How sustainable are the SDGs?

http://indiatogether.org/how-sustainable-are-the-sdgs-government

This piece came in India Together on December 9, 2015

Can we look at ending poverty without looking at the structural reasons and dimensions of poverty and inequality? Pradeep Baisakh looks at this and at other objectives within the UN SDG framework and analyses how realistic their achievement would be.

The Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), which are a set of development goals framed by the United Nations in 2000, to be achieved by 2015, is now set to be replaced by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in 2016.

The MDGs aimed at addressing extreme poverty and hunger, achieving universal primary education, reducing child mortality and improving maternal health, combating various forms of disease, promoting gender equality, protecting the environment and developing global partnership.

The performance of the MDGs so far has been mixed. The United Nations claims that 700 million people have come out of extreme poverty globally between 1990 and 2010, access to education has increased and the gender gap in access to primary education has been substantially reduced. However, on child and reproductive health, the achievement has not been encouraging.

Learnings from the implementation of MDGs and the changing developmental realities have guided the formulation of the SDGs - another set of goals for the next 15 years – that is from 2016 to 2030. It promises a developmental framework, which is ‘sustainable’ and equitable, and one that will ‘leave no one behind’.

The biggest criticism of the MDGs was its exclusivity and the reductionist approach in shaping them. It is alleged that a handful of people sitting in the UN office framed those goals, which were eventually adopted by the member nations. Keeping these criticisms in mind, the formulation of the SDGs involved representation from several sections, including civil society, and saw phases of inter-governmental negotiation before the draft was actually finalised.

A little over two years of consultation resulted in the framing of a set of 17 goals and 169 targets to achieve. The goals were adopted by the heads of states of 193 member nations in a deliberation held from 25-27 September 2015 in the United Nations Summit, which was convened as a high-level plenary meeting of the UN General Assembly. It may be pointed out that the SDGs are not legally binding on the member nations though they certainly influence the national laws and policies.

The SDGs cover a range of important issues: socio-economic, political and environmental. They embrace energy and governance, ending poverty and hunger, achievement of food security and of sustainable economic growth and productive employment.

Some of the other objectives encompassed within the set of SDGs are:

• Promotion of sustainable agriculture
• Reduction of inequality
• Provision of quality education
• Access to universal healthcare
• Ensuring gender equality and justice
• Combating climate change
• Conservation of oceans
• Protection of wildlife and forest management
• Increasing the share of renewable energy
• A peaceful society and global partnership
• Enhanced infrastructure
• Addressing issues of migration
• Respect for ethnicity
• Promotion of a just trade regime
• Development assistance and technological transfer from the developed countries to the developing and least developing countries (LDCs), and others

More importantly, SDGs chart out the ways of implementation and participatory monitoring and review of the goals and targets. The global leaders deserve kudos for creating a framework which at least aims to save ‘Mother Earth’!

However, a closer look at the document may raise doubts about the feasibility of converting some of these ambitious goals into an actionable framework. More fundamentally, while in a way it acknowledges that economic growth has been accompanied by rising inequality in the past few years, it conspicuously avoids discussing the structural aspects of poverty and inequality.

The first goal of the SDGs is to ‘end poverty in all forms and everywhere’. But poverty is defined as ‘people living on less than $1.25 a day’ – which has been the global poverty line since 2005. With the cost of living rising in many countries, ‘ending poverty’ is a pretentious promise to make.

In the same breath, the draft promises to provide equal rights to economic resources, ownership and control over land and natural resources. This is a welcome statement but open to debate and interpretation. Does it refer to ownership of people within the overarching definition of ‘eminent domain’ or does it stand for real ownership by the community?

The last few years have witnessed large scale transfer of various means of peoples’ livelihood to the big industries in the form of control over land, forest, water. How the conflict between a development paradigm based on industry-fuelled GDP growth and community ownership of natural resources can be resolved in the best interest of all, could be an interesting subject for discussion in the coming days.

Reading goal 8 (promoting sustainable economic growth and productive employment), goal 9 (sustainable industrialization) and goal 10 (reducing inequality within and among countries) together will be helpful in deconstructing the SDG-driven approach to development. Let us consider these one by one.

SDGs aim for at least 7 percent GDP growth in the least developed countries and generally sustained per capita-growth globally. This is apparently a pre-condition for achieving full employment. However it has been witnessed globally that growth always does not lead to proportionate employment generation.

In goal 9, it aims at significantly raising the share of industry in employment and GDP. Generally, movement of workforce from agriculture to industry may appear to be a good thing, given that it defines the trajectory of growth that the world has been following so far. However, in India we have witnessed that the thrust in industrial development has been accompanied by negligence of the agro-sector to an extent where the country has witnessed massive socio-economic problems, the most alarming being the widespread suicide of farmers (more than a quarter of a million) in the last twenty years.

In South Africa, where mining-based industries have flourished in the last 100 years, people were forced to leave farming to serve as cheap labour in mining industries. Mining based industries have their own limitations. Today, the rate of unemployment is as high as, or more than 25 percent and almost as many live in hunger.

Consumption for self-production is almost invisible. Barely two percent of households grow their own food. There has been complete corporatization of agro and food produce. People are completely dependent on the markets for purchase of food. Snatching and other criminal activities by unemployed youth are a menace here. Hence, the proposition that growth of industry will automatically increase productive employment is no more a sacrosanct proposition. 

On the issue of inequality, the draft SDG promises income growth of the bottom 40 percent people. It stresses official development assistance from developed to developing countries and increased foreign direct investment in these countries. The irony is that inequality has gone up to the extent where the richest one percent owned 48 percent of the total global wealth in 2014. But there is no discussion in the document about the mechanism for downward flow of wealth, which is necessary for bringing about equality.

Given the rise in global temperatures and the evident destructive impact of climate change, which in turn is the result of industrial activities and lavish consumerism of a section of the people, world leaders have to seriously think about how much natural resources this generation could afford to exhaust to make the rich richer, even if it means the eventual flow of wealth to the poor.

This document speaks about noble intentions of ‘sustainable consumption and production’ but all these will depend on how willing and able the affluent are in adjusting their lifestyles in metro cities across the globe, especially in the western countries.

Another aspect missed out in the discussion on inequality pertains to the more nuanced forms of inequality in different local communities, such as inequality arising out of caste-based discrimination. As many as 260 million ‘Dalits’ spread across Asia, Africa and European countries are facing caste-based discrimination and are treated as untouchables.

Ending hunger, promoting sustainable agriculture, ensuring food security – all of these essentially require deliberation on food sovereignty, which again is missing within the SDG framework.

