Death Toll More in Naxal Violence

+00002009-07-17T09:37:04+00:00312009bUTCFri, 17 Jul 2009 09:37:04 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (Governance, SFH)

police-maoist-ambush-attack_64391The Naxal extremists are posing more danger than other terrorists in the country. This long brewed violence is going unchecked in the some of the worst affected states like Chattisgarh. It is importat and urgent to check these merchants of death at the earliest to save the country from the worst crisis.

The Times of India writes (17 July 2009)

More than 3,800 people have lost their lives in naxal violence in the country in the past five years with the number of casualties

increasing every year since 2004.

The annual report of the home ministry for 2008-09, released this week, says that a total of 3,338 persons were killed in 7,806 incidents of naxal violence which took place in Chhattisgarh, Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Orissa, Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal and Karnataka from 2004 to 2008.

The total number of casualties increased to 3,823 till July 13 this year. This reflects home minister P Chidambaram’s grim assessment of the situation when he told the Rajya Sabha on Wednesday that the naxal threat was “underestimated” for many years.

The country witnessed the killing of 566 persons in naxal violence in 2004; 677 in 2005; 678 in 2006; 696 in 2007 and 721 in 2008. The year 2009 has so far reported the killings of 485 persons including 230 security personnel.

The annual report said the highest casualties during the period (2004-08) were in Chhattisgarh where a total of 1,250 people lost their lives in 2,654 incidents. The state saw 242 deaths last year, 369 deaths in 2007 and 388 in 2006. Naxal violence claimed 776 lives in Jharkhand, one of the worst affected states, in the last five years.

In 2008 alone, the state witnessed 207 deaths from 484 incidents of violence. Altogether, 452 people lost their lives in Bihar in 915 incidents in the last five years. Last year, there were 73 deaths in 164 incidents of naxal violence in Bihar while in 2007, 67 deaths in 135 incidents were reported.

Andhra Pradesh witnessed 420 deaths in 1,252 incidents in the last five years. There was less violence in the state last year — 46 deaths in 92 incidents — in comparison to 2005 when there were 208 deaths in 535 incidents, the home ministry report said.

The Maoist violence claimed 149 lives in Orissa in 291 incidents that took place between 2004 and 2008. Incidentally, 101 deaths had taken place in 2008 alone in 103 incidents.

While West Bengal witnessed 71 deaths in 115 incidents, there were 35 naxal related deaths in Uttar Pradesh and 18 deaths in Karnataka.

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Dangerous Use of Plastic Bags

+00002009-07-16T10:50:45+00:00312009bUTCThu, 16 Jul 2009 10:50:45 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (Ecology)

plasticConvenience and cost effectiveness of plastic bags are driving the society to the dangerous periphery. Despite hectic publicity against the use of plastic bags for common purposes there is decline of its use. All stakeholders should join with the government to stop the over use of plastic bags in every day lives.

The Times of India writes (16 July 2009)

Plastic is convenient. It is cheap, too. So plastic bags are ubiquitous in cities, towns and hill stations. From mega grocery store chains and retail outlets to pushcart vendors, eateries and restaurants, the plastic bag is the wonder solution to storage and cartage. Sadly it also kills hundreds of thousands of birds, whales, seals and turtles every year the world over. In India, discarded plastic bags choke not only drains leading to flooding in cities but cows, too. The animals eat leftover food-filled bags discarded on the roads, and suffer the consequences. Polythene bags are not biodegradable. In landfills, they leach toxic chemicals into the soil, contaminating groundwater. Polythene bags that are of less than 40-micron thickness are more harmful not only to the environment; as popular wraps for takeaway foods, they impact public health as well.

The issue at hand is to work out how we can reduce the risks with better usage and disposal methods as well as eventually replace plastic with safer options. A complete ban might not be the answer. Recycling is an option, and this could apply not only to recycling better quality plastic bags but also waste paper. The advantage of allowing bags that are more than 40 microns thick is that they have some economic value, and thus provide some incentive for recycling. Another option would be a plastic tax, which would lead to greater reuse of plastic as well as a shift towards more ecologically friendly packaging.

