As we close in on 20 years of Manmohanomics, it's worth remembering one chant the chattering classes uttered, first with pride, later to console themselves. “Whatever you say, we have the most honest man in Dr. Manmohan Singh. And no one can speak a word against him.” It's less heard now — those affections having been transferred to other punters in the honesty sweepstakes. But growing numbers do say this daily: the honest Prime Minister presides over indisputably the most corrupt government in our history. And therein lie many lessons.
Dr. Singh's decision to meet weekly with editors tells us which lesson he has drawn from the mess. That his government's problem with corruption is a public relations one. This even though the media, while barking at politicians in the 2G scam, have steered clear of the corporate core of all such rackets. Dr. Singh sees the media acting too often as “accuser, prosecutor and judge.” (He may have got that one right). Yet, he wants a weekly meeting with them. So is this a PR exercise? Or does he believe India's editors possess a wisdom unknown to others that will end corruption in all sectors (bar their own)? I hope the former.
Totting up his government's scams is like a Census operation. A large and complex count. There are scams done and buried, there are those alive and breathing. More are exhumed by the day. There are others in the pipeline, about to be pulled off. Still others where the media remain helpfully silent. And yet more in planning and process. We have a Union Cabinet that is possibly richer (at over Rs.500 crore) than most earlier Cabinets put together. And in spirit, reminiscent of the bungling mob in Jimmy Breslin's 1969 book The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight. Only this mob rakes it in where Breslin's collapsed swiftly. And this crowd runs a large country, not a few blocks in New York.
There are of course many causes of corruption and everyone has his or her favourite story. But there are three sources which, if ignored, render analysis worthless. One: the structural inequalities of Indian society, including huge concentrations of wealth and power, class and caste, gender and other embedded discrimination. Two: the whole edifice of economic policy that has (more rapidly in the past 20 years) deepened, driven and legitimised those inequalities. That has, for instance, made corporations far more important than citizens, mocking the Constitution. And three: the culture of impunity and arbitrariness — with very little accountability. That allows the powerful to get away with almost anything. Where a judge in one State bans all protest rallies on weekdays because his car got stuck in a rally on the way to work. Where sundry godmen can break every tax law — so long as they don't challenge the ruling regime.
Tackling corruption without addressing its sources is like trying to mop the floor dry — with all taps open and running. The sources are old. Their (man-made) scope, size and damage are pretty new.
The past 20 years have seen unprecedented concentrations of wealth, often by awful means, mostly enabled by economic policy. The state stands reduced to a tool of corporate enrichment. It is there to facilitate private investment. Each budget is written for (and partly by) the corporate world. The last six budgets have gifted the corporates Rs.21 lakh crore in concessions on just direct corporate income tax, customs and excise duties. In the same period, food subsidies and agriculture have suffered cuts.
The neo-liberal economic framework assigns the state the role of wet nursing the corporate sector at public cost. This is why we live in the age of privatisation of just about everything. It is the state's mission to hand over scarce national resources of all kinds, land, water, spectrum, anything, to further bloat corporate profits. It is this process of peddling a nation's resources to private agents on preferential terms that is the main source of corruption in our time. The scams are the symptoms; a state that serves corporations, not citizens, is the disease.
Those who rightly worry about election spending also need to make other connections. There is a class of people which has much more to spend — and illicit funds to spend from. At levels unheard of since 1947. In many States, you cannot hope to contest an election without being a crorepati.
Take the case of 825 MLAs elected this May to the legislatures of four States, one Union Territory (and the bypoll in Kadapa.) Look at their declared assets. Thanks to the alert National Election Watch (NEW), a coalition of over 1200 NGOs spearheaded by the Association for Democratic Reforms (ADR), we have data that are fun to analyse.
The ADR data tell us that the total self-declared value of these 825 MLAs is around Rs.2,128 crore. As many as 231 of these MLAs are into their second term. They increased their assets by 169 per cent on average, between 2006 and 2011. That is, they may well have collared more wealth in their first five-year terms than they had acquired in the rest of their lives.
Now think of 825 landless labour households. We cannot compare their ‘assets' with those of the MLAs since the landless households have none and are drowning in debt. How long would it take, working on the MGNREGS for instance, for them to earn money equalling the wealth of the 825 MLAs?
The most they can make in the 100 days of work the MGNREGS grants them is — on national average — around Rs. 12,600 a year. The 825 landless households would require over 2,000 years to touch that Rs. 2,128-crore mark. And they'd need to abandon frivolous habits like eating. But let's make that 10,000 labour households. They would need close to 170 years to hit the jackpot. Even a million households would take well over a year to get close. (Recall that over a fourth of those MLAs acquired most of their assets in 60 months.)
Of course, given the profound inequalities, the labourer households will never have any assets, leave alone Rs.2,128-crore worth. They will remain indebted. And the interest they will pay off on those debts will likely add to the assets of the MLAs — some of whom are moneylenders. Yet the wealth of those MLAs is paltry compared to the huge state-led enrichment of the corporate world. It would take a million labourer households around 275 years on the MGNREGS to earn the Rs.3.5 lakh crore the government has doled out on annual average in the past six years to the corporate sector.
And then there's the impunity. Dr. Singh can juggle his Cabinet, but will it change much? An Agriculture Minister who spent more time on cricket — and helped transform that national passion into a tawdry, commercial swamp of sleaze. (At the time of writing, another wicket, that of the Textiles Minister, has fallen in this regime's precarious second innings.) Another, the Minister of Heavy Industries, shamed by the Supreme Court for helping moneylenders — then promptly promoted to Rural Development Minister. Even if dumped, their replacements, however youthful, won't alter that. For it isn't about lax governance or poor rules only. It's about corrupt policies.
Want to fight corruption in our time? Move to dismantle structural inequality, the disease of neo-liberal economic policy and the culture of arbitrariness without accountability. Do we need a Lokpal? Yes. Should it be a supra-government? Above constitutional structures and answerable to no one? You're begging for trouble. Can it tame the Trimurti of inequality, economic policy and arbitrariness? No. It's not geared towards that. That's a larger battle for people as a whole and their institutions. As the old saw goes, your rights are only as secure as the process by which you defend them.
At this moment battles rage across the country over displacement, forced land acquisition, the rape of resources, over forest and other rights. These may be ‘local' battles but they challenge corruption on a large, even global, canvas. They are fighting inequality and discrimination. They resist impunity, greed and profit. They try to hold their rulers accountable. Some fight unjust laws (as in the case of Irom Sharmila). Others for the just application of laws (as with some forest rights struggles). Almost none, however, place themselves above the nation. Or declare that they will lay down laws which others must obey. Nor assert that they are answerable to no one. Yet, they fight for their rights and ours too and help make oppressive structures more accountable.
There's a little amnesia on this. A corrupt and effete government and the Congress party know that well. Barely 36 years ago, a man placed himself above all structures of the Constitution. A one-man supra-government. It's sad to recall how many PLUs, middle class people and even some intellectuals wound up cheering this man and his era. His name was Sanjay Gandhi and the period was called the Emergency. The rest is history.
Friday, July 8, 2011
Thursday, July 7, 2011
We are a Part of the Solution
Dear Sameer,
You are very correct.Along with the persons you mentioned,there are numerous others such as Mr Pandey of Husk Power Systems which has about a lac consumers,and projecting about 30 lacs in 4 years time, in Bihar generating elecricity for their needs.This gentleman quit his cosy job in the U.S and,with two other friends,one of them an Italian, is doing this pathbreaking work in one of the most backward regions.
The point about my forward is to motivate many of us,who have so much of experience and ideas, to think of similar projects so that we can enrich not only ourselves but also our communities in a big way.The poor now,who earn about a dollar or two today, can easily be scaled up to earn much more by providing such basic infrastrucure such as electricity, education and health facilities.
The govts are too lethargic and incompetent to undertake such massive initiatives in the 6.5 lac villages of our country.It is here that we, the educated whose children are well on course towards attractive careers, can chip in with our efforts.For this we just need some courage and a new mind set which sets us on larger goals.We may be endlessly aware of corruption in high places and how the entire system has become dysfunctional.But once We,the educated and relatively prosperous section of the society, take charge we'll also begin the process of being part of the solution instead of mere cribbings and fault findings.
Best regards,
You are very correct.Along with the persons you mentioned,there are numerous others such as Mr Pandey of Husk Power Systems which has about a lac consumers,and projecting about 30 lacs in 4 years time, in Bihar generating elecricity for their needs.This gentleman quit his cosy job in the U.S and,with two other friends,one of them an Italian, is doing this pathbreaking work in one of the most backward regions.
The point about my forward is to motivate many of us,who have so much of experience and ideas, to think of similar projects so that we can enrich not only ourselves but also our communities in a big way.The poor now,who earn about a dollar or two today, can easily be scaled up to earn much more by providing such basic infrastrucure such as electricity, education and health facilities.
The govts are too lethargic and incompetent to undertake such massive initiatives in the 6.5 lac villages of our country.It is here that we, the educated whose children are well on course towards attractive careers, can chip in with our efforts.For this we just need some courage and a new mind set which sets us on larger goals.We may be endlessly aware of corruption in high places and how the entire system has become dysfunctional.But once We,the educated and relatively prosperous section of the society, take charge we'll also begin the process of being part of the solution instead of mere cribbings and fault findings.
Best regards,
Monday, July 4, 2011
Is a Classless Society a Law of Nature?
YOUR ANSWERS QUESTIONED....
Insomnia
An article in an American woman’s magazine says that as many as fifty million Americans suffer from so-called insomnia. After the common cold and headache, this disease ranks as number three for visits to the doctor. Would you comment?
Insomnia is not a disease. Insomnia is a certain way of life.
Man is made by nature to work hard for at least eight hours. Unless he works hard for eight hours he does not earn the right to have a deep sleep. And as a society grows richer, people are not working hard. There is no need; others can work for them. The whole day they are doing small things which they enjoy doing, but it is not hard work like that of a stonecutter or a woodcutter. The body is made so that after eight hours of hard work it naturally needs to fall into sleep to rejuvenate its energy. But it seems difficult...you have earned enough money and still you are chopping wood for eight hours? Then for what have you earned all that money? It seems stupid. You could have chopped wood even without becoming a millionaire.
So if fifty million people in America are suffering from insomnia, that simply means these are the people who are not earning the right to sleep. They are not working to create the situation in which sleep happens. You cannot find fifty million people in a poor country...you cannot find five people.
It has been known for centuries that beggars sleep better than emperors. Laborers, manual laborers sleep better than intellectuals. The poor sleep better than the rich, because they have to work hard to earn their bread and butter, but side by side they are also earning the right to have a beautiful sleep.
Insomnia is not a disease, it is the richest way of life. In fact what is happening is: the whole day you are resting; then in the night you are tossing and turning in the bed. That is the only exercise left for you, and you don’t want to do even that exercise. Toss and turn as much as you can. If the whole day is of resting then the night cannot be of sleep. You have already rested.
If the people who are suffering from insomnia really want to get rid of it they should not think of it as a disease. Visiting a doctor is meaningless. They should start working in their garden, doing some hard work, and forget all about sleep; it will come. It always comes, you don’t have to bring it.
These are the difficulties. Nature never intended that a few people should have all the riches in the world and most of the people should be poor. Looking at the intentions of nature, it seems it wanted everybody to work. It never wanted these classes of the poor and the rich; it wanted a classless society where everybody is working.
It is possible the work may be different. If you have been painting the whole day, that will also bring sleep. Or you have to create artificial exercises — go to the gym, run for miles, jog. Many idiots are doing it. A futile exercise — why jog when you can chop wood? Why jog when your garden is being looked after by somebody else who sleeps perfectly? You pay him for the work, and he sleeps perfectly well.
