Hurting freedom of press will hurt India

I wrote in June 2017 after attack on NDTV

A free press constitutes an instrument of development in the same way as education or investment

Nation builders build institutions – independent and robust institutions. A free press is one such institutions which has been nurtured and cherished in democracies world over. It not only informs citizens, a prerequisite for the society to be responsible and powerful, it acts as a watchdog of democracy, alerting people in time to possible wrongdoing or misuse of power by the government of the day.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of America, put the relation between free press and democratic government in perspective: “The basis of our government being the opinion of the people, the very first object should be to keep that right…And were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter…” (Emphasis added)

But the import of a free press goes far beyond this. Free press is a powerful tool of development too. A multinational study covering more than 150 countries, published by UNESCO in 2008 (Press Freedom and Development), examined the co-relation between the free press and different dimensions of development (including GDP, health and education), poverty, governance and conflict/violence by using econometrics and concluded that there indeed existed a “good co-relation” and a “positive influence”.

The study said, among other things: Countries with higher per capita GDP had freer press, barring some exceptions; where there is no press freedom, the share of GDP spent on health is low; countries with press freedom have high rates of primary and secondary enrolment; countries that do not have press freedom suffer from governance problems; free press is positively co-related with low level of military expenditure and military personnel; free press creates a business-enabling environment and so forth.

It rests its case with a compelling observation: “A free press constitutes an instrument of development as such, in the same way as education or investment.” (Emphasis added)

What a free press seems to be doing is, the study observes, to expand participation in the political decision-making process, provide access to a whole variety of different ideas, opinions and information, make governments more accountable and allow policy implementation and the practices of those in power (corruption, for example) to be monitored.

The co-relation between free press and corruption is well known. A 2004 study of 97 countries (for period 1995-2002), found that reduction in free press restrictions by 1% led to a 5.1% improvement in the Corruption Perception Index (CPI). There have been many other studies showing evidence of a catalytic role played by free press in influencing opinion leading to social change.

Free press, thus, plays a dual role – a source of information about people’s need for the government and also force the government to intervene by arousing public opinion. Amartya Sen had famously observed that there had never been a famine in a democratic society, or even in India since independence. He thought that famine was not even possible when the press is free because it would expose any shortage in time for the corrective measures to be taken.

After analysing data for 50 countries, a study (Press Freedom and Jump in Stock Market, 2016) found that stock markets in countries with free press saw higher volatility, higher jump risk, and lesser information asymmetry. With a free press, those countries were better at processing economic information and suppression of bad news was less, and hence markets were fair and transparent giving better price discovery.

It is in these lights that the egregious attack on NDTV has to be seen. Not only because the justification issued by CBI is specious – a presumptuous loss of interest to a private bank which didn’t even complain – the raid and the events prior to that lead one to belief of an assault on press freedom the way NDTV was singled out for being critical of the government.

Apart from the media, the raid has sent a danger signal to the beleaguered banking sector too, which is fighting to survive a humongous NPA mess, for it makes even a haircut in interest (as in the case of NDTV), not the principal amount, a criminal activity. Banks do make sacrifices in the case of stressed assets to salvage whatever they can.

There are more reasons to worry. The news of the raid on NDTV has been splashed all over the world – from BBC and New York Times to Al Jazeera. A headline like ‘Raids in India Target Founders of News Outlet Critical of Government’ in the New York Times for example, does not go unnoticed or do any good to the investors’ sentiments as sentiments play a key role in determining investment destination.

Suppression of the press indicates poor governance and low transparency. In the composition of AT Kearney’s FDI Index, transparency of government in regulations is a key factor and any decline in that affects our ability to consistently draw overseas investment. For a government that claims to go by the dictum of “minimum government and maximum governance”, freedom of press is a necessary oversight and safety mechanism. Hurting that freedom will hurt India’s development, both economic and social, as well as democracy. That is a price we wouldn’t like to pay.

North India chokes as farmers set stubble ablaze

India Climate Dialogue
Oct 24, 2018

The burning of crop residue in Punjab and Haryana, responsible for severe air pollution in Delhi and northern India, is declining but farmers need cheap and effective alternatives for it to stop altogether


In the afternoon of October 20, a 40-year-old farmer in Sangrur district of Punjab torched his four-acre field covered with paddy stubble even as the Central Pollution Control Board warned of serious air pollution. The pollution watchdog said in its daily air quality index (AQI) bulletin that air quality was very poor and severe in the national capital region (NCR), with values ranging between 300 and 500. The AQI needs to be below 50 to be termed as good. Sangrur is close to the NCR.

Both the farmer and his 70-year-old father, who supervised the operation, know that crop residue burning (CRB) causes air pollution and attracts fines between INR 2,500 and INR 15,000 (USD 34-205) but brush aside the concerns, saying that it is their majboori (Hindi for compulsion).

The father says he has been burning residue ever since he started growing rice 30 years ago “at the prodding of the government”. He says even if he uses Rotavator, a farm implement to mix crop residue and prepare the seedbed that he bought last year, the paddy residue still needs to be burnt. See: From bread basket to basket case

Ready for prison

Other implements for on-site residue management, such as Super-Straw Management System (Mulcher), which cuts the stubble and spreads it; or Happy Seeder, which sows wheat without burning the residue, are not available for hiring at the Custom Hiring Centres (CHCs) in the area. While the father says he is ready to go to jail, the son says he is scared but is helpless, as using implements for stubble management will raise his cost by INR 10,000 to INR 20,000 per acre.

In the neighbouring Kaithal district of Haryana state, which witnesses the most CRB incidents in India’s breadbasket, a rich farmer owning 21 acre land declares defiantly, “I will burn the residue on my 10-acre plot this evening. No, I will not pay the fine. Why does the government not ban rice mills belching fumes 24 hours a day (pointing at one)? There are 55 to 60 such mills running in our area. Don’t they pollute the environment?”

