India together digital edition 16 March 2013

P36togetherT h e n e w s i n P r o P o r T i o n

india

16 May 2013 www.indiatogether.org Fortnightly Pages 56

Paid news undermines democracy

social justice: Two key Bills propose P7

corporate interests rise above all P10

Preserving history for posterity P15

Living off jackfruit P20 india needs an alternative model of development P25

Bhama askhed dam: Just another pawn P28

The role of individuals towards a better life P44

what makes world class cities? P46

orphans of our society P50

BoTh of india’s PoLiTics

on display in KarnataKa

2 |www.indiatogether.org| 03 Mar 2013

INTERVIEW

wanted: a clamour for better governance

Bangalore, once the poster-boy of new age India and its development, is now crumbling, having been sorely let down by the administration and politics of the state. As Karnataka heads for polls, subramaniam Vincent, discusses the prospects and necessary preconditions for change with independent MP Rajeev Chandrasekhar.

Raje

ev C

hand

rase

khar

. Pic

: Div

ya G

owda

via

Wik

imed

ia

03 Mar 2013 |www.indiatogether.org| 3

INTERVIEW

Rajeev Chandrasekhar is an independent MP representing Karnataka and Bangalore Urban in the Rajya Sabha. In April 2012, he was elected unopposed for a second term with the support of the JD(S) and BJP MLAs in the Karnataka Assembly. He is the founder of RC foundation which focuses on primary education for poor children and has been at the forefront of raising finances and resources for supporting Tsunami-affected people, Kargil war-affected and defence personnel and rehabilitation of children impacted by the tragic burning of school in Kumbakonam in Tamil Nadu.

Chandrasekhar has been looking forward to the Karnataka elections. He has been advocating everywhere recently that citizens turn out in large numbers to vote on 5 May, 2013. He says in this quickfire interview that he dreads "low turnout and the lack of real debate". The elections also come at a time when there is a strong sense of anti-incumbency against the BJP, and there is brewing anger in Bangalore on the complete breakdown of civic affairs.

Chandrasekhar's move to public life also came not long after he started Jupiter Capital in 2005, a venture fund that has investments in technology and media. His firm owns or controls three well known media outlets in the south. Two of these are TV channels - Suvarna News (Kannada) and Asianet (Malayalam) - and one is a print newspaper, Kannada Prabha.

Chandrasekhar maintains a strong spirited persona and has championed several causes over the past several years. In Bangalore itself, he headed former CM B S Yeddyurappa's task force for the city - Agenda for Bengaluru's Infrastructure and Development, also called ABIDe. This task force prepared several reports and key reform recommendations for the government. In 2011, he offered to support citizen-led anti-corruption and governance reform litigation at the courts by offering to take on their legal fees. He did so in at least one major case that citizens won. After Yeddyurappa's falling foul of the Lokayukta and his subsequent ouster as CM, ABIDe proceedings went into the background.

At the national level, Chandrasekhar has weighed in on several regulatory issues in telecom and banking. More recently, he championed the cause of amending the brutal 66A clause of the IT Act which allows police to arrest you and me for critical comments we may make on social media and the Internet. He was nominated for the UK-based Index Freedom of Expression award, for pressing this case in the Rajya Sabha. He also received an honorary Doctor of Science award from the Visveswaraya Technological University two weeks ago for his contributions to technology and public service.

Subramaniam Vincent caught up with Rajeev Chandrasekhar on what the elections ahead could herald.

You got your honorary Doctor of Science award from VTU two weeks ago. Congratulations! Should we address you as Dr Rajeev Chandrasekhar now?


The Honorary Doctor of Science from Visveswaraya Technological University is a great honour, because I had started working towards my PhD at Stanford when I decided to come back to India in the 90s and also because it's from an institute named after Sir Visveswaraya.

But as far as addressing me goes, Rajeev as before is fine.

On Facebook, you recently asked Bangaloreans to vote for whoever best understands and agrees to work for a 'Better, Safer, Cleaner Namma Bangalore'. Karnataka politics is in crisis, and Bangalore has been paying a price. What do you look forward to in this upcoming Karnataka elections?

I would like voters to be more aware while casting their vote - aware of the real direction required for our city, about the positions of the MLA candidate and political parties, about the real reforms required in city governance. I would like them not to get carried away by rhetoric and slogans.

What do you secretly dread, or hope will not happen in this election?

I dread 'low turnout,' the lack of a real debate and voting based on caste and community, rather than the future of our city.

So, is there anything you would do to ensure that this does not happen?

It is not my business to tell voters who to vote for but I can certainly help them understand the challenges that we face as a city and state and pose the questions to the person who will represent them in our Legislature.

Over the last decade and a half, Bengaluru has become the symbol of a new India, and an important gateway for investments into the country. The growth of this city has outpaced its infrastructure. A picture of utter urban chaos is the result and it is our biggest challenge to bring infrastructure up to speed in Bengaluru.

Not only is the situation today alarming, it could get worse! By 2020, the population in the Bengaluru Metropolitan Region (BMR) could exceed 16 million (1.6 Crores). (Src:Click here) If the same unplanned approach to growth continues, the historical advantages of the city will be lost.

So I would tell voters, like many of you, I am a proud Bengalurean - and have also been a helpless witness to the decline of our city - as it has gone from a vibrant metropolis to a city that is creaking under the weight of its own growth. Your vote in this

election could help arrest this decline. I believe that it's important that we move from complaining about what our City has become, to actively participating in rebuilding Bengaluru into a city that we all can be once again proud of.

A Bangalorean is at the booth on May 5th. She sees a list of names. She already knows the major names campaigning in her constituency. She

distrusts all of them. None of them helped address any of the deeper problems in her locality, yet they came to her residential layout only during elections. Should she be using 49-O to nullify her vote?

INTERVIEW

The reality is that political parties respond to a demand for reforms only if they get a sense

that people want reforms. This is true for

all political parties.

Rajeev Chandrasekhar was conferred with Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by His Excellency Hansraj Bhardwaj, Governor of Karnataka and Chancellor of the Visveswaraya Technological University (VTU) recently. Pic: Anand V.


I would personally seek out and engage at least one of the candidates. Having a representative is important and to give him/her an opportunity to serve. If he or she lets down the mandate to serve, we should shame him/her.

Are you saying that by voting, citizens can help ameliorate the present mess that we see all around?

The first step is to ensure that our MLAs are people who understand the challenges. In particular, action is needed around two fundamental issues of statutory planning for the city and ushering in reforms for citizen-centric Governance.

1. PlanningPlanning is critical for coping with the anticipated

growth of our city and the pressures that growth will place on housing, infrastructure and public services. Planning is the glue that holds together the ideas of elected representatives and the executive actions of administrators.

In the absence of planning, residents of the city face difficulties all around - bad roads, leaky pipes, absent sewerage, intermittent power, and creaky public transport. These issues can only be addressed through a Metropolitan Planning Committee which, in

turn, is responsible for a long term statutory Regional Plan that leaves very little room for derailment by political or vested interests.

2. Citizen-centric GovernanceGovernance reforms are the second urgent need

for the city. These should focus on transparency and RWA/citizen involvement in neighbourhood life. Through proper Ward and Neighbourhood Area committees such a goal can be realised. In every successful modern city, citizens have a very powerful voice in the destiny and direction of development around their homes and places of work. For Bengaluru too, we must want the same.

Bengaluru has a long history of very livable residential areas, but the feel of a comfortable and attractive city is now at risk. We can only hope to restore this by promoting community engagement and citizen involvement on key issues. A sense of community leads to a feeling of belonging and the resulting sense of safety and security.

The decline of the various City Government agencies is an area of concern. Planning for big cities, managing public service delivery and contracting functions requires skill, integrity and transparency. For this we need continuous improvement in the capacity of public institutions. A modern - and still growing - city needs administrators who are equipped with the tools and technologies for transparent and effective administration. Developing a cadre of dedicated city managers and nurturing robust institutions that concentrate on transparency and residents' welfare is immediately required.

As I've said before, it's time now that we as residents took an active and informed interest in directing our city's future. The first step of this is getting more involved in these elections and shaping its debate around the real issues that impact our city. By starting a debate around the solutions for our city, we will transform MLAs representing our city into catalysts for reforms. Only this can lead to policy action needed to manage Bengaluru.

The major political parties in Karnataka do not appear to have it in them to really decentralise power in Bangalore and pave the way for local political and administrative empowerment. How do you reconcile your connection to the parties at one level (support to enter Rajya Sabha) and the apparent contradiction at the other level between the values you espouse and theirs?

I was elected with unanimous support of all political parties. I campaigned as an Independent candidate and have remained an Independent. Being

INTERVIEW

Rajeev Chandrasekhar was conferred with Doctor of Science (Honoris Causa) by His Excellency Hansraj Bhardwaj, Governor of Karnataka and Chancellor of the Visveswaraya Technological University (VTU) recently. Pic: Anand V.


an Independent MP gives me the unique opportunity and ability to take non-partisan and objective views of the positions and actions of political parties. My support or opposition is therefore based on these objective assessments of issues.

The reality is that political parties respond to a demand for reforms only if they get a sense that people want reforms. This is true for all political parties. So if there isn't enough clamour among our residents for reforms, I blame myself and media for not doing enough to make people more aware and demanding about the reforms and changes required in city governance.

Take the Lokpal campaign of Anna Hazare before AAP was formed. Thousands of urban Indians came out on the streets. Here is what we got: We have a Lokpal bill in the process, yes, but it is not yet passed. And all the states do not have provision for Lokayukta. Going by your own belief above, are you satisfied with the Lokpal outcome so far?

I am very satisfied that the concept and need for Lokpal has been firmly and irrevocably accepted by the country in general and political parties in particular.

This has been made possible only because people came out in large numbers and demanded the reform measure of Lokpal.

We should not be satisfied till Lokpal bill is passed and implemented - and starts making a visible transformation of standards in governance and public life.

You know the political winds in Karnataka. Do you see the Congress winning? (An opinion poll by one of the newspapers owned by you - Kannada Prabha

- stated so.)It is clear from the independent

polls conducted so far that the Congress enjoys a political advantage. Mostly because the BJP vote has been divided by the split of the KJP and a certain amount of anti-incumbency; and certainly a dissatisfaction with them about how they have managed Bangalore in their term vis-a-vis the promises they had made.

You run also in the media business - owning or controlling Suvarna News, Asianet and Kannada Prabha. Prajavani and Udayavani have announced that they do not print paid news. That this has to even be said openly indicates the state of affairs. What's your take on the paid news syndrome?

Paid news is a disease that threatens the media. Given the importance of media in democracy - it threatens democracy. Many months ago, we have already taken initiatives to promote trust among the consumers of media. The initiatives include strong Code of Conduct and Ethics policy - which is an intrinsic part of the employment contract of every team member, disclosing ad sales and revenues during the months leading up to and during elections and disclosure by ANN news brands on all ad sales and revenues accrued from political parties and politicians.

This policy will ensure no scope for paid news in any of the news brands of ANN .

People openly talk about politicians and personal biases influencing editors of TV channels and newspapers, particularly during elections. As a media owner, react.

Admittedly there are a lot of commercial and political

interests influencing media. But be sure to understand, it's often more commercial interests that are driving these biases. This is dangerous, but an unfortunate reality of media.

Recently, Jayaprakash Narayan of the Lok Satta party argued in an interview that plain independent candidates (even those with integrity, competency and popularity) still cannot push for change in government, compared to good candidates from within political parties. Do you agree?

I completely agree and have said this several times since I joined politics. To make the fastest impact on our country, the best way is to 'persuade' our political parties to see and understand what people want - to get them to abandon vote bank politics and instead, focus on the political benefits of governance and development and expansion of opportunities.

In this particular election, Ashwin Mahesh, a member of your ABIDE committee, and a person who has demonstrated capacities in policy making and progressive governance, is contesting. But he is running from a relatively smaller, lesser-known party. If he were running in your constituency, would you vote for him vs a routine Congress candidate or a BJP minister?

I would evaluate him alongside the other candidates and compare all their promises and track records, and then decide.

Subramaniam Vincent is co-founder and editor at India Together. This is adapted

from an interview and an op-ed published in Citizen Matters, Bangalore's interactive

newsmagazine.

INTERVIEW


PENDING LEGISLATION

sociaL JusTice:

whaT Two key BiLLs ProPose

As the Budget Session of Parliament nears its end, the House is expected to decide on at least two key pieces of legislation that propose major reforms in the areas of food security and the rights of the displaced; sakshi Balani provides a quick round-up of the provisions and issues related to the two Bills.

Pic:

Wik

imed

ia c

omm

ons


The 15th Lok Sabha is close to the end

of its tenure. Two big legislations that propose major reforms in food security and land acquisition - one introduced in the Lok Sabha and the other listed for discussion - await a nod from Parliament. Both Bills have been scrutinised by Standing Committees and Groups of Ministers, and have gone through various rounds of iterations and amendments. In this article, we take a look at how these Bills envision these reforms.

Food for allLet us first take

a look at The Food Security Bill, 2011 that was introduced in Parliament on 6 May, 2013. The Bill aims to make the right to food a statutory right. It proposes to use the existing PDS to deliver food grain to 75 per cent of the rural and 50 per cent of the urban population. However, the Bill also allows for cash transfers and food coupons in lieu of grains as mechanisms to ensure food security. While the PDS is known to suffer from leakage as high as 40 per cent, cash transfers and food coupons could expose beneficiaries to volatility and price inflation. Each method of delivery would have its own implications, both financial and otherwise.

