A Question of Food Security

Amidst all the brouhaha of the Lokpal Bill, the UPA Govt has introduced arguably an ultra-ambitious food security programme that strives to put food into the thalis of lakhs of famished Indians. The Bill was introduced in the Parliament and referred to the Standing Committee immediately. It has far reaching implications but has not attracted sufficient national attention or media eye balls, like the Lokpal, maybe because it deals with hunger – a theme that has lesser TRPs.

So what does the National Food Security Bill provide for? The present draft of the Bill seeks to provide legal entitlement of food grain to 75% of the rural population and 50% of the urban population.  Eligible households will be divided into two categories – priority and general – wherein the priority group will consist of atleast 46 percent of the rural population and 28 percent of the urban population. BPL (priority) families will be entitled to a monthly provision of 7 kg food grain per person and APL (general) families will be eligible to 3 kg per person, at half the Minimum Support Price. The 7 kg will comprise rice for Rs 3 /kg, wheat for Rs 2/kg and coarse grains for Re 1/kg.

In addition to this, the bill envisages maternity benefit of 1000 Rs per month for 6 months for pregnant women and lactating mothers, free or affordable meals to destitute, homeless and disaster-affected persons and nutritional meals for children upto 14 years. In effect, this would translate subsidies worth almost Rs 1 lakh crore for close to 75% of our population (an additional cost of 40,000 crore over the existing food subsidy Bill of 60,000 crore, making it 1.25% of the GDP.

The Bill in its current form looks like a Utopian drug that doctors would like to administer to a dying patient so that he is up the next day.  The moral imperative behind such a law is agreed to by everyone; a country with 45% malnourished children and a lowly ranking of 66 among 88 countries on the World Hunger Index, below even sub-Saharan countries is a pretty damning statistic! The problem of hunger is a national shame and so while we must be careful of the fiscal implications of such a solution, a decision cannot be driven by economics alone – what is the price that we can pay for a human who dies of hunger?

To quote Sainath -

The corporate giveaway in the current Indian budget is 18-19 billion dollars in direct income tax and if you add other corporate concessions under excise and customs, it crosses over a hundred billion US dollars. According to UNDP, that’s the amount you require every year to solve all the basic problems of the human race. But the same Indian budget cuts 4,500 million rupees from food security. Last year the same amount, nearly 10,000 million rupees had disappeared in 24 months from food subsidies in a country which has the largest number of hungry people in the world.

The primary concern of the Bill deals with identification of the target groups to whom the scheme is to be directed at. Umpteen committees like the Tendulkar Committee, NC Saxena Committee, the Planning Commission (remember the 32 Rs starvation line) and other smaller groups have come up with figures which quote different definitions of what it means to be poor in this country. The Bill has left it to the wisdom of the Govt and the Parliament to sort this out but the experience of the Lokpal does not indicate that the Parliament has any Solomons to provide solutions. Until we really know the quantum of people to whom the scheme is targeted, the real cost and strategy required to handle this cannot be estimated.

Nandan Nilekani’s UID Project (which still has no Parliamentary law to back it) has run into rough weather and the Standing Committee on Finance has come down heavily on it for being a badly designed scheme with no clear objectives. The Home Minister is not comfortable with its working and the socio-economic and caste census to determine eligibility is well behind schedule.

One way out of this target based conundrum suggested by most experts is in looking at the success story of the Universal PDS popularized by Tamil Nadu. Here, population segregation for distribution of grains has been done away with and every family in the state, BPL or not, has a colour-coded card that entitles it to draw rice under PDS with a provision that those under the ‘needy’ category get a larger amount than the others. The task of minimizing diversion and reaching rice to about 2 crore cardholders across 31,439 outlets in 32 districts is being carried out using technological interventions, drawing up innovative fool-proof delivery mechanisms, proper policing, surprise checks and constant reviews, efficient supply chain management system including a GPS tracking of trucks carrying food grains to tackle pilferage and fixing responsibility at each.

The FSB requires large scale foodgrain procurement, storage planning and construction, creation of a distribution system from scratch and strengthening the existing PDS. Currently, the Government procures close to 52 million tonnes of food grains every year and the new entitlement would lead to an enhanced requirement of close to 25 million tonnes. Such a massive exercise of procurement and distribution will be handled by the Food Corporation of India but does it have the capacity and logistics to handle such large volumes? When food grains go rotting every year due to storage problems, where will this additional procurement go?This is assuming that every grain of food procured is actually distributed to the stakeholders - RBI data shows close to 50% leakage in the PDS and corruption estimates of around 20,000 crore every year! Reforming the existing leaking PDS structure is probably a better thing to do than rather than increasing its size beyond controllable limits.

Govt data about a decade back estimates the cost of procuring wheat at 134 Rs/quintal and transportation of the same at 289 Rs – a massive expenditure involved merely in the to and fro movement of food among states! Does the Centre have to be involved in such an activity? Each State must decide the best way to carry out such programmes locally and even here, a decentralized design where the Grama Panchayats can act as the agent to carry out these activities will ensure a lower cost and proper delivery to people. Schemes like free kitchens run by villagers and mid-day meal have done more than any Central driven scheme in handling the issue. States like Chhattisgarh and Gujarat have devised working mechanisms like door step delivery and computerised PDS which can be emulated in the rest of the country.

Alternate solutions in the form of food coupons or cash transfers directly to the needy have also been discussed. Bihar uses a system of food coupons which unfortunately has very little to show because of the corruption nexus between dealers and Govt officers while the cash transfer scheme is largely untested in India. Access to banks and markets is still pretty low in rural India and so the cash transfer is possibly too early an option but it makes sense to run pilots based on these schemes in various regions so that empirical data is present while making a final decision.

There is also a larger question of whether hunger and poverty can be eradicated by legally ensuring dole outs in this manner. The adage of ‘teaching a man to fish rather than giving him fish’ is equally relevant; state interventions which put grains or cash in the hands of struggling individuals can only ensure that they can survive but in the long run, they are  dependent on the State to bail them out. Dipali Rastogi, Commissioner – Food Supplies (M.P.) writing in the Indian Express refers to South Korea’s Saemaeul movement where the Govt strived to eliminate absolute poverty through harnessing the labour of the poor to carry out development and infrastructure projects – something on the lines of NREGS but in the form of incentive-based programmes to fund high capital concrete development of villages instead of beneficiary based entitlements that provide no incentive to tackle the real problem.

There is a danger that any discussion on this Bill will degenerate into a fight between the rich and the poor. It is imperative that we put aside the political background of the Bill and judge it purely what it is trying to implement – right or wrong can be debated even without judging the affiliations of the people who have drafted it. Most of us agree with the fact that it is a well-intentioned bill but then as they say ‘The road to hell is paved with good intentions’ and it needs all the debate it can to make it effective..

There is no readymade consensus strategy to combat this alarming situation – the Left talks about Govt subsidizing food similar to wages for labour in NREGS while the Right talks about growth being the only natural panacea to deal with the problem (actually, looking at the way FDI in Retail and the Pension Bill have gone, the current polity looks too confused to decide on whether they are on the right or left side of the debate). The solution has to lie somewhere in between, similar to all other solutions that India needs to tackle its gargantuan problems.

Image Courtesy - http://www.cartoonistsandeep.com/post_detail.php.php?id=MAYAR1324784812MAYA4ef69cac848fc

Racing to Annihilate Corruption

As the race to annihilate corruption heats up, Anna Hazare and team have started off on their next hunger strike to combat the Government’s lackadaisical attitude on the Jan Lokpal Bill. But as the middle class, in desperate search of a messiah, follows the Pied Piper in his mission, a doubt lingers on whether there isn’t an undue haste being followed in trying to pass a Bill that has emerged as a rallying point for citizens frustrated with corruption.

Anna Hazare’s prior Jantar Mantar manoeuvre won him fans across but more importantly put the limelight on corruption in a way that we have not seen in decades. It led to the Government climbing down from its stand on the Lok Pal and instituting a combined committee to re-draft the bill. The Bill has now reached the Parliament and the Parliamentary Standing Committee has invited Anna and team to present his views on the subject.

Governments across the world are normally subject to multiple forms of pressure from all kinds of lobbies like the press, judiciary, corporates and others. The Indian civil society (if such a homogeneous group exists) has been a more passive pressure group; even the most virulent representatives like Arundhati Roy and Medha Patkar have been debated in the media only and left untouched by a vast stretch of the population (middle class urban population to be more precise) but the Anna group has successfully managed to create a support base amongst this crowd.