Reuse, reduce and recycle the three R’s of polythene use may be a popular mantra among schoolchildren, but we don’t take it seriously enough as adults. The throwaway culture is a major reason for increase in toxic garbage and sewage clogging. There are many alternatives to polythene bags. Encourage the use of jute bags and baskets that were used by shoppers before plastics. Use bags made of recycled paper, or else shopping trolleys and rucksacks or backpacks.

Bangladesh banned thin polythene bags in 2002 to solve the problem of blocked drains and flooding and it has worked. Delhi began with a ban early this year but the momentum seems to be petering out. Biodegradable polythene made of starch is another, less affordable option. A total ban on thin polythene bags coupled with practising the three R’s will help us take significant steps towards curbing the plastic menace.

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Ogling Obama at G8 Summit

+00002009-07-16T10:46:06+00:00312009bUTCThu, 16 Jul 2009 10:46:06 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (Uncategorized)

g-8-2009-imageOgling is common. But it is uncommon to catch on camera the heads of nations stareing at the beautiful women in the most powerful global summits. Barack Obama was clicked by the photo journalists when he was interestingly watching a beautiful young Brazilian delegate walking up for a photo session. Nicolas Sarkozy was giving sidelook.

Rupa Sengupta writes in The Times of India (15 July 2009)

Shock and horror! Obama’s been clicked ‘ogling’ at a Brazilian delegate at the G8 do. Not only is he likely to be branded a bad hubby-cum-daddy, his ratings as Prez may nosedive. His compatriots are big on family values. Unlike the Europeans, generally cool about real or perceived familial blots. Italy’s given a long rope to scandal-prone Berlusconi. The French don’t fulminate over First Lady Carla Bruni’s pin-ups. The British saw Lady Di take comfort outside a troubled marriage and not always be a focused mother. But she was People’s Princess, in life as in death.

We in India too don’t seem to think the personal choices, peccadilloes or parental lapses of public personages determine their professional calibre or lack of it. Gandhi did bold experiments with abstinence. Nehru had a soft spot for Edwina. Indira chose career over conjugal bliss. Single-status Vajpayee wasn’t grilled about his private life. Glamour people from Dharmendra to Javed Akhtar broke with biwi number one for second marriages. People’s reaction mostly was and is: so what?

Try telling that to Oprah Winfrey enthusiasts or Bush family fans, who believe daddy-do-no-wrong or, alternatively, it-all-goes-back-to-mommy. Wacko Jacko once lived up to his alias by dangling his baby from a balcony. Today, everyone forgives Michael Jackson that transgression. All because daughter Paris has crowned him the world’s best daddy. Her “i love him so” message came at a memorial concert, where the crowds were already making mega-use of their tear ducts thanks to the gigs of hold your sobs Lionel Ritchie and John Mayer.

Jackson’s alleged pajama parties with adolescents may finally be consigned to HIStory. With his child doing him the best (if belated) PR favour before a gaping global audience, he’s been posthumously redeemed. Fatherhood, duly certified, now overshadows his music, his brilliance as an entertainer or those hot moves that spawned legions of break-dancing copycats. For large sections in America, you can be singing sensation or pop president. How good you are at your job still depends on publicly swearing that you tuck your kids into bed and sing them a lullaby or two besides.

Hell, even Obama knows that. On the campaign trail, he’d neglected onerous bedtime-story-reading duties to his two girls. In White House, he felt they needed a written apology. No, he confessed in an epistolary tear-jerker, he hadn’t been a perfect daddy. Nor a model member of that greatest of all American institutions: the family-about-to-turn-First Family. But guess what? He took wife and wards on his “adventure” of running for Prez only because he wanted wonderful things “for every child in this nation”. Even Obama-baiters must have sighed over that presidential gem in a magazine appropriately called Parade. Obama wasn’t just papa to Sasha and Malia. He was Papa of the Nation.

If only Bill Clinton had thought of dashing off a paternal mea culpa to Chelsea way back when Bush Sr attacked his family values. Not that he didn’t have a post-presidency defence strategy. Who can forget the Clintons attending Sunday church like exemplary First Citizens? If anything, Obama got great tips from his Democratic predecessor at Oval Office, and we’re not just referring to his commissioning a mandatory First Puppy. Obama’s well-publicised romantic dates with spouse recall Bill and Hillary waltzing in Martha’s vineyard (with their ‘private’ clinch somehow making it to every tabloid cover in the country).

