Villages show that self-help is the best help (The Hindu, March 10, 2002)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
A long held view that people do not want to contribute to better their lives in the villages has been disproved in Maharashtra. The World Bank, in a recent aide memoir, has not only confirmed it but, on that strength, has shown an inclination to fund rural water supply and sanitation projects.
On a recent visit to Maharashtra, World Bank officials found that people had chipped in with ideas, money and even physical labour to create facilities in their villages last year, which at a conservative estimate, could be around Rs. 200 crores. If that was possible, then 10 per cent share towards the projects would be normal.
Hitherto, politicians had been telling policy-makers that villagers do not or would not contribute their share for demand-driven projects and that Maharashtra, despite a fund crunch, would have to remain rooted in the supply-driven projects, which the Government as a duty has to provide. The reality is that without funds, the State Government could not provide the 90 per cent.
All of last year, Maharashtra had seen a quiet revolution, where under a village cleanliness movement, named after Gadge Maharaj, a saintly figure of the 20th century, villages were asked to clean up and show their performance on 85 counts including sanitation, hygiene, toilets, water storage etc. The best villages got rewards totalling Rs. 5 crores. This brainchild of the Rural Development Minister, R. R. Patil, triggered phenomenal enthusiasm.
Gadge Maharaj was a preacher who carried a broom tied to his waist — he died in 1957 — and first swept a village before he preached moral, societal and personal cleanliness. It was a mission whose meaning was incorporated into the programme, and the people responded.
The World Bank has recognised the "success'' of this endeavour to "build social capital'' and "empower women groups'' and thinks they can be "useful pointers for the project design'' where popular participation is a reality. It would like to have new local institutions that are "inclusive, accountable and transparent''.
Under the project, now in its second year, villages which get less than 50 per cent marks were categorised as "dirty villages'', and, sources say, in some cases, families refused to give their daughters to grooms from such villages. Those that are winners are not entitled to another cash reward but would be preferred for new projects on a priority.
Of the 42,000 villages, some 35,000 participated, 6,000 were declared "dirty'' but those who did well, did with elan. In Sangli district, for instance, the people of Tung village decided that everything would be pink, like Jaipur. But, when they came to a mosque, they stopped in their tracks. But Muslims said it was all right to daub pink on its walls too, instead of the preferred green.
The World Bank, which noted "local talent, innovation'' but requiring "training'', also found, for instance, Raanmala "clean, aesthetic'' and that Rs. 5.7 lakhs was spent by the people on a village pond. Barapur, also in Pune district, was "impressively clean''. The people funded all this.
As the State Government did not believe that popular contribution towards projects was possible and abandoned its intent and four funding proposals — including from the World Bank, the German and Japanese Governments — which required popular funding were lost.
By the time the reformed policy, which again hinged on a 10 per cent popular participation, came through in July 2000, it was too late. Some 2,817 projects, costing around Rs. 2,100 crores are on the shelf, with just 819 of them having been completed up to 75 per cent, another 490 up to half way and another 337, much less. The interest burden on this expenditure has been Rs. 134 crores in 1999-2000 and Rs. 485 crores in the subsequent year.
About Me
- Mahesh Vijapurkar
- Thane, Maharashtra, India
- Mahesh Vijapurkar is a longtime journalist, had worked for two national newspapers, The Indian Express and later, The Hindu. Thane is his adopted city. Any views or inputs for use could be mailed to him at mvijapurkar@gmail.com
24 April 2007
Man smarter, but women?
Where women are mere proxies (The Hindu, February 24, 2002)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
MUMBAI FEB. 23. As many as 13 women won from `open wards' defeating men rivals in the recent Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections. Their strength is now an all-time high of 89 or 40 per cent in a House of 227.
This is a new benchmark of female participation in mainstream politics. In smaller towns across Maharashtra, it has been only tokenism in women's empowerment. Quotas have been filled, and often, by women who are proxies for males in their families.
Since 1990, Maharashtra had a policy of 30 per cent reservation for women in all local self-government bodies, from gram panchayat to the municipal corporations, marking it out as ``progressive''
In the legislature where no quotas are yet set, it has been just 15 per cent presence. However, the male dominant tradition still holds sway in smaller towns and villages though some exceptionally well-run all-woman gram panchayats are found. They, however, are not a rule.
Even in Mumbai, a woman politician is not on her own. A woman corporator was not allowed to take telephone calls from newspapers during election time and the husband insisted that he be interviewed instead.
In another instance, a male politician told the returning officer that a caste certificate of his was good enough to judge his wife's while filing her nomination paper. In the countryside and small towns, even if she is elected, she is only a `vahini' (sister-in-law) with the male conducting the business of politics.
Here is yet another telling instance. The Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, was felicitating women directly elected to the reserved posts of presidents of town civic councils. When it was time for photographs, their men-folk were in the forefront and the women had to wait for their turn. When a Congress party official pointed this out to Mr. Deshmukh, he reportedly conceded ``in our society, this is how it is''.
A whole lot of women have entered politics because their husbands' wards were reserved for women. Men-folk sit in the offices of presidents and often, no decisions are taken without the male nod. Executive officers of some local bodies provide a place for their husbands in the standing committees. When this was brought to their notice, political leaders conceded that ``it is a reality'' and it ``would be long before the women manage to come into their own''.
Though this practice is not widespread, it is a marked feature of the political landscape of Maharashtra. To start with, a whole lot of them contest to keep the seats warm for the male members of their family _ father, son, husband or even a brother- in-law _ who lost the option since the reservation for women had kept them out of the reckoning.
Senior politicians, all men, speak of ``difficulties'' in finding enough women or ``women with the right background'' even to fill quotas.
Medha Nanivadekar's ``Empowering women: assessing the policy of reservations in local bodies: a report'' five years ago commented, ``The proxy women manifest a naive consciousness which has internalised or is at least guided by the perceptions and orientations of the men, thereby, forming some distorted perception of their own condition. They totally lack in articulating views about women's issues.''
Ms. Nanivadekar even ``found one example where a person got married just before the election in order to field his better half in his constituency''.
What her study said five years ago is true even today. In Maharashtra, a coinage has gained currency: `dheed sadasya' meaning in Marathi `a member-and-a-half' and denoting a woman whose `elected life' is run by the male.
It is obvious who ``the half'' is. The trend in many gram panchayats is that elected woman sarpanches, using an enabling provision in the law, hand over their authority to an upasarpanch who is often a male.
Ms. Nanivadekar's study says the proxy arrangement has brought in a mindset not conducive to promoting women's empowerment.
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
MUMBAI FEB. 23. As many as 13 women won from `open wards' defeating men rivals in the recent Greater Mumbai Municipal Corporation elections. Their strength is now an all-time high of 89 or 40 per cent in a House of 227.
This is a new benchmark of female participation in mainstream politics. In smaller towns across Maharashtra, it has been only tokenism in women's empowerment. Quotas have been filled, and often, by women who are proxies for males in their families.
Since 1990, Maharashtra had a policy of 30 per cent reservation for women in all local self-government bodies, from gram panchayat to the municipal corporations, marking it out as ``progressive''
In the legislature where no quotas are yet set, it has been just 15 per cent presence. However, the male dominant tradition still holds sway in smaller towns and villages though some exceptionally well-run all-woman gram panchayats are found. They, however, are not a rule.
Even in Mumbai, a woman politician is not on her own. A woman corporator was not allowed to take telephone calls from newspapers during election time and the husband insisted that he be interviewed instead.
In another instance, a male politician told the returning officer that a caste certificate of his was good enough to judge his wife's while filing her nomination paper. In the countryside and small towns, even if she is elected, she is only a `vahini' (sister-in-law) with the male conducting the business of politics.
Here is yet another telling instance. The Chief Minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, was felicitating women directly elected to the reserved posts of presidents of town civic councils. When it was time for photographs, their men-folk were in the forefront and the women had to wait for their turn. When a Congress party official pointed this out to Mr. Deshmukh, he reportedly conceded ``in our society, this is how it is''.
A whole lot of women have entered politics because their husbands' wards were reserved for women. Men-folk sit in the offices of presidents and often, no decisions are taken without the male nod. Executive officers of some local bodies provide a place for their husbands in the standing committees. When this was brought to their notice, political leaders conceded that ``it is a reality'' and it ``would be long before the women manage to come into their own''.
Though this practice is not widespread, it is a marked feature of the political landscape of Maharashtra. To start with, a whole lot of them contest to keep the seats warm for the male members of their family _ father, son, husband or even a brother- in-law _ who lost the option since the reservation for women had kept them out of the reckoning.
Senior politicians, all men, speak of ``difficulties'' in finding enough women or ``women with the right background'' even to fill quotas.
Medha Nanivadekar's ``Empowering women: assessing the policy of reservations in local bodies: a report'' five years ago commented, ``The proxy women manifest a naive consciousness which has internalised or is at least guided by the perceptions and orientations of the men, thereby, forming some distorted perception of their own condition. They totally lack in articulating views about women's issues.''
Ms. Nanivadekar even ``found one example where a person got married just before the election in order to field his better half in his constituency''.
What her study said five years ago is true even today. In Maharashtra, a coinage has gained currency: `dheed sadasya' meaning in Marathi `a member-and-a-half' and denoting a woman whose `elected life' is run by the male.
It is obvious who ``the half'' is. The trend in many gram panchayats is that elected woman sarpanches, using an enabling provision in the law, hand over their authority to an upasarpanch who is often a male.
Ms. Nanivadekar's study says the proxy arrangement has brought in a mindset not conducive to promoting women's empowerment.
Carelessness adds to hazards
Untreated hospital waste in Mumbai (The Hindu, December 18, 2003)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
MUMBAI: Had a rag-picker not raised a hue and cry after stumbling upon some amputated limbs and body parts at a dumping ground here on Tuesday, few would have been wiser to the fact that some six tonnes of untreated hospital waste floats around the city, posing a threat to public health.
According to officially stated norms, only up to 15 per cent of such hospital wastes — bio-medical waste which include amputated limbs, umbilical cords, blood and pus-soaked cotton and gauze and discarded bandages — require to be incinerated. The rest is to be autoclaved before being sent to the dumping yard.
Sometimes, wastes requiring incineration can be higher in proportion. In July, for instance, it was found that of the 90.17 tonnes of hospital waste received at the centralised incinerator-cum-autoclave facility, 37.23 tonnes (about 41 per cent) needed to be incinerated.
Till October 21, only a third of all estimated hospital waste was being incinerated at the centralised facility. But the facility was shut down for improvements since local residents feared health hazards from the smoke that came from its stacks. It will be weeks before the plant becomes operational again. But even after that it would be inadequate to meet the city's needs.
