Everybody loves a good drought, page 34
This has been true of development, Indian style, for over four decades now. Central to its philosophy is the idea that we can somehow avoid the big moves, the painful ones, the reforms that Indian society really needs. Is there some way we can improve people’s lives without getting into annoying things like land reform? There isn’t, but there are powerful people who’d like to believe there is.
The same illusion runs through what we call our ‘globalisation’. It has the Indian elite excited. ‘We must globalise. There is no choice. Everybody else is doing it. Look at Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Taiwan, South Korea.’
Of course, ‘everyone’ who is doing it, did a lot of other things. All those countries—if you must take authoritarian states as a model—went through land reform. They gave their people literacy and education, as also some standards of health, shelter, nutrition. Point this out—and the Indian elite discover our ‘cultural uniqueness’. The same is true of child labour. Dozens of other societies got rid of it. But ‘India is different’. So India’s uniqueness does not stand in the way of globalisation. It stands in the way of land reform, education, health. It does not prevent external agencies making policies for India on a wide range of subjects. It does stand in the way of doing away with child labour.
The Indian development experience reeks of this sort of hypocrisy across its four and a half decades. Ignore the big issues long enough, and you can finally dismiss them as ‘outdated’. Nobody will really bother.
People, however, do bother. The issues of land, forest and water resources remain fundamental to real development. The poor are acutely aware of this. After all, 85 per cent of the Indian poor are either landless agricultural labourers or small and marginal farmers. They know where it hurts. Real development would mean more than just letting them know the plans of the elite. It would mean their involvement in the decisions for all development, especially their own.
Let’s say we hold a seminar on medical issues. To this, we invite not a single doctor, nurse, patient or medical expert. A lot of people would consider that odd. And rightly so. The many symposia and conferences where land reform gets rubbished are likewise odd. They never have a single landless labourer to state his or her case. To the elite that is perfectly natural. Isn’t India unique, after all?
There isn’t a single migrant worker among millions who would not tell you how crucial the land issue is. But what do they know anyway? They didn’t go to the right schools and are not part of the old boy network. Land reform has taken place within our own country. The bulk of it in just four states. If it could take place in Jammu and Kashmir—apart from the familiar examples of Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura—it is surely possible elsewhere in the nation?
Take the country as a whole and you get a different picture. Just a little over one per cent of total cultivable area has been redistributed. That is, of 455 million acres, only 4.5 million have been distributed among the poor. The eighth plan says about 2.6 million acres ‘are still to be distributed’. Even if this were done, that would still come to about two per cent of total cultivable land in India. There are other ways of going about it. But let’s not hear those old stories again, shall we?
A profoundly undemocratic streak runs through India’s development process. Exclusion doesn’t end at the symposia. Peasants are excluded from land issues in real life too. Villagers are increasingly robbed of control over water and other community resources. Tribes are being more and more cut off from the forests. Yet, elite vision holds the poor and their experiences in contempt.
Real development would involve the transformation of the human state to a higher level of being and living. Almost all versions of development accept that. However, such a transformation must have the participation and consent of those affected by it. Their involvement in the decision-making process. And the intrusion on their environment, culture, livelihood and tradition by that process should be minimal.
But that sounds too much like work. So you can have a play staged and enacted with all the main actors sitting in the audience—if they are around at all. If reality smells, rewrite the script. Take the current champions of ‘change’. Those shouting loudest about change among the elite are the very people who ran this country for over forty years. If it is in a mess, they had much to do with it.
The most amusing side to what passes for a debate on the economy is not so much the change but the amazing continuity of so many elements. Sure, June 1991 represents a major leap in some ways. But it was not one in a more progressive direction. A Narasimha Rao and a Manmohan Singh are quintessential representatives of the old order they want to ‘change’. They were party to, even authors of, some of the policies of the past that are now in disgrace. Oddly, the adversarial’ media see no irony in this.
If ‘change’ is to come, those who seek to author it must have credibility. And that, a credibility of record. Not one invented by a media chorus that has no link at all to what hundreds of millions of Indians are thinking. This growing disconnect of the ‘mass’ media from mass reality is getting worse.
The unfinished agenda
The rituals, of course, are always observed. Editorials on the economy end, after much celebration of policy, on a mandatory note of ‘concern’ for the poor. Most discussions in elite fora on the economy go the same way. The intellectuals, the economists, the bureaucrats, policy makers, all agree on one thing. Something must be done about poverty. Everyone agrees that ‘not enough is being done’.
Many speak with passion to insist that ‘both’ things must go together. That is, poverty reduction on the one hand. And economic reforms (or what the elite see as reforms) and growth on the other. So, in theory, there is always this two-part agenda. It makes all participants in the debate feel good. Progress is being made. The reforms are fine. But ‘something must be done about poverty’.
Poverty, education health … these make up the unfinished agenda’. The discussion ended, the participants go back to what they’re really working on. That is, part two of the agenda. Because part one is a sham. But it makes you feel good, doesn’t it?
