the hidden state

Perhaps the most important reason for the decoupled debate phenomenon is that the big development challenge in the developing world is not the state-market boundary but the more mundane yet fiendishly difficult question of how to improve the state and its basic capacity to deliver law and order, security and other essential services such as health, water, sanitation and education. That was so before the crisis. That will remain true in its aftermath.

from here.

improve the state and its basic capacity to deliver. who needs to improve? the politicians or the babus? elected officials, of all kinds, don't number more than a million in this country. of them politicians in local bodies wield very little power because very little power trickles down to them from state capitals and delhi. so, politicians who do enjoy some power and authority, across the country, don't number more than a few thousands. and you can change them if you don't like them. every five years or earlier.

that leaves the babus, much more than ten million in number. they represent the state's capacity to deliver more than the politicians, and as the history of the last sixty years has shown, they also represent the state's unwillingness to deliver more than the politicians.

and the babus have built a country of their own. not on their own, but along with their cousins in organized industry, their uncles still on the large irrigated farms, their bright nephews in the class of university teachers, doctors, lawyers and media professionals (like those who are now celebrating the return to normalcy and the rejection of excess).

and in this country within a country, a state hidden within a state works on its own plans and goals, decoupled from the excessive clamour outside.

yes, mayawati thinking that she could gain control over this hidden state was pure excess.

nitish kumar votes for the dole

nitish kumar demands special status for bihar as his price and most of the media gleefully reports it. gleefully because the addition of one more saleable actor to the marathon election soap playing on tv channels now would mean more spice and drama to chew on in the next two days or weeks. but what all the reports failed to mention was how the bihar chief minister came down upon leakages in programmes like the pds, subsidies which went to big businesses rather than small farmers etc., before unveiling his demand that bihar be given special leeway and be allocated cash, instead of kind subsidies, by the centre which could be directly transferred to the bank accounts of poor beneficiaries' in the state. he was demanding support from the centre for, among other things, a dole. trust the media to miss the less sexy, but more important part of his speech.

i don't wish to know why manmohan singh or advani is better

while india's brahminized classes, like always, successfully managed to hijack the current elections for their own narrow, grubby ends, a few questions that remained unasked:

*what are they going to do about rural indians? a great majority of them have to move away from agriculture in the next 10-20 years.

*what are they going to do about universal education? more than a 100 million children of school-going age are not in school right now.

*what are they going to do about drinking water? around two hundred thousand children in one district, nalgonda, have withered limbs from drinking groundwater with high fluoride content. that's one district. while one paddy growing district in punjab probably uses/misuses more water, in one season, than the whole of delhi and its satellite towns in one year. or as much water as the whole of rural rajasthan probably drinks in more than one year. and to think that punjab doesn't consume even a fraction of the rice it produces.

* what are they going to do about hunger and malnutrition that over half of india's women and infants, among others, suffer from? luring punjabi farmers to produce more rice, so that more farmers in traditionally rice-producing states in the south and east lose their livelihood, and then looking away when the punjabi farmers commit suicide in droves isn't going to help. anymore.

*what are they going to do about primary health care in 6,00,000 villages? india has over 6,00,000 doctors of whom only 20,000 odd thousand work in the countryside. each doctor caters to around 60 villages, or 50,000-1,00,000 villagers. how about a doctor for every village, a tap and a toilet and electricity for every home? and schools and sanitation systems for every ward? that's primary healthcare according to the u.n. etc.,

*what are they going to do about people who work on medieval occupations like weaving to scavenging? probably around 50-75 million families depend on those occupations. and earn medieval wages.

*what are they going to do about immediate and sustained relief for the vast majority of workers in the unorganized sector (93% of the workforce in the country) who earn less than a dollar a day? social security for them would be useless if it comes in only when they get seriously injured. how about relief for today, this month, next month, next year- for as long as they can't retrain themselves to look for better work opportunities? or until better work opportunities are created?

*how about a mechanism for ensuring people who oppress dalits, women, children and others in every village are brought to justice as fast as ajmal kasab?

'mayawati is anti-obama'

note how newsweek's judgment on mayawati so faithfully mirrors brahminized india's views on her. the international media depends, as i said in this post, very strongly on certain classes of indians to generate content on india- who were providing research and field support for jeremy kahn?

the article says: mayawati is divisive. because her secular record is clean? because she has not engineered any communal riots until now? because her party has not drawn any muslim or hindu blood until now, unlike the two major national parties? in india, the debate on secularism is a gigantic hoax, a clever collaborative effort between the two national parties. a staged debate that never moves beyond arguments on the lines of how the other party has killed more people. mayawati doesn't qualify to participate in this debate, i guess.

mayawati doesn't have an economic policy. more lower caste farmers and weavers and others have committed suicide in the last five years than in any comparable period in indian history- manmohan singh knows economic policy? or advani whose party depends as much, if not more, on astrologers as the planning commission to formulate policy, understands economic policy better?

mayawati doesn't know foreign policy. the phrase foreign policy itself is such an anachronism, redolent of the colonial era. imperial powers have foreign policies, ordinary nations try to forge friendly, on a basis of mutual benefit and on terms of equality, ties with other nations. remember, in the last ten years, the advani and manmohan singh led regimes have pushed india more than once to the brink of war with pakistan.

and if the media wishes to know about mayawati's agenda, her economic and foreign policies, why don't they use a fraction of the sweat they spend on chasing such folks as priyanka gandhi or shashi tharoor or whoever else and try and speak to her?

some perspective

estimates on the kind of funds the dole, covering more than 1.25 crore families in andhra pradesh, would require range from rs. 20,000-30,000 crores a year.

