sonia's gang of genocidal kautilyas

Despite producing of 22 per cent wheat , 12 per cent rice and 13 per cent cotton of the country’s total , the Punjab agriculture is in serious crisis that have pushed 90 per cent farm households under debt, mounting to whooping Rs 26,000 crore said Punjab Agriculture University (PAU) Vice Chancellor MS Kang. Inaugurating two-day seminar on “Punjab Economy: Performance and Challenges” organized by the Department of Economics at the university campus, Dr Kang said the farm production is of optimum level as the state shares less than 2 per cent of the total cultivable land of the country.
Moreover, the total value of farm produce per annum from the state has down to Rs 22695 crore now from Rs 26000 crore in 1994-95, he said adding the pauperization of farm families has led migration of farmers which now touches one lakh hands. The farm income per hectare has come down because produce prices announced by the Central government as Minimum Support Price (MSP) increased on average by one per cent while the prices of inputs rose by 3.5 per cent. And, the growth rate of agriculture Punjab, registered at 10 per cent in 1980s has come down to mere 1.2 per cent now and soil got fatigued and sick requiring more does of fertilizers, pesticides and other inputs to achieve the same level of production. [emphasis mine].

that's a march 2009 news story from the punjab university news bulletin .

despite producing more every year, the punjab farmer earns less every year. his costs go up every year, and so do his debts. and the suicides keep increasing.

from 1988 to 2006, according to a non-profit organization called the Movement Against State Repression (MASR), around 40,000 farmers have committed suicide. and that's only an estimate based on research done in some districts of punjab. around 2009, each farmer in punjab owed a debt of over rs.40,000, on an average, to institutional and other lenders. and every one of them would have incurred more debt in the past three years because the value of his produce has been going down, steadily, over two decades, at least.

now, he's being asked to borrow some more money to pay for the food security bill.

because punjab's the biggest source of surpluses for the indian state, the punjabi farmer would again be enticed with the promise of more procurement. though that would mean assured sales to an extent, looking more closely one would realize that with procurement prices growing at the spectacular rate of 1% per year on an average, it would only mean more losses for him in the end, when the growth in prices is measured against the general rate of inflation. as the banks have already shut their tijoris tight, he'd have to borrow more from informal lenders, incurring more costs..and so on.

and the funniest part is that the savarna/civil society activists promoting the food security bill have been closely associated with the sainath kind of 'liberals' who, while making jetsetting careers out of suicides, have been trivializing the crisis by bruiting around the idea that everything would be alright if only the govt subsidizes inputs a bit more, pushes the banks a little more, doles out a little more for procurement etc. have they really looked at the scale of the problem? the total debt burden on the punjabi farmers in 2009 was nearly 20% more than the total yearly output of all of them put together. now it'd have gone up much more. the more the farmer produces, the less he makes, and the more he slides into debt. because oversupply pushes prices down and wipes away all gains from lower costs. that's been the trend since the mid 80s when the suicides started in punjab.

by asking him to pay more for this new, enhanced 'food security' formula, sonia gandhi's brahminized gang of advisers are pushing more punjabi farmers towards suicide.

right to overrule

The "Right to Food Campaign" is an informal network of organisations and individuals committed to the realisation of the right to food in India. We consider that everyone has a fundamental right to be free from hunger and undernutrition. Realising this right requires not only equitable and sustainable food systems, but also entitlements relating to livelihood security such as the right to work, land reform and social security. We consider that the primary responsibility for guaranteeing these entitlements rests with the state. Lack of financial resources cannot be accepted as an excuse for abdicating this responsibility. In the present context, where people's basic needs are not a political priority, state intervention itself depends on effective popular organisation. We are committed to fostering this process through all democratic means. [emphasis mine]

that's the foundation statement of the right to food campaign.please check the highlighted line again: don't our elections produce 'popular' governments? if elected governments don't represent 'popular' organisations, who does?

