12981 - From Rajasthan to UP, ration woes dominate public hearing in city - Indian Express

From Rajasthan to UP, ration woes dominate public hearing in city

From e-PoS machines failing to authenticate biometrics, and missing names in Aadhaar Cards to families waiting for ration cards to be issued for 15 years — the public hearing was a platform to share tales from remote areas of Gujarat, MP, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Delhi.

Written by Somya Lakhani | New Delhi |

 Published: March 16, 2018 2:32 am

                                 At the hearing

In the last seven months, Bhanwari Devi (80) has received her share of five kg wheat from a Fair Price Shop (FPS) only once. “The shop is 1.5 km away from my home and the machine doesn’t recognise my thumbprint… I have to buy wheat from the market, which I cannot afford on my old-age pension of Rs 500,” she said.

From Harmada village in Rajasthan’s Rajasmand district, Devi was one of the many people from across 14 states who testified about the “situation of hunger and unemployment” at a national public hearing, organised by Right To Food campaign, at the capital’s Gandhi Peace Foundation on Thursday.

From e-PoS machines failing to authenticate biometrics, and missing names in Aadhaar Cards to families waiting for ration cards to be issued for 15 years and mothers fighting for maternity benefits — the public hearing was a platform to share tales from remote areas of Gujarat, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Rajasthan, and Delhi.

With her baby in tow, Poonam Devi (22) sat at the hearing from 10 am till she finally got to speak at 4 pm. A resident of Mustafabad in UP, she said she has been running from pillar to post to get the first installment of the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana, a maternity benefit programme. “It’s Rs 5,000 in all, if I get it, I can save it for my baby’s future. He’s eight months old now and I haven’t got a rupee,” she said.

The hearing took place in front of a panel comprising activist Harsh Mander, advocates Usha Ramanathan and Prashant Bhushan, journalists Neha Dixit and Bhasha Singh, among others.

From Rewa district in MP, came Ram Bahadur (62). “Mine is one of the 155 families in my village without a ration card. We have been waiting for 15 years and did get a ‘token’ in 2014 through which we got ration once. I work at a stone quarry and get Rs 100 a day…by coming here, I have lost my wages but maybe we will get ration cards now,” he said.

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12565 - Jharkhand hunger death: A girl died crying for food. Her family is now accused of shaming India - Scroll.In

Jharkhand hunger death: A girl died crying for food. Her family is now accused of shaming India

Koili Devi lost her daughter to hunger after failing to link her ration card to Aadhaar. A social boycott has added to her trauma.

Taramani Sahu

Dec 26, 2017 · 12:30 pm

Harsh Mander

In October, Koili Devi lost her young daughter to creeping hunger. Life gave her no chance to grieve – this was only the beginning of her long nightmare. The state administration, even at its highest levels, stigmatised her for bringing shame to her village and the nation with her claim that her daughter had died of starvation. Her predicament is a mirror to what we have become as a nation.

Life was hard enough for Koili Devi before her husband descended rapidly into mental illness five years ago. They own a tiny rump of stony land in their village in Simdega district of Jharkhand, which yields nothing. He would constantly look for work. Some five days a month, he would earn maybe Rs 100 a day in exchange for hard labour in the fields or house-building. Koili Devi would bring in even less, cleaning cowsheds or collecting leaves from the forest. But now, he only sleeps or wanders about, and the burden fell on Koili Devi’s thin shoulders to feed and tend to him, his aged mother, and their four children.

She married off two daughters when they were around 12; one has returned home. A young boy she holds to her breast. Santoshi, 11 years old, was her youngest daughter. Koili Devi pulled her out of school after she completed Class 5, to graze the cattle of landlords and bring a little money home. This is not unusual in their Dalit habitation.

Critically dependent on the subsidised rations they receive through the public distribution system to keep hunger at bay, catastrophe struck the family when the state administration made it mandatory for all ration cards to be linked to biometric identification through Aadhaar. Koili Devi’s was only one of around 11 lakh households whose ration cards were cancelled in the state because they failed to link these to Aadhaar.

Subsidised grain was the thin thread that held the family aloft above hunger. When this thread snapped, the family plunged into starvation. This was aggravated with the collapse of a range of other social entitlements as well. There was no wage work available under the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act – the government scheme that promises every rural household 100 days of work a year – because contractors illegally used big machines and wage registers were fudged. Koili Devi’s mother-in-law had not received her pension for months. Even though Santoshi had dropped out of school, she would still take a break from her cow-grazing to eat the mid-day meal served in school. But the school had closed for the Durga Puja break.

Koili Devi says her 11-year-old daughter Santoshi died crying "bhaat, bhaat". (Credit: YouTube)

Unable to find work, Koili Devi and her daughter begged for food outside the homes of their richer upper-caste neighbours. But, as she said to me when we met later, “You cannot force anyone to give you food, can you?”

Santoshi’s health began to slide, and she whimpered all the time, begging for rice. Her stomach ached unbearably, so her mother took her to the vaid. He gently told her, “There is nothing wrong with your child. All she needs is food.” But all they had in their hovel were tea leaves and salt. She gave her child salted tea to assuage her hunger. The child finally died, crying “bhaat, bhaat” (rice, rice), her mother recalled.

