LETTERS Issn 0012-9976 Ever since the first issue in 1966, EPW has been India’s premier journal for comment on current affairs and research in the social sciences. It succeeded Economic Weekly (1949-1965), which was launched and shepherded by Sachin Chaudhuri, who was also the founder-editor of EPW. As editor for thirty-five years (1969-2004) Krishna Raj gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.
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A Plan for Resolving Mullaperiyar Conflict [The following is an open letter to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.]
T
he Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India has been closely following the Mullaperiyar issue for the last several years. The polarisation of views around the Mullaperiyar has hardened over the years. The Tamil Nadu government insists that the Mullaperiyar dam is safe and that the water level must be maintained at the maximum level as per the agreement. The Kerala government insists that a new dam, downstream of the present dam, must be built because the present dam is unsafe. The recent tremors with their epicentres near the dam and the already diminishing trust and rising fears and apprehensions on both sides have created a grave situation needing immediate intervention and your initiative in getting the two parties together is a welcome move. However, we believe that both positions are flawed and there is a need to think beyond them. The 115 years old Mullaperiyar dam shows all the signs of the ravages of time. Expert opinion on the safety of the dam is divided; while there are experts who believe that the dam would be safe with certain repairs, others believe that the dam may be unsafe, based on hydrology studies as well as the technology and material used for dam construction. The dam is located in a seismically sensitive zone and recently there have been a series of tremors with epicentres close to the dam. On the other hand, the new dam which is being planned about 400 m downstream with a larger storage capacity which would create a heavy financial burden, submerge a substantial additional portion of the Periyar Tiger Reserve, result in a large permanent structure inside the reserve, introduce massive interference and disturbance over the entire construction period, would be subject to the same problem of seismicity. It would also cause additional environmental damage in Kerala to fulfil Tamil Nadu’s requirements. Given the intense fear and insecurity amongst the downstream people, and the divided expert opinion on dam safety at higher water levels, it would be best to use
the precautionary principle and keep water levels low, to around 120 ft. Water can be delivered to Tamil Nadu at 120 ft level and the province should be encouraged to divert as much water as it can and store it inside the state in balancing reservoirs or other storages. Long-term action is needed on the following lines: (i) Reconfirm Kerala’s commitment to provide the present quantum of water. The Kerala government in any case has publicly confirmed this commitment; (ii) Come to a common understanding of the role of the Mullaperiyar dam as a diversion dam rather than a storage dam and that the storage capacity needed for Tamil Nadu should be created inside the state with adequate assistance from the centre; (iii) Immediately undertake studies on (a) the requisite capacity needed inside Tamil Nadu, (b) the redesign of the diversion and conveyance system, (c) on the basis of (b), minimising storage behind the dam as close as possible to the minimum regulatory storage required, (d) measures to strengthen the dam at the new level, (e) hydrological study of flow at the dam site and a schedule for the regulatory storage, and (f) working out arrangements in the transition phase; (iv) Though the dam would continue to be in the control of Tamil Nadu, we would suggest that there should be a tripartite board consisting of representatives of the Government of Kerala, Government of Tamil Nadu and the union government (on the lines of the Tunga bhadra Board) that oversees the preparation of a reservoir operation plan and monitors and modifies it throughout the year. We believe that this would be a just and optimal solution and would be financially and economically more viable. The measures above are based on what we think is the minimum necessary to resolve the conflict. Further optimisation is possible in many ways. For example, a strategy of local water harvesting and increase of on-field and irrigation efficiency so as to gradually reduce the requirement from the Mullaperiyar allowing eventual decommissioning. In fact, we should ultimately move to ecosystembased river basin planning. We would once again emphasise that the short-term measures of keeping the water level down and strengthening the
december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
LETTERS
existing structure so as to allay the fears of the downstream people about the safety of the dam and abandoning the plans for a new dam are important both on the ground of the precautionary principle as well as from the perspective of building trust. Amita Baviskar, Bharat Patankar, Biksham Gujja, Chandan Mahanta, Dulal Chandra Goswami, Eklavya Prasad, Jayanta Bandopadhyaya, K J Joy, Medha Patkar, Partha Das, Philippe Cullet, Pranab Choudhury, M K Prasad, Rohini Nilekani, Shripad Dharmadhikary, Shruti Vispute, Sunita Nadhamuni, Vinod Gaud, Y K Alagh, A Vaidyanathan and B N Yugandhar (For Forum for Policy Dialogue on Water Conflicts in India)
Killing the Talks and Faking an Encounter
A
22-member team of four constituents of the Coordination of the Democratic Rights Organisation (CDRO) undertook a fact-finding into the alleged encounter killing of Mallojula Koteswara Rao (Kishenji) on 1 December 2011. The team visited Sorakatta hamlet of Burisole and Gosaibandh village of Paschim Medinipur. The team spoke to the residents of the two villages, the subinspector (SI) and assistant sub-inspector of Jamboni police station, and visited the spot where the alleged encounter took place on 24 November. The place where Kishenji’s body was found is about 300 metres from the Sorakatta hamlet of Burisole village. It is barely 50 metres from the village football ground and surrounded by a thin cover of sal trees. Right next to where his body lay on the ground is a termite hill, which remains undamaged by all the alleged exchange of fire. At the spot where the body lay on the ground there was a pool of blood where his head and torso lay but there were no blood spot marks where his legs lay. The trees which ostensibly carry the bullet marks show no burn marks caused by bullets. Indeed the contrast between the badly damaged body of the deceased and the undisturbed spot where his body lay gives rise to much doubt. If there was heavy exchange of fire there would be telltale signs around. At Sorakatta hamlet we were told that two days before the incident security forces movement became evident and it
picked up by 24 November when in the morning, between 10 am and 11 am, police personnel asked the villagers to stay inside their house and not to step out. According to the villagers during these three days of heavy security force movement no announcements of any kind were heard, let alone of police asking Kishenji to surrender. Between 4 pm and 5 pm on 24 November they heard a loud noise followed by sounds of bullet fire for about 15-30 minutes. Significantly, two villagers, a local quack Budhev Mahato and Tarachand Tudu a 20-year-old student, were picked up and implicated in the same case no 46/11 dated 25/11/2011 and charged under Section 307 and other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). At Gosaibandh, which is about 5 km from Burisole, one Dharmendra, a thirdyear student of geography at a local college, was picked up for allegedly sheltering Kishenji and the police claimed to have seized a laptop. The family said that the bag belonged to Dharmendra and there was no laptop in it. Instead, Rs 20,000 was stolen and the family’s ration card, certi ficates and OBC card were seized too. At Jamboni police station, the team members spoke to SI Sabyasachi Bodhak. According to them they received the information from additional superintendent of police (SP) of Jangalmahal Aloknath Rajori at night at around 10.30 pm. And it was the additional SP who wrote the FIR. It is important to note that the investigation has been entrusted to the deputy superintendent of police crime branch-criminal investigation department (CB-CID) whereas the complainant is a superior officer. This violates the basic principle of natural justice that an officer superior to the complainant officer investigates the crime. We wish to recall the nature of injuries on the body of Kishenji as witnessed by some CDRO activists earlier. There were bullet, sharp cut and burn injuries. It is strange that there were no injury marks on his shirt and trousers corresponding to his body parts. We were unable to get the inquest report prepared by the executive magistrate nor could we get the post-mortem report although team members have read and taken notes from it. Surprisingly, none of the many injuries were recorded except the bullet entry and exit injuries.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
Considering the extent of the damage caused to the body against the rather undisturbed surrounding of the spot where the body lay, we are suspicious about the official versions. The reported official versions themselves suffer from inconsistencies. For example, whereas Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that for three days Kishenji and his companions were encircled and they were asked to surrender, the villagers deny having heard any public announcement over loudspeaker of any kind. Vijay Kumar DG of Central Reserve Police Force went on record on 25 November that Kishenji and three others were killed in an encounter whereas only a single body was found. The killing of Kishenji took place against the background of fledgling efforts to initiate talks between the Government of West Bengal and the CPI(Maoist). With his death these efforts have been dealt a fatal blow. We cannot but wonder if this is a repeat of what transpired last year on 1-2 July when Cherukuri Rajkumar (Azad) was killed in an encounter. We wish to point out that in the context of a crime committed in the area affected by armed conflict, investigation by one branch of the administration into the conduct of another branch, in this case CB-CID investigating the role of joint forces cannot be considered impartial and unbiased. We believe that only an independent investi gation, for example, by a special investigation team can help unravel the truth. Our findings tend to confirm our suspicion that this appears to be a case of custodial killing. Therefore, we demand (1) an independent judicial inquiry headed by a sitting or retired Supreme Court or high court judge into the circumstances surrounding Kishenji’s death and (2) that a criminal case under Section 302 IPC be registered. Debaprasad Roychoudhury (APDR) C H Chandrashekhar (APCLC) Bhanu Sarkar (BMS) Gautam Navlakha (PUDR)
Corrigendum The correct title of the special article by Ayesha Siddiqa in this issue is “Pakistan’s Modernity: Between the Military and Militancy” and not as printed on p 61. The error is regretted.
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december 17, 2011
Undermining Parliament The ruling party and the opposition have become partners in the crime of destroying Parliament.
T
he first nine days of the winter session of Parliament were completely lost due to repeated disruption of the house and adjournments. Most of the blame can be put at the door of the opposition parties which seem to have taken a decision not to allow the smooth functioning of Parliament, though some ruling party members too have been involved in creating disruption in the House. The disruptions in the winter session are in line with the disruptions in the previous sessions of the sitting 15th Lok Sabha and there seems to be a secular decline in the time Parliament has been giving to the work it should be doing. A Member of Parliament recently pointed out that the Lower House was in session for 128 days each year during the 1950s, for 100 days at the end of the 1980s and for only 70 days in the noughties. Even when in session, time is lost due to disruptions: 9%, 5% and 10% in the 10th, 11th and 12th Lok Sabhas, respectively. The 14th Lok Sabha saw as much as 38% of the time lost because of disruptions; this may be even higher in the 15th Lok Sabha (Indian Express, 7 December 2011). The opposition is usually blamed for disruptions in Parliament, but recent Congress Party-led governments have shown a poor record of parliamentary management. According to statistics compiled by PRS Legislative Research, there were a total of 2,910 hours of sitting planned in the Eighth Lok Sabha (1984-89) when the Rajiv Gandhi government was in office. The Lower House actually sat for business for 3,223 hours, or 111% of the allocated time during those years. In the next Congress-dominated Lok Sabha, the 10th, which sat from 1991 to 1996, a total of 2,538 hours of business were planned by the government and the House sat for almost the entire time allocated. Those who remember the politics of these Lok Sabhas will identify the weakness of the Narasimha Rao government’s support compared to the bulldozer majority of Rajiv Gandhi as one of the reasons why the government reduced the number of parliamentary sittings in the 10th Lok Sabha. But this logic does not hold for the 14th Lok Sabha which saw the return of the Congress to power in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. Though the Congress did not have a majority of its own, it faced a routed Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and enjoyed stable support from its allies, both within and outside the government at least for the first four years. Yet, compared to 20 years ago the Congress-led UPA government Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvi no 51
of 2004-09 called Parliament to session for only 1,992 hours during its tenure. This is a sharp fall of 918 hours of planned sitting in the 14th Lok Sabha compared to the Eighth Lok Sabha of 1984-89, and since Parliament sits for six hours a day this was a decline of 153 days of Parliament in session. Thus the central government only called Parliament to session for two-thirds of the time it did two decades before. This is a very sharp fall which cannot be justified under any circumstance, much less so under the benign political conditions faced by UPA-I. Unfortunately, the 14th Lok Sabha functioned for only 1,736 out of the planned 1,992 hours, or 87% of its time. This shows the dangerous levels of decline in the functioning of the Lok Sabha and much of the blame for this rests on the ruling dispensation. It is clear from this trend that the government does not like to face the elected representatives of the people but would rather rush through its legislative and other businesses in Parliament in the least possible time. Compared to the fact that the British parliament sits for about 200 days in a year, why was the Indian Parliament called to session for only about 66 days in a year between 2004 and 2009? It should be pointed out that while the Congress has reduced the number of sittings of Parliament, the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government also reduced the total time of Parliament during its full five-year term in the 13th Lok Sabha (1999-2004). The Ninth Lok Sabha (1989-91) with V P Singh and Chandrashekhar as prime ministers and the 11th Lok Sabha (1996-98) with the United Front government too saw drastically reduced parliamentary sittings. Thus this seems to be a cross-party affliction. As the time available for parliamentary proceedings reduces so does the ability of its members to raise concerns and issues, in particular of those from the opposition parties who may not have access to the ministers and bureaucrats in-charge. As the number of days Parliament was in session in a year halved from 107 in 1984-89 to 57 in 2004-09, it squeezed out time for deliberations and debates and put a premium on spectacular action which would catch the attention of the people, especially after the introduction of television cameras in Parliament. To this secular trend of reduced parliamentary time is the added factor of the political dead-end that the main parties find themselves in. The main opposition party, the BJP is still searching for an agenda for its politics, even while it is fighting organisational disarray. The left
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EDITORIALS
contingent still seems to have not recovered from the twin electoral shocks of 2009 and 2011 while the various regional parties have lost their sense of purpose which the “Third Front” gave them on the national stage. Together, these parties do not seem to have a single constructive idea and use the most disruptive of parliamentary tactics to corner the ruling alliance. As for the ruling Congress, between its prime minister who has not won a Lok Sabha election and its de facto leader who is still learning the ropes, Parliament appears to be an unnecessary distraction.
It is clear that the disruptionist behaviour of the opposition parties and the neglect by the ruling dispensations now present a real threat to Parliament as the central institution of Indian democracy. This can have fatal consequences for the republic and immediate measures must be taken to reverse these trends. For starters we should ask the government to hold parliamentary sessions for at least four months each year and non-functional days should be compensated for by working extra days.
Jail, Bail and the Poor Despite curative measures and judgments, undertrials who are poor continue to rot in jails.
T
he public debate over bail to the 2G spectrum accused and the controversy over the parole granted to murder convict Manu Sharma has unfortunately sidestepped a much more pressing concern – the plight of poor undertrial prisoners who have spent years inside jail without being convicted of any offence. A series of Supreme Court judgments over the past three decades have led to changes in provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to enable the poorest among them to either get bail or be released on a personal bond. Going by the numbers however, these Court rulings have not been implemented effectively. According to the 2009 report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), of the 3,76,969 prisoners, 2,50,204 (66%) are undertrials and a little more than 2,000 of them have spent more than five years in prison. In addition, 1,196 women undertrials with their children (1,314) were in jail. Not only do these undertrials suffer the consequences of surviving for years in overcrowded, badly maintained and violence-prone prisons, the socio-economic devastation visited upon their families is no less horrific. Ironically, many undertrials spend more time in jail than the sentence their crime would have carried had they been convicted. Under bailable offences, payment of bail releases the accused from legal custody pending trial or investigation and is premised on the guarantee that he or she will submit to legal authority in the course of an investigation. In non-bailable offences, it is left to the discretion of the court to allow or deny bail. Some of the reasons for the large number of undertrials in India include the inability of the accused who are poor to provide surety, their ignorance of their rights under the system and the excruciatingly slow police investigations and delay in trials. There have been efforts to deal with some of these factors. For instance, Section 167 of the CrPC lays down that the maximum time for investigating offences that attract the death penalty, life imprisonment or imprisonment of more than 10 years is 90 days. For all other offences it is 60 days. Should the investigation not be completed within the required time, the magistrate must release the accused on bail. In 2005, Section 436-A was inserted in the CrPC permitting an undertrial to apply for bail once he or she has served onehalf of the maximum term of the sentence that he/she would have received had he/she been convicted.
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The Supreme Court’s judgments particularly in the State of Rajasthan vs Balchand (1977), the Moti Ram and Others vs State of MP (1978), the Maneka Gandhi vs Union of India (1978) and the Hussainara Khatoon and Others vs Home Secretary, State of Bihar (1980) cases are also noteworthy. These tried to ensure not only the criminal judicial system’s sensitivity to the poverty of the undertrials but also speedy police investigation. In Hussainara Khatoon and Others vs Home Secretary, State of Bihar, the ruling stated, “Fairness under Article 21 is impaired where procedural law does not provide speedy trial of the accused; does not provide for his pre-trial release on bail on his personal bond, when he is indigent and there is no sub stantial risk of his absconding…” There could be no clearer indictment of a system that has failed to provide these basic rights to the poor. Why have these changes in the CrPC provisions and the Supreme Court’s rulings not resulted in relief for under trials? Clearly, many of these changes have not yet been implemented. But there are several other steps that could also be considered. For instance, there is a suggestion that only undertrials capable of absconding or committing similar offences should be sent to custody and that judges must take into account the overcrowding of jails and the strain on the exchequer whilst deciding on bail. Also, given the overall bias against the poor and marginalised in the criminal justice system, there have to be specific and institutional mechanisms to ensure that poor people are informed about their right to free legal assistance, about bail procedures and their rights as undertrials. It is also clear, in the light of the current state of affairs where despite changes in the law and court rulings the situation of poor undertrials remains virtually unaltered, that a change in attitude among all those involved at the ground level – the police, the prison staff and the lower judiciary – is imperative. It is at the first point where the poor encounter the law enforcement machinery that they face the biggest injustice – that of being denied knowledge of their basic rights. The statistics will change only when we find a way to deal with the lack of sensitivity among those tasked with enforcing the law as well as protecting the vulnerable. december 17, 2011 vol xlvi no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
EDITORIALS
contingent still seems to have not recovered from the twin electoral shocks of 2009 and 2011 while the various regional parties have lost their sense of purpose which the “Third Front” gave them on the national stage. Together, these parties do not seem to have a single constructive idea and use the most disruptive of parliamentary tactics to corner the ruling alliance. As for the ruling Congress, between its prime minister who has not won a Lok Sabha election and its de facto leader who is still learning the ropes, Parliament appears to be an unnecessary distraction.
It is clear that the disruptionist behaviour of the opposition parties and the neglect by the ruling dispensations now present a real threat to Parliament as the central institution of Indian democracy. This can have fatal consequences for the republic and immediate measures must be taken to reverse these trends. For starters we should ask the government to hold parliamentary sessions for at least four months each year and non-functional days should be compensated for by working extra days.
Jail, Bail and the Poor Despite curative measures and judgments, undertrials who are poor continue to rot in jails.
T
he public debate over bail to the 2G spectrum accused and the controversy over the parole granted to murder convict Manu Sharma has unfortunately sidestepped a much more pressing concern – the plight of poor undertrial prisoners who have spent years inside jail without being convicted of any offence. A series of Supreme Court judgments over the past three decades have led to changes in provisions of the Criminal Procedure Code (CrPC) to enable the poorest among them to either get bail or be released on a personal bond. Going by the numbers however, these Court rulings have not been implemented effectively. According to the 2009 report of the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), of the 3,76,969 prisoners, 2,50,204 (66%) are undertrials and a little more than 2,000 of them have spent more than five years in prison. In addition, 1,196 women undertrials with their children (1,314) were in jail. Not only do these undertrials suffer the consequences of surviving for years in overcrowded, badly maintained and violence-prone prisons, the socio-economic devastation visited upon their families is no less horrific. Ironically, many undertrials spend more time in jail than the sentence their crime would have carried had they been convicted. Under bailable offences, payment of bail releases the accused from legal custody pending trial or investigation and is premised on the guarantee that he or she will submit to legal authority in the course of an investigation. In non-bailable offences, it is left to the discretion of the court to allow or deny bail. Some of the reasons for the large number of undertrials in India include the inability of the accused who are poor to provide surety, their ignorance of their rights under the system and the excruciatingly slow police investigations and delay in trials. There have been efforts to deal with some of these factors. For instance, Section 167 of the CrPC lays down that the maximum time for investigating offences that attract the death penalty, life imprisonment or imprisonment of more than 10 years is 90 days. For all other offences it is 60 days. Should the investigation not be completed within the required time, the magistrate must release the accused on bail. In 2005, Section 436-A was inserted in the CrPC permitting an undertrial to apply for bail once he or she has served onehalf of the maximum term of the sentence that he/she would have received had he/she been convicted.
8
The Supreme Court’s judgments particularly in the State of Rajasthan vs Balchand (1977), the Moti Ram and Others vs State of MP (1978), the Maneka Gandhi vs Union of India (1978) and the Hussainara Khatoon and Others vs Home Secretary, State of Bihar (1980) cases are also noteworthy. These tried to ensure not only the criminal judicial system’s sensitivity to the poverty of the undertrials but also speedy police investigation. In Hussainara Khatoon and Others vs Home Secretary, State of Bihar, the ruling stated, “Fairness under Article 21 is impaired where procedural law does not provide speedy trial of the accused; does not provide for his pre-trial release on bail on his personal bond, when he is indigent and there is no sub stantial risk of his absconding…” There could be no clearer indictment of a system that has failed to provide these basic rights to the poor. Why have these changes in the CrPC provisions and the Supreme Court’s rulings not resulted in relief for under trials? Clearly, many of these changes have not yet been implemented. But there are several other steps that could also be considered. For instance, there is a suggestion that only undertrials capable of absconding or committing similar offences should be sent to custody and that judges must take into account the overcrowding of jails and the strain on the exchequer whilst deciding on bail. Also, given the overall bias against the poor and marginalised in the criminal justice system, there have to be specific and institutional mechanisms to ensure that poor people are informed about their right to free legal assistance, about bail procedures and their rights as undertrials. It is also clear, in the light of the current state of affairs where despite changes in the law and court rulings the situation of poor undertrials remains virtually unaltered, that a change in attitude among all those involved at the ground level – the police, the prison staff and the lower judiciary – is imperative. It is at the first point where the poor encounter the law enforcement machinery that they face the biggest injustice – that of being denied knowledge of their basic rights. The statistics will change only when we find a way to deal with the lack of sensitivity among those tasked with enforcing the law as well as protecting the vulnerable. december 17, 2011 vol xlvi no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
EDITORIALS
Pakistani Army’s Assertion The winner in the frayed relations between the United States and Pakistan is the Pakistani military.
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tate-to-state relations between the United States and Pakistan – allies in the so-called “war on terror” – have rapidly deteriorated over the past year. These dealings touched a new low last month following the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing in Mohmand district in Pakistan close to the Afghanistan border and revelations of what is described in the Pakistani media as “memogate”. The Pakistan government’s responses to the bombing – closure of supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan, an end to the US use of the Shamsi air base and a decision to boycott the Bonn conference on reaching a political solution to the Afghan conflict – will not affect NATO’s ability to wage war. But they do point to obvious strains emerging in a peculiar relationship between Pakistan and the US. The US’ unilateral action in the murder of Osama bin Laden on 2 May 2011 in Abbottabad exposed its distrust of the Pakistani state. The uneasy relationship between the US and Pakistan has only worsened since then. It was out of compulsion and a fear of being isolated post-11 September 2001 that the Pakistani military first agreed to a strategic and military relationship with the US and NATO in the “war on terror”. Since then, large amounts of military and financial aid have poured into the country. But the Pakistani military has continued to maintain its links with fundamentalists in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Abbottabad incidents had evoked ridicule and anger from several sections of the people within Pakistan about the military establishment’s duplicity – its feigned ignorance of Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country and its inability to prevent the US’ unilateral actions on its sovereign territory. The military’s inaction had also angered its conservative and fundamentalist base, which it has been nurturing for years since the Zia-ul-Haq era. US influence over Pakistan has never been popular with either the polity or society. The use of drones by the US military to target extremists in the Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and tribal provinces of Pakistan has long been resented because of the many civilians who have been killed in the attacks. The Raymond Davis affair – the murder of two Pakistani civilians by a Central Intelligence Agency operative in broad daylight in Lahore – only served to reignite the anger against the US and its “Af-Pak” policy.
From 50 Years Ago
Vol Xiii, No 50, december 16, 1961
editorials
End this Agony While India has communicated to the Security Council the position in regard to Goa, there was no question of submitting any dispute to the supreme body of the United Nations. No dispute arises, for the Portuguese occupation of Goa is there and the fact is not under dispute.
The Asif Ali Zardari-led Pakistan Peoples Party government has never been able to establish civilian supremacy in strategic and foreign policymaking. The Abbottabad incident provided both an opportunity and a threat to the government to redefine its relationship with the military. Public anger against the armed forces could have been tapped by the civilian establishment to rein in the military over its double game of selectively pandering to and taking on jihadi forces within and outside Pakistan. But the government also seems to have been afraid that the exposed military would turn its anger on the civilian authorities. It was the fear of a military coup that led the Zardari government to use “back channel” diplomatic contacts in the US to prevail on the Pentagon to take cognisance of the threat; Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, was availed of to pass on a memorandum to the then chairman of the joint chief of staff committee on defence, admiral Mike Mullen. The civilian leadership made the fatal error of reaching out secretively to the unpopular US for support, in effect ceding the edge it had gained over the military. But the US does recognise that the Pakistani military’s support – duplicitous or not – is still quite vital for its plans in Afghanistan where the Taliban continues to hold sway in various parts of the country. The US not only needs Pakistan’s cooperation for military reasons, but also to play the role of an interlocutor in its strategy to break the Taliban and to facilitate its departure from Afghanistan. Overall, the role of the US in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been deleterious to both nations. Far from eliminating the threat of fundamentalist forces, the years of overt military support for the Afghan mujahideen in alliance with Pakistan during the 1980s and then the intervention since 2001 in Afghanistan have only contributed to a continued devastation of that country. And the US influence in Pakistan has resulted in a state dominated by the military and a society torn apart by sectarian forces. For Pakistan, prudence would demand that the civilian leadership breaks its dependence on the US as an arbitrator in both its internal and external affairs. For all the orchestrated anger over the actions of NATO and the US, that kind of independence seems to be nowhere in the offing and it is no wonder that the military establishment in the country continues to call the shots.
Goa being Indian territory, its continued occupation by a foreign power constitutes aggression and India has made no secret of it that she is determined to vacate this aggression by any means open to her. India maintains an army and has as Pandit Nehru has said pretty emphatically, the use of force is not ruled out. The restraint which India has shown all these years has convinced the world that India prefers other means, if at all possible. If India resorts to force, it will not be in haste or with pleasure. The last resort still remains the last resort, to be taken recourse to when every other means has failed…
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvi no 51
If the Government of India should use force now to help the Goans, already in a state of rebellion, to drive out the Portuguese, the complaints or protests are likely to be, ironically enough, on the ground of India’s own policy of pursuing the path of peace and peaceful settlement of disputes… Portugal has again and again declared that it will cling to Goa whatever the cost and there has even been a threat by Salazar that if the Portuguese should ever be forced to quit, he would see that Goa was destroyed before that happened. Will it not be humane to act in time to prevent such senseless destruction?
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EDITORIALS
Pakistani Army’s Assertion The winner in the frayed relations between the United States and Pakistan is the Pakistani military.
S
tate-to-state relations between the United States and Pakistan – allies in the so-called “war on terror” – have rapidly deteriorated over the past year. These dealings touched a new low last month following the killing of 24 Pakistani soldiers in a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) bombing in Mohmand district in Pakistan close to the Afghanistan border and revelations of what is described in the Pakistani media as “memogate”. The Pakistan government’s responses to the bombing – closure of supply routes to NATO forces in Afghanistan, an end to the US use of the Shamsi air base and a decision to boycott the Bonn conference on reaching a political solution to the Afghan conflict – will not affect NATO’s ability to wage war. But they do point to obvious strains emerging in a peculiar relationship between Pakistan and the US. The US’ unilateral action in the murder of Osama bin Laden on 2 May 2011 in Abbottabad exposed its distrust of the Pakistani state. The uneasy relationship between the US and Pakistan has only worsened since then. It was out of compulsion and a fear of being isolated post-11 September 2001 that the Pakistani military first agreed to a strategic and military relationship with the US and NATO in the “war on terror”. Since then, large amounts of military and financial aid have poured into the country. But the Pakistani military has continued to maintain its links with fundamentalists in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The Abbottabad incidents had evoked ridicule and anger from several sections of the people within Pakistan about the military establishment’s duplicity – its feigned ignorance of Osama bin Laden’s presence in the country and its inability to prevent the US’ unilateral actions on its sovereign territory. The military’s inaction had also angered its conservative and fundamentalist base, which it has been nurturing for years since the Zia-ul-Haq era. US influence over Pakistan has never been popular with either the polity or society. The use of drones by the US military to target extremists in the Khyber Pakhtoonkhwa and tribal provinces of Pakistan has long been resented because of the many civilians who have been killed in the attacks. The Raymond Davis affair – the murder of two Pakistani civilians by a Central Intelligence Agency operative in broad daylight in Lahore – only served to reignite the anger against the US and its “Af-Pak” policy.
From 50 Years Ago
Vol Xiii, No 50, december 16, 1961
editorials
End this Agony While India has communicated to the Security Council the position in regard to Goa, there was no question of submitting any dispute to the supreme body of the United Nations. No dispute arises, for the Portuguese occupation of Goa is there and the fact is not under dispute.
The Asif Ali Zardari-led Pakistan Peoples Party government has never been able to establish civilian supremacy in strategic and foreign policymaking. The Abbottabad incident provided both an opportunity and a threat to the government to redefine its relationship with the military. Public anger against the armed forces could have been tapped by the civilian establishment to rein in the military over its double game of selectively pandering to and taking on jihadi forces within and outside Pakistan. But the government also seems to have been afraid that the exposed military would turn its anger on the civilian authorities. It was the fear of a military coup that led the Zardari government to use “back channel” diplomatic contacts in the US to prevail on the Pentagon to take cognisance of the threat; Pakistan’s ambassador to the US, Hussain Haqqani, was availed of to pass on a memorandum to the then chairman of the joint chief of staff committee on defence, admiral Mike Mullen. The civilian leadership made the fatal error of reaching out secretively to the unpopular US for support, in effect ceding the edge it had gained over the military. But the US does recognise that the Pakistani military’s support – duplicitous or not – is still quite vital for its plans in Afghanistan where the Taliban continues to hold sway in various parts of the country. The US not only needs Pakistan’s cooperation for military reasons, but also to play the role of an interlocutor in its strategy to break the Taliban and to facilitate its departure from Afghanistan. Overall, the role of the US in Pakistan and Afghanistan has been deleterious to both nations. Far from eliminating the threat of fundamentalist forces, the years of overt military support for the Afghan mujahideen in alliance with Pakistan during the 1980s and then the intervention since 2001 in Afghanistan have only contributed to a continued devastation of that country. And the US influence in Pakistan has resulted in a state dominated by the military and a society torn apart by sectarian forces. For Pakistan, prudence would demand that the civilian leadership breaks its dependence on the US as an arbitrator in both its internal and external affairs. For all the orchestrated anger over the actions of NATO and the US, that kind of independence seems to be nowhere in the offing and it is no wonder that the military establishment in the country continues to call the shots.
Goa being Indian territory, its continued occupation by a foreign power constitutes aggression and India has made no secret of it that she is determined to vacate this aggression by any means open to her. India maintains an army and has as Pandit Nehru has said pretty emphatically, the use of force is not ruled out. The restraint which India has shown all these years has convinced the world that India prefers other means, if at all possible. If India resorts to force, it will not be in haste or with pleasure. The last resort still remains the last resort, to be taken recourse to when every other means has failed…
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If the Government of India should use force now to help the Goans, already in a state of rebellion, to drive out the Portuguese, the complaints or protests are likely to be, ironically enough, on the ground of India’s own policy of pursuing the path of peace and peaceful settlement of disputes… Portugal has again and again declared that it will cling to Goa whatever the cost and there has even been a threat by Salazar that if the Portuguese should ever be forced to quit, he would see that Goa was destroyed before that happened. Will it not be humane to act in time to prevent such senseless destruction?
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MARGIN SPEAK
Occupy Movement and India Anand Teltumbde
Why did the Occupy movement fail to take root in India? The basic reason is that the Indian middle class is so infused with the ideology of the caste system that it can never easily identify itself with the lower strata of society to say that we are the 99.99%.
The Occupy movement really is an exciting development. In fact, it’s spectacular. It’s unprecedented; there’s never been anything like it that I can think of. – Noam Chomsky
U
ltimately, hundreds of police officers in riot gear clamped down on the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) encampment at Zuccotti Park in lower Manhattan in New York City in the predawn darkness on 15 November. They demolished the tent city that had come up there since mid-September as the epicentre of a movement protesting against corporate greed and economic inequality. Around 200 people were arrested; their tents, sleeping bags and equipment were carted away, and by 4:30 am, the park was empty. Earlier, the police did a similar thing in Oakland. However, this leaderless movement had already sprouted in all kinds of places across the world from Australia through Asia, Europe and, of course, the Americas. In India, arguably one of the most unequal countries in the world, it failed to evoke much response. All that we saw of the Occupy movement was a small rally in Kolkata and an attempt to stage an “Occupy Dalal Street” in Mumbai, which died a still birth because it lacked support and, of course, the prompt arrests of a significant section of the protestors by the Mumbai police.
The Form of Struggle
Anand Teltumbde (
[email protected]) is a writer and civil rights activist with the Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai.
10
Every mode of production and every historical phase throws up its own form of struggles. Previously the anti-capitalist movements were marked by militant wor kers’ strikes. But things have changed fast with changes in the form of capitalism. It has, on the one hand, nearly succeeded in marginalising the proletariat and, on the other, adopted increasingly predatory forms of exploitation. Advances in technology that not only displaced human labour but also human labourers from the sphere of production have helped blur the classical
class divide. But technological change has not been able to save capitalism from the impending crises that gripped it from the mid-1960s. When, in order to stave them off, it adopted an offensive strategy of neo-liberal globalisation, the resistance also manifested itself in novel forms. One of the first major protests it faced was in 1999 during the ministerial conference of the World Trade Organisation in Seattle. The negotiations were quickly overshadowed by massive street protests outside the hotels and the conference venue. The crowd of over 40,000, which was mobilised through informal networks, effectively stalled the meeting and shook the citadel of global capital. It was compelled to devise, as we know, the vent of the World Social Forum (WSF) with its illusory slogan “Another World Is Possible” from 2001. After 11 WSFs, and scores of regional social fora, the roughshod march of global capital not only distanced that “another world” but also brought the world itself to the brink of collapse. The massive financialisation of economies to facilitate accumulation intensified the crises to unprecedented magnitudes. The Asian financial crisis of 1997, the sub-prime lending crisis of 2008 in the US, and the current European sovereign debt crisis are but markers in this continuing process of financing the accumulation of global capital. Each successive crisis was followed by a massive transfer of public funds to save the crumbling banking system. The estimates of public funds channelled in the wake of the so-called subprime crisis is said to be as high as $16 to 23 trillion. It was a naked illustration of the Marxian dictum that the state is but a committee of the bourgeoisie to advance its own interests at the expense of the public. Such transfer of public funds into private hands evoked a mass expression of disapproval. The clue came from the Arab Spring protests in Tunisia. The accumulated mass dissent against the feudal regimes in Arab countries spread like wild fire from country to country and brought about changes, which although currently modulated by imperial America, are being carried on through a new upsurge in Tahrir Square.
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Taking inspiration from this mass rage, an artist at the Adbusters magazine in Vancouver drew a poster of a ballerina balancing on the Wall Street bull, putting a hash tag on her head “Occupy Wall Street”. The poster resonated with people. It soon spread to over 100 cities in the US and even outside. Over 1,500 protest actions, took place all over the world on the “global day of action” in 82 countries. Although they have been crushed at various places, it may not be the end of them. Such forms of spontaneous mass upsurge sans leaders, indeed, do not have a beginning or an end; they only signify the beginning of the end of what they protest against.
We Are the 99% The slogan “We Are the 99%” of the OWS movement signifies the extreme concentration of wealth in the hands of the top 1% of income-earners and drives home the point that an overwhelming majority of the people are paying the price for the speculative dealing of a tiny minority. Paul Krugman, writing in the New York Times, said that the 99% slogan aimed too low. A large fraction of the top one per cent’s gains have actually gone to an even smaller group, the top 0.1% – the richest one-thousandth of the population. The top 0.1% of the population saw the sharpest increase in income share, taking home over 10.4% of the nation’s earnings in 2008 as against 1% in 1970 and 2.6% in 1975. During the last two decades of neo-liberal globalisation, inequ ality has been growing all over the globe. Krugman cited a Congressional report that between 1979 and 2005, the inflation-adjusted, after-tax income of Americans in the middle of the income distribution rose by 21%. The equivalent number for the richest 0.1% rose by 400%. But deepening inequality in the so-called emerging economies like Brazil, China and India has been rather worse. The rulers of these countries fooled the people saying that their free market policies would bring economic growth which would trickle down to the lower strata, making everybody better off. These policies led to an unprecedented concentration of wealth in the hands of the elite at the top, even as they simultaneously dispossessed the vast majority. The resultant
inequality was not a problem so long as people experienced a reasonable degree of improvement in their living standards. However, this has not been the case for the majority of people. The process of deindustrialisation, jobless growth, devastation of the environment, commercialisation of public services, etc, unleashed by these policies has eroded their living standards. The politics shaped by these policies has undermined democratic expression of the working classes and valorised the euphoric voices of the middle classes. The jolts of repeated economic crises have shaken the middle classes but they have still not realised the mirage of the free market and started seeing the stark reality.
Whither India? If corporate greed and inequality were the targets of the Occupy movement, India should have been fertile ground for such protests. Income inequality, both in rural and urban areas, has gone up during the post-1990s. The per capita consumptionbased Gini coefficient (a measure of inequality – zero signifying perfect equality and one, perfect inequality) has moved up for rural India – from 0.38 in 1995-96 to 0.41 in 2004-05 – and also in urban India – 0.39 vis-à-vis 0.43. At the all-India level, the Gini coefficient has moved up from 0.43 (1995-96) to 0.45 (2004-05) (Economic Times, 7 February 2008). The distribution of consumption expenditure does not however reflect the true magnitude of inequality. Reeve Vanneman of the University of Maryland and Amaresh Dubey of Jawaharlal Nehru University and the National Council for Applied Economic Research have in a working paper “Horizontal and Vertical Inequalities in India”, dated 21 June 2010, computed the Gini coefficient based on income distribution and found its value to be a whopping 0.54, well above conventional estimates, catapulting the country into the ranks of the most unequal in the world. “Cross-cutting this large vertical inequality are regional and social group inequalities...With the exception of the city state of Delhi, Ginis for Indian states vary between 0.45 (Chhattisgarh) and 0.59 (Karnataka), all well above typical OECD values”.
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With regard to corporate greed, the government has been systematically fuelling it by ideologically valorising the private sector. In just six years from 2005-06, it wrote off corporate income tax worth Rs 3,74,937 crore in successive union budgets. Besides these direct transfers, there have been massive transfers to the private corporate sector through disinvestment, giving away natural resources and opening up business opportunities in public goods like healthcare and edu cation. Corporate plunder has provoked people’s resistance movements in various parts of the country. But the opulence of the corporate honchos, evident in their billion dollar residences, private planes and so on, knows no end. Why then did the OWS movement evoke no response in India? As mentioned earlier, apart from a small rally in Kolkata, an attempt was made to “Occupy Dalal Street” in Mumbai on 4 November but it failed due to lack of public support and high-handedness of the police. It is interesting that the middle caste-class youth who excitedly thronged behind Hazare just ignored it. Paradoxically, some commentators mistakenly traced inspiration of the Occupy movement to the Anna Hazare-led campaign, not knowing the fundamental fact that while Hazare’s movement seeks a surreal solution to the real problem of corruption, and that too, within the confines of the status quo, the Occupy movement has symbolically challenged capitalism itself. Why did the “globalising” middle cla sses of India ignore this global movement is an important question to ask. The possible reason, of course, is that they still feel that they are greatly benefiting from the system. After all, it is this system that extricated the economy from the fivedecade long syndrome of the “Hindu rate of growth”, brought recognition to the rich migrant community in the US, their El Dorado, catapulted many of them to the top of the corporate ladder and restored their megalomaniacal pride in the nation. But there is something that is missing. The Indian middle class is a class that is infused with the ideology of the caste system. It will thus never easily identify with the lower strata of society of say that we are the 99.99%!
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COMMENTARY
Mullaperiyar: A Plea for Sanity Ramaswamy R Iyer
The safety of the Mullaperiyar dam is not a matter for judicial determination. This dispute is eminently a case for an agreed settlement by amicable talks between Kerala and Tamil Nadu. Talks at the intergovernmental level must be supplemented by civil society moves to bring the people concerned in the two states together.
T
he Mullaperiyar issue has flared up again, presumably because the empowered committee is likely to submit its report shortly, and the Supreme Court may make a pronouncement. Feel ings are running high in both Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Pleas for sanity may well fall on deaf ears, but must nevertheless be made. An account of the dispute and its his tory was published in this journal earlier (“Towards Good Sense on Mullaperiyar”, 6 January 2007). Without going over the entire ground again, the issue can be suc cinctly stated as follows. Tamil Nadu wants the flows (from the dam to the beneficiary area in the Vaigai basin) to be maintained and increased, and for this purpose it wants the water level in the Mullaperiyar reservoir to be raised to the design level of 142 ft. Kerala is worried about the safety of the old dam, in particular from the point of view of the people living downstream of the dam, and wants the water level not to be raised above 136 ft, and if possible to be reduced to a lower level.
Issue of Safety
Ramaswamy R Iyer (ramaswamy.iyer@gmail. com) is with the Centre for Policy Research and has written extensively on issues related to water.
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Thus, the issue now is the safety of the dam, or so it appears on the surface, though under it lies a deep, long-standing sense of grievance in Kerala over the 1886 agreement between the Madras Presidency and the princely state of Travancore. Leaving that history aside for the time being, and confining ourselves to the question of dam safety, it is unfortunate that the Supreme Court has allowed itself to be embroiled in it. Dam safety is not a matter for judicial determination. One wishes that the Supreme Court had asked the two state governments to resolve the issue themselves by mutual agreement, or directed the Inter-State Council, a consti tutional body, to intervene and bring about a settlement. Instead, the Supreme Court has not merely taken up the matter, but has performed the executive function
of setting up an empowered expert com mittee, whose report is now awaited. However, leaving the role of the judici ary aside, let us consider the crucial issue. We are talking about a dam that is 115 years old. Even if the empowered commit tee pronounces the dam safe, the fears of the people living downstream of the dam and exposed to the risk of its failure may not be wholly set at rest. Those fears get accentuated by the occurrence of tremors in the area, even if these be of relatively small magnitudes. There have been so many reports of earthquakes in various parts of the world that a general sense of nervousness is understandable. The right attitude to these fears is not to belittle them or question their genuine ness but to pay due regard to them and allay them. The point that while the bene fits of the project go predominantly to people in Tamil Nadu, the risks are borne entirely by people in Kerala, is also not without force.
Minimisation of Risk A dam that is 115 years old must be pre sumed to be nearing the end of its useful life. Perhaps it can be kept going for some more years by some strengthening meas ures, but for how long? Is it not time to start preparing for a planned phasing out of the dam? Meanwhile, it seems wise to avoid unnecessary risk, even at the cost of being overcautious. If ever there was a case for the invocation of the Precaution ary Principle, this is clearly one. Should a new dam be built in replace ment of the existing one, as proposed by Kerala? The answer, in this writer’s view, should be clearly “No”. The existing project itself was a horrendous interven tion in Nature of a kind that would hardly receive environmental clearance today. If this were a new project now coming up for approval, it seems very probable that it would have met the same fate as the Silent Valley Project. However, it exists and we have to live with it; but there is no reason why the folly of more than a century ago must now be repeated through the build ing of a new dam. What follows? The answer is that the existing dam must be strengthened through
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any measures that the empowered com mittee may recommend, and must be safely operated with a view to the minimisation of risk. That may require the water storage to be kept at an appropriate level, what ever that may be.
Extent of Adjustment To what extent will that affect the eco nomic activities and the related prosperity in the beneficiary areas in Tamil Nadu? That question may be answered through a counter question: is water use in the rele vant areas in Tamil Nadu at the optimum level of efficiency, with no possibility of improvement? Is it not possible to main tain the existing level of economic activity with less water? Is it feasible to change to less water-demanding activities? Assum ing that some supplementing of Mullaper iyar waters is needed, are there possibili ties, and have these been studied? It is not clear whether any work has been done on these matters.
Consider the riparian dispute over Cauvery waters (though the Mullaperiyar dispute is not a riparian one). Tamil Nadu, which has a history of irrigated agricul ture based on Cauvery waters going back to Chola times, has had to adjust itself to reduced flows in the river because of inevitable upstream development over the years. The argument now is about the extent of adjustment. Is it entirely unrea sonable to expect a similar process of adjustment in the areas benefiting from the ageing Mullaperiyar project? Going beyond the Cauvery case, the gen eral prospect in the country is one of in creasing pressure on a finite resource, and all water users, whatever the nature of their use and whatever the source of their water, will have to learn to manage with less water and get more use out of it. Even without ref erence to the state of the Mullaperiyar dam, the people in the Vaigai basin will have to make a similar effort. Such an effort will ipso facto diminish their dependence on
FDI in Retail: Misplaced Expectations and Half-truths Sukhpal Singh
The central government claims that allowing foreign direct investment into India’s retail sector will benefit small farmers, expand employment and lower food inflation. What has been the experience in India with organised retail so far and what has been the global experience with FDI?
Sukhpal Singh (
[email protected]) is currently at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.
A
fter being under relentless attack for a week, the United Progressive Alliance government was forced to “put on hold” its decision to allow 51% foreign direct investment (FDI) holding in multi-brand retail trade (MBRT) and raise the FDI ceiling from 51% to 100% in single brand retail trade (SBRT). It was an executive decision taken by the union cabinet on 24 November without any discussion in Parliament or consultation with various stakeholders, despite the fact that the issue had been hanging fire for the last 15 years ever since 100% FDI in whole sale cash and carry trade was permitted in January 1997 on a case-by-case basis. After that, the N K Singh Committee on FDI in retail trade in 2002 suggested the ban be continued, which led to the Tenth Plan dropping the proposed recommendation on FDI in retail trade. Metro – a German supermarket chain – was the first one to
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
Mullaperiyar waters. (To cite an inter national example, Singapore is trying to reduce its dependence on water from Malaysia and become self-sufficient in water through a variety of measures.) None of the cases cited is an exact par allel to the Mullaperiyar-Vaigai case, but they are illustrative of the possibilities of adjustment to changing circumstances. This dispute is eminently a case for an agreed settlement by amicable talks bet ween the two states. Talks at the inter governmental level must be supplemented by civil society moves to bring the people concerned in the two states together, on the lines of the “Cauvery Family” initiative. In the talks, both at the governmental and nongovernmental levels, efforts will also have to be made to remove the strong and continu ing sense of grievance in Kerala over the 1886 agreement, to which a reference was made earlier. The conflict between the two states cannot be fully resolved without some attempt to assuage that grievance.
enter India as cash and carry wholesaler in 2003 with a store in Bangalore. Then, in early 2006, 51% FDI in SBRT was allowed. Since 2007, all the major wholesale cash and carry players like Walmart, Metro and Carrefour have set up shop in India and have multiple outlets ranging from two in the case of Carrefour to as many as 14 in case of Bharti-Walmart (Mookerji 2011). Reliance Retail has also made an entry into wholesale sector with a store – Reliance Market – in Ahmedabad a couple of months ago. Global retail chains have also been present in India in retail through licensing/franchising arrangements like SPAR (a global supermarket with more than 12,000 stores in 33 countries) has a licensee and Max Hypermarkets of Dubaibased Landmark Group which operates 10 stores in India (Images Retail, December 2011). Under this arrangement, a domestic player buys a licence/franchising right for a fee from a global brand owner and there is no FDI involved. The conditions for 51% FDI in MBRT in clude a minimum investment of $100 mil lion by each player, 50% of it in back-end infrastructure, 30% procurement from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and the government’s right to
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COMMENTARY
any measures that the empowered com mittee may recommend, and must be safely operated with a view to the minimisation of risk. That may require the water storage to be kept at an appropriate level, what ever that may be.
Extent of Adjustment To what extent will that affect the eco nomic activities and the related prosperity in the beneficiary areas in Tamil Nadu? That question may be answered through a counter question: is water use in the rele vant areas in Tamil Nadu at the optimum level of efficiency, with no possibility of improvement? Is it not possible to main tain the existing level of economic activity with less water? Is it feasible to change to less water-demanding activities? Assum ing that some supplementing of Mullaper iyar waters is needed, are there possibili ties, and have these been studied? It is not clear whether any work has been done on these matters.
Consider the riparian dispute over Cauvery waters (though the Mullaperiyar dispute is not a riparian one). Tamil Nadu, which has a history of irrigated agricul ture based on Cauvery waters going back to Chola times, has had to adjust itself to reduced flows in the river because of inevitable upstream development over the years. The argument now is about the extent of adjustment. Is it entirely unrea sonable to expect a similar process of adjustment in the areas benefiting from the ageing Mullaperiyar project? Going beyond the Cauvery case, the gen eral prospect in the country is one of in creasing pressure on a finite resource, and all water users, whatever the nature of their use and whatever the source of their water, will have to learn to manage with less water and get more use out of it. Even without ref erence to the state of the Mullaperiyar dam, the people in the Vaigai basin will have to make a similar effort. Such an effort will ipso facto diminish their dependence on
FDI in Retail: Misplaced Expectations and Half-truths Sukhpal Singh
The central government claims that allowing foreign direct investment into India’s retail sector will benefit small farmers, expand employment and lower food inflation. What has been the experience in India with organised retail so far and what has been the global experience with FDI?
Sukhpal Singh (
[email protected]) is currently at the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.
A
fter being under relentless attack for a week, the United Progressive Alliance government was forced to “put on hold” its decision to allow 51% foreign direct investment (FDI) holding in multi-brand retail trade (MBRT) and raise the FDI ceiling from 51% to 100% in single brand retail trade (SBRT). It was an executive decision taken by the union cabinet on 24 November without any discussion in Parliament or consultation with various stakeholders, despite the fact that the issue had been hanging fire for the last 15 years ever since 100% FDI in whole sale cash and carry trade was permitted in January 1997 on a case-by-case basis. After that, the N K Singh Committee on FDI in retail trade in 2002 suggested the ban be continued, which led to the Tenth Plan dropping the proposed recommendation on FDI in retail trade. Metro – a German supermarket chain – was the first one to
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
Mullaperiyar waters. (To cite an inter national example, Singapore is trying to reduce its dependence on water from Malaysia and become self-sufficient in water through a variety of measures.) None of the cases cited is an exact par allel to the Mullaperiyar-Vaigai case, but they are illustrative of the possibilities of adjustment to changing circumstances. This dispute is eminently a case for an agreed settlement by amicable talks bet ween the two states. Talks at the inter governmental level must be supplemented by civil society moves to bring the people concerned in the two states together, on the lines of the “Cauvery Family” initiative. In the talks, both at the governmental and nongovernmental levels, efforts will also have to be made to remove the strong and continu ing sense of grievance in Kerala over the 1886 agreement, to which a reference was made earlier. The conflict between the two states cannot be fully resolved without some attempt to assuage that grievance.
enter India as cash and carry wholesaler in 2003 with a store in Bangalore. Then, in early 2006, 51% FDI in SBRT was allowed. Since 2007, all the major wholesale cash and carry players like Walmart, Metro and Carrefour have set up shop in India and have multiple outlets ranging from two in the case of Carrefour to as many as 14 in case of Bharti-Walmart (Mookerji 2011). Reliance Retail has also made an entry into wholesale sector with a store – Reliance Market – in Ahmedabad a couple of months ago. Global retail chains have also been present in India in retail through licensing/franchising arrangements like SPAR (a global supermarket with more than 12,000 stores in 33 countries) has a licensee and Max Hypermarkets of Dubaibased Landmark Group which operates 10 stores in India (Images Retail, December 2011). Under this arrangement, a domestic player buys a licence/franchising right for a fee from a global brand owner and there is no FDI involved. The conditions for 51% FDI in MBRT in clude a minimum investment of $100 mil lion by each player, 50% of it in back-end infrastructure, 30% procurement from micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs), and the government’s right to
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COMMENTARY
procure the farm produce first. But MBRT players are allowed to sell perishables such as fruits and vegetables as “unbranded”. Further, the permission for MBRT has been granted for cities with a population of one million or more, which brings in 53 cities. In this context, it is important to under stand the implications of FDI in food retail for various stakeholders as it is being permit ted in the name of farmers, supply chain efficiency, and employment generation. The more important questions to be asked on the issue of FDI in retail are: Does it really help farmers, especially small farmers who constitute 85% of all cultivators? Does it improve efficiency of food supply chains and help lower food inflation which India is presently grappling with? And, of course, how does it affect traditional food retailers’ livelihoods? These questions are important to examine as two days after the announcement of the decision, the Ministry of Commerce and Industry placed full-page advertisements in all national newspapers to defend and justify the decision by highlighting the employment, farmer and consumer benefits. The advertisement claimed that one crore new jobs will be created in the farm sector. It said nothing about the impact on the traditional retail sector. The advertisement called this policy “Another Revolutionary Leap” after IT/computerisation and the liberalisation, privatisation and globalisa tion (LPG) policies pursued by the Rajiv Gandhi and Manmohan Singh governments in the past. The advertisement listed myths and realities but without any evidence. This article discusses the three major dimensions of the policy on FDI in MBRT, i e, farmer benefit, the impact on the tradi tional retail sector in terms of employment as there are more than 1.2 crore of such outlets in India, and the role of FDI in MBRT in inflation containment. It suggests alternative policy measures to leverage FDI in MBRT for the benefit of farmers and the national economy. It builds on articles published earlier in this journal as well as other work.