You jog, and nobody pays you and you find it difficult to sleep. How much can you jog? How much can you run? And a man who has not slept the whole night does not feel like running in the morning, because the whole night he has been struggling to find a little bit of sleep. Tired of tossing and turning, in the morning he finds a little bit of sleep — and that is the time suggested that he should run and he should jog!
Insomnia should not be counted among diseases. People should be made aware that you are not following the natural course that the body needs. Then you can do small things...swimming, tennis — but it will not be a real substitute for hard labor for eight hours. Man basically was a hunter — and not with machine guns, just with arrows — running after deer. It was not every day that he would get his food. The whole day he would run and follow the animals and would not be able to catch one, and he would come home empty-handed but utterly tired.
Your body is still asking you to do that. You can choose in what way you want to do it; then insomnia will disappear of its own accord.
Those fifty million insomnia sufferers do not need any compassion from anybody. They have to be told directly and straightforwardly, “Your way of life is wrong. Change it; otherwise suffer.” And it will bring a great revolution if fifty million people start working eight hours a day. They don’t need it for their food, for their clothing, for their shelter, but they can work for those who need food, who need medicine, who need other necessities of life.
If fifty million people turn out to work hard eight hours per day in the service of the poor, it will change the whole climate of the society. The very idea of fighting, of struggle between classes, will disappear — because there will be no classes.
And this is going to become a bigger problem every day because machines are replacing man in every field. Machines are more efficient, more obedient, can work twenty-four hours without any rest, seven days a week...no holiday, no religious holiday, because they are neither Jews nor Christians nor Hindus.
Machines don’t ask for anything, not even for a coffee break. And one machine can work in place of a hundred people or a thousand people, so soon the whole world is going to be in a trouble: insomnia is going to be one of the biggest troubles in the coming days because when the machine takes over, the man is free. He will be paid for his unemployment, and paid enough so that he does not ask for employment. He will have enough money.
So what can he do? He can play cards, chess, drink alcohol, have a fight — and suffer insomnia. Insomnia is going to be a worldwide phenomena. What is happening to fifty million people in America will be happening to almost every person whose work is taken from him. When people retire they start suffering from insomnia, and they had never suffered before.
So I don’t believe that it is a disease. Don’t categorize it as the third most prevalent disease. It is not of the category of diseases; it is our wrong way of life.
There may be a few people, a very few people, for whom it may be a disease — for example, the intellectuals whose minds are continuously working and get into the habit of working. Then in the night when they want to sleep the mind goes on working, and that’s enough for insomnia. And they have no control over the mind to stop it. They may shout; the mind doesn’t care about it.
The mind, while you are resting in bed, goes on unwinding itself, because in the day there were many sidelines of thoughts which have been left incomplete; they have to be completed. Mind is a perfectionist. It wants to do everything perfectly, so whatever has remained incomplete it is trying to complete. And it has no need of sleep. It is the body that needs sleep. If the body has not worked and has not earned any sleep, and the mind has been functioning too much and going so fast that it has become habituated to it, this type of man may even work with the body and still suffer insomnia. Then it will be a disease. Then he needs the medicine I call meditation, so that his mind can relax and allow the body to go into sleep.
But these people who cannot sleep are really suffering badly because in their life there is nothing — no meaning, all hypocrisy. “Socializing” they call it. And then in the night they cannot even sleep. The day is useless, the night is useless. They have lost all touch with life. They should be helped.
There should be more meditation centers specially for people who are suffering from insomnia. Meditation will help them to relax. And when they come to meditate then they should be told, “Alone meditation will not do; it is half of the work. Half you have to do — that is hard physical exercise.” And I think people are in such a suffering without sleep that they will be able to do anything that is suggested.
And hard work has a beauty of its own. Chopping wood and perspiring and a cool breeze comes...and there is such a beautiful feeling in the body, which a person who is not working hard cannot even understand. The poor man also has his luxuries. Only he knows about them.
The Path of the Mystic
Insomnia
An article in an American woman’s magazine says that as many as fifty million Americans suffer from so-called insomnia. After the common cold and headache, this disease ranks as number three for visits to the doctor. Would you comment?
Insomnia is not a disease. Insomnia is a certain way of life.
Man is made by nature to work hard for at least eight hours. Unless he works hard for eight hours he does not earn the right to have a deep sleep. And as a society grows richer, people are not working hard. There is no need; others can work for them. The whole day they are doing small things which they enjoy doing, but it is not hard work like that of a stonecutter or a woodcutter. The body is made so that after eight hours of hard work it naturally needs to fall into sleep to rejuvenate its energy. But it seems difficult...you have earned enough money and still you are chopping wood for eight hours? Then for what have you earned all that money? It seems stupid. You could have chopped wood even without becoming a millionaire.
So if fifty million people in America are suffering from insomnia, that simply means these are the people who are not earning the right to sleep. They are not working to create the situation in which sleep happens. You cannot find fifty million people in a poor country...you cannot find five people.
It has been known for centuries that beggars sleep better than emperors. Laborers, manual laborers sleep better than intellectuals. The poor sleep better than the rich, because they have to work hard to earn their bread and butter, but side by side they are also earning the right to have a beautiful sleep.
Insomnia is not a disease, it is the richest way of life. In fact what is happening is: the whole day you are resting; then in the night you are tossing and turning in the bed. That is the only exercise left for you, and you don’t want to do even that exercise. Toss and turn as much as you can. If the whole day is of resting then the night cannot be of sleep. You have already rested.
If the people who are suffering from insomnia really want to get rid of it they should not think of it as a disease. Visiting a doctor is meaningless. They should start working in their garden, doing some hard work, and forget all about sleep; it will come. It always comes, you don’t have to bring it.
These are the difficulties. Nature never intended that a few people should have all the riches in the world and most of the people should be poor. Looking at the intentions of nature, it seems it wanted everybody to work. It never wanted these classes of the poor and the rich; it wanted a classless society where everybody is working.
It is possible the work may be different. If you have been painting the whole day, that will also bring sleep. Or you have to create artificial exercises — go to the gym, run for miles, jog. Many idiots are doing it. A futile exercise — why jog when you can chop wood? Why jog when your garden is being looked after by somebody else who sleeps perfectly? You pay him for the work, and he sleeps perfectly well.
You jog, and nobody pays you and you find it difficult to sleep. How much can you jog? How much can you run? And a man who has not slept the whole night does not feel like running in the morning, because the whole night he has been struggling to find a little bit of sleep. Tired of tossing and turning, in the morning he finds a little bit of sleep — and that is the time suggested that he should run and he should jog!
Insomnia should not be counted among diseases. People should be made aware that you are not following the natural course that the body needs. Then you can do small things...swimming, tennis — but it will not be a real substitute for hard labor for eight hours. Man basically was a hunter — and not with machine guns, just with arrows — running after deer. It was not every day that he would get his food. The whole day he would run and follow the animals and would not be able to catch one, and he would come home empty-handed but utterly tired.
Your body is still asking you to do that. You can choose in what way you want to do it; then insomnia will disappear of its own accord.
Those fifty million insomnia sufferers do not need any compassion from anybody. They have to be told directly and straightforwardly, “Your way of life is wrong. Change it; otherwise suffer.” And it will bring a great revolution if fifty million people start working eight hours a day. They don’t need it for their food, for their clothing, for their shelter, but they can work for those who need food, who need medicine, who need other necessities of life.
If fifty million people turn out to work hard eight hours per day in the service of the poor, it will change the whole climate of the society. The very idea of fighting, of struggle between classes, will disappear — because there will be no classes.
And this is going to become a bigger problem every day because machines are replacing man in every field. Machines are more efficient, more obedient, can work twenty-four hours without any rest, seven days a week...no holiday, no religious holiday, because they are neither Jews nor Christians nor Hindus.
Machines don’t ask for anything, not even for a coffee break. And one machine can work in place of a hundred people or a thousand people, so soon the whole world is going to be in a trouble: insomnia is going to be one of the biggest troubles in the coming days because when the machine takes over, the man is free. He will be paid for his unemployment, and paid enough so that he does not ask for employment. He will have enough money.
So what can he do? He can play cards, chess, drink alcohol, have a fight — and suffer insomnia. Insomnia is going to be a worldwide phenomena. What is happening to fifty million people in America will be happening to almost every person whose work is taken from him. When people retire they start suffering from insomnia, and they had never suffered before.
So I don’t believe that it is a disease. Don’t categorize it as the third most prevalent disease. It is not of the category of diseases; it is our wrong way of life.
There may be a few people, a very few people, for whom it may be a disease — for example, the intellectuals whose minds are continuously working and get into the habit of working. Then in the night when they want to sleep the mind goes on working, and that’s enough for insomnia. And they have no control over the mind to stop it. They may shout; the mind doesn’t care about it.
The mind, while you are resting in bed, goes on unwinding itself, because in the day there were many sidelines of thoughts which have been left incomplete; they have to be completed. Mind is a perfectionist. It wants to do everything perfectly, so whatever has remained incomplete it is trying to complete. And it has no need of sleep. It is the body that needs sleep. If the body has not worked and has not earned any sleep, and the mind has been functioning too much and going so fast that it has become habituated to it, this type of man may even work with the body and still suffer insomnia. Then it will be a disease. Then he needs the medicine I call meditation, so that his mind can relax and allow the body to go into sleep.
But these people who cannot sleep are really suffering badly because in their life there is nothing — no meaning, all hypocrisy. “Socializing” they call it. And then in the night they cannot even sleep. The day is useless, the night is useless. They have lost all touch with life. They should be helped.
There should be more meditation centers specially for people who are suffering from insomnia. Meditation will help them to relax. And when they come to meditate then they should be told, “Alone meditation will not do; it is half of the work. Half you have to do — that is hard physical exercise.” And I think people are in such a suffering without sleep that they will be able to do anything that is suggested.
And hard work has a beauty of its own. Chopping wood and perspiring and a cool breeze comes...and there is such a beautiful feeling in the body, which a person who is not working hard cannot even understand. The poor man also has his luxuries. Only he knows about them.
The Path of the Mystic
The Fortune to be made at the Bottom of the Pyramid
Friends,
I'm convinced(to plagiarise from C.K.Prahlad) that there is a fortune to be made at the bottom of the pyramid if only we could free ourselves from the paranoia of herding in big cities,power kegs waiting to explode any time.
The economics works like this.So far the elites have pocketed the money that should rightly go to the people at large.Three factors make it impossible for this state of affairs to continue.
One,the explosion in communications in an increasingly wired world.Two,the explosion of scientific and technological innovation which knows no boundaries and its proponents are smart enough to sense endless opportunities. Third, 70% of the population in India is below 35 and this group is indignant about the present mess and will no longer brook much nonsense of the elites.
If only people between 40-60 could de-fossilize themselves and flow with the unlimited,pulsating,exuberant rhythm of life, they could be the co torch bearers in a new world just waiting to be born.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com
Simon Desjardins
Electrifying Bihar - the role of philanthropy and social investment
Why does Bihar matter?
Simon Desjardins
1 June 2011
Alliance magazine
Long before Gandhi would use it as a launch pad for his campaign for independence, Bihar was an economic powerhouse, serving as the capital of India during Ashoka’s empire in the third century BC, when India’s boundaries stretched to include present-day Afghanistan and parts of Iran to the west and Bangladesh to the east. It is a state rich in history, home to one of the world’s oldest universities (Nalanda) and the oldest democracy, and they even say Buddha found enlightenment here.
Credit Nations Online Project
That prominence didn’t last.
The state has come to be known in recent times more for poverty, widespread corruption and economic irrelevance. It is still hugely stigmatized today within India. I was asked three years ago by a high-profile Indian ‘impact’ investor why we were planning to support a Bihari rural electrification start-up. ‘You can’t do business over there,’ he told me. ‘It’s a backward state. If you want to have an impact on electrification, do something in the cities, where people will pay for their power.’ In those cities, ask a taxi driver about Bihar and they’re liable to refer (loudly) to the Bihari brain-drain, lamenting that local jobs are being taken by Bihari migrants. The state is surely helping to drive India’s trend of rapid urbanization as people leave rural communities looking for work in cities. By most accounts it would seem like a place to avoid, rather than a place to commit capital. As with most things Indian, though, the reality is more complex than would appear to the casual observer.
