Indexing inhumanity, Indian style

It took minutes for the top guns to swing into action when the Sensex fell by several hundred points. But no Minister came forward to calm the nation when India hit the 94th rank in the Global Hunger Index.

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It all happened around the same time. The day the Sensex crossed 19,000, India clocked in 94th in the Global Hunger Index — behind Ethiopia. Both stories did make it to the front page (in one daily at least). But, of course, the GHI ranking was mostly buried inside or not carried at all that day. The joy over the stunning rise of the media’s most loved index held on for a bit the next day. The same day, India clocked in as the leading nation in the number of women dying in childbirth. In this list, the second, third and fourth worst countries put together just about matched India’s 1.17 lakh deaths of women in childbirth. This story appeared in single column just beneath the Sensex surge.

Next came the fall of several hundred points in the Sensex. That is, barely a couple of days later. It took minutes for the top guns to swing into action. Fingers were in every dyke. Finance Minister P. Chidambaram lost no time in reassuring worried investors via the media. Other top officials were all over television, doing the same. “FM soothes the Market’s nerves” ran the ticker. The barrage — both media and official — kept up through the day. The panels of experts convened to celebrate the 19K summit were reconvened to explain why they’d tripped off the cliff. They then droned on about the merits of P-Notes, regulation and the future. What stood out, of course, was the swiftness of both government and media response to each twitch in the index.

No Minister came forward to calm the nation when India hit the 94th rank in the Global Hunger Index. That’s out of 118 countries. The daily, DNA, though, did capture the essence of the story with its report: “Ethiopians manage hunger better than us.” For indeed, they do these days. At least by the measure of the International Food Policy Research Institute’s Global Hunger Index. Ethiopia ranks a notch above us at 93. Draw the baseline anywhere in the 1990s, and you’ll find Ethiopia worked better at reducing hunger than we did. Pakistan ranks ahead of us, too, at 88. China logs in at 47. All our South Asian neighbours do better than us on this index, except Bangladesh. And who knows when it will overtake us? None of the countries boasts an economy growing at 9 per cent a year.

You’d think it was an issue worth some attention. But it was hard to find panels debating this on television. Or any editorials in the newspapers doing the same. No Ministers or top babus soothing the nerves of the hungry. No experts with furrowed brows warning that the trends could continue, even worsen.

The GHI is by no means the only measure of what’s happening. The United Nations’ Food & Agriculture Organisation put it simply in 2006. Its State of Food Insecurity in the World report confirmed yet again that we have the largest number of undernourished people in the globe. The 2004 edition of the report had shown that India had added more people to the “newly hungry” in the planet than the rest of the world together. There, too, nations much worse off had done far better. Between the years 1995-97 and 2000-02, hunger grew in India at a time when it fell in Ethiopia.

There was also another link begging to be made. Not just between the Sensex and hunger stories. Let’s revert to the latest maternal mortality figures released by the WHO and others. Some 536,000 women died in childbirth in 2005. Of these, every fifth one of them, at least, was an Indian. That is, 117,000 of them. A total that could only be matched by Nigeria, Afghanistan and Congo together. Almost 99 per cent of all these deaths worldwide occurred in developing countries. Much of this, again, is amongst the poorer sections of the population.

If we were to look at specific groups or communities, this would be even clearer. Let alone on the hunger index, India’s rank in the U.N.’s Human Development Index is anyway dismal. There, at 126, we are below Bolivia, Guatemala and Gabon. Yet even that rank does not tell the full story. If we were to isolate the rich and the better off as a group, they might enter the top 10 nations. Efforts last year to look at adivasis as a group led pretty much in the reverse direction. One study found that if we were to derive the HDI for our tribes only, they would rank in the worst off 25 nations of the world.

That’s quite easy to believe. Canada has always been among the top 10 nations of the world in HDI rankings. In fact, it occupied the top slot for some years. Yet, a survey of its native or indigenous people towards the end of the last decade placed them at rank 63. That is, all those natives living on “reservations.” Across the world, tribal people mostly have a poor HDI profile.

And so it is in India, too, where they are pretty much at the bottom. The study that found their HDI to rank amongst the bottom 25 nations of the world, also found things to be worse by the region. The tribes of Orissa, it reports, fall below even the low end of the HDI of sub-Saharan African nations. This is by no means the only study to tell us how India’s tribes are doing. There are tons of official data to show us that in great detail. But there’s no rush to debate their survival in expert panels. They mostly get covered when they resist displacement. Often with loss of life. They make up just eight per cent of the population. But account for over 45 per cent of those losing their lands to projects.

The furore now on the import of wheat is welcome. At least the media have begun to look at the issue. But surely, it is also worth discussing how we came to import wheat in the first place. And how a nation with so many in hunger ended up exporting millions of tonnes of grain this decade. That too, at prices lower than those we offer to millions of poor people in this country.

New heights of misery

And no matter how the Sensex is doing, the misery index for the poor scales new heights in one sector after another. Health costs still mount. They push people into debt even faster than before. A study done for the WHO in six Indian States found that 16 per cent of households it looked at were pushed below the poverty line by heavy medical costs. Nearly 10,000 families from lower income groups were covered by the survey for the years 2002-05. Some 12 per cent had to sell their assets to meet health expenses. Over 43 per cent had to resort to loans for the same reasons.

Our answer to this has been: more of the same. More privatisation. Less and less of a public health system. In Mumbai, extortion by hospitals has become so frequent as to actually find mention in the media. But journalists do not get to make the link between the gutting of public services and the public’s misery. Much less can they track this in terms of private profiteering. That would go against the publication or channel’s stand of privatisation as a cure for all ills.

More than once this year, the Bombay High Court has warned hospitals against the cruel practice of holding back the body of a patient — demanding lakhs of rupees from the family before returning it. It still happens, though. Now even at government hospitals leased out to private managements. So a low income family is suddenly told it owes the hospital a huge sum of money. And that the body of its five-year-old girl will be released only when that sum is paid. A fine example of public-private partnership as it works today.

In fact, it would be good to devise a health index spanning the reform years. One that looks at how both rich and poor have done health-wise. How many years of life, for instance, are taken away from you by ill-health if you are one of India’s less well off citizens? In the world of the media, though, only one index matters: the Sensex. Watching which has spawned a whole little industry in itself. The numbers who pronounce on and debate it (in the media, anyway) are impressive. The oracles reading equity’s entrails for omens. Maybe we need a media relevance index. An MRI scan of mass-produced mediocrity

‘Incredible India’ right here at home

The week-long ‘Incredible India’ campaign in New York aimed at boosting the vibrant image of an emerging, powerful India at 60 and showcasing its diversity. But the real action was at home.

Those focussed on the $10 million event in New York are missing out on the real thing. The bharatiya khana, sangeet and natak unleashed on the Big Apple are not a patch on the carnival at home. ‘Incredible India’ is happening right here. It came fully alive two weeks ago with the Congress government of Andhra Pradesh declaring that rice would be sold to the poor at Rs.2 a kilo. It also announced a doubling of widow pensions from Rs.500 to Rs. 1000. And the same for State-level pensions of freedom fighters. Soon after, it pledged that it would not raise power charges for the next five years. Along with these came a slew of other pro-poor announcements. Some, if not all the measures, were things any government ought to have done long ago.

The rice at Rs.2 a kilo annoyed the opposition Telugu Desam Party (TDP). After all, its founder, N.T. Rama Rao (NTR), was the true author of the scheme. But the TDP leaders had to be cautious about describing this as ‘stealing our clothes.’ For, their own government had shed those clothes with alacrity in the post-NTR era. So, instead, they announced ‘nine hours of free power daily for farmers’ — the very first policy the Congress signed into effect on taking power in 2004.

The TDP also promised farmers loans at four per cent interest. Not to be left out, the “Loksatta,” a movement that decries the populist stunts of other parties and which sees itself as cleaning up politics, showed itself as a force with a difference. A one-hour difference. It offered eight hours of free power as against the more lavish nine hours of the TDP. And, of course, rice at Rs.2 a kilo. The Telangana Rashtriya Samiti closed the bidding at 12 hours of free power for farmers. The TDP topped it off with the promise of three cents of land for poor urban families to build homes.

India is never more incredible than when polls are on or around the corner. And politics is never more focussed on real issues either. At that point, the blah of software superstardom or nuclear nirvana is simply buried. Unlike newspaper editors and channel anchors, most politicians know who votes. To messily paraphrase Samuel Johnson, nothing concentrates the human mind more than the knowledge that its owner is to be hanged in a fortnight. Elections appear to produce that result in Incredible India.

To gain a sense of just how incredible India gets, look at the latest on the National Rural Employment Guarantee programme. This is the single most vital action of the UPA government thus far. Never mind that it embraced the programme kicking and screaming in protest. Or that it badly under funded it. Never mind that a hundred days of work for only one person per household was much less than needed. Never mind, too, that earlier this year the number of districts under the scheme was doubled, but the funds were not.

