South Asia Citizens Wire | March 9-10, 2007 | Dispatch No. 2374 - Year 9 [1] Pakistan: Regulating Democracy (I A Rehman) [2] Sri Lanka: Island in crisis (Ahilan Kadirgamar) [3] India: There's a great need for equal rights (Teesta Setalvad) [4] India: There is no civil society in Gujarat' (Achut Yagnik) [5] India : Bombs Not Food - Priorities of the State (i) Neglect of Children under 6 in the Budget 2007-2008 - Concerned Citizens letter to the Prime Minister (ii) Empty Stomachs and The Union Budget (Jean Drèze)
____ [1] Dawn March 08, 2007 REGULATING DEMOCRACY by I. A. Rehman WHAT is common in the creation of a committee to screen the ruling party's parliamentarians for a new term, the organisation of an election cell in Punjab, the 'disappearance' of the PPP- Patriots, and the new parliamentary rules of conduct? The answer is: the working of a democratic system regulatory authority. The omens are unsavoury. All parties scrutinise, or should scrutinise, the performance of their parliamentary representatives at the time of examining their request for party tickets in a new election. Traditionally this has been done by bodies all parties describe as parliamentary boards. The scheme is supposed to work like this: A board studies the credentials of candidates seeking the party ticket in each constituency, including the sitting member of a house as well as new aspirants to elective office. The board may award the party ticket to the sitting legislator or may dump him in favour of a new candidate. At least in the bad old days before independence there used to be an appellate board to hear the cases of all those who were aggrieved by the decision of the first parliamentary board.In the course of vulgarisation of politics in Pakistan, and elsewhere too, deviations from this scheme may have become common, and the parliamentary candidates' selection may have been reserved for the party supremo, but democratic politics knows no other way of choosing party representatives for any assignments. The criteria for selecting party candidates for elected bodies is not written in any manual. To an extent a good candidate is a person who understands and is committed to his/her party's manifesto and has appreciable support in the constituency he/she wishes to represent. There may be other considerations, some in accord with democratic norms and some others repugnant to them. But the exercise is quite different from ACR writing by bureaucrats, and it is fairly transparent. The committee reportedly set up to open dossiers on the ruling party parliamentarians is quite a different fish. Apparently, instead of a party outfit, it is an official entity, paid for by the state, and accountable to the government only. And its functioning is secret. Whatever the objectives of the exercise, and it is not difficult to imagine what these can be, the whole approach is anti-democratic. It amounts to regulating elections in a manner alien to democratic politics. It reveals the same thought process that had earlier given us some ugly concepts such as 'controlled democracy' and 'guided democracy'. No dissimilar is the premises of the high-level election cell created in the Punjab province. Any political party may create a cell to prepare constituency profiles, identify established vote banks in the country, and analyse the success/failure of candidates in preceding elections. This is good politics. The same cannot be said, however, about an election cell created by the state and functioning secretly. Something could be said in its favour if its findings were meant to be offered to students of electoral politics, research scholars, media persons and the public at large. That cannot be the purpose of a secret undertaking. Since the people can recall the working of similar cells on the eve of and during general elections in the past, it is impossible to dismiss the thought that the present cell has been established to continue tits predecessors' mission, that is, to manipulate elections in favour of the entrenched establishment. Regulated democracy begins with regulated polls. There is nothing surreptitious about the disappearance of one of the establishment's auxiliary companies known as PPP-Patriots. Their merger with the PML (Q) may be likened to formalisation of a partnership into a more popularly acceptable bond. For all political purpose, the worthies concerned have for years been in the camp they have now notified as their permanent address. But for this they have had to add some adverse remarks to those they had attracted in 2002. The worldly-wise are offering several explanations - that as PPP - Patriots they could receive no accommodation with the present masters of Punjab or that they would have become homeless in the event of government's understanding with the flock from which they had broken away. There may be some substance in these theories but a more decisive cause of the awakening of the honourable patriots seem to be the regulatory authority's known discomfort with diversity and its insistence on gathering its forces under a single or unified command. What has revealed to the people the most easily recognizable (so far) portrait of the democracy regulatory authority is the adoption of a new code to punish parliamentarians who can be so ill-mannered as to violate the rules of decorum, make noise (unauthorised, that is ) in the holy