The truth is that Bihar is quietly becoming important again.
A unique test bed
Specifically, there are three main reasons we’ve chosen to focus this issue of Alliance on energy provision in Bihar. First, for those readers interested in energy poverty and the services that could be delivered as a result of rural electricity provision, this state is a hotbed of innovation. Indeed, some of the world’s most ground-breaking rural electrification businesses are scaling up in this state. We need to learn from them.
Second, energy in Bihar may seem like a narrow focus, irrelevant to a development organization or investor working on education in Africa, for example. The opposite is true. In many ways, Bihar is a proxy for the rest of India (excluding the urban growth centres), and a unique test bed for technology and service innovation that could be applied throughout the world. It is a conflict-free region and starvation is not a major problem. The state’s democracy is working: voters resoundingly rejected the caste-based politics of Laloo Yadav in 2004 by electing Nitish Kumar, who ran an issues-driven campaign, as chief minister. People here are subsisting, but they are not flourishing – and they are grossly underserved. In other words, there is nothing peculiar to the region that would limit the applicability of solutions developed here to regions elsewhere.
Third, because access to products and services is so limited in Bihar, the opportunity to make a significant difference is heightened. Bihar’s 90 million or so inhabitants almost universally lack access to reliable energy, education and healthcare services. Paradoxically, the challenges of doing business here are advantages for enterprises with national or global ambitions, because they force innovation. ‘We have to create everything we need,’ says Gyanesh Pandey, co-founder and CEO of Husk Power Systems. If you can make it work in Bihar, you can make it work anywhere.
Clearly, investment should be driven by specific commercial opportunity rather than geography, though from this perspective Bihar is an exciting story, rich with unique opportunities for commercial investors and scale-driven donors alike.
Energy in context
The issue of access to energy in India is a pressing one, and the numbers tell a story that borders on scandal. India has over 500 million people without access to reliable electricity – nearly a third of the world’s 1.6 billion ‘energy poor’. Of the 650,000 villages in India, 100,000 have no access to grid electricity and most of the rest have only a very poor-quality power supply. The enterprises working here to date have proved that there is not just a need for electricity, but a genuine demand, as the willingness to pay for high-quality solutions when offered shows. The supply of technology and feedstock required to meet the demand already exists, but largely because of solvable route-to-market challenges, supply isn’t meeting demand.
Bihar is at the centre of this problem. The story here will sound all too familiar toAlliance readers working on this issue in other areas: most of the population uses polluting and prohibitively expensive and dangerous kerosene for lighting, and diesel generators are used (by those few who can afford them) to power irrigation systems and often to charge phones at great expense and inconvenience. People don’t pay for electricity, of course. They pay for what they can do with that electricity. It sounds obvious, but the implications are tremendous.
There are broad implications to this problem. The economic impact extends to shopkeepers who have difficulty staying open after nightfall, to farmers who need to pay for diesel to irrigate their land, to consumers who need to pay a hefty price to charge their phones. The social impact is felt by children who struggle to study at night, by anyone who wants to meet friends during the evening, by retired men who want to play a board game before bed. The list goes on. It also has a direct effect on quality of life – intangible benefits that matter in ways that are difficult to measure. For example, consumers describe new-found access to electricity in surprising ways: they talk about feelings of pride and independence that at least equal the economic benefits. The lack of television probably increases the rates of spousal abuse, though we’re waiting for a bright group of academics to confirm this.
Our approach at Shell Foundation has been to support small and growing enterprises that provide modern energy services to the poor in ways that are financially viable and scalable. We support these enterprises by providing smart subsidy (in the form of grants), typically at the post-R&D stage but before revenues start to come in when commercial funding is not yet available. Our grants are never used to subsidize the price of the end product or service. Rather, they are used to create the core components required for scale, namely: seed funding for proof-of-concept, business plan and strategy development; initial partial subsidy support to enable the enterprise to employ senior managers (who are much needed but often too expensive to afford at the pilot stage); assistance in developing route-to-market partnerships; and technical assistance from Shell engineers and safety experts.
The most successful enterprises in Bihar
In Bihar, we are providing direct support both to energy providers and to a rural distribution company. Our rural electrification partner, Husk Power Systems, generates reliable and affordable power to rural villages by gasifying waste rice husk (or any other locally available biomass), feeding the resulting ‘producer gas’ into a generator, and selling that electricity to the community on a pay-as-you-go basis, as a kerosene replacement.
The company, which has developed the lowest cost power generation model at this scale (35-50kW) in the world, is gearing itself for rapid growth. Their infrastructure now includes electronic systems to monitor power plant performance remotely as well as the world’s cheapest energy meter (less than $10). They’re also developing a centralized training institution dubbed ‘Husk Power University’ which will deliver capacity-building content through video, e-learning and lectures by experts to the thousands of operators and managers who will be required over the coming years. They are finding ways to monetize the waste streams generated by the plants, for example the new incense sticks business (see Husk Power article), which will significantly improve the economics for future operators. Husk Power has now installed over 65 power plants that collectively deliver electricity to over 100,000 individuals and has a plan to grow to over 30 times its present size over the next four years, mainly through a ‘build and maintain’ model (see Husk Power funders).
We also have a partnership with d.light – a manufacturer of solar lighting products – to help the company reach lower-income groups in the population by reducing the risks for potential distribution partners. This has meant deploying grant funding as a revolving capital pool to incentivize high potential distributors who can’t or won’t pay cash up front for d.light’s solar lanterns. Mandeep Singh, who runs d.light in India, sees Bihar as a core growth market, and has focused on selling through FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) distribution points, bicycle selling shops and telecom outlets, as well as seeding lights with local opinion leaders like local doctors and school students through corporate partnerships.
Credit Tushar Dayal
Our rural distribution partner, Project Dharma, is actively involved in selling social impact products and services to low-income customers at the ‘last mile’. Products include water purifiers, improved stoves and a range of solar lighting products offered at a range of prices. Health and sanitation products are on the way. Distribution is based on a network of village-level entrepreneurs who are given professional training and logistical support, backed up by SAP-powered information systems. Project Dharma’s founder Gaurav Mehta is increasing the company’s presence in Bihar, with an entrepreneur network that now numbers in the hundreds. Their model is different because of the quality of training and support services offered to their dealers, as well as their growing range of complementary products which translate into sustainable incomes for dealers.
Greenlight Planet, a portable solar lantern company led by Anish Thakkar and Mayank Sekhsaria, is the fourth organization in Bihar on the way to achieving scale. They are implementing a unique sales agent model based on successful sales techniques developed in the US (see Greenlight article). Rural sales agents sell lights part time on a cash basis and can make a significant top-up income over their regular jobs. Bihar is a key market for Greenlight, which is now selling thousands of lights per month.
Lessons to be learned
What lessons can we learn from these enterprises? First, the solution must be entrepreneur-led, not model-led. We’ve seen many high-profile electrification schemes fail or stagnate due to a reliance on ‘community-led’ solutions involving high levels of capital expenditure that look great on paper but don’t have committed promoters behind them. The entrepreneur must come first, and the promoters must have shared financial risk with their investors.
Second, it’s clear that in Bihar there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to energy provision. In some areas, a biomass-powered mini-grid option like the one Husk Power is promoting will be most appropriate. In other areas, solar lanterns or solar home systems will make more economic sense.
Third, for those organizations providing energy to the underserved, that provision must be the first priority. We’ve seen proposed models where energy for rural communities would be derived from leveraging the over-capacity of existing energy sources, like diesel generators powering mobile phone towers. This looks great on paper too but in practice is potentially reckless, as it will surely lead to unreliable energy supply at times when resources are stretched (and they will be), as power to the mobile tower will necessarily be the first priority for the provider, not the communities.
Finally, quality of technology matters, but it is secondary to the quality of the channel that delivers that technology to the customer. The key question related to potential for scalability is: does that channel deliver significant improvements in reliability and cost savings to the communities in which it is implemented? We often get proposals or questions related to a new product that claims some marginal cost-per-kilowatt-hour improvement over some other energy product along with a declaration of superiority. This type of comparison may be of academic interest to someone sitting in a comfortable armchair in London or New York, but it is meaningless to a rural Bihari coughing in front of a kerosene lantern.
Simon Desjardins is guest editor for this Alliance special feature. He is responsible for Shell Foundation’s Excelerate programme, which has the goal of helping to provide access to modern energy services for the poor. EmailSimon.Desjardins@shell.com
The vision - energy as a catalyst
I'm convinced(to plagiarise from C.K.Prahlad) that there is a fortune to be made at the bottom of the pyramid if only we could free ourselves from the paranoia of herding in big cities,power kegs waiting to explode any time.
The economics works like this.So far the elites have pocketed the money that should rightly go to the people at large.Three factors make it impossible for this state of affairs to continue.
One,the explosion in communications in an increasingly wired world.Two,the explosion of scientific and technological innovation which knows no boundaries and its proponents are smart enough to sense endless opportunities. Third, 70% of the population in India is below 35 and this group is indignant about the present mess and will no longer brook much nonsense of the elites.
If only people between 40-60 could de-fossilize themselves and flow with the unlimited,pulsating,exuberant rhythm of life, they could be the co torch bearers in a new world just waiting to be born.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com
Simon Desjardins
Electrifying Bihar - the role of philanthropy and social investment
Why does Bihar matter?
Simon Desjardins
1 June 2011
Alliance magazine
Long before Gandhi would use it as a launch pad for his campaign for independence, Bihar was an economic powerhouse, serving as the capital of India during Ashoka’s empire in the third century BC, when India’s boundaries stretched to include present-day Afghanistan and parts of Iran to the west and Bangladesh to the east. It is a state rich in history, home to one of the world’s oldest universities (Nalanda) and the oldest democracy, and they even say Buddha found enlightenment here.
Credit Nations Online Project
That prominence didn’t last.
The state has come to be known in recent times more for poverty, widespread corruption and economic irrelevance. It is still hugely stigmatized today within India. I was asked three years ago by a high-profile Indian ‘impact’ investor why we were planning to support a Bihari rural electrification start-up. ‘You can’t do business over there,’ he told me. ‘It’s a backward state. If you want to have an impact on electrification, do something in the cities, where people will pay for their power.’ In those cities, ask a taxi driver about Bihar and they’re liable to refer (loudly) to the Bihari brain-drain, lamenting that local jobs are being taken by Bihari migrants. The state is surely helping to drive India’s trend of rapid urbanization as people leave rural communities looking for work in cities. By most accounts it would seem like a place to avoid, rather than a place to commit capital. As with most things Indian, though, the reality is more complex than would appear to the casual observer.
The truth is that Bihar is quietly becoming important again.
A unique test bed
Specifically, there are three main reasons we’ve chosen to focus this issue of Alliance on energy provision in Bihar. First, for those readers interested in energy poverty and the services that could be delivered as a result of rural electricity provision, this state is a hotbed of innovation. Indeed, some of the world’s most ground-breaking rural electrification businesses are scaling up in this state. We need to learn from them.
Second, energy in Bihar may seem like a narrow focus, irrelevant to a development organization or investor working on education in Africa, for example. The opposite is true. In many ways, Bihar is a proxy for the rest of India (excluding the urban growth centres), and a unique test bed for technology and service innovation that could be applied throughout the world. It is a conflict-free region and starvation is not a major problem. The state’s democracy is working: voters resoundingly rejected the caste-based politics of Laloo Yadav in 2004 by electing Nitish Kumar, who ran an issues-driven campaign, as chief minister. People here are subsisting, but they are not flourishing – and they are grossly underserved. In other words, there is nothing peculiar to the region that would limit the applicability of solutions developed here to regions elsewhere.
