Events & Issues

New Delhi, 30 November 2009

Recovery Path

AGRICULTURAL GROWTH VITAL

By Dhurjati Mukherjee

It is heartening to note from recent reports that France and Germany have returned to the growth path which means that now four of the world’s five largest economies and six of the top 10 are not in recession. Most economists had predicted both France and Germany  to face a decline of about 0.3 per cent in their GDP for the second quarter (April-June, 2009), but they surprised the world by announcing a growth of 0.3 per cent. Japan too has climbed out of the recession while China and India are already growing at healthy rates. However, the UK, which is the seventh largest economy and Italy the 10^th largest remain in recession like the US.  

As far as India is concerned, the current year has not been all that encouraging. While surveys have revealed that most industrial sectors have shown positive growth, the cumulative shortfall of around 30 per cent rainfall has definitely affected agricultural production and the GDP has been restricted. In fact, 2009 may be declared a drought year, affecting the rural population in a big way.

The Union Finance Ministry had recently stated that the economy would expand by around 6.5 per cent in the current fiscal despite the insufficient monsoon and the somewhat adverse impact on agricultural output. The growth rate may steadily pick up and accelerate to over eight per cent in 2010-11 and nine per cent the following year. Experts believe that the growth rate this year would have been much higher had the country witnessed normal or near-normal rainfall.

According to the Planning Commission, agriculture production is likely to fall by 14 per cent (15-16 metric tonnes) – the third highest fall in foodgrains production since 1964-65. But these are conservative estimates and actual figures may be more. The rainfall deficit of around 25-26 per cent was the highest-ever in recent times but its impact would be less as around 46 per cent of farm land has been under irrigation as against 40 per cent in 2001-02.

Its effect on the agriculture sector poses a big problem for the Government but the situation could be salvaged if the rabi crops was protected. There are reports that the kharif crop had been affected in 58 districts of U.P. and 38 districts of Bihar and also in Punjab and Haryana which, in turn, has already led to increasing prices of foodgrains. Obviously, this would affect the poorer with inflation moving upwards.

There is need to analyze how much of the country’s population would be directly affected in such a situation. The inflationary conditions, which may accentuate with lower yield of staple crops may primarily affect the rural sector and the farming community in particular who form the majority in the country. However, buffer stocks of rice and wheat are quite adequate to have helped see the year though.

It is important and heartening to note that a food security mission has been launched to raise production in respect of rice by 10 million tonnes, wheat by 8 million tonnes and pulses by two million tonnes over the next five years. This is most needed as around seven million children die of hunger every year, around 63 per cent of them go to bed hungry and 47 per cent suffer from chronic malnutrition.

In recent years, a large number of people died of starvation or malnutrition in the poverty-stricken regions of Orissa, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Chhattisgarh, Maharashtra and Himachal Pradesh. Such procedures confirm that the procedure being followed to benefit BPL families through the public distribution system or through the NREGS programme has not been successful to make a big dent.

The situation is manifest in the FAO report which had earlier resolved to reduce the number of the undernourished to half by 2015. However, the latest report on world agriculture observed that the target would not be met even by the 2030, principally because populous nations like India’s record has been far from satisfactory.

It may be relevant here to point out that D. Bandyopadhyay, a former Secretary to the Union Government, who has served on many panels of the Planning Commission questioned whether sustainable 9 per cent GDP growth would solve the problem of ensuring two square meals a day to the entire population? Unfortunately, the development model being followed was one of exclusion and not of inclusion and therefore the common man was not deriving any benefits from this growth trajectory.    

 Experts have been holding consultations on the need for a second green revolution, which must reach the farthest corners of the country and that financial inclusion of the small and marginal farmers should be ensured by providing the technological inputs to increase or diversify their production and add value to the products. Moreover, it could be based on genetically modified (GM) technology referred to as “gene revolution.” However, its products must be safe. 

Indeed, sustained agricultural development is necessary through a variety of measures which should not only look into innovative technology for increasing production and productivity but also ensure resource conservation, soil health and water planning. Additionally, dryland farming needs to be encouraged as water resources are becoming scarce day by day and there is need to experiment on crops that need less water. Development of farmers’ cooperatives as is being done in Gujarat and Maharashtra could too help. The Government should not only invest more in the agricultural sector but should ensure that subsidies are not reduced, given the special situation of our country unlike others in the West which are moving away from agriculture.      