SDGs aim to correct and prevent trade restrictions and distortions in the world agricultural market in accordance with the Doha development round under the WTO framework, whereas it is now common knowledge that import restrictions could in fact adversely affect small farmers while enabling large subsidised agri-businesses to capture markets in impoverished countries.

If, alongside the SDGs, one should read the Addis Ababa Action Agenda on financing for development adopted by global leaders in July in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, it will be seen that overwhelming importance has been attached to private capital for financing development. In a way, the Agenda has legitimised the ongoing withdrawal of the state from providing essential services like education, health, water and sanitation and other sectors. This could be dangerous as the public-private partnership model has placed quality education and health care almost out of reach for the people living in poverty and socially excluded groups.

Therefore, while SDGs look quite good on the surface, their implementation will remain a challenge as the fundamental reasons for unsustainable development have not been reckoned with in the document.

.....

The author is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi, India.

Checking dissent

This piece came in Himalmag, a Nepal based journal on February 16, 2015

Web link: http://himalmag.com/checking-dissent/

In September 2006, during the release of NGOs, Activists & Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry, edited by Radha Rajan and Krishen Kakbook, the then-Chief Minister of Gujarat Narendra Modi criticised the “wealthy” and “influential” class of NGOs, accusing them of hiring public-relations (PR) firms to build their image with money coming from abroad. The leaked Intelligence Bureau (IB) report submitted to the Prime Minister’s Office in June last year echoed that sentiment quite closely. In an almost word-to-word rendition of some portions of the speech, which was included in the second edition of the book, the IB report went on to add, “in some cases it is observed that in a cyclical process, an NGO is set up, funds are obtained from abroad, a few articles are commissioned, a PR firm is recruited and, slowly, with the help of the media an image is created. And then awards are procured from foreign countries to enhance the image, after which Government machinery finds it more difficult to act against the awardee.”

The 21-page classified report, titled ‘NGO activism against development projects in India’, generated considerable debate in the civil society and media. The conclusion of the report was clear enough: “A significant number of Indian NGOs (funded by some donors based in US, UK, Germany or the Netherlands) have been noticed to be using people centric issues to create and environment, which lends itself to stalling development projects.” Without much in the way of economic analysis, the report later added that activism against various projects, ranging from use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to mega industrial projects from Vedanta and POSCO, had negatively impacted the national GDP by 3 percent.

Activist groups condemned the report in unequivocal terms, arguing that it was essentially an attempt to intimidate the groups and muzzle dissent. The report had accused certain NGOs – like Greenpeace International, Action Aid, Amnesty International ­­– of using foreign funds and scuttling India’s economic development. Some thought that IB had overstepped its jurisdiction by focusing on ‘development’. Clearly, the IB report was promoting a certain model of development, one driven by extractive industries and GDP growth – a view that closely parallels the agenda of the current political dispensation.

The IB’s probe into foreign funding of NGOs started during the United Progressive Alliance’s (UPA) regime. In 2012, the UPA government had ordered a probe into the activities of the NGOs during the heightened protest against the Russian-built Kundankalam nuclear plant. Publicly citing the role of ‘foreign hands’ behind the protests, the then-Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said, “The atomic programme has run into difficulties because these NGOs, mostly I think based in United States, don’t appreciate the need for our country to increase energy supply.” In a similar vein, he noted the role of NGOs funded by the US and Scandinavian countries in opposing GM crops and food.

The submission of this report and its leak to the media is interestingly timed, as it occurred a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi took office. Unsurprisingly, based on the report, the government started issuing notices to some NGOs, including one to Greenpeace asking why its permission to receive funds under FCRA (Foreign Contribution (Regulation) Act) should not be withdrawn.

Undermining democracy
The leaked report is clearly aimed at reinforcing suspicion towards NGOs, and one way it tries to achieve this is by ignoring the deliberations of the legislature and the judiciary. In 2010, when the environment minister Jairam Ramesh imposed a moratorium on the field testing of Bt transgenic, a genetically modified breed of Brinjal, he added that the moratorium would continue “till such time independent scientific studies establish… the safety of the product from the point of view of its long-term impact on human health and environment.” Two years later, both the Parliamentary Standing Committee (2012) and the Technical Expert Committee (2012), appointed by the Supreme Court, went on to recommend a moratorium on all open-field testing of transgenic crops.

The Parliamentary Standing Committee in its 2012 report on ‘Cultivation of Genetically Modified Food Crops – Prospects and Effects’ found that (in agreement with past findings of activists and journalists) Bt cotton cultivation had also contributed to farmers’ suicides. The standing committee members visited Vidarbha, Maharashtra, and found that despite the initial rise in production due to the use of Bt cotton seeds, small and marginal farmers eventually suffered losses due to the high input costs and yield loss. It also caused the wiping out of traditional local cotton varieties. These factors, combined with farmers’ debts, led to 7992 suicides in the region between 2006 and 2011. The committee also recommended the complete overhaul of the existing regulatory systems, which it noted had a pro-industry tilt.

But the report doesn’t engage with such findings or recommendations of these committees beyond casually inferring that the “NGOs were active facilitators of news articles… and social media activism, which contributed to the three-year old moratorium on Bt Brinjal and the ban/moratorium regimes” recommended by them. Along similar lines, the report uncritically assumes that the findings of the pro-GM lobby and the GM companies is accurate, without adequate explanation or verification. It ignores the specifics behind the death of hundreds of cattle after ingesting Bt cotton leaves in Warangal district in 2006 and 2007. However, the report mentions accusations made against anti-GM-food activists by Dr Ronald Herring of Cornell University, who has consistently taken a pro-GM position in the past. The report adds, “Pro-GM researchers, bio-tech companies and other filed enquiries have not been able to verify any such deaths, raising questions on the credibility and integrity of the reports generated by these activists.”

‘Foreign funding’
Another important concern for the IB report is the activism against projects of steel giant Pohang Steel Company (POSCO) and mining group Vedanta in Odisha. Ever since POSCO signed a USD 12 billion agreement with the Odisha government in 2005 for a steel plant which requires 2900 acres of forest land, there has been a popular grassroots movement against it. The Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) of MoEF, based on the works of the N C Saxena and Meena Gupta committee, appointed by the central government, had recommended a temporary withdrawal of clearances for the project. Despite this, and local protests, the project eventually got all the necessary clearances in 2011.

Not only this, central and state governments have unleashed police brutality on people peacefully protesting in Odisha. The criminalisation of dissent has been appalling: about 360 police cases have been clamped against 2500 people, including 500 women in the area. About 400 people have been arrested in last nine years of struggle, though courts eventually granted them bail. Several people have not ventured out of village for years now due to fear of arrest.

