Ground Reality

Nothing Special about Special Economic Zones (SEZs)

2012-01-26T13:28:00.000+05:30

Some years back I delivered a memorial lecture at Rohtak inHaryana. The Haryana chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda was in the chair.Knowing how flawed his economic thinking of acquiring large tracts of farmlandfor the sake of industry in the name of Special Economic Zones (SEZs) was, Idwelled upon the dangers and the disastrous fallout waiting to happen as far aslivelihood security of the masses and country’s food security was concerned.

Hooda was obviouslyirked, and visibly angry. Cutting me short, he got up and intervened saying howright his policy was for the farmers, and for the state’s ultimate economicprogress. I asked him where and when was a public discourse held to know whetherSEZ was a good investment, and he retaliated by challenging me to an opendiscussion anytime later in Chandigarh,which of course never happened.

Several yearslater, I stand bemused to find Hooda take a complete u-turn: “It is true thatSEZs have not succeeded, not only in the state but in the entire country. Therewas economic slowdown in the entire world, so SEZs could not succeed,” he saidrecently. Although he acknowledges the fault, what he says in its defence isalso not correct. And this is true for the entire policy making process, whichstill refuses to accept the fundamental flaws in the SEZ policy. As IMF chiefeconomist and an advisor to the prime minister, Raghuram Rajan, had stated wayback in 2007: “India’sSEZ policy was a tax give-away and was likely to shift Indian production toSEZs rather than create new economic activity.” He was quoted in the WallStreet Journal as saying “these zones would be viable only if they focused onproviding superior infrastructure, business-friendly regulations and exemptionsfrom labour laws rather than offering often misdirected subsidies, guarantees,and tax sops that a stretched budget can ill-afford”.

By October 2011,ministry of commerce had approved 583 SEZs. As per news reports, one-third ofthese – approximately 202 -- have been already withdrawn. A majority of thosewho are still struck are known to be looking for better escape options. Forinstance, the realty giant DLF with its joint venture partner Hubtown, hasrecently sold its IT SEZ in Pune to a private equity firm Blackstone for Rs810-crore. In Haryana, Reliance Haryana SEZ Limited (RHSL), a Mukesh Ambani’sReliance Ventures Ltd and Haryana State Industrial and InfrastructureDevelopment Corporation (HSIDC), is the latest one to drop out. It had earliershelved its Jhajjar SEZ and converted it into a model economic township to beimplemented by a new company.

Reliance wasseeking further extension for its Gurgaon SEZ, but has been finally asked toreturn 1,383 acres that it got from the state government. In Andhra Pradesh,109 SEZs were approved, only 36 are operational. The Andhra Pradesh IndustrialInfrastructure Corporation has scrapped the MoUs with the major defaulters andtaken back the land assigned, including from Unitech and Caparo. In Haryana,only 3 of the 46 approved SEZ are in operation.

SEZ were promotedas a engine house of economic liberalisation. These were primarily set up toprop-up the slowing economy. These were supposed to drive exports, and, in turnemployment and growth. All kinds of sops – tax waivers and giveaways –including precious land provided at a throwaway price, were given to energisemanufacturing and exports. To blame the economic slowdown therefore for thefailure of SEZs to take-off is to find an easy escape route for thefundamentally flawed policy. Even before the global economic meltdown of2009-10, SEZs had failed to live up to the expectations and at the same timefailed to demonstrate any significant upswing in export growth. In reality, itprovided a massive windfall for realty developers. SEZ were perceived as realestate ventures and therefore an opportunity for land grab where developerscould use 65 per cent of the acquired land to build hotels, restaurant andapartments.

Why blame Hoodaalone, prime minister Manmohan Singh too was mesmerised by the SEZ potential.At an award ceremony in Mumbai in 2007, he had said: “Special Economic Zone(SEZ) is an idea whose time has come.” Supported by all political parties,including the Left Front, he actually launched a nationwide campaign toforcibly acquire and make available land on a platter to the industry,displacing lakhs of farmers. What began with SEZ subsequently continued inthe name of industrial development. Farmers resisted, and pitched land battleswere waged across the country, the likes of which have not been witnessed inliving memory. The resulting social unrest across the rural spectrum wasconsidered to be a small price the country must pay for achieving long-termdevelopment. As companies lined up for SEZs, most state governments wentaggressively into property dealing.

As expected, notmany states have realised the social and economic benefits that were originallypromised. Except for the IT sector, which has very cleverly used SEZ to seekfurther extend the tax exemption period, the enthusiasm from other sectors wasclearly missing. In essence, SEZ was a misplaced idea whose time had lapsedmuch before it caught the imagination of policy makers in India.

US expresses displeasure over delay in FDI in Indian retail while US/EU love for Big retail is over.

2012-01-15T13:22:00.000+05:30

US is visibly upset. According to a news report, US Trade Representative Ronald Kirk has postponed his visit to India presumably to 'convey US displeasure on India going slow in giving market access to the American companies, in areas like retail, banking and insurance'. Another US Senator and co-chair of the Senate India Caucus Mark K Warner has also expressed his displeasure. "I am seriously concerned about delay in implementation of FDI in multi-brand retail," he told the CII Partnership Summit 2012 [US Senator upset over delay in FDI in Indian retail http://www.moneycontrol.com/news/current-affairs/us-senator-upset-over-delayfdiindian-retail_650019.html]

Notice the tone of displeasure that Mar R Warner conveys. He seems to be talking like a school Headmaster complaining about some students who fail to live up to the prescribed discipline.

But you shouldn't be surprised. That is what the US treats Indian government as.

A few days later, P K Chaudhary, Secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) reportedly told a group of farmer representatives that he was not seeking a plebiscite on the issue whether India should allow FDI in retail but trying to find out safeguards that needed to thrown in. In other words, the decision to allow FDI in retail has already been taken. This is quite evident from the press release that some of the farmers' organisation issued after meeting the DIPP Secretary. While they opposed the entry of Retail FDI, the DIPP Secretary gave an impression as if there was general support for the opening of the retail market. Well, didn't I say earlier: how can the DIPP (on behalf of Govt of India) dare to annoy the Headmaster?

This comes in the wake of another interesting report that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his colleague, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee, would not like to read. Nor would the mainline media, which is more or less sold to the idea since a lot of business interests are involved. Coming to the media, it is interesting that the same arguments that are being floated for opening up for Retail FDI are debunked when it comes to bringing in 100 per cent FDI in print media. Let me give you just one example. FDI in retail is expected to create jobs within the country. But when it comes to FDI in print media, the Information and Broadcasting Minister Ambika Soni told Parliament on Dec 20, 2011: "With the liberalisation process, 26% FDI has been allowed in foreign news and that category of newspapers. But it has been our considered policy and there is no unanimity in the country on increasing the FD quotient. It is also an endeavour on the part of the government to encourage the newspaper industry which is indigenous, which is Indian, so that our people do not lose their source of employment."

Well, you must have observed the double-talk. FDI in retail is being allowed for the same reason that you do not want FDI in print media to be allowed. The DIPP analysis therefore is nothing but bunkum, and should be discarded. It is an utterly flawed and faulty analysis, and needs to be questioned.

Returning back to the new emerging global trend in supermarket expansion, the Financial Times in an editorial End of space race [Jan 13, 2012] -- a paper that PM Manmohan Singh treats as Bible -- says: "Twenty years ago, hypermarkets drew shoppers like monuments draw tourists. People travelled for miles to browse these vast cathedrals of consumerism, which sold everything from fresh fish to televisions at everyday low prices. In 20 years’ time, the decision by Britain’s biggest food retailer, Tesco, to halt hypermarket expansion and shift its non-food sales increasingly online may come to be seen as a turning point for the industry. Consumers no longer want everything under one vaulting roof. They want to shop locally, take less time about it and avoid the temptation of buying what they do not need".

Considering that supermarkets are now stopping expansion, and going for 'small is beautiful' approach, I don't understand the logic why should India be opening huge malls for multi-brand retail? Wal-Mart has also shifted to smaller stores, called Wal-Mart Express. Why should we be made to go through the grind, and learn our lessons 20 years later? By the time, the damage would have been done.

But will our PM like to read the writing on the wall? Your guess is as good as mine. He awaits instructions from his Headmaster !

Here is the FT editorial:

End of space race

Twenty years ago, hypermarkets drew shoppers like monuments draw tourists. People travelled for miles to browse these vast cathedrals of consumerism, which sold everything from fresh fish to televisions at everyday low prices.

In 20 years’ time, the decision by Britain’s biggest food retailer, Tesco, to halt hypermarket expansion and shift its non-food sales increasingly online may come to be seen as a turning point for the industry. Consumers no longer want everything under one vaulting roof. They want to shop locally, take less time about it and avoid the temptation of buying what they do not need.

This trend is apparent well beyond the UK. In France, the birthplace of the European hypermarket, consumers are shunning the big boxes out of town in favour of discounters and convenience stores. Even in the US, the mighty Walmart is beginning to open smaller stores to tap the convenience boom. People are busier, the population is ageing and they have less to spend on big weekly shops as well as on the petrol to get them to out of town outlets.

Tesco was bold in being the first of Britain’s big four to openly declare the end of a hyper-expansion drive that will see 26m new square feet added in the next few years. Though it has been apparent for some time that the hypermarket model of combining high margin non-food items with the weekly grocery shop was becoming less attractive, each retailer was afraid to change tack for fear of calling the trend wrong and losing market share. Tesco’s decision should help to mitigate what had become a damaging and costly race for space in a market where volumes have fallen for the first time in 30 years.

It is less obvious that Tesco’s move signals a revolution in online retailing, however. Consumers are still reluctant to buy their food on the web, as the woes of Ocado, Britain’s only true online food retailer, show. Overall, online food sales account for just 4 per cent of the industry after 15 years.

The real revolution will be to accelerate the shift in bringing sophisticated food retailing back to the high street. This is good news for Britain’s many dying town centres. A more vibrant high street is good for community building and for the environment. Shoppers will be less inclined to take their cars to out of town centres if what they need is within easy reach. But this poses a challenge for local councils. Retailers complain that they struggle to find good sites. Property developers are reluctant to take on town-centre projects because of rules that require additional investments, such as new roads or libraries, to secure planning permission. Such constraints must be lifted. Otherwise, the high street risks becoming a monument to a missed opportunity.

'The Foundation for New Agriculture' taking roots

2012-01-14T11:24:00.001+05:30

We ushered in the new year with an energised start that saw a gathering of 14 veteran natural farmers up at Patanjali Yog Peeth in Haridwar to discuss the potential of agriculture with a new dimension. Agriculture that is safe, sustainable, user friendly and affordable by marginal farmers.

I am truly delighted to share the highlights of this 4 day meet (1st - 5th Jan) with you.

The 'One small step towards chemical free agriculture' as Devinder coins it, is his brain child.( article below). For a long time now, it has been Devinder's mission to equip marginal farmers and release them from their debts by linking like-minded green guardians on a common platform, help provide alternative safe farming practices. Hence, revolutionize the safe food movement, a dream now slowly manifesting not just for him but for all of us.

By educating and winning the trust of most spiritual leaders on food and trade issues, Devinder's concerns finds a voice to awaken and alert a vast devotee following. His perseverance is bound to bear fruition. His consistent proactive advice and interactions with Swami Ramdev, the yoga guru whose unceasing zeal since 2002 has been to educate the masses daily on apackage of seven simple breathing exercises whose message to all, more so to young India, is to take charge of the mind, body and soul. In fact while at the deliberations, we were invited by Swami Ramdevji to partake in his yog session amidst 40,000 devotees. Most admirable, especially when you get to witness first hand a 100 Surya Namaskaars in record time of 4 mins! Whilst each one of were dazed, overwhelmed at his energy levels, it also unraveled how unfit we all were! Swamiji does not just advocate good health through yog but to indulge in safe foods and avail the benefits of Ayurveda to make it an integral part of one's life rather than to be at the mercy of hospitals.

To this effect, Swami Ramdevji wished to explore how safe sustainable agricultural practices could be brought into the forefront of National food security that starts at the grass roots. Hence, 14 best practitioners in this field were identified from across the country and then invited for a 4 day deliberation at Haridwar. We had the privilege of Swami Ramdevji's energised presence throughout these 4 days from 9am- 8.30pm!

I have yet to know of any spiritual leader who takes such deep interest and quality time out to understand the best practices presented by each one of our veteran farmers. My joy knew no bounds as i had the privilege and opportunity to present and share my farm learnings with Swami Ramdevji, Devinder and our humble agriculture gurus. This was aired live on Aastha channel. The genuine interest, the probing dilemmas, the crisis faced by our farmers, the solutions were dissected and tackled in earnest by Swami Ramdevji. Most inspiring to see his intensity during our presentations, the grave questions asked, jotting relevant points in his small black note pad, then summed it all up with much ease.

It did not just stop there. The most important issue that arose was how this would translate on the ground. Then came an action plan to execute three safe sustainable farm models in Hardiwar to start with, as seeing is believing! Prompt decisions were instantly taken by Swami Ramdevji and Acharya Balkrishanji to allocate land in Hardiwar for the 3 farm models. Suresh Desai a founding member of an Organic Farmers' Club with over 400 members in Belgaum District of Karnataka will design a model, Subhash Sharma- whose 32 acre farm in Yavatmal is flourishing, and has become a model for hundreds of other farmers will design the second one. And me and team Annadana the third one...on the traditional vegetable and cereal for the purpose of seed production, multiplication and conservation. Concurrently Team Annadana will also design a seed bank, one that is replicable.

Further, to strengthen our models, the back up ammunition of time tested knowledge and expertise arising from our team of Krishi Vigyaans or Krishi Rishi as Swami Ramdevji fondly calls us are Natbar Sarangiji who maintains 365 indigenous rice germplasm collection, Raghuvanjiji on 100's of varieties of indigenous wheat, Dr Surendar Dalal expertise has no bounds on insect and pest management, Dr Narayan Reddy on his wisdom of integrated farm practices, Rajbir Singh from All India Pingalwara Amritsar sharing his successful experience, Amarjit Singh Sharma from Faridkot who continues with vigor in producing and marketing safe crops in the most infested toxic bowl of Punjab, Shoor vir Singh from Uttar Pradesh whose knowledge on 95 varieties of weeds and their uses is just incredible, Ahir Mayan Hamir from Kutch with his expertise on groundnuts and castor and the young new age farmer Poorvi Vyas, with her research and development background so handy to document and aid each one us willingly and cheerfully.

Work has already commenced in the selected fields with best practices in soil fertility management being implemented. A team of reliable, enterprising points of contact co-ordinated by Vinod Kumar Birkhani, Uttarakhand Open University, school of agriculture and Sanjay Khare, a dedicated sevak from Patanjali Peet Yog are monitoring this whilst we have come back to our respective destinations carrying forward the energy to our teams.

There is a buzz, an excitement, a challenge to plan and showcase low cost sustainable farm models and we hope to see this through in 2012.

An overwhelming response of interest and support continues to flow when Devinder Sharma's wrote about this on his facebook. Those interested to lend support may connect him on hunger55@gmail.com

(From My right to Safe Food campaign newsletter) Jan 14, 2012

Shame and shammer: PM on malnutrition

2012-01-14T09:31:00.000+05:30

Ten years back, in April 2001, the then Prime Minister AtalBihari Vajpayee, said in his inaugural address at a national consultation on“Towards a Hunger Free India” in New Delhi: “Democracy and hunger cannot go together. Ahungry stomach questions and censures the system’s failure to meet what is abasic biological need of every human being. There can be no place for hungerand poverty in a modern world in which science and technology have createdconditions for abundance and equitable development.” And yet, all hisgovernment did was merely rename and ‘strengthen’ the public distributionsystem and to “use food stocks in an imaginative and purposeful way” tostabilise prices and boost exports.

Hunger proliferated, and malnutrition grew.

When I see Prime Minister Manmohan Singh express shock anddisgust, terming malnutrition a ‘national shame’ I am not the bit surprised.Seeing the timing of the report before the coming State Assembly elections infive States, the entire exercise seems to be aimed at the electoral prospects.Releasing a report on Hunger and Malnutrition (HUNGaMA) in New Delhi recently, he said: "the problem of malnutrition is a matter ofnational shame. Despite impressive growth in our GDP, the level ofunder-nutrition in the country is unacceptably high." The bigger shame ofcourse is that it took the Prime Minister 7 years in office to feel concernedat the extent of ‘malnutrition’ that prevails among children below 6-years age.

A year back, the international child rights organisation Savethe Children had come up with a damming report, which probably missed the PrimeMinister’s attention. After all, we can’t blame his office for keeping thePrime Minister in the dark about the failure of the high-growth trajectory inmaking any significant reduction in poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Nor didhe find anything unusual when the Planning Commission raised the percentage of‘below poverty line’ population on the recommendation of Suresh Tendulkarcommittee report. This happen despite

India

’s GDP continuously remainingon a high. This is because the entire policy planning, as we know, continues torevolve around opening up for more foreign direct investment, acquiringagricultural land for the industry and providing all kinds of sops andtax-concessions to the industry in the name of ‘policy paralysis’.

The Prime Minister probably had also missed reading thereport of National Family Health Survey III 2005-06 which showed that half of all children in India wereunder-nourished.

Shocking indictment

Another damming report “A fair Chance of Life” released inSeptember 2010 did not hit the front pages of prominent newspapers simplybecause it wasn’t backed by any group of parliamentarians. Nevertheless, it wasa shocking indictment of the economic paradigm that actually perpetuates hungerand malnutrition by widening economic disparities. The report said: “Of the 26million children born every year, approximately 1.83 million died before theirfifth birthday”. Half of these children actually die within a month of beingborn.

Half of the 1.83 million children, who die before their fifthbirthday in India,actually die within a month of being born. This is a clear pointer the dismalstate of health of the mothers. After all, a newly born malnourished child owesmuch to the impoverished mother’s health, which in turn points to the inabilityand inefficiency of the public distribution system to reach food to the poorand the needy. Hunger and malnutrition are closely correlated. Feeding thepopulation is the first requisite to building up a healthy population. Supplementary nutrition programme like theIntegrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) can only be effective if firstpeople are adequately fed.

The Prime Minister is right when he said: “We have believedthat a mother’s education level, economic status of the family, provisions ofsanitation, status of women and breast-feeding affect children’s nutrition”.Each survey validates these linkages but where is the nationwide programme tofight malnutrition on a war footing? The ICDS programme, aided by a falteringanganwadi system, is crying for attention. For 37-years now, ICDS has failedmiserably to reach anywhere near its objective of ensuring child health andnutrition. It failure can be gauged from the fact that the ICDS programmeoperates in the 100 districts in which the HUNGaMA survey was done. Thedeteriorating health of the ICDS programme has to be first addressed before it canbe expected to take care of expecting mothers and the children.

Still more importantly isto first understand the crucial ink between growing hunger and malnutrition andthe economic policies being perpetuated. Hunger is the result of faultyeconomic policies which widens the gulf between the haves and have-nots; is theoutcome of policies that take away community control over natural resourceslike water, forests and farmlands; and is also the fallout of neoliberal policies that removes socialsecurity nets and allows corporate takeover of agriculture. The more thegovernment destroys the very foundations of agriculture forcing farmers toabandon farming and migrate into the urban cities in search of menial jobs, themore is likely to the growth in hunger and malnutrition. Instead of extendingwhat is visibly a mere lip-sympathy to the poor and malnourished, the PrimeMinister needs to recast his economic policies making it pro-people andpro-environment.

Source: Deccan Herald, Jan 14, 2012.
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/219133/shame-shammer.html

You may also like to read Dinesh Sharma's report in Mail Today
'National shame' on PM Manmohan Singh as kids go hungry
http://bit.ly/yuWxOc

Only lip-sympathy for the malnourished

2012-01-12T17:03:00.001+05:30

Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh termed malnutrition anational shame, it appears as if only the legislators and the parliamentarians arethe ones who are affected. A day after the Prime Minister released a surveyreport that stated 42 per cent children below the age of 6 yrs are malnourished;the Andhra Pradesh Assembly gave a hefty hike in salaries and allowances, andprovided swanky SUVs to its legislators. The salary of AP minister willincrease from Rs 70,000 to Rs 2 lakh, and the monthly allowance for MLAs willrise from Rs 36,000 to Rs 90,000. Telengana MLAs are being provided with swankyToyota SUVs.

This is coming at a time when the Integrated ChildDevelopment Scheme (ICDS) is struggling with a terrible paucity of funds.Minister for Child Development Krishna Tirath has sought an increase of Rs 2lakh crore for the next five years to augment the nationwide programme thathelps provide supplementary nutrition to children and their mothers.

While the poor and malnourished are languishing, Delhi MLAswere showered a few months back with hefty pay hikes and additional allowances.An MLA, who used to get Rs 42,000 per month, now gets anything between Rs90,000 and Rs 1 lakh. Ministers are getting a higher salary of Rs 1.2 to 1.3lakh per month. On an average, the hike in basic salary resulted in a 100 percent increase with a slew of additional perks like travel allowance,constituency allowance and allowance for attending the session were alsoappreciably enhanced.

Prior to Delhi, nine Statesincluding Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh andKarnataka had raised the salaries and perks of their legislators. Ironically, theState government too have time and again expressed their inability to provideits own share of resources to augment the supplementary health programmes. Whilethe State’s have all the money for showering freebies for legislators, theyhave no money, for example, for the anganwadi workers. The anganwadi workersget a maximum of Rs 1800 per month, and are expected to counsel and motivatethe expecting mothers. The anganwadi helpers are paid still less. In otherwords, the anganwadi workers and the helpers are themselves surviving ‘belowthe poverty line’.

And now take a look at howthe country is trying to fight malnutrition with meagre resources. According tothe ICDS website, for supplementary nutrition the financial normswere revised recently. The cost of supplementary nutrition (per day perbeneficiary) for different category of beneficiaries vide the Ministry’s letterNo. F.No. 4-2/2008-CD.II dated 07.11.2008, are: Children (6-72 months): Rs 4 (upfrom Rs 2); Severelymalnourished children (6-72 months): Rs 6 (upfrom Rs 2.70) and Pregnant women andnursing mothers: Rs 5 (upfrom Rs 2.30). No wonder, the Ministry has sought a four-fold hike in thebudget of ICDS. All earlier efforts of the Ministry, and also by various Planpanels, acknowledging that the allocation for the priority sector programme wasabysmally low had met with the standard answer: no additional funds areavailable.

Only a miracle can remove malnutrition in the allocated Rs 4 for a childand Rs 6 for a pregnant mother. The 2005-06 National Family Health SurveyIII had showed that half ofall children in Indiawere under-nourished.

In September 2010, when an international child rights organisation Savethe Children had come up with a damning report, the Indian Parliament hadpassed a bill that raised the basic salary of parliamentarians by three times,from Rs 16,000 to Rs 50,000 and at the same time raising their daily allowancesand pension. Ironically, the Save the Children report “A fair Chance ofLife” hadstated: “Of the 26 million children born every year, approximately1.83 million died before their fifth birthday”. Half of these children actuallydie within a month of being born. Parliament did not even take notice of theseverity of the prevailing health crisis.

Therefore when I see Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressshock and disgust, terming malnutrition a ‘national shame’ I am not the bitsurprised. Seeing the timing of the report before the coming State Assemblyelections in five States, the entire exercise seems to be aimed at theelectoral prospects. Releasing a report on Hunger and Malnutrition (HUNGaMA) inNew Delhirecently, he said: "the problemof malnutrition is a matter of national shame. Despite impressive growth in ourGDP, the level of under-nutrition in the country is unacceptably high." Thishappen despite India’sGDP continuously remaining on a high.

While the entire policy planning, as we know, continues torevolve around opening up for more foreign direct investment, acquiringagricultural land for the industry and providing all kinds of sops andtax-concessions to the industry in the name of ‘policy paralysis’, the hungryand malnourished continue to live on hope. For a country which has the dubiousdistinction of having the largest population of hungry – an estimated 320million – and ranks below Sub-Saharan Africa in malnutrition, there is littlemoney when it comes to addressing malnutrition. Hunger and malnutrition areclosely correlated. Feeding the population is the first requisite to buildingup a healthy population. Supplementarynutrition programme like the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) andanganwadis can only be effective when adequate resources are made available. Butwhere is the money?

One small step towards chemical-free agriculture

2012-01-08T15:28:00.001+05:30

For quite sometime now there has been a silent resurgence in sustainable farming practices across the country. After the environmental destruction wrought by the chemical-based external input driven agriculture for almost four decades now, I find a large percentage of farmers trying whatever they can to salvage the situation. While on the one hand I can count a sizable number of progressive farmers in different parts of the country who discarded chemical-based farming system (and some of them were even awarded and honoured for achieving record yields) and opted for more sustainable farming practices, there is quite a significant proportion of the farming community which has moved away from the Green Revolution approach to farming.

Call it organic agriculture or natural farming or holistic farming or whatever variation you can think of, the fact remains that Low External Input-based Sustainable Agriculture (LEISA) is now being increasingly adopted. Innovative farmers are trying all kinds of permutations and combinations, and I am really amazed at the extent of wisdom our farmers carry. I am not going to list here the innovations being applied, but all I can say is that the mainline agricultural research system would certainly be the gainer if they were to move out of the 'lab-to-land' approach and follow the reverse mode of 'land-to-lab'.

For quite sometime I had wondered if I could ever bring some of these innovative leaders together on a platform and chart out a strategy to put this all together and spread it across the country in a mission mode. I am aware of the reluctance on the part of the agriculture universities as well as the policy makers to extend a helping hand. At the same time, I was also aware of the limitations that the civil society has. Although several groups/individuals are spearheading the silent movement in their own way, but given the monumental constraints that prevail, it isn't moving ahead at a pace I would have expected.

At my own level I had discussed the possibility of forming a consortium with like-minded groups/farmer organisations to spread sustainable farming practices far and wide and to even the remote corners but somehow it didn't work out. It was then that I met the Yoga Guru Swami Ramdev who is better known for the monumental role he has played in promoting healthy living through yoga. Healthy living is directly related to healthy food, which in turn is directly proportionate to cultivation of healthy crops. Over the period, we discussed the possibility of laying out sustainable farming models, where soil, water and food is not poisoned, and then preparing an outreach programme through regular training and learning exercises.

The New Year provided an opportunity. 14 well-known practitioners in sustainable farming methods assembled at Haridwar (at the foothills of the Himalayas) for deliberations which continued non-stop for 4 days. We would sit from 9 in the morning and the discussions would go on till 8.30 in the evening. Such was the intensity of deliberations and the commitment to the cause that even after dinner the participants would once again assemble for an informal round of discussions. Well, to cut the long story short, it has now been decided to layout three models of chemical-free farming, each catering to the requirement of farmers who farm in one acre, two acres and five acres. Once the farming system comes up in Haridwar, we would throw it open to farmers to adopt and improve upon depending upon their local conditions and requirements. This would simultaneously be followed with preparations for a nationwide training programme, which too would depend upon the need and the requirement of different regions.

The plots were selected, earmarked and soil preparations began the day the deliberations ended. Soil samples have been drawn, and we are now getting ready for the next step. Meanwhile, a week-by-week action plan has been laid out, and the package of practices to be immediately followed is also being worked out, and improved with each passing day. Soon after Swami Ramdev made public the initiative on Aastha TV channel, I have been deluged with requests and support from hundreds of people from across the country. Let us hope that this small initiative galvanises the country to move away from 'business as usual' in agriculture, and ends up promoting healthy farming. I am looking for the day when agriculture does not lead to suicides, does not push farmers into distress, and above all does not usurp the natural resources. The Haridwar initiative is a small step, and I am aware we have a long journey ahead. #

India's shameful paradox of plenty

2011-12-23T22:22:00.000+05:30

It's a paradox ofplenty. At a time when

India

ranks 67th among 81 countries in the2011 Global Hunger Index prepared by the International Food Policy ResearchInstitute, mountains of grain continue to rot in godowns while more recently,irate farmers spilled tonnes of potatoes on the streets in Punjab. A few months ago, it was tomatofarmers in Jharkhand, and then it was the turn of onion growers in Rajasthan.And if you think this is a recent phenomenon, you are mistaken. I have seenthis happening for nearly 25 years now across the country at regular intervals.

