'How the Supreme Court played havoc with the ecologically sensitive Niyamgiri hills'

Dongaria Kondh tribes are not grass-eaters.

Pic by Amnesty International

A day before I had talked about Supreme Court's numerous verdicts (and some suggestions) about rotting foodgrains. The day the Supreme Court suggested that foodgrains should be distributed to the poor than allowed to rot, I was asked by Rajdeep Sardesai on CNN-IBN as to what I thought of it. I had said that I am not much enthused by Supreme Court's suggestion because it has never pulled up the State government's for not complying with its earlier orders on ensuring that no one goes to bed hungry. 

Merely making such statements does not make any difference. Unless of course His Lordship hauls up the Chief Secretary of a defaulting State, and sends him/her to judicial custody for not complying with its orders, things will not change.

Having said that I was pleasantly surprised when I read a Times of India article today (Aug 29, 2010) wherein it said: The Lanjigarh refinery shows how the Supreme Court played havoc with the ecologically sensitive Niyamgiri hills, which are home to 8,000 Dongaria Kondh tribals. This to my mind is the first time I am seeing such a clear analysis of Supreme Court's role in a controversial mining deal. Going through the article I must say I felt like raising my hands to offer my salute to the writer, Manoj Mitta.

Lanjigarh alumina refinery was to draw bauxite from Niyamgiri hills in Orissa. "In a bizarre reversal of roles, Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh all but over-ruled Kapadia's decision to grant bauxite mining project the right to clear forests in the Niyamgiri hills, where the 8,000 Dongaria Kondhs live."

Justice S H Kapadia is now the Chief Justice of India.

Manoj Mitta goes on to write: "Clearly, the lapses that have come to light go beyond Vedanta and the Central and State governments. They extend to the Supreme Court as well." Accordingly, the author of the Vedanta verdict -- Justice S H Kapadia -- had made it clear how he saw the Dongaria Kondhs, who are officially classified as 'primitive tribal group'. Kapadia, now chief justice of India, described this tribe from Orissa as a people "living on grass."

Following the widespread criticism of the dilution of charges by the former Chief Justice of India A H Ahmadi against the Union Carbide in the Bhopal gas tragedy case, I feel the nation is now becoming mature enough to evaluate, analyse and scrutinise the meaning and implications of court judgements. This is a welcome sign, and indicates the evolution of a healthy and vibrant democracy.

Kapadia did not call the Dongaria Kondhs grass-eaters in either of his orders he wrote in the Vedanta case, the article goes on to say, but the fact that he did so in a public lecture, which was reproduced full in a law journal, may underline all that was wrong with the basis of his judgement. In the modern idiom, he might have seemed to have shown where he was coming from? 

At a time when the government itself is considering making it obligatory for the mining companies to pay an enhanced royalty of 26 per cent, I am surprised to learn that Justice Kapadia had come up with an economic formula -- 5 per cent of the project profits would go to tribal welfare -- ostensibly to balance the conflicting interests of development and environment.  

You can read the complete article here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/home/sunday-toi/special-report/Who-will-save-our-Navis/articleshow/6453608.cms
 
Now before I end, I would like to draw your attention to another interesting analysis in the same newspaper, and also about the same issue. Senior journalist M J Akbar in his column Out of Turn (Aug 29, 2010) looked into Rahul Gandhi's support of the tribals and farmers. He says that it has always been clear to Delhi insiders that Digvijay Singh opened a front against  P Chidambaram with Rahul Gandhi's permission. Outsiders now have confirmation.

I found this particular para not only very interesting, but also reflecting the ground realities. The Congress has set out to be the party of the poor in daytime, and of the rich at night. Its sunlight politics will fetch votes, its twilight policies will enable it to govern. This is an extremely clever act whose opening scenes are being played out for a new generation that is vague about Indira Gandhi and amnesiac about Nehru. The hero of this drama must have the christma to dazzle the poor and the flexibility to keep the rich onside. That is the challenge before Rahul Gandhi. His avowed role is to be the guardian of the poor in Delhi, which means that the poor need protection from Delhi. He is at home with the elite in the evening and is now making the effort to capture the sunshine hours. 

Oh, dear ! Have we really evolved as a healthy and vibrant democracy?

National Food Security Mission should be linked with the proposed National Food Security Act

[The Hindi version of this article is published in the four page pullout Hatskshep in Rashtriya Sahara of Aug 28, 2010. http://rashtriyasahara.samaylive.com/epapermain.aspx?queryed=17]

Food and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar has turned down the Supreme Court’s suggestion asking the government to ensure free distribution of food grains to the hungry poor instead of allowing it to rot in the godowns of the Food Corporation of India.

"Give it to the hungry poor instead of it (grains) going down the drain," a bench of justice Dalveer Bhandari and justice Deepak Verma said while listening to a petition on the rampant corruption in public distribution system (PDS). This suggestion came almost ten years after the Supreme Court had directed six-hunger prone States – Orissa, Chattisgarh, Rajasthan, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Himachal Pradesh – to reopen closed PDS shops and that too within a week so as the address the problem of mounting hunger.

This was in August 2001. Seven years later, the Supreme Court gave another directive to the government: “devise a scheme where no person goes hungry when the granaries are full and lots being wasted due to non-availability of storage space,” hasn’t had the desired impact. Except for statistical jugglery, the government we all know remains non-committal on its role in eradicating hunger.

As I wrote sometimes back, not only the Supreme Court, even successive Prime Ministers time and again paid a mere lip-sympathy to the poor and hungry. In April 2001, the then Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee had said in his inaugural address to a national consultation on “Towards a Hunger Free India” in New Delhi: “Democracy and hunger cannot go together. A hungry stomach questions and censures the system’s failure to meet what is a basic biological need of every human being. There can be no place for hunger and poverty in a modern world in which science and technology have created conditions for abundance and equitable development.”

He said the nation is guided by the commandment of the Upanishads: Annam Bahu Kurvita, literally meaning "multiply food production many fold. Ensure an abundance of food all around." How pious. And yet, all his government did was merely rename and ‘strengthen’ the public distribution system so as to ‘use food stocks in an imaginative and purposeful way’ to stabilise prices and boost exports.

The shocking paradox of the number of people living in hunger multiplying amidst overflowing food godowns has put the nation to shame. India ranks abysmally low – at ranking 66th among 88 countries -- in the Global Hunger Index.

Howsoever the governments swear in the name of hungry and the poor, the fact remains that it is not a national priority. Amidst the talk of bringing in a National Food Security Act, politicians of all political parties, without exception, have been busy talking about disinvestment and land acquisitions. Policy makers spend more time with industrialists and business houses, or hobnobbing with the diplomats in the cocktail circuits.

The debate on the National Food Security Act has not moved beyond the quantity of grains to be made available to each household falling under the category of ‘below the poverty line’ (BPL). While the Ministry of Food and Agriculture has expressed its inability to provide subsidised grain to those living above the poverty line, the National Advisory Council headed by Sonia Gandhi too is at a loss to find a suitable pathway to address hunger.

Unfortunately, what is not being understood is that hunger, agriculture and food security are related. These cannot be viewed separately. The National Food Security Act in reality does not look beyond food entitlements, the monthly ration quota that the poor needs to be given at a subsidised rate. Food Security on the other hand cannot be viewed without sustainable agriculture and it is here that the National Food Security Act fails miserably to draw a linkage.

In fact, I find there is a terrible confusion on the food security front. On the one hand the government is thinking of encouraging the private sector to cultivate oilseeds and pulses in neighbouring countries like Myanmar, and also in Latin America and then import it into India; and on the other it has launched a Rs 4,883-crore National Food Security Mission to bolster production of wheat, rice, oilseeds and pulses.

Strangely, the National Food Security Mission has nothing to do with the proposed National Food Security Act. Not many experts who swear in the name of food security ever relate it to the National Food Security Mission.

In fact, setting up a time-bound National Food Security Mission by enhancing production of wheat, rice, pulses and edible oils comes at a time when the UPA-II government itself is lowering the custom tariff thereby allowing cheaper imports. Take the case of edible oils. India was almost self-sufficient in edible oils in 1993-94. Ever since the government began lowering the tariffs, edible oil imports have multiplied turning the country into the biggest importer. Small farmers growing oilseeds and that too in the rainfed areas of the country had to abandon production in the light of cheaper imports.

I think there is something terribly wrong somewhere. The government has been steadily reducing the import tariffs on edible oils to make it cheaper for the domestic consumers thereby destroying the production capacity within the country. At the same time, it intends to pump in resources to improve productivity of oilseeds in the hope that the imports of edible oils can be reduced in the years to come. How can this be possible? Does it not mean that the government programmes in reality work at a cross-purpose?

On another front, land acquisition has become a politically motivated issue. While all kinds of options are being thrown up regarding how to make land acquisition economically worthwhile for the displaced, no one is talking of its impact on food security. If the land continues to be gobbled up at the prevailing rate, where will the country produce food for its growing population?