Monicagate was to make Bill, Hillary and Chelsea look more like the Simpsons than the Clintons. But Hillary’s blame-his-mother defence of her husband was a psychobabble that floored all. Bill, she revealed in 1999, was a victim of childhood scarring. His ma and grandma fought like she-cats in toddler Bill’s presence. So he turned philanderer in retaliation!

Question: Why is it that do-little daddies get second chances while monster-mommies don’t? Answer: Britney Spears the story goes had her babies substitute gum-chewing for teeth-brushing. And that made rapper-hubby Kevin Federline seem the epitome of parental solicitude. What a no-brainer.

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Infighting in CPI(M)

+00002009-07-16T10:18:10+00:00312009bUTCThu, 16 Jul 2009 10:18:10 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (Politics)

achuthanandan_pinayari248The ideological and practical confusions among the Indian communists have completely isolated them from the masses. The just concluded Lok Sabha election had proved that the people have rejected them electorally and given the Left body blow by giving them historically lowest tally in the Lower house. The infighting and dubious handling by the politiburo by sideing with the culprits is going to erode the communists forever from the Indian political scene.

The Times of India writes (15 July 2009)

These are not the best of times for the CPM. Its parliamentary strength is at the lowest since the party’s formation in 1964. The leadership is  divided over the factors that led to the massive defeat in the 2009 polls and the remedial actions needed to regain the confidence of voters. The confusion at the top has manifested itself in the ad hoc measures taken by the party’s central leadership to address factionalism within its Kerala unit.

The fight between two groups, one headed by the state party secretary, Pinarayi Vijayan, and the other by the chief minister, V S Achuthanandan, has paralysed administration in the state and contributed to the Left Front’s defeat in the Lok Sabha polls. However, the steps announced by the CPM central leadership are unlikely to improve matters within the party or in the state administration. This week, the CPM, after an unusual two-day session to discuss factionalism in Kerala, chose to expel VS, a founding leader of the organisation, from the party’s highest decision-making body, the politburo. However, Vijayan has been allowed to continue as state chief even though he faces a CBI case over his alleged role in the multi-crore SNC Lavalin corruption case. A truce between the two factions seems unlikely, which will be a drag on governance.

It is strange that a party should penalise a member but want him to head its government. It is equally rare for the CPM, which emphasises probity in public office, to defend a leader facing corruption charges at the risk of dividing the party and alienating sympathisers. The only possible explanation is the Machiavellian logic that while VS is relatively more popular than Vijayan, the latter has control of the party. That the CPM leadership prejudged the case against Vijayan and gave him a clean chit has complicated matters. The party failed to convincingly argue its position and defend its leader without obstructing the investigation. It lost credibility over the Lavalin controversy and that was a major factor in its electoral loss. Now, the party leadership finds it awkward even to ask Vijayan to step down till the case is concluded.

By so blatantly favouring one faction, whose leader is an accused in a corruption case, the party’s central leadership has gone against its own interests. While the Left’s withdrawal of support from the UPA government was packaged as an act of morality and ideological purity, it will be hard to maintain that appearance in the face of the expulsion of VS. Prakash Karat, general secretary of the CPM, was the key mover behind both those decisions. His authority is bound to be eroded when the party comes face to face with their consequences

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India – Hillary Clinton’s Darling

+00002009-07-14T12:34:11+00:00312009bUTCTue, 14 Jul 2009 12:34:11 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (Uncategorized)
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okrishna%20radhillaryThe Clintons have a natural affinity with India for the past one and half decades. Induced by the Indian diaspora they were pushing for India than China or Pakistan. Now Hillary in the helm of state affairs India should get preferential treament in trade, technology and diplomatic matters.

K. Subramanhyam writes in The Times of India (14 July 2009)

In the last 62 years of India-US relations, no US secretary of state had credentials anywhere comparable to Hillary Clinton’s in the matter of promoting the bilateral partnership. As senator, she co-founded and co-chaired the India caucus. She has visited India more than once. She has a constituency among Indian-Americans, most of whom supported, electorally and financially, her candidacy for the Democratic presidential nomination.