None of this is made clear in the IB report, however, which only looks at the funding of groups like Indian Social Action Forum (INSAF) and attempts to portray them as purveyors of foreign interest that attempt to “internationalize” cases of human-rights violations. Similarly, the report also names NGOs and activists who purportedly campaigned against the Vedanta alumina project in Lanjigarh, Odisha, and took the issue to international level. Here too several government and Supreme Court-appointed committees and commissions have pointed out that the mining of the area will not only destroy the unique flora and fauna of the Niyamgiri hills but also affect the lives and livelihood of the local Dongria Kondhs people. The expert committee headed by Dr N C Saxena made important observations in 2010 regarding the violation of environment protection acts and the Forest Rights Act. Based on the report the Forest Advisory Committee (FAC), which is a statutory committee affiliated to the Ministry of Environment and Forest (MoEF), recommended the withdrawal of all clearances given to Vedanta for mining in Niyamgiri. Eventually, MoEF withdrew the forest clearance given for mining the hill in 2010, a project worth USD 1.7 billion worth in FDI from the UK-based Vedanta group.

Yet the report ignores one of the most dubious areas of foreign funding: undisclosed donations to political parties. For instance, the Vedanta Company in its annual report in 2011-12 has admitted to have donated about USD 8.3 million to political parties in India since 2003-04. But it hasn’t disclosed the names of the recipient parties. In March 2014, the High Court of Delhi ruled that foreign funds received by Congress and BJP were illegal. Interestingly, this line of thought is completely absent from the report whose sole focus is in maligning NGOs for their ‘anti-developmental’ and ‘anti-national’ activities, without establishing either of these. Its antipathy towards foreign funding to NGOs is untenable but perfectly in line with the current government’s economic agenda. Evidently, the intelligence agency has been used by the government to make a case against the NGOs.

~Pradeep Baisakh is a journalist based in New Delhi.

- See more at: http://himalmag.com/checking-dissent/#sthash.EhvYoGfL.dpuf

How has Modi performed in 100 days in office?

The piece came in OpenDemocracy, a UK based journal on October, 10, 2014.

Web link: https://www.opendemocracy.net/openindia/pradeep-baisakh/how-has-modi-performed-in-100-days-in-office

PRADEEP BAISAKH 10 October 2014

The governance process seems to be running smoothly. Modi’s public announcement on corruption “Na khaunga na khane dunga’ (Neither would I pocket money illegally nor allow others to do it) is laudable, though only time will prove if he walks his talk.

The NDA (National Democratic Alliance) government led by Narendra Modi took an oath on May 16, 2014. It completed its first 100 days in office on September 2, 2014, having won by a thumping majority, 336 seats in 545 capacity Lok Sabha (The lower house of Parliament). The main constituent, Bharatiya Jananata Party secured 282 seats, so an absolute majority in itself. It came in promising to bring ‘Achhe din’ (good days ahead).

Modi's government has succeeded the tainted former UPA (United Progressive Alliance) government which was marred by corruption cases involving several billion dollars ( including the 2G scam of $ 36 billion, Coalgate scam of $33.6 billion and many others) and a scenario of unabated inflation and extremely high cost of living. So how would Modi turn a new leaf?

Attempt to check inflation

‘Inflation’ has hit every single Indian household hard. After assuming office, among Modi’s first priorities was to check primarily food inflation. His government took some urgent and laudable steps in banning the export of essential commodities, ordering the states to take stringent measures to check hoarding and black marketing and establishing a ‘Price Stabilization Fund’. Despite these steps, food inflation has refused to budge, with retail inflation across all groups in July 2014 as high as 7.96 per cent while the consumer food price inflation was 9.36 per cent according to government data. Some of the food items that witnessed high inflation during this time included fruits (22.48 per cent), vegetables (16.88 per cent) and milk & milk products (11.26 per cent).

People might not have expected visible relief from price rises in the first 100 days. However, some structural issues should be tackled by the government, which it seems they are ignoring. The pursuit of an agenda of a liberalized economy marked by the withdrawal of the state from key sectors of the economy such as health, education and other welfare activities should be fundamentally reconsidered. A state withdrawal from the key sectors of the economy has a debilitating effect on inflation. With the slogans of privatisation and liberalization e.g. ‘minimum government and maximum governance’ the NDA government is unlikely to be successful in checking inflation.

Amending the TRAI law

Just after assuming office, the government was plunged into controversy for issuing an ordinance to amend the TRAI (Telecom Regulatory Authority of India) Act to facilitate the appointment of its former chairperson Nripendra Mishra as the Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister.

Under the TRAI Act, its members cannot hold any government office after retirement, which ensures the independence of the regulatory body. Article 123 of Indian Constitution, which provides the President (effectively the Council of Ministers or the cabinet) with the power to promulgate an ordinance, reads: “If at any time, except when both houses of Parliament are not in session, the President is satisfied that circumstances exist which render it necessary to him to take immediate action, he may promulgate such Ordinances as the circumstances appear to him to require”. In simple language, any ordinance can be issued by the President in case of exigencies only. So it is inexplicable why the appointment of one person was so urgent.

Eventually the ordinance was placed before the Parliament and of course passed, as the ruling coalition has the numbers in the house. The opposition parties did not show sufficient courage to oppose the bill in the upper house, so letting the government get away with this ‘Constitutional impropriety’.

Governor appointments

In practice, the appointment and removal of governors has always been based on a ‘Spoils System’ in India. It has been a trend for the new federal governments to remove the Governors of the units appointed by an earlier government led by a rival party or coalition. The NDA Government is no different. It has asked the governors appointed by the former UPA government, to resign. Governors in the firing line were those of Uttar Pradesh, West Bengal, Kerala, Rajasthan, Gujrat, Maharastra and others. Some of them were shown the door quite humiliatingly, replaced by NDA senior politicians who could not be absorbed by the ministries. Under article 156 (1) of the Constitution, the Governor enjoys office for five years. In order to constrain the spoils system the Sarkaria Commission on centre-state relations recommended bringing eminent persons into public life as governors, and to stop appointing ‘burnt out’ politicians. But the recommendations have fallen on deaf ears in successive governments; the NDA being no exception.

It has also ignored the judgment by the Supreme Court in the B P Singhal case in 2010 where a five judge bench ruled that governors cannot be removed in an arbitrary or unreasonable manner.

Dismantling the Planning Commission

The PM declared from the ramparts of Red Fort on Independence Day (August 15) that the existing Planning Commission will be restructured. In all practicality the Planning Commission, which was formed in 1950, has been dismantled. The Planning Commission is the body which plans the five-year, prospective roadmap of development for the country. It takes measures aimed at protecting the interest of the marginalized sections of society and the geographically backward areas. Despite criticism, the body had its own significance in a socialist economy. Its dismantling, experts believe, marks the complete shift of the country from a socialist-oriented economy to a capitalist one. India made a major shift from a mixed economic pattern to a capitalist one in the early 1990s when it pursued economic liberalization under the IMF mandated structural adjustment programme. In its Constitution, however, India continues to have some socialist pretensions. 