Who cares?

Don't worry. The National Food Security Act hai naa, goes the common refrain.

The emergence of two faces within Congress. People's voice getting stronger

I happened to listen to All-India Congress Committee general secretary Rahul Gandhi live on the TV when he addressed tribals in Lanjigarh in western Orissa yesterday. His combative speech, short and crisp, delivered the underlying message loud and clear. Development cannot be at the cost of people. He said he believed in development that did not ignore the voices of people. "In my religion, all are equal -- whether it is rich or poor, Dalits or Adivasis. Wherever as individual's voice is being stifled, that is against my religion."

Two days ago, Environment and Forests Minister Jairam Ramesh had rejected environment clearance for the London-based Vedanta bauxite mining project in Orissa.

Meanwhile, against the backdrop of the continuing protests against acquisition of land for Yamuna Expressway in Uttar Pradesh, farmers protest reached the out gates of Indian Parliament in New Delhi yesterday. Backed by political parties of all hues -- Congress, BJP, CPM/CPI, JD(U), TDP, BJP and Akali Dal -- and led by Ajit Singh of Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD), the demand for a new law for land acquisition gained political strength.

Speaking at the impressive rally, Ajit Singh said: "Yesterday, the prime minister announced that such a law will be introduced in the next session after a meeting with Rahul Gandhi. He should understand that he is not the prime minister for just Rahul Gandhi. He is my prime minister, your prime minister."

Is he people's prime minister? I very much doubt.

In my understanding, Manmohan Singh is the prime minister only of the industry and for the industry. He is a victim of the illusion created by GDP growth. Rahul Gandhi on the other hand has made him see the ground reality a number of times, and I appreciate his (Rahul Gandhi's) role in making the prime minister do certain things that he would otherwise never do.

Rahul Gandhi has often highlighted the real divide between the 'rich India and the poor India.' As he said in Orissa yesterday: "There are two India's -- Ameeron ka Hindustan (India of the rich) whose voices reach everywhere, and the Garibon ka Hindustan (India of the poor) whose voices are seldom heard.... Two years ago, you had come to me saying the Niyamgiri hill is your god. I told you I would be your soldier in Delhi. I am happy that I have helped you in whatever way I could. What is important is that your voice was heard without violence."

This is not the first time he has emphasised on the great divide. As the Indian Express says today (Aug 27, 2010) in a front page box:

------------------------------------------
His 2-India Refrain 

Parliament, Budget Debate, 2008-09: There are two distinct voices among India's people today. The louder of these voices comes from an India that is empowered .. the other voice is yet to be empowered. The two Indias are fundamentally inseparable. 

Kolkata, April 2009: it angers me when I think that there are people who have more money than anyone else in the world. And there are people who don't have food. 

Ranchi, October 2009: Two Indias have been created. One India is yours and my India, the India of opportunity...the other is of villages where opportunities are very rare.

Kanker (Chattisgarh), July 2010: There are two parts of India. One part is the part you see in urban areas, growing very fast. There is another part of India, a forgotten part of India, and tribals, Adivasis and Dalits are part of it.

-------------------------------

I have often been asked whether the sympathy that Rahul Gandhi for the poor and marginalised is only for winning elections. I am not sure what he has in his mind or why is he doing it but what is quite visible is that here is someone who is making the effort to not only reach out to the children of the lesser gods but also trying to understand them. Knowing his political future, the safe pathway that he has in front of him, it wasn't necessary for him to venture out into the countryside.

Having said that, I think Rahul Gandhi's actions and pronouncements (ostensibly backed by his mother Sonia Gandhi) are indicative of two faces within Congress party. One is the more visible and exploitative Corporate face -- led by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Home Minister P Chidambaram and the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia -- and with most of the Cabinet ministers lending support, and for obvious reasons; the other is more sensitive to the existing ground realities, and is led by Congress president Sonia Gandhi, supported by Rahul Gandhi, Digvijay Singh, Jairam Ramesh and Mani Shanker Aiyer.

After being mesmerised by the growth figures for quite long, I think Sonia Gandhi has now begun to realise that all is not well. Growth is not only leading to widening of inequalities, but is also at the foundation for the growing socio-economic unrest. I am aware that if it were not for Sonia Gandhi, the UPA would have never approved NREGA, the Rs 71,000-crore farm loan waiver, refusing permission for a series of small dams on Ganga, and striking down the Vedanta mining project. The moratorium on India's first poisonous food crop -- Bt brinjal -- also was backed by 10 Janpath.

Now this does not in any way undermine the historic role played by tribal communities and people's movements across the country. I think behind the political realisation of the importance of environmental protection is the non-violent struggle by the masses for several years and in several parts of the country. They have succeeded somewhere, but have failed at most places. But slowly and steadily the world is beginning to realise that the poor are not merely an obstruction in development. They are the losers, and they need to be heard.

I for one would continue to support the mass struggles, and be part of the great awakening that emanates from Garibon ka Hindustan. This is where the future of any great country lies.

Privatising higher education is the only way to 'educate' the stupid brats

Professor Dinesh Mohan of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) New Delhi was right on the mark. Speaking in New Delhi last week, his understanding of the socio-economic reasons behind the so-called neo-liberal assault on higher education made me think. He is so right.

He said if you look around your circle of friends and extended families you will find that most people who are even less than mediocre are doing so well. They have been 'educated' in foreign universities or have degrees from some private education institutes in India and yet we know they fall in the category of stupid. They are there because they could afford to be 'educated', even if they didn't deserve it.

Well, I immediately let my mind wander, and gosh he was so right. Many of my close friends and relatives certainly do not deserve to be where they are. They wouldn't have gone beyond the graduation level if higher education was not available for a price. Because they got those degrees, they managed to meet the essential qualification that landed them with plush jobs. These jobs should have actually gone to more aspiring and deserving candidates who were left behind because they could not 'afford' higher education.

Estimating the middle class to be around 250 million, Prof Dinesh Mohan said this means we have roughly 40 million families which fall in that category. They have children, some of them of course are bright, but a majority are stupid. Every parent makes the best of efforts to see that his children, howsoever stupid they may be, acquire the best of education (read degrees). Now, this wouldn't be possible unless he/she overcomes the competition from youngsters who come from the poor strata of life.

Since this stupid generation is unable to compete on merit, the next best option is to remove merit. Therefore, while the middle class talks of merit and talent, it actually hates competition based on merit. Private schools, colleges and universities have come in handy to rescue this stupid generation, and ofcourse generations after generation.

I found this argument very appealing, and of course true. 

If money couldn't buy education, and deprive the poor but bright students from higher education, we wouldn't have a majority of the politicians, and scions of the business families, coming back with degrees from Harvard, Cambridge and even some obscure university hidden in a street corner somewhere in Liverpool or Melbourne. Just think. Anil and Mukesh Ambani wouldn't have been heading the Empire if they were not the children of Dhirubhai? They certainly couldn't have managed higher education in the US since they were not meritorius enough. At best, they would have been upper division clerks somewhere if they were born to lesser mortals.

If you look around, you will find the same story everywhere. Your neighbour's son/daughter would have found it difficult to strike a better deal in matrimony since even there education qualification counts.

No wonder, more than 300 members of Parliament own colleges/universities. They are catering to a class of society that can only 'buy' education.

To hasten this process, the government is planning to introduce in Parliament the following four bills:

1. The Foreign Educational Institutional Institutions (Regulation of Entry and Operation) Bill, 2010.

2. The Educational Tribunals Bill, 2010.

3. The Prohibition of Unfair Practices in Technical Educational Institutions, Medical Educational Institutions and Universities Bill, 20101.

4. The National Accreditation Regulatory Authority for Higher Educational Institutions Bill, 2010.

At least, two more Bills in the same vein, including one on establishing the much-hyped National Commission for Higher Education and Research for facilitating single-window clearance for private/foreign universities, are reportedly in the offing, says Anil Sadgopal. And let us not forget the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative in Agricultural Research, Education and Marketing (KIA) that UPA-I had introduced.

This is a subject which needs a lot of debate and discussion, which unfortunately is not happening. Although the Prime Minister says that he is not working for the US, the fact remains that his government is in a tearing hurry to corporatise all sectors of the Indian economy, including education. And as James Petras, author of Globalisation Unmasked, had said: "The inevitability of globalisation and the adjustment or submission of people all over the world to free market capitalism depend upon the capacity of dominant and ruling classes to bend people to their own will and make them see the interest of capital as their own."

[If you want to know more about what the government is doing to destroy education,  suggest you try to get hold of a small publication: "Neo-liberal assault on Higher Education" edited by Anil Sadgopal. His email is: anilsadgopal@yahoo.com]

Rural India on a boil; battling against land acquisition

Indian villagers attack a policeman during a protest by farmers demanding better compensation for their land acquired by the state government for an upcoming expressway project near Agra, 17 Aug 2010 -- AP photo

India is fast becoming landless. Or should I say that majority Indians are being deprived of their ownership over land. I think in the years to come, let us say by the end of 11th Plan period, close to 90 per cent of the land will be owned by about 15 per cent of the population, with bulk of the ownership slipping into the hands of not more than 10 per cent of the population comprising essentially the elite.