Third, because access to products and services is so limited in Bihar, the opportunity to make a significant difference is heightened. Bihar’s 90 million or so inhabitants almost universally lack access to reliable energy, education and healthcare services. Paradoxically, the challenges of doing business here are advantages for enterprises with national or global ambitions, because they force innovation. ‘We have to create everything we need,’ says Gyanesh Pandey, co-founder and CEO of Husk Power Systems. If you can make it work in Bihar, you can make it work anywhere.
Clearly, investment should be driven by specific commercial opportunity rather than geography, though from this perspective Bihar is an exciting story, rich with unique opportunities for commercial investors and scale-driven donors alike.
Energy in context
The issue of access to energy in India is a pressing one, and the numbers tell a story that borders on scandal. India has over 500 million people without access to reliable electricity – nearly a third of the world’s 1.6 billion ‘energy poor’. Of the 650,000 villages in India, 100,000 have no access to grid electricity and most of the rest have only a very poor-quality power supply. The enterprises working here to date have proved that there is not just a need for electricity, but a genuine demand, as the willingness to pay for high-quality solutions when offered shows. The supply of technology and feedstock required to meet the demand already exists, but largely because of solvable route-to-market challenges, supply isn’t meeting demand.
Bihar is at the centre of this problem. The story here will sound all too familiar toAlliance readers working on this issue in other areas: most of the population uses polluting and prohibitively expensive and dangerous kerosene for lighting, and diesel generators are used (by those few who can afford them) to power irrigation systems and often to charge phones at great expense and inconvenience. People don’t pay for electricity, of course. They pay for what they can do with that electricity. It sounds obvious, but the implications are tremendous.
There are broad implications to this problem. The economic impact extends to shopkeepers who have difficulty staying open after nightfall, to farmers who need to pay for diesel to irrigate their land, to consumers who need to pay a hefty price to charge their phones. The social impact is felt by children who struggle to study at night, by anyone who wants to meet friends during the evening, by retired men who want to play a board game before bed. The list goes on. It also has a direct effect on quality of life – intangible benefits that matter in ways that are difficult to measure. For example, consumers describe new-found access to electricity in surprising ways: they talk about feelings of pride and independence that at least equal the economic benefits. The lack of television probably increases the rates of spousal abuse, though we’re waiting for a bright group of academics to confirm this.
Our approach at Shell Foundation has been to support small and growing enterprises that provide modern energy services to the poor in ways that are financially viable and scalable. We support these enterprises by providing smart subsidy (in the form of grants), typically at the post-R&D stage but before revenues start to come in when commercial funding is not yet available. Our grants are never used to subsidize the price of the end product or service. Rather, they are used to create the core components required for scale, namely: seed funding for proof-of-concept, business plan and strategy development; initial partial subsidy support to enable the enterprise to employ senior managers (who are much needed but often too expensive to afford at the pilot stage); assistance in developing route-to-market partnerships; and technical assistance from Shell engineers and safety experts.
The most successful enterprises in Bihar
In Bihar, we are providing direct support both to energy providers and to a rural distribution company. Our rural electrification partner, Husk Power Systems, generates reliable and affordable power to rural villages by gasifying waste rice husk (or any other locally available biomass), feeding the resulting ‘producer gas’ into a generator, and selling that electricity to the community on a pay-as-you-go basis, as a kerosene replacement.
The company, which has developed the lowest cost power generation model at this scale (35-50kW) in the world, is gearing itself for rapid growth. Their infrastructure now includes electronic systems to monitor power plant performance remotely as well as the world’s cheapest energy meter (less than $10). They’re also developing a centralized training institution dubbed ‘Husk Power University’ which will deliver capacity-building content through video, e-learning and lectures by experts to the thousands of operators and managers who will be required over the coming years. They are finding ways to monetize the waste streams generated by the plants, for example the new incense sticks business (see Husk Power article), which will significantly improve the economics for future operators. Husk Power has now installed over 65 power plants that collectively deliver electricity to over 100,000 individuals and has a plan to grow to over 30 times its present size over the next four years, mainly through a ‘build and maintain’ model (see Husk Power funders).
We also have a partnership with d.light – a manufacturer of solar lighting products – to help the company reach lower-income groups in the population by reducing the risks for potential distribution partners. This has meant deploying grant funding as a revolving capital pool to incentivize high potential distributors who can’t or won’t pay cash up front for d.light’s solar lanterns. Mandeep Singh, who runs d.light in India, sees Bihar as a core growth market, and has focused on selling through FMCG (fast moving consumer goods) distribution points, bicycle selling shops and telecom outlets, as well as seeding lights with local opinion leaders like local doctors and school students through corporate partnerships.
Credit Tushar Dayal
Our rural distribution partner, Project Dharma, is actively involved in selling social impact products and services to low-income customers at the ‘last mile’. Products include water purifiers, improved stoves and a range of solar lighting products offered at a range of prices. Health and sanitation products are on the way. Distribution is based on a network of village-level entrepreneurs who are given professional training and logistical support, backed up by SAP-powered information systems. Project Dharma’s founder Gaurav Mehta is increasing the company’s presence in Bihar, with an entrepreneur network that now numbers in the hundreds. Their model is different because of the quality of training and support services offered to their dealers, as well as their growing range of complementary products which translate into sustainable incomes for dealers.
Greenlight Planet, a portable solar lantern company led by Anish Thakkar and Mayank Sekhsaria, is the fourth organization in Bihar on the way to achieving scale. They are implementing a unique sales agent model based on successful sales techniques developed in the US (see Greenlight article). Rural sales agents sell lights part time on a cash basis and can make a significant top-up income over their regular jobs. Bihar is a key market for Greenlight, which is now selling thousands of lights per month.
Lessons to be learned
What lessons can we learn from these enterprises? First, the solution must be entrepreneur-led, not model-led. We’ve seen many high-profile electrification schemes fail or stagnate due to a reliance on ‘community-led’ solutions involving high levels of capital expenditure that look great on paper but don’t have committed promoters behind them. The entrepreneur must come first, and the promoters must have shared financial risk with their investors.
Second, it’s clear that in Bihar there is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to energy provision. In some areas, a biomass-powered mini-grid option like the one Husk Power is promoting will be most appropriate. In other areas, solar lanterns or solar home systems will make more economic sense.
Third, for those organizations providing energy to the underserved, that provision must be the first priority. We’ve seen proposed models where energy for rural communities would be derived from leveraging the over-capacity of existing energy sources, like diesel generators powering mobile phone towers. This looks great on paper too but in practice is potentially reckless, as it will surely lead to unreliable energy supply at times when resources are stretched (and they will be), as power to the mobile tower will necessarily be the first priority for the provider, not the communities.
Finally, quality of technology matters, but it is secondary to the quality of the channel that delivers that technology to the customer. The key question related to potential for scalability is: does that channel deliver significant improvements in reliability and cost savings to the communities in which it is implemented? We often get proposals or questions related to a new product that claims some marginal cost-per-kilowatt-hour improvement over some other energy product along with a declaration of superiority. This type of comparison may be of academic interest to someone sitting in a comfortable armchair in London or New York, but it is meaningless to a rural Bihari coughing in front of a kerosene lantern.
Simon Desjardins is guest editor for this Alliance special feature. He is responsible for Shell Foundation’s Excelerate programme, which has the goal of helping to provide access to modern energy services for the poor. EmailSimon.Desjardins@shell.com
The vision - energy as a catalyst
Sunday, July 3, 2011
Indignez Vous!!!
Sent: Sat, July 2, 2011 5:25:20 PM
Subject: Time for Outrage by Stephane Hessel
Friends,
The season for outrage is upon us and Stephane Hessel,a 94 year old has polemically captured the angst of the age.Man is born free,but everywhere he is in chains.I think the time is just ripe to unshackle ourselves of these chains.
Once we realize the unlimited potentials, that lie buried within reams and reams of social consciousness,and find our true power we'll have the wherewithal,collectively, to fashion a just society premised on equal opportunities for all.
Do check out this 40 page book which is creating waves the world over.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: "mailerservice@indiatimes.com"
To: asahays@yahoo.com
Sent: Sat, July 2, 2011 5:06:00 PM
Subject: Timesofindia.com: A Resistance Hero Casts A Spell
--------------------------------
A Resistance Hero Casts A Spell
The only way to avoid a violent revolution is to stage a peaceful one. That, in substance, is the message that Stephane Hessel, a grand old man of 94, issued in a slim pamphlet published in October last year.
Log on to : http://www.timesofindia.com
----------------------------------
Message from avinash sahay
in india the people are deeply concerned about corruption in high places.actually the whole system has become dysfunctional.this book is a timely warning for intervention,indeed outrage,by young people because they stand to lose the most.i am certain that outrage and intervention will change the entire paradigm.the meek shall yet inherit.
Subject: Time for Outrage by Stephane Hessel
Friends,
The season for outrage is upon us and Stephane Hessel,a 94 year old has polemically captured the angst of the age.Man is born free,but everywhere he is in chains.I think the time is just ripe to unshackle ourselves of these chains.
Once we realize the unlimited potentials, that lie buried within reams and reams of social consciousness,and find our true power we'll have the wherewithal,collectively, to fashion a just society premised on equal opportunities for all.
Do check out this 40 page book which is creating waves the world over.
Best regards,
Avinash
http://poshaning.blogspot.com/
----- Forwarded Message ----
From: "mailerservice@indiatimes.com"
To: asahays@yahoo.com
Sent: Sat, July 2, 2011 5:06:00 PM
Subject: Timesofindia.com: A Resistance Hero Casts A Spell
--------------------------------
A Resistance Hero Casts A Spell
The only way to avoid a violent revolution is to stage a peaceful one. That, in substance, is the message that Stephane Hessel, a grand old man of 94, issued in a slim pamphlet published in October last year.
Log on to : http://www.timesofindia.com
----------------------------------
Message from avinash sahay
in india the people are deeply concerned about corruption in high places.actually the whole system has become dysfunctional.this book is a timely warning for intervention,indeed outrage,by young people because they stand to lose the most.i am certain that outrage and intervention will change the entire paradigm.the meek shall yet inherit.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Throwing the Baby and Keeping the Bathwater
June 19, 2011 By Kaushik Mitter
Tags: Amitav Ghosh
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Smooth Sailing on creativity
Three years after Sea of Poppies in 2008, master storyteller Amitav Ghosh is back with River of Smoke, the second part of his epic Ibis trilogy, where we are reunited with many old faces and meet new ones as the action shifts from colonial Bengal and its calm Ganga waters to the stormy seas off China, to bustling Canton in the thick of the Opium Wars, where a wealthy Parsi businessman from Mumbai holds his own in cut-throat trade battles...
In a freewheeling conversation with Kaushik Mitter in New Delhi recently, Ghosh insisted he hasn’t even thought where he’ll take the story in the trilogy’s final part, or when. He talks of how writing The Glass Palace (on Burma’s last king, exiled to India) some years ago led him to think of Sea of Poppies, how he’s excited by the “incredible creative energy” in the Indian arts today, about his favourite contemporary writers, of experiences at Oxford and Harvard, and how he sees a changing India evolving.
Ghosh, who divides his time between New York, Goa and Kolkata, says he now does most of his writing in Goa, and when he’s not working he relaxes with his family and plays a round or two of badminton.
Excerpts from the interview:
Do you find India increasingly becoming an intolerant place, where the liberal space is shrinking?
A. That’s absolutely true. The other day we lost our great painter M.F. Husain — such a tragedy, the way he was hounded out... having to move to Qatar, then dying in London. You see that phenomenon replicating at every level — that space for freedom, so essential for writing or any kind of art, is shrinking constantly.
