20 die in illegal unit fire, but who cares?

So far, 20 people have died of burns out of boiler blast at an illegal garment unit in Delhi fortnight back.  The survivors and  families of those killed have no money to take care of medical and family expenses. Eleven people with over 60 percent burn are getting treatment in government hospitals.

Media and city's social activists are playing their usual game: they are conspicuous by their absence. Had the same thing happened in a posh colony and affected rich people, they would have raised hell. Police, as expected, are downplaying the incident. Most of the victims are poor workers from UP.

The illegal factory at Tughlaqabad Extension ran there for ages, in collusion with police and city administration and in recent times it had expanded into an export unit. A chemical leak on January 25 when about 36 people were working in the factory lead to blast in a boiler used for dyeing garments. A fire tender was called, and it did come in time and doused the resultant fire. It found many victims unconscious when the rescuers reached them. However, the police say, it was a simple fire.

Only exposes the rampant corruption in city administrations and police, and society's indifference to the calamities affecting the poor.

India's human development: 119 too low

Without any comments, I am giving below some statistics about India's ranking in the Human Development Index [HDI] announced by the UNDP yesterday:

India ranks 119. Some other countries' ranks are as follows:
Norway 1
Australia 2
New Zealand 3
USA 4
Russia 69
Brazil 73
China 89
Sri Lanka 91
Pakistan 125
Bangladesh 129
Nepal 138
As per the Human Development Report, new tools have been used to arrive at HDI rankings this time. 'In this Report we introduce three measures to the Report family of indices—the Inequality-adjusted Human Development Index, the Gender Inequality Index and the Multidimensional Poverty Index. These state-of-the-art measures incorporate recent advances in theory and measurement and support the centrality of inequality and poverty in the human development framework.'

India's figures for key indicators of human development are:
life expectancy in years: 64.352
Mean years of schooling in adults: 4.399
Per capita yearly income [after parity] $3337.366
Inequality adjusted HDI: 0.365 [maximum: Norway: 0.876]
Intensity of deprivation: 53.5
Gender inequality index: 0.721 [minimum: Norway: 0.234]
Adjusted net saving: 24.2%
Robberies per lakh population: 1.6
HDI value: 0.519 [world: 0.624, maximum: Norway: 0.938, India in 2009: 0.512]

hunger, India and Bharat

The latest global hunger index brought out by International Food Policy Research Institute is holding mirror before us once again. It has put India at 67th position among 84 nations it studied and ranked for hunger. [It has not ranked highly developed countries and those getting very low hunger incidence.] India’s position is higher [=worse] than its neighbouring nations in the South Asia [except Bangla Desh] and is equal to strife-torn Darfur and the closed communist country North Korea.

Earlier, the World Human Development Report showed us the mirror.

The IFPRI Global Hunger Index takes into account proportion of malnourished people in the population, underweight children in the age group 0-5 years and child mortality in this age group.

I will not discuss the reasons of such a poor performance by India, but juxtapose it with some other realities of India:

• India has been growing at the rate of 8-9% per year year after year for many years and is likely to grow at over 9.5% this year.
• India is commended for its handling of global recession, and is at present one of the fastest economies in the world.
• The number of Indian millionaires and billionaires in global list is going up year after year.
• India can boast of flashy infrastructure built in recent years with public money: a dozen ultra-modern airports, numerous flyovers without consideration for long-term traffic, expensive government buildings. Add to it the glossy high-rise glass towers and elite residential townships developed by the private sector. Only yesterday, papers talked about the newly built ‘house’ for Mukesh Ambani that has two roof-top helipads and closed parking space for 160 cars! Today, the papers talk of over 150 Mercs being sold in Aurangabad in one lot!
  
• India spent huge sums on Commonwealth Games – directly and indirectly, making it among the costliest games if you consider $-Re price parity and the quality and future utility of the infrastructure created.
• The consumption of cars, consumer durables and high-end fashion items is on the rise in India. India is supposed to be the world’s biggest free market.
• The turnover of Indian stock and commodities markets, though small by western standards, runs into thousands of billion rupees a day.
• India is craving for a permanent seat in the Security Council and is a member of G-20.
• India runs some of the world’s biggest welfare schemes: Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan for elementary education, Integrated Child Development Scheme [ICDS] for child development, and the recent Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme [MNREGA] and National Rural Health Mission. India has had the world’s largest family planning programme and has been running numerous schemes for maternal health, promotion of girl child, poverty alleviation, housing and what not.
• The gender ratio is unfavourable to women in most parts of the country.
• India has huge granaries, world’s biggest food grain procurement system, and the largest ration system [Public Distribution System] – all in the government sector. Government agencies also waste huge quantities of food grain because of corruption and poor storage facility.