Another farmer expresses his helplessness, saying that it takes one-and-half months for the stubble to decompose, by which time the wheat-sowing season will be over.

Climate impact of residue burning

The burning of crop stubble is a matter of serious concern because it is a significant source of atmospheric particulate matters and greenhouses gases such as carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide, nitrous oxide and methane, which have short and long term impacts on global climate systems, according to a NASA report on biomass burning.

The government of India’s 2018 operational guidelines for on-site farm residue management for Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, which are collectively known as the country breadbasket, says that an estimated 23 million tonnes of paddy straw is burnt in these states every year, shooting up the levels of carbon dioxide by 70%, carbon monoxide by 7% and nitrogen dioxide by 2.1%.

It also says that burning of one tonne of rice straw releases 3 kg of particulate matter, 60 kg of carbon monoxide, 1,460 kg of carbon dioxide, 199 kg of ash and 2 kg of sulphur dioxide.

Impacting all of India

The residue burning started in the 1980s for both wheat and rice stalks with mechanisation of harvesting. Harvesting machines leave taller stubbles of 1-2 ft compared with less than 6 inches when the crops are manually harvested.


Tall paddy stubble left on the field after mechanised harvesting by a farmer in Punjab (Photo by Prasanna Mohanty)

Although the current concern of policymakers and the media over air pollution due to the annual burning in autumn is focussed on New Delhi and the NCR, a study released in June 2018 says the threat is spreading to other parts of India as well.

Using NASA images and evidence on the ground, the study says there’s “an increasing impact of CRB over the eastern parts of the Indo-Gangetic Basin and also over parts of central and southern India.” The increasing trends of finer black carbon particles and greenhouse gases have also accelerated since 2010, it said. See: Air quality worsens in India, Delhi improves

Farmers in Punjab and Haryana say that on-site residue management doesn’t work for paddy. Contrary to the government policy of promoting management of residue in the farm itself, conversations with farmers in half-a-dozen villages in Sangrur in Punjab and Kaithal in Haryana revealed that they think otherwise.

They point to three shortcomings — one, paddy residue takes a long time (more than a month) to decompose and mix with soil; two, paddy residue provides ideal breeding grounds for termites and rats; and three, wheat germination and plant growth is significantly impacted, reducing yield by 30-40%.

Therefore, they argue, providing incentives for on-site residue management systems such as Happy Seeder, Zero-till, Rotavator, Super-SMS or Mulcher are of little use in case of paddy despite the government providing financial incentives. These range from 50% to individuals to 80% to farmer groups and cooperatives.

One farmer in Sangrur said he had inquired from those who had used Happy Seeder and was told that crop yield reduced by half.

These farmers also dismiss that residue burning harms the soil or reduces yield. “In my 15 years of experience (of stubble burning), I have not found any harm to my land. If at all, negative impact is very little”, said a Sangrur farmer who declared that he would be burning the residues this year too.

He says the topsoil may heat up for a while but it cools down soon and the ashes gel well with soil. Besides, farmers say, burning kills brown plant hoppers and mosquitoes that spread malaria and dengue.

Eminent agriculture economist Sardar Singh Johl, however, differs. He blamed this attitude on lack of awareness among the farmers and a higher emphasis on maximising rather than optimising yield. Farmers were wasting organic matter (stubble) and harming the soil by burning residue while cheaper alternatives were available with agriculture universities, he told indiaclimatedialogue.net.

No alternatives

Interactions with farmers also reveal that they are aware of environmental concerns and the government’s carrot-and-stick policies, but their problem is multi-faceted. The on-site residue management systems are expensive — costing from a few thousand to several lakh rupees — and are useful just for a day or two in a year.

Many farmers claimed that they bought one of these implements in the past two years, applied for the subsidy but haven’t got it yet. Non-availability of such implements for hiring at the CHCs or farmers’ cooperatives in these areas is another constraint.

The farmers talk of other solutions. The state government could arrange for collecting, transporting and utilising crop residue, and setting up industries that could use it, such as paper, waste energy, packing and cement plants and so on. See: Easy solution to India’s air pollution problem

One farmer pointed out that the Hay Baler machine that compresses the crop residue into bales could be useful in such a scenario, but is prohibitively costly. Composting stubble — about which there is incessant radio commercials in the two states — has little resonance on the ground.

Burning is declining

However, official data, anecdotal evidence and ground-level feedback all point to the fact that CRB is going down. Crop burning incidents had gone down substantially, from 11,179 in 2016 to 7,613 in 2017 and 2,589 in 2018 during the period between September 27 and October 21, Punjab Pollution Control Board chairman K.S. Pannu told indiaclimatedialogue.net.

In Haryana, member secretary of the state pollution control board S. Narayanan said CRB had gone down by 35-40% so far. As on October 21, about 2,600 cases have been recorded, as against about 4,000 by this day in 2017. There were 12,600 CRB incidents in the state during the entire season of 2017.

The two states have adopted different approaches. Punjab is more lenient, with the chief minister seeking a compensation of INR 100 per quintal from the central government. It also has a strong farmers’ organisation, which is very vocal and openly supportive of CRB, even live streaming the incident of October 20 mentioned earlier.

Haryana has been tough with daily field visits to identify and impose fines. Fear of being found out is real on the ground in Kaithal. So far, 750 farmers have been fined to the tune of INR 470,000 in the state. No such data is available for Punjab, revealing its milder approach.


It’s however evident that creating awareness and providing cheap and effective alternatives to crop residue burning are more likely to produce better results.