It’s not just in India... Through most of the 20th century we always thought creative freedom is essentially a problem in relation to the state... This has completely changed — it’s non-state actors who are the main threats to freedom... You have the political parties, various activists, fundamentalists of various kinds, and you have multinational corporations — also very heavily invested in controlling the outflow of information. In America various forms of expression are threatened. It actually happened, you know — various people had criticised McDonald’s hamburgers, and they were prosecuted... they were just ordinary, poor people.
Q. Do you feel the liberal consensus around which the Indian state was founded is breaking down?
A. Yes, the ground has certainly shifted... and quite dramatically. It’s also curious to see so many stories about Rising India, Shining India, Glittering India... because in every aspect of Indian life you see signs of extreme tension. Just one example: 10 years ago it was perfectly possible to drive across the interior of Orissa — I myself have driven through Koraput and Kalahandi in a car. Now it’s almost impossible to leave the coastal belt. Midnapore in Bengal — so much a part of mainland India — today it’s not really under government control. If you add up (such) districts around India, you’ll see almost a third of the country is not under state control... And more and more areas are passing out of state control every year.
Q. You’ve travelled and worked extensively in the Sunderbans. Where are we going wrong on development?
A. What’s happening is a resource takeover by the private sector... The government seems to feel it can just hand over these resources to profit-making companies — I think that it’s a disaster. Millions of people are being displaced, there’s massive violence, it’s visibly leading to the complete unravelling of the political balance.
Q. Can the lives of the poor be improved without development?
A. The problem, say, in the forest region is that because of British era forestry laws the people who lived there were deprived of all rights to that land. The state claims control of the forests, people there were not given any title to these lands, which was always their common land... The most important thing is for their title to these lands to be restored. Then it’s for them to decide... Let them strike a bargain with the companies if they want to sell it. The people now have no right to decide, that’s why they are protesting. They don’t think of themselves as poor, it’s a life they have been perfectly happy with. You are actually creating poverty in order to lift them out of poverty!
Q. You grew up in Kolkata, you’ve lived there at different times, before and during the Left period. What is your take on politics there?
A. Oh my goodness, you really want to get me into trouble (laughs)... I think in its early years the Left had some important ideas — land reforms have been important in Bengal, give them credit for that. But for the last 20 years they’ve been completely moribund — I say this not out of any sense of antipathy towards the Left, but they’ve been completely on the wrong track. Even when thinking of development and industrialisation, they’ve had no vision...
Kolkata has so many things going for it. In an era of water scarcity, it sits in the middle of a water-rich region, with easy access to both the Northeast and to Southeast Asia. It can very easily become a cultural, financial, retail hub — it has all this going for it. But when the Left finally begins to think of industrialisation, what do they think? Of all the dirty old industries. It’s so ridiculous...
Both London and New York have been through this process of de-industrialisation — and turned that into an enormous asset. They became financial hubs, cultural hubs — all those old buildings turned into galleries, art spaces... It would be so easy to do that in Kolkata if people had any kind of vision, they would have done that. But when they (Left) think of industry, they think of our grandfather’s time, not clean industries... It makes you feel so sad and so helpless. And the reason is they’re still only reading Das Kapital, they’re thinking of the 19th century.
Q. Your new book River of Smoke carries on from where Sea of Poppies left off — with many of the same characters. Have you thought about where the story moves in the third and last part of the Ibis trilogy?
A. I really haven’t. It’s strange to relate, but I’ve always conceived of this trilogy as books not connected in a linear sense, but which have a more glancing relationship with each other, like parts of a puzzle, if you like. So when I finished Sea of Poppies, I didn’t know where the next book would go. In that way it’s no different from writing a book that stands on its own.
My main concern — doing it as a trilogy — was to stay with the characters and their families... If necessary I can take up the story 20 years later, 30 years later, two generations later... and I still feel free to do that.
Q. Does the close India-China relationship that you depict in River of Smoke have any lessons for us in the 21st century?
A. People talk about this (India-China) relationship as though it was something that fell out of the sky in the last 10 years… A lot of Indians were trading in China in the 19th century, unfortunately they were trading in opium. But there is no doubt that a lot of the capital accumulation that happened in India in the 19th century came from the opium trade… This was responsible for the growth of many present-day Indian firms. So China has always been a vital aspect of our economic life. The curious thing is that there is an absolute ignorance of that in India… we never grew up with an awareness of this.
What do you think of the new English writing in India? Anything that stands out in the recent popular fiction, chick lit, etc?
A. I don’t read much chick lit (laughs), but one thing I really love is this genre of IIT novels... Chetan Bhagat and Amitabha Bagchi, both of them are extremely talented writers. It’s strange, you know, the world they are writing about is probably not of interest to anyone outside India, who haven’t been through our educational system or similar systems. To me, it was simply fascinating. Amitabha, in his first book (Above Average), what he did I think went far beyond the boundaries of any such genre — it’s really making the IITs a kind of metaphor for India...
Speaking of chick lit, at one point when I was teaching in Harvard, a Kaavya Viswanathan was my student. I never read her book, so I can’t say anything about it, except that clearly it had problems... But the work that she did for me was excellent. She was a very talented writer. (Her 2006 debut novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, written just after high school, was withdrawn after charges of plagiarism.)
I was at Harvard very briefly, and she came to some classes... I was very impressed... In that brief time that I was teaching there I had so many brilliant students from South Asia, some of whom have now published books... (such as) Ali Sethi, who’s Pakistani, a superb writer...
Q. The recent book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother created a lot of buzz in America and elsewhere. You’ve researched extensively on China — do you find parallels between the way the Chinese and Indians bring up kids, in their education systems.
A. That’s an interesting question. I can’t say I’ve read this book of Amy Chua... I’ve read about it, read excerpts from it... I’ve in fact read her earlier book World on Fire (whose subhead says it all: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability). I think she’s an exceptionally clever woman... It’s also very interesting that her children are incredibly successful, and they adore her, they’ve said so repeatedly.
I think what’s happened in America, the reason it made such an impact is that Americans have begun to realise now that there is something problematic about their system of education. For years they’ve been accustomed to thinking their education system is the best in the world; now they realise it has very deep problems. I’ve brought up two children there, they’ve been through the whole American educational system — and I’m happy to say that they’ve done very well in that system. But I certainly realise this system is riddled with terrible problems.
I also think the strengths of our system are never properly articulated. The whole world has become so battered and bullied by this constant talk about the excellence of American education by people who have no experience of it, who don’t know what it is to bring up children in different places... people automatically accept there is something magnificent in that system and that our system is horrible... And it’s really not true.
I’ve taught at Harvard and at all these places... One of the reasons I really feel relieved not to be teaching any more is that I don’t think in many significant respects that the American system works...
Q. You mean in the universities or in schools as well?
A. School education, college education... From top to bottom, it just doesn’t work. In some ways it’s become like entertainment... When as a college teacher in America you are offering a class, the children “shop” for classes. So which are the classes they’re going to take? The classes that are entertaining, the classes where they are marked very liberally. This is exactly what happens: they put their evaluations on their websites so that the students who are following know exactly who are the strict teachers, who are the not strict teachers, and they can game the system very, very well...
Education is not all fun. Education is difficult, but the idea that you have to make education fun at some point becomes self-defeating. You can’t make certain kinds of mathematics fun. You can’t make difficult things fun. And that’s not why you are doing education. Learning poetry by heart is not fun. But it’s very necessary to have that poetry in your head if you are studying English literature... I sometimes ask my children: Can you recite a poem? — and they’ve been to the top institutions in America — and no, they can’t.
They (Americans) think that rote learning is bad... But it is such an idiotic idea — what is learning but rote learning? How can you learn the multiplication tables as though it was fun? There’s nothing fun about multiplication tables... And learning is in fact 90 per cent rote learning. If you constantly attack this idea of rote learning, it’s ridiculous...
If you go to American universities now, why is it that all the departments of mathematics, engineering are filled with Asian students? They come from systems where the rigour is drilled into them from a very early age. If it hasn’t been drilled into you from an early age, you have to be truly exceptional. America is a country filled with very brilliant people, and many exceptional students. But the institutional structure doesn’t always support them.
Would you say the Indian educational system, with all its faults, still has a few lessons for America and others?
A. This is the point Amy Chua is making — in India and China and so on there is no strict dividing line between upbringing and education — it’s your family that is actually providing much of the education. And that you can’t reproduce elsewhere. For example, my niece in Kolkata, when she has to go through exams, the whole house shuts down. For two or three months no one will go out, (someone) will sit with her every evening, no one will turn on the TV, literally... the kind of things that every parent in India, every household in India does. Can you imagine this happening in America? It’s inconceivable.
Q. There are many in India who want changes in our education system, to bring in Western ideas, an American-style education...
A. That’s absolutely the wrong way to go. I’m not saying our system is without faults. There are many faults, many things wrong with it. But there’s a lot of stuff which I see constantly being said — from education ministry people and so on, most of whom have no connection with education. I look at it and just laugh to myself... These people have no conception of what they’re saying — they are going to destroy what’s good in our system and take everything that’s bad in that system and end up with the worst possible mess.
When I went from Delhi University to Oxford, I thought I was going into a place where there’s so much higher learning, so much a “life of the mind” and it was exactly the opposite... My education in Delhi had been much better than anything Oxford could have provided. I was far ahead of those other students; I’d read all the books already... I knew more than my teachers there, for heaven’s sake.
There were also wonderful things about Oxford. It let me explore avenues and byways I could not have done in Delhi, but that was possible because I’d been through this whole rigour... What really worries me is that they are in danger now of throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater!
One thing that is never factored into the debate here — do people even understand the level of cost involved... For each of my two children I’m paying over $50,000 a year for college education — each year for four years — so at the end on each child you spend something like a crore of rupees on their college education.
Our system is delivering an education which in many ways is competitive internationally — and at what cost? It’s less than one per cent of that cost. How will our society generate this kind of money for this (American) kind of education? It’s ridiculous. Even America can no longer sustain this. Everyone there is talking of the next big bubble being in American education, and I think they’re absolutely right...
Do you know what they have to do to put their children through college? People don’t realise this here — they take out these loans, and a staggering percentage of American children now come into life with a burden of loans which amount to $200,000-$300,000.
These loans have crippling rates of interest — they can never get rid of these loans, and they are specifically exempted even from bankruptcy claims... So if a person declares bankruptcy, even then they cannot get rid of these loans. For the first 20-30 years of their lives they are working to pay off these loans. Is such a system conceivable here? What impact will it have on the poor and all those who can’t afford it?
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Smooth Sailing on creativity
Three years after Sea of Poppies in 2008, master storyteller Amitav Ghosh is back with River of Smoke, the second part of his epic Ibis trilogy, where we are reunited with many old faces and meet new ones as the action shifts from colonial Bengal and its calm Ganga waters to the stormy seas off China, to bustling Canton in the thick of the Opium Wars, where a wealthy Parsi businessman from Mumbai holds his own in cut-throat trade battles...
In a freewheeling conversation with Kaushik Mitter in New Delhi recently, Ghosh insisted he hasn’t even thought where he’ll take the story in the trilogy’s final part, or when. He talks of how writing The Glass Palace (on Burma’s last king, exiled to India) some years ago led him to think of Sea of Poppies, how he’s excited by the “incredible creative energy” in the Indian arts today, about his favourite contemporary writers, of experiences at Oxford and Harvard, and how he sees a changing India evolving.
Ghosh, who divides his time between New York, Goa and Kolkata, says he now does most of his writing in Goa, and when he’s not working he relaxes with his family and plays a round or two of badminton.
Excerpts from the interview:
Do you find India increasingly becoming an intolerant place, where the liberal space is shrinking?
