what the brahmin can't hide, bury or burn anymore

south, karnataka. there are 17.9 lakh landless households in the state. of these, nearly 4.5 lakh are sc households, and 1.7 lakh are st households. who are the other 11.7 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags, they will tell you that they're mostly brahmin households..lingayat and vokkaliga households would also figure, i guess.
‪#obc‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
west, maharashtra. there are 47.6 lakh landless households in the state. of these, nearly 9.4 lakh are sc households, and 10.3 lakh are st households. who are the other 27.9 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags, they will tell you that they're mostly brahmin, maratha and kayasth households..
‪#obc‬ ‎‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
east. west bengal. there are 75.6 lakh landless households in the state. of these, 25.4 lakh are sc households and 6.1 lakh are st households. who are the other 44.1 lakh landless households? the statesman and the telegraph and the hindu will probably tell you that they're mostly brahmin, baidya and kayasth households.
‪‪#obc‬ ‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
west, north. rajasthan. there 26.74 lakh landless households in rajasthan. of these, 7.91 lakh are sc households, and 4.39 lakh are st households. who are the other 14.44 lakh landless households? the hindustan times and the hindu will probably tell you they're all brahmin, rajput and bania households..
‪#obc‬ ‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
north, uttar pradesh..there are 79 lakh landless households in the state. of these, 26 lakh are sc households and around 62, 000 are st households. who are the other 52.38 lakh landless households? the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags will tell you that they're mostly brahmin, rajput, bania households..
‪‪#obc‬ ‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
east, again. jharkhand. there are 11.57 lakh landless households in the state. of these, 2.27 lakh are sc households and 2.61 lakh are st households. who are the other 6.7 lakh landless households? the hindustan times and toi will probably tell you they're all brahmin and rajput households..
‪#obc‬ ‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
northmost, uttarakhand. there are nearly 2.8 lakh landless households in uttarakhand. of these, over 84, 000 are sc households and over 9,200 are st households. who are the other 1.86 lakh landless households? the hindustan times and the hindu will probably tell you they're all brahmins and rajputs..
‪#obc‬ ‬ ‪#‎castecensus
~
centre, north, madhya pradesh. there are over 50 lakh landless households in the state. nearly 10.45 lakhs of those are sc households, and 13.92 lakh are st households. who are the other 26.35 lakh landless households? if you ask the toi or the hindustan times, they'll probably tell you they're mostly brahmin, rajput, bania households..
‪‪#obc‬ ‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
east, odisha. there are over 34 lakh landless households in odisha. nearly 8.7 lakh of them are sc households and over 8 lakh of them are st households. who are the other 17.3 lakh landless households? the statesman and the indian express will probably tell you they're all brahmins and karanas.
‪#obc‬ ‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
further west or north, haryana. there are 11. 26 lakh landless households in haryana..over 5 lakh of them are sc households and 380 are st households. who are the other nearly 6.2 lakh households? the hindustan times and outlook will probably tell you they're all jat, brahmin and bania households.
‪‪#obc‬  ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
east, bihar. there are nearly 96 lakh landless households in the state. nearly 23 lakh of them are sc households, and 1.6 lakh are st households. who are the other 71.4 lakh households? if you ask epw or india today, they'll tell you most of them are brahmin, bhumihar, rajput etc households..
‪#obc‬ ‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
west, gujarat. there are 25.5 lakh landless households in gujarat. around 2.7 lakhs of them are sc households, and 5.2 lakhs are st households. who are the other 17.6 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu or the toi, they'll tell you they're all brahmin, vaishya or rajput households.
‪‪#obc‬  ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
chhattisgarh. there are 16.88 lakh landless households in the state. of these 4.7 lakh are st households and 3. 3 lakh sc households. who are the other 8.8 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu or the toi, they'll tell you they're all brahmin or rajput households.
‪#obc‬  ‪#‎castecensus
~
‬ there are over 56 lakh landless households in tamil nadu, and around 19 lakh of them are dalit.. 94, 000 are st households. who are the other nearly 36 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu it will tell you that all of them are brahmin.
‪#obc‬  ‪#‎castecensus
~‬
north, west, punjab. there are 14.8 lakh landless households in the state. of these, nearly 9.3 lakh are sc households, and 111 are st households. who are the other 5.5 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags, they will tell you that they're mostly brahmin, jat, khatri households.
‪‪#obc‬‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
south, andhra pradesh. there are 45 lakh landless households in the state. of these, nearly 10.8 lakh are sc households, and 2.5 lakh are st households. who are the other 31.7 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags, they will tell you that they're mostly brahmin, reddy, kamma, raju, velama households.
‪‪#obc‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
south, kerala. there are 25.34 lakh landless households in the state. of these, nearly 4.2 lakh are sc households, and nearly 55000 are st households. who are the other nearly 20.6 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags, they will tell you that they're mostly brahmin and nair households.
‪#obc‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
north, himachal pradesh. there are 80, 222 landless households in the state. of these, nearly 28, 800 are sc households, and 3,951 lakh are st households. who are the other nearly 47, 500 landless households? if you ask the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags, they will tell you that they're mostly brahmin and rajput households.
‪#obc‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
east, north. assam. there are 18 lakh landless households in the state. of these, nearly 1.7 lakh are sc households, and nearly 1.3 lakh are st households. who are the other nearly 15 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags, they will tell you that they're mostly brahmin and kayasth households.
‪‪#obc‬‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬
~
telangana, temporarily indian. there are 19.7 lakh landless households in the state. of these, nearly 4.7 lakh are sc households, and 1.97 lakh are st households. who are the other nearly 13.3 lakh landless households? if you ask the hindu, epw, india today, outlook, toi, hindustan times and all the other brahmin rags, they will tell you that they're mostly brahmin, reddy, velama, kamma, raju households.
‪#obc‬‬ ‪#‎castecensus‬