chamber, and criticise the president, the armed forces or the judiciary. The message is: the dictum that democracy is a messy affair does not hold good in Pakistan, here will be grown a thoroughly sanitised brand of democracy in which nobody is out of step, nobody stirs, and nobody raises his/her voice higher than a whisper. Regulated democracy, in plain words. Let us take note of some amusing statements made by privileged citizens in justification of the new code. It has been said that criticism of the armed forces and the judiciary is already prohibited in the Constitution and now only president has been added to them. The statement can easily be assailed. The constitutional provision under reference is contained in Article 63 (g) and it runs as follows: " 63. A person shall be disqualified from being elected or chosen as, and from being, a member of the Majlis-i- Shura (Parliament) if (g) he is propagating any opinion, or acting in any manner, prejudicial to the ideology of Pakistan, or the sovereignty, integrity or security of Pakistan, or morality, or maintenance of law and order, or the integrity or independence of the judiciary of Pakistan, or which defames or brings into ridicule the judiciary or the armed forces of Pakistan." While invoking this provision to justify the new rules of procedure, two points need to be noted. First, democratic opinion has never accepted this sub-section, as well as the other eligibility tests for members of parliament arbitrarily devised by Gen. Ziaul Haq. The restrictions on parliamentarians interfere with their responsibilities as defenders of public interest. Now they are being made liable to arbitrary punishment Hence democratic opinion has consistently demanded repeal of the clauses added to Articles 62 and 63 by Gen. Zia Secondly, the authors of the new rules of procedure seem to assume that any criticism of an institution, such as the judiciary or the armed forces, amounts to defaming it or bringing it into ridicule. The proposition is simply preposterous. It has been argued that the Speaker has been given additional powers to control unruly conduct by parliamentarians in order to ensure peace and proper decorum in the house during a presidential address. The lack of such guarantees is said to have been the main reason that General Pervez Musharraf has not addressed the parliament he himself brought into being. What this matter involves is a strategy for dealing with opposition elements in the parliament. Assuming for the sake of argument that those who created noise or sought to disrupt presidential address in the past violated a sacred code of behaviour, the question is whether threats of punishment is the only way to deal with them. The democratic system does provide for resolution of such matters through government-opposition negotiations and issue-based understanding. Unfortunately, however, authority in Pakistan seems to believe that those opposed to it are only fit to be put on the chopping block. Much has been said in denigration of the popular modes of political expression the people have followed for decades. For them politics means congregation in open space, processions, slogan-mongering in streets, and the excitement of thrust and counter-thrust in political fencing. The regulatory authority wants to put an end to all this, all that gives democracy its colour and vibrancy. This is a recipe for depoliticisation of society. And we are already witnessing the result of this operation. Democracy does not suffer decline by being noisy and messy, but the imposition of garrison discipline will surely choke it to death. This country needs more and more articulate, even angry, defenders of the rights of the poor and the marginlised and not tongueless models of obsequiousness that react neither to the rapacity of the privileged nor the despair of families driven to suicide by hunger and want. There must come a day when a Pakistani citizen does not have to cry out 'chali hai rasm keh koi na sar utha kai chaley.' ______ [2] Hindustan Times March 8, 2007 ISLAND IN CRISIS by Ahilan Kadirgamar The absence of State effort to put in place human rights mechanisms has aggravated the war in Sri Lanka. For matters to improve, Colombo must rein in State-linked violations Situations of armed conflict lead to grave human rights abuses. In Sri Lanka, the absence of human rights mechanisms and protection has led to the escalation of an undeclared war. The Norway-facilitated Ceasefire Agreement (CFA) between the Sri Lankan government and the LTTE has collapsed. Many argue that the seminal failure of the Norwegian peace process was the lack of an adequate human rights agreement and corresponding monitoring. The LTTE took advantage of the CFA during the early years of the peace process, including its provisions to do political work in government-controlled territory, to carry out political killings and child recruitment with impunity. The killings that were initially limited to the LTTE's Tamil opponents spilled over to target military personnel and eventually even the Foreign Minister on August 12, 2005. A year later to the day, human rights and peace activist Kethesh Loganathan, then deputy head of the government peace secretariat, was gunned down the by the LTTE. While the LTTE's human rights abuses and its intransigence are nothing new, what is worrying is the rapid descent of the