NREGA – a rule changer on the rural scene

The ‘rights centred’ approach that the previous UPA government experimented with, with national rural employment guarantee act, has led to an economic and social transformation of sort. Implementation of the schemes following this Act [NREGS] leaves much to be desired, but without doubt the scheme has -

• Flushed enormous funds into rural and semi-urban areas;
• Brought employment to people near their homes and thus substantially reduced seasonal or perennial migration to big cities;
• Made the unorganised labour more assertive in demanding wages for the work done whether under NREGS or otherwise;
• Reduced the cost competitiveness and profit of enterprises that depend on cheap labour;
• Increased the purchasing power of the rural poor and thus empowered them in various ways;
• Created more demand for goods in rural areas, creating more jobs indirectly; and
• Created all sorts of pits and mounds and sometimes useful assets such as bridges, river embankments and reservoirs.

Wherever the real poor are getting employment for a good part of the year, fair wages and subsidised food from the Public Distribution System [PDS], the newfound security has the potential of eradicating poverty in a short time. The money the family earns should remove the compulsion to put children on menial jobs and give a sense of security that can spur savings. Theoretically, it would lead to lesser malnutrition and ailments, children going to school, women looking after themselves better, less indebtedness and less dispossession of land needed for repayment of loans. In practice, there are many many gaps. But we are not talking right now about implementation.

On the negative side, because of the money that is flowing into villages and small towns, new forms of tension are rising. There are many fake wage earners, and a good number of genuine poor are denied work due to caste or other considerations leading to disenchantment among those denied jobs. A part of the money that is coming ‘cheap’ to the household is getting diverted to country-made liquor shops. Contracts for various types of work are cornered by the progeny of village heads, revenue clerk etc who are emerging as the new generation of strongmen. While the wage earners are learning to raise their voice, these new youth with easy money are intolerant of such ‘rebellion’ by the erstwhile oppressed people. Though no documentation or proof of this is still available, this new money must be generating a new breed of thieves and brigands in villages.

It is also reported from many parts of the country that labour for farming is becoming scarce due to NREGS. In some places, labourers have started sort of blackmailing when they find that the job is critical [like paddy transplantation and crop harvesting] and no other labour is available.

An economic intervention of this type is always prone to have negative side effects, but let’s hail it. After the Integrated Rural Development Programmes [IRDP] that ran in the earlier two decades, this is the largest scheme the government ever started for the rural poor. It is better in at least two respects - one, it lands money directly in the hands of the poor, and two – it gives a sort of job security to the poor.

We’ll talk about implementation sometime later.

rotting foodgrains and a hungry nation

Rotting of foodgrains should make no big news. But when the foodgrains rot after the government has bought them for distribution among the poor, and when foodgrains rot in mounds, and when foodgrains rot because of rot in the system and callousness, it becomes an unpardonable crime. But whom are you going to punish?

The Prime Minister? He is the head of the government that is responsible for such a rot, but he is above reproach. How is he supposed to be responsible for rotting of a million tonnes of foodgrains while about a third of the country's population sleeps hungry? No, you are throwing stones at a wrong glasshouse.

The Agriculture Minister? Ha ha!! You are joking. The Minister is the highest political leader responsible for food management for the entire country. So what? He has given directions, he is monitoring the things, he has suspended a few lower level officials, he will take further action. In the meanwhile, he is hopeful that with the investment and schemes he has approved, there will be enough storage within a couple of years and the corruption in the Food Corporation of India will be gone.

The bureaucratic heads? Na, na. They are the best, having been selected into the Indian Administrative Service. If there is something good happening, it is because of them. You think, what would have happened to agricultural production and stored foodgrains if they were not there? Thank them for their devotion to duty, sincerity, honesty and intelligence.

Then who is left there to take the blame? No one, sir [or madam]. Even if the opposition parties prove that A, B, C of the ruling circus are to blame, who will punish them?

It is not that the government was caught napping. Everybody in the concerned government department must have known even a year before that there would be problem of storage if corrective actions are not taken in time. But they chose to ignore, for shameful reasons.

Even the Supreme Court pulled up the government and called such waste of foodgrains a crime, but how does it affect the ones responsible? In the meantime, the blame game has started between State and Central government about who has the responsibility to store the grain safely.

The grain will continue rotting and on the other side of the storage bins, there will be debates in parliament, reports on TV and print media, editorials, discussions on channels, a few protest marches in some cities, even a general strike. Prices will keep rising, grain will be out of reach of the poorest lot, pockets of politicians, bureaucrats and contractors / traders will continue to fatten.