you may try to hide it, bury it, burn it - but the larger truth is out: in brahmin india - from east to west, north to south- there are nearly 6.86 crore landless households. of these, nearly 1.81 crore are sc households, and nearly 70 lakh are st households. who are the other 4.34 crore landless households? they're definitely not brahmin-savarna.

this blog is ten years old today. it was worth the wait. 

breaking up india 6

[notes from a forthcoming book: part 6 of a series of exercises involving breaking up india into parts to understand it better. i'm not posting all the notes, only random ones]
i'd said:

india was always considered an empire all through history - how did it become a nation?

perry anderson asks this question too - how did india become a nation? or why did india become a nation in the minds of all major leaders of the freedom movement - from gandhi to nehru - and still remains such a strong idea among even the 'most distinguished Indian intellectuals' - like amartya sen to ramachandra guha to sunil khilnani to meghnad desai - when historically it never was a nation? anderson notes:

Nehru’s claim of an ‘impress of oneness’, going back six thousand years, persisted from pre-war writings like The Unity of India to his final dispute with China, in which the Mahabharata could be invoked by his foreign office as proof that the North-East Frontier Agency had been part of Mother India from time immemorial, rather as if the Niebelunglied were to clinch German diplomatic claims to Morocco. Such notions have not gone away. The facts gainsay them. The sub-continent as we know it today never formed a single political or cultural unit in pre-modern times. For much the longest stretches of its history, its lands were divided between a varying assortment of middle-sized kingdoms, of different stripes. Of the three larger empires it witnessed, none covered the territory of Nehru’s Discovery of India. Maurya and Mughal control extended to contemporary Afghanistan, ceased below the Deccan, and never came near Manipur. The area of Gupta control was considerably less. Separated by intervals of five hundred and a thousand years, there was no remembered political or cultural connexion between these orders, or even common religious affiliation: at its height, the first of these Buddhist, the second Hindu, the third Muslim. Beneath a changing mosaic of mostly regional rulers, there was more continuity of social patterns, caste – the best claimant to a cultural demarcation – attested very early, but no uniformity. The ‘idea of India’ was essentially a European, not a local invention, as the name itself makes clear. No such term, or equivalent, as India existed in any indigenous language. A Greek coinage, taken from the Indus river, it was so exogenous to the subcontinent that as late as the 16th century, Europeans could define Indians simply as ‘all natives of an unknown country’, and so call the inhabitants of the Americas.

