Silence of the lamb

As the Supreme Court spelled out in its ruling that only a man of impeccable integrity must be elevated to the post of Chief Vigilance Commissioner (CVC) , the time is not far when the apex court will have to come up with a ruling that only a man of action and reaction can hold the post of Prime Minister in the country.

The honest, decent … Dr Manmohan Singh has in due course of his PM’s tenure turned out to be the most hapless and incapable man in the UPA government machinery.
The nation faced a massive loss of Rs 1027 crores in the 2G scam that could have been averted through the timely intervention of PM.

Its atrocious that the PM choose to remain silent for 20 months when he had a premonitions of the fissiparous tendencies in the telecom ministry. And more atrocious is that he attributes his silence to the compulsions of collation dharma! Thus the ‘Honest’ PM made it clear that for him running a corrupt government was more important than to curb the corrupt practices of the government.

The country lost wealth, an entire session of parliament went for a toss, the investment scene is the country has turned bleak with foreign investors hesitant to put their money , a cabinet minister has been put behind bars, about 25 biggies of the industry are circling the gates of CBI…this is indeed a national shame!

2G scam was preceded by the CWG mess last year. Kalmadi was the scapegoat to be sacrificed at the CWG alters! No one pointed finger at the congress bigshots who should be held equally responsible. The nature of pilferage is yet to be defined in this case but one can be sure that it was the “Common’s” wealth that was splurged at the Common Wealth Games.

One after other the skeletons have kept tumbling out of the UPA’s cupboard! The party that came to power holding the hands of aam admi is now hell bent at breaking its back.

And the crony capitalism fired by the corrupt politics at the sidelines are ushering a new era of growth in the country which is measured through sensex and GDP… an 8 per cent GDP which is yet to reflect in the lives of the farmers of Vidarbha… poors of kalahandi.. Insurgents of Lalghar… and the list goes on…

The Pauperised Growth

The rich ones are God in this country, the middle class constitute the Congress category of 'aam admi' and the paupers are not even eligible to be treated like humans, they have to compete with rats for the basic amenity ‘food’. The government prefers to feed the 500 million tonnes of food grains to the rats than distributing it free to the starving populace, When the judiciary intervened and ordered the government to freely distribute the grains that were stacked in the warehouses,the able prime minister opened his mouth wide for the first time in his political career , subtly bashing the Supreme Court that the ‘policy matters must be better saved for the governments to work upon." There can be no doubt that it is the policies of the successive governments that have led to the pathetic state of the teeming millions.

Coming back to the aam admi again , The aamadmi would act decisively only once in five years when it votes but the poor ones are the desperado who commit suicide, take to arms struggle and yes... they even cast their vote. The biggest tragedy with the government is that it has even lost count of the ‘poor terrorists’ as various committee put across various figures. Thus the government has been trying hard to fix numbers.

Last December, the government announced that only 27 per cent were living below the poverty line in 2004-5, based on National Sample Survey data However, the Planning Commission has now put the new figure at 37 per cent, based on Tendulkar Committee report.

While this committee estimated the number of BPL families at 80 million, the Planning Commission has fixed it at 74 million, while its own earlier figure was 65 million. Interestingly the Tendulkar Committee had been set up after the March 2009 National Development Council meeting, to look into the methodology for estimating poverty, because there was widespread criticism that the Planning Commission was producing unrealistically low poverty estimates.

P Sainath in his article dated "How right are you, Dr Singh" writes "What too, does the Supreme Court do when the government's 2006 promise of a new Below Poverty Line (BPL) Survey to be completed before the start of the Eleventh Plan never materialises? What do they or anyone do when the government sets grain allocations to the states based on poverty estimates of year 2000 based on the 1991 Census. Twenty-year-old data which result in 70 million fewer people getting BPL/Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) grain than should be the case."

With the food inflation increasing day by day and the income levels of the poor remaining almost unchanged, the current numbers of the people living (dying) below the poverty line is surely more than the 'accepted' figures of the government.

What has the government done ?

To mention its few (mis)deeds:

For purposes of food security, the Planning Commission finally accepted that the number of people living below the poverty line in India is 37.2 per cent . The Plan panel, mandated by the empowered group of ministers chaired by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee to finalise the BPL numbers, will now meet the secretaries of food and expenditure to calculate the cost of providing food security to so many poor.

While the process of meetings, deliberations and discussions continue and the government finally calculates the ACTUAL number of poor, I am sure the population would have increased by that time and the time would be ripe to form another committee to calculate the number of poor.