Suddenly, it is to cover all districts of the country. The media say this happened because the request came from Rahul Gandhi. Well, good for him. Maybe, he can even get the government to fund it better. And extend it to all seeking work, while raising the number of work days. What’s incredible, though, is the instant conversion of the Prime Minister and his Finance Minister to avid fans of a programme they cared little for and adopted under duress from their allies.

No less impressive is the sudden hike in the minimum support price for wheat, rice and other crops. Till this moment, the government was happy to import wheat from Australia at far higher prices than it was willing to give our own farmers. No amount of distress could move Delhi’s hearts of stone. But elections can. There is now a rise of Rs.250 per quintal in the MSP for wheat, overnight. Of course, this does not set things right. And the hike of Rs.50 per quintal of paddy comes towards the end of the procurement season. But it is a sign of events to follow.

In Maharashtra, Chief Minister Vilasrao Deshmukh’s heart has begun bleeding for Mumbai’s displaced mill workers. Mr. Deshmukh is appalled to find that mill owners have not been honouring their commitments. (Gee, who would ever have suspected them of that?) And that workers are not getting the housing they were promised. This is not right, says the saddened Chief Minister, to a public that has known all of this for a very long time. Mr. Deshmukh’s heart now beats in sync with the electoral clock.

Only weeks earlier, the Chief Minister was in danger of losing his job for all the opposite reasons. He had scoffed at the farmers of Vidharbha — standing right in the zone of their suffering — and mocked their “innovative” ways of cheating. The uproar over those remarks drew the usual “quoted out of context” defence.

But all that is past now. No context is greater than the poll context. And if you are Chief Minister of one of the country’s richest States, it’s not a context you want to be thrown out of.

Meanwhile, the TDP in Andhra Pradesh finds that the Congress selling rice at Rs.2 a kilo is “panic reaction.” The idea had always been a TDP original. In truth, the TDP, while in office, had done away with the move after NTR’s time. It had forced a number of other costs on its people. Utility rates were hiked massively, sparking major State-wide protests. User charges were imposed on poor patients at government hospitals. The hospitals themselves were being set up for a transfer to private control. But now the party wishes to provide “quality power supply to the farm sector.” And pledges “to halt the auction of Government land” and check the growth of “shops selling liquor.”

The crisis in Karnataka also has firm roots in Incredible (or Electoral) India. At the point of stirring the cauldron, the cooks have forgotten what went into the recipe. It all makes for the kind of gripping drama Bollywood and television can never capture. It’s hard to make a compelling script without any kind of hero. But India’s Silicon Valley has managed it.

On the Ramar Sethu issue, alas, Incredible India has lost its way. When mythology takes over, it’s hard to discuss more vital problems of unique marine parks or the fate of local fishermen. If countless millennia of deposits and sediment formed such a bridge, it stands to reason that process will continue. So it’s worth pondering the fortune you will spend each year on cleaning up your planned route. Instead, we’re stuck with the mythology. But for the BJP, that’s Incredible India.

Impact on media

Incredible India will also, at some late and brief point, make its impact on the media. It is possible, though not certain, that Bollywood and cricket might get just a little less coverage for a while. So far this season, we’ve been seeing the merging of the two. Shah Rukh Khan at the T20s, for instance. Some space will have to be found, though, for the clichés of bijli, sadak, paani. And television will trot out its intrepid anchors, eyes flashing in made-up anger, berating squirming politicians over their lack of concern for the problems of the aam aadmi. Of course, with full knowledge that this is a minor diversion before we go back to the serious business of covering Paris Hilton, Shilpa Shetty and the Sensex.

The politicians are in fact way ahead of the media. At least in sensing public concerns and moods. They do not rely on SMS polls with a sample size of zilch, which declare with certainty that 97 per cent of Indians think that Thursday is better than Wednesday. Media antennae are far more crippled than those of the politicians they despise. Remember those magisterial pronouncements of the mega-pundits on the eve of the 2004 polls? All those they hope no one will recall the next time around? The most famous one was this — and it came from a highly visible media personality less than a hundred hours before the results were out:

“The era of the massive election rally has long been over. People now have work to do. This election was fought more in the media than in the streets. Television is now the new electoral battleground and, as with more developed democracies, will increasingly replace public meetings and door-to-door campaigns as the mode of campaigning. A recent … opinion poll has clearly shown that a large majority of voters now make up their minds on the basis of what they learn from the media.”

As famous last words, those rank right up there with Tarzan’s Who Greased the Grapevine? But that won’t stop them from being repeated. The media are slow learners. Welcome to Incredible India. Goodbye New York, Hello Hyderabad.

The decade of our discontent

Sixty years on, rural India is a shambles. The most severe agrarian crisis since the eve of the Green Revolution rages on.

Rural India is a funny place. In 60 years we haven’t managed — except in three States — to push through any serious land reforms or tenancy reforms. But we can clear a Special Economic Zone (SEZ) in six months. In the sixth decade of our independence, structural and other inequalities deepen, and rural India is in big trouble

The first lead story on the front page of a major English daily four weeks ago was striking. A young man from Chandigarh had paid Rs.15 lakh for a ‘fancy’cellphone number. It wasn’t long before the rest of the media got into the act. Soon we saw his parents distributing sweets to mark their son’s achievement. Newspapers editorialised (in front page ‘news reports’) on how this reflected India’s new confidence. Our ‘aggro’ in the period of economic reforms and liberalisation.

It surely reflects something. A class exists to whom it is perfectly natural for a leading Indian magazine to act as luxury scout. Its publisher’s letter tells them that “for $115,000 a box, 500 limited edition Dragon Gurkha cigars are now available. In 80 year old camelbone boxes that once belonged to a Rajasthani ruler.”

The average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) of the Indian farm household is a long way from Rs.15 lakh. And further from $115,000. It is, in fact, Rs.503. Not far above the rural poverty line. And that’s a national average, mixing both giant landlords and tiny landholders. It also includes States like Kerala where the average is nearly twice the national one. Remove Kerala and Punjab and the figure gets still more dismal. Of course, inequality is rife in urban India too. And growing. But the contrasts get more glaring when you look at rural India.

About 60 per cent of that Rs.503 is spent on food. Another 18 per cent on fuel, clothing, and footwear. Of the pathetic sum left over, the household spends on health twice what it does on education. That is Rs.34 and Rs.17. It seems unlikely that buying unique cellphone numbers is set to emerge a major hobby amongst rural Indians. There are countless households for whom that figure is not Rs.503, but Rs.225. There are whole States whose average falls below the poverty line. As for the landless, their hardships are appalling.

It is not that inequality is new or unknown to us. What makes the last 15 years different is the ruthlessness with which it has been engineered. The cynicism with which it has been constructed. And the scale on which it now exists. And that’s at all levels, even at the top. As Abhijit Banerjee and Thomas Piketty put it in a paper on “Top Indian Incomes 1956-2000,” “The rich (the top 1 per cent) substantially increased their share of total income [in the reform years]. However, while in the 1980s the gains were shared by everyone in the top percentile, in the 1990s it was only those in the top 0.1 per cent who made big gains.”

“The average top 0.01 per cent income was about 150-200 times larger than the average income of the entire population during the 1950s. This went down to less than 50 times as large by the early 1980s. But went back to being 150-200 times larger during the late 1990s.” All the evidence suggests it has gotten worse since then.

Industry’s hostile response to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s meek comments on CEO salaries is just a sign of how entrenched such privilege now is. The editorials of most newspapers blew Dr. Singh out of the water. So it is odd and worth noting, that one of the very best pieces on concentration of wealth in recent times comes from the Executive Director of Morgan Stanley. (The Economic Times, July 9, 2007). “We believe,” writes Chetan Ahya, “that the social pressure arising from widening inequality has increased in the past few years, driven by globalisation and the rise of capitalism.” He finds the “rising social challenge on account of the rise in inequality” a worrying trend. He also finds that “the inequality gap in wealth is even starker … Our analysis indicate an increase in wealth of over $1 trillion (over 100 per cent of GDP) in the past four years — and that the bulk of this gain has been concentrated within a very small segment of the population.” Mr. Ahya rightly sees “social and political upheaval,” as the outcome of some directions we are taking. As in the case of farmers and SEZs.

Structural inequalities

All this comes atop existing structural inequalities in rural India. In 60 years, we never resolved the issue of land. Nor those of forests and water rights. Or of appalling levels of caste and gender discrimination. We never really addressed our structural or other inequalities. Now we’re working hard at making them worse.

Even at the start of the reforms period, the bottom half of rural households accounted for less than 3.5 per cent of total land ownership. The top ten per cent of households owned well over 50 per cent. That’s for all lands as a whole. If we took into account only irrigated land, the picture is more frightening. Add productive assets, and it gets still worse. In one estimate, over 85 per cent of rural households are either landless, sub-marginal, marginal or small farmers. Nothing has happened in 15 years that has changed that situation for the better. Much has happened to make it a lot worse.