A. That’s absolutely true. The other day we lost our great painter M.F. Husain — such a tragedy, the way he was hounded out... having to move to Qatar, then dying in London. You see that phenomenon replicating at every level — that space for freedom, so essential for writing or any kind of art, is shrinking constantly.
It’s not just in India... Through most of the 20th century we always thought creative freedom is essentially a problem in relation to the state... This has completely changed — it’s non-state actors who are the main threats to freedom... You have the political parties, various activists, fundamentalists of various kinds, and you have multinational corporations — also very heavily invested in controlling the outflow of information. In America various forms of expression are threatened. It actually happened, you know — various people had criticised McDonald’s hamburgers, and they were prosecuted... they were just ordinary, poor people.
Q. Do you feel the liberal consensus around which the Indian state was founded is breaking down?
A. Yes, the ground has certainly shifted... and quite dramatically. It’s also curious to see so many stories about Rising India, Shining India, Glittering India... because in every aspect of Indian life you see signs of extreme tension. Just one example: 10 years ago it was perfectly possible to drive across the interior of Orissa — I myself have driven through Koraput and Kalahandi in a car. Now it’s almost impossible to leave the coastal belt. Midnapore in Bengal — so much a part of mainland India — today it’s not really under government control. If you add up (such) districts around India, you’ll see almost a third of the country is not under state control... And more and more areas are passing out of state control every year.
Q. You’ve travelled and worked extensively in the Sunderbans. Where are we going wrong on development?
A. What’s happening is a resource takeover by the private sector... The government seems to feel it can just hand over these resources to profit-making companies — I think that it’s a disaster. Millions of people are being displaced, there’s massive violence, it’s visibly leading to the complete unravelling of the political balance.
Q. Can the lives of the poor be improved without development?
A. The problem, say, in the forest region is that because of British era forestry laws the people who lived there were deprived of all rights to that land. The state claims control of the forests, people there were not given any title to these lands, which was always their common land... The most important thing is for their title to these lands to be restored. Then it’s for them to decide... Let them strike a bargain with the companies if they want to sell it. The people now have no right to decide, that’s why they are protesting. They don’t think of themselves as poor, it’s a life they have been perfectly happy with. You are actually creating poverty in order to lift them out of poverty!
Q. You grew up in Kolkata, you’ve lived there at different times, before and during the Left period. What is your take on politics there?
A. Oh my goodness, you really want to get me into trouble (laughs)... I think in its early years the Left had some important ideas — land reforms have been important in Bengal, give them credit for that. But for the last 20 years they’ve been completely moribund — I say this not out of any sense of antipathy towards the Left, but they’ve been completely on the wrong track. Even when thinking of development and industrialisation, they’ve had no vision...
Kolkata has so many things going for it. In an era of water scarcity, it sits in the middle of a water-rich region, with easy access to both the Northeast and to Southeast Asia. It can very easily become a cultural, financial, retail hub — it has all this going for it. But when the Left finally begins to think of industrialisation, what do they think? Of all the dirty old industries. It’s so ridiculous...
Both London and New York have been through this process of de-industrialisation — and turned that into an enormous asset. They became financial hubs, cultural hubs — all those old buildings turned into galleries, art spaces... It would be so easy to do that in Kolkata if people had any kind of vision, they would have done that. But when they (Left) think of industry, they think of our grandfather’s time, not clean industries... It makes you feel so sad and so helpless. And the reason is they’re still only reading Das Kapital, they’re thinking of the 19th century.
Q. Your new book River of Smoke carries on from where Sea of Poppies left off — with many of the same characters. Have you thought about where the story moves in the third and last part of the Ibis trilogy?
A. I really haven’t. It’s strange to relate, but I’ve always conceived of this trilogy as books not connected in a linear sense, but which have a more glancing relationship with each other, like parts of a puzzle, if you like. So when I finished Sea of Poppies, I didn’t know where the next book would go. In that way it’s no different from writing a book that stands on its own.
My main concern — doing it as a trilogy — was to stay with the characters and their families... If necessary I can take up the story 20 years later, 30 years later, two generations later... and I still feel free to do that.
Q. Does the close India-China relationship that you depict in River of Smoke have any lessons for us in the 21st century?
A. People talk about this (India-China) relationship as though it was something that fell out of the sky in the last 10 years… A lot of Indians were trading in China in the 19th century, unfortunately they were trading in opium. But there is no doubt that a lot of the capital accumulation that happened in India in the 19th century came from the opium trade… This was responsible for the growth of many present-day Indian firms. So China has always been a vital aspect of our economic life. The curious thing is that there is an absolute ignorance of that in India… we never grew up with an awareness of this.
What do you think of the new English writing in India? Anything that stands out in the recent popular fiction, chick lit, etc?
A. I don’t read much chick lit (laughs), but one thing I really love is this genre of IIT novels... Chetan Bhagat and Amitabha Bagchi, both of them are extremely talented writers. It’s strange, you know, the world they are writing about is probably not of interest to anyone outside India, who haven’t been through our educational system or similar systems. To me, it was simply fascinating. Amitabha, in his first book (Above Average), what he did I think went far beyond the boundaries of any such genre — it’s really making the IITs a kind of metaphor for India...
Speaking of chick lit, at one point when I was teaching in Harvard, a Kaavya Viswanathan was my student. I never read her book, so I can’t say anything about it, except that clearly it had problems... But the work that she did for me was excellent. She was a very talented writer. (Her 2006 debut novel How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, written just after high school, was withdrawn after charges of plagiarism.)
I was at Harvard very briefly, and she came to some classes... I was very impressed... In that brief time that I was teaching there I had so many brilliant students from South Asia, some of whom have now published books... (such as) Ali Sethi, who’s Pakistani, a superb writer...
Q. The recent book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother created a lot of buzz in America and elsewhere. You’ve researched extensively on China — do you find parallels between the way the Chinese and Indians bring up kids, in their education systems.
A. That’s an interesting question. I can’t say I’ve read this book of Amy Chua... I’ve read about it, read excerpts from it... I’ve in fact read her earlier book World on Fire (whose subhead says it all: How Exporting Free Market Democracy Breeds Ethnic Hatred and Global Instability). I think she’s an exceptionally clever woman... It’s also very interesting that her children are incredibly successful, and they adore her, they’ve said so repeatedly.
I think what’s happened in America, the reason it made such an impact is that Americans have begun to realise now that there is something problematic about their system of education. For years they’ve been accustomed to thinking their education system is the best in the world; now they realise it has very deep problems. I’ve brought up two children there, they’ve been through the whole American educational system — and I’m happy to say that they’ve done very well in that system. But I certainly realise this system is riddled with terrible problems.
I also think the strengths of our system are never properly articulated. The whole world has become so battered and bullied by this constant talk about the excellence of American education by people who have no experience of it, who don’t know what it is to bring up children in different places... people automatically accept there is something magnificent in that system and that our system is horrible... And it’s really not true.
I’ve taught at Harvard and at all these places... One of the reasons I really feel relieved not to be teaching any more is that I don’t think in many significant respects that the American system works...
Q. You mean in the universities or in schools as well?
A. School education, college education... From top to bottom, it just doesn’t work. In some ways it’s become like entertainment... When as a college teacher in America you are offering a class, the children “shop” for classes. So which are the classes they’re going to take? The classes that are entertaining, the classes where they are marked very liberally. This is exactly what happens: they put their evaluations on their websites so that the students who are following know exactly who are the strict teachers, who are the not strict teachers, and they can game the system very, very well...
Education is not all fun. Education is difficult, but the idea that you have to make education fun at some point becomes self-defeating. You can’t make certain kinds of mathematics fun. You can’t make difficult things fun. And that’s not why you are doing education. Learning poetry by heart is not fun. But it’s very necessary to have that poetry in your head if you are studying English literature... I sometimes ask my children: Can you recite a poem? — and they’ve been to the top institutions in America — and no, they can’t.
They (Americans) think that rote learning is bad... But it is such an idiotic idea — what is learning but rote learning? How can you learn the multiplication tables as though it was fun? There’s nothing fun about multiplication tables... And learning is in fact 90 per cent rote learning. If you constantly attack this idea of rote learning, it’s ridiculous...
If you go to American universities now, why is it that all the departments of mathematics, engineering are filled with Asian students? They come from systems where the rigour is drilled into them from a very early age. If it hasn’t been drilled into you from an early age, you have to be truly exceptional. America is a country filled with very brilliant people, and many exceptional students. But the institutional structure doesn’t always support them.
Would you say the Indian educational system, with all its faults, still has a few lessons for America and others?
A. This is the point Amy Chua is making — in India and China and so on there is no strict dividing line between upbringing and education — it’s your family that is actually providing much of the education. And that you can’t reproduce elsewhere. For example, my niece in Kolkata, when she has to go through exams, the whole house shuts down. For two or three months no one will go out, (someone) will sit with her every evening, no one will turn on the TV, literally... the kind of things that every parent in India, every household in India does. Can you imagine this happening in America? It’s inconceivable.
Q. There are many in India who want changes in our education system, to bring in Western ideas, an American-style education...
A. That’s absolutely the wrong way to go. I’m not saying our system is without faults. There are many faults, many things wrong with it. But there’s a lot of stuff which I see constantly being said — from education ministry people and so on, most of whom have no connection with education. I look at it and just laugh to myself... These people have no conception of what they’re saying — they are going to destroy what’s good in our system and take everything that’s bad in that system and end up with the worst possible mess.
When I went from Delhi University to Oxford, I thought I was going into a place where there’s so much higher learning, so much a “life of the mind” and it was exactly the opposite... My education in Delhi had been much better than anything Oxford could have provided. I was far ahead of those other students; I’d read all the books already... I knew more than my teachers there, for heaven’s sake.
There were also wonderful things about Oxford. It let me explore avenues and byways I could not have done in Delhi, but that was possible because I’d been through this whole rigour... What really worries me is that they are in danger now of throwing out the baby and keeping the bathwater!
One thing that is never factored into the debate here — do people even understand the level of cost involved... For each of my two children I’m paying over $50,000 a year for college education — each year for four years — so at the end on each child you spend something like a crore of rupees on their college education.
Our system is delivering an education which in many ways is competitive internationally — and at what cost? It’s less than one per cent of that cost. How will our society generate this kind of money for this (American) kind of education? It’s ridiculous. Even America can no longer sustain this. Everyone there is talking of the next big bubble being in American education, and I think they’re absolutely right...
Do you know what they have to do to put their children through college? People don’t realise this here — they take out these loans, and a staggering percentage of American children now come into life with a burden of loans which amount to $200,000-$300,000.
These loans have crippling rates of interest — they can never get rid of these loans, and they are specifically exempted even from bankruptcy claims... So if a person declares bankruptcy, even then they cannot get rid of these loans. For the first 20-30 years of their lives they are working to pay off these loans. Is such a system conceivable here? What impact will it have on the poor and all those who can’t afford it?
A Corporate State!!
Friends,
I'm forwarding this article by Dr Vandana Shiva.We,the upwardly mobile,obsess and endlessly discuss the issue of corruption. Perhaps,this article will help us in having a better perspective.
I feel that one of the major factors behind corruption is an over centralized state apparatus endowed with huge discretionary powers.The thinking behind this could be that the State was a better arbiter to mediate between conflicting interests.But the present situation is that the State seems to be more aligned with the Corporate interest than with that of the poor, the rural and the tribal. Therefore it is imperative that powers of the State be decentralized in favour of local bodies.
Unfortunately,there is no organized effort in this direction.
Despite all the despondency all around,I remain hopeful that the people of this country will not be cowed down and something good, even for the Corporates and the State,will emerge from all these struggles. In a global,wired,world,it is impossible to fool all people for all times.
I trust all of us will retain our optimism and pray for precisely this outcome.
Avinash
2010 was the year of scams — 2G Spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing Society etc.