Disgusting, isn’t it?Well, the visuals of food rotting speak volumes of the criminal apathy, neglectand callousness with which we, as a nation, have failed to address the shamefulscourge of hunger. For a country that has the dubious distinction of having thelargest population of hungry in the world — close to 320 million — and with 42percent of children officially clubbed as malnourished, the spectacle ofmassive quantities of food being allowed to go waste is an unpardonable crime.What is still worse is that hunger proliferates in a country that claims to bethe world’s largest democracy.

For nearly five years,procurement has hovered at 50-60 million tonnes. Someone had worked it out thatif we keep a bag of grain over another, and stack 60 million tonnes in avertical row, we could actually walk to the moon and back. With so much ofsurplus grain, and with unmanageable quantities of fruits and vegetablesrotting by the roadside, there is no justification for growing hunger. At thesame time, it is baffling to find staple food being exported while thepopulation of the hungry and malnourished continues to multiply. No wonder,hunger continues to keep pace with economic growth.

Over the years,farming has become a big gamble. It is not only the worrisome vagaries ofweather that more often than not plays havoc, farmers are also faced with astrange phenomenon — produce and perish. Take the case of Suryabhagwan, afarmer in the East Godavari district of Andhra Pradesh. This year,he voluntarily announced that he would rather work as a ‘coolie’ than undertakepaddy cultivation. Already under heavy debt and knowing that another season ofpaddy cultivation will only add to his indebtedness, his call for a ‘cropholiday’ soon reverberated. Within weeks, the idea spread like wildfire, withthe result that now more than 1 lakh hectares in the two irrigated districts ofEast and West Godavari lie barren.

AP is a paddy growingarea. While production has been steadily on an upswing over the years, adequatemarket infrastructure for procurement has not been created. The result is thatdespite a very high production capacity, there is little space for storage.This is not only true of AP or for that matter Punjab andHaryana, the country’s food bowl, but extends to the whole country. The tragedymanifested after the initial years of the Green Revolution, when food becameabundantly available. The focus then shifted away from agriculture. With publicsector investment drastically falling over the past few decades, agriculturewas left at the mercy of the rain gods. Protecting every single grain of foodproduced to feed the growing population of deprived sections never became anational priority.

Whileproduction increased, the accompanying market and storage infrastructure werenot created.

India

doesnot even have the capacity to handle and absorb an excess production of 5percent, whether it is of wheat, potato or cotton. Whatever the policymakersmay say, the neglect of agriculture was deliberate. It is essentially designedto open up agriculture to private investment. Farmers have been the victims ofa bigger and hidden design to push them out of agriculture. The more theyproduce, the more they suffer. Produce and perish, and thereby make way forcorporate agriculture.

Source: Tehelka, Dec 31, 2011

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main51.asp?filename=Op311211proscons.asp

Punjab makes an effort to bring environment in political discourse

2011-12-21T22:35:00.000+05:30

The diatribe between the two major political opponents seemsunending. In a build up to the impending Punjabelections, there is hardly a day when we don’t get swamped by charges and thecounter-charges. While the underlying idea seems to settle political scores,there is hardly anything refreshing in the way charges are being traded.

Claims and counter-claims notwithstanding, I came across aninitiative taken by several social, religious and environmental activists andorganisations, which comes as a whiff of fresh air in this murky politicalclimate. On December 14, more than two dozen environmentally conscious groupsand individuals have formed a Vatavaran ate Samaj Bachao Morcha (Save Environment and Society Morcha). So as toprotect health, environment, agriculture and the society from any furtherdeterioration, the Morcha aims at making it mandatory for the political partiesto present a time bound programme to improve the state of polluted environment,water, deteriorating health and at the same time take appropriate steps toprevent farming from turning poisonous.

There couldn’t have been a better and timely initiative. Punjab being the seat of Green Revolution, excessive useof chemical fertiliser and pesticides all these years has turned the soilinfertile and poisonous, and at the same time leaching of chemicals into thegroundwater has contaminated the water source. Political parties however haveremained insensitive to the destruction wrought on the environment as a resultof which deadly diseases like cancer are proliferating. Indiscriminate use ofdrugs and intoxicants too has played havoc with human health. A recent UNDPstudy had shown that as much as 74 per cent of the youth in Punjabhad consumed drugs at one stage or the other. In other words, both the soil aswell as the human population has been drugged.

The Morcha’s aim is reach out to all political parties andleaders and apprise them of the growing destruction of the natural environment.It will impress upon these parties to accord environment protection highestpriority in their manifestoes and in their respective governance agenda. Thetask does not end here. Not only the Morcha, it is also the job of everyconscious citizen and voter to raise these concerns whenever they get to meetthe prospective candidates or raise their voice in political rallies andmeetings. Remember, you cannot leave the task of environmental protection,which is so crucial for your future generations, into the hands of a fewenvironmentally-conscious citizens. You too have a role to play.

This is where we need to draw some lessons from AnnaHazare’s campaign for removing corruption. When a few of us had sat down inOctober last year planning for raising the issue of a strong janlokpal, we didnot leave the task to our elected representatives. As founding members of theIndia Against Corruption campaign, we took upon ourselves the responsibility tofight corruption. We were hardly ten people in the beginning. Since we weredetermined, we were able to galvanise the nation to stand and fight for endingcorruption. Similarly, you too can make an effort and make a difference.

I don't know if there are such initiatives also in the other states which are ready to go for elections. I am talking of environmental protection here. Environmentally-conscious citizens must make an effort to bring together sensitive and caring people from different walks of life, build up a charter of expectations, and then create wider awareness so as to reach the political parties. Unless people exert more pressure, environmental and social problems cannot be addressed effectively.

You can probably start by following the activities of the Vatavaranate Samaj Bachao Morcha, which is headed by Sant Baba Balbir Singh Seechewal. Someof the well-known personalities of the region form the advisory group, and itincludes: Prof Jagmohan Singh, Dr Nirmal Singh Panjabi, Dr Bibi Inderjit Kaur,Balbir Singh Rajewal, Pishaura Singh Sidhupur, and Dr GPI Singh. The corecommittee comprises among others Umendra Dutt and Singh Sahib Giani KewalSingh. This is your opportunity to save Punjab.

Potato glut: Looking beyond the markets

2011-12-12T14:55:00.000+05:30

The clock has turned full circle. Some 25 years ago, potatogrowers in Punjab were forced to plough backthe standing potato crop since it was more expensive to pull out the tubersfrom the soil. To demonstrate their indignation, some farmers had even dumped hundredsof bags of potatoes on the streets. Such was the glut in the market, potatoprices had tumbled leaving farmers in an unprecedented distress.

Potato growers in Punjabare not an isolated lot. Farmers in Haryana, western Uttar Pradesh, West Bengaland Gujarat are also faced with anunprecedented glut. Cold storages in the northern region are dumping potato bythe roadside or in the nallahs to make way for fresh arrivals. The tragedy isthat this year the national production is up by 27 lakh tonnes, which is an increase of 7 per cent over last years's production. In other words, it means that even a 7 per cent increase in production causes an unmanageable glut.

The fate of potato growers is not much different from whatis being felt by basmati and cotton farmers in Punjaband Haryana. In anticipation of a better price this year, based on the pricerealised last year, there has been a marked shift in acreage under rice tocotton, and basmati. While acreage under cotton had gone up by 19 per cent, thearea under basmati increased by 15 per cent. Price of both the commodities hascrashed as a result. Farmers are known to be withholding the produce waitingfor the market rates to improve. This brings me to the central question. Howlong will farmers remain at the mercy of the markets?

Faced with a similar situation, and with no potential buyersfor even last year’s harvest of paddy, farmers in East Godawari and West Godawari districts in Andhra Pradesh had gone on acrop holiday. Uncertainty of the markets has forced 90 farmers to take theirown lives in the past one and a half months in Andhra Pradesh. Over-productionof cotton and resulting low market prices has seen over a dozen suicides in thesuicide-prone region of Vidharbha in Maharashtrain the past fortnight. Every now and then we hear reports of tomato farmers,onion growers and even mustard farmers dumping their crop by roadside somewhereor the other.

Returning back to potato in Punjab,in the past few days, newspapers are again full of reports of the massivepotato glut that is forcing farmers to dump the harvested crop on roads.Saddled with 2.5 lakh tonnes of unsold harvest from the previous season, and inanticipation of a bumper crop this fortnight, the market has slumped. AgainstRs 800 per quintal last year, farmers are able to realise merely Rs 100-150this year. Such steep fall in prices has brought gloom in the potato belt.

Twenty-five years, and nothing seems to have changed forfarmers. I still recall the then Chief Minister Darbara Singh providing Rs5-crore for setting up cold storages. Over the years, with steady investment thenumber of cold storages has increased to 500 plus. If cold storages alone couldhave addressed the problem, potato growers would have been a happy lot allthese years. On the contrary, farmers are reluctant to lift the stored potatoesfrom the cold storages because of the highly uneconomical prices prevailing inthe market.

Nearly 20 lakh quintals of potatoes are lying in coldstorages.

Following the newspapers over the years, I find quite alarge number of editorials suggesting the way out from an unmanageable glut.Invariably, all editorials make three suggestions: provide additional coldstorage space; encourage public/private investment for processing potatoes intochips and French fries; and finally some setting up plants for manufacturingvodka. I don’t blame the editorial writers alone, agricultural economists toohaven’t looked beyond. They would obfuscate the issue by throwing in economicvocabulary that practically means little new.

Let us analyse these suggestions. Cold storages have beenset up not only in Punjab but across the potato belt in northern India. Settingup more cold storages would certainly not help the farmers realise a betterprice at a time of glut. I have seen farmers being served legal notices by theowners of cold storages to lift the stored potatoes. A number of times I findfarmers prefer to let the stored harvest lie in the stores than to sell itknowing well that it is not worth it.

Increase processing facilities for making chips and Frenchfries is a suggestion that finds many takers. Not many realise that the marketfor potato chips is already over-saturated and many popular brands have vowedout. Market for French fries is also limited because many big retail chainsactually have been importing frozen potato fries, whose import is allowed asper the WTO norms. Setting up a few vodka plants however seems to a suggestion mademore out of jest than any seriousness. In any case, a vodka manufacturing plantwould not require any big quantity that can make a significant difference tothe production.

When the going gets tough, irate farmers invariably fallback upon the government for help. Potato farmers for instance have time andagain met the Punjab Chief Minister Prakash Singh Badal and have been askingfor government’s help in selling 20 lakh tonnes of potatoes lying in coldstorage. Cotton farmers on the other hand are demanding a higher procurementprice. Surprisingly, no one has demanded big retail companies like RelianceFresh and Bharti to purchase the surplus potato. Probably farmers are awarethat big retail is only a fair weather friend. The question therefore is thereany way to ensure that farmers remain insulated from the vagaries of themarkets?

I have three suggestions to make. First and foremost, thereis an urgent need to strengthen market intelligence. It is time to prepare acrop map for the country. It has to be based on the nation’s requirements as tohow much of a particular crop is what the country needs. Department ofAgriculture, State marketing agencies and the Growers Association mustcollaborate to go into mapping the production potential and monitor the areasown under the crops based on the production potential and what can be handled.An alarm needs to be sounded when the area sown exceeds the permissible limitthereby ensuring farmers do not bring any more area under the same crop. Thismust be accompanied by a vigorous campaign to educate farmers not to go in formonocultures. Multiple cropping must be encouraged so that farmers are able toreduce dependence on one crop, and thereby reduce risk.

And finally, each state must set up a State Farmers’ IncomeCommission, which works out the monthly assured income package a farmer mustreceive based on production and irrespective of whether he is able to find amarket or not.

Foreign capital based economy does not translate into more welfare for the people

2011-12-08T14:38:00.001+05:30

Chakravarthi Raghvan drew my attention to a very importantissue that most of us find it very difficult to decipher. We therefore tend toaccept what is being told to us. I am talking of the relationship (ordifference) between GDP (Gross Domestic Product) and GNP (Gross NationalProduct). Many of us use the acronyms inter-changeably or as if they aresynonyms. He wrote: "Thosemoaning and bemoaning failure of the government to push through 100 percent FDIin retail trade, equating more FDI with more growth and 'welfare' (FinancialTimes has both a news report and comment), might look at the Paul Krugman blogon difference between GDP and GNP in such cases as the Irish example, whereForeign investor based economic growth (GDP) actually did not translate intowelfare for ordinary Irish (GNP)."

I was curious to know how is he substantiating his statement. I looked atPaul Krugman's blog and found it very fascinating. Under the caption IrishPfizer Smiling, he writes: "Ireland, you see,is a country with an extraordinary amount of foreign-owned capital; this meansthat gross national product, the income ofIrish residents, is substantially smaller than gross domestic product, the incomegenerated in the country. We normally focus on GDP, because it’s easier tomeasure accurately, but in Ireland’scase this can be misleading — because the gap between GDP and GNP has beenwidening." It means that the more foreign capital flowing intoyour country does not translate into welfare of the people, as measured by GNP.In other words, what Chief Economic Adviser to Prime Minister, Kaushik Basu,deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, and a hordeof other neoliberal economistsare saying in support of FDI in multi-brand retail, as if it is going to be thepanacea for all economic ills, is simply incorrect.

Krugman illustrateswith a diagram that tells us how the Irish GDP has been steadily going up in2011, but the GNP is not keeping pace. He says: "The slump has beendeeper, and the recovery even less apparent, when you look at GNP -- which iswhat matters to the Irish -- rather than GDP. What's going on here? As Iunderstand it, the recent rise in Irish exports is largely a matter ofcapital-intensive multinationals -- especially pharma -- ramping up Irishproduction. This is good for GDP, but generates very little income for Irishresidents, so that GN doesn' gain." Thank you Krugman for explaining it sosimply and clearly (for those who would like to look at the blog post, here isthe link: http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/12/06/irish-pfizer-smiling/).

To know how does GDP compare with GNP, I tried searching on the net. Hereis what I found: GDPvs GNP http://www.diffen.com/difference/GDP_vs_GNP I will try to decipherthe complex web in one of my future blog posts.

Corporate lobbying gaining strength in India

2011-12-07T21:50:00.001+05:30

Some days back, DainikBhaskar published one of my tweets. I wrote: “Wal-Mart has spent Rs52-crore between 2007 and 2009 on lobbying. Will Wal-Mart tell us how much itspent on the Prime Minister’s office?” A few days later, I noticed the BJPleader Shanta Kumar asking the same question.

Crores of rupees have been spent over the past few years bysome of the big multinational corporations to seek an entry into India. What mayappear to be economic decisions taken by the government often turn out to bethe result of intense lobbying by foreign companies. Besides Wal-Mart Stores,the coffee shop giant Starbucks, which runs a global chain of coffee shops, hasbeen lobbying in Indiaseeking 100 per cent FDI in single brand retail. As per a disclosure statementit made before the American Senate, the company had spent more than Rs 1-crorein the first 6 months of 2011, for “market opening initiatives in India.”

Starbucks efforts have borne fruits. Finally, the govt hasapproved 100% FDI in single-brand retail.

Wal-Mart Stores, the world’s biggest multi-brand retailchain, had told the US Senate that it had lobbied for “discussions related to India’s ForeignDirect Investment (FDI).” In addition to Rs 52-crore spent between 2007-1009,the company had also incurred Rs 6-crore in the first 3 months of 2010 for thesame purpose. In other words, crores of rupees are being spent by foreigncompanies to influence public policy and the decision making process. Not manyof us know that the debate we see on the television or the articles we see insupport of the foreign companies are often supported with lobbying money.

At a time when the American and European economies are facedwith a recession, at least a dozen Corporate giants are lobbying hard to seekan entry into

India

.These include Wal-Mart, Starbucks, and financial services major Morgan Stanley,New York Life Insurance and Prudential Financial. The financial services companieshave already gained with the approval granted to 100 % FDI in single-brandretail. In addition, technology companies Intel, chemical giant Dow Chemical,pharmaceutical major Pfizer, telecom companies AT&T, Alcatel-Lucent arealso engaged in intense lobbying.

Lobbying is a legal activity in America. The companies aretherefore required to inform the US Senate about such activities by submittingquarterly disclosure reports. In India, where lobbying is so far not legallyrecognised, but the industry and business houses have formed association andfederations which primarily are engaged in lobbying with the government.Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce & Industry (FICCI), Confederationof Indian Industry (CII) and the Punjab,Haryana, Delhi Chamber of Commerc are basically lobbying groups. You would havenoticed that the CII and FICCI have also been actively supporting the entry ofBig box retail into

India

Internationally, lobbying is a major activity. According toWikipedia, currently around 15,000 Brussels-basedlobbyists (consultants, lawyers, associations, corporations, NGOs etc.) seek toinfluence the European Union’s legislative process. Some 2,600 special interestgroups have a permanent office in Brussels. InAmerica,lobbyists target the US Senate, US House of Representative and the Statelegislatures. There were some 17,000 lobbyists registered in Washington DCalone in 2007. This clearly tells us how corporate lobbying is writing theeconomic policies of the American and European governments. The economicdecisions are in reality not based on what the people require, but how much thebusiness houses can invest in influencing policy decisions.

It is therefore important for us to also know how much moneyhas been spent by companies on influencing the Prime Minister’s office and alsoon parliamentarians. After all, it is our future that is at stake. #

The Slap that failed to shake the nation

2011-12-03T13:25:00.001+05:30

The day Food and AgricultureMinister Sharad Pawar received ‘the slap’ I and Sharad Joshi were speaking at anational conference of farmers in Haridwar. A little after lunch, Swami Ramdevwalked in to take his seat on the dais and expressed his apologies for beinglate. He said he was late because he had got busy responding to mediaquestioning on the thappad.

The moment he gave out thenews of the ‘the slap’ there was a round of applause. I think the clapping andcheering that followed was louder than the applause any one of us had received duringand after our presentations. Meanwhile, the stream of messages on my mobileseemed never ending. My twitter too was flooded with congratulatory messages. Iam aware that howsoever we may strongly condemn the incident, which was thepolitically correct thing to do, the fact remains that there was a sense ofjubilation all around.

For acountry reeling under an unprecedented price rise, corruption and economicpolicies that benefit only 1 per cent of the population, ‘the slap’ was anexpression of the simmering anger and increasing frustration. While the moredaring have picked up the gun (in the Maoist-affected areas) against theinequalities being continuously perpetuated with impunity, the liberal and theeducated in the urban centres too are getting restless. I agree with Shobha Dewhen she says ‘this is not about Sharad Pawar. He just happened to be the manat the receiving end of the most recent slap’.

It certainlycould have happened to anyone, including the Prime Minister.

Blame forbeing politically incorrect, but the self-righteousness and ‘we know what weare doing’ kind of approach that ruling party politician exhibit day in and dayout smacks of arrogance. The tu-tu-main-mainthat follows daily on the TV shows have turned into the biggest soap operaswhere the spokesperson of all political parties simply try to outwit the other toestablish his/her shirt is cleaner than the other’s. Not realising that everyprime time TV show actually helps build up the disgust and anger against thepolitical class.

Not only the politicians,even the economists and the specialists who are regulars on the TV shows behavelike the committed voters like the people political parties bring in to listento leaders at political rallies. They know what is expected of them, and theydeliver it faithfully. I am sure if they were to be ferried to a Congressrally, they would shout CongressZindabad. The next time, if the BJPis in power, you can expect them to shift gears and not shy from raising BJPZindabad slogans. Similarly, in the studio they knowwhat is expected from them, and deliver it faithfully to get their fifteen secondsof fame. It is very rare to see an expert on a TV show who speaks from convictionand is basing his analysis on ground realities.

Nevertheless,returning back to food inflation, for several years now Prime Minister ManmohanSingh, Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and Food & Agriculture MinisterSharad Pawar have been setting fresh deadlines for bringing down inflation.Chief Economic Advisor to the Prime Minister Dr Kaushik Basu too has beenmaking statements which have little relevance to the realities and whichclearly show that his finger is not on the right nerve. Certainly people arefed up and except for the media no one takes these deadlines seriously. Theyknow that the leaders are hiding their inability to stem the rot in the systemand are refraining from a crackdown against the stockist, black marketers andspeculators.

Roughly ayear back, I remember when I was asked by the media to respond to the UPAgovernment's latest claim that food prices will ease by April. Although foodinflation has risen to 17.87 per cent for the week ending Feb 20, 2010, KaushikBasu was quoted as saying that the food price have come down, and thehigh inflation is because of the base effect. Analysts said that the Aprilharvest would be crucial, and the pressure on inflation will ease after the newcrop flows into the markets.

I made it clear that food inflation will not ebbafter April. In fact, I went a step ahead and said that any strong government,if it wasn't faced with the compulsions of coalition politics, would haveremoved the Food & Agriculture Minister by now. He deliberately makesstatements that have helped raise the prices of sugar and made India paythrough its nose for wheat imports. The UPA therefore cannot wait any longer.It must get rid of Sharad Pawar, and you will see the prices coming down. Iwasn’t wrong. Even Sonia Gandhi had reportedly told a group of visiting farmersand activists that she is helpless when it comes to agriculture.

However, a few days after thethappad incident, I was expectingsome visible changes in the way Agriculture Minister has been operating. But nothingseems to have changed. It is business as usual for Sharad Pawar. In the midstof the logjam over FDI in retail, he said: “The critics are overlooking thefact that the policy’s main objective is to enhance the financial ability ofthe farmers who are responsible for the produce. If the farmers’ produce isdirectly lifted from the fields, with them receiving higher remuneration forit, why should there be any objections?” he asked. “It has always been myendeavour to address farmers’ interests.”

This is simply untrue. Thereis no empirical study that details the benefits that have accrued to farmersfrom big retail. Nor did Sharad Pawar or for that matter his Cabinet colleagueAnand Sharma has held any wider public discussions on the subject. Somehow,ministers have increasingly begun to believe that once they have elected theyhave the right to do anything in the name of ‘inclusive growth’. The problem isthat if the people protest outside parliament, the media chastises them sayingstreet protests cause inconvenience. If parliamentarians protest inside, it isthe wastage of public money. How and where people express their dissent?

And this brings me to anotherburning issue that many felt was an ‘unhealthy' and 'undemocratic' trend. Iam talking of the spate of editorials on Jarnail Singh's boldinitiative a few years back of hurling his shoe at Mr P Chidambaram, theHome Minister. I am aware that it will be politically incorrect to admirethe trajectory the shoe took. But notwithstanding what our political leaders(and the so called enlightened media) believe, the fact remains that the nationis finding it a simple way to express their anger. After all therehas to be an outlet for a deep-rooted anger and disgust. If democracy providesno avenues for people to voice their concern, people will eventually find otherways to make their voice heard.

If shoe hurling and ‘theslap’ is undemocratic, is committing suicide democratic? In the 2004general elections (correct me if I am wrong), the then chief minister of AndhraPradesh Mr Chandrababu Naidu witnessed a piquant situation when a farmerstood up in a political rally being addressed by him and drankpesticide. He died before he could reach the hospital. Imagine, if he hadinstead thrown his chappal at Mr Naidu. It would havecaused commotion in the crowd, and more attention to the cause for whichhe eventually died.

Not only in Andhra Pradesh,farmers all over the country have tried to send a strong political signal bytaking their own lives. Over the years, when all democratic norms failed todraw attention, they took their own lives. By committing suicide theyactually delivered what should be seen as a powerful statement. They failedhere too. The world's largest democracy did not take notice. Since 1997, the National Crime RecordsBureau tells us that over 2.5 lakh farmers have committed suicide.

I always thought that suicidewas an undemocratic tool being used by the voiceless to make their voice heard.But what puzzles me is that why none of the political parties are taking it upas if it was a question of life and death (which you will agree, it is). Afterall, people are taking the extreme fatal step as an expression of theiranger. I always wondered why the enlightened media, which candepute some 450 journalists to cover the Lakme Fashion show, or send anarmy of reporters and cameramen to cover the IPL cricket in South Africa (as ifit is a Mahabharata battle), are not even moved to take upthe issue of farmers committing suicide.

Come to think of it. Wasn't it undemocratic on the part of the politicians aswell as the media (which never tires of telling us that it is the Fouth Estate) to ignorehuman suffering in the crop fields? Media has no regrets when thefarmer took their own lives but it certainly would have been furious and"want these perpetrators to be booted out of society" if they hadinstead thrown shoes. Imagine if the 2.5 lakh farmers had not died but insteadflung their chappals/jutis, wouldn'tit have been a more civilised form of angst?

Please do not get me wrong. I am not advocating throwing shoes to bea democratic form of dissent. But at the same time, I want you to think,and think deeply, as to why this democracy finds nothing disturbing whenfarmers kill themselves in order to draw the attention of powers that beto their plight. Such arrogance and indifference in a people’s democracy can’tgo on for long. “The slap’ and the chappalcannot be simply dismissed as the work of a mentally unstable person. It is anexpression of growing anger among the masses. Let us not wait for an Arabspring to force the Indian democracy to truly respond and represent the people.It is a question of the forgotten 99 per cent. #

An edited version of this article appeared in Tehelka magazine, Dec 10, 2011.
Slaps, shoes and suicides http://bit.ly/tu7vOH

Allowing Retail FDI in India: lies, lies and damn lies

2011-11-30T16:01:00.001+05:30

At a time when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is refusing torollback the decision to open the retail sector to foreign direct investmentsaying it will benefit our country, the American President Obama thinksotherwise. In a tweet on Saturday (Nov 26), President Obama wrote: “supportsmall businesses in your community by shopping at your favourite local store.”

While President Obama is talking of what is good for America,Manmohan Singh too is adamant on protecting American interests. It is primarilyfor this reason that Manmohan Singh’s assertion that retail FDI will benefitour country and ‘improve rural infrastructure, reduce wastage of agriculturalproduce and enable our farmers to get better prices for their crops’ is notborne on facts. In the midst of the rhetorical contests in the TV studios, thereal facts have been sacrificed for the sake of political partisanship.

A lot has been said and written about the virtues ofallowing FDI in retail into India.Let me make an attempt to answer some of the bigger claims that CommerceMinister Anand Sharma as well as the Prime Minister have repeatedly made. Frankly,their arguments seem to be driven more by political expediency rather than anyeconomic understanding, and that is more worrying. It only shows how economicfacts can be twisted, tailored and manipulated to justify the political agendaof the ruling party. There can be nothing more damaging for the future of acountry.

First, thebiggest argument in favour of multi-brand retail is that it will create 10million jobs by the year 2010. There is no justification for this claim. In theUnited States,Wal-Mart dominates big retail. It has a turnover of US $ 400 billion, andemploys 2.1 million people. Ironically, the Indian retail sector too has aturnover of US $ 400 billion, but has 12 million shops and employs 44 millionpeople. It is the Indian retail which is a much-bigger employer, and any effortto allow retail FDI will only destroy millions of livelihoods.

Take the case of England. The two big retail giantsare Tesco and Sainsbury. Both had committed to create 24,000 jobs between them,in the past two years. A British government enquiry found out that instead ofcreating any additional job, these two big retail companies had actually thrownout 850 people from existing jobs. The big retail units which failed to createjobs in their own countries cannot be expected to create additional employmentin

India

Second, AnandSharma says that retail FDI will provide 30 per cent more income to farmers. Therecan be no bigger lie than this. In the US, for instance, if Wal-Mart was ableto enhance farm incomes there was no reason why the America government woulddole out a massive subsidy of US $ 307 billion under the US Farm Bill 2008,which basically makes a budgetary subsidy provision for the next five years. Mostof these subsidies are clubbed in the category of Green Box under the WTO. Andas per an UNCTAD-India study, if the Green Box subsidies are withdrawn,American agriculture faces a collapse.

Agriculture in America is therefore sustained withagricultural subsidies. In OECD countries, a group comprising 30 richescountries, the situation is no different. A latest 2010 report statesexplicitly that farm subsidies rose by 22 per cent in 2009, up from 21 per centin 2008. In just one year in 2009, these industrialised countries provided asubsidy of Rs 12.60 lakh crore to agriculture. Despite this, every minute onefarmer quits agriculture in Europe. This ishappening at a time when farmer’s incomes are dwindling. In France alone,farmer’s income has fallen by 39 per cent in 2009.

