As individuals, we all go through our own internal contradictions between the reality and the aspirations - so, apparently does a country...
The following are some of the headlines I could pick up during last one month, showing the internal struggles/ contradictions of the contemporary India:
Speaking at the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Oslo on ‘India’s Socio Economic Agenda: Development with Democracy’, the Finance Minister P Chidambaram said that GDP at market prices has increased from US $20 billion in 1950-51 to US $912 billion in 2006-07 and is expected to cross the trillion dollar mark in the current year.... in terms of purchasing power parity, India’s GDP at US $4 trillion in 2006-07 accounted for 6.3 per cent of global GDP.
Despite averaging over 8.5% growth since 2000, India has achieved less than half of the United Nations Millennium Development Goal targets in hunger and is 94th on the Global Hunger Index of 118 countries, a report released by the Washington-based International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) said.
After a three-day hiatus, FIIs became net buyers on Monday at Rs 688 crore... The Sensex surged above 20,000 for the first time on Monday in tune with other Asian markets, as traders priced in another rate cut by the US Federal Reserve this week.
In 2007, 50 per cent (Indian) homes have access to a toilet.... Manual scavenging is banned in India but is still practised as large numbers of toilets, specially in semi-urban and rural areas, are not connected with sewage systems... An estimated 50,000 manual scavengers in India still clean toilets and toilet pits with their hands and carry the human excreta to dumping sites...
Billionaire Mukesh Ambani today became the richest person in the world, surpassing American software czar Bill Gates, Mexican business tycoon Carlos Slim Helu and famous investment guru Warren Buffett, courtesy the bull run in the stock market.
Liberalisation and a free market economy have not changed traditional biases in companies.... A study conducted by American and Indian scholars... responded to 548 job advertisements in over 66 weeks and sent about 4,800 applications were sent.... The results were shocking: For every 100 upper-caste candidates who received calls for interviews, only 67 Dalit and 33 Muslim candidates were called. Upper-caste candidates who were not well qualified got better responses than Dalit applicants with higher degrees.
Tenth Fortune Global Forum begins in New Delhi
Top CEOs, head of states, academics and leading thinkers are gathering here to discuss the most pressing issues facing global business at the 10th Fortune Global Forum.... This year’s Forum is centered on ‘Mastering the Global Economy,’ a theme in which leaders will discuss the market realities that companies face in the midst of global integration... Speakers at the Forum include Prime Minister Manmohan Singh; Chairman and CEO of Time Warner, Richard D. Parsons; Finance Minister P. Chidambaram; Chairman of Wipro Ltd, Azim H. Premji; Chairman and CEO of The Goldman Sachs Group, Lloyd Blankfein; Chairman and CEO of Cisco Systems, John Chambers and Henry M. Paulson, Jr., Secretary of the Treasury, U.S. Treasury Department.
While India saw unprecedented prosperity in the last 15 years, its foodgrain intake declined — millions more of its people now live in hunger.... A major source of the trouble in the countryside is the erosion of land rights. Traditional land rights of adivasis and small farmers are denied either in the name of development or through manipulations of the land mafia. More and more people are becoming landless.
The number of 'high net worth individuals' (HNWIs) in India at the end of 2006, grew by 20.5 per cent to 100,000... HNWIs are people with net financial assets of at least $1 million, excluding their primary residence and consumables... Indian HNWIs held a combined $350 billion in financial assets at the end of 2006.
GDP growth originating in agriculture is at least twice as effective in reducing poverty as GDP growth originating outside agriculture, according to the World Development Report 2008, which focuses on ‘Agriculture for Development’. It suggests that South Asian countries, with about 60 per cent of their labour force employed in agriculture, should place importance on agricultural growth to reduce poverty as “the transition of people out of agriculture and rural areas is not keeping pace with the restructuring of economies away from agriculture”.
... or as,in a different context, TS Elliot wrote (The Hollow Men):
Between the desire
And the spasm
Between the potency
And the existence
Between the essence
And the descent
Falls the Shadow...
Thursday, November 01, 2007
India: Between Hopes and Despair...
Saturday, October 27, 2007
Ekalavya Applies for a Job!!
Let's suppose the modern-day Ekalavya is able to convince the Dronacharyas, manages to get into a decent educational institution, does well in his/her study (or as well as the modern-day Pandavas)...