Regrettably, while the Indian Council for Agricultural Research (ICAR) has huge funding, its research is not percolating to the desired grass-root level. Moreover, the emphasis on agricultural science and training and extension to farmers has not been sufficient over the years. Worse, farmers are not getting quality seeds and the benefits of research (lab-to-land facility) is virtually non-existent in most parts of the country.

While the nation may focus on high growth it simply cannot ignore agriculture if grass- root development and food security has to be ensured. The planners must remember that the majority of the working population is still dependent on agriculture and will continue to do so for decades. Rural economy must be strengthened through agriculture and agro-based industries, which could generate employment, ensure food for farmers and usher in the necessary transformation. Recall, an estimate by eminent economist C. Rangarajan in 1982: a mere one per cent increase in agricultural output led to a 0.7 increase in national income and that most part of this reached the grass-root level of rural India and benefited the farming community. -- INFA    

 (Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Political Diary

New Delhi, 5 December 2009

The Question Hour

PARLIAMENT’S ZEROSUM GAME

By Poonam I Kaushish

It was bound to happen. The signs were all there. Another shameful pointer to the lack of seriousness and sab chalta hai attitude with which our MPs take their job, repeatedly vandalise and spew contempt on the temple of democracy. Thus, reducing Parliament to a zerosum game!

Most scandalously, for the first time in over two decades, the sacrosanct Question Hour in the Lok Sabha had to be abandoned when 34 MPs with 17 questions listed against their names were absent last Monday Shamefully, Tuesday fared no better when only 8 out of 14 Members with questions listed were present. Equally embarrassing for the Government, Cabinet Minister for Chemicals and Fertilisers Azhagiri’s habitually ducks Parliament. In the last week alone he absented himself twice, leaving questions to be answered by his junior Minister

Ditto was the situation in the Rajya Sabha when Question Hour was adjourned twice over. No matter that the queries pertained to infiltration incidents in J&K and North-eastern States and the surrender and rehabilitation of Maoists. Not for our Right Honourables that the Question Hour is the hyphen between the Executive and the Legislature. In this sacred hour any MP can ask any question from the Government and hold it accountable.

Importantly, it serves as a barometer of Government performance at the macro-level and a Minister’s effectiveness at the micro- level wherein the Government through its Ministers is forced to answer questions. The most powerful weapon available to the Opposition to keep the Government on a tight leash. The reason why it is by and large not suspended unlike any another business, except adjournment or no-confidence motions which supercede all business.

Alas, even as our truant MPs throw up excuses of delayed flights and non-receipt of notices for absences, they are ignorant that in 1957, it was a Question Hour query that blew the lid off India’s first major financial scam. When Feroze Gandhi unravelled the Mundhra scandal in the Lok Sabha which led to the resignation of then Finance Minister T T Krishnamachari,

Not only that. Many MPs do not even know what questions are being asked in their names. Asserted Constitutional expert Subhash Kashyap: “Before going to their constituency or elsewhere, they often sign blank forms for babus to fill up when summons are issued. No one wants to be seen lagging behind,” he says. Adding, “When ‘inconvenient’ questions are filled up, MPs may even be taken to task by a Party biggie on the issue. The only way out is to absent themselves.”

Tragically, all this is water of a duck’s back for our Right Honourables. Shrugged of an ‘absconding’ MP nonchalantly, “since the House normally covers only 3.34 questions on an average, I was doubtful that my question, listed seventh, would be taken up. This happens all the time, why make a big deal out of it.” Why, indeed? What to speak of the colossal waste of public money given that it cost’s Rs 28 lakhs per hour to run both Houses of Parliament.

Worse, not a few of our MPs are more interested in asking “lucrative” questions. Remember December 2004 when 11 MPs were expelled in the question-for-money scam. Wherein they sold the dignity and honour of Parliament for fake questions. That too for an embarrassingly petty amounts ranging from Rs.5000 to Rs.55000.  Confided a senior Minister, “But this is only the tip of the iceberg. Nine out of ten cases go unreported.”

Clearly, the absence of MPs during Question Hour is symbolic of the overall erosion of Parliament itself. Equally revealing of how far the rot has spread is the annual audit for 2007-08 of the functioning of 12 Standing Committees to oversee the working of Union ministries during the last Lok Sabha. Wherein many MPs earning the dubious distinction of not having attended a single meeting in the entire year. 

