January 8, 2012 08:22 IST
Dignity denied even in death for Vrindavan widows
Aarti Dhar
Bodies taken away by sweepers, cut into pieces and disposed of in jute bags
The bodies of widows who die in government-run shelter homes in Vrindavan are taken away by sweepers at night, cut into pieces, put into jute bags and disposed of as the institutions do not have any provision for a decent funeral. This, too, is done only after the inmates give money to the sweeper!
This shocking fact has come to light in a survey by the District Legal Services Authority (DLSA) on the “Plight of Forsaken/Forlorn Women — Old and Widows Living in Vrindavan and Radius.”
Taking cognisance of a report published in The Hindu on August 11 on the plight of the widows living in Vrindavan in Mathura district of Uttar Pradesh, Justice Altamash Kabir, Executive Chairperson of the National Legal Services Authority, had asked the U.P. State Legal Services Authority to survey the conditions of the women.
The terms of reference also included ascertaining whether there were peculiar family circumstances which led to abandonment of the women by their families or children which was actionable under Section 24 of the Maintenance and Welfare of Parents and Senior Citizens Act, 2007.
The report, a copy of which is available with The Hindu, has recommended that the District Magistrates be directed to protect the property and property rights of these women. It wanted them to take necessary steps to restore the property to the destitute women in accordance with law which would facilitate their return home and enable them to lead a dignified life.
It has also suggested that legal aid clinics be set up to generate awareness among these women about various Acts and their rights and provide assistance wherever needed.
The District Legal Services Authority in its report quoted Mithilesh Solanki, a widow living in Swadhar Mahila Ashray Kendra, Chaitanya Vihar (Vrindavan), to reveal the “sorry state of affairs and disheartening fact that sweepers take away the dead bodies in the night, cut them into pieces and dispose them of in jute bags.”
The institution, started by the Union Ministry of Women and Child Development in 2006 and run by a non-governmental organisation Akhil Bharatiya Maa Sharda Samaj Kalyan Samiti, does not undertake the responsibility of arranging funerals.
Similar conditions prevail in another residential institution established by the U.P. Mahila Samaj Kalyan Nigam — the only of its kind run by the State government under its Meera Sahbhagini scheme.
The report, prepared by Sapna Tripathi, ACJM and Vijay Bahadur Yadav, chairman (DLSA) and district judge, Mathura along with some other members is based on personal interaction with the widows and the data provided by the government and non-government agencies. The official figures provided by the District Probation Office and Social Welfare Department at Mathura puts the number of abandoned women in the entire district at 3151 — a large number of whom were shunned by their conservative and orthodox families in certain parts of West Bengal and persuaded or even forced by the family members to live a ‘sacred widowed life' in Vrindavan after the death of her husband.
In most cases widows are denied remarriage even after the death of their husband in childhood or young age. While some are forced to leave the marital home and native place by the family members just to avoid maintenance in old age and bearing the burden of a non-productive family member, many others leave their homes due to physical and mental torture.
The report details the plight of these women, some of whom get a monthly pension of Rs. 300 and a measly quantity of food grain and sugar which is woefully inadequate for survival. As a result, they are forced to beg and sing in temples from where they can earn two or three rupees a day.
The living quarters are unhygienic with little or no facilities for toilets and drinking water. Medical facilities are only on paper. But due to lack of education, the women are often deprived of the paltry sum they are entitled to under the National Social Assistance Programme, Antodaya Scheme and Food Money Scheme as the funds are often pilfered.
Recommending setting up of sufficient shelter homes with proper facilities, the DLSA report said the Centre and the State governments are expected to fulfil the basic needs guaranteed by the Constitution and protect the human rights of the widows. It has also suggested proper audit of the funds received by the NGOs and private charitable institutions.
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Only three states complied with SC order on shelters
9.1.2012, Times of India
New Delhi: Following a Supreme Court order to set up permanent shelters for the homeless before the onset of winter,only three states of 15 studied by SC commissioners showed average level of compliance: Delhi,TN and UP,which built 30-60 % of the required shelters.
Ten states put up only 20-30 % of the shelters required to house the poor. These were Andhra Pradesh,Bihar,Chhattisgarh,Gujarat,Jharkhand,Karnataka,Madhya Pradesh,Orissa,Rajasthan and Uttarakhand,a national report on homelessness compiled by the SC commissioners said.
Two states,the court commissioners said,which showed willful disobedience of the court orders and not set up even 20% of their targeted shelters were Maharashtra and West Bengal.In both,no functional shelters exist till date.Of 64 shelters that Delhi put up,21 were found locked.The 21 shelters are underutilized and,in most cases,locked.Homeless are not aware of those shelters.Shelters are located in places which are too difficult to identify.The occupied shelters are only for men and no separate space for women in those.The basic amenities provided in the shelters are very poor, the report said.
Apathy towards homeless seems to be worst in the big cities.In Greater Mumbai,when the local corporation tried to start a shelter,the local Shiv Sena MLA objected to it.While Maharashtra claimed it would build 27 shelters in 15 cities by October 31,2011,not a single shelter is in operation.In Kolkata,the state government claimed two running shelters existed and three more were being renovated.But the study found none operational.Worse,in Howrah,homeless families were actually evicted from a running shelter.Chennai,on the other hand,is doing better with 12 functional shelters though these too have their attendant problems.
In a scathing critique of government indifference,the report said: Two years have elapsed now since the court first directed the states;one winter has given way to another and to another;monsoons have come and gone by In this period,the SC has reviewed the case on more that 10 occasions and has periodically guided the governments with support from office of the commissioners of the SC to ensure implementation of the SC directions.
The commissioners said that even where the shelters existed,in many cases the most basic facilities were not there.In the biting cold,there are shelters across the country which do not even provide a polythene sheet and people sleep on cold bare ground in many.There are shelters which have been opened in cremation grounds (Kanpur),or outside city limits.The commissioners noted that the Centre too had failed in formulating a policy to provide for the homeless.The only scheme it once ran was whittled down and then wound up in 2005.
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- U.S. NEWS
- JANUARY 14, 2012
Fuel Arrives, but Deep Freeze Endures
Russian Tanker Churns Through Ice to Relieve Nome, Alaska, but Epic Blizzards Keep State Shivering
The ice-bound town of Nome will likely get its emergency fuel supply this weekend from a Russian tanker that has taken three weeks to get there, as Alaska continues to be battered by one of the state's harshest winters in decades.
The tanker Renda arrived just offshore from Nome on Friday with its cargo of fuel for the town, which was cut off from oceangoing supplies by waters that froze earlier than expected.
Photos: Alaska Hit With Heavy Snow
Reuters
The Russian-flagged tanker vessel Renda followed a trail cut through the ice by the Coast Guard Cutter Healy in the Bering Sea Thursday as it headed to Nome with emergency fuel supplies.
By early morning Friday, lights from the tanker and a Coast Guard cutter escort were visible from the community of 3,600 in western Alaska, promising relief for residents whose fuel reserves were expected to run out by March.
The Renda was originally going to arrive five days earlier, but thick ice delayed its progress. The tanker won't be able to approach closer than about a mile from shore because of an iced-in harbor, local officials said, so it will transfer 1.4 million gallons of diesel fuel and gasoline by hose to a tank facility. That task was expected to begin Saturday and take as long as three days, amid Arctic temperatures that on Friday stood at minus-31 degrees.
Across Alaska, relentless snowstorms have collapsed buildings, sunk boats and caused minor injuries, many from falls and strained backs, said Jeremy Zidek, spokesman for Alaska's Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.
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U.S. Coast Guard/Getty Images
The Russian tanker Renda powers through the Bering Sea this week toward Nome, Alaska, with help from U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Healy.
Alaska's bad weather is partly the result of the jet stream bulging farther north than normal for this season, said National Weather Service forecaster Dave Stricklan in Anchorage. That's feeding some storms into Alaska that normally would head toward California and the Pacific Northwest, which are now seeing unseasonably mild and dry conditions, he said.
One of the hardest-hit communities is the Prince William Sound town of Cordova, where rooftops of six commercial buildings and several smaller porches and out-buildings have collapsed under 15 feet of snow since Nov. 1, said Allen Marquette, spokesman for the Cordova Incident Command Center.
National Guard soldiers have been called in to help dig out the community of 2,200 people. The 82 inches of snow that fell in December broke a 1989 record of 57 inches, and dwarfed the 9.5 inches in December 2010, Mr. Marquette said.
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The snow prompted city officials in the port city of Valdez to close the three local schools on Thursday and Friday, as a precaution against collapses. No disruptions to oil shipments were reported to the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, which ends in Valdez.
So far, Alaska has reported no fatalities, though the weather has been harsh enough to give even the hardiest Alaskans pause. Todd Armstrong said he had to drive 70 miles through a blizzard last Tuesday back to his home in Soldotna after deep drifts prevented him from reaching a hotel while on a job in the port town of Homer.
"I'll be up here 50 years this year, and I'm getting a little tired of it," said the 49-year-old Mr. Armstrong, a commercial fire-safety systems installer.
Nome typically stocks up on fuel before its waters freeze. A Nome tank farm owned by the Sitnasuak Native Corp. had been scheduled to receive the rest of its winter's fuel by barge in November.
But a severe storm caused the offshore waters to fill with ice, leaving the barge unable to get in, said Jason Evans, the company's chairman. He said his corporation arranged for the Renda shipment as an alternative to shipping fuel by air.
"It would take more than 300 flights and cost consumers as much as $9 a gallon," Mr. Evans said, adding that the current cost of about $6 a gallon probably won't change much now.
The 370-foot Renda set sail from Vladivostok on Dec. 23, taking on fuel in South Korea and Dutch Harbor, Alaska. The vessel had to clear U.S. regulatory requirements before continuing on from Dutch Harbor, led by the 420-foot Healy, which plowed ahead through about 300 miles of ice.
"I wish we could do a large celebration for the crews now," said Denise Michels, the mayor of the town that includes many Inupiat Eskimos, "but there's not much more we can do except be very grateful."
January 27, 2012, 5:57 PM IST
Weekend Panorama: India’s $25 Billion Annual Oversight
By Ajit Mohan
The murky business of land in India is about to get even murkier.
Last September, the UPA government drafted a bill to address an issue that has been at the heart of the developmental debate in the country: how best to deploy land on a large scale for private enterprises and public utilities in a fair manner, especially in rural areas. The bill, termed the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill, aims to create a framework for land acquisition, defining the purpose and terms of such transactions.
Manpreet Romana/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Women protested against the land acquisition policy, in New Delhi, Nov. 22, 2010.
As pointed out by PRS Legislative Research – an organization that tracks the functioning of Parliament — the bill, the purpose of which has been misrepresented in most media reports, sets the terms for forcible acquisition of land involving unwilling sellers. It is not about the government purchasing land from voluntary sellers.
The bill allows the government to acquire land for its own use or for use by private companies for “public purpose.” If more than 100 acres is involved in rural areas or 50 acres in urban areas, the bill requires affected people (not just the land owners) to be rehabilitated and resettled. The total compensation (including the value of the land and the “solatium” amount for the forced nature of the transaction) is linked to the average sale price of transactions over the most recent three-year period. Here, the bill has a marker for the size of the total compensation, set to be four times this benchmark price in rural areas and twice the benchmark in urban areas. Every acquisition, regardless of size, will also require a Social Impact Assessment by an independent body before the District Collector can approve the project.