Facebook, Twitter and 24x7 news have ensured that the public is fed on a constant diet of anti-corruption capsules. So you have slogans like “If you are not with Anna and Team, you are with the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats of our country"(Bush would approve!) and “We can’t afford to fail this time. For if we fail, we may never get another chance. It is now or never”. While I am honestly cynical about this business of eradicating corruption with a  magic wand, it must be said that despite the obvious theatrics behind all this sloganeering and ideas (my personal favourite is the Give a Missed Call and Support the Movement), it is wonderful to see people actually talking and thinking about it and forcing the Government to do something about this.

The Government’s position is an open goal post and indefensible; the UPA is at the nadir of its popularity and the multiple scams which leap out of papers and TV sets have reduced it to a motley group with zero credibility. It does not help that the PM is perceived to be a man with no voice and the voices that matter are not available on any public discourse (anyone’s seen a Sonia or Rahul Gandhi interview?). The opposition is practically non-existent in terms of performance and despite the Government giving away its advantage on a platter, the weak knead Opposition is unable to anything about it. In such a position, you cannot blame the civil society for filling in the vacuum and acting as the moral guardian. You'd think that by now our politics would be mature enough to accept dissent but the hara-kiri done in trying to tackle Anna Hazare makes the Government look totally ridiculous and out of touch with people's sentiments.

So, Team Anna has stepped into the Opposition’s shoes and done great service in pitching across an important voice missing all these years – the voice of the electorate. The ruling party realizes that he has the masses behind him and so needs to be taken seriously and so we had the charade of a Joint Drafting Committee that arrived on a consensus that nobody understood. But somewhere in the din of the Anti-Corruption movement (is it one?), there is a concern that the movement is side-stepping its own principles and attempting to bulldoze its own version of the bill in undue haste, bypassing the norms of democracy.

Team Anna has called the proposed bill a Joke Pal and ridiculed its namby-pamby way of trying to tackling corruption. This may be true but the fact that is that the team has a chance to voice their concern in the Standing Committee of the Parliament and so changes can still be incorporated. The RTI Act which was widely touted as a victory of the civil society movement underwent 153 amendments in the standing committee before emerging into the form it now finds itself in.

The team would also be well-advised not to mix the business of governance with popular support and attempt to play to the gallery. It is ridiculous when top cop Kiran Bedi comes to NDTV and suggests that the NDTV opinion polls and their own polls indicate the mass support behind the movement and so their version must be passed; the team even talked about a referendum to gauge public support on their stand. The notion of a people's court to settle issues in a plural society is fraught with dangers. Is public support (assuming that the support exists beyond urban netizens) and rhetoric the basis on which public policy needs to be drafted in this country? If this was the criterion, you’d probably have death penalty as a popular form of punishment and moral policing as an important police activity…

The Jan Lokpal Bill has undergone 40+ revisions and Arvind Kejriwal says that they are open to suggestions but the Team is critical of the Government for not accepting their bill in toto and does not seem to be receptive to any changes in it. Not supporting the Anna movement does not tantamount to supporting the Government at all; staunch public warriors like Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander have expressed serious misgivings about the form of the proposed bill and have in fact even proposed an alternative in the form of a basket of reforms to tackle corruption (haven’t seen much reporting on this other than in the Tehelka).

Democracy is a messy business but it’s probably the best way to clean the mess that we find ourselves in. It is naive and even arrogant (at times) to assume that this is a black and white debate and that there is only one set of people who knows what is best and so the rest should follow. The Mumbai blasts in the 90s led to the demand of a stringent anti-terrorist law and POTA replaced the TADA but now in hindsight, most parties have taken a position against it and agreed that there needs to be more safeguards to protect its misuse while many others have said that the existing Criminal procedure Law in the country is good enough to handle the issue.

We have seen the Lok Ayukta in Karnataka, the CAG in the 2G and CWG scams and institutions like the Election Commission and the higher judiciary make an overall impact on the state by their interventions; so we may not necessarily require a super cop to manage our affairs here. A Frankenstein monster who bosses over everyone can be a terror but does the bill have relevant safeguards ( look back at the terror unleashed by Edgar Hoover as the first director of the FBI) or will it even actually do what it set out to do - tackle corruption? This is debatable but is there a room for even such a debate or are the emotions running so high that we cannot tolerate anyone questioning the proposals?

Anna Hazare’s role in pushing corruption to the forefront of the Indian political debate is arguably immense but there is a danger of overdoing his actions and pushing the envelope just too far that is making many his supporters/well-wishers wondering whether the wise men have not chewed off more than they can swallow. The hysteria created in the initial fast has sky rocketed the expectations of the public and they want the death knell to be sounded now but can the artists keep performing for an audience that has begun to relish the idea of a magic wand and may not be willing to accept the complexities of the process involved?

Yes, the final objective is noble but that does not absolve us from acting responsibly and taking the right path. No one says that the path needs to be dismantled but there is a line that needs to be drawn between what can be the role of unelected and unaccountable civil society member and a Parliamentarian? I know we are skeptical about the role of the Parliament but let’s not forget that the same set of people implemented the RTI Act and many other important pieces of legislation.


The parliamentary way of doing things is understandably not the fastest or most glamorous way to do so (the Dravid rather than Sehwag way) but in a democracy, the fairest way to proceed is deploying faith in the parliament, while pressure groups continue to exert their influence on Governments. We cannot bypass institutions in favour of individuals; it may work perfectly well in one scenario but it sets a precedent which becomes difficult to follow. So, yes, Anna and team must continue with all their good work but it must draw a line between the rule of the civil society and that of an elected representative and not become a mirror opposite of the Government in its actions.

To quote Aruna Roy –

I think it’s democratically and politically immature to demand that one take a simplistic and black-and-white position on this. This is what governments have always being doing with us. You are seen as either with them or against them. For instance, if you fought for land rights you were described as a Maoist and a votary of violent revolution. We cannot do the same thing ourselves, but we are. We are not allowing ourselves the luxury of the rich debates and nuanced thinking that has been our strength. Pluralism has been the strength of the so-called civil society. We cannot sacrifice that. I don’t care what happens to the Government but it’s wrong for the people of this country, it’s wrong for democracy and that’s why we have decided to speak from the NCPRI. 

Image Courtesy - http://churumuri.wordpress.com/2011/04/08/let-a-thousand-anna-hazares-bloom-across-india/

Being Realistic About Kashmir

More than 100 civilians have been killed in the last 3 months as Kashmir boils in a fury that we have not seen in recent times. There is a clear revolt in the streets of the Valley and we must face it – it is not a Pakistani plot but led by enraged young men and women. No party has any idea on how to quell the violence and the state bleeds as violent protests and demonstrations paralyze it. The National Conference demands autonomy, the Congress prefers status quo (something that Narasimha Rao had elevated to an art) while BJP wants to crush the revolt.

Omar Abdullah has not gained any brownie points for his governmental incompetence – but seriously, would changing the Chief Minister make any difference? When the State is besieged by rebellions throughout the year and the administration is left to the army, can the CM change things? You could argue that only a man in touch with the Kashmiri common man can make a difference; but then this is just as true for any political leader in this country. Those who think that Farooq Abdullah would have done a better job, better think twice – are we talking about one of the men who was responsible for the 1987 poll rigging in Kashmir, a turning point in its politics?

Everyone knows the history of Kashmir – the fact that state which may have become independent or part of Pakistan is now in India primarily because Maharaja Hari Singh agreed to cede to India in order to protect his kingdom from Pakistani tribal warlords. But that was 63 years back and we still have not been able to resolve the Kashmir issue that rocks every conference where India and Pakistan try to sit and talk to each other. No one has a magic wand to resolve it and all the smart alecs who talk about giving solutions are living in a fool’s paradise.

The Government’s announcement of 50,000 jobs and the creation of a panel to study the creation of more jobs are small efforts that are taken with a pinch of salt in the Valley. The economic package will only work with a proper political one but then India has never won any fans for its dismal and insensitive handling of provincial challenges. The strategy never changes – whether it is Kashmir, North-East or Punjab; the Centre props up a few leaders, buys or bullies its way through other factions and finds itself in a position where it is stuck in a Catch-22 situation.

The 2002 elections were a starting point of a change in the ground realities in Kashmir. Elections were held and there was wide participation by the people; the extremist groups slowly started losing their hold on the masses and there was a hope that moderate groups like the Hurriyat can be brought into the administration. Negotiations with moderates like Sajjad Lone, Yasin Malik and Mirwaiz Farooq were attempted but all this has come to nought in the past couple of years. New Delhi must take most of the blame for dilly-dallying and not doing enough to rope in moderates and allowing hardliners like Geelani to call the shots once again.