Sabarimala temple row: #HappyToBleed maintains intriguing silence even as #MeToo becomes a rage in India

Firstpost

Oct 19, 2018

Part III

  

At a time when the #MeToo campaign on social media has claimed its most high profile person, a minister in the Narendra Modi government – something few expected, especially after the minister MJ Akbar brushed aside allegations of sexual misconduct by saying that “lies don’t have legs” and filed a criminal defamation case against journalist Priya Ramani – the #HappyToBleed campaign against the denial of entry of women of menstrual age into the Sabarimala temple is inscrutably silent.

This is more intriguing now since the women have the Supreme Court and the state government on their side and a pitched battle is being fought in and around the Sabarimala temple to deny women their agency (the head priest threatening to close down the temple if women attempt to enter it and the faithful indulging in arson and physical assault on women).

The #HappyToBleed became quite a rage in 2015 in response to a rather tame statement of the then president of the Travancore Devaswom Board (TDB) Prayar Gopalakrishnan, who had said in November that year that women would be allowed entry only “when a machine is invented to scan if it is right time for women to enter the temple”, it evoked a huge outrage from young women on the social media. Women were “to hold placards/sanitary napkins/charts saying Happy To Bleed” and post the pictures on their profiles or the campaign page “to oppose the shame game played by patriarchal society since ages”. Nikita Azad, a college student of Patiala, turned overnight into a celebrity for her write up, ‘#HappyToBleed: An Initiative Against Sexism’, in countercurrents.org. Soon #HappyToBleed went viral on Facebook with the conventional media jumping in.

But now there is a virtual silence on that front. The last posting on the Facebook page ‘Happy To Bleed’, hosted by Nikita Azad and four others, was on 11 August (a month-and-half before the Supreme Court verdict) which simply read: “Entry of women to Sabarimala. There is no bar for young women to go to Sabarimala, because there is the Goddess Malikaprathamma sitting close to Ayyappa at Sabarimala. If women are prohibited a Goddess would not have been there at Sabarimala." There is just one ‘like’ to this post.

There is another page ‘HAPPYTOBLEED’ which carries nothing more than a quote from Justice DY Chandrachud’s observations in the Sabarimala case: “The social exclusion of women, based on menstrual status, is a form of untouchability which is an anathema to constitutional values. Notions of “purity and pollution”, which stigmatise individuals, have no place in a constitutional order.”  This post has been liked by six. A Twitter handle ‘happytobleed’ too records very little activity – with only two of the four posts of this year making a passing reference to the temple, but not on the issue as such.

This silence may be because, as Azad wrote in her original article, this was “not a temple-entry campaign. This campaign is an initiative against sexism, and the taboos it uphold since ages”. Her concerns were, as she added, “The class structure has created various forms of patriarchy like locking women in kitchens, reducing her contribution in production processes, considering her a reproductive machine, attaching the 'honour' tag, objectifying her as an object of sexual pleasure, impurity during menses etc.”

Indeed, isolating menstruating women is quite pandemic in India. Many authors and commentators have explained that this is because Indian traditions have viewed menstrual blood as “polluting, powerful, and therefore dangerous”. In his 2003 book Kiss of the Yogini:Tantric Sex in its South Asian Context, David Gordon White of the University of California traces its origin to Rig Veda and Atharva Veda and explains how it brought about certain strange rituals. For example, he writes that Rig Veda “enjoin the husband – who wishes to avoid the immediate destruction of his person from the lethal power of the virginal bloodshed on his wedding night – to give the bloodstained cloth of defloration to a Brahmin priest...” In Atharva Veda, he writes, “the defiling power of virginal blood requires that a second complete marriage ritual be held in the husband’s home, following the consummation of the actual marriage. Here a “scapegoat” Brahmin priest absorbs and purifies the bride’s virginal blood of its magical dangers…”

Closer home, mythologist and author Devdutta Pattanaik, who had also joined the women’s-entry-into-Sabarimala debate in 2015, explained in his article, Scanners for Menstrual Blood: “The practice of restricting access to menstruating women is rooted in the pre-modern belief that links purity and power to bodily fluids. Not spilling male genital fluid (semen) makes men powerful and pure. Inability to hold back female genital fluid (menstruation) makes women weak and impure. This is why many babas and gurus of India insist they are celibate. That is why Jain munis rejected family life. This is why Buddha’s enlightenment is closely linked to his rejection of his wife. The red-tilak of Hindu men and the red-bindi of Hindu women have close links to blood and its links to life. Menstrual blood is particularly feared as it came to be associated with ‘death’ as it marked the failure of conception.” In fact, as Pattanaik pointed out in the same article, the taboo relating to celibacy and menstruation exists in other religions and many cultures, except in the tantrik traditions.

As for the entry into the Sabarimala temple, TDB had explained in its deposition before the Supreme Court that the traditional ban on menstruating women was “attributable to the manifestation of the deity at the Sabarimala Temple which is in the form of a ‘Naishtik Bramhachari’ (an eternal celibate), who practises strict penance, and the severest form of celibacy”. It said there were about 1,000 more temples dedicated to the same deity, Lord Ayyappa, which don’t ban menstruating women because the deity in those temples was not in the form of a ‘Naishtik Brahmachari’.

Religious faith has its own logic, beyond rationality and science. It also runs very deep in individuals and society. The day the Supreme Court verdict came, one of the firsts to react was Gopalakrishnan who sparked the rage in 2015. (He has been replaced by A Padmakumar, former CPM legislator, as the TDB president since then.) He said, “I am unhappy... A constitutional authority cannot interfere in religious matters”, adding that his family, mainly his daughters, would not enter the shrine, come what may. When asked whether it was their decision, he replied: “They are my daughters, it is my decision. I think my daughter's decision must be my decision.”