The custom in their caste is to bury rather than cremate the dead, so she tearfully laid her child down in a shallow grave. Activists from the non-profit Right to Food Campaign had been helping her and many others facing the same problem for months before the child’s death, demanding that her ration card not be cancelled. When they learnt of Santoshi’s death, they announced to the media that the child had died because of the state administration’s callous denial of rations to the family because of their failure to link to Aadhaar. This story somehow penetrated the customary indifference of the national press and Santoshi’s story nudged its way on to the front pages of newspapers. In this way, it briefly pierced our conscience.

Punished for telling the truth

Officials in the area were swift in their defence. They claimed the child had not died of starvation but of malaria. Koili Devi stoutly refuted this claim. “Why should I say she died of malaria when she was not sick at all?” she said. The story refused to die down. Instead, it exploded, with dozens of air-conditioned vehicles, some with flashing beacons, winding their way into this dusty village. Some visitors took pictures and selfies holding candles at the child’s grave, some offered charity to the family, and officials and members of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party remonstrated that Koili Devi should abandon her claim that her child had died of starvation and accept that she succumbed to malaria.

Officials told her that if she did this, she would be adequately rewarded. But destitute Koili Devi displayed exceptional resolve, determined to stand firmly by the truth of the circumstances of her daughter’s death. When rewards did not work, they threatened that if she persisted, the officials would have to take her child’s body from its grave and cut it up for a post-mortem. But here again, Koili Devi replied with calm rationality, “Now that my daughter is dead, how does it matter what anyone does with her body?”

Chief Minister Raghubar Das announced that Koili Devi had brought a “bad name” to her village by claiming that her child had died of starvation. Taking this cue, the upper-caste residents of her village also reproached her for disgracing the village with her contention. Some went further and said she was bringing shame to the nation. After she resisted every attempt to force her to backtrack, they imposed a boycott on her family. No one will employ them, or sell them anything. When the residents heckled and threatened to assault her, the right to food campaigners demanded that she be given police protection. A police guard now stands outside her hovel.

The question remains, what brings shame to a nation? Is a nation diminished because a destitute and unlettered mother insists simply that she must uphold the truth of how her child died? Or is it shamed because a callous administration thinks nothing of cutting off the lifeline of the country’s poorest people because they fail to adhere to its digital imagination? Because we have still not built a robust social protection to guard against destitution and want? Because galloping economic growth and overflowing government warehouses of grain have done nothing to prevent children from dying, crying out for food until their last breath?

We welcome your comments at letters@scroll.in.

8354 - Senior citizens pour out woes at Pension Parishad

CHENNAI, July 22, 2015

Senior citizens pour out woes at Pension Parishad

• STAFF REPORTER

A public hearing of the Pension Parishad in the city on Tuesday brought to focus ill-treatment and disappointment meted out to beneficiaries by the government authorities.

The hearing saw a large number of participants comprising disabled persons, transgenders, senior citizens and social welfare organisations, making representations to the committee about the denial and termination of pension.

The Supreme Court-appointed Commissioner on the Right to Food Harsh Mander said he was disappointed to see several complaints being registered about denial of pension in a State considered to be an example in execution of social welfare measures.

Ramamoorthy, a daily wage labourer from Saligramam, complained that though there was disability pension for construction labourers, he had not been provided with it.

R. Vedi, a disabled person from Nookampadi of Thiruvannamalai district, pointed out that despite receiving pension order copies he had not received disability pension. When he approached the Special Tahsildar, Social Security Scheme, a bribe was demanded.

T.M.L. Deepak, member, December 3 Movement (D3M), describing that beneficiaries were being denied pension due to lack of Aadhaar card, cited the Supreme Court order of Aadhaar card not being compulsory to avail government benefits.

V. Daniel Vinod Kumar, State Program Manager, Center for Advocacy and Research, highlighted the removal of more than four lakh beneficiaries claiming pension by the Tamil Nadu State Planning Commission stating that these pensioners had a dependent.

The Pension Parishad also demanded that the pension amount be increased to Rs. 3,000 and provision of pension for all categories of unorganised workers.

Qudsia Gandhi, retired IAS officer and social activist Aruna Roy participated in the public hearing.

2830 - Socialism, Cash Down

Socialism, Cash Down

Its ploy of Aadhar-hinged cash transfer may have won the Congress political points, but will it really be a game-changer?

UTTAM SENGUPTA, ARINDAM MUKHERJEE

ALSO IN THIS STORY

State-Wise

• 40% of the 22 crore Aadhar numbers are in Andhra Pradesh (4.7 crore) and Maharashtra (4 crore)
• 20% is what the two politically sensitive, Congress-ruled states account for of the 51 districts where DCT will be rolled out
• 55 lakh Aadhar numbers in TMC-run West Bengal. BJP-ruled Gujarat (57 lakh) and DMK-ruled Tamil Nadu (69 lakh) are other states with lowest penetration of Aadhar
• 2.35 crore is the Aadhar number in neediest BIMARU states (Bihar: 20 lakh, Madhya Pradesh: 1.2 crore, Rajasthan: 97 lakh and UP: 98 lakh).
• 55% of Aadhar numbers have been issued to the voter catchment-friendly age band of
  16-45 years. Those above 66 years, who are needier, account for just 4.3% of numbers issued.

Game Of The Name

• The Rs 12,000-crore uid scheme remains outside Parliament’s ambit. Some feel Aadhar not following proper rules, procedures.
• States divided over Aadhar, even Congress-ruled ones. P. Chidambaram’s NPR opposed to its methods, data, objectives.
• Coverage of Aadhar not complete even in showcase states. Charges of flawed data collections; mismatch of technology.
• Issues of privacy, security of personal data still shrouds Aadhar. Fate of those who haven’t registered for it unclear.