Currently, the biggest stumbling block is the controversial AFSPA – the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA), which was passed on September 11, 1958. It conferred special powers upon armed forces in "disturbed areas" in the states of North-East and was later extended to Jammu and Kashmir in July 1990. The Defence establishment is not very keen on repealing this abused act and though most political parties (except the BJP) are keen to repeal it or at least dilute it in Kashmir, no decision has been taken on it.

AFSPA was meant to be used under special conditions but unfortunately, a draconian act like the Act can never serve its purpose for long. There is no doubt that the AFSPA is the biggest obstacle in trying to bring immediate peace – we must do away with it in totality or at least gradually – and release important political prisoners. Today’s Kashmir is not what it was in the 90s – foreign influence is on the wane and the state election turnout has been very positive. Kashmir needs a proper civilian government and the government has to be run through proper political administration and not by the military.

The State police force needs to handle the ground job and get the army only to protect its borders. The Armed Forces are not equipped to handle law and order problems and you cannot justify using them against your own people. As the death toll rises in clashes between the armed forces and the protesters, witness the reaction to other protests like the Jats going berserk in Haryana. They did much more damage than the stone pelters in Kashmir but no army was brought in; it was left to the police to settle things and there were no deaths reported due to police firing.

In the last one year, India has lost ground majorly and allowed separatists to make a comeback. Knee-jerk reactions like banning SMSs, pre-paid mobile connections, media and cable channels will only increase the burning rage; the State must learn to respect the civil society and safeguard its rights. Today, there are powerful forces demanding a trifurcation of the main regions of the state – Jammu, Kashmir and Ladakh – into separate administrative units but this is dangerous.

While the onus is primarily on the State and Central Government to understand the Kashmir psyche, it is also high time for Kashmiris to be realistic about their options. Are choices like independence, autonomy or alignment with Pakistan workable?

Azaadi is a utopian dream; there is no way any self-respecting country can relinquish land mindful of the geographical and political complexities of the place. Kashmiris would be foolish to believe that they can survive independently surrounded by India, China and Pakistan. Independence will only encourage the likes of Taliban to try to wrestle their way through to occupy the Valley, with tacit support of Pakistan and China, thus creating another Afghanistan like situation. Kashmir is not about the majority Muslims alone; ask the minority Kashmiri Pandits (who have been victims of ethnic cleansing making them homeless) and Sikhs and they would be happier to be aligned with India.

Bad governance is a malaise that is present everywhere in the country. Police excesses, administrative apathy and corruption have corroded India everywhere and this is not a Kashmir specific problem. The Indian bureaucracy has treated Kashmiris no better and no worse than they’ve treated the rest of India. Will throwing out the Indian element of the administration cure that? I doubt that.

Autonomous Kashmir can be a way out but then isn’t the Indian Government answerable to the rest of the nation too? If Kashmir can be autonomous, why not Tamil Nadu or Manipur or Gujarat? Historical and cultural differences are hardly significant to treat Kashmir separately – those reasons are applicable to just about any other state in India. Doesn’t Article 370 give Kashmir a special significance which we don’t have? Kashmiris need to be convinced that they are governed by somebody from among them and not a candidate whose strings are being pulled by the Centre. What we need is greater decentralization and that is the need in every state and not just Kashmir but again this is not specific to Kashmir alone; local level empowerment and devolution of power can help in making a more federal India.

Aligning with Pakistan is not a very popular option now even for Kashmir. PoK is miles away from any autonomy while Mohajirs are second class people in Pakistan. Hardliners like Alam Bhat and Asiya Andrabi may want to be a part of Pakistan but they are perceived by most Kashmiris as fundamentalists who do not understand Kashmir and its soul. But the political environment is changing; the pan-Islamic identity of the Kashmir struggle is slowly gaining ground. In the last 2 years, the moderates find themselves more and more sidelines and separatist leaders like Geelani have started calling the shots again.

Historical prejudices are hard to resolve but then if we start trying to correct every perceived historical wrong, there is no end to it. LoC is a reality that we better accept; there is no scope for ambiguity – Kashmir is an integral part of India and this is the only way forward. Improving on the existing reality is critical but ignoring the very ground reality is foolishness...

Image Courtesy - http://www.twocircles.net/2010aug16/tcn_cartoon_kashmiri_leadership.html

The Second Bhopal Tragedy

Karl Marx had once said - History repeats itself, occurring first as tragedy, the second time as farce. The quotation cannot have been more aptly applied than to the Bhopal Gas Disaster where the farce in question is the so-called conviction of the perpetuators of the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, which makes a mockery of the Indian sense of justice. More than 25 years after a deadly gas leak from a Union Carbide plant caused the world’s worst industrial disaster, which killed more than 15,000 and affected more than 5 lakh people (and many more unreported), a local court yesterday convicted all the accused to a 2 year imprisonment!!! The accused were fined a lakh each and immediately granted bail.

The sentence is not just distressing – it is absolutely shocking to see a crime on humanity escaping such a mild rebuke, under the Indian law. After years of suffering under an arrogant MNC and being ignored by that albatross called Government of India, the people of Bhopal have been delivered the final blow. The victims of the Bhopal disaster gain practically nothing from the judgment; even a moral satisfaction of seeing the big guys behind bars is missing.

The Indian judicial system does not seem to be capable of giving justice to its own people- the main accused has not even been brought to trial and seven others have been given punishments, which equates the crime to a road negligence act, instead of the actual heinous act that it is. If justice has eluded the victims, this is because the governments of the US and India have colluded to protect the guilty. Successive governments have been eager to please US business corporations in order to attract more investment rather than pursue justice.

Even by the standards of the Indian judicial system, a 25 year wait is an incredibly long wait and imagine this is the largest industrial disaster in the world. Will it be wrong to expect a speedy, detailed investigation into an even of such enormity but then we are bound by our law. The only fatalistic expectation that we can have is of Divine justice and karmic punishment for the accused!!!

Various investigations and studies show that a series of negligent decisions taken by the management lead to the explosion of the gas tank, leading to 40,000 kg of methyl isocyanide spilling over to the city. Investigations over the years have shown that the Bhopal plant design was faulty and that there was next to no emergency preparedness — issues that the parent company in the U.S. apparently knew about, according to the groups that conducted the studies. Union Carbide not apply the same safety standards at its plant in India as it operated at a sister plant in West Virginia, US but then you can do that in India and get away with it.

Initially, Union carbide offered $ 5 million as a relief fund but the Indian government rejected the claim and demanded $3.3 billion instead. The original criminal case was settled out of court in 1989, when both Union Carbide and the Government sought to terminate all court proceedings by agreeing for a $470 million settlement. Consequently, Union Carbide paid 713 crore to the government as compensation – 113 crore was paid to those with property and cattle damage while the remaining 600 crore was to be distributed to the kin of the death and injured. But some victims are still waiting to receive even this share of the money.

No scientific survey was done and an arbitrary casualty figure was estimated. As time progressed, the numbers reported started increasing but since the amount was already agreed upon, the fixed amount had to be distributed among the people leading to on an average, each victim just receiving 12,410 Rs!!! As part of this settlement, all the criminal charges filed against Union Carbide were dropped but the uproar caused due to this led to the reopening of cases in 1991.

However, in 1996, the Supreme Court directed that charges against the accused be converted from culpable homicide (which carries a maximum of 10 years) to death due to negligence (maximum sentence of 2 years). So, the trail court cannot be accused of going soft on the accused; the real slackness was demonstrated by the SC Bench (including the then CJI A M Ahmedi) for allowing prosecution only under nominal ground. By reducing the Bhopal disaster to the equivalent of a traffic accident, the prison term for the crimes of Bhopal was brought down from 10 years to 2 years.

The main accused Warren Anderson, who was the Chairman and CEO of Union Carbide at the time of the incident was not even in the list of those convicted. He was arrested and released on bail by the police in 1984 and since then he has turned his back to India. The Indian Government made a plea for his extradition in 2004, but it was rejected by the US Government on the grounds that under US laws, only someone personally culpable for a crime can be extradited. The American and Indian Governments claimed they had no whereabouts about Warren Anderson but Greenpeace traced him to a nine hundred thousand dollar luxury home in New York, where he still lives in ‘anonymity’.

The Indian government seemed to go out of its way to cushion the experience for Union Carbide. The various Union governments in the meantime have not taken on Union Carbide, which is now owned by Dow Chemical. Meanwhile, Keshub Mahindra, Chairman of Union Carbide India Ltd at the time of the Bhopal disaster and now chairman of Mahindra & Mahindra was even nominated for a civilian honor, the Padma Bhushan, in 2002!!! He had to decline in the face of widespread protests.