Third, big retailhelps remove the middlemen and therefore provides a better price to farmers.Again, it is a flawed argument and is not borne on any evidence. Studies showthat in Americain the first half of 20^th century, for every dollar worth of producea farmer sold, 70 cents was his income. In 2005, farmer’s income had fallen to4 per cent. This is despite the presence of Wal-mart and other big retailers in

America

In other words, the middlemen are not squeezed out as is thegeneral understanding but in reality their number actually increases. A newbattery of middlemen – quality controller, standardiser, certification agency,processor, packaging consultant etc – now operate under the same retail hub andhave been walking away with farmer’s income. Moreover, due to the sheer sizeand buying power, big retail generally depresses producer prices. In England, Tescofor example paid 4 per cent less to producers. Low supermarket prices in Scotland haveforced irate farmers to form a coalition called ‘Fair Deal Food’ to seek betterprice for their farm produce.

Fourth, retailFDI will source 30 per cent from the small and medium enterprises and thereforewill benefit Indian manufacturers. This is an afterthought, especially after asection of the media highlighted the discrepancy. Even though Anand Sharma says30 per cent products would be sources from within the country, the factsremains that under the WTO agreements, India cannot limit the big retail fromoutsourcing its products from anywhere in the world. This is against the WTOnorms, wherein no member country can apply any investment restriction that isinconsistent with the provisions of Article III or Article XI of GATT 1994.

Using the WTO provisions, multi-brand retail will flood theIndian market with cheaper Chinese manufactured goods thereby wiping out thedomestic SME sector. At the same time, the ‘Indian Stamp’ on multi-brand retailthat Anand Sharma claims will have at least 60 per cent investment on ‘backend’ systems is also not based on facts. As per the definition of ‘back-end’,anything that is not ‘front-end’ becomes ‘back-end’ and has to beself-certified. Which means even the expenses on the corporate headquarterbecomes ‘back-end’ investment. In any case, 51 per cent FDI in cold storagesetc is already provided and yet no investment has come. Let us be very clear, bigretail is not coming to Indiato provide a network of food storage silos and cold chains.

Fifth, moreimportantly, in an eye-opening study entitled “Wal-Mart and Poverty”, Pennsylvania StateUniversity in the United Stateshas clearly brought out that those American states that had more Wal-Martstores in 1987, had higher poverty rates by 1999 than the states where fewerstores were set up. This is something that the government is not talking aboutbut should ring an alarm bell for a country which is reeling in poverty, hungerand squalor.

World produces enough food for the year 2050. The problem is access and distribution.

2011-11-25T22:19:00.001+05:30

With the world population crosses 7 billion, feeding theteeming population is becoming a major concern. At times of diminishing landresources, and in an era of climate change, ensuring food security is thebiggest challenge.

All efforts are aimed at increasing food production. Somehowan impression has been created that the world needs to increase crop productionmanifold if it has to meet the food requirement for the year 2050. The globalpopulation would then be 9 billion. What is however deliberately being glossedover is that there is at present no shortage of food. It is not production, butaccess and distribution that need immediate attention.

At present, the total quantity of food that is producedglobally is good enough to meet the daily needs of 11.5 billion people. Ifevery individual were to get his daily food requirement as per the WHO norms,there would be abundant food supplies. In terms of calories, against theaverage per capita requirement of 2,300, what is available is a little morethan 4,500 calories. In other words, the world is already producing more foodthan what would be required in 2050. So where is the need to panic?

Why then is the world faced with hunger? Simply put, one partof the world is eating more and the other is left to starve. Hunger has grownover the years because of gross food mismanagement. Let me explain. At the 1996World Food Summit, political leaders had pledged to pull out half theworld's hungry (at that time the figure was somewhere around 840 million)by the years 2015. In other words, by 2010, the world should have removedat least 300 million people from the hunger list.

Instead it has added another 85 million to raise the hunger tallyto 925 million. In my understanding, this too is a gross understatement.The horrendous face of hunger is being kept deliberately hidden. Butnevertheless, let’s again go back to the question we posed earlier: If there isno shortage of food than why the growing pangs of hunger?

Consider this. An average American consumes about 125 kg ofmeat, including 46 kg of poultry meat. While the Indians are still laggingbehind, the Chinese are fast catching up with the American lifestyle. TheChinese consume about 70 kg of meat on average each year, inclusive of 8.7 kgof poultry meat. The Indian average is around 3.5 kg of meat, much of it (2.1kg) coming from poultry. If you put all this together, the Chinese are thebiggest meat eaters, and for obvious reasons - devouring close to 100 milliontonnes every year. Americais not far behind, consuming about 35 million tonnes of meat in a year.

When I said earlier that one part of the world is eatingmore, this is what I meant. Six times more grain is required to provide theproteins that are consumed by the meat-eaters. Changing the dietary habitstherefore assumes importance. But still worse, Americans throw away as much as 30 percent of their food, worth $ 48.3billion. Why only blame the Americans, walk into any marriage ceremony in

India

and you would be aghast to see the quantity of food that goes waste.

Food wastage has thereforebecome our right.

Considering FAO's projections of the number ofpeople succumbing to hunger and malnutrition at around 24,000 a day, I hadcalculated that by the year 2015, the 20 years time limit that World FoodSummit had decided to work on to pull out half the hungry, 172 millionpeople would die of hunger. Thesepeople are succumbing to hunger because both at the household and at thenational level, we have allowed food to go waste.

In America,for instance, hunger has broken a 14-year record and onein every ten Americans lives in hunger. In Europe, 40 million people arehungry, almost equivalent to the population of

Spain

. In India, nearly320 million people live in hunger. The International Institute for FoodPolicy’s Global Hunger Index 2011 ranks India 67^th among 81countries. While India rankslower than Rwanda, what isstill more shocking is that Punjab – the food bowl – ranks below Sudan and Honduras in ensuring food security.

Is it so difficult to remove hunger? The answer is No.

A simple act ofsaving and sharing food is the best way to fight hunger. It can begin at thehousehold level, at the community level and of course at the regional andnational levels. If every household were to ensure that no food is wasted, andthen organise the left over to be delivered to the poor and needy, much of thehunger that we see around can be taken care of. A small initiative in Rewaritown in Haryana has galvanised the township into saving and sharing food. If itcan happen in Rewari, it can happen in your neighbourhood too. Try it, and youwill see you too can make a difference. #

Turmeric can heal but only if you get it pure

2011-11-16T09:19:00.001+05:30

Some years back, I remember listening to Bhagat Singh’snephew, Dr Jagmohan Singh. He was addressing a public meeting at Bhagat Singh’snative village. I still recall him speaking passionately about the need to use haldi (turmeric) in our daily preparations, andwhat continued to linger in my mind was his suggestion to procure pure haldi at any cost. “If a family canconsume one kilo of pure haldi in amonth, believe me most of the family’s health problems would be taken care of.”

I knew that haldibeing sold in the market was contaminated with horse dung and various otherimpurities. But with more and more packaged and branded haldi coming into the market I thought the problem withcontamination had been taken care of. But I now realise I was wrong.

Last week, I travelled to Hoshiarpur in Punjab to visit a small farmer’scooperative by the name FAPRO (Farm Produce Promotion Society). Comprising 300members, the main activity of this society which is based in village Ghugial, centreson processing of haldi and honey. Iwas told that haldi is cultivated in23 acres, and the farmers are paid 20-25 per cent higher price than the averageprevailing market price. The entire crop is grown under natural farmingconditions.

Going around the processing plant and talking to theofficials and farmers present, what I learnt was certainly eye-opening. I wastold that generally the haldi that issold in the urban areas contains roughly 40 per cent of filler. Normally, thefiller is of rice powder made from broken rice grains that do not fetch a highprice in the market. The more you go into the countryside, the percentage ofrice powder filler increases. In rural areas, it is not unusual to find 60 percent of rice powder mixed in haldi. Nowonder, you must be wondering why haldiis not that effective anymore.

Although rice powder is not damaging to human health, but mixedwith haldi it certainly reduces themedicinal efficiency of haldi powder.Now I know why the haldi powder thatI have been consuming is not as effective in healing as it is generally knownto be. A hot glass of milk with haldiis supposed to be strong antidote for most sorts of trauma and cough. Turmerichas antioxidants which help purify the blood, protect the liver and removetoxins from the body. Regular consumption of haldi, and when combined with a dose of honey, helps ease pain thatoriginates with ageing of bones. When consumed with raw garlic it is effectiveagainst bronchitis.

The list of its healing properties is endless. Haldi is know to be of immense medicinaluse and that is why some years back there was an effort to draw a patent on itshealing properties by an American institute. After public outcry, thegovernment had successfully managed to fight the patent and get it revoked. Butwhat is the use of singing all praises for haldiwhen consumers can’t get pure and good quality haldi in the market. At least two sources of pure haldi I can suggest. The next time youare looking for haldi, you can searchfor FAPRO haldi in Hoshiarpur, andalso from Markfed outlets across Punjab.Another source for pure haldi isSwami Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogapeeth outlets which exist in every town.

Debt-ridden Kingfisher Airlines to get a bailout package; indebted farmers are left to die.

2011-11-12T12:04:00.001+05:30

Kingfisher Airlines chairman Vijay Mallya is in trouble. His airline awaits an emergency rescue. Kingfisher Airline suffered a loss of Rs 1,027 crore in 2010-11 and has a mounting debt of Rs 7,057.08 crores. With banks reluctant to give more cash to Kingfisher Airlines, Vijay Mallya has turned to the government.

Civil Aviation minister Vayalar Ravi has been quick to make a public pitch to bailout the debt-ridden company. "I will meet the Prime Minister on his return to the country," he told the Indian Express. "I will also talk to the Finance Minister so that some assistance from the lead banks is granted. Closing down the flights affects the travelling public".

Ironically, in the past one month more than a hundred farmers have committed suicide in Andhra Pradesh, Vidharba and Kerala. All these farmers took the fatal route to escape the humiliation that comes along with mounting indebtedness. According to the National Crime Records Bureau 15,964 farmers committed suicide in 2010 alone. Put together, more than 250,000 farmers have taken their own lives during the past 15 years. Growing indebtedness had pushed them to the brink.

I haven't seen any urgency on the part of the successive governments or the policy planners and mainline economists to provide a bailout package to the beleaguered farmers. I don't understand why the serial death dance in the countryside does not evoke any reaction while all hell breaks loose when a big company goes bankrupt. Aren't the poor farmers human beings? Why is that they don't need even a word of sympathy whereas all aviation experts/planners and economists are making a strong pitch for bailing out a debt-ridden airline?

Well, George Orwell was dead right. All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

This brings me to the fundamental question. Economic reforms have been built on the need to privatise the industry. The economic justification for privatisation is that it ushers in efficiency. The underlying principle is that while efficiency has to be appreciated, the inefficient ones are left behind and need to be dumped. The rules of the game are clearly laid out. In a competitive environment, inefficient firms bow out. Agreed, than why do we want to change the rules of the game? Why do we want to bailout a bankrupt company? Why shouldn't it be allowed to die?

I see a number of experts on the TV channels making a strong plea to bailout the company. These experts of course are all beneficiary of a system that keeps inefficient industries floating with the help of public money. This is what happened when the world witnessed economic collapse in 2009. The inefficient and corrupt banks were rewarded with bailout packages, and the top executives who should have gone to the jail instead received bountiful bonuses. Market economy was made to survive with public money.

More than US $ 20 trillion of public money was pumped in to keep economic liberalisation alive. And this tells us that market reforms or market economy cannot sustain without public money. All it does, and that too very cleverly, is to hoodwink us to believe that capitalism is the sure path to economic growth. In reality, all it does is to allow for 'privatisation of profits, and socialisation of costs'. The rich become richer, and the poor are left to pick up the socio-economic as well as the environmental costs.

Aren't mainline economists therefore liars? They go on singing virtues of a failed and flawed economic model? Why don't they muster courage to accept the underlying principles of economic reforms? Well, the answer is obvious. They too are beneficiaries of the same flawed economic model.

Kingfisher Airline should be allowed to die a natural death. Unless we do so we will never be able to clean the rot in the system. We will go on supporting inefficiency with bailouts. What we need, and need desperately, is to send a strong message that inefficiency can NEVER be appreciated. Otherwise, we will continue to ensure that the big companies never collapse. The bigger the company the bigger would be the tax-payers support in the form of a bailout package.

The government cannot be allowed to run a charitable hospital for the ailing private companies. Let them strictly follow the rules of the game. Only the fittest survives, and the rest need to be dumped in the dustbin.

Food inflation: Groping in the dark

2011-11-11T10:29:00.001+05:30

Although Prime Minister Manmohan Singh considers rising foodinflation to be a sign of growing prosperity, the reality is very harsh andpainful. Rising food inflation, which continues for the 4^thsuccessive year now, has hit the aam aadmilike never before. Adding fuel to fire is the frequent raise inpetrol prices.

Every time food inflation crosses the double-digit barrier,the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, the Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and the deputychairman of the Planning Commission, Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia, have been quickto set a deadline some three to six months ahead during which period they promiseto bring down the prices. While the failure to stem the price rise is writtenlarge, what is more worrying is the complete inability of the government tocomprehend the reasons behind it. Economists and policy makers appear cluelessand therefore continue to grope in the dark.

For over 4 years now, in every media discussion that I aminvited to, I am appalled at the economic ignorance that prevails. They go onharping again and again on what the economic textbooks would prescribe as theplausible reasons behind any runaway inflation. Whether it is any member ofPrime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council or the Planning Commission or one ofthe senior officials of the Reserve Bank of India, the answers you get are allthe same: food inflation is because of low production; with rising incomesthere is a shift in demand towards nutritious foods thereby increasing theprices of fruits, vegetables and milk products; and because the farmers arebeing paid a higher procurement price, the consumers have to pay more.

Now let us look at the each of the argument separately. Thecommon refrain that one hears is that food prices are on an upswing becauseproduction is unable to match the growing demand. For several months now, youhave watched with concern news reports of foodgrains rotting in godowns. Whilelakhs of tonnes of wheat and paddy are allowed to rot, we are being told thatthere is a need to increase crop production. Ever since the TV channels beganhighlighting the grain wastage, except for lip-sympathy, the government has notmade any significant allocation for creating additional storage space. In sucha depressing scenario, how will more production help? Where will the governmentstore the additional produce? Will it too not go waste?

Every year, as per official figures more than 16 lakh tonnesof foodgrains rot in godowns. The quantity of wheat and rice that becomes sub-standardand unfit for human consumption and which has to be sold for manufacturingalcohol and goes as cattle feed is several times more.

When Prime Minister Manmohan Singh equated inflation withprosperity, he was trying to say that with more income in hand people haveshifted to nutritious diets. The demand for fruits, vegetables and milkproducts has shot up as a result. This too is untrue, and has no scientificbasis. Since this is a frequently asked question, I did some computation of theproduction estimates. The per capita daily availability of fruits andvegetables is 480 grams. The per capita requirement for a balanced diet isroughly 80 grams, against which the actual consumption is much low. Thereforeit becomes apparent that there is at least six times more availability offruits and vegetables in this country than what is required. So where is theshortfall? Why are the prices of fruits and vegetables sky-rocketing when theavailability is in abundance?

In any case, the argument that with rising incomes theintake of nutritious food products in the food basket expands is also not basedon any empirical evidence. The 2007 National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) tellsus that cereal consumption has been on a steady decline, with no correspondingincrease in the intake of more nutritious eggs, vegetables, fruits and milk. Itmeans hunger has been on a rise and is now more widespread and well-entrenched.The feeling was that with the changing food habits, people have shifted fromcereals to nutritious foods like fruits, vegetables and milk. This assumptiontoo does not hold true anymore.

The decline in cereal consumption has more or less followeda steady pattern in the rural and urban areas, of course much faster in therural areas. Per capita cereal consumption per month in the rural areas acrossthe country has fallen from 13.4 kg in 1993-94 to 11.7 kg in 2006-07. Thedecline has been sharper between the period 2004 and 2007 when just in threeyears, cereals consumption fell from 12.1 kg to 11.7 kg. In the urban centresthe decline was from 10.6 kg in 1993-94 to 9.6 kg in 2006-07. In a largelyvegetarian society, cereals constitute the single important source of nutritionand therefore its importance in the Indian context is well established.

Moreover, if it was true, India’s ranking in the 2010 GlobalHunger Index prepared by the International Food Policy Research Instituteshould have improved. India continuesto rank 67^th among 81 countries, faring much lower then Pakistan, Sudanand

Rwanda

.If people had started eating more, I see no reason why India should beranked so low in the hunger index.

And finally how true is the argument that food prices aregoing up because farmers have been paid a higher procurement price. Wheat, riceand sugarcane are essentially the three major crops where farmers have receiveda higher procurement price. Interestingly, wheat and rice are not the cropswhere food inflation is hurting the poor. In case of sugarcane, after a hike inprices in 2009, sugar prices have stabilised even though the growers aregetting a higher price. It is in case of fruits and vegetables, which do notreceive any benefit of procurement prices, where the market prices have made ahole in the pocket of average consumers.

Economists need to understand that it is not the farmer whogains from food inflation. He never gets a high price for his produce even whenmarket prices touch the roof. For sake of illustration, let us look at a bananagrower. All he earns is between Rs 8-9 per dozen where as the prevailing marketprice hovers between Rs 50-60. The real problem therefore lies in the mandis. It is the wholesale and retailtrade, which in the absence of any tough regulation, is exploiting theconsumers by raising the prices by anything between 100 to 300 per cent. In theabsence of any crackdown, the trade is having a free run.

The government doesn’t want to check the traders because asthe Prime Minister said the other day he wants more and more commodity pricesto be deregulated. He wants market to decide the final price of the farmproduce. In other words, we are paying through our nose to keep alive marketreforms. #

Occupy Wall Street and India's struggle against corruption have much in common, but Occupy goes much beyond ..

2011-11-06T11:29:00.000+05:30

The screaming headlines provide insight into the dichotomythat prevails in our society. This newspaper reported that in Chandigarh alone (in northwest India) Rs 80-crore worth of goldornaments and nearly 800 cars were sold on the occasion of Dhanteras. Far away in Patna,Rs 400-crore were withdrawn on the same day from ATMs. It seems buying metals onthis auspicious occasion had beaten all records.

Most families consider Dhanterasto be an auspicious occasion to buy gold and silver. Unfortunately for them,the prices of these precious metals have gone through the roof in the last fewmonths, making it difficult for many to buy even a coin of few grams.Completely unable to comprehend the reasons behind such high price-rise, manyof them can be heard asking, “Why have gold prices increased so much”?

Little do they know that the unprecedented escalation ingold prices is only because of speculation in which just one per cent of theinvestors are raking in huge profits while 99 per cent end up paying throughthe nose. This in short is the essence of the slogan, ‘We are the 99 per cent’,that is sweeping across the continents. More than 950 cities in 82 countrieshave seen thousands of people streaming in to the roads, squares and the parksto protest against economic inequalities. What began as a silent sit-in by ahandful of protesters in the Wall Street -- the financial capital of the world-- New York amonth back, has now spread like a wildfire.

India

too, some groups, including the Communist Party, have launched of the Indian version ‘Occupy Dalal Street’from Nov 4.

Well, before we follow the global trends let me take youback to the days when petrol price internationally had shot up to $ 140 abarrel. This was barely two years back in 2009, just before the world witnessedan economic meltdown. I remember even Prime Minister Manmohan Singh saying thathe wasn’t sure whether it was because of a slump in production or rise indemand. The fact is the stupendous rise in oil prices was not because of supply-demandconstraints. It was simply because of speculation in trading. The companieswhich have invested in its stocks on the Wall Street try best to garner moreprofits.

Oil prices subsequently slumped to a low of $ 40 a barrel.From $ 140 a barrel to $ 40 a barrel certainly proves that demand had nothingto do with prices. It was all in the game of speculation.

In lot many ways Anna Hazare’s movement against corruptionlooked similar. But while, Team Anna is crusading for the removal of graft frompublic life, Occupy movement goes much beyond and hits at the veryfoundations of the growing inequalities. Removing corruption will makeavailable more resources for development activities, and as Swami Ramdev hasbeen saying bringing back Rs 400 lakh crore of black money stacked abroad willmake available abundant resources that can be ploughed back to fight povertyand hunger.

Removing corruption is certainly the crying need. But whatmakes Swami Ramdev and Anna Hazare’s struggle against corruption and blackmoney different from Occupy campaign is that while you may not haveto pay underhand for getting admission for you child in a school or auniversity but you will still end up pay exorbitantly for the gold ornamentsthat you need to buy for your daughter’s marriage. You will still continue topay dearly and periodically for hike in petrol and diesel prices. You will endup paying more not because of supply demand constraints, but because somepeople are raking in more money through speculations in trading. You and Ieventually pay for the greed of one per cent people.

Occupy movement is a global struggle for a decent living. It hits at the very fundamental of the growing economic disparities, the inequalities and injustice that prevails.

For more on Occupy Wall Street, read what Noam Chomsky has to say: http://bit.ly/rYxgK4

विषमता के खिलाफ लामबंदी

2011-11-01T15:59:00.002+05:30

These are the 1318 transnational corporations that dominate the global economy. Of these, 147 are tightly-knit companies which control almost 40 per cent of the global network. This study is published in New Scientist (and I got it from Duncan Green's blog post: http://www.oxfamblogs.org/fp2p/?p=7368)

दुबली कद-काठी की एक युवा लड़की नई दिल्ली में स्वर्णाभूषणों की एक दुकान से कुछ आभूषण खरीदने गई। आभूषण खरीदने की उसकी मंशा भी थी। उसने कीमत पर नजर दौड़ाई। वह यह भी जानती थी कि वह एक छोटी सी अंगूठी खरीदने में सक्षम है। उसने दुकानदार पर नजरें उठाते हुए पूछा, 'सोने के दाम आकाश पर क्यों पहुंचते जा रहे हैं।' दुकानदार उत्तर देता, इसके पहले ही मैंने अपना सर घुमाया और धीरे से कहा, 'महोदया, इसकी वजह सट्टेबाजी है या इस पर केवल अनुमान लगाया जा सकता है।'

वह सोने की कीमतों के तेजी से उछलने के कारणों से नावाकिफ थी। वजह यह है कि बमुश्किल एक फीसदी निवेशकों को बड़ा लाभ कमाने वालों की श््रेणी में रखा जा सकता है, जबकि 99 प्रतिशत लोग गुजर-बसर करने को मजबूर हैं। इसके सार तत्व को संक्षेप में इस प्रकार कहा जा सकता है, 'हम उन 99 प्रतिशत लोगों में शामिल हैं,' जो पूरे महाद्वीप में फैले हुए हैं। 82 देशों के 1500 शहरों में रहने वाले हजारों-लाखों लोग आर्थिक असमानता के खिलाफ सड़कों पर उतर आए हैं, मुख्य चौराहों और सेन्ट्रल पार्क में प्रदर्शन कर रहे हैं। न्यू यॉर्क से यह मुहिम एक माह पहले शुरू हुई थी। विश्व की वित्तीय राजधानी से शुरू इस मूक प्रदर्शन की मुहिम देखते ही देखते जंगल की आग की तरह अब हर जगह फैल गई है।

आर्थिक असमानता के खिलाफ 'आक्यूपॉय वॉल स्ट्रीट' अभियान को हर जगह समर्थन मिला है। अमरीकी इसलिए नाराज हैं क्योंकि वर्ष 2009 की आर्थिक गिरावट के बाद बेल आउट पैकेज दिए गए थे, बैंकों को अब उससे भारी लाभ कमाने की अनुमति दे दी गई है। जबकि एक औसत अमरीकी का वित्तीय संकट से जूझना जारी है। अपनी अर्थव्यवस्था को धराशायी होने से बचाने के लिए विभिन्न देशों की सरकारों ने, इसमें भारत भी शामिल है, ने लगभग 20 ट्रिलियन डॉलर की सहायता उड़ेली थी। इस वित्तीय संकट के लिए जो देश प्रारम्भिक रूप से जिम्मेदार थे, उन्हें बोनस की मोटी राशि के चेकों से नवाजा गया। मैं पहले भी कह चुका हूं कि आर्थिक ढांचे के तंत्र को इस तरह डिजायन किया गया है कि लाभ के निजीकरण को बढ़ावा मिलता रहे और कीमतों का समाजीकरण होता रहे।

जरा, इस ओर गौर फरमाइए, अमरीका में धनाढय वर्ग और औसत नगारिक के बीच का फर्क राष्ट्रपति रोनाल्ड रीगन के काल से गहराता जा रहा है। रोनाल्ड रीगन ने टैक्स कटौती शुरू की थी। इसे रीगन टैक्स कटौती कहा गया। इस नीति में घर लेने के वास्ते लोगों को सक्षम बनाना था। कहना न होगा कि अधिकतम टैक्स दर घटकर काफी नीचे तक आ गई थी।

कोई आश्चर्य नहीं, एक फीसदी अमरीकी 42 प्रतिशत सम्पदा पर कब्जा किए बैठे हैं, जबकि 80 फीसदी आबादी सिर्फ सात प्रतिशत धन-दौलत पर निर्भर रहने को मजबूर है। दूसरे शब्दों में कहा जाए तो 20 फीसदी अमरीकियों ने 93 प्रतिशत सम्पदा हथिया ली है। विडम्बना तो यह है कि अमरीका विश्व का सबसे धनी देश है। यहां गरीबी ने 52 साल का रिकॉर्ड तोड़ दिया है, 15.1 प्रतिशत आबादी गरीबी में जीवन-यापन करने को मजबूर है। भूख ने सभी रेखाएं पार कर दी हैं। छह में से एक व्यक्ति खाद्य आपूर्ति के लिए कतार में खड़ा है।

2009 की आर्थिक गिरावट और 1930 के दशक की महामंदी में सुस्पष्ट समानताएं दिखती हैं। 1929 में अमरीका के एक फीसदी शीर्षस्थ लोग 60 फीसद राष्ट्रीय आय पर कब्जा जमाए बैठे थे। अस्सी साल बाद हमें आय में असमानता साफ तौर पर दृष्टिगोचर होती है। आज शीर्ष पर बैठे दस फीसदी अमरीकी आय के 90 फीसदी हिस्से पर नियंत्रण रखे हुए हैं। अब यह समय सोचने-समझने का है कि हमारी आर्थिक नीतियों में दुखांतिक रूप से कुछ गलत हो रहा है। लेकिन यह एक ऎसा विस्तार है और नीति-निर्माताओं, शिक्षाविद्ों और मीडिया पर कॉरपोरेट ताकतों का ऎसा नियंत्रण कि बदलाव की कोई भी आवाज या चिल्लाहट परिहास में बदल जाती है।

भारत में तो गरीब और अमीर के बीच का अंतर 90,000 गुना से भी अधिक हो गया है। विश्वास किया जाता है कि शीर्षस्थ 50 परिवार आर्थिक सम्पदा पर नियंत्रण जमाए बैठे हैं जो देश के एक ट्रिलियन डॉलर का एक तिहाई, साथ में जीडीपी के बराबर है। यदि ये परिवार दूसरे देशों में जाकर बस जाते हैं तो भारत की आर्थिक सम्पन्नता तेजी से ढह जाएगी। एक व्याख्या के अनुसार जिनके पास एक मिलियन डॉलर या अधिक की विनिवेश करने योग्य सम्पत्ति है, उनकी धन-दौलत 2009 में 1,26,700 मिलियन डॉलर के मुकाबले वर्ष 2010 में 20.8 प्रतिशत तक की वृद्धि होकर 1,53,000 मिलियन डॉलर हो गई है।

ठीक इसी दौरान, संयुक्त राष्ट्र के आकलन के अनुसार भारत में 456 मिलियन लोग रोजाना 1.25 डॉलर से भी कम पर जीवन-यापन करने को मजबूर हैं। इंटरनेशनल फूड पॉलिसी रिसर्च इंस्टीट्यूट के ग्लोबल हंगर इंडैक्स-2010 के अनुसार भारत को विश्व के 81 देशों में 67वें स्थान पर रखा गया है।

वर्ष 2004 के बाद के सालों में सरकार ने 22 लाख करोड़ रूपए से अधिक कॉरपोरेट और व्यापारिक घरानों को कर माफी के जरिए बांटे हैं। यह राशि लगभग दो सालाना बजटों के प्रावधानों के बराबर है।

इतनी उदारता से तो नागरिकों, उद्योगों को नीचे से उठाकर ऊपर लाया जा सकता था, लोगों की धन-दौलत बढ़ाने में मदद की जा सकती थी। 'आक्यूपॉय वाल स्ट्रीट' अभियान जन नीतियों के खिलाफ अभिव्यक्ति है, उन धनियों के खिलाफ भी जो लोकतंत्र को निजी क्लब की तरह चलाते हैं। कई अर्थो में यह अभियान महात्मा गांधी के नमक सत्याग्रह की तरह है। मुठ्ठीभर समर्थकों द्वारा शुरू यह अभियान आज तूफान हो चला है और अरब सागर के तट तक पहुंच रहा है।

Source: Rajasthan Patrika, Nov 1, 2011. http://www.rajasthanpatrika.com/article/opinion/1112011/editorial-special-article/242200

The hidden nexus: food, health and insurance industry

2011-10-27T23:25:00.000+05:30

The other day, travelling from Chandigarhto New Delhi Istopped to meet some farmers on the way. Sitting under a mango tree a littleoutside Ambala, I heard Rajender Dahiya, a small farmer; tell me proudly of hisvisit to an upstream coffee house. “I spent Rs 160 for a cup of coffee. Ireally enjoyed it.” He didn’t stop here. “I intend to take my wife also to thecoffee shop one of these days,” he said, adding ‘I love the taste.”