While an argument can be made in favor of the central government crafting a national framework for an important subject such as land, what may well have been an honorable intent has translated into a highly flawed bill that promises to do more damage than good. For a start, it is not clear if the bill is even legally sound. Agricultural land is a state subject, while the concurrent list only allows the centre to legislate on transfer of property other than agricultural land. So, the bill may be attempting to legislate on a terrain clearly marked out for the states.
But the flaws run deeper. At the heart of the bill is the new compensation framework. The idea of a bill that sets the “market price” as four times the actual market price is an amusing non sequitur. The unofficial justification in government circles is that most property is registered for far less than its actual transaction value. So, effectively, the disturbing outcome is a bill introduced in the country’s highest legislating authority that is attempting to correct a distortion in registered prices arising from a blatantly illegal practice.
At the same time, the bill completely ignores a key element of fair compensation (one that was core to the 2007 version passed by the Lok Sabha that was blocked by the Rajya Sabha): intended use of the land.
Getting the permission from development authorities to convert land classified as rural to urban has often passed for real estate “entrepreneurship” in this country in the last two decades. Underpinning this is a straightforward fact: amidst poor agricultural productivity and rapid urbanization, the land’s classification has a direct impact on its value. Land that can be used for urban housing and industrial activity has a lot more value than the same land that is restricted to farming. The new draft completely ignores this. Thus, while the terms of the compensation may seem high, the bill, by attaching compensation to agricultural land price rather than the final use of the land, represents a large transfer of wealth from sellers to purchasers.
The other disturbing attribute of the bill is that, for the first time, it creates a new basis for forced acquisition by the government. This bill is expansive on what public purpose means. It seems to go beyond the creation of specific public goods to a remit that includes “planned development and improvement of villages” and “provision of public goods and services by private companies.” In other words, so long as even a tenuous linkage is made between a commercial activity and broad developmental impact, the government can forcibly acquire land on behalf of private enterprises.
The bill, therefore, sets the government up to play the role of a land agent for private corporations. Cynics may argue, of course, that this is only institutionalizing within the government a role that has been traditionally played well by freelancing political leaders.
And yet, if the intent was to create fairness in pricing for landowners while making it easier for manufacturing enterprises to set up businesses, other provisions in the bill only create new contradictions and uncertainty.
The requirement for a Social Impact Assessment is likely to delay the implementation of every single public utilities project in the country, from the installation of a roadside tap to the expansion of a highway. And while it may generate new revenue sources for the fast growing industry of independent consultants who churn out banal project reports, such assessments are unlikely to be meaningful. In the past, a similar provision in the National Urban Renewal Mission generated thousands of pages of similar-looking City Development Plans across the country, but no new insights or direction.
The requirement for consent from 80% of “affected persons” and not just the landowners further muddies the waters. The legislation effectively cedes decisions to a vaguely defined group who will have the ability to supersede the interests of the landowners.
Raul Arboledad/Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
Other countries have used land to generate resources to invest in their public infrastructure. Pictured, a neighborhood in Medellin, Colombia, December 26, 2011.
The bill could have attempted to provide a real solution to an entrenched problem that has two faces. One is the blatant exploitation of natural resources (and people whose livelihoods depend on them) by a few large corporations. The other is that entrepreneurs find it difficult to purchase and consolidate land needed to run enterprises critical to economic growth. However, what reinforces the lurking suspicion that this bill is aimed to be more a manifesto headline than a real solution is that both Special Economic Zones and mining are out of the purview of the bill. Led by powerful entrenched interests, these two sectors have been poster children for arbitrary land acquisition and muscular approaches that have bulldozed the interests of rural communities. That the principles of the bill do not apply to these two sectors suggests insincerity from the drafters.
The government’s response to an issue that is, quite obviously, a huge impediment to growth has been a flawed bill focused on the wrong issues. It has chosen to use a crude and unwieldy machete to hack away at a complex problem. And in the process, it has created legislation that is unlikely to appeal to landowners or farmers, small businesses or large corporations.
More glaringly, even as the bill has ventured into the terrain of acquisition in urban areas, it has completely ignored the huge potential of using urban land to fund public investments.
Throughout history, governments have leveraged land in cities to raise funds to invest in public infrastructure and services. This was true in the Western world and it is now the case in developing countries like China. Among fast-growing, fast-urbanizing countries in the developing world, India remains an exception in not having an approach to use the value of rising urban land prices to build public services and utilities.
India’s requirement for funds to build trunk services that raise the living standards of its people is substantial. The bill for creating water supply systems, roads, sanitation, and waste disposal will run to more than $1 trillion over the next 20 years.
The enormity of this task usually pushes the conversation in two directions, both unhelpful. One is the pursuit of futility, the conversation about how we should try to reduce the pace of our urbanization and find ways to keep people in villages. The other is the debate between an increased role from a government with limited budgetary resources, and the need for greater involvement from a private sector which will just not invest capital if it doesn’t see a path to get its money back.
What is lost in this pointless debate is that the one way to bring together a rising urban population, the need for more space and public utilities, and rising land values is for the government to devise an approach that uses land to fund public infrastructure.
Is this rocket science? Hardly.
All that the government has to do is put a price on the enormous value that it helps to create for private parties by leveraging rising land prices.
There are many ways in which the government can extract a fair share. One is to demand a share of the increased land value, when rural land is reclassified for urban housing or industrial activity. The other is to auction public lands when the government has adequate foresight about the infrastructure being built around it that will directly and substantially contribute to the value of the land. A third way is to charge private landowners who directly benefit from an infrastructure project, such as land near a newly built highway. This charge can be levied when they sell off the property.
But the most common approach is to charge private developers for building high-rise offices and apartments. When developers add floors to houses and offices, they are adding new space that is then sold to the market. While the profits from this additional space go to the developers, the bill for creating public services and utilities to serve the additional population fall on the government.
There is no way a government – even one that has an adequate tax base – can keep up with this new demand. This is exactly how our roads get clogged, our water supply systems dry out and our waste piles up.
The answer is not to prevent developers from building more. In most cases, they are responding to a real market need for more houses, more office spaces and more retail outlets. What has to change is the notion that there is a market in which developers make all the money, and a separate government authority that is stuck with all the responsibilities. In the absence of levying adequate charges on developers, they are extracting abnormal profits that are just not in line with the level of their risks and the value of their expertise.
That is not capitalism at work; it is bad policy on display.
The principles involved here are clear and defendable. It is fair for the government to levy a portion of the value it helps to create from private landowners who disproportionately benefit from public infrastructure. It is not only fair but necessary for the government to generate revenues to invest in raising the living standards of all its citizens, not just a few, wealthy landowners. And, in the case of charges on developers, it is absolutely irresponsible for a city authority not to charge for the additional space, which, at the end of the day, is public land. Imagine the uproar if government land in prime locations were to be given away for miniscule amounts. This is no different.
A recent economic estimate, in fact, put the value of such an approach at close to $25 billion annually. In other words, India could raise 1.35 trillion rupees every year if the government crafted a sensible approach to monetizing urban land. That’s a lot of money that could be used to create public utilities and services.
Yet the government continues to shy away from such an approach. Across the country, some authorities levy small fees. But the approach is muddled, and rarely are the fees commensurate with the value created.
This is certainly not from a lack of understanding of the enormous, hidden value of urban land.
Nothing has happened precisely for the reason that the two constituencies that have the most to benefit from the current status quo are also the ones with the best understanding of what is being left on the table: political leaders and bureaucrats in urban development authorities, and large real estate developers.
The need to change this status quo is urgent. Much of the private infrastructure that will last the 21st century is going to be built over the next 20 years. Other countries at a similar moment in their development journeys have used land to generate resources to invest in their public infrastructure. Such an approach is the only way to create a virtuous cycle without which even private landowners and enterprises will start to see steep declines in their land values.
So the message is this: stop expending political capital on the wrong issues and start building a framework for leveraging land that will have a clear and direct impact on our ability to raise the living standards of our citizens.
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In 37 Raj villages,NREGS workers get 1- 10 as wages
Times Of India, 27.1.12
MINIMUM PAY
Nitin Sethi TNN
New Delhi: Many poor labourers across the country are being cheated of their money and the much publicized guaranteed daily wage of Rs 100 on many occasions remains only on paper.Initial reports had suggested just a one-off case of Re 1 being paid to several in Tonk district in Rajasthan.But trawling through hundreds of muster rolls in the state has shown that this is an endemic fraud being perpetrated on the poor in Rajasthan.
Asurvey of 249 panchayats in 33 districts of the state carried out by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan has shown that in 37 panchayats,some people were paid wages between Rs 1-10 in 2011-12.Another 40 panchayats paid between Rs 11-20 to people employed to carry out rural development work under the scheme.In only 7 of the 249 panchayats,scrutinized workers ever got between Rs 91-100 per day for their work in 2011-12.
The story is as bad in Karanataka.A scrutiny of the muster rolls shows that in Bapur village of Sadapur panchayat in Raichur,people got paid anywhere from Rs 2-11 for carrying out work under the scheme.It is not a one-off case in Karnataka either.Meagre wages have been paid in several districts over the last year,documents with TOI show.
The shocking discrepancy between the promise and the reality is a pointer to how the details of a scheme can end up defeating the objective it was meant for.In this case,while Rs 100 is publicized as the guaranteed pay,it is actually the maximum the poor can get and it entirely depends on the district administration if the worker will get it at all.Under the scheme,the administration first assesses how much work was done in the day by the labourer on a particular project.This technical assessment takes place days after the labourer has completed his work.The labourer has no room to dispute the assessment and is,thus forced,to settle for whatever has already been put in the banks.More so,because in many cases,the payments reach months after completion of the project.
Consequently,in several districts of Karnataka and Rajasthan,vigilant activists have found the poor being defrauded of their rightful income.This is in sharp contrast to the fact that UPA government is now fighting a case in the SC to ensure that it does not have to pay minimum wages fixed by states,which in many cases,Karnataka included,are higher than that prescribed by the Centre for the scheme.
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Times Of India, 27.1.12
Distress sale report for PM
Sidhartha & Surojit Gupta TNN
New Delhi: The Commission for Agricultural Costs & Prices will take up with PM Manmohan Singh the issue of Bihar and UP farmers being forced to sell paddy to the Food Corporation of India (FCI) at 70% of the minimum support price of Rs 1,080 per quintal.A CACP team surveyed 20 procurement centres in the two states last week and found distress sale in many.
We are preparing a report.I plan to take up the issue with the PM since this is the second time we have noticed that there are problems with procurement, CACP chairman Ashok Gulati said.FCI chairman Siraj Hussain could not be reached for comment.A senior officer in the UP food department said he had not received a report from the Centre so far.Quite often,we receive complaints and we have a toll-free number to help people.Whenever we hear of poor procurement or the centre being shut,we immediately take action, the officer said.Despite several attempts,Bihar food secretary Shishir Sinha could not be reached.
For long,Bihar and eastern UP have complained that FCI focuses its energies on Punjab,Haryana and western UP,while neglecting other parts of the Gangetic belt.This year,West Bengal and Orissa too have joined the chorus.FCI has repeatedly been blamed for its inability to create storage space,resulting in wastage of grains.
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Times Of India, 27.1.12
Poor labourers pledged Rs 100, get Re 1 for day's work under govt's employment guarantee scheme
Nitin Sethi, TNN Jan 27, 2012, 03.44AM IST
Tags:
(Fraud on poor labourers: While Rs 100 is publicized as guaranteed pay under MNREGA, it is actually the maximum the poor can get & it entirely depends on district administration if the worker will get it at all.)