No wonder, in the pitched battle between orthodoxy and constitutionalism – the Supreme Court talked about constitutional morality and values to justify entry of the menstruating women into the temple – women’s agency has become a casualty.

Sabarimala temple row: India's liberalisation in 90s brought globalisation, unavoidable economics and politics of religiosity

Firstpost

Oct 16, 2018

Part II

India adopted a ‘secular’ model of governance after Independence – though the actual word was inserted into the Constitution of India much later, during the Emergency years. And yet it has become more religious, especially of the organised variety. The ever-expanding empires of Baba Ramdev, Sri Sri Ravi Shankar and Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev and the state patronage extended to them by way of cheap land, political support and other concessions in a number of states are an indication of that. The Madhya Pradesh government even appointed five Hindu religious leaders as Ministers of State (MoS) – Computer Baba, Bhayyu Maharaj, Pandit Yogendra Mahant, Narmadanand Maharaj and Hariharanand Maharaj – who had threatened to expose government irregularities in April 2018.

Historian William Dalrymple points out the paradox. In 2010, he wrote in Outlook magazine, “In 19th century Europe, industrialisation and the mass migrations from farms and villages to the towns and cities went hand in hand with the death of God: organised religion began to decline and the Church and state moved further and further apart. The experience of South Asia has been more or less the reverse of this. All over the subcontinent faith has been growing and religion becoming stronger as the region reinvented itself in different ways over the last twenty years. This is at least as much true of India as it is of Pakistan and Sri Lanka.”

Meera Nanda, US-based Indian writer and academic, provided a compelling account of this growth of religiosity in India in her 2009 book, The God Market: How Globalization is Making India More Hindu. She wrote: “As India is liberalising and globalising its economy, the country is experiencing a rising tide of popular Hinduism which is leaving no social segment and no public institution untouched. There is a surge in popular religiosity among the burgeoning and largely Hindu middle classes, as is evident from a boom in pilgrimage and invention of new and more ostentatious rituals. This religiosity is being cultivated by the emerging state–temple–corporate complex that is replacing the more secular public institutions of the Nehruvian era....Given India’s growing visibility in the global economy, Hindu religiosity is getting fused with feelings of national pride and dreams of becoming a superpower...”

This increase in religiosity is not only becoming more and more public and political, Nanda wrote that the newly prosperous middle classes are “turning away from the more philosophical, neo-Vedantic form of religiosity and embracing a more ritualistic and superstitious form of popular Hinduism centred on temples, pilgrimages and popular saints or god-men/women” – that is, adopting a more dogmatic form of religion rather than the spiritual as author and psychology teacher Steve Taylor would have described. She also pointed out that Hindus are not the only ones becoming more religious and wrote, “The 2007 State of the National Survey (by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi) shows that 38 percent of Indian Muslims, 47 percent of Christians and 33 percent of Sikhs, as compared to 27 percent of Hindus, claim to have become more religious in the last five years.”

This made a telling comment on the state of affairs, “...around the turn of the millennium, the country (India) had 2.5 million places of worship, but only 1.5 million schools and barely 75,000 hospitals”, which she ascribed to Indian diplomat (and now JD-U leader) Pavan K Varma’s 2004 book Being Indian, the data being sourced from 2001 Census findings.

What is the relationship between the spread of religiosity and liberalisation? Sriya Iyer, who teaches economics at the University of Cambridge, explains this in her book, The Economics of Religion in India, published in September 2018. The book not only demonstrates that religious organisations increased their activities “compensating for the retreat of the state” after India’s economy was liberalised in 1991, but also that religious violence is more common where economic growth is higher, apparently because higher growth leads to higher inequality, which politicians tend to use for their own end. The book says, as ‘inequality’ leads to social polarisation, religious doctrines become more extreme. It, however, also says that religious organisations, on balance, play a positive role in India’s socio-economic development.

Be that as it may, Kerala is on the boil. The Sabarimala verdict has become a tool for political mobilisation in Kerala. After the initial hesitation, both the top line political parties – the BJP and Congress – have come out in favour of the faithful, criticising the Left Font-led state government for not going for an appeal against the Supreme Court verdict. The BJP has held several public meetings and rallies in different parts of the state, including one by its women’s wing. It is at one such meeting that a BJP leader and Malayalam movie actor Kollam Thulasi threatened that women entering the Sabarimala temple should be “torn into two pieces”, attracting an FIR for hurting religious sentiments, sexist remarks and others under the Indian Penal Code.

Now mixing religion with politics has dangerous consequences and Pakistan is a good example of that. Starting Wednesday, this week will see more political and religious mobilisations as the Sabarimala temple opens for monthly rituals. The faithful, with the backing of political parties and Hindu organisations, have already announced that they would be guarding the temple entry to prevent menstruating women, should one dare to walk in. One activist, Trupti Desai, has queered the pitch by declaring that she would be visiting the hill shrine, evoking sharp reactions. An interesting battle awaits.

Sabarimala shrine reopens tomorrow: Can't blame patriarchy alone for protests against SC verdict, organised religion is also at fault

Firstpost

Oct 16, 2018

Part I

 American historian Katherine Mayo gave a detailed account of the turbulent times British India witnessed while fighting against child marriage in her polemical book Mother India (1927). It is all the more relevant now when even women are marching to protest against a Supreme Court verdict which allows them to enter the Sabarimala temple irrespective of their age and bears quoting from the book at some length.

She wrote: "Indian and English authorities unite in the conviction that no law raising the marriage age of girls would be today effectively accepted by the Hindu peoples. The utmost to be hoped, in the present state of public mentality, is, so these experienced men hold, a raising of the age of consent within the marriage bonds. A step in this direction was accomplished in 1891, when Government, backed by certain members of the advanced section of the Indians, after a hot battle in which it was fiercely accused by eminent orthodox Hindus of assailing the most sacred foundations of the Hindu world, succeeded in raising that age from ten years to twelve. In latter-day Legislative Assemblies the struggle has been renewed, non-official Indian Assemblymen bringing forward bills aiming at further advance only to see them, in one stage or another, defeated by the strong orthodox majority."

