India Together P Sainath

8/3/2019 India Together P Sainath

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Celeb crusades & the death of politics

P. Sainath

The Lok Sabha constituencies of Mumbai averaged over 60 per cent voting

between 1957 and 1977. All years of politics, workers rights, unions, historic

policy decisions, rising consciousness and ideological debates.

The barrage of celebrity propaganda to get out there to vote had an impact

in Mumbai. Voting fell by 6 per cent. Well, okay, thats being facetious. But had

the voting risen, it would certainly have been credited in good measure to the

celebrity campaigns, 26/11 and the medias untiring appeals to an ungrateful

electorate. Urged by a special song campaign from a well-meaning Bangalore-based rock band to Shut up and vote, too many Mum baikars paid heed to

only the first part of that exhortation. (As did voters in Bangalore, too.) In

Mumbai, voting was 41.41 per cent this time around as compared to 47.15 per

cent in 2004.

Corporate medias cutest efforts failed to arrest a decline in voting percentage.

Nor did corporate-sponsored events and NGO activism fare any better. The

Facebook fraternity, and e-activism didnt come out of it too well either (raisingquestions about real IT penetration even in this wealthy city). That was so even in

the constituency that received more space and time than any other south

Mumbai, which saw 40.33 per cent polling (2004: 44.22%). Nor did the expected

level of anger over 26/11 materialise much beyond the television studios.

There is now a similar trauma over 30/04 (voting day). Many rural constituencies

in Maharashtra, despite a relative fall in turnout, saw higher voting than Mumbai.

Even after the polling day, the focus was on how Bollywood stepped up to the

challenge of voting. The largest English daily (including its captive tabloid and

city supplement) had as many as 11 items across 8 pages on celebrity, mostly

Bollywood, voting in Mumbai. These ran with heaps of pictures, featuring around


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50 film world personae and assorted other celebs, kicking off with the main

front-page photograph.

Just in case this was all too subtle for readers, the items ran helpful headlines.

Bollyvote. Filmdom flashes finger with pride. City hi-fliers step out to

get inked. What a star cast. And Glam quotient: Mumbais celebrities

step out in style. One small item framed Shilpa Shettys edict that elections

have to be taken seriously. She regretted being unable to follow this advice

herself, being in Durban for the IPL.

Ms Shetty is not alone, though. Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar did vote

in the earlier round, but whizzed off to Durban less than a week later. The

national leader and potential Prime Minister had pressing business there. Um,

yes, with the IPL. And so he left to attend to it before the Mumbai voting, leaving

the slog overs to the tail-enders.

My favourite, though, was the charge of the Lightbulb Brigade on television. One

celebrity urged everybody to vote. I vote every year, he said earnestly. Every

year? Oh, the blessings of democracy. Another phrased it better, saying he voted

every time. (Though, given his age, it couldnt have been too many times.)

On the whole, slumdogs vote in larger numbers than the white-ribbon,

candlelight crowds do. The final figure of a constituency is an average of how its

different segments, sections and socio-economic groups voted. Even Malabar

Hill has many poor voters. Generally, the poor vote in greater numbers. (The rich

capture governments by other means.) The poor usually want to use the vote. It

is the one instrument of democracy they get to exercise. But across the country,

not just in Mumbai, millions are affected when elections are held in April-May. Itis around this time that many regions see their largest exodus of migrant labour.

Those workers do not get to vote. We take school and college examination

schedules into account while fixing poll dates and rightly so. But we take no

note of the survival schedules of the poor.


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In the diverse city of Mumbai, more than half the population lives in the slums

and on the streets. Many who would vote are not registered. Several have had

their status questioned. More so after slum demolitions, shifting and multiple

relocations. Many, even if they are registered to vote in Mumbai, tend to go back

to their villages (in Maharashtra or elsewhere) when given a break as in this

times four-day weekend. So even voting among the poorer sections is affected.

April-May is also the marriage season in many parts of the country. In Vidarbha,

for instance, priests and astrologers had long ago declared April 16 (the voting

day there) to be one of the most auspicious days for weddings. That too impacts

on voting. The horoscope seers, alas, also fail each time to inform the Election

Commission that temperatures of 46 degrees Celsius do not throw up the mostauspicious days for voting. For the urban middle classes, this is vacation time.

Nobody sees it as a great time to vote. But with Mumbais Beautiful People,

having whipped up a lather over how things have changed with 26/11, a

sense of letdown is inescapable. It is also, given the realities, quite overdone.

There is even, face it, the apathy of the comfortable. Those who might well

explode in drawing-room or television studio outrage about high taxes and

26/11. But who see no real need to fiddle with the status quo. The comfort zone

classes exist and are more urban than rural. See the difference between voting in

rural Karnataka and Bangalore.

There is also, for the non-comfort zone classes, the small matter of issues. When

last did the problems of food price rise, BPL cards, or ration quotas, dominate

campaigns in either the Lok Sabha or the State Assembly polls? Or those of,

sanitation, water, housing, demolitions and jobs? For millions in Indias

megapolis, as elsewhere, these are very real issues. Its a long time since anyone

in Mumbai articulated a vision that integrates these basics into a national

platform or perspective. The same failure also helped produce lower voting in

other towns and even rural regions beyond Mumbai.


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It has much to do with the death of politics. Even the BJPs Hindutva crusade

and the Shiv Senas shrillest campaigns in the 1980s and 1990s did not result in

Mumbais best voter turnouts. Has low voting always been the rule here? No.

The Lok Sabha constituencies of Mumbai averaged over 60 per cent voting for 20

years between 1957 and 1977. All years of politics, workers rights, unions, historic

policy decisions and rising consciousness. There were ideological debates around

economic, social and foreign policy. In this city, Krishna Menon took on J.B.

Kripalani and George Fernandes slugged it out with S.K. Patil. The ordinary

Mumbaikars level of political participation was stunning.

Bollywood did not rule although even the films of the time were more

ideological. Sure, jobs, hunger, rations, food prices are local issues evenhighly personal ones. They are also intensely national problems as well. (Last

year, food prices were a global issue.) The price of bread has often proved the

price of power.

In the present round, many well-meaning awareness-raising groups brought

no politics to their voting drive. Vote, you must vote! Dont fail to vote. For

whom? For what? And why? One critic likened this to urging people to rush to

get married without knowing who their partners might be. At points, the

campaigns even raised this sense in young people of voting to feel good

about yourself. Not for any political reason. Some of the groups asked voters to

focus on the individual candidates. Not his or her political platform. So its okay

if your clean candidate has a genocidal political agenda. This cannot help

much with a young generation already depoliticised. And exposed daily to the

media scorn of politics and all that goes with it.

In Mumbai, perhaps, the voting would have been higher had Vilasrao

Deshmukhs government still been around. One of that gentlemans last acts

as Chief Minister was to visit the Taj Hotel after the terror attacks with his film

actor son and a prominent Bollywood film maker, offending just about


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everybody. Had he remained in power after that, there might have been higher

polling in the city. Against the Congress.

At the end of it, voting levels fell in Mumbai. And elsewhere, too. It was curious

then, to see one discussion on Maharashtra on television. The panellists

wondered if the prospect of Mr. Pawar as Prime Minister would evoke a burst of

Maharashtrian pride. And if this would see the NCP-Congress alliance make huge

gains. (As the channels opinion poll suggested it would.) Now, the alliance

could indeed make gains in the State, but would that be the reason? Problem:

the decline in voting in Mr. Pawars bastions in western Maharashtra has been,

in relative terms, even greater than that in Mumbai. In Baramati, that decline

(compared to 2004) was over six per cent. In Satara, over seven per cent. InSangli over eight per cent and in Solapur over 10 per cent. If that is an outburst

of pride, it is a very humble pride. Try issues, ideology, politics and decent

election schedules. That could bring out far more voters any day, in Mumbai or

elsewhere.

OPINION

The dull days of White Gold

Across India, cotton growers make up the largest group of the over 180,000

farmers who committed suicide between 1997 and 2007. There's nothing like an

election to spur policy change, though, notes P Sainath.

08 April 2009 - They called it White Gold. In 1972, you could buy 15 grams of

gold with what you earned from producing one quintal of cotton. In Vidarbha,

for instance, you made Rs.340 for that quintal (long staple). And gold went atRs.220 for 10 grams (Rs.330 for 15). True, the cotton growers were even then

subsidising rich textile barons in Mumbai. They still do - a lot more, in fact. But

'back then' seems a lot better right now, relatively speaking.