Impact on Small Farmers The most glaring aspect of the decision to allow 100% FDI was that there was no pro vision for protection of farmer interest. The only protection granted was the mandatory
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30% procurement from MSMEs though it is still not clear how this can be restricted to only Indian MSMEs when the World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules under the provisions of the Trade Related Invest ment Measures (TRIMs) may not permit this India-specific protection since it will violate the national treatment clause of the agreement. One of the arguments made for bringing FDI into MBRT is that it will help reduce wastages in the farm produce sector. Here it is important to point out that this aspect of wastages is exaggerated as there is no absolute wastage. “Wastage” is value loss across the chain as finally all qualities/ grades of produce sell in the market at some price though price realisation is lower for lower grade produce. In fact, one of the corporates in retail/agro-processing had planned to use a perishable produce like tomato for different uses, i e, fresh produce in supermarkets and local markets, and for processing into paste. Further, wastage in major vegetables like potatoes and onions, which account for a large proportion of the produce, is not more than 10% and it is only 10-12% in cabbages and cauliflowers. Thus, only 10-20% of vegetable production is lost due to poor post-harvest practices (Pulamte 2008) and some of it is inevitable as shown by the experience of domestic supermarkets. Further, if the operations of domestic fresh food supermarkets in India and those of the global supermarkets are any indication, then unlike what many propo nents of liberal FDI in MBRT policy claim, the entry of foreign retailers will not make any difference to the producer’s share in the consumer’s rupee. The only impact so far has been in lowering the producers’ cost of marketing, as supermarkets have collection centres in producing areas. The supermarkets procure from “contact” (not contract) farmers without any commit ment to buy regularly as they do not want to share the risk of the growers. Thus, the involvement of supermarket chains with producers in India is low and there is no delivery of supply chain efficiency. So far, during the past decade, none of them – domestic retail players or wholesale cash and carry players – have made any signi ficant back-end investments other than in setting up small collection centres in
procurement regions and some distribu tion centres in cities/markets. They have mostly focused more on opening stores in a drive to capture mar ket share than on making supply chain im provements and operational efficiencies (Singh and Singla 2011; Dutta 2011). This may not change even with FDI in MBRT though 50% investments in back-end infra structure is a reasonable condition. Further, due to the sheer size and buying power of foreign supermarkets, producer prices may be depressed. In the United Kingdom (UK), there was a negative rela tion between the relative market share of a supermarket and the price paid to the suppliers in relation to the average price. The UK supermarket chain Tesco paid its suppliers 4% below the average price paid by retailers (Stichele et al 2006). There have been a large number of super market malpractices across the globe which include payment to be on the supplier list (listing fees); threats of delisting if supplier price is not low enough; payment and dis counts from suppliers for promotions/open ing of new stores; rebate from producers as a percentage of their supermarket sales; minus margins under which suppliers are not allowed to supply at prices higher than the competitor price; delayed payments; lowering prices at the last minute when the supplier has no alternative; changing quantity/quality standards without notice; just-in-time systems to avoid storage/in ventory costs; removing suppliers from list without good reason; charging high interest on credit, using tough contracts and pen alties for failing to supply. Supermarkets also resort to unfair and unethical practices. Carrefour was fined in South Korea for unfair business practices, i e, forcing suppliers over 10 months to cut prices to save 1.737 billion won in 2005. It was also fined $170,000 by the Indonesian Business Competition Authority in 2005 for not sourcing goods from a listed supplier who then went bankrupt, which was con sidered an unfair competition practice. It was asked to stop minus margin practices. Its agreement was found to include listing fees, fixed rebates, minus margins, regular discounts, common assortment costs, opening costs/new store, fees for bi-weekly advertisements and penalties. Its listing fee was significantly higher than that of
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competitors and was applied before the suppliers could sell in its supermarkets (Stichele et al 2006). Further, there is no assurance that farmers will receive higher prices, as prices are more about the rela tive bargaining power of the buyers and the suppliers. It is also known that the problems of Indian farming are not about market risk alone but also about produc tion risk and structural factors like irriga tion, technology, credit and so on which MBRT players may not address. The State needs to invest in these areas and cannot hand over responsibility to FDI in MBRT. It is surprising that with 85% of India’s farmers being small or marginal land operators, no restrictions on procurement of farm/allied produce were included to protect the primary producer or smallholder interest. In fact, there are no incentives even to encourage small farmer inclusion. The supermarkets are known to prefer large suppliers of farm produce. Further, there was no provision in the decision for formal registered contract farming being mandatory. Even after so many years of domestic supermarkets operating in India, 60-70% of their procurement is from wholesale markets, and not directly from farmers (Singh and Singla 2011). Thus, the last mile which is a must for farmer benefit may not be reached.
On Traditional Retail and Employment It is being claimed that one crore new jobs will be created. But, it is not clear where these jobs will be created as farmers sup plying to these supermarkets are already doing some work and are not unemployed. This claim by the government is similar to the argument made when Pepsi was brought to Punjab in 1989 when it was claimed that 50,000 new jobs would be created by its various projects. But later it was found that to make its claim Pepsi was also including in that number the potential supplying farmers! In fact, the supermarket expansion leads to a pheno menon of “retail Darwinism” in which only the fittest survive (Bijoor 2011). Thus, there is employment loss in the value chain. For example, as compared to 18 jobs created by a street vendor, 10 by a tradi tional retailer and eight by a shop vendor in Vietnam, a supermarket like Big C
needed just four persons for the same vol ume of produce handled (Wiggerthale 2007). Metro’s cash and carry employed 1.2 workers per tonne of tomatoes sold in Vietnam compared with the 2.9 persons employed by traditional wholesale chan nels for the same quantity sold. The spread of supermarkets led to a 14% re duction in the share of “mom and pop” stores in Thailand within four years of FDI permission (Stichele et al 2006). In India, 33-60% of the traditional fruit and vegetable retailers reported a 15-30% decline in footfalls, 10-30% decline in sales and 20-30% decline in incomes across the cities of Bangalore, Ahmedabad and Chandigarh, the largest impact being in Bangalore, which is one of the most supermarket penetrated cities in India (Singh and Singla 2011). Therefore, it is important to include the potential employment loss in the tradi tional retail sector when calculating the employment benefits from modern retail and the net employment effect should be considered in policy decisions. Further, as supermarkets use modern technology, not many jobs may be forthcoming from their operations even with 50% investment in back-end operations.
Impact on Food Inflation As far as the role of FDI driven food super markets in containing food inflation is con cerned, the evidence from Latin American (Mexico, Nicaragua, Argentina), African (Kenya, Madagascar) and Asian countries (Thailand, Vietnam, India) shows that the supermarket prices for fruits and vegetables and other basic foods were higher than those in traditional markets (Singh 2011). In fact, in China, where large global retailers like Walmart, Tesco and Carrefour have hundreds of stores, since 2004 food infla tion has been an issue and this year some local governments have offered a subsidy to lessen its effect on consumers (Mei and Shao 2011). Even if it is accepted that supermarkets are able to offer lower prices, the low income households may face higher food prices because they live far from super markets and because of the higher prices charged by supermarkets in low-income areas. Thus, there is no direct correspond ence between modern retail and lower
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food prices and, therefore, with better food security of the poor consumers. Therefore, the inflation containment logic for FDI in food retail does not stand ground, given the empirical evidence from across the globe (Singh 2011). Supermarkets would instead lead to concentration of market power, with upstream suppliers facing buyer power in terms of lower prices and consumers (buyers) facing higher prices due to lower competition.
Policy Issues and Mechanisms The biggest fear in India for farmers is not that FDI in MBRT per se is worse than do mestic corporate investment; it is that there may not be adequate institutions and effective governance mechanisms to regulate and monitor the operations of the global retailers and leverage them for benefits like better prices for farmers, more employment generation and lower prices. If the monitoring of wholesale cash and carry stores so far is anything to go by, there is no regulation and the norms are being flouted openly at the store level by the existing players. They are found to do retail sales in the garb of wholesale as the size of a single purchase (minimum ticket size) is just Rs 500 or Rs 1,000 which does not seem to be governed by any regulation. The so-called freedom being given to states on the FDI decision is not a good step as it may fragment the market and the benefits of FDI will be undermined. This is evident from the experience of freedom given to states to amend the Agricultural Produce Market Committees (APMC) Act. Even eight years later there are still some states which have not amended the Act, many others have done it in their own way and this has become a thorny issue in agribusiness policy and practice. Further, given that FDI is an important global issue in terms of TRIMs and WTO negotiations and involves foreign relations, it is important to treat it as a national, and not a regional issue. Regarding the protection of traditional retail interest, if there could be the Milk and Milk Products Order (MMPO) in the dairy sector to protect dairy cooperatives from private and multinational onslaught in the post-1991 phase, why cannot there be protection of the traditional
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retail sector for some time to give it breath ing space? Given the global and the Indian experi ences of supermarkets so far, it was impor tant to slow down supermarket expansion using mechanisms like zoning within cit ies, business licences, and trading restric tions. Further, there is a need to limit the buying power of the supermarkets by strengthening competition laws as in the legal protection given in Japan to subcon tracting industries in their relations with large firms. These provisions are moni tored by the Fair Trade Commission. If contract farming is only another name for subcontracting prevalent in industry, then it is only logical to extend such legal provi sions with necessary modifications to farming contracts. The example of China is quoted to justify the FDI permission. China took over 12 years to liberalise its FDI regime, and in stages. It first allowed only 26% FDI in retail in 1992, took another 10 years to raise the limit to 49%, and allowed full foreign ownership in 2004, but only in
certain cities. It even revoked some pre viously granted approvals, in order to reduce the foreign retailers’ footprint (Mei and Shao 2011; Dutta 2011). Also, provisions for legally binding and clearly worded rules for fair treatment of suppliers, and the establishment of an independent authority like a retail com mission to supervise and regulate super markets on supplier, consumer, and labour issues and to support local retailers are required. The authority should ban buying of products and selling below cost, make contract farming a must, improve local traditional markets for small growers, slow the pace of supermarket expansion, establish multi-stakeholder initiatives in the chains and provide support to small producers and traditional food retailers. Producer organisations and the NGOs need to monitor and negotiate more equitable contracts with the supermarkets.��������� The ���� gov ernment should play an enabling role with legal provisions and institutional mecha nisms for helping farmer cooperatives, producer companies and producer groups
Human Development: How Not to Interpret Change Achin Chakraborty
The India Human Development Report 2011 makes a number of mistakes in its analysis of the relative performance of states and also offers conceptually wrong perspectives in its comparison of the sectoral performance in health and education.
Achin Chakraborty (achinchak@rediffmail. com) is at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata.
16
T
he publication of the second human development report for India after a gap of 10 years is undoubtedly a major event. Yet, the recently released India Human Development Report 2011 (IHDR 2011 or report for short), prepared by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research under the aegis of the Planning Commis sion, disappoints for the shockingly poor quality of commentary and analysis. When the report’s commentaries are not obviously wrong, they indulge in trivia and platitudes. In the end, the report leaves the reader no more informed or illuminated than she was before. As a matter of fact, the reader is positively misled, which ought to be taken seriously. We could have ignored the report, had it not had the Planning Commission stamp. The rankings of states in terms of some
in a smooth functioning of the supermarket linkage and to avoid its ill-effects. References Bijoor, H (2011): “Small Is Beautiful, But Big Is Cheaper”, The Hindu Business Line, 1 December, Brand Line, p 4. Dutta, D (2011): “FDI in Retail: More Heat Than Light”, Financial Express, FE Reflect, 26 November. Mei, L and D Shao (2011): “Too Cheap Hurts Farmers, too Expensive Hurts Customers: The Changing Impacts of Supermarkets on Chinese Agro-food Markets”, Millennial Asia, 2(1), 43-64. Mookerji, N (2011): “A Whole New Opportunity”, Business Standard, the Strategist, 28 November, pp 1-3. Pulamte, L (2008): “Key Issues in Post Harvest Manage ment of Fruits and Vegetables in India”, downloaded from www.nistads.res.in/india/2008, on 13/09/11. Singh, S (2011): “Controlling Food Inflation: Do Super markets Have a Role?”, Economic & Political Weekly, 46(18), 19-22. Singh, S and N Singla (2011): Fresh Food Retail Chains in India: Organisation and Impacts (New Delhi: Allied). Stichele, M V, Sanne van der Wal and J Oldenzeil (2006): Who Reaps the Fruit? Critical Issues in the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Chain (Amsterdam: Center for Research in Multinational Corpora tions (SOMO)), June. Wiggerthale, M (2007): “Expansion of Supermarkets in the Food Sector: Who Reaps the Benefits?”, presented at the G8 Alternative Summit, June, Rostock, www.fairer-agrarhandel.de/mediapool/ 16/163463/.../Supermarkets_G8.pdf, accessed 19 July 2010.
indices usually attract media attention, particularly when such rankings are pre sented in the press briefing by an agency such as the Planning Commission. People are naturally keen to see where this or that state stands in the ranking.
Analysis of Change: 1999-2000 to 2007-08 The report’s main contribution is sup posed to lie in the analyses of the changes in the Human Development Index (HDI) and its three components for India as well as the states between two time points, viz, 1999-2000 and 2007-08. The three com ponent indices are the Education Index, the Health Index and the Income Index. Not only does the report focus on spatial disparity, it also presents in detail the rela tive status of various social and religious groups in terms of various indicators of human development and changes in the relative distance between the groups over the greater part of the past decade. The choice of the time points has been guided by the two rounds of National Sam ple Surveys (NSS) that were conducted in these two years, respectively. The period is
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retail sector for some time to give it breath ing space? Given the global and the Indian experi ences of supermarkets so far, it was impor tant to slow down supermarket expansion using mechanisms like zoning within cit ies, business licences, and trading restric tions. Further, there is a need to limit the buying power of the supermarkets by strengthening competition laws as in the legal protection given in Japan to subcon tracting industries in their relations with large firms. These provisions are moni tored by the Fair Trade Commission. If contract farming is only another name for subcontracting prevalent in industry, then it is only logical to extend such legal provi sions with necessary modifications to farming contracts. The example of China is quoted to justify the FDI permission. China took over 12 years to liberalise its FDI regime, and in stages. It first allowed only 26% FDI in retail in 1992, took another 10 years to raise the limit to 49%, and allowed full foreign ownership in 2004, but only in
certain cities. It even revoked some pre viously granted approvals, in order to reduce the foreign retailers’ footprint (Mei and Shao 2011; Dutta 2011). Also, provisions for legally binding and clearly worded rules for fair treatment of suppliers, and the establishment of an independent authority like a retail com mission to supervise and regulate super markets on supplier, consumer, and labour issues and to support local retailers are required. The authority should ban buying of products and selling below cost, make contract farming a must, improve local traditional markets for small growers, slow the pace of supermarket expansion, establish multi-stakeholder initiatives in the chains and provide support to small producers and traditional food retailers. Producer organisations and the NGOs need to monitor and negotiate more equitable contracts with the supermarkets.��������� The ���� gov ernment should play an enabling role with legal provisions and institutional mecha nisms for helping farmer cooperatives, producer companies and producer groups
Human Development: How Not to Interpret Change Achin Chakraborty
The India Human Development Report 2011 makes a number of mistakes in its analysis of the relative performance of states and also offers conceptually wrong perspectives in its comparison of the sectoral performance in health and education.
Achin Chakraborty (achinchak@rediffmail. com) is at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata.
16
T
he publication of the second human development report for India after a gap of 10 years is undoubtedly a major event. Yet, the recently released India Human Development Report 2011 (IHDR 2011 or report for short), prepared by the Institute of Applied Manpower Research under the aegis of the Planning Commis sion, disappoints for the shockingly poor quality of commentary and analysis. When the report’s commentaries are not obviously wrong, they indulge in trivia and platitudes. In the end, the report leaves the reader no more informed or illuminated than she was before. As a matter of fact, the reader is positively misled, which ought to be taken seriously. We could have ignored the report, had it not had the Planning Commission stamp. The rankings of states in terms of some
in a smooth functioning of the supermarket linkage and to avoid its ill-effects. References Bijoor, H (2011): “Small Is Beautiful, But Big Is Cheaper”, The Hindu Business Line, 1 December, Brand Line, p 4. Dutta, D (2011): “FDI in Retail: More Heat Than Light”, Financial Express, FE Reflect, 26 November. Mei, L and D Shao (2011): “Too Cheap Hurts Farmers, too Expensive Hurts Customers: The Changing Impacts of Supermarkets on Chinese Agro-food Markets”, Millennial Asia, 2(1), 43-64. Mookerji, N (2011): “A Whole New Opportunity”, Business Standard, the Strategist, 28 November, pp 1-3. Pulamte, L (2008): “Key Issues in Post Harvest Manage ment of Fruits and Vegetables in India”, downloaded from www.nistads.res.in/india/2008, on 13/09/11. Singh, S (2011): “Controlling Food Inflation: Do Super markets Have a Role?”, Economic & Political Weekly, 46(18), 19-22. Singh, S and N Singla (2011): Fresh Food Retail Chains in India: Organisation and Impacts (New Delhi: Allied). Stichele, M V, Sanne van der Wal and J Oldenzeil (2006): Who Reaps the Fruit? Critical Issues in the Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Chain (Amsterdam: Center for Research in Multinational Corpora tions (SOMO)), June. Wiggerthale, M (2007): “Expansion of Supermarkets in the Food Sector: Who Reaps the Benefits?”, presented at the G8 Alternative Summit, June, Rostock, www.fairer-agrarhandel.de/mediapool/ 16/163463/.../Supermarkets_G8.pdf, accessed 19 July 2010.
indices usually attract media attention, particularly when such rankings are pre sented in the press briefing by an agency such as the Planning Commission. People are naturally keen to see where this or that state stands in the ranking.
Analysis of Change: 1999-2000 to 2007-08 The report’s main contribution is sup posed to lie in the analyses of the changes in the Human Development Index (HDI) and its three components for India as well as the states between two time points, viz, 1999-2000 and 2007-08. The three com ponent indices are the Education Index, the Health Index and the Income Index. Not only does the report focus on spatial disparity, it also presents in detail the rela tive status of various social and religious groups in terms of various indicators of human development and changes in the relative distance between the groups over the greater part of the past decade. The choice of the time points has been guided by the two rounds of National Sam ple Surveys (NSS) that were conducted in these two years, respectively. The period is
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COMMENTARY Table 1: Improvement in HDI across States
HDI 1999-2000
1
2
0.368 0.336 0.292 0.278 0.466 0.501 0.581 0.465 0.268 0.432 0.677 0.285 0.501 0.275 0.543 0.387 0.48 0.316 0.339 0.422 0.387
Andhra Pradesh Assam Bihar Chhattisgarh Gujarat Haryana Himachal Pradesh Jammu and Kashmir Jharkhand Karnataka Kerala Madhya Pradesh Maharashtra Orissa Punjab Rajasthan Tamil Nadu Uttar Pradesh Uttarakhand West Bengal All India
Change
Rank
3
4
0.473 0.444 0.367 0.358 0.527 0.552 0.652 0.529 0.376 0.519 0.79 0.375 0.572 0.362 0.605 0.434 0.57 0.38 0.49 0.492 0.467
0.105 0.108 0.075 0.08 0.061 0.051 0.071 0.064 0.108 0.087 0.113 0.09 0.071 0.087 0.062 0.047 0.09 0.064 0.151 0.07 0.08
2007-08
% Change
Rank
Imp Index
Rank
5
6
5 3 12 11 19 20 13 17 4 8 2 6 14 9 18 21 7 16 1 15 10
0.285 0.321 0.257 0.288 0.131 0.102 0.122 0.138 0.403 0.201 0.167 0.316 0.142 0.316 0.114 0.121 0.188 0.203 0.445 0.166 0.207
7
8
9
7 3 8 6 17 21 18 16 2 11 13 5 15 4 20 19 12 10 1 14 9
0.166 0.163 0.106 0.111 0.114 0.102 0.169 0.120 0.148 0.153 0.350 0.126 0.142 0.120 0.136 0.077 0.173 0.094 0.228 0.121 0.131
5 6 18 17 16 19 4 15 8 7 1 12 9 14 10 21 3 20 2 13 11
Source: India Human Development Report 2011 and author’s calculations.
important since a five-year sub-period within this period, the period between 2003-04 and 2007-08, includes the years of unprecedented high growth in India’s gross domestic product (GDP). Prior to the global financial crisis of 2008, the growth rate of GDP was near 9% during 2003-08. There has been a discernible acceleration in GDP growth since 2003-04. The growth rate slowed slightly in 2008-09 and recovered once again in the next year. With this high growth in GDP but no accompanying im provement in work participation rates, the question of inclusiveness of growth is even more relevant than before. The subtitle of the IHDR 2011 is “Towards Social Inclu sion”. That the Planning Commission has taken up the task of illuminating the popu lace on the progress in human develop ment and social inclusion in different states and among different population groups in India is indeed commendable. However, the report is unlikely to serve the commis sion good for the serious mistakes that it has made while interpreting change. After presenting the figure depicting the percentage changes in HDI in different states between 1999-2000 and 2007-08, the report states What is remarkable is that for five of the low HDI states the improvement in HDI is consid erably above the national average. These are Bihar, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh,
Orissa, and Assam. Even for a poor state like Uttar Pradesh the change in HDI is similar to the change that has occurred at the all-India level. Among the poorer states, only West Bengal and Rajasthan have shown an im provement in HDI below the national average during the period 1999-2000 to 2007-08. All the other states that have shown an increase lower than the national average are relatively well-off states, suggesting a base-effect phe nomenon. Thus, despite low absolute levels of HDI, there is a convergence in HDI across states over time (p 22).
The commentary goes astray because of its blind reliance on percentage chan ges for reckoning improvement. Its ab surdity becomes apparent once we take a look at Table 1 in which we reproduce from the report the HDI values for a select number of states. Column 4 shows the absolute differenc es between the HDI values for two time points and column 5 gives the ranks of the states in terms of these differences – larger the difference, higher is the rank. Column 6 presents the percentage changes in HDI between 1999-2000 and 2007-08. Between the two, i e, the absolute change and per centage change, which one should one look at while reckoning improvements in HDI? Percentages are clearly the wrong thing to look at. Consider, for example, Bihar and Kerala. In Bihar the HDI value increased by 0.075 from 0.292, and in Kerala it increased by 0.113 starting from 0.677.
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Clearly Kerala has made greater absolute improvement. However, if we compare the percentage changes in HDI in the two states and with the national average as well, which the report has done, the increase in Bihar (25.7%) turns out to be greater than the increase in the national average (20.7%). On the other hand, Kerala’s HDI has improved by 16.7%, which is below the national average of 20.7%. What kind of meaning can we attach to these percentages? Do they mean that Bihar’s improvement is more valuable than Kerala’s? Do they mean that Bihar has performed better than Kerala? The two questions are distinctly different and they direct us to two very different ways of measuring improvement.
Assessing Marginal Improvements If one holds the view that the marginal human development diminishes as human development improves, then any improve ment on a lower level is more valuable than a similar improvement on a higher level. In this view, Bihar’s improvement would be judged more valuable than Kera la’s. However, if one is to judge how com mendable the performances of the two states are, it is rather unlikely that a rea sonable person would accept the view that Bihar has performed better than Kerala.1 The southern state has clearly made more commendable progress as it has managed to improve its HDI by 0.113 from an already high 0.677, whereas Bihar’s HDI has in creased by only 0.075 starting from a low 0.292. Moreover, in this example, the gap between the HDI values in the two states has in fact increased rather than de creased. Therefore, just by looking at the relatively higher percentage changes in the HDI values in low human development states one cannot logically conclude that the latter states have made better progress than others and “there is convergence tak ing place in HDI across states” (p xvii). All this is pretty well known to scholars. About three decades ago, it was Sen (1981) who first raised this issue while compar ing performances of the developing coun tries in terms of longevity and literacy. His suggestion was that instead of comparing percentages we need to use a formula that would incorporate a value judgment
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which is exactly the opposite of the one implicit in percentage changes. Sen takes the absolute shortfall of actual longevity (or literacy) from some chosen upper bound and then examines the percentage decline of this shortfall. The formula that he uses instead of the percentage change is given by (X 2 – X1)/(X max- X1), where X1 and X 2 are the indicator values in the ini tial year and the final year, respectively, and X max is the chosen upper bound. Sen’s formula reflects the view that as, say, longevity becomes high, it becomes more of an achievement to raise it further.2 This might be called the principle of “increas ing marginal difficulty”. Using the HDI values provided by the re port, we have computed Sen’s index of im provement for the states choosing X max to be 1. The values of the index are presented in column 8 of Table 1. One can make a number of interesting observations while comparing the three rankings based on absolute change, percentage change and Sen’s improvement index, respectively.
While for some states the ranks according to Sen’s index are radically different from those based on percentages, for some others there is no change in the rank. Predict ably, the states that are rewarded most by Sen’s index are Kerala, Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, which have already achieved relatively high human develop ment and have raised their HDI values in the period under consideration. Since Uttarakhand has made a large absolute change from a relatively lower base, its performance really stands out, no matter which formula we use. In terms of the im provement index, the ranks of Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh and Orissa slide down below the all-India aver age. Thus the story of the low HDI states surging ahead does not stand up to scrutiny. Consider further the following state ment: “Among the poorer states, only West Bengal and Rajasthan have shown an improvement in HDI below the national average during the period 1999-2000 to 2007-08”. It seems that by “poorer” the
report means a relatively low level of hu man development. While Rajasthan could be called “poorer” for its HDI value being less than the all-India average in 19992000, West Bengal’s HDI could hardly make the state poorer as the value was comfortably above the country average (0.422 as opposed to 0.387).
Education vs Health Improvements Another significant “finding” of the report is that while the Education Index improved much more than the improve ment in HDI, that in the Health Index was well below the latter. This observa tion apparently prompted the deputy chairman of the Planning Commission to write in the foreword to the IHDR that “[t]he major driver of HDI has been the Education Index, which has seen an improvement of over 28% between 19992000 and 2007-08” (p xvii). It would again be a gross mistake if one made substantive conclusions on the relative
8th Biennial International Workshop 2012: “Advances in Energy Studies” Energy Security and Development—the Changing Global Context October 25-27, 2012
Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai 400 065, India.
Call for Papers The International Workshop on Advances in Energy Studies 2012 is the eighth edition in an ongoing series of biennial meetings dedicated to advances, innovation and vision in energy and energy-related environmental and socio-economic issues. Energy security for sustainable development is one of the most obvious but least discussed topics in the present times. In this workshop, the Energy Studies community will bring the issue to centre stage and challenges the participants to come up with practical solutions to the problem. Paper submission: The call for papers is now open and proposals for contributions can be submitted through our website: http://www.igidr.in/conf/AES2012 through the ‘Submit Abstract’ menu before February 29, 2012. They need to be set in MS-Word format and not exceed 500 words. Please put your name and e-mail id in the abstract file. For convenience include your name as part of the file name. All submissions will be peer-reviewed by a panel of experts. Selected abstracts will be considered for full papers/posters. Papers/posters will be further reviewed for final acceptance. The accepted papers will be invited for presentation and published in the conference proceedings. Select papers presented at the conference will be brought out as a volume later. Topics include, but are not limited to: ❖ Energy Security - Energy demand and supply security - Energy inter-dependence - Energy trade and investment engagement - Security in Persian Gulf - Political economy of energy supply
❖ Energy Dynamics - Energy dynamics of emerging economies - Trilateral energy demand – US, Europe and Asia - Regional energy competitiveness - Energy crisis and coordinated responses - Cross-border energy Trade
❖ Role of Technology in Development ❖ Institutions and Governance - Renewable energy technologies and resources - The human dimension – institutions and patterns for - Energy transition, security and competitiveness the governance of energy systems - Efficiency patterns – industrial, transportation, - Energy infrastructure agricultural and household sectors - Universalisation of modern energy services - Perspectives of Nuclear energy - Urbanization – alternative energy patterns for the cities - Capacity building in Energy technology of the third millennium management - Long-term energy security Registration fee: Rs.2,000/- (Academics); Rs.1,000/- (students), Rs.5,000/- (industry delegates). Demand Draft should be drawn in favour of "IGIDR" payable at Mumbai, India. For foreign delegates the fee is US $150 (Academics); US $ 50/- (students) (through ‘paypal’). Prof. B.Sudhakara Reddy Organising Committee Chairman Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Goregaon (East), Mumbai 400 065, India.
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performance of the education and health sectors exclusively on the basis of the dif ferences in the percentage changes in the two sectoral indices. This becomes clear as we take a close look at the method of construction of the sub-indices and the in dicators used. For the Health Index, the report takes life expectancy at birth and normalises the values using the United Nations Development Programme’s HDI formula. For the Education Index, the re port takes a combination of literacy rate and mean years of schooling. The nature of the indicators chosen largely deter mines the possible ranges of percentage changes in the respective indices. For ex ample, the literacy rate for India improved
from 56% in 1999-2000 to 67% in 200708. In percentage terms it is a 19.6% in crease. Even if the health situation im proves fast enough life expectancy can never match literacy in terms of percent age increases. If life expectancy in 19992000 was 60 years, it had to increase to 72 in 2007-08 to make an improvement of roughly 20%, which is impossible. Life ex pectancy usually improves by only three to four years in a span of 7-8 years. In oth er words, what the report has “found” about the relative performance of educa tion and health sectors will be the most likely outcome no matter how fast the im provement in population health and how slow the progress in education. It is really
Inducing Vulnerabilities in a Fragile Landscape Kanchi Kohli
In Sikkim at least 17 large hydropower projects on the Teesta River and its tributaries have their environmental clearances in place, despite warnings, improper assessments and negotiated conditions. At a point of time when a natural seismic occurrence has shaken the stability of an already unpredictable Himalayan ecosystem, it is important to revisit the concept of hydropower projects as a green, clean and safe option.
The author would like to acknowledge the substantial and invaluable inputs of Neeraj Vagholikar and Manju Menon (Kalpavriksh) and Tseten Lepcha (ACT, Sikkim). Kanchi Kohli (
[email protected]) works and writes on social and environmental issues and is a member of Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group, New Delhi.
I
n early November 2011, the people of Chungthang and Shipgyer gram pan chayats of Lepcha Reserve of Dzongu, Sikkim, wrote to the managing director of Teesta Urja seeking compensation for the damage experienced by people in the project-affected area during the earth quake of 18 September. The letter articu lates their conviction that the houses al ready damaged due to the blasting and other related construction activities of the Teesta III hydroelectric project being exe cuted by Teesta Urja, could not withstand the impact of the earthquake. While most of the houses collapsed, others were severely damaged, said the letter. When the earthquake of the magnitude of 6.9 on the Richter scale hit northeastern India, Sikkim felt both the quake and its aftershocks with the maximum intensity. Even as the extent of the dam age is still being estimated, the earth quake and its aftermath has thrown up many reflections and lessons around hydropower generation. The Teesta III hydroelectric project is being constructed on the River Teesta, which is considered Sikkim’s lifeline. The river originates from Tso Lhamo lake in
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
unbelievable that a report on such an im portant issue can make so many elemen tary mistakes. Notes 1 For a discussion of these two alternative interpre tations of change, see Chakraborty (1998). 2 Sharing the same view, Kakwani (1993) develops a different “improvement index” which satisfies certain desirable properties.
References Chakraborty, Achin (1998): “Reckoning Improvement in Living Standards across Countries”, Journal of Quantitative Economics, 14(1): 1-15. Kakwani, Nanak (1993): “Performance in Living Standards: An International Comparison”, Journal of Development Economics, 41: 307-36. Sen, Amartya (1981): “Public Action and the Quality of Life in Developing Countries”, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 43: 287-319.
the eastern part of the state and then flows towards West Bengal. As it traverses through its basin, the river is fed by several tributaries and rivulets until it forms the ecological border between the two states and finally joins the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. For Sikkim and its people, the flow of the Teesta has always had a deep-rooted connection with their lives, livelihoods and cultures. A change in this river ecosystem affects all these aspects. However, in the last decade, Sikkim, which is known for its stunning forest vis tas and amazing biodiversity, has been under threat from the cumulative impacts of close to 30 large hydroelectric projects to be constructed on the Teesta and its rivulets. While several of these are already under construction or completed, many more are at various stages of approval.
Run-of-the-River Projects Hydropower projects in Sikkim like the Teesta III are projected as environmentally benign because unlike storage reservoirs they do not cause huge submergence or large-scale displacement of the population. But most of Sikkim’s so-called “run-of-theriver” hydroelectric projects being devel oped divert the river waters through long tunnels before the water is dropped back into the river at a downstream location after passing through a powerhouse. The perception that they are “environ mentally benign” ignores the impact of several features intrinsic to this design. For example, long stretches of the river
19
COMMENTARY
performance of the education and health sectors exclusively on the basis of the differences in the percentage changes in the two sectoral indices. This becomes clear as we take a close look at the method of construction of the sub-indices and the indicators used. For the Health Index, the report takes life expectancy at birth and normalises the values using the United Nations Development Programme’s HDI formula. For the Education Index, the report takes a combination of literacy rate and mean years of schooling. The nature of the indicators chosen largely determines the possible ranges of percentage changes in the respective indices. For example, the literacy rate for India improved
from 56% in 1999-2000 to 67% in 200708. In percentage terms it is a 19.6% increase. Even if the health situation improves fast enough life expectancy can never match literacy in terms of percentage increases. If life expectancy in 19992000 was 60 years, it had to increase to 72 in 2007-08 to make an improvement of roughly 20%, which is impossible. Life expectancy usually improves by only three to four years in a span of 7-8 years. In other words, what the report has “found” about the relative performance of education and health sectors will be the most likely outcome no matter how fast the improvement in population health and how slow the progress in education. It is really
Inducing Vulnerabilities in a Fragile Landscape Kanchi Kohli
In Sikkim at least 17 large hydropower projects on the Teesta River and its tributaries have their environmental clearances in place, despite warnings, improper assessments and negotiated conditions. At a point of time when a natural seismic occurrence has shaken the stability of an already unpredictable Himalayan ecosystem, it is important to revisit the concept of hydropower projects as a green, clean and safe option.
The author would like to acknowledge the substantial and invaluable inputs of Neeraj Vagholikar and Manju Menon (Kalpavriksh) and Tseten Lepcha (ACT, Sikkim). Kanchi Kohli (
[email protected]) works and writes on social and environmental issues and is a member of Kalpavriksh Environmental Action Group, New Delhi.
I
n early November 2011, the people of Chungthang and Shipgyer gram panchayats of Lepcha Reserve of Dzongu, Sikkim, wrote to the managing director of Teesta Urja seeking compensation for the damage experienced by people in the project-affected area during the earthquake of 18 September. The letter articulates their conviction that the houses already damaged due to the blasting and other related construction activities of the Teesta III hydroelectric project being executed by Teesta Urja, could not withstand the impact of the earthquake. While most of the houses collapsed, others were severely damaged, said the letter. When the earthquake of the magnitude of 6.9 on the Richter scale hit northeastern India, Sikkim felt both the quake and its aftershocks with the maximum intensity. Even as the extent of the damage is still being estimated, the earthquake and its aftermath has thrown up many reflections and lessons around hydropower generation. The Teesta III hydroelectric project is being constructed on the River Teesta, which is considered Sikkim’s lifeline. The river originates from Tso Lhamo lake in
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
unbelievable that a report on such an important issue can make so many elementary mistakes. Notes 1 For a discussion of these two alternative interpretations of change, see Chakraborty (1998). 2 Sharing the same view, Kakwani (1993) develops a different “improvement index” which satisfies certain desirable properties.
References Chakraborty, Achin (1998): “Reckoning Improvement in Living Standards across Countries”, Journal of Quantitative Economics, 14(1): 1-15. Kakwani, Nanak (1993): “Performance in Living Standards: An International Comparison”, Journal of Development Economics, 41: 307-36. Sen, Amartya (1981): “Public Action and the Quality of Life in Developing Countries”, Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, 43: 287-319.
the eastern part of the state and then flows towards West Bengal. As it traverses through its basin, the river is fed by several tributaries and rivulets until it forms the ecological border between the two states and finally joins the Brahmaputra in Bangladesh. For Sikkim and its people, the flow of the Teesta has always had a deep-rooted connection with their lives, livelihoods and cultures. A change in this river ecosystem affects all these aspects. However, in the last decade, Sikkim, which is known for its stunning forest vistas and amazing biodiversity, has been under threat from the cumulative impacts of close to 30 large hydroelectric projects to be constructed on the Teesta and its rivulets. While several of these are already under construction or completed, many more are at various stages of approval.
Run-of-the-River Projects Hydropower projects in Sikkim like the Teesta III are projected as environmentally benign because unlike storage reservoirs they do not cause huge submergence or large-scale displacement of the population. But most of Sikkim’s so-called “run-of-theriver” hydroelectric projects being developed divert the river waters through long tunnels before the water is dropped back into the river at a downstream location after passing through a powerhouse. The perception that they are “environmentally benign” ignores the impact of several features intrinsic to this design. For example, long stretches of the river
19
COMMENTARY
will be bypassed between the dam and powerhouse, with up to 85-90% of the flow in the winter (lean season) diverted through the tunnels. In the already commissioned 510 MW Teesta V project in Sikkim, the “head race tunnel” taking the water from the dam to the powerhouse is 18.5 km long and bypasses a 23 km length of the river. The cascade of proposed projects will mean most of the river will essentially end up flowing through tunnels. These projects also involve extensive tunnelling in a geologically fragile landscape, the environmental and social impacts of which are most often underestimated. Impacts observed include cracks in houses above long tunnel alignments, drying up of water resources and major landslides. In projects that are underway on the Teesta, the list of project-affected-persons is clearly much longer than what is calculated at the planning stage which only looks at those whose lands are to be directly acquired for the project. The tunnelling also generates a huge quantity of debris. The indiscriminate dumping of massive quantities of excavated debris in steep eastern Himalayan valleys with little available flat land is a gross environmental violation (Lepcha and Vagholikar 2011).
Induced Vulnerabilities The troubled terrain of hydropower projects in Sikkim is not new. However, it becomes even more relevant today in the damaged imagery of the earthquake. The questions around the state’s vulnerability to seismic events like the earthquake and the impacts of landslides having been aggravated by the construction of a large number of hydropower projects cannot be brushed aside. While it might not be possible to ascertain that the earthquake itself was induced by heavy construction in an ecologically volatile mountain region, there are several important points to address about what kind of interference of existing land use increases risk and pressures. The letter by the residents of Chung thang brings the issue of induced vulnerability to light through evidence. It refers to a report of the department of mines and geology prepared following an investigation in April 2010 in response to the request of the people affected by the construction of the Teesta III project. The report titled,
20
“Report on Damages Caused Due to Blasting and Other Activities by Teesta III HEPP Under Construction by M/S Teesta Urja” compares the situation to a pre-dam scenario when the area was free from major instabilities except bank erosion. While referring to the situation in townships such as Jorethang, Singtam and Rangpo, the report states that, even though these are situated over similar geological conditions as Chungthang, they have not experienced any distress in reinforced cement concrete (RCC) structures. It reiterates that the cause of damage to RCC structures in Chungthang is mainly due to blasting in close vicinity. State authorities, including Chief Minister Pawan Chamling, have sought to underplay the connection. As reported, the state's resilience has been compared to countries like Canada and Switzerland where dams dot the landscape and have been declared safe. Those who raise these questions are irresponsible, the chief minister has been quoted to have said (Gurung 2011). The chief minister’s statements stand in contrast to the observations of the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India in its 2009 report on Sikkim. The CAG report states that the land profile of the state consists of steep slopes and narrow gorges and is prone to weathering, erosion and frequent landslides. Further, it is also located in Zone IV according to seismic
zoning map of India. It adds that during the last 50 years, as many as 115 cases of major landslides and nine major earthquakes of magnitude of more than 5 on the Richter scale were recorded. Keeping this in mind, the CAG report cautions that the establishment of the hydropower projects in the State entailed extensive excavation, tunnelling, blasting, construction of mammoth water reservoirs, powerhouses and allied acti vities. These construction activities put tremendous stress on the fragile environment of the State which could bring about unanticipated disasters and calamities (CAG 2009).
The Story of Regulatory Collapse Leaving aside the current situation, the story of the Teesta’s tryst with environment regulation can be traced back to 1998 when the expert committee for river valley and hydroelectric projects in the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) was in the process of granting approval to the 510 MW Teesta V hydro project of the NHPC. This approval was required as part of the procedure prescribed under the environment impact assessment (EIA) notification, 1994 (subsequently amended in 2006). This project was to be the first of the sixstage “cascade” plan to harness 3,635 megawatt of hydropower, all within 175 km of the river Teesta in Sikkim (Menon and Vagholikar 2004). Initially, MoEF’s committee was of the view that the Teesta V project should not be
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allowed to go ahead unless and until a comprehensive carrying capacity of the river Teesta was carried out. The purpose of such a study would be to ascertain the extent of load the river Teesta can actually take when it comes to social, ecological and environmental impacts. But in 1999, Teesta V pro ject was granted clearance with a condition that no other project in Sikkim would be considered for environmental clearance till the carrying capacity study was completed. Even as the New Delhi-based Centre for Inter-Disciplinary Studies of Mountain and Hill Environment (CISMHE) continued to carry out the carrying capacity study in the area, the 1,200 MW Teesta III project (another run-of-the-river scheme) was granted environmental clearance. It was one amongst the five projects on the Teesta river basin which was approved in violation of the conditions prescribed for Teesta V. CISMHE’s study was funded by the NHPC and it took six years to complete (2001-07). In October 2008, based on the CISMHE recommendations, the MoEF issued a letter to the Government of Sikkim that no activities related to dams (even investigations) should be taken up north of Chungthang region in north Sikkim, home to the Lepcha, Bhutia and other communities. The MoEF asked the state government to scrap five projects – Teesta I (300 MW), Teesta II (480 MW), Bhimkyong (99 MW), Bop (99 MW) and Lachung (99 MW) hydro-electric power stations (HEPs), with a total installed capacity of 1,077 MW. It is pertinent to note that this was the time that the movement against dams in Sikkim led by the Affected Citizens of Teesta (ACT) was at its peak. As part of this struggle, several local youth took the campaign to the streets of Gangtok and launched an indefinite satyagraha as a mark of protest and to bring pressure on both central and state governments. In January 2010, the power secretary of the Government of Sikkim attended the Expert Appraisal Committee (EAC) meeting which was revisiting the above-mentioned projects. P G Sastry, an erstwhile EAC chairperson, who now represents Sikkim’s department of power, argued that the project developers were unable to carry out exploratory work upstream of Teesta to gather additional data for mitigation and management of impacts because of the MoEF’s decision. In February 2010, the
EAC gave permission to Teesta I and II projects to conduct these investigations. In March 2010, after members of the EAC visited Sikkim, the remaining three projects in north Sikkim, Lachung, Bhimkyong and Bop HEPs were allowed to carry out investigations. In the judgment of the EAC subgroup that visited the sites of these projects, the sites at Bop and Bhimkyong do not have any rehabilitation issues and the 10 km stretch of the tunnelled river is intercepted by several perennial streams. Based on their wisdom, the MoEF took a decision to allow Lachung, Bhimkyong and Bop projects to initiate EIAs which would then set the ball rolling for procuring the environment clearance under the EIA notification, 2006 (Kohli 2011). As on date, at least 17 large hydropower projects on the Teesta and its tributaries have their environmental clearances in place, despite warnings, improper assessments and negotiated conditions. The violations made by the existing projects are still unaddressed. In June 2011, Tseten Lepcha, the honorary wildlife warden of the north district of Sikkim wrote to the MoEF highlighting the violations of the Wildlife Protection Act, 1972 in the killing of a Serow (Capricornis sumanntraensis), a Schedule I animal, by a subcontractor at the Teesta III project site in 2008, and the lack of appropriate action. In the same
letter, he highlighted that the Teesta III project is being constructed without all the prescribed approvals. The letter states that the project also requires a clearance from the standing committee of the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) as it is just 1 km away from the Khangchendzonga National Park (some of the components are within the Khangchendzonga Biosphere Reserve). This violates the Supreme Court order of December 2006 that laid down that projects within 10 km radius of national parks and sanctuaries must be referred to the Standing Committee of the NBWL. This was never applied for Teesta III.
The People’s Struggle The story of dams in Sikkim would be incomplete without mentioning and acknowledging the consistent struggle of the affected people and their supporters in Sikkim, north Bengal and in New Delhi. The members of the ACT have taken to the streets of Gangtok even as negotiations between the Sikkim government and MoEF were on. Representatives of the Lepcha tribal community who would be affected by the construction of the dams on the river Teesta and other tributaries began an indefinite hunger strike to save Dzongu, their traditional homeland. It was one of the most inspiring youth-led campaigns of recent times which received
Course on Qualitative Methods in Labour Research (January 16-27, 2012) V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, NOIDA invites applications from young teachers and researchers from Universities/Colleges/Research Institutions and professionals in government organizations who intend to pursue their interest in labour research and policy, for participating in the Course on Qualitative Methods in Labour Research, during January 16-27, 2012. The objectives of this course are - (i) To appraise participants with the various epistemologies or schools of thought in qualitative research; (ii) To equip participants with the understanding and applicability of various qualitative methods; (iii) To familiarize the participants with the analysis and interpretation of qualitative data. Each of the selected participants would be required to make a brief presentation of a research proposal/paper related to their current theme of research interest, during the course period. There is no course fee and the selected candidates will be provided to-and-fro sleeper class fare and free boarding and lodging during the Course duration. Details regarding the Course and application form can be downloaded from www.vvgnli.org. All applications must be accompanied by a no objection certificate/ recommendation of the employer/research supervisor. Applications along with the biodata and a brief statement of the applicant’s research interests in labour studies may be sent to Dr. Ruma Ghosh, V.V. Giri National Labour Institute, NOIDA- 201301 or at
[email protected]
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
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COMMENTARY
both national and international attention. While the impact on Lepcha culture and identity was important, the campaign was deeply concerned about the impact on the Teesta’s river ecology and flow. ACT aptly has described their anguish by saying, “Our sacred Teesta is being converted into an underground river.” A concern many people in the state continue to carry forward, till date. (More at http://weepingsikkim.blogspot.com/ and http://www.actsikkim.com/)
At a point of time when a natural seismic occurrence has shaken the stability of an already unpredictable Himalayan ecosystem, it is important to revisit the concept of hydropower projects as a green, clean and safe option. Perhaps, it is better to be conservative about the risks from such projects rather than deciding on the basis of other contexts where landscape changes might not have altered the ecological stability of river basins.
The Seeds Bill, 2011: Some Reflections Harbir Singh, Ramesh Chand
The main reason for the continued low use of quality seed has been inadequate access. Though the private sector has taken a lead in harnessing technological innovation in some segments, it has concentrated on particular types of seed. It has also occasionally supplied spurious and low quality seeds and charged exorbitant prices. There is, thus, a strong need to promote competition, strengthen the role of the public sector and encourage investment in seed production. The provisions of the new seeds bill and its early enactment are critical for moving agriculture to a new growth trajectory.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not in any way reflect those of the organisation to which they belong. Harbir Singh (
[email protected]) and Ramesh Chand (
[email protected]) are at the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi.
22
S
eed is a carrier of technology and the medium for translating scientific achievement to the field. Often, Indian farmers do not distinguish between grain and seed (Chand 2007), and use common farm produce as seed. The reasons for this are: (1) lack of awareness about the potential of quality seed, (2) the non-availability of good quality seed, and (3) high seed price. To a greater extent, this also explains the large gap between attainable levels of productivity achieved in front line demonstration plots and the actual productivity at farm levels. This article examines the trends in supply of good quality seed and hybrids, estimates the seed demand and supply gap and discusses the government response addressing issues of seed production and availability through legislative measures, namely, the new seeds bill. It is noteworthy here that the draft of the seeds bill has been revised three times in last seven years (2004, 2008, 2010) mainly to accom modate the concerns expressed by farmers bodies, civil society and parliamentarians, and the latest 2011 version is still pending in the Upper House of Parliament. The article discusses the latest amendments propo sed in the bill and their implications for improving farmers’ access to quality seed.
1 Access to Quality Seed The seed scenario in India is undergoing rapid change. During 2003-04, the private
References CAG (2009): Audit Report for the Year Ended 31 March 2009: Sikkim, Comptroller and Auditor General, Government of India, New Delhi. Gurung, Bijoy (2011): “CM Hits Out at Hydel Link to Quake: Caution on Rumours”, The Telegraph, 27 September. Kohli, K (2011): “Sikkim Dams on the Horizon”, Civil Society, April. Lepcha, T and N Vagholikar (2011): “Sikkim Under Attack”, Sanctuary Asia, June. Menon, M and N Vagholikar (2004): “Environmental and Social Impacts of Teesta V Hydroelectric Project, Sikkim: An Investigation Report”, unpublished, May.
sector produced 62.8 lakh quintal and public sector 69.5 lakh quintal of seed. Seed production by the private and public sectors in the next seven years increased to 109 and 171 lakh quintal, respectively. However, it is important to point out here that the share of the private sector in total seed production does not portray the correct picture of market share. Its share in the market value of seed is much higher than the share in volumes as the major focus of the private sector has been on selling seeds for vegetables and hybrids. These fetch higher prices (Ramaswami 2002). Further, the private sector has a strong interest and dominance in the supply of proprietary seed-like hybrids, as can be seen from the information presented in Table 1 (p 23). Though accurate and detailed data is not available, interaction with the National Seed Association of India and information available in the annual reports and websites of the major seed companies together indicate that the private sector has developed three to 22 times the number of crop hybrids marketed by the public sector till 2001-02. There is discernible change in the role of the public sector in the development of hybrids after 2001-02 in all types of crops (Table 1). Till 2001-02, the private sector had developed 150 hybrids of cotton compared to 15 by the public sector. Similarly, the numbers of maize hybrids developed by the private and public sectors were 67 and three, respectively. In the next eight years (2002-03 to 2009-10), however, the share of the public sector increased from 8% to 19% in cotton, 4% to 40% in maize and 25% to 58% in rice. Similar changes are observed in the case of other crops also. The sum total of hybrids developed so far by the public and private sectors (with
december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
COMMENTARY
both national and international attention. While the impact on Lepcha culture and identity was important, the campaign was deeply concerned about the impact on the Teesta’s river ecology and flow. ACT aptly has described their anguish by saying, “Our sacred Teesta is being converted into an underground river.” A concern many people in the state continue to carry forward, till date. (More at http://weepingsikkim.blogspot.com/ and http://www.actsikkim.com/)
At a point of time when a natural seismic occurrence has shaken the stability of an already unpredictable Himalayan ecosystem, it is important to revisit the concept of hydropower projects as a green, clean and safe option. Perhaps, it is better to be conservative about the risks from such projects rather than deciding on the basis of other contexts where landscape changes might not have altered the ecological stability of river basins.
The Seeds Bill, 2011: Some Reflections Harbir Singh, Ramesh Chand
The main reason for the continued low use of quality seed has been inadequate access. Though the private sector has taken a lead in harnessing technological innovation in some segments, it has concentrated on particular types of seed. It has also occasionally supplied spurious and low quality seeds and charged exorbitant prices. There is, thus, a strong need to promote competition, strengthen the role of the public sector and encourage investment in seed production. The provisions of the new seeds bill and its early enactment are critical for moving agriculture to a new growth trajectory.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not in any way reflect those of the organisation to which they belong. Harbir Singh (
[email protected]) and Ramesh Chand (
[email protected]) are at the National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi.
22
S
eed is a carrier of technology and the medium for translating scientific achievement to the field. Often, Indian farmers do not distinguish between grain and seed (Chand 2007), and use common farm produce as seed. The reasons for this are: (1) lack of awareness about the potential of quality seed, (2) the non-availability of good quality seed, and (3) high seed price. To a greater extent, this also explains the large gap between attainable levels of productivity achieved in front line demonstration plots and the actual productivity at farm levels. This article examines the trends in supply of good quality seed and hybrids, estimates the seed demand and supply gap and discusses the government response addressing issues of seed production and availability through legislative measures, namely, the new seeds bill. It is noteworthy here that the draft of the seeds bill has been revised three times in last seven years (2004, 2008, 2010) mainly to accom modate the concerns expressed by farmers bodies, civil society and parliamentarians, and the latest 2011 version is still pending in the Upper House of Parliament. The article discusses the latest amendments propo sed in the bill and their implications for improving farmers’ access to quality seed.