- that makes it bigger than the total allocation for the nregs (rs.16,000 crores) in the central budget of 2008-2009 for the entire country. please note: the 16,000 crores was the amount allocated, not the amount spent finally, by the end of the year.

how india pays for america's health

there is an organization called the American Association of Physicians of Indian Origin (AAPI) in the united states which boasts of a membership of 46,000 doctors.

if you wanted to form an organization called the indian association of physicians of indian origin (iapi) as a forum to facilitate and enable physicians working in rural india to excel in patient care, teaching and research etc., i bet you wouldn't find half as many members.

all state governments together don't employ half as many doctors in rural india, in over 6 lakh villages. and i am not even talking of absenteeism among those paid to work in the villages. vote for a government that'll send a chandrayaan-like mission to rural india to explore how people live there, in the absence of anything remotely resembling a public health system.

what's a vote bank?

The word “party” has become a Kannada word. Every administrator and politician speaks of “party politics” in villages, and even villagers are often heard saying, “There is too much ‘party’ in such and such a village”. The coming of elections gives fresh opportunities for the crystallization of parties around patrons. Each patron may be said to have a “vote bank” which he can place at the disposal of a provincial or national party for a consideration which is not mentioned but implied. The secret ballot helps to preserve the marginal affiliation of the marginal clients.

ramchandra guha quoting from 'The Social System of a Mysore Village' by M.N.Srinivas to explain how the term 'vote bank' was born. in the next paragraph he asks- how does this description hold up 50 years later?

We still use the term coined by Srinivas; however, we mostly mean it now to capture a solidarity that is horizontal rather than vertical. “Vote bank” is not what a single patron commands; rather it denotes a collective political preference exercised by a particular interest group. In India, this interest is defined principally by primordial identity — of caste or religion or language.

check how the definition of the term has been twisted: 50 years ago, going by srinivas' and his effusive admirer guha's formulation, dalits and other lower castes and the minorities were the vote banks. 50 years later, dalits and other lower castes and minorities are still the vote banks. the definition has changed, but it still fits the same social groups. the definition has been changed to still fit the same social groups?

who actually deserves this gaali (because that's what it is primarily, because that's the intention behind the usage of the term, mostly): vote banks in india? who are the actual vote banks in india, people who vote along strictly sectarian lines (if we go by the first definition), for sectarian interests (going by the second definition)? i won't bore with you a lot of facts and figures- i'll refer only to the bsp experience in uttar pradesh. in uttar pradesh, brahmins and other upper castes didn't vote for the bsp until the bsp started offering them tickets- now all brahmin and other upper caste voters of the bsp vote for its brahmin candidates, but very few of them vote for the party's dalit/obc/muslim candidates. they vote along strictly sectarian lines. and even now they'd vote for the bsp only as long as it serves their interests- like in this elections, brahmins were given 25% of the tickets. they vote for their own sectarian interests.

if the dalits or lower castes of india voted along sectarian lines or for sectarian interests- would the majority of legislators in elected houses across states still be from the upper castes?

vote for the dole

the media says poll expenditure in andhra pradesh would exceed 4,500 crores this time. the police, across the state, seem to be stumbling over piles of cash and liquor bottles wherever they turn. over 25 crores has been recovered until now- a mere nothing really.

cms says this problem isn't so bad in kerala and a few other states. not everyone is selling their votes. journalists say not everyone accepting cash or packets of biryani or gold jewellery or saris or bottles of liquor is voting for the buyers.

if you still feel like voting- vote for the dole. because once the dole becomes policy, no future government can wriggle itself out of it. and it'd soon expand beyond the state to become national policy. once the dole reaches the villages, the poor would start thinking a few days ahead of today. they wouldn't sell themselves short today- this would ensure minimum wages are respected, without any babu's intervention. on days when there isn't any work, and because we've all become such cynics, people could splurge on the movies, liquor, satta. that wouldn't matter really, because it would mean more businesses would spring up around the cinemas and arrack shops. which would result in more work for those who are willing to work. and if the men splurge on the movies, liquor, satta even on days when there is enough work, the women could go to work and purchasing power of their families would still remain higher than earlier, because for the great majority of families in the villages, the dole would mean a two-three times jump in their incomes. which would mean more business for anyone who is interested in the rural markets- and a lot of smart businesses would be interested in a 20,000 crores market. and more businesses would spring up around the countryside- and not all of them would be new stores, cinemas and bars- there'd also be small manufacturers and others. and not all of them would be interested in selling products- some of them would also be interested in buying local products. which would mean more work for those who are willing to work.

