november 5, 2011
Marginalisation, Memory and Monuments Mayawati’s grand edifice to dalit icons is diminished by her personality cult.
I
t is indisputable that there is something skewed about our national memory and the heroes who populate it. The nationalist pantheon, whether of the Left or the Right, is largely dominated by a small demographic of upper caste men. There are a few token women and fewer from the less exalted castes. This is not necessarily a critique of the ideas and activism of these men but rather a fact of reality that needs to be acknowledged. Many of these upper caste, upper class men worked hard not only to overcome the privilege and power they were born into but also to destroy the institutions and structures which perpetuated caste, class, gender and other discriminations in our society. Their contributions to the anti-colonial struggle and to building India as a modern nation cannot be denied, but it cannot also be denied that despite all these efforts discrimination and prejudice remained high in Indian society. Caste, gender and class hierarchies could be reformed and ameliorated, but rarely was there space for an outright challenge to them. Not only has this dominance of upper caste, upper class men excluded reformers from castes, classes, regions, religions and a gender different from theirs from the national pantheon of heroes, it has also dyed the national imagination in colours which reflect the world view from the top of the social pyramid. The vast majority of India’s citizens have been, in a sense, marginalised from the national imagination and also from the construction of national memories and myths. How do those thus excluded enter the hallowed portals? How does a different memory, which places the leaders and representatives of the marginalised in this exalted firmament, become national? In the past few decades a mass politics of the oppressed and marginalised has emerged. This politics is not willing to accept paternalistic benevolence and social reform, but wants to dismantle the structures of power within society; at the least it wants a share of power, it wants to exercise power. The upsurge of the dalits, the various communities forming the Other Backward Classes, the minorities and adivasis has altered India’s political landscape beyond recognition and is a welcome step forward towards achieving the goals of equality and justice. Much of the recent effort in the social sciences has been to address these and similar concerns. Parallel to this has been the churn in the social sciences and humanities which have endeavoured to break free from the hegemony of elite ideologies and bring to the fore the ideas and perspectives of those who have entered academia from the marginalised and oppressed communities. Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
It is in this context that the Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal (National Dalit Inspiration Place), inaugurated by Uttar Pradesh (UP) Chief Minister and Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) leader, Mayawati, needs to be understood. The point is not how much money it has cost, rather the fact, which has been underscored by almost all dalit activists and intellectuals, that it memorialises an alternate pantheon of intellectual and political leaders. Further, as a commentator has noted, most dalit icons will not get archives and museums and libraries that celebrate their life and work. This Dalit Prerna Sthal, like the numerous other statues and memorials built by Mayawati, is thus both a site for archiving dalit memory and history as well as establishing, in cold physical form, the actuality of dalit presence in the national imagination. The towering statues are meant to be weapons of shock and awe in the dalit armoury. The media and public reaction from non-dalit sections appears to underline their polemical effectiveness. The statues of 15 dalit icons installed at the Dalit Prerna Sthal in the Delhi suburb of Noida metaphorically face the Delhi of Gandhi and Nehru on the other bank of the Yamuna. This symbolism was reiterated by Mayawati at the inaugural of the Sthal to underline the eagerness of dalits to capture power in Delhi. Mayawati has built on the political groundwork of Kanshi Ram and earlier generations of dalit politicians to weld a political coalition in UP which has ensured her a full term in office. However, her attempts to move beyond UP have been largely unsuccessful and given her lack lustre performance in Lucknow it is not sure whether she will be able to even retain her hold on power. Political commentators and Mayawati’s supporters view the Dalit Prerna Sthal almost entirely through the prism of her attempt to retain chief ministership and as a measure to shore up dalit support and position herself as the pole star of dalit politics. That the larger political and ideological concerns of challenging the entrenched national imagination remain marginal, not just for Mayawati’s opponents but for her as well is evident from the manner in which her persona is magnified and projected. Mayawati has put up a massive statue of her own in the Sthal along with Kanshi Ram’s and B R Ambedkar’s, and these are the only ones which have been publicised. Despite contacting various officials of the UP government, EPW could not get a definitive list of people whose statues have been put up. Other than these three, none have been mentioned and there was none who could say for sure who among the
7
EDITORIALS
dalit icons had been included and who had not been. In fact, they appear irrelevant to Mayawati’s efforts to regain Lucknow and thus emerge already neglected at the moment of their inauguration. The personification of the entire dalit politics in Mayawati is at
once a symptom of the rising aspirations among the dalits she is giving leadership to as well as the difficulty of aligning such bourgeois aspirations with emancipatory politics. Will Mayawati be able to overcome this contradiction?
Looking for the Poor The media noise shed little light on the important issues involved in deciding the coverage of welfare programmes.
T
he context for the Planning Commission’s (PC) affidavit on the official poverty line was the deliberation in the Supreme Court on how many people could be covered by the public distribution system (PDS). But while the sound and fury over the poverty line – Rs 32 per capita per day in the urban areas and Rs 26 in rural India – has subsided, it is not clear if we are any closer to taking a correct decision on who will be covered by welfare programmes. All that we know from the joint statement issued by the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and the union minister for rural development is that the state-wise poverty numbers – based on the PC’s methodology – will not be used to set ceilings (“caps”) on the number of households to be covered in each state by specific programmes. What the statement was silent about was if a different set of caps will henceforth be applied and if these caps will operate within the ceiling of the national poverty ratio. In other words, first, capping is still on the table. Second, the union cabinet, when earlier clearing the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), had taken a decision on which kind of household would be automatically excluded, which one included and how to “score” deprivation indices of others, and had linked the size of the beneficiary population to the PC’s poverty ratios. It has now been decided that yet another committee of experts will make recommendations on how to use the information of the SECC. Fiscal considerations drove the introduction of the “targeted” public distribution system (TPDS), which in turn called for the design of the “Below the Poverty Line” (BPL) Census. It is now almost universally accepted that targeting – whichever the programme and whatever the criterion used – has led to errors in exclusion (i e, those who should be covered are not) that are substantially larger than the errors in inclusion (i e, those who should not be covered are). Yet the government and those who would like to shut down all anti-poverty programmes prefer to focus on the errors of inclusion, which is not surprising given their concern with containing the fiscal deficit. It is unfortunate that the debate begins with the premise that some caps (poverty line based or any other) are necessary. It is sometimes argued that it may be better to have universal coverage with an appropriate design of self-selection. This would prevent any errors in exclusion and inclusion and simultaneously contain the costs of administration. This is how the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) programme – which is not restricted to BPL families – has been designed. Some programmes – like the Indira Awaas Yojana – may yet call for identification since unlike the gains from labouring on an MGNREGA project those to be had from grabbing a house site would be
8
tempting to even the well-off. As far as total costs are concerned, a universal PDS may be more expensive than even a poorly designed TPDS, but in other programmes universalisation with self-targeting should not lead to higher outlays. Therefore, some programmes may lend themselves to universalisation and others may require the use of identification criteria. There is admittedly no simple solution and there are numerous programmes other than the PDS such as the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, the Indira Awaas Yojana and the new National Rural Livelihoods Mission which currently use BPL criteria to identify beneficiaries. The design of the SECC that is now being conducted – with how much preparation and how much rigour in comparison to the population census we do not know – is an improvement over the earlier BPL Censuses. But, as commentators have pointed out, the SECC too is not free from possible problems and pilot surveys have reportedly shown up complications. Instead of looking for a single measure of identification – based either on consumption expenditure norms or on a deprivation index as likely from the SECC – it may be better to rank households on different criteria (see “The BPL Census and a Possible Alternative”, EPW, 27 February 2010, for a proposal on identifying a “Social Assistance Base”). Then, depending on the programme that is being administered, households could be chosen on where they rank on appropriate criteria (for example, possession of a pukka house for a housing programme, age of the head of the household for a pension scheme, etc). Sadly, these difficult but very important issues were ignored in the frenzy about the poverty line and poverty numbers that swept the newspapers and the airwaves. The poverty line is not a new concept; it has been around in official India for almost half a century. Academics have wrestled with its meaning and measurement for even longer. There is an unresolved and heated dispute about the correct measure and how the incidence of poverty in India has moved over the years. Yet, this has never been of concern to the media. The recent avalanche of comment and abuse was a comment on how fashions can grip a media, which after refusing for years to acknowledge the pittance of an income that many million Indians live on every month, suddenly – but only fleetingly – seized upon the absurdity of the current official poverty line. The PC certainly needed to be placed in the dock for claiming before the Supreme Court, “The recommended poverty lines ensure the adequacy of actual private expenditure per capita near the poverty lines on food, education and health...” But the disclosure of the PC’s affidavit was an occasion to address the more important issue of access to the government’s anti-poverty/ welfare programmes. There, once again, we failed. November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
EDITORIALS
dalit icons had been included and who had not been. In fact, they appear irrelevant to Mayawati’s efforts to regain Lucknow and thus emerge already neglected at the moment of their inauguration. The personification of the entire dalit politics in Mayawati is at
once a symptom of the rising aspirations among the dalits she is giving leadership to as well as the difficulty of aligning such bourgeois aspirations with emancipatory politics. Will Mayawati be able to overcome this contradiction?
Looking for the Poor The media noise shed little light on the important issues involved in deciding the coverage of welfare programmes.
T
he context for the Planning Commission’s (PC) affidavit on the official poverty line was the deliberation in the Supreme Court on how many people could be covered by the public distribution system (PDS). But while the sound and fury over the poverty line – Rs 32 per capita per day in the urban areas and Rs 26 in rural India – has subsided, it is not clear if we are any closer to taking a correct decision on who will be covered by welfare programmes. All that we know from the joint statement issued by the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission and the union minister for rural development is that the state-wise poverty numbers – based on the PC’s methodology – will not be used to set ceilings (“caps”) on the number of households to be covered in each state by specific programmes. What the statement was silent about was if a different set of caps will henceforth be applied and if these caps will operate within the ceiling of the national poverty ratio. In other words, first, capping is still on the table. Second, the union cabinet, when earlier clearing the Socio-Economic and Caste Census (SECC), had taken a decision on which kind of household would be automatically excluded, which one included and how to “score” deprivation indices of others, and had linked the size of the beneficiary population to the PC’s poverty ratios. It has now been decided that yet another committee of experts will make recommendations on how to use the information of the SECC. Fiscal considerations drove the introduction of the “targeted” public distribution system (TPDS), which in turn called for the design of the “Below the Poverty Line” (BPL) Census. It is now almost universally accepted that targeting – whichever the programme and whatever the criterion used – has led to errors in exclusion (i e, those who should be covered are not) that are substantially larger than the errors in inclusion (i e, those who should not be covered are). Yet the government and those who would like to shut down all anti-poverty programmes prefer to focus on the errors of inclusion, which is not surprising given their concern with containing the fiscal deficit. It is unfortunate that the debate begins with the premise that some caps (poverty line based or any other) are necessary. It is sometimes argued that it may be better to have universal coverage with an appropriate design of self-selection. This would prevent any errors in exclusion and inclusion and simultaneously contain the costs of administration. This is how the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) programme – which is not restricted to BPL families – has been designed. Some programmes – like the Indira Awaas Yojana – may yet call for identification since unlike the gains from labouring on an MGNREGA project those to be had from grabbing a house site would be
8
tempting to even the well-off. As far as total costs are concerned, a universal PDS may be more expensive than even a poorly designed TPDS, but in other programmes universalisation with self-targeting should not lead to higher outlays. Therefore, some programmes may lend themselves to universalisation and others may require the use of identification criteria. There is admittedly no simple solution and there are numerous programmes other than the PDS such as the Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana, the Indira Awaas Yojana and the new National Rural Livelihoods Mission which currently use BPL criteria to identify beneficiaries. The design of the SECC that is now being conducted – with how much preparation and how much rigour in comparison to the population census we do not know – is an improvement over the earlier BPL Censuses. But, as commentators have pointed out, the SECC too is not free from possible problems and pilot surveys have reportedly shown up complications. Instead of looking for a single measure of identification – based either on consumption expenditure norms or on a deprivation index as likely from the SECC – it may be better to rank households on different criteria (see “The BPL Census and a Possible Alternative”, EPW, 27 February 2010, for a proposal on identifying a “Social Assistance Base”). Then, depending on the programme that is being administered, households could be chosen on where they rank on appropriate criteria (for example, possession of a pukka house for a housing programme, age of the head of the household for a pension scheme, etc). Sadly, these difficult but very important issues were ignored in the frenzy about the poverty line and poverty numbers that swept the newspapers and the airwaves. The poverty line is not a new concept; it has been around in official India for almost half a century. Academics have wrestled with its meaning and measurement for even longer. There is an unresolved and heated dispute about the correct measure and how the incidence of poverty in India has moved over the years. Yet, this has never been of concern to the media. The recent avalanche of comment and abuse was a comment on how fashions can grip a media, which after refusing for years to acknowledge the pittance of an income that many million Indians live on every month, suddenly – but only fleetingly – seized upon the absurdity of the current official poverty line. The PC certainly needed to be placed in the dock for claiming before the Supreme Court, “The recommended poverty lines ensure the adequacy of actual private expenditure per capita near the poverty lines on food, education and health...” But the disclosure of the PC’s affidavit was an occasion to address the more important issue of access to the government’s anti-poverty/ welfare programmes. There, once again, we failed. November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
EDITORIALS
Occupying the Deserted Left Space The “Occupy Wall Street” movement could provide an outlet for the unrepresented Left of the United States.
A
s thousands of Americans continue to pour onto the streets in a number of cities every day, answering calls to replicate the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement in Zuccotti Park in New York City, the signs are unmistakable – representative democracy as we know it in the US is potentially in for an overhaul. With differences between the Democratic and the Republican Parties on economic issues now more of form than essence, it has taken party-less protest movements to articulate concrete policy positions from the perspectives of the Right and the Left. If from the Right the Tea Party movement had a libertarian streak – blaming “government” for America’s financial ills – from the Left the Occupy movement has a simple message – end the dominance of finance capital in government decision-making. The Tea Party eventually became a faction within the Republican Party, pushing it further to the Right while making it more populist. Will the OWS movement manage to shift the terrain of American politics to the Left and finally bring the concerns of the middle class and working Americans to the mainstream? One might ask why it took so long for something like the Occupy movement to emerge in the US. The Barack Obama presidency belied its rhetoric of “change” and by coming up short on various promises the Democrat administration deeply disappointed many who had voted for it. Healthcare reform, a major campaign plank, was managed with a piecemeal approach as Obama and the Democrats gave into Republican Party pressure. Obama could not even manage to overturn the tax cuts instituted during George W Bush’s tenure for the wealthiest of citizens. And his presidency has only managed to impose minimal regulation on Wall Street. Meanwhile, the core economic concern – unemployment – continues to remain at a high level (9.1% in August 2011) and the sub-prime mortgage problem that resulted in millions of home foreclosures stays unresolved. The Obama presidency has, in short, failed voters who expected it to overturn the Bush era policies and provide substantive relief during a severe economic crisis. Taking inspiration from and parallel to similar party-less mass mobilisations across the world – the Arab Spring in north Africa
From 50 Years Ago
Vol Xiii, Nos 44-45, november 4, 1961
our delhi letter
Wooing the American Investor Red carpets were rolled out to the group of American businessmen who had been herded together by the Business International Inc and gently led and guided by the Indian Commercial Counsellor in New York. The object: a round-table conference to acquaint themselves
and west Asia and the Indignants in Spain – the OWS movement has finally taken the angst of Americans to the streets. It has other parallels with movements in other countries: The organisation is mostly non-hierarchical and “leaderless”, and there is no single opinion on how things have to be changed, but all agree on a key demand – to take on Wall Street. The movement seems to be a coalition of the Left-minded, anarchists, socialists, and liberals disillusioned with the Democratic Party. The question of whether the OWS protests can draw in the centrists and “third way” establishment figures in the Democratic Party and shift the latter to the Left is, however, an incorrect poser. Unlike the Tea Party movement, which was spurred to a great extent by wealthy financiers and involved what is termed the “astroturf” – money-driven mobilisation masquerading as a grass-roots movement – the Occupy movement is a truer political coalition. And if its momentum sustains itself, it could fill a void by giving space to the Left that is currently not represented in America’s political system. For long, socialists and welfarists in the country have been marginalised. They have never recovered from the sustained “anti-Red” attacks of the 1950s and have limited themselves to working as pressure groups within the Democratic Party or as fringe groups. The current motif of “overcoming economic injustice” has the potential of giving the new protests a new basis and to that extent it would want to resist co-option by the Democratic Party. The attempt at co-option and appropriation of slogans is already under way as party satraps and White House representatives have begun to rediscover the anti-Wall Street narrative for rhetorical purposes. The OWS movement can only sustain itself if it graduates from the inchoate to a kind of political organisation much like the Tea Party movement did but with obviously significant differences. The powerful mainstream American media gave the OWS phenomenon scant coverage until they realised it was too big to be ignored, but it is now reporting the movement with disdain. In many cases, the police have also dealt with the protests with a heavy hand. It is not going to be easy for the movement to make the transition to the next stage, but the signs are promising.
with the business conditions in this country and to “sense” the investment climate. Their 40-point questionnaire ranging from “Do you regard profit immoral?’’ to “How easy or difficult is to dismiss an Indian worker?” embraced all facets of Indian economy and also touched broadly the political situation in the country – as was clear from their question to the Labour Minister: What was the extent of Communist influence among labour and what were the Government measures to counter it? While most of the questions were exploratory, some betrayed a fantastic ignorance of the Government’s economic policies and some were tendentious. For instance, they
Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
wanted to know what public sector projects the Government would switch over to the private sector. The questions which figured most prominently were those on taxation, nationalisation and compensation, majority-share or wholly owned foreign enterprises, and foreign private capital participation in the proposed Bokaro Steel Plant and in all phases of oil industry… In official circles it is categorically stated that no new concession was offered to the American businessmen and that the interpretations of policies, were objective and “there was no attempt to hide the “socialistic” and “nationalistic” content of our “policies”…
9
EDITORIALS
Occupying the Deserted Left Space The “Occupy Wall Street” movement could provide an outlet for the unrepresented Left of the United States.
A
s thousands of Americans continue to pour onto the streets in a number of cities every day, answering calls to replicate the “Occupy Wall Street” (OWS) movement in Zuccotti Park in New York City, the signs are unmistakable – representative democracy as we know it in the US is potentially in for an overhaul. With differences between the Democratic and the Republican Parties on economic issues now more of form than essence, it has taken party-less protest movements to articulate concrete policy positions from the perspectives of the Right and the Left. If from the Right the Tea Party movement had a libertarian streak – blaming “government” for America’s financial ills – from the Left the Occupy movement has a simple message – end the dominance of finance capital in government decision-making. The Tea Party eventually became a faction within the Republican Party, pushing it further to the Right while making it more populist. Will the OWS movement manage to shift the terrain of American politics to the Left and finally bring the concerns of the middle class and working Americans to the mainstream? One might ask why it took so long for something like the Occupy movement to emerge in the US. The Barack Obama presidency belied its rhetoric of “change” and by coming up short on various promises the Democrat administration deeply disappointed many who had voted for it. Healthcare reform, a major campaign plank, was managed with a piecemeal approach as Obama and the Democrats gave into Republican Party pressure. Obama could not even manage to overturn the tax cuts instituted during George W Bush’s tenure for the wealthiest of citizens. And his presidency has only managed to impose minimal regulation on Wall Street. Meanwhile, the core economic concern – unemployment – continues to remain at a high level (9.1% in August 2011) and the sub-prime mortgage problem that resulted in millions of home foreclosures stays unresolved. The Obama presidency has, in short, failed voters who expected it to overturn the Bush era policies and provide substantive relief during a severe economic crisis. Taking inspiration from and parallel to similar party-less mass mobilisations across the world – the Arab Spring in north Africa
From 50 Years Ago
Vol Xiii, Nos 44-45, november 4, 1961
our delhi letter
Wooing the American Investor Red carpets were rolled out to the group of American businessmen who had been herded together by the Business International Inc and gently led and guided by the Indian Commercial Counsellor in New York. The object: a round-table conference to acquaint themselves
and west Asia and the Indignants in Spain – the OWS movement has finally taken the angst of Americans to the streets. It has other parallels with movements in other countries: The organisation is mostly non-hierarchical and “leaderless”, and there is no single opinion on how things have to be changed, but all agree on a key demand – to take on Wall Street. The movement seems to be a coalition of the Left-minded, anarchists, socialists, and liberals disillusioned with the Democratic Party. The question of whether the OWS protests can draw in the centrists and “third way” establishment figures in the Democratic Party and shift the latter to the Left is, however, an incorrect poser. Unlike the Tea Party movement, which was spurred to a great extent by wealthy financiers and involved what is termed the “astroturf” – money-driven mobilisation masquerading as a grass-roots movement – the Occupy movement is a truer political coalition. And if its momentum sustains itself, it could fill a void by giving space to the Left that is currently not represented in America’s political system. For long, socialists and welfarists in the country have been marginalised. They have never recovered from the sustained “anti-Red” attacks of the 1950s and have limited themselves to working as pressure groups within the Democratic Party or as fringe groups. The current motif of “overcoming economic injustice” has the potential of giving the new protests a new basis and to that extent it would want to resist co-option by the Democratic Party. The attempt at co-option and appropriation of slogans is already under way as party satraps and White House representatives have begun to rediscover the anti-Wall Street narrative for rhetorical purposes. The OWS movement can only sustain itself if it graduates from the inchoate to a kind of political organisation much like the Tea Party movement did but with obviously significant differences. The powerful mainstream American media gave the OWS phenomenon scant coverage until they realised it was too big to be ignored, but it is now reporting the movement with disdain. In many cases, the police have also dealt with the protests with a heavy hand. It is not going to be easy for the movement to make the transition to the next stage, but the signs are promising.
with the business conditions in this country and to “sense” the investment climate. Their 40-point questionnaire ranging from “Do you regard profit immoral?’’ to “How easy or difficult is to dismiss an Indian worker?” embraced all facets of Indian economy and also touched broadly the political situation in the country – as was clear from their question to the Labour Minister: What was the extent of Communist influence among labour and what were the Government measures to counter it? While most of the questions were exploratory, some betrayed a fantastic ignorance of the Government’s economic policies and some were tendentious. For instance, they
Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
wanted to know what public sector projects the Government would switch over to the private sector. The questions which figured most prominently were those on taxation, nationalisation and compensation, majority-share or wholly owned foreign enterprises, and foreign private capital participation in the proposed Bokaro Steel Plant and in all phases of oil industry… In official circles it is categorically stated that no new concession was offered to the American businessmen and that the interpretations of policies, were objective and “there was no attempt to hide the “socialistic” and “nationalistic” content of our “policies”…
9
COMMENTARY
Land Acquisition, Eminent Domain and the 2011 Bill Usha Ramanathan
The displaced and their advocates have been campaigning for a law that will limit the coercive power of the State in taking over land. The Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill 2011 adopts some of the language and concerns from the sites of conflict. But by beginning with the premise that acquisition is inevitable and that industrialisation, urbanisation and infrastructure will have lexical priority, the LARR Bill 2011 may have gained few friends among those whom involuntary acquisition has displaced, and those for whom rehabilitation has been about promises that have seldom been kept.
I
n its 117 years of existence, the Land Acquisition Act 1894 (LAA 1894) has influenced the expansion of the power of the State to acquire and take over land. It has helped institutionalise involuntary acquisition. Premised on the doctrine of eminent domain, it presumes a priority to the requirements of the State which, by definition, is for the general good of the public, over the interests of landowners and users. The doctrine of eminent domain invests power in the state to acquire private land for public purpose on payment of compensation. The language of “public purpose” has lent a touch of public morality to invol untary acquisition and dispossession which, especially since the 1980s has been facing serious challenge. Mass dis placement posed an early threat to the legitimacy of the project of development. This phenomenon defied the logic of emi nent domain in demonstrating that the link between “public purpose” and acqui sition was incapable of acknowledging the thousands, and hundreds of thousands, who would stand to lose their livelihood, security, support structures when land was acquired and whole communities uproot ed. The LAA, 1894 was trained to acknowl edge a “person interested” in the land who could, therefore, become a “claimant”. Even this limited right did not vest in the wider multitude who would face the con sequent forcible eviction.
Unresolved Question
Usha Ramanathan (
[email protected]) is an independent law researcher working on the jurisprudence of law, poverty and rights.
10
An unresolved question has hung in the air since the early years after Independ ence when laws were passed to dispossess zamindars: What is the relationship of the state with land? Is it a landlord? A super landlord? An owner? A trustee? A holder of land? A manager? Even as this remains in the realm of debate, the state has, among other roles, emerged as an agency
that facilitates the transfer of land to com panies in their pursuit of projects and profits. This has been the second, domi nant, challenge to the legitimacy of invol untary acquisition. In 1984, when the LAA 1894 went through elaborate amendment, the role that the State had taken on in acquiring land for companies was re inforced. The neo-liberal agenda, or the reforms agenda as some term it, forged a partnership between the state and compa nies. The state casts itself in the role of a facilitator; as the “public” in public-private partnerships (PPP); as party to contracts with corporations where it guarantees certain conditions and terms that would make projects friction free while guaran teeing profits; as agents in procuring land and providing clearances; as disinvestors, through which process the transfer of assets would occur. The alignment of state interest with corporate interest, which has the state acquiring and transferring land to corporations, has had dispossessed and displaced persons and communities seeing the state as adversarial to their interest. In 1984, the Statement of Objects and Reasons (SoR) of the Amendment Act referred to the “sacrifices” of the affected population. “The individuals and institu tions who are unavoidably to be deprived of their property rights in land need to be adequately compensated for the loss keeping in view the sacrifice they have to make for the larger interests of the com munity”, the SoR read. The widening rift in the meaning accorded to “the larger interests of the community”, and the determination not to become “sacrifices” in the interests of the corporatisation of resources has become the theme song of the past decade and a half. A model of development that requires extraordinary sacrifices, that is ecologi cally and in socio-economic terms of ques tionable repute and which is linked with such phenomena as marginalisation, exclusion and impoverishment has not been able to cross the credibility barrier to convince those who are sometimes referred to as “victims of development”. Macroeconomic projections of growth and prosperity have not succeeded in convinc ing the project affected that their sacrifice
november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
COMMENTARY
has value that they must respect; and this is in evidence in the many sites of pitched conflict and resistance where projects venture. A challenge to the development paradigm has in addition emerged from concerns that the avidity with which choice land is being handed over to cor porations to be diverted from its desig nated use would compromise food secu rity, with agricultural land disappearing into domains of non-agricultural uses.
Laws and Policies The decades since the development project got underway in the 1950s has caused “development-induced displace ment”. Laws and policies that dealt with rehabilitation have been around since the 1960s and 1970s. The T N Singh formula of a job to each family displaced to make way for public sector mines and industries is of 1967 vintage.1 Since 1976, Mahara shtra has had a law on rehabilitation which in its current form is the Mahara shtra Project Affected Persons Rehabilita tion Act. The most discussed is the 1993 draft policy put together by the Ministry of Rural Development.2 States and public enterprises have sporadically produced policies. It was not till February 2004 that a National Policy on Resettlement and Rehabilitation 2003 was notified, to be replaced in 2007 by the National Rehabili tation Policy 2006. The prescriptions in policy, the possibility of performance, and sanctions for non-performance are at the heart of the problem. “Retrospecti vity”, which acknowledges displacement through decades past, has been a crucial element in the validation, or unaccept ability, of law and policy. There has been an escalating demand to replace the LAA, 1894 with a law that recog nises the perils of mass displacement, acc ounts for those who have been dislodged and dispossessed through the decades, restrains companies from benefiting from involuntary acquisition and forced evic tion, and reconsiders a model of deve lopment that could demote agriculture and, consequently, threaten food security. The Land Acquisition Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bill (77 of 2011) (LARR 2011) introduced in the Lok Sabha on 7 Septem ber 2011 will have to be tested to see if it meets these expectations.
Lexical Priority There is a problem even at the outset. A “Foreword” to the draft bill that Union Minister for Rural Development Jairam Ramesh displayed on the ministry’s web site on 27 July 2011 begins with these words: “Infrastructure across the country must expand rapidly. Industrialisation, especially based on manufacture, has also to accelerate. Urbanisation is inevitable. Land is an essential requirement for all these processes.” Having set these out as priorities which the law is to adopt, it is then said: “In every case, land acquisition must take place in a manner that fully pro tects the interests of landowners and also those whose livelihoods depend on the land being acquired”. This sets up a lexical priority for industry, urbanisation and infrastructure, and introduces pragma tism into issues of displacement and reha bilitation. This approach runs through the entire LARR 2011. In the bill introduced in the Lok Sabha, the preamble uses adjec tives such as “humane”, “participatory”, “informed”, “consultative”, “transparent”, but the juggernaut of “development” is not to be slowed down; the process of dealing with its wake may be modified. The attempt to reconcile conflicting interests has, however, produced some interesting elements. So, • the idea of “legitimate and bona fide public purpose for the proposed acqui sition which necessitates acquisition of the land identified” (Clause 8(2)(a)); • that “only the minimum area of land required for the project” can be sought to be acquired (Clause 8(3)); • that “minimum displacement of people, minimum disturbance to the infrastruc ture, ecology and minimum adverse im pact on the individuals affected” should be ensured (Clause 8(3)). These capture some of the causes of dis content. Yet, these are not justiciable standards but indicators to be used by an expert committee in its appraisal of the social impact assessment which is to be carried out as a prelude to acquisition. The LAA 1894 was concerned exclusively with acquisition; it was innocent of the need for rehabilitation. In 1984, “public purpose” was redefined to include the pro vision of land for residential purposes “...to persons displaced or affected by
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r eason of the implementation of any scheme undertaken by government...” (Section 3(f)(v)). There was no procedure prescribed, and no entitlements created. It was among the purposes for which the state had the power, under the Act, to acquire land.
Beyond the 1894 Act The LARR 2011 has had to move beyond the perimeters of the LAA 1894. Since the mid-1990s, the demand has been for any law of acquisition to include within it pro visions that ensure rehabilitation. That explains the move from a “Land Acquisi tion Act” to a “Land Acquisition, Rehabili tation and Resettlement Bill”. The applica bility of the law accordingly extends to situations where land is acquired for purposes connected with the government and private companies including public- private partnership projects. The notion of the “affected family” (Clause 3(c)) has been introduced, and this is distinct from the “person interested” who was, and continues in this bill to be the person enti tled to compensation. “Affected family” includes agricultural labourers, tenants, sharecroppers, artisans, those working in the affected area for three years prior to the acquisition, “whose primary source of livelihood stands affected by the acquisition of land” as also the person who loses land. It includes those whose primary source of livelihood for three years prior to the acquisition was “dependent on forests or water bodies and includes gatherers of forest produce, hunters, fisherfolk and boatmen and (those whose) livelihood is affected due to acquisition of land”. It includes too families to whom land has been assigned under any government scheme and which land is to be acquired. In urban areas, it would include a family residing on the land for the preceding three years, or where their livelihood is linked with it. This expanded idea of the affected family could, if the law is seri ously implemented, work to prevent indis criminate and wanton dispossession. The inclusion of “tribals and other traditional forest dwellers who have lost any of their traditional rights recognised under the Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest
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Rights) Act 2006 due to acquisition of land” (Clause 3(c) (iii)), however, should bring us to a screeching halt if we are oth erwise finding room for optimism.
Diluting Forest Rights Act The Forest Rights Act 2006 was an out come of concerns about the increasing insecurity of tribals, forest dwellers, and forest dependent communities. The threat of eviction, or alienation, from the forest was looming in the early years of the first decade of this century. That tribals and for est dwellers had no legally ascribed rights, and this was making them vulnerable to exclusion from their habitat. The Forest Rights Act 2006 was not about vesting property rights in the individual; it was about protecting the interests of the tribals and forest dwellers in relation to their hab itat. It was not about creating rights; it was about recognising rights. In including the rights created under the 2006 Act among those that may be “acquired” through what, at its root, is a coercive law, it reduc es the Act to merely creating transactable property rights. The LARR 2011 does carry a caveat: that the law relating to land transfer
12
in scheduled areas shall be followed. The weakness of this protection is revealed when we consider that the transfer of land from a tribal to non-tribal in scheduled ar eas is generally overseen by a collector, or some agent of the state, whose job it is to ensure that the interests of the tribal is pro tected. If the state is itself to be acquiring the land, then the protection is diminished to that degree. If the state is legally permit ted to acquire the land to be handed over to a private company, that dilutes the pro tection further. Bringing forest areas, and Fifth and Sixth Schedule areas, within the law of involuntary acquisition does not conform to the hard-fought norms recognised in the Samatha judgment.3 The idea of recognising rights so that they can be monetised and taken over could be viewed as amounting to a fraud on the tribals and forest dwellers. If land has to be diverted for the purposes of industry or infrastructure in scheduled areas and in areas in the Fifth and Sixth Schedules, some route other than the coercive power under the land acquisition law will have to be found.
There are provisions that have been introduced in the LARR 2011 which have drawn on the debates and disputes around displacement. Change of public purpose – where acquisition is based on one purpose but it is used for another purpose – has been among the practices that brought co ercive acquisition into disrepute. It revealed a casualness about state power. The LARR 2011 reads: “No change from the purpose or related purposes for which the land is originally sought to be acquired shall be allowed” (Clause 93). “Or related purposes” does allow for some leeway, but it still becomes a qualified power. Trans acting on land and on projects between corporations has raised questions which, in part, is addressed in clause 94: “No change of ownership without specific per mission from the appropriate government shall be allowed”. Importantly: “No land use change shall be permitted if rehabili tation and resettlement is not complied with in full” (Clause 42(4)). There is no clarity on what would constitute such compliance, and setting that out would be necessary prerequisite to this provision acquiring meaning.
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A government, embarrassed at being seen as an agent for corporations, has stepped aside and is seen to be encour aging corporations to buy land from landowners, with the State stepping in when a substantial portion – LARR 2011 sets it at 80% – has been bought. The rehabilitation aspect of LARR 2011 would apply where the State steps in, and also where a project exceeds 100 acres in rural areas and 50 acres in urban areas, whether or not the state has had a role in the purchase of land.
Few Rights For years now, “market value” as a basis for compensation has been sought to be replaced by “replacement value”. LARR 2011 falls far short of considering that standard, even as it provides the calculus that will increase the total amount received as compensation. The possibi lity of other forms of compensation, such as shares in the enterprise for which the land is being acquired, is built into this bill. But land for land, jobs in the enter prise, annuities, fishing rights are alter natives only as the rehabilitation autho rity deems practical. There are few rights and entitlements in this construction of the law. The retention of the “urgency” clause is inexplicable. It is true that there is a significant contraction in the LARR 2011 of the reasons that can provoke the use of the urgency power. Unlike the LAA 1894 which vests vast discretion in what is considered urgent, and which has result ed in indiscriminate use of this power, 4 the LARR Bill 2011 restricts it “to the minimum area required for the defence of India or national security or for any emergencies arising out of natural ca lamities”. These situations may require immediate possession, but the perma nent severance of the relationship bet ween the land and persons interested in the land is excessive. “Requisitioning” land or property,5 and taking it free of all encumbrances, are two distinct proces ses. This power does not belong in a land acquisition law. Clause 59 of the 27 July draft allowed for imposing a penalty for obstructing acquisition of land with imprisonment that could extend to one month or a fine of
Rs 500 or both. This provision, which was a carry-over from LAA 1894 (Section 46) fortunately finds no place in LARR 2011. In another context, the 27 July draft had pro vided for the “return of unutilised land” and this seems to have quietly slipped out of the LARR 2011. This is a significant omission, which has been replaced by the idea of a “Land Bank” (Clause 95). The perception of the state as a rightful holder of land is in evidence not only in this no tion of the land bank. Clause 2(1) (a) rec ognises an interest in the government to acquire land “for its own use, hold and control” – each of these terms recognise an extraordinary interest, and power, in relation to land which conflicts around this power have sought to tame. The LARR 2011, in reinforcing this broad sweep of power and interest, keeps the conflicts alive. Fuelling the conflicts further is the expansion of this law to give priority to “use of private companies for public pur pose (including public-private partnership projects)...”, and acquisition “on the re quest of private companies for immediate and declared use by such companies of land for public purposes” (Clause 2(1) (b) and (c)). The prioritising of infrastructure projects, which is then defined to include “educational, sports, healthcare” and even “tourism” are unlikely to lull the fears of those who anticipate large-scale transfer of land to follow if this bill were to become law. More bluntly stated, these are likely to draw the lines of conflict more sharply still. There is an interesting departure from the LAA 1894 in Chapter XII which atte mpts to set out “offences and penalties”. Producing a false document, making a false claim for rehabilitation are made punishable. In a departure from common practice, the LARR 2011 suggests that “dis ciplinary proceedings” may be drawn up against a government servant who “if proved guilty of a mala fide action in respect of any provision of this Act, shall be liable to punishment”. This, and other provisions in this chapter, though, are non-specific and, so, not likely to be enforceable as they now read. Clause 79, for instance, provides a punishment “if any person contravenes any of the provi sions relating to payment of compensation or rehabilitation and resettlement”. It is
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not clear if this refers to officials, affected families or any others; or whether it will cover such acts as “overacquisition”. Con sidering the serious consequences of involuntary acquisition and forced evic tion, “offences” are a component that can usefully have a place in this law; but it clearly needs inputs assisted by imagina tion and experience. A special mention of the diversion of land from multi-cropping to other uses employs the language of “exceptional circumstances” and “demon strable last resort” when such diversion is to occur, and percentages prescribed for the maximum extent that may be allowed (Clause 10).
Land Titling Bill There is another bill which must be seen in conjunction with the LARR 2011. The Land Titling Bill 2011 which has been released by the Ministry of Rural Develop ment in draft form, connected law. That bill is an attempt at commoditisation of land, making it tradable in the land mar ket. The long title says that the law is to create a “conclusive property titling sys tem”. It is to “prepare a record of all immovable properties”. It shifts the onus from the state to the individual to keep the records updated on pain of punishment, and even loss of acknowledgement of title to the land or interest in the land (Chap ter VI, “Compulsory Intimations to Land Titling Authority”). Clause 36(3) cautions: “All persons are deemed to have notice of every entry in the Register of Titles”. Indicating that the purpose of the bill is simplifying transactions on land, it says: “Any title recorded in the Register of Titles in accordance with the provisions of the Act, shall be considered as evi dence of the marketable title of the landholder” (Clause 41). Indemnification in transactions on land is an idea that is undertaken by insurance companies as part of their business acti vity: they indemnify land titles and bear the cost of litigation and ancillary matters if they were to arise. The idea of introduc ing an “indemnification” clause, where the government indemnifies a person who acts on the basis of the title as it is recorded in the Land Registry (Clause 42), is a case of the government taking over the role of an insurance company. They indemnify
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land titles and bear the cost of litigation and ancillary matters if they were to arise. The draft Land Titling Bill is not about updating land records. It is not about the accuracy of land records, but about its finality for purposes of determining encumbrances and saleability. It is about deciding on a means by which land may be easily dealt with in the market. The displaced, project affected and dis possessed and their advocates have been campaigning long and hard for a law that
will limit the coercive power of the state in taking over land. The LARR 2011 adopts some of the language and concerns from the sites of conflict. But, in beginning with the premise that land acquisition is inevi table and that industrialisation, urbanisa tion and infrastructure will have lexical priority, the LARR 2011 may have gained few friends among those whom involun tary acquisition has displaced, and those for whom rehabilitation has been about promises that have seldom been kept.
Paramakudi Violence: Against Dalits, Against Politics Muthukaruppan Parthasarathi
The killing of six dalits in police firing in Paramakudi in September again exposes the manner in which state institutions work to enforce the social dominance of certain castes. In the southern districts of Tamil Nadu there is an upsurge within dalit castes, but there is also a continuing complicity between the dominant castes, political parties and state institutions to beat this back.
Muthukaruppan Parthasarathi (
[email protected]) teaches cultural studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.
14
T
he police killing on 11 September of six dalits on the 54th memorial day of Immanuel Sekaran in Parama kudi town of Ramanathapuram district in southern Tamil Nadu (TN) once again demonstrated the casteist nature of state institutions and the Government of TN.