What Govt Pays Out

• Rs 4,519 crore scholarships
• Rs 5,110 crore pensions
• Rs 1,600 crore Janani Suraksha Yojana
• Rs 877 crore ASHA

How DCT Will Kick In

• Only 29 out of 42 subsidy schemes included for now
• Pensions and scholarships are existing cash subsidies
• 51 districts from January 1. Next 18 states by April 2013.
• PDS, health and fertilisers to come in later.

***

Before becoming the chairman of the UIDAI, Nandan Nilekani famously wrote about the need for a national ID system in his book Imagining India. He invoked that immortal statement by Rajiv Gandhi that only 15 paise of every rupee earmarked for the poor actually reaches them. And went on to doff his hat to his son, “In 2007; his (Rajiv’s) son, Rahul, offered his own estimate, saying that now a mere five paise of every rupee spent reaches the poor in some districts.” Well, it’s payback time. One only has to look at the grudging respect the Congress has earned from its political rivals for its Next Big Idea: the plan to ride on Nilekani’s Aadhar card to roll out Direct Cash Transfers (DCT) to the poor in 51 districts—and later nationally. And all within sniffing distance of the fast approaching 2014 polls.

“Technology will no doubt help, but then technology can also make the fair price shops better.”Harsh Mander, Social Activist

There’s no doubt in most observers’ minds that this move to give cash to India’s poor is all about power, politics and winning elections—and not (at least at the moment) about reducing subsidies, eliminating wastage and corruption. 

Union minister for rural development Jairam Ramesh—who coined the slogan ‘aapka paisa, aapke haath’—lost no time in announcing that Rahul Gandhi would visit the 51 districts (20 per cent of which are in the politically sensitive states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh) where DCT would be rolled out initially.

Disturbed by the initial negative reaction that it was seeking to buy votes, the government was quick to replace the ‘cash’ in DCT with the more anodyne ‘benefits’. Incidentally, there was no direct mention of cash (or benefits) transfer in the Congress’s 2009 manifesto— apart from the line that, owing to fiscal responsibility, it would work to ensure that “all subsidies reach only the truly needy and poor sections of our society”. The politics is also probably why Nilekani politely declined Outlook’s request for a meeting, saying, “Thanks, but I’m not giving interviews on this.”

Aadhar is being touted as the “magic formula” to enable the “game-changing” DCT. Clubbing the two serves a key purpose—legitimising the Aadhar card, which has morphed from being a mere identity document to a service-delivery engine in a short while despite criticism from bureaucrats, policy experts, activists, even a few state governments. That Aadhar has top political backing is evident from Union finance minister P. Chidambaram making the announcement on DCT just a few days ago. Only last year he had made a scathing attack on Aadhar’s legitimacy, saying it was not following proper procedure and involved issues of security. Remember, the National Identification Authority Bill is yet to be cleared by Parliament, which is supposed to give Aadhar its powers.

“A food security act will do much more for poor people than linking their bank account with UID.”Jean Dreze, Development Economist

Despite all the hype around the move, it’s clearly a cautious one. Some 29 existing welfare schemes will continue to be made available to the existing beneficiaries, only the mode of payment will change. Scholarships and pensions have, after all, always been paid in cash and routed into bank accounts or via post offices and panchayats. Now the payment will have to be linked to Aadhar cards and bank accounts. “This experiment is bound to take many years, if it succeeds at all,” says development economist Jean Dreze. “If the UPA government thinks this is the way to get votes in 2014, it has lost the plot.”

It’s only when the government replaces the growing food, fertiliser and fuel subsidies (see chart) with cash that the “game-changing” idea will face its litmus test. It will not, of course, stop the UPA from going to the polls offering the promise of cash/benefits directly reaching the poor. Supporters of the government’s move also feel that it is time India found an alternative to the age-old public distribution system which is hobbled with leakages and corruption at all levels.

Getting NREGA wages via an Aadhar-enabled ATM in Ranchi

Officials in the PMO say that the Aadhar-enabled payment system would help weed out fake beneficiaries and ghost ration cards. Citing a study by the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), which holds that integrating Aadhar with welfare schemes is likely to yield a 52 per cent return to the government on that investment, even after all costs are accounted for, the official says, “Surely it makes no sense to spend three rupees to deliver one rupee.” Another key argument in favour of cash transfers is that it empowers the poor with choice.

“The unique 12-digit number has advantages that other ID address proofs do not.”R.S. Sharma, Mission Director, Uidai

However, there still remains the issue of bank accounts. The last census shows that only 54.4 per cent people in rural areas have bank accounts. Bank branches too are not evenly distributed, with too many of them, say, in the constituency of former finance minister and now President Pranab Mukherjee and too few of them elsewhere. At least some of the rural branches are located too far apart, forcing people to waste several hours commuting and waiting to collect cash, having to forgo daily wages in the bargain.

The government hopes to bridge the gap through “business correspondents” appointed by commercial banks. The banks seem to have taken to the idea because it is more cost-effective than opening a rural branch or maintaining a physical ATM. The correspondents will use hand-held devices to help authenticate the identity of the beneficiary and the credit balance in his bank account. Much of the success of DCT will depend on how this system will work.