I can understand how difficult it must be for RajenderDahiya to shell out Rs 160 for a cup of coffee, which at home may not cost himmore than Rs 10. But then, such is the power of marketing blitz that none of uscan escape its fury. Agribusiness knows how to tickle our taste buds, andthereby turn us into addicts: beautiful packaging and aggressive marketing skillsdictating new developing food habits; ending up by literally force feeding uswith what the industry wants us to be fed with; and by the time we realise it ourtraditional local and nutritious foods are out of our plate.

Changing food habits have brought the entire food system –from farm to the fork – under a monopolistic industrial food system.

I am therefore not surprised to find food movement in the United States –comprising NGOs, community groups and family farmers – joining the non-violent OccupyWall Street protesters. As the American activist Eric Holt Gimenez says in hisessay ‘Occupy the Food system’ the relationship between hunger, lifestylediseases and the unchecked power of the Wall Street investors and corporations runsdeep and strong. The urgent need is to connect the dots. Let me try.

The connection is however clearly visible. “Big US companieslobbying hard to enter India,”screams a headline. The large US-based multinationals queuing up to grab a pieof India’srobust economic growth includes Wal-Mart Stores, Starbucks and financialservices majors Morgan Stanley. Some other technology giants like Pfizer, DowChemicals, and telecom major AT&T are seeking support to further strengthentheir Indian businesses. Already some food majors, being driven out of Americabecause of the campaign launched against growing obesity among children by theUS first lady Michelle Obama, have recently made massive investments in foodbusiness in India.

All this is happening at a time when India had laidout a red carpet for food processing. Planning Commission had provided for Rs 1.50lakh crore for the food processing industry in the 10th and 11th Plan periods. Massivesubsidy is being doled out for setting up food processing units. If you have Rs50,000 in your pocket and don’t know what to do with it, says a radioadvertisement, just meet your banker and explore the possibility of setting upa processing unit.

The backward linkages do not end here. The Ministry of Foodand Agriculture has been facilitating the process by amending and suitablymodifying the national policies to suit industry interests. Massive subsidy isbeing poured in for the supply of hybrid seeds, farm equipment, chemical inputsand farm credit. This in reality is the ‘farm to the fork model’ wherein thegovernment extends all help in rooting the industrial food systems. The banks,seed technology firms, manufacturing units, and the retail sector join in topropose cropping patterns, which the farmers are expected to adopt. Scientistsalso step in by repeatedly bemoaning that only 2 per cent of Indian foods areprocessed. Not telling that in the US, from where the industrial pushcomes from, ‘junk foods’ are being blamed for turning food into a killer. Morethan 4 lakh people die every year in America alone from obesity and itsrelated ailments.

It all began with the advent of Green Revolution some 4decades back. Agricultural research, farm policies, credit supply, subsidiesand technology was woven in to promote high-yielding crop varieties whichresponded well to chemical fertilisers and pesticides. Since then, technologyhas come along with a financial package that lures farmers to shift to newercropping patterns. Over the years, huge subsidy has been doled out to makechemical fertilisers more popular. But no subsidy has been given to organicmanures, composting and green manure crops thereby making them economicallyredundant.

I have always wondered why the banks provided easy creditfor exotic and cross-bred cattle breeds whereas no support came for the desi cows. More than 40 years after theWhite Revolution was ushered in, the National Dairy Development Board (NDDB)has now realised the potential of the desibreeds of cows. It is now planning for a massive investment in developingimproved pedigree bulls of desibreeds so as to shift the cattle breeding focus to improving the performance ofnative breeds. If only a corresponding subsidy and financial support wasprovided for building and improving the native breeds, millions of cows wouldnot have been roaming on the streets.

Similarly, the food processing industry banking on some ofthe big players has through a sustained campaign shifted the food habits to meetthe industrial needs. White polished rice for instance replaced the highlynutritious red and parboiled rice. White sugar replaced brown sugar. Both theseindustrial products are now being faulted for the growing incidence of diabetesand other lifestyle diseases. But with the entry of big US food giants into India, the effort will be to weanaway gullible consumers to more delectable food choices. In the US forinstance, an average Wal-Mart store stocks more than 40,000 food products onits shelves, and no wonder the country is faced with a health epidemic.

The more the sale of unhealthy processed foods, the more isthe gain to the economy. The more the processed and nutritionally poor productsare sold, the more is the growth of medicines, wellness and thereby an upswingin the visits to hospitals. In other words, the growth of pharmaceuticalindustry is directly dependent upon the performance of the food industry. Andmore the pharmaceutical industry grows; the bigger is the share of healthinsurance industry in the economic pie. The future of food, health andinsurance industry therefore are interlinked. Not surprising therefore to findthe insurance sector in the USinvesting $ 2 billion every year in the food sector. The reason is obvious. Themore the contaminated food, more is the gain for the insurance sector.

The rules and institutions governing food supply favour itsmonopoly control by corporations. World Bank/IMF, World Trade Organisation,Free Trade Agreements, and Wall Street define the regulations. The challenge isto delink food from the Wall Street. This can be achieved by building upsustainable alternatives, and also by reverting back to daily cooking and encouraginga healthy lifestyle. At a time when the world is once again at the doorstep ofan impending food crisis, and with lifestyle diseases growing out ofproportion, the time is ripe to bring about a change in food habits and moreimportantly the thinking that goes in restoring the pride in traditional foodsand the natural farming system. The 99 per cent must wake up to the threat totheir food. #

India: Where Food Adulteration is the most paying business

2011-10-19T17:15:00.003+05:30

Last week, the Punjab Department of Health and FamilyWelfare seized 2,000 litres of synthetic milk in Patiala. In Chandigarh, the administration has so fardestroyed 30 tonnes of sweets in the past week -- 30 tonnes means 30,000 dibbas of one kilo each. These are notisolated events. Local newspapers are awash with reports of adulterated sweetsand dry fruits, and also have been carrying features on the unhygienicconditions in which the prolific sweet industry operates. Not only Punjab, shocking reports of adulteration and spurious sweets/dairy products is pouring in from across the country. Food adulteration certainly has become one of the biggest proliferating industry.

This is the festival season. While it is time for you tocelebrate by exchanging sweets, it is also the time for a roaring and brisk businessfor your neighbourhood shopwallahs. Inthe next few days, tonnes of sweets, bakery products, dairy products, andprocessed foods will be sold. How much of it will be of good quality and safefor consumption is anybody’s guess.

Let us look at some of common forms of adulteration that youare likely to encounter. Synthetic milk, which was seized from Patiala, as per reports, wasused for manufacturing sweets, ghee, khoa, cream, and other dairy products.It is known to cause irreparable damage to your body organs. It is of course ahealth hazard but if you are suffering from heart and kidney ailments, it willacerbate your problem. Urea, which is used in the preparation of syntheticmilk, is particularly harmful for kidneys, and caustic soda is a slow poisonfor people suffering from hypertension and heart ailments.

The chances are that khoasweets and desi ghee you buy too is adulterated.In addition, harmful colours and other raw materials are used. The colours thatare often used contain lead and arsenic and can damage kidneys. You pay a heftyprice for mithai made in desi ghee, and what you get in returnhas no nutrition but animal fat, crushed animal bones and mineral oil. Forthose who can’t afford desi ghee, thevanaspati too is laced withadulterants. It comes laced with stearin, a bye-product of palm oil used insoap manufacture.

While such gheemanufacturing units abound in Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, MadhyaPradesh, Rajasthan and Maharashtra, the khoa trade is equally rampant. It isbelieved that 90 per cent of the vanaspatibeing sold in the market violates the specifications of the Prevention of FoodAdulteration Act (PFA).

Such is the extent of adulteration, that even pistachio usedin sweets is not spared. Unscrupulous traders instead use inferior qualitypeanuts, cut into small pieces and than coloured with artificial colouringagents. From adulterated pistachio, you can show symptoms of acidity, severeheadache, vomiting, and in severe cases it can leave behind a terrible impactfor the pregnant women. But by the time the child is born with deformities, itmay be practically impossible to link it with food adulteration.

I can go on describing the harmful impacts adulterated foodscan have on your health. What is however disturbing is the completeindifference being shown by the consumers as well as the regulatory bodies inchecking the menace of adulterated food products, fruits and vegetables. Whatis urgently needed is a massive and widespread clamp down against theunscrupulous traders and farmers. This will take some time, but let us beginwith what we can do. Besides lodging complaint with the health department oryour local SDM, I have two suggestions:

Because of a string of television programmes last year, you will be surprised to know that consumers in Meerut, one of the epicentres of adulterated foods, had shunned khoa products. Tonnes of khoa sweets had to be thrown away by shopkeepers after the festive season were over. If this can happen in Meerut, it can also happen in your city and town. Just refuse the temptation to buy sweets, and believe me you are safe.
For the mithaiwallahas and bulk manufacturers. Why can’t they form an association of those traders/manufacturers who you can guarantee to sell quality products? Why can’t they follow the standardised quality norms spelled out by the health department? This association can vouch for quality and publicise through media listing reliable shops/outlets in different cities/town. This is the only way to regain the confidence of the consumers.

How to push GM crops by strangulating regulations

2011-10-16T17:18:00.000+05:30

Government seems to behell bent upon forcing GM food on us by proposing quick approvals to theindustry under the BRAI Act. “Wewill have 9 billion mouths to feed on this earth by 2050 and there will not beenough food for all of us which is why we need to make technologicalinterventions like GM crop to produce more food.”

At a time when food prices are soaringand agricultural land is increasingly turning into housing societies andshopping malls, increasing food production and providing food security for alltimes to come to all population is indeed a challenging task. We are repeatedlytold, by scientists, economists and politicians, that as population grows in ageometric proportion, the country has to embark new technologies to producemore food. GM crops are therefore being pushed as the only alternative theworld has got.

This argument cuts ice with the leadersas well as the gullible masses. This is however not true. There is no shortageof food globally. The reality is that for a human population of around 7billion, the world produces food for at least 11.5 billion people. In terms ofcalories, against the acceptable per capita norm of 2400 to 2500 kcal, what isavailable is 4,600 kcal. So in reality we actually produce double the quantityof food than what we need today. We have more than enough food to feed thepeople even by the year 2050 when the earth’s population reaches 9 billion.

The need is to ensure that theavailable food reaches the hungry. Itis not a crisis of production, but is more of a political problem relating toaccess and distribution.

Take the case of

India.It has one third of world’s hungry population – roughly 300 million people --deprived of food despite the availability of a continuous surplus of 60 milliontonne of food grains. I have always said that if we are really serious andsincere in addressing hunger and poverty, the time is now. We have huge foodsurplus with us, and at the same time

India

alone has the world’s largestpopulation of hungry. Why can’t we make the surplus food available to theneedy? Why don’t be launch a food security programme that builds onself-reliance rather than depend on entitlement doles for the poor? Why do wewant to go in for genetically modified (GM) or transgenic crops, which areunhealthy and environmentally damaging, and thereby create more problems?

To me this is sheer madness.

Why GM?

GM crops are developed throughinsertion of alien genes from different species which, it is claimed, gives thecrop an ability to withstand pests among other improved traits that areincorporated. However, several studies have indicated serious side effects ofconsuming GM food on animal and human health especially genetic defects seen inthe next generation. At the same time, the environmental risks outweigh thepotential benefits that are being claimed.

GM crops are primarily being promotedin the name of increasing productivity. There can be no bigger lie.

Let me makeit clear that there is not a GM crop that increases productivity. In fact, thebiotechnology industry has very cleverly infused the illusion of enhancedproductivity by treating reduction in crop losses as increase in productivity.Take the case of Bt cotton. It has been pushed in the name of increasing cropproductivity. In reality, Bt cotton acts more or less like a biologicalpesticide and like any other chemical pesticide reduces crop losses. Increasein crop productivity will only come through a genetic breakthrough, which isnot the case in case of GM crops. The last time the world witnessed a geneticbreakthrough in productivity was at the time high-yielding crop varieties weredeveloped that helped usher in Green Revolution.

For the sake of discussion, let meillustrate. Chemical pesticides are applied on standing crops to control pests.By doing so, pesticides reduce crop losses. GM crops, as I said earlier,perform the role of biological pesticides. By killing certain pests, GM cropsalso reduce crop losses. Why is that while we consider GM crops to beindirectly increasing productivity by reducing crop losses whereas we refuse toaccept that chemical pesticides increase crop productivity? Why we refuse togive credit to chemical pesticides for increase in crop yield, and if not thenwhy should we hold GM crops responsible for increasing productivity? (For adetailed analysis on the yield factor, please refer to my analysis: Do GMcrops increase yield, the answer is No. http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2009/03/do-gm-crop-increase-yield-answer-is-no.html)

India,only one GM crop has been approved for commercialisation. It is being generallyclaimed that cotton production has gone up because of the increased acreageunder Bt cotton. In the last 5 years, the weather in the cotton belt hasgenerally remained fine benefiting even the limited non-Bt cotton acreage.Whenever the crop does well, the credit goes to the improved varieties. Andwhenever the production declines, the blame invariably shifts to aberrantweather. I wonder when scientists will start acknowledging the role weatherplays in increasing crop production!

Let me give you an example. Gujarat ishailed as a model of high production as far as Bt Cotton is concerned. In fact,International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), which for all practicalpurposes is an industry body, had even sung virtues of praise for Bt cotton tobe primarily responsible for 9 per cent growth in agriculture. am not denying that cotton crop ingeneral did well in Gujarat. But the other day I met formerMinister Dr Y K Alagh in Ahmedabad who told me that the agriculture growth thatIFPRI had worked out was hyped. It was something around 6 per cent, and not 9per cent.

Nevertheless, what is not beingacknowledged is the expansion in irrigation area in Gujarat. In recent years, irrigation wasbrought to an additional 35 per cent acreage as a result of which cropproduction took an upswing. Bt cotton too was a major beneficiary.

Another argument that I often hear isthat GM crops reduce the application of chemical pesticides as a result ofwhich the environment becomes much safer and cleaner. Given the acreagepresently under Bt cotton, the use of pesticides on cotton should have comedown by now. But it hasn’t. According to the Central Institute for Cotton Research(CICR) Nagpur,the usage of pesticides too has gone up. In 2005, Rs 649-crore worth ofchemical pesticides was used on cotton. In 2010, when roughly 90 per cent areaunder cotton is of Bt cotton variety, the pesticides usage has gone up to Rs880.40-crore.

The other question that I am oftenasked is that if Bt cotton is not all so good than how come farmers areincreasingly bringing more acreage under the transgenic seed. I agree that theacreage under Bt cotton is over 90 per cent today. But what is little known isthat the industries along with the agricultural scientists have very cleverlyremoved the non-Bt cotton seed from the market. Bt cotton trait has beenincorporated in hybrid cotton varieties, which means farmers have to buy seedafresh every year. They go to the market, and find only Bt cotton seedavailable. So what choice are they left with except to buy Bt cotton seed. Thearea under Bt cotton has therefore multiplied.

Remember, if Bt cotton was the saviour,there should have been a marked reduction in farmers suicides in the past 5years. More than 70 per cent farmer suicides still remain confined to thecotton belt.

The BRAI Act

After the open-ended moratorium imposedon the introduction of Bt brinjal, the industry has been aggressively pushingfor a tougher regulatory regime that minimises the role of the general public.The proposed BRI Act came in handy. The 2009 version of the bill, which wasleaked out, and caused enough public uproar, actually sought to muzzleopposition (Sec 63) to GM by seeking to impose fines and imprisonment on voicesraising concerns on GM crops. After the outrage dieddown, another version of the bill has been put in public domain. In my understanding, the grip of theGM-promoting companies will be further strengthened if the draft BiotechnologyRegulatory Authority of India (BRAI) Act is passed by the Parliament in itspresent form.

The idea of an independent authority toregulate biotechnology and offer single window clearance to new techniques wasmooted by a task force headed by Dr M S Swaminathan in 2003-04. However, therewere caveats mentioned for approving any biotechnology regulatory policy: thesafety of the environment, wellbeing of farming families, ecological andeconomic sustainability of farming systems, health and nutrition security ofconsumers, safeguarding of home and external trade and biosecurity of thenation.

The task force also recommended that “transgenics should be resorted to when other options to achievethe desired objectives are either not available or not feasible.” Though the Agriculture Ministry accepted thetask force’s report in 2004, the draft BRAI Act contains provisions which goagainst these very recommendations and hence invite strong objections. At thesame time I don’t understand when the

United States

can have a three-window regulatorysystem in place for GM crops (although not perfect) why does

India

have to rush through with asingle-window clearance house.

First, it is now being increasinglyrealised and accepted that GM crop is not safe for the environment. Whiledealing with target pests, it also affects the friendly insects and createssuperweeds thus creating imbalance in nature. The GM crop will also spell adeath knell for traditional varieties of the same crop. For instance,

India

currently has thousands of varietiesof Brinjal but introduction of Bt Brinjal would have led to contamination andgradual elimination of the traditional varieties. Meanwhile, the emergence ofsuperweeds has assumed menacing proportion in the

and

Canada.

This trait of transgenic crop isagainst the spirit of the Biodiversity Act, which lists provisions forconservation of flora and fauna. I have never understood how can scientists andplanners talk of preserving biodiversity and promoting transgenics in the samebreath !

GM crop do not ensure economicsustainability of farming systems. As mentioned above not only farmers have tobuy costly GM seeds every year, the expenditure on pesticides and fertilizersincreases manifolds. Still more importantly, the implication on human health isthe least studied. Why risky and unhealthy food should be pushed onunsuspecting consumers when there is no shortage of food and nutrient crops.

The regulatory authority envisagedunder the draft bill is going to be under the Ministry of Science andTechnology which points towards conflict of interest because this is theministry with a mandate to promote biotechnology.

Further, the BRAI setup will replacethe current regulatory regime which is governed by the Environment ProtectionAct’s 1989 Rules to protect health, environment and nature from risks ofbiotechnology. Thisprotective attitude should also be adopted in the BRAI Act and the Ministry ofEnvironment and Forests and the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare should bethe nodal agency in regulatory biotechnology.

An all-powerful five-member committee(two being part-time members) is being suggested under the draft bill with“distinguished” scientists or senior bureaucrats as its three permanentmembers. This again highlights the fact that promoters of biotechnology will beappointed as regulators. The committee should instead have eminent people fromall walks of life to ensure that there is no conflict of interest. In addition,several committees are envisioned in the bill but all of them have beenaccorded advisory role with the five-member panel being supreme.

An environment appraisal panel has beenproposed which will be consulted in case of organisms and products havingenvironmental impact. However, the five-member authority can override thepanel’s opinion in case of difference of opinion thus making the whole set upan exercise in futility.

Under the federal structure of

India,agriculture is a state subject but the proposed legislation gives only advisoryrole to the state governments in the form of “State Biotechnology RegulatoryAdvisory Committee” with no decision-making powers. It should be noted thatseven state governments have already rejected field trials of GM crops andduring anti-Bt Brinjal campaign last year, 13 state governments had said no tocultivation of Bt Brinjal in their areas. Recently, State governments have beengiven the powers to refuse field trials of GM crops, which are a welcomeinitiative and goes with the democratic norms. The BRAI Act seems to be a newtool to force GM crops down the throats of state governments.

Section 28 of the BRAI Act classifiessome information as confidential which can’t be supplied even under the RightTo Information (RTI) Act thereby making the whole decision making process aclandestine affair. Earlier, on a petition filed by Greenpeace seeking informationrelated to Bt Brinjal, the Supreme Court had ordered the regulators to put outall the biosafety data in public domain. The new provision seems to be adeliberate effort on the part of the industry to scuttle public scrutiny.

Lastly, since GM crops have alreadygenerated so much controversy with doubts being raised about its health andenvironment implications, isn’t it prudent to make independent and long termsafety trials mandatory for all GM crops before approval? The fact that thedraft BRAI Act does not have any provision for labelling, redressal and recallof a GM product makes the situation more worrisome.

Gullible Indians are already being usedas guinea pigs by international pharmaceutical industry which conducts itsclinical trials here without following the required protocol. BRAI Act willensure we serve as guinea pigs for GM crops too.

(Based on an interview conducted by Manu Moudgil of www.goimonitor.com and the interview is available at: http://www.goimonitor.com/story/burden-gm-food-and-farcical-brai-act)

MNREGA is hitting Indian agriculture

2011-10-12T12:15:00.002+05:30

Paucity of farm labour is hitting Indian agriculture like never before.

Isn’t it strange? The Mahatma Gandhi Rural EmploymentGuarantee Act (MNREGA), which was primarily designed as a radical and novelresponse to combat rural poverty, is actually hitting the very foundations ofagriculture. Acute shortage of farm labour witnessed across the country at thepeak and crucial time of crop harvesting and sowing is not only playing havocwith food production, but is increasingly forcing small farmers to abandonagriculture.

It isn’t aberrant weather, uneconomical farm prices and the increasingcorporatisation of agriculture that alone is responsible for the prevailingagrarian distress, the unavailability of farm labour at the time of cropharvest has added on to farmers woes. In my opinion, it is the single mostimportant factor that is forcing small farmers to sell-off their meagre landholdings and join the growing ranks of landless workers. No wonder, travellingacross the country, the common refrain that I hear, is: “Please ask thegovernment to ban MNREGA. It is killing us.”

I remember the time when trains steaming in from Bihar andeastern Uttar Pradesh into Ludhiana, Patiala and other prominent destinations in Punjab would come over-loaded with workers. These migrantlabourers would generally arrive in the second half of March and stay on tillJuly, helping farmers with harvesting the wheat crop and also transplantingpaddy with the onset of monsoon rains. Today, the railway stations lookdeserted. Getting hold of a farm worker has become the biggest challenge forany farmer. And if you think the situation in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtraand Kerala is any different, you are mistaken. Farm labour has simpledisappeared.

MNREGA has now completed five years. Many believe with notmuch meaningful work available, it is already faced with a mid-life crisis.Nevertheless, it is in these five years that the crisis in agriculture has alsoworsened. For those who want to see, the crisis in agriculture is directlyproportionate to the spread of MNREGA. The intra-state movement of labour, andof course the exodus from the rural hinterland to meet the burgeoning needs ofreal estate, expressways and urban infrastructure has diverted the workforcefrom poorly paid agriculture. And still, despite the recommendation of theMinistry of Agriculture, the Ministry for Rural Development has refused torelent the slowing of MNREGA work during the peak farming season.

Some years back, agriculture was brought under MNREGAactivities after a lot of hue and cry was made. The Indian Council ofAgricultural Research (ICAR) had identified 50 districts for launchingtechnological interventions by Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) on a pilot basis.These included operations like water harvesting, digging farm ponds, rooftoprainwater harvesting, drought proofing, micro-irrigation and renovation oftraditional water bodies. These activities would certainly go into much needed assetcreations in agriculture, but it is generally believed that pressure fromagribusiness industry -- including the sectors dealing with farm machinery,herbicides and GM crops -- is holding the crucial decision of MNREGA’sconvergence with peak farm operations.

MNREGA is incomplete without incorporating crop harvestingand sowing. Considering that two-third of the MNREGA work force comprises smalland marginal farmers, and knowing that more than 42 per cent farmers (this datais still to be updated) want to quit agriculture if given an alternative,agriculture cannot be allowed to suffer any more blows. Already some studieshave pointed to the frightening scenario of the country turning into a majorfood importer before the end of the decade. Some 45 years after the launch of Green Revolution, India is once again poised toreturn back to the days of “ship-to-mouth’ existence.

As a welcome move, I find some state governments are in theprocess of extending several benefits that have already been allotted to SC/STfamilies, to be extended to small farmers. In addition, I have two suggestions:First, the MoRD should direct the state governments to ensure no MNREGA workactivities are undertaken during the peak farming seasons. This can vary fromregion to region, and from crops to crops. Secondly, and most importantly,since most MNREGA workers are land owners, the monthly wages applicable duringthe farming season should be given directly to them. Bringing convergence between farming andMNREGA would also ensure livelihood security.

Source: Business Standard, Oct 12, 2011.

Should MNREGA labour be used for farming? http://bit.ly/o19LSa

Why turn Punjab into a fire ball

2011-10-11T12:35:00.000+05:30

This is how Punjab (and for that matter much of Indo-Gangetic plains) looks like at the time of paddy harvest.

Come October, and travelling through Punjabespecially in the evenings becomes a pain. With smoke bellowing out from cropfields, irritation/itching of eyes is accompanied by difficulty in breathingand chest congestion. It isn’t a day’s problem; people living in Punjab have to continuously bear this torture for thebetter part of October and November, sometimes extending into early December.

Aware of the resulting impact on human health andenvironment, in a few days from now, on October 13, over 20 lakh schoolchildren will take out awareness walks in all Punjab villages to educatefarmers about the destructive fallout of burning paddy stubbles in their cropfields. A brainchild of Punjab Pollution Control Board, the state-wide march byschool students is certainly a welcome initiative. The Board is also impressingupon the CBSE to ensure that their schools too join the campaign, which willlast for a month.

It is essentially in the two and half months after paddyharvest, the entire Indo-Gangetic plains stretching from lower Himachal Pradeshto Punjab, Haryana and western parts of UttarPradesh literally turns into a furnace. It is a usual practice for farmers toput the paddy stubbles after harvest to fire in a bid to clear the crop fieldfor the sowing of the next wheat crop. This harmful operation, which causessevere environmental pollution besides damaging the soil, has been going onunchecked for years now.

Seen from the sky, as the satellite images show, Punjab literally appears to be more or less like a fireball. It appears red in colour, with dark spots concentrated in the paddygrowing areas. Despite the imposition of a ban on burning of paddy straw, it isbelieved that of the estimated 100 million tonnes of paddy straw that isproduced in Punjab, roughly 85 per cent is burnt. If measured in terms ofenergy equivalent, this is approximately equal to 30-40 million tonnes of coal.A massive loss you will agree.

A recent study has computed the resulting health damage fromthe burning of paddy straw in Punjab alone atRs 7.6 crore a year. On an average each household adds Rs 1000 to its medicalbill every month. In addition, there are expenses that farmers have to make byway of more application of chemical fertilisers, and pesticides, and also theloss he undergoes in soil nutrients, vegetation and biodiversity, which has notbeen included.

This unwanted practice must stop. I therefore feel excitedthat the school children have taken on the responsibility to put an end to theburning of a massive biological waste. They have already played a very crucialand defining role in stopping the use of plastic carry bags forcing severalState governments to impose bans; and also the impact their campaigns have madeon effectively limiting the use and abuse of fire crackers on Diwali. Childrentherefore can be the right medium to make farmers aware of the need to abandonthe damaging practice of burning paddy straw, and may force them to switch togreener options to utilise the waste.

I am only hoping that private schools too would be part ofthe effort. At some stage, college students too should be involved. After all,such an environmentally harmful practice has to change. Let us hope, thepopular media, medical doctors, agricultural scientists and the averagecitizens too join hands in creating wider awareness to stop turning Punjab into a fire ball. #

How to save Punjab Agriculture

2011-10-04T12:25:00.000+05:30

For over 40 years now, ever since Green Revolution began,the nation has eulogised the Punjab farmer.Newspapers have reported time and again about the visible prosperity ushered inthrough intensive agriculture. Magazine articles have featured the opulent lifestyle of prosperous Punjabi farmers. The story of the bygone era somehow remainstransfixed in our memory, and that perhaps is the reason why policy makers,economists and scientists still continue to live in the past.