you'd think anderson had delivered a resounding slap to the collective face of the brahminized classes through his book. but they're not easily daunted, and ignoring totally the unpalatable parts, such as the excerpt quoted above, they quote him selectively with a lot of enthusiasm these days. because it's a trendy thing to do in academia, perhaps.

so why do all of india's modern day leaders and intellectuals lie, why don't they admit that there never was any india? anderson's essay is just one recent example, there have always been others who had questioned this 'idea of india'. anderson's scaled down, but very effective presentation of some plain facts makes it seems such a commonsensical question. why don't people ask it more often?

breaking up india 5

[notes from a forthcoming book: part 5 of a series of exercises involving breaking up india into parts to understand it better. i'm not posting all the notes, only random ones]

talking against indian nationalism while writing within its framework is naturally very counter-productive. india was always considered an empire all through history - how did it become a nation?

the empire became a nation in the same way as the brahmins became just another jati. both ideas are now articulated as common sense. the indian nation has become so much common sense that even those who have critiqued indian nationalism, from an anti-caste perspective, have not questioned this fundamental premise.

historically, aloysius says: 'The cultural unity of the subcontinent, then, is mostly derived from the ascriptive and hierarchical elements of power as dominance.'

in other words, the existence of the caste system across the subcontinent is viewed as indicative of 'cultural unity'. how acceptable is this theory of 'cultural unity', and how did it merge so totally with the idea of one nation and one nation-state, when historically there had always been several states in the subcontinent?

if a shared system of oppression were to be taken as an indicator of cultural unity, all the former colonized lands of the world should also be seen as one nation. all the former roman colonies should also be one nation. one could think of several such examples. the subcontinent itself wouldn't have evolved into the 5 or 6 nations that it is now if the theory of cultural unity were tenable.

cultural commonalities can't be interpreted as signs of cultural unity. there might be much in common, culturally, between maharashtra and gujarat or andhra and tamil nadu or bengal and odisha and all of these regions and foreign countries such as malaysia, sri lanka and pakistan and so on.

even if we assume, for argument's sake,  there is cultural unity across the subcontinent, history has provided more than enough evidence that political unity, based around this cultural unity, was always short-lived. because, obviously, the kind of 'cultural unity' that many see in the subcontinent is a very narrowly defined unity. and this unity is defined from the perspective of the dominant brahminized classes, across regions.  

cultural unity of india was the dominant classes' excuse for forging one political geography out of the largest part of the subcontinent. it needs to be understood that more than any cultural unity, the indian state is the result of the political unity of the dominant classes of india.

but, as dr. ambedkar would have said, it might be in the interests of the dominant classes to define india as one nation, but how can it be in the interests of the oppressed classes to accept that definition?

breaking up india

[notes from a forthcoming book: part 1 of a series of exercises involving breaking up india into parts to understand it better]

 if a lower caste labourer from, say, rural telangana/andhra, unable to cope with dominant caste reddies or kammas or rajus or velamas migrates to rural maharashtra, he'll face the same, more or less, kind of oppression at the hands of the marathas there. if he moves further north to haryana, he'll have to face the jats..if he goes east to bihar, he'll meet the bhumihars, rajputs, brahmins etc..

you would think all of these dominant castes were born from the same womb. they might behave in a similar fashion, but we know they all speak different languages, have different cultures, eat different food and enjoy different kinds of entertainment. and they also look different, even if they all seem to be of different shades of brown. and if you check even more closely, you'll find that they don't even pray to the same gods, if you ignore the common brahmanic gods (like avatars of vishnu, shiva, durga, ganpati etc) that most of them have taken up over the last one century. their faiths are distinctively local, and different from each other even if they're all labeled together as brahminism/hinduism.