The centre has generously decentralised the prices of the petrol, ...... the government rationale is that the complete deregulation of auto-fuels and sharp hike in the prices of cooking fuels would help the government in reducing fiscal deficit and thus curtail its borrowings. Since fuel is a basic commodity, diesel prices rise will increase the carriage charges, which will be added to the commodities being transported. It will mean a hike in the prices for everything that is sold in the market and more money has to be shelled out.

Also, it is a well-known fact that the subsidised kerosene is not reaching the needy poor, rather it is being used as adulterant in diesel and it constitutes a roaring business.

 The government has asked banks to ensure that micro finance institution (MFI) they lend to, do not charge beyond 24% interest from final borrowers.This directly contradicts the RBI policy that there should be no interest rate caps, and the RBI is the regulator of banks. It remains to be seen whether the RBI will assert itself or give way on this. While the government preaches SC not to intervene in the policy matters it forgets its own boundaries.

The main source of credit for the poor farmers has been the moneylenders and their interest rates exceed 30% in most of the cases. The main advantage of the MFI has been that it has been delivering credit at the doorsteps of the needy.

The question is how long can the trio (the aam aadmi and the government and the Gods) continue to turn a blind eye to the poor Indians, it is indeed a national shame to talk about the GDP rates, boast of soaring sensex figures and go gaga over the great Indian growth story where the ‘growth’ hasn’t even touched the majority of the populace. In the year 2010 when more than half of the population is malnourished, 17% are slum dwellers, 35% of the homes still live in darkness,One woman dies every eight minutes due to lack of medical facility... Indian growth figures seem hollow and shammed.

A land of million mutinies and a land of million voices – India!

The voice is at times is suppressed, at times ignored and at times unheard of...but it still keeps ringing in villages, in the mud thatched huts, panchayats, bus stands, pan shops, in the courtyards of temples, hills, fields, cow sheds, benches lying near the tea shops, charpoys of roadside dhabas and in many such places. These voices are the ones which the mainstream media carelessly or at times carefully manages to ignore, but there is an strong urge to be heard, thus it is being heard!

The community radio – though a new concept, is picking up in the hinterlands of the country!It is certainly not a romantic idea of the rustic villagers handling the sophisticated equipments of the radio station or RJying ! It is more about the community using the medium to voice its issues and aspirations. A community has a vibrant life and its various hues are being effectively communicated by the members through the channel.

The topics heard on the radio are of multifarious nature…. folk songs, ad of the missing buffalos, ideas of the small business (that could even include gathering peanuts and selling in the nearby markets), a sneak peek into the life of a women who lives in the nearby village, punditry on ‘how to get good harvest this season’, information on RTI, NREGA… and at times granny tales too. The programming is as fresh as jasmine and as innovative as weaver’s bird nest!

There has been a mystery about the functioning of  the media…. No commoners know what goes around the premises of the of a conservative Radio station AIR (I call it conservative as most of the times it’s the particular tribe that mans or at times (woman's) the radio station for donkey years! The citizens are usually the hapless receivers and their ritualistic participation only left to requesting songs or sharing love life dilemmas over the radio ?(be it AIR or FM)).

But here the story is different …there is more than it meets the eye or rather enters the ears. It is about building the confidence of the people and the realization of the fact that ‘We do exist and our problems are not the common problems’.The rural communities experience the perennial neglect of the government.Earlier it was the mainstream media that would atleast report the issues but over the passage of time It is the media that has turned more hostile to the people than the government itself. The ceremonial debate on the 24/7 channels by the driven by ‘God’ like journos are mere gimmickry! In those discussions there will be a voice from the government, from opposition, an intellectual from an academic institution but the ‘common man’ on whom the entire debate is based , stands missing ! His perspective is never enquired by the media. In such a scenario it becomes imperative that the ‘aam addmi’ must speak out…and the community radio gives the platform.It is not just speaking on problems but also about the culture and communicating the local flavor of the community through folklore, songs etc. This the songs that were restricted to the special occasions such as marriage , birth or harvesting seasons are now on the radio and the singers are the local artists. The programs are not in Hindi or the standard vernacular language, but in the local dialect (for example in Himachal the community radio in Solan uses the pahadi dialect Bhagati and similarly in Uttar Pradesh the Bundelkhand radio uses bundeli as the medium of communication).

