november 19, 2011
The Politics of Petrol The political response to rising petroleum prices is dangerously short-sighted.
T
he recent political drama over the increase in petrol prices staged by Mamata Banerjee and the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government has only underlined the high political visibility of the issue and how it is used by every political party to try and garner narrow support for itself. This time the increase in prices of petrol, used primarily in passenger cars, was a little less than Rs 2 per litre but enabled the West Bengal chief minister to wrangle for her state hundreds of crores of rupees in promised grants by the central government. The price of petrol is the most convenient occasion for political parties to show their concern for the “common man” and to attack the government for its “anti-people” policies. It has surely helped them that during a period of high inflation the price of petrol has been raised six times this year from around Rs 50 a litre to about Rs 70 a litre, varying over different states due to varying levies. The prices of diesel, kerosene and LPG cylinders used for cooking were raised only once, in June, by Rs 3 and Rs 2 a litre for diesel and kerosene, respectively, and by Rs 50 for an LPG cylinder. Today the price of diesel remains at around Rs 41 per litre (the price varies across the states), not much higher than it was two years ago. The last time there was such a rise in petrol prices was during the first Gulf War of 1991. The price of petrol went up from about Rs 8.50 to more than Rs 16 a litre, while diesel prices rose from about Rs 3.50 to more than Rs 6 a litre. The big difference between then and now is the presence of diesel passenger cars. In the early 2000s, diesel cars constituted only 4% of the passenger car fleet. With the wide differential today between petrol and diesel prices, consumers have been encouraged to switch to diesel passenger vehicles and these are today estimated to be as much as 40% of new registrations of passenger vehicles. Passenger cars are now the second largest consumers of subsidised diesel at 15% of the total. Bus transport and agriculture, traditionally larger users of diesel fuel, each account for only 12% of the total consumption, while the railways consume a mere 6%. The largest consumption of diesel (37%) is by freight trucks; consumption has grown primarily due to the neglect of the freight carrying capacity of railways by successive governments. The railways are by far the most efficient transporters of freight, consuming a fourth of the energy used by trucks to carry the same amount of goods. Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
The massive increase in diesel consumption, fuelled by passenger cars and trucks, is a public health disaster. As a result of civil society and judicial activism in the 1990s, many Indian cities, starting with Delhi, moved from diesel to compressed natural gas (CNG) for their buses and the government improved the quality of diesel. There was a perceptible improvement in urban air quality and a concomitant improvement in indicators for respiratory diseases. But in the rest of the country it is subsidised diesel that continues to drive freight haulage and now increasingly and scandalously private transport as well. Diesel may be more energy efficient than petrol; it emits less carbon dioxide but its impact on local pollution through emission of particulate matter is substantial. Almost everyone agrees that the pricing policies in India’s oil and gas sector are in a mess. However, opinion on what exactly this mess is and what needs to be done to remedy matters diverges greatly. The ruling establishment, irrespective of the political formation at its helm, argues for complete price deregulation and reduction in subsidies (often in the name of targeting). The Kirit Parikh Committee had predictably asked for a decontrol of diesel prices and massive reduction in LPG and kerosene subsidies. The government has not implemented most of these recommendations, not due to any alternate economic vision but because a rise in diesel prices will further push up inflation. But diesel’s influence on inflation is due to other past and continuing policy lapses. For instance, the government has continued to allow the unrestrained growth of the diesel car industry and even now has not implemented the Kirit Parikh Committee’s recommendation of an excise duty to neutralise the price advantage of diesel. The railways remain starved of investment and road transport keeps moving an increasing share of long-haul freight. Even today, investment in railways is a fraction of what is being invested in new roads to ease truck movement. Similarly, in agriculture, diesel use has ballooned due to the unregulated extraction of groundwater, which is another ecological disaster. Better management of urban transport, railways and irrigation would have resulted in a lower impact of diesel prices on inflation and freed the government to take policy measures which would have been in line with environmental and public health goals. The original rationale for sub sidising diesel was to keep its price close to kerosene, then the
7
EDITORIALS
poor man’s fuel for (rural) lighting and (urban) cooking, so as to prevent the latter’s use as adulterated fuel. But adulteration happens on a large scale and the need to keep diesel prices low has acquired a logic of its own. But there is little sign that the right lessons are being learnt. The government looks at every problem from the narrow perspective of decontrol and ending subsidies. Unfortunately, there is also no alternative political perspective with regard to
oil and gas policies. Across the political spectrum the obsession is with prices. While these are important and the poor need to be cushioned from the fallout of the excesses of the rich, it also needs to be recognised that corrective policies which discourage personal transport, trucks and groundwater-based agriculture would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and improve the efficiency of use as well. Can we hope for such a political position to emerge?
Winning India Over Baburam Bhattarai’s visit to India secures its support for the peace process in Nepal but are the “hardliners” convinced?
N
epal Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai’s mission when he arrived on a state visit to India last month was to convince his hosts to support his government’s efforts to conclude the long-stalled peace process. To that extent, his visit turned out to be a success. Barely a week after his return to Kathmandu, the more contentious aspects of a peace process that had begun in 2005 were resolved after a three-year long stalemate. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or UCPN, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified MarxistLeninist) or UML have signed a nine-point deal that paves the way for the parliamentarians to focus on the writing of a new constitution. The centrepiece of the deal is an agreement on integrating the former Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army; a give and take by all sides enabled a decision on an issue that had led to political drift and uncertainty. It needs no reiteration that a change in India’s stance and its support for the Bhattarai government’s efforts must have been a major factor in the conclusion of the process. Bhattarai’s visit to New Delhi was mostly one of goodwill, as the Nepal government was keen not to stir any controversy at home in a delicate political situation by signing any major security or energy-related agreements with a neighbour who is widely and correctly perceived in Nepal as a hegemon. Even then, the inking of the non-controversial Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) triggered an outburst of protest by the opposition UML as well as the dissident Mohan Baidya “Kiran” led faction of Bhattarai’s own party. Nepal already has BIPPAs with five countries (France, the United Kingdom, Mauritius, Germany and Finland) while India has 80 such. There was nothing in the India-Nepal BIPPA that was skewed towards Indian investors. On the contrary, the India-Nepal BIPPA provides for compensation to Indian investors in cases of losses due to war, armed conflict, emergency, insurrection or riots – as opposed to the BIPPAs India has entered into with many other countries that have broadly defined the “civil disturbances” clause, which could include, for example, labour strikes. Such is the nature of Nepal’s political intrigue these days that Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, who was feted and accorded rousing receptions in India, was greeted on his return to Kathmandu with black flags by the Kiran faction of the UCPN. An intense two-line ideological struggle is underway among the
8
Maoists between the Kiran group and the Prachanda-Baburam combine. The former identifies anti-imperialism as a key element in furthering Nepal’s revolution, while the Bhattarai faction has identified the primary contradiction to be between democratic forces and remnants of feudalism. It is this understanding that explains the strident rhetoric by the Kiran group against the India-Nepal BIPPA, while Bhattarai understood the importance of Indian support to complete what he terms the “bourgeois democratic revolution” by concluding the peace process and by drafting a constitution. Ever since the new government was formed with Baburam Bhattarai at the helm of a coalition between the UCPN and the Madhesis, there has been a visible shift in the Indian establishment’s position vis-a-vis the Maoists. But the Indian establishment’s shift to supporting the Maoists after months of attempts to isolate them from the rest of the polity was neither sudden nor complete. There are still sections in the government that do not favour any change in attitude towards the former insurgents. But the Maoists’ willingness to negotiate with the opposition and the strong public opinion in Nepal in favour of the Bhattarai-led government seem to have impressed many in the Indian establishment who have been disappointed with the stasis following the earlier security-centric geopolitical approach towards Nepal. Internally, Bhattarai’s government has undertaken a difficult balancing act, trying to conclude the peace process by negotiating with the opposition and at the same time attempting not to antagonise hardliners within the UCPN. Bhattarai has consistently insisted on using the possibilities for a progressive transformation in Nepal within the existing constraints – he said so clearly in his speech at his alma mater Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi during his visit. The subsequent nine-point deal among the main parties suggests that his approach has been vindicated. Drafting a new constitution will not be easy, but the members of the constituent assembly should at least be confident that a major hurdle in the peace process has been overcome. It is in India’s interest to play a positive and non-intrusive role in Nepal since a stable republic in the Himalayan country will strengthen the prospects of friendly relations. Bhattarai’s visit has hopefully heralded a new chapter in the history of close but tense relations between the two neighbours. November 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
EDITORIALS
poor man’s fuel for (rural) lighting and (urban) cooking, so as to prevent the latter’s use as adulterated fuel. But adulteration happens on a large scale and the need to keep diesel prices low has acquired a logic of its own. But there is little sign that the right lessons are being learnt. The government looks at every problem from the narrow perspective of decontrol and ending subsidies. Unfortunately, there is also no alternative political perspective with regard to
oil and gas policies. Across the political spectrum the obsession is with prices. While these are important and the poor need to be cushioned from the fallout of the excesses of the rich, it also needs to be recognised that corrective policies which discourage personal transport, trucks and groundwater-based agriculture would reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and improve the efficiency of use as well. Can we hope for such a political position to emerge?
Winning India Over Baburam Bhattarai’s visit to India secures its support for the peace process in Nepal but are the “hardliners” convinced?
N
epal Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai’s mission when he arrived on a state visit to India last month was to convince his hosts to support his government’s efforts to conclude the long-stalled peace process. To that extent, his visit turned out to be a success. Barely a week after his return to Kathmandu, the more contentious aspects of a peace process that had begun in 2005 were resolved after a three-year long stalemate. The Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) or UCPN, the Nepali Congress and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unified MarxistLeninist) or UML have signed a nine-point deal that paves the way for the parliamentarians to focus on the writing of a new constitution. The centrepiece of the deal is an agreement on integrating the former Maoist combatants into the Nepal Army; a give and take by all sides enabled a decision on an issue that had led to political drift and uncertainty. It needs no reiteration that a change in India’s stance and its support for the Bhattarai government’s efforts must have been a major factor in the conclusion of the process. Bhattarai’s visit to New Delhi was mostly one of goodwill, as the Nepal government was keen not to stir any controversy at home in a delicate political situation by signing any major security or energy-related agreements with a neighbour who is widely and correctly perceived in Nepal as a hegemon. Even then, the inking of the non-controversial Bilateral Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement (BIPPA) triggered an outburst of protest by the opposition UML as well as the dissident Mohan Baidya “Kiran” led faction of Bhattarai’s own party. Nepal already has BIPPAs with five countries (France, the United Kingdom, Mauritius, Germany and Finland) while India has 80 such. There was nothing in the India-Nepal BIPPA that was skewed towards Indian investors. On the contrary, the India-Nepal BIPPA provides for compensation to Indian investors in cases of losses due to war, armed conflict, emergency, insurrection or riots – as opposed to the BIPPAs India has entered into with many other countries that have broadly defined the “civil disturbances” clause, which could include, for example, labour strikes. Such is the nature of Nepal’s political intrigue these days that Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai, who was feted and accorded rousing receptions in India, was greeted on his return to Kathmandu with black flags by the Kiran faction of the UCPN. An intense two-line ideological struggle is underway among the
8
Maoists between the Kiran group and the Prachanda-Baburam combine. The former identifies anti-imperialism as a key element in furthering Nepal’s revolution, while the Bhattarai faction has identified the primary contradiction to be between democratic forces and remnants of feudalism. It is this understanding that explains the strident rhetoric by the Kiran group against the India-Nepal BIPPA, while Bhattarai understood the importance of Indian support to complete what he terms the “bourgeois democratic revolution” by concluding the peace process and by drafting a constitution. Ever since the new government was formed with Baburam Bhattarai at the helm of a coalition between the UCPN and the Madhesis, there has been a visible shift in the Indian establishment’s position vis-a-vis the Maoists. But the Indian establishment’s shift to supporting the Maoists after months of attempts to isolate them from the rest of the polity was neither sudden nor complete. There are still sections in the government that do not favour any change in attitude towards the former insurgents. But the Maoists’ willingness to negotiate with the opposition and the strong public opinion in Nepal in favour of the Bhattarai-led government seem to have impressed many in the Indian establishment who have been disappointed with the stasis following the earlier security-centric geopolitical approach towards Nepal. Internally, Bhattarai’s government has undertaken a difficult balancing act, trying to conclude the peace process by negotiating with the opposition and at the same time attempting not to antagonise hardliners within the UCPN. Bhattarai has consistently insisted on using the possibilities for a progressive transformation in Nepal within the existing constraints – he said so clearly in his speech at his alma mater Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi during his visit. The subsequent nine-point deal among the main parties suggests that his approach has been vindicated. Drafting a new constitution will not be easy, but the members of the constituent assembly should at least be confident that a major hurdle in the peace process has been overcome. It is in India’s interest to play a positive and non-intrusive role in Nepal since a stable republic in the Himalayan country will strengthen the prospects of friendly relations. Bhattarai’s visit has hopefully heralded a new chapter in the history of close but tense relations between the two neighbours. November 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
EDITORIALS
Zionism, Racism and Culture Israel will ignore Palestine’s membership of UNESCO, but Palestine can use this toehold to salvage its heritage.
A
fter blustery threats failed to banish the item from the agenda, the United States and Israel retaliated in their own ways when the United Nations cultural body, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) voted overwhelmingly to admit Palestine as a full member. The US cut off all financial support and Israel announced plans to build a few thousand more dwelling units in occupied Palestinian land. As the public discourse plays out about a world body that does not repay US generosity with any manner of gratitude, a more realistic assessment, which nobody yet dares speak out loud, is gaining traction in the higher levels of the US administration. Robert Gates, a legacy of the Bush administration and till recently defence secretary, in one of his final internal meetings before leaving office, reportedly said that the US had done much and taken great risks for Israel, though Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was proving an “ungrateful ally”. Netanyahu’s disdain for all who would stand in the way of Israel’s infinite aggrandisement was evident in his address to the UN General Assembly in September, not long after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had submitted a claim on behalf of his people for full membership of the world body. The General Assembly, he said, was “the theatre of the absurd”, which a religious mentor had, as he began his political career as envoy to the UN, described as a “house of many lies”. Netanyahu spoke with unconcealed racist contempt, as when describing Israel’s challenge of security in terms of its proximity to hostile territory, comparable to the distance between certain boroughs of New York city. And the people within these boroughs, he reminded his audience, “are considerably nicer than some of Israel’s neighbours”. Netanyahu accused the UN of having sanctified the “lie” that “the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest place” was “occupied Palestinian territory”. And with this airy denial of centuries of Palestinian settlement in the area, Netanyahu quickly moved onto another tall tale to establish the antiquity of the Jewish claim to the land. Archaeologists, he said, had found in close proximity to the Western Wall, an ancient seal, close to 3,000 years old, imprinted with his surname. And his first name dated even further back. People who bore that name wandered in the area since distant millennia and there had been “a continuous
From 50 Years Ago
Vol Xiii, No 47, november 25, 1961
editorials
Dealing with China The whole country must have been gravely disturbed to learn this week that the Chinese have been continuing their acts of aggression against India without the slightest regard for the agreement against further incursions between
Jewish presence in the land ever since”. Current scholarship, as exemplified in the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’s acclaimed book The Invention of the Jewish People has exploded this mythology in large part. The denial of the Palestinians’ right to exist acquires several forms, most of them overt, physical and brutal. Palestine has been a battle about culture and antiquity since the first expropriations of the native population by Zionist settlers in the 1920s. And it is no coincidence that among the first major projects that Israel undertook in East Jerusalem, after it was seized in 1967, was an archaeological excavation to establish the area’s unbroken Jewish heritage. These excavations have been controversial, their most observable feature being the use of bulldozers to cut through layers of antiquity to arrive at a distant Judaic past. Archaeology has been a profoundly political discipline everywhere, but nowhere more explosively so than in Palestine. In 2010, Israel entered into a public spat with UNESCO when the historic site in Hebron – scene of a grisly 1994 massacre of Palestinian worshippers by the extremist Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein – was designated as a mosque on the basis of its dominant features. In 1996, riots broke out all over the occupied territories when Netanyahu, in an earlier tenure as prime minister, ordered the opening of an archaeological tunnel that, Palestinians believe, was deliberately laid under the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem to weaken its foundations. And in 1992, Albert Glock, an American archaeologist who had documented the principal features of Palestinian villages and heritage sites effaced in the creation of Israel, was shot dead in Birzeit on the West Bank, in a crime that was never solved. Netanyahu’s locutions are increasingly an insult to basic rationality. His government is almost certainly going to disregard the consequences of Palestine’s newly acquired membership of UNESCO, much as it has every inconvenient UN resolution in the past. The Palestinian people though have gained a toehold within the institutional framework of multilateralism. They could use this limited opening to work towards salvaging their culture and heritage – as embodied in numerous sites of historic importance in the entire territory of historical Palestine – from the devouring myths of Zionism. It is a largely symbolic victory, but significant nonetheless and one that needs to be consolidated.
the two countries. The Parliament was understandably stirred when it heard the news from the lips of the Prime Minister. It had been led to believe that the Government of India would not allow “even an inch of territory” to be added to what the Chinese have already occupied in Ladakh and elsewhere. And now, on Pandit Nehru’s own admission, the Chinese have infiltrated up to five miles in at least two areas and have actually opened new checkposts there and linked them with roads – indicating most unmistakably that they do not have the slightest intention of withdrawing, and confirming also
Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
that these were no accidental intrusions but part of a careful and wilful plan. The question now is: What is the Government going to do about this... It is, in other words, of the very first importance that Pandit Nehru should undertake an entirely fresh reappraisal of our policy towards China. We must quickly build ourselves into a position where China would be unable to treat our frontiers as thoroughfares. As a people we cannot risk annihilation for the sake of what would be a mere abstraction. The time for protest notes is past, even if we made them as stiff as cardboard.
9
EDITORIALS
Zionism, Racism and Culture Israel will ignore Palestine’s membership of UNESCO, but Palestine can use this toehold to salvage its heritage.
A
fter blustery threats failed to banish the item from the agenda, the United States and Israel retaliated in their own ways when the United Nations cultural body, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation (UNESCO) voted overwhelmingly to admit Palestine as a full member. The US cut off all financial support and Israel announced plans to build a few thousand more dwelling units in occupied Palestinian land. As the public discourse plays out about a world body that does not repay US generosity with any manner of gratitude, a more realistic assessment, which nobody yet dares speak out loud, is gaining traction in the higher levels of the US administration. Robert Gates, a legacy of the Bush administration and till recently defence secretary, in one of his final internal meetings before leaving office, reportedly said that the US had done much and taken great risks for Israel, though Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was proving an “ungrateful ally”. Netanyahu’s disdain for all who would stand in the way of Israel’s infinite aggrandisement was evident in his address to the UN General Assembly in September, not long after Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas had submitted a claim on behalf of his people for full membership of the world body. The General Assembly, he said, was “the theatre of the absurd”, which a religious mentor had, as he began his political career as envoy to the UN, described as a “house of many lies”. Netanyahu spoke with unconcealed racist contempt, as when describing Israel’s challenge of security in terms of its proximity to hostile territory, comparable to the distance between certain boroughs of New York city. And the people within these boroughs, he reminded his audience, “are considerably nicer than some of Israel’s neighbours”. Netanyahu accused the UN of having sanctified the “lie” that “the Western Wall in Jerusalem, Judaism’s holiest place” was “occupied Palestinian territory”. And with this airy denial of centuries of Palestinian settlement in the area, Netanyahu quickly moved onto another tall tale to establish the antiquity of the Jewish claim to the land. Archaeologists, he said, had found in close proximity to the Western Wall, an ancient seal, close to 3,000 years old, imprinted with his surname. And his first name dated even further back. People who bore that name wandered in the area since distant millennia and there had been “a continuous
From 50 Years Ago
Vol Xiii, No 47, november 25, 1961
editorials
Dealing with China The whole country must have been gravely disturbed to learn this week that the Chinese have been continuing their acts of aggression against India without the slightest regard for the agreement against further incursions between
Jewish presence in the land ever since”. Current scholarship, as exemplified in the Israeli historian Shlomo Sand’s acclaimed book The Invention of the Jewish People has exploded this mythology in large part. The denial of the Palestinians’ right to exist acquires several forms, most of them overt, physical and brutal. Palestine has been a battle about culture and antiquity since the first expropriations of the native population by Zionist settlers in the 1920s. And it is no coincidence that among the first major projects that Israel undertook in East Jerusalem, after it was seized in 1967, was an archaeological excavation to establish the area’s unbroken Jewish heritage. These excavations have been controversial, their most observable feature being the use of bulldozers to cut through layers of antiquity to arrive at a distant Judaic past. Archaeology has been a profoundly political discipline everywhere, but nowhere more explosively so than in Palestine. In 2010, Israel entered into a public spat with UNESCO when the historic site in Hebron – scene of a grisly 1994 massacre of Palestinian worshippers by the extremist Jewish settler Baruch Goldstein – was designated as a mosque on the basis of its dominant features. In 1996, riots broke out all over the occupied territories when Netanyahu, in an earlier tenure as prime minister, ordered the opening of an archaeological tunnel that, Palestinians believe, was deliberately laid under the Al Aqsa mosque in Jerusalem to weaken its foundations. And in 1992, Albert Glock, an American archaeologist who had documented the principal features of Palestinian villages and heritage sites effaced in the creation of Israel, was shot dead in Birzeit on the West Bank, in a crime that was never solved. Netanyahu’s locutions are increasingly an insult to basic rationality. His government is almost certainly going to disregard the consequences of Palestine’s newly acquired membership of UNESCO, much as it has every inconvenient UN resolution in the past. The Palestinian people though have gained a toehold within the institutional framework of multilateralism. They could use this limited opening to work towards salvaging their culture and heritage – as embodied in numerous sites of historic importance in the entire territory of historical Palestine – from the devouring myths of Zionism. It is a largely symbolic victory, but significant nonetheless and one that needs to be consolidated.
the two countries. The Parliament was understandably stirred when it heard the news from the lips of the Prime Minister. It had been led to believe that the Government of India would not allow “even an inch of territory” to be added to what the Chinese have already occupied in Ladakh and elsewhere. And now, on Pandit Nehru’s own admission, the Chinese have infiltrated up to five miles in at least two areas and have actually opened new checkposts there and linked them with roads – indicating most unmistakably that they do not have the slightest intention of withdrawing, and confirming also
Economic & Political Weekly EPW November 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
that these were no accidental intrusions but part of a careful and wilful plan. The question now is: What is the Government going to do about this... It is, in other words, of the very first importance that Pandit Nehru should undertake an entirely fresh reappraisal of our policy towards China. We must quickly build ourselves into a position where China would be unable to treat our frontiers as thoroughfares. As a people we cannot risk annihilation for the sake of what would be a mere abstraction. The time for protest notes is past, even if we made them as stiff as cardboard.
9
COMMENTARY
Occupy Wall Street, Mass Media and Progressive Change in the Tea Party Era Anthony DiMaggio, Paul Street
Occupy Wall Street represents one of those rare opportunities where the Democratic Party and the state-reliant mass media claim to be sympathetic towards its rhetoric and demands. This, no doubt, is due to the electoral value that OWS retains for Democrats seeking to get re-elected next year. The challenge for the left will be to continue to garner sympathetic media coverage and attention, while also finding ways to propose a specific policy platform that represents a challenge to Obama’s corporatist, pro-Wall Street agenda.
Anthony DiMaggio (
[email protected]) is a political scientist and the author of numerous books, including The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate Media in the Age of Obama, due this month from Monthly Review Press. Paul Street (paulstreet99@ yahoo.com) is the author of six books, including Barack Obama and the Future of American Politics (Boulder, CO: Paradigm, 2008), described by John Pilger in The Guardian in 2009 as “perhaps the only book that tells the truth about the 44th president of the United States”.
10
O
ccupy Wall Street (OWS) is spreading throughout the United States (US) and the world. It is captivating media attention in the US in a way no left social movement has in recent history. Regular reporting of public anger at business elites has led some to compare OWS to the Tea Party with regard to both forces’ “insurgent” “revolutionary” themes and support for “rebellion” against the status quo. Questions about how both the Tea Party and OWS are portrayed in the mass media are still emerging, however, considering the freshness of OWS in American politics. A better understanding of how both OWS and the Tea Party are discussed in popular dialogue and media should remain a major focus of those concerned with promoting bottom-up notions of grass roots democracy. Considering the freshness of OWS, many questions still remain with regard to whether it is a real social movement. From our limited experiences participating in OWS thus far (in New York, Illinois, and Iowa), it certainly appears to have many of the basic prerequisites of a movement, in terms of participation across a wide number of demographic groups, regular protests in towns and cities across the country and world, strong resistance from much of the political-economic establishment, and in terms of OWS’ strong opposition to co-optation by national Democratic Party elites. Whether the group will further develop and sustain a mass activist base in terms of regularly planning meetings and mass marches, and whether it will coalesce around a specific set of demands that differ from those of the corporatist Democrats, remains to be seen. Will the group become a sustainable, mass movement, or does it simply represent a short, populist outburst of emotion and anger?
The answer is difficult to provide with certainty. Acknowledging such uncertainty, one can still undertake a preliminary analysis of how the OWS has been discussed in popular narratives and discussion.
OWS in Popular Narratives According to one theme that quickly became popular in academic and mainstream media circles this fall, OWS – spread from New York City’s financial district to more than 800 locations by mid-October 2011 – is the left wing version of the Tea Party. One variant of this tale referred to OWS as the Democratic Party’s version of the Tea Party. The storyline drew on a number of obvious and undeniable parallels. Like the Tea Party phenomenon that broke out in the late winter and spring of 2009 and significantly influenced US politics on behalf of the Republican Party at the federal and state levels in the mid-term elections of November 2010, OWS1 • Opposes the federal government’s massive bailout of the nation’s leading financial institutions. • Speaks in loud and angry terms and populist, anti-establishment language on behalf of “the people” against arrogant and greedy elites. • Inveighs in stark and dramatic terms about the subversion of American demo cracy, freedom, and prosperity by concentrated power and tyranny and calls for taking America back from the agents and forces of subversion. • Is disproportionately white (Caucasian) in composition. • Expresses the sense that something has gone fundamentally wrong in America and that fundamental changes are required to restore balance, decency, and democracy. • Appeals to a rising mass of Americans who feel that “the system no longer works for them” and who complain that they are getting nowhere despite playing by all the rules and working hard. • Is driven by “anxiety about the economy [and] belief that big institutions favour the reckless over the hard-working”.2 • Advances grievances that seem “inchoate and contradictory” (Zernike) to many observers.
november 19, 2011 vol xlvI no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
COMMENTARY
• Conducts demonstrations, protests, and rallies against designated tyrannical targets beyond and between candidatecentred elections. • Claims to be independent, partisan, and leaderless, beyond the control of the dominant two establishment business parties (the Republicans and the Democrats). • Participants post themselves as legitimate expressions of “the people” over and against dreaded and demonised others. • Expanded quickly, thanks in large part to outside sponsorship and excited media coverage. (This final point is one of the most important that we track in this essay, with regard to explaining the rapid proli feration of OWS.)
Tea Party – Classic Right Wing Beneath and beyond these easily notice able similarities, however, deep and fundamental differences significantly undermine the core equivalence and parallels that are commonly posited between the Tea Party and the occupation movement. As we showed in our book Crashing the Tea Party: Mass Media and the Campaign to Remake American Politics (Paradigm 2011), the conventional, quickly entrenched, and mainstreamed media description of “the Tea Party” as a refreshing, independentnon-partisan, anti-establishment, insurgent, grass roots, populist, and democratic force that constituted a leaderless and decentralised popular social and political protest movement was deeply inaccurate – every bit as false as Tea Partiers’ fallacious claim that Barack Obama, the Democratic Party, and the nation’s dominant corporate media are part of the “radical socialist Left”. Crashing the Tea Party exposes an ugly, authoritarian, and fake-populist pseudomovement directed from above and early on by and for elite Republican and business interests like the right wing billionaires Charles and David Koch and the long-time leading Republican operative Dick Armey. Its active membership and leadership are far from “grassroots” and “popular”, far more affluent and reactionary than the US citizenry as a whole and even more than the segment of the populace that purports (at the prompting of some pollsters) to feel “sympathy” for the Tea Party. The real Tea Party phenomenon, we discovered, is relatively well off and Middle American (not
particularly disadvantaged), very predominantly white, significantly racist, militaristic, narcissistically selfish, vicious in its hostility to the poor, deeply undemocratic, profoundly ignorant and deluded, heavily paranoid, wooden-headed, and overly reliant on propagandistic right wing news and commentary for basic political information. Many of its leaders and members exhibit profound philosophic contempt for collective action, a disturbing and revealing uniformity of rhetoric across groups, cities, and regions, a stunning absence of real and deeply rooted local organising, and a predominant prioritisation of Republican electioneering over grass-roots protest of any kind. The Tea Party we discovered is not a social movement at all in fact, but rather a loose conglomeration of partisan interest groups that is set on returning the Republican Party to power. It is Astroturf and partisan Republican in orientation. It is not an “uprising” against a corrupt political system or against the established social order. Rather, it is a reactionary, top-down manifestation of that system, dressed up and sold as an outsider rebellion set on changing the rules in Washington. Far from being anti-establishment, the Tea Party is a classic, right wing, and fundamentally Republican and significantly racist and victim-blaming epitome of what the formerly left political commentator Christopher Hitchens once called “the essence of American politics”: “the manipulation of populism by elitism”.
OWS – Radically Democratic In terms of social movements, everything the Tea Party pretended to be and was not, OWS displays the potential to be. Unlike the Tea Party, which was launched from the arch-Republican top-down by Republican-operative groups like Freedom Works, Americans for Prosperity, and Tea Party Express, OWS really did spring up from outside and from beneath the political establishment. It emerged from the dedicated activism of anarchist and other radically democratic activists acting on an extremely clever and powerful suggestion on the part of the Canadian anti-consumerist magazine Adbusters – to occupy the belly of the world capitalist financial beast in New York City’s financial district on the
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model of the revolutionary Egyptians who seized Cairo’s Tahrir Square in early 2011. Unlike the Tea Party, OWS really is a leaderless phenomenon, making decisions through a militantly democratic and decentralised process embodied in its nightly General Assembly process. OWS really is populist at a grass-roots level, targeting the nation’s leading economic institutions and modern capitalism’s extreme concentration of wealth and power in the hands of “the One Percent”: the unelected dictatorship of money that controls both the nation’s major political parties and so much more. OWS really does appear to be a genuine social movement, with demands, slogans, tactics, philosophies and practices regularly percolating up from the grass roots, not from the top-down (i e, from the billionaire arch-reactionary Koch brothers, Armey’s Freedom Works, and Fox News). At this point in its development, OWS is far more independent of establishment partisan politics, refusing to embrace candidates of either the Democratic or Republican Party. It has seen recent significant efforts at co-optation from Democratic Party officials, although protesters at the rank and file level have bitterly complained about such co-optation in light of the refusal of the Democratic Party to reconsider its corporatist, pro-Wall Street orientation. As the 2012 campaign heats up and large majorities of voters share OWS’ hostility towards concentrated wealth and power, the Democratic Party is predictably trying to position itself to draw strength and gain electoral advantage from OWS. It hopes to turn OWS to its benefit in the same way that the Tea Party benefited the GOP in 2010. But it is not likely to succeed in that endeavour. OWS articulates a social movement and direct action orientation that rejects the candidate-centred electoral extravaganzas that big money and media masters stage for the populace every two and four years, saying “that’s politics – the only politics that matters”. A recent survey of OWS protesters in New York finds that most people disapprove of Obama, and are strongly disillusioned with the party in light of its establishment, pro-Wall Street politics. Ninety-seven per cent say they disapprove of Congress. A plurality of OWS protesters claim to identify with no political
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party, while 11% identify themselves openly as socialists, and another 11% as Green Party members. Most are significantly to the left of centre in describing their ideological orientations (80% claim to be liberal, 40% very liberal), compared to the increasingly centre-right Democratic Party.3 OWS activists get it that, as the late great radical American historian Howard Zinn used to say, “what matters most is not who is sitting in the White House, but who is sitting in – and who is marching outside the White House, pushing for change”. As Arun Gupta has noted, “it is difficult to imagine a Michele Bachmann or Eric Cantor emerging as a standard bearer of the Occupy Wall Street movement.” And “given their reliance on Wall Street money, as well as radical demands from many protesters”, Gupta adds, “the Democrats will find it almost impossible to channel ‘the 99%’ into an electoral tidal wave next year, the way the Republicans rode the Tea Party to victory in 2010.” Unlike the Tea Party, OWS is no adjunct of the dominant party system and does not focus ultimately on electoral objectives. Its targets go deeper than partisan politics, reaching down to taproot national and global capitalist financial institutions and corporations that hold leading national parties, policies, and governments hostage to the profit interests of the wealthy few. It really is a refreshing, independent-nonpartisan, anti-establishment, insurgent, grass roots, populist, and democratic force that constitutes a leaderless and decentralised popular social and political protest movement that actively and fluidly represents long-standing majority public dissatisfaction with concentrated wealth and power. This is no small part of why it has inspired hundreds of sympathetic copycat movements/occupations not only across the US but also (in a significant contrast with the white nationalist Tea Party phenomenon) around the world. As a corollary to these core differences, the Tea Party and OWS have considerably different responses from government autho rities and the dominant corporate media. As a fake-populist pseudo-movement that is strictly aligned with existing dominant domestic and global hierarchies of class, race, and empire, Tea Party activists have faced little if anything in the way of
12
state repression. They pose no threat whatsoever to the existing corporate, military, sexist, “eco-cidal” and whitesupremacist state and therefore operate largely free of government harassment, surveillance, arrest, violence, and incarce ration. Things are very different with OWS. Its genuinely radical-populist and demo cratic character and its basic opposition to the aforementioned hierarchies have meant that it has repeatedly been subjected to arrest, brutality and surveillance from state authorities.
Media Coverage: Tea Party Favoured More Interestingly, media coverage of OWS has been quite varied, depending on the media outlet, but generally speaking strongly sympathetic. In terms of variation, some media outlets are strongly supportive, while others are fiercely opposed. In the opposition camp are the right wing Fox News, the Washington Times, and the Wall Street Journal, among other news organisations. The Washington Times’ editors dismiss OWS protesters as little more than “whiners” and “cry-babies” who are “desperate to blame others for their poor life choices” – “Wall Street occupiers represent the problem, not the solution”.4 Similarly, the editors of the reactionary Wall Street Journal lament the protests as out of step with the American public’s anger, which the editors (falsely) claim, resides exclusively “a few hundred miles south of Wall Street” in Washington DC.5 That a plurality of Americans agree with OWS protesters (over their Tea Party competitors), and that most blame both government and Wall Street for failing the American people, seems largely irrelevant in the paternalistic scolding expressed in the Wall Street Journal. Much of the commentary in the Wall Street Journal amounts to little more than vulgar propaganda and distortion. The same editorial that criticises OWS would have Americans (and the world) believe that the primary causes of the economic crisis today are: (1) Obama’s mildly populist rhetoric (in early 2009) as directed against the banks and their reckless lending practices (criticisms which he quickly retracted after an outpouring of Wall Street rage); (2) The extremely mild government
r eforms as directed against Wall Street (personified in the Dodd Frank legislation) which legally required toxic derivatives investments (which helped cause the global 2008 economic crisis) to be the subject of federal regulation; and (3) Talk among Democrats of a very modest increase in personal income taxes for the wealthiest 1% – as personified in Obama’s proposal to increase the highest tax bracket to 39% of (from the current 35%) that portion of individuals’ yearly income that exceeds $379,150. This mild increase translates into a return to the Clinton era’s (also admittedly mild) levels of taxation. Ignoring the right wing’s fear mongering, one is confronted with the reality that even Clinton era tax law amounted to a dramatic scaling back of previous top tax bracket rates (of 90%) during the 1950s, Eisenhower’s golden era of capitalism. Propaganda masquerading as informed comment does not stop with the above comments. The Wall Street Journal also lends credence to a widely discredited “study” by right wing pollster Douglas Schoen, who argued (inaccurately) that a “large majority” of OWS protesters support “radical redistribution of wealth” and express “opposition to free-market capitalism”.6 A closer look at Schoen’s own survey results finds that only very small minorities of OWS protesters express support for these views, despite Schoen’s brazen misrepresentations of his data.7 Despite the propaganda, fear mongering, and hate expressed above, much (perhaps most) of the reporting on OWS was strongly sympathetic in two ways. First, OWS is receiving a significant amount of attention in terms of volume of coverage. A study by the Pew Research Centre finds that coverage in early October 2011 accounted for 7% of all national news coverage, at a time when protests were picking up steam. This compared quite well with the Tea Party national protests, which also received 7% of all news coverage during mid-April 2009.8 In contrast, Tea Party coverage was even more extensive in September to November 2011, accounting for 13% of all media coverage – a full six percentage points more attention than that directed at OWS in October 2011.9 Our own research finds mixed evidence of favouritism in terms of volume of coverage. As the
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data chart immediately below suggests, five out of seven major American news outlets actually devoted more attention to the OWS (October 2011) protests than to the Tea Party (April 2010) protests, when measured in two week increments following the beginning of each group’s rallies.10 However, volume of coverage heavily favours the Tea Party (over OWS), when comparing coverage of OWS (October 2011) and the Tea Party in the two weeks prior to and after the 2 November election (Table 1). Extensive coverage of, and favouritism towards the Tea Party in this later period is likely due to media outlets magnifying the importance of the Tea Party as it was being embraced wholeheartedly as an integral part of Republican Party politics during a major election. Quality of content was also quite mixed in terms of reporting, although media outlets were visibly biased in favour of the Tea Party. Editorially speaking, there was quite
the Tea Party, is angry at the right people [Wall Street]”. Other elite outlets such as the Washington Post followed suit. Its editors commented that a plurality of Americans agrees with Occupy Wall Street’s diagnosis of what’s wrong. Despite a relentless effort from the right to portray the movement as radical and extreme, a plurality says it reflects the views of mainstream America.
Counted under such agreements were opinions (revealed in national polling) suggesting that a majority of Americans agree with progressive proposals such as increasing federal aid to states in order to avoid public worker layoffs, payroll tax cuts for the working class in the name of stimulating the economy, increased government spending on improving the nation’s infrastructure, and increased taxation on the wealthiest 1% in the name of reducing the budget deficit.
Table 1: Total Coverage of the Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street (Two Week Windows)
NYT
W Post
CNN
Fox
ABC
NBC
Tea Party (15-29 April 2010)
37
30
78
46
9
13
CBS
8
OWS (15-28 October 2011)
180
41
111
44
21
35
23
Tea Party (26 October to 8 November 2010)
151
108
188
90
69
65
32
Table 2: Per Cent of Stories Framing Tea Party and OWS as a Social ‘Movement’ (in %) NYT
W Post
CNN
Fox
ABC
NBC
CBS
Tea Party (15-29 April 2010)
76
77
54
76
89
85
75
OWS (15-28 October 2011)
44
61
60
64
19
51
61
Tea Party (26 October-8 November 2010)
70
66
60
68
75
69
56
a bit of support for OWS in the elite liberal press. The New York Times, for example, sympathised with the OWS message: At this point, protest is the message: income inequality is grinding down that middle class, increasing the ranks of the poor, and threatening to create a permanent underclass of able, willing but jobless people. On one level, the protesters, most of them young, are giving voice to a generation of lost opportunity…The protesters’ own problems are only one illustration of the ways in which the economy is not working for most Americans. They are exactly right when they say that the financial sector, with regulators and elected officials in collusion, inflated and profited from a credit bubble that burst, costing millions of Americans their jobs, incomes, savings and home equity. As the bad times have endured, Americans have also lost their belief in redress and recovery.
Columnists at the New York Times such as Paul Krugman agreed, as he remarked that “we may, at long last, be seeing the rise of a popular movement that, unlike
Systematic analysis finds that OWS receives quite sympathetic coverage in general, although the Tea Party receives even more sympathetic coverage. The data in Table 1 suggest that, in six out of seven news outfits, reporters were more likely to classify the Tea Party (as compared to OWS) as a genuine, grass roots movement, examining the two week periods following both the April 2010 Tea Party protests and the October 2011 OWS demonstrations. Stories were also more likely to favour the Tea Party when comparing reporting on the October 2011 OWS rallies to Tea Party reporting in the two weeks prior to and following the November 2010 elections (Table 2). The relative favouritism directed towards the Tea Party represents a sort of double bias, considering that our findings already suggested that the Tea Party is not a genuine social movement, while OWS (at least in
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its early stages) appears to exhibit many of the classical characteristics of a movement. Still, the OWS does quite well for itself (at least standing on its own) in reporting, considering the strong support received in elite papers such as the New York Times and Washington Post, and in light of the fact that a majority of news stories in five of the seven outlets examined refer to OWS as a genuine social movement. Our findings should be of no surprise to critical media scholars. Movements (and even false movements) traditionally receive significant attention and sympathetic coverage when they are embraced (or at least rhetorically supported) by major political parties. Conversely, movements that go against the establishment-political grain are typically ignored and vilified (on the rare occasions when they are reported). Our findings (in terms of sympathetic OWS coverage, but even more sympathetic Tea Party coverage) could have been predicted considering that the Democratic Party is (at least rhetorically) embracing and attempting to co-opt OWS, while the Tea Party has long been courted, celebrated, and thoroughly absorbed into Republican establishment politics. In other words, the Tea Party’s relatively greater partisan support accounts for its relatively more favourable coverage. Tea Party supporters may challenge the depiction of their group as “establishment oriented”, although a mountain of empirical evidence – documented in our forthcoming book The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate Media in the Age of Obama – suggests otherwise.
Challenge for the Left Supporters of OWS should look at sympathetic media reporting as an opportunity to expand the movement to new segments of the American public. As with the Tea Party, favourable media reporting appears to be creating positive impressions of the OWS among the public. Recent data from the Pew Research Centre suggests as much. Pew’s October 2011 survey finds that increased public attentiveness to the political debate and media reporting on OWS is correlated with increased public approval of the group. Those following OWS “fairly” or “very closely” are more than 2.5 times
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more likely to support the group, compared to those following OWS “not too closely” or “not at all closely”.11 The American left has long been distrustful (rightly so) of the mass media, which regularly ignore progressive social movements due to their lack of usefulness to those who hold political power. OWS represents one of those rare opportunities where the Democratic Party and the statereliant mass media claim to be sympathetic towards its rhetoric and demands. This, no doubt, is due to the electoral value that OWS retains for Democrats seeking to get re-elected next year. The challenge for the left will be to continue to garner sympathetic media coverage and attention, while also finding ways to propose a specific policy platform that represents a challenge to Obama’s corporatist, proWall Street agenda. Walking this tightrope is no easy task, but it may be the
only path towards building a movement that is able to reach out to the masses, while also offering serious progressive and democratic change. Notes 1 In thinking about these parallels, we have consulted (among other sources) Arun Gupta, “Where OWS and the Tea Party Are Coming From”, Salon, 21 October 2011; John Avlon, “Tea Party for the Left?”, Daily Beast, 10 October 2011, http://www. thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/10/occupy-wallstreet- this-is-not-the-left-wing-tea-party.html 2 Kate Zernike, “Wall St Protest Isn’t Like Ours, Tea Party Says”, New York Times, 21 October 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/us/politics/wall-st-protest-isnt-like-ours-tea-party-says. html?pagewanted=all 3 Douglas Schoen, “Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd”, Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297 0204479504576637082965745362.html; Marjorie Connelly, “Occupy Protestors Down on Obama, Survey Finds”, New York Times, 28 October 2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/ protesters-at-occupy-wall-street-disapprove-ofobama-a-survey-finds/ 4 Editorial, “The Wall Street Whiners”, Washington Times, 18 October 2011, http://www.washington-
Press Council as Bully Pulpit: A Debate on Media That Could Go Nowhere Sukumar Muralidharan
After the strong opinions about the media expressed by the chairperson of the Press Council of India and the tone of the counter-response from media associations and groups, where the debate will proceed from here is anybody’s guess. But the tone has dropped several notches and the media industry is unlikely to let yet another opportunity pass to push back against a potentially constructive public debate on transparency and accountability. Sukumar Muralidharan (sukumar.md@gmail. com) is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.
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arkandey Katju was appointed chairman of the Press Council of India (PCI) within days of retiring as a judge of the Supreme Court. Purely by coincidence, there was some talk hanging in the air as he took office, of the need for new regulatory norms in the electronic media. Though not within his formal jurisdiction, he was quick to ask that the new guidelines be held in abeyance. He then plunged into a sequence of abrasive comments about the realm he had just been appointed to oversee and regulate, which if substantively little different from observations made by his predecessors, has raised hackles with its added embellishment of intellectual disdain. Where the debate will proceed from here is anybody’s guess. But the tone has dropped several notches and the media industry is unlikely to let yet another
times.com/news/2011/oct/18/the-wall-streetwhiners/ 5 Editorial, “What’s Occupying Wall Street?”, Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2011, http://online.wsj. com/article/SB100014240529702034997045766 25302455112990.html 6 Schoen, “Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd”, 2011. 7 Judd Legum, “Douglas Schoen Grossly Misrepresents His Own Poll Results to Smear Occupy Wall Street”, Think Progress, 18 October 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/10/18/347165/breakingdoug-schoen-grossly-misrepresents-his-own-pollresults-to-smear-occupy-wall-street/ 8 Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Coverage of Wall Street Protests Keeps Growing, Gets More Political”, Pew Research Centre, 10-16 October 2011, http://www.journalism.org/index_report/ pej_news_coverage_index_october_1016_2011 9 Project for Excellence in Journalism, “The 2010 Midterms: A Tea Party Tale”, Pew Research Centre, 11 January 2011, http://www.journalism.org/ analysis_report/2010_midterms_tea_party_tale 10 Our data is drawn from an analysis of Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street print stories and television transcripts, as made available via the Lexis Nexis academic database. 11 Pew Research Centre, “Public Divided Over Occupy Wall Street Movement”, Pew Research Centre, 24 October 2011, http://www.people-press.org/ 2011/10/24/public-divided-over-occupy-wall-streetmovement/
opportunity pass to push back against a potentially constructive public debate on transparency and accountability. The media, in its broadest definition, touches several lives. Even if it is a small player on most aggregate economic measures – revenue, value addition or profit – it is an industry on which everybody has an opinion and an urge to be heard. Media persons, who are generous with moral judgments and grudging in admitting the most egregious errors, cannot really complain when the compliment is occasionally returned. The final bulwark that the public often finds difficult to breach, is the ability of the media to control the message.
Rise of the Blogosphere For long, the only recourse an ordinary reader (or “media consumer” in current terminology) had for being heard, was a letter to the editor, which would, in most cases, end up in the trash bin if it did not pamper newspaper egos. Today, even as she suffers the constant mortification of being talked down to by hectoring news anchors and leader writers, the media consumer has discovered the blogosphere, or the virtual media, which offers itself as a new platform for conducting the social dialogue. The ability of the media industry
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more likely to support the group, compared to those following OWS “not too closely” or “not at all closely”.11 The American left has long been distrustful (rightly so) of the mass media, which regularly ignore progressive social movements due to their lack of usefulness to those who hold political power. OWS represents one of those rare opportunities where the Democratic Party and the statereliant mass media claim to be sympathetic towards its rhetoric and demands. This, no doubt, is due to the electoral value that OWS retains for Democrats seeking to get re-elected next year. The challenge for the left will be to continue to garner sympathetic media coverage and attention, while also finding ways to propose a specific policy platform that represents a challenge to Obama’s corporatist, proWall Street agenda. Walking this tightrope is no easy task, but it may be the
only path towards building a movement that is able to reach out to the masses, while also offering serious progressive and democratic change. Notes 1 In thinking about these parallels, we have consulted (among other sources) Arun Gupta, “Where OWS and the Tea Party Are Coming From”, Salon, 21 October 2011; John Avlon, “Tea Party for the Left?”, Daily Beast, 10 October 2011, http://www. thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/10/occupy-wallstreet- this-is-not-the-left-wing-tea-party.html 2 Kate Zernike, “Wall St Protest Isn’t Like Ours, Tea Party Says”, New York Times, 21 October 2011, http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/us/politics/wall-st-protest-isnt-like-ours-tea-party-says. html?pagewanted=all 3 Douglas Schoen, “Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd”, Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2011, http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297 0204479504576637082965745362.html; Marjorie Connelly, “Occupy Protestors Down on Obama, Survey Finds”, New York Times, 28 October 2011, http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/ protesters-at-occupy-wall-street-disapprove-ofobama-a-survey-finds/ 4 Editorial, “The Wall Street Whiners”, Washington Times, 18 October 2011, http://www.washington-
Press Council as Bully Pulpit: A Debate on Media That Could Go Nowhere Sukumar Muralidharan
After the strong opinions about the media expressed by the chairperson of the Press Council of India and the tone of the counter-response from media associations and groups, where the debate will proceed from here is anybody’s guess. But the tone has dropped several notches and the media industry is unlikely to let yet another opportunity pass to push back against a potentially constructive public debate on transparency and accountability. Sukumar Muralidharan (sukumar.md@gmail. com) is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.