Ironically, there was a mad scramble among our Right Honourables to be on “important” Committees since a seat on these panels gives them leverage with officials. As it stands the meetings are hardly an austere affair, with the Ministries and public sector undertakings required to foot the bill for MPs tours who are invariably lodged in luxurious places and have fleets of cars at their disposal.

Thus, with politics becoming a profitable business MPs are more interested in feathering their own nests. Preferring to lobby and curry favour with seniors. Oblivious that the most serious of Parliament’s self-inflicted limitations is the drastic reduction in the number of days it chooses to work in a year.

Scandalously, the House hit an all-time low when the Lok Sabha functioned only for 32 days in2008.  Notwithstanding the political consensus that Parliament should meet for a minimum of 100 days in a year.  In 2007 it had fared better when it met for 66 days. But all was washed away by the shortest ever monsoon session of barely 17 days with the longest daily adjournments and hardly any work, a mere 64 hours. Typical, the Government and Opposition accused each other for “killing” Parliament.

There are no easy answers to the deterioration of Parliament. But upgrading MP quality is imperative. If IAS officers can go for re-training, why can’t politicians? Rajiv Gandhi had said even pilots need retraining. It’s the same thing. Sadly, there’s no exposure of MPs to orientations on how to go about the House. No training on how or what issues to raise. 

Also, just as happens in normal employment --- no work, no pay, our jan sevaks fancy salaries and perks too should be clipped. And those who are habitual defaulters, should be disqualified, three strikes and they are barred.

Clearly, our Parliament needs to look afresh at its procedures and adapt them to the changing demands, as was wisely done in Britain in 1976. The House of Commons then gave itself new rules and procedures to ensure “control and stewardship over Ministers and the expanding bureaucracy”. What was true of Britain in 1976 is even more true of India today, if we really mean business.

Undoubtedly, accountability in a Parliamentary democracy does not mean merely ensuring that the Government retains its majority in the Lok Sabha. Continued support of the majority is, no doubt, very important for accountability, but accountability goes beyond confidence motions and approval of money bills. It is a day-to-day exercise of continuing assessment of the performance of ministers through questions from the floor of the House.

In the ultimate, how does one restore the strong sense of its own authority to Parliament? What is going to be our basic approach to this continuing distressing and disgraceful spectacle? Are we going to stand as mute spectators as Parliament gets vandalized by our mental midgets. No. We can’t afford it. It is time to cry a halt. If the netagan do not mend matters the public may well choose to take the law into their own hands. More and more people are today saying: Laaton ke bhoot baton se nahin mante (People used to being kicked will not listen to reason.)

Needless to say, the tragedy of our Parliamentary democracy is the absence of probity at all levels of public life.  No doubt action has justifiably been taken against the erring MPs. But a lot still needs to be done. For starters our MPs should stop scoring petty political points against each other. It is in the interest of healthy democracy that unhealthy precedents are not set. Remember, Parliamentary democracy can succeed only when the rules of the game are followed honestly. Else it will become redundant and irrelevant. Our elected MPs need to answer just one question: whose Parliament is it any way? Theirs or the aam aadmis’? ---- INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Economic Highlights

New Delhi, 27 November 2009

Rich, Bad & Ugly

TIME TO EMPOWER WORKERS

By Shivaji Sarkar

 “Richest 40 add 65 per cent to their wealth over the year. But the poor continue to pay inflation tax”, screams a newspaper headline. The number of billionaires in the country almost doubled to 52 in a year which saw the world going through the worst recession in 80 years.

That is the paradox. The world-over the rich are becoming richer and the poor are being marginalized. While the rich go on adding to their wealth, the poor are losing their capacity to buy the bare necessities as food prices rise by almost 15 per cent (14.55 per cent as per in a year and 55 per cent since March). Inflation does not impact the rich, but it further impoverishes the poor. Larger the number of poor means less they have the capacity to bargain or earn in terms of wages. The loss of the poor is the direct benefit of the rich. They get cheap labour and can further add to their wealth.

The stark reality is that the 40 rich Indians are all industrialists. They have replaced the maharajas and nizams, who were counted among the world’s richest. Maharajas were thriving on the toil of the poor, it is often said, and the 40 rich are industrious people. This is half truth if not untruth. While these and many others of their tribe thrive, those working in their establishments are suffering wage cuts and job losses. This only testifies what Karl Marx had said:  that the rich could become rich exploiting the poor. Are we going back to re-enact Water Babies of the 17^th and 18^th centuries?