Community radio signals a lot of things….first the community establishes its unique identity through the medium, second the medium has led to a meaningful addition to the social lives of the people of the community as the people now discuss their issues more vigorously and third and the most important - the mainstream media has in a way failed the ‘rural’ India and thus people will exercise their rights through this tool .

Manufacturing Images

Thankfully the great Indian Tamasha – IPL(Indian Paisa league) has come to grinding halt … I had literally gone on hibernation during these days. It was torture browsing the web portals of any news channel. Even Narendra modi wasn’t the cynosure of media during his hay days (Godhra riots) as Lalit Modi has been during the IPL. This time Narendra can happily repeat his statement (and I would second it, if it is directed towards Latit bhai) “your riot was worse than mine”. The IPL was literally a Riot!

The drama even shook the not so holy portals of “Indian Parliament” – no doubt Lalu was jealous, vexed and so were other ‘leaders’. A feeling of inferiority complex had crept in as politics is no longer the only ‘dirty game ‘ in country ….there are more ‘sinister ‘ plays now.
IPL robbed the lone ‘dude’ minister, Sashi Tharoor of Congress of his cabinet berth, it robbed the richest man in India of his precious sleep (I guess so as Mukesh Ambani didn’t seem amused when he saw his prettier half clinging to the tiny sardar Bhajji), it robbed the game of the game itself!
IPL….also stirred a bit of my mind… Are all the poorest of Indians actually crying hoax, everything seemed fine in this country during IPL!! All talks about inflation, poverty, inequality had a new connotation these days…if there was inequality in this country it was between the scores of two teams! If there was any poverty, it was of NEWS…and if there was any inflation…. It wasn’t there for the 'sabjis’ but for the ‘Bhajjis’ and other tomatoes and potatoes of the international cricketing world!
No point of shooting arrows on Lalit Modi… one should bomb those 24 hours channel which manufactured only those images that earned buks! Why a farmer from vidharba or from any part of the country would have a prime time slot…. He certainly cannot pay for it…isn’t it?
If he needs to have his story told on the media…. He has to do something dramatic … No a suicide won’t help anymore!! They have to think out of the box…has to be something scandalous as their story is pitted against that of the Modis, Mirzas and Mallicks!!

WANTED - Power!

One of the ‘accidental intellectuals’ of this decade has been Karan Johar. Not that I have any particular liking for this tissue like, touchy kind of  bollywood director , but what amuses me are the ‘not so popular’ issues that he has thrown open through his ‘popular’ cinema! One such topic that popped up with his dumbo Dostana was ‘gay prem’!

Once unheard, unspoken and untouched of the gayish jokes are relatively common these days. Generally people do acknowledge the existence of ‘Gay’ men except for the likes of yoga obsessed baba Ram Dev who claims to cure? Sexuality (I hope karan Johar knows of this). The murmurs are clearer now.  I just hope that we don’t restrict it to the frivolousness of the light jokes surrounding the topic. The debate has to go deeper, raise important questions about the civil rights of this minority community.

The judiciary has to be hailed for the series of ‘welcome’ judgements that it has pronounced in favour of gay men in India. The recent Allahabad High Courts judgement to reinstate Dr Sreenivas Siras back as a faculty in Alighar Muslim University is case point. To give a brief background of the case, Dr Siras was caught on a camera footage having sex with a rickshaw puller and the Vice Chancellor of the university sacked him terming it as ‘grave misconduct’. Judiciary didn’t go with the VC’s version and now Dr Siras is back to his beloved! In an ideal situation its Dr Siras should have slapped a case of intrusion of Privacy on the VC who had sent the so called journos to film him in the compromising position.

These judgements are a good beginning but the stir shouldn’t calm here, not all gay men are affluent and educated as Dr Siras. They are trapped in other unprivileged identities such as Dalit, lower castes, Scheduled castes, scheduled tribe etc. In such a case it is a dual stigma for them… do we brush them aside as they constitute a very miniscule part of the  gigantic population or wait till there is an uprising (I see very remote chances as Not all gay men can unite…. They have hierarchies among them too…as all Hindus do not love all Hindus, all gay men cannot act humane to each other).

One of the solutions can be political representation, If women can have 33% reservation (though passed only in Rajya Sabha) why not gays! If for representing about 46% percent of the population, a 33% of reservation can be thought of then why not reserve atleast 5 seats for about 70 million LGBT populations in India. This proposition might seem contentious and can be criticised on many fronts such as …. How to determine which constituency they must represent as all the LGBT do not concentrate them in one particular land or so, they are scattered, unorganised like any other group in the country. Will they serve as true representatives (in that case no one can claim to be a genuine representative of another). If seats are reserved for LGBT , then reservation based on other identities may be demanded.