1 Access to Quality Seed The seed scenario in India is undergoing rapid change. During 2003-04, the private
References CAG (2009): Audit Report for the Year Ended 31 March 2009: Sikkim, Comptroller and Auditor General, Government of India, New Delhi. Gurung, Bijoy (2011): “CM Hits Out at Hydel Link to Quake: Caution on Rumours”, The Telegraph, 27 September. Kohli, K (2011): “Sikkim Dams on the Horizon”, Civil Society, April. Lepcha, T and N Vagholikar (2011): “Sikkim Under Attack”, Sanctuary Asia, June. Menon, M and N Vagholikar (2004): “Environmental and Social Impacts of Teesta V Hydroelectric Project, Sikkim: An Investigation Report”, unpublished, May.
sector produced 62.8 lakh quintal and public sector 69.5 lakh quintal of seed. Seed production by the private and public sectors in the next seven years increased to 109 and 171 lakh quintal, respectively. However, it is important to point out here that the share of the private sector in total seed production does not portray the correct picture of market share. Its share in the market value of seed is much higher than the share in volumes as the major focus of the private sector has been on selling seeds for vegetables and hybrids. These fetch higher prices (Ramaswami 2002). Further, the private sector has a strong interest and dominance in the supply of proprietary seed-like hybrids, as can be seen from the information presented in Table 1 (p 23). Though accurate and detailed data is not available, interaction with the National Seed Association of India and information available in the annual reports and websites of the major seed companies together indicate that the private sector has developed three to 22 times the number of crop hybrids marketed by the public sector till 2001-02. There is discernible change in the role of the public sector in the development of hybrids after 2001-02 in all types of crops (Table 1). Till 2001-02, the private sector had developed 150 hybrids of cotton compared to 15 by the public sector. Similarly, the numbers of maize hybrids developed by the private and public sectors were 67 and three, respectively. In the next eight years (2002-03 to 2009-10), however, the share of the public sector increased from 8% to 19% in cotton, 4% to 40% in maize and 25% to 58% in rice. Similar changes are observed in the case of other crops also. The sum total of hybrids developed so far by the public and private sectors (with
december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
COMMENTARY Table 1: Number of Hybrids in Major Field Crops Developed by the Private and Public Sector in India Crop
Till 2001-02 2002-03 to 2009-10 Private Sector Public Sector Private Sector Public Sector
Total Share of Private Sector Hybrids Private Sector Public Sector in Total Hybrids (%)
Cotton Maize Paddy Wheat Pearl millet Sorghum Pigeon pea Soybean Sunflower Jute Mesta Castor Green gram Mustard Safflower
150 67 12 60 41 35
15 3 4 6 5 6
43 36 11 3 22 12 1 2 13 4 1 11
10 25 15 0 7 8 2 10 23 11 9 1 2
193 103 23 3 82 53 1 2 48 0 0 4 1 11 0
25 28 19 0 13 13 2 0 16 23 11 9 0 1 2
88.5 78.6 54.8 100.0 86.3 80.3 33.3 100.0 75.0 0.0 0.0 30.8 100.0 91.7 0.0
Total
365
39
159
123
524
162
76.4
Source: Seed Association of India, 2002; ICAR research institutes’ websites; annual reports and websites of major seed companies (JK Agri-Genetics, Nath Seeds, Monsanto India, Syngenta, Mahyco, Adventa, Nuzhiveedu, Indo-American, Ankur, Rasi and Ganga Kaveri Seeds).2
the limited information that is available for the latter) and also the share of the private sector in hybrids of different crops is presented in the last three columns of Table 1. Cotton and maize have been the favourite crops for development of hybrids by both the public and private sectors. The private sector has also shown a strong interest in pearl millet, sunflower and sorghum. Considering all crops together, the private sector accounts for three-fourths of the total hybrids developed so far in the country. The data for the last eight years, i e, after 2001-02, shows that the gap between the private sector and public sector in the development of hybrids narrowed down considerably compared to earlier, even though the private sector continued its dominance in crops like cotton, maize, pearl millet and sorghum. These are either cross-pollinated or amenable to economic production of hybrid seed. It is interesting to point out that even in the case of self-pollinated crops like paddy and wheat where the development of hybrids is quite cumbersome and costly, the private sector has ventured to develop and supply improved and hybrid seeds wherever it found commercial markets for these crops (like paddy in Andhra Pradesh and Haryana). In order to meet farmers’ demand for good quality seed and to maintain competition in the seed market, it is essential to maintain the same growth tempo witnessed during last five to six years in the public sector.
2 Demand for Quality Seed To understand the size of the domestic market for quality seed, the total seed requirement for various crops was estimated by multiplying per hectare seed used by farmers by area under the crop in the country. Per hectare seed requirement for the selected crops was estimated by taking the weighted average of seed applied by sample farmers included in the
Ministry of Agriculture’s Cost of Cultivation Scheme in various states, using area under the crop in that state as weight. This was then compared with total quantity of seed supplied by the private sector (other than farmers themselves) and the public sector to get an idea about the adequacy of quality seed. The ratio of quality seed distributed vis-à-vis seed requirement at the national level is presented in Table 2. In the case of self-pollinated crops, farm-saved seed is supposed to last for three to four generations. However, the yield potential cannot be realised if due care is not taken regarding varietal and physical purity, seed health and vigour. Farm-level surveys and interactions with farmers reveal that farmers prefer to buy fresh seed every year, even of the self- pollinated crops, provided it is of high quality (Singh et al 2008). Thus, to make the analysis more realistic, the supply gap for quality seed for cereals, pulses, oilseeds and fibres in the country is estimated under three scenarios corresponding to 25%, 33%, and 100% seed replacement rates (SRR).3 These estimates show that even for achieving the minimum SRR of
Table 2: Seed Requirement and Gaps in Demand for Quality Seed in India (2008-09) Crop
Seed Requirement Quality Seed Ratio of Seed Distributed/ (lakh quintals) Distributed Requirement (lakh quintals) (column 2/column 1)
Paddy Wheat Maize Sorghum Pearl millet Barley Ragi Cereals Gram Pigeon pea Green gram Black gram Lentil Pulses Rapeseed/mustard Groundnut Sunflower Soybean Safflower Sesame Niger seed Oilseeds Cotton Jute Fibres
323.79 367.71 18.77 10.20 4.93 8.02 1.90 735.32 56.39 5.43 6.37 7.22 7.25 82.67 3.81 64.02 1.12 71.29 0.41 1.06 0.37 142.07 3.65 57.17 60.83
58.18 74.83 7.94 2.41 2.20 1.62 0.25 147.43 8.60 1.09 1.23 1.37 0.59 12.88 1.63 15.90 0.80 20.89 0.09 0.18 na 39.49 2.27 0.28 2.55
0.18 0.20 0.42 0.24 0.45 0.20 0.13 0.20 0.15 0.20 0.19 0.19 0.08 0.16 0.43 0.25 0.71 0.29 0.22 0.17 na 0.28 0.62 0.005 0.04
Gaps in Demand for Quality Seed (lakh qtls) Scenario I Scenario II Scenario III (SRR=25%) (SRR=33%) (SRR=100%)
22.77 17.10 -3.25 0.14 -0.97 0.38 0.22 36.40 5.50 0.27 0.36 0.43 1.22 7.79 -0.68 0.10 -0.52 -3.07 0.01 0.09 na -3.97 -1.36 14.01 12.66
49.75 47.74 -1.68 0.99 -0.56 1.05 0.38 97.68 10.20 0.72 0.89 1.04 1.83 14.68 -0.36 5.44 -0.43 2.87 0.05 0.17 na 7.87 -1.05 18.78 17.73
265.61 292.88 10.83 7.79 2.73 6.40 1.65 587.89 47.79 4.34 5.14 5.85 6.66 69.79 2.18 48.12 0.32 50.40 0.32 0.88 na 102.58 1.38 56.89 58.28
na= not available. Source: Authors’ calculations based on Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (2010) and Ministry of Agriculture (2010: 296).
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25% at the national level, there is a deficit of quality seed to the tune of 36.4 lakh quintal for cereals, 7.8 lakh quintal for pulses and 12.7 lakh quintal for fibre crops. However, a closer look at seed demand for individual crops shows that we have adequate quantity of quality seed to achieve more than 25% SRR for maize, pearl millet, rapeseed/mustard, sunflower, soybean and cotton (Table 2). When fresh seed is used every third year (SRR=33%), the gap between seed requirements and the present level of availability increases to 112.4 lakh quintal for foodgrains and 17.7 lakh quintal for fibre crops. Additional seed requirement in the third scenario, that is when fresh seed is used every time, rises to 587.9 lakh quintal for cereals, 69.8 lakh quintal for pulses, 102.6 lakh quintal for oilseeds, 56.9 lakh quintal for jute and 1.4 lakh quintal for cotton. In this scenario, seed requirement for paddy and wheat is estimated to be 265.6 and 292.9 lakh quintals, respectively. These estimates show that there is huge market demand for good quality seed, not only for hybrids but also self-pollinated crops. Except for crops like maize, pearl millet, sunflower, cotton, hardly one-third of demand for quality seed is met by present availability of seed. It needs no emphasis that use of low quality seed adversely affects crop productivity, and farmers would prefer 100% seed replacement if quality seed is available at reasonable prices. Since the recent Seeds Bill 2011 aims at ensuring access to quality seed, the next section assesses its salient features and implications for the farm sector.
3 Seeds Bill 2011 The very first draft of the Seeds Bill in 2004 came under a lot of criticism from farmers, civil society and parliamentarians. Subsequently, the Government of India referred the Seeds Bill 2004 to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture (PSCA).4 Incorporating many of the PSCA recommendations, a Seeds Bill 2010 was again introduced in the Rajya Sabha in April 2010.5 Meanwhile, many state governments (particularly Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Madhya Pradesh and Odisha) sought further amendments in the bill. Some of these suggestions from
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the states have been incorporated in the revised Seeds Bill 2011, introduced in the Rajya Sabha in February 2011. The revised bill is still awaiting discussion and approval by Parliament.
4 Areas of Concern Though the proposed bill with the latest amendments addresses most stakeholder concerns, there are still some grey areas which need closer examination.
4.1 Quality Seed Although the central aim of the proposed bill is to regulate the quality of seed for sale, import and export and to facilitate production and supply of quality seeds, nowhere does the bill define what quality seed is. Even if it can be discerned that quality seed will have to meet all the prescribed criteria of germination, genetic and physical purity and seed health, it would be more prudent if standards for quality seed are specifically defined in the proposed bill.
4.2 Seed Price Regulation There are lots of apprehensions on how the proposed bill will ensure supply of quality seed at reasonable prices. In the absence of adequate competition in the seed sector, a few seed producers may be tempted to raise seed prices in order to realise their research and development
(R&D) investments in the shortest possible time. Increased privatisation of the seed industry is found to be associated with enhancement in seed prices, which is likely to continue. The cost of establishing and maintaining plant variety rights will further add to seed cost (Pal et al 2007). The moot question, therefore, is whether the proposed bill should have provision for regulating seed price? Are there other effective ways of ensuring supply of quality seed at reasonable prices? Before jumping to conclusions on this issue, one should remember that the private sector will invest in seed development and delivery only when it finds a favourable institutional and policy environment for expected returns on its R&D investment. If the public sector alone can meet farmers’ demand for quality seed, price regulation would not be a serious concern. But both the public and private sectors have a role, in some cases quite distinct, in meeting future requirement of seed. Past experience shows that the public sector has an edge over the private sector in terms of seed R&D, particularly for self-pollinated crops, while the private sector has been more proactive in meeting the demand for hybrid seeds. While there are institutions like the Competition Commission of India to deal with situations of monopoly control in seed industry, one of the effective ways of
CENTRE FOR SOCIAL STUDIES, SURAT Applications/nominations are invited for the post of Director of the Centre, an institution funded by the Indian Council of Social Science Research and the Government of Gujarat. An autonomous social science research institute of more than forty years of standing, the CSS is involved in conducting studies on understanding of the development processes and uses such knowledge for interventions at different levels. An applicant/nominee should be a scholar of repute in any of the social sciences capable of providing academic leadership, and should be willing to conduct, direct and promote research on Gujarat and elsewhere in the country. The candidate should preferably have some experience in the administration of academic/ research organization(s) and willingness to interact with other similar institutions, development agencies and governments. Appointment will be initially for a period of three years, but can be extended. The age of retirement is 62 years. Scale of pay: Rs.37,400-67,000+10,000, plus allowances and perquisites according to the rules of the Centre. Applications/nominations, with complete biodata, should be addressed to the Chairman, Search Committee, Centre for Social Studies, Veer Narmad South Gujarat University, Udhna-Magdalla Road, Surat – 395 007, and reach him within one month from the date of publication of this advertisement. The committee will have the freedom to consider names of scholars who may not have applied or been nominated. Shortlisted scholars may be invited for a discussion during February, 2012. Telephone:(0261) 2227173, 2227174, 2255298. Fax: 2223851 E-mail:
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e nsuring a reasonable seed price would be to create conditions for competition among private seed providers, and in some cases, even with public seed agencies. If a competitive environment alone does not serve the purpose of keeping a check on seed prices, and the market fails to meet farmers’ demand for seed at reasonable price, the legislation could be amended in the future to provide for a seed price regulator.
4.3 Penal Clauses Initially, the penalties for contravening the provisions of seed bill were very low and it was dubbed a toothless law with an unwritten licence for violation, malpractice and cheating (Bala Ravi 2010). The latest version stipulates that any person who sells seed which does not conform to the prescribed standards will be punish able with a fine ranging from Rs 25,000 to one lakh. Further, the penalty for furnishing false information relating to seed standards, misbranding the seed, supplying spurious seed or selling non-registered seed, will attract a prison term of up to one year or fine up to Rs 5 lakh or both. Although raising the penalties would keep a check on fly-by-night operators looking for windfall gains, particularly in the event of seed scarcity, the amount of penalty can be an effective deterrent only when it is linked to the volume of (seed) business.
4.4 Relevance of Other Legislations The proposed bill does not seem to be in harmony with the Protection of Plant Varieties and Farmers’ Rights Act (PPVFRA), 2001 which provides for compulsory licen sing (Section 41) if reasonable requirements of the public for seeds or other propagating material of a particular variety have not been satisfied. Therefore, it would be logical if the registration of seed is linked to varieties protected under the PPVFRA. In the absence of such harmonisation, there is a room for unscrupulous seed producers/dealers to get useful seeds registered through the route of the Seeds Bill 2011, without sharing the benefits, as provided under the PPVFRA, with those who make efforts in evolving and conserving plant genetic resources.
5 Conclusions It is widely accepted that the public sector alone cannot meet all the seed demand of our farmers. The private sector has managed to harness the benefits of technological innovation in some segments of the seed sector, as is evident particularly in Bt-cotton, maize and pearl millet hybrids. Further, the private sector has an edge over the public sector in capturing market signals and delivering the desired (seed) product in time. However, there have been instances of fleecing of farmers through supply of spurious and low-quality seeds and charging of exorbitant prices by the private sector. Thus, there is a strong need to promote competition in the seed sector to fill the gap between demand and supply of quality seed and to ensure supply reasonable prices. The proposed Seeds Bill 2011, with its central aim of enhancing production and supply of quality seed to meet future requirements for sustainable agricultural production, is an attempt in this direction. It addresses most concerns of stakeholders, except some grey areas which need closer examination. The seed legislation should avoid excessive curbs on private sector activities. Through competition, effective monitoring and strong regulation, it should check the tendency to acquire control of the market through monopoly and cartelisation. If a competitive environment alone does not serve the purpose of keeping a check on seed prices, the seed legislation may be amended later to incorporate a provision for establishing a seed price regulator. It seems that the proposed legislation has got stuck in the never-ending process of consultation and accommodation of various (often conflicting) stakeholder concerns. As a result, the larger issue of ensuring farmers’ access to improved agricultural (seed varieties and hybrids) technology, for raising and sustaining agricultural productivity in the country, is getting sidetracked. As of now, the unreasonable delay and indecisiveness on these important issues is doing more harm than good. Therefore, the Seeds Bill 2011 should become an act at the earliest to avoid more delay in meeting the requirement for quality seed and realising the yield potential of improved agricultural technologies.
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Notes 1 Seeds Division (nd): “Role of Public & Private Seed Sector”, viewed on 27 November 2011: http://seednet.gov.in/material/IndianSeedSector.htm#Role%20of%20Public%20&%20Private%20Seed%20Sector. For the remaining years, seed information reported in a reply to the Lok Sabha unstarred question 3174, dated 16 March 2010 was used. The seed data in the link above shows higher figures in comparison to the Economic Survey 2010-11 (Table 8.6, p 196). We used the higher figures to ensure that our analysis does not overestimate the supply deficit in quality seed, since in addition to public sector and major private seed firms, many smaller seed producers and progressive farmers also supply quality seed for different crops. 2 See for example (viewed on 27 July 2011): http:// jkseeds.net/ ; www.nathseeds.com/; www.monsantoindia.com/; www.syngenta.co.in/; www. mahyco.com/; www.nuziveeduseeds.com; www. indamseeds.com/; www.ankurseed.com/; www. rasiseeds.com/home.html;www.gangakaveri.in/; www.advantaindia.com/ 3 SRR is defined as the percentage of area sown with certified/quality seeds, out of the total cultivated area under a crop in a season. 4 The Seeds Bill 2004 was first introduced in the Rajya Sabha on 9 December 2004. It was later referred to the PSCA chaired by Ram Gopal Yadav. The PSCA submitted its report on 28 November 2006. The PSCA’s main recommendations were to strengthen farmers’ traditional rights to seed use, exempt farmers from compulsory registration, provide for seed price regulation in the bill, impose substantial fines for selling poor quality/spurious seed, simplify compensation procedure for farmers, etc. Many of these recommendations were included in the revised draft. See Singh and Chand (2010) for salient features of the revised bill. 5 See Singh and Chand (2010) and Bala Ravi (2010) for salient features and a critique of the Seeds Bill 2010.
References Bala Ravi, S (2010): “Faultlines in the 2010 Seeds Bill”, Economic & Political Weekly, 45(32):12-16. Chand, Ramesh (2007): “The State of Indian Agriculture and Prospects for the Future” in Kanchan Chopra and C H Hanumantha Rao (ed.), Growth, Equity, Environment and Population: Economic and Sociological Perspectives (New Delhi: Sage Publications). Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices (2010): Report of Commission for Agricultural Costs and Prices for the Crops Sown during 2009-10 Season, Department of Agriculture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agriculture, New Delhi. Ministry of Agriculture (2010): Agricultural Statistics at a Glance 2010, Government of India, New Delhi. Pal, Suresh, R Tripp and Niels P Louwaars (2007): “Intellectual Property Rights in Plant Breeding and Biotechnology: Assessing Impact on Indian Seed Industry”, Economic & Political Weekly, 42(3):231-40. Ramaswami, B (2002): “Understanding the Seed Industry: Contemporary Trends and Analytical Issues”, Indian Journal of Agricultural Economics, 57(3):417-29. Singh, Harbir, P Mathur and Suresh Pal (2008): “Development of the Indian Seed System: Policy and Institutional Options”, Agricultural Economics Research Review, 21(1):20-29. Singh, Harbir and Ramesh Chand (2010): “The Seeds Bill, 2010: A Critical Appraisal”, Policy Brief 33, National Centre for Agricultural Economics and Policy Research, New Delhi.
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Pushing the Poor to the Periphery in Mumbai Freny Manecksha
The resettlement packages offered to slum dwellers in Mumbai not only violate their right to shelter but also lead to deterioration in their quality of life. There is an urgent need to calculate the cost of repeated demolitions that push slum dwellers to the city’s outer limits against that of acknowledging their right to housing.
Freny Manecksha (
[email protected]) is a Mumbai-based independent journalist interested in development and human rights issues.
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T
he relocation of Mumbai’s slums and its population northwards is perhaps indicative of the city’s growing exclusionary character. Data collected during the 2011 Census shows that there is a slight dip in the slum population of south Mumbai. In ward A (Colaba), it has decreased by more than 63% and the nonslum population by 16%. This is, however, accompanied by a simultaneous growth of slum dwellers in the satellite towns and suburbs of Mumbai. In Ward M east (Mankhurd), the slum population grew by 2.23 lakhs or 48.3% and at present 85% of the population in this ward comprises slum dwellers. In the most populous ward, Dindoshi or Ward P (north), the slum population rose by 39% with slum dwellers forming as much as 75% of the population.1 Several such northward shifts occurred at various points of Mumbai’s history as it evolved since colonial times. The present pattern, however, is significant because it is one caused by policymakers in the name of development and rehabilitation. In the 1950s there was a clear-cut policy of slum clearance. Today no one uses the term “clearance” and naked violence is not always witnessed, but the politics of rehabilitation is no better than eviction. Resettlement packages and implementation of the Slum Rehabilitation Scheme (SRS) not only deny basic rights to shelter, say activists like Simpreet Singh, lecturer at Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) and also member of the National Alliance of People’s Movement (NAPM), but the very vital linkages of livelihood and housing are also being ruptured. Let us look at some of the ways in which rehabilitation policies and schemes have actually lowered the quality of life and are further dividing the city into haves and have-nots. Life in a slum is organic, it gives people space to accommodate or outgrow, and slum dwellers have been adept at making multiple usages of space. Even a 10 feet by 15 feet cubicle provides multiple spaces
where people can live, eke out a livelihood and evolve a unique lifestyle. A narrow road for carrying out trade can double up as a playground for children in the evening. Slum dwellers prise out the maximum output from land, believes Singh, who adds that even the land devoted solely to commercial interests like Dalal Street, where the Bombay Stock Exchange is located, and which becomes a ghost town at night.
Usage and Human Living The main pull factor for the poor who migrate to the city and are forced to live in slums because of unaffordable housing, is livelihood and this must be viewed in context with their housing needs. However, urban planning experts who are responsible for resettlement schemes and an evergrowing lobby that pursues commodification of land have failed to contextualise usage with human living. That is why 50-year-old Rajkumari Pillai who was relocated to Vashi scoffs at security of tenure and a pucca flat. She says life was better inside the huge pipeline she called home in Mahim because now she has to spend half her earnings on commuting there for work. She has also lost access to many services and her social life has been rudely disrupted.2 Like Rajkumari, some 60,000 people’s lives were disrupted by various development projects in Mumbai over the past decade. A survey report, “Staking a Claim, Housing Rights of the Poor in Mumbai” carried out over three years by Amita Bhide and Neela Dabir of TISS looked at how the quality of life was affected for 205 affected communities in resettlement and rehabilitation colonies. These included 20,000 displaced persons under the World Bank funded Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP), 30,000 displaced under the Mumbai Urban Infrastructure Project (MUIP) and the 9,000 displaced under the Mithi river clean-up project. In their new locations 51% of the people surveyed said access to water supply was problematic. Sixty-two per cent had no water in the toilets. One-third of the people had been resettled at locations more than 15-20 km from their original dwellings and 26.42% spent more time in commuting. Health was also affected and 21.41% said illnesses had increased.
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Programmes under the SRS have not fared better and have failed to reflect the needs or aspirations of the working classes. All indications are that under the influence of a particular section of society, legislation has got vitiated so that the SRS, originally meant for the benefit of slum dwellers, is today facilitating builders and realty barons. A notable struggle, largely ignored by the mainstream media, was waged throughout this year by the inhabitants of Ganesh Krupa Society, one of the 46 societies of the gigantic sprawl of slumlands of Golibar, Khar East, which is conveniently sited near the airport and is being eyed by realty speculators. The Ganesh Krupa residents have resisted eviction attempts by Shivalik Ventures and have refused to move into the transit camp. Despite frequent demolitions, families continue to live amidst rubble and in broken-down buildings. Devasandhan Nair, a storybook artist in the movie and advertising industry who reflects the aspirations of the vibrant community amidst which he lives, used social networking sites like YouTube and Facebook to highlight the fact that he and other slum dwellers are responsible citizens. A society was formed in 1994 and property taxes paid. An agreement was signed with Madhu Constructions for redevelopment, but that builder illegally gave the rights to Shivalik Ventures which has cluster development rights for Golibar. Ganesh Krupa residents charged Shivalik Ventures with forging signatures to get the necessary 70% consent for redevelopment. One such signature was of a woman who had died years ago. Orders by the high court to the Nirmal Nagar police to file an FIR have been ignored. According to rules of the Slum Rehabilitation Authority (SRA) a builder who has committed fraud can be arrested on a non-bailable charge. The travesties of SRS are laid bare in a report on a public hearing which was held earlier this year by the Ghar Bachao, Ghar Banao Andolan of the NAPM.3 A panel comprising justice (retired) Hospet Suresh, former municipal commissioner S Tinaikar and editor of Maharashtra Times Bharat Kumar Raut were on the panel. Among the observations were: (1) A near unanimity of opinion that the SRS, under the guise of giving free slum
tenements, is pure and simple a scheme in favour of builders. (Activists have pointed out how Section 3k of SRA virtually gifts huge tracts of land to private builders because there is no bidding.) (2) In the course of 15 years, only 70,000 shanty houses have been redeveloped into multi-storied single apartments instead of the promised figure of 10 lakh homes. (3) There is a complete lack of transparency whereby several slum dwellers have been cheated with names being struck off the list. (4) The transit camps in which the slum dwellers are lodged lack all basic amenities. In many instances slum dwellers continued to suffer in transit camps and were not brought back to the buildings even after they had been completed. The panel made the observation that implementation of such “rehabilitation schemes” is in fact overriding basic constitutional rights, especially the right to housing and the right to shelter and that thousands were being evicted but not rehabilitated. These thousands were forced to settle elsewhere and start fresh slum colonies without possessing the necessary documents. Former Indian Police Service (IPS) officer and lawyer Y P Singh points out in an annexure that aggrieved parties are forced to take recourse to government officials and the police when it is this very section of society that is denying them justice.
Favouring Builders Let aside issues of justice, even as far as the law is concerned there is no hesitation in declaring slums to be illegal, but flagrant violations by builders are glossed over and regularised. The recent Powai land row highlights how land meant for affordable housing was subverted to suit the needs of builders and high-end clients. In 1986, a tripartite agreement was signed with the Powai landowners (for whom builder Niranjan Hiranandani held a power of attorney), the state government and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) to set up a residential township for low-income groups. MMRDA later charged Hiranandani with fraud, concealment and violations because he had amalgamated smaller flats and sold them as large units to high-end clients and only 15% of the land was used for low income housing. MMRDA
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filed a Rs 89.75 crore damage claim. However in September this year, a stateappointed arbitrator absolved Hiranandani of fraud, concealment and violations and rejected MMRDA’s damage claims. MMRDA has appealed against this ruling and a PIL filed by Medha Patkar alleging fraud of Rs 30,000 crore is still pending in court.4 Glaring inequities become evident in the state’s attitude to slum dwellers vis-à-vis health and social determinants. Whilst the Maharashtra government has provided more than Rs 450 crore towards the total cost of the Rs 1,634 sealink between Bandra and Worli to facilitate those who use private transport, it is indifferent to the sanitation needs of thousands of slum dwellers.5 The civic authorities have admitted to a huge backlog where construction of toilet blocks and sanitation needs of thousands of slum dwelling families are concerned. According to the BMC’s survey, there is a severe shortage and in some slums the ratio is a staggering 273 persons per toilet seat. It means that even if everyone in the slums spent just a minute a day inside a toilet, there are at least 500 persons who will not be able to make use of the toilet.6 Abysmal health conditions prevail among the unsettled, insecure communities of Mankhurd where 75% of the population lives in slums and demolitions are frequent. Apnalaya, an organisation that began working with these communities after their homes were razed in 2004, found that after its intervention although the number of children under the age of five suffering from third-degree malnutrition has come down, 62% of the children are malnourished.7 These determinants of Mumbai are paradoxical because slum dwellers spend a far greater proportion of their earnings on basic services which the BMC can legally provide at regular rates. The tremendous hostility towards the poor by the state and civic authorities has led to this situation where, as Varsha Puchure, of Apnalaya observes women living in slums are forced to give birth at home in unsafe conditions despite the state government’s advocacy of safe birth practices. On 25 May this year, when bulldozers began demolishing some 200 hutments at Rafiq Nagar, among those left completely homeless and vulnerable was a woman who had delivered an infant just five days
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ago. Puchure considers this to be a monstrous breach of human trust. She declares, The state recognises these people in terms of voting rights and citizens of this city are willing to use their manpower for cheap labour but when it comes to giving them the right to an abode or other basic amenities we want to manipulate their lives and say they have no right to exist. It is also appalling how the issue of migrants and nonmigrants is being politicised.
Demonising those who live in slums and viewing them as illegal residents who harbour terrorists and criminals is due to the fact that the vast majority of those who live in the city do not acknowledge co-dependency. Sheela Patel, founding director of the Society for Promotion of Area Resource Centres, who takes up advocacy issues for slum dwellers, reminds us that the slum network not only provides serv ices, but actually subsidises the lifestyle of the others as well as participating in and subsidising the city’s informal economy. For example, it is the rag pickers and waste pickers who handle more than one-third of the city’s waste and perform an invaluable task which is actually a civic obligation. Another
pertinent question that arises out of repeated demolitions and relocations to the periphery which keep moving northwards is whether the state government has factored in the cost of repeated demolitions and weighed it against a commitment to spend some resources on housing slum residents. Patel says, The British media has highlighted the fact that eviction of travellers from Dale farm in Essex England is expected to reach £18 million.8 We need some similar analysis here of the cost of repeated demolitions. The net story of demolitions is that of a mindset of not giving people an abode even as the state spends disproportionate sums for its dislocation. The slum people are not going to go away. The state should not be allowed to abdicate its duty.
The growing clout of realty barons is evident and although there are huge hoardings and newspaper advertisements proclaiming thousands of townships, there are reportedly currently nearly 32,000 unsold flats.9 Housing activists say this is indicative of hoarding and illustrative of the complaint that smaller and more afford able flats are simply not being built. But the builder community denies this. This
contradiction shows how the challenge for Mumbai’s citizens is not just of burgeoning populations and paucity of space but of a far more open mindset that is willing to accommodate the needs and aspirations of all sections of society. Notes 1 http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/mumbai/Ghettoisation-of-Mumbai-bodes-ill-for-society/articleshow/10422351.cms 2 http://lite.epaper.timesofindia.com/mobile.aspx? article=yes&pageid=9§id=edid=&edlabel= TOIM&mydateHid=22-01-2011&pubname=&edn ame=&articleid=Ar00901&publabel=TOI 3 “Truth and Lies of Slum Rehabilitation in Mumbai _ Report of the Public Hearing on SRA” 4 http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ 2011-09-16/mumbai/30165090_1_mmrda-commissioner-land-scam-mmrda-s-rs; and http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/2011-09-17/ mumbai/30168716_1_mmrda-clean-chit-builder 5 http://www.business-standard.com/india/news/ bandra-worli-sea-link-opens-today/362489/ 6 http://www.dnaindia.com/mumbai/report_congress-poll-vault-toilet-for-each-shanty-in-mumbai_1598135 7 http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ 2011-01-10/interviews/28373285_1_malnutritionintegrated-child-development-scheme-healthcaresystem 8 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex15380419 9 http://www.hindustantimes.com/India-news/ Mumbai/Bitter-realty-Unsold-flats-in-Mumbaiat-record-32-000/Article1-764244.aspx
Mahalanobis Memorial Medal
(MMM Award: 2010) (National and International Award in Quantitative Economics) To encourage high quality research and to recognize the young talent in the field of Quantitative Economics, the Indian Econometric Society has instituted the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal, in memory of Prof P C Mahalanobis, for researchers below 45 years. This award is given once in two years for Indian researchers and once in four years for international researchers. Currently TIES Trust has constituted a high level expert Committee, under the Chairmanship of Prof. V.R. Panchamukhi, Chairman, TIES Trust, with the objective of identifying suitable scholars for the award of the Mahalanobis Memorial Medal – National award for 2010 and International Award for 2010. Dr N R Bhanumurthy, National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, Delhi, and Secretary, TIES, will receive the nominations and co-ordinate with the committee for selection of candidates for the Award. The Committee hereby invites nominations for the Award on the basis of which recommendations will be made to the President, TIES. Kindly note the following: A. Eligibility requirement: 1. The candidate for the Award should not have been above 45 years of age on January 1, 2011; 2. Research Work, which is to be considered as the basis for the Award, should be in the area of quantitative economics and should have been carried out in India for the National Award and abroad for international award; 3. Contributions made by the nominee should be of high quality. B. Nomination should give full CV of the researcher, which should include the following: a. Name in full; b. Date of birth; c. Educational Qualification; d. Present position and earlier institutional affiliations; e. A list of major publications, with focus on the significant contributions, which could be considered as the basis for the Award; f. Copies of some select Publications; g. Any other relevant information; Incomplete information will not be entertained. All nominations must be received by 2nd January 2012 and addressed to Dr N R Bhanumurthy, Secretary (TIES), National Institute of Public Finance and Policy, 18/2 Satsang Vihar Kendra, Special Institutional area, New Delhi – 110 067 E-mail:
[email protected] R.B. Barman Managing Trustee, TIES Trust
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december 17, 2011 vol xlvi no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
COMMENTARY
Genius of Bhupen Hazarika Arupjyoti Saikia
Bhupen Hazarika (1926-2011) emerged as a central figure in Assam giving voice to the aspirations and imagination of Assamese nationalism. Despite his deep-rootedness in his own cultural context, his music and ideas were universal and constantly engaged with the people in a dialogic process.
Arupjyoti Saikia (
[email protected]) is currently a fellow at the agrarian studies program of Yale University, USA.
I too wanted to be a singer with the power to change society – Bhupen Hazarika
I
t is not often that a musician’s works become synonymous with the political and cultural aspirations of a nation ality. Bhupen Hazarika, the versatile Assamese singer was that kind of rara avis. The world of Assamese imagination was associated, since Independence, with the songs and music of Bhupen Hazarika. His music was responsible for reinforcing the cultural aspirations of various communities during this time. That he was one of the central elements in the world of Assamese imagination was again proven when Hazarika died on 5 November. In a rare show of public mourning, more than a million people in Assam paid their tribute. They were joined by others across India. Hazarika’s death and funeral turned out to be a memorable occasion, show casing Assamese collectivity. The centrality of his songs to this region became even more obvious at this moment. This is partly because many now realised that there are very few Assamese singers who deserve to be considered in similar light. Tributes were paid by hundreds of thousands of people – poor as well as rich, nationalists and others – for all of whom, it seems, Hazarika had sung his songs. The state, often under siege of political protests, saw something unusual. A tribal organisation, which earlier had announced a bandh, postponed its protest, while several unions deferred their strikes. A rickshaw-puller composed a poem written with care. As a mark of honour, he also offered his day’s earnings to an orphanage. While similar public mourning is not unusual in India or elsewhere, the occasion was a unique experience for Assam. What made Hazarika different? Probably two factors contributed to the expressions of such spectacular public grief. First, while his life in music was widely appreciated by a wide cross-section of people, his
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works had received extensive recognition amongst the diverse and often politically divided communities in the region. Ethnic mobilisation since the 1990s and the resultant political polarisation could not displace this wider recognition. This was so because his public life in music was drawn mostly from shared political and economic aspirations of the communities living in the region. Second, Hazarika’s public life was also seen, by the nationalities in the region, as an important instrument for substantiating their cause. His works acted as a medium for introducing the cultural landscape of the region to the wider national life.
Cultural Modernity and Assam Bhupen Hazarika’s middle-class family origin had limited choices to offer him. His traditional Assamese family was trained in both Vaishnavite and nationalistic traditions. His father introduced him to the cultural ambience of the 1930s. The second quarter of the 20th century experienced several layers of intellectual and cultural experiments in Assam. The Assamese nationalists, through experiments in language, literature, history and antiquity, had already laid out the scope for the institutions that they had struggled to build. In the last decades of the 19th century they had undertaken several experiments picking up from the experiences of Calcutta in the issues of language, literature, their past and heritage. By the 1930s, a tiny but educated and largely urban Assamese middle class began to speak confidently on behalf of their community. This was the time when the liberalhumanists and communists, though small in number, made their mark in public life. In the 1930s Assam’s agrarian economy underwent rapid transformation. Indebtedness increased manifold and a majority of the Assamese peasantry were at the mercy of traders. This was soon to bring failure to the agrarian economy. Against this backdrop local resources were now being shared with migrants. This was also the time when the Assamese youth learnt communism. Like eastern and northern India, this communist experiment took several forms: from organised party politics to radical experiments in
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existing cultural practices. This initiation into communism slowly resulted in a fresh look at varieties of social and literary institutions. As part of their struggles to mobilise the distressed peasantry, the communists also experimented with social and cultural practices. The communist impact continued to be deeply felt within Assam right up till the 1960s. All these streams interacted with the larger political developments. The new Assamese nationalistic experiments created sufficient democratic space from the second quarter of the 20th century and drew in a wide array of tribal cultural practices which found engagement with liberal and communist politics. Most of these practices had imbibed the ideas of democracy and liberty but spelled them in different languages. Changing social dynamics also meant challenges to the post-Vaishnavite institutional orthodoxies. Vaishnavite reforms had already created a cultural space for the larger public but institutional orthodoxies were still a drag on these democratic processes. The 1930s was also when the first Assamese film was produced and new experiments in cultural life exposed the urban Assamese to a complex cultural experience. Along with this new cultural life there emerged new political ideas and nationalism. By now Assamese modernity was firmly rooted in local culture and its political landscape. The modern experiment in Assamese music was rooted in this liberal – left as well as nationalist – social milieu and Hazarika learnt and performed his songs drawing from it. Several of his mentors in the middle decades of the 20th century were leading Assamese cultural icons located within this left liberal tradition. Amongst them Jyoti Prasad Agarwalla had strong sympathies towards communist political programmes. Similar was the stand of Bishnu Rabha, the Marxist. Hazarika was also inspired by the works of leading Assamese writer Lakshinath Bezbarua. Though he often composed his own songs, he also drew on the lyrics and songs of other poets and writers. Sensitive to the complex cultural mosaic and nationality question of the region, his mentors drew equally from the
30
Vaishnavite as well as the complex tribal and folk traditions.
Becoming a Singer Hazarika had boyhood encounters with this cultural world. While Hazarika never accepted the larger orthodoxies, he remained culturally indebted to Vaishnavite traditions and these inevitably got reflected in his songs and tone. He knew the Vaishnavite literature well and could recite most texts in full. It was in this context that he sang one of his first songs at the age of 10 and soon became part of the liberal-left-nationalist cultural world of Assam. In the United States, as he pursued his masters and doctoral studies on mass communication at New York’s Columbia University, he came in close touch with the Afro-American political tradition. The civil rights movement, and the cultural mobilisation associated with it, surely would have impressed and influenced someone like him who had gone through years of engagement with Indian nationalist and communist politics. Later this experience led him to compose some of his most popular songs, freely drawn from Paul Robeson, the most acclaimed AfroAmerican singer. His tenures with the All India Radio and Gauhati University were both shortlived. These early uncertainties were largely conditioned by his romance of being antiestablishment. A political career with the Indian Peoples Theatre Association (IPTA), mostly during the 1950s and 1960s helped him engage with the left political programme. Hazarika with his fellow cultural workers converted the IPTA experiment into a truly mass movement in Assam. The IPTA, under their leadership, became a major platform for social and political dialogue, especially
during times of political crisis like those emerging from the language debates in the 1960s. Further, his association with IPTA also led him to critique the elites and rich. He visualised emancipated social institutions in Assam free from extant feudal practices like when he immortalised the anger and frustration of the palanquin carrier in the iconic song “Dola”. A life in left-wing cultural activism also resulted in trips to communist countries. Thus, in February 1972, he and his gifted singer brother Jayanta Hazarika (19431977) sang at the Berlin International Festival of Political Songs – an annual event of radical songs that continued until 1990. This even gained more popularity amongst the communist workers from the middle of the 1970s. Leading political singers across the world began to attend. Hazarika carefully chose the songs for this festival, one recognised the newly born nation of Bangladesh and the other portrayed a confident Assam. A brief spell in electoral politics did not interrupt his life in music. He became a member of the Assam assembly in 1967 as an independent candidate. He lost in 1971. Politically the most unsuccessful moment in Hazarika’s life came in 2004 when he contested the Guwahati parliamentary seat as a BJP candidate. The right-wing Hindutva party hoped to use his stature as a representative voice of Assamese nationalism to further its own support base but this was a failure. For many this proved once again that Assamese nationalism did not have a strong connection with right-wing Hindutva. It seems that Hazarika was passionate about any political “line”, whether hard core left or Hindutva. His shift from cultural left to regional left to nationalist-rightist may be a mere reflection of this non-committal
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COMMENTARY
personality of his. Early in the 1980s, Hazarika succumbed to aggressive nationalism and showed a clear shift from his leftist leanings, which could not restrain him for long, and he moderated some of his lyrics to suit the needs of the Assamese ultra-nationalists. In this he was not alone. Several Assamese communist leaders had brief and sometimes prolonged careers in regionalism.
Rebuilding Nationality Hazarika was adept at telling histories of the land, nature, landscape and contested political ambience through his lyrics and songs. Hazarika sang in standard Assamese and combined gravitas and passion. His attention to the careful use of words and correct pronunciation of the same was phenomenal. Many educated Assamese, trained in the urban Anglo-Assamese milieu, would turn to him for learning “the correct pronunciation” of an Assamese word. His songs would take an Assamese listener back and forth through her past, present and future, while his emphasis on space was crucial for the making of a collective sense of nationality. Despite his attention to nationalist values, he constantly reminded his Assamese listeners about the ideas of universalism. His songs reflected the political dimensions of culture and Assam’s national narrative. He often reconfigured the lyrics of his songs to suit the demands of new political conditions and was successful in giving voice to the optimisms, ambitions and disillusionments of the Assamese in their tryst with the new Indian nation state. It is also unquestionable that his works emerged as contested resources for appropriation by a range of political experiments. His songs often became tools of nationalist mobilisation. Motifs in his songs act powerfully in binding together the Assamese nationality and the Indian nation state. His songs are then essentially a reflection of the Assamese experience of modernity and embody the inherent complexities of this particular nationalist experience. There was a life in journalism – through his association with Amar Pratinidhi which played a crucial role in directing the taste and sensibilities of the Assamese elites. Often political in nature, this cultural
magazine tried to bridge the gap between the emerging taste of the Assamese elites and other forms of experiments elsewhere. There will be little disagreement that the very constitution of Assamese beingness includes a substantial element of Hazarika’s songs. He responded to almost all major and small social and political events of Assam of the last 70 years by singing a memorable song. As a balladeer he was a raconteur par excellence. His key role in the making of Assamese nationality did not go unnoticed. Towards the later stage of his life, the Indian government tried to appropriate his place within Assamese society by making him chairman of the Sangeet Natak Academy. The Sattriya dance form, associated with Srimanta Sankardeva, got national recognition during his tenure.
Reconfiguring Nationalism Though most songs of Bhupen Hazarika were rooted in the Assamese landscape, they nonetheless transcended regional boundaries and often acquired a universal character. He could connect the regional to the larger national and international landscape. Often it was through this transcending landscape that an Assamese would associate with the political canvass of the nation. His association with Hindi films – for instance, his use of folk songs from Rajasthan – gave him an ability to strike a chord with an audience beyond eastern India. Equally, his songs had an audience amongst most communities in north-east India. His appreciation of emerging Bengali identity and praise for newly born Bangladesh gave him permanent recognition in eastern India. He was sensitive to the complex tribal aspirations and tried to reinforce them through his engagement with the Assamese nationalism. On several occasions his songs disagreed with Assamese nationalism’s stand on the tribal question, which viewed them as marginal to its location Hazarika’s songs often disagreed and recognised their distinct political independence. Similarly, he went against the positions of Assamese nationalism in his portrayal of the social history of tea plantations, which was expressed through the voice and emotions of tea garden workers. The tea plantation had emerged, despite the
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travails of tea garden workers, as a soughtafter romantic space in the minds of the Assamese intelligentsia and his songs subverted this.
Music for the Poor His songs became the “weapons of the weak”. His commitment to the cause of the plebeians were mostly reflected through his songs and public life. His songs gave dignity to the poor and downtrodden. His songs were carefully considered, deeply serious documents about people and their troubles. He reminds his listeners about the hungry daily wage labourers, the mighty Brahmaputra, the political potentiality of the poor, and the subaltern identity of the Assamese nationality. A common Assamese villager was introduced to the world of political ideals through his songs. Not only his songs but his writings spoke on behalf of the poor. Some of them were responses to the contemporary crisis in the rural world. Several of his writings ridiculed the failures of the government to address peasant hardship. Never a puritan in his private or public life, his fans and critics are both legion. His critics primarily came from amongst the nationalists. Hazarika sang in Bengali equally. He chose those songs to render in Bengali that had both universal appeal and were rooted in the Bengal landscape. Many Bengalis even claimed Hazarika as of Bengali origin resulting in unwarranted public controversies. The cultural contest between two linguistic communities had not disappeared when such claims and counterclaims began to surface. Die-hard Assamese nationalists condemned Hazarika for his failure to contest such claims made by his Bengali listeners. Thus it is difficult to categorise Hazarika. While deeply rooted in Assamese traditions and cultural milieus, he was equally at ease in other traditions and languages, parti cularly Bengali. While being often seen as close to Assamese nationalism, he still managed to bring a universalist tone to his music. His politics too varied across the spectrum. However, his travels enriched both his music as well as his listeners by making them see the world in new ways even when he reached a dead end and had to restart his journey. That was the genius of Hazarika.
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Unending Tragedy M S Prabhakara
S
een simply in terms of the numbers involved, the Chakma refugee “problem” in India appears an incomprehensible one. The most generous estimate of the total Chakma population in the whole world is a little over seven lakh, less than that of medium size south Asian city. (All the population figures are approximations, for even official census figures are hotly contested in India, especially in north-east India where because of migration and “illegal” influx of population, identity and even the nomenclatures of people are controversial issues.) Some estimates cite even lower figures. Of this about five lakh still live in Bangladesh, most of them in the Chittagong Hill Tracts (CHT) now divided into three districts, Rangamati, Khagrachari and Bandarban. The rest, barring insignificant numbers who may have made homes outside the sub continent, are in India, living in Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram and Tripura. Their total number is about two and a half lakh. These numbers are so small, in the context of India’s population, that their settlement, rehabilitation, perhaps even their eventual absorption, should have been routine and normal. Instead, they have remained contentious, engaging the attention of so many international relief agencies and non-governmental organisations. The “problem” has been festering for decades, especially in Arunachal Pradesh. Historically, the Chakma people constituted nearly 99% of the population of the CHT, sharing the space with smaller populations of other tribes with ethnic links to the indigenous people of Tippera, the Lushai Hills and the Arakans at the time of the Partition of India. Despite its population being overwhelmingly tribal and Buddhist, the CHT was awarded to Pakistan. The factors that influenced this award are well known and are anyway not relevant now. There were other instances of such a disconnect between ethnicity and an acknow ledged emergent theocratic nationhood in
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book review Stateless in South Asia: The Chakmas between Bangladesh and India by Deepak K Singh (Delhi: Sage), 2009; pp xxiii+289, Rs 695.
the hurried implementation of the colonial administration’s policy of divide and quit in the run up to India’s Partition. Much is made even now of the fact that India’s Independence was celebrated in Rangamati, the headquarters of CHT, by the hoisting of the Indian tricolour under the mistaken belief that this non-Muslim majority district would be awarded to India. However, a similar contretemps marked the observance of Independence Day, 1947, on the Indian side of the divide, too. In Karimganj, a subdivisional town of Sylhet district of East Bengal awarded to India after the July 1947 Sylhet referendum and made part of Cachar district of Assam, the Pakistan flag was hoisted in the subdivisional office grounds though, as in CHT, a day or two later, the reality dawned.
Sympathetic Study The book under review, based on the author’s doctoral thesis, is a sympathetic study of the tragedy and dislocation that has been a fact of life for the Chakma people ever since Partition, in Islamic Pakistan under which the loss of their traditional lands began, and in the supposedly secular Bangladesh as a discriminated minority subjected to further loss of their lands due to increased migration of Bengali Muslims from the plains. And in India where the approximately 65,000 Chakma refugees, the so-called Kaptai oustees, settled by the Government of India in the mid-1960s in some parts of eastern Arunachal Pradesh when the territory was still the North East Frontier Agency (NEFA) remain foreigners even now, over 40 years later, though the majority of the present generation of Chakmas in Arunachal Pradesh are entitled to Indian citizenship by birth.
Put simply, they have irrevocably lost their lands in the land of their birth. And their very identity as citizens of a modern state is still contentious in a part of India where they and their ancestors have been living for nearly half a century. Indeed, their status as refugees and stateless persons in Arunachal Pradesh has a unique dimension in that they are the first people to be characterised as “environmental refugees” in south Asia. Though the term and the concept are problematic, the phenomenon of displacement of a people due to natural or man-made disruptions of their environment brought about, ironically, in the name of development, is not new. The loss of land had begun under Pakistan with the commissioning of the Kaptai hydroelectric project in 1964. This also marked the fleeing of the so-called Kaptai oustees to India and their being settled in what was then the NEFA, a vast and thinly populated territory notionally part of Assam but in reality administered by the union government, with the contending bureaucracies of the union home and external affairs ministries seeking to get the territory under their wing. The irrigation resources provided by the Kaptai project gave further impetus to migration from the plains. The search of East Pakistan/Bangladesh for more “living space” in the “sparsely populated lands to the east and the north-east”, meaning Assam and its neighbourhood, has been there from long before the birth of Pakistan, though in those days such migration even when systematically organised was legitimate. It went on when the territory was East Pakistan and continued when it became Bangladesh. The civil liberation war in East Pakistan during which the formal leadership of the Chakmas supported Pakistan because it was seen as a remote and less threatening factor compared to the immediate threat posed by the prospect of a triumphalist Bengali nationalism. It led to more refugees seeking shelter in India, mainly in Tripura.
Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram Though the book touches on all these aspects, its principal focus is on the situation in Arunachal Pradesh. Despite the
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views canvassed in Chapter 4 where the author appears to question the relative peace brought about by political accommodation and resolution of the Chakma issue in Tripura and Mizoram, the fact is that the problems faced by the Chakma in these states are residual, not fundamental as in Arunachal Pradesh. This impossibility of squaring the circle in Arunachal Pradesh which is marked by a clash of the fundamentals is discussed in three closely argued Chapters, 5, 6 and 7, where none of the principal actors, including especially the union and state government, and the non-state players like student organisations, emerge with honour intact. There is a contrast, and a lesson, too, in this very impasse. In the predominantly Christian Mizoram there is a degree of internal ethnic coherence such that an alien would stand out. It also has a history of sovereignty aspirations backed by a prolonged insurgency that forced the union government to negotiate and seek a settlement with the Mizo National Front. In this state nearly a lakh Chakmas,
the largest single concentration of the Chakma population in India, has been able not merely to secure citizenship rights, but it has a political space and accommodation in the form of the Chakma Autonomous Council under the Sixth Schedule. True, the Chakma presence in what was known as the Lushai Hills district of Assam went back to the period before Independence and the Chakma in the Demagiri/Tlabung area had become acculturated with, though not assimilated into their environment, helped in the creation of an autonomous council for this important, non-indigenous (unlike the Pawi and the Lakher) non-Lushai minority in southern Lushai Hills. In Tripura which at the time of the civil war in East Pakistan had the largest concentration of Chakma refugees, along with even larger numbers of Bengali refugees, political negotiations and concessions on all sides persuaded the Chakma refugees to return to Bangladesh in 1997. The contrast with Chakma predicament in Arunachal Pradesh could not be more striking. Being predominantly Buddhist and
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a scheduled tribe, the Chakmas shared many common features with the people of Arunachal Pradesh, and should have easily fitted in. Instead, it is in Arunachal Pradesh that the Chaka dilemma is most acute. The Chakmas, more than anyone else, should be able to understand this opposition across the board in Arunachal Pradesh to their permanent settlement there. After all, the roots of the insurgency launched by the Parbattya Chattogram Jana Sanghati Samity lay precisely in land settlement policy of the government, both in East Pakistan and in Bangladesh, to settle people who did not belong to the land in the CHT. This account, while rightly sympathetic to the tragic dilemma of the Chakmas, is insufficiently understanding of the compulsions of the governments in Dhaka in formulating and implementing the land settlement policy in the Hills. Indeed, Bangladesh has declined to even acknowledge that the Kaptai oustees, more accurately their descendants, in Arunachal Pradesh, as its citizens on the specious ground that this was all the handiwork of the Pakistan government. In
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contrast, though the refugee problem in Tripura too was because of the actions of the Pakistan government, the successor Government of Bangladesh has taken back these refugees, including the Chakma refugees, though sections of the Chakmas were involved in a violent insurgency against the Bangladesh state that was led by the so-called Shanti Bahini.
The inferences and conclusions drawn by the author are deeply depressing. A political resolution of the continuing dislocation and statelessness of the Chakma in Arunachal Pradesh is nowhere in sight for the simple reasons that the numbers involved are too small. The victims are also in no position to create a major problem for either the state or
Indian Sanitation
I
Total Sanitation Despite the possible advantages, a large number of people lack access to basic sanitation and drinking water facilities. At the end of the last century sanitation had been given high priority by the State. Hence, the TSC, launched in 1999, focused on making rural areas free from open defecation through several promotional programmes, including the construction of new toilets for households, schools, anganwadis, and converting dry latrines into pour flush latrines. TSC provides reasonable economic support and materials for new toilets in the
34
M S Prabhakara (
[email protected]) has been writing on the North-East for more than three decades.
international learning exchange on sanitation, eco-sanitation, solid and liquid waste management, etc.
Hinduism, Caste, Cleanliness
Ravichandaran Bathran
n his book, Squatting with Dignity: Lessons from India, Kumar Alok analyses the success and challenges encountered in the rural sanitation movement. The objective of the book is to analyse the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), and suggest ways to achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals accepted by India. The campaign focuses on making rural India free from open defecation. Alok writes that in rural areas the top killer diseases affecting children aged below four years are caused by contaminated water and poor sanitation. Further, human excreta is an organic matter, if it decomposes in the open it produces greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane resulting in global warming. The author argues that adopting safe sanitation and hygienic behaviour would lead to convenience, privacy and pride. Improved access to safe water and adequate sanitation can make a major contribution to poverty reduction and improving the overall quality of life.
union government, not even to the non-state actors like the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union. Of its nature, therefore, there is no end to this unending tragedy.