none of them would inter-marry, and would probably go to violent lengths to stop any such alliances from happening if any couples overcome the limits of geographic, linguistic/cultural boundaries and come together. and inter-caste marriages even within the same linguistic geographies are rare.

you'd also notice that they might have dislike and contempt for each other, might plot against each other for political positions, economic interests at local, regional or central level. but they all behave in a similar fashion, more or less, towards people lower down the caste hierarchy.

how and why did all these dominant castes, which are so different from each other, come together and become one 'nation'? and paradoxically, why did the oppressed castes, the dalit bahujans, acquiesce to this formulation that they are also a part of the same 'nation', along with the oppressor castes?         

అనర్థ శాస్త్రం

పైసాలో
పదోవంతు
పదిలో ఐదుగురికి
పంచితే
వాళ్ళిళ్ళళ్ళో పస్తులు
పొలాల్లో ఆత్మహత్యలే
పండుతాయి

ఇద్దరే
యేడుపాళ్ళు
యేడురోజులూ తింటే
మిగతా ముగ్గురికి
వారానికి మూడు రోజులు
రెండు పూటలూ
యేడుపే

పైసాలో
ఇంత భారతముంటే
పార్లమెంటు
యిద్దరి సుఖం కోసం
పరిచిన పరుపే
అవుతుంది
పంచాయితీ పెట్టండి!

Mind over Savanur

If India were a country of 18 crores, instead of 118 crores or so, all the excitement in the media would make more sense. A panelist on a TV debate on the Union Budget, for instance, expresses warm approval of a particular proposal, saying: 'infrastructure would help the poor more than subsidies in the long run'.

There are several presumptions impelling that little outburst: one, the poor don't want infrastructure, or don't understand its value or are shortsighted or hold all of those attitudes, opinions. Two, the poor want sops and handouts, and therefore are lazy and suffer from a weak work ethic. Three, infrastructure is meant for everyone, even if it is a games village worth 60,000 crore rupees in Delhi which starts crumbling down even as it is being built. Four, subsidies are for exclusively the poor, and most of them don't go to the non-poor.

 As caste is a state of mind, as Dr Ambedkar said, we've come to accept that kind of biased discourse as normal in savarna media: how can it be different when their minds and consciousness work in that fashion, dividing the world into normal 'us' and the errant 'others'?