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arkandey Katju was appointed chairman of the Press Council of India (PCI) within days of retiring as a judge of the Supreme Court. Purely by coincidence, there was some talk hanging in the air as he took office, of the need for new regulatory norms in the electronic media. Though not within his formal jurisdiction, he was quick to ask that the new guidelines be held in abeyance. He then plunged into a sequence of abrasive comments about the realm he had just been appointed to oversee and regulate, which if substantively little different from observations made by his predecessors, has raised hackles with its added embellishment of intellectual disdain. Where the debate will proceed from here is anybody’s guess. But the tone has dropped several notches and the media industry is unlikely to let yet another
times.com/news/2011/oct/18/the-wall-streetwhiners/ 5 Editorial, “What’s Occupying Wall Street?”, Wall Street Journal, 17 October 2011, http://online.wsj. com/article/SB100014240529702034997045766 25302455112990.html 6 Schoen, “Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd”, 2011. 7 Judd Legum, “Douglas Schoen Grossly Misrepresents His Own Poll Results to Smear Occupy Wall Street”, Think Progress, 18 October 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/10/18/347165/breakingdoug-schoen-grossly-misrepresents-his-own-pollresults-to-smear-occupy-wall-street/ 8 Project for Excellence in Journalism, “Coverage of Wall Street Protests Keeps Growing, Gets More Political”, Pew Research Centre, 10-16 October 2011, http://www.journalism.org/index_report/ pej_news_coverage_index_october_1016_2011 9 Project for Excellence in Journalism, “The 2010 Midterms: A Tea Party Tale”, Pew Research Centre, 11 January 2011, http://www.journalism.org/ analysis_report/2010_midterms_tea_party_tale 10 Our data is drawn from an analysis of Tea Party and Occupy Wall Street print stories and television transcripts, as made available via the Lexis Nexis academic database. 11 Pew Research Centre, “Public Divided Over Occupy Wall Street Movement”, Pew Research Centre, 24 October 2011, http://www.people-press.org/ 2011/10/24/public-divided-over-occupy-wall-streetmovement/
opportunity pass to push back against a potentially constructive public debate on transparency and accountability. The media, in its broadest definition, touches several lives. Even if it is a small player on most aggregate economic measures – revenue, value addition or profit – it is an industry on which everybody has an opinion and an urge to be heard. Media persons, who are generous with moral judgments and grudging in admitting the most egregious errors, cannot really complain when the compliment is occasionally returned. The final bulwark that the public often finds difficult to breach, is the ability of the media to control the message.
Rise of the Blogosphere For long, the only recourse an ordinary reader (or “media consumer” in current terminology) had for being heard, was a letter to the editor, which would, in most cases, end up in the trash bin if it did not pamper newspaper egos. Today, even as she suffers the constant mortification of being talked down to by hectoring news anchors and leader writers, the media consumer has discovered the blogosphere, or the virtual media, which offers itself as a new platform for conducting the social dialogue. The ability of the media industry
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to control the public discourse is rapidly eroding and there has yet been no credible strategy devised from within its business model, to counter this reality. Legal coercion though, is an option that still works. A sturdy platform of media criticism in the “virtual world” recently found itself the target of unwelcome attention from a real world entity whose enormous clout could be denied only at great peril. On 14 October, the media watchdog website, The Hoot (www.thehoot.org) received a legal notice from the Times Global Broadcasting Company, which owns the Times Now news channel and is a subsidiary of Bennett Coleman and Co Ltd (BCCL), publishers of the Times of India. The media giant had been irked by an article published the day before, which raised a number of troubling questions about the coverage of a brutal attack on the lawyer and civil rights campaigner Prashant Bhushan, by right-wing thugs on 12 October.1 Under particular scrutiny was the conduct of the Times Now channel, since it had a news crew on the spot at the time of the attack. The article, written by a journalist with years of experience in print and television, wondered if the presence of the news crew may not have brought on the attacks. The thought was not outlandish, since the vigilante group behind the attack, the Sri Ram Sene, had a long record – from places as far afield as Mangalore, Bangalore and Delhi – of prearranging media coverage before foraying forth to dispense summary justice. Once the attack on Bhushan began, the news crew on the site showed less than humane instincts when it continued recording the brutality with a steady and unswerving camera. No member of the team even stepped into the camera frame while Bhushan was punched, kicked and dragged along the floor. Perhaps, the article said, the climate of intolerance that brought on the attack had been nurtured by the unique style of the electronic media. It was a regular feature of prime-time news broadcasts to pit adversarial viewpoints against each other in the most abrasive and uncivil manner. A special mention was reserved for the Times Now’s prime-time news anchor, who regularly sets the blogosphere
buzzing with his preachy morality and self-righteousness. There were points made in the article which could have been fruitfully debated, had The Hoot not taken it down in haste under threat of legal action.2 While protesting that the article had nothing by way of defamatory content and was merely an honest effort to advance the debate on free speech and its attendant obligations, The Hoot took the abundant precaution of apologising for any offence it may have caused. The whole episode passed without seriously disturbing the stately passage of the mighty media. A desultory debate had meanwhile begun on the sidelines, occasioned by the expressed intent of the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting (MIB) to revise eligibility norms for the broadcasting industry. The stated rationale was that the norms currently in place are notoriously lax, which few can really question. But the antidote devised by the MIB bureaucracy seemed worse than the disease.
Norms for Broadcasting The norms for cable and satellite broadcasting were put in place rather late, close to a decade after the medium became pervasive at least in urban India. And in that one decade, as the government dithered, big global players had already acquired a major presence in India, forcing open several doors by making creative use of policy ambiguities and the marked official proclivity for ad hoc procedures. The initial policy response was to doggedly hang on to the government’s monopoly over the airwaves – at least in the limited sense of uplinking signals from Indian territory. In a defensive measure against proliferating signals from satellites high above, which could only be restrained through the extraordinary exercise of police powers, the principle of inter mediary liability was imposed. The cable operator would be responsible for ensuring conformity of all broadcast content with applicable norms. It was another matter that there was little consultation or agreement across relevant sections of government, industry and civil society, on best regulatory practices. Neither was there any concern in the two decades of the satellite broadcasting
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boom, for enforcing the basic principles of media governance: such as the separation of content and carriage; and the prevention of cross-media ownership concentration. A landmark judgment by the Indian Supreme Court in 1995, holding the broadcast spectrum as a public resource, entered the judicial annals as a finely crafted statement of principle. But its practical relevance has been negligible, as corporate entities, political parties and even religious bodies have rapidly colonised the airwaves.
Information Ministry Awakens The MIB’s recent awakening clearly occurred under duress. Following widespread public concern over media coverage of the November 2008 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, there was one attempt at enforcing a code on the electronic media, especially in situations designated as “emergencies”. The news channels, sensing a threat to their autonomy, pre-emptively enacted their own code, to be enforced by a News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) under the chairmanship of J S Verma, a former chief justice of India. The other main industry body, the Indian Broadcasting Federation followed after a few months with its own complaints council, under a former chief justice of the Delhi High Court, A P Shah. The NBSA has had a mixed record of success. Its first major ruling imposing a fine led to angry recriminations between the offending channel and its competitors, and an unabashed refusal to comply. Following a truce and the return of the delinquent element into the fold, a more settled course has been in evidence. Strictures that the NBSA issued early this year against a channel that had telecast a news
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COMMENTARY
item held grossly derogatory of the gay community, were complied with in full. Close observers of the broadcast industry believe that despite this chastening, the channel concerned soon went back to its old ways, secure in the knowledge that it could always move faster than the watchdog’s capabilities of oversight and sanction.
earlier, the tone now was all aggression and disparagement. Indian journalists he said, were for the most part, “of a very poor intellectual level”. Media personnel in general, he said, have no idea of “economic theory or political science, philosophy, literature”.3
Low Requirements
Katju also called for investing the PCI with statutory powers – extending to the broadcast media – to punish organisations that step out of line of an accepted code of conduct. “One of the reasons” that self-regulation has not worked, he said, is that its procedures have failed to instil “fear in the media”. In Katju’s own words, the means of achieving optimal regulatory ends are clear:
Meanwhile, the news channels’ coverage of the Anna Hazare agitation, first in April this year and then in August, had reawakened the deepest anxieties of the government. Yet again, the debate on regulation was resurrected in terms of the old and discredited principles of oversight and sanction, with little regard for how feasible such a strategy would be in a domain where an estimated 727 channels function, of which no fewer than 359 are cate gorised as news broadcasters by the MIB. The entry threshold is ridiculously low: principal requirements being that a company uplinking to a broadcast satellite would need to be registered in India, have no more than 40% foreign shareholding and a minimum net-worth ranging from as low as Rs 1 crore to a high of Rs 3 crore, depending on the category of licence applied for. As Katju assumed charge at the PCI, a debate was underway on the need to revise these norms. The principal measures under consideration included raising the threshold of net worth to a figure in the range of Rs 10 crore and stipulating that news channels should be headed by individuals with a certain minimum years of editorial experience. There were also suggestions of a “five strikes and out” rule: that news channels held guilty of a certain number of violations of an agreed programme code would be stripped of their licence. Katju’s interventions in this context seemed less an affirmation of principle and more a power-grab. At his first public engagement, which was a meeting with senior editors, Katju called for “introspection” and also questioned some of the priorities that the media seemed to be pursuing at the cost of what he considered the really important issues. Soon afterwards, he appeared on a widely watched interview programme on an English news channel. If there was an element of discretion
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Powers for Council
I want powers to stop government advertisements, I want powers to suspend the licence of that media for a certain period if it behaves in a very obnoxious manner. I want powers to impose fines, all this in extreme situations.
The scorn and disdain aside, these are possible options that have been raised by Katju’s three immediate predecessors and perhaps several more.4 So it is not yet evident that Katju has in any manner advanced a debate that has been underway for at least as long as the PCI has existed.
Evidence of a constructive role going forward, if any, could be found from examining the other points the PCI chairman makes about the three modes in which the media is failing the people of India. The substance of the former judge’s accusations are that: the media often focuses on trivialities at the cost of the really major issues the country faces; it frequently divides communities by leaping to unwarranted inferences about the identity of those responsible for crimes such as terrorism; and finally, rather than propagate rational and scientific thinking, which is the need of the delicate social and economic transition India is under going, the media seemingly has time for only the most obscurantist fetishes, such as astrology and the supernatural.
Geared towards Profit None of what Katju says would come as breaking news to an observer of the Indian media. At various recent junctures when its conduct has been seen as questionable, the media’s role has come in for incisive and frequently, scathing analysis. But the logic of the media as an industry geared towards the motive of private profit, determines that it will follow a trajectory that remains indifferent to these public
Krishna Raj Memorial Scholarships 2011 NSSKPT High School, Ottappalam, Kerala Six scholarships have been awarded in the school where Krishna Raj studied for a few years. The scholarships cover tuition fees, uniforms, books and special coaching. In 2011-12, the scholarships have been awarded to Sreedevi P K, Ajayan V (VIII standard), Arun C, Amal S R (IX standard) and Vipindas P, Induja V (X standard). Delhi School of Economics Summer fellowships were awarded to 17 students (M.A. Economics & Sociology) working in eight groups, for conducting field surveys and writing reports under the supervision of faculty of the DSE: Ashwini Deshpande, Aditya Bhattacharjea, J V Meenakshi and Anirban Kar. The students awarded fellowships were Dheeraj Mamadule, Vimmy, Swati Sharma, Arnab Kumar Maulik, Ashutosh Kumar, Debapriya Bhowmik, Yesh Vardhan Agarwal, Sandhya Srinivasan, Keshav Maheshwari, Madhulika Khanna, Ravideep Sethi, Resham Nagpal (all Economics); Shagua Kaur Bhangu, Maria Ann Mathew, Ujjainee Sharma, Trishna Senapati, Aaradhana Dalmia (all Sociology). The seven projects were (i) Rehabilitation and Resettlement of Slums in Delhi, (ii) Social Networks of Migrant Women Employed at Construction Sites, (iii) Reading Spaces: A Study of Libraries and the Reading Public in India, (iv) Marriage Practices of the Knanaya Community of Kerala, (v) Socio-Economic Impact Analysis and Replicability Study of Alternative Energy Programme in the Sunderbans, (vi) Impact of FPS on Slums in Delhi, and (vii) Addressing Poverty through NTFPs: An Analysis of Madhya Pradesh. november 19, 2011 vol xlvI no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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concerns. Media growth in the last two decades – but more so since the turn of the century – is a sub-theme of the larger story of the revolution of rising aspirations of the great Indian middle class. It has been fuelled by the advertising boom that has accompanied this dizzying expansion of horizons. Needless to say, the growth of advertising – from the automobile sector, communications, real estate, financial services and other so-called success stories of the two decades of liberalisation – has reflected emerging patterns of consumption of the middle and upper strata. The other side of the growth story, of rising economic inequality and stagnant or deteriorating living standards at the lower end of the scale of wealth, has been rudely excised from the media narrative, simply because it is of no interest to the advertiser. These aspects of media functioning have been in the spotlight since the early years of independence and notably since 1952, when the Press Commission was appointed as India’s first expert attempt to evolve a doctrine on the media and society. Political circles and journalism unions were then suffused with the sense of imminent betrayal, that the press was forgetting its mission and treading the perilous pathway towards profit at all costs. The Press Commission put forward the doctrine that the newspaper was a “public utility”, which, by definition, was essential to the sustenance of the civic community. Needless to say, the newspaper industry had little patience with what it regarded as a particularly woolly-headed type of idealism.5 And it has since managed to beat back every regulatory effort. As the media environment became more complex, independent media commentators and journalism unions did their bit to advance the debate, and there were also significant developments, such as the “airwaves” judgment of 1995, that could potentially have had a bearing. Yet, with all the cumulative force that genuinely committed individuals and organisations could exert, the media industry just would not be deflected off its chosen trajectory.
Silence of Council Set up in 1966, abolished in 1975 and then revived three years later, the PCI has not had a great record in stamping its
authority on media functioning. Its credibility has not been helped in any measure by a discrete tendency towards silence at junctures when the press has come under attack in India’s more troubled regions. In November 2008, for instance, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir sent out a letter warning the media against publishing any “objectionable material”. Failure to comply, it warned, would lead to action under the applicable laws, including the withdrawal of government advertising. In June 2009, as civil disturbances swept the Kashmir Valley, the state government, almost reflexively, blamed the media for fomenting the strife and banned all news broadcasts on local channels. The harsh measures continued right through to the following year and were considerably enhanced through the four months of mass demonstrations in 2010, when physical attacks on journalists became commonplace, newspapers were seized at the point of publication, and messaging services over the cellular network were completely banned.6 More recently, the Ministry of Home Affairs has directed public sector enterprises to deny advertising to news papers in Kashmir that it has identified as expressing “anti-national” views, a directive that has evoked no comment from either the PCI or the self-appointed protectors of the freedom of the press. Except for announcing an inquiry in 2010 that did not get very far, the PCI remained indifferent through these events. So the question really must be asked if a body that fails to raise its voice when summary measures are used to muzzle the press, can be trusted to use such powers fairly. Katju thinks that he has the judicial wisdom and experience to ensure the fair application of such powers, but he has not convinced very many. Professional bodies such as the Editors’ Guild and industry lobbies from the print and broadcast sectors have already dismissed his proposals out of hand. And for former chief justice J S Verma, his locutions seem to suggest an “authoritarian” tendency. Little progress is likely if the debate remains confined within a paradigm of controls and sanctions, to the neglect of possible modes of allowing more voices the opportunity to be heard. Access to the blogosphere is still reserved for those
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of relative privilege and the alternative message that has begun to spread through this medium, though valuable, is limited in its diffusion. An official discourse that emphasises control and conformity has effectively banished the 1995 airwaves judgment from the central position it deserves in the debate. Public service broadcasting has languished and the ridiculous prohibition of news content over FM radio continues to be in force. A PCI that endlessly rehearses old themes about an augmentation of its powers, serves little purpose today. A more constructive engagement would look at true measures of public empowerment, rather than the aggrandisement of a highly diminished body. Notes 1 The Hoot’s letter of apology and retraction can be found at the following link: http://www.thehoot. org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5549&mod=1 &pg=1§ionId=5&valid=true. 2 The ethical issues involved were, in fact, not dealt with in any manner at all by the media, aside from a report in The Hindu on 13 October, which raised some of the questions and sought at least preliminary clarifications from the Times Now management. See “Attack on Prashant Bhushan captured on Camera”, The Hindu, Delhi, October 13, p 10; available at: http://www.thehindu.com/ todays-paper/tp-national/article2532909.ece. 3 See the transcript of the interview at the website of the channel concerned: http://ibnlive.in.com/ news/media-deliberately-dividing-people-pci-chief/ 197593-3.html. 4 See A G Noorani, “The Press Council: An Expensive Irrelevance”, Economic & Political Weekly, 3 January 2009, pp 13-5, for the substance of what has been said earlier on these issues. 5 This is a story that is adequately told by G S Bhargava, The Press in India: An Overview (Delhi: National Book Trust), 2005. 6 The International Federation of Journalists has come out with situation reports on the media in Kashmir through these three years. These are available currently at: http://asiapacific.ifj.org/assets/docs/ 118/188/54dea76-41a4dbc.pdf; http://asiapacific.ifj. org/assets/docs/126/1132fe407e-23c0e71.pdf; http:// asiapacific.ifj.org/en/articles/blaming-themessenger-media-under-pressure-in-jammu-andkashmir.
EPW Index An author-title index for EPW has been prepared for the years from 1968 to 2010. The PDFs of the Index have been uploaded, year-wise, on the EPW web site. Visitors can download the Index for all the years from the site. (The Index for a few years is yet to be prepared and will be uploaded when ready.) EPW would like to acknowledge the help of the staff of the library of the Indira Gandhi Institute for Development Research, Mumbai, in preparing the index under a project supported by the RD Tata Trust.
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COMMENTARY
Visibility as a Trap in the Anna Hazare Campaign Arvind Rajagopal
The rapid escalation of the Anna Hazare campaign, aided by embracing the media as allies, compromised its political character in numerous ways. Political participation as a critique of the status quo has to exist both inside and outside the media spectacle. Visibility can be experienced as fulfilling, but when the image becomes the destination of politics, it is a trap.
B
eginning in December 2010, a wave of public protests travelled across the world, opening with the “Arab Spring” in the Maghreb and west Asia. Not long thereafter, the autumn of 2011 saw the “Occupy Wall Street” movement in New York spread rapidly across the US. In a gesture rich with historical irony, it claimed the “revolutionary Arab Spring” as its inspiration.1 The first set of movements sought regime change and lost thousands of lives in the process, possibly in vain.2 The second targeted public rage at the finance industry believed to be responsible for the economic recession, and despite highly sceptical news coverage spread to 100 cities within days.3 Book-ended by these movements, the Anna Hazare campaign in the summer of 2011 provides an interesting contrast. It combined extraordinary public fervour followed by corrosive wrangling amongst leaders, sweeping moral and political critique supplanted by implicit trust in political representation, and protest against corruption that saw so little opposition, it seemed everyone was on the same side. Affluent and educated classes could congratulate themselves that however corrupt, poor or unequal India might be, political expression is free. Free to do what? That might be the question.
Role of Media
Arvind Rajagopal (
[email protected]) teaches media studies at New York University.
Even if ruling party leaders were caught offguard by the strength of Anna Hazare’s popularity, it would be a mistake to equate their confusion with the response of the political system as a whole. The Hazare campaign may point to a bid by media corporations to act as political antennae, shock absorbers and conflict managers for Indian society, while staging criticism of the state. It is worth noting that the kind of criticism directed at the State is sweeping and impatient, and more confusing than clarifying. All politicians are under suspicion of being corrupt, while select
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civil society figures are held up as redeeming. But the same level of attention is not paid to procedures whereby grievances can be adjudicated; to assume that a new law or a new leader can solve the problems is surely too optimistic. The media themselves have emerged as most important in fructifying this campaign, and most exempt from criticism. In this respect, the publicity given to Anna Hazare shows the adroitness of corporate India and their allies in government in responding to popular protest. This is only one sign that India is not yet a society where Big Brother is Watching You. But the spectacle of crowds of people from a wide range of backgrounds wearing “I am Anna” topis and T-shirts offers another way of reading: if we recall “Anna” means Big Brother, we may wonder if in this case Big Brother is You, Watching. In the second case too, I would say, not yet. Unlike George Orwell’s 1984 or fascist mass rallies in Nazi Germany, the centre of the spectacle in this case was a 74-yearold villager on an indefinite fast against corruption. Echoing a widespread belief that prevailing institutions are self-serving and unmindful of people’s welfare, Hazare was a reminder of the ethics that politics and government seemed to have turned their backs on. In an earlier era Prime Minister Indira Gandhi demanded a “committed judiciary”, and a “committed bureaucracy”, suggesting that national development required a surplus of effort from its workers. Essentially, civil servants had to be ready to sacrifice for the nation, and avoid self-seeking behaviour. On that occasion, the demand smacked of autocracy, since it implied Gandhi would decide what was needed for the nation, and not Parliament or government servants. Today it is the media that is in a position not only to make such a demand, but also to stage a convincing response to it. At a time when disclosures about the corruptions of power were larger, better documented, and more extensive in the loot they revealed than anything before in recent history, the emergence of a protest movement was not surprising. That it turned into a popular affirmation of national values, and a demonstration of an immense readiness to mobilise, thus restoring a degree of confidence in a sinking stock as it were, was due to the news media’s astute
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management. The Hazare campaign’s success suggested that even if the government was dysfunctional, popular democracy was alive and well, and that the India growth story had a real future. Normally this is the kind of message we expect from political leaders. It is a symptom of our times that instead, this message was choreographed by the corporate news media.
Welding a Split Public Together What took shape with the Hazare campaign was perhaps the largest orchestrated media campaign since Ram Janma bhoomi. Unlike that campaign, this one destroyed nothing, and sought to introduce legislation that Parliament had resisted for decades. One of the key factors that distinguished the staging of the Hazare campaign from the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992 was the massive expansion of the media in the interim, most notably, the growth of satellite TV news channels.4 Some comparison with popular agitations of the past will provide a perspective on this subject. The Indian media have historically res ponded in one of two ways to popular agitations and campaigns. Either they were seen as a threat to order to be contained by the law, or they were regarded as a positive expression, to be treated with respect. In the past, the English language media usually embraced the first position, and the Indian language media the second. Anna Hazare’s was perhaps the first mass campaign after 1947 where English and vernacular media came together so visibly. Thus, instead of applying a wholly positive or negative response to the agitation, this time the media applied it to the observer. Thus coverage of the movement was mainly in terms of a “with-us-oragainst-us” approach. It should be noted though that the Hindi channels adopted a more positive attitude on the whole than the English language media, which provided space for criticism even if their overall thrust was promotional. Questions about the middle class limitations of the movement were more often raised in English language news shows on TV, for example, while Hindi media signalled a more consistently positive appraisal of the agitation. Indian language media have a tradition of embracing popular agitation dating
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back to the freedom struggle. By contrast, the English media adopted the perspective of colonial rulers, and distrusted the public expressions of ordinary people. And in post-Independence times the Englishlanguage media, in its struggle to adhere to secular values, often found itself replicating colonial distrust of popular sentiment. Consider for example, its tendency to reduce news of popular demonstrations, whether of worker unrest or of religiously motivated campaigns, to questions of law and order, at the expense of understanding why such movements occur and what they aim to achieve. The media’s collective endorsement of mass agitation in this case was something new, therefore. What kind of media was at work here, that mirrored the collective imaginary, requires clarification however. Unusually in this case, news reporters downplayed criticism of a grassroots campaign. This was deliberate, not accidental. The Times Group, India’s largest media conglomerate, aggressively defined Anna Hazare as a man of the people. The ceaseless reiteration of this theme across their numerous news organs left other news media scrambling to follow suit, and show they were on the right side.5 Compared to Ram Janmabhoomi, which was an agitation promoted from within the Hindi press, and resisted for good reasons by much of the English language press, the English language media defined the contours of the coverage this time, with the Times Group taking the lead, according to media industry observers. It is symptomatic of the pattern of media growth in the era of liberalisation that, while the Indian language is now many times larger than the English language segment, the latter displays an agenda-setting power that may actually be greater than it was hardly two decades ago. Although the television market now features about 800 channels,6 the majority of which are Indian language, the force of Times Now TV, which has no Indian language counterpart, has been impressive indeed. This is a sign that the expansion of the visual media has led, not to a toppling of English language hegemony, but to a new mode of legitimising its agenda-setting role. The Anna Hazare campaign was remarkable in that, across the language media, the spectacle of popular mobilisation
became a thing of unqualified virtue, discreetly signalled in the nomenclature “civil society”. Civil society, unlike the state, was assumed to be free of corruption, as if one could distinguish between them so neatly. The condition of it being so regarded however was that it made no demands in the name of any specific groups based on caste, gender, religion, region, etc. During the anti-colonial struggle, the nationalist press could see popular mobilisation as a pure virtue, but that struggle was a momentous project of regime change. An increasingly corporate and globalised media could celebrate mass agitation only in a more contained way, as a sign of “the people” and as a statement that “the people” want what “we” want. The media’s construct of “civil society” does not look so innocent in this light; it is in fact a fantasy arising from the elite and projected onto the masses. As Aruna Roy has noted, the huge Lokpal mobilisation had a relatively small outcome. No corrupt politicians were pinpointed, much less punished, although that was the stimulus for the movement. No relief was offered for the unaffordably high cost of living, although that was a major motive for the agitation. Instead we were given the promise of a new bureaucracy to examine bureaucratic corruption. What exactly will emerge amidst the government’s attempts to undermine and create rifts within the Anna Hazare team, is hard to say. But this is indeed a small victory for a mobilisation so impressive that Anna Hazare had to avow that he had no plans to overthrow the government.
Mass Media? For the media, the popular mobilisation was a sign of their own success and not only of Anna Hazare’s. From the reports following the campaign’s conclusion, in fact, it is clear that the two were closely linked from the outset. It proved that the media could help move people onto the streets for a cause. This is not to deny the idealism involved in this phenomenon. Nor is the point to oppose real events against media artifice. At least from the time of the October Revolution, it has become clear that the entry of the masses on to the stage of history is both a real and a mediated event. Susan BuckMorss has pointed out, in this connection, that the 20th century was an era where
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real politics and mediated visions of collective futures became inextricably intertwined, notably in the battle between capitalism and communism. India was no exception. Gandhi’s Salt March was a public procession that grew and grew, joining a staple of everyday life with the idea of making a new nation: Gandhi saw that political participation had to be imagined as well as enacted. Collective imagination requires the work of media, human as well as technological. Grass-roots work and pub lic rallies, the press and the cinema, and today, electronic media are all involved in staging “the people” as a collective force and as a (possible) counter-public. But consider what it means for people to be together in a public space. Hannah Arendt has observed that political action requires the visibility of those who act, to themselves and to others. Such action is political only by virtue of a struggle to bring into perception what is otherwise excluded from view. To the extent that one saw events organised around ordinary people expressing critical views on public affairs, the Hazare campaign was political. But to the extent that every effort was made to render participation easier, more public and visible, this was an orchestrated spectacle. That is, we can neither dismiss it completely, nor endorse it without qualification as political in the best sense of the word. Meanwhile there is reason to be sceptical about the agitation’s outcomes. The fundamental business of television is to get people to watch it, and of the press to get people to read it. Sixty per cent of India’s households now have television. Watching TV and being on TV acquired a greater overlap during this campaign than ever before. It pointed to a kind of media awareness that had not been so prominent before. Images of their actions were reflected back to people, who then acted in a more camera-friendly way. Media images were part of their own political repertoire, which meant that media became to some extent the destination of political action too. Today we have not only TV, but also cell phones and email, Facebook, Twitter, and so on. Mass events like the drive for the Lokpal Bill accumulate huge amounts of attention, which is quantified for revenue
generation. They are also means for discharging popular energy, leaving only memories behind. That is the risk we have to be vigilant about. To the extent that media mobilise constituencies, they are fluid and volatile. Static builds up in media circuits and is released. People congregate and then disperse.
Middle Class Character One might look to evidence of such performative politics in the August Kranti of 1942, a model for the recent movement, albeit with marked difference. Gandhi was not only the leader of the earlier campaign, he was a model for volunteers’ behaviour. Abstinence, frugality, and moral character were inculcated; to this extent people sought to emulate Gandhi in their own lives. Civil disobedience carried risks, of penalisation by employers, and of imprisonment. Political dissidence took courage, and involved a public stance against the government. While courage and dedication were not absent in the Lokpal campaign, its technologically mediated form made Anna Hazare’s austerity and frugality a spectacle for contemplation and empathy. It appeared that it was enough to say, “I am Anna.” Herein lay its middle class character. The virtues that seemed essential in the earlier moment became more of an option in the recent event. Indeed, the revelations that have followed the Ramlila maidan agitation about extensive planning and coordination with PR personnel from the media industry, disclosures by Arvind Kejriwal about his casting Hazare as a suitable role model for the agitation he had planned, and accusations about some of the members of the Anna Hazare group, have left many wondering what exactly it was that they had been so enthused about. By contrast, the Right to Information Act emerged from a grass-roots rural movement, and the legislation was achieved with far less fanfare than has attended the barest preliminaries of the Lokpal Bill proposals. There is a lesson here on the co-opting power of the mass media, on its inflation of the value of the people as spectacle, and its deflation of popular power outside the image. As it happens, the French Situationist Guy Debord theorised such an outcome in his Society of the Spectacle (1967).
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When popular struggles were spreading across Arab countries, long viewed as lacking in democratic traditions, India’s apparently pacific response to its escalating corruption scandals did not look so distinguished. However, the rapid escalation of the protests, aided by embracing the media as allies, compromised their political character in numerous ways. Political parti cipation as a critique of the status quo has to exist both inside and outside the media spectacle.7 Visibility can be experienced as fulfilling, but when the image becomes the destination of politics, it is a trap. It remains to be seen whether the Lokpal Bill will not be added to India’s distinguished list of progressive legislation that is defeated by ineffective implementation. Notes 1 “Occupy Wall Street”, Adbusters Blog, 13 July 2011, http://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/ occupywallstreet.html. 2 An interim estimate in the summer of 2011 was 2594. See “The Price of Protest, So Far”, The Economist, 14 July 2011. http://www.economist. com/blogs/dailychart/2011/07/arab-springdeath-tollhttp://www.economist.com/blogs/ dailychart/2011/07/arab-spring-death-toll 3 At the time of writing, October-November 2011, it is obviously too soon to tell what outcomes if any will follow the movement. Given that the agenda for the presidential elections of 2012 remains to be clearly defined, however, the Occupy Wall Street movement, together with the Tea Party movement maybe taken to have defined the boundaries of public sentiment on the role of government vis-à-vis the economy. 4 As well, the role of social media was crucial, although reports about its uses are mainly anecdotal at present. See however the following news report: “Team Anna’s Use of Social Media Caught Us Unawares, Says [Union Law Minister Salman] Khurshid,” Indian Express, 19 October 2011, p 6. 5 Times Now TV was by far the most watched satellite news channel in English in the week following Anna’s inauguration of his fast on 16 August, with 37.8% viewership or 12 million viewers, followed by NDTV 24×7 (22.2%) and CNN-IBN (20.7%). The genre share of Hindi news channels increased from 5.9% in the period 6-13 August to 11.02% in the period 13-20 August, according to TAM Media Research. The genre share of English news channels increased during this time from to 0.54% from 0.31%. See “Anna Hazare Drives Up News Viewership,” by Abhilasha Ojha and Anushree Chandran, Livemint. com, 25 August 2011. http://www.livemint. com/2011/08/25235016/Anna-Hazare-drives-upnews-vie.html. Accessed 19 October 2011. 6 I&B Minister Ambika Soni interviewed by Prabhu Chawla on IBN-7, “Teekhi Baat”, 17 September 2011. http://prabhuchawla.blogspot.com/2011/09/ teekhi-baatibn7prabhu-chawla-with.html. Accessed 4 November 2011. The exact number of channels cited even by the I&B minister varies from week to week, so 800 cannot be taken as definitive at the time of writing. 7 As we know, there are in fact numerous struggles that attract little advocacy from the major media, from human rights demands in the north-east and in Kashmir, and Maoist insurgency in tribal lands, from victims of industrial disasters in Bhopal and elsewhere, to anti-nuclear agitations in Jaitapur and Koodankulam, and many others.
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Remembering Ajit Roy Gabriele Dietrich
Ajit Roy’s tenacity in bringing out The Marxist Review under most difficult conditions and his drive to address the Indian Left of different shades and to interact with activists of mass organisations, had clearly to do with his “optimism of the will”, which was like an inspiring contagion for those who knew him and loved him.
Gabriele Dietrich (
[email protected]) is a scholar and activist based in Madurai.
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he passing away of comrade Ajit Roy, editor of The Marxist Review, in Kolkata on 3 June 2011 signifies in a way the end of an era. Though he was ailing and retired from public life, the thought that he was still around in the little flat in Salt Lake, faithfully cared for by his wife Chuni and his daughter Nandini, had a comforting quality. He was passionately working for Left unity and upheld an incorruptible analysis of current events. The disintegration of Eastern Europe and the absorption of China into the neo-liberal world market did not shake his deep commitment to the class struggle of the toiling masses. Though The Marxist Review had stopped circulation in 2004, he remained a communist through and through in his thoughts and his passions right to the very end. Ajit Roy was born in erstwhile East Bengal in November 1920 in Dhaka district. His father was a widely respected schoolteacher and his mother brought up two daughters and two sons with an unusually secular and modern outlook. This liberal family atmosphere made Ajit Roy more open-minded later in life regarding the critique of patriarchy and the willingness to share in household chores, while his wife was holding down a modest government job. Ajit Roy did his school and college education in Dhaka district and graduated in economics at Dhaka University. He also did his post-graduation in Economics, but did not appear for the final MA exams. He had joined the Communist Party in 1940 and became a full-fledged member in 1941. He was vice-president of the Provincial Students Federation during 1945. He became a party journalist, first as reporter and then as a member of the editorial board of the Bengali party organ, Swadhinata. Together with another comrade, he was sent to Pune in 1946 by the then general secretary of the Communist Party of India (CPI), P C Joshi. This was to take the interview of M K Gandhi. In 1949, Ajit Roy opposed the Left sectarian line under the leadership of
B T Ranadive and was expelled from the party. He was later readmitted when the party-line changed. He was elected as Calcutta District Committee member of the CPI in 1955. During the 1950s, he also did some work with the Indian Statistical Institute. When the party split in 1964 under the impact of conflict with China and the Communist Party of India (Marxist) – CPI(M) – came into being, he quit the party and decided to work for Left unity from outside. With a small group of comrades he started publishing The Marxist Review, which carried on up to 2004, was run on subscriptions and meagre donations of dedicated readers, who also did not know how to make ends meet. The donations were always acknowledged in the journal.
Beacon for Young Activists I remember Ajit Roy from the early 1970s onwards. He participated in some of the seminars organised by the Christian Institute for the Study of Religion and Society in Bangalore under the leadership of M M Thomas (MMT). He also interacted with groups at the Ecumenical Christian Centre (ECC) in Whitefield and made inputs in workshops of the Indian Social Institute, as well as in training programmes for social activists, organised by action groups in Tamil Nadu. This was a period of intense hope that “non-party political formations” would be able to make a difference in the political life of the country. Ajit Roy was free from illusions as far as transformation of society was concerned. Though intensely critical of the established Left parties, including the Marxist-Leninists, he did not ever encourage the lofty dreams of selfappointed activists. He believed in thorough organisational processes of the working classes. He was deeply concerned about the disconnect between organised and unorganised workers. He contributed substantially to the political formation of a young generation of that period in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and other parts, including Jharkhand. Ajit Roy had a sharp critique of the Garibi Hatao slogans of Indira Gandhi, but also saw the limitations of Jayaprakash Narayan’s “total revolution”. He sharply saw the danger of rising communalism. When the Emergency was declared, he became a fierce critic and advocate of re-establishing constitutional democracy.
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Ajit Roy had become a good friend of MMT by that time. MMT wrote his cyclostyled circular letters, expressing a scathing critique of the “Taj Mahal policies” of the autocratic regime. These were later published in the classical booklet Response to Tyranny. The other communication we eagerly awaited was The Marxist Review. Both authors expected to be arrested any time, but this never happened. Their fierce opposition to the Twenty Point Programme and the realisation that it only streamlined capitalism but was far from aiming at real transformation, helped many young people of that period to form a lasting class perspective. Ajit Roy made it a point in the mid-1970s to travel to Europe and to get into dialogue with people who had resisted fascism under Hitler. He went to Berlin and East Germany and to the Netherlands and made broad contacts. He also made friends in the Ecumenical Centre, Hendrik Kraemer House in Berlin, where Be Ruys had worked for the recognition of the German Democratic Republic as a socialist state and for wider dialogue with the countries of Eastern Europe. He also came into contact with the Christian Peace Conference. In the 1980s, Ajit Roy was a member of the jury of the Rome-based permanent People’s Tribunal, a successor organisation of the Bertrand Russell Tribunal. He was in touch with the Communist Parties in Italy, France, the Netherlands, East Germany, Denmark and Sweden. He also knew many neoMarxists without party affiliation. He wrote innumerable articles and around 10 books, mostly in English and also in Bengali. I attended many of the workshops in which he made inputs in the second half of the 1970s. He inspired many youngsters. He was very hard-working and demanded a serious application of the mind. He went on discussing till late in the night, when most people around him were caving in. He hated getting up early, but did it anyway when unavoidable. He adjusted to very rudimentary living conditions, but he expected discipline and attention to detail. His international contacts widened his exposure and he took on board questions of ecology and participatory democracy more seriously than most other Marxists. He was very critical of nuclear energy and saw the connection with the arms race very clearly.
Ajit Roy had a very thorough understanding of Marxist theory and praxis. He had read and understood Marx, Lenin and Gramsci with great attention to historical context and keenly reread them under the challenge of new situations. Alas, most of the time the challenge did not come from mass uprisings, but was caused by the complacency of established left forces. Ajit Roy was passionate and untiring in self-critically addressing the failures of the Indian Left to respond to the Indian situation in a truly dialectical and revolutionary spirit.
Upholding Marxism He perceived the betrayal of the Marxist government in West Bengal in its compromise with multinational corporations (MNCs) and Indian capitalist forces long before Nandigram happened. In 1985, he addressed the question of Jyoti Basu’s wooing of MNCs and Indian big business houses (“Question of a Transitional Government in Marxist Terminology”, EPW, Vol XX, No 43, 26 October 1985). He contested the interpretation of Section 112 of the CPI(M) programme, which spoke of utilising opportunities of bringing Left governments into existence, which through their programmes could bring some relief to the working people and thus strengthen the process of building the Democratic Front. Ajit Roy was not an advocate for the progressing “immiseration” of the working class to serve the revolutionary cause. However, taking recourse to Lenin, he jumped into the fray to ask: “What distinguishes the dialectical transition from the un-dialectical transition? The leap. The contradiction. The interruption of gradualism. The unity (identity) of Being and non-Being” (V I Lenin, Collected Works, Moscow, Vol 38, p 284, emphasis added by AR). Ajit Roy goes on to say: “Without entering into a discussion of Marxist dialectics one can safely say that a transitional slogan is a slogan calling for a leap from day-to-day politics to the struggle for the revolutionary overthrow of the existing power structure” (EPW, 26 October 1985, p 1820). It was this sense of urgency, combined with meticulous attention to concrete conditions of space and time, which made Ajit Roy restless and consistently critical. He comes down devastatingly on the compromising attitude of Jyoti Basu, who does
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not want his state “to become an industrial desert”. He exposes the ruthless plunder of resources by the MNCs and the opportunism which abandons the class struggle and neglects the effort to sharpen the revolutionary grasp. He accuses Jyoti Basu and the CPI(M) of “philistine realism”. In a similar vein, he also did not spare the CPI and his personal friend P C Joshi. In a critical review of P C Joshi’s book on Marxism and Social Revolution in India, and Other Essays (New Delhi, 1986), which he characterises as a “Siren Song for an Indian Marxism” (EPW, 8 August 1987), Ajit Roy sharply criticises the collaborationist policies of the CPI during the Emergency from July 1975 and the failure to take a relevant stand after the anti-Sikh riots of 1984. He sees the root of the failure in lack of political will and asserts with Gramsci that “only the man who wills something strongly can identify the elements which are necessary for realisation of this will” (Prison Notebooks, International Publishers, New York, 1973, p 171). Ajit Roy is disapproving of Joshi’s attempt to discard the basic tenets of socialism in order to adapt to the Indian conditions. He also is apprehensive of the attempt to find a compromise between Indian nationalism and Indian socialism, i e, Gandhism and Marxism. However, Ajit Roy clearly acknow ledges the need to build the worker-peasant alliance, while at the same time fighting lumpenisation and fascist tendencies. He criticises Joshi for misreading Gramsci as giving primacy of ideological superstructure over economic structure and primacy of civil society (consensus) over political society (force). Obviously, these kinds of contradictions are still very much with us in our society today, in a situation where “civil society” social movements are trying to challenge the State but are in constant danger to be co-opted by the ruling classes, while the ruling classes at the same time employ ideological pressure and are also turning to militaristic solutions under the pretext of “fighting terrorism”. In these confusing times of postmodern identity politics and so-called “post-colonialism” (while we are reeling under neocolonial onslaught) Ajit Roy’s unabashed effort to uphold Marxism as an integral world view which is un reservedly universal, appears like a whiff
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Ajit Roy’s tenacity in bringing out The Marxist Review under most difficult conditions and his drive to address the Indian Left of different shades and to interact with activists of mass organisations, had clearly to do with this optimism of the will, which was like an inspiring contagion for those who knew him and loved him. There was always space for debate and disagreement based on mutual respect. He knew that the revolutionary task is enormous but never shunned to face it and to draw others into the orbit of his critical thinking. He suffered serious health setbacks in recent years. Nalini Nayak and I used to visit him and his family, when we came
through Kolkata on our way to or from Nagaland. He had become very patient and listened to music a lot. Today, we have probably come somewhat closer to his ideal of Left unity, as alliance building is trying to find new ways. At the same time, people’s struggles are facing increasing repression. Both these features can at present be observed in the anti-POSCO struggle. The question of how to form an effective organisational structure for transformation remains acutely relevant. We will keep in mind the motto of the Marxist Review: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, the point is to change it” (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach).
Democracy Triumphs in Tunisia’s First Free Elections
A variety of secular, regional, and special interest parties, though divided, won nearly 60% of assembly seats, while AlNahda scored the highest, winning 90 of the assembly’s 217 seats (or 41.47%) and 36.4% of the popular vote.1 In order to govern, the Islamists will most likely form an alliance with two left of centre parties who will make their own demands and act as a safeguard to preserve the many gains, including the abolishment of polygamy, that Tunisians have achieved since their independence from France in 1956. The first of these parties, the Congress for the Republic (CPR), with 30 seats (13.82%), led by Moncef Marzouki, a human rights activist and perpetual opponent of the deposed dictator, Zine El Abdine Ben Ali, has publicly demanded control of the ministry of interior in order to reform the nation’s police force and security apparatus and wants the interim government to hold on to power for three years, instead of one year proposed by the post-revolutionary interim government whose functions will end when the new government is installed.
of fresh air from a period which the Left has largely abandoned at its own peril. Ajit Roy rejects a national or a temporal version in the form of “Indian Marxism” as uncalled for. He is at the same time thoroughly internationalist and situation specific. He castigates the Indian Left for lack of mass mobilisation and for its compromising position on “national democratic revolution”.
‘Optimism of the Will’ Very impressively, Ajit Roy affirmed Gramsci’s Optimism of the Will even in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in a review of Randhir Singh’s book Of Marxism and Indian Politics (EPW, 2 June 1990).
Stuart Schaar
Despite attempts to demonise Tunisia’s Al-Nahda, the Islamist party emerged as the most important in the elections held last month. Tunisia, where the Arab spring began, has shown what the ballot box can achieve.
Stuart Schaar (
[email protected]) is professor emeritus of Middle East and North African history, Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He lives in Rabat, Morocco where he teaches US university undergraduates studying abroad. His co-authored Middle East and Islamic World Reader published by Grove Press, NY will be out next year in a new revised edition. The author was in Tunisia during the elections.
24
T
he atmosphere was celebratory, almost like being at a carnival, on 23 October as 39,12,369 voters, or 56% of eligible citizens, lined up at polling places throughout the north African country of Tunisia for as long as three hours to cast their ballots. The first uprising in the Arab Spring revolts had produced the country’s and the Arab world’s first free and fair elections for an assembly to write a new constitution and choose a government to run the country on an interim basis. A specially created independent electoral commission had replaced the ministry of interior to run the elections and over 5,000 poll watchers from abroad along with 1,000 foreign journalists and 2,000 Tunisian observers made certain that the elections would be fair and honest – and they largely were. The Islamist Renaissance Party, Al- Nahda, organised 7,000 of its own people to monitor the voting in every polling place throughout the country. Overseas, 2,02,177 Tunisians flocked to vote at their embassies and consulates. After voting, citizens held up their black-inked finger to show off their civic pride. Others wrapped themselves in Tunisian flags and paraded through towns and villages.
Importance of Interior Ministry In north African history some of the most intense political squabbles have revolved around who controls the interior ministry. The CPR will have to fight hard to get that post, for whoever heads that ministry maintains power over one of the major coercive forces of the state. Al-Nahda may not be willing to give up the post readily and the outcome of that struggle will tell
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Ajit Roy’s tenacity in bringing out The Marxist Review under most difficult conditions and his drive to address the Indian Left of different shades and to interact with activists of mass organisations, had clearly to do with this optimism of the will, which was like an inspiring contagion for those who knew him and loved him. There was always space for debate and disagreement based on mutual respect. He knew that the revolutionary task is enormous but never shunned to face it and to draw others into the orbit of his critical thinking. He suffered serious health setbacks in recent years. Nalini Nayak and I used to visit him and his family, when we came
through Kolkata on our way to or from Nagaland. He had become very patient and listened to music a lot. Today, we have probably come somewhat closer to his ideal of Left unity, as alliance building is trying to find new ways. At the same time, people’s struggles are facing increasing repression. Both these features can at present be observed in the anti-POSCO struggle. The question of how to form an effective organisational structure for transformation remains acutely relevant. We will keep in mind the motto of the Marxist Review: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world differently, the point is to change it” (Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach).
Democracy Triumphs in Tunisia’s First Free Elections
A variety of secular, regional, and special interest parties, though divided, won nearly 60% of assembly seats, while AlNahda scored the highest, winning 90 of the assembly’s 217 seats (or 41.47%) and 36.4% of the popular vote.1 In order to govern, the Islamists will most likely form an alliance with two left of centre parties who will make their own demands and act as a safeguard to preserve the many gains, including the abolishment of polygamy, that Tunisians have achieved since their independence from France in 1956. The first of these parties, the Congress for the Republic (CPR), with 30 seats (13.82%), led by Moncef Marzouki, a human rights activist and perpetual opponent of the deposed dictator, Zine El Abdine Ben Ali, has publicly demanded control of the ministry of interior in order to reform the nation’s police force and security apparatus and wants the interim government to hold on to power for three years, instead of one year proposed by the post-revolutionary interim government whose functions will end when the new government is installed.
of fresh air from a period which the Left has largely abandoned at its own peril. Ajit Roy rejects a national or a temporal version in the form of “Indian Marxism” as uncalled for. He is at the same time thoroughly internationalist and situation specific. He castigates the Indian Left for lack of mass mobilisation and for its compromising position on “national democratic revolution”.
‘Optimism of the Will’ Very impressively, Ajit Roy affirmed Gramsci’s Optimism of the Will even in 1990, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, in a review of Randhir Singh’s book Of Marxism and Indian Politics (EPW, 2 June 1990).
Stuart Schaar
Despite attempts to demonise Tunisia’s Al-Nahda, the Islamist party emerged as the most important in the elections held last month. Tunisia, where the Arab spring began, has shown what the ballot box can achieve.
Stuart Schaar (
[email protected]) is professor emeritus of Middle East and North African history, Brooklyn College, City University of New York. He lives in Rabat, Morocco where he teaches US university undergraduates studying abroad. His co-authored Middle East and Islamic World Reader published by Grove Press, NY will be out next year in a new revised edition. The author was in Tunisia during the elections.
24
T
he atmosphere was celebratory, almost like being at a carnival, on 23 October as 39,12,369 voters, or 56% of eligible citizens, lined up at polling places throughout the north African country of Tunisia for as long as three hours to cast their ballots. The first uprising in the Arab Spring revolts had produced the country’s and the Arab world’s first free and fair elections for an assembly to write a new constitution and choose a government to run the country on an interim basis. A specially created independent electoral commission had replaced the ministry of interior to run the elections and over 5,000 poll watchers from abroad along with 1,000 foreign journalists and 2,000 Tunisian observers made certain that the elections would be fair and honest – and they largely were. The Islamist Renaissance Party, Al- Nahda, organised 7,000 of its own people to monitor the voting in every polling place throughout the country. Overseas, 2,02,177 Tunisians flocked to vote at their embassies and consulates. After voting, citizens held up their black-inked finger to show off their civic pride. Others wrapped themselves in Tunisian flags and paraded through towns and villages.