Or alternatively, the Swaminomics' suggestion that "creating quality schools and colleges for dalits and tribals would be a far better form of affirmative action than job reservation in the private sector", gets implemented, and so Ekalavya goes through this special institution to prepare him/her to join the mainstream society with adequate "merit"...
...and then applies for a job!
Chances are that s/he will find that the world has still not changed - not for him/her.
These are the findings of a recent study, which was done by the Indian Institute of Dalit Studies (IIDS) and Princeton University:
"The researchers filed 4,808 applications for 548 jobs advertised in English newspapers over 66 weeks starting October 2005. Applications by equally-qualified males from higher upper castes, Dalits and Muslims were filed for each vacancy and the response from the corporate sector was shocking.
While all higher upper caste candidates were called for interviews for a particular job vacancy, only 67% Dalits and 33% Muslims were contacted."
The study, original paper published in The Economic & Political Weekly (Oct 13, 2007) mentions the methodology:
"The research staff prepared sets of three matched application letters and résumés (in English) for each type of job. These applications had identical educational qualifications and experience. All the résumés and cover letters presented strong applicants for the job opening: they had suitable degrees from reputable universities...
The only aspect of family background that was communicated in these applications was the applicant’s name, yet this was enough to generate a different pattern of responses to applications from Muslims and dalits, compared to high caste Hindu names. These were all highly-educated and appropriately qualified applicants attempting to enter the modern private sector, yet even in this sector, caste and religion proved influential in determining ones job chances...
These discriminatory outcomes occurred at the very first stage of the process that Indian university graduates go through to apply for a job...."
Another recent study by S Madheswaran and Paul Attwell - Cast Discrimination in Indian Urban Labour Market (Economic & Political Weekly, Oct 13 2007) - concluded:
"...(a) discrimination causes 15 per cent lower wages for SC/STs as compared to equally qualified others; (b) SC/ST workers are discriminated against both in the public and private sectors, but the discrimination effect is much larger in the private sector; (c) discrimination accounts for a large part of the gross earnings difference between the two social groups in the regular salaried urban labour market, with occupational discrimination – unequal access to jobs – being considerably more important than wage discrimination – unequal pay in the same job..."
So what is the future for Ekalavya?
Pretty bleak, actually! - because even in the unlikely scenario of enforced job reservations in private sector, Swaminomics recommends the tactics for "Getting Around Job Quota", e.g.,:
"Faced with job quotas, companies could stop outsourcing and resume in-house operations. They can hire dalits and tribals as sweepers, canteen workers, drivers, chowkidars and so on.... They can open holiday homes for officers in the hills, employing tribals. This will enable them to fulfil job quotas without affecting management or factory quality."
This, perhaps, also represents the distorted definition of Enlightened Self-Interest in a divided society.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
Janadesh'07: India's Anti-Colonial March of 21st Century
Lalit Vachani's BBC-documentary "In Search of Gandhi" ends with a stark statement:
We won our freedom sixty years ago, but what has really changed? We proclaim an economic miracle, but the inequality and the violence still continues... there is a new colonialism in India, but we don't seem to care.... After all, we are the colonisers!"
According to chairman of India's National Commission for Denotified, Nomadic and Semi-Nomadic Tribes, Balkrishna Renake: "There are 120 million people who have no rights in this country. They are still waiting in independent India for the right to vote, to have schools and teachers, and for their land."
And so, this month marks perhaps the long march by India's very own colonised citizens - the landless, the tribals, the dalits, the marginal farmers, the displaced, the "project-affected people"... for their right to land - and to dignity.
Unlike other earlier protest- (and solidarity-) rallies in the Indian Capital, these dispensable people are not coming by buses or trains... they are walking. All 350kms. Since October 2nd, when they started from Gwaliar. 25,000 of them from 13 states, including 11,000 women and about 250 foreign satyagrahis from countries which have similar concerns at the grass-root levels (Brazil, Kenya, France, Ireland, Canada Southeast Asia, etc.).
The march, Janadesh 2007, organised by Bhopal-based Ekta Parishad is perhaps the first - and definitely the largest - non-violent satyagraha in the post Independence India.
What do they want?
“We want the government to set up a national land commission," says PV Rajgopal of Ekta Parishad, "Let the Centre and state governments decide once and for all what land is surplus land, wasteland, scrubland, forest, what’s for roads and railway lines and what’s for SEZs... Land promised under the Bhoodan movement is yet to reach people... (people) have been jailed and dubbed Naxalites for raising the issue of their ancestral lands that today fall either under the Forest Act or have been appropriated for railway lines, roads, dams and sezs. For the last 60 years, people have been either pushed out of their spaces or locked into interminable court cases, jailed or shunted around by laws made with no concern for them.” 