Amending land and forest laws

The government has arrived with strong backing from corporate donations; some of which are on record, and some are not. Corporate funding of elections is not seen favourably in this country, though it is these which fund the election of the country’s leading political parties. Therefore, there is no transparent source of information keeping track of how much money has gone in donations to different political parties, though different commentators put different figures on this.

After winning the elections, it is not unnatural to expect that the government will take steps which are good for business. This government has attempted to create a favourable climate for investment by removing all possible hurdles. Major among these are the attempt to change the land acquisition law and the norms of environment protection. The Environment Minister Prakash Javadekar announced that its ministry would not be a roadblock ministry. The Rural Development Minister, Nitin Gadkari, announced his intent to amend the land acquisition law under which consent of up to 80% of the land owners is required to acquire the land for private business and up to 70% for public-private ventures. In amending the land law to divert land for industrial purposes, (The Right to Fair Compensation and Transparency in Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act which came into effect in January 2014) there will be a significant diluting of the authority of the village assembly under the Forest Rights Act, that is intended to ease the process of land transfer and other clearances to set up industries.

Hwoever, the easing of the environment protection laws are seen as a failure to take into account the impact of climate change in the country, while the attempt to demean the authority of the village council goes against the decentralized model of governance which has been promised by all, including the current establishment. Where it is good to have minimum procedures for any clearances, the essence of environmental protection and community governance are of no interest to the new establishment.

India’s stand in the WTO 

Where the Government does deserve a pat on the back is its stand at the WTO ministerial conference held in Geneva in July. It took a tough stand on food security issues, staving off the pressure from the northern countries to sign the trade facilitation agreement. It denied them a deadline for finding a permanent solution to the food security issue and bringing the food subsidy to a level fixed by the WTO. Instead, it demanded change in the base year (1986-88) for calculating the subsidy. It was felt that signing the treaty, the country would be compromised in its food security for millions of poor people and the interests of the farmers.

The Government has also been praised for taking the relations of neighboring countries like Nepal, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Bhutan to a new level. With Pakistan, it has also made friendly overtures, notwithstanding the cancellation of the recent foreign secretary’s talks. Modi invited all the heads of the neighboring countries to the swearing in ceremony of the ministry, a gesture that created a favourable environment from the beginning. It was followed by visits of the PM and the Foreign Minister to many of these countries.

Insecurity of minorities

Stands taken by some religious fringe elements have been a cause of great concern as the new establishment settled in. Some of the ruling party members of Parliament (MPs) have also added their words to this conflagration. The BJP MP Yogi Adityanath is spearheading a campaign against what is called, the “Love Jihad”.  Some incidents have come to light (reported in the media) where Muslim men allegedly trapped Hindu girls into marriage as part of a plot to convert them. The MPs' outburst is against this alleged practice. In a country like India, people from several regions co-habit with amity in many places and in a confrontational situation in others. It would not be responsible on the part of a people’s representative to take sides with one community at the cost of others. A few incidences at the hands of some miscreants should not be allowed to target a community. The silence of the Government on these MPs' public stand is discouraging. 

After the NDA government came to power, incidences of communal violence have been reported from different parts of the country. All have created a great sense of insecurity among the minority communities. The PM and the government has a constitutional responsibility to protect minorities from fear and ensure a right to life under article 21 of the Constitution. But, it does not seem galvanised on this front.

Authority or authoritarianism?

PM Modi has been praised by one and all for having exercised authority as the head of the government. The praise comes against the backdrop of a weak former PM, Manmohan Singh, who acted closely at the behest of Ms Sonia Gandhi, the chairperson of UPA and President of the Congress party.

However, there is a difference between being in command and being authoritarian. Several incidences reported in media speak of Modi’s authoritarianism. First, he did not give any freedom to the Ministers to choose their secretaries. On occasions he has even objected to the particular type of dress a minister could wear! More significantly, it is gradually emerging that power is unnecessarily centralized in the PM’s office. In the parliamentary form of democracy, the PM is first among the equals, nothing more than that. The ‘Head Master’ approach to managing colleagues in the biggest democracy does not augur well in the long term. What the PM needs is to give adequate freedom for decision making to encourage the better performance of individual ministries. 

In all, things have certainly started moving. The governance process seems to be running smoothly. Modi’s public announcement on corruption “Na khaunga na khane dunga’ (Neither would I pocket money illegally nor allow others to do it) is laudable, though only time will prove if he walks his talk. On the other hand however, Government’s obsession with diluting the communities’ authority to determine the fate of the land and resources at their disposal will only aggravate the already disenchanted tribes and Dalits where big ticket investors have been coming and snatching away their land and resources for a pittance.

The PM should be interacting more with the media, which neither he not his ministers have done enthusiastically so far. Media is the fourth pillar of democracy, which draws its authority for sharing information from the article 19 of the Constitution that guarantees freedom of expression. Finally, Modi should see himself as the PM of all his constituencies, and take steps toward addressing the insecurities of the minorities.

Why UPA’s folly could be Modi’s too

The piece was carried in India Together on July, 7, 2014. 
Web link: http://indiatogether.org/upa-modi-development-models-economy

Why UPA’s folly could be Modi’s too

With Narendra Modi at the helm, the push towards market-driven development looks likely to be continued, leading to an eventual defeat of real expectations from the voter, says Pradeep Baisakh as he analyses the causes behind the UPA debacle.

Elections 2014 in India were phenomenal in many ways. For one thing, it saw, for the first time in thirty years, a single party winning such an overwhelming majority. The last time this happened was in 1984, when the Congress party secured a thumping win under the leadership of Rajiv Gandhi.

This time, the people voted overwhelmingly for the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition, with the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) being its largest constituent. The NDA got 336 seats out of the 543 while the BJP got 282, its highest individual tally till date.

The second important outcome was the historic drubbing of the Indian National Congress (INC). Voters gave the party just 44 seats and the UPA alliance led by it only 59 seats in the Lok Sabha. In the 2009 parliamentary elections, the Congress had 206 seats and the UPA 261 seats.

For the Modi government to hold on to the huge advantage it has secured, it must succeed in governance, for which it would be crucial to grasp the reasons behind the fall of the former regime and learn from it. However, the approach of the new government does not seem to hint at that.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi called upon predecessor Manmohan Singh a day after he took office. Photo: pib.nic.in

If we were to probe the reasons behind the fatal performance of the Congress party in 2014, we would broadly identify three reasons for it: insurmountable price rise; a plethora of scams, and thirdly, fast rising inequality. There could be other reasons, too, but those would be beyond the scope of discussion in this piece.