Sri Lankan security forces to their despicable practices of the early 1990s. The Karuna faction, a breakaway faction of the LTTE now working closely with the security forces, has made matters worse. Sri Lanka has witnessed an orgy of abuses by multiple actors. Grave abuses contained in the last decade, such as disappearances, abductions, rape and torture, are back to haunt us with a vengeance. If the State wants to, it can contain the abuses by checking the security forces and reining in the Karuna faction. The latter in its present form is a failure of the Norwegians, who froze a two-party peace process and created conditions for the LTTE to obliterate its breakaway faction. This allowed the Sri Lankan establishment to take it under its wing. The undeclared war - over 4,000 dead, over 250,000 internally displaced and another 16,000 finding refuge in India last year - has proved costly for the Tamil community in the North and East. Furthermore, Tamils in the heart of Colombo have also been subject to arbitrary detentions, disappearances, extortion and humiliation by State-linked forces. While LTTE threats forced the new Vice Chancellor of Jaffna University, Jeevan Hoole, to flee the country, the Vice Chancellor of the Eastern University, Raveendran, has disappeared after alleged abduction by State-linked forces from a high security zone in Colombo. The attacks on the Vice Chancellors are a grim foreboding for the Tamil community, which placed a premium on academic excellence. The extension of abuse in Colombo would have been the ultimate shame for any other government. But in Sri Lanka, even the abduction and extortion of the Tamil business elite and the assassination of a member of Parliament, Raviraj, in broad daylight seems to have set a norm. The government, effectively now an oligarchy leaning towards militarists and Sinhala chauvinists, appears not to care. The cry that one expects more from a democratic government than a fascist group such as the LTTE seems to be falling on deaf ears. And the international community is increasingly finding it embarrassing and annoying to pretend that business is as usual in Colombo. It is in this disturbing climate that the fourth session of the UN Human Rights Council begins proceedings in Geneva on March 12, 2007. Will the council, to which Sri Lanka was elected, take note of the island nation's dismal record and act? Will India take the necessary step of leading a multilateral diplomatic initiative to pressure Sri Lanka to address its human rights situation and move on a political solution? The engagement at the UN forums last year was propelled by the interventions of UN Special Rapporteur on Extrajudicial Killings, Philip Alston, calling for a UN human rights monitoring mission in Sri Lanka. Colombo, to deflect attention from such monitoring, has appointed a Presidential Commission of Inquiry. It needs to deliver by showing a pattern of State complicity in at least some of their 15 mandated cases of grave human rights abuses. This does not in any way reject the need for UN human rights monitoring. If the government musters the political will, it can immediately rein in the State-linked violations and create an environment for a political solution. However, that may depend on Sri Lankans concerned about human rights taking a firm stand coupled with international pressure led by India. Ahilan Kadirgamar is a human rights activist with the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum ______ [3] [ http://communalism.blogspot.com/2007/03/theres-great-need-for-equal-rights.html ] Deccan Herald March 9, 2007 THERE'S A GREAT NEED FOR EQUAL RIGHTS by Teesta Setalvad Curiously, it was just this cleverly coined word, appeasement, (read tushtikaran) of the Muslim minority, more than any other coinage that can be credited to have resulted in the soaring success graph of the sangh parivar's hate politics into the mind and vocabulary of large sections of India's largest religious minority through the 1980s and 1990s. Aggressive, if mindless street politics by a carefully cultivated religio-political leadership among the largest minority that was caught in a time warp when it came to expressions of protest especially in relation to the Indian state's relationship with one half of its population, the Muslim woman, contributed to the shifting and hardening of stances against all Muslims in general. When protests on the streets from the minority were seen and heard, they easily took the form and shape of a threat to keep away from personal laws of the community, even if the aim was to empower and enable divorced or deserted Muslim women. The result was that the Indian state passed, in 1986, in Parliament, an Act that in fact disempowered the Muslim woman by keeping her out of the rights guaranteed under Indian penal law to all women but this action of the Indian state, pushed by a belligerent Muslim community leadership, is remembered in public memory as the symbol of Muslim appeasement. Other protests that often took ludicrous forms especially given the syncretic culture of the sub-continent with its centuries-old Sufi-Bhakti traditions included, for instance, protest against the start of an occasion through lighting the lamp (a pervasive tradition in Kerala and the South, especially) and even for Friday holidays! All these combined, successfully kept the image of this vibrant