One example of the commitment of the former Narasimha Rao government to fighting poverty came in March 1995. That month, it announced the formation of several new departments in key ministries to tackle poverty on a war footing. This was on the front pages of most newspapers on March 9. The official notification made curious reading but the press missed out on it.
The first responsibility listed in it for the new department of food was: ‘Participation in international conferences and other bodies concerning food …’ The second? ‘Entering into treaties and agreements with foreign countries …’ Those priorities tell us so much, it seems pointless to repeat the rest.
There are more poor in India today than was the population of the country in 1947. Yet, the government celebrates the swift decline of poverty. A good part of the media have joined it in this. Never mind that at Copenhagen we said 39.9 per cent of the population were below the poverty line. That was to make some money from donors. Look at it now, 19 per cent!
If we were to define a sleeping bag as a house, India would move swiftly towards ending her housing shortage. A shortage of nearly thirty-one million units. Accept this definition, and you could go in for mass production of sleeping bags. We could then have passionate debates about the drastic reduction in the magnitude of the housing problem. The cover stories could run headlines: ‘Is it for real?’ And straps: ‘Sounds too good to be true, but it is.’
The government could boast that it had not only stepped up production of sleeping bags but had piled up an all-time record surplus of them. Say, thirty-seven million. Conservatives could argue that we were doing so well, the time had come to export sleeping bags, at ‘world prices’. The bleeding hearts could moan that sleeping bags had not reached the poorest. Investigative muckrakers could scrutinise the contracts given to manufacturers. Were the bags overpriced? Were they of good quality?
That ends the housing shortage. There’s only one problem. Those without houses at the start of the programme will still be without houses at the end of it. (True, some of them will have sleeping bags, probably at world prices.)
If all this sounds insane, that’s only because it is. Yet, what passes for a debate on poverty in this country is not very different. There’s a point beyond which the numbers game—based on present definitions—gets as crazy as the sleeping bag argument.
An understanding of poverty anchored in the calorie norm serves us about as well. But these basics are seldom questioned by the non-poor. So it is only natural that the latest inanity of the Planning Commission should receive so much attention. That is, its claim that the number of people below the poverty line had fallen dramatically, from 25.5 per cent in 1987-88 to 19 per cent in 1993-94. (A note on the official poverty line and how it is arrived at is given in Appendix 1.)
One of the newspaper stories on this appeared several days before the Planning Commission ‘unveiled’ its new figures in January 1996. It said poverty had ‘dropped sharply to the lowest levels ever’. It sourced this finding to ‘highly placed government officials’.
There you have a flavour of the poverty debate. The ‘sharp’ drop in poverty is something to be revealed by ‘highly placed officials’. Such modesty, too. It’s like Einstein not wanting to be credited publicly with the Theory of Relativity. Not yet, anyway. Is poverty a state secret? One that can only be revealed by highly placed official sources?
The Commission arrived at its new estimates by throwing out the suggestions of its own expert group. Their report, in 1993, placed the number of poor at 39 per cent of the population. Even if we accept the old discredited methods the Commission now wants to use, it does not show a decline in poverty in the years of the economic ‘reforms’. Quite the contrary. The most conventional of methods still show that while rural poverty declined in the ’80s, it rose steeply in just the first eighteen months of the ‘reforms’ alone. The Commission’s own mid-term appraisal (MTA) of the reforms makes interesting reading.
But let’s leave sleeping bags lie.
It is crucial to understand this about the landless agricultural workers and marginal farmers who make up 85 per cent of India’s poor: they are net purchasers of foodgrain. Hikes in grain prices hit them very badly. Inflation is strongly linked to food prices. So its impact on these sections is always worse.
For instance, urban middle class professionals spend much less of their incomes on food than, say, industrial workers. Both spend less on food than landless labourers and small farmers. So when food prices go up, those spending more on it are hit. Industrial workers suffer, but agricultural labourers have it worst.
Millions are eating less. How does that constitute a reform? The availability of foodgrain per person in this country has declined. Per capita daily net availability of cereals and pulses fell from 510 gm in 1991 to 461 gm for 1995-96—the government’s own data show us that. Inflation has crushed agricultural labour. Their real wages have declined. But there’s a 37 million tonne surplus of foodgrain of which we can all be proud. The sleeping bag syndrome at its best.
The collapse of the PDS
The public distribution system (PDS) is in a state of advanced decay. Pointing to a slight rise in offtake in a few months of 1995 makes a poor joke. Over a four-year period, grain purchased through the PDS fell drastically. Why? The government raised issue prices by around 85 per cent in that time. This is unprecedented in the country’s post-independence history. So offtake from the PDS declined six million tonnes. This, in part, allows us to boast of our gigantic buffer stock.
Between March and June 1995, nineteen children belonging to poor tribal families in Dhule, Maharashtra, died of starvation. Not far from where the deaths occurred were godowns stocked to the roof with foodgrain. The families of the victims just could not access or afford that grain.