Immanuel Memorial and Police Violence Immanuel (1924-57) is considered to be the first leader to dedicate his life in the struggle against caste oppression in postIndependence TN. Back from the Indian Army in 1952, Immanuel involved himself in revolutionary activity against caste oppression and organised Pallar youth in Ramanathapuram district.1 The period 1952-57 in Immanuel’s life was marked by a series of militant activities against untouchability. During this time he also organised a number of conferences and public meetings against caste discrimin ation. He associated himself with both the Depressed Classes League and the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church. He became a nightmare for the upper castes, especially for the Maravars of Ramanathapuram dis trict. It is widely believed that a day after his confrontation with Muthuramalingam in a peace meeting called by the district collector over some local dispute, hit men of Muthuramalingam murdered Immanuel on 11 September 1957.2 Immanuel’s death
Notes 1 Ibid. See also, Butu Prasad Kumbhar vs SAIL ,1995 Supp 2, Supreme Court Cases, 225. 2 Walter Fernandes and Vijay Paranjpye (1997), Rehabilitation Policy and Law in India: A Right to Livelihood, Indian Social Institute. 3 Samatha vs State of Andhra Pradesh (1997) 8, Supreme Court Cases, 191. 4 See for e g, Ashish Tripathi, “HC Quashes Acquisi tion of 600 Hectares of Land in Greater Noida”, dated 19 July 2011 found at http://articles.times ofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-07-19/noida/29790 697_1_urgency-clause-land-acquisition-act-greater -noida-authority. 5 See, for instance, Requisitioning and Acquisition of Immovable Property Act 1952.
resulted in the Mudukulathur riots, a clash between the Devendirars and Thevars that lasted for a few weeks. Though there has been a rivalry between Devendirars and Thevars since Mudukulathur riots, it cannot be reduced simply to a caste feud; rather this is rooted in the dialectics of the Devendirars’ revolt against the domination of the Thevars. From 1958 onwards the Devendirars in the Paramakudi region started gathering at Immanuel’s burial place to conduct a memorial at the taluk level. By 1969, the memorial had started attracting a substan tial number of Pallar youth and students from the Ramanathapuram district. The formation of the Thiyagi Immanuel Peravai (TIP), a dalit movement for the annihilation of caste by P Chandrabose in 1988, paved the way for a routine and larger gathering on memorial day. The memorial also at tracted the Devendirars from Sivagangai, Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli and a few nearby districts. The memorial gained larger mobilisation only after 2007, the 50th anniversary of Immanuel’s death. Now it has become an event in which several political parties and organisations participate. There were certain significant develop ments a few weeks before the day of the present Paramakudi police killings. Gene rally, there seems to be hostility and dis taste among the Thevars towards the growing popularity of the Immanuel memorial day. The release of John Pandian (jp) after 10 years of imprisonment and the victory of the Puthiya Tamilagam (PT) party in two assembly constituencies have added fuel to Thevar hostility.3 The demand that the Immanuel Memorial should be conducted by the State has been pushed by dalit forces. The fact-finding
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COMMENTARY
land titles and bear the cost of litigation and ancillary matters if they were to arise. The draft Land Titling Bill is not about updating land records. It is not about the accuracy of land records, but about its finality for purposes of determining encumbrances and saleability. It is about deciding on a means by which land may be easily dealt with in the market. The displaced, project affected and dispossessed and their advocates have been campaigning long and hard for a law that
will limit the coercive power of the state in taking over land. The LARR 2011 adopts some of the language and concerns from the sites of conflict. But, in beginning with the premise that land acquisition is inevitable and that industrialisation, urbanisation and infrastructure will have lexical priority, the LARR 2011 may have gained few friends among those whom involuntary acquisition has displaced, and those for whom rehabilitation has been about promises that have seldom been kept.
Paramakudi Violence: Against Dalits, Against Politics Muthukaruppan Parthasarathi
The killing of six dalits in police firing in Paramakudi in September again exposes the manner in which state institutions work to enforce the social dominance of certain castes. In the southern districts of Tamil Nadu there is an upsurge within dalit castes, but there is also a continuing complicity between the dominant castes, political parties and state institutions to beat this back.
Muthukaruppan Parthasarathi (
[email protected]) teaches cultural studies at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.
14
T
he police killing on 11 September of six dalits on the 54th memorial day of Immanuel Sekaran in Parama kudi town of Ramanathapuram district in southern Tamil Nadu (TN) once again demonstrated the casteist nature of state institutions and the Government of TN.
Immanuel Memorial and Police Violence Immanuel (1924-57) is considered to be the first leader to dedicate his life in the struggle against caste oppression in postIndependence TN. Back from the Indian Army in 1952, Immanuel involved himself in revolutionary activity against caste oppression and organised Pallar youth in Ramanathapuram district.1 The period 1952-57 in Immanuel’s life was marked by a series of militant activities against untouchability. During this time he also organised a number of conferences and public meetings against caste discrimin ation. He associated himself with both the Depressed Classes League and the Tamil Evangelical Lutheran Church. He became a nightmare for the upper castes, especially for the Maravars of Ramanathapuram district. It is widely believed that a day after his confrontation with Muthuramalingam in a peace meeting called by the district collector over some local dispute, hit men of Muthuramalingam murdered Immanuel on 11 September 1957.2 Immanuel’s death
Notes 1 Ibid. See also, Butu Prasad Kumbhar vs SAIL ,1995 Supp 2, Supreme Court Cases, 225. 2 Walter Fernandes and Vijay Paranjpye (1997), Rehabilitation Policy and Law in India: A Right to Livelihood, Indian Social Institute. 3 Samatha vs State of Andhra Pradesh (1997) 8, Supreme Court Cases, 191. 4 See for e g, Ashish Tripathi, “HC Quashes Acquisition of 600 Hectares of Land in Greater Noida”, dated 19 July 2011 found at http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-07-19/noida/29790 697_1_urgency-clause-land-acquisition-act-greater -noida-authority. 5 See, for instance, Requisitioning and Acquisition of Immovable Property Act 1952.
resulted in the Mudukulathur riots, a clash between the Devendirars and Thevars that lasted for a few weeks. Though there has been a rivalry between Devendirars and Thevars since Mudukulathur riots, it cannot be reduced simply to a caste feud; rather this is rooted in the dialectics of the Devendirars’ revolt against the domination of the Thevars. From 1958 onwards the Devendirars in the Paramakudi region started gathering at Immanuel’s burial place to conduct a memorial at the taluk level. By 1969, the memorial had started attracting a substantial number of Pallar youth and students from the Ramanathapuram district. The formation of the Thiyagi Immanuel Peravai (TIP), a dalit movement for the annihilation of caste by P Chandrabose in 1988, paved the way for a routine and larger gathering on memorial day. The memorial also attracted the Devendirars from Sivagangai, Virudhunagar, Tirunelveli and a few nearby districts. The memorial gained larger mobilisation only after 2007, the 50th anniversary of Immanuel’s death. Now it has become an event in which several political parties and organisations participate. There were certain significant developments a few weeks before the day of the present Paramakudi police killings. Gene rally, there seems to be hostility and distaste among the Thevars towards the growing popularity of the Immanuel memorial day. The release of John Pandian (jp) after 10 years of imprisonment and the victory of the Puthiya Tamilagam (PT) party in two assembly constituencies have added fuel to Thevar hostility.3 The demand that the Immanuel Memorial should be conducted by the State has been pushed by dalit forces. The fact-finding
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COMMENTARY
teams which went to investigate the police firing point to the notice of the Appanadu Maravar Sangam circulated among Thevars which asked for a plan to spoil the Immanuel memorial and also to prevent the Pallar attempts to make it a governmentsponsored celebration. It has been a pattern for the past few years that the Thevars indulge in violence against the dalits every year during the Immanuel memorial celebrations. This year 16-year old Palanikumar of Pallapacheri village was killed by the Maravars of Mandalamanikkam village on 9 September. Later, the Thevars alleged that Palanikumar wrote “Muthuramalingam Thevar was a eunuch” on the wall. The fact-finding reports (FFRs) have conclusively shown these allegations to be baseless. It has also been reported that the flex boards of Immanuel were torn by Thevars in many places across TN. On 7 September Maravar advocates of Paramakudi, with the help of local police and revenue authorities, removed the flex boards carrying the title “Deivathirumagan” put up by SC/ST transport corporation employees.4 Consequently it led to more flex boards of that kind and the local authorities were annoyed by the “disobedience” of the Devendirars. On 10 September police refused jp permission to visit Pallapacheri; he obeyed the orders and went back. JP was arrested by the police and prevented from attending the memorial. Rumours also spread that the police had planned an “encounter” with JP. On 11 September, around 30 party members of the Tamilaga Makkal Munnetra Kazhagam (TMMK) demanded the release of JP and staged a protest at the five-point junction of Paramakudi. The strength of the police force at the site was around 2,000. Without any provocation, police opened fire on the people straightaway without first trying out any other method such as lathi-charge or tear gas. The police claimed that they had to resort to firing because the protesters were pelting stones and setting fire to vehicles. Dalit organisations allege that the entire episode was preplanned and was an attempt to suppress the assertion of the dalits. They have also pointed out that some of the high level police officers, who had been especially deployed for the Immanuel memorial day celebrations, were known for their anti-dalit
a ctivities. Dalit activists and writers at the site claim that police set fire to the vehicles and stones were being pelted, not by dalits but, by the policemen themselves in mufti. Similar firings took place at two other places – Chinthamani and Ilayangudi – on the same day. More than 30 people were severely injured and six were killed. Several political parties and organisations, civil and human rights collectives have condemned the brutal acts. Media reports have mostly reproduced the police statements justifying police action. The Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa justified the police action by saying that they had resorted to firing to prevent John Pandian and his men from rioting. She also justified the killing of Palanikumar saying that it was the result of his graffiti on the wall defaming Muthuramalingam Thevar. Several civil and human rights organisations, non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and other collectives of public interest have come up with ffrs condemning the wanton police action and the fabrications by the media. Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) Krishnasamy staged a walkout from the assembly with a few other MLAs when he was not given an opportunity to raise the issue. Jayalalithaa has announced a compensation of Rs 1,00,000 for those killed and ordered a judicial enquiry. Some of the dalit organisations are demanding an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and
action against the guilty police officials under the SC/ST Atrocity Act.
Violence of Conditions The Paramakudi violence was not accidental nor was it due to efforts at restoring law and order by the police, as the media reported. The issue needs to be viewed in the context of the frequent incidents of v iolence by the State on the Devendirars in southern TN. It has been a routine practice of the TN police to enter Devendirar v illages and destroy their properties and unleash cruel violence on the inhabitants (Viswanathan 2005: 156-62, 87-94). Police looting of the dalit hamlets increased after the Bodi riots of 1989 (Human Rights Watch 2001: 102-12). Police in the region are notorious for extorting, looting property, abusing women and children, beating men and foisting false cases. The false cases framed on Devendirars around the 1989 Bodi riots were closed only a couple of years ago. Devendirar villages have been blacklisted by the police and the community is, unofficially, considered a “violent community”. Policing the community has drastically increased after 1989. These are the “initiatives” taken by the State in TN to keep this community under control. Even the community leaders have been framed in criminal cases and the Devendirars’ attempts to participate in democratic politics have been repressed.
PERSPECTIVES ON CASH TRANSFERS May 21, 2011 A Case for Reframing the Cash Transfer Debate in India Mexico’s Targeted and Conditional Transfers: Between Oportunidades and Rights Brazil’s Bolsa Família: A Review Conditional Cash Transfers as a Tool of Social Policy Cash Transfers as the Silver Bullet for Poverty Reduction: A Sceptical Note PDS Forever? Impact of Biometric Identification-Based Transfers The Shift to Cash Transfers: Running Better But on the Wrong Road?
– Sudha Narayanan – Pablo Yanes – Fabio Veras Soares – Francesca Bastagli – Jayati Ghosh – Ashok Kotwal, Milind Murugkar, Bharat Ramaswami – Arka Roy Chaudhuri, E Somanathan – Devesh Kapur
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45
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COMMENTARY
There have been reports from Paramakudi that large numbers of dalit men are thus framed in police and legal cases. Across the southern districts of TN, dalit movements are not allowed to conduct any public protest and police have objected to any democratic protest condemning the recent Paramakudi police firing. Though the deadly police violence against dalits is erupting on and off, what needs to be understood is that it is not a new development in TN. Violence has become an inevitable part of dalit life in southern TN. Conditions have become, or have been made, too violent, rigid and constraining for dalits to be able to conduct emancipatory politics, especially mobilisation politics.
Caste, Governments and the State Dalits strongly believe that the Thevars have engineered the police killings with the support of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (AIADMK) government. In the assembly, Jayalalithaa’s justification of the police firing and arrests of dalit youth across the region has strengthened this perception of the dalits. Though one may not believe in conspiracy theories, one has to pay attention to the history of class/caste interest and how it is played out in administering state power, particularly police power. There are two issues which need to be understood. First, the nature of the police institution needs a historical understanding. Independence did not constitute an event of structural transformation. It has been noted that the basic apparatus of governmental administrative structure is drawn directly from the colonial structures. The basic structures of civil and criminal law and the Indian armed forces have been derived largely from the colonial period. (Chatterjee 2010: 3-15). Arnold (1976: 3-16) has shown that the transformation of sovereignty in 1947 did not produce any change in the nature and function of the (Madras) police that was loyal to landlords and propertied classes. The Congress, in the late colonial period, used the police force to curb the activities of communists, self-respecters and labour activists. That practice was continued by its successors. Arnold has also pointed to the cases where dalits were repressed by the police
16
when they revolted against the landlords and their poor material conditions. It has been argued that given the dominance of upper castes in the police force, the distinction between upper caste violence and state violence is of no theoretical relevance (Roberts 2010). The colonial and oppressive nature of police has always been used by the ruling classes to monitor and curb the political activities of the oppressed groups. Apart from curbing political acti vities, the institution of the police, by its very nature, is brutal and the possibilities for an excess of violence are always present. Even in exceptional cases, where the police is used to protect the weaker sections, brutality never fails to show itself. Though the Congress managed to control the Mudukulathur riots that erupted after the murder of Immanuel in 1957, the subsequent police killings of five Maravars in Keelathuval village were brutal and unwarranted. Second, the questions related to governments are of great importance. Are governments capable of democratising state institutions that are clearly oppressive? Since governments largely function within the given frames of state institutional structures it hardly seems a possibility. That is to suggest that the change in the nature of the State would have a more transformative effect than the change of governments. The history of TN, at least for the past three decades, shows that police violence on dalits or the collaboration of the police with the upper castes against dalits are closely tied with the rise of an independent dalit political leadership, organisations and parties. One of the defining features of the 1990s is the coincidence of the rise of dalits as a political force and the increased violence on dalits (Satyanarayana and Tharu 2011: 1-69). This also signifies the dalits’ moving away from Dravidian parties. The Dravidian parties, both at the party level and in their governments, privileged the dominant castes and kept the lower castes as vote banks. The representatives from the reserved constituencies were kept under strict party control. They recruited the dominant castes more into the power structure, especially the police (HRW: 86-87). MSS Pandian (2000) has a useful account of the AIADMK’s public collaboration with Thevar groups in oppressing the dalits.
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november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly The schedule for advt-3 is: Advt-3 - Nov 2011 - 1st week - Right hand position
COMMENTARY
However, he avoids any discussion of the police killing of 17 people that happened in 1997 during the Dravida Munnetra Kazagham (DMK) regime. The DMK is no exception from the upholding of Thevar interests or unleashing the police against the Devendirars (Viswanathan 2005 and Viswanathan and Syed Muthahar Saqaf 1999). The response of the then chief minister K Karunanidhi to the Thamiraparani police killings was no less virulent and openly biased towards Thevars than Jayalalithaa’s recent statements in the assembly justifying the Paramakudi violence. Thevar groups praised the Thamiraparani killings as “maintaining law and order” and it was so reported in the newspapers too (Viswanathan 2005: 135). Ravikumar’s (2009: 109) comparison of Karunanidhi with Manu neethi Cholan (an ancient king who carefully observed the laws of Manu) is worth mentioning here. This to say that the Dravidian parties and governments, in general, play an active role in the violence on dalits.
Dalit Politics of Recognition? Given that class and caste are intimately interwoven in TN’s agricultural land relations, most labour mobilisations mostly amount to dalit mobilisation. Kilvenmani mobilisations of agricultural labourers in Thanjavur district and the consequent massacre in 1968 is a classic case illustrating this point. The Thamiraparani mobilisation in 1997 was also based on labour issues of the Manjolai tea estate. The Immanuel memorial mobilisation is different from all these and it is a move towards symbolic equality and recognition. The earlier instances cited are of mobi lisations for wages, land and other material resources; in short redistribution of resources. The latter is an instance for symbolic recognition; its relation with material resources are subtle. However, both recognition and redistribution questions are deeply interconnected and inseparable. Mobilisation as part of the politics of recognition has been gaining momentum among the dalits of south TN. There has been a demand from the Devendirars that since Immanuel was a freedom fighter and social activist who sacrificed his life for the cause of equality, the Gurupooja of Immanuel should be conducted by the TN state. This struggle for symbolic equality
and recognition has intensified after the late 1980s. There was also the Devendirar demand for a transport corporation to be named after the historical figure, Veeran Sundaralingam. Another demand is that Madurai airport should be named after Immanuel. Given the nature of such demands and the history of the symbolic role played by both Ambedkar and Immanuel statues in the previous instances of violence across southern TN, one can clearly see the politics of recognition emerging parallel to dalit arguments for the redistribution of material resources. The mobilisational dim ension in certain ways has the potential to overcome the state’s standard method of addressing social issues through a policy regime. In a way, these symbolic demands are going to serve as the basis for dalit mobilisations for a long time to come. Such mobilisations may not be contained by any of the developmental programmes of the State or depoliticised by neo-liberal and NGO forces. In a situation where dalit politics has, to some extent, become a part of NGO activism and advocacy, the politics of mobilisation seem to rejuvenate the militant trajectory of dalit politics. Though in the Paramakudi incident there was no violence from the Devendirars, the last three decades have shown how Devendirars have been resisting police and upper caste violence and on occasion how they have been forced to take recourse to violent modes of resistance. This trajectory of dalit politics and its mobi lisational dimension seem not to have principles of consensus and resolution as the driving force, but rather disagreement and conflict at the heart of its politics. It is precisely this kind of politics that is under attack by the State. The celebration of Immanuel’s memorial day is more of a political mobilisation for equality. It is primarily about the claim to symbolic equality and to ensure that public spaces are common; it is a verification of equality. It needs to be understood against the background of the century-old practices of caste in constraining and regulating dalit bodies and not allowing them to have their place in the public. The reception of the dalit presence in the public is seen by both state institutions and the upper castes in a similar manner and
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45
they both respond in similar ways. Dalit politics is aware that the struggle against caste is simultaneously a fight against the caste interests of both state and society. Notes 1 Pallars are a scheduled caste community largely located in the southern districts of TN. They are mainly agricultural labourers. As early as the late colonial period they called themselves Devendirar kula vellalars; vellalar in Tamil means people who involve in agriculture/cultivation. For an insightful interpretation of the lineage of Devendirars and Buddhism by Ravikumar see the introduction in Viswanathan (2005). 2 Muthuramalinga Thevar (1908-63) was a Thevar leader of Ramanathapuram district; he associated himself with Forward Bloc Party and preached Hindu spirituality and authoritarian politics. As an oppositional force to communists and congressmen of his time, he politically mobilised Thevars. He was arrested in the Immanuel murder case but was later acquitted. The caste Thevar is a broader category which refers to a cluster of castes including Maravars, Agamudayars, and Kallars. 3 John Pandian (or JP as he is popularly known) is the supremo of the TMMK which represents an assertive leadership against the inequalities of caste. His rise as a dalit leader in the 1980s coincides with the rise of dalit assertion in southern districts. State police and the media have projected him as a criminal by separating his persona from the socio-political cause he is fighting for. But the Devendirar community constantly contests this media/state manufactured image and affirms him as a leader and fighter against caste and untouchability. The Puthiya Tamilagam is a dalit party, largely of the Devendirars. Its president K Krishnasamy is anothor leader with a mass following. 4 Deivathirumagan, the title generally refers to someone who attained god and is very commonly used in Tamil to refer to ancestors. It also bears the meaning of a divine persona. However, the use of new titles and names also has another intent; they are meant to counter the Thevar use of these terms with reference to Muthuramalingam Thevar. There was an opposition from both Thevars and the police against the use of these titles for Immanuel in Paramakudi. It is also worthy of note that when Arunthaiyars (another scheduled caste community) adopted the title Mamannan, meaning emperor, for the historical icon Ondiveeran there was similar opposition from the upper castes.
References Chatterjee, Partha (2010): “The State” in Pratap Bhanu Mehta and Neeraja Gopal Jayal (ed.), The Oxford Companion to Politics in India, OUP. David, Arnold (1976): “The Police and Colonial Control in South India”, Social Scientist, Vol 4, No 12 (July), pp 3-16. Human Rights Watch (1999): Broken People (Bangalore: Books for Change). Pandian, M S S (2000): “Dalit Assertion in Tamil Nadu: An Exploratory Note”, Journal of Indian School of Political Economy: 12:3-4, July-December. Ravikumar (2009): Venomous Touch: Notes on Caste, Culture and Politics, trns R Azhagarasan (Calcutta: Samya). Roberts, Nathanial (2010): “Language, Violence and the State: Writing Tamil Dalits”, South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal. Satyanarayana, K and Susie Tharu (2011): No Alphabet in Sight: New Dalit Writings from South India (New Delhi: Penguin). Viswanathan S and Syed Muthahar Saqaf (1999): “The Tirunelveli”, Frontline, Vol 16, Issue 16, 31 July, 13 August. Viswanathan, S (2005): Dalits in Dravidian Land (Pondichery: Navayana).
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COMMENTARY
Vaccine Policy and Advance Market Commitments Jacob Puliyel
The new National Vaccine Policy Draft 2011 by the Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare comes out openly in favour of public-private partnerships and suggests flexible governing and funding mechanisms to support vaccine development in the PPP mode. This article argues that our vaccine policy must look into the health of the children in the country and it should not be overly concerned solely with the viability of the vaccine industry.
T
he Union Ministry of Health and Family Welfare’s National Vaccine Policy Draft has been posted on the website.1 It is now open for public comments before it goes to the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation (NTAGI) and then has to be approved by the cabinet and ratified by Parliament. As the draft includes a number of momentous suggestions, it is important to be debated widely before it is enshrined as a policy.
Background and Context Judicial prompting provided the impetus for the government to formulate this policy. While hearing a public interest petition about the introduction of new vaccines in the country without sufficient evidence, the Delhi High Court asked the Union of India to state its policy on vaccines. New vaccines being introduced would be assessed in the light of that policy. The vaccine policy ideally would state how the government proposes to universalise the benefits of immunisation to the large sections who do not receive the basic vaccinations. It would also describe how new vaccines are to be selected for introduction in the programme for universal immunisation. Ideally it would lay down the process of selection of members to the NTAGI and how the procedures of this committee are to be open to the public – including the methods of estimating disease burden, vaccine efficacy and assessment of costs, benefits and adverse effects of newer vaccines.
Critique of Policy
The views expressed are entirely those of the author. Jacob Puliyel (
[email protected]) is a member of the National Technical Advisory Group on Immunisation and of the Working Group on Food and Drug Regulation in the Twelfth Five-Year Plan.
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Unfortunately, the draft is non-committal on almost all of these issues. Instead, it brings up other matters whose serious implications are underplayed, perhaps deliberately. These momentous policy changes are buried on pages 10, 11 and 16 of the draft policy document. The vaccine policy comes out openly in favour of public- private partnership (PPP). It suggests flexible governing and funding mechanisms to
support vaccine development in the PPP mode, because “the private sector has the discipline and culture for business development and marketing”. The policy draft states that industry (the private partner) will in future be allowed to influence policy. It states that “industry must be provided a channel to voice opinion to be utilised in framing policy”. The fact that this would invite conflicts of interest because of the tension between the profit motives of industry and the promotion of public health is ignored. Furthermore, the policy states that if industry has a “genuine concern that a decision is made to its detriment”, there must be a speedy redressal by an independent (of government) mechanism. The funding mechanisms will ensure that costs are borne by the government and profits are reserved for the private partner for their “entrepreneurial skills and marketing abilities”. The document even suggests that repositories in public sector institutes and platforms in the Indian Institute of Technology must support the vaccine industry (private partner) as they manufacture “risky vaccines”. The policy prescribes the “risk of manufacturing vaccines must be cushioned by assistance from government”. The boldest suggestion is that it should be “mandatory for government to support developments with Advance Market Commitments and honour the commitments”. It further says that a vaccine fund, through “innovative financing mechanisms” must be considered, for introducing new vaccines.
Advance Market Commitments The concepts of advance market commitment (AMC) and the implications of the term “innovative financing” as used by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunisation (GAVI) – an organisation of vaccine manufacturers, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the World Health Organisation (WHO), among others need to be stated explicitly. AMCs are aimed at providing incentives for new vaccines through guaranteeing the market for the product even before it is tested – the government promising it will buy a certain amount of vaccines at a given price. It is to be binding even if the vaccine produced has poor efficacy or
november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
COMMENTARY
even if the market price of the vaccine is a fraction of the AMC price. AMC was first used for pneumococcal vaccine research. The vaccine that resulted from this effort prevents just four cases of cough and cold for every 1,000 babies vaccinated and the vaccine costs Rs 1,200 per child at the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) prices. The cost of vaccinating 1,000 children to prevent four cases of pneumonia is Rs 12 lakh. Instead, on an average, treating the pneumonia in four children with the drugs recommended by the WHO would cost only Rs 40. The money for the vaccine in the AMC must be deposited with the World Bank even before the delivery of vaccine, so the directors of the pharmaceutical do not have to lose sleep about marketing the drug or about withdrawal of orders on account of the low efficacy of the product. The policy drafters understand the government will not be able to foot the hefty bill. The draft, therefore, helpfully suggests “innovative financing” to be able to make the money available to the World Bank upfront. The term “innovative financing” is
GAVI speak and must be understood as such. The Government of India is being urged to issue sovereign bonds in the capital markets so that investors and speculators can put up the money. This is a winwin situation for the pharmaceutical industry and the bond investors – for all, except perhaps the taxpayer. These innovations need careful consideration before this is accepted as a national policy.
Moving Forward Vaccines have eradicated small pox and it is one of the greatest successes of modern medicine. Characteristics of vaccines in the past have been their low costs and their remarkable cost-effectiveness. The diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine (DPT) costs less than Rs 15 for all the doses needed to immunise a child. According to the National Family Health Survey, we are not been able to provide this vaccine to half our population. The production of these essential vaccines, inexpensively in our public sector undertakings, was a source of security for the country, at a time when private manufacturers were dropping out of the market
Lokpal Movement: Unanswered Questions Gautam Navlakha
Why is it that the Anna Hazare-led movement against corruption does not seek to have the Lokpal cover NGOs, corporate houses and the corporate media?
Gautam Navlakha (
[email protected]) is a member of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi.
I
t would be churlish to dismiss “Team Anna’s” mass mobilisation which is an assertion of our collective right to protest. This is especially so in view of the fact that after having waited for four decades, the chances have significantly brightened of the passage of a Lokpal Act by the 15th Parliament. However, it would be naïve not to recognise that corruption is not a life and death matter for most Indians who are fighting for their right to live in dignity. We have to ask ourselves if the answers to all our woes are subsumed under corruption. Will ending corruption lift people out of poverty? End oppression? Resolve the struggles against land grab? Help ascertain the will of the people in Jammu and Kashmir? Bring the war in Manipur to an end or halt Operation Greenhunt? Stop the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45
because of the low profitability of these products. The public sector should be what the national vaccine policy supports. It is no one’s case that more expensive vaccines sold by private manufacturers must not be introduced in the public health system in India. However, there must be a transparent evaluation of the need for the vaccine and it must have demonstrable cost-effectiveness. Vaccine policy must enunciate these guiding principles and describe how the evaluation is to be done. Our vaccine policy must look into the health of the children in the country and it should not be overly concerned solely with the viability of the vaccine industry. This looks like a policy not to have a policy, but to utilise vaccines indiscriminatingly. If we are being asked to make long-term advance market commitments before evaluating the utility or even the market value of a vaccine, this policy needs a careful scrutiny. Note 1 http://www.slideshare.net/prabirkc/nationalvaccine-policy-2011
mining juggernaut? End the persecution of minorities at the hands of Hindutva terror? Let me confine my argument to the fight against corruption that is being projected as being the key demand of people. Even as a bill to fight corruption, the non-state Jan Lokpal draft is a half-measure which feeds, not unjustifiably, into a disdain for politicians and bureaucrats. It aims at stopping ordinary people from getting harassed and cheated by the lower bureaucracy, politicians, etc. But it neither speaks for those who fight hunger or resist the loot of land, forest and water nor, for that matter, targets those who are the biggest beneficiaries of the privatisation of public assets and those who corner public funds. True, like the Right to Information (RTI) Act, a Lokpal Act too could go some way in empowering citizens. But just as the campaign for RTI then dismissed the proposal to bring NGOs under the purview of the RTI, even this time all versions of the non-state Lokpal bill/s exclude NGOs from the purview of the Lokpal. This exclusion is not innocent. So too the exclusion of corporates and the media.
19
COMMENTARY
even if the market price of the vaccine is a fraction of the AMC price. AMC was first used for pneumococcal vaccine research. The vaccine that resulted from this effort prevents just four cases of cough and cold for every 1,000 babies vaccinated and the vaccine costs Rs 1,200 per child at the United Nations International Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF) prices. The cost of vaccinating 1,000 children to prevent four cases of pneumonia is Rs 12 lakh. Instead, on an average, treating the pneumonia in four children with the drugs recommended by the WHO would cost only Rs 40. The money for the vaccine in the AMC must be deposited with the World Bank even before the delivery of vaccine, so the directors of the pharmaceutical do not have to lose sleep about marketing the drug or about withdrawal of orders on account of the low efficacy of the product. The policy drafters understand the government will not be able to foot the hefty bill. The draft, therefore, helpfully suggests “innovative financing” to be able to make the money available to the World Bank upfront. The term “innovative financing” is
GAVI speak and must be understood as such. The Government of India is being urged to issue sovereign bonds in the capital markets so that investors and speculators can put up the money. This is a winwin situation for the pharmaceutical industry and the bond investors – for all, except perhaps the taxpayer. These innovations need careful consideration before this is accepted as a national policy.
Moving Forward Vaccines have eradicated small pox and it is one of the greatest successes of modern medicine. Characteristics of vaccines in the past have been their low costs and their remarkable cost-effectiveness. The diphtheria, tetanus, pertussis vaccine (DPT) costs less than Rs 15 for all the doses needed to immunise a child. According to the National Family Health Survey, we are not been able to provide this vaccine to half our population. The production of these essential vaccines, inexpensively in our public sector undertakings, was a source of security for the country, at a time when private manufacturers were dropping out of the market
Lokpal Movement: Unanswered Questions Gautam Navlakha
Why is it that the Anna Hazare-led movement against corruption does not seek to have the Lokpal cover NGOs, corporate houses and the corporate media?
Gautam Navlakha (
[email protected]) is a member of the People’s Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi.
I
t would be churlish to dismiss “Team Anna’s” mass mobilisation which is an assertion of our collective right to protest. This is especially so in view of the fact that after having waited for four decades, the chances have significantly brightened of the passage of a Lokpal Act by the 15th Parliament. However, it would be naïve not to recognise that corruption is not a life and death matter for most Indians who are fighting for their right to live in dignity. We have to ask ourselves if the answers to all our woes are subsumed under corruption. Will ending corruption lift people out of poverty? End oppression? Resolve the struggles against land grab? Help ascertain the will of the people in Jammu and Kashmir? Bring the war in Manipur to an end or halt Operation Greenhunt? Stop the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45
because of the low profitability of these products. The public sector should be what the national vaccine policy supports. It is no one’s case that more expensive vaccines sold by private manufacturers must not be introduced in the public health system in India. However, there must be a transparent evaluation of the need for the vaccine and it must have demonstrable cost-effectiveness. Vaccine policy must enunciate these guiding principles and describe how the evaluation is to be done. Our vaccine policy must look into the health of the children in the country and it should not be overly concerned solely with the viability of the vaccine industry. This looks like a policy not to have a policy, but to utilise vaccines indiscriminatingly. If we are being asked to make long-term advance market commitments before evaluating the utility or even the market value of a vaccine, this policy needs a careful scrutiny. Note 1 http://www.slideshare.net/prabirkc/nationalvaccine-policy-2011
mining juggernaut? End the persecution of minorities at the hands of Hindutva terror? Let me confine my argument to the fight against corruption that is being projected as being the key demand of people. Even as a bill to fight corruption, the non-state Jan Lokpal draft is a half-measure which feeds, not unjustifiably, into a disdain for politicians and bureaucrats. It aims at stopping ordinary people from getting harassed and cheated by the lower bureaucracy, politicians, etc. But it neither speaks for those who fight hunger or resist the loot of land, forest and water nor, for that matter, targets those who are the biggest beneficiaries of the privatisation of public assets and those who corner public funds. True, like the Right to Information (RTI) Act, a Lokpal Act too could go some way in empowering citizens. But just as the campaign for RTI then dismissed the proposal to bring NGOs under the purview of the RTI, even this time all versions of the non-state Lokpal bill/s exclude NGOs from the purview of the Lokpal. This exclusion is not innocent. So too the exclusion of corporates and the media.
19
COMMENTARY
The argument is that the authorities, through the Foreign Currency Regulation Act and other laws, already have oversight over the NGOs and that bringing them under the Lokpal would add to burdening the latter with additional responsibilities as well as increase the government’s harassment of funded NGOs. As for corporate bodies, they have by and large passed the onus for ending corruption on to the politicians or, in some cases, they have said that industry should self-regulate its activ ities. In other words, corporates too must be exempt from public scrutiny. But corporations are not mere victims of graft, they are active and willing participants, if not the initiators of this loot. What else explains the underpricing of public assets sold to Indian big business houses? And corporate houses do concoct schemes for looting public assets and tempt politicians and bureaucrats with bribes. So they are not just victims but aggressors, so well exemplified by the role of big business houses in the 2G scam. Furthermore, bribe takers float companies with their loot and/or invest in established companies, as Pramod Mahajan did in the early 2000s Reliance Communication scam where as union telecommunications minister Mahajan got a huge number of shares. As for NGOs, a large number of them are recipients of corrupt money, like the Kanimozhi-run NGO. Thus, the corporations whose nexus with politicians and bureaucrats in the age of neo-liberalism has meant a colossal loot of public funds and assets; the corporate media – especially the electronic version – whose involvement in scams as cyphers for the powerful and the privileged surfaced last year; the NGOs who work in the public domain – they are all reluctant to be accountable to the public in whose name and interest they claim to be engaged. As for corporate entities, by which logic do we leave them out when public utilities are/ and have been privatised? And in the name of public-private partnerships, the biggest transfer of public funds to the private sector is taking place, be it in education, health, surface transport or highway construction. Public funds are used for privately owned/ managed public projects or public land is virtually gifted to hospitals and educational institutions or sold at a fraction of its market cost, only to see the institutions deny free medical assistance to the common man and
20
woman and deny seats to the children of “lesser mortals”. Are all these not corrupt practices, among other crimes? Take the case of the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). All of us know it is a cesspool of corruption. Many of those who speak in the public domain as “neutral” commentators/observers actually enjoy lucrative contracts with the BCCI to act as its public relations personnel. Corporate houses which are involved with the BCCI are also privy to decisions taken by the board, which is a source of great financial benefit to them as owners of the Indian Premier League teams. They too have taken shelter behind the fact that the BCCI does not take money from the government and it therefore owes no explanation to the public. But the BCCI wraps the tricolour around itself to promote itself as a team representing India, and yet the Indian public is denied oversight over the BCCI. Does this not suffice to bring them under RTI and Lokpal Acts? Take another aspect. All listed companies by the sheer fact of participating in the capital market raise some of their funds from institutions which hold public money. They either raise debt from banks, insurance companies, pension funds, etc, in which public money is deposited or raise money from the so-called capital market where public money in the form of mutual funds is invested in equity. Why should corporations therefore be excluded from the Lokpal? We have had corporate honchos in Parliament; now we have politicians who have become corporate entities such as YSR’s son Jagan Reddy who has amassed wealth to the tune of Rs 43,000 crore, according to the Central Bureau of Investigation, in just seven years, after declaring income of a few lakhs in 2004. Just consider the staggering scale of bribe taking/giving and it becomes abundantly clear that politicians like YSR made thousands of crores and the companies they benefited made 10 times more. Why should an ordinary citizen not have some right to protest against such forms of corporate loot? What about the corporate media? There are many media houses which have received huge investments from companies which have been implicated in one or the other scams. Could these media houses ever be in a position to bite the hands that feed them and expose their wheeling and dealing? Look at how NDTV buckled and suppressed
news of the attack by the Adani group hoodlums on its own reporters who were investigating the destruction of mangrove forests in Kutch recently? Look at also the timidity displayed by Times Now anchors when faced with corporate honchos or right-wing rabble rousers such as the Shiv Sena or Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) activists and leaders – fawning and deferential in contrast to their aggression against human rights activists and centre-left politicians. Look also at how reporters were editorialising during Anna’s fast as though their job description said that they were to help in managing if not manufacturing opinion in favour of Anna rather than report. And through this entire period of a heightened sense of fight against corruption not once did they show concern for the corporate media’s own role in the 2G scam and its implications for their role in informing the public. Why does the media cry “public interest” when they are threatened with censorship, but claim privacy and secrecy when it comes to public accountability?
Role of NGOs Consider this as well: Out of 4.3 lakh registered NGOs more than 70% are religious NGOs: Hindu, Christian and Muslim, in that order. Some of these religious NGOs do not restrict themselves to working in religious affairs but work to poison our body politic. Now for Anna Hazare and his group as well as the National Campaign for People’s Right to Information, Loksatta, etc, it is alright if such NGOs continue to receive funds and do divisive work. In order to save their own socially conscious type of NGOs from coming under scrutiny they would prefer that everyone escape scrutiny! For instance, the RSS has floated thousands of NGOs. Surely Indians have a right to know who funds these bigoted organisations and what kind of activities they are engaged in? Let us recall the role that these RSS-floated NGOs played between 1983 and 1993 in nearly wrecking the country and begetting Muslim radicalism. Can we allow the acts of omission and commission of the State or the nexus between RSS fronts and agencies of the State to be left out of public scrutiny? We should not forget that the government of another doyen of anti-corruption, V P Singh, suspended an income tax commissioner who had the effrontery to serve the Vishwa
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Hindu Parishad notice for gross and serious violations in tax returns? Thus, this mollycoddling by successive parties and now at the hands of the social movement to continues. So if the objective of fighting corruption is to bring about an end to extortion and harassment in our public life it also means that there must be some accountability of all those who work in the public domain. What is intriguing is also the silence of acolytes of the Anna Hazare group over the pro-state leanings of “Team Anna” as is clear from Section 29(12) of the Jan Lokpal Bill which says, The appropriate bench of the Lokpal shall be deemed to be designated authority under Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act empowered to approve interception and monitoring of messages or data or voice transmitted
through telephones, internet or any other medium as covered under the Indian Telegraph Act read with Information and Technology Act 2000 and as per rules and regulations made under the Indian Telegraph Act 1885 (Times of India, 30 August 2011).
Why do they want to create yet another “big brother” watching and monitoring our activities and invading our privacy? Is it not enough that nine central government departments enjoy this authority along with multiple private agencies operating clandestinely? Thus, one section of the social movement stream, in the name of strengthening democratic institutions, participates in policymaking closely aligned with the ruling government, frowns on prolonged mass mobilisation and considers it a form of “blackmail”. The other uses street power,
Inequality and Exclusion: As If the System Mattered V Anil Kumar
The study of exclusion in social terms by itself is inadequate. Any attempt to understand and explicate exclusion either historically or contemporarily has to pay attention to interdisciplinary approaches. This note emphasises that the approach should be via understanding the operation of economic forces in particular and interdisciplinarity in general. This was presented at the International Seminar on “Social Exclusion: Meanings and Perspectives” held by the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, University of Hyderabad, during 23 to 25 of March 2011. I would like to thank the organisers of the seminar for having given me the opportunity to participate. V Anil Kumar (
[email protected]) is with the Centre for Political Institutions, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
T
he predominantly postmodern enthusiasm to view exclusion in terms of “social” categories is fundamentally mistaken; both historically and contemporarily. I say this partly against my own belief. The study of exclusion in social terms by itself is inadequate and as such the approach should be via understanding the operation of the economic forces in particular and interdisciplinarily in general. The causal factors for exclusion in social terms lay largely in the economic and thereby political realms. This proposition is not new. The postmodern imagination wants us to believe that inequality, exclusion and exploitation lay basically in non-economic realms. This also requires one to define what “social” itself is. If the term is taken in its broadest sense it includes the economic realm as well; but taken in a restrictive sense, it can mean social categories that insufficiently point to the major fault lines of any society. At the root of this problem is the dispen sation that Jean-Francois Lyotard (2001) famously put, “I define postmodern as incredulity towards meta-narratives”. The
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which from behind the scene is aligned to the opposition BJP, takes half-measure and elevates them to the level of a panacea. But both show their limitations of being no better than wanting to reform and strengthen the present status quo, while escaping public oversight of their funded activities in the public domain. The Achilles heel of the social movements against corruption, consequently, is the promotion of a narrow vision for fighting corruption by leaving out NGOs, corporate houses and corporate media and an illiberalism for demanding the right to snoop. So unless the ambit of the debate and thus the understanding of the issue are widened, expectations of account ability and transparency in our public life may remain only partially realised.
point is that the meta-narratives of earlier times have become sources of unjust power. But the question is, can we at all do without some or the other meta-narrative in talking about exclusion. This is parti cularly so in countries that have a vast section of poor and marginalised people. Any attempt at chalking out marginalisation in this context leads to its material causes. But of course – and at this point the postmodern approaches are relevant – that marginalisation does not stop there. Therefore, any approach to understand and explicate exclusion, either historically or contemporarily, has to pay attention to interdisciplinary approaches.