NEW DELHI: Poor workers are being paid wages as low as Rs 1-10 for a hard day's labour in states like Rajasthan and Karnataka under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme which promises a real wage of Rs 100 per day.
Documents with TOI show that many desperate, poor labourers across the country are being cheated of their hard earned money and the much publicized guaranteed daily wage of Rs 100 on many occasions remains a mere illusion.
The scheme legally entitles any citizen in the hinterland to demand work for 100 days from the government and be paid Rs 100 per day for the work rendered. But documents with TOI show how rules of the scheme have allowed government officials to cheat the people of their day's entitlement. In practice, the promise of guaranteed wage has been supplanted by non-transparent efficiency norms which allow the executing authorities to use discretion to hammer down the wages.
De-linking the payment under the scheme from minimum wages keeps the wages low to begin with. On top of it, linking it to non-transparent efficiency norms has ensured that the poor can be robbed of their wages under MNREGA, and that it can be done safely under the techno-legal loopholes passing off the inefficiency of the bureaucracy to the poor at the latter's cost.
Initial reports had suggested just a one-off case of Re 1 being paid to several in Tonk district in Rajasthan. But trawling through hundreds of muster rolls in the state has shown that this is an endemic fraud being perpetrated on the poor in Rajasthan.
A survey of 249 panchayats in 33 districts of the state carried out by Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan has shown that in 37 panchayats, some people were paid wages between Rs 1-10 in 2011-12. Another 40 panchayats paid between Rs 11-20 to people employed to carry out rural development work under the scheme. In only 7 of the 249 panchayats, scrutinized workers ever got between Rs 91-100 per day for their work in 2011-12.
The story is as bad in Karanataka. A scrutiny of the muster rolls shows that in Bapur village of Sadapur panchayat in Raichur, people got paid anywhere from Rs 2-11 for carrying out work under the scheme. It is not a one-off case in Karnataka either. The meagre wages have been paid in several districts over the last year, documents with TOI show.
The shocking discrepancy between the promise and the reality is a pointer to how the details of a scheme can end up defeating the objective it was meant for. In this case, while Rs 100 is publicized as the guaranteed pay, it is actually the maximum the poor can get and it entirely depends on the district administration if the worker will get it at all. Under the scheme, the administration first assesses how much work was done in the day by the labourer on a particular project. This technical assessment takes place days after the labourer has completed his work. The labourer has no room to dispute the assessment and is, thus forced, to settle for whatever has already been put in the banks. More so, because in many cases, the payments reach months after completion of the project.
Consequently, in several districts of Karnataka and Rajasthan, vigilant activists have found the poor being defrauded of their rightful income. Perhaps the only reasons cases have not been found in other states is that no one has scrutinized thousands of muster rolls generated so far.
This is in sharp contrast to the fact that UPA government is now fighting a case in the Supreme Court to ensure that it does not have to pay minimum wages fixed by states, which in many cases, Karnataka included, are higher than that prescribed by the Centre for the scheme. It also contrasts with the high pitched arguments about MNREGA stealing away labour from the farms by paying a guaranteed wage of Rs 100 per day. UPA fears paying prescribed minimum wages will be a drain on its coffers.
Times View
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme pledges to provide a minimum amount of work to the rural poor on a minimum daily wage. Its purpose is to give some income support to the poor. Similarly, minimum support price for crops is meant to ensure that farmers aren't forced into distress sales. The government is pledged to both - in the case of the NREGS, the pledge is legally binding. Yet, the promises are being violated. This, naturally, undermines the state's credibility. It also draws attention to a moth-eaten, leaky delivery mechanism. It must be fixed. Those being promised deserve better and so do the taxpayers who pay for the schemes.
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Sunday, January 15, 2012
Superpower? 230m Indians go hungry daily : Times of India NEWS Dated 15th January, 2012
SHAME MALNUTRITION
Superpower? 230m Indians go hungry daily
Subodh Varma TIG
Often, in the hype over economic growth, we forget the harsh reality of India — extreme poverty, hunger, disease, lack of education, and regressive social practices. We Indians should be ashamed about them. These simmering injustices cannot be allowed to fester because they will heighten social tensions that will ultimately risk our growth story. TOI flags some of the key problems that need speedy intervention
With 21% of its population undernourished, nearly 44% of under-5 children underweight and 7% of them dying before they reach five years, India is firmly established among the world’s most hunger-ridden countries. The situation is better than only Congo, Chad, Ethiopia or Burundi, butitisworsethan Sudan,NorthKorea, Pakistan or Nepal.
This is according to the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI)whichcombinesthe abovethreeindicators to give us a Global Hunger Index (GHI) according to which India is 67th among the worst 80 countries in terms of malnourishment.
That’s not all. Data collected by GHI researchers shows that while there has been some improvement in children’s malnutrition and early deaths since 1990, the proportion of hungry in the population has actually gone up.Today,India has213 million hungry and malnourished people by GHI estimates although the UN agency Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) putsthefigure at around230 million.The difference is because FAO uses only the standardcalorieintakeformula for measuring sufficiency of foodwhiletheHunger Index is based on broader criteria.Nutrition schemes need to be expanded.
Whichever way you slice it and dice it, the shameful reality is inescapable – India is home to the largest number of hungry people, about a quarter of the estimated 820 million in the whole world.
The National Family and Health Survey (NFHS), last carried out in 2004-05, had shown that 23% of married men, 52% of married women and a chilling 72% of infants were anemic – a sure sign that a shockingly large number of families were caught in a downward spiral of slow starvation.
Global research has now firmly established that depriving the fetus of essential nutrients – as will happen in an under-nourished pregnant woman – seals the fate of the baby once it is born. It is likely to suffer from susceptibility to diseases and physical retardation, as also to mental faculties getting compromised.
So, continuing to allow people to go hungry and malnourished, is not just more misery for them: it is the fate of future generations of Indians in balance.
What can be done to fix this unending tragedy? The government already runs two of world’s biggest nutrition programmes: the midday meal scheme for students up to class 12 and the anganwadi programme under which infants and children up to 6 are given “hot cooked” meals.
These need to be spread further and more resources pumped in to tackle weaknesses. For instance, a report by the anganwadi workers’ federation revealed that as many as 73,375 posts of anganwadi workers and 16,251 posts of supervisors are lying vacant. But the biggest contribution to fighting hunger would be providing universal coverage of the PDS with adequate amounts of grain, pulses and edible oils included.
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From food security to food justice
February 1, 2012
Ananya Mukherjee
The Hindu
A quarter of a million women in Kerala are showing us how to earn livelihoods with dignity.
If the malnourished in India formed a country, it would be the world's fifth largest — almost the size of Indonesia. According to Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), 237.7 million Indians are currently undernourished (up from 224.6 million in 2008). And it is far worse if we use the minimal calorie intake norms accepted officially in India. By those counts <http://www.thehindu. com/news/resources/article2803621.ece> (2200 rural/2100 urban), the number of Indians who cannot afford the daily minimum could equal the entire population of Europe.
Yet, the Indian elite shrieks at the prospect of formalising a universal right to food. Notwithstanding the collective moral deficit this reveals, it also shows that the millions of Indians whose food rights are so flagrantly violated are completely voiceless in the policy space. India's problem is not only to secure food, but to secure food justice.
What can food justice practically mean? First, to prevent situations where grains rot while people die — a very basic principle of distributive justice. But it has to mean a lot more: people must have the right to produce food with dignity, have control over the parameters of production, get just value for their labour and their produce. Mainstream notions of food security ignore this dimension.
Food justice must entail both production and distribution. Its fundamental premise must be that governments have a non-negotiable obligation to address food insecurity. They must also address the structural factors that engender that insecurity. Most governments, however, appear neither willing nor able to deliver food justice. It needs therefore the devolution of power and resources to the local level, where millions of protagonists, with their knowledge of local needs and situations, can create a just food economy.
Collective struggle
This is not quite as utopian as it may sound. Something on these lines has been unfolding in Kerala — a collective struggle of close to a quarter million women who are farming nearly 10 million acres of land. The experiment, “Sangha Krishi,” or group farming, is part of Kerala's anti-poverty programme “Kudumbashree.” Initiated in 2007, it was seen as a means to enhance local food production. Kerala's women embraced this vision enthusiastically. As many as 44, 225 collectives of women farmers have sprung up across the State. These collectives lease fallow land, rejuvenate it, farm it and then either sell the produce or use it for consumption, depending on the needs of members. On an average, Kudumbashree farmers earn Rs.15,000-25,000 per year (sometimes higher, depending on the crops and the number of yields annually).
Kudumbashree is a network of 4 million women, mostly below the poverty line. It is not a mere ‘project' or a ‘programme' but a social space where marginalised women can collectively pursue their needs and aspirations. The primary unit of Kudumbashree is the neighbourhood group (NHG). Each NHG consists of 10-20 women; for an overwhelming majority, the NHG is their first ever space outside the home. NHGs are federated into an Area Development Society (ADS) and these are in turn federated into Community Development Societies (CDSs) at the panchayat level. Today, there are 213,000 NHGs all over Kerala. Kudumbashree office-bearers are elected, a crucial process for its members. “We are poor. We don't have money or connections to get elected — only our service,” is a common refrain. These elections bring women into politics. And they bring with them a different set of values that can change politics.
The NHG is very different from a self-help group (SHG) in that it is structurally linked to the State (through the institutions of local self-government). This ensures that local development reflects the needs and aspirations of communities, who are not reduced to mere “executors” of government programmes. What is sought is a synergy between democratisation and poverty reduction; with Kudumbashree, this occurs through the mobilisation of poor women's leadership and solidarity. “Sangha Krishi” or group farming is just one example of how this works. It is transforming the socio-political space that women inhabit — who in turn transform that space in vital ways.
This experiment is having three major consequences. First, there is a palpable shift in the role of women in Kerala's agriculture. This was earlier limited to daily wage work in plantations — at wages much lower than those earned by men. Thousands of Kudumbashree women — hitherto underpaid agricultural labourers — have abandoned wage work to become independent producers. Many others combine wage work with farming. With independent production comes control over one's time and labour, over crops and production methods and, most significantly, over the produce. Since the farmers are primarily poor women, they often decide to use a part of their produce to meet their own needs, rather than selling it. Every group takes this decision democratically, depending on levels of food insecurity of their members. In Idukki, where the terrain prevents easy market access and food insecurity is higher, farmers take more of their produce home — as opposed to Thiruvananthapuram where market access is better and returns are higher.
Sangha Krishi
Second, “Sangha Krishi” has enabled women to salvage their dignity and livelihoods amidst immense adversity. Take the story of Subaida in Malappuram. Once widowed and once deserted, with three young children, she found no means of survival other than cleaning dead bodies. Hardly adequate as a livelihood, it also brought her unbearable social ostracism. Now Subaida is a proud member of a farming collective and wants to enter politics. In the nine districts this writer visited, there was a visible, passionate commitment to social inclusion amongst Kudumbashree farmers.
Our survey of 100 collectives across 14 districts found that 15 per cent of the farmers were Dalits and Adivasis and 32 per cent came from the minority communities.
Third, “Sangha Krishi” is producing important consequences for the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme in Kerala. Because of Kerala's high wages for men, the MGNREGS in Kerala has become predominantly a space for women (93 per cent of the employment generated has gone to women where the national average is 50). From the beginning, synergies were sought between the MGNREGS, the People's Plan and Kudumbashree. Kudumbashree farmers strongly feel this has transformed MGNREGS work.