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By the 1990s, that trend had been reversed. From the 1970s to mid-1985, cotton

was, as Vijay Jawandia calls it, "the poor man's cloth." Man-made fabric was all

the rage. By the end of the 1980s, however, a growing bias towards natural fibre

saw cotton emerge as the rich man's cloth. All the big brand names were cashing

in on cotton. Yet, cotton farmers in the poorer nations were doing worse.

Corporations and traders were doing better. By the mid to late 1990s, obscene

subsidies to cotton growers from the United States and the European Union

were already pulling the prices downwards.

By 2005, you needed to sell five quintals of cotton to buy 15 grams of gold. By

early 2008, gold was at Rs.12,125 for 10 grams, cotton at Rs. 2000 a quintal. You

now needed to sell nine quintals of cotton to buy 15 grams of gold. The livingstandards of farmers in cotton-growing regions like Vidarbha had fallen sharply.

Cotton prices and incomes were crashing, debt and cultivation costs soaring. The

2004 Lok Sabha polls saw a wave of farmer anger - and the BSP's rise - bludgeon

the Congress. The BJP-Shiv Sena alliance won 10 of the then 11 seats in

Vidarbha.

But in the Maharashtra Assembly polls just months later, the Congress did better.

It took 30 of the 66 seats from the region. True, Sonia Gandhi's visit had a huge

impact in this traditionally pro-Congress cotton belt. Turning down prime

ministership further enhanced the respect she enjoyed there. But the Congress

campaign captured voters with a single promise. It would raise the cotton prices

- then Rs.2200 a quintal - to Rs.2700. That promise was to be betrayed just

months after the polls - with terrible consequences.

In Maharashtra, cotton never received the support that sugarcane did. It was

grown in poor regions by dryland farmers with far less political clout than the

Pawars of western Maharashtra. As India embraced neo-liberal globalism, that

clout waned further. On the one hand, cotton-growers were locked into the

volatility of global prices. On the other, input costs were exploding. Local seed

cost around Rs.9 a kilogram in 1991. By 2004, commercial seed had taken over


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and could cost as much as Rs.1,650 to Rs.1,800 for just 450 grams, thanks to

Monsanto's Bt cotton. State intervention later brought the price down to half

that. But the damage had been done. And even today's price of Rs.650-850 for

less than half a kg is still many times higher than Rs.9 a kg. In Maharashtra, the

State actively promoted the costly Bt seed, its own agency being a distributor.

Huge sums also went to promoting it by using film stars as "brand

ambassadors."

Other inputs, fertilizer, pesticide, utilities like water and electricity, all saw a big

rise in costs from the mid to late 1990s. Cotton covers about 5 per cent of

cultivable area in India, but accounts for 55 per cent of all pesticides used. (That

is in itself a huge problem with alarming long-term consequences for agriculture,environment and health as a whole.) With the massive spread of these, it is no

surprise that most farmers taking their lives swallowed chemical pesticides to do

so. They are so easy to access, perhaps far more so in this sector.

Successive Indian governments did nothing to stop the dumping of subsidised

U.S. cotton in this country. There are no duties on import of cotton today. India is

the second biggest producer of what is one of the world's most widely traded

commodities. Yet between 1997-98 and 2004-05, we imported 115 lakh bales.

That is, over three times the number we did in the preceding 25 years. This cheap

imported cotton further devastated growers here. At the same time, like millions

of other small farmers, they found bank loans harder and harder to access as

rural credit shrank - by policy. Credit was increasingly diverted towards urban-

metro consumption. Many farmers turned to moneylenders, ending up mired in

debt.

While poor cotton farmers never developed much political and electoral clout,

traders and textile barons did. Even if the barons were to pay a slightly better

price - say an additional Rs.2 per metre of raw material went to the farmer - it

would make a difference. It never happened.


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By 2005, cotton prices collapsed. That's when the Maharashtra government

withdrew the Rs.500 per quintal "advance bonus" normally tagged on to the

minimum support price (MSP) in the State. This saw the price plunging to

Rs.1,700 a quintal. (Gold was at Rs.6,180 for ten grams.) Suicides in Vidarbha,

already rising, shot up massively.

By September 2006, farmers in that region were killing themselves at the rate of

one every six hours on average. The Vilasrao Deshmukh government had

withdrawn the advance bonus in 2005 despite appeals from cotton growers, the

National Commission for Farmers and many others. The next year, Vidarbha,

indeed all of Maharashtra, recorded its worst rise in farm suicides ever. If the

Deshmukh government could get away with that, it was because cotton had nostrong lobby. Its electoral clout was feeble.

Across India, cotton growers make up the largest group of the over 180,000

farmers who committed suicide between 1997 and 2007. The cumulative impact

of all these processes was crushing farmers locked into this model of production

and into neo-liberal economics. In Vidarbha, for the first time ever, farmers grew

more soybean than cotton as losses on the latter were killing them, literally.

There's nothing like an election to spur policy change, though. In the run-up year

to the polls, the Union government came through with its Rs.71,000 crore loan

waiver for indebted farmers. In Maharashtra, the lion's share of that waiver's

benefits went to just seven of the State's 35 districts, none of them in the poor

cotton-growing regions of Vidarbha and Marathwada. Most of them within the

power base of Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar. And all this was about

bank debt. Moneylender debt was not touched. Still, there was some relief.

The main loan waiver excluded those owning more than five acres. This penalised

some of the poorest farmers. In unirrigated regions, even poor farmers tend to

own more acres as productivity is so low. The government did respond to

demands that dryland cultivators not be penalised for having more than five


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acres. After all, polls were now months away. The write-off that followed of

Rs.20,000 for such farmers did help a significant group of growers in Vidarbha.

And there was also some money that trickled down from even the awfully flawed

packages.

Then came a healthy rise in cotton prices. The shifting of huge swathes of land in

the U.S. to bio-fuel production pushed up prices last year. And a nearly 50 per

cent rise in the MSP for cotton took the price to Rs.3,000 per quintal. In Vidarbha,

it meant that about seven months of 2008 were the best period the region had

seen in years. No basic problem had been resolved, but it brought some relief

and reduced the stifling pressure. A pity it took so many deaths - and election

year - for that to happen.

The rise in MSP to Rs.3,000 was also an admission of how disastrous the

Deshmukh government's torpedoing the price to Rs.1700 a quintal had been.

And the removal of that Chief Minister also won the region's approval.

To what extent this helps the Congress in these Lok Sabha polls is hard to gauge.

There is the BSP factor that is very real and could mess up all bets. (It played a

big role in 2004, too. In four seats, the BSP polled far more votes than the marginof defeat of Congress-NCP candidates.) But the Congress faces less hostility than

it did three years ago. Whether it can play that to its advantage is another

question. And the long-term future of White Gold here is an even bigger one.

DEVELOPMENT INDICATORS

HDI Oscars: Slumdogs versus millionaires

What does it mean to rank much better on GDP per capita than in the HDI, as wedo? It means we have been less successful in converting income into human

development, writes P Sainath.

19 March 2009 - It has been the night of the long knives for our burgeoning


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billionaire population. Its band has just been devastated, falling by more than

half from 53 to 24. The latest Croesus Count, also known as the Forbes

Billionaires list, makes that much clear. We also fell by two notches to the sixth

rank in the list of nations with the most billionaires. Our earlier No. 4 slot being

slyly usurped by the Chinese who clock in with 29. More mortifying, we are a

rung below the Brits who've grabbed Perch number 5, with 25.

The net asset worth of India's brightest and best has also shrunk by over a third

from the time of the last Forbes scroll. By 2007, that worth had reached $335

billion. That is, 53 individuals in a population of one billion held wealth equal to

almost a third of their nation's GDP at the time. This year, that worth plunged to

$107 billion. (A moment's respectful silence in memory of the dear, departedbillions seems in order.) But there is some comfort in that our team is still worth

more than twice what its Chinese rivals are. And we even now have eight

billionaires more than all the Nordic nations put together - though they boast

the highest living standards in the world.

"Four Indians were among the world's top ten richest in 2008, worth a combined

$160 billion," points out Forbes. Today, alas, "that same foursome is worth just

$54 billion." But the 29 Indian tycoons reduced to the penury of mere

millionairehood should not lose heart. Forbes offers us these words of

reassurance. "The winds of wealth can change quickly ? They may yet again blow

favourably in the direction of these tycoons." So what if the big balances fly at

half mast briefly? There could be gales ahead.

