Whose livelihoods are we talking about?

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gmw: Whose livelihoods are we talking about?

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Sun, 5 Jun 2005 15:21:48 +0100

 

 

Whose livelihoods are we talking about?

 

By Devinder Sharma

 

It was too late. By the time, Jai Lal, a landless agricultural worker

of Bandali village, in Sheopur district of Madhya Pradesh, in the

heartland of India, returned to share the good news with his wife –

that he

finally managed to get a petty job with a shopkeeper – she had succumbed

to hunger. A week later, graves were dug for his two children, both

unable to continue with the prolonged fight against hunger.

 

Jai Lal's family paid a heavy price for the faulty agricultural

policies that are being relentlessly promoted and pushed in the name of

economic growth and development. Jai Lal is not the only victim of a

development paradigm that turns a blind eye to the resulting human

suffering.

Travelling around the country, I am no longer shocked at the plight of

the rural masses, unknowingly who continue to pay a heavy price for the

agrarian policy thrust upon them. What hurts me is to see that even

fifty-seven years after Independence, growing hunger and inequalities do

not prick the conscious of the nation.

 

There is no other plausible reason that can explain why Jai Lal lost

his family. After all, Jai Lal's family died of hunger when more than 45

million tonnes of foodgrains were stacked in the open, much of it

rotting for want of adequate storage facilities. This was in early

2003. Two

years earlier, the country had a record 65 million tonnes of food

surplus, at a time when nearly 320 million – a third of the world's

estimated 840 million hungry – looked in disbelief at the mountains of

the food

stocks that lay decaying in front of their dry eyes. None of the Nobel

laureates or distinguished academicians or the chief executive officers

of the IT companies, who never get tired of swearing in the name of

poverty eradication, even made a passing reference to the criminal apathy

exhibited through the shameful paradox of plenty – mountains of food

rotting at a time when millions were living in hunger.

 

A report of the Standing Committee of Parliament estimated that the

government was spending Rs 6,200-crore every year to maintain these food

stocks. Mainline economists and agricultural scientists did not even

once question the necessity of maintaining the surplus stocks when

millions were sleeping with empty stomach. Some parliamentarians even

suggested throwing the surplus food in the sea. Instead of feeding the

poor,

nearly 17 million tonnes from the unmanageable food surplus was diverted

for exports in 2002-03, and that too at a price that was actually meant

for people living below the poverty line. Another six million tonnes

were released for the open trade at the same price.

 

The much-publicised Millennium Development Goals aims to pull out half

the world's population living in poverty and hunger by the year 2015.

If only India had attempted to feed its 320 million hungry in 2002-03,

at least a third of world's hunger could have been taken care of.

Refraining from feeding its own people, successive governments took

refuge by

saying that the cost of feeding the poor would push up the fiscal

deficit. On the other hand, between 2000-05, Rs 72,000 crores have been

invested in the telecom sector. There is no dearth of money when it comes

to the sunrise industries. Much of this is however in the name of

building a knowledge-led rural economy.

 

Technology Divide

 

Ten years back, while researching for my book " In the Famine Trap "

(published by UK Food Group, London) I was travelling in the infamous

Kalahandi region of western Orissa. It was during that time some

hunger-related deaths were reported from Bolangir district. I drove to

the village

to meet the families of those who had succumbed to hunger. As I was

approaching the dusty village what appalled me was the sight of two huge

satellite towers installed right in the heart of the village. Believe it

or not, each house in the village had a satellite telephone. The

inhabitants of the village didn't have food to eat but were provided with

telephones.

 

Satellite towers in a village where people had nothing to eat ! That

surely is an ingenious way to bridge the technology divide so as to help

the poverty-stricken join the mainstream the of upwardly mobile !!

 

In a country, which alone has one-third of the world's hungry, hunger

and starvation no longer evokes compassion and reaction. News of hunger

and starvation no longer adorns the front pages of newspapers. Hunger

is, in reality, a non-issue. It is something that we must despise,

something that we must close our eyes to. After all, the elite should not

spoil their morning breakfast looking at pictures of the hungry splashed

on the front pages of daily newspapers.