Not everything was right when the plant was working: it was under-utilised as just four trucks of the civic body were transporting waste to the facility while at least 10 trucks were needed for this purpose. The plant received only 2.6 tonnes of waste though it could process four tonnes a day.
About six tonnes of waste is produced everyday by hospitals in Mumbai. "Some 500 hospitals are registered with the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and are authorised to generate biomedical wastes," a source said. There is no full census of this sector.
Untreated wastes, sources in the pollution control board concede, "obviously get mixed with the municipal garbage, exposing the garbage handlers and the people to infections."
There are several deficiencies in the two-year-old centralised plant concept. First, it was located in the Group of Tuberculosis Hospital in Sewri, a thickly-populated part of the city. Secondly, no thought was given to a fallback arrangement in the event of failure. "We went wrong in both location and the number of facilities we need," a government official admitted.
Now, the Mumbai Municipal Corporation has been told to not only make operational the facility quickly but also open more such plants.The Hindu, December 18, 2003)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
MUMBAI: Had a rag-picker not raised a hue and cry after stumbling upon some amputated limbs and body parts at a dumping ground here on Tuesday, few would have been wiser to the fact that some six tonnes of untreated hospital waste floats around the city, posing a threat to public health.
According to officially stated norms, only up to 15 per cent of such hospital wastes — bio-medical waste which include amputated limbs, umbilical cords, blood and pus-soaked cotton and gauze and discarded bandages — require to be incinerated. The rest is to be autoclaved before being sent to the dumping yard.
Sometimes, wastes requiring incineration can be higher in proportion. In July, for instance, it was found that of the 90.17 tonnes of hospital waste received at the centralised incinerator-cum-autoclave facility, 37.23 tonnes (about 41 per cent) needed to be incinerated.
Till October 21, only a third of all estimated hospital waste was being incinerated at the centralised facility. But the facility was shut down for improvements since local residents feared health hazards from the smoke that came from its stacks. It will be weeks before the plant becomes operational again. But even after that it would be inadequate to meet the city's needs.
Not everything was right when the plant was working: it was under-utilised as just four trucks of the civic body were transporting waste to the facility while at least 10 trucks were needed for this purpose. The plant received only 2.6 tonnes of waste though it could process four tonnes a day.
About six tonnes of waste is produced everyday by hospitals in Mumbai. "Some 500 hospitals are registered with the Maharashtra Pollution Control Board and are authorised to generate biomedical wastes," a source said. There is no full census of this sector.
Untreated wastes, sources in the pollution control board concede, "obviously get mixed with the municipal garbage, exposing the garbage handlers and the people to infections."
There are several deficiencies in the two-year-old centralised plant concept. First, it was located in the Group of Tuberculosis Hospital in Sewri, a thickly-populated part of the city. Secondly, no thought was given to a fallback arrangement in the event of failure. "We went wrong in both location and the number of facilities we need," a government official admitted.
Now, the Mumbai Municipal Corporation has been told to not only make operational the facility quickly but also open more such plants.The Hindu, December 18, 2003)
Place to work, no place to live!
Poor pay the price for Mumbai's `Shanghaisation' (The Hindu Business Line,Feb 04, 2005)
State adopts `double-standards' in re-sheltering slum-dwellers
Mahesh Vijapurkar
Only after about 84,000 huts were flattened by civic officials under police protection have strident voices are being raised with support from Ms Medha Patkar of Narmada Bachao Andolan.
WHAT'S sauce for the goose is obviously not sauce for the gander. That's certainly so with slum dwellers in Mumbai where the Maharashtra Government is applying two different yardsticks to decide who should get re-housed at State expense and who should be left out in the cold.
Those who have been evicted from the route of the new, broad roads and extra railway tracks being laid to make movement easier alone are being given alternate apartments of 225 sq ft each. But those who have been bulldozed to make Mumbai shine like Shanghai — were they alone eyesores? — are being asked to fend for themselves.
Because the World Bank so stipulated, the Bank-funded infrastructure endeavour, Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) has already spent most part of the Rs 450-plus-crore on building apartments on Government land. Or else, the squatters would have had no defenders. But the others whose huts were bulldozed since mid-November 2004 have no protectors.
The number affected by the MUTP and those made homeless to make Mumbai shine like Shanghai may ultimately be alike, at about 3.5 lakh.
Only after about 84,000 huts were flattened by civic officials under police protection have strident voices are being raised with support from Ms Medha Patkar of Narmada Bachao Andolan. Even before she told the victims of the massive — and for the first time, such relentless drive to rid the city of slums — that they should return to rebuild their homes at the same spots, some 25,000 had done just that. A vexed civic corporation says it is not theirs' but the Government's job to protect cleared lands.
The backgrounds of all the migrants who colonised all vacant land, both private and public, with official and political connivance do not differ: They came to find livelihoods but not houses to live in. Of them, only those who luckily picked spots that later became the route for new, wider roads and extra railway tracks for the suburban trains are entitled to replacement housing costing over Rs 450 crore. The other squatters are the unwanted.
If the massive demolition drive targeted shanties put up after January 1,1995, those who are benefiting from the MUTP-driven housing including those who built them after that cut-off date and thus would normally be categorised "illegal."
Those built prior to 1995 alone are entitled to protection till resettlement. In the MUTP's resettlement all huts, regardless of their `legal' or `illegal' status have been treated alike. In the first 1996 base line survey, most of the potential beneficiaries were living, obviously, in pre-1995 huts but by the time they were supposed to shift , the number of those who put up their huts on those sites grew.
An official confirmed that, depending on the site, such dwellings "could be between a fifth and a third of the total. We have been flexible and people have benefited."
`Tsunami demolition': The drive which a former High Court judge, Mr Hosbet Suresh, calls "a tsunami demolition" and so far has flattened 73,500 shanties built post-1995 has no rehabilitation component at all. People left homeless are expected to move out of the city. Most continue hoping for help and remain in the open.
Some who linger on the devastated landscape, may soon be driven away in a second wave of action. The demolition drive's victims also stand to lose their right to vote because they are no longer residents of "given addresses" in the voters' lists; unless they find new ones, cannot vote.
This, however, has not triggered many protests because the priority is to find a home, not retain their voting right. And they had voted for this Government because they were promised their post-1995, but pre-2000 shanties would be protected. So what price the vote?
State adopts `double-standards' in re-sheltering slum-dwellers
Mahesh Vijapurkar
Only after about 84,000 huts were flattened by civic officials under police protection have strident voices are being raised with support from Ms Medha Patkar of Narmada Bachao Andolan.
WHAT'S sauce for the goose is obviously not sauce for the gander. That's certainly so with slum dwellers in Mumbai where the Maharashtra Government is applying two different yardsticks to decide who should get re-housed at State expense and who should be left out in the cold.
Those who have been evicted from the route of the new, broad roads and extra railway tracks being laid to make movement easier alone are being given alternate apartments of 225 sq ft each. But those who have been bulldozed to make Mumbai shine like Shanghai — were they alone eyesores? — are being asked to fend for themselves.
Because the World Bank so stipulated, the Bank-funded infrastructure endeavour, Mumbai Urban Transport Project (MUTP) has already spent most part of the Rs 450-plus-crore on building apartments on Government land. Or else, the squatters would have had no defenders. But the others whose huts were bulldozed since mid-November 2004 have no protectors.
The number affected by the MUTP and those made homeless to make Mumbai shine like Shanghai may ultimately be alike, at about 3.5 lakh.
Only after about 84,000 huts were flattened by civic officials under police protection have strident voices are being raised with support from Ms Medha Patkar of Narmada Bachao Andolan. Even before she told the victims of the massive — and for the first time, such relentless drive to rid the city of slums — that they should return to rebuild their homes at the same spots, some 25,000 had done just that. A vexed civic corporation says it is not theirs' but the Government's job to protect cleared lands.
The backgrounds of all the migrants who colonised all vacant land, both private and public, with official and political connivance do not differ: They came to find livelihoods but not houses to live in. Of them, only those who luckily picked spots that later became the route for new, wider roads and extra railway tracks for the suburban trains are entitled to replacement housing costing over Rs 450 crore. The other squatters are the unwanted.
If the massive demolition drive targeted shanties put up after January 1,1995, those who are benefiting from the MUTP-driven housing including those who built them after that cut-off date and thus would normally be categorised "illegal."
Those built prior to 1995 alone are entitled to protection till resettlement. In the MUTP's resettlement all huts, regardless of their `legal' or `illegal' status have been treated alike. In the first 1996 base line survey, most of the potential beneficiaries were living, obviously, in pre-1995 huts but by the time they were supposed to shift , the number of those who put up their huts on those sites grew.
An official confirmed that, depending on the site, such dwellings "could be between a fifth and a third of the total. We have been flexible and people have benefited."
`Tsunami demolition': The drive which a former High Court judge, Mr Hosbet Suresh, calls "a tsunami demolition" and so far has flattened 73,500 shanties built post-1995 has no rehabilitation component at all. People left homeless are expected to move out of the city. Most continue hoping for help and remain in the open.
Some who linger on the devastated landscape, may soon be driven away in a second wave of action. The demolition drive's victims also stand to lose their right to vote because they are no longer residents of "given addresses" in the voters' lists; unless they find new ones, cannot vote.
This, however, has not triggered many protests because the priority is to find a home, not retain their voting right. And they had voted for this Government because they were promised their post-1995, but pre-2000 shanties would be protected. So what price the vote?
21 April 2007
Truth: Droughts are moneyspinners, but victims always helpless
Recurring droughts & enduring truth (The Hindu, June 1, 2000)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
STARK IMAGES of dry landscapes, columns of women bringing home pots of drinking water from far-off places or empty pots lined up, cattle carcasses strewn around, evoke readers' and TV viewers' horror. These periodic bouts of graphic pictorials have resulted in little mitigation of a recurring crisis across the country. If they have been relatively absent in the last one decade, it is due to the good, blissfully long, unbroken cycle of plentiful rains. No credit to any State or, for that matter, the Centre for any work done in the intervening years.
Some pictures are piercingly poignant; some do not tell an accurate story. It is not uncommon for flayed animals to be left undisposed. After the vultures pick them clean, the village panchayats do not do their job and leave them around, a not uncommon rural sight. But a photographer cannot but take note of it when hungry, thirsty villagers index a drought using the first visible - to the urban reporter, the only understandable - benchmark. I recall a sarpanch in a village beyond Jodhpur saying how he ``misled'' a national fortnightly into believing that a pile of camel bones, accumulated over years, was the result of one bad year. That was 1983 in Solankiya Tala.