Alongside this grim tragedy runs a slightly longer-term saga. India has fallen to

132 in the new rankings of the United Nations Human Development Index (HDI)

for 179 nations. Each year since 1990, the U.N. Development Programme has

brought us this index, as a part of its Human Development Report. The HDI

"looks beyond GDP to a broader definition of well-being." It seeks to capture

"three dimensions of human development: a long and healthy life (measured by

life expectancy at birth). Being educated (measured by adult literacy and


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enrolment in primary, secondary and tertiary education). And third: GDP per

capita measured in U.S. dollars at Purchasing Power Parity (PPP)."

Worst in a decade

In the Index of 2007-08, India ranked a dismal 128. Now we're at 132. That is our

worst ever grade on the Index this decade. It means, among other things, that

little Bhutan, never once in the Forbes hall of fame, has trumped us in the new

HDI rankings. The tiny Himalayan nation clocks in at 131. That is, a notch above

its "second-fastest-growing-economy-in the-world" neighbour. Bhutan once

languished amongst the bottom 15 nations in the U.N.'s HDI. It has never been

among the world's fastest growing economies.

At rank 132, India also lags behind war-ravaged Congo, Botswana, and Bolivia.

(The last is often called Latin America's poorest nation). The Occupied Territories

of Palestine (torn by conflict for 60 years) are also ahead of us. Another

neighbour - Sri Lanka - has been devastated by war for over two decades and

has slipped a few notches. It still logs in at 104 - 28 rungs above India. Vietnam

suffered casualties in millions in the war waged against it by the United States.

Decades after, its agriculture is yet to recover from the planned destruction,lethal bombing, and the conscious use of deadly poisons. But Vietnam clocks in

at 114. And China at 94 despite falling several places.

The bad news about the bad news is that these figures reflect the good news

days. They relate to the year 2006. (The Sensex was booming. It breached the

10,000 and even 14,000-mark for the first time ever. The Indian economy also

grew at 9.6 per cent in 2006-07 and 9.4 per cent in 2005-06.) Those were the

glory days our 132nd rank is rooted in. The same period when we churned out 53dollar billionaires. So the updated HDI numbers do not begin to capture the

economic downturn. The picture will be even less pretty when those factors kick

in.


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They do capture, though, the revised purchasing power parity (PPP) estimates

that clocked in by late 2007. These columns foretold this problem at the time. It

was clear that if the Index was using the older PPP data, then "even our awful

HDI performance could get worse" once those were revised. (India's GDP per

capita (PPP) fell from $3452 to $2489 with the new data.)

And yet, we'd be even lower down than rank 132 but for our showing on the

GDP-per capita front. Even now, our rank on that front is six notches higher than

our HDI rank. It makes us look better than we are. For instance, in making out the

current rankings, U.N. researchers point out that the GDP per capita data for

2006 "caused India to rise one place." But "new data (for 2006) on life expectancy

caused India to fall one place." India then also fell two more places as two morenations - Montenegro and Serbia - joined the list. Both fared better than we did.

We fell a further two places "as a result of revised PPP estimates." That's how we

ended up four slots below our last rank.

What does it mean to rank much better on GDP per capita than in the HDI, as we

do? It means you have been less successful in converting income into human

development. Our GDP per capita rank is six rungs above our HDI rank.

Vietnam's HDI rank of 114 is 15 rungs above its GDP per capita rank. Unlike us,

Vietnam has - despite awful historic handicaps - converted its wealth into human

development far better.

Cuba logs in at 48, thus breaking into the top 50 nations in the HDI. (While India

firms up its place in the bottom 50.) That's seven places above wealthy Saudi

Arabia, whose per capita GDP is three times higher than Cuba's. In that ranking,

Saudi Arabia is No. 35, towering above Cuba's 88. But when it comes to human

development, Saudi Arabia lags seven rungs below Cuba. Apart from suffering

lower income, Cuba has lived under crippling sanctions for decades. Sanctions

that have imposed huge constraints and high prices on all essentials. Yet, life

expectancy at birth in Cuba is now 77.9 years. That's almost the same as the U.S.

(78). And about 14 years better than India's 64.1.


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Meanwhile, the U.S. has logged its worst rank ever, falling to 15 from 12.

Between 1995 and 2000, the U.S. was always in the top 5, even staying at rank 2

for a couple of years. Like with India, its decline in HDI has come in the very years

seen as its best, the Golden Age of the Free Market. The Nirvana point of neo-

liberalism. A year into the economic reforms, India in 1992 ranked 121 among

160 nations then covered by the Index. Today, India is at 132 among 179 nations.

Straight comparisons across that time are hard as the Index has changed in

numbers and methodology. But the trend is clearly not joyous.

Steady decline

The HDI figures since 2002 signal a steady decline in the nation's conversion of

wealth into human development - even as the numbers of its billionaires and

millionaires doubled and trebled. Now the billionaires have shrunk in number,

but not the slumdogs. There are at least 836 million Indians living on less than

Rs.20 a day, as the government's own report told us in 2007. Over 200 million of

those get by on less than Rs.12 daily. And those are pre-downturn numbers, too.

Maybe, we need a new Forbes 500 list - naming the world's 500 poorest citizens.

Who could beat us on that one?

ECONOMIC MELTDOWN

Whose crisis is it, anyway?

Through January the US has seen the loss of 17,000 jobs every day since the

meltdown began in September. Here in India, too, things are slipping but the

lessons remain unlearnt, writes P Sainath.

15 February 2009 - Many find it amusing that it took officials 11 months to

declare a "recession" in the United States. Yet, it took more than 20 years to

recognise worse. When does a crisis become "A Crisis?" First came ?the boom' -

exploding debt, crazy credit, insane speculation, a finance sector gone berserk

even as manufacturing declined. Then the doom - as multiple bubbles burst.


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Massive job losses, a credit crunch, a huge breakdown. These are some features

of the ?Crisis' that has struck the U.S. since September.

But some of those problems, certainly ruin of industry and job losses, have

plagued other, poorer nations for close to two decades now. Some even saw

doom without a boom. When imposed on those societies we didn't call these

problems a crisis. We called them "reforms." Or the painful fallout of necessary

"adjustment." When they come home to roost in Wall Street, we call it a crisis.

Simply put, a crisis becomes a crisis when it hits the suits. Even within those

nations on which it was imposed, the poor and hungry were devastated years

before the well-off found crisis on their menu. Indeed, the predicament faced by

poor people translated into the "success stories" of those elites.

Remember The Crisis that struck India in 1991? The then Finance Minister, a Dr.

M. Singh, told us that our balance of payments problem and shrinking forex

reserves were truly a crisis. These, he said, called for reforms on a war footing.

Oddly, 400 million human beings going to bed hungry every night was never

thought of as a crisis. Certainly not one to be dealt with on a war footing.

Within India, rural despair and breakdown meant little. Crisis is when the Sensextanks. It took over a decade of intense misery before a Prime Minister figured out

there were problems in the countryside. Which he then tried tackling with

makeshift "relief packages" thinly spread out across hundreds of millions of

people. (Even the much-needed NREGA only happened due to arm-twisting

allies.) But much larger "stimulus" packages, aimed mostly at the narrow

corporate world, happen in a jiffy. And Finance Ministers are quick to descend on

Dalal Street within hours of a hiccup on the Sensex. They do so, as the media

tenderly put it, "to soothe the market's nerves." Recall the short eight-day

session of Parliament in 2004? It followed the historic elections of that year. The

then Finance Minister was absent on the first day of that session. He was

consoling the distraught millionaires of Dalal Street. The delicate sentiment of

the Market had been wounded by the democratic sentiments of the Indian voter.


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Even today, debate on the ?crisis' in the U.S. centres around how to help the

banks and other financial bodies back on their feet. And that with few

preconditions or questions asked. Forays into the most painful part of it - the

staggering job losses - are infrequent. These are often mentioned in news items,

and now form the rationale for the American Recovery & Reinvestment Act. But

it is still very hard to push through the modest measures to help those crushed

by the crisis - despite popular support for it. In any case, the jobs crisis never

gets the priority that Wall Street's does.

Since the meltdown began in September, the U.S. economy has seen the loss, on

average, of around 17,000 jobs a day. Move the baseline to November 1 and job

losses have averaged more than 19,000 a day. And the trend is getting worse.Close to 2.6 million jobs have been lost since just September. Over 1.7 million of

those have vanished over the last three months. January saw the loss, on

average, of more than 800 jobs every hour.

'Understated'

Paul Craig Roberts, who was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury in the Reagan

White House, notes that even these numbers "are likely understated." Writing inCounterpunch.org, Mr. Roberts sums up the message of those who use un-

massaged job loss data: If we revert to the methodology used in the U.S. in 1980

- before the government started fiddling definitions of joblessness - the U.S.

unemployment rate would be not 7.2 per cent but 17.5 per cent.

