a dole in pakistan

a slightly old article in cobra post says:

Soon after forming his government, Punjab Chief Shahbaz Sharif announced the Punjab Food Support Scheme to help the "poorest of the poor". This, some insiders believe, was done to preempt the PPP's Benazir Ration Card scheme.

The 'hurriedly shaped' programme is worth 21.60 billion with the aim to pay to each of 1.8 million families, a money order worth Rs 1000. The scheme was formally launched on Aug 14, 2008 and will continue throughout the fiscal year 2008-09. [emphasis mine].

the details in the article are not very clear but i'd admit that this news makes me happy. shows that the pakistani politicians are wiser than many politicians from some so-called progressive states in india. from promising free television sets to free rice to free lpg- political parties increasingly speak like large retail stores in these states.

why doesn't anybody talk about a dole like the pakistanis? because a dole is most likely to be leakage-proof?

[please click on the label dole for my other posts on the subject].

on violence

i see this as violence: banks promoted by the government cornering most of the capital in the country to lend only to an exclusive few sections of indian society. how's that violence? because that leaves very little surplus capital outside the banks. and naturally, informal lenders who control this capital demand high rates of interest from the rest of the borrowers.

any solution that ignores the fact that most of the credit in the country is cornered by those banks to be lent exclusively to very few sections of indian society, ignores the whole picture- there is very little left for a very large number of people.

anu: that illustrates violence in its entirety, in my view.

mehmaan

i said welcome to the guest
he said-- i am a refugee
from a certain hunting party
the dove that's escaped!
i regarded him as only a mehmaan
i didn't understand- what do i serve him
i didn't understand- what do i serve him
i asked him what he liked
'eating with my family' he said.
like a dried well
what did he hide inside
is this food?
with frightened eyes that had lost trust
hesitant..
the smoke's still coming out from somewhere he said!
pecking at a few fistfuls
remembering his family with every morsel..
it didn't seem like he was eating- drawing
sorrow from the seas inside
he seemed he's here
but wandering elsewhere..
the brother lost..the sister taken away...
the families destroyed
the estranged watan...remembering in delirium
his lane razed
friends killed
villages disfigured
nation scattered
because two eyes weren't enough
he seemed to grieve with his whole body!
finally without making a sound
departing like he came, he said-
'bloodthirst is a dangerous disease'.

- my translation of the telugu poem mehmaan by shahjahana (first published in andhra jyoti in december 2007).

fund blogging, not reason

1. We need government-run schools because private schools aren’t up to the task
2. But government schools aren’t doing a great job either, the reason is that competition from the private tuitions are taking resources away from them.
3. Hence we should ban private tuitions.

i used to think almost like that, being an indian. but i'm learning:

1. we should fund schooling, not schools because this will build competition.
2. if the competition fails to appear in villages without bridges, the reason is that public transport is taking resources away from them.
3. hence we should fund transport not transporters.

you might ask: what public transport in a village without a bridge? well, if you can make competition appear in a village without a bridge... what do you suggest? the poor want education desperately and viscerally, so they'll cross the bridge when they come to it. meanwhile:

1. we should fund travel, not bridges.
2. if people still fail to travel, the reason is that books are taking resources away from them.
3. hence we should fund reading not books.

readers? in a village without a school? well, nautch girls then. or the local moonshine. to work around that:

1. we should fund drinking, not bars.
2. if people still fail to drink, the reason is that sex is taking time away from drinking.
3. hence we should fund sex not pornography.

what does funding pornography have to do with competition not showing up at the village without the bridge? who said anything about competition in the village? competition would spring up across the ravine. how would that improve access to schooling? that's again indian kind of thinking. my suggestion is:

1. we should fund thinking, not indians.
2. if indians still don't stop thinking, the reason is that they are not blogging much.
3. hence we should fund blogging, not reason.

skirting the question of land

whether it's the government trying to acquire his land or some large businessman, why do you think an indian farmer would always be cheated? because he isn't as smart as you are?

because he's of an inferior variety of the human race?

that's one way of articulating the brown man's burden. here's another kind: one that rests on the principle that the indian farmer shall always cheat. so, you've to save the honest indian businessman or government from the wily indian farmer.

