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.

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Impressions on an Agitation....

The chips were always stacked up against the Government – a poor old septuagenarian messiah vs the black hands of the Government was an unfair battle from a media coverage and public empathy perspective. It was a no-win situation for the Govt but it did not help that they committed hara-kiri and managed to make themselves the laughing stock of the nation.

Hasn’t the Congress ever thought of collective bargaining or were they so drunk in the stupor of arrogance and out of touch with the man on the street that it thought that AH was just another old man who would be forgotten quickly enough and so there was no need to indulge him in a civil fashion. For a party that merely takes orders from the top, it may have been tough to understand the meaning of moral superiority.

UPA is isolated now as it has to battle an army of protestors and an Opposition waiting to strike but they have just themselves to blame for not including a single member of the Opposition on the drafting committee. The party probably did not want to share credit with anyone else and tried going alone and now when they have egg on their face, they realize that they have to fight it out themselves.

Forget about the moral angle to the entire sequence of events; you’d think that the Congress had some kind of a strategy to fight AH but it managed to dig a hole and crawl into slowly at first and then rapidly. Without the presence of Sonia Gandhi, is the party totally rudderless (assuming that they’d have done the right thing if she were there ofcourse)? The Crown Prince has been silent throughout assuming that it’s better to blame a lost cause on the PMs head than take any action (their spin doctors still managed to give him credit for releasing Anna!!!); the same attitude that led the PM to fix the responsibility of the mishandling of the situation on the Delhi police.

For years now, we have had this spectacle of an arrangement between the ‘honest’ PM and St. Sonia taking the party together – an arrangement that worked well for them as well as onlookers. Finally, it looks like the time has come to sever this umbilical cord and get somebody else onto the throne. PM, the gentleman image has served you long enough and it’s time for a forced renunciation now – get somebody at the helm who can actually act. Rahul may not be my choice but if Congressmen can stay united only under him, so be it; no more mukhotas are needed.

Dear Rahul, if the Congress party looks at you as a future PM, you need to speak up. You cannot pick and choose your revolutions only looking at the safe areas to score brownie points; so you cannot go to Bhatta- Parsaul and Pune and make long winding assertions but choose to stay silent when your government is being thrashed around by the entire country. You let Manish Tewari and a few other jokers go berserk in their attacks and be slaughtered by the remarkable campaign of Team Anna.

We have seen enough of Kapil Sibal and Abhishek Singhvi now; they have managed to weave legal spin as much as possible but for God’s sake, show some spine, stand up and talk if you really want people to take you seriously (Ideally, this appeal should be to the PM but you know..). Are you waiting for the dust to settle down, sacrifice the PM and then step in with a noble gesture of getting Anna’s fast broken and get everyone’s applause?

There is a broad consensus that it was the Government’s bungling that has brought the issue so far but it is also the failure of the Opposition that has resulted in the ‘civil’ society taking the matter into its arms. The UPA has lost all its authority and is rudderless but where is the BJP in the midst of this entire din? It has neither taken a stance on the bill or made any attempts to resolve the logjam but has been enjoying the show from the sidelines. The party badly misses a Vajpayee kind of statesman like figure who can appeal to the masses and even talk to Team Hazare (the kind of credibility that the current Parliament lacks). Maybe a Nitish Kumar can step in and help in assuaging this public angst (would have suggested Modi but his image makes him a polarizing figure).

In the midst of all the upheaval that I see around me in the nation, it is difficult to stay unmoved and detached as a wave of emotions sweeps across the political fabric of this country. I have been oscillating from one side to another regularly unsure on what side I find myself in. Though my brain tells me that ‘Anna way or no way’ approach is not in sync with democratic principles, my heart asks me whether there was any other way?

When lakhs (let’s call it thousands for Karan Thapar’s sake) hit the roads with a sort of vengeance, can we simply disregard it hiding under the cloak of constitutionalism and Parliament? If different versions of the bill have been lying in the cans for more than 40+ years, does it not reflect the failure of the elected representatives? Yes, the people on the streets do not understand the Lok Pal and its intricacies but their protest is the only tangible way to tell the powers-at-the-top that they need to be heard (Agreed that the agitation has gone overboard on any occasions like the Anna-is-India and timeline based demands but it gives the Govt an opportunity to act mature, put aside egos and show magnanimity in handling the issue and actually win over people).