At present about 70 per cent of the country's land is owned by close to 26 per cent of the population.

It isn't however coming in easy. For several years now, since the time economists/planners began telling us that land is an economic asset and it is unfortunately in hands of people who are inefficient, there has been literally a scramble by business and industry (driven by real estate) to procure as much as possible. The World Bank is backing this strategy, and if you have read the World Development Report 2008, you would know what I mean. It calls for land rentals, and setting up a network of training centres to train the displaced farmers to become industrial labour.

No wonder, the UPA government has made budgetary provisions for setting up 1,000 Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs). Prime Minister himself has been calling for a population shift, moving out 70 per cent of the farming community into urban centres.

Pitched battles are being fought across the country by the poor and deprived, who fear further marginalisation when their land is literally grabbed by the government on behalf of the industry. Over the years agriculture has been deliberately turned into a losing proposition as a result of which farmers, in most places, are keen to move out provided they get a better price for their land.

State governments across the country are facilitating the process of takeover. Whether it is for the Special Economic Zones (SEZ) or IT parks or nuclear reactors or airports or building a new capital or even for biofuel plantations, the battle for land has become fierce.

In fact, it will not be wrong to assume that many Chief Ministers have for all practical purposes become property dealers.

Gone are the days when a worried Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first Prime Minister, while addressing the nation on Aug 15, 1955 from the ramparts of the Red Fort in New Delhi said: "It is very humiliating for any country to import food. So everything else can wait, but not agriculture." That was in 1955. Fifty-five years later, in 2010, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh thinks that food security can be addressed by importing food. Land must be acquired for the industry, because the industrial sector alone will be the vehicle for higher growth.

Successive governments have used the Land Acquisition Act 1894, framed by the British during the days of the Raj, to forcibly evict landowners in the name of public good. It is only lately that landowners have realised the economic worth of their land, and have begun to demand a higher price. But still, government prefer to buy land at a throwaway price, and then sell it to the industry at exorbitant rates. The Real Estate and the industry then sells it to prospective buyers at a phenomenal price.

No one wants to throw away the stale law into the dustbin of history. Political parties are willing to accept it with a few changes. Political pressure is therefore mounting on the government to bring back the Land Acquisition (Amendment) bill 2007, along with the accompanying Resettlement and Rehabilitation Bill, 2009 which were introduced in Parliament on Feb 25, 2009, but was allowed to lapse in view of the strong opposition from Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee.

I am not getting into the nitty-gritty of the two bills introduced earlier. I want to draw your attention to another significant Supreme Court judgement which the industry does not like (and therefore the government is not talking about). A bench comprising Justice Mukundakam Sharma and Anil R Dave has held that not only the present market value but also future potential value, and the purpose for which the land is to be used, must be taken into account for arriving at just compensation.

The Hindu (Aug 22, 2010) reports: For providing Adi Dravidas with house sites, the Tamil Nadu government acquired 3.90 acres at Palangudi in Tiruchi district in September 1992. The land Acquisition Officer awarded Rs 1.72 a square foot. At the instance of appellant A Natesan Pillai the reference court fixed the market value of the land at Rs 17 a sq foot. On  the State's appeal, the Madras High Court fixed the value at Rs 9. Hearing this case, the Supreme Court said: It cannot be disputed that the acquired land, being in the heart of the city and having excellent prospects of being used as residential site, definitely has an edge regarding potential value.."

Meanwhile, here is a report from Voice of America on the continuing fight for land In India.

India Witnesses Growing Conflict Over Land

Anjana Pasricha

New Delhi 23 August 2010:

In India, protests by farmers about land acquisition in the country's most populated state have focused attention on the growing conflict about land, as the economy modernizes. The growing resistance by rural communities about giving up their land for industrial expansion is throwing up new challenges for India.

The violent protests in the northern state, Uttar Pradesh, earlier this month were sparked by demands by farmers for higher compensation for land taken from them to build a highway connecting New Delhi with the tourist hub, Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. Three farmers were killed in the demonstration.

The clashes are the latest in a series of protests which have erupted in many parts of the country about efforts to acquire farmland for infrastructure projects or industry.

As India industrializes, businesses are in search of more land to build factories. The government is under pressure to quickly improve rickety infrastructure and build more highways, power stations and railways to meet the needs of an expanding economy.

The only free land available is populated, fertile farm land across rural India. Moving farmers and tribal communities off the land is not always proving to be easy.

Farmers complain

Some farmers complain that compensation given for their land is too low. And, they worry about loss of their livelihood in a country where two thirds of the billion-plus people live off the land.

Devinder Sharma of the Forum for Biotechnology and Food Security in New Delhi says promises of employment in the new industries do not materialize for the bulk of the farmers whose land is taken away. He says many of them are driven to an uncertain future in cities.

He says the new economy cannot sustain the kind of employment which farming provides in a populous country.

"No industry or group of industries can provide the kind of jobs or the scale of jobs India needs," Sharma said. "In a country which has 600 million farmers including their families, I don't think any industry has the capability or even industrial sector has the capability to provide even jobs to even one-tenth of that population."

Read the full report at: http://www1.voanews.com/english/news/asia/India-Witnesses-Growing-Conflict-Over-Land-101293609.html

Exposing the myths surrounding FDI in retail

Only a few days back the Minister of State for Industries Jyotiraditya Scindia had made a strong plea to allow FDI in multi-brand retail. He told Parliament that his ministry has formed a five-member committee which will talk to stake-holders and take a final decision. The Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion had earlier come up with a discussion paper, which ostensibly was written by Wal-Mart.

The Business TV channels had gone ga-ga over it. They have a task to perform on behalf of the businesses which controls them, and since they thrive on advertisements they have a clear vested interest. That is where their 'national interest' as well as 'economic analysis' ends. Aamir Khan's Peepli Live has already brought out the sordid truth behind media motives.    

The ongoing debate is therefore heavily backed in favour of the commercial interests of the retail industry. More worrying is the way the private business schools (and you have a large number of them) have been teaching this subject, more in line with the DIPP discussion paper, without any fruitful discussion. Of course, there have been exceptions.

This did not dampen my efforts to bring the realities to the fore. I am sure you have seen my analysis, a part of which had also appeared in one of my blog posts. In case you missed it, here it is: FDI in retail: Importing a failed model (http://devinder-sharma.blogspot.com/2010/07/fdi-in-retail-importing-failed-model.html). I am aware that the UPA-II government is under pressure from G-20 to open up to FDI in multi-brand retail, and all these justifications are simply to hoodwink the masses to believe all is well.

At last, after long I came across an analysis that really measures up to what should be dubbed as 'academic excellence'. Prof Janat Shah (along with an independent researcher M G Subramaniam) of the Indian Institute of Management (IIM), Bangalore, have come out with an analysis that should serve as an eye-opener. Every college/university and the plethora of business schools should prescribe this as part of the curriculum. Every business journalist worth the name should read this.

I am not expecting the five-member team to follow this analysis. The poor chaps have a mandate, and despite the public face they will put up, they will eventually sign on the dotted line. But you and me have a responsibility. We do not want our farmers and  consumers to suffer. Let us therefore stand up and try to show the mirror to the people who govern us (and never get tired of telling us about the virtues of governance), but in reality are working for business and industry.

Mythical benefits of retail FDI
http://bit.ly/akJPFC

By Janat Shah and M G Subramanian

Popular business press articles today vehemently support FDI in retail often leaving readers with this perception that once FDI is allowed in multi-brand retail, the Wal-Marts and Tescos of the world would enter India and revolutionise the agricultural practices and supply chains for food products.

It is further assumed that our farmers would receive higher share of the retail price and consumers would enjoy food products at lower prices. Such similar notions have often been supported through discussion papers produced by the department of industrial policy and promotion as well as studies in organised retail by IFPRI and ICRIER.

The entire debate is often based on certain assumptions (‘ myths’ ) which need to be questioned. We outline these major myths and question their validity by looking at experience from the US and Europe.

Myth 1. Farmers would get higher share of retail income with the entry of global organised retail chains: Empirical studies in both the US and Europe have shown that farmers share of retail income has steadily declined over time. In an empirical study using US data it has been shown that farm value share of consumer expenditure for domestically produced farm foods has steadily declined from 33% to 21% from 1970 to 1994. According to a European study, the real farm producer price index of total farm production fell by 27% over the period 1990-2002.

Myth 2. Increase in share of global organised retail would lower prices in food articles : This is a major argument used by most of the studies which strongly favour entry of FDI in retail. However, trends in the BLS (Bureau of Labour studies) food price index in US from 1950 to 2007 tend to somewhat mirror the general Consumer Price Index, with no steady decrease or increase. So expecting the retail price in food products to decline with entry of global retail chains is like chasing a mirage.

