Category Archives: Countryside

Countryside, Government, Identities

Elections, Politics and Tamil Nationalism: Hopeless Impasse and Strivings of the People

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This article co-written by SWASTHIKA ARULINGAM AND AHILAN KADIRGAMAR was originally published in the September 2015 issue of Samakalam, a Tamil monthly magazine on contemporary affairs. A group of us have been writing a column every month titled ‘Dissent and Debate’. Samakalam is a unique effort to interpret the debates in the national press in Sri Lanka to the Tamil speaking audience and in turn also engage the rest of the country on debates in the North and East through a few articles in English.

The Tamil National Alliance (TNA) has swept the 2015 parliamentary elections in its Tamil constituencies. This victory further consolidates the power of the TNA and particularly the Federal Party (ITAK). However, this is also the weakness of Tamil nationalist politics. Historically, Tamil politics dominated by the Federal Party has done little other than win elections. Politics should be much more, building alliances with other political forces and mobilising society and finding solutions to people’s social, economic and political problems. Tamil nationalist politics neither seems to have the capacity to govern as with the Northern Provincial Council (NPC) nor does it seem to have a vision to recover Tamil society out of the post-war crisis in the North and East. This article addresses the future of Tamil politics given this problematic political trajectory. Continue reading Elections, Politics and Tamil Nationalism: Hopeless Impasse and Strivings of the People →

Capitalism, Countryside, Movements, Politics

Saving ‘Development’ From Dangerous Women Activists: Kamal Nayan Choubey

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Guest Post by  KAMAL NAYAN CHOUBEY

The inclination of the Indian State to suppress any movement related to the just demands of marginalized sections has increased immensely in recent times. There is no question of dialogue. Coercive methods are generally employed to contain these movements. This is what has happened with the movement of tribal people are struggling against the Kanhar Dam in the Sonbhadra district of Uttar Pradesh. In this movement, women activists play a crucial role, and in order to contain it, the UP Police arrested two key women activists Roma and Sukalo, and six other women activists from the Robertsganj office of All India Union for Forest Working People (AIUFWP) on 30th June 2015.

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Roma is the General Secretary of the AIUFWP.

The UP police has registered cases of inciting rioting against the women activists and it has also reopened old cases against them, particularly against Roma. Apart from them, another tribal woman activist Rajkumari was arrested on 21st April.

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Sukalo

Continue reading Saving ‘Development’ From Dangerous Women Activists: Kamal Nayan Choubey →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Media politics

An Open Letter to Mr Adani on the Occasion of Onam

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Dear Mr Adani

Writing to you from Thiruvananthapuram, where you recently signed an agreement with the Kerala government, undertaking the construction of the international container terminal at Vizhinjam off the Thiruvananthapuram coast.

The Malayali press went wild in their delight ; the politicians beamed in triumph (well, most of them. Some of them –guess who — could not, having discovered that they had shot themselves in the foot); the contractors and sundry middlemen in the construction sector rubbed their hands in glee. This is Onam season in Kerala, and Onam, you may know, is our national festival. You are very much in the talk here. To the contractors and our miserably corrupt and craven political class, you are Maveli reborn in flesh and blood. To the poor fisher people on what is arguably Kerala’s poorest coastal stretch, you are a newer version of evil Vamanan himself, threatening to banish them to the nether-world. There was a time when the political left in Kerala reinterpreted the Maveli myth as a vindication of the Welfare State. But since the welfare state has been almost as good as dead in the minds of Kerala’s mainstream political classes, the throne has also been conveniently empty.The mainstream press has set you up on it indirectly but definitely, and that’s pretty much evident. But Malayalees who love this land and are not blinded by hollow –false– national sentiment can see that not only are you the very opposite of Maveli, but also that this Emperor-figure has no clothes at all.