in whatever way the men choose to spend the dole, women would still get to handle some money- from hiding a little, or going to work and earning a little. that would mean more kids would go to school. and better nutrition for them than earlier.

if the women are harassed at home, they would've enough money to talk with the police. if the women are harassed at work, they could skip work to look for better opportunities, the next day or the day after. the dole would give them that kind of breathing space. the dole would mean not just the transfer of a little money from the cities to the villages- it'd inevitably be accompanied by a little transfer of power, every time the money travels from the cities to the villages.

the logic behind freebies

Price-makers, for their existence, need the price-takers to take the prices they make. Hence, to preserve themselves, the price-makers must also preserve the price-takers. This is the positive side of the contradiction. It explains several policies pursued by the ruling class aimed at protecting the price-takers, namely, the farmers, agricultural labourers, artisans, handicraftsmen and small industry men. Such for instance are the policies to perpetuate small-scale farming by legislating ceilings on agricultural holdings: to protect artisans by make-believe support and assistance; and to promote small industry by supply of bank credit. What the ruling class will not do is to give these producers an assured price for their product or an assured wage for their labour.

In order to escape exploitation and privation, the price-takers must abolish themselves as a class. This they do, not by abolishing the price-makers, their opposite, but by invading the camp of price-makers and merging themselves into them. This is the negative side of the contradiction.

The process is already on. Farmers, agricultural labourers, artisans, handicraftsmen, small industry and businessmen, price-takers all, are leaving their trades behind and seeking wage-employment in the organized sector; in other words, they're joining the camp of price-makers. They have nothing to lose except their petty property in land and means of production. and they have a job to win, a job with an assured income on the first of every month, whether it rains or not, whether they produce or not, whether what they produce, sells or not. With progressive exploitation of the price-takers by the price-makers, the gap between the two will widen, and the migration will accelerate until the class of price-makers reaches a critical level. The inherent contradiction in everybody trying to be a price-maker will then come to surface and the whole system will fall to the ground. I should be modest and not prophesy what will take its place.

v.m.dandekar wrote that around 1974. i'd originally read the essay in a collection called 'social inequality in india' (rawat publications). there seem to be some minor changes between the essay in the book and the essay i've quoted here- but the chief argument remains the same: the organized sector, the price-makers, in india exploits the unorganized sector, the price-takers.

dandekar's essay, in my view, reflects a growing realization, in the 70s, among participants in policy making, those who make it and discuss it, that the indian welfare state isn't working. its institutions worked for only a few and weren't capable of delivering to a vast majority of indians such basic public services as education, health and other entitlements which promised relief from hunger and deprivation. it's not the institutions were inherently incapable, just that they tended to serve a few at the cost of the many. the 70s, one should remember, also mark the beginning of populist politics- half-hearted attempts to make up for this serious structural bias.

in the essay, dandekar tries to use the marxian method to identify social classes in india: he finds that of 180 million workers in india, only 47.5 million may be said to have entered into production relations of the capitalist economy. the rest, around 130 millions, are workers whose gainful activity is conducted within the framework of households, in other words, whose relations of production are pre-capitalist. these were mostly cultivators, landless labourers, artisans and handicraftsmen etc.,

he further divides the 47.5 million who have stepped into a capitalist economy into three broad segments: those who work for the state, others who work for the bourgeoisie and independent workers. the independent workers, who numbered around 16 million, were neither employers nor employees and hence neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat. they worked in diverse occupations- as tailors, bricklayers, vehicle operators and labourers to waiters, washermen, hair-dressers, shopkeepers, salesmen etc.,

so, who were the bourgeoisie and the proletariat? of the remaining 31 million, around 2.2 million could be called the bourgeoisie because they were employers who ran their own businesses and employed others. and the remaining 29 million were all employees, with further classes (blue collar and white collar) between them. but broadly speaking, in 1971, these were the proletariat of india, according to dandekar.

of these 29 (or 29.5 million, to be precise) million, 12.5 million were employed in the public sector (by the state), 6.8 million were employed in establishments employing ten or more workers. these sections together constituted the organized sector. the rest, 10.2 million, were employed in the private unorganized sector (in establishments employing less than 10 people each).

summing up, the organized sector in india in the early 70s employed around 19.3 million workers and these folks, along with the big bourgeoisie exploited the rest of the workers (130+16+10+others= 160 million).

how? in a tightly controlled economy, the organized public and private sector enjoyed monopolistic clout. and people employed in the organized sector too enjoyed better bargaining clout than workers employed in the rest of the economy. so monopoly capital combined with monopoly labour and passed a large share of costs to the unorganized sector, broadly. how did dandekar reach such a conclusion?