Myth 3. Global retail chains would procure directly from farmers: This is not simply true. Currently Wal-Mart procures only 20% (mainly non-food category) of goods directly from manufacturers. Most of the organised retailers procure from large wholesalers and other intermediaries.

Myth 4. Global retail chains would invest in cold chain and we would see immediate benefits in terms of reduction in wastages in fruits and vegetable sector: As has been seen world over, organised retail usually starts with non-food items and slowly moves to dry food category and over a period of time enters into fresh food category. In general, perishables are difficult to manage world over and it is unlikely that it would receive too much attention from global retail chains in the initial stages.

Myth 5. Models and practices followed by global retailers like Wal-Mart represent the best supply chain practices and same models and practices would continue to be valid/optimal in future for world in general and India in particular: The current global model of organised retail was established when crude prices were relatively low and one was not worried about carbon footprint in the supply chain deployed in the process. This model worked with hub and spoke model involving concentrated production and storage systems. The current model is highly energy and carbon intensive in nature. We believe this is neither desirable nor sustainable in long run.

Myth 6. Entry of organised retail would result in higher jobs: This seems to be wishful thinking. Of course higher growth of Indian economy would result in more jobs in retail in general but there is no reason to believe that capital-intensive global retail chains would relatively create more jobs compared to the unorganised sector.

Myth 7. There is level playing field between organised and unorganised retailers: One of the major components of cost in retail is the cost of financing working capital. Unfortunately unorganised retail does not have easy access to finance. Most of the retailers end up borrowing money from informal money markets and with a result we are dealing an uneven playing field loaded against the unorganised sector.

The war as we believe is not between ideologies . What worries one is the wishful thinking on the part of public in general and industry and policymakers in particular who assume that FDI in organised retail in India is the one stop solution to all problems . Yes, we have problems for which we do not have ready-made solutions. Yes, we need to improve productivity in agriculture and reduce wastage in supply chains.

But, it would be naive for us to assume that global organised retail chains would do the tough task of solving these complex set of problems in agriculture production and distribution . We need to look at FDI in retail as just another approach and not look at it as panacea for all our problems in agriculture. #

Read this article in sync with my analysis (the blog link has been posted above) and you will get a true picture of what FDI in retail actually means, and who it stands to benefit.

Congress high command bows before public pressure; scraps the controversial dam on river Bhagirithi in the Himalayas

An enchanting view of the Himalayan valley -- photo by S Roy Biswas

After the moratorium on Bt Brinjal -- which could have been India's first poisonous GM food crop -- the scrapping of the 600 MW Loharinag Pala hydroelectric project on Bhagirithi river in the lap of the Himalayas (in Uttarakhand State) is another firm but major decision that has been swayed by public opinion.

Faced with a wave of religious sentiments, opposition from environmentalists (spearheaded by the respected environmentalist Prof G D Agarwal who sat on a 31-day fast on the banks of the river), academicians and local villagers, a three-member Group of Ministers (GoM) -- headed by Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee and comprising Power Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde and Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh -- reversed its earlier decision of continuing with the construction of the hydel dam project in view of the financial implications involved.

This decision assumes terrible importance, and may actually serve as a precedent, since Rs 650-crore had already been spent on the controversial project, and another Rs 2000-crore is locked in supplies and future orders. Also, this decision is not going to evoke any strong reaction from the industry because the project was being laid out by the public sector National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC). But if it was, for instance, being pursued by Reliance Industries, I am sure the Finance Minister would have dug his heels, and the media would have cried hoarse.

"The decision to shut down the hydel project comes after the Congress leadership showed it was ready to lend more political credence to environmental concerns," writes Nitin Sethi in a front page dispatch in The Times of India (Aug 21, 2010). Now, this in my understanding is the reason why the UPA-II has actually been forced to reverse its own decision taken a few months back.

We all know that with the Congress high command intervening, the GoM reversed its decision. It does evoke a curiosity to know who do we mean when we say Congress high command. After all, the government itself had given a go-ahead in June, and then who in the Congress party could have over-ruled that decision. Well, when the newspapers say Congress high command they actually mean the UPA President Sonia Gandhi.

Sonia Gandhi has very rightly donned the robe of an environmental watchdog.

While the decision also means that the mighty Ganga would not be tamed for 135-km stretch from Gomukh to Uttarakashi, and as Jairam Ramesh stated: "It will be a no-dam area and the government will declare it an ecologically sensitive zone in the next four to five week." This is an important decision, and will go a long way to protect the fragile ecology of the Himalayas. More and more such ecologically important decision need to be taken to ensure that we do play havoc with the environment any further.

You would have noticed that environment protection has suddenly taken a hot seat. It also tells us that the instrument of Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) if used properly can be really helpful in balancing the needs of development vis a vis environment protection and conservation. At times when the world is confronted with the grave implications of global warming, and the destruction of the natural habitat, I feel Jairam Ramesh has single-handedly taken upon himself the role of protector of India's environment. He has very effectively used EIA to bring out the concerns, and is also ensuring that the companies are made to behave.

The UPA-II cabinet (also a section of the media) wouldn't have allowed Jairam Ramesh to function if it was not for the unequivocal support he is receiving from the Congress president Sonia Gandhi. I was particularly impressed by her take more recently on illegal mining: "It is a menace with profound political, economic and social implications...What is most worrying is the high degree of convergence between areas that are mineral and forest-rich and areas that are arenas of tribal deprivation and Left-wing extremist violence."

Very well said indeed. As she rightly added: "Dealing with the Naxalite challenge will call for fundamental innovations in the manner in which the mineral resources are exploited and forests are managed." I hope the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Home Minister P Chidambaram, as well as the BJP leadership is listening.

How it feels to be living under a cloud of smoke in Russia

Below the dense clouds: ENVISAT satellite image from August 10, 2010 shows smoke over Russia. Russia's deadly summer heatwave could wipe up to $14 billion off economic growth, economists said on Tuesday, as wildfires raged on in several provinces and forecasters said sweltering weather won't abate this week -- pic from MSN website

It the times of turbulent weather conditions, often extreme, appearing in several parts of the world, seemingly disconnected, one gets to read a lot of analysis by climatologists. But I sometimes wonder how the people who lived through it felt. The nightmare that these people must have gone through would be a chilling experience to recount, perhaps not many of us can put that in words.

Somehow I feel people across the world have never tried to feel the chill that others (who lived the experience) have felt. We somehow believe that what has happened in some distant land will not happen to us. You express a few words of sympathy, even express shock, and life is back to normal.

All is well.

This is not true. Such indifference is the reason why the human society has almost lost out on compassion. We no longer share the suffering of fellow human beings, not even in our thoughts. Sometimes it dawns on me that in the 20th century the human cells have been quietly replaced by the computer chip. We have no feelings left.

Nevertheless, I had been reading about the clouds over Russia, and the unprecedented heat and wildfires that has choked the countryside. The more I read the more I wanted someone to tell me the story, how was it to breathe through it. I wanted to feel what it means to live in the record heat that Russia is passing through.

I only hope it is a passing phase, never to return.

Vera Pavlova is the author of a collection of poems "If there is something to desire". She recently travelled to Moscow: "Breathe in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. I concentrate on breathing through the surgeon's mask, and that becomes an effort in itself. Not a simple effort, but difficult and all-important. After a while I am busy doing only that: breathe in, breathe out."

This opening para of her article "Moscow, Through a Cloud of Smoke" (New York Times, Aug 14) sums it up nicely. You have to read the article to get a feel of what people living in Moscow have undergone. The picture from the ENVISAT satellite above only tells you how massive the clouds are, but what it means to be living under its shadow is well brought out by Vera Pavlova. Believe me, it is not of the unreality of the reel life, but reality itself. 

Moscow, through a cloud of smoke
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/15/opinion/15pavlova.html

By Vera Pavlova

BREATHE in, breathe out. Breathe in, breathe out. I concentrate on breathing through the surgeon’s mask, and that becomes an effort in itself. Not a simple effort, but difficult and all-important. After a while I am busy doing only that: breathe in, breathe out.

I have just arrived in Moscow. I hear the voice of a TV announcer describing the combined effects of record heat and nearby wildfires: “The level of carbon monoxide in the air is four times higher than normal. Stay indoors, whenever possible. If you have to go outside, use gauze masks.”

I have to go outside: I need to register my American husband with the Department of Visas and Registrations, as I always do, even if it is only for a six-day visit, as is the case this time. That is why I am standing in front of a mirror, wearing a mask and learning to breathe through it. My husband gives me a kiss through the mask. I try to smile. The mask stifles the smile. How am I going to smile at the Muscovites, to cheer them up, my fellow martyrs? How will they smile back at me?