Continue reading An Open Letter to Mr Adani on the Occasion of Onam →

Centre watch, Countryside, Culture, Government, Politics

Open Letter to Odisha CM Re False Charges Against GASS Activist Debaranjan

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 WITHDRAW FALSE CHARGES AGAINST DEBARANJAN OF GASS, ODISHA

To:

Mr Naveen Patnaik
Chief Minister,
Government of Odisha

22 August 2015

 We, the undersigned, unequivocally condemn the foisting of a false case on Debaranjan, member of the Ganatantrik Adhikar Surakhya Sangathan (GASS) in Odisha.

Debaranjan has for several years now been deeply involved with people’s struggles in Odisha, first as a full-time activist in Kashipur, Rayagada district, then as film-maker, and most recently also as a member of the democratic rights group GASS. His has been among the consistent voices in Odisha for over twenty years against state repression on people’s struggles, atrocities faced by adivasis, dalits and other underprivileged communities, and against communalization of the polity and in society. This is the political context in which he is being targeted.

Last week, Debaranjan was sought to be interrogated by the Special Branch of the Intelligence Department while he was engaged in work on a documentary film in Malkangari district. Subsequently, a number of false charges were filed against him by the Malkangiri Police, including charges pertaining to molestation under Section 354 (b) of the IPC, and under sections 354 and 323. We believe these charges to be patently false and absurd, and constitute nothing other than harassment and part of the continued persecution of democratic voices in this country. Continue reading Open Letter to Odisha CM Re False Charges Against GASS Activist Debaranjan →

Bad ideas, Countryside, Everyday Life, Excavation, Media politics, Movements, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Public Secrets Now Proven – Ranveer Sena Terrorists Caught on Camera by Cobrapost: Kavita Krishnan

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Guest Post by Kavita Krishnan

The ‘Operation Black Rain’ film released by the web portal Cobrapost, based on secretly filmed boasts of the Ranveer Sena terrorists with detailed accounts of massacres of Dalit and oppressed caste labourers in the 1990s, has only confirmed public secrets that everyone in Bihar already knew.

Continue reading Public Secrets Now Proven – Ranveer Sena Terrorists Caught on Camera by Cobrapost: Kavita Krishnan →

Capitalism, Countryside, Everyday Life, Feminism

Branding Mother India: Sarojini N, Anindita Majumdar, Veena Johari and Priya Ranjan

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Guest post by SAROJINI N, ANINDITA MAJUMDAR, VEENA JOHARI AND PRIYA RANJAN

Indian motherhood is finally, officially being advertised. Recent news reports regarding the launch of the Japanese advertising conglomerate Dentsu Mama Labs in India, have left many of us working on women’s reproductive lives in a serious quandary. How does one explain the unthinking coverage that the firm has received?

This is their pitch (or ‘branding’, as the Corporation puts it):

Dentsu Mama Lab aims to be a thought leader on mothers, motherhood and mothering.

The beautifully shot launch advertisement of pregnant women in a scenic desert village in India, using Japanese products and living in evident prosperity belies the true nature of what Mama Labs is representing, or rather misrepresenting.

Continue reading Branding Mother India: Sarojini N, Anindita Majumdar, Veena Johari and Priya Ranjan →

Capitalism, Countryside, Everyday Life

Cancer – getting the story right: Harmala Gupta

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Guest post by HARMALA GUPTA

Despite the almost daily dose of information on some aspect of cancer or the other in the national and international media these days, the confusion around cancer persists. The reports and their headers are calculated to catch the public eye rather than inform: “tetanus shot may boost brain cancer survival”; “extra oxygen could help you fight cancer”, etc. The reality on the ground is far removed and infinitely more complex.

To begin with, cancer is one word used to describe a number of different diseases. Furthermore, despite the progress made, we are still far from curing a majority of cancers, from preventing them or finding them early enough to ensure long term survival. The progress that has been made is largely in the West and can be attributed to screening techniques which are able to detect cancers earlier than they did before. In fact, some would argue, too early.