My contention is that the large wage-differentials presently obtaining in different sectors of the economy are the result of the fact that the appropriation of the surplus-value generated in each enterprise is left to the bargaining between the management, private or public, and the workers in each enterprise. When this is done, the workers in the capitalistically more highly developed sectors are able to secure higher wages; firstly because in these sectors, there is employed more fixed capital per employee and consequently is created larger surplus value per employee which, though it is due to past labour embodied in the means of production, is treated as available for splitting between the bourgeoisie and the workers; secondly because the workers in these sectors are better organized, and hence possess superior bargaining power, which power improves with every increase in wages they secure; and thirdly because the bourgeoisie in the private sector, or the state in the public sector, enjoy greater monopoly power and hence are able to pass at least part of the costs to the less developed sectors of the economy. This is the central proposition of my analysis and, in my view, this constitutes exploitation of the less organized sector by the more organized sector in which process the capital and labour combine.

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

how has the picture changed in the last forty years? the first class of workers (mostly cultivators, landless labourers, artisans and handicraftsmen etc.,), those whose gainful activity is conducted within the framework of households, in other words, whose relations of production are pre-capitalist, number around 270-300 million*, approximately, (130 million in the 70s) now. are relations in this sector still largely pre-capitalist? we do see wage labour, production for the market and profit, but most of the gainful activity is still tied within the confines of the household and the use of technology is still limited. and the question is unimportant in the sense that most of this sector still consists of price-takers anyway, if you follow dandekar's formulation. remember, the key parameter that should be employed to determine whether workers, in any sector, belong to either the super-class of price-takers or price-makers should be the capital employed, on an average, per worker in that sector.

now, who has definitely stepped into a capitalist economy following dandekar's formulation again? the rest (those who work for the state, others who work for the bourgeoisie and independent workers)- around 130-150 million (47.5 million in the 70s). of these, 17-18 million work for the state (central, state governments and psus), or the organized public sector, and 9-10 million for the organized private sector (the big bourgeoisie). 26-27 million in all. of the remaining 100-120 million workers, around 25-30 million work in the unorganized private sector (in establishments employing less than 10 people each) and the rest, 70-95 million, are independent workers (tailors, bricklayers, vehicle operators and labourers to waiters, washermen, hair-dressers, shopkeepers, salesmen etc.,).

the organized sector in india, in terms of numbers employed, as you can see, hasn't expanded at the same rate as the rest of the indian economy. the price-makers are still a very small part of the indian economy. only around 27 million people?

the indian economy has changed a lot since the 70s: it has grown a lot, liberalized. do the price-makers still call the shots? does organized capital still combine with organized labour to exploit the unorganized sector? my answer is yes.

we no longer live in a explicitly controlled license-permit raj, but the regulations are smarter now. in sectors where big public and private sector companies enjoyed monopolistic clout earlier, we've oligopolies now, like in the telecom sector. liberalization has meant that big companies now employ much more capital, thanks to easier technology imports, per employee than ever before. so they need fewer people now, and hence the stagnation in employment in the organized sector.

but does organized labour still enjoy superior bargaining power? yes again, in my view. because more capital goes into training the kind of workers technology-intensive big companies need now. they're always in short supply- and the new workers are so in demand that many of them work for more than one company now, as consultants etc.,

the organized sector employed 10% of all workers in india in the 70s- it has shrunk now to 7% or so. that doesn't mean the class of price-makers has actually shrunk- the key yardstick for measuring whether a worker belongs to the class of price-makers or price-takers is to measure the kind of capital that is invested in him, his merit- those who work in capital-intensive large organized sector jobs are obviously price-makers. but those among the independent workers and small entrepreneurs- like chartered accountants, doctors, engineers and architects, fashion designers, software and technology consultants, media professionals and a whole host of new classes of independent workers who have emerged in the last forty years are also price-makers (but not the older classes of independent workers like the tailors, bricklayers, vehicle operators and labourers to waiters, washermen, hair-dressers, shopkeepers, salesmen etc.,) because a lot of capital has gone into training them.

in the past, i've tried to point out in a number of posts on how and why public policy, rooted in brahminized universalistic dogma, works against the marginalized in india. against those who aren't 'upper caste, hindu, male' (because that's what the price-makers essentially are).

i like dandekar's essay because it makes the same point, but in the language of the dogmatic. since the 70s, as i said earlier, policy makers in india have tried to hide the systematic bias in state policies by cooking up elaborate schemes to deal with poverty- the demand for a universal dole would be a great way to call their bluff. would they still go on building iits and calling them national assets when the dole shall start challenging their priorities, when the marginalized can see where the money's coming from?

* these figures are guesstimates, the earlier figures are based on figures from the essay in the book.

the future wasn't agriculture (a naive idea- 4)

57 days a year. that's the number of days of work available in the farm sector in india. from more than 220 days a year, 40 years ago. it'll go down further. how much can you earn from 57 days of mostly manual labour?

despite whatever was promised by the upa five years ago, or whatever the upa or the nda will promise now, in the next ten years agriculture's share in the gdp will go down further- from around 20% now to around 10%. despite increased credit and frequent loan waivers. despite increased subsidies and investments in irrigation. despite whatever curbs on imports or exports. all that means the real incomes of those who depend on agriculture, farmers and workers and others, will go down further every year.