“We have created life … and food, which gives life, not just 100 days of manual labour,” said a Perambra farmer. In Perambra, Kudumbashree women, working with the panchayat, have rejuvenated 140 acres that lay fallow for 26 years. It now grows rice, vegetables and tapioca. Farmers also receive two special incentives — an ‘area incentive' for developing land and a ‘production incentive' for achieving certain levels of productivity. These amounted to over Rs.200 million in 2009-10. They were combined with subsidised loans from banks and the State, and seeds, input and equipment from Krishi Bhavan and the panchayats.
Challenges
However, serious challenges remain. Kudumbashree farmers are predominantly landless women working on leased land; there is no certainty of tenure. Lack of ownership also restricts access to credit, since they cannot offer formal guarantees on the land they farm. Whenever possible, Kudumbashree collectives have started buying land to overcome this uncertainty. But an alternative institutional solution is clearly needed. It is also difficult for women to access resources and technical know-how — the relevant institutions (such as crop committees) are oriented towards male farmers. There is also no mechanism of risk insurance.
Is this a sustainable, replicable model of food security? It is certainly one worth serious analysis. First, this concerted effort to encourage agriculture is occurring when farmers elsewhere are forced to exit farming — in large numbers. It re-connects food security to livelihoods, as any serious food policy must. But more importantly, the value of Sangha Krishi lies in that it has become the manifestation of a deep-rooted consciousness about food justice amongst Kerala's women. Kannyama, the president of Idamalakudy, Kerala's first tribal panchayat, says she wants to make her community entirely self-sufficient in food. She wants Sangha Krishi produce to feed every school and anganwadi in her panchayat — to ensure that children get local, chemical-free food. Elsewhere, Kudumbashree farmers plan to protest the commercialisation of land. Even in the tough terrain of Idukki's Vathikudy panchayat, women were taking a census of fallow land in the area that they could cultivate. Some 100,000 women practise organic farming and more wish to. Kudumbashree farmers speak passionately about preventing ecological devastation through alternative farming methods.
In the world of Sangha Krishi, food is a reflection of social relations. And only new social relations of food, not political manoeuvres, can combat the twin violence of hunger and injustice.
(Ananya Mukherjee is Professor and Chair of Political Science at York University, Toronto. Her latest work is a co-edited volume in collaboration with UNRISD, Geneva (Business Regulation and Non-state actors: Whose Standards? Whose Development? Routledge Studies in Development Economics, 2012.))
March 6, 2012 01:19 IST | Updated: March 6, 2012 03:45 IST March 6, 2012
Needed, more HUNGaMA over malnutrition
Gopalan Balagopal
AP Tackling malnutrition requires a ‘life cycle approach’ that starts before pregnancy and then addresses all stages of development of the child.
The solutions to ending chronic hunger, the consequences of which are felt over generations, are not complicated.
Amartya Sen and Jean Dreze wrote in Hunger and Public Action in 1989 that nearly four million people die every year in India from malnutrition and related causes, a number and that “is more than the number that has perished during the entire Bengal famine.” The recent “HUNGaMA” report and the activities of the Citizen's Alliance Against Malnutrition have brought renewed attention to this issue. This report from 112 districts over nine States tells us that 42 per cent of children are underweight and 58 per cent are stunted by the age of 24 months.
In addition to greatly increasing the chances of infant death, child malnutrition has other devastating consequences. Research has established that the damage that begins in the womb and during the first two years of life is irreversible, leading to reduced intelligence and physical capacity. Malnutrition thus has a direct impact on productivity and economic growth. It is also clear that the consequences of malnutrition transcend generations, as stunted mothers are likely to have underweight children.
The solutions to ending malnutrition are not complicated. What is necessary to be done is known and has been achieved in parts of our own country. What is needed are the will and the determination to make this happen.
Why is child malnutrition still so high in India?
The seriousness of the problem is still largely invisible to the families and communities that experience them. This inadequate recognition of the human and economic costs of malnutrition by families, communities and governments is an important reason for the inertia in solving this problem.
Equally important is the fact that adequate nutrition is not seen as a human right and the malnourished have little voice in determining the directions of policy.
There are also problems related to how we deal with malnutrition currently. There are many stakeholders and several agencies that work on the issue. Perhaps there is inadequate consensus on what needs to be done. Politicians and senior officials do not give programmes addressing malnourishment the priority they deserve. There is a tendency to keep repeating programmes that have not resulted in tangible improvements.
There are also some myths that need to be demolished before significant progress can be made. The first is that malnutrition is about inadequate food intake. Many children in food-secure environments are underweight or stunted because of inappropriate infant feeding and care practices, poor access to health services, or poor sanitation. The second myth is that improved nutrition only comes with economic progress and poverty reduction.
Both myths are disproved by experience in parts of India and from other countries. Bangladesh, for instance, is a country with a per capita GNI almost half of India. However, Bangladesh has succeeded in reducing infant mortality, under-five mortality and stunting to rates that are lower than those we have in India in the course of less than 10 years.
What needs to be done?
The experience from all over the world is that food alone does not ensure better nutrition. A range of other interventions is necessary to ensure the health and nutrition of mothers and children.
Following a “life cycle” approach, these should begin with the health of the woman before the pregnancy begins and address all the critical stages of the birth and development of the baby. All these are well known and part of the routine of care in health centres and the Integrated Child Development Centres in the country. In addition, hand washing with soap, use of household filters for purification of water and use of sanitary latrines will ensure the continued good health of the baby and the mother.
A 2006 World Bank publication, “Repositioning Nutrition as Central to Development” evaluates the benefit to cost ratios of some of these interventions. These range from between five to 67 for breast feeding programmes, 15 to 520 for iodine supplementation programmes for women and 176 to 200 for iron fortification per capita. Thus, it is no surprise that the Copenhagen Consensus rated nutrition interventions among the top 17 potential development investments in 2008, outranking others including trade liberalisation.
To make lasting improvements, interventions should go beyond the direct causes of malnutrition, diet and disease burden. Levels of economic development, governance structures including the political will necessary to address this issue, the agriculture and food security situation and women's power in decision-making all influence levels of malnutrition. However, there is no good reason to wait for changes to happen at all these levels before starting to improve infant feeding, sanitation, clean water, and affordable and accessible health services.
What can we do differently?
Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), the National Rural Health Mission and the Total Sanitation Campaign are some of the major programmes of the government that address the issues relating to child malnutrition. While these programmes each have enormous potential for doing good, the combined efforts of all of them with the power of engagement with the communities who need the help most is the need of the day.
It is essential to ensure that the families and communities know what is at stake. We have experience with Participative Rapid Appraisals and such approaches where the community is part of the planning and execution of development programmes. We need a grass-roots level approach that works with communities in this manner, with a coordinated programme that brings the mainstream interventions to bear upon identified problems.
There is a need for evolving strategies separately for urban and rural areas. Local government agencies — Panchayats and municipalities and other stakeholders like women's groups, NGOs, academic institutions with expertise and interest in nutrition and health need to be a part of this effort. It is necessary that such an effort operates at a sufficiently decentralised level in order that it does not get bogged down in bureaucracy and procedures.
Three key elements should be kept in mind to make such an approach successful. These are Coordination, Convergence and Monitoring. The need for effective coordination and convergence is self-evident. However the potential for monitoring performance much more efficiently by harnessing the power of modern technology is not always realised. SMS on cell phones can provide instant updates, replacing slow paper based reporting forms. Colour coded GIS maps can pinpoint the situation on the ground, down to the nutritional status of individual children in ICDS centres, ensuring the possibilities of rapid responses.
The crucial period for the mother and the child is the period of pregnancy and the first two years of life of the child. This is also the window of opportunity to bring these interventions together in a way that the foundations of good health and nutrition are laid once and for all. It is therefore suggested that decentralised interventions at the district, sub-district, and municipal or urban ward levels be launched to cover these vital “thousand days” that can finally give us the success we seek.
The bulk of infant deaths occur in the neo-natal period of about a month after birth. Neonatology and peri-natal care have made considerable advances and if we can ensure that all health facilities handling deliveries are fully equipped and staffed by trained personnel we can bring about a sharp decline in infant deaths.
What is suggested is possible to be achieved now. It is based on experience in our own country. It is in line with the National Nutritional Council's recommendation for accelerated multi-sectoral action in 200 high burden districts. What we cannot afford is to wait any longer. We cannot anymore accept the shame of standing by when more than half the children of our country are stunted by the age of two.
(The author is a retired civil servant who has worked with UNICEF in several countries.)
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Half of India's homes have cellphones, but not toilets
March 14, 2012
P. Sunderarajan
Census sheds new light on changing nation
Though half of all Indians do not have a toilet at home, well over half own a telephone, new census data released on Tuesday show.
These and many other contrasting facts of life have come out in Census 2011. The data on housing, household amenities and assets cast new light on a country in the throes of a complex transition, where millions have access to state-of-the-art technologies and consumer goods — but a larger number lacks access to the most rudimentary facilities.
It shows Indian society is overwhelmingly made up of nuclear families. They have ever more access to electricity and gather their information from television, rather than radio. At the same time, women are forced to rely on traditional smoky fuels to cook, and less than a third of the population have access to treated drinking water.
Only 46.9 per cent of the total 246.6 million households have toilet facilities. Of the rest, 3.2 per cent use public toilets. And 49.8 per cent ease themselves in the open. In stark contrast, 63.2 per cent of the households own a telephone connection — 53.2 per cent of mobile phones
Releasing the data, Registrar-General and Census Commissioner C. Chandramouli said the lack of sanitary facilities “continues to be a big concern for the country.” “Cultural and traditional reasons,” he argued, “and lack of education seemed to be the primary reasons for this unhygienic practice. We have to do a lot in these areas.”
However, the data also show significant deficits in areas that have nothing to do with cultural practices or poor education. For example, two-thirds of households continue to use firewood, crop residue, cow dung cakes or coal for cooking — putting women to significant health hazards and hardship.
The data also show that just 32 per cent of the households use treated water for drinking and 17 per cent still fetch drinking water from a source located more than 500 metres in rural areas or 100 metres in urban centres.
There has been an 11 percentage point increase in households using electricity, from 56 per cent to 67 per cent. The rural-urban gap for this indicator has dropped by seven percentage point, from 44 per cent to 37 per cent.
India, the data show, is now overwhelmingly made up of nuclear families — a dramatic change from just a generation ago, where joint families were the norm. Seventy per cent of the households consist of only one couple. Indian families are overwhelmingly likely — 86.6 per cent of them — to live in their own houses, but 37.1 per cent live in a single room.
Though there has been a nine percentage point jump in the numbers of households who own a two-wheeler, 45 per cent own a cycle, which remains the primary mode of transport.
The data cast light on the changing character of the media. There has been a 16 per cent increase in the number of households watching television, but a 15 per cent decline in the use of radios and transistors. A total of 47.2 per cent of households own a television; only 19.9 per cent have either radio or transistors.
Correction: The table has been edited to correct an error in earlier versions which suggested the number of households with (1) latrine facilities connected to a piped sewer system and (2) with no drainage system were 11.9 per cent and 48.9 per cent respectively of households with a latrine facility inside the house. In fact, these numbers are a percentage of all households.
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NEW DELHI, March 15, 2012
Population growth rate slows down; concentration up in South-West, North-West
Gaurav Vivek Bhatnagar
After recording a staggering 47 per cent growth in population between 1991 and 2001, Delhi's decadal pace of population growth has slowed down to 21 per cent, with two of its nine districts, New Delhi and Central, registering even negative growth, the Census of India 2011 has revealed. It also shows how construction activity, displacement and rehabilitation of slums, and commercialisation of residential areas has led to significant demographic changes in Delhi.