In Washington on June 17, Clinton addressed the US-India business council meeting, setting out the agenda for her India visit and for India-US relations in general under the Obama administration. She intends to build stage III of the relationship, with India as a key partner helping America shape the 21st century. The earlier two stages were, according to her, the Cold War years and the post-Cold War period up to the end of the Bush administration and the India-US nuclear deal. She proposes to build ties on four natural platforms: global security, human development, economic activity and science and technology.

Recent security-related developments are likely to dominate her interaction with the Indian leadership. Pakistani president Asif Zardari has admitted that “militants and extremists were created and nurtured in the country as a policy to achieve some short-term political objectives”. There are reports of the Pakistani army and ISI offering to bring the Afghan Taliban to the negotiating table with the US provided the latter ensures that India’s involvement in Afghanistan is reduced. Both disclosures validate India’s assessment that the Taliban obtained safe haven in Pakistan with the full connivance of the army, which made jihadi groups its instruments.

In his Af-Pak strategy, Barack Obama termed the al-Qaeda, its extremist allies and the Taliban as enemies to be defeated. Urged to fight them, Pakistan had its army launch campaigns against Pakistani Taliban groups in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas but not against Afghan Taliban functioning from Quetta or jihadi groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba or Jaish-e-Mohammed, allied to al-Qaeda. The Lahore high court in the Hafiz Saeed case held that Pakistan’s security and anti-terrorism laws were silent on al-Qaeda being a terrorist organisation. Despite al-Qaeda’s outlawing by the UN seven years ago, this remains the position in a country claiming to be a frontline state in the war against terrorism.

Clinton in her speech said terrorism was a “common threat” to be met “with a common strategy”. Indian investment of $1.2 billion in infrastructure projects in Afghanistan is part of the nation-building efforts common to the anti-Taliban campaign. Pakistan wants India’s participation discontinued. An undeveloped Afghanistan will be vulnerable to a takeover by a Taliban that’s able to survive by negotiating the exit of the US-led coalition forces.
Pakistan is offering to arrange this, and interest has been expressed in some quarters in America on talking with some Taliban elements. There is a strong, well-reasoned rebuttal of that approach in Ashley Tellis’s paper, Reconciling with Taliban.

Pakistan’s approach to al-Qaeda and its extremist allies and the Afghan Taliban, as well as its fears about India’s presence in Afghanistan will be core issues for Clinton in New Delhi. The outcome of discussions will be a litmus test of whether the US and India can develop a common strategy against extremist forces.

The second aspect of global security will be Obama’s commitment to promoting nuclear disarmament. Clinton has called for work to realise the vision articulated by generations of Indians and Americans. The two countries have some basic differences in approach. The US approach is to accept the role of nuclear weapons and move towards the distant goal of disarmament through the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and arms reduction and control measures. Obama accepts that a nuclear weapons-free world may not be achieved in his lifetime.

India’s approach is to start with delegitimisation of nuclear arms and their role as a currency of power, and to move towards elimination. Chemical weapons are an example of delegitimisation leading to elimination. There is no instance of the restricted cartelisation of nuclear weapons as represented by the NPT leading to total elimination. While the non-proliferation regime needs to be sustained, arms reduction and control will have to be founded on delegitimisation. There is a lot of scope for exchange of ideas between the two countries. Perhaps a joint task force may be considered to reconcile viewpoints.

The remaining issues are less contentious. The global economic crisis is likely to lead to a new world order where the US must review its strategy to sustain its position as the world’s pre-eminent economic, technological and military power. It will need strategic partners. As Clinton said, India could be one of the key partners as a democracy and an English-speaking country, with the Indian diaspora playing a bridging role. But neither side is used to dealing with partners. America has worked with allies depending on it for their security. India has been isolationist under the non-alignment rubric. Both have to learn mutual give-and-take and the emerging world order may well create conditions compelling them to explore a meaningful partnership.