all that silly figures of how we've achieved 4% growth trumpeted by whatever government in any one year actually hides the fact that there had been a 10% fall the previous year. we've been served the same sorry meal for the last twenty years or more and we have been waiting for that inevitable turnaround just around the corner all this while.

the andhra pradesh government has sunk in more than 50,000 crores in the last five years in large irrigation projects and the average and overall yields are almost where they were ten years ago. and twice as many farmers have committed suicide in the last five years than in the ten years before that.

logically speaking, there shouldn't be any farmers' suicides in andhra pradesh. because the state has always been a food surplus state, from even before the green revolution. and there are enough rice deficit regions in the neighbourhood, and across india, to fetch the andhra farmers' produce good prices. take kerala, for instance. a major portion of rice consumed in kerala comes from andhra pradesh. in the last forty years, while the total area devoted to paddy cultivation in kerala has come down by more than half, it has increased in andhra pradesh.

kerala, which imports rice, has a higher per capita income than andhra pradesh which exports nearly 30-40% of the rice it produces every year.

kerala also has a higher rate of literacy. infant and maternal mortality rates are lower in kerala than in andhra pradesh.

today, rice sells for rs.20-30 a kg in andhra pradesh, at almost the same price as in kerala.

logically speaking, the andhra pradesh (indian) electors should have kicked out anyone who spoke of agriculture and food security in 2004. or during any elections in the last twenty years.

where are the issues?

i've been looking at how many major national issues have come up for discussion on the national media, since the election schedule was made public, until now. varun gandhi and ipl, as i'd pointed out earlier, were the only two major issues until a couple of days ago. now, sanjay dutt seems to have joined them.

let's ignore the media for a moment and ask- is anyone, in the political class, looking at issues? i found jaya jaitly's blog at the ibn live site and a post that promised to look at issues. good.

I propose to look at some issues hovering before the electorate in the four crucial states that matter to anyone wanting to create the biggest post-election combine, i.e., Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. The rest are in the category of smaller states that add or subtract equally and therefore are not decisive.

I propose to look at some issues. why do issues hover only before the electorate in big states? aren't we talking about national elections? is this what elections in india have turned into: purely elections? in the rest of the post, jaitly briefly touches upon issues such as the recession, 'corporate growth' oriented economic policy, iraq and saddam hussein (why?), job losses, and hurries back to discuss various political parties, alliances, personalities. where are the issues?

i've read that advani too has a blog: so is he discussing issues? the latest post is titled: The Seven Social Sins - By Mahatma Gandhi. And it lists out: The Seven Social Sins - By Mahatma Gandhi. in seven lines. before that, a post titled: The Hour Of God- By Yogi Aurobindo. the post before that promotes one of the schemes he plans to introduce: ladli laxmi yojana. he does talk about girl children and falling gender ratios but then moves on to tell you why he likes prasoon joshi (because he is prasoon joshi?)

and what does he plan to debate with manmohan singh?

fix the clock ( a naive idea- 3 )

i remember reading somewhere, the number of handlooms in india, in early nineteenth century was around 20 lakhs. now, it's 38 lakhs. the number of handlooms in the u.k., in early nineteenth century was around 2 lakhs. now it's just a couple of hundreds or so.

india is a living museum, thanks to the large presence, despite their small number, of committed aesthetes in the population:

"I know that the ultimate weapon in my kitty is the sari... This Sunday I have taken down my Ikat, Chanderi, Puneri, Laheriya, Bandhej, Bomkai, Gadwal, Narayanpet , Maheshwari, Kantha and Kanjeevaram saris and stroked them in the reflecting sunlight." (I guarantee no man would ever think of doing anything similar with his dhoti collection.) And Sindhu Sheth wrote that she would heed my appeal: "I have decided to wear a sari (instead of my regular churidar-kurta) — once a week, to begin with." In that "to begin with" lies the hope that my column will not have been entirely in vain....

would you be able to digest the sight of 8 out of every 10 indians living on less than a dollar a day if more than half of them weren't wrapped in saris, mr.tharoor seems to say. how many of the women who work on turning out Ikat, Chanderi, Puneri, Laheriya, Bandhej, Bomkai, Gadwal, Narayanpet , Maheshwari, Kantha and Kanjeevaram and other fine material can actually afford those saris? the average life expectancy of some weavers in some of those towns those products come from has gone down to around 50 years in recent times, according to some news reports.

the sari is the ultimate weapon in the kitty of a lot of people: it helps wrap up a lot of freedoms, drive everything unseemly into purdah. wrap women in ikat, chanderi, puneri etc., and tie up the lower castes in the production of ikat, chanderi, puneri etc., for the parivar the sari has totemic significance, refined sensibilties are congressi liberal tharoor's excuse. mr.tharoor and the rss top brass might prescribe the sari as essential hindu-fashionwear for women, but would they suggest weaving as a career for their children? or fishing? scavenging? tanning? toddy tapping?

seventy percent of indians have little or no basic reading/writing skills. and almost all of them belong to the lower castes, but no one involved in policy-making ever acknowledges the fact that almost all of them belong to the lower castes- euphemisms such as the poor, people below the poverty line etc., serve as effective purdahs. researchers go to great lengths to take the sectarian sting out of the truth, to purify bad statistics with good taste. 80% of india lives on less than a dollar a day. what does that tell you? nothing.