The total population of Delhi stood at 1.68 crore in 2011 compared to 1.38 crore in 2001. The population growth has been highest at 30.62 per cent in South-West Delhi, followed by 27.63 per cent in North-West, 26.73 per cent in North-East, 20.59 per cent in South, 18.91 per cent in West, 16.68 per cent in East and 13.04 per cent in North Delhi.
New Delhi district posted a negative 25.35 per cent growth as people were either displaced or shifted out in large numbers. So was the case with Central District, which comprises a large part of the Walled City area, and where the population has actually declined by 10.48 per cent in the past decade.
On the events influencing the demographic changes, the Census states that a major reason for the fall in the decadal growth rate was the wide-ranging removal of slum clusters. Some major clusters were removed in the mid-2000s from the Yamuna Pushta. These clusters were spread along the river bed in the New Delhi, Central, North and East districts. Besides, some slums were also removed from Gautam Nagar and Kalka Mandir area in South District while others were removed from the New Delhi Municipal Council area.
“Many more have been removed in the run-up to the Commonwealth Games in the last two years. Of the population living in these clusters, about 32,000 families have been shifted to rehabilitation colonies in North-West and South districts as per the data from the Delhi Urban Shelter Improvement Board but the rest were not eligible for rehabilitation and were thus displaced,” the Census report says.
Another visible trend as per the report has been the commercialisation of previously residential areas.
“The tendency is to convert the ground floor for commercial/office use and, if at all, only keep the upper floors residential, thus to a great extent using up the extra housing capacity created by the increased floor-area ratio norms of the Municipal Corporation of Delhi,” it observes.
With this trend most visible in Old Delhi areas of Chandni Chowk and Sadar Bazar as also Central Delhi areas of Paharganj and Karol Bagh, the report notes that there has been a marked reluctance among the descendants of old time residents of these areas to continue staying there.
“People prefer to move out to more modernised housing in other parts of Delhi or the National Capital region. Thus the removal of the Yamuna Pushta and simultaneous large-scale commercialisation has led to a 10.5 per cent fall in population in Central Delhi,” it points out.
On the other hand, the report says the coming up of numerous unauthorised colonies in West District has led to a growth in population there. A similar situation exists in South District as well. As for the North District, it says while these factors hold true, the coming in of Delhi Metro and many flyovers has led to large-scale demolition and consequent loss of population in its Kashmere Gate area.
The overall population density of Delhi has also increased from 9,340 persons per square km to 11,297 persons in 2011.
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P. Sainath
PTI MORE THAN THREE BAGS FULL: Food not reaching those who need it. A file photograph of wheat being loaded at an open FCI godown at Sonepat, Haryana.
Average per capita net availability of foodgrain declined in every five-year period of the 'reforms' without exception. In the 20 years preceding the reforms — 1972-1991 — it rose every five-year period without exception.
The country's total foodgrain production is expected to touch a record 250 million tons this year (2011-12).
Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar
PTI, February 17, 2012
Record foodgrain output of 235.88 million tons in 2010-11.
Sharad Pawar,
PTI, April 6, 2011
India's foodgrain production hit a fresh record at 233.87 million tonnes in 2008-09.
Sharad Pawar, Lok Sabha,
July 20, 2009
The Minister (Mr. Pawar) said food grain production in 2007-08 had reached a record 227.32 million tonnes and record production has been achieved in a number of crops.
Economic Times,
April 23, 2008
“During 2006-07, the agriculture sector has posted new landmarks. The record production of 216 million tonnes of food grains…”
Sharad Pawar,
November 13, 2007
Economic Editors conference
Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar doesn't just deal in foodgrain production, he deals in records. Landmarks he's fond of citing as foodgrain production rises every year. (Barring blips like those in 2009-10, of course). Sticking to absolute numbers helps him maintain a modest silence on another record he's been a big part of.
The daily per capita net availability of foodgrain has been falling steadily and dangerously during the “reform” years. If we take five-year averages for those years from 1992 to 2010 — the figure declined every five years without exception (see table “Declining per capita …”). From 474.9 grams of cereals and pulses for the years of 1992-96 to 440.4 grams for the period 2007-2010 (The 2011 figure is yet to come). A fall of 7.3 per cent. There has not been a single five-year period that saw an upward blip.
What about the 20 years preceding the reforms? That is 1972-1991? The per capita availability figure rose every five-year period without exception. From 433.7 for 1972-76, to 480.3 grams in 1987-91. An increase of 10.7 per cent.
Not reaching the needy
Consider the average for the latest five years for which data are available. It was 441.4 grams for the period 2006-2010. That's lower than the corresponding period half a century ago. It was 446.9 for the years 1956-60. Not great news for a nation where malnutrition among children under five is nearly double that of Sub-Saharan Africa's. (A point the India Human Development Report 2011 — from a wing of the Planning Commission — concedes).
If production is rising, which it is; if the upper classes are eating a lot better, which they are; and if per capita availability keeps declining, which it does — that implies three things at least. That foodgrain is not getting to those who most need it. That the gap between those eating more and those eating less is worsening. And that food prices and incomes of the poor are less and less in sync.
It also tells us how disastrous the reforms-era policy of “targeting” through the Public Distribution System has been. The poor have not gained from “targeting” in the PDS. They have been the targets. The “reforms” period has seen more poor and hungry people shut out of the PDS in practice. The latest budget suggests that “targeting” is about to get more ruthless. A universal PDS covering all would cost much less than what the government gives away each year in concessions to the corporate sector.
Small wonder that Mr. Pawar sticks to aggregate numbers in his claims of records. He stays with production in absolute numbers, because that's rising. As the Big Boss of Cricket in India (and the planet) Mr. Pawar would not be satisfied with totalling up how many runs a batsman of his makes. He'd divide it by the number of innings the batter has played. He'd perhaps even look at the number of balls he faced, strike rate and so on. But when it comes to his boss role on foodgrain, aggregate figures will do. The big numbers look so nice. Why complicate things by looking at how much foodgrain is available per Indian? That too, per day or year?
Economic Survey document
For those worried about food availability, though, it matters. The highest figure for any year in our history was the 510.1 grams for 1991. Aha! Chalk one up for the reformers? Not really. The data are based on the agricultural year — i.e. July to June. So the 1991 figure corresponds to the production of July 1990 to June 1991. Manmohan Singh made his speech launching the reforms on July 24, 1991. And the average for 2010, after nearly two decades of “reforms,” was 440.4 grams.
The decline across the reforms years has been dismal. Indeed, some five-year periods in this era compare poorly even with those in the pre-Green Revolution years. For instance, 2006-10 throws up worse figures than 1956-1960. All figures from 1961 are seen in the latest Economic Survey of 2011-12. (http://indiabudget.nic.in/es2011-12/estat1.pdf See A22, 1.17. Last year's survey has data going back to 1951.
This, of course, is the point at which someone pops up with: “It's all due to the population. The poor breed like flies.” Is it? The compound annual growth of population was much higher in pre-reform decades than it is now. But the CAGR for food production was always higher and ahead of it. Even in 1961-1971, when the CAGR for population was 2.24 per cent it was 2.37 for grain production. In 2001-10, the figure for population was just 1.65 per cent. But foodgrain production lagged behind even that figure, at 1.03 per cent. (For the growth rate in foodgrain, we have not taken 2010-11 into account. We have only advance estimates for that year and these can vary quite a bit from final figures).
In all the southern states the fertility rate is either at replacement level or even below it. And the population growth rate is falling everywhere in the country, and at quite a rapid pace. Yet, per capita availability has declined. So the population claim does not fly. There may be one-off years in which the growth rate of food production (or even per capita availability) gets better, or much worse. Hence, looking at five-year or decadal averages makes more sense. And the trends those show are awful.
This is a context where foodgrain production per capita is on the decline. Where, however, the buffer stocks with the government in fact show an increasing trend. So per capita availability is in fact declining at a faster rate. It means the poor are so badly hit that they cannot buy, or have access to, even the limited grain on offer.
GHI ranking
True, this will invite yowls of rage from the Marie Antoinette School of Economics (or ‘Let-them-eat-cake' crowd). For them the decline only shows that people now care less for cereals and pulses. They're eating much better stuff since they're doing so much better. So much better that we'd be lucky to reach Sub-Saharan Africa's rate of child malnourishment in a few years. Or improve enough in the Global Hunger Index (GHI) to challenge an upstart Rwanda in a few years. Presently we rank 67 in the GHI (out of 81 countries with the worst food security status). Rwanda clocks in ahead of us at rank 60. India's GHI value in 2011 was worse than it was 15 years before that in 1996.
We've spent 20 years promoting cash crops at the expense of food crops. No one knows quite how much land has been converted from the latter to the former, but it would run to lakhs of acres. As food crop cultivation has grown less remunerative, many have abandoned it. As farming tanks across large swathes of the country, more and more land lies fallow. The owners have given up on the idea of making a living from it. Close to seven-and-a-half million people quit farming between 1991 and 2001 (and we still await the figures for 2001-11). Two decades of policies hostile to smallholders, but paving the way for corporate control, have seen public investment in agriculture crash. No surprise then that foodgrain production is “growing” only in absolute numbers but falling at an alarming rate in per capita terms.
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Sainath Poverty British Cotton
Reaping gold through cotton, and newsprint
P. Sainath
May 10, 2012 19:37 IST May 10, 2012
A facsimile of The Times of India’s August 28, 2011 page with the ‘marketing feature’ on Bt Cotton.
“Not a single person from the two villages has committed suicide.”
Three and a half years ago, at a time when the controversy over the use of genetically modified seeds was raging across India, a newspaper story painted a heartening picture of the technology's success. “There are no suicides here and people are prospering on agriculture. The switchover from the conventional cotton to Bollgard or Bt Cotton here has led to a social and economic transformation in the villages [of Bhambraja and Antargaon] in the past three-four years.” (Times of India, October 31, 2008).
So heartening was this account that nine months ago, the same story was run again in the same newspaper, word for word. (Times of India, August 28, 2011). Never mind that the villagers themselves had a different story to tell.
“There have been 14 suicides in our village,” a crowd of agitated farmers in Bhambraja told shocked members of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture in March this year. “Most of them after Bt came here.” The Hindu was able to verify nine that had occurred between 2003 and 2009. Activist groups count five more since then. All after 2002, the year the TOI story says farmers here switched to Bt. Prospering on agriculture? The villagers told the visibly shaken MPs: “Sir, lots of land is lying fallow. Many have lost faith in farming.” Some have shifted to soybean where “at least the losses are less.”
Over a hundred people, including landed farmers, have migrated from this ‘model farming village' showcasing Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech's Bt Cotton. “Many more will leave because agriculture is dying,” Suresh Ramdas Bhondre had predicted during our first visit to Bhambraja last September.
The 2008 full-page panegyric in the TOI on Monsanto's Bt Cotton rose from the dead soon after the government failed to introduce the Biotech Regulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Bill in Parliament in August 2011. The failure to table the Bill — crucial to the future profits of the agri-biotech industry — sparked frenzied lobbying to have it brought in soon. The full-page, titled Reaping Gold through Bt Cotton on August 28 was followed by a flurry of advertisements from Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech (India) Ltd., in the TOI (and some other papers), starting the very next day. These appeared on August 29, 30, 31, September 1 and 3. The Bill finally wasn't introduced either in the monsoon or winter session — though listed for business in both — with Parliament bogged down in other issues. Somebody did reap gold, though, with newsprint if not with Bt Cotton.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture appeared unimpressed by the ad barrage, which also seemed timed for the committee's deliberations on allowing genetically modified food crops. Disturbed by reports of mounting farm suicides and acute distress in Vidarbha, committee members, who belong to different parties, decided to visit the region.