In the best of times, the ruralscapes of Barmer and Kutch are not going to provide a lot of greenery, certainly not in April and May when the desiccating winds and scorching sun take their toll. Even places around a well are going to be as barren in semi-arid and arid regions, but such pictures do tell a tale. After all, when a system fails to note the signals and April and May show up the unfolding implications such pictures have a purpose. But what should be asked is, if such areas have tanks with some water and women wait simply because electricity is not available to pump it up, who is responsible for aggravating fickle nature's impact? They are not being asked.
It does not take more funds - States demand more than they need, get less than they ask from the Centre, the reality is somewhere in between - to ensure that power is switched on at the right time so that women do not endure more hardships than required when scarce water is actually available? Does it need anything more than common sense to decide that if a drought was impending, a State (Gujarat in this case) should not sell its fodder cheap and wait for the distress to set in before importing at double the price from Punjab, tying up its strained manpower in avoidable tasks? Governments cannot wish, like people do, that droughts do not happen. They should prepare for it.Drought- proofing is difficult but could have been done. But the seeming insulation of the economy from droughts and their impact appears to have made those tasks less important. After all, what are a few disaster stories which will anyway disappear from newspapers when the monsoon washes the land with its plenty just weeks later? Chats with officials reveal their lurking respect for such stories because States are able to urge more relief from the Centre on that basis. Media hype helps.
The authorities will now spend lavishly, announcing big relief as succour to the thirsty and the jobless on the farms. But that will not prevent a scarcity in the future. Right now, two problems are to be squarely faced: 1) providing drinking water and 2) giving foodgrains either through food-for-work programmes or free distribution because the vulnerable do not have the resources to buy them even if available.
The experience of several droughts tells us that this round too will have its element of mismanagement, corruption, inadequacy and dissatisfaction. Each and every drought past has left its tell-tale, even grotesque, imprint. This correspondent remembers how in the early 80s, officialdom in Rayalaseema had perfected a system to cream off more than was provided. It seems quite improbable - even mathematically impossible - but it was done. There is a report written by an Executive Engineer, a DSP and a Revenue Official on how this was accomplished: jungle clearance where no blade of grass could grow, procurement of cement for sale at rates that shamed the blackmarket then prevailing. Plus the corpus itself.
This report should be available in the Government archives. What was done with it is not known. But work to be done was grossly overestimated at inflated rates and under-executed. All this points to not just the contractors' perfidy but official connivance. In drought relief, no payments are generally made unless Collectors certify. Even if all officials are not to be - and cannot be - painted with the same brush, petty officials at lower rungs have their own way of overcoming the best of supervision. After all, a drought is when crops fail and officialdom harvests gains by shortchanging the ``beneficiaries''.
But there are some generic issues that should be addressed. The frequency of droughts has actually generated even new linguistics. In Rajasthan, droughts are so frequent that the word ``famine'' too has gone into the rural vocabulary even when the official lexicon prefers ``drought'' - there is a qualitative difference between the two words. Famine speaks of unspeakable hardships, with no access to foodgrains. Drought is only scarcity because foodgrains can be moved and people can access them. Provided, of course, they have the money to spend on it because of the precarious employment opportunities and vast under- employment and under-payment that is more a practice than exception in rural areas.
It took quite sometime for this correspondent to understand the difference sought to be conveyed by residents of village after village on a trip to the Jodhpur region in 1984. The drought, they said, was bad in that it had laid waste their agrarian economy that coped with paltry production in adverse conditions but the ``Famine, saab, has been good''. It needed an IAS official in the comfort of his palatial bungalow to make things clear. The year was bad, but the work done under what the villagers thought was a Famine Relief Code was good. They just dropped the other two words.
Saurashtra and Kutch, a region known for charity and community concerns, see a system of cattle camp management where distressed farmers can leave their cattle behind at camps run by the village mahajans who are actually traders. They are dutifully tended, with no return in terms of milk yield. When a farmer wants to take them back with the advent of a hopeful monsoon, he has to pay for it. So even charity has a price. But this is glossed over.
And the cake is taken by what happened in 1977 in Warangal. When the Zilla Parishad discussed drought relief, each of the non- officials wanted as much as could be made available for their own constituencies, regardless of the intensity of the drought impact in that region of Telangana. An exasperated District Collector, know more for his soft-spoken words which had the impact of a sledge-hammer, quietly told them: this was a drought relief fund and not a booty to be distributed to the most demanding. The result: the well-meaning Collector's transfer was sought. But he stayed on, underscoring a simple fact - the people matter. Someone in Hyderabad realised the truth. But each year, it seems, the future will reveal more of such images. The truth: droughts are here to stay till prevention, not post-crisis management, becomes the norm.
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
STARK IMAGES of dry landscapes, columns of women bringing home pots of drinking water from far-off places or empty pots lined up, cattle carcasses strewn around, evoke readers' and TV viewers' horror. These periodic bouts of graphic pictorials have resulted in little mitigation of a recurring crisis across the country. If they have been relatively absent in the last one decade, it is due to the good, blissfully long, unbroken cycle of plentiful rains. No credit to any State or, for that matter, the Centre for any work done in the intervening years.
Some pictures are piercingly poignant; some do not tell an accurate story. It is not uncommon for flayed animals to be left undisposed. After the vultures pick them clean, the village panchayats do not do their job and leave them around, a not uncommon rural sight. But a photographer cannot but take note of it when hungry, thirsty villagers index a drought using the first visible - to the urban reporter, the only understandable - benchmark. I recall a sarpanch in a village beyond Jodhpur saying how he ``misled'' a national fortnightly into believing that a pile of camel bones, accumulated over years, was the result of one bad year. That was 1983 in Solankiya Tala.
In the best of times, the ruralscapes of Barmer and Kutch are not going to provide a lot of greenery, certainly not in April and May when the desiccating winds and scorching sun take their toll. Even places around a well are going to be as barren in semi-arid and arid regions, but such pictures do tell a tale. After all, when a system fails to note the signals and April and May show up the unfolding implications such pictures have a purpose. But what should be asked is, if such areas have tanks with some water and women wait simply because electricity is not available to pump it up, who is responsible for aggravating fickle nature's impact? They are not being asked.
It does not take more funds - States demand more than they need, get less than they ask from the Centre, the reality is somewhere in between - to ensure that power is switched on at the right time so that women do not endure more hardships than required when scarce water is actually available? Does it need anything more than common sense to decide that if a drought was impending, a State (Gujarat in this case) should not sell its fodder cheap and wait for the distress to set in before importing at double the price from Punjab, tying up its strained manpower in avoidable tasks? Governments cannot wish, like people do, that droughts do not happen. They should prepare for it.Drought- proofing is difficult but could have been done. But the seeming insulation of the economy from droughts and their impact appears to have made those tasks less important. After all, what are a few disaster stories which will anyway disappear from newspapers when the monsoon washes the land with its plenty just weeks later? Chats with officials reveal their lurking respect for such stories because States are able to urge more relief from the Centre on that basis. Media hype helps.
The authorities will now spend lavishly, announcing big relief as succour to the thirsty and the jobless on the farms. But that will not prevent a scarcity in the future. Right now, two problems are to be squarely faced: 1) providing drinking water and 2) giving foodgrains either through food-for-work programmes or free distribution because the vulnerable do not have the resources to buy them even if available.
The experience of several droughts tells us that this round too will have its element of mismanagement, corruption, inadequacy and dissatisfaction. Each and every drought past has left its tell-tale, even grotesque, imprint. This correspondent remembers how in the early 80s, officialdom in Rayalaseema had perfected a system to cream off more than was provided. It seems quite improbable - even mathematically impossible - but it was done. There is a report written by an Executive Engineer, a DSP and a Revenue Official on how this was accomplished: jungle clearance where no blade of grass could grow, procurement of cement for sale at rates that shamed the blackmarket then prevailing. Plus the corpus itself.
This report should be available in the Government archives. What was done with it is not known. But work to be done was grossly overestimated at inflated rates and under-executed. All this points to not just the contractors' perfidy but official connivance. In drought relief, no payments are generally made unless Collectors certify. Even if all officials are not to be - and cannot be - painted with the same brush, petty officials at lower rungs have their own way of overcoming the best of supervision. After all, a drought is when crops fail and officialdom harvests gains by shortchanging the ``beneficiaries''.
But there are some generic issues that should be addressed. The frequency of droughts has actually generated even new linguistics. In Rajasthan, droughts are so frequent that the word ``famine'' too has gone into the rural vocabulary even when the official lexicon prefers ``drought'' - there is a qualitative difference between the two words. Famine speaks of unspeakable hardships, with no access to foodgrains. Drought is only scarcity because foodgrains can be moved and people can access them. Provided, of course, they have the money to spend on it because of the precarious employment opportunities and vast under- employment and under-payment that is more a practice than exception in rural areas.
It took quite sometime for this correspondent to understand the difference sought to be conveyed by residents of village after village on a trip to the Jodhpur region in 1984. The drought, they said, was bad in that it had laid waste their agrarian economy that coped with paltry production in adverse conditions but the ``Famine, saab, has been good''. It needed an IAS official in the comfort of his palatial bungalow to make things clear. The year was bad, but the work done under what the villagers thought was a Famine Relief Code was good. They just dropped the other two words.
Saurashtra and Kutch, a region known for charity and community concerns, see a system of cattle camp management where distressed farmers can leave their cattle behind at camps run by the village mahajans who are actually traders. They are dutifully tended, with no return in terms of milk yield. When a farmer wants to take them back with the advent of a hopeful monsoon, he has to pay for it. So even charity has a price. But this is glossed over.
And the cake is taken by what happened in 1977 in Warangal. When the Zilla Parishad discussed drought relief, each of the non- officials wanted as much as could be made available for their own constituencies, regardless of the intensity of the drought impact in that region of Telangana. An exasperated District Collector, know more for his soft-spoken words which had the impact of a sledge-hammer, quietly told them: this was a drought relief fund and not a booty to be distributed to the most demanding. The result: the well-meaning Collector's transfer was sought. But he stayed on, underscoring a simple fact - the people matter. Someone in Hyderabad realised the truth. But each year, it seems, the future will reveal more of such images. The truth: droughts are here to stay till prevention, not post-crisis management, becomes the norm.
Pretending to help, helping themselves
Tribal schools or money-spinners? (The Hindu, November 24, 2002)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
It is not only the profitable engineering and medical colleges, which are in the clutches of the powerful political elite in Maharashtra but also the ashram schools meant for tribal children. Most schools for tribals seem to be run for "profits" rather than for spreading education.
According to a report by the Tribal Research and Training Institute (TRTI), Pune, headed by the controversial IAS officer, Arun Bhatia, of the 484 non-Governmental ashram schools surveyed, 56 per cent were run by NGOs, headed by politicians. These schools cornered Rs. 23.9 crores of the total subsidy of Rs. 38.1 crores doled out by the State Government.