The Bill does not universalise food entitlements. It classifies the population into two categories of beneficiaries, to be identified by

the centre and states. Mechanisms that aim to target benefits to certain sections of the population have been prone to large inclusion and exclusion errors. A 2009 expert group study estimated that about 61 per cent of the eligible population was excluded from the BPL list while 25 per cent of APL households were included in the BPL list. With such large errors in identification already plaguing the system, it is unclear how the implementation of the Bill would work around these issues.

A Bill that aims to deliver food security to a large section of the country would have significant

financial implications. Costs shall be shared between the centre and states. Although the centre shall provide some assistance, states will have to bear a significant financial burden on account of implementation. It is unclear whether Parliament can require states to allocate funds without encroaching on the powers of state legislative assemblies. If a state chooses not to allocate the necessary funds or does not possess the funds to do so, implementation of the Bill could be seriously affected. The Standing Committee examining the Bill had recommended that an independent body, such as the Finance Commission, should be consulted regarding additional funds to be borne by states. The Right to Education Act which entails similar

centre-state sharing of funds provides for such consultation with the Finance Commission.

Another contentious issue is the cost of implementing the Bill. The Bill estimates the cost at Rs 95,000 crore. However, experts have made varying estimates on the costs ranging from Rs 2 lakh crore to Rs 3.5 lakh crore. Ashok Gulati, Chairman of the Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices estimated the cost at 2 lakh crore per year whereas the Minister of Food, K.V. Thomas was reported to have estimated the cost at Rs 3.5 lakh crore.

The Food Security Bill proposes to use the existing PDS to deliver food grain to 75 per cent of the rural and

50 per cent of the urban population. However, the Bill also allows for cash transfers

and food coupons in lieu of grains as mechanisms to

ensure food security.

PENDING LEGISLATION

File

pic


Displacement for Development

The Land Acquisition Bill, 2011 proposes to repeal the 1894 Act, by combining acquisition and rehabilitation and resettlement (R&R) in a single comprehensive law. The Bill aims to promote land acquisition for development while providing adequate compensation and rehabilitation for the forcible nature of acquisition. How does the Bill do this? It allows for the acquisition of land for a certain number of ‘public purposes’ which include defence, infrastructure, development schemes, manufacturing zones and urbanisation. The term ‘public purpose’ existed in the 1894 Act and previous version of the Bill. The big change from the 1894 Act is that the current Bill does not contain a catch-all purpose that allows acquisition for projects that are ‘for the good of the general public’. The 2007 Bill had narrowed public purpose to include only defence, infrastructure, and private projects for contiguity reasons, thus preventing acquisition for urbanisation, dams, etc. The list has been widened under the current Bill.

Once the purpose of an acquisition has been determined, land can be acquired for use by the government, a private company or a public-private-partnership. In order to balance the forcible nature of these acquisitions, the Bill makes it necessary to take the consent of landowners in certain cases. However, the Bill distinguishes between a private company and a PSU on the issue of consent. If a PSU acquires land for a public purpose, consent of owners will not be necessary. Yet, if land is acquired for the same purpose by a private company or a

PPP, then consent of 80% and 70% of landowners respectively will be necessary. It is unclear though why the Bill poses different conditions for consent based on the ownership of the company.

In addition, the Bill aims to compensate landowners through a formula that differs for land in urban and rural areas. In urban areas, compensation has been fixed at twice the average market value of land, based on recently reported transactions in the vicinity. The amount of compensation increases to up to four times for land in rural areas, depending on the proximity of land to urban centres. The Bill provides no rationale for how these numbers have been determined. A possible reason for this doubling could be to compensate for under-reporting of the transacted price in registration deeds, a common practice in land acquisition today. However, this calculation may not provide an accurate estimation of the value of land.

The process of acquisition also involves a Social Impact Assessment (SIA) of all projects. The Bill does not specify any minimum threshold of land for which an SIA must be conducted. This implies that an SIA would be necessary even if an acre of land was being acquired to build a bus shelter. Requiring an SIA for each and every project could lead to large delays in implementation of small acquisitions for useful projects.

The Bill exempts acquisitions for projects such as national highways, railways and atomic energy. These acquisitions are governed under other Acts which envision their own compensation and R&R framework. There are differences between the Bill and these Acts in the way they

address such issues. There has been no clarification, however, on why compensation should differ for a landowner simply because his land is being acquired for a national highway versus an urbanisation project.

Both the land and food legislation propose key reforms to the existing frameworks. Their passage in Parliament will depend on the ability of the government to build consensus on the above issues. In case of land acquisition, the law will be evaluated on its ability to balance the need for acquiring land with compensation and rehabilitation of affected people. The biggest challenge for the Food Security Bill will be to ensure food and nutritional security for the poor. It remains to be seen how Parliament debates these two historic legislations.

SakShi balani is with PRS Legislative Research. India Together regularly publishes

reports from PRS on bills pending in Parliament. A full list of such legislation can

be found at the PRS website - www.prsindia.org

PENDING LEGISLATION


CERC ORDER IN ADANI CASE

corporate interests rise above all

Despite privatisation in the power

sector, consumer interests are professed to

be safeguarded through

competitive processes and

independent regulatory

authorities, but a recent order in

favour of Adani Power Ltd. dents such assertions.

Shripad Dharmadhikary

analyses the implications.

File pic of a coal mine/Shripad Dharmadhikary



Ever since India opened up its power sector in 1991 for large

scale privatisation, there have been serious concerns that the process has largely privileged big corporate interests over those of the common people and consumers of electricity.

These apprehensions have once again reared their head with a recent (majority) order of the Central Electricity Regulatory Commission (CERC) in the Adani Power Limited case.

In spite of the complicated legal and financial nuances, in its essence, the matter is fairly straightforward:

Adani Power Limited (APL) has set up a coal based thermal power station at Mundra in Kutch, Gujarat with a total capacity of 4620 MW. The Gujarat state power distribution company - Gujarat Urja Vikas Nigam Limited (GUVNL), and two power distribution companies of Haryana, namely Uttar Haryana Bijli Vidyut Nigam Ltd and Dakshin Haryana Bijli Vidyut Nigam Ltd (Haryana Utilities) had invited bids from power generators to supply them with power for 25 years.

The bids had been invited under the so called Case 1 bidding framework. In this, the procurer only states how much power it wants. It is entirely up to the generating company to decide the location of the plant, which fuel it wants to use (coal, hydro, gas etc.), which technology it wants to use and so on. In particular, the source, procurement and transport of the fuel are entirely the bidder’s (generating company’s) lookout and responsibility. Further, this is a tariff-based bidding process, that is, the bidders are to state the tariff at which they will supply the electricity, given all other requirements of the procurers.

corporate interests rise above all


The bidder with the lowest tariff wins the bid.

In this case, APL decided to choose coal as a fuel. Further, the bidder had two clear options while bidding. In one case, they could choose to quote the tariff as escalable tariff, that is, if the price of the fuel went up during the duration of the contract, then the tariff would also rise as per a pre-determined formula indexed to the rise in cost of fuel. In the second option, the bidder could quote a fixed tariff that would remain constant over the 25 years of the contract. The bidder could also quote a combination of escalable and fixed bids.

APL chose the second option, quoting a completely fixed tariff. In effect, it chose to take on its shoulders the burden of any increase in the cost of coal or the increase in dollar exchange rate (in case of imported coal) and protect procurers entirely from the risk of rising coal prices.

Such a decision immediately raises the question - why did a company that has been active internationally, is a well-established player in the market and knows well the ups and downs of the trade opt to quote a fixed rate for such a long-term contract? While it is not possible to know what was in the minds of those running the company, it seems clear that the underlying motivation was to bid aggressively so as to win the contract.

Initially, APL had a commitment from GMDC who was to supply it with coal from its Morga mines (at that time, the Adani plant was to be in Korba), and MoUs with two international firms. The agreement with GMDC fell through (the matter is currently in the Supreme Court), and the MoUs with international

companies were terminated after the award of Letter of Intent for the GUVNL bid. Instead, APL signed a coal supply agreement with its parent company Adani Enterprises Limited (AEL) who in turn had coal supply agreements with other companies. At least some part of the coal was to come from mines in Indonesia, in which AEL itself had 74% holding.

APL presumably felt that this arrangement - including procuring at least a part of the coal from its own mines — allowed it to get coal at lower prices and at prices low enough to supply power to GUVNL and Haryana

Utilities at the quoted rate. But on 23 September 2010, Indonesia passed the “Regulation of Ministry of Energy and Mineral Resources No.17 of 2010,” which made it mandatory for anyone selling coal from Indonesia to sell at the benchmark price to be set by the Director General which effectively indexed it to the market price.

APL claims that this made the coal for their Mundra plant very expensive, and it has become unviable for them to supply power to Gujarat and Haryana at the rates which they had quoted initially. They asked the states to revise their tariffs. When the state refused, they went to the CERC, which is quasi-judicial in nature. CERC, after hearing the matter has issued orders on April 2, 2013.

The CERC OrderCERC in its majority order

found that the legal grounds to re-open the tariffs did not hold. Yet, it held that APL “is suffering on account of escalation of sudden increase in coal price subsequent to the promulgation of Indonesian Regulations and... deserves to be compensated to make the project commercially viable to operate and supply power to the respondents [GUVNL and Haryana] in terms of the PPAs [Power Purchase Agreements].”

The Order then asks for the setting up of a committee to work out the compensatory tariffs. It may be mentioned here that while the Indonesian regulations require sale of coal at the market price, the excess revenues that accrue to the company through such sales can be retained by it and are not appropriated by the Indonesian government. Thus, Adani’s group company holding ownership in the Indonesian mine is likely to benefit from the new

While the order is justified in the

name of consumer interest, there

was no consumer representative

heard at the hearing, nor is any consumer representative nominated in

the committee that the Order

has asked to be constituted to work out the

compensatory tariff.



Indonesian regulations.While the CERC Order does

require that the profits from such an excess revenue of Adani’s Indonesian coal mines be factored into the compensatory tariff, it is difficult to visualise how the committee will force the coal mining company located in another country to submit all its accounts and records, and how the committee shall ensure that they represent the true picture. In fact, one of the reasons behind the introduction of tariff-based competitive bidding is precisely to avoid such difficult scrutiny.

The Order by one member of the CERC dissented against these findings and held that no such compensation needs to be paid. In effect, the majority Order has held that even though APL knowingly took the risk of coal prices increasing over the years when it bid fixed tariffs, it now needs to be relieved from the burden of that risk. It may be mentioned here that while the Indonesian Regulation was promulgated in 2010, it had been under discussion since 2007 and there were clear indications of what was likely to come. Since the Adanis have been active in Indonesia well before 2007, it’s difficult to see how they could be unaware of the likelihood of such a regulation coming in, and the risks it would entail for their coal imports to India.

More importantly, the CERC Order has the serious implication of undermining the very rationale of a competitive bidding process. It may be noted that free competition is presented as the key mechanism that leads to purported high economic efficiency of the private sector; thus, it is to form the cornerstone of the privatisation process in the power sector, and in harnessing

the strengths of the private sector for improving the power sector.

To understand the significance of this order, a little bit of background might also be useful.

The Evolution of the Liberalised Power Sector

When the power sector was opened up for private participation in 1991, the first step was to allow private companies to set up thermal and hydro power generating stations. The process was mostly in the nature of a free-for-all, with states signing MoUs with individual companies directly, without any competitive tendering processes, and the terms and conditions being decided on a one-to-one basis between the governments and the private companies. Naturally, there were huge opportunities of rent-seeking and a large number of MoUs were signed, with companies having no experience in the power sectors also joining the bandwagon.

Another problem was the method of determining the tariff, which was mostly done through the so-called “cost-plus” method. In this, the company was to be reimbursed for all its costs, and an additional amount for profit. This raised the spectre of massive cost padding, cost rigging with collusion between officials and company, and required, at the least, an elaborate and expensive mechanism to monitor the costs.

The results of all this were MoUs that were extremely skewed to benefit private companies and extremely high power tariffs. Not surprisingly, many of the projects were mired in controversy. The best known example of this is probably the Enron project in Maharashtra.

In subsequent years, there were efforts to create a better process, one that was to be based on creating a free, fair and competitive market, for that was seen as the means to arrive at optimal economic efficiency and also weed out corruption and rent seeking opportunities.

The efforts culminated in the Electricity Act of 2003. The Act did include some form of cost-plus tariff setting, but this was to be done now by independent regulatory commissions, to be established in each state and at the centre (the CERC). However, any cost-plus approach involves the monitoring of many parameters and so the Act also provides for a process of tariff setting through competitive bidding. In fact, the Act requires that any tariff arrived at through a competitive bidding process carried out as per the guidelines has to be adopted, as it is by the Regulatory Commission. The APL tariff falls under this category.

Implications of the OrderThe CERC (majority) Order in

the APL case is nothing but a post-contractual reopening of the bid, even though it tries to say that it is not reopening the bids, but is only granting compensatory tariff for a limited period till the cause of the problem remains.

The Order says this in so many words: “74. The principles that emerge... is absence of a clause for price escalation in the contract cannot be the ground for denying the compensation on account of actual expenditure on account of price rise. Therefore, if the actual cost of production of electricity goes beyond what was agreed in the PPAs, compensation should not be denied merely on the ground that there is no provision



in the PPAs.”Not only that, but the Order

tries to justify this as being in the consumer’s interest. It says:

“The consumers’ interest is protected not only by fixing competitive tariff but it is equally imperative to ensure continuous, uninterrupted and reliable supply of electricity. For the purpose of qualitative supply of electricity, it is necessary that adequate investments are made for creating infrastructure for generation, transmission, distribution and supply of electricity and this is possible only when the investor gets adequate return on the investments made. Therefore, in the final analysis, the recovery of costs of the investors serves the consumers’ interest by attracting investments in the sector by improving quality of supply of electricity to the consumers.”