Importance of Interior Ministry In north African history some of the most intense political squabbles have revolved around who controls the interior ministry. The CPR will have to fight hard to get that post, for whoever heads that ministry maintains power over one of the major coercive forces of the state. Al-Nahda may not be willing to give up the post readily and the outcome of that struggle will tell
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us a great deal about how much the party is willing to concede to make coalition politics work. Mustapha Ben Jafaar, the leader of Ettakadol, or the Democratic Forum for Labour and Liberties (FDTL), with 21 seats (9.68%), has made it known that he would accept the presidency of the assembly as part of an alliance deal. Prominent French political leaders have supported him in his bid to head that body, which may or may not hurt his chances for success. Marzouki, however, may have the same ambition, since he proclaimed upon arriving back to Tunisia from years of French exile that he wanted to be president of the country. Many feminists and left-of-centre Tunisians who I spoke to after the elections took place would like to see a secular alliance form in the assembly to prevent AlNahda from controlling the government. They oppose the formation of any coalition with the Islamists. This does not seem possible, since both the CPR and the FDTL leadership refused to demonise the Islamists during the campaign and made it clear that they wanted Al-Nahda to be accepted as a major political force in the country. This position most likely contributed to their electoral gains, since the population, having undergone extreme trauma during and after the Arab Spring revolt, does not seem to want confrontational politics and sent a message that they desire a transitional government based on consensus. The popular will gave Al-Nahda victory in every circumscription of the country and 50% of assembly seats in voting overseas. They remain the political force to contend with in the country. Another party, the Progressives Democratic Party (PDP) led by the lawyer, Ahmed Najib Chebbi, had demonised AlNahda late in the campaign, expecting that his party’s high scores in polls taken before the election reflected real strength. To everyone’s surprise, the PDP came in fifth with 17 assembly seats (7.83%). The polls, conducted by phone with 1,034 respondents on 22-24 September, were wrong on almost every count, giving the Islamists 25% of the vote. In ex-dictatorships people polled maintain extreme discretion, as if the old order still existed in which no one dared to speak the truth for fear of police retribution.2 This lacklustre
result disappointed the PDP since it had the support of the Tunisian equivalent of the Chamber of Commerce, UTICA, and the country’s business elite. With lavish funds to spend, Chebbi launched an expensive campaign that backfired. His demonisation of Al-Nahda turned many voters away from his party. The Popular Petition Party, which did not score at all on the pre-election polls, surprised most people by winning 19 seats (or 8.76% of the total). Its leader based in London, Hachmi Hamdi, a former luminary of Al-Ittijah Al Islami, a precursor of Al-Nahda, and later a confidant of Ben Ali, campaigned from the UK by means of a private television channel that he owns. Beaming into Tunisia ceaselessly during the campaign, he delivered a populist message aimed at the poorest Tunisians, promising that he would fight to reduce the price of a loaf of bread from 250 millimes to 100 millimes and give free healthcare for all, without saying where he would find the money to execute his plans. Rumours began spreading that Hamdi used the networks of the ex-ruling party, the RCD (Constitutional Democratic Rally), to win his seats. The election commission disqualified six victors from his party, including a Tunisian living in France who won despite the fact that he had been a prominent member of the ex-dictator’s ruling party, 14,000 of whom (out of 20,00,000 members) were barred by the commission from running in the elections. Hamdi’s hometown, Sidi Bouzid, the cradle of the revolution where Mohammed Bouazizi immolated himself on 10 December 2010, and sparked the revolt, rioted when news reached them that their votes for their favourite son were null and void. This was the only instance of serious electoral violence in the country.
Al-Nahda’s Approach Al-Nahda has made claims on the prime minister’s office for its Secretary General, Hamadi Jebali, a conciliator by nature, and one of the architects of the party’s strong showing. Jebali spent 16 years in Ben Ali’s prisons, 10 of them in solitary confinement. Once liberated and after Ben Ali fled the country, the Al-Nahda leader made the rounds of political figures in the Tunisian opposition, asking their
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advice about how to proceed. I spoke with some of his interlocutors during this past summer and they all were impressed with his genuine interest in hearing their opinions. One of them recommended that the party follow the AKP (Justice and Development Party) Islamist Party’s model in Turkey and allow for a clear division of religion and state. I was assured that Jabali paid great attention to the discussion that followed. Throughout the campaign and after the elections, he and the party’s titular head, Rachid Gennouchi, embarked on a media blitz to assure opponents that they need not fear that the party would turn Tunisia into a medieval theocracy. They already had issued issued a 250-page programme which promised not to amend the personal status laws (which gave Tunisian women a higher legal status than most other Arab women enjoy), enforce a dress code for women or beards for men, or change the direction of Tunisian capitalism, claiming that they would encourage foreign investment from western and west Asian investors. For the tourism sector they pledged to allow bars to serve foreign tourists alcohol and promised not to enforce dress codes. That surprised me, since in many Tunisian resorts, European women parade topless openly in public view on the beaches. I wonder whether Al-Nahda is going to permit that transgression to continue. On 29 October Gannouchi appeared for more than an hour on Arabic television for a hard-hitting interview in which he again attempted to calm the fears of those who opposed his party. The man had spent over 20 years living in the United Kingdom in exile. His daughter grew up there and speaks perfect English and has served at times as his spokesperson. While living overseas he has had influence over the political direction of the KPD Party in Turkey. In many meetings with their leaders he has counselled moderation in order that they could win and keep power. A violent bent of his movement in its early years has, through exile, imprisonment and torture, been tempered by a desire to win power through the ballot box.
Achievement of Arab Spring The Arab Spring, with its non-violent beginnings in Tunisia and Egypt, demonstrated that civil disobedience and
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solidarities across class lines could bring down dictators and open up new possibilities never before dreamed of. This is perhaps the greatest achievement of the movement. In the minds of many Arabs the ballot box in fair and free elections can now accomplish more than suicide bombers. The trend began much earlier as masses of people in the Muslim world started turning against Al Qaida because their tactics killed more Muslims than the “enemy” westerners. It took the Arab Spring movement to prove that there was an alternative way to change. Sit-ins, mass demonstrations, hunger strikes, participating in fair and free elections were other means that could work to foster meaningful change. Tunisia has demonstrated that this is possible. Many problems remain though. Tunisia’s economy has stagnated because of the perceived and real turmoil in the country. Tourism has fallen by 60%; investments from abroad and within the country have come to a standstill, although the head of the national bank expects growth of about 2.5% by next year as donors and investors return. Yet, to satisfy the demands for jobs of 3,00,000 unemployed university graduates and to equalise the gaps between the wealthier coastal population and those long neglected in the interior, it is estimated that the country needs to grow by about 7% yearly. Needed transformations cannot be accomplished quickly, but probably need to be planned out over the next one or two decades. Here Turkey can serve as a model, since that country also had major discrepancies between the populations of industrial Istanbul and the agricultural and backwards interior. Over the past decade the Turks have built an economy that is now growing by 10% yearly and have diversified to the point that major industries have been established throughout the interior of the country, giving people hope that their lives will improve dramatically. The consistently impressive electoral results of the Turkish KPD Party reflect this new reality. The close relations bet ween Gannouchi and the Turkish Islamist leadership should facilitate investments by Ankara in decentralised industrial ventures in rural Tunisia. The first stage of Tunisian development under presidents
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Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali improved the lives of many who lived on the coast. The next stage has to attend to the needs of the poor, many of whom live on less than $2 per day. If Al-Nahda can mobilise that population the way they mobilised voters in this election, Tunisia’s future may be brighter than its critics realise.
Importance of Islam That organisation goes deep into Tunisian society. I spoke to a man in a Tunis bar after the elections and asked him whom he voted for. “Al-Nahda”, he answered. I asked him how someone who imbibes so freely can vote for an Islamist Party. Without missing a beat he told me that he had been jailed by Ben Ali for five years and during that time the only organisation that gave his family money was Al-Nahda. The party while underground established networks of social aid that kept many poor families alive. There is one final item of great importance that worked in Al-Nahda’s favour. All the secular dictatorial reformers, such as Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in Turkey or Habib Bourguiba and Ben Ali in Tunisia, relegated the Islamic religion to the back-burner, in effect depriving their populations of their very souls. Simply stated, Islam permeates
Muslim societies. When you learn Arabic, you are told that you must say inshallah (if god wills) every time that you say that something will happen in the future. It is a grave mistake if you do not do it. The religion permeates daily life and has never died out except for a small minority of the population. You cannot find many atheists in society. God permeates the language and the culture. Islam defines Tunisian identity as it does Moroccan, Egyptian, and so on. When left free a sizeable portion of the population will chose an Islamic party over others, because it represents who they are. This feeling has not changed over the years. What has changed is a new ability to express these feelings and emotions through the ballot box. Tunisia has become a trendsetter, so we should expect similar results in the months and years to come in neighbouring countries. The positive aspect of this change lies in its non-violent character. This may be a portent of great promise rather than irrational fear. Notes 1 The final voting results can be found at the Arabic website of the independent electoral commission. The Tunisian French daily newspaper, Le Temps on 28 October 2011 also published official results. 2 La Presse de Tunisie published pre-electoral polling results on 3 November 2011.
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FROM THE STATES
Political Economy of the Temple Treasure Trove Rajan Gurukkal
The Supreme Court’s order to assess and document the artefacts of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple in Thiruvananthapuram is a move towards democratisation of knowledge of the treasure. Equally significant is the Court’s appointment of an expert committee headed by the directorgeneral of the National Museum for evolving measures to preserve them – a step suggestive of the tacit recognition of the people’s right to see the treasure. With no choice left, the Government of India has to come to terms with its constitutional responsibility of preserving the treasure in a museum under the temple with the highest safety measures.
Rajan Gurukkal (
[email protected]) is with the Mahatma Gandhi University, Kottayam, Kerala.
T
he recently reported treasure trove of the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, unbelievably huge and valued at tens of thousands of crore, has not been adequately situated in its historical context as yet.
Source of Wealth Historically, the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple dates back to the ninth century as one of the 13 Vaishnava shrines sung by Alvars (Vaishnava hymnists). It is relevant to try and recapitulate a bit the ante cedents of wealth accumulation in the temple. Like other prominent ones of the period, which had extensive land control along the fertile tracts of wet-rice agriculture, the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple had owned paddy fields and garden lands in a radius of about 30 km, interspersed with crown lands (cerikkal) and brahmana lands (brahmasvam) from the 10th century. It had become a landed magnate by the 14th century with holdings far and wide along the banks of the Ittikkara, Veli, Sithar, Karamana, Neyyar and Kothayar rivers. Unlike other temples, the Sri Padmanabha swamy Temple had a lot of forest land rich in spices and commercial crops like cardamom and pepper. The temple had its land redistributed among the members of the landed corporation (ettarayogakkar consisting of eight brahmanas and one Nair chief) who were brahmana landlords with obligations to look after the temple affairs. These landlords had hereditary officials escorted by armed men (manushyam) for making periodic exactions from the temple land (devaswam). The crown lands distributed across the landscape from Kallada in present-day Kollam district to Tovala in Kanyakumari district, managed by collateral royal lineages (swarupams) such as Kayamkulam, Attingal, Desinganad, Ilayitam, Thrippapur, and Chirava, had often clashed with one
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
another and individually with the temple officials in matters of revenue jurisdiction and exaction. Such clashes had led to attacks on the temple and even the murder of a few servants there, which had sometimes brought capital punishment to the chief offender but invariably ended up with imposition of heavy fines on royal personages by way of expiation. The vast tenant population of the temple-land had to surrender a substantial share of its produce. Traders were indeed a major source of the temple’s wealth. All this accounts for the accumulation of wealth in the temple.
Marthandavarma The ruling lineage of Travancore rose to prominence under the king, Marthandavarma (1729-58), through his conquests of petty chieftains, suppression of big landlords and acquisition of direct control over strategic points like ports, markets and trade routes. Inflicting a historic victory on the Dutch East India Company, on 31 July 1741, at Colechel, he became the first king to have defeated a European power on Asian soil. He got the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple renovated, expanded and made integral to the royal household. The big gateways (gopura), the fortifications (mathil), the granite structures, and the huge sanctum surrounded by singularly distinct and unique treasurevaults are his political statements in architecture. He ritually placed his extra ordinarily expanded kingdom at the feet of Sri Padmanabha and declared himself the deity’s servant (Sri Padmanabhadasa), with the vow to rule on his behalf, which makes explicit the lack of structural and institutional means to sustain sovereign control. The state was yet to structurally and institutionally re-articulate itself by removing the shackles of the feudal order and the traditional strategies of extra-economic coercion. Naturally, the temple wealth and royal assets converged, enabling their preservation in the temple as hidden treasure for security reasons. The royal assets that consisted of gifts from neighbouring kings, forced acquisitions, fines and, fortunes in the form of booty from battles
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FROM THE STATES
had grown in an unprecedented proportion during the reign of Marthandavarma. The temple wealth accrued over a few centuries must have certainly involved a lot of gold and silver in artefacts, coins and bullion, purchased using its own income or received as gifts.
Protection from Plunder One of the most significant reasons for the long survival of Sri Padmanabha’s treasure is the strange immunity to plunder that the temple had enjoyed, ensured by a variety of factors. Both Hyder Ali and Tipu Sultan, enticed by the great stock of wealth of Travancore, had plans to loot the kingdom. However, the plans never succeeded, thanks to the block put up by the Dutch and the English and the newly acquired prowess of the Travancore Nair militia. The incredible level of inaccessibility, which the hidden vaults, strategically built into the temple architecture with complex locks, camouflages and faith-based checks, has indeed been a major factor in protecting the artefacts. The treasures were concealed in six vaults built around the sanctum sanctorum. All vaults except two were being opened from time to time and hence much of its very precious contents must have vanished into thin air! It is from one of the two long unopened vaults that the treasure trove has been discovered. The sixth vault, the one not opened as yet and supposed to contain the most riches, is pandaravaka (vested in the crown), presumably containing the treasure of the Travancore kings. Traditions about the sixth vault, which has been bewilderingly sealed under a concealed lock, say that it is closed for good by a magical snake-knot (nagabandha) amenable to untying only by divine souls. The underlying mythical connotation here is that snakes are the celestial custodians of gems, who yield only to the blessed.
Archaeological Wealth Irrespective of whether the treasure is vested in the crown or temple or both, it is archaeological wealth accumulated over a few centuries. Any objects of archaeological treasure trove – except for unworked natural objects, or minerals extracted from a natural deposit, or objects
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otherwise not designated to be of heritage value in India – belong to the nation. Nevertheless, this does not mean that the national government whose constitutional prerogative is only to preserve, can turn the objects into cash and spend it, unless enabled to do so through a legislative intervention by Parliament. As such the government can only preserve these objects of immense heritage value. All presumptions about the original source or owner of the treasure, and prescriptive suggestions about utilisation of the valuables are therefore unwarranted in the case of heritage objects. In India, as per the extant acts, statutes and regulations, the central government has the sole constitutional rights over any potential treasure trove of national heritage value. There is a genealogy of legislations relating to heritage treasure law in the country, starting with the Indian Treasure-Trove Act, 1878 and the Ancient Monuments Preservation Act, 1904. The Ancient and Historical Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1951, and the States Reorganisation Act, 1956, improved with insertion of constitutional provisions into the Ancient Monuments and Archaeological Sites and Remains Act, 1958, strengthened by the Antiquities and Art Treasures Act, 1972, and supplemented by the Antiquities and Art Treasure Rules 1973, all provide for the union government to have monopolistic control over heritage treasures. Nevertheless, people debate on the ways and means of the productive use of the assets for the cause of the poor, provoking heated disputes and controversies. Understanding the historical making of the treasure is fundamental to its political economy wherein the social structural arrangements for appropriation of the unpaid surplus were central. The treasure is a culturally contingent store of valuables, which in the present case is predominantly stored in the form of gems and gold. Who worked gems and gold artefacts for whom, and what entitled the latter to accumulate them are questions of the political economy of the treasure trove. It is the feudal caste-based social relations of power headed by the king against which we situate the historical making of the treasure that is fundamental to its
political economy. These relations represent the social structural arrangement for appropriation of unpaid surplus. It is the structures of control of a protostate, which account for the accretion of wealth in the form of the temple treasure trove. What the treasure means and how it works today in the national and provincial set-up of a weak capitalist country of uneven development with the persistence of a lot of feudal passions and values are the contemporary political economy questions. Contemporary political economy has set in with the Supreme Court’s order to assess and document the artefacts – a move towards democratisation of knowledge of the treasure. Equally significant is the Supreme Court’s appointment of an expert committee headed by the director-general of the National Museum for evolving measures to preserve the treasure – a step suggestive of the tacit recognition of the people’s right to see it. With no choice left, the Government of India has to come to terms with the constitutional responsi bility of preserving the treasure in a museum under the temple with the highest safety measures, for that is the only legally feasible measure that can reduce the state’s burden of providing security cost by generating some money. The Supreme Court’s acceptance of the temple’s average annual income as Rs 5 crore against the budgeted expenditures of Rs 4 crore and Rs 1 crore for meeting the establishment and maintenance costs respectively, precludes the temple’s financial participation in security measures. This means the Government of Kerala has to meet the cost of security, which it has offered to do. Salaries for watch and ward alone come to Rs 7.5 lakh a month. The Supreme Court’s decision, amidst objections from various quarters, to put off the opening of the “magically sealed” and highly mystified sixth vault, till the measures for documentation, categorisation, security, preservation and conservation of the unveiled treasure in the other vaults are complete, and the Court-appointed expert committee’s opinion that it requires a year to build up the proposed museum, point to a longer duration over which the state must bear the financial burden of guarding the treasure.
november 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
The Rise of China Nitin Desai
A
n eclipse is a totally predictable celestial event determined precisely by the Newtonian motions of the earth and the moon around the sun. Arvind Subramanian’s book Eclipse can be thought of as the economic equivalent of celestial mechanics in that it applies the algebra of exponential economic growth to come up with a forecast that China will displace the United States (US) as numero uno in the global economic power game by 2030. The centrepiece of his thesis is the convergence of low income and high income countries and a pace of convergence determined by the distance from the standard of living frontier. The argument for this is the “flat earth” thesis of Thomas Friedman, that productivity enhancing innovations travel virtually costless across national boundaries, provided that some preconditions of human skills and openness to trade are present. An older argument for convergence is that capitalism needs it for its own survival; but in that case it will never allow convergence to erode its own power! Subramanian’s argument is based on some fairly straightforward analysis of historical growth patterns. He defines global economic dominance in terms of the size of an economy, measured in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) at purchasing power parity, international trade and net capital exports, all measured as ratios to the world totals. He argues that other elements that determine economic dominance, like technology or human capital, are likely to be correlated with these and need not be independently considered. He defends his index on the ground that it does a good job in identifying dominating powers in the 1870-2010 period. Having defined the index, he bravely projects it forward to the present on the basis of assumptions that, according to him understate China’s growth and capital exporting potential. His trade projections
book review Eclipse: Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance by Arvind Subramanian (Washington: Peterson Institute for International Economics), 2011; pp xvii + 216, price not indicated.
are derived from his GDP projections as they came out of a gravity model for predicting trade flows. As is usual with this type of exercise he tests for robustness by tweaking the growth rate differential, which is the key to his projections, up or down. The more novel element in his projection of Chinese dominance is the thesis that the renminbi will displace the dollar as a reserve currency within the next 20 years. This is based on the argument that the dominant economic power’s currency becomes the preferred reserve currency some time after the power has reached undisputed dominance. He does some vigorous scouring of historical data and ana logies to suggest that the lag is around 10 years and that means that if history is any guide the renminbi will rule much sooner than expected.
Relying on Historical Analogy Subramanian’s arguments rest heavily on historical analogy. But as he himself recognises we live “…in a fuzzier, more muddled world with history supplying only imperfect analogies and providing limited guidance” (p 154). What are the possible reasons for a departure from these Newtonian predictions of Chinese dominance that according to him is imminent, broad-based and as substantial as United Kingdom dominance in the heyday of empire and US dominance after the second world war? China’s trade dependence is a constraint on power as much as an opportunity for exercising it. Its industrial capacities produce products to meet demand in countries much richer than it is now or will be even 20 years from now. Much of this capacity is
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
in the hands of multinationals that may not be willing to switch to catering to the demands of the lower income Chinese consumer. It also needs trade to obtain the many raw materials it lacks. Even now China needs access to other countries markets and resources. The US is less vulnerable. It is rich in resources or has control over low-cost resources in other countries. Its control of west Asian oil, based on its security umbrella for the sheikhdoms and for Israel, is a big part of this advantage. It has a large domestic market and has always been an innovating society. It does not need the world to the extent to which the world needed it and this shows up in trade proportions that are lower than what Subramanian’s Newtonian dynamics would predict. Subramanian also underestimates the role of technology as the basis of US dominance. In fact, boom years in the US eco nomy seem to coincide with the spread of some game changing innovation in products or processes. There are a few references to technological prowess in the book and Subramanian seems to count on the larger number of engineers in China as a sufficient ground for believing that technological dependence will not stand in the way of global dominance. If only it were so simple India would also be there vying for a share in global power. China is moving into a phase where it has to make a transition from low income to middle income status. Reverse engineering will not be enough. It needs to become a product and process innovator. But the fact is that it does not have an ecosystem for innovation capable of allowing mavericks like Steve Jobs to flourish. The big one, however, is the forecast that the renminbi will become a reserve currency. Subramanian’s arguments rest heavily on the association between reserve status with GDP, trade and net creditor positions. For the renminbi to become a reserve currency China would have to give up a mercantilist policy of an undervalued exchange rate, reform its financial sector so that it can provide globally competitive financial services and open its financial sector to foreign investment. Subramanian seems to think that China is
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BOOK REVIEW
ready for this and will do so initially through enclaves in Hong Kong and Shanghai. But the fact is that the high rates of investment in China have led also to poorly performing loans in the balance sheets of banks and that clean up could take even longer than the sub-prime clean up in the US. The impact of a quicker rise in the exchange rate also may exert an influence on domestic jobs that the regime may not be ready to accept. The choice of the currency in which you will have an open position or in which you would prefer to hold your assets is increasingly influenced by capital flows. Many more businesses now have capital assets and liabilities in currencies other than their home currency. Even their transactions demand for currencies reflects these capital account commitments. This is a change from the past when the scale of capital transactions was much smaller. The availability of efficient and deep financial markets is a necessity for coping with these large flows. Chinese banks and finance companies are nowhere near the point at which they can offer a borrower
or lender in another country the sort of services that New York or even London can offer. There are other factors that may slow the rise of China like political upheavals in the struggle for democracy and social issues like ageing. But these go beyond the framework of reference of Subramanian’s study. Basically, Subramanian measures the power potential of a country. Translating this potential into dominance requires institutions that can mobilise domestic society and polity around the goal of dominance and the diplomatic and military capacity to project this globally. These dimensions are barely touched in Subramanian’s book. Assuming that China has what it takes to exercise global dominance, Subramanian’s answer to this is to coax China into multilateralism. His preferred institution for this is the World Trade Organisation rather than the International Monetary Fund (IMF), even though his book begins and ends with the fantasy of a Chinese managing director of the IMF reading the riot act to a US President accompanied by the legislative heads of both parties!
Tethering China to multilateralism amounts to a demand for socialising China and for Mao Tse Tung’s successors to take on the responsibility for managing an open and liberal capitalist world system. According to Subramanian they may do this on their own if his projections of overwhelming Chinese power are right, with the US as part of a G-2 if the inertia in the global power system slows down China’s rise or with the G-20 in tow if China sees some practical or ideological value in multi lateralism. But this type of transformation of an avowedly communist state is only possible if the Chinese political system goes through the sort of upheaval that the erstwhile Soviet Union went through from the mid-1980s onwards. The results of such a jasmine revolution could disrupt China’s long march to dominance as much as perestroika and glasnost did to their northern neighbour. One can be sceptical about the pace at which China will rise; but that it will become an increasingly powerful player in shaping global economic relations is inevitable. So also is the diminution of
New from SAGE! FROM ECSTASY TO AGONY AND BACK
FROM SEVA TO CYBERSPACE
Journeying with Adolescents on the Street Barnabe D’Souza
From Ecstasy to Agony and Back presents the journey of adolescent street drugaddicts—from psychological brokenness resulting from family disruption to the process of mending; from abuse, trauma and vulnerability to building up of self-esteem, talents and personality; and finally to the process of moving off the streets. Based on the author’s experience of working with the street children for over 26 years, the book explores the universe of street children interestingly, yet empathetically. The author discusses laws and policies affecting street children; root causes and their effects on them and their families; and the various stakeholders like agencies, employers, and institutions involved in their care and guidance. The participatory action research discussed here views children as their own psychologists, creating meanings for themselves out of their own experiences and understanding.
The Many Faces of Volunteering in India Femida Handy, Meenaz Kassam, Jillian Ingold and Bhagyashree Ranade From Seva to Cyberspace examines the phenomenon of volunteering in India from its earliest instances to present-day manifestations. Tracing the origins of voluntary action in India, the authors examine the historic, religious, and cultural traditions of Seva (direct service to others) that have played an important role in inspiring Indians toward voluntary action. The authers define the volunteer and discuss the methods of measuring the value of volunteer labor to NGOs. They includes a detailed discussion of the particular contributions of the oldest and youngest volunteers in India. The distinctive motivations and contributions of those with a religious inspiration for voluntary action are explored at length, as are the important issues of service clubs and corporate support for volunteer activities. 2011 • 272 pages • ` 650 (Hardback)
2012 • 252 pages • ` 350 (Paperback)
www.sagepub.in 30
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novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
BOOK REVIEW
US power. What does this mean for the rest of us? Subramanian’s book has the subtitle “Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance”. So presumably China is the Rahu that is gobbling up the sun that is the US and dimming the prospects for all of us! But is that the case? Should the world fear Chinese dominance? May be geopolitical factors make Chinese dominance less welcome to India. But that is no reason for it to be the
cat’s paw of the US in delaying the rise of China. If one reads the long litany of US high-handedness when it ran the global system the polite Confucian mandarins of China may be a welcome change from the aggressive evangelicals from the north Atlantic. The answer for India and the rest of the world marginalised by the emergence of the G-2 lies in containing both of them. The imminent end of the hegemony of
Emotion Cultures and the Culture of Emotions Pravesh Jung G
P
ramod K Nayar’s States of Sentiment is a work that explores the consequences of the play and politics of emotions in our day-to-day life. It makes a genuine attempt to unfold and highlight the complex ways in which emotions ope rate, both in terms of the ways in which they are organised by various socio- cultural mediums as well as in the ways in which they are consumed by the world, and the consequences that unfold. Nayar’s “Introduction” is indeed a carefully crafted introduction to the work. Through its length it intends to gear and orient the reader to the fundamental pillar upon which the book rests, namely, that though emotions are private and subjective experiences, their modes of production and their outcomes are not necessarily so and that they can be seen, in contrast, as being largely sociocultural. It is this social-cultural aspect of emotions and the politics that govern them that the book makes an attempt to explore and capture. The attempt is to explore what emotions (the author’s neologism for this is emotional dominant) are sought to be extracted from us by representations that are represented in various mediums that are in circulation in a given sociocultural avenue. The book explores the manufacturing of these structures of representations that demand a determinate emotional response from us. As such, emotions as dealt with here are not captured and treated as merely subjective
States of Sentiment – Exploring the Cultures of Emotion by Pramod K Nayar (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan), 2011; pp i-xxiii + 291, Hardcover, Rs 595.
experiential states but rather as an outwardly mode in which I am sought to be directed to relate to the world in specific stances and pushed to position myself in it in determinate ways. Thus emotions are, as Nayar puts it, to be seen as constituting a mode of “affective sociality” where my response to an event or an entity in a given cultural context is sought to be governed by the various manufacturing apparatus of mediums of presentation/representations of our sociocultural world and its narratives. Emotional dominants thus play a pivotal role in the politics of identity formation, identification/classification and evaluation of events and entities in the world. The text, thus, explicitly positions itself as an engagement with this sociocultural aspect of emotions, and by distancing the exploration that is undertaken in the book from an “exploration of the psychological foundations or authenticity of emotions” (p 4), it positions itself firmly as a work within the boundaries of cultural studies in general and cultural emotion studies in particular.
Landscape of Emotion Cultures Apart from skilfully managing the expected tasks of orienting the reader on how to go
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
one superpower provides an opening for pursuing the path of robust and equitable multilateralism that Subramanian recommends. So India and the rest of the world should pursue this fast before another hegemonic superpower consolidates its position. Nitin Desai (
[email protected]) is chairman of the board of governors, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.
about the remaining 230 odd pages that constitute the four chapters of the book; in familiarising her/him with the terms and neologism that she/he needs to equip herself/himself in reading the text; and in helping the readers locate the book in the world of academic boundaries, the “Introduction” warns the readers to get the proper intellectual gear and tune it to the demands of the style in which this exploration is presented in the text. In a sense, the author through his text intends to introduce the reader to a landscape of emotion cultures and the various sites where emotions are “cultured”. The attempt to introduce us to this landscape is done through snapshots, and hence it is crucial for the author that the reader is oriented in her/his reading of a presented snapshot. The “Introduction” starts off with a set of discrete images (snapshots) that we have encountered in various mediums of our culture such as mass media but before we can think through them, the author forces us to look at them in terms of the emotional dominant that operates in each of these images by explicitly stating them immediately after the presentation of the image. In doing so, the text uses a blunt but a powerful tool of keeping the reader’s mind from loitering around and then proceeds to put forth an analytic description of the complex sociocultural mechanism of the operating emotional dominant in a simple and free flowing style of exposition. Given the vastness and the complexities of the landscape that the author intends to familiarise us with, the author is generous with the number of snapshots provided to us and they are numerous. Thus, Nayar’s movement from one snapshot of the landscape of emotion culture to the other
31
BOOK REVIEW
US power. What does this mean for the rest of us? Subramanian’s book has the subtitle “Living in the Shadow of China’s Economic Dominance”. So presumably China is the Rahu that is gobbling up the sun that is the US and dimming the prospects for all of us! But is that the case? Should the world fear Chinese dominance? May be geopolitical factors make Chinese dominance less welcome to India. But that is no reason for it to be the
cat’s paw of the US in delaying the rise of China. If one reads the long litany of US high-handedness when it ran the global system the polite Confucian mandarins of China may be a welcome change from the aggressive evangelicals from the north Atlantic. The answer for India and the rest of the world marginalised by the emergence of the G-2 lies in containing both of them. The imminent end of the hegemony of
Emotion Cultures and the Culture of Emotions Pravesh Jung G
P
ramod K Nayar’s States of Sentiment is a work that explores the consequences of the play and politics of emotions in our day-to-day life. It makes a genuine attempt to unfold and highlight the complex ways in which emotions ope rate, both in terms of the ways in which they are organised by various socio- cultural mediums as well as in the ways in which they are consumed by the world, and the consequences that unfold. Nayar’s “Introduction” is indeed a carefully crafted introduction to the work. Through its length it intends to gear and orient the reader to the fundamental pillar upon which the book rests, namely, that though emotions are private and subjective experiences, their modes of production and their outcomes are not necessarily so and that they can be seen, in contrast, as being largely sociocultural. It is this social-cultural aspect of emotions and the politics that govern them that the book makes an attempt to explore and capture. The attempt is to explore what emotions (the author’s neologism for this is emotional dominant) are sought to be extracted from us by representations that are represented in various mediums that are in circulation in a given sociocultural avenue. The book explores the manufacturing of these structures of representations that demand a determinate emotional response from us. As such, emotions as dealt with here are not captured and treated as merely subjective
States of Sentiment – Exploring the Cultures of Emotion by Pramod K Nayar (Hyderabad: Orient Blackswan), 2011; pp i-xxiii + 291, Hardcover, Rs 595.
experiential states but rather as an outwardly mode in which I am sought to be directed to relate to the world in specific stances and pushed to position myself in it in determinate ways. Thus emotions are, as Nayar puts it, to be seen as constituting a mode of “affective sociality” where my response to an event or an entity in a given cultural context is sought to be governed by the various manufacturing apparatus of mediums of presentation/representations of our sociocultural world and its narratives. Emotional dominants thus play a pivotal role in the politics of identity formation, identification/classification and evaluation of events and entities in the world. The text, thus, explicitly positions itself as an engagement with this sociocultural aspect of emotions, and by distancing the exploration that is undertaken in the book from an “exploration of the psychological foundations or authenticity of emotions” (p 4), it positions itself firmly as a work within the boundaries of cultural studies in general and cultural emotion studies in particular.
Landscape of Emotion Cultures Apart from skilfully managing the expected tasks of orienting the reader on how to go
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
one superpower provides an opening for pursuing the path of robust and equitable multilateralism that Subramanian recommends. So India and the rest of the world should pursue this fast before another hegemonic superpower consolidates its position. Nitin Desai (
[email protected]) is chairman of the board of governors, Institute of Economic Growth, Delhi.
about the remaining 230 odd pages that constitute the four chapters of the book; in familiarising her/him with the terms and neologism that she/he needs to equip herself/himself in reading the text; and in helping the readers locate the book in the world of academic boundaries, the “Introduction” warns the readers to get the proper intellectual gear and tune it to the demands of the style in which this exploration is presented in the text. In a sense, the author through his text intends to introduce the reader to a landscape of emotion cultures and the various sites where emotions are “cultured”. The attempt to introduce us to this landscape is done through snapshots, and hence it is crucial for the author that the reader is oriented in her/his reading of a presented snapshot. The “Introduction” starts off with a set of discrete images (snapshots) that we have encountered in various mediums of our culture such as mass media but before we can think through them, the author forces us to look at them in terms of the emotional dominant that operates in each of these images by explicitly stating them immediately after the presentation of the image. In doing so, the text uses a blunt but a powerful tool of keeping the reader’s mind from loitering around and then proceeds to put forth an analytic description of the complex sociocultural mechanism of the operating emotional dominant in a simple and free flowing style of exposition. Given the vastness and the complexities of the landscape that the author intends to familiarise us with, the author is generous with the number of snapshots provided to us and they are numerous. Thus, Nayar’s movement from one snapshot of the landscape of emotion culture to the other
31
BOOK REVIEW
is necessarily swift and demands attention from the reader, which in turn is secured by the simple free flowing style of his analytic exposition of the snapshot positioning it in the larger context of the landscape. The reader must, however, be careful to not allow the transposition of the simplicity of the exposition as a qualifier to that about which the exposition is. The “Introduction” thus also implicitly makes the reader aware of the intellectual demand made by the text as the same style is consistently followed in the expositions provided in the four chapters of the book, each of which is devoted to the four “sentiments” of Well-Being, Suffering, Aversion and Hope. Each chapter provides, through the medium of snapshots, a lucid analytic exposition of how each state of these sentiments is manufactured, organised and circulated for our consumption through strategically designed discourses that we encounter in our dayto-day life. Given that the text is primarily an engagement with the discourses that pertain to states of sentiments, the choice of images (snapshots) that the
32
a uthor uses for illustration of his points are borrowed from various forms of discourses ranging from Calvin and Hobbes to self-help books and from social networking sites to reality shows, apart from the usual mediums such as adverts and newspapers. The author employs a variety of these illustrative images and manages to bring to light the complexities that we usually take for granted in things we encounter and highlights the culture of emotions in which we partake. But at the same time, the variety and the numerous images employed by the author also demands an intellectual flexibility on the part of the reader to move from a hilarious image to a grave one within the space of a few pages. The analytic description that the author intends to navigate the reader through is generously supported by other scholarly works to act as a ready signpost in case the reader has doubts about the navigating skills of the author. The ready references and the bibliography also enable the reader to seek out new avenues and routes to navigate the terrain should she/he intend to do so on her/his own.
I must also caution the reader that the work is not a book on mass-media ethics though it deals with the mediums of massmedia. The author has consistently managed to keep the text away from a tone of imperativeness of “ought to” or “ought not to” even while discussing issues with normative contents. The work is more in the spirit of descriptive and analytic exploration rather than a prescriptive analysis. A well written Foreword to the text by Shiv Vishwanathan not only introduces the reader to the text but also positions the text and highlights its relevancy. Nayar’s States of Sentiment is a book that is engaging and is filled with insights; some piercing, some interesting, some both piercing and interesting. The strength of the work lies in its ability to corner the reader to put on her/his thinking caps and rethink the world of emotions and the way they work or are constantly being worked upon. Pravesh Jung G (
[email protected]) is at the department of humanities and social sciences, IIT-Bombay.
novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
PERSPECTIVES
The Human Rights Movement in India: In Search of a Realistic Approach Dipankar Chakrabarti
Frameworks of human rights – cast largely in terms of the individual’s relationship with the state – are facing an unprecedented challenge today. After tracing the evolution of the civil rights movement in India in the age of colonialism and its trajectory towards maturity in the post-Independence period, the author emphasises the need to focus particularly on economic, social and cultural rights in a third world context such as India’s, and more so in the present age of globalisation, arguing that this will in turn pave the way for the achievement of civil and political rights.
Dipankar Chakrabarti (
[email protected]) is the founder-editor of Aneek, a monthly journal in Bengali published from Kolkata, and vice-president, APDR (West Bengal).
1 A World-Historical Outline
I
n this age of globalisation, the very framework of society is undergoing great upheavals. While the nationstate remains the fundamental constituent element of the international community, its role is changing in the face of the expansion of the global market. The global market, clearly dominated and controlled by the imperialists, is assuming an aggressive control over more and more aspects of our lives. Frameworks of human rights – cast largely in terms of the individual’s relationship with the state – are facing an unprecedented c hallenge. According to the direct or indirect proponents of globalisation, economic deve lopment – in other words, the spread and deepening of the market – should precede over everything else. But what is this “economic development”? Whose development? Whose economy? Does it ensure people’s basic welfare and rights? The grim reality is that the global economy is not at present working in favour of the poor countries or of the poor; rather the rich countries and the rich are becoming richer and the poor poorer. There is a lot of debate about the extent to which economic growth leads to the realisation of economic rights (such as an adequate standard of living), but what is undeniable is that in the pursuit of economic growth, people who are defending their land, livelihood and resources have been facing v iolent repression by the state. Economic growth often comes at the expense of other rights, with governments justifying, tacitly supporting, or even engineering human rights violations in the name of development and economic competitiveness. In this context, it should be emphasised that quality and security of life cannot be measured solely in terms of the market or
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economic development, economic growth or per capita income. Genuine sustainable development is a more holistic process, embracing the place of individuals in civil society, their personal security and their capacity to determine and realise their potential. As the United Nations Development Programme states, The concept of human development is much broader than the conventional theories of economic development. ...It analyses all issues in society – whether economic growth, trade, employment, political freedom or cultural values – from the perspective of the people. It thus focuses on enlarging human choices.
Or, as made clear in the Declaration on the Right to Development adopted by the UN General Assembly in 1986, “the human person is the central subject of deve lopment”. In this way, the process of development brings together the full range of human rights – civil, cultural, economic, political and social – into one indivisible and interdependent whole. Freedom from fear and extrication from want are the two sides of the same coin. That is why, in the Preamble to the International Covenant of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, one of the cornerstones of inter national human rights law, it has been clearly and unambiguously accepted that “the ideal of free human beings enjoying freedom from fear and want can only be achieved if conditions are created whereby everyone may enjoy his economic, social and cultural rights, as well as his civil and political rights”. Even though the historical evolution of international human rights law saw the artificial and misleading separation of civil and political rights on the one hand, and economic, social and cultural rights on the other, into separate covenants with separate characters, in 1993, the world conference of the governments of the different countries on human rights in Vienna clearly declared that “All human rights are universal and indivi sible, interdependent and interrelated. The international community must treat human rights globally in a fair and equal manner, on the same footing and with the same emphasis.” At the very outset it should be remembered that the concept of human rights is
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not an abstract idea, independent of class division, but is basically dependant on the specific stage of the social development of any country. There cannot be any unchangeable and “pure” concept of human rights, independent of a specific society, universally applicable to all countries across time. The experience of the deve lopment of human society has shown that the social and economic progress achieved through the continuous development of the productive forces helps to develop the concept of human rights, which again plays a role in developing human consciousness. A primary consciousness regarding human rights can be traced even to the early stages of human society, but in the absence of an appropriate social base, it could not develop, not to speak of its realisation. The unprecedented development of the social productive forces in Europe under capitalism through the industrial revolution created that social base by challenging the old feudal, monarchical and religious authority, and gradually thereby shaped the concept that “human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights”. Democratic ideas began to take shape against national and international autocracy, which again helped the concrete development of the concept of human rights. Since then gradually, through ups and downs and in the context of different social realities and times, it has been almost universally established that the concept of human rights is not static or unchangeable and independent of social reality, but rather dynamic and always developing. And, in this context it must be emphasised that though the aspiration for equality and dignity of all human beings, reflecting the essence of human rights, was inherent in the culture and civilisation of the different stages of human society, it has, in the final analysis, been brought to reality through class-differentiation and class struggle. We, in West Bengal, generally try to explain this class nature of human rights in a class-divided society with the help of two stories. One is a story involving Bertrand Russell, the renowned British pacifist philosopher, taken from his P ortraits from Memory. Once, during the first world war, Russell, the pacifist, was trying to build up public opinion against Britain’s
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participation in the war by publicly speaking in a park in London. Some chauvinistic, war-hysteric persons physically assaulted him. One of his students, present at the meeting, ran to the nearest police station to request the cops to save him. The officer-in-charge was then picking his teeth in a leisurely manner, with his feet on the table. He asked: “Who is this Russell?’’ When told that he was a world- famous philosopher of Cambridge University, he remarked: “So what! One who opposes war should certainly be assaulted!” The young man exclaimed in an exasperated voice: “Do you know that he comes from a Lord family?” The police officer jumped up, brought his feet to the ground, gave a salute and angrily said, “Why didn’t you say it earlier?”, and then ran to the park to save “the Lord”. The second story is actually a famous realist Bengali story: “Democracy and Gopal Kahar”. A rich and influential landowner, belonging to the ruling party, lodged a false complaint with the police against a landless poor peasant in order to evict him from his land. The obliging police duly brought the peasant to the police station and tortured him mercilessly, accusing him of being a dangerous element jeopardising democracy. The innocent and puzzled farmer repeatedly declared in the name of god that he did not even know the identity of that babu, democracy. But the torture continued and ultimately he lost one leg for no fault of his. The fate of the two characters – Russell and Gopal Kahar – was actually pre- determined on the basis of their class identities. And actually, this is the real picture of democratic rights in a class- divided bourgeois society: the whole super-structure of the system is based on property relations, where there remains the fundamental and inviolable discrimination between the haves and the havenots. Without this realisation we cannot actually understand the basic class nature of human rights in a class society. The historical trajectory of democratic transformation of European autocracies has hinged upon the successful assertion of three important components of human freedom: (i) freedom of expression; (ii) freedom from arbitrary imprisonment; (iii) freedom from custodial violence. The
legitimisation of these freedoms as the inalienable civil and political rights of all citizens against the state constitutes a historical landmark in the evolution of liberal democracies, initially in Europe, and subsequently in other parts of the advanced countries. In this process of evolution of the concept of human rights, special mention should be made of the role played by the Magna Carta (1215), Petition of Rights (1627), and the Bill of Rights (1688) in England, the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizens (1791) of France adopted after the French Revolution, and especially of the Bill of Rights (1787) of the USA. These civil and political rights constitute the sources of the first generation of the modern concept of human rights. The Russian revolution under the Bolshevik slogan of “bread, land, and all power to the Soviets” inspired the Soviet Bill of Rights with its conscious primacy of economic and social rights over civil and political rights, ultimately leading to the most comprehensive and fundamental acceptance of the human rights as contained in the constitution of Soviet Union adopted in 1937. These, along with the post-war era’s concern for the right of self-determination of the colonial world, and against racial and/or gender discrimination, have paved the path for the unanimous adoption of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR in short) by the United Nations General Assembly on 10 December 1948, signed by India amongst others.
2 Indian Civil Rights Movement: Evolution We shall now try to sketch the evolution of the civil rights movement in India. Quite obviously, in India, the civil rights movement began during the colonial period in close association with the national liberation movement. Though the movement did not acquire any organisational form before 1936, its genesis can be traced from the early 19th century, when the embryo of the civil libertarian conscious ness was manifested through the demand for the freedom of expression and also for the freedom of the press, equality before the law, protection against racial discrimination, etc. And the ground for an organised effort to develop the civil liberties movement was gradually being prepared
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by different significant events like the adoption of the Declaration of Rights in a special session of the Congress (1918), the spontaneous agitation against the Rowlatt Act (1919), the historic meeting at Calcutta addressed by Rabindranath Tagore amongst others to protest against police firing in Hijli Jail on the political prisoners (1931), leading to efforts to form a Citizens’ Committee for championing the cause of the release of political prisoners and safeguarding individual freedom, etc. The 1920s and 1930s was a significant period in the history of India’s freedom movement. Mass movements against colonial rule were gradually spreading and assuming an organised form. The All India Trade Union Congress, the All India Students’ Federation, the All India Kisan Sabha, the Progressive Writers’ Association, etc, were founded. The All India Trade Union Congress was gathering strength on the basis of the much-cherished unity of different factions leading the working class. All these movements actually set the foundation and the background for an organisation to launch the civil rights movement. Ultimately, on 24 August 1936, the All India Civil Liberties Union (ICLU) was founded in Bombay with Jawaharlal Nehru as the main initiator. Rabindranath Tagore was elected as the president, Sarojini Naidu as the working president, and K B Menon as the general secretary and a 21-member executive committee which included Jawaharlal Nehru, Abul Kalam Azad, Sarat Chandra Bose, Rajendra Prasad, Vallabhbhai Patel, Jayaprakash Narayan, etc. The inherent spirit of the ICLU was precisely reflected in the closing sentence of Nehru’s address at the inaugural session: “The idea of civil liberty is to have the right to oppose the government”. That in a capitalist state the civil liberties movement must, in essence, be an anti-state movement in spirit was realised even then, and it obviously had, and still now has, a serious and far-reaching impact on the civil rights movement in our country. ICLU was quite active in the political arena of our country till the mass-explosion of the Quit India Movement in 1942. It built up the tradition of citizens’ investigations in cases of political imprisonment and harassment, police brutalities, govern ment bans and autocratic restrictions, etc,
publishing reports on them, and also of lodging protests and placing demands before the government. That the activities of the movement had a considerable impact was proved by the fact that the Congress ministries formed in many provinces after the 1937 elections were directed by the Congress Working Committee to show respect to civil liberties. But one of the inherent weaknesses of the movement on a national scale was that the cases of revolutionary freedom-fighters following the path of armed struggle were not given proper importance. And it should be noted that even today, almost 75 years after the organised beginning of the civil liberties movement in our country, not only the Congress, but rather, all the ruling parties, be they of the “left” or right variety, are virtually denying the civil rights of those political activists, who follow the path of armed struggle to fulfil their dream of leading the Indian people to liberation, “enjoying freedom from want and hunger” as postulated in the UDHR. Still the ICLU played a commendable role in developing civil liberties consciousness among a significant section of the people in a colonial set-up.
3 Indian Civil Rights Movement: Towards Maturity There must be some basic distinction in the civil rights movement in any country between its colonial and postcolonial phases. But at the very outset it must not be forgotten that in spite of a post-second world war revolutionary upsurge all over India against imperialist domination, India’s freedom was achieved basically through a compromise with the imperialists, thereby handing over power to the bourgeoisie, dependant on the imperialists in alliance with the feudal elements. As a consequence, human rights of the common labouring people were not at all guaranteed, nor were such rights expected to be ensured. The Constitution of India, framed after the adoption of the UDHR, of which India was a signatory, no doubt, has ensured the inclusion of some fundamental rights like right to life, expression, press, association, mobility, etc. But even in this “rights- giving” constitution, provisions have been included to take away all the fundamental rights on one or other excuses.
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Although during the independence struggle, Pandit Nehru – the supposed champion of and the main spirit behind the democratic and civil rights movement in the pre-independence period, and also the first prime minister of independent India – had repeatedly assured that there will be no “black law” infringing upon people’s fundamental freedom from arbitrary imprisonment, rarely was there any prolonged period in our country in the post-independence period when a “black law” in some form or the other1 was not in operation. Recurrent use of the draconian and colonial Disturbed Areas Act and the Armed Forces Special Powers Act, etc, in some areas of the country has turned the promise of non-prevalence of black laws into sheer mockery. Innumerable instances can be cited in this respect. And again, rights to work and shelter have not been included in the Constitution in spite of the demand repeatedly raised by the people as well as by civil rights organisations. Consequently, the unbridled persecution as well as exploitation of the common labouring people continues. Naturally the people fought and have been fighting during the whole of the post-independence period for service and other means of livelihood, land for cultivation and housing, for better wages and living conditions, exercising their constitutional democratic rights to fight for these demands. But the State takes recourse to persecution and torture, imprisonment and police brutalities, like lathi charge and firing, unasha medly suppressing all basic democratic and legal norms and grossly violating all the fundamental rights enshrined in the Constitution. This process prevails, whatever may be the colour of the government either at the centre or in the states – green, saffron or red. The civil and democratic rights movements began to develop in postcolonial India just side by side with the process of transfer of political power from the British imperialists to the Indian ruling classes, in the main, dependant on them. The first organisation that came up was in 1947, the Madras Civil Liberties Union (mCLU) (bearing the same name as the erstwhile Madras branch of ICLU). In the meantime a Bombay Civil Liberties Conference was held on 1-2 January 1949. The same year,
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MCLU organised an All India Civil Liberties Conference in Madras on 16-17 July. Significantly, even then, just after India’s independence, apprehensions were expressed in the conference that the limited civil liberties enjoyed under the British rule would be “the first casualty” in independent India. In 1948, the Communist Party of India (CPI) was banned and an all-out severe repression on its members and sympathisers unfolded. A civil liberties committee was formed in West Bengal in the same year. Eminent scientists, lawyers and academic intellectuals like Meghnad Saha, Sarat Chandra Bose, N C Chatterjee, Khitish Chattopadhyay, etc joined this movement against the government’s onslaught on civil and democratic rights, particularly of political workers. In this context a particular characteristic of the initial phase of the Indian civil liberties movement in the post-independence period should be emphasised. At that time the members and the supporters of the undivided CPI mainly organised and took the lead in the civil rights movement at different junctures of time. This created a couple of problems. First, the movement used to become active only when the communists were under state repression and persecution. But when state repression against the communists receded, the movement practically evaporated. This lack of continuity was, no doubt, detrimental to the building up of a strong and organised movement. Second, and most importantly, since the communists’ main commitment and devotion were to their party programmes, it was virtually impossible to frame policies and develop and organise the civil liberties movement independently on a broader basis beyond the boundary set forth by the party, so that the interests of the broad section of the masses in general be served. A resurgence of the civil liberties movement began only in the 1970s of the last century on a new and more or less independent plane. With the formation of the Association for the Protection of Democratic Rights (APDR) in West Bengal in 1972, there began the present and undoubtedly new and higher phase of the movement. Thus a new chapter in the process of evolution and development of the human rights movement in India was
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inaugurated. The movement acquired, more or less, an independent theoretical and organisational foundation leading to a continuous existence and a set of ongoing activities. In Andhra too, Andhra Pradesh Civil Liberties Committee (APCLC) was formed in 1974. Gradually this movement, no doubt, became a permanent feature of Indian society, spreading to Delhi, Maharashtra, Assam, Punjab, Kashmir, Chhattisgarh, Tamil Nadu, etc. APDR was formed in West Bengal at a time of the most heinous attack on democratic rights, when state terrorism appeared in its most barbarous form through mass killings, murder in police and judicial custody, fake encounters and atrocious and continuous attacks on mass movements of labouring people. Naturally the main demands at that time centred on putting an end to all those inhuman, illegal and undemocratic acts of the state, release of all political prisoners and the repeal of the black acts like MISA. International support came from the international civil rights organisations like Amnesty International. The movement got tremendous support from the people. But in June 1975 the most draconian internal Emergency was imposed in India, taking away by a stroke of the pen, that too with an illegal and questionable method, all the basic civil rights of a citizen enshrined in the Constitution of India.