The direction of policy on farming — central to rural India — is simple in its main idea. To take agriculture out of the hands of farmers and place it firmly in the hands of large corporations. Every move, every policy, only pushes this idea further forward. We are witnessing the largest displacement in our history. It is not happening in a dam or a mining project. It’s happening in agriculture. And we haven’t a clue yet what we will do with the millions we’re busy shoving off the land. This is not being done with tanks and bulldozers. We just make farming impossible for small holders. And we create no options for those whose livelihoods we so cheerfully destroy.

The early decades were at least decades of hope. There were improvements, significant if not impressive. In literacy, life expectancy, and other human development indicators. There was a sense that “India lives in her villages.” The slogan that caught the nation’s imagination, even if in wartime, was ‘jai jawan, jai kisan.’ The farmer was seen as carrying the nation’s future on his or her shoulders. (More normally ‘his’ since women are to this day denied property rights and not seen as ‘farmers.’) At least, that was the image.

Sixty years on, rural India is a shambles. The most severe agrarian crisis since the eve of the Green Revolution rages on, but does not hold elite or media interest for long. Farm incomes have collapsed. Hunger has grown very fast. Public investment in agriculture shrank to nothing a long time ago. Employment has collapsed. Non-farm employment has stagnated. (Only the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act has brought some limited relief in recent times.) Millions move towards towns and cities where, too, there are few jobs to be found. Many move towards a status that is neither farmer nor worker. A huge pool of menial labour or domestic servants. (In one estimate, there are close to two lakh girls from Jharkhand in Delhi alone, in work of this kind.)

A credit squeeze has pushed lakhs of farmers into bankruptcy. This after encouraging, even pushing them towards high-cost cash crop cultivation with its attendant risks. In Kerala of 2003-04, raising an acre of vanilla cost 15 to 20 times what it took to raise an acre of paddy. But farmers were asked to rush in regardless. The price of vanilla has sunk and the credit flow has stopped. And several such growers have taken their own lives.

We fail to invoke even those measures the blatantly unfair WTO allows us; this means the prices our own farmers get for products like cotton collapses by the season. The huge subsidies attached to U.S. cotton — over a million bales dumped on this country in just 2001-02 — are not challenged. Duties are not raised. We’re glad to trade the interests of our poor for another 30,000 H1B visas.

The government tells us over 112,000 farmers have committed suicide since 1993. A gross underestimate but the figure is bad enough. These are suicides driven by debt. And the indebtedness of the peasantry, so the National Sample Survey tells us, has almost doubled in the past decade.

It is not as if there is no resistance, no voices raised. The people have spoken to their governments and all of us in election after election. In protest after protest. And good things, too, have happened. Like the NREGA. But the larger direction is overwhelming. And it is one that races towards catastrophe, disaster having already been achieved. We, however, are more interested in the cellphone number worth Rs.15 lakh. And maybe there’s a point in that. The ‘fancy’ number was purchased on borrowed money. Our orgy in inequality plays out on borrowed time.

Nine decades of non-violence

Countless rural Indians sacrificed much for India's freedom, to fade into oblivion later, seeking neither reward nor recognition. Gandhian Baji Mohammed, who has been active for 70 years in one or the other cause, is amongst the last of this dying tribe, writes P Sainath.

We were sitting in the tent, they tore it down. We kept sitting," the old freedom fighter told us. "They threw water on the ground and at us. They tried making the ground wet and difficult to sit on. We remained seated. Then when I went to drink some water and bent down near the tap, they smashed me on the head, fracturing my skull. I had to be rushed to hospital."

Baji Mohammed is one of India's last living freedom fighters - just one of four or five nationally recognised ones still alive in Orissa's Koraput region. He is not talking about British brutality in 1942. (Though he has much to say on that, too.) He's describing the vicious attack on him during the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, half a century later. "I was there as part of a 100-member peace team." But the team was given no peace. The old Gandhian fighter, already in his mid-seventies, spent ten days in hospital and a month in a Varanasi ashram recovering from the injury to his head.

No hatred in his heart

There is not an iota of anger as he describes the event. No hatred towards the RSS or Bajrang Dal that led the attack. Just a gentle old man with a charming smile. And a firm Gandhi bakht. He's a Muslim who heads the anti-cow slaughter league of Nabrangpur. "After the attack, Biju Patnaik came to my home and scolded me. He was worried about my being active even in peaceful protest at my age. Earlier, too, when I did not accept this freedom fighter's pension for twelve years, he chided me."

Baji Mohammad at home in Nabrangpur, Orissa with his most precious possession: a photo showing him in one of Mahatma Gandhi's protest marches.
Picture: P Sainath.

Baji Mohammed is a colourful remnant of a dying tribe. Countless rural Indians sacrificed much for India's freedom. But the generation that led the nation to it is dying out swiftly, most of its members in their late 80s or 90s. Baji is closing in on 90.

"I was studying in the 1930s, but did not make it past matric. My guru was Sadashiv Tripathi who later became Orissa Chief Minister. I joined the Congress Party and became president of its Nabrangpur unit [then still a part of Koraput district]. I made 20,000 members for the Congress. This was a region of great ferment. And it came fully alive with satyagraha."

However, while hundreds marched towards Koraput, Baji Mohammed headed elsewhere. "I went to Gandhiji. I had to see him." And so he "took a cycle, my friend Lakshman Sahu, no money, and went from here to Raipur." A distance of 350 km of very tough, mountainous terrain. "From there we took a train to Wardha and went on to Sewagram. Many great people were at his ashram. We were awed and worried. When could we meet him, if ever? Ask his secretary Mahadev Desai, people told us."

"Desai told us to talk to him during his 5 p.m. evening walk. That's nice, I thought. A leisurely meeting. But the man walked so fast! My run was his walk. Finally, I could no longer keep up and appealed to him: Please stop: I have come all the way from Orissa just to see you."

"He said testily: "what will you see? I too, am a human being, two hands, two legs, a pair of eyes. Are you a satyagrahi back in Orissa?' I replied that I had pledged to be one."

"Go,' said Gandhi. "Jao, lathi khao. (Go and taste the British lathis.) Sacrifice for the nation.' Seven days later, we returned here to do exactly as he ordered us." Baji Mohammed offered satyagraha in an anti-war protest outside the Nabrangpur Masjid. It led to "six months in jail and a Rs. 50 fine. Not a small amount those days."

More episodes followed. "On one occasion, at the jail, people gathered to attack the police. I stepped in and stopped it. "Marenge lekin maarenge nahin,' I said. (We shall die, but we shall not attack.)"

"Coming out of jail, I wrote to Gandhi: what now? And his reply came. "Go to jail again.' So I did. This time for four months. But the third time, they did not arrest us. So I asked Gandhi yet again: now what? And he said: "take the same slogans and move amongst the people.' So we went 60 km on foot each time with 20-30 people to clusters of villages. Then came the Quit India movement, and things changed."

"On August 25, 1942, we were all arrested and held. Nineteen people died on the spot in police firing at Paparandi in Nabrangpur. Many died thereafter from their wounds. Over 300 were injured. More than a thousand were jailed in Koraput district. Several were shot or executed. There were over a hundred shaheed (martyrs) in Koraput. Veer Lakhan Nayak [legendary tribal leader who defied the British] was hanged."

Baji's shoulder was shattered in the violence unleashed against the protesters. "I then spent five years in Koraput jail. There I saw Lakhan Nayak before he was shifted to Berhampore jail. He was in the cell in front of me and I was with him when the hanging order came. What should I tell your family, I asked him. "Tell them I am not worried,' he replied. 'Only sad that I will not live to see the swaraj we fought for.'" Baji himself did. He was released just before Independence Day - "to walk into a newly free nation." Many of his colleagues, amongst them future Chief Minister Sadashiv Tripathi, "all became MLAs in the 1952 elections, the first in free India." Baji himself "never contested the polls. Never married."

"I did not seek power or position," he explains. "I knew I could serve in other ways. The way Gandhi wanted us to." He was a staunch Congressman for decades. "But now I belong to no party," he says. "I am non-party." It did not stop him from being active in every cause which he thought mattered to the masses. Right from the time "I took part in the bhoodan movement of Vinoba Bhave in 1956." He was also supportive of some of Jayaprakash Narayan's campaigns. "He stayed here twice in the 1950s." The Congress asked him to contest elections more than once. "But me, I was more sewa dal than satta dal. (More service oriented than power seeking.)"

Greatest moment

For freedom fighter Baji Mohammed, meeting Gandhi was "the greatest reward of my struggle. What more could one ask for?" His eyes mist over as he shows us pictures of himself in one of the Mahatma's famous protest marches. These are his treasures, having gifted away his 14 acres of land during the bhoodan movement. His favourite moments during the freedom struggle? "Every one of them. But of course, meeting the Mahatma, hearing his voice. That was the greatest moment of my life. The only regret is that his vision of what we should be as a nation, that is still not realised."