The question being asked is: should we be meddling with pre- cancerous or early stage tumours that are unlikely to ever become life threatening?  Studies show that in some people, for no clear reason, these tumours do not progress. Once again, the baffling question is: Are these tumours best left alone? And if so, at what stage should we begin to engage with them? Only now are we learning that the mammogram touted as the gold standard for detecting breast cancer works best for women over 50 years of age. Before that age there are too may false positives with their attendant consequences to ethically warrant its regular use as a diagnostic tool. Shame that it took medical science so long to work this out. In the meantime, thousands of women have had surgeries and gone through emotional trauma they could have avoided.

Continue reading Cancer – getting the story right: Harmala Gupta →

Capitalism, Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Government, Violence/Conflict

An Encounter in the Forest: Bharath Sundaram and Nitin Rai

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Guest post by BHARATH SUNDARAM and NITIN RAI

The labelling of the Seshachalam incident as a ‘law and order’ problem by State actors obfuscates the larger underlying problem deriving from lopsided notions of the human-environment relationship, and flies in the face of ecological concerns and social justice

The massacre of twenty people in the Seshachalam forests in a joint operation by the Red-Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force (RSASTF) of the Andhra Pradesh Police and the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department is reflective of the hegemonic control of natural resources by an increasingly militarised state. It is particularly shocking that such a massacre occurred just as calls are being made nationally for a democratic forest management approach that gives local people more rights and powers to manage forests.

Encounter killings in Seshachalam forests
Encounter killings in Seshachalam forests, courtesy Hindustan Times

While the state has chosen to depict the killing of 20 people in the Seshachalam forests as a response to a law and order issue, such a draconian response to the cutting of trees by peasants is indicative of a much deeper malaise in the governance of natural resources in India. On the evening or night of 6th of April, 2015, twenty people, purportedly smugglers of red sanders, were shot to death by ten officials of the RSASTF and one official from the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department. The shooting and killing (using automatic weapons) was supposedly an act of ‘self-defence’ precipitated by an attack on the officials by more than 100 people who ‘rained stones and hurled sickles’ during the raid. Three days after the incident, ‘country weapons’ and ‘firearms’ were added to the list of weapons used by the smugglers. That would work in their favor, because who better than the smugglers to know where to buy AK 47 Rifles and assault weapons.

Observer accounts mention that several of those killed were shot in the face, chest, or back. Nobody was apprehended in an injured state. Official post-mortem reports of those killed remain unavailable. No government officials were reported injured immediately after the operation, although mysteriously, all eleven officials involved were placed in isolation in the A-Class ward of a government hospital four days after the incident occurred. Human rights activists, led by the Coordination of Democratic Rights Organization have labelled the incident as a staged encounter, questioned the use of brute force, and have pointed out several inconsistencies in the official version of events. Continue reading An Encounter in the Forest: Bharath Sundaram and Nitin Rai →

Capitalism, Countryside, Everyday Life, Politics

Coallateral: Research Collective of Programme for Social Action

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Executive Summary by RESEARCH COLLECTIVE of Programme for Social Action, of the Report of the Independent People’s Tribunal on the MoU between Rajmahal Pahad Bachao Andolan and PANEM Coal Mines.

Press Invite

Release of the Report and Panel Discussion on May 6, 2015 at Constitution Club

The Independent People’s Tribunal, held on 16 November 2014 in Ranchi, established that PANEM Coal Mines repeatedly violated human rights of Adivasis, used violence against them to force their consent to operationalise the project, and has not adequately resettled and rehabilitated project affected families. PANEM Coal Mines, which acquired Adivasi lands in 2002 in Pakur district of Jharkhand, violated the Santhal Parganas Tenancy Act, 1949 and the rights of Adivasi (indigenous) people granted under the fifth schedule of the Indian Constitution.

PANEM Coal Mines, a Joint Venture company between Punjab State Electricity Board (now PSPCL) and EMTA Group, required land from Adivasi communities in Alubera and Pachwara panchayats in Pakur to operationalise the Pachwara Central Coal Block mining project. Fearing that the large-scale mining project would ultimately destroy their homeland, the Santhal and Pahadia people did not consent to the acquisition of their land. They organized themselves as the Rajmahal Pahad Bachao Andolan (RPBA) and militantly opposed the project between 2000 and 2006. In an unexpected turn of events, on 30 November 2006, RPBA signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with PANEM and allowed the company to acquire land and mine coal.