Squatting with Dignity: Lessons from India by Kumar Alok (New Delhi: Sage), 2010; pp 412, Rs 850.
households. TSC also organises awareness programmes for the general public with the support of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the media, in addition to conducting special educational programmes for bureaucrats. Panchayat raj institutions (PRIs) are the major beneficiaries of TSC programmes. In 2003 the TSC constituted the Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP) “clean village award” to promote PRIs’ involvement in the sanitation projects. The award is conferred on PRIs which successfully complete TSC projects within the stipulated time. The author claims that within a short span of time, the campaign has “influenced” the lives of millions in rural areas across India. However, the author also says that the success of TSC in terms of the number of panchayats which became free from open defecation was meagre. Nevertheless, Alok is optimistic about achieving total sanitation in India within five years, through certain policy measures. He proposes including sanitation as a subject in the civil engineering curriculum, which the author feels would create a new breed of engineers who would compensate for the lack of expertise. He also advocates the inclusion of urban areas within the purview of the TSC, uniform policy guidelines for all states, promoting friendly toilets for the differently-abled, consolidating the implementation of sanitation technology in railways, a national campaign focusing on cleanliness,
Alok’s analysis of TSC brings forth significant issues for further discussion. His understanding of the issue of sanitation is firmly rooted in a problematic combination of Vedic tradition and state policies. The author draws on Vedic literature to build his arguments. He claims (p 18) that the Vedic period represents the most noteworthy phase in Indian history, which trace their [Caste-Hindus’] cultural life to the Vedas, which they hold to be divine truths revealed from time to time to the Rishis (seers) in their super normal consciousness.
He further writes (p 19), Manu Samhita contains a set of verses which talk about the places where defecation and urination were permitted and places prohibiting passage of stool or urine. The code was very clear and rigid regarding maintaining environmental sanitation…
Alok gives long quotations from the Hindu sacred texts which emphasise the importance of maintaining cleanliness and hygiene in daily life. However, he conveniently eschews any discussion on how some castes were assigned mandatory and rigid traditional occupations, which are labelled unclean and impure by the very same Manu Samhita. This legal treatise says, Their (out-caste) dress (shall be) the garments of the dead, (they shall eat) their food from broken dishes, black iron (shall be) their ornaments, and they must always wander from place to place [v.10.52.].
There are stringent punishments for those who try to be equal. One of those punishments I quote (Manusmrti 8: 281). If a man of inferior caste (polluted) tries to sit down on the same seat as a man of
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BOOK REVIEW
contrast, though the refugee problem in Tripura too was because of the actions of the Pakistan government, the successor Government of Bangladesh has taken back these refugees, including the Chakma refugees, though sections of the Chakmas were involved in a violent insurgency against the Bangladesh state that was led by the so-called Shanti Bahini.
The inferences and conclusions drawn by the author are deeply depressing. A political resolution of the continuing dislocation and statelessness of the Chakma in Arunachal Pradesh is nowhere in sight for the simple reasons that the numbers involved are too small. The victims are also in no position to create a major problem for either the state or
Indian Sanitation
I
Total Sanitation Despite the possible advantages, a large number of people lack access to basic sanitation and drinking water facilities. At the end of the last century sanitation had been given high priority by the State. Hence, the TSC, launched in 1999, focused on making rural areas free from open defecation through several promotional programmes, including the construction of new toilets for households, schools, anganwadis, and converting dry latrines into pour flush latrines. TSC provides reasonable economic support and materials for new toilets in the
34
M S Prabhakara (
[email protected]) has been writing on the North-East for more than three decades.
international learning exchange on sanitation, eco-sanitation, solid and liquid waste management, etc.
Hinduism, Caste, Cleanliness
Ravichandaran Bathran
n his book, Squatting with Dignity: Lessons from India, Kumar Alok analyses the success and challenges encountered in the rural sanitation movement. The objective of the book is to analyse the Total Sanitation Campaign (TSC), and suggest ways to achieve the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals accepted by India. The campaign focuses on making rural India free from open defecation. Alok writes that in rural areas the top killer diseases affecting children aged below four years are caused by contaminated water and poor sanitation. Further, human excreta is an organic matter, if it decomposes in the open it produces greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide and methane resulting in global warming. The author argues that adopting safe sanitation and hygienic behaviour would lead to convenience, privacy and pride. Improved access to safe water and adequate sanitation can make a major contribution to poverty reduction and improving the overall quality of life.
union government, not even to the non-state actors like the All Arunachal Pradesh Students’ Union. Of its nature, therefore, there is no end to this unending tragedy.
Squatting with Dignity: Lessons from India by Kumar Alok (New Delhi: Sage), 2010; pp 412, Rs 850.
households. TSC also organises awareness programmes for the general public with the support of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and the media, in addition to conducting special educational programmes for bureaucrats. Panchayat raj institutions (PRIs) are the major beneficiaries of TSC programmes. In 2003 the TSC constituted the Nirmal Gram Puraskar (NGP) “clean village award” to promote PRIs’ involvement in the sanitation projects. The award is conferred on PRIs which successfully complete TSC projects within the stipulated time. The author claims that within a short span of time, the campaign has “influenced” the lives of millions in rural areas across India. However, the author also says that the success of TSC in terms of the number of panchayats which became free from open defecation was meagre. Nevertheless, Alok is optimistic about achieving total sanitation in India within five years, through certain policy measures. He proposes including sanitation as a subject in the civil engineering curriculum, which the author feels would create a new breed of engineers who would compensate for the lack of expertise. He also advocates the inclusion of urban areas within the purview of the TSC, uniform policy guidelines for all states, promoting friendly toilets for the differently-abled, consolidating the implementation of sanitation technology in railways, a national campaign focusing on cleanliness,
Alok’s analysis of TSC brings forth significant issues for further discussion. His understanding of the issue of sanitation is firmly rooted in a problematic combination of Vedic tradition and state policies. The author draws on Vedic literature to build his arguments. He claims (p 18) that the Vedic period represents the most noteworthy phase in Indian history, which trace their [Caste-Hindus’] cultural life to the Vedas, which they hold to be divine truths revealed from time to time to the Rishis (seers) in their super normal consciousness.
He further writes (p 19), Manu Samhita contains a set of verses which talk about the places where defecation and urination were permitted and places prohibiting passage of stool or urine. The code was very clear and rigid regarding maintaining environmental sanitation…
Alok gives long quotations from the Hindu sacred texts which emphasise the importance of maintaining cleanliness and hygiene in daily life. However, he conveniently eschews any discussion on how some castes were assigned mandatory and rigid traditional occupations, which are labelled unclean and impure by the very same Manu Samhita. This legal treatise says, Their (out-caste) dress (shall be) the garments of the dead, (they shall eat) their food from broken dishes, black iron (shall be) their ornaments, and they must always wander from place to place [v.10.52.].
There are stringent punishments for those who try to be equal. One of those punishments I quote (Manusmrti 8: 281). If a man of inferior caste (polluted) tries to sit down on the same seat as a man of
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Such a theory of inequality preached in the Manusmrti exists as a general practice in present-day Indian society, especially in the Indian villages. Manu says that the untouchables should live outside the village and continue serving the village in menial and unclean occupations (v.10.51). In this context the role model village of Ralegan Siddhi in Maharashtra, for which Anna Hazare was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Indian state is a good example. There are three houses of Matangs in the village. They are still tied to their traditional occupation of making brooms and ropes. There have been no elections of the gram panchayat in the village for the last 24 years. In the gram sabha, representatives to the panchayat as well as the societies are nominated. Elections are not allowed here too (Sharma 2006). Instead of upholding the rule of law, the state functionaries uphold inequality. It is also not surprising to see that the TSC focuses on promoting the PRIs, which is part of the state apparatus in the villages for its implementation. The Nehruvian belief that all the social issues could be addressed through state policy is supplemented with the Gandhian insight that varnasramadharma (the caste divided organisation of society) is a better way of organising people’s lives. A book like the Manu Samhita, with inequality at its heart, surely cannot be the basis of arguments that seek to resolve the question of sanitation democratically. Unfortunately, such biased texts are not only referred to positively, but also upheld and followed even for present-day policies, as the book under review illustrates.
Purity and Modern India The form of unequal treatment meted out to the untouchable has changed in the modern era. Hence, it is important to pay close attention to the difference between the caste system in the pre-modern and modern eras. In pre-modern India, the caste system involved material practices with two things embedded in it. First, the untouchables lived outside the village and, second, they were in unclean/menial occupations. Those two are the outward registers, while at the same time there was an inward feeling of defilement, odium,
aversion and contempt (Ambedkar 1982: 492). Hence the untouchable “causing pollution by touch” was at two different levels, one is literal and the other notional. What makes it difficult to break the system of untouchability is the Hindu religious sanction of the practice of untouchability in the notional sense. The ordinary Hindu looks upon it as part of his religion. There is little doubt that in adopting what is deemed to be inhuman behaviour, the Hindu does so more from the sense of observing his religion than from any motive of deliberate cruelty (Ambedkar 1982: 493). Therefore, in India a person is a scavenger by birth and not due to his occupation. Ambedkar argues, Untouchability will vanish only when Hindus will change their mentality. The problem is how to make the Hindus unlearn their way of life. It is no small matter to make a whole nation give up its accustomed way of life. Besides the way of life the Hindus are accustomed to, is a way which is sanctified by their religion, at any rate they believe it to be so (1989: 144).
Instead of removing the cruel notion of the caste system inside the thinking of the caste Hindus, the state and the civil society focus on the occupation or the living condition, which is only an outward expression of the inner notions which structure the thinking of caste Hindus. Thus, the state and civil society manage to show their shrewd sincerity on this issue without actually addressing the matter at hand. As a result, they argue for and often provide better equipment in relation to the occupation or they talk about the cleanliness of their households. However, none of these actions will remove the caste system. The present sanitation campaign, discussed in this book, is another example of such a programme constructing toilets for households in the rural areas.
Explaining Away Scavengers At one level Alok holds Vedic literature, which preaches inequality, as sacrosanct and then claims that the system of scavenging and its stigma came into force during the Mughal period with the introduction of the purdah system where Muslim women used to wear the burka (veil) and were not allowed to go out to defecate (p 33). Such a strange narration of India’s medieval history seems intended only to make the Muslim responsible for introducing the scavenging
Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvi no 51
system. It is unquestionable that the caste system has always been integral to Hindu society, and it is illogical, and intensely political, to say that the scavenging system came into force due to Muslim rule. The Hindu nationalist has always sustained the caste system in practice, while glorifying and heaping lavish praise on the scavenging communities. Here we see in operation a favoured narration which makes the Muslim responsible for the caste system and scavenging, at the same time bringing the untouchables into the fold of Hindus. Most of the so-called nationalists were comfortable with Gandhi’s notion of untouchability, which was to improve the condition of sweeping, but were not prepared to abolish the basis of untouchability. In other words they were not for emancipation of scavenging castes but only for reforming the excesses within the caste occupation (Prasad 2000: 117). The nationalist appropriation of the scavenging system into its narration also extends to the appropriation of people. Alok, at one point, says (p 35), “Inspired by him [Gandhi], a large number of disciples worked relentlessly for this purpose and notable among them were… Shri B R Ambekdar…” This act of naming Ambedkar as a disciple of Gandhi only proves that the author is completely unaware of the tempestuous relationship between these two. Ambedkar was one of the few intellectuals and political figures to outright reject Gandhi’s ideology. I agree with Prasad’s argument that the Gandhian solution to untouchability and the caste system, for the most part, entailed a valorisation of the dalits as sweepers, not now to be seen as the “lowest occupation”, but indeed as the “highest”.
The State and Sanitation Sanitation is defined as “prevention of human contact with the hazards of waste”. A large number of people working in contact with “waste” have been whitewashed by both the government agencies and the author, by not including scavengers or municipality workers in the definition of sanitation. When it comes to common removal of human excreta (second or third person shit), in municipality, or common toilets, these voices, however, become muted. The state does not provide logistics
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to the scavenging communities, rather it forces them to do the cleaning of “waste” in an unhygienic manner. If the state promotes hygiene among the scavenging occupation, it implies that the state has to spend a large amount of money on mechanisation. However, even if it invested in mechanisation and other modernisation of the sanitation sector which reduces or eliminates immediate human contact with “waste”, it will still not remove the caste stigma embedded with the occupation. Therefore, no other community/caste will be willing to take up the occupation of sanitation (Ramaswamy 2005: 23). If the state genuinely wants to eradicate the scavenging caste system then it would have to undermine all the discriminative practices of the caste system and the biased preachings emanating from the Hindu texts, which many people hold sacrosanct. It is due to the lack of clarity in the issue of sanitation in India that the TSC or the author cannot provide clear guidelines as to who should clean the common toilets in schools, community complexes, etc. Since the state cannot ask the scavenging community to do the job, therefore a Gandhian understanding would be to construct an
independent toilet for each person where he cleans his own shit. However, the state cannot escape the government schools. Therefore in schools the TSC encourages the children to clean the toilets on a rotation basis. But the reality, as seen in many villages, is that the dalit students are forced to clean the toilet. This has resulted in protest and opposition from the dalit movement. In the school’s context the author says, in a somewhat disjointed sentence, that there is a need to recognise the dignity of labour. The question which remains unanswered is why does this dignity need to be recognised only by the dalits, why cannot everyone recognise this dignity and clean others’ shit? Other long-term issues are also neglected in the TSC because of the perceived ideas on sanitation, based on the notions of caste, remain unquestioned. Take one illustration. Open defecation may not require people to clean it; however when toilets are constructed, at some or the other point of time scavengers will be required to clean the pit. This is evident even in modern cities and institutional spaces where we find them getting into drainages and manholes to remove the blockade and
many time they come out dead due to the toxic gases.
Conclusions The title of the book Squatting with Dignity, contradicts itself. It implies that people can squat with dignity. All through the book, the author himself says that before the ngp award was introduced by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation, the sanitation campaign could not move forward. It is true people were not comfortable with open defecation but certainly it was not a question of their dignity, as the author presents. Then whose “dignity” is it? It appears, from a reading of the book, that the dignity at stake is that of the “nation”, which remains the silent presence throughout the book. Only in his acknowledgements does the author declaim “open defecation has been the biggest national shame”. Therefore the saddest part is even if some people are concerned with the question of sanitation, they fail to understand the hidden caste/religious construction of scavenging and the scavenger’s identity. Certainly it is the state education apparatus which keeps us away from this very
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important topic, and there is growing antagonism towards anyone who questions caste-based discrimination and occupation. This book is a blueprint of the Indian state functionaries’ experience and attempts to provide “constructive” suggestions from that perspective. This book provides a view of this perspective and shows us that the scavenging population has been bypassed by the Indian state’s modernity drive. A politically informed and socially relevant way of looking at the issue of sanitation ought to, first, involve a study of the ways in which historically the notion of caste-based occupation was constructed and the processes through which it developed, and then to educate the masses while rejecting those heinous Hindu texts which strengthen and justify inequality. This cannot be done through a valorisation of the caste system and its occupation. The state’s failure has been that it has viewed
caste and the question of sanitation/scavengers only at the level of the individual and not as a problem of the structure. Therefore the state has looked for scavengers to rehabilitate. If one views the issue from the perspective of structure, then it is easy to see that it is the non-scavengers who need rehabilitation. The social disabilities that come with scavenging/sanitation can only be eradicated by a large-scale reformation of the caste hindu society. “As long as there will be a metal trash can in Rameshwari’s hands”, noted one Balmiki poet, “the democracy of my nation will be an insult” (Valmiki 1991: 16-17). The tsc may offer “pride” while squatting with dignity but scavengers will still experience and endure ignominy. Ravichandaran Bathran (
[email protected]) is a research scholar at the English and Foreign Languages University, Hyderabad.
references Ambedkar, B R (1982): Writings and Speeches, Volume 2, Government of Maharashtra, Pune. – (1989): Writings and Speeches, Volume 5, Government of Maharashtra, Pune. Ambedkar, B R: Essays on Untouchables and Untouchability: Social, Chapter 1, Section IV, available at http://www.ambedkar.org/ambcd/ 23.%20Essay%20on%20Untouchables%20and %20Untouchability_Social.htm#c01 (accessed 1 November 2011) B R Ambedkar, D (1990): What Congress and Gandhi Have Done to the Untouchables, Vol 9, Government of Maharashtra, Pune. Buhler, G (translator) (2004): The Laws of Manu (New Delhi: Cosmo Publication). Gandhi, M K (1932): “Note of 21 August 1932”, Collected Works, Vol 50 (New Delhi: GOI, 1958 onwards). Kaviraj, Gangadhar Kabi Ratna, ed. (1883): Manu Samhita by Rishi Manu (with Pramadabhanjan tika) Baharampur, Bengal. Prasad, V (2000): Untouchable Freedom: A Social History of a Dalit Community (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Ramasamy, G (2005): India Stinking (Chennai: Navayana). Sharma, Mukul (2006): “The Making of Moral Authority”, Economic & Political Weekly, 20 May. Valmiki, Om Prakash (1991): “Jharuwali”, Sadiyon ka Santap, Dehra Dun, Philphal.
Books Received Akyuz, Yilmaz, ed. (2011); The Financial Crisis and Asian Developing Countries (Penang, Malaysia: Third World Network); pp 344, price not indicated.
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Bang, Peter Fibiger and C A Bayly, ed. (2011); Tributary Empires in Global History (England: Palgrave Macmillan); pp xiii + 294, £ 19.99. Barik, R K (2011); Saffron Regime: Ideology, Liberal Intelligentsia and Fear (Delhi: Shipra Publications); pp x + 200, Rs 550. Bayly, C A, Vijayendra Rao, Simon Szreter and Michael Woolcock, ed. (2011); History, Historians & Development Policy (Manchester: Manchester University Press); pp xii + 276, price not indicated. Behal, Rana, Alice Mah and Babacar Fall, ed. (2011); Rethinking Work: Global Historical and Sociological Perspectives (New Delhi: Tulika Books); pp xv + 182, Rs 400. Bhambhri, C P (2011); Congress-Led Coalition Government: Crisis to Crisis (Delhi: Shipra Publications); pp 242, Rs 650.
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Hegemony in Contemporary Culture and Media and the Need for a Counter Initiative Sashi Kumar
Gramscian hegemony, more than overt imperialism, characterises contemporary mass culture and media. A paradigm shift in the way we understand, represent and experience the world subserves a new and aggressive corporate teleology. Technological convergence and digitisation, which held an initial promise of and potential for democratisation, collapse into vertical integration and monopolisation. In the process, cultural sovereignty is abstracted into a homogenised, make-believe, global marketplace, which reduces every individual to a consumer and excludes the real and abiding concerns of vast swathes of humanity. An intellectual resurgence must counter the counterfeit revolution of the information era.
This essay is based on the presentation made at the Sahmat symposium “Awaz Do” at New Delhi on 13 October 2011. Sashi Kumar (
[email protected]) is at the Asian College of Journalism, Chennai.
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F
redric Jameson in his 1984 article on the cultural logic of late capitalism captures three critical historical junctures of capitalism and their respective cultural tempers: the market capitalism of the 1840s whose cultural logic was realism; the monopoly capitalism of the 1890s whose expression was modernism; and the latest and current phase of multinational capitalism of the 1940s which brings us into what for many of us may be the uncomfortable realm of postmodernism. Scholars like Vivian Sobchack (1994) have extrapolated on this schema to propose the dominant cultural instrumentality of each of these phases: the photographic exemp lifying the mood of realism under market capitalism; the cinematic dominating the sensibility of modernism under monopoly capitalism; and the electronic pervading the contemporary, postmodern phase. The shift from the cinematic to the electronic is subsumed in the larger transition from the analogue to the digital, which is perhaps the definitive techno logical change of our times and marks the essential dynamics of the information revolution which, we are told, has succeeded or superseded the industrial revolution. It is a change with the potential to subvert the hierarchic ordering of the world as we know it. The non-linear takes over from the linear; the margins move into the centre; the tyranny of the written text is challenged by visual and acoustic modes of knowledge furtherance and sense perception. To put it another way, digital technology draws us to see, hear and experience our context first-hand, rather than read about it at one remove. The new technology is weaving a sensorium around us, which approximates our natural cognitive experience. The electronic, on the rebound, alters the terms of the cinematic. Digitisation is
taking over both the production and – with satellite simulcasts – the exhibition of cinema, rendering film raw stock, processing and printing obsolete. “Digital surround sound” in the modern cinema, or home theatre, disperses the myriad components of the audio track across the room, so that they come to us from different directions, spatially matching the visual source of the voice or sound on the screen. The visual, meanwhile, strives to be expressed in 3D and HD, although, with variations in the aspect ratio, it continues to be confined to the rectangular screen. The change, perhaps, will be complete when the visual breaks out of its rectangularity and simulates the panoptic ken of the human eye. The churning that accompanies the transition into the digital realm has thrown up a mix of new perceptual and conceptual elements which seek to challenge the perspectives and values which are the given at this point. They constitute a cultural newspeak, which requires us to press the reset button and reconfigure the world. Flatism is perhaps the more tendentious of these concepts. In the post-Nietschean tradition, as Susan Sontag (1966) tells us, there are no heights or depths, only various kinds of surface and spectacles. Roland Barthes (1972) goes further and rubbishes the idea of depth as a repository of any concealed meaning. Jean Baudri llard’s (1989) mirror metaphor holds up the idiosyncratic end of the proposition. Regis Debray (1996) calls the contemporary realm a mediasphere, which privileges “the letter against the spirit, extension in space against comprehension, space against duration, surface against content”. The mediological sensibility, he says, is not given to going to the bottom of things, keeping, instead, to “faces, surfaces and interfaces”. The operative jargon of the new media seems to prop up this new surfaceism: after all we “surf”, rather than delve into, TV channels and the internet. The setting, thus, was ripe for Thomas Friedman (2005) to script his anecdotal adventure of flattening the world into a continuum of IT enclaves – a level playing field, as he saw it, with easy enough entrance and exit options. Before Friedman had declared the world flat, Francis Fukuyama (1993, 1999),
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with more scholarly effort, had both declared history dead and announced a new order on a clean slate. Endism, however, did not get as much play as flatism and Fukuyama’s The End of History and The Great Disruption turned out to be flashes in the pan at the turn of the new century. But it was unsettling enough that he could grab intellectual and media attention, and seize popular imagination, even if fleetingly, for propositions which were outlandishly sui generis. Another set of ideas privileged by the information age is a version of the futurism propounded by Marinetti1 as far back as 1909, with its celebration of speed: “We declare that the splendour of the world has been enriched by a new beauty: the beauty of speed”. Speed in the media morphs, in Todd Gitlin’s (2003) gaze, into a “torrent”, which, combined with the digital parsing of sensibility, leads to the rhetoric of sound bytes and a regime of sparse attention spans. Speed introduces an aesthetics of blur to photo, video and typography and incentivises techniques like stop framing, shutter motion and out of focus shots. The trend, for Gitlin, is reminiscent of the spirit of impressionism in painting: The visual style introduced by the French impressionists in the 1870s to convey the instant of motion, the instant in motion, recorded as if the artist’s hand were in motion, has now reached typography, the representation of language itself.
The known iconising impulse of the mass media breaks up, in this digital future, into a realm of flitting attention and fleeting reputations where, as Andy Warhol mocked, “every one will be worldfamous for fifteen minutes”. Speed and futurism combine also to pace up the rate of technological obsolescence in the digitised media. The state of the art is in constant renewal and the new yields quickly to the newer in gadgetry; more up to the moment, versatile and affordable than what went just before. The explosion of information that marks the age and the compression of this vast data through digitisation place a huge demand on the human capacity for assimilation, making it necessary to resort to what the French biologist and futurist, Joel de Rosney,2 calls a “dietetics of communication”. The need to pick and choose
optimally, nutritionally, from the surfeit fare on offer out there for our consumption leads to the ratings mindset that rules mass media and culture. Ratings become not only the rationale for allocation of advertising budgets, but also the filter by which the popularity of cultural products are hierarchised. The “bestseller” and “countdown” lists in books and music, for instance, determine the universe of our reading and the repertoire of our “heard melodies”. Work outside these shortlists does not make it to our notice and, for all practical purposes, does not exist. The tyranny of the ratings, Pierre Bourdieu (1998) points out, takes a toll on our intellectual potential because it is so subservient to popular demand. It circumscribes our intellectual horizons. Contrast this, he says, with the fact that well until recently the greatest accomplishments in literature, science or mathematics actually went against the grain of the popular.
Posthumous Rediscovery It is also a phase when thinkers or clairvoyants who lived in advance of their times are being posthumously rediscovered for their prescience about the information age that is suddenly upon us. The oracular aphorisms of Marshall McLuhan (1994) and Guy Debord (1967) seem to come into their own in this era. In particular, Debord’s Society of the Spectacle, written in the 1970s, bears an uncanny resemblance to what obtains today. “In societies where modern conditions of production prevail”, wrote Debord, “all of life presents itself as a immense accumulation of spectacles. Everything that was directly lived has moved away into representation”. The process of reality being abstracted by its representation has dogged literature and philosophy down the ages, even if it acquires a kind of criticality in the information age. A K Ramanujan (2005) cites the plight of Dushyanta in Kalidasa’s Shakuntala as his memory plays tricks on him – “like one who doubts the existence of an elephant who walks in front of him, but feels convinced by seeing footprints…” The elephant in the room goes unrecognised; it takes its footprints, after it has left, to re-member, to reconstruct, its presence. Cognition, in the traditional Indian definition, integrates the pratyaksha (that which
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is manifest) with what is arrived at through anumana (or inference), what is remembered through smriti (memory) and what is reported as aptavakya (eyewitness account of the one who was present). Representative reality takes over lived reality when direct, unmediated perception, or the capa city to see the obvious, the manifest – i e, pratyaksha – is supplanted by the secondary constructs of smriti, anumana or aptavakya. In 19th century Europe, we have Feuerbach (1989 trans), in a similar vein, lamen ting in his Essence of Christianity, that his era prefers “the image to the thing, the copy to the original, the representation to reality, appearance to being”. The representative ritual of the eucharist, where the faithful partake of the body and the blood of Christ, acquires a larger than real dimension as it becomes a coded expression of the hierarchy of the church. In fact, Regis Debray3 argues that representative values are often ascribed post facto. The French Revolution, he observes, “invented the Enlightenment as a meaningful rallying round a cause; and the Catholic magesterium invented (one century after Jesus) the New Testament. The womb comes after the child, who shapes it in his own measure. The words of the Prophet are put in his mouth posthumously, all this according to the law of the precursor, the one of whom one knows afterward that he came before”. In his reflective study Media Mani festos, Debray arrives at a pervasive video sphere as the latest revelation in a palim psest where a print-and-publishing centric graphosphere and scripture-dominated logosphere are the preceding layers, in that order. Moreover, he recognises that this sphere is as determined as the biosphere, noting that “a good politics can no more prevent a mass medium from functioning according to its own economy than it can prevent a severe drought”. There may be consensus about the purpose of the sciences of life, viz, to prevent illness, increase longevity, mitigate suffering and better the quality of life; the manipulation of embryos and “in vitro” fertilisation have to do with the genetic legacy of the species. There may not be a similar agreement about the objective of the sciences of culture because they are not subject to the equivalent of a bioethics. But they should be, suggests Debray, because like the genetic legacy of
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the species, they are the cultural legacy of communities. (He even raises, inter alia, the question whether mediology can become to semiology what ecology is to biosphere.) But the new visual, sound and sign techno logies are geared, instead, to “globalise one sole political economy of videospheric consciousness which risks fostering harsh conditions for those who deviate from or disturb its status quo”. These are technologies of standardisation rather than difference and divergence. Their product, says Debray, is of uniform value, just like power output whether from sun, water, wind or atom is all expressed as kilowatt-hour. If Fordism typifies the industrial revolution at its height, its counterpart in the information revolution is Murdochism. Both systems ply standardisation and homogenisation. Ford intruded into the family, home and even the body of the workers to ensure that they were physically and mentally fit to give their best. Their sexual lives were monitored, their alcohol intake reined in by prohibition, and their morality was under constant scrutiny. As Gramsci (1996 reprint) observes in his Prison Notebooks, “American industrialists are concerned to maintain the continuity of the physical and muscular-nervous efficiency of the worker. It is in their interest to have a stable, skilled, labour force, a permanently well adjusted complex , because the human complex (the collective worker) of an enterprise is also a machine which cannot, without considerable loss, be taken to pieces too often and renewed with single new parts”. Gramsci astutely forecasts both the surveillance state and the intrusive information age when he observes: The attempts made by Ford with the aid of a body of inspectors to intervene in the private lives of his employees and to control how they spend their wages and how they lived is an indication of these tendencies...these tendencies are yet private, but they could become, at a certain point, state ideology.
And they did, so much so that the citizen, even in liberal democracies, has been deconstructed, classified and archived in data bases which serve both the profit agenda of the market and the security alarmism of the state. They are, moreover, insinuated into the practice of contemporary media and pop culture. The genre of reality TV which is a rage today is, for the most part, a showcasing, for the entertainment and
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v icarious participation of the viewers, the private phobias, maladjustments or mismatches in the relationships between members of a social group or a family. All that happens behind closed doors and would normally be considered private is displayed under the intense unrelenting scrutiny of cameras for all the public to behold. This is a modern spectacle, a psychological-thriller equivalent of the lion and the gladiator in the stadium. Pulp psycho logy rules the roost. The candid camera – both its jocular and sting variety – does not respect any limits of privacy. Even the internet, although purportedly a realm of anonymity, seems to end up constructing the self as a commodity by showcasing it as a cyber shop window or web page, and publicising the personal through what seems a process of compulsive social networking. The Hollywood blockbuster, Independ ence Day4 of 1996 is a pointer to how technology in the garb and gizmo-hood of science fiction sublimates an implicit hegemonic intent into a noble and altruistic theme – in this case a future unification of humankind occasioned by the threat from an extraterrestrial enemy. The plot is about an alien invasion of the earth. No less than the president of the United States (US), who happens to be a fighter pilot, leads the counter offensive. The forces he commands are drawn from across all nations of the world – a unanimous international fighting force. After much spatial blitzkrieg the world is saved from being colonised, or destroyed, or whatever it was those weird aliens set out to do. The rub comes at the end. In a state of the world address just before this historic victory, the president of the US announces, as if fulfilling a long nourished aspiration of peoples across the world, that henceforth the fourth of July would be celebrated not as American independence day, but as world independence day. The telling-ness of the title kicks in. The film was one of the highest grossers ever until 1996, and significantly, collected more overseas than within the US. Its success, like its theme, was emphatically global. The hegemony operative here is what the scholar on media and cultural studies, Aida Hozic calls “neo-Gramscian”. It is persuasive rather than coercive. The hegemon presents its “own interests as universal and objective and thereby create(s) willing
f ollowers of its own vision”. Hozic contrasts this with the “neo-realist” hegemony model of Pax Americana, where the dominant state calls the shots and determines the shape of interstate relations.
Curious Intersection Aida Hozic’s (1999) study of the curious intersection of Hollywood, Silicon Valley and the Pentagon (“Uncle Sam Goes to Siliwood: of Landscapes, Spielberg and Hegemony”)5 offers useful insights into how technology, and its fetishisation, bring these unlikely partners on the same page and subserve a hegemonic agenda. Computer companies, like Silcon Graphics in the California belt, which earlier depended on the US military establishment for its funding and R&D work, began to turn, in the 1990s, to Hollywood for work. Even by the late 1970s, Hollywood was in the process of a makeover, having stepped out of the producer and director driven studio system into the more difficult turf of distributors and merchandisers. The star system and the exorbitant fees stars commanded prompted a rebel group including George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to seek low budget alternatives, to substitute the star with his virtual-digital equivalent. Lucas’ Star Wars (1977) and Spielberg’s ET (1982) were the first expressions of this dissidence. Stars were replaced with technology and special effects. Lucas’ Industrial Lights and Magic (ILM) and Spielberg’s Dreamworks SKG also initiated changes in the mode of production and distribution, restoring, on the one hand, the producer as key functionary, and adopting, on the other, a union-friendly approach. Spielberg, observes Hozic, was able to get the best animators to work for him because he allowed them authorial entitlements and a share of the profits. From these independent beginnings, the digital technology driven cinema has now become a cultural assertion of the US military-industrial complex. The techno logy of simulation and image generation were similar for Pentagon and Hollywood. The line between video gaming and electronic warfare blurred to such an extent that the theatre of war became a virtual theatre of the absurd for Baudrillard (1995)6 when he declared that the Gulf war never took place – so unilateral, simulated and hyper real was its conduct.
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The Hollywood-Pentagon mix proved volatile hits on the screen, unleashing sci-fi monoliths single-handedly redeeming American humaneness from dystopias. These digital, special-effects-suffused, filmic products, with their techno-icons also lent themselves better to licensing rights and branding and to a corollary retail chain of merchandising. Aida Hozic points out that the dual-use technology regime under the Clinton administration intended to promote a civilian-military industrial base gave a fillip to this nexus and further diffused the difference between entertainment, surveillance and warfare. “Systems for monitoring ozone data are used in digital imaging for special effects…submarine sound detection technology is used in music recording, image generation technology, which served in missile rehearsal, has been turned into a part of computer game software.” The civilian aspect of dual-use technology by no means extended to the freewheeling public sphere as we know it; it was showcased in flight simulators or submarines or virtual reality war games installed in theme parks and malls or such other ostensibly public spaces which were enclaves of private profit. This “Disneyfication” and its variation of game/theme parks were essentially a process of private property masquerading as public space. Hozic explains how a digital alliance of academic institutions in the Silicon Valley belt, R&D establishments like the Media Lab of the MIT, and corporate sponsors including Disney, Sony, Philips, Nintendo, Lego, Sega, Nike, Microsoft, Intel and Viacom has built on the Silicon Valley-HollywoodPentagon nexus to create diverse cultural products delivered online and offline. Globally, Hollywoodisation not only sealed the wellspring of the French new wave of the late 1950s to the early 1970s, but also systematically infiltrated and deracinated the mainstream national cinemas of the world – so much so that today the dubbed Hollywood film sits pretty, like a strange but familiar cultural squatter, on prime-time television cutting across national and local languages and cultures, whether in Europe, Asia or Africa. It is no longer quaint, let alone anachronistic, to see and hear American characters on the screen spout Tamil, or Telugu, or Hindi, as
the Hollywood meta-narrative unspools in such disparate ethnic settings. Hollywood adversely affects the local cinema industry both in terms of the market and creative expression. Voices of concern have already been raised in Kerala against Hollywood products further eroding an already precarious industry ravaged by high star-system-driven costs. Given the expatriate extent of this, even if narrow, Malayalam market, it may not get to the situation in neighbouring Karnataka where the industry has imposed a blanket ban on films dubbed into Kannada from any language. The Tamil cinema, with its wider film-friendly mass market base, has shown greater resilience and added dubbed Hollywood to its indiscriminate, if robust, mix which spans the countryside with idealised feudal katta pan chayats (or kangaroo courts), middle and upper class city-centric milieus and the hybridisation that globalisation brings to different segments of society.
Tailing Hollywood Bollywood, while continuing to leverage its unique selling proposition of the songand-dance “item” number (as it is called), has tailed Hollywood into the metropolitan mindset of consumerism and conspicuous consumption and readjusted its sights to make the upper middle class and its NRI counterpart its principal constituency. Whereas the original inspiration, in Hollywood, for the hi-tech sci-fi special effects movie was as a counter to the bane of the star system, in both Bollywood’s and Kollywood’s (as Tamil filmdom is called) imitative version, the star undergoes a prosthetic transmogrification and becomes a technological extension of himself. The robotised Rajnikanth of the Tamil film Enthiran7 and cyborgised Shahrukh Khan of Ra One8 in Hindi mark a self-transcendence from superstardom to supra-stardom. There is hardly any rural-ness in the mainstream Hindi cinema today. The riteof-passage leitmotif of the 1970s and 1980s, where the village rustic, as he moves into the city, at once sheds his innocence and becomes socially mobile, is no longer a thematic concern precisely when by all statistical accounts, urbanisation is at its acutest in India. Satellite delivery makes it no longer necessary to replicate hundreds of release
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prints of a film and cart the reels in cans to the theatres. Digital dissemination should, ideally, make for a de-massification of the medium and enable devolved distribution and reach. What has happened, instead, is that the traditional multi-tiered exhibition system – with the A class circuit of theatres in cities, B class in townships and semiurban areas and C class temporary touring sheds in the villages – has collapsed and is being rapidly replaced by a bundling of screens in the expensive and exclusive one-stop-shop facility of the multiplex. The market, including in print and television, has become segmented and stratified so that it is less and less one of “mass” media. The media themselves have become more and more class self conscious, with little going for those below a set purchasing power threshold. The lower you are in the social and economic scale, seems the moral and the model, the less relevant you are to the media, either as subject or consumer. The absence of cross media restrictions in India has paved the way for monopolies straddling the different sectors like print, television, radio and cyber media. Profit maximisation, rather than any commitment to the citizen’s right to be informed, drives the news media. Real and imagined threats to freedom of the press are conjured up to keep the media market protected and yielding huge returns. Lobbies for both maintaining and dismantling foreign direct investment norms in the Indian news media are essentially driven by the profit mantra – the one to keep their empires protected and competition at bay, and the other to make fresh market forays with powerful foreign alliances. Both, though, are quick to cite the principle of the freedom of the press, or danger thereto, to press their claims. The ludicrous extent to which the bogey of press freedom can be invoked strikes home when the big media houses editorially deplore the latest wage board recommendations on the salary structure for working journalists as a threat to the free press. What takes the cake, however, is the disingenuous attempt by the media baronage, a few years back, to make heredity and family the insurance against foreign invasion. Setting themselves up as the Indian Media Group, the members of this cartel actually had the gall to suggest to the government
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that, to prevent foreign infiltration in the print and broadcast sectors, a mandatory 51% rights “should be vested in one Indian family or one Indian group”. This is not to suggest that there is no threat to the Indian media from outside. With the US and European markets saturated, the transnational heavyweights have been eyeing the Indian market as the new frontier. The big ticket acquisitions and mergers, which marked the US media scene in the late 1990s, are now happening here. An investigative audit on Murdoch’s diverse holdings in India, both direct and through Indian proxies, across sectors of the media, may well present an alarming picture of information and cultural control. (Indeed, a timely exercise for a concerned neutral body, say, like the Press Council of India, would be to map the media in the country to ascertain who owns what, and how.) But the indigenous big media have been fatuous and self-serving in their response to the foreign investor at the door.
Skewed TV Growth The growth of the television industry in India is peculiarly skewed and distorted by entry barriers, not in terms of access to satellite transponder or facility to uplink, but at the market-ruled distribution end. The distribution fees charged by the mega cable TV and Direct to Home (DTH) operators are exorbitant and vary whimsically, in the absence of any set tariff card, from channel to channel. As a result small, even medium sized, ventures do not have a fighting chance of making it to the charmed circle of a national DTH or digital cable served viewership, or even of being carried in the prime or adjacent bands in the analogue cable networks. The situation makes a mockery of the 1995 Supreme Court ruling9 that airwaves are public property. They seem, for all practical purposes, more like private property. This, in effect, defeats the purpose of licensing, for what does it benefit a channel to have the right to telecast without the means to be seen? In a context where hundreds of channels – over 700 at last count – are jostling for popular notice, the state should be building the infrastructure network, the information super highway, to handle this traffic equitably and efficiently. Instead, a few big DTH and cable TV
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players have set up their own carriageways with their own tollbooths charging rates that are prohibitive for the bulk of the traffic. The government, if anything, has compounded the problem by making the financial profile required of applicants for new TV channels more demanding. The net worth qualification of the applicant for a news channel has been raised steeply from Rs 3 crore to Rs 20 crore, and for non-news channels from Rs 1.5 crore to Rs 5 crore. The new norms, ostensibly to keep non- serious applicants away, weigh heavily in favour of moneybags and high net worth entities, rather than professionals in the field. Not unsurprisingly, the extant industry takes no objection to these changes, its only quarrel being with the penal clause of a possible revocation of a channel’s licence if it violates, five times over the 10-year contractual period, the prescribed programming and advertising codes. With much of the turf taken, the hope for independent democratic media turns to the internet, with its promise of liberated bandwidths and devices like audio pod casts and Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) to provide cross-media versatility. India, with less than 10% of its population having access to the net, may yet be on the wrong side of the digital divide. But the rate of growth in connectivity here is among the fastest in the world. According to a recent industry estimate (KPCB),10 the year on year growth during the period 2007 to 2010 was of the order of 43%. It may not be far-fetched to imagine a not too distant future where the plural energy of Indian culture unleashed on the net blazes a different and unique trail. But that hope needs to be tempered by what we see happening to the net in a country like the US with near 80% penetration and a longer experience with the medium. In a very recent joint study (“The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism”), John Bellamy Foster and Robert McChesney (2011) take stock of the role and implications of internet 20 years after it was made available to the public. Their finding, alarmingly, is that what once held the promise of an open public sphere is slowly being taken over by giant monopolies. In fact digital capitalism, it turns out, is more v icious than other forms of capitalism because it creates greater and more acute
market concentration. The KPCB study cited earlier and released in October 2011, confirms this trend. The US mega quartet – Apple, Google, Amazon and Facebook – predominate the internet. Apple’s revenue in 2010 was $76,283 million and its market value in 2011 stood at $373 billion. Through iTunes, it has 87% of the market share in digital music downloads and some 70% of the MP3 player market. Google is a not so close a second with revenue in 2010 of $29,321 million and market value in 2011 of $177 billion. But it controls 70% of the search engine market and has a far greater global spread, with at least 80% of its over 1,000 million monthly unique visitors in August 2011 coming from outside the US. The corresponding figures for Amazon are $34,204 (revenue in 2010) and $108 billion (market value in 2011). Facebook’s market value in 2011 was $77 billion (the revenue figure is not available) whereas eBay has a market value of $42 billion the same year and revenue of $9,156 in 2010. Microsoft, Intel and Cisco are among the other big players with monopoly clout. The big players create the most visible and repeat-hit hot properties on the net and erect barriers to prevent others eroding their business concentration. What they have redeemed and fenced off and developed is where consumers aggregate and transact business most – the rest of the net seems relative terra incognita. Michael Wolff of Wired magazine shows how the concentration grows and accretes and does not disburse or diffuse over the so-called long tail that Chris Anderson (the founder of Wired) enthused about: the top 10 websites accounted for 31% of US page views in 2001, 40% in 2006 and close to 75% in 2010.
Threatening the Net This array of organised monopolistic power is contesting the liberative power and potential of internet as a space which enables and empowers peer to peer activities, the open source movement, a user driven knowledge domain like Wikipedia, a brow ser like Mozilla Firefox, a site with a nose for anything under wraps like WikiLeaks (which took the corridors of power across the world by storm and is struggling to outmanoeuvre a concerted financial blockade), or the viral power of social sites for mass mobilisation.
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Foster and McChesney call this the paradox of the internet akin to, they elaborate, the Lauderdale Paradox in economics which deals with the conflict of interest between public wealth and private riches – public wealth understood as “all that man desires as useful or delightful for him”, and private riches as “all that man desires as useful or delightful for him which exists in a degree of scarcity”. Thus it is scarcity that makes the difference, and helps make private riches out of public wealth. If what is naturally and plentifully available – like air, water or food – were rendered scarce, they would acquire an exchange value as against their user value. The paradox went through many hands and filters including Ricardo and John Stuart Mill, and Marx adapted it to argue – and this became a key element of his Capital – that the conflict between user value and exchange value was germane to capitalistic production. Marx, further, drew on Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s take on the political economy of colonisation. Wakefield found that the free availability of land in the new colonies like America, Canada and New Zealand created a shortage of wage labour because workers could set themselves up independently as subsistence farmers. The solution to the problem was to artificially inflate the price of land and encourage absentee landlordism, thus keeping land out of the reach of potential wage labour, or the mass of the people. Similarly, by creating and developing select enclaves of heavy traffic and commerce in the internet space, the digital capitalist seeks to create artificial scarcity and high exchange value for them. Against this, the use value of the vast freewheeling realm of the net has to be redeemed and reinstated. At another level, these virtual walled gardens in cyberspace are a throwback to the enclosure movements in England and Wales where “open” land that belonged to the community at large was systematically taken over and, even without physical fencing, began to be owned in “severalty” – a euphemism for the many who cornered it in what E P Thomson called a “plain enough case of class robbery”. The striking difference, of course, is that the appropriators on the net today are fewer in number, far more concentrated and far more totalising in their control.
On the other hand, the net has, with the Seattle protests against the WTO in 1999 and up until the current Occupy Wall Street movement, become the agency par excel lence for popular mobilisations against the big and the powerful. Its viral, virtual energy can be harnessed to topple absolutist regimes, as the Egyptian and Tunisian experiences have shown. The natural champions of such a net-scape should be those in the vanguard of the knowledge economy – the organic intellectuals, in the Gramscian sense, of this era. Not coincidentally, we find the intellectual as a potential counterhegemon being invoked repeatedly in a succession of works by the intellectuals themselves; almost like a self-awareness of their manifest responsibility. Foucault, Derrida, Bourdieu, Said and Chomsky have all dwelt on the role of the intellectual in reframing contemporary society. Where they succumb to the laws of the market (and become, as Bourdieu puts it, heteronomous), or where they capitulate to the temptation of the media, they legitimise and subserve the prevailing hegemonic forces. But when they do not lend themselves to be co-opted by the market and position themselves, consciously and concertedly, against the current, they may well trigger the force to reverse it. Notes 1 Filippo Tommaso Marinetti published his “Futurist Manifesto” in the French paper La Figaro in February 1909. Primarily a movement in the arts, it was breathlessly excited about technology and the future and impatient with intellectuals, museums, libraries, feminism and “all utilitarian cowardice”. Futurism dovetailed into fascism as Marinetti himself became an acolyte of Mussolini. 2 French biologist and cyber analyst, Joel de Rosney revels in neologisms like cybionte, conceived as a global super organism of which we are all neurons. The internauts themselves organise the global meta computer realm and its denizens constitute a pronetaire who, like Marx’s prole tariat, unite as a productive force of change. 3 Debray’s (1967) Revolution in the Revolution? was an iconic work, inspired by Che, on guerrilla warfare in Latin America. When he was taken into custody in Bolivia, Jean Paul Sartre, expressing solidarity before a mass audience in Paris on 30 May 1967, said, as reported by Le Monde: “Regis Debray has been arrested by the Bolivian authorities, not for having participated in guerrilla activities but for having written a book”. He turned to contemplation of a different kind in later life, creating the discipline of “mediology”, which sought, in his words, to “view history by hybridising technology and culture” (interview to Wired magazine). 4 The film was directed by Roland Emmerich. The cast included Will Smith as a fighter pilot and Bill Pullman as President Thomas Whitmore. The combined gross collection at the box office in the US and outside was $816,969,000. It won the Oscar for visual effects in 1996. 5 “Siliwood” conveys the mix of Silicon Valley and Hollywood.
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6 Jean Baudrillard, The Gulf War Did Not Take Place (Bloomington: Indiana University Press), 1995. It is a collection of three essays: “The Gulf War Will Not Take Place”, “The Gulf War Is Not Really Taking Place”, and “The Gulf War Did Not Take Place”, all originally published in the French paper Liberation and Guardian between January and March 1991. 7 Enthiran, which cost $36 million and was directed by S Shankar, was released on 1 October 2010, along with its dubbed versions, Robot in Hindi and Robo in Telugu. 8 Ra One, budgeted at $30.5 million and scripted and directed by Anubhav Sinha, was released on 26 October 2011. 9 The Supreme Court ruling given on 5 February 1995 by justice P B Sawant and justice S Mohan in the case between Union of India vs Cricket Association of Bengal, said that airwaves or frequencies are a public property; their use has to be controlled by a public authority in the interests of the public and to prevent the invasion of their rights; since the electronic media involves the use of the airwaves, this factor creates an inbuilt restriction on its use as in the case of any other public property. 10 The study, “Internet Trends 2011” by the venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers (KPCB) was released at the Web 2.0 summit in San Francisco, CA, in October.
References Barthes, Roland (1972 print): “Myth Today” in Roland Barthes (ed.), Mythologies (New York: Noonday Press). Baudrillard, Jean (1989 print): “The Ecstasy of Communication” in Mark Poster (ed.), Jean Baudrillard: Selected Writings (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Bourdieu, Pierre (1998): On Television and Journalism (Pluto Press). Debray, Regis (1967): Revolution in the Revolution? (Penguin). – (1996): Media Manifestos, (trans) Eric Rauth (London/New York: Verso). Debord, Guy Ernest (1967): “La Societie du Spectacle” ( Paris: Buchet Chastel (trans)) in Donald Nicholson-Smith, The Society of the Spectacle (New York: Zone Books). Feuerbach, Ludwig (1989): The Essence of Christianity (trans) (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books). Foster, John Bellamy and Robert W McChesney (2011): “The Internet’s Unholy Marriage to Capitalism”, Monthly Review, Vol 62, Issue 10, March. Friedman, Thomas (2005): The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Globalised World in the 21st Century (London: Penguin/Allen Lane). Fukuyama, Francis (1993): The End of History and the Last Man (New York: Avon Books). – (1999): The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstruction of Social Order (New York: The Free Press (a division of Simon & Schuster Inc)). Gitlin, Todd (2003): Media Unlimited: How the Torrent of Images and Sounds Overwhelms Our Lives (New York: A Metropolitan/Owl Book (Henry Holt & Co)). Gramsci, Antonio (1996): Selections from the Prison Notebooks, Orient Longman. Hozic, Aida A (1999): “Uncle Sam Goes to Siliwood: Of Landscapes, Spielberg and Hegemony” in Review of International Political Economy, Vol 6, No 3, Autumn. Jameson, Fredric (1984): “Postmodernism, or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism”, New Left Review, 146. McLuhan, Marshal (1994): Understanding Media: The Extensions of Man, first MIT Press edition. Ramanujan, A K (2005): Uncollected Poems and Prose (USA: Oxford University Press). Sobchack, Vivian (1994): “The Scene of the Screen: Envisioning Cinematic and Electronic Presence” in Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht and K Pfeiffer (ed.), Materialities of Communication (Stanford: Stanford University Press). Sontag, Susan (1966): “On Roland Barthes” in Susan Sontag (ed.), Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux).
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
A Hijra, a Female Pradhan and a Real Estate Dealer: Between the Market, the State and ‘Community’ Sanjay Srivastava
The history of 20th century Delhi is an intertwined history of the city and the slum. Investigating strategies of being and belonging deployed by the urban poor in the Delhi basti of Nangla Matchi, which was demolished in 2006, this paper explores three varied individual biographies as sites of meanings regarding processes of the state, the unstable contexts of livelihoods, and histories of intra-national displacement. The paper also seeks to make an ethnographic contribution to studies of the urban margins by examining the overlapping careers of “margin” and “centre” as cultural, political and economic contexts. The life-stories described in this paper thus concern the ways in which the metropolises of power, comfort, pleasure, and hygiene are built over and through the provinces of powerlessness, pain, suffering and displacement.
Sanjay Srivastava (
[email protected]) is with the Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.
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T
he modern history of urban “improvement” schemes in Delhi is closely tied to colonial and postcolonial projects of producing “clean” spaces through projects such as “slum clearance” and the demarcation of “criminal” spaces. Indeed, the Delhi Improvement Trust (DIT), vested with monopoly powers over purchasing, selling and “improving” land and dwelling in Delhi was established in 1937 in the wake “of a report by Mr A P Hume, [Indian Civil Services] ICS, on congestion in Delhi city”.1 Soon after, in February 1938, DIT “notified” its first (and best known) urban improvement scheme, viz, the Delhi Ajmeri Gate Slum Clearance Scheme (Mehra 1991; see also Hosagrahar 2007; Legg 2007). Notwithstanding the contrary opinion of the state-appointed Birla Committee set up to inquire into the workings of the DIT,2 the postcolonial state substantially appropriated the “clean-up” agenda formulated by the DIT. The Delhi Development Authority (DDA), established in 1957 as the successor body to the DIT, also sought through a variety of means to “cleanse” Delhi of unwanted spaces such as slums (Baviskar 2006; Ramanathan 2006; MenonSen and Bhan 2008). The DIT also administered “reclamation colonies”, such as those near Karol Bagh in west Delhi, where members of “criminal tribes” were confined within well-defined geographical boundaries, with their residents requiring permission from the police to travel beyond.3 The history of 20th century Delhi is, then, an intertwined history of the city and the slum. For projects such as the building of New Delhi (King 1976) and a variety of other infrastructure-related activities – public housing, construction of the Pragati Maidan exhibition grounds, and the various projects associated with the 1984 Asian Games, to name just a few – have invariably attracted poor migrant labour from different parts of the country (Rao and Desai 1956; Dupont 2000; Tarlo 2000). Also, DDA’s monopolistic and speculative activities have led to artificially inflated land prices in Delhi, thereby disenfranchising large sections of the urban population from the housing market (Dasappa Kacker 2005; Menon-Sen and Bhan 2008). The history of the growth of Delhi’s slums (or, “bastis”) is also, then, the history of the policies of urban development. To paraphrase Richard Sennett (1996), the flesh that drapes the stone in India’s national capital is veined with “informal” settlements that are home to approximately 30 lakh people, in a city of some 1.4 crore, “living in six lakh jhuggis in 1,100 jhuggi jhompri clusters” (Ramanathan 2006: 3195). This paper seeks to utilise life histories from the cultural and economic edges of the city as a tool for investigating urban and national processes. While I provide a gloss on the narratives below, I also hope to leave open the possibility of reading the december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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“negotiated possibilities” (Roy 2003: 89) of being in the city in as many different ways as possible. The stories below are of migrants to the city and offer possibilities of tracking a variety of cultural, political, and economic histories across the different life strategies. A serious attention to biography, as Judith Brown suggests, has much to tell us about “the nature of individual and shared identities and the ways these develop over time in different contexts, the nature of agency in the historical process, and the local and global webs of connection within which people live and work, within and across national boundaries” (2009: 588).
