“The Burning Issue”

No one can pretend poverty isn’t still a serious issue in India, but the government is trying to mislead us about its gravity. They have relied on internal studies to argue rural poverty has dropped to 28.3%, but less biased sources are challenging their claims.

An alarming new report in The Hindu (http://www.hindu.com/mag/2010/01/24/stories/2010012450190500.htm) highlights the horrifying statistics provided by the Tendulkar Committee. Their numbers tell a far darker story. Not only do they place rural poverty at 41.8%, but indicate over 50% of SCs and STs are in a state of ‘permanent famine.’

Schumacher Centre strives to spread awareness of the severity of India’s poverty. Government efforts to downplay poverty are detrimental to our mission. Politicians use India’s overall national economic ‘growth’ as a measure of prosperity for all its citizens, but this is rooted in ignorance.

India’s GDP growth does not mean anything to starving people. A recent UN report states , “…such growth has not been sufficiently inclusive and pro-poor to reduce the absolute numbers of people living in poverty. Income inequalities have grown steadily in India since the 1980s, in both urban and rural areas.”

The UN are releasing more and more reports that challenge the government’s rhetoric. They indicate mass economic liberalization has widened the gap between rich and poor in the last few decades. Using the stock market index as the prime indicator of national prosperity has had dire consequences.

To improve the lives of the poorest of the poor, who currently don’t have access to the ‘booming’ markets, the government must change its approach. It must stop manipulating numbers to deceive its citizens.

The people must discourage government deception by remaining skeptical.  The tendency to worship the stock market index must end. Prosperity must be measured by the living conditions of all Indians, not only the middle and upper class. Otherwise, the new decade will not witness any meaningful change.

Schumacher Centre is on a crusade to unite all three sectors of society: public, private and civil. The forceful implementation of trisector partnership (TSP) would mean a revolution in how India tackles poverty. We have held a series of workshops and an international conference to bring the three sectors together and force upfront communication between them. We spread TSP awareness and attack the fears and prejudices that impede unity.

Business news website and Wall Street partner, Livemint.com, has published an article written by Dr. Giri, Director of Schumacher Centre. This poignant and eloquent article highlights what trisector partnership truly means. It succinctly explains why trisector partnership is truly India’s last hope.

Read the article here.

By Dr. D.K. Giri, Director, Schumacher Centre

Last week I wrote about the mismatch between politics and development, citing the specific example of Mohammadi, a tehsil in Uttar Pradesh. There are many such examples in the country where high political activism sits comfortably with poor development. But the other side of the story is that, if development is put on the political agenda, then progress is quicker. Also I must add that it is the state (political leadership in a democracy) which is the principal actor in the development processt. Some would argue that the state should be the facilitator, it should rollback in the face of Globalisation and reposition itself as enabler or facilitator.

Only last week, the award given by Economic Times to the Chief Minister of Bihar Sri Nitish Kumar proves the contrathesis that  in India that Development driven Politics is viable in a  society torn by caste, religion and ethnicity.  The award was for the “best reformer of the year”. This was for turning the state of Bihar around in governance and development. In his acceptance speech, Mr. Nitish Kumar said, ‘The award goes to hundreds of people working in Bihar to change things and they have dispelled the doubt that Bihar was ungovernable or development in Bihar was unthinkable. The state of Bihar which used to be one of the laggard states has registered 11.5% growth, more than the national average. This is remarkable progress.

The role of state is crucial in the development process. The civil society organizations, the professional NGOs, the CSR of the business sector will have impact only if the state is development oriented creating a conducive atmosphere for other players to make their contributions. So, one can win in politics by putting development issues in the centre stage which do not whip up mass frenzy. The old style politics of creating mass hysteria should be history, and the ‘new politics’ should deal with progress, peace and harmony.

By Dr DK Giri, Director, Schumacher Centre

Last week I was invited to visit Mohmadi Tehsil in the Laxmipur Kheri district of Uttar Pradesh. The objective was to explore the possibilities for development interventions. I took the train from Old Delhi to Sahajahanpur, a journey of 346km which took 8 hours, less than 45 km per hour by an express train. When the developed world is introducing bullet trains with a speed of up to 500km per hour, our trains do not clock up to 100km per hour. We are yet to learn the essence of time and speed. 

However, I was met up by my host waiting with a flashy new van to drive me to our destination. Sahajahanpur was brightly lit at 1:30am, dispelling my doubt about the supply of electricity. I was taken to a ‘dhaba’ for a cup of tea to warm up in the cold night, before we drove 28 km to Mohmadi.  I was warned by my host that the 28 km may take an hour because of the road conditions.

Mohmadipur Tehsil has two blocks, one with Muslim majority, and the other with Hindus. I was taken around both blocks in two full days. What I observed was nothing sort of baffling – but eventually supported my long-held hypothesis that there is a mismatch between politics and development. Uttar Pradesh provides the best case for such understanding. UP used to send 85 MPs to 543 strong Lok Sabha – the new state, Uttarakhand, carved out of UP has taken away only 5 MPs. The state has given us so many of our Prime Ministers. Yet, the status of development in UP is lower than many other states in the country. Read the rest of this entry »

Here at Schumacher Centre we’ve been impressed by an article which appeared yesterday on www.countercurrents.org. The article, (linked here), argues that the Government of India’s definition of poverty is a stubborn one.