The land market in India is so primitive that very often both buyers and sellers depend on the Almighty and transact business. Around half the operational holdings in States is plagued by legal disputes, most of which are on account of ownership. Sub-division and fragmentation of land holdings is a common phenomenon arising out of excessive emphasis on heritage rights. There are also state-owned land which, either because of misuse or abuse of power by revenue authorities, have been encroached upon. The encroachers, in several cases, have been given titles by default. Though reforms were initiated, defective implementation of land records again led to conferment of titles to those who used them for their own purposes. Such land also got titles conferred over a period of time.

a fair transaction could happen when both - the buyer and the seller- have ready access to reliable information. when both of them have to depend on the almighty as the only source of reliable information- because there are no reliable records on land- how do you judge, later, who was cheated? or arrive at any conclusions, beforehand, who'd be cheated?

the whole debate on singur etc., provides so much fun. no one looks at the questions- where's the land? if there's land, where are the records? if there are no land records, how can there be a land market?

if you believe in the market, reliable land records would be the first step in ensuring that any given transaction would have a fair chance of being fair. you don't believe in the market? good. if you have reliable land records, you could redistribute the land on the basis of the records.

so, why is everyone, from the left and the right, who's talking about land (in singur or other such places), not talking about land, actually? because they all emerged from somewhere above brahma's ankles? because if you have reliable land records, you would have to redistribute the land on the basis of the records?

will obama be good for india?

here are the results of a snap poll held across the country:

hyderabad: both of us had grown up in hyderabad so we had lots to talk about.

hoshiarpur: i got several good proposals.. finally i chose him.

chennai: we met for the first time at my uncle's house in chennai.

lucknow: my parents spoke to his parents and we're planning to get married.. next month.

kolkata: when he..first emailed, i knew that we'd get along well.

all of them seem to agree: india, if you want a better match than obama, please go here.

chandala age

shambhuka, smile on his lips,

is killing rama.

ekalavya with an axe

is chopping down drona's thumb

bali with his little feet

is stamping vamana down to patala


manu, piercing needles in his eyes

cutting his tongue

pouring lead in his ears

is rolling in the graveyard


standing on the butcher's knife of time

the chandala roars

setting four hounds

on adi sankara


oh..!

this current age

is an extremely chandala age


my translation of sivasagar's naDustunna caritra (1994).

civil society and political society

a very interesting paper(pdf), by partha chatterjee- a key formulation in the paper 'is a split in the field of the political between a domain of properly constituted civil society and a more ill-defined and contingently activated domain of political society'. an excerpt:

Let me summarise my main argument. With the continuing rapid growth of the Indian economy, the hegemonic hold of corporate capital over the domain of civil society is likely to continue. This will inevitably mean continued primitive accumulation. That is to say, there will be more and more primary producers, i e, peasants, artisans and petty manufacturers, who will lose their means of production. But most of these victims of primitive accumulation are unlikely to be absorbed in the new growth sectors of the economy. They will be marginalised and rendered useless as far as the sectors dominated by corporate capital are concerned. But the passive revolution under conditions of electoral democracy makes it unacceptable and illegitimate for the government to leave these marginalised populations without the means of labour to simply fend for themselves. That carries the risk of turning them into the “dangerous classes”. Hence, a whole series of governmental policies are being, and will be, devised to reverse the effects of primitive accumulation. This is the field in which peasant societies are having to redefine their relations with both the state and with capital. Thus far, it appears that whereas many new practices have been developed by peasants, using the mechanisms of democratic politics, to claim and negotiate benefits from the state, their ability to deal with the world of capital is still unsure and inadequate. This is where the further development of peasant activities as non-corporate capital, seeking to ensure the livelihood needs of peasants while operating within the circuits of capital, will define the future of peasant society in India. As far as I can see, peasant society will certainly survive in India in the 21st century, but only by accommodating a substantial non-agricultural component within the village. Further, I think there will be major overlaps and continuities in emerging cultural practices between rural villages and small towns and urban areas, with the urban elements gaining predominance.