the barely concealed contempt for india's politics, democracy and the ordinary indian who considers himself a participant in both can also be noticed in the dazzling rhetoric of other 'right to..' campaigners. indian politics can't handle this serious stuff, so here's what the indian state, through its 'civil', hence neutral and untainted by the filth of politics, bureaucracy needs to do to deliver these 'rights'. in effect, what the campaigners want the state to do is to overrule the the 'politics' of the elected government.   

and they've been succeeding. the nac is filled with these campaigners, and the nac, of course, talks to sonia gandhi more often than the elected government does. and why does the elected government have to consult with sonia gandhi? because sonia gandhi is the party. if she didn't nominate every one of the 'elected' lawmakers (down to panchayat sarpanches and even ward members, sometimes) and if her endorsement wasn't required for the 'election' of the lowliest official in her party across the country, you could have said: the congress is bigger than sonia gandhi.

---------------------

that was a draft i had worked on 7 months ago. a couple of days ago, i see that sonia gandhi is not just congress party, or the government. she is god. food and consumer affairs minister k.v.thomas says:

“The draft Bill is ready now. I don’t say it is in line with NAC or not. But it is in line with what is in the mind of Madam Sonia Gandhi,” he said.
“The principle of Sonia Gandhi is that every citizen of the country should get legal cover toward a certain quantity of nutritious food, not simply foodgrains,” he shared.

in the 7 months since i started on this post, the priests of civil society have moved much closer to god, through the lokpal coup d'etat, pushing parliament into more 'ineffectiveness'. this current move shows utter contempt for not just parliament, elected through popular vote, but also ignores totally a majority of those who participate in the popular vote-- cultivators and workers. one wonders if god, while nodding her assent to all the sanctimonious mumbo-jumbo her civil society priests were chanting before her, had thought even a little about the answers they didn't have?

* who shall pay for the increased procurement? the fci procures, and if it pays a higher msp to the farmer, the govt will have to dole out a greater amount by way of subsidies to the pds. in balancing these two actions, will the farmer always not get paid less to keep the subsidies lower? or will the msp not be a function of the pds prices, always? should cultivators and workers continue to pay with stagnation and death for the food security of the urban middle classes?
* wheat and rice, the brahmin grains, will drive this increased procurement, as always. what about the farmers who produce less brahminical cereals like jowar, bajra etc?
* will surpluses continue to be procured from 3-4 states? wouldn't that destroy any incentive for food security in the majority of states, like it has done in all these years?
* shouldn't food security be a concern of the states, primarily, regions within the states, and districts within regions and blocks within districts and villages within blocks to be more meaningful?
* rice is a water-guzzler and has taken away a much needed resource from millions and millions of ordinary citizens, especially in northwest india, a region which never produced rice in much quantity before the so-called green revolution.. who will pay for this water, which means thirst, hardship, lack of basic sanitation.. dry toilets and again stagnation, caste and much more?
* there is increased competition among many states to build costly but ineffective irrigation systems to tap water to grow rice and other such crops.. who will pay for all the bad blood among states and regions? for the ecological disasters and the adivasi displacements? does india need more rice, at such heavy costs?

questions. one can think of many more questions, but the priests know better, i guess.  

how telangana grew more

some doubts were raised here on whether the rest of telangana grew as much as hyderabad in the post-reforms period. dr.jayaprakash narayan of loksatta seems to have looked at that question too. in a television chat show he has tried to answer a similar question:

mahesh:I need some clarification on what factor telangana districts are growing much faster than andhra region districts. Can u please ans me?
Dr. Jayaprakash Narayan: I have presented many parameters and the growth in Telangana & rest of AP over 50 years. The facts speak for themselves. If you see the annual growth rates of gross district domestic product of various districts from 1994-95 to 2006-07, the facts are revealing. 1994-95 to 2006-07 - Annual average growth rate. AP: 6.68%.
Nalgonda: 7.38% Khammam: 6.99% Warangal: 7.57% Karimnagar: 7.53% Adilabad: 6.46% Nizamabad: 6.30% Medak: 7.34% Hyderabad: 10.41% Rangareddy: 9.32% Mahabubnagar:8.34%
Rayalaseema: Kurnool: 5.33% Ananthapur: 5.82% Cuddapah: 4.90% Chittoor: 4.73%
coastal AP Nellore: 5.09% Prakasam: 6.80% Guntur: 4.81% Krishna: 7.01% West Godavari: 5.79% East Godavari: 6.46% Visakhapatnam: 9.65% Vizianagaram: 5.81% Srikakulam: 6.58% you can see these trends - these are long term trends aggregate economic growth over 13 years for each district. The facts speak for themselves. [emphasis mine]

as you can see, in gdp terms, eight (of ten) districts of telangana of grew more than the whole of andhra pradesh in the period 1994-95 to 2006-07, while three (of nine) districts in coastal andhra, and no district (of four) in rayalaseema grew more than the whole of andhra pradesh and these figures match, to a great degree, the results of the study mentioned in my previous post. as i said in my previous post, for unbiased observers, it isn't hard to understand why a large number of districts in telangana grew more. most of them were growing from a lower base, and some like nizamabad had gone through this process much earlier and were now slackening, like many districts in coastal andhra. (also, you'd also find a great deal of other information on development in telangana in other fields too in that lok satta page which strengthen the view that telangana is growing more).

the study i had discussed in my previous post didn't look at gdp figures, but on page 8 of the report you'll find an explanation of why the results of their efforts to measure the 'level of economic activity' across regions differ slightly from gdp figures.

that telangana grew more than coastal andhra in the post-reforms period isn't inconsistent, in my view, with the fact that there are pockets of great distress in the region. it is true that cotton farmers have committed suicide in telangana through the nineties, and it is also true that the area under cotton cultivation has also expanded significantly. the number of farmers' suicides in telangana matches similar figures in vidarbha, punjab and other regions. but it is also true that yields per acre of paddy grown in karimnagar and other parts of telangana now equal or exceed yields in west godavari or guntur districts. mass migrations from mahbubnagar are also true, but so is the increasing number of students from telangana scoring well in board exams and highly competitive entrance tests. parts of nalgonda reel from the effects of high levels of fluoride contamination in the water they drink, but it is also true that other parts of nalgonda present a picture of economic vibrancy and prosperity. it is true that more young rural youngsters were killed in fake encounters than in many other 'naxal-affected' regions in the country, but it is also true that a large number of educated youth have also entered such modern professions as the the academia, law, media on the one hand and government, organized public and private sector industry and new age businesses like software on the other, over the last 2-3 decades.

across india, there are large pockets of distress in every village. rural india as a whole, 70% of the population, gets only 30% of the gdp. and even that small share of the pie gets divided very unevenly: probably 60-80% of it goes to 20% of the rural population. usually those with better and bigger landholdings, and of purer castes. so, there are always enough grounds for distress and anger and agitation. everywhere. i consider it a sign of the strength of the creative capacities of the growing middle class of fairly prosperous telanganis that they've managed to convert so successfully the deprivation and pain of the less fortunate majority into a movement designed to serve, solely, their own growing ambitions.

[ there is a large loony fringe among the separatists who dispute these kind of figures. many times even without looking at them. and dr.jayaprakash narayan's source of the data is probably the government of andhra pradesh, so more suspect in the eyes of the separatists'. but as these issues are discussed more, and at less acrimonious fora, i hope for their own sake that they would find other arguments to make their points in the future].

click to save..what?

india's population has nearly doubled since 1970. so has its foodgrain production. actually, india's food production could've quadrupled, considering the average yield per acre, across the world (including china and even countries such as vietnam and laos, sometimes) of any major cereal (rice, wheat corn) is more than twice the indian average. but yes, india does produce a little more than it requires and has been doing so for nearly four decades.