does it tell you that we've double the number of handlooms as we did 200 years ago? that we've many times more fishermen (as a proportion of the population), using almost the same equipment, than we did 200 years ago? that we probably have more rat catchers and tanners and scavengers than 200 years ago?

most of india stands where it was 200 years ago. while a small section of indians turn to the newest professions: from international diplomats to fashion designers, programmers to pilots, astronauts to brewers. that the number of handlooms in india has actually doubled in the last 200 years is a more damning statistic for me than the bald figure that 80% of indians live on less than a dollar a day. the former seems to suggest almost a huge break in social evolution, while the latter wants you to look away. shouldn't someone talk about this during this elections? shouldn't indian politics be about restarting the process of evolution for those stranded in a different age?

daughter of south mumbai

“Do you know Mumbai contributes 33 per cent of income tax collections, 60 per cent of customs duty collections, 20 per cent of central excise tax collections, 40 per cent of India’s foreign trade and a significant quantum to corporate taxes? For such a prosperous city, how can we be content with a withering transport system and lagging public amenities?” she questions. Like any good banker, she obviously keeps her numbers handy.

meera sanyal isn't contesting the mumbai municipal elections. what can she do about mumbai's withering transport system and lagging public amenities, that she talks about, in the lok sabha? there'd be very few occasions on which she could raise those issues at a forum where primarily national or international issues are discussed.

Like a million other Mumbaikars, Meera Sanyal too watched the horror of 26/11 unfold on her television screen — all within the confines of her safe haven at Malabar Hill. But unlike a million other Mumbaikars who went back to work after those horrifying few days, Sanyal could not shake off the feeling of being cheated.

The 47-year-old, who heads ABN-Amro Bank in India, was up against difficult choices: “Either I could sit back and blame the politicians and move on or I could pull up my sleeves and get on the ground to do something about it,” she says.

security. she can get on the ground to do something about it. how?

she can raise questions: the first hour of each day in the lok sabha is devoted to questions.

It is during the Question Hour that the members can ask questions on every aspect of administration and Governmental activity. Government policies in national as well as international spheres come into sharp focus as the members try to elicit pertinent information during the Question Hour.

all the other 540 odd members too have the same right to raise questions. so one has to queue up. but the lok sabha worked for just 46 days last year. it usually works a little more, but the number has been falling since the first parliament. so ms.sanyal would have to share those 50 odd question hours with 540 odd other members, many of who, as we have seen in the last two-three lok sabhas would rather raise slogans and placards during the question hour than questions. so many question hours might pass before ms.sanyal actually gets to ask any questions.

by which time, the taj mahal in mumbai might be attacked again. if such an unfortunate event does happen again, and when a lok sabha is in session, ms.sanyal might get lucky and be able to call attention of the home minister of that matter of urgent public importance and request him to make a statement by giving a notice to the Secretary General, Lok Sabha, first. would that help prevent the next attack on mumbai?

perhaps she could raise the issue of mumbai's security through an adjournment motion by giving notice to the speaker and the minister concerned, to get answers faster because they are taken up for discussion on the same day. but a lot of adjournment motions are brought in every day, and only one member gets to be lucky, if at all, provided he manages to convince the speaker that the purpose of the motion is to initiate discussion on a definite matter of urgent public importance. and security in mumbai, or anywhere for that matter, is a definite matter of urgent public importance, but something bal thackeray said, a day earlier, or m.f.hussain painted, decades earlier might crowd the urgency out of that matter of public importance. other members who had issued notices too might sit in the well of the house and create pandemonium forcing the speaker to adjourn the house.

i hope ms.sanyal has an actionable business plan.

my wise grandfather owes thanks to anand giridhardas (a naive idea- 2)

India did not export brains; it invested them. It sent millions away. In the freedom of new soil, they flowered. They seeded a new generation that, having blossomed, did what humans have always done: chase the frontier of the future.

(because i'd to chase the frontier of the future and needed your grandfather's sweat and blood and his faith, above all, to lay the road he'd never use. good that your grandfather was wise enough to invest in me and not spend on his silly needs. this helped us build, together, a nation that valued my freedom to find new soil to flower and return two or three generations later, having blossomed, to build a great future for your grandfather.)

a naive idea- 1

i think, many times, what's the point of elections anyway?

i like this dream: all children of all castes, creeds going to the same school. of schools that have not just blackboards but computers and stuff. that have fans and lights and playgrounds and teachers. libraries and internet. that have girls' cricket teams and budding filmmakers. and toilets and clean water. schools that look and feel great to children- excite them as much as new games or movies or books or insects and grass and a great number of other things that we know nothing about do. schools that communities can take pride in.

some might tell you that this is not a practical idea. we don't have the money, villages (and cities) don't have the roads or electricity, teachers hate going to villages to teach, poor parents can't afford to send working children to school.

if that's not a practical idea, what's india? and what's the point of this elections anyway?