 

Farmers constitute the rural majority. Some pro-liberalisation

economists led the assault on farming saying that it is not the poor

farmers

who needed adequate infrastructure, cheap credit, an assured market, and

a remunerative price but the small percentage of rich industrialists,

business and trade that needed to be showered with the State exchequer.

The result is that while the non-performing assets of the nationalized

banks in India grew to Rs 101,000 crore -- you cannot call it bank

fraud, as it has been performed by the rich -- with many individual

industrialists defaulting the banks to the tune of Rs 500 crore, the

recovery

of outstanding dues from small and marginal farmers continued to be in

the range of 85 per cent.

 

It is amusing that a majority of these erring business establishments

have already made a foray into the ICT sector. The technology divide or

the digital divide surely becomes wider when scarce public resources

are first misappropriated and then invested by the same industrial houses

with the `pious' intention of ameliorating poverty.

 

Take the case of agriculture. In Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, eastern

Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and even in

the frontline agricultural state of Punjab, thousands of farmers had

committed suicides. Reeling under mounting debt, and with the crop

harvest lying at the mercy of the private grain trade, thousands took the

fatal route to escape the humiliation that comes along with indebtedness.

Tens of thousands of others have been known to be selling body organs.

A majority of those who survived the ordeal preferred to migrate to the

urban centres. Much of the agrarian crisis is because of the terms of

trade being heavily loaded against the rural areas – more money is being

taken out of the villages than what is being invested.

 

In more recent times, between May to August 2003, hundreds of farmers

in Karnataka, in south India, paradoxically the hub of biotechnology

industry, have taken the fatal route to escape the spasm of hunger and

the

growing humiliation that comes along with crop failures. In fact, such

is the growing crisis on the farm front, that there is hardly a week

when a couple of farmers do not commit suicide in several parts of

southern India. Pick up a vernacular newspaper in any region of south

India

and the chances are that you will find a report of a farmer's suicide.

Unable to understand the ground realities, an expert committee in

Karnataka has asked the government to send a team of psychiatrists to

talk to

farmers.

 

At the same time, in the past few months and for that matter a trend

that continues from a couple of years, a few educated entrepreneurs in

the Karnataka's Capital, Bangalore, have suddenly become the darling of

the state exchequer. Many foreign companies most of them unable to

operate in the hostile environment against genetically modified crops in

Europe, have moved shop to Bangalore. The mice, they say cannot resist

the

cheese. Foreign investment therefore lures many of the educated young.

And invariably, they all come with the promise of higher crop yields,

nutritional crops, and with the underlying thrust on eradicating hunger.

A majority of these biotechnology units, subsidised heavily from the

state funds, merely act as a service centre for the foreign companies.

 

It isn't therefore surprising to see Bangalore hosting five-star

conclaves every month or so and that too in the name of fighting

hunger. None

of the delegates, and I repeat, none of them have ever stepped out of

the hotels to even visit and meet the families of those who laid down

their lives essentially to sustain flawed policies, including the

misplaced emphasis on crop biotechnology. Those talking of hunger and

poverty

actually have never been even close to feeling what hunger means. For

the educated and the elite, hunger is nothing more than a missed lunch.

Biotechnology therefore is a 'technological tool' for them that can

help mitigate hunger and malnutrition. But the question that is often

missed is: whose hunger and malnutrition are they talking about?

 

Digital Divide

 

At a time when jobless growth proliferates, the government has found an

easy way out. Realising the importance of developing an information and

knowledge-based rural economy " especially among the ultra poor and

socially underprivileged sections of the society, " it has embarked

upon an

ambitious programme to take information communication technology (ICT)

to the villages.

 

Didn't we hear of the woman weaver in remote Tamil Nadu who was able to

sell traditional handloom saris at a fabulous price? Haven't we read in

the New York Times about the info-kiosks and 'e-Choupal' that Indian

Tobacco Company has provided in rural countryside? Don't we know of the

government's initiative to encourage farmers to go in for future trading

in commodities? We are often told that these opportunities are merely a

peep into the enormous potential ICT has in promoting the principles of

social inclusion, gender equity and reaching remote areas and remedying

regional imbalances.