minority community that is as diverse, rich and plural as any other Indian community or caste, confined for those among the Hindus and the elite who wished not to look beyond the surreptitious propaganda of the sangh, or those who actually believed it anyway and found, with the propaganda, a convenient anchor to peg their belief. As the word appeasement threatens to surface once again in the wake of the recently released Sachar committee report, it would be wise for all, politicians and media included, to recall this recent history. For any society, country or nation, the graph of comparative access and development is a matter of collective appraisal, either pride or shame. Just as the denial of space, access and rights for the minority black population in the USA right until the 1960s, the results of the shocking, if not gross findings of the Sachar committee reveal that the Indian state has led the Muslim minority down. Even the communist-run states have questions to answer, with the onus on 'Hindu' society to answer. Global growth rate however inflationary is revelled in, stock market surges are celebrated but have we so lost the capacity to critique ourselves that we accept institutionalised discrimination against our largest minority-that can only be the result of active bias - without so much as the blinking of an eye? Sixty years of independence as a democracy ought to bring maturity and reason into the polity and searching self-criticism into all institutions of democratic governance. A question that begs a reply is how come in two fields with mass appeal, Bollywood and sports, it has not been possible to keep the Muslims out? The zippy run-up and in swing of Irfan Pathan, from a bruised and battered Vadodara in Gujarat, who is one of the icons of Indian cricket nationalism today. Or the Aamir, Shahrukh and Salman Khans, who are the heart throbs of millions! Azim Premji, a corporate giant and self-confident Sania Mirza are the icing on this cake. Clearly in those fields and arenas of free and fair play, Muslims can and do excel, on their own, and need no prop. As high as 55 per cent of India's vibrant artisan class - self-employed and ignored by the present development paradigm - is also Muslim, be they the extradordinary weavers of Benarasi silk, or those that create skilled embroideries on fabric, be it the Kutchi or Lucknowi chicken variety. Faced with 400 pages of the revealing Sachar committee report, that contains as many as 150 pages of carefully and meticulously tabulated graphs, it is time for India as a whole, especially its articulate, privileged sections to sit up and take notice. A retired bureaucrat who had covered many a site of bitter communal strife in north India in the seventies and eighties had this to say about the landscape in Uttar Pradesh: "A Hindu area can be spotted or marked with the existence of a school, a Muslim area with the existence of a police station!" Stark words that deserve some serious consideration. Rationally, not through the hysterical dialectic being adopted by the BJP's think-tank on the eve of the elections in Uttar Pradesh. Equal rights, equal access and non-discrimination should be the demand of all including minority organisations. A close monitor on access in and to educational institutions and arenas for employment can only be ensured through a Non-Discrimination Officer who is available to register complaints of denial and discrimination. A mature and inclusive Indian democracy and polity must not, and cannot let the Sachar committee report, with its findings and recommendations become the victim of narrow, divisive, hate-filled politics. Implementation of the Sachar committee report is a challenge to all Indian political parties, saffron included. The pathetic status of the Indian Muslim, socially and economically, in areas where there are structural glass ceilings of bias in place is a challenge first and foremost to the secular, Indian state and then to elitist, privileged Hindu India. (The writer is co-editor of 'Communalism Combat'.) ------ [4] rediff.com THERE IS NO CIVIL SOCIETY IN GUJARAT' March 7, 2007 Ahmedabad-based Achyut Yagnik, 62, author, thinker and social activist, and co-author Suchitra Sheth are engaged in writing the history of Ahmedabad, which will turn 600 years old in 2011. Their acclaimed last book, The Shaping of Modern Gujarat: Plurality, Hindutva and Beyond, was shortlisted for the Crossword Book Awards 2006. Yagnik has also co-authored Creating a Nationality: Ramjanmabhoomi Movement and Fear of the Self with noted sociologist Ashis Nandy. >From 1970 to 1980, Yagnik was a journalist and trade unionist. Then, he became general secretary of the People's Union for Civil Liberties, Gujarat. In Ahmedabad, he leads SETU: Centre for Social Knowledge and Action, a social organisation working among the vulnerable communities in western India. Yagnik, who studied religion and nationalism at university, has strong views on the middle class of Gujarat. And he speaks fearlessly against what he says is the dominance of the upper class in Gujarati politics. Through his writings Yagnik has been trying to explain why Gujarat, which has absorbed diverse people like the Turks, the Portuguese and the Marathas for centuries, today appears insular and parochial, making even the release of commercial Hindi films a difficult issue. Yagnik debates