Interdisciplinary Approaches Here we can take the example of Amartya Sen’s work (Sen 2000). Sen has firstly made a useful observation that the concept of social exclusion and the use of it lacks a certain discipline. The plasticity of the concept means that virtually any form of deprivation can be called social exclusion. While he recognises that social exclusion can be caused owing to multiple reasons, he also warns against undisciplined rhetorical use of the phrase; however important the uses of rhetoric may be. While saying the above, he has made four subtle distinctions about the concept: social exclusion as (a) consti tutive; (b) instrumental; (c) active; and (d) passive. Sen has appreciated the concept
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Hindu Parishad notice for gross and serious violations in tax returns? Thus, this mollycoddling by successive parties and now at the hands of the social movement to continues. So if the objective of fighting corruption is to bring about an end to extortion and harassment in our public life it also means that there must be some accountability of all those who work in the public domain. What is intriguing is also the silence of acolytes of the Anna Hazare group over the pro-state leanings of “Team Anna” as is clear from Section 29(12) of the Jan Lokpal Bill which says, The appropriate bench of the Lokpal shall be deemed to be designated authority under Section 5 of the Indian Telegraph Act empowered to approve interception and monitoring of messages or data or voice transmitted
through telephones, internet or any other medium as covered under the Indian Telegraph Act read with Information and Technology Act 2000 and as per rules and regulations made under the Indian Telegraph Act 1885 (Times of India, 30 August 2011).
Why do they want to create yet another “big brother” watching and monitoring our activities and invading our privacy? Is it not enough that nine central government departments enjoy this authority along with multiple private agencies operating clandestinely? Thus, one section of the social movement stream, in the name of strengthening democratic institutions, participates in policymaking closely aligned with the ruling government, frowns on prolonged mass mobilisation and considers it a form of “blackmail”. The other uses street power,
Inequality and Exclusion: As If the System Mattered V Anil Kumar
The study of exclusion in social terms by itself is inadequate. Any attempt to understand and explicate exclusion either historically or contemporarily has to pay attention to interdisciplinary approaches. This note emphasises that the approach should be via understanding the operation of economic forces in particular and interdisciplinarity in general. This was presented at the International Seminar on “Social Exclusion: Meanings and Perspectives” held by the Centre for the Study of Social Exclusion and Inclusive Policy, University of Hyderabad, during 23 to 25 of March 2011. I would like to thank the organisers of the seminar for having given me the opportunity to participate. V Anil Kumar (
[email protected]) is with the Centre for Political Institutions, Institute for Social and Economic Change, Bangalore.
T
he predominantly postmodern enthusiasm to view exclusion in terms of “social” categories is fundamentally mistaken; both historically and contemporarily. I say this partly against my own belief. The study of exclusion in social terms by itself is inadequate and as such the approach should be via understanding the operation of the economic forces in particular and interdisciplinarily in general. The causal factors for exclusion in social terms lay largely in the economic and thereby political realms. This proposition is not new. The postmodern imagination wants us to believe that inequality, exclusion and exploitation lay basically in non-economic realms. This also requires one to define what “social” itself is. If the term is taken in its broadest sense it includes the economic realm as well; but taken in a restrictive sense, it can mean social categories that insufficiently point to the major fault lines of any society. At the root of this problem is the dispen sation that Jean-Francois Lyotard (2001) famously put, “I define postmodern as incredulity towards meta-narratives”. The
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45
which from behind the scene is aligned to the opposition BJP, takes half-measure and elevates them to the level of a panacea. But both show their limitations of being no better than wanting to reform and strengthen the present status quo, while escaping public oversight of their funded activities in the public domain. The Achilles heel of the social movements against corruption, consequently, is the promotion of a narrow vision for fighting corruption by leaving out NGOs, corporate houses and corporate media and an illiberalism for demanding the right to snoop. So unless the ambit of the debate and thus the understanding of the issue are widened, expectations of account ability and transparency in our public life may remain only partially realised.
point is that the meta-narratives of earlier times have become sources of unjust power. But the question is, can we at all do without some or the other meta-narrative in talking about exclusion. This is parti cularly so in countries that have a vast section of poor and marginalised people. Any attempt at chalking out marginalisation in this context leads to its material causes. But of course – and at this point the postmodern approaches are relevant – that marginalisation does not stop there. Therefore, any approach to understand and explicate exclusion, either historically or contemporarily, has to pay attention to interdisciplinary approaches.
Interdisciplinary Approaches Here we can take the example of Amartya Sen’s work (Sen 2000). Sen has firstly made a useful observation that the concept of social exclusion and the use of it lacks a certain discipline. The plasticity of the concept means that virtually any form of deprivation can be called social exclusion. While he recognises that social exclusion can be caused owing to multiple reasons, he also warns against undisciplined rhetorical use of the phrase; however important the uses of rhetoric may be. While saying the above, he has made four subtle distinctions about the concept: social exclusion as (a) consti tutive; (b) instrumental; (c) active; and (d) passive. Sen has appreciated the concept
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positively and has said that his own concept of capability deprivation comes close to that of social exclusion. Poverty and deprivation studies have tremendous deal to learn from the concept of social exclusion; the latter points to hitherto unincluded dimensions of deprivation. Then Sen provides a list of deprivations that leads to social exclusion. These, for example, are (a) inequality and relational poverty; (b) labour market exclusion; (c) credit market exclusion; (d) gender- related exclusion and inequality; (e) healthcare; and (f) food market and poverty. Sen discusses how each one matters for analysis and policy. Please note that of all the forms of exclusion that are listed above, only the gender-related exclusion and inequality is not related to the category of class or economic determination. We have hardly seen in any circumstances the well-off of a society being excluded from the food market, healthcare, credit market, labour market or mired in inequality and relational poverty. Sen gives an elaborate discussion of the “east Asian strategy” of development and the consequences of its crisis. Of course, we cannot remind Sen about the primacy of the economic. But we can surely say that of all categories of exclusion “social” is largely determined by the economic primacy of the individuals belonging to one or the other economic group, i e, a certain class. While one may completely agree with Sen on gender-related deprivation and for being sensitive to non-economic factors of exclusion, we still say that most categories of social exclusion are determined on the basis of economic exclusion. And what is more, this economic exclusion is a historically formed reality,1 and the other aspects of it are, as Sen puts it, relational. Having said that, we must also note that the division of the causes of social exclusion in two separate terms – historical and policy-generated – is fallacious, inasmuch as it depends on the study of policy factors in history as well as historical nature of policies themselves. Therefore, this article argues that the meaning of exclusion has to address (a) the structural causes of exclusion, and (b) how these are exacerbated through the development policies. This is more so in the context of countries such as India where the causes of exclusion
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are never just social; they are intertwined with economic and political factors. This is fortified with the fact that the study of history itself depends on how one studies it. Whenever the historicity of exclusion is traced, particularly in the Indian context, the most conspicuous category for discussion, and, rightly so, is caste. But the point is that even the caste system started as an unequal division of labour. It was never possible to delink caste from its relation to the economy and polity. The materiality of caste requires us to consider the caste system with occupational groupings; both unequal and unjust. Therefore, a historical discussion of caste cannot be separated from how it was organised in terms occupational groupings to serve a predominantly agricultural economy. This is what Wiser (1969) discussed elaborately in the book on jajmani system. At present caste has become disassociated with occupational groupings to a large extent, but this is still not fully complete. The point is this depends on the pace and development of the social formation at large. To put it more bluntly, this raises the question as to what is the pace and development of capitalist economic and social relations both inside and outside the countryside. Therefore the point as to what was in history always depends on how we see it. Even today we cannot see the hierarchy totally separately from the occupational justification given to it. While the overall pace of development matters, the understanding of historical social-economic exclusion in itself does not give us sufficient clue as to how we go about the process of inclusion. Because, for example, rapid urbanisation is said to have the impact of erasing hierarchies; interestingly, this is not completely true. Rapid urbanisation, it is said, will render vertical hierarchies into horizontal difference in the social space. Another point about the historical rootedness of exclusion/inclusion is that the evolution of policies of the State has tremendously to contribute to it. These policies of the state have come, to some extent, owing to struggles from below and to some extent owing to official policies. For example, the Dravidian movement in Tamil Nadu has long since established the rights of backward classes from much
efore the Independence. The policies of b the Mysore state prior to Independence provided reservation for backward classes in Karnataka. Similar examples can be found in Kerala too. Social and economic dis advantage and advantage are historically constituted. These are inseparable from the policies that states in specific regions have historically pursued. In postcolonial states, state-society relations are often not only in the form of societies determining the states, but states constituting the society by giving it a direction too. Not following any social policy and contributing to social stagnation, too is a policy.
Two Ramifications This has two ramifications, and here we introduce the third factor, apart from economy and policy – the question of power. Finally, in all third world countries, at least since the end of colonialism, the state played an overwhelming role in constituting economy and society; in nurturing and developing the specific ways of capitalist development itself.2 In the current dispensation, the state attempts to create a growth process which addresses a limited constituency in sharing the fruits of the “development”. Despite the leeway given to the markets in the economic processes, the state power still matters in defining the processes in inclusion and exclusion. This configuration of circumstances is not only true from above, from the vantage point of the state, but also from the side of those who bear the brunt of this development. The crucial question in this context is what role the state plays in the redistri bution of the fruits of development. The popular attention given to growth rates
EPW Index An author-title index for epw has been prepared for the years from 1968 to 2010. The PDFs of the Index have been uploaded, year-wise, on the epw web site. Visitors can download the Index for all the years from the site. (The Index for a few years is yet to be prepared and will be uploaded when ready.) would like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the library of the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai, in preparing the index under a project supported by the RD Tata Trust. epw
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hides a huge mass of people either left behind or bearing the burden of that growth process. It is popularly talked about that there is a dilemma between “equity and growth”. But redistributive justice requires that it be taken intrinsically significant. Since the globalisation-led development process places premium on growth, the question is, who is included in growth process and who is beyond its reach. There is an added force given to economic arguments even in everyday life about economy and economic processes in this process of development. These processes, however, do not tell us what ought not to be; and also as to how exclusion created by economic growth can be addressed and the role of the state in it. The point is that no other institution can address the question of redistributive justice other than the state. What is important in the Indian context is that globalisation and its auxiliary products such as explosion of audiovisual media have removed barriers from creating awareness about the fruits of the development process. By the same process, these have also made the state and its agencies vulnerable to popular scrutiny, hour by hour and minute by minute. This phenomenon of distribution of news without distribution of economic resources has the double impact of creating awareness about political rights of individuals and groups, while at the same time, creating an awareness of what the viewers do not have, and the awareness of brazenness of the unequal development. For awareness of rights and the awareness of economic exclusion now even the barrier of literacy does not count. The audiovisual media tells about what one deserves, or desires, and what one does not have, and all this along with minute details of the malfunctioning of the state. This does make Aristotelian middle way about social and political processes outmoded. The ordinary and the excluded get political enfranchisement, while they are excluded from economic enfranchisement. In Indian polity it was observed even before the full bloom of globalisation that there is increased participation of the marginalised and poor in the polity. Combined with the processes that we have discussed above, this can cause Aristotelian middle-paths anathema for the excluded:3
thus resulting in increased discontent with the state. As the state cannot give away regulation and shepherding of capitalism even after globalisation, it cannot also get away from redistributive justice. An interesting fact that may be recalled is that the commodities that capitalism can or cannot play a major role in politics than social markers.
the community identities above. The point, however, is this process which Althusser notes depends both on the pace and quality of capitalist development. As someone who still believes that certain of the meta-narratives that social science bequeaths us are always valuable, I propose to revisit them in understanding exclusion, social, economic and political.
Normative Standards
Notes
The point is that the state cannot get away from the normative standards set for itself. Thus, increasingly in a situation of increasing awareness of the excluded, it is not the electoral palliatives, but redistributive effort that counts. In this brief paper I have made the following points: • The study of exclusion cannot just be “social”, but has to be primarily based on the economic. • That we cannot do away entirely with meta-narratives; the meta-narrative of percolation of growth cannot replace all other previous meta-narratives. • Social exclusion owing to historical reasons and owing to policy reasons cannot be separated. Policies are part of history and history is born out of policies. • That state power plays a constitutive role vis-à-vis society. As states are determined by society, the postcolonial state can also determine society. • In the context of globalisation, the mass awareness about the system increases without sufficient redressal of the economic exclusion. • The often results in the impatient rejection of Aristotelian golden mean. • In order to redress exclusion, political enfranchisement ought to be accom panied by economic enfranchisement in equal measure. Finally, Louis Althusser says in Reading Capital that capitalism has a tendency to level social and historical particularities (Althusser and Balibar 1968). In this process of levelling, which is accompanied also by dissolving communities and families into desperate individuals, capitalism achieves a great feat of rendering historical markers irrelevant. A lthusser goes a step forward in saying the history itself becomes irrelevant for the system. I have alluded the process of rapid urbanisation eroding
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1 The point is that the determination by the economic is an historically contingent reality. It was not so in earlier times, and likewise need not be so in the future. That the instance of the economic is dominant is no matter for revelry; it is that such determination of reality by one aspect of social life happens only in capitalist system and that in other historical times and circumstances, the economic need not be the sole determinant of the society, or perhaps it should not be; we sincerely owe this insight to Marx. 2 The usual point about the current situation is to view the state as retreating. This is not true in the current Indian context. Although state’s share in direct economic activity has declined, the regulatory role of the state has enormously increased and the role and powers of the political and administrative executive by no means have diminished. More than all, the expectations vast numbers of ordinary people have increased upon the state. 3 In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (1962) uses the notion of middle path largely to address practical reason. Here I use the notion specifically to address political reason including practical reason. That moderate middle paths are not preferred politically, and extremes of all kinds are popularly opted for is the characteristic feature of our times. Aristotle also used the term “good” and “goodness” in a specific normative sense of saying “the good of something is that which preserves it”; now, precisely the normative ideals that follow from this proposition are of abhorrence to political and practical reason.
References Althusser, Louis and Etienne Balibar (1968): Reading Capital (London: New Left Books). Aristotle (1962): Nicomachean Ethics (Indianapolis: The Library of Liberal Arts Bobbs-Merrill Educational Publishing) (Translated with Introduction and Notes by Martin Oswald). Lyotard, Jean-Francois (2001): “The Postmodern Condition” in Steven Seidman and Jeffrey C Alexander (ed.), The New Social Theory Reader: Contemporary Debates (London and New York: Routledge), pp 166-67. Sen, Amartya (2000): “Social Exclusion: Concept, Application and Scrutiny”, Social Development Papers No 1 (Manila: Asian Development Bank). Wiser, W H (1969): The Hindu Jajmani Systerm: A Socio-Economic System Interrelating Members of Hindu Village Community in Services (Lucknow: Lucknow Publishing House).
available at
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D U Sastry: An Empirical Economist K V Ramaswamy
H
“
ow is your work? What are you working on these days?….Consider using jumps in the data series to break the periods. How is your institute doing? How is your little daughter?” These were a few of D U Sastry’s concerns when I last spoke to him a few months ago, though the little daughter he was referring to was already in pre-university. D U Sastry, an empirical economist with an abiding interest in industry studies, industrial economics and economic measurement issues, passed away on 5 September 2011. His concerns expressed over the telephone to one of his students, whom he jointly guided more than 20 years ago, reflects the essence of his personality. Serious and rigorous when discussing academic issues, at the same time a generous, encouraging and affectionate well-wisher of all who came into contact with him. Davangere Umapathy Sastry (1930-2011), did his MA in economics from Mysore University in the early 1950s. He was taught by V L D’Souza, M H Gopal and A P Srinivasa murthy among others (see “V L D’Souza, M H Gopal and Their Environs” by P R Bramhananda, Indian Economic Journal, 42(1), 1994, for a nice narrative of econo mics education at Maharaja’s College, where Economics (Hons) and MA programmes were held). In September 1956, he proceeded to Amherst College in Massachusetts, the United States, as the Harold Johnson Scholar to pursue graduate studies. Due to personal problems he had to return to India. But Amherst College allowed him to use the fellowship grant in India. He was Amherst Fellow at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics in Pune during 1957-59. He was associated with D R Gadgil. At Gokhale he met among others K Krishnamurthy, macroeconomist, who later became his colleague at the Institute of Economic Growth (ieg) and their academic collaboration, was very productive resulting in co-authored books and papers. Later he worked as an assistant professor at the Indian Institute of Economics, Hyderabad (1959-61) and moved
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to Delhi to work at the IEG in March 1961. He stayed at IEG until retirement in 1990. At IEG he had a circle of economist colleagues that included V K R V Rao, P N Dhar, K Krishnamurthy, and Ashish Bose among others. He had a long association with K L Krishna at Delhi School of Economics with whom he shared his strong interest in industrial economics and quantitative approach and jointly guided many PhD students. He was a visiting research fellow at the University of Pennsylvania during 1971-72 and was associated with Lawrence Klein. He attributed his inclination towards quantitative approach to the influence of L R Klein. He liked quantitative economics with an emphasis on careful measurement. D U Sastry was the president of the Andhra Pradesh Economic Association and delivered the presidential address in 1987 at S K University in Anantapur. He made early empirical contributions in areas that have now become major areas of importance in empirical industrial economics and other areas of applied economics in India. Sastry’s very early pieces of work appeared in Economic Weekly in the form of comments on two interesting topics (1) “Economic Development and Income Distribution” (May 1962), (2) “The Optimum Firm and the Optimum Farm” (November 1962). Very early in his academic career he had developed an interest in industry specific studies as illustrated in his studies of the metallurgical industry (1961) and the sugar industry (1965). His work on the demand for energy, co-authored with P N Dhar in 1967 attempted to forecast the demand for energy in north-western India and was based on using observed input-out coefficients with the desired level of production in different sectors of the economy. He later examined inter-industry variations in manufacturing industry in a paper published in 1969 in EPW (co-authored with P N Dhar). This paper used industrial power consumption as an index of the relative degree of industrial development rather than using output or employment and argued that it reflects the degree of mechanisation
and capital intensity. This is essentially the idea of instrumental variable in modern econometrics parlance. In the 1970s he worked more on corporate investment behaviour including inventory investment in collaboration with K Krishnamurthy, using the accelerator model and emphasising the role of financial factors (Inventories in Indian Manufacturing (1970), Investment and Financing in the Corporate Sector in India (1975)).
Cotton Industry In the late 1970s, he began his detailed study of the cotton mill industry in India that was completed in 1984 (The Cotton Mill Industry in India). The core chapter of this book was on capacity utilisation and an earlier version of this chapter had appeared in The Indian Economic Review in 1980. His work on capacity utilisation perhaps best illustrates his overall approach to empirical industrial economics. He presents an appraisal of six alternative measures of capacity utilisation including the well-known Wharton Index of Klein and Summers. The approach is that of first explaining the economic measure of capacity and then pointing out the limitations. Sastry’s work is an example of the importance of measurement issues in applied industrial economics. He was the first to respond to the issues of the single deflation method for the estimation of value added in the studies of total factor productivity (EPW, 14 January 1995). In that short note he made practical suggestions of how one could estimate the raw material price index for manufacturing industries. One needs to mention that when he wrote that note he had retired and settled down in Madanapalle in Chittoor district (Andhra Pradesh) and EPW was perhaps his only window to the economics journal papers available to him. D U Sastry was meticulous in his research but he was much more careful when it came to drawing policy conclusions and perhaps never believed in overstepping the limits of one’s analysis. With his death the community of economics researchers in India has lost an important empirical economist, scholar and an excellent human being. K V Ramaswamy (
[email protected]) is at the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai.
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Dark Side of Indigeneity? Amita Baviskar
I
n October 2009, Madhu Koda, a Member of the Lok Sabha and former chief minister of Jharkhand, was arrested on charges of money laundering and owning illegal assets worth Rs 4,000 crore. Koda allegedly made most of this money by allowing private companies to illegally mine coal, iron ore, bauxite and other minerals in his state. In a perverse symmetry, he invested some of his illicit profits in a coal mine in Liberia. If Koda got Rs 4,000 crore in bribes, the mind boggles at the superprofits harvested by the mining companies willing to cut deals with him. A smaller but nonetheless significant share, estimated to be around Rs 1,200 crore, was also reportedly skimmed off by Maoists who collected “protection” money per truck load of mineral ore. This episode is only one of a series of scandals in the 11-year-old history of Jharkhand, but it exemplifies the dynamics of development in a region where a long struggle for autonomy, waged in the name of exploited people, has succeeded in enriching new power elites while leaving the rest of the population trailing behind in the dust. In the Shadows of the State focuses on a section of Jharkhandi society thus obscured from view – poor Munda farmers in a village near Ranchi, the state capital. However, the main argument of the book does not directly engage with the larger political economy of poverty and exploitation, but takes issue with those who seek to counter it by championing the rights of adivasis as indigenous people.
Flawed Indigeneity? The discourse of indigeneity claims that there is a primordial attachment between adivasis and the land they inhabit. It asserts that, for adivasis, land, forests and wild animals are not merely resources for subsistence, but aspects of a living nature that is sacred and hence to be treated with respect. Relations with the natural and
book review In the Shadows of the State: Indigenous Politics, Environmentalism, and Insurgency in Jharkhand, India by Alpa Shah (Durham, NC: Duke University Press); 2010, pp xiii+273, price not stated.
social world are rooted in a communitarian ethic which is egalitarian and redistributive. On the basis of these beliefs, indigenous activists attempt to protect and revive adivasi cultural traditions in order to safeguard their land and community from the rapacious and soul-destroying process of ‘development as domination’. In the movement leading to the formation of Jharkhand state and in campaigns against specific dam, mining and military projects, the discourse of indigeneity has been effectively deployed in the cultural politics of claims-making. However, Shah argues that the culturalist claim of indigeneity is fatally flawed by its exclusions and distortions. This book focuses on the “dark side of indigeneity” which reinforces “a class system that further marginalises the poorest people”, creating a form of “ecoincarceration” that condemns villagers to live in an oppressive local environment, at the mercy of marauding elephants and non-adivasi elites who have usurped state resources. If “an alternative radical politics” is to emerge in the area, it must avoid the indigenous rights activists and work directly with Munda notions of jungle raj, a sacred polity based on a communitarian ethos. Each chapter of In the Shadow of the State takes up a separate aspect of the discourse of indigeneity and, by juxtaposing it with the actual practices and predicaments of poor Munda villagers, shows how it does injustice to the latter. The chapter on polity discusses the attempt by indigenous rights activists to promote a secular system of self-governance as an alternative to corrupt and co-opted electoral processes. It shows how the activists’
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
vision of self-governance seeks to eliminate the role of shamans as key intermediaries in village affairs. Shah argues that the legitimacy of village institutions rests precisely upon the presence of shamans who can summon the powers of ancestral spirits. By trying to purge Munda self-government institutions of their sacral element, indigenous activists end up creating a secular simulacrum which fails to take on either the corrupt state or the concerns of Munda villagers. The chapter on ecology shows that, against “the nature-loving, nature worshipping imagery being reproduced by indigenous activism”, Munda villagers would prefer to cut down the forests because they harbour herds of elephants that terrorise them by raiding their crops and destroying their homes. In order to assert an adivasi identity that is distinct from Hinduism and Christianity – the two dominant religious folds in the region – indigenous activists have revived Sarna, a set of religious practices based on “the adivasis’ inherent love for nature”. However, Sarna ends up being an anaemic version of Munda since practices red in tooth and claw as blood sacrifices and liquor offerings are censored from the rituals. Shah argues that this domesticated Sarna, where nature is worshipped with flowers and coconuts, is completely at odds with how the poor Munda actually encounter nature – in the middle of the night, in the form of elephants that wreak havoc in their village. The chapter on place takes on the notion that adivasis have an innate attachment to their land and that severing this connection renders them vulnerable to predatory capitalism. This understanding underlies the activists’ critique of economic processes that drive adivasis to work as seasonal labourers on distant brick kilns and farms. Against this, Shah describes how working away from home is, in fact, a liberating experience for adivasis who are freed from the social constraints of the village. Instead of regarding migrant work only as a grim economic compulsion, Munda seasonal labourers also see it as a way to “escape domestic problems, explore a new country”,
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BOOK REVIEW
and embark upon love affairs frowned upon at home.
Maoists for the Rural Elite According to Shah, their inability to grasp the complexities of Munda life reveals that indigenous rights activists are inadequate to the task of representing adivasi aspirations. However, if claims based on cultural identity do not work neither do those based on a shared class position. The Maoists, who are projected today as the political formation most likely to secure adivasi rights, entered the area towards the end of the author’s fieldwork. Their initial alliances were not with poor adivasis, but with rural elites to whom they offered protection while ripping off state resources. Shah shows how it is rural, usually higher-caste, elites who corner the benefits of state development works while the poor Munda strive to keep their distance from the State, thereby reproducing an unequal class structure. The Maoist intervention into local political economy has only served to cement this inequality. While demolishing the discourse of indigeneity, the book shows the curious
convergence between the moralising views of dominant religious establishments, indigenous activists and Maoists – all of whom regard adivasi practices of drinking alcohol, premarital sexual relations and spirit worship as signs of backwardness. Shah also makes a persuasive argument about the symmetry between the State and the Maoists, with both profitably engaged in the business of providing protection. These insights are a useful corrective to the more common perspective that sees these groups only as polar opposites. By consistently presenting the world as it appears to the Munda villagers among whom the author lived for an extended period, In the Shadow of the State shows how discursive violence shapes these subaltern lives. Her sympathy for her informants is evident in the warm tone of the fieldwork diary extracts reproduced here, as well as the evocative illustrations that dot the narrative. The strength of a carefully observed ethnography like this one is that it provides enough detail so that the reader can independently engage with the evidence, unlike a more selective account where facts are chosen primarily to substantiate
the author’s assertions. However, this also opens up the possibility of alternative interpretations that cast doubt on the author’s argument. Take, for instance, Shah’s advocacy for the Munda notion of a sacred polity that is opposed to the corrupt sarkar and is, at the same time, different from the sanitised form of selfgovernment promoted by indigenous acti vists. One could argue that, for all that the Munda notion has greater legitimacy because it is backed by spiritual authority, it is nevertheless a system where women are excluded from positions of power. The egalitarian values of the Munda do not seem to extend to at least half of their community and perhaps even more, since young men do not wield power either. Though the spirits favour patriarchs, at least one cannot fault the political vision of the indigenous activists on this score. Shah’s account of the parha (tribal intervillage authority) mela as an assertion of the separation of the parha and the sarkari State, and the superiority of the former, is also open to alternative analysis. The prominent presence of elected tribal politicians, who help finance the celebrations
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november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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as well, shows that the occasion allows those adivasis who participate in the secular State to display their power, dispense patronage and mobilise supporters. That such adivasi festivals are characterised by the interpenetration of sacred and secular power, and are transformed by the modern State into spectacles of its own legitimacy, has been convincingly shown by Nandini Sundar for Bastar, Chhattisgarh, and by Ajay Skaria in the case of the Dangs, Gujarat. Their analyses suggest that the parha mela is likely to be an occasion where the balance between the parha and sarkar is negotiated, rather than their mutual separation asserted.
Shadowy Figures The fact that there are adivasis who have successfully entered electoral politics, enriching themselves and the higher-caste rural elites whom they patronise, is at odds with Shah’s unrelieved representation of the Munda as fated to forever be poor and powerless. A passing observation informs us that younger, educated Munda men prefer to emulate and fraternise with their highercaste peers, which also suggests that social relations may not be as unyielding or asymmetrical as the author claims. A more fundamental problem with In the Shadow of the State is its depiction of the indigenous activists. Considering that the book’s argument hinges on criticising this group of actors, they appear only as shadowy figures mouthing views off-stage. They are described as “urban based and highly educated middle classes – some even have PhDs from foreign universities”; some are Christian adivasis, others upper-caste settlers, and still others the descendants of adivasi village elites. Inspired equally by Marxist critiques of inequality and romantic colonial accounts of adivasi culture, their aim is “to recreate a glorious Jharkhand indigenous past”. That is all; there is no substantive discussion of what these activ ists actually do, besides attending international conferences and speaking to “the many academics, journalists, international activists, and development consultants” who visit Jharkhand. One is left to wonder: Are there no rural-based indigenous activists who work directly with villagers, trying to build on local traditions of water management or health?
Do not any activists get their hands dirty opposing large projects such as dams and military installations? Are there no activists for indigenous rights whose thinking and practice have evolved from a sustained engagement with the realities that seek to represent?
Vibrant Culture of Activism Like many other parts of adivasi India, Jharkhand has a diverse and vibrant culture of political activism. On the ground, most activism is ideologically hybrid, a creative response to the complex challenges confronting political actors. The indigenous activists who act as a foil to the poor Munda villagers in this book, however, appear to be devoid of any such dynamism. If this feisty book does not actually construct and demolish a straw man called the “indigenous activist”, it chooses to focus on a particular strand of indigenous activism, one that is probably not the most con sequential either. Are the naïve views of the indigenous activ ists described in the book the most influential political representation to come out of Jharkhand? When the crisis in the state seems to centre on
the political economy of illicit resource extraction and the corruption of elected representatives,these indigenous activists seem harmless by comparison. Shah blames the indigenous activists for promoting the view that adivasis are naturelovers, which leads to the latter’s “ecoincarceration”. According to her, state policies of wildlife conservation adversely affect Munda villagers who have to contend with increased elephant populations and who would rather cut down the forests to get rid of the elephants. While it may indeed be the situation confronting Munda villagers, in this case the indigenous activists happen to be correct. The herds of elephants that raid Munda villages are not the result of successful wildlife conservation, but its exact opposite. As the 2010 report of the Elephant Task Force of the Ministry of Environment and Forests confirms, it is destruction of the great Saranda sal forests of Jharkhand by mining and other human encroachments that has made elephants homeless, forcing them to forage further afield. The indigenous rights activists’ critique of mining and other extractive practices in Jharkhand is also spot-on, as is their argument that
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
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BOOK REVIEW
wildlife conservation will only succeed if local villagers are made equal partners in deciding land use and management. At this juncture, when the anthropology of adivasis seems to have been overtaken by events – massive corruption and accelerated resource plunder, the expansion of Maoist territory, the Forest Rights Act – In the
Shadow of the State marks a moment when life was simpler, when perhaps the worst that poor adivasis had to contend with were the representations of indigenous activists. The passing of that moment signifies that anthropology can no longer afford to linger on that famously fertile question: Can the subaltern speak? Shah’s
Insightful but Incomplete Arup Mitra
T
he study of the informal sector has been a key focus area in development economics literature. Parti cularly since the 1970s, it has drawn extensive attention of researchers and policymakers. The considerable overlaps between informal sector employment and poverty are testimony to the phenomenon of the “working poor”. Now in the present context of globalisation there has been a revived interest in issues relating to the informal sector. Thus the volume under review is timely and useful. The volume treats the informal economy “as one of the most dynamic, active and hotly debated domains in the developing world”. Perhaps it is necessary right at the outset to suggest that this very mechanism of conceptualising the informal economy can be misleading in many a situation because in the context of the developing countries it is hardly a dynamic sector, though some thin segments tend to be so. Thus, it is then a theoretical luxury to assume as if the firms have a choice to produce in the formal or in the informal sector. Nevertheless the theoretical underpinnings are brought out distinctly and a vast spectrum of issues, which are relevant in the present context of globalisation and liberalisation, have been discussed with great lucidity. The chapter on political economy of the informal sector deals with many interesting aspects such as governance, informality and corruption. Similarly, the focus on the link between agriculture and the informal sector and the chapter on the phenomenon of outsourcing and the informal wages are indeed insightful. International trade,
28
The Outsiders: Economic Reform and Informal Labour in a Developing Economy by Sugata Marjit and Saibal Kar (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 2011; pp 218, Rs 695.
informal sector and welfare gains have also been discussed extensively. The empirical section, however, is very weak. Even the theoretical exposition that it offers to justify some of the pro positions (p 163) has not been developed appropriately. For example, it claims that the more affluent informal sector forces the formal sector to look for “productivity augmenting strategies”. It would be rather interesting to identify situations under which the conditions in the formal sector can lead to better work conditions and wage rates in the informal sector. Questions worth pondering could include specific types of development in the formal sector that can make the informal sector complementary in nature and help it reap the benefits of growth. Several studies in the Indian context have tried to analyse these aspects quite systematically. Unfortunately the authors do not find them worth citing.
Too Obvious The authors spend a lot of effort in bringing out certain obvious facts. For example, productivity growth in the informal sector naturally will be higher as the level of productivity is much lower than its formal sector counterpart. Similarly the producti vity response to capital in the formal sector is higher than that in the informal sector – it is an obvious fact because the informal sector is endemically a capital scarce sector.
strength in providing a carefully observed and empathetic account of the lives of poor adivasis makes one look forward to seeing how her future work will address these emerging issues. Amita Baviskar (
[email protected]) is at the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi.
The fact that labour productiv ity is positively related to capital-labour ratio does not come as a surprise. The study could have analysed several other relevant issues pertaining to the informal sector. For example, the size, composition, variations in the incidence of the informal sector across activities, nature of linkages between the formal and informal components and their variations across activities, issues relating to earnings, the productivity-wage relationship, and nature of employment in the informal sector are some of the crucial issues. It is of great analytical interest to check if the informal sector varies in response to industrialisation and growth. The concept of growth with productive employment generation has important implications in terms of industrialisation and the techno logy adopted in the (formal) industrial sector. The large spread of the (formal) industrial sector and adoption of labourintensive technology can create labour demand. Even when high productivity industry cannot absorb labour directly, ancillarisation, subcontracting and outsourcing can also thrive outside the formal industrial sector due to the complementary relationship between the formal and the informal manufacturing units. Although the relative size of the informal sector can be almost equally high in both the situations of sluggish and rapid industrialisation, the latter situation may envisage the growth of productive activities even within the informal sector. The other connection between the formal and the informal sector can be perceived in terms of the inter-sectoral wage linkages. The formal industrial sector wage may be high for being linked to higher levels of technology and productivity. And this may have a positive impact on the wages in the informal manufacturing units depending upon the factor market conditions.
november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
BOOK REVIEW
wildlife conservation will only succeed if local villagers are made equal partners in deciding land use and management. At this juncture, when the anthropology of adivasis seems to have been overtaken by events – massive corruption and accelerated resource plunder, the expansion of Maoist territory, the Forest Rights Act – In the
Shadow of the State marks a moment when life was simpler, when perhaps the worst that poor adivasis had to contend with were the representations of indigenous activists. The passing of that moment signifies that anthropology can no longer afford to linger on that famously fertile question: Can the subaltern speak? Shah’s
Insightful but Incomplete Arup Mitra
T
he study of the informal sector has been a key focus area in develop ment economics literature. Parti cularly since the 1970s, it has drawn ex tensive attention of researchers and policy makers. The considerable overlaps between informal sector employment and poverty are testimony to the phenomenon of the “working poor”. Now in the present con text of globalisation there has been a revived interest in issues relating to the informal sector. Thus the volume under review is timely and useful. The volume treats the informal economy “as one of the most dynamic, active and hotly debated domains in the developing world”. Perhaps it is necessary right at the outset to suggest that this very mechanism of conceptualising the informal economy can be misleading in many a situation because in the context of the developing countries it is hardly a dynamic sector, though some thin segments tend to be so. Thus, it is then a theoretical luxury to assume as if the firms have a choice to produce in the formal or in the informal sector. Nevertheless the theoretical under pinnings are brought out distinctly and a vast spectrum of issues, which are rele vant in the present context of globalisa tion and liberalisation, have been dis cussed with great lucidity. The chapter on political economy of the informal sector deals with many interesting aspects such as governance, informality and corruption. Similarly, the focus on the link between agriculture and the informal sector and the chapter on the phenomenon of out sourcing and the informal wages are indeed insightful. International trade,
28
The Outsiders: Economic Reform and Informal Labour in a Developing Economy by Sugata Marjit and Saibal Kar (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 2011; pp 218, Rs 695.
informal sector and welfare gains have also been discussed extensively. The empirical section, however, is very weak. Even the theoretical exposition that it offers to justify some of the pro positions (p 163) has not been developed appropriately. For example, it claims that the more affluent informal sector forces the formal sector to look for “productivity augmenting strategies”. It would be rather interesting to identify situations under which the conditions in the formal sector can lead to better work conditions and wage rates in the informal sector. Ques tions worth pondering could include spe cific types of development in the formal sector that can make the informal sector complementary in nature and help it reap the benefits of growth. Several studies in the Indian context have tried to analyse these aspects quite systematically. Unfor tunately the authors do not find them worth citing.
Too Obvious The authors spend a lot of effort in bringing out certain obvious facts. For example, productivity growth in the informal sector naturally will be higher as the level of productivity is much lower than its formal sector counterpart. Similarly the producti vity response to capital in the formal sector is higher than that in the informal sector – it is an obvious fact because the informal sector is endemically a capital scarce sector.
strength in providing a carefully observed and empathetic account of the lives of poor adivasis makes one look forward to seeing how her future work will address these emerging issues. Amita Baviskar (
[email protected]) is at the Institute of Economic Growth, New Delhi.
The fact that labour productiv ity is posi tively related to capital-labour ratio does not come as a surprise. The study could have analysed several other relevant issues pertaining to the informal sector. For example, the size, composition, variations in the incidence of the informal sector across activities, nature of linkages between the formal and informal components and their variations across activities, issues relating to earnings, the productivity-wage relationship, and na ture of employment in the informal sector are some of the crucial issues. It is of great analytical interest to check if the informal sector varies in response to industrialisation and growth. The concept of growth with productive employment generation has important implications in terms of industrialisation and the techno logy adopted in the (formal) industrial sector. The large spread of the (formal) industrial sector and adoption of labourintensive technology can create labour demand. Even when high productivity industry cannot absorb labour directly, ancillarisation, subcontracting and out sourcing can also thrive outside the formal industrial sector due to the complementary relationship between the formal and the informal manufacturing units. Although the relative size of the informal sector can be almost equally high in both the situa tions of sluggish and rapid industrialisa tion, the latter situation may envisage the growth of productive activities even with in the informal sector. The other connec tion between the formal and the informal sector can be perceived in terms of the inter-sectoral wage linkages. The formal industrial sector wage may be high for being linked to higher levels of technology and productivity. And this may have a positive impact on the wages in the infor mal manufacturing units depending upon the factor market conditions.
november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
BOOK REVIEW
But what about the informal services sector? In fact it constitutes a very large percentage of the total informal sector employment. These activities are not directly connected to the high productivity segment and the possibilities of spillover are limited in comparison to those observed between the formal industrial sector and the informal manufacturing enterprises.
Un-tackled Questions What are the endemic problems of the informal sector? Can they be related to the very mechanisms through which employ ment takes place in this sector? How do the informal mechanisms continue to facilitate the process of job search and recruitment? What role is civil society able to play in delivering better outcomes and what are the consequences of rapid contractualisation that the economy has witnessed? Has it opened up new channels of labour exploitation while bringing in more consignments? These are some of the issues that need to be addressed both analytically and empirically. While the informal contacts might have help in sur vival strategies they do not actually result in upward mobility in the long run. Even the theoretical models in which the vol ume is relatively strong do not bother to cover these points adequately. What helps workers from low-income households to access urban job market information and whether migrants are able to experience upward mobility at the place of destination are the two pertinent issues in urban development. While high lighting the importance of various infor mal channels through which urban jobs are accessed it has been noted by others that these networks reduce the prob ability of upward mobility, as network extension leads to excess supply of labour relative to demand. The issue of upward mobility has also been examined by others by considering a large number of social, economic, demographic, education and health-specific variables. Although the findings are indicative of improvements in the well-being of migrant workers over time, several of the long-duration migrants and natives in the cities still lead a low quality life, the findings of which are indeed important for policy at the national level.
There are certain major omissions in the volume. For example, the survival of low income households in an anonymous urban set-up with an inadequate rural-ur ban continuum has been a major concern of social scientists. One class of literature that has grown in this respect emphasises the role of social capital in enabling the poor to cope with uncertainties and risks. However, while social capital can enhance accessibility to jobs and earnings at the in dividual level, issues relating to the needs of a group of households need to be ad dressed in terms of a wider framework. For example, squatting on public land with no provision of drinking water and sanita tion is a difficult situation involving insur mountable risks and struggles. In India, political contacts often play the role of reducing risks and uncertainties relating to land encroachment, and also help with access to basic amenities. The operation of social networks that occurs simultane ously with the struggle to access political support is a complex phenomenon. Thus there is a need to make an effort in under standing some of these processes that make survival even at the bare minimum level possible, although they actually involve a heavy cost to slum residents, perpetuating their misery and restricting their upward mobility. These issues are very much con nected to the informal sector issues.
those of the contact persons), both of which reduce their bargaining power considerably. The tendency for specialised activities to be concentrated in different geographic loca tions of a city further restricts the possibility of women workers being engaged in diverse jobs and thus aggravates the situation of an excess supply of labour in a particular activity. Constrained choice, limited contacts of women and physical segmentation of the labour market perpetuate forces that entrap women workers in a low-income situation with worse outcomes than those of their male counterparts. Consequently with greater intensity of work they still continue to receive low wages, while residual partici pation in the labour market restricts the possibilities of skill formation and upward mobility. All of these factors offer a sub stantive basis for policy recommendations. Another inevitable issue in the context of the informal sector is child labour. In several low income households it is rather pursued for gaining experience even at meagre incomes. Though the contribution made by the child labour to the overall wellbeing may not be substantial, without this, households would have been much worse off compared to those which can afford not to have child labour. The probability of working is higher for a male child com pared to a girl child. But this is because the girl children are often engaged in household activities and even when they are engaged in income earning jobs they are shown as helpers. What motivates households to with draw children from the labour market is a pertinent question and in the context of globalisation the expected and observed outcomes need to be visited thoroughly.