Just a gentle old man with a charming smile. And a sacrifice that sits lightly on ageing shoulders

AGRO CRISIS

Farmer's diet worse than a convict's

Several women in Karnataka's Mandya district like Jayalakshmamma, whose husband committed suicide four years ago, still stand up to the unending pressure with incredible resilience, writes P Sainath.

When Jayalakshmamma finishes her 12 hours of labour - on those days she can find work - she's entitled to less than a fourth of the rice given to a convict in prison. In fact, the rice she gets on average for a whole day is far less than what the incarcerated offender gets in a single meal.

Jayalakshmamma is not a convict in prison. She's a marginal farmer whose husband H.M. Krishna, 45, killed himself in Huluganahalli village of Mandya district four years ago. This district was among the worst affected by the farm suicides of 2003 in Karnataka. In this State, her BPL (below the poverty line) card entitles her to only four kg of rice (and a kg of wheat) a month. True, those four kg are subsidised by the State. But she cannot afford to buy a lot more than that at prevailing market price. She is also one of over a lakh of women across India who have lost their husbands in suicides arising from the farm crisis these past 14 years.

"Four kilograms a month means about 135 grams a day," says T. Yashavantha, who is from a farming family of the same district. He is also State vice-president of the Students Federation of India. "Even an undertrial or convict gets more." What's more, they get cooked rice. She gets four kg of grain. Jail diets in the State vary according to whether the prisoner is on a "rice diet," a "ragi diet" or a "chapati diet." Jail officials in Bangalore told The Hindu "those on rice diets and doing rigorous imprisonment get 710 grams of cooked rice per meal. Those on non-rice diets get 290 grams of rice. Undertrials and those doing simple imprisonment [who are on rice diets] get 505 grams of rice per meal."

The convict doing rigorous imprisonment does eight hours of labour. Jayalakshmamma does 12 or more. "But her entitlement is 45 grams per meal if she has three a day," points out Mr. Yashavantha. She doesn't have the time, though, to make comparisons. Her daughter now works at breadline wages in a Bangalore garment company. "At most she can send us Rs.500 in a year," she told us at her village. This leaves her son and herself at home. Their joint entitlement on the BPL card would yield 270 grams per day. That is: they would together still get less rice than even a prisoner on "ragi diet" gets - 290 grams or more.

They own around 0.4 acres and had leased two acres before Krishna's suicide. "On the former we grew vegetables. On the latter, we had sericulture. Vegetable prices have been terrible. Once, we got Rs.1 a kilo for tomatoes. And water costs came to Rs.9,000 (or Rs.70 per hour) over six months." Now they have only the 0.4 acres. "We also sold all our livestock after his death." They have been paying off his loans and most of the compensation they received appears to have gone this way. "My boy Nandipa grazes the goats of others but there's no daily income from it." Instead, they will share the offspring of the animals - if any - with the owner. "I myself make Rs.35 a day working this off-season."

"I wanted Nandipa to study. But he was in despair. Three years ago, then aged 12, he ran off to Bangalore and worked in a hotel. There he was beaten by the owner. He ran away, took the wrong train and landed up in Mumbai. After a while, he was brought back."

"All widows have problems. But those bereaved by the farm crisis suffer worse," says Sunanda Jayaram, president of the women's wing of the Karnataka Rajya Ryuthu Sangha (Puttanaiah group) "Even after losing her husband she has to maintain his father and mother, her own children and the farm - with no economic security for herself. And she is saddled with his debts. Her husband took his own life. She will pay the price all her life."

In Bidarahosahalli village, Chikktayamma's state exemplifies this. Her husband, Hanumegowda, 38, killed himself in 2003. "The debts are all we're left with," she says, without self-pity. "What we earn won't pay off even the interest on loans to the money lenders." She's struggled to educate her three children - who might be forced to drop out though all want to study further. "The girls should study, too. But later, we'll have to raise lots of money for their marriages as well."

One girl, Sruthi, has done her SSLC exams and another, Bharathi, is in the second year of her pre-university course. Her son Hanumesh is in the 8th standard. Her husband's mother and a couple of other relatives also live in this house. Chikktayamma is the sole breadwinner for at least five people. "We have only 1.5 acres [on part of which she grows mangoes]. So I also work as a labourer when I can for Rs. 30 a day. I had a BPL card but they [the authorities] took it from me saying `we'll give you a new card.'" It never came back, says Mr. Yashavantha. "Instead, they gave her an APL [above the poverty line] one."

Huge debt

In Huligerepura, Chenamma and her family grapple with a debt of over Rs.2 lakh left by her husband Kadegowda, 60, who took his life four years ago. "Sugarcane just sank and it crushed him," says his son Sidhiraj. "We have only three acres," says Chenamma. "It's hard to generate a living from that now." But she and her sons still try. And the family plans to shift to paddy this year.

In Thoreshettahalli, Mr. Yashavantha's father, Thammanna, a farmer for decades, says the farm crisis is biting deep. "Most cane growers are not recovering the cost of production. Input costs go upwards, incomes downwards. Also, some 40 borewells were drilled in this village last month but only one succeeded. People are giving up. You will find farmland lying unused even during season."

What about self-help groups? Jayalakshmamma has paid an initial amount "but the group has not yet launched. And I cannot afford the Rs.25 a week. Nor the 24 per cent interest each year." Chikktayamma cannot think of making such payments regularly. "The SHG concept is a good one," says KRRS leader K.S. Puttannaiah. "But in some cases, they've also become moneylenders. Meanwhile, after the initial compensations, the State has no plan for widows and orphans of farm suicides. When have they even thought about it?"

"Remember, these and all other farm women are breadwinners and have always been so," says Ms. Jayaram. "Yet, they have no land rights and no land security. Even in agricultural labour, they are paid far less than men. Those widowed by the suicides are in constant tension. There are debts hanging on their heads which they did not incur. There are daughters whose marriages are pending. The pressure is unending." It is. But all the three women and many more like them in Mandya stand up to it with incredible resilience and still try to run their farms and feed their families with dignity and respect

FARM WIDOWS

Suicides are about the living, not the dead

In society's eyes, Kamlabai is a `widow.' In her own, she's a small farmer trying to make a living and support her family. She is also one of about one lakh women across the country who've lost their husbands to farm suicides since the 1990s, writes P Sainath.

A farmer in her mid-60s, Kamlabai Gudhe works as a labourer whenever she can - for grain, not cash. It's all she can get. So she labours, sometimes for 12 hours, for Rs.25 worth of jowar. This is apart from slogging on her own four-and-a-half acres whenever she can. When her crop does succeed, she mostly loses it to wild animals as her farm is on the edge of the jungle. The better her cotton and soybean, the more wild boars and Nilgai it attracts. Fencing the farm would cost Rs.1 lakh. Money she can't dream of.

Kamlabai is one of over 100,000 women who have lost their husbands to farm suicides in India's agrarian crisis since the mid-1990s. She lives in the worst-hit zone: Vidharbha. Her village Lonsawla is located in Wardha, one of the six districts in the region that have together seen more than 6,000 farm suicides since 2001. Her husband Palasram, bogged down in debt, took his life a year ago. She has pulled on, trying to run their farm, living in a house with its roof half gone and two walls about to cave in again. This tiny ramshackle residence is home to five human beings. That includes her son, daughter-in-law, and two grandchildren. In society's eyes, Kamlabai is a "widow." In her own, she's a small farmer trying to make a living and support her family.

How did a landless Dalit come to own a farm at all? The same way she keeps it going. Every moment of Kamlabai's life has been a struggle. She began as an agricultural labourer on a daily wage of Rs.10-12. "That bought a lot more in those days," she says, of a time nearly four decades ago. To this, she added a little bit by collecting and selling fodder to farmers.

"I remember how my mother trudged for hours to collect chara [fodder] and sell it for next to nothing," says her son Bhaskar who is central to her plans to keep their farm afloat. "I got ten paisa per penda [fistful]," she laughs. "But I made so many trips for it, I could make up to ten rupees daily from the chara." That is, she walked more kilometres than she could count to fetch and sell one hundred pendas of fodder each day. Her 16-18 hour workdays paid off, though. From these pathetic earnings she and her husband saved and bought land no one else would at the edge of the forest. That was nearly 40 years ago. She paid Rs.12,000 for four and a half acres. The family then worked like galley slaves to cultivate a very difficult farm. "I had another son, too, but he died."

Kamlabai walks long distances even today, in her mid-60s. "What to do? The farm is six kilometres away from our village. I earn as a labourer when I find work. And then I go to the farm to help Bhaskar and Vanita." She is too old to find work on government project sites. And on those, anyway, exist huge prejudices against lone women in general and widows in particular. So she takes any work she finds.