Nov 29 Nilekani and Jairam Ramesh at a DCT conference. (Photograph by Sanjay Rawat)

At a broader level, not many share the government’s optimism about cash transfers as a modern way of disbursing subsidies. “Cash transfer is not a silver bullet for dealing with corruption. The identification of who will receive these transfers is still not clear. The government has been spectacularly unsuccessful in identifying the beneficiaries,” says social activist Harsh Mander. The fact that the government has announced the goal without actually defining the route is a cause for concern. Mander, for one, feels that it is erroneous to think of cash transfer as a substitute for provisioning public good—healthcare, education and food—without first putting a system in place.

The danger in not doing that is because the PDS is associated with the system of minimum support price (MSP) for farmers and price stabilisation which the government ensures. With the government procuring high amounts from farmers for PDS, an alternative use for that grain would need to be found. Likewise, the physical infrastructure of the six-decade-old PDS (thousands of stores all over the country and lakhs of employees) would have to be put to some use.

“The present subsidy system has to change. This is our opportunity, but this might not be the way.”Vijay Mahajan, Social Entrepreneur And Ceo, Basix

There would be other issues too, especially regarding prices and supply. Many economists are arguing that a system of cash transfers—as opposed to goods and services—will increase inflation in the economy. Says Vijay Mahajan, social entrepreneur and CEO, Basix, “By direct cash transfers, you are placing a large part of the demand in the hands of the poor while supply is entirely in the hands of the private sector. Unregulated supply led by the private sector could be dangerous as there could be high prices, bad supply and bad services.” Similarly, in healthcare too, there is a possibility of medical services becoming out of reach.

Also, cash transfers will not guarantee that the cash given for a purpose is actually used for it. According to many social activists, experience shows that delivery of food—rather than cash—is more likely to end up as food in children’s stomachs. Too much choice may not be desirable for very poor families—a recent experiment in cash transfers in a Delhi slum met with a mixed reception, with many women (the intended beneficiaries) saying they would prefer to get rations rather than deal with the many demands. Similarly, there have been negative reactions from at least one ‘successful’ pilot project cited by the UPA to claim that it has weeded out fake beneficiaries and reduced consumption, leading to savings.

Crucially, despite all the brouhaha about Aadhar, it is yet to become sanctioned by law, and is by present definition not mandatory. Its coverage is not complete anywhere in the country, even in its own showcase states. There is still confusion over what Aadhar seeks to do. The fact that it wasn’t mandatory and had no services attached to it—like the pan card or the passport had—has discouraged many from getting into it. Nilekani, however, is clear in his thoughts on Aadhar. He had told Outlook last year, “We’re an identity authentication system. We only confirm that X is X. Other people can build applications on top of that.” Sure, conditional cash transfers have worked in other countries. Brazil is a good example. So is Mexico. Cash transfers, therefore, are not necessarily a bad thing. But in a country with so many poor (and poorer infrastructure), it’s not something that can be exclusivised and rushed through without thinking through the enormous consequences.

Establishing (at least in mindspace) a direct link between New Delhi and India’s poor is attractive, particularly when elections are fast approaching. There’s also no denying that the present system of subsidies needs to be majorly improved upon. “This is our opportunity to bring in that change, but this might not be the way,” warns Mahajan. Poll gimmicks, however expedient and catchy, are not always the answer. One has to think of the morning after.

Pro View
Aadhar Will Help Indians Obtain ‘Financial Identity’
GOVINDRAJ ETHIRAJ,Co-authoring a book on Aadhar

The government’s decision to launch cash-based transfers based on Aadhar has drawn some criticism. Some concerns are valid, but it would help to focus on the collateral benefits of both initiatives which, in some ways, could dwarf the original stated purpose.

Aadhar’s primary aim was to create a unique identity for Indian residents, so that the government could deliver benefits and subsidies directly, potentially saving thousands of crores of taxpayers’ money.

But one of UIDAI’s key efforts has been to expand financial inclusion by giving 250 million enrollees (so far) the option of opening bank accounts with data they submitted during enrolment. This would be ancillary to the process of touching the unbanked millions by opening no-frills accounts.

In the last two years, Indian banks added 70 million such accounts. Using Aadhar, identity for these no-frills banking transactions can now be authenticated in real time from anywhere, anytime—think of a Visa/Mastercard system which allows you access to your bank account from any ATM. Banks are already using Aadhar for this.

Now comes cash transfers. RBI figures show only 40 per cent Indians have bank accounts. New accounts with authentication capability will help millions of Indians own active ‘financial identity’. Both Aadhar and cash transfers can kickstart a host of transaction-led services and therefore enhance the consumer economy. I would focus on those outcomes.

CON VIEW
Aadhar Can’t Identify Poor, Only Eliminate Ghost Entities
N.C. SAXENA
NAC Member

Direct cash transfer is a welcome idea as it will reduce dual pricing. But let us not be too euphoric about the scheme as it has many limitations, while bringing a political advantage for the government.

Firstly, the scheme would be used in programmes targeted at the poor where identification would be a huge issue. When you talk about kerosene and fertiliser subsidies but don’t have a methodology to identify the target people, it could become a problem. This cannot be done with Aadhar. It cannot identify the rural poor. It can only eliminate ghost entities. For cash transfer to work, you need to have a good system for identification of the poor.

Also, if cash is given instead of grain, what do you do with the large amount of grains bought from the farmers? If you abolish PDS, you will also have to abolish MSP (minimum support price) as they are two sides of the same coin. In giving cash in lieu of PDS grain, we also need to look at issues like the grain rotting in our godowns and increasing open market prices. Even in healthcare, there could be the issue of doctors and hospitals charging more through tests and services.