Gender Differences The other important issue relates to gender differences in the informal sector. Women are often constrained to work in the neigh bourhood of their residence (the location of the residence having been decided upon by male family members), and can access jobs only through informal contacts (which usually means they end up in jobs similar to
Arup Mitra (
[email protected]) is at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.
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Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
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PERSPECTIVES
The Categorical Revolution: Democratic Uprising in the Middle East Irfan Ahmad
The protests over the past year across the “Middle East” are perhaps saying that the region first and foremost belongs to its people and that the categories of “oil-rich”, “oil-less” and “main route” are at best exciting materials for a historian’s archive. While unfolding this “categorical revolution”, this article explodes two key myths: (1) that of the terminology of the Middle East, and (2) Islam’s incompatibility with democracy.
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the symposium “Democratic Storm in the Muslim World: The Categorical Revolution” at Monash University, on 23 March, 2011. I thank co-panellists Sayed Khatab, Benjamin Macqueen, Salih Yucel and the audience for their reflections. I also wish to thank Kannan Srinivasan and Nida for their thoughtful comments and references. Discussions with John Keane (University of Sydney) and Linda Herrera (University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign) about the “new” Middle East have been enriching. Irfan Ahmad (
[email protected]) is with the School of Political and Social Inquiry Caulfield Campus, Monash University, Australia.
30
Why ‘The Categorical Revolution’?
I
n the French revolution of 1789, less than 2% of the population participated (Kurzman 2004: VIII; cf, Milani 2010: 26). In the Egyptian revolution of 2011, the percentage of population participating in the revolution was surely far greater.1 Symbolic of the recent convulsions in the the Middle East (first Tunisia and later Libya), the Egyptian revolution is thus historic and momentous. Recently, a democratic storm has swept one Muslim country after another. Clearly, we do not know the outcome of these convulsions in different places – diverse as they are – because as phenomena they are far from over. Indeed, one might say that these momentous changes are mere beginnings, the future of which remain as much open as unpredictable. Furthermore, the future will depend not just on local, but more importantly, the global actors, in particular, the United States (US), Britain, France and the European Union which have their centurylong geostrategic interests in the region. This article is not precisely about the future of the Middle East. My attempt here is to understand the unfolding of the dramatic change in the region since Mohammad Bouazizi, a young street vendor of Tunisia, publicly committed suicide in front of the municipal office (on 17 December 2010) to protest against the routine humiliation meted out by the police (Al-Jazeera 2011). Can we give this dramatic change, set in motion by the self-immolation of Mohammad Bouazizi, a name? I have chosen to call it “the categorical revolution”. Let me explain what I mean by this phrase. I use “categorical” in a double sense. First, as an adjective of “category” by which I mean the conceptual category, the notions and tools with which we think, rather have been verily forced to think
with. Intellectual categories are not formed overnight. Nor do they disappear over a fine weekend. In the case of the Middle East, many important categories have been dominant for over a century; at least they have been dominant since the second world war. I shall discuss these categories more fully later; let me quickly mention here one such hegemonic cate gory; namely, Islam and democracy are by definition opposed to each other. The recent events in the Middle East have substantially destabilised, if not nullified, this conceptual category. They have uprooted several other established myths and lies, hitherto often packaged and paraded as truth. Second, the recent events are also categorical in the sense that they are not conditional. They are “unqualified, direct, explicit” (Oxford English Dictionary). By this I mean the recent events are categorical enough to question the universal view – dominant on TV, internet and newspapers as well as in the syllabi of the universities across the globe – that Islam and democracy are antithetical: that Muslims cannot have democracy on their own; they badly need benign external promoters such as the US or European Union. Barack Obama’s reluctant and belated appropriation of the “Arab Spring” notwithstanding, it needs to be noted that it happened in spite of, and indeed, as a critique of the West in general and the US in particular.2 The recent events are also categorical in that they cry for a redefinition of democracy, a democracy that questions the universal language of “national interests”, and “geopolitics”. Against the ruthless pursuit of “national interest” and “geopolitics” – which is the supreme principle of global politics (Ahmad 2011) – the democratic uprising in the Muslim world perhaps gestures a different language of enacting politics – a politics of ethics and dignity. In what follows, I interrogate two key myths the categorical revolution has nearly exploded. In the first section of this article, I examine the myth of the termino logy, the very term called the Middle East that is used in the West for the Middle East. What does the term Middle East mean? What precisely does it connote in the western imagination? And in what
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specific ways does the categorical revolution speak to the term “the Middle East”? In the second section, I discuss another key myth – Islam’s incompatibility with democracy. Contra the established wisdom, here I argue that far from being a benevolent patron to democracy in the Middle East, the West, in fact, consistently de-democratised the region. Clearly, this contention presupposes not merely the normative compatibility between Islam and democracy, but also the actual existence of democracy and then proceeds to ask how these democratic experiments were subverted. A key mechanism of this de-democratisation, championed, inter alios, by Fareed Zakaria (editor-at-large of Newsweek) has been the concerted efforts to promote constitutional liberalism, presided over by a select elite subservient to the West, at the expense of political democracy. I discuss Zakaria at some length because he represents the mainstream western perspective and is considered important. In 1999, Esquire described him “the most influential foreign policy adviser of his generation” and in 2010 Foreign Policy named him “one of the top 100 global thinkers”.3 In the third and final section, I cautiously predict if and to what extent the categorical revolution may inaugurate a new understanding of the theory as well as practice of democracy. Here I engage with Derrida’s notion of “democracy to come”. Parenthetically, I also highlight the meaning of tah ̣rīr –Tah ̣rīr Square being the symbol of the categorical revolution – and its relationship with the role of intellectuals.
1 The Middle East – The Very Term In the last 100 years or so, several categories have ruled the Middle East. One such important category has been the term Middle East itself. Anthropologically spea king, it is an etic, external (in contra distinction to emic) term. People of the Middle East themselves did not coin this term. Even today there are not many in the Middle East who actually use it. Outside too it does not have a global currency. For instance, Indians do not use the term Middle East; they usually call it West Asia. So, when I hear this term I often ask myself: middle between which two points or locations? And yes, East of what? Clearly,
it is a geographical designation which puts the West and Europe at the centre of the world. Historically, the term emerged in the late 19th century. Alfred Mahan, an American navy officer, invented the term Middle East and used it in his book The Influence of Sea Power Upon History, 1600-1783. Later on, Halford Mackinder, a liberal imperialist of Britain, invested this term with some popularity that subsequently only increased and became sedimented (Khalidi 2003: 170). Ever since its coinage, the western power elite (in the sense used by Mills 2000) has seldom used the term Middle East to properly refer to its human population in its entirety with its diverse, rich, social-cultural textures. Rather the Middle East has often been used to mean an object “out there”. For the western power elite, it invariably has two interconnected referents. First, it refers to a land or area of multiple resources and strategic interests. This is probably best illustrated by Robert W Stookey’s description of the Middle East. A prominent member of the US foreign service (with postings in the Middle East and a doctorate in political science), in 1984, he published an edited book from Stanford University’s Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace. The books published from Hoover Institution (Stookey 1984: IV) were “concerned with the US involvement in world and regional politics”. Stookey (1984: XIII, italics added) began the book’s introduction as follows: “Considering the economic and strategic significance for our national interests, the Arabian peninsula is not well known to the general public”. And this is how, within the framework of the US national interest, he made the Middle East “known” to his American and European audience. Saudi Arabia, he noted, had the “possession of one-fourth of the non-communist world’s oil reserves”. Given the logic of the cold war prevalent at the time of the book’s publication, the word “non-communist” is clearly important. A more crisp description is offered soon after the passage cited above. He described Saudi Arabia and Kuwait as “oil-rich” states. In contrast, he called the then two Yemens as “oil-less” (Stookey 1984: XVI, XVIII, XIX). It is evident how the Middle East made any sense to the
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West only in relation to whether it was “oil-rich” or “oil-less”.4 Stookey’s description of the Middle East was in perfect consonance with the earlier imperial description, particularly by the Anglo-French alliance. Long before the advent of the language of oil-rich or oilless Middle East, it was Egypt’s water and land, not her humanity, which rendered Egypt important to the European powers. The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 (marked by an international pompous party at which the chief guest was France’s empress, Eugenie) generated a fervent response from the literati of Victorian Britain. British writers called it “brilliant”; the canal epitomised “progress”. “Brilliant”! Fine. “Progress”! Ok. But for whom? Clearly, it was for the British population. Egypt’s people did not matter at all. In fact, they were not regarded as even human; they were mere beasts. Only 20 years earlier, the Suez Canal had been thrown open to the enhancement of Europe’s ruthless commercial greed, Florence Nightingale, who had briefly lived in Egypt in 1849, described Egyptians as “a race of lizards, scrambling over the broken monuments”. William George Hamley (d 1893), a colonel in the Corps of Royal Engineers and a novelist to boot, spoke of the immense benefits flowing (to England and Europe) from the “piercing of Isthmus [of Suez]” (both cited in Haddad: 2005: 366, 385). That 1,20,000 Egyptian labourers (almost slaves) died during the canal’s construction over a period of 10 years (Ogen 2008: 527) was of no consequence. Ultimately, what mattered to the western power elite was that because of the Suez Canal, Egypt became a “main route” (Lewis 1995: 298) between Europe and Asia, particularly India. So, Egypt itself and all the humanity that inhabited it merely signified the canal as a bare route to India. Egypt mattered insofar as the Suez Canal provided the shortest sea route between western Europe and Asia, including the Far East and Australia; it reduced the distance (formerly crossed via Cape of Good Hope) between western Europe and Asia by more than 3,000 kilometres (Ogen 2008: 529). Not surprisingly, when Egyptian President Gamal Abdul Nasser, in 1956, nationalised the Suez Canal, the French press screamed that Nasser was a
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new Hitler (Shepherd Jr 1956: 6). In British opinion too he was dubbed as “another Mussolini”, “another Hitler” and “a mad dog” (Hitchens and Rostow 1986: 102). My point about the West’s conceptualisation of the Middle East as a land of multiple resources with geostrategic salience will become clearer if we look at Afghanistan. Technically, Afghanistan is not part of the Middle East. However, after 9/11, many university presses in the US included even books on Pakistan (not to mention Afghanistan) in their catalogues on the Middle East rather than South Asia.5 Ever since the 19th century, the West has often viewed Afghanistan as no more than a mass of land and thus dispossessed A fghanistan of, what to the West was, her only possession, her geostrategic significance. In itself it had barely any value; it was important to the extent that it became the fulcrum of what is known as the Great Game between the imperial Britain and the tsarist Russia to exercise control over Central Asia and India. Curzon, later to become India’s viceroy, exemplified such a geostrategic conceptualisation of A fghanistan: Turkestan, Afghanistan, Transcaspia, Persia – to many these words breathe only a sense of utter remoteness, or a memory of strange vicissitudes and of moribund romance. To me, I confess they are pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a game for the domination of the world (cited in Rashid 2001: 145).
Once viewed as no more than an area of multiple resources with strategic significance, logically it follows that the Middle East must be maintained as “stable” to continually serve the national interests of different western powers. Political (in)stability was the second meaning, to the West, of the Middle East. The key tool in order to contain this political instability was the policy of recurring intervention and control. In the eyes of the West, the Middle East thus needed to be “managed”. It did not have any agency of its own – it was passive. Indeed, the masculine thinking of the West saw the Middle East as a passive bride crying for the attention of a western man. Recalling the impression of his first visit to the Middle East, Bernard Lewis, a noted scholar of the region based at Princeton University, told The Atlantic: “On my first landing I was filled with
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e motion, like an eastern bridegroom about to lift the veil of his …unseen bride” (cited in Naim 1999:203). Such is the technology of masculine de-humanisation! The people’s protests across the Middle East contest such a western masculine thinking. The democratic uprisings are perhaps the strongest voice crying out that the Middle East is first of all its people and that the categories of “oil-rich”, “oilless” and “main route” are at best exciting materials for a historian’s archive.
2 The Myth of Islam’s Hostility to Democracy Let me discuss another category dominant for decades in western academia. This category is the so-called incompatibility between Islam and democracy. Though much older, this debate got intensified in the wake of “Democracy’s Third Wave” ending in 1990. During this wave, which Huntington called a “Catholic wave”, 30 countries made the transition to democracy. In contrast, between 1980 and 1991, of the world’s 37 Muslim-majority countries only two were democratic (Huntington 1991: 28). By 2005, of the undemocratic regimes across the globe, Muslim countries constituted a total of 55% (Fattah: 2006:1). This absence of democracy in the “Muslim world” has generated many explanations. Following the third wave, Huntington wrote:
it is hard to identify any Islamic leader who made a reputation as an advocate...of demo cracy while in office. Why is this? This question inevitably leads to the issue of culture.
Huntington, indeed, averred that there was an inverse relationship: more Muslims = less democracy. Read this: “Once Muslims became a majority in Lebanon ... Lebanese democracy collapsed” (1991:22, 28). In his theorisation of democracy in America, Tocqueville accorded much significance to the role Christianity played in fashioning civil society. However, like Huntington, he too held that the Quránic emphasis on faith rather than splendid deeds made Islam fanatical and inhospitable to democracy (Kelly 1995). Differentiating between three versions of Islam – religion, civilisation and politics – Lewis stated that the last one was surely hostile to democracy. The first two are also hostile because “in Islam ... there is from the beginning interpenetration of ... religion and the state” (Lewis 1996: 54, 61). Bernard Lewis, in fact, remarked that, like Christianity, Islam is not a religion. “Islam from its inception”, he declared, “is a religion of power” (1986: 82). Curiously enough, Islam’s equation with power was advanced precisely at a moment when the Middle East stood disempowered at the hands of the West. The lack of democracy in the Middle East was attributed primarily to the
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istinctiveness of Islam as a religion. If d such an understanding is valid, how do we explain the democratic upsurge in the Middle East? Logically, it will mean that the people marching in the street and chanting for democracy, even sacrificing their lives for it – were not Muslims. That is, their struggle for democracy has no relations whatsoever to Islam. Indeed, this seems to be the case. Now that the Middle East has risen for democracy, most commentators have changed their explana tory paradigm. The democratic storm in Egypt, Tunisia and Yemen is now explained not in terms of Islam, but in terms of technology, Facebook, youth, the rate of unemployment, and so on and so forth. Newsweek (21 February, 2011; also see The Economist, 19-25 February 2011) ran a story titled “Facebook Freedom Fighter”. One commentator seemed to psychologise the issue in that he attributed the fall of the regime of Mubarak less to the massive demonstrations and more to the loss of the grandchild of the octogenarian President Mubarak. After the sudden death of “old man’s [Mubarak’s] great joy of life”, the 12 year-old Mohammad, Dickey (2011: 29) wrote in Newsweek, “the spark behind his eyes was gone”. It is clear how the standard of explanation has changed – the absence of democracy is because of Islam; the presence of democracy is in spite of Islam. This notion persists despite the fact that many protestors chanted, inter alia, “Allah o Akbar” (Keane 2011: 3) and their leaflets and badges carried verses from the Qur’an.6 Before I might get misunderstood, let me quickly add that I am not saying that religion was the leitmotif of the categorical revolution. Nor is it my point that the ideational framework of all actors in the revolution was uniform and singular: agnostics, Marxists, ex-Marxists, atheists as well as non-Muslims too took part in it. My simple point is that contra the established myth that Islam is hostile to democracy many also participated in the revolution because they were inspired by Islam’s message of democracy and human dignity. Returning to the shift in the explanation for the absence and presence of democracy, one might say that it shows the double standards used by the western commentators. But the logic of double
standard is not a sufficient explanation because what we see is not just the double but rather a series of multiple standards. Conceptual robbery is probably an appropriate term to construe such a sudden shift in the very terms of contrasting, even contradicting, explanations for the absence and presence of democracy. The democratic storm swept across the Middle East not only because of the availability of Facebook, youth unrest, and so on; it was, in fact, a continuation of yearnings for democracy the history of which is much older than what most commentators would have us believe. People in the Middle East have been desiring democracy for long; it was the western power which continually subverted and derailed it. In light of the argument, I propose here the important question is not if Islam is compatible with democracy for it was a bogus question from the beginning (for details, see Ahmad 2011), but how the West de- democratised the Middle East. To pursue my argument, consider two examples.
Coup against Mosaddeq First, the 1953 coup against the elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mosaddeq. Mosaddeq enjoyed the approval of Iran’s parliament for his nationalisation programme. As we know, the US-UK alliance organised a coup against Mosaddeq and toppled him. Justifying Iran’s subversion of democracy, the then American ambassador to Iran said: Only a coup d‘état can save the situation. Mosaddeq [Iran’s Premier] has so flattered the mob as the sources of his powers that he had, I fear, made it impossible for a successor to oust him by normal constitutional methods (cited in Abrahmian 2008: 120).
It is clear how Iran’s democracy was sacrificed to serve the national interests of the US-UK alliance. This is a classic illustration of de-democratisation I put for consideration to the readers. Another example is Bahrain’s de-democratisation from 1974 to 2002. Bahrain was a British protectorate. In 1971, Bahrain became independent. In 1973 the first elections were held and an elected parliament formed. That parliament challenged the unbridled authority of Al-Khalifa, the family which has ruled Bahrain since 1783. A major challenge to the Al-Khalifa family came in
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the form of parliament’s demand for the eviction of the US navy base from Bahrain. It is important to mention here that the American military presence in Bahrain dates to 1949. After the withdrawal of British forces, American presence sharply increased subsequently. Legally, Bahrain’s parliament was right in asking for the eviction of the US navy. But the ruling AlKhalifa dissolved parliament in 1975. Since then there has been no democratic institution until 2002. Various vibrant institutions of civil society such as trade unions were all crushed. So, what mattered to the US was not the voice of the Bahraini people, but America’s national interest, which was to keep the American navy base in Bahrain. Again, this is a classic example of how the West de- democratised the Middle East (for details, see A hmad 2011). It is for this pursuit of national interest by the West that, intellectuals such as Fareed Zakaria recently began to advocate constitutional liberalism at the cost of political democracy. In 1997, he wrote an article in Foreign Affairs. In it, his main contention was that electoral democracy is not coterminous with democracy per se for constitutionalism – individual liberty, rights, checks against the abuse of power (by the state, church or society), and so on – are equally, rather more, important for democracy. In itself, this is a valid point and I tend to agree with him. However, Zakaria drew a different conclusion from it – a conclusion which at once legitimised the authoritarian status quo and stigmatised the oppositional forces in the Middle East. Below is the relevant passage: In the Islamic world, from the Palestinian Authority to Iran to Pakistan, democratisation has led to an increasing role for theocratic politics, eroding long-standing traditions of secularism and tolerance. In many parts of that world, such as Tunisia, Morocco, Egypt, and some of the Gulf States, were elections to be held tomorrow, the resulting regimes would almost certainly be more illiberal than the ones now in place.
In the Foreign Affairs article, Zakaria’s focus was not the Middle East. However, his subsequent writings deal specifically with the Middle East. In the wake of 9/11, in Newsweek, he wrote a long article with a messianic title “How to Save the Arab World”. Outlining the US policy towards
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the Middle East, he wrote: Oil, strategic ties, history will endure our ongoing involvement. We will continue to aid the Egyptian regime, we will continue to protect the Saudi monarchy… The question really is, should not we ask for something in return? By not pushing these regimes, the United States would be making a conscious decision to let things stay as they are – to once again opt for ‘stability’…We don’t seek democracy in the Middle East – at least not yet. We seek first…what I have called ‘constitutional liberalism’ – the rule of law, individual rights, private property…the separation of Church and state’. 7
As the reader will recall, Zakaria’s variety of conceptualisation of the Middle East is precisely what I have been critiquing (see Section I). Consistent with his line of reasoning this is how he, in 2004, justified the above policy: The Arab rulers of the Middle East are autocratic, corrupt and heavy-handed. But they are still more liberal, tolerant and pluralistic than those who would likely replace them (Zakaria 2004: 2).
The contradiction in Zakaria’s argument here comes to its full glare as it undermines his own earlier argument (made in 1997) that constitutionalism should not be sacrificed to the shallow logic of electoral democracy. It is too well-known to repeat that ”the Arab rulers” like Mubarak repeatedly organised sham elections and showed little, if any, respect to individual liberty, rights or constitutionalism of any kind. In fact, the regime of Mubarak was highly skilled in the business of illegal detention, torture and killings of scores of opposition activists (Hafez 2003). Yet, liberals like Zakaria have no qualms in justifying the brutal, anti-democratic regimes (continually violating the constitutional provisions) such as Mubarak’s or Salih’s in Yemen on the lame pretext that “Islamists” and ”fundamentalists” might take over the reign of power. Right in the thick of the Arab Spring or what I call the categorical revolution, the Dutch politician Ayaan Hirsi Ali (now a resident fellow at American Enterprise Institute, Washington, DC) did exactly what Zakaria had prescribed much earlier. In The Wall Street Journal (21 February 2011), she warned of the takeover of Egypt by the “fundamentalist” Muslim brotherhood. To summarise, my argument in this section has been that the notion of Islam’s
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incompatibility with democracy is both theoretically and historically flawed. Contra this all-pervasive myth, I showed how the West, on the contrary, de-democratised the Middle East from the early 1950s onwards. To this end, I offered the ex amples of West’s de-democratisation of Bahrain and Iran. I conclude this section by showing how the liberal position such as Fareed Zarakria’s that constitutionalism, not democracy, should be promoted in the Arab world is, in fact, a new mechanism to continue the old western policy of de-democratising the Middle East.
3 Conclusions: ‘Democracy to Come’ and Tah ̣rīr Square When asked what he thought about the impact of the French revolution, Chairman Mao Zedong said that it was too early to say (Osborne 2006: 2).8 If it is too early for an event of 1789, it is definitely earlier for an event of 2011 which, in some ways, is still in the making. However, it is my hope that it is not the kind of democracy we have seen in the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century; from the US to Australia, democracy also has a dark history of subjugation and utter violence (Ahmad 2009: 233-36). The categorical revolution, I hope and hypothesise, contextually exemplifies some elements of what Jacques Derrida termed “democracy to come”. Though present in earlier writings (e g, 1994, 2004), his posthumous publication, Rouges: Two Essays on Reason, offers a fuller treatment of “democracy to come”. In preface to Rouges, Derrida cites a fable from La Fontaine (a 17th century French fabulist). Titled The Wolf and the Lamb, it shows how a blood-thirsty wolf, having decided in advance to kill an innocent lamb, enacts the justification to kill her. The wolf accuses the lamb of dirtying the water to which she protests saying she is 20 feet downstream from the wolf, and therefore, could in no way muddy the wolf’s water. In violent disregard to the lamb’s plea based on evidence, the wolf persists in his allegation: “you are muddying it”. More allegations follow; the poor lamb continues to present her defence and evidence. But to no avail! The wolf always wins. The passage ends: “The Wolf drag ged and ate his mid-day snack/so trial and
judgment stood”. This fable typifies the ideology and practice that the sovereign decides well before the legal procedures unfold; judgment is delivered prior to trial and irrespective of evidence. The lesson of the fable is succinctly contained in the opening lines: “The strong are always best at proving they are right/witness the case we are now going to cite” (2005: X). Derrida takes the figures of wolf and lamb to institute a deconstruction of the contemporary and past forms of democracy. The key to his “militant and interminable critique” is the notion of “democracy to come”, which at one place in the otherwise dense text he defines as a protest ”against all naïveté and every political abuse, every rhetoric that would present as a present or existing democracy, as a de facto democracy, what remains inadequate to the democratic demand...” (ibid: 86). One such inadequacy he identifies is how democracy continues to be hostage to the violent logic of nation and its self-fulfilling interests. He, thus, issues a plea for installing a democratic global order of democracy for the existing international arrangements remain so distant from his conceptualisation of “democracy to come”. Describing the binding and enforceable power of the Security Council as “monstrosity”, Derrida observes: To put it in the most cut and dried terms, I would say that the fate of the democracy to come, in relation to world order, depends on what will become of this strange and supposedly all-powerful institution called the Security Council (2005: 98).
Returning to Derrida’s fable, the democratic storm in the Middle East shows one how to gallantly confront the wolf (the sovereign) and secure dignity and justice. By enacting his individual sacrificial death, Mohammad Bouazizi, it seems, succeeded in lighting the hopes and aspiration of millions for securing the collective life of
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justice itself. Though anchored in the nation state spaces, voices like Bouazizi’s and scores of those who followed him in other modes of resistance across the Middle East were not, as Keane (2011: 5) fittingly notes, fired by the credo of nationalist gusto. They are probably vital infrastructure to inaugurate a global order of justice and dignity. They exemplify a promise and its renewability which is basic to “democracy to come”. Before I conclude, let me say a word about the meaning of Tah ̣rīr square, the centre of the democratic uprising in Cairo. Tah ̣rīr etymologically means liberation, freedom and deliverance. In Arabic and Urdu, tah ̣rīr also means writing and the written product – letter, note, message, dispatch and document (Al-Mawrid Modern English-Arabic Dictionary 1997: 285286). The purpose of writing is thus to liberate: not just personally, but also collectively; not nationally, but humanly. The aim of writings by the scholars, intellectuals, not to speak of most pundits in the mainstream media – both in the so-called West and the East – seems to enslave rather than liberate our minds. Nothing demonstrates this more clearly than the prevalence and power of categories that dominate the media and the consciousness thereby enforced on us. The Middle East, Islam’s incompatibility with democracy, constitutional separation but not democracy, and the demonisation of the Muslim brotherhood are examples of such categories. Scholars and public intellectuals whose ideas this article has critiqued are engaged in producing and circulating these categories. The democratic storm in Tunisia, Egypt, Bahrain, Yemen and elsewhere seem to dethrone the categories and language of thoughts dominant for over half a century. This is why I call the democratic storm in the Middle East “the categorical revolution”.9 Notes 1 Drawn from numbers of protesters in different towns/cities listed at Wikipedia http://en. wikipedia.org/wiki/Egyptian_revolution_of_ 2011. Accessed on 21March 2011. I am aware of the extent to which this source is accurate. 2 In his review of George W Bush’s autobiography, Decision Points, Alexander Downer (2011: 49), the Australian foreign minister, went to the extent of suggesting that the Arab Spring was indeed the “message” of Bush’s “freedom agenda”.
3 See his website http://www.fareedzakaria.com/ home/About.html. Accessed on 20 June 2011. 4 On carbon, oil and politics, see Mitchell’s (2009) fine and novel analysis. 5 I owe this information to Ravi Arvind Palat, State University of New York at Binghamton, who mentioned this in an exchange (on list serve H-ASIA, dated 26 August 2009; the author subscribes to this list) on “Is Afghanistan Part of S Asia? Academic Boundaries and Geographical Regions”. Also available at http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/ logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-asia&month=0908 &week=d&msg=S9kjy9lTGicgZnR3HmpNQA&u ser=&pw= Accessed 10 July 2011. 6 These badges are in author’s possession; I thank Linda Herrera (University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign) for gifting them to me. 7 Given that Islam has no church, is not Zakaria’s call to separate church and state in the Middle East not only eurocentric but also absurd? 8 This remark is also attributed to Mao’s contemporary, Zhou Enlai ���������������������������� (see BBC undated������ . “Inside China’s Ruling Party”. http://news.bbc. co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/asia_pac/02/china_party_ congress/china_r uling _ par t y/key _ people_ events/html/zhou_enlai.stm. Accessed on 15 July 2011). 9 Cf, Bayat (Bayat, Asef (2011): “Paradoxes of Refolution” http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/ 786/paradoxes-of-arab-refo-lutions, accessed 5 June 2011) and Keane (2011) who use the term “refoultion” as a synthesis between reform and revolution.
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Keane, John (2011): “The Refolution in the Arab World”, Paper presented at the International Symposium Spirited Voices from the Muslim World: Islam, Democracy and Gender Rights, University of Sydney, 28-30 April. Kelly, Christopher (1995): “Civil and Uncivil Religions: Tocqueville on Hinduism and Islam”, History of European Ideas, 20 (4-6): 845-50. Khalidi, Rashid I (2003): “The Middle East as Area in an Era of Globalisation” in Ali Mirsepassi Amrita Basu and Frederick Weaver (ed.), Localising Knowledge in a Globalising World (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press), pp 170-90. Kurzman, Charles (2004): The Unthinkable Revolution in Iran (Harvard, Mass.: Harvard University Press). Lewis, Bernard (1986): “The Return of Islam” in Michael Curtis (ed.), The Middle East Reader (New Brunswick: Transaction Books), pp 69-82. – (1995): The Middle East: 200 Years History from the Rise of Islam Christianity to the Present Day (London: Phoenix Press). – (1996): “A Historical View: Islam and Liberal Democracy”, Journal of Democracy, 7(2): 52-63. Milani, Abbas (2010): “Three Paradoxes of Islamic Revolution in Iran” in The Iranian Revolution at 30 (Washington DC: Middle East Institute). Mills, C Wright (2000): [1956]: The Power Elite (Oxford: Oxford University Press), New Edition, with a new afterword by Alan Wolfe. Mitchell, Timothy (2009): “Carbon Democracy”, Economy and Society 38(3):399-432. Naim, C M (1999): Ambiguities of Heritage (Karachi: City Press). Newsweek (2011): “The Facebook Freedom Fighter”, 21 February, pp 22-25. Ogen, Olukoya (2008): “The Economic Lifeline of British Global Empire: A Reconsideration of the Historic Dynamics of the Suez Canal, 1869-1956”, The Journal of International Social Research 1(5): 523-33. Osborne, Robin (2006): “Introduction” in Simon Goldhill and Robin Osborne (ed.), Rethinking Revolutions through Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press), pp 1-9. Oxford English Dictionary Online. http://www.oed. com.ezproxy.lib.monash.edu.au/view/Entry/288 77?redirectedFrom=category# accessed on 20 March 2011. Rashid, Ahmed (2001 [2000]): Taliban: The Story of the Afghan Warlords (London: Pan Books). Shepherd Jr, George W (1956): “Suez: Touchstone of Colonialism”, Africa Today. 3(5): 6-7. Stookey, Robert W (1984): “Introduction” in Robert W Stookey (ed.), The Arabian Peninsula: Zone of Ferment (Stanford: Hover Institution Press, Stanford University), pp XIII-XXXIII. The Economist (2011): “Cover Story”, 19-25 February. Zakaria, Fareed (2004): “Islam, Democracy and Constitutional Liberalism”, Political Science Quarterly, 119(1): 120.
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Revival of the Public Distribution System: Evidence and Explanations Reetika Khera
Contrary to a common belief that India’s public distribution system is irreparably dysfunctional, a nine-state survey of the pds finds that the respondents received 84-88% of their full entitlement. The implicit subsidy for households below the poverty line from pds foodgrains alone is roughly equivalent, in many states, to a week’s nrega wages every month. The revival of the pds can be traced, in large part, to a renewed political interest which manifests itself in state initiatives such as expanded coverage, reduced prices, computerisation of stock management, etc. A large majority of the respondents preferred to receive in-kind food transfers rather than cash transfers, except in Bihar where the pds is still in very poor shape. Their testimonies, and the survey findings, point to many good reasons to be wary of a hasty transition to cash transfers. Further improving the pds seems like a more sensible way forward.
I thank Diane Coffey, Jean Drèze, Sudha Narayanan and Dean Spears for comments and suggestions that helped improve this paper and Karuna Muthiah and Dipa Sinha for helping to coordinate the survey in Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh, respectively. Most importantly perhaps, I would like to thank the investigators who participated in the survey and provided us new insights into and a deep understanding of the working of the PDS in the survey states. I acknowledge financial support from the Indian Institute of Technology, New Delhi. A pilot study was supported by the Planning and Development Unit, Department of Economics, University of Allahabad. Reetika Khera (
[email protected]) is at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi and a visiting scholar at the Centre for Development Economics, Delhi School of Economics.
36
1 Introduction
T
he public distribution system (PDS) is among the most important food security programmes of the Government of India. Since the introduction of the Targeted PDS (TPDS) in 1997, most field-based studies of the PDS have focused on inclusion and exclusion errors (see, e g, Swaminathan and Misra 2001; Hirway 2003; Khera 2008; Mahamallik and Sahu 2011). Using National Sample Survey (NSS) data, others have focused on leakages from the PDS (see, e g, Jha and Ramaswami 2010; Himanshu and Sen 2011; Khera 2011c, among others). Several other equally important questions, e g, the nutritional impact of the PDS, policy changes in the past decade (especially at the state level), the role of the PDS in providing food security, have remained neglected. To address some of these gaps, and understand the ground realities, a survey of the PDS in nine Indian states was undertaken in May-June 2011 (hereafter “PDS Survey”). This exercise is important for two reasons: one, there have been few independent evaluations of the PDS in recent years, and, two, the PDS is expected to play an important role in the proposed National Food Security Act.1 Given that cash is also being discussed as an alternative to the PDS, this survey included an effort to understand people’s views on cash transfers. Contrary to a common belief in policy debates (and academic circles) that the PDS is an irreparably dysfunctional scheme, this survey finds that many state governments have undertaken a series of measures that have made the PDS functional. By providing assured supply of foodgrains at nominal prices, the PDS has become an important source of food security for rural households, or more precisely for eligible rural households. With the notable exception of Bihar, below the poverty line (BPL) households in the nine sample states reported receiving almost their full entitlement of grain (rice and wheat) on a regular basis. In the three months preceding the survey, households reported receiving 84-88% of their full entitlement of PDS grain – up to 40 kg of grain per household per month. Further, the implicit transfers associated with these food entitlements are now quite substantial due to the combined effect of an increase in market prices and reduced PDS prices. The main weakness of the current system is that it is restricted to certain categories of households and that there are large exclusion errors. Until recently, the PDS was targeted mainly at BPL households in most states. In many states, increasing dissatisfaction with this approach has led to a move towards a more inclusive, if not a universal, system. As discussed below, the november 5, 2011 vol xlvi no 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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r evival of the PDS in many states appears to be linked with this expanded coverage. Along with foodgrain, the PDS provides sugar and kerosene in most states. In addition, several states have started providing pulses and edible oil at subsidised prices. However, PDS supplies of non-foodgrain commodities (pulses, oil, kerosene, sugar, salt, etc) were not the main focus of this survey. Drawing on the survey, this report examines different aspects of the PDS: its role in ensuring food security, corruption and other complaints, state-level diversity in the way it works and reform measures undertaken by state governments. We also discuss people’s views on cash transfers as an alternative to subsidised food from the PDS. The reasons that were given for preferring cash or food are enlightening and they help us understand rural realities from the perspective of those who are directly affected. While people’s preferences are not the last word on this issue, they do need greater attention than they have received so far.
that two more states from the languishing category (Jharkhand and Rajasthan) seem to be “reviving”. Two blocks in each of two sample districts in each state were visited by the survey teams.4 Sample districts and blocks were selected to maintain a balance between more and less developed areas of the state, and also between different agro-climatic regions. For instance, in Bihar, Nalanda (in “south Bihar” and two hours from the state capital) and Katihar districts (in “north Bihar”, on the border with Nepal) were selected. In Tamil Nadu, both sample districts (Dindigul and Dharmapuri) are known as “backward” districts. Given Tamil Nadu’s exceptional PDS performance, we were interested in seeing how the scheme fared in the worst areas of the state. In each of the 20 sample districts, six villages (three each in two different blocks) were selected for investigation. Selected villages were a random sample from the list of census villages with a population of 500-1,500.5 Investigators were supposed to interview 12 randomly selected households in each village. 1.1 The Survey In six out of nine sample states, surveyed households were a The nine sample states are: Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, random sample selected from the BPL list. In the remaining three Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu (Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu), where the and Uttar Pradesh.2 In an earlier paper based on secondary data PDS is universal or quasi-universal, the voter list was used for for 2004-05 (Khera 2011c), the major Indian states were grouped sampling.6 As discussed below, the BPL lists are far from reliable, into three categories based on the performance of the PDS: “func- but they were good enough for our purposes, with the partial extioning”, “reviving” or “languishing”.3 The selection of states for ception of Jharkhand. If a household on the BPL list (or voter list) the PDS survey relied on that grouping of states. We chose three happened to have an above poverty line (APL) card or no card at functioning states (Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and all, investigators were instructed to skip that household; houseTamil Nadu), three reviving (Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Uttar holds with Antyodaya cards, meant for the poorest of the poor, Pradesh) and three languishing (Bihar, Jharkhand and Rajasthan). were included (these households are generally, but not This survey finds further support for this categorisation, except always, selected from the BPL list). The survey (hereafter “PDS Survey”) covered 1,227 houseTable 1: Socio-economic Characteristics of Sample Households All States AP BI CH HP JH OR RJ TN UP holds in the nine states. Female respondents (%) 48 63 37 44 45 42 50 43 63 44 Along with the household quesIlliterate respondents (%) 66 58 86 79 33 67 79 70 54 62 tionnaire, the survey collected inLiving in kachha homes (%) 49 24 50 76 53 73 62 38 13 50 formation on basic socio-economic Proportion (%) of Dalits 28 22 46 17 49 10 10 48 15 43 features of the sample village. Adivasis 24 17 6 52 1 68 59 7 2 1 This included information on connectivity, basic amenities, access OBCs 35 46 27 29 3 20 30 36 80 40 Other 12 15 20 2 47 2 1 9 3 16 to local markets and so on. The Proportion (%) of households with village questionnaire also included No land 36 29 73 43 7 22 25 59 36 26 an interview with the fair price Less than one acre of land 61 62 99 69 70 70 56 76 56 81 shop (FPS) dealer who was asked Main occupation 7 Self-employed in agriculture 37 37 13 38 56 34 55 12 41 53 about the running of the shop. The survey was conducted by Casual labour 49 41 76 50 31 53 36 72 40 33 students from the University of Regular employment 3 1 1 0 5 1 1 7 11 2 Other 11 21 10 11 8 13 9 9 8 12 Delhi and other universities, along Standard of Living Indexa with local volunteers, after careful Low (SLI<=10) 70 30.2 96.0 86.7 41.5 95.7 85.2 81.5 18.0 92.5 training. Many of them had also High (SLI>20) 4 10.3 0.0 1.4 7.6 0.0 0.7 0.0 12.2 0.8 participated in a series of earlier Per capita (Rs/month) expenditure, non-food 450 524 375 289 649 289 356 663 631 342 surveys of the PDS and other NREGA employing in the preceding 12 months % getting no employment (0 days) 37 20 62 31 22 30 46 52 22 50 social security programmes such % getting 100 days 7 8 0 5 9 2 4 23 13 0 as the National Rural Employment Average days per household 29 39 12 25 41 28 19 33 55 14 Guarantee Act (NREGA), Mid-Day a The “Standard of Living Index” has been created by weighting the ownership of assets in this manner: four for a pucca house, two for a semi-pucca Meal Scheme and Integrated Child house and zero for kachha; four for a flush toilet and zero for none; two for electricity and zero for none; two for piped water supply and one for public sources of water supply; four for five or more acres of land, three for two to five acres of land, two for up to two acres of land and zero for no Development Services (see, e g, land; four for ownership of a four-wheel vehicle and three for ownership of two-wheel vehicle; three each for ownership of a television set or fan; Drèze 2001, 2002a; Bhatia and one for ownership of a pressure cooker. 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Drèze 2002; Drèze and Goyal 2003; Khera 2002, 2006, 2008, 2011b, 2011c; Sinha 2008; Citizen’s Initiative for the Children under Six 2006, among others). Each of the nine states covered by the PDS survey was also covered in one or more of these earlier surveys. This, along with secondary data, helped to understand how things have changed over time in these areas.
1.2 Socio-economic Background of Respondents This section briefly describes the socio-economic characteristics of the respondents and their households. Nearly half (48%) of all respondents were women (Table 1, p 37): the highest proportion (63%) of female respondents were interviewed in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu; the Bihar sample had the lowest (37%).8 Two-thirds of all respondents were illiterate, though there are large interstate variations. For instance, Himachal Pradesh had the lowest proportion of illiterate respondents (33%) and Bihar had the highest (86%). Just over half (52%) of all respondents were dalits (scheduled castes) and adivasis (scheduled tribes), one-third belonged to the “Other Backward Classes” and 12% belonged to other communities. Table 1 provides further details of the socio-economic background of sample households. A large majority of households were poor, with a small asset base (e g, more than one-third were landless and 61% owned less than one acre of land); a quarter of the households lived in kachha homes without electricity. A “Standard of Living Index” (SLI) along the lines of the index used in the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) has been created using asset data collected in the PDS Survey.9 Households score between 1 and 30 on the SLI constructed here. In six survey states, more than 70% of the households had a “low” SLI score (i e, SLI less than 10, see Table 1 for details). The two southern states (AP and TN) and Himachal Pradesh in the north are economically better off with 18-42% of households with a low SLI.