Continue reading Coallateral: Research Collective of Programme for Social Action →

Capitalism, Countryside

The Body-politic and Death of the Farmer: R Umamaheshwari

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Guest Post by R. UMAMAHESHWARI

Until now suicides happened in an almost invisible ‘intimate’ ‘psychic’ space of the farmer and his (almost always it was a male) loneliness and pain and anguish; we only got to know of it after the act was committed. But for the first time, a farmer committed suicide in full public view, and his body was consumed by the world at that moment of his committing the act. In a leading Hindi newspaper, the following day, there was a photograph, on the front page. The images showed the gradual metamorphosis of a living man, with a profession (that of a farmer), with a history and a family turning into a mere dead body. The photographer had actually recorded this metamorphosis, image by image in sequence, second by second. Not a moment had been left out. (See Amar Ujala, dated 23rd April 2015) With one loop the man, named Gajendra, became yet another body; yet another dispensable body, to be consumed by the entire nation through photographs and TV images. It was the signifier of our times: an act in the theatre of the absurd that democracy has come to be. The farmer will increasingly be ‘seen’ when he dies. Continue reading The Body-politic and Death of the Farmer: R Umamaheshwari →

Capitalism, Centre watch, Countryside, Violence/Conflict

Why are we always Encroachers? Tribal farmers in Khammam District, Telangana: Vasudha Nagaraj

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Guest Post by VASUDHA NAGARAJ

Korsa Subba Rao, a man from Koya tribe, cultivates about three acres of forest land in a village in Khammam district. His family has been doing so for several generations. Subba Rao has a ration card, voter identity card, Aadhar Card and a NREGA job card. However, for the land that he tills, he has no papers whatsoever. Ironically the only evidence he has is an FIR issued by the Forest department. For committing a forest offence of encroaching into the forest – cutting down trees and putting it to podu cultivation.

Like Korsa Subba Rao, in Khammam district, there are thousands of farmers belonging to Koya, Konda Reddis and Lambadi tribal communities cultivating one to four acres in forest lands. Most of them have been cultivating since the times of their forefathers. Often this is their only income. However, factors such as scanty rain, untimely rain or pest can drastically reduce this income. The prevalence of malaria and other mosquito borne diseases also adds to the toll.

Here, it needs to be understood that forest lands do not always imply green forests. A forest land can be dense forest, moderate forest, shrub growth and also barren land. In Khammam district, thousands of acres of forest lands have been put to cultivation since several decades. But any cultivation of forest land is considered to be illegal, as it is an offence as per the AP Forest Act, 1967. In this scheme of things, the tribal farmers are seen as “encroachers”. The irony is that they are encroachers inspite of being the original inhabitants of the land. Because of this illegality and because of the power of the Forest Department to register criminal cases, the tribal farmers live in a constant fear of eviction from their lands. Continue reading Why are we always Encroachers? Tribal farmers in Khammam District, Telangana: Vasudha Nagaraj →

Countryside, Government, Law, Politics, Right watch

Land Acquisition and Delays Over Democracy: Shubham Jain, Sarangan Rajeshkumar, Dhruva Gandhi

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Guest post by SHUBHAM JAIN, SARANGAN RAJESHKUMAR and DHRUVA GANDHI

The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Resettlement and Rehabilitation Act, 2013 was passed with Objective to promote transparency and participative governance in the acquisition of land for industrialisation and urbanisation and to, thereby, ensure overall socio-economic development. In the pursuit of this objective, the law introduced mechanisms as Social Impact Assessment, Consent, and Rehabilitation et al.