In 1992 Prime Minister Rao put in place the scheme called the Revamped Public Distribution System (RPDS). This was to be part of a ‘strictly targeted regime’. The PDS was wasteful. But this government would set that right. It chose 1,778 very backward blocks in the country for the RPDS. It would ‘target’ the poor on a special basis.
It did. It is precisely in the targeted blocks that starvation deaths have occurred in the past five years. In Thane, Dhule and Amravati districts (all in the rich state of Maharashtra). In Surguja district of Madhya Pradesh. In other RPDS blocks elsewhere.
In practice, RPDS simply meant selling grain in these blocks at around 50 paise less per kilogram than elsewhere. Since prices in even the regular PDS were hovering around Rs. 8 a kg, this did not help. In Surguja in 1994, the then district collector confirmed that people were getting employment for only around 125 days a year. How were they to afford these prices?
The upward revision of gram prices was never matched by rises in daily minimum wages. The current minimum wage in such zones varies from Rs. 20 to Rs. 22. In practice, poorly organised labourers don’t get much more than Rs. 15 or Rs. 16 per day.
In 1995, the man who had been the main expert on poverty in the Prime Minister’s Office, K.R. Venugopal, wrote in anguish that ‘the PDS and RPDS have become irrelevant …
The trauma of the rural poor has left the elite unmoved. Some even talk of exporting the grain at ‘world prices’. (The vast majority of Indian agriculturists are net buyers of grain.) Within the country, food prices have shot up. Who talks of ‘world prices’ for the labour of the Indian peasants or workers? So Indians face world prices, but will not get world class incomes. In short, globalisation of prices, Indianisation of incomes.
A mid-day meal scheme that works out to spending around 0.57 paise per meal per child. A housing programme that is a disaster. An approach to public health that has seen a huge resurgence of malaria, among other diseases. A ‘massive’ rural development budget of a little over Rs. 7,000 crore—that works out to roughly the subsidy on two major fertilisers (used mostly in ninety-five not-so-poor districts). That has been this government’s response to the ‘unfinished agenda’.
Again, many attitudes on view in this period go back some years. Among these, the attempt by governments to abdicate their duties towards citizens. The dilution of people’s rights did not begin with Narasimha Rao. (He can claim credit, though, for hastening the process.) Whether on child labour or in the field of education, the actions of successive Indian governments violate the constitution.
The forms and channels of abdication are many. One, in recent times, is most favoured. That is: leave it to the NGOs. Non-governmental organisations are supposed to be able to take care of gigantic problems affecting hundreds of millions of people. Problems that elected governments, with the full force of state machinery behind them, apparently can’t handle.
Passing the buck
The best among the NGO activists see through this. Some of them are quite clear that many major issues have to be handled and resolved by the state. They do see that the state is just trying to pass the buck to them. A lot of others, however, seem to revel in the new era. Their growing links with the state render them anything but nongovernmental. Yet, despite many scandals, particular types of NGOs remain the sacred cows of the press, its blind spot. (Often, these are NGOs with links to the corporate sector.)
The way the press covers development issues does not help. There have been, broadly, two tracks in what many call ‘development journalism’. The ‘government’ or ‘official’ mode and the ‘non-governmental organisation (NGO) or alternative journalism’ mode. Both have largely failed. The first, already discredited, requires little argument. (Though there are critical elements in this framework too which are not to be dismissed offhand.)
It is about what governments are doing which is important. (Some of the things governments do defy the imagination.) For example, there are 2,000 water wells sunk in one drought-prone area. The critical element of this mode would be: Were those wells enough? Did they come too late? Should there have been another sort of well?
But yes, the NGO or alternative mode of development journalism has also failed. Worse, its virtuous halo has deflected critical comment. Somehow, there is often a willing suspension of disbelief when journalists begin to interact with NGOs.
Development theology holds that NGOs stand outside the establishment. They present a credible alternative to it. The majority of NGOs are, alas, deeply integrated with the establishment, with government and with the agenda of their funding bodies.
A little reality therapy is in order: the government wants a ‘partnership’ with NGOs. In this, it sees an opportunity to discard its commitments towards 921 million citizens on fundamentals like health, education, housing. These are best left to NGOs, while the state tinkers around with a few trifling issues, like how to double the wealth of the richest five per cent.
The World Bank is no less enthusiastic. Its bulletin of 22 September 1994 says, ‘NGO Involvement in Bank Projects Grows Rapidly’. It notes approvingly that ‘involvement by non-governmental organisations jumped from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of Bank projects’. And we all know what a saintly NGO the Bank is.
International funding agencies are using NGOs to dump fertilisers, harmful contraceptives and obsolete technologies. Even for corporate market research. NGOs are sometimes created for this purpose. There are groups in this country that have tried to push ‘drip irrigation’ in districts that have abundant rainfall. They hawked a technique used for the deserts of Israel (in regions not lacking in rain) because some corporate had something to sell. Besides, in India, many NGOs are contractors for government schemes.