In 1999, Raj Sharma, a lawyer based out of US, filed a lawsuit in the US against Union Carbide and Anderson, and has been litigating since. And this is what he has to say about the Indian Government - "The Indian government refused to put in even a single line or letter for us. They did not want to be embarrassed in front of Union Carbide, embarrassed to be supporting their own people. I had heard of the government's collusion with the company before I left for Bhopal. I said to myself, 'Don't be naive, this cannot be true,' until I saw it happening with my own eyes," says Sharma.

In a separate US litigation in 2002, Dow Chemical set aside $2.2bn to compensate American workers who were exposed to asbestos at Union Carbide operations but the cost of an Indian life is really not worth anything – for all gung-go talks about being at par with the West, an Indian life is not worth even a mini-percentage of the various bailouts that the US Government does for its greedy financial institutions.

This is in contrast to the way the U.S. government is now confronting BP — holding it squarely responsible for the oil spill and accountable for all cleanup costs. Eleven people were killed when British Petroleum's Deepwater Horizon rig exploded in Gulf of Mexico, compared to 20,000+ deaths in Bhopal. The oil spill has caused extensive damage to marine life, birds and the US coastline in the states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. In Bhopal, 26 years after the gas leak, the soil and the water are still contaminated,   with dangerously high levels of toxic chemicals, and thousands still suffering the aftereffects.

British Petroleum has already paid 69 million dollars, just as first installment for the damages caused. That figure could multiply several times, with the company's liability still being decided. In contrast, Union Carbide paid just $ 470 million in compensation for the deaths it caused.

There are disturbing echoes of this history in the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Bill, which the Manmohan Singh Government introduced in Parliament and is eager to push to please the Obama administration. The Bill not merely limits the civil liability of any company running a nuclear power plant to Rs 500 crore per accident (less than a quarter of the dollar equivalent of the Bhopal settlement two decades ago), with an overall cap of roughly Rs 2,100 crore; it also exonerates international companies that supplied the equipment and technology. No equipment supplier in any other industry has such exemption from liability, and no other industry functions with such a cap on the operator's liability. Doesn’t the Bhopal Conviction clearly expose how shallow such a Bill is and the risk that we are going to take to please the Americans?

Shobhan Saxena puts it appropriately when he says in a blog in The Times of India - Today, India proved once again that it doesn't care for its poor… Today, India proved that it doesn't really care for its people, particularly if they have been slaughtered by powerful people from the most powerful nation in the world. Instead of taking on America and fighting for justice for its poor, India is more than happy to sell its dead cheap. Today – on the day of Bhopal disaster judgment -- if there is a failed state in the world, it’s India. It’s not Iraq. It’s not Somalia. It’s not Sudan. It’s India.

Sustaining Agriculture in the Long Run

Whenever I talk to my folks back home in Palakkad about plans to probably go back to our village one day and try my hand in agriculture,  I am greeted with well-grounded scepticism. The apprehensions are pretty clear – high labour costs, poor water management, low sales price and lack of support by the Government and industry to sustain careers in agriculture.

Despite being the top-ranked state in the suicide industry, Kerala does not lie within the suicide belt of the country, when it comes to farmer deaths. The state has vast tracts of land and is well-endowed in terms of natural resources and so would ideally qualify to be a good player in the agriculture sector. But there is still a mood of despondency I notice whenever I visit the place.

However watching Green Kerala Express raises my hope and gives a slightly different perspective. In its mission to zero on the best panchayat in the state, it chances upon several villages, where people and the administration have come together to give agriculture another chance and prove that despite being a poorer cousin, farming can be a livelihood tool with a much larger impact than the others.

For an average Malayalee, Kudappanakunnu in Trivandrum is known primarily for being the base station of Malayalam Doordarshan Kendra but a wonderful facet of the village was brought to the fore in one of GEKs episodes earlier this week. Employment opportunities were once few and far between in this village and agricultural land was practically zero, primarily due to its proximity with the main town.

Then three years ago the panchayat in collaboration with the local Krishi Bhavan implemented the Karshika Karmasena project – a project to harness the youth of the village to revive agriculture in the area. The Karshika Karma Sena launched by the panchayat has 25 agricultural technicians (a euphemism for workers) who are trained in using modern agricultural devices such as the power tiller, brush cutter, soil digger and sprayer.

“The karma sena was started as a means to combat the intense labour shortage in the region,” said C.L. Mini, Agricultural Officer, Kudappanakkunnu panchayat. “The cost of cultivation can be brought down significantly by using agricultural technicians,” she added. The technicians assist interested clients right from selecting a plot for farming to marketing the produce.

Today, these workers earn close to Rs 7500 per month working in fields where they help to cultivate a variety of mostly-organic fruits and vegetables that are later marketed and sold through the Karshika Vipani Kendras. The wages are paid as monthly salaries through an SBI Account opened nearby for the employees and they are also entitled to EPF.

This is a sustained ecological and agricultural movement where the entire community had come in to help, resulting in making Kudappanakunnu a Green Panchayat. The technicians are educated persons and work on lands taken on lease by the Panchayat at low rates. Mind you, these are not workers and they are given proper training by the Krishi Office; additionally, machines are used for most tasks (including tree-climbing and tilling), making it a highly productive enterprise. In addition to the use of machinery, subsidies in the form of seedlings and low cost organic fertilizers were distributed to the technicians, abhorring the use of expensive pesticides.

Kudappanakunnu presents a case where the community and the administration came together to implement an innovative solution to tackle the issues of wastelands and employment. When more than 70% of the country depends on agriculture for its livelihood, it is important that rather than doing away with it in the name of development, the idea should be to enhance the scope of agriculture and utilize it better.

Moving from Trivandrum to Kannur, we now come across the village of Chembilodu, which is unique that every house in this village has a kitchen garden. As part of the Panchayat’s initiative to ensure that no land in the village is wasted and to promote food security, a directive was given to the people that they need to maintain a kitchen garden and grow vegetables themselves.

As a result, close to 4000 houses have vegetable gardens where ladies finger, cucumber, spinach and pumpkin are grown, which is used for local consumption. Anything extra is then sold outside to the markets by the villagers; this has dramatically reduced the food prices in the region and added an extra means of livelihood for the people. Additionally, the villagers use organic fertilizers from their household waste and have abandoned the use of chemicals totally, leading to a healthier vegetation.

It is important to realize that such a movement would not have happened without the active role of the villagers as well as the Panchayat in changing the face of the village. It is laudable that the administration took the initiative to not only revive the agricultural produce but also revive barren lands in the place, leading to more than 40 hectares of waste land becoming productive again.

Most people would say that agriculture is no longer relevant to our growth and that the government should look at promoting industry at the expense of farming – this explains the almost non-questioning of creation of SEZs haphazardly to businessmen. When an Infosys asks for large tracts of land at rock bottom rates, it is a legitimate business demand but when the farmer wants protection from dumping and other duties, we view it as protectionism and dub any support to the farmer as socialist interference.

Subsidies is a bad word in the economy now – as we move towards embracing greater role for private companies, we demand that no one should get a freebie and everyone should earn them. But let us understand that, this is not a perfect economic world and that the State has a greater role in bringing up the poor than increasing the wealth in the country (the trickledown theory is a classic case where the trickling down never really happened). Writing off bad debts by farmers is foolishness but then tax holidays and waivers for corporate is smart capitalism (This year alone, the budget gifts over Rs. 500,000 crore in write-offs, direct and indirect, to the Corporate Sector)!!!

Quoting Sainath on this:

In India, people have the perception of "subsidies" being given to farmers, and this is one of the reasons why the urban folks think that farmers need to improve their act. But the vast majority of this subsidy is given not to the farmers themselves but to fertilizer producers. The "farmers" who get this subsidy are called Birla, Tata and Ambani! Also, this is given in such a way that the more you produce the lower the rate of subsidy, and the smaller amounts you produce, the more higher the rate of subsidy. In theory, this should support the "small farmers", but in fact the large producers overproduce and understate their output, just so they can avail of the higher rate of subsidy.

But blind subsidy is equally silly, more so in our case where implementation is abysmal (Remember Rajiv Gandhi’s famous comment-Out of every rupee of subsidy only 15 paise reach the targeted populace). Most successful villages, as seen in GEK, have worked on a strategy of providing subsidies to take care of the infrastructure, followed by regular support to ensure that the subsidies do not go waste. A more directed approach towards subsidies (which UID is aiming to do) will possibly make the entire exercise more useful.