Out in the street, however, I realize it is no time for smiling. The neighborhood, so familiar since my childhood, is almost invisible. There is no sky at all. The sun is there: dim and reddish-brown, the color of dried blood. You could look straight at it without your eyes tearing, were they not already tearing because of the acrid smoke. Walking through it, I see a vague outline of my old high school, of the kindergarten my daughters went to when they were younger, of the house where one of my girlfriends used to live.

Unreal, as if in slow-motion, a baby carriage appears. Passing by a backyard, I dimly see, as in a half-developed photograph, a playground: kids on swings, grandmas on benches, young mothers smoking cigarettes. I realize I am the only one wearing a mask. Breathe in, breathe out. Oh, smoke, why are you burning my eyes so fiercely?

Back home, I dash for the phone. My mother: “Your dad and I are fine. We’re smokers, aren’t we? Didn’t we always tell you smoking’s good for you?” My uncle: “I am at the dacha, parading around here in the nude; the neighbors can’t see a thing anyway.” My friend: “I know what’s happening: it’s a velvet apocalypse. A pigeon is dying on my balcony.”

I check my e-mail: a letter from a girlfriend who lives outside the city. “In our town, policemen in parade uniforms are standing along the main street, one every quarter mile. The whole town is in smoke, and these jokers with their white shirts, like ghosts. What’s the occasion? Some bigwig is passing through, in a car with darkened windows, with two ambulances and two fire engines in the motorcade.” My computer crashes: it is too hot.

Outside the temperature is 102, and I am afraid to even guess how hot it is inside the apartment: the windows are shut and caulked with cotton wool to stop the smoke, and still the smell seeps in. Fans and air conditioners vanished from stores even before the fires began, two months ago, when the heat wave first set in. Since then it has broken all records, like a high jumper continuously raising the bar. We dread the daily weather forecasts: 95, 97, 98, 100, 102, 104 (and that is no poetic license; I vouchsafe for the accuracy of these figures).

A friend recommends: “Put your bed sheets in a plastic bag and keep them in a freezer. Use them at night, and two to three hours of coolness are guaranteed. But don’t catch a cold.” We put the sheets in the freezer for a day, unfold them with a crunch at night. Alas, in two minutes they are as hot as the pillows. 

Shall I ever forget the past six days and nights? Every morning we woke up in sticky sweat and dashed to the window to see if the smoke screen had lifted. No, it had become even denser. Then we watched the news reports: “We don’t know how to get our newborn home from the maternity ward; we fear the infant may suffocate on the way.”

“We had our wedding on a ship; couldn’t even walk out on the deck.”

“Subway stations are filled with smoke; many passengers faint.”

“The number of fires has decreased, but the burning areas are expanding.”

“It was a miracle that I made it safely from the burning woods; I followed the wild animals, they led me out.”

The most frequently used quotation: “And the smoke of homeland is to us both sweet and pleasing” (from Alexander Griboyedov’s comedy “Woe from Wit,” which every Russian knows from school). The most frequently used metaphor: hell.

On the sixth day I was obliged to go out again: to de-register my husband so that we could fly back to New York. Baby carriages were still out in the street, but by this time there were many people with masks (now the pharmacies have sold out). What was there, under those masks? Certainly not smiles, judging by the eyes. What I saw in them instead was determination, to go on. To keep breathing.

Leaving Moscow, we felt as if we were fleeing a combat zone. Even inside the smoky Sheremetyevo airport, people were wearing masks, and the visibility on the runway was no more than 380 yards.

Soon after we landed in New York, my mother called: the smoke in Moscow had lifted.

Pakistan stares at an arid future

After the deluge, Pakistan needs to realise that it actually is faced with a terrible water scarcity.  

There is something strange happening to the weather. The cold deserts of Ladakh (in India) have always received precipitation in the form of snow. It hardly ever rains in this high altitude desert. But for some years now, rains had begun to happen. Even last year, it rained more than it snowed. In the first week of August, it didn't only rain in Leh but a cloudburst that lasted for about two hours caused extensive damage.

In neighbouring Pakistan, BBC reports that the worst floods in the country's history have hit at least 14 million people, killing at least 1,600. Strangely, the floods hit the dry belt of Sindh, much of it semi-arid, besides other adjoining areas. While the climate experts are trying to find out whether the extreme weather conditions have something to do with global warming, I think the political and intellectual leaders are failing to look beyond climate change.

Meanwhile, Russia, and parts of Africa have lost millions of acres of wheat due to an unprecedented drought and the resulting heat wave. Russia has banned wheat export. The Russian ban explains how vulnerable is food security to sudden changes in climate. Pakistan may have to resort to foodgrain imports once the floods recede. Australia and Canada in the past have had low wheat harvests necessiating large cuts in grain exports.

Dependence on imported food to meet the food security challenges is no longer a sustainable option. Pakistan had always relied on food imports. India is fast catching up. But hopefully global warming should make countries across globe to rethink food policies, to ensure that more food is produced within the country. It needs government policies in agriculture that does not end up acerbating the existing crisis. More urgently, it needs governments to reframe economic policies so that they don't lead to greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere.

The bigger tragedy however is that all weather extremes are now being very conveniently blamed on climate change. Somehow an impression is being given as if climate change is the act of god, and is beyond human role. Climate change has become the scapegoat for all ills.

I see this mindset to be more devastating than the actual destruction being wrought by greenhouse gases. Intensive farming across globe, aided by commodity trading and futures, is one major reason for the crop cycles busting. More than blaming the weather gods, it is time governments revisit agriculture programmes to revert to more sustainable farming systems, and apply the principles of food sovereignty to lessen the impact of global warming on food supplies. Re-desiging agriculture has to be accompanied with a shift away from the policies and approaches that are part of what is called as growth economics.

Pakistan however faces a much bigger challenge. After the deluge recedes, it will be time to realise that Pakistan is perhaps faced with its worst-ever freshwater crisis. This will compound the crisis that Pakistan already faces in food security. The FAO estimates that Pakistan is at the bottom of the 26 Asian countries when it comes to water availability. Pakistan is fast moving from being a water stressed country to a water scarce country.

In fact, water stress stares at not only but also India and China. In Pakistan, the looming water scarcity makes it more vulnerable to socio-political upheavals, something that is not desirable for the South Asia region as a whole. It is in this context that I came across an interesting and thought-provoking article in the International Herald Tribune. Written by Steven Solomon, author of "Water: The Epic Struggle for Wealth, Power and Civilization," it suggests several steps that the country must take immediately.

I am not sure whether the suggestion of mega projects is the right one. But I think it will be useful if this blog could draw some opinion/comments from within Pakistan as to what the Pakistanis feel should be the right strategy to combat looming water scarcity.
 
Pakistan's looming freshwater crisis
by Steven Solomon

HARD as it may be to believe when you see the images of the monsoon floods that are now devastating Pakistan, the country is actually on the verge of a critical shortage of fresh water. And water scarcity is not only a worry for Pakistan’s population — it is a threat to America’s national security as well.

Given the rapid melting of the Himalayan glaciers that feed the Indus River — a possible contributor to the current floods — and growing tensions with upriver archenemy India about use of the river’s tributaries, it’s unlikely that Pakistani food production will long keep pace with the growing population.

It’s no surprise, then, that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made Pakistani headlines a few weeks before the flooding by unveiling major water projects aimed at bolstering national storage capacity, irrigation, safe drinking water and faltering electrical power service under America’s new $7.5 billion assistance program. In March, the State Department announced that water scarcity had been upgraded to “a central U.S. foreign policy concern.” Pakistan is at the center of it.

This is because a widespread water shortage in Pakistan would further destabilize the fractious country, hurting its efforts to root out its resident international terrorists. The struggle for water could also become a tipping point for renewed war with India. The jihadists know how important the issue is: in April 2009, Taliban forces launched an offensive that got within 35 miles of the giant Tarbela Dam, the linchpin of Pakistan’s hydroelectric and irrigation system.

Pakistan needs to rebuild and overhaul the administration of the world’s largest contiguous irrigation network. For decades, Islamabad has spent far too little on basic maintenance, drainage and distribution canals, new water storage and hydropower plants.

To some extent, these deficiencies have been masked since the 1970s by farmers drilling hundreds of thousands of little tube wells, which now provide half of the country’s irrigation. But in many of these places the groundwater is running dry and becoming too salty for use. The result is an agricultural crisis of wasted water, inefficient production and incipient crop shortfalls.

Like Egypt on the Nile, arid Pakistan is totally reliant on the Indus and its tributaries. Yet the river’s water is already so overdrawn that it no longer reaches the sea, dribbling to a meager end near the Indian Ocean port of Karachi. Its once-fertile delta of rice paddies and fisheries has shriveled up.

Chronic water shortages in the southern province of Sindh breed suspicions that politically connected landowners in upriver Punjab are siphoning more than their allotted share. There have been repeated riots over lack of water and electricity in Karachi, and across the country people suffer from contaminated drinking water, poor sanitation and pollution.