so why do you still see charities across the western world (and everywhere on the internet) asking you to save indian children from hunger etc.,? india doesn't require any foodgrain imports from the west (except to bridge any very temporary shortfall, just as any other food surplus nation in the world)- so how can any westerner save indian children from hunger? by donating money so that the child/his parents/charity looking after him can buy food. by giving the child/his parents etc purchasing power.

but what most western donors probably do not know is that their money would buy food produced in india and not in the west. for all they know, they're sending food to india.

now, there's another way in which any kindhearted citizen of the west can save indian children from hunger: ask his/her government to stop subsidizing its agriculture. or at least stop spending ridiculous amounts on crops that people of those countries rarely consume- like for instance, the subsidies that america spends on rice production. it throws away more money on the subsidies than the actual output is worth, in dollar terms! if those subsidies are lowered, indian farmers would produce more and earn more from selling a part of their produce overseas. which in turn would mean more purchasing power for indian parents.

p.sainath and many like him do not like that idea because they inherently do not believe indian farmers are capable of the kind of productivity any western or chinese or vietnamese or laotian farmer is capable of. and that is exactly what many knowledgeable people in the west also think, even when they see that their real agricultural productivity is going from bad to worse. so, the indian farmer should continue to live on the indian government's charity, according to people like sainath (he would of course make it sound like he's talking about farmers' rights). and indian children should continue to receive food from kindhearted westerners. (that's what i call brahminized angst).

but is it possible for indian farmers to increase productivity and their incomes by selling their produce only in india?

look at how growth in indian agricultural output has managed to hover around, on an average, 2% a year, over the last forty years. why? because that's more than adequate to meet the annual growth in population? it's like indian farmers instinctively seem to know just exactly how much india needs. or, think of it in this way: if indian farmers had quadrupled their production in the last forty years- where would they have sold half their produce? definitely not in india. which means they've been producing just as much as india is willing to pay for. and india has been paying less and less over the years- from around 50% of gdp in 1970 to around 18% now, which of course, meant more and more distress in the countryside. and now, more and more suicides.

so, why do indian farmers need to significantly improve their productivity if they need to sell only in india? and given the record of the past forty years, how will they manage to increase their incomes by selling only in india? especially, when the indian government/s would continue to control all trade in agriculture commodities even within the country?

why this half-rant now? because i get massively annoyed by invitations to 'click to save an indian child from hunger' and so on, sometimes.

60,000 crores: missing the woods

a report in the times of india, hyderabad, a couple of days ago says:

Even as bankers wait for detailed guidelines from the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) on the loan waiver scheme, their preliminary assessment is that the real beneficiaries would only be the wilful defaulters and not the disciplined farmers. In Andhra Pradesh, bankers estimate the wilful defaulters to be not more than 10 lakhs at the most.

10 lakhs in andhra pradesh. how many farmers would that mean, across india? at best, 8 million? that means i was a little optimistic in this post, in which i'd mentioned 10 million possible beneficiaries. the report goes on to say:

Bankers say there are about 1.15 crore farmers in the state. Of these, about 90 lakh are small and marginal farmers, including about 20 lakh tenant farmers. The tenant farmers have never tapped banks, not surprising because they work on an oral tenancy without any written agreement with landlords. The 70 lakh "real" farmers, bankers say, have been making use of the banking sector but a majority of them are disciplined and repay loans on time. This is also to avail loans for the next crop.

here, the reporter seems a little optimistic: if 70 lakh small and marginal farmers were able to access institutional credit in andhra pradesh, so many thousands wouldn't have committed suicide in the last fifteen years. this rediff report from punjab says:

Indeed, according to Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal, nearly 80 per cent of the farmers in 1 million holdings in Punjab will be outside the ambit of the biggest loan waiver in Indian fiscal history.

