MNREGA is hitting Indian agriculture

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

Isn’t it strange? The Mahatma Gandhi Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), which was primarily designed as a radical and novel response to combat rural poverty, is actually hitting the very foundations of agriculture. Acute shortage of farm labour witnessed across the country at the peak and crucial time of crop harvesting and sowing is not only playing havoc with food production, but is increasingly forcing small farmers to abandon agriculture.

It isn’t aberrant weather, uneconomical farm prices and the increasing corporatisation of agriculture that alone is responsible for the prevailing agrarian distress, the unavailability of farm labour at the time of crop harvest has added on to farmers woes. In my opinion, it is the single most important factor that is forcing small farmers to sell-off their meagre land holdings and join the growing ranks of landless workers. No wonder, travelling across the country, the common refrain that I hear, is: “Please ask the government to ban MNREGA. It is killing us.” 

I remember the time when trains steaming in from Bihar and eastern Uttar Pradesh into Ludhiana, Patiala and other prominent destinations in Punjab would come over-loaded with workers. These migrant labourers would generally arrive in the second half of March and stay on till July, helping farmers with harvesting the wheat crop and also transplanting paddy with the onset of monsoon rains. Today, the railway stations look deserted. Getting hold of a farm worker has become the biggest challenge for any farmer. And if you think the situation in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtraand Kerala is any different, you are mistaken. Farm labour has simple disappeared.

MNREGA has now completed five years. Many believe with not much meaningful work available, it is already faced with a mid-life crisis. Nevertheless, it is in these five years that the crisis in agriculture has also worsened. For those who want to see, the crisis in agriculture is directly proportionate to the spread of MNREGA. The intra-state movement of labour, and of course the exodus from the rural hinterland to meet the burgeoning needs of real estate, expressways and urban infrastructure has diverted the workforce from poorly paid agriculture. And still, despite the recommendation of the Ministry of Agriculture, the Ministry for Rural Development has refused to relent the slowing of MNREGA work during the peak farming season.

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

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

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

Source: Business Standard, Oct 12, 2011.

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

Why turn Punjab into a fire ball

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

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

Aware of the resulting impact on human health and environment, in a few days from now, on October 13, over 20 lakh school children will take out awareness walks in all Punjab villages to educate farmers about the destructive fallout of burning paddy stubbles in their crop fields. A brainchild of Punjab Pollution Control Board, the state-wide march by school students is certainly a welcome initiative. The Board is also impressing upon the CBSE to ensure that their schools too join the campaign, which will last for a month. 

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

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

A recent study has computed the resulting health damage from the burning of paddy straw in Punjab alone at Rs 7.6 crore a year. On an average each household adds Rs 1000 to its medical bill every month. In addition, there are expenses that farmers have to make by way of more application of chemical fertilisers, and pesticides, and also the loss he undergoes in soil nutrients, vegetation and biodiversity, which has not been included. 

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

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

How to save Punjab Agriculture

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

For nearly two decades now, Punjab’s underbelly has been gradually caving in. Excessive use of chemical fertilisers have turned the verdant lands poisonous, water mining has dried the aquifers leading to the expansion of the desert, and chemical fertilisers and pesticides have played havoc with the environment and human health. With the input prices climbing year after year and the output prices remaining static, Punjab farmers became a victim of the same economic policies that projected them as country’s heroes. Agriculture has turned not only unsustainable but economically unviable.  

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

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

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

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

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

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

At a time when Punjab’s agriculture is at the cross-roads, it needs a radically different approach drawing from the lessons of its recent past. Here is a six-pronged strategy that can sow the seeds of revival of Punjab’s agriculture:

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

Dear farmer, your eviction notice

It is happening as per design. The demographic transition being witnessed - cities, towns and municipalities growing faster and bigger - is perhaps at a little slower pace than what was envisaged. But it is moving as planned. If you have read the World Development Report 2008, you would know what I mean. It called for land rentals and for setting up a network of centres to train the displaced farmers to become industrial workers. 

And this is exactly what the then finance ministerP Chidambaram did when he presented his last budget. He made a budgetary allocation for setting up 1,000 industrial training institutes across the country to provide training to the young from the rural areas who, as per the report , do not know anything except farming. 

In the next decade, between 2011 and 2021, India is expected to add another 95 million to its urban population. The process to expedite the demographic transition - by forcing farmers to abandon agriculture, and by usurping land, water and natural resources in the name of development - actually began much earlier. It was in 1996 that I first heard Dr Ismail Serageldin, a vice president of the World Bank and also the then chairman of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research warn of the rapid swing in population from the rural to the urban centres. 

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

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

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

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

The ablebodied men are the first to move out, leaving behind the old and the weaker sex. They comprise the new breed of agricultural refugees . With 70% of the 60-crore farming population officially not required, the world's biggest environmental displacement is going to be witnessed on the farm in Indiain the decades to come. Not realising that what India needs is a production system by the masses , and not for the masses. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A big question mark hangs over the future of globalisation

What has happened to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh? No, I am not talking about the political confabulations that he is holding to save his colleague Home Minister P Chidambaram from falling into disgrace.  In case you missed it, what I am referring to is his speech at the 66th session of the UN General Assembly in New York. "Till a few years ago the world had taken for granted the benefits of globalisation and global interdependence,” the Prime Minister said. “Today we are being called upon to cope with the negative dimensions of those very phenomena.” [Grim globalisation sermon by Singh, The Telegraph, Sept 24. http://bit.ly/oTuKjt].

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Poverty of Estimates

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

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

This is what constitutes conspiracy of silence.  

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

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

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

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

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