It is, of course, interesting that while the order is justified in the name of consumer interest, there was no consumer representative heard at the hearing, nor is any consumer representative nominated in the committee that the Order has asked to be constituted to work out the compensatory tariff.

One of the serious implications of this Order is that it will encourage companies to go for aggressive bidding to win contracts, quoting terms that they never intend to fulfil, and then push for post contractual renegotiations on the grounds that the project is unviable. This will render the competitive bidding process meaningless. Competitive bidding will lose its very justification, that it leads to lowest tariffs and the best economic efficiency.

The process of post contractual renegotiation will also be unfair to the other companies who had

posted the losing bids, as they were evaluated against terms quoted by the winning company which it never intended to keep. Of course, it’s a moot point whether other companies will want to question this unfairness, as it may work in their favour in some other case.

For example, a very similar order has been passed by the CERC in another matter involving the Tata power plant at Mundra, Kutch. In that case, while Tata Power Company Limited had won the bid, the next two lowest bidders were Reliance Energy Generation Ltd and Adani Enterprises. Clearly, Adani would have little incentive in urging that the process is unfair, as it has itself been the beneficiary of a similar Order. Reliance, on the other hand, also finds itself in a similar situation in another case, and hence is not likely to challenge the same. In a competitive and free market, the various market players are supposed to keep a check and balance on the other players, but the Indian market seems to be becoming one where it is in every player’s interest to maintain distortions.

At the same time, the most impacted will be the ordinary citizen and consumer, who would have little say in the matter, but who would be (or, is being) assured all the time that there is a competitive market arrangement to help harness the strengths, efficiencies and resources of the private sector. Reality, however, is that it is more a facade shielding a structure that seems to be increasingly facilitating the interest of the big corporates.

These developments in the power sector also have a wider implication given that the privatisation process is probably

the most developed in the power sector. In other sectors, for example water, the privatisation process is much more ad hoc, and has been highly skewed towards private interests. In these areas, the government proposes to remedy the same by bringing in a model similar to that of the power sector - including independent regulation and competitive tariff setting. The developments in the power sector show the hollowness of these promises. The time has come to comprehensively re-assess the whole process of privatisation in such core areas as power, water, natural resources, health and education.

Shripad dharmadhikary coordinates the Manthan Adhyayan Kendra, a centre set

up to research, analyse and monitor water and energy issues.



FILM REVIEW

celluloid man:

Preserving history for posterity

Celluloid Man pays a moving tribute to P.K. Nair, a man whose passion and commitment has kept alive the history of Indian cinema for film lovers, even as it exposes the tragic indifference of the establishment towards Nair, and archiving in general. shoma a. chatterji reviews the film.


Celluloid Man is a film that is a tribute to Indian cinema in its

100th year and a celebration of the man who made it possible for us to know about these hundred years through his life dedicated to archiving the history of Indian cinema. This man is P.K. Nair, founder-director of National Film Archive of India (NFAI) in Pune. We would never have heard the name of Dadasaheb Phalke and his first film Raja Harishchandra had it not been for Nair.

Raja Harishchandra was released on 3 May, 1913 heralding the unveiling of Indian cinema. On 3 May, 2013, the Indian audience was witness to Celluloid Man, a 64-minute-long documentary that reveals layer by layer, the magic of cinema seen through the eyes of the man who re-created that history for posterity – P.K. Nair.

There is a brief prologue. It shows a rectangle of light shot in Black-and-White leading an old, wooden staircase to the upper floor of the NFAI. The camera zeroes in on this rectangle as the shadow of a figure with a walking stick steps in slowly, the soundtrack filled with the sound of his walking stick. The shadow becomes a man and it is none other than P.K. Nair himself.

He clambers up the staircase, ever so slowly, to reach the narrow alleys between shelves of film reels, rattling off the titles and chosen reel number of films like Light of Asia, Kalia Mardan, Our Daily Bread, Blue Angel, Sant Tukaram, Hunterwalli, Queen Christina and PC Barua’s Devdas. The camera cuts between B&W and colour to merge the past with the present because that is what P.K. Nair is all about. Noted filmmaker Krysztof Zanussi says that for him, Mr. Nair is a symbol of the memory of cinema while late

Sri Lankan filmmaker Lester James Peries says that Nair is not only an archivist but also a historian. He is the custodian of Indian cinema, because he has preserved the memory of Indian cinema as a form of art.

One can hear that dialogue “Dada, I want to live” from Ritwik Ghatak’s Meghe Dhaka Tara as the camera pans across unending spools of celluloid and rusted film

reels scattered across the grounds of the Archive. When Nair enters the room where he spent 20 of the best years of his life, we see empty shelves across the room apparently out of use after he retired.

Shivendra Singh Dungarpur, an FTII alumnus who was fascinated by this man’s commitment to retrieve and restore forgotten films, damaged films, destroyed

FILM REVIEW


films for posterity, suddenly felt this trigger to make a documentary on Nair who was living in Pune in retirement but was not permitted to enter the complex of the NFAI for reasons that are unexplained. It took Singh 11 trips to the NFAI to convince the powers-that-be that it was necessary to shoot within the complex and also for Nair to be present.

Shot entirely on film with

eleven DOPs, Celluloid Man is a brilliant film that overlaps several genres – history, biography, sociology and even politics. In a very understated manner, the film points out how the very man who made this history possible can be summarily rejected by the institution he built up from zero to what it stood to become. Brick by small brick - or rather, one film can by another film can - patiently

yet determined, Nair built the National Film Archive of India in a country where few beyond films even know what archiving of cinema means.

It all began when Dungarpur decided to visit Mr. Nair who was living a retired life in Pune. He arrived to find that the Archive had been orphaned: rusting cans lying in the grass, thick cobwebs hanging from the shelves in the vaults and Mr. Nair’s old office turned into a junkyard. Mr. Nair had devoted his life to collecting and saving these films and Dungarpur was determined that his legacy should not be forgotten. And so the journey began.

Celluloid Man runs along three different levels which merge and blend as the film unfolds several stories. On the one hand, it concentrates on the life of a small boy whose love for cinema created for posterity a cinema archivist and historian, who resurrected the 100-year-old history of Indian cinema almost single-handedly for over 20 years. On the other, it unfolds the history of Indian cinema itself through the eyes of Nair who knows exactly on which reel of which film a particular scene or song sequence or dance exists and can pull that reel out to show it to you. No one has heard about an archivist with this phenomenally photographic and descriptive memory.

The third layer is tragic. It reveals the underbelly of the NFAI and its status quo as it exists in the present. The camera pans across film reels lying uncared for, neglected and turned almost to waste on the grounds of the NFAI on beds of dry leaves. We see loose spools of priceless celluloid either hanging here and there or lying in a heap, lost to time and history. There is no dialogue and

A still from the documentary, showing film archivist and historian P. K. Nair

FILM REVIEW


no voice-over in these scenes, silence sometimes dotted with the music track of old films. The visuals do the talking.

“I remembered Mr. Nair as a shadowy figure in the darkened theatre, scribbling industriously in a notebook by the light of a tiny torch – winding and unwinding reels of film, shouting instructions to the projectionist and always, always watching films. We were all a little in awe of him and had to muster up the courage to climb the creaking wooden stairs to his office to request to watch a particular film”, says Dungarpur who is happy that Celluloid Man won two National Awards this year. The film has already journeyed through 24 prestigious international film festivals including the 50th New York Film Festival, the 39th Telluride Film Festival, 49th International Film Festival of Rotterdam and the 37th Hong Kong International Film Festival.

Dungarpur began his career as an assistant director to his mentor, writer-lyricist and director, Gulzar. Gulzar suggested he enroll himself at the Film and Television Institute of India (FTII), Pune to study film direction and scriptwriting. After graduating from FTII, Shivendra l a u n c h e d himself as a producer-director in 2001 under the banner “Dungarpur Films”. “I was always interested in preservation – something I learnt from my father. I had read an interview with Martin Scorsese

about the Il Cinema Ritrovato festival in Bologna, Italy where they screened restored films. I was so fascinated that I decided

to attend the festival. I think the seeds of restoring

and preserving concretely as my

life’s mission were sowed with this decision. It worked like a trigger,” he says.

Celluloid Man moves

b a c k w a r d s and forward

in time where Nair narrates how his

love for cinema since he was a boy began with collecting and

storing ticket stubs of films he had watched in a tent cinema. Though his father was strongly against his ambition, Nair was firm. He became an archivist though he wanted to become a filmmaker. His younger brother Ramana Kutty was the only one who encouraged him. About Nair’s first film, he says, “when I was about seven or eight, I sat on a floor with shiny white sand to watch a film made by K. Subramanian who made mythologicals. We had tent cinemas at that time and films that left a deep impression on me are Vigilante’s Return, Cecil De Mille’s Unconquered, Blue Earrings and The Lost Weekend.”

Nair recalls how when he went in search of prints of India’s first talkie Alam Ara to Ardeshir Irani’s home, the old man was still alive

Director Shivendra Singh Dungarpur.

P.K. Nair under the Wisdom Tree. Pic: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur

FILM REVIEW


and his son Shapurji Irani was by his side. “Shapurji looked under the cot in the room, pulled out three reels of the film and handed them to me. As we were clambering down the stairs, he confessed that he had sold the rest of the film’s reels and other films for the silver that could be obtained from the nitrate based films. At that time, the selling price of the reels was Rs.100/kg for 35mm film,” says Nair. He considers Henri Langlois, a master archivist of cinema of the Cinematheque in Paris, his mentor whom he met personally when he went to Paris.

The title and credits of the film are designed to look as if written on a scratched piece of B&W celluloid film, like an archival film strip. The graphics follow the style and pattern of fonts used in very old Indian films. “For me, cinema began as a wonder and a magic when I was a boy. Later, it became a kind of obsession and then a passion. Now, looking back, it has become a part of me and my life. I understood the world and the people better through cinema. Cinema opened my view of life itself because cinema is Life,” says Nair, as if to himself, softly, in his low-key manner.

Celluloid Man is an ideal blend of form, technique and content. It is shot against a live backdrop of old film clips, with famous old songs, or dialogue from old films on the soundtrack sometimes punctured by the sound of a live projector, interspersed with comments from great personalities of Indian cinema from Mrinal Sen to Gulzar to Shyam Benegal and Girish Kasaravalli extending to capture some famous FTII alumni. The cinematography is low key, alternating between monochrome and colour, never brightened with primary colours

as it catches Nair in a long shot, sitting alone under the Wisdom Tree or zeroing in on his hands as he ties a knot at different points on a film reel.

dr. Shoma a chatterji, freelance journalist and author, writes on cinema,

media, human rights, cultural issues and gender.

“For me, cinema began as a wonder and a magic when I was a boy. Later, it became a kind of obsession and then a passion. Now, looking back, it has become a part of me and my life.”

P.K. Nair under the Wisdom Tree. Pic: Shivendra Singh Dungarpur

FILM REVIEW


FARMING SUCCESS

Thanjavur district of Tamilnadu has two Maharajapurams. One

is well-known for its musicians. And now, the lesser known Maharajapuram is earning a name for something completely different - the unique jackfruit variety it has.

35 kilometers from Tiruchirappalli, the second

Maharajapuram is very close to a petty town called Trikkattuppalli. Sundaram Sabesan (74), a banana farmer very active for his age, has named his famed jackfruit variety after his native hamlet, Maharajapuram.

Unfortunately, across our country, farmers don’t get a fair price for their jackfruits. An

estimated 70 per cent of fruits go wasted without utilization. Among the rest, in whatever is marketed, the middleman enjoys a very thick slice, leaving the farmer with only chicken-feed.

Today imported apples sell well at over Rupees 10 each, even in the smallest of towns. But a huge jackfruit, that can well fill the belly

LiVing off JackfruiT

While jackfruit farmers across India lament the lack of fair compensation, one farmer in Thanjavur district of Tamil Nadu earns an income of two lakh rupees a year from his unique and succulent “Maharajapuram” variety. shree Padre brings us his story.


FARMING SUCCESS

of three families, doesn’t even bring that much for thousands of jackfruit farmers in remote villages around the country.

It is in this context that the Maharajapuram jackfruit story deserves an audience. Sundaram’s twenty trees bring him a handsome income of two lakh rupees per annum. This figure

would be unbelievable for most of the jackfruit farmers of our country!

The “mother” tree of Sundaram’s jackfruit variety belonged to Thoppukulam Subramanian Ayyar, whose house is in the next street to his. Recalls Sundaram, “Five decades ago, I remember Ayyar selling

each bulb of that fruit for fifty paisa.” An impressed Sundaram raised a seedling of that tree that fortunately gave true-to-type fruits later. That mother tree is long dead now.

This tree, Sundaram’s mother tree, is now 65 years old. He got it grafted and had the young ones planted on the edges of his

Sundaram Sabesan stands beside one of his jackfruit trees. Pic: Shree Padre


Sundaram has not kept detailed

accounts of his jackfruits. Says he: “Broadly speaking,

I get around Rupees 10,000

from each tree.” However, his heavy

bearing trees should be bringing

in not less than double this income.

FARMING SUCCESS


banana fields. The younger trees are now around two decades old. Some of them yield profusely and in bunches.

The carpels are thick and light yellow in colour. Flavour and sweetness is medium. In all, the fruit has a unique and pleasant taste that is acceptable for most people. The ‘fill’ – referring to the percentage of edible fruit portion in the total mass – is also good. “The taste of Maharajapuram variety jackfruit is something very unique and pleasing. Once you eat its spongy carpels, you feel like eating more and more,” explains V. Palaniyappan, retired Joint Director of Agriculture, Thanjavur, who visits Sundaram’s farm very often.