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Towards Universal Nuclear Disarmament

+00002009-07-14T12:01:26+00:00312009bUTCTue, 14 Jul 2009 12:01:26 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (SFH, world affairs)

NuclearDisarmamentUniversal nuclear disarmament is urgently needed to ensure peace and prosperity of the world. If the current generation of the world leaders are giving good life for the present and future generations nuclear disarmament should be immediately enforced.
President Barack Obama has created optimism about the future of nuclear disarmament by calling for a “reset” in relations with Russia, which would
 
include significant cuts in the size of the nuclear arsenals that both nations possess. The Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty between the US and Russia is due to expire in December this year. While this treaty allows both sides to possess up to 2,200 warheads and 1,600 delivery vehicles, Obama would like to see these figures whittled down to 1,500 warheads carried on 500 to 1,000 delivery vehicles. Even more interestingly, Obama has set out a vision for a world rid entirely of nuclear weapons.

During the Cold War the US and the USSR armed themselves to the teeth with nuclear forces on hair-trigger alert, provoking the nightmare spectre of a threat to humanity’s existence itself in case of a nuclear exchange between the two superpowers. With the end of the Cold War, mutually assured destruction mutated into a new kind of threat. Nuclear weapons became a currency of power and nations became determined to acquire them. This enhances the possibility of leakages to non-state actors, whether by design or accident. Nuclear bombs, in fact, could become the ultimate terrorist weapon of blackmail.

Responding to this new situation, even former nuclear hawks such as Henry Kissinger have been calling for universal nuclear disarmament as a means of warding off the threat of nuclear proliferation. It’s an idea that Rajiv Gandhi also mooted in a speech to the UN General Assembly in June 1988. The thing about disarmament, though, is that it has to be mutually coordinated across nations. India, for example, cannot unilaterally disarm if Pakistan and China retain their nuclear weapons.

Although climate change is more on the global agenda nowadays, nuclear disarmament poses similar issues. Acting on either would require many nations undertaking simultaneous actions. Yet ignoring them can have catastrophic consequences not limited by national boundaries. In both senses they are global issues which require, among other things, consciousness-raising by media across the world. In May 2009, The Times of India Online received the highest number of hits among English newspaper websites in the world, placing it much ahead of The New York Times or The Sun. Moreover it’s a brand with global reach, as 65 per cent of TOI Online’s readers come from outside India. This newspaper can, and will, play its role in alerting people across the world to the dangers posed by nuclear proliferation and ways in which the spread of such weaponry can be reversed.

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Divorces in Britain

+00002009-07-14T11:45:55+00:00312009bUTCTue, 14 Jul 2009 11:45:55 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (society)

PD*27572655The western world is crippling with the collapse of family values and systems for a very long time. As a belated measure the Government of Britain has taken some steps to check alarming divorce rates. Yes it should implement reapproachment period of three to six months between couples in stress. This can cool off their short tempers and haste decision to go for divorces.

The Times of India reports 14 July 2009)

If Britain’s Conservatives have their way, estranged husbands and wives would have to think twice literally before saying goodbye. A Tory-backed

Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) think tank report says couples wanting to separate should undergo a three-month “cooling off” period before kickstarting divorce proceedings. According to ex-Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, most people today forget that compromise is the secret of conjugal bliss. Ergo, many marriages could be saved if only warring spouses were made by law to reflect upon the decision to call it quits.

Social concern over marital discord is understandable, especially when the decisions of adults affect children. There may also be issues about property or alimony that heighten the bitterness of parting. However, the problem with the Tories’ contention is the moral judgement that it appears to pass on divorce-seekers. Couples may have genuine irreconcilable differences. A compulsory ‘cool off’ delay may only prolong their pain of cohabitation. Conversely, if estranged spouses want to kiss and make up, they’ll do so anyway. Reconciliation can’t be brought about by government fiat. Surely, it’s best left to couples to decide whether they want to “cool off” or approach the courts.

The report declares: “Marriage is of paramount importance to individuals, children and our nation.” Such a statement can have authoritarian implications. It seems to view the stable, conformist family “holy matrimony” as the microcosmic reflection of the “nation”, which history has shown can often be dangerously conflated with a self-perpetuating political regime.
In any democracy, it’s individuals who are “paramount”, and all institutions built on the foundation of their free choices. Modern marriage is no exception, more so since it involves human relationships that are dynamic in nature. If couples part by mutual consent, it’s their affair. If divorce is not mutually willed or involves child custody and property disputes, the courts can step in. Politicians, surely, should have no business telling private citizens how to go about taking important personal decisions.

