P. Sainath sees growing Indian inequality threat to democracy PANJIM: P. Sainath, the Indian media's most articulate advocate for the causes of the deprived, unequivocally supported Goa's campaigns against SEZs. But he appealed to a large Kala Academy audience to see the nationwide and global links of growing inequity and how this threatened democracy.
"If you have 18 SEZs in Goa, you don't have Goa then," Sainath said, while speaking during the second day's lecture of the Festival of Ideas being held to mark the birth centenary of historian, mathematician of Goan origin D.D. Kosambi (1907-1966). Sainath said few countries industrialised via the SEZ route, and even China had just a handful of them, while more recent information emerging from there highlighted the not-so-positive side of SEZs. But the Magsaysay award-winning rural editor's speech was focussed on the growing inequity in post-reforms India. In a well-marshalled case propped up by facts, figures, anecdotes and quotes, Sainath told of super-plush schools -- like Goenka's in Delhi and Bombay Scotish or Sanskriti -- that promised globalised meals, bottle water and more at fees of half-a-million rupees. He said the new form of 'class struggle' in India of the past decade was between the "millionaires and the billionaires". "India had more places of worship (2.4 million) than schools, colleges and hospitals combined," complained the powerful speaker, who happens to be the grandson of late President V.V.Giri, a fact Sainath doesn't make much of. Citing official and UNDP data, Sainath pointed to India's dysmal performance on social indicators, even compared to war-devastated countries of sub-Saharan Africa, or countries that went through turmoil in the Far East like Vietnam. "India's richest ten people were adding Rs 2 crore per minute to their wealth (over a few months time)," Sainath said, drawing a contrast between the growing wealth of Indian billionaires and the dysmal poverty leading to farmer suicides. "India is far more unequal than it ever was since the days of the Raj," said Sainath. "What's shocking is the ruthlessness and cynicism with which it is being constructed." Palagummi Sainath, who has widely reported on India's agrarian crisis, highlighted the slashing of subsidies for the poor, the "unprecedented rise of corporate power", the growth of user costs, "market fundamentalism" and the "stunning" rise of inegalitarianism. India has the fourth largest number of dollar-billionaires in the world, and yet on social indicators the country was ranked only 128th in the world. Infant mortality was killing 2.1 million babies a year in India, and yet we had some of the fastest-growing CEO salaries worldwide. Villagers in parts of India were starving themselves in "rotation", to be able to send some family members to do hard work. Sainath highlighted other shocking realities -- Indian cheap grain exports to feed Euro cattle, European cows getting more in subsidies per day ($3) than many earn here, how rural poor migrating to cities had no jobs to go to as mills and factories were being dismantled. More houses had been demolished (86,000) in a week in Mumbai than the tsunami had levelled on the east coast, Sainath said. A stretch of a river had been sold in Chhattishgarh, and water privatisation was the next big thing coming, he said. "You can't have a democracy with political equality, and no social and economic equality," Sainath quoted Ambedkar saying. He said the gap between top CEOs and their lowest workers was as high as 22,000:1 in India. Sainath ended his well-argued talk with the example of Roman Emperor Nero and Queen Victoria, who invited huge banquets while the people faced famine or worse. "Don't be Nero's guests," he appealed to the cross-section of Panjim's citizenry. Later, he answered questions on the maturity of Indian democracy, how global subsidies were aggravating Indian farmer suicides, and even whether it was ethical to eat cashewnuts given the way labour was treated by some sectors of the industry. (ENDS ########################################## Unfashionable datelines, walking the rural road ########################################## PANJIM: Former journalist-turned-academic Savia Viegas of Carmona, who runs the Saxtti Foundation there, introduced Sainath as a hardworking colleague who was former deputy editor of the Blitz. Then too, in the 1980s, he was a young man full of ideas. Sainath published COUNTERMEDIA, a journal mean to 'investigate the investigators'. "He spent 24 hours in his Blitz cabin, which was a 'adda' (meeting point) for all of us," Savia said, narrating Sainath's journey from UNI to Blitz and then on to a Times fellowship to study poverty in five Indian states. "Sainath came up with unfashionable datelines (from the depths of rural India).He told stories of how officialdom bungled, roads taht took us nowhere, and schools that were without pupils," Viegas said. Writer and social campaigner Maria Aurora Couto called Sainath's photographs, on exhibition at the Kala Academy, "rich in details, visiaul poetry and work that evokes an understanding of powerlessness". Sunaparant editor Sandesh Prabhudesai compered the function, and noted that Sainath spends 270-300 days each year in rural areas.