The future looks grim. Pakistan’s population is expected to rise to 220 million over the next decade, up from around 170 million today. Yet, eventually, flows of the Indus are expected to decrease as global warming causes the Himalayan glaciers to retreat, while monsoons will get more intense. Terrifyingly, Pakistan only has the capacity to hold a 30-day reserve storage of water as a buffer against drought.

India, meanwhile, is straining the limits of the Indus Waters Treaty, a 1960 agreement on sharing the river system. To cope with its own severe electricity shortages, it is building a series of hydropower dams on Indus tributaries in Jammu and Kashmir State, where the rivers emerge from the Himalayas.

Read the full article at: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/16/opinion/16solomon.htmlPakistan

Where the head is held high, but the mind is colonised

Very rarely you come across an article that hits you like an avalanche. Searching through my emails upon return after a long period of absence from New Delhi, and in the process missing the excitement of the Independence Day celebrations, I had merely set my eyes on this article. And within minutes I read through, the underlying passion holding me spellbound. I must say it is a powerful indictment of the way we have allowed our mind to be colonised (to borrow a phrase from the write-up).

I will not hold you for long from this magnificent piece that paints a picture of an Independent India that we want to hide. The reason is simple. Whether we like it or not we are the real beneficiary (and in many ways product) of this system that merrily goes on widening the gulf between the rich and poor, and between the haves and have nots. This article makes you think. You may not have all the answers but certainly you can begin by doing something that makes a difference. Come on, wake up, and do your bit to bridge the widening gulf in our society. That will be true celebration.

As Sangita Sharma says in her piece "Still Imprisoned, what Independence?" (posted on My Right To Safe Food list): "The whole nation and NRI's galore go into a frenzy by showing patriotism on this particular day. Only to indulge in a superficial celebration, pretending all is well. But all is not! After 63 years of this so called Independence hard earned by our freedom fighters, we have not only let them down but ourselves unfortunately. Our policy makers, industry and scientists have progressed. But not the masses of citizens who remain mute spectators."

Still Imprisoned, what Independence?
By Sangita Sharma

Just back after attending Independence Day celebrations by the little stars of Parmanand Education Trust (P.ET). This incredible school educates 250 underprivileged children from various backgrounds ranging from domestic help, contract workers, security guards, orphans, including 12 of my farmers children and more from surrounding villages. Witnessing these children perform with such zeal and enthusiasm was so heart provoking. A dedicated lot of enterprising teachers choreographed painstakingly short skits and dance performances translating the essence of true Freedom.

This one particular skit made a deep impact on me. I hope it did the same to a whole lot of parents, educationists and passers by. This act depicted the currently existing vices like corruption, unhealthy environment, untouchability, dowry, poverty, caste system and ugly bickering politics. How each one of these vices need to be overcome by reflecting the need to stand up for honesty, transparency, harmony of one and all. After which as future awakened citizens, a celebration of FREEDOM ensued. Truly outstanding.

This to me is our Freedom, not this mindless futile emotive of wishing each other a "Happy Independence Day". The whole nation and NRI's galore go into a frenzy by showing patriotism on this particular day. Only to indulge in a superficial celebration, pretending all is well. But all is not! After 63 years of this so called Independence hard earned by our freedom fighters, we have not only let them down but ourselves unfortunately. Our policy makers, industry and scientists have progressed. But not the masses of citizens who remain mute spectators. Alarm bells ring loud. The health of our nation is under serious jeopardy.

The proof is right in front of you.

We have an an estimated 421 million in poverty. 360 million dying of hunger. We breed a sick nation with every second person a victim of some chronic disease. Is this Freedom? But there is not - a squeak against the policy makers who get away by designing policies to suit the vested interests of the 48 dollar billionaires and about a 100,000 millionaires in our country.

- Not a squeak against faulty farm policies designed to suit industry but not our farmers. Traditional seeds are under threat, a direct consequence of our food being under assault.

- Not a squeak against pharmaceutical industry that releases day after day new drugs, new vaccines, new prescriptions to suit a new diseases. But the root cause is never tackled. Progress in science they call it but in reality designed to fill their coffers. No wonder India is the Diabetic capital in the world with only a 40.9 million people being diabetic.

- Not a squeak against the flourishing food processing industry that unleashes day after day countless toxic refined foods. In short, we blindly accept the claims of these politically correct nutritionists.

There is no distinction made by these diet dictocrats :

-between whole grains and refined grains, cereals, nuts and more that have lost their nutrients

-Between foods grown organically and those grown with fertilizers, pesticides and now genetically engineered.

-Between unprocessed dairy products and pasteurized dairy products from confined animals raised on processed feed.

•Between fresh and rancid fats

•Between natural and battery produced eggs and more

Just look at the irony - It single out foods grown by independent producers – small farmers but spares the powerful and highly profitable food processing industry, vegetable refined oil producers. It gives lip service to the overwhelming evidences implicating refined sugar as a major cause of degenerative diseases but spares the soft drink industry. It raises not a murmur against the refined flour, hydrogenated fats and foods adulterated with harmful preservatives like emulsifiers and coloring agents. In short, the traditional foods that nourished our ancestors is now replaced with the new toxic products that dominate the modern market place. Diet Dictocrats endorse this, they are none other than doctors, policy makers, scientists, health associations and more. Dr Sally Fallon has articulated this truths in her book Nourishing Traditions.

With the result being immunities are collapsing. Children are the victims for they are far more susceptible. Children as old as 6 reach puberty, youth at 18 suffering heart attacks, cancer, BP and more. Is this the future we wish to provide our children? What kind of independence is this?

We the educated citizens wear blinkers and stay trapped but do nothing within our own country, then who is to blame? The enemy is not outside of our borders. The enemy resides well within us. Colonised we still are but within our own minds. Our defenses and voice of reasoning dies a tragic death each day. We have no time to question the oppressive institutional policies that have constantly undermined the well being of our nation. Henry Kissinger's forecast is well underway “ if you want to control nations control oil, but if you want to control the society control food”. A handful of MNC's are merrily controlling our food chain. Whilst they laugh their ways to their banks, you suffer your way to the hospitals with a big dent in your pocket.

Wake up. Set yourself free from the clutches of sense habits. Raise your voices against the diktats of the junk, processed food produce. Boycott all such products.

The Right to Safe Food Choices and Good Health is our constitutional Right. Demand it.

Freedom lies with us. Just shift the gears in your minds and START.

Read the full piece at: http://myrighttosafefood.blogspot.com/2010/08/still-imprisoned-what-independence.html

Farm subsidies on an upswing in OECD countries

Last week, the IPS put out a story on the increasing farm subsidies in Europe. The report was based on an OECD report "Agricultural Policies in OECD Countries at a Glance: 2010," which said that agricultural subsidies rose by 22 in 2009, up from 21 per cent in 2008.

Not all these subsidies benefit the European farmers. The news report quotes Rainer Falk, publisher of the " World Economy and Development", as saying: "The main beneficiary of the EU subsidies in Germany for instance is Suedzucker, a large sugar producer, which received in 2008 more than $ 50 million in subsidies." My friend Marita Wiggerthale from Oxfam says: "EU subsidies for agriculture are a sham." She cites the example of milk subsidies to drive home the point.

"Due mostly to over-production, the European milk prices prices for farmers in early 2009 were extremely low at less than 0.20 cents per litre. instead of reducing the production to stabilise prices, the EU reintroduced subsidies for milk in 2009 to support producers." Needless to say, the EU is again resorting to dumping milk globally, mainly in Africa, but in the days to come will also aim at India (if the EU-India FTA comes through).

I found this news report very useful. More interesting are the comments provided by Jacques Berthelot of the French group, Solidarite. I am providing his comments in brackets and in blue. I think this is an excellent analysis for all those who have a discerning eye for details. At the same time, the news report is very useful in the ongoing debate on farm subsidies, international trade and dumping.

Farm subsidies on increase

Paris, 6 Aug (IPS/Julio Godoy) -- Subsidies for agriculture in the industrialized countries of the world grew again in 2009, benefiting the largest companies an landowners, such as Prince Albert of Monaco and Queen Elizabeth of Britain.

The latest increase came despite repeated and consistent evidence that such subsidies contribute to the destruction of the livelihoods of poor farmers in developing countries, especially in Africa, and that they distort international trade.

According to a new study by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), subsidies for agriculture in industrialised countries rose to around $252.5 billion, or 22 percent of total farmers' receipts in 2009 -- up from 21 percent in 2008.

[This is simply not true: $252.5 billion is not a figure of "agricultural subsidies" but of "agricultural supports". To demystify this figure, we must distinguish the concepts of support and subsidy, although OECD and free-traders prefer to blur it. If a subsidy – a public expense financed by taxpayers – is a support, the reverse is not true: support is a broader concept encompassing 'market price supports' through import protection which increases the gap between domestic and world prices. For OECD, free traders and the WTO for which "market access" is the first objective of the Doha Round, import protection deprives consumers to buy their food (and other goods) at world prices to which they consider to be entitled so that they suffer a negative consumer's surplus, the gap between the domestic and world prices considered as a distortion. OECD considers this gap as a 'transfer from consumers to producers', translated as a consumers’ subsidy to farmers.