Between them, the family have nurtured the farm. It looks good and productive. "See this well," she points to a rather large one created by mostly family labour. "If only we could get it cleaned and repaired, we'd have much more water." But that would need Rs.15,000 at least. And that's apart from the Rs.1 lakh that fencing the field would cost. They could convert one acre to a water body at the bottom of a slope on their land. That would mean even more money. Bank loans are now impossible. And proper repairs to her crumbling house would cost another Rs.25,000. "My husband killed himself because of crop loss leading to debt of Rs.1.5 lakh," she says. They've paid off bits of that and the family has run through most of the Rs.1 lakh compensation she got from the State. But creditors still trouble her. "We were doing alright. But then agriculture really failed for several years and we suffered big losses."

Like millions of others, her family was hit by the biggest agrarian crisis in decades. Rising input costs, falling output prices, lack of credit, withdrawal of State support. "It's the same with everyone else in the village, too," she says. Last year brought crop disaster as well. She lost hugely, with Bhaskar betting on Bt cotton. "All we got was two quintals," she says.

The Government then added to the damage. Late last year, it made her a "beneficiary" of a "relief package." Under this, Kamlabai was made to buy a costly "aadha Jersey" (half Jersey) cow she did not want. Though heavily subsidised, she still had to pay her share of Rs.5,500 for it. "The brute ate more than all of us put together," she told us. (The Hindu, Nov. 23, 2006). And "it yielded very little milk."

Reverse rental

Since then, "I have twice given away the cow, but they always bring it back," she says with resignation. Those she gifts it to return it saying "we cannot afford to feed it." So now "I am paying a neighbour Rs.50 a month to look after the animal." A kind of reverse rental. The deal being that if the cow starts giving milk as it should, she will get a half-share. That belongs to an optimistic future. Right now, Kamlabai is paying to take care of a cow the Government promised would take care of her.

But her spirit is as yet unbroken. She still makes that long walk to the farm every day she does not find work. Today her tiny but energetic grandchildren make a slightly comical picture alongside her on the trail. Their survival and future is her biggest motivator. As always, her head is held high, but she can't hold back the tears when she looks at them. Kamlabai has decided that suicide is not about the dead. It's about the living. And for them she soldiers on.

ON CRICKET

And now for a commercial break

Knowing that big money is undermining the game as a whole, and pussyfooting around it, just isn't cricket, writes P Sainath. nd finally, the business of endorsements in cricket is on the table, however briefly. Thanks to recommendations credited to a bunch of ex-captains. But some of the ex-skippers have begun to jump ship. A couple say they did not press for limiting the number and nature of product endorsements a player can get into. And the Board of Control for Cricket in India, despite wide public approval of the idea, has begun to waffle under sharp attack in the media. Such is the power of corporate rage.

Whether the curbs first announced were the most appropriate ones is another matter. The massive corporate backlash is against the very idea that their rights to milk the game - no matter what damage it causes - can be restricted. Just when it seemed something positive might have come out of our World Cup exit, after all. But the debate at least highlights that corporate pressures on the game are real and dangerous. A fact long known, but little acknowledged. My favourite is a clause reported to be in the corporate contracts of two players: the more time you spend at the crease, the more money you earn. What happens when the interest of the team demands a hurricane, do or die knock? Or if taking root at the crease loses your side the game?

If you've got crores of rupees riding on your shoulders, it will at some point affect your play. More so when you have contracts from sponsors that make failure financially devastating. So many of our cricketers play like gods in their early seasons. There is no fear of failure. Then, they're playing for India, enjoyment, and fun. Soon, they're playing for Brand India, endorsements, and funds. When a team returning from one tour sees some of its players dash off almost straight from the airport to ad-shoots, something is awry. More so when another series is to begin within a very short time. So the ban on shoots 15 days prior to a series, if enforced, might do some good.

Even the most experienced and strong-minded cannot evade the effects of endorsement raj. So imagine a 21- or 22-year-old caught up in this. A kid who has been blazing away at the best bowlers in the world without fear of failure. Once the endorsement web closes in and you have crores riding on your next performance, it's different. That too when you've had a couple of bad outings. With what freedom will you play that next innings? Will you play safe or with spirit? Will you go for the bowling or will you hesitate on that big, bold stroke? Of course players should not be barred from income outside of the game. They have a right to that. But the nature and effects of this source of income went way over the top ages ago and need checking.

In 1986, a study of a single India-England one-day match showed that 72 ads from about 20 companies had been telecast in under seven hours. At that time, this was thought to be a matter of some concern. How trivial those numbers seem today. Not just the match but what Erik Barnouw called the "surrounding territory" is suffused with the sponsors' material. There are pre-match, lunch interval, and post-match programmes designed to showcase the sponsor's products. There are curtain raisers, cheerleader shows, and post mortems that do the same.

There are no more boundaries in cricket. There's only Corporate X's Fantastic Fours, Business Y's Super Sixes and Company Z's Magic Moments. Not to forget some other concern's Sizzling Catches. As this whole culture takes root, the successful player drowns in sponsor money. The distinction between cricket player and product peddler blurs in more ways than one. Logos and uniforms proclaim who owns the players and it's not the country. Once it was just an annoying bunch of ear-splitting ads between overs. Now it's a colossal money-spinning industry in which the game is smaller than the revenue.

It's not just about match fees, really. Nor so simple as the BCCI regulating players' endorsements. The nature of the game's ties to big money - the Board's own deals and those of the media, too - have all got to be looked at honestly. Those calling for increasing the number of selectors should reflect there already are more. Corporate sponsors and agents. They've got too much to lose from `their' players being dropped or sidelined. They will interfere.

But there's more. In one estimate, three players of the Indian side had endorsement work for 60-75 days each last year. It could overwhelm anybody. Imagine the pressure on 20-somethings. Because some of these players are so very good, they will still perform brilliantly at times. Because the stress of so much money riding on them is so intense, they can falter at crucial moments. That's why the ex-captains have rightly spoken about the need to check performance-linked clauses in the endorsements. It is easy to forget that the same players have also won significant victories. Like it or not, if you drew up a list of the country's 20 best players, it would be hard to exclude many of those in the present team. Their replacements, anyway, would simply be fresh prey for sponsors, ads, and agents.

Now that endorsements have at least begun to be looked at, there's one more thing that should be factored into analysis: the role of the media. Hysterical over-the-top stories, astonishing levels of speculation, intense personalisation, are one part of it. Lobbying, plants, and camp reporting are another.

Meanwhile, the media are bashing the `fickle-minded' cricket-loving public, blaming them for the proposed curbs on endorsements. "This is to appease the public," declared one channel. In truth, the media have been far more fickle. Their own polls show the public's stand on these issues is not much different from what it was earlier. However, the media's rah-rah campaign for the team changed drastically with our Caribbean catastrophe. No more cheer India, right?

There is an important link. The same commercial interests that weigh down the players are also massive advertisers. The money they put in there drives the kind of whipped up, concocted feel-good factor you saw in the media prior to the defeats. The players become super humans. A class apart. No need to consider that other teams might be better. Just have yards of newsprint and hours of broadcast time devoted to halo-building and product hawking. This too obviously piles up the pressure on players of any age, let alone 21-year-olds. Fact: It's a game (or used to be). We weren't good enough, we lost. And Bangladesh played with a passion and energy we lacked on the day.

It's no accident that among the first round of stories that appeared as the team faced an exit was on how much corporate sponsors stood to lose. Quite absurd. They made millions before the first match was played in the World Cup. But those stories had to happen. They reflect the reality that the media was set to lose a lot of advertising revenue. They're furious with the curbs. It's not the `gagging' of players that upsets them. It's the money. All those `exclusive' links with players that translate into revenue.

Meanwhile, the home remedies being doled out will hopefully not drown the new, welcome look at endorsements. Regional bias as villain has surfaced yet again. Sure, such a bias in selection can be a problem but it is not the root cause of the evil. This view assumes that the supermen who will replace the regional system of selectors will be free of such bias themselves. Is there evidence to support that notion? What if they are only familiar with cricket in the major centres they know? Curbing regional bias surely involves more than just doing away with the old method?

The enduring appeal of all these remedies is, of course, that most have some truth in them. But that truth gets badly stretched. The cult of youth is one of these. It's wonderful to have young players do very well as indeed they often have for India. Making this a mindless mantra ignores that Australia's Dad's Army is the most feared team in the world. It is no less true that everybody has to go sometime. But should that be on performance and record or do we just set an expiry date that treats the capabilities of all sportsmen as being exactly the same: "Best before 2008. Shake well before use."

The others too, we've heard before. And they're all very true: quality pitches. Improve domestic cricket. Better infrastructure. Treat the junior level of the game more seriously. Quite right. But all these would apply to almost any other sport as well. Including those that have produced far better achievers than cricket - without any of the sponsorship or attention it receives. The one huge difference between cricket and all these sports is the money involved. And remember that our team got almost anything it could have asked for. Failure too is part of the game. And others can and will often play better than us. But knowing that big money is undermining the game as a whole and pussyfooting around it, that's dumb. It just isn't cricket.