But can a mere 25,000 people with no voice in the system, change the fate of the other 70%-plus of the population of this 1.13bn-strong country?
Maybe!... and hopefully!!
One remembers the words of Margaret Mead:
“Never underestimate the power of a handful of individuals to change the world. After all, it’s the only thing that ever does.”
For more information:
(Photo credit: various sources from the Net)
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Economic Growth is an 8-Lane Expressway
Long time back – in the mid ‘80s – I used to live in Delhi. Maruti factory had just come up in Gurgaon – DLF was still developing in a nascent stage - , and sometimes, I had to go there for some professional assignments. It used to take almost 3-4 hours then… A few months back, while visiting the NCR, I had a chance to ply on this yet to be completed expressway, and the experience was akin to a change in paradigm!
The 28km long New Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway is both a symbol – and a metaphor – of India’s unfolding economic prowess and growth.
The Symbol:
The Metaphor:Thursday, October 04, 2007
Tipping Point for US$?
There is an interesting video discussion with the investment expert, Dr Martin D Weiss at "The Great Dollar Panic of 2007-2008" (Click to watch)
Some excerpts from the transcript:
- "this credit crisis is many times larger.... Back in 1998, Greenspan was dealing with a small tumor in our financial system that could quickly be isolated and contained. Today, his successor, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, is dealing with a cancer that has already spread throughout the financial system...
...Back in 1998, Greenspan was dealing with a crisis that was isolated and easily contained. Now, in 2007, Bernanke is dealing with a crisis that is already spreading out of control to 20,000 cities and towns across America.
In 1998, the epicenter of the crisis was small Asian markets. This time, the epicenter is right here in the United States, with financial markets that are at least a hundred times larger.
In 1998, Greenspan was dealing with just one major hedge fund in trouble. He was able to sit down with the big banks. They were able to hash out a bailout. They were able to nip the crisis in the bud.
Now, Bernanke is trying to cope with at least a thousand hedge funds in this sector. If even just one-tenth of them are entangled in this mess — and there's every indication they are — that alone is 100 times more than 1998. Plus, this time, we already have 140 mortgage companies in trouble, bankrupt or mortally wounded.
Greenspan's 1998 crisis was a ripple. Bernanke's 2007 crisis is a tidal wave....
...It's already striking. Bernanke is facing a tidal wave of foreclosures in the $824 billion subprime mortgage market... the $722 billion Alt-A mortgage market... the $517 billion jumbo mortgage market... and, ultimately, in the entire $13.5 trillion mortgage market.... Not only the $13.5 trillion mortgage market, but also the $2.2 trillion U.S commercial paper market... the $2.4 trillion consumer credit market... the $10.1 trillion corporate bond market … and, biggest of all, the $144.8 trillion in derivatives held by U.S. banks alone.
So apparently, this may be, for all you know, the history in making... the concluding part of a trend that was quite apparent in the long-cycle over last many decades:
Tuesday, October 02, 2007
A Slum vs. The International Hotel Complex
When Yamuna Pushta - one of the largest and oldest slum in East Delhi - was demolished a couple of years back, and made way for an eight-lane highway, the Supreme Court ruled:
- "Poverty could not be an excuse for living in slums."
The court was unimpressed that many of those evicted had been living on this "encroached" land for more than a generation, that they possessed ration cards issued on their addresses, and that they were paying a license fee of Rs. 7000/-p.a. to MCD (Municipal Corporation of Delhi) for possession of their 12.5 sq.m. plot. The court went on to elaborate:
- "Desperation does not mean they will do something illegal by encroaching public land... In India, we have three weather conditions — heat, rain and winter. If we accept your argument, there will never be an appropriate time to demolish illegal structures standing on public land... Nobody forced you to come to Delhi. Is there a right to live in Delhi only? Stay where you can. If encroachments on public land are to be allowed, there will be anarchy."
Last year,a similar story got repeated. The only difference this time was that the land was for the "International Hotel Complex" project in South Delhi, whose project cost ran into hundreds of crore of rupee, and would host 5-star hotels, shopping malls, recreational facilties, residential and institutional area, etc... and this time the "defaulters" to this 92 hectare ‘constraint area’ (nice term!!) included Maruti Udyog Limited, Ambience Developers Private Limited, Regency Park Management Services Private Limited, Beverly Park Maintenance Services Private Limited and Jasmine Project Private Limited.