in the next three years, india is going to spend around rs. 5,00,000- 6,00,000 crores on defense- much more than what's needed to build those schools. what's foolish about spending a crore each on a school in every one of the 6,00,000 villages in the country? it'd actually cost much less because most of the existing schools only need to be refurbished or expanded.

but defense is a practical idea. holding onto kashmir is a practical idea. and war with pakistan is always a practical idea.

villages don't have the roads or electricity? bunker roy of barefoot college tells you what can be done for $400,000 a year:

For the same amount of money, one could electrify 15 whole villages of 800 houses annually with solar power; collect 20 million liters of rainwater in 40 remote rural schools; or run more than 300 night schools for a year for over 4,000 dropped-out children anywhere in the world. For the same amount 100,000 families living below the starvation line of 50 cents a day could receive two square meals a day in 50 villages. When that sort of money is available, it is foolish and absurd to spend it on one village.

equipping a school with solar electricity wouldn't need more than $ 5,000 (assuming each school needs as much electricity as ten homes) or $50,000 (assuming each school needs as much electricity as a hundred homes). that'd be less than 2-20 lakh rupees? that'd also solve the problem of water. what i'm trying to say is- all these problems can be solved. i mean in three years (even without cutting into the holy defense budget).

what's more difficult to solve? problems like teachers who won't go to villages, parents who don't/can't send their children to school, a bureaucracy that doesn't care about schools etc., are those the real problems, those issues much bandied about by experts? the iits and the schools with air-conditioning and french tell you india is a stupid dream, a mere slogan. that's the real problem.

[this post by space bar made me think]

'in the name of the poor' scams or a dole?

a two year old article in the indian express:

Poverty alleviation is but a small aspect of social justice. A just society provides equal opportunity to all members of society—all religions, all castes, and both sexes. India’s record of ill-treatment starts before birth—we kill the girl child before she is born. After birth, there is at best benign neglect and later on, especially among poor families, the girl child is needed to work at home. As she grows up, she becomes an increas-ing burden, and parents worry about raising a dowry for her marriage. And the cycle continues.

There’s a need for accountability in our poverty schemes; the government is not being held responsi-ble for its failures. Can this centuries old discrimination practice be broken? Yes. Here is how. There are approximately 120 million girl children in the school-going age of five to 14. About 80 million live in rural areas. Each girl child in the rural areas is entitled to Rs 300 a month if she attends school. Total expen-diture? Less than Rs 30,000 crore, and less than the just introduced employ-ment guarantee programme.

What kind of ‘leakages’ can occur here? There will be a market for fake education certificates. True, but we also observe that the poor are spending a fair amount of their hard-earned money to send their kids, even girls, to school. For just Rs 300 a month, they are not going to jeopardise the future of their children. But let us assume they do; so let us modify the scheme thus: every girl child in the age group five to 14 receives Rs 3,600 a year. Period. No ifs, ands and buts. Now where is the leakage? Other than an increase in sex-change operations, I cannot foresee any. This plan might encourage movement from urban to rural areas. Good. The parents will find that the girl child is ‘profitable’, so more girl children will be born. Good. More girls will be educated, more girls will become pro-ductive, and the dowry system will begin a slow death. Good. So why has such a plan not been thought of, let alone implemented? Because it is more profitable for the government to spend about 10 times the money, Rs 200,000 crore annually, on various ‘in the name of the poor’ schemes than to imple-ment policies that will actually help the rural poor. (italics mine).

i do not agree with surjit bhalla most times but this is an exception. isn't he talking about a variant of the dole?

the 'national' media's two glass system

if one were to trust the indian media, the ipl and varun gandhi are the only important issues these elections have thrown up until now.

if he wasn't varun gandhi, and the indian police weren't the indian police, he would've been arrested while he was making those speeches and would have earned a mere mention in one of the inner pages of local dailies. and the ipl? if the indian media weren't the indian media, it'd still have been big news, but definitely not on all front pages. or on the best slots on television.

why aren't the careers of politicians like varun gandhi nipped in the bud (because there are enough provisions in the law to do so)? the answer lies in another question: why weren't several others like him stopped earlier? it isn't just indian politics that makes the indian police the indian police but a whole host of other institutions like the indian media etc., and it isn't just indian politics that makes the indian media indian media, but indian media too helps in making indan politics indian politics. all of that is confusing, yes, but this final attempt to explain all might help: indians are behind all this. certain classes of indians.

check what the bbc had to say a few hours ago: indians saddened by ipl decision. and who were the indians bbc's prachi pinglay spoke to? the ipl, i guess, is popular in the villages too- but the question is: would any issues that occupy the minds of the marginalized in india ever really make such a big splash in the so-called national media? definitely not. not as long as even the newsmen who generate reports for the international media too come from certain classes of indians.

madigas, and over fifty other dalit castes in andhra pradesh have been agitating over the last fifteen years for dividing the scheduled castes into categories (as it is done in the case of obcs) to ensure that, according to their view, not all the fruits of reservations are cornered by a couple of castes. there have also been barely covered reports of similar movements across the country. now this demand needs to be debated seriously across a wide range of fora because it involves not just madigas and other castes in andhra pradesh, but dalits, primarily, and all other classes of people across the country. from 300 million to one billion people.