In India, too, job losses are now finding some mention. When covered in the

media, it's mostly about jobs in the IT sector. Or those lost in related fields in the

organised sector. While these are not small, only a handful of reports look at theawful hit taken, for instance, by migrant labourers. Millions of these are people

who left their villages seeking work when there was no other option. They found

it in construction, in laying roads and other poorly paid work. And, keeping afloat

in oppressive conditions, many still managed to send something back to their


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families. Now, as one of them told us: "There is nothing to send back to the

village and nothing to go back to the village for." And what about all those small

farmers who moved towards growing cash crops for export markets that have

collapsed? And do we get to ask questions of the policy experts who brought it

all to this point?

Somewhere in there persists a fond and smug belief that our innate cleverness

has saved India from all those bad things out there. "What slowdown?" crowed

one daily, pointing to the sums spent at IPL's "auctions." If our barons could

spend millions of dollars acquiring a clutch of foreign cricketers, it reasoned,

things couldn't be so bad. Never mind that some of the franchisees may have

laid off lots of workers, and slashed the salaries of many others. Spending threemillion dollars on just a couple of players is worth seeing in that context, but it

won't be. Some sections of the media celebrating the IPL's success as proof of

the economy's vibrancy are themselves laying off many journalists and other

workers.

But our elite believe that CEOs lead or should lead a charmed life. Remember

their outrage when Prime Minister Manmohan Singh - otherwise a darling of the

corporate media - made a few bleats of protest about CEO salaries getting, er, a

wee bit too large? That other media icon, Dr. Narayana Murthy of Infosys was not

spared either when he called for some restraint in CEO feeding frenzy. "Pay

peanuts, get monkeys" spat one contemptuous editorial. (Never mind that such

publications have paid gold and got gorillas.) Now there is coverage, without

much comment, of the bumbling efforts at curbing CEO pay in the U.S.

Corporate kleptocracy

Meanwhile, U.S. banks and CEOs continue to educate us on the culture of

corporate kleptocracy. Take Citigroup, which hogged $45 billion of public money

at the bailout trough. Soon after, it sought to spend $50 million on a corporate

jet - a move that had to be squelched at the level of the Treasury Secretary. The


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now disgraced CEO of Merrill Lynch, John Thain, spent $1.22 million on

redecorating his office in early 2008. That is, even as he prepared to cut

thousands of jobs. The amount included purchase of an antique "commode on

legs." Heavy symbolism there, given the company was by then halfway down the

tube with massive losses. Less than a week after the U.S. government committed

$85 billion in bailout money to AIG, the insurance company's executives whizzed

off to a luxury resort where rooms could cost over $1000 a night. Blowout

followed bailout. Wells Fargo ($25 billion in bailout money) laid on a trip to Las

Vegas for its star execs.

Top bosses of New York financial firms paid themselves bonuses worth $18

billion in 2008. The kleptocrats clearly believe that the crisis - one that has theirpersonal stamp on it - is for others. They themselves flourish by divine right. And

the bailouts seem to confirm that. The very gangs that spurred the meltdown are

rewarded with huge amounts of taxpayer money so that they can go back to

doing the same things they were doing before.

Meanwhile tens of millions of human beings across the world stand to lose their

jobs. Many will descend into distress and chaos. The already hungry will have it

much worse. Whose crisis is it, anyway? U.S. economy its business as

unusual

P. Sainath

Things are not as bad as they seem for the U.S. economy. They are worse.

On average, the United States has seen the loss of nearly 14,000 jobs each day

since September 1. In 90 days from that date, close to 1.3 million Americans lost

their jobs. After weeks of headline-grabbing events on Wall Street, these

developments tend to recede into the background. Current estimates suggest

that over half a million Americans lost their jobs in November alone. Something

not seen in a single month since December 1974.


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Things are not as bad as they seem for the U.S. economy. They are worse. As the

data flow in, even estimates for earlier months have been revised sharply

upwards. The September job loss figure was recorded as 159,000 two months

ago. The Bureau of Labour Statistics now says the figure is 403,000. The first

figure for October was 240,000 jobs lost. Now it is 320,000. The unemployment

rate for teenagers, at 20.4 per cent, is three times the claimed national rate of 6.7

per cent. (This does not include those who have given up looking for work in

despair. Nor does it count those working far fewer hours than they need or

would like to.) A measure that includes such factors would raise the

unemployment rate to 12.5 per cent. Yet, even with this flawed measure, the rate

is at its highest in 15 years. There were 10.3 million jobless people in November

and that was 3.1 million more workers unemployed than just a year ago. Worse,

massive layoffs continue. Even the IT sector has lost thousands of jobs.

There are other icebergs ahead. This is winter, when at least two major sectors

agriculture and construction do not hire much. Come spring, and there will be

different benchmarks to test jobless figures against. There could also be a new

round of layoffs (in Retail, for instance) starting January after the last two major

holidays Christmas and New Year get over. Things might improve if the

new administration has massive programmes running by spring that help

millions return to work. Circumstances might force this administration to make

choices that could in America be denounced as Leftist. Not impossible but

on current evidence, tough. Huge job stimulus programmes, even if brought in,

would take time to work through. If Barack Obamas plan to create 3 million

jobs over the next two years works, it would still barely recover those that

vanished over the previous two.

The Federal Reserve has cut interest rates to between 0 and 0.25 per cent.

(Leading one wit to declare that the Fed is now the only institution truly

attempting Islamic Banking.) It believes the positive results of this will be seen

in time. However, this will not solve the credit crunch the problem of banks

fearful or unwilling to lend to those who currently need it. The mortgage and


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other crises show no major signs of a let-up. Even if all the measures of the Bush

and the incoming Obama administration work, it wont be a return to business

as usual. For tens of millions of people, life might never be the same again.

The housing mortgage crisis still burns. Six million people could lose their homes

over the next two years. And the credit card crisis, already setting in, could strike

sharply in a few months. That hit would encompass far more people than

housing would, even if the amounts involved (and impact on the financial

markets) are smaller. As Business Weekputs it: Making matters worse, the

subprime threat is also greater in credit-card land. Risky borrowers with low

credit scores account for roughly 30% of outstanding credit-card debt, compared

with 11% of mortgage debt. This is a country where almost everybody usescredit cards (often several of them).

If job losses continue to mount at their present pace, the card catastrophe will

accelerate. Those out of work will not be able to meet their payments. They could

also find it hard to purchase essentials and would likely fall deeper into debt. This

was a sector already headed for crisis for quite some time. In some estimates,

U.S. credit card debt grew from $211 billion in 2002 to $915 billion by the end of

2007. When this house of cards falls, it will spur further the home mortgage mess

and the recession already under way. There are those making their housing

payments off their credit cards at huge interest.

Meanwhile, the emphasis right through has been on bailing out the financial

giants. (An Institute for Policy Studies report notes that the U.S. and European

governments are set to spend 40 times more to rescue financial firms than to

fight climate and poverty crises in the developing world.) And yet, daily, new

scandals emerge from Wall Street. Both from the banks and other types of

operations. The billions paid out as bonuses to executives have not been

reversed even when the profits for which these bonuses were rewards

have proved illusory. Merrill Lynch, as the New York Timespoints out, handed


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out $5 billion to $6 billion in bonuses in 2006. But Merrills record earnings in

2006 $7.5 billion turned out to be a mirage.

It is only now that the obscene compensation for CEOs and top executives is a

matter of limited debate. As for the hundreds of billions of dollars given to

the banks in the bailout, there is no evidence of this money being used to ease

the credit and mortgage crises at the level of the public. Not even a requirement

that they make details of their use of the money public though it is public

money they make use of.

Meanwhile, the latest Wall Street scandal snowballing is that of the Bernard L.

Madoff Investment Securities. Madoff, a shining beacon of Wall Street enterprise

and philanthropy, ran what has been described as the biggest Ponzi scheme in

history. His own estimate of the fraud is in the region of $50 billion (more than

three times Indias farm loan waiver). Huge charities, trusts and individuals,

including billionaires, have lost massively in this rip-off. And theres more to

come. Yet again the question how such gigantic rackets thrived in Wall Street

without the massive financial media ever noticing leaps up. The Madoff scam is

only one among many things unravelling.