While the court acknowledged that:
- "DDA's advertisement (Hindu Dec 12, 2003 ) states: "purchaser would be required to obtain necessary clearance for the project from the EPCA and/or DPCC before submitting the plans for sanction to the Building Dept of DDA". There is no confirmation that this requirement was fulfilled by the allottees."
...it went on to conclude that:
- "...Had such parties inkling of an idea that such clearances were not obtained by DDA, they would not have invested such huge sums of money. The stand that wherever constructions have been made unauthorisedly demolition is the only option cannot apply to the present cases, more particularly, when they unlike, where some private individuals or private limited companies or firms being allotted to have made contraventions, are corporate bodies and institutions and the question of their having indulged in any malpractices in getting the approval or sanction does not arise..."
In case, one missed the last line in the quote: when they... are corporate bodies and institutions and the question of their having indulged in any malpractices in getting the approval or sanction does not arise!!!
Just to complete the story, the SC did ask the Ministry of Environment and Forestry to take remedial measures and penalise the violators.... And the Environment Ministry subsequently cleared the projects by imposing a penalty of Rs. 1 lakh to each of the developer!!!
...
Some months back, I was bemused - and depressed - looking at this sign board outside a property of a known-to-be benign corporate house:
I guess, it says all about the "aam aadmi" (the common man)... our version of The Unauthorized Person!!!
Saturday, September 22, 2007
From "Indian Slum" to "Shining India"
There are many paths from a Slum to the "Shining India". Here are two:
This one is a short and quick... takes less than 2 minutes
India Nude
The other one is a longer route to dignity, more arduous path... yet, one which celebrates the human spirit... love, support, self-confidence...:
Indian Slum Girl Makes it
Surprisingly (again, not-really-surprisingly!), this piece of information came not from the star-struck Indian media, but from Al-Jazeera
[On another note, it is nice to post this 251st post on Alternative Perspective on the eve of its 5th anniversary;0)]
Monday, September 17, 2007
Why IT does not "trickle down"?
Earlier, the criticism/skepticism came from the left-of-center/leftist activists/academicians... then it was the politicians like Manmohan Singh and Mani Shankar Aiyer, who voiced their concern about the uneven social impacts of what goes in the guise of globalisations/free-trade, etc., ... or whatever
and now this comes from one of the central stakeholders of the current zeitgeist, the Executive Director of Morgan Stanley, Chetan Ahya:
- "Globalisation and capitalism have been the two key drivers of India’s GDP growth acceleration over the past five years.... The business environment is changing, allowing entrepreneurial spirit to flourish. This trend is reflected in the divergence in corporate profit and wages relative to GDP. Over the past five years, retained corporate operating profits (gross of capital charges) to GDP have shot up to an estimated 9.1% in F2007 from 3.7% in F2002, while wages to GDP have declined to an estimated 28.7% from 31%.
These two trends (globalisation and capitalism) have helped accelerate India’s GDP growth to an average of 7.6% over the past five years from 5.7% in the 1990s... The worrying aspect of the trend in globalisation and capitalism is the rising social challenges on account of increasing inequality. We believe the rise in inequality, when absolute poverty levels are still very high, poses a major political challenge.
Although recent data are not available, the World Bank gauges that income/consumption inequality (as measured by the Gini Index) increased to 30.5% in 2004 from 27.7% in 1994 (the point from which growth started accelerating) in rural areas and to 37.6% in 2004 from 33.3% in 1994 in urban areas. We believe that this is likely to have increased further over the past three years.
The inequality gap in wealth is even starker... our analysis indicates that India has witnessed an increase in wealth of over $1 trillion (over 100% of GDP) in the past four years — and that the bulk of this gain has been concentrated within a very small segment of the population."
Chetan Ahya offers 3 domains of wealth creation ("three key sources of wealth accretion have been the equity market, property and gold") and how/why the nature of wealth creation remains confined to the upper-end of the society:
1. Equity Market:
"Stock market capitalisation has increased from $120 billion as of March 2003 to $1 trillion as of May 2007. Adjusted for foreign and government ownership, the implied overall gain for domestic shareholders is $570 billion. As per the Securities Exchange Board of India, only 4-7% of the population own equities. Even within this group, the ownership is likely to be highly concentrated as almost $350 billion of the increase is accounted for by promoters (controlling stakeholders)."