2 The Public Distribution System Under the TPDS introduced in 1997, households are provided APL, BPL, or Antyodaya (introduced in 2001) cards.10 Antyodaya cards, which enjoy a larger subsidy than BPL households, are meant for the “poorest of the poor”. APL households were effectively excluded from the PDS in 2001 when the central government raised the APL issue price above market prices. However, they gradually re-entered the system in recent years, in many states, as market prices shot up while the issue price remained unchanged (some states have also used the APL quota to expand the coverage of the PDS – see below). The proportion of BPL families that the central government is willing to subsidise in each state is fixed in accordance with the Planning Commission’s poverty estimates. The 1993-94 poverty estimates are still used for this purpose, on account of a Supreme Court order in the “right to food” case (PUCL vs Union of India and Others, Writ Petition Civil, No 196 of 2001). To take into account the increase in population, in 2000 the centre revised the BPL figures for each state by applying the 1993-94 poverty estimates to the projected population in 2000.11 Note that, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu never really adopted the central government’s
38
BPL caps, and do not have a BPL category for the PDS.12 In Andhra Pradesh, those who are entitled to PDS commodities are given “white” cards and in Tamil Nadu these cards are referred to as “rice cards”.13 Since 2003, many state governments have felt that the caps on BPL cards imposed by the central government are too stringent. In response to this, many have initiated state schemes (e g, the Mukhya Mantri Khadya Sahayog Yojana in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh) to issue more BPL cards (these are referred to as “state BPL cards” in this paper). Household entitlements of state BPL cardholders tend to be the same as those of regular BPL households. In our sample, 62% of sample households had BPL cards, and nearly one-tenth (8%) had state BPL cards. Just over a quarter (27%) of the sample households possessed A ntyodaya ration cards.14
2.1 PDS Entitlements There have been two important developments with respect to the PDS at the state-level in the past few years. One, there has been a renewed political interest in the PDS, especially since 2007. There are two manifestations of this: (a) a rejection of the APL-BPL distinction imposed on state governments by the centre for the purpose of the PDS; and (b) a reduction in PDS prices in many states, including free grain in Tamil Nadu since June 2011. A second, more recent and less widespread development is the inclusion of pulses and edible oils among the commodities distributed at subsidised prices. There are wide state-wise variations in the list of commodities supplied by the PDS. Table 2 (p 39) presents state-wise entitlements of BPL cardholders including non-grain commodities that are supplied through the PDS in each of the survey states. While wheat and rice are generally provided only to BPL or Antyodaya households, kerosene is meant for all households. Sugar is another commodity provided through the PDS. As mentioned earlier, this survey focused primarily on the supply of wheat and rice. Another point worth noting is that given the massive build up of foodgrain stocks with the Food Corporation of India (FCI) in 2010, the Supreme Court ordered that excess stocks be reduced by increasing PDS entitlements. Some states have taken advantage of the additional allocation of grain by providing an additional 5 kg/month per BPL household.
2.1.1 Towards Universalisation An encouraging trend observed in the states was one towards a much more inclusive (even universal, in some cases) PDS. Tamil Nadu has had a universal PDS for some time. Himachal Pradesh also has a universal PDS, albeit with a difference – APL households pay a higher price than BPL households, though the entitlements (in terms of commodities and quantities) of all households are the same. In Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, the system is “quasi-universal” with nearly 80% of the population entitled to PDS commodities. This trend towards universalisation of the PDS could be seen in other states too. In Orissa, the PDS has been universalised in the hunger prone “KBK region” (originally the Kalahandi-BolangirKoraput districts, now divided into smaller districts).15 Rajasthan, november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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month, in other sample states household entitlements are lower than 35 kg per month (Table 2). Two states (Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu) have moved to per capita entitlements whereas in Bihar, Orissa and Rajasthan BPL households are entitled to 25 kg per month.
Table 2: PDS Norms for BPL Cardholdersa
Grain Entitlements
Other PDS Commodities
Andhra Rice: 4 kg/capita (Rs 2/kg) Pradeshb Wheat: Fortified atta
Kerosene, sugar, salt Pulses (1-2 kg, Rs 34-50/kg) Oil (1 litre, Rs 35/litre)
Bihar
Kerosene
Rice: 15 kg (Rs 6.7/kg) Wheat: 10 kg (Rs 5.22/kg)
Chhattisgarhc Rice: 25 kg (Rs 2/kg) Wheat: 10 kg (Rs 2/kg)
Kerosene, sugar, salt Chana dal on experimental basis
Himachal Pradesh
Rice: 15 kg (Rs 10/kg for APL and Rs 6.85/kg for BPL) Wheat: 20 kg (Rs 8.5 for APL and Rs 5.25 for BPL)
Kerosene, sugar, salt Pulses (1-3 kg, Rs 20-35/kg) Edible oil (1-2 litres, Rs 40)
Jharkhand
Rice: 35 kg (Re 1/kg) Wheat: Discontinued
Kerosene
Orissa
Rice: 25 kg (Rs 2/kg in KBK region; Rs 9.3/kg for APL elsewhere) Wheat: Unclear
Kerosene, sugar
Rajasthan
Rice: 0 Wheat: 25 kg (Rs 2/kg)
Kerosene, sugar
Tamil Nadu
Rice: 20 kg (free)d Wheat: Fortified atta (1 kg, Rs 11/kg)
Kerosene, sugar, salt Pulses (2 kg, Rs 30/kg) Oil (1 litre, Rs 25/litre)
Uttar Pradesh Rice: 20 (Rs 6.15/kg) Wheat: 15 (Rs 4.65/kg)
Kerosene, sugar
a Antyodaya cardholders get 35 kg/month/household in all states, and they pay Rs 3/kg for rice
and Rs 2/kg for wheat. However, in Orissa rice is given to them at Rs 2/kg; Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have reduced the prices further to Re 1/kg. In Tamil Nadu and for so-called "primitive tribal groups" with Antyodaya cards in Jharkhand rice is free. b In Andhra Pradesh entitlements are specified in per capita terms, with each person entitled to four kg/month, with a maximum of 20 kg per family. c In Chhattisgarh, there are three additional state-specific of ration cards. Grey cards (for STs and SCs) and Saffron (OBCs) enjoy the same entitlements as BPL cardholders. Widows and senior citizens are also given saffron cards, but with smaller entitlements (10 kg rice at Rs 2/kg). Persons with disabilities are given green cards with the same entitlements as widows and senior citizens. d Single-person households are entitled to 12 kg of rice and 16 kg for two-person households.
Bihar and Jharkhand have all expanded their BPL lists to include more rural households (see Table 3 in Khera 2011c). Uttar Pradesh is the only exception among the nine sample states. Expanded coverage has been made possible by using one (or both) of two measures: state governments pay for expanded coverage (e g in Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu) or central allocations to states are “spread thinner”. The central government currently allocates 35 kg for each BPL household (so long as state governments adhere to the Planning Commission’s poverty estimates). While Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh still give 35 kg per household per Table 3: Purchase of PDS Grain
Average Purchase (Kg/Month) BPL April May Average March
Antyodayaa April May
2.1.2 Reduction of PDS Prices Along with increasing the number of households entitled to PDS grain, six out of nine state governments have reduced issue prices below the centrally fixed issue prices for BPL households – Rs 4.65/ kg for wheat and Rs 6.15/kg for rice. In Tamil Nadu, the government provides 20 kg of free grain; in Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan, Orissa and Andhra Pradesh, grain is provided at Rs 2/kg; in Jharkhand the price is Re 1/kg (and free for Antyodaya households belonging to the “primitive tribal group” category). Meanwhile market prices have increased, so that there has been a sharp increase in the implicit subsidy from the PDS. To illustrate, consider the case of Chhattisgarh, where BPL households are entitled to 35 kg of rice at Rs 2/kg (much the same as in Jharkhand, Orissa, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu). The value of this monthly ration at local market prices, net of what people pay for it, is around Rs 600. This, in turn, is the equivalent of about five days of NREGA wages every month, or 60 days per year. To put this in perspective, the sample households in Chhattisgarh had worked for 25 days on NREGA in the preceding 12 months, on average. The PDS is doing more than twice as much as NREGA for them, and the two together now give them a very important protection from poverty and hunger.
2.1.3 Beyond Rice and Wheat
Another positive trend is the tendency to expand the list of commodities made available through the PDS to include more nutritious items. In Himachal Pradesh, all ration cardholders (irrespective of whether they are APL or BPL) can buy at least 1 kg of dal and 1 kg of oil each month. Larger households can buy up to 3 kg of dal and 2 kg of edible oil. Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu also provide dal and edible oil. In Uttar Pradesh, households reported intermittent supply of “matar ki dal” (split peas); in Rajasthan too, households reported getting dal and oil briefly during 2009-10, when market prices suddenly Average Purchase-Entitlement jumped. There was an expecEntitlement for Ratio (PER) in the Past tation among respondents that Average BPL Cardholders Three Months these would be reintroduced. (Kg/Month)b BPL Antyodaya The Chhattisgarh state govern33.8 15.1 100 97 16.3 25 45 47 ment has introduced chana dal 34.1 35 95 97 on a pilot basis in Bastar district.
March
Andhra Pradesh
14.8
15.1
14.9
14.9
35.3
35.3
30.9
Bihar
11.5
10.8
11.4
11.2
19.3
14.9
14.6
Chhattisgarh
33.1
34.0 32.8
33.3
34.1
33.1
35
Himachal Pradesh
41.6
36.9 32.9
37.1
43.1
38.1
31.8
37.6
35-40d
92-100d
Jarkhand
29.5
22.5 22.8
24.9
30.4
22.1
19.4
23.9
35
71
68
Orissa
20.9
26.0 40.6c
29.2
31.6
32.7
40.6
35.0
25-30d
97-100d
100
Rajasthan
25.6
25.3
27.1
26.0
35
35.3
35
35.1
25-30d
86-100d
100
Tamil Nadu
17.3
18.6
17.8
17.9
33.5
28.5
30.3
30.8
19.5
92
88
Uttar Praesh
31.2
31.0 29.8
30.7
33.7
34.4
33.9
33.9
35-40d
77-88d
85
All states
23.7
23.5 24.7
24.0
32.6
29.6
29.1
30.4
27.3-28.7
84-88
87
94-100
aFor Antyodaya the entitlements are 35 kg/month everywhere except in Uttar Pradesh where it is 40 kg (temporarily) on account a Supreme Court
Order in the right to food case (see text). bEntitlements applicable to sample households, based on the norms given in Table 2. cDue to "clubbing" (e g, several households getting nothing in March and April, and then getting 100 kg in May). dEntitlements are reported as a range to account for the five kg extra due to a Supreme Court order in the right to food case (see text). The range gives the lower and upper limit for entitlements as well as PER. Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
2.2 BPL Lists Two BPL censuses (in 1997 and 2002) have been conducted so far by state governments. BPL lists prepared on the basis of the 2002 Census were held up on account of a stay order from the Supreme Court in the “right to food” case. The Supreme
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Court lifted the stay in 2005, with the proviso that names of households on the 1997 BPL list could not be struck off the 2002 BPL list and that effective appeal procedures should be put in place for all households. Even after the stay was lifted, not all states adopted the new BPL list. Meanwhile, as noted earlier, state governments began to spend resources on expanding the PDS with the introduction of state BPL cards.16 As a result of this chain of events, in each of the states where the BPL list was used for sampling (with the notable exception of Chhattisgarh), there was confusion regarding to which BPL survey the BPL list corresponded (1997, 2002 or something more recent). In Jharkhand the situation was particularly messy. The distribution of BPL cards was largely based on the 1997 survey. However, the distribution of PDS rations was on the basis of a separate list (let us call it the “PDS list”) which the FPS dealer had, and did not quite coincide with the BPL list. During the survey, we came across households whose names were on the BPL list and who had a BPL card, but who did not get rations. On the other hand, a few households did not have a ration card, but were getting rations because their names appeared on the PDS list! This situation is the result of expansion of the PDS beyond the BPL list in recent years and of poor governance in the state.17 The lack of clarity in terms of who is entitled to PDS rations opens the door to corrupt practices on the part of dealers and other officials. The misclassification of households (inclusion and exclusion errors) on BPL lists is well established (e g, Drèze and Khera 2010a and the literature cited earlier). Documenting such errors was not explicitly part of the survey, yet the investigators came across serious inclusion and especially exclusion errors. On the brighter side, the BPL lists are becoming more transparent (see section 7.3 below). Most BPL lists are online. In Chhattisgarh and Orissa, the teams found that an exercise to update and verify BPL lists had been conducted recently. However, even this exercise has had some negative fallouts – the ration cards of those who were not available during the verification drive (e g, migrants) have been cancelled. The drive has also given the FPS managers an additional excuse to deny some people their ration. Further, since BPL lists were used for sampling purposes it gave us a chance to investigate the presence of “ghost” cards on the BPL list. The teams found hardly any bogus names on the BPL lists. Across all states, there were less than 10 names (out of 1,227) on the BPL lists that the survey teams were unable to locate. Nearly all households (93%) possessed only one ration card. A small proportion (6%) of households had two; of these, one-third were joint families. This is significant in the light of claims that bogus and/or duplicate cards are a major source of corruption in the PDS. A possibility remains that bogus cards are floating “outside” the official BPL lists; this could be verified by checking whether actual PDS allocations (say, at the state or district level) exceed what one would expect based on the official BPL lists.
2.2.1 Poor Coverage In Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, the BPL lists were very patchy and there were enormous “exclusion errors”. For instance, in Jharkhand, the team found entire hamlets that did not have BPL cards. In Uttar Pradesh, the survey team sometimes found it
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difficult to locate 12 BPL households in one village. In Orissa’s Nuapada district (in the KBK region), many households complained of having no ration card at all. Often, younger households – i e, newly married couples – did not have any ration card. Aside from well-known general problems associated with the entire BPL identification exercise, one important source of exclusion errors is the absence of arrangements to update the BPL list over time. The current system of issuing ration cards is inflexible – centrally imposed caps on the permissible number of BPL cards combined with population increase (in many states, the last BPL census was held about 10 years ago) lie behind the rigidity in the system. The block supply officer in Nuapada’s Sinapalli block told us that the order for issuing new cards has to be given from Bhuwaneshwar, the state capital. The district or block administration does not have the authority to do so. In many states, a satisfactory system for issuing new cards needs to be put in place (e g, whereby names for new ration cards could be sent from the gram panchayat to the district or state capital for approval).
2.2.2 Supreme Court Order on Antyodaya Cards The Supreme Court has issued an interim order in the right to food case directing certain groups to be included compulsorily on the Antyodaya list. The team found several violations of this – e g, many eligible widows did not have Antyodaya cards. There were 34 landless widows in the sample with BPL cards, although by virtue of being landless alone they should have been on the A ntyodaya list.18 Another group that is entitled to Antyodaya card is that of so-called “primitive tribal groups” (or, PTGs). In the case of PTGs, there has been some attempt to cover all households, but even here the team found exclusion errors, e g, in Gopikander block of Jharkhand several Parhaiya households (classified as PTGs) did not have any ration card.
3 Corruption and the PDS As mentioned earlier, corruption in the PDS has been one the biggest concerns in recent years (see, e g, Jha and Ramaswami 2010; Himanshu and Sen 2011; Kotwal, Murugkar and Ramaswami 2011; Khera 2011c), including in this survey. The survey questionnaire included a very careful accounting of purchases of PDS grain by sample households. Respondents were asked three complementary questions to arrive at a reliable estimate of the extent to which they were able to secure their full entitlements: (1) how much they “normally” get from the FPS; (2) how much they got the last time they bought PDS grain; and (3) how much they bought, month by month, from March to June 2011.
3.1 Improvement in ‘Purchase-Entitlement Ratio’ The purchase-entitlement ratio (PER) refers to the proportion of full entitlement that is purchased by BPL households. A low PER could be due to corruption in the system or lack of demand (possibly related to low quality of PDS grain). One of the major findings of the survey is that as far as BPL and Antyodaya cardholders are concerned, there has been a marked improvement in the PER, except in Bihar (Table 3, p 39).19 As Table 3 shows, average purchase in the past three months ranged between november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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24.0 and 30.4 kg/month (for BPL and Antyodaya cards respectively). The average entitlement of BPL cardholders (averaged over all states) is between 27.3 and 28.7 kg/month.20 The average PDS purchase in the past three months (24 kg/household per month) is at least 84% of the monthly entitlement (28.7 kg/ household per month).21 A more demanding benchmark is to look at the proportion of households for whom PER equals 100, i e, the proportion of households who get their full entitlement normally. Three-quarters of respondents reported getting their full quota in the nine survey states.22 This rises to 80-81% if we exclude Bihar from the sample. The two important exceptions to this general pattern of high PERs are Bihar and Jharkhand. In Bihar, the situation remains grim (even though it seems to have improved even there, at least by Bihar’s standards).23 Only 18% of BPL households reported getting their full quota in Bihar, followed by Jharkhand where 25% get their full entitlement (Table 6, p 42). NSS data on PDS purchases from 2004-05 onwards show a similar revival in the PDS (Himanshu and Sen 2011; Khera 2011c).24 Some of the measures that have contributed to this turnaround are discussed below. Many household respondents and others (the ration dealer, village head, etc) attributed the improvement in the PDS to the increase in the gap between market and PDS prices mentioned earlier. The increase in implicit subsidy has had the effect of enhancing voice, and no one seems willing to forego their ration any more. Leakages in wheat supply among “rice states” has perhaps not been properly captured in the survey.25 For instance, in Tamil Nadu, respondents complained that the supply of wheat/atta is irregular. Respondents in other rice states (Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Orissa) also voiced such complaints. Much of this is also linked to uncertainty among both dealers and cardholders regarding their wheat entitlements. However, wheat distribution in these rice-eating states is relatively small.
3.2 Corruption in Other Commodities The PDS survey did not include a similar careful accounting for other PDS commodities (e g, sugar, dal, edible oil and kerosene). Sample households often complained about corruption in the distribution of kerosene and sugar. In Tamil Nadu, some cardholders complained of irregular supply of dals and pulses. This survey did not match kerosene and sugar entitlements of households with actual purchase. There are two reasons why this is difficult to do: one, entitlements of these commodities are not clear, not even to FPS managers in some cases. Two, interviews with the FPS managers and block supply officers suggested that the supply of these commodities to the district/block is irregular. In such cases, it is not clear whether cardholders do not get these commodities because of supply issues or because commodities have been siphoned off.
3.3 Awareness of Entitlements As far as awareness of grain entitlements is concerned, generally people knew what they were entitled to. For instance, in the case of Antyodaya cardholders, less than 3% were unable to answer the question on grain entitlement correctly. Among BPL cardholders, Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
the correct answers ranged between 84% and 100%.26 However, in the case of other commodities such as sugar, kerosene, dals and oils there was a lack of clarity and irregularity in the supply of these commodities.
3.4 Overcharging There were hardly any instances of “overcharging” (charging more than the official issue price) for PDS grain. In Jharkhand (where BPL households now pay Re 1/kg for rice) we heard some complaints of people paying Rs 35 each month, even though they were given only 32 kg of rice. One factor that has helped to prevent overcharging is the reduction in prices (e g, from Rs 4.65/kg of wheat to Rs 2/kg in Rajasthan) and the use of round figures. It is much easier for people to calculate the total amount due when, say, wheat is priced at Rs 2/kg for 25 kg, than to multiply Rs 4.65 by 35. Here again, as far as other commodities are concerned, there was a lot of confusion and also more reports of overcharging. Among the worst cases were FPS managers in Dumka (Jharkhand) who openly told us that though the official price of kerosene is Rs 13.50/litre, they charge Rs 16/litre as this was the “norm”.
4 Assessment of the PDS Respondents were asked about the importance of the PDS in their lives. A large majority (80%) considered it “very important”. If one includes those who said it was “quite important” the proportion increases to 98%. This sentiment is also conveyed in the qualitative data from the survey, especially the responses to cash transfer as alternative to the PDS. Many respondents pleaded that the FPS not be closed (“Society nahi band honi chahiye”). Respondents in Warangal district (Andhra Pradesh) said “even if you give me Rs 1 lakh, I will opt for rice”, or “you want to deny us our food?” A female respondent in Tamil Nadu followed the survey team to persuade them that closing down the ration shop was a bad idea. Similar sentiments were echoed in most states (see e g, Nag 2011 and Puri forthcoming). People’s perception of the overall change in the PDS over the past five years were also recorded. In Himachal Pradesh, Jharkhand, Orissa and Tamil Nadu, half or more respondents felt that things had improved. One-tenth of all respondents said that things had become worse over the past five years.27 Table 4: Main Complaints with Fair Price Shops
Proportion (%) of Respondents
Quality related concerns Poor quality of grain at the time of last purchase
15
Lack of predictability Days of opening are not fixed
38
Inadequate information regarding the opening of FPS
20
Access to FPS Distance to FPS more than two km (3 km) Last visit (travel + queuing) took more than two hours (three hours)
19 (9) 45 (30)
Days of opening are not adequate
48
Reasons for not buying full ration in the past three months No supply to the ration shop
10
Supplies ran out by the time respondent went to the FPS
10
FPS dealer refused to give full quota
18
Dealer's attitude is unhelpful
18
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4.1 Quality Overall, 38% of respondents reported getting good quality grain at the time of their last purchase; nearly half (47%) said it was of “fair” quality and 15% said that the grain they received was of poor quality (Table 4, p 41). In Andhra Pradesh and Himachal Pradesh there were hardly any complaints about the quality of PDS grain. In Bihar, however, close to one-third (33%) of the respondents reported getting poor-quality grain at the time of their last purchase. The qualitative data, however, suggest that perhaps the quantitative data do not capture grain quality issues adequately. Many interviews were interspersed with complaints regarding quality. This was especially true in Pali district (Rajasthan) where some households reported finding 2-3 kg of stones in the wheat out of the 25 kg they bought each month. In Chhattisgarh, respondents had clear preferences with respect to “usna” (parboiled) and “arwa” (fine) rice. The complaints in these areas often related to getting the less preferred type of rice. In Tamil Nadu, some households said that they prefer to pay more and get better quality rice than get free or cheap rice of poor quality. They said that the rice they get has to be mixed with other rice to be edible and is suitable only for making idlis and dosas. Further evidence of the quality of grain being an issue comes from the fact that when people were presented with the option of buying PDS grain or getting cash, one-fourth of all sample households cited grain quality among the relevant considerations.
in some areas, in long waiting hours (sometimes the whole day to buy the month’s quota). It was not uncommon to find FPSs that remain open throughout the month in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. Even in states such as Chhattisgarh and Orissa, some outlets remain open through the month. In many places, respondents said that dealers were willing to sell them their ration even if the opening days of the FPS were over. Some households also said that they could buy two months’ ration together, if they had been unable to purchase it in the previous month. Table 5 brings out the association between the PER and regularity of opening of the FPS. The pattern is striking (more regularity, less diversion) and is not coincidental. Bihar is the state with highest levels of reported under-purchase (82%) and lowest levels of predictability in the opening of the FPS – only 7% of respondents felt that opening hours were predictable. In Jharkhand, similarly, reported under-purchase is relatively high along with lack of predictability in the opening hours of the ration shop. Rajasthan lies at the other end of the spectrum where 91% of respondents said that the opening days of the FPS were known to them in advance; in Rajasthan, most sample households reported getting their full ration “normally”. Table 5: Predictability of Fair Price Shops
Average "Purchase- Proportion (%) of Proportion (%) of Respondents Entitlement Ratio" Respondent Who Reporting That Days of (PER) in the Past Report That They “Normally” Opening of FPS Are Fixed a Three Months Get Their Full Entitlement
Rajasthan
86-100
100
91
92
85
95
Tamil Nadu
4.2 Regularity and Predictability There has been much improvement in the predictability and regularity of PDS distribution and opening of FPSs. Most state governments have now instituted a system of pre-announced and fixed dates for distribution of PDS rations. For instance, in Rajasthan, FPSs are open from the 15th to the 22nd of each month. Regularity and predictability in opening days and hours is a major convenience for rural households, and also important to prevent diversion of PDS quotas. In many of the sample states, it used to be common for private dealers to open the FPS whenever they liked. This meant that households may or may not hear about the FPS being open. By the time they did get to hear of it, the dealer would tell them that stocks are over. Further, when opening days are predictable, households can plan their budgets better and arrange to have cash in hand on those days. Reports from households of being told that their quota had “lapsed” have certainly gone down. More than 70% of sample households said that their quota had not been diverted to the open market even once in the past six months (others either said it had or were not sure). This simple and effective reform measure needs to be enforced strictly in all states. This step was welcomed by the sample households and yet it was clear that this rule needs better enforcement. Though FPSs are supposed to remain open throughout the month (as per Supreme Court orders) or at least for a week (as per the newly instituted schedule in many states), respondents complained that shops would be open only for two to three days. This also resulted,
42
Chhattisgarh
95
97
72
Orissa
97-100
98
73
Himachal Pradesh
92-100
86
71
100
79
70 56
Andhra Pradesh Uttar Pradesh
77-88
77
Jharkhand
71
25
9
Bihar
45
18
7
84-88
75
60
All states
a "Purchase-entitlement ratio" refers to the proportion of full entitlement purchased by
households (see Table 3 for further details).
4.3 Accessibility Generally, the accessibility of the PDS is quite remarkable: the local FPS was 1.4 km away from the respondent’s house on average, and within 3 km for 91% of respondents (Table 6). Respon dents reported that, on average, the last round-trip to the FPS (including commuting and waiting time) took two hours. Distance to the FPS remains an issue in some of the remoter regions of the sample areas. Table 6: Access to Bank or Post Office vs PDS
Average Distance (Km)
Average Time Taken on Last Visita (Hours)
Proportion (%) of Respondents Who Reported Availability within Taking More Than 2 km (3 km) One Hour at Last Visit
Bank/post office
5.2b
3.25
37 (53)
76
Fair price shop
1.4
2.10
81 (91)
53
a "Time taken on last visit" includes travel and queuing time. b If one includes two outliers, the
average distance to the bank increases to 5.4 km.
The accessibility of the PDS is a major convenience for rural households. This is not an insignificant achievement given the earlier literature on urban bias in the PDS (Dev and Suryanarayana 1991; Howes and Jha 1992; Suryanarayana 1995). november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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5 Hunger and Food Intake 5.1 Hunger in the Survey Areas An important function of the PDS is to ensure food security in a limited sense, viz, protection from hunger. Survey respondents were asked if any member of the household had to skip a meal or sleep hungry in the three months preceding the survey.28 More than one-fifth (22%) said yes (Table 7). Table 7: Hunger and Dietary Diversity
Monthly Cereal Consumption (Kg, Per Capita)
P roportion (%) of Households That Reported Any Reported Did Not Consume the Following Member Having Eating Only Items Even Once in the Past Week Skipped Meals in Rice or Dal Fruit Eggs or Meat the Preceding Roti at the Three Months Last Meal Preceding
Bihar
18.5
70
13
15
88
Rajasthan
17.7
36
29a
15
90
66 91
Jharkhand
13.9
26
3
12
47
55 56
Chhattisgarh
17.2
17
5
9
82
Andhra Pradesh
11.7
16
4
1
54
9
Himachal Pradesh 13.2
6
1
3
66
87
Orissa
15.8
9
2
4
72
41
Tamil Nadu
12.1
6
5
1
34
36
Uttar Pradesh
13.4
7
2
14
79
84
All states
14.9
22
7
8
68
58
aIn Rajasthan, the questionnaire did not capture certain frequently consumed food items, such
as buttermilk (see text).
The interstate contrasts are striking. The proportion reporting hunger is very low in Himachal Pradesh (6%), Orissa (9%), Tamil Nadu (6%) and Uttar Pradesh (7%). In Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, it is around 15%. In the other states, the figures are not negligible: over a quarter of the households in Jharkhand reported skipping meals. In Rajasthan, the proportion rises to 36% and a whopping 70% in Bihar! It is perhaps not an accident that the highest levels of incidence of hunger (by a long margin) were in Bihar, where the PDS is in bad shape. Bihar is of course very poor, too, but so are, say, Chhattisgarh and Orissa. At the other end, the two states with an exemplary PDS (HP and TN) report very little hunger. While the state of the PDS may not be the only factor behind these contrasts, they are certainly consistent with the idea that the PDS has become an important tool of food security in rural India.
5.2 Diversification of Diets Diets in many survey areas remain heavily cereal-based ( Table 7). Per capita monthly cereal consumption, as reported in the survey, is nearly 15 kg on average.29 Not only is cereal consumption high, there does not seem to be much dietary diversity in people’s meals. Overall, 7% of sample households ate only rice or roti for their evening meal on the day before the survey. The figures for Bihar and Rajasthan are alarmingly high – 13% and 29% respectively.30 Half of all sample households reported eating vegetables every day in the week preceding the survey the corresponding proportions for fruit, eggs and meat are negligible: 5.4%, 0.7% and 0.4%, respectively. The last three columns of Table 7 report the proportion of households which did not consume dal, fruit or eggs and meat Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
on even once in the week preceding the survey. The state patterns are interesting: not surprisingly, in states where the PDS supplies subsidised dal, this proportion is negligible (1-3% for Andhra Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu). The lowest consumption of dal is reported in Bihar, Jharkhand, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh. Consumption of animal proteins (eggs and meat) is abysmally low in Himachal Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh.31
5.3 On Millets It is a common perception among policymakers that people are not interested in buying cereals other than wheat or rice from the PDS.32 Contrary to this perception, a majority of respondents (79%) said that they would buy millets or maize should they be provided at subsidised prices under the PDS. In Tamil Nadu, some respondents even said that they would be willing to take ragi in lieu of rice. There is a strong case for the introduction of millets and maize in the PDS. First, these grains are nutritionally superior to “fine” grains such as wheat and rice. Second, these crops are suited for dryland farming conditions that prevail in large parts of the country. Third, there is a huge potential for procurement of millets – in 2008-09, only 4% of total millet production was procured by the government. Fourth, procurement of millets/ maize would also be cheaper than buying wheat and rice. For instance, the economic cost of bajra in Rajasthan was half of that of paddy in 2010-11. Finally, the introduction of these grains would also impart a “self-selecting” character to the PDS as these grains are known to be more popular among the poor than richer rural households.
6 Cash vs Food In each of the sample households, the investigators had detailed discussions with the respondents regarding their views on cash and food. The question posed to the respondents was, how they would feel if the FPS was closed and instead of PDS grain, the government opened an account for them and deposited cash each month in that account. The amount deposited would be equal to the market value of the commodities they currently purchase from the FPS (i e, whatever it would cost them to buy these commodities on the market).33 It was clarified that this amount would be adjusted with price increases, so that it always enables people to buy from the market whatever they are getting today from the PDS. Based on the experience of pilot testing the questionnaire, we were prepared for some respondents being unable to engage easily with this hypothetical question. Given that our interest was as much in learning about people’s preferences as with understanding how they think about these issues, investigators were told to play the “devil’s advocate” if need be, presenting the advantages of the other option to the respondent. We were, however, pleasantly surprised to find that a large majority of households were able to articulate their preferences. Only 7.5% of all respondents were unclear or gave inconsistent replies. The remaining 92.5% were able to state clearly whether they preferred food or cash, or expressed a “conditional preference” for one of those two options
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6.1 People’s Preference between Cash and Food There is a very clear pattern in the preference between cash and food – in states where the PDS is functional, most people did not want to hear of cash transfers (Table 8 and Figure 1). However, in areas with a dysfunctional PDS, notably Bihar (where the system functioned so poorly that some households had received their entitlements only three times in the past 12 months), many respondents were quite open to the idea of cash transfers. The general sentiment in these villages was, “give us something, so long as it reaches us”. Overall, more than two-thirds of the respondents expressed a clear preference for food over cash; less than one-fifth (18%) were in favour of cash over food (Table 8).34 Clubbing conditional Table 8: Cash vs Food
Prefer Food
Proportion (%) of Respondents Who: Prefer Have a “Conditional Have a “Conditional Were Undecided, Cash Preference" Preference" Unclear or for Food for Cash Inconsistent
Andhra Pradesh
91.3
5.6
0.8
0
2.4
Bihar
20.8
54.2
18.1
1.4
5.6
Chhattisgarh
90.3
2.1
2.1
1.4
4.2
Himachal Pradesh
81.4
9.3
1.7
0
7.6
Jharkhand
66.0
22.2
3.5
1.4
7.0
Orissa
88.3
5.8
0.7
0
5.0 10.2
Rajasthan
59.6
14.7
7.4
8.1
Tamil Nadu
70.6
10.5
8.4
2.1
8.4
Uttar Pradesh
41.5
34.1
6.7
0
17.7
All states
67.2
17.9
5.6
1.6
7.5
See text for details.
44
Figure 1: Performance of the PDS and Views on Food vs Cash 1 1
Proportion of respondents who prefer food, village average
(e g, “I prefer food if good quality of grain is assured” or “I prefer cash if we are assured of the money being deposited on time every month”). Most of the respondents were also able to explain why they preferred one or the other, and in many cases the explanations were very insightful. Their thoughtfulness is also reflected in the fact that about one-fifth of the respondents were able to list at least one problem with both cash and food. People’s preferences depended on a combination of pragmatism, shrewdness and deep understanding of the local circumstances. For example, a widow in a remote Maoist-affected block of Nuapada district (Orissa) with no local transport but with a functional PDS was as likely to opt for food as a widow from a Bharatpur village (Rajasthan) with easy access to banks and markets where she suspected the PDS dealer was cheating her was to opt for cash. When some households were asked what they would opt for if the cash amount was double the market value of their current PDS entitlements, those who switched from food to cash made mental calculations about whether the additional hassles associated with taking cash would be compensated for by the larger amount being offered. A mid-survey informal review (conducted when teams had concluded the survey in the first of the two districts in each state) suggested that most households were in favour of food over cash transfers. To get a sense of whether and to what extent this decision was linked to the amount of cash offered, investigators were asked to offer double the market value of their current PDS entitlement, as a follow-up question.
.8 .8
.6 .6
.4 .4
.2 .2
0 0
20 40 60 80 100 00 20 40 60 80 100 Purchase-entitlement ratio (proportion of full entitlement bought in the past three months), village average.
and unconditional preferences for food, the proportion wh0 prefer food rises to 73%. State-wise preferences are reported in Table 8. Another interesting finding is that even in states where the proportion of respondents preferring food over cash is comparatively “low” (e g, 60% in Rajasthan), the converse preference (i e, for cash over food) remains uncommon. In Rajasthan, only 15% of respondents were in favour of cash over food. A related point is that many of those who were in favour of food felt very strongly about it. As mentioned earlier, some respondents were quite agitated when the cash proposal was discussed with them. Interestingly, the responses of men and women were quite similar. Among female respondents, 71% opted for food compared to 63% among male respondents. While men were more favourably disposed to the cash option (21% said they preferred cash), the corresponding figure for women is only slightly lower (15%). Among the social categories, adivasis in the sample were most favourably disposed to food (83%) with only 8% in favour of cash.
6.2 Readiness of the System One very basic indicator of readiness of the system for a transition to cash transfers is whether people have bank or post office accounts. Nearly three-quarters of sample households already had a bank or post office account – most of them were opened for NREGA wage payments. The lowest coverage was in Bihar (46%) and the highest in Himachal Pradesh (87%). Of those households that had a bank or post office account, nearly two-thirds (68%) had an account either in a nationalised bank (46%) or in “other banks” (22%). Post office accounts were also common – 30% reported having a post office account. Only 5% of households had more than one account. In the light of the relatively high rates of “financial inclusion” already achieved, the overwhelming preference for food in most sample states is all the more interesting. It suggests that the preference for food is not just a reflection of playing safe (i e, the rejection of cash is not just on account of being completely unfamiliar with the new system). Further, this also suggests that “readiness” to transition to cash transfers goes beyond opening bank or post office accounts, as suggested by some commentators. november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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For instance, readiness is also a question of accessibility, convenience and efficiency of the banking or post office systems.
6.3 Reasons for Preferring Food Respondents had a range of reasons for preferring the PDS to cash transfers: food security, poor access to banks and post offices, unimpressive record of other cash transfer programmes, underdeveloped rural markets, apprehensions regarding possible misuse of cash, and familiarity with the existing system, among others. Some of these are elaborated below. Food security was a major concern among sample households. The sense of security that poor households derive from getting an assured quota of grain every month through the PDS was palpable among many of those who expressed a preference for food.35 This was especially true for single women (often widows), the elderly and also poor households. Respondents expressed a range of reasons for being apprehensive about dealing with banks and post offices. The first among these is the distant location of banks and post offices, exacerbated by the lack of public transport facilities in most of the survey areas (Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu are exceptions to this). Second, households were also concerned with overcrowding at banks and post offices. This is because of the poor density of branches in rural areas as well as poorly staffed offices. Third, in some parts many respondents were scarred by their bitter experience (delays, overcrowding, repeated trips, etc) with banks and post offices in the context of NREGA wage payments. Since 2008, NREGA wages have been paid through bank and post office accounts and that transition has resulted in delays of up to one year (Khera 2011d). Apart from delays, in some areas respondents had encountered corrupt practices in the payment of NREGA wages even through banks and especially post offices. Fourth, respondents also said that the PDS provided greater flexibility in the sense that any household member, relative or neighbour could be sent to purchase the household’s monthly quota. They were worried that this would not be possible if a transition to bank payments were to be made. Fifth, high rates of illiteracy among respondents makes them uncertain of their ability to deal with banking procedures. Among respondents who had some experience with other forms of cash transfers (e g, social security pensions, Janani Suraksha Yojana or Indira Awas Yojana), many voiced another range of concerns, such as irregular payments and corruption (especially in the case of the Indira Awas Yojana) in the form of “cuts” being demanded by local officials. Another set of concerns related to under-developed rural markets. Primary among these was the distance to the market. Households felt that combined with poor access to banks and post offices, this would increase the transaction costs substantially especially in comparison with the current PDS system. (As Table 6 shows, on average, the bank/post office is 3.8 km further away than the FPS.) Second, not only are markets far, but in some parts (especially Chhattisgarh and Orissa) respondents were concerned about where they would buy their rice, as it seems rice is not easily available in the markets of those regions and not throughout the year. Some people were also anxious that making Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
frequent retail purchases would raise their food budget. A third factor brought up often – directly or indirectly – was the lack of trust in local markets and traders. Respondents said that if the PDS shop closes down, there is every likelihood of local private traders taking advantage of the lack of that fallback option for poor households and raising prices. Even when respondents did not articulate this distrust of local traders directly, they expressed apprehensions regarding being entirely reliant on private t raders. The current situation, where they are only partly dependent on private traders (with the rest of their needs being met out of home-produce and the PDS) seemed a source of comfort for them. Note that these concerns were expressed in spite of the presence of more than one kirana shop in the village (on average each village had 3.6 kirana stores). The reason why the kirana shop does not count as a real alternative to the PDS or the local market is that they do not necessarily stock grains and pulses and households seem to resort to purchases from them in emergency situations (e g, when there are unexpected guests). As a result, the correct market alternative available to rural households seem to be bulk grocery stores generally located in the nearest market. Those who preferred food were 2.8 km from the bulk grocery store and 5.6 km from the nearest market. Those who preferred cash were closer to the bulk grocery store (1.9 km) and the nearest market (3.7 km). The food-walas were 2.5 km from the post office, 5.7 km from the bank, and nearly 1 km from an all-weather road. The cash-walas were marginally closer to these facilities. Apart from this, some respondents appeared to be “risk averse” in the sense that they were happier with the current situation – with its various faults discussed earlier – than with transitioning into a system which they only partially understood. While the payment of NREGA wages through banks and post offices has given them an opportunity to understand the banking system, that experience has not always been positive.
6.4 Reasons for Preferring Cash Corruption in the PDS and dissatisfaction with the quality of grain were important reasons for preferring cash. While overall only 13% complained of corruption in the PDS, among those who preferred cash this proportion was much higher (47%). However, these proportions were very high in Bihar (54%) and UP (28%). Similarly, where respondents were unhappy with the quality of PDS grain, they were more likely to prefer cash: e g, compared with an overall average of 24% complaining about the quality of PDS grain, this proportion rises to 48% in Bihar, 39% in Tamil Nadu and 35% in Rajasthan. The only state where respondents preferred cash on account of irregularity of the FPSs was Bihar (50% of respondents reported that as a reason for preferring cash). Some respondents also valued the fact that cash could be spent however they liked, including on diversification of diets and purchasing better-quality grain. Based on a pilot survey, we expected those in favour of cash to generally be the better off households. This applies to some extent, but in many states the pattern was not particularly pronounced, perhaps because the survey was confined to BPL (or Antyodaya) households. However, in Tamil Nadu, where the PDS
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is universal, this pattern was very clear. For instance, average per capita expenditure was almost twice as high among households preferring cash than among households preferring food. But interestingly, even the better-off households in Tamil Nadu often mentioned that while they preferred cash for themselves, the situation of poorer people, who might prefer food, should also be taken into account.
7 PDS Reforms There is evidence of improvement in the PDS in most sample states. Some of the measures undertaken by state governments are discussed here (see also Drèze and Khera 2010b; Singh Sawhney 2011 for more on PDS reforms at the state level).
7.1 Management Practices in the PDS This section discusses management practices in the PDS, covering the viability of outlets, changes in systems and the complaints of dealers.