For an Indian, it is a dilemma – whether to celebrate the achievements of the rich or mourn over the five- lakh job losses as per official statistics during the period the country’s 40 rich add almost three-fourth more to their wealth. This is also the period when many poor workers, not just debt-ridden farmers, committed suicide after having lost their jobs even in the national capital – Delhi. There is a stark similarity with the US – the trend is alike as disparity grows there. The Lehman Brothers and AIG scandals have robbed millions of people in America of their lifetime savings and pension payments. Officially now 12.5 per cent or 37 million people in the US live below the poverty line (though the line at $ 21203 a year family income may be higher by Indian standards).

The situation in the US is worsening. “My guess is poverty is going to go up from around 12.5 per cent now by about half percentage point to 13 per cent,” said Rebecca Blank, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “The main driving factor is the rising unemployment.”

During the recent visit of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, US President Barack Obama expressed the hope, “Indian investments would create jobs in the US”. Has the wheel taken a full circle or is it another ruse of the rich to deprive the poor nations of the opportunity to invest their wealth in their own countries? The situation in Europe is also on similar patterns but there the rich are continuing to grow richer.

Sadly, the condition in India is not seemingly improving. The policy makers have to be cautious. Tata and Reliance are investing in loss-making units in degenerating European economies raising huge debt. It serves one purpose. The workers in the West agree to work at poor wages while the condition at home also becomes conducive for keeping the wages low at the threat of throwing people out of jobs. In the process they add more personal wealth.

This is how the rich are making huge money while the common man is getting impoverished or, at best, holding on to his low income. Increase in inequality appears to be inevitable. The workers of England were impoverished in the 19th century to release investment in factories of Manchester. This is seemingly being repeated in the 21st century. The wolf of recession has helped the rich further reduce the cost on wages. So while the common man is denied of even the subsistence wages, large companies shamelessly make huge profits.

It pays to keep the people poor. The poorest grumble but do not protest. They are more concerned about their hunger and have little time to look at the way they are being deprived. Surely, this cannot be the model for development, either for India or the world. The Arjun Sengupta report says that 77 per cent of Indians subsist on Rs 20 a day. Thus, we have the Maoists who are not fighting for the cause of the poor but the ruse has helped them find support among them and disturb peace in a wide stretch of the country.

Disparity cannot be the model for development. If the rich want to grow richer the system would not prevent that. But what was true in the 19^th century – maintaining low wages - cannot be panacea in the21^st century. Though the industry may be making hey-day due to the weakening of the labour movements across the world, it should be viewed as a temporary relief. Indeed, some workers have started uniting and raising their voice once again demanding “floor wages” – euphemism for just and equitable wages and sharing of profits with the workers. It is at a nascent stage.

If their voice is not heard, it would not be very long when the world may witness resurgence of trade unionism. Industries need to learn that low wages prevent the workers from consuming goods. It results in more production and low demand. In the end it ultimately cuts on their earnings as some manufacturers are now experiencing.

Clearly, it is time to consider empowering the workers particularly in this country, which is at the threshold of taking over the global leadership. The model of rising inequality with alleviation of poverty is unlikely to work. If the corporate and their owners want to grow they would have to do so by paying just and adequate wages. ‘Hire and fire’ cannot be the solution to jack up profits. Being rich is not bad. But they would also have to come up with a model so that all those around them – the workers – also become rich to sustain them. Less the disparity, higher would not only be the growth but also the “index of happiness”. Would the Indian rich take the lead? ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)

Open Forum

New Delhi, 25 November 2009

Vande Mataram Controversy

EXPOSE DUPLICITY OF JAMAIT

By Dr. Nitish Sengupta

(Former MP and Secretary, Finance (Revenue, Govt of India)

One strongly suspects that anti-national forces have manipulated the recent resolution of the Jamait Ulemai-i-Hind asking the Muslims of India not to sing the national song, Vande Mataram, even in its translated official version, on the ground that it is un Islamic. Thereby the mullahs, who assembled at the organisation’s 30th session recently, disowned nearly a century of the history of this song, its role in inspiring several generations of freedom fighters, including so many Muslims, who braved police bullets and lathi charges and courted imprisonment or laid down their lives for securing India’s freedom. Tragically, they sought to carve out a separate identity for the Indian Muslim community away from the national identity, which is the proud inheritance of every Indian, irrespective of his religious affiliation.

