http://scroll.in/article/807178/governments-response-to-drought-is-lacking-in-compassion-economists-activists-tell-modi
DROUGHT COUNTRY Government's response to drought 'is lacking in compassion', economists, activists tell Modi Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Jean Dreze among 170 citizens who urge Centre to implement relief measures rapidly. Yesterday · 07:00 pm Scroll Staff The government's response to the massive drought being faced by large parts of the country "is sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion", 170 eminent citizens wrote in an open letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi. The signatories, including leading activists, economists and sociologists such as Aruna Roy, Harsh Mander, Jean Dreze, Jayati Ghosh and Ajit Ranade, noted that the crisis has resulted in "massive distress movement of populations, causing broken childhoods, interrupted education, life in camps, city pavements or crowded shanties". They urged Modi to make "rapid amends, by implementing all the traditional relief measures as well as by ensuring full implementation of the National Food Security Act 2013 and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 in letter and spirit". Here is the full text of the letter. Dear Mr Prime Minister, We wish to convey our deep collective anxiety about the enormous suffering of the rural poor in large parts of India’s countryside as they are battling drought, often for the second or even third consecutive year. In areas where rains have failed, farmers who depend mainly on rainwater to irrigate their crops have no or very low crop yields. Those who rely on irrigation are also affected, with groundwater sinking and streams and reservoirs drying up. All this adds to chronic agrarian distress reflected in a massive slowdown in agricultural growth during the last few years, with no imminent signs of recovery. The consequence of this adversity is massive distress movement of populations, causing broken childhoods, interrupted education, life in camps, city pavements or crowded shanties. Add to this the old and the infirm who are left behind, to beg for food or just quietly die. The cattle for whom there is no fodder, sold at distress prices or just abandoned to fend for themselves. And the drying up even of sources of water to drink. However, the response of central and state administrations to looming drought is sadly listless, lacking in both urgency and compassion. The scale of MGNREGA works is way below what is required and wages often remain unpaid for months. Even more gravely, the central and state governments are doing far too little to implement the National Food Security Act, three years after it came into force. Had the Act been in place, more than 80 per cent of rural households in the poorer states would be able to secure about half of their monthly cereal requirements almost free of cost. In a drought situation food security entitlements should be made universal. In addition, we find no plans in most of the drought-hit regions for feeding the destitute, especially old persons left behind when families migrate, children without care-givers, the disabled and other vulnerable groups. ICDS centres could have been upgraded to supply emergency feeding to the destitute during the drought, but this has not happened. Under Supreme Court orders, school meals should be served on all days, including holidays, in drought-affected areas, but this is rarely the case. Arrangements to augment drinking water supply, including ensuring that marginalised hamlets have functioning tube-wells and transporting water where necessary, are awfully inadequate. There are also few attempts to create fodder banks and cattle camps. Most of these measures used to be a routine part of state response to drought, and were often undertaken with a great sense of urgency, but they are barely being considered today. The highest priority of the central government in a drought situation should be to ensure the creation of millions of additional person-days of work in all affected villages. Instead, the government has not even allocated enough funds this year to sustain the level of employment generated last year – 233 crore person-days according to official data. At current levels of expenditure per person-day, this would cost well over Rs 50,000 crores. Yet the central government has allocated just Rs 38,500 crores to MGNREGA this year, of which more than Rs 12,000 crores are required to clear pending liabilities. These liabilities, only prove the distress crores of workers have been put through because of wages left unpaid for months at a time. Unemployment allowance and mandatory compensation for delayed wage payments, are also not paid citing “insufficient funds”, resulting in a failure of the Act, and its legal safeguards. Most alarming today, is that instead of expanding, MGNREGA is all set to contract in this critical drought year, unless financial allocations are vastly expanded. The enormous distress – of food, drinking water, work, fodder for animals, and dignity – of hundred of millions is utterly unacceptable. We demand that the central government under your leadership acknowledges these failures and makes rapid amends, by implementing all the traditional relief measures as well as by ensuring full implementation of the National Food Security Act 2013 and the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act 2005 in letter and spirit. Signed 1. 