Business Standard spoke to 25 farmers in three villages in Sangrur and found that just 4 out of 25 farmers benefit from the waiver.

if only 20% of farmers (or 2 lakh farmers) in punjab would benefit from this waiver, the less said about the rest of the country the better- even the figure of 8 million sounds very, very optimistic now. because, in terms of access to bank credit punjabi famers have always been the most fortunate. institutional credit met 60% or more of their needs until a few years ago- famers in most other states, on an average, cannot access more than a fifth of their credit needs from banks.

i met five small famers from the prosperous samalkot area in east godavari district, in coastal andhra, yesterday. access to bank credit in that paddy-growing, canal irrigated region has always been better than in most other regions in the state. but i was told that none of the five famers i met would benefit from this waiver. because none of them are defaulters. and they had stopped going to co-operative banks more than a decade ago because most of them had stopped lending to ordinary famers. most of the debtors on their books are famers of course. but a majority of the farmer-borrowers don't know that the co-operative banks had lent them money.

will the suicides stop?

60,000 crores: relief for the farmers or the banks?
for the banks, of course. they are sitting on non-productive, soon-to-become-non-productive and long-rotting agricultural credit worth 1,00,000 crores.

this will help 3 crore small and marginal farmers in the country.
oh really? find me 3 crore small and marginal farmers who got institutional credit in the first place, in the last three years or any three years before that. the prime minister himself said not more than 14 days ago:

We are also looking into the credit needs of farmers.We cannot have a situation where 80% of our agricultural sector is outside the formal financial system and suffers from excessive burden of indebtedness.

the total number of all agricultural holdings (large, medium, semi-medium, marginal etc.,) in india was around 120 million, approximately, a few years ago. which doesn't mean we have 120 million farmers in the country. the number of active farmers in the country ranges from 60 million to 100 million, according to various estimates. it's most probably closer to 80 million. but, for the sake of argument, if we assume each of those 120 million or more holdings equals one farmer, only 20%, according to the prime minister, of those 120 million landholders ever gets institutional credit in india- which means not more than 24 million farmers. or more exactly, 24 million landholders. i repeat, where did chidambaram find 30 million agricultural customers for indian banks? and how many of those were actually small and marginal farmers?

well, a substantial number of small and marginal farmers would get relief, anyway.
at best, not more than 10 million small landholders, not farmers, would benefit from this largesse. it doesn't matter how many large farmers benefit from it- they're not killing themselves anyway. mostly.

why?
85% of indian holdings, or 100 million holdings, fall in the small and marginal category. average sizes being two acres and half acre respectively (both are slightly optimistic estimates). there are around 20 million medium and large landholdings in the country (average sizes: 10 acres and 40 acres, respectively). if you were a banker, who'd you treat with more respect- the small guys or those with not less than ten acres each? you can totally rule out the 80 million marginal farmers (with holdings less than half acre each), i think. how many of the 24-25 million farmers who get credit from banks would be small and marginal farmers? .4-5 million (after taking care of the 20 million medium and large farmers)? slightly more- say, 10 million? 13 million? 13 million sounds impossible, doesn't it? considering, that would mean more than half of the 24-25 million agricultural customers of banks are small and marginal farmers. so, even 10 million is a very, very optimistic figure. and most of them wouldn't fall in the suicidal farmer category.

it wouldn't benefit any farmers in distress?
let's talk of farmer p.c.chettiar. he works in the finance ministry in delhi but holds 4 acres in the cauvery delta region. his brother p.d.chettiar, who owns race horses and runs hotels in chennai, owns the adjacent plot of four acres. another brother, p.e.chettiar, whose interest is racing cars and lives in milan also owns four acres. yet another brother, p.f.chettiar, who's an assistant commissioner of police in madurai also has another 4 acres to his name. the last brother, p.g.chettiar, who also owns 4 acres actually looks after agricultural operations in all the twenty five acres all the brothers together own. and all 5 of these small farmers would benefit from this relief offered by chidambaram. that's one kind of farmers this measure would benefit- the absentee farmer from the regions with a long history of access to irrigation. like two-three districts in coastal andhra and western maharashtra, several districts in punjab, haryana, western uttar pradesh and west bengal etc., regions which grow sugarcane, paddy, wheat and other commercially profitable crops. the more prosperous sections of farmers in these regions would benefit.