Direct cash transfer has worked in a few countries like Belgium and Mexico where the urban population is high. But these countries have a good coverage of bank branches. In India, many rural areas don’t have bank branches. Besides, banks also charge a commission for their services.

2028 - NAC Opposed Cash Transfer Replacing PDS - Counter Currents

By Pradeep Baisakh & Aruna Roy

28 November, 2011
Countercurrents.org

Magsaysay award winner Ms Aruna Roy has been the member of National Advisory Council (NAC) headed by the UPA Chairperson Ms Sonia Gandhi in both of its Avtars and has influenced several social policies of the country. Ms Roy, also the founder member of Mazdoor Kisan Shakti Sangathan (MKSS), a people's organisation in Rajasthan recently visited to the proposed POSCO area in Jagatsingpur district in Odisha to observe the protest of people against the land acquisition there. Speaking to Pradeep Baisakh , she shares her observation on POSCO issue, on Land Acquisition Bill, on National Food security Bill and on the performance of MGNREGA in Odisha

You recently visited proposed POSCO area in Jagatsingpur district of Odisha. Please share with us your observation.

Aruna Roy: The villagers in Dhinkia are completely opposed to the project, and are unwilling to give up any of their personal, or community land. Attempts by the state government for land acquisition are being made in a legal vacuum, as the MoU of the government with POSCO has been lapsed. This makes this forcible land acquisition morally and legally unjustified.

People's democratic voices shouldn't be crushed. People's consent is a must for establishing any industrial project. This is even more important in the context of the proposed new Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation legislation.

Thousands of trees are being felled by the district administration when the project does not legally exist (MoU is yet to be renewed). How far is this defensible?

Aruna Roy: Exactly that we have to say that now there is no legal ground. Reportedly, several thousand trees approximately 40-50,000 trees have already been chopped by the administration. 

The government is planning to cut lakhs trees like Casurina casuarinas, Jackfruit, Cashew nut and Mangroves. This tree cutting activities will leave the area exposed to cyclones and other environmental disasters in an area with a very sensitive ecology. Felling of trees is completely unacceptable.

We also have observed that people there want to work but there is no Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in the area. MGNREGA has to function as this is the right of every individual. No matter what for the people of Dhinkia have protested, it's still a part of India and people of the Panchayat are citizen of this country.

The Panchayat premises occupied by the police should be vacated. We also have said that the Sarpanch of Dhinkia panchayat, who has been suspended by the state government, should be reinstated. He cannot be suspended for what law requires him to do i.e. for holding Palli Sabhas (General body of the village). This is not a constitutional violation of any sort and this is not corruption.

National Food Security bill does not say about universal PDS. Even the draft recommended by the NAC does not guarantee universal food security despite the people like you, Jean Dreze (Now is no more a member of NAC) and Harsh Mander being the members of NAC?

Aruna Roy: The NAC draft says about 90% coverage. Actually universal PDS is something we all demanded, but somehow in the process of negotiation with the GoI, it got whittled down. This was one of the most painful processes and it has been very difficult to convince government.

The government actually did not look it as the right to food and health issue of people but from the point of view of problems in storage and procurement and from financial point of views. The government bill is quite disappointing and has taken away some of the vital recommendations of NAC e.g. the grievance redressal mechanism. 

They are for putting in UID and cash transfer in it, two things that NAC totally opposed because they are very dangerous. Recently Jean Dreze and Reetika Khera did a survey and came out with the fact that PDS is doing very well in Odisha and shown signs of revival in other states too. This shows that the system as it is can function.

What's your position on introduction of fortified food? Does not it lead to corporatisation of PDS?

Aruna Roy: It is totally unacceptable. What may be the fortified food and its new definition; you have enough nutritious food in the villages which will cater to the needs of the malnourished children. What's necessary is cooking is done and hot meal is provided. And that is the most important thing.

How do you react to the Supreme Court observation that the current Land Acquisition Law should rather be thrown away?

Aruna Roy: A new land acquisition law is coming which will replace the existing law. We have suggested that the first test of the land acquisition bill and the discussion should take place in Dhinkia Panchayat, because people have been displaced from there. All that is suggesting should now be tested in action. We suggest that there should be public hearing in Dhinkia itself on the project.

You have favoured a direct negotiation by the private corporate with people and acquire land in the new land acquisition law. Do not you think there is risk of people being intimidated and cheated in the process?

Aruna Roy: Now there are so much of private investments coming, if government acquires land for them, then it will go into that business. By effect something like Singur and Nadigram will be repeated. It should limit itself acquiring land for projects which serve public purpose e.g. for government offices, schools, hospitals.

If the government acquires land for the privates, then there will be creation of land bank like in Tamil Nadu and in Karnataka. And when the land bank is traded off, the person who is dispossessed of the land gets very little money than what profits are made there after. So it becomes a business. At one level it's much more difficult for people to oppose the government than to the private industries. The government should rather play the role of a regulator in such cases. It should regulate that no land is acquired below some market price, that anyone displaced in this process should get all rights covered by the Resettlement & Rehabilitation policies or laws.

You must be aware that CBI inquiry is going on in six districts of Odisha on the allegations of corruption in MGNREGA. So much of money is flushed under MGNREA to the state which is siphoned off and distressed migration in the KBK region and beyond is actually on the rise. Is it not wastage of public money when the state government is apathetic toward its implementation?