Sundaram sells his fruits to a wholesaler at nearby Thrikkattupalli town. He, in turn, sells it to vendors for a commission. As Thanjavur district has very limited jackfruit production and locals are fond of ‘pala palam’ (jackfruit), the fruits command good price. Sundaram gets anything from Rs 200 to 250 for a fruit as these are quite big in size.

Marketing starts in December. By general standards, jackfruit available in December is considered as early season variety. The Maharajapuram variety

continues to yield till July and August. “This means,” Sundaram points out, “we don’t have fruits for only three months a year, that is, during September, October and November.” In fact, these trees appear to be of the twice-yielding kind (bearing fruit two times a year).

Sundaram runs a fertilizer shop too, but so far he hasn’t fed fertilizers to his trees. However, since he has been manuring and irrigating the banana trees, the jack trees would have absorbed both fertilizers and water from the surroundings. As such, the same jackfruit tree, planted in a dry area without irrigation would give still sweeter fruits.

Profuse bearingSundaram’s mother tree has lost its

vigor due to heavy pruning and pest attack. He maintains that all the plants are grafts from this mother tree. However, instead of uniform type, the younger progeny, in fact, gives two types of fruits - round and elongated.

The round type comprises very big fruits – its bulbs weigh 110 grams on an average. This type bears very profusely. On an average, it gives 100 to 150 fruits.

FARMING SUCCESS

Pics: Shree Padre


Another interesting character of this heavy bearing type is that it bears in bunches. The lower portion of the stem itself will have a few fruits that anyone can harvest without climbing the tree. Added to this, it gives a few fruits just on the ground. To protect it from pests or insect attack, Sundaram spreads plastic sheets between the fruits and the floor.

The above characters are also found in another famous Tamilnadu variety of Jackfruit – Palur-1, a selection released by Palur Vegetable Research Station of Tamil Nadu Agriculture University (TNAU). Palur -1 is also twice-bearing and bears fruits on the ground as well as at a man’s reach from the bottom.

The second type of Sundaram’s fruits is slightly elongated. Its bulb weight is a little less. The productivity is also less. This gives around hundred fruits a year. One explanation for the difference in character and fruit shape is that in some grafted plants, the top portion (scion) might have died and the root-stock might have sprouted into a tree.

Sundaram has not kept detailed accounts of his jackfruits. Says he, “Broadly speaking, I get around Rupees 10,000 from each tree.” However, his heavy bearing trees should be bringing in not less than double this income.

Surprisingly, in this belt, approach graft is being practiced still. Approach graft turns out to be very cumbersome because to maintain the grafted plants one has to go near the mother tree and climb it many a time to irrigate. In softwood grafting, scions from the mother tree are cut, taken to the site and grafted to root-stocks and maintained in greenhouses, if need be.

A local grafting expert, Swaminathan, staff at Aduthurai Agriculture Farm has produced some grafts of Sundaram jack trees. These will be available in the farm till the stocks finish. In addition, a nearby private nursery also claims to have grafts of this Maharajapuram variety.

Though Sundaram’s young jack trees look quite healthy, thanks to the ample moisture and nutrition available to them, he loses a considerable number of fruits every year due to fruit-borer menace. Sundaram is looking forward to some non-chemical ways of solving the fruit-borer problem.

‘Thinning’ would be beneficial

P. Haridoss, former Assistant Director of Horticulture, Kammapuram, who was in our team during the visit strongly suggests Sundaram to follow ‘thinning’ from next year. Thinning is a simple but very useful agronomic practice religiously followed by all jackfruit farmers at Panruti.

Instead of allowing all tender jackfruits to grow, once the pollination is over- say when the tender fruit attains the size of a medium-sized cucumber - excessive fruits are cut with a sickle. Each peduncle (stalk) is permitted to have only one fruit. The weak and shapeless fruits are also removed. Panruti farmers have a thumb-rule regarding the number of tender jackfruits to be retained after thinning. If the vegetative growth is good, two fruits per age of the tree are allowed. This means, twenty-four fruits in a tree of twelve years.

Thinning has many benefits. First and foremost, the carpel

size, thickness and even the taste increases. The size of the fruit is also enhanced. As many of the pests attack the overlapping areas between two jackfruits, thinning reduces the damage from such pests by reducing or eliminating the vulnerable overlapping area.

Says Anilkumar Balanja, a jackfruit lover of Dakshina Kannada district, from where the now- famous ‘Gum-less Jackfruit’ (latex less) variety has evolved, “this Maharajapuram fruit, when eaten reminds me very strongly about the gum-less variety”.

Maharajapuram certainly deserves a place in the states’ very good Jackfruit varieties.

Shree padre is a journalist with many years of experience in agricultural reporting.

He is the author

FARMING SUCCESS


April 2013 was a major deadline, of vital importance at the

national level, but went almost fully ignored. 3 May constituted yet another important deadline set by the Supreme Court of India, and that too has gone largely unnoticed by activists as well as the general public for whom both deadlines determine the quality of our lives.

The Supreme Court had, in October 2012, given state governments six months’ time - till April - to ensure that all schools around the country were provided with drinking water and proper toilet facilities. That deadline has not been met. One can survive without books and blackboards but the absence of potable water and toilet facilities in schools, where millions of children spend the greater part of their wakeful hours, was (and is) not only a matter of shame six decades after independence, but also a major reason for preventable illnesses,

high infant mortality rates and high dropout rates (especially among adolescent girls). All of this affects the human development indices of the future generation in the subcontinent.

Three weeks after that deadline imposed by the apex court, there

has been not even a mention of this in the media, or contempt of court charges and no politician has so much as mentioned this, in or out of parliament. There are other, more pressing matters on their minds of course - the assembly elections in Karnataka,

OPINION

why india needs an aLTernaTiVe modeL of deVeLoPmenTApathetic, inefficient government and mindless pursuit of Western consumerist ideals by a few have brought India’s marginalized millions to a state where the judiciary has to intervene to enforce the most basic of rights. Often, without effect, as sakuntala narasimhan finds.

Locked toilets at a school in Tamil Nadu. File pic by Krithika Ramalingam


the choice and projection of a party candidate as future prime minister in view of next year‘s Lok Sabha elections, and so on. The health and education of millions of school children is apparently low priority matter, even if the Supreme Court took cognisance of this shocking state of affairs.

In international discussions about the Millennium Development Goals (MDG) to be reached by all countries by 2015 (just two years away), India’s poor child health and sanitation record gets mentioned repeatedly, a matter of shame for a country that sees itself as an “emerging leader“ in the global arena.

A news item on 27 April reports how, out of more than 63,300 anganwadis in Karnataka state, over 42 per cent have no toilets. In the wake of the Supreme Court order, the state’s High Court also took note of this suo moto and asked the state administration to rectify matters. Why does it require court orders to urge our policymakers to attend to the provision of such basic needs, when we are supposed to be the world’s largest democracy and when every candidate standing for elections promises to “ensure that the country progresses fully and takes its rightful place in the global enclave of nations”? Because

anganwadi children do not have votes and so, do not need to be wooed with promises? Because the parents of children who attend government schools are so poor that they can be enticed with gifts/bribes of polyester saris and liquor and cash, rather than clean water and sanitation?

Those children whose families can afford private schools -- the urban elite, primarily -- carry bottles of drinking water along with their satchels, adding to the burden that they haul (in a literal sense) on their backs every

day. I weighed the backpack of a 10 year old last month; it tipped the scales at 9 kg. A litre of bottled water adds another kg to that burden. The boy weighed 26 kg. Many years ago, when the late novelist R.K.Narayan was a member of the Rajya Sabha, he raised the issue of heavy school bags during a session in parliament. Nothing happened, though thousands of parents were in full agreement with the sentiments that Narayan expressed in parliament. I know of parents who carry their wards’ bags to the bus stop each morning because the child cannot manage it on his own. Perhaps it is time to commission a study on the contribution of heavy backpacks to school children’s stunting during their growing years.

Now the Supreme Court has decreed that water and toilets “must be provided” in all schools. It is not that there is a financial crunch. A fancy clock tower (the tallest in Karnataka, as the state government proudly declares) was installed at South End Circle in south Bangalore a few weeks ago, at a cost of Rs 90 lakh. How much does it cost to build a functional toilet in a school? Out of the 40 per cent of schools in the state that lack a common toilet and another 40 per cent which don’t have a separate toilet for girls,

We have come to such a pass now in the matter of

siphoning off public money for showpieces instead of spending it on social

betterment, that the courts have to intervene, whether it is about the use of red lights on VIPs' vehicles, disposal of plastic, clearing of garbage in the metropolis or provision of

toilets in schools.

OPINION


how many could have benefited from this ‘clock tower’ money if it had been used for a socially useful purpose? It is the same story in all states around the country, east or west, north or south. There is not a single region that can boast of having provided water and toilets in all schools. Not a single party in power has deemed it fit to accord high priority to this basic need.

A former chief minister, H.D.Kumaraswamy of Karnataka, was reported to have carried with him (or rather, his entourage carried for his use) a portable toilet whenever he went visiting rural areas as a political PR exercise, to gather votes for his party. That is an eloquent comment on the insensitivity and hauteur of our politicians, who fold their hands in supplication when they go on their electioneering rounds as voting day approaches, but close their eyes to all social amelioration plans once they get to the corridors of power.

We have come to such a pass now in the matter of siphoning off public money for showpieces, instead of spending it on social betterment - especially of the disadvantaged sections, that the courts have to intervene, whether it is about the use of red lights on VIPs’ vehicles, disposal of plastic, clearing of garbage in the metropolis or provision of toilets in schools.

The other deadline that the Supreme Court set was for the Central Pollution Control Board and its state units to explain to the court “within four weeks” what steps they were taking to tackle plastic waste disposal. That deadline expired on 3 May. The judges who delivered the ultimatum expressed shock over the fact that the country is generating over 5.6 million tonnes

of plastic waste annually (over 15,300 tonnes per day) of which nearly 40 per cent lies around as non-biodegradable litter. The figures are from the Pollution Control Board itself. Delhi tops the list with 690 tonnes generated daily, with Chennai, Mumbai and Kolkata following close. Bangalore, which comes in at fifth place (out of the 60 major cities surveyed), throws up just half of the mess that Delhi spews, but life in this “IT capital” is already plagued by multiple environmental issues. Whether it is a city of rulers and national level decision-makers, or of high income global players such as software professionals, it apparently makes no difference to the callousness with which plastic waste is generated.

Connect this to two other recent developments -- a survey dated March 2013 which found that rural areas are taking to packaged commodities like branded juices and disposable diapers and the passing of the bill on allowing FDI (Foreign Direct Investment) in retail. You can now connect the dots to arrive at a picture that explains why we generate increasing mounds of plastic waste when the trend in developing countries is to focus on discouraging lifestyles that lead to ecological damage. In the name of development, rural populations are spending Rs 200 crore on disposable diapers (a 150 percent increase in just two years). Multinational companies that see India as a “huge market to be tapped for profits” see the need for “greater penetration” of the rural market and spend billions on advertising. TV ads reach even the illiterate rustics who see the acquisition of consumer goods that the urban elites use as a measure of progress, even if the

village school does not have a toilet (or drinking water). Such is the potent power of advertising!

More FDI in retail means more supermarkets and packaged goods (even vegetables come wrapped in cling film or plastic pouches) which in turn means more plastic waste thrown out every day. I have written elsewhere about the servant maid who was given Rs 10 by her employer to buy milk for her malnourished infant. She spent the money on a can of fizzy cola, and when chided, retorted saying that she too “wanted to experience, at least once, the pleasures that the rich enjoy every day with their meals” and declared that she and her child “got a lot of pleasure” from tasting the commercial drink -- she sees film stars drinking and advertising cola drinks on TV every day.

The problem is not poverty or teeming population, it is the adoption of a highly inappropriate model of development imported from the west in the name of ‘progress,’ and the exposure of the disadvantaged sections of the population to the dubious but enticing “luxuries“ of the upwardly mobile urban yuppies through ads. The media want advertisements for the revenue they bring, the multinationals rake in the moolah through sale of junk, the government declares that foreign companies are investing in India and GDP is rising -- everybody is happy, except for the marginalised millions who are doomed to lifelong deprivation. With the result that the Supreme Court has to intervene, in everything from garbage disposal to toilets in schools.

Sakuntala naraSimhan is a Bangalore-based writer, musician and

consumer activist.

OPINION


Bhama askhed dam: Just another pawnA dam that was sanctioned upon its claims of being able to irrigate 30,000 hectares in a semi-arid area of Maharashtra does not even have canals 18 years after initiation, but spawns industrial development! Findings by Parineeta dandekar typify the issues of many large dams in the state.

WATER MANAGEMENT IN MAHARASHTRA

Ujani Dam Pic: Parineeta Dandekar


Bhama askhed dam: Just another pawnA dam that was sanctioned upon its claims of being able to irrigate 30,000 hectares in a semi-arid area of Maharashtra does not even have canals 18 years after initiation, but spawns industrial development! Findings by Parineeta dandekar typify the issues of many large dams in the state.



On 9 April, 2013, the Bombay High Court, in response

to a PIL filed by Mohol Taluka Shetkari Sangh ordered the Water Resources Department (WRD) of the Government of Maharashtra to release ‘sufficient’ water to Ujani Dam (the largest dam in the Bhima Basin) within 24 hours to meet the drinking water needs of drought-stricken villages downstream Ujani.

In the 24 hours that followed, WRD zeroed in on the release of 3 TMC (Thousand Million Cubic Feet) water from Bhama Askhed and 1 TMC from Andra. The water releases from both the dams were ongoing as on 1 May 2013, when I visited the Bhama Askhed dam. By then, 2 TMC water had already been released. There are no credible reports about how much water from this release has reached Ujani, or how much will eventually reach. When the water was released on 10 April 2013, the Chief Engineer, Bhima Basin had reportedly said that it will take 6-7 days to reach Ujani backwaters, without mentioning the rate of release. 26 days later, the release is still on.