The UPA debacle

Let us probe the three reasons mentioned in more detail. Going back a little, in 1998, the BJP faced an electoral debacle in three states, despite the national wave being in favour of the party, for a single reason: Onion prices had hit an unmanageable high of Rupees 40 per kg, rising six-fold over the previous year! Prices of other essential commodities had also risen. As a result, the BJP lost Delhi and Rajasthan to the Congress and performed poorly in Madhya Pradesh where the Congress retained power though the BJP-led NDA government was voted to power at the centre in same year.

Fast forward to 2014 and for the UPA too, the inflationary pressure of food and other essential commodities proved to be a big blow. Despite repeated assurances from the economist prime minister Manmohan Singh, inflation refused to decline. In April 2014, food prices increased by 9.66 per cent from a year earlier. In fact, the general trend of price rise has been felt for years together now, with an overall impact on the purchasing power of the people.

The health sector, too, has become unaffordable. During my visits to Balangir, Kalahandi, Koraput - some of the poorest districts of Odisha, and elsewhere, I have witnessed that if a member of a poor family, or one bordering on the threshold of poverty, suffers a major ailment, the family is forced to sell out its land and other family assets to fund the treatment. While the ailing person may or may not be cured, the family is often left penniless after the treatment and deep in debt.

Added to the bitter inflation pill, was the exposure of the multi-billion dollar scams in which the Manmohan government was embroiled. These included the 2G scam, the Coalgate scam, and the Commonwealth Games scam, to name just a few.

In addition to inflation and big ticket corruption, the third big factor one needs to consider is the bent of economic policy followed over the last decade. The neo-liberal economic policies introduced in the early 1990s by the Narasimha Rao-Manmohan Singh team naturally appealed to the UPA, but the UPA-I, though led by Singh, pursued similar policies with a check, as the left parties formed its coalition partners.

The strength of the UPA-I lay in effecting several welfare legislations such as the employment guarantee law (the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, in short MGNREGA) the Right to Education Act, forest rights law and very importantly, the Right to Information law. All of these favoured the marginalised sections of society and also, the people in general.

The UPA-II bounced back to power with greater numbers than in the first term, which is attributed to the success of primarily the MGNREGA by many political analysts. However, UPA II, where left parties were not part of the government, got a free hand to pursue the policies of neo-liberalism except over the last two years, which is termed a period of ‘policy paralysis’.

Aggressive industrialisation policies marked massive subsidy to corporate organisations and free doles of natural resources like mineral, water and land to both MNCs and Indian bigwigs. Revenue foregone in the form of corporate income tax, excise and customs duty from 2005-06 to 2012-13 amounted to $523 billion or 31 lakh crore rupees.

The market driven economy led to the trickle-up theory where newly created wealth poured into the hands of the elite and inequality went up visibly.

With market-driven economic policies, inequality in India has risen sharply leading to expansion of slums and growth in numbers of the urban poor. (Illustrative picture, courtesy: Pallabjyoti Kalita/Wikimedia)

Erroneous parameters chosen by the government to estimate poverty often obfuscate the real picture of poverty in the country. The government estimate of poverty stood at 21.9 percent in 2011-12, down from 45.3 in 1993-94. However, the Arjun Sengupta committee report on the unorganised sector, 2007 found that 77 per cent of people live below an income of 20 rupees a day. The N C Saxena Committee 2009 suggested that the percentage of people below poverty line should be revised to 50 percent.

It is not surprising, therefore, that over the same period, the country witnessed massive unrest in the form of expansion of Maoist presence in backward regions of the country, open movements by people against forced industrialisation, environmental protests and so on.

Why the future is unlikely to be different 

Even as one holds the Manmohan Singh government’s policies responsible for such misguided policies, it must be remembered that the Vajpayee-led NDA pursued liberalisation with a vigour no less.

More FDI and FIIs for increasing investment, tax concessions for industrial growth, deregulation of prices of several commodities including petroleum products, reduction of state spending on welfare schemes to keep a check on fiscal deficit were some of the policies carried forward.

The outcome was the same, however. All these economic measures created resentment among the people. The consequence was visible in the 2004 general elections when, despite projections to the contrary, the BJP-led NDA coalition crumbled to 181 seats from a tally of 303 in 1999.

It must also be notd that over the last twenty five years, whether it has been a BJP-led or a Congress-led government at the Centre, the agriculture sector has been neglected grossly, leading to mass exodus of small and marginal farmers from the farm sector, and even large scale farm suicides. The latest National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB) report suggests that there have been about 2.7 lakh farm suicides since 1995.

About 15 million farmers have left the sector since 1991 and over 7.7 million since 2001, shows the Census data of 2011. As farmers migrated to cities seeking work in the unprotected, unorganised sectors, slums in the cities witnessed a sharp expansion.

Narendra Modi, the great strategist, may have taken full advantage of the anti-incumbency factor and the absence of any alternative to the NDA combination in the recently concluded general elections, but his thrust has been the same.

During the campaign, Modi highlighted his Gujarat development model and indicated that he would replicate it across the country to bring about change in the lives of people. Most of the Indian media continued to exaggerate his achievements without discussing the root cause of price rise and inequality.

The Gujarat model is primarily a market-driven economy, though even by those standards it is not the best, given that Maharastra, Delhi and Tamil Nadu attract more FDI than the state. In terms of the Human Development Index, it stands at 9 among 20 states. Welfare economist Jean Dreze elaborates on this in his columns in The Hindu, The Gujarat Muddle and The Gujarat Middle.

Modi’s slogans like ‘Less Government and More Governance’ or ‘Government has no business in businesses’ fit in well with the neo-liberal economic model. Just after assuming office, his finance minister declared that his priority would be bringing in more foreign investment.

While listing out his ten priorities for the first 100 days, Modi included “removing hurdles for economic growth” at the top. “Pushing reforms in infrastructure focusing on attracting investment” featured among other major priorities.

While he does place emphasis on education and health sectors, it remains to be seen how these sectors are supported: through increased state funding, or through promotion of the public-private partnership (PPP) model which could push up the education and health expenditures of families to even higher levels than at present.

The rhetoric and steps taken so far strongly suggest that Modi is unlikely to reverse Manmohanomics. A proper analysis of a neo-liberal economy and its impact in India and other countries would clearly spell out what it means for the masses who matter. If Modi does not realise this, I will not be surprised if he is also shown the way out by Indian voters!