Aruna Roy: You cannot extrapolate the Odisha experience to the whole country. I think it's the administrative failure that people are not applying for work, people are not getting jobs in time. And if you do not receive application in time and you do not give wages in time, then people will go out looking for work. I really do think that there is a conspiracy in the government in general against NREGA because you cannot siphon off money as easily as you can do in other welfare works. If you look at other rural development work those have come to us, you cannot know where and how crores of money is being siphoned off. MGNREGA is the first programme that tells that the money is siphoned off. It is because NRGEA has made mandatory that the transparency and accountability is put into system.

Especially in the areas where there are Maoist influences or suspected Maoist influences it is more than necessary that this programme functions properly to bring in basic needs to the people and ensure that there is peace. Right to food and right to 100 days employment are guarantees against starvation and deaths.

What suggestion do you have for the Odisha government to improve the performance of MGNREGA?

Aruna Roy: I met the Chief Minister about three years ago. I made a presentation on the operation of NREGA in Rajsthan. I said if you paint the basic information of NREGA on walls, like how many job cards issued, and how many people have been given how much money –so translating the MIS to what we call it as JIS-Janata Information System. So you put it on wall, people will take care of it.

Secondly, work must be given in fifteen days time and give unemployment allowance in case of default. For making this work you need political will from the Chief Minister and bureaucratic will from the Chief Secretary and the Secretary from Principal Secretary, Rural Development. Unless you have a trigger of a dated acknowledgement receipt, followed by work and payment, things will not happen. It also means improving your MIS system, whether it means improving the system of payment, it must be done.

And I think any government that neglects NREGA that does with its own risk. So much money that comes in and this money it will provide even political benefit. But to neglect it, in my opinion, is not only a tragedy for the people but also it is dangerous for both administrative and political system.

Do you basically tell that political and administrative will in the state is lacking on issues relating to implementation of MGNREGA?

Aruna Roy: Well, It seems so.

You are the member of NAC in both of its avtars . Do you think that Ms Gandhi and the central government are using NAC as a ‘safety valve' to manage the rising discontent of people owing to the kind of public (economic) policies being pursued which has widened the gap between the haves and the have-nots?

Aruna Roy: I do not believe in horoscopes. So I cannot predict nor can I read. As an activist we ask and demand for many things. If in the first NAC there had been no common minimum programme which made the commitment to the people of India and for the first time after 25 years poor and issues of poor surfaced in the political discourse. Now, whatever may be the reason for their putting on this, for people like us its important to grab whatever space we have, catch them on their commitment and make them implement it. The NREGA, the RTI, the forest rights bill and the domestic violence bill all came out of it.

There is some polarity on what the government wants and what social policies demands. It which case, it should be boosted by our public demand. 

Ultimately if we believe violent revolution, then it's different matter. But if people want peaceful change, then we are also limited in the arenas in which we can get it. We have to make wider push as much as we can in whatever space we get. So those of us who have worked in this space that is provided have tried to push the system.

Pradeep Baisakh is a Freelance Journalist based in Bhubaneswar . He has extensively written on transparency law, right to work and food, environment issues, industrialisation and development, women, tribal rights etc. He can be contacted through e mail: 2006pradeep@gmail.com .

1698 - The Officer Raj by Shekhar Gupta - Indian Express

Posted: Sat Oct 15 2011, 01:38 hrs

On the last working day of September, the Nandan Nilekani-led UID Authority received a rather clinical-sounding communication from the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG), informing him that he was sending in a team to conduct a performance audit of UPA 2’s flagship programme. This was to be a performance audit. Now, UID was not due for audit this year, so this was some kind of special initiative. And sudden too. Because on the morning of the very next working day, October 3, Monday, the CAG team was sitting in the UID offices. It was almost like a tax or CBI raid.
 

Now, you could argue either way on the constitutionality or justification behind such a sudden move, particularly when there hasn’t been even a whiff of any financial wrongdoing on the part of the UID. Even in terms of performance, its work has hardly gathered pace, so it may be much too premature for audit evaluation. But while there are no charges of wrongdoing of any kind against the UID yet, it has been dragged into a bureaucratic turf battle with some sections of the Planning Commission, and it is no secret on Raisina Hill that the opposition to the project (and the relative financial autonomy given to it) is led by Sudha Pillai, a redoubtable IAS officer now serving as secretary to the Planning Commission. 

To be fair, she has been open in questioning certain aspects of the way the project is being run. And it is probably only a coincidence that the current CAG, Vinod Rai, not only happens to be her 1972 batchmate, but also shares with her their parent cadre of Kerala.
 

We have no evidence at all of the two working in concert in any way, and so let us simply presume that each one has been acting on his/ her own, driven by bona fide doubts about the project. But what is evident is that each of them is at least individually challenging a programme so precious not only to this government, but also to the UPA’s top leadership, the Gandhis. Let’s not take a position on whether this is a good or a bad thing. Let us simply say that such things are nearly unprecedented in New Delhi.
 

If you’ve been observing our politico-bureaucratic complex closely over the past few months, you will find many such things that were hitherto unthinkable, or at least extremely rare. Some examples:
 

On July 29, Ashwani Kumar, minister of state for science and technology, threw a dinner party in honour of the new cabinet secretary and CVC, to which other senior political leaders and even top diplomats were invited. Now, how often have you seen ministers holding parties to welcome new bureaucratic appointees? In the British system we follow, in fact, the cabinet secretary is the clerk of the cabinet.
 

Just a fortnight back, the Indian Coast Guard took out advertisements (including in this paper) announcing the launch of two new ships. One of these was launched by the wife of the secretary, defence production, and the other by the wife of the joint secretary. So far, you thought these ceremonial, publicised launches were the privilege of the political class. With the politicians hiding in bunkers now, came the bureaucrats. And now their wives have joined the party too.
 