Brushing aside all the criticisms and doubts regarding such a move, I would just like to highlight some points …. Our society is homophobic. There have been endless cases when they have been beaten, harassed or put to death by authorities. In many states, they have killed themselves after facing harassment at home and outside. They are forced by family into heterosexual marriages. It is not that all are confident about their sexuality, at times it is difficult to come to  terms with ones identity and it can be painful process when every one around despises you. Gay behaviour is regarded as sexually predatory!

Homosexuality may have been decriminalised but Government departments are yet to acknowledge the fact that India has a gay population, they are yet to be recognised as a third sex (or why not the first sex, I won’t assign hierarchies to different sex). As the LGBT are not a visible vote bank, it becomes imperative that they should be given power to address their own problems.

And what better form of Power than the Political Power…. (As in our country political power is the doorway to all kind of prosperity…. economic, social and what not.. Let gays men also have some garlands !!)

Chenchus…lean, thin and lost!

Mutthiya sits with his back resting on a wall of a house; a lock dangles on its door. Out of forty two houses, only four of the doors remain unlocked in this Chenchu penta(the colony is known as penta). The entire village has migrated in the search of employment to the towns… left behind are the likes of Mutthiya, who are old and cannot toil hard. He occasionally goes in the nearby forests (forest seem an overstatement) to collect honey and sells it at the nearest town Devarkonda. Chinamma, an old lady in her fifties collects groundnuts and earns Rs 10 per day. There are many such old men women in the penta who live for pittance as most of them do not get the old age pension that they are entitled to.

Chenchus are the hunting tribes who once dwelled in the forests of Orissa, Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. With the cities swallowing up the forests and their lands being washed away by mighty dams, Chenchus have relocated themselves or have been ‘rehabilitated’ In other parts of the land.  As is the case with this Chenchu group, their colony was gifted to them in exchange of the forests that Nagarjunasagar dam drowned in 1967

It has been almost forty years and Chenchus are yet to merge in the mainstream mode of life. The colony or penta as it is popularly known is located around 50 kms from Devarkonda, other adjoining town includes Timapur.  9866163824 , a phone number is written with charcoal on a wall facing Deenamma’s home, it is the phone number of a doctor residing in Timapur. The penta doesn’t have a primary health centre.

Deenamma has called up this number many times as she has a new born baby girl, due to this reason her husband has chosen not to work far away from their penta. The number comes handy as Doctor is just a phone call away, Thanks to the nokia set! Most of the Chenchus own mobile phones…the road connectivity may be poor but the tele connectivity is excellent!

Not just mobile sets, one could spot a dish antenna on the roof top of two shut houses. I wondered if the house had a TV set. It is amazing to witness the paradox… A one room  house, where a bedroom, kitchen, living room, guest room (all kind of fancy rooms we love to have in our homes) is crammed up, also has a space for a TV set. A more intriguing question is the fact that how one does manages it? Is it through collecting honey, killing rabbits, porcupines, working in fields or through sweating at the construction sites in the urban centres? Chenchus are hard working people. Employment card elude most of these hard working Chenchus …. Other people have it … certainly on the name of Chenchus folks!

It is relatively easy to con the tribals are as the literacy levels are depressingly low. The Chenchu penta had one dilapidated room in the name of a primary school. Around 30 to 35 children in the age group of 5 to 13 who should be ideally going to a primary school actually accompany their parents where they migrate in search of work. Whoever are left are lucky to have more holidays than working days as the teacher visits once in four days in the so called primary school which is deprived of the primary facilities!

The issues are numerous but Chenchus are not an organised tribe unlike the other tribal communities such as the lambadas. Their political representation is nil and the population is also declining soon… thus a vanishing tribe. E.V.L.Narayana , President of Green Cross, an NGO based in Devarkonda says “ Chenchus are lean , thin and usually malnourished. One of the reasons is the rampant arrack consumption. The immunity levels are very low as Chenchus marry within their community only and the life span is usually up to 45 to 50 years”.