Traditionally, Indian farmers have flooded their fields with water using canal irrigation. Canal irrigation advocated through large dams (a by-product of Nehru's fascination with Russian style of mega structures) have never been popular with farms - massive land loss to construct costly dams are one issue while farmers are plagued with the problems of depending on agencies to release water as and when they want and  wastage of water through evaporation. But the Government has never sort to promote the use of drip and sprinkler irrigation, which is far a cheaper and more economic option - something that Israel has excelled in.

The Government further focuses on market needs and so expensive cash crops are encouraged, at the expense of poor food crops. This has not only forced farmers to abandon traditional farm crops but grow these crops on a large scale, creating a massive monoculture, which erodes soil value slowly. When the Agricultural Minister is more pre-occupied with starting sugar factories and advocating wine cultivation in dry lands in Maharashtra, is it any wonder that the State looks away when farmers look to it for guidance?

Pawar pushes for greater cuts in import duties on a large variety of crops, as the Indian farmer struggles to sell his produce. Even while being in WTO, India can charge duties (even upto 150% as in cotton) but for mysterious reasons, we have decided to be pro-West in our approach. So, while European and American Governments dole out large amounts of cash subsidies to their farmers, we force our farmers to sell their produce at absurd prices and expect them to sustain their livelihood without any complaint. What explains the Government importing food at high prices when many of the crops rot here in godowns, lying unutilized?

Agriculture contributes close to 17% if India’s GDP but it is largely a poor man’s story in India today. Policy issues in the mainstream media tend to be about the economy but the ones pertaining to agriculture do not merit sufficient space – lack of glamour as well as interest contributes to this. The key word is outsourcing and so prominent bloggers, who are self-appointed economists also, bemoan the fact that after so many years, India remains largely a rural populace.

An agricultural policy that moves out of the ghosts of the Green Revolution is important, as we struggle to maintain the relevance of agri-business in the country. Successful villages have shown a way out to keep agriculture in the forefront with greater focus on watershed management, organic farming and greater administration support. As we hurtle towards globalisation at a rapid pace, will the Indian farmer increasingly become a mere suicide statistic or a critical driver of our GDP? It is a choice that we have to make and make it pretty soon.

Survival of the Humble Brinjal

When the Union Minister for Environment Jairam Ramesh announced an indefinite moratorium on Bt brinjal last month, the decision created a small window for many in India to sit and understand what the fuss is all about, without being swept away in the tides of another flawed Green Revolution, fuelled by the usage of Genetic Modified Crops. It is important that we understand that the Bt Brinjal issue is not a simple Traditional Vs Modernity fight or a rural farmer issue but a complex issue concerning National Security – there are 40+ GM food crops which are in the pipeline and covers every aspect of food security in India.

Bt Brinjal is a transgenic brinjal created by inserting a gene (Cry 1Ac) from the soil bacterium Bt into brinjal. The insertion of the gene into the vegetable is said to give the brinjal plant resistance against insects like the brinjal fruit and shoot borer and fruit borer. In India, Bt Brinjal is being promoted by Mahyco (Maharashtra Hybrid Seeds Company). If cleared for human consumption, Bt-brinjal will be the first GM vegetable crop approved for cultivation anywhere in the world. GM corn and GM soya are mainly used to feed cattle in North America or go into processed foods.

US multinational bio-technology firm Monsanto (which sells 90 per cent of the world's genetically engineered seeds), promotes GM crops in India through Mahyco-Monsanto Biotech, a 50:50 joint venture between Monsanto and Mahyco. In the 80s, Monsanto developed and patented a technology that enabled inject the Bt gene into seeds, as a result of which whenever a pest attacks the plant it dies. No one knows for sure what happens to the human beings who actually consume it. The scientific community is divided over the effects of this gene on us and opponents of GM (Genetically Modified) Food have raised issues on the health, environmental, economic and ethical aspects of moving over to GM food.

If you were to ask if eating Bt brinjal is dangerous or would cause cancer or any life threatening disease, the upfront answer to that would be an emphatic DON’T KNOW. Bt brinjal has not been properly tested for health or environmental safety though the advocates of Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs) say that they are safe and are the same as the naturally occurring organisms used to create the transgenic crop.

In October 2009, the Indian biotechnology regulator, Genetic Engineering Approval Committee (GEAC), the statutory body responsible for approving its cultivation in India which is an ad hoc 30-member committee comprising mainly bureaucrats and scientists, gave its approval for introduction of Bt brinjal. The clearance was provided by the GEAC based purely on the data provided by Mahyco and the institutions it used for testing without doing any independent testing!!!

Isn’t this a clear case of conflict of interest- you create a product, do the testing yourself or sanction it and provide data to a regulator and the dumb regulator accepts it, without any form of independent evaluation. The French geneticist, Gilles-Eric Seralini, who was commissioned by the environmental group Greenpeace to check the claims made by Mahyco at the GEAC pronounced the data submitted by Monsanto-Mahyco as insufficient and misleading on several counts and the GEAC wanting in diligence. There are no proper bio-safety regulations for the environmental release of transgenic crops in India, with the GEAC, essentially adopting U.S.-style lack of regulation for GMOs.

The GEAC also says that they were not sure about the long-term health effects of genetically modified food on humans and stipulate that surveillance and long-term follow up should be conducted — essentially saying that you can eat Bt brinjal and it’s fine now but in the long term, it may or may not cause problems. How can the Government give clearance for something as radical as GM food without sufficient clinical trials? Apart from the fact that there were no long-term tests conducted for human safety, the adverse results of the short-term tests on lab rats were actually suppressed.

One of the more touted benefits of GMOs is that they reduce the use of pesticides, making it a more eco-friendly alternative. But there is always a danger of the pests developing resistance to the gene just as some populations of mosquitoes developed resistance to DDT. A Government conducted survey in 2002-03 on Bt Cotton (the first transgenic crop to be released in India) revealed an almost 99% incidence of the pink bollworm, a major pest that attacks the cotton crop.

Monsanto admitted this week that during field monitoring in 2009, the Bt cotton variety used in four Gujarat districts — Amreli, Bhavnagar, Junagarh and Rajkot — failed to control pests. Similar cases have been reported on the American bollworm, increasingly indicating that the pest is growing immune to the Bt gene. Some studies have shown that GM crops have destroyed useful insects as well as changed the nature of the soil (Monsanto had developed a herbicide called Round Up which when sprayed killed not only weeds but also soya. So it developed a GM soya bean which was resistant to Round Up and sold both the herbicide and the seed – a perfect double whammy!!!).

Conventionally in India, farmers buy seeds from the Government (centres like Krishi Bhavan) and then save their seeds from year to year obtained after the initial produce, for further usage. These seeds are diverse and replicable and over the years given the climatic conditions, these native seeds develop resistance to pests and disease attacks. The cost of a packet of Bt Cotton is Rs. 1600 as compared to the non-Bt hybrid that costs between Rs. 380 to Rs 460 because seed costs are higher.

Also since the Bt Cotton plant is not effective in controlling secondary pests like the white mosquito, aphids and other sucking pests, more pesticides have to be used, escalating total input costs. Monsanto patents its seeds and insists on contractual agreements with farmers that they will not save and replant seeds the next season, increasing the price of the seeds when compared to the inexpensive seeds available in the market (To enforce this, it had developed a terminator gene which produce sterile seeds that do not germinate, ensuring that farmers buy the seeds every year).

Another strong argument in favour of the Bt seeds is their claim to increasing crop yields by ushering a second Green Revolution. This is a false promise; Bt cotton destroys bollworm while Bt brinjal prevents the fruit and shoot borer but beyond this, they remain the same in their susceptibility towards other issues. Every year we have bumper harvests but the final produces lie rotting in government godowns and are burnt later on while millions suffer due to starvation and hunger. The problem we face is more related to distribution and less with production, so is increasing the yield through such suspect methods the only way out?

Access to food of our choice is a basic human right; we all can exercise this human right by refusing or agreeing to purchase engineered and manufactured food. But how can we differentiate between a normal brinjal and a Bt brinjal? Monsanto has consistently refused to label its GM foods, leading to most European countries banning GM foods. Moreover, India does not have a proper labeling system to distinguish and inform us of the GM content in our food.

In the words of Jeffrey Smith, author of Genetic Roulette on Bt Brinjal - If Bt brinjal produces allergic or toxic symptoms in the population, it could be years or decades before authorities are able to track the cause. The brinjal is not labelled, so some may get reactions to some meals with brinjal, and not to others isolating the cause is difficult. By the time it is discovered, the brinjal will have contaminated so many varieties; abandoning brinjal altogether may be the only recourse.