The Multiple Histories of Nangla Matchi Before it was demolished in June 2006, the basti of Nangla Matchi (“Nangla”) stood on Delhi’s Ring Road, on the western banks of the Yamuna River, near the International Trade Fair grounds known as Pragati Maidan (literally “the field of progress”).4 The term “basti” is Hindi for “settlement” and, following Menon-Sen and Bhan (2008), I adopt this usage in preference to “slum” in order to avoid spurious judgments regarding illegality, criminality, and lack of industriousness inherent within the latter term. Use of the term “slum” denies the fact that as home to workers, producers, and consumers, such spaces are “inextricably bound up with the morphology of the city” (Tarlo 2003: 15), and are “not so much marginal to [the city’s] history as marginalised by it” (ibid; emphasis in the original); the idea of illegality that attaches to slums is not, of course, applied in the same manner to residents of richer localities such as those that contain Delhi’s “farm houses”. “Considered in terms of the livelihoods of their households”, the basti of Nangla was among “the products of the strategies of low-income groups to position themselves in the labour, consumption and production sectors of the metropolis and the neighbourhood surrounding them” (Askew 2002: 143). The biographies I present here are narratives of modern histories of work and unemployment, settlement and displacement, intimacies and stranger-hood, and the myriad erratic cultural economies of the city through which poor women and men negotiate life, death and the pleasures and sufferings that fall in between. They are accounts from the cultural and economic margins of the city. However, they demonstrate that “margins” are “sites that do not so much lie outside the state but rather like rivers, run through its body” (Das and Poole 2004: 13). As narratives of “concrete practices in which life and labour are engaged” (ibid: 15), these life-stories are about the significance of the margins – both as life and labour – to the making of the centre. They concern the ways in which the metropolises of power, comfort, pleasure, and hygiene are built over, and through, the provinces of powerlessness, pain, suffering and displacement.
Chamkili Pradhan: Sakhi, Leader Stretching across approximately five acres of riverfront land in the shadows of the coal-fired Indraprastha power plant, Nangla rested on the fly ash remains of the raw material that lit up and warmed Delhi. The land had been the dumping ground for the plant’s waste products. By the time I got to know Nangla, in 2004, the ash had been cemented and bricked-over with houses, mosques, temples and narrow pathways, though pools of green-coloured liquid – discharge from the plant, I was told by some – still surrounded the basti on one side. But before the cement and the yellow-brick paths, Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
when the entire stretch was a sea of fly ash, there was Chamkili Pradhan.5 Almost everyone I met in Nangla told me that it was Chamkili who founded the settlement, and that she had been instrumental in settling people there from the late 1970s. When the first settlers began to arrive, the ash was exquisitely fine – like dull-coloured butterflies that slowly descended upon the riverbank and were easily stirred into swirling grey clouds by the slightest gust, flavouring all food, and smearing the freshly bathed. Chamkili Pradhan (literally, the “bright/shiny chief”) described herself as a sakhi, or literally, “girl-friend”. Kalu Ram, who owned a cigarette shop in Nangla, once said to me: “That hijra [eunuch] is called Chamkili Pradhan since she has the [illegal] contract for supplying electricity to Nangla. As long as I have known her, she has been the bijlee supplier.” There were two versions regarding how Chamkili came to be Nangla’s founder. In the first, she came to Delhi in the mid-1970s and worked for a contractor who built bundhs or embankments along the Yamuna. Though originally from Bihar, Chamkili had left her home state as a teenager in search of a job, moving to different parts of the country, finally to settle in Delhi. “At that time”, she told me, “there was no one at Nangla”. She built a hut for herself on the riverbank, not far from the original (and still existing) village of Nangla Matchi from where the basti got its name. In addition to building the Yamuna embankment, Chamkili had also worked in other parts of Delhi, including at Pragati Maidan. As she moved from one part of the city to another, she met individuals and families newly arrived in Delhi and told them to come to Nangla and set up home there. These families were keen to do so as the area is in a central location and very well connected to public transport. The second version regarding Chamkili’s arrival had it that she was employed as a driver for a prominent Congress politician who held the contract for collecting ash from the power plant and dumping it at Nangla. What is common to both accounts is that Chamkili would charge a “fee” for “allotting” a plot of land. No one could say how she was able to take money and give “permission” for new hutments to be built on land that, as everyone knew, was owned by the government. But then no one – not even the men – ever said anything about Chamkili’s obvious demeanour as a hijra, that she wore a sari but spoke in a heavy male voice, and that she wore large earrings and peppered every second sentence with expletives. In the manly world of basti pradhans, Chamkili held her own in Nangla as well as in those places and systems – police stations, for example – that impinge upon basti life. Nangla was a hybrid kind of space – not solid earth but fly ash, owned by the state but actually under Chamkili’s provenance, and within the city but also at its cultural and economic margins. A hijra as its progenitor was, then, an appropriate lineage. Of course, it may also say something about the levels of tolerance regarding gender and sexual identities in bastis that can be contrasted to the “heterosexist normativity” (Butler 1999: 186) of the wider city. A long time resident of Nangla told me that Chamkili, “could deal with anyone…the police were scared of her… if ever they wanted to arrest someone from the basti, they first went to ask for her permission… she would swear at them, and they would beat a hasty retreat!”. Chamkili Pradhan mentioned that her “ashram” was in the city of Vrindavan in Uttar Pradesh (UP) – the putative site of Krishna’s loveplay – where, she said, “hundreds of sadhus and sants [ascetics] are
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fed”. Chamkili had an aura of sacred power that was also part of her appeal to the people of Nangla, where the sacred sat alongside stories of witchcraft, headless men who hunt for children, and mysterious thieves in the night with thickly oiled bodies that evade all attempts at capture. Chamkili’s sacredness drew upon the ritual position of the hijra in Indian society (Nanda 1990; Reddy 2005), but also exceeded it inasmuch as she could, seemingly, best secular forces. In the city, you never knew which of your powers you may need to call upon.
Pradhan The word “pradhan” translates into “chief” or “head”, and the village pradhan headed the panchayat (the traditional all-male village council), settled disputes among villagers, and mediated between the village and higher levels of authority, such as regional or more powerful rulers. Virtually all bastis in Delhi have one or more pradhan, indicating a continuing familiarity with rural power structures, as well as their deployment within a hostile urban environment (see also Menon-Sen and Bhan 2008, on the role of the urban pradhan). The number of pradhans in any one basti depends upon competing ambitions as well as the politics of identity. So, several men may stake claim to being pradhan and possessing the capacity to mediate with the outside world on behalf of basti residents. The demonstration of such capacity – either consistently or in stray cases – can lead to these claimants being elected to the position, or being proclaimed pradhan by a group of basti residents. If there are several men who aspire to the position, then it is not unusual for a basti to have more than one pradhan, each with his own factional following, competing for authority and respect among residents and seeking to expand his sphere of influence. Attempts to “show-up” competitors are intense and never-ending; however, just as frequently, one pradhan may relinquish his title in favour of another, ceding his authority and following to the latter. Second, if a basti contains more than one ethnic community, as is common, then each community also elects its own pradhan, who may or may not recognise the authority of other pradhans in the locality (see also Jha, Rao and Woolcock 2007). The urban pradhan, usually a middle-aged man, is a master of the hybrid cultural and power economies of the city that relate to the poor; or at least that is what he tells his fellow residents, on behalf of whom he negotiates with the world beyond basti boundaries.6 Chamkili’s life-story is a combined history of the structures of power, and the erratic possibilities, half-chances, strategies and limitations that making a living for rural and the urban poor involve. Chamkili was pradhan of Nangla Matchi for a period of seven years, having been elected three times by popular vote. Basti pradhans have specific qualities, those located on a continuum that includes charisma, kindred warmth, persistence, and the ability to issue promissory notes that have no maturity date. They must always promise to get things done, and must simultaneously have a bagful of reasons for lack of success. Their position in the urban political economy – economically marginal inhabitants of the city, illegal occupiers of “public property”, among others – makes it impossible to fulfil all promises. When elections come around and politicians ask for a truck-full of votes in return for paved roads or delaying basti demolition, then the pradhan is on surer grounds in terms of her power. Otherwise, she must constantly dissimulate.
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Pradhans usually have a modicum of education, and, most importantly, a deep familiarity with the bureaucratic geography of the city. Their city is occupied by the premises of Ministry of Food and Supplies (that deals with the variety of ration cards for purchasing food at subsidised rates) and that of urban development, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi, slum bureaucracies, the DDA, offices that issue voters identification cards, police stations, court houses, and offices of politicians. Not only must the pradhan be intimate with these official geographies, he must also know how to gain access to their corridors, offices and cubicles. Gaining access to such spaces is usually quite a difficult affair, and a pradhan must also be versed in the arts of passing and faking in order to inveigle the sentries of such spaces into allowing entry. Indeed, the ability to convince those who guard the portals of bureaucratic power that someone who looks and talks like a poor person might actually carry some indefinable weight of authority – “perhaps he knows someone who knows someone” – is worth many votes in basti elections. The pradhan, and those who would aspire to be pradhan, must move across a number of erratic and uncertain contexts of making contacts and connections. She must carefully map out those interstices within bureaucratic checkpoints where strategies of dissimulation can secure access to the offices of key officials. In the midst of a neo-liberal state that seeks to build a “global city” by removing the working poor from it, the pradhan – in her deep intimacy with the state – is the unexpected Nehruvian urban subject. She knows that at the edges of bureaucratic and political formations, and at those points where these meet the basti, there are ways of gaining access through the seemingly impenetrable walls of permission slips and departmental checkpoints. That is what makes a pradhan.
Connections By the time I met her in early 2005, however, Chamkili was no longer a pradhan. In fact, she no longer lived in Nangla and occasionally visited to keep an eye on the electricity business that had become a significant source of her income.7 By then, there were several people who were referred to as “pradhanji”. The people of Nangla recognised three distinct settlements within the locality – Devi Nagar (the earliest), Sant Nagar and Kali Basti. Different pradhans tended to have uneven jurisdiction over these areas. The population in Sant Nagar and Kali Basti was quite mixed, both in terms of religion and place of origin, whereas Devi Nagar was predominantly Muslim. It was in Devi Nagar that Chamkili began her “settlement” activities. At the time of its demolition in 2006, Nangla had a population of approximately 25,000. Before coming to Delhi, Chamkili had worked for a company that manufactured electricity transformers and poles in the town of Panki, near Kanpur. She travelled around India as member of the group that installed the equipment. “I have helped to supply electri city to all parts of the country”, she once told me. By the time she arrived in Delhi in the late 1970s, she was worldly-wise: her search for a living had taken her all over the country, she had acquired a modicum of technical expertise through making and installing transformers and other electrical equipment, and had met a wide variety of people with whom she learnt to defend and negotiate her ambiguous gender identity. In Delhi, Chamkili utilised her rapidly growing urban connections to secure a “contract” for supplying december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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electricity to parts of the burgeoning Nangla basti. She installed a mini-transformer in her pucca house, bought electricity from the Delhi Electric Supply Undertaking (DESU), the government-owned electricity body, and sold it at a profit to Nangla residents. Chamkili was one of three such contractors in Nangla. According to Nassim, who owned a small teashop, Chamkili had got the electri city contract during the chief ministership of the Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) Madan Lal Khurana (1993-95); Chamkili had been a BJP supporter and activist for quite some time. After some years of sole ownership, she went into partnership with another Nangla resident, Bilkees Begum. Nassim mentioned that a few years ago, some DESU officials had come to Nangla and charged everyone Rs 320 for permanent and direct electricity connections, bypassing private suppliers such as Chamkili. However, he said, Chamkili used her political connections to ensure that the government supply did not materialise. The cost per unit in 2005 was Rs 3.50 which, many residents complained, was far more expensive than in other parts of Delhi. Around 2002, Chamkili moved out of Nangla, appointing a man everyone called “masterji” – he provided private tuition to schoolchildren – to look after her electricity business. Masterji supervised new connections, the maintenance of the equipment, and the collection of tariff. Chamkili visited about once a fortnight to collect the money. She built a house near Sonia Vihar in the northern extremities of Delhi, about 40 kilometres from Nangla. She also started a real estate business there. Nassim thought that Chamkili had been aware that Nangla would be demolished and so bought elsewhere. Others said that Chamkili and some others were directly responsible for the demolition by getting residents to take part in the government survey that determined who would be eligible for alternative land in a proposed resettlement colony near the village of SavdaGhevda, some 40 kilometres away, on the northern edges of Delhi.8 These informants thought that the pradhans had been bought off by the same politicians who in the past had saved the basti from demolition as it was an important vote bank (see also Batra and Mehra 2008; Risbud 2009). However, they added, the government agency that owned the land (and wanted it back) paid the politicians, who paid the pradhans, who, in turn, convinced many in Nangla that it was in their interests to be “surveyed”, paving the way for the basti’s demolition. For instance, Suraj Chandra, a former pradhan of Nangla, now living in Savda-Ghevda, said that:9 Well, we didn’t know who owned the land on which Nangla was located. However, later we found out that in 1986 or so, Pragati Power Company had paid [named three prominent Congress Party politicians, an MP (Member of Parliament), an MLA (Member of Legislative Assembly), and a municipal corporation functionary] around nine crores to buy the land from the DDA …. However, Delhi Jal [Water] Board also put up a sign that part of the land was theirs. Then we found out that that the land actually belonged to the people of Nangla village nearby. … Now there is a case going on between the village residents and Pragati Power. That’s why nothing has been built upon that land. There was a dispute over the property when it was being demolished and if we had known, they could not have removed us.
Erratic Passages Sonia Vihar, where Chamkili now lived, lies at the north-eastern extremity of Delhi, on the banks of the Yamuna River, near the locality of Wazirabad. Located at the border with UP, it is perhaps best known as the location of a large-scale water treatment plant that is Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
touted as the solution to Delhi’s perpetual water shortages. The locality is an extended settlement of red brick pucca houses, small shops, repair workshops, and small-scale factories. Chamkili’s own house was a triple-storey structure, with a single room at the top. It had high ceilings, and religious posters stuck to the wall almost at ceiling level. The house was surrounded by farmlands. Normally, I would run into Chamkili as she rushed around Nangla collecting dues for her electricity business. My visit to her Sonia Vihar residence was the first chance I had of meeting her at leisure. I began by saying that I had heard that she had a reputation as a very successful businessperson. But she interrupted me, saying that she started her working life in a sarkari naukari (government job) in the electricity department in Dehradun”, later moving to work on “electric trains”. She then joined a “company” that offered to send her to Saudi Arabia as a practitioner of Unani medicine, in which she had undertaken a course of study. However, this did not work out:10 The company used to train people to become doctors and then send them to videsh [foreign lands]. But [about me] the company said “this man has an illness”, so we can’t send him overseas, so I left and moved to Kanpur.
Chamkili’s erratic passages across professional and geographical registers reflect the conditions of life for many in her situation. Additionally, as a poor sakhi, she was disadvantaged both on economic and sexual grounds. In Kanpur, Chamkili joined the Swadeshi Cotton Mills:11 At the time, Morarji Desai was the Prime Minister, and there had been firing by the PAC [Provincial Armed Constabulary], so I left that job and I managed to get a job in DDA …then I left that job and got a job at Pragati Maidan, as a chaukidar [security guard], whereas in the DDA, I used to work as a gardener. At Pragati Maidan, I worked in Karnataka [state pavilion] as a chaukidar during trade exhibitions.
The “firing” that Chamkili speaks of most likely refers to an unprovoked attack by the police on striking workers at the Swadeshi Cotton Mills in Kanpur on 6 December 1977 (Chakravarty, Roy and Saberwal 1978). It is not clear whether Chamkili ever actually worked for a government department or for contractors who supplied a department. Her position both at the DDA and Pragati Maidan was most likely as casual daily wage labourer. Indeed, Pragati Maidan was a significant source of casual (or kachcha) employment for many residents of Nangla when they first arrived in Delhi. Later, in the mid-1970s, a major strike at Pragati Maidan resulted in permanent jobs for some, and retrenchment for others. Chamkili’s invocation of the sarkar (government/state) as part of her professional biography was significant in the context of the precarious job market for rural migrants to the city. Everyone at Nangla knew that Chamkili had once been a “government officer”, and hence was a person of some importance. Just as the state is pronounced a blight for its arbitrary and opaque dealings with its citizens, there is also simultaneously a desire for its intimacy and gaze. And, just as the ambivalence of Chamkili’s gender identity was counterbalanced by her past as a state “official”, her professional biography converted easily into a personal one: Chamkili could “handle” the state because having worked for the state, she had secured some of its aura. The aura of the state derives, in part but significantly, from its ability to lay claim to land, as well as the ability to allow or restrict
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its usage. In the late 19th century, the colonial state was quick to declare vast tracts in Delhi as Nazul (“crown”) land, thus proclaiming an unambiguous spatial sovereignty. Moving within the axes of a subaltern modernity of modest technical expertise, postcolonial hybrid corporatism, the developmentalist state and its public works, and an ambiguous gender and sexual identity, Chamkili’s passage from itinerant job seeker to urban bada aadmi (literally “big man”) also unfolded through spatial politics. Upon arriving in Delhi, she met a man called “Arjun”, who “lived at Turkman Gate” in Old Delhi. Arjun was a contractor and “involved in the construction of a pushta [stone embankment] from the Wazirabad bridge to Badarpur”:12 …and I started working there. There were other labourers who then started living on what is now Devi Nagar. Then, slowly, others began to arrive. In this manner, I started settling people. They came from Bihar, Bengal, UP, Madras, and many other places. Slowly, I got plans passed for the kharanja [brick-paved laneway], public toilets, water connection, ration cards… I got the place settled…. Then, the netas [politicians] started coming and vote cards [election identity cards] were made, and eventually things became pucca [i e, there was greater certainty].
The fragile certainty of basti life – oscillating between politicians’ promises, court judgments ordering their removal, and middle-class aspirations for a global city – came to an end in June 2006, when Nangla was demolished. It is the difficult task of the pradhan to make the illusion of permanence last. Everyone loves suspense, though some pay more for it than others. Almost all my conversations with Chamkili drifted towards stories of her kindness towards those around her. She was, she suggested in different ways, both a protector against the state’s depredations, as well as a translator of its rules and regulations. If bureaucracies savage the hapless, they also make for the creation of the web of neighbourhoods, kin-like relationships and intimacies of various kinds. She narrated how she arranged for electricity and water supply, built temples, paved the lane-ways, fought with exploitative contractors and the police on behalf of residents, and performed “dharnas” (or sit-ins) against demolition.
Desire and Distance The basti that rose out of the ashes of the power plant had a complex relationship to the spaces represented by the plant, the pucca localities and the state. It is one aligned to narratives of desire as well as distance from the state. Both Tarlo (2003) and Das (2004) urge that the manner in which we think about the relationship between the poor and structures of state power must move beyond the sterile binary of “passive victims” and “heroic rebels”. However, given the inescapable relationship between the poor and the state, it is a relationship that does not quite present in the same manner as for other class fractions in the city. While Tarlo is right to point out that the market “far from operating outside the state, often features as the vernacular idiom through which ordinary people negotiate with local agents of the state” (2003: 12), for basti people, the market is a via media rather than destination. That is, it is the state that is the most significant site for the dramas and desires of having, being, relating, consuming, acquiring, and social mobility. Basti residents are statists in an unwitting manner. The market only seeks their attention when they display the ability to consume. However, even as basti residents are at the mercy of the unpredictable pastoralism of the state, there is
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also great disdain for its corrupt and arbitrary ways (Osella and Osella 2000). Given this context, as I discuss in the concluding section, there is an identity politics that is in the nature of a relay between “statism” and “communitarianism”. This suggests another line of theorising beyond the victim/rebel dichotomy. Chamkili would repeatedly tell me how the mahaul (or atmosphere) in Nangla had deteriorated. Whereas “earlier”, the police hardly visited the locality, “now they are there twenty-four hours”. However, the regulatory presence of the state was not its only form. For, “the police used to come and demolish [the jhuggis]; this would keep happening, and we would rebuild”. But now the mahaul had become so bad, Chamkili insisted, that the only solution lay in another act of state: it was now best to demolish the locality. The state, simultaneously a site for all that was good and bad, was ultimately inescapable. “All those who say that they will not allow the ‘survey’ to proceed” [in the hope that this may stall demolition], she said, “are only fooling themselves. Is there anything that can stand in the way of the will of the sarkar?” I have noted earlier that Chamkili was a member of the BJP, and that she became an electricity contractor during the reign of a BJP-led state government in Delhi. So, during this period, and at least for Chamkili, the nation and the sarkar coalesced into a coherent and favourable configuration. However, ironically, it was the intense presence of the state in her life (and in that of fellow basti dwellers) that precluded any straightforward relationship with it. I asked Chamkili if she thought the BJP would come back into power. She replied:13 It’s going to come back like a giant wave, all over India. They lost because they opposed foreign capitalists… also because of coalition politics…this [names senior BJP politician] is no good, that sister-fucker… mother fucker, he is of the [names ethnic group] community… when you were 15, did you ever hear of Babri Masjid? Instead of making a mandir or a masjid, they could have just made a government hospital, and anyone could go there… Nowadays the country is full of Muslims from Bangladesh…the politicians only want votes, whether it’s [from] Pakistanis or Bangladeshis… how will they fly in their helicopters if they don’t get the votes? But one day, Ravan will be punished…Kans was killed one day, Hitler was gotten rid of one day…
It is perhaps appropriate that statist, national, party-political, ethnic, mythic, communal, xenophobic and transnational imagery intermingles in the same discursive breath. For it is the double bind of the relationship with the state – wanting and not wanting its embrace – that engenders both the intensity of the relationship as well as the desire to “expose” its duplicity and ferocity across multiple registers. If it is to the state that one must turn for securing bodily, territorial, legal, and sexual integrity, then the relationship with it is bound to be of a loving hatefulness. Chamkili said:14 I came to Delhi at the time when Indira Gandhi had imposed nasbandi [enforced sterilisation, see Tarlo 2003] and chakbandi [“land consolidation”, referring to slum demolitions]… during the Emergency… the mahaul was wonderful… there was no robbery and thieving … the police didn’t hassle anyone, there were no terrorists…. During nasbandi, the poor didn’t suffer in Delhi, though they may have outside Delhi…even if something had happened, I really don’t know…. I mean when I didn’t suffer at all, what can I tell you?
Under Suspicion: Bilkees Begum There are, however, others who are more willing to speak of the suffering that accompanies intimacy with the state. Bilkees Begum, who had earlier shared in the electricity contract business with december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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Chamkili was one of them. I met Bilkees Begum in 2005 during preparations for a rally to welcome the newly elected chief minister of Bihar, Nitish Kumar, to Delhi. I had been wanting to meet her for quite some time, but none of the men I had become friendly with had ever offered to introduce me, despite the fact that she was an elected pradhan. Bilkees’s position within Nangla society outlines a narrative of gender and ethnicity within the political economy of the city’s margins. Her identity as a Muslim female Bihari pradhan was at the centre of her struggle to exert authority and gain respect. Nangla residents were informed soon after his election in November 2005 that Nitish Kumar was coming to Delhi. Bilkees Begum gathered a large group that was to form a welcoming party at the airport. As others clambered on to mini-vans, Bilkees directed me to a Maruti Gypsy vehicle owned by the district chairman of the Janata Dal (JD), the political party to which Kumar belonged. We were told to proceed to the party office in Connaught Place in central New Delhi. Sitting in the front seat and giving the driver directions, Bilkees was in charge. We reached the JD office and waited for instructions on proceeding to the airport. Amid all the hubbub, I found Bilkees sitting in one corner of the office compound and asked if she knew when we were to go to the airport. She shrugged. Here in Connaught Place, Bilkees seemed lost, bereft of the bluster and self-confidence I had seen at Nangla. We finally left for the airport around 4 pm, along with another truck-full of “supporters” from another part of Delhi. Bilkees mentioned that she was earlier with the BJP, and had now “joined” the Janata Dal. En route, our convoy got lost as no one appeared to know the way to the domestic airport where Nitish Kumar was arriving. “What is ‘domestic’?” Bilkees asked me, as we wound our way around the pylons of the (then) under-construction Delhi-Gurgaon toll-way. At the airport neither Bilkees nor any of her followers knew when Nitish Kumar was to arrive. It was getting dark and there was still no sign of the politician. Then, suddenly, a man was heard shouting from a gate that was some distance from where we stood: “He is here! He is here!” “There?”, Bilkees turned around to me, “what gate is that?” It was the VIP gate. We ran towards it. Police sirens sounded, the gate opened, and a cavalcade of white Ambassador cars drove out. We caught a fleeting glimpse of Nitish Kumar as he went past and, in a flash he was gone. Bilkees just about managed to throw some flowers in the direction of the speeding vehicles. “Garibon ka masiha!” she muttered to no one in particular. By now, the vehicles that had been part of our cavalcade had also disappeared and the Nangla group scrambled to find the nearest truck to take it back home. Bilkees said she did not want to miss the truck, as she did not know the way back from the airport.
Female and Pradhan In Nangla, Bilkees had a double-storied, and, by Nangla standards, very commodious house. She lived with her husband, four sons, their wives, and a daughter. Two of her sons worked for her in her electricity redistribution business. During our first meeting at her house – soon after the airport visit – Bilkees was besieged by an unending stream of visitors with a variety of requests: help with getting new identity card made, replacement of lost ration Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
cards, removing “encroachers” from property, etc. To each, she offered a terse word or two, before dismissing them from her presence: “have you been to the Food and Supply office?”, “did you not know you had to fill this form in triplicate?”, and, “why did you go to those bastards [the police], rather than come to me?” About 45 minutes into our conversation, she fixed me with a stare, and said “now, tell me who you really are. Someone told me that you work at a university, but I told him that that’s not your real identity, and I know that I am right.” I was taken aback, as much at the image I might have presented, as Bilkees’s forceful directness. I asked her who she thought I was: “You’re a CBI [Central Bureau of Investigation] agent!” she said, “I can tell”. I spent the next half-hour explaining who I was. “CBI” and “vigilance people”, Bilkees told me, are very frequent visitors to bastis such as Nangla. They come, she said, to collect information on “terrorists” and other “security” issues. And, she added, “they look more or less like you”. In the past, some of them had accused her of hoarding arms, selling drugs, and being a “Pakistani agent, because I am Muslim”. But, she said, “I know so many CBI and vigilance people myself, and they never believe these accusations against me”. Bilkees came to Delhi from Bihar in the late 1970s and her sister Razia Begum was married to local resident Ranjan Kumar, who converted to Islam in order to marry Razia. In the last elections for pradhan, Bilkees defeated Suraj Chandra for the position; Suraj Chandra maintained that this was because she was Bihari and now “Nangla [was] 50% Bihari”. Though elected the pradhan of Nangla, Bilkees had to compete with others of equal – though unelected – rank in dealing with the state on behalf of her fellow residents. In addition to negotiating (to whatever extent possible) with the state, pradhans also seek to mimic it. So both Suraj and Bilkees frequently carried out a variety of surveys that asked for different kinds of information, blurring the line between the disciplinary and classificatory practices of the state and individualised attempts to sequester some of its aura. Sometimes the survey was for the “issue of new ration cards” and at others for “making new identity cards”. Bilkees’ surveys were located within the contexts of kinship, neighbourliness, conjugal arrangements and other domestic details, property rights, and ethnic and religious identities, positioning her as a progenitor of the different worlds of urban possibilities. The surveys also established her as someone with the capacity to mediate and establish connections between these worlds and the state: the surveys were robust promises of putative entitlements. Within the confines of Nangla, my most enduring memory of Bilkees is of a booming voice, a slim erect body, long confident strides, and expletives that carried to the boundaries of the basti. Even as she coaxed her Nangla neighbours to part with a variety of information based on her status as quotidian compatriot and classificatory kin, no one quite knew how the information thus gathered was to be used. But hardly anyone ever refused. There was always some survey or another at Nangla, each offering the hope of recognition by the state, contextualised by a deep – and potentially empowering – desire for classification; to be surveyed was to have proof of entitlement. The uncertain validity of the processes through which the information was gathered hardly affected craving for the certainty that the survey promised.
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It was as if the acts of surveying and gathering information transformed Bilkees into a powerful male, exercising control and guiding the destinies of her fellow residents. Her situational masculinity was, however, frequently disputed. The questions mostly asked concerned her ability to pass as male within the multiple geographies of power she sought to occupy. One day, Suraj Chandra gleefully related a tale that, to him, demonstrated the pitfalls of operating in that porous zone of mimicry and impersonation where knowledge of borders – of identity and processes – was crucial. It concerned a survey Bilkees had carried out to enable a group from Nangla to apply for a below poverty line (BPL) card issued by the government to enable holders to purchase food and other household items from government-controlled ration shops at below-market rates. Having gathered the information required to complete the application procedure, Bilkees marked the application forms with a newly acquired stamp that said “Bilkees Begum, Pradhan”. However, according to Suraj, the examining subdivisional magistrate (SDM) “objected saying that government stationary was made void if stamped by a non-government authority”. So, after that, “people realised that they had made a mistake in electing someone like Bilkees”. Seeking to consolidate her several identities – mediator with the state, urban potentate of diverse basti worlds, classificatory male – through an insignia of uncertain authority, Bilkees suffered a symbolic setback. She had not so much overstepped her authority as pradhan – for such faux symbols of authority are common enough – as transgressed the rules of gender. I will return to this theme in the concluding section of this essay.
Rakesh Kumar: From Journeyman to Man of Means Beyond the contested arenas of political leadership, there are, of course, other strategies of sustenance that have something to say about relationships between “community”, state and commerce. Rakesh Kumar, around 52 years of age, came to Delhi around 1972 from Meerut in western UP. Rakesh’s father had worked as a “composer” in a printing company. However, in mid-life, he lost his job as a result of “union-baji” (trade-unionism). When Rakesh came to Delhi he had recently completed studying until class VIII and his father wanted him to learn “composing” as well. However, he wanted to be a “businessman”.15 Rakesh set up a small stall near Town Hall in the Chandni Chowk (Old Delhi) area, where he sold stationary and handkerchiefs. He was convinced that he had launched himself on successful career. However, Indira Gandhi put paid to that aspiration. When Emergency was declared in 1975, the Old Delhi area particularly suffered the brunt of the slum clearance drives initiated by Sanjay Gandhi and overseen by the then vice-chairman of the DDA, Jagmohan. The street traders of Chandni Chowk were also drawn into the demolitions net; Rakesh remembers being severely beaten by the police as part of the drive to cleanse the footpaths of “encroachments”. Soon after, he had to abandon his stall. Now unemployed, Rakesh decided to complete matriculation. However, after four years of further study, and with a matriculation certificate in hand, he was no closer to finding a permanent job. Desperately short of money, Rakesh took up plying a cyclerickshaw. However, “being educated”, he soon managed to get a three-wheeler autorickshaw licence and worked as an autorickshaw
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driver for about 20 years. As he ferried passengers around the city, he would engage them in conversation. What did they do? Where did they live? Were they, like him, migrants to Delhi? What was a good business to be in? Could they tell him anything about other ways of making money? The erratic traffic of conversation between Rakesh and his passengers led to the next rung of Rakesh’s career in the city. “Someone” told him about the Kuber Finance corporation, a “chit fund” company that had a huge clientele among the urban poor. He joined the company as an “agent”, charged with securing “investment” funds from the residents of Delhi’s bastis. This was in 1997. He says he got the company “a lot of business” by convincing many in the bastis to invest their savings in fixed deposit in return for the promise that it would “triple in three years”. “The basti people”, Rakesh told me, “had a great deal of faith in someone who was just like them”, and the business prospered. He quit his autorickshaw job in order to devote more time to it. During the first year of his job with Kuber, everything went according to plan: there were an increasing number of clients, and the company gave him frequent bonuses. Then, sometime in late 1998, government regulators discovered several “irregularities” in Kuber’s business practices and the apex regulatory body, the Reserve Bank of India, ordered it to close business (Mathew 1999). More importantly, it appeared that Kuber was not in a position to pay back either the principal or any returns to its investors. Almost overnight, the company shut its doors. Thousands of investors – including those in bastis – suffered very significant financial losses. Rakesh lost about Rs 50,000. When Kuber folded, Rakesh Kumar was back on the streets. However, as Rakesh once noted, “something good also happened during this time”: around 1988, he had met an Assamese woman who was living with her relatives in Delhi. She mentioned that she was having “problems” with them and turned to Rakesh for advice. They got to know each other well, resulting in a “love marriage”. Shanti, his wife, trained to be a crèche worker and became part of a government scheme to run a crèche in Nangla. At the time of the demolitions, she looked after 30 children. Since around 2000, Rakesh has mostly been unemployed, surviving on odd jobs and “fees” for “social work” such as filling out forms and directing and accompanying fellow basti dwellers to various government offices. This had been the most specific outcome of his enhanced education.
Real Estate Ironically, it was the demolition of Nangla Matchi that led to an unexpected but highly lucrative source of employment for Rakesh. In May 2006, before the Nangla demolitions began, Rakesh and some of his friends decided to visit the village of Savda-Ghevda where, they had heard, they were to be relocated. I was invited to join them and six of us make our way there on an autorickshaw. Savda-Ghevda is at the northern end of Delhi, off the highway that leads to Rohtak – beyond the metro line, the shopping malls, the traffic lights, regular bus services, schools, hospitals, police stations and government offices. Coming off the highway, the autorickshaw turned off onto a dirt road, coming to a stop near some bulldozers and roadrollers. december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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We saw men measuring the ground and inserting pegs at different distances. It was vast open farmland. A Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) board told us that around 265 acres of land were to be used for “transit camps” and a resettlement colony for about 22,000 families. We approached a man to ask if land had been allotted for Nangla people. He said no. He was an assistant engineer of the MCD Slum Wing. Two men approached us and wanted to know about the locality. They said that they were interested in buying kachchi parchis (temporary documents indicating entitlement) from allottees. They were real estate dealers. In the past few weeks, Rakesh and his friends had been saying that Savda was “the other end of the world” and that, among other things, they would find it very difficult to find schools for their children. However, as we now walked around the locality, the group began to change its opinion. Rakesh said that the place was a far better deal than, say, the resettlement colony of Bawana in northwest Delhi: it was closer to urban localities, and there was a rail-line nearby that connected to Delhi. By the end of the visit, everyone felt quite pleased about the place, and the prospect of moving there. In January 2007, I was sitting with Rakesh at Savda where he has been allotted a plot. He had built a temporary shack on it but did not live there. Instead, he had taken a room on rent outside the resettlement colony. There was a vacant plot of land right next to his shack. Rakesh was hoping that he would be able to buy it. As we wandered around the locality, he pointed out various plots and current prices. Corner plots were particularly valued, as were adjoining plots that were vacant and could be made into “judwa” (twins) and sold either for a shop or for someone to build a larger house. Plots on the main road fetched the highest prices. There was now an active real estate market: many original allottees had never moved in and had sold their “pink” (allotment) slips to dealers, others had sold and moved closer to their place of work; still others had sold and gone back to their villages. Rakesh had become a real estate dealer. He said he tried to convince people not to sell and to ride out the tough times, because “Savda [would] become as well-connected as Nangla”, especially now that there was a metro line around six kilometres from the settlement. However, if they still wanted to sell, he bought their plot with money borrowed from a “financier”. When selling, he got a small cut. He told me that this was the “best investment” and asked me to seriously consider putting some money into it, as many “middle-class” people from nearby localities had done. He was happy to act on my behalf. He said he was now fully occupied with his new business. He flourished a “receipt book” that had rows and columns for listing the names of buyers and sellers, the amount of deposit paid, amounts to be forfeited in case either party decided not to go ahead, and dates of “settlement”. But buying and selling land here is illegal, right?” I asked him. Yes, he said, of course, “but I mainly get my information on what is available via MCD officials. So, we are all in it together.” Between the Chandni Chowk footpath, the Nangla dislocation, and settlement at Savda, Rakesh had learnt to mimic both the state and the market. The real estate negotiations produced a curiously warm sociality, for Rakesh mostly bought plots from those he had known well and who were now in financial distress. An ex-resident of Nangla, who had been lent money by Rakesh for medical treatment, Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
eventually offered his plot as he was unable to pay back the loan. He repeatedly spoke of Rakesh’s “kindness” in agreeing to the transaction. In a hostile urban world, better to suffer the ravages of one’s acquaintances and further cement ties of community, than be exploited by strangers and get “nothing” in return; basti residents, as Menon-Sen and Bhan point out, seek out “friends and family members”, as “preferred” providers of credit (2008: 133). By the end of 2007, Rakesh owned two plots of land, one through the original allotment and the second bought from another man who wanted to sell to go back to his village. The second plot was near the main road and hence more valuable. “The best way to make money”, he told me, “is through buying and selling land”. As we walked around the locality, he stopped to chat to another man on a scooter who told him about the availability of saleable land in Savda. “If I had more money to spare”, he said, “I would invest it all in land in Savda”. Plots of land which were given by the government at Rs 7,000 were, in 2007, selling for up to Rs two lakh, if they happened to be near one of the main roads that ran through the locality. There were no pucca roads yet, but a flourishing real estate market.
Conclusion: Between the State and the Community Within bastis such as Nangla Matchi, those who acted as the state – the pradhans, for example – did so in a manner in which they both deferred to it, as well as treated it as an unwanted accretion upon the “real” community or the samaj. Aditya Nigam suggested that “[t]he spatial organisation, as well as the specific histories of [Delhi’s poorer neighbourhoods]… ensures a kind of life where a community existence is reproduced on a daily basis and one that stands in sharp contrast to the atomised existence of middle-class and affluent sections of the city” (2002: 26). The remaining part of this discussion seeks to extend this insight through a modification. I will suggest that basti life is characterised by contexts of intimate entanglements with one’s neighbours that produce the basti as different from as well as linked to the “formal” (here, the state) machinations that surround it. The imagination that produces the basti as of the city but also beyond it makes for a situation of state mimicry as well as a rejection of the state in favour of community life. Let us return to Bilkees Begum – the woman who would be a man – to comment on this aspect. Suraj Chandra’s comment on Bilkees’s abilities (or, rather, their lack) was linked to a number of long-running disputes between the two. This mise en scène tells us something about the strategies of moving between ideas of the state and the samaj. Sometime in 2003, a woman had come to seek Suraj Chandra’s help, stating that her plot of land in Nangla had been “taken over” by a group that claimed allegiance to Bilkees. Sensing a political opportunity, Suraj and some of his followers filed a police complaint against Bilkees. Bilkees, who never tired of telling me about her contacts with “the police and CBI officials”, retaliated by filing a counter-complaint against Suraj, accusing him of the murder of the woman’s husband. The husband had indeed been murdered some years ago, and the police had been unable to solve the crime. His body lay in wait for Bilkees to conjure its ghost to her cause. In April 2005, a meeting was called to resolve the imbroglio. It was presided over by Sohrab, a man in his early-40s. Sohrab began
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by informing the gathering he was earlier a resident of Nangla and now lived elsewhere. “In 1987”, he said, “I lived here and ate raakh [ash]… but now I am a rich contractor and employ 200 people.” He lived near Nehru Stadium, and had come to mediate between Suraj and Bilkees as he “spoke on no one’s behalf”. What interests me in the following is not Sohrab’s dispute resolution skills. Rather, it is Bilkees’s contingent self-positioning as an active agent in the interstices of the state and the samaj. Sohrab began by asking about the dispute between Bilkees and Suraj. The latter responded that Bilkees had been carrying out a number of surveys “without permission from anyone”. There was now an argument between Sohrab and Suraj, with the latter suggesting that Sohrab favoured Bilkees. Suraj went on to say that neither Sohrab nor Bilkees could be trusted (perhaps because they were co-religionists?) “Do you follow the rule of law”, he asked, addressing Sohrab and Bilkees. “I do”, said Sohrab, “but if nothing else works, I use force, I have 200 londas [hefty young men] to back me”. Bilkees smiled, nodding. The implied violence in the term “londa”, as Cohen (1995) points out, is infused with masculine sexual meanings. Specifically, it Notes 1 Annual Administration Report of the Delhi Province for 1937-38 (Delhi: Government of India), pp 26-27. 2 The Birla Committee pointed out that the DIT’s strategy of selling land to the highest bidder had only exacerbated the “housing problem” (1951:4), that “slum clearance” should only take place once alternative accommodation had been found for the evictees (not always the practice with DIT), and that evictees should be resettled at sites not far from their place of work. See Birla Committee (1951): Report of the Delhi Improvement Trust Enquiry Committee, Volume I (New Delhi: Government of India Press). 3 “Proposed Transfer of Ganga Sahai, son of Kanori Aheria from the Aligarh district to the Delhi district”, File 189/1938/General/Delhi State Archives. 4 The fieldwork on which this article is based took place between 2005 and 2008 at a variety of sites, of which Nangla Basti was the most significant. 5 All names of persons have been changed. 6 However, the claim by Jha, Rao and Woolcock (2007) that the urban pradhan furthers the ends of participatory democracy for the urban poor seems somewhat impressionistic. 7 Nangla residents estimated Chamkili’s income to be around Rs 40,000 per month 8 The pre-demolition survey is one of the most momentous events in the life of a basti, engendering fear, anxiety, hope and a variety of relationships with the state. See Batra and Mehra (2008) for a discussion of the survey and other processes leading up to demolition and eviction. 9 Interview, 2 May 2007. 10 Interview, 15 March 2006. 11 Interview, 15 March 2006. 12 Interview, 6 April 2006. 13 Interview, 6 April 2006. 14 Interview, 6 April 2006. 15 Interview, 8 November 2005.
References Askew, Marc (2002): Bangkok: Place, Practice and Representation (London and New York: Routledge). Baviskar, Amita (2006): “Demolishing Delhi: World Class City in the Making”, Mute, 5 September. Accessed 27 July 2009: http://www.metamute.org/ en/Demolishing-Delhi
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combines the contexts of masculine “fun and violence” (see, for example, Verkaaik 2004). As the arguments for and against different positions unfolded, Bilkees sat pensively in one corner of the hut. Finally, Sohrab turned to her, and then to Suraj: “what I can’t understand”, he said, “is why you had taken recourse to the law and not solved this problem at a samajik [community] level”. Bilkees – the bearer of the pradhan rubber-stamp, police confidante, and overseer of countless faux surveys – smiled expansively. “Exactly”, she said; there are times when you must become the state, and at others convey your role as guardian of community, at one with it. For it is the community that possesses the norms and standards of behaviour, whereas the state is seen as “inherently corrupt” and without any norms (Osella and Osella 2000: 150). For basti residents, the search for intimacy with the state and assertions of distance from it constitute enmeshed strategies of securing the material means of life as well as the emotional comforts of fellow-feeling in a hostile urban environment. This constant calibration of identity – the relay between strategic statism and quotidian communitarianism – is the irreducible condition of life at the margins of the city.
Batra, Lalit and Diya Mehra (2008): “Slum Demolitions and the Production of Neo-liberal Space” in Darshini Mahadevia (ed.), Inside the Transforming Asia: Processes, Policies and Public Actions (New Delhi: Concept). Brown, Judith (2009): “Historians and Biography: ‘Life Histories’ and the History of Modern Asia”, American Historical Review, 114(3): 587-95. Butler, Judith (1999): Gender Trouble. Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New York: Routledge). Chakravarty, Nikhil, A K Roy and Satish Saberwal (1978): Report on Kanpur Killing (Citizens’ Committee for Inquiry into Kanpur Massacre: New Delhi). Cohen, Lawrence (1995): “Holi in Banaras and the Mahaland of Modernity”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 2(4): 399-424. Das, Veena (2004): “The Signature of the State: The Paradox of Illegibility” in V Das and D Poole (ed.), Anthropology in the Margins of the State (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 225-52. Das, Veena and Deborah Poole (2004): “State and Its Margins: Comparative Ethnographies” in V Das and D Poole (ed.), Anthropology in the Margins of the State (New Delhi: Oxford University Press), 3-33. Dasappa Kacker, Suneetha (2005): “The DDA and the Idea of Delhi” in Romi Khosla (ed.), The Idea of Delhi (Mumbai: Marg). Dupont, Veronique (2000): “Spatial and Demographic Growth of Delhi and the Main Migration Flows, in Delhi” in V Dupont, E Tarlo and D Vidal (ed.), Delhi: Urban Space and Human Destinies (Delhi: Manohar – Centre de Sciences Humaines). Hosagrahar, Jyoti (2007): “Negotiated Modernity: Symbolic Terrains of Housing in New Delhi” in Peter Scriver and Vikramaditya Prakash (ed.), Colonial Modernities: Building, Dwelling and Architecture in British India and Ceylon (Routledge: London and New York). Jha, Saumitra, Vijayendra Rao and Michael Woolcock (2007): “Governance in the Gullies: Democratic Responsiveness and Leadership in Delhi’s Slums”, World Development, 35 (2): 230-46. King, Anthony (1976): Colonial Urban Development: Culture, Social Power, and Environment (London: Routledge). Legg, Stephen (2007): Spaces of Colonialism: Delhi’s Urban Governmentalities (Oxford: Blackwell).
Mathew, George (1999): “Kuber Group Firms Heading for Liquidation”, Indian Express, 17 April. Mehra, Ajay (1991): The Politics of Urban Redevelopment: A Study of Old Delhi (New Delhi: Sage). Menon-Sen, Kalyani and Gautam Bhan (2008): Swept Off the Map: Surviving Eviction and Resettlement in Delhi (New Delhi: Yoda Press). Nanda, Serena (1990): Neither Man Nor Woman: The Hijras of India (Belmont, California: Wadsworth Publishing). Nigam, Aditya (2002): “Theatre of the Urban: The Strange Case of the Monkeyman” in Ravi Vasudevan, Ravi Sundaram, Jeebesh Bagchi, Monica Narula, Geert Lovink (ed.), The Sarai Reader 2002: Cities of Everyday Life (Delhi: Sarai and Centre for the Study of Developing Societies). Osella, Filippo and Caroline Osella (2000): “The Return of King Mahabali: The Politics of Morality in Kerala” in C J Fuller and Véronique Bénéï (ed.), The Everyday State and Society in Modern India (New Delhi: Social Science Press). Ramanathan, Usha (2006): “Illegality and the Urban Poor”, Economic & Political Weekly, 41 (29): 3193-97. Rao, V K R V and P B Desai (1956): Greater Delhi: A Study in Urbanisation 1940-1957 (New Delhi: Asia Publishing House). Reddy, Gayatri (2005): With Respect to Sex: Negotiating Hjira Identity in South India (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Risbud, Neelima (2009): “The Poor and the Morpho logy of Cities” in Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation and United Nations Development Programme (ed.), India: Urban Poverty Report (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Roy, Ananya (2003): City Requiem, Calcutta: Gender and the Politics of Poverty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press). Sennett, Richard (1996): Flesh and Stone: The Body and the City in Western Civilisation (New York: WW Norton). Tarlo, Emma (2000): “Welcome to History: A Resettlement Colony in the Making” in V Dupont, E Tarlo and D Vidal (ed.), Delhi: Urban Space and Human Destinies (Delhi: Manohar – Centre de Sciences Humaines). – (2003): Unsettling Memories: Narratives of India’s ‘Emergency’ (Delhi: Permanent Black). Verkaaik, Oskar (2004): Migrants and Militants: Fun and Urban Violence in Pakistan (Princeton: Princeton University Press).
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Turning the Tide: Women’s Lives in Fisheries and the Assault of Capital Nilanjana Biswas
Over the years, research on women in the fisheries moved from a framework of political economy to a framework of political ecology. This meant that analyses shifted away from labour, production relations and surplus value extraction typically grounded in Marxian modes of analysis, in favour of those focused on environmental sustainability, livelihood sustainability and a discourse on poverty. During this period, women’s labour has been mobilised at an unprecedented scale and concentrated in the most exploitative jobs to fuel economic growth in fisheries. Even as industrial fisheries thrive on the labour of poor women, new analyses and new forms of organising are needed to fundamentally challenge this exploitation. Capital cannot be left unfettered to do as it pleases, but must be forced through stringent regulation to heed other considerations apart from profitability alone. Donor aid is, however, driving the non-governmental organisation increasingly towards conciliatory, mediatory roles, incapable of seeking solutions outside the framework of capital.
This is a shorter version of a paper commissioned in 2010 by the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers, Chennai. Heartfelt thanks to Chandrika Sharma, Cornelie Quist, Jackie Sunde, John Kurien, Mohan Mani, Nagraj Adve, Nalini Nayak and Sebastian Mathew for their comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Nilanjana Biswas (
[email protected]) is an independent researcher/writer based in Bangalore. Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
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review of the literature on women in the fisheries spanning the past three decades reveals a set of five developments: • First, in a span of 30 years, research analysis shifted from women’s labour to survival and livelihood issues, moving from a labour to an ecological framework. • Second, the idea of women’s empowerment gained ascendancy over the idea of women’s exploitation and oppression. • Third, this period saw the rise of rights-based approaches. • Fourth, the idea of “community” emerged during this period. • Finally, multi-donor aid, embedded in the ideology of liberalisation and free market as a single prescription for all, increasingly shaped activities in the fishing sector. Although these may appear to be distinct developments, more so because they will be elaborated one by one in the following sections, it is important to understand that they have evolved not in isolation, but in fact, in deeply related ways. They must, therefore, be read and analysed together. Of particular significance is the last point, the growing dominance of development aid, which has played a key role in manufacturing a global and uniform discourse on development, and strongly shaping the rest of the developments outlined above. Of the 43.5 million people around the world directly employed in fishing and aquaculture, 90% are small-scale fishers1 (FAO 2005). The majority (86%) live in Asia; most under the conditions of great poverty (FAO 2008). For every person directly employed in fishing or fish farming, it is estimated that four others are employed in post- or pre-harvest work (ibid). However, most countries do not consider the work that these four others do – work such as fish processing and the selling of fish, transportation, net and gear making, boat building, fuel supply, engine repair – to be economically productive. Thus, in 2010, the labour of about 174 million people across the world remained largely invisible in fishery statistics and was either unpaid or insufficiently paid for. Women made up the bulk of this figure. Because the numbers dependent on fishing for a livelihood is increasing every year, the numbers of women whose labour is freely exploited can be said to be proportionately soaring. This is ironic since never before has the question of women in the fisheries been more visible than it has in the recent past. The fishing sector has undergone substantial changes in the last few decades. The collapse of industrial fishing in the North and its shift to the global South,2 the overexploitation of marine resources, and the shift from capture to culture fisheries, these changes have been accompanied by documentation and research
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which have influenced policy, practice and the flow of resources to the fishing sector. The literature on women in the fisheries in the last three decades was reviewed for the purpose of this paper. This period was marked by two significant milestones in the history of development aid. Its start, in the late 1980s, coincided with the formulation of what is known as the Washington Consensus; towards the end of this period, in 2005, there was the drafting of the Paris Declaration. “Development” via neo-liberal economic reforms was the key thrust of the Washington Consensus. In the Paris Declaration, good governance took priority with consequent implications for aid budgets. As international financial institutions such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) worked the policy prescriptions of the Washington Consensus into core-loan conditionalities for country after borrowing country, the financial and policy impacts of economic restructuring were felt across every sector. In the case of the fisheries, this intensified an export-led growth boom and led to the deregulation of international trade and cross-border investment. As the new millennium dawned, the economic restructuring of the global South, accelerated by the Washington Consensus, was more or less completed. Capitalist reforms were largely in place in all poor countries. It now became critical for industry to reshuffle its priorities in order to consolidate its hold over newly emerging market economies. In the last 10 years or so, industry has, therefore, pushed for two things: one, in order that norms related to environment, labour, and so on, are harmonised with the interests of industry, it has pushed for the privatisation of regulation, and two, in order that people affected by the reforms do not perish, it has pushed for the specific targeting of aid to the most impoverished. The success of both privatisation and targeted aid depends on efficient management and delivery systems. For these reasons, the capitalist agenda has now shifted to “good governance”, and thus, the “harmonisation” of aid with national goals is the focus of the Paris Declaration of 2005. With this context in mind, we turn to the key developments that mark the literature on women in the fisheries.