No one thinks that the bill will eradicate corruption and to that extent, the JLP bill may backfire (remember the much-maligned Anti-Defection Law was drafted by Shanti Bhushan) because of its grandiose design but the voice of the people is a voice of desperation and frustration, a voice that says we have a role even beyond the ballot box. It is this voice that the State needs to recognize and provide a platform, otherwise we will see more such agitations. If the Government had been able to communicate properly its views on the bill, it would not have come to an us vs them situation, where even strands of intelligent opposition are being attacked. This coupled with the fact that the principal opposition is not able to present an alternative has led to a vacuum in the polity, which the civil society is trying to fill, albeit in spurts.

We are the world’s largest democracy but simply providing universal suffrage does not suffice – we need to evolve into a participatory democracy from an electoral democracy. Every 5 years, we vote a leader into the Assembly and Parliament but till the next election, we have no role to play in the day-to-day governance of the state. Decisions taken in the House have no relation with what happens in our lives even though they affect us. I’d see the protest not in terms of the JLP or even corruption (though it is the rallying point) but in terms of how millions in this country feel alienated in the decision making process in the country. If all this action translates into some kind of mechanism where we feel responsible (even accountable) for governmental decisions and have a concrete say in it, it would be the real victory of the agitation.

But let us not push it a point of no return where even if a compromise is desired, it cannot be achieved because the legions of supporters will not settle for anything other than total victory. The point has been made well enough for the polity to understand that citizens cannot be taken for granted and it’s time to move to a more conciliatory rather than confrontational approach; while rhetoric works well to get in mass support, a more nuanced approach is needed to break the current logjam and accept other points of view. Team Anna has to be careful not to snatch a loss from the jaws of victory by its dogmatic and sanctimonious posturing which is taking us to a rather uncalled for chaotic situation.

Unlike the Arab Spring, the objective here is not toppling a government but a strong  moral show of strength in tackling political apathy. So, once the target is achieved, there is a danger that this triumph will be short-lived and the hubris will evaporate just as quickly as it was created. The anger can crystallize into either an apolitical or political movement but it should hopefully not be an anti-political movement as it is now. Eventually, only when the politics of the land undergoes a transformation (this is where electoral reforms are a key), a true change will emerge. Otherwise, we need to keep searching for an Anna like figure to rally people around on every issue that concerns us.

I am neither in favour of the JLP or the Government bill and look forward to the debate in the Standing Committee to come up with its recommendations. The Govt is responsible for the current impasse but Team Anna and followers have been quite adamant, jingoistic and inflexible in their approach towards resolving this, so hope good sense prevails!!!

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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. 

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The Sacred Treasure Hunt

The treasure is still being counted and the last estimates of the treasure trove obtained from the vaults of the Padmanabhaswamy Temple are being pegged at around 100,000 crores – almost like a scene from Indiana Jones and The Raiders of the Lost Ark. There is one more unopened vault which the Supreme Court has yet not permitted to open and so the final figure is anyone’s imagination but the amount is a mind boggling figure by any stretch of imagination. Mind you, the figure is not an official estimate but is hearsay but then who cares, the media has already proclaimed the temple as the richest religious institution in the country.

The priceless items in the vaults include solid gold idols, a 10-foot long gold chain, gold pots, bags of diamonds, hundreds of kilograms of gold trinkets, Belgium diamonds and emeralds, hundreds of French, Dutch East India Company and Roman gold coins(called Aureus), Roman silver coins, Venetian ducats, drachmas, Vijayanagar period coins and so on. Other riches include, necklaces made of gold coins, gold waist bands, anklets, three crowns studded with diamonds, pearls and rubies, gold staff and plates.

The valuation is now being carried out basis a Supreme Court judgment which stayed a ruling by the high court in Kerala ordering the state government to take over the temple and its assets from the royal trust. The initial court petition was brought by a local lawyer, who filed a case in the Kerala High Court demanding the takeover of the temple, saying that the current controllers were incapable of protecting the wealth of the temple because it did not have its own security force.

According to the temple staff, the 18th century ruler of Travancore, Marthanda Varma, gifted his kingdom to the deity, Sree Padmanabhan, after which the royal family has been ruling their subjects as “a servant of Sree Padmanabhan,” or Padmanabhadasan. There is no clear historical agreement on the source of the treasure but it is largely thought to have been in the temple for hundreds of years, having been put there by traders, pilgrims and royals such as the maharajahs of Travancore, and by offerings of Travancore kings, other royals and ordinary devotees to the deity.