There are more than 2400 varieties of brinjal available in India due to local flavours and conditions. Fostering these bacterial genes into the brinjal could rapidly contaminate the thousands of brinjal varieties because the structure of its flower is conducive to a high rate of cross-pollination, leading to destruction of many of the home grown varieties. With an annual yield of 8 million tones, we do not face any crisis in brinjal production. If food security was an issue behind introduction of GM food crops, then why was brinjal chosen though it is not a staple diet? Maybe the answer lies when you are told that Monsanto spends 2 million dollars a day on research – it’s Payback Time!!!

The First Green Revolution in India in the 1970s regarded chemicals as the magic wands to transform Indian agriculture but these same chemicals are now being looked at as monsters that have adulterated many of our crops. The rest of the world may have banned DDT and Endosulfan but we continue to patronise them and kill our people. Now, there is a demand to bring GMOs to counter these same insecticides. We do not know whether the risk that was taken 30 years back is worth it but now do we want to tempt history again?

There is a risk that bio-technology may be branded as a villain and halted totally but surely, there is a middle ground. Maybe many of us are wrong, maybe GMOs will actually help make a difference but then should we not wait till a proper Cost-Benefit and Risk Analysis is done and we have concrete evidence to actually prove this rather than jumping the gun?

Image Courtesy: http://www.polyp.org.uk/index.html

A Twittering Predicament

#Is all that worth it just in hope of making it difficult for a future Headley to recce? R we going 2 allow terrorists 2 make us less welcoming?

# Making it more difficult 2 visit India, return here frequently or stay long hurts large nbrs of innocents, costs us millions of$ & alienates.

These are the 2 tweets by Shashi Tharoor which have been splashed across all channels and newspapers and have generated enough controversy for the man who seems to be in a hurry to usher in an era of e-politics. Did our MoS for External Affairs minister say something that is against public norms or morally wrong? But still Fulbright scholar SM Krishna, an honourable man, felt the need to reprimand his junior while the media has joined hands in gleefully branding Tharoor as irresponsible.

Krishna made his displeasure public saying - “These (issues) are not to be discussed in public. If there are any perceptions, then I think these should be sorted out within the four walls of the ministry; the business of government is far too serious and has to be conducted in a manner in which we decide. The broad policy parameters are dictated, decided by the minister in-charge of external affairs of this country and everyone will have to fall on the same page.''

The Indian government is an archaic piece of machinery which refuses to answer any questions put across it because the public is ill-educated to understand complex matters and it is best left to the buffoons who sit in both the Houses to decide on everything on our behalf (assuming that they decide to turn up at the House and try opening their mouths). But when the State refuses to even divulge the names of the Padma nominees claiming the irrelevance o f this information to the public, you know that you are fishing in deep waters and getting a catch here is going to be difficult. Talking to the public is a blasphemous offence by any standards of public probity defined by the State and the media.

Democracy is a 60+ year old institution in India but the concept remains nascent on many counts. Indian Public Policy is an opaque instrument which, despite numerous amendments, is held so sacrosanct by the polity that any discussion on that is anathema to the State. Everything is kept under the wraps of national security and confidentiality and any challenges to the status quo position of the rules are looked at with contempt. After all, how does the “cattle class” know what is right for it; this is the right assigned to the protectors of democracy by the electorate.

There is also a generational conflict of culture taking place here with the cyber savvy Tharoor talking to netizens directly which is against the functioning of the old school of government. The traditionalists are out of sync with new media and still believe that the best ways to show dissent or call for a debate is by manufacturing leaks and planting stories. The old school is entrenched in the roots of “consensus”, where the High Command proposes as well as disposes and the officials merely carry out orders. A healthy democracy thrives in the presence of dissent and it is time to recognize that public dissent also counts in decision making.

There was a counter argument that the response would be the same if this were a private company and that it is not just the Government which is paranoid when it comes to maintain confidentiality of information. But the difference is in primarily the kind of information that is shared across the table – we are not talking about a company’s pricing strategy but a law which has relevance to all our lives. When it comes to matters of public policy or laws that are public knowledge, what is the rationale of trying to build in a veil of secrecy? Isn’t it a step in the right direction when policy matters get discussed on the net and any form of dissent is well-covered so that public can judge accordingly?

But why is the media propping up the likes of SM Krishna here and targetting Tharoor? When you’d expect them to rally against SM Krishna, the media has tried to act as a partisan referee (read Chris Broad) and stand by the establishment. If Shashi Tharoor had called a press conference and said the same things to journalists, he would be hailed as frank and the law called an ass but now he is irresponsible – the foot-in-the mouth minister who is rocking the boat to show off his technological prowess.

Is it that the likes of Rajdeep Sardesai and Co feel threatened by the fact that by using tweet, Tharoor is directly talking to the public and bypassing the media filters? If sound bytes and “exclusive” stories are available online for everyone to see and understand, then how will the media fabricate grapevine news and flash breaking news? Shashi Tharoor talks directly to half a million people on Twitter and very few newspapers or TV channels have the same reach which is making the media uneasy.

Shashi Tharoor is unfortunately no Rahul Gandhi, whose of pearls of wisdom are scooped up by the party workers and displayed as strings of intellect, and cannot expect anyone in the Congress to stand up for his valid questions. The Grand Old Party is slowly undergoing a transformation but the change is only at the surface level and the definition of inner party democracy is confined by the Lakshman Rekha drawn by Sonia and family. Rahul has publicly railed against the Congress culture earlier and done an excellent job as its top Strategy guy and this would have been an excellent opportunity for him to step forward and stand up for Tharoor but then standing up for lightweights is probably not worth the political rewards.

The Twitterer has ruffled many feathers here but will the Ministry be lost for want of a tweet? Whichever way it goes, all I say is it is nice to have a Minister who talks to the public and we need more of his ilk. Way to go, sir, with a half a million strong twitter base, you have a huge online voice listening to you...

Jaagore… Aur Phir Kya???

(Original Source: http://electioncartoons09.blogspot.com/2009/03/cartoon-by-manoj-chopra_29.html)

When the Election Commission mandated that the indelible ink in Maharashtra was to be put in the middle finger instead of the forefinger, it did not quite realize the irony of the situation. The Mumbaikars also responded by showing their middle fingers –no better symbol to demonstrate what you always felt!!!

Circa Oct 30th 2009 – the day of the elections in Mumbai ; after all the hype created by the Jaago re campaign, the exhortations by the media and celebrities; it turned out to be quite a damp squib, even worse than the Knight Riders cacophony. The final city turnout was a pathetic 41% -the majority showed their middle finger to the Great Indian Election. The way the English press was gung ho about the entire event, you realize how much out of touch they are with the mood of the millions of people who felt – Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.

There were other reasons too for the low turnout here – the simmering heat, the long weekend (4 days from Thursday to Sunday) and the standard problem of missing names in electoral rolls. But whether you choose to call it voter apathy, voter fatigue or indifference, you cannot ignore the role it plays in an electoral poll. In the initial enthusiasm, you vote for a party and if you are dissatisfied, you give another party a chance and then the ring-a-ring-a-roses goes on and on till you give up on this Divine Thought of making a difference.

When you try to sell a product and do a marketing overkill, sometimes it falls flat and makes it more repulsive. Let me be honest – I did feel a bit cheesed off at being told to Shut Up and Vote and being repeatedly told by the media and country loving celebrities that I need to contribute and make a difference. See, SRK came all the way down from South Africa just to cast a vote – I wish he’d fund my trip to Hyderabad; I’d love to visit my parents and make a difference.

Don’t get me wrong; I am a strong votary of the right to universal adult franchise – after all, that’s the only thing I can do which can, at least theoretically, make a difference to the polity running this place. We all agree that as a functioning democracy, the Right to Vote is a fundamental right that has been bestowed on us by the governing fathers of this nation and the Election Commission, under T N Seshan and his successors, has actually done its best to ensure that the polls are as free as they can be.

In the late 70s, buoyed by the call for Sampurna Kranti Aandolan by Jayaprakash Narayan against the regime of Indira Gandhi, people voted, rather revolted, in large numbers and overthrew the perpetrators of the Emergency. But what did they get –a ragtag group of Janata Party jokers, who made such a fool of themselves that it took just 3 years for Mrs. Gandhi to come back to power with a thumping majority. What we witnessed was truly the victory of adult franchise, when the voters brought back the same leader whom they had deposed a few years back.