1 From Political Economy to Political Ecology Over the years, research on women in the fisheries moved from a framework of political economy to a framework of political ecology. This meant that analyses shifted away from labour, production relations and surplus value extraction typically grounded in Marxian modes of analysis, in favour of analyses focused on environmental sustainability, livelihood sustainability and a discourse on poverty. The early studies on women in the fisheries came out of a context of organised struggle by fishers all over the world; in the north, against the rapid breakdown of fishing communities and declining access to fish resources; and in parts of the south, livelihood struggles that demanded, for instance, regulation of trawling activities, public transport for women fish vendors and reduction of market taxes for women vendors. Although Marxian class analysis was often central to the framework of the early literature, this analysis was actively questioned its failure to account for the work that women did in the household and outside. A body of research evolved, which often reflected the vibrant political culture of the times and opened up new vistas in the literature (Connelly and MacDonald 1983;
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MacDonald and Connelly 1989; Nayak 1986; Thompson 1985; Porter 1983, 1985, 1987; Nadel-Klein and Davis 1988). The fishing economy, it became clear, would collapse if the fish that is caught is not processed and sold, if families are not fed and clothed, or if fishermen are not freed from the pressures of household work to go to sea. However, only one type of labour (the act of fishing) was found to be economically valued while the other (everything else) was undervalued/underpaid or not valued at all/unpaid. To explain this, the early studies turned to ways in which patriarchal power relations were institutionalised in fishing societies. This included the sexual division of labour, which seemed to provide the biological justification for patriarchal practices. It also included the split both between the public and the private spheres and between the spheres of production and reproduction. In the private sphere of the fishing economy, that is, in the domestic or household domain, poor women, who formed the bulk of the small-scale fisheries, put in long hours, working until they were ready to collapse. However, this work (for example, cleaning and drying fish, mending nets, cooking for the family) was considered to be economically valueless and remained unwaged. Productive or waged work (for example, the selling of fish) was considered to take place only in the public sphere of the market. The public-private separation ensured that a certain type of labour (typically of women but also that of children, migrants and so on) would subsidise the dominant economy. Subsidies were extracted at three levels. One, women, in accordance with the sexual division of labour, routinely put in unpaid labour into essential tasks without which active fishing could not be sustained. They thus heavily subsidised the traditional fishing economy and helped maintain the “resilience of small-scale fishing communities”. Two, in poor countries, women’s labour also subsidised the State by absorbing the costs of reproducing the fishing family (day-care for children, cooking for the household, care of the sick and elderly, etc) into the private sphere of the family and the community, allowing the State to abandon its social responsibilities towards the working poor. Three, the cheaply available labour of women directly subsidised industrial or capitalist fisheries by keeping wage levels in factories and production sites low (Connelly and MacDonald 1983). Thus, the growing demand for “labour market flexibility”, a euphemism for poor wages and working conditions, casual work and absence of organisation, triggered a trend towards feminisation of employment in the fisheries of the global south (Neis et al 2005). Women act as a reserve army of labour for capital, to be hired or fired at will as economic conditions demand (Connelly and MacDonald 1983). This important insight explains why women in many industrialised countries were drawn into the labour force when capital needed cheap labour and fired when capital relocated itself to the South, for instance, when canning factories moved out of countries in the North to Thailand and Seychelles. This analysis of women’s work continues to be important in the context of the global south, where capital is consolidating itself through exploiting highly vulnerable forms of feminised labour. The increasing use of sex as a form of economic exchange by poor women, as we see in “fish-for-sex” transactions requires an understanding of the political economy of our times and is just one december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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example of how women in poverty are drawn into highly exploitative forms of production and exchange relations. The political economy framework, however, had its blind spots and shortcomings. It lacked an ecological dimension at a time when fish resources were clearly dwindling. Further, it often viewed technology as a liberating force, overlooking the problems technology introduced. Over the years, the livelihood struggles of poor women in the South against deforestation, coastal commercialisation, industrial agriculture and commercial seeds (Mies 1986; Mies and Shiva 1993) brought questions of ecological sustainability to the forefront, forcing new frameworks of analysis to emerge. These rightly focused attention on the declining natural resource base and questioned production and consumption relations from the point of view of sustainability but were marked by an untenable biological essentialism (Agarwal 1992). There are efforts today to articulate a more non-essentialist version of feminist political ecology which take into account women’s role in community coastal and marine resource management and frameworks of indigenous knowledge systems (Bavington et al 2005). These point out the futility of narrowlyconceived regimes of fisheries management and urge for holistic approaches that locate the fisheries in the entire web of life thus questioning not just unsustainable fishery practices, but all forms of ecologically unsustainable development. Such frameworks, no doubt, allow for a more dialectical process of questioning, but there are several unanswered gaps with respect to women. One is that their non-essentialist nature is never made clear. The arguments tend to be articulated at a moral and spiritual level without very clear notions of how the specific nature of women’s oppression in the private and public sphere is to be addressed, for example, the issues of waged work in the context of more and more women from fishing communities seeking part-time and full-time livelihoods outside the fisheries to make ends meet; the sexual division of labour; patriarchal domination within families and communities, and so on. If political economy frameworks failed to address the ecological dimension adequately, political ecology frameworks fail in equal measure to address the question of labour, particularly women’s labour, within the household and local markets as well as in the factories and fish processing plants. For the bulk of women in the smallscale fisheries, whose labour power is possibly their sole asset, this represents an immense and unjustifiable loss of focus.
2 From Exploitation and Oppression to Empowerment Over the last few decades the ideas of women’s oppression and exploitation have given way to the notion of women’s empowerment. The idea of women’s oppression was tied to the understanding of patriarchy, a term used by women’s movements in many poor countries to refer to a system of power relations that controlled women’s labour, fertility and sexuality in multiple ways to serve institutions both in the private and public domain. The notion of women’s exploitation was tied to an understanding of the appropriation of women’s labour by capital. The analysis of patriarchy made it clear that keeping women out of decisionmaking was not an accidental oversight, but rather a strategy in the fisheries that, say, the cofradía, the caste panchayat or the Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
modern trade union used to control power and perpetuate the status quo. Because the prevailing structures of power in the traditional fishing community and family gain material benefits from women’s unpaid and underpaid labour, they all tend to impose patriarchal boundaries on women’s lives, using violence if needed to guard these boundaries. The early studies demonstrated how the hidden and devalued nature of women’s domestic labour served to devalue women in the marketplace when they sought employment. They also highlighted the role of the State in transforming familial forms of patriarchy to social forms as the fisheries shifted from the household to the industrial mode of production in countries of the North (Neis 1997). Globally, however, the idea of women’s exploitation and oppression soon began to be discredited. One reason was that it affected capital too strongly, together with patriarchy and other structures of power responsible of the subjugation of women, and had therefore, to be co-opted. Another reason was that in the period of the Washington Consensus, capitalist opportunities inherent in integrating women into development began to be recognised. By 1979, the United Nations had adopted the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) which promised equal opportunities for women. While this promise of equality was good news for women of the upper classes who had access to education or investment capital, for the vast majority of women in the sector who were poor, to expect equality within capitalism, a system that thrived on subsidies gained from their exploitation, was no more than a cruel joke. But this was a period of the World Bank/IMF-led structural adjustment, which forced borrowing countries to privatise basic services, to open up their markets, to dilute, if not remove, any existing labour, environmental and coastal regulation that stood in the way of industry, and to follow export-led models of economic growth. As traditional livelihoods soon began to get wiped out, poor women, anxious for a means of survival, joined waged work in unprecedented numbers. It was in this period that dilution began in the ways that the term “gender” was used in the fisheries literature. Although the term was everywhere, it was rarely explained. When it was explained, there was little consistency or rigour regarding its use. Gender was variously defined as a “social role” (Williams et al 2005); as “the relations between men and women” (FAO 2004); as a “structuring principle in society” (Bavington et al 2005); and sometimes even tautologically, as the “basis of certain behavioural standards, values and patterns regarding both genders” (Aguilar and Castaneda 2001). In different contexts, thus, the term referred to different constructions; in one instance, material, in another, ideological. The implications were, of course, significant and different. It was not just by coincidence that the term “gender empowerment” gained currency in this period. The idea of “empowerment” is, generally speaking, associated, as Petras (1997) observes, with “non-confrontational politics, never going beyond influencing small areas of social life, with limited resources, and within the conditions permitted by the neoliberal state and macroeconomy”. While the framework of gender empowerment cleared the path for the uncontested assimilation of women into capitalism, another term embraced widely was “gender mainstreaming”. Popularised by the 1995 Beijing Conference, the political implications
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of this term were clear: capitalism, race, caste, religion and other structures of power were not the problem for women and did not need to be challenged so long as gender could somehow be “mainstreamed” into them; as long as some women became the beneficiaries of these divisions. In this period, ecological viewpoints gained wide acceptance. Therefore, when “environment” was added to the “women and development” cocktail, and celebrated, as it was during 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the empowerment discourse received further impetus. “Earth mother myths” about women’s innate closeness to nature implied that women were the “natural caretakers” of the environment (Leach 2007). Empowerment training was all that was required to draw out this natural potential. In development practice, the women-environment link meant that women’s labour, skills and knowledge were used to subsidise forestry and coastal conservation programmes and women were drawn in to “unpaid labour surveillance tasks” (Nayak 2008). The issue of gender soon became all about providing “opportunities” such as empowerment training, skills training, microcredit, and so on, taking attention away from the structural and political roots of the problem. Gender politics as a matter of consensus and assimilation rather than of struggle and resistance was institutionalised by state policy and propped up by donor aid. A class of professional “gender experts” sprang up across the world, embedded in a wide array of state, non-state and global bodies – the World Bank, the United Nations and its affiliates, national development agencies, governments, business firms, multinational companies and non-governmental organisations. This emerging collaboration has been critical for the global expansion of capital in the last three decades.
3 Rise of Rights-based Arguments Two main types of rights-based arguments have gained ground in the last few decades – one as put forward by fisheries managers, which promotes private property rights in the fisheries to counter the problem of “open access”, and the other, the assertion by small-scale fishing communities of their human rights. The State, in many parts of the industrial North, deployed the logic of “tragedy of the commons” to privilege individual rights over community rights in the fisheries, and the crisis brought on by industrial overfishing was sought to be addressed through privatisation. Aiding privatisation was the quota regime. The experience of Iceland demonstrates how the individual quota (IQ) system, introduced in 1984, first helped to consolidate fishing access in the hands of proprietors of large boats; thereafter, the individual transferable quota (ITQ) system, introduced in 1991, concentrated access even more in the hands of big corporations and absentee owners. Ocean fish, by law, common, national property, was transformed into a marketable, private commodity. While there were differences in the implementation of quota management systems, increasingly the fishing licence became a product that could be bought, sold, rented out or transferred at will (Munk-Madsen 1998; Skaptadóttir and Proppé 2005). The continuing collapse of fish stocks in the northern seas prompted further market-led regulatory mechanisms such as the “professionalisation” of the sector which, in some countries,
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restricted commercial fisheries to “core fishers”. This marginalised women further in the sector (Gerrard 2006) while at the same time, the rising cost of vessels and licence fees led to further quota concentration in the hands of fishing companies. Thus, the very crisis caused by industrial overfishing was used to drive away small fish producers, and consolidate the hold of large players on the sector. Since the late 1980s, this model of privatisation of the fisheries and the shift of regulation from state to the market is being globalised with transition economies such as South Africa, adopting the ITQ regime. Further, the privatisation model is being cast anew in the form of the wealth-based fisheries management approach, promoted by the World Bank and international aid agencies, which seeks to stem the “dissipation of resource rent” from the sector (Cunningham et al 2009). While fisheries management regimes continue to prop up privatisation, there is also a case being made for adopting a different kind of rights-based framework – a human rights approach to fisheries development (Sharma nd-a). This approach argues that fishing communities are entitled to the full realisation of their human rights. Human rights, in this view, encompass economic, social, cultural and political rights and are the entitlements of not just individuals but of communities as well. How effective is the human rights argument in countering the alienation of small-scale fishing communities and how effectively does it address the issue of women’s rights within the traditional fisheries? Historically, community rights are based on the idea of customary possession not ownership. Access, ownership, and the “dissipation of rent” through illegal leakages, overproduction and so on, were not contentious issues for fishing communities in earlier situations where the State was weak and its institutions remote. The collective possession of resources ensured that “resource rent” was absorbed into the community, typically enriching its powerful strata. However, in the era of market liberalisation, when capital penetration aided by the State gathered momentum, access became a highly contentious issue requiring regulation. In the political economy of the times, this meant privatised forms of regulation. Another point of note is that the human rights discourse is a modern one, associated with individual citizens of democratic nation states. Central to it is the sanctity of private property. In this context, when advocacy groups in the fisheries argue that a human rights approach backed by an international apparatus of universally-held norms provides “a stronger basis for citizens to make claims on their States” (Sharma nd-b), it is not immediately clear what is being signalled. If by human rights in the fisheries is meant the collective ownership of fishing lands and resources, then how would conflict be resolved when the community right to property clashes with private property rights? This is no mere academic question given the present era of market-led growth where the coasts are intensely contested properties and communities increasingly divided. If, on the other hand, by human rights is meant the preferential access of fishing communities to lands and resources, how would the human rights framework ensure this access not just for the fishing elites but equally for those at the bottom of community hierarchies, such as poor women? Further, can access rights provide enduring security? Since industry and development render them meaningless december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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over time, access rights are unlikely to be opposed by capital. Does the human rights argument not therefore represent an argument for accelerating class formation within traditional communities? And given that class formation in the fishing communities may have a socially restrictive effect on women (Hapke 2001), what does the human rights approach signify in term of women’s rights in the traditional fisheries of the global South? There is also the related question of the human rights of the non-fishing poor. With food prices soaring and in the absence of social security, fishing is drawing increasing numbers of the traditionally non-fishing rural poor as a way out of poverty and starvation (FAO 2008). If the human rights discourse is formulated around the rights of the traditional fishing community, how then would the human rights of the non-fishing poor, such as occasional fishers, be addressed? A major problem with the human rights discourse is that human rights are usually articulated in relation to the public domain and rarely linked to the domestic or private sphere. It typically ignores the crucial fact that the public sphere exists precisely because women’s hidden labour in the household sphere enables it to. Women rarely have autonomous status as full citizens, with control over their labour, sexuality and fertility. Significant aspects of public policy in the South, for example, the structuring the “minimum” or “family” wage, are based on the patriarchal assumption of female dependency. This assumption together with the assignment of the major part of household production and all of household reproduction to women, leads to real and crippling constraints on a woman’s ability to cross the boundary of the private sphere into the public, and play any sort of empowered role therein (for example, see Kusakabe 2003). The public sphere becomes the sphere of human activity and rights, while the private sphere is the sexually differentiated one. As the State retreats from the social sector, as capital’s stranglehold increases, and as community structures that might have earlier provided a modicum of social support are fragmented, the enormous intensification of work is left increasingly to women to handle. For the human rights approach in the fisheries to be effective, it must engage with several questions. First, how would it negotiate the issue of private property in ways that are fundamentally any different from those of privatised rights regimes? Second, would the human rights paradigm not facilitate community elites to gain for themselves ownership over what were earlier common/shared property resources? Third, how would it protect against the exploitation of women and other marginalised sections within fishing communities, and related to this, how would it accommodate the human rights of the poor outside the traditional fishing community, such as occasional fishers? And finally, how can the human rights framework address the specific nature of gender-based oppression and exploitation when its very formulation is based upon the denial of the private sphere, the primary site of this oppression and exploitation?
4 The Emergence of Community Fishing communities have occupied the coastlines for generations. However, the idea of community emerged from two different locations at two different points in time. The first, the community as a political construct emerged from the struggles of fishing communities, threatened by development, and fighting to retain Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
their rights in the face of imminent dispossession and displacement. The second, the community as an institutional construct and an artefact of global policy, was the outcome of the institutionalised response to these struggles. This is a very important distinction but one that is increasingly blurred in real life, the role of aid being central to the blurring of this difference. The rights of fishing communities have been articulated historically through a political context of resistance. This is not to claim that such community struggles were always democratic or even that they represented the demands of all sections of the community. However, since the late 1980s onwards there has also been a second articulation, emerging from the institutionalisation of the community into an artefact of global policy. Development, viewed and resisted until now as a top-down and illegitimate project by communities, had to be recast in more acceptable terms. The community had to be convinced that it was just one among many “stakeholders” of the contested coasts. Other reasons for the institutionalisation of the concept of community could be found in the model of modernisation promoted in the years following the Washington Consensus. As the State in countries of the global South began withdrawing from regulation, the discourse began to revolve increasingly around privatising all forms of regulation including that of natural resource management. Since the decade of the 1990s, models of co-management and community-based coastal resource management began to spread in the fisheries. It is significant, however, that the few positive reports of such experiments in community-based coastal resource management remain largely in the realm of pilot projects supported extensively by donor aid (Quist et al 2008). Industry, in the context of a retreating state, had to deal with a new reality of increased private participation in the social sector. Roles that were earlier performed by government, for example, drafting regulatory norms or providing disaster relief, were now being taken over by private bodies. Increasingly, this included the non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector. Market-oriented policies received national legitimacy as well as the rubber stamp of civilsociety representation with the participation of NGOs. As a result, NGOs came under pressure to surrender what little oppositional role they had to align with the dominant ideology. Wittingly or unwittingly, they became instrumental for pushing neo-liberalism into local administrative institutions. As Petras (1997) argues in the context of South America: “As the neoliberal regimes at the top devastated communities by inundating the country with cheap imports, extracting external debt payment, abolishing labour legislation, and creating a growing mass of low-paid and unemployed workers, the NGOs were funded to provide ‘self-help’ projects, ‘popular education’, and job training, to temporarily absorb small groups of poor, to co-opt local leaders, and to undermine anti-system struggles”. Another important factor in augmenting the role of community during the period of the 1990s was the growth of identity politics. Under the impact of the aggressive penetration of capital, aided by the State, the fishing community of the global South began to be pulled into the mainstream in a manner that alienated it from its traditional means of survival. It was now forced to begin fighting for a piece of the development pie. In the contested political arena, a hardening of community boundaries along lines of
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began to take place. In the case of Kerala, for example, being born in a fishing caste, irrespective of whether one was an actual fisher or not, was sought to be made the primary criterion for access to fishery resources, the “renewal of the caste card” ensuring the rise of absentee ownership (Kurien 2005: 87). The assertion of traditional identity was mediated however by modern compulsions. In some cases this led to the democratisation of old community forms. In Galicia, Spain, the changing historical context forced the centuries-old and traditionally male-run cofradía to accommodate women shellfish-collectors (Meltzoff 1995). In Kanyakumari, the fishing community’s claim to local identity and rights was tied to citizenship and the exercise of state power to protect their mode of fishing (Subramanian 2009). While community identity could thus be a vibrant mobilising force, it also affected the ways in which the women’s question was articulated in this period. In fishery-related advocacy, women’s rights began to be increasingly articulated as community rights. The World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers (WFF), for example, asserted that it was important to “ensure that our sector is not weakened by dividing it, putting men on one side and women on the other, in a context where increasingly small-scale fishers from the North and South are having to abandon their way of life due to the impact of government policies which favour industrial fisheries interests” (Le Sauze 2000). The suggestion that the fishing sector would be weakened if women were to organise around their own issues was reminiscent of the strong opposition from the Left several decades ago to the idea of women organising autonomously on the grounds that this would divide working class struggles. Civil society statements from the fishery sector reflect a loss of focus on women’s rights by failing to directly address the basis of women’s oppression within the family and community. For example, in the absence of any fundamental questioning of oppressive community structures, the call to “protect the cultural identities, dignity and traditional rights of fishing communities and indigenous peoples” (Bangkok Statement on Small-Scale Fisheries 2008) could in fact have negative consequences for vulnerable groups, such as women or the poor or the sexuality minorities, that have been historically denied their rights as part of the traditional mores of the community. As economic reforms rapidly alter the contours of the fisheries, women pulled into new forms of work confront a mixed bag of experiences with new opportunities sometimes allowing an escape from oppressive traditional practices. Despite the exploitative working conditions that migrant women workers from Kerala working seasonally in the commercial fish processing industry in far-off Gujarat face, they report earning better wages and feeling less discriminated as against men than did their counterparts engaged in home-based fish processing in Kerala (Centre for Social Research nd). Women in India’s Sunderbans district who are earning a decent wage today as a result of commercial prawn seed collection, report experiencing a sense of liberation from the exploitation of feudal and patriarchal landlords in whose fields they had laboured for generations (Jalais 2009). In other parts of the South too, such as Ghana, motorisation and technological change have brought empowering opportunities for certain sections of women (Overå 2005). However, even as waged work helps to improve women’s status and bargaining power within the household,
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it introduces to their lives a punishing double burden since housework continues to be primarily women’s responsibility. Communities are not static but rapidly changing in response to capital’s growth. In the global South, the changing context includes a retreating state, a bitterly-contested and threatened and rapidly-depleting natural resource base, intensification of labour and diminishing social support – a situation that has grave and specific, gender-determined impacts on women. For example, the National Fishworkers Forum (NFF) in India has justified its shift to caste-based identity politics on the grounds that fishworkers as a caste/community must unite to get their share of mainstream development. However, as Nayak (2005: 42) points out: “The minute that caste identities are called into play, the old social and cultural norms that have subjugated women are also revived, and any attempt to raise feminist positions or to talk about an alternative development paradigm is jeopardised”. In fishing communities in the South women are increasingly moving into wage labour and finding access to independent economic means. Governments are also being forced to recognise, even if only to pay lip service to, the idea of women’s rights, which is bolstered further through NGO interventions. It is therefore becoming inevitable for communities to respond to women both not just as part of community structures, but also as individuals. How, in this context, would women’s rights that derive from gender and citizenship be reconciled with practices that result from entrenched power structures within communities such as those of religion, sexuality, race, caste or class?
5 Growing Aid Dependence Aid has played a significant role in the spread of the ideology of globalisation and the spread of “free trade”. If free trade is regarded as capital’s iron fist, then aid may be seen as the velvet glove that sheaths it. Among global institutions, the synergies of the Big Three – the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO – have created what has been described as a “single global institution governing the world economy, whose three parts specialise in stabilisation (IMF), structural adjustment (World Bank) and trade liberalisation (WTO)”, cooperating closely to forge a “coherent, unifying policy position, increasingly centred on what they take to be their most convincing theme – free trade” (Peet 2003: 201). The agenda of free trade is central to the liberalisation agenda pushed directly through aid. Aid and trade are thus deeply and inextricably linked. In the fisheries, donor aid was tied to conditionalities promoting modernisation and industrialisation, spreading a destructive model of development in the marine and culture fisheries widely in the global South. Worldwide fisheries subsidies are estimated at $30 to $34 billion annually, the majority of which goes to industrial fisheries (Jacquet and Pauly 2008). Export-led growth has been followed so aggressively that the fisheries today is “one of the most highly globalised economic sectors” (LeSann 1998 cf Neis et al 2005). According to the FAO, in 2009, 37% of fish was exported out of the country of origin. The value of exports for 2008, at $102 billion, was two-thirds more than exports in 2000. Fish is thus the fastest-growing cash crop with increases in trade mostly fuelled by industrial aquaculture (FAO 2008). In 2008, Japan, the US and the EU received 70% of all fish exports from december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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developing countries, which are now the largest exporters of fish and fish products. The net figures in export showed a sharp rising trend, from $7.2 billion in 1996 to $27 billion in 2008, a nearly 300% increase indicating the huge transfer of an extremely important source of protein for the common people, from the South to the North (FAO 2008). Global fish exports transfer fish from the poor consumer’s plate in the South to the rich consumer’s plate in the North (Béné et al 2010). This unequal transfer will only intensify in the years to come as economies like China and India begin to import rather than export fish (Ahmed 2006). In the fisheries, aid agencies acted on behalf of capital in two stages. In the first stage, they provided a politically acceptable route for capital investments and in the second, they became the vehicle for comprehensive privatisation. Early aid in the fisheries was routed through national governments. Thus, in the 1950s, capital was poured into offshore bottom trawlers and distant water fleets in industrialised countries, while, in the South, intergovernmental aid assisted the modernisation of craft and gear. By the early 1980s, a southern debt crisis triggered by overspending became capital’s opportunity to expand to new sites. Southern markets had to be speedily opened up but inter-governmental aid as earlier decades had demonstrated contained inherent drag factors, impeding the direct flow of capital with regulations to be bypassed and bureaucracy to be humoured. The Washington Consensus of the 1980s, crafted by the World Bank, the IMF and the US treasury, sought to eliminate governmental controls on capital flows. For this, aid was the most expedient route. Even as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO influenced national governments to liberalise trade and capital flows, to deregulate, privatise and specialise in fishery exports (MacDonald 2005), an extraordinary consensus emerged around neo-liberal economic growth. Aid agencies, in the second stage, cleared the path for privatisation by helping to establish hegemony. Gender empowerment and mainstreaming became a necessary component of every project plan. The “greening of investments” became paramount. Policy elites in southern countries drafted national environmental plans in consultation with banks. Environmental NGOs drafted the project documentation associated with loans for aquaculture, coastal management, forestry, mining and agriculture. At the same time, the privatisation of all regulation, including that of natural resource management, was vigorously pursued. In the fisheries, the notions of co-management, and later, community-based coastal resource management gained currency. Aid flowed into capacity-building and skills training for community-based organisations and networks that worked directly with indigenous groups and natural resource-based communities. Regulation, which might restrict industrial growth, was increasingly replaced by management-based models involving consensus among so-called civil society stakeholders in matters of coastal zone, marine and biodiversity protection. At the same time, globally, income disparities rose and food and oil prices spiralled out of control. To manage the growing livelihood alienation and growing political unrest, these years saw the growth of the poverty and livelihood discourse throughout the global South. By the turn of the millennium, it became clear that the objectives of the Washington Consensus were more or less achieved. Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
Over the period 1996 to 2004, although all other forms of deve lopment aid flattened out, aid for governance and the rule of law increased steadily from 10% in 1996 to 45% in 2004 (World Bank 2005). This indicated that economic restructuring was largely in place in the global South, with only minor hurdles remaining in the path of complete deregulation and free trade (Tandon 2008). It now became critical for capital to consolidate its hold over the newly emerging markets in the South.
Privatisation, Targeting of Aid In the last 10 years or so, capital has therefore pushed for two things: one, the privatisation of regulation to ensure industryfriendly norms, and two, the targeting of aid to attenuate the miseries of global capitalism. The success of both programmes – privatisation and targeted aid – depends however on efficient management and delivery systems. The capitalist agenda has therefore shifted to “good governance”, and the alignment of aid with national priorities is the focus of the Paris Declaration of 2005, widely endorsed by donor agencies and state governments. This rationale informs a range of global policy instruments, for example, the Millenium Development Goals. However, such marketisation of governance is expected to only sharpen the existing divisions between the poor, who would be left clamouring to somehow fit inclusionary criteria, leading to the further hardening of identity politics across all sections of the poor, including fishing communities. The huge expansion of industry in the last few decades has completely restructured economic relations in the fishing sector. Today fish is largely produced by the poor and consumed by the rich. With the global rise of the “environmental state” (Goldman 2005), notions of labour and illegitimate surplus value have been largely replaced by the idea of environmental destruction. The poor and the marginalised are seen less as an exploited labour force than as the natural custodians of the environment. The locus of struggle moving away in this manner from class to ecological sustainability represents the consolidation of opposition to the present form of development, and the development of a sharp and much-needed critique of the industrialisation model of economic development embraced by both capitalism and socialism. However, it has the definite weakness of blurring class distinctions among those opposed to industrialisation. It importantly downplays distinctions between imperatives in the North and the South; it downplays also the connection between the growing impoverishment of the South and the increased accumulation of wealth in the North. The relinquishing of the class perspective has heralded a new era of political concord. NGOs today, at best, offer only the weakest opposition, and, at worst, embrace the development agenda set by capital. As far as labour is concerned, the role of the NGO is restricted to addressing only the issue of labour’s survival. Increasingly unaddressed is the need for a politically powerful labour power which is able to negotiate for greater justice and equality. Women’s labour has been mobilised at an unprecedented scale and concentrated in the most exploitative jobs to fuel economic growth in the fisheries. Even as the industrial fisheries thrives on the labour of poor women, new analyses and new forms of organising are needed to fundamentally challenge this exploitation. Capital cannot be left unfettered to do as it pleases,
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but must be forced through stringent regulation to heed other considerations apart from profitability alone. Donor aid is however driving the NGO increasingly towards conciliatory, mediatory roles, incapable of seeking solutions outside the framework of capital. Community-based forms of mobilisation thus face many challenges. Can communities form their own market mechanisms that are not modelled after capitalist forms, and evolve non-cash-based economies? Can they demand for the regulation of capital and its relations with both people and the environment? Can they collectivise the ownership of property and the means of production, ensuring the rights of those who labour while delegitimising the profits of the profiteers? Can they address the rights of the non-fishing poor? Can housework be collectivised? Will the full Notes 1 The definition of the small-scale fisheries differs greatly across different regions. This paper adopts the approach suggested by Mathew (2007: 7): “It can be assumed that artisanal and small-scale fisheries, in general, refer to the smallest viable fishing units in a country or a province, with downward or lateral compatibility in fishing gear operation”. 2 This paper uses the terms “North” or “global North” and “South” or “global South” to denote blocs of high and low economic development respectively.
References Agarwal, B (1992): “The Gender and Environment Debate: Lessons from India”, Feminist Studies, Minnesota, 18(1): 119-58. Aguilar, L and I Castañeda (2001): About Fishermen, Fisher Women, Oceans and Tides: A Gender Perspective in Marine-coastal Zones (San José, CR: IUCN: Absoluto). Ahmed, M (2006): Market Access and Trade Liberalisation in Fisheries, ICTSD Natural Resources, International Trade and Sustainable Development Series Issue Paper No 4, International Centre for Trade and Sustainable Development, Geneva, Switzerland. Bangkok Statement on Small-Scale Fisheries (2008): Civil Society Workshop Bangkok, Thailand, 11 to 13 October. See http://www.icsf.net/icsf2006/uploads/ resources/statements/txt/english/statements_icsf /1248431635976***bangkokstatement.txt Bavington, D, B Grzetic and B Neis (2005): The Feminist Political Ecology of Fishing Down: Reflections from Newfoundland and Labrador; Studies in Political Economy 73; Spring/Summer 2004. Béné, C, B Hersoug and E H Allison (2010): “Not by Rent Alone: Analysing the Pro-Poor Functions of Small-Scale Fisheries in Developing Countries”, Development Policy Review, Volume 28, Issue 3, pp 325-58, May. Centre for Social Research (undated): “Impact of Trade and Globalisation on Gender in India: A Case Study of Women Workers in the Fisheries Sector”, prepared under UNCTAD-Government of India- DFID Project “Strategies and Preparedness for Trade and Globalisation in India”. Connelly, P and M MacDonald (1983): “Women’s Work: Domestic and Wage Labour in a Nova Scotia Community”, Studies in Political Economy, 10, Winter 1983. Cunningham, S, A E Neiland, M Arbuckle and T Bostock (2009): “Wealth-Based Fisheries Management: Using Fisheries Wealth to Orchestrate Sound Fisheries Policy in Practice”, Marine Resource Economics, Vol 24, Issue 3. FAO (2004): “What Is Gender?” Factsheet in FAO (2004); “Building on Gender, Agrobiodiversity and Local Knowledge”, Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, Rome. – (2005): “Increasing the Contribution of Smallscale Fisheries to Poverty Alleviation and Food Security”, FAO Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries, No 10, FAO, Rome, p 79. – (2008): The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2004 (SOFIA), FAO, Rome.
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labour of women be recognised and valued? Can labour struggles in the fisheries go beyond the issue of labour’s survival alone and address the need for a politically powerful labour power which is able to negotiate for greater justice and equality? Can women’s fertility and sexuality be freed from the institutions of family and private property? Can the analytical and political clarity required for such agendas come solely from identity-based politics? Similarly, would identity-based politics ever tolerate the struggle against patriarchy? Would it not necessarily require bringing back an emphasis on class together with other structures of oppression and exploitation such as patriarchy, race, caste, sexuality, and so on? Is not the radical re-envisioning of gender politics an urgent necessity of our times?
Gerrard, S (2006): “Woman, Man and Fishing Quotas”, Yemaya, Issue No 22, September. Goldman, M (2005): Imperial Nature: The World Bank and Struggles for Social Justice in the Age of Globalisation (UK: Yale University Press). Hapke, H (2001): “Gender, Work and Household Survival in South Indian Fishing Communities: A Preliminary Analysis”, The Professional Geographer, 53 (3), pp 313-31. Jacquet, J and D Pauly (2008): “Funding Priorities: Big Barriers to Small-Scale Fisheries”, Conservation Biology, Volume 22, No 4, 832-35. Jalais, A (2009): “Confronting Authority, Negotiating Morality”, Yemaya, Issue 32, November. Kurien, J (2005): “Evolving towards Unsustainability: A Personal Statement on Kerala’s Marine Fishery Spanning Three Decades”, International Journal of Rural Management, 1 (1). Kusakabe, K (2003): “Women’s Involvement in Smallscale Aquaculture in Thailand”, Development in Practice, Vol 13, No 4, August. Le Sann, A (1998): A Livelihood from Fishing: Globalisation and Sustainable Fisheries Policies (London: Intermediate Technology Publications). Le Sauze, D (2000): “A Community Approach…”, Yemaya, Issue 5, December. Leach, M (2007): “Earth Mother Myths and Other Ecofeminist Fables: How a Strategic Notion Rose and Fell”, Development and Change, 38(1): 67-85. MacDonald, M and P Connelly (1989): “Class and Gender in Fishing Communities in Nova Scotia”, Studies in Political Economy, 30. MacDonald, M (2005): “Building a Framework for Analysing the Relationships between Gender, Globalisation and Fisheries” in B Neis, M Binkley, S Gerrard and C M Maneschy (ed.), Changing Tides: Gender, Fisheries and Globalization (Fernwood Publishing: Halifax). Mathew, S (2007): “Social Dimensions of Certification Schemes for Capture Fisheries: How Can Coastal Communities Benefit?”, APFIC Regional Workshop on Certification Schemes for Capture Fisheries and Aquaculture; Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, 18-20 September. Meltzoff, S K (1995): “Marisquadoras of the Shellfish Revolution: The Rise of Women in Co-management on Illa de Arousa, Galicia”, Journal of Political Ecology, Vol 2, pp 20-38. Mies, M (1986): Patriarchy and Accumulation on a World Scale (London: Zed Books). Mies, M and V Shiva (1993): Ecofeminism (London: Zed Books). Munk-Madsen, E (1998): The Norwegian Fishing Quota System: Another Patriarchal Construction? Society and Natural Resources, 11. Nadel-Klein, J and D L Davis, ed. (1988): To Work and to Weep: Women in Fishing Economies, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Canada; Memorial University of Newfoundland. Nayak, N (1986): A Struggle within the Struggle, PCO, Trivandrum, Kerala. – (2005): “Fishing for Need and Not for Greed” in B Neis, M Binkley, S Gerrard and C M Maneschy (ed.), Changing Tides: Gender, Fisheries and Globali sation (Fernwood Publishing: Halifax).
– (2008): “Women’s Struggles in Fisheries: What Have We Gained?”, Yemaya, Issue 27, March. Neis, B (1997): “From ‘Shipped Girls’ to ‘Brides of the State’: The Transition from Familial to Social Patriarchy in the Newfoundland Fishing Industry”, Canadian Journal of Regional Science; Vol 16, 2. Neis, B, M Binkley, S Gerrard and C M Maneschy, ed. (2005): Changing Tides: Gender, Fisheries and Globalisation (Fernwood Publishing: Halifax). Overå, R (2005): “When Sisters Become Competitors: Coastal Women’s Innovative Utilisation of Trawler by-Catch in Ghana” in B Neis, M Binkley, S Gerrard and C M Maneschy (ed.), Changing Tides: Gender, Fisheries and Globalisation (Fernwood Publishing: Halifax). Peet, R (2003): Unholy Trinity: The IMF, World Bank and WTO (London: Zed Books). Petras, J (1997): “Imperialism and NGOs in Latin America”, Monthly Review, 49: 7, December. Porter, M (1983): Home, Work and Class Consciousness (Manchester, UK: Manchester University Press). – (1985): “She Was Skipper of the Shore-Crew”, Notes on the History of the Sexual Division of Labour in Newfoundland, Labourite Travail, 15, Spring, 105-23. – (1987): “Peripheral Women: Toward a Feminist Analysis of the Atlantic Region”, Studies in Political Economy, 23; pp 41-73. Quist, C, L Polotan-De la Cruz and ICSF (2008): Integrating a Gender Perspective in CBCRM Approaches: A Review of Experiences and Best Practices of Oxfam Novib Partners in Southeast Asia and Other Efforts from Worldwide, International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), December. Sharma, C (nd-a): “Fisheries, Development and Human Rights”, available online at http://www. ksla.se/sv/retrieve_file.asp?n=2108 – (nd-b): “Securing Economic, Social and Cultural Rights of Fishworkers and Fishing Communities”, available online at http://icsf.net/icsf2006/uploads/resources/presentations/pdf/english/1280 826786888***ICSF_4SSF.pdf Skaptadóttir, U D and H Proppé (2005): “Global Processes, Localities and Gender Identities: A Feminist Perspective on Changes in Icelandic Fisheries” in B Neis, M Binkley, S Gerrard and C M Maneschy (ed.), Changing Tides: Gender, Fisheries and Globalisation (Fernwood Publishing: Halifax). Subramanian, A (2009): “Getting on the Bus”, Yemaya, Issue 30, March. Tandon, Y (2008): Ending Aid Dependence (Oxford: Pambazuka Press). Thompson, P (1985): “Women in the Fishing: The Roots of Power between the Sexes”, Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol 27, No 1, January, pp 3-32. Williams, S B, M Hochet-Kinbongui and C E Nauen (2005): Gender, Fisheries and Aquaculture: Social Capital and Knowledge for the Transition – Towards Sustainable Use of Aquatic Ecosystems, EU, Brussels, p 32. World Bank (2005): Review of World Bank Conditionality: Recent Trends and Practices; Operations Policy and Country Services, World Bank, Washington DC, September.
december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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Pakistan’s Modernity: Between the Military and Militancy Ayesha Siddiqa
In Pakistan economic progress does not automatically translate into liberal progressive modernity mainly due to the nature of the state. Pakistan’s modernity is structured along two axes: neo-liberal nationalism and right-wing radical nationalism. While the neo-liberal nationalism axis depicts an authoritarian and top-down model of economic and political development marked with the expansion of a national security-obsessed middle class and ruling elite, the right-wing radical nationalism axis denotes the growth of religious radicalism and militancy as symbols of geopolitical modernity that are anti-imperialist in nature. This analysis argues that liberalism is one of the many consequences of modernity, but not the only one. The meeting point of both trajectories has resulted in turning Pakistan into a hybrid-theocratic state which encapsulates a mix of economic neo-liberalism, pockets of social liberalism, formal theocracy and larger spaces experiencing informal theocracy.
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here is a new kind of literature on Pakistan in the market which claims to present an alternative view of the country, a view that is more positive and talks of the huge potential of the Pakistani state to become a success story on par with the emerging economies of the world. Instead of focusing on religious radicalism, the war on terror, the problematic politics or the excessively powerful military, the new works highlight the progressive, liberal and democratic tendencies of the state and society. One of the key arguments presented in the new literature is that given some structural changes in politics, especially by replacing the traditional elite with the growing middle class, the country can be turned into a success story. The emphasis, thus, is on empowerment of the middle class, greater urbanisation, political order and economic development. This is the formula for sociopolitical and socio-economic modernity. This essay examines the above notion and argues instead that this peculiar formula for modernity is deeply flawed. The empowerment of the middle class or economic progress does not automatically translate into liberal progressive modernity mainly due to the nature of the state. Pakistan’s modernity, I argue, is structured along two axes: neo-liberal nationalism and right-wing radical nationalism. While the neo-liberal nationalism axis depicts an authoritarian and top-down model of economic and political development marked with the expansion of a national securityobsessed middle class and ruling elite, the right-wing radical nationalism axis denotes the growth of religious radicalism and militancy as symbols of geopolitical modernity and anti-imperialism. The terms – military and militancy – are both used here in symbolic terms. While military denotes all forms of authoritarian behaviour, militancy refers to all the shades ranging from latent radicalism to extremism and religious fascism which will also be referred to here as jihadism. I also argue that liberalism is one of the many consequences of modernity, but not the only one. The meeting point of both trajectories has resulted in turning Pakistan into a hybrid-theocratic state which encapsulates a mix of economic neo-liberalism, pockets of social liberalism, formal theocracy and larger spaces experiencing informal theocracy.
1 Modernity: The Neo-liberal Nationalism Axis
The author is grateful to a referee for comments. Ayesha Siddiqa (
[email protected]) is an independent social scientist and author of Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy. Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
The new or alternative view literature is represented by three works: (a) Maleeha Lodhi’s Pakistan: Beyond ‘The Crisis State’ (2011), (b) Anatol Lieven’s Pakistan: A Hard Country (2011), and (c) Javed Jabbar’s Pakistan – Unique Origins; Unique Destiny? (2011). What is common in these books is a propensity to consider modernity as a “rational or social operation that is culture-neutral”
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(Taylor 1995: 25) which means looking at modernity purely in material terms and as a goal that can be fulfilled through good neoliberal policies. These three works and some others that will also be mentioned in the course of this article seem to be duly advertised by powerful segments of the Pakistani state as a response to many other works that either categorise the country as failed or failing, or unfavourably view certain powerful institutions such as the military as causing this failure. Although the effort of repainting Pakistan in brighter colours was started almost a decade ago under Pervez Musharraf, the initiative was speeded up in the ensuing years. The militarydominated state encouraged new scholarship to redefine Pakistan to the general public, both nationally and internationally. There are two angles of such scholarship: (a) take the emphasis away for any weakness or failure of the state from the civil and military bureaucracy to the political elite that is also considered the traditional elite, and (b) present an alternative formula for the country’s progress through improving governance and transferring power to the middle class. This indicates a fair amount of heating up of the inner conflict between the traditional elite and those that aspire to and are taking place of the old elite.
Significance of Armed Forces According to this type of literature, an alternative but successful Pakistan can be created by fulfilling certain sociopolitical conditions and honouring the right agents of change such as the urban middle class largely represented by the state bureaucracy, especially the military. All the three works highlight the significance of the armed forces as an organisation with an unquestioned reputation, especially in comparison with other players such as the politicians. This is not simple propagandist literature, but the type which is arguing for a structural sociopolitical shift – movement of power from the traditional elite to the emerging middle class. This literature considers the armed forces as primarily representing the middle class and thus the keepers of middle class morality (Lieven 2011: 163). Therefore, they paint another Pakistan, which is not in trouble but whose future will be determined by the following factors: – A vibrant entrepreneurial class – A growing middle class – A free and assertive media – A ferociously independent judiciary – A large segment of youth. Although modernity has several dimensions, the concept of modernity envisioned by this set of authors has a strong neo-liberal flavour that espouses economic progress as a key indicator of modernity, which, in turn, requires political order and buildingup of a strong and centralised national-identity that seems to be missing at the moment. These authors envision a modern Pakistan as economically progressive, ideologically secular-liberal, increasingly urbanised with a fairly strong industrial and technical base. This is, in fact, not a new argument as other authors such as Pakistan’s political-economist Akbar Zaidi have also presented urbanisation and reduced economic dependence on agriculture as an indicator of progress.1 The authors under discussion take Zaidi’s argument even further and present modernity as a material and
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technical issue. Thus, the greatness of the state is not evaluated through political and social progress or lack of it but from mundane material aspects such as the size of the country being the sixth largest country in the world. This is a bureaucratic approach since the state machinery also likes to highlight other facts such as Pakistan being the second largest producer of milk, or having the most extensive electricity supply network in the south Asian region as an indicator of its potential. Emphasising these material indicators, instead of discussing the sociopolitical imbalances that the society and state suffer from is considered the way forward. In any case, the modernity argument tends to follow the reasoning forwarded by people like the editor of The Wall Street Journal, Robert Bartley, that economic development results in political development (Bhutto 2008: 253-54). The latest prescription for progress also calls for strengthening of the nation state and deepening a sense of nationalism. Therefore, it is necessary to downplay all such elements such as ethnicity and sectarianism that might weaken the nation state project. It is not as if the formula is not being adhered to by the state machinery which likes to minimise the emphasis on ethnic politics and downplay sectarian differences. The state bureaucracy, especially the military, even uses brutal force to curb ethnic differences as is obvious from the case of Baluchistan. The demand of the people for the Pakistani state to respect ethnic diversity and honour the rights of the Baluch such as greater share in the control of their resources is presented as a plan of miscreant tribal leaders instigated by neighbouring India. The ethnic differences are not viewed as positive diversity but as part of the traditional-elitist political framework which must be replaced with another that proposes top-down nationalism to attain progress. In this respect, the formula is Pakistan’s version of neoconservatism where top-down nationalism or national cohesion is considered almost a prerequisite for modernity. Nationalism as a precursor for gaining western modernity is obvious in other cases as well (Suhrrke 2007: 1239-96). This is due to the nature of the nation state project that calls for homogeneous identity as a source of strength for the state. A strong state is viewed vital for harnessing the great potential of the society including its size. The fact that Pakistan is the sixth largest country in the world has begun to figure in the statist literature (Nishtar 2011: 9; Hamid 2011: 35). But a centralised national identity is even more important, hence, the emphasis on defining and streamlining what the former information minister Javed Jabbar calls Pakistaniat which is a set of positive attributes of a committed Pakistani citizen (ibid: 108-47). But most important, Pakistaniat is about a sense of homogeneous nationalism. These characteristics such as resilience in the face of adversity, feeling concern in the face of national humiliation, sense of pride in being a Pakistani are some of the 57 characteristics that in the eyes of the former information minister, Javed Jabbar, constitute positive characteristics of “Pakistaniat” and will guarantee the country’s development. Intriguingly, the author also includes respect for religious and ethnic minorities as one of the prominent characteristics of Pakistani nationalism which is a misrepresentation of facts or figment of his imagination. Given the attacks on religious, sectarian december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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and ethnic minorities that have increased in the past couple of decades, Jabbar’s assertion is more of propaganda and pretense rather than a fact. The recent past does not bear witness to this. In fact, one of the issues that this new literature does not fully address is the conflictual relation between the powerful and less powerful ethnic, sectarian and political groups in the country. The mysterious disappearance and killing of Baluch people at the hands of security and intelligence agencies not only indicates a contradiction in Jabbar’s prescription, but also denotes the mindset of the state in dealing with dissent and creating a top-down nationalism.2 The Pakistani establishment seems to want to use coercion and some amount of political manoeuvring to attain the state of Pakistaniat or a unison in national thinking. While the state tends to use coercion, it has also tried other means such as generating a new national narrative and build institutional mechanisms to rope in dissidents towards this narrative. The opening up of cadet colleges in Baluchistan and recruiting people into the military from Sindh is some of the ways used to co-opt the peripheral people into the state project. Both provinces mentioned earlier are known for dissent towards the central state resulting in oppression and violence in Sindh during the 1980s and the early 1990s and a constant friction between the state and people in Baluchistan throughout the nation’s 64 years history. Oppression and force is also one of the methods to create order which is considered necessary for socio-economic development. Those that refuse to conform to a regimented state narrative are dealt with harshly and through violence, as is the case in Baluchistan where the military’s intelligence agencies and paramilitary forces abduct people and torture and kill them. These three elements become both the end and means to attain progress. However, these factors have to be matched with two essential drivers for change: the nationalist-urbanised middle class and the military.
2 Progressive Nationalist Middle Class The alternative view literature completely discards the traditionalelite as the engine of progress. Progress, it is believed, can only be brought about by the burgeoning middle class (Lodhi 2011: 72-78), which according to one report is estimated at 20 million (Warraich 2011). Another more detailed research estimates the size to be about 35% of the population which means 61 million (Durr-e-Nayab 2011: 17-20). The paper does not engage in defining the middle class but uses pre-existing definitions. The middle class in Pakistan has grown during the three phases of upbeat economic growth under the three military regimes of generals Ayub Khan (1958-69), Zia-ul-Haq (1977-88) and Pervez Musharraf (1999-2008). There was a fairly free flow of financial resources from the west to Pakistan as part of the United States-Pakistan security alignment during these periods that resulted in temporarily enhancing growth (Hussain 2004). During the last phase of economic expansion under Musharraf, there were reports on the increase in the economic capacity of ordinary folk which resulted in greater number of vehicles, mobile phones and modern technology. Some consider this as denoting empowerment of the middle class (Lodhi 2011: 74). But there is a dearth of research on the middle class which is certainly not a lump but can be divided into rural and urban middle Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
class as well as at three levels: the lower-middle class, middle class and upper-middle class. According to Nayyab’s research, the size of the rural middle class is smaller and most of it is in Punjab (ibid: 20). The bulk of the rural middle class represents medium-sized (less than 100 acres) farmers and the burgeoning trader-merchant class that live in towns small cities that have cropped up from villages and depend on the agrarian economy. The urban middle class, on the other hand, comprises trader-merchants, small business and professional class belonging to various vocational groups in intermediate cities and large cities. For instance, in Punjab alone there are five large cities (population around 10 million), 15 intermediate cities (population around five million), 74 small cities (population around one million), and 114 towns (population less than 50,000).3 The middle class also includes the bulk of the state bureaucracy such as civil servants and military. The urban upper-middle class, on the other hand, represents the intermediate class that will eventually become the upper class and it comprises the echelons of the burgeoning media, the elite of the civil and military bureaucracies, the top leadership of the judiciary and the legal community, the non-governmental organisation (NGO) sector and professional expatriate Pakistanis that are keen to build their influence in their home country by remaining central to its politics. The case of Ghulam Nabi Fai, an expatriate Kashmiri leader based in the US and some of his friends that were allegedly part of the Inter-Services Intelligence’s (ISI) operations in Washington DC is a case in point (Barker et al 2011). The underlying assumption is that the empowerment of this socio-economic class is bound to bring liberalism and progress to the country. Better economic progress is bound to tackle the problem of militancy, which is adding to Pakistan’s poor image and is a consequence of poor governance, poverty and rampant feudalism. The key to success is, what is assumed as, a liberal (to be interpreted as secular) and progressive middle class denoted by a vibrant entrepreneurial class, free media, an independent judiciary and well-trained civil and military bureaucracies. However, what tops the list is the military which is considered as an upholder of middle class values and political order in the country. However, there are four issues with such formulation. First, it suffers from serious lack of clarity in defining the socio-economic origins of the ruling elite. We get an impression as if the ruling elite comprises mainly of landowners or entrepreneurs. The reality is that the bulk of the ruling elite no longer comprises traditional feudal-landowners but is instead of middle class and even lower middle class background. The 2008 parliament, for instance, has about 25 members out of a house of 342 with over 100 acres of landholdings. Not to forget the leadership of parties like the Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) (PML-N) group, Pakistan Muslim League (Quaid-e-Azam) (PML-Q) and Jamaat-e-Islami that have a middle class background. Even the current Pakistan Peoples Party (PPP) leadership, a party usually associated with feudal-landowners, is a mix of rural and urban middle class. Thus, it is not inheritance but kinship that cuts across class, sect and cast that determines power of an individual or a group. Second, these authors tend to borrow a Marxian political formulation without understanding its historical linkages. The
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entire debate of middle class and progress is essentially borrowed from western history that is not necessarily applicable to most developing countries where the bulk of the middle class is not liberal or politically progressive. Third, there is a problematic suggestion that middle class is liberal, secular and progressive that can guarantee Pakistan’s internal political and economic integrity. The seemingly free and vibrant media and judiciary are viewed as forces that would even keep a powerful military at bay in terms of its political ambitions. More important, these representatives of middle class values are viewed as a major bulwark against a corrupt feudal-minded leadership. Such notion does not take into account the fact that in a pre-capitalist culture like Pakistan’s, the middle class is intellectually an extension of the ruling elite. Fourth, it artificially links political development with economic progress. In fact, democratic norms and politics can be ignored for ensuring a top-down economic progress that is best attained through military bureaucratic dictatorial regimes. In this respect, the formula is akin to Singapore which indeed is a favourite model of many civil-military authoritarian leaders in Pakistan. In any case, a strong perception is that the current form of westernsponsored democratic process does not suit Pakistan due to the fact that the majority of people are illiterate and bound to the traditional feudal-landowning class. The fact that 56% Pakistanis do not vote does not speak highly of the political system that electoral democracy represents. Finally, political development is not directly linked with economic development and the focus of the middle class is the latter not the former. Moreover, this class has always supported and benefited from authoritarianism.4 The middle class needs attention due to its ideological leanings which are conservative, pro-authoritarian and increasingly latent-radical. The bulk of the emerging rural or even urban middle class is not socially or politically liberal. The same can be said of the middle class in major cities. In any case, the expanding middle class is accompanied with another trend that is migration from rural areas to urban spaces. The estimated growth rate of urbanisation for 2005 is calculated at 35%.5 According to Arif Hasan, 8% of the total population (1998 Census) comprises migrants out of which 63.7% have migrated from rural to urban areas (Hasan and Raza 2011: 33). This means that there is a significant amount of carryover of rural attitudes into urban spaces. But the more important fact is that the urban middle class has been a beneficiary of military governments which shape their perception in favour of authoritarian politics rather than tolerate the rigours of the political system. The urban middle and upper middle class both have an inclination towards authoritarianism and even latent religious radicalism. Some of the groups partnered with the military establishment under the Musharraf government.6 This was nothing new since, according to Akbar Zaidi, the regimes of Ayub Khan and Zia-ul-Haq had built and provided fillip to the middle class in terms of enhancing its economic potential.7 Not surprisingly, this group of people is inclined towards authoritarian rule, especially by the military, rather than support the democratic process. Most recently, new political movements denoted by urbanbased political parties, such as the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaaf – PTI (the justice party) run by the former cricketer Imran Khan, espouse wrangling political control through the army’s help. This, in
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Pakistan, is referred to as the “Bangladesh model”, a form of a middle class coup meant to eliminate traditional power centres. The military in Pakistan, which is also seen as representing middle class interests, is inclined to insert a “clean” party in the political process. In any case, the armed forces, which form a sizeable chunk of the middle class, are inclined towards their organisational control of politics of the state, indirectly if not directly. The other two pillars of the middle class, that is, the media and the legal community (including the judiciary) have equally questionable attitudes. The media and judiciary both have authoritarian, centre-right nationalist and even latent radical perspectives. A review of the various judgments including that of the Salman Taseer and Mukhtaran Mai cases indicates a judiciary that has willingly conceded space to the religious right.