 Infrastructure is important for poor, mostly Dalitbahujan, Indians too. 70% of rural homes don't have toilets, and those which do have toilets are not connected to any sewerage systems. Who would understand the need for infrastructure better than them? Yes, they understand the need for roads, the need for toilets, and the need for freedoms that infrastructure could represent more intensely than anyone else. But in India, we need to understand, there is infrastructure and there is pure infrastructure.
~~~

please read the rest of the article here, at round table india. 

63 years of savanurs

wipe some savanur with the flag. because the brahminical narrative that links 'modern' india to an ancient 'civilization' is good enough for only that.

in karnataka now, or in telangana or andhra pradesh (now gripped with a stronger love for mother india than any time in the past, despite other differences across regions) later, or across india, expect many more savanurs in the future.

an article in 'danse macabre'

an article i'd written on dalit poetry in telugu had been published here:

A television news report I'd seen a few years ago captured this strange tale of a small clan of people living atop trees less than five hundred miles from my desk. They ate, relaxed, slept and lived on the branches of peepul trees in a farm adjoining a village. They belonged to a community of swineherds, people who normally live inside villages or on their fringe, interact with other villagers every day and have a role to play in village life, not a chunk of pre-history that forgot to erase itself, evolve. How could they become so unsure of all firm ground?

Their story illustrates the ineffable nature of the reaches of marginality in Indian society: the abyss of marginality could be lurking outside your door. A single mis-step, and you could drop off the horizon.

Land and caste are dominant themes in poetry in Telugu, by poets from the Dalit Bahujan (or the ‘lower’ castes) communities, because land, as little as a quarter of an acre, means a firmer hold on rural economic life and caste determines your chances of inheriting or acquiring land.

Narayanaswami laments, as though he is talking to himself:

anytime
anywhere
land's the problem
the problem's only land
a little land for food
or for your death
the problem's wholly land

please read the rest of 'I'll weep like Karamchedu!' at the danse macabre, 'Nevada's first online literary magazine'. thanks, nabina, for all the support.

of unspeakable crimes

from the website of The Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (or simply, Claims Conference):

The mission of the Claims Conference over its 50-year history has always been to secure what we consider a small measure of justice for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. We have pursued this goal since 1951 through a combination of negotiations, disbursing funds to individuals and organizations, and seeking the return of Jewish property lost during the Holocaust. [...]

As a result of negotiations with the Claims Conference since 1952, the German government has paid more than $60 billion in indemnification for suffering and losses resulting from Nazi persecution. Claims Conference negotiations have also resulted in the creation of funds from German and Austrian industry, as well as the Austrian government.
[emphasis mine].

the process began in 1951 when the claims conference was formed:

The Claims Conference had the task of negotiating with the German government a program of indemnification for the material damages to Jewish individuals and to the Jewish people caused by Germany through the Holocaust.

On September 10, 1952, after six months of negotiations, the Claims Conference and the West German federal government signed an agreement embodied in two protocols. Protocol No. 1 called for the enactment of laws that would compensate Nazi victims directly for indemnification and restitution claims arising from Nazi persecution. Under Protocol No. 2, the West German government provided the Claims Conference with DM 450 million for the relief, rehabilitation and resettlement of Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, according to the urgency of their need as determined by the Conference. Agreements were also signed with the State of Israel.

The agreements were at the time unique in human history. All three entities involved—the Claims Conference, West Germany, and Israel—had not existed at the time of World War II, and yet all entered into an agreement for compensation for crimes committed during that time. [emphasis mine].

wikipedia has some related information on the Reparations Agreement between Israel and West Germany page.

will india, like west germany, ever acknowledge that …unspeakable crimes have been committed..(against the dalits)...calling for moral and material indemnity?

this old idea of india

smokescreen's interesting post offering a novel solution to link the indian nation. don't understand why 1) we need to link the indian nation through 1/2/3 languages, 2) if it is a nation, why does it have to be linked through synthetic policy solutions?

why not chuck the whole idea of building india along the lines of a conventional nation, and let the people link to each other? an unfinished, but very interesting, discussion with smokescreen and the recent debates around official/link languages, in the media and elsewhere, reminded me of this old article which gives you an idea of how small (when compared with the total population of any given state) migration from one state to other states even in the worst of times is:

Inter-state labour migration is an important feature of the Indian economy. Most of this movement has been from the most populous and poorest states with net in-migration being higher for the more developed states. Gujarat and Bihar provide an interesting contrast in terms of migration. The population entering Bihar was 364,337 and that exiting the state was more than three times higher at 1,226,839. (Census 1991) In contrast, the in-coming population for Gujarat was double that of Bihar at 716,190 and the out-going population 305,738, a quarter of the population leaving Bihar.