 

One such approach is to set up virtual agriculture universities. In

Maharashtra, a virtual university for agrarian prosperity has been

suggested. Fifty internet kiosks have already been set up as a pilot

project

in the villages of Baramati and Khed tehsils of Pune district. Like the

disbanded `Training and Visit' (T & V) system of farm extension where

each trained farmer was expected to spread the technology to another ten

farmers in the village, the virtual university too is embarking upon the

same strategy. What is perhaps not known is that despite the backing of

the World Bank, the T & V system of agricultural extension had miserably

failed in disseminating improved technology. Maharashtra meanwhile has

already spent Rs 150 lakhs for the pilot project in 2003-04 and has

promised Rs 175 lakhs for 2004-05.

 

The new order of empowerment is being hailed as a revolutionary

paradigm transformation in the life of the Indian farmer. After all, the

'e-Choupal' project has already benefited over 2.4 million farmers

with in

six states. In the next ten years, its reach will extend to 100,000

villages and in the process create more than 10 million e-farmers. What

will then happen? It will improve the farmers decision making ability,

help aggregation of demand by creating a virtual producers cooperative

and

in the process facilitate access to higher quality farm inputs at lower

costs for the farmers.

 

This is more or less what was promised when the country was waking up

to the visual medium – the television. The government had then come up

with numerous schemes for providing community TV sets in each village

with the same aims and objectives. While the TV failed to inspire the

farming community to bring about a technological revolution, the fact

remains that despite the reach of the visual communication medium, hunger

and poverty continued to grow in absolute terms. Who gained in the

process were the manufacturers and suppliers of the TV sets.

 

Let us first analyse the motive behind the commodity exchange. At a

time when thousands of farmers have committed suicide in the past few

years throughout the country, the government's intention of introducing

future trading in rice, wheat and other commodities shows the complete

bankruptcy in finding alternatives. In India, the average land holding

size is 1.47 hectares, and only five to ten percent of the farming

population has land holdings exceeding 4 hectares. To expect these

farmers,

who continue to survive against all odds year after year, to go online

and trade seems to be a wild imagination of a stockbroker that has been

accepted by apathetic official machinery.

 

It is known that the government is slowly withdrawing from food

procurement citing the unwieldy procurement structure and the

inefficiency in

the system as the main reason. Food procurement however was an

essential measure to provide an assured market to the farmers. By

withdrawing

from food procurement, it is obvious that farmers are being penalised

for the inefficiency of the food corporation and various other government

agencies, which includes some of the original promoters of the NMCE.

 

At the same time, the government is also withdrawing from providing an

assured price to farmers by saying time and again that the minimum

support price (MSP) has become the maximum support price. This is a wrong

conclusion, and does not hold true. The reality is that the MSP looks

higher than the international prices because of the massive agricultural

subsidies in the western countries that depress global prices. In the

richest trading block – Organisation for Economic Cooperation (OECD)

countries – a subsidy of US $ 1 billion is provided every day to

agriculture as a result of which the international prices slump.

 

The question is why should the Indian farmers be penalised for the

subsidised agriculture in the rich countries? Furthermore, by withdrawing

the support prices, the Indian government is only helping the American

and European farmers who continue to produce at subsidised prices and

then dump the produce in the global markets. The cheap and subsidised

commodities that are dumped on the world markets, actually is the key

reason for growing rural poverty and loss of livelihoods.

 

Even in America, it is not the farmers who trade at the stock markets.

It is the trade, which does that. If only future trading was a viable

mechanism to ensure lock in prices of future production or sales, and

provide efficient management of price risks through hedging, there was no

need for the rich countries to shell out a monumental subsidy for

agriculture. If the American farmers, with the level of education and the

size of landholdings, do not find future trading to be helpful, it is

strange how the Indian government is promoting it as a saviour for the

farming community.

 

In reality, future trading is a recipe for sure destruction of the

gains achieved after the advent of green revolution. This is a recipe for

the elimination of small and marginal farmers, forming 80 per cent of

the agricultural workforce, and is meant to pave the way for the smooth

entry of the private sector. This is a recipe for further

marginalisation of the farming communities. This is a recipe to ensure

that India

slips back into the dark days of the 'ship-to-mouth' existence.