The proposal to implement a mandatory ‘cool off’ period of three months before divorce proceedings can begin is a perfectly good idea. It’s based on

the valid insight that people may rush into decisions in the heat of anger. If couples are just given enough time to re-examine their situations, they may reconsider divorce as an option.

Divorce in England and Wales is currently granted on the basis of the irretrievable breakdown of marriage, on one of five grounds adultery, unreasonable behaviour, desertion, two years’ separation with consent, or five years’ separation without consent. Several of these grounds also apply to divorce in India. Nowadays we hear about people getting divorced for the most ridiculous of reasons. They may have been able to work out the issues between them had they been given enough time to understand the enormity of their actions.

In recent times, divorce rates across the world have increased alarmingly, thus threatening the family unit on which human civilisation is predicated. Children, usually innocent bystanders in case of fights between couples, may suffer the most. It is, therefore, quite acceptable for the state to intervene and create laws that would discourage people from divorcing. Divorce should be the last option for a couple, something they consider in the worst-case scenario. It shouldn’t be an easy way out when things get a little tough. Marriage is hard work and requires compromise from both parties. But a couple is unlikely to work on their relationship if they know that they can get a quick and easy divorce at the first sign of trouble.

This proposed three-month period would offer feuding couples a chance to take time off. They could re-evaluate their decision and consider the impact it would have on their children, if any. It is important that the state give every encouragement to the traditional family unit that has proven to be the building block of society. If we allow it to fall by the wayside for the sake of convenience, we will be looking at a vastly different future than the one envisaged for later generations.

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Speed up cold storages and warehouses

+00002009-07-14T11:30:10+00:00312009bUTCTue, 14 Jul 2009 11:30:10 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (Governance)

warehouse-storageFailing to store perishable goods like fruits and vegetables are costing millions of rupees daily. If there is adequate cold storage facilities and warehousing this can be easily avoided and maximum profit can be given to the producers.

The Times of India editorial writes (13 July 2009)

It’s estimated that nearly 40 per cent of the country’s fruits and vegetables are wasted while moving from farms to retail outlets. That a

developing nation grappling with poverty, hunger and malnutrition should waste so much fresh produce is obscene. Improved post-harvest technologies especially storage and transportation facilities are a must for a nation that’s the world’s second largest producer of fruits and vegetables and where agriculture and allied activities account for around 17 per cent of GDP.

It’s good that Budget 2009-10 promised investment-linked tax incentives in order to attract private funds in the cold chain and warehousing sector. More so, since existing profit-linked tax breaks to which investors are entitled don’t seem to have worked magic so far. In theory, sector-specific tax incentives risk distorting efficient resource use. But, given the woeful inadequacy of cold chain and storage infrastructure, public policy has to make some practical concessions to a critical sector of the economy.
Increasing the shelf life of perishables is key to supply mechanisms whether we talk of fruits, vegetables, milk and milk products, meat and meat products or processed foods. To create a cross-country network of godowns and integrated cold chains, capacity building is required in farms, food processing units, refrigerated storage and distribution hubs as well as retail outlets, apart from temperature-controlled transportation.

All of this represents capital-intensive infrastructure. However, while industry has welcomed the investment-linked tax sops, these may not be sufficient. There should be a multi-pronged strategy to raising resources, in light of the huge growth potential of organised retail in India. It would make sense to relax rules on FDI in multibrand retail. Along with big domestic firms, several multinationals are keen to enter the field. That supermarket chains, foreign or home-grown, can boost farmers’ income by eliminating middlemen isn’t their only advantage. Getting greater numbers of organised sector players into farm-to-fork retail would automatically boost business stakes in improving the infrastructural logistics of the rural farm and non-farm sectors.