However as the world agricultural prices are dumped prices for most products exported by the OECD countries, to consider the gap between the domestic and world prices as a support to agriculture, and what is more, as a consumers’ subsidy to farmers, is quite bold. In that context of world dumped prices import protection is quite justified. The OECD consumers are all the less justified to claim they are subsidizing their farmers that they are themselves at the origin of these low world prices since, in their position of taxpayers, they have subsidized not only the agricultural exports at these dumped prices but also the direct payments given to farmers to their products sold on the domestic market and abroad to compensate them after reduction of their domestic prices! Furthermore it is absurd to consider that the consumers should pay the world price for their whole food basket when the share of the imported food represents at most 10% of their food staples consumption.

Another reason why the MPS concept is irrelevant is that those 'consumers' to whom the farmers are selling their products are not the households but, as OECD recognizes it, they are 'the first consumers (measured at the farm gate)', that is to say the agri-food industries which today collect at least 90% of the products to process them before selling them to supermarkets, the consumers being only at the end of the chain. And everybody knows that even if the agri-food industries and supermarkets import about 10% of their agricultural products before selling the end-products to Western consumers, the profits made on these cheap imported products are rarely shared with the end consumers and are to the contrary an argument to pay less the domestic farmers.

In the $252.5 billion – which corresponds to the PSE (producer support estimate) OECD indicator – the market price support (MPS) component was of $116.2 billion in 2009 so that the actual subsidies in cash to individual OECD farmers was of $136.3 billion, which is clearly still huge.

However the author has forgotten the collective subsidies given in kind to farmers for $95.3 billion in 2009 – corresponding to the General Services Support Estimate (GSSE) made of subsidies to Research and development, Agricultural schools, Inspection services, Infrastructure, Marketing and promotion, public stockholding – which, clearly contribute to a large extent to the high competitiveness of Western agricultural products. So that, at the end of the day, the total agricultural subsidies to Western farmers have been in 2009 of $231.6 billion.

The reason why the OECD is not including these general services subsidies in the PSE (producer support estimate) is that they are generally notified in the WTO green box as considered not to be "trade-distorting". Don't forget indeed that OECD is the main think-tank of the WTO and of all neo-liberal economists. Yet Professor Daryll Ray has demystified this idea that these general services subsidies are not trade-distorting: "WTO has declared that such research and education related expenditures have a minimal effect on trade... In practice, these activities have a direct impact on price and trade, whether that be a set-aside program or yield enhancing research" [Daryll Ray, Is food too important to be left to WTO? Agricultural Analysis Policy Center, University of Tennessee, November 29, 2002 (http://www.agpolicy.org).], and he has added: "Clearly, neither the US nor the rest of the world would be facing today's low prices and failing small farms if the cumulative growth in agricultural productivity had not taken place" [Daryll Ray, Daniel de la Torre Ugarte, Kelly J. Tiller, US Agricultural Policy: Changing course to secure farmers livelihoods worldwide, Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee, September 2003.]. And he enlarges his assessment in saying: "Little attention has been paid to legacy investments in the infrastructure of agricultural areas. These legacy investments… all influence production decisions in one way or another and that influence continues year after year while the influence of direct payments are limited to a given year" [Daryll Ray, What is an agricultural subsidy?, Agricultural Policy Analysis Center, University of Tennessee, 26 mars 2004]

The study, "Agricultural Policies in OECD Countries at a Glance 2010", found that the European Union's subsidies for farmers rose from 22 to 24 percent.

[Again this is the figure for the EU PSE which is not made of subsidies only and which on the other hand fails to incorporate the collective subsidies given in kind to farmers.]

In the period between 2007 and 2009, EU farmers received an average of 23 percent of their gross receipts in the form of direct financial support from the state.

[Again these figures concern the PSE but the actual EU agricultural budget in 2009 has represented 16.9% of the agricultural production value, or 20.5% if we include the Member states agricultural subsidies.]

The OECD represents the 30 most industrialised countries of the world, including the US and most members of the EU.

The subsidies for farmers in OECD countries have been at the centre of a heated dispute for years, both at the level of the EU and US and within the larger framework of the World Trade Organisation and its deadlocked Doha Development Round.

The EU spends about $75 billion on subsidies for agriculture, even though the sector represents only about two percent of the total gross domestic product of the union.

[The EU actual agricultural budget has been of €54.858 billion or $76.516 billion in 2009 (the € average exchange rate was of $1.3948). However this fails to take into account the agricultural subsidies of the Member States not paid from the EU budget, for €11.785 or $16.438 billion so that the EU whole agricultural subsidies have been of €66.643 billion or $92.954 billion. 

This subsidies regime will only change in 2014.

The new OECD data inflamed these complaints, the more so since it has been shown that the largest agro-businesses and even some royal houses in European monarchies benefit the most from the subsidies.

"EU subsidies for agriculture are a shame," Marita Wiggerthale from the German office of the humanitarian organisation Oxfam told IPS. She cited the example of subsidies for milk, which form part of the EU agricultural policy.

Due mostly to over-production, the European milk prices for farmers were in early 2009 extremely low at less than 0.20 euro per litre. Instead of reducing the production to stabilise prices, the EU reintroduced subsidies for milk in 2009 to support producers. [However this fails to incorporate the much larger hidden feed subsidies consumed by the dairy cows as a consequence of the large subsidies given to cereals, oilseeds and pulses since the CAP reforms of 1992 and 1999 and now integrated in the single farm payments.]

"As [a] consequence, the EU is again exporting milk to the whole developing world, especially towards Africa, at dumping' prices," Wiggerthale said. "By so doing, the EU is destroying the livelihoods of farmers in the poorest countries of the world while artificially maintaining a too high level of production."

To add insult to injury, the EU is simultaneously forcing developing countries in Africa, the Caribbean and the Pacific to further open their markets through the trade deals called economic partnership agreements.

Rainer Falk, a leading German critic of neoliberal globalization and publisher of "World Economy and Development", a specialised newsletter on international cooperation and trade, told IPS that the OECD subsidies for agriculture only benefit the largest companies in the sector. "The data for 2008 illustrates this point," Falk said. "The main beneficiary of the EU subsidies in Germany was Suedzucker, a large sugar producer, which that year received more than 50 million US dollars in subsidies," Falk pointed out. Data from other countries confirms Falk's complaints. In France, one of the main beneficiaries of the EU subsidies for agriculture in the recent past has been Prince Albert of Monaco. Queen Elizabeth of Britain has also received large subsidies from the EU.

Carmel Cahill, head of the policies, trade and adjustment division of the OECD's directorate for agriculture, food and fisheries, subscribed to this criticism. "European subsidies for agriculture continue to benefit the largest land owners," Cahill told IPS.

According to the most recent data, 11 percent of farms get 75 percent of the payments. "Take care though," Cahill warned, "it is the share of the payments, not of the entire budget, some of which goes to programmes and purposes that are not payments."

[Indeed, as explained above, part of the EU budget goes to collective subsidies in kind such as for rural development and it is also the case of the largest part of the State aids.]

Cahill also called attention to positive changes in the agricultural subsidy policies, especially in the EU.

"Despite still spending a large chunk of its budget on supporting a relatively small sector of its economy, the EU has reformed its subsidies criteria to move away from supporting exports and towards supporting producers, thus decoupling aid from production," Cahill said. "Such subsidies," Cahill argued, "are far less distorting in terms of trade than the aid directly linked to production volumes."

[Not at all, to the contrary: the Single Payment Scheme which accounted in 2009 for 60% of the common EU agricultural budget and 72% of the domestic direct payments (excluding export refunds and rural development, see table above) is the most trade-distorting type of subsidy for 7 reasons which cannot be explained here. See: J. Berthelot, The CAP subsidies are incompatible with the WTO Agreement on agriculture, 1st April 2010, http://www.solidarite.asso.fr/Papers-2010.html]

However, Cahill lamented that the EU and the member countries do not link the subsidies to specific targets. "The EU could connect its aid to better environmental protection measures of agriculture, or to an increased concern for biodiversity," Cahill told IPS. She explained that the increase in agricultural subsidies was mainly provoked by fluctuations in international commodity prices during the last four years. "Higher commodity prices in 2007 and 2008 were behind drops in the measured support in those years and the return to 2007 level prices reversed this trend for 2009", automatically leading to relatively higher subsidies. The OECD report also says that lower or negative economic growth in OECD countries, caused by the recent global recession, moderated demand pressures in particularly higher value-added products, such as dairy and meats. A positive supply response to higher prices in 2008 came at the same time as growth for food demand was easing. These factors all contributed to the rise in subsidies.