However, there is far more passion generated over the obnoxious Governor of

Illinois who tried to sell the Senate seat that Mr. Obama vacated for personal

benefit. Governor Blagojevichs action is neither new to Chicago, nor huge. It is

a petty deal by a petty person, reeking of low corruption in high places. The

energy it generates, though, is like focussing on the local pick-pocket when

grand larceny proceeds next door. Maybe there is a need to hold businessmen to

the same standards as elected representatives. Especially those dealing with

untold sums of public money?

In this bleak landscape came a surprise at a factory in Chicago. You got bailed

out. We got sold out. So read the banner at the sit-in strike of the workers of

the Republic Windows and Doors factory. Having been robbed of their jobs in a


21/55

stealthy shutdown, over 200 unionised workers and their families occupied the

factory and demanded severance and vacation pay. They got it, too. The action

drew national attention. In a sign of changed times, politicians, celebrities, and

public figures turned up at the factory to declare support. Even Mr. Obama said

he agreed with their demands. The media which, pre-meltdown, would have

savaged the strike, were less hostile. Prior to the economic crisis, says analyst

and columnist Carl Bloice who writes in the Black Commentator, the police

might have gone into the factory and evicted the workers as trespassers. Post-

meltdown, it was a different story. Bloice says the U.S. has not seen such a labour

action in decades. Impressively, ordinary citizens went up with food hampers to

help out the strikers. Could we be witnessing the start of more militant labour

action in the U.S. after decades? And could we be seeing greater sympathy in the

country for such actions after decades, as job losses mount?

Why the United States got it wrong

P. Sainath

It is worth learning this: Al-Qaeda was the biggest beneficiary of the

response of the United States to 9/11 alongside U.S. corporations.

Americas War on Terror produced far more terrorism in the world than

there had been prior to that response.

Of all the arguments making the rounds after the appalling slaughter of 180

people in Mumbai, the worst is this: that India should learn from the United

States about how to respond to such terror. Look at the USA, goes the

refrain, after 9/11 has there been another attack on U.S. soil? In short,

Washingtons measures after that tragedy were so effective, nobody ever

bothered them again. This knocks at the doors of insanity. The U.S.

;response does stand out as worth learning from. There is very little it did not

get wrong.


22/55

Around 3,000 people lost their lives in the dreadful attacks on the World Trade

Centre in New York on 9 /11. Americas response was to go to war. It launched

two wars, one of against a country that had not a single link to the events of

9/11. Close to a million human beings have lost their lives in that response. That

includes 4,000 U.S. troops in Iraq and nearly 1,000 in Afghanistan. That is apart

from several hundred thousand Iraqis losing their lives. Countless Afghans die

each month, as one of the worlds poorest states sinks deeper into devastation.

(Afghanistan, for U.S. liberals, is the good war.) Millions have suffered

dislocation and deprivation in the region.

$ 3 trillion-war

Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz estimates that the Iraq war is costing the United

States $ 3 trillion in all. (About three times Indias GDP.) Good news for

American corporations that make a killing every time there is large-scale killing,

but not of much use to ordinary Americans. With the U.S. economy in awful

crisis, those costs are haemorrhaging. The war in Iraq was launched with

intelligence findings on weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) being

stockpiled in that country. And on the ground that Baghdad was linked to 9/11.

This was the excuse for the response. Both claims proved false. At the time,

the US media played a huge role -- its response -- in planting fabricated WMD

stories. That helped launch perhaps the most destructive conflict of our time.

American costs also include tens of thousands wounded, injured and ill soldiers.

With over 100,000 US soldiers "returning from the war suffering serious mental

health disorders, a significant fraction of which will be chronic afflictions."

(Stiglitz: "The Three Trillion Dollar War."). Besides, the war meant huge spending

cuts at home. At the time of writing, California, the largest of American states, ismulling massive cuts. Its budget deficit is around $ 11 billion, says journalist

and analyst Conn Hallinan. Just about a months worth of war costs in Iraq

and Afghanistan.


23/55

By late 2006, a little over three years after that response began, over 650,000

Iraqis were estimated to have lost their lives. A survey by researchers at the Johns

Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland and the Al

Mustansiriya University in Baghdad put it bluntly: As many as 654,965 more

Iraqis may have died since hostilities began in Iraq in March 2003 than would

have been expected under pre-war conditions. The deaths from all causes

violent and non-violent are over and above the estimated 143,000 deaths per

year that occurred from all causes prior to the March 2003 invasion. Iraqs

overall mortality rate more than doubled from 5.5 deaths per 1,000 persons

before the war began to 13.3 per 1,000 persons by late 2006.

Many more civilians have died since then, an extension of the USAsresponse to 9/11. Pre-war Iraq was the Arab country most ruthless towards

Islamic fundamentalists. Today, the latter wield enormous power in a country

they had no base in. Fundamentalism harvested new recruiting fields fertilised

by U.S. violence. Its worth learning this: Al Qaeda was the biggest beneficiary

of the response of the United States to 9/11 alongside U.S. corporations.

Americas War on Terror produced far more terrorism in the world than

there had been prior to that response.

There are other lessons in the U.S. debacle. Almost every week now, the U.S.

bombs some part of Pakistan its firm ally of decades. Civilians are routinely

killed by this, and if Mr. Obamas campaign promises are to be kept, this will go

up. So will the appeal of fundamentalism amongst the affected.

This is Islamabads reward for decades of faithful support to American military

adventures in Afghanistan. A lot of Pakistans distress arises from the very kind

of strategic ties with the United States that Indias elite would so love to have

themselves. Also, the resultant undermining of Pakistan, is bad news for India.

More fundamentalisms, more militancy, and worse, both sides of the border.

Embedded journalism


24/55

The media too, have much to learn from the response of their U.S. counterparts.

The embedded journalism that disgraced some of Americas leading media

institutions. Regardless of a bleating anti-war editorial, The New York Timeswill

never live down its WMD stories. The very media that now mock George Bush

propped him up at the time. Now they report how unpopular the war is, how silly

he was. But the war for ratings had already done damage hard to undo. Its

both pathetic and funny: the very forces in the United States that saw only

external and foreign reasons for all that had happened now advise India

exactly the opposite. Not to rush to any such conclusions. In coming days,

says the New York Timesfor example, India will have to look inward to see

where and how its government failed to protect its citizens.

The damage of whipped up hysteria as part of the response occurred within

the United States, too. Sikhs in America became the targets of vicious hate

crimes across the country after 9/11. Why? The demonising for years of anyone

with turbans and beards made them targets of retaliation. One Sikh body

says it has logged over 300 hate crimes against Sikhs after 9/11. These include

torching of a home, vandalising of Gurdwaras, vicious assaults and one death by

shooting. This is the model to emulate?

Curbing of civil liberties

Globally, the barbaric prison camp at Guantanamo, from where several prisoners

have been released as innocent after years of brutal torture, has been a widely

criticised part of the American response. Inside the United States, the

curbing of civil liberties a vital 9/11 response was at its worst since the

McCarthy period. The Patriot Act was just one symbol of these. And Mr. Bush

now ranks among the most despised U.S. Presidents of all time. (Though he did

succeed, in another constituency, in bringing more popularity to Osama bin

Laden than Al-Qaedas leader could have dreamed of.)


25/55

There is a need for a strong and vigorous response to the appalling outrage in

Mumbai. Parts of what that should be are obvious: bringing the guilty to book,

revamping the intelligence networks, overhauling a range of security agencies,

being more prepared. It is no less vital, though, that the immediate response also

be to deny the authors of the outrage the success of their goal. To ensure that

further polarisation within Mumbai society along religious, sectarian lines does

not occur. To make sure that innocent people are not killed or terrorised in the

response. To dump the notion that shredding civil liberties and democratic

rights helps anybody in any way. Shred chauvinism and jingoism, not the

Constitution of India. To strongly counter those attempting to foment communal

strife, regardless of which religion they belong to. To see there is no repeat of

1992-93 when close to a quarter of a million people fled the city in terror. That

would a great reply. But to learn from Mumbais events that we should emulate

Americas response at the very time Americans are figuring out how poorly

they were served by it would be to repeat history both as tragedy and as

farce.

The unlikely martyrdom of market jihad

P. Sainath

Market Jihad is mortal, martyred but not dead. It has merely gone underground.

Or is catching its breath.

Wall Street is run for the benefit of Wall Street In truth, there is no substitute

for regulation It is time to end the failed experiment with radical

deregulation. From The American Conservative, October 2008.

When words like these appear in a bastion of United States conservative thought,

you know something is on. More so when The American Conservative graces that


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article with this blurb about rescuing the U.S. economy: Goldman Sachs alums

arent the men for the job.