Emergency and Its Aftermath Taking advantage of this, the Government of West Bengal banned APDR and arrested some leading activists including the present writer, most of whom had to languish in jail without any meaningful trial for the whole Emergency period, i e, about 21 months. During this infamous Emergency period, an all India civil rights organisation, the People’s Union for Civil Liberties and Democratic Rights (PUCLDR in short) gradually took shape in 1976, with Jayaprakash Narayan as its moral spirit. In the 1977 parliamentary elections, the repressive government was defeated, and PUCLDR played a significant role in mobilising the people against the ruling clique. After the withdrawal of the Emergency, there developed a high tide of mass movement demanding the release of all political prisoners, which had to be included in the election manifesto of the Left Front (LF) in
West Bengal. Consequently, the newly elected LF government had to release all political prisoners, and the ban order on APDR had to be withdrawn. Subsequently, a number of civil rights organisations have been formed, regionally or on a national basis in almost all the states. A few years back an All India Coordination of Democratic Rights Organisation (cdro), comprising almost all the regional civil rights organisations has been formed. The civil rights movement has, no doubt, emerged as a permanent feature of Indian society. Though a democratic atmosphere prevailed after the withdrawal of the Emergency and the installation of a new government in New Delhi, it was apprehended by the civil rights workers that state terrorism, police atrocities as well as attacks on mass movements and human rights would continue in some form or the other. The experience of the next four decades confirmed these apprehensions. All the anti-people acts of the State continued, although on a smaller scale. And APDR played its role as before. But it was felt at the same time that public opinion as well as movements, as far as possible, should be built not only for safeguarding political and civil rights, but also for the general economic and social rights of the people. With this contention, the basic aims and objectives of APDR were aligned with the UDHR. Consequently, protection of the human and civil rights of even non- political people came under the purview of APDR. At present APDR has been fighting not only against state terrorism, violation of political and human rights and police atrocities, but also against indiscriminate non-state terrorism, and in favour of the people’s right for livelihood, education, medical facilities, and against globalisation, environmental pollution, communalism, fundamentalism, etc. As a result, APDR’s influence has spread among different sections of the people. In 1995, a human rights commission was set up by the Government of West Bengal. Since its inception APDR has been aware of its limitations and constraints, but still the commission is being utilised as far as possible. It will not perhaps be irrelevant to mention here that, so far as the attitude of the state towards the human rights movement, especially in West Bengal, is concerned,
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time and again, it has gone through significant shifts and changes, reflected through the attitudes of the state personnel, especially the police and those in administration. Initially they looked at civil rights activists with contempt, virtually ignoring them. Then it was felt that they have some popular support, and consequently they had to be accepted, grudgingly though; in private, state personnel began to fear them a bit. But even when they have to acknowledge the human rights workers, at the same time they try to denigrate them as far as possible. Initially the state officials tried to generally allege that APDR protects criminals and anti-socials in the name of protection of human rights. Indeed, the recently overthrown “Marxist” Government of West Bengal has even viewed APDR (since the 1990s) virtually as a terrorist organisation, closely linked with the Maoists. This trend has been observed in almost all the states of India, be they led by centrists like Congress, Hindu fundamentalists like the Bharatiya Janata Party, regional parties like the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam, the Bahujan Samaj Party, or self-declared Marxists like CPI(M). But time and again the ill motives and activities of governments, both at the centre and in the states, in violation of human rights, and even the laws of our country, have been exposed publicly. On this specific issue of what should be the viewpoint of the civil rights organisations to any government or political party, a clear difference of opinion emerged. When the Janata Party came to power after the fall of the Congress government at the centre in 1977, the national leaders of the PUCLDR refused to criticise or condemn the government even after the killing of workers in Kanpur and mine-workers in DalliRajhara. Consequently, the Delhi unit came out of the organisation and built a separate one, the People’s Union for Democratic Rights (PUDR). In fact, in the context of increasing criminalisation and corruption of the political parties and brutalisation of state terror, even assaults on democratic rights activists, the civil liberties organisations like APDR, PUDR, etc, have emerged as significant social forces in many states, which both the central and state governments have to reckon with.
That no doubt signals, to some extent, the maturity of the civil rights movement.
4 In the Age of Globalisation But that does not mean that a correct and clear orientation, in the proper sense of the term, has already been achieved. As we have already noted, though many of the existing civil rights organisations have begun to take note of the evil consequences of globalisation running amok in our country since the beginning of the 1990s, it must, no doubt, be admitted that a significant and comprehensive programme which can fully and properly address its onslaught and consequences has not yet been formulated. In order to achieve that goal, we must first try to redefine the very concept of human rights itself in the context of the grim reality of globalisation. For the very definition of the concept undoubtedly depends on the class character and interests of human rights theorists. Just as there is the possibility of existence of darkness under a lamp, similarly there remains the danger of confusion, consciously or unconsciously, behind the formulation of this definition. So long, we – human rights theorists as well as activists of third world countries like India – in the main, have been following the concept in a narrower sense as set forth by liberal western theorists of the advanced capitalist countries. In conventional analysis, liberal western theorists equate human rights, in a general sense, only with the civil and political rights, thereby basically almost negating the economic, social and cul tural rights of the people of the third world, and also the latter’s right to develop independently and without any interference by the imperialist nations. This will naturally be conducive to the maintenance of the economic domination of the imperialists on the third world. The UDHR of 1948 itself shows overwhelming concern for political and civil rights and gives meagre attention to economic, social and cultural rights. Though the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1966 – largely through the insistence of the third world countries – seeks to rectify the imbalance, human rights continue to be equated with only
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political and civil rights. On the other hand, liberal western theorists want to interpret human rights only in an individualistic sense, showing no concern for the sense of the collective, or of the collective interests of the people, or the country itself. Their aim is to impose their own realityinduced mentality on the people of the third world who face a completely different reality and background. The aspiration for the freedom and development of the individual self of the post-renaissance advanced capitalist countries, basically liberated from the domination of feudalism and the church of the middle ages, has almost no similarity with the fundamental aspiration of the people of the third world, still gasping under the bondage of imperialism (direct or indirect), feudalism and religious fundamentalism. The spirit of the international covenants of 1966 and the declaration of development of third world countries of 1986, adopted by the United Nations in spite of the stiff resistance by the advanced countries, has rightly led to the Tehran declaration of 1986: “The Civil and Political Rights cannot be fully realised without fully realising the economic, social and cultural rights”. In order to secure the most basic of all human rights – the right to life, along with the fulfilment of the ideal enshrined in the Preamble to the UDHR (of “enjoying freedom from fear and want”), conditions must be created to achieve and secure human rights to food, to clothing, to shelter, to education, to health, to employment, etc, which are fundamental to the very survival of the vast majority of the human race in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Life and liberty, food and freedom, must go hand in hand if we want to develop an integrated and real vision of human rights for these people, one which does not revolve around the individual, but is centred on a notion of the rights of the collective, the community, the nation. It is obvious that this vision is simply contrary, almost inimical, to the goal of achieving mainly the civil and political rights of individuals, following the dictate of liberal western proponents of human rights. This follows from the colonial experience of the third world countries. Subjected to alien and exploitative colonial domination for centuries, fighting for freedom came to mean fighting for the
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freedom of not merely the individual, but for the people as a whole. This explains why freedom as well as the basic economic, social and cultural rights to these people becomes a composite collective ideal, intertwined with the quest of whole communities for human dignity and social justice, “free of hunger and want”. And this should be the primary understanding for redefining and developing a basic concept of human rights relevant to the people of the third world, far away from the concept as understood and propagated so long by the liberal western theorists of human rights, and almost imitated by us, the human rights activists of countries like India, shamelessly, though perhaps unconsciously.
5 Globalisation and the Violation of Human Rights Once we accept that for the people of the third world, the right to live is the most important and decisive human right to realise and secure, it also becomes evident that even in the 21st century, the most disastrous obstacle to the realisation of that right is colonialism or domination of imperialists of different hues and colours, and their aggression and exploitation, control and domination over the third world. This again basically encourages and perpetuates racial discrimination, fundamentalism and communalism as well as almost all the backward norms and practices of pre-capitalist society, whichever become helpful to the continuation of that domination. Imperialism grotesquely tramples upon the national independence and sovereignty of the third world countries, controls and captures their natural resources and wealth, raw materials and produced goods, thereby depriving them of their legitimate incomes. During the post-second world war period, most of the 150 major localised wars took place in the third world, with the direct or indirect backing of imperialist countries, and obviously the people of these countries became the cannon fodder of those wars. In the last 100 years, at least six million people have been killed by imperialists, directly or indirectly. Economically too, due to the exploitation and manipulation of imperialism and their stooges, the living conditions in
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these countries for most of the people are becoming more and more precarious. This process has actually been evident for the last few centuries with the emergence of capitalism, and especially its highest phase, imperialism. It has been tremendously accentuated in the last few decades with the emergence of the economics of globalisation, based on neo-liberal economic doctrine. Perhaps it would be better to take the help of Lewis Carroll’s famous allegory Through the Looking Glass to understand the phenomenon of globalisation. In that allegory, Alice and the Queen were running hand in hand in the Red Queen’s garden, and the Queen was running so fast that it was very difficult for Alice to keep pace with her. But still the Queen kept crying “Faster! Faster!” The most curious part of the thing to Alice was that the trees and the other things round them never changed their places at all; however fast they went, they never seemed to pass anything. An astonished Alice exclaimed: “‘Well, in our country, you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you ran for a long time as we’ve been doing”. But the Queen retorted: “A slow sort of country! Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same place. If you want to get somewhere else, you must run at least twice as fast as that”! Think of the Red Queen’s garden as capitalism. The relentless search for markets and profits brings about rapid changes in production and space, industry and commerce, occupation and locale, with profound effects on the organisation of classes and states. It is through this ferocious process of extension and change that capitalism preserves itself, remains capitalistic, and perpetuates basically the same system. This paradox, or rather this dialectic, can only properly be grasped if we understand that the “bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society” (Karl Marx). This was not an understanding merely appropriate to what happened to the world in the first half of the 19th century: it is no less appropriate to understanding what has happened over the second half of the 20th century and also in
the first decade of the present century, and to what is taking place in the world today in the context of globalisation. Now think of Alice, frantically running alongside the Red Queen, as the representative of the third world. You will begin to grasp the real significance of globalisation to them. They must keep on running in order to keep pace in the face of deprivation and poverty, brought about by the fierce plunder of the imperialists for more and more profit, but still basically unable to satisfy their basic needs of life – for food and shelter, for health and education and culture. And from the point of view of imperialism, historically speaking, its most severe crisis burst out towards the end of the 1920s, ultimately resulting in the second world war. After a brief respite as a consequence of massive reconstruction following the unprecedented devastation of the war, the crisis again came to the fore in the 1970s. Since then the capitalist world has been continuously ridden with crises, leading to the next most severe major crisis in 2008, which has not yet been overcome. The ferocity of this continuous period of crises forced the imperialists to give greater attention to plundering the third world’s natural resources – land, minerals, water, and even air. The process of globalisation is nothing but the programmatic manifestation of this more acute phase of imperialist plunder based on the hydra-headed doctrine of neo- liberalism. The Indian ruling classes began to traverse this path of globalisation since 1991. The advocates of globalisation descri bed it as the panacea for all economic woes; they claimed that the only path to prosperity is to adhere to free-market principles. The nations of the third world, in particular, are being urged to deregulate and open up their economies to free trade and foreign investment, to ensure their speedy transition to the status of developed economies. But it has already been proved that globalisation has brought, in its wake, great inequities, mass impoverishment and despair; that it has fractured society more acutely along the existing fault lines of class, gender and community, while almost irreversibly widening the gap between the rich and the poor,
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both in terms of individuals and nations; that it has caused the flow of capital across international borders, which has been responsible for financial and economic crises in many countries and regions; that it has enriched a small minority of persons and corporations within nations and within the international system, marginalising and violating the basic human rights of millions of workers, peasants and farmers and indigenous communities. Though globalisation has been portrayed as turning the whole world into one global village, leading to unprecedented enjoyment of human rights for everyone together with the spread of the highly cherished values of democracy, freedom and justice, in reality, it has turned the world into a global market for goods and services, dominated and steered by the powerful, gigantic transnational corporations and governed by the rule of profit, thereby trampling upon the basic human rights of the people in the world, parti cularly in the third world countries. The governments of these third world countries are abiding by the multilateral agreements that are deepening the process of globali sation, thereby violating the basic human rights of the people. These agreements and policies have had adverse effects on the right to work, the right to food, the right to health, the right to education, and the right to development. In their drive for profits, companies, in particular, the TNCs, have been restructuring their operations on a global scale. The result has been massive unemployment. In 1995, the International Labour Organisation announced that onethird of the world’s workforce (those willing and able to work) was either unemployed or underemployed. In India, only 8% of the labour force is in the formal economy while 92% work in the informal economy with no legal protection or security, and are subject to ruthless exploitation. Workers in developing countries have been forced into a race to the bottom, and the bottom means slavelike conditions. Consequently, the calorie intake of the poor has declined. The Trade Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of the World Trade Organisation prevents countries from producing low-cost generic drugs, robbing poor patients of their rights to health.
olicies promoting globalisation by introP ducing the market mechanism into the provision of healthcare obviously make such services less available to the poor. The privatisation of health and hospital services also makes the poor suffer as services become more oriented towards those who can pay. The lives of at least one to two million children on average are lost every year. The right to education has also been adversely affected by privatisation policies and the turning of education into a profit-generating enterprise in developing countries. Due to the reduced governmental expenditure on education the quality of public free education has been suffering. The consequences of violations of human rights are revealed by the widening gap between the rich and the poor, both at the global and the local levels, as reflected in international statistics (http://www. global issues.org/article/26/poverty-factsand-stats): (1) Half the world – nearly three billion people – live on less than two dollars a day. (2) The wealthiest nation on earth has the widest gap between rich and poor of any industrialised nation. (3) The top fifth of the world’s people in the richest countries enjoy 82% of the expanding export trade and 68% of foreign direct investment, while the bottom fifth, barely more than 1%. (4) In 1960, 20% of the world’s people in the richest countries had 30 times the income of the poorest 20%; in 1997, 74 times as much; and in 2015 it is estimated to be just 100 times. (5) A few hundred millionaires now own as much wealth as the world’s poorest 2.5 billion people. (6) The combined wealth of the world’s 200 richest people hit $1 trillion in 1999; the combined income of the 582 million people living in the 43 least developed countries was $146 billion. (7) As globalisation matures, the rate at which the rich people and countries become richer competes with and becomes directly proportional to the rate at which the poor people and poor countries become poorer. It is simply unnecessary to fill up hundreds of pages with relevant statistics to prove how globalisation has been affecting human lives most disastrously in the countries of the third world. We are much more interested in the irrevocable fact that emerges from these figures that capitalism has already been proved to be detrimental
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to the interests of the labouring people; and that globalisation is even more so. It is simply inimical to the realisation of the basic human rights of the vast majority of the third world. This leads to the basic tasks of the human rights movement in countries like India to raise people’s level of consciousness so that they come forward to thwart this inhuman process of globalisation.
6 Supporting Movements against Globalisation The aspiration for winning civil and political rights which has primarily motivated the movement over all these years definitely remains. But, as we noted earlier, without fully achieving economic, social and cultural rights, the above rights cannot be really achieved. Hence, the main emphasis should be given to these basic rights, i e, economic, social and cultural rights. Consequently, the human rights movement should now build a direct bridge with the ongoing people’s movements as well as those that will surely arise in the near future, defending the basic interests of the labouring people. The implementation of globalisation policies led to the emergence of many such movements, like the Narmada Bachao A ndolan of lakhs of evicted people, the anti-Posco movement in Orissa, the farmers movement in Noida, Uttar Pradesh, etc, for safeguarding the living conditions of the downtrodden. We, in West Bengal, have already acquired some experience in collaborating with such movements. Our organisation, APDR, has actively supported the Singur and Nandigram movements of the peasants against eviction by the state at the dictate of multinationals and big capital, and also the Lalgarh movement of the adivasis against state terror and deprivation by building up public opinion and extending necessary help and cooperation. It is noteworthy that special economic zones (SEZs), a direct outcome of globalisation policies, are being opposed by the people everywhere in India, and we are proud to have been a part of the Nandigram movement, which in India was the first case of the people emerging victorious in their fight against an SEZ project. We, the human rights activists of India, must frame a new orientation and programme of action so
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as to serve such people’s movements, which are sure to be organised in large numbers and with broader perspectives in the near future.
7 Relation with Progressive Political Movements In this context, it is necessary to bring into the discussion once more the question of the relation between political movements and human rights movements in a country like ours. It should be made clear at the very outset that there cannot be any Chinese wall between the two, so long as a particular political movement seeks to uphold the economic and political interests of the poor, not in words but in reality, and is not under the domination of any particular political party or group. Otherwise the question of dual loyalty will surely arise. But that does not mean that a political worker cannot participate in the human rights movement. Obviously she/he must be allowed to do so, so long she/he is conscious of the limits and constraints of the human rights movement, and is ready to work in such a situation. Please note, in this connection, I can declare without hesitation that in the present circumstances of our country, a human rights organisation cannot and should not ‘‘limit itself only to filing writ petitions, organising signature campaigns, publishing reports by sending fact-finding teams and holding symbolic protest demonstrations’’. We in West Bengal did more than that, remaining within the framework of democratic methods and norms, when the movement in question is not led and dominated by a particular political party or group, but under the collective leadership of numerous democratic organisations and persons of different political viewpoints during the mass struggles in Singur and Nandigram, and, at present, in the context of a renewed movement for the release of all political prisoners in West Bengal. And we shall not hesitate to repeat the same. But if we accept the leadership of one particular political organisation, there will always remain the danger of abandonment of human rights ideals to serve the interests of that political force. There are ample examples before us. We have already noted the case of PUCLDR, which played such a vital role in mobilising
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ublic opinion against the autocracy of p Indira Gandhi during the Emergency period, but later on, some of its leaders refused to condemn police atrocities under the Janata Party rule in 1978 against the struggling workers of Swadeshi Mills in Kanpur, or mining workers in Dalli- Rajhara in Madhya Pradesh (now in Chhattisgarh), so as not to “disturb” the new (Janata) government. They repeated the same in 1979, when they refused to condemn the CPI(M)-controlled Left Front Government of West Bengal in 1979 for the atrocity perpetrated on the poor refugees in Marichjhapi. Indeed, just now in West Bengal we have been passing through a similar experience. A section of the civil liberties activists – who were most vocal and active in demanding the unconditional release of all political prisoners just a month before the assumption of power by the Trinamool Congress-Congress Party bloc after defeating the Left Front – is now virtually opposing the movement that is brewing against the new government for refusing to release them unconditionally and imposing offending conditions on the political prisoners. I am happy to state that the vast majority of civil liberty activists are eager to depend not on the government’s “goodwill” but on the people’s movements. Hence, our lesson is to join the political movement for the achievement of the basic economic and social rights of the people keeping aloft the flag of human rights, not sacrificing it to the pedestal of any other force. I want to sum up my deliberations with the earnest and sincere hope that a new orientation as well as programme of action suitable for a third world country like ours to achieve and secure the basic economic, social and cultural rights which will, in turn, also pave the way for the achievement of the civil and political rights of the people. Note 1 For e g, Preventive Detention Act, Defence of India Rules, Prevention of Violence Act, Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA), Conservation of Foreign E xchange and Prevention of Smuggling Activities Act, Essential Services Maintenance Act, Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act, Prevention of Terrorism Act, Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, etc (like the different names of the mythical character Sree Krishna of the Hindus!). novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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Why Worry about Inequality in the Booming Indian Economy? Thomas E Weisskopf
This paper makes the case that, even in a poor country such as India, decision-makers should aim not only to eradicate poverty but also to reduce economic inequality. After providing an overview of various dimensions of economic inequality in India, it is argued that such inequalities – both among individuals and between identity groups – are a matter of concern even independently of their implications for the extent of poverty. It is discussed as to how government economic policies can be oriented to reduce economic inequality without reducing economic growth.
O
ver the last two decades India has emerged on the global scene as a rising economic power. Although still a relatively poor country, India’s huge population and its rapid rate of economic growth since the early 1990s have combined to make it an important player in the world economy.1 More significantly for the Indian people, the higher rate of economic growth in recent decades has contributed to a decline in the proportion of the population living below a very modest poverty line. While there is much dispute over the precise extent of poverty in India, it is indisputable that standards of living have improved for a significant share of India’s poor during the period of rapid economic growth since the early 1990s. In the context of a booming Indian economy, in which poverty is being reduced, concerns about inequalities in the distribution of income and wealth have taken a back seat. Why should it matter if the gains of economic growth are being unequally distributed, so long as significant headway is being made in combating poverty? My objective in this paper is to answer this question. I will try to make the case that, even in a poor country such as India, we should indeed be very concerned about economic inequality. For many, especially in the academic arena, the injustice of a high degree of economic inequality is self-evident, just as the injustice of a high incidence of poverty is self-evident; so one should aim at reducing both. Among economists, however, it is commonly suggested that there is a trade-off between growth and equity: increasing inequality is seen as a necessary concomitant – if not an actual contributor – to economic growth, and efforts to curb inequality are seen as likely to retard the pace of growth and thereby impede the effort to reduce poverty.2 In arguing against this position, I will try to make my case persuasive to sceptics.
Economic Inequality among Individuals
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference on “Inequalities in India”, organised and sponsored by the Center for South Asian Studies of the University of Michigan under a grant from the Trehan Foundation. I am grateful to participants in the conference (in particular, Suresh Tendulkar), as well as to Arthur MacEwan for comments that have been helpful to me in revising the paper. Thomas E Weisskopf (
[email protected]) is professor emeritus of Economics at the University of Michigan, Ann-Arbor, USA. Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
Whereas poverty involves absolute deprivation in terms of economic resources such as income, wealth, and access to public services, economic inequality involves relative deprivation – i e, where one stands in relation to others in one’s society. The arguments for limiting economic inequality that I find compelling are of four broad kinds: moral, political, economic and social. I will characterise each argument in terms of the societal goal to which greater economic equality is likely to contribute.
Moral Arguments People differ greatly with respect to what they consider a fair distribution of income or wealth. There is quite widespread agreement,
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however, on the importance of the following two goals for a good society: (1) To ensure that all citizens are respected and treated as fundamentally equal: But how one is treated depends a great deal on one’s economic status and resources. People with far fewer economic resources than the societal average are likely to be disrespected and disfavoured in a variety of ways, whereas people with far more resources than the societal average will tend to be treated with undue deference and granted undue favours. (2) To promote equality of opportunity: But highly unequal economic resource endowments result in corresponding inequalities of opportunity. Much evidence suggests that the degree of social and economic mobility in a society is inversely correlated with the degree of economic inequality,3 arguably because opportunities for advancement depend significantly on initial economic resources.
Political Arguments There is widespread agreement that a good society needs to be democratic – i e, it needs to have a political system in which citizens have reasonably equal opportunity to influence governmental decision-making and therefore have reason to accept the legitimacy of governmental power. This implies the following societal goals: (1) To limit the role of money in politics: Democracy is undermined if some people can deploy enormous economic resources to influence political decisions, while others cannot. Great wealth passed on across generations – whether in physical or in financial assets – limits social mobility and leads to a hereditary aristocracy, which is antithetical to democracy.4 (2) To promote societal cohesion: A political system – and the power it vests in the government – will only be respected as legitimate if people have a real sense of community with one another as fellow members of the larger society. Substantial economic disparities between individuals, however, inhibit the development of such a sense of community; the resultant lack of societal cohesion tends to undermine the legitimacy of the political system and the governmental power it entails.5
Economic Arguments In a variety of ways economic inequalities generate significant economic costs for a society, which could be curtailed – if not eliminated – by a more equal distribution of economic resources. Greater economic equality can promote greater economic efficiency by contributing to the achievement of the following goals: (1) To improve the allocation and development of human resources: The greater the degree of economic inequality, the less likely it is that full advantage can be taken of people’s innate capacities to make productive contributions. Many poor people with considerable innate talent, ability and drive will be consigned to a poor education and to jobs of little responsibility; and many rich people with little innate talent, ability and drive will nonetheless be able to get a good education and access to positions of responsibility in society. Moreover, a more equal distribution of economic resources will improve the nutrition, health, and education of the poor, thereby increasing not only their well-being but also their productive potential.
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(2) To reduce social tensions and political instability: Economically deprived and socially disrespected people are often tempted to challenge the established order in a variety of disturbing and sometimes violent ways – such as strikes, protests, sabotage, and crime. The resultant tensions and instability can easily render property rights less secure and is likely to give rise to costly efforts to combat disturbances and to pay for security systems, prisons, etc. (3) To reduce popular opposition to needed economic reforms: A high degree of inequality is likely to generate suspicions that growthoriented reforms will only benefit the rich at the expense of the poor, thereby intensifying popular opposition to such reforms.6 This is especially true of reforms that increase the scope of market forces, which are likely to increase allocative efficiency but also to distribute the resultant gains in a disequalising fashion – absent systematic efforts to limit economic inequality. (4) To foster cooperation as a basis for low-cost solutions to “coordination failures”: Ordinary market transactions, as well as complex multi-party economic projects, work much more smoothly when the individuals and groups involved can count on one another’s honesty, trustworthiness, and cooperative behaviour. In the absence of widespread norms of trust and cooperation, substantial resources must be devoted to monitoring, supervision, and contract enforcement in order to assure that the terms of a market transaction are respected or that inter-related economic activities are well coordinated. But it is difficult to develop and maintain norms of trust and cooperation in a society characterised by large economic disparities between the rich and the poor.7
Social Arguments There are a number of respects in which economic inequalities generate significant social costs for all members of society, in ways that are not reflected in conventional measures of economic well-being. Greater economic equality can reduce such social costs by contributing to the achievement of the following goals: (1) To improve health throughout the population: There is much evidence that not only those who are the most economically deprived, but all segments of society, suffer from worse health outcomes the greater is the overall degree of economic inequality.8 This evidence identifies stress as an important variable affecting health outcomes and shows that stress levels throughout all strata of a population tend to vary positively with the degree of economic inequality. Moreover, the ability of a society to limit the spread of disease and other public health problems is impaired to the extent that a relatively poor segment of the population lacks access to good nutrition and health facilities. (2) To promote a better quality of life by reducing competitive consumerism: The desire to improve one’s relative position tends to drive consumers into a competition in which the purchase of more and more goods ends up at best just maintaining one’s relative position – a kind of “arms race” that adds little to overall well-being.9 Less economic inequality, and hence a smaller gap between the consumption norms of the rich and the consumption levels of the bulk of the population, would reduce the salience of competitive consumerism and permit a shift of resources towards goods, or novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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indeed leisure activities, that do more to improve the quality of people’s lives. Moreover, a shift from a quantitative to a more qualitative pattern of economic growth would reduce the pace of natural resource destruction, waste product disposal, and air and water pollution, thereby promoting greater environmental sustainability.10
Economic Inequality among Identity Groups An identity group is a community of people who share characteristics that are physical or cultural and rarely alterable.11 Economic inequality between identity groups – each treated as a single collective entity, with economic characteristics reflecting those of the average member of the group – is at least as likely as economic inequality among individuals to impede the achievement of some of the key societal goals referenced in arguments raised in the previous section. Most of the same arguments made for reducing inter-individual inequality can be made persuasively for reducing inter-group inequality, but in the latter context the following have a somewhat different character. To Promote Equality of Opportunity: In the case of members of an identity group that has been historically marginalised by group-based negative discrimination, ensuring equal opportunity by eliminating all such discrimination may well prove insufficient to erode historically-generated differences in outcomes – differences that have nothing to do with individual choices and actions by group members. Economic decisions made in an unbiased and non-discriminatory market context are unable to overcome past negative discrimination when there is a tendency towards clustering and social segregation in associational behaviour, whereby members of a particular identity group prefer to intermarry, to live in the same residential neighbourhoods, and to join the same community institutions.12 This is because the acquisition of productive characteristics and skills by an individual child depends significantly on the richness of upbringing that parents can offer her/him and on the quality of the quasi-public resources – such as neighbours, peers and schools – that local communities can offer to children. These parental and community influences convey advantages or disadvantages that cannot be equalised by market forces; so full equality of opportunity requires that compensatory steps be taken to reduce economic disparities between groups and thereby provide more equal access to important non-market resources and social networks.
To Improve the Allocation and Development of Human Resources: If some identity groups are far better represented than others in the upper echelons of a society, then many members of the poorly represented groups may lack sufficient motivation (due to doubt about their ability to succeed) or sufficient opportunity (due to lack of access to useful connections) to develop and apply their capacity to make productive contributions. Such constraints on truly meritocratic human resource allocation are likely to result in a significant loss of economic potential. To Reduce Social Tensions and Political Instability: Inequalities between members of different identity groups within the same society are likely to some extent to be attributable to – and (even more so) to be seen as explained by – discrimination against members of less-well-off groups. As a consequence, intergroup inequalities in a society are considerably more likely to evoke strong feelings about the unfairness of the social order, and are considerably more likely to lead to social and political tensions and divisions, than inter-class inequalities. Even when negative discrimination has largely been curbed, ongoing intergroup inequalities can reasonably be seen as attributable in part to past negative discrimination; and the failure to address the unequal consequences of such past discrimination can pose a continuing challenge to social and political stability. Members of relatively deprived groups in a society are therefore likely to challenge the system in a variety of ways that are costly to all. To Reduce Popular Opposition to Needed Economic Reforms: A high degree of inequality between identity groups fortifies suspicions that growth-oriented reforms will benefit more powerful groups at the expense of less favoured groups, thereby generating opposition to such reforms on the part of the latter. To Foster Cooperation as a Basis for Low-Cost Solutions to “Coordination Failures”: It is more difficult to develop and maintain widespread norms of trust and cooperation in a society characterised by multiple identity groups than in a culturally more homogeneous society. The difficulty is compounded if there are large economic disparities between identity groups, whose members are then all the more likely to distrust or disrespect members of other groups.
Focus on Inequality Over Poverty To Promote Societal Cohesion: A political system – and the power it vests in the government – will only be respected as legitimate if people have a real sense of community with one another as fellow members of the larger society. However, if some identity groups are far more highly represented than other groups in powerful and prestigious decision-making positions in a society (within and outside of government), the legitimacy of the political system and of the governmental power it entails will tend to be undermined for members of the latter groups. The integrity of a political system will thus benefit from reduction of inequalities between groups and, in particular, by efforts to make the group composition of the societal elite more broadly representative of the population as a whole.13 Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
Where poverty is a problem of huge proportions – as in India – rapid economic growth is a compelling objective, for growth does generate resources with which to alleviate mass poverty. But there are two major reasons why a focus on spurring economic growth, to the exclusion of reducing economic inequality, is ill-advised. The Independent Benefits of Inequality Reduction: In most contemporary nations – certainly including India – the current degree of economic inequality is too inequitable, in the sense that a reduction in economic disparities would contribute positively to overall societal welfare along lines elaborated earlier on. If economic growth were increased and poverty were reduced without a concomitant reduction in inequality, then the overall
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gains would be far less substantial than if inequality were simultaneously reduced. A few of the goals of reduced inequality might be met simply by a reduction in poverty – e g, goals (the first moral argument, the fourth economic argument and the first social argument). However, poverty reduction without inequality reduction can contribute little or nothing to the achievement of most of the other goals of inequality listed earlier. It is worth noting too that inequality is usually measured in strictly relative terms – e g, as shares or ratios of consumption, income or wealth as between different economic classes or social groups. But if such shares or ratios remain unchanged during a period of overall economic growth, then the absolute size of the disparities actually increases – and what happens to absolute disparities over the course of time is arguably more salient to people than what happens to relative disparities.14 This implies there must be some reduction in conventionally-measured inequality in order to avoid setbacks to the achievement of the various goals served by reduced inequality. The Prospect That Inequality Reduction Can Boost Economic Growth: Economists often assert that, at least in the early stages of economic development, rapid economic growth cannot be achieved without a rise in economic inequality. Some argue that government efforts to reduce inequality in the context of economic growth will restrain the rate of economic growth and thus hamper efforts to reduce poverty. The potential costs most often cited by critics of redistributive policies are that they will (a) reduce short-run economic efficiency (for example by reducing individual incentives to work, or by generating administrative costs and creating more opportunities for corruption), and (b) reduce long-run economic growth (for example by reducing incentives to save and to invest in enhancing personal capabilities or in societal capital accumulation). Certainly, some kinds of government redistributive policy are likely to have adverse effects on aggregate output and overall economic growth. Examples are policies that impose a high tax rate on business profits in order to raise resources to transfer directly to the poor, or policies that limit flows of capital and productive activity from one locality or region to another in an effort to limit geographical disparities. But there is no iron law that requires a trade-off between achieving more rapid growth and reducing inequality. For one thing, statistical studies of trends in growth and inequality across developing economies do not support the notion that more rapid growth in output is correlated with increases in inequality.15 Furthermore, there is a growing scholarly literature that distinguishes between bad inequalities (or “unproductive disparities”), which hinder economic growth, and good inequalities (or “productive disparities”), which promote economic growth.16 Bad inequalities are rooted in market failures, or coordination failures, or governance failures that have the effect of impeding economic efficiency as they limit the ability of poor and marginalised people to improve their economic well-being in productive ways – e g, by investing in human or physical capital. Good inequalities incentivise and reward economic dynamism on the part of individuals (both rich and poor) in the private and in the public sector.
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If inequality is reduced primarily by policies that remove unproductive disparities, it follows that reducing inequality can actually contribute to economic growth and thereby contribute both directly (via the reduction in inequality) and indirectly (via more rapid economic growth) to the reduction of poverty. But it is critical, in considering ways to reduce inequality, to identify and promote those redistributive policies that cut back on unproductive disparities, while avoiding redistributive policies that inhibit truly productive disparities.
Economic Inequality in India I aim here to review the available evidence on several different kinds of economic inequality in contemporary India.17 I will draw attention here to trends in inequality over time since Indian Independence, focusing on differences between the period before and after the adoption of a market-oriented reform policy of controlled liberalisation in 1991.18 By any measure of income distribution, India is currently neither among the most economically unequal countries of the world nor among the most equal. The most equal include most of the nations of western and central Europe, Canada and Australia – all relatively affluent countries. As compared to other developing countries of substantial size, India is certainly less unequal than South Africa and Brazil and probably less unequal than China. Income inequality in India is more comparable to that in Argentina, Russia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.19 Wealth inequality in India appears to be less unequal than in the United States, but more unequal than in most other affluent countries and China – especially in the distribution of land.20
Brief Summary Throughout the last 50 years inequalities of income and of consumption expenditure by individuals have been greater in urban than in rural India. In the pre-reform period the urban/rural gap fell at times and rose at times; but after 1991 it widened in most of the Indian states as well as in India as a whole. Within rural areas inequality appears to have declined, slowly and unsteadily, from the late 1950s to the early 1990s; it then rose considerably in the post-reform period. In urban areas inequality declined a bit, also unsteadily, from the late 1950s to the early 1990s; and it rose sharply thereafter. The ratio of consumption in urban areas to that in rural areas did not differ much as between the poor and the rich in the pre-reform period, but in the post-reform period the ratio was significantly higher for the rich than for the poor. There is clear evidence that in the post-reform period disproportionate shares of consumption gains have gone to better off urban residents. In the late 1980s, when the degree of economic inequality was considerably lower than it is now, the top 1% of consumers in India are estimated to have enjoyed on average about 25 times as much real consumption per person than the bottom 1%;21 the gap in income was much higher. One of the few studies of trends among the richest Indians found that the income share of the richest 1% declined from above 10% in the late 1950s to about 5% in the early 1990s and then rose again to roughly 10% by 2000.22 There can be little doubt that it has increased further since then. novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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For the distribution of wealth among individuals in India there are no reliable data prior to the early 1990s; and the available data are widely recognised to understate significantly the amount of wealth held by the rich. The most extensive study yet done estimated that in both the early 1990s and the early 2000s the wealthiest 10% of wealth-holders held at least 50% of total assets, while the least wealthy 10% held at most 0.4% of total assets and 0.2% of net worth.23 Land is the most important single asset in India, and it is more unequally distributed than wealth as a whole. The ownership of financial assets is even more concentrated, as almost all financial wealth is held by well below 1% of the population. The limited evidence available on trends over time points to increasing inequality in the distribution of wealth in India since the early 1990s. Data on economic inequalities across religious and caste groups in India are considerably sparser than data on inequalities among individuals, but in recent decades more information has become available. In the rural areas of India there is a clear hierarchy of economic inequality across social groups. Hindu “forward castes” (H-FCs) fare much better than the national average; Hindu “backward castes” are close to the average; Muslims are somewhat worse off; dalits and adivasis are by far the worst off. In urban areas H-FCs are even more dominant, Hindu backward castes are still close to the national average, but Muslims are a little worse off than urban dalits and adivasis. At the all-India level, the hierarchy of social groups is similar to that of the rural sector, but the differences between groups are greater. Starting from the lowest levels, dalits and adivasis as a group have recorded from the
1980s to the late 1990s the most rapid growth in earnings and in the proportion of college graduates among persons in their 20s; Muslims have recorded the slowest growth in these respects.
Class Inequalities The kind of economic inequality most often discussed by economists is that of the distribution of income across households or individuals. In India, however, the inequality data collected most frequently and most systematically – by the National Sample Survey (NSS) – involve the distribution of expenditure on consumption rather than income. Because the rich tend to save a significant fraction of their income, while the poor tend to use all of their income – and often some borrowed money as well – for consumption, the distribution of consumption is considerably less unequal than that of income. Furthermore, the NSS has a practice of oversampling the poor and undersampling the rich (often missing the super-rich altogether), so its survey results tend to understate the degree of inequality even of consumption. Thus measures of inequality calculated for consumption in India significantly understate the actual degree of inequality in income.24 Because economic growth in India in recent decades has spawned an increasing number of super-rich,25 the understatement of the degree of inequality in consumption and in income is most likely to have become more serious over time, resulting in an understatement of the growth in these economic inequalities as well. Table 1 presents a series of estimates of Gini coefficients26 measuring the degree of inequality in consumption in rural India,
Table 1: Data on Class Inequality – Gini Coefficients (%) of Per Capita Consumer Expenditure Rural
Year
1957-58
1963-64
1968-69
1970-71
1973-74
1977-78
1983-84
1987-88
1990-91
Jha (2005) 33.7 29.0 30.7 28.3 31.2 Dreze and Sen (2002) 1960-61: 32.5 28.8 28.5 30.9 Jain and Tendulkar (1989, 1992)* 28.7 28.1 31.1 Datt (1999) 28.5 30.9 Himanshu (2007)** Dev and Ravi (2007)** Topalova (2008) Sarkar and Mehta (2010)
30.1 30.2 27.7 30.1 29.4 27.7 33.1 30.2 30.1 29.4 27.7 30.4 29.9 30.8 31.2† 30.1 31.9
Urban
1983-84
Year
1957-58
1963-64
1968-69
1970-71
1973-74
1977-78
1987-88
1990-91
Jha (2005) 35.9 36.5 32.9 31.5 33.7 Dreze and Sen (2002) 1960-61: 35.6 35.7 30.8 34.7 Jain and Tendulkar (1989, 1992)* 34.4 31.6 33.7 Datt (1999) 30.8 34.7 Himanshu (2007)** Dev and Ravi (2007)** Topalova (2008) Sarkar and Mehta (2010)
33.4 35.6 34.0 34.1 34.6 34.0 33.4 35.6 34.1 34.6 34.0 33.9 30.5 34.1 34.0† 34.9 36.7
All-India
1983-84
Year
1957-58
1963-64
1968-69
1970-71
1973-74
1977-78
1987-88
1990-91
Ravallion (2000) 32.06 33.08 31.21 Topalova (2008) 31.9 31.3 Sarkar and Mehta (2010) 33.7 Vakulabharanam (2010)
1993-94
1997-98
28.5 28.6
30.1 30.6
2004-05
28.6 30.6 28.6 30.5 28.6 30.5 28.5 29.8 29.8 32.0 1993-94
1997-98
34.5 34.3
36.1 36.5
2004-05
34.5 36.6 34.4 37.6 34.3 37.5 34.3 37.8 35.7 38.9 1993-94
1997-98
2004-05
31.52 37.83 30.3 32.5 34.7 37.6 32.6 36.3
1973-91
1991-97
27.98
29.5
1973-91
1991-97
34.79
36.04
1983-88
1994-97
32.94
35.67
* Fractile-price-adjusted data; ** Uniform recall period; † 1982-83 Sources: Jha 2005 Table 4 Dreze and Sen 2002 Table A.6 Jain and Tendulkar 1989 Table 3 Jain and Tendulkar 1992 Table 6 Datt 1999 Table 1 Himanshu 2007 Tables 1 and 2. Dev and Ravi 2007 Table 3 Topalova 2008 Table 3 Sarkar and Mehta 2010 Table 6 Ravallion 2000 Table (un-numbered) Vakulabharanam 2010 Table 3 For full bibliographical citations, see the list of References. Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
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urban India, and India as a whole, for various years from the late 1950s to the mid-2000s and over the two periods 1973-91 and 1991-97. All these estimates are based on NSS surveys, which are done separately for rural and urban India (representing on average roughly three-fourths and one-fourth of the total Indian population over the five-decades under consideration). All-India estimates are also included in the table; these are less often calculated because to do so requires complex integration of primary data from the rural and the urban areas.27 There are several reasons why the estimated Gini coefficients for any given year differ from one another. For one thing, there are often inconsistencies in the questions asked from one survey round to another, and different analysts make different kinds of adjustments to deal with that problem. For another, to get figures comparable across time periods and regions, it is necessary to adjust for differential changes in the prices of commodities consumed; and this may be done by different analysts in different ways. In principle, one also ought to take account of different prices faced by consumers in different fractile groups; but this is rarely done.28 With these caveats in mind, one may summarise the evidence in the table – supplemented by some key studies29 whose findings cannot be fitted into the format of Table 1. The Gini coefficient of inequality in rural consumption has averaged about 30% over the whole five-decade period. It appears to have declined from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, then risen in the early 1980s, then declined to reach a low point in the early 1990s, and finally risen again through the mid-2000s. It has been higher in the post-reform period since 1991 than in the two previous decades. Sen and Himanshu (2004) found a slow decline in rural consumption inequality from the late 1970s to the early 1990s, followed by a sharp rise in the early 2000s. Looking at the rate of growth of real consumer expenditure in the 1990s by the poorest 40% of consumers, they found that per capita consumption by the rural poor increased only one-fifth as much as the average increase in national per capita consumption. Sarkar and Mehta (2010), comparing growth rates of consumer expenditure before and after the 1991 reforms, estimated that in the pre-reform period the poorer fractile groups registered a faster rate of growth than the richer fractile groups, whereas in the post-reform period consumption growth rates were significantly higher for the top 20% than for the rest of the rural population. The Gini coefficient of inequality in urban consumption has averaged about 35% over the whole five-decade period – reflecting a significantly higher degree of inequality than in the rural sector. It appears to have declined a bit from the late 1950s through the mid-1970s, then risen a bit in the early 1980s, then changed little until the early 1990s, and then risen noticeably through the mid2000s. As in the rural sector, urban inequality has been higher in the post-reform period than in the two decades prior to 1991. Sen and Himanshu (2004) found that in the 1990s, per capita consumption by the urban poor increased only half as much as the per capita national average rate of growth of consumer expenditure. Sarkar and Mehta (2010), comparing growth rates of real consumer expenditure for the decade before and the decade after the liberalising reforms of the early 1990s, estimated that the average rate of growth for all urban consumers was 0.75% in the pre-reform period and 1.77% in the post-reform period. Comparing patterns of growth
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of consumer expenditure across fractile groups before and after 1991, they found that the pro-rich bias in the post-reform period was even more striking in the urban than in the rural sector. The degree of inequality in consumption for all of India depends both on the degrees of inequality within the rural and urban sectors (just discussed) and on the degree of inequality between those two sectors. Numerous studies have found evidence that the latter has been rising in recent decades. Datt and Ravallion (2009) found that the ratio of average real per capita consumption in urban areas to that in rural areas fell from about 1.33 in the early 1950s to 1.17 in the early 1960s, then rose slowly to 1.25 by the mid-1990s and more rapidly to about 1.30 in the mid-2000s. Topalova (2008) reported that in the 1980s, and even more so in the 1990s, the urban/rural consumption gap widened in most of the Indian states as well as in India as a whole. Sarkar and Mehta (2010) investigated how the urban/rural ratio of average per capita consumption varies across different fractile groups. They found that this ratio did not differ much as between the poor and the rich in the pre-reform period, but that in the post-reform period the ratio was significantly higher for the richer than for the poorer groups – indicating that in the post-reform period a disproportionate share of the consumption gains went to better off urban residents.
Increasing Post-Reform Consumption Inequality Gini coefficients for the degree of consumption inequality in India as a whole, which are available only for the post-1980 period, are presented at the bottom of Table 1. The estimates in the table show that all-India Gini coefficient averaged about 32% from the early 1980s through the early 1990s and then increased significantly in the post-reform period to a level of at least 35%.30 Ravallion (2000) calculated decile shares of consumption in India from 1983 to 1997. He found that over this period the share of the poorest two deciles remained quite flat, the share of the middle deciles fluctuated around a slight downward trend, and the share of the richest two deciles showed a clear upward trend; within the 1990s the upward trend of the latter was even more marked. These findings were corroborated by Topalova (2008), who concluded that “all measures point to a significant increase in overall inequality in the 1990s, particularly in urban areas” and that “in the 1990s, the top of the population enjoyed a substantially larger share of the gains from economic growth compared to the previous decade”. Even before the disequalising trend that began in the early 1990s, the degree of consumption inequality in India was substantial: in the late 1980s, when the all-India Gini coefficient was upwards of 30%, the top 1% of consumers are estimated to have consumed on average about 25 times as much as the bottom 1%.31 One study has attempted to compensate for the two major shortcomings of the NSS data – the focus on consumption rather than income and the undersampling of the rich. Banerjee and Piketty (2003) used data on individual income tax returns to chart the evolution of the share of top income earners in India from 1956 to 2000. They found that the income shares of the top 0.01%, the top 0.1% and the top 1% declined very substantially until the early-to-mid-1980s, but then rose again by the year 2000 to reach levels not far below those of the year 1956. The share of the top 1% of income earners dropped from roughly 13% novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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in the late 1950s to about 10% in the late 1960s and down to 5% in the early 1990s, then rose sharply to over 10% in the late 1990s. I turn finally to some data recently compiled on the distribution of wealth in India. Wealth – whether measured as the total value of assets, or as net worth (assets minus liabilities) – is everywhere far more unequally distributed than income or consumption. Many people have no significant assets at all, or have liabilities that outweigh their assets; while a small number of people have been able to accumulate enormous holdings of wealth. Data on the distribution of wealth in India – as elsewhere – are subject to more shortcomings than data on income and consumption. Not only do the rich tend to be undersampled in surveys, but even when surveyed they have every incentive to under-report their wealth holdings, to report below-market values for their assets, and to hide illegitimately acquired wealth. The available data are thus bound to understate the full extent of inequality in the distribution of wealth; but at least they yield estimates of the lower bound of that inequality. Data on the distribution of wealth ownership in India come primarily from two NSS household surveys of debt and investment throughout India, one in 1991-92 and the second in 2002-03. The most extensive study based on these surveys was carried out by Jayadev et al (2007);32 they estimated Gini coefficients for all-India per capita total asset ownership of 64% in 1991-92 and 65% in
2002-03. The corresponding figures for net worth were almost identical: 64% and 66%. To express the degree of inequality in more easily comprehensible terms: in both years the wealthiest 10% of wealth-holders held roughly 50% of total assets and 50% of net worth, while the least wealthy 10% held roughly 0.4% of total assets and 0.2% of net worth. Land is the single most important asset for most Indian wealth-holders, and it is more unequally distributed than wealth as a whole – with a Gini coefficient of 73% in both years. The ownership of financial assets is even more concentrated, with an estimated Gini coefficient of 99% in both years; at most 5% of Indians participates in the stock market, and almost all financial wealth is held by just a fraction of 1% of the population. There is little evidence from NSS surveys of any significant change in the degree of wealth inequality between 1991 and 2002. However, Ahya and Sheth (2007) have estimated that in the following four years there was a huge increase in wealth – more than the value of total Indian GDP – in financial equity, residential property and gold, and that most of this increase accrued to a relatively small segment of the population.