with Managing Editor Sheela Bhatt his views on the last five years of Gujarat after Godhra. Five years have passed after the Godhra carnage and the communal riots. How do you evaluate those events? By and large, Gujarat has remained peaceful, except the incident of violence in Baroda over the issue of the demolition of a dargah. When I say peaceful, you must remember that it is peace without justice. It is peace without remorse. The Muslim minority -- who were attacked, harassed and marginalised -- is waiting for justice. You hardly find remorse in the urban middle class of Gujarat. That is very disturbing. However, we must note that in 2002, except in Rajkot and Bhavnagar, virtually nothing happened in Saurashtra, Kutch and south of the Narmada. The main theatres of violence were north and central Gujarat and urban centres like Baroda and Ahmedabad. In these areas there is further ghettoisation. In Mehsana and in some villages of tribal Gujarat, Muslim families are unable to go back to their homes. In Himmatnagar, Visnagar and Vijapur, you find that Muslims are being further marginalised in society. In Ahmedbad, Juhapura has evolved as the biggest ghetto of Muslims. It was continuously neglected by civil corporations and the state government for many years. The Juhapura area has a Juhapura village but it also includes some other villages like Sarkhej. It is believed that out of the 300,000 population, 90 percent are Muslims. Nationalised banks are not opening their branches here. It is not just the state government that is neglecting Muslim areas, even the central government is doing so. It is so because the bureaucracy involved here at the local level has also internalised anti-Muslim images and emotions. Many buses are not passing through this area. Only in July 2006, Juhapura has become a part of the Ahmedabad Corporation. Now we will have to wait and see how development activity picks up here. We shall compare it with other areas. On one hand Muslims themselves are moving towards Juhapura out of fear, anxiety and insecurity, and on the other hand you realise that the majority is neglecting them more and more. You said it is peace without remorse. Why? For the riots of 2002, the state government was responsible. The state machinery didn't work at all. Over and above the state government, you also find that the Gujarati middle class is equally responsible. They refuse to analyse the situation. They refuse to look at their own face in the mirror. Why? it is an interesting question. You can say it is unfortunate. But I am not in a position to give you the reason why the Gujarati middle class has no remorse. I can look back 25 years. I know how in the 1980s we saw the emergence of the politics of the upper castes. In 1981, and later in 1985, for the first time we saw violence against Dalits. In 1990, we saw that the politics of the upper castes was fully converted into Hindutva. The Sangh Parivar played a significant role in Hinduisation. They played an important role in shaping the worldview of the Gujarati urban middle class. Along with the Sangh, we should also take note of various modern Hindu religious sects. They have not come out against the violence and they are not talking about Gandhiji's Arva Dharma Sambhav. They are talking about classical Hinduism without the ethical or Bhakti traditions of Gujarat. The religious sects of Gujarat are playing a very crucial role in inducting Hindutva amongst their followers. They are spreading Hindu cultural nationalism. In that process, non-resident Gujaratis also played a significant role. Abroad, they are in a minority. Many of them, while living in different countries, think they are second class citizens. Their identity problem shifts here because a large number of non-resident Gujaratis in the Western world have their relatives in urban Gujarat in upper caste society. The emergence of upper caste politics, which got transformed into Hindutva politics, and the role of religious sects are helping this transformation. If you analyse their lectures they are talking about the Gita without talking of non-violence. Gujarat's Bhakti tradition spoke about plurality but that message is not highlighted today. I think the popular religious leaders of Gujarat don't want to disturb their equation with the middle class and also with the political and social establishment. If central government employees are not opening bank branches in Juhapura, it is not because of the Hindus. The close-knit Muslim community is seen as posing a security problem. The Muslims in Gujarat are not a homogenous community. All the Muslims living in Juhapura are not criminals. In the same way, you can't say all Gujarati Hindus are communal. I have already told you that in Kutch, Saurashtra and south of the Narmada people are living in peace and harmony. My question was regarding Juhapura. If banks are not opening their branches easily then don't you think the community also has to answer? The community in Juhapura wants more banks and other government offices. But within the banking world, the authority lies in hands of upper class people. And they are not responding to the demands of Muslims. You can't say all the 300,000 people living in Juhapura are communal. Nobody is saying all Muslims in Juhapura are criminals, but questions are raised about the lack of response from the Muslim community