While water releases from a distance of over 205 kilometers for a region like Solapur, which has mismanaged its water to the hilt by using all its water for sugarcane and sugar factories even in this severe drought year, as well as the merits of the High Court decision can be debated, it is important to see the implications of such decisions from the perspective of those at the source: around Bhama Askhed Dam. The choice of Bhama Askhed and Andra Dams was not based on any participatory process, but was a closed-doors decision taken by the WRD, allegedly because it will be politically impossible to release

water from dams reserved for Pune’s drinking water (Although Pune dams are still releasing water for downstream sugarcane).

How come the Bhama Askhed dam had 124 million cubic metres (57 per cent of live storage capacity) on April 8, 2013 (practically the end of the irrigation season) in a drought

year? In fact, the live storage of the dam was filled up to 66 per cent on the same date in 2012 and 74 per cent in 2011. It seems the dam remains hugely underutilized. One key reason is that Bhama Askhed has no canals built for irrigation, as per the original plans even after 18 years of construction initiation.


Releases from Bhama Askhed dam into Bhama river Pic: Parineeta Dandekar


Away from the media attention, the project-affected people of Bhama Askhed Dam were on a protest fast at the Dam wall for four days after the release of water from it for Ujani started. Their demand: they have not been rehabilitated even after 13 years of initiating dam filling in the dam. They should be rehabilitated first,

should receive water for drinking and irrigation on priority and only then should the water be released for the downstream.

Let us take a look at Bhama Askhed as a representative of dam-centered water management in Maharashtra, a state with maximum dams in the country, to see the extent of fulfilment of

the stated objectives of a dam and other underlying realities.

The DamBhama Askhed Dam on Bhama

River, a short tributary of Bhima River, received administrative sanction in 1992 with the explicit objective of providing irrigation to 37 villages in Khed, 18 villages in Haveli and 9 villages in Daund talukas of Pune district with a total command area of 29,465 hectares, as per the White Paper on Irrigation Projects brought out by the WRD. It was to have two canals: a right bank canal (RBC) of 105 kilometres and a left bank canal (LBC) of 14 kilometres. Construction on the dam started in 1995.

According to its last administrative sanction in 2012, the cost of the dam has now risen to Rs. 575.84 crore from its initial Rs 112.96 crores in 1992. The dam has a live storage capacity of 7.6 TMC. Canal-work has not been done even according to the claims of the WRD. Right Bank Canal is barely 18 kilometres complete, in patches. Left Bank Canal work is not even initiated. Of the intended 30,000 hectares to be irrigated, not a single hectare receives irrigation through canals, since the RBC work stops just about 200 mts from the dam site, before resuming after a distance, but this discontinuity means water cannot be taken to any of the command area.

Tragedy of the displacedBhama Askhed Dam

submerged 2,259 hectares of land, affecting three villages completely and nearly 20 villages partially, displacing 1414 landholders, approximately 7000 people in all. When we had a meeting with some of these affected people, the Sarpanch of Roundhalwadi



(a fully affected village) said that of the 1414 landholders, till date only 56 landholders have been rehabilitated in the command area of the dam. When affected people were paid compensation, there was a clause that they have to pay back 65 per cent of the compensation amount within 40 days to be eligible later for land in the command area of Bhama Askhed. When a majority among the people signed the compensation papers, this clause was not pointed out to them and most of them being uneducated were unable to read this.

Even among the 111 landholders who paid 65 per cent of the amount, only 56 received land in the command. In every village, there are nearly 20 per cent people who neither received land, nor money for the land and livelihoods that they lost. They eventually moved to the High Court in 2007 and the case is still pending. We met farmers who had lost all their land: fields as well as homes without receiving land compensation till now, and have sent rehabilitation claims four times or more, but have received no response.

As in the case of most dam projects, the rehabilitated villages such as Roundhalwadi, Parale, Anawale, Waki lack basic amenities, do not have fully functional drinking water sources, irrigation schemes, assured electricity or proper roads. Some villages like Kasari are surrounded by water on three sides without a proper road.

Affected villages also supported 25-30 settlements of landless tribals: Thakars and Katkaris who mainly depended on the forests and fishing for survival, without owning any land. They received no compensation

for losing their livelihoods from fishing and forests. Once the dam was built, fishing contracts were awarded to a city-based contractor in five-year cycles and locals were not allowed to fish in the dam. No one knows what happened to these tribal settlements; they just vanished in thin air!

18 years from initiation of dam

construction, the problems of project-affected communities are far from solved. Local farmers have organised protests in 2009, 2010, 2012 and now in 2013. Every time they are given assurances, but the problems remain. In the words of Devidas Bandal, an affected villager fighting the HC case, “We do not say no to releasing water


Bhama Askhed Reservoir Pic: Parineeta Dandekar


to Ujani, we only ask that we, who lost our lands and livelihoods, also be given water for drinking and irrigation and basic amenities in rehabilitated villages. Is that too much to ask for?”

Water to the industriesIn 2005, Chakan MIDC started

coming up in a part of the

command area of Bhama Askhed Dam, we were told. This was also the same land promised to farmers for resettlement. Now, the land prices here have skyrocketed and affected farmers say that administration will never resettle them here, though this area lies in the command. Letting MIDC encroach upon the command

area of a dam already underway, that too on land which has been promised for rehabilitation, is unjustifiable. In addition, Chakan MIDC lifts water directly from Bhama Askhed Dam. This water allocation was never planned. Now, with expanding MIDC and a huge real estate boom in Chakan, the development moves closer and closer to the land reserved for the canals, which should have been ready many years back.

So, for whom has this dam been built?

When quizzed about canals, the WRD officials say that there is resistance for land acquisition for building canals. Some of the farmers in the downstream are lifting water from 26 KT weirs built by the WRD on Bhama and Bhima Rivers for utilising water releases from Bhama Askhed Dam. They seemed to have been encouraged to use the water from the weirs built by the same irrigation department that has not built the canals. Now some of them are naturally resisting land acquisition for canals, since they already have irrigation from the KT weirs, and the irrigation department is using this as a reason for not building canals in the planned command area. In the regions irrigated by weirs, sugarcane flourishes, increasing inequity again. A large part of the area now irrigated thus was not even part of the original command area.

Water for Pune Municipal Corporation

A huge reservoir storing 7.6 TMC water without canals is an attractive proposition for many. According to a Government Resolution (GR) dated December



2011, 1.2 TMC water from Bhama Askhed has been allocated to Pune Municipal Corporation (PMC) for drinking water purposes. In its explosive growth, Pune city wastes and pollutes water with impunity, has unchecked leakages and huge inequity in water supply. But having a source like Bhama Askhed makes it easy for Pune to forget these worries and simply buy water from the water resource department.

According to the same GR, PMC is supposed to pay Rs. 48.76 crore to WRD for re-establishing irrigation infrastructure. This is at the rate of 1 lakh rupees per hectare, which means that irrigation for 4876 hectares of command area is losing this water. Again, this has been an entirely non transparent and non-participatory decision. While the White Paper laments the funds crunch to take up canal work, it does not mention these unplanned diversions or this added revenue and how it plans to use this for either rehabilitation or the command area.

A dam, which was sanctioned on its claimed potential to irrigate nearly 30,000 hectares in a semi-arid area, is already built at a huge economic and social cost and is storing water earmarked for the command area that should receive this water. But the reasons behind the delay in starting canal works of Bhama Askhed are incomprehensible. The contractors, engineers, politicians, industrialists and even fish contractor have profited, but no benefits accrue to recognised or unrecognised affected population or intended beneficiaries as per the original plans. While unplanned sugarcane, Pune Municipal Corporation and Chakan MIDC have emerged as the unplanned beneficiaries of these dams, the

farmers in command, for whom the dam was justified, and the project-affected people have been the losers in this game.

Bhama Askhed is not an isolated example showing water diversions from irrigation projects to non-irrigation uses. Notable examples are Hetawane Dam in Pen and Surya Dam in Dahanu, among many others.

HC Decision and the functioning of WRD and MWRRA

The High Court decision of ordering water release may be debated for its merits (will the water flow again for sugarcane cultivation?) and its practicality. However, the institutions entrusted to the task of equitable water distribution were sleeping for too long and refused to wake up. Equitable water distribution was the primary objective for setting up the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority (MWRRA) in 2005, with 325 million dollars funding from the World Bank under its Maharashtra Water Sector Improvement Project (MWSIP).

In April 2011, allegedly under the influence of the then WR Minister Ajit Pawar, the final right to allocate water was given to the Cabinet Committee. When the High Court was hearing this case related to water releases for Ujani, it had first ordered the MWRRA to look into the allocation as it was MWRRA’s duty. But the HC was informed by the government lawyer that MWRRA is dysfunctional as none of the posts of Chairperson or two expert members have been filled. The post of the Chairperson of the MWRRA has been vacant since 16 August 2011!

When the High Court was hearing

this case related to water releases

for Ujani, it had first ordered the MWRRA to look

into the allocation. But the HC was

informed by the government

lawyer that MWRRA is

dysfunctional as none of the posts

of Chairperson or two expert

members have been filled.

The post of the Chairperson of

the MWRRA has been vacant since

August 2011!



Thereafter, on 15 March 2013 the HC urged the Maharashtra Govt. to reconstitute the Authority expeditiously. Despite this, till 9 April 2013, no action was taken! The HC in its order states that “we are therefore left with no alternative but to direct the respondent to release water to Ujani as expeditiously as possible”. Some of the MWRRA posts have since been filled following HC’s time bound orders, but it is once again clear that MWRRA, the so called solution pushed by the World Bank, has completely failed to achieve any of its stated objectives.

So while Sharad Pawar, the Union Agriculture Minister and Head of NCP, which held the irrigation portfolio for more than 14 years may comment sarcastically on the HC decision saying “WRD will consult the court about water if monsoon is delayed beyond June-July”, it is evident that the Court’s decision is another significant proof of mismanagement of water resources in Maharashtra by the administration and politicians.

High Court order to release water for Jayakwadi Dam

A similar decision has come from the Aurangabad Bench of Maharashtra HC on 27 April 2013 to the effect that WRD should release water expeditiously for Jayakwadi dam in Godavari basin from upstream dams.

Again dams in the upstream have been selected by the WRD in a completely non-transparent and non-participatory way. One such dam is Karanjwan Dam, more than 200 kms from Jayakwadi, which also supplies water to the parched

Manmad town. Manmad gets water once in 22 days and when this author visited Manmad on 10 March 2013, it had received water after 51 days from Palkhed Dam, which is downstream Karanjwan dam. People of Manmad may not accept the decision of water releases from Karanjvan dam quietly. President of the Manmad Municipal Council has taken objection to it already. For another dam, Nilwande, which is to release water for Jayakwadi, the project-affected people who have not been rehabilitated fully are opposing water releases before rehabilitation, just as in the case of Bhama Askhed.

It seems as if the dams have become pawns in the hands of engineers, bureaucrats and politicians, to be used as and when required for whatever ulterior motive they might serve - anything but their stated purpose. It is not a coincidence then that despite spending 70,000 crore rupees on irrigation in Maharashtra for ten years, the irrigated area is showing no net increase and thousands of villages are parched despite building multiple dams in the vicinity.

While participatory, transparent and accountable water management is crucial in all years, its importance is particularly highlighted in a drought year like 2012-13. Let us hope that all concerned, including farmers, media, civil society as well as the High Court look at the complete picture and are able to take collective action on this.

parineeta dandekar works with the South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and

People.



FIGHTING PAID NEWS

In a major twist to the Ashok Chavan vs. Madhav Kinhalkar legal battle (more notorious as the “Paid

News” scandal), leading civil society organisations and eminent individuals have approached the Supreme Court to implead themselves into the case.

Their intervention application, moved by advocate Prashant Bhushan, minces no words on their reasons for doing so. They are disturbed by “the stranglehold of money power on our electoral politics.” And by a recent move of the Union Law Ministry which could destroy the Election Commission of India’s power to disqualify candidates filing incorrect or false accounts.

The applicants for intervention hope to defeat “the nefarious design” of the Union government which seeks to “undo all the good work done by the Election Commission of India.” And which further seeks, to “unsettle the law already settled” by the Supreme Court of India. They wish to ensure that the

ECI “retains the plenitude of its power and authority to safeguard the purity and integrity of the electoral process.” Which includes holding candidates to account on poll expenses.

This action follows the Union Law Ministry filing a counter-affidavit on behalf of the Government in the Ashok Chavan case. That affidavit, first reported by The Hindu on March 20, asserts that “the power of the Election Commission to disqualify a person arises only in the event of failure to lodge an account of expenses and not for any other reason, including the correctness or otherwise of such accounts.” Simply put: the government claims the ECI has no right to disqualify a candidate even if his accounts are found to be improper or fraudulent. If accepted, this would virtually gut the powers of that Constitutional body. (However, the Court is yet to give any ruling on the matter.)

Paid news undermines democracyThe government’s counter-affidavit in a recent suit could strip the ECI of its power to disqualify candidates for fraudulent accounts or put an end to the pandemic of paid news. P sainath reports on civil society attempts to stop the subversion of the EC’s powers.

Ashok Chavan, former Chief Minister of Maharashtra.Pic: www.bollywoodhungama.com via Wikimedia


FIGHTING PAID NEWS

Those seeking to intervene include Common Cause, a public interest body. Its legal activism on electoral matters had a role in the Supreme Court’s ordering that political parties had to file regular returns of income or invite possible penal action. Also in the line-up is the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), a group at the forefront of many battles for electoral and political reforms. Vital among those, a public interest litigation (PIL) of ADR in 1999, which later saw the Supreme Court order candidates to disclose their criminal, financial and educational background prior to the polls. That is, by filing an affidavit with the ECI. Common Cause and ADR are joined by five other civil society bodies in this application.