For nearly two decades now, Punjab’sunderbelly has been gradually caving in. Excessive use of chemical fertilisershave turned the verdant lands poisonous, water mining has dried the aquifers leadingto the expansion of the desert, and chemical fertilisers and pesticides haveplayed havoc with the environment and human health. With the input pricesclimbing year after year and the output prices remaining static, Punjab farmers became a victim of the same economicpolicies that projected them as country’s heroes. Agriculture has turned notonly unsustainable but economically unviable.

Over the years indebtedness began growing to phenomenallevels. A recent Punjab Agricultural Universityshows as many as 89 per cent of Punjab farmhouseholds are reeling under debt. The per farm family debt stands at astaggering Rs 1,78,934. In other words, for every hectare of land holding, theoutstanding debt is Rs 50, 140. In my understanding, indebtedness has grown stillhigher in the last few years. One of the main reasons being the push for moresophisticated but unwanted farm machinery. Take the case of tractors. Once a symbolof prosperity, tractors have now turned into a symbol of suicides. With everysecond farm household owning a tractor, more out of prestige than necessity,the resulting indebtedness has grown.

Mainline agricultural scientists cannot think beyond costlyequipments and chemicals. New equipments are being introduced with regularfrequency. Even the World Bank supported ‘Conservation Agriculture’ which ismore or less centred on zero tillage brings its own set of farm equipments.Farmers are being asked to purchase laser land leveller; zero till planters,including the second generation ‘happy seeds and ‘turbo seeders’; rotary discdrill used for intensive soil working and of course a range of costly herbicides.And before you realise the importance of these equipments, you find over 150fabricators and entrepreneurs descending on your farm. All such innovations addto the costs of the farmer.

Farm incomes continue to dwindle. As per NSSO 2003-04estimates, the average monthly income for a farm family in Punjabdoes not exceed Rs 3,400. No wonder, younger generation is refusing to take upfarming as a profession.

Increasing crop productivity and shifting to cash crops isthe only solution that is being suggested to provide more income into the handsof farmers. Still struck up in the Jurassic age, some scientist-administratorshave been seeking policy directions to remove small and marginal farmers, andhand over Punjab’s agriculture to agri-business.Already efforts have been made, without much success, to usher in corporateagriculture through the backdoor. For instance, ‘contract farming’ was one suchapproach although it is widely known that most of the private companies thatentered into contracts have run away, leaving farmers in lurch. Some studiespoint to nearly 65 per cent of the farmers who went into ‘contracts’ withprivate companies saying they are so disillusioned that they would never liketo burn their fingers again.

Still worse, the progressive farming techniques beingdisplayed, and which form part of the crop diversification plan for Punjab, are all based on water guzzling crops (essentiallyhybrids and GM crops). Sugarcane farmers, who follow a system on cane bondingwith the mills, actually are drawing 240 cm of water every year, which is twoand a half times more than what wheat and rice requires on an average. Rosecultivation requires 212 inches of groundwater consumption in every acre. On anaverage, cash crops require five to ten times more water and three times morechemical fertilisers than what is used in wheat and rice.

What Punjab needs is a newmodel of agriculture based on the principles of natural resource regeneration.Instead of bringing in the industry-driven 2^nd Green Revolutionapproach, which is an extension of the intensive-farming systems that has ledto the present crisis, Punjab needs to take aleaf from the world’s biggest sustainable farming system being laid out inAndhra Pradesh. Within a span of six years, AP has brought in 40 lakh acresunder no pesticides farming. It has set a target for increasing the acreageunder sustainable farming to 100 lakh acres by 2013. Significantly, farmincomes have increased, environment has become much clean, pest attack has comedown, and the health expenses too have come down drastically.

At a time when Punjab’sagriculture is at the cross-roads, it needs a radically different approachdrawing from the lessons of its recent past. Here is a six-pronged strategythat can sow the seeds of revival of Punjab’sagriculture:

Set up State Farm Income Commission: Increasing farm incomes remains the top priority. Like all other sections of the society, farmers too should have a monthly take home package. Ironically, the minimum monthly income for a peon is Rs 15,000 where as farmers get only a fraction of this. Therefore, instead of providing him with more credit, which increases indebtedness, farmers too need assured monthly income. This cannot come from big retail (like Walmart/Tesco) which is wrongly believed to remove middlemen and thereby provide more income to farmers. Like in the US/Europe, farmers need direct income support.
Introduce Non-Pesticides Management: To begin with, pesticides on rice need to be phased out under a time bound programme. The International Rice Research Institute (IRRI) in the Philippines has already accepted that ‘pesticides use on rice was a waste of time and effort”. Knowing this, the Department of Agriculture should be directed to work out an alternative farming system using biological options. Punjab needs to aggressively pursue the NPM farming systems being promoted under the National Rural Livelihood Mission by the Ministry of Rural Development. This will also impact positively the health mission that the State is grappling with.
Restore Soil health and fertility: Over the years, Punjab soils have turned sick and the organic matter hovers around zero per cent. Indiscriminate use and abuse of nitrogen fertilisers has also created a huge nutrient imbalance. All efforts to induce balanced application of nutrients have failed to make any marked improvement. This must be supplemented by State-wide campaign to rejuvenate soils utilising the available biomass and the forgotten green technologies. It should be made mandatory for fertiliser companies to ensure green manuring, composting and use of panchkavya and jeev amrit in farming. Only a healthy soil can produce healthy food.
Regenerate Groundwater: Considering the water crisis that looms large, Punjab must shift to farming systems that require less water. As a matter of principle, hybrid and GM crops (which require much more water) should be discouraged. Instead of pushing more farm equipments, effort should be directed to promote System of Rice Intensification (SRI), which does not require much standing water and also does away with heavy labour at the time of transplanting. Direct seeding of rice also saves a lot of water. In addition, water harvesting and revival of village ponds should be given incentives. Artificial regeneration of groundwater along borewells and wells too need adequate allocation.
Research Priorities: Punjab Agricultural University (PAU), once the seat of Green Revolution, needs to undergo transformation in its research approach. So far crop varieties were being evolved looking into its fertiliser-response, photo-period insensitivity and the application of chemical pesticides. From inorganic crop breeding, research focus should now shift to organic breeding where varieties are developed in response to the availability of nutrients in organic form. These varieties have also to respond to climate change that stares ahead. Multiple cropping systems, incorporating dairy cattle, need adequate emphasis. Science must cater to the changing consumer needs rather than remain driven by industry interests.
Farm land Acquisition: No agricultural land, whether single-cropped or multi-cropped, should be diverted for non-farm purposes. Even in US, from where we increasingly borrow our economic policies, all efforts are to ensure that farmers do not sell off their lands for private use. US has brought in a Farmland and Grazing land Protection Programme that provides economic support to farmers for not diverting their land for non-agricultural use. In the 2008 Farm bill, US has allocated $ 743 million (approximately Rs 3,500 crores) to farmers over a five-year period 2008-2012 for conserving and protecting their farm lands. Budgetary allocation must be made for improving and conserving farm lands, and coupled with monthly income package; it would provide the right kind of incentive to make agriculture profitable. #

Dear farmer, your eviction notice

2011-10-02T12:50:00.000+05:30

It is happening as perdesign. The demographic transition being witnessed - cities, towns andmunicipalities growing faster and bigger - is perhaps at a little slower pacethan what was envisaged. But it is moving as planned. If you have read the WorldDevelopment Report 2008, you would know what I mean. It called forland rentals and for setting up a network of centres to train the displacedfarmers to become industrial workers.

And this is exactly what the then finance ministerP Chidambaram did whenhe presented his last budget. He made a budgetary allocation for setting up1,000 industrial training institutes across the country to provide training tothe young from the rural areas who, as per the report , do not know anythingexcept farming.

In the next decade, between 2011 and 2021, India isexpected to add another 95 million to its urban population. The process toexpedite the demographic transition - by forcing farmers to abandonagriculture, and by usurping land, water and natural resources in the name ofdevelopment - actually began much earlier. It was in 1996 that I first heard Dr IsmailSerageldin, a vice president of the World Bank and alsothe then chairman of the Consultative Group on International AgriculturalResearch warn of the rapid swing in population from the rural to the urbancentres.

The Bank had projected that in the next 20 years -by 2015 - the number of people migrating from the rural to urban areas in India alone would be equal to twice the combinedpopulation of UK, France and Germany. The combined population ofUK, France and Germany is 200 million. So the Bankhad in 1995-96 estimated that 400 million people will move out of rural areasin Indiaby the year 2015. I thought this was a warning, but looking at the wayagricultural policies were being re-written to usher in corporate farming, andappropriate laws being introduced to acquire fertile land and groundwater forreal estate and industry, it became obvious that the bank was actually layingthe ground rules. Heeding the advice, Prime MinisterManmohan Singh,too, has called for a population shift saying that agriculture employs 70% morepeople than what is required.

Over the years agriculture has been deliberatelyturned into a losing proposition as a result of which farmers are keen to moveout. With over 250,000 farmers taking the fatal route in the past 15 years toescape the humiliation that comes along with growing indebtedness, and withover 42% farmers expressing the desire to quit agriculture, the terribledistress that prevails in the countryside has been all too apparent.

The massive death toll has failed to make anydifference, though. Ironically, more than 40 years after the launch of theGreen Revolution , the average monthly income of a farm family hovers around apaltry Rs 2,400, which includes Rs 900 from non-farm activities. Those who feedthe nation are going hungry. No wonder, an estimated twothird of MNREGA workersare actually land owners. Following the policy directives of World Bank/IMF,the government has been on a fast-track mode to divest farmers from theirmeagre land holdings. Rural Indiais literally on a boil. In the past decade , more than 2 million hectares ofcultivable land, equivalent to the total arable land of Kerala,has been acquired for non-farm purposes .

The next decade will probably see eight times morecultivable land being acquired in the name of development. Uttar Pradesh aloneis set to acquire 6.6 million hectares for the proposed expressways. Severalstudies have shown that Indiawill turn into a major food importer somewhere around 2017-18 , back into thedays of 'ship-to-mouth' existence. Forcibly driven out from their only sourceof economic security, thousands of people are trudging out of the countrysideeveryday in the hope of a better future. They are swarming the smaller towns,cities and metros, which are bulging at the seams. Not only from Orissa,Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh , Bihar and West Bengal, increasingly farmers from thefrontline states of Punjab, Haryana , andwestern Uttar Pradesh are quitting agriculture.

The ablebodied men are the first to move out,leaving behind the old and the weaker sex. They comprise the new breed ofagricultural refugees . With 70% of the 60-crore farming population officiallynot required, the world's biggest environmental displacement is going to bewitnessed on the farm in Indiain the decades to come. Not realising that what

India

needs is a production systemby the masses , and not for the masses.

Source:The Times of India,Oct 2, 2011. Link: http://bit.ly/o9AJs3

How can you live for 365 days on 100 days assured employment? MNREGA activists need to explain.

2011-10-01T15:18:00.000+05:30

The poverty debate refuses to die down. Stung by public uproar, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Dr Montek Singh Ahluwalia has decided to revisit the poverty line of Rs 32 a day for urban areas and Rs 26 for the rural areas. Newspaper reports say the Planning Commission may consider redefining the poverty line, at a meeting scheduled on Oct 3. Planning Commission member Mihir Shah has been quoted in Business Standard as saying: "The Rs 32 poverty line to determine who is poor and who is not poor will go".

Another Planning Commission member Abhijit Sen has been strongly advocating for the removal of caps in BPL surveys. "The moment the caps are removed, the poverty line would become redundant as a means of deciding funds given to States for BPL schemes like food distribution. The poverty line would then be something like GDP estimates." [Plan panel to eat its words on poverty definition, Business Standard, Oct 1, 2011. http://bit.ly/pfiHBj].

Well, even if the BPL caps are removed, I don't think the primary issue of what constitutes the poverty line will disappear. It is a bogus estimate that has been deliberately made by economists for over 50 years now. It is not based on common sense, and as I said earlier it is nothing short of a crime that mainline economists have been merrily perpetuating against millions of poor in the country.

Still more amusing is the effort to seek media attention over the faulty poverty line. After the Right to Food campaign suddenly woke up and wrote a memorandum to Montek Singh Ahluwalia (they had never questioned the contours of the poverty line), I got an invite by a TV channel yesterday to be on a show where two members of the National Advisory Council were also to participate. I inquired about the subject that we were to discuss, and I was told it is about an open letter they had written to Mr Ahluwalia challenging him to live on Rs 32 a day.

I was amused, and told the journalist that I would have loved to be on the show but I was far away driving in the hills of Himachal Pradesh. Nevertheless, when I looked at the newspapers a day later, I felt sad. Why do activists have to try these tricks to stay in the news columns? Why can't Right to Food campaign raise some fundamental issues of the inability of the State to reach food to the poor and needy that are so relevant in the debate on hunger? Anyway, take a look at this report: Live on Rs 32 a day: Aruna to Montek. IBNlive, Sept 30. Here is the link: http://bit.ly/r8JQCM.

Enough has been said and written about the guffaw on poverty estimates. There is no denying that the poverty estimates are completely flawed. You cannot live on Rs 32 a day. As I have been repeatedly saying for several years now, you can't even raise a pet dog in the amount the Planning Commission wants us to believe that a human being can be fed adequately. And don't forget, the food component of the Rs 32 cut-off is only Rs 18. So the question that Right to Food campaign should have asked Plan panel members is to explain the basis for treating this (the food component) as 'normatively adequate'.

It is true that Rs 18 a day for food expenses would only qualify the poor to be living in abject hunger.

That brings me to another relevant and related question. Some of the activists named by the media in its headlines were also on the forefront of the MNREGA campaign. The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, which recently completed five years of its existence, has been providing 100 days assured income to at least one member of the poor and marginalised families. For a moment, ignore the issue of rampant corruption and how much the MNREGA funds reach the real beneficiaries. I would like to challenge the distinguished activists to live for 365 days on an income they receive for 100 days. If the poor can be expected to survive for a whole year on an income they get for 100 days, why can't other sections of the society also be comfortable with 100 days payment every year?

Will the activists demonstrate the relevance of 100 days assured employment in a year? If the poor are expected to be doing other things for the remaining 265 days, we can also allow you the same benefit. But please show us if you can live for a year on just 100 days employment?

A big question mark hangs over the future of globalisation

2011-09-26T10:34:00.000+05:30

What has happened to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? No, I am nottalking about the political confabulations that he is holding to save hiscolleague Home Minister P Chidambaram from falling into disgrace. In caseyou missed it, what I am referring to is his speech at the 66th session of theUN General Assembly in New York. "Till afew years ago the world had taken for granted the benefits of globalisation andglobal interdependence,” the Prime Minister said. “Today we are being calledupon to cope with the negative dimensions of those very phenomena.” [Grimglobalisation sermon by Singh, TheTelegraph, Sept 24.http://bit.ly/oTuKjt].

It seems wisdom has finally dawned upon the elderly economist.After being in power for over seven years, and having initiated the process ofeconomic liberalisation in Indiain 1991, Manmohan Singh probably is now being arm-twisted to sign on the dottedline. Only he would know how tough and harsh it must be for him to blurt it outat the UN General Assembly. Enough is enough, he seems to be conveying.

This reminds me of another historical statement that India's first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehruhad made from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi on Aug 15, 1955. He had said:"It is very humiliating for any country to import food. So everything elsecan wait, but not agriculture." I have often said in my presentations thatonly Nehru would have known how much humiliation he had to undergo to receivefood aid. Similarly, I think only Manmohan Singh can tell us, if at all he everpicks up the courage to confide with the nation, how humiliating it has beenfor him to not only sing songs in favour of globalisation but to also bring inpolicies that would eventually go against the national interest.

The Telegraph report further states: In aclear indictment of free market policies and deregulation which have broughtthe world to its present financial meltdown, Singh said: “Economic, social andpolitical events in different parts of the world have coalesced together andtheir adverse impact is now being felt across countries and continents.” The economist PrimeMinister warned that “the world economy is in trouble”. As one of the leaderswho is party to the Group of Twenty (G-20) efforts to revive the global economyafter the meltdown three years ago, he lamented that “the shoots of recoverywhich were visible after the economic and financial crisis of 2008 have yet toblossom”.Making a grim prediction for the future, the Prime Minister, in fact,said: “In many respects the crisis has deepened even further.”

This is what happens when you read too much fromthe textbooks. The proponents of economic liberalisation had simply followedthe book rules and had gone on defending whenever signs of failure wouldappear. These rules were designed in the west, and Indian economists (most ofwhom are on a kind of sabbatical from the western universities) had the oneroustask to ensure that Indiadoes not deviate from the path of privatisation and neoliberalism. Using themainline media to their advantage, I must say these economists had done aremarkable job in creating the illusion of economic growth. We have been simplyseduced by the power of GDP, and somehow made to believe that we can all realiseour dreams to be stinkingly rich before we die.

I think the Prime Minister's exasperation stemsfrom the diktats he has been lately receiving from the G-20 and theWorld Trade organisation (WTO). Take a look at the recent review of India's trade policy by the WTO (which inreality was more of a USreview of India'strade policies). WTO hit where it would hit the Prime Minister most. Alreadyunder fire from the political opposition, media and the public at large for hisinability to control inflation, WTO actually directed India not torestrict food exports at any cost. India must export, and when itneeds to meet its domestic needs it can import. Such a directive, if India decidesto follow, will only add to Manmohan Singh's woes. [WTO slams India's tradepolicy on farm items, EconomicTimes, Sept 15, 2011,http://bit.ly/pNqIKh]

Another crucial policy that he is being directedto adopt, and in fact he is being repeatedly asked to explain as to why he hasnot been able to implement is the approval for FDI in big retail. As per theG-20, Indiawas supposed to have cleared all the obstacles in allowing unhindered approvalfor FDI in retail by November last year. As the coordinator on behalf of G-20,IMF was to monitor the implementation for FDI in retail across the G-20countries. It is not that Manmohan Singh didn't try. He had in fact created afast track approval process as a result of which all discerning views were puton hold. But then politically it has not been possible for him to appease theG-20.

These may be just two of the irritants. But thewriting of the wall is clear to any sensible person, provided he is not amainline economist. The 2008 economic meltdown was in reality an economiccollapse. If the governments across the globe had not joined hands to pump inUS $ 20 trillion to save the economy, the neoliberaleconomic model would have collapsed by now. This year too it is once againshowing its ugly head. There is panic all around. The crisis of PIGS countriesis now heating the Eurozone. The US is already faced with its worsteconomic crisis, partly being sustained by printing more currency notes.Everyone know it can't go on for long.

Nevertheless, Manmohan Singh must now be familiarwith the imminent collapse of the global economy. As the head of the State he must be trying to emerge clean so that he can say: Look, Iwarned you.."

The Poverty of Estimates

2011-09-24T11:34:00.000+05:30

Everyone seems upset. Ironically, more upset with the definition of the poverty line and the criteria that has now become the butt of a national joke, are the economists and of course some members of the high-profile National Advisory Council. They have been doing the rounds of the TV channels expressing dismay at the threshold of what Planning Commission constitutes as the poverty line.

I was amused watching them express their concerns. In many ways it is like shedding crocodile tears. Amused because these were the same people who were either responsible for drafting the poverty line or were in a way the silent spectators. They had never challenged the 'below the poverty line' (BPL) criteria. Perhaps by remaining quiet or turning a blind eye to the gross injustice being perpetuated by the planners on country's vast army of poor and downtrodden, these economists stood to gain. I see no other reason why the entire community of economists had silently been using the same fraudulent BPL norms that they now find fault with (believe it or not, some of the most distinguished names are associated with the formulation of the poverty line).

This is what constitutes conspiracy of silence.

I have no hesitation in saying that the entire controversy following the questioning of the BPL norms by the Supreme Court has actually brought the economist class into disgrace. For nearly 50 years, they had not only prepared but also backed a bogus poverty estimate. They went on using the same useless poverty estimates into all their economic analysis. I wonder with such a faulty foundation what kind of analysis these economists must have produced. How reliable is their analysis, perhaps we will get to know provided the Supreme Court now gets into questioning the merits of the econometric analysis (that uses the poverty data) has been churned out in volumes over the years.

I have also keenly followed many of the quick news analysis that many economists and others have written. This was expected. The best way to overcome your guilt is to paint a picture that show how pained you are now to know that Planning Commission's poverty line for urban areas is Rs 31/day and Rs 25/day for the rural areas. If you are earning more than this, you are above the poverty line. In reality, this estimate is nothing but a revised estimate based on the current prices. Otherwise, Tendulkar committee had earlier drawn a line of Rs 19 per day for the urban areas and Rs 14 for the rural areas. The parameters that go into defining this BPL criteria remain the same. (Spend Rs 32 a day? Govt says you can't be poor Times of India Sept 21, 2011 http://bit.ly/qMWYRc).

In an interesting piece Playing with numbers, and lives (Indian Express, Sept 23, 2011) Rajya Sabha MP Brinda Karat writes: "The National Advisory Council, headed by Sonia Gandhi, had in its draft also included a clause that 'identification will be based on the criteria notified by the Central government'. One wonders whether the veteran activists who were part of the drafting committee in NAC were unaware of the poverty line which at the stage of their drafting was even lower than the Rs 26 line they are so articulately criticising today." She is referring to the public outcry being made by Aruna Roy, Jean Derez and N C Saxena.

I have always considered India's poverty line to be actually a starvation line. For over a decade now, I have been questioning the wisdom of fixing a stringent poverty line in which you can't even feed a dog. How can a human being survive in that amount? But believe me, none of the economists or NAC members (I am not sure of there is an exception) ever stood up to pose the same questions. They were very happy following the poverty prescription laid out. They obviously stood the gain by not questioning the poverty norms.

I have been asked as to what I think should be the way to determine real poverty. You can read what I had to say when the NAC came up with what I consider is yet another faulty path to removing hunger (Path to hell they say is paved with good intentions. http://bit.ly/iB2HDj). I also draw your attention to another article How to keep poverty low http://bit.ly/o60BsA. In my opinion, what India needs is not one poverty line. We need two lines: Poverty Line (what Arjun Sengupta committee worked out at 77 per cent population unable to spend more than Rs 20 a day), and an Antyodaya Line comprising 37.2 per cent of the population (which incidentally is the present poverty line).

Why onions continues to bring tears in your eyes.

2011-09-22T09:14:00.001+05:30

Within 11 days of imposing a ban on the export of onions,the powerful traders lobby forced the government to lift the ban. Succumbing topressure from the onion traders, who normally cry hoarse in the name offarmers, the speed at which the onion trade made the government to bendbackwards is a pointer to the monumental failure to curb food inflation.

For over 4 years now, ever since food inflation has hit theroof, I haven’t seen so much of political activity as I have observed in thelast few days. Triggered by protest by Nasikonion traders, who had refused to partake in daily auction to demonstrate theiranger against the sudden imposition of exports ban, the NCP chief MadhukarPichad had first written to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the CommerceMinister Anand Sharma. Maharashtra Chief Minister Prithviraj Chavan had deputedhis Agriculture Minister Radhakrishna Vikhe-patil and some of his colleagues tomeet Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and other concerned ministers.

According to news reports, Prithviraj Chavan had himselflobbyed with Pranab Mukherjee and Anand Sharma seeking an immediate withdrawalof the ban on onion exports. Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar too hadthrown his weight behind the agitating traders and had met Food Minister K VThomas to impress upon him the need to allow onion exports. He had forcefullyargued in favour of onion exports at the meeting of the empowered Group ofMinister (eGoM) on Tuesday. Knowing the strength Sharad Pawar wields in UPA II,it was expected that the government will give in.

After the much-awaited eGoM that met under the chairmanshipof Pranab Mukherjee on Tuesday, Food Minister K V Thomas announced the liftingof the ban subject to a minimum export price (MEP) of $475/tonne. While noquantitative restrictions were announced, the high MEP is expected to act as adamper on onion exports. Seeing the steady rise in open market onion prices fora month or so, the MEP had been steeply raised by $ 200/tonne within a span ofa month. In mid-August, the MEP stood at $ 275/tonne.

The high MEP certainly has not dampened the spirit of theexporters who have merrily resumed the daily auction operations in Nasik mandis.

There are reasons to understand the panic the Food Ministrymust be under when it decided to impose a ban on onion exports. Knowing wellthe stupendous rise in the prices of onions in the retail market just a fewmonths back, when for no justifiable reasons the consumer prices had swung to ahigh of Rs 80/kg, the Food Ministry was certainly being over-cautious. Heavyrains in the last week of August had further slowed down transportation ofbulbs from Maharashtra, thereby adding to thewoes of the consumers In mid-August, Food Ministry first tried to restrict exportsby raising the MEP by $45 to bring it $275/tonne, but it failed to control the retailprices. And when open market prices increased to Rs 25/kg, the panic button waspressed.

For the past three years, September has been the worryingmonth. Last year, heavy exports undertaken in September were blamed for the subsequentshortfall in onion availability in December when a sudden jerk in prices hadbrought tears in the eyes of the consumers. When onion prices had jumped fromRs 35/kg to Rs 60/kg in retail last year, Commerce Minister Anand Sharma hadsaid that the price rise was because of hoarding as the country had enoughstocks. This year too, when onion prices had begun to show its head, AnandSharma is on record saying that the price rise is because of hoarding. Iremember when the government went into a tizzy last year, the Nafed chief hadexpressed surprise at the price rise. He told the media that there was roughly20 per cent more supply, and despite the rain damage to the standing crop inSeptember, the price rise defies any logic.

The legitimate question that follows is then why is thegovernment unable to crackdown on hoarders. More so at a time when onionproduction was estimated to be at record 145.62 lakh tonnes last year. Thisyear, the crop is still better and estimates point to an overall production of 151.36lakh tonnes.

Now, let us look at how politics is defining the rise inonion prices. Before even the prices had stabilised to Rs 50-60 per kg lastyear, Anand Sharma had met some of his fellow cabinet colleagues and impressedupon them the need to support the opening up of multi-brand retail. FinanceMinister Pranab Mukherjee, Home Minister P Chidambaram and Defence Minister A KAnthony had taken part in these discussions. Why the urgency? Anand Sharma hadreplied: “Policy formation is a dynamic process, and we are very progressiveand forward-looking.”

In fact, he also met the media the same day (Dec 23) to informthem about the dynamics of multi-brand retail. According to a news report:“While Mr Sharma rejected the argument that there was a link between thesoaring onion prices and the opening up of multi-brand retail to foreign directinvestment, the demand for liberalising the sector has been intensifying,especially in the wake of wide gap between the wholesale prices and retailprices.” It was therefore quite apparent that the onion price hike in Dec2010-jan 2011 was a manipulation to justify the approval for FDI in multi-brandretail.

Indiais under pressure from G-20 leadership to remove all barriers in opening up tomulti-brad retail. British Prime Minister David Cameron, US President BarackObama and the French President Nicolas Sarkozy had during their visits to NewDelhi had reportedly impressed upon Prime Minister Manmohan Singh on theurgency to open up for multi-brand retail. No wonder, the government has beentrying its best to project the need for big retail. With the politicalenvironment is not still conducive, there is no reason to disbelieve that thereis a deliberate effort to establish that multi-brand retail remains the onlyoption to bring down the retail prices.

September-October is generally a lean period for onions. Itsarrival in the mandis slackens duringthese months, and to meet the market demand traders maintain enough stocks fromApril onwards. With the arrival of the new crop in the second half of October,prices generally ease. Knowing the seasonality of the production cycle, theFood Ministry should have waited for a little more time before the suddenknee-jerk action of banning exports. Such adhoc decisions when it comes to commodity exports results in a loss ofconfidence among importers as a result of which the trade suffers. More oftenthan not, exports only help traders whereas onion farmers continue to be paid afraction.

This brings me back to the original question why thegovernment has been unable to control food inflation. Well, looking at the waythe onion traders have forced the government to retract its ban order, the factremains that I haven’t seen so much of political activity at any time on theissue of price rise. The reason is obvious. No political party wants to rufflethe traders with any stringent action. Traders hold the key to the politicalpurse, and a crackdown against hoarding and speculation would mean chopping offthe financial cord. We must therefore learn to live with food inflation.