too. What kind of responsibility you are talking about? This is the problem with the perception of upper class banking officers. A city that is divided and segmented like Ahmedabad is not even good for the development of Ahmedabad. How can you make Ahmedabad a mega city where there are walls within walls? When there are boundaries, some areas known as 'Chhote Pakistan'? Even Dalits are not allowed within upper caste areas. Now Dalits are forming their own housing societies. Nobody is talking about the marginalisation of Dalits by the same people who marginalised Muslims. Why is civil society not taking up the issue? There is no civil society in Gujarat. At the beginning of the 21st century Ahmedabad is at the crossroads. Godhra changed Gujarat's image for the first time but the changes within Ahmedabad started in the 1980s. Riots occurred frequently through the 1980s and 1990s. You cannot understand 2002 in isolation. But for non-Gujaratis the earlier riots of 1985 or 1989 or 1990 were not that important. Because the 2002 riots were the first televised riots of India, it became different. The media's reach played a role also. As a result, large numbers of writers in the Western world are not looking at Gujarat as Gandhi's Gujarat or mercantile Gujarat. From the viewpoint of the image of Gujarat, 2002 was the watershed event. Within Gujarat, the media, academicians and upper caste think outsiders are anti-Gujarat. Personally, I am worried about intellectual poverty in Gujarat. Take the example of the Sahitya Parishad, which celebrated its centenary in 2006. A centenary ago the same Parishad was talking about an inclusive Gujarat but now writers are talking in the language of Hindutva. Professor Ganesh Devi is a professor of English working in the tribal areas of Gujarat and working on the tribal dialect. He criticised the riots, so a number of writers attacked Devi in literary journals. They threaten to boycott the annual event organised at Devi's institute. The Parishad was forced to change the venue. This is very suggestive. The events of 2002 have not created any new waves in literature. Ranjitram, founder of the Parishad, was talking of an inclusive Gujarat. Poet Khabardar was talking about Hindus, Muslims and Parsis in his poems. The great poet Nanalal gave powerful expression to the plurality of Gujarat. In 1960, the Gujarat state was created. Then, Sundaram and Umashanker Joshi were talking about pluralist Gujarat. Now, that voice is hardly heard. The cultural leadership of Gujarat has failed in projecting the greatness of Gujarat. Once, the great poet Narmad asked: Koni, koni che (Gujarat? Gujarat belongs to whom?) He said Gujarat belongs to not only Aryans and Hindus -- but those who came from outside and are settled here and who speak Gujarati are Gujaratis. Gujarat belongs to people who speak Gujarati. Now, in the universities of Gujarat, top appointments are made only if the educationalists and writers voice Hindutva views. There is a vacuum and intellectual poverty in cultural organisations. The present generation of Gujarat has only witnessed anti-Muslim or anti-Dalit propaganda and violence. How would they get the correct messages and from where? The youth is not trained to look within. Don't miss the second part of the interview where Achyut Yagnik decodes Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. ______ [5] [Bombs Not Food - Priorities of the Indian State] o o o (i) http://www.sacw.net/Nation/Letter_PM_Finalpdf.pdf LETTER TO THE PRIME MINISTER OF INDIA 5 March 2007 Dr. Manmohan Singh Prime Minister of India Dear Prime Minister, Neglect of Children Under Six in the Union Budget 2007-8 We are writing to express our deep concern about the neglect of children under six in the Union Budget 2007-8. You may remember meeting some of us on 19 December 2006 (just after "Bal Adhikar Samvad"), when we discussed the FOCUS Report, the rights of children under six, and the recent Supreme Court judgement on ICDS. At that time you had assured us that the UPA Government was committed to the universalization of ICDS, as stated in the Common Minimum Programme (CMP), and also to the implementation of the Supreme Court judgement. We are, therefore, startled and dismayed that this commitment is not reflected at all in the Union Budget 2007-8. The allocation for ICDS (Rs 4,761 crores) has barely increased in real terms, and is virtually unchanged as a proportion of GDP. It is a mystery to us how the CMP commitment and Supreme Court judgement can possibly be implemented within such meagre budget allocations. The Supreme Court judgement requires an increase in the number of Anganwadis from the present 9.4 lakhs to 14 lakhs at the very least by December 2008. Higher allocations are also required to enhance the quality of ICDS services. Based on fairly conservative calculations of the requirements of "universalization with quality", the National Advisory Council had recommended (in November 2004) an allocation of at least Rs 9,600 crores for ICDS in 2007-8. This figure needs upward revision in the light of the Supreme Court judgement, yet the actual provision in the Union Budget 2007-8 is not even half of this conservative estimate. As per this Budget, the Government of India will be spending less than Rs 5,000 crores this year on children under six, who represent more than 15 per cent of India's population. This