The TRTI report said, "We have to ensure that ashram schools give the poor access to education and do not degenerate into business ventures managed by the local elite for attracting Government funds." The institute was instrumental in exposing the deaths of tribals due to malnutrition in the State.
Maharashtra has 917 ashram schools for tribals — 410 are run by the Government and 507 by NGOs, which receive assistance from the State. Each NGO gets Rs. 500 a child — up from the Rs. 335 given earlier — and the expenditure on staff, rent of the buildings and books and stationery is also borne by the State Government.
The TRTI said it was a "common method" to inflate the number of students in such hostel-cum-schools to "obtain higher governmental assistance". During a visit, its "team members were frightened to do the checking because of the linkage between school managements and political authority".
The report claimed that the Tribal Department dithered when the TRTI sought data on the number of schools being run by politicians. "The information started trickling in only after officials were threatened with prosecution." Of the 507 aided schools, data was received on only 484.
The report said that 16 MLAs ran 28 schools, 30 former MLAs ran 71 schools and six MPs were either chairmen or secretaries of the trusts managing 23 schools. Ten schools were run by four ex-MPs. Nine Ministers and 11 former ones were also engaged in this practice. Twentynine office-bearers of political parties ran 33 schools. Institutions run by 28 MLAs received a grant of Rs. 3.08 crores a year, while those run by sitting MPs got Rs. 2.04 crores a year. An amount of Rs. 2.86 crores was being given as grant to schools run by Ministers and Rs. 8.47 lakhs to those run by junior Ministers.
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
It is not only the profitable engineering and medical colleges, which are in the clutches of the powerful political elite in Maharashtra but also the ashram schools meant for tribal children. Most schools for tribals seem to be run for "profits" rather than for spreading education.
According to a report by the Tribal Research and Training Institute (TRTI), Pune, headed by the controversial IAS officer, Arun Bhatia, of the 484 non-Governmental ashram schools surveyed, 56 per cent were run by NGOs, headed by politicians. These schools cornered Rs. 23.9 crores of the total subsidy of Rs. 38.1 crores doled out by the State Government.
The TRTI report said, "We have to ensure that ashram schools give the poor access to education and do not degenerate into business ventures managed by the local elite for attracting Government funds." The institute was instrumental in exposing the deaths of tribals due to malnutrition in the State.
Maharashtra has 917 ashram schools for tribals — 410 are run by the Government and 507 by NGOs, which receive assistance from the State. Each NGO gets Rs. 500 a child — up from the Rs. 335 given earlier — and the expenditure on staff, rent of the buildings and books and stationery is also borne by the State Government.
The TRTI said it was a "common method" to inflate the number of students in such hostel-cum-schools to "obtain higher governmental assistance". During a visit, its "team members were frightened to do the checking because of the linkage between school managements and political authority".
The report claimed that the Tribal Department dithered when the TRTI sought data on the number of schools being run by politicians. "The information started trickling in only after officials were threatened with prosecution." Of the 507 aided schools, data was received on only 484.
The report said that 16 MLAs ran 28 schools, 30 former MLAs ran 71 schools and six MPs were either chairmen or secretaries of the trusts managing 23 schools. Ten schools were run by four ex-MPs. Nine Ministers and 11 former ones were also engaged in this practice. Twentynine office-bearers of political parties ran 33 schools. Institutions run by 28 MLAs received a grant of Rs. 3.08 crores a year, while those run by sitting MPs got Rs. 2.04 crores a year. An amount of Rs. 2.86 crores was being given as grant to schools run by Ministers and Rs. 8.47 lakhs to those run by junior Ministers.
20 April 2007
Making it easier for the women
Towards empowerment of women (The Hindu, Feb 6, 2006)
Mahesh Vijapurkar
MAHARASHTRA HAS decided to hand over ration shops to all-women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in a bid to end the massive diversion of foodgrains and kerosene. Will this be a step towards empowering women as claimed in the State Cabinet meeting on shaping the policy?
Though no precise time frame has been set, initially, outlets in the 68 tribal-dominated taluks will be handed over to the SHGs. Later, all ration shops that are closed down because of irregularities will be re-assigned to the SHGs. They would also be transferred to the SHGs wherever the gram sabhas of women-run panchayats call for it.
Shocking revelations
The Government says the decision follows revelations by a Planning Commission study that as much as 35 per cent of the foodgrains meant for the PDS in the State were diverted to non-beneficiaries, meaning the black market.
However, NGOs involved in monitoring the PDS and engaged in discussions with the Government say the arrangement of funnelling foodgrains and kerosene to the poor through 50,083 ration shops and 55,000 kerosene outlets is flawed not only because of irregularities committed by shopkeepers but also because of rampant corruption in the system. Unless the system is cleansed, they say, the women will be at a disadvantage while trying to run the outlets.
The Rationing Kruti Samiti, an alliance of several NGOs working among the poor, including tribals, across Maharashtra, says: "The Government is putting the cart before the horse." Its member, Ulka Mahajan, points out: "It is co-option without cutting out corruption. This would make the SHGs vulnerable from the very start." If that "were avoided, this is a good opportunity to empower women." Otherwise, it is like asking "poor women to become entrepreneurs in a system loaded against honesty."
Though the intent is laudable, opinion appears divided within the Government. The Civil Supplies Department, which spearheaded this proposal through the Cabinet, describes it as being "revolutionary" and says it will "empower women who have waited for their destiny for far too long."
The Rural Development Department that helped set up 79,511 all-women SHGs, tailored more to improve their credit lines and less towards economic activity, is hesitant.
But the Maharashtra Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal (MAVIM) — the women's economic development corporation — is quite enthusiastic. It sees this as a definite step on the path towards empowering women. A. Ramakrishnan, Principal Secretary, Civil Supplies, says: "Training is a critical input we would provide" and concedes, "MAVIM-sponsored 5,000-odd SHGs could be my main vehicle for they are involved in economic activity already."
If the plan succeeds, housewives will be spared the task of running around for kerosene and foodgrains. The optimistic say women have the best reasons to be motivated to make it succeed. Others point to the serious, practical difficulties such as the presence of bribe-demanding officials who have helped generate lakhs of fake ration cards. Such cards are now being culled.
Many problems
But even a supportive MAVIM has a worry. If the supply chain gets disrupted and bills are not paid in time, then the SHGs' meagre savings will get eroded. Apart from training SHGs, it points out, officials at all levels, especially at the field level, will need to be sensitised. The NGOs say eliminating corruption will be impossible because politicians too have their fingers in the pie. Bhim Raskar of the Committee of Resource Organisations, an NGO, says: "Running fair price shops is just not economically beneficial." When his group helped promote one such outlet to be run by one of their SHGs on the outskirts of Mumbai, it took years for it to stabilise, avoid giving bribes and still break even. The only benefit was getting ration supplies to the poor on time. But "even this was an uphill task. It is difficult to run honestly," he says.
The commissions paid to ration shops are abysmally low. The margins are seven per cent for rice, and eight per cent for wheat. Since the sale of other profit-making items is banned, breaking even becomes "almost impossible."
So, the question is: "Can first generation women entrepreneurs cope with all this?" If they do, it would truly be a revolution.
Mahesh Vijapurkar
MAHARASHTRA HAS decided to hand over ration shops to all-women Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in a bid to end the massive diversion of foodgrains and kerosene. Will this be a step towards empowering women as claimed in the State Cabinet meeting on shaping the policy?
Though no precise time frame has been set, initially, outlets in the 68 tribal-dominated taluks will be handed over to the SHGs. Later, all ration shops that are closed down because of irregularities will be re-assigned to the SHGs. They would also be transferred to the SHGs wherever the gram sabhas of women-run panchayats call for it.
Shocking revelations
The Government says the decision follows revelations by a Planning Commission study that as much as 35 per cent of the foodgrains meant for the PDS in the State were diverted to non-beneficiaries, meaning the black market.
However, NGOs involved in monitoring the PDS and engaged in discussions with the Government say the arrangement of funnelling foodgrains and kerosene to the poor through 50,083 ration shops and 55,000 kerosene outlets is flawed not only because of irregularities committed by shopkeepers but also because of rampant corruption in the system. Unless the system is cleansed, they say, the women will be at a disadvantage while trying to run the outlets.
The Rationing Kruti Samiti, an alliance of several NGOs working among the poor, including tribals, across Maharashtra, says: "The Government is putting the cart before the horse." Its member, Ulka Mahajan, points out: "It is co-option without cutting out corruption. This would make the SHGs vulnerable from the very start." If that "were avoided, this is a good opportunity to empower women." Otherwise, it is like asking "poor women to become entrepreneurs in a system loaded against honesty."
Though the intent is laudable, opinion appears divided within the Government. The Civil Supplies Department, which spearheaded this proposal through the Cabinet, describes it as being "revolutionary" and says it will "empower women who have waited for their destiny for far too long."
The Rural Development Department that helped set up 79,511 all-women SHGs, tailored more to improve their credit lines and less towards economic activity, is hesitant.
But the Maharashtra Mahila Arthik Vikas Mahamandal (MAVIM) — the women's economic development corporation — is quite enthusiastic. It sees this as a definite step on the path towards empowering women. A. Ramakrishnan, Principal Secretary, Civil Supplies, says: "Training is a critical input we would provide" and concedes, "MAVIM-sponsored 5,000-odd SHGs could be my main vehicle for they are involved in economic activity already."
If the plan succeeds, housewives will be spared the task of running around for kerosene and foodgrains. The optimistic say women have the best reasons to be motivated to make it succeed. Others point to the serious, practical difficulties such as the presence of bribe-demanding officials who have helped generate lakhs of fake ration cards. Such cards are now being culled.
Many problems
But even a supportive MAVIM has a worry. If the supply chain gets disrupted and bills are not paid in time, then the SHGs' meagre savings will get eroded. Apart from training SHGs, it points out, officials at all levels, especially at the field level, will need to be sensitised. The NGOs say eliminating corruption will be impossible because politicians too have their fingers in the pie. Bhim Raskar of the Committee of Resource Organisations, an NGO, says: "Running fair price shops is just not economically beneficial." When his group helped promote one such outlet to be run by one of their SHGs on the outskirts of Mumbai, it took years for it to stabilise, avoid giving bribes and still break even. The only benefit was getting ration supplies to the poor on time. But "even this was an uphill task. It is difficult to run honestly," he says.
The commissions paid to ration shops are abysmally low. The margins are seven per cent for rice, and eight per cent for wheat. Since the sale of other profit-making items is banned, breaking even becomes "almost impossible."