Devinder Sharma says: “The poverty line reflects the number of people living in acute hunger. It should therefore be called as a starvation line.”

Such a definition ignores wider measures of poverty – such as lack of access to education, health services, etc – allowing the Government of India to keep poverty figures suspiciously low.

A compilation of interviews conducted in the village of Badnoli in Uttar Pradesh is available for your viewing. The women being interviewed shed light on the kind of problems typically faced in rural villages forgotten by the government.

Badnoli was just 1.5 hours’ drive from our office in south Delhi – but it was a different India.

Click on the following link to be directed to the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WqfRka7sjos

By Dr DK Giri, Director of Schumacher Centre

During 26-27 November I was a part of an Indian delegation invited to attend a seminar in Paris. The bilateral seminar was between scholars from India and the European Union organized in partnership between FEPS – Foundation of European Progressive Studies (Brussels), JJF – Jean Jaures Foundation, (Paris), and ADS -Association for Democratic Socialism, (New Delhi).

The topic on 26th was “Growing Inequality, Fighting Globalization Challenges.” The discussion centred on fighting inequality in various forms, the growing disparity between rich and the poor in a global economy, ethnic deprivation and so on. The way to create an egalitarian society is to promote inclusive growth and development within multicultural and plural democracy. But Indian development presents a paradox – while it is an established democracy, a multicultural society, has a decent economic growth for over a decade or so now, poverty is still widespread, chronic and persisting. The participants agreed that while India and Europe had a lot in common, both the unions had different trajectories and strategies in their democracies. While India currently is devolutionary, European Union is evolutionary.

On the second day, we had a closed door discussion on “India and European Union, common grounds in foreign policies”. It focused mainly on the emergence of EU as a political personality in the international arena and the difficulties it faces in doing so. India’s foreign policy compulsions also figured in the deliberations. The participants rued the fact that despite shared foreign policy principles, EU and Indian are not working as closely as they should in international politics.

Our delegation consisted of myself, Prof. T.K. Oommen, Chairman, Schumacher Centre, Dr. Meera Mitra, sociologist, Member of ADS and Schumacher Centre, Dr. Subbha Somu, Member, National Commission for Backward Classes, Dr. Ravni Thakur, Associate Professor, Delhi University. The other batch of delegates from India consisted of Sri Mani Sankar Aiyer, Former Union Minister, Kanwal Sibal, Former foreign Secretary, Manoj Joshi, a senior journalist, and Uday Bhaskar, former Director, IDSA.

Overall, it was a good meeting, generating warmth, understanding and an atmosphere for a free and frank exchange of ideas.

The Schumacher Centre team are in a completative mood as we look back across the year 2009. The last 12 months have seen an expansion of our work with UN organisations such as the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), along with a host of other successes.

For those who have not yet read it, please check out our Annual Report 08-09

Focusing on 2009 itself, it’s fair to say that this year’s place in history will be decided by the success or failure of the current Copenhagen conference on climate change.

Crooked moneylenders are exploiting rural poverty and perpetuating a new form of slavery. As farmers struggle to maintain their crops amidst climate change and other forms of pollution, many are left no recourse but to borrow from loan sharks.

Insurmountable interest rates exceeding 50% lead to exploitation and the destruction of lives. Rape, suicide, indentured servitude and murder are propagated by this throwback to medieval feudalism.

A Los Angeles Time article tells the story of a young woman repeatedly raped over months by a moneylender in response to her father’s unpaid debts.

This is only one among many money-lending related horror stories of a sexual nature. Farmers frequently sell their wives and daughters to moneylenders to settle outstanding debts.

This detailed and engrossing article also highlights the estimate of 200,000 farmer suicides since 1997. The main cause of these suicides is loss of land, and thus livelihood, to creditors. The article can be read here.

An often-neglected subject is the link between money-lending and local government. Most of the biggest money-lending families in the region have ties to the public sector. Some even have family in the government. It is easy for these moneylenders to ignore the law and evade persecution.

Despite popular outrage against these injustices, reports indicate money-lending isn’t going away any time soon. The Invest India Savings and Income 2007 survey reported that rural India relies on moneylenders nearly twice as much as banks. This is a sign of the disparity between urban and rural India.

Author: Patrick Koohafkan

Most of society’s problems hit women hardest – that is the nature of patriarchy. Still, it was thought-provoking when, this week, a UN report claimed women are hit hardest by climate change.

The United Nations Population Fund 2009 report stated that: “women are among the most vulnerable to climate change, partly because in many countries they make up the larger share of the agricultural work force and partly because they tend to have access to fewer income-earning opportunities.”

It added: “Women manage households and care for family members, which often limits their mobility and increases their vulnerability to sudden weather-related natural disasters. Drought and erratic rainfall force women to work harder to secure food, water and energy for their homes.”