The impoverished state of Kerala’s governmental coffers contrasts with the massive treasures unearthed from the temple and so there is a sneaking (wishful) temptation to demand that the temple wealth be given to the Government so that the money is used for public welfare (so the pitch about the size of the funds being equivalent to x% of the GDP or equal to the NREGS or PDS funding required).

With all the various scams corroding the exchequer regularly, there is a clear deficit of faith in the Government’s ability to act as the fund manager. It’s kind of difficult to imagine the Govt as Robin hood by taking this money from the temple and putting it to public use. When the reputation of the politician is in shreds and the Government is seen as an entity that helps in hoarding black money and does nothing about corruption, can you trust this wealth in the hands of the wealth? The Govt needs to be perceived to be at least remotely honest before people can repose their faith in it to do this. Would the same devotees be comfortable in contributing to a temple if teh money were to fill in government coffers?

But then isn’t there is something like an ownership right that exists in this country? If the media discovers that someone is mega rich, there are clamours all around for the money to be used for the discerning public – always easy to be generous when the cash flows from someone else’s pocket, I presume. Some historians have suggested that a major chunk of the stored riches reached the kings in the form of tax, gifts, as well as conquered wealth of conquered states and temples stocked in the temple for safekeeping and so the money is not necessarily a legitimate source of income. By that standard, you’d to have to admit that practically every ancient monument would have to be razed – imagine confiscating the Taj Mahal because Shah Jahan taxed the people heavily to flaunt his love for his wife.   

The valuation exercise being carried out in the temple vaults has thrown up gold assets and artifacts and not hard cash. So, the actual funding can only happen if the Government auctions all the treasure trove and mops up the money. I am no fan of ancient relics but then there are enough museums in the country which can merit this kind of approach and you cannot isolate Padmanabhaswamy temple on this. Public deficit financing through the auction of ancient treasures has never been a public policy and will never be one.

The best way to treat this largess would have to hive it off into a museum on the lines of a Louvre or the British Museum. The museum can be setup under the aegis of a trust comprising the royal family and a couple of government nominees where the role of the Govt will largely be in providing security and building the infrastructure to make it a renowned tourist and cultural location.   

The Kerala government is fearful of being drawn into an issue that has the potential to be religiously divisive. The UDF which has a narrow majority of two seats in an assembly of 140 seats is seen as a minority-friendly government. Analysts believe that the Hindus largely voted for the LDF in the last state elections and so CM Oommen Chandy is wary of upsetting the religious balance especially with a large section vocal section favouring the continuance of the former royal family at the helm of affairs at the temple.

What could eventually happen is what normally happens as an everyday political strategy in India – a committee will be formed to suggest what should be done with the temple’s treasure trove. The news hype will die down and the committee will amble along and finally present a report which probably some sort of status quo (a bit like the anti-climax of the Telangana report). The treasure will be sealed and thrown back into the vaults lock, stock and barrel and the issue will come up once a while as and when the media rises out of its slumber. And the poor Trivandrum citizen will find that living next to a wealthy lord translates into being surrounded by armed security.

Far from insisting on status quo, the issue is an opportunity to revisit a debate on the role of Government in the administration of religious institutions, especially Hindu temples. Nehru’s vision of a secular India meant that in 1949, the Hindu endowments and charitable trusts act was passed which gave control of Hindu religious institutions to the government. So, you have Governments heading trusts like the TTD and the Devaswom Board even though there is no business for the state to get involved in religion and matters of faith. Even here the intervention is selective - there are scores of temples that are lying in a state of neglect but the Government is indifferent but the moment money starts pouring in, there is direct and indirect intervention in its affairs.

It does not help that while Governments think twice before applying similar solutions to Madrassas and Christian Missionaries, there is an urge to clamp down on the religious institutions of the majority community. It is also true that Hindu trusts have themselves not covered themselves in glory by their unwillingness to be transparent and accountable to millions of stakeholders. Religious institutions have to necessarily be more approachable than government offices and ensure that regular audits are carried out and the financial statements are open to scrutiny by anyone. It does not augur well for a temple to be treated as a haven for stacking black money and being opaque in its financial dealings, especially when millions look to it for guidance.