The piece by Eamonn Fingleton goes on to say why: Both Treasury Secretary

Henry Paulson and his key adviser Neel Kashkari, formerly held top jobs at

Goldman Sachs, and it seems clear that their highly controversial and, to

economic historians, bafflingly unorthodox bailout plan serves Wall Streets

interests particularly those of their former employer far more than the

American publics. Well, theres a start. A recognition that Wall Street and

corporate interest (and even leaving it to the market) can be very different

from public interest.

Interventionist mode

The first part of October, said the New York Times, represents the most

sweeping government moves into the nations financial markets since The

Great depression and perhaps ever, according to economists and finance

experts. That month saw government after government sworn to free

markets and deregulation announce they were acquiring ownership stakes in

banks. Declare they would prop up dying private institutions with billions inpublic funds. And guarantee bank debt. Whether in Britain, Germany, France,

Italy, Spain or the United States, massive state intervention is the order of the

day. Across the world, governments are in one way or the other in profoundly

interventionist mode.

How profound? Well, estimates by the United Nations and like bodies suggest

that with $60-80 billion a year additional spending, major issues in education,

water, sanitation, or health could be well addressed worldwide.

Governments have long pleaded that this money simply didnt exist. Yet, a

handful of them discovered they could find over a trillion dollars to bail out

mostly private corporations. And found that money public money oh so

fast.


27/55

In its amazing fervour for privatisation, Indias post-1991 elite never once

admits why quite a few industries had been nationalised in the first place. Their

private owners had run them into the ground with huge amounts of public

money. As one top official put it at the time: the sicker the industries get, the

healthier the owners get. Thats when governments stepped in to save

thousands of jobs. Once nationalised, these looted, sick units were quickly

dubbed as symbols of public sector inefficiency.

Now its happening across the world. In the United States, too, the public will

pay the bills of the decades-long frenzy at the corporate feeding trough. But

here, the bailout cannot be called nationalisation, though often, that is what it is

about or could well be about. That would be Communistic. In some cases,companies are being bailed with amounts of public funds greater than their

current market value. (The $25 billion bailout the auto makers seek is worth even

more than that of Citigroup till late the 800-pound gorilla of American

finance.)

The right wing slogan of not with my tax dollars now chokes its authors.

Investors and shareholders were, on the one hand, sacred (or supposed to be) in

corporate theology. In the larger economy, on the other, you had to cut any

public spending you could. Now, when youre spending billions of public tax

dollars on these behemoths shouldnt that make the public their owners?

Their main shareholder? Till now, there is not even a semblance of accountability

to the public on the billions so far doled out to the oligarchs.

Market fundamentalism is in bad shape. Shrine attendance has fallen. Its

televangelists are subdued, their psalm book is lost and the singers have

laryngitis. Market jihadis scour other subjects to crusade about. Remember the

editorials urging the UPA after the Lefts walkout to push ahead with financial

liberalisation since the cancer was gone? Well, no recanting but a more

subdued mood for sure. The government itself takes credit for insulating the

economy against the global meltdown. In short: credit for non-liberalisation.


28/55

That the insulation arose from the restraint imposed on it by the Left and public

opinion is hotly denied.

In the U.S., words are now being bandied that were unheard on air in decades.

Socialism for the rich. Deficiencies of the Free Market. This shift is more

important than it seems. For three decades, markets were raised from a tool

one amongst many to being a tyranny. There was nothing The Market

could not solve. Thomas Frank summed up the mindset very sharply in his

book One Market Under God. Markets enjoyed some mystic organic

connection to the people, while governments were fundamentally illegitimate

markets expressed the popular will more articulately and meaningfully than did

mere elections markets are where we are most fully human; markets are wherewe show that we have a soul. The market was not merely inseparable from

democracy. It was democracy.

In India, as late as this June during the food price crisis, there were ideologues

who saw hunger as essentially a function of anti-market systems. (One editorial

argued that if the markets were allowed to do their job, food would rush to the

places where demand was highest.) What about health, education or agriculture?

Just leave it all to The Market.

Of course, the American Conservative does not take an anti-market position. Nor

does it plead for intervention as a rule, even in vital sectors. It singles out finance

as unique. Finance simply cannot be left to its own notoriously conflicted

devices, it declares. It then calls for the regulation of that sector, quoting from

Market Fundamentalist scripture to show that such exemptions were implicit in

the words or silence of True Prophets such as Milton Friedman. And this is one of

the more thoughtful journals of its spectrum.

Market Jihad is mortal, martyred but not dead. It has merely gone underground.

Or is catching its breath. The meltdown has devastated its storm troopers. The

IMF soldiers on bravely, though, presenting an ideological volte faceas business


29/55


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31/55

There are complaints of rip-offs. "We've been paid only Rs.30 a day," says an

angry P. Mallamma in Mosangi. The record says they got Rs.84 a day. K. Kalamma

says she has "worked for over a month, without being paid." Even a former

deputy sarpanch, Saiddulu, has not been paid for a week's work. He is well over

60 - yet another older person returning to work, driven by food costs. But he is

clear that the work the NREGA brings is "very vital to us. It should run well, that's

all."

Three issues

Three major issues confront a programme that is the lifeline of these

communities at this time. Two of these are built into it. "Why only 100 days of

work," ask people. And they do not get those 100 days fully. The second is the

rule of only one member per family being able to use it. In Andhra Pradesh, very

sensibly, field assistants at NREG sites are breaking that rule. It is possible to see

husband and wife together at the same site. That's as far as it goes, though.

Poor families see themselves as a collective. "One family member cannot go to

Guntur to work and another to the site," says Lashkar in Lambapur village.

Splitting up is bad economics. A day's wage at a brick kiln might be less thanwhat it is for NREG work. But though brick kilns are brutal and exploitative, all

members of a family can work there - and for more than a hundred days. These

two restrictions hobble a programme people say they badly need.

Third are the usual local problems. Payment delays for one. Though Andhra

Pradesh seems to be ahead of several other States, this remains a problem.

"People here have waited four months to get much less than what was owed to

them," says Mallamma. "People are recorded as working when they did not work.Others are not recorded as working when they did," says B. Ramaiah in

Vadlaparthi village of Nalgonda.

Lambapur in the same district throws up this kind of paradox. This is a village

where NREG work has dramatically curbed migrations. There is no one who will


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tell you things have not improved. Yet, most "passbooks" show zero days of

work. This is an adivasi 'tanda' with very low literacy and education. The records

are a mess and a formal audit would conclude there has been a disaster. But

Lambapur has done well out of the NREGA. To make it more complex, the

reverse could be true in Mosangi. The records would show Mosangi has done

better, which it has not. Everywhere is the backlash from the old contractor-local

official-low bureaucracy that feels threatened by the NREGA. Capturing the

records and the process is part of the fightback. In at least two other States,

activists promoting the NREGA have been killed.

A.P. fares better

Yet Andhra Pradesh has fared better, thanks to the growing awareness of people

of their rights. Even at the start, 2.7 million people applied for job cards in the

first month after the programme was announced. From top officials in the State's

NREGA team to unions of landless labourers, many have worked hard to

promote the programme

In this process, a small but vital reordering of power relations is under way. The

NREGA is having multiple and layered effects. With better wages, the bargainingpower of the weakest has gone up a notch. For some, their access to costly

services like health has risen slightly. NREG work has been a lifejacket in the flood

waters of the price rise. And no other programme has had the positive impact on

distress migrations that it has achieved.

Lakshmamma hopes the NREG work will

continue. But she's up against a powerful

combine of forces entrenched in thecountryside and ensconced in Delhi's power

elite. (Picture by P Sainath)

"It is not just low level officials," laughs a very

senior official in Delhi. "There is hostility right


33/55

here at top levels of bureaucracy and politicians. There are efforts on to make it

less attractive to people needing work. Complaints that the NREGA is raising

wages and hurting farmers are being used to push for limiting that wage. And

making even those 100 days of work harder to access. This would be disastrous.

But it seems certain such efforts will soon follow."

"Of course, there is much scope for improvement," he says. "You could get

people to participate more in choosing the kind of works needed locally. We

could provide better technical support and advice. Restrictions on the number of

days and family members could be sorted out by making it more universal." And

by aligning it to works that benefit the whole community, including local farmers,

some of those other problems could also be met.