Bhambraja, touted as a model for Mahyco-Monsanto's miracle Bt, was an obvious destination for the committee headed by veteran parliamentarian Basudeb Acharia. Another was Maregaon-Soneburdi. But the MPs struck no gold in either village. Only distress arising from the miracle's collapse and a raft of other, government failures.
The issues (and the claims made by the TOI in its stories) have come alive yet again with the debate sparked off by the completion of 10 years of Bt cotton in India in 2012. The “Reaping Gold through Bt Cotton” that appeared on August 28 last year, presented itself as “A consumer connect initiative.” In other words, a paid-for advertisement. The bylines, however, were those of professional reporters and photographers of the Times of India. More oddly, the story-turned-ad had already appeared, word-for-word, in the Times of India, Nagpur on October 31, 2008. The repetition was noticed and ridiculed by critics. The August 28, 2011 version itself acknowledged this unedited ‘reprint' lightly. What appeared in 2008, though, was not marked as an advertisement. What both versions do acknowledge is: “The trip to Yavatmal was arranged by Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech.”
The company refers to the 2008 feature as “a full-page news report” filed by the TOI. “The 2008 coverage was a result of the media visit and was based on the editorial discretion of the journalists involved. We only arranged transport to-and-from the fields,” a Mahyco Monsanto Biotech India spokesperson told The Hindu last week. “The 2011 report was an unedited reprint of the 2008 coverage as a marketing feature.” The 2008 “full-page news report” appeared in the Nagpur edition. The 2011 “marketing feature” appeared in multiple editions (which you can click to online under ‘special reports') but not in Nagpur, where it would surely have caused astonishment.
So the same full-page appeared twice in three years, the first time as news, the second time as an advertisement. The first time done by the staff reporter and photographer of a newspaper. The second time exhumed by the advertising department. The first time as a story trip ‘arranged by Mahyco-Monsanto.' The second time as an advertisement arranged by Mahyco-Monsanto. The first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
The company spokesperson claimed high standards of transparency in that “…we insisted that the publication add the source and dateline as follows: ‘This is a reprint of a story from the Times of India, Nagpur edition, October 31, 2008.' But the spokesperson's e-mail reply to The Hindu's questions is silent on the timing of the advertisements. “In 2011, we conducted a communications initiative for a limited duration aimed at raising awareness on the role of cotton seeds and plant biotechnologies in agriculture.” Though The Hindu raised the query, there is no mention of why the ads were run during the Parliament session when the BRAI Bill was to have come up, but didn't.
But there's more. Some of the glowing photographs accompanying the TOI coverage of the Bt miracle were not taken in Bhambraja or Antargaon, villagers allege. “This picture is not from Bhambraja, though the people in it are” says farmer Babanrao Gawande from that village.
Phantom miracle
The Times of India story had a champion educated farmer in Nandu Raut who is also an LIC agent. His earnings shot up with the Bt miracle. “I made about Rs.2 lakhs the previous year,” Nandu Raut told me last September. “About Rs.1.6 lakh came from the LIC policies I sold.” In short, he earned from selling LIC policies four times what he earned from farming. He has seven and a half acres and a four-member family.
But the TOI story has him earning “Rs.20,000 more per acre (emphasis added) due to savings in pesticide.” Since he grew cotton on four acres, that was a “saving” of Rs. 80,000 “on pesticide.” Quite a feat. As many in Bhambraja say angrily: “Show us one farmer here earning Rs.20,000 per acre at all, let alone that much more per acre.” A data sheet from a village-wide survey signed by Mr. Raut (in The Hindu's possession) also tells a very different story on his earnings.
The ridicule that Bhambraja and Maregaon farmers pour on the Bt ‘miracle' gains credence from the Union Agriculture Minister's figures. “Vidarbha produces about 1.2 quintals [cotton lint] per hectare on average,” Sharad Pawar told Parliament on December 19, 2011. That is a shockingly low figure. Twice that figure would still be low. The farmer sells his crop as raw cotton. One-hundred kg of raw cotton gives 35 kg of lint and 65 kg of cotton seed (of which up to two kg is lost in ginning). And Mr. Pawar's figure translates to just 3.5 quintals of raw cotton per hectare. Or merely 1.4 quintals per acre. Mr. Pawar also assumed farmers were getting a high price of Rs.4,200 per quintal. He conceded that this was close to “the cost of cultivation… and that is why I think such a serious situation is developing there.” If Mr. Pawar's figure was right, it means Nandu Raut's gross income could not have exceeded Rs.5,900 per acre. Deduct his input costs — of which 1.5 packets of seed alone accounts for around Rs.1,400 — and he's left with almost nothing. Yet, the TOI has him earning “Rs.20,000 more per acre.”
Asked if they stood by these extraordinary claims, the Mahyco-Monsanto spokesperson said, “We stand by the quotes of our MMB India colleague, as published in the news report.” Ironically, that single-paragraph quote, in the full-page-news story-turned-ad, makes no mention of the Rs.20,000-plus per acre earnings or any other figure. It merely speaks of Bt creating “increased income of cotton growers…” and of growth in Bt acreage. It does not mention per acre yields. And says nothing about zero suicides in the two villages. So the company carefully avoids direct endorsement of the TOI's claims, but uses them in a marketing feature where they are the main points.
The MMB spokesperson's position on these claims is that “the journalists spoke directly with farmers on their personal experiences during the visits, resulting in various news reports, including the farmer quotes.”
The born-again story-turned-ad also has Nandu Raut reaping yields of “about 20 quintals per acre with Bollgard II,” nearly 14 times the Agriculture Minister's average of 1.4 quintals per acre. Mr. Pawar felt that Vidarbha's rainfed irrigation led to low yields, as cotton needs “two to three waterings.” He was silent on why Maharashtra, ruled by an NCP-Congress alliance, promotes Bt Cotton in almost entirely rainfed regions. The Maharashtra State Seed Corporation (Mahabeej) distributes the very seeds the State's Agriculture Commissioner found to be unsuited for rainfed regions seven years ago. Going by the TOI, Nandu is rolling in cash. Going by the Minister, he barely stays afloat.
Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech's ad barrage the same week in 2011 drew other fire. Following a complaint, one of the ads (also appearing in another Delhi newspaper) claiming huge monetary benefits to Indian farmers landed before the Advertising Standards Council of India. ASCI “concluded that the claims made in the advertisement and cited in the complaint, were not substantiated.” The MMB spokesperson said the company “took cognizance of the points made by ASCI and revised the advertisement promptly…. ASCI has, on record, acknowledged MMB India's modification of the advertisement…”
We met Nandu again as the Standing Committee MPs left his village in March. “If you ask me today,” he said, “I would say don't use Bt here, in unirrigated places like this. Things are now bad.” He had not raised a word during the meeting with the MPs, saying he had arrived too late to do so.
“We have thrown away the moneylender. No one needs him anymore,” The Times of India news report-turned-ad quotes farmer Mangoo Chavan as saying. That's in Antargaon, the other village the newspaper found to be basking in Bt-induced prosperity. A study of the 365 farm households in Bhambraja and the nearly 150 in Antargaon by the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti (VJAS) shows otherwise. “Almost all farmers with bank accounts are in critical default and 60 per cent of farmers are also in debt to private moneylenders,” says VJAS chief Kishor Tiwari.
The Maharashtra government tried hard to divert the MPs away from the ‘model village' of Bhambraja (and Maregaon) to places where the government felt in control. However, Committee Chairperson Basudeb Acharia and his colleagues stood firm. Encouraged by the MPs visit, people in both places spoke their minds and hearts. Maharashtra's record of over 50,000 farm suicides between 1995 and 2010 is the worst in the country as the data of the National Crime Records Bureau show. And Vidarbha has long led the State in such deaths. Yet, the farmers also spoke of vast, policy-linked issues driving agrarian distress here.
None of the farmers reduced the issue of the suicides or the crisis to being only the outcome of Bt Cotton. But they punctured many myths about its miracles, costs and ‘savings.' Some of their comments came as news to the MPs. And not as paid news or a marketing feature, either.
http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/article3402423.ece?css=print
Supreme Court sets up panel to study woes of Vrindavan widows
May 10, 2012 06:39 IST NEW DELHI, May 10, 2012
Vijetha S.N
Bench asks government to reach out to the women, think of an immediate alternative
A file photo of elderly widows at an ashram in Vrindavan.— Photo: V.V. Krishnan
The Supreme Court on Wednesday set up a seven-member committee to look into the deplorable conditions of “widows/destitutes” living in Vrindavan and set an eight-week deadline to complete its report.
The committee, headed by the chairman of the Mathura District Legal Services Authority, will prepare a list of the widows with their names, age and reasons for being in Vrindavan (whether abandoned or of their own volition), whether there is any piece of property in theirs or their husbands name and the names and addresses of relatives in possession of the properties.
The court also asked the government to think of an immediate alternative, pending the exercise, to provide for women who do not have any shelter and are wandering on the streets.
There were some deliberations by the Bench on whether the term “widow/destitute” or just “widow” would be apt before finally settling on “widow/destitute” as the lawyer appearing for the National Legal Services Authority, the petitioner, emphasised that there were also many unmarried women who shared the same plight of abandonment in Vrindavan.
The plight of these forsaken and unfortunate women was first brought to the attention of the National Legal Services Authority by The Hindu in August last in an article, “Prayers in Penury.” The article provided an in-depth view of the countless problems faced by the women. The government schemes barely covered their survival costs; some of them did not even have access to any of the schemes, eking out a living by singing bhajans at ashrams, with three hours of singing fetching them a mere Rs.3. Health was another issue, with most of the widows being over 60 years.
The National Legal Services Authority then directed the Mathura District Legal Services Authority to conduct an enquiry about these widows. A plea was then instituted in the Supreme Court seeking that it direct the State of U.P. and the Centre to provide for the widows.
The Supreme Court also asked why the U.P. government had not filed its response. State's counsel said it could not do so due to a “paucity of time.”
Other members of the committee are a representative from the National Commission for Women, U.P. Secretary for Social Welfare and Secretary for Women and Child Development or their nominees, District Collector, District Medical Officer and Senior Superintendent of Police in Mathura.
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• The issue was first brought to attention of National Legal Services Authority by The Hindu
• Bench asks U.P. why it had not filed its response so far
The Hindu
Sainath - To fix BPL, nix CPL
P. Sainath
To get the Below Poverty Line figures in perspective, we need to closely monitor the numbers driving the Corporate Plunder Line.
One Tendulkar makes the big scores. The other wrecks the averages. The Planning Commission clearly prefers Suresh to Sachin. Using Professor Tendulkar's methodology, it declares that there's been another massive fall in poverty. Yes, another (“more dramatic in the rural areas”). “Record Fall in Poverty” reads one headline. The record is in how many times you've seen the same headline over the years. And how many times poverty has collapsed, only to bounce back when the math is done differently.