Group Inequalities In a nation as multicultural as India, a great deal of interest attaches to inequalities between identity groups as well as inequalities across
Table 2: Data on Social Group Inequality (1999-2000 unless otherwise indicated)
ST
SC
SC+ST
H-OBC
H-FC
Hindu
Muslim
Rural (72% of total) % of the population 9.6%** 16.5%** 30.2% 19.3% 75.6% 17.3% % poor and % well-off*** 50.9 2.7 42.9 3.4 33.7 6.1 16.9 14.0 37.5 5.5 % poor minus % well-off 48.2 39.5 27.6 2.9 32.0 MPCE 2004-05 86% 100% 129% 95% (as % of overall average) Gini coefficient 2004-05 23% 25% 28% 26% Urban (28% of total) % of the population 2.9%** 14.0%** 27.2% 38.3% 82.30% 12.0% % poor and % well-off*** 42.6 5.7 43.1 2.0 36.0 3.7 4.9 17.1 46.5 2.5 % poor minus % well-off 36.9 41.1 32.3 -12.2 44.0 MPCE 2004-05 62% 73% 113% 62% (as % of overall average) Gini coefficient 2004-05 30% 32% 34% 32% All-India % of the population 24.4 80.5 13.4 MPCE 2004-05 74% 92% 144% 90% (as % of overall average) Growth in weekly earnings 4.72% 3.61% 3.38% (annual rate 1987-1999) % of professionals 1999-2000 5.7% 6.0% 15.4%**** 11.5% (among household heads) College graduates % of persons aged 24-29
1983
0.8%
1.3%
6.5%
2.5%
1999-2000
3.0%
3.2%
11.7%
4.4%
All*
100% 33.6 7.3 26.3 100% 28% 100% 28.5 7.8 20.7 100% 36% 100.0 100% 3.60% 12.4%
* Other religious groups (Christians, Sikhs, etc), amounting to 7.1%, 5.7% and 6.1% of the rural, urban and all-India populations, are not shown in the table. ** ST and SC figures were calculated by applying SC and ST proportions from the 2001 Census of India to the total SC+ST proportion from the Sachar Report. *** rural/urban poor = below rural/urban poverty line; rural/urban well-off = above 775/1,500 rupees MPCE. **** Includes both H-OBC and H-FC. Sources: % of the population Rural and Urban GoI (2006) (Sachar Report), Table 1.1, except as indicated in note ** above. All-India 2001 Census of India. % poor and % well-off Rural and Urban Deshpande S (2003), Tables 1 and 3. MPCE Rural, Urban, All-India GOI (2006) (Sachar Report), Figure 8.2 and related text. (Monthly per capita expenditure) Gini coefficient Rural and Urban GoI (2006) (Sachar Report), Figure 8.7. Growth in weekly earnings All-India Bhaumik and Chakrabarty (2006), Table 1. % of professionals All-India Desai and Kulkarni (2008), Table 1. (among household heads) College graduates All-India Desai and Kulkarni (2008), Table 2 (average for males and females). % of persons aged 24-29 For full bibliographical citations, see the list of References. Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
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households or individuals. Among the most salient identity groups in contemporary India are social groups distinguished by caste and/ or religion.33 Data on such social group inequalities are considerably sparser than data on household or individual inequalities; but in recent decades more attention has been paid to the former. Table 2 (p 47) presents relevant data on economic inequalities in India as between Hindus and Muslims and – among Hindus34 – four major caste groups: adivasis or “scheduled tribes” (ST), dalits or “scheduled castes” (SC), Hindu “other backward classes” (H-OBC), and H-FCs. Before summarising some of the key findings reported in the Table 1 reiterate that, because most of the group data are based on NSS surveys that under-sample the rich, the data tend to understate the degree of inequality between richer and poorer groups. In the rural areas of India there is a clear hierarchy of social groups when it comes to basic economic inequality. Whether one looks at the percentage of group members living below the official poverty line, or the difference between the percentage of those in poverty and the percentage of those labelled “well-off” (i e, middleclass or above), or average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE), the pattern of group-wise economic inequality is the same: Hindu FCs fare much better than the national average, Hindu OBCs are close to the average, and Muslims somewhat worse off, while SCs and STs are by far the worst off. The Hindu FCs are even more dominant with respect to economic well-being in urban areas, but the hierarchy is somewhat different for the other groups. Urban Muslims are if anything a little worse off than urban SCs and STs in their economic well-being, while urban Hindu OBCs are still the closest to the national average. The Gini coefficient of withingroup inequality is a bit lower for SC+STs than for other groups, and highest among Hindu FCs, both in the urban and in the rural sector – no doubt reflecting the lack of well-off people among SC+STs and the presence of many among Hindu FCs. At the all-India level, the hierarchy of social groups in terms of average MPCE in 2004-05 is similar to that of the rural sector, but the differentiation between groups is sharper.35 Hindu FCs are considerably further above the national average, Hindu OBCs and Muslims are both somewhat below that average, while SC+STs are by far the furthest below the average. Interestingly, however, the SC+ST group recorded the highest rate of growth in earnings between 1987 and 1999, while the Muslims as a group recorded the lowest. The pattern of inter-social-group inequality in the occupational and educational spheres is similar to that in the economic sphere: Hindu FCs and OBCs as a single group are far ahead, and SC and STs well behind, in both the proportion of professionals among household heads and the proportion of college graduates among persons 24 to 29 years of age. In the educational sphere it is again the SCs and STs who have advanced most rapidly (in relation to their low starting points), and the Muslims most slowly, from the 1980s to the end of the 1990s. A limited amount of information is available on the distribution of wealth by social group, also based on the NSS investment and debt surveys of 1991-92 and 2002-03. Jayadev et al (2007) estimated that in 2002-03 Hindus had per capita asset holdings on average about 50% greater than Muslims, and that among Hindus FCs were much wealthier than SC+STs, with OBCs in the middle. Zacharias and Vakulabharanam (2009) compared per capita mean
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and median wealth holdings of urban and rural STs, SCs and Hindu “other castes” (OC = FC+OBC) in 1991-92 and 2002-03. They found that urban wealth levels were significantly higher than rural wealth levels for all groups in both years. Not surprisingly, urban and rural Hindu OCs occupied the top two positions. Rural SCs and STs occupied the bottom two positions at average wealth levels less than half of Hindu OCs, while urban SCs and STs had slightly higher wealth levels at a little more than half of Hindu OCs. Percentage changes between the two years were rather similar for all groups, except that the mean value of per capita wealth for urban STs rose at a significantly more rapid pace, even though the corresponding median value rose much more slowly – indicating that a relatively small number of urban STs with relatively high wealthholdings made big gains over this period, though not enough to change their position in the rank ordering of the six groups.
Alternative Government Policies The reduction of inequality requires a deliberate effort to limit the flow of economic gains to the relatively rich and to expand the flow of economic gains to the relatively poor. If such an effort is to be carried out on a large scale, it will have to be undertaken by governmental authorities with the power to implement policies that significantly affect the distribution of economic resources. Some policy measures taken to reduce economic inequality may impose costs in terms of reduced economic efficiency and dynamism. I seek therefore to identify below the kinds of inequality-reducing policies that are least likely to have such adverse effects on economic growth.
Limiting the Economic Gains of the Rich (1) Progressive Taxation of Individual Income: Income tax rates that rise with the level of income are reasonably grounded, in that the ability to pay rises as income rises while the utility of additional untaxed income arguably falls as incomes rise. But tax rates on the well-to-do should not rise beyond the point where the supply of labour by the well-to-do is significantly impaired by the reduced after-tax return to labour. (2) Progressive Taxation of Individual Wealth: Wealth taxes that rise with the level of wealth are justifiable on the same basis as income taxes, but it is analogously important in this case not to avoid reducing the after-tax return to saving to the point where it significantly reduces the incentive to save or invest. The best way to tax wealth is upon its inheritance, in the form of progressive taxation of estates or bequests, since the disincentives from such taxation are relatively indirect and thus less forceful. (3) Taxation of Business Profits: This kind of taxation is less desirable than income or wealth taxation, because it directly impacts productive enterprises. If it is to be employed, it would be best to exempt reinvested profits and target distributed profits, so as to encourage further investment. On the other hand, where business profits are subsidised by government through various forms of “corporate welfare”, the elimination of such subsidies will simultaneously promote economic efficiency and reduce economic inequality.36 novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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(4) Expropriation of Productive Assets from the Wealthy: Expropriation of assets – for example land, plant and equipment, housing – reduces the incentive to invest and creates potentially damaging uncertainty in the business climate; so it is a policy that should be implemented, if at all, on a one-shot basis and with great care. However, if assets are initially distributed highly unequally (as is often the case with land), redistribution from largeholders to smallholders or non-holders can bring significant gains – as detailed under policy number 4 below.
are hard to specify or to enforce, it is often more efficient for persons actually working productive assets to own those assets, and thus to have rights to the residual income generated from the assets, because those persons bear directly the consequences of decision-making about the assets.38 For example, ownership of land by cultivators is often preferable to tenancy arrangements with absentee landowners in which the gains from increases (or the losses from decreases) in production do not accrue fully to the cultivators.
(5) Antitrust Action to Reduce Monopoly Power: It is a fundamental tenet of economic theory that monopolies and nearmonopolies generate both inequalities and inefficiencies by limiting market competition. Breaking up monopolies and near-monopolies, and encouraging more market competition, simultaneously reduces the monopoly profits of the rich and improves the allocation of resources as well as the incentive to invest productively.
(5) Public Investments That Improve Labour Quality: Just as unequal access to credit markets leads to inefficient capital allocation, unequal access to public educational institutions (or subsidised private ones) leads to inefficient allocation of human resources. Government spending that expands educational opportunities and distributes them more widely and efficiently (according to innate potential rather than financial means) is arguably the form of public investment with the greatest simultaneous pay-off in economic growth and inequality reduction. A similar argument can be made with respect to public investment in healthcare facilities, especially where lack of sufficient nutrition and/or lack of adequate medical care impairs the capability to work of a substantial part of the population.
(6) Limitation of the Inter-regional Movement of Capital: National governments are often tempted to limit or counter such movement, in order to reduce economic disparities between rich and poor regions of the country. Such disparities, however, may well reflect comparative advantage, or the dynamic advantage of agglomeration and clustering, or superior economic policymaking at the regional level. Rather than restricting inter-regional movement of capital, which may well reduce economic growth, it is better to address excessive regional economic differentials by using tax revenues to stimulate development in poorer areas.
Expanding Economic Gains of the Poor (1) Cash or In-kind Transfers to the Poor: Such transfers are justifiable on humanitarian grounds, when people lack the resources for a decent standard of living through no fault of their own. Insofar as they improve the nutrition and health of the ablebodied poor, such transfers can increase not only their well-being but also their productive capacity. The transfers should be tailored, however, to avoid impairing to any significant extent the incentive to work. (2) Labour Subsidies: In a poor country a large proportion of the poor are likely to be working in jobs or activities with very low remuneration. Transfers to the working poor, in the form of progressive negative income taxes whose size declines as incomes rise, increase the return to labour supplied by the poor. (3) Improved and/or Subsidised Access of the Poor to Credit Markets: It is widely recognised that unequal access of the rich and the poor to credit markets leads to an inefficient allocation of capital (both human and physical).37 Governmental efforts to reduce this inequality and to facilitate accumulation of productive assets by the poor are not costless, but they can yield a high return in more rapid growth through more efficient capital markets. (4) Transfers of Expropriated Physical Assets to the WealthPoor: In the many contexts where all-encompassing contracts Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
(6) Affirmative Action for Historically Marginalised Groups: Overt discrimination against members of marginalised groups both aggravates economic inequality and hinders economic efficiency and growth, so affirmative action policies that combat such discrimination are clearly desirable ways to reduce inequality between individuals and groups. The same is true of measures to ensure that information about educational, job and economic opportunities is made available to members of marginalised groups as widely as to others. More controversial are affirmative action policies that provide preferences to members of marginalised groups, for in this case it is arguable that such policies may interfere with economic efficiency by favouring less qualified candidates from the beneficiary groups over more qualified competitors, and that they may increase inequality within marginalised groups while reducing inequality between such groups and dominant groups. Yet the stronger form of affirmative action can nonetheless be justified by the fact that continued adherence to a group-blind standard cannot lead ultimately to outcomes that do not reflect prior discrimination.39 It is especially appropriate to concentrate affirmative action policies on equalising educational and residential opportunities, for these are key arenas where historically discriminated-against minorities continue to face barriers to social and economic mobility from group clustering of the corresponding local public goods, which result in inefficient allocations of human and social capital.
Conclusions There is much that the government of a poor country such as India can do to reduce economic inequalities while promoting economic growth and combating poverty. The most promising policies that limit the economic gains of the rich are those that tax their income and (especially) wealth progressively, that reduce
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“corporate welfare”, that break up monopolistic market positions, and that shift ownership away from absentee asset-owners (especially of land). The most promising policies that expand the economic gains of the poor and the marginalised are those that improve their health, that increase their access to good-quality education institutions, that improve their access to credit markets, that promote higher employment, and that shift asset ownership to actual producers (especially cultivators). That the above policies are not pursued to a much greater extent nowadays is a sad commentary, not on any iron laws of economics, but on the current constellation of political power in most countries around the world. The recent experience of Brazil demonstrates how rapid economic growth can indeed be combined with reduction of Notes 1 During the four decades from 1950 to 1990, the rate of growth of the Indian economy was relatively modest: gross domestic product (GDP) increased at an average annual rate of about 4%, and GDP per capita at about 2%. In the 1990s the corresponding figures increased by roughly two percentage points each, and in the 2000s they increased by another 2-3 percentage points. 2 See, for example, Tendulkar (2010). I am grateful to Suresh Tendulkar for a lengthy e-mail dialogue about many of the issues I address in this paper. 3 See Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), Chapter 12. On p 169 they conclude: “Bigger income differences seem to solidify the social structure and decrease the chances of upward mobility. Where there are greater inequalities of outcome, equal opportunity is a significantly more distant prospect.” 4 The US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis put it well: “We can have concentrated wealth in the hands of a few or we can have democracy, but we can’t have both” (quoted by Jeffrey Madrick in an op-ed column in the New York Times, 14 December 2010). 5 As Nicholas Kristof has written: “Economic polarisation also shatters our sense of national union and common purpose, fostering political polarisation as well” (op-ed column in the New York Times, 6 November 2010). 6 This point has been well made in the Indian context by, among many others, Chaudhuri and Ravallion (2006). 7 See Bardhan (2004), especially Chapter 2, “Distri butive Conflicts and the Persistence of Inefficient Institutions”. 8 See Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), Chapters 6 and 13. 9 This point has been made most forcefully by Robert Frank; see Frank (2007). 10 See Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), Chapter 15. 11 In this paper I consider identity groups based on race, caste, tribe, region of origin, mother tongue, religion, and/or cultural tradition, setting aside groups based on gender or sexual preference because these raise rather different issues. 12 See Loury (1987) for a convincing exposition of the argument presented in this paragraph. 13 Anderson (2002) has argued persuasively that this is the single-most important rationale for positive discrimination in favour of historically marginalised groups. 14 This point has been persuasively made, in the context of Indian economic development, by Ravallion (2005). 15 See, for example, Bruno, Ravallion and Squire (1999). 16 A good example is Chaudhuri and Ravallion (2006). 17 As Rohini Somanathan has reminded me, the data on economic inequality that I review in this appendix do not reflect the effects of taxation and public expenditures on individual economic wellbeing; this remains an under-researched issue.
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economic inequality. From 1950, when data on economic inequality began to become available, and up to the early 1990s, Brazil and South Africa were the most unequal of the major countries of the world. Like India, both Brazil and South Africa stepped up their integration into the international capitalist economy in the 1990s, and over the past two decades these countries have all achieved fairly rapid rates of economic growth. Unlike in India and South Africa, however, there is evidence of a significant decline in the degree of economic inequality in Brazil since the early 1990s. This decline can be explained in considerable part by policy changes introduced by the successive administrations of Brazilian presidents Fernando Cardoso (1995-2003) and Lula Da Silva (2003-11).40
18 Elements of the new reform policies were foreshadowed in the early 1980s, but it was not until the 1990s that a major shift was undertaken. 19 It is difficult to place India in a world rank order of income inequality, not only because data on income distribution in most countries vary greatly in terms of how inequality is defined and measured, but also because most distributional data collected in India are for consumption expenditure rather than for income received. The rough comparative information provided in this paragraph is drawn from standard UN and World Bank sources. 20 See Jayadev et al (2007) and Bardhan (2009). 21 These estimates are from Tendulkar and Jain (1995), who have done the most meticulous research on the distribution of consumption expenditure, adjusting carefully for different prices faced by consumers at different levels of consumption. 22 These estimates are from Banerjee and Piketty (2003). 23 All the figures mentioned in this paragraph are from Jayadev et al (2007). 24 The degree to which measures of consumption inequality understate income inequality in India may be gauged by comparing estimates of the Gini coefficient for all-India consumption in 2004-05, which average roughly 35% as shown in Table 1, with an estimated Gini coefficient of 54% for all-India income calculated by the Indian National Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER) from a household survey carried out in the same year (as reported in Bardhan 2009). 25 See the list of India’s wealthiest individuals at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indians_by_ net_worthon-line 26 The value of a Gini coefficient can range from 0 to 1, with higher values denoting greater inequality. The Gini coefficient is usually expressed in percentage terms; and it should be noted that a difference of just a few percentage points represents a considerable difference in the degree of inequality. 27 I could not find any detailed and methodologically transparent studies of the all-India distribution of consumer expenditure prior to the early 1980s. 28 To my knowledge only Jain and Tendulkar (1989, 1992) have adjusted consumption distribution data to take account of the different prices faced by consumers in different fractile groups. 29 Notably Sen and Himanshu (2004) and Sarkar and Mehta (2010), whose careful studies of trends in consumption inequality examined differences between the experiences of richer and poorer fractile groups; see also Topalova (2008). 30 Bhalla (2007, ch 11) reported that “in the low growth period 1950-1980, consumption inequality in India improved [i e, declined] by about 15 to 20%”. It is not clear, however, what his sources were for this estimate. He went on to write that “since 1983, inequality levels have stayed within a tight 1 to 3 Gini point range around a mean of 31[%].” It is very hard to reconcile this assertion
31
32 33
34 35
36 37 38
39
40
with all the evidence cited in this paper on the increase in rural, urban and all-India consumption inequality, as well as the evidence of a widening gap between average urban and rural consumption levels since the early 1990s. These estimates are from Tendulkar and Jain (1995), who – as noted earlier – adjusted carefully for different prices faced by consumers in different fractile groups. All the figures mentioned in this paragraph are from this study. Gender is of course also an important basis for distinguishing identity groups; but measurement of economic inequalities between men and women raises complex issues that are beyond the scope of this paper. Following a curious convention in Indian data on social groups, STs are included here within the Hindu population. This reflects the fact that only Hindu-FCs constitute a higher proportion of urban dwellers than rural dwellers, and MPCEs are higher in urban than in rural areas. I am indebted to Arthur MacEwan for stressing this point. See, for example, Bruno, Ravallion and Squire (1996). See Bardhan, Bowles and Gintis (2000). As the authors note, there may also be a loss of efficiency when ownership of productive assets shifts from wealthy owners to less wealthy operators, insofar as the latter are likely to be more risk-averse than the former. However, the authors conclude that asset redistribution from the wealthy to the nonwealthy is more often productivity-enhancing than the other way round. As Loury (1987) has shown, only government action in favour of members of marginalised groups can hope to erase inter-group inequalities resulting from past discrimination. For an analysis of the decline in economic inequality in Brazil since the early 1990s, see Ferreira et al (2006) and Seidman (2010).
References Ahya, C and M Sheth (2007): “India Economics, ‘Globalisation, Capitalism and Inequality’”, Morgan Stanley Research, 14 June. Anderson, Elizabeth A (2002): “Integration, Affirmative Action, and Strict Scrutiny”, NYU Law Review, 77: 1195-1271. Banerjee, Abhijit and Thomas Piketty (2003): “Top Indian Incomes: 1956-2000”, World Bank Economic Review, 19(1):1-20. Bardhan, Pranab (2004): Scarcity, Conflicts and Cooperation (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press). – (2009): “How Unequal a Country Is India?”, September, on-line at: http://business.rediff.com/ column/2009/sep/07/how-unequal-a-country-isindia.htm.
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SPECIAL ARTICLE Bardhan, Pranab, Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis (2000): “Wealth Inequality, Wealth Constraints and Economic Performance”, Chapter 10 in A B Atkinson and F Bourguignon (ed.), Handbook of Income Distribution (Amsterdam: Elsevier B V). Bhalla, Surjit S (2007): Second Among Equals: The Middle Class Kingdoms of India and China, on-line at http://www.oxusinvestments.com/files/pdf/ NE20090106.pdf. Bhaumik, Sumon Kumar and Manisha Chakrabarty (March 2006): “Earnings Inequality in India: Has the Rise of Caste and Religion Based Politics in India Had an Impact?”, Discussion Paper No 2008, Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit, Bonn, Germany. Bruno, Michael, Martin Ravallion and Lynn Squire (1999): “Equity and Growth in Developing Countries: Old and New Perspectives on the Policy Issues”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 1563, 30 November. Chaudhuri, Shubham and Martin Ravallion (2006): “Partially Awakened Giants: Uneven Growth in China and India” in L A Winters and S Y Yusuf (ed.), Dancing with Giants: China, India and the Global Economy, chapter 6 (Washington DC: The World Bank). Datt, Gaurav (1999): “Has Poverty Declined since Economic Reforms? Statistical Data Analysis”, Economic & Political Weekly, 11 December, 3516-18. Datt, Gaurav and Martin Ravallion (2009): “Has India’s Economic Growth Become More Pro-Poor in the Wake of Economic Reforms?”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 5103, October. Desai, Sonalde and Veena Kulkarni (2008): “Changing Educational Inequalities in India in the Context of Affirmative Action”, Demography, 45(2): 245-70. Deshpande, Satish (2003): “Caste Inequalities in India Today”, Chapter 5 in S Deshpande, Contemporary India: A Sociological View (New Delhi: Viking Penguin).
Dev, S Mahendra and C Ravi (2007): “Poverty and Inequality: All-India and States, 1983-2005”, Economic & Political Weekly, 10 February, 509-21. Dreze, Jean and Amartya Sen (2002): India: Development and Participation (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Ferreira, Francisco H G, Phillippe G Leite and Julie A Litchfield (2006): “The Rise and Fall of Brazilian Inequality, 1981-2004”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3867, 1 March. Frank, Robert (2007): Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Harms the Middle Class (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press). Government of India, Prime Minister’s High Level Committee, Cabinet Secretariat (2006): Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslim Community of India: A Report (The “Sachar Report”, Government of India, New Delhi, November. Himanshu (2007): “Recent Trends in Poverty and Inequality: Some Preliminary Results”, Economic & Political Weekly, 10 February, 497-508. Jain, L R and S D Tendulkar (1989): “Intertemporal and Inter-fractile Group Movements in Real Levels of Living for Rural and Urban Population of India, 1970-71 to 1983”, Journal of Indian School of Political Economy, 1 (2): 313-34. – (1992): “Inter-Temporal, Interfractile Group and Rural-Urban Differential in the Cost of Living, Real Levels of Living, Inequality and Poverty for all-India: 1970-71 to 1988-89”, Journal of the Indian School of Political Economy, 4(3): 456-83. Jayadev, Arjun, Sripad Motiram and Vamsi Vakula bharanam (2007): “Patterns of Wealth Disparities in India during the Liberalisation Era”, Economic & Political Weekly, 22 September, 3853-63. Jha, Raghbendra (2005): “Reducing Poverty and Inequality in India: Has the Liberalisation Helped?”, Chapter 12 in G A Cornia (ed.), Inequality, Growth and Poverty in an Era of Liberalisation and Globalisation (New York: Oxford University Press), for UNU-WIDER (Helsinki).
Loury, Glenn (1987): “Why Should We Care about Group Inequality”, Social Philosophy and Policy, 5: 249-71. Ravallion, Martin (2000): “Should Poverty Measures Be Anchored to the National Accounts?”, Economic & Political Weekly, 26 August, 2 September, 3245-52. – (2005): “Inequality is Bad for the Poor”, World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 3677, August. Sarkar, Sandip and Balwant Singh Mehta (2010): “Income Inequality in India: Pre- and PostReform Periods”, Economic & Political Weekly, 11 September, 45-55. Seidman, Gay (2010): “Brazil’s ‘Pro-poor’ Strategies: What South Africa Could Learn”, Transformation, on-line at http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_ 7080/is_72-73/ai_n54561807/ Sen, Abhijit and Himanshu (2004): “Poverty and Inequality in India: Getting Closer to the Truth”, Economic & Political Weekly, 18 and 25 September, 4247-63, 4361-75. Tendulkar, S D (2010): “Inequality and Equity During Rapid Growth Process”, Chapter 2 in S Acharya and R Mohan (ed.), India’s Economy: Performance and Challenges: Essays in Honor of Montek Singh Ahluwalia (New Delhi: Oxford University Press). Tendulkar, S D and L R Jain (1995): “Economic Growth and Equity: India, 1970-71 to 1988-89”, Indian Economic Review, 33(1): 19-49. Topalova, Petia (2008): “India: Is the Rising Tide Lifting All Boats?”, International Monetary Fund Working Paper 08/54, March. Vakulabharanam, Vamsi (2010): “Does Class Matter? Class Structure and Worsening Inequality in India”, Economic & Political Weekly, 17 July, 67-76. Wilkinson, Richard and Kate Pickett (2009): The Spirit Level: Why More Equal Societies Almost Always Do Better (London: Allen Lane). Zacharias, Ajit and Vamsi Vakulabharanam (2009): “Caste and Wealth Inequality in India”, The Levy Economics Institute of Bard College Working Paper 566, May.
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The ‘Composite’ State and Its ‘Nation’: Karnataka’s Reunification Revisited Janaki Nair
Has the idea of the linguistic state been rendered increasingly irrelevant or less pertinent in the current stage of capitalist development? The unfolding political scenario in Karnataka calls for a return to its founding moments as a linguistic state. In the early 1950s, Kengal Hanumanthaiah developed the idea of a “composite state” partly in order to channelise the discontent within Mysore about the possible loss of (caste) power but equally to provide an alternative matrix (that of development) within the expanded state. What were the roots of that alternative to the (linguistic) state that was being imagined, and have the recent political developments been a realisation of that imagined “composite state” or its demise? This article attempts to frame these questions through a return to the legislative assembly debates of the early 1950s.
The author was compelled to return to, and rethink, a previous and much shorter, version of this article which is to appear in a collection of her essays entitled “Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Region under Princely Rule” (2011, University of Minnesota Press). She is grateful to A R Vasavi and M S S Pandian for their comments. Janaki Nair (
[email protected]) teaches at the Centre for Historical Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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ontemporary events that are unfolding in Karnataka are baffling even the most astute of commentators and politi cal analysts.1 The implications of the new contract that is being forged by Karnataka politicians with “god as witness” and mediated by the powerful leaders of assorted religious insti tutions, bypassing existing judicial and constitutional authorities and institutions demand urgent analyses rather than condem nation alone. While journalists rail against the unparalleled self- interest that drives and “empowers” only the political/bureaucratic class,2 the much cherished “Modern Mysore” heritage has been recently refashioned into a “Karnataka Model of Development” premised on the twin pillars of “technology led growth” and “improved governance”.3 The “Mysore First” argument which the “model” state made its emblem before 1947 has been burnished anew for the post-independence period, during which time, as some argue, democracy has been both “broadened” by Devaraj Urs, and “deepened” by Ramakrishna Hegde. 4 An academic interest in highlighting the pioneering role played by the State well before Independence, and its continuance in the post-inde pendence period,5 is nevertheless simultaneously placed under the strain of explaining the “democratisation” and “deepening” of corruption, the steady dismantling of state schemes and inter ventions, coupled with the dizzying rise of market forces, and the complex interplay of inherited and newly invented hierar chies.6 For instance, was the appeal of former Chief Minister Yeddyurappa and his political opponent H D Kumaraswamy, another former chief minister, to the “power” of the deity at Dharmasthala an expression of faith in the only enduring insti tutions within Karnataka, and a disavowal of the more brittle institutions of the nation state?7 Such questions will require much deeper historical research and analysis of not only the Mysore bureaucracy and its moderni sing agenda but the powerful role played by non-state institutions in providing legitimacy and defining political power. I will attempt a far more modest framing of such questions by return ing to the moment of expanded state formation to ask: does the case of Karnataka decisively demonstrate the limits, perhaps even the growing irrelevance, of linguistic nationalism? Was another political possibility articulated in the early 1950s by both opponents and supporters of the enlarged state? And finally, is the new face of Karnataka politics a fulfilment or a betrayal of this vision? The new directions taken by electoral politics in Karnataka, and the multiple claims on the district of Bellary and its mineral wealth, as well as the scant respect for linguistic borders or indeed affective sentiments shown by the robber novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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barons of the mining belt,8 appear to make very relevant, though perhaps not in its intended senses, the discourse on economic de velopment, with a stress on a “composite” Kannada nation which was initiated by Kengal Hanumanthaiah, among others, during the debates of the early 1950s in Mysore. In 1956, Mysore’s independent existence as a former princely state ended, as it became part of an expanded linguistic state (later renamed as Karnataka). This expansion was far from eagerly sought by Mysore: the reluctance was marked from the time when seven taluks of Bellary were severed from Madras Presidency and added to Mysore in 1953, right up until the eventual unification in 1956. It would therefore be easy to trace the political rumblings 50 years later – separatist movements in Kodagu,9 similar expressions of discontent in Uttara Karnataka, and the state’s own acknowledgement of its failures in that region10 – to the unfulfilled goals or viability of linguistic states. Indeed, these rumblings appear to confirm the early misgivings of many Mysoreans about the embrace of their fellow language speakers to the north.11 Added to this is the widespread dissatis faction with the role of the state in nurturing and developing the community of Kannada speakers12: indeed, the “love of language” expressed by a range of Kannada protagonists in the recent past has dismayed the early campaigners for unification. As Patil Puttappa described the predicament, Mysoreans had achieved political integration, without an accompanying emotional unification.13 Kannada nationalism, in its broader and more inclusive sense, therefore followed, rather than preceded, the establishment of the state of Mysore/Karnataka, with unexpected consequences. Of what then did unification consist?
Territorialising Caste or Language? Nationalist accounts of karnataka ekikarana (Karnataka uni fication) adopt the familiar mode of all nationalist histories: the “idea of Karnataka” has existed from the time of the earliest dynasties in the southern and northern Karnataka regions, but its historical “unity” was broken in the 13th century with the sack of Dwarasamudra by Malik Kafur. A striving for linguistic unity is traced back to the time of the Vijayanagar kings: the rule of the Bahmani sultans marks a break in the cultural continuity of the region.14 The classical/folk heritage of Islam was thus kept away from the cultural history of Karnataka or more properly, Kan nada.15 Yet, although Kannada suffered blows from at least the 14th century, the actual territorial disintegration and the dis memberment of the Kannada people occurred with the defeat of Tipu Sultan and the start of British rule in 1799. The demand for a unified linguistic state gathered political force only in the third decade of the 20th century, following the Congress’ acceptance of the principle of linguistic state forma tion. The creation of Pradesh Congress Committees for states which did not yet exist, such as Karnataka, was an acknowl edgement of the yearnings of substantial proportions of Kannada speakers who lived in the British ruled provinces of Bombay, Madras, Coorg (Kodagu) and in the princely state of Hyderabad. In 1956, the formation of the new Mysore healed the cartographic wounds inflicted by British rule for strategic or administrative convenience.16 Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
The corrective to this nationalist version of unification takes as its starting point the well known opposition of some political leaders and intellectuals in Mysore to the idea of submerging the princely state within a larger political and administrative unity.17 A unified Karnataka would, by including large numbers of Lingayats from the northern Karnataka regions, forever alter the demographic composition that gave Vokkaligas the edge in Mysore state politics. This interpretation was amply aided by the States Reorganisation Commission (SRC) report itself, which singled out Mysore as the state haunted by bitter acrimony between the two castes. According to the SRC, state reorganisa tion would produce an administrative unity in which “no com munity may be dominant”.18 This raises the question about what was re-terrritorialised when the larger Mysore came into being – language or caste? The self-evident rivalries of dominant castes dog all analyses of Karnataka politics up to the present day19 despite the fact that there is much that they fail to explain. A return to this “founding” moment of Karnataka may therefore be imperative to generate new approaches to an understanding of its contemporary history.
The Shifting Grounds of Unification In 1944, D V Gundappa (DVG) addressed the Karnataka Sangha Rajothsava at Bangalore’s Central College with a programme for building up the language, which included consolidation of the Kannada-speaking areas within two or more states.20 By the time of the SRC in 1955, DVG had become a staunch opponent of a sin gular Karnataka.21 Others opposed to the idea of linguistic unifi cation while supporting the idea of two states, Karnataka and Mysore, were ex-dewans such as M Visvesvaraya and M Mirza Ismail, scholars such as M P L Sastry, Congressmen such as A G Ramachandra Rao and T Channaiah (who had also earlier sup ported unification), and members of caste associations such as Vokkaligara and Kuruba Sanghas. This assortment of cultural “royalists”, non-dominant castes, and technocrat-administrators who had built Mysore’s formidable reputation as a “model” state clouds the clarity provided by a singular focus on communal difference in historical accounts of unification. Equally heterogeneous were the votaries of unification within and outside the Mysore legislature: socialists such as Gopala Gowda and well-known writer-poets of Mysore such as Kuvempu (both Vokkaligas), literary figures such as Aa Na Kru (A N Krishna Rao), critics of unification turned supporters such as the writer Shivarama Karanth, and representatives of parties such as the Praja Socialist Party (notably J Mohamed Imam), also disturb the strictly “communal” categories within which Karnataka unifica tion has been understood.22 Gopala Gowda said that between 1953 and 1955, he was viewed widely as betraying, on the one hand, both Mysore and his caste, and on the other, the unifica tion movement itself.23 Neither the nationalist nor the “communal” modes of concep tualising the moment seem adequate in explaining developments in Mysore in the early 1950s. The obsessive focus on caste and secular power has thrust the form taken by the debate on a possible Karnataka into the shadows. The rethinking on unification that occurred between 1949 and 1955 may provide important
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clues on the conceptions of democracy and development that were being fashioned. The crystallisation of the linguistic nation after the state occurred when the stage was already prepared by another political logic, the logic of state-led “development”. Which of the two languages – of linguistic unity, or of economic development – possessed the greater prospect of being the bearer of democracy? Did developmental discourse play a crucial role in marking the passage from the limited literary love of language and country as it was expressed in the demand for karnataka ekikarana, and an expanded political mobilisation? In other words, what were the stakes on both sides of the debate as they shaped the practice of democracy in Karnataka? I would like to return to the contentious official debates on the wisdom of karnataka ekikarana for the crucial insights they pro vide on the imagined economy of Karnataka state.24 This economy had long been in the making, as I have shown elsewhere. In its 1950s version, it was reflected in official debates on the Andhra State Bill in December 1953/January 1954; the (Seshadri) Fact Finding Committee Report in March/April 1955; and the SRC’s report in November/December 1955. This series of debates focused above all on the question of “development”. The term was used primarily in two senses, to refer to the historical achievements of the model Mysore state, on the one hand, and to discuss the potentialities for expansion (i e, capitalist develop ment) offered by the acquisition of new territories. Development was thus used both in arguments by the protagonists of, and opponents to, the idea of an expanded Mysore state. Was development merely the smokescreen for real anxieties about the likely political dominance of Lingayats? The many unabashed discussions of caste and its links to political power in both the assembly and the council reveal that there was no hesitation at all in naming “enlightened self-interest” for what it was.25 However, once the Congress and other politicians were reconciled to the inevitability of linguistic states, the develop ment discourse became the principal means of reorganising the political order and developing a notion of hegemony outside the framework of representative politics. The attempt to turn a potential political threat into an opportunity via the discourse of development focused strongly on the economy, particularly a process of accumulation that risked no radical social change.26 Mysore Chief Minister Kengal Hanumanthaiah’s support for the recommendations of the SRC in 1955 and his insistence on Mysore’s legacy as a “composite state” which countered the settled ortho doxies of linguistic nationalism, was thus an effort to imagine a new economy and forge new political goals through development and planning, namely “a modality of political power constituted outside the immediate political process itself”.27 My purpose here will be to discuss the discernible shift within law-making bodies away from history and its affective senti ments about love of the Karnataka country, to geography and the economic value of the landscape as “natural resource”.28 No doubt, the reliance on development and its enabling material conditions did succeed in displacing the question of caste, at least in this territorialised form. Indeed, debates about the addition of Bellary (district and taluk) revealed the problems of a strict adherence to linguistic norms in state formation. The near total
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absence of a popular nationalism in the Mysore region meant that when “the people” did conceptualise the nation, they laid claim to language as a precious cultural object, a form of selfdefinition against outsiders within the state and not as a vehicle of democracy.
Linguistic Imaginings Kannada language speakers were recognised by the SRC of 1955 as the most fragmented during the period of British rule.29 Geographical distance from the capitals of those provinces only heightened the perception of being marginalised. Since Kannadaspeaking minorities were present in parts of Bombay, Madras, and Coorg, with a substantial minority in Hyderabad, they were to be converted into a majority of their own.30 Karnataka’s demand for a separate state, however, was primarily driven by Congress workers from north Karnataka, and especially from Bombay-Karnataka. Satish Deshpande has defined this as a cusp-region, “an overlap zone, or a hybrid (or mixed) cultural space, where the transition from one ‘pure’ cultural identity to another can take place”. Since it “straddles the cultural domain between ‘north’ and ‘south’ India, the Bombay-Karnataka region marks both the southern boundary of northern culture as well as the northern boundary of the southern culture.”31 There were, in other words, marked cultural differences between this region and Old Mysore. After the formal acceptance by the Congress in 1920 of the linguistic state principle, the demand for karnataka ekikarana quickened. The Karnataka Handbook, brought out on the occa sion of the 1924 Congress Session, recognised that the physical boundaries of this new entity were not quite firm, though it had already taken shape as a province in the Congress lexicon.32 By 1937, the establishment of a Mysore Pradesh Congress Committee, as distinct from the Karnataka Pradesh Congress Committee (KPCC) set up in 1924, raised the possibility of two states using the same language. The meetings of the Kannada Sahitya Parishat routinely mentioned the prospect of unification, but a meeting devoted to ekikarana first took place only in 1946 at Davangere, and was attended by elected representatives from the British presidencies of Madras and Bombay. In that year, a determined move was made to yoke the KPCC’s demand for a linguistic state with Mysore’s yearning for a “responsible government”. The pragmatic arrangements that could follow Indian independence alarmed many young Mysore leaders, such as Kengal Hanumanthaiah and H C Dasappa at the 10th karnataka ekikarana conference held in Bombay in 1946. The writer Sriranga recalled that when some important [n Karnataka] leaders said, “with Mysore if possible, without Mysore if necessary”, leaders from Mysore pleaded for the inclusion of their province.33 Yet questions of unification remained muted in Mysore, and were somewhat confined even in the Bombay-Karnataka region thereafter though many calculations were made between 1947 and 1953 about the potential strengths of brahmins, Lingayats and Vokkaligas in a unified Mysore.34 The possibility of two states strengthened as clear preferences were being made among provinces such as Kodagu, parts of Salem and the Niligiris to join Mysore, while Bombay-Karnataka leaders not only distanced novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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themselves from “princely” Mysore, but wanted to relocate the state capital to Dharwad.35
The ‘Gift’ of Bellary The sudden “gift” of seven of Bellary taluks from Madras Presi dency to Mysore by the first Partition Committee of 1949 made it clear that Mysore’s preferences regarding reorganisation would be overlooked when stronger claims were made, as by Andhra Pradesh. The Partition Committee, which consisted of Andhra and Tamil leaders (but no Mysoreans) granted Bellary with neither a demand nor a struggle from the Mysore side (though Karnataka politicians such as Nijalingappa and Tekur Subrahmanyam had been active in demanding its inclusion in Kannada-speaking state all along).36 Mysore legislators were sceptical of the Partition Committee’s generosity towards these backward districts, even though they consisted of a majority of Kannada speakers. There was a persistent feeling that the backward region of Bellary was thrust on Mysore since neither Tamil Nadu nor Andhra was inter ested in keeping it. Mulka Govinda Reddy, while discussing the possible return of Bellary taluk alone to Andhra, said that “The chief minister of Mysore did not agitate for those seven taluks from Madras. It was done at the instance of the Government of India. …it is their bounden duty to subsidise to the extent that the Mysore Government is going to suffer on account of the trans ferred seven taluks”.37 However, Kengal Hanumanthaiah used a filial metaphor to describe the addition of Bellary to Mysore: “the return of the Bellary District to Mysore is like the calf returning to its mother.”38 He then began to outline a different vision of territory, one that was associated neither with language nor cultural history (though he was not averse to invoking the latter), but of development, of land as natural resource. Bellary, he anticipated, would not be the Rs 30 lakh “drain on the budget” expected by many critics, but a potential new Mandya, the area which flourished after the building of the Krishnarajasagar dam. This promise of agricultural growth was held out by the upcoming Tungabhadra project. Bellary’s addition to Mysore was protracted and complex: as a border district with substantial populations of Telugu speakers, it pushed Kannada speakers below the 70% mark. In 1921, the Congress District Arbitration Committee (headed by N C Kelkar) said that “The Telugu province, as now reorganised, is already too strong and extensive to lose much by losing the Bellary district”, and suggested awarding the whole to Karnataka. Even tually, however, he gave three taluks of Bellary (Alur, Adoni and Rayadurg) to Andhra on the basis of the census, and the rest to Karnataka. It was recognised that Bellary was not merely bilingual; it was of a “mixed character”, including Hindusthani speakers who were mostly Muslims, and whose political affilia tions were not firmly rooted in language. The 1948 Dar Commission recognised the problems of “bilingual districts in border areas which had developed an economic and organic life of their own”, which “should not be broken up and should be disposed of on consideration of their own special needs”. However, the Partition Committee of 1949, faced with an intransigent Andhra that wanted a “purely Telugu-speaking state” and a sullen Madras Presidency, which did not want to Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
r etain seven Bellary taluks which were “not contiguous with its territory”, awarded those taluks to Mysore. At the time of the formation of Andhra province in 1953, justice Wanchoo noted that the headworks of Tungabhadra dam were in a predominantly Kannada-speaking taluk, and that the new state was (now) demanding the whole district, which was opposed by Karnataka. Wanchoo wanted the district to be administered by Andhra until Mysore/Karnataka could be created, and did not en visage discrimination against the Kannada-speaking areas of Bel lary district.39 In its 1953 declaration, the Government of India however stuck to the linguistic principle in giving three taluks to Andhra and six to Mysore, with Bellary taluk’s fate to be decided later, and the Tungabhadra scheme to be jointly administered by the two states. The next committee headed by justice L S Mishra concluded that Bellary taluk as a whole should be transferred to Mysore. However, following the SRC suggestion in 1955 to return Bellary taluk to Andhra, fierce resistance broke out in the district, with Mysore objecting strenuously since “the areas joint to Mysore are comparatively poorer than the areas going to Andhra” which Bellary’s addition to Mysore would mitigate.40 While Mysore clung simultaneously to the historical, linguistic and economic factors, Andhra demanded Bellary for its capital, claiming that “language alone should not be deciding factor” (emphasis added). The Government of India noted with some asperity that “It is a little surprising that the [States Reorganisation] Commission which in effect conceded the linguistic principle in redrawing the map of India, should have chosen to ignore it in the case of a predominantly Kannada-speaking area like Bellary which has had historical economic and cultural kinship with Kannadaspeaking territories all through the history of the area in modern times”. However, it weighed in favour of Bellary going to Andhra on economic and administrative grounds since the Tungabhadra headworks were located there and the project was crucial to famine stricken Rayalseema.41 Yet, flooded with representations from a wide range of organisations in Karnataka, and faced with seething revolt,42 the taluk was retained in Mysore.43 In this debate, Hanumanthaiah said that the L S Mishra award which had conferred seven of Bellary’s 10 taluks to Mysore, must not be questioned or reopened.44 He was supported by others who invoked administrative and cultural advantages. Bellary had been a part of Karnataka state for a long time, said P R Ramaiah, but for some reasons, “it was briefly separated from Mysore”. Its cultural heritage alone warranted a return to its parent.45 J Mohammad Imam stressed the long cultural ties between Mysore state and Bellary, arguing against those who saw Bellary as an economic drain by saying “I must point out that this is not a mercenary business…we are reclaiming our brethren who lived with us for centuries, together, but who parted from us for a short time…they may be poor they may be helpless but that need not frighten us…”.46 Bellary was thus variously “welcomed” on the basis of cultural affinity, administrative convenience, and on other affective grounds, but it was Bellary as natural resource that held out the most promise. That this was not immediately a rosy future became clear when the Rajpramukh of Mysore himself declared
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in 1954, while welcoming four new members of the legislative assembly from that area, that the 3,821 sq km territory and 7¾ lakh population was a temporary economic burden to be borne until the Tungabhadra project made the area self-sufficient.47 Central aid under the First Five-Year Plan was indeed enhanced to bear the extra burden.48 It is striking however that the region was primarily seen as a potentially rich agricultural district rather than a source of mineral wealth. The Bellary “landfall” quickened the debate on the possibility of a unified Karnataka. K S Gurusiddappa wrote to the prime minister that Karnataka had to be formed soon after the constitu tion of Andhra Pradesh.49 Rajashekara Murthy noted that the people of Karnataka were being punished for remaining silent, and for not agitating for a new province as Andhra had done.50
The Promises of a Linguistic State It is true that Andhra had precipitated the demand for state reor ganisation, and there were significant differences in both the concerns and the paths chosen by each language region. The Andhra Sahitya Parishat set up in 1911 was quickly followed by the demand for an Andhra Province in 1912. Once this goal was achieved in 1953, it was linked to the movement in the Telangana region of Hyderabad by the demand for Vishal Andhra. Such warmth between the literary and political realms was less a feature of the Karnataka movement,51 where the demand for unified statehood was slow to develop. Kerala was a late developer on the question of an Aikya Keralam with firm steps taken in that direction only in the 1940s.52 Tamil remained safely corralled within the erstwhile Madras Presidency, and the demand for a separate province was articulated only in 1938: according to K V Narayana Rao, the first official demand for Tamil Nadu was made as late as 1948.53 Dilip Menon suggests however that the Dravidian movement conceived of southern India, at least after 1944, in racial terms, as Dravidanadu, its motto being “Divide on the basis of language; unite on the basis of race.”54 Only in Karnataka was caste territorialised in a distinctive way. While the struggle between the Kammas and Reddys for the control of regions (coastal Andhra and Rayalseema respectively) subtended some of the discussions on unification and resistance to it, it never assumed the charge that questions of caste and ter ritoriality attained in Mysore/Karnataka. Nor did such equations become possible in Tamil Nadu or Kerala.55 Nevertheless, it also became clear that the centre could make decisions that state governments could do little to oppose. The Dar Commission of 1948 firmly ruled out the necessity of linguistic states when a precarious stability had just been achieved in the subcontinent in the aftermath of partition, but a year later, the Congress Party’s Jawaharlal-Vallabhbhai-Pattabhi Sitaramayya (JVP) Committee conceded the possibility of Andhra Pradesh. The appointment of the Fazl Ali Commission in 1954 after the forma tion of Andhra Pradesh was a breathtaking display of how cen tralised power could refashion the nation-space according to its priorities of unity and administrative rationalisation. Mysore’s response to the appointment of the commission was a hard-nosed assessment of the territories to be added, taking
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the experience of the difficulties already posed by Bellary. Hanumanthaiah’s “discovery of Karnataka” in 1949 had persuaded him of the need to remain open to the addition of territory.56 In 1954, as chief minister, Hanumanthaiah, who had virtually gagged dissenting Congressmen by preventing them from appearing before the SRC in Mysore, appointed a committee headed by M Seshadri, a professor of philosophy from Mysore University.57 Appropriately named the Fact Finding Committee, it focused on gathering data relating to “the area and popula tion of the Kannada-speaking people in the states of Madras, Bombay, Hyderabad and Coorg”, while assessing “the level of development in those areas particularly in the fields of Education, Medical and Public Health, Rural Development, Industries, Irrigation, and Power” and the “the availability of natural resources”.58 The committee minced no words in declaring that these areas were decades behind Mysore on practically all counts, and would require massive doses of central aid. The discussion of this report was the dress rehearsal for the discussion of the SRC report, generating bitter debate about the appropriate grounds on which the proposed unity should be assessed, though arguments for economic well-being overshadowed the more sentimental grounds for unity. The committee avoided any reference to caste, and steered clear of the quicksands of popular sentiment. As B K Puttaramaiah, a vociferous opponent of Mysore unification, said, the committee was appointed “to see whether the political costs of saying no to Karnataka were as high as saying yes to Karnataka”, concluding “that saying no is not a problem”.59 T Mariappa, however, pointed out that the “Seshadri Committee furnished a first class argu ment for the formation of [unified] Karnataka: we ourselves furnished…a handle to say [an independent] Karnataka is not financially viable”.60 By focusing on the compelling economic reasons against including these underdeveloped regions in the new state, the ground was also laid for invoking development goals, rather than memories of a greater historical Karnataka, in making a case for a linguistically unified state. Nevertheless, the actual decision to reorganise the state of Mysore to include areas from Bombay and Madras Presidencies, Coorg, Hyderabad and several other small regions in the SRC report of 1955 officially brought together questions of caste and territory in Mysore’s representative politics. It has been estimated that Lingayats or Veerashaivas constitute about 30% to 40% of the population in the Kannada areas outside Mysore at present. The other important section of the Kannadigas namely the Vakkaligas (sic) similarly constitute a little less than 29% of the popu lation of Mysore. In the united Karnataka, it has been estimated that a little more than 20% of the population may be Lingayats between 13% and 14% Vakkaligas and about 17% to 18% Harijans. It is clear there fore that no one community will therefore be dominant and any one section can be reduced to the status of a minority if other groups combine against it…61
Legislative Council member M P L Sastry was among those who pointed out that “The Commission has done a great injustice to the people and classes of Mysore by bringing in the question of caste…”62 But by this time, the question of caste had become the indisputable common sense of administrative unification. novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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The Limits of History in Imagining Karnataka In his memoirs, Alura Venkatarao recalled that he first raised hopes of a unified Karnataka in the journal Vagbhushana in 1903. The more influential term “karnatakatwa” was historicised in Karnataka Gatha Vaibhava, first published in 1917. Signifying the love of country, “karnatakatwa” was “that single word which was coined in my mint to describe the politics, dharma, history and art [of Karnataka]”.63 Widely circulated as the most important statement of Kannada, and unmistakably Hindu, pride,64 Karnataka Gatha Vaibhava strongly focused on history as a resource for remembering the achievements and the loss suffered by the Kannada people and their nation. As a political entity, Karnataka first found expression in 1923, a few years after the Congress’ acceptance of Nagpur resolution on linguistic states. The shuttling between history, especially of the medieval period, and the discussion of injustices suffered by Kannadigas living under different administrations was not accidental. Throughout the debates on the Andhra State Bill (1953) the Seshadri Fact Finding Committee Report (1954), and the States Reorganisation Commission Report (1955) in the Mysore legislature, the past was used to build, not the love of country, but a hard case for justice under the new Indian dispen sation. Hanumanthaiah, however, steered attention away from history during the debate on the Andhra State Bill in 1953 when he declared: It is history that has cemented our feelings into one administrative unit. It would be unwise to break up that administrative unity… Mysore State is going to remain the administrative unit which it is today. The question next arises as to what we should do if some people of the neighbouring area express a wish to come to the Mysore State. To them we have decided to extend a hearty welcome…[but] we are not thinking in terms of Visala Mysore…65
By the end of 1955, his idea of the “composite structure” of Mysore66 became useful in advocating a complete change of political authority based neither on language nor its history but on the pragmatics of power, of accommodating multiple languages and ethnicities for administrative, and especially developmental convenience. Drawing on H G Wells’ “theory of history” he said Just as human beings have a life expectancy of 100-120 years, political regimes also have a life. …The Mysore kingdom developed as an inde pendent kingdom from the time of Chamaraja Wodeyar in 1566. In the intervening 389 years, Mysore has waxed and waned. Even in this 389 year period, it did not remain stable. In the end, when Hyder and Tipu were the commanders…all of south India was joined to Mysore.67
By emphasising the unstable contours of Mysore territory and the ever-present possibility of changing regimes, he signalled that there was nothing worth preserving about the rump state of Mysore (a mere 29,000 square miles carved out of 80,000 in 1799) even if the territory had remained stable for nearly 160 years. Yet it was precisely this latter day stability, and “improve ment” under the auspices of a modernising bureaucracy, that the “no-changers” wished to preserve. M P L Sastry emphasised the precious heritage of the “model state” of Mysore that stood endangered by the inclusion of much less civilised regions.68 History served to compensate for the disincentives of adding underdeveloped regions: the symbolic gains of the Vijayanagar Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
capital at Hampi were emphasised to counter the suspicion that the Bellary addition was a result of Madras’ refusal to retain this deficit region. A consensus on the addition of Bellary was achieved within the houses, but although Hanumanthaiah wished for a similar consensus on the SRC Report barely two years later, there was little hope of history playing this cementing role. If anything, his own minister for Law and Education, A G Ramachandra Rao, a vehement opponent of unification, declared that there had been no moment in history when Karnataka had been united. It had always been divided either between the east and west or north and south “The North Karnataka looked to the North and North east. The south Karnataka looked to the South and South east and there was no Karnataka kingdom comprising the entire area.” “Neladaha” (a thirst for territory) only recalled the time of the paleyagaras, so he proposed support for two separate but robust states which were not haunted by the “ghost of linguism”.69 From love of language and country to the evocation of “the ghost of linguism”: as Gopala Gowda had pointed out even during the discussion on the Andhra State Bill in 1953, there was a gulf between those (such as the littérateurs and poets) who under stood the history of the language and its beauty and those who spoke in more practical but “squint-eyed” political terms. “If we take our claims from history and entertain hopes of a new state there will be lots of obstacles”, he said, adding “we must make history ourselves: we must take the opportunity of the Andhra State Bill and argue for our own state from the centre”.70 Hanumanthaiah himself returned to the pragmatic use of historical symbols in a moment of transition by urging the retention of the name “Mysore”, which he claimed would give “psychological satisfaction” to the people who speak languages other than Kannada.71 By this time, historical geography has lost its primacy as the basis for imagining the new nation, its place increasingly taken by a calculated interest in resources of the region.