2011 has emerged as the year of the fight against corruption — with social activist Anna Hazare’s fast for a Lokpal Bill and Baba Ramdev’s fast to bring back black money stashed away in foreign banks.
The midnight police crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s satyagraha with 100,000 followers was yet another signal of the undemocratic tendency of the government to crush social movements and social protests.
At the same time, when Ramdev’s satyagraha was attacked in Delhi, 20 police battalions were being used to crush the anti-Posco movement in Odisha and destroy the betel-vine gardens that are the basis of people’s prosperous living economy, earning small farmers Rs 400,000 per acre.
The use of force has become the norm for the government dealing with people’s protests.
In a democracy, which is supposed to be by the people, of the people and for the people, protests and movements are supposed to signal what people want or do not want.
Listening to people is the democratic duty of governments. When governments fail to listen to the people and use force against peaceful movements they become undemocratic; they become dictatorships.
When, in addition, governments that are supposed to represent the peoples’ will and interests in a representative democracy start to represent the will and interests of corporations and big business, the government mutates from being of the people, by the people and for the people to becoming of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. The state is becoming a corporate state. And this mutation transforms democracy into fascism.
Neo-liberal economic policies have a political fallout of inducing this mutation of government from a democratic representative of peoples’ interests to an undemocratic representative of corporate interests. Not only is neo-liberalism leading to the privatisation of seed and land, water and biodiversity, health and education, power and transport, it is also leading to the privatisation of government itself. And a privatised corporate state starts to see people fighting for public good and economic democracy as a threat.
It is in this context that we need to read the repeated statements of government ministers that peoples’ protests and social movements are a threat to democracy. Social movements are raising issues about economic justice and economic democracy. Corruption is a symptom of the deepening trends of economic injustice and undermining of economic democracy.
We need to connect the dots between the diverse social movements of tribals and farmers fighting to defend their land and natural resources, the movements of workers fighting to defend jobs and livelihoods, and the new anti-corruption movements whose faces are Mr Hazare and Baba Ramdev.
Corruption is the unjust, illegal and private appropriation of public resources and public wealth, be it natural wealth, public goods and services or financial wealth. The ecology movements and tribal and farmers’ movements are fighting against the corruption involved in the massive resource grab and land grab taking place across the country for the mining of bauxite, coal and iron ore, for mega steel plants and power plants, for super highways and luxury townships.
Farmers fighting the land grab along the Yamuna Expressway were killed on May 7. While they received a mere Rs 300 per sq. m. for their land the developers who grab the land in partnership with government using the 1894 colonial land acquisition law sell it for Rs 600,000 per sq. m. This is corporate corruption.
I have just received an SMS:
* Lush Green Farmhouses in Noida Expressway
* 10 minutes from South Delhi
* Clubs, Swimming Pool, Cricket Stadium
* Government Electricity and Roads
Farmhouses of farmers are burnt and destroyed to create “farmhouses” for the rich. Farms are destroyed to create Formula 1 race tracks and swimming pools for the elite. This obscene, violent, unjust land grab is the cruellest face of corruption in today’s India.
The privatisation of our seed, our food, our water, our health, our education, our electricity and mobility is another facet of corporate corruption. In the case of the privatisation of seed, farmers are paying with their very lives. Seed costs rise and farmers are trapped in debt. Farmer suicides need to be seen as part of the web of privatisation as corruption.
The government of Maharashtra has signed memorandums of understanding with Monsanto to hand over seed, the genetic wealth of farmers’ research and the knowledge wealth of society to a seed MNC. This is corporate corruption. The government of India wants to totally dismantle the public distribution system to benefit agribusiness and corporate retail. Undermining the right to food is corporate corruption.
The appropriation of public and national wealth through bribes and black money is the third facet of corruption. It is when all the streams of the fight for economic justice and economic democracy join as one will we have a strong and vibrant movement for defending and deepening democracy. Social movements are the life blood of democracy.
The government will, of course, try its best to crush democracy to protect the private economic interests it represents. The two faces of government who most frequently make statements about social movements subverting democracy are the human resources development minister, Mr Kapil Sibal and the home minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, both of whom have represented corporations against the public interest in their legal career.
They carry these corporate loyalties into their political career. They will do their very best to use every undemocratic means to crush movements for democracy and justice. Operation Green Hunt in tribal areas and the midnight crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s satyagraha are just two examples of the use of violence to protect corrupt corporate interests.
The corrupt militarised, totalitarian power of the corporate state is not democracy. Peoples’ vibrant movements fighting the concentration of economic and political power and the corrupt means used for concentration of that power are at the heart of democracy. It is people and social movements who have kept and will keep democracy alive in India.
The author is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust
Hemang Bhatt 22/06/2011 - 03:14am
Stopping Ramdevji could have been done in a civilszed way, say, give them 12 or 24 hours notice to vacate and give this notice publicly, say on TV. Then if they do not vacate then you can use a bit of force, but, beating up children and women at night?
Reply
sushant chakravarty 22/06/2011 - 02:12am
I fully agree with you that the ongoing events one after other, be it the series of scandals and then the merciless crackdown on innocent protestors. are making us bow our head in shame in front of the world. In fact we have devalued the people's right which is the most significant in the democratic setup.
We have come to such situation that we have to redefine democracy and try to find out whether democracy that exist in present context is really of, for and by the people.
According to the definition in vogue today, democracy is defined as the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Adult suffrage plays an important role in democracy. In the name of forming a democratic government, different political and communal parties throw their hats into the election ring. Every party issues its own election manifesto to influence the people in order to carry the laurels in the ensuing election battle. Besides, different parties entice the voters through election propaganda.
Where educated people are in the majority and political consciousness is adequate, it is not very difficult for people to weigh the pros and cons of the manifesto of a particular party and to ascertain what is in the best interests of the people. But where there is a dearth of education and political consciousness, and where people fail to understand the reality of the manifesto and are misled by wrong propaganda, they cast their ballots in favour of parties whose ideals go contrary to the social interest. Consequently, parties are installed in power which go against the interests of the people.
In the present democratic system, the right to cast a vote depends on age. Suppose people get the right of suffrage at the age of 21. This assumes that all persons attaining the age of 21 have an understanding of the basic problems of the people, but in reality many people above the age of 21 remain ignorant of these problems for want of political consciousness. So the right of suffrage should not be based on age. This right should be vested in those who are educated and politically conscious. Conferring voting rights on the basis of age means that people may cast their ballots without proper understanding and knowledge, while many educated and politically conscious people are debarred from voting because of their age. This is the greatest lacuna of democracy.
The second lacuna is that in the democratic system people have to hear lengthy, insubstantial lectures which are also often misleading. Leaders have to canvass all and sundry to get votes. They have to placate thieves, dacoits and hypocrites because the latter command great voting power. That is why democracy is the government of thieves, dacoits and hypocrites. The government cannot take action against them because a government which curbs their nefarious activities cannot last long.
It is possible in a democratic government that the members or the elected representatives comprise more than fifty percent of the total number of candidates winning at the hustings while the total votes secured by their party may be less than fifty per cent. In such a condition the government is said to be of a majority party, but in reality it is the government of a particular minority party. As the government is formed by a particular party the opinion of another party or other parties is not respected in the legislature. Though all parties participate in passing legislation, bill are passed according to the wishes of the party that is in the majority. When acts are passed by a particular party, that party often derives benefit from the enacted law while the people at large do not derive much benefit from it at all.
Kapil Sibal with his articulate way will try to convince all that is wrong as right and push the Lokpal bill which suits the corrupt government and all his colleagues will help him in this misdeed. Just imagine he quotes Baba Ramdev a real heroic figure who has reinvented Yoga in our country as charlatan.
The problem with him that he has to make his party bosses happy and get blessings of Manmohan and Sonia.
We have to understand that the government is formed by a particular party, the independence of the government servants is also impaired. The members and leaders of the ruling party interfere with the work of the executive and force it to tow the party line. Under duress work is done which benefits a particular party but harms the interests of the people at large. In the democratic system government officials cannot go against the wishes of the government leaders as the former work under the direction of the secretariat which is headed by the cabinet formed by the ruling party.
In so-called democracies even the judiciary cannot function independently as the ruling party pressures judges and judicial officers. Thus judgements are sometimes delivered which strangulate justice.
Independence of the audit department, too, is indispensable for the proper functioning of the public exchequer. But owing to the pressure of the party in power, it often fails to act independently. For want of proper auditing, public funds are squandered and misused. Consequently nation-building activity is not carried out properly. A government is to govern and serve the people, but it is not possible to govern in the democratic system, for who is there to be governed?
The public are placated in order to secure votes which makes the would-be rulers unfit to rule. And the would-be rulers are themselves incompetent, immoral, hypocritical exploiters or how else would they get elected? They take recourse to devious strategies and the power of money. That is why there is no one to provide worthy leadership. And as far as the question of the people is concerned, that is meaningless in a democracy. In this system the party and the leaders serve themselves in all possible ways.
Thus, it is crystal-clear that the democratic form of government is riddled with lacunae. Without removing them it is impossible to properly run the administration of a country.
Now let us discuss some reforms to democracy. Democracy cannot succeed in countries where people are illiterate, immoral, or backward. Countries like England, the USA and France are suitable for democracy, but even these countries need to introduce some reforms.
First, legislators in the states and at the centre should be elected on the recommendations of the people at large. At the time of electing representatives the people should pay heed to their education, moral standard and sacrifice for the society etc. If the representatives are elected keeping in view these factors, they will not be guided by party interests but by collective interests. In their minds the interests of the entire human race and society will dominate, and not any class interests. They will be able to enact laws keeping in mind the prob lems of all and sundry, thereby accelerating the speed of social reconstruction. Their impartial service will bring happiness to all.
The voting rights should be vested in educated persons who have political consciousness and awareness of people’s problems. Age should not be a bar to voting right. If illiterate people are given voting rights there is the possibility of antisocial and incompetent representatives being elected.
To provide a fearless and independent ambience to the administration, the secretariat should be kept free from pressures from the cabinet. The cabinet should confine itself to legislation, the passage and passing of the budget, the implementation of its plans and policies, defense etc. The power of ministers should remain confined to the parliament and they should not poke their nose into the workings of the secretariat. The chief secretary should not be under the president or the prime minister but should act independently as the executive head. All the secretaries should work under the chief secretary. Free from cabinet pressures, every department will serve the people well.
In the present system the judiciary functions under a cabinet minister, and pressure from the minister may impair its independent functioning. To remove this defect and to ensure impartial justice, the judiciary should have the right to function independently. In no case should the chief justice be treated as inferior to the president or the prime minister. Only moralists and honest persons should be installed on the hallowed seat of justice. If people fail to keep this issue under their close scrutiny, injustice will take the place of justice.
Finally, for the proper utilization of the public exchequer, the independence of the audit department too, is a must. The auditor general should be independent of the sceptre of the president or the prime minister. Only an independent audit de partment can keep proper accounts of every department.
Thus, there should be four compartments in a properly constituted democracy – legislature, executive, judiciary and public exchequer – and all of them should be independent from one another. But in such a situation there is still the possibility of injustice and exploitation. So to supervise or monitor the function of all these compartments, the benevolent dictatorship of the board of Sadvipras(Group of honest and moral people, In this context led by Lokpal) is required so that spirituality will reign supreme.
I'm forwarding this article by Dr Vandana Shiva.We,the upwardly mobile,obsess and endlessly discuss the issue of corruption. Perhaps,this article will help us in having a better perspective.
I feel that one of the major factors behind corruption is an over centralized state apparatus endowed with huge discretionary powers.The thinking behind this could be that the State was a better arbiter to mediate between conflicting interests.But the present situation is that the State seems to be more aligned with the Corporate interest than with that of the poor, the rural and the tribal. Therefore it is imperative that powers of the State be decentralized in favour of local bodies.
Unfortunately,there is no organized effort in this direction.