 

The emergence of `e-Choupal' is also timed with the withdrawal of

safety nets for the farmers. It is coming at a time when the retail

sector

is fast moving into the rural areas. The real objective of the

'e-Choupals' is to create a direct marketing channel for the promoting

company,

by what it calls as 'eliminating wasteful intermediation and multiple

handling'. It actually aims at harmonising the business pursuits of the

promoting company rather than helping the farming community with

pro-environment, pro-women and pro-farming systems that lead to

sustainable

livelihoods.

 

If the retail sector (read supermarkets) is an endeavour for achieving

the broader objectives of social and economic development, farmers in

the rich and developed countries would not have been driven out of the

farm lands. It is a fact that corporate agriculture in collaboration

with the retail sector has plundered the natural resource base thereby

rendering agriculture unproductive and environmentally-unfriendly.

Promoting such a system in India is sure to compound the existing

agrarian

crisis and lead to some unforeseen socio-economic problems.

 

Setting up a vision for a rural knowledge revolution is certainly not

incorrect. But what is needed is a mission that takes advantage of the

existing knowledge and wisdom in the rural areas and incorporate

strategies that actually help mitigate the existing problems.

 

Change is not only desirable, but vital. But the time-tested

technologies of the past cannot be confined to a dead museum. Take the

case of

the traditional water harvesting structures. These have been perfected

with time, and have incorporated the wisdom of the people who lived in

water scare situations. The need is to rebuild these structures, rather

than to allow the water tankers mafia to ruin the remarkable traditional

system.

 

History tells us that civilisations were nurtured along the rivers, the

meandering rivers acting as a lifeline. At the same time the population

in the cities drew its food requirements from the adjoining hinterland.

The synergy between the cities or towns (call it urban) and the rural

areas was therefore economically integrated. This has been gradually

dismantled. Instead the entire effort is now to privatise the rivers and

lakes, de-link it from the people who protected these water bodies.

Similarly, the food supply of the mega cities and urban centres is now

being passed into the hands of supermarkets. These highly subsidised

retail

malls are now moving into the villages.

 

Pushing the farmers and the rural populations into yet another alien

`knowledge' system is unlikely to meet Mahatma Gandhi's dream of a gram

swaraj. Mahatma Gandhi realised the strength of the villages and wanted

these to be self-reliant. The tragedy is that those who design such

massive networks in the name of poor and hungry have actually lost touch

with the ground realities. The problems exists somewhere else and we

come out with solutions that actually help the corporates garner more

profits.

 

It is true that the ICT sector despite massive government funding has

only generated not more than 600,000 jobs. In addition, the BPO industry

employs some 200,000 people. This is not even a drop in the ocean

looking at India's huge crisis in job creation. We are aware that the ICT

sector promises to create one million jobs by 2007. It is also a fact

that the ICT industry can meet its own obligations from its own

resources.

The technology is certainly very useful and this writer is not opposed

to technology interventions but what has to be immediately checked is

the faulty emphasis in promoting the commercial interests of the

hardware manufacturers in the name of creating rural livelihoods.

 

It is time to redefine the national priorities. It is time the

government first understood the limitations of its own `knowledge' in

grasping

the real problems and obstacle in rural development. Talking of

steering a job-led growth for the ultra poor with the help of the ICT

is like

the four blind men trying to figure out the elephant. Jai Lal is one of

the millions who constitute the ultra poor. Where is the technology

intervention that can help create a livelihood or empower people like him

and other under-privileged? And who cares as long as our own livelihood

remains protected and is sustained by such glorious statements??

 

Poverty cannot be removed by providing the poor with mobile phones and

knowledge-kiosks whereas hunger cannot be fought by setting up a

nationwide network of `e-Choupals'. If we are honest in fighting

hunger and

squalor, let us begin by making an effort where it is needed. #

 

Devinder Sharma is an expert on food and trade policy and is based in

New Delhi

 

 

 

 

 

 

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