Almost every day now, you see civil servants, particularly those from economic ministries, on your TV screens. From finance to power to coal to oil and gas, almost all key economic ministries have seen their top civil servants emerge as their most visible spokespersons. On top of this bureaucratic star cast was, of course, our former home secretary G.K. Pillai. In fact, the only truly invisible civil servant is the seniormost of them all, the cabinet secretary, who, such a nice, self-effacing man, will most likely tell you that that is the way it is meant to be.
 

This government is under a legal assault of sorts from more civil servants retired from top positions than any in India’s history. At least three former chief election commissioners, one former cabinet secretary, 17 former Central government secretaries or equivalent and four former DGPs are in court, mostly with PILs, against this government. 

This list also includes a real surprise, a former air chief, Air Chief Marshal S. Krishnaswamy, who has joined a PIL questioning the appointment of directors to SEBI. And as this is being written, a group of former high-ranking government officials, led by former Union cabinet secretary T.S.R. Subramanian, and including former CEC N.

Gopalaswami among others, have filed a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the Civil Liability for Nuclear Damage Act, 2010. It seeks a stay on all proposed nuclear plants till a safety reassessment of all nuclear facilities in India and a cost-benefit analysis of nuclear plants are carried out.
 

As they would say in bureaucratese, this list is by no means conclusive, or even exhaustive. But it does give you the picture. That with the weakening of the political authority of UPA 2, with its ministers hiding in fright rather than going out to explain, support and be accountable for their decisions, our civil services are enjoying a golden era of unfettered, unquestioned power. They are controlling their ministries, with the political bosses afraid of questioning any bureaucratic input as it would later be seen as a scam by a regulator or anti-corruption watchdog (CAG, CVC, even the CBI), all totally manned by brethren in the same civil service. The result is indeed an unprecedented civil service coup.
 

You may also want to add to it the fact that most of the civil society groups — on all sides — are led by former bureaucrats (N.C. Saxena, Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander of Sonia Gandhi’s NAC; Kiran Bedi and Arvind Kejriwal of Anna’s team; and E.A.S. Sarma, B.D. Sharma and others of the anti-big project opposition loosely built around Medha Patkar). From all formulations it now also seems that the new Lokpal, whatever the nature of the final bill, would also be mostly manned by former bureaucrats, selected by a committee with a preponderance of their own former colleagues.
 

Can you blame the bureaucracy for this? Maybe not, because they are simply walking into a vacuum left behind by a political leadership which is not willing to stand up for its beliefs, convictions, or even bona fide decisions. This is the main reason it has got itself into such a jam on the 2G scam. 

With no real centre of gravity in UPA 2, its ministers are caught in an every-man-for-himself mindset. It’s been ceding ground which legitimately belongs to an elected government, to all claimants: the judiciary, civil society, RTI leaders, and now its own civil servants. The net result is this creeping acquisition of state power by the civil service. The state of this government is best characterised by that brutal, if sexist, old saying from the Hindi heartland: garib ki joru, sab ki bhaujai (a weak man’s wife is everybody’s sister-in-law).
 

Is this is a good thing, or a bad thing? Many, in fact most, of these civil servants are probably honest, well-meaning Indians — so what is wrong if they displace our bumbling politicians?
 

I am reminded of a story that former US Ambassador to India Robert Blackwill says he would tell routinely to his students at Harvard University’s Kennedy School. Bureaucrats, he said, were like doctors and nurses in the emergency ward of a hospital. When a patient was wheeled in, their job was to follow Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) and wait for the specialists (the political leaders) to arrive next morning. The politicians would then decide what to do with the patient, and the bureaucrats would, in turn, implement those instructions. 

But you can imagine what would happen if people trained to follow SOPs took over the job of the specialists in a country as challenging to govern as India. The result would be a government in deep freeze, incapable of taking decisions, running on mere SOPs. In brief, a government in the emergency ward, which is as good a way as any to describe UPA 2 today.
 

sg@expressindia.com

1420 - Kept out of the list - Source Hindustan Times

Hars Mander

Hindustan Times
June 20, 2011

On a hot midsummer afternoon in May, I joined an unusual protest outside India's Planning Commission in New Delhi. The protesters displayed placards, raised slogans, but also brought boxes as 'gifts' for members of the apex planning body The gifts were refused and the protesters dispersed by the police after mild altercation.

According to the report of the expert group appointed by the plan panel, chaired by Suresh Tendulkar, to estimate levels of poverty in India, a person is poor if she spends, at 2004-05 prices, less than Rs 20 a day in cities, or Rs 16 in rural India. At today's prices, this means that a person is not poor if she is able to pay out more than Rs 23 in a village or Rs 29 rupees a day in a city.

The 'gifts' that the protestors from the Right to Food Campaign carried were cardboard boxes filled with what could be bought for R29 a day in Delhi, the ceiling to qualify in the government's definition of poverty. One box had two bus tickets of Rs 15 each, the cost of travel to and from work. This would leave nothing for food or any other essentials. Another box contained half a pencil, 25 grams of rajma beans, four pieces of okra, 25 grams of flour and one arm of a shirt. In another were stuffed 50 grams of masoor dal, half a shirt for a child, beans for one meal and 50 grams of washing powder. One more box had half a soap bar, half a banana, five pieces of okra, half a notebook and half a toothbrush.