7.1.1 Viability of Outlets In the current system, the financial viability of FPSs depends on the volume of grain they handle and official commissions (Rs/quintal). In 1997, the number of ration cards handled by each FPS dealer shrank with the introduction of the targeted PDS. Low commissions combined with fewer cards made most FPSs financially unviable, a strong incentive (if not compulsion) to cheat. In the past three years, barring Bihar, Jharkhand and Uttar Pradesh, official commissions that FPS managers earn from the sale of PDS commodities have been revised (increased). This has contributed to improving the viability of the FPS. Simultaneously, the number of BPL cards per FPS has also increased in Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Rajasthan, as the coverage of the PDS was expanded. These two measures (higher commissions and more ration cards), combined with earnings from the sale of empty gunny bags (boras) after the grain has been sold, seem to reduce the pressure on FPS dealers to indulge in corrupt practices. They also make it much easier to replace private dealers with collective management of FPS (e g, by gram panchayats or self-help groups), as many states have already done.
7.1.2 Management Practices There have been several important changes in the policies for management of the FPSs. This includes, in some states, the handing over of FPSs to cooperative societies, gram panchayats, self-help groups and other community institutions. This was especially visible in Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa and Tamil Nadu. In Chhattisgarh, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu cooperative societies dominated; Orissa has taken the lead in handing over management of FPSs to gram panchayats, followed by Chhattisgarh and Andhra Pradesh. In Bihar and Uttar Pradesh all shops were run by private dealers. Private dealers were running most FPSs in Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand and Rajasthan (between 67% and 75% of FPSs were managed by them). Andhra Pradesh is the only state in which the PDS works reasonably well in spite of the involvement of private dealers on a large scale.
46
In cases where FPSs are run by cooperative societies, salesmen are appointed to run the FPS. As employees, the salesman receives a reasonable monthly salary (more than Rs 4,000 in both Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu). This is an important step towards reducing corrupt practices at the FPS. Another major change in policy has been the implementation of “door-step delivery” of grain to FPSs. Much of the diversion of PDS grain is known to happen between the lifting of grain from FCI godowns and the FPSs. When PDS dealers are responsible for this step, the chances of diversion are high. In many sample states, the food department has started making transport arrangements to deliver PDS commodities to the FPS. Half of the FPSs reported door-step delivery (either through state transport or contractors). Wherever this has been implemented, the PERs are high. A measure that has reduced the woes of FPS dealers is that commissions and transport reimbursements are adjusted at the time of depositing money for the grain. This reduces the risk of delays and harassment when private dealers try to recover their official commissions and transport reimbursements ex post. Improvement in the physical infrastructure for FPS has also helped smoother functioning of these shops. Nearly 40% of FPS in the sample had their own dedicated space. Another 30% were either housed in gram panchayat buildings or rented spaces. The proportion of shops located in private houses (e g, of the private dealer) remains high – 25%. Most shops (71%) used weighing scales with standard weights (rather than using stones, etc) and one-third even had electronic weighing machines. Calculators and receipt books were found at two-thirds and one-third of all FPSs in the sample respectively. These basic facilities, especially separate buildings and standard weights, contribute to streamlining the running of the ration shop.
7.1.3 PDS Dealers’ Complaints PDS dealers have various complaints. In some states, dealers did complain about low commissions for certain commodities. Quite surprisingly, in many areas dealers did not complain of having to pay bribes at the FCI godown or while submitting their records at the block office.36 Dealers also complained of under-staffing. For instance, in Tamil Nadu, each salesman is expected to make entries in several registers, make a bill, handle the cash, then bring out the five to seven commodities being purchased by each cardholder and weigh them. In other places, e g, Chhattisgarh and Orissa where many shops are run by gram panchayats, it becomes difficult for one person (panchayat secretary in Orissa) to handle all BPL cardholders over a short spell of three to four days. To deal with the work, in most survey areas, the practice is to hire one person (e g, a labourer) when the shop is open and pay him out of their own salary. However, these expenses are not reimbursed.
7.2 Computerisation of Records One of the most significant initiatives to increase transparency in the PDS has been the computerisation of records. This has several advantages. One, it helps to streamline the entire chain of distribution (from lifting to distribution at FPSs) and adopt more november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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e ffective management practices (e g, Chhattisgarh has been able to regularly update the list of cardholders in the state allowing them to weed out duplicates from the system). Two, it helps to maintain better records (e g, accurate, consistent, and tamperproof), even in real time in some cases. Three, the discipline of strict record-keeping makes corrupt practices more difficult. However, the full potential of these computerised databases for reducing corruption and fostering transparency is yet to be realised. For instance, in Chhattisgarh and Tamil Nadu, details of purchases by each ration cardholder are available in a computerised database. However this database has not been made public, as the NREGA Management Information System has been.37 If these were public access databases, it would help to bring greater transparency to the system.
7.3 Transparency Measures 7.3.1 Role of Ration Cards Ration cards can play an important role in checking whether PDS commodities have reached intended beneficiaries. Ration cards also allow cardholders to keep track of their purchases. In most states, ration cards were really old. The worst case perhaps was Jharkhand where almost all BPL respondents still had ration cards issued by the Bihar government in 1997! In Orissa, there was no space to record entries for current purchases because ration cards were outdated. The teams found few instances of ration card hoarding either by dealers or by sarpanches. Overall, 93% of sample households were in possession of their ration cards. The two states in which ration card hoarding was an issue are Bihar and Uttar Pradesh. The maintenance of ration cards varied quite a lot across states. In many survey areas, ration cards were legible and regularly updated. In others (e g, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh), while they were updated regularly, the entries were barely legible. In Bihar (42%), Jharkhand (51%) and Uttar Pradesh (42%), teams found that ration cards had some incorrect and inflated entries, especially in the case of non-grain commodities.
7.3.2 Coupons Bihar recently introduced a coupon system in the PDS as a “last mile” tracking device. At the beginning of each year, each BPL household is supposed to get 12 coupons, one for each month of the year. Each time a household purchases grain they are expected to deposit the coupons for that month with the dealer. Each month, the FPS dealer can only get as much grain as the number of coupons he deposits.38 However, far from acting as a transparency measure, the coupon system in Bihar was often creating more confusion (Dhorajiwala and Gupta forthcoming). One reason for this is the haphazard distribution and redeeming of coupons. What seems to have happened is that many BPL cardholders do no have the coupons, while some non-BPL households were given coupons. BPL households without coupons do not get rations. Further, the team found piles of undistributed coupons with mukhiyas (village heads). They also found that dealers were hoarding coupons. In one village, the team found that the FPS opens once every two Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
months; when BPL cardholders go to buy their ration, they are sold only one month’s ration, but are expected to deposit coupons for two months. In this and other ways, dealers are able to undermine the usefulness of coupons as an accountability mechanism. That, at any rate, seems to be the situation in Bihar at the moment. In the past, Rajasthan has experimented with the use of a similar coupon system – both for the PDS and in the context of food-for-work programmes – and the experience there has, apparently, been more encouraging.
7.3.3 Transparency of BPL Lists In many states, we noticed that the names of BPL households are painted outside the panchayat bhawan or FPS. This serves the dual purpose of helping people to know whether or not they are on the BPL list, and also of identifying “ghost” and “duplicate” cardholders. Chhattisgarh has gone a step ahead and painted a sign on the door frame of each rural house indicating the colour, type of ration card the household has, associated entitlements and the BPL census it was based on. This exercise has helped to clean up the BPL list, create awareness regarding entitlements and also shame richer households that were in possession of BPL or A ntyodaya cards.
7.3.4 SMS Alerts in Tamil Nadu In Tamil Nadu, the food department has put in place a system whereby any ration cardholder can send an SMS with the FPS number to receive instant information regarding the stock of each PDS commodity available in that outlet. The survey teams tested this at several FPSs and found that the stock register matched the information received through the SMS alert. This is an impressive arrangement, which illustrates the scope for effective IT-based transparency measures using straightforward technology. In a similar vein, the Chhattisgarh government provides a service whereby mobile phone users can register themselves to receive an SMS alert whenever a truck with PDS grain leaves for their village. The SMS gives details regarding the truck, quantity of grain being transported, etc.
7.4 Grievance Redressal In Tamil Nadu and Chhattisgarh, there is (at least partially) a functional system of grievance redressal. This includes providing phone numbers – or helplines – for ration cardholders to call in case of complaints. In Tamil Nadu, the phone numbers of concerned officials are painted outside each FPS. Local organisations in Chhattisgarh claimed that the helplines were effective and that complaints lodged there usually led to some effective action.
8 Performance of States Before concluding, this section attempts an informal ranking of states on eight parameters: degree of inclusiveness, integrity of the system (assessed in terms of the PER, quality of PDS grain, physical access (distance and time), predictability (whether days of opening of the FPS are fixed), reliability (whether days of
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pening are adequate), record-keeping (maintenance of ration o cards and of the sales and stocks registers) and institutional arrangements (door-step delivery of grain and whether the FPS has its own physical space). Evaluated in this way, we place Himachal Pradesh at the top of the chart and Bihar at the bottom (Table 9). The Himachal Pradesh model is of particular interest because it is based on the principle of a “universal, not uniform” PDS. The state has a BPL list and BPL households are entitled to PDS grain at a lower price than APL households. However, unlike other states, HP seems to have ensured APL quotas are lifted and supplied to APL households. Importantly, non-grain PDS commodities (pulses and edible oils) are provided to all households at the same price. Here the entitlements are linked to the number of members in the household, rather than ration card type. Finally, Himachal Pradesh has achieved all this without resorting to the practice of “spreading thinner”. Many would argue that Tamil Nadu, in fact, should be ranked first (even based on the indicators chosen in Table 9).39 Indeed, it is ranked number one on half of the indicators used. There are two important reasons for placing Himachal Pradesh above Tamil Nadu: one, in terms of providing a nutritious basket of goods, the HP model is better than the TN model – there is a larger provision for pulses and edible oil and this is linked to household size. Two, the achievements of Himachal Pradesh have to be evaluated in the light of its difficult terrain. A curious contrast between Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu is that Himachal’s performance has come about without strict checks and balances of the sort that one sees in Tamil Nadu. On the other hand, primary among Tamil Nadu’s achievements, are the monitoring systems that have evolved there – be it the use of people-friendly and low cost technology, simple and cost- effective measures for ensuring transparency and account ability, no other state has invested so much careful thought into putting systems in place (Alamu 2011; Meenakshi 2011; Mary Joseph forthcoming). The PDS in Andhra Pradesh is in large part inspired by the Tamil Nadu model – former Chief Minister N T Rama Rao rea lised early the advantages of reducing prices for winning votes as well as reducing corruption. Andhra Pradesh also never used BPL
lists prepared according to central government guidelines for the purpose of the PDS. They applied simple exclusion criterion and the state contributed to covering the additional households (over and above the central quota). In more recent times, Chhattisgarh has applied some important lessons from Tamil Nadu: this includes an expansion of PDS coverage, reduction in PDS prices, computerisation, doorstep delivery of grain, “deprivatisation” of ration shops (handing over ration shops to community institutions such as the gram panchayats and self-help groups) and setting up proper channels for grievance redressal. These measures along with other PDS reforms put Chhattisgarh fourth among the nine PDS states included in this survey. Since 2008, Orissa has been emulating the Chhattisgarh model (including universalisation of the PDS in the “KBK” region); it is ranked sixth. Its experiment with entrusting the management of the FPS to gram panchayat secretaries has had encouraging results (Aggarwal 2011). More recently, since May 2010, Rajasthan too has implemented some of the reform measures. It is worth noting that Rajasthan was selected as it belonged to the category of states with a “languishing” PDS in 2007-08. However, the results of this survey suggest that the reforms introduced in 2010 have already had an impact on the functioning of the PDS there. At the bottom of the rankings are Uttar Pradesh (ranked eighth), Jharkhand and Bihar. While there are some signs of improvement in Uttar Pradesh too (e g, respondents reported receiving 77-88% of their full entitlement of grain from the PDS), it is not yet clear whether, and to what extent, this is a broadbased improvement. Jharkhand, though ranked last but one, is an interesting case: this is because since 2009, the state slashed PDS prices of rice to Re 1/kg. Along with this, other PDS reforms have also been initiated (somewhat half-heartedly), e g, instituting a timetable for the distribution of PDS grain to improve predictability in the system and door-step delivery. However, its record on actual implementation of these measures is at best mixed. Further, Jharkhand had possibly the most incomplete and outdated BPL lists among all sample states. The reason why Jharkhand does not do as badly
Table 9: Performance Indicators of PDS and State Ranking State
Type of PDS
Purchase- Entitlement Ratio (PER)
Himachal Pradesh Universal, not uniform
92-100 92
Proportion of (%) Respondents Who Got “Poor” Quality Grain at the Time of the Last Purchase
Access to FPS Distance (Km) Time Taken to Ration (mins) for the Shop Last Round Tripa
4 1.4 114 (50) 17
0.6
109 (56)
Predictability and Reliability Proportion (%) of Respondents Who Said that the Opening Days of the FPS Are Fixed Adequate
Institutional Arrangementsb Proportion (%) of FPS Reporting Running “Door-step from a Delivery” Private c of Grain Residence
Record-Keeping Agree with Registers Rationcard Available for Entries (% of Inspection Respondents)d (% of FPS)
71
76
45
0
70
80
95
67
100
8
85
100
61
92
10
NA
70
39
100
0
94
75
44
8
9
96
53
91
39
35
28
87
100
56
44
0
17
53
75
9
26
83
50
43
91
7
29
0
100
25
55
Tamil Nadu
Universal
Andhra Pradesh
Quasi-universal
100
5
0.7
50 (83)
70
Chhattisgarh
Quasi-universal
95
14
2.3
233 (13)
72
Orissa
Expanded
97-100
14
2.4
194 (24)
73
Rajasthan
Expanded
86-100
19
1.7
122 (46)
Uttar Pradesh
Targeted
77-88
11
1.6
102 (55)
Jharkhand
Targeted
71
19
0.7
98 (47)
Bihar
Targeted
45
31
1.4
94 (54)
aIn brackets, proportion (%) of respondents who reported taking up to one hour for their last round trip to the FPS. bInformation on institutional arrangements and record-keeping is taken from
the village questionnaire and is based on the visit to the FPS and interview with the FPS manager. cIncluding direct (by government) or contracted door-step delivery. dExcluding households where responses were "unclear" or missing.
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as Bihar in spite of the lack of a proper system can be attributed to the reduction of the price of rice to Re 1/kg. The PDS survey and secondary data suggest that at least on one parameter (integrity of the system) there has been a substantial improvement in Jharkhand (Drèze and Khera 2011). This leaves Bihar at the bottom of the pile, way down. It seems that in spite of the rhetoric of development and good governance, things have not changed all that much there at least insofar as the PDS and NREGA are concerned.40 Bihar is at the bottom of the chart on seven out of eight indicators used in Table 9. Even here, though, it appears that things have improved in recent times.
9 Discussion and Concluding Remarks An important lesson from the PDS Survey 2011 is the need for a careful and nuanced evaluation of the PDS. Coverage, entitlements and implementation of the PDS at the state level vary so much that it now makes little sense to evaluate it only at the national level. From a universal PDS that supplies grain, dals and edible oil in Tamil Nadu with hardly any leakages to Bihar’s targeted PDS where much of the grain does not even reach the rural poor, in each survey state the PDS has unique features. The most encouraging finding from the PDS survey is that there is a broad-based trend of improvement in the sample states, linked with recent initiatives to make the system work. Some of these measures (e g, computerisation of records, “de-privatisation” of FPS management, rationalising official commissions and so on) have been outlined here. An important part of the revival, without which perhaps the reform measures mentioned above would not have been undertaken, is a new political will to make the PDS work. In spite of these positive developments, there remains much scope for improving the PDS, especially in terms of better quality of grain, monitoring and grievance redressal systems. Meanwhile, the PDS is already considered an important lifeline by many rural households. As we saw, for BPL households in many states, the implicit subsidy from PDS foodgrains alone is roughly equivalent to a week’s NREGA wages (without having to work) every month. Combined with NREGA employment (another two days per month, on average, among sample households), the PDS has become one important foundation for India’s much needed social security system. An important caveat is that the PDS survey focused mainly on BPL (and Antyodaya) households. It is possible that serious corruption persists in the APL quota; indeed there is some tentative evidence to that effect from the 66th round of the NSS (on this see Notes 1 There are two nationally representative surveys which asked about the PDS (NSS and the India Human Development Survey conducted by the National Council of Applied Economic Research), but neither goes much beyond possession of ration cards and PDS purchase. 2 As a follow-up activity, Wayanad and Palakkad districts of Kerala were also surveyed in July 2011. Those findings are not discussed here. 3 This classification of states is based on per capita monthly purchase of PDS grain. “Functioning” states are those where per capita purchase remained above 1 kg/month in the post-1999-2000 period; “Languishing” where it remained below 1 kg/month and “Reviving” states are those where
Drèze and Khera 2011). One possible reason why the PDS works better for BPL households than APL households is the lack of clear entitlements for the latter and arbitrariness of the APL quota. The PDS performs a very useful role in ensuring food security for the rural poor in another important sense: it ensures a regular supply of foodgrains even in the remotest parts of the country. As things stand, rural markets are under-developed and private markets seem to fail at the last mile in many areas. It is not easy to predict what would happen in the event of a dismantling of the PDS. This “stabilisation” role of the PDS is not adequately recognised today. People’s aversion to cash transfers must be read in the light of this observation. A hasty dismantling of the PDS in favour of cash transfers would expose rural households to considerable uncertainty and possibly exploitative transactions. While this and related obstacles (such as the poor reach of the banking system) can be removed, this is a big challenge, and there is no “quick fix”. For instance, one may suggest the use of business correspondents (“the BC model”) to improve access to banks. In this context, Andhra Pradesh’s experiment with the BC model for NREGA wage payments in some areas has been sobering. Four years after the model was introduced with a team committed to making it work, there are still major issues related to accountability, corruption and delays. The BC model comes with its own set of problems. Similarly, some commentators suggest that the problem of maintaining the purchasing power of cash in times of inflation has an easy fix – viz, to link cash transfers to an appropriate price index. However, this deceptively simple solution raises difficult questions such as whether local prices can be tracked with adequate precision and speed. Apart from the “technical” issues, there is also a political aspect to indexation. The recent freeze on NREGA wages (in money terms), lasting two years at a time of double-digit food inflation, shows that political dimensions also need to be factored in. In the end, it is worth recalling that the PDS infrastructure exists and in many ways performs a useful role. On the other hand, currently the infrastructure for cash transfers seems sorely lacking in rural areas. For those respondents who were dissatisfied with the functioning of the PDS, the correct question to ask seemed to be how to improve the PDS and reduce leakages further. In their view, the PDS, though a leaky ship, was nowhere close to sinking, and in fact, it helps them stay afloat. And therefore, to them, it seemed premature to jump into untested waters.
per capita purchase was below 1 kg/month at the beginning of the period, but crossed that threshold at the end of the period (2007-08). Note that purchases were averaged over all households, not just BPL households. 4 The sample Districts are Chittoor and Warangal (Andhra Pradesh), Katihar and Nalanda (Bihar), Mahasamund and Surguja (Chhattisgarh), Mandi and Sirmaur (Himachal Pradesh), Dumka and undivided Ranchi (Jharkhand), Nuapada and Sundergarh (Orissa), Bharatpur and Pali (Rajasthan), Hardoi and Jaunpur (Uttar Pradesh) and Dharmapuri and Dindigul (Tamil Nadu). 5 The proportion of the sample district’s rural population living in villages in the 500-1,500 population range varies from 9-17% Andhra Pradesh,
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19-21% Bihar, 52-63% Chhattisgarh, 38-44% Himachal Pradesh, 42-45% Jharkhand, 49-60% Orissa, 29-35% Rajasthan, 5-13% Tamil Nadu and 26-36% Uttar Pradesh. The survey findings should be read in the light of these figures. 6 In Dumka (Jharkhand), we were unable to find the BPL list; he voter list was used. 7 The terms “FPS Dealer” and “FPS Manager” are used interchangeably in this article for different management types (self-help groups, private dealerships, cooperative societies, etc). Both survey instruments are available online at http:// web.iitd.ac.in/~reetika/. 8 As we sampled “Households” rather than individuals, investigators were requested to maintain a rough balance between male and female respondents.
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9
10
11 12
13
14 15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22 23
24
50
This is important in its own right, and especially in the context of their views on cash and food (see Section 6). In the NFHS, the Standard of Living Index is the sum of scores assigned to the ownership of land, television sets, fans, pressure cooker, four- and twowheelers, type of house, toilet, energy and water source available to the household (see International Institute for Population Sciences 2000). A modified version of SLI is used here (see Table 1 for details). Annapoorna cards (entitled to 10 kg of free grain each month) are for the aged who do not get a pension. There were three Annapoorna card holders in the sample. These have been excluded from the discussion. It is not clear whether there have been further revisions to take into account the increase in population since then. This does not preclude the possibility that these states have a BPL list which is used to identify households for other government schemes such as the Indira Awas Yojana and Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana. In Tamil Nadu, one can choose either a “Rice Card” or a “Sugar Card”. The former entitles households to rice and other commodities; those with the “Sugar Card” forego their rice quota for an additional quantity of sugar. See http://www.tncsc. tn.gov.in/html/pds.htm for further details. The remaining 3% were either APL or Annapoorna cardholders. This was done by abolishing any differentiation of entitlements between APL and BPL households. An important caveat though is that many households in the KBK region do not have any (APL or BPL) ration card. According to some estimates nearly one-fifth of all households do not have any ration card, so the universalisation of the PDS in the KBK region remains incomplete. Interestingly, the survey team in Chhattisgarh found that households brought under the PDS as a result of the state’s decision to expand the PDS were much the same as previously identified “BPL” households (see Puri forthcoming). The expansion of PDS coverage in Jharkhand has come in phases, with one expansion during the drought of 2008-09 and another in 2010. It was not easy to trace when these expansions were ordered, what the entitlements of the new cardholders are or the criteria that were used for the selection of new cardholders. An order dated 3 August 2004 was issued by the Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs to implement the second expansion of the Antyodaya list. According to an interim order dated 2 May 2003 in the right to food case, widows are supposed to receive Antyodaya cards. For instance, in a 2002 survey of 400 households in Rajasthan, I found that BPL households were buying only 12.6 kg/month, 36% of their 35 kg quota. In the PDS survey 2011, the corresponding figure for the Rajasthan sample is 85-91%. As some states provide an additional 5 kg/household per month after a Supreme Court order, the entitlements are expressed as a range (27.3 to 28.7 kg/household per month). Another way of calculating a lower bound is to look at the lowest purchase from the PDS in the three months preceding the survey (i e, MarchMay), as a proportion of the full entitlement. Doing so for BPL households, over all states, households get 82% of their full quota. Whether we use the “Normal” purchase criterion, or the “Last Purchase” criterion, the same conclusion applies. In 2004-05, 90% of PDS grain in Bihar did not reach ration cardholders (Khera 2011c) according to NSS data; in our PDS survey, the average PER for Bihar is 45-47% (Table 3). More recent data pertaining to 2009-10 from the 66th round of the NSS also confirm that revival among most sample states has been consolidated between 2004-05 and 2009-10 (Drèze and Khera 2011).
25 The “Rice States” are Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and Tamil Nadu, where wheat is either not distributed at all or forms a very small share of total PDS grain entitlements. 26 In the case of Rajasthan, data on awareness was recorded only for about half of the households. Among these, awareness levels are high. The rem aining households include missing observations and those who were unaware of their entitlements. 27 Some households (nearly 14% of the sample) were unable to answer this question as they had been included in the PDS in the past one or two years only. 28 The figures on hunger reported here are not comparable to those reported by the NSS. The latter reports whether everyone in the household gets two square meals throughout the year whereas in this survey, we asked if any person in the household had ever had to sleep hungry/skip a meal in the past three months. During the debriefing workshop, investigators felt that there were variations in people’s willingness to talk about hunger in the household, and the data presented here should be read in that light. 29 If one excludes outliers, it comes down to 14.5 kg/ capita/month. 30 In the case of Rajasthan, it is possible that the questionnaire did not capture some food items that might be ordinarily consumed by households (e g, buttermilk). 31 This pattern can be explained partly by vegetarian diets for significant sections of the population. 32 Statements to this effect were often made in the consultations on the National Food Security Act. 33 Note that this amount exceeds the cash equivalent of PDS entitlements. The latter is equal to the market value of PDS commodities, minus what people pay for them at the FPS. This is still quite substantial (e g, Rs 4.65 per kg for wheat) in states that charge the “Central Issue Price”. 34 Excluding the Bihar sample, the corresponding proportions are 73% (food) and 13% (cash) respectively. 35 See Jose (2011), Nag (2011) and Puri (forthcoming). 36 In the past, PDS dealers have given us detailed accounts of the corrupt practices they indulge in to break even when official commissions are coupled with low volumes and pressures to pay bribes (see, e g, Khera 2011b). 37 The official NREGA website (www.nrega.nic.in) has a publicly accessible database which contains employment information for all job cardholders (including days of employment, wages earned, worksite employed on and so on). This makes it possible for people to verify their own records and that of others, apart from facilitating social audits. 38 This is not the same as the “Food Stamps” advocated by others which can be redeemed at any shop, in the private market or an FPS (e g, Basu 2011). 39 See Meenakshi (2011) and Alamu (2011). 40 In Table 1, one finds that Bihar 62% of sample households reported getting no work on NREGA in the past 12 months and the average days of NREGA employment in the same period was just 12 days. Not a single household had got 100 days of work. Secondary data also suggest that Bihar is among the worst states in terms of the scale of NREGA employment (see www.nrega.nic.in and Khera 2011d).
References Aggarwal, Ankita (2011): “The PDS in Rural Orissa: Against the Grain”? Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 46, No 36, 3 September. Alamu, R (2011): “It Just Works in Tamil Nadu”, The Hindu, 25 September. Bhatia, Bela and Jean Drèze (2002): “Still Starving in Jharkhand”, 16 August, Frontline. Citizen’s Initiative for the Rights of Children Under Six (2006): “Focus on Children under Six (New Delhi: Right to Food Campaign)”, available online at http://www.righttofoodindia.org/icds/icds_index.html. Last accessed on 15 September 2011. Dev, S Mahendra and M H Suryanarayana (1991): “Is PDS Urban Biased and Pro-Rich? An Evaluation”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 26, No 41, 12 October.
Dhorajiwala, Sakina and Aashish Gupta (forthcoming): “Can Coupons Cure Corruption?”, Frontline. Drèze, Jean (2001): “No More Lifelines: Political Economy of Hunger in Orissa”, Times of India, 17 September. – (2002a): “Ending Destitution”, The Hindu, 27 July. – (2002b): “From the Court to the Streets”, The Hindu. Drèze, Jean and Aparajita Goyal (2003): “The Future of Mid-Day Meals”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 38, No 44, 1 November. Drèze, Jean and Reetika Khera (2010a): “The BPL Census and A Possible Alternative”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 45, No 9, 27 February. – (2010b): “Chhattisgarh Shows the Way”, The Hindu, 13 November. – (2011): “PDS Leakages: The Plot Thickens”, 12 August, The Hindu. Himanshu and Abhijit Sen (2011): “Why Not a Universal Food Security Legislation?”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 46, No 12, 19 March. Hirway, Indira (2003): “Identification of BPL Households for Poverty Alleviation Programmes”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 38, No 45, 8 November. Howes, Stephen and Shikha Jha (1992): “Urban Bias in the Indian Public Distribution System”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 27, No 19, 9 May, pp 1022-30. International Institute for Population Sciences (2000): “National Family Health Survey 1998-99 (NFHS-2): India” (Mumbai: International Institute of Population Sciences). Jha, Shikha and Bharat Ramaswami (2010): “How Can Food Subsidies Work Better? Answers from India and the Phillippines”, ADB Economics Working Paper Series, No 221, September, Asian Development Bank, available online at http:// www.adb.org/documents/working-papers/2010/ economics-wp221.pdf. Last accessed 20 September 2011. Jose, Jijo (2011): “The PDS Learning Curve”, Down to Earth. Khera, Reetika (2002): “Mid-Day Meals in Rajasthan”, The Hindu, 13 November. – (2006): “Mid-Day Meals in Primary Schools: Achievements and Challenges”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 41, No 46, 18 November. – (2008): “Access to the Targeted Public Distribution System: A Case Study in Rajasthan”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 43, No 44, 1-7 November. – (2011a): “The UID Project and Social Welfare”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 46, No 9. – (2011b): “India’s Public Distribution System: Utilisation and Impact”, Journal of Development Studies, Vol 47, No 3, pp 1-23. – (2011c): “Trends in Diversion of Grain from the Public Distribution System”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 46, No 26, 21 May. – (2011d): ed. “Battle for Employment Guarantee (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Kotwal, Ashok, Milind Murugkar and Bharat Ramaswami (2011): “Don’t Water Down Food Security”, Indian Express, 19 January. Mahamallik, Motilal and Gagan Bihari Sahu (2011): “Identification of the Poor: Errors of Exclusion and Inclusion”, Economic & Political Weekly, Volume 46, No 9, 26 February. Mary Joseph, Aleesha (forthcoming): “Lessons in Grassroots Economics”, Frontline. Meenakshi, Swathi (2011): “A Case for Uniform and Universal System”, The Tribune, 7 September. Nag, Kuber (2011): “People’s Demand: ‘No Substitute for the PDS’”, 4 September, The Hindu. Puri, Raghav (forthcoming): “Cash Transfers? No, thanks”, Frontline. Sinha, Dipa (2008): “Social Audit of Mid-day Meal Scheme in AP”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 43, No 44, 1 November. Sawhney Singh, Ria (2011): “The PDS Is Not Ailing or Failing”, The Tribune, 7 September. Suryanarayana, M H (1995): “PDS: Beyond Implicit Subsidy and Urban Bias – The Indian Experience”, Food Policy, Vol 20, No 4, pp 259-78. Swaminathan, Madhura and Neeta Misra (2001): “Errors of Targeting”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 36, No 26, 30 June.
november 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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An Asian Clash of Civilisations? Revisiting the Sino-Indian Conflict of 1962 Ramachandra Guha
Nearly 50 years ago, India and China met in a brief, bloody border clash. This essay analyses that conflict in terms of its impact on the legacy of Jawaharlal Nehru. It explains the roots of Nehru’s interest in China, his hopes for relations between the two new nations, the origins of the border dispute, and its escalation into a full-fledged war. Nehru’s policies are assessed from the viewpoint of his critics and admirers. The deeper structural reasons for the conflict between India and China are analysed. Finally, the essay also speaks to the shadow cast by the war of 1962 on the geopolitics of the present day.
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n the late autumn of 1962, there was a short, intense border war between India and China. It resulted in the rout of an underprepared and poorly led Indian army. The battle was seen in national, civilisational, and ideological terms. India became free of British rule in 1947; China was united under communist auspices in 1949. These two nations were, or at least saw themselves as, carriers of ancient civilisations that had produced great literature, philosophy, architecture, science, and much else, but whose further evolution had been rudely interrupted by western imperialists. The recovery of their national independence was seen as the prelude to the re-emergence of China and India as major forces in the modern world. The defeat of 1962 was thus at once a defeat of the Indian army at the hands of its Chinese counterpart, a defeat of democracy by communism, a defeat of one large new nation by another, a defeat of one ancient civilisation at the hands of another. In India, the defeat was also interpreted in personal terms, as the defeat of Jawaharlal Nehru, who had held the offices of prime minister and foreign minister continuously since Independence in 1947. That debacle at the hands of China still hangs as a huge cloud over Nehru’s reputation. There is an intriguing comparison to be made here with the historical reputation of his fellow Harrovian, Winston Churchill. Robert Rhodes James once wrote a book called Churchill: A Study in Failure, whose narrative stopped in 1940. It excavated, perhaps in excessive detail, its subject’s erratic and undistinguished career before that date. But of course, all Churchill’s failures were redeemed by his great and heroic leadership in the second world war. It is tempting to see Nehru’s career as being Churchill’s in reverse, insofar as it was marked for many decades by achievement and success, these nullified by the one humiliating failure, with regard to China, which broke his nation’s morale and broke his own spirit and body. The war was fought in October-November 1962; a year-and-a-half later, Nehru was dead.
2 This essay is based on the Ingalls Lecture delivered at the HarvardYengching Institute on 29 March 2011. I am grateful to Shiv Shankar Menon, Madhavan Palat and Srinath Raghavan for their advice, to Sharan Madanapudi for assistance with research, and to Anil Nauriya for directing me to a crucial source. A shorter version was published in the National Interest, September-October 2011. Ramachandra Guha (
[email protected]) is a historian and writer based in Bangalore. Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
The four towering figures of 20th century India were Rabindra nath Tagore, Mohandas K Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, and B R Ambedkar. All four had a close connection with England, a country they each spent extended periods in, and whose literature and politics they were deeply influenced by. But all also had a long engagement with a second foreign country. In the case of Tagore, this was Japan, which he visited on four separate occasions, and whose culture and art he greatly admired. In the case
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of Gandhi, this second country was South Africa, where he spent two decades working as a lawyer, community organiser, and acti vist. In the case of Ambedkar it was the United States, where he studied, and by whose democratic traditions he was influenced. As for Nehru, other than India and England, the country that interested him most was China. His first major book, Glimpses of World History, published in 1935, has as many as 134 index references to China. These refer to, among other things, different dynasties (the Tang, Han, Ch’in, etc), corruption, communism, civil war, agriculture, and banditry. Already, the pairing of China and India was strongly imprinted in Nehru’s framework. Thus China is referred to as “the other great country of Asia”, and as “India’s old-time friend”. There was a manifest sympathy with its troubles at the hands of foreigners. The British were savaged for forcing both humiliating treaties and opium down the throats of the Chinese, this being an illustration of the “growing arrogance and interference by the western Powers”. More notable, perhaps, was Nehru’s chastisement of Japan, which “not only followed Europe in industrial methods”, but, at least with regard to China, “also in imperialist aggression”. Speaking of the wars between the two nations in the 1890s, Nehru writes that “no scruple had ever troubled Japan in the pursuit of her imperial policy. She grabbed openly, not caring even to cover her designs with a veil.” He also judged Japan harshly with regard to the war with China that took place at the time of the book’s writing. Thus, when the aggressor met with resistance from Chinese nationalists, it “tried to break it by vast and horrible massacres from the air and other methods of unbelievable barbarity”. But, continued Nehru, “in this fiery ordeal a new nation was forged in China, and the old lethargy of the Chinese people dropped away from them. … The sympathy of the people of India was naturally with the Chinese people, as it also was with the Spanish Republic, and in India and America and elsewhere great movements for the boycott of Japanese goods grew.” The sympathy of this particular Indian manifested itself in a trip he made to China in August 1939. The visit was cut short by the outbreak of hostilities in Europe, which forced Nehru to come home to discuss with his nationalist colleagues the impact of the war on their movement. Even so, the two weeks he spent in China were, wrote Nehru, “memorable ones both personally for me and for the future relations of India and China. I found, to my joy, that my desire that China and India should draw ever closer to each other was fully reciprocated by China’s leaders… I returned to India an even greater admirer of China and the Chinese people than I had been previously, and I could not imagine that any adverse fate could break the spirit of these ancient people, who had grown so young again.” Shortly after writing these words, Nehru was jailed by the British. While in prison for the next three years, he composed The Discovery of India, a brilliant and idiosyncratic work that mixes autobiography with history, and cultural analysis with political prophecy. One important strand in the book relates to relations between the two great Asiatic civilisations. Nehru speaks of the exchange of ideas and artefacts carried on down the centuries by pilgrims, mystics, scholars, travellers, and diplomats. “During the thousand years and more of intercourse between India and
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China”, he writes, “each country learnt something from the other, not only in the regions of thought and philosophy, but also in the arts and sciences of life. Probably China was more influenced by India than India by China, which is a pity, for India could well have received, with profit to herself, some of the sound common sense of the Chinese, and with aid checked her own extravagant fancies.” In The Discovery of India, Nehru again compares China favourably with Japan. China’s struggle for national dignity attracted “much sympathy” in India, in contrast to “a certain antipathy” for Japan. The Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek had visited India during the war; he, and his attractive and forceful wife, met Nehru and were impressed by him. The viceroy, Linlithgow, commented cattily that madame Chiang had “a kittenish weakness for Nehru’s eyelashes”. The Indian returned the affection, albeit in political rather than personal terms. The presence of the generalissimo and his wife, thought Nehru, “and their manifest sympathy for India’s freedom, helped to bring India out of her national shell and increased her awareness of the international issues at stake. The bonds that tied India and China grew stronger, and so did the desire to line up with China and other nations against the common adversary” (namely, fascism and imperialism). Writing at the conclusion of the second world war, Nehru could clearly see the decline of Great Britain, and the emergence of the United States and Soviet Russia as the two major powers. This bipolar world would, in time, become a multipolar world. Nehru thought that “China and India are potentially capable of joining that group. Each of them is compact and homogeneous and full of natural wealth, manpower and human skill and capacity…. No other country, taken singly, apart from these four, is actually or potentially in such a position”. “It is possible of course”, wrote Nehru presciently, “that large federations of groups of nations may emerge in Europe or elsewhere and form huge multinational States”. In his pre-1947 writings, Nehru saw China from the lens of a progressive anti-imperialist, from which perspective India and China were akin and alike, simultaneously fighting western control as well as feudal remnants in their own society. Chiang and company, like Nehru and company, were at once freedom- fighters, national unifiers, and social modernisers. It stood to reason that, when finally free of foreign domination, the two neighbours would be friends and partners.
3 I turn now to Jawaharlal Nehru’s atttude to China as prime minister and foreign minister. The bridge between these two periods, pre- and-post-Indian independence, is provided by the Asian Relations Conference, held in New Delhi in March-April 1947. In his speech to the conference, Nehru called China “that great country to which Asia owes so much and from which so much is expected”. The conference itself he characterised as “an expression of that deeper urge of the mind and spirit of Asia which has persisted in spite of the isolationism which grew up during the years of European domination. As that domination goes, the walls that surrounded us fall down and we look at one another again and meet as old friends long parted”. November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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The Chinese delegation to this conference represented Chiang Kaishek’s Guomindang Party; there was also a separate delegation from Tibet. Two years later the communists came to power in Beijing. The Indian ambassador, K M Panikkar, was greatly impressed by the new rulers of China. He compared Mao Zedong to his own boss, Nehru, writing that “both are men of action with dreamy, idealistic temperaments”, both “humanists in the broadest sense of the term”. One does not know what Nehru made of this comparison. But an Indian who had a different and more realistic view of Mao and his comrades was the home minister, Vallabhbhai Patel. When China invaded Tibet in October 1950, Patel wrote to Nehru that “communism is no shield against imperialism and that the Communists are as good or as bad imperialists as any other. Chinese ambitions in this respect not only cover the Himalayan slopes on our side but also include important parts of Assam… Chinese irredentism and Communist imperialism are different from the expansionism or imperialism of the Western Powers. The former has a cloak of ideology which makes it 10 times more dangerous. In the guise of ideological expansion lies concealed racial, national or historical claims.” The prime minister, however, continued to give the Chinese the benefit of doubt, speaking in Parliament in December 1950, he said: “Some hon Members seem to think that I should issue an ultimatum to China, that I should warn them not to do this or that or that I should send them a letter saying that it is foolish to follow the doctrine of communism. I do not see how it is going to help anybody if I act in this way.” Through the first half of the 1950s, Nehru continued to see China as a kindred soul. Like India, it had embarked on an ambitious and autonomous programme of economic and social development, albeit under communist auspices. Once more these civilisations could interact with and learn from each other. As Nehru wrote to his chief ministers in June 1952: “[A] variety of circumstances pull India and China towards each other, in spite of differences of forms of government. This is the long pull of geography and history and, if I may add, of the future.” Later the same year, after a visit to India’s north-east, Nehru insisted that there was not “the slightest reason to expect any aggression on our north-eastern frontier. A little clear thinking will show that it is a frightfully difficult task for any army to cross Tibet and the Himalayas and invade India. Tibet is one of the most difficult and inhospitable of countries. An army may possibly cross it, but the problem of logistics and feeding it becomes increasingly difficult. The climate is itself an enemy of any large-scale movement. Apart from this, there was no particular reason why China should think of aggression in this direction.” Nehru even thought “there is a definite feeling of friendliness towards India in China”. In June 1954, Zhou Enlai visited New Delhi. In a letter to his chief ministers written immediately afterwards, Nehru reported that the Chinese prime minister “was particularly anxious, of course, for the friendship and cooperation of India…. His talk was wholly different from the normal approach of the average Communist, which is full of certain slogans and cliches. He hardly mentioned communism or the Soviet Union or European politics.” Nehru then reported his own talk: “I spoke to him at some length Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
about our peaceful struggle for independence under Gandhiji’s leadership and how this had conditioned us. Our policies had developed from that struggle and we proposed to follow them.” Nehru made a return visit to China in October 1954. His reception there is described in a diary maintained by his security officer, K F Rustamji. In Beijing, a million people lined the roads to greet and cheer Nehru and Zhou as they drove in an open car from the airport to the city. “All along the route”, observed Rustamji, “not a single police in uniform was visible”. Then he visited Canton, Dairen, Nanking, and “at each place the cheers became louder, the clapping more vigorous. At each place we felt that nothing could be better than the reception given there. Then we moved on and found that there was something better – Shanghai. There the airport was a mass of people waving gladioli flowers – there were so many flowers that they seemed to change the colour of the airport.” This reception must certainly have flattered Nehru. But it seems also to have convinced him of the depth of popular support for the regime (with not a policeman in sight), and of the desire for friendship with India. As he wrote to his closest friend, Edwina Mountbatten, “I had a welcome in China, such as I have in the big cities of India, and that is saying something. …The welcome given to me was official and popular. …One million took part on the day of arrival in Peking. It was not the numbers but their obvious enthusiasm. There appeared to be something emotional to it.” In a letter to his chief ministers, Nehru likewise insisted that “this welcome represented something more than political exigency. It was almost an emotional upheaval representing the basic urges of the people for friendship with India.” He had “no doubt at all that the Government and people of China desire peace and want to concentrate on building up their country during the next decade or so”.