ON CRICKET

Growth ideology of the cancer cell

In that the trend of falling state investment in sector after sector continues, this budget does not break with neo-liberalism. Instead, it just dolls it up. India is still on a path damaging and dangerous to the poor. The UPA has learned nothing and forgotten everything, writes P Sainath.

"As Dr. Muhammad Yunus, the Nobel laureate, said, 'Faster growth rate is essential for faster reduction in poverty. There is no other trick to it'." So said P. Chidambaram in his budget speech. Drawing on his words must have seemed a politically correct thing to do. Mr. Chidambaram might want to add another quote to his cupboard. This one from the late Edward Abbey, environmental activist and writer. "Growth for growth's sake is the ideology of the cancer cell."

Few things grow as relentlessly as that cell does, with such fatal results. As the cancer of neo-liberalism claims an ever-higher toll, its greatest theologians now include standard disclaimers in their chant. Growth has to be 'inclusive' and 'sustainable'. Even the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund have earned these escape clauses. In any case, growth in India this past decade has been neither. The appalling distress in the countryside is just one measure of this. Election after election also rubs it in. Especially that of 2004, which brought the United Progressive Alliance to power.

Even going by the government's economic survey, by its own other data, agriculture is choking. Per capita growth has been negative. Farm incomes have taken a beating. Thousands of farmers commit suicide each year. The government has long known there is a frightful crisis on. One driven by human agency, by state policy. Yet, for all the noise, Central plan outlay on agriculture as a share of GDP sees no increase worth the name. Nor is there anything that touches the acute farm distress on the ground. In that the trend of falling state investment in sector after sector continues, this budget does not break with neo-liberalism. It just dolls it up.

One of the most important steps the UPA took in 2004 was to assign the National Commission on Farmers the grim task of studying this crisis. The work of the NCF caught the imagination of farmers nationwide. In Vidarbha or in Andhra Pradesh, farmers when they speak at all of 'relief packages' do so with scorn. What they do demand is action on the NCF's findings. It is hard to find a single one of its many vital proposals addressed in this budget.

There are no steps towards a Price Stabilisation Fund. None at all towards debt relief, let alone a waiver. Nothing has happened that will make input costs cheaper. Racketeering on that front is not only left alone, it can dash on regardless. The 'huge' boost for rural credit does not touch the high interest rates, which are such a major source of the trouble. And government knows very well that small and marginal farmers have gained almost nothing from its earlier 'expansion' of credit. No incentives for food crops in crisis regions. No action, to cite just one problem, to prevent the dumping of American cotton subsidised in billions of dollars and devastating prices here and around the world. (In just marketing year 2001-02, as an official report shows us, U.S. raw cotton exports to India had tripled to more than a million bales.)

There is no move to use valid tools like raising duties to halt a process that is literally killing Indian farmers. Import duty on cotton remains at a low 10 per cent. Indeed, the lowering of other duties in many cases will hit other sectors of Indian agriculture too. Not just cotton. If this is a pro-farmer budget, it's scary to think of what an anti-farmer one would look like. As always, the standards of judging the deal given to poor Indians differ totally from those used to measure what a 'sulking India Inc.,' gets. The big boys shouldn't be too disheartened, though. Business as usual will resume after a pause for the Uttar Pradesh elections.

Even as the budget is hailed as 'pro-farmer', there comes the embarrassment to the Centre from a Congress-led State. Responding to a PIL on farm suicides, the Maharashtra government tries telling the Supreme Court that the Centre's dragging its feet over funds for Vidarbha was a big factor in the problem. True, it backs off pleading an error when this is highlighted in the press. But it gives you a picture of how bad things are.

Many have shown that some of the 'higher allocations' of the budget are negative when adjusted for inflation. The Left, for instance, points out that spending on the government's flagship employment programmes is up by seven per cent. Which amounts to stagnation given inflation levels. The increase in outlays on food subsidies, at 6.2 per cent, means a cut in real terms.

There is also a rather clumsy dodge on the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme. To begin with, it was given Rs.11,300 crores when it needed much more. And that was for 200 districts. Now it is to be 'expanded' to 330 districts. But the outlay goes up by just Rs.700 crores. So the number of districts covered goes up 40 per cent. The money goes up six per cent.

The 'huge' hike in outlays for health still does not bring us to even the modest two to three per cent of GDP level promised in 2004. View education outlays as share of GDP and you see how far behind we still are. In the end, though, it's not just about sector to sector funding. It's the whole direction. And in that very little has changed. India is still on a path damaging and dangerous to the poor.

Big media, though, now view the Finance Minister with a 'how-could-you' air of injured innocence. He actually had to face some questions on television. He was questioned. But from a point of view which, at most other times, he would have been happy with. That is, the liberalisation and 'reforms process' from a corporate outlook. (India Shining has been back for a while, jostling for space with India Rising and India Poised. But that's another story.)

Mr. Chidambaram accused one interviewer of being obsessed "with the corporate sector." That was code for 'wait till after the State elections.' ("Our programme continues after a small non-commercial break.") He even tried to explain that a 'thrust' on agriculture in fact favoured Indian industry. And he had a real point there. But I doubt it went home. The debate amongst the elite is still in terms of a 'letdown'. A 'setback in the pace of reforms'. For the media, this is India with a shining black eye.

And so we have a budget that gives 'top priority' to agriculture. And eight more farmers have taken their lives in Vidarbha. This is now a region where farmers killing themselves are directly addressing the Prime Minister or Chief Minister in their suicide notes. After the Prime Minister's Independence Day Speech in 2006, you might have expected something different. That was a rare occasion. Dr. Singh spoke clearly of the state of our farmers. Even more rare for an I-Day speech, he singled out Vidarbha for special mention. And he clearly acknowledged a major crisis was on in agrarian India. Not a trace of that sentiment can be found in the philosophy or the numbers of this budget.

Nor is there even a sense that much has been learnt from the polls in Punjab and Uttarakhand. There is even some bravado about how the Congress has fared better in rural Punjab. The price rise, among other things, was and is a major issue. But the government's response to it is at most levels tokenism. Not a lesson has been learnt by this government. Like others before it, it imagines it will make a few 'course corrections' just before the polls. It has forgotten the reasons for its win in 2004. Nor does it want to see just how awful the crisis in the countryside is.

We are now at that mid-way mark where, historically, the Congress revives the Bharatiya Janata Party. A party gasping for breath after 2004 regains its oxygen. The Congress is hard at work on this in Maharashtra, too. The government's terrible power cuts have a clear regional, urban, and class bias. Talleyrand is said to have remarked of the Bourbon monarchs of France after their restoration that they had learnt nothing and forgotten everything. We don't know that he really said that of them. But it fits the UPA. This budget reads like a Bourbon Manifesto

Elite activism: can't vote, can vet

The Beautiful People whose next-door neighbours never vote are back, teaching the masses - who do vote - how to go about it in the civic elections in Mumbai. This is the upper middle class trying to preen itself in the one process where they matter less, writes P Sainath.

All wards reserved for backward classes and Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes/women will have "candidates of poor calibre." So 'asserts' one of Mumbai's most high profile 'citizen activists' in a daily newspaper in the city. This statement - from a 'civil' society leader - escaped comment or response. Both in that paper and at large. A sign of how easily caste and other visceral prejudices pass off as analysis in the aggressive anti-reservation mood gripping the upper classes.

That isn't all, though. His group is "trying to working out a system of grading candidates." Elections to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation's 227 wards will be held next month. And the rotation of reserved wards is causing heartburn. More so amongst the elite. Some of Mumbai's swankiest neighbourhoods find their wards reserved for SCs and OBCs. (It could hurt property values, you know.) And the bile is out.

Besides, it's that time of year. "Citizens' groups," mostly headed by the very elite, are hogging media time and space. The Beautiful People whose next-door neighbours never vote are back, teaching the masses - who do vote - how to go about it. One group wants a corporate agency to do candidate 'ratings.' (This has rich possibilities. A Candidate Sensitive Index? Call it CANSEX?) Others are running their own aspirants.

Now all this, up to a point, is good clean fun. It is part of the charm of elections in our society that so many feel encouraged to stand. (Including one astonishing BMC hopeful who got just the one vote the last time. And two more who secured two votes each.) It speaks well, too, of the urge to participate in the democratic process. And different groups do so in many ways. Political parties contest wards they know they will lose. Where they might at best get a few hundred votes. Maybe a thousand. They see that as a way of measuring their core vote there. And believe this will help consolidate a nascent base that might otherwise drift towards other parties.

There are also other, truly interesting groups this time. Like one that will contest each of the six wards in Dharavi, Asia's biggest slum. Win or lose they will force a debate on some of the most vital issues of urban development. Including the future of lakhs of families like their own. Maharashtra's scheme for Dharavi sells out residents' interests to real estate sharks. Fearing the destruction of their livelihoods, some locals have formed this group to contest the BMC polls.

And, of course, there are the mainstream political parties involved in the battle for control of a corporation whose Rs.9,000 crore budget outstrips those of some States in the Northeast. This time, Raj Thackeray's Maharashtra Navnirman Sena will be a spoiler for the Shiv Sena-Bharatiya Janata Party alliance. Those refused a ticket by the latter now have more ponds to fish in. The Congress-Natiionalist Congress Party's who-will-blink-first alliance bargaining is entertaining. And the re-delineation of wards can make things dicey for some hopefuls. Yet, it is the elite "citizen's groups" that hold the media spellbound. Of course, they have as much a right to fight the elections as anyone else. What is amazing is the media space and legitimacy these groups always get. Never mind that they are the least important in the poll process. Never mind too, that their importance blossoms after the polls. (Why bother with the ballot when you anyway get to run the government later?) A glance at Mumbai's media and you'd think these groups, particularly one, are setting the agenda. That they are re-defining the entire process. The members of group themselves believe it, which is fine. Whether the media should, is the question.

During the 2004 national polls, and the Assembly elections later, the same elite Mumbai crowd hogged hours of television time. They existed wholly in the media, both print and visual. Malabar Hill socialites became 'noted activists.' They played a central role in television debates. And were always accepted at their own valuation. That is, the people the anchor turned to with deep respect as independent, impartial forces without a bias. But with a 'cause' - the cleansing of a corrupt electoral process. Which only they, of course, were capable of. All this tanked horribly at the hustings. As the results rolled out, not a byte was sought, nor a quote supplied, from the previous month's wholesale dealers in profound thought.

This is so across the country. Any outfit launched by ex-IITians, for instance, is a sure-fire media hit. No matter that these sink without a trace at the polls. The last one commanded front page treatment in the press. The highlights included such thoughtful quotes from its founders: "Giving up handsome pay packages, comfort of family and support of friends wasn't that easy." And "My inner voice told me I should invest my efforts in my country... " "People think we are crazy so much so that our families have also failed to understand our motto... " (You'd think that if even your own family failed to understand, you might have a communication problem. One that could hurt you in the campaign.) Some of these were likely sincere, well-meaning people. But you could also have got these same quotes from thousands of others candidates.

However, it was the 'brand' that mattered. At least to the media if not the voter. As one young journalist covering the present round of BMC polls puts it: our approach is simple. Anything that has an 'I' a double 'II' or 'IT' in it makes front page. That is, if you have an IT, IIT or IIM tag. Then the force is with you. Candidates of these brands are covered with near reverence.

It happened in the 2006 polls in Tamilnadu when one of the chosen few "took on Karunanidhi" in Chepauk. Newspapers ran stories on this brave new world battle. It didn't matter that Mr. Karunanidhi had likely never heard of his rival and probably never will. This was an IIT man. Again, of course, he had a right to be in the fray. And to take on Mr. Karunanidhi, if he saw it that way. And it does not matter that he got under 1 per cent of the votes cast and less than two per cent of those notched up by the DMK leader. It does matter that the space the media gave this was misleading to their audiences, cruel to a cub candidate, and harmful to their own credibility.

But with each new election we go through the whole drama again. The media love it when someone they see as 'middle class' gives those ugly politicians "a run for their money." (Usually, the heroes are mostly upper middle class in the Indian hierarchy.) Another big daily in Mumbai has front-paged the decision of three ex-IITians to run in the BMC elections. It goes on.

One tabloid has front-paged several stories of heroic 'citizens activist' groups. These reports carry a symbol - the clenched fist. Not a symbol most of the upper classes would care to have in their own homes. But it's the thought that counts, I guess.

Margins and upsets

One argument the groups now make is that in 83 BMC wards, the victory margin was less than 100 votes the last time. So in theory, if you can get 100 votes, you can cause an upset. The margins may have been narrow. But the top candidates got votes in the thousands. Raj Thackeray's MNS candidates could cause several such upsets. But only on the basis of getting quite a few votes themselves. Even being a spoiler requires some clout.

Meanwhile, the papers though are full of 'tips' and 'ideas' from the groups on how we should vote. These range from the embarrassing to the absurd. And have little to do with the issues that motivate far more conscious voters and citizens than themselves.

It's happened before. The newspapers of 1971 were over the moon with Naval Tata running for the Lok Sabha from Bombay South. They saw this as the best thing ever to happen for the 'middle class.' Good, clean candidates were all that people wanted. For some, the race was a no-contest. Tata would win hands down. In the event, he was trounced by a Congress candidate little heard of at the time, and unheard of since. After that, many good, clean industrialists have settled for buying their way into the Rajya Sabha.

The lovely bit is where the newspaper or channel tells you: "this time it's different." A group of idealistic young whatever have "banded together" to do whichever. The current crop are fighting 'vote bank politics.' 'Vote bank' means those who support someone you can't stand. But something is different this time. And it's appalling. Open jibes at SC, ST, and OBC candidates and voters. Attacks on 'slum appeasement' by politicians. Some members of these elite outfits are closely linked to corporate cabals whose thinking they mirror. Some have also been party to a petition seeking to take away the voting rights of slum dwellers whose huts have been demolished. (Aha! They have no address now. How can they vote?) Even the eccentric charm of the two-vote wannabes is missing in this lot. And they are completely without humour. This is the upper middle class trying to preen itself in the one process where they matter less. They seem not satisfied with the fact that their raj will mostly be restored once it is over.

What the heart does not feel, ...

After 15 years of a battering from hostile policies and governments, the world of the peasant has turned highly fragile. But the onus of changing is on the farmer. Not on those driving a cruel process and system, who have only contempt for ordinary folk, writes P Sainath.

10 September 2006 - The spraying season is just about to begin in Vidarbha. Which means the region sits on a volcano. This is when a farmer actually holds that can of pesticide in his hand. When a moment's frustration can snuff out a life forever. Even the run-up to the season has been a disaster. More than 200 farmers have committed suicide in two months. August alone saw 111 indebted farmers kill themselves. That brings the total since June last year to 828. Of these, 72 have occurred since Independence Day this year.

We'd be lucky if the Government prepares itself for this season. And if we're even more lucky, the suicides might taper off a bit after the spraying. They have always had seasonal highs and lows. It's vital though never to forget that these deaths are only a symptom of the larger crisis. Not its cause. Failing to see this link means ignoring the main issues. It then becomes "if they're not killing themselves, things are okay." A bad illusion. That said, the numbers are indeed appalling.

Something very fundamental is happening. The central, driving factors behind the suicides remain the same. Rising debt, soaring input costs, plummeting output prices, a credit crunch and so on. But the outcome now adds up to more than just the sum total of these factors. After 15 years of a battering from hostile policies and governments, the world of the peasant has turned highly fragile. Problems that would not have driven many to suicide a decade ago do so now. It takes less to push farmers over the edge because their resistance is down. So fragile is their economy and equilibrium.

The studies and surveys seldom account for one vital factor - the worldview of peasants. How that is changing as their links to the land erode. How their hopes of what's possible are constantly dashed. How, losing their anchor, they drift to a frightening future. How it feels to watch your child drop out of school or college because education has become too expensive. Even as your daughter's marriage is off, because you cannot afford it. You fail to get your ailing mother to a hospital because health is the most costly thing in your world. All this while agriculture itself is tanking. And there's less food on the table. For too many, pessimism soaks the worldview this shapes. And despair gains ground as the coming deity.

But why are farmers committing suicide only in Vidarbha? This question based on falsehood or ignorance or both, is being posed just now. Farm suicides have been on in many parts of the country. In sheer numbers, Andhra Pradesh has had more than any other State. During the Chandrababu Naidu years, they accounted for the bulk of all such deaths in the country. A better question would be why their intensity has been less since then. Or why they could easily go up again in the same State.

Farm suicides have also been on for several years in Punjab, Haryana, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and elsewhere. To imply they are only happening in Vidarbha is false. The agrarian problem is nationwide. So are many of the policies driving it. But all regions are not the same. Some crops are more subject to price shocks. Some communities more vulnerable than others. Some cultivation practices more destructive than others. And some governments are far worse at handling distress than others. No State is exempt from the crisis. But more exposed regions will feel its effects before many others do.

Those covering the Andhra Pradesh suicides in the early years of this decade were often asked this question: why only Andhra? Something is wrong with people there. Among those asking were many from Maharashtra. They were quite sure this could never happen in their State.

Farm suicides have been on for a while in the cotton-growing West African nations, too. As they have in many other parts of the world with farmers into other crops as well. (They occurred in the United States, too, during the Great Depression. And again, as corporate farming snuffed out small holder agriculture in the last quarter of the 20th century.)

But this way of posing it - why Vidarbha? - allows us to spring the next argument. The problem is not distress or debt. The problem is with the 'psyche' of the Vidarbha farmer. Note that this 'psyche' has nothing to do with the lived experience of the peasant. It's about the wiring inside his brain. Having thus derived an 'answer' verging on the racist, we can leave the status quo as it is. Counsel the poor things. They need shrinks. Also, it becomes clear - to those of this view - that the factors are 'social' rather than economic. If we can cut down the 'social evils' like drinking alcohol, things would be okay.

This might even be funny if it weren't so tragically obtuse. For one thing, if liquor is the main cause of farm suicides, there would be little left of the Indian peasantry. Indeed, Vidarbha would have more survivors. The Warkari sect - firm abstainers - have a large following here. Yet this group too has been hit by suicides. Further, why then are there more such deaths in Vidarbha than in Tamilnadu? Liquor is better entrenched in the rural regions of the latter. It also raises the question why alcohol leads rich kids in Mumbai to rape and murder, but leads poor farmers in Vidarbha to suicide.

Sure alcohol can be a factor in some of the deaths. There have been instances of farmers who got drunk, fought with their wives, and took their lives. These have mostly come after financial collapse, crushing levels of debt, and humiliation at the hands of creditors. Interestingly, an investigation by the newspaper Sakaal suggests that the number of suicide victims who had an alcohol problem is quite minor. Normally, the drunkenness argument comes up in the second or third year of a crisis, when denial is still an option. That's how it happened in Andhra. That it should come up so late in Vidarbha's crisis speaks of at least two things. A bankrupt elite scraping the barrel for excuses. And their inept yes-men in the media, ignorant of a larger canvas or history to the issue.

Contempt for ordinary folk

"They did it for the handouts." That's another jibe that reeks of contempt for ordinary folk. It tells us more about the people asserting this than about those taking their lives. The notion is that people destroy their families forever in order to get a 'compensation' of Rs.1 lakh. This reduces the victim to some kind of crazed beast. Yawn. It's all been said before. In 1998, using precisely this claim, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister Chandrababu Naidu scrapped compensation for suicide-hit families. Fact: the suicides shot up and were at their highest in the years 1998-2004 when there was no compensation at all.

Then there are the ideologically insane. The members of the sect have no interest in either farmers or agriculture. Only in upholding their Gospel. For them, farmers are dying because they have not been reached by free market reforms. If more of them keep dying after they are reached, it's because the "reforms have not gone far enough." It hangs a halo of righteousness around wanton ignorance.

The same 'commitment' also leads to a spirited defence of large corporations wreaking havoc in agriculture. The stout defence of technologies about which the defender knows nothing. Some of this is, of course, ideological. Some of it is also self-serving. Corporations involved in agriculture have organised foreign freebies for their ideological advocates. At this moment, major efforts are under way to co-opt journalists in affected regions. Yet, we can be proud that the vast majority have rejected such blandishments. So many of Vidarbha's journalists - and activists - remain a scourge of the establishment.

Meanwhile, every other study ends up calling for 'counselling' of the Vidarbha farmers. Calls upon them to change their system of cultivation. Sure there's some reality in this. (The agriculture extension system - which should indeed 'counsel' farmers - has collapsed nationwide.) But why not counsel governments on their policies? Or call for a change in the socio-economic system that drives people to such lengths? The onus of changing is on the farmer. Not on those driving a cruel process and system.

Attempts to 'counsel' them in those terms have been on for years. Andhra Pradesh tried it in 2003. Teams of psychologists, revenue officials and doctors went out to Vidarbha's villages from as early as 2004. To counsel the poor, disturbed souls. In one village, an old farmer greatly embarrassed such a team: "You've given us fine advice on so many things. On coping with stress, curbing our drinking, not fighting with our wives and so on. And you've asked us so many good questions, too. Now ask us one more. Ask us why farmers, who produce the nation's food, are starving. Ask us why the children of those who grow your food, are starving." The team remained silent.

Some of the learned - and well-meaning - team members had been to great medical colleges. And one of the first principles they learned there is sound. "What the mind does not know, the eye cannot observe." Very true. But the old farmer was posing a larger point before society as a whole, not just to the doctors. What the heart does not feel, the eye can never see.

FARMING CRISIS

Unwilling parents, unwary orphans
In Anantapur, farm suicides are fewer than they were in 2002. But they still happen and could rise again in this fragile region. As elsewhere, agriculture is plagued by uncertainty, writes P Sainath.

In some ways, it was the turning point in Andhra Pradesh. The 2002 visit of Congress president Sonia Gandhi to the State both galvanised her demoralised party and brought hope to families destroyed by the agrarian crisis. Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu till that moment seen as invincible by even his opponents began to look less so.

The highlight of Ms. Gandhi's visit to the devastated Anantapur district was a meeting where many from suicide-hit families gathered. Each was issued a special "victim pass" for the event by Congress organisers.

Media reports of the time recall the anguish of the Congress president, appalled by what she heard and saw. This was, after all, the State's worst-hit district in the farm crisis. Hundreds of suicides were being reported each year. Many had been calmly recorded as "suicide due to unbearable stomach ache (kadupu noppi)." Story after painful story poured out. One of the saddest being that of 12-year-old Jayalakshmi Palem. A keen learner, the 7th standard student had killed herself when faced with dropping out of school. Her father Laxminarayana, a small farmer in Mamillaguntapalli village, could no longer pay her fees.

Other girls, too, had killed themselves under similar circumstances. In some households, the suicide of a father was followed by that of his eldest daughter. Often, the girl blamed herself for her father's death, feeling he had taken such a step because he had failed to get her married.

And countless other households had seen suicides, too. The farm crisis was eating into Anantapur. The Congress president's meeting was the big moment for the families to be seen and heard. "Sonia Gandhi spoke to my mother," says 12-year-old Somashekar, younger brother of Jayalakshmi, with some pride. He too might well have dropped out of school later on. The visit and the public focus it got ensured he did not.

It was also the big moment for local Congressmen to be seen and heard by their leader. To make a good impression and grab that photo-op. This, some of them did by declaring to the media that they were "adopting" those families that had lost their breadwinners. It was, says one officer, "a real Kodak moment." For the families it proved a fleeting one. Five years on, most have never seen the parents who "adopted" them. Some might-have-been foster parents flatly deny making any such commitments. Others claim they have done their bit and that is enough.

Jayalaksmi's own home is a fractured one. "Both her parents are across the border in Karnataka, doing coolie work," says her grandmother P. Mangamma. "Their four acres are lying fallow." They had Mangamma leave her own village and move into their house here so that young Somashekar could live on and study in this village.

"There was no option," she says. "Farming had collapsed. But even that coolie work has since become a huge problem. Laxminarayana had a nasty fall from a height at a construction site when the scaffolding there collapsed. His back was injured and right now only his wife can work." So the four-member family depends on the daily wage of one woman - when she can find work, in another State. And on Mangamma's old age pension of Rs.200. "They only come back once in two or three months. And most months they can send just Rs.200 or Rs.300 home."

Surely, this was odd. Media reports say the family was 'adopted' during Ms. Gandhi's visit by Congress MLA J.C. Diwakar Reddy. He is now the State's Panchayati Raj Minister. Neither Mangamma nor her grandson has any harsh words for the Minister. They've just never seen him in their lives. In fact, they haven't seen any of the local leaders since that meeting.

Mr. Reddy remembers it differently. He told The Hindu that he "did not make any promise to adopt the family." However, he "still stands by the commitment" that he did make. Which was, he says, that he would e ducate Somashekar. He is "ready to deposit annually, the full amount required for the boy's expenses towards school fee, books, clothes, and hostel charges." The school Somashekar goes to charges Rs.2,400 a year as fees for a day scholar. Not a small amount in this poor village. Curious turn

This is where it gets curious. The school is not charging the boy any fees. The correspondent of the Sri Vignan T.M. and E.M. school, Mastan, insists, "we have not taken any money from the boy. As his was a poor family, we did not accept any fees at all." Well, at least not since Jayalakshmi's death and Ms. Gandhi's visit.

Mr. Reddy says he deputed a mandal president and a village sarpanch to meet the family after Ms. Gandhi's visit and see to the child's school needs. But, he told The Hindu, "the family sought cash instead."< /p>

Mr. Reddy said he would rather "deposit the amount with the head of the institution in the name of boy." The institution insists it takes no payment at all in this case. And the boy's family does not claim to be making one. Neighbours say that someone did pay a small amount the first year, after which the school stopped charging its fee. But that was it. "So where," asks one villager, "does this leave all these 'adoptions?'"

Anantapur is not where it was in 2002. The district did receive special attention after the change of government in 2004. On some fronts it has seen distinct improvements.

On others, unfulfilled promises and hardship. In this district, there are still those dragged out of school and college by the farm crisis years ago - and who never went back. That includes the holders of full government scholarships forced to quit to help their families in the fields.

Farm suicides are fewer than they were in 2002. But they still happen and could rise again in this fragile region. As elsewhere, agriculture is plagued by uncertainty. Efforts by some groundnut farmers to switch to vegetables, papaya, sweet lemon, and other crops have not quite worked. The next two seasons could prove crucial, says one senior officer.

"A lot more depends on the kind of policies we adopt than on the number of children the Ministers adopt."