In Tatikolu village, Lakshmamma hopes the programme will continue. She is up

against a powerful combine of forces entrenched in the countryside and

ensconced in Delhi's power elite. A widow with young children, she finds it hard

to get work at the site to begin with. Seated in her bleak home, she wonders

when her food supply will run out. And hopes the NREG work won't. "Without it,

I don't know what we would do." Soybean trumps King Cotton in

Vidharbhas regime change

P. Sainath

The shift from cotton to soybean has major implications for agriculture,

livelihoods and the future of the Vidharbha region.

The shift began a few seasons ago but has picked up

Cotton gets more risky each season

Soybean input costs are far lower


34/55

Yes, says Babanrao Khatale in Ashti. In our village, 80 per cent of farmers

have shifted from cotton to Soybean. In Lonsawla in the same Wardha district,

Prabhakar Argude, also a farmer, confirms a major shift away from cotton. As

for jowar, it has almost disappeared. Its now soybean all the way.

In Washim district, the changeover has already occurred. District Agriculture

Officer N.V. Deshmukh says, soybean cultivation shot up by 80,000 hectares

between 2003 and last year when it touched 1.93 lakh hectares. And it might go

up more. In the same period, cotton fell to 59,000 hectares and could decline

further.

Even in Panderkauda, heart of cotton territory in Yavatmal where the fibre is still

King, there could be a regime change this year. The agriculture office says that

soybean might just slide past cotton.

Historic

Vidharbha is witnessing a historic shift as King Cotton loses ground to soybean.

A shift that has major implications for agriculture, livelihoods and the future of

the region. It began a few seasons ago but has now picked up rapidly, says

Vijay Jawandia, a farmers leader and the regions foremost thinker on

agriculture. He says that the price for soybean today is more than double what

farmers got just a year or two ago. That is, Rs. 2,600 a quintal against Rs. 1,200.

Simply put: soybean is selling at more than twice the minimum support price.

The prices have gone up, says Jawandia, because of problems hitting big

producers like Argentina amd Brazil. And reduced acreage for it in the United

States. That cannot remain the case for long, he points out. With cotton pricesfluctuating over seasons and often declining sharply, lakhs of farmers have been

lured by soybean.

By end-2004 farmers were getting less than Rs. 1,800 a quintal of cotton on

average. That has risen considerably this past year. Mainly because of large


35/55

acreage shifts to biofuels in the United States. Since Vidharbhas prices had

earlier tanked due to EU-U.S. subsidies to their cotton producers, they rose again

with this shift. But its hard to see how long it can remain that way, says

Jawandia. Dismal cotton prices from the late 90s to last year were a major factor

in the wave of suicides by indebted farmers.

Soybean input costs are far lower. In Washim, Agriculture Department official

P.D. Lokhande calculates that input costs of soybean are at least Rs. 2,500 less

for an acre than those of cotton. Thats a conservative estimate. Many

farmers in Vidharbha run up input costs of over Rs. 13,000 an acre on cotton.

Particularly those using Bt and other expensive technologies and chemicals. An

acre of soybean can cost half that much to cultivate.

Cotton seed costs were even higher two years ago than they are now after

government intervention, says an agriculture department official. Then, Bt

cost Rs. 1,650 a bag of 450 grams. And people often stick to the practice of using

two bags an acre even when not needed. Soybean, you can buy the 30 kilograms

you need for an acre for Rs. 1,000.

Labour costs are cheaper, too, says Prabhakar Argude in Lonsawli. Incotton you pay for sowing, spraying, five pickings and so on. With soybean its

for a couple of sprays and then the harvesting. Whats more, soybean matures

in four months less time than cotton or sugarcane. That allows you to go for a

second crop like channa or wheat by October. So all around your returns are

higher than with cotton, though your costs with cotton are higher.

Soybean also has less problems with pests, at least for now. Cotton gets more

risky each season, says one agriculture officer. It attracts a range of peststhat Bt does not even claim to touch. And even the bollworm is gaining in

resistance to Bt. Now with the mealy bug showing up, cotton is in trouble. It

means more pesticides, more costs, more losses.


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Nationally, groups linked to the soybean industry expect the crop to cover up to

10 million hectares in the season that began this month. Up 13 per cent from the

previous year. Production by this September could be close to 10 million tonnes

across the country. And Maharashtra is the State making the largest shift towards

soybean.

If the picture in Vidharbha is something to go by, those estimates could well be

on track. (Unless the fertilizer shortage derails plans.) Area under soybean in the

11 districts of the region went up by nearly two lakh hectares in 2007 to 17 lakh

hectares in one estimate. Even as cotton saw a dip of nearly three lakh hectares,

falling to about 14 lakh hectares. It was only in the western districts that cotton

retained its fragile hold. This year, soybean seems set to overtake it even there.

Across the region, farmers say theres another reason. Payments with cotton

are a nightmare. You never know when you will receive them.

Not everyone is enamoured of the shift to soybean, though. Its not the oil,

but the high global price of soybeans de-oiled cake (DoC) that is driving the

frenzy, says Jawandia. DoC prices are above Rs. 2,000 a quintal at the global

level. (One quintal yields upto 82 kilograms of DoC and 18 kilograms of edibleoil.) But what happens when the crop of Argentina and Brazil return to the

market? Soybean has its own risks, too. No rains at the time of flowering or

rains at harvest time can cause a wipe-out.

Cotton, on the other hand, says Jawandia, has a better long-term staying power.

It is the worlds most important non-food agricultural commodity and the soil

here is ideal for it. Those families using their own labour should stay with cotton.

The main draw of soybean is lower labour costs. In non-irrigated land, cotton isthe best employment guarantee scheme for the number of days of work it

gives.

In Nagpur, a government statistical expert on agriculture is also wary.


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This shift is being driven by poor cotton prices over the past few years. Better

cotton prices will see many return to it. Also, soybean is a heavy-feeder crop,

drawing much more out of the soil. So successive seasons can see the soil turn

soybean sick. In which case, yields will fall. By mid-August, we should know

better the extent of change this season."

Whichever way it goes, the shift is on from cotton to soybean. The regions

farmers could be trading one volatility for another.

Fertilising profit, sowing misery

P. Sainath

The fertilizer shortage might even be overcome just now. But the crisis wont

go away. It and many more to come are built into both, whats going on in

world capitalism and what we have been doing in India.

When youre down to distributing fertilizer from a police station, you have a

problem. Its what they did in Hingoli in Maharashtra. That was a week ago, but

the police are still, in a sense, involved in its distribution there and elsewhere. In

Hingoli itself, there are lots of policeman controlling the queues outsidedealers outlets. The dealers wont open up otherwise. Thanks to the police,

Hingolis farmers got some fertilizer. Sort of giv es a whole new meaning to the

acronym PDS. Police Distribution System.

In Nanded, cops lathicharged angry farmers demanding fertilizer needed

urgently with the rains setting in. In Akola, there is heavy police bandobast for

the same reasons. More than one Agriculture Officer has fled his workplace to

escape mobs. There were angry outbursts at the market place in the chiefministers own constituency at Latur. Protests in neighbouring Karnataka have

grabbed national attention with a farmer being shot dead. In Andhra Pradesh,

farmers stormed zilla parishad meetings in Medak and Rangareddy and set up

road blocks in other districts.


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In Vidharbhas cotton belt, for all the celebration of Bts success, there have

been huge shifts towards soybean. Thats because soybean costs much less to

grow than cotton. At least for now. Soybean needs less fertilizer than cotton. But

needs it at the time of sowing, just as the rains set in. In Madhya Pradeshs,

soya bowl, the shortages are hurting. And for years now, more farmers have

been joining the soybean bandwagon in other states, too

At the very least, it argues that government was unprepared for the agricultural

season. The shortages had been predicted for a long time. Not just fertilizer, but

seeds as well. In Maharashtra, the state argues that the Gujjar agitation has

crippled freight train traffic, hence the shortages. This may well be a real factor,

but it is not going to account for the 60 per cent shortfall in supply.

Even if we tide over the present crisis, fertilizer troubles will worsen. Many

complex factors are asserting themselves. Some of the very things that happened

with grain and food prices are at work with fertilizer as well. The corporate

conquest of agriculture is well apace. As the Wall Street Journal(April 30, 2008)

notes: At a time when parts of the world are facing food riots, Big Agriculture is

dealing with a different sort of challenge: huge profits. The WSJpoints to the

grain-processing giant Archer-Daniels-Midland Co., which saw a 42 per cent leap

in its fiscal third quarter profits. Including a sevenfold increase in net income in

its unit that stores, transports and trades grains such as wheat and corn, as well

as soybeans.