When Rajiv Gandhi swept into power with a brutal majority, thanks to the tidal wave of sympathy after Mrs. Gandhi’s assassination, a lot was expected from the man – a Clean Leader they said, who would make a difference. He started with all the right notes before running out of steam; the smile faded, the hair deserted him and everything else that had endeared him to the masses disappeared– a mandate given on a platter and thrown away in a span of about 2 years.

Over the years, there were many others who have come and the BJP was supposedly The Alternative and when you heard them on TV, you felt that there had the energy to make a difference and sure, they did. They managed to make themselves another caricature (mukhauta) of the Congress and so we are now stuck between 2 rudderless entities. With an octogenarian leader and a rather weak second rung, the party looks lost in this electoral sea and is solely banking on Modi’s charisma to win the Centre.

The Third Front was always a joke – a group of individuals with their own private agendas and no illusions about making a difference. The Commies never got out of their comfort zones of Bengal, Kerala and Tripura (someone tell them that Mao and Che are no longer with us) while the regional parties stuck to their regional tantrums. Thanks to years of Congress misrule, they were wiped out of India’s largest Electoral College state – UP- only to be replaced with leaders like Mulayam and Maya.

The Right to Choice was given to us and it still exists but where are the bloody choices? I am thankful that I have the right to vote and protest about it but that’s the most I can, is it? So, I am told join the polity and make the difference that you want to see but then everyone cannot get into such a role, can he? I am thoroughly disillusioned and at 28, I wonder whether my vote can make a difference but I am stuck with my choices – after all, when I whine, I am told – Shut Up and Vote.

All said and done, I am glad that we have organizations like the Janaagraha, which are making the right noises and trying to bring about a change in the electoral system (among several other things). The change may just be too small but possibly (and I am trying to be an optimist), it could give something to rally around, during these trying times. After all, it’s so much easy to be a cynic and lambast everything around but so much more difficult to MAKE A DIFFERENCE…

P.S. Despite all exhortations, my family did not vote. I had relocated to Mumbai for my job and my registration was in Hyderabad, so no vote for me. My parents, despite living in Hyderabad for 30+ years and the same house for more than 15 years and voting in every election so far, realized that their names had suddenly disappeared from the voting lists. All for the Right to Make a Difference, which does not even exist!!!

Do we have a Transport policy???

A few days back, I came across Karan Thapar’s interview with Ratan Tata in CNBC TV-18. Among the various issues that were discussed, one of them was the Tata’s 1 lakh car. Ratan Tata was confident that they would be able to deliver the Rs 1 lakh car by mid-2008; a few more months to go before the world’s cheapest car hits the roads.

The showroom price may not be one lakh but somewhere in the range of 1.2-1.3 lakh, nevertheless, it still beats the lowest price in India by a huge margin. The Maruti 800 sells at about 2.3 lakhs while even its second hand model (with 2 years usage) comes at about 1.5 at least.

As a business model, it makes perfect sense to launch such a low priced car targeting a segment waiting to indulge itself. The Indian car industry is growing at more than 15 percent compounded annually since 2001 and we are expected to be one of the top 10 countries in terms of vehicle sales by 2015.

Anyway, I’m looking at this post not in terms of the business strategy of Tata Motors but in terms of the larger picture of how we commute in urban centres. Whenever I try to picture city life, the first images that strike my mind are traffic congestion, pollution and chaos.

When I moved out of Mumbai (16 months back) and came to Hyderabad, I was expecting a saner city but now, I have given up on that idea. The idea of a clean, organized city remains a mirage – sometimes, it takes me more than 2.5 hrs in the evening to commute from my office to home by the company bus (the distance to be covered is about 32 km).

Everyday, as I sit in the bus and look out at the ever bludgeoning traffic, I feel so relieved that I am not subject to the torture of driving to and fro for my work. But imagine, what a 1 lakh car will do – two wheeler houses will start investing in it and you will have many households with multiple cars at home. Can our roads and environment sustain all this?

There are two primary ways that the government can look at handling road congestion – expanding the scope of the public transportation or increasing the roadways in the country. Most governments are hell bent upon ignoring the first strategy (at least in most cases) and are going full throttle on the latter one. While expansion of road infrastructure is required, will it solve the problem?

More roads will mean more automobiles on the road, strangling whatever public space is still available. Ask a Hyderabadi the pain involved in navigating through Ameerpet and finding parking space there.

Funnily, the only solution that a government can think of is towing vehicles instead of regulating uncontrolled construction. Public transportation as a policy is notoriously under debated, primarily because we live under the fallacy that everything that is private is perfect and government should be avoided as much as possible. To ensure free flow of traffic, we need to evolve a combination of strategies, including discouraging citizens from using their own vehicles.

What can an efficient public transportation system do? Very clearly, reduce the traffic congestion problem and lower the health hazards that we face after being dumped with tons of carbon monoxide – a visible manifestation of the booming economy. The system should provide a credible alternative that encourages people to move from the comfort and convenience of their vehicles to the public transportation system.

The Hyderabad MMTS provides the comfort but no convenience (very few trains and poor connectivity to the city) while it works the other way for the Mumbai local trains (good connectivity and frequency but zero passenger comfort). From whatever I have heard, Delhi, has got this balance right.

The concept of a Metro Rail that a few governments in India are floating is a step in the right direction. It is a non-polluting medium and can help immensely reducing traffic (Thailand has seen a 4% reduction in traffic after introducing trains in the city).

Hopefully, the gestation time of the projects will not be too high otherwise by the time the first train rolls out; our traffic would have seen a quantum leap. Moreover, during the entire period of the project, the traffic could be badly affected; the Project mangers would have to tread carefully to prevent the chaos from spurting further out of bounds.

One very important thing that needs to be done is to have an integrated transportation policy and not just a rail policy. One of the main criticisms of the MMTS system in Hyderabad is its poor connectivity with the state’s road transport system – something that could have been learned from the successful model in Mumbai.

I take a train from Secunderabad to Lingampally station (to commute to my office) but there is hardly any connectivity from the station to the rest of the city. Why would people want to pay hefty rates and travel by autos from the station when bus transport is so much easier?

The AP government is finally implementing a long delayed proposal of having a combined pass for railways and buses in the city. This would clearly help passengers who have to otherwise take a ticket separately for the MMTS system. But there is more required to be done in terms of infrastructure building. Frequency needs to be increased and connectivity issues need to be addressed to enable more and more people to use these systems.

Any traveller who arrives in Singapore the first time will be able to commute his way through easily because of the user-friendly approach of the government in having clear signals, sign boards everywhere. Contrast this with the confusion in Dadar in determining on which platforms the Western and Central Line trains arrive. This might seem a pretty innocuous point but these small steps do go a long way in easing congestion.

There could be other ways to tackle commutation woes as tried out in London and Singapore. London has tried a harsh £8 congestion charge for motoring through some areas such as Central London while Singapore has not only a peak-hour tax but also a surcharge on the sale of automobiles (a step clearly out of favour with the automobile industry and other ancillary industries). However, the point to be noted is that they have a robust rail network to get the city moving and no such measure can be taken in isolation.

Our consumption rates are increasing dramatically but can the Indian infrastructure handle all this???

Blame it on the Bandh

April 4th was a red-letter day for many of us here. Not because Greg Chappell felt that coaching kangaroos is a less stressful experience than the Indian cricket team (Though the likes of Aaj Tak, CNN-IBN and the rest of them may think that this is only thing that matters to all of us). This day is significant because this was when the Government of Andhra Pradesh and Opposition joined hands, in a rare show of unanimity, to help the poor masses of Andhra Pradesh. The Opposition called for a State wide Bandh and the Government chipped in to provide legitimate, moral backing for this wonderful event. But then, YSR was not acting in an unprecedented fashion; a couple of days back, Karunanidhi called for a total bandh in Tamil Nadu to protest the Supreme Court’s verdict on the OBC reservation tangle.

The Supreme Court in August 2003 upheld the Kerala High Court's judgment declaring bandhs as illegal and unconstitutional way of collective bargaining, whatever the cause "just or unjust". The Bench opined: "Strike as a weapon is mostly misused, which results in chaos and total maladministration. Strikers cannot hold society to ransom." The Shiv Sena and the BJP were even penalized for damaging public property and we all felt that maybe, finally, we will stop being blackmailed by unions, that too in the name of social and economic justice. But then, I guess, that was too much wishful thinking; trust the democratic polity to uphold the finest traditions of democracy by staging strikes and protests at the drop of a hat.