Pradeep Baisakh
07 July 2014

The author is an independent journalist based in New Delhi. He was a media fellow of National Foundation for India (NFI) in 2012.

Bricks or turmeric powder, women show they can do better than men

The piece came in 'Grassroots' June 15, 2013

Bricks or turmeric powder, women show they can do better than men

PRADEEP BAISAKH, Bhubaneswar

The self help movement in India has brought about entrepreneurship among rural women, which was not quite conventional earlier. With the guidance of civil society organisations, in many places in Odisha several women’s groups have proved to be performing entrepreneurs.

The women self-help group (SHG) members of Jerabanji village of Balangir district of Odisha took up the challenge to start unique entrepreneurship of running a brick kiln for self employment. Sarala SHG consisting ten members has been functioning in the area for seven years. Since last year they started making bricks with a modest investment. But at the end of the season the group made a handsome income of 1.4 lakh rupees. Ten women made and sold 70,000 bricks to the traders last year. Each got a sum of 14,000 rupees in just two months of effort. Initial finance for getting wood from the jungle and transporting them and purchasing the frame to mould bricks were met from the regular small monthly savings the women make to their SHG account.

This money was invested by the women in their children’s education, making houses and meeting daily household needs. “My son Suasant studies in intermediate. I purchased books and notes for him and borne upon his travel expenses from home to college from this income.” says a proud Bilasa Bhoi, President of the SHG. Similarly other members like Mula Dharua and Usha Dharua spent on their children education. Apart from selling the bricks, some women like Bilasa Bhoi and others made their own houses of their handmade bricks.

In the area brick kilns were operating for last some years by some local businessmen where the families of these women used to work. Some of the male members of these families also used to migrate out of state earlier. But this time around they took up the challenge onto themselves.  All the family members of the women worked in their own kilns. They sold their bricks to the local traders who sold them in the district market. The staff of the local NGO, Friends for Human Development (FHD) supported the women in making a good bargain with the traders. Had they been the labourers in other’s kiln, each of these women would have earned a wage of meagre 2200 making those many bricks.

There are some families in this remote village which migrate to other states like Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu to work in brick kilns. In fact Balangir district is infamous in sending migrant labourers to other states. This happens due to dearth of work in the villages. The families which migrate to other states to work have to go through severity of life and torture by the employers. This time a village women Bhagyabati Dharua, who went with her relatives to work in kilns in Secunderabad in Andhra Pradesh, was made to work for more than eighteen hours a day and was given paltry to meet her daily food expenses. Bhagyabati did not get any advance money nor any payment for her month’s work. Finally she and her group clandestinely flee from the place back to village.

In local brick kilns at least there is not harassment. “For us it is easy to have own brick kilns. We are not under any pressure to work stretched hours. Simultaneously when we are seeing our daily household chores, we mould bricks. The kiln is in the end of the village. We may stay near the site or stay in the our houses in the villages.” Says Bilasa Bhoi. Motivated with the last year’s success, this year also the women have again started moulding bricks and making their own kilns.

Women turn turmeric traders!

Women in the adjacent Boud district have become traders! Conventionally it is the domain of men in Odisha. The women members of the Nari Vikas Samavaya Ltd, a women cooperative have turned themselves to turmeric traders. Along with managing their daily household chores, the women in the cooperative prepare turmeric power for personal consumptions and they also sell it to the villagers. This unadulterated turmeric powder is also used in preparing the mid day meals for the students in the village schools.

In 2007 Youth Council for Development Alternative (YCDA), a local NGO facilitated the formation of a cooperative of women in two Panchayats in Khamanimunda and Khuntigura GP under Kantamal block of Boud district consisting 105 women. Out of them about 30 members are now quite active in the cooperative and each member saves some money every month in the account of the cooperative. In 2010 the NGO provided some financial support to start a grinding meal for grinding turmeric and wheat. “We then started purchasing raw turmeric from Baliguida market of neighbouring Kandhamal district and process them for making the powder.” Says Kavita Behera, President of the group. The women make their initial investment from the regular monthly group savings. The business provides employment to the women of the cooperative. They do not outsource any work. This is like a self employment unit. Two or three members are given the task to purchase turmeric. Another group of women may wash, dry and cut the turmeric into small pieces which could be grinded. A person is employed to run the meal. The powder are then formed into packets of different denominations with the brand name “Nari Vikas Samavaya Ltd”.  All the women who are involved in the purchasing and processing are given daily wages. The meal has been built on the land of a woman from the cooperative itself. She has opened a shop adjacent to the meal where she sells the product. She keeps some percentage of profit from the sell and rest goes to the group account. The group purchases about one to two quintals of turmeric each year with an investment of the range 15,000 to 30,000. The final product is sold with about 20 percent more rate than the raw material. “This is quite a modest rate. “But as this is quite a pure form of turmeric, our own cooperative women purchase them. Some neighbours also purchase. Now we are selling this product to six schools who use them in preparing mid day meals.” Boastfully say Savita. 

The product of the cooperative is not very competitive in the market as the market rate of turmeric powder is less than that of the cooperative’s product. Even then the villagers prefer the cooperative product due to its purity. In fact the ones sold in the open market are adulterated, say the locals. “The labour of women and the sale-ability of their produces need not be seen in the perspective of profits but with consumption. More than 100 families consume pure form of turmeric. And what’s more that their own children in the schools eat food cooked using this pure products . This is the success of the women in the cooperative” says Suresh Pradhan of the local NGO.

……………

Pradeep Baisakh is a Journalist based in Odisha, India and a media fellow of National Foundation of India (2012). His articles can be acessed at: http://pradeepbaisakh.blogspot.com/ . He can be contacted through email:2006pradeep@gmail.com.

Posco plant could be reality soon: land ‘grab’ to resume

This piece came in 'Governance Now' on April 10, 2013. 

http://governancenow.com/news/regular-story/posco-plant-could-be-reality-soon-land-grab-resume

Posco plant could be reality soon: land ‘grab’ to resume

Administration gears up even as women threaten nude protests

PRADEEP BAISAKH | BHUBANESWAR | APRIL 10 2013

Just 250 acres of additional land is required for the district administration of Jagatsingpur of Odisha from the area earmarked for Posco’s proposed steel and power plant to complete the acquisition of 2,700 acres of land, which is needed to begin work for the plant. The administration is gearing up to resume the land acquisition in the strategic Gobindpur village, considered to be the citadel of anti-Posco movement, as the latest assembly session ended on April 6.