The line-up of distinguished individuals includes veteran journalist and editor B.G. Verghese, former Chief Election Commissioners of India (CEC) N. Gopalaswami and J.M. Lyngdoh, and former adviser to the ECI, K.J. Rao.

The immediate beneficiary of the UPA government’s attack on the ECI’s powers is the disgraced ex-chief Minister of Maharashtra, Ashok Chavan. As former Chief Election Commissioner N. Gopalaswami has pointed out: “The government has joined Mr. Chavan in challenging the Election Commission’s power to disqualify a candidate under Section 10A of the Act for his failure to submit a correct and true rendering of his election expenditure” (The Hindu, April 17, 2013). The former CEC clearly sums up the impulse for civil society action: “The case before the Supreme Court is no longer one of Dr. Kinhalkar and others vs Ashok Chavan. It concerns every individual and institution that is uneasy about and opposed to the sway of

money power in elections.” — (See “Doublespeak on electoral reforms, April 17, 2013, The Hindu).

Mr. Chavan not only lost his post in the fallout of the Adarsh scam, but also earned notoriety in the “Paid News scandal,” a story broken by The Hindu (See: “Is the ‘Era of Ashok’ a new era for ‘news’” November 29, 2009).

DestructiveThe applicants for

intervention in the case note there is “a growing concern that the pandemic of Paid News is eating into the vitals of our democratic polity by compromising the purity of the elections and destroying the credibility of the print/electronic media.” They cite the case of Umlesh Yadav, MLA from Uttar Pradesh, who was disqualified by the ECI for three years. Ms Yadav had failed “to account for an expenditure of Rs. 21,250 on an advertisement that had appeared in the disguise of a news item in the Dainik Jagran,” of April 17, 2007.

They note that “Umlesh Yadav pales into insignificance in comparison to the media blitzkrieg” launched in support of Ashok

Chavan’s 2009 Assembly election campaign. And that the Government of India which had ostensibly taken a strong public position on Paid News and praised the ECI’s efforts to curb it, “has filed a counter affidavit which reveals its true colours.”

The Election Commission is also likely to file an affidavit opposing the government’s pro-Chavan counter-affidavit.

P. Sainath is the 2007 winner of the Ramon Magsaysay award for Journalism, Literature, and Creative Communication Arts. He is one

of the two recipients of the A.H. Boerma Award, 2001, granted for his contributions in changing the nature of the development debate on

food, hunger and rural development in the Indian media.

The applicants for intervention hope to defeat “the nefarious design” of the Union government which

seeks to “undo all the good work done by the Election Commission of India.” And which

further seeks, to “unsettle the law

already settled” by the Supreme Court of India.

They wish to ensure that the ECI “retains the plenitude of its

power and authority to safeguard the purity

and integrity of the electoral process.”


KARNATAKA VERDICT 2013

BoTh of india’s PoLiTics on disPLay in karnaTaka

There are two spheres of politics being

played out in India at present. One is

patronage, and the second, aspirational.

During the just concluded Karnataka

assembly elections, both were seen. More

and more people are waking up to the

aspirational one, writes subramaniam

Vincent



Plenty will be written, said, read, and heard around the return of the

Congress to Karnataka. Plenty will also be said about how the incoming chief minister plans to fix Bengaluru, the ailing capital city. As if this party did not have opportunities in the past.

At the end of this article, I’m going to summarise what this verdict means to me. I will also add a few key areas where I would like to see real change. But before that, let’s take a deeper look at the context under which our elections are being fought and won. I will also decode apathy for you without the judgmentalism of the self-righteous.

Some of this is all economics. I am not an economist, so I will not write this part like one.

There are two levels at which I am seeing politics played out in India. One is patronage, and the second, aspirational. During the just concluded Karnataka assembly elections, both were seen. The aspirational one is a baby movement getting louder by the day. But let’s do first things first.

In patronage politics, our MLAs and their parties are expected to help in the providing of many services for the citizens. Water, housing, electricity, schools, roads, drains, waste collection, religious trust funds, regularising property titles, jobs, BPL cards, you name it. Most key of these are schooling, health care, electricity, housing and water. Governance has by and large continued to fail low-income

BoTh of india’s PoLiTics on disPLay in karnaTaka

Pic:

Shr

ee D

N


people in these areas.As a result you find that

during every state election, the same cries come out each time, many getting louder. People are desperate for whatever their MLAs can do. My domestic help voted for the sitting MLA because he helped bring a ‘transformer’ to her area for electricity and promised to get new government sites allotted. And of course, she took money from all the major parties this time. Equally, she took part in rallies where low-income people like her are paid Rs.250-750 to attend meetings.

In patronage politics, MLAs are like the extended arms of state power (the political executive) reaching directly into the constituencies. Government is like an octopus with 224 arms. Lawmaking glory is not for our MLAs. Ever heard of an MLA proudly boasting about a reform law passed in the state assembly that changed the way things were done? Hardly.

Most importantly, in patronage politics, all kinds of conflicts of interests are fused in, with no regulatory teeth to actually check or stop anything. Politicians are builders. Builders are politicians. Politicians run water tanker firms, contractors become city councillors.

Also, patronage politics is supported by a society that is still struggling to unshackle itself from being deeply hierarchical, caste-oriented and easily corruptible. Fundamental rights of citizens are not upheld here. A policeman could abuse you tomorrow and you will not get remedy easily. Journalists can be jailed on trumped up charges. In this world, MLAs are like ‘rulers’ not public servants, and ministers, ‘gods’. Corruption is still ‘accepted’,

especially as a means to an end.Ethics? It is best left out.You know all this. Here is the

problem though.In better-off democracies,

schooling, health care, electricity and water are considered entitlements and are delivered far better to all people. No country is perfect and there are problems everywhere. But in comparison to us, there are democracies that deliver the basics better. The result: Voters in those democracies are not en-masse struggling for these basics. If they fall ill, the expense does not push them back into poverty.

In turn, this allows people to plan for their future and invest in it. The assurance of the basics and upholding of fundamental rights levels the playing field and gives most citizens, if not every one, a shot at the good life. It is also the biggest counter-balance against apathy, which we will come to later. The broadest group that receives these entitlements in the so-called ‘mature’ democracies is the middle-classes. (How it got that way is another story altogether.)

The modern idea of holding governments accountable to

citizens is built on top of this premise that the basics themselves will never become a struggle for the people. So the largest vote bank is itself the middle class, and they vote on the issues that matter to them. For instance, voters will support parties and candidates on whether ‘healthcare’ be made universal or not. They could vote on whether state government funding to protect forest lands be expanded or cut. Or cutting pollution in cities. That is where ideology and competitive politics comes in.

In patronage politics, this is not even imagined. The basic entitlements themselves are so far from being delivered that lower-income voters do not have any real autonomy, as citizens. Children go to dysfunctional schools and get unreliable health care. Fetching potable water kills a substantial part of a poor woman’s productive day time. Housing may be in an informal slum today, and it may get razed tomorrow. These citizens will take whatever money comes their way. Naturally, when elections come around, as was abundantly on display in Karnataka this time too, political campaigns here are rozi roti.


Pic:

wik

iped

ia


Which brings me to the second level, aspirational politics.

Aspiration politics is the new India. Here, citizens are earning more and are already setup to go up further. Even though the Indian middle-class is a much smaller percentage of the country compared even to Brazil’s middle class, lakhs of people are already better-off in Indian cities. Economists are also pointing to an income class in India which is below the middle class itself. This income group is much larger than the middle class, is well above the poverty line and is expanding. This group too contains citizens who are breaking from the grip of patronage politics.

Aspirational politics in a deeply hierarchical society like India is most defined by people speaking up. Speaking up is in fact picking up here.

Most voters at this level are not voting to ensure their tomorrow will not be snatched away or because of their identity. They are trying to rise above that. So freedom of expression, justice, equality, governance reform, integrity, accountability, rights, independence of regulators, vision, professionalism, problem

solving, data driven debate, etc., all figure in the discussions at this level.

Also in aspirational politics, you cannot buy voters. They are already better off. You have to get them to come out and vote for you and your party with an ideology or with a promise of change or both. By the way, in each major political party there are a few individual politicians of this mould. It would be wrong to say that such politicians exist only on the fringes. But they are isolated cases in a system of patronage anyway.

However, it is still early times for aspirational politics in India. Voters from this sphere are still a trickle at the polls now.

So if it is as simple as this, some would say we need more economic growth to get the majority of Indians into the income levels that work for aspirational politics and by then, our political parties would have morphed by necessity. Politics itself will then deliver. Simple. Why not just wait it out, new India?

Sorry. This is where the comparison between India’s journey and that of the more evolved democracies fades out. Several problems complicate matters for us. I will only list two here. (Ask leading economists, political scientists and environmentalists, they have even more.)

One, the better-off classes in India are also what political scientist Pratap Bhanu Mehta calls the world’s largest privatised middle class. Because of caste, as well as how this country was colonised, run by the British, and run after political independence in 1947, our story is unique.

Today, our better-off citizens do not rely on government for

In patronage politics, MLAs are like the extended arms of state power (the political executive) reaching directly into the constituencies. Government is like an octopus with 224 arms. Lawmaking glory is not for our MLAs. Ever heard of an MLA proudly boasting about a reform law passed in the state assembly that changed the way things were done? Hardly.



two most important and public-creating entitlements that citizens in mature democracies usually do: public schooling and healthcare. Better-off Indians go to private school and get private health care. (Central government-run Kendriya Vidyalayas do not count as normal government-run schools. They are on par with private schools, and cater to government staff at the same middle and upper income levels. This itself is shameful proof of how our governance creates hierarchies in taxpayer-funded schooling system.) As for water, the better-off in cities like Bengaluru just buy it outright when the state system fails.

So take a city like Bengaluru. At the local level, for better-off citizens, it is roads, electricity to some degree, and waste management that governments provide as ‘basic’ services. Which to put in one word is ‘infrastructure’, with roads dominating everything. This is why you find every politician and party promising ‘infrastructure’ when they campaign with people at the aspirational level.

But, let me take a small detour here to explain voter apathy. Political scientists note readily that middle and upper classes have historically been the smallest numbers in voting in India. But not voting is only one-half apathy. The other half is a real response to stake. The better-off know that they are only reliant on state and local government for infrastructure. But here again, look at the manifestos. All the parties talk infrastructure anyway. So why vote, when anyway you know they will all promise 100, deliver between 20-50 and take turns coming to power to do that?

Flip over, and look at it for the parties. Promising infrastructure

always looks good. And they do not need a higher-income-voters’ mandate to justify infrastructure anyway. Why? In patronage politics, infrastructure building is 'cool'. Politicians get rich, builders get rich. Voters understand this, cynically. That is the win-win. This is the other half of apathy you do not hear much about.

Herein lies the deeper problem for aspirational politics in the higher income groups: The minute patronage politics makes tall infrastructure promises, it is like a drug, especially in the media. It neutralises the progressive and real purpose of dialogue on governance reform. All conversations about integrity, accountability, and fairness in public spending become secondary. They want to give you infrastructure, that is great, so take it.

The second thing that complicates matters is language. At the aspirational level, there is a duality of language choices

for discussion. While some citizens prefer local languages, other citizens prefer English. This changes the game because it creates a parallel political process, with each side not necessarily emotionally comfortable with the other. It also creates the need for bilingual mediators to bring both aspirational spheres together. If you ask Ramachandra Guha, he worries that there are simply not enough bilingual intellectuals emerging.

I would argue that language, as issue, is by far the messiest factor.

Seen this way, there are two publics in our polity. One is the patronage politics-public, running in local languages everywhere. The other is the aspirational politics-public which works in the languages to some degree, and is also very vocal in English, especially in the major cities, and ethnically diverse one like Bengaluru.

Despite these complications, more and more people are waking


Pic:

Nik

kul w

ikip

edia


up. As seen in Bengaluru this month, the better-off did vote in higher numbers. Voting jumped to highest level in since 1994, in India’s apathy capital. Voting is starting to get recognised as progress itself.

Which brings me to the Karnataka verdict of 2013.

To me, the verdict is simply a change of guard from one patronage politics player to another. The manner in which politics itself is conducted and plays out has not changed.

And, recognising the two publics, the new government, like the previous one, will play at both levels. To the less better off, ministers and MLAs will play ‘gods who roll the dice’. You may get water, you may not. You may get better teachers and school buildings, you may not. To the better-off, they will talk infrastructure. We’ll give you expressways, corridors, industrial townships, and what not. There is a lot of money in that. Wink, and

win-win.So what are the chances

of aspirational politics to get a transformative shot?

Hard to say. If you are searching for a silver lining here, there is one slightly promising factor from recent history.

When the Congress-led UPA government came to power at the Centre in 2004, it came on the back of a campaign where it derided the BJP for India Shining. There was something new in the air then, I still recall. The National Advisory Council was set up with great expectations. That is how the Right to Information Act and the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (there are critics of this one) were also passed.

Both were strokes of aspiration politics, not patronage. But in its second term, the Congress at Delhi has more or less mirrored the BJP’s first term in Karnataka, stroke for stroke, scam for scam. Patronage politics prevailed.

For the sake of argument, let us assume that the incoming Karnataka government sees itself as having been given a chance to lead the way forward. Focusing only on Bengaluru, here is a litmus test of the new leaders' capacity to transcend the old culture. Just examples, you may have other ones. The new cabinet is not even going to be a coalition, so they have five continuous years.