This law, however, attracted widespread criticism from the industry on account of the supposedly time consuming barriers created for the acquisition of land. Accordingly, the Ordinance of 2015 was promulgated as a measure to hasten the process of Land Acquisition and to, thereby, contribute towards the economic development of the country. Unfortunately, most of the debate on this Ordinance has barely focussed on the problems it sought to address and, consequentially, there has been a dearth of an analysis of solutions proposed therein in the backdrop of these problems. Let us, therefore, contextualise the debate on the Ordinance and, then, examine the merits of the same. Continue reading Land Acquisition and Delays Over Democracy: Shubham Jain, Sarangan Rajeshkumar, Dhruva Gandhi →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Centre watch, Countryside, Government, Law, Metropolis, Movements, Politics, Right watch

“Those Backward People” – Arun Jaitley and a Long Ugly History

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Two days ago, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley sought to make a special mention of “poor, dalits, tribals, backwards, those who are landless.” The occasion was the the Land Acquisition Bill, which,

“we are bringing, as per that the industrial corridors which would be set up in the country, those backward people, the 300 million landless people would get employment opportunities,”

First, Mr Jaitley, what exactly is the mechanism your government proposes by which the “backwards” released from the land will be absorbed into industry? Is there a guarantee by the industry owners? Is there a provision for skill training in the same industrial corridors? Are there ITI institutes being set up? Forget these, is even primary or secondary education going to be expanded so that farmers’ children, at some point in the distant future can take advantage of the supposed industrial boom? Continue reading “Those Backward People” – Arun Jaitley and a Long Ugly History →

Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Government, Images, Right watch

CPDR Statement on Maharashtra Cow Slaughter Ban

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Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai
THE MAHARASHTRA ANIMAL PRESERVATION (AMENDMENT) ACT, 1995
18 March 2015

As if the 1976 Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act banning the slaughter of cows, including the male and female calf of the cow, enacted by the Shankarrao Chavan-led Congress government during the Emergency was not enough, the Devendra Fadnavis-led Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government is elated that the 1995 Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, enacted by a previous BJP-Sena led by Manohar Joshi, that extends the ban to include slaughter of bulls and bullocks, has now received presidential assent. Despite the BJP’s claims justifying the ban on agro-economic grounds, among others, the driving force behind the prohibition is the ideology of Hindutva, presented as “a way of life” rooted in the central beliefs of neo-Vedantic Hinduism, of which cow slaughter and beef eating are supposedly anathema.

Continue reading CPDR Statement on Maharashtra Cow Slaughter Ban →

Bad ideas, Countryside, Culture

Hashimpura : Who will Guard the Guards Themselves ?

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India lost, not victims, in Hashimpura massacre case: Victims' lawyer

Picture : Courtesy http://www.indiatomorrow.net

Wait for justice to victims of Hashimpura has become much longer.

After around 28 years of the gruesome massacre allegedly by the personnel of the much feared PAC ( Provincial Armed Constabulary) for its biased approach , the Delhi court acquitted all 16 accused on ‘benefit of doubt due to insufficient evidence, particularly on the identification of the accused’.

There have been very few massacres in post-independent India which have shaken the civil society to the core and have propelled it to come forward and raise its voice. And the Hashimpura killings happen to be one such episode. One still remembers the words of the well-known journalist Nikhil Chakravarty who had visited the place along with few likeminded individuals and in his scathing write-up condemning the incident had compared the event with

“Nazi Pogrom against the Jews, to strike terror and nothing but terror in a whole minority Community”.

Continue reading Hashimpura : Who will Guard the Guards Themselves ? →

Capitalism, Centre watch, Countryside, Ecology/Environment, Violence/Conflict

The Land Ordinance (now Bill) is Bringing Back the Colonial Legacy: NAPM

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Statement from National Alliance of People’s Movements

The Real Battle is between Farmers and Land Grabbing Corporates and BJP, not between Bharat and Pakistan!