who wouldn't benefit?
farmers in most of india. in the rainfed, arid regions which constitute 70% of all arable area in india. like vidarbha, telangana, rayalaseema, many parts of karnataka, madhya pradesh, gujarat, rajasthan etc., and also marginal farmers from all over india, including the prosperous, irrigated regions like punjab, coastal andhra etc., i had mentioned earlier.

would the suicides stop?
no. 90% of the farmers who are committing suicide do not receive any institutional credit. if some of them ever did, they do not receive it now. most of their credit needs are met by private moneylenders.

then who'd benefit from this measure?
like i said, prosperous upper caste farmers from the irrigated regions of the country. and upper caste run banks which 'can clean up their books now', as chidambaram says, of some bad credit which would have been written off anyway, in due course. they would receive around 20,000 crores each year as additional capital from the government and this would enable them to lend an additional 2,00,000 each year as credit, hopefully, to more upper caste customers working in the organized sector looking to buy new cars, homes or holidays.

as i said in this post, budgets are mostly about dressing up sectarian interests in widely acceptable, egalitarian garb.

prof. gadde swarup's comments

professor gadde swarup, in an interesting comment on my previous post , says:

Caste questions and farmers' problems seem to be two different problems. The first may be solved in a few hundred years but it seems to me that the second may not be solvable. In any case, may be it is simpler to discuss the problems seperately.

please note two things:

1. my previous post was not about caste. it doesn't even mention caste, or any variant, or any term derived from caste. not even in the tags. am i being slotted away?

2. the scale applied, not consciously i am sure, to measure the problems (the caste problem and farmers' problem): i feel it is inappropriate. i think the act of measurement itself is wrong- caste is being slotted away.

(please also read prof. swarup's second comment explaining his first). moving on to the suggestion at the end: In any case, may be it is simpler to discuss the problems seperately. i hadn't discussed caste in my previous post, but i admit it was on my mind: the two issues can't be separated. ask p.sainath:

Typically, the forward caste will till at the head of the water, the middle caste will till in the middle water, and the tail water will be left to the lower caste and the Dalits. Now in Rajasthan this problem does not arise, since there is no water, no river in the border areas. So how is the positioning of the Dalit basti determined in Rajasthan? In all other parts of the country where the river water runs north to south, the Dalit basti will be in the south. Why is it on the east and northeast there? This happens because Dalits work on leather, which stinks and our sacred nostrils cannot be offended by this menial activity, so we place them outside, so the smell of carcasses and tanning does not enter the village.

that was an extract from an interview with sainath that i had quoted in this post. i'd also referred to other articles in that post to make my point that caste does play a role in the making of policy (and its implementation ) that impacts agriculture and rural india: the clear bias towards famers with larger holdings, easier access to irrigation, inputs, extension and market support and generally all other public goods/services (read: upper caste) is clearly evident, though couched in much egalitarian phraseology. i'd also written on how large irrigation projects benefit mostly a small section of rural india (around 10-20%) in one of my posts on otherindia (now dead?).

two: in my recent series of posts on agriculture (please check this post for links to other posts in the series) and elsewhere (check tags: agriculture, famers etc) i'd pointed out , directly and not so directly, how policy on agriculture is very narrowly framed in india. to sum up, roughly, it has two components: 1. food security. 2. through support to the productive category of famers i'd referred to in the previous paragraph. it doesn't support farmers, broadly, or rual india, broadly. policy is definitely not framed from a holistic point of view- the productive farmers are agriculture are rural india. i'd referred to this paternalistic attitude of policy makers in this post and also in the post on otherindia i'd referred to earlier (here's a link to a link to the post and here's the title of the post: 'bottled up in agriculture'.. i don't know whether it's cached somewhere. i didn't cross-post it here).