Water: Bangalore is in deep, deep trouble. Tanker firms are holding sway at the peripheries. Unchecked and illegal borewell drilling is still the norm. Massive real estate activity still happens without water planning. The water agency is not fixing its own massive pipe leaks and is squandering the most precious resource. Solutions exist as always. But patronage politics must yield

for solutions to flow in.Public lands: Over the past

few decades massive theft of government lands in the greater Bengaluru region has taken place, as showed by both the A T Ramaswamy and V Balasubramanian reports. The city became a real estate playground. After all, land theft is the hallmark of patronage politics. The Karnataka Congress party, if it really means change, can do something new here to stem the rot. (At the time I wrote this, their High Command in Delhi is busy negotiating the storm that the latest Coalgates and Railgates have stirred up.)

Decentralisation of state powers: Our cities are like bloated children on steroids. Without decentralisation of state power, Bengaluru has grown, but did not grow up. I argued in an open letter to Manmohan Singh two weeks ago that I do not want world-class infrastructure, I want world-class city government. Many friends found so much clarity in the letter that they asked me to get Dr Singh to read it. That article was premised on aspirational politics. I intend to give it to the new chief minister anyway. Fat hopes they will act, you might say.

In the meantime, the people in aspirational politics will simply have to keep chipping away to take power back. There is no comparable model anywhere on the planet for the complex and transformative political journey this country and its cities are going through. Something will have to break on the ground, hopefully sooner rather than later.

Subramaniam Vincent is co-founder and editor at India Together.



SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

Following a panel discussion on Corporate Sustainability held in

a five star hotel followed by a lavish lunch, my fellow panelist asked a very fundamental question, ‘Can Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) thrive without Individual Social Responsibility (ISR)?’ Even a month after this event, this question remained buzzing in my head. A company is a legal entity without a heart and a soul, which it borrows from its chief decision makers, who are individuals. In the absence of individuals who feel a sense of social responsibility, is it realistic to expect CSR to thrive and make a positive contribution? If ISR is a prerequisite, what could be its contours?

We are familiar with air-hostesses announcing at the start of a flight that in case of an emergency, one needs to fix the oxygen mask on his face before helping others; this reveals an important truth: you cannot help others when you are yourself dependent. Likewise, does ISR too need to be preceded by IPR, which in this case is Individual Personal Responsibility?

In determining individual responsibility, we need to recognize the different stages in the life of an individual, each of which comes with varying expectations. In an individual’s life, the first two decades could be seen as seeding time, the next four the harvesting period, and the remaining decades, living off the store. However, what remains common across the three stages are the three basic needs for a good life—leisure, relationships and money.

In the first phase of youth, leisure and relationships are not in short supply, with one feeding the other, though money could be hard to come by. In the next stage as earning money takes priority, leisure time is traded in for money. If too much of leisure is traded away, it is possible that relationships get starved. While this impact of reduced relationships may not be immediately felt, come sunset years, when time is returned to the individual, his personal relationships - and not the professional ones - make life meaningful and worth living.

While pondering over these issues, I stumbled upon the Better Life Index initiative of the OECD. This ambitious project launched in 2010 attempts to measure what makes for a ‘better life’. In the process it has identified eleven essential measures. While these parameters measure the quality of life in a country, with some poetic liberty, we can also look at it from the lens of an individual’s responsibility to make his life better. Coincidentally, Better Life Index also considers leisure time, relationships and money as critical measures. Hence could balancing the three conflicting priorities of time, money and relationship, without sacrificing any one, be the key to IPR that is a prerequisite for Individual Social Responsibility? For it does seem that youth without a need for money, a working age with adequate leisure, and a retired life rich in personal relationships are the indicators of a good life.

Turning to Individual Social Responsibility, can we take a leaf out of the Triple Bottom-Line concept advocated so often

The role of individuals towards a better lifeIn a country where the need for collective and institutional engagement in social improvement is stark, shankar Jaganathan explores the role and contours of individual responsibility - both towards self and society - as a necessary precondition for the former.


SOCIAL RESPONSIBILITY

for the corporate world? In the last two decades, the Triple Bottom-Line concept emerged to supplement the inadequacies of focusing exclusively on financial results. John Elkington in his visionary book Cannibals with Forks highlighted the fact that by focusing solely on economic results we may be prone to incurring social and environmental costs that could result in the human race cannibalizing itself. To avert this catastrophe, Elkington recommended that corporate entities should flank their basic financial goal of profits with social and environmental objectives to remain resilient and sustainable. While the logic of Triple Bottom-Line is to make corporate entities enduring, the trigger for ISR could be very different. ISR looks to enrich the life of an individual by making it more meaningful and well-connected. But if the Triple Bottom-Line is extended to ISR, we can perhaps consider political, social and environmental responsibility as the three cornerstones.

Better Life Index considers civic engagement as a critical factor, which is measured by voter turnout in elections and the extent to which an individual can participate or have a role to play in the process of ‘rule-making’ or enacting legislation. Looked at from the point of an individual’s responsibility, we can say that the first aspect of ISR is an individual’s political duty to vote and contribute their personal insights to ‘rule-making’ in society.

Turning to the social front, the second aspect of ISR, we see two elements in the index from which we can borrow. One relates to the educational attainment of members in society, and the other to a highly visible need in India

today, that of individual safety as measured by the prevailing assault rates and homicide rates. While the two elements mentioned above are outcomes, when viewed through the prism of individual responsibility, it translates to what one can do to enhance these social indicators. Recognizing this, can we include tax payments by an individual as one form of fulfilling individual responsibility? Tax payments could directly fund investment in social infrastructure for education and enhance the law & order system. Even though tax planning may be legal in today’s world, it is my personal view that low tax payments are not reflective of healthy social engagement; in fact, tax evasions are seen to be at the lowest where the taxpayer has a voice in how public revenue is spent.

Individual responsibility to environment, the third aspect of ISR, seems to be the most apparent and visible need recognized. For every urban resident, air pollution is a harsh reality he wakes up to

every morning; for both urban and rural residents, continued water availability is increasingly turning to a mirage. It is a matter of time before the reality of drought catches up with all of us, even in the most sophisticated of cities. This is not an extreme view, as in Bangalore today, we can see public interest hoardings appealing to residents to stop using showers and return to the age-old practice of bucket and mug for bathing; the water so saved could provide ten other residents with drinking water. Given this concern in one sphere, adoption of voluntary simplicity by switching to a minimalist lifestyle that preserves air quality and ensures water availability may be at the core of individual responsibility.

Taken together, the logical fit between IPR and ISR is very apparent. A ‘time rich’, ‘money rich’ and ‘relationship rich’ individual will have the time to be politically engaged, the resource to be socially responsible and will be tuned in to an environmentally-friendly lifestyle that demands less money and releases more time to cultivate a ‘relationship rich’ life.

Does this line of reasoning sound idealistic? If you concur, it would not surprise me for I believe that the very desire for a better life is also idealistic. However for realizing a better life, we need to ask a more pragmatic question, which is whether these ideas are feasible for us to adopt in our daily life.

Shankar jaganathan is passionate about corporate governance, sustainability

practices and economic history. He divides his time between consulting engagements,

teaching and writing. He is the author of the book ‘Corporate Disclosures 1553-2007, The

Origin of Financial and Business Reports’, and the recently published ‘The Wisdom of

Ants, A Short History of Economics’.

ISR looks to enrich the life of an

individual by making it more meaningful and well-connected. If the Triple Bottom

Line concept is extended to ISR, we

can perhaps consider political, social

and environmental responsibility as the three cornerstones.


OPEN LETTER TO PM DR MANMOHAN SINGH

what makes world class cities?Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised Bengaluru world class infrastructure on the eve of elections in Karnataka, recently. Subramaniam Vincent exposed the farce in a letter to him.

Pic: Sridhar C R



Dear Dr Singh,Last evening, I read a report

of your speech at Mysore Road outside Bengaluru.

“Congress will give world class infrastructure to Bengaluru: PM”, went the headline by the Indo Asian News Service. The report was carried by several news websites including media as far away as the New York Daily News. It went on to quote your reason for this promise:

“Because Bengaluru deserves the best”, you said.

Dr Singh, stop.I cannot speak for all

Bangaloreans, but hear me out anyway.

I do not want a world class infrastructure for Bengaluru. I want a world class city government.

First things first. If elected to power, ask your Congress government to give us this, and Bengaluru will take care of itself.

But for that, you need to stop thinking ‘infrastructure’ and starting thinking ‘government’.

I have to explain this because I believe your speech, of all recent political speeches, reveals the most astounding lack of deeper vision to inspire world class Bangaloreans. And by world class Bangaloreans, I do not mean the elite alone. I mean everyone in the city with the aspiration for a better life for themselves and their families.

What is world class city government? This, Dr Singh, should have been your starting point.

Go to any major city in a democracy with world class infrastructure, to use you own words. Look at their city governments. And then look at ours.

In a world class city, a mayor

is the city’s leader. In our city, Bengaluru, the mayor is invisible. The state government’s ministers hold all the cards.

In a world class city, a mayor has a five-year-term. Our mayor has one.

In a world class city, the mayor has the powers to take decisions without having to run for approval to ‘papa’, i.e. state government. Our mayor is ceremonial, he can only convene the city council, not much else.

In a world class city, the mayor will appoint a team including the city’s commissioner. In our city, papa decides all that. Papa’s babu-boys who come with fancy designations that all end with the word ‘commissioner’ in it. They report to the city council only ceremonially. And papa keeps transferring them around like puppets. No vision, no plan, no tenure. Only firefighting.

A world class mayor will hold press conferences regularly and explain decisions to the media, not by speeches but in interactive conversation. Our mayor never faces the press for anything beyond a few ‘sound bites’.

There’s more to this world class concept you need to understand, Dr Singh.

A world class city government raises its own funds using a combination of world class financing, high credit-rating, and revenues that befit a city that contributes over Rs.50,000 crores to the GDP of the state. But our city is outlawed against doing anything but raise property taxes, advertising taxes, a few cesses, and building license fees, on its own. Bengaluru’s total inflows are a few thousand crore rupees, a pittance.

A world class city government

what makes world class cities?Prime Minister Manmohan Singh promised Bengaluru world class infrastructure on the eve of elections in Karnataka, recently. Subramaniam Vincent exposed the farce in a letter to him.


will not have to run to papa to get every awarded tender approved, and worse still, run to big papa in New Delhi, which is you Dr Singh, for money to put new local buses, neighbourhood flyovers and what not.

A world class city council will debate major issues and vote on decisions, with every councillor’s vote recorded and made public so that citizens know how councillors voted. Our city council does not even vote! (I bet you did not know that. And worse, this was happening when your party was in power too.)

A world class city government will have one planning authority and one master plan which provides for and balances the needs that come from population growth, housing, public transportation, commercial real estate, water supply, roads and lighting, schools, hospitals and more. Astoundingly, this ‘one authority’ is provided for in our own Constitution and it is called the metropolitan planning committee or the MPC.

But our city region, equally astoundingly, Dr Singh, does not have this MPC. No party in power created one. Instead, we have four planning authorities, all run by papa. I call them papa’s “B* planning club”. They are the BDA, BMRDA, BIAPA and the BMICPA. Forget the expansions, in case you are wondering. It does not matter. BDA is for city limits, BMRDA for the greater Bengaluru region, BIAPA for the airport area and BMICPA for the NICE corridor. Independent of these four is our state’s premier land-grabbing authority, the KIADB. The KIADB chooses to override the city master plan (to favour crony developers) whenever it feels like.

The MPC never happened.

Worse, parts of our city’s master plan were found illegal in the High Court last year and the justices ordered the city to revert to 1995-2005 residential zoning. How does a world class city get world class infrastructure if its master plan is pulled into the courts?

This is not all Dr Singh. Not letting you go that easy.

A world class city government knows how much water is needed every day, sources it and supplies it clean and potable to everyone. It bars massive new housing and commercial estates to come up where is neither groundwater nor piped water. But our city government does not even control the supply agency that distributes water to the city. Papa runs the agency.

A world class city government has its electricity agency under it. In our city, papa runs this too.

So papa arranges for water, power, roads, underpasses, everything for our city.

Show me one city in any large country in the democratic world with world class infrastructure without a world class city government.

You cannot.What we got instead from

the approach all major parties including yours have to ‘world class infrastructure’, Dr Singh, is a city on steroids. Bulging muscles everywhere, and no nourishment. Most lakes dead, the few left are in trouble. The good news is that real Bangaloreans are fighting back. Learn from the citizens that steroids don’t work long term.

So Dr Singh, let me keep this simple.

Division of power between centre and states was always there, we call it federalism. But decentralisation of power from state to city is what allows cities

What we got from the approach all

major parties, including

yours, have to ‘world class

infrastructure’, Dr Singh, is a

city on steroids. Bulging muscles everywhere, and no nourishment. Most lakes dead,

the few left are in trouble. The

good news is that real Bangaloreans are fighting back.

Learn from the citizens that

steroids don’t work long term.



to build the right capacities with the right people in office. that is, it allows cities to grow up.

But Dr Singh, our cities, and Bengaluru in particular, are good examples of fat-bloated children who have grown, but not grown up into responsible adults to manage most of their own affairs. Over-parenting is our culture here, and we have taken it so seriously that it shows in our approach to government too.

Because all parties, including yours have only done lip service to empowering cities in this nation of amazingly talented people. Bengaluru, Dr Singh, is an aspirational city with the best of the world’s talent. Architects, artists, activists, human rights advocates, planners, entrepreneurs, political innovators, engineers, lawyers, scholars, pragmatists, visionaries, administrators, whistleblowers, watchdogs and most of all, volunteers. See the work of the Ugly Indian, and you will know.