Farmers in Andhra Pradesh are left with no option but to go on a 'crop holiday'

2011-09-16T22:05:00.000+05:30

There is something terribly going wrong with agriculture.While nearly 40,000 farmers in Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu& Kashmir have defaulted on repayment to the State Bank of India alone tothe tune of Rs 600-crore, hundreds of farmers in the rice bowl of AndhraPradesh, comprising the fertile and irrigated East Godawari and West Godwaridistricts, have refused to cultivate paddy this year, declaring a ‘crop holiday’.

What may appear to be two completely disconnected eventshappening in two different geographical regions of the country is in reality awake up call. Whether it is the northeast or the more productive northwestregions; whether it is Punjab, Andhra Pradesh,Tamil Nadu or Odisha; agriculture continues to be in the throes of what appearsto be a perpetual crisis for survival. What is not realised is that it is actuallya crisis of sustainability and economic viability.

It all began from the fertile konaseema region of EastGodawari district in Andhra Pradesh where a small farmer Suryabhagwan owningsix-acres of land voluntarily announced that he would prefer to work as a‘coolie’ than to undertake paddy cultivation. Already under heavy debt andknowing that another season of paddy cultivation will only add to hisindebtedness, his call for a ‘crop holiday’ soon reverberated. Within a fewweeks, the idea of a ‘crop holiday’ in the ongoing kharif season spread like wildfire and more than 1 lakh hectares inthe two irrigated districts today lies barren.

Andhra Pradesh is a paddy growing area. While production hasbeen steadily on an upswing over the years, adequate market infrastructure forprocurement has not been created. The result is that despite a very highproduction capacity there is little space for storage. When Chandrababu Naiduwas the chief minister, I remember one of his statements asking farmers not toproduce more rice in kharif season ashe has no place to stock the surplus grain. I am therefore not surprised tolearn that from the previous rabi season(2010-2011) alone, an estimated 50 lakh tonnes lying with farmers, is still tobe purchased.

Much of the unsold stocks of paddy are stored with farmersin the two districts of East Godawari and West Godawari.Suryabhagwan therefore is absolutely right in deciding not to grow another cropof rice in kharif and be saddled withthe additional harvest. This brings me to another popular thinking, beingpromoted by economists, policy makers and the private trade, that thegovernment needs to withdraw from procurement and allow the private players toprocure the grains. If the Andhra Pradesh government was to withdraw from paddyprocurement, and knowing how private trade exploits the gullible farmers, Iwouldn’t be surprised to find more and more seasons of ‘crop holidays’.

Like in Andhra Pradesh, the Ministry of Food and Agricultureannounces procurement price for 25 crops every year but effectively procuresonly wheat and rice. Unlike Punjab and Haryana where the State agencies procureover 90 per cent of the grains flowing into the mandis, the Food Corporation of India has in other States outsourcedits procurement operations. Such an arrangement has allowed farmers to beexploited by the private trade, and more often than not forces them intodistress sale. Minimum Support Price (MSP) thereby loses its significance andfarming becomes unviable. It is primarily because the farmer is unable to get aremunerative price for his produce that more than 40 per cent of the farmers,as per a NSSO survey, want to quit agriculture if given a choice.

Even in the frontline agricultural states of Punjab and Haryana, where massive quantities of chemicalfertilisers, pesticides and ground water are used, farming has become economicallyunviable. Despite abundant irrigation and subsidised loan to farmers, if nearly40,000 farmers have defaulted on repayment to just one bank -- State Bank ofIndia – to the tune of Rs 570 crore (HP and J&K have defaulted by Rs 30crore only), it clearly is an indication that agriculture in the GreenRevolution belt has lost its sheen. Farmers in Punjaband Haryana have certainly not opted for a ‘crop holiday’ but by defaulting thebanks they too have made a powerful statement. What is still worse is that suchan acute economic crisis is happening in a state that has always beenconsidered to be the harbinger of rural prosperity.

Interestingly, the subsidised loan was being provided at aneffective rate of 4 per cent despite the rate of interest for agriculture being7 per cent. The State bank is now holding 400 compromise camps for farmerswhere a final settlement can be made. I am told the situation in other statesis no different. The non-performing assets of the banks from agriculture arepiling up. This is happening at a time when a recent NABARD study shows thatbanks are in reality charging 14 per cent interest (against the subsidised 7per cent) by clubbing their extraneous expenses also as amount to be recoveredfrom farmers.

The warning is loud and clear. The terrible agrarian crisissweeping the country is the outcome of a continuous neglect and apathy. Overthe years, agriculture has been deliberately pushed the downhill path. Whilethe economic and scientific prescription to bail out the farming communityinvariably hinges on to providing improved and sophisticated technology, it isthe declining incomes that is hitting the farm sector. The tragedy is thatinstead of providing more incomes into the hands of farmers, what is beingoffered is more credit which further adds on to farm indebtedness. No wonder,two-third of MNREGA workers are actually land owners. Clearly an indicationthat small farmers are unable to survive solely on agriculture.

Setting up yet another high-level committee is not theanswer. What is needed is to provide farmers with an assured monthly take-homepackage. At a time when the monthly wages of government employees after the 6^thpay commission have gone up by 150 per cent, monthly income of legislators andparliamentarians has risen by 200 to 400 per cent, education and healthexpenses have gone through the roof, and even the BPL families are getting thebenefit of health insurance and PDS, it is only the farming community that hasremained at the receiving end. What the farmers need desperately is a FarmersIncome Guarantee Act that determines the monthly income package a farm familymust receive. #

Agriculture in ruins

2011-09-07T22:13:00.001+05:30

I haven’t forgotten thatnight. Sitting with a group of farmers in a village in Ludhianadistrict in Punjab, at the height of the GreenRevolution, a farmer showed me a bag of fertiliser that he brought from themarket.

“Why are you showing me thisbag”, I asked. “Wait”, he said, and began to open the bag. It was only when hecrushed the granules with his hands that I realised why he wanted me to see thefertiliser bag. The fertiliser was spurious. The jute bag, neatly packed andbranded, contained mud granules.

Several years later I wastravelling in the villages of Warangaldistrict in Andhra Pradesh to understand the reasons behind the spate of farmsuicides that had first rocked the nation. This was in 1997 when 37 farmerscommitted suicide in this district alone. While everyone blamed the weathergods for inflicting a terrible blow to farmers, I found spurious pesticides tobe the reason for the failure of the cotton crop.

More than 80 per cent of thepesticides sold in Warangaldistrict were later found to be adulterated and fake.

Two and a half decades later,agriculture is in ruins. The story of demise in agriculture across the countryis the same. Dying crop fields, and crying farmers. With degraded soils,depleting groundwater, and chemical pesticides playing havoc with theenvironment, agriculture is in terrible distress. With farming becoming alosing proposition, and with the entire equation going wrong, agriculture iswitnessing a mass exodus.

While academicians, economistsand policy makers are ascribing several complex reasons for the decline ofagriculture, the dark underbelly has somehow remained unexposed. What hasactually eaten into the vitals of agriculture over the years is rampantcorruption. It is like the vultures swarming around a dead animal carcase. Believeit or not, the despicable farm scenario is no less gory.

Fake and sub-standard inputs– seeds, fertiliser, pesticides and machinery is only one part of the story. Withquality control in complete shambles, and with testing laboratories known to havea fixed price tag for approving samples, farmers are always on the receivingend. No wonder, the post of plant protection officers as well as qualitycontrol is one of the most sought after in the State Departments ofAgriculture.

Massive public outlays underthe National Horticulture Mission, Rashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna, and theNational Food Security Mission are in fact being used as grants. When I see themisuse of these outlays, often going into the pockets of senior farm officials,I have always wondered why the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has refrainedfrom focusing on the flagrant misuse of resources in the name of food security.

Agricultural officials andinput suppliers have always maintained a cosy relationship. Even where uprightofficials have blacklisted erring firms, it isn’t difficult to pull down theshutters and then float a new company. Over the years, I have seen the businessgrowing for those who were once know to be selling sub-standard products.

Fly-by-night operators adornthe seed industry, and despite seed laws spelling out stringent punishment formarketing fake seeds, the market is full of spurious seeds. Bihar ChiefMinister Nitish Kumar had recently said that a big seed company had suppliedinferior maize hybrid seed, and had refused to account for the losses. Ultimately,Bihar government had to pay for the Rs60-crore loss.

Post harvest, the travails ofa farmer take a different turn. In areas where procurement centres and mandis exist (mainly in the GreenRevolution belt of Punjab, Haryana, western UPand some parts of Madhya Pradesh), invariably farmers are at the mercy of the arhtiyas and the mandi agents. In rest of the country, the farmer is exploited, fleecedand ends up selling his produce in distress. It will not be wrong to say thatit is a nightmare for a farmer to get a fair price for his produce and that tooafter putting in so much of hard labour.

Banks, money lenders andmicro-credit agencies have been perpetual suckers. Several studies have pointedto the mismanagement (and corruption) in distribution of bank credit to be theprimary reason for the agrarian crisis. Usurping interest charged bymicro-finance institutions, often exceeding 24 per cent and that too to berepaid at weekly intervals, as well as the dependence on private money lendershas been the bane of farming.

If you think scientificresearch, agricultural development and policy framing is devoid of corruptionyou are grossly mistaken. Much of what hits the farmer is the result of wrongpolicies framed deliberately. But then, it is topic for another day.

Source: Deccan Herald, Bangalore, Sept 7, 2011

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/189016/agriculture-ruins.html

Subsidy for the poor is bad; subsidy for the rich is good and always welcome

2011-07-16T10:56:00.008+05:30

Subsidy has become a bad word. The moment the word 'subsidy' is mentioned one thinks of another crumb being thrown at the poor; as if tax-payers money is once again being wasted in the name of social security for reasons that are purely political. Over the years, neoliberal economists have successfully managed to create an impression in public perception that all subsides are wrong and need to be phased out. World Bank/IMF have in fact been forcing governments to remove subsidies as part of the fiscal prudence exercises needed to prop up the sagging economy. Let us face it, an average educated person finds subsidy despicable.

I wasn't therefore surprised to read New York Times commentary: "Politics gives some US subsidy program staying power" (NYT, July 14, 2011, http://nyti.ms/qDXRo4). Pitching for removal of wasteful subsidies, and most of these obviously fall in the agriculture sector, the writer tells us how these programs operate more or less like vampires, always coming back when you thought they were dead and gone.

Illustrating his argument with some telling examples, like Washington's Essential Air Service programme that results in an annual burden of $ 1.6 million for just three flights, he adds: "A close look at two programs highlights the age-old politics protecting government spending. The peanut and cotton storage program, which costs $1 million a year, has repeatedly survived cuts thanks to bipartisan support. Under the program, the government picks up storage costs for cotton and peanut farmers when they defer selling crops until prices rise. The peanut storage credits have been around since 2002. The cotton subsidy dates to the 1990s."

Talking about agricultural subsidies I am reminded of another report "Government's Continued Bailout for Corporate Agriculture," published by the Environment Working Group in 2010 that listed the massive US farm subsidy support over the years. Accordingly, the US had paid a quarter of trillion dollars in farm subsidy support between 1995 and 2009. What makes the farm subsidy conundrum more complicated is the role the highly subsidised commodities play in international trade. Take cotton for example. US cotton subsidy have been known to be killing small cotton growers in western Africa, Asia and Latin America who cannot compete against the heavily subsidised cotton being imported from America.

I am not in favour of wasteful subsidies. These must be curbed.

But why is that no economist, and for that matter no policy maker, is ever willing to point a finger at the massive subsidies that are being doled to the industry, services and banking sectors in the name of improving efficiency? If subsidies are bad, these are bad for the industry too. Take the case of India where a similar debate has been raging for quite sometime now. Since 2004, the government has waived taxes, including income tax reductions, for the business and industry to the tune of Rs 22 lakh crore. These tax exemptions are clubbed under the category of 'revenue foregone' and presented in every annual budget. I haven't yet seen any economist or a TV anchor ever pointing a finger to these 'wasteful' subsidies. Perhaps the reason is simple. In some way or the other we all are beneficiaries of the same subsidised system.

I was surprised to read another report the other day. The government has decided to provide a subsidy (you can call it an investment) of Rs 100,000 crore in the next 10 years for the opulent IT industry. I thought the IT sector has already been one of the major recipients of government subsidies all these years, and is now a cash rich sector. On the other hand, the government finds it unable to take anymore the burden of cooking gas cylinders for the average households. Well, the reason is simple. The outgo on LPG falls under the category of subsidy whereas the subsidy for IT sector is an investment for improving efficiency and thereby add to job creation.

This is what is called 'tough love'. Tough for you and me, and love for the rich.

A starving proposition

2011-07-13T09:44:00.001+05:30

Sowing trouble: Reckless acquisition of agricultural land imperils food security; call a halt to it before food bowls turn into begging bowls.

Going by a Hindustan Times-GFK Modeopinion poll conducted across five worst affected villages in Aligarh andGautam Budh Nagar districts of UP, more than 48 per cent farmers are willing to sell land. All they are looking for is a better compensation package.

The underlying message isloud and clear. Farmers are keen to dispense with their land because agriculturehas turned into a losing proposition.

This quick market researchreiterates the findings of an earlier National Sample Survey Organisation(NSSO) survey in which 42 per cent farmers had said that they would quit agriculture if given an alternative. Viewed in the light of the terribleagrarian distress reflected in the spate of farmer suicides across the country, the ongoing debate on land acquisition skirts thefundamental issues confronting the economic viability of the farm and theresulting food insecurity.

Cultivable land is being acquired for non-agricultural purposes at a frantic pace at a time when the country is struggling to meet the growing demand for food. If India is to meet this basic need of its burgeoning population, it will have to bring more land under cultivation. For instance, we will have to set aside 200 lakh acres if we decide to grow domestically the pulses and oilseeds we import.

Preserving productive agricultural land for cultivation assumesutmost importance. In the US, the federal government is providingUS $ 750 million to farmers for the period 2008-13 under the Farm Bill 2008 toconserve and improve their grazing lands. The idea is to ensure that farmers do not divert the land for non-agricultural purposes.

Why can’t India, too, makeadequate investments to protect agricultural land? Why can’t it use theRashtriya Krishi Vikas Yojna (RKVY) exclusively to improve and preserve farmlands?

Economicdevelopment, unfortunately, has come to mean divesting of their meagre land holdings. Policymakers say that with rapid industrialization,average incomes will increase. As a result, people will have more money to buyfood from the open market and make more nutritious choices. But the biggerquestion we have simply overlooked at our own peril is that from where will the additional food come from.

In Andhra Pradesh, over 20 lakh acres has been diverted from agriculture tonon-farm uses. In Haryana, over 60,000 acres has been acquired between 2005 and2010. In Madhya Pradesh, over 11 lakh acres has been acquired for the industryin the past five years. Punjab, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra,Chhatisgarh, and Madhya Pradesh are building up "land banks" for theindustry and Rajasthan has allowed the industry to buy land directly fromfarmers, setting aside the ceiling limit.

Noone, in fact, has worked out as to how much agricultural land needs to be acquired tomeet the industrial needs, and how much has actually been purchased. It is freefor all; you can acquire as much land as you can.

RahulGandhi himself has alleged that along the proposed Yamuna Expressway in UP,roughly 44,000 hectares of fertile farm land is being acquired for townships,industrial clusters, golf courses and an F1 racing track. My own analysis showsthat of the total area of 198 lakh acres under food grain crops in UP, one-thirdor roughly 66 lakh acres will go out of production. This will mean a shortfallin foodgrain production in UP alone to the tune of 145 lakh tonnes.

Giving paramount importance to food security, we should draw a land use map for the country. There should be a moratorium on the sale of farm lands for non-agricultural activities, except for clearly defined‘public’ purpose. The proposed Land Acquisition Bill must include provisions for enhancing farm incomes. At presentthe average monthly income of a farmer's family is Rs 2400. Even a peon in a government office is drawing Rs 15,000. A Farmer’s Income Guarantee Act is the answer.

Source: Hindustan Times, Chandigarh

http://bit.ly/qx7TJD

True Justice: Supreme Court shows the way

2011-07-12T17:28:00.006+05:30

In a series of judgementsthat have challenged the mainline economic thinking, the country’s highestcourt has struck at the very foundation of

India

’s growth story. Moving a stepahead of simple diagnosis and introspection, the Supreme Court has taken on theresponsibility of cleaning the mess.

For the aam aadmi, the Supreme Court’s judgements are a telling commentaryon what is going wrong. The spate of judgements, coming in quick succession,has obviously upset some of the major loudspeakers of economic reforms. Somenewspapers were quick to seek restraint in judicial activism reminding thejudiciary of its limits. This was expected because it is this dominant group orindividuals who have primarily been the beneficiary of the rot that had setin.

At a time when economists arecalling for sweeping new reforms to maintain the trajectory of growth, thecourt warns of how the culture of unrestrained selfishness and greed spawned bymodern neo-liberal economic ideology has led to ever increasing spirals ofconsumption giving a false impression of economic growth. The court wasresponding to a writ petition filed by Nandini Sunder and others against theState of Chhatisgarh.

Whether it is agriculture,land acquisitions, taxation, infrastructure and finance, the emphases is onmore reforms (read privatisation) and thereby restore confidence of investors. Beit the media ringmasters, and I am talking of the anchors, or the country’splanners, policy makers and economists working with credit rating agencies, therefrain remains the same for privatisation as the only path to development. Notrealising that in lot many ways the line between development and exploitationhas blurred.

Nevertheless as growthremains on an upswing, Indiacontinues to slide downhill in human development, hunger and poverty. If itwere not for the artificially kept low poverty line, where Rs 20 and Rs 15earned per day in urban and rural areas constitutes the cut-off for poverty,over 50 per cent of the world’s poor would be officially living in India.

The dichotomy has never beenexplained. As the never-ending chorus for the much-awaited second wave ofreforms grows louder by the day, there is a rapacious assault on the naturalresources. The State has turned a blatant exploiter usurping precious naturalresources – water, land and mineral wealth – for private good. The ruralhinterland is witnessing land wars the likes of which have never been seen before.While economists continue to justify the takeover of public resources in thename of development, the judiciary has begun to see through the fallaciousclaims and the resulting socio-economic fallout. Realising that enough isenough the Supreme Court has decided to step in.

Dismissing another petitionfiled by the Greater Noida Development Authority and several private builders, theSupreme Court lashed out at the growing incidence of violent land acquisitions:“This is a sinister campaign initiated by several state governments against thepeople. It is forcing them (land owners) to become slum dwellers or take tocrime.” It faulted state governments for using the ‘urgency’ or ‘emergency’clause for private benefit. The nexus has grown thicker and wider – economistsjoining ranks with politicians, bureaucrats and builders.

Read the followingobservation: “The justification often advanced, by advocates of neo-liberaldevelopment paradigm, as historically followed, or newly emerging, is thatunless development occurs, via rapid and vast exploitation of naturalresources, the country would not be able to either compete on the global scale,nor accumulate the wealth necessary to tackle endemic and seemingly intractableproblems of poverty, illiteracy, hunger and squalor.” Together with the 50-pageorder on ‘black money, the country’s highest court has conclusively demolishedthe mainline economic thinking that weighs economic wealth over humanwelfare.

Isn’t this an argument thatyou hear every other day? That rural India is literally on a boil is ofno consequence. After all we are repeatedly told: land is required formanufacturing and industry; more industrial development means more employment;more employment means less of poverty. This popular assumption is regardless ofthe recommendations of a 2008 Expert Group of Planning Commission, which hadconcluded: “the benefits of this paradigm have been disproportionately corneredby the dominant sections at the expanse of the poor.” Ironically, it is thesame Planning Commission which ignores the recommendations of its own expertgroups and continues to thrust economic liberalisation policies that have acerbatedeconomic disparities driving the poor against the wall.

Land grab is happening at atime when the country is already in the throes of an unmanageable food crisisgiven that the galloping demands for food in the years to come requiring morearea to be maintained under agriculture. For instance, if India is togrow domestically the quantity of pulses and oilseeds (in the form ofedible oil) that are presently being imported, an additional 20 millionhectares would be required. On the contrary, with arable land – mono-cropped ormulti-cropped -- being diverted for non-agricultural purposes, India is fastgetting into a much worse hunger trap.

Preserving productive agricultural land for cultivation therefore assumesutmost importance. In the United States, the federal government is providingUS $ 750 million to farmers for the period 2008-13 under the Farm Bill 2008 toconserve and improve their farm and grazing lands so as to ensure farmers donot divert it for industrial and private use. In India on theother hand, the State governments are a tearing hurry to divest farm lands andturn them into concrete jungles in the name of development. “When peopleprotest against acquisition of their land, men are arrested and women raped,”the apex court observed.

At a time when the State has moreor less abdicated its responsibility to act conclusively against graft, theSupreme Court has appointed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to repatriateblack money. Coming in the wake of the continuous monitoring of the 2G Spectrumscandals that has already sent a number of politicians and corporate honchos tothe Tihar jail, only a crusade against land grab by the highest court can comeas the much needed respite for the rural poor.

The court appears determined.“We will not keep our eyes closed. You take it (agricultural land) from oneside and give it to the other. This has to go, and if it does not go, thiscourt will step in to ensure that,’ the apex court had warned.

Agriculture reforms will deepen the agrarian crisis.

2011-07-05T12:56:00.000+05:30

The news that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh wants an annual agriculture survey from next year, similar to the pre-Budget Economic Survey, is perhaps aimed at kick-starting agricultural reforms. Agriculture had remained on the back burner ever since the Economic Reforms were unleashed in 1991, and has been literally crying for attention.

The Prime Minister's office, says a report in The Hindustan Times (Agriculture reform next on the menu? HT July 5, 2011) has called for an "analysis of policy issues, evaluation of schemes and their impact on farm economy." This is certainly a welcome step. But if what the Prime Minister told a select group of editors the other day is any indication, agriculture is in for still a worst crisis. Why I say so is because the word 'reform' only means more of privatisation. And privatisation in agriculture, especially for a country like India, would only acerbate the prevailing crisis by bringing in unsustainable technologies through inappropriate policy changes.

As per The Hindustan Times report: In case of retail, where a proposal to allow global chains to enter the Indian market is awaiting government decision, PM sought to push the case for allowing foreign investment arguing that it would help improve supply-chains and distribution of food supply. At the same time he tried to soothe swayed nerves of small traders who fear they might be out of business. "There is fear of small traders, but without breaking such institutional barriers, there is fear of food inflation. I am hoping we can make a beginning in these areas. These are some of the ideas that are uppermost in my mind," Singh said.

Although the Prime Minister did not mention the contentious term 'FDI in Retail' when he talked of allowing foreign investment to help improve supply chains thereby streamlining distribution of food supply, he actually implied that. I am aware that allowing FDI in Retail is uppermost in Prime Minister's mind and some news reports have indicated that an approval might come within a fortnight or so. As I have said earlier, that of course will be the beginning of the end of Indian agriculture.

Agriculture today is suffering from a terrible crisis resulting primarily from economic unviability and deepening unsustainablity. The tragedy of farm suicides and the growing economic distress is directly proportionate to the imposition of Green Revolution technology. It is true that farmers are burdened with mounting debt but what is not being realised is that the growing indebtedness is because farmers have been forced to buy technological inputs that have not only created the second-generation environmental impacts but also turned farming into a losing proposition.

From Green Revolution, India is fast moving towards what is popularly called Rainbow Revolution. All policies are being amended/designed to help facilitate the take over of small scale agriculture by corporates. Contract farming, future trading and FDI in food retail are some of the measures that can help agribusiness to take control over farming. And it is primarily to strengthen the control of agribusiness over agriculture that farmers are being pushed out of agriculture. The growing, often violent, conflicts over acquisition of land by the government on behalf of the companies only testifies the government's resolve to hand over agriculture to the industry.

Is this the way forward?

I don't think so. What India needs is a kind of agriculture that encourages production by the masses, and not for the masses. Displacing farmers, acquiring fertile land in the name of economic development, and allowing FDI in food retail are some measures that will destroy the very foundations of country's food security. Unfortunately, unlike corruption, the Supreme Court is not coming down heavily on the government's ineptness in handling agriculture. Somehow farming and agriculture has remained outside the thinking frame of the middle class. It is the least understood and the most exploited sector of the economy.

Reviving agriculture would therefore depend upon a right mix of public policies with appropriate action. Here is what I feel should be the approach to be adopted to truly reform agriculture:

Reviving Agriculture
http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/nov/dsh-revive.htm

Food Security: Path to Hell they say is paved with Good Intentions

2011-06-23T11:21:00.000+05:30

(I am being asked repeatedly to comment on the proposed draft bill on food security prepared by the National Advisory Council. Here is my general response)

The way to feed the hungry and impoverished in India – the world’s largest population of hungry and malnourished – also seems to be driven by good intentions. My only worry is that the proposed National Food Security Act will end up pushing the hungry even more deeply into a virtual hell.

From what I read in the newspapers, however, and from what is emerging from the latest draft bill on Food Security proposed by the National Advisory Council, the path being developed is unlikely to deviate from the present direction to hell for the hungry. If the primary objective of the new law is simply to re-classify below-poverty-line (BPL) families by identifying who is entitled to receive 25 kg (or 35 kg) of grain (wheat and rice) per month at a price of Rs 3/kg, then I think we have missed the very purpose of bringing in a statutory framework to ensure the right to food. In any case, it has followed the same faulty principle of accessing the number of beneficiaries based on the stringent poverty line estimates which have been widely questioned.

Let us first be clear that the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) had ranked India 66th in Global Hunger Index for 88 countries, in 2008. Hunger multiplied at a time when we had the bogus Public Distribution System operative, made more efficient by the addition of the prefix 'targetted'. Hunger also multiplied while the Supreme Court was seized of the issue, and had even constituted an office of Food Commissioner (set up in response to a petition in Supreme Court) monitoring the food distribution supplies. Hunger and malnutrition grew at a time when we had more anganwadis set up, and more schools being provided with mid-day meals.

There is something therefore terribly wrong in our approach. The Ministry for Food and Agriculture, Ministry for Human Resource and Development, Ministry for Rural Development, Ministry for Child & Women Development had among them 22 national schemes or programmes, and yet hunger goes on multiplying.

At a time when the government is now planning to bring out a National Food Security Bill, which primarily ensures that every poor family gets a minimum of 35 kg of foodgrains at Rs 3/kg, it is time to ask whether the proposed bill will mean anything for the poor and hungry? How can we ensure that hunger is removed by relying on the same bogus PDS system that has failed to deliver in the past 40 years? Isn’t the proposed Food Security Act like “old wine in a new bottle’?

Hunger needs more than PDS ration, and that is where we are failing to focus on. Even the Right to Food campaign has failed to see beyond the entitlements, and its approach is no different from what the Empowered Group of Ministers is recommending. The question that needs to be asked is whether hunger will be removed if the food entitlement is raised from 25 kilos to 35 kilos? Will hunger disappear if the destitute and disabled and the homeless are also included in the list?

The answer is a big NO.

Unless we remove the structural causes that acerbate hunger, and most of these relate to agriculture and management of natural resources, India would not be able to make any significant difference in reducing hunger. Let me therefore look at some of the commonly raised fears/questions, and see how we can make the proposed food security act meaningful and effective.

India already has numerous programmes for fighting hunger, why do we now need a National Food Security Act?

It is true that we have an impressive list of programmes to fight hunger, and the budget allocation for these is increased every year, and yet the poor go hungry. The number of hungry and impoverished has increased with every passing year. India has more than a third of the world’s hungry. Several studies tells us that more than 5000 children die every day in India from malnourishment.

Therefore, to add another couple of schemes to the existing lot is certainly not going to make it any better for the hungry. Nor a mere tinkering of the approach will help. Replacing the ration cards for the PDS allocations with food stamps is one such misplaced initiative. If we persist with such borrowed ideas, hunger will continue to multiply.

I am a strong supporter of the right-based approach to fight hunger. But another piece of legislation that enshrines Right to Food as the basic human right is not going to make any difference to those who live in hunger and penury, and to the millions who are added to this dreaded list year after year. Right to Food cannot be ensured by simply ensuring on paper half the food entitlements (which has even failed to reach the needy) that a human body needs for normal human activity and growth.

Hunger is basically outcome of our wrong policies and our inability to accept that the delivery system is not delivering. At present some 22 government programmes exist to fight hunger and to provide food and nutritional security. These programs run by various Ministries range from Mid-day Meal Programme to National Food Security Mission, and Antyodaya Anna Yojna to Annapoorna Yojna.