compares with Rs 96,000 crores to be spent on "defence". This is a staggering and unacceptable imbalance in Budget priorities. The contrast is all the more shocking at a time of growing evidence (particularly from the National Family Health Survey) that there has been no substantial improvement in infant and young child nutrition, including optimal breastfeeding practices, during the last eight years, in spite of runaway economic growth. We urge you to intervene and ensure a fairer deal for children in the Union Budget 2007-8 as well as in the 11th Plan. We also take this opportunity to reiterate our appeal for more active political leadership on children's issues, including the universalization of ICDS. Yours Sincerely, Jean Dreze N.C.Saxena Shantha Sinha Aruna Roy (Allahabad University) (former Secretary, (M.V.Foundation) (National Campaign for Planning Commission) People's Right to Information) Kavita Srivastava Harsh Mander Vandana Prasad Arun Gupta (People's Union (Centre for Equity (Jan Swasthya Abhiyan) (Breastfeeding Promotion for Civil Liberties) Studies) Network of India) Annie Raja Veena Shatrugna Sudha Sundararaman (National Federation (National Institute (All India Democratic For Indian Women) of Nutrition) Women's Association) cc: Mrs. Sonia Gandhi (Chairperson, UPA), Shri P. Chidambaram (Finance Minister), Dr. Montek S. Ahluwalia (Deputy Chairman, Planning Commission) o o o (ii) The Hindu Mar 09, 2007 EMPTY STOMACHS AND THE UNION BUDGET by Jean Drèze The need of the hour is to increase expenditure under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. FINANCE MINISTER P. Chidambaram's recent budget speech leaves no doubt about the priorities of economic policy in India today. The Minister endorses the 11th Plan's "declared goal" of "faster and more inclusive growth," but the fine print makes it clear that his main concern is with "faster." Human development is little more than a footnote, and is even invoked at the end of the speech to justify the single-minded focus on faster economic growth: "Our human and gender development indices are low not because of high growth but because growth is not high enough." This odd statement trivialises any possible dissent with the growth-centred strategy by equating such dissent with the foolish claim that India's human development indicators are low "because of high growth." The concluding sentence of the speech drives the last nail in the coffin of the critics by quoting Nobel Laureate Mohammad Yunus to the effect that there is "no other trick" than faster growth to achieve rapid poverty reduction. A useful test of the government's commitment to "more inclusive growth" is the priority attached to the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), which came into force in February 2006 in the country's poorest 200 districts. Two years ago, the National Advisory Council (NAC) estimated that fair implementation of the Act in these 200 districts would require an annual expenditure of about Rs.20,000 crore, or Rs.100 crore per district on average. As it happens, expenditure levels in the better-performing districts are right on track. Rajasthan, for instance, has already spent Rs.600 crore in its six NREGA districts. But in the country as a whole, NREGA expenditure per district was barely Rs.30 crore by the end of January 2007 - about one third of the NAC benchmark. The case of Dungarpur district in Rajasthan is particularly interesting because the findings of recent "social audits" conducted there give reasonable confidence that the money has reached the intended persons. For instance, large-scale verification of "muster rolls" uncovered little evidence of significant fudging. According to official data, NREGA expenditure in Dungarpur (a relatively small district) is already well over Rs.100 crore. Almost every rural household has a job card, and the average job cardholder had already worked for about 70 days under the NREGA by the end of January. This is an unprecedented achievement in the history of social security in India, which points to the enormous potential of the NREGA as a tool of "inclusive growth." The positive experiences in Dungarpur and elsewhere also lend support to the hopes that have been placed in the potential achievements of the Act, whether it is in terms of enhancing food security, or reducing distress migration, or activating the Gram Sabhas, or empowering disadvantaged groups (notably women, Dalits, and Adivasis). The need of the hour is to extend these positive experiences across the country, and to raise NREGA expenditure levels much closer to the NAC projections. Instead, the Finance Ministry continues its crusade against the Employment Guarantee Act. It is an open secret that the Ministry opposed the NREGA (the "expensive gravy train", in the words of a former Chief Economic Adviser) from the beginning. Indeed, it played a leading role in the attempted dilution of the NREGA draft prepared by the National Advisory Council. When this failed, the Finance Ministry insisted on the inclusion of a so-called "anti-corruption clause," which gives sweeping powers to the Central Government to discontinue NREGA funding on the flimsiest suspicion of "improper utilisation of funds." As the Act came into force, the Finance Ministry restricted the financial allocation for administrative expenses to two per cent of total costs, making it