ipl's lalit modi gets almost unhindered access to top elected and other officials in the central government and the states, and at any given moment you'll find him on a couple of television channels. how many newsmen working for the national media have heard of manda krishna madiga? has rajdeep sardesai heard of him? or barkha dutt? or m.j.akbar? or vinod mehta? or pick any other big name. have they ever interviewed him?

but the dalits in andhra pradesh are seriously agitated over the issue, and their demand requires a constitutional solution that could only be found through the parliament. and that'd involve the whole country. yes, it is regional or local news, but only because the national media ignore it.

if indian media started listening to the marginalized, why would the marginalized sit around listening to empty-headed bigots like varun gandhi? wouldn't they be talking instead? and making a citizen's arrest? they face people like varun gandhi every day, in villages across the country- people who demand a two glass system at tea shops, for instance. if those minor bigots go untouched, it isn't because the people like them or think they're right. it is because the people who work in institutions, like the media and the justice system etc., which are supposed to work for all citizens believe in the two-glass system themselves.

the indianness of gangu teli

the saying goes: kahaan raja bhoj, kahaan gangu teli. some smart researchers from jnu might dig up some half-history of a teli having ruled a minor province somewhere for half a blink of history and flaunt it in your face as evidence of the flexibility of the caste system, while sundry marxists who'd never yield to the probability of upward mobility in a market economy nod approvingly- but does it disprove the logic of the saying? people know: kahaan raja bhoj, kahaan gangu teli.

you can't visualize gangu teli as a raja. there are narratives in many cultures that talk of commoners becoming rajas (or saving rajas)- tales, legends, myths that slowly condense into empirical wisdom. commoners don't become rajas. perigadu rajanta ('perigadu is the king!'), goes a telugu idiom. it refers to another folk tale which talks about a dhobi who is installed as ruler in the place of raja pratapa rudra (of the kakatiyas) for a short while to save the king from traitors in his court.

both expressions, while referring to mythical events that foisted rajahood on commoners also poke fun at the very idea. the exclamation mark was made for just such an idea. there is not an inch of space between germany and austria to accommodate ruritania.

if democracy can't accommodate gangu teli or perigadu, it means their critics need to develop a national outlook, not the other way round. i think this very interesting article by nisha susan captures with great accuracy how narrow the national outlook of some indians is. i also think this paper- “ Nation State” or “State Nation”? Comparative Reflections on Indian Democracy by Juan J. Linz (Yale University), Alfred Stepan (Columbia University) andYogendra Yadav (Center for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi) is a great read.

mayawati lacks merit?

It is a joke that even Mayawati and Jayalalithaa want to become PM. It is matter to laugh about. A lot of people in Indian politics want to become PM, but if you look at the trend then Manmohan Singh is well placed to become the PM again.

mani shankar aiyar, who started working for rajiv gandhi's congress even before he left the civil services, thinks mayawati is a joke. what does he take seriously, really? apart from serious sycophancy and slavish devotion to the leaders he chooses to follow? i mean seriously.

aiyar is the second person to call mayawati a joke. cho ramaswamy was the first.

Is this upper caste Hindu bias speaking? Chari refused it was. "I do not deny I am a Hindu and by circumstances, I was born into an upper caste family, but that does not make me biased. A person like P A Sangma could become a Speaker of this country's Parliament though he was from backward classes but that was purely due to merit," Chari said.

the parivar likes merit. and that's what the other major national political formation, the congress, is also trying to say: that mayawati lacks merit. this common belief might be articulated differently, but what one shouldn't forget is that this is a commonly held belief.

louis dumont formulated the theory that the guiding principle of caste is purity. over time, it'd seem, this has transformed into merit. how does one define merit? merit, just as purity, is defined by the meritorious.

if mayawati is accused of lacking intellectual merit, one shouldn't argue that both indira and rajiv gandhi didn't even hold undergraduate degrees while mayawati holds multiple degrees including a b.a., a degree in education and another in law.

what's her agenda beyond caste? the two national parties have consistently brought into legislatures at both the national and regional levels, representatives who've consistently belonged to a select band of castes from each state. castes which don't make up more than 15-20% of india's population. arms of the state- the bureaucracy, the public sector, the judiciary and also the media- are all run by members of this select band of castes. what was nehru's/indira's/ rajiv gandhi's/vajpayee's/sonia's agenda- it wasn't/isn't caste?

she doesn't have a national outlook? isn't mayawati's entire career about expanding the narrow idea of the indian nation?

wanted: an alert and smartly dressed pm

"I think Advani has come out of Vajpayee's shadow and has coined a place for himself. He's alert, smartly dressed and all. The young people see him as the Winston Churchill of India. He is a tough, decisive and lovable person."

he's alert, smartly dressed and all. like winston churchill. wasn't churchill sozzled all the time? are all guests on indian television sozzled all the time?

tough, decisive and lovable. like idi amin before he started cooking his guests?