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Protest Against Land Ordinance, February 2015 Delhi

Image courtesy Joe Athialy

Forcible land acquisition has always been an issue of life and death for millions of people in India, not only farmers but also agricultural laborers and fish workers. With the Land Ordinance it has become a political hot potato. More than 350 people’s organizations gathered at Parliament Street on February 24th, with 25,000 people from Gujarat to Orissa to Assam, and from Himachal Pradesh to Tamil Nadu and Kerala. This show of strength has forced the political parties to take a stand on the issue, leading to heated debates and discussion on the floor of the Parliament. The Ordinance, now Bill, reflects the anti-farmer and anti-poor move of un-democratically amending the 2013 Act on Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation, killing its very spirit and purpose.

The Ordinance brought in by the NDA government just after the Winter session of the Parliament came to an end was an obvious imposition on the country’s common people, of the colonial legacy of a perverted vision of development through an unjust and undemocratic modus operandi. The Ordinance is an attempt to open up the land that is the life support, source of livelihood and shelter for India’s toiling masses, to wealthy investors, including big corporations and builders. Its intention is to forcibly divert India’s agricultural land at the cost of food security, giving a free hand with no ceiling to the private companies as well as private entities i.e. private trusts and expensive profit-making educational and health institutions. The intention is to benefit private interests in the name of public interest.
 Continue reading The Land Ordinance (now Bill) is Bringing Back the Colonial Legacy: NAPM →

Capitalism, Countryside, Politics

Massive protests against Land Acquisition Ordinance at Jantar Mantar

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For updates on the protest, visit Abki Baar Humara Adhikar

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Images courtesy Abki Baar Humara Adhikar

Countryside, Identities, Violence/Conflict

Adivasis in Assam – Extermination without a Camp: Suraj Gogoi and Prasenjit Biswas

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Guest Post by SURAJ GOGOI AND PRASENJIT BISWAS

Repeated genocides in Assam and justification and rationalization of the same can be seen as the severest form of crime against humanity that one can imagine. It is the most reprehensible form of hatred that is committed and perpetually pushed under the carpet. Located in the foothills of Bhutan, the villages where 81 or so Adivasi persons were exterminated in the recent killings by the National Democratic Front of Bodoland (Songbijit faction) is no less than a genocide. Apparently the motive for such killing is attributed to Adivasi villagers helping the army and police in busting camps of Bodo militants. Seemingly they turn out to be the easy targets for insurgent firepower.

The adivasis, therefore, remain in a state of being exterminated. If camps mark the predicament of a modern fragmented society, one might say that the Adivasis are permanently thrown into shelters and camps as internally displaced. An estimated 2.75 lakh people of Adivasi origin are settled in about 250 camps across Udalguri and Chirang. They are decamped before the act of being camped and by the very act of remaining in the state of being camped they are rightless and defenseless. Herein we find a sense of perennial othering which subverts any democratic attempt to empower them with right and dignity. They are othered in a state of displacement and pushed form their settlements to an uncertain destiny. This continual displacement completes the fate of marginality. The process marks an inner othering of the marginalized that actualizes fragmentation of mainstream social identities of Assam. Continue reading Adivasis in Assam – Extermination without a Camp: Suraj Gogoi and Prasenjit Biswas →

Capitalism, Countryside, Everyday Life, Politics

Farmers’ Suicides and Fatal Politics: Vasanthi Srinivasan

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Guest Post by VASANTHI SRINIVASAN

With depressing regularity, the newspapers have been reporting farmers’ suicides in many states. Recently, P Sainath wrote on BBC that around 296,438 farmers have committed suicide since 1995. He also mentions that cash crop cultivators of cotton, sugar cane, vanilla, pepper, groundnut etc account for the bulk of those suicides. According to a PIL heard by the Supreme Court in December 2014, around 3146 farmers in Maharashtra have committed suicide this year. Of course, farmer’s suicides only account for a fraction of all suicides reported in India. Besides, farmer’s suicides are a global phenomenon. The litany of woes is also familiar to readers, namely rising indebtedness, crop failures, falling prices, natural disasters etc.

And yet the meaning of these suicides, if any, is worth reflecting upon.