very hard to implement the NREGA in States that do not have readymade arrangements for implementing large-scale public works. And in the run-up to the Union budget 2007-08, the Finance Ministry opposed the Ministry of Rural Development's demand for extension of the NREGA to another 200 districts. As the Rural Development Minister, Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, politely said in a recent interview to Business Standard, "the Planning Commission and Finance Ministry are not showing interest in funding the programme." In more agitated moments he often castigates North Block as an "anti-rural, anti-poor lobby." With a little help from the Prime Minister's Office, the Finance Ministry eventually agreed to extend the NREGA to an additional 130 districts. But there is a catch: the budget allocation is virtually unchanged (just over Rs.10,000 crore), on the grounds that last year's allocation was underspent. In effect, the Union budget 2007-08 takes last year's diminutive expenditure levels as a benchmark for this year, instead of waking up to the need for a drastic increase. And while the budget speech states that "the budget allocation [for the NREGA] would have to be supplemented according to need," it is a safe bet that nothing of the sort will actually happen. The sub-text is clear: The NREGA was successfully held up last year, and will be held up again this year. Another useful test of the government's commitment to "inclusive growth" is the fate of the Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) - the only major national programme for children under the age of six years. The universalisation of the ICDS is one of the core commitments of the Common Minimum Programme. It is also required for compliance with Supreme Court orders, including the landmark judgment of December 13, 2006. In concrete terms, universalisation involves ensuring that every settlement has a functional anganwadi (child care centre), and that all ICDS services are extended to all children under six as well as to all eligible women. As things stand, barely one third of all children under six are covered, and the quality of ICDS services is also far from adequate. Detailed recommendations to achieve "universalisation with quality" have recently been formulated by the National Advisory Council, the Commissioners of the Supreme Court, Citizens' Initiative for the Rights of Children Under Six, the Ministry of Women and Child Development's Working Group on Child Development, the Planning Commission's Working Group on Food and Nutrition Security, and the Working Group on Integrating Nutrition with Health, among others. In spite of minor differences, there is a remarkable consistency between these different sets of recommendations. The government has rarely been presented with such a clear road map to implement its own promises. This material was consolidated in the Focus On Children Under Six (FOCUS) report, released on December 19, 2006, by Amartya Sen on the occasion of "Bal Adhikar Samvad," a public gathering on the rights of children under six. Montek S. Ahluwalia, Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission, publicly welcomed the report and assured the audience that the government was committed to the implementation of the Supreme Court judgment on the ICDS. Similar assurances were received from the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh, on the same day, and from Sonia Gandhi, Chairperson of the United Progressive Alliance, the next day. Against this background, it is startling to find that the budget allocation for the ICDS in 2007-08 is virtually the same as in 2006-07. In fact, it is the same, as a proportion of GDP. This year, the Government of India will be spending less than Rs.5,000 crore to protect the well-being and rights of 160 million children under six. This compares with Rs.96,000 crore to be spent on defence - the figures speak for themselves. The status quo on the ICDS would be easier to accept if the government had an alternative plan to tackle the country's disgraceful levels of child undernutrition and ill health. According to the recently released findings of the third National Family Health Survey, 46 per cent of Indian children are underweight - virtually the same figure as eight years ago. This is a stark indictment of aimless economic growth as a strategy for rapid improvements in health and nutrition. Yet the fixation with "faster growth" continues and direct intervention is limited to token programmes. In effect, hungry children are being told, "be patient, it's just a matter of another twenty or thirty years and everything will be fine." (The author is Visiting Professor at the University of Allahabad, and member of the Central Employment Guarantee Council.) _/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/_/ Buzz for secularism, on the dangers of fundamentalism(s), on matters of peace and democratisation in South Asia. SACW is an independent & non-profit citizens wire service run since 1998 by South Asia Citizens Web: www.sacw.net/ SACW archive is available at: bridget.jatol.com/pipermail/sacw_insaf.net/ DISCLAIMER: Opinions expressed in materials carried in the posts do not necessarily reflect the views of SACW compilers. _______________________________________________ SACW mailing list SACW@insaf.net http://insaf.net/mailman/listinfo/sacw_insaf.net