bihar's total population was 8.66 crores in 1991 and migrants from that state were less than 2% of the total population of the state. and bihar, let me remind you, has a long history of out-migration.

most indians prefer to stay or migrate within their own states. it seems to me, what they need are tools to help them connect, or link, with people in their own states first. and india later. should policy, in areas like education for instance, be directed towards helping the most privileged sections (of educated migrants) of that 2%, at best, of india's total population? and i'm not even going to talk about the seasonal nature of a large proportion of all inter-state migration.

lack of an audience for poetry?

was reading this interesting discussion (thanks, space bar).

the clip i'd posted a couple of days ago- i'd been searching for it for about a year, i think. on etv urdu, especially on sunday evenings, you'd be shown mushairas held in places as remote as jagtial and jagdalpur. all the poets at the events would be covered, all the work they recite, sing, from their first sher to the last nazm, would be covered. who'd watch a program consisting entirely of poetry? people like me, in lakhs, through television. and people who actually are/were at the places were the mushairas are/were held. never less than a hundred, and often running to a few thousands. people, men and women, rich and poor, sitting, in the open most times, for hours, late into the night.

when i was younger, i'd often walk long distances on not-so-walkable city streets to a library or an auditorium where a kavi sammelanam was being held or a book of poetry was being released. at these sammelans, as at those mushairas telecast on etv, one might get to hear only a line or two of impressive verse. most of the poetry could be on well-trodden themes, not very smartly expressed, cliche-ridden. which means you go there expecting nothing more those one or two good lines. and nursing the hope that there'd be more than one or two.

indian poets writing in english are writing for a potential community that consists of english speaking peoples across the world, including india. even if you excluded the rest of the world, the number of people in india who have at least a basic understanding of the language would number more than the entire population of, say, australia (21 million) or new zealand (4 million). or australia and new zealand. so, why isn't there an audience, as some of the poets at the discussion feel, for indian english poetry- in india, especially? i do agree that the audience isn't there, but i don't see anyone exploring the question: why? because there is a tradition or culture, as i pointed out earlier, of appreciating poetry in india. the problem isn't, as someone at the discussion says: less the lack of an audience for Indian poetry but the lack of an audience for poetry in India.

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.

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]

elections 2009: the tamasha is on

centre for media studies estimates that around rs.10,000 crores would be spent in the next general elections, to be held in april-may 2009. that works out to roughly rs.18 cores per constituency. the central and state governments would be spending around 20% of that, according to cms. the contending aspirants would be spending rs.8,000 crores, roughly, (or rs. 15 crores in each constituency).

on an average, it is safe to assume i think, whoever wins ultimately would've spent at least rs.5-6 crore, say, (in each constituency) in reaching that goal? that assumption is built on the reasonable premise that most of the total expenditure in any constituency would be shared by not more than 2-3 major aspirants (from major, locally, parties). of the rs. 8,000 crores to be spent by the contestants, only around 2,000 crores, at best, would come from big party coffers. the rest, rs. 6,000 crores, would be spent by individual candidates. factoring in the party contributions, one would arrive at this final guesstimate: any candidate who's serious about winning in the next elections would've to invest rs. 4-6 crores, of his own or borrowed resources.

what would be the primary concern of a member of parliament who has invested, say, rs. 4-6 crores in his election?

his pay and allowances wouldn't help him pay back even a fraction of that investment. how significant an obligation would your vote be, in his mind, weighed against such a large investment that has to be recovered, with profit?

lok satta, which has been tracking elections in india for over a decade, and a few other pundits, say rs. 10,000 crores is a conservative estimate- a more realistic figure would range between 15,000-20,000 crores. and i agree with lok satta. in the light of this new estimate, one needs to revise the average expenditure of individual winners again:

what would be the primary concern of a member of parliament who has invested, say, rs. 6-12 crores in his election?

i have a feeling it wouldn't probably be you, dear voter.

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].

india smoking

in the back of an auto-rickshaw moving in jerks in every direction, trying with every jerk to find a 3 ft wide breach in the here and now, i suddenly notice this little advertising sign (of a new magazine/newspaper). it says, in telugu:

tomorrow, outsiders will queue up for work permits in india. you'll be the witness.

that almost jerked me out of my getaway vehicle. i look around and check what's changed: i still see people, cars, autos, buses, bicycles, motorcycles, people- all moving in all directions to get out of this..here and now. and the u.s. consulate will start its operations in hyderabad in a few months.