Knowing that the existing programmes and projects have failed to make any appreciable dent, it is high time the opportunity provided by the proposed National Food Security Act be utilised in a realistic manner. It was a great opportunity, and we are surely let down by the failure of NAC to bring about a radical overhaul of the existing approach to fight hunger. The entire debate has shifted from the hands of a few bureaucrats and self-appointed experts who have monopolised any decision-making on hunger. It has to be taken to the nation, through a series of regional deliberations.

Why can’t we strengthen the existing Public Distribution System (PDS) to make it more effective?

Justice Wadhwa committee appointed by the Supreme Court has very rightly dubbed the running PDS as a bogus programme. It has very clearly brought out that the PDS has collapsed in several States, and is languishing in several others. It is a system that is engulfed in corruption, leakage and inefficiency.

Much of the food from the PDS is diverted in the open market. PDS grains are also diverted to neighbouring countries like Nepal, Burma, Bangladesh, and even Singapore. As Justice Wadhwa says 80 per cent of the corruption is before the grain reaches the ration shops. There are several estimates about the extent of leakage and siphoning off of the grains, but the fact remains that PDS has failed to deliver.

Having faith in a rotten PDS system, as the Supreme Court appointed advisory panel has been asserting, is basically playing a prank with the poor and hungry. But somehow I find that the experts and activists who are part of the Supreme Court committee too are content with the system because it gives them enormous political clout. It is primarily for this reason that there is hardly much difference in the approach that the government is planning, and a section of the civil society is suggesting. What the NAC is doing is to chart out a new structure of grievance redressal without plugging the system loopholes.

But at the same time, there is a need for a distribution system. I am asking for a complete overhaul of the existing PDS. A mere tinkering will not do. Replace it with a more sharp and effective channel. At the same time, there is a need to limit the scope and reach of the distribution channel in the rural areas where a more people-oriented programme can be launched to ensure long-term food security. We will discuss this more later.

Group of Ministers have now directed Planning Commission to redefine the number of actual poor. Will it not help in ensuring food reaches those who need it most?

First and foremost, the time has come to draw a realistic poverty line. The Tendulkar Committee has suggested that 37 per cent of our population is living in poverty. Earlier, Arjun Sengupta Committee had said that 77 per cent of the population (or 836 million people) is able to spend not more than Rs 20/day. Justice D P Wadhwa Committee has now recommended that anyone earning less than Rs 100 a day should be considered below the poverty line.

Knowing that India has one of the most stringent poverty line in the world, I think the fault begins by accepting the faulty projections. During Prime Minister Narasimha Rao's tenure, Planning Commission had even lowered the poverty estimates from 37 per cent to 19 per cent. Poverty estimates were restored back when the new Planning Commission took over. I am sure if we had persisted with the same poverty line of 19 per cent (in the beginning of 1990s), India would have banished hunger in official records by now.

But the tragedy is that none of the numerous committees, economic surveys had not highlighted the urgent need to change the poverty line to a more meaningful figure if the issue of growing hunger has to be nipped in the bud. Surprisingly, deputy chairman of the Planning Commission, Montek Singh Ahluwalia is now saying that he finds the Tendular committee recommendation of 37 per cent as the BPL line “reasonable”.

Extent of hunger does not depend upon what policy makers think as ‘reasonable’. It has to be realistic.

It doesn't help in continuing with faulty estimates. I therefore suggest that India should have two lines demarcating the percentage of absolute hungry and malnourished from those who are not so hungry. The Suresh Tendulkar Committee suggestion of 37 per cent should be taken as the new Hunger line, which needs low-cost food grains as an emergency entitlement. In addition, the Arjun Sengupta committee's cut-off at 77 per cent should be the new Poverty line.

Once we have set these criteria, the approach for tackling absolute hunger and poverty would be different.

If India is to feed every poor, where is the money?

It is often argued that the government cannot foot the bill for feeding each and every Indian. This is far from true. Estimates have shown that the country would require 60 million tonnes of foodgrains (@35 kg per family) if it follows a Universal Public Distribution System. In other words, Rs. 1.10 lakh crore is required to feed the nation for a year.

The proposed National Food Security bill actually reduced the family food intake that has to be supplied through the public distribution system (PDS) from 35 kg to 25 kg per family. To the BPL families, the 25 kg of foodgrains will be supplied at Rs. 3 per kg, which means in actual terms the government has very cleverly reduced the food subsidy.

If the government could provide Rs. 3.5 lakh crore as economic stimulus to the industry, and also provide for Rs. 5 lakh crore as revenue foregone in the 2010-11 fiscal, which are the sops and tax concessions to the industry and business, how can the government say it has no money to fight hunger?

From the projected allocation of Rs. 56,000 crore for 2010-11, the expenditure on food will come down to an estimated Rs. 25,428 crore. But now with the lastest NAC draft positioning for a coverage of 90 per cent of the rural population and 50 per cent of urban, fresh estimates point to the food bill going upto Rs 70,000-crore. In a country, which fares much worse than sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to hunger and malnutrition, isn’t it strange that the government is trying to cry wolf when it comes to fighting hunger.

The government somehow gives an impression that the country does not have the money to feed the hungry. Nothing can be further away from truth. If the government could provide Rs. 3.5 lakh crore as economic stimulus to the industry (actually the industry did not need it), and also provide for Rs. 6.5 lakh crore as revenue foregone in the 2011-12 fiscal, which are the sops and tax concessions to the industry and business, how can the government say it has no money.

The annual Budget exercise is of roughly Rs. 11 lakh crores. Which means, the government is subsidising industrialists almost 50 per cent of it by way of direct sops, in addition to what is provided in the Budget itself. The support by way of 'revenue foregone' is basically 'under the table' payment, since it lies outside the Budget allocations.

I suggest that Rs. 3 lakh crore from the 'revenue foregone' be immediately withdrawn. This should provide resources for feeding the hungry, and also for ensuring assured supply of safe drinking water plus sanitation. In addition to wheat and rice, the food allocation should also include nutritious coarse cereals and pulses.

What policy changes are required to ensure food security for all times to come?

But all this is not possible, unless some other policy changes are introduced to put the emphasis on long-term sustainable farming, and to stop land acquisitions and privatisation of natural resources. We need policies that ensure food for all for all times to come. This is what constitutes inclusive growth. A hungry population is a great economic loss resulting from the inability of the manpower to undertake economic activities. The debate on the proposed National Food Security Bill provides us an excellent opportunity to recast the economic map of India in such a way that makes hunger history.

I suggest a 6-point programme to ensure Zero Hunger:

1. No agricultural land be diverted for non-agricultural purposes except where it is absolutely necessary like constructing railway lines, canals etc.

2. Revive agriculture on the lines of sustainability by restoring soil health and the natural resource base by bringing in low-external input sustainable farming practices.

3. Provide farmers with a fixed monthly income, incorporating the minimum support price. For the poorest of the poor household receiving micro-finance, ensure that the interest rate is reduced from the existing 18-48 per cent to a maximum of 4 per cent.

4. Disband PDS except for cash transfer for the Antyodya families. Replace this with Foodgrain Banks at the village level on the lines of the traditional gola system of food security in Bihar and east India.

5. Export of foodgrains be allowed only when the country’s total population is adequately fed.

6. International trade, including Free Trade Agreements, should not be allowed to play havoc with domestic agriculture and food security.

Isn’t it sad that people living in the villages which produce food should go to bed hungry?

Exactly, this is where we need a fundamental shift in our approach to addressing hunger. This will also reduce our dependence upon PDS, and thereby reduce the food subsidy bill. After all, India has more than 6 lakh villages. Why can’t we ensure that these villages become self-sustaining?

The proposed Food Security Act should consider setting up of community controlled small foodgrain banks at the village and taluka level. Any long-term food security plan cannot remain sustainable unless the poor and hungry become partners in the fight against hunger. There are ample examples of successful models of traditional grain banks (for instance, the famed gola system in Bihar), which need to be replicated through a nationwide programme involving self-help groups and NGOs.

Drawing up programme and projects that have long-term sustainability and become viable without government support in a couple of years, involving charitable institutions, religious bodies, SHGs and the non-profit organizations to ensure speedy implementation.

I am aware of at least a hundred villages in this country which haven’t witnessed hunger for over four decades now. They follow the traditional ‘sharing and caring’ system. I think this programme needs to be extended to all the villages of the country. Let the people in the villages take control over their food security.

Like in Brazil, the time has come when India needs to formulate a Zero Hunger programme. This should aim at a differential approach. I see no reason why people should go hungry in the villages, which produce enough food for the country year after year. These villages have to be made hunger-free by adopting a community-based localised food grain bank scheme.

In the urban centres and the food deficit areas, a universal public distribution system is required. The existing PDS system also requires to be overhauled. Also, there is a dire need to involve social and religious organisations in food distribution. They have done a remarkable job in cities like Bangalore, and there are lessons to be imbibed. #

Intensive Farming Responsible For Farmer Suicides: Devinder Sharma

2011-06-19T23:44:00.001+05:30

By Pradeep Baisakh
17 June, 2011

Countercurrents.org

Devinder Sharma, Journalist, Food Policy Analyst and an activist speaks to Pradeep Baisakh on the issue of farmers' suicide, role of Micro Finance Institutions, water conflict between industry and agriculture sector, with special focus on Odisha.

Q: Odisha is not much known for farmers' suicide the way we hear it in Vidarbha, Andhra Pradesh etc. But of late such cases are being reported in the media. What's the reason?

A: When you look at the issue of farmers' suicide, it's an indication of the crisis that exists in the agriculture sector. This is linked to monoculture and intensive or industrial farming model that have been implemented in the country. Vidharbha for instance has been in the news on the issue of farmers' suicide mainly because there is one NGO namely Vidharbha Jan Andolan Samiti which regularly compiles the figures of farmers suicide and feeds to the media. Unfortunately there are no such NGOs elsewhere to do a similar job. So therefore we do not get the real picture of farmers distress in other areas where conditions are equally bad. If suppose this NGO also stops compiling suicide figures, our impression about Vidharbha as a suicide belt of India will also disappear. In other words, not only in Vidharbha, agriculture across the country is in a terrible crisis.

The primary cause of farm suicide is the destruction of natural resources. Due to intensive farming soil has been destroyed and ground water has plummeted. Inputs like use of fertiliser and pesticides have destroyed the environment. Unwanted technologies have added to the woes. The input cost e.g. the cost of the seeds, fertilisers and pesticides have gone up whereas the output cost has remained same more or less in the last twenty years. If you adjust for inflation, output prices have remained more or less frozen. So what do you expect the farmer to do? Those who collapse under agrarian distress, commit suicide.
In Odisha the suicide rates are not as high as in Maharastra or Punjab. That's because Odisha still follows sustainable farming and has yet to completely switch over to intensive farming.

Odisha has yet not adopted the ‘intensive farming' model that the green revolution areas are plagued with. The lessons here is very clear. If you want the farmers to suffer push them into intensive farming. I find Odisha is now at the crossroads. It is under pressure from agribusiness to go in for industrial farming. It has therefore to decide what path -- sustainable or unsustainable -- it wants to pick up for its farmers.

Q: Can you explain what intensive or industrial farming model is?

A: Soil comprises of organic matter. The effort should be on how to ensure that the organic matter is released to plants in a sustainable manner. Under the industrial farming model, the use of chemical fertilisers, pesticides and hybrid seeds are promoted in an intensive way. Over the years, chemical fertilisers upsets the equilibrium of micro-organism in the soil. The organic matter in the soil should be at least 2%. If it is 4% content, nothing like it. Now look at Punjab, where the organic matter in the soil has come down to a low of 0.1-0.2%. In other words due to excessive use of chemical fertilisers, organic matter in the soils is almost zero. Under such conditions, crop production is dependent upon how much chemical fertilisers you use. It is primarily for the lack of organic matter in soil that farmers are now applying twice the quantity of fertilisers that they used to apply some 10 years ago for getting the same harvest. What is not being realised is that he soil is gasping for breath. The desperate need of the hour is to regenerate the soil.

Similarly, the use and abuse of chemical pesticides have played havoc with the environment and food chain. All this has been necessiated because we developed high-yielding crop varieties and hybrids that were responsive to chemical fertilisers and pesticides.

These crop varieties are also water guzzlers. A high-yielding variety (HYV) of rice, for example, consumes on an average 5000 liters of water to produce 1 kg of grain. For the hybrid varieties, the water requirement is as high as 7000 to 7500 litres for producing 1 kg of rice. Hybrid seeds have hybrid vigour and therefore its seed have to be purchased afesh every year. This means more cost for the farmer. In any case, till now hybrid rice occupied about 3% area under cultivation. Now the government is aggressively pushing the use of hybrid seeds under Rashtriya Krishi VikasYojana. As a result we will see water mining literally sucking the groundwater levels dry. Any shrtfall in rain will turn into a severe drought-like conditions because the groundwater levels will fall drastically because of hybrid seeds promotion.

Q: In many cases of farmer's suicides there appears to be a linkage with small loans taken from Micro-Finance Institutions (MFIs). Are MFIs also responsible for agrarian distress?

A: There is no denying that micro-finance is a killer. It looks very attractive under the garb of disbursing small credit at a cheaper rate to build the capacity of the poor and thereby alleviate poverty. In reality, it does the opposite. I fail to understand how can poverty be banished when the poor are given small loans upto Rs 10,000 on an exorbitant annual interest rate of 24%, which in reality turns out to be as high as 48% on weekly recovery. If you and me were to be also charged a usurping interest of 24 % we would surely slide into poverty. Micro-finance is therefore nothing short of a crime against humanity.

In the cities, we can buy a car on a loan at an interest averaging 6-7%. House loans upto Rs 20 lakh are available at 8 % interest. Why should then the poorest of the poor be charged 24 % for a paltry amount? This is nothing but crime. And now look at the MFI hypocrisy. They have gone to the Reserve Bank of India pleading for an extension of their repayment pariod for loans to 5-6 years. MFIs expect the poorest of the poor to repay at weekly intervals but when it comes to them, they are seeking a repayment period of 5-6 years. Isn't this double standards? I have no hasitation in saying that the MFIs bosses need to be held accountable for the crime they continue to inflict on the poor.

Often MFIs respond by saying they have empowered the poor with micro-finance. This is a cruel joke. As I said earlier, if anyone like you and me were to repay back our loans at an interest rate of 24% with weekly instalments, we too would remain perpetually in poverty. The stories that some women have succeeded with MFIs loans is not only unconvincing but are more often than not simply cooked up. As the private money lenders (who charge still higher rate of interests) and they too will tell you stories of several poor who turned the tables with their loans. So if the MFIs brand the private money lenders as criminals, I see no reason why they too need to be seen as anything different. MFIs are nothing but organised money lenders.

Q: People also are taking multiple credit?

A: The repayment cycle is so designed that poor have no choice but to take multiple credit thereby falling in multiple trap. When the poor women cannot repay at weekly intervals they come under so much of peer pressure that they are left with no other option but to commit suicide. Most of the poor in the rural areas are either small farmers or landless labourers. It is therefore obvious that farmer suicide has a direct correlation with the functioning of MFIs.

Let me illustrate. If a poor woman in West Bengal wants to buy a goat she gets a loan from an MFI at 24%. On the other hand, the previous government had made available credit to Tatas for setting up its manufacturing facility for Nano car at an interest of 1%. isn't this ironical? If the poor woean was also to be given a small loan at 1% interest I bet she would be driving a Nano car at the end of the year.

Q: In many cases, relatives of the victims of farmer suicides allege that coercive methods are used by MFIs to recover loan thereby creating a desperate situation wherein the borrower is forced to commit suicide. Has the government done enough on this issue?

A: This is true. Recently, primarily for this reason Andhra Pradesh had brought in a law to regulate MFIs. I am told the Centre is brining in another law which will over-ride the AP law. It is therefore obvious no lessons have been learnt. The Centre appears keen to protect the erring MFIs. This probably follows from the global euphoria in recent years in favour of the MFIs. Such a feeling emanated after the Nobel Peace prize was given to Mohammed Yunus of Bangladesh. No one ever asked Yunus whether he had ever taken a loan at an interest rate of 24% for himself or for his family. The same is true for the head of Basix and SKS Finance in India. They have never taken a loan for themseleves at 24%.

I fail to understand why the shutter should not be pulled down on MFIs. The RBI can do that. I have always said that if farmers can be given cooperative loans at 3% (some States give at 1%) why the same loan cannot be extended to the SHGs?

Q: Farmers in Western Odisha districts like Balangir and Kalahandi, which are also part of the KBK (Undivided Kalahandi, Balangir and Koraput) region, have started using Bt cotton seed for cotton farming. Is it legal? What will be the impact of the entry of Bt seeds to Odisha agro-market given that it has led to farm crisis elsewhere?

A: I think it does not matter if this is legal or illegal. The governments all over the country are supporting Bt cotton or genetically modified cotton. Under public pressure some of the governments may say something, but basically all of them barring a few exceptions appear sold to the idea of GM crops.

KBK as an area that has been in news for long and for wrong reasons. We all know what has gone wrong with KBK, which otherwise is a naturally well endowed region. Early in 1990s when I visited the area to research for my book, people had started shifting to cash crops. You cannot only blame the seed companies for the shift. My view is the farmers are also responsible for the mess they have created in agriculture. Normally we all blame the government. But somewhere down the line we need to also see where the farmer is at fault. If in the last fifteen years more then 2.5 lakh farmers have committed suicide much of the blame also rests with farmers. They have gone equally greedy and wanted to be rich overnight and did all the wrong things. They complain that they have been taken for a ride while purchasing a particular type of seed, this is not believable. I think as a community they must come together to understand what has gone wrong. Look at the farmers union. Are any of them taking the issue of farmers' suicide seriously?

In KBK region also farmers have tried to be rich overnight. There is always a government pressure through various ‘Kisan Melas' to adopt a particular model of farming or promoting a particular brand of seed. But the farmer should know what seed they are using and what would its effect be.

There is one farmer Subhash Sharma in Vidharbha region who owns 16 acres of land. He grows organic crops for the domestic market; does not use any chemical fertilisers or pesticides and still makes good profit. To his 50-odd workers, he gives them an annual bonus and also provides them leave travel concession with 50 days holidays every year. If one farmer can do this, why can't others? Still more importantly, Subhash Sharma farms in the heart of the suicide belt of Vidharbha. This only shows that there still is hope provided the farmers learn to apply the right kind of farming techniques and approaches.

Q: Is the water conflict between industry and agriculture real? Or do we have sufficient water resources to afford for both the sectors?

A: Water conflict is now all pervasive. In Gujrat, Andhara Pradesh, Punjab conflict is being witnessed around the contentious issue of water distribution. Odisha is also going to be major problematic area because the influx of private companies will divert a lot of water being used by the communities. Most of the companies which originate in other Asian countries are coming here for water. For example, POSCO (A South Korean steel giant which is going to make huge investment in Odisha) originates from South Korea which is faced with a terrible water crisis. Crisis there is so precarious that here is one country (there may be other countries) which actually erected underground dams for preserving and conserving groundwater. Steel manufacturing process is one of the worst water consuming. Therefore if Korea permits companies like POSCO to guzzle water then there will be little water left for domestic use. Therefore Korea is allowing steel and car manufacturers (car production tops the list as far as water consumption is concerned) to set up plants outside the country. But in our quest for more FDI we allow these companies to set in. We are simply ignoring the environmental cost. By the time we realise it, it will be too late.

The author is a freelance journalist based in Bhubaneswar . He can be contaced through e mail: 2006pradeep@gmail.com

How the Govt betrayed Baba Ramdev with empty promises..

2011-06-12T20:39:00.000+05:30

If you want to know how the govt betrayed Swami Ramdev and then created an impression as if it had accepted all the demands, read this letter. Signed by Cabinet Minister Kapil Sibal, this letter was delivered at 11.30 pm on June 4, a couple of hours before the crackdown on peaceful sleeping protesters. The letter says nothing. It means nothing.

This letter contains only empty promises. It talks of commitment, which we all know is also there for Lok Pal bill that continues to be on the table for 43 years. It talks of govt's intention. Well, we know of govt's intention to feed the hungry. Even the Constitution promises to do that. Still, 64 years after Independence, 320 million people go to bed hungry. Despite the Supreme Court monitoring the food distribution, the number of hungry is only increasing. More than 70 lakh people (including children) die every year from hunger. India is worse than Sub-Saharan Africa when it comes to hunger. As per the Global Hunger Index, India fares worse than many countries of Sub-Saharan Africa.

What does the 'commitment' and 'intention' that the letter conveys actually means? It means that the Govt is not at all serious in removing corruption and bringing back black money.

What is still more tragic is that just two hours after this letter was delivered, police cracked down on peacefully sleeping protesters in Ramlila grounds in New Delhi. In my opinion, like 9/11 and 27/11, June 4 has to be remembered as 4/6.

Lost in the din: Baba Ramdev's plan to save agriculture

2011-06-07T12:59:00.003+05:30

Tens of thousands of people had come to Delhi to support the fast of Swami Ramdev that began on June 4. In the early hours of June 5 (the midnight of June 4/5) Delhi police backed by Rapid Action Force swept on sleeping protestors using teargas and lathi-charge to evict them.

Standing on the dais and looking at the sea of humanity that braved the heat of the peak summer season in New Delhi, I wondered what these millions were here for. It had been almost ten hours since the indefinite fast that Swami Ramdev launched and I was trying to read the faces of some of those who I could see clearly from where I was sitting. This was in the afternoon of June 4.

The turn of events in the next few hours have put a permanent blot on the face of Indian democracy.

These were poor people. A majority of them came from the lower strata of the society. They were drenched in sweat. They had poured in from distant parts of the country. Some came in trains, some in public buses, some came as part of better organised bus loads. With their bags on their heads or slung on their shoulders, and quite a large number coming with their families, including small children, they thronged to Ramlila grounds in the heart of Delhi with a great sense of hope and determination which was clearly visible on their faces. Victim of continuous apathy, neglect and discrimination, they were born in misery and will probably live all through in misery. Treated like cattle, and shunned by the perfumed class who are more or less beneficiaries of the corrupt system, they had demonstrated their willingness to walk the extra mile knowing well it was going to be really hard and tough.

As I sat there on the stage, I could see clearly the mired expressions on some the faces I tried to scan. The Incredulous India, as the Shining India brigade would normally refer the million to, had arrived.

Besides the contentious issue of getting back the black money stashed in safe havens outside the country, Swami Ramdev had struck a common cord with the masses. Here is one person with whom I have interacted in recent times who I find has a finger on the real nerve of the nation. Rooted firmly on the ground, he has relentlessly called for changes in a manner that would have direct bearing on the deprived millions. He talked of providing technical and professional education in regional languages, he talked of repealing the draconian land acquisition provisions and also understood how dangerous it would be for not only country's food security but also the national sovereignty by allowing indiscriminate transfer of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes.

At a time when the perfumed class chanted the mantra of development -- by usurping the natural resources and by displacing the millions -- Swami Ramdev talked of empowering the masses. And that is why Shining India in reality hated him, and in lot many ways feared him. Ever since the time I fist sat down with him to discuss what is going wrong with agriculture I found in him someone who was not only receptive but also wanting to understand the complexities and look for viable solutions. To me -- and also for him -- reviving agriculture and thereby empowering the masses is the key to true economic growth, progress and happiness. I could therefore see in him as an amplifier, someone who could carry the message loudly and clearly. He had the strength to demonstrate that another India is possible. He was keen to help provide viable alternatives.

At a time when the State was colluding with the Corporates to take over agriculture and push farmers out of farming, Swami Ramdev emerged as a strong voice in favour of self-reliance. The charter of demands that HRD Minister Kapil Sibal now frowns at actually had a number of such positive elements for transforming agriculture thereby effectively ensuring household food security and minimising hunger and poverty. It was after a lot of deliberations that Swami ji had narrowed down a vast plethora of issues to some salient features that needed immediate attention. These set of interventions were included in the list of demands that Swami Ramdev had sent to the Prime Minister.

The first set of demands pertained to land aacquisitions. Primarily, the demand was for not allowing agricultural land -- whether it is mono-cropped or multi-cropped -- to be diverted for non-farm purposes. Even where it is to be definitely acquired given the nature of public utility, permission has to be sought from the Gram Sabhas. It was pointed out very clearly that already the country is in the throes of a crisis given that the demand for food is requiring more area to be maintained under agriculture. For instance, it was pointed out that if India was to grow domestically the quantity of pulses and oilseeds (in the form of edible oil) that are presently imported, an additional 20 million hectares would be required.

Preserving productive agricultural land for cultivation therefore assumes utmost importance. In the United States, the US government is providing US $ 750 million for the the period 2008-13 under the Farm Bill 2008 to farmers to conserve and improve their farm and grazing lands so as to ensure they do not divert it for industrial and private use. On the contrary, India is in a hurry to divest its farm lands and turn them into concrete jungles in the name of development.

India is faced with a terrible agrarian crisis. The serial death dance across the country, with over 2.5 lakh farmers already committing suicide, shows no signs of ending. Much of the crisis is because of the unsustainable farming practices that have turned the Green Revolution to a Gray revolution. Reviving agriculture and restoring the pride in farming form the two most important planks of any nationwide strategy to revitalise the rural economy. The following are some of the key elements of the farm strategy and the immediate approach that needs to be followed:

a) Knowing that GM crops/foods pose serious environmental and health hazards, Swami Ramdev had asked for a 10-year moratorium on Bt-Brinjal and all field trials and commercial release of GM crops. The basic purpose is to ensure that the biotech industry is not allowed to contaminate the environment and thereby destroy the biodiversity that is available. He had also demanded that facilities for 29-biosafety tests that the Supreme Court nominee on the Genetic Engineering Assessment Committee (GEAC) Dr Pushpa Bhargava had called for be first ensured before any GM crop/food is allowed for commercial release.

b) Seed is emerging a major issue of contention for farmers. Over the years, the government has facilitated the takeover by private industry of the seed supply and trade. This has taken away the control of farmers over their seed. Although there were a number of suggestions and approaches that we discussed, finally Swami Ramdev included two major areas of focus in relation to seed. First was the need to regulate seed price considering that industry continues to fleece farmers by charging exorbitantly. Secondly, every district should have a community-controlled seed centre with a gene bank for traditional seeds. The local available seed diversity needs to be protected and conserved at any cost.

c) The use and abuse of chemical pesticides has played havoc with human health, the food chain and also resulted in an unbalanced biological equilibrium in nature. It is now being realised that agriculture can perform much better without the use of chemical pesticides which are not only a drain on the farmers pockets but also is harmful for human health and environment. Following the decision to phase out dreaded chemical pesticide Endusulfan under the Stockholm Convention, the demand was to also ban 67 pesticides which are being used in India but are banned for use elsewhere.

d) A beginning could also be made by ensuring that in the proposed 12th Five Year Plan at least a target to convert 25 per cent of the total agriculture area be fixed for converting to zero pesticides use. Already 40 lakh acres in Andhra Pradesh has been brought under non-pesticidal management by under a government programme and this could be replicated across the country.

e) A National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) survey had concluded that the average monthly income of a farming family in India does not exceed Rs 2400. No wonder, more than 40 per cent farmers have expressed the desire to quit farming if given an alternative. Because of the dwinling farm incomes more and more agrarian distress is becoming visible. A Farmers Income Commission therefore needs to be setup and income guaranteed to the farmer under a Farmers Income Guarantee Act (FIGA)

f) It is strange paradox that while 32 crore people go to bed hungry every night foodgrains continue to rot in storage. A centralised procurement and distribution network has failed to ensure that food reaches those who need it most. Suggesting for local production, local procurement and local distribution, community grain storage banks need to be established in every panchayat. This will not only minimise grain wastage but also ensure that food reaches the hungry.

g) Education in the Agriculture, Health and Engineering Sectors should also be in Hindi and other State languages.

I don't think any political party or the common minimum programme of the successive coalitions that ran the country have ever projected such a comprehensive agricultural and rural economy plan. Unfortunately, amidst the din and noise created over black money and corruption, the proposals to revitalise the rural economy by strengthening agriculture were simply ignored. The nation therefore lost a historic opportunity to debate and deliberate on some worthwhile approaches that could usher in self-reliance in agriculture and put an end to farmer suicides. #

The hungry can wait. India to create a National Food Security Commission. To be followed up at the State-level. More cushy jobs in the name of poor and hungry.