4 Towards the end of 1956, Zhou Enlai visited India again. The Dalai Lama was also in his party. The Tibetan leader briefly escaped his Chinese minders, and told Nehru that conditions were so harsh in his country that he wished to flee to India. Nehru advised him to return. In 1958, the Indian prime minister asked to visit Tibet, but was refused permission. Now the first seeds of doubt, or at least confusion, were planted in his mind. Perhaps the Chinese were not as straightforward, or indeed as progressive, as he had supposed. In July 1958, a map was printed in Beijing which showed large parts of India as Chinese territory. It was also revealed that the Chinese had built a road linking Xinjiang to Tibet, which passed through an uninhabited, and scarcely visited, stretch of the Indian district of Ladakh. There were protests from New Delhi, whereupon Zhou Enlai wrote back saying that the McMahon Line, marking the border between India and China, was a legacy of British imperialism and hence not “legal”. The Chinese leader suggested that both sides retain control of the territory they currently occupied, pending a final settlement. Meanwhile, a revolt broke out in Tibet. It was put down, and in March 1959 the Dalai Lama fled to India. That he was given refuge, and that Indian political parties rushed to his defence, enraged the Chinese. The war of words
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e scalated. That autumn there were sporadic clashes between Indian and Chinese troops on the border. In October 1959, Nehru wrote to his chief ministers that “this tension that has arisen between India and China is, of course, of great concern to us. That does not mean that we should get alarmed in the present or fear any serious consequences. I do not think any such development is likely in the foreseeable future. But the basic fact remains that India and China have fallen out and, even though relative peace may continue at the frontier, it is some kind of an armed peace, and the future appears to be one of continuing tension.” Nehru continued, Behind all this frontier trouble, there appears to me to be a basic problem of a strong and united Chinese State, expansive and pushing out in various directions and full of pride in its growing strength. In Chinese history, this kind of thing has happened on several occasions. Communism as such is only an added element; the real reason should be found to lie deeper in history and in national characteristic. But it is true that never before have these two great countries, India and China, come face to face in some kind of a conflict. By virtue of their very size and their actual or potential strength, there is danger in this situation, not danger in the present, but rather in the future. That danger may be minimised by other developments and by the world moving gradually towards peace. But the danger will still remain, partly because of the tremendous rate of increase of the population of the Chinese State. Apart from population, there has been and is a certain homogeneity among the Chinese people which probably we lack. I have no doubt, however, that in the face of danger there will be much greater cohesion in India than we have at present. Perhaps, that may be one of the good effects of this new and unfortunate development.
By now, Nehru appeared to have come around, at least in part, to the point of view articulated by Vallabhbhai Patel in 1950. The Chinese state was more nationalist than communist. Still, he felt that there was no chance of a full-fledged war between the two countries. To protect India’s interests, Nehru now sanctioned a policy of “forward posts”, whereby detachments were camped in areas along the border claimed by both sides. This was a preemptive measure, designed to deter the Chinese from advancing beyond the McMahon Line. In 1960, Zhou Enlai came to New Delhi in an attempt to find a settlement. India’s case was stronger in the western sector, where Chinese interests were greater. Here lay the access road linking the two troublesome provinces of Tibet and Xinjiang, a road that passed through territory claimed by India. On the other hand, in the eastern sector, where Chinese claims were more robust, their strategic interests were minimal. Zhou offered a quid pro quo. The Chinese would not challenge Indian control of the eastern sector, so long as the Indians in turn winked at their incursions in the west. It was a practical, and in terms of realpolitik, a reasonable proposal. Nehru himself was open to considering it favourably. But by this time knowledge of the road in Ladakh had become public, and there was an outcry in Parliament and the press. The border clashes and the flight of the Dalai Lama had further inflamed public opinion. Opposition politicians accused Nehru of betraying the national interest by talking to the Chinese. Not an inch of Indian territory, they said, could or should be ceded to the
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Chinese. In the prevailing climate, Nehru chose not to pursue the idea of a settlement.
5 In July 1962, there were clashes between Indian and Chinese troops in the western sector, followed, in September, by clashes in the east. In the third week of October, the Chinese launched a major military strike. In the west, the Indian resisted stoutly, but in the east they were overwhelmed. The Chinese swept through the Brahmaputra Valley, coming as far as the Assam town of Tezpur. The great city of Calcutta was in their sights. However, on 22 November, the Chinese announced a unilateral ceasefire, and withdrew from the areas they had occupied. Why did the Chinese act when they did? One school of histo rians argues that they were reacting to Nehru’s provocative forward policy. Another school argues that the military adventure was to distract the attention of the Chinese people from domestic events, such as the failure of the Great Leap Forward. This had led to increasing criticism of Mao within the Chinese Communist Party, to deflect and answer which the plan to invade India was sanctioned. This dispute, between those who see India as the instigator and those who see China as the aggressor, dominates the literature to this day. A third explanation for the war was offered by Jawaharlal Nehru himself, in a fascinating, forgotten letter written to his chief ministers on 22 December 1962. Here, Nehru admitted the lack of preparedness of the Indian army and the lack of foresight of the political leadership in not building roads up to the border to carry supplies and ammunitions. On the other side, the invasion of Tibet and the Korean war had made the Chinese primed and ready for battle. Then he asked the question – why did the Chinese attack when and in the manner they did? The answer, he argued, had to do not so much with the border dispute as with their larger desire to keep the cold war going. Between Russia and the United States, said Nehru, lay a large number of countries which, though weak in conventional military terms, had become symbols “of peaceful coexistence and their policy of non-alignment to military blocs has gradually been appreciated more and more even by the big blocs. Both the United States of America and the Soviet Union have appreciated this policy of non-alignment and peaceful coexistence, even though they cannot adopt it for themselves because of their fear of each other. … While some individuals in either group of countries may think and behave like warmongers, the fact is that most countries or nearly all, including the leaders of the two blocs, do not want a war and would welcome some peaceful arrangement. The hunger for disarmament is itself witness of this urge.” In Nehru’s view, to this “desire for peace and coexistence there is one major exception, and that is China. … It believes in the inevitability of war and, therefore, does not want the tensions in the world to lessen. It dislikes non-alignment and it would much rather have a clear polarisation of the different countries in the world. It is not afraid even of a nuclear war because as it is often said, they can afford to lose a few hundred million people and yet have enough numbers left.” Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
China, claimed Nehru, was upset with “Russia’s softening down, in its opinion, in revolutionary ardour and its thinking of peace and peaceful coexistence…” In recent years, this difference in opinion had led Russia to withdraw economic support to China. To make matters worse, Russia had even offered technical aid to India. Nehru wrote that, It was possible for China to fall into line with Russian thinking and present policy, and thus perhaps get more aid. But they are too proud to do this and trained too much in the old revolutionary tradition to accept defeat in this matter. What else then could they do? The other course was to heighten tensions in the world and to make non-alignment and peaceful coexistence more and more difficult to maintain. … India was said to be the chief non-aligned country in the world, and a country which constantly preached the virtues of peaceful coexistence. If India could be humiliated and defeated and perhaps even driven into the other camp of the Western Powers, that would be the end of nonalignment for other countries also, and Russia’s policy would have been broken down. The cold war would be at its fiercest and Russia would be compelled then to help China to a much greater degree and to withdraw help from the nations that did not side with it completely in the cold war. If this reasoning is correct [continued Nehru], then India became the stumbling block to China in the furtherance of its wider policy. The removal of India as a power which has become an obstacle in the way of China becoming a great power, became the primary objective of Chinese policy, and the elimination of non-alignment became particularly important from China’s viewpoint. China wanted to show that Soviet policy was wrong. If this could be demonstrated then the Communist countries and those that followed them would veer round to the Chinese point of view and a hegemony of that bloc would be created. At the same time, the Asian and African countries would have to choose one way or the other. Many of them would be frightened of China. In this state of affairs, China would get much more help from the Soviet and allied countries and her industrialisation would proceed more rapidly. If war comes, well and good. If it does not come, the strength of the Communist and allied bloc would grow and there would be interdependence of [the] Soviet Union and China.
This then was Nehru’s explanation for the war – that China hoped by its actions to thrust India into the American camp, and thus restore the clear, sharp, boundaries that once separated the Russian bloc of nations from the American one, boundaries that however had become blurred and porous owing to the success of the Indian, or more specifically Nehruvian, idea of non-alignment.
6 I now move on to an analysis of how Indians, then and how, have written or spoken of Jawaharlal Nehru’s policies vis-à-vis the Chinese. There are and have been three distinct views on the subject. The first is empathetic. Affirmed by Nehruvians, Congress supporters and a large swathe of the middle-aged middleclass, this holds Nehru to be a good and decent man betrayed by perfidious communists. This point of view finds literary illustration in a novel by Rukun Advani called Beethoven among the Cows. A chapter entitled “Nehru’s Children” is set in 1962, “the year the Chinese invaded India, a little before Nehru died of a broken heart”. The action, set in the northern Indian town of Lucknow (a town Nehru knew well, and visited often) takes place just before war, when much sabre-rattling was going on. The people in Lucknow were spouting couplets “shot through with Nehru’s Shellyean
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idealism on the socialist Brotherhood of Man” (a brotherhood now being denied and violated by the perfidious Chinese). Drawing on his childhood memories, the novelist composed four couplets that reflect the mood of the times. Here they are, in Hindi: Jaisé dood aur malai, Hindi-Chini bhai bhai Hosh mé ao, hosh mé ao, Chou, Mao, hosh mé ao Jaisé noodle, vaisé pulao, Nehru saath chowmein khao Chou, Mao, hosh mé ao, hosh mé ago aur chowmein khao. Haath milao, gaal milao, Nehru saath haath milao Chou, Mao, hosh mé ao, hosh mé ao aur haath milao. Dono bhai Chou Mao, Nehru saath baith jao Baith jao aur chowmein khao, Chou, Mao, hosh mé ao. I will not attempt here a literal translation of each of the four couplets, but content myself with the one line summary of the novelist, which is that these verses “asked the Chinese leaders to shake hands with Nehru, eat chowmein with him, and generally come to their senses”. The second view, opposed to the first, is contemptuous of Nehru. It sees him as a foolish and vain man who betrayed the nation by encouraging China in its aggressive designs on the sacred soil of India. This viewpoint is associated with ideologues of the Hindu right, speaking for organisations such as the Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS) and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP). In the 1960s, the RSS chief M S Golwalkar wrote witheringly that “the slogans and paper compromise like ‘peaceful coexistence’ and ‘Panchsheel’ that our leaders are indulging in only serve as a camouflage for the self-seeking predatory countries of the world to pursue their own ulterior motives against our country. China, as we know, was most vociferous in its expression of faith in Panchsheel. China was extolled as our great neighbour and friend for the last two thousand years or more from the day it accepted Buddhism. Our leaders declared that they were determined to stick to China’s friendship ‘at all costs’. … How much it has cost us in terms of our national integrity and honour is all too well known.” Writing in 1998, the journalist M V Kamath named names. Saluting the nuclear tests overseen by the BJP, he recalled the “time, under Jawaharlal Nehru and V K Krishna Menon when a decision must have been taken not to engage in a ‘debilitating and criminally wasteful arms race’; it was very noble of the two gentlemen who taught us to sing Hindi-Chini-bhai-bhai in chorus. For our efforts China kicked us in the teeth.” Kamath was writing decades after the conflict, but a contemporary expression of this point of view can be found in the writings of Deendayal Upadhyaya, the leading ideologue of the BJP’s mother party, the Jana Sangh. When the first clashes broke out on the border in September 1959, Upadhyaya argued that “the present situation is the result of complacency on the part of the Prime Minister. It seems that he was reluctant to take any action till the situation became really grave”. The Jana Sangh leader complained that Nehru had “more faith in his Panchsheel per orations than in preparation and performance”. The prime minister was compared to the notoriously effete and incompetent 19th century ruler of Awadh, Wajid Ali Shah. “Only he [Nehru] knows when a crisis is not a crisis”, wrote Upadhyaya sarcastically, only
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Nehru knew “how to emit smoke without fire and how to arrest a conflagration in a Niagara of verbiage!” Week after week, Upadhyaya excoriated Nehru and his China policy in the pages of the RSS journal, Organiser. “As usual the Prime Minister has exhibited his temperamental weakness in dealing with the issue of Chinese aggression”, he remarked: “Why can’t he [the Prime Minister] – with equal justification, and more justice – accept Tibet’s case [over China’s], which is also in our national interest? What native impotence makes him willing to strike but afraid to wound? What confuses him into subverting all three aims of his Northern policy by his single misunderstanding of the position of Tibet? Is it plain ignorance? Is it simple cowardice? Or is it a simple national policy induced by military weakness, ideological ambiguities and weakening of nationalism?” Upadhyaya accused Nehru of showing little serious intent in acting upon border transgressions by the Chinese. “While on the one hand, he [Nehru] had been declaring that India was firm in her stand, on the other he counselled forbearance in the Lok Sabha, saying that there were limits to firmness also. Of course there are limits to everything, but unfortunately the Prime Minister’s limits are set to startling points”. The prime minister’s attitude to China, concluded Upadhyaya, was “characteristic of his weak and timid nature”. The argument that India’s first prime minister was pusillanimous with regard to China was also articulated by that obsessive critic of all that Nehru stood for, the brilliant socialist thinker Rammanohar Lohia. In a speech in Hyderabad in October 1959, Lohia asked Nehru and his government “to take back the territory the Chinese have captured by whatever means it thinks fit”. “Increase the country’s strength and might”, he thundered; “Then alone China’s challenge can be met”. Then, when Zhou Enlai visited Delhi in April 1960 and was met with a hostile demonstration organised by the Jana Sangh, Lohia said that “if any one deserves a black flag demonstration, it is no one else but Mr Nehru for extending an invitation to an outright aggressor.” The third view of Nehru’s attitude to Chinese claims and demands was perhaps the most interesting. Exuding pity rather
Who watches the media?
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than contempt, this held Nehru to be a naïve man misled by malign advisers and by his own idealism. Responding to the border clashes in the second half of 1959, C Rajagopalachari wrote several essays urging Nehru to abandon his long-held and deeply cherished policy of non-alignment. “Rajaji” had once been a colleague of Nehru in party and government. Now, however, he was a political rival, as the founder of the Swatantra Party. In the realm of domestic policy, Rajaji and the Swatantra Party criticised Nehru for his hostility to the market. In the realm of foreign policy, they deplored his reluctance to identify more closely with the western bloc of nations, led by the United States. The growing tension between India and China provided, in Rajaji’s view, one more reason to abandon non-alignment. The change in creed, he said, was made necessary by the fact that “one of the nations engaged in the cold war makes aggression on an uninvolved nation”. “The path of peace”, wrote this other and equally remarkable disciple of Gandhi in the first week of December 1959, is “not always smooth. China has incontinently betrayed India and Nehru. He dare not resist Indian public resentment over China’s aggression and her attempt to sabotage India’s position in the Himalayan frontier. Whatever be China’s objective, this aggression and show of power have put an end to any meaning in non-alignment.” Rajaji sympathised with Nehru’s desire to avoid full-scale war, which lay behind his reconciling attitude to the Chinese. Nor had he any illusions about the western powers, whose policies reflected a general unwillingness to accommodate the aspirations of the postcolonial world. Still, the border conflict had, wrote Rajaji in the last week of December 1959, called for “a complete revision of our attitude and activities in respect of foreign policy”. With China backed implicitly and explicitly by the Soviet Union, India had no alternative but to seek support from the western powers. Rajaji found justification for a tilt to the west in a verse of the ancient Tamil classic, the Kural of Thiruvalluvar, which, in his translation, read; “You have no allies. You are faced with two enemies. Make it up with one of them and make of him a good ally.” In May 1960, after Zhou Enlai had come and gone, and Nehru himself had begun making noises about standing firm on India’s claims, Rajaji warned that it would be a mistake to seek to unilaterally evacuate Chinese forces from the thousands of square miles of territory it controlled which were claimed by India. “Our armed forces can be used against this trespass”, he wrote, “but no one can guarantee the localisation of conflict. It would be foolish to start an operation knowing fully well that it would be a leap in the dark. The only legitimate and wise course is to drop the isolationist policy which we have been hugging to our bosom, and get into closer bonds of alliance with the World Powers that are ranged against Communism.” There was, he said, “no other way, and so it must be followed, for the rehabilitation of India’s prestige and gathering of moral power against the aggressor”. There were, of course, points of overlap between the positions articulated by Rajaji, Deendayal Upadhyaya, and Lohia. This is not surprising, since all were opponents of Jawaharlal Nehru and the ruling Congress Party. However, there were also points of divergence. Rajaji more clearly recognised that India did not Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
have the military might to combat, still less overcome, the Chinese. Hindu ideologues like Upadhyaya suggested that India’s deficiencies in this regard could be made up by a mobilisation of militantly spiritual energy; socialists like Lohia thought that the gap could be filled by collective social action. Rajaji could see, however, that it was not merely a failure of nerve, but of capacity, which could be remedied only through the forging of a new strategic alliance.
7 First articulated in the late 1950s, the three views outlined above found powerful expression in the immediate aftermath of the war. A debate in Parliament in November 1962 saw many members express solidarity with the prime minister. India’s leader had been betrayed, and it was time to close ranks and stand behind him. The debate ended with a resolution affirming “the firm resolve of the Indian people to drive off the aggressor from the sacred soil of India however long and hard this struggle may be”. Ordinary citizens also rallied around Nehru, with young men lining up outside army recruitment centres and young women donating their jewels to the National Defence Fund. Letters to the editor urged opposition leaders to forget past differences and work in cooperation with the prime minister. In the first weeks of the war, when it became clear that the Chinese advance had not and could not be stopped, there was much criticism of the defence minister, V K Krishna Menon. Menon was not new to controversy; in April 1961, in a polemic described at the time as “perhaps the greatest speech that has been made on the floor of [the Indian Parliament] since Independence”, J B Kripalani had attacked Krishna Menon for having “created cliques [and] lowered the morale of our [armed] forces”, by promoting incompetent officers congenial to “his political and ideological purpose”. Now, with the Indian defences disintegrating, there were loud calls for Menon to resign. These criticisms usually stopped short of attacking Nehru himself. The respected editor of the Indian Express, Frank Moraes, wrote that it was “the Defence Minister who is most culpable for the deficiency of arms”. The lack of preparedness of the army under his leadership now made Menon look “like Cardinal Wolseley, left naked to his friends and enemies”. The readers of the newspaper agreed. The defence minister, said one G R Subbu, “should make room for another man. All our Defence losses spring from the policies of Mr Krishna Menon.” When the prime minister at first resisted the calls for Menon’s head, Frank Moraes offered a very muted criticism of Nehru himself, remarking that “the Prime Minister’s loyalty to his colleagues is commendable provided it is not pushed to a point where it endangers the safety and unity of the country”. A rare personal attack on Nehru came from N G Ranga of the Swatantra Party. Speaking in Parliament in the third week of November 1962, he noted that “the Prime Minister has also been good enough to make a number of admissions in regard to the failure of his dreams [as regards Asian solidarity]. We all dream, true. And our dreams do not come true. That is also true. But, at the same time it is very dangerous to go on dreaming and dreaming for years and years and over such a terrific crisis
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and problem as this with the result that not only our people but also people abroad have had to wonder how this country’s leadership has been guiding our people with all this atmosphere of dreaming.” The three views of Nehru and China analysed above first became visible in the period 1959-62, as the border dispute was revealed to be serious, and as it resulted in war. These views have each been held and articulated these past 50 years, by politicians and by ordinary citizens alike. The first, empathetic view, was probably dominant in the aftermath of the 1962 war. The second, contemptuous view, has become more widespread in recent years, with the rise to political salience of the BJP and its ideology of Hindutva. The third, pitying view, was energetically articulated in the 1950s and 1960s by Rajaji and some other associates of Nehru in the freedom movement (such as Acharya Kripalani, Jayaprakash Narayan, and Minoo Masani). It may be now enjoying a sort of after-life, in the form of the argument, now quite common in the press and in policy circles in New Delhi, that India must actively pursue closer military and economic ties with the United States to thwart and combat an assertive China.
8 In retrospect, it is evident that in the years between the invasion of Tibet in 1950 and the war of 1962, Jawaharlal Nehru did make a series of miscalculations in his dealings with China. These errors were of three kinds. The first were personal – his faith in officials who gave him wrong or foolish advice, or who executed the jobs assigned to them with carelessness or lack of foresight. Two men in particular appear to have been unworthy of his trust: the intelligence officer, B N Mullick, who advised Nehru to sanction the provocative forward posts; and Krishna Menon, who as defence minister refused to properly arm the military, and who promoted incompetent generals and otherwise damaged the morale of the armed forces. A second set of miscalculations were political, namely, his ignorance or underestimation of the ideological dimensions of Chinese politics. Nehru did not, or could not, see beyond the professions of internationalism and Asian solidarity; had he done so, he would have more properly understood the reservations the Chinese had of the McMahon Line, and their irritation, and then anger, that India stood by an “imperialist” demarcation that silently legitimised the case for Tibetan independence from China. A third miscalculation was strategic, his endorsement of Krishna Menon’s policies of not modernising the military, and his naïve thinking that the forward policy would not provoke a reaction. Nehru’s mistakes were considerable; however, beyond the merely personal, there were important structural and conjunctural reasons behind the clash of armies and national egos between India and China. If Jawaharlal Nehru had not been prime minister, there would still have been a border dispute bet ween India and China. Indeed, all other things remaining constant, India and China may still have gone to war had Jawaharlal Nehru never lived. The most consequential question that divided the two countries concerned the status and future of Tibet. The Tibet factor in India-China relations had three dimensions – which we may
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gloss as the long-term dimension, the medium-term dimension, and the short-term dimension respectively. The long-term dimension had its origins in a conference held in 1913 in the British imperial summer capital, Simla. This was convened by the Government of India, and attended also by Chinese and Tibetan representatives (Tibet was then enjoying a period of substantial, indeed near-complete, political autonomy from Chinese overlordship). A product of this conference was the McMahon Line, which sought to demarcate the frontiers of British India. When India became independent in 1947 it recognised the McMahon Line, and adopted it as its own. The Chinese however had serious reservations about this line, reservations which intensified after the communists came to power in 1950. The Chinese government said the demarcation of the border had been imposed by the British at a time when they were powerless; besides, they did not recognise that Tibet had a right to send separate delegates of its own. All through the 1950s, while India insisted on the sanctity of the McMahon Line, the Chinese said that since it was a legacy of imperialism, the border question had to be negotiated afresh and a new boundary decided upon. The medium-term dimension related to the Chinese invasion and occupation of Tibet in 1950. So long as it was semi-independent, Tibet served as a buffer state for India. Besides, there were close and continuing connections between India and Tibet, as in an active cross-border trade, and regular visits of Hindu pilgrims to the holy mountain of Kailas. There were thus strategic as well as sentimental reasons for India to be concerned about what, from their point of view, was an excessive Chinese presence in Tibet after 1950. The short-term dimension was the flight of the Dalai Lama into India in the spring of 1959. That he was given refuge the Chinese government could perhaps accept; that he was treated as a honoured visitor, and that a steady stream of influential Indians queued up to meet him, they could not abide. What upset them most was the mobilisation of anti-Chinese and pro-Tibetan sentiment by opposition parties in India. Nehru could have perhaps been less trusting of the Chinese in the early 1950s. But he could scarcely have gone to war on the Tibetans’ behalf. India was newly independent; it was a poor and divided country. There were a clutch of domestic problems to attend to, among them the cultivation of a spirit of national unity, the promotion of economic development, and the nurturing of democratic institutions. War would have set back these efforts by decades. It would have led to political instability, and economic privation. After the Dalai Lama fled into India, the balancing act became more delicate still. Nehru could scarcely hand him back to the Chinese. Nor could he keep him imprisoned and isolated. The exiled leader had to be provided refuge, consistent with his dignity and stature. In a democracy that encouraged debate, and in a culture that venerated spiritual leaders, the Dalai Lama would attract visitors, who would make public their admiration for him and their distaste for their persecutors. Nehru could hardly put a stop to this; nor, on the other hand, could he use the situation of the Dalai Lama to wag a threatening finger at the Chinese. November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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The open manifestation of support for the Tibetans and their leader brings us to the second structural reason behind the failure to solve the border dispute – the fact that China was a one-party state and India a multiparty democracy. When, on his visit to New Delhi in 1960, Zhou Enlai complained about the protection afforded to the Dalai Lama, the senior Cabinet Minister Morarji Desai compared the status of the Tibetan leader to that of Karl Marx, who was given sanctuary by the British after he was exiled from his native Germany. This, perhaps, was a debating point – and Morarji Desai was a skilled debater – but the fact that the two political regimes differed so radically had a powerful bearing on the dispute. Thus, when a group of anti-communist protesters raised Free Tibet slogans and defaced a portrait of Mao outside the Chinese consulate in Mumbai, Beijing wrote to New Delhi that this was “a huge insult to the head of state of the People’s Republic of China and the respected and beloved leader of the Chinese people”, an insult which “the masses of the six hundred and fifty million Chinese people absolutely cannot tolerate”. If the matter was “not reasonably settled”, the complaint continued, the “Chinese side will never come to a stop without a satisfactory settlement of the matter, that is to say, never stop even for one hundred years”. In its reply, the Indian government accepted that the incident was “deplorable”. But it pointed out that “under the law in India processions cannot be banned so long as they are peaceful… Not unoften they are held even near the Parliament House and the processionists indulge in all manner of slogans against high personages in India. Incidents have occurred in the past when portraits of Mahatma Gandhi and the prime minister were taken out by irresponsible persons and treated in an insulting manner. Under the law and Constitution of India a great deal of latitude is allowed to the people so long as they do not indulge in actual violence.” That one state was totalitarian and the other democratic had a critical impact on how the debate was framed, on why it escalated, and why it could not be resolved. After the border clashes of 1959, Opposition MPs asked that the official correspondence between the two countries be placed in the public domain. The demand was conceded, whereupon the evidence of Chinese claims further inflamed and angered public opinion. Now Zhou arrived in Delhi, with his offer of a quid pro quo. You overlook our transgressions in the west, said the Chinese leader, and we shall overlook your transgressions in the east. In a dictatorship, such as China, a policy once decided upon by its top leaders did not require the endorsement or support of anyone else. In India, however, treaties with other nations had to be discussed and debated by Parliament. In purely instrumental terms, Zhou’s proposal was both pragmatic and practicable. However, Nehru could not endorse or implement the agreement on its own; he had to discuss it with his colleagues in party and government, and, pending their acceptance, place it on the floor of the House, with the ensuing debates reported and widely discussed in the newspapers. Cabinet, Parliament, and public opinion were three facets of social and political life in India, that were wholly absent in China. Mao, and Zhou, did not have to contend with these facets or Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
forces, whereas Nehru was confined and circumscribed by them. Thus, as it happened, knowledge of Chinese maps that made claims that clashed with India’s, knowledge of a Chinese road in land claimed by India, knowledge of Indian soldiers killed by Chinese soldiers, knowledge of the persecution of supporters of the Dalai Lama – all this led to a rising tide of nationalist outrage inside and outside Parliament. And with members of his own cabinet firmly opposed to a settlement, Nehru had no chance of seeing it through.
9 Behind the border dispute lay the respective national and civilisational aspirations of the two countries. Now, in 2011, with surging growth rates and 60 years of independent development behind them, China and India seek great power status. In the 1950s, however, they sought something apparently less ambitious but which, in the context of their recent colonial history, was as important, namely, a respect in the eyes of the world comparable with their size, the antiquity of their civilisation, and the distinctiveness of their national revolution. Towards the end of 1959, after the first clashes on the border, and the arrival into India of the Dalai Lama, Jawaharlal Nehru was interviewed by the American journalist Edgar Snow. In Snow’s recollection, Nehru told him that “the basic reason for the Sino-Indian dispute was that they were both ‘new nations’, in that both were newly independent and under dynamic nationalistic leaderships, and in a sense were meeting at their ‘frontiers’ for the first time in history; hence it was natural that a certain degree of conflict should be generated before they could stabilise their frontiers.” Nehru added that in the past there were “buffer zones” between the two countries/civilisations, but now India and China were “filling out, and meeting [for the first time] as modern nations on the borders”. Nehru was speaking here not as a politician – whether pragmatic or idealist – but as a student of history. In this, more detached, role, he could see that a clash of arms, and of ideo logies and aspirations behind it, was written into the logic of the respective and collective histories of India and China.
10 In 1961, when relations between the two countries had moreor-less broken down, India withdrew its ambassador to Beijing. China did likewise. For 15 years, the two countries ran skeletal offices in each other’s capital. Finally, in 1976, full diplomatic relations were resumed. In the same year Mao Zedong died. Deng Xiaoping, who emerged as the most important leader in China soon after Mao’s death, wished to overcome the baggage of 1962, and to set relations between the two countries on a new footing. In the early 1980s, he invited Prime Minister Indira Gandhi to visit Beijing. Serving diplomats were sympathetic, but in the end, the invitation was not accepted. After Nehru’s grandson, Rajiv Gandhi, took over as prime minister of India, the invitation was renewed. In December 1988, Rajiv Gandhi visited China, the first Indian leader of any substance to do so for more than 30 years. He had a 90-minute meeting with Deng, who is said to have told him, “You are the young. You are the future.”
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In a public speech in Beijing, Rajiv Gandhi remarked that “it is now time to look beyond the past; it is now time to look forward to the future. It is now time to restore the relationship between our countries to a level commensurate with the contribution which our civilisations made to the world, to a level commensurate with the centuries of friendship between our two countries, to a level commensurate with the contribution which today we must take together to the building of a new world order. Between us, we represent a third of humanity. There is much we can do together.” However, Rajiv Gandhi’s hopefulness was called into question by some Indian commentators. A columnist in The Statesman noted that the territorial disputes between the two countries remained unresolved. These were, he said, “the strongest and certainly the most important element in the connection between the two countries”. He chastised “the myth-makers, the political pundits, the fashionable fellow-travellers, [and] the fervent promoters of Pan-Asianism” for “working overtime to build up the case for friendship in disregard to the border…”. This scepticism was also expressed in a letter to The Hindu from K Vedamurthy, who had been a close associate of Nehru’s colleague-turned-critic, Rajaji. He recalled the debacle of 1962, and noted also that China had seamlessly moved from being pro-Soviet to being pro-American when it suited them. “We in India”, wrote Vedamurthy, “should not be once again caught in any euphoria of the kind in which we were when Pandit Nehru returned to Delhi from his apparent triumph in the Bandung Conference (of non-aligned nations) of the 1950s. By all means let us repair our relations … but let us also remember that what governs international relations is the enlightened self-interest of the countries concerned and not any ideology. … Eternal vigilance, as always, remains the price of liberty.” Three years after Rajiv Gandhi visited Beijing, the Indian economy opened itself out to the world. At first, the growing international trade was chiefly with the west and west Asia. Slowly, Chinese goods began to enter the Indian market, and vice versa. In 2003, another Indian prime minister visited Beijing. This was Atal Behari Vajpayee, who, as a young, right-wing, proAmerican member of Parliament in the late 1950s, had regularly attacked Jawaharlal Nehru for being too trusting of the Chinese. Now, Vajpayee signed a document accepting that Tibet was an integral part of China. Two years later, the Chinese prime minister Wen Jiabao came to India. He chose first to come to Bangalore, the centre of the software industry, going later to the political capital, New Delhi. Seconding (or perhaps explaining) the sequence, the Chinese ambassador in New Delhi said in a press conference that “the ‘B’ of business is more important than the ‘B’ of boundary”. The most recent figures estimate the annual trade between China and India at $60 billion, up from roughly zero in the 1990s. India exports iron ore and cotton to China, and imports heavy machinery and electronics in return. Indian software and pharmaceutical firms seek a share of the Chinese market; Chinese companies think that they are best placed to build the highways, bridges and ports that India so urgently requires.
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Still, despite the steady increase in trade, and the rhetoric that sometimes accompanies it, the “B” of boundary disputes has not entirely gone away. Every now and then, Chinese newspapers claim the eastern state of Arunachal Pradesh to be their territory. In 2009, when the Dalai Lama sought to visit the ancient Buddhist monastery in Tawang – which lies deep inside Arunachal – Beijing demanded that the Government of India stop him. New Delhi declined to interfere – the Dalai Lama, they said, was a spiritual leader who was going on a spiritual pilgrimage. On the Indian side, suspicions linger about Chinese intentions. Among the Hindu right-wing and some sections of the military, there is talk of Chinese attempts to throw a “string of pearls” to encircle India, by building and then controlling ports in Gwadar in Pakistan, Hambantota in Sri Lanka, Chittagong in Bangladesh, and Kyaukphyu in Myanmar. China’s consistent support to Pakistan is also a sore point in the relationship. China and India are not the deadly enemies they were between 1959 and 1962; nor are they the close and intimate friends that, back in the 1940s and early 1950s, Jawaharlal Nehru had hoped they would be. The border dispute remains unresolved; and so it will be for some time. After denouncing the McMahon Line for so long, the Chinese cannot suddenly turn around and accept it; while any significant concessions from the Indian side will have to be discussed in Parliament, to be subjected to, and very likely rejected by, an always contentious opposition. Meanwhile, the presence of a large and vocal Tibetan community in India still irks the Chinese; as does the steady popularity the Dalai Lama enjoys within India and across the world.
11 There is a noticeable asymmetry in the ways in which the war of 1962 is viewed in the two countries that fought it. The Indian sense of humiliation, so visible in some circles even five decades later, it not matched by a comparable triumphalism in China. This may be because they fought far bloodier wars against the Japanese, and among themselves. At any rate, while histories of modern India devote pages and pages to the conflict (my own India after Gandhi has two chapters on the subject), histories of modern China (such as those written by Jonathan Fenby, Jonathan Spence, and others) devote at most a few paragraphs to it. Likewise, the conflict with India merits barely a passing reference in biographies of Mao or Zhou, whereas the conflict with China occupies a dominant place in biographies of Nehru. This asymmetry is also in part a product of the fact that while Nehru wrote a great deal about how he saw China, his counterparts in Beijing did not leave behind books or essays that speak about India. Meeting Mao Zedong in the 1930s, Edgar Snow told him about Gandhi and his non-violent movement for freedom, without evoking much interest. Mao’s collected works hardly refer to India at all. From Zhou Enlai’s statements on the border dispute we get a sense of the great stress he laid on the antiquity of Chinese civilisation. But of his impressions and opinions of the other great Asian civilisation we get no hint. In the popular imagination, Nehru’s place of history is assessed principally across three axes – his role in the independence movement; his economic policy; and his foreign policy in general but November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
SPECIAL ARTICLE
with particular reference to China. With regard to the first he is generally judged a hero. With regard to the second the judgment has varied across time – once celebrated for forging an autonomous path of economic development, Nehru has more recently been demonised for shackling the forces of individual enterprise and innovation. (However, with the global financial crisis and the growth of crony capitalism within India, Nehru’s economic record may yet be regarded in less dark terms.) With regard to the third, the verdicts are less ambiguous. Most Indians now believe that Nehru betrayed the country’s interests in his dealings with China. This essay has sought to qualify and nuance that judgment. For Nehru was not as much in control of these events as commonly supposed. The border conflict had deep structural roots, and was made more intractable by contingent factors such as the Tibet question and the different, and in a sense rival, political regimes in the two countries. At the same time, the massive emotional investment of Indians in the defeat of 1962 is also not commensurate with the event itself. A mere 3,000 Indian soldiers died on the battlefield, far fewer than Indian casualties in the two world wars, and a trivial number compared with the loss of life that accompanied the partition of India. It was really a skirmish rather than a war. Nor did it really change the facts on the ground, since the Chinese withdrew to where they were before the battle began. The border dispute, the question of Tibet, and the difference between the two countries’ political systems – these remain, to influence and determine India-China relations in 2011, as they did in 1951 or 1961. Such is the argument of the historian, based (he thinks) on a detached, dispassionate analysis of both evidence and context. But while the historian may document, and contextualise, the conventional wisdom will most likely remain impervious to his work. Citizens and ideologues shall continue to personalise a political conflict, seeing it principally through the lens of what Jawaharlal Nehru did or did not do, or is believed to have done and not done, with regard to China. Neglecting the deeper structural forces that underlay and directed the conflict, neglecting also the lack of foresight or preparedness of other arms of government – the bureaucracy and army among them – Indian public opinion has made the military defeat of 1962 Nehru’s failure alone. Thus the image, so popular then and now, of an old and broken man taking his defeat to the cremation ground, an image that may be emotionally satisfying but which altogether lacks historical plausibility. I shall end this essay with a verdict on Nehru’s China policies that combines the empathetic, the pitying, and the contemptuous. It was offered by H V Kamath, a former civil servant turned freedom fighter, who served several terms in Parliament and was jailed both by the British and during Indira Gandhi’s Emergency. In a book entitled Last Days of Jawaharlal Nehru, published in 1977, Kamath took his readers back to a Parliament session in September 1963, when he saw “an old man, looking frail and fatigued, with a marked stoop in his gait, coming down the gangway opposite with slow, faltering steps, and clutching the backrests of benches for support as he descended”. The man was Jawaharlal Nehru, prime minister of India at this time for the past 16 years. Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
As H V Kamath watched “the bent, retreating figure”, a cluster of memories came to his mind. Was this the same man, who, while Kamath was studying at the Presidency College in Madras, he had seen “sprightly, slim and erect”, speaking at the Congress session of 1927 in that city? The same man, who, when he visited him in Allahabad 10 years later, had “jumped two steps at a time, with me emulating him, as I followed him upstairs from his office room on the ground floor to his study and library above?” The same man, who, when they were both members of the Constituent Assembly of India, during one session “impulsively ran from his front seat and literally dragged a recalcitrant member from the podium rebuking him audibly yeh Jhansi ki public meeting nahin hai” (This is not a public meeting in Jhansi). The same man whom the nationalist poetess, Sarojini Naidu, had “affectionately conferred the sobriquet ‘Jack-in-the-box’ – a compliment to his restless agility of body and mind”? Kamath was clear that it was the war with China that alone was responsible for this deterioration and degradation. As he wrote, “India’s defeat, nay, military debacle in that one-month war not only shattered [Nehru] physically and weakened him mentally but, what was more galling to him, eroded his prestige in Asia and the world, dealt a crippling blow to his visions of leadership of the newly emancipated nations, and cast a shadow on his place in history.” It was, the affectionate yet critical observer insisted, a debacle that could have been avoided, had Nehru not “stubbornly turned a deaf ear to all friendly warnings”, offered, for example, by his own deputy prime minister, Vallabhbhai Patel, who, as far back as 1950, had alerted him to “China’s intentions and objectives in invading Tibet, and its dangerous implications for India’s future security”, and more recently by his old comrades Jayaprakash Narayan and Acharya Kripalani, who had “cautioned against appeasement and adulation of China”. Kamath himself, after a tour of the India-Tibet border in the summer of 1959, had said publicly that “Nehru will have to adopt a firmer attitude towards China and her colonisation in Tibet must be exposed and condemned, just as he had criticised European imperialism in the past”. Alas, recalled Kamath 20 years later, Nehru “poohpooh[ed] all criticisms of his China policy but even dubbed the critics as war mongers who were spreading fear and panic in the country”. Thus it was that in 1962, as a consequence of Jawaharlal Nehru’s “supine policy”, “our Jawans, ill-clad, ill-shod, illequipped were sent like sheeps to their slaughter”. A Note on Sources Originally delivered as a lecture, this essay eschews the normal academic apparatus of notes and references. But a brief word on the main sources may be in order. Apart from Nehru’s major books, cited in the text, the essays draws upon his letters to chief ministers, his interventions in Parliament, and his correspondence with the Chinese government. The quotes from Rajagopalachari come from his articles in the journal Swarajya; those from Deendayal Upadhyaya from the journal Organiser; those from Lohia from collections of his speeches and articles. The account of Zhou Enlai’s visit to India draws on contemporary newspapers and on a file in the P N Haksar Papers in the Nehru Memorial Musuem and Library. The account of Rajiv Gandhi’s trip to China draws on reports in the Indian press.
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DISCUSSION
Labour and Employment in Gujarat Indira Hirway, Neha Shah
This response to the criticism by Dholakia and Sapre (6 August 2011) of our article “Labour and Employment under Globalisation: The Case of Gujarat” (28 May, 2011) argues that the ultimate goal of Gujarat’s growth should not be the growth of the state domestic product but people’s well-being. Gujarat does need to take a fresh look at the growth model that it is following.