should read it again. [thanks, rama].

son! yesoba!

what can i say sir!

my son yesobu

died in the war

my son who could conquer neerukonda*

lies sacrificed on a slab of ice

he left with a smile

and has returned as a corpse

smiling, he calls 'nAnna'*

he went on foot and has returned a bridegroom

a flowering plant has returned as a fallen banyan

he has returned

what can i say? and how?

people turn up here as at a fair

in throngs and throngs

addressing them, speaking of

my son's 'sacrifices, patriotism'

you, sarpanch babu! sir!

when he stopped

people washing their animals

in the tank*

didn't you, with a whip

lash my son's chest

mark him with stains

in the cinema outside our village

for buying a big ticket*

and sitting alongside you

didn't you scheme

to cut his hands legs

was it your daughter who looked at him

or he who looked at her

i do not know but-

to kill lionlike yesobu

you wove the noose

how can we forget this history!

we know all this

does the rain wash away the wounds, sir!

on the untouchable's eyelids

these truths stand erect

like crowbars driven into our hearts

mothers! sirs!

my son's death

this isn't the first

many times in our village

he died and lived

to live he joined the army

as a corpse, he has returned alive

ayyo!

my mind's not in my mind

my mind's not in my mind

sir! in my eyes

the pyre dances

son! yesoba! yesoba!

yesoba! my father*!

for you

i'll weep like karamchedu*

for you

i'll weep like chunduru*

for you

i'll weep like vempenta*

i'll weep like yesterday's gosayipalem*!

father! as a tear big as the sky

i'll pour like a storm for you!

elders! lords!

salutations!

i wish to curse you

a basketful of curses

i wish to drive a basketful of wild ants

to bite you all over

to see my son's corpse, arriving

like armies of ants

and disappearing like swarms of locusts,

you patriots!

wait a second

if you're made of pus* and blood, shame and honour

if your liver hasn't melted yet

answer this untouchable's questions

not my son

you've come to visit his corpse

do you agree!

my son dead is a veera jawan

alive he's a mala* jawan

what do you say?

answer me!

swear on your manu

as a pigeon and a snake

can't be linked

your upper caste pride

can't go with patriotism

elders! lords!

listen! listen to the untouchable word

between the village and the wada

there's a kargil

from grandfathers' forefathers' age

burning between us

this kargil war

hasn't stopped, it goes on

son! yesoba!

on the third day

if you can't return

find the time

to return some day

and wipe my tears! father!

-my translation of sivasagar's kodukA! yEsobA!, written in 1999.
note: will explain the asterisks and my inadequacies as a translator later.

telugu, of song and rebellion

the bow and arrows hidden in the mahua trees' tresses
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the spears hidden by the path to lohar jwala
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the glistening swords dipped in the landlord's blood
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the guns hidden in the tulasikonda ravine
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the rifle snatched from the garla train
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the sepoy's throat slit in rupaayi konda
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the martyrs' blood flowing in misty mountains valleys
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the moonlight caught in the eyes of dark hills
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the flowers that grew wild on the budarisingi peaks
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the heroism of boddapadu- the lightning courage of garuda bhadra
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the twinkle of kailasam's eyes- the intensity of venkatapu's stare
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

panigrahi's swordsong- mallik's childlike smile
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

the hopes of the poor- the battle of srikakulam
i give you my brother! i give you my brother!

put down the traitors- grab the rifles
build a red army- form a red zone

join hands with your brothers- free mother earth
come along brother- don't tarry brother!