3 The Military The country’s six lakh strong military and its extended families, which include retired personnel and their kith and kin, are critical to the presentation of a progressive-modern Pakistan narrative. There are several reasons for this. First, the military is considered as an institutional representation of middle class ethos. The narrative regarding military as a modernising force having the capacity to develop Pakistan politically, economically and socially is found in several recent publications. Lieven, in fact, confesses to his own bias for the military top brass in comparison to the traditional elite (Lieven 2011: 366). The assertion is that the military is neither authoritarian nor a detriment to political development. It only intervenes to protect the state from internal and external threat. Moreover, unlike the traditional elite, which establishes a patronage system of politics and is essentially authoritarian, the military, being a representative of middle class values, encourages the establishment of sustainable democracy. The basis of the armed forces being middle class is highlighted by a study jointly done by a military-friendly journalist and author Shuja Nawaz and American political scientist C Christine Fair. According to Fair and Shuja’s new work the military is increasingly getting urbanised and middle class. Although they do not explicitly draw a linear connection between urbanisation and political maturity, their line of argument implicitly suggests the same. Thus, the argument that the political situation will change as the ranks of the officer cadre is increasingly being filled with urban middle class men who, we are supposed to presume, inherently progressive (Fair and Nawaz 2011). This line of argument again is not new as it was initially broached by authors like Samuel P Huntington, Morris Janowitz, Alfred Stepan and many others in explaining modernity in a third world context. There is an array of literature which considers militaries of developing countries as representing secular-liberal modernity. The socio-economic category of Pakistan’s civil and military bureaucrats began to change as soon as the process of indigenisation of the officer cadre stared after 1951. Gradually, the officers were no longer from the Muslim elite or Ashrafia, for whom both the civil and military bureaucracies during the colonial times were coveted positions. The British distributed jaggirs (land) in specific areas to create a community of loyal officers. There is enough literature available that shows how the British used land colonisation for the said purpose. The same policies were practised december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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for the 1,50,000 strong Pakistan armed forces which included officer cadre of 2,500 men (Cheema 1990: 80). Soon after Independence in 1947, there was the first India-Pakistan war of 1947-48 which made it imperative for Pakistan to expand the armed forces. An investment of about 70% of the central government expenditure (CGE) in the first year after Independence (Siddiqi 1996: 70) meant the expansion of the defence sector that, in turn, meant that induction could not be limited to the ruling elite. Recruitment could certainly not remain limited to the elite that had migrated from the Muslim minority provinces in India popularly known as the mohajirs (migrant). The mohajirs, in any case, had become part of the elite by dominating the officer cadre of the military in a newly established bureaucratic-polity. In 1968, for instance, the mohajirs held 11 out of 48 senior positions (23%) in the military (Kennedy 1991: 943). This began to change as other ethnicities and social classes started to join the armed forces. Now, the military is predominantly middle class and lower-middle class which is one of the reasons why some Pakistani intellectuals consider Pervez Musharraf as representing middle class values that are juxtaposed to the norms of the traditional feudal elite.8 Since the military has brute force, which is so critical to Pakistan’s praetorian politics, the middle class views the armed forces as critical for change. The upper middle class, which is the emerging elite, benefit from a nationalist discourse to strengthen their position against the traditional elite that are disliked by the military as well. The middle class is inclined to build a partnership with the military to use authoritarian methods for replacing the redundant old elite. This means approving of the political role of the armed forces (though subtly) and also developing a narrative which presents the military as being above board. Thus, it is necessary to reject any negative notions of the military and debunk all scholarly work that sheds a negative light on the armed forces and its activities such as its links with the militant Islamists (Haqqani 2005) or its predatory corporate interests (Siddiqa 2007). Third, due to the character of the military being middle class it is seen as a source of political and economic modernity in the country. In fact, there is an entire discourse developed by technocrats with experience of working in the World Bank and other multilateral aid donor agencies who present the military as a driver of economic progress. These experts do not even factor in the reality of military governments being lucky to get major economic boost from the US due to some geostrategic crisis. Besides, the three books mentioned earlier, there are others such as Carey Schofield’s book Inside the Pakistan Army which was commissioned with the purpose of neutralising any negative sentiment about the military (Schofield 2010). Schofield, in fact, rubbishes all criticism of the military as the work of the “chattering classes” of the country that are out of sync with reality (ibid: 2). As far as the military is concerned, these books fall in the same genre of literature sponsored by the military during the 1980s to build its image as an “alternative” national institution that is most capable of governing Pakistan. The emphasis is on the military’s “progressive” middle class ethos. The fact that Musharraf was from the middle class or that his successor Ashfaq Pervez Kayani comes from the lower middle class as he is the son of a junior military official are deemed as an evidence of modernity. Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
According to the new narrative, not only is the current army chief Kayani progressive, he is also liberal with great concern for strengthening democracy. The general’s main aim is to professionalise the armed forces by taking the military back to the proverbial barracks. Since taking control of the politically powerful army in 2007, Kayani has gradually distanced himself and his military from politics. Apparently, he barred his officers from meeting politicians and announced his intention to withdraw military officers from civilian departments. The military’s willingness to disclose its affairs and have it discussed in the Parliament at least thrice is deemed as an example of increased maturity on the part of the army’s top brass. According to an expert of Pakistan’s civil-military relations, Saeed Shafqat, the accommodating behaviour of the army top brass has encouraged the civilian leadership to respond positively and give an extension to the army chief, which Shafqat presents, as an example of elite accommodation (Shafqat 2011: 103-12). Possibly, Shafqat’s benchmark is civil-military relations during the 1990s when civilian governments seen as overstepping into military’s domain were dismissed resulting in a constant tension between the civil and the military. The tension also expanded into constitutional issues such as the question of retaining the purity of a parliamentary-democratic system by keeping the prime minister powerful or empowering the president as a means for checks and balance.
The Military and the Presidency The debate about Article 58(2)(b) of the 1973 Constitution, which was introduced under General Zia-ul-Haq to keep civilian governments in check through a strong president, has been a matter of contention. The military prefers a strong president, especially when the army chief himself is the president or when the officebearer is a favourite of the armed forces. However, it is the second time in the country’s history that the president is not of the army’s choosing and the service was unable to remove President Asif Ali Zardari due to his ability to compromise and negotiate space for himself. Asif Zardari gave up his power to control the nuclear weapons or to appoint the service chiefs to stave off pressure from the army which could have translated at some point into his removal or that of his government. Moreover, the PPP government has made sure that it regularly pats the army on the back and is seen as allowing the military to take the decisions on foreign and security policies. The eulogising by the government of the military intelligence agency ISI’s initiative to take the parliament into confidence after the Osama bin Laden operation is a case in point. Some analysts believe that this balancing act will result in prolongation of the civilian government, which, in turn, will result in strengthening of the democratic system. There are three problems with Shafqat’s formula. First, he wrongly assumes that such accommodation is unprecedented. In fact, a glance at Marxian literature in Pakistan, especially the works of authors like Hamza Alavi indicate a partnership between the ruling elite and the civil-military bureaucracy in the country that dates back to the early days of the state. In fact, the echelons of the armed forces are part of the ruling elite and partner with other elite groups (Siddiqa 2007: 76-111). However, there is also the underlying contestation with civilian groups to establish the
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military’s dominant position. Throughout the country’s history, the military has not allowed civilian politicians the luxury of imagining that they could make the armed forces subservient which has often led to severe contestation between the two and turmoil. The army has historically used crisis to replace unfriendly political leaders with others considered loyal. Thus, the elite accommodation existed even under the seemingly liberal dispensation of Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto during the 1960s and the 1970s (Toor 2011: 117-25; Siddiqa 2007: 65-82). However, in a bid to prove that they are above board both the military and the politicians do not talk of accommodation of each other’s interests. Second, he does not ask the basic question if a major shift in civil-military balance could happen without a major transformation of the rules of the games regarding civil-military balance. What may actually appear as accommodation is based on some tactical adjustment of the military taking charge of some areas while leaving the less important issues for the civilian government. Strategically, the partnership between civil and military is always needed to hide the military’s actual control of the state. Therefore, the armed forces did not withdraw from de facto control of the state and its politics. Even some of the tactical measures were more of pretence such as withdrawing military personnel from civilian offices. Contrary to his commitment to the people, Kayani did not withdraw all military personnel from civilian departments. In any case, military men performing civilian duties are just the tip of the iceberg in a political system that is dominated by the armed forces. Third, what Shafqat calls elite negotiation is essentially an adjustment between the two power poles in the country – military and civil – to protect overall elite interests. Such an adjustment does not in any way indicate a fundamental shift in the political system and structure or a movement away from authoritarian rule. Hence, it is not surprising that the emerging political leaders such as Imran Khan or civil society groups, which allegedly represent middle class values such as the Pakistan Ex-Servicemen Association (PESA), are also inclined towards using military to change the political scenario to their advantage. More important, the military, though the echelons belong to the ruling elite, currently sees the middle class as a more acceptable and modern replacement of the traditional elite with which it has always had problems due to contestation of power. Over the past 64 years the Pakistani military has tried creating a new group of rulers every decade or so. The organisation has immense capacity at both political and social engineering since it can bolster an individual or group’s social class and make leaders out of them. The case of Nawaz Sharif is exemplary as the Zia regime boosted the politician’s family from its middle class existence to upper middle and then to upper class. Moreover, it made Sharif into a politician as it did with the latest crop of young and educated politicians selected by Musharraf, or even Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto who owes his flight to prominence to the Ayub regime. However, at this stage, in a desire to create an image of national modernity, the military is keen to present the image of the middle class’ ascendency to power. Supporting the middle class narrative helps the military in remaining relevant to the country’s politics and establishing its own image as being above board. Not that corruption is not a fact of Pakistan’s politics, but the reality also is
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that the military is not above board either. However, it uses the corruption of the politicians and its own image as a representative of the middle class to influence national psychology. This is part of the exercise of establishing intellectual control of the people.
4 Modernity: The Right-Wing Radical Nationalism Axis The alternative view literature is also known for its pretension of mainstreaming of the liberal discourse. The Pakistani society, as encapsulated in these books, is fairly liberal and has the capacity of countering the increasing jihadism and Talibaanisation of the society. Mainly because this literature tends to address the perception, or what is considered as a misperception of Pakistan in foreign lands, there is an overemphasis on presenting liberal trends without exploring the depth of such trends in the society. This kind of literature does not bring to the fore the issue of the gradual mainstreaming of jihadism and Islamism and the related narrative at several levels. There is an increasing non-liberal trend in the country which follows two inter-related trajectories: (a) latent militant radicalism that is found mainly amongst the poor and the lower middle classes (but does not preclude the middle class), and (b) latent radicalism found amongst the middle class, the upper middle class and (to a certain extent) the upper class as well. These emerging trends are not documented or analysed in the course of the debate on Pakistan’s modernity. Although representing a class divide, the two aforementioned trends feed on each other and on the modernity debate as well. Latent militant radicalism can be defined as a tendency towards adopting violence as means to suppress people of opposing religious ideology. The expansion of jihadi outfits throughout the country and their visibility in the society in various forms including their relief work bear witness to the fact that latent militantradicalism is fast acquiring a structure. This does not necessarily mean that there is a large majority of people who are willing to take up arms, but the fact is that there is a greater propensity towards using violence or even visualising violence as a means of strategic change in the society or at the national or international level. A major fillip to this kind of radicalism is provided by another tendency called latent radicalism, which is defined as the inability to imagine the “other” that is defined on the basis of religious dogmatic differences. The two behavioural norms are interconnected as one feeds on the other. In some instances, the two types are directly connected due to the fact that latent radicalism includes population, which may not directly take part in militancy but are part of creating the tools for it and even finance militant outfits, operations and madrasas that are a fundamental part of the “jihad complex”. The above trend is, in fact, a facet of Pakistan’s modernity. First, the state presents these trends not as a regressive behaviour, but as an indicator of growing anti-imperialism and anti-neocolonialism in the society. If militancy and radicalism is a response to, what the London-based Pakistani intellectual Tariq Ali considers as a response to foreign presence in Afghanistan,9 then it indicates political progress and a desire to empower the native. From the state’s perspective, latent radicalism is a response to American presence in Afghanistan. Such an argument is even december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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made by elements who once represented the liberal left. Today, some believe that the Taliban must be tolerated as they are the only bulwark against American hegemony. The political right, which is a bulk of the parties today including the mainstream political parties, has an element that is sympathetic to the militant and latent militant radical elements in the society and view the war on terror as a foreign conspiracy. Such belief has created a certain amount of psychological confusion and infested the society with conspiracy theories in which Pakistan emerges as a victim of American expansionist designs.10 There are quite a few urban and educated people who stand up to defend Afia Siddiqui, an Al Qaida member, or support Mumtaz Qadri, a religious bigot and the killer of the Punjab governor Salman Taseer. The lawyers seem to represent a large support base for Qadri and the likes. The support for Qadri or for a certain perspective on blasphemy law is not just limited to lawyers that belong to the middle class and are products of an inferior intellectual background, but also of lawyers from the upper middle class who have been exposed to a more liberal background. This is not a result of any confusion but an extension of the victimhood discourse that then allows people to target the native “other” who is viewed as an agent of the imperialist force. The religious minorities must then suffer as they are considered agents of a particular neoimperialist power or even others that do not fall in this category but are viewed as suspects by the national security apparatus of the state (some journalists have even, between the lines, justified the genocide of Shiite population in Baluchistan due to the fact that they take money from the Iranian government, an activity disliked by the military) (Haider 2011). There is a close connection between the suspicion of the “external” and the “internal” other that could be observed in another study done by the author. A study by the author regarding sociopolitical attitudes of youth in elite universities in three major cities of Pakistan – Lahore, Islamabad and Karachi – indicated a propensity of the sample, which belonged to the upper-middle class and even the upper class, towards greater political conservatism that was not merely restricted to an aversion of the US or other western countries. The sample showed lesser tolerance towards religious minorities and difference of opinion regarding faith. For instance, 62% of the survey sample agreed with the government’s policy to declare Ahmedis as non-Muslims and 18% considered Shiite as non-Muslims. More interestingly, 56% respondents did not want Pakistan to become a secular state and 60% believed the concept of Muslim ummah being a concrete reality than an abstract idea (Siddiqa 2010: 21-68). This does not necessarily mean that this segment of the youth will automatically turn violent, but their world view – both external and internal – is much more radicalised. This will result in creating a situation that may produce cases like Omar Saeed Sheikh (the young educated Pakistani-British man involved in the killing of American journalist Daniel Pearl) and Faisal Shehzad (Pakistani-American man who planned to blow up Time Square in New York in 2010), and create greater space for latent radicalism that feeds latent militant radicalism. Second, there is an increasing societal ownership of the radical discourse, especially at the level of the middle and upper-middle classes. For instance, one of the emerging icons is a rabid Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
televangelist Zaid Hamid, who preaches hatred of the US and India, rejects democracy and propagates the establishment of an Islamic caliphate (Constable 2011: 142, 144). Another popular character is the former cricketer-turned-politician Imran Khan who approves of the tribal system for adjudication and is known for his links with the religious right parties. Such support indicates an increasing acceptance of right-wing politics as an alternative to the existing political parties that are viewed as lackeys of imperial power, the US. It is a fact that Pakistan’s nationalism today has a deeper shade of ideological right, which is now being legitimised, through a new scholarly discourse that presents radical and religious forces as part of the native culture. In doing so, the new narrative even provides justification for jihadi outfits and jihadism.
New Face of Pakistani Modernity? The growing number of Pakistani postmodernist scholars such as Humaira Iqtidar, Kamran Asdar Ali, Saba Mehmood, Amina Jillani and many others in western and elite Pakistani universities are now proposing the religious right-wing forces as the new face of Muslim and Pakistani modernity. Iqtidar, a UK-based Pakistani anthropologist has argued in her book Secularising Islamists that forces such as Jamaat-e-Islami and Jamaat-ud-Dawwa have a secularising influence over the society (Iqtidar 2011). Others such as Mehmood and Jillani present Islamists as the new face of feminism in Pakistan and the Muslim world in general (Mehmood 2005). They are similar and different from the modernists of the early days who advocated inclusion of religion in politics from the perspective of keeping the state away from turning into a theocracy. The traditional modernists (1960s and 1970s) believed that religion should remain fundamental to the state but should be kept in a most liberal form (Sayeed 1967: 160-61). The postmodernists, on the other hand, are of the view that radical elements should be allowed to pursue their agenda that would eventually result in the religious right toning down its rhetoric and become more inclusive (ibid). There is a definite effort to legitimise both the political and religious right which makes the mix of Lieven-Lodhi-Jabbar and postmodernist scholars’ narrative a dangerous brew. While the former present nationalist right-wing military authoritarianism as representing the face of progressive-nation-statist-modernity, the latter highlights the same for the religious radical forces. Third, the growing radicalism is part of the evolving politics and psychology of the middle class. A general perception created about militants and radical forces in Pakistan is that they belong to the poor and the disgruntled strata of society. Studies such as the Sustainable Development Policy Institute (SDPI)-World Food Programme’s (WFP) analysis of food insecurity in the country have even suggested that militancy is a result of food insecurity.11 Such analysis fails to grasp the dynamics of both militancy and the middle class. If poverty indeed were the key driver, the volume of violence would have been much greater especially in areas that were identified in the WFP-SDPI report as highly food insecure areas. In fact, the recruitment for jihad is from areas which are relatively food secure such as south and central Punjab. This is not to suggest that poverty and poor governance do not play a role in increasing militancy. But the fact of the matter is that poverty
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becomes a driver only when combined with other factors such as weakening of the traditional power structure, weakness or absence of the state in occupying the space, and the relative strengthening of the militant structure. In Pakistan’s case, the rise in militancy is directly linked with state support, be it from the military or provincial governments. As far as militancy is concerned, it is concentrated amongst the poor, but also the lower middle and middle classes. The various militant outfits recruit their foot soldiers from amongst the poorest segments of the population, especially those that are used for suicide attacks. These are people who are desperate for money and easily motivated by the clergy. But these are not the only ones recruited for jihad. Over the years, jihadi outfits have exhibited a propensity to recruit capable youth who are literate or semi-literate. This segment in Punjab, in particular, belongs to the rural lower middle class, and even the middle class. In any case, the leadership of the jihadi organisations represents both the lower middle and the middle class. The background of the leaders of Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), Jasih-e-Mohammad (JeM) and Lashkar-e-Jhangavi (LeJ) bears witness to the above-stated fact. In the case of the LeT, it attracts members from amongst the Punjabi and mohajir middle class in central and south Punjab.12 The leadership of the Deobandi groups is generally lower-middle class that has now elevated to middle class or even upper-middle class. Again, it is mainly the middle class that is eager to give donations to the militant outfits and madrassas. The expansion of jihadism in Pakistan, in certain respects, represents the breakdown of the feudal system which many would consider as a socially modernising development. The middle class in Punjab and Sindh are increasingly supporting militant outfits and latent-radicalism, as it is the only available alternative to the traditional but gradually weakening feudal structure.13 The absence of an alternative force and discourse has favoured radical forces more than anything else. Also, since the feudal culture has made re-negotiation of power through legal means almost impossible, the jihadi forces have gained credibility and stepped into challenge the older power centres. For instance, in many places the jihadi organisations hold jirgas (local courts) and adjudicate and arbitrate amongst members of the society. They play a role which the state should have or that was earlier played by the feudal lords. What makes these jihadi forces potent in terms of power is the support provided to them by state institutions which make these outfits almost above board. For example, a general understanding is that the jihadis have become powerful due to their linkage with the military’s intelligence agencies (Siddiqa 2009). Since jihadi organisations are proxies of the state and cannot really be touched, other state institutions and political forces have also begun to be accommodative. According to the journalist Mujahid Hussain, members of the jihadi outfits have now become part of the junior and mid-ranking leadership of main political parties in Punjab (Hussain 2010).
Impact of Urbanisation Another influence pertains to the growing urbanisation in the country. The fact that Pakistan is moving very rapidly towards urbanisation as a result of which almost 50% of population is
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projected to be urban by 2030.14 The concentration of people is not just in the large cities but small towns as well that border on the rural areas and large cities. The new emerging small towns also indicate migration patterns. According to the 1998 Census, 49.7% people lived in about six cities with a million plus population and 27.7% in 418 cities of 50,000 or less (Hasan and Raza 2011: 75). The concentration of population and this kind of urbanisation has an impact on the political, social and cultural dynamics. It not only influences the mode of production, but also alters cultural norms. For instance, the social and economic structures have an impact on psychological, intellectual and even spiritual needs. Pakistan’s foremost social scientist Hamza Alavi believed that Barelvi and Sufi Islam, which denote “peasant’s religion”, would become less relevant with growing urbanisation, particularly sophistication in modes of production. Increasing mechanisation of agriculture (and now the gradual industrialisation) will make Barelvisim redundant or less forceful.15 These socio-economic changes have an impact especially in increasing the common man’s need for more potent culturalreligious-social structures. Deobandi and Wahabi Islam, as opposed to Sufi and Barelvi Islam, have textual basis and offer a form of modernity. Allama Mohammad Iqbal, the poet-philosopher of Pakistan, also recognised this factor. He found orthodox religion as having greater capacity to respond to the needs of establishing a modern state. Referring to present times the increasing popularity of Deobandi and Wahabi Islam in what used to be centres of Sufi Islam bears witness to the society’s urge for modernity. While Sufi shrines will continue to attract people, they will fail to fulfil the spiritual and intellectuals needs of those marching towards some form of material progress. The rural middle class and those of the small towns view the piri-mureedi culture as an extension of the extortionist feudal culture. Sufism as an institution has over the years transformed into piri-mureedi, which represents crude institutionalisation of Sufism with deep shades of feudalism. The pirimureedi culture, as we find from Sarah Ansari’s work (Ansari 2003) is not a new phenomenon. However, the transformation has compounded with the problem of a new power alternative emerging in the society that has some licence from the state in the shape of militant-radical force. The Talibans and jihadists are seen as challenging the traditional power centres known for their feudal-tribal culture (Constable 2011: 88). A close analysis of Punjab’s politics will show that the Sufi institution, which was an essential part of traditional power politics, no longer holds the power it used to. In fact, the various militant groups and their leaders are emerging as the new power centres that will influence electoral politics and sociopolitical development in general (Siddiqa 2011). The changing social and economic patterns have a bearing on cultural-religious norms in general. The militants benefit from the rise in Deobandism-Wahabism since it enhances the ideological pool from which they can recruit fighters at will. But the most noticeable development pertains to the impact of DeobandismWahabism on Barelvi religious norms that face the pressure of competing for political and ideological space. The Barelvi ulema and organisations seem under pressure to generate a popular december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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discourse that matches the Deobandi ideology. This behaviour is most obvious from the Barelvi reaction to the blasphemy issue. The Barelvi ulema are suddenly caught in a competition with the Deobandis in flagging the issue of blasphemy and support for Mumtaz Qadri, the killer of Punjab’s governor Salman Taseer. Intriguingly, the Deobandis and Wahabis have also highlighted the issue despite that they do not share the Barelvi’s passion for the prophet or the important historical personalities of Islam. This is mainly because the Deobandis and Wahabis do not want to miss an opportunity to popularise themselves in a largely Barelvi country. However, this raises problems for the Barelvi ulema who then have to up the ante in terms of rhetoric to remain relevant to their own followers who are tuned to the more militant and radical narrative of the Deobandis and the Wahabis around them. The Deobandi-Wahabi discourse has gained influence also because of the military-strategic and political significance of militant organisations and the relevant ideological network for the security apparatus of the state. The fact of the matter is that the Sufi-Barelvi ideology has gradually lost ground, as it could not play the role in creating an ideology needed by the state to fight its foreign battles. Currently, the militant outfits are not just a handful of organisations, but a dense ideological network. So, even organisations like Tableeghi Jamaat, which is meant for propagating Deobandi ideology, are integrated into the jihadiideological network. Furthermore, the evolution of the militarymilitant nexus has transformed the military as well which now has an increased dependence on these outfits to undertake the state’s military-strategic objectives. The linkage becomes critical at a time when the strategic community, particularly the security establishment, has become ambitious regarding its desire to expand its influence in the region or adjoining regions.
5 Conclusions Are these ideological forces relatively benign and will eventually get tamed by forces of capitalism, as suggested by Syed Vali Nasr? In his latest book on forces of fundamentalism in some of the Muslim countries Nasr has proposed that ultimately the fundamentalist forces will be tamed mainly because people do not want violence. However, such an analysis is based on a certain amount of naivety and simplicity in understanding various societies particularly Pakistan, which has already turned into a hybrid theocracy. This means that the country comprises small pockets of liberalism, small spaces where sharia law is formally enforced and larger spaces where it is informally implemented. This is not simply an issue of implementation of the sharia, but the use of force in various forms to restructure the power base and the ideological structure of the state. At a micro level, the use of force translates into cases like the torture of the Christian woman Aasiya Bibi who is jailed for blasphemy. Notwithstanding the veracity of the claim against her, the fact is that the state is unable to provide her some form of protection while she is incarcerated.16 Similarly, the state is increasingly less capable of providing protection to its citizens as the more violent forces dictate their ideology such as the case of the school in Rawalpindi where masked men entered and threatened the young girls who had not Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
worn the hijab.17 The militants are, in fact, the neo-feudals who are gradually gaining the same kind of power that the traditional feudal-landowners used to have. This is not to suggest that all militants are above the law, but the fact is that the state has established a principle according to which some favoured militants are propelled to being above the law. Since the militant forces have both the power and authority of religion, it has become difficult to contest their power. Geopolitically, the militant forces and their ideological network have gathered influence due to their efficacy for the military-strategic objectives of the state. The militants have established a partnership with the security apparatus of the state, which also considers the partnership beneficiary in pursuance of its military-strategic goals. The Pakistani state has often been viewed by its military establishment as a fortress of Islam. Religion is also seen as a source for propelling the state’s influence in adjoining regions such as central Asia for which a partnership with militant forces is necessary. The military’s new partnership is different from its older linkage with the traditional elite. The powerful establishment of the Pakistani state is in a process of reinventing itself because of which it seeks newer partnership and narrative. The emphasis on the power of the middle class that is audible in some of the recently written books that are sponsored by the establishment is meant to produce a new set of political stakeholders that can challenge the traditional and the old elite. Although the establishment, which is dominated by the military, has been central in creating the traditional elite as well, it is now eager to produce a new crop which has a more exciting narrative. The middle class is presented as an epitome of liberal-progressive Pakistan. However, it is an erroneous assumption to consider the middle class as liberal since the bulk of it seems to be ridden with latent radical tendencies are on the verge of it. Such an attitude will affect Pakistan internally before it has an impact on its external relations. In Pakistan the growth of the middle class accompanied with increasing urbanisation is an evolving socioeconomic and sociopolitical phenomenon. While the liberal political forces have been receding in terms of providing a forceful narrative, the radical forces have been gaining momentum. Religion, which was made the logic for the creation of the state, has become an even more powerful tool that could be used to determine internal and external relations. The newer political stakeholders view the Taliban and other militants as forces that challenge neo-imperialism by the US and other western forces. Even some of the new scholarly discourse tends to legitimise the jihadis. The liberal-western elite, which dominated the state at the time of partition and even later, has gradually lost its legitimacy. Such developments are taking place in an environment where there is very little space for a liberal discourse. The liberal elements in the country that can liberalise the religiouspolitical discourse and rescue it from the clutches of latent radicalism are few and far between. More important, it will take decades before a movement towards counter-radicalisation picks up speed. Meanwhile, any change that will happen will be through connivance with the security apparatus of the state which will remain relevant for any change in the political system for many years to come.
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References
1 S Akbar Zaidi, “Another Kind of Change”. See, https://www.opfblog.com/1746/another-kind-ofchange-by-s-akbar-zaidi/ 2 “Balochistan Blinkered Slide into Chaos”. Report of an HRCP fact-finding mission, June 2011. 3 Data obtained from the Urban Unit, Government of the Punjab. 4 Akbas S Zaidi, “The Improbable Future of Demo cracy in Pakistan”, http://www.democracy-asia. org/qa/pakistan/S.%20Akbar%20Zaidi.pdf 5 http://www.riazhaq.com/2010/05/1999-2009pakistans-decade-of-urban.html 6 Ayesha Siddiqa, “Political Homosexuality” in http:// ayeshasiddiqa.blogspot.com/2010/07/political-homosexuality.html. 7 See foot note 4. 8 Discussion with poet Fahmida Riaz (Islamabad: 10/02/11). 9 http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010 /jul/30/no-secret-pakistan-taliban 10 Nitin Pai, “Three Grand Narrative of Pakistan”, http://acorn.nationalinterest.in/2011/09/20/threegrand-narratives-about-pakistan/ 11 http://www.sdpi.org/policy_outreach/news_details.php?news_id=125 12 Assessment based on fieldwork in Punjab and Sindh. 13 Interview with various journalists working on Sindh. 14 “UNFPA State of World Population 2007 Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth”. 15 Discussion with Sartaj Khan, 30/12/08. (He was Hamza Alavi’s colleague and is currently working in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa for mapping the impact of urbanisation on changing cultural norms.) 16 http://tribune.com.pk/story/272192/blasphemyconvict-aasia-bibi-tortured-in-jail-sources/ 17 http://tribune.com.pk/story/269918/dress-modestly-masked-men-enter-girls-school-thrash-students/
Ansari, Sarah F D (2003): Sufi Saints and State Power: The Pirs of Sind, 1843-1947 Cambridge South Asian Studies (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). Barker, Kim, Habiba Nosheen and Raheel Khursheed (2011): “The Man behind Pakistan Spy Agency’s Plot to Influence Washington”, ProPublica, 3 October. Bhutto, Benazir (2008): Reconciliation Islam, Demo cracy and the West (New York: Harper Collins). Cheema, Pervaiz Iqbal (1990): Pakistan’s Defence Policy, 1947-58 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press). Constable, Pamela (2011): Playing with Fire Pakistan at War with Itself (New York: Random House). Durr-e-Nayab (2011) “Estimating the Middle Class in Pakistan”, Pakistan Institute of Development Economics, Islamabad. Fair, Christine C and Shuja Nawaz (2011): “The Changing Pakistan Army Officer Corps”, Journal of Strategic Studies, Volume 34, Issue 1, February. Haider, Ejaz (2011): “Who Are the Hazara?”, Express Tribune, 5 October, http://tribune.com.pk/story/267225/who-are-the-hazara/ Hamid, Mohsin (2011): “Why Pakistan Will Survive” in Maleeha Lodhi (ed.), Pakistan beyond the Crisis State (Karachi, 1). Haqqani, Hussain (2005): Pakistan between Mosque and Military (Washington DC: Carnegie Endowment for Peace). Hasan, Arif and Mansoor Raza (2011): Migration and Small Towns in Pakistan (Karachi: Oxford University Press). Hussain, Ishrat (2004): “Pakistan’s Economic Progress since 2000: False Dawn or Promising Start”, paper presented at a seminar at SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, 6 October. Hussain, Mujahid (2011): Punjabi Taliban (in Urdu language) (Lahore: Sanjh – revised edition). Iqtidar, Humaira (2011): Secularising Islamists (Chicago: University of Chicago Press). Jabbar, Javed (2011): Pakistan – Unique Origins; Unique Destiny? (Islamabad: National Book Foundation). Kennedy, Charles (1991): “The Politics of Ethnicity in Sindh”, The Asian Survey, Vol 31, No 10, October.
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Lieven, Anatol (2011): Pakistan: A Hard Country (London: Allen Lane). Lodhi, Maleeha, ed. (2011): Pakistan: Beyond the Crisis State (Karachi: Oxford University Press) paperback edition. Mehmood, Saba (2005): The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject (Princeton: Princeton University Press). Nishtar, Sania (2011): “Solutions from Within”, Hilal, edition 1, Vol 48, July. Sayeed, Khalid B (1967): The Political System of Pakistan (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company), pp 160-61. Schofield, Carey (2010): Inside Pakistan Army (London: Biteback), p 2. Shafqat, Saeed (2011): “Praetorians and the People” in Maleeha Lodhi (ed.), Pakistan beyond the Crisis State (Karachi), pp 103-12. Siddiqa, Ayesha (2007): Military Inc: Inside Pakistan’s Military Economy (London: Pluto Press). – (2009): “Terror’s Training Ground”, Newsline, 9 November, http://www.newslinemagazine.com/ 2009/09/terror’s-training-ground/ – (2010): Red Hot Chilli Peppers Islam – Is the Youth in Elite Universities in Pakistan Radical (Lahore: Heinrich Boel Stiftung), pp 21-68. – (2011): “Why Not Free Qadri?”, The Express Tribune, 9 October. Siddiqi, Abdurrahman (1996): The Military in Pakistan, Image and Reality (Lahore: Vanguard Books). Suhrrke, Astri (2007): “Reconstruction as Moderni sation: The ‘Post-Conflict’ Project in Afghanistan”, Third World Quarterly, Vol 28, No 7. Taylor, Charles (1995): “Two Theories of Modernity” in The Hastings Center Report, Vol 25, No 2 (March-April). Toor, Saadia (2011): The State of Islam: Culture and Cold War Politics in Pakistan (London: Pluto Press). Warraich, Omar (2011): “Could Pakistan Have an Egypt-Style Revolution?”, Time, 20 February. See, http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599, 2049747,00.html
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Private Space in Public Transport: Locating Gender in the Delhi Metro Shelly Tara
Gender has not been fully integrated into the mainstream of either the infrastructure debate or the debate on transport services. This article attempts to locate gender in public transport through an ethnographic study of the Delhi Metro services. Delhi Metro has not only promised women comfortable travel but has also provided private space for them in public transport. Thus a distinct power dynamics has been created, which has reproduced or transformed the internalised meaning of public space for women.
A
young girl wearing short pants and a T-shirt, lots of junk jewellery, carrying a big casual bag enters the metro station, gets herself frisked at the ladies security check, crosses another check with the use of a smart card (a plastic magnetic strip card used as a prepaid swipe card by frequent travellers of the metro services), waits at the “women only” side of the platform and enters the ladies coach of the Delhi Metro. This is how most of the middle class women are experiencing public transport in Delhi. The metro train which has brought unprecedented comfort to public transport has further added to this comfort by introducing an exclusive ladies coach. The ladies coach has become a phenomenon in the Delhi Metro, promising a safer journey to its women passengers. Experiences of the space provided by the ladies coach in public transport remain unexplored. Based on an ethnographic study, the aim of this article is to locate gender in the Delhi Metro and the kind of space it has provided to its women passengers. It is based on the participant observation on the Delhi Metro over one year during which the informal interviews were conducted with women passengers.
Public Transport and Gender
Shelly Tara (
[email protected]) is with the Women Studies and Development Centre, Delhi University.
In policymaking the transport concerns are mainly about how transport infrastructure could be efficiently and cost- effectively constructed and maintained. Fernando and Porter’s (2002) work on gender and transport, using a gender perspective to look at a range of transport issues in a variety of locations, maintains that gender has not been fully integrated into the mainstream of either the infrastructure debate or the debate on transport services. However this work mainly focuses
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on rural areas and highlights that while transport professionals have taken little account of gender, the issues of access and mobility have also been marginalised in the discourse on gender and development (Fernando and Porter 2002). Some studies in this work (Iga 2002) suggest that the influence of culture should not be ignored in the usage of transport. The cultural rules which are rarely unfavourable to men reinforce the unequal gender power in the transport as well. Men can usually travel as they wish, by whatever means available. However, women may be constrained by restrictions on where, how and with whom they travel (Iga 2002).
The experiences of urban women are remarkably different from that of their rural counterparts for the need of transport, as urban women mostly need to travel for work or education on a daily basis. Urban women travel long distances to reach offices or commercial areas and for that they have to depend on public transport. Woman’s access to the economic, social and cultural life of a city has always been constrained as she could never circulate freely. In addition, “because a woman’s spatial range is kept limited, she is often anxious about travelling alone to new place or unknown areas even in her own city. Thus the physical structure of a city reflects and reinforces inequalities of its social structure through not being equally accessible to both the genders” (Desai 2007). Before the advent of Delhi Metro, public transport in Delhi relied primarily on the Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses and private bus service which used to be called the Blue Line buses. The experiences of women in these buses comprised nar ratives of harassment by men, which occurred mostly silently and sometimes verbally. The only space for women in these buses was around six to eight reserved seats. However, the experiences of boarding and de-boarding the buses hijack the whole purpose of having reserved seats as women feel that they would not mind standing in the bus if the journey is harassment free. There have been initiatives to address these issues. For example, DTC welcomed
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the partnership with a Delhi-based nongovernmental organisation (NGO) Jagori for holding workshops to sensitise bus drivers and conductors on issues of gender and sexual harassment and to not tolerate harassment in their buses. The training programme was inaugurated by the chief minister, Sheila Dikshit on 3 September 2007 (Jagori 2007). Some of the findings of a survey conducted by Jagori during these workshops show that if women commuters confront the harassers, support from co-passengers and bus staff is difficult to get. The seats reserved for women are often occupied by men who do not vacate them even when requested to do so. The harassers most often are not intimidated by the presence of bus drivers and conductors and they usually get away without much protest by the bus staff or the public. Women have also reported the presence of drunken men around bus stops after dark which gives them an acute sense of insecurity (Unifem 2011). The understanding of gendered experiences in public transport in Delhi before the metro confirms that in the buses there is no sense of secure space, as women share the space with anonymous men. Hence travelling in the buses has always been reported as a struggle by women passengers. It curtailed their field of opportunity and dimmed their sense of secured travel in the city.
Here Comes the Metro The Delhi Metro was inaugurated on 24 Dec ember 2002. The initial days of metro journey were reported safer than the bus travel by women. However, the increasing connectivity of the metro on different routes resulted in it getting overcrowded. Especially, after its connectivity to prime stations like Rajeev Chowk, Kashmiri Gate and NOIDA, special security personnel have to handle the crowd on the platforms and help maintain queues of the passengers for the convenience of those passengers who have to de-board the metro. Women’s experiences started getting closer to the earlier experiences of the bus journeys because of the increasing population in the metro train. In October 2010, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) decided to reserve the first coach of the
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train for women passengers in view of increasing number of passengers in general and women passengers in particular. The ladies coach is the first coach of every train. Unlike the ladies coach of the Mumbai local trains, the coach does not have picture or figure of a woman outside the coach, neither does it have “ladies” inscribed on it. The ladies coach can be recognised by its placement on the platform because the platform has specific space where the ladies coach stops. “Women only” in pink colour is written on that part of the floor of the platform where the first coach/woman’s coach is designated to stop. However, inside the coach some differences can be found which demarcate it from the rest of the train. These are marked by the advertisements about contraceptive pills or beauty products and sometimes awareness about health issues faced by women like breast cancer or cervical cancer. The ladies coach accommodates about 361 commuters (43 seating and 318 standing). However one can find more than 43 women sitting, as they do not mind sitting in congested way and the coach accommodates more women as they do not have to mind the body distance in the absence of men. In other instances of public transport women always have to be alert in public areas to protect their physical as well as visual boundaries. There is no barrier to separate the ladies coach from the rest of the train as the emergency exit is at the end of the ladies coach. However, the barrier is in the form of a penalty of Rs 250, which deters men from boarding it.
Gender and Delhi Metro Gender exploration in public transport has been done in earlier studies (Phadke 2007), where women’s presence and usage of public transport has been explored. Nevertheless, as far as the Delhi Metro is concerned, Sadana’s (2010) work on it has explained women’s better access to the city and their emancipation from the dependency on male family members for mobility in the city. Apart from the increasing number of women passengers in the Delhi Metro, there are quite a number of instances where gender can be located. It starts with the entry gate, where the security is divided along gender lines, with women security police, who frisk women
passengers entering the metro station. At the customer care and token selling counters the presence of women staff is quite evident, which brings women employees in a noticeable number, in the realms of the public transport for the first time in Delhi. The Delhi Metro employed three women drivers in 2002 and the number has increased to 25 in 2011 (The Times of India 2011). After this initiative DTC decided to hire women conductors for the DTC buses (Pandey 2010), which gradually would result into rendering a new face to the public transport in Delhi. Women guards are also employed on the metro’s platforms to restrict men from boarding the ladies coach. This illustrates how these women guards, who come from lower middle class families, exercise authority in the public realm which they might not claim in the private realm of their homes. This reinforces one of the claims of gender and space discourse that people and social identities are determined by the physical or spatial environment (Desai 2005).
Private within Public The ladies coach provides a private space for women. Apart from the safety aspect, women’s physical interaction with men is almost absent during travel in the metro. Many women reported that they hire a cycle rickshaw to reach the metro station, get themselves frisked at the women’s security check counter and most of them use the smart card to travel in the metro, so they do not need to even stand in the queue with men to buy the token. At the platform they have a separate space to stand while waiting for the train’s arrival and which separates them from the male passengers even on the platform. In the initial days a lady guard used to stand on the platform to instruct men not to stand on the space which is reserved for the women.
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Many women reported that they do not mind the crowded platforms now as they have a separate space to stand. Even male passengers reported that when they travel with women family members on crowded routes they ask them to travel in the women’s coach. Women travelling with men also prefer to travel in the ladies coach and on the platform stand at the space reserved for them. Even in the night women feel safe in the ladies coach. The metro trains run from 6 am till about 11 pm. Many women who travel to faraway stations like NOIDA or Gurgaon (cities at the periphery of Delhi) have to travel by metro after dark as well. But these women reported that the ladies coach provides them a secure space to travel and a male family member picks them up at the metro station near their homes. Many women are found to be waiting for a male family member, outside the metro station (in the daytime). However, in the night hours, women prefer to wait at the “women only” section of the platform as they find this space safer than that outside the metro station. The “women only” section of the platform has been reported as a waiting point by many women. Sometimes, even in daytime, many women are found to be waiting there. Inside the ladies coach, the observations reinforce the sense of space and freedom among women in many ways. A group of women is often found to be sitting on the floor of the train and chatting with each other. They feel less conscious in the ladies coach than in the other coaches with men. Women passengers reported that they can talk, sit, and laugh without being conscious of the male presence. The studies on women’s access to public space attach the discourse of respectability with their presence in public space. In this discourse women moderate their behaviour in public to avoid being labelled as unrspectable. This moderation involves tone, volume of voice along with body language. These body politics have been discussed in detail in the studies on social construction of gender (Dube 2001). One important finding that came out during the study was about their agency in dressing. There are many young female students who travel by metro to the Delhi University wearing short pants and skirts.
Many of these students explained their limited agency earlier as far as their dressing was concerned (when they used to travel by bus). However, due to the ladies coach of the Delhi Metro the threat of physical proximity with men in the public transport is absent thus allowing them the freedom to wear clothes of their choice. In the gender and space discourse, the public space is the site for exchanging ideas, values and a platform for leisure activities for men. However, for women, public spaces are often regarded as transit ways to other regions. A woman is supposed to use public spaces as a transit between one private space to another (Gardner 1990). Her negotiation of the public spaces is more likely to be governed by some markers stipulated for the woman like physical look, proper decorum, non-verbal communication, proper attire and so on (Paul 2001). Women’s claim to the freedom of body language and choice of clothes reflect how space and spatial considerations contribute in the constitution of femininity (Niranjana 2001). Many geography scholars maintain that it is important to understand that there is a difference between the metaphorical (or cultural) space and material space. This understanding particularly becomes imperative, if we consider how certain cultural ideas of space have an impact upon the bodily practices of women, conceptualising and embodying the sociospatial matrix (Soja 1989). The understanding of bodily practices in the ladies coach of the metro emphasises the spatial perspective to women’s experiences showing that spatiality itself participates in the production of gendered bodies. On a parallel note, Bourdieu’s work also demonstrates how space enters into the very constitution of social life and identities (Bourdieu 1977). His concept of habitus reveals how a spatial classification is fundamental to one’s social and cognitive map, providing individuals with a set of parameters within which to deal with everyday lives and situations. In Bourdieu’s conceptual scheme, the habitus not only plays a major role in shaping and orienting our practical acts, but is also renewed along this course. The new notion of expressivity in the public transport (provided by the ladies coach) also puts forth an understanding
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of how the ladies coach has come up as a resource for “doing gender”. Doing gender means constructing the differences between men and women and using them in actions and interactions to reinforce the essentialness of gender (West and Zimmerman 1987). The creation of separate public washrooms in North America has been recognised as the earliest resource of doing gender (Goffman 1977). In the Indian context the ladies coach of Delhi Metro is the latest example of such resource. In the feminist studies of social construction of gender and doing gender, gender itself is constituted through interactions (West and Zimmerman 1987), which explain that in Indian society girls internalise the use of space and behaviour including posture, dress and speech. The freedom of conduct and clothing in the public space provided by the ladies coach reveals, first, how a private space is created for women in a public transport while transiting from one space to another, second, how gender is reproduced in a new environment, and third, how women conduct themselves to fit their own notion of expressivity.
Policing the Space Invaders Apart from the sense of freedom and protection, the ladies coach also provides a sense of authority among women passengers. Many women confirmed that they feel a sense of belongingness with the ladies coach and protect the purpose of the same by not allowing men to travel in it. Many women protest and generally do not let the men enter. The DMRC has a special squad for the metro train for the same purpose. Women passengers claim that they sometimes inform the male passengers about the fine which they will have to pay if they travel in the ladies coach, which works to stop them from travelling in ladies coach. This, however, reveals that the ladies coach does not only provide a sense of private space to women but also accords an unprecedented authority to them in the public place to protest. Women explained that, while travelling by bus, it is difficult to protest in case of any assault as co-passengers who are mostly men do not support the woman victim. The protest in the bus becomes more of an embarrassment rather than being an effective means to redressal. Feminist scholars
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and geographers have posited access to and control over space as key elements in power dynamics (Paul 2001). Power relations demarcate the boundaries of spaces and determine the legitimacy of users who enter these spaces as well as their identities, discourses and interests (Gaventa 2006). The physical space is frequently utilised as strategy to reproduce self which, embody and sometimes naturalise such behavioural strategies with passage of time. It is through replication of such identities that specific spaces come to be associated with either masculine or feminine that strongly influence men’s and women’s actual behavior and power within them (Kilde 1999).
The experiences of women passengers in policing men in Delhi Metro brings forth an understanding about the gender relations in public space that the power equation of every space involves the question of majority. In the gender and space discourse, the subjugated position of women in public space has a lot to do with their minority status and where a space like ladies coach brings them together and provides them with a sense of majority which makes them feel empowered and renders them the capacity to protest vocally. Second, the space of metro train is a controlled space where it is difficult for the offender to run away unlike the bus journeys of earlier days, however, it may be added that with the inclusion of Tata buses of the Marcopolo make in the fleet of the DTC, the entry and exit in DTC buses have become relatively controlled. The doors of the metro train open only at the station and in between the two stations the security can be contacted to complaint against the offender. Hence, the space of ladies coach, providing a sense of majority to women and the special security attached with it (penalty of Rs 250 and special squad) facilitate an unusual kind of power relation in the public space. This power relation can be understood by Bourdieu’s work on symbolic power (Bourdieu 1989), where the space of the ladies coach can be analysed as a space of symbolic power. Symbolic power is the power, according to Bourdieu, “to conserve or to transform the current classification in matters of gender, nation, region, age and social status”. It is used through words to describe individuals, groups or institutions. But to understand how women get this
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symbolic power in the ladies coach, it is important to understand that symbolic power has to be based on symbolic capital. Bourdieu has recognised symbolic capital as a “credit”, “which grants power to those who have obtained sufficient recognition to be in the position to impose recognition” (Bourdieu 1989). The separate ladies coach is a symbolic capital for women, which helps them to recognise themselves as a group and to look upon men in this public space as the other group. Within the space of their own group they exercise power to impose the recognition that has been provided to them. Now we can understand that women’s capacity to police men in the ladies coach comes through the symbolic power provided to them in the space of the ladies coach. To make them exercise their symbolic power they are given symbolic capital (in form of punishment and penalty to the invaders). Public space has always been a no-authority space for women and women were always expected to negotiate with the power relations, which are tilted towards men. However, the ladies coach of the Delhi Metro, representing symbolic power and symbolic capital to women, has brought a transformation of power relations in the public space. The space of the ladies coach as a part of public transport has provided certain amount of agency as well as power to women which has manifested in making their negotiation with the public space smoother.
Conclusions Although there are continuous shifts and transformations in how public and private spaces are characterised, as the meanings they acquire are always contingent upon their contexts, the dichotomy of public/ private space can get blurred when one space can become part of another. The ladies coach of Delhi Metro has provided a little private space to women in the vast public space. The meaning of a public space can be beyond its physical bound aries and there can be an emotional meaning of the space (i e, space that is mentally inhabited) which create an attachment with the space inhibited. The ladies coach provides a private space in a public transport to women for the first time in Delhi. There is a visible transformation in their
conduct, decorum and even in physical looks including the attire, to fit their own notion of expressivity in this new space. The space of the ladies coach also highlights a distinct power dynamics in public transport which is tilted in favour of women and reproduced or transformed the internalised meaning of public space for women. References Bourdieu, Pierre (1977): Outline of a Theory of Practice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). – (1989): “Social Space and Symbolic Power”, Sociological Theory, 7(1): 14-25. Desai, M (2007): “Introduction” in Madhavi Desai (ed.), Gender and the Built Environment in India (Zubaan: Delhi), 1-29. Dube, Leela (2001): “Anthropological Exploration in Gender: Intersecting Fields” (New Delhi: Sage Publication). Fernando, P and G Porter (2002): “Introduction” in P Fernando and G Porter (ed.), Balancing the Load: Women Gender and Transport (New York: Zed), 1-14. Gardner, Carol Brooks (1990): “Safe Conduct: Women Crime and Self in Public Places”, Social Problems, 37(3): 311-28. Gaventa, John (2006): “Finding the Spaces for Change: A Power Analysis”, IDS Bulletin, 37(6): 26-33. Goffman, Erving (1977): “The Arrangements between the Sexes”, Theory and Society, 4: 301-31. Iga, Harriet (2002): “Bicycles, Boda Boda and Women’s Travel Needs” in P Fernando and G Porter (ed.), Balancing the Load: Women Gender and Transport (New York: Zed), 50-56. Jagori (2007): “DTC Partners with Jagori on the Safe Delhi Campaign”, viewed on 26 June 2011 (http:// safedelhi.jagori.org/news/dtc-partners-with-jagori-on-the-safe-delhi-campaign/). Kilde, Jeanne Halgren (1999): “The Predominance of the Feminine at Chautauqua: Rethinking the Gender-Space Relationship in Victorian America”, Signs, 24(2): 449-86. Niranjana, Seemanthini (2001): Gender and Space: Feminity, Sexualisation and the Female Body (New Delhi: Sage Publication). Pandey, Neelam (2010): “DTC Hires Women Conductors”, Hindustan Times, 20 October, viewed on 30 June 2011 (http://www.hindustantimes.com/DTC-hireswomen-conductors/Article1-615197.aspx). Paul, Tanushree (2001): “Public Spaces and Everyday Lives: Gendered Encounters in the Metro City of Kolkata” in S Raju and K Lahiri-Dutt (ed.), Doing Gender Doing Geography: Emerging Research in India (New Delhi: Routledge). Phadke, S (2007): “Re-Mapping the Public: Gendered Spaces in Mumbai” in Madhavi Desai (ed.), Gender and the Built Environment in India (Zubaan: Delhi), 53-73. Sadana, Rashmi (2010): “On the Delhi Metro: An Ethnographic View”, Economic & Political Weekly, XLV(46): 77-83. Soja, Edward (1989): “Postmodern Geographies: The Reassertion of Space in Critical Social Theory” (London: Verso). The Times of India (2011): “DMRC Marks 100 Months of Operations”, The Times of India, viewed on 25 June (http://articles.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/ 2011-04-24/delhi/29468392_1_delhi-metro-railcorporation-metro-today-metro-train-operations). Unifem (2011): “Initiative to Make Delhi Safe for Women Takes Off with Training of DTC Instructors”, viewed on 27 June (http://www.unifem. org.in/DTC%20Story.htm). West, C and D H Zimmerman (1987): “Doing Gender”, Gender and Society, 1(2): 1-25.
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DISCUSSION
WTO Conflict with Financial Re-regulation Todd Tucker, Jayati Ghosh
The General Agreement on Trade in Services does impose limits on many developing countries’ ability to regulate the financial sector. A response to the article “Regulatory Freedom under GATS: Financial Services Sector” which argued otherwise.
Todd Tucker (
[email protected]) is Research Director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch in the United States and Jayati Ghosh (
[email protected]) teaches economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
B
K Zutshi (“Regulatory Freedom under GATS: Financial Services Sector”, 12 November 2011), who has been India’s ambassador to the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and a dispute settlement panelist, makes an unapologetic defence of the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) in terms of the possible impact on financial regulation in signatory countries. He critiques the growing concern that GATS limits options for re-regulation and development banking, describing this argument as “misguided” and “meritless” “propaganda” that is coming “mostly from developed countries”. In the process, however, he displays a lack of awareness not only of concerns related to financial fragility in both developed and developing countries, but also of the implications of the actual reach of the GATS restrictions. This is a matter of concern because in fact GATS does impose restraints on many developing nations’ ability to utilise capital controls, size limits and other regulations in the financial sector. This has been recognised not just by the groups quoted in the article, but also by the United Nations Commission of Experts on Reforms of the International Monetary and Financial System, the G-24 intergovernmental group of developing countries within the Bretton Woods organisations and the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD). This concern led to a modest proposal by Ecuador to have the WTO’s December ministerial conference mandate further discussion of the intersection between re-regulation and the GATS’ financial services terms, which was supported by many developing nations including India. However, it was opposed and blocked by a group of developed countries: the European Union, Canada and the United States, which has recently launched the first ever case against a
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developing country under GATS financial services clauses (on China’s credit card policies). This context makes it all the more necessary to be clear about the possible implications of GATS on financial sector regulation.