She explained why the Indian parliamentarians, in successive debates, opposed to raising the age of marriage even while agreeing that marriage should be postponed until a girl is physically and emotionally mature to prevent high child and maternal mortality rates and other disadvantages and risks involved with child marriage. She pointed at three reasons offered by those who opposed it: "First, because immutable custom forbids, premarital pubescence being generally considered, among Hindus, a social if not a religious sin. Second, because the father dare not keep his daughter at home lest she be damaged before she is off his hands. And this especially in joint-family households, where several men and boys brothers, cousins, uncles live under the same roof. Third, because the parents dare not expose the girl, after her dawning puberty, to the pressure of her own desire unsatisfied."

The objections to the Sabarimala verdict are no different. No less than member of the Travancore royal family Ashwathi Thirunal Gowri Lakshmi Bayi, said: "...Centuries-old faith and way of worship that is integral to Hinduism are now being dismantled and destroyed. My grandmother, the Maharani of Travancore royal family, has visited Sabarimala temple only after her uterus has been removed. To the best of my knowledge till now, no woman of the menstruating age has entered the Sabarimala temple..." It is believed that the Sabarimala deity is different from others by his vow of celibacy and therefore, it is not advisable to allow menstruating women into the temple.

What should be surprising, or may be not be so after all, is that a large number of women who should be hailing the Supreme Court verdict as something that empowers them and frees them from the taboos of a bygone era are instead taking out protest marches along with men.

It is just not adequate to put the blame on a patriarchal mindset that pervades across gender, indoctrination or social and political compulsions, though all these are significant contributing factors. The protests have a lot to do with organised religions which have gained more and more currency in India in the past few decades. When Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim was convicted of raping two of his disciples by a court last year, thousands of his disciples went on a rampage in Chandigarh, Delhi and Rajasthan leading to 29 deaths, mostly in police firing and injuries to hundreds of others. Baba Rampal, who was recently convicted in two murder cases by a Haryana court, was arrested after a two-long stand-off between his followers and police at his ashram in 2015 which left six dead and several others injured.

In recent years, psychologists have been trying to explain such conflicts in different ways. Steve Taylor, author and psychology teacher of Leeds Metropolitan University of UK, for example, says "Don't blame religion for our problems — blame it on the human need for belonging and certainty". He seeks to draw a clear distinction between 'dogmatic' and 'spiritual' religion. Dogmatic religion, he says, "...isn't about self-development or experiencing the transcendent, but about adhering to a set of rigid beliefs and following the rules laid down by religious authorities. It's about defending their beliefs against anyone who questions them, asserting their 'truth' over other people's, and spreading those beliefs to others. For them, the fact that other people have different beliefs is an affront, since it implies the possibility that their own beliefs may not be true...".

He adds that such impulse "stems from the psychological need for group identity and belonging, together with a need for certainty and meaning". On the other hand, he writes, "'Spiritual' religion is very different. It promotes the higher attributes of human nature, like altruism and compassion and fosters a sense of the sacred and sublime. 'Spiritually religious' people don't feel any animosity to other religious groups - in fact, they're happy to investigate other beliefs, and may even go to other groups' temples and services".

Steven Reiss, a professor emeritus of psychology at the Ohio State University and author, takes it further to say that his research identified 16 basic desires that attract people to religion - acceptance, curiosity, eating, family, honour, idealism, independence, order, physical activity, power, romance, saving, social contact, status, tranquillity and vengeance. A 'secular society' offers alternatives to fulfil all these desires. Therefore, religion competes with secular society and can gain or lose in popularity based on how well people believe it does compare to secular society.

What separates the religious from the non-religious? Reiss explains that it is one of the same basic desires - independence. In his studies, he found that religious people expressed a strong desire for interdependence with others while those who were not showed a stronger need to be self-reliant and independent.

India's landless poor: Post-liberalisation era brought in wealth to a stressed economy but did little to end rural poverty

Firstpost

Oct 8, 2018

Editor's Note: Landlessness is increasingly becoming endemic in India's rural belt, as over 56 percent of the rural population has no landholdings. For decades, there has hardly been any attempt to bring in land reforms in India, even as this critical index affects income, social security, health and education, among other factors that impact households. This two-part series attempts to study the gravity of the situation and suggest ways to address it. This is the second and final part of the series.

In June 2016, three top economists of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) — proponent of the neo-liberal economic policy — created a brouhaha among the economists world over by writing an article in their flagship magazine which said that there may be much to cheer about ‘neoliberal agenda’ but some neoliberal policies 'increased inequality' instead of delivering economic growth.

Provocatively headlined Neoliberalism: Oversold? the article said the economists looked at two neoliberal policies — removing restrictions on the movement of capital and fiscal consolidation — and came to 'disquieting conclusions' that these policies increased inequality, which in turn hurt the level and sustainability of growth and therefore, attention must be paid to 'distributional effects'.

Economists agree that inequality hurts growth and that ‘trickle down’ may not necessarily happen. In fact, a 2015 IMF study concluded that contrary to the ‘trickle down’ economics, “the benefits do not trickle down”. It said an increase in the income share of the rich leads to the decrease in GDP growth while that of the poor brings higher GDP growth. Therefore, it asked policymakers to focus on the poor and the middle class. Yet another IMF discussion paper of 2014 dismissed the argument that redistributing incomes is self-defeating by asserting that “lower net inequality is robustly correlated with faster and more durable growth” – that is, inequality drags down growth.

French economists Thomas Piketty and Lucas Chancel who are known for their seminal work on inequality, published their study on India in 2017 — Indian income inequality, 1922-2015: From British Raj to Billionaire Raj? — saying that India is more unequal now than any time since the British Raj and that this increase happened in the mid-1980s “when pro-business, market deregulation policies were implemented”. They said, “The top 1 percent of earners captured less than 21 percent of total income in the late 1930s, before dropping to 6 percent in the early 1980s and rising to 22 percent today”, concluding that “much can be done to promote more inclusive growth in India.”

In 2016, former prime minister Manmohan Singh, who ushered in liberalisation in 1991, admitted that growth alone may not reduce poverty or trickle down unless explicit policy interventions were made to create jobs, raise income of weaker sections or prioritise investment in health and education. He did try to promote ‘inclusive growth’ during his tenure. He was successful in legislating the Forest Rights Act of 2006 giving the tribals rights to forest land and resources and replacing the old land acquisition law with a new one in 2013 giving legal rights to fair compensation, resettlement and rehabilitation to those who lost their land to development projects. But he failed to push his 2013 ‘draft’ National Land Reform Policy which intended to work on the unfinished agenda of land reforms or introduce 26 percent stakes to the displaced in the mining companies the Mines and Minerals (Development and Regulation) Act of 2011.

In fact, land reform became a victim to the new economic thinking in the post-liberalisation era in which development paradigm overtook redistributive justice, as the 2009 report of the Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms had observed.

Land reform was a major policy thrust area in the first three decades after Independence during which zamindari was abolished, a land ceiling was imposed and surplus and wasteland were distributed among the landless, though implementation was patchy except for West Bengal, Kerala and Jammu and Kashmir. Even the bulk of the Bhoodan land remained undistributed. Property right ceased to be a fundamental right in the late 1970s and since then, there has been no champion of the landless.

In 2007, the National Commission on Farmers took a baby step of considering both landowning cultivators and landless agricultural workers as ‘farmers’ but made no specific recommendations. Taking it further, the Ashok Dalwai panel, set up in August 2017 to look into ‘doubling farmers’ income’, made a valiant attempt to recommend extending all government supports meant for farmers to the landless as well admitting that it had no mandate but asserting that the landless were far too large to be ignored.

A similar suggestion was made in 2016 by the Niti Aayog’s Expert Committee on Land Leasing, led by T Haque. It proposed a ‘model agricultural land leasing law’ for the states which would help the landless, among others, to access land, institutional credit, insurance and other government support services.

While the Dalwai committee’s formulation requires a statutory definition of the landless as farmers, that of the Haque committee entirely depends on the state governments since some states have banned leasing while many others have imposed several restrictions on land lease. Even if fully implemented, which is very doubtful, these are minor tinkering with a major economic challenge with serious political implications.

The Forest Rights Act, which has the potential to make a significant change in the social and economic status of the tribals, has been poorly implemented and significantly diluted in recent years. It is imperative, therefore, that the issue of landlessness is addressed holistically with the seriousness it deserves. There should be a national debate with the intent to develop appropriate policy and legislative response. Else, the issue will keep surfacing every now and then.

India's landless poor: Amid rising rural poverty and lower access to land, empowering this group must be priority

Firstpost

Oct 9, 2018

Editor's Note: Landlessness is increasingly becoming endemic in India's rural belt, as over 56 percent of the rural population has no landholdings. For decades, there has hardly been any attempt to bring in land reforms in India, even as this critical index affects income, social security, health and education, among other factors that impact households. This two-part series attempts to study the gravity of the situation and suggest ways to address it. This is the first part of the series.

The farmers may have lifted their siege and gone away but a 25,000-strong group of landless poor are marching towards Delhi from Gwalior with their own set of demands: a national land reform policy, implementation of the Forest Rights Act and right to agricultural land, among others.

The word ‘landless’ conjures up the black and white images of a breathless Balraj Sahni running furiously on the streets of Kolkata as he pulls his cart carrying a young man goading him to run faster and faster to catch up with his love interest. The end is tragic, both in the scene when one of the wheels gives in and at the end of the movie when he and his family bid adieu and walk away from their land, Do Bigha Zamin – having lost it to the zamindar and where a mill is coming up.

It was a classic Bimal Roy film on landlessness in contemporary India (released in 1953) but one would be forgiven for thinking that it was about a medieval reality, aeons away from today’s India.

But the truth is quite the contrary.

In 1951, the ‘landless agriculture labour’ numbered just 27.3 million which went up to 144.3 million (or 14.4 crore) in 2011. The Socio-Economic and Caste Census of 2011, which acknowledged and counted landlessness as a major indicator of poverty, put the ‘households with no land’ at 56.41 percent of total rural households or 101 million households. With a mean household size of 4.9 in rural India (as per the 2011 Census), the number of landless comes to 494.9 million (or 49.49 crore).

Shocking! Well, the landless are the new invisibles of our market-driven economy, or market driven consciousness if you please.

It took quite some time for the enormity of the issue to hit home in the liberalised era. In 2009, the rural development ministry’s Committee on State Agrarian Relations and Unfinished Task of Land Reforms pointed out that landlessness had witnessed a phenomenal rise from about 40 percent in 1991 to about 52 percent in 2004-5. It explained why: “While all the enhanced landlessness cannot be attributed to the liberalisation process alone the non-agricultural demands placed on land on account of industrialisation, infrastructural development, urbanisation and migration of the urban rich in the rural areas have certainly contributed to the process.”

It also explained why landlessness has gone out of economic consciousness: “The post-liberalisation era has been marked by a debate. There is the view that the possibilities of Land Reforms have exhausted and future growth is only to come from private investment in the rural areas. The protective legislation act as an inhibiting factor to this investment. Accordingly many States are proceeded to revise their legislation. Even within the Government there was the view that distributive justice programmes have been overtaken by development paradigm.”