The administration was able to break into the anti-Posco bastion and ‘capture’ 450 acres of land (government authorities claim to have acquired this much land) in two phases in February and March 2013. As many as 250 and 200 acres were acquired respectively in just three to four days of operation in each case. The administration preferred to take pause in the spree of acquisition process during the assembly sessions to stave off possibility of stormy debate in the house. Earlier 2,000 acres were already acquired from nearby Gadakujanga and Nuagaon panchayat. 

In fact, led by the economist-prime minister Manmohan Singh, the central government seems to have distanced itself from the basic constitutional premise of the ‘sovereignty’ of people. The fast-dwindling concept of “We the people of India…” has given way to a gradual control of foreign corporates over the Indian policymaking with Singh in the saddle. Tracking the government’s manoeuvres in implementation of the Posco project, tipped to be the biggest FDI in India, would provide some glimpse of the same. The proposed plant was to have a capacity of 12 mtpa and will pump in $12 billion in investment. However, the capacity has been reduced to 8 mtpa and accordingly the land requirement was truncated from 4,000 acres to 2,700 acres. 

On January 29, 2013 the South Korean knowledge and economy minister Sukwoo Hong during his visit to Agra expressed his worry about ‘tardy’ implementation of the project. To allay his fears, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma told him that “prime minister Manmohan Singh is himself monitoring the project, which is followed by the prime minister’s office (PMO).” South Korea, it is understood, ‘categorically’ asked India to sort out the hurdle in way of the project.

The impact of the direction from the South Korean minister was felt just after four days in Gobindpur village on February 3 where police ruthlessly beat the women and children to make way for land acquisition. About 25 people were injured in the clash including children and old. Eventually on March 2 three protesters died after the blast of crude bombs in nearby Patana village. 

Sumit Chakravorty, editor of the Mainstream weekly, says, “I wonder how the FDI will help in development of the country and the people. In another 20 years all the mineral resources will be gone. The way things are going, the sovereignty of the nation seems to be at stake.

Insensitivity of Indian and foreign officials

In fact, led by the economist-prime minister Manmohan Singh, the central government seems to have distanced itself from the basic constitutional premise of the ‘sovereignty’ of people. The fast-dwindling concept of “We the people of India…” has given way to a gradual control of foreign corporate over the Indian policy making with Singh in the saddle. Tracking the government’s manoeuvres in implementation of the Posco project, tipped to be the biggest FDI in India, would provide some glimpse of the same. The proposed plant was to have a capacity of 12 mtpa and will pump in $12 billion in investment. However, the capacity has been reduced to 8 mtpa and accordingly the land requirement was truncated from 4,000 acres to 2,700 acres. 

On January 29, 2013 the South Korean knowledge and economy minister Sukwoo Hong during his visit to Agra expressed his worry about ‘tardy’ implementation of the project. To allay his fears, commerce and industry minister Anand Sharma told him that “prime minister Manmohan Singh is himself monitoring the project, which is followed by the prime minister’s office (PMO).” South Korea, it is understood, ‘categorically’ asked India to sort out the hurdle in way of the project.

The impact of the direction from the South Korean minister was felt just after four days in Gobindpur village on February 3 where police ruthlessly beat the women and children to make way for land acquisition. About 25 people were injured in the clash including children and old. Eventually on March 2 three protesters died after the blast of crude bombs in nearby Patana village.

Sumit Chakravorty, editor of the Mainstream weekly, says, “I wonder how the FDI will help in development of the country and the people. In another 20 years all the mineral resources will be gone. The way things are going, the sovereignty of the nation seems to be at stake.”

The three deaths were not a deterrent for the state to resume land acquisition. The administration went ahead with its plan and resumed it on March 3. None of the officials however visited the families of the deceased for some days. When contacted for comment, district collector SK Mallick said, "We were on the spot today but no one came to meet us. And why would I meet the criminals? There are criminal cases against two of the people who have died!” However, the police allegedly have indiscriminately filed criminal cases against the protesters. PTI news agency reported that about 2,500 cases have been clamped against the villagers in last eight years of protest and nearly seventy cases against Abhay Sahoo, the leader of PPSS.

The ambassador of South Korea to India, Kim Joong Keun, met chief minister Naveen Patnaik on March 6 and requested him to give further push to the project. The envoy said, "If possible, I would like to see our president and your chief minister launch this mega project." He however did not say a single word about the people who died in the blast just four days before his meet with the CM.

Strategic advantage for police, PPSS on defensive 

Resistance to the first phase of acquisition on February 3 continued and the use of force was widely condemned by all and sundry. Several politicians from the state capital visited and expressed solidarity with the protestors. D Raja, national secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), also came down to Gobindpur from New Delhi. His party has been providing leadership to the anti-Posco movement from the beginning. Despite people’s demand for the police to leave Gobindpur village, the police did not wind up its two camps where about 15-20 police personnel have been staying all the time. The rest of the force was staying near a transit camp about three kilometres away from the village.

Earlier, since Balitikira, the entry point of the village, was under the control of the villagers, police could never enter Gobindpur village in the last eight years. Last time in May 2011, when police attempted to enter the village, children lied down on hot sand at Balitikira to block their entry. The protesters clung on to the strategic location as pressure mounted severely on the administration to withdraw police force then. But this time, after capturing that strategic point and establishing camps in the village, the police never budged to the demands of leaders from opposition parties to leave the village during even the lull period taking the plea of protecting law and order in the village. Two camps still exist in the village.

The strategy and response of the political parties, particularly the CPI, seemed not to be very intense this time; unlike in May 2011 when a similar situation had arisen. Then, as some policemen strayed into the agricultural land of people to dismantle the betel vines, leaders of five-party conglomerate (CPI, CPM, Samajwadi party and Rashtriya Janata Dal and other parties) sat down on the spot where betel vines were dismantled forcing the police to return. At one point when the situation was worsening due to the continued police presence in the place, CPI leader Narayan Reddy categorically asked Patnaik to withdraw force from the area, which had moral pressure on the government as CPI was an alliance partner of the ruling Biju Janata Dal (BJD) in the 2009 general elections. Due to the mounting pressure, police had to withdraw itself from Balitikira.

But this time, when police were acquiring land in Gobindpur, the party leadership was away in nearby Dhinkia village. The political leaders who came from Bhubaneswar would only make a superficial gesture of solidarity to people. People in Gobindpur did not get immediate support of the leadership and gave away land out of fear. The leadership came to directly confront police at the spot after four days, but by then the administration had acquired 250 acres.

Bibhu Praasad Tarai, the local MP from CPI who sided with protesters on the first day of acquisition, was not seen during the rest of the days. Clarifying on a possible alliance with BJD in 2014 general election, Tarai said, “an electoral alliance with BJD and our fight against the Posco project in Dhinkia are different matters.” But in a surprising statement, he said, “we would not mind if the project is shifted to a place just two kilometres away from Dhinkia.” Many anti-Posco activists saw this as an appeasement to Patnaik as this was not in sync with the stand of PPSS which demands complete scrapping of the project from the area.