So, the question is: "Can first generation women entrepreneurs cope with all this?" If they do, it would truly be a revolution.
Give unto them their rights
State move to make villages tiny republics (The Hindu, July 14, 2002)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar,
Assemblies of voters in tribal gram panchayats in Maharashtra, by a direct secret ballot, can force their sarpanchs and upa-sarpanchs to quit office by adopting no-confidence motions against them in gram sabhas. Then the post would be declared vacant. Similarly, motions limited to the voters of a ward can recall members of the gram panchayat from a ward. Immediately thereafter, new persons can be elected in a by-election to fill the vacancies. The appeals against such developments would not lie with the courts. These two major steps were approved by the Maharashtra Cabinet last week for enactment into law during the coming monsoon session of the Assembly.
Gram sabhas in these areas are to be empowered beyond what was difficult to contemplate in the past. The sarpanch, his deputy and village officials, if found unwilling to cooperate with such assemblies of voters, can be named by resolutions passed by a three-fourths majority and be subject to disciplinary action by the district administration. These sabhas would also have the right to demand the presence of all its officials __ kothwal, talati, police patil, health official, primacy and middle school headmasters, agricultural officials, lowest ranking MSEB engineer __ to give an account of their work. The decisions of these sabhas will have to be enforced.
Once legislated, the changes would go beyond the requirements prescribed in the 1996 stipulation of the Centre and are aimed at developing villages as tiny republics, a concept that was brought into vogue during the Gram Sabha Year in 1999-2000 countrywide.
Nevertheless, R. R. Patil, Rural Development Minister, who inspired a kind of a revolution by enabling villages across Maharashtra to compete in cleanliness and social cohesiveness through a campaign now in its second year, has lobbied hard with all departments to secure their concurrence because he believes in the autonomy of the people, not mere organisational. What makes it easier to get these features into practice in tribal areas is that in purely tribal societies are seen community cohesiveness, and lesser outside influence. There is a traditional respect for community welfare over mere individual rights in such societies. A whole lot of new features are to be introduced. The first annual gram sabha would be presided over by the secretary of the gram panchayat but subsequent ones would be the rights of an individual elected by the sabha. In fact, decisions on priorities to be accorded to village-level projects would vest with the sabha and be binding on the gram panchayat.
The motions of no-confidence against the elected sarpanch and upa-sarpanch have to come for consideration only after a third of all voters in the village give a 15-day notice to the gram panchayat secretary. The deputy tahsildar of the region would preside over such sabhas where the motion is to be taken up. To recall a ward member, at least 50 per cent of voters of the ward have to accordingly vote.
By Mahesh Vijapurkar,
Assemblies of voters in tribal gram panchayats in Maharashtra, by a direct secret ballot, can force their sarpanchs and upa-sarpanchs to quit office by adopting no-confidence motions against them in gram sabhas. Then the post would be declared vacant. Similarly, motions limited to the voters of a ward can recall members of the gram panchayat from a ward. Immediately thereafter, new persons can be elected in a by-election to fill the vacancies. The appeals against such developments would not lie with the courts. These two major steps were approved by the Maharashtra Cabinet last week for enactment into law during the coming monsoon session of the Assembly.
Gram sabhas in these areas are to be empowered beyond what was difficult to contemplate in the past. The sarpanch, his deputy and village officials, if found unwilling to cooperate with such assemblies of voters, can be named by resolutions passed by a three-fourths majority and be subject to disciplinary action by the district administration. These sabhas would also have the right to demand the presence of all its officials __ kothwal, talati, police patil, health official, primacy and middle school headmasters, agricultural officials, lowest ranking MSEB engineer __ to give an account of their work. The decisions of these sabhas will have to be enforced.
Once legislated, the changes would go beyond the requirements prescribed in the 1996 stipulation of the Centre and are aimed at developing villages as tiny republics, a concept that was brought into vogue during the Gram Sabha Year in 1999-2000 countrywide.
Nevertheless, R. R. Patil, Rural Development Minister, who inspired a kind of a revolution by enabling villages across Maharashtra to compete in cleanliness and social cohesiveness through a campaign now in its second year, has lobbied hard with all departments to secure their concurrence because he believes in the autonomy of the people, not mere organisational. What makes it easier to get these features into practice in tribal areas is that in purely tribal societies are seen community cohesiveness, and lesser outside influence. There is a traditional respect for community welfare over mere individual rights in such societies. A whole lot of new features are to be introduced. The first annual gram sabha would be presided over by the secretary of the gram panchayat but subsequent ones would be the rights of an individual elected by the sabha. In fact, decisions on priorities to be accorded to village-level projects would vest with the sabha and be binding on the gram panchayat.
The motions of no-confidence against the elected sarpanch and upa-sarpanch have to come for consideration only after a third of all voters in the village give a 15-day notice to the gram panchayat secretary. The deputy tahsildar of the region would preside over such sabhas where the motion is to be taken up. To recall a ward member, at least 50 per cent of voters of the ward have to accordingly vote.
Wiil it work? It does!
Budgetary allocation for people-driven scheme? Source - THE HINDU, March 20, 2002
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
MUMBAI MARCH 16.
If a village in Maharashtra coughs up 10 per cent of a project cost, then at the `tehsil' level, a committee, comprising the local MLA, the panchayat samiti chief, the Block Development Officer and five `sarpanchs' (village chiefs) will allocate the remaining 90 per cent of the estimated cost for executing it. This scheme will be people and demand-driven. The project will be executed according to a contract cleared by the `gram sabha' - and not the `gram panchayat' officialdom or elected representatives - and monitored by it. Even the costs will be determined by the `sabha'.
The scheme is to be named after Yashwantrao B. Chavan. Some 30 per cent of the entire budgetary allocation for the Rural Development department in the coming budget may get parcelled out to the various `taluks.' The figures will be based on the population of each `tehsil.' The five members who will come from the hierarchy of `sarpanchs' within the `tehsil' will have a one-year term. The MLA and the BDO, of course, will have a nominal role as once the 10 per cent popular contribution comes, their sanction will be automatic.
This concept stems from the experience of the Gadge Maharaj Gram Swatchhatha Abhiyan in which people spent money to compete in work for keeping their villages clean and improving their community facilities. And their work, done through popular contribution and `shram dhaan' - building a road, toilet, pond etc. - was cheaper by 70 per cent. The quality was also not as bad as the work done by the Government through contractors. The `abhiyan' received the appreciation of the World Bank.
The argument is that if the entire village is involved in decision-making and the villagers take pride in their effort, they will refrain from taking away slices of the capital cost. Government costing, sources said, often takes into account enormous profits for the contractors and bribes for the officialdom. An example cited is the construction of toilets by the Government. Only 40 per cent of the 14 lakh toilets, built at a cost of Rs. 442 crores, over the past few years, are in use. Either they were built at an inconvenient place, or ``thrust upon the village regardless of whether they were needed or not.''
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
MUMBAI MARCH 16.
If a village in Maharashtra coughs up 10 per cent of a project cost, then at the `tehsil' level, a committee, comprising the local MLA, the panchayat samiti chief, the Block Development Officer and five `sarpanchs' (village chiefs) will allocate the remaining 90 per cent of the estimated cost for executing it. This scheme will be people and demand-driven. The project will be executed according to a contract cleared by the `gram sabha' - and not the `gram panchayat' officialdom or elected representatives - and monitored by it. Even the costs will be determined by the `sabha'.
The scheme is to be named after Yashwantrao B. Chavan. Some 30 per cent of the entire budgetary allocation for the Rural Development department in the coming budget may get parcelled out to the various `taluks.' The figures will be based on the population of each `tehsil.' The five members who will come from the hierarchy of `sarpanchs' within the `tehsil' will have a one-year term. The MLA and the BDO, of course, will have a nominal role as once the 10 per cent popular contribution comes, their sanction will be automatic.
This concept stems from the experience of the Gadge Maharaj Gram Swatchhatha Abhiyan in which people spent money to compete in work for keeping their villages clean and improving their community facilities. And their work, done through popular contribution and `shram dhaan' - building a road, toilet, pond etc. - was cheaper by 70 per cent. The quality was also not as bad as the work done by the Government through contractors. The `abhiyan' received the appreciation of the World Bank.
The argument is that if the entire village is involved in decision-making and the villagers take pride in their effort, they will refrain from taking away slices of the capital cost. Government costing, sources said, often takes into account enormous profits for the contractors and bribes for the officialdom. An example cited is the construction of toilets by the Government. Only 40 per cent of the 14 lakh toilets, built at a cost of Rs. 442 crores, over the past few years, are in use. Either they were built at an inconvenient place, or ``thrust upon the village regardless of whether they were needed or not.''
Grow, by joining the flow
Bringing in sweeping changes
MAHESH VIJAPURKAR Hindustan Times February 14, 2007
(Migrants to Mumbai work much harder than the locals and thus reap the benefits of labour)
BIJLABAI, A loquacious tribal working as a domestic in Thane's new apartment blocks, could be a development economist's delight. She cannot even name her tribe except that her "ancestor Shabari tasted the fruits before Lord Ram ate them". But she can explain the benefits of migrating to urban areas to improve one's life. Her faith in the trickle-down theory would make Medha Patkars blanch.
Government, Bijlabai expounds, can never ever effectively come to your doorstep and improve your lives; one has to work hard in an uncaring world. The more people spend, the more the disadvantaged benefit, provided the latter move first to the fringe, both in geographic and socio-economic terms, and grab opportunities to integrate. Bijlabai migrated from beyond Manmad to Thane, where a building boom now gives her family livelihood.
She advocates an economic concept where flourishing businesses let their profits, or at least their working capital, ultimately trickle down to lower-income individuals. This hypothesis holds that higher standards accrue gradually, not at the overt, immediate expense of the affluent. The unorganised service that flows from that is enough to keep the Bijlabais of this world in good stead.
Broom in hand, she outlines how "Nehru and his daughter" bestowed some land on her family, but not enough to keep them going. She, with her husband, struck out for the city, following a desperate Scheduled Caste friend from her hamlet. "Other tribals are scared of cities, but we worked packing mosquito coils in a factory. We got wages, weekly offs, accident benefits and even rewards if our children passed exams." Despite a scholarship the son "always failed".
If only he had studied hard, their lives would have been better, she says. Just when the factory shifted elsewhere, the building boom started. Her husband became a mason and the son a sweeper in the new township that sprang up. The farmers complained first of lands lost, and then took jobs as masons, their assistants or started petty businesses to serve the new housing colonies. "Their households see more money than before." The city edged into their homes in Patlipada village and lifestyles changed.