It is useful to remember that this committee was set up when the Maoist violence was at its peak with 220 districts (one-third of the total) declared as ‘Maoist-affected’ by the then Planning Commission of India.

There is no official assessment of how many became landless because of all the factors listed above but the report quoted eminent sociologist Walter Fernandes’ study to peg the figure of people disposed of their land at 60 million during the period of 1947 to 2004, involving 25 million ha of land. The report particularly referred to the alienation of tribal land as “the biggest grab of tribal lands after Columbus” in which the state was held complicit. It considered alienation of land and other critical natural resources to be at the root of the social unrest and violence in the Maoist-affected areas.

The NSSO data shows that the average landholding (including landless) in rural India has gone down from 1.53 ha in 1971-72 to 0.59 ha in 2013 — it halved between 1992 and 2013 — and 92.8 percent of rural households own less than 2 ha each. It also reflects another disturbing phenomenon -- marginalisation of rural landholdings. The larger landholdings of 1 to 10 ha or more are gradually shrinking since 1971-72 with more and more households falling into the marginal category (0.002- 1 ha).

How does landlessness, or marginalisation of landholding, matter?

The 2013 draft National Land Reform Policy provides the answer: “Landlessness is a strong indicator of rural poverty in the country. Land is the most valuable, imperishable possession from which people derive their economic independence, social status and a modest and permanent means of livelihood. But in addition to that, land also assures them of identity and dignity and creates condition and opportunities for realizing social equality. Assured possession and equitable distribution of land is a lasting source for peace and prosperity and will pave way for economic and social justice in India.”

The landless are, in fact, the “poorest of the poor” -- according to the Government of India’s own admission, for whom, among others, it launched an insurance policy, Aam Aadmi Bima Yojana (AABY), in 2007.

Here are some more sobering facts. The 2018 UNDP-OPHI report, Global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), which hailed India for reducing poverty in the last one decade, also said that India “still has the largest number of people living with multidimensional poverty in the world (364 million)” – which is “higher than the combined populations of the most populous Western European countries, including Germany, France, UK, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium”. Of the 364 million MPI poor, 113 million — or 8.6 percent of India’s population — live in “severe poverty”.

Surely, the landless fall within the MPI poor and deserve serious attention of the Delhi’s mandarins.

Kisan Kranti Yatra: After raising minimum support prices, will the centre blink and waive farmers’ loans?

Firstpost

Oct 10, 2018

Apart from a higher minimum support price (MSP) for their produce – which the Union Cabinet announced last week for the rabi crops as it had done for the kharif crops in July this year – the agitating farmers have been insisting on loan waivers because of growing indebtedness.

According to the Situational Assessment Survey (SAS) of 2013 released in 2016, 52 percent of an estimated 90.2 million farm households in rural India were indebted – up from 48.6 percent a decade earlier in 2003.

In 2013, the average of outstanding loan for farm households was Rs 47,000. The indebtedness went up progressively with the size of landholdings – from 41.9 percent for those at the bottom with less than 0.01 hectare to 78.7 percent for those with more than 10 hectare. Southern states were at the top: Andhra Pradesh (92.9 percent) Telangana (89.1 percent) and Tamil Nadu (82.5 percent). The states at the bottom were Assam (17.5 percent), Jharkhand (28.9 percent) and Chhattisgarh (37.2 percent).

In 2003, the average amount of outstanding loan for farm household was Rs 12,585. Indebtedness was lowest among the landholdings both at the top and at the bottom in terms of landholding – 1.4 percent for those with less than 0.01 hectare and 0.8 percent for those with more than 10 hectare.

Almost 80 percent of indebted farmer households possessed two hectare or less. Indebtedness was higher among the southern states: Andhra Pradesh (82 percent), Tamil Nadu (74.5 percent) and Punjab (65.4 percent) Kerala (64.4 percent) and Karnataka (61.6 percent). At the bottom were Meghalaya, Arunachal Pradesh and Uttarakhand – with less than 10 percent farmer households indebted.

Clearly, the dynamics of indebtedness has changed in many ways between the two surveys. Not only farmers’ indebtedness has increased in terms of percentage of households but also in terms of amount.

The reasons for availing loans have also gone through a sea change. In 2003, two most important purposes for taking loan were ‘capital expenditure in farm business’ and ‘current expenditure in farm business’, accounting for 58.4 percent of the total. The next was ‘marriages and ceremonies’, followed by other non-farm businesses, education and medical treatment. A decade later in 2013, the tables turned with farm loans in rural areas accounting for only 28.6 percent of the loan while those from non-farm business accounting for 60 percent.

Where do the farmers get their loans from? The 2016 SAS report says, 60 percent of outstanding loans were taken from institutional sources, the rest from non-institutional or informal sources, including 26 percent from moneylenders. The share of institutional loan increases with the increase in the landholding. While the poorest (landholding less than 0.01 hectare) sourced only 15 percent of outstanding loans from institutional sources, that for the richest (more than 10 hectare) was 79 percent. No wonder, when it comes to mounting an agitation, the rich and poor farmers participate with equal enthusiasm.

Why has the indebtedness gone up? Poor remuneration from agriculture produce has been cited as one of the prime reasons. The input costs have gone up four times in the first half of the current decade alone while income has more or less stagnated.

Nearly 57 percent of the average monthly income from farm business (cultivation and farming of livestock) is spent on crop production – 24 percent on fertilisers, 21 percent on labour and 11 percent on seeds.