- my translation of the poem nEla talli ceranu viDipinchaga ('to free mother earth'), written by 'sivasagar' (k.g.satyamurthy). it was written in october 1973 when the poet, a leader of the earliest naxalite movement in andhra pradesh, was organizing little rebellions (notice the reference to various battlefields) across the state, from srikakulam to adilabad.

honourable judges!
sunrise is not a conspiracy
the sun is not a conspirator
are a mother's labour pains a conspiracy?
what would you call the progress of the chariot of history?

honourable judges!
demoniac feudalism that's tucked up earth,
like a rolled mat, inside its armpit is a conspiracy
the selling of my country to outsiders
is a conspiracy
brokered at kosygin's leprous feet
the peace treaty is a conspiracy
the food that nixon's ships
bring is a conspiracy
indian independence is a conspiracy
the ballot box is a conspiracy
'garibi hatao' is a conspiracy
indira's smile is a conspiracy
waiting to hang the sun
the arrogance of your unjust laws is a conspiracy
honourable judges!
the srikakulam sunrise is not a conspiracy
the guerilla sun is not a conspirator
isn't driving away darkness sunrise
isn't spreading light warmth among people sunrise

honourable judges!
you, you..are all very righteous
in adharma's destruction, as just as yama.

- my translation of the poem kutradarudu vAj~nmoolamu ('the conspirator's admission') by 'sivasagar' (k.g.satyamurthy). this poem was his statement before the court trying him for participating in the parvathipuram conspiracy.

telugu doesn't need this or any other government's endorsement. it has battled sanskrit (for five centuries?), prakrit (for another five?), persian (for yet another five?)..and repression in one telugu region or another for more than two thousand years.

in thanjavur, or golkonda, and in srikakulam or jagityala, it's been the language of song and rebellion. now, it's gaddar's language, and sivasagar's. and of all dalits, sudras ..and, as sri sri would have said, of all pathithulu, bhrashtulu, badha sarpa dashtulu.

s*&&% the pundits in delhi. i'd rather remember:

endarO mahAnubhAvulu..

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.

financial crisis could fuel hunger?

felix salmon (via gadde swarup) quoting from a bloomberg post:

The number of hungry around the world is at risk of increasing as the financial crisis cuts investment in agriculture and crops, said Abdolreza Abbassian, secretary of the Intergovernmental Group on Grains at the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization in Rome. The total increased by 75 million last year to 923 million, the UN estimates.

a squeeze on worldwide institutional credit could affect corn output this year? not in india where 90% of credit that farmers access is non-institutional. perhaps, this is the time for americans to go easy on their subsidies so that indian farmers can invest more in productivity. if you want to save the world's hungry don't send money to india or africa- and don't subsidise the fortunate in america either.

hierarchy prioritized

will the bank ever lend any money to these three businessmen? so that they can move out of the slum? they've been working there, for the last twenty years, honestly and hard for more hours, every day, than any one in the bank itself. for twenty long years. does the bank trust them?

i'd said indians do not qualify. not even when they're prioritized. those who have already invested 5 lakhs to 2 crores in their businesses are also prioritized, so what kind of a chance does a thelawallah stand against them?

lending to the really small guy does not make any business sense? listen to swaminathan aiyar:

This is extraordinary. Big financiers lend against collateral, a back-up if their borrower defaults. But MFIs lend with no collateral at all. Big financiers lend to the most creditworthy corporations. MFIs lend to poor women whom nobody in history considered creditworthy before. Yet, the secured loans to big corporations are bombing, while unsecured loans to poor women are being repaid in full.

How so? What lessons does micro-finance have for Wall Street?

america and most other western nations have programmes like the sba. india has the priority sector to ensure that loans go only to people who have already exhibited their easy access to self-owned resources and credit. people who would have gained access to further credit anyway, even without their needs being prioritized by the government. seen against the history of small borrowers being more trustworthy than bigger businessmen how does one understand the indian banks' reluctance to lend to them? it means those who'd historically never owned much property do not stand a chance with indian banks. that clearly means lower caste borrowers. i ask again: if all these banks were to disappear, why would any truly marginalized individual in the country miss them?

from sircilla to wherever mr.guha's next article is going to be published

a slogan in telugu, scrawled over a wall bordering the security printing press in hyderabad says:

workers of the world unite! oppose globalization, privatization!

workers who produce a quintessentially national product calling for a global effort to oppose globalization? now here's a quintessentially global product ( schooled in la martiniere school, calcutta, st. stephen's college, delhi and the delhi school of economics- each institution started, run or inspired by global institutions/ideas) telling you:

..the views and analyses of the political economist, philosopher and sociologist Karl Heinrich Marx remain as relevant as ever in understanding why the world is what it is at present.

now if rapelli mallaiah had gone to la martiniere school and st.stephens college and the delhi school of economics he'd have realized much before that fateful day that karl marx is as relevant as ever. i'd say, globalize mallaiah's and paranjoy guha thakurta's world.

the physics of disappearing land

going back to this post:

could it have been stolen? 44% and more of all cultivable land in india?

there must be some law of physics that says land can't disappear or be stolen. but look at how tough it is to find the land that's disappeared from most of our cities:

In 2001, office space near the center of town sold for $1 a square foot. Now it can go for $400 a square foot. Janwani bought his 6-acre plot in 1992 for $13,000. Today, even undeveloped, it's worth $3 million.

But high prices are only part of the problem for businesses looking for space in the city. It's nearly impossible to determine who actually owns any given piece of Bangalorean real estate. Some 85 percent of citizens occupy land illegally, according to Solomon Benjamin, a University of Toronto urban studies professor who specializes in Bangalore's real estate market. Most land in the city, as in the rest of India, is bound by ancestral ties that go back hundreds of years. Little undisputed documentation exists. Moreover, as families mingle and fracture over generations, ownership becomes diluted along with the bloodline. A buyer who wants to acquire a large parcel may have to negotiate with dozens of owners. Disputes are inevitable.

scott carney's great investigative work on the land mafia in bangalore could be easily read as a great investigative work on the land mafia in bangalore. please read the italicized portions again- the lessons we need to draw from it are not about the land mafia.

Some 40 percent of land transactions occur on the black market, according to Arun Kumar, an economist at Jawaharlal Nehru University. Often the local authorities facilitate these deals. A World Bank report rated the Bangalore Development Authority, which oversees urban planning, as one of the most corrupt and inefficient institutions in India.

and, from another page:

"When a foreign company wants to set up a business, they don't know who to trust," he says. "They need clear titles, and if they go to a local person, they're going to get screwed with legal cases. But if Rai gives you a title, it comes with a 100 percent guarantee of no litigation. No cheating. It's perfectly straightforward." [...]
According to a lawyer who deals with land issues, the system works like this: Asked to intercede by a prospective buyer, Rai checks out the parcel for competing owners. If two parties assert ownership, he hears both sides plead their case and decides which has the more legitimate claim (what he calls "80 percent legal"). He offers that person 50 percent of the land's current value in cash. To the other, he offers 25 percent to abandon their claim—still a fortune to most Indians, given the inflated price of Bangalorean real estate. Then he sells the land to his client for the market price and pockets the remaining 25 percent. Anyone who wants to dispute the judgment can take it up with him directly. [...]
Collusion between enforcers and mobsters raises troubling questions about the future of this city. "Since Bangalore went global, things have gotten worse," says Santosh Hegde , his graying hair dyed jet-black and a chain of prayer beads around his neck. He's the state official responsible for prosecuting corruption cases. "Businesspeople want to get things done quickly, and they have no option but to bribe officials to shortcut the bureaucracy," he says.Hegde, 68, served six years on India's Supreme Court before taking the anticorruption beat. He oversees a team of accountants who burrow through documents and field operatives trained in covert recordings and sting operations. Since assuming office, Hegde has charged more than 300 officials with receiving cash bribes totaling over $250,000 and illegal assets and land holdings worth $40 million. That's just 5 percent of total bribery in Karnataka, he says, which he estimates at more than $800 million.

no, it isn't about the land mafia, or about corruption or about fast paced development. and it isn't about bangalore or any other big city in india either.

slowing down reforms saved us?

if growth after reforms did not trickle down how would recession trickle down now? if shining india isn't connected to other parts of india, why should the samosawallah outside jnu fear the wall street crash? why should anyone who's never had a bank account feel safe now that our banks, because they're still in the public sector, are safe?

you're funny.

the case of the stolen land

a few days ago, i'd wandered into a discussion on singur (thanks to abi) at rahul siddharthan's blog. rahul had a few questions, and among them i found this one interesting:

Why didn't the Tatas (and others who extol the virtues of the free market) acquire their land on the open market?

yes, why didn't they go to the open market? that question represents insouciance of a degree, let's say, that's disturbing. if land was so freely available in the open market (or wherever), what the f&&* are the naxalites doing in the jungles? oh yes, of course, they don't have the money to buy the land. so why don't the more fortunate citizens of this country donate whatever little they can to a fund, say, the prime minister's relief fund, and ask the indian government to finance the naxalites?

that'd require a huge pile of money. how much? let's say there are 20 crore families in india and around 13 crore of them live in the villages. by most accounts, more than 40% of them are landless- say 5.2 crore families. even if the government paid only rs.1 lakh per acre it'd require 5,20,000 crores to buy up enough land to distribute at least one acre each to those 5.2 crore families. considering not even 13 lakh per acre was considered a fair rate in singur, you could say the government would need much more money to pay fair rates to the sellers. seems like a bad idea?

why doesn't the government just go ahead and mop up the excess land, instead? without paying any fair compensation? as of 1995-96, around 20% of land owners in rural india owned around 64% of all available agricultural land. and the landless represented around 43% of the rural population. you could say the top 20% of land owners had cornered all the landless poor's share of farmland (and more).

so, why didn't the government just mop up that excess land and distribute it among the landless? that is exactly what all progressive governments in india have been trying to do for the last sixty years- scouring the land for the land, which you and i know is easily available in the open market. but why can't the government find it?

could it have been stolen? 44% and more of all cultivable land in india?

stick to hindus and muslims

But we live in a time when even multitudes are forced to lay claim to a singular label.

from this moving piece of writing at space bar's blog. and the comment i couldn't bring myself to post:

i wish i could overlook the presumption here that i can lay claim to the label 'hindu'. a great many people with hindu names can't be hindus even if they wanted to, not even if india today or bajrang dal wanted them to. i wish i didn't have to post this comment, but i've noticed many 'liberal secular hindus and muslims' share this presumption.

why didn't i post it? because the key tenets of the liberal secular ethos in india were defined by nehru, who took great pains to describe his descent in the very first chapter of his autobiography, and later interpreted by his biographers like m.j.akbar who take great pains to engage only with upper caste hindus in all their writing. because even when one has been labelled one doesn't feel invited to these debates.

because my folks come from a village where the muharram procession still starts from lower caste homes. because some of my mother's cousins were named after a holy man called yaqub. because my grandmother always believed the festival of peers was our festival. one could go on, but for any debate to be truly liberal secular, one should stick to hindus and muslims, i guess.

does the priority sector include the marginalized?

the priority sector is a kind of a holy cow- even if a government thinks of rephrasing a line or two in the guidelines, it'd have a war on its hands. from p.sainath to muppala lakshman rao, a vast army of rishis and munis would be up in arms and pens. why? because these weaker sections need to be protected:

2.1.1 Units engaged in the manufacture, processing or preservation of goods and whose investment in plant and machinery (original cost) excluding land and building does not exceed Rs. 5 crore.
2.1.2 Small scale units whose investment in plant and machinery (original cost) excluding land and building is up to Rs. 25 lakh, irrespective of the location of the unit, are treated as Micro Enterprises.
2.2.4 Loans granted by banks to NBFCs for on lending to SSI sector.
3.1 Loans granted to small business and service enterprises such as, Small Road and Water Transport Operators, Small Business, Professional & Self Employed Persons, etc. engaged in providing/rendering of services (which are industry or non-industry related), and whose investment in equipment (original cost and excluding land and building) does not exceed Rs. 2 crore.
3.2 (ii) Advances granted to private retail traders with credit limits not exceeding Rs. 20 lakh.
6.Educational loans should include only loans and advances granted to individuals for educational purposes up to Rs. 10 lakh for studies in India and Rs. 20 lakh for studies abroad, and not those granted to institutions.
6.1Loans up to Rs. 15 lakh, irrespective of location, for construction of houses by individuals, excluding loans granted by banks to their own employees.
1.1 Domestic scheduled commercial banks having shortfall in lending to priority sector target (40 per cent of ANBC or credit equivalent amount of Off-Balance Sheet Exposure, whichever is higher) and / or agriculture target (18 per cent of ANBC or credit equivalent amount of Off-Balance Sheet Exposure, whichever is higher) shall be allocated amounts for contribution to the Rural Infrastructure Development Fund (RIDF) established with NABARD. The concerned banks will be called upon by NABARD, on receiving demands from various State Governments, to contribute to RIDF.

among those prioritized borrowers, do you recognize anyone who makes rs. 20 or less a day? in the rbi guidelines, bunched together with those weaker sections are these weaker sections:

(a) Small and marginal farmers with land holding of 5 acres and less, and landless labourers, tenant farmers and share croppers.
(b) Artisans, village and cottage industries where individual credit limits do not exceed Rs. 50,000.
(c) Beneficiaries of Swarnjayanti Gram Swarozgar Yojana (SGSY).
(d) Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes.
(e) Beneficiaries of Differential Rate of Interest (DRI) scheme.
(f) Beneficiaries under Swarna Jayanti Shahari Rozgar Yojana (SJSRY).
(g) Beneficiaries under the Scheme for Liberation and Rehabilitation of Scavangers (SLRS).
(h) Advances to Self Help Groups.
(i) Loans to distressed urban/rural poor to prepay their debt to non-institutional lenders, against appropriate collateral or group security.

who do you think gets better attention from the banks? most of the second category of borrowers do not even have bank accounts, as i pointed out in this post. only 13% of the most vocal section of the second category (small and marginal farmers) have managed to secure occasional credit from the banks (read the opening paragraph of the 'report of the working group on the competitive micro credit market in india', prepared by the development policy division of the planning commission) until now. how would you rate the chances of anyone from the other sections in the second, real, category of obtaining, say, an occasional loan of rs. 20 or so from a public sector bank?

5 million more reasons why caste survives

to the few bloggers who'd commented on my last 2-3 posts: my apologies. for various reasons, i wasn't able to respond earlier.

i'd like to respond now to one comment by kiran here. he says:

So are you trying to suggest that Banks would have been all inclusive if they remained private ? Unlikely. Even those 10% would not have been there.

by 1980, employees in nationalized banks numbered around one million. more than 9 lakhs of those were from the upper castes. you could say around 9 lakh upper caste families (more than 5 million individuals) benefitted directly from the nationalization project.

those were national resources that were deployed to nationalize and run those banks- but they employed, almost exclusively, upper caste individuals and lent money, almost exclusively, to upper caste individuals. did nationalization reduce caste inequalities? it aggravated them. upper caste individuals, long used to privileges, were rewarded with new positions of privilege just as naturally as in the past. and the lower castes paid for those privileges just as naturally as in the past. but the key difference was: if you were a landlord in the pre-modern era, feudal honour required that you make sure those who worked for you didn't starve. the new privileges carried no such price.

how many million lower caste individuals paid for the privileges of those 5 million upper caste individuals? how many of those 5 million would actually admit that caste is a problem? most of them would probably say: it had no role to play in their lives.

what would private banks have done? by 1980, they definitely wouldn't have been able to reward 5 million upper caste individuals with privileges and made several million more lower caste individuals pay for those privileges.