three: most of the farmers who have committed suicide are obcs and dalits. sainath had mentioned this somewhere, and other journalists have talked about it. but not explicitly or in depth. they wanted to keep things simpler, i guess.

p.s: on being slotted away, there is an interesting post on the issue on 'double consciousness' (thanks, jack)..

sharad pawar, farmers' suicides and other obscene jokes

in 2004, the upa government rode into power on dead farmers' shoulders. on the one hand, you'd sainath and other sensitive journalists who were bringing in heart-rending stories from the countryside, and on the other hand, you'd sensitive politicians like sonia gandhi actually touring villages in andhra pradesh and distributing relief to the families of the farmers who had died. and bringing up the middle and the considerable rear of the people's movement orchestrating this sudden national upsurge of indignation, wailing and matam were all kinds of political and social workers, activists, writers, journalists (and bloggers too), leaders from organizations reflecting all shades of political opinion slightly left of the vishwa hindu parishad's. you'd think they really meant it, that their indignation was genuine.

"Sharad Pawar has done nothing for farmers in Maharashtra farmers suicides still continue. He is only doing a lot for cricket. He should not forget that he is not a sports minister he is the agriculture minister of this country, " Singh said.

when amar singh, who according to most samajvadis, is an obscene joke on samajvad in the country, feels bold enough to start questioning the credentials of the u.p.a government- what's wrong with the genuine samajvadis who worked so hard to bring the u.pa., into power? why don't they notice that the emperor is running stark naked around the cricket stadia of the world?

until 2004, most of the suicides had happened in andhra pradesh and a few places in punjab, karnataka, kerala and maharashtra. since 2004, they have spread to most of the country- the numbers have actually increased in andhra pradesh (as many suicides in the last three years as in the preceding nine years), karnataka, kerala, punjab..and the contagion is fast claiming new territories: gujarat, rajasthan, chhattisgarh, bundelkhand in uttar pradesh, madhya pradesh.. and most starvation deaths in west bengal, orissa and bihar go unreported.

what has the government of the indignant been doing? it has been saving harbhajan singh from being dubbed a racist, among other things..like..um... i wrote the last line five minutes ago (and i'd scratched a considerable portion of my scalp free of dandruff during that period). what has sharad pawar been doing? what has manmohan singh been doing? what has sainath been doing? what has prakash karat been doing? what has rajasekhar reddy been doing? what has sonia gandhi been doing? what has aruna roy been doing? what has jayati ghosh been doing? what has...

agricultural credit has been increased to 2,00,000 crores a year (from around 100,000 crores), according to the government. ask the banks- most of the increase is rolling over of old credit. nrega has been introduced in over 300 hundred of the poorest districts in the country- the government's own figures say less than 3% of those who had been issued job cards until now have received employment for the promised hundred days. and people have been given the right to information- an educated applicant, backed by a powerful media baron, had to wait nearly three months to get the copy of a government order from the chief minister's office in hyderabad. and in a country where more than 60% of students in primary school drop out by the time they reach high school (which means more than 80% don't finish high school)- what kind of an obscene joke on indian democracy is this rti?

now, let me try and answer a question i had asker earlier in this post: what's wrong with the genuine samajvadis who worked so hard to bring the u.p.a., into power? why don't they notice that the emperor is running stark naked around the cricket stadia of the world?

the answer is very simple: they thrive on power too. no, don't point to the austere lifestyles of some of these folks- i'd not like to be told again about aruna roy's abstinence or sainath's penances..or sonia gandhi's sacrifices or the struggles of lakhs of ordinary activists etc. i'm talking about power that enables you to tell the ignorant masses: love me, love my rabid dog.

this brahmin journalist deserves a magsaysay

Faced with job quotas, companies could stop outsourcing and resume in-house operations. They can hire dalits and tribals as sweepers, canteen workers, drivers, chowkidars and so on.