You have only let us down, Manmohan Singh. True, your party’s former leader of the 80’s gets the credit for amending the Constitution of India to bring in the clause that mandates state governments to let cities run their own affairs. But then vested interests to control cities took over. Your whole approach to giving world class infrastructure to cities without an MPC is therefore unconstitutional and plainly put, illegal. World class cities do not have illegal methods.

Dr Singh, do not talk of infrastructure in this premise-less, spiritless, undemocratic kind of way. This election is a chance for your party to set that right if it comes to power.

The old cliche bears repeating here. Teach a man to fish, don’t feed him fish.

I do not want your world class infrastructure, Dr Singh. I want a world class city government. The infrastructure will come on its own. And it will be better than the ill-planned and unjustly provisioned patchwork that papa doles out.

Subramaniam Vincent is co-founder and editor at India Together. This article

was originally published in Citizen Matters, Bangalore’s interactive newsmagazine. Citizen Matters and India Together are

published by Oorvani Media.



THE FATE OF NOMADIC CASTES

Orphans are children who have no parents; who have nobody

to care for them or love them. Sadly, our society too has many who may be called its orphans, whom we see around us but who remain ignored and neglected by everybody - the government, civil society organizations as well as media. These orphans of our society are the nomadic castes who are among the poorest and the most marginalized. Ironically, these people are highly visible, especially in cities: they beg, they hawk traditional medicines on roadsides, they break rocks, dig

trenches to lay cables, pipelines and so on, they clear out rocky land for highways and high rises. Others of their ilk do impossible tricks with the help of their bulls, put up puppet shows and do rope tricks.

In the past, most of these castes earned a livelihood through their indigenous art and knowledge that was perfected and passed on from one generation to another. They took their talent, their knowledge of art and crafts far and wide, travelling from village to village and thus sustained themselves

and their families. However, as modernization spread, inexorably changing the way of life of the people, the immense talent and knowledge of the nomadic castes became redundant. Their skills and artistry, their art, their talent, their creativity and the knowledge of medical ailments and their treatment that had been garnered over centuries and passed on for generations from parents to children and that had sustained them and their way of life now have no place in society. The people and their art have been overtaken by the times. While a negligible

orphans of our societyIgnored by the government, shunned by society and caught in a time-warp of their own, the nomadic castes and tribes of India are almost “non citizens” of the land. r. akhileshwari describes the abysmal plight of such people from Andhra Pradesh and highlights the injustice and neglect that they are subject to.



few among these people have moved with the times, got some education and settled down in urban and semi urban areas, most of these nomadic communities are struggling to survive, victimised by the caste system and alienated by their nomadic way of living.

The result is that since they have no permanent home, they are not enrolled as voters nor do they have a ration card. Since these two things recognize them as citizens, the substantial numbers belonging to the nomadic castes have become the ‘non-citizens’ of our society.

Official data puts the population of nomadic and denotified tribes at 60 million in the country, comprising 0.7 per cent of the population. They belong to the 313 Nomadic Tribes and 198 Denotified Tribes. In Andhra Pradesh, as many as 28 major communities are identified as nomadic, and denotified tribes. Among these tribes, the plight of the Denotified Tribes is the worst. These tribes were regarded as prone to crime and the colonial rulers enacted the Criminal Tribes Act 1871 to keep a check on them. Under the Act, these communities

were defined as ‘addicted to systematic commission of non-bailable offences’ such as theft. Since they were described as ‘habitually criminal’, restrictions on their movements were also imposed. Often, the adult men were forced to report to the local police on a regular basis. However, an independent India annulled the Act which was described by Nehru as a blot on the law books of a free India. These tribes were ‘denotified’ and since then they have been referred to as ‘DNT’.

As many as 14 out of the 28 Nomadic Tribes in Andhra Pradesh,

Budubukkula nomadic artistes. Pic:Savio Mendes


are ‘DNT’s. These include Boya, Bavuri, Dandasi, Lambadi, Pardhi, Paidi, Picchakuntla, Waddera, Yerukula, Relli, Yata, Yanadi and, Dasari. However, this new identity has not helped them much in living down the stigma for even today the police consider them as the first suspects in cases of crime and they are routinely rounded up and questioned whenever a crime takes place in the neighbourhood of where these people live in towns and cities.

Such is the plight of the nomadic castes that most of them have no permanent address or a home; their children don’t attend school as their families don’t stay in a place long enough for the children to attend school and develop an interest in studies. Besides, since parents earn a pittance, the children are put to work or made to beg to supplement the meagre earnings of the parents. These families have no access to a ration card as it requires a permanent address, which the nomadic castes don’t have. Nor do they have voter id cards for the same reason. This means that they cannot access any government welfare programme. It also means that they are not in the reckoning of the political parties that normally woo people for their votes.

The backwardness of these communities lead to caste panchayats holding sway on the people. These panchayats discourage people from approaching police and continue to use superstitious methods to determine the innocence or guilt of a person. The primitive methods include holding a red-hot iron crowbar or dipping one’s hand in hot oil, according to leaders of these communities. Some of these castes live in abject poverty: one

of their leaders did not attend a roundtable meeting of nomadic castes organised in Hyderabad recently as part of the first attempts to organize themselves to bring about a change in their situation. The leader of the Mandula caste, people who hawk indigenous medicines, could not even afford the bus fare to attend the meeting.

Incidentally, this writer had the good fortune to be invited to this roundtable. The extent of their marginalization may be understood from the fact that in all my 30-odd years of newspaper reporting, this was the first meeting of nomadic castes I was attending. The reason was simple: it was the first roundtable organized by a few men who had

the time, means and importantly, the awareness and concern to discuss the issues plaguing their communities and seek solutions.

Odde Narendar, President of the Struggle Committee for the Rights of Nomadic Castes, the first ever organisation for nomadic castes in Hyderabad, believes that they have not moved with the times because no leader emerged from their ranks. They have no role model to emulate or any mentor to inspire and guide them, as the Dalits had in B R Ambedkar.

Leaders of the various nomadic castes pointed out how these castes lagged behind others in modern times such as Dalits and Lambadas. The latter have gone a long way in overcoming societal prejudices mainly because



of leaders and mentors who showed the way in recent times. Traditionally castes like toddy tappers and Lambadas have had ‘gurus’ who guided their people. But the nomadic castes had none, either then or in the modern era. “Our people have no awareness of their rights. We have had no one to guide and inspire us, to give courage and strength to demand our due from the government,” said Narendar.

In the pre-modern days, the nomadic castes had a role to play in society: each caste

fulfilled a need; each caste had a social duty and role assigned to it. But modernization rendered redundant several of these tasks or roles. To cite a few examples: entertainers such as the Gangireddula people who trained bulls to do impossible tricks, or those like the Dommara whose women and children were trained to walk on the rope now have no takers; Mandula people who were itinerant dispensers of traditional cures and medicines, Picchakuntala people who held audiences in thrall with their

story-telling and narration of local histories of people and events have been rendered jobless. Modernisation has destroyed these caste professions and made beggars of the people. According to the leaders of the nomadic castes, an overwhelming majority of beggars in all major cities across India are nomadic men, women and children.

To add to their woes, some of these castes have not yet been able to live down the negative image they acquired when the colonial rulers labelled them as criminals.


Above: Gangireddula artistes making the bull do tricks.

Top right: Getting the Gangireddu or bull ready for display.

Right below: Nomadic people singing for a living. Pic:Savio Mendes


Even today, people in urban areas are deeply suspicious of these castes and deny them even casual jobs, often forcing these people to lie about their caste. Some other tribes, such as those rearing pigs, have been victimised by the authorities. In the past few years, from 2005 onwards, whenever diseases like dengue, encephalitis or chikungunya have broken out affecting people on a large scale, pigs have been identified as the cause behind the spread of these diseases and hence, a threat to public health. Consequently, pig-rearing communities such as Yerukulas were hounded out of their villages and settlements in cities and in some instances, their only assets - their animals - were rounded up and killed.

What can be done to improve the lot of these nomadic people? They continue their way of life because they know of no other. Some castes and some groups have settled down in towns and villages but they continue to depend on their traditional professions which barely allow them to eke out a livelihood. Those who have given up their traditional profession have now taken to cleaning the city as rag-pickers or have managed to get regular earning through the municipal bodies of urban and semi-urban areas as garbage-collectors, going from house to house. Yet, the majority of the nomadic people remain outside the purview of any official scheme.

Their leaders believe that the Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes and Backward Castes - whom they call the ‘children of the government’ - benefitted from special residential hostels, schools and colleges, financial corporations and housing corporations reserved for them.

They too need such a helping hand. “Let the government hold our hand for just one generation; we will then put our past behind and make our future,” said Narasimha, President of Gangireddula Caste Welfare Society who is now considered among the elite since he owns and runs a taxi in Hyderabad and whose son attends college, one of the very few Gangireddula children to have crossed that rubicon of college education.

For the government to wake up, perhaps the push has to come from political parties for which the nomadic castes have to emerge as a vote bank; as Narasimha said. “Only then the politicians will recognise us,” he said. For which they would have to mobilize themselves, unite and show value as voters. They have taken the first step, a very small albeit important step of vocalizing their concerns and seeking redressal.

Postscript: How I discovered the existence of Nomadic Tribes

I am amazed at how some communities have lived literally in isolation although they are fairly visible physically. I was a press reporter for a little more than three decades, mostly reporting events and people of Andhra Pradesh. Yet, it was a casual attendance at a roundtable discussion that made me aware of the issues ofÂ the Gangireddula people and other nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes in the AP.

I had seen the Gangireddu, a bull that is trained to do various tricks and is believed to be auspicious, bringing good luck to those who respect and worship it, I knew of its significance since it had strong links to my home town of Nizamabad in the Telangana region of Andhra Pradesh. Around the Sankranti festival in


Some castes have settled

down in towns and villages but

they continue to depend on

their traditional professions

which barely allow them to eke out a

livelihood. Those who have

given up their profession have

now taken to cleaning the city

as rag-pickers or working as door-to-

door garbage-collectors.



AP which is a harvest festival, the Gangireddula people go with their bull which is decorated in brightly coloured clothes from house to house playing the shehnai to herald celebration and cheer. Women and men worship the bull which represents vitality and strength; they pray to the bull to bless them with plenty and continued prosperity of their family. One had heard, read and discussed the rehabilitation of the so-called criminal tribe of Yerukulas. But the Round Table discussion opened up a hitherto unknown world of neglect, poverty, discrimination and marginalisation of a large number of people of so many different castes.

In the three decades of news reporting that I have done, I travelled the length and breadth of AP, came across many people who deserved to be reported and indeed, reported and wrote extensively on the injustice, exploitation and suffering of the weakest in the society. Yet, I hadn’t come across anybody, either in government or political circles, among social activists or the NGO community __ these are the usual sources for reporters who put us on to a ‘story’__ who articulated the issues of the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes. What does this mean? It simply means that the issues and concerns of these communities who lived on the margins of society, were not mainstreamed. They had not come to the notice of those who fight for the rights of the under-privileged.

Just like themselves, the problems of the nomadic and semi-nomadic communities too were marginalised among the large number of groups and organisations who make it their

business to take up the issues of the marginalised people. The issue came to light only when a few individuals among these communities assumed leadership to demand their rights and organised small meetings in Hyderabad with the help of academics and activists from their own and similarly oppressed communities who had come up despite the prejudices and poverty.

As a reporter, I have seen abject poverty and heard many a heart-rending account of the wretched lives that the poor lead in our country. But the lives of the nomadic tribes seem to be apart from the rest. They are the invisible people of our land, existing in flesh and blood and yet not in the eyes of the rest of the society.

As I researched the issues of the nomadic and semi-nomadic tribes and interacted with them, several things began to fall in place for me. As a child growing up in a small town, even if one went to an elite school in Hyderabad, one would sometimes be abused or hear others being abused without understanding the meaning of the abuses hurled. A youngster who rarely stayed at home was called “pardesi,” another name for the nomadic people who were at the bottom-most rung of the society. A rebellious girl would be termed “Jogudana,” that is a Jogin.Â Any small task or negligible amount of anything or anything of low value would be dismissed as “Picchakuntla,” another nomadic tribe. Any colourful dress would be sarcastically equated with the Gangireddula dress as comical or garish.Â Only now all of it falls into place: that the words of abuse were derogatory of the lifestyle and livelihood and poverty of the poorest of the poor;

contemptuous of the so-called ‘low’ or ‘untouchable’ castes. They denoted the undesirability of the professions that they practised that had been imposed on them since times immemorial. Â

It seems like time has stood still for these nomadic castes: they continue to be unrecognised, demeaned, and shunned by mainstream society.

dr. r. akhileShwari is a journalist and academic based in Hyderabad.

Support IndependentJournalism

Dear Reader,

Haven’t you wondered how India Together’s operations are

financed? Perhaps you’ve asked yourself what you could do to support

this publication. Well, you’re on the right page. India Together is largely

funded by annual financial contributions from readers like you. Your

participation and support is vital; it helps India Together bring you news

and in-depth views on the issues that matter, every day. If you haven’t

already done so this year, make your contribution today, and together

we can keep public interest news, information and advocacy where they

belong - in front of citizens, who can then make informed choices for

their own interests, and to promote the public good.

— [email protected]

Make your annual contribution | Basic: Rs.500 | Recommended: Rs.1000 | Friend: Rs.5000 or higher |Sponsor articles |

In IndiaIndia Together 1677, 17th Main Road J P Nagar II Phase Bangalore- 560078

Outside IndiaIndia Together PO Box 26254 San Diego CA 92196 USA

Oorvani Media Pvt LtdA/c no: 00532020001014HDFC Bank, BangaloreCurrent AccountIFSC Code: HDFC0000053 (For RTGS/NEFT)

facebook.com/IndiaTogether.org

twitter.com/itdotorgwww.indiatogether.org

Documents

India together digital edition 16 March 2013