Towards a Geography of National Resources Although 42 pages of the Report of the Fact Finding Committee headed by Seshadri covered Karnataka’s history from 550 AD to 1799 AD,72 K Shivarudrappa pointed out that “As soon as you read the facts and figures, you will conclude that Mysore will be destroyed by the addition of regions beyond where Kannada speaking people reside.”73 These aspects of Mysore/Karnataka’s future were not just proportionately larger than appeals based on history, but shifted the ground away from linguistic states to developmental strategies and their outcomes. There was, in other words, a distinct shift away from the cultural basis for imagining the nation to the realm of the economy. Modern, rather than medieval or ancient Karnataka history, was therefore pertinent to discussions of the potentialities for development in different regions of Mysore: This Mysore state from its earlier times was a unique and careful administration and is growing from strength to strength. This region is richer than the surrounding areas, and in education and urbanity it has reached a high level. …If other types of adjoining areas are joined to this developing state the economic status will decline….74
Several others were also for the preservation of the advantages of a smaller constituent unit, the ideal size being a population of
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one crore (as opposed to the proposed Karnataka population of two crores). When the merger of seven taluks of the Bellary district was welcomed, despite the Rs 30,00,000 annual deficit that it involved, hopes were pinned on the Tungabhadra River Valley project and its promise of bringing self-sufficiency to the area.75 By 1954, it was clear that “Bellary had been an expensive addition”.76 As Devaraj Urs noted, “Without us saying we want these areas, without satyagrahas, without agitations, by themselves they [Bellary] have joined our Mysore Province”.77 This landfall, which should have been welcomed as the first step towards the achievement of the linguistic state, stoked the fears of the Mysore leaders. Even more ignominious was the recommendation of the SRC in 1955 to return some areas of Bellary to Andhra Pradesh on administrative grounds (as we have seen above).78 Yet even this shared indignation did not unite the Mysore political leadership. “I have never heard in history”, said R Chennigaramaiah “of a country that wants to expand being offered more territory and refusing to take it”.79 Even those supporting the idea of a united Karnataka were thus forced to make their arguments on new grounds that held out the promise of development. Aa Na Kru struck a pragmatic note, in contrast to his cultural arguments for unification, when he said, The gains and losses of a state are to be seen not only from the point of view of the present….But the raw materials of North Karnataka and North Canara , the convenience of ports at Bhatkal, Kumta and Malpe, and the commercial co-operation of north Karnataka are vital for Mysore. If all these advantages of Mysore and other parts of Karnataka are combined, there will be no state as rich as Mysore.80
Unlike the supporters of Aikya Keralam, who saw little prospect of progress in the smaller units of the state, Mysore’s vibrant self-sufficiency could be enhanced by unification. Mysore may be troubled but in the long run things will be fine.81 Partha Chatterjee has pointed out that “as early as the 1940s, planning had emerged as a crucial institutional modality by which the state would determine the material allocation of productive resources within the nation: a modality of political power constituted outside the immediate political process itself”.82 It is to this domain of political power that I believe the “prochangers” were pointing, effecting another change of heart from their earlier opposition to the idea of a linguistically unified state to a more pragmatic embrace of a multilingual developmentalist state. Thus Hanumanthaiah enhanced the attractions of going beyond the pragmatics of administration: in 1953 he emphasised that the Tungabhadra project was three times larger than the Kannambadi (Krishnarajasagar in Mysore) dam.83 In 1955, he dwelt on what the new territory would add to Mysore: a 200-mile coastline to landlocked Mysore, three valuable harbours of Bhatkal, Malpe and Karwar; new cities; crops; rivers and water falls of north Karnataka as potential hydroelectric dam sites. Nature thus became a productive resource, subordinated to the demands of development and quite different from the Karnataka evoked in the poetry of Kuvempu. Mysore state had long prided itself on its policy of state aid to industries (particularly at the time when private capital was shy).84 However, in the post-independence years, such regional patriotism reached its limits, since, as Bjorn Hettne has shown,
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many of Mysore’s state-run enterprises had become loss-making units, followed by a distinct “ruralisation” of the Mysore economy.85 Hanumanthaiah was therefore not merely echoing the etatisme of the old Mysore State, but signalling an important shift that sought an extended role for the power and resources of the centre. Three public sector giants (ITI, HMT and BEL) had been established in Bangalore by this time, to provide a way out of the state’s impasse.86 However, those who extolled the rich natural resources of the Bombay-Karnataka, Coorg and S Canara regions also provided their opponents with ready arguments for proposing a separate and equal Kannada-speaking state. As Mudalagiri Gowda asked, “Is the development of [Bombay and Hyderabad] regions contingent on them belonging to one linguistic province?”87 An argument based on the developmental prospects of the resource-rich region served to repress the more difficult question of expanded populations, and addressed even less the question of the people-nation in whose name the unification, or resistance to it, was being undertaken. It was, however, in the very lacks of the people of Mysore that some legislators found a compelling reason for unification, and for building up the resources for sustained development. Mohamed Imam drew attention to the Mysoreans’ reputation for laziness and lack of entrepreneurship, which left most of the industrial jobs within the state to Tamilians in KGF, Bhadravathi and Bangalore.88 Gopala Gowda went further in comparing Mysoreans with the people of Dakshina Kannada, who were “very hardworking” and filled the demand for work in the plantations and areca plantations of Malnadu and for agricul ture.89 They would infuse areas such as Malnadu with the breath of enterprise.90 At the end of the discussion on the SRC Report, hard-nosed cal culations of economic benefit won the day over concerns that were expressed about the communal designs of the Lingayats, or even the dark fears about conversion that were thrown up by some representatives such as Shivananjegowda.91
From State to Nation: Making Room for the Manina Maga (Son of the Soil) It was a sentimental A G Ramachandra Rao, minister for law, labour and education, who wrote a letter to the prime minister and president in October 1955: Linguism as admitted by the Commission is a devitalising force, in that it promotes conflicts in the body politic. …In the interests of Indi an unity, linguism must be liquidated before it is too late. …Mysore should be enabled to decide about the continuance of their state and its head. Democratic policies and practices should not be denied to Mysore – the nursery of democracy in India. For these minor adjust ments, Mysore, like minorities, prays for protection from your august hands to enable her to continue to pursue her progressive life.92
The minister’s anguish was in vain, and the end of Mysore as it had been for nearly 160 years was quickly turned into cause for official celebration, despite his desperate attempt to appeal for central “protection”. An emphatically new state of 73,560 square miles, containing 1.94 crore people had been formed out of dispa rate and reluctant entities: this was indeed an unprecedented moment, both in Karnataka’s history and in the brief history of the independent Indian nation state.93 novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
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In discussions on territory and its relationship to language and caste, the question of democracy was left unspecified. Further more, even the much touted economic benefits of unification were questioned by Devaraj Urs: …Linguistic province is not an issue that concerns most people and therefore there is not much interest in it. Only intelligent merchant class is enthusiastic about this [sic]…for the people of the country and the workers, if the linguistic province is not formed, their lives will not become worse. From this economic point of view, it is difficult to say that their lives will improve….94
He declared himself opposed to the idea of forming a linguistic state, though reorganisation on other principles could be acceptable. Devaraj Urs’ remark sparked no debate but took the discussion of language and caste in a direction that anticipated develop ments for decades to come. By introducing the question of class, and speaking of a figure that had largely been kept out of the discussion on unification, namely the worker-citizen, Urs ques tioned the ways in which the “citizen” of Karnataka had been normed. In less than 10 years time, the figure around whom the Kannada nation would crystallise was indeed the worker-citizen and his entitlements to livelihood within the finite boundaries of the Mysore/Karnataka state, and here the gendering of the sub ject/citizen as male was not accidental.95 In the wake of the mas sive expansion of the state sector, increasing focus was placed on the knowledge of Kannada as the qualification for jobs. If the debates before and on the SRC report engaged primarily with the dominance of Andhra Pradesh and its many claims on Mysore territory (Bangalore included!) post unification discourse defined the Kannadiga in ways that excluded minorities such as Tamils and Muslims. Throughout the discussions of 1953-55, some legislators, led by Hanumanthaiah, recalled the multilingual traditions of Mysore. Yet, despite Hanumanthaiah’s acknowledgement of the many “cusp cultures” of the state, Urdu was consistently ignored. H R Gaffar Khan pointed out this shocking silence by saying “Even as the chief minister of Mysore, he [Hanuman thaiah] forgot that there are eight lakhs of people in the state of Mysore who speak Hindusthani and for whom thousands of Hindusthani schools are being managed by the government”.96 In some ways, the identification of Kannada with Mysore/ Karnataka and simultaneously with Hindu97 was to have serious consequences in the decades to come. Devaraj Urs and Lakshmi Devi Ramanna were among the earliest to point to another significant gap in the discourse on unification, namely the castes that were “sandwiched” between the “big two” Vokkaliga and Lingayat castes.98 The SRC report itself hinted that the logic of representative democracy could render them subordi nate in the dominant caste equations. What promises did the prospect of unification hold to the large numbers of minority castes who could not be so easily territorialised? Demographi cally they constituted a good 50 lakh of the 73 lakh population of Mysore and represented 45 castes.99 There was, as G Dugappa pointed out, no room for territorialising the Harijan who was not confined to any one region of India.100 None of these critiques of the way in which the citizen-subject was being normed paid attention to the large and significant Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
opulation that had remained invisible in all these decades of p struggle and would remain thus until well into the 1980s. Only as a sign of the language itself, circulating as a feminised and captive icon of Kannada Bhuvaneswari or Kannada Thayi, did women enter into the discourse of language politics, whose supplicants and devotees were more or less entirely male.101 The hyper-masculinism that surrounded the language protection movements of the region flared into public view only when the son-of-the-soil movement got under way, though the silencing of women had been a persistent feature from the unification movement’s origins. On the whole, Hanumanthaiah’s effort at reorienting the discussion in the legislature deliberately focused on the potentials of the new areas for economic development and succeeded in tamping down the potential fire of resistance. Yet rather than planning and development under the aegis of the state being the driving force, the exploitation of the regions’ resources now occurs without and against the state which is no longer seen as enabling but a stifling institutional space.
Conclusions By insisting that name of the new state should remain Mysore, the Mysore Legislature retained a symbolic continuity with the older monarchical state, and softened the blow to those who per ceived the expanded state as a loss of identity.102 Hanumanthaiah declared that what was coming into being was not a linguistic state but a composite one, derived from Mysore’s unique history. The task of nation-building remained. Through the crucial years of the early 1950s, there were attempts to construct a Karnataka aesthetic and perhaps even define its unique elements within the well-known boundaries of the new Karnataka state. Litterateurs and writers such as R R Diwakar and Kuvempu had knocked on the studio-doors of Mysore’s premier modern artist, K Venkatappa, for help in defining a uniquely Karnataka aesthetic.103 Shivarama Karanth similarly undertook something of a pilgrimage around Karnataka to document and classify Karnataka’s artistic tradition104 and more importantly deployed folklore as a unifying cultural element. These were, however, no match to the mass mobilising aspects of cinema. As Madhava Prasad has argued in his analysis of the cinepolitics of southern India, in the aftermath of linguistic re organisation of states, cinematic icons in Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh began to supplement the political life of the people in a parallel state form. Indeed, “the national address that the cinema adopts as a marketing device gives body to the lin guistic nation more concretely than any other cultural form”.105 The influence exerted by the literary/cultural imagination of the Kannada language and people on the field of politics grew slighter with the expansion of the cinematic field. By the 1970s, though the Kannada nation was mobilised through the parallel state form of cinepolitics, one of the principal anchors of this mobili sation was the question of jobs and the economy, for which demography became an invaluable resource.106 The uses of history as a useful discourse for wresting, or more correctly pro tecting, privilege, had been dismissed by Abdul Gaffar during the debate on the SRC report: “I think in the present set-up… historic
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factors need not be given any consideration whatsoever. It is the facts that exist today that have got to be considered”.107 In 1973, Mysore was renamed Karnataka, thereby obliterating even the one small link with its long past. By this time, it was the beleagured minorities of Karnataka that took recourse to history as an explanation for their predicament. The movement away from topography of Mysore products and resources, from the Mysorean as a “patriotic producer” to a focus on the “social origins” of the producer soon occurred. Vociferous demands were made to restrict recruitment to the sons-of-thesoil, following, and followed by direct attacks on linguistic mi norities ignoring the historical processes that had drawn them to Mysore. Despite several warnings against the dangers of narrowly defining Karnataka as a state for Kannadigas, the concept of the “son-of-the-soil” became useful. Shivananjegowda’s statement in the Assembly, which painted the image of a deprived son-of-thesoil, became the war cry of Kannada nationalism in the years after unification.108 It is precisely against such “war cries” that Hanumanthaiah had warned when he preached the virtues of compromise: War cries have potency and force during times of war. We cannot use these cries and slogans in times of peace. They are unnecessary. In the same way, the war cries of Karnataka Matha ki Jai, etc, must now be laid to rest, and they must come to this state with that approach of a happy compromise.109
Although the reference here was to the plight of the Vokkaligas, in its post-ekikarana version, this feeling of inadequacy was useful in getting the state to protect the son-of-the-soil from the claims of other language speakers, rather than his dominant caste counterparts. H K Veeranna Gowdh’s dire predictions that a Notes 1 A good instance of the academic confusion about how to make sense of recent economic and political developments, (most of which are characterised as anti-democratic, intolerant and exploitative) and the variety of inherited practices and cultural traditions (most of which are characterised as instances of syncretism, tolerance and under standing) is in the recent issue that focuses on Karnataka: Vignettes of Karnataka, Seminar, 612, (August 2010). These are commendable efforts to accurately describe, without an explanatory framework, the contradictory tendencies that are exhibited in contemporary Karnataka. No clear effort is made to disentangle its specificities from the broader developments in the Indian economy and society. So while Siddalingaiah may describe the virtues of local religious practices, another author reports the continued moral authority of religious institutions in north Karnataka, along side the lament about economic exploitation of that area, implying, rather than demonstrating, a structural link. 2 See for instance Sugata Srinivasaraju, “A Golden Laden Ship: All Hands on the Deck” in Outlook, 25 October 2010. 3 Gopal Kadekodi, Ravi Kanbur and Vijayendra Rao, “Assessing the “Karnataka Model of Deve lopment” in Kadekodi, Kanbur and Rao (ed.), Development in Karnataka: Challenges of Governance, Equity and Empowerment (New Delhi: Academic Foundation 2008), pp 17-34. 4 E Raghavan and James Manor, Broadening and Deepening Democracy: Political Innovation in Karnataka, Routledge, 2009. 5 This is not to discount the specificities of Karnataka policies, as have been pointed out more generally
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unified Karnataka was doomed to a short life and would lead to a struggle for two Karnatakas have thus far proved wrong, after briefly flaring into view in 1969,110 though his demand that “people’s wishes” be given greater importance has been realised in unanticipated ways.111 One might ask by way of conclusion whether a new stage has been reached in contemporary Karnataka politics which goes beyond the moment when cinepolitics supplemented formal political power, while remaining tied to linguistic nationalism. The path of “economic development”, of which the likes of Hanumanthaiah and Urs dreamed, has been trodden, after the withdrawal of the state as the principal mobiliser of economic resources in ways that were unanticipated. In the current moment, the capture of political capital by those who have already secured the exploita tion of mineral resources in the quickest way using the shortest route possible has rendered the law an irrelevant feature of this new stage of capitalism. The intergenerational responsibility to which linguistic nationalism was tied, and which even its critics tried to anchor in an alternative vision of the “composite state” of Mysore/Karnataka in the 1950s has been forced out by the large and growing demand for quick exploitation of land and minerals, to which the law is a block rather than an aid. Does the simultaneous recourse of elected representatives to extra-constitutional, and extra-judicial institutions and practices in Karnataka, as in the large and growing absorption with a “return to the temple/matha” signal the drawing of a new political contract in post-Independence India, an ascendance of moral in the place of legal authority? This is the question that demands an urgent answer from observers and analysts of Mysore/Karnataka.
by James Manor, and others such as Balaji Parthasarathy, “Envisioning the Future in Bangalore”, Seminar, 612, August 2010, pp 39-43. 6 A variety of strategies is adopted to address this contradictory demand, as in a recent book on Karnataka’s development. See Gopal Kadekodi, Ravi Kanbur and Vijayendra Rao, “Assessing the “Karnataka Model of Development” in Kadekodi, Kanbur and Rao (ed.), Development in Karnataka: Challenges of Governance, Equity and Empowerment (New Delhi: Academic Foundation 2008). For instance, one author places Karnataka on a comparative plane with other states which are more criminalised, more corrupt with a less autonomous bureaucracy (pp 44-45), another emphasises the continued role of notions of “honour” and “respect” in contemporary politics (pp 87-104) while per sistent hierarchies and state failures are also attributed to older historical reasons, such as the political regions from which districts of (northern) Karnataka were drawn (p 19; note however, that this attribution does not reflect the argument in the actual article summarised: see Gita Sen, Aditi Iyer, and Asha George, “Systematic Hierarchies and Systemic Failures”, pp 351-76). Finally, per sisting anomalies are covered by such banal ob servations as “good ideas do not always translate into good politics” (p 32) and “Deepening demo cracy is a very slow process with lots of ups and downs…” in which even “social movements” are an impediment. For a more pessimistic reading of the role of the Mysore bureaucracy in fulfilling a role since nationalist politicians were “absent” see Vinod Vyasulu, “Celebrating Karnataka”, Seminar, 612, August 2010, pp 59-63, esp 62. I have outlined a fuller argument from a similar standpoint for the colonial period in Mysore, in “Reconceptualising the Modern, the Region, and
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Princely Rule” in Mysore Modern (forthcoming, University of Minnesota Press 2011). A more recent pessimistic reading of contem porary Karnataka as a state in “Decline” is in A R Vasavi “Beyond Corruption in Mining: A Derailed Democracy”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol XLVI, No 33, 13 August 2011, pp 14-17. Within this general portrait of “Decline” Vasavi points to the new concentration of secular/moral-spiritual power at what has curiously been identified as a “Math-temple-Resort” complex, which would need further research and elaboration. Those who just a few years ago touted the uniqueness of the Karnataka model may be hard pressed to ex plain the new and unprecedented role that politics is being made to play in enabling routes to capitalist accumulation of a primitive kind, and its entail ing lack of intergenerational responsibility or respect for legal norms. There is some recognition of these problems, and much intellectual anguish, expressed in the issue Vignettes of Karnataka, Seminar (August 2010), 612. We may justly ask, for instance, how the self-denigrating protests staged within and outside the Karnataka Assembly in mid-2010 can be fit with claims of enduring heritage of “Mana” “Maryada” and palegar conceptions of honour/respect. See Pamela Price, “Ideological Elements in Political Stability in Karnataka” in Kadekodi, Kanbur and Rao (ed.), D evelopment in Karnataka, pp 87-106. Vijaya Poonacha Thambanda, Conflicting Identities in Karnataka: Separate State and Anti-Separate State Movements in Coorg (Hampi: Prasaranga, Kannada University, 2004); Adhunika Kodagu (Hampi: Prasaranga, Kannada University 2000). A High Power Committee headed by D M Nanjun dappa for Redressal of Regional Imbalances (2002),
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recommended investments of up to Rs 31,000 crore and a series of other measures such as choosing at least 50% of the cabinet of ministers from the region. For instance, DVG to C Rajagopalachari, 29 March 1958, DVG Private Papers, Karnataka State Archives (KSA) Bangalore; also B K Puttaramaiah Mysore Legislative Council Debates (hereafter MLCD), Vol VII (1955), 771; M P L Sastry MLCD, Vol VII, (1955), 595. The literature is huge and growing: among some of the recent statements are V Narayana Rao, Kannadathana Mattu Bhaaratheeyathe (Belgavi: Kannada Jagruti Pustaka Male 2000); Bargur Ramachandrappa, Kannadaabhimana (Bangalore: Ankita Pustaka, 2002); Chidananda Murthy, “Kanna dada Samasyegalu” in Ra Nam Chandrasekhar (ed.), Kannada-Kannadiga-Karnataka Kannada Shakti (Bangalore: Kannada Shakthi Kendra, 1996). K V Narayana offers a different optic on the predicament of Kannada today, which draws attention to the homogenisation of Kannada that has already been violently achieved. Narayana “What Should We Address? Kannada Cause or the Kannada Hegemony?”, Journal of Karnataka Studies, Vol 2.1 (2 May and 5 April 2006), pp 257-64. H S Gopala Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, 315. See fn 18 and Alura Venkata Rao, Karnataka Gatha Vaibhava (Dharwad 1917). A newer version of the attempt to instil “Pride” though without making an overt plea for territorial claims is Chidanandamurthy, Bhasika Bruhat Karnataka (Bangalore: Sapna Book House 2005). Nair, ‘“Memories of Underdevelopment’: The Identities of Language in Contemporary Karnataka” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 21, No 42 (12 October 1996); see, however, Rahmat Tarikere, Karnatakada Sufigalu (Hampi: Prasaranga, Kannada University 1998). Halappa, History of the Freedom Movement in Karnataka, pp 419-26. S Chandrasekhar, “Mysuru Mattu Ekikruta Karna takada Rachane 1937-56”, Adhunika Karnatakada Aandolanagalu (Belegere, Tiptur 2002), pp 93-104. Robert King, Nehru and the Language Politics of India (Delhi: Oxford University Press 1997); Manor, Political Change, 84-85; “Karnataka: Caste, Class, Dominance and Politics in a Cohesive Society” in Sudipta Kaviraj (ed.), Politics in India: Oxford India Readings in Sociology and Social Anthropology (Delhi: OUP 1997); S Nijalingappa, My Life and Politics: An Autobiography (Delhi: Vision Books 2000), p 62 provides a brief and tell ing account of the late development of karnataka ekikarana: “This frive to unify Kannadigas had begun in 1915, when the first conference of Kannadigas was organised by the Karnataka Sahitya Parishad in Bangalore. Subsequently it held its meetings in different parts of the Kannadaspeaking areas from year to year. While this kept people thinking of a unified Karnataka State it had no political clout. It was only after Congress took up this unification work from 1945 that it began to influence the all-India Congress and its working committee.” States Reorganisation Commission Report (Govern ment of India 1955), 91. Among the earliest to suggest that all the linguistic movements were in fact masks for other agendas was Selig Harrison, India: The Most Dangerous Decades (Princeton: Princeton University Press 1960). President’s speech by D V Gundappa at the Karnataka Sangha Rajathotsava, Bangalore Central College, 16 January 1944. K V Subbanna, “The Kannada Cosmos Formed by Kavirajamarga” in N Manu Chakravarthy (ed.), Community and Culture: Selected Writings by K V Subbanna (Heggodu: Akshara Prakashana 2009), pp 220-21. Subbanna refers briefly to DVG’s de mand for even five Karnatakas.
22 Here it must be remembered that the term “Com munal” in administrative terminology referred to the two dominant caste groups of Mysore, Lingayats and Vokkaligas. 23 S Gopala Gowda, Mysore Legislative Assembly Debates, (hereafter ) Vol XIII, No 15 (1955), 873. 24 Deshpande, Contemporary India, 48-73. 25 For instance, A Thimmappa Gowda, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 20 (1955), 1295. 26 Partha Chatterjee, “Development Planning and the Indian State” in Chatterjee (ed.), State and Politics in India (Delhi: Oxford University Press 1997), pp 271-98. 27 Ibid, p 276. 28 Here I draw inspiration from J Devika’s discussion of the Aikya Keralam Movement in “The Idea of Being Malayali: The Aikyakeralam Movement of the Mid-20th Century” (mimeo). 29 States Reorganisation Commission Report (Govern ment of India 1955), 93 (hereafter SRC Report). 30 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, lists the 19 administrations under which Kannada speakers beyond Mysore were found. 31 Deshpande, Contemporary India, 158. 32 “The boundary of Karnataka”, it said with respect to the map that was included, “Marked by thin straight lines, may only be taken as approximately marking the limits of the Kannada-speaking people. It does not follow the Congress division. Suggestions for rendering it accurate will be thankfully received”, The Karnataka Handbook (Bangalore 1924?), note on the map, Preface. 33 Rao, Karnataka ekikarana itihasa, 67. Before the Congress session of 1946 at Birur, Mysore’s Con gressmen, such as T Channaiah, T Siddalingaiya, A G Bandi Gowda, K G Wodeyar, T Subrahmanyam and others raised the question of forming Karnataka with the Maharaja as the constitutional head. J Mohamed Imam, MLAD, Vol XII, No 11, March 1955, 646. 34 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, 146. “Proposed Union of Karnatak: Move to include Mysore”, The Times of India, 26 April 1948; “The Karnataka Unification Movement, as it was originally conceived, never took Mysore into account until two years ago when India attained Independence, and the first steps were taken to integrate the state with union territory”. “A Separate Province?: Some Undecided Issues”, The Times of India, 11 November 1949. 35 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, 155. The All Karnataka Unification Sangha in its response to the Linguistic Provinces Commission of 1948 said that every attempt would be made to unite the Union Karnataka and Mysore, but “if this is not possible, the formation of Karnataka Prov ince of Union Karnataka area ought not to be postponed under any circumstances”, Replies by AKUS p 22. 36 “Inclusion of Kannada Areas in Andhra Criticised”, The Times of India, 28 December 1949. 37 Mulka Govinda Reddy, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), p 2662-63. 38 Hanumanthaiah, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), pp 2499. 39 Note by O S D/SR: Ministry of Home Affairs: Appendix to Notes, File No 58/2/55-SR, 1955, Ministry of Home Affairs, GOI, SR Section, NAI. 40 Ibid. 41 Ibid. 42 “Visions of Greater Mysore Conjured Up: Cautions Approach to Bellary Merger”, Times of India, 11 June 1953. 43 File No 16/1/55-SR, 1955. Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, S R Section 44 Discussion of the Andhra State Bill, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37, 1953, pp 2499-500. 45 Discussion of the Andhra State Bill, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37, 1953, pp 2509-10.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
46 Discussion of the Andhra State Bill, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37, 1953, p 2549. A similar note was struck by Boranna Gowda and Rajashekhara Murthy, Discussion of the Andhra State Bill, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37, 1953, pp 2563, 2645. 47 Address of His Highness, the Rajpramukh, on Monday 11 January 1954, MLAD, Vol X, Part I, 1954. 48 G Thimmaiah, “Political Leadership and Economic Development in Karnataka” in Kadekodi et al (ed.), Development in Karnataka, p 71. 49 K S Gurusuddappa to Prime Minister, 5/9/1953, File No F 2(8) – PA/53, 1953, Ministry of States, Political A Section, Sl No 1-2, NAI. 50 M Rajashekara Murthy, MLAD, Vol IX, No 38, (1953), 2658. 51 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa. 52 J Devika, “The Idea of Being Malayali”. See also, Dilip Menon, “Being Brahman the Marxist Way: E M S Namboodiripad and the Pasts of Kerala” in Daud Ali (ed.), Invoking the Past: The Uses of History in South Asia (Delhi: Oxford University Press 1996). 53 K V Narayana Rao, The Emergence of Andhra Pradesh (Bombay: Popular Prakashan), 1973. 54 Menon, “Being Brahman the Marxist Way”, 82. 55 One might say that the territorialisation of caste in Tamil Nadu occurred well after the moment of independence, with alliances between sets of castes in northern and southern Tamil Nadu. 56 Hanumanthaiah was accompanied by J Mohamed Imam on the tour of the regions of north Karnataka, when according to Imam, he was moved by the predicament of people in those regions. 57 Others included T Singaravelu, a High Court Judge, V L D’Souza, V C of Mysore University, H R Guruve Reddy and lawyer O Veerabasappa. 58 Report of the Fact Finding Committee (States Reorganisation), (Bangalore 1954), 1. 59 B K Puttaramaiah, MLCD, Vol VII, No 18, (1955), 772. 60 T Mariappa, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 20 (1955), 1269. 61 SRC Report, 91 (emphasis added). The idea of the linguistic state being a panacea to the irritants of caste were echoed within the Assembly as well by R Ramaiah among others. See also, Karnataka Handbook, 130. 62 M P L Sastry, MLCD, Vol VII (1955), 595. 63 Rao, Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa, 72. 64 Alura proposed that festivals similar to Mahar ashtra’s Ganeshotsava be organised to honour Karnataka’s heroes: Kannada poets like Pampa and Kumara Vyasa, Vidyaranya, the intellectual guide of Vijayanagar kings; Basaveswara the 12th century reformer. 65 Hanumanthaiah, MLAD, Vol IX, No 38 (1953), 2716. 66 “People who speak Kannada, people who speak Telugu and people who speak Tamil…these three form what is called the constituents of the state of Mysore…the composite character of this portion of India has been there probably for several thou sands of years…. it [Mysore] was not only one set of people talking one language who constituted the unit.” Hanumanthaiah, MLCD, 1955, 583; MLAD, Vol XIII, No 13, (1955) 791. 67 Ibid. 68 Sastry, MLCD, Vol VII (1955), 594. 69 A G Ramachandra Rao, MLAD, Vol 13, No 14 (1955), 880. 70 Gopala Gowda, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), 2556. 71 K Hanumanthaiah, MLCD, Vol VII, No (1955), 585. 72 Shivananjegowda, MLAD, Vol XII, No 1 (1955), 606-07. 73 H K Shivarudrappa, MLAD, 7 (1955), p 570. 74 G A Thimmappa Gowda, MLAD, Vol IX, No 39 (1953), 2782. 75 Address of His Highness the Rajapramukh, MLAD, 10, Part 1 (1954), 2-3.
61
SPECIAL ARTICLE 76 Srinivasa Gowda, MLAD, Vol XII, No 1 (1955), 607. 77 Devaraj Urs, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), 2708. 78 File No 56/2/55-SR, 1955, Ministry of Home A ffairs, GOI, SR Section, NAI. 79 Chennigramaiah, MLAD, Vol XII, No 1 (1954), 668. 80 Aa Na Kru, Karnataka Ekikarana Kaipidi, Vol I, Dharwad, 1947, as cited in H S Rao Karnataka Ekikarana Itihasa (Bangalore: Navakarnataka, 2004 [1996]), 15. 81 B Madhavachar (Bhadravathi), MLAD, Vol XII, No 6 (1955), 577. 82 Chatterjee, State and Politics, 276. 83 Hanumanthaiah, MLAD (1953), 2499. 84 There has been a continuing interest in tracing the roots of Mysore’s absorption with capitalist modernity and its “development agenda”: most recently Chandan Gowda “Advance Mysore”: The Cultural Logic of a Developmental State”, EPW, Vol XLV, No 29 (17 July 2010). 85 Hettne, The Political Economy of Indirect Rule, 345. 86 Ibid: 346, Hanumanthaiah, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 13 (1955), 797. 87 T M Mudalagiri Gowda, MLAD, Vol XII, No 2 (1955), 88 Imam, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 14 (1955), 870. 89 Gopala Gowda, MLAD, Vol XIII, No 12 (1955), 622. 90 Ibid: p 23. Gowda complained that the people of Malnad had been referred to as “blanket wearing bears” but their development on new lines was possible with the available energies of unifica tion. “Simply saying ‘Mysore is ours’ will not fill our stomachs”, 624.
91 Shivananjegowda, MLAD, Vol XII, No 1 (1955), 606-07. 92 A G Ramachandra Rao Minister for Law Labour and Education, to President and Prime Minister, 25 October 1955, Box 22, Palace Papers, KSA. 93 I am not taking up here the very serious questions about the modalities of representative democracy that were thrown up during these debates. Hanu manthaiah firmly denied the need for a plebiscite, or a two-thirds majority vote, or a referendum, or even a postponement of the decision of unifica tion until the next elections. 94 Devaraj Urs, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), 2708. 95 On the norming of the citizen as male, see Susie Tharu and Tejaswini Niranjana (1996), “Problems for a Contemporary Theory of Gender” in Shahid Amin and Dipesh Chakrabarty (ed.), Subaltern Studies IX: Writings on South Asian History and Society (Delhi: Oxford University Press), 1996. 96 The speech by Velluri in Urdu was not even trans lated! H R Abdul Gaffar (teachers’ Constituency), MLCD, Vol VII, 839. 97 For a recent espousal of “Kannadathana” as a quality that has endured the rise and fall of dynasties, fluctuating economic fortunes, war and peace, see Narayana, Kannadathana mattu Bharatiyate, 15. Narayana says that the splinter ing of people into regions that spoke other lan guages occurred with the destruction of Vijayana gar, unity restored by ekikarana movement and lost once more thereafter. 43 98 Devaraj Urs, MLAD, Vol IX, No 37 (1953), 2708. 99 Lakshmi Devi Ramanna (Anekal-Hoskote), MLAD, Vol XIII (1955), 1259.
100 G Duggappa (Holalkere, Scheduled Caste), MLAD, Vol XIII (1955), 1049. 101 For Tamil, see Ramaswamy, Passions of the Tongue, esp 79-134. See also Tejaswini Niranajana, “Reworking Masculinities: Rajkumar and the Kannada Public Sphere”, Economic & Political Weekly, 35: (47) (2000). 102 K Hanumanthaiah to G V Pant, Minister for Home Affairs, 5 December 1955, Sl No 1, D O letter mo K K 1558 dated 5/18 December 1955 from the Chief Minister, Mysore State, Government of In dia, Ministry of Home Affairs, S R Section, NAI. 103 See Janaki Nair “K Venkatappa and the fashioning of a ‘Mysore Modern’ in Art’ in” Mysore Modern: Rethinking the Princely State (University of Minnesota Press 2011, forthcoming). 104 Karanth, Karnataka Painting. 105 Madhava Prasad, “Cinema as a Site of Nationalist Identity” in Journal of Karnataka Studies, 1, 1 November 2003-April 2004, pp 60-85, esp 80. 106 T M Joseph “Politics of Recruitment in Public Sector Undertakings: A Study of the Nativist Movement in Bangalore” (PhD Thesis, ISEC, Bangalore, 1994). 107 H R Abdul Gaffar, MLCD, Vol VII (1955), 838. 108 Shivananjegowda, MLAD, Vol XIII (1955), 981. 109 Extempore Speech delivered by Sri K Hanuman thaiah on the 30 November 1955, on the floor of the Legislative Council while moving an amend ment to the Official resolution of 17 November 1955. File No 16/2/55-SR 1955 Government of India, Ministry of Home Affairs, S R Section, NAI. 110 “Statehood for Old Mysore Area: Stir Threatened” TOI, 14 April 1969. 111 B K Veeranna Gowdh, MLAD, Vol XIII, 1109.
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novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Catastrophic Payments and Impoverishment due to Out-of-Pocket Health Spending Soumitra Ghosh
Out-of-pocket payments are the principal source of healthcare finance in most Asian countries, and India is no exception. This fact has important consequences for household living standards. In this paper the author explores significant changes in the 1990s and early 2000s that appear to have occurred as a result of out-of-pocket spending on healthcare in 16 Indian states. Using data from the National Sample Survey on consumption expenditure undertaken in 1993-94 and 2004-05, the author measures catastrophic payments and impoverishment due to out-of-pocket payments for healthcare. Considerable data on the magnitude, distribution and economic consequences of out-of-pocket payments in India are provided; when compared over the study period, these indicate that new policies have significantly increased both catastrophic expenditure and impoverishment.
The author is grateful to an anonymous referee for comments on an earlier version of this paper. Soumitra Ghosh (
[email protected]) is at the Centre for Health Policy, Planning and Management, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. Economic & Political Weekly EPW NOVEMBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
1 Introduction
O
ut-of-pocket (OOP) payments are the principal source of healthcare finance in most Asian countries and India is no exception. This fact has important consequences for household living standards. The macroeconomic adjustments of the 1990s prompted some major policy shifts in the health sector. While health sector reforms in India can be traced to as early as the 1980s, as the State began to reduce its role in the provision of healthcare services, it was only in the 1990s that reforms began in earnest. In India, health sector reforms have been piecemeal and incremental but have led to extensive changes in the organisation, structure and delivery of healthcare services and financing (Sen, Iyer and George 2002). One of the important policy shifts in the public health sector was the introduction of user fees during the Eighth Five-Year Plan (1992-97). Because health policy is administered at the state level in India, user fees were implemented at different times in different states. The majority of states introduced these fees in the midto late 1990s. Also, during the late 1990s to early 2000s, many states initiated World Bank-sponsored health system reforms that further increased user fees in government hospitals. Although user fees were waived for people living below the poverty line, the definition of poor was arbitrary, leading to limited relief for most poor people (Thakur and Ghosh 2009). The second policy change was mainly related to the decline of government spending on health. The Structural Adjustment Programme led to central and state governments reducing funding for the social sector. Public expenditure in the health sector was further squeezed at the state level in the 1990s (Mooij and Dev 2002), leading to a government failure to meet the public’s healthcare needs. As public health investment decreased and user fees in the public sector increased, the private sector moved in to exploit the market opportunity (Peters et al 2002; Bhat 1996). Another major development in the health sector occurred with the introduction of the new Drug Price Control Order (DPCO) in 1994. According to the DPCO (1995), only 74 out of 500 commonly used bulk drugs were to be kept under statutory price control. Pricing pharmaceutical sector was further liberalised in 2002. The impact of these drug policy changes could be seen in the spiralling increase in drug prices during the period 1994-2004 (National Commission on Macroeconomics and Health 2005). All these developments in the health sector are expected to push OOP health payments upward in both public and
63
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pr ivate facilities, and these increases, in turn, are likely to af fect healthcare utilisation and overall health. In the absence of adequate insurance coverage – and more than 90% of India’s population has no health insurance – expenditures to treat il lness can lead to financial catastrophe, pushing individuals or households into poverty or deepening their existing poverty (van Doorslaer et al 2006; Wagstaff and van Doorslaer 2003; Xu et al 2003). It is therefore important to assess how the increase in OOP health payments might affect household living standards in India, especially in the context of the ongoing health sector reforms. Empirical studies conducted in many countries on the effects of these policies point to severe negative consequences (Wagstaff and van Doorslaer 2003; O’Donnell et al 2007; Chaudhuri and Roy 2008; Garg and Karan 2009). Such findings have become a major concern for policymakers working on the financing of healthcare throughout the world (Commission on Macro economics and Health 2001; OECD and WHO 2003; World Bank 2004; WHO 2005, 2008). This paper, explores significant changes that appear to have occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s as a result of an increase in OOP spending on healthcare in India and its 16 major states. The data are from the National Sample Survey (NSS) on consumption expenditure of 1993-94 and 2004-05. The paper seeks to analyse (i) the changes in OOP spending during this period, (ii) health-financing contributions and composition in both periods, (iii) the magnitude and distribution of OOP payments relative to total household consumption expenditure across economic classes, (iv) the extent of catastrophic healthcare ex penditure due to OOP payments, and (v) the changes in the magnitude and depth of impoverishment because of OOP payments for healthcare. This paper is organised as follows: Section 2 describes the data and the methods used. Section 3 presents background infor mation on the financing contribution and composition of OOP payments. Section 4 deals with the changes in the magnitude and distribution of OOP payments relative to total household consumption expenditure across economic classes. Section 5 shows the changes in the incidence and intensity of catastrophic expenditure. Section 6 presents the changes in the level and depth of impoverishment due to OOP payments across states. And, finally, Section 7 presents a discussion of the data.
2 Methods
One of the approaches used to measure catastrophic payments for healthcare involves analysing the incidence of catastrophic payments – that is, the percentage of households that spend more on healthcare than the threshold, which can be measured by the headcount (Hcat). Hcat is the fraction of the sample whose expenditures as a proportion of total income exceed the threshold Zcat. Meanwhile, Oi is the “catastrophic overshoot”, which equals Ti /x i – Zcat if Ti /x i > Zcat and zero otherwise. The catastrophic overshoot captures the average degree by which payments (as a proportion of total expenditure) exceed the threshold Zcat. If we let Ei = 1 if Oi > 0 and Ei = 0 otherwise, then the headcount is given by expression (1): n H cat = (1 / N)∑ E i , = µ E , ...(1) i =1
where N is the sample size and µ E is the mean of Ei , while Hcat captures only the incidence of any catastrophes occurring and O captures the intensity of the occurrence as well. In order to determine whether poor households incur more catastrophic payments than rich households, the concentration index (CI) of Ei can be calculated. Positive values of the CI for Ei indicate a greater tendency for rich households to exceed the threshold, while negative values indicate a greater tendency for poor households to exceed the threshold. Measuring Impoverishment due to Healthcare Expenditure: In measuring impoverishment – that is, the extent to which households are made poor or poorer by making OOP payments for healthcare – two measures of poverty can be used: the poverty headcount and the poverty gap. While the poverty headcount measures the number of households living below the poverty line as a percentage of total households, the poverty gap captures the depth of poverty or the amount by which poor households fall short of reaching the poverty line. If we let x i be household i’s consumption per capita (which also refers to prepayment), Z pre pov the poverty line and x i the individual i’s prepayment income, then we can define Pipre = 1 i f x i < Zpre pov , and zero otherwise. The prepayment poverty headcount is then expressed as N pre H pre = µ Ppre , ...(2) pov = (1 / N)∑ Pi i =1
where N is the sample size. The average prepayment poverty gap is defined as N
Catastrophic Payments for Healthcare: The methodology applied by this study to measure catastrophic payments for healthcare has been discussed by Wagstaff and van Doorslaer (2003). An OOP payment for healthcare is considered catastrophic when the payment exceeds some threshold (Zcat), defined as a fraction of total household consumption or non-food consumption. If T represents OOP payments for healthcare, x represents total household expenditure and f(x) stands for food expenditure, then a household is said to have incurred catastrophic payments when T/x or T/[x-f(x)] exceeds a specified threshold, Zcat.
64
pre G pre = µ gpre , pov = (1 / N)∑ g i
...(3)
i =1
pre
pre
where N is the sample size and g i = x i − z pov . It is possible to define a normalised prepayment poverty gap, given by pre pre N G pre NG pov = G pov / Z pov ,
...(4)
which allows comparative analysis as it eliminates differences in currency or the choice of the poverty line. Post-payment is defined as xi after the subtraction of payments for healthcare. NOVEMBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Post-payments can be calculated following the same formula as for pre-payment. The effects of OOP payments on poverty, termed “poverty impact” (PI), are then defined as the difference between the relevant prepayment and post-payment measures, such as: pre PIPIHH = H post pov − H pov
...(5)
pre PIPIGG = G post pov − G pov
...(6)
N GN post G post pre NG PIPIPI == GN G G N G pre =N NGpov –−N NG pov pov − pov
...(7)
3 Data Cross-sectional data are taken from the 50th (1993-94) and 61st (2004-05) rounds of national and state representative surveys on “consumption expenditure”, collected by the National Sample Survey Office (NSSO 2006) in India. The surveys include res ponses from 1,15,254 and 1,24,644 households, respectively, comprising 5,64,537 and 6,09,736 individuals. By collecting detailed information on both OOP payments for healthcare and total household consumption expenditure, these surveys offer robust estimates of the magnitude of OOP payments relative to household budgets. The OOP payments for healthcare include expenditure for institutional and non-institutional care.1 All the variables related to expenditure are converted to a monthly figure. The survey periods for the 50th and 61st rounds were from July 1993 to June 1994 and from July 2004 to June 2005, respectively. The survey period of one year was divided into four sub-rounds of three months each, and an equal number of villages and households were allotted to each round. Since data were collected over a full year, the estimates of health expenditure were expected to be largely free from seasonal fluctuations. The analysis was done at the country and state level. However, smaller states – those with a population of less than 10 million – were not included.