They can open holiday homes for officers in the hills, employing tribals. This will enable them to fulfil job quotas without affecting management or factory quality.

Many dalits and tribals may find this quite acceptable, because they will move from the unorganised to the organised sector.

Third tactic: Convert officers, technicians and skilled workers into consultants. Top staff need not be salaried employees. They can equally be consultants on contract. Consultants get no provident fund or leave travel benefits.

i'd call that an honest, heartfelt expression of self-interest. and this? well, that is more like all the outrage, indignation, handwringing and breastbeating that was probably on display here, all through last week. or like this display of aforementioned theatrics:

Land has a great deal to do with both economic and social status. Let's look at who are the poor in India. Of the Indian poor, 40 per cent are landless agricultural labourers; 45 per cent are small or marginal farmers. (60 per cent of Indian farmers own less than an acre of land). This means that 85 per cent of the poor are either landless or marginal farmers. It's in the first category that you will find dalits in large numbers.

how would you characterize someone who, after more than one decade of writing passionately about the injustices being perpetrated on rural india, admits in a moment of rare honesty (albeit in a circuitous manner) that that he hasn't exactly been advocating the cause of the weakest in indian society all that while but raising concerns about the interests of india's upper caste farmers (who benefits the most from india's agricultural subsidies, support prices and public investments in such areas as irrigation anyway)? sainath's friend jean dreze is less circuitous about acknowledging that support prices etc., do not benefit lower caste farmers:

There are two answers to this question. One is that the poorer sections of the farming community benefit very little, if at all, from price support measures. Consider for instance small farmers in, say, Orissa or Jharkhand or Chhatisgarh. These farmers typically sell little grain, if any, on the market; instead, they tend to combine subsistence farming with labour migration and other income-earning activities that allow them to buy non-food commodities.Hence, higher food prices do not help them.

dreze also thinks the pds is a scam but we know sainath's views on that - he believes the pds 'has wilted under policies clearly aimed at dismantling it'.. who does sainath speak for? does he speak for the dalits and the lower castes?

Typically, the forward caste will till at the head of the water, the middle caste will till in the middle water, and the tail water will be left to the lower caste and the Dalits. Now in Rajasthan this problem does not arise, since there is no water, no river in the border areas. So how is the positioning of the Dalit basti determined in Rajasthan? In all other parts of the country where the river water runs north to south, the Dalit basti will be in the south. Why is it on the east and northeast there? This happens because Dalits work on leather, which stinks and our sacred nostrils cannot be offended by this menial activity, so we place them outside, so the smell of carcasses and tanning does not enter the village.

he speaks for the farmers and he speaks for the dalits and the lower castes. but the good book says: no one can serve two masters. if sainath is concerned about farmers who place 'food on our table' he can't be speaking for '85 per cent of the poor (who) are either landless or marginal farmers'. who does sainath speak for? or, let me rephrase the question: who has he (and the whole army of born again pro-farmer advocates among the indignant classes that the last one decade had spawned) served? institutional credit for farmers has more than doubled, from around 80, 000 crores to 2,00,000 crores, since the last three years. investment in irrigation has gone up everywhere- andhra pradesh, maharashtra and karnataka together, for instance, have spent more than 100,000 crores (maybe more) on irrigation in the last 3-10 years and will be spending more in the near future.. and the central government has just raised the support price of wheat to rs.1000 a quintal etc., etc., have the suicides stopped? oh..those were mostly misguided obc, dalit farmers who shouldn't have tried to 'place food on our table' by trying to compete with those who'd be served everything- water, subsidies, credit, price support- first. why couldn't they remain content with the nregs?

finally, who has he served? my magsaysay goes to aiyar for being more honest. and less theatrical.

(read also: brahmin journalist bags magsaysay award)