[This first appeared on WTO-INTL list]

How Green Revolution Played Havoc With Mexican Agriculture

Mexico is the land of origin of the Green Revolution. It is here that the so called miracle seeds of dwarf wheat were first evolved. Norman Borlaug's wheat magic did cast a spell in far away India, which spread like a wild fire across the developing world. It literally sowed the seeds of what was later dubbed as the Green Revolution.

While the 2nd generation-environmental impacts of Green Revolution have played havoc with the natural resource base across continents, the destruction of the farm lands, and the plight of the dying farmers, is being hastily buried under the aggressive launch of the Second Green Revolution. To avoid the finger of suspicion pointing towards them, the international scientific community in collaboration with the agribusiness industry and the policy makers, are in a desperate hurry to create a smokescreen that hides the great tragedy.

Four decades after Green Revolution was launched, the world is still to come to grips with the devastation it wrought to the farm lands -- the fertile and verdant lands gasping for breath; chemical pesticides not only disrupting the insect equilibrium, but resulting in more savage pest attack besides contaminating the food chain; and the relentless mining of groundwater drying up the hemisphere. Intensive agriculture has already brought the world to a boiling point.

Added to the destruction of farm lands, the growing emphasis on corporatisation of agriculture which includes futures trading, free trade in agriculture and the strengthening of big box food retail has already brought the food chain into the hands of a few food giants/agribusiness companies. Farming communities wordwide have been marginalised in the process, and I am sure the day is not far away when farmers will disappear from the face of the Earth.

The extinction of the farm communities is actually a process that began more or less with the advent of Green Revolution. Those who promoted Green Revolution, it is now becoming clear, were not aware of the hidden design. The complete take over of agricultural research and education across the globe by the US land grant system came in handy to programme the scientific mindset. The USAID has to be admired the way it helped change the scientific brains to the virtues of the intensive farming systems as the only way forward.

Anyway, I came across this interesting insight into Mexican agriculture, which I feel I must draw your attention to. Jill Richardson, author of Recipe for America: Why Our Food System is Broken and What Can we do it to Fix it, travelled to 'see the Green Revolution first hand'. Here is her report.

The US Ploy to Promote Genetically Engineered Seeds and Pesticides to Poor Mexican Farmers Is Impoverishing Their Communities.
By Jill Richardson
http://bit.ly/9zY4gb

Chernobyl disaster killed nearly one million, with hundred-fold more radioactive emissions than Hiroshima; India ignores the warning, getting ready with a safe passage for setting up nuclear plants

The picture above is a reminder of what a nuclear disaster means: This is an aerial photo of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant taken two or three days after the 1986 Chernobyl nuclear plant explosion which spread clouds of radioactive dust across the western part of the Soviet Union and Europe. -- AP photo by Volodymir Repik

While the UPA-II government is planning to table the controversial Nuclear Liability bill in Parliament in the ongoing monsoon session so as to keep US President Barack Obama ostensibly happy during his proposed visit to India in November, Russia too is now insisting to exempt its companies from any liability.

India is already under pressure from the US to dilute one of the provisions -- Section 17(b) -- which allows for claims in the event of negligence, says The Hindu (July 30, 2010). The safe passage of the bill is the only remaining step before US companies can start selling reactors to India.

Of the 435 nuclear reactors in the world, 104 are in the United States.

Let us understand. The more the sale of nuclear reactors to India, the more will be the GDP growth. For a government that is desperately clinging to the GDP report card, nuclear reactors therefore means more than the issues regarding public health and environment, and also the argument that American life is more precious than Indian life.

While the arguments fly high, and the spokespersons of the UPA-II are trying their best to obfuscate the media debates by shrieking and shouting, a new book "Chernobyl: Consequence of the Catastrophe for People and the Environment" by Alexey Yablokov of the Center for Russian Environmental Policy in Moscow, and Vassily Nesterenko and Alexey Nesterenko of the Institute of Radiation Safety, in Minsk, Belarus, should come as an eye-opener.

Accordingly, on April 26, 1986, two explosions occurred at reactor number four at the Chernobyl plant which tore the top from the reactor and its building and exposed the reactor core. The resulting fire sent a plume of radioactive fallout into the atmosphere and over large parts of the western Soviet Union, Europe and across the Northern Hemisphere. Large areas in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia had to be evacuated.

Published by the New York Academy of Sciences, the book tells us that nearly one million people died from exposure to radiation released by the 1986 nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl reactor. This is in contrast to estimates by the World Health Organization and the International Atomic Energy Agency that initially said only 31 people had died among the "liquidators," though approximately 830,000 people who were in charge of extinguishing the fire at the Chernobyl reactor and deactivation and cleanup of the site. The book finds that by 2005, between 112,000 and 125,000 liquidators had died.

The Environment News Service (ENS) had on April 26, 2010, carried the highlights, which I am reproducing below:

1. The authors say: "For the past 23 years, it has been clear that there is a danger greater than nuclear weapons concealed within nuclear power. Emissions from this one reactor exceeded a hundred-fold the radioactive contamination of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki."

2. "No citizen of any country can be assured that he or she can be protected from radioactive contamination. One nuclear reactor can pollute half the globe," they said. "Chernobyl fallout covers the entire Northern Hemisphere."

3. "On this 24th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster, we now realize that the consequences were far worse than many researchers had believed," says Janette Sherman, MD, the physician and toxicologist who edited the book.

4. Drawing upon extensive data, the authors estimate the number of deaths worldwide due to Chernobyl fallout from 1986 through 2004 was 985,000, a number that has since increased. By contrast, WHO and the IAEA estimated 9,000 deaths and some 200,000 people sickened in 2005.

5. Yablokov and his co-authors find that radioactive emissions from the stricken reactor, once believed to be 50 million curies, may have been as great as 10 billion curies, or 200 times greater than the initial estimate, and hundreds of times larger than the fallout from the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

6. Nations outside the former Soviet Union received high doses of radioactive fallout, most notably Norway, Sweden, Finland, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Austria, Romania, Greece, and parts of the United Kingdom and Germany.

7. About 550 million Europeans, and 150 to 230 million others in the Northern Hemisphere received notable contamination. Fallout reached the United States and Canada nine days after the disaster.

8. The proportion of children considered healthy born to irradiated parents in Belarus, the Ukraine, and European Russia considered healthy fell from about 80 percent to less than 20 percent since 1986.

9. Numerous reports reviewed for this book document elevated disease rates in the Chernobyl area. These include increased fetal and infant deaths, birth defects, and diseases of the respiratory, digestive, musculoskeletal, nervous, endocrine, reproductive, hematological, urological, cardiovascular, genetic, immune, and other systems, as well as cancers and non-cancerous tumors.

10. In addition to adverse effects in humans, numerous other species have been contaminated, based upon studies of livestock, voles, birds, fish, plants, trees, bacteria, viruses, and other species.

11. Foods produced in highly contaminated areas in the former Soviet Union were shipped, and consumed worldwide, affecting persons in many other nations. Some, but not all, contamination was detected and contaminated foods not shipped.

12. The authors warn that the soil, foliage, and water in highly contaminated areas still contain substantial levels of radioactive chemicals, and will continue to harm humans for decades to come.

13. The book explores effects of Chernobyl fallout that arrived above the United States nine days after the disaster. Fallout entered the U.S. environment and food chain through rainfall. Levels of iodine-131 in milk, for example, were seven to 28 times above normal in May and June 1986. The authors found that the highest US radiation levels were recorded in the Pacific Northwest.

14. Americans also consumed contaminated food imported from nations affected by the disaster. Four years later, 25 percent of imported food was found to be still contaminated.

15. Little research on Chernobyl health effects in the United States has been conducted, the authors found, but one study by the Radiation and Public Health Project found that in the early 1990s, a few years after the meltdown, thyroid cancer in Connecticut children had nearly doubled.

This occurred at the same time that childhood thyroid cancer rates in the former Soviet Union were surging, as the thyroid gland is highly sensitive to radioactive iodine exposures.

Equally important, the New York Academy of Sciences says not enough attention has been paid to Eastern European research studies on the effects of Chernobyl at a time when corporations in several nations, including the United States, are attempting to build more nuclear reactors and to extend the years of operation of aging reactors.

The academy said in a statement, "Official discussions from the International Atomic Energy Agency and associated United Nations' agencies (e.g. the Chernobyl Forum reports) have largely downplayed or ignored many of the findings reported in the Eastern European scientific literature and consequently have erred by not including these assessments."

The highlights above comes as a stern warning. Unfortunately in India, while the political masters are busy selling the country's silver, policy makers and planners are busy promoting dreadful technologies in the name of development. I fail to understand how can any sensible human turn a blind eye to the dastardly implications of the fallout from a nuclear disaster. But then, world over the political leadership only works for the corporate interests. They are all operating under the directions of the invisible Economic Hit Man. Indian leadership is no exception.