The Government of India has taken three initiatives to reduce debt burdens on farmers : (a) popularising Kisan Credit Cards (KCC) for short-term loans up to Rs 3 lakh for cultivation at 7 percent and interest subvention of 3 percent, (b) RBI is providing relief measures in areas affected by calamities, including restructuring of loans and moratorium and (c) Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) providing comprehensive insurance cover against crop failures.

While PMFBY has not been as successful as the government would have liked – from delay of claim payment for as long as 18 months to declining enrolment – prompting it to declare penalties for delayed payments, there has been a substantial decline in long-term credit (or investment credit) in agriculture, causing concern in many quarters. The Economic Survey of 2015-16 pointed out that long-term credits had declined from 55 percent in 2006-7 to 39 percent in 2011-12 and sought immediate measures to arrest the decline. This was followed by an increase in allocation for long-term credit fund (LTRCF) of NABARD, the result of which is not yet clear.

There is yet another way of providing relief to farmers, easy and popular though not necessarily the best way to address the issue – waiving off their loans. Karnataka is only the latest state to join the long list of states. Maharashtra, Punjab, Uttar Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Jammu and Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Puducherry have announced farm loan waivers. But the central government has stood firm in its resolve not to take recourse to it even when angry farmers from Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh have pitched their tents in the capital’s outskirts. Less than a year to go for the general elections, the face-off between the government and farmers has set the stage for an interesting battle for the next few days.

Kisan Kranti Yatra: Low income major cause of agrarian distress, but is higher MSP solution to farmers' woes?

Firstpost

Oct 03, 2018

The current farmers’ agitation demanding a higher minimum support price (MSP), among others, is puzzling for many since it had been raised by 15 percent for 13 kharif crops, on an average, in July this year – the highest since 2013. The Union Cabinet is expected to raise MSP for rabi crops also when it meets in a few hours from now.

So is the farmers’ agitation purely a political arm-twisting ahead of the 2019 elections or is there more to it? A part of the answer could be found in the income generated from farming.

Ironical as it may seem, a 2017 Niti Aayog report says that farmers’ income has not kept pace with the growth in agriculture output – which has been low to begin with – resulting in low income for farmers. It quotes a NSSO survey for 2011-12 to show that 22.5 percent farm households had income less than the poverty line – ranging from 0.5 percent in Punjab to 45.3 percent in Jharkhand.

Niti Aayog further says, farmers’ income has also remained considerably lower than that of non-agriculture workers. During the early 1980s, farm income per cultivator was just 34 percent of that of non-farm worker, which remained unchanged in the next decade but after 1993-94, it worsened and reached 25 percent of non-agriculture farmers. There was an improvement during 2004-5 to 2011-12 but no change over the 1983-84 level. The past four years (2012-13 to 2015-16) again witnessed deterioration in relative income of farmers. This low income and income disparity are a major cause of the agrarian distress, leading to farmers’ suicides and youngsters leaving farming.

There isn’t adequate information on farmers’ income. However, some estimates are available. One 2015 study (Chand et al 2015) observed that income from farming is not adequate to keep 53 percent of farm households out of poverty, who operate on less than 0.63 hectare of land holdings. The average landholding in India is 0.59 hectare (including landless) and 0.64 hectare (excluding landless) – according to a NSSO report of 2015.

A Situational Assessment Survey (SAS) of farm households released in 2016 says, the average monthly income of farm households during 2012-13 was Rs 6,426. It also says that only 60 percent of this income came from farm business – cultivation and farming animals. Thus farm income accounted for only Rs 3,855 per month. Now to give it a perspective, compare it with the minimum wages for industrial workers. In October 2012, the minimum wage for unskilled labour was Rs 6,960 (at Rs 232 per day for 30 working days), for semi-skilled Rs 7,870 (Rs 262.3 per day) and for skilled Rs 9,090 (Rs 303 per day). Farmers’ income, in comparison, was just about half that of an unskilled industrial worker.

In terms of growth in farmers’ income, Niti Aayog estimates show in the first decade of economic 

liberalisation – 1993-94 to 2004-5 – the growth in real income per farmer was 1.96 percent. It went up to 7.46 percent from 2004-5 to 2011-12 and fell to 0.44 percent from 2011-12 to 2015-16. Taken together, farm incomes per farmer grew at 3.4 percent annually during 1993-94 to 2015-16. In fact, Niti Aayog says, it took 22 years from 1993-94 to 2015-16 for the real income of farmers to double!

In terms of GDP growth, agriculture growth has been lagging behind the rest of the economy. Growth of both farm and non-farm sectors had remained the same until 1990-91. Thereafter, non-farm growth picked up from below 6 percent to above 8 percent for most of the period while farm growth has taken a cyclical path with a long term trend of 2.8 percent, according to Niti Aayog.

Now to double farmers’ income by 2021-22 from the 2015-16 level – the avowed policy of the central government – Niti Aayog says two key things need to happen: (a) real income of farmers need to grow annually at 10.4 percent, which means the on-going and previously achieved growth in farm income has to be sharply accelerated and (b) various sources of growth – productivity of crops and livestock, efficiency of input use, high value crops, price realisation etc. – has to be accelerated by 33 percent. Niti Aayog concluded that “increase in real farm prices has a very high scope to raise farmers’ income”.

Now, increasing MSP is a direct way of improving price realisation for farm produce and income of farmers. RBI database shows that the real MSP for paddy and wheat – two major items procured under MSP – has been declining since 2007-8. A 15 percent increase in MSP for the kharif crops in July 2018, therefore, was a welcome move.

But the trouble with MSP is that only 6 percent of farmers directly gain from selling paddy and wheat to the government agencies. However, a higher MSP pushes up market price of the commodities, benefitting a far larger number of farmers. That is why farmers have been clamouring for higher MSP but face stiff resistance from governments and economists who seek to contain subsidies to improve fiscal health of the economy. That, however, is a hotly contested debate for another time.