With the Courts deciding in favour of God as a legal entity in the Babri Masjid case, is there any reason why Gods and their offices need to be kept out of the purview of RTI?

P.S. I am no temple goer or worshipper in any true sense. I am a Hindu by birth and by birth only and my relationship to temple is purely cultural and not religious. While I have visited the temple twice, personally, I believe that it is ridiculous that it does not allow non-Hindus inside; an idea that I had railed against earlier.

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.

Let the Sleeping Watchdogs Lie

The One Man Army has finally been shown the door. After years of flaunting his power in the erstwhile halo corridors of the Indian cricket establishment, the Big Boys decided that it is time to stop the circus and let the Wise Old Men step in. So, outgoes showman Lalit Modi and incomes Amin, backed by a coterie of unsuspecting BCCI honchos, who slept when Indian cricket burnt. Nothing has changed; the main conman has been shown the door while the architects of the circus, watch amusedly at how they have effectively brought in IPL under their control.

Lalit Modi had made enough foes in the last few years as he strode over the map of IPL, brandishing his powers as a third world dictator, forgetting that what goes round comes around. Three years ago Jagmohan Dalmiya was hounded out from the BCCI over charges of corruption and embezzlement. Among his detractors, Modi was the shrillest, announcing on one occasion that Dalmiya would be sent to jail. Modi has now been dumped even more unceremoniously, and the charges against him are far more severe. Among other things he has been accused of fixing the auctions; of creating slush funds; manipulating broadcast deals and many more things.

The media is gleeful and there are obituaries about the man who sometime back was a knight in the shining armour – a man who changed the face of Indian cricket and hailed as a champion of the big brand called IPL. The moment Modi is axed, the Government says that there is nothing to probe against Sharad Pawar and Praful Patel and the focus would primarily be on Modi only – everyone wants a Fall Guy, and we have one, actually two – an ex-Foreign Minister, who was driven out.

BCCI honcho Shashikant Manohar says:

Now most of the contracts have been entered into without the consent of the governing council and they’ve been brought to the governing council after the contract was signed.

Ok, Picture this now - One man sits in the IPL office, conducts auctions, draws contracts, awards it to his people and makes money. After all the hard work of corruption is done, the papers are brought to the IPL Governing Council (Governing what????) and the Wise Men sign over the dotted lines of the contract, without batting an eye lid. Smart guys, they now that Collective Responsibility is not applicable in BCCI Constitution and in case anything goes wrong, all they have to do is point fingers.

You have 3 cricketers in the council, who are rubber stamps and have absolutely no idea what is happening – maybe they are simply naïve; after all you can’t call Gavaskar, Shastri and Pataudi corrupt or incompetent? The very idea of bringing them into such a Council would be to bring about a greater legitimacy to the its workings and provide a certain amount of checks and balances to such a system. But if it did not even read the contract or debate it, what the heck did this glorified council do - Make money by doling out contracts to Modi's kith and kin???

But then we must not forget that it is a nice little cosy club out there. BCCI Secretary N Srinivasan owns Chennai Super Kings, Gavaskar and Shastri have commentary contracts with BCCI and the IPL, the chairman of the national selection committee Srikanth is a brand ambassador for CSK. And this is what is publicly known. Practically, everyone has a close political association – If Congress has Rajiv Shukla, BJP has Arun Jaitley and you have the invisible hands of Sharad Pawar controlling many more stakes. Last week, Times Now has reported that in the previous season, BCCI awarded 5 million to the semi-finalists. Cool, right!!! Srinivasan transfers money from BCCI’s coffers to his and we call it ‘conflict of interest’ – whose interest??

Now, BCCI is a chameleon which keeps switching between being a public body and a private body as and when it wants. When a demand is put forth to bring in more accountability and bring BCCI under the ambit of Tight to Information, it suddenly becomes a private body, which cannot be questioned but when the same body asks for tax waiver or the right to control cricket in India, it becomes a public body working in the interests of Indian fans!!! In reality, BCCI is a registered society under an obscure law in Tamil Nadu and has de-facto control over cricket in India, without any legislation or form of accountability. It receives enormous benefits and concessions from Governments, buys land at throw away prices and gets tax exemptions for selling national interest. 