2. Property:
"...household wealth creation through residential property will have been at least $300-500 billion. However, only an estimated 47% of the population own a ‘pucca’ house (a house wherein walls and roofs are made of stable construction materials). Even within this segment of ‘pucca’ housing, the higher-income classes own a large proportion of the area in terms of square feet."
3. Gold:
"On our estimates, the market value of India’s stock of gold has increased by approximately $200 billion since March 2003 to $370 billion currently. The gains under this asset class, though unequal, should have been more widely distributed than those related to equity and property. According to a survey of household assets conducted by the National Sample Survey Organisation, as of June 2002, the top 34% of households (in terms of wealth) held 71% of the value of consumer durables (including gold and jewellery)."
To me, this is actually somewhat simplistic analysis... but what this article does bring home is that somewhere in that sphere, there are - thankfuly - people who are also becoming skeptical about this whole issue of:
"why it does not trickle down?"
Wednesday, August 29, 2007
The Man Who Moved the Mountain
I had once written about him...
A tribute to this man...he died last week.
Outlook Magazine wrote wrote about him:
- "Every morning, for 22 long years, a frail, diminutive man, barefoot and clad in a loin cloth, would trudge two kilometres to a hillock of solid rock and chip away at it with a hammer and chisel. Bemused onlookers thought he had lost his mind, and he was an object of great fun for village urchins. But the women of the village, young and old, admired him, for his was a labour of love."
This was his memorial to his wife, who had died on her way to the Wazirganj hospital, because the road around the rock was 19km long, and took long time to traverse... a memorial
- "...that won't ever find a place in hallowed global must-visit lists, but can well be passed down from this generation to the next as a monument of love. A poor man's Taj, literally. Not for its aesthetics, but for the way it symbolises the human spirit's capacity to endure, its indomitability..."
Wednesday, August 22, 2007
Floods in India??... Really??
It is, sadly - but not surprisingly - true!!
If you go to Google News and search "floods India", of the more than 5,000 links, only 4-5 are from Indian media. The figure is only indicative of the focus... even search on the websites of Indian MSM, the figures are telling...
Apparently, the media - and people - around the world are more aware and concerned about the Indian flood situation - which according to UN has affected close to 35-40mn people, has damaged or destroyed 1.28mn homes across 260mn hectares in more than 200 flood-affected districts, and is one of the worst flood disaster in recent history. UP, Bihar, Assam and Orissa are the worst impacted accounting for almost 24mn affected people (including 3mn children).
An article in New York Times reports:
- "The monsoon rains in India are a democratic force. When the skies open, the water pours on the homes of rich and poor alike. But after the deluge, the poor always suffer most.
....But for survivors, the real endurance test is just beginning. With crops destroyed and fields bloated with water, there will be no agricultural work for millions of landless laborers here for months, leaving them to rely on the sporadic support of aid agencies and government relief organizations.
...there are gradations within this poverty, and subclasses of richer and poorer.
The flood waters began receding in mid-August, replaced by a stinking, stagnant sludge, but villages remained cut off, and many of those houses that have re-emerged are uninhabitable. Hundreds of thousands of people are sheltered beneath bed sheets along raised highways, just inches away from the traffic, which grinds past, splattering them with mud. Life cannot yet begin again for most.... those with the least to lose had lost the most...."
...the article goes on to say:
- "At a national level, the plight of these flood victims arouses little compassion. In early August, when the United Nations declared the floods the worst in living memory, the miserable condition of the 31 million people affected in India was covered internationally but was neither front-page news in New Delhi newspapers nor featured on national news channels. Instead, bulletins were dominated by the sentencing of a Bollywood star to jail.
Such apathy is not unusual. Newspapers in India often neglect the suffering of the rural poor, more preoccupied with the triumphs of the emerging India than with the familiar stories of extreme hardship experienced by hundreds of millions of Indians living on the land."
In Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's 15th August Independence Day speech, this was the only mention about "floods":
- "I urge states to look upon water as a national asset and work to resolve inter-state disputes over water sharing with an attitude of give and take. It is only through a cooperative approach that lasting solutions can be found to recurring problems, like floods and drought. We should work together to prevent the destruction caused by the ravages of nature, like floods."
Needless to say that all the images in this post are not from India media!