4 Findings Out-of-pocket Financing Composition of Healthcare in India: I analyse the impact of OOP payments for healthcare across consumption expenditure quintiles in 16 states for the periods 1993-94 and 2004-05. The mean share of household OOP healthcare expenditure in relation to monthly household consumption expenditure rose from 4.39% in 1993-94 to 5.51% (Table 2, p 66). The percentage shares of total OOP payments on inpatient care, ambulatory care, medicines and other types of care are given in Table 1. Drugs and medicine, the most vital component of OOP expenditure, account for a substantial part of household payments. However, estimates reveal that spending on drugs dec lined from 81.6% of household expenditure in 1993-94 to 71.17% in 2004-05. While expenditure on ambulatory care remained stable, spending on inpatient care increased by a factor of 2.5. The distribution of OOP expenditure varies substantially among the states: drug spending is high (79%-85%) in less-developed states such as Orissa, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Assam, while economically prosperous states such as Maharashtra, Kerala, Gujarat, Karnataka and Punjab spend less (60%-67%) on Economic & Political Weekly EPW NOVEMBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
drugs. However, OOP spending on inpatient care is much higher in these richer states (15%-23% of total OOP expenditure) than in their poorer counterparts. Though average OOP payments on healthcare as a share of total consumption expenditure have registered a substantial increase for the majority of the states, significant differences in the mean OOP budget across states persist. There is a positive relationship between the share of OOP health payments and the level of economic development of states, as measured by the per capita state domestic product (SDP) (Figure 1). However, the gradient is not very steep, indicating that this relationship is rather weak. Table 1: The Composition of Out-of-Pocket Payments for Healthcare (1993-94 and 2004-05, in %) State
1993-94
2004-05
Inpatient Ambulatory Medicine Other Inpatient Ambulatory Medicine Other Care Care Care Care
Bihar
0.73
7.71
90.00
1.57
3.95
10.51
84.14
1.4
Orissa
0.81
4.86
93.13
1.20
5.53
5.58
85.2
3.7
Rajasthan
1.64
4.48
86.81
7.08
7.62
4.41
83.11 4.86
Uttar Pradesh
1.79
3.84
92.19
2.18
8.32
5.38
81.86 4.43
Himachal Pradesh 2.21
2.55
94.48
0.77
6.60
1.73
87.95 3.71
Punjab
2.27
5.29
91.44
1.00
17.91
7.68
67.46 6.94
Madhya Pradesh
2.84
7.74
85.92
3.51 12.21
13.92
71.27 2.59
Haryana
4.18
5.24
89.10
1.47 15.71
9.07
70.11 5.11
Assam
4.26
6.41
83.03
6.30
7.42
78.77 4.63
West Bengal
6.60
13.67
77.87
1.87 12.36
17.30
65.80 4.54
Karnataka
7.07
13.18
67.49 12.26 14.98
16.06
65.17 3.79
Andhra Pradesh
7.64
14.98
75.61
1.78 12.37
17.00
67.09 3.54
Maharashtra
7.83
18.54
71.00
2.62 17.66
15.37
60.82 6.15
Gujarat
8.33
13.05
75.57
3.05
18.2
12.94
64.16
Tamil Nadu
9.61
17.77
67.63
4.99 13.69
18.09
66.56 1.67
9.17
4.7
Kerala
11.05
5.48
77.45
6.03 23.08
9.89
62.68 4.34
India
5.06
11.39
81.60
1.95 12.94
11.58
71.17 4.31
Drugs and medicine are the same.
During the study period, the highest increase in OOP payments on healthcare as a share of total household consumption expenditure was observed in Kerala (4.7%), Himachal Pradesh (2.5%), Maharashtra (2%) and Gujarat (1.9%) (Table 2). Uttar Pradesh, one of the poorest states of India, has a very high OOP share compared with many high-income states, and this share increased during the period considered. This could be explained by the fact that government expenditure on healthcare declined at an annual rate of 1.54% from 1993-94 to 2002-03 (Economic Research Foundation 2006). Furthermore, the high healthcare utilisation of Figure 1: Average OOP Share (%) in Indian States Ranked by Per Capita SDP (Rs) (1993-94 and 2004-05) 11 10 10 99 88
2004-05
77 66
1993-94
55 44 33 22 11 00
0 0
2,000 2000
4,000 6,000 4000 6000 8,000 8000 10,000 10000 12,000 12000 14,000 14000 16,000 16000 18,000 18000 20,000 20000
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
private providers due to insufficient public healthcare infrastructure may have also contributed to the prevailing high OOP share in Uttar Pradesh (the proportion of population utilising healthcare services from the private sector is almost 90%).2 Since Bihar continues to be the poorest state in India, households have little choice but to divert their resources for other necessary food and non-food consumption. This could also be due to the poor availability of healthcare services, which has led to low healthcare utilisation (NSSO 2006). Karnataka’s decreasing OOP share is due to other factors. The annual growth rate of public expenditure on health in Karnataka (7.31%) sharply increased between 1993-94 and 2003-04, and per capita spending by the Government of Karnataka on healthcare is the second highest in the country (Economic Research Foundation 2006). In addition to this, the state is also ahead of others in protecting households from uncertain health risks by a better risk-pooling mechanism, with nearly 10.5% of households reporting having at least one member covered by health insurance in 2005-06 (International Institute for Population Sciences and ORC Macro 2007). There is significant variation in the OOP payments for healthcare within the country and its different states. During the period between 1993-94 and 2004-05, the distribution of OOP share in India became more skewed (Table 2). Except for West Bengal and Uttar Pradesh, the standard deviation of the share was at least twice the mean for all the other states. This feature is typical of healthcare expenditure distribution, indicating that many people spend little or nothing on healthcare, while a few sick individuals have high expenditures. The coefficient of variation is the greatest in Maharashtra, which also has a greater mean OOP share. On the other hand, West Bengal, with a high OOP share, had the lowest coefficient of variation, one that further declined from 1.94 in 1993-94 to 1.82 in 2004-05. The Concentration Index (CIs) of OOP payment for healthcare, which rank households according to their income on the x-axis and their healthcare expenditure on the y-axis, indicate the
progressivity of household healthcare payments. These indices show whether healthcare payments account for an increasing proportion of income as the latter rises. The CIs are positive for both periods, indicating that OOP payments on healthcare are disproportionately concentrated among the rich. The quintilespecific means of OOP payments also confirm this result. Notably, the trends of OOP health payments for healthcare as share of monthly household consumption expenditure increased during the reform period, particularly among the households belonging to richest, second richest and middle quintiles. It is interesting to note that although Kerala has the highest average OOP healthcare spending share (10.5% of total consumption), there is very little variation in this share across consumption expenditure quintiles. This might be explained by the fact that Kerala is India’s most literate state, a place where households across the socio-economic strata have been exposed to an extensive healthcare infrastructure. Consequently, they are more conscious about their healthcare needs and are willing to spend a larger proportion of their resources on healthcare than households in other states. Although Maharashtra, Himachal Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh show as high an average share of OOP payments for healthcare as Kerala, they also show a steep gradient. The most dramatic declines in the gradient for OOP payments on healthcare can be seen in Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal and Bihar, while a steep increase in the income gradient has occurred in Karnataka and Punjab. Catastrophic Payments: Catastrophic spending on health occurs when a household reduces its basic expenses over a certain period of time, sell assets, or accumulate debts in order to cope with the medical bills of one or more of its members. Since there are no universally accepted cut-off values or thresholds for defining the catastrophic nature of healthcare payments, the catastrophic headcount has been defined here as the percentage of households spending more than a 5-25% of their total consumption expenditure on
Table 2: Out-of-Pocket Payments for Healthcare as a Percentage of Household Consumption Expenditure (1993-94 and 2004-05)
India
Assam
2004-05 Mean
5.51
2.05
CV
2.37
2.35
Haryana
Kerala
6.30
5.60
10.36
2.38
2.22
2.19
0.121
0.047
0.023
Quintile means Poorest 4.00 1.66 2.50 4.61 3.30 4.61 5.81 2.22 3.92 4.47 3.12 2.82 5.42 3.52 3.61 3.76
11.57
CI
Bihar
Madhya Pradesh
Orissa
West Bengal
Uttar Karnataka Andhra Pradesh Pradesh
Gujarat
Tamil Nadu
Rajasthan Maharashtra Punjab
2.92
5.82
4.48
6.15
7.38
3.78
5.62
5.51
4.56
4.76
6.82
5.96
2.06
2.52
2.2
1.82
1.98
2.57
2.06
2.67
2.36
2.42
2.71
2.07
0.122 0.093 0.094 0.109
0.182
0.129
0.085
0.174
0.142
0.068
0.167
0.125
0.092
0.127
Himachal Pradesh
2nd poorest
5.01
1.86
2.65
5.60
5.55
5.41
6.73
3.56
5.61
4.55
4.16
3.92
6.48
4.67
4.91
4.92
Middle
5.92
2.02
3.12
6.31
6.21
6.38
7.64
4.18
6.66
6.29
5.55
5.24
6.94
4.94
6.68
5.70
9.30
2nd richest
6.69
2.29
3.38
6.90
5.51
7.91
8.82
5.41
7.51
6.43
5.65
5.23
6.77
7.20
7.66
6.51
11.59
Richest
7.09
2.79
5.70
7.95
6.26
8.12
8.69
5.00
6.79
5.77
6.89
6.38
8.81
7.11
7.33
5.92
10.47
1993-94 Mean
4.39
1.68
3.10
4.34
3.05
4.45
5.52
4.37
5.36
3.64
3.99
4.15
4.80
5.43
3.82
5.03
5.62
CV
1.97
1.82
1.92
1.82
1.87
1.94
1.68
1.82
1.78
2.03
2.12
2.31
2.33
1.32
1.99
1.80
1.90
0.106 0.096 0.141 0.166
0.164
0.170
0.101
0.055
0.097
0.044
0.139 0.091
0.0307
0.044
0.147
0.113
0.018
CI
8.87
Quintile means Poorest 3.25 1.31 2.14 2.81 1.97 2.66 4.19 3.63 3.91 3.37 2.72 3.35 4.19 4.83 2.40 3.58
5.00
2nd poorest
4.19
1.61
Middle
4.68
2nd richest
5.23
Richest
5.45
2.78
3.75
2.59
3.86
5.20
4.32
1.60
3.18
4.49
3.09
1.73
3.45
5.41
4.18
2.39
4.67
6.62
4.22
6.15
5.29
3.67
3.51
3.84
5.06
5.29
4.74
5.79
4.79
5.88
6.54
5.01
6.76
4.40
6.07
3.15
5.07
6.08
6.05
3.49
4.44
4.00
4.98
6.23
3.87
5.06
4.42
5.41
5.58
4.41
4.73
5.36
5.99
4.22
5.31
4.09
5.12
5.61
4.52
6.51
5.69
5.43
7.04
5.04
CV - Coefficient of variation and CI - Concentration index.
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NOVEMBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
SPECIAL ARTICLE Table 3: Percentage of Households Incurring Catastrophic Payments for Healthcare in India and Select States (1993-94 and 2004-05)
Threshold
India Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Assam Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Bihar Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Madhya Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Pradesh Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Orissa Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) West Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Bengal Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Uttar Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Pradesh Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Karnataka Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Andhra Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Pradesh Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Gujarat Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Tamil Nadu Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Rajasthan Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Maharashtra Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Punjab Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Himachal Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Pradesh Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Haryana Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg) Kerala Catastrophic headcount (Hc) Concentration index (CE) Overshoot (Hg) Concentration index (CEg)
5%
26.66% 0.1019 2.27% 0.1002 7.86% 0.1444 0.33% 0.1462 21.03% 0.1151 1.39% 0.1661 26.38% 0.1670 2.26% 0.1858 18.74% 0.1747 1.23% 0.2122 28.29% 0.1584 2.24% 0.1802 31.76% 0.0746 3.01% 0.1097 26.60% 0.0535 2.15% 0.0341 25.26% 0.1116 2.04% 0.0722 21.42% 0.0741 1.63% 0.1188 24.11% 0.1618 2.11% 0.1065 24.33% 0.0949 2.28% 0.0829 30.42% 0.0640 2.60% -0.0325 35.04% 0.0399 2.44% 0.0568 21.74% 0.1913 1.88% 0.1611 28.95% 0.0837 2.85% 0.1422 34.21% 0.0228 3.00% -0.0056
OOP Payments as Share of Total Household Consumption Expenditure 1993-94 2004-05 10% (95% CI) 15% 25% 5% 10% (95% CI)
12.97% (12.77-13.17) 0.1024 1.34% 0.1025 1.96% (1.53-2.39) 0.2035 0.13% 0.1919 8.96% (8.37-9.54) 0.1535 0.71% 0.2148 12.98% (12.27-13.69) 0.1642 1.32% 0.2039 7.68% (6.89-8.47) 0.2099 0.64% 0.2382 14.25% (13.48-15.03) 0.1552 1.22% 0.1989 16.57% (15.89-17.26) 0.0911 1.86% 0.1275 11.82% (10.93-12.70) 0.0622 1.26% 0.0238 11.88% (10.82-12.93) 0.0980 1.18% 0.0504 9.97%(8.76-11.17) 0.0710 0.88% 0.1574 11.59%(10.89-12.30) 0.1391 1.28% 0.0789 11.86% (10.96-12.77) 0.1462 1.43% 0.0683 15.29%(14.59-16.0) 0.0056 1.52% -0.0741 15.12%(14.01-16.23) 0.0477 1.29% 0.0722 10.21%(8.96-11.46) 0.1693 1.12% 0.1559 16.55%(14.80-18.30) 0.0777 1.77% 0.1748 17.40%(16.27-18.52) 0.0116 1.77% -0.0192
Economic & Political Weekly EPW NOVEMBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
7.45% 0.1047 0.85% 0.1084 0.77% 0.1667 0.06% 0.2214 4.81% 0.1987 0.39% 0.2644 7.40% 0.1822 0.83% 0.2238 3.67% 0.26343 0.36% 0.2574 7.48% 0.1508 0.70% 0.2398 10.09% 0.0883 1.22% 0.1488 6.79% 0.0449 0.81% 0.0116 6.50% 0.0743 0.76% 0.0386 5.35% 0.1007 0.52% 0.2194 6.74% 0.1424 0.86% 0.0573 6.93% 0.1680 0.98% 0.0323 8.74% -0.0183 0.94% -0.1098 7.39% 0.0700 0.76% 0.0848 6.30% 0.1861 0.73% 0.1401 10.08% 0.1090 1.12% 0.2260 9.72% -0.0183 1.13% -0.0201
2.77% 0.1471 0.39% 0.1195 0.21% 0.4944 0.03% 0.2006 1.27% 0.2894 0.14% 0.3910 2.93% 0.2073 0.37% 0.2908 1.16% 0.2306 0.14% 0.3004 2.34% 0.2426 0.28% 0.3292 4.09% 0.1478 0.56% 0.2125 2.60% 0.0439 0.38% -0.0037 2.77% 0.0991 0.35% 0.0769 2.24% 0.2273 0.18% 0.3634 2.93% 0.1436 0.44% 0.0094 3.18% 0.1375 0.52% -0.0849 2.85% -0.0773 0.44% -0.1625 2.90% 0.0801 0.30% 0.1237 2.64% 0.2701 0.34% 0.0816 3.60% 0.2898 0.48% 0.3363 2.97% 0.0576 0.59% -0.0394
29.98% 0.1095 3.19% 0.1327 9.25% 0.0723 0.63% 0.1075 17.56% 0.0784 1.08% 0.1423 30.57% 0.0898 3.58% 0.1179 24.02% 0.1915 2.40% 0.199043 34.99% 0.1170 3.50% 0.1574 39.66% 0.0755 4.42% 0.0932 22.81% 0.1411 1.84% 0.2154 32.23% 0.1222 3.39% 0.1555 30.88% 0.0655 3.27% 0.0553 26.08% 0.1769 2.59% 0.1609 25.05% 0.1251 2.77% 0.1258 34.98% 0.0851 4.33% 0.0813 37.79% 0.0423 3.06% 0.1959 33.14% 0.1689 3.86% 0.1251 34.07% 0.0627 3.30% 0.0184 52.55% 0.0360 7.05% 0.0098
15.37% (15.17-15.57) 0.1186 2.12% 0.1414 3.21% (2.98-3.45) 0.1360 0.34% 0.1034 5.76% (5.16-6.36) 0.0912 0.57% 0.1836 16.30% (15.35-17.24) 0.1042 2.46% 0.1236 12.21% (11.30-13.11) 0.2122 1.56% 0.1937 17.80% (16.74-18.86) 0.1240 2.25% 0.1770 20.24% (19.50-20.99) 0.0919 2.99% 0.0995 9.87% (8.78-10.96) 0.1485 1.10% 0.2600 17.17% (16.37-17.98) 0.1551 2.22% 0.1645 16.76%(15.64-17.88) 0.0114 2.14% 0.0589 12.86%(12.24-14.31) 0.1983 1.67% 0.1490 13.20% (12.30-14.15) 0.1045 1.86% 0.1298 19.46%(18.69-20.24) 0.0608 3.03% 0.0848 17.25%(15.75-18.75) 0.1238 1.96% 0.2593 18.48% (16.97-19.98) 0.1349 2.60% 0.1222 19.27%(17.60-20.94) 0.0113 2.28% 0.0033 32.42%(31.16-33.69) 0.0156 4.97% 0.0029
15%
25%
9.24% 4.15% 0.1408 0.1689 1.52% 0.90% 0.1467 0.1424 1.63% 0.59% 0.1593 0.0614 0.23% 0.13% 0.0791 0.0144 2.88% 1.05% 0.1690 0.2856 0.37% 0.19% 0.2161 0.2115 10.44% 4.85% 0.1259 0.1964 1.80% 1.07% 0.1272 0.1039 7.36% 3.08% 0.1689 0.2285 1.08% 0.61% 0.19223 0.1942 10.72% 4.85% 0.1802 0.2213 1.55% 0.84% 0.19056 0.1822 12.41% 5.88% 0.1062 0.1394 2.20% 1.34% 0.0988 0.0854 5.15% 2.26% 0.21859 0.3775 0.76% 0.42% 0.2934 0.2966 10.36% 4.69% 0.1781 0.2097 1.55% 0.83% 0.1658 0.1437 9.47% 4.06% 0.0456 0.0597 1.52% 0.89% 0.0647 0.0744 7.45% 3.15% 0.2046 0.1646 1.18% 0.70% 0.1303 0.0956 8.37% 3.68% 0.0944 0.1568 1.32% 0.77% 0.14437 0.1605 11.92% 5.31% 0.1028 0.0809 2.26% 1.47% 0.0892 0.0922 10.05% 3.86% 0.1424 0.2947 1.38% 0.81% 0.31704 0.4002 11.62% 5.03% 0.1752 0.1988 1.86% 1.06% 0.1099 0.0384 12.30% 5.48% -0.0193 -0.0496 1.70% 1.05% 0.0013 0.0226 20.45% 8.95% 0.0150 -0.0151 3.68% 2.28% 0.0003 -0.0084
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healthcare. However, it is evident from Figure 3: Mean Catastrophic Overshoot (OOP > 10%) in India and Selected States (1993-94 to 2004-05) other empirical studies that 10% of total 5 expenditure is widely accepted as the 4 standard, as this represents an approximate threshold at which the household is 3 forced to cut down on subsistence needs, sell productive assets, incur debts or be 2 1993-94 impoverished (van Doorslaer et al 2006). The impact of the increase in the share 1 2004-05 of OOP expenditure can be seen in the incidence of catastrophic expenditure 0 Ass Bih Kar Ori TN Raj Pun India Guj AP WB Har MP HP UP Mah Ker (Table 3, p 67). It is important to note that the catastrophic character of OOP payments increased between consumption expenditure, the proportion of rich households the two time points at the 5%, 10%, 15% and 25% thresholds. The with catastrophic expenditure still increases for both years. Howcatastrophic healthcare expenditure incidence (OOP> 10%) ever, it is important to note that rich households are more likely increased from 13.1% in 1993-94 to about 15.4% in 2004-05. The than poor ones to spend their savings on healthcare and thus are catastrophic headcount was more than 4% even at the highest less likely to experience real impoverishing impact of such exdefined threshold level (OOP> 25%) in 2004-05, and the per penditure (Berman et al 2010). centage of households falling into the “catastrophic” bracket The intensity of catastrophic payments is measured by the increased substantially, from a low level of 2.77% in 1993-94. amount by which OOP payments exceed the defined threshold The proportion of households facing catastrophic OOP health (for example, 10% of total expenditure); this margin is referred payments varied widely among states, from 3.46% in Assam to to as the “catastrophic overshoot” (Wagstaff and van Doorslaer 32.42% in Kerala (Table 3) in 2004-05. A similar pattern in cata- 2003). Since wealthier households spend a larger fraction of their strophic health payments was also observed in 1993-94, when income on healthcare than poor ones do, they are more likely to catastrophic headcounts were prevalent mostly in high- and overshoot the threshold by a larger amount. This holds true middle-income states (except Uttar Pradesh) at lower threshold irrespective of the threshold, though for each threshold there levels. However, at the highest threshold level (25% of total con- was a greater concentration of overshooting among the better off sumption expenditure), many poorer states such as Madhya in 2004-05 than in 1993-94 (Table 3). Defining the catastrophic Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan had higher levels of catas payment as 10% of total consumption expenditure, Kerala has trophic headcount than some of the high-income states such as the highest mean overshoot (Figure 3). Also, the mean overshoot Punjab, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu. The pattern has pattern across states (presented in Figure 3) is akin to the pattern not changed much even after a decade or so. In 2004-05, with the depicted by the catastrophic headcount. However, a significant exception of two poor states, Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, amount of variation exists across states in the distribution of catastrophic headcount at every threshold level continued to be catastrophic healthcare payments across income classes. concentrated among the relatively developed states (Figure 2). However, two higher-middle-income states, Tamil Nadu and The Impoverishing Impact of Healthcare Spending: The impact of OOP payments on various measures of poverty over Figure 2: Percentage Change in Catastrophic Expenditure (OOP > 10%) in India and Selected States (1993-94 to 2004-05) the period in question is examined here. Table 4 (p 69) presents 20 the poverty headcount ratio, both gross and net, of OOP payments on healthcare for India in 1993-94 and 2004-05. The 15 pre-OOP poverty headcount ratio in India was 36% in 1993-94 and 27.6% in 2004-05. 10 OOP payments increased the poverty ratio by 4 percentage points in 1993-94 and 4.4 percentage points in 2004-05. In other 5 words, 35 million people in 1993-94 and 47 million people in 0 2004-05 were pushed into poverty by the need to pay for health TN Raj Ass Pun India Har MP WB UP Mah Ori AP Guj HP Ker care services. The poverty gap comparisons across years are most -5 Bih Kar meaningful when normalised poverty gaps are used: i e, when Karnataka, have a substantially lower catastrophic headcount poverty gaps are divided by the poverty line (Wagstaff and van Doorslaer 2003). The increase in the normalised gap because of than other states at every threshold level. CIs, which reflect how the proportion of households exceeding OOP payments was 1.4 percentage points in 1993-94 and 1.8 the threshold vary across the income distribution, are presented percentage points in 2004-05. in Table 3. At each threshold, the incidence of catastrophic health payments was concentrated among the rich households in both 5 Discussion 1993-94 and 2004-05 and increased between the two time points OOP payments are the principal means of financing healthcare in studied. Even if the threshold is raised from 5% to 25% of total most low-income countries, and India follows this pattern.
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NOVEMBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
SPECIAL ARTICLE
This article has presented data which suggests that new policies have had a major impact in increasing the incidence of catastrophic expenditure and impoverishment. However, there could be alternate explanations. The analysis shows that the OOP payments for medical care increased between 1993-94 and 2004-05. On average, households spent 5.5% of total consumption expenditure on healthcare in 2004-05 compared to 4.4% in 1993-94.
were relatively better in this state. On the other hand, in Uttar Pradesh, the OOP payment share is the second highest in the country despite very low public health spending. Drugs accounted for 61-88% of the total OOP payments across states, which is several times higher than in established market economies and which clearly points to the overuse of drugs in India. One reason for the high reported expenditure on drugs could be the difficulty of obtaining an accurate picture of the Table 4: OOP Payments for Healthcare: Poverty Headcounts and Poverty Gaps, India (1993-94 and 2004-05) breakdown between outpatient care and drugs for institutional Poverty Measures 1993-94 2004-05 care. For example, rural practitioners and informal healthcare Poverty headcounts* (in %) providers tend to give drugs as part of their service and charge Prepayment headcount (pre-Hp) 36.0 27.6 a single amount. Also, since the poor have very limited access Post-payment headcount (post-Hp) 40.0 32.0 to professional healthcare services, they often opt for self- Poverty impact – headcount (post-Hp - pre-Hp) 4.0 4.4 medication and end up spending a large amount on medicines. It Poverty gaps (in Rs) Prepayment gap (pre-G) 18.77 23.4 is argued that the incentives provided by the pharmaceutical Post-payment gap (post-G) 21.87 30.6 companies in India to the physicians have also contributed to the Poverty impact – gap (post-G - pre-G) 3.1 7.2 irrational use of medicines. Hospitalisations accounted for only Normalised poverty gaps (in %) 13% of OOP expenditure at the all-India level in 2004-05. The dis Prepayment normalised gap (pre-NG) 8.4 5.8 tribution of OOP payments on inpatient care, ambulatory care, Post-payment normalised gap (post-NG) 9.8 7.6 medicines and other types of care varied considerably across Normalised poverty impact (post-NG -pre-NG) 1.4 1.8 Hp - Poverty headcount, G - Poverty gap, NG -Normalised poverty gap. states. While the households in lower-income states spent a This may be attributed to medical inflation that has been pre- higher fraction of OOP payments on medicine, their counterparts sumably higher than the overall price level for goods and services in higher-income states spent a higher fraction on inpatient care. in the economy during the period. An increase in healthcare use One possible explanation could be that the states with low SDP from private sector can also partly explain the rise in OOP health- (and possibly low per capita government spending on healthcare) care expenditure. would have less medicines in the pharmacies compared to betterThe empirical evidence described here shows that the trends off states forcing the patients to purchase medicines from the of OOP health payments for healthcare as share of monthly house- market and hence incurring higher OOP payments on medicine. hold consumption expenditure increased in greater proportion The analysis indicates that catastrophic healthcare expenditure during the period among the households belonging to richest, incidence (OOP > 10%) increased to about 15.4% in 2004-05 from second richest and middle quintiles than poorer quintiles. These 13.1% in 1993-94. Meanwhile, 4% of households fell into the “cataresults indicate the rising trend of over medicalisation among the strophic bracket” in 2004-05 (by spending more than 25% of their richer quintiles. total consumption expenditure) – a substantial increase from a low There are considerable inter-state differences in the mean OOP level of 2.8% in 1993-94. There are important differences in the inbudget. The results suggest a positive relationship between the cidence of catastrophic health payments across states. Catastrophic share of OOP health payments and the level of economic develop- health expenditures most often stayed at a low threshold (comprisment of states measured by the per caping a smaller share of total household exita SDP. One possible reason could be the Table 5: People Impoverished due to OOP Payments penditure) in economically better-per(1993-94 and 2004-05) fact that in high income states, the prev- States/India forming states. However, at the highest 1993-94 2004-05 alence of non-communicable diseases is threshold level – i e, 25% of total expendi% Number % Number higher which could account for the Assam ture – many of the poorest states such as 1.88 4,38,263 1.70 4,73,926 higher OOP expenditure on healthcare. Andhra Pradesh Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Ra4.07 27,96,568 2.76 18,32,173 4.29 20,02,380 3.86 21,20,144 Apart from income and the availability Karnataka jasthan had higher levels of catastrophic 3.50 31,14,549 2.71 23,86,664 of health services, the mechanism of Bihar headcount. The incidence of catastrophic 3.71 7,82,497 3.45 8,75,748 healthcare financing seemed to play an Punjab expenditure increased substantially in 3.67 21,07,512 3.33 21,34,396 important role towards deciding state dif- Tamil Nadu Kerala (15%), Himachal Pradesh (8.3%), Himachal Pradesh 2.66 1,45,811 4.54 2,86,428 ferences in OOP spending on healthcare. Gujarat (6.8%) and Andhra Pradesh Haryana 3.72 6,42,442 4.36 9,78,820 Where public healthcare investment and (5.3%), where the OOP payments share Orissa 3.60 11,78,778 4.32 16,45,272 insurance coverage were higher, the OOP Rajasthan also increased between the two time 3.68 17,00,518 4.71 28,25,246 payment share was lower (Karnataka). Gujarat points. Surprisingly, in Gujarat, the CI 3.33 14,30,416 4.99 26,59,171 However, this does not explain the full Maharashtra value decreased from 0.07 to 0.01 for cat3.95 32,43,734 4.96 50,71,038 amplitude of OOP payment share differ- West Bengal astrophic expenditure, indicating that 4.70 33,18,942 5.01 41,91,346 ences by state. For instance, the OOP Madhya Pradesh the poorest households were making 4.79 32,48,927 5.47 35,01,128 4.33 12,91,691 6.15 20,11,480 payment share reported in Maharashtra Kerala more catastrophic health payments. Im5.33 77,90,750 6.64 1,17,11,234 was much higher even though public Uttar Pradesh portantly, Gujarat is one of those states 4.0 3,52,17,191 4.40 4,73,76,688 investment and insurance coverage India where community health insurance (CHI) Economic & Political Weekly EPW NOVEMBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
has gone far towards containing the impact of healthcare costs on poor insured households (Ranson and Akash 2003). This suggests the need for providing protection to the remaining uncovered population against the financial risk of illness. The distribution of catastrophic payments also differs across states. Barring a few states, catastrophic expenditure is more evenly distributed in economically better-performing states than in their disadvantaged counterparts. In most of the poorest states, it is the richer households that can afford to spend a larger fraction of their resources on healthcare, while the poorer ones are not in a position to divert their resources from other needs. However, contrary to the hypothesis that an increase in OOP payments leads to a reduction (or regression) in the progressivity of the financial burden of healthcare, the results suggest that at every threshold, the incidence of catastrophic health payments became more concentrated among rich households over the period 1993-94 to 2004-05 – both across India and in most of the selected states. This has to do with the limitations of the method ological approach adopted in this study. The main problem with its focus on catastrophic payments and impoverishment is that it misses a huge number of households that do not have the financial capacity to utilise healthcare services and therefore could not be quantified (Pradhan and Presscott 2002). Notes 1 Expenditure on institutional care includes (i) pur chase of drugs and medicines; (ii) payments for diagnostic tests; (iii) medical fees; (iv) payments made to hospitals and nursing homes for medical treatment; and (v) others. The expenditure for non-institutional care are the same for the first three items. The other types of expenditure recorded under this are (i) family planning appliances including intrauterine devices (IUDs), oral pills, condoms, etc, and (ii) others. 2 Author’s own calculation from the 60th round of the NSSO data collected in 2004 on healthcare utilisation.
References Berman, P, R Ahuja and L Bhandari (2010): “The Impoverishing Effects of Healthcare Payments in India: New Methodology and Findings”, Economic & Political Weekly, 45(16): 65-71. Bhat, R (1996): “Regulation of the Private Health Sector in India”, International Journal of Health Planning and Management, 11: 253-74. Chaudhuri, A and K Roy (2008): “Changes in Out-ofPocket Payments for Healthcare in Vietnam and Its Impact on Equity in Payments, 1992-2002”, Health Policy, 88(1): 38-48. Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (2001): Macroeconomics and Health: Investing in Health for Economic Development (Geneva: World Health Organisation). Economic Research Foundation (2006): Government Health Expenditure in India: A Benchmark Study, New Delhi. Garg, C and a Karan (2009): “Reducing Out-of-Pocket Expenditures to Reduce Poverty: A Disaggregated Analysis at Rural-Urban and State Level in India”, Health Policy and Planning, 24(2): 116-28. International Institute for Population Sciences (IIPS) and ORC Macro (2007): National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), 2005-06, India: Volume I, Mumbai, IIPS. Mooij, J and M Dev (2002): “Social Sector Priorities: An Analysis of Budgets and Expenditures in India in the 1990s”, Development Policy Review, 22 (1): 97-120.
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It is noted that despite the greater concentration of catas trophic payments among better-off households in the majority of the states, OOP payments aggravated the prevalence and intensity of poverty in India over the period 1993-94 to 2004-05 (Table 5, p 69). The results of this paper imply that lower- and middleincome households bear the brunt of the ongoing healthcare reforms. The evidence points towards higher incidences of impoverishment among these populations. Therefore, a rather broad-based risk pooling and prepayment measure (balancing between sick and healthy) would seem to be a better financing strategy as it would limit OOP spending, increase financial protection, reduce the risk of impoverishment and ensure the utilisation of healthcare serv ices by the poorest of the poor. Social health protection mechanisms may be more suitable for a country like India with a dominant informal sector. Alternatively, high OOP payments for healthcare and their consequent effects on household living standards can be prevented by subsidising drugs for low-income households (from lower-middle-class households to those living below the poverty line) and by increasing the contribution of both public and private-sector spending on healthcare, which would in turn reduce the household burden.
National Commission on Macroeconomics and Health (2005): Financing and Delivery of Healthcare Services in India, Government of India, New Delhi. National Sample Survey Office (2006): Morbidity, Healthcare and the Condition of the Aged (NSSO 60th Round, January-June 2006) (New Delhi: NSSO, Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation), Government of India. O’Donnell, O, E van Doorslaer et al (2007): “The Incidence of Public Spending on Healthcare: Comparative Evidence from Asia”, The World Bank Economic Review, 21(1): 93-123. OECD and WHO (2003): DAC Guidelines and Reference Series – Poverty and Health (Paris: Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development and World Health Organisation). Peters, D H, A S Yazbeck, R Sharma, G N V Ramana, L Pritchett and A Wagstaff (2002): Better Health Systems for India’s Poor: Findings, Analysis, and Options (Washington DC: The World Bank). Pradhan, M and N Prescott (2002): “Social Risk Management Options for Medical Care in Indonesia”, Health Economics, 11(5): 431-46. Ranson K and A Akash (2003): “Community-based Health Insurance: The Answer to India’s Risk Sharing Problems?”, Health Action, March: 12-14. Sen, G, A Iyer and A George (2002): “Structural Reforms and Health Equity: A Comparison of NSS
Surveys, 1986-87 and 1995-96”, Economic & Political Weekly, 37(14): 1342-52. Thakur, H and S Ghosh (2009): “User-fees in India’s Health Sector: Can the Poor Hope for any Respite?”, Artha Vijnana, 51(2): 139-58. van Doorslaer, E, O O’Donnell, R P Rannan-Eliya, A Somanathan et al (2006): “Effect of Payments for Healthcare on Poverty Estimates in 11 Countries in Asia: An Analysis of Household Survey Data”, Lancet, 368 (9544): 1357-64. Wagstaff, A and E van Doorslaer (2003): “Catastrophe and Impoverishment in Paying for Healthcare: With Applications to Vietnam 1993-98”, Health Economics, 12: 921-34. World Bank (2001): The World Development Report: Attacking Poverty (Washington DC: World Bank). – (2004): The Millennium Development Goals for Health: Rising to the Challenges (Washington DC: World Bank). WHO (2005): “Sustainable Health Financing, Universal Coverage and Social Health Insurance”, 115th World Health Assembly Resolution EB115.R13, World Health Organisation, Geneva. – (2008): World Health Report, Geneva. Xu, K, D Evans, K Kawabata, R Zeramdini and C Murray (2003): “Household Catastrophic Health Expenditure: A Multicountry Analysis”, The Lancet, 362: 111-17.
For the Attention of Subscribers and Subscription Agencies Outside India It has come to our notice that a large number of subscriptions to the EPW from outside the
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DISCUSSION
For a Left Resurgence Dipankar Bhattacharya
One needs to go beyond Prabhat Patnaik’s analysis (“The Left in Decline”, EPW, 16 July 2011) to understand the Communist Party of India (Marxist)’s ignominious exit from power in West Bengal in 2011. What are the reasons for the Party’s loss of credibility and legitimacy vis-à-vis the basic classes? What led it to abandon the Left’s core agenda of democracy, land and rural welfare? What about the Party’s self-proclaimed anti-imperialist credentials? Was not its parliamentary practice bereft of the spirit and vision of transcending capitalism?
Dipankar Bhattacharya (
[email protected]) is general secretary of the CPI(Marxist-Leninist) (Liberation).
T
he drubbing received by the Communist Party of India (Marxist) [CPI(M)] and the Left Front in the elections to the West Bengal state assembly held earlier this year has triggered widespread speculation about the future of the Left in India. Quite predictably, one can hear a loud celebratory noise in the dominant “mainstream” media which treats the CPI(M)’s Bengal debacle as the beginning of the end of the Left in India. This shrill cry is remarkably reminiscent of the “end of history” triumphalism in the American media in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union. But after a decade of war and quite a few years of stubborn recession, the discourse in the United States itself has now shifted to the whisper of a possible advent of an American Autumn. No doubt, the “end-of-the-Left” ideological campaign in India will also find itself equally out of sync with the developing climate of popular unrest against corruption and corporate loot. Even as we reject the roars of bourgeois triumphalism, and the ruling class wisdom that advises Indian communists to reinvent themselves as social-democrats wedded to the idea of making capitalism more humane while abandoning the idea of transcending capitalism, we must however also acknowledge the genuine concerns in Left and democratic circles about the future of the Left and the need for a necessary realignment of Left forces for a rejuvenation of the Left movement. In this context, a welcome debate seems to be shaping up in the pages of the EPW, beginning with Sumanta Banerjee’s insightful account of the recent transfer of power in West Bengal from the CPI(M) to the Trinamool Congress (TMC) (“West Bengal’s Next Quinquennium, and the Future of the Indian Left”, EPW, 4 June 2011). Banerjee sees little prospect of a course correction in the CPI(M) and stresses the need for the rise of a new Indian Left through closer cooperation and realignment among the non-CPI(M) Left.
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Banerjee’s piece provoked Prabhat Patnaik to produce a theoretical narrative on the CPI(M)’s decline (“The Left in Decline”, EPW, 16 July 2011). Patnaik has quite categorically argued that the CPI(M) is suffering from a deep-seated malady of “empiricisation”, a delinking of practice from the spirit and vision of transcending capitalism, which has the potential to derail the party completely from the trajectory of Left politics. He however believes that the CPI(M) still has the ideological wherewithal to overcome the degenerative dialectic of “empiricisation” and in case it fails to do that, it can only be supplanted by a communist formation whose theoretical positions are akin to those of the CPI(M). In a brief response to Prabhat Patnaik, Hiren Gohain has taken the debate deeper into the CPI(M)’s very approach to parliamentary democracy (“Decline of the Left: A Critical Comment”, EPW, 17 September 2011). Gohain holds that a non-revolutionary approach to Parliament leading to a steady assimilation to the attitudes of the ruling classes and fatal weakening of extraparliamentary initiatives and imagination has caused the CPI(M)’s growing alienation from the basic classes. The divergence of the party’s own interest from the interests of the basic classes has led to brutal suppression of popular protests as witnessed in Singur and Nandigram and it cannot just be brushed aside as a mere case of “empiricisation”. Before we proceed with this discussion, let us take a look at the CPI(M)’s own official review of the West Bengal poll outcome. The review acknowledges that the party has suffered a major defeat, identifies a host of reasons and promises “a more elaborate review…to examine whether the Left Front government did enough to implement alternative policies to the neoliberal framework”. But for all practical purposes, the review would like us to believe that the defeat is essentially attri butable to a conspiracy by the ruling classes and imperialism to dethrone the CPI(M) because of its opposition to neo-liberal policies and the Indo-US nuclear deal, and the popular aspiration for change resulted from just a fatigue among the people because of the prolonged duration of the CPI(M) rule.
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DISCUSSION
Patnaik’s account is clearly at considerable variance from the CPI(M)’s official narrative. He argues that the CPI(M) has essentially had to pay a price for taking it upon itself to build capitalism while abdicating the guiding vision of transcending capitalism. Patnaik talks of the CPI(M) abandoning the basic classes while the CPI(M) review blames the TMC for driving a wedge between the party and sections of the peasantry by invoking the land acquisition issue. But both Patnaik and the CPI(M) underplay the real gravity of the Bengal debacle, and obscure, if not altogether ignore, the core internal reasons. They thus fail to stress the urgent lessons for any real recovery.
Land and Liberty For any objective observer of West Bengal developments, there can be no denying the fact that 2011 marked a total reversal of 1977. In 1977, the CPI(M) had come to power riding on a popular quest for restoration of democracy in Emergencyeclipsed West Bengal. By the late 1960s the CPI(M) had already emerged as the main organisational beneficiary of the gains of decades of communist-led popular struggles in Bengal, but 1977 provided the defining moment, and the CPI(M) went on to consolidate its position through panchayati raj and Operation Barga. If land and liberty were thus the twin planks that had created a big base for the CPI(M) in the early years of Left Front rule, the same were the core issues for the people in 2011 as well. A widespread quest for liberation from the stifling domination of the CPI(M)led party-government apparatus and a growing unrest among large sections of the peasantry and the rural poor over land and livelihood led to the CPI(M)’s ignominious exit in 2011. It is this context which must be the real cause of concern for all well-wishers of the Left. The Right has returned to power in Bengal by capitalising on the ruling Left’s loss of credibility and legitimacy vis-à-vis the basic classes and the core agenda of democracy, land and rural welfare. While Mamata Banerjee enhanced and consolidated her mass appeal with the slogan of Ma-Mati-Manush (mother, land and humanity) the CPI(M) in Bengal came to be bracketed with brutal massacres, special
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economic zones (SEZs) and Tata Nano! There can be no real introspection without squarely addressing this crux of the problem. And it is not only for the CPI(M) leadership to introspect, but the pro-CPI(M) intellectuals who discredited themselves by trying to defend the indefensible CPI(M) role in Singur and Nandigram should also do some soul-searching. It is well known that the dominant opinion in the CPI(M)’s Bengal leadership refuses to admit and discuss, let alone rectify, this real problem and instead looks for scapegoats in the CPI(M)’s acts of omission and commission at the Centre. If the CPI(M) Central Committee’s refusal to let Jyoti Basu become the prime minister of a Congress-backed ragtag United Front government in 1996 was considered the first “historic blunder”, the 2008 withdrawal of support to United Progressive Alliance – I (UPA-I) government is being treated as the second. The presumption is that it is this act of withdrawal which facilitated the renewed unity between the Congress and the TMC thereby sealing the CPI(M)’s electoral fate in West Bengal. Nothing could be farther from the truth than this wishful and bankrupt line of thinking. The TMC and the Congress would have anyway come together in West Bengal and, as the Kolkata corporation elections showed, even if the Congress had stayed aloof, it could have hardly stopped the TMC surge in the state. But the CPI(M) lacks the will to resolve this debate and the result is a review which seeks to project the party’s debacle in West Bengal as an anti-imperialist martyrdom of sorts. This is how the CPI(M) would like to avoid any real critical scrutiny of the developments in West Bengal as well as its role at the Centre. To set the record straight, for most part of UPA-I’s tenure, the CPI(M) did effectively collaborate with the government. The SEZ Act 2005 was allowed to be passed un opposed – Prakash Karat recently made a candid confession in course of a discussion with students of Jawaharlal Nehru University that the CPI(M) had failed to assess the issue from the point of view of the peasantry, looking at it more from a trade union angle. It is another matter that even from the point of view of working class struggles in SEZs, the Act deserved
to be opposed no less categorically. Even on the issue of Indo-US nuclear deal, the withdrawal of support eventually came over a rather procedural wrangling with the government by which time the Indo-US strategic partnership had already gathered enough momentum.
CPI(M)’s Anti-Imperialism Prabhat Patnaik often refers to Lenin’s thesis on imperialism and cites anti-imperialism as the decisive communist credential of the CPI(M). The biggest merit of Lenin’s thesis was his identification of imperialism as a structural development of capitalism itself. He showed us how war and aggressive external intervention by imperialist powers was not just a foreign policy question – and certainly not an aberration arising from a failure of diplomacy, but rooted in the intrinsic expansionary urge of capital. Going by the Leninist definition of imperialism, it should be clear that anti-imperialism in India today cannot therefore be limited only to challenging the Indo-US nuclear deal and strategic partnership – it must challenge the whole gamut of neo-liberal policies that are promoting corporate loot and ravaging all our resources. How has the CPI(M) fared on this real test of anti-imperialism? While lauding the CPI(M)’s stand on the nuclear deal, Patnaik is compelled to admit that the CPI(M) in West Bengal was busy building capitalism on the neo-liberal plank. When a party does this in its strongest bastion, its opposition to the same policies elsewhere naturally lacks sincerity or substance. And now thanks to WikiLeaks’ disclosure of US embassy cables from India, we know very well how senior CPI(M) leaders maintained close links with US officials in India even as the party was publicly decrying India’s nuclear deal and strategic partnership with the US. Mere theoretical recognition of imperialism was never enough for Lenin. Under Lenin’s leadership, communists the world over demarcated themselves from reformists and social-democrats by evolving and following a whole set of revolutionary tactical principles guided by and catering to a revolutionary strategic vision. This revolutionary praxis achieved its greatest success in the victorious socialist revolution in Russia, but it was meant for communists
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working in a wide variety of conditions – from the bourgeois parliamentary republics of Europe and America to the colonies and semi-colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Central to the demarcation between communists and social-democrats was the question of intervention in parliamentary politics and utilisation of electoral victories. In contrast to the social-democratic thesis of participation in bourgeois governments and sharing of power with the bourgeoisie, communists resolved to use any power won in elections at local or provincial levels (outright communist victory in elections to the highest level of bourgeois state power was clearly considered highly unlikely) for the advancement of class struggle and as part and parcel of an overall revolutionary opposition to the central authority. The CPI(M) had moved away from this communist policy quite early on in the course of its protracted parliamentary journey. Against the backdrop of the inspiring victory of the CPI(M) and its Left Front partners in 1977, the slogan that had captured the imagination of Left ranks was none other than “bam front sarkar sangramer hatiyar” (Left Front government is a weapon of struggle). But it did not take the CPI(M) long to realise that such a slogan would not be tenable with the imperatives of a stable government. Thus the slogan was soon effectively withdrawn and replaced by “bamfront sarkar unnayaner hatiyar” (Left Front government is an instrument of “development”, experienced by the people mostly as bulldozer of development). In the wake of Singur, Nandigram and Lalgarh, a good majority of people in West Bengal saw it degenerate further as “utpiraner hatiyar” (instrument of repression). If only Patnaik bothered to look beyond the question of a sheer theoretical recognition of the danger of imperialism into the realm of strategy and tactics of a communist party, he would have noticed how the CPI(M) had abandoned the communist attitude to the question of power in a bourgeois state to opt for a social- democratic framework of relief and reform through power-sharing. The updated CPI(M) programme of 2000 made a provision for the party’s participation in central government
as a junior partner – a major departure from the famous Para 112 of the party’s 1964 programme which had distinguished the party from the CPI all through the 1960s and 1970s right up to the 1996-98 period when the majority of the CPI(M) Central Committee refused to let Jyoti Basu become the prime minister of a Congress-backed United Front government even as two CPI leaders accepted ministerial positions.
Parliamentary Cretinism Patnaik does not see any link between the CPI(M)’s model of intervention in parliamentary politics and the trajectory of “empiricisation”. Instead Patnaik accuses those who see a link between the two of being victims of what he calls parliamentary fetishism. Now this is quite interesting. Marx had taken on commodity fetishism to deepen the study of capital – starting from the commodity-crowded surface of capitalism he had taken the reader to the core question of production and appropriation of surplus value. But instead of taking us beyond Parliament to unravel the class nature of the state and explore the means of stronger proletarian intervention in bourgeois politics, Patnaik employs the term parliamentary fetishism only against those who advocate a boycott of Parliament and others who stay away from the political process. Conspicuously absent is any critical gaze at all at those who deliberately invoke Parliament to limit the people’s political initiative and imagination, and who habitually always put the aura and privilege of Parliament above the rights and struggles of the people. He seems to be completely oblivious of the fact that while fighting against “boycottists” and Left adventurists, Lenin always held that the communist movement faced a much bigger danger from parliamentary cretinism. In his response to Prabhat Patnaik, Hiren Gohain has quite rightly highlighted the CPI(M)’s failure in combining parliamentary work and extraparliamentary struggles, even contrasting it to the imagination and vigour (albeit of the reactionary type) displayed by the Right in their multifarious extra-parliamentary initiatives and programmes. In fact, Patnaik’s own argument regarding the ongoing popular agitation against
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c orruption presents a glaring example of parliamentary fetishism. It is one thing to critique the framework or provisions of the Jan Lokpal Bill or the limited agenda and way of functioning of what has come to be known as “Team Anna” but to project the whole thing as a threat to democracy or parliament is clearly missing the wood for the trees. One understands the desperation of discredited bourgeois leaders to try and hide behind the parliamentary shield, but why should the forces of social transformation be afraid of an awakened people? Should communists keep aloof from the growing anti-corruption awakening among the people in the name of defending Parliament and saving democracy from “mobocracy” or should communists welcome the people’s anger and try and direct it against the whole regime of corporate loot and denial of people’s rights? The way ahead for the Left clearly lies through a radical realignment of Left forces on the basis of united struggle. After two decades of domination of neoliberal policies, almost all sections of the people are up in arms against the dis astrous consequences of this policy regime. Fundamental questions regarding the nature of our economy and polity are being discussed and debated quite widely. While the Right will definitely try to use this climate to its own advantage and liberals will only limit themselves to shallow and superficial reforms, the Left must seize this opportunity to deepen and widen the struggles and lead them on to their logical conclusions. The more the Left gets integrated with the developing resistance of various sections of the people, the more will be the momentum generated for a resurgence of the Left. And that alone can be the true resolution of the debate over the “decline” of the Left.
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DISCUSSION
Yadavji’s Anorexia and the Decline of the Left Siddhartha Lahiri
Call it “revisionism” if you are bold enough to call a spade a spade like Hiren Gohain (“Decline of the Left: A Critical Comment”, EPW, 17 September 2011), or “empiricisation” like Prabhat Patnaik (“The Left in Decline”, EPW, 16 July 2011) does, there cannot be any doubt that revolutionary change is no more on the agenda of the present leadership of CPI(M). One can only imagine the predicament of dedicated party cadre like Mukeswar Yadav.
M
ukeswar Yadav, now around 76, is perhaps the only CPI(M) whole-timer in Dibrugarh town, Assam who has served the party for more than 40 years. Besides organising a few trade unions, he had the job to distribute party literature. He did that sincerely, maintained transparent accountancy and unquestionable integrity. In the 1970s, Yadavji, on behalf of the party, ran a progressive bookstall. A small ten-by-ten feet rented room accommodated a bookstall, party office, trade union office and shelter for the bachelor whole-timer. Located near the only flyover of the town, the symbol of “growth” that distinguishes small and big towns in Assam, the party office had a well-known public identity. During the nationalistic fervour of the 1980s, led by the students’ body All Assam Students Union (AASU), the bookstall was burnt by miscreants. Presently, there is no progressive bookstall in Dibrugarh. As the party could never take a clear stand on the “National Question” and the state unit unable to bring to the fore innovative leaders, the only significant programme the party could organise over the last 15 years was the annual celebration of May Day. Some of the university students among whom Yadavji distributed progressive literature, joined later on as the faculty members and then their days of retirement too came closer – Yadavji, pedalling a cycle slowly, kept on distributing those red stuffs as usual. The only visible and unchangeable face of CPI(M) in the Dibrugarh township was Yadavji.