Politicians, who are used to massive debts, seem to think this is an ‘extreme step’ on the part of farmers. In 2003, the then Union Minister for Agriculture hinted that indebtedness alone may not be causing the ‘extreme step’, and that ‘family problems’ may also be a reason. In Karnataka, the Veeresh committee report had earlier identified depression, alcoholism and marital discord rather than the rising debt as the relevant causes. Never one to lag behind, the hi-tech Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh Chandrababu Naidu  announced compensations and proposed to get psychiatrists to rural areas. One scholar has pointed to the increasing isolation of cultivators and high levels of anxiety about failure suffered by some farmers [1]. These attempts at ‘personalizing’ the farmers’ problems may be necessary but not sufficient as long as other factors remain unexplored – increasing cultivation costs, crop failures, water shortages and falling product price. Citing the high figures of suicides (204) in Maharashtra for 2014 until April, followed by Telangana (69 until October), the Times of India  (dated Nov 26, 2014), reported that the present Central government admitted indebtedness as a possible factor.  There are also calls to increase monetary compensation to families affected by such suicides.   Continue reading Farmers’ Suicides and Fatal Politics: Vasanthi Srinivasan →

Countryside, Culture, Excavation, Government

“Welcome to the Land of Enlightenment”: Kaveri Gill

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Guest post by KAVERI GILL

Bihar Tourism’s Neglected Treasures

Kesariya Stupa East Champaran
Kesariya Stupa East Champaran

A recent work trip took me to the north-east of Bihar, the poorest region of a state with ‘critical’ poverty incidence by any measure. For instance, within the state, on NSS 2004-05 data, West Champaran is the worst-performing district on headcount ratios (76.9) in rural India (Chaudhuri and Gupta, Economic and Political Weekly, 2009). Such destitution was on ample evidence amongst the segregated group of mahadalit and minority women members of a self-help group we spoke to, in a tola with no electricity and only candles to dispel an eerie fog settled over the village at dusk. Of 13 of them, 11 had repeat experience (up to three times per woman) of losing a child in the last trimester of pregnancy, just after giving birth or of a child under 5 years of age.  It was from Champaran that Gandhi first led landless labour and tenants or ryots, in his first satyagraha against the British, protesting the coerced cultivation of the cash crop, indigo. Almost a century later, not much has changed in tangible terms for the population of this part of the democratic Republic of India. Continue reading “Welcome to the Land of Enlightenment”: Kaveri Gill →

Capitalism, Countryside, Government, Law

MNREGA’s Swan Song – Not everyone’s idea of ‘achche din’: Amitava Gupta

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Guest Post by AMITAVA GUPTA

Concerned about the approach of the central government toward the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), 28  development economists wrote a letter to the PM, urging him to stop tampering with the scheme. The letter, as one might have suspected, did not go down well with Jagdish Bhagwati. He, along with his Man Friday Arvind Panagariya, was quick to put forward a rebuttal. Though Bhagwati’s credentials as a trade theorist cannot but be acknowledged even by his bitterest critics, he is hitherto not known for his contribution toward development economics. Panagariya would merit even lesser mention. But, that should not ideally deny their argument a fair scrutiny.

The central government announced a set of measures over the last couple of months or so. Those include restricting the scheme to the poorest 200 districts; reducing the labour to material ratio from 60:40 to 51:49; freezing the real wage rate; imposing cap to state expenditure on the scheme.  Put together, those measures deliver a lethal blow to MNREGA. Bhagwati and Panagariya extend unconditional support to this rather brutal amputation. What they essentially do is to summarize the standard arguments against the scheme. The arguments can be clubbed under two heads— i) the scheme is marred in corruption; ii) it does not generate revenue to justify the spending from the exchequer and hence, it should be done away with. It is worthwhile to check whether any of these arguments has some merit or these are just political salvos packaged as economic wisdom.

Continue reading MNREGA’s Swan Song – Not everyone’s idea of ‘achche din’: Amitava Gupta →