The state of Andhra Pradesh went on a general bandh with the state-owned APSRTC calling off its services and the result - APSRTC suffered a loss to the tune of Rs 10 crore. Social justice was achieved because it gave an opportunity for the auto drivers and six seaters to mint money at the expense of the general public. So, minimum fares shot up from 10 Rs to 25 Rs just because we had no other option. There were office- goers like us who got away merely because our employer was thoughtful enough to arrange trips through private buses to tide over the crisis. Despite 2,800 city buses remaining off the roads, city roads were as busy as any other day with commuters hiring auto-rickshaws or hitch-hiking their way to their destinations. Banks and other commercial establishments remained open though the attendance was thin.

Take a look at the estimated loss due to lockouts in the country. The Labour Bureau figures state that West Bengal contributed more than 60 per cent - the highest of any State - of all mandays lost due to strikes and lockouts in the country last year. The next two biggest contributors to mandays lost last year were Kerala, with 30.6 lakh (13.5% of the national figure) and Rajasthan, with 19.3 lakh (8.29%). For Kerala, this was an almost five-fold increase from the previous year with officials attributing it to the labour crisis in the plantation sector last year. For Rajasthan, it was a 45% increase. Clearly, all signs of Shining India!!!

Even though bandhs are illegal, I can understand the Opposition parties calling for a hartal but what happens when the ruling party, duly elected by us, decides to stop all public life. Don’t the elected representatives owe it to the people to take care of their needs? Can they violate the rights of the people in the name of spirit of democracy? Mahatma Gandhi was the pioneer of strikes and hartals but he would never have thought that a day would come when his strategy would be so counter-productively used by our leaders.

Can our leaders explain the reason for calling a strike and putting thousands of us to this kind of inconvenience? Moral support for the OBC cause could be done through more democratic means but why does it have to come through calling off work? We all know it’s a joke when we are told that it was a voluntary strike by the masses and not something done through coercion. There were a few petrol pumps and shops which were subject to stone throwing because they were open despite the call.

As stakeholders in the country, we need to question the irresponsibility of the State and Central Govt. (both are run by Congress) in causing deliberate loss to the State’s treasury by abdicating responsibilities. If the State, who has to protect its citizens, puts the lives of its people at peril, who will protect the people? We need to estimate the loss suffered by the exchequer due to this and then probably take some punitive action against the callous attitude of the government. YSR cannot do anything about the land acquisition disputes or the immovable traffic in urban areas but he can support a bandh against a Supreme Court order??? Where are the government’s priorities?

We may take pride in calling ourselves a genuine democracy but let us ask ourselves where we are headed when it becomes a play tool in the hands of spineless governments who are least bothered about public welfare . There is no point in merely sneering at Chinese and Singapore polities and accusing them of lacking in democratic institutions, when we really can’t deliver with our half- baked approaches towards governance. Freedom of expression is a very fundamental feeling we all cherish and the ability to criticize the Government may give us a high but if that’s the only thing I can do, what’s the point?

It has been only AP and Tamil Nadu till now, surely the bastion of strikes, Kerala, cannot be behind. With a fundamentally crippled economy, it lumbers ahead as communists continue to milk the state dry and leave the state to the Gulf expatriates. Even Iraq may not have called for a strike when Saddam Hussain was hanged, but my dear state went on a strike!!! West Bengal is trying to do a metamorphosis by shedding the red colour but the Kerala comrades, unmindful of the stupidity involved in its deep entrenched Trade Unionism, continue to perpetuate unemployment. God save HIS OWN STATE…

As the dialogue in Spiderman goes " With great power comes great responsibility", the leaders must realise that there are more mature ways to handle disagreements and disputes among people. A greater tolerance of individual and collective views and mutual respect for different opinions is required before we start feeling smug about ourselves. Merely criticizing others is no way ahead; we need to learn from our mistakes and the success of nations how to march ahead.

There are teething problems but I remain an optimist; without a hope or a dream, there is no survival...

Singapore Diary – Part 3

A few days left before I am back in India and so my smileometer is beaming high signals in the midst of hazy Singapore skies (an annual haze in this part of the year caused by forest fires in Sumatra). A sign of confused times when you make money but wonder what exactly you want to do in life and is it worth troubling your mind but satisfying your pocket. As I ponder over this question and ask myself how much I can take all this, I decide to tread the conformist path of doing nothing but journeying along till you are forced to take up the less trodden path.

A vegetarian’s life is a difficult one outside India. Wherever I go, I find the meat of some animal or the other ornately decorated and put up for sale but very few restaurants catering to the needs of a herbivore like me (Fellow Indians think it blasphemous for a Keralite to even be a vegetarian). Since I stay in a predominantly Indian environment in Singapore, its fine but otherwise it can be a tough choice. Vegetables are at a pretty low priority here.

India is quite inclusive when it comes to such eating habits as it serves both the vegetarian and the non-vegetarian palate. I find it both amusing and outright crazy when I see a Kentucky Fried Chicken outlet in Singapore Zoo. How can a zoo which is meant to be a home for animals be a place for serving them hot? Of course, it may be a case of forward integration for the zoo!!!

I am shocked (an understatement) when I am told that it is a govt. policy that birds are not allowed into the city limits. Not allowed??? There are, supposedly, shooting squads to ensure this compliance. I cannot confirm the veracity of such a law/policy in force but honestly, I have never seen a bird here and the closest I have come to, is reading, in The Strait Times, of bird droppings being a menace for poor car owners. This would have been funny if not an example of insensitivity of the state towards anything that does not derive economic value.

We forget very conveniently that buildings and malls cannot substitute the beauty of nature and that co-habitation is the key to a greater and more fulfilling existence. Imagine a day when future generations here do not know what animals are and have to visit museums to see their remnants.

The Government plays an important role in the lives of people through the usage of subsidies. It taxes private transport and subsidizes the public transportation and housing sector. The railway tariffs are capped at a maximum value of about 3 Singapore dollars for a trip to encourage greater usage of the MRT. The surcharge on cars to increase the purchase and ownership costs (as mentioned previously), tolling on high congestion spots at peak hours (using Electronic Road Pricing) and Area Licensing Scheme (restricted zones in business areas) have eased the traffic which is fairly dense at peak hours. It has developed a system which even the Americans have tried to emulate but have not been able to do so far.

Urban development has not been given due importance in India and it is worthwhile for us to consider measures to reduce the movement of cars in cities and boost public transportation, like in London or Curitiba (in Brazil, considered as one of the best examples of urban development). Mumbai, Bangalore and other cities are all aiming to be Shanghai but they are all slowly choking and require urgent measures to get them back on track.

In the housing segment, there are two types of flats here – HDB (Housing Development Board) and Condors. The Govt. constructs and sells/leases out HDBs at lower than market rates and this serves a substantial portion of Singapore’s housing needs. Condors are private flats and are more elitist in nature. This is another example of the Govt.’s presence in a very commercial business which may be scoffed by believers of laissez faire.

A massive urban renewal programme which began in the 1960s resulted in the replacement of all slums with these housing units. The Govt. of that time required that a percentage of everyone’s wages be placed in a forced retirement account or be used to purchase a residence which resulted in everyone owning a property in the country. Slums and displacement is another serious issue that we face in India and there needs to be a further debate on how we address that issue.

Democracy is a virtue that we do not necessarily celebrate because we take it for granted. This is alien to Singapore but they do not mind it – probably a frog in the well syndrome. Singapore’s First Premier and principal architect, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew, believes that democracy is a primarily Western concept and not necessarily required for Asia and so they should not be judged on this yardstick. This has found its echo in various Asian countries with China, Malaysia and a few others endorsing this opinion. He had famously stated in a newspaper interview :

I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn't be here today. And I say without the slightest remorse, that we wouldn't be here, we would not have made economic progress, if we had not intervened on very personal matters - who your neighbour is, how you live, the noise you make, how you spit, or what language you use. We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.

But as an Indian who sees and cherishes the ideals of a free world, I do not subscribe to this thought process. Economic freedom without political freedom is a very superficial freedom, something that has earned Singapore the dubious name of a “nanny state”. Policies like excessive fines, tax reliefs for sterilization, compulsory saving schemes, strong censorship and archaic draconian laws have diminished its position in terms of human rights but it's principle has been Greater Capitalism for Socialism, dubbed by Singapore University scholars as "meritocratic,elitist,Confucianist, bureaucratic state". The principle seems to work fine currently and the people are very much in favour of it but can it sustain in the long run??? Let's wait and watch.....

Tail piece: You would be surprised to know that chewing gum was banned in Singapore until a few years ago (2004) when the US Govt. negotiated, alongside the active lobbying of gum maker Wrigley’s, with the Singapore government for the lifting of the ban. Sticking of the gum in train doors and other public places was leading to a public nuisance, so the ban was imposed. Even now it is available here only in drugstores and that too on prescription!!!