there's another child..and another

there was this kid next door. i never saw him, but i knew he was there because one could hear his mother yelling at him once in a while. more during what's called the exams season. one day, last year, he hanged himself (i learnt that later, from another neighbour). i still hear the mother, once in a while. she has another child.

the movie taare zameen par has become so popular, i guess more kids would be named ishaan now. and more parents would send their kids to boarding schools that promise to offer special treatment.

race and caste

While trying to blog on connections between Dalit struggles and people of color struggles in the U.S. one thing that struck me was the similarities of caste and whiteness; specifically on not seeing one’s own privilege as an upper caste Hindu or as a white person. One thing whites have done in America is try to co-opt movements from people of color and try to make them their own or try to co-opt them by trying to enfold certain leaders from communities of color into the mainstream political fold so only cosmetic changes are done and no real change happens. [...] So too for the Congress Party of India, which for a long time was really the only political party that had control of the Indian government. While Gandhi and the Congress Party claimed to represent the interests of India and to be for all Indians in reality the Congress Party was actually run by upper caste men; while, even though many of whom were more “liberal” minded when it came to religion, they still enjoyed the benefits of caste.

in the second post in 'the spotlight series' on blogbharti, jack stephens of the mustard seed, looks at the similarities between the struggles of the lower castes in india and the people of color in the united states.

why most indian states should seriously think of seceding from india

THE Green revolution from the late sixties onwards, owing to its markedly greater success in Northern and North western India compared to other parts of the country, had led to increase in the regional concentration of foodgrains output, to a degree of which few are aware. Over a decade ago we had worked out the changing structure of the various regions' contribution to aggregate food output in India for the period 1960-61 to 1987-88 and presented the summarised data in the form of snapshots of three sub-periods, in Table 1. This shows a marked, indeed dramatic shift. Total food output in the regions considered rose by 82 per cent from the early sixties to the mid-eighties. Accounting for just around a quarter (26 per cent) of total food output during 1959-60 to 1961-62 (taking the average of the three years), North and North-Western India had increased its share to two-fifths (39.8 per cent) by the mid-eighties, taking the triennial average for 1983-84 to 1985-86. All other regions of India showed a greater or lesser decline: Eastern India from 23.2 per cent to 20.2 per cent, South India from 21.5 per cent to to 17 per cent and West-central India from 29.1 per cent to 23.1 per cent. Of the addition to grain output during this period, which was 65 million tonnes, nearly 37 million tonnes or over half came came from North India alone.

read ms.utsa patnaik's glib explanation of how this severely distorted growth has been good for india- read and understand that the grotesque edifice of food security in india has been built and rests on growth in a few states in the north and north-west and the concomitant decline in food production across the majority of states! food security at the national level sorely depends on food insecurity in most of the states!

and that is exactly the point i've been trying to make in this series [ (1), (2) and (3) ] of posts. i'd outlined how difficult it is for most indian states to think of producing enough food for all the residents living in any given state. it's not possible because a) the country already produces enough food for everyone, and b) the government distributes surpluses from a few states in all the deficit states so that the total market for local farmers in any given state stands diminished. why should farmers use 100% of the resources at their disposal to produce enough food for 80-90% of the consumption needs in any particular state? any producer would produce only as much as his market demands- in deficit states in india, the government of india ensures that the deficit (5-70% of total consumption needs, across various states) is bridged by bringing in surplus grain from punjab and a couple of other states. so where can the farmers in that state sell their produce if they produce enough for 100% of the consumption needs in that particular state? they can't a) sell in their own state all their produce because the grain sold through the pds takes away 5-70% of their market- their produce can't compete with pds grain on price, and b) they can't sell in other states, because of increased transactional costs, trade restrictions and because their grain, in all probability, would be costlier than grain from surplus states like punjab which have over the years achieved certain economies of scale (i shall touch upon these reasons again, later).

in the final analysis, what the governnment of india does in all the deficit states is to follow precisely the kind of ugly, neo-imperialist strategy that patnaik and sainath and many like them accuse the e.u., and the u.s., of adopting in most of the third world- dumping cheap, subsidized produce and driving the local farmers to suicide.

to survive, any food-deficit indian state needs to produce enough food for all the citizens in that state - it is also necessary for the overall development of the economy of that state that agriculture, and farmers, should be able to grow. that isn't possible for most indian states as long as they remain indian states.

older posts in this series: [1], [2], [3].