You must commend the role of media in this IPL Show. They praise Lalit Modi, go overboard in selling the IPL Brand, sitting mum over the so-called “conflicts of interest” and instances of corruption for so many years and suddenly, there is that smug WE TOLD YOU grin. There are stories of how Modi literally controlled Rajasthan, fixed deals and created a crony capitalistic regime in IPL – but why was the media silent all this while? Many of these facts exist in public domain but not a single query was raised so far on all this. The media was seduced by the big money, parties and prime time entertainment and the watchdog just slept through this spectacle till the tweet war between Tharoor and Modi shook things up.

Watch how Arnab Goswami (my pick of the worst of the English journalist showmen) grimaces and questions the legitimacy of all the deals done in IPL, casually dropping in a match fixing query and being so indignantly self-righteous. It is ridiculous that after shamelessly, blindly and unquestionably backing Modi and the IPL, media men start the demonizing act so fast without a qualm for journalistic impropriety (something only reserved for Shashi Tharoor, it would seem).

The Times of India, which is the first to cover every event on the planet, reports today that the BCCI claims that there is no conflict of interest in N Srinivasan’s ownership of CSK because he had informed the then BCCI president, Sharad Pawar about it. How convenient!!! Don’t you even to ask them how silly and ridiculous such a claim is!!! Our press friends paint the town red accusing Modi of running a parallel administration in Rajasthan, with the help of Vasundhararaje, but when the same man is at the helm of IPL, they do not see the same avarice, the same conceit and the same schmuck around him.

When franchisees were putting in an absurd amount of money without any clear indicators of great returns in the future, why was the media silent? If the IPL contract says that franchisee holdings must not be disclosed, isn’t there a reason to suspect that something is amiss here? Bangalore is suffering from massive power cuts but as the city reels under the shocking power situation, the Chinnaswamy stadium is flood-lit so that IPL matches can be held using subsidized power. The Government gets a pittance to provide security to the players and even has the gall to waive off the entertainment tax (though in the same breath, it argues that farmers cannot be waived loans entirely). So, there are two sets of rules for two different sets of people and the watchdogs do not give a damn!!!

Suddenly, no one wants to talk about Shashi Tharoor and Sunanda Pushkar – a couple of convenient news items who have been dropped now, since there are no more leaks available about them. In Shashi Tharoor’s case, there was a potential case of misappropriate behaviour and maybe even corruption, but most of it remained accusations which were never substantiated. The mere fact that there is a woman does not automatically translate into sleaze, sex and drugs – a story so fondly carried home by the media. Since his resignation, there is practically no news about the two and after Amin took over, the channels have also gone silent – they have a new story now about Madhuri Gupta spying scandal and the old story is no longer appealing.

So, Congress has the moral high ground by choosing to throw out a minister on the basis of suspicion while Raja, the charge sheeted (not tweet accused, mind you) minister, stays on because he has enough backing. BJP hollers on Tharoor but remains mum when greater evidence is brought to the fore against NCP ministers and their people. When the political establishment has its hand in practically every pie of the sports administration, is it inevitable that the sport starts stinking? Stories of match fixing may not be true but they gain credence primarily because people lose faith in the way the game is run – so every match is fixed and every cricketer is a two-timer.

Personally, I give two hoots for IPL and do not care what happens to it but the future of cricket in India is now sub-twined with it. If the administration were to cut down on the frills and the mindless vaudeville and concentrate on the game, it has a future - forget the national level cricketers, atleast the others get a chance to play and make a future for themselves. But the brand needs credibility and the need is to have a professionally managed body for cricket, which is transparent and run with a high degree of accountability. When the match fixing scandal broke out, it gave the BCCI an opportunity to clean its stables but after a few peripheral changes, nothing ever changed.

Modi has been cut to size by the Grand Old Men of the Game and how does it help the sport? All that has happened is that one layer has been peeled off and another layer has been carefully pasted across, without altering anything at all. There will be a small talk of transparency and public interests but after some time, it will disguise itself in a new avatar and be served to us again in all its nauseating glory– after all, the show must go on!!!

P.S. Incidentally, N Srinivasan also heads AICF - All India Chess Federation - and since his takeover, the federation has practically been inactive. The Anand-Topalov World Championship Match is currently being held in Bulgaria (even though the Bulgaria bid is only 13 crore) because the AICF could not get any sponsor. Vishy wanted the match to be held in India but with practically no interest shown by India, the bid was won by Bulgaria. Clearly, the Chess World Championship is not worth the money for the CSK boss. 


Image Courtesy - http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?265180

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