There are programs like Integrated Tribal Development Agency ITDA initiated by the government that are functional in various places such as Mehboobnagar ands Srisailam. The program constitutes of community and women's development, health and education, natural resources development, credit and marketing support and project management support, including monitoring and evaluation. The Tribal Welfare Department had the overall responsibility for project implementation, with the commissioner for tribal welfare as the project coordinator. Project activities are implemented through the regular ITDA channels which includes local NGOs. Atleast the government has provided each home with a medical kit. Whether they have been briefed about its usage is altogether a different story that we couldn’t explore.

For long life … Chenchus believe in God! Apart from calling the Timapur Doctor occasionally, and using/or not using the medical kit Deenamma invokes God to ensure a healthy life for her family.  She recently converted to Christianity along with the entire penta. Now every house has a holy cross enshrined on its outer wall. Few weeks back a lady from another Chenchu penta had visited this penta and had facilitated conversion to Christianity. Muthhiya says that he has stopped drinking arrack as he had taken oath in the name of Jesus Christ! Amen!

Insight into the food Inflation

The malicious and mindless blame game is on! Who ever in the government can be held responsible by the opposition is being brutally attacked (certainly the style is verbose). The crisis isn’t a common one, it has broke backs of the most vulnerable of the aam admis of our country … it is the ever bourgeoning food inflation.

The cliché with such a kind of crisis is that, people belonging to different spheres such as politicians, economists have their own respective interpretations and not necessarily does it leads to any kind of solution.

Many culprits have been named till now… while Manmohan Singh holds global increase in the commodity, prices responsible for the domestic surge in the prices while BJP accuses Sharad Pawar as being the sole malefactor.

Closely examining the food inflation, the picture doesn’t seems a simplistic one… bad recessionary times intersecting with the neglect of the agricultural sector at the home has led to the unprecedented rise in the price of the basic food items across the length and breadth of the country.

With an average growth rate of about 2% per annum, the agricultural sector has been gasping for real time reforms. Major issues continue to hog the sector persistently. Low per hectare yield, poor irrigational facilities, dependence on the erratic monsoon, lack of credit facilities are some of the issues that farmers have been facing since decades! It wasn’t a surprise that the monsoon was the spoiler this year…. lack of rain, power crisis and heat waves damaged the sown seeds but also delayed the cultivation cycle, resulting in huge loss of the output. This was the point when the food prices started rising. The rise was not on account of any shortage but more on account of probable shortage

Secondly the poor shortage facilities resulted in loses of 58,000 crores worth of agricultural food items due to lack of post harvesting infrastructure. If the Government had ensured timely storage facility, food inventory would have been more then sufficient leading to prices remaining under control. Next factor that led to the spurt was the government going soft on the hoarders and speculators.

On the global arena economic recovery from recession in major advanced economies and improved growth prospects in major agricultural products have been major drivers of the recent increases in international commodity prices. The FAO (Food Price Index), a measure of the monthly changes in the international prices of a food basket composed of cereals, oilseeds, diary, meat and sugar has been increasing significantly since August 2009, led by all its components. The major driver of this increase has been sugar, as output of the two major sugar producing countries, i.e. India and Brazil has declined. Consequently sugar prices have shot up in India too.

All the above mentioned cases are the supply side constraints that have led to sky rocketing prices of the staple food items of an Indian family such as pulses, rice, sugar etc. Government has reacted by permitting import of raw and white sugar, edible oil and pulses by public and private sector as well. Centre has taken steps in empowering states to punish hoarders. The area that can be consolidated further is the public distribution system

Pranab Mukherjee, Union Finance Minister said “RBI (Reserve Bank of India) has already done the demand-side management by raising the CRR (cash reserve ratio). It will suck out Rs.40,000 crores money from the banking system. This will ease liquidity pressure on the system,” 

Added to the proactive measures by the Government institutions, one can also count on nature as Rabi crops prospects seem encouraging; the post monsoon rains have been good. Along with the short term initiatives, there has to be long term vision in dealing with a crisis of such grave nature. Inflation as an economic phenomenon is cyclical in nature, but how much of it can be allowed a free play is a crucial question. Had the agricultural sector been better off to absorb shock, the intensity of the food inflation would have been moderate.

The bottom line is that agriculture has to be revived, revamped and reformed through a visionary plan in our country! The double digit growth that the PM claims in the next few years cannot be at achieved by riding on the success story of the manufacturing and the service sector. The growth has to be holistic including all sectors of the economy.

To conclude I would like to quote George Washington who had once remarked, "I know of no pursuit in which more real and important services can be rendered to any country than by improving its agriculture"