And so, a mere 29.9 per cent of India's population is now below the official poverty line (BPL). The figure was 37.2 per cent in 2004-05. The “line” is another story in itself, of course. But on the surface, rural poverty has declined by eight percentage points to log in at 33.8 per cent. That's down from 41.8 per cent in 2004-05. And urban poverty fell by 4.8 percentage points from 25.7 to 20.9 per cent in the same period. Millions have been dragged above the poverty line, without knowing it.
Undoing bogus methodology
Media amnesia fogs the “lowest-ever” figures, though. These are not the “lowest-ever.”
“Kill me, I say,” said Prof. Madhu Dandavate in 1996, chuckling. “I just doubled poverty in your country today.” What that fine old gentleman had really done, as deputy chairperson of the Planning Commission, was to jettison the bogus methodology peddled by that body before he came to head it the same year. Even minor changes in methodology or poverty line can produce dramatically differing estimates.
The fraud he undid was “an exercise” bringing poverty down to 19 per cent in 1993-94. And that, from 25.5 per cent in 1987-88. These were the “preliminary results of a Planning Commission exercise based on National Sample Survey data” (Economic & Political Weekly, January 27, 1996). Now if these figures were true, then poverty has risen ever since. And remember, highlighting that historic fall was an honest Finance Minister. The never-tell-a-lie Dr. Manmohan Singh. One business daily ran a hilarious “exclusive” on this at the time. Poverty falls to record low of 19 per cent, “government officials say.” This was the best news since Independence. But the modest officials remained anonymous, knowing how stupid they'd look. In the present era, they hold press conferences to flaunt their fraud.
The “lowest ever at 19 per cent” fraud was buried in the ruins of the April 1996 polls. So was the government of the day. The “estimate” was not heard of again. Now we have the 29.9 per cent avatar. Surely that's a rise of 10.9 percentage points in 16 years? Or just another methodological fiddle.
However, the new Planning Commission numbers have achieved one thing. They've united most of Parliament on the issue. Members from all parties have blasted the “estimates” and called for explanations.
There's also the Tendulkar report's own fiddles. As Dr. Madhura Swaminathan points out, the committee dumped the calorie norms of “2,100 kcal per day for urban areas and 2,400 kcal for rural areas.” It switched to “a single norm of 1,800 kcal per day.” And did so citing an “FAO norm.” As Dr. Swaminathan observed: “the standards set by the Food and Agriculture Organisation for energy requirements are for “minimum dietary energy requirements” or MDER. That is, “the amount of energy needed for light or sedentary activity.” And she cites an FAO example of such activity. “…a male office worker in urban areas who only occasionally engages in physically demanding activities during or outside working hours.”
As Dr. Swaminathan asks: “Can we assume that a head load worker who carries heavy sacks through the day is engaged in light activity?” — The Hindu, February 5, 2010.
Measuring poverty
The media rarely mention that there are other methodologies for measuring poverty on offer. Also set in motion by this same government. The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) saw BPL Indians as making up 77 per cent of the population. The N.C. Saxena-headed BPL Expert group placed it at around 50 per cent. Like the Tendulkar Committee, these two were also set up by government. While differing wildly, all three pegged rural poverty at a higher level than government did. Meanwhile, we will have many more committees on the same issue until one of them gives this government the report it wants. The one it can get away with. (The many inquiries on farm suicides exemplify this.)
That the Planning Commission thought they could slip the present bunkum by sets a new benchmark for — and marriage of — arrogance and incompetence. First, they sparked outrage with their affidavit in the Supreme Court. There they defended a BPL cut-off line of Rs.26 a day (rural) and Rs.32 (urban). Now they hope to get by with numbers of Rs.22.42 a day (rural) and Rs.28.35 a day (urban).
The same year the government and planning commission shot themselves in both feet in 1996, a leading Delhi think tank joined in. It came up with the “biggest ever study” done on poverty in the country. This covered over 30,000 households and queried respondents across more than 300 parameters. So said its famous chief at a meeting in Bhopal.
This stunned the journalists in the audience. Till then, they had been doing what most journalists do at most seminars. Sleeping in a peaceful, non-confrontational manner. The veteran beside me came alive, startled. “Did he mean they asked those households over 300 questions? My God! Thirty years in this line and the biggest interview I ever did had nine. That was with my boss's best friend. And my last question was ‘may I go now'?” We did suggest to the famous economist that battered with 300 questions, his respondents were more likely to die of fatigue than of poverty. A senior aide of the think tank chief took the mike to explain why we were wrong. We sent two investigators to each household, he said. Which made sense, of course: one to hold the respondent down physically, twisting his arm, while the other asked him 300 questions.
Now to the queue of BPL, APL, IPL, et al., may I add my own modest contribution? This is the CPL, or Corporate Plunder Line. This embraces the corporate world and other very well-off or “high net worth individuals.” We have no money for a universal PDS. Or even for a shrunken food security bill. We've cut thousands of crores from net spending on rural employment. We lag horribly in human development indicators, hunger indexes and nutritional surveys. Food prices keep rising and decent jobs get fewer.
Yet, BPL numbers keep shrinking. The CPL numbers, however, keep expanding. The CPL concept is anchored in the “Statement of Revenue Foregone” section of successive union budgets. Since 2005-06, for instance, the union government has written off close to Rs.4 lakh crore in corporate income tax. Over Rs.50,000 crore of that in the present budget. The very one in which it slashes thousands of crores from the MNREGS. Throw in concessions on customs and excise duties and the corporate karza maafi in this year's budget sneaks up to nearly Rs.5 lakh crore.
True, there are things covered in excise and customs that also affect larger sections, like fuel, for instance. But mostly, they benefit the corporate world and the very rich. In just this budget and the last one, we've written off Rs.1 lakh crore for diamonds, gold and jewellery in customs duties. That sort of money buys a lot of food security. But CPL trumps BPL every time. The same is true of write-offs on things like machinery. In theory, there's a lot that should benefit everybody: like the equipment hospitals import. In practice, most Indians will never enter the five-star hospitals that cash in on these benefits.
The total write-off on these three heads in eight years since 2005-06: Rs. 25.7 lakh crore. (See Table). That's over half a trillion U.S. dollars. Not far from 15 times the size of your 2G scam. Or over twice the Coal Scam, the latest addition to the CPL. Look at the table and think about BPL estimates working on cut-offs of Rs.22.42 a day rural and Rs.28.35 urban. To fix BPL, nix CPL.
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Hope springs a trap
An absence of optimism plays a large role in keeping people trapped in poverty
May 12th 2012 | from the print edition
THE idea that an infusion of hope can make a big difference to the lives of wretchedly poor people sounds like something dreamed up by a well-meaning activist or a tub-thumping politician. Yet this was the central thrust of a lecture at Harvard University on May 3rd by Esther Duflo, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology known for her data-driven analysis of poverty. Ms Duflo argued that the effects of some anti-poverty programmes go beyond the direct impact of the resources they provide. These programmes also make it possible for the very poor to hope for more than mere survival.
She and her colleagues evaluated a programme in the Indian state of West Bengal, where Bandhan, an Indian microfinance institution, worked with people who lived in extreme penury. They were reckoned to be unable to handle the demands of repaying a loan. Instead, Bandhan gave each of them a small productive asset—a cow, a couple of goats or some chickens. It also provided a small stipend to reduce the temptation to eat or sell the asset immediately, as well as weekly training sessions to teach them how to tend to animals and manage their households. Bandhan hoped that there would be a small increase in income from selling the products of the farm animals provided, and that people would become more adept at managing their own finances.
The results were far more dramatic. Well after the financial help and hand-holding had stopped, the families of those who had been randomly chosen for the Bandhan programme were eating 15% more, earning 20% more each month and skipping fewer meals than people in a comparison group. They were also saving a lot. The effects were so large and persistent that they could not be attributed to the direct effects of the grants: people could not have sold enough milk, eggs or meat to explain the income gains. Nor were they simply selling the assets (although some did).
So what could explain these outcomes? One clue came from the fact that recipients worked 28% more hours, mostly on activities not directly related to the assets they were given. Ms Duflo and her co-authors also found that the beneficiaries’ mental health improved dramatically: the programme had cut the rate of depression sharply. She argues that it provided these extremely poor people with the mental space to think about more than just scraping by. As well as finding more work in existing activities, like agricultural labour, they also started exploring new lines of work. Ms Duflo reckons that an absence of hope had helped keep these people in penury; Bandhan injected a dose of optimism.
Ms Duflo is building on an old idea. Development economists have long surmised that some very poor people may remain trapped in poverty because even the largest investments they are able to make, whether eating a few more calories or working a bit harder on their minuscule businesses, are too small to make a big difference. So getting out of poverty seems to require a quantum leap—vastly more food, a modern machine, or an employee to mind the shop. As a result, they often forgo even the small incremental investments of which they are capable: a bit more fertiliser, some more schooling or a small amount of saving.
This hopelessness manifests itself in many ways. One is a sort of pathological conservatism, where people forgo even feasible things with potentially large benefits for fear of losing the little they already possess. For example, poor people stay in drought-hit villages when the city is just a bus ride away. An experiment in rural Bangladesh provided men with the bus fare to Dhaka at the beginning of the lean season, the period between planting and the next harvest when there is little to do except sit around. The offer of the bus fare, an amount which most of the men could have saved up to pay for themselves, led to a 22-percentage-point increase in the probability of migration. The money migrants sent back led their families’ consumption to soar. Having experienced the $100 increase in seasonal consumption per head that the $8 bus fare made possible, half of those offered the bus fare migrated again the next year, this time without the inducement.
People sometimes think they are in a poverty trap when they are not. Surveys in many countries show that poor parents often believe that a few years of schooling have almost no benefit; education is valuable only if you finish secondary school. So if they cannot ensure that their children can complete school, they tend to keep them out of the classroom altogether. And if they can pay for only one child to complete school, they often do so by avoiding any education for the children they think are less clever. Yet economists have found that each year of schooling adds a roughly similar amount to a person’s earning power: the more education, the better. Moreover, parents are very likely to misjudge their children’s skills. By putting all their investment in the child who they believe to be the brightest, they ensure that their other children never find out what they are good at. Assumed to have little potential, these children live down to their parents’ expectations.
The fuel of self-belief
Surprising things can often act as a spur to hope. A law in India set aside for women the elected post of head of the village council in a third of villages. Following up several years later, Ms Duflo found a clear effect on the education of girls. Previously parents and children had far more modest education and career goals for girls than for boys. Girls were expected to get much less schooling, stay at home and do the bidding of their in-laws. But a few years of exposure to a female village head had led to a striking degree of convergence between goals for sons and daughters. Their very existence seems to have expanded the girls’ sense of the possible beyond a life of domestic drudgery. An unexpected consequence, perhaps, but a profoundly hopeful one.
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Hard Labor By Josh Sanburn (reprinted from Time Magazine, May 21, 2012)
internships
Shipping thousand-dollar hats from New York City to London. Shuttling heavy bags around Manhattan. Skipping lunch. Working 55-hour weeks. And doing it all for free.
"It was disgusting," says Diana Wang, 28, of her unpaid labor at Harper's Bazaar magazine. It was also potentially illegal.
Today an estimated one-third to one-half of the U.S.'s 1.5 million internships are without pay, a trend that has only accelerated since the 2008 financial crisis. Employers contend that they're paying interns with experience, which can be more valuable than cash, especially in tough-to-break-into fields such as media, fashion and entertainment. But if unpaid interns are working jobs--no matter how menial--that would otherwise go to entry-level employees, federal law mandates compensation.