Seed and Herbicide giant Monsanto and fertilizer maker Mosaic Co. all

reported similar windfalls in their latest quarters. As the WSJgrudgingly says:

Some observers think financial speculation has helped push up prices as

wealthy investors in the past year have flooded the agriculture commodity

markets in search of better returns. So much so that The Commodity Futures

Trading Commission last week held a hearing in Washington to examine the role

index funds and other speculators are playing in driving up grain prices.

The WSJcites research showing that total index fund investment in corn,


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soybean, wheat, cattle and hogs has risen by 37 billion dollars (which is well over

double Indias farm loan waiver for millions of farmers) since 2006.

Now, its the turn of the New York Times(June 5, 2008) to note that a few big

private investors are starting to make bolder and longer-term bets that the

worlds need for food will greatly increase by buying farmland, fertilizer,

grain elevators and shipping equipment. One company has bought about five

dozen fertilizer distribution outlets and a fleet of barges and ships. And others,

including the giant BlackRock fund group in New York, are separately planning

to invest hundreds of millions of dollars in agriculture, chiefly farmland, from

sub-Saharan Africa to the English countryside.

Of course, the NYTand WSJalso parrot corporate chant that this could be a

good thing for hungry humanity. These new bets by big investors could bolster

food production at a time when the world needs more of it, says

the NYTreport. And the WSJnotes that food companies say bigger profits can

be used to develop new technologies that will ultimately help farmers improve

productivity. Monsanto says its designing improved genetically modified seeds

that can squeeze even more yield from each acre of planted grain. Gee!

Theyre the good guys, actually. In the WSJs eyes (June 10, 2008) the villains

are elsewhere. The problems arise with China and India gobbling food as never

before and food prices soaring

Complex as the reality is, the principles are fairly simple. At a time when debates

in India highlight the un-viability of agriculture, giant corporations are betting

the opposite. For them, at least, it holds the promise of an undying source of

super profit. The NYTreports headline sums it up nicely: Food is gold, so

billions invested in farming. Ultimately, you can live without a lot of things, yes,

even television. Or aircraft and SUVs. But you cannot live without food and water.

The latter commodity is the focus of the biggest thrust of some huge

multinational companies. And we are well into the process of privatising water in


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India (for them). A process that promises chaos, misery and conflict on a scale we

cannot begin to grasp at this point.

Across the globe, the entire chain of resources and inputs is now getting

cornered by corporations. Farm land, water, fertilizer, seed, pesticide and many

more. Grab these together and youve got the world by its belly. The giant

companies are now putting out papers on how they will solve the worlds food

problem. Never mind they are at the heart of it.

Meanwhile, making chemical fertilizer requires large use of fossil fuels. So rising

oil prices further spur the fertilizer crisis. The rip-off by the top corporations in

that sector has been so great that even the United States Senate saw moves to

impose a windfall profits tax on oil companies. (In India, the government

responded to such calls by transferring the burden to the people and asking for

patience on the inflationary trend.) Of course, it was scotched in the Senate,

too.

Subsidy paradox

Fertilizer subsidies in India have for long gone to manufacturers, not farmers. (If

they went to farmers directly, they would have more choice in what fertilizer to

use.) Meanwhile, the world over, speculative capital has been moving towards

agricultural commodities and fertilizer. Other sectors in the stock markets have

tanked or not done so well. In India, too, calls for a ban on futures trading in

agricultural commodities arose from such a situation. Wheat went underground

for a while. Prices rose (and keep rising). Now it is the turn of fertilizer. A bag of

Diammonium Phosphate today costs Rs. 490 officially. In black, it sells for around

Rs. 600. (The global price, far more under corporate control, is at least four timesas much. That makes imports more difficult.) Even our nominal price is nearly

three times what it was 15 years ago.

For well over a decade now, we have invested less and less in agriculture.

Following the World Bank-IMF menu, we discouraged food crop and focused on


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cash crop and sang the hymns of export-led growth. Mindless de-regulation saw

corporate control grip more sectors of agriculture. Seed, fertilizer, markets, you

name it. We reduced our agricultural universities to labs for private corporations.

We stepped up our use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Millions of farmers

were shifted to a much higher-cost economy where input costs are crippling. A

(non-organic) farmer in 1991 could cultivate an acre of cotton in Vidharbha for

Rs. 2,500. Today that would cost him or her Rs. 13,000 or more. That is, with all

the miracles of chemicals, pesticides and Bt.

As these costs shot up, we disabled our capacities to meet the needs of the

cultivator. And then we withdrew credit. Even if the fertilizer comes through this

season, countless farmers in the post-loan waiver world find themselves withoutfresh credit. Were not mad, say bank managers in crisis regions. The

farmer has no new income. Nor better prices. How will someone who could not

repay Rs. 10,000 repay thrice that sum? So who do farmers seeking credit turn

to? The very input dealers who are emerging the major source of informal credit

in the countryside. And who are implicated in the black marketing of vital inputs

in every crisis.

The fertilizer shortage might even be overcome just now. But the crisis wont

go away. It and many more to come are built into both, whats going on in

world capitalism and what we have been doing in India. Weve dismantled

vital parts of our agriculture and with it, the livelihoods of millions. This at a time

when the World Bank and IMF are trying to hide their tracks in the trail of

disaster they left the world over. A study by the Banks economists now says

that economic growth of the agriculture sector is at least twice as effective at

reducing poverty as any other sector. (The Wall Street Journal, June 10, 2008).And we fail to see why food costs could get a lot worse. The corporations do,

though. As that NYTheadline puts it: Food is gold, so billions invested in

farming. Or, more truly, in the capture of it.


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Of loan waivers and tax waivers

An overwhelming majority of Vidharbha's farmers do not gain from the farm

loan waiver because they are too 'big.' But the IPL waiver goes to some of India's

richest millionaires and billionaires. They aren't too big, writes P Sainath.

20 May 2008 - In Maharashtra, where the nation's most distressed farmers

have been denied the benefit of the 'farm loan waiver,' the government is said

to waive crores in entertainment tax that the Indian Premier League cricket

matches would normally attract. Media reports in Mumbai on this score reckon

that means a loss of up to Rs.10 crore in revenue. As even the pro-corporate

newspapers of the city point out, the direct beneficiaries would be Mumbai's

millionaires and billionaires. Film stars and corporate bosses who did not find it

difficult to spend crores on buying teams and players. That too, for what the

media are fond of calling "the world's richest cricket tournament." Simply put, if

it goes through, they'll be getting tax waivers on the hiring of cheerleaders,

among other things.

True, this is not the first time that entertainment tax has been waived on cricket

matches in Mumbai or elsewhere. The BCCI and its affiliates have always enjoyedpolitical patronage. The difference, which has got even members of the ruling

front worked up, is that those raking in the crores in exemptions are for-profit-

only groups and individuals. By law, any event, musical or cultural, performance

or other, staged for profit must pay entertainment tax. But not the IPL, which will

have held 10 matches in Mumbai including the Final.

It's an odd situation. The overwhelming majority of Vidharbha's farmers do not

gain from the farm loan waiver - because they are too "big." That is, they holdmore than two hectares of land. But the IPL waiver goes to some of India's

richest millionaires and billionaires. They aren't too big. And the only reason

Vidharbha's farmers have holdings that exceed the loan waiver's two-hectare


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cut-off is because they are dry-land farmers. Their fields are poor, un-irrigated

and less productive.

The IPL waiver reports come within three weeks of the Comptroller and Auditor

General's report on "Farmer's Packages" in the State. A performance audit the

government of Maharashtra chose to present to the Assembly on April 27, the

last day of the session. A day on which, as MLAs say, "there isn't enough time to

count the pages, let alone read the many documents they push at that time."

Clearly, they were not eager on a discussion of the contents.

The very first page of the CAG report tells us why. Despite the State

government's Rs.1075-crore "package" for farmers "the suicides, however,

continued unabated and the number increased to 1414 during 2006-07." The

Prime Minister's visit in mid-2006 and the Centre's Rs.3750-crore package that

followed in July also came the year the suicides increased. As we know from

earlier reports, including some in this newspaper, they actually went up in the

second half of that year.

Erratic spending

Here is the CAG on the official response: "No evaluation of the implementation

of the packages, in terms of reduction in agrarian distress, was made." We also

learn that tens of crores of rupees aimed at reducing farmer distress were, in fact,

never spent. The value of the packages themselves was exaggerated by over

Rs.200 crore. Crores were released under some heads with no reference at all to

the actual requirement of funds.

Other funds, such as those meant "for increase in production," were releasedlate. Cheques given to some 'beneficiaries' "were dishonoured for w

India Together P Sainath

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