A Dedicated Party Worker’s Predicament
Siddhartha Lahiri (
[email protected]) is with the department of Applied Geology, Dibrugarh University, Assam.
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Very recently Yadavji came with a court order that instructed him to vacate the office immediately. He was visibly shaken to the core. The story that emerged was very simple. With time, the place where the party office was located became prime land. The earlier landlord sold it to an
industrialist and from the very beginning of the handover, the new landlord tried to get his tenant to vacate the place. A case was filed, the court order challenged, an injunction by the higher court followed, so on and so forth. Usually, these types of cases go on for decades and Yadavji felt highly assured because the party deputed a high-profile party-affiliated lawyer having a roaring practice. As an obedient cadre (Yadavji could not manage any promotion in the party rung and remained, lifelong, a grass root member), when the matter was referred to the state committee, Yadavji was conveyed a message that he should not bypass the organisational ladder; everything would reach him through the “proper channel”. For the first time, Yadavji was furious, frustrated and defiant. He conveyed the matter to different camps too and started thinking in every direction so that the office could be retained. Subsequently, it was discovered that the party-assigned lawyer did not attend the case, neither had he bothered to inform Yadavji. As a result, in the absence of the appellant, the high court simply dismissed the case. Even by parliamentary standards, this was a serious offence. The party immediately smelt a “Maoist” in Yadavji – if this was not so, how could a meek cadre question the big stalwarts? Members from different camps were highly sympathetic to Yadavji. The general view was: among the lower level cadres, still some incorruptible honest members were there and Yadavji was one of them. Within no time, a few volunteers came forward to donate the money to take the case to any level. Yadavji’s frustration reduced significantly. He expressed openly the level of corruption the party leadership had immersed into which he never divulged before, thinking these stories were the party’s “internal matter”. He suspected some underhand dealing. He remembered how in the past, militant programmes from the lower level cadres were countered by some influential members. Over the years, those militant workers had either left the party or became inactive. On the other hand, the opportunists could mange high party positions, tickets during the elections, and petrol pumps after the elections. Yadavji was ready for the Halla Bol. These developments
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gradually percolated into the ears of the top bosses of the party sitting in the Guwahati office. Yadavji was called. For a week the volunteers did not get any news from Yadavji. After a fortnight, Yadavji was seen again with the same duty of distributing party literature. There was only one difference. He complained wherever he went – bhook nahin lagti! Those who were aware of the eviction notice asked him about the party’s stand on the matter. With lots of hesitation he said that the party instructed him to vacate the place in the first place and search for some other rented house and whatever doubts he had with the party members, those things could be raised formally in the local body meeting, subsequently in the higher levels, so on and so forth. Some of the volunteers did not like Yadavji’s submissive attitude. They rebuked him bluntly – if he was not ready to fight, why did he ask for help and waste their precious time? Yadavji could not answer their questions. Those who did not like to hurt the old man, they knew Yadavji could not do anything within the party and at this ripe age of 76, it was not possible for him to challenge the influential coteries without forgoing the party membership, the most precious thing the man possessed. For the first time perhaps in the last 40 years, Yadavji became highly irregular. He even started to miss some of the interesting numbers. Those who knew Yadavji closely were showing concern towards the deteriorating health condition of the old man. There are good doctors in the Dibrugarh Medical College who sympathise with the left cause. They asked Yadavji to get admitted and performed a thorough check up. Lots of tests were performed. Nothing was found and Yadavji was discharged. The problem lingered – loss of appetite. There is an old ayurvedic doctor. He administered saline bottles for three consecutive days and forced him to take general food under his own supervision. Yadavji’s condition was showing marginal improvement. Some of the regular subscribers of party literature were worried for the missed numbers as well as Yadavji’s health. In exceptional situations, Yadavji pursues some of his sympathisers to make calls to those persons with whom he feels closer. In his latest call, Yadavji was
r epeating the old complain – bilkool bhook nahin lagti!
Revolution: Not on the CPI(M)’s Agenda Prabhat Patnaik’s method of dealing with the decline in the contemporary left politics in India (EPW, 16 July 2011) is highly refined and a real treat for those left intellectuals who find different ways and means of prospective areas of further research, parti cularly in the epistemological domain of praxis. The meaning he assigned to “empiricisation” was questioned by Hiren Gohain (EPW, 17 September 2011). He argues that the categories of deviations observed within the ambit of “empiricisation” can be understood by the clearer term “revisionism”. It is indeed so. However, there is minor shade of difference too. After calling a party revisionist, it is no more possible for a person advocating the concrete possibilities of revolutionary change and subsequent transcendence to socialism, at least at the theoretical level, to share the same platform in public. There cannot be any doubt that revolutionary change is no more in the agenda of the present leadership of CPI(M). Patnaik has correctly identified the wrong mechanical emphasis given by the parliamentary Left to “stage theory” and then the resolve to bring capitalism first, thereby going against the interest of the “basic classes”, and subsequently jumping the “stage of capitalism” to enter into the “stage of socialism” to win back the interests of the “basic classes”. This somersault theory is definitely not in keeping with a class-based understanding of the history of civilisation. An abstract understanding of “time as the ultimate regulator” and the
function of the Left is to keep on listening to the beats and reorient the steps, from waltz to ballet to east-west mix, is fundamentally different from the Marxist understanding of praxis. Moreover, the parliamentary Left’s explanation about the ennui of the “basic classes” due to excessive oppression and its programme to utilise parliamentary means to pump energy inside to make them fit for the coming revolutionary change has already been proved to be a wrong assessment of the strength of the struggling masses. Though there is no such direct correlation but the contemporary reality is replete with many such examples where those who suffer the most strive for revolutionary change much more passionately. The present form of the Indian left is definitely not sustainable against the forceful as well as flexibly tuned shrewdly calibrated neo-liberal mode of functioning of finance capital. Over the last two decades, the CPI(M) has transformed its party infrastructure to have a colla borationist track with finance capital, maintaining simultaneously the slogan mongering of the “golden” past. Perhaps the majority of the dedicated party cadres could not monitor the changing colour of the flame from multi-shaded fumes. Thumping electoral victories in Kerala, West Bengal and Tripura kept them happy and ignorant. After the resounding debacle, a soul searching has begun but the energy level is too low to expect any quantum jump in the near future. As long as that silver line is not visible, the question at the middle level that can afford to go through the EPW is – can “empiricisation” explain Kyun Yadavjiko bilkool bhook nahin lagti?
REVIEW OF LABOUR May 28, 2011 Global Crises, Welfare Provision and Coping Strategies of Labour in Tiruppur – M Vijayabaskar Extending the Coverage of Minimum Wages in India: Simulations from Household Data – Patrick Belser, Uma Rani Labour and Employment under Globalisation: The Case of Gujarat – Indira Hirway, Neha Shah Impact of the Economic Crisis on Workers in the Unorganised Sector in Rajasthan – S Mohanakumar, Surjit Singh For copies write to: Circulation Manager, Economic and Political Weekly, 320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013. email:
[email protected] Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
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DISCUSSION
On the Left in Decline Kripa Shankar
If overwhelming evidence shows that the CPI(M) has abandoned the project of “transcending capitalism” then Prabhat Patnaik (“The Left in Decline”, EPW, 16 July 2011) should come to the logical conclusion that CPI(M) is no different from any standard bourgeois party.
Kripa Shankar (kripa_shankar26@rediffmail. com), a former full-time activist of the Communist Party of India – is an Honorary Fellow at the Govind Ballabh Pant Institute, Allahabad.
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T
he communist movement in India has been characterised by its loyalty to Soviet Union. Like a religious faith, it accepted any directive as the last wisdom to be followed without any argument or demur. When the Soviet Union was in alliance with the United Kingdom, the Communist Party of India (CPI) opposed the Quit India Movement at the behest of the Soviet Union and got alienated from the people. After the second world war, when the Soviet Union found that the imperialist countries were conspiring against it, in a desperate response, in 1948, it directed the CPI to make a final assault on the government to overthrow it through armed struggle. But the Soviet Union soon realised that governments in newly independent countries like India were not lackeys of imperialism. They wanted to develop their countries and were anxious to befriend the Soviet Union with this end in view. The Soviet Union now took a U-turn and directed the CPI in 1950 – through an editorial in For a Lasting Peace and People’s Democracy which was the central organ of the then international communist movement – to form a united front with the national bourgeoisie which was in power but was facing imperial machinations with the connivance of the comprador bourgeoisie. It gave this line a theoretical justification by arguing that the bourgeoisie in such countries is divided between a nationalist and a comprador section. The latter was aligned with imperialism. Hence the task of CPI was to ally with the national bourgeoisie to thwart the designs of imperialists. It was a watershed for the CPI. Now it would collaborate with the government of the national bourgeoisie. There was now no agenda to fight the government except in words. The party would be looking for every opportunity to join the government if the occasion so arose. The focus was to increase its representation in the state assemblies and Parliament by electoral manoeuvring. Regional bourgeois parties had come up because they wanted greater space and opposed the central government.
The CPI went into coalition with regional parties and formed the government in some of the states in 1967 but with no programme. This signified the beginning of degeneration. It behaved like any other bourgeois party. Indira Gandhi appeared to be friendlier to the Soviet Union and now the directive was to support the former in a more upright manner. CPI supported the Emergency although CPI (Marxist) (CPI(M)) opposed it but also denounced the JP movement.
Transcending Capitalism? The CPI(M) ruled West Bengal uninterruptedly for more than three decades. Where is the evidence that it stands for transcending capitalism? Despite a high concentration in land it did not go in for acquiring the land of the richest farmers even at market price and get it distributed among the landless. On the other hand, it was very keen to get agricultural land acquired for the monopoly houses and multinational corporations. The budgetary expenditure on agriculture and all allied activities, including minor irrigation, did not form even 3% of the total expenditure and was all along lower than the police budget. It was not prepared to provide cheap bank loans to the poor through interest subsidy so that they could make some investment in small remunerative activities like rearing small cattle, poultry, fisheries, etc. It could run massive rural employment generation activities like con structing rural roads, irrigation sources, storages, etc, but there were no funds after paying interest charges and expenditure on administration. The government was not prepared to tax the richer segments and resorted to reckless borrowings making it the largest indebted state on a per capita basis. It had a lower taxstate GDP ratio than many other states. Interest payments accounted for more than one-third of the state revenue. It was lukewarm in devolving power and funds to panchayats and municipalities “to enable them to function as institutions of self government” as enjoined by the 73rd and 74th amendment of the Constitution. It could have opened a new chapter in rural reconstruction where people could take their destiny in their own hands but refrained from doing so. Rural areas could have
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pulsated with a new life and vigour. But all this was anathema to the government. Prabhat Patnaik (hereafter PP) asserts that the CPI(M) has a project of transcending capitalism and is opposed to the neoliberal policies imposed by international finance capital. Then why invite the same for creating hubs of super profits? The Salim group was cajoled. Tata Motors was invited to set up a car factory in Singur and not a powerhouse which the people need. Was firing on unarmed farmers by police in Nandigram in which 14 persons were killed a part of the fight that CPI(M) was waging against neo-liberalism? PP asserts that the CPI(M) is wedded to the project of transcending capitalism because whatsoever reforms may be undertaken, capitalism cannot provide a humane society. There can be no disagreement about the latter part of the statement but the assertion that CPI(M) is wedded to transcending capitalism is nowhere in evidence if we go by what the CPI(M) had done while in office. PP cites the example of CPI(M) withdrawing support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Then why the frantic effort to form a Third Front with parties like Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal, Bahujan Samaj Party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK),
Telugu Desam, etc, which are no better than Congress insofar as their support to neo-liberal policies is concerned. The bigger question is that knowing full well that the UPA was pursuing neo-liberal policies at the behest of international capital, why was CPI(M) supporting it from the very beginning? It appears that it was keener to come to office through a Third Front which again would follow the same neoliberal policies because of its class composition. CPI(M) was doing the same in West Bengal and Kerala. PP in gung-ho about the parliamentary path little realising its infirmities in a country like India where money and muscle power matter most. One-third of the members of parliament have criminal records and with each election their proportion is rising. All the bourgeois parties are patronising criminals as they can intimidate voters. Glorification of the parliamentary path to the exclusion of mass mobilisation, mass upheaval and upsurge has also much to do with the degeneration and decadence of CPI(M) and other so-called left parties. PP is also unwilling to learn anything from Anna Hazare’s episode which shows that people are prepared to come to the streets if genuine issues of the masses are addressed. Significantly it has also shown that people have lost faith in political parties
‘The Left in Decline’: A Historical Perspective Arup Baisya
Why should the CPI(M) not be considered a ruling class party? The answer to this question and that of the transformation of the official Indian Left requires one to delve into the history of Stalinism, the Comintern, and the communist movement in India. Arup Baisya (
[email protected]) is a social activist based in Silchar, Assam.
I
n extending the argument of Prabhat Patnaik (“The Left in Decline”, EPW, 16 July 2011) on the question of the decline of the Left (read CPI(M) and CPI), Hiren Gohain (“Decline of the Left: A Critical Comment”, EPW, 17 September 2011) commented that one fails to understand “why the familiar and clearer term ‘revisionism’ should not be used” instead of “empiricisation”. In a brief discussion on Prabhat Patnaik’s article, he wrote “the looming conclusion is that it has botched its parliamentary role allowing bourgeois forces to gain the upper hand …”
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
because all the major parties that have been in office for some time have followed the same policies that benefit the elite.
Stooge of the Bourgeoisie? Long ago Lenin said that the party should learn from the people. Why did the people consider CPI(M) and the Left Front irrelevant? It is because they see it as not much different from any other bourgeois party. This is their life experience; the demagogy that CPI(M) stands for transcending capitalism stands exposed. PP rightly claims that if a communist party abandons the concept of transcending capitalism and instead “presides over the building of capitalism (it) will end up being no different from standard bourgeois parties, notwithstanding its lip service to the revolution”. If overwhelming evidence shows that CPI(M) has abandoned the project of transcending capitalism then PP should come to the logical conclusion that CPI(M) is no different from any standard bourgeois party. In that case he should give a call for a new communist party which will be consistent in its opposition to the capitalist path and will depend on mass mobilisation and mass upsurge to dethrone the ruling bourgeoisie rather than forming a united front with it and thereby end as a stooge of the bourgeoisie.
He further remarked: Participation in parliamentary democracy has also meant seeking and holding power in the states. That has meant acceptance of central policies to some extent, acquiescence in the anti-people role of the police, and compromises with the bureaucracy. True, there has been some degree of power-sharing at lower levels, and the panchayats had a more popular character. But there too the party became an instrument of domination rather than service to the people. Lastly it succumbed to the capitalist paradigm of development with it present mantra of private sector-led ….largely jobless growth, and was hustled into adoption of anti-people policies, robbing the masses of their right to land, water and other natural resources.
He concluded by saying how otherwise one does explain the party’s “alienation from the basic classes” without considering the change of class character of the party. It is a good sign that critical arguments on Left rule in Indian states are pouring
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DISCUSSION
pulsated with a new life and vigour. But all this was anathema to the government. Prabhat Patnaik (hereafter PP) asserts that the CPI(M) has a project of transcending capitalism and is opposed to the neoliberal policies imposed by international finance capital. Then why invite the same for creating hubs of super profits? The Salim group was cajoled. Tata Motors was invited to set up a car factory in Singur and not a powerhouse which the people need. Was firing on unarmed farmers by police in Nandigram in which 14 persons were killed a part of the fight that CPI(M) was waging against neo-liberalism? PP asserts that the CPI(M) is wedded to the project of transcending capitalism because whatsoever reforms may be undertaken, capitalism cannot provide a humane society. There can be no disagreement about the latter part of the statement but the assertion that CPI(M) is wedded to transcending capitalism is nowhere in evidence if we go by what the CPI(M) had done while in office. PP cites the example of CPI(M) withdrawing support to the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government on the issue of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Then why the frantic effort to form a Third Front with parties like Samajwadi Party, Janata Dal, Bahujan Samaj Party, All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK),
Telugu Desam, etc, which are no better than Congress insofar as their support to neo-liberal policies is concerned. The bigger question is that knowing full well that the UPA was pursuing neo-liberal policies at the behest of international capital, why was CPI(M) supporting it from the very beginning? It appears that it was keener to come to office through a Third Front which again would follow the same neoliberal policies because of its class composition. CPI(M) was doing the same in West Bengal and Kerala. PP in gung-ho about the parliamentary path little realising its infirmities in a country like India where money and muscle power matter most. One-third of the members of parliament have criminal records and with each election their proportion is rising. All the bourgeois parties are patronising criminals as they can intimidate voters. Glorification of the parliamentary path to the exclusion of mass mobilisation, mass upheaval and upsurge has also much to do with the degeneration and decadence of CPI(M) and other so-called left parties. PP is also unwilling to learn anything from Anna Hazare’s episode which shows that people are prepared to come to the streets if genuine issues of the masses are addressed. Significantly it has also shown that people have lost faith in political parties
‘The Left in Decline’: A Historical Perspective Arup Baisya
Why should the CPI(M) not be considered a ruling class party? The answer to this question and that of the transformation of the official Indian Left requires one to delve into the history of Stalinism, the Comintern, and the communist movement in India. Arup Baisya (
[email protected]) is a social activist based in Silchar, Assam.
I
n extending the argument of Prabhat Patnaik (“The Left in Decline”, EPW, 16 July 2011) on the question of the decline of the Left (read CPI(M) and CPI), Hiren Gohain (“Decline of the Left: A Critical Comment”, EPW, 17 September 2011) commented that one fails to understand “why the familiar and clearer term ‘revisionism’ should not be used” instead of “empiricisation”. In a brief discussion on Prabhat Patnaik’s article, he wrote “the looming conclusion is that it has botched its parliamentary role allowing bourgeois forces to gain the upper hand …”
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
because all the major parties that have been in office for some time have followed the same policies that benefit the elite.
Stooge of the Bourgeoisie? Long ago Lenin said that the party should learn from the people. Why did the people consider CPI(M) and the Left Front irrelevant? It is because they see it as not much different from any other bourgeois party. This is their life experience; the demagogy that CPI(M) stands for transcending capitalism stands exposed. PP rightly claims that if a communist party abandons the concept of transcending capitalism and instead “presides over the building of capitalism (it) will end up being no different from standard bourgeois parties, notwithstanding its lip service to the revolution”. If overwhelming evidence shows that CPI(M) has abandoned the project of transcending capitalism then PP should come to the logical conclusion that CPI(M) is no different from any standard bourgeois party. In that case he should give a call for a new communist party which will be consistent in its opposition to the capitalist path and will depend on mass mobilisation and mass upsurge to dethrone the ruling bourgeoisie rather than forming a united front with it and thereby end as a stooge of the bourgeoisie.
He further remarked: Participation in parliamentary democracy has also meant seeking and holding power in the states. That has meant acceptance of central policies to some extent, acquiescence in the anti-people role of the police, and compromises with the bureaucracy. True, there has been some degree of power-sharing at lower levels, and the panchayats had a more popular character. But there too the party became an instrument of domination rather than service to the people. Lastly it succumbed to the capitalist paradigm of development with it present mantra of private sector-led ….largely jobless growth, and was hustled into adoption of anti-people policies, robbing the masses of their right to land, water and other natural resources.
He concluded by saying how otherwise one does explain the party’s “alienation from the basic classes” without considering the change of class character of the party. It is a good sign that critical arguments on Left rule in Indian states are pouring
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DISCUSSION
out from within the pro-left (especially pro-CPI(M)) intellectual quarters after the fall of Left Front in West Bengal. But the argument needs to be extended further, and a brainstorming exercise should be undertaken on the question of “Left resurgence” based on the experience of not only Left rule in some parts of India but also on the worldwide experience of building socialism. Why should the CPI(M) not be considered a ruling class party? The answer to this question and that of the transformation of the official Indian Left requires one to delve into the history of Stalinism, the Comintern,1 and the communist movement in India.
Toeing the Stalinist Line From such a perspective, we can broadly underline the turn of the events when the Indian communist movement, the legacy of which is borne by the CPI(M), sided with the forces of reaction. When Stalinist forced collectivisation of the peasantry had shattered the worker-peasant alliance and reversed the trend from socialism to bourgeois nation-building, pursuing military intervention in the name of exporting socialism, Soviet Russia was transformed into a social-imperialist power. The CPI(M) emulated the Russian path as the model for building socialism. The Leninist party in the Soviet Russia, which was wellentrenched amongst the working class as well as the radical intelligentsia, achieved the alliance with the peasantry through radical land reform. But radical land reform realised the Russian peasants’ age-old dream of becoming landowners. The market forces thus released ended up producing growing differences within the peasantry. The Stalinist way of solving this problem did not advance the building of socialism. But parties like the CPI and the CPI(M), so infatuated with socialism in Russia, did not even notice that Maoist China had successfully addressed the “peasant question” through agrarian revolution instead of forced collectivisation and throttling the dissenting voices within the party. They toed the Russian line and served the Russian national goal of global expansion in the guise of “exporting communism” till the complete collapse of Soviet system and disintegration of Soviet Russia. Then these parties started to cite the success story of
78
the Chinese model of “market socialism” when it became clear that the capitalist roaders gradually took control of the helm of affairs after the cultural revolution came to an unsuccessful end. At the formative stage, the most of the leaders and organisers of the Bengal Left came from that section of young men and women who flaunted the extreme nationalist views of the Independence movement and engaged themselves in the extremist path of annihilating British magistrates and police officers with bombs and pistols. The political prisoners who were languishing in jail and had been converted to Marxism were released from jail for supporting the British war effort. Those who joined the Communist Party of India remained outside the jail during the Quit India Movement in 1942 and faced the people’s hatred for betraying the cause of Independence. However, the relentless and selfless service to famine stricken people in the Bengal famine gave the communist leaders some credence. The post-Independence Left party in Bengal started further expanding its base due to the Left leanings of the refugee uppercaste, educated section who were sentimentally involved with the Hindu refugees in West Bengal. Most of these upper-caste youths came from Kulin zamindar families who earned their notoriety by being ruthless and oppressive vis-à-vis their Muslim and lower caste tenants in East Bengal. So those communist leaders were not organically linked with the working class who are predominantly comprised of the most oppressed castes and communities. But the displaced people had no other option but to embrace the Left who fought for their rights. The worldwide turbulent situation of the 1960s, the extension of support to the working class struggle, the resurgence of cultural and literary activities, and the participation of the Left in the food movement gave it overwhelming support from the Bengali masses. With this popular base, party apparatchiks emerged from above the working class and came to power in Bengal with a reformist agenda.
Comintern Hegemony During the pre-Independence, anti-imperialist struggle, the Indian Left – toeing the line of the Comintern – failed to
emerge as a mass communist party and build a mass organisation based on the worker-peasant alliance. After the death of Lenin, and especially during the period of 1935-43, the Comintern became the instrument of Soviet foreign policy. When the revolutionary wave subsided and the hope for the revolution in western Europe faded away, the national interest of Soviet Union gradually started coming to the fore. The changing policy directives of the Indian Left were in keeping with the vicissitudes of the Comintern’s character. In 1922, the demand for a comprehensive “Programme of National Liberation and Reconstruction” in the name of CPI was raised at the Gaya Session of the Congress that received a message of solidarity from Comintern. Against the background of peasant repression in Chauri Chaura and the growing militancy of the peasantry, an Indian Left manifesto, commonly known as Manilal Doctor’s manifesto, proposed the idea of a labour and kisan party of India and advocated the abolition of the standing army, arming of the masses and the organisation of militias with a view to radicalise political life. This document, subsequently revised in various phases, had the following features, according to G Adhikari: (1) it was an attempt to formulate a complete economic and political programme for national independence; (2) it urged the formation of a legal left-wing mass party inside the Congress; and (3) it emphasised the idea of forming workers’ and peasants’ mass organisations in defence of their class demands. After the 1931 Calcutta session, the Indian Communists, instead of pursuing Lenin’s theses on the colonial question, adopted the colonial theses of the Comintern’s sixth congress and emphasised the control of the party leadership over the workers and peasants from above rather than the process of raising mass-consciousness and building a mass communist party whose members are organically linked with the struggling masses. The expulsion of the nationalist leadership from the league against imperialism also underlined the communist leadership’s endeavour to ensure the monolithic character of the mass organisation. The Indian communists also imbibed the idea of one-party rule in a post-revolutionary society from the practice of the Communist
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DISCUSSION
Party of the Soviet Union and the influence of the Comintern. Competition with parties representing the interests of other classes to win over the masses creates the space for a democratic environment which is necessary for the healthy interaction of diverse opinion within and outside the party. This acts as an important countervailing factor to save the party from plunging into the quagmire of ultra-centralism and inertia of moribund party life. The foreign policy of Soviet Russia that advanced its own national interests blurred the distinction between fascism and bourgeois democracy; the united front strategy had gradually been abandoned after the death of Lenin. The concept of democratic centralism drifted in favour of centralism sans democracy, and those who differed with this new strategy were considered as rivals who were eliminated. The organisational arm-twisting and manoeuvring of the monolithic Russian communist party constricted the space within the Comintern for democratic debate of member revolutionaries, especially after the sixth congress. The German invasion of the Soviet Union that changed the balance of forces was viewed by the Indian communists as transforming the character of the conflict – from imperialist war to people’s war. The Indian communists toed the formulation of the Comintern and, in doing so, they even abandoned the line of “conditional support” to the British and opposed the August movement launched by Indian National Congress. During Lenin’s time, the Comintern had a democratic character. In line with Lenin’s theses on colonial question, the Berlin group of Indian revolutionaries Maulana Barkatullah, Virendranath Chattopadhyaya, Bhupendranath Dutta emphasised not only the unity of the anti-imperialist forces in India, but also the specificities of Indian society like caste question. But the present day major Left parties like the CPI and the CPI(M) bear the organisational and theoretical tradition of the Comintern of the post-Lenin period.
basic classes through a command structure. The release of initiative of the rural poor due to the land reform implemented by the Left Front in West Bengal was arrested after the incorporation of the new middle classes within party command structure. The party refrained from empowering the rural poor and the working class by furthering the agrarian reform process and by allowing active participation in the panchayati raj system through the Gram Sansad mechanism. By silencing the voice of the rural poor who could have been a potent force for modern agriculture, cooperative farming and for development of indigenous industries, the Left Front plunged into crisis. The vibrant rural life that resulted from the implementation of Operation Barga was subsequently throttled by the CPI(M)’s control of all spheres of public life through its command structure and control of the administration. This situation led them to follow the neo-liberal development path. West Bengal sprang a major surprise when, two years into liberalisation, in September 1994, Jyoti Basu announced his government’s new industrial policy in the assembly. “We are all for new technology and investment in selective spheres where
Note 1 For the period 1920-42, we draw on Sobhanlal Datta Gupta’s Comintern and the Destiny of Communism in India, 1919-1943 (Kolkata: Seribaan, 2006).
PERSPECTIVES ON CASH TRANSFERS May 21, 2011 A Case for Reframing the Cash Transfer Debate in India
– Sudha Narayanan
Mexico’s Targeted and Conditional Transfers: Between Oportunidades and Rights
– Pablo Yanes
Brazil’s Bolsa Família: A Review
– Fabio Veras Soares
Conditional Cash Transfers as a Tool of Social Policy
– Francesca Bastagli
Cash Transfers as the Silver Bullet for Poverty Reduction: A Sceptical Note PDS Forever?
– Jayati Ghosh – Ashok Kotwal, Milind Murugkar, Bharat Ramaswami
Impact of Biometric Identification-Based Transfers
– Arka Roy Chaudhuri, E Somanathan
The Shift to Cash Transfers: Running Better But on the Wrong Road?
– Devesh Kapur
For copies write to: Circulation Manager,
Party of the Ruling Class So the major Indian Left parties mechanically toeing the post-Lenin Soviet line transformed themselves into regimented parties maintaining their relation with the
they help our economy and which are of mutual interest. We have the state sector, the private sector and also the joint sector. All these have a role to play”, said the chief minister. In pursuing this new policy of the Left, Basu exercised caution; Buddhadeb stomped. The latter even wanted the CPI(M) to back the Pension Fund Regulatory Deve lopment Authority Bill in Parliament. “Team Buddha” was so engrossed with the success story of the neo-liberal drive that his government not only invited notorious companies like Dow Chemicals, but was also planning to invite Wal-Mart to take hold of the retail market. The central CPI(M) leaders with their characteristic double speak always backed the neo-liberal policy of the Left Front in West Bengal. The major left parties like CPI(M) are ideologically and organisationally plunged deep into parliamentary cretinism and perhaps lost the will to revive the path of working class struggle. So there is no reason not to consider the present-day major Left parties like the CPI(M) as parties of the ruling class.
Economic and Political Weekly, 320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013. email:
[email protected] Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47
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CURRENT STATISTICS
EPW Research Foundation
The business of commercial banks in India has become increasingly urban-centric. The top 50 centres which accounted for 54.4% of total deposits in end-March 2009 increased their share to 64.1% in end-March 2011. While their share of credit remained the same at around 73%, their credit deposit ratio rose from 83.2% to 85.5% during the same period. In terms of deposits, Chennai has overtaken Kolkata from fifth to fourth place. Jaipur, Gurgaon, Bhubaneswar, Guwahati, Coimbatore and Surat are the other prominent towns which improved their ranking.
Macroeconomic Indicators Variation (in %): Point-to-Point Index Numbers of Wholesale Prices Weights 22 Oct Over Over 12 Months Fiscal Year So Far Full Financial Year (Base Year: 2004-05 = 100)^ 2011 Month 2011 2010 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 Primary Articles 20.1 205.0 1.3 12.1 17.1 8.8 9.8 13.1 22.4 5.3 9.1 Food Articles 14.3 202.2 2.3 12.2 13.5 12.9 9.6 8.9 21.1 7.5 5.8 Non-Food Articles 4.3 177.2 -2.7 6.4 25.1 -7.6 10.6 27.3 19.6 1.8 13.3 Fuel & Power 14.9 169.8 0.2 14.5 10.7 7.5 5.9 12.7 13.8 -4.9 9.2 Manufactured Products* 65.0 138.6 0.2 7.7 5.0 2.2 2.0 7.4 5.3 1.7 7.2 Food Products* 10.0 151.7 0.9 8.0 3.6 4.5 -0.9 2.4 15.1 6.3 8.4 Food Index (computed)* 24.3 178.1 1.2 8.8 11.5 7.9 5.9 6.8 18.5 7.3 6.7 All Commodities (point to point basis)* 100.0 155.8 0.6 9.7 9.0 4.2 4.2 9.7 10.4 1.6 7.8 All Commodities (Monthly average basis)* 100.0 153.8 - 9.4 8.5 9.6 9.9 9.6 3.8 8.1 4.9 * Data pertain to the month of September 2011 as weekly release of data discontinued wef 24 October 2009. ^The date of first release of data based on 2004-05 series wef 14 September 2010. Variation (in %): Point-to-Point Cost of Living Indices Latest Over Over 12 Months Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Month 2011 Month 2011 2010 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 9 Industrial Workers (IW) (2001=100) 197 1.5 10.1 9.8 6.5 5.3 8.8 14.9 8.0 7.9 6.7 9 Agricultural Labourers (AL) (1986-87=100) 615 0.8 9.4 9.1 5.1 4.9 9.1 15.8 9.5 7.9 9.5
2006-07 12.9 12.7 13.4 0.9 6.5 4.3 9.6 6.8 6.5
2005-06 5.3 5.3
Note: Superscript numeral denotes month to which figure relates, e g, superscript 9 stands for September. Money and Banking (Rs crore) 21 October Over Month Over Year 2011 2011 Money Supply (M3) 6958664 99835(1.5) 878162(14.4) Currency with Public 952190 10932(1.2) 111449(13.3) Deposits Money with Banks 6005314 90086(1.5) 769550(14.7) of which: Demand Deposits 646007 8085(1.3) -83689(-11.5) Time Deposits 5359307 82001(1.6) 853239(18.9) Net Bank Credit to Government 2181908 44076(2.1) 387648(21.6) Bank Credit to Commercial Sector 4447127 57466(1.3) 693916(18.5) Net Foreign Exchange Assets 1598117 48977(3.2) 251288(18.7) Banking Sector’s Net Non-Monetary Liabilities 1281800 51036(4.1) 455849(55.2) of which: RBI 578538 51888(9.9) 245345(73.6) Reserve Money (28 October 2011) 1385212 -16933(-1.2) 138228(11.1) Net RBI Credit to Centre 391681 -14509(-) 114065(-) Scheduled Commercial Banks (21 October 2011) Aggregate Deposits 5618986 88719(1.6) 741394(15.2) Demand 566892 7890(1.4) -90392(-13.8) Time 5052094 80829(1.6) 831786(19.7) Investments (for SLR purposes) 1706649 6450(0.4) 202936(13.5) Bank Credit 4150520 57365(1.4) 671021(19.3) Non-Food Credit 4081598 56688(1.4) 649314(18.9) Commercial Investments 169903 11117(7.0) 18705(12.4) Total Bank Assistance to Comml Sector 4251501 67805(1.6) 668019(18.6)
Variation Fiscal Year So Far 2011-12 2010-11 459116(7.1) 477770(8.5) 37993(4.2) 73248(9.5) 423675(7.6) 404364(8.4) -71652(-10.0) 11726(1.6) 495327(10.2) 392638(9.5) 199137(10.0) 125074(7.5) 211720(5.0) 261802(7.5) 204790(14.7) 65361(5.1) 157119(14.0) -24652(-2.9) 210263(57.1) 31578(10.5) 8330(0.6) 91298(7.9) -2353(-) 66036(-)
2010-11 896817 (16.0) 146704 (19.1) 750239 (15.5) -310 (-0.0) 750549 (18.2) 313584 (18.8) 743997 (21.3) 111858 (8.7) 274078 (32.2) 66660 (22.1) 221195 (19.1) 182453
Full Fiscal Year 2009-10 807920 (16.8) 102043 (15.3) 707606 (17.2) 129281 (22.0) 578325 (16.4) 391853 (30.7) 476516 (15.8) 367718 (-5.2) -9050 (-1.1) -86316 (-22.3) 167688 (17.0) 149821
411017(7.9) -74814(-11.7) 485830(10.6) 205030(13.7) 208437(5.3) 203798(5.3) 22302(15.1) 226100(5.6)
715143 (15.9) -3905 (-0.6) 719048 (18.7) 116867 (8.4) 697294 (21.5) 681500 (21.3) 28872 (24.5) 710372 (21.4)
658716 (17.2) 122525 (23.4) 536191 (16.2) 218342 (18.7) 469239 (16.9) 466961 (17.1) 11654 (11.0) 478615 (16.9)
384766(8.6) 11674(1.8) 373092(9.7) 118961(8.6) 234711(7.2) 235985(7.4) 33127(28.1) 269112(8.1)
2008-09 776930 (19.3) 97040 (17.1) 683375 (19.9) 10316 (1.8) 673059 (23.5) 377815 (42.0) 435904 (16.9) 57053 (4.4) 94672 (12.4) 177709 (84.5) 59696 (6.4) 176397 637170 (19.9) -1224 (-0.2) 638395 (23.9) 194694 (20.0) 413635 (17.5) 411825 (17.8) 10911 (11.4) 422736 (17.5)
Note: Government Balances as on 31 March 2011 are after closure of accounts. Index Numbers of Industrial Production August Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Averages (Base 2004-05=100) Weights 2011 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 General Index 100.00 162.4(4.0) 166.5(5.6) 157.7(8.6) 165.4(8.2) 152.9(5.3) 145.2(2.5) 141.7(15.5) 122.6(12.9) Mining and Quarrying 14.157 117.6-(3.4) 125.2(0.1) 125.1(7.7) 131.0(5.2) 124.5(7.9) 115.4(2.6) 112.5(4.6) 107.6(5.2) Manufacturing 75.527 172.6(4.5) 176.7(6.0) 166.7(9.3) 175.6(8.9) 161.3(4.8) 153.8(2.5) 150.1(18.4) 126.8(15.0) Electricity 10.316 149.4(9.5) 149.0(9.5) 136.1(4.2) 138.0(5.6) 130.8(6.1) 123.3(2.8) 120.0(6.4) 112.8(7.3) Fiscal Year So Far 2010-11 End of Fiscal Year Capital Market 4 Nov 2011 Month Ago Year Ago Trough Peak Trough Peak 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 BSE Sensitive Index (1978-79=100) 17563(-15.9) 15865 20894(31.3) 15792 19702 16022 21005 19445(10.9) 17528(80.5) 9709(-37.9) BSE-100 (1983-84=100) 9157(-17.4) 8324 11085(33.0) 8283 10262 8540 11141 10096(8.6) 9300(88.2) 4943(-40.0) BSE-200 (1989-90=100) 2148(-18.8) 1960 2647(34.9) 1950 2427 2034 2753 2379(8.1) 2200(92.9) 1140(-41.0) S&P CNX Nifty (3 Nov 1995=1000) 5284(-15.9) 4772 6282(33.3) 4748 5912 4807 6312 5834(11.1) 5249(73.8) 3021(-36.2) Skindia GDR Index (2 Jan 1995=1000) 2441(-27.3) 2191 3358(45.6) 2146 3441 2477 3479 3151(9.3) 2883(134.2) 1153(-56.2) Net FII Investment in (US $ Mn Equities) - period end 102532(3.2) 101803 99366(43.3) - - - - 101454(31.5) 77159(43.1) 51669(-18.6) September* Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Foreign Trade 2011 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 2005-06 2004-05 Exports: Rs crore 118234 723432 (49.3) 484687 (23.2) 1118823 (32.3) 845534 (0.6) 840754(28.2) 655863(14.7) 571779(25.3) 456418(21.6) 375340(27.9) US $ mn 24822 160049 (52.1) 105241 (30.0) 245868 (37.5) 178751 (-3.5) 185295(13.6) 163132(29.0) 126361(22.6) 103091(23.4) 83536(30.8) Imports: Rs crore 164759 1055339 (30.0) 811773 (30.4) 1596869 (17.1) 1363736 (-0.8) 1374434(35.8) 1012312(20.4) 840506(27.3) 660409(31.8) 501065(39.5) US $ mn 34589 233510 (32.4) 176360 (37.6) 350695 (21.6) 288373 (-5.0) 303696(20.7) 251654(35.5) 185749(24.5) 149166(33.8) 111517(42.7) Non-POL US $ mn (* Provisional figures) 25379 163161 (28.5) 126955 (40.0) 249006 (23.7) 201237 (-4.2) 210029(22.2) 171940(33.5) 128790(22.4) 105233(37.1) 76772(33.2) Balance of Trade: Rs crore -46525 -331907 -327085 -478047 -518202 -533680 -356449 -268727 -203991 -125725 US $ mn -9767 -73461 -71119 -104827 -109621 -118401 -88522 -59388 -46075 -27981 Variation Over Foreign Exchange Reserves (excluding 28 Oct 29 Oct 31 Mar Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year gold but including revaluation effects) 2011 2010 2011 Month Ago Year Ago 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 Rs crore 1411144 1221622 1245284 40112 189522 165860 49376 73038 -57826 33975 359500 189270 US $ mn 289051 274275 278899 8848 14776 10152 14584 19208 18264 -57821 107324 46816 Figures in brackets are percentage variations over the specified or over the comparable period of the previous year. (–) not relevant. [Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates, as also the thematic notes and Special Statistics series, are available on our website: http://www.epwrf.in].
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November 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
Economic & Political Weekly
Performance of Scheduled Commercial Banks in Top 50 Centres* (arranged according to deposit mobilisation rank as on March 2011) (Rs crore)
Deposit Mobilisation
2009 Rank
EPW november 19, 2011 vol xlvI no 47
Rank
801548 1 510978 2 162768 3 118778 5 123351 4 88426 6 51813 7 50276 8 38177 9 25879 10 24334 11 23169 13 20999 14 22380 12 20328 19 21005 15 18001 17 20713 18 20086 16 16782 20 16281 21 16837 22 24548 24 15542 23 13728 25 12830 27 14474 26 15041 32 13274 29 9759 31 13456 28 11008 33 8223 30 10154 34 10787 36 9037 40 8893 35 8978 37 9025 39 9252 38 8104 42 9029 43 7993 44 8292 41 6974 50 7422 47 7577 46 6102 53 6441 49 6168 45 2505020 3937336 54.4
Rs crore
2011 Rank
982498 1 560675 2 186432 3 135755 4 151872 5 103713 6 61740 7 61098 8 44882 9 30379 10 28926 11 26952 12 26148 13 27113 14 23107 15 24612 16 24272 17 23632 18 24376 19 21016 20 20332 21 18361 22 17849 23 18261 24 16630 25 14797 26 16188 27 12640 28 14361 29 12953 30 14639 31 12574 32 13141 33 12358 34 11588 35 10134 36 11836 37 10691 38 10353 39 10409 40 9873 41 9515 42 9213 43 9930 44 7923 45 8499 46 8777 47 7517 48 7934 49 9141 50 2937615 4601926 63.8
2009 Rs crore
Rank
1185099 1 634855 2 228119 4 166838 3 165644 5 128287 6 74215 7 71235 8 54592 15 35889 10 34626 9 33048 39 32228 28 31461 27 30625 17 30188 14 30140 24 29544 13 28273 18 27869 25 23732 38 21574 22 20437 63 20376 16 18645 12 18385 21 18355 11 16379 52 16293 35 15925 19 15295 26 15128 54 14879 33 14322 49 14130 29 13190 42 13134 32 12993 74 12155 40 11853 97 11447 88 11325 44 10684 37 10171 128 10004 36 9887 43 9880 65 9163 83 9140 87 9047 64 3480703 5426510 64.1
Rs crore
Rank
794658 1 351174 2 129368 4 146101 3 107367 5 105460 6 50007 7 39109 8 16229 14 31347 10 32322 9 5066 37 7565 27 7818 24 11565 17 16762 15 8383 20 18042 13 10835 18 8291 28 5304 34 9656 23 2877 63 15852 16 22297 12 9791 21 23124 11 3403 50 5407 39 10556 19 8040 26 3275 53 5680 29 3639 47 6566 30 4477 41 5821 38 2546 71 4735 43 1711 90 2024 89 4279 45 5308 36 1139 129 5374 33 4473 44 2844 74 2251 85 2031 96 2875 64 2084824 2857525 73.0
81
* Centres selected are the top 50 centres in deposit mobilisation in March 2011 which also find place in the top 200 in credit disbursement. Source: RBI (2011), Quarterly Statistics on Deposits and Credit of Scheduled Commercial Banks, March and relevant earlier issues.
C/D Ratio in %
2010
Annual Growth
2011 Rs crore
Rank
852311 1 422514 2 148852 4 175834 3 133004 6 132112 5 59309 7 47148 8 21410 14 41013 10 44028 9 6328 34 9522 21 10710 23 16444 17 21140 13 12296 20 21966 15 13684 18 8698 29 6722 37 10787 25 3446 65 18665 16 26575 12 12177 19 27943 11 4536 48 6171 39 12951 22 9939 27 4102 53 8169 28 4624 40 7977 36 5284 44 6326 38 3078 68 5184 43 2255 67 2284 94 5067 46 6479 35 1342 127 6826 62 5109 42 3016 76 2492 86 2071 85 3410 63 2423330 3345619 72.4
Deposit Rs crore
2009
2010
2011
2009
2010
Credit 2011
2009
2010
2011
1018249 99.1 86.7 85.9 19.2 22.6 20.6 15.8 7.3 553783 68.7 75.4 87.2 18.8 9.7 13.2 24.0 20.3 167449 79.5 79.8 73.4 23.1 14.5 22.4 22.0 15.1 213151 123.0 129.5 127.8 24.7 14.3 22.9 21.1 20.4 155686 87.0 87.6 94.0 17.2 23.1 9.1 22.3 23.9 163511 119.3 127.4 127.5 22.5 17.3 23.7 39.2 25.3 72011 96.5 96.1 97.0 21.2 19.2 20.2 24.7 18.6 56508 77.8 77.2 79.3 24.2 21.5 16.6 22.4 20.6 30277 42.5 47.7 55.5 24.5 17.6 21.6 3.8 31.9 48007 121.1 135.0 133.8 14.6 17.4 18.1 41.8 30.8 56158 132.8 152.2 162.2 24.0 18.9 19.7 38.4 36.2 8266 21.9 23.5 25.0 31.9 16.3 22.6 18.0 24.9 15606 36.0 36.4 48.4 22.0 24.6 23.3 16.7 25.9 15126 34.9 39.5 48.1 39.7 21.1 16.0 79.8 37.0 21744 56.9 71.2 71.0 22.4 13.7 32.5 31.5 42.2 31549 79.8 85.9 104.5 34.2 17.2 22.7 30.7 26.1 15784 46.6 50.7 52.4 14.9 34.8 24.2 34.9 46.7 25647 87.1 93.0 86.8 21.1 14.1 25.0 20.1 21.7 18842 53.9 56.1 66.6 31.8 21.3 16.0 20.4 26.3 9981 49.4 41.4 35.8 22.1 25.2 32.6 17.5 4.9 7992 32.6 33.1 33.7 24.9 24.9 16.7 20.4 26.7 13715 57.3 58.7 63.6 29.2 9.1 17.5 17.4 11.7 4107 11.7 19.3 20.1 30.7 -27.3 14.5 18.7 19.8 24219 102.0 102.2 118.9 26.8 7.5 11.6 15.6 17.7 31560 162.4 159.8 169.3 17.4 21.1 12.1 13.0 19.2 15955 76.3 82.3 86.8 32.5 15.3 24.2 17.0 24.4 36597 159.8 172.6 199.4 19.5 11.8 13.4 16.5 20.8 5782 22.6 35.9 35.3 49.1 -16.0 29.6 17.8 33.3 7395 40.7 43.0 45.4 12.6 8.2 13.5 20.2 14.1 15522 108.2 100.0 97.5 22.4 32.7 22.9 40.0 22.7 11950 59.8 67.9 78.1 4.0 8.8 4.5 15.9 23.6 5106 29.8 32.6 33.8 24.0 14.2 20.3 27.5 25.3 11655 69.1 62.2 78.3 -11.1 59.8 13.2 14.8 43.8 7168 35.8 37.4 50.0 26.8 21.7 15.9 -11.6 27.1 8092 60.9 68.8 57.3 25.0 7.4 21.9 26.9 21.5 6085 49.5 52.1 46.1 22.1 12.1 30.2 9.6 18.0 7825 65.5 53.4 59.6 27.4 33.1 11.0 30.4 8.7 3958 28.4 28.8 30.5 30.3 19.1 21.5 19.1 20.9 6180 52.5 50.1 50.8 21.8 14.7 17.4 12.3 9.5 3994 18.5 21.7 33.7 40.3 12.5 13.9 55.1 31.8 2658 25.0 23.1 23.2 21.3 21.8 15.9 7.6 12.8 5889 47.4 53.3 52.0 34.4 5.4 19.0 24.9 18.4 8132 66.4 70.3 76.1 22.9 15.3 16.0 11.4 22.1 1608 13.7 13.5 15.8 43.6 19.8 2.4 15.7 17.9 4249 77.1 86.2 42.5 19.6 13.6 26.3 10.3 27.0 6234 60.3 60.1 63.1 23.3 14.5 16.3 15.5 14.2 3438 37.5 34.4 34.8 14.5 15.8 12.6 8.8 6.1 2995 36.9 33.2 32.7 15.4 23.2 21.9 9.8 10.7 3016 31.5 26.1 33.0 24.7 23.2 15.2 36.8 2.0 4187 46.6 37.3 46.3 22.6 48.2 -1.0 26.2 18.6 2974598 83.2 82.5 85.5 17.3 18.5 16.2 4076868 72.6 72.7 75.1 21.9 16.9 17.9 17.1 21.9 73.0
19.5 31.1 12.5 21.2 17.1 23.8 21.4 19.9 41.4 17.1 27.6 30.6 63.9 41.2 32.2 49.2 28.4 16.8 37.7 14.7 18.9 27.1 19.2 29.8 18.8 31.0 31.0 27.5 19.8 19.9 20.2 24.5 42.7 55.0 1.5 15.2 23.7 28.6 19.2 77.1 16.4 16.2 25.5 19.8 -37.8 22.0 14.0 20.2 45.6 22.8 22.7
STATISTICS
Greater Mumbai 1 Delhi 2 Bangalore 3 Chennai 5 Kolkata 4 Hyderabad 6 Ahmadabad 7 Pune 8 Lucknow 9 Chandigarh 10 Jaipur 12 Patna 13 Gurgaon 16 Noida 14 Bhubaneswar 18 Kochi 15 Bhopal 20 Vadodara 17 Nagpur 19 Kanpur 22 Guwahati 23 Thiruvananthapuram 21 Dehradun 11 Indore 24 Coimbatore 27 Surat 30 Ludhiana 26 Navi Mumbai 25 Jalandhar 29 Raipur 34 Visakhapatnam 28 Ranchi 31 Panchakula Urban Estate 42 Thane 33 Ghaziabad 32 Amritsar 36 Faridabad 40 Varanasi 39 Mangalore 38 Bidhan Nagar 35 Allahabad 43 Agra 37 Rajkot 44 Bilaspur 41 Srinagar 47 Mysore 46 Jammu 45 Jabalpur 54 Kalyan-Dombivli 51 Panaji 53 Selected 50 centres All-India Percentage of selected centres
Rs crore
Gross Bank Credit
2010