GATS Architecture and Regulatory Bans GATS pertains to “measures by Members affecting trade in services”, and it contains an Annex on Financial Services that “applies to measures affecting the supply of financial services”.1 The WTO’s Appellate Body has ruled that the word “affecting” indicates that the GATS has “a broad scope of application” and does not require that a measure specifi cally “regulate” or “govern” services per se.2 Similarly, the meaning of “measures” is broad, and can include statutes, regulations, court decisions, agency determinations, and government actions to implement any of the foregoing.3 “Financial services” is also defined broadly as including everything from credit cards to bank deposits to derivatives and swaps. GATS is a positive list agreement, meaning that countries pick which service sectors to commit to coverage, which “modes of supply” to commit (i e, cross-border trade [Mode 1], consumption abroad [Mode 2], commercial presence [Mode 3], etc), and whether and how much to commit to the market access and national treatment disciplines. Once a service sector is committed, certain disciplines (such as mostfavoured nation) apply across the board. This architecture means that GATS obligations can and do vary considerably from country to country. Despite Zutshi’s assertion, no one argues that GATS prohibits every regulation. But it does prohibit several common policy tools. Article XVI(2) represents a ban on bans and size limits.4 While Zutshi details several aspects of the ruling of the panel he chaired in the US-gambling case, he fails to note that panel’s central conclusion: a ban in a sector and mode committed to GATS (even if it is non-discriminatory) constitutes a “zero quota” impermissible under Article XVI(2). If there was any doubt as to the troubling reach of this decision, the panel decreed that WTO members’
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regulatory “sovereignty ends” whenever GATS is violated.5 While this case did not deal with financial services per se, the panel’s interpretation of the content of the Article XVI requirement (upheld by the Appellate Body) would undoubtedly be imported into future cases in the absence of any political-level ministerial directive to the contrary. Article XVI has severe implications for developing countries. Unlike developed nations that may possibly have the admini strative capacity to make finely drawn distinctions between core banking sectors and purely speculative activities, developing countries often find it easier simply to ban economically harmful services. Yet if the government of a country has made deep Article XVI commitments, such bans would be seen as GATS-illegal in terms of Zutshi’s own jurisprudence.6 Further, the ongoing negotiations pursuant to GATS A rticle VI(4) may subject every regulation (including those not covered by GATS market access and national treatment requirements) to a series of tests that are likely to push further deregulation.7
Limitations on Capital Management Techniques Capital management techniques (CMTs) or capital controls are used in many developing countries. Yet countries with deep A rticle XVI market access commitments may find their ability to engage in these curtailed. Countries list their “specific commitments” pursuant to GATS. A footnote to Article XVI notes that If a Member undertakes a market-access commitment in relation to the supply of a service through [Mode 1] and if the cross-border movement of capital is an essential part of the service itself, that Member is thereby committed to allow such movement of capital.8
In addition, Article XI9 of GATS states that a country “shall not impose restrictions on any capital transactions inconsistently with its specific commitments regarding such transactions”. The strictness of these disciplines turn on several interpretative and technical questions that have yet to be resolved by a WTO panel. First, how widely would a panel construe the notion of “restriction” in Article XI? WTO panels and legal scholars all agree that it should be construed broadly,10
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so a wide range of capital controls could constitute “restrictions”, including measures to prohibit capital flows, requiring permits for capital transactions, measures that tax or increase the cost of such transactions. Second, are the only “restrictions” to be avoided those that do not “allow...movement of capital” at all, or could a broader range of restrictions be prohibited? In other words, what is the range of “restrictions” that can be imposed “consistently with specific commitments”? Here there is a range of possible interpretations. One interpretation of the phrase “that member is committed to allow such movement of capital” is that the only GATS-prohibited “restriction” would be an outright refusal to allow Mode 1 capital movements in a committed sector. This is a fairly extreme CMT that most countries do not utilise (although it is unfortunate that even that policy space would have to be given up). However, the rest of GATS provides context that suggests that a broader range of CMTs could be inconsistent with GATS specific commitments in Mode 1.11 Third, when is “capital...an essential part of the service itself”? This is most clearly the case for financial services. In core financial service sectors, there is no service transaction unless it is accompanied by a capital flow. For instance, it would be difficult to supply lending services if there were no loans (i e, capital).12 Further, distinction between Mode 1 (cross-border trade) and Mode 2 (consumption abroad) has collapsed with the emergence of online banking. A recent paper by US Federal Reserve economists calls the classification system “particularly useless when addressing prudential concerns, fears of contagion and capital flows”, and notes that the distinction is especially “blurry, because it is not clear whether the consumer or the service crosses the border”.13 There are many nations who have deep Mode 2 but shallow Mode 1 commitments, including most developed nations and more than a handful of developing countries. Add this to the countries with substantial Mode 1 commitments, and you have around 60 developing nations that have a particular interest in clarifying (and expanding) the permissible policy space for CMTs.14 In sum, countries with deep “market access” commitments are right to be concerned
that the GATS goes beyond even countries’ obligations under the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF) Articles of Agreement.15 It is foolhardy to be complacent on these matters in the absence of clear case law through dispute settlement, which is yet to be developed. This provides additional support for the argument that these GATS provisions ought to be re-examined.
Defence against GATS Obligations? Zutshi makes much of a provision in the GATS Annex on Financial Services Article 2(a) known as the “prudential measures defence”, or PMD. This reads: Notwithstanding any other provisions of the Agreement, a Member shall not be prevented from taking measures for prudential reasons, including for the protection of investors, depositors, policy holders or persons to whom a fiduciary duty is owed by a financial service supplier, or to ensure the integrity and stability of the financial system. Where such measures do not conform with the provisions of the Agreement, they shall not be used as a means of avoiding the Member’s commitments or obligations under the Agreement (italics added).
This sui generis provision has a formulation that is distinct from other provisions of trade law, and presents unique interpretative puzzles that cannot simply be rushed through. A careful analysis shows that the provision is not, and logically cannot be, the sweeping carve-out that Zutshi makes it out to be. The PMD’s first sentence establishes the scope of the article as “measures taken for prudential reasons”. Zutshi is correct that the word “including” indicates that this is an indicative list, which does not mean that any measure is included in its scope. Some measures that affect financial services are taken for other reasons, such as measures against commodity speculation that are taken to address rising food prices and hunger. A WTO panel interpreting the PMD would be tasked with discerning “the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose”.16 As legal scholars have noted, a WTO panel would likely consult general and specialised dictionary definitions of the word “prudential” to establish its “ordinary meaning”, and then examine the list of illustrative examples in the PMD as “context”.17
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Utilising the interpretative principle of ejusdem generis, we can delineate the types of policies captured by the first sentence. The various dictionary definitions of “prudent” congeal around the notion of individual agents’ risk aversion, caution, circumspection and judiciousness. The context provided by the illustrative examples of prudential motivations in the PMD include: “for the protection of investors, depositors, policyholders or persons to whom a fiduciary duty is owed by a financial service supplier…” These illustrative examples seem geared towards the so-called “principal-agent problem”, i e, rules that discourage management (agents) of an enterprise from acting against the interests of the other stakeholders (principal). Thus, it is unsurprising that one of the most commonly cited “prudential measures” is minimum capital or reserve requirements that keep financial managers from making decisions to become more indebted or have more loans outstanding than would be wise to keep the enterprise intact as an ongoing concern. The final illustrative example provided in the PMD’s first sentence is something of an outlier, referring to the “financial system” as a whole. This example could be seen as widening the scope of the PMD considerably, so it is worth dissecting the phraseology in some detail. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines “integrity” as “the condition of having no part or element taken away or wanting”, while “stability” is “immunity from destruction or essential change”. “Ensure” is defined as “to make certain the occurrence or arrival of (an event), or the attainment of (a result)...” Taken together, this illustrative example should be read as “to make certain that the financial system does not lose any part or element and is immune from destruction or essential change”. The GATS negotiators could have used a weaker formulation, such as “contribute to protecting the financial system”. Instead, the use of the word “ensure” suggests an outcomeoriented test: that the measure not merely be motivated by prudential concerns, but that total stability and integrity actually be achieved as a result of the measure. In sum, four out of five of the PMD’s illustrative measures relate to rules that contribute to the minimisation of harm brought by agents on principals, which
would seem to indicate the “centre of gravity” of the definition of “prudential” under the PMD. Only one of the five illustrative examples goes beyond this to examine rules that relate to systemic risks. Policies taken for the more traditional “prudential” reasons examined by the first four examples would likely have an easier time falling under the scope of the PMD, while the fifth type of policy would be subject to greater scrutiny. Even if a measure comes within the scope of the PMD’s first sentence (no easy task), it must also be within the scope of the second sentence, which imposes limitations on the ability to invoke it as a defence: “Where such measures [i e, those ‘taken for prudential reasons’] do not conform with the provisions of the Agreement, they shall not be used as a means of avoiding the Member’s commitments or obligations under the Agreement.” Much of the existing academic literature on the PMD interprets the second sentence as socalled “anti-abuse language”, and Zutshi echoes this sentiment repeatedly and in especially unrestrained terms. But there are several reasons to doubt the soundness of this interpretation. First, this interpretation goes against the “ordinary meaning” of the verbs “to use” and “to avoid”, in violation of Article 31 of the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties (VCLT). Advocates of the anti-abuse interpretation seem to be reading the PMD as saying “used with the intent to avoid” rather than the formulation actually utilised: “used as a means of avoiding”. The verbs “to use” and “to avoid” do not require a demonstration of intent on the part of the subject.18 For this reason, legal invocations of the verb “to use” are often modified to “used with intent” when actions resulting from unique motivations are meant to be differentiated from generally prevailing customs.19 Whether a WTO member “uses a measure to avoid” its GATS obligations is determined by the fact of the GATS obligations not being fulfilled, not because the WTO member was motivated by the intent to avoid its GATS commitments. Second, Zutshi’s interpretation goes against the principle of effective treaty interpretation, which requires that two treaty obligations described using different words be given different meanings. Treaty
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negotiators and interpreters are familiar with the standard anti-abuse language of the so-called chapeau of GATT Article XX.20 They chose not to utilise that language, and instead create sui generis language of the PMD. Interpreters would have to accordingly apply a different legal standard.
Application of Chapeau The chapeau comes into play when a panel has sided with a complainant that a respondent country has violated their WTO obligations, but has sided with the respon dent that the policy nonetheless is taken for some permissible objective (such as protection of human life) and that the policy is (for instance) “necessary” to achieve the objective. The chapeau represents a “final cross-check”, to show that the permissible violation of a WTO obligation is not taken for protectionist reasons or in an arbitrary manner not expressly prohibited by the violated obligation itself. In contrast, the “final cross-check” PMD is simply a return to the initial test, of whether a violation of an obligation or commitment occurred. Only one respondent has survived the chapeau test in the history of the WTO,21 and it is hard to see how a respondent could ever survive the PMD test. This raises the question of whether the PMD as a whole can be left with any legal effect.22 Zutshi rightly identifies this interpretive quandary, and notes that interpreters should ensure that “no text or expression is rendered inutile”. While he worries that we would leave the PMD inutile, his interpretation would lead Article XVI (or any other claimed violated provision) effectively inutile. He writes (without interpretive support) that the PMD allows regulatory interventions that “result in violation of a specific commitment”. And: “As to the appli cation of the caveat in practical terms, the facts and circumstances of individual cases under dispute will show whether or not a challenged measure was for prudential reasons or taken with the intent of avoiding a commitment.” Aside from such interpretation going against the ordinary meaning of the English text of the GATS, there is the issue of whether any policy (be it related to trade in goods, services, investment or intellectual property) could ever be said to be taken “with the intent of avoiding a
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commitment”. There is little WTO jurisprudence that delves deeply into how “intention” is ascertained for the purpose of trade law, but recent panels have examined the architecture, design, structure and characteristics of legislation. In practice, this has meant that they examine the preambles and legislative history of the challenged measure.23 By Zutshi’s evidentiary standard, if a country claims a measure is prudential, this defence could only be invalidated if a parliament was so guileless as to include a provision in the preamble of legislation along the lines of, “While we are claiming this financial reform is for prudential reasons, the real reason is because we seek to violate the GATS commitments”. We know of no instance in the history of the WTO where a legislature has taken action so capricious that it stated the motivation as violating WTO commitments. Rather, a nation takes action that is intended towards some other goal (protection of jobs, consumers or environment), and is unaware of or unconcerned about violating its WTO commitments. By Zutshi’s reading, the PMD would render other GATS provisions inutile, which would be even more unacceptable for an agreement that has as its stated objective “the reduction or elimination” of barriers to services trade.24
PMD and Capital Controls? All of the foregoing could be moot in the instance of CMTs. The lex specialis interpretive principle suggests that Article XII (which establishes certain limited permissible deviations from Article XI) is rather the governing exception for CMTs. This was the conclusion of two University of Zurich scholars whose writings tend towards supportive of the current WTO regime. In their study of the provisions, Rolf Weber (a WTO panelist) and Christine Kaufmann wrote: The right of a member to issue or maintain such prudential regulation seems to find its limits in Article XI GATS. Indeed, paragraph 2 of the Annex on Financial Services underlines that the prudential carve-out should not be used to avoid commitments or obligations under the GATS Agreement. This sheds uncertainty on the relationship between the Annex on Financial Services and the GATS, in particular Article XI GATS. The issue is well illustrated by the current request from the EC to Chile to lift its requirement that a prior authorisation by the Central Bank is necessary
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before profit repatriation to be allowed. Such restrictions are indeed considered by the EC to be in breach of Article XI... If this provision is interpreted as prevailing over the prudential carve-out, it seems to prevent countries from taking prudential measures with respect to payment in transfers, in fact measures, which could be ‘nevertheless very effective for dealing with financial stability’.25
The Planck commentaries provide support for this conclusion, stating that members may not use prudential measures to “actually avoid any obligations under the GATS (including the obligation to liberalise international transfers and payments relating to services for which specific commitments have been made)”.26 Also, arbitrator Mark Kantor has a similar interpretation of the non-applicability to capital and current restrictions of a nearly identical PMD clause in bilateral US trade and investment agreements.27
GATS: A Special Problem Zutshi sets up a straw man when he concludes that “Specific commitments of members in the financial service sector were in no way responsible for the crisis”, since no one has argued this in the first place. Rather, the apprehension is that commitments under GATS may prevent both developed and developing countries from putting in place financial sector policies that are seen to be in society’s interests. Some of the issues with respect to CMTs and banking requirements have already been highlighted. There are further areas of concern for developing countries, most strongly with respect to development banking and directed credit. The requirement of national treatment may affect countries seeking to develop their own domestic financial sector in particular ways, especially to generate greater financial inclusion. The importance of public sector banks in maintaining stability and furthering an economic growth strategy has become evident in the light of the role played by successful development banks such as BNDES in Brazil. Such options may be constrained in some countries depending upon the exact nature of their Article XVI commitments. Similar concerns apply to the possibility of directing credit to certain sectors for developmental or societal purposes. Since no country has
developed without some recourse to directed credit, this is a serious limitation. Two underlying axioms imbue Zutshi’s analysis. The first is that GATS generally provides a framework for trade liberalisation that is generally favourable to developing countries and that therefore it is in their interests to promote and further strengthen the agreement. This issue is not so clear cut, and Zutshi’s own discussion of the costbenefit equation suggests that subjective perceptions play an important part in such a judgment. The second is an excessive faith in the ability of the IMF to serve as the objective arbiter in case of disputes with respect to restrictions imposed by a member in case of balance of payments difficulties. He notes approvingly that the “IMF has a decisive say in the assessing the balanceof-payment and the external financial situation of a consulting member under Article XII”. But in fact this power has been asymmetrically applied by the IMF, often to the detriment of developing countries, as has even been recognised by the Independent Evaluation Office of the IMF.28 We have raised several areas where GATS disciplines are at best ambiguous, and at worst, could pose barriers to financial services reform. There are still other areas we have not explored, such as the worrying implications of the proposed disciplines on the accountancy sector, or even the overly expansive interpretation of non-discrimination rules. This discussion should underline that developing countries’ efforts to further discuss these intersections should be encouraged, not discouraged. Indeed, if there had been more honest engagement on these issues the first time around, proponents of GATS would not currently confronting difficult questions for which they have no good answers.29
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DISCUSSION Notes 1 General Agreement on Trade in Services, Article I(1), and Annex on Financial Services Article 1. Full text available at: http://wto.org/english/ docs_ e/ legal_e /26-gats_01_e.htm 2 WTO Appellate Body, European Communities – Regime for the Importation, Sale and Distribution of Bananas, WT/DS27/AB/R, 9 September 1997, at p 220. 3 Simon Lester, “A Framework for Thinking about the ‘Discretion’ in the Mandatory/Discretionary Distinction”, Journal of International Economic Law, 22 June 2011. 4 See “United States – Measures Affecting the CrossBorder Supply of Gambling and Betting Services – AB-2005-1 – Report of the Appellate Body”, WTO Document WT/DS285/AB/R, 4 July 2005, at paragraph 251-52, and Todd Tucker, “How to Reform WTO and FTA Rules to Confront Too-Big-To-Fail Banks”, Public Citizen Memorandum, 10 May 2011, available at: http://www.citizen.org/ documents/ memo-gats-conflict-with-bank-size-limits-may-102011.pdf 5 WTO Dispute Settlement Body, “United States – Measures Affecting the Cross-Border Supply of Gambling and Betting Services”, WTO Document WT/DS285/R, 10 November 2004, at paragraph 6.285 and 6.316. 6 It is unclear whether Zutshi fully understands the implications of his own ruling in the US-Gambling case. On p 72 of the special article, he notes that a size limitation may survive GATS scrutiny if “the measure is applied on a non-discriminatory basis between foreign and domestic suppliers, in cases of full market access commitments”. In fact, a measure need not be discriminatory to violate market access commitments, as the panel noted. See WTO Dispute Settlement Body, “United States – Measures Affecting the Cross-Border Supply of Gambling and Betting Services”, WTO Document WT/DS285/R, 10 November 2004, at paragraph 6.278-79, and 6.426. 7 See Ellen Gould, “The Draft GATS Domestic Regulation Disciplines – Potential Conflicts with Developing Country Regulations”, South Centre Analytical Note SC/AN/TDP/SV/12, July 2009, available at: http://www.uneca.org/ atpc/ egm0 909/gats.pdf 8 The GATS text is available at: http://wto.org/ english/docs_e/legal_e/26-gats_01_e.htm 9 WTO Dispute Settlement Body, “United States – Measures Affecting the Cross-Border Supply of Gambling and Betting Services”, WTO Document WT/DS285/R, 10 November 2004, at paragraph 6.442; and Todd Tucker, “The WTO Conflict with Transaction Taxes and Capital Management Techniques and How to Fix It”, Public Citizen Memorandum, 9 July 2010, available at: http://www.citizen.org/documents/MemoonCapitalControls.pdf 10 “WTO – Trade in Services”, edited by Rüdiger Wolfrum, Peter-Tobias Stoll and Clemens Feinäugle, Max Planck Commentaries on World Trade Law, Vol 6 (Koninklijke Brill N V, Leiden) 2008, at 251-52; Deborah Siegel, “Legal Aspects of the IMF/WTO Relationship: The Fund’s Articles of Agreement and the WTO Agreements”, American Journal of International Law, July 2002, at 586-87; Panel Report, European Communities – Measures Affecting Asbestos and Asbestos-Containing Products, WT/ DS135/R and Add.1, adopted 5 April 2001, as modified by the Appellate Body Report, WT/DS135/ AB/R, para 8.235. 11 The Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties A rticle 31.1 establishes the general rule of treaty interpretation that “A treaty shall be interpreted in good faith in accordance with the ordinary meaning to be given to the terms of the treaty in their context and in the light of its object and purpose”. The text of the treaty as a whole is the primary context, available at: http://untreaty.un.org/ilc/texts/instruments/english/conventions/ 1_ 1_ 19 69.pdf 12 GATS Article XII is a provision that countries can invoke as a defence in balance-of-payments (BOP) emergencies to get out of having to comply with Article XI. It states that (subject to over a
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dozen procedural and substantive hurdles, such as the requirement that CMTs be temporary rather than preventative) “…a Member may adopt or maintain restrictions on trade in services on which it has undertaken specific commitments, including on payments or transfers for transactions related to such commitments.” If the only prohibited form a “restriction” could take were an absolute refusal to allow capital to flow, GATS Article XII would have been couched more narrowly than “restrictions on trade in services… including on payments or transfers for transactions…” Instead, it would have said “…a Member may refuse to allow movement of capital that is an essential part of a service in which the Member has undertaken a market access commitment.” In other words, if “restrictions” other than outright prohibitions are not inconsistent with GATS obligations, a country wouldn’t need a defense provision in Article XII that allowed recourse to all “restrictions on trade in services” in BOP emergencies. Or as one IMF scholar has written, “this rule would serve, for example, to liberalise both the interest and principal portion of loan repayments made by a consumer to a foreign bank”. See Sean Hagan, “Transfer of Funds”, UNCTAD/ITE/IIT/ 20, 2000, at 25. Francisco Parodi and Alejandra Pereira, “Financial Services Trade Liberalisation in the Doha Round: Implications for Latin America”, Integration and Trade, January-June 2005, 9: 22. First part of quote from the draft version. The lack of analysis of specific countries’ schedules may be one reason why ambassador Zutshi seems to discount the GATS as a problem for developing nations. Zutshi makes much of the BOP defence provisions under Article XII, but fails to note that this is only for measures undertaken after a crisis has hit (and then only for a limited time period and subject to all sorts of limitations). The issue of most concern to policymakers is the absence of policy space to engage in forward-looking, crisis aversion policies. Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties, Article 31. Daniela Garretón, Mary Arutyunyan and Robert Stumberg, “Relevant Regulation of Food Derivatives”, Harrison Institute for Public Law at Georgetown University, 2011, at 33 to 43. The OED defines “avoid” as “to keep clear of or away from”. This is unlike the verb “to shun”, which is defined as “to avoid...from repugnance, fear or caution...” the verb “avoid” on its own does not connote any particular motivation on the part of the subject. A subject “avoids” some thing or obligation when the thing or obligation is steered clear of, regardless of whether this was the intention of the subject. For its part, the verb “to use” is defined as “to work, employ or manage (an implement, instrument, etc); to manipulate, operate, or handle, especially to some useful or desired end”. “Use” also often appears in the notion of “uses and customs”, which describe practices handed down through institutions. The verb “to use” on its own is not typically invoked when describing actions that are strongly original, improvised or inventive (and therefore where there are unique intentions and motivations). See, for instance, 18 USC § 491. This provision reads in part: “Subject to the requirement that such measures are not applied in a manner which would constitute a means of arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination between countries where the same conditions prevail, or a disguised restriction on international trade, nothing in this agreement shall be construed to prevent the adoption or enforcement by any contracting party of measures,” and then the text goes on to list over a dozen policy motivations, such as protection of human life. The text of A rticle XX of the GATT is available here: http://wto.org/english/docs_e/legal_e/gatt47_ 02_ e.htm# articleXX.Article XIV of the GATS
Economic & Political Weekly EPW December 17, 2011 vol xlvi no 51
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( “General E xceptions”) has virtually identical language, and WTO panels have consulted the GATT jurisprudence when e xamining the GATS General Exceptions. As the Appellate Body describes it, “The focus of the chapeau, by its express terms, is on the application of a measure already found to be inconsistent with an obligation of the GATT 1994 but falling within one of the paragraphs of Article XX. The chapeau’s requirements are twofold. First, a measure provisionally justified under one of the paragraphs of Article XX must not be applied in a manner that would constitute ‘arbitrary or unjustifiable discrimination’ between countries where the same conditions prevail. Second, this measure must not be applied in a manner that would constitute ‘a disguised restriction on international trade’. Through these requirements, the chapeau serves to ensure that Members’ rights to avail themselves of exceptions are exercised in good faith to protect interests considered legitimate under Article XX, not as a means to circumvent one Member’s obligations towards other WTO Members.” See WTO Appellate Body, Brazil – Measures Affecting Imports of Retreaded Tyres, December 2007, at para 224. See http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/ 2011/09/wto-is-the-big-kid-on-the-seesaw.html . While it is difficult to know for sure how a panel would strive to give effect to the provision, it is possible that it is meant to excuse qualifying prudential measures from the necessity tests envisioned in Article VI. This concept is explored in more detail here: http://citizen.typepad.com/ eyesontrade/2011/04/ reflections-on-meaningof-prudential-language-in-the-wto.html See discussions at WTO “United States – Measures Concerning the Importation, Marketing and Sale of Tuna and Tuna Products”, Report of the Panel, WT/DS381/R, 15 September, 2011, at paragraphs 7.399 to 7.427. This interpretive problem seems especially pronounced in the GATS articles we have examined in this article. National Treatment analysis scours the use of any (prima facie allowable) policy tools for possible impermissible protectionist intents or effects. Thus there is a clear conceptual distinction between the means, end and intent. In GATS Articles XVI and XI, however, it is the policy tool itself that is prohibited, regardless of intent. Thus, establishing whether a Member’s GATS Articles XVI or XI commitments have been avoided (as required by the PMD) is simply a box checking exercise that scrutinises the employment of a particular policy tool, not the end or intent. Christine Kaufmann and Rolf Weber, “Reconciling Liberalised Trade in Financial Services and Domestic Regulation” in Kern Alexander and Mads Andenas (ed.), The World Trade Organisation and Trade in Services (Amsterdam: Martinus Nijhoff Publishers), 2008, at 424. On Weber and Kaufmann’s background, see: http://www.nccrtrade.org/people/kaufmann/and http://www.nccr-trade.org/people/weber/ “WTO – Trade in Services”, edited by Rüdiger Wolfrum, Peter-Tobias Stoll and Clemens Feinäugle, Max Planck Commentaries on World Trade Law, Vol 6 (Koninklijke Brill N V, Leiden), 2008, at 254. Mark Kantor, “International Investment Law Protections for Chinese Investment into the US” in Karl Sauvant (ed.), Investing in the United States: Is the US Ready for FDI from China? (Northampton, Massachusetts: Edward Elgar), 2010, at 161. Report of the Evaluation of the IMF’s approach to capital account liberalisation, April 2005, http://www.imf.org/External/NP/ieo/2005/cal/ eng/index.htm Zutshi makes the point on page 77 that the WTO Secretariat itself is unlikely to offer “authoritative interpretations” of the GATS. This is exactly why the WTO members themselves should be taking such steps.
79
CURRENT STATISTICS
EPW Research Foundation
India’s real GDP growth touched a low of 6.9% during Q2 of 2011-12, after the 5.6%-6.4% range seen during the last two quarters of 2008-09 and the first quarter of 2009-10. Though services grew at a robust 9.3%, both agriculture and allied activities and industry recorded only 3.2% growth. Within industry, mining and quarrying actually showed a decline of 2.9%. Following the growth of only 7.7% in the first quarter, hopes of a GDP growth of more than 8% in 2011-12 have been dampened.
Macroeconomic Indicators Variation (in %): Point-to-Point Index Numbers of Wholesale Prices Weights 19 November Over Over 12 Months Fiscal Year So Far Full Financial Year (Base Year: 2004-05 = 100)^ 2011 Month 2011 2010 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 Primary Articles 20.1 200.4 -2.2 7.7 14.3 6.4 11.6 13.1 22.4 5.3 9.1 Food Articles 14.3 195.7 -3.2 8.0 9.0 9.3 10.2 8.9 21.1 7.5 5.8 Non-Food Articles 4.3 176.7 -0.3 2.1 26.9 -7.8 14.9 27.3 19.6 1.8 13.3 Fuel & Power 14.9 171.8 1.2 15.5 10.1 8.8 6.1 12.7 13.8 -4.9 9.2 Manufactured Products* 65.0 139.1 0.4 7.7 5.1 2.6 2.4 7.4 5.3 1.7 7.2 Food Products* 10.0 152.0 0.2 7.8 3.8 4.8 -0.5 2.4 15.1 6.3 8.4 Food Index (computed)* 24.3 180.8 1.5 9.9 10.6 9.5 6.4 6.8 18.5 7.3 6.7 All Commodities (point to point basis)* 100.0 156.8 0.6 9.7 9.1 4.9 4.8 9.7 10.4 1.6 7.8 All Commodities (Monthly average basis)* 100.0 154.2 – 9.5 9.1 9.6 9.8 9.6 3.8 8.1 4.9 * Data pertain to the month of October 2011 as weekly release of data discontinued wef 24 Oct 2009. ^The date of first release of data based on 2004-05 series wef 14 September 2010. Variation (in %): Point-to-Point Cost of Living Indices Latest Over Over 12 Months Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Month 2011 Month 2011 2010 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 Industrial Workers (IW) (2001=100) 19810 0.5 9.4 9.7 7.0 6.5 8.8 14.9 8.0 7.9 6.7 Agricultural Labourers (AL) (1986-87=100) 61910 0.7 9.4 8.4 5.8 5.6 9.1 15.8 9.5 7.9 9.5
2006-07 12.9 12.7 13.4 0.9 6.5 4.3 9.6 6.8 6.5
2005-06 5.3 5.3
Note: Superscript numeral denotes month to which figure relates, e g, superscript 10 stands for October. Variation Money and Banking (Rs crore) 18 November Over Month Over Year Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year 2011 2011 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 Money Supply (M3) 7013674 55010(0.8) 923075(15.2) 514125(7.9) 487867(8.7) 896817 (16.0) 807920 (16.8) 776930 (19.3) Currency with Public 977384 25194(2.6) 105617(12.1) 63187(6.9) 104274(13.6) 146704 (19.1) 102043 (15.3) 97040 (17.1) Deposits Money with Banks 6035167 29853(0.5) 819895(15.7) 453529(8.1) 383873(7.9) 750239 (15.5) 707606 (17.2) 683375 (19.9) of which: Demand Deposits 638474 -7533(-1.2) -72269(-10.2) -79185(-11.0) -7226(-1.0) -310 (-0.0) 129281 (22.0) 10316 (1.8) Time Deposits 5396693 37386(0.7) 892164(19.8) 532714(11.0) 391099(9.5) 750549 (18.2) 578325 (16.4) 673059 (23.5) Net Bank Credit to Government 2212915 31007(1.4) 392053(21.5) 230144(11.6) 151676(9.1) 313584 (18.8) 391853 (30.7) 377815 (42.0) Bank Credit to Commercial Sector 4486142 39015(0.9) 648164(16.9) 250735(5.9) 346568(9.9) 743997 (21.3) 476516 (15.8) 435904 (16.9) Net Foreign Exchange Assets 1584738 -13379(-0.8) 205419(14.9) 191411(13.7) 97851(7.6) 111858 (8.7) 367718 (-5.2) 57053 (4.4) Banking Sector’s Net Non-Monetary Liabilities 1283433 1633(0.1) 323619(33.7) 158752(14.1) 109212(12.8) 274078 (32.2) -9050 (-1.1) 94672 (12.4) of which: RBI 577475 -1063(-0.2) 215613(59.6) 209201(56.8) 60247(20.0) 66660 (22.1) -86316 (-22.3) 177709 (84.5) Reserve Money (25 November 2011) 1409139 23927(1.7) 172525(14.0) 32258(2.3) 80928(7.0) 221195 (19.1) 167688 (17.0) 59696 (6.4) Net RBI Credit to Centre 423136 31455(-) 159845(-) 29101(-) 51709(-) 182453 149821 176397 Scheduled Commercial Banks (18 November 2011) Aggregate Deposits 5647264 28278(0.5) 794542(16.4) 439294(8.4) 359896(8.0) 715143 (15.9) 658716 (17.2) 637170 (19.9) Demand 559375 -7517(-1.3) -78589(-12.3) -82330(-12.8) -7645(-1.2) -3905 (-0.6) 122525 (23.4) -1224 (-0.2) Time 5087888 35794(0.7) 873131(20.7) 521624(11.4) 367541(9.6) 719048 (18.7) 536191 (16.2) 638395 (23.9) Investments (for SLR purposes) 1713986 7337(0.4) 237575(16.1) 212367(14.1) 91659(6.6) 116867 (8.4) 218342 (18.7) 194694 (20.0) Bank Credit 4189044 38524(0.9) 629148(17.7) 246962(6.3) 315108(9.7) 697294 (21.5) 469239 (16.9) 413635 (17.5) Non-Food Credit 4110331 28733(0.7) 608442(17.4) 232531(6.0) 305590(9.6) 681500 (21.3) 466961 (17.1) 411825 (17.8) Commercial Investments 170648 745(0.4) 17907(11.7) 23047(15.6) 34670(29.4) 28872 (24.5) 11654 (11.0) 10911 (11.4) Total Bank Assistance to Comml Sector 4280979 29478(0.7) 626349(17.1) 255578(6.3) 340260(10.3) 710372 (21.4) 478615 (16.9) 422736 (17.5) Note: Government Balances as on 31 March 2011 are after closure of accounts. Index Numbers of Industrial Production September* Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Averages (Base 2004-05=100) Weights 2011 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 General Index 100.00 163.2(1.8) 166.0(5.0) 158.1(8.2) 165.4(8.2) 152.9(5.3) 145.2(2.5) 141.7(15.5) 122.6(12.9) Mining and Quarrying 14.157 111.0-(5.7) 122.6-(1.0) 123.8(7.2) 131.0(5.2) 124.5(7.9) 115.4(2.6) 112.5(4.6) 107.6(5.2) Manufacturing 75.527 175.7(2.1) 176.6(5.4) 167.6(8.8) 175.6(8.9) 161.3(4.8) 153.8(2.5) 150.1(18.4) 126.8(15.0) Electricity 10.316 144.1(9.0) 148.2(9.4) 135.5(3.8) 138.0(5.6) 130.8(6.1) 123.3(2.8) 120.0(6.4) 112.8(7.3) * Indices for the month are Quick Estimates Fiscal Year So Far 2010-11 End of Fiscal Year Capital Market 2 Dec 2011 Month Ago Year Ago Trough Peak Trough Peak 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 BSE Sensitive Index (1978-79=100) 16847(-15.7) 17465 19993(16.4) 15695 19702 16022 21005 19445(10.9) 17528(80.5) 9709(-37.9) BSE-100 (1983-84=100) 8696(-17.5) 9091 10542(16.0) 8124 10262 8540 11141 10096(8.6) 9300(88.2) 4943(-40.0) BSE-200 (1989-90=100) 2034(-19.2) 2132 2516(17.2) 1905 2427 2034 2753 2379(8.1) 2200(92.9) 1140(-41.0) S&P CNX Nifty (3 Nov 1995=1000) 5050(-16.0) 5258 6012(17.3) 4706 5912 4807 6312 5834(11.1) 5249(73.8) 3021(-36.2) Skindia GDR Index (2 Jan 1995=1000) 2115(-34.2) 2394 3217(21.1) 1980 3441 2477 3479 3151(9.3) 2883(134.2) 1153(-56.2) Net FII Investment in (US $ Mn Equities) - period end 101786(-0.1) 102476 101879(43.4) – – – – 101454(31.5) 77159(43.1) 51669(-18.6) October* Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Foreign Trade 2011 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 2005-06 2004-05 Exports: Rs crore 97875 820679(45.4) 564314(22.0) 1118823(32.3) 845534 (0.6) 840754(28.2) 655863(14.7) 571779(25.3) 456418(21.6) 375340(27.9) US $ mn 19870 179777(46.0) 123170(28.6) 245868(37.5) 178751(-3.5) 185295 (13.6) 163132(29.0) 126361(22.6) 103091(23.4) 83536(30.8) Imports: Rs crore 194636 1251948(31.0) 955937(28.6) 1596869(17.1) 1363736(-0.8) 1374434(35.8) 1012312(20.4) 840506(27.3) 660409(31.8) 501065(39.5) US $ mn 39514 273468(31.0) 208822(35.5) 350695(21.6) 288373(-5.0) 303696(20.7) 251654(35.5) 185749(24.5) 149166(33.8) 111517(42.7) Non-POL US $ mn (* Provisional figures) 29437 191546(27.1) 150646(39.2) 249006(23.7) 201237(-4.2) 210029(22.2) 171940(33.5) 128790(22.4) 105233(37.1) 76772(33.2) Balance of Trade: Rs crore -96761 -431269 -391623 -478047 -518202 -533680 -356449 -268727 -203991 -125725 US $ mn -19644 -93691 -85651 -104827 -109621 -118401 -88522 -59388 -46075 -27981 * Provisional figures. Variation Over Foreign Exchange Reserves (excluding 25 Nov 26 Nov 31 Mar Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year gold but including revaluation effects) 2011 2010 2011 Month Ago Year Ago 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 Rs crore 1433976 1236522 1245284 22832 197454 188692 64276 73038 -57826 33975 359500 189270 US $ mn 274866 270337 278899 -14185 4529 -4033 10646 19208 18264 -57821 107324 46816 Figures in brackets are percentage variations over the specified or over the comparable period of the previous year. (–) not relevant. [Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates, as also the thematic notes and Special Statistics series, are available on our website: http://www.epwrf.in].
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december 17, 2011 vol xlvi no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
Economic & Political Weekly
India’s Quarterly and Annual GDP Estimates from 2008-09 to 2011-12 (2004-05 Series)
EPW december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51
Source: www.mospi.nic.in
2009-10
Q2
Q3
154307 (4.8) 285035 (6.8) 22903 (1.0) 159042 (6.4) 20687 (5.1) 82403 (9.7) 544952 (9.7) 257700 (10.1) 168259 (10.1) 118993 (8.3) 984293 (8.0)
123389 (2.6) 286695 (6.0) 22125 (0.0) 162174 (6.3) 20723 (6.2) 81673 (7.2) 564412 (10.0) 261944 (10.4) 170953 (9.8) 131515 (9.4) 974496 (7.8)
213140 (14.5) 362289 (17.0) 33220 (15.1) 197109 (15.5) 20916 (1.0) 111044 (24.1) 665053 (20.5) 311607 (20.1) 202898 (22.8) 150548 (18.0) 1240482 (18.4)
176709 (14.8) 373388 (18.8) 34796 (32.7) 204291 (16.2) 20952 (1.9) 113349 (23.6) 707049 (22.9) 323603 (22.7) 211551 (24.9) 171895 (21.1) 1257146 (20.5)
Q4
2010-11
2011-12
Annual
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Q1
Q2
Q3
Q4
Q1
Q2
2008-09
2009-10
2010-11
204748 -(1.3) 289074 (1.9) 25226 (1.2) 162114 (1.9) 20823 (5.9) 80911 (1.1) 592686 (10.2) 272156 (4.3) 177881 (10.8) 142649 (22.6) 1086507 (5.6)
171675 157064 (3.8) (1.8) 308115 299353 (3.2) (5.0) 26989 24547 -(1.8) (7.2) 172445 165950 (2.5) (4.3) 21110 21998 (6.0) (6.3) 87571 86858 (5.6) (5.4) 637422 589445 (8.9) (8.2) 295776 267362 (7.0) (3.7) 189619 187575 (12.8) (11.5) 152027 134508 (7.8) (13.0) 1117212 1045862 (6.4) (6.3)
124859 (1.2) 305956 (6.7) 23620 (6.8) 174236 (7.4) 22273 (7.5) 85827 (5.1) 628948 (11.4) 282295 (7.8) 189614 (10.9) 157039 (19.4) 1059763 (8.7)
201471 -(1.6) 316466 (9.5) 26534 (5.2) 180587 (11.4) 21758 (4.5) 87587 (8.3) 648144 (9.4) 301618 (10.8) 193028 (8.5) 153498 (7.6) 1166082 (7.3)
173580 (1.1) 346350 (12.4) 29399 (8.9) 198663 (15.2) 22642 (7.3) 95646 (9.2) 702642 (10.2) 336417 (13.7) 201547 (6.3) 164678 (8.3) 1222573 (9.4)
160771 (2.4) 326560 (9.1) 26354 (7.4) 183488 (10.6) 23204 (5.5) 93514 (7.7) 650955 (10.4) 299600 (12.1) 205870 (9.8) 145485 (8.2) 1138286 (8.8)
131550 (5.4) 327723 (7.1) 25509 (8.0) 187763 (7.8) 22894 (2.8) 91557 (6.7) 689201 (9.6) 311166 (10.2) 208645 (10.0) 169390 (7.9) 1148474 (8.4)
221511 (9.9) 339076 (7.1) 28365 (6.9) 191502 (6.0) 23151 (6.4) 96058 (9.7) 702840 (8.4) 327538 (8.6) 213944 (10.8) 161358 (5.1) 1263428 (8.3)
186557 (7.5) 367410 (6.1) 29903 (1.7) 209608 (5.5) 24399 (7.8) 103500 (8.2) 763587 (8.7) 367747 (9.3) 219645 (9.0) 176195 (7.0) 1317554 (7.8)
167091 (3.9) 343212 (5.1) 26832 (1.8) 196699 (7.2) 25042 (7.9) 94639 (1.2) 716035 (10.0) 337872 (12.8) 224574 (9.1) 153589 (5.6) 1226338 (7.7)
135789 (3.2) 338249 (3.2) 24774 -(2.9) 192849 (2.7) 25137 (9.8) 95489 (4.3) 753218 (9.3) 342080 (9.9) 230627 (10.5) 180511 (6.6) 1227256 (6.9)
654118 (-0.1) 1168920 (4.4) 97244 (1.3) 655775 (4.2) 83344 (4.9) 332557 (5.4) 2339471 (10.1) 1087575 (7.5) 706712 (12.5) 545184 (12.7) 4162509 (6.8)
656975 (0.4) 1261999 (8.0) 103999 (6.9) 713428 (8.8) 88654 (6.4) 355918 (7.0) 2574769 (10.1) 1193282 (9.7) 771763 (9.2) 609724 (11.8) 4493743 (8.0)
700390 (6.6) 1364234 (8.1) 110009 (5.8) 772960 (8.3) 93665 (5.7) 384629 (8.1) 2822500 (9.6) 1315656 (10.3) 848103 (9.9) 652431 (7.0) 4877842 (8.5)
291936 (10.5) 369346 (11.5) 36199 (26.8) 201665 (9.0) 21053 (1.7) 110429 (13.7) 731016 (20.6) 330140 (12.8) 214590 (22.6) 186286 (34.5) 1392298 (15.8)
247158 237751 (17.1) (11.5) 385421 381956 (5.3) (5.4) 34434 35880 -(18.2) (8.0) 213152 205874 (6.7) (4.4) 21243 22480 (0.7) (7.5) 116592 117722 (13.0) (6.0) 759581 748956 (13.3) (12.6) 343290 321706 (9.5) (3.2) 220154 242192 (18.2) (19.4) 196137 185058 (14.7) (22.9) 1392161 1368663 (11.6) (10.3)
200035 (13.2) 397860 (6.6) 36665 (5.4) 218387 (6.9) 23281 (11.1) 119527 (5.5) 822113 (16.3) 346017 (6.9) 250744 (18.5) 225352 (31.1) 1420008 (13.0)
344862 (18.1) 416093 (12.7) 38696 (6.9) 229595 (13.8) 22997 (9.2) 124805 (13.0) 864752 (18.3) 378422 (14.6) 259778 (21.1) 226552 (21.6) 1625707 (16.8)
306650 (24.1) 464651 (20.6) 43176 (25.4) 257951 (21.0) 23931 (12.7) 139593 (19.7) 945464 (24.5) 422714 (23.1) 274323 (24.6) 248427 (26.7) 1716765 (23.3)
300298 (26.3) 454478 (19.0) 45519 (26.9) 243533 (18.3) 25342 (12.7) 140084 (19.0) 904934 (20.8) 387399 (20.4) 293512 (21.2) 224023 (21.1) 1659710 (21.3)
253965 (27.0) 459412 (15.5) 44449 (21.2) 250239 (14.6) 25404 (9.1) 139320 (16.6) 972415 (18.3) 404487 (16.9) 300952 (20.0) 266976 (18.5) 1685792 (18.7)
447571 (29.8) 479166 (15.2) 48862 (26.3) 255902 (11.5) 25690 (11.7) 148712 (19.2) 1007766 (16.5) 435651 (15.1) 312241 (20.2) 259874 (14.7) 1934503 (19.0)
385029 (25.6) 529422 (13.9) 51412 (19.1) 287154 (11.3) 26718 (11.6) 164138 (17.6) 1098076 (16.1) 482347 (14.1) 325859 (18.8) 289870 (16.7) 2012527 (17.2)
350405 (16.7) 511770 (12.6) 52074 (14.4) 277193 (13.8) 27423 (8.2) 155080 (10.7) 1074949 (18.8) 466959 (20.5) 349665 (19.1) 258325 (15.3) 1937124 (16.7)
294349 (15.9) 511947 (11.4) 50589 (13.8) 274314 (9.6) 27835 (9.6) 159209 (14.3) 1149584 (18.2) 475291 (17.5) 362963 (20.6) 311330 (16.6) 1955880 (16.0)
928943 (11.0) 1490444 (12.0) 138649 (11.1) 816217 (11.4) 84164 (0.4) 451414 (16.1) 2862699 (18.6) 1308640 (13.9) 849193 (22.8) 704866 (22.8) 5282086 (15.3)
1089297 (17.3) 1653870 (11.0) 154269 (11.3) 905224 (10.9) 92671 (10.1) 501706 (11.1) 3390063 (18.4) 1477456 (12.9) 1027158 (21.0) 885449 (25.6) 6133230 (16.1)
1386882 (27.3) 1906116 (15.3) 191565 (24.2) 1034149 (14.2) 103173 (11.3) 591864 (18.0) 4008952 (18.3) 1725485 (16.8) 1232897 (20.0) 1040975 (17.6) 7306990 (19.1)
STATISTICS
81
At 2004-05 Prices 1 Agriculture, forestry and fishing 2 Industry 2.1 Mining and quarrying 2.2 Manufacturing 2.3 Electricity, gas and water supply 2.4 Construction 3 Services 3.1 Trade, hotels, transport and communication 3.2 Financing, insurance, real estate and business services 3.3 Community, social and personal services GDP at factor cost At current prices 1 Agriculture, forestry and fishing 2 Industry 2.1 Mining and quarrying 2.2 Manufacturing 2.3 Electricity, gas and water supply 2.4 Construction 3 Services 3.1 Trade, hotels, transport and communication 3.2 Financing, insurance, real estate and business services 3.3 Community, social and personal services GDP at factor cost
2008-09 Q1
1 Settlement Volume of Government Securities Transactions
2 Netting Factor (Rs crore)
Outright Repo Daily Average (Outright) Daily Average (Repo) Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume of Trades (Face Value of Trades (Face Value of Trades (Face Value of Trades (Face Value in Rs Crore) in Rs Crore) in Rs Crore) in Rs Crore)
Nov-2011 30660 Nov-2010 20877 2011-12* 229544 2010-11* 243095
237619 167619 1922083 2197247
2332 2157 19775 18237
318173 239118 2723170 2803039
1533 1044 1462 1482
11881 8381 12243 13398
4 Tenor-wise Settlement Volume of Central Government Dated Securities (Rs crore) Year
december 17, 2011 vol xlvI no 51 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 2023 2024 2025 2026 2027 2028 2029 2030 2031 2032 2033 2034 2035 2036 2037 2038 2039 2040 Total
Nov-2011
Nov-2010
0 1593 25 231 398 481 2322 25000 50 1700 112454 22546 1 39256 0 365 3089 1 0 0 0 2 0 5 0 0 0 0 0 3583 213102
0 0 0 0 0 0 216 2484 986 571 13690 500 38647 53 63 24382 6 59017 7 52 1 927 6503 15 61 2 0 0 0 3070 151253
2011-12*
4592 (0.27) 13625 (0.81) 2506 (0.15) 2563 (0.15) 9673 (0.58) 19865 (1.19) 24238 (1.45) 107801 (6.44) 203 (0.01) 14141 (0.85) 967433 (57.82) 415584 (24.84) 2276 (0.14) 40343 (2.41) 178 (0.01) 2885 (0.17) 28074 (1.68) 41 (0.00) 1 (0.00) 1 (0.00) 1 (0.00) 4358 (0.26) 1 (0.00) 25 (0.00) 130 (0.01) 21 (0.00) 1 (0.00) 1 (0.00) 3 (0.00) 12638 (0.76) 1673202 (100.00)
97 90 103 93
2010-11*
0 (0.00) 0 (0.00) 0 (0.00) 0 (0.00) 0 (0.00) 15050 (0.77) 25200 (1.29) 53342 (2.73) 30008 (1.53) 19992 (1.02) 159235 (8.14) 129644 (6.63) 95518 (4.88) 699 (0.04) 2134 (0.11) 786531 (40.20) 574 (0.03) 550172 (28.12) 1999 (0.10) 4347 (0.22) 93 (0.00) 7941 (0.41) 44432 (2.27) 143 (0.01) 17546 (0.90) 726 (0.04) 115 (0.01) 387 (0.02) 72 (0.00) 10858 (0.55) 1956758 (100.00)
Outright
Buy Side of the Transactions (%)
27665 210969 18590 146258 208979 1702700 219904 1997155
2995 2287 20565 23191
854610 658074 7272713 7934638
157368 147733 1551674 1722418
Private Sector Banks
Primary Dealers
Public Sector Banks
Foreign Banks Private Sector Banks Primary Dealers Public Sector Banks Mutual Funds Ins Cos Others Cooperative Banks FIs
37.01 23.82 50.93 32.87 35.70 43.06 5.88 4.69 0.00
11.16 9.91 29.23 25.38 15.69 12.61 11.52 25.50 0.00
34.76 48.42 6.52 27.77 44.24 37.91 72.03 24.08 0.00
10.19 13.67 6.28 9.08 4.12 4.04 2.05 26.49 0.00
Sell Side of the Transactions (%)
Foreign Banks
Primary Dealers
Foreign Banks Primary Dealers Private Sector Banks Public Sector Banks Mutual Funds Ins Cos Cooperative Banks Others FIs
42.27 40.04 29.00 42.53 50.45 71.37 8.94 41.89 0.00
22.42 2.90 29.26 10.10 34.23 7.04 16.82 0.01 0.00
1810 1688 16149 14674
Figures in brackets are percentages to total. * Data pertains to April-November. Source: Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL).
273870 205489 2434033 2521625
Private Public Sector Banks Sector Banks
14.91 30.57 14.11 31.28 3.60 15.08 29.71 50.31 0.00
81.59 77.55 78.66 78.29
a Outright Trades b Repo Central Govt Treasury State Central Govt Treasury Dated Bills Govts Dated Bills
213102 151253 1673201 1956757
22002 13730 228814 210348
2516 2636 20068 30142
164994 195278 1542014 2243873
State Govts
152356 43137 1167063 549595
823 703 14092 9571
Categories
Coop Banks
Nov-2011 61.50 2011-12* 59.87
Foreign Banks
Public Sector Banks
Private Sector Banks
Mutual Funds
Primary Dealers
72.76 75.32
53.80 52.46
71.19 72.53
70.69 67.75
81.68 83.19
8 Market Share of Top ‘n’ Members (%) Top 5
Top 10
Top 15
Top 20
Nov-2011 28.49 Nov-2010 31.66 Nov-2009 82.08
47.57 46.07 90.35
61.22 56.56 94.99
69.76 64.88 97.06
522 469 3626 3563
44303 33630 289137 281414
9 Market Share of Top ‘n’ Securities (%)
Mutual Ins Cos Others Funds
2.75 0.36 4.84 2.29 0.26 1.51 0.00 0.00 0.00
3.48 1.34 0.89 1.27 0.00 0.00 0.36 1.64 0.00
0.38 0.84 0.00 0.11 0.00 0.37 0.05 0.38 0.00
Mutual Funds
Ins Cos
Coop Banks
7.78 9.72 7.77 3.28 0.90 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
4.78 4.25 3.19 1.64 2.70 0.00 1.63 3.91 0.00
0.16 0.83 1.98 3.30 0.00 1.01 17.03 1.23 0.00
7.23 6.16 12.70 7.30 8.11 5.03 7.90 2.28 0.00
Coop FIs Total Banks
0.27 1.64 1.32 1.24 0.00 0.50 8.12 17.22 0.00
0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 0.00
Others FIs Total
0.45 5.54 2.00 0.57 0.00 0.49 17.98 0.37 0.00
0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00
100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 0.00
Market Share (%) Nov 2011 Nov 2010
39.83 21.83 15.35 7.67 7.60 3.87 2.66 1.19 0.00
40.52 14.00 15.32 10.76 9.17 4.85 3.61 1.76 0.00
Market Share (%) Nov 2011 Nov 2010
34.87 34.57 15.33 9.54 2.17 1.94 1.20 0.37 0.00
38.90 26.89 19.71 8.30 2.49 2.21 1.49 0.00 0.00
10 Settlement Volume of Forex Segment
7 Market Share of Top Five (Category-wise) (%)
Repo
26650 21361 219383 200092
63.27 56.95 60.36 56.04
Foreign Banks
Proprietary Constituent Proprietary Constituent Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume of Trades (Face Value of Trades (Face Value of Trades (Face Value of Trades (Face Value in Rs Crore) in Rs Crore) in Rs Crore) in Rs Crore)
Nov-2011 Nov-2010 2011-12* 2010-11*
875177 321424 653665 281427 7357481 2916761 7803037 3430098
Netting Factor (%)
5 Intercategory Member Turnover Activity for NDS Reported Outright Trades of Central Government Securities: November 2011
6 Type-wise Settlement Volume of Government Securities Transactions
13257 9963 14183 14301
3 Instrument-wise Break-up of Securities Transactions (Rs crore)
a Securities b Funds Gross Net Netting Gross Net Factor (%)
Top 5
Top 10
Top 15
Top 20
Nov-2011 91.49 Nov-2010 87.98 Nov-2009 26.37
97.82 97.24 42.23
99.27 99.06 55.02
99.79 99.59 62.81
Total Settlement Volume Number Volume Volume of Trades (US$ mn) (Rs Crore)
Nov-2011 Nov-2010 2011-12* 2010-11*
123940 97218 851939 769978
383888 429932 3042355 2814102
1920907 1937062 14127541 12897759
Daily Average Number Volume of Trades (US$ mn)
6886 5401 5642 4843
21327 23885 20148 17699
Volume (Rs Crore)
106717 107615 93560 81118
11 Settlement Volume of Collateralised Borrowing and Lending Obligations (CBLO)
Overnight Number Volume of Trades (Rs Crore)
Term Number of Trades
Volume (Rs Crore)
Nov-2011 Nov-2010 2011-12* 2010-11*
9152 9502 79461 81415
1774 1915 16096 16661
104634 121229 1124647 1197155
685102 669838 6931617 6793980
Total Number Volume of Trades (Rs Crore)
10926 11417 95557 98076
789736 791067 8056264 7991134
STATISTICS
82
Secondary Market Transactions in Government Securities and the Forex Market – November 2011