We also need a holistic look at related infrastructural shortcomings. Investors may baulk at pouring money into a sector where returns could depend on factors beyond their control. Electricity, for instance, is the lifeline of cold storage. If ensuring uninterrupted supply meant resorting to power backups, it would hike operational costs. Movement of goods also demands good roads and highways. Finally, a common market as sought to be created by the goods and services tax regime would spur demand for cold chain and storage facilities. That, needless to say, would have to be combined with an overhaul of our creaking agricultural marketing infrastructure

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A Different Tale About NREGA

+00002009-07-12T20:14:15+00:00312009bUTCSun, 12 Jul 2009 20:14:15 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (UPA goverment)

nrega1Good intentions may not turn out be good outcome. This is mostly true in government sponsored programmes. The rural employment guarantee scheme NREGA has cheer leaders and doomsayers. But definitely this scheme is not cent percent success. On the other hand it can be abandoned as it provides little cooling effect to the rural folks who are suffering from the heat of poverty and unemployment. Now it is up to the state governments and local administration to make effective use of the scheme to help the poor. This scheme should be implemented in the lean agricultural season. during peak harvest season if this is carried out, agriculture will suffer as the labourers prefer to go to NREGA scheme as this is no work pay method.

Shankar Raghuraman writes in The Times of India (12 July 2009)
The National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) is seen by those who pushed most vigorously for its enactment as a piece of legislation that can

potentially transform the picture of rural poverty. It is not difficult to understand why this perception should exist.

The Act guarantees at least 100 days of employment as unskilled labour to at least one adult member of any rural household that registers for employment under it. Finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has promised in his budget speech that the real wage rate paid under NREGA will be Rs 100 per day. Put those two things together and what it amounts to is that if the Act is perfectly implemented, any rural household availing of the scheme should be able to earn at least Rs 10,000 a year from it.

The rural poverty line, which is now in the region of Rs 400 per capita per day, means that an average household that is below the poverty line (BPL) will have an income of something in the range of Rs 24,000 per annum or less, assuming a five-member household.

In other words, if a BPL family were to get the full promised benefit of NREGA they could earn the equivalent of more than 40% of their annual income from this one scheme alone. That should be enough to see why NREGA should not be seen as just another of the plethora of poverty alleviation schemes that India has had since Independence.

But how much of this potential has actually been realized? Data for the three years during which NREGA has been in operation, 2006-07, 2007-08 and 2008-09 shows that on average only 50% of the households that registered under the scheme actually got employment. Further, the average number of days each household got employment was only 45 against the promised 100. In short, at best a quarter of what was promised has been delivered. It’s a beginning but a long way from meeting the objective.

What’s more, the all-India figures do not reveal the true picture. The reality is that there is a wide variation of performance across states. In terms of the percentage of registered households provided work, Maharashtra has averaged an abysmal 13% over the three years while Rajasthan at the other end of the spectrum has averaged 73%.

In terms of the average number of person-days of employment per household too, the variation is quite wide — from 22 in West Bengal to 79 in Rajasthan. If we take both parameters together, states like Rajasthan, Chhattisgarh and Assam are above the national average, others like Gujarat, West Bengal, Bihar, Karnataka and Kerala are below the average on both counts and most others have performed well on one of the two counts but not so well on the other.

The average wage rate paid is now a touch over Rs 85, but again that varies from around Rs 70 per person per day in states like Gujarat and Meghalaya to double that amount in Haryana. For many states including Uttar Pradesh, therefore, the promise of Rs 100 per day will not add anything to what is available. Nevertheless, the fact that the government is willing to stipulate a minimum floor across the country rather than leaving it to minimum wage criteria in the states is a welcome development.

What the disaggregated picture shows, thus, is that there is considerable scope for improving the implementation of the scheme, more so in some states. Making the NREGA work well could become particularly crucial in the current year if the apprehensions about drought in some areas turn out to be well-founded.

A study of the seasonal pattern in the demand for work under NREGA shows that the July-October period is the lean season while May-June is the peak period. While there may be other factors, the monsoon and the kharif crop would seem to have a major role to play in providing farm employment opportunities during this period and hence reducing the demand for employment under NREGA.

A drought could change that and raise the demand for work during these lean months. Will the system be able to cope with that increased demand? Finding the money to fund it is the relatively easy part. Streamlining the delivery mechanism might be much tougher.