Despite all the despondency all around,I remain hopeful that the people of this country will not be cowed down and something good, even for the Corporates and the State,will emerge from all these struggles. In a global,wired,world,it is impossible to fool all people for all times.
I trust all of us will retain our optimism and pray for precisely this outcome.
Avinash
2010 was the year of scams — 2G Spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing Society etc.
2011 has emerged as the year of the fight against corruption — with social activist Anna Hazare’s fast for a Lokpal Bill and Baba Ramdev’s fast to bring back black money stashed away in foreign banks.
The midnight police crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s satyagraha with 100,000 followers was yet another signal of the undemocratic tendency of the government to crush social movements and social protests.
At the same time, when Ramdev’s satyagraha was attacked in Delhi, 20 police battalions were being used to crush the anti-Posco movement in Odisha and destroy the betel-vine gardens that are the basis of people’s prosperous living economy, earning small farmers Rs 400,000 per acre.
The use of force has become the norm for the government dealing with people’s protests.
In a democracy, which is supposed to be by the people, of the people and for the people, protests and movements are supposed to signal what people want or do not want.
Listening to people is the democratic duty of governments. When governments fail to listen to the people and use force against peaceful movements they become undemocratic; they become dictatorships.
When, in addition, governments that are supposed to represent the peoples’ will and interests in a representative democracy start to represent the will and interests of corporations and big business, the government mutates from being of the people, by the people and for the people to becoming of the corporations, by the corporations and for the corporations. The state is becoming a corporate state. And this mutation transforms democracy into fascism.
Neo-liberal economic policies have a political fallout of inducing this mutation of government from a democratic representative of peoples’ interests to an undemocratic representative of corporate interests. Not only is neo-liberalism leading to the privatisation of seed and land, water and biodiversity, health and education, power and transport, it is also leading to the privatisation of government itself. And a privatised corporate state starts to see people fighting for public good and economic democracy as a threat.
It is in this context that we need to read the repeated statements of government ministers that peoples’ protests and social movements are a threat to democracy. Social movements are raising issues about economic justice and economic democracy. Corruption is a symptom of the deepening trends of economic injustice and undermining of economic democracy.
We need to connect the dots between the diverse social movements of tribals and farmers fighting to defend their land and natural resources, the movements of workers fighting to defend jobs and livelihoods, and the new anti-corruption movements whose faces are Mr Hazare and Baba Ramdev.
Corruption is the unjust, illegal and private appropriation of public resources and public wealth, be it natural wealth, public goods and services or financial wealth. The ecology movements and tribal and farmers’ movements are fighting against the corruption involved in the massive resource grab and land grab taking place across the country for the mining of bauxite, coal and iron ore, for mega steel plants and power plants, for super highways and luxury townships.
Farmers fighting the land grab along the Yamuna Expressway were killed on May 7. While they received a mere Rs 300 per sq. m. for their land the developers who grab the land in partnership with government using the 1894 colonial land acquisition law sell it for Rs 600,000 per sq. m. This is corporate corruption.
I have just received an SMS:
* Lush Green Farmhouses in Noida Expressway
* 10 minutes from South Delhi
* Clubs, Swimming Pool, Cricket Stadium
* Government Electricity and Roads
Farmhouses of farmers are burnt and destroyed to create “farmhouses” for the rich. Farms are destroyed to create Formula 1 race tracks and swimming pools for the elite. This obscene, violent, unjust land grab is the cruellest face of corruption in today’s India.
The privatisation of our seed, our food, our water, our health, our education, our electricity and mobility is another facet of corporate corruption. In the case of the privatisation of seed, farmers are paying with their very lives. Seed costs rise and farmers are trapped in debt. Farmer suicides need to be seen as part of the web of privatisation as corruption.
The government of Maharashtra has signed memorandums of understanding with Monsanto to hand over seed, the genetic wealth of farmers’ research and the knowledge wealth of society to a seed MNC. This is corporate corruption. The government of India wants to totally dismantle the public distribution system to benefit agribusiness and corporate retail. Undermining the right to food is corporate corruption.
The appropriation of public and national wealth through bribes and black money is the third facet of corruption. It is when all the streams of the fight for economic justice and economic democracy join as one will we have a strong and vibrant movement for defending and deepening democracy. Social movements are the life blood of democracy.
The government will, of course, try its best to crush democracy to protect the private economic interests it represents. The two faces of government who most frequently make statements about social movements subverting democracy are the human resources development minister, Mr Kapil Sibal and the home minister, Mr P. Chidambaram, both of whom have represented corporations against the public interest in their legal career.
They carry these corporate loyalties into their political career. They will do their very best to use every undemocratic means to crush movements for democracy and justice. Operation Green Hunt in tribal areas and the midnight crackdown on Baba Ramdev’s satyagraha are just two examples of the use of violence to protect corrupt corporate interests.
The corrupt militarised, totalitarian power of the corporate state is not democracy. Peoples’ vibrant movements fighting the concentration of economic and political power and the corrupt means used for concentration of that power are at the heart of democracy. It is people and social movements who have kept and will keep democracy alive in India.
The author is the executive director of the Navdanya Trust
Hemang Bhatt 22/06/2011 - 03:14am
Stopping Ramdevji could have been done in a civilszed way, say, give them 12 or 24 hours notice to vacate and give this notice publicly, say on TV. Then if they do not vacate then you can use a bit of force, but, beating up children and women at night?
Reply
sushant chakravarty 22/06/2011 - 02:12am
I fully agree with you that the ongoing events one after other, be it the series of scandals and then the merciless crackdown on innocent protestors. are making us bow our head in shame in front of the world. In fact we have devalued the people's right which is the most significant in the democratic setup.
We have come to such situation that we have to redefine democracy and try to find out whether democracy that exist in present context is really of, for and by the people.
According to the definition in vogue today, democracy is defined as the government of the people, by the people and for the people. Adult suffrage plays an important role in democracy. In the name of forming a democratic government, different political and communal parties throw their hats into the election ring. Every party issues its own election manifesto to influence the people in order to carry the laurels in the ensuing election battle. Besides, different parties entice the voters through election propaganda.
Where educated people are in the majority and political consciousness is adequate, it is not very difficult for people to weigh the pros and cons of the manifesto of a particular party and to ascertain what is in the best interests of the people. But where there is a dearth of education and political consciousness, and where people fail to understand the reality of the manifesto and are misled by wrong propaganda, they cast their ballots in favour of parties whose ideals go contrary to the social interest. Consequently, parties are installed in power which go against the interests of the people.
In the present democratic system, the right to cast a vote depends on age. Suppose people get the right of suffrage at the age of 21. This assumes that all persons attaining the age of 21 have an understanding of the basic problems of the people, but in reality many people above the age of 21 remain ignorant of these problems for want of political consciousness. So the right of suffrage should not be based on age. This right should be vested in those who are educated and politically conscious. Conferring voting rights on the basis of age means that people may cast their ballots without proper understanding and knowledge, while many educated and politically conscious people are debarred from voting because of their age. This is the greatest lacuna of democracy.
The second lacuna is that in the democratic system people have to hear lengthy, insubstantial lectures which are also often misleading. Leaders have to canvass all and sundry to get votes. They have to placate thieves, dacoits and hypocrites because the latter command great voting power. That is why democracy is the government of thieves, dacoits and hypocrites. The government cannot take action against them because a government which curbs their nefarious activities cannot last long.
It is possible in a democratic government that the members or the elected representatives comprise more than fifty percent of the total number of candidates winning at the hustings while the total votes secured by their party may be less than fifty per cent. In such a condition the government is said to be of a majority party, but in reality it is the government of a particular minority party. As the government is formed by a particular party the opinion of another party or other parties is not respected in the legislature. Though all parties participate in passing legislation, bill are passed according to the wishes of the party that is in the majority. When acts are passed by a particular party, that party often derives benefit from the enacted law while the people at large do not derive much benefit from it at all.
Kapil Sibal with his articulate way will try to convince all that is wrong as right and push the Lokpal bill which suits the corrupt government and all his colleagues will help him in this misdeed. Just imagine he quotes Baba Ramdev a real heroic figure who has reinvented Yoga in our country as charlatan.
The problem with him that he has to make his party bosses happy and get blessings of Manmohan and Sonia.
We have to understand that the government is formed by a particular party, the independence of the government servants is also impaired. The members and leaders of the ruling party interfere with the work of the executive and force it to tow the party line. Under duress work is done which benefits a particular party but harms the interests of the people at large. In the democratic system government officials cannot go against the wishes of the government leaders as the former work under the direction of the secretariat which is headed by the cabinet formed by the ruling party.
In so-called democracies even the judiciary cannot function independently as the ruling party pressures judges and judicial officers. Thus judgements are sometimes delivered which strangulate justice.
Independence of the audit department, too, is indispensable for the proper functioning of the public exchequer. But owing to the pressure of the party in power, it often fails to act independently. For want of proper auditing, public funds are squandered and misused. Consequently nation-building activity is not carried out properly. A government is to govern and serve the people, but it is not possible to govern in the democratic system, for who is there to be governed?
The public are placated in order to secure votes which makes the would-be rulers unfit to rule. And the would-be rulers are themselves incompetent, immoral, hypocritical exploiters or how else would they get elected? They take recourse to devious strategies and the power of money. That is why there is no one to provide worthy leadership. And as far as the question of the people is concerned, that is meaningless in a democracy. In this system the party and the leaders serve themselves in all possible ways.
Thus, it is crystal-clear that the democratic form of government is riddled with lacunae. Without removing them it is impossible to properly run the administration of a country.
Now let us discuss some reforms to democracy. Democracy cannot succeed in countries where people are illiterate, immoral, or backward. Countries like England, the USA and France are suitable for democracy, but even these countries need to introduce some reforms.
First, legislators in the states and at the centre should be elected on the recommendations of the people at large. At the time of electing representatives the people should pay heed to their education, moral standard and sacrifice for the society etc. If the representatives are elected keeping in view these factors, they will not be guided by party interests but by collective interests. In their minds the interests of the entire human race and society will dominate, and not any class interests. They will be able to enact laws keeping in mind the prob lems of all and sundry, thereby accelerating the speed of social reconstruction. Their impartial service will bring happiness to all.
The voting rights should be vested in educated persons who have political consciousness and awareness of people’s problems. Age should not be a bar to voting right. If illiterate people are given voting rights there is the possibility of antisocial and incompetent representatives being elected.
To provide a fearless and independent ambience to the administration, the secretariat should be kept free from pressures from the cabinet. The cabinet should confine itself to legislation, the passage and passing of the budget, the implementation of its plans and policies, defense etc. The power of ministers should remain confined to the parliament and they should not poke their nose into the workings of the secretariat. The chief secretary should not be under the president or the prime minister but should act independently as the executive head. All the secretaries should work under the chief secretary. Free from cabinet pressures, every department will serve the people well.
In the present system the judiciary functions under a cabinet minister, and pressure from the minister may impair its independent functioning. To remove this defect and to ensure impartial justice, the judiciary should have the right to function independently. In no case should the chief justice be treated as inferior to the president or the prime minister. Only moralists and honest persons should be installed on the hallowed seat of justice. If people fail to keep this issue under their close scrutiny, injustice will take the place of justice.
Finally, for the proper utilization of the public exchequer, the independence of the audit department too, is a must. The auditor general should be independent of the sceptre of the president or the prime minister. Only an independent audit de partment can keep proper accounts of every department.
Thus, there should be four compartments in a properly constituted democracy – legislature, executive, judiciary and public exchequer – and all of them should be independent from one another. But in such a situation there is still the possibility of injustice and exploitation. So to supervise or monitor the function of all these compartments, the benevolent dictatorship of the board of Sadvipras(Group of honest and moral people, In this context led by Lokpal) is required so that spirituality will reign supreme.
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