The devious manner in which they tried to seek respectability and legitimacy by the presence of Union Home Minister Chidambaram, at the Deoband meeting, without informing him about the outrageous resolutions they were going to pass, or had already passed, before he arrived to address the gathering, is all the more reprehensible.  Obviously he was not aware of this. Had he been so, he would no doubt have condemned the Jamait’s denigration of the national song with his characteristic plain speaking. But one wonders what the I.B was doing to keep tab on the Jamait’s intention and to brief the Minister about it before hand? This failure to do so is yet another instance of the I.B’s slipshod working in recent times.

It is good to recall Vande Mataram’s glorious association with India’s freedom movement, both as a song and as the originator of the slogan Vande Mataram, which became the battle cry for India’s freedom fighters, the various all India movements against the British Raj in 1905-07, in 1919-21, in 1931 and in 1942. True, that the original song in Bankim Chandra’s novel Anand Math has some stanzas where our motherland is compared to goddess Durga and, to that extent, orthodox Muslims had some objection to these stanzas which offended their sentiment against idolatry. But our national leaders were aware of this, and that is why they omitted over half of the original song, and selected only a few preliminary stanzas which describe India’s natural beauty.  Vande Mataram need not even be translated as “we worship our mother” but as “we pay homage to our motherland”.

It is this truncated version, fully responsive to Muslim sentiment, which was adopted by the Indian National Congress as our national song. It was this which was sung at the annual sessions of the Congress. On one occasion Rabindranath sang this. There are eyewitness reports that during the two decades, when M. A. Jinnah was a prominent Congress leader, he would dutifully stand up whenever this song was sung to show respect to the national song. When the Constituent Assembly had to choose a national anthem they chose ‘Jana Gana Mana’ in preference to Vande Mataram simply because the former song was found more suitable to be played on the orchestra, and not for any other reason.

But our Constitution says that Vande Mataram will be given equal position as that of our National Anthem. A tradition has developed that whenever a Parliament session ends Vande Mataram is played on the orchestra. In the context of all this, the mischievous efforts by the Jamait and the Darul Ulum to revive a controversy that is dead, must be dismissed with the contempt it deserves. 

The mental attitude displayed by the Jamait seeks to repudiate the glorious traditions of Islam such as the policy of rulers like Akbar, who tried to build all subjects, Hindus and Muslims into a common nationalism with loyalty to the national monarchy. Islam in India, as in several other countries, built up a tradition of tolerance, equality and finer sensibility. It was the advent of Wahabis in Arabia in the last century, and the attitude that they tried to cultivate amongst Muslims, which is the villain of the piece. 

Noted lawyer Ram Jethmalani, whose statements are not normally taken seriously by sensible  people, made a very rational comment about how Islam’s earlier tradition of Sufism and tolerance was subverted by the advent of the Wahabi movement from Arabia in the last century. It preaches to all Muslims to hate all other non-believers, to subjugate them and convert them to Islam, if possible, and create a whole generation of die hard orthodox jehadi people, led by mad persons like Osama bin Laden.

This tradition has to be fought with all our might and bulk of the Muslims gradually won over back to the earlier tradition of Sufism. They should be taught not to hate all others, but to love and treat them as equal citizens in the kingdom of God.  All the nonsense which the Jamait have been fed with, like the belief that if they die in jehadi action they will go to heaven and will have company of good looking huris, must be fought with all our might, particularly among Indian Muslims.  There is no dearth of liberal, peace loving and god fearing Muslims who generally like equal treatment to all others

There are already vigorous protests from Muslim organizations, as also individual Muslims. In Bhopal some Muslims have openly challenged them. Osam Khurram, Chairman, All India Muslim Tahwar Committee, has described Vande Mataram as patriotic and not un-Islamic and also announced that he would sing it in front of the State Assembly. He has also pointed to Muslims like Ashfaqullah, Maulana Obaidullah Sindhi or Maulana Hussain Ahmed Madani who have laid down their lives singing Vande Mataram.  Such protests are rising every day. 

But stronger action from the Government is called for, action in winning over the moderate Muslims into the true teachings of the Quran far away from the fundamentalists who are poisoning the minds of the young generation of Muslims. And also deterrent action against all those who preach jehad against non-believers as the only legitimate duty of the true Muslims, contrary to primitive Islam. Also, the mischievous duplicity of the Jamait mullahs should be exposed and condemned. We cannot forget the glorious traditions of our freedom movement including the accepted version of Vande Mataram for the sake of vote bank politics, which is the regrettable objective of the Jamait.  ---INFA

(Copyright, India News and Feature Alliance)