CPI's compulsions 

There are electoral compulsions for CPI to resume is ties with BJD ahead of the general election in 2014. Both in 2004 and in 2009 the party had faced the situation of losing its national party status. CPI has only 4 seats in the present (15th) Lok Sabha (lower house of Parliament), one of them is from Jagatsingpur district of Odisha, which it won due to alliance with the ruling BJD. Insiders of the party say “Voter base and winning a MP seat and some MLA seats from Odisha in coming elections could have significance toward the continuity of national party status of CPI.”. Importance of Odisha for CPI was reflected in its decision to hold its national executive meeting in Bhubaneswar in January 2013 where its general secretary A B Bardhan strongly hinted toward alliance with BJD in 2014 state and general (Lok Shabha) elections.

Alliance seems necessary toward strengthening the possibility of emergence of a non-Congress and non-BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) force in the national politics in 2014 general election. If Naveen is not taken into the fold of possible ‘third front’ there is possibility that he will go with its former long term ally, BJP. These are the reasons why CPI may be trying to keep Naveen in good humour.

“Even though on ground CPI supports the anti-Posco movement, over ground it has gone openly with the party which is advocating for Posco. It is sheer double standard. CPI’s strength in Odisha lies in its leadership taking up people’s issues. Preferring electoral politics over people’s interest would be counter-productive for the party in the long run,” says Basudev Mahapatra, senior journalist.

Raja of CPI evaded the question on a possible alliance with BJD. He said, “we are open to form an alliance with non-BJP and non-Congress parties, but things vary from place to place. I will have to speak to my party collages in Odisha before giving any opinion on the possibility of alliance. I do not have updated information on that.”

Questionable legal basis

The environment clearance granted to the project by the ministry of environment and forests (MoEF) was suspended by the national green tribunal (NGT), a statutory body, in March 2012. Acquiring land for the project after that is illegal, according to experts. Meanwhile, the MoU between the company and the Odisha government expired in June 2010 and has not been renewed yet. So, why acquire land?

Nude protest, the only option left? 

On March 7, some women lodged a semi-nude protest against the forceful land grabbing by police. PPSS has declared that the women from three villages under Dhinkia panchayat would make a nude protest en masse in case the government resumed land acquisition with use of force.

Tanu Das, an elderly woman, says, “We are left with no other option as the government has not heeded our democratic protests and instead indiscriminately used force against us. All mothers will make a nude protest if the government dares to take away our land.” Now it depends on the central and state governments and the political parties opposing or supporting the project if they wish to protect the dignity of Indian women or succumb to the pressure of global capital! 

.........

Pradeep Baisakh

Baisakh is an Odisha-based freelance journalist and National Foundation of India (NFI) media fellow of 2012.

This piece came in 'The Hindu'-Periscope on 5th April 2013

Web link: http://www.thehindu.com/todays-paper/tp-national/towards-upping-the-ante/article4583083.ece

Towards upping the ante

PRADEEP BAISAKH

Decentralising ration procurement in Odisha’s anganwadis has yielded better results

Flexibility for anganwadis: Effect of decentralisation.Photo: Pradeep Baisakh

Following the Rs. 700 crore pulses scam in Odisha in January 2011, the State government decided to decentralise the procurement of all the items in the supplementary nutrition programme (SNP) under the Integrated Child Development Scheme (ICDS) and the Mid Day Meal programme in schools, with the exception of rice which is supplied by the Food Corporation of India.

Two years since, the decision has brought colours in the villages. In the Kakringia anganwadi centre (in Kasinipur gram panchayat under Phiringia block) in the tribal-dominated Kandhamal district, about 10 children in the age group of 3-6 years arrive in the morning and stay till noon. In the morning, they receive snacks and have a hot cooked meal for lunch — both following the standard menu developed by the WCD Department.

Asked if they get a stomach full of food at the anganwadi, the senior children nodded in affirmative. They get vegetables and eggs regularly as per norms. The anganwadis are also tasked with providing ‘Take Home Ration’ (THR) for children in six months to three years group, for pregnant and lactating mothers and for severely undernourished children. Damayanti Kahanra, a pregnant woman from Babdingia village under Phiringia block, says she has been getting two packets of ground cereals every month.

Under the new dispensation, joint accounts have been opened in the name of the anganwadi worker and the ward member of the village who will purchase the ration. “This has fixed accountability on the anganwadi workers which they cannot escape. Therefore the delivery is better,” says Rajkishor Mishra, State Advisor to Supreme Court Commission on Right to Food. The new system has dispensed with the contractor system which was a source of corruption. Odisha became one of the first States to implement the standing order of the Supreme Court to ban contractors in ICDS. The ground cereals are procured from local SHGs, thus providing rural women with entrepreneurial opportunities.

A study conducted by the Voice for Child Rights Organisation (VCRO), a civil society organisation working for children, in December 2011 in seven districts on the functioning of decentralised procurement shows that deliveries have improved in quality and regularity under the ICDS. Fifty seven per cent of the surveyed beneficiaries said that their children are getting regular cooked meals as per the menu chart; 58 per cent said that cooked food given under SNP is sufficient; 60 pre cent said the morning snacks is as per norms; 87 per cent said that they have received dry ration regularly and as per norms. In 65 per cent cases, the standard menu chart is displayed in the anganwadi centres.

“Earlier there was delay in delivery of ration and rice near us. We could hardly give some lentils and rice to the children. However with money coming directly to our hands, we are trying to give best to the children,” says an anganwadi worker in Nuapada district.

In Odisha, 71,000 anganwadi centres benefit about 45 lakh people, including children under 6 years and pregnant and lactating women. As per official figures, in 2012-13, Rs. 625 crore was released under the decentralised procurement process in SNP to the anganwadi centres and block levels. Apart from food, the government also provides uniforms for the students and books.

However, there is a complete mismatch between cost norms and nutrition norms. On an average, Rs. 2.33 is spent toward the food of each child excluding rice. This is too meagre in view of the inflationary trend in food prices. The rate has not been revised for last five to six years. Secretary of the WCD Department, Arati Ahuja, says, “This amount is actually less but we have been able to manage due to localisation of purchase as this keeps the purchase cost low. Locally available seasonal vegetable and pulses could be procured keeping calorie requirement in mind. We have not fixed price for each item and we have made it a weekly costing system to give flexibility to the anganwadi worker to manage within the overall cost.”

(The writer is a journalist based in Odisha and a media fellow of National Foundation of India [2012])