The Fair Labor Standards Act isn't new; it's been around since 1938. But in recent months, it has received unprecedented attention, thanks to a trio of class actions led by frustrated ex-interns. Wang, Eric Glatt and Alex Footman, and Lucy Bickerton are demanding wages from Hearst (the owner of Harper's Bazaar), Fox Searchlight and PBS, respectively, for being overworked as unpaid interns. (All three firms declined TIME's interview requests but have publicly denied any wrongdoing.)
"They were counting on the fact that nobody would sue, particularly kids who are just out of school," says Glatt, who took his Fox internship at age 40. "This culture of expecting free labor if you slap the title 'intern' on it has become so pervasive that people don't question whether it's ethically wrong or legally acceptable."
That's starting to change. In response to these lawsuits as well as to advocacy work by the Economic Policy Institute, the U.S. Department of Labor has ramped up efforts to educate unpaid interns about their rights. It has also encouraged them to speak out, as opposed to the norm of "keeping your mouth shut and being thankful for anything that comes your way," as Bickerton, who is suing PBS's The Charlie Rose Show, put it.
Meanwhile, some companies are pre-emptively improving their internship programs. Magazine publisher Cond Nast, for example, used to offer unpaid internships without work-hour limits. Now it pays a stipend of $550 per internship, pairs interns with a mentor and sends them home by 7 p.m. at the latest. Atlantic Media, publisher of the Atlantic, established similar guidelines. Even overseas, Stella McCartney--which last year was one of 102 U.K.-based fashion houses to receive an unpaid-labor warning from the British government--has vowed to pay all interns. (Time Inc.'s policy is to pay interns, though some exceptions may be made, for example, when a student receives academic credit.) "We're at the very early stages of a backlash against unpaid internships," says Ross Perlin, author of Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy. "The phenomenon has gone off the rails."
That's good news for the ex-interns, who Camille Olson, a labor-law attorney at Seyfarth Shaw LLP, says could indeed win their suits, which are still in the early stages of litigation. And fewer unpaid internships could even mean more entry-level jobs for 20-to-24-year-olds, whose unemployment rate in the U.S. hit 13.2% last month.
For now, though, newfound intern-rights activists like Glatt are focused on raising awareness. "This will be the last summer that students do [unpaid] internships without recognizing that there's something fundamentally wrong with them," he says.
Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2114428,00.html#ixzz1uwrKrM79
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http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/Delhi/article3435469.ece?css=print
Published: May 19, 2012 11:37
Increase in violence against SCs and STs, reveals report
Mohammad Ali
Decades after enacting a legislation to prevent atrocities against the Schedule Castes and Schedule Tribes through the SCs/STs (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, and the SCs/STs (Prevention of Atrocities) Rules, 1995, the picture continues to remain quite grim, according to a civil society report.
The report on the “Status of Implementation of SCs and STs [Prevention of Atrocities] Act 1989 and Rules 1995” reveals that there has been substantial increase in cases of violence against SCs and STs.
Released by Justice K.G. Balakrishnan, the first Dalit Chief Justice of India, here on Thursday, the report highlights loopholes in the implementation of the Act and argues that it has not been able to check atrocities against Dalits and Adivasis in an effective manner.
Prepared after collecting evidences by visiting the places of incidents and talking to victims across the country, the study says “to begin with first the cases of violence against SCs/STs are not registered” and even in those that are registered the conviction rate is quite low. “At least one-fourth of the cases have been disposed of at the investigation stage itself by the police and these complaints have been referred to as ‘mistake of fact,” adds the report which was prepared by the National Coalition for Strengthening SCs & STs (Prevention of Atrocities) Act
The report which explains in details the trends and nature of discrimination and atrocities against SCs/STs over the years, recommends that “a high-level committee should be appointed to review implementation of the Act and the Rules in all the States”.
While expressing disappointment over the States' failure to check crimes against Dalits and Adivasis, Justice Balakrishnan favoured the reports' recommendation that “exclusive special courts with powers to take cognizance of the offences under the Act should be set up and special public prosecutors for speedy trials of cases registered under the Act should be appointed”.
According to the report crime rate against SCs has increased from 2.6 per cent in 2007 to 2.8 per cent in 2010. In 2010, Uttar Pradesh accounted for 19.2 per cent of the total crimes against SCs (6,272 out of 32,712) in the country. In the same year, Rajasthan reported the highest rate of crimes (7.4 per cent) against SCs compared to the national average of 2.9 per cent.
According to the report, the number of crimes against STs drastically increased in 2010 to 5,885 cases and murder cases of STs alone totalled 142.
When it comes to registration of atrocity cases, the report says “police resort to various machinations to discourage SCs/STs from registering cases, to dilute the seriousness of the violence, and to shield the accused persons from arrest and prosecution. FIRs are often registered under the PCR Act and IPC provisions, which attract lesser punishment than PoA Act provisions for the same offence.”
At national level, only 11,682 (34.2 per cent) out of 34,127 atrocity cases were registered under PoA Act in 2010.
Of all the cases registered in 2010 investigation was completed only for 37,558 cases of the total of 51,782 cases. Charge sheets were submitted only for 26,480 cases (51 per cent) because of which even by the year end, around 14,092 cases remained pending for investigation.
In 2010, of the 16,601 cases registered across the country under PoA Act for atrocities against SCs, the police closed almost 2,150 cases (13 per cent) in 2010. Meanwhile, of the 1,714 registered cases of atrocities against STs, 223 (13 per cent) were closed.
The report says that with 101,251 cases of crimes against SCs/STs (80 per cent) pending for trial by the end of 2010, no significant improvement was seen in the trial pendency rate (82.5 per cent) at the end of 2011.
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June 7, 2012
As Grain Piles Up, India’s Poor Still Go Hungry
RANWAN, India — In this north Indian village, workers recently dismantled stacks of burned and mildewed rice while flies swarmed nearby over spoiled wheat. Local residents said the rice crop had been sitting along the side of a highway for several years and was now being sent to a distillery to be turned into liquor.
Just 180 miles to the south, in a slum on the outskirts of New Delhi, Leela Devi struggled to feed her family of four on meager portions of flatbread and potatoes, which she said were all she could afford on her disability pension and the irregular wages of her day-laborer husband. Her family is among the estimated 250 million Indians who do not get enough to eat.
Such is the paradox of plenty in India’s food system. Spurred by agricultural innovation and generous farm subsidies, India now grows so much food that it has a bigger grain stockpile than any country except China, and it exports some of it to countries like Saudi Arabia and Australia. Yet one-fifth of its people are malnourished — double the rate of other developing countries like Vietnam and China — because of pervasive corruption, mismanagement and waste in the programs that are supposed to distribute food to the poor.
“The reason we are facing this problem is our refusal to distribute the grain that we buy from farmers to the people who need it,” said Biraj Patnaik, who advises India’s Supreme Court on food issues. “The only place that this grain deserves to be is in the stomachs of the people who are hungry.”
After years of neglect, the nation’s failed food policies have now become a subject of intense debate in New Delhi, with lawmakers, advocates for the poor, economists and the news media increasingly calling for an overhaul. The populist national government is considering legislation that would pour billions of additional dollars into the system and double the number of people served to two-thirds of the population. The proposed law would also allow the poor to buy more rice and wheat at lower prices.
Proponents say the new law, if written and executed well, could help ensure that nobody goes hungry in India, the world’s second-most populous country behind China. But critics say that without fundamental system reforms, the extra money will only deepen the nation’s budget deficit and further enrich the officials who routinely steal food from various levels of the distribution chain.
India’s food policy has two central goals: to provide farmers with higher and more consistent prices for their crops than they would get from the open market, and to sell food grains to the poor at lower prices than they would pay at private stores.
The federal government buys grain and stores it. Each state can take a certain amount of grain from these stocks based on how many of its residents are poor. The states deliver the grain to subsidized shops and decide which families get the ration cards that allow them to buy cheap wheat and rice there.
The sprawling system costs the government 750 billion rupees ($13.6 billion) a year, almost 1 percent of India’s gross domestic product. Yet 21 percent of the country’s 1.2 billion people remain undernourished, a proportion that has changed little in the last two decades despite an almost 50 percent increase in food production, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute, a research group in Washington.
The new food security law could more than double the government’s outlays to 2 trillion rupees a year, according to some estimates.
Much of the extra money would go to buy more grain, even though the government already has a tremendous stockpile of wheat and rice — 71 million tons as of early May, up 20 percent from a year earlier.
“India is paying the price of an unexpected success — our production of rice and wheat has surged and procurement has been better than ever,” said Kaushik Basu, the chief economic adviser to India’s Finance Ministry and a professor at Cornell University. “This success is showing up some of the gaps in our policy.”
The biggest gap is the inefficient, corrupt system used to get the food to those who need it. Just 41.4 percent of the grain picked up by the states from federal warehouses reaches Indian homes, according to a recent World Bank study.
Critics say officials all along the chain, from warehouse managers to shopkeepers, steal food and sell it to traders, pocketing tidy, illicit profits.
Poor Indians who have ration cards often complain about both the quality and quantity of grain available at government stores, called fair price shops.
Other families do not even have ration cards because of the procedures — and often, bribes — required to get them. Some are denied because they cannot document their residence or income. And critics say more people would qualify if the income cutoff were raised; in New Delhi, it is 2,000 rupees ($36) a month, regardless of family size, a sum that many poor families spend on rent alone.
Ms. Devi, who lives in the Jagdamba Camp slum in south Delhi, said she was denied a ration card four years ago. She said her family’s steadiest income is a disability pension of 1,000 rupees a month she gets because of burns suffered in an accident a few years ago. While her husband sometimes earns up to 3,000 rupees a month as a laborer, she says she should be entitled to subsidized grain since they must often get by on 2,000 rupees or less.
“Sometimes, we just have to sit and wait,” she said. “My mother-in-law gets subsidized food and she gives me some when she can.”
Indian officials say they are addressing the system’s problems. Some states, like Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh, have made big improvements by using technology to track food and have made it easier for almost all households to get ration cards. Other states, like Bihar, have experimented with food stamps.
Reformers argue that India should move toward giving the poor cash or food stamps as the United States, Mexico and other countries have done. That would reduce corruption and mismanagement because the government would buy and store only enough grain to insure against bad harvests. And the poor would get more choices, said Ashok Gulati, chairman of the government’s Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices.
“Why only wheat and rice? If he wants to have eggs, or fruits, or some vegetables, he should be given that option,” Mr. Gulati said. “You need to augment his income. Then, the distribution, you leave it to the private sector.”
But most officials say they are worried that if India switched to food stamps, men would trade them for liquor or tobacco, depriving their families of enough to eat.
“It has to improve, I have no doubt about it,” said K. V. Thomas, India’s minister for food, consumer affairs and public distribution. “But this is the only system that can work in our country.”
Officials say Parliament is likely to vote on a new food policy at the end of the year. In the meantime, the government is working on temporary solutions to its grain storage problems, putting up new silos and exporting more rice.
Still, much of it is likely to keep sitting on the side of the road here in Punjab.
“It’s painful to watch,” said Gurdeep Singh, a farmer from near Ranwan who recently sold his wheat harvest to the government. “The government is big and powerful. It should be able to put up a shed to store this crop.”
Neha Thirani contributed reporting from Mumbai and Karishma Vyas from New Delhi.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: June 12, 2012
An article on Friday about malnourishment in India despite programs to distribute its bountiful grain crops misspelled the surname of a specialist on food policy and misidentified his profession. He is Biraj Patnaik, not Patniak, and while he advises the Indian Supreme Court on food issues, he is not a lawyer.
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