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No discrimination in the branches of education

+00002009-07-12T20:03:03+00:00312009bUTCSun, 12 Jul 2009 20:03:03 +0000 2, 2008 at 7.27 p07 (Education)

humanitiesThe government keep on tossing students. Education is the first target for any frustrated politicians. It is high time the nation takes a holistic view of education without discriminating between professional and humanities courses.

Shahid Amin writes in The Times of India (11 July 2009)

Education in India appears to be in for a major revamp. There is a certain urgency to getting things right this time. Imparting of knowledge, skill, expertise, all these need to be of high order but without bypassing the aam aadmi. A balance between quality and a level playing field has to be ensured. The government must pump in more resources, but also make investment in education by private players attractive. All this seems propelled by two considerations: first, to try and meet the abysmal shortage of engineers, doctors, educators which India faces and, second, to climb up the ladder of educational success on the world scale. We get dejected by the fact that none of our IITs figure anywhere near the top, or even the middle, of international listings.

Most such listings are biased in favour of cataloguing academic output across universities in the sciences. One may be forgiven for thinking that the blips figuring most prominently on the radars of our educational CEOs are the sciences, law, medicine and management. This is not to denigrate the importance of these disciplines, but only to underscore the appalling lack of any fresh thinking on the role of the humanities in the fashioning of the India of tomorrow.

The feeling that universities must relate to the market instead of functioning largely in the realm of ideas often leads to certain oversights. First, the best universities in Europe and the US continue to have programmes in the core areas of the humanities and social sciences: their remit is to train well-rounded undergraduates, not single-minded, monochromatic specialists. This attention to ‘universals’ distinguishes premier universities like Oxford and Harvard from polytechnics and other institutions offering only professional courses. Lest we forget, the emphasis put in independent India on strengthening core humanities and social science disciplines (economics, history, sociology, political science, literature) has contributed its part to the development of a vigorous civil society.

An absence of democratic governance in several parts of the world has often gone hand in hand with an excessive emphasis on the technical and the professional in education, to the relative neglect of the humanistic and the social scientific. It would be suicidal for India to forsake the nurturing of these critical components. The upsurge of the marginalised requires that apart from making them employable, we also invest resources in understanding our society’s past and present. Electoral analysis cannot be a substitute for understanding the ‘politics of the governed’ in its wider social, cultural and economic dimensions.

We hear about the contribution of Indians worldwide in medicine, management and the sciences. What has gone unnoticed is the large number of prestigious positions occupied by our social scientists and humanists in some top universities the world over. Our achievement in these fields has been considerable. We need to invest in innovative programmes in these very areas. To take one example, there has been a singular lack of attention to classical and pre-modern languages and scripts in higher education. Sanskrit and Persian language and literature are taught in a large number of universities. But in most instances, their teaching has little interaction with those studying ancient and medieval Indian history. Till 50 years ago there was an essential language requirement for those studying pre-modern India. The average history researcher today is largely innocent of any language other than English and her mother tongue. This has created a piquant situation: there are very few scholars left who can meaningfully study a Sanskrit or Persian inscription.

The same holds for scripts. A good many older records and texts were written in scripts different from those used today in some modern Indian languages. So Marathi had its specialised ‘modi’ script for revenue documents, Urdu had ’shikasta’, a kind of munshi’s short-hand, and Hindi in large parts of UP and Bihar was written in ‘kaithi’, the script of the scribes. Today, an average school-going child would not even know of their existence. Till the early 1950s, 15-year-olds routinely learnt how to recognise and partially decipher these scripts in India’s different linguistic zones. The progress of modernity, which includes modernisation of scripts, has been largely responsible for their disappearance from the school curriculum.

This is not to suggest that we add to the school-satchel of our children by teaching them arcane ways of writing. But innovative programmes are required, where the learning of classical languages and pre-modern scripts as inputs for humanistic studies is actively encouraged. Let there be special scholarships for budding historians and social scientists for the learning of Sanskrit and Persian, so as to deghettoise these remarkable languages and bring them into the humanist mainstream. Similarly, we need specialised courses, where graduate students sit together with the limited number of experts that remain to study pre-modern scripts such as ’shikasta’ and ‘kaithi’, ‘modi’ and ‘mahajani’. Otherwise, we may soon have to rely on scholars from abroad to come and read our pre-modern texts and pasts for us!

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