R
avindra H Dholakia and Amey A Sapre (R-A), in their response (6 August 2011) to our paper “Labour and Employment under Globalisation: The Case of Gujarat” (28 May 2011) have argued that our major conclusions in the paper are not consistent and convincing. R-A’s observations as well as logic are unacceptable to us not only because they have addressed only a part of the paper and ignored a wide range of evidence we have presented, but also because their argument is weak and does not support their overall observations.
Structural Changes in Employment
Indira Hirway (
[email protected]) is with the Centre for Development Alternatives, Ahmedabad and Neha Shah (nehakabir00@ gmail.com) is with the L J Institute of Management Studies, Ahmedabad.
62
the primary sector contributed 14.8% to the state SDP, but housed 54.4% of the workforce. As against this, the non-primary sectors contributed 85.2% to SDP but gave employment only to 45.6% workforce. To put it differently, 1% of SDP in the primary sector supported 3.67% of the workforce, while 1% of SDP in the non-primary sectors supported only 0.53% of the workforce! This indicates the wide gap bet ween incomes in the primary and nonprimary sectors. Table 1 shows that this gap has increased over the years. The percentage share of SDP from the primary sector to total SDP has continuously declined between 2001-02 and 2009-10. The moving averages, which remove annual fluctuations in the percentage shares, also suggest the same thing. However, according to the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) rounds, the share of employment of the primary sector in the total employment has increased from 49.9% in 2004-05 to 54.4% in 2008-09. When Arthur Lewis talked about structural transformation, he meant shifting of labour from agriculture (i e, the primary sector) to non-primary sectors along with structural transformation in production. And this has not happened in Gujarat. The growth in the non-primary sector has failed to create adequate employment
R-A have argued that (1) the rate of growth of the state domestic product (SDP) in the Gujarat economy, including the agricultural sector, has been high during the past decade and (2) the high rate in the agricultural sector has been achieved by a shift to high value commercial crops and the high growth of allied sectors, Table 1: Percentage Share of the Primary Sector in the SDP in Gujarat such as dairying, animal at Constant Prices (1999-2000 Prices, in Rs Crore) SDP -Primary Total Percentage Share 3 Yearly Moving Average-(SDP) husbandry, horticulture, Year Sector SDP of Primary Sector Years Primary Percentage in Total SDP Sector Share in Total SDP etc. This has brought 23,215 1,13,277 20.49 about a shift in the em- 2001-02 2002-03 22,281 1,22,500 18.19 ployment structure with2003-04 29,925 1,40,598 21.28 2001-03 25,140 19.99 in the primary sector. 2004-05 28,053 1,53,079 18.33 2002-04 26,753 19.27 We agree and in fact 2005-06 33,936 1,73,654 19.54 2003-05 30,638 19.72 we have noted the high 2006-07 33,277 1,89,436 17.57 2004-06 31,755 18.48 growth rates in all the 2007-08 38,004 2,13,674 17.79 2005-07 35,072 18.30 three sectors (i e, pri- 2008-09 33,827 2,28,460 14.81 2006-08 35,036 16.72 mary, secondary and 2009-10 33,998 2,51,839 13.50 2007-09 35,276 15.36 tertiary sectors) clearly Source: Annual Socio-economic Reviews of Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Government of Gujarat. in our paper. Where we do not agree is that this has opportunities for labour to shift to nonbrought about a transformation in the em- primary sectors in the state. ployment structure in the state. Though changes have taken place within primary Share of Wages sector employment, the overall structure The statement of R-A that the share of of employment has not changed signifi- wages in the factory sector is 25% of the cantly in spite of a high rate of growth of net value added (NVA) is indeed surprising the economy. For example, in 2008-09, (refer to Table 1, Dholakia and Sapre 2011). november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
DISCUSSION
This is because they have calculated the share of wages where wages include “wages and salaries” of (1) workers, (2) supervisory and managerial staff, and (3) other employees – administrative clerical staff – as well as employers’ contributions to social security and bonus (including hefty bonus to managerial and administrative staff). R-A have not distinguished between the wages of workers and the salaries of “non-workers” or higher staff! Table 2 reproduced from the Annual Survey of Industries (ASI) reports presents the data on the share of wages in the ASI sector. It clearly shows that (1) the share of wages has declined consistently in Gujarat between 2001-02 and 2007-08 and (2) Gujarat ranks 15th among the major 20 states in India in terms of the share of wages in the ASI sector in 2007-08. Table 2 also shows that the average daily wage rate of workers in the ASI sector was Rs 184.2 in that year, and that the state ranks eighth in the major states in the country in this respect. Since the organised workers constitute only 8% of the total workforce in the state, the focus of our paper was on the unorganised informal workers. Unfortunately, this point is totally missed by R-A. While discussing wage rates, therefore, we have used wage rates of regular and casual workers. Table 8 of our paper on
daily wage rates of casual and regular workers in rural and urban areas in 20 major states in India shows that in 2007-08 Gujarat ranked 14th and 17th in the rural male average daily wage rate for casual and regular rural male workers, respectively, among the 20 major states – in spite of the high growth rate in agriculture. The corresponding ranks for urban male workers are eighth and 18th for casual and regular workers, respectively. The ranks for female workers are eighth and ninth (for casual and regular workers, respectively) for rural women and 14th and 13th for urban females. Clearly these ranks are extremely low for a fast growing state like Gujarat. It is also important to note that Gujarat has slipped in the ranking over the years in almost all the wage rates – except for marginal improvements among rural female casual workers (from ninth to eighth rank), urban male casual workers (from eighth to seventh rank) and for urban regular workers (from 20th rank to 19th rank for male workers and from 14th to 13th rank for female workers). Clearly these achievements are most unimpressive. We have also noted that the unemployment rates in Gujarat are lower than those in all-India. We have no quarrel with R-A on this. But what is surprising is that R-A have totally missed our point regarding the poor quality of employment in the
Table 2: Share of Wages in Net Value Added in ASI Sector
1998-99
2001-02
2003-04
2005-06
2007-08
1 Andhra Pradesh
22.98
22.50
2 Assam
15.20
28.52
3 Bihar
24.66
29.19
4 Chhattisgarh
16.97
5 Gujarat
11.83
6 Haryana
21.35
7 Himachal Pradesh
Rank Average Daily Wage Rank 2007-08 Rate 2007-08 2007-08
17.83
17.63
13.44
8
136.2
8.17
10.25
13.05
9
104.9
19
27.84
43.86
19.74
3
102.0
20
20.28
9.02
7.67
5.97
19
204.2
5
14.96
9.66
7.67
8.52
15
184.2
8
16.31
14.31
12.26
13.89
6
175.8
10
16
13.52
8.75
7.01
3.43
3.52
20
152.5
12
8 Jammu and Kashmir
NA
46.41
45.61
12.77
7.06
18
127.7
17
9 Jharkhand
NA
41.71
19.52
10.00
8.82
13
330.0
1
10 Karnataka
12.38
18.55
13.83
12.86
11.14
11
187.4
7
11 Kerala
40.74
29.33
23.46
25.73
22.47
1
119.9
18
12 Madhya Pradesh
17.59
13.04
14.66
12.90
8.69
14
177.0
9
2.32
18.95
13.26
9.02
7.65
17
246.6
3
252.27
31.21
19.35
12.38
9.62
12
248.5
2
8.77
19.95
21.37
23.48
15.27
5
138.0
14
13 Maharashtra 14 Orissa 15 Punjab 16 Rajasthan
23.48
15.96
16.03
13.36
11.27
10
137.7
15
17 Tamil Nadu
4.94
23.72
19.71
17.32
16.37
4
139.4
13
18 Uttar Pradesh
29.53
17.03
15.52
14.70
13.85
7
152.9
11
19 Uttarakhand
366.13
26.68
15.76
10.11
8.51
16
201.3
6
20 West Bengal
1.83
41.17
30.49
28.22
21.89
2
204.6
4
18.24
20.10
15.02
12.08
10.7
172.9
All India
Source: Annual Reports of ASI . Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45
state. It is now widely accepted that the poor quality of employment is a major concern related to employment in the present environment. The entire literature on “decent work” has underlined the need for ensuring quality employment to workers. The National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector (NCEUS) had also shown in its reports that a major concern in the area of employment was the rising share of the working poor. Using the data from the NCEUS reports, our paper has shown that the share of informal workers in Gujarat is much higher than many other states in India. We have also shown how these workers are served adequately by the labour administration including the different boards set up for them. Unfortunately, R-A have paid no attention to this important concern.
Human Development The slipping of the state in its ranks in the different aspects of human development has been shown not only by IFPRI (2009), but also by UNDP (2011), Planning Commission (2009), Shukla (2010) and the recent National Family Health Survey (NFHS) and National Sample Survey Office reports. The report of the expert group to set up to review the methodology for estimation of poverty (Planning Commission 2009) under the chairmanship of Suresh Tendulkar has pointed out that the incidence of poverty in Gujarat has declined by 0.55 percentage points per annum between 1993-94 and 2004-05. The rank of Gujarat in poverty reduction is 11th among the major 20 states. The same committee has also shown that the incidence of poverty belonging to tribal population in the state has increased by 0.3 percentage points per year during the same period. Also, according to a recent study by the UNDP, Gujarat ranks eighth among the major Indian states in the human development index (UNDP 2011). It ranks eighth in education and ninth in health. Again, according to the latest report of the NSSO, Gujarat ranks 13th in infant mortality rate (IMR) (the lowest IMR gets the first rank), 14th in child mortality rate, and ninth in children’s malnutrition. It ranks 11th in retention of children (6-16 years) in school. The recent NFHS has also pointed out that Gujarat ranks very low in women’s health
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DISCUSSION
and nutrition. In short, it is clear that a high growth rate is not translated into well-being effectively.
Inequalities in Gujarat It is difficult to understand why R-A have used Gini coefficients of the distribution of consumption expenditure as a measure of inequality in the state. It is well known in the literature that a Gini coefficient of consumption expenditure, particularly in developing countries, does not reveal adequately the inequalities in the access to incomes of different groups. The consumption expenditure of the rich class is usually underestimated and the consumption expenditure of the poor is overestimated. This is because (1) the rich tend to hide their consumption expenditure while reporting, (2) use black money for expenditure and do not report this expenditure, and (3) save a large part of their incomes. As against this, the poorer sections many times incur debts to consume. The need, therefore, is to measure inequalities of incomes to estimate inequalities. Rajesh Shukla has recently done this exercise (quoted in our paper), which shows that the Gini coefficient of income distribution in Gujarat is 0.46, which is not only higher than that in India, but also is higher than the accepted limits (up to 0.32-0.33) (Shukla 2010). Clearly, as Shukla has observed, Gujarat is one of the most unequal states in India.
Capital Intensity of Growth The argument made by R-A that the high capital intensity in Gujarat is due to the relative high wage rates and a high share of wages in NVA is absolutely wrong. There is neither any logic nor any empirical basis for this. The high capital intensity is primarily due to three reasons: First, the high contribution to national exports from Gujarat has encouraged export industries to use the globally competitive techno logies, the frontier technologies, which are highly capital-intensive. Second, the flow of foreign direct investment from outside also brings with it highly capitalintensive technologies to the state economy. And finally, the high level of capital subsidies, incentives and concessions has reduced the relative price of capital, encouraging the use of capital-intensive
64
technologies in the state. It needs to be underlined that the price of capital in Gujarat is not the market price, but it is influenced by policies that invite investments at almost any cost. It is clear that R-A have read the rising capital intensity in the state incorrectly. Our discussion on aggregate demand deficiency basically refers to the question: Growth for whom? We agree that in an open economy (open to the country as well as to the world), there will be a demand from outside the state and outside the country, and this may sustain growth of a state economy. But the critical question is about the purchasing power generated within the state that can not only sustain the growth of the state economy, but can also benefit the masses of workers within the state. Though the markets outside the state may sustain the state economy, it will not sustain, with the rising inequalities, the social and political life in the state. Though the deficiency of domestic demand will not hurt growth at the present, it will definitely adversely affect social and political sustainability (and therefore, economic sustainability) in the medium and long term. As shown in our paper, the impact of the recent global crisis on Gujarat has raised questions regarding the validity of the strategy of growth that treats exports as an engine of growth. Our study of the crisis (quoted in our paper: Hirway 2009) also shows that the poor level of social protection of informal workers added to the woes of the workers during the crisis. R-A paper is silent on these issues. It seems to us that the R-A paper con siders growth of SDP (and gross domestic product) as the goal, while we consider
people’s well-being as the goal. To us, economic growth is a tool to achieve developmental goals such as poverty reduction, human development, full employment, etc. Surprisingly, R-A have failed to look at labour beyond the formal organised labour. They have also failed to note how labour administration, including the Rural Labour Commissionerate, the Un organised Sector Workers Board, etc, have achieved very limited success in providing social security, enforcing labour laws and in raising the overall well-being of the masses of informal workers in the state. Gujarat definitely needs to take a fresh look at the growth model that it is following. References ASI, (2011): Report of the Annual Survey of Industries, 2008-09 (Factory Sector), Vol 1, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Kolkata. Dholakia, H Ravindra and Amey A Spare (2011): “Gujarat’s Growth Story”, Economic & Political Weekly, 6 August. Government of Gujarat (2007-08, 2008-09, 2009-10): Socio-Economic Review, Annual Publication of the Directorate of Economics and Statistics, Gandhinagar. Hirway, Indira and Neha Shah (2011): “Labour and Employment under Globalisation: The Case of Gujarat”, Economic & Political Weekly, 28 May. IFPRI (2009): “India State Hunger Index” in Report on Global Hunger Index, International Food Policy Research Institute, Washington DC. NFHS (2007): “Final National Report of NFHS-3” 2005-06, National Family Health Survey India, 11 November. NSSO (various years): “Employment and Unemployment” Surveys in 1993-94, 2004-05 and 2009, National Sample Survey Organisation, Government of India, New Delhi. Planning, Commission (2009): “Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty” (Tendulkar Committee), Government of India, New Delhi. Shukla, Rajesh (2010): “The Official Poor in India Summed Up”, Indian Journal of Human Development, Vol 4, No 2. Surayanarayana, M H, Ankush Agrawal and Seeta Prabhu (UNDP 2011): “Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index for India’s States”, UNDP, New Delhi.
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Manager
november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
CURRENT STATISTICS
EPW Research Foundation
The outstanding amount of small savings recorded growth rates in the range of 15.3% and 21.8% per annum over the period 2000-01 to 2005-06; the growth rates declined sharply to a range of (-)9.7% and 7.2% in the later years up to 2010-11. The outstanding scheduled commercial bank time deposits on the other hand accelerated in growth from a range of 13.5% and 20.1% to between 16.2% and 25.1% over the corresponding periods. This can be attributed to the totally inelastic interest rates offered on small saving schemes ever since March 2003.
Macroeconomic Indicators Variation (in %): Point-to-Point Index Numbers of Wholesale Prices Weights 8 Oct Over Over 12 Months Fiscal Year So Far Full Financial Year (Base Year: 2004-05 = 100)^ 2011 Month 2011 2010 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 Primary Articles 20.1 203.8 0.9 11.2 19.0 8.2 10.0 13.1 22.4 5.3 9.1 Food Articles 14.3 200.3 2.4 10.6 15.7 11.8 10.2 8.9 21.1 7.5 5.8 Non-Food Articles 4.3 179.8 -3.0 8.5 27.2 -6.2 10.0 27.3 19.6 1.8 13.3 Fuel & Power 14.9 170.1 1.1 15.2 11.1 7.7 5.4 12.7 13.8 -4.9 9.2 Manufactured Products* 65.0 138.6 0.2 7.7 5.0 2.2 2.0 7.4 5.3 1.7 7.2 Food Products* 10.0 151.7 0.9 8.0 3.6 4.5 -0.9 2.4 15.1 6.3 8.4 Food Index (computed)* 24.3 178.1 1.2 8.8 11.5 7.9 5.9 6.8 18.5 7.3 6.7 All Commodities (point to point basis)* 100.0 155.8 0.6 9.7 9.0 4.2 4.2 9.7 10.4 1.6 7.8 All Commodities (Monthly average basis)* 100.0 153.8 – 9.4 8.5 9.6 9.9 9.6 3.8 8.1 4.9 * Data pertain to the month of September 2011 as weekly release of data discontinued wef 24 Oct 2009. ^The date of first release of data based on 2004-05 series wef 14 September 2010. Variation (in %): Point-to-Point Cost of Living Indices Latest Over Over 12 Months Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Month 2011 Month 2011 2010 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 Industrial Workers (IW) (2001=100) 1948 0.5 9.0 9.9 4.9 4.7 8.8 14.9 8.0 7.9 6.7 Agricultural Labourers (AL) (1986-87=100) 6159 0.8 9.4 9.1 5.1 4.9 9.1 15.8 9.5 7.9 9.5
2006-07 12.9 12.7 13.4 0.9 6.5 4.3 9.6 6.8 6.5
2005-06 5.3 5.3
Note: Superscript numeral denotes month to which figure relates, e g, superscript 8 stands for August and 9 stands for September. Money and Banking (Rs crore) 7 October Over Month Over Year 2011 2011 Money Supply (M3) 6962822 104884(1.5) 972390(16.2) Currency with Public 949232 -2293(-0.2) 115374(13.8) Deposits Money with Banks 6011223 108186(1.8) 859294(16.7) of which: Demand Deposits 651919 27457(4.4) -23948(-3.5) Time Deposits 5359304 80729(1.5) 883242(19.7) Net Bank Credit to Government 2157973 -9316(-0.4) 401850(22.9) Bank Credit to Commercial Sector 4445753 79283(1.8) 700934(18.7) Net Foreign Exchange Assets 1542066 43937(2.9) 195577(14.5) Banking Sector’s Net Non-Monetary Liabilities 1196281 9371(0.8) 327283(37.7) of which: RBI 518818 69127(15.4) 189542(57.6) Reserve Money (14 October 2011) 1384833 9323(0.7) 157637(12.8) Net RBI Credit to Centre 384836 6176(-) 125756(-) Scheduled Commercial Banks (7 October 2011) Aggregate Deposits 5624932 102897(1.9) 832080(17.4) Demand 572679 24267(4.4) -29411(-4.9) Time 5052253 78629(1.6) 861491(20.6) Investments (for SLR purposes) 1734778 25808(1.5) 257685(17.4) Bank Credit 4148598 74303(1.8) 675538(19.5) Non-Food Credit 4085282 84403(2.1) 661978(19.3) Commercial Investments 169275 12179(7.8) 18518(12.3) Total Bank Assistance to Comml Sector 4254557 96582(2.3) 680496(19.0)
Variation Fiscal Year So Far 2011-12 2010-11 463274(7.1) 387701(6.9) 35035(3.8) 66365(8.6) 429585(7.7) 320530(6.6) -65740(-9.2) -42102(-5.9) 495325(10.2) 362632(8.8) 175202(8.8) 86937(5.2) 210347(5.0) 253410(7.3) 148739(10.7) 65020(5.1) 71601(6.4) 18397(2.2) 150544(40.9) 27661(9.2) 7951(0.6) 71510(6.2) -9198(-) 47499(-)
Full Fiscal Year 2010-11 2009-10 896817 (16.0) 807920 (16.8) 146704 (19.1) 102043 (15.3) 750239 (15.5) 707606 (17.2) -310 (-0.0) 129281 (22.0) 750549 (18.2) 578325 (16.4) 313584 (18.8) 391853 (30.7) 743997 (21.3) 476516 (15.8) 111858 (8.7) 367718 (-5.2) 274078 (32.2) -9050 (-1.1) 66660 (22.1) -86316 (-22.3) 221195 (19.1) 167688 (17.0) 182453 149821
2008-09 776930 (19.3) 97040 (17.1) 683375 (19.9) 10316 (1.8) 673059 (23.5) 377815 (42.0) 435904 (16.9) 57053 (4.4) 94672 (12.4) 177709 (84.5) 59696 (6.4) 176397
416963(8.0) -69026(-10.8) 485989(10.6) 233159(15.5) 206515(5.2) 207483(5.4) 21674(14.7) 229157(5.7)
715143 (15.9) -3905 (-0.6) 719048 (18.7) 116867 (8.4) 697294 (21.5) 681500 (21.3) 28872 (24.5) 710372 (21.4)
637170 (19.9) -1224 (-0.2) 638395 (23.9) 194694 (20.0) 413635 (17.5) 411825 (17.8) 10911 (11.4) 422736 (17.5)
300026(6.7) -43519(-6.7) 343546(8.9) 92341(6.7) 228271(7.0) 227006(7.1) 32686(27.7) 259692(7.8)
658716 (17.2) 122525 (23.4) 536191 (16.2) 218342 (18.7) 469239 (16.9) 466961 (17.1) 11654 (11.0) 478615 (16.9)
Note: Government Balances as on 31 March 2011 are after closure of accounts. Index Numbers of Industrial Production August Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Averages (Base 2004-05=100) Weights 2011 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 General Index 100.00 162.4(4.0) 166.5(5.6) 157.7(8.6) 165.4(8.2) 152.9(5.3) 145.2(2.5) 141.7(15.5) 122.6(12.9) Mining and Quarrying 14.157 117.6-(3.4) 125.2(0.1) 125.1(7.7) 131.0(5.2) 124.5(7.9) 115.4(2.6) 112.5(4.6) 107.6(5.2) Manufacturing 75.527 172.6(4.5) 176.7(6.0) 166.7(9.3) 175.6(8.9) 161.3(4.8) 153.8(2.5) 150.1(18.4) 126.8(15.0) Electricity 10.316 149.4(9.5) 149.0(9.5) 136.1(4.2) 138.0(5.6) 130.8(6.1) 123.3(2.8) 120.0(6.4) 112.8(7.3) * Full fiscal year variation is based on 1993-94 = 100 series. Fiscal Year So Far 2010-11 End of Fiscal Year Capital Market 21 Oct 2011 Month Ago Year Ago Trough Peak Trough Peak 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 BSE Sensitive Index (1978-79=100) 16786(-17.2) 17065 20261(19.1) 15792 19702 16022 21005 19445(10.9) 17528(80.5) 9709(-37.9) BSE-100 (1983-84=100) 8744(-19.0) 8968 10791(20.4) 8283 10262 8540 11141 10096(8.6) 9300(88.2) 4943(-40.0) BSE-200 (1989-90=100) 2054(-20.3) 2116 2577(21.9) 1950 2427 2034 2753 2379(8.1) 2200(92.9) 1140(-41.0) S&P CNX Nifty (3 Nov 1995=1000) 5050(-17.2) 5133 6102(20.5) 4748 5912 4807 6312 5834(11.1) 5249(73.8) 3021(-36.2) Skindia GDR Index (2 Jan 1995=1000) 2306(-27.8) 2359 3195(21.9) 2146 3441 2477 3479 3151(9.3) 2883(134.2) 1153(-56.2) Net FII Investment in (US $ Mn Equities) - period end 101802(5.4) 102581 96565(39.2) – – – – 101454(31.5) 77159(43.1) 51669(-18.6) August* Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Foreign Trade 2011 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 2005-06 2004-05 Exports: Rs crore 110084 602032 (49.9) 401671 (24.6) 1118823 (32.3) 845534 (0.6) 840754(28.2) 655863(14.7) 571779(25.3) 456418(21.6) 375340(27.9) US $ mn 24313 134503 (54.2) 87219 (31.5) 245868 (37.5) 178751 (-3.5) 185295 (13.6) 163132(29.0) 126361(22.6) 103091(23.4) 83536(30.8) Imports: Rs crore 173663 847987 (36.5) 621089 (19.9) 1596869 (17.1) 1363736 (-0.8) 1374434(35.8) 1012312(20.4) 840506(27.3) 660409(31.8) 501065(39.5) US $ mn 38354 189394 (40.4) 134928 (26.6) 350695 (21.6) 288373 (-5.0) 303696(20.7) 251654(35.5) 185749(24.5) 149166(33.8) 111517(42.7) Non-POL US $ mn (* Provisional figures) 28075 137143 (46.2) 93814 (24.0) 249006 (23.7) 201237 (-4.2) 210029(22.2) 171940(33.5) 128790(22.4) 105233(37.1) 76772(33.2) Balance of Trade: Rs crore -63579 -245955 -219418 -478047 -518202 -533680 -356449 -268727 -203991 -125725 US $ mn -14042 -54891 -47710 -104827 -109621 -118401 -88522 -59388 -46075 -27981 Variation Over Foreign Exchange Reserves (excluding 14 Oct 15 Oct 31 Mar Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year gold but including revaluation effects) 2011 2010 2011 Month Ago Year Ago 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 Rs crore 1404366 1205952 1245284 49322 198414 159082 33706 73038 -57826 33975 359500 189270 US $ mn 286197 273893 278899 745 12304 7298 14202 19208 18264 -57821 107324 46816 Figures in brackets are percentage variations over the specified or over the comparable period of the previous year. (–) not relevant. [Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates, as also the thematic notes and Special Statistics series, are available on our website: http://www.epwrf.in]. Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 5, 2011 vol xlvi nos 44 & 45
65
STATISTICS
Small Savings: Outstandings: 2000-01 - 2010-11 (Rs crore)
April-March
2000-01
2001-02
2002-03
2003-04
2004-05
2005-06
2006-07
2007-08
2008-09
2009-10
2010-11
Total Small Savings (1+2+3) Outstandings 225087 262856 313793 375737 457732 527611 564372 509411 545873 583789 619908 [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] [100.0] Absolute variation 37577 37769 50937 61944 81995 69879 36761 -54961 36462 37916 36119 Percent variation (20.0) (16.8) (19.4) (19.7) (21.8) (15.3) (7.0) (-9.7) (7.2) (6.9) (6.2) 1.Public Provident Fund Outstandings 6392 8111 10156 12267 14273 16872 19457 21358 23402 26096 31583 Percent to Total [2.8] [3.1] [3.2] [3.3] [3.1] [3.2] [3.4] [4.2] [4.3] [4.5] [5.1] Absolute variation 1768 1719 2045 2111 2006 2599 2585 1901 2044 2694 5487 Percent variation (38.2) (26.9) (25.2) (20.8) (16.4) (18.2) (15.3) (9.8) (9.6) (11.5) (21.0) 2.Total Certificates Outstandings 138041 149667 163421 174563 191794 203771 212785 208976 203813 209667 214197 Percent to Total [61.3] [56.9] [52.1] [46.5] [41.9] [38.6] [37.7] [41] [37.3] [35.9] [34.6] Absolute variation 15794 11626 13754 11142 17231 11977 9014 -3809 -5163 5854 4530 Percent variation (12.9) (8.4) (9.2) (6.8) (9.9) (6.2) (4.4) (-1.8) (-2.5) (2.9) (2.2) of which: NSC VIII Issue Outstandings 36649 40205 44525 50633 55128 58541 58913 57388 55309 54776 54642 Percent to Total [16.3] [15.3] [14.2] [13.5] [12] [11.1] [10.4] [11.3] [10.1] [9.4] [8.8] Absolute variation 5646 3556 4320 6108 4495 3413 372 -1525 -2079 -533 -134 Percent variation (18.2) (9.7) (10.7) (13.7) (8.9) (6.2) (0.6) (-2.6) (-3.6) (-1.0) (-0.2) Kisan Vikas Patra Outstandings 92462 102751 113675 122188 136449 146607 152767 150408 147517 153933 158584 Percent to Total [41.1] [39.1] [36.2] [32.5] [29.8] [27.8] [27.1] [29.5] [27] [26.4] [25.6] Net Receipts 12402 10289 10924 8513 14261 10158 6160 -2359 -2891 6416 4651 Percent variation (15.5) (11.1) (10.6) (7.5) (11.7) (7.4) (4.2) (-1.5) (-1.9) (4.3) (3.0) 3.Total Deposits Outstandings 80654 105078 140216 188907 251665 306986 332130 324077 318658 348026 374128 Percent to Total [35.8] [40] [44.7] [50.3] [55] [58.2] [58.8] [63.6] [58.4] [59.6] [60.4] Absolute variation 20015 24424 35138 48691 62758 55321 25144 -8053 -5419 29368 26102 Percent variation (33.0) (30.3) (33.4) (34.7) (33.2) (22.0) (8.2) (-2.4) (-1.7) (9.2) (7.5) of which: Post Office Saving Bank Deposits Outstandings 8830 10045 11594 13367 14870 16790 18565 19789 22690 26458 30101 Percent to Total [3.9] [3.8] [3.7] [3.6] [3.2] [3.2] [3.3] [3.9] [4.2] [4.5] [4.9] Net Receipts 852 1215 1549 1773 1503 1920 1775 1224 2901 3768 3643 Percent variation (10.7) (13.8) (15.4) (15.3) (11.2) (12.9) (10.6) (6.6) (14.7) (16.6) (13.8) Monthly Income Scheme Outstandings 42560 57335 80915 113386 151026 183077 189440 182390 179504 201693 218674 Percent to Total [18.9] [21.8] [25.8] [30.2] [33] [34.7] [33.6] [35.8] [32.9] [34.5] [35.3] Net Receipts 12586 14775 23580 32471 37640 32051 6363 -7050 -2886 22189 16981 Percent variation (42.0) (34.7) (41.1) (40.1) (33.2) (21.2) (3.5) (-3.7) (-1.6) (12.4) (8.4) Senior Citizen Scheme* Outstandings 5436 15916 22284 22197 20651 24989 30913 Percent to Total [1.2] [3] [3.9] [4.4] [3.8] [4.3] [5.0] Net Receipts 5436 10480 6368 -87 -1546 4338 5924 Percent variation (192.8) (40.0) (-0.4) (-7.0) (21.0) (23.7) Post Office Time Deposits Outstandings 6921 10261 15608 24067 31994 38879 36714 29941 26265 27573 28445 Percent to Total [3.1] [3.9] [5] [6.4] [7] [7.4] [6.5] [5.9] [4.8] [4.7] [4.6] Net Receipts 1579 3340 5347 8459 7927 6885 -2165 -6773 -3676 1308 872 Percent variation (29.6) (48.3) (52.1) (54.2) (32.9) (21.5) (-5.6) (-18.4) (-12.3) (5.0) (3.2) Post Office Recurring Deposits Outstandings 18696 23648 28084 33963 41102 50188 60228 65071 65072 62818 61250 Percent to Total [8.3] [9] [8.9] [9] [9] [9.5] [10.7] [12.8] [11.9] [10.8] [9.9] Net Receipts 4431 4952 4436 5879 7139 9086 10040 4843 1 -2254 -1568 Percent variation (31.1) (26.5) (18.8) (20.9) (21.0) (22.1) (20.0) (8.0) (0.0) (-3.5) (-2.5) memo items: GDP at currnet market price 2102314 2278952 2454561 2754620 3242209 3692485 4293672 4986426 5582623 6550271 7875627 Gross receipt 79311 81753 105601 135970 158519 173283 154836 123652 146801 215562 240236 %to GDP 3.8 3.6 4.3 4.9 4.9 4.7 3.6 2.5 2.6 3.3 3.1 Net receipt 37577 37769 50937 61944 81995 69879 36761 -54961 36462 37916 24674 % to GDP 1.8 1.7 2.1 2.2 2.5 1.9 0.9 -1.1 0.7 0.6 0.3 Repayment 41734 43984 54664 74026 76524 103404 118075 178613 110339 177646 215562 % to GDP 2.0 1.9 2.2 2.7 2.4 2.8 2.7 3.6 2.0 2.7 2.7 Scheduled Commercial Bank Time Deposits Outstandings 820066 950312 1110564 1279394 1452171 1744409 2182203 2672630 3311025 3847216 4566264 Net Receipts 134088 130246 160252 168830 172777 292238 437794 490427 638395 536191 719048 Percent variation (19.5) (15.9) (16.9) (15.2) (13.5) (20.1) (25.1) (22.5) (23.9) (16.2) (18.7) Deposit Rate (1year and above) 8.50-11.00 7.50-8.50 5.25-6.25 5.00-5.5 5.25-6.25 6.00-7.00 7.50-9.60 8.25-9.00 8.00-8.50 6.00-7.50 6.00-7.50 Small Saving: Interest Rate with effect from 1-3-2001 1-3-2002 1 -3-2003 Provident fund 9.50 9.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 Time deposit – 1year maturity 7.50 7.25 6.25 6.25 6.25 6.25 6.25 6.25 6.25 6.25 6.25 Recurring Deposit 9.00 8.50 7.50 7.50 7.50 7.50 7.50 7.50 7.50 7.50 7.50 Monthly Income Scheme 9.50 9.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 NSC VIII Issue 9.50 9.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 8.00 ‘ * ‘ Senior citizen scheme introduced from August 2004. Figures in round brackets are percentage variations over the previous year and that in square brackets are percentages to total. Deductions under Sec 80C of Income Tax Act is available for provident fund, NSC VIII issue and National saving scheme 1992 only . For calculating % to GDP upto 2003-04 GDP with Base 1999-2000 + 100 is used thereafter with base 2004-05= 100 is used. Source: RBI(2011), Reserve Bank of India Bulletin, September and previous issues.
66
november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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4
Anand G Chandavarkar
A
nand G Chandavarkar, a noted econo mist, historian central banker, international civil servant, to mention some of his varied accomplishments, passed away recently in the United States where he had settled after retiring from the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Chandavarkar’s early years were spent in Hyderabad, a city for which he had lifelong affection. He did his schooling there during the course of which he acquired commendable proficiency in Urdu. He then went to Bombay for a degree course before going to the London School of Economics (LSE) from where he graduated with first class honours. At the LSE, his mentor and guide was Richard Sayers – the guru in theory and practice of banking and central banking. With Sayers’ intellectual inspiration Chandavarkar developed his interest in central banking and a career in the field seemed almost preordained. On his return to India and after a brief spell of teaching at the Osmania University to fulfil his scholarship bond obligation, he joined the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) in the early 1950s in its research department, which, at that time, was perhaps the leading economic think tank of the country. As a research economist in the RBI, he worked on various aspects of money and banking. Alongside working on assignments allotted to him, he used his time to study aspects of India’s public debt and also wrote an interesting and original paper on the nature of the private demand for gold in India, which was subsequently published, if I recall correctly, in the Oxford Economic Papers. He went on secondment from the RBI to the National Bank of Libya for a couple of years in the mid-1950s. In the late 1960s, he joined the IMF and served in various capacities there and finally became a senior member of the Treasurer’s Department – the sanctum sanctorum, so to say in the IMF – which managed the Special Drawing Rights (SDR), the Fund’s treasury operations and other financial transactions. In between, he again went to Libya, this time on deputation as a member of the IMF’s Central Banking Advisory Services.
Chandavarkar always had a strong sense of history and biography and, these twin interests happily coincided in his seminal work on Keynes and India (1990), an aspect, which did not receive the attention in Skidelsky’s monumental trilogy on Keynes. In his work on Keynes, Chandavarkar traces his interest in India, beginning with his brief stint at the India Office after his graduation from Cambridge to his association with the 1913 Commission on Indian Currency and Finance, where he expounded on the concept of the gold exchange standard and his testimony before the Hilton Young Commission and his eloquent and powerful advocacy for the establishment of the RBI and finally to his interaction with the India delegation at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944. After retirement from the IMF, Anand Chandavarkar continued to be intellec tually active and, among other things, explored the interface between economics and philosophy. He also wished to draw attention to the early concerns of economics with ethics and felt it was necessary to rekindle this link and give a moral content to the “dismal science”. Exploring the interface of economics and philosophy earned him an invitation to the Conference of the American Philosophical Association. He also penned a one-off piece on economics in the context of Islamic thought and practice. His interest in and contribution to the study of economics and history received appropriate recognition in his being invited to contribute a chapter on money and banking in the Cambridge Economic History of India. Among his other interests in economics and history I recall his telling me more than once that he wished to write a monograph on the Hali Sicca (OS) currency of the old Hyderabad State – its origin, provenance and demise. He felt that the subject would have opened up interesting aspects in currency management in relation to other aspects of fiscal governance and economic administration in the context of the feudal state and in the management of the exchange rate of that currency, vis-à-vis the Indian rupee. He would have been particularly wellsuited to work on the subject, given his background in monetary economics and
november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
LETTERS
his familiarity with Urdu, which would have enabled him to access relevant archives pertaining to that period. Unfortunately, this desire of his remains unfulfilled. A central banker to the manner born, he reverted to the subject of central banking during his years of retirement and brought out a book Central Banking in Developing Countries (1996). He also wrote a piece in the EPW on the need for an independent Federal Reserve Bank of India (EPW, 27 August 2005). His stress on an independent central bank in India came out of his strong belief that central banks should be independent and his concern expressed in other writings of the way in which the Government of India acted to circumscribe the autonomy and independence of the RBI. He also felt a righteous indignation at what he saw as the Government of India’s dominance over the central bank to make that institution an extended arm of government. The reference to the Federal Reserve Bank in EPW stemmed from his appreciation that despite its original laudable intentions the establishment of the local boards of the RBI did not sufficiently resonate with the aspirations and concerns in the different regions of the country. He was a prolific writer in his retirement on a variety of topics, many of which appeared in the pages of EPW. Among his many interesting contributions was one on Jeremy Raisman, the Finance Member of the Government of India during the second world war and who led the India delegation to Bretton Woods (EPW, 14 July 2001) and an interesting piece on what he termed “the First Economic Adviser in India”, a reference to an American who served in the Court of Sayajirao Gaekwad of Baroda, as an economic adviser at the turn of the 20th century (EPW, 22 December 2007). During his years of retirement he wrote an interesting paper on “The Unexplored Keynes”, which, along with some other essays, came together in an eponymously titled work The Unexplored Keynes and Other Essays (2010). Three books and a number of published articles, many unpublished papers and belles-lettres and essays remain a legacy of his intellectual and diverse interests. He had extensive literary interests and was particularly keen on India-related
historical fiction and other aspects of colonial history. Not surprisingly he was also keen on Rudyard Kipling’s works as well as those of Meadows Taylor. He was a close student of military history and was very knowledgeable about the history of various Indian Army regiments such as the Kumaon Regiment – with its Hyderabad connection – Gurkhas (thanks to his reading of John Masters) and of the “Piffer Regiments”, composed of what the British referred to as PMs (Punjabi Mohammedans) (sic). He also appears to have interacted with Shuja Nawaz, a fellow IMF staffer and the author of the much-acclaimed book on the Pakistan Army. Anand Chandavarkar was a keen follower of cricket and his interests went beyond mere statistics on scores, runs and wickets to the social philosophy of the game. C L R James’ exposition of this aspect of cricket attracted him perhaps more than did the brilliant prose and shrewd analysis of a Neville Cardis. Chandavarkar’s persona was an ideal complement to his meticulous professionalism. He was a warm, gentle and genial person and a very sociable companion and an excellent raconteur, especially those relating to men and affairs in the ancien regime of the Hyderabad of the Nizams. His sense of humour found expression in a little piece he wrote for the IMF Retirees Magazine entitled “A Fund of Humour”, where he narrated brief anecdotes of unintended humour involving personalities and situations in the Fund. His affection for Hyderabad was reflected in his sadness at the break-up of the old composite Hyderabad state, which he felt could have been a successful experiment of a multilingual and diverse cultural polity before it was dismantled. An evocative piece on this appeared in the Economic Weekly (earlier avatar of the EPW) around the time of the states reorganisation entitled “The Musings of a Mulki”. He was an intellectual who could also pen essays on less serious subjects, which reflected the polymath in him. He was in a sense a true “Renaissance” man. He would be sadly missed by those who had the privilege to know him well. Farewell friend, RIP
Study of Excellence
A
shok Mitra’s review of Sulabha Brahme’s book on D R Gadgil’s writings discusses two icons of India, Prasant Chandra Mahalanobis and Dhananjayrao Gadgil (EPW, 15 October 2011). As a follow-up to his review, I would like to urge researchers to pursue a dispassionate analysis of what happened to excellence at the Gokhale Institute of Politics and Economics (GIPE) and also at the Indian Statistical Institute (ISI, Calcutta) left behind by these two icons of Indian planning. I had the good fortune to be a student of the Masters in Statistics at the ISI for three years in the late 1960s and later a research scholar at the GIPE when both of these stalwarts were alive and the institutions were also at their peak. Have these institutions maintained that excellence over time? And if they have not, what were the factors that led to the fall in standards? Chandrashekhar G Ranade Centreville, Virginia, USA
Harmful to Social Justice
W
ith regard to Anand Teltumbde’s “Dismantling ‘Dalit’ with a Poisonous PIL” (EPW, 8 October 2011), the PIL filed in the Supreme Court asking for removal of certain castes from the list of scheduled castes/ scheduled tribes (SCs/STs) raises an important concern but also poses harm to the concept of social justice. The data related to crimes committed on the SCs/STs under the Prevention of Atrocities Act shows that most of the victims are from the castes the PIL would like to remove from the list. Our society has not reformed itself to the extent of accepting even educationally and economically advanced SCs/STs as equal citizens. The Constitution mandates reservation for the SCs/STs in proportion to their population. The non-availability of opportunities through reservation to the weaker castes among them has more to do with the socio-economic developmental programmes of the State than with the reservation policy. The most important issue is to provide education and skills to weaker castes at the primary and secondary stage by opening schools and hostels.
M Narasimham
Anil S Sutar Tata Institute of Social Sciences
Hyderabad
Mumbai
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 5, 2011 vol xlvI nos 44 & 45
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