1 Aruna Roy, senior activist, Rajasthan 2. Jean Dreze, Economist 3. Jayati Ghosh, Economist 4. Harsh Mander, Activist, Writer 5. Satish Deshpande, Academic, Sociologist 6. Deep Joshi, senior environmentalist and water activist 7. Prof. Prabhat Patnaik, Professor Emeritus, Economist, Senior academician 8. Amit Bhaduri, Professor Emeritus, Senior Economist 9. Vijay Vyas, Professor Emeritus, Senior Economist 10. Utsa Patnaik, Professor and Senior Economist 11. Arundhati Roy, Writer 12. Admiral Ramdas, former Chief of Naval Staff 13. Lalita Ramdas, activist, Maharashtra 14. Naseeruddin Shah, Actor 15. Brinda Karat, Women’s leader, Politician 16. Medha Patkar, Activist, politician, women’s leader 17. Shabana Azmi, Actor 18. Kavitha Kuruganti, Activist, leader of farmer’s groups 19. Nivedita Menon, Academic 20. Nandita Das, actor 21. Mukul Kesavan, writer 22. Leela Samson, dancer 23. Ashok Vajpeyi, writer 24. Justice Rajinder Sachar, senior jurist 25. Syeda Hameed, women’s leader, former member Planning Commission 26. Shyam Benegal, filmmaker 27. Himanshu Thakkar, environmentalist 28. Wajahat Habibullah, former Chief Information Commissioner 29. Deepak Sandhu, former Chief Information Commissioner 30. Shailesh Gandhi, former Central Information Commissioner 31. Uma Chakravarty, historian 32. Ritwick Dutta, environmental legal activist 33. Trilochan Shastry, academic 34. Jagdeep Chhokar, academic 35. Advocate Vrinda Grover 36. Nandini Sundar, Sociologist 37. Shekhar Singh, RTI activist 38. Amar Kanwar, filmmaker 39. Prof C.P.Chandrasekhar, labour economist 40. Dilip Simeon, academic 41. Prithvi Sharma, activist, also on behalf of ICAN 42. Maja Daruwala, senior human rights activist 43. Mathew Cherian, Helpage 44. TM Krishna, Musician, Writer 45. Anand Patwardhan, filmmaker 46. Lalit Mathur, former civil servant 47. Kavita Srivastava, PUCL, Rajasthan 48. Anjali Bhardwaj, RTI activist 49. Achin Vinayak, academic and activist, Delhi 50. Ram Rehman, photographer 51. Pamela Philipose, journalist 52. Tushar.A.Gandhi , academic 53. Rita Anand, senior journalist 54. Nirmala Lakshman, senior journalist 55. Tripurari Sharma, Drama and Theater, playright 56. Harsh Sethi, writer 57. Madhu Bhaduri, former diplomat 58. Sharmila Tagore, Actor 59. Amitabh Mukhopadhyay, former auditor, CAG 60. Mridula Mukherjee, historian 61. Aditya Mukherjee, historian 62. Amita Baviskar, academic 63. Arundhati Dhuru, activist, UP 64. Kavita Krishnan, activist, leader of women’s groups 65. Reetika Khera, Economist 66. Sanjay Kak, filmmaker 67. Baba Adhav, labour leader 68. Achyut Das, activist, Odisha 69. Ajit Ranade, economist 70. Kalpana Kannabiran, sociologist, lawyer 71. Vasanth Kannabiran, teacher and activist, Andhra 72. Paul Divakar, dalit activist 73. Abha Sur, writer, academic 74. Rajni Bakshi, writer 75. Ravi Chopra, activist, Uttarakhand 76. Neelabh Mishra, writer 77. Poornima Chikarmane, Pune 78. Zoya Hasan , academic, political scientist 79. Shabnam Hashmi, activist 80. Rebecca John, academic 81. Anandalakshmy, academic 82. Smita Gupta, Economist, Head of economic cell, AIDWA 83. Praveen Jha, Economist 84. Gautam Navlakha, senior activist 85. Venkatesh Nayak, RTI activist 86. Seema Mustafa, journalist, editor, The Citizen 87. Bela Bhatia, academic 88. Bezwada Wilson, senior activist 89. Prof. Haragopal, academic 90. Sumit Chakravarty, Editor, Mainstream 91. Gargi Chakravarty, Women’s activist 92. Patricia Uberoi 93. Kamal Chenoy, senior academic 94. Janaki Nair, academic 95. Vipul Mudgal, journalist 96. Deepa Sinha, Right to Food activist 97. Himanshu, activist 98. Uma Pillai, former civil servant 99. Nikhil Dey, activist, Rajasthan 100. D.N.Rath, academic 101. Abey George,academic 102. Mahesh Pandya, ICAN 103. Jyothi Krishnan, academic 104. Balram, activist, Jharkhand 105. AL Rangarajan, ICAN 106. Rajaram Singh 107. Rameshwar Prasad, ICAN 108. Anand Murugesan, academic 109. Abha Bhaiya, women’s activist 110. Sagar Rabari, activist, Gujarat 111. Dhirendhra Singh 112. C. Rammanohar Reddy, former editor EPW, senior writer 113. Nandini K Oza, water activist, Maharasthra 114. Osama Manzar, Digital Empowerment Foundation 115. Rakesh Sharma 116. Pankti Jog, RTI activist 117. Rakesh Reddy Dubbudu, RTI activist, Telangana 118. Subrat Das, economist 119. Umesh Anand, editor, Civil Society 120. Charul,singer, cultural activist 121. Vinay, singer, writer, musician, activist 122. Maya Caroli 123. Ashwini Kulkarni, activist, Pune 124. Vibha Puri Das 125. Surjit Das 126. Amrita Johri, RTI activist 127. Madhuresh Kumar, activist 128. Ankur Sarin 129. Dipak Dholakia 130. Navdeep Mathur 131. Harinesh, activist, Gujarat 132. Persis Ginwalla 133. Shamsul Islam, theatre activist 134. Prafulla Samantara, activist, Odisha 135. Lingraj Azad, activist, Odisha 136. Sunilam, activist, Madhya Pradesh 137. Aradhana Bhargava 138. Meera Chaudhary, activist 139. Suniti SR, activist, Pune 140. Suhas Kolhekar, activist Pune 141. Prasad Bagwe 142. Gabrielle Dietrich, leader of Women’s groups 143. Geetha Ramakrishnan, activist Tamil Nadu 144. C.R. Neelkandan 145. P Chennaiah, activist Telangana 146. Ramakrishnan Raju, activist, Andhra 147. Richa Singh, activist, Uttar Pradesh 148. Sister Cella 149. Vimal Bhai, activist, Himachal Pradesh 150. Jabar Singh, activist 151. Anand Mazgaonkar 152. Krishnakanth 153. Kamayani Swami, activist, Bihar 154. Ashish Ranjan, activist 155. Mahendra Yadav, activist 156. Faisal Khan, activist, Haryana 157. JS Walla 158. Kailash Meena, activist, Rajasthan 159. Amitava Mitra 160. Aveek Saha 161. BS Rawat 162. Rajendra Ravi 163. Shabnam Shaikh 164. Mahesh Pandya 165. H.S. Shylendra 166. Iqbalkhan Pulli 167. Soumen Ray 168. Ramachandra Prasad, ICAN 169. Ravi M. 170. Dipak Dholakia -- Peace Is Doable -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. 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