The placards were more stark: 'Poor person allowed to eat only half a katori of dal everyday'; 'Fruits poor people can eat every month — two bananas; two shirts and two pants — all that a poor person can buy every year — what about warm clothes?'; 'Poor family allowed to spend on conveyance — Rs 50 per month. If commuting by bus, minimum daily fare — Rs 10'.

This creative protest illuminated the absurd assumptions on which official poverty lines are fixed. Tendulkar's report claims its poverty line is derived from official household expenditure surveys "validated by checking the adequacy of actual private expenditure per capita near the poverty lines on food, education and health and by comparing them with normative expenditures consistent with nutritional, educational and health outcomes". But I find it hard to comprehend what kind of validation would arrive at a poverty threshold which normatively allows the poor so little.

I work with street children in Delhi. A young boy recycling plastic and other waste earns an average of Rs 120 a day. This is four times higher than the official poverty line. In the eyes of our learned planners, the homeless child is positively wealthy. But he sleeps under the open sky or on the railway platform, he is routinely thrashed by policemen and sexually abused by older men, he often scrounges for food in rubbish heaps, he has to pay each time he bathes or defecates in a public toilet, he is barred from health care in public hospitals and no school will open its doors for him.

Poverty has many dimensions. Its economic aspects include low income, poor consumption including of food, few assets such as land and household goods and low-paid, uncertain and casual livelihoods. But it also manifests in poor access to public services like clean drinking water, sanitation, healthcare and education. It involves social discrimination and devaluation, such as of gender, caste and religious identity and political powerlessness. But planners estimating poverty include only those elements which can be counted — economic dimensions such as consumption and household expenditure. Even estimating these involves many unrealistic assumptions, normatively condemning the poor to bleak deprived lives, on standards which would be inconceivable for the middle classes. It is as though the rich and poor live on different planets.

What is deeply worrying is that applying even these absolutely rock-bottom indicators of poverty — more starvation line than poverty line — the expert group estimates that more than a third of our people are poor. If the government adopts more humane poverty line thresholds, such as the internationally accepted $2  a day (adjusted for purchasing power parity), it is likely that the numbers would be closer to 74%, as estimated by the World Bank.

If official estimates of poverty were just of academic interest, their vision of what life is acceptable for India's poor would be troubling enough. But the government in recent decades has used these highly depressed estimates of poverty to limit access to social services — such as subsidised food, free medical care, social security pensions for the aged, and cheap housing — to people the government identifies as poor. The problem is compounded by the government's inability to identify not just how many people are poor but who actually is poor, and official studies indicate that 60% of the impoverished are left out of government lists of the 'poor'.

An enormous chasm separates planners and economists, and indeed the middle classes, from the lived realities of impoverished people in India. Unless this is bridged, they will continue to assume that poor people can live with dignity at the price of two bus tickets each day.

Harsh Mander is director, Centre for Equity Studies. The views expressed by the author are personal.

1357 - NAC members protest against plan panel's move for new poverty line - Source- Times of India

Nitin Sethi, May 24, 2011, 04.12am IST
 

NEW DELHI: A spoon, 25 grams of dal, half a slice of bread, some washing powder and a torn piece of kurta, in total worth Rs 20. That is what three key National Advisory Council members -- Jean Dreze, Aruna Roy and Harsh Mander -- brought for the deputy chairman of Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia on Monday protesting against the Rs 20 per day person expenditure poverty line it has decided upon as a cut off.

The three NAC members led a group of about 60-70 noisy protestors carrying dozens of packets – all worth Rs 20 – and asked the Planning Commission members to survive a day in Delhi on the contents and shouted slogans waving placards mocking the poverty line

The presence of the trio, who have been locked in an argument against the 'fiscal prudence wallahs' in the government while pushing for an expansive food security bill, marked a scaling up of the battle between the two sides.

They were leading the Right To Food campaigners protesting against how the Planning Commission defines poverty in the country.

The storm had been brewing since the Planning Commission impleaded itself in the case in the Supreme Court and claimed that an expenditure of Rs 20 per day on essentials for those living in urban areas and Rs 15 for those living in rural India was enough to keep them out of poverty and, therefore, out of government's social safety net.

The poverty line of Rs 20 works out from the Rs 578 per month per capita expenditure Planning Commission considers ample for a city dweller to survive on. This, as per their report, includes Rs 31 a month on rent and conveyance, Rs 18 a month on education, Rs 25 a month on medicines and Rs 36.5 a month on vegetables. Anyone spending a paisa more than this is officially not poor.

The three would have been well aware that their presence at the protest would mark a public declaration that they were not backing off from the confrontation with the Prime Minister's Office and the Plan panel, the latter being as determined that food subsidies have to be kept low despite the food security bill.

Earlier the apex court too had suggested to the government to relook at whether spending Rs 20 kept people well fed and above the poverty line.

When the protestors gathered at Yojna Bhawan they were whisked away by the police and later released. The Plan panel members refused to meet them but later in the evening the deputy chairman met 15 of them which included Jean Dreze.

Montek got his packet of goodies. The gathering handed over the Rs 20 packets -- including combs, a little dal, some rice grains, a band aid, and other essentials -- for his colleagues as well. But he stuck to his position, said one of the protestors who got to meet Singh. He instead suggested they meet Kaushik Basu, the chief economic advisor to the finance ministry. Basu has made a strong pitch for dismantling the grain distribution system and shift to cash transfers.

The meeting only produced one result – both sides came out sure that the other is not going to budge from its position anytime soon.