2011-05-30T13:39:00.001+05:30

It is being projected as the Big Mummy of All Welfare Schemes. I am talking of the draft Food Security Bill that the Ministry of Food and Consumer Affairs is trying to bring out. The bill guarantees 35 kg of foodgrains to every person belonging to the priority household and 15 kg to general households every month at a subsidised price. Dressed up as if is ambitious in size and detail, the fact remains it is as good as any dressed chicken that you get in a restaurant -- only the taste is finger licking, the content is no different and the quality may be worse.

According to The Economic Times priority household, the main beneficiaries of the bill, will be selected from the poorest 46 per cent in rural areas and 26 per cent in urban areas. Another 29 per cent and 22 per cent from rural to urban areas, respectively will be treated as general category. Well, before you get lost in the complex mire of figures, let me tell you what it entails. It says nothing new that was not existing in the earlier public distribution system that prevailed except that under the proposed Food Security bill the actual number of beneficiaries have been reduced and also the quantum of grain to be provided has also been curtailed.

Earlier, more than 900 million people officially had access to the PDS now it will be close to 75 per cent of the population. Also, every above poverty line (APL) family was earlier getting 25 kg of grains which has now been reduced to 15 kg for the 'general' category. The bill also calls for improved 'modern and scientific storage' and doorstep delivery of grain to targeted PDS outlets, which for those of you who have followed the way the government works, means nothing in reality.

I have earlier analysed the food crisis and the way we are addressing the monumental problem and therefore will not go into it again. Do look at my one of my latest postings How to Feed the Hungry http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2010/04/how-to-feed-hungry.html and other blogposts under the labels Hunger. What I want to draw your attention is to the recommendation that I had feared most. I have a number of times warned that the primary objective of this entire redrafting exercise is to create a new set up for a favoured few who occupy the position of National Food Security Commissioner at the national level, and also provides an opening of 28 State Food Security Commissioners at the State level.

So here we are. The draft Food Bill according to the newspaper report (http://bit.ly/l13Ekr) proposes: "the draft bill is that it pushes for the creation of an advisory body called the National Food Security Commission to help the central government implement the landmark welfare scheme. The commission will advise the central government on "synergising existing schemes and framing news ones for entitlements". It will also recommend steps for effective implementation of schemes through greater government oversight by dramatically overhauling the nation's food distribution system, says the draft.

Under the food commission's watch, guidelines will be issued for the training, capacity building and performance management of people involved in the implementation of welfare schemes, says the draft. The commission will also prepare annual reports on implementation of the Act.

The commission will be headquartered in Delhi and comprise a chairperson, a vice-chairperson and five other members, provided that there at least two women and at least one person each from the scheduled castes and scheduled tribes. The centre will pay the salaries of the commission's bosses, support staff and administrative expenses, says the draft."

Every crisis is an opportunity. Hunger too has come in handy for some members of the National Advisory Council to find a cushy job. It also provides for a Secretariat at the national and also at the State levels -- all to be paid for from taxpayers money. I am sure the Right To Food movement must now be feeling elated. After all, the State Advisers to the Supreme Court appointed Commissioner on Hunger can now look forward to a highly paid bureaucratic job. I am told the original demand has to been to extend the status and perks of a Supreme Court judge to the National Food Security Commissioner. Similarly, the State Food Security Commissioners would be accorded the rank of a High Court judge.

What I fail to understand is how do we expect the proposed National Food Security Commission to make a difference when the Supreme Court appointed Commissioners failed to make any tangible difference to the plight of the poor and hungry, and that too despite the Supreme Court monitoring it periodically?

Each State has a Food Secretary and a full-fledged department that caters to food supply and has a mandate to ensure that no one goes to bed hungry. How will the creation of another set of bureaucracy help in better monitoring of the existing schemes? In any case, the State Food Security Commission will have to get the delivery done through the same system that it considers ineffective and unworthy of the great humanitarian task.

The National Food Security Commission would comprise a chairperson, vice-chairperson and five other members. It must include at least two women and at least one person each from the scheduled caste and scheduled tribes. A similar structure would be created at the state level. If only the crores to be spent on the new bureaucratic set up to monitor the effectiveness of the provisions of the proposed national Food Security Act is to be spent instead on feeding the hungry, I am sure hundreds of thousands more can be fed every year.

Didn't someone say that every disaster provides an opportunity?

A farmer in the supermart

2011-05-26T08:20:00.000+05:30

Devinder Sharma on how FDI in retail could break the backbone of Indian agriculture

A CRUCIAL development in organised retail took place in Scotland recently. Low supermarket prices in the country led to an exodus of dairy farmers from the value chain. It also led to irate farmers forming a coalition, Fair Deal Food, to seek better price for their farm produce. It is ironical that at this time, India’s Minister for Food and Consumer Affairs, KV Thomas, thought of asking for incentives for the organised retail sector in an effort to make direct purchases from farmers.

Thomas made this suggestion recently in a letter to the Prime Minister. Although he did not mention the contentious term “FDI in retail”, his proposal seems to be clearly aimed at opening up the domestic farm sector to the organised big retail.

Ever since British Prime Minister David Cameron pitched for the further opening up the retail sector in India during his visit in July 2010, New Delhi has been bending backwards to justify the need to allow big retail. It all began with a discussion paper floated by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion, which said, “The agriculture sector needs well-functioning markets to drive growth, employment and economic prosperity in rural areas.” Soon, a number of economists and researchers began joining the chorus on the role the supermarkets can play in promoting Indian growth.

The International Food Policy Research Institute says: “So far, in India, while Wal-Mart has succeeded in opening one cash-and-carry outlet since its alliance with Bharati Telecom, Tesco has entered into a franchise agreement with Tata Trent, and Carrefour is still scouting for a suitable partner. In the meantime, farmers are robbed in the mandis while consumers pay through their nose to retail vendors.” This is a flawed argument. Past experience shows that big food retail has neither benefited the farmer nor the consumer. Nor has big retail helped create jobs.

Related Claims by the big supermarkets to be driving economic growth by creating thousands of jobs have been exposed as a sham. In the UK, it has now been shown that supermarket chains, like Tesco and Sainsbury, have failed to live up to the promise of creating thousands of jobs and thereby driving up the economy. In the past two years, Tesco had promised to create 11,000 jobs and Sainsbury another 13,000. Newspaper reports say that instead of creating 24,000 jobs in two years, the big retail actually laid off 874 already employed. Tesco had created only 726 jobs, while Sainsbury laid off 1,600 of its existing employees, leaving 874 people unemployed.

If not creating any additional employment, do supermarkets help remove poverty? Based on biased studies by consultancy firms and some institutes, the government believes that supermarkets will create employment and therefore help in ameliorating poverty. This too is a flawed assumption. Lessons need to be drawn from a 2004 study done by Stephen J Goetz and Hema Swaminathan of Pennsylvania State University. This eye-opening study, titled Wal-Mart and Poverty, clearly brings out that those American states that had more Wal-Mart stores in 1987 had higher poverty rates by 1999 than the states where fewer stores were set up. “Equally important, the counties which built new Wal-Mart stores during the period 1987 to 1998 also had high poverty rates,” the report concludes.

Does big retail help farmers realise a better price? I have already talked about the experience of dairy and pig farmers in the UK, but the picture is no different elsewhere. In fact, ever since big retail – dominated by multi-brand retailers like Wal-Mart, Tesco and Carrefour – has entered the market, farmers have disappeared, and poverty has increased. Today, not more than 7 lakh farmers live on the farm in America. In fact, the number of farmers has come down to such a low level that the US has stopped counting its farmers since its last census in 2000.

In Europe, despite the dominance of big retail, every minute a farmer quits agriculture. According to a report, farmer’s income in France has come down by 39 per cent in 2009, having already slumped by 20 per cent in 2008. Farmer’s income in Europe is being sustained by huge subsidies in the form of direct income support otherwise agriculture would have collapsed by now. It is therefore futile to expect the supermarkets to rescue farmers in India.

The argument is that the supermarket chains will squeeze out the middlemen thereby providing higher prices to farmers and at the same time provide large investments for the development of post-harvest and cold chain infrastructure. All these claims are untrue, and big retail has not helped farmers anywhere in the world. Even in Latin American countries, including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Colombia, where supermarkets, most of them owned by multinational giants, now control 65 to 95 per cent of supermarket sales, farmers have been forced to quit agriculture.

If the supermarkets were so efficient and provided dynamism, why is the US providing massive subsidy for agriculture. After all, the world’s biggest retail giant Wal-Mart is based in the US and it should have helped American farmers to become economically viable. But, it has not happened. American farmers have instead been bailed out by the government, providing a subsidy of `12.50 lakh crore between 1995 and 2009, and this includes direct income support as well.

The situation is no better in Europe. A 2010 report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development states explicitly that farm subsidies rose by 22 per cent in 2009, up from 21 per cent in 2008. In just 2009, industrialised countries provided a subsidy of `1,260 billion. And, it is primarily for this reason that the farm incomes are lucrative. Take the Netherlands; the average farm family income is 275 per cent of average household income. This is because of the farm subsidies, and not because of supermarkets.

Big fish is known to eat the smaller ones. Supermarkets exactly perform that function. They replace the plethora of small middlemen. The arthiya clad in a dhoti kurta is replaced by a smartly dressed middleman. An illusion is, therefore, created that the supermarkets have removed the middleman from trading. But, in reality, the big boys now share the commission between them. The new battery of middlemen, who replace the traditional middlemen, are the quality controller, certification agencies, packaging industry, processors, wholesalers, etc.

The drop in the farmers’ income that I talked about earlier is, therefore, shared by the new battery of middlemen, who come under the same retail hub. So, while the farmer is pauperised, the profit of supermarkets multiply. In India too, the supermarkets are coming with the same intention.

Source: Financial World and Tehelka.com
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main49.asp?filename=Fw250511AfarmerSupermart.asp

Hunger for more or more for hunger?

2011-05-13T22:10:00.000+05:30

Incessant grabbing of productive farmland for more industry is a recipe for disaster

RURAL INDIA is on the boil. What we have seen in Greater Noida, Aligarh, Agra, Allahabad and Mathura in UP or Mansa in Punjab or Jaitapur in Maharashtra or Mangalore in Karnataka are mere representations of what’s happening far away from the glare of the national media. Pitched battles are being fought across the country by the poor who fear further marginalisation when their land is grabbed by the government on behalf of the industry. Even a state like Madhya Pradesh, which otherwise seems relatively calm and untouched by the turmoil, has seen violent protests against forcible takeover of land. In five years, the clashes have multiplied from 67 in 2005 to 252 in 2009.

The builder-industrialist-politician nexus, often held responsible for landrelated agitations, finds a new player now. Ever since economists began telling us that land is an economic asset, which unfortunately, is in the hands of the inefficient, there has been a scramble by industry, driven by real estate, to procure as much as possible. Surprisingly, it is the World Bank that is backing this strategy. The World Development Report 2008 calls for land rentals and setting up training centres to train displaced farmers in industrial work.

State governments are facilitating the process of takeover. Whether it is for Special Economic Zones (SEZ) or IT parks or nuclear reactors or airports or even for bio-fuel plantations, the battle for land has become fierce. So powerful are these economic interests that many chief ministers have also been found suspect. Thanks to economists, the argument that industry is important for economic growth is coming in handy to usurp land, water and other natural resources.

Over the years, agriculture has been deliberately turned into a losing proposition. As a result, farmers in most places are keen to move out, provided they get a better price for their land. This is a global phenomenon. It is primarily for this reason that even in a highly subsidised Europe, where farmers receive direct income support, one farmer every minute is forced to quit farming. Agriculture is increasingly coming under big agribusinesses. The same trend is being adopted in India, which alone has one-fourth of the world’s farmers.

While good productive farmland is being diverted for non-agricultural purposes, there is no mention of the resulting disaster awaiting the nation as far as food security is concerned. As per rough estimates, 6.6 million hectares would be taken out of farming in UP, which would mean a production loss of 14 million tonnes of foodgrains. In other words, UP will be faced with a terrible food crisis in the years to come, the seeds for which are being sown now. The question no one is asking is who will feed UP?

What is not being realised is that crisis in that state alone will make all estimates of the proposed National Food Security Act go topsy-turvy. An economic superpower cannot be built on hungry stomachs. The need, therefore, is to immediately ban the conversion of agricultural land for non-agricultural purposes. This has to be followed with a comprehensive development planning Act that is people-friendly and replaces the draconian Land Acquisition Act, 1894.

Devinder Sharma is food policy analyst.
http://www.tehelka.com/story_main49.asp?filename=Op210511Hunger.asp

Monsoon blues

2011-05-10T12:57:00.001+05:30

In 2009 when India was faced with one of its worst droughts, the monsoon forecast was for an 'almost normal' rainfall season.

You must have heard of the meteorological department’s monsoon forecast. It promises to be a near normal monsoon season from June-September with rains expected to be 98 per cent of the long period average with a 5 per cent variation. Sounds good.

But if you are a farmer, keep your fingers crossed. Instead of depending on the first monsoon forecast that was given out in April, I suggest you keep on praying before rain gods to be kind to you. Pray with folded hands that the rains do not deceive you once again as it did two years back in 2009. You haven’t yet recovered from the economic distress that the 2009 drought had inflicted, and if the monsoon fails again you will be in dire straits.

The near-normal forecast certainly brought respite to the policymakers struggling to check rising food inflation. To industrialists it brought hope of a positive business and market sentiments meaning more consumer goods can be sold in rural areas. But let me warn you. You need not be too hopeful. Don’t read too much into the first official monsoon forecast of the year.

The day the forecast came I was in a TV studio. The anchor asked me as to what I read of a 98 per cent normal monsoon prediction. My answer to him was that I am disappointed. If this is all that the meteorological department is capable of predicting then I would rather trust my grandmother. Her predictions, not as sharp in quantitative terms as that of the meteorology department, but have rarely gone wrong. She has never let me down. I would stand by her. So should you.

First, the meteorological department itself has conceded that the accuracy of its prediction is only 53 per cent correct, which means it has 50:50 probability of going wrong. This is where I said that my grandmother’s traditional instincts are much trustworthy. Secondly, the department says that it can’t tell us exactly as to how much rainfall would come in each of the three months of the monsoon season — July, August and September. That is what you need it most.

The meteorological department will therefore be able to tell in June as to how much rainfall you can expect the next month in July; in July they will tell us about the intensity expected in August; and in August they can make a prediction about September. Now, don’t get me wrong but if you were to yourself stand on your rooftop in June, the chances are that you too can predict with quite a broad assessment about the coming rains in the next few weeks.

Uncertainty

For the farmers, the monsoon forecast makes little sense. It is the timeliness and the geographical spread that is more important. If the rains come on time in June and then disappear for the next few months, and then again there is a heavy downpour in August, the average performance would be near normal. But in the process the entire freshly sown crop would have withered away necessitating either re-sowing or for many abandoning the kharif crop altogether.

This year also indications are that the rainfall will be deficient in north-western parts of the country as well as the northeast. But in the absence of any definite assessment it is difficult to know how spatially it would be distributed and for how long. There have been times earlier when the country as a whole gets normal or above normal rains, some parts/regions go dry. It has happened a few years in Rajasthan, and there have been cases when rains have bypassed the central region of the country altogether. Last year, Bihar and Jharkhand were faced with drought while the rest of the country received bountiful rains.

Although the meteorological department has been promising to provide block-level forecasts, I wonder how it can when it even fails to make a correct macro prediction for the country as a whole. Don’t forget, in 2009 when the country was faced with one of its worst droughts, the monsoon forecast was for an ‘almost normal’ rainfall season with 96 per cent overall rainfall expected. It is however another matter that the country received a deficit of 22 per cent in rains causing a severe drought across the country. Moreover, despite all the technological sophistication it may surprise you to know that the department has never been able to predict a drought or impending floods.

When asked as to give the exact date of monsoon hitting the Kerala coast in India, minister for science and technology Pawan Bansal said that based on the averages of the past, he was expecting rains to arrive on June 1 in Kerala and June 29 over Delhi. He wasn’t sure but he was banking his assessment on the past averages. Well, I am sure you would agree that our grandmother too knows when the rains would normally appear. She too banks upon the past averages. That is why I am asking you to keep your fingers crossed, and pray.

Source: Deccan Herald, May 10, 2011
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/160159/monsoon-forecast.html

So far you were worried about DDT traces in blood; Now you have Bt insecticides in human blood

2011-05-07T11:31:00.002+05:30

Environmentalists have been telling us about the presence of DDT residues in human milk. We also know that DDT has been found in the blood of Penguins, which tells us how rampant and widespread the use and abuse of the deadly chemical was (and still is despite the worldwide ban with some exceptions). It is because of the renewed interest and concern over the excessive use of persistent organic pollutants that the Stockholm Convention, which has representatives from 127 Governments who met in Geneva last week at the fifth meeting of the Conference of the Parties, agreed to add endosulfan to the list of POPs to be eliminated worldwide.

According to the Stockholm Convention website: "The action puts the widely-used pesticide on course for elimination from the global market by 2012. The Parties agreed to list endosulfan in Annex A to the Convention, with specific exemptions. When the amendment to the Annex A enters into force in one year, endosulfan will become the 22nd POP to be listed under the Convention."

All this seems to be on the expected lines. Decades after these were pressed into use, the negative impact of chemical pesticides have now become known. International effort is to phase out these deadly chemicals. But while we phase out the harmful chemicals, newer and more potent chemicals are being pushed into the market. Stockholm Convention will therefore continue to have a lot of work on hand and for many years ahead.

Wikipedia defines POPs as organic compounds that are resistant to environmental degradation through chemical, biological, and photolytic processes.^[1] I am not sure whether biological toxins -- like Bt -- would also fall in the same broader definition or probably we will have to carve out a new category for them, but the world is now beginning to wake up to the threat Bt toxins pose to human health and environment. I am not talking of the ongoing debate over the harmful health impacts of Bt toxins in GM foods (or other transgenes used for developing GM crops), but a recent Canadian study that points to the widespread presence of Bt-related insecticide in the blood of 93 per cent pregnant women and 80 per cent of fetuses.

As Glenn Davis Stone, Professor of Anthropology and Environmental Studies at the University of Washington in St Louis, asks: "What does this mean for health impacts? Nobody knows. There are some signs that high levels of glyphosate and gluphosinate disrupt fetal development, but the levels in the women in this study were low. I know of no evidence that Bt proteins in the blood are harmful, and Bt is quite safe for humans in most contexts. (And as one of our graduate students just suggested, we should look on the bright side — the babies should be protected from caterpillar bites.) But there’s no contesting the authors’ conclusion: “Given the potential toxicity of these environmental pollutants and the fragility of the fetus, more studies are needed.” A lot more.

As long as we don't know what the Bt insecticide proteins are doing in our body we can surely remain in stage of ignorant bliss. But I am sure this is reason enough for us to sit up and feel concerned. I am sure you don't want your body to sooner or later turn into an insecticide factory.

Prof Glenn Davis Stone has analysed this issue in his excellent blog post. [For those who would like to view his blog Fieldquestions, here is the link: http://fieldquestions.com/]

Blood type: Bt

By Glenn Davis Stone

A new study by toxicologists and obstetricians looks in the bloodstreams of a sample of Canadians for pesticides associated with genetically modified foods (new acronym alert: PAGMF). They studied pregnant women, their fetuses (actually umbilical cord blood after delivery), and also a group of non-pregnant women. GM-associated insecticide was widespread in the blood samples; GM-associated herbicide was present but rare.

Some background: the overwhelming majority of GM crops grown in the world today are either herbicide tolerant (HT) or insect resistant (IR). Herbicide tolerance is from a gene for immunity to glyphosate (Roundup) or gluphosinate (Liberty) weedkiller, allowing the farmer to spray weeds without harming the crop. Insect resistance is via a gene from the soil microbe Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt) which produces an insecticide — hence the name “Bt crops.” Canada mainly grows a lot of HT canola, but it grows other GM crops too including some Bt maize (details here).

Bt insecticidal proteins were found in the blood of 93% of the pregnant women and 80% of the fetuses. The current thinking is they get into humans via meat from animals fed Bt crops — these proteins have been found in the guts of pigs and calves.

Evidence of weedkiller in the blood was much more scant. None of the samples from pregnant women or fetuses were contaminated; 5% of nonpregnant women had glyphosate and 18% had gluphosinate.

What does this mean for health impacts? Nobody knows. There are some signs that high levels of glyphosate and gluphosinate disrupt fetal development, but the levels in the women in this study were low. I know of no evidence that Bt proteins in the blood are harmful, and Bt is quite safe for humans in most contexts. (And as one of our graduate students just suggested, we should look on the bright side — the babies should be protected from caterpillar bites.) But there’s no contesting the authors’ conclusion: “Given the potential toxicity of these environmental pollutants and the fragility of the fetus, more studies are needed.” A lot more.

Should this affect what we eat? Or what we think about GM crops? Ah, as with so many things, it all depends on the counterfactual — i.e., what you compare it to. You can buy organic produce that is free of weedkiller, and organic or most grassfed beef will be Bt-free. You pay more for these foods, but then again they offer benefits beyond the avoidance of pesticides.

On the other hand, while low levels of Roundup in adult blood and the common occurrence of Bt in fetal blood may give us pause, try wrapping your mind around some of the findings on other pesticides. Start with this article by Rauh et al. that just came out in Environmental Health Perspectives. They have been studying the effects of exposure to chlorpyrifos in the womb.

Years ago Rauh et al. started looking at umbilical cord blood for chlorpyrifos in several hundred births. They found some problems right off the bat — for example, the babies whose mothers had chlorpyrifos in their systems were smaller. They checked the kids at 3 years, and found the chlorpyrifos kids had cognitive and behavioral problems. Now the kids are 7 and this new study shows the exposed kids to have slightly lower IQ’s and poorer memories.

The spread HT crops into Canada and several other countries has not reduced weedkiller use — actually it has led to increases especially in the use of Roundup, but also to less use of other more toxic sprays. The spread of Bt crops has reduced the use of chlorpyrifos and many other toxic insecticides, but we now know it means most babies (in Quebec anyway) are born with Bt in their blood. What that means for our health and our babies, we really don’t know, but it’s hard to resist the conclusion that it’s better than organophosphates in the blood, and worse than neither.

GM Rubber interview Part II: "Learn from Global Experience"

2011-04-30T08:16:00.001+05:30

The bitter experience with genetically modified crops the world over is a wake-up call for the rest to move away from the potential havoc GM technology could wreak across the plantation sector. Dr Devinder Sharma, a renowned food policy analyst, environmental campaigner, writer and columnist, says GM experiments should not be allowed to be taken out of the lab. In the second and concluding part of the interview, he urges researchers to change their mindset and quit promoting the commercial interests of fertiliser and pesticide companies. The first part appeared in the Feb/March issue

Learn from Global Experiences

In India, the introduction of genetically-modified rubber is caught in the crossfire of science and politics. While the government of the rubber-growing state of Kerala is opposed to GM, the federal government has given its official body, the Rubber Board the clearance to conduct field trials. Although the federally-funded Board has received the permission, it is yet to conduct field trials. Parliament has been officially informed that the Genetic Engineering Approval Committee of the Ministry of Environment has allowed it to take up field trials in 0.5 hectares each in the research farms of Rubber Research Institute of India (RRII) in Kerala and Maharashtra. However, it has not conducted any field trials so far.

It shows that the pressure on the government by environmental activists against GM rubber is working. But they are watching how long the government would put on hold field trials. One of the persons on the forefront opposing the introduction of GM rubber is Dr Devinder Sharma, who himself is a trained scientist. Explaining the flaws in GM research, he told Polymers & Tyre Asia about the falsehoods propagated by interested parties.

He recalled that ‘pharming’ was trumpeted in the initial stages, but researchers themselves had realised its futility and dangers. Several pharma crops had been developed but all of them got entangled in controversy. For example, GM banana with a gene for hepatitis-B was attempted to be pushed in India by none other than John Hopkins University, but it was eventually turned down, Dr Sharma explained.

“Even at that time I had questioned the need for GM banana,” he pointed out. At that time the proponents were trying to market the product, which had still not been approved for biosafety in the US. “They were exploiting public emotions whereas in reality they were treating India as a giant field testing laboratory,” Dr Sharma charged.

“I am of the opinion that any GM pharma rubber possibilities should remain confined to the laboratories and should not be allowed to be taken out of the lab,” he cautioned. “The possibility of a pharma gene escaping (knowing the danger it poses by contaminating our food and feed supplies) into the environment, is very likely, and India cannot afford to add onto its human health and environmental problems. The precautionary principle must be adhered to.”

Wrong notions

Rubber researchers have been saying that the GM experiment is not intended to create transgenic tree as it has incorporated the target gene (MnSOD) from rubber itself and not from any other species. But Dr Sharma fiercely says that such statements are untrue. "MnSOD gene is certainly from the rubber plant itself. But it uses virus gene as a promoter and bacteria gene as a marker,” he explained.

Cauliflower Mosaic Virus (CaMV 35S) gene is being used as a promoter and npt II Kanamycin resistance and GUS reporter genes from bacteria (E. coli) as markers.

“We need to know that both CaMV 35S and npt II genes are the same genes that have been used in several field crops as well as edible crops. Notwithstanding the denial by the Rubber Board, there is enough scientific evidence that shows that these genes can cause adverse effects on both human beings and animals,” Dr Sharma asserted.

In any case, the use of the virus and bacteria gene constructs for inserting the MnSOD gene into the rubber plants makes the plant transgenic. “It, therefore, has to follow the biosafety norms that are prescribed for any GM plant,” he demanded. Commenting on a point of view that Gene cDNA or MnSOD can trigger human hazards, he explained that scientists have observed low expression of MnSOD enzyme in different cancer tissues.

Studies conducted by the Department of Industrial Hygiene and Toxicology of the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health has conclusively shown that the MnSOD gene, which works as an antioxidant in human cells to defend against diseases, does modify breast cancer risk among women.

Later, another study in 2008 observed that men with MnSOD gene variant (MnSOD gene is passed from parents to children in three forms) in their body and who also had long-term lycopene (it is not an essential nutrient, but is commonly found in diets rich in tomato) status had more possibility of prostate cancer.

Output increase

Then what is the alternative strategy that India should adopt to increase rubber output in view of the current deficit of 55,000 tonnes of natural rubber? To increase the rubber output, there should be a change in the mindset of RRII scientists, Dr Sharma has argued. “They have so far backed and promoted the commercial interests of fertiliser and pesticide companies. This is true of agricultural scientists elsewhere too,” he explained.

Considering the rising concerns from global warming, soil destruction and stagnating yields, it is time that RRII scientists go in for a complete overhaul of the package of practices that they promote.

Dr Sharma cited two sensible approaches that can bring a turnaround to the rubber plantation sector. He gave an example of a rubber farmer in Kerala. Chandrasekharan Nair, a small rubber farmer near Thiruvanthapuram in Kerala, has abandoned the cultivation practices that the Rubber Board would come up with, and since 2005 had gone into organic cultivation of rubber. "Today he follows the rubber cultivation practices that RRII scientists would not endorse,” Dr Sharma said.

“But the fact is that Chandrasekharan has a higher productivity than the average yield attained in Kerala,” he said. He suggested that doubters should log on to the rubber farmer’s website http://keralafarmeronline.com to learn about his practices.

Another example that Dr Sharma gave was that of Dr Laxmi Thankamma, who had retired as a mycologist from the RRII.

“It is quite obvious that the RRII may not like to acknowledge her achievements. But with the help of an NGO – Integrated Rural Technology Centre – she has demonstrated that the latex productivity can be enhanced by an average of 75%, with the productive lifespan of the trees also doubling thereby bringing more revenue in the hands of the tappers.”

Her technology, based on simple grafting techniques, has been tried in eight districts in Kerala with excellent results. Significantly, no tree goes into tapping panel dryness (TPD) when farmers follow the approach she advocates.

Dr Sharma vows that if the incidence of TP is brought down drastically, and with the available height of the tree for drawing latex also doubling, there is no need to experiment with risky and hazardous technologies like GM rubber. But he is wondering whether the scientific community is willing to listen to saner voices. He is also asking whether the rubber industry is prepared to look beyond its immediate profits.

These are the questions that need to be answered objectively before considering whether India should go for GM rubber, Dr Sharma said.