"We saw TVs and fridges in the new homes and we too got them." Everyone she knows, including her sweeper son, are better off than a farm hand and own mobile phones. "You can call me on it anytime." This outlook is manifest in the unspoken and unwritten stories of other migrants too. They were forced out of their rural moorings due to deprivation but they decided to chase opportunities. The visions of success kept them first in squalor no different from the backward villages they left behind. The braver ones decided to maximise on their gains and set examples for others to follow.
Like Bi jlabai. Like Lalu Valmiki. Lalu's father came from near Mathura to sweep floors in an office block. On his death, the boy got that job and worked diligently, starting his day early, working in nearby homes in his spare time and looked for a better life. His father had lived in a hut but Lalu bought a one-room apartment in distant Bhayandar with a housing loan and, slowly, got material comforts in place a settee doubling as storage, a TV, a refrigerator, a fan.
He sends his two daughters to Eng lish medium schools. He himself did not go to school but wants his daughters to "at least marry clerks". His chest swells with pride when they answer his phone in English. He explains why people like him from distant places do well in Mumbai. "I have seen very few locals working as hard at what is thought to be menial work. They send their wives to work as domestics. We men from distant places try to keep our wives in comfort the best we can. The locals are no patch on us. I don't even drink."
He may be generalising, but he has a point. The locals lack enterprise. At least six out of ten autorickshaw drivers in Thane are from UP and Bihar. They too have a similar explanation as to why they make it here. Unlike the locals, who sell their property because they don't chase jobs or show enterprise, the migrants have a simple rule: don't sell what you own here or back from where you came. Instead, buy. If possible, land."
If only the locals matched their enterprise, migrants would find Mumbai and its neighbourhood far less inviting. The outsiders met the demand for labour and flooded Mumbai, crowding it but also making a contribution to its GDP. They did just about anything that turned in a coin at the end of the day — run the informal service sector, including running vada pau stalls or illegally hawk stuff on pavements. They chased opportunities the sons-of-the-soil spurned and complained that their rights were being snatched away and the metropolis was being swamped by outsiders.
MAHESH VIJAPURKAR Hindustan Times February 14, 2007
(Migrants to Mumbai work much harder than the locals and thus reap the benefits of labour)
BIJLABAI, A loquacious tribal working as a domestic in Thane's new apartment blocks, could be a development economist's delight. She cannot even name her tribe except that her "ancestor Shabari tasted the fruits before Lord Ram ate them". But she can explain the benefits of migrating to urban areas to improve one's life. Her faith in the trickle-down theory would make Medha Patkars blanch.
Government, Bijlabai expounds, can never ever effectively come to your doorstep and improve your lives; one has to work hard in an uncaring world. The more people spend, the more the disadvantaged benefit, provided the latter move first to the fringe, both in geographic and socio-economic terms, and grab opportunities to integrate. Bijlabai migrated from beyond Manmad to Thane, where a building boom now gives her family livelihood.
She advocates an economic concept where flourishing businesses let their profits, or at least their working capital, ultimately trickle down to lower-income individuals. This hypothesis holds that higher standards accrue gradually, not at the overt, immediate expense of the affluent. The unorganised service that flows from that is enough to keep the Bijlabais of this world in good stead.
Broom in hand, she outlines how "Nehru and his daughter" bestowed some land on her family, but not enough to keep them going. She, with her husband, struck out for the city, following a desperate Scheduled Caste friend from her hamlet. "Other tribals are scared of cities, but we worked packing mosquito coils in a factory. We got wages, weekly offs, accident benefits and even rewards if our children passed exams." Despite a scholarship the son "always failed".
If only he had studied hard, their lives would have been better, she says. Just when the factory shifted elsewhere, the building boom started. Her husband became a mason and the son a sweeper in the new township that sprang up. The farmers complained first of lands lost, and then took jobs as masons, their assistants or started petty businesses to serve the new housing colonies. "Their households see more money than before." The city edged into their homes in Patlipada village and lifestyles changed.
"We saw TVs and fridges in the new homes and we too got them." Everyone she knows, including her sweeper son, are better off than a farm hand and own mobile phones. "You can call me on it anytime." This outlook is manifest in the unspoken and unwritten stories of other migrants too. They were forced out of their rural moorings due to deprivation but they decided to chase opportunities. The visions of success kept them first in squalor no different from the backward villages they left behind. The braver ones decided to maximise on their gains and set examples for others to follow.
Like Bi jlabai. Like Lalu Valmiki. Lalu's father came from near Mathura to sweep floors in an office block. On his death, the boy got that job and worked diligently, starting his day early, working in nearby homes in his spare time and looked for a better life. His father had lived in a hut but Lalu bought a one-room apartment in distant Bhayandar with a housing loan and, slowly, got material comforts in place a settee doubling as storage, a TV, a refrigerator, a fan.
He sends his two daughters to Eng lish medium schools. He himself did not go to school but wants his daughters to "at least marry clerks". His chest swells with pride when they answer his phone in English. He explains why people like him from distant places do well in Mumbai. "I have seen very few locals working as hard at what is thought to be menial work. They send their wives to work as domestics. We men from distant places try to keep our wives in comfort the best we can. The locals are no patch on us. I don't even drink."
He may be generalising, but he has a point. The locals lack enterprise. At least six out of ten autorickshaw drivers in Thane are from UP and Bihar. They too have a similar explanation as to why they make it here. Unlike the locals, who sell their property because they don't chase jobs or show enterprise, the migrants have a simple rule: don't sell what you own here or back from where you came. Instead, buy. If possible, land."
If only the locals matched their enterprise, migrants would find Mumbai and its neighbourhood far less inviting. The outsiders met the demand for labour and flooded Mumbai, crowding it but also making a contribution to its GDP. They did just about anything that turned in a coin at the end of the day — run the informal service sector, including running vada pau stalls or illegally hawk stuff on pavements. They chased opportunities the sons-of-the-soil spurned and complained that their rights were being snatched away and the metropolis was being swamped by outsiders.
Water as a community asset (The Hindu, Wednesday, April 19, 2000)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
SINCE 1991, Hirve Bazaar, a village in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district has been self-sufficient in foodgrains though it gets no more than 450 mm of rainfall annually. It also produces 400 to 450 tonnes of potatoes and onions a year and about three truckloads of vegetables and 1,500 litres of milk daily. The secret of its prosperity is the ability to harvest and use water judicially though there is no canal flowing in the region. One index of wealth coming from equity in water use: farm labour gets Rs. 150 a day.
The story does not end here. Hirve Bazaar's commitment to efficient water use is so strong that bananas and sugarcane, two water guzzlers, are allowed by the community to be grown only if the landholder opts for drip irrigation. So entrenched is the view that land and water's optimal use leads to prosperity that the entire village has decided that land, if sold by anyone at all, should not go to outsiders. Wealth and the means to it, the community there has decided, should remain with the locals. For, outsiders may not be true to the village's philosophy. Villages like these help wells recharge and do not mindlessly exploit what is available.
Even if outsiders are kept at bay, the village remains wired to the world. From just one set, in nine years, 95 per cent of the housholds have got TVs, as many as 118 two-wheelers churn up the dust in the village and eight tractors ply the farmlands and haul away the harvests. According to the key leader of Hirve Bazaar in this community enterprise, Mr. Popatrao Patil, prosperity brought in other good practices: family planning, spacing of children has led to schools slowly emptying out; there are fewer children there threatening closure of some school rooms.
There are many such examples - Adgaon Khurd in Aurangabad, Raleganshiddi, famous more for Anna Hazare than its water management; Ozar in Nashik. In Ozar, sugarcane was abandoned recognising water scarcity and farmers moved to floriculture and now, as Mr. Bharat Kavle from there points out, ``migrants who had gone for other livelihood elsewhere, have returned''. All this, it must be recognised, is the effort of the locals in tune with forward-looking NGOs who are seldom seen or heard about outside their own small domains. They are not high-flyers nor flush with funds.
On the other hand, there are a number of societies (around 200) set up by the officials of the Irrigation Department which are supposed to help farmers locally work out water-sharing formulae but they are apparently riddled by problems. It is another matter that a few successes may have drawn Mr. Chandrababu Naidu to replicate them in Andhra Pradesh, but by and large, they are more on paper than on the ground. At a recent conference on water in Pune, complaints were heard that officials chase targets but do not involve farmers.
Going by what Mr. Bharat Kavle says, and this is not denied by officials, the beneficiaries have no role in such canal-level official societies. ``Officials want to register them but leave out the people's participation,'' he laments. By themselves, farmers seem to be able to understand how to deal with land and water. Engineers and officials as an a intervening mechanism seem to sap them of that drive. Success stories are where the Government is absent.
Says Dr. Dwarkadas Lohiya who has worked on similar projects in Marathwada: ``the farmer understands and speaks to the land'' which officials cannot, in their rush to meet statistical deadlines which are more often, experience reveals, on paper alone. He should know; his efforts have seen about 6,000 families get a new lease of life with community wells. People there who did not know how to cook wheat into chappathies now have enough wheat to make it a staple. ``They are themselves the best social engineers. Leave them to do their work. Support them, do not interfere,'' is the philosophy he backs.
What strings these projects and their successes together is the fact that they focus on sustainable harvesting of groundwater, by appropriate treatment of land contours with bunds and sinking of community wells, which brings about a sea-change in the economy of the villages in drought-prone areas of Maharashtra. In areas such as Adgaon Khurd, where farmers once went to work under the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), it is difficult now to find enough labour for the farms which have come to life under the water management programme. These boroughs recognise that water is a community asset.
Well water, NGOs working in this domain insist, should be treated as community water by law and the gains made in a few villages across Maharashtra would then get easily replicated. Possibly, farmers with excess water in relation to their land holding could share it for the common good of the community. But it is recognised that this idea of water as a common asset cannot be easily sold.
In Maharashtra, where the gross irrigated area in 1999-2000 was 33.7 lakh hectares and the net remained at 25.7 lakh hectares, the same as in the previous year, this concept has tremendous significance. Especially since of the 25.7 lakh hectares, 14.1 lakh hectares were fed by wells and not expensive canals systems with poor irrigation efficiency. But studies quoted by Government speak of the possibility of bringing 84 lakh hectares - 42 per cent of all cultivable lands - under irrigation using surface water.
If the examples of Hirve Bazaar and a few others are not replicated, it is because work at the micro-level is not adequately recognised at the macro-level by decision-makers and officials. Even as the farmers themselves strive to do something for the community, official neglect has seen an enormous quantum of harvested surface water in dams lost due to siltation. Officials say about 17 per cent of all dam capacities in Maharashtra have been lost to siltation, a slow but sure death for the expensive dams. And when water from these major surface sources reached the villages, it brought inequity.
The community has no say in deciding the command nuances of its lands and he who has most stands to gain most by indiscriminate use of the resources when others who are next-door neighbours, with no access to the same water, are worse off. Even when dams were built, it took years for the water to flow to the lands and the Government never ensured that when it laid down a command nuance and cropping pattern, it was enforced. Corruption has been one cause why the cropping pattern is distorted by greedy farmers and conniving officials and the farmers as a community have no say in what affects them all the most.
The example of villages which have taken to water harvesting should force a change in the mindset of those who manage larger banks of water. Mr. Vilas Salunkhe, a pioneer in promoting water as a community asset at the village level, speaks of treating an entire watershed as being a community asset where each and everyone should have a proper share. If he had been heard earlier, the story would have been different; villages like Hirve Bazaar would not have been mere dots on the irrigation landscape.
Not only do more of them have to emerge, but canal societies have to be forced to become truly autonomous bodies where farmers decide and busybody politicians and officials have little role to play. Says Mr. Salunkhe: ``even if these watershed efforts of farmers are not found everywhere, they are successful in their own right when it is realised that they are on their own. Canal societies, however, have unfortunately not been that successful.'' But of late, Mr. Sudhakarrao Naik, former Chief Minister, who now heads the panel monitoring these NGO-led effort says: ``all is not roses there. Corruption is rampant in such bodies as well.''
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
SINCE 1991, Hirve Bazaar, a village in Maharashtra's Ahmednagar district has been self-sufficient in foodgrains though it gets no more than 450 mm of rainfall annually. It also produces 400 to 450 tonnes of potatoes and onions a year and about three truckloads of vegetables and 1,500 litres of milk daily. The secret of its prosperity is the ability to harvest and use water judicially though there is no canal flowing in the region. One index of wealth coming from equity in water use: farm labour gets Rs. 150 a day.
The story does not end here. Hirve Bazaar's commitment to efficient water use is so strong that bananas and sugarcane, two water guzzlers, are allowed by the community to be grown only if the landholder opts for drip irrigation. So entrenched is the view that land and water's optimal use leads to prosperity that the entire village has decided that land, if sold by anyone at all, should not go to outsiders. Wealth and the means to it, the community there has decided, should remain with the locals. For, outsiders may not be true to the village's philosophy. Villages like these help wells recharge and do not mindlessly exploit what is available.
Even if outsiders are kept at bay, the village remains wired to the world. From just one set, in nine years, 95 per cent of the housholds have got TVs, as many as 118 two-wheelers churn up the dust in the village and eight tractors ply the farmlands and haul away the harvests. According to the key leader of Hirve Bazaar in this community enterprise, Mr. Popatrao Patil, prosperity brought in other good practices: family planning, spacing of children has led to schools slowly emptying out; there are fewer children there threatening closure of some school rooms.
There are many such examples - Adgaon Khurd in Aurangabad, Raleganshiddi, famous more for Anna Hazare than its water management; Ozar in Nashik. In Ozar, sugarcane was abandoned recognising water scarcity and farmers moved to floriculture and now, as Mr. Bharat Kavle from there points out, ``migrants who had gone for other livelihood elsewhere, have returned''. All this, it must be recognised, is the effort of the locals in tune with forward-looking NGOs who are seldom seen or heard about outside their own small domains. They are not high-flyers nor flush with funds.
On the other hand, there are a number of societies (around 200) set up by the officials of the Irrigation Department which are supposed to help farmers locally work out water-sharing formulae but they are apparently riddled by problems. It is another matter that a few successes may have drawn Mr. Chandrababu Naidu to replicate them in Andhra Pradesh, but by and large, they are more on paper than on the ground. At a recent conference on water in Pune, complaints were heard that officials chase targets but do not involve farmers.
Going by what Mr. Bharat Kavle says, and this is not denied by officials, the beneficiaries have no role in such canal-level official societies. ``Officials want to register them but leave out the people's participation,'' he laments. By themselves, farmers seem to be able to understand how to deal with land and water. Engineers and officials as an a intervening mechanism seem to sap them of that drive. Success stories are where the Government is absent.
Says Dr. Dwarkadas Lohiya who has worked on similar projects in Marathwada: ``the farmer understands and speaks to the land'' which officials cannot, in their rush to meet statistical deadlines which are more often, experience reveals, on paper alone. He should know; his efforts have seen about 6,000 families get a new lease of life with community wells. People there who did not know how to cook wheat into chappathies now have enough wheat to make it a staple. ``They are themselves the best social engineers. Leave them to do their work. Support them, do not interfere,'' is the philosophy he backs.
What strings these projects and their successes together is the fact that they focus on sustainable harvesting of groundwater, by appropriate treatment of land contours with bunds and sinking of community wells, which brings about a sea-change in the economy of the villages in drought-prone areas of Maharashtra. In areas such as Adgaon Khurd, where farmers once went to work under the Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS), it is difficult now to find enough labour for the farms which have come to life under the water management programme. These boroughs recognise that water is a community asset.
Well water, NGOs working in this domain insist, should be treated as community water by law and the gains made in a few villages across Maharashtra would then get easily replicated. Possibly, farmers with excess water in relation to their land holding could share it for the common good of the community. But it is recognised that this idea of water as a common asset cannot be easily sold.
In Maharashtra, where the gross irrigated area in 1999-2000 was 33.7 lakh hectares and the net remained at 25.7 lakh hectares, the same as in the previous year, this concept has tremendous significance. Especially since of the 25.7 lakh hectares, 14.1 lakh hectares were fed by wells and not expensive canals systems with poor irrigation efficiency. But studies quoted by Government speak of the possibility of bringing 84 lakh hectares - 42 per cent of all cultivable lands - under irrigation using surface water.
If the examples of Hirve Bazaar and a few others are not replicated, it is because work at the micro-level is not adequately recognised at the macro-level by decision-makers and officials. Even as the farmers themselves strive to do something for the community, official neglect has seen an enormous quantum of harvested surface water in dams lost due to siltation. Officials say about 17 per cent of all dam capacities in Maharashtra have been lost to siltation, a slow but sure death for the expensive dams. And when water from these major surface sources reached the villages, it brought inequity.
The community has no say in deciding the command nuances of its lands and he who has most stands to gain most by indiscriminate use of the resources when others who are next-door neighbours, with no access to the same water, are worse off. Even when dams were built, it took years for the water to flow to the lands and the Government never ensured that when it laid down a command nuance and cropping pattern, it was enforced. Corruption has been one cause why the cropping pattern is distorted by greedy farmers and conniving officials and the farmers as a community have no say in what affects them all the most.
The example of villages which have taken to water harvesting should force a change in the mindset of those who manage larger banks of water. Mr. Vilas Salunkhe, a pioneer in promoting water as a community asset at the village level, speaks of treating an entire watershed as being a community asset where each and everyone should have a proper share. If he had been heard earlier, the story would have been different; villages like Hirve Bazaar would not have been mere dots on the irrigation landscape.
Not only do more of them have to emerge, but canal societies have to be forced to become truly autonomous bodies where farmers decide and busybody politicians and officials have little role to play. Says Mr. Salunkhe: ``even if these watershed efforts of farmers are not found everywhere, they are successful in their own right when it is realised that they are on their own. Canal societies, however, have unfortunately not been that successful.'' But of late, Mr. Sudhakarrao Naik, former Chief Minister, who now heads the panel monitoring these NGO-led effort says: ``all is not roses there. Corruption is rampant in such bodies as well.''
17 April 2007
Transferring rights to farmers vital to curb inefficiencies in Maharashtra
(from The Hindu BusinessLine, August 5, 2005)
Mahesh Vijapurkar
GOING by records and claims, Maharashtra's 300-odd major, medium and minor irrigation projects have included 95.41 lakh acres under their command areas but more than 62 lakh acres of that do not get any water to their crops because of the huge inefficiencies in the system.
They remain project `beneficiaries' but irrigation eludes them; even with reservoirs full, their fate is that of rain-fed farmers.
This may end soon, if a three-year old concept of transferring rights to manage the irrigation system to farmers themselves comes into being, which was announced as policy back in mid-2001.
Conceptually, when farmers themselves collectively decide as to what share each of them should get, the inequity would dissolve.
That may led to a change in the cropping pattern enabling larger tracts, if not all, to get access to irrigation. The inefficiencies came about due to several reasons: The poor condition of the canals, the farmers in upper reaches grabbing whatever water they can to deviate with abandon from the set cropping patterns fixed when the projects were built.
But this participatory irrigation management is delayed for want of Rs 2,000 crore to de-silt and repair the canal before being handed over.
Each water users' association (WUA) would have control on up to 2,000 hectares; ultimately, over 10,000 WUAs would be needed though some NGO-inspired WUAs are already in business with official support covering 1.6 lakh hectares because "they are good pilot WUAs."
Even legislative backing is yet to be found to this intent to democratise water management, a must if multilateral agencies are to fund any irrigation project including repairs now to the system.
But a legislation that can give it the teeth was introduced in December in the Assembly but it is yet to be discussed though it was listed another six months later.
Officials hope they can persuade the Government to speed this up by an Ordinance soon. Officials concede that when these projects were built, the farmers within the command areas were not taken into confidence and told that if they misused the water supplied and switched to other crops, "everyone would lose."
But those, being in the head reaches of the canals could grab larger shares than actual entitlement did not heed it, developing a vested right they are unwilling to part with. None of them are known to have been effectively punished either.
Those who grabbed more became prosperous and acquired bigger clout.
This in turn, enabled the sabotage of the supervisory system of the canal water distribution and many field level functionaries began to actually hide the true extent of illegal irrigation by powerful farmers.
Which meant loss of revenue to the Government in unpaid water rates.
(from The Hindu BusinessLine, August 5, 2005)
Mahesh Vijapurkar
GOING by records and claims, Maharashtra's 300-odd major, medium and minor irrigation projects have included 95.41 lakh acres under their command areas but more than 62 lakh acres of that do not get any water to their crops because of the huge inefficiencies in the system.
They remain project `beneficiaries' but irrigation eludes them; even with reservoirs full, their fate is that of rain-fed farmers.
This may end soon, if a three-year old concept of transferring rights to manage the irrigation system to farmers themselves comes into being, which was announced as policy back in mid-2001.
Conceptually, when farmers themselves collectively decide as to what share each of them should get, the inequity would dissolve.
That may led to a change in the cropping pattern enabling larger tracts, if not all, to get access to irrigation. The inefficiencies came about due to several reasons: The poor condition of the canals, the farmers in upper reaches grabbing whatever water they can to deviate with abandon from the set cropping patterns fixed when the projects were built.
But this participatory irrigation management is delayed for want of Rs 2,000 crore to de-silt and repair the canal before being handed over.
Each water users' association (WUA) would have control on up to 2,000 hectares; ultimately, over 10,000 WUAs would be needed though some NGO-inspired WUAs are already in business with official support covering 1.6 lakh hectares because "they are good pilot WUAs."
Even legislative backing is yet to be found to this intent to democratise water management, a must if multilateral agencies are to fund any irrigation project including repairs now to the system.
But a legislation that can give it the teeth was introduced in December in the Assembly but it is yet to be discussed though it was listed another six months later.
Officials hope they can persuade the Government to speed this up by an Ordinance soon. Officials concede that when these projects were built, the farmers within the command areas were not taken into confidence and told that if they misused the water supplied and switched to other crops, "everyone would lose."
But those, being in the head reaches of the canals could grab larger shares than actual entitlement did not heed it, developing a vested right they are unwilling to part with. None of them are known to have been effectively punished either.
Those who grabbed more became prosperous and acquired bigger clout.
This in turn, enabled the sabotage of the supervisory system of the canal water distribution and many field level functionaries began to actually hide the true extent of illegal irrigation by powerful farmers.
Which meant loss of revenue to the Government in unpaid water rates.
16 April 2007
On How Government Mulcts People Pretending to Help the Poor
CESS, LIES & RED TAPE (The Hindustan Times, Mumbai Edition, April 4, 2007)
By Mahesh Vijapurkar
It is all very well that the Maharashtra government has said it would soon act on reports from the CID and the Revenue Divisional Commissioner on a Rs 251 crore misappropriation of Employment Guarantee Scheme (EGS) funds in Solapur district. The scam was simple — overestimate the funds requirement, record that several poor persons were employed when only a few, if at all, actually were. In some instances it was even simpler: fake it all. EGS pays the poor in distress up to — on record again — Rs 51 per day of manual labour in rural Maharashtra.
Actually, all this is routine stuff. Year after year, reports by the EGS committees, filed with the Maharashtra Legislature, have been routinely listing the rampant shady deals in what is, on paper, a sound poverty alleviation scheme for farmers and farm labour hit by drought. So endemic has this large-scale racketeering become that eyebrows aren’t raised anymore. A probe here, a probe there and everything is wrapped in red tape and forgotten. Solapur is just the iceberg’s tip.
The March 23 promise of action carries no conviction. For the government is itself operating a scam on a mind-boggling scale under the pretext of running the EGS. Here’s how it works: money is collected via taxes and various cesses from you and me, on the promise that it would be used for providing jobs to the rural poor during droughts, for digging wells, building roads, percolation tanks et al. In reality, this money is diverted to other populist schemes. No questions asked.
This money in the kitty for diversion comes from every employee in the organised sector who forks out a profession tax. Then there is tax on trades and callings, additional tax on motor vehicle purchase, a cess on sales tax, a special levy on irrigated farmlands, a surcharge on land revenue and on non-residential urban lands. This constitutes half of what is statutorily the Employment Guarantee Fund (EGF). The other half comes in as government’s matching grant for every rupee collected. That’s a statutory obligation.
Under EGS, if 30 people and more walk up to a tehsildar and ask for work because they have no jobs, he is bound to provide it, be it unskilled and temporary work, as close to their village as possible. But in practice, it works differently. The government is quietly stashing away the cash under EGS. It has a whopping unspent corpus in the Employment Guarantee Fund. At the end of fiscal 2005, the balance was Rs 7,941 crore. On March 31, 2006, it was Rs 9,601 crore. Going by these figures, on March 31 this year it ought to be Rs 11,000 crore and more. What’s wrong in building up a huge corpus, one may ask. There is a catch.
The money is not just unspent; it is also quite hard to trace. On querying government officials, I got a bland but official answer that was actually a shocker: The money could well have been unspent on EGS, but it was “unavailable.” When pressed, a minister, surprised at my naiveté, replied, “What is not spent on EGS is spent on other things.” So, even the estimated Rs 11,000 crore balance is apparently only on paper. One wonders how this passes muster with an auditor.
Every year, therefore, money is being collected on false pretexts — ostensibly to support the EGS, but spent elsewhere. The EGS Act, adopted in 1977 apparently foresaw such dipping into the EGF coffers and stipulated that if any of it is borrowed — officialese for diversion? — it ought to be returned in the next fiscal. That has never happened. In fact, from 2000-01 to 2002-03, the government did not even make its matching contribution of Rs 3,144 crore. The government should stop collecting the EGF. It should either spend the money on creating rural jobs or stop collecting the taxes and cesses. But it is scarcely in a position to do so. It is debt-ridden and any money comes in handy.
However, the government’s defence is that at no time has the EGS been starved of funds, EGF or no EGF. Clever. It would argue that this year too a substantial allocation has been made for EGS (Rs 1,000 for 2007-08) and, as Finance Minister Jayant Patil said in his Budget speech, more would be made available if required. But the government need not worry, because the actual expenditure will assuredly be well below allocation.
The truth is that, except for the years between 1981 and 1989, the expenditure has been about half of the annual accruals. All other years, the collections have been jam-on-butter for a perpetually hard-pressed government.
By continuing with this taxation on false pretexts, the government is fattening the cow every year. Every year, more money flows from the levies and there is more to dip into. Unless, of course, the law is changed and the EGF, instead of being a part of the consolidated fund, is converted into an escrow account which cannot be touched except for the stated purpose, which is to provide jobs to the poor.
Or the government could use the unspent resources — unspent on EGS, that is — to develop infrastructure, which could attract industries and generate employment away from Mumbai, Pune, Nashik, Nagpur and Kolhapur and reduce dependence on farming as a livelihood. That would mitigate any crisis during droughts when demand for work goes up. In 2006-07, a normal year, it touched 8.27 crore mandays, on which Rs 578.91 crore was spent. However, it is worth noting that the total collection for EGF that year was about Rs 2,900 crore.
In other words, even in a year when a sizeable amount was spent on EGS, there was still an excess fund of about Rs 2,300 crore. It is time the government was asked how the surplus funds were spent. Now that the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (NREGS) has become operational, the demands on EGF would go down further, because the Central scheme covers 12 districts of the state. If the NREGS provides 100 days of work as promised, the demand on EGF would drop. EGS has to provide jobs for all 365 days. For all that, the state government shows no inclination to end a steady source of revenue that it has been using for unstated purposes. So what’s Rs 251 crore misspent or misappropriated in Solapur?
Email author: mvijapurkar@gmail.com
Mahesh Vijapurkar is a freelance journalist
14 April 2007
Equity!
An innovative price mechanism for farmland acquisition (http://www.domain-b.com/economy/general/2007/20070405_mechanism.htm)
5 April 2007
Mahesh Vijapurkar, former deputy editor, The Hindu, supports an innovative farmland pricing mechanism that equalises the opportunity for gain amongst all in the vicinity of the project.
In recent times, two interesting developments, centred around special economic zones and land acquisition have taken place, One is outright cancellation of the Nandigram proposals of West Bengal where the state has decided to retreat. The second is a proposal being worked by the centre wherein the state shall not get involved in acquiring land for private industrial activity but confine its role in land acquisitions for pubic projects, like roads, dams, power generation projects, etc.
The two are not unconnected developments. If the people of Nandigram had not become agitated to the extent of becoming violent, the state would not have backed out. And in the proposal — one hopes it does see the light of the day — to shift itself out of land acquisition for the private sector is the acknowledgement that only market price mechanisms ought to work in procurement of land. However, the government may intervene if about 90 per cent of land has been bought up but patches remain. Then the government should ensure a price that is equal to the highest paid for any parcel of land.
By now, it is clear that the thinking classes have begun to worry about the substantive issues that surround the acquisition of land, where more often than not, the 'eminent domain' doctrine is invoked and land owners have no alternative but to agree to give up titles to their land. In my view, it is time that the country's collective conscience is roused; it is time the landowner is not bulldozed by the combined might of the state and big business into being forcibly alienated from his ancestral property, often the sole means of his livelihood.
Land acquisition by the government is not a new beast. It has been there right from 1894 when the first enactment emerged during the British Raj and since then, it has been a singularly effective tool to get the crucial asset to build public projects and private industrial enterprises upon. However, the sudden emergence of special economic zones with its inherent appetite for huge swaths of land has awakened the people to the need for fair and equitable deals for landowners who are forced to part with their assets.
In my column last month (See: Not low prices, but equity please!), I had suggested not just a fair price for the land plus an enterprise value to the farmer to be converted into equity in the new project that impinges on his land. That, it can be argued, would convert the landowner from a mere stakeholder in the national enterprise towards development into, quite literally, a shareholder in the project. Some alert readers have pointed out some aspects of considerable interest.
One of them is K G Solegaonkar, an alumnus of IIT, Powai, and then Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, who came up with an entirely new price mechanism. He had shed his corporate skin long ago, abandoned the humdrum and taken to spiritualism. But he was stirred enough to suggest that a model of incremental pricing for lands acquired was not only possible. That model, he implies, can prevent premature erosion of the farmers' lands.
The roots of discontent His argument is that it is difficult to pin down what would be the proper price of land, because market prices would be in relation to the demand and supply between farmers who sell to curtail their holdings and those who buy to expand theirs. I acknowledge that sale of farmlands for non-farming activities is not a normal activity and needs state approval, and the commerce is generally among the agrarian community. The terms of trade change when it is sought for non-agrarian purposes.That's when suddenly the demand surges.
And a whole community, which has been tied to the land for generations, suddenly feels threatened. And as the Asian Development Bank pointed out recently, it is not just the landed but also the landless dependent on the land directly or indirectly get drawn into the new maelstrom. It is not as if a patch of land is changing hands within the village; a new economic intrusion is going to take place and rapidly, their lives would undergo vast changes. The money that is swapped for their lands would hardly constitute enough resources to develop a new livelihood.
These people in the ruralscape sense that from the centre of their own universe, they would move to the fringe of another where they are no more masters. Their hitherto predictable life stands on its head and uncertainties loom large, including the prospect of the seller getting far less than the neighbour whose land was not being bought up. This is where Solegaonkar has a refreshingly new perspective to offer. Land prices of those not bought up always go up because of the project that is built. Others whose lands were untouched in the acquisition stand to gain more.
For instance, the price of land, even on the most generous terms and far exceeding the Ready Reckoner prices would be no patch on the nearby piece of land, which would eventually get converted into real estate, for instance, to cater to private housing or commercial use in close proximity of the project.
Let us consider a dam. The price paid for the land to be submerged would be nothing compared to the land on which shops come up to cater to the project staff. And it would be miniscule compared to the value that is put on land, which gets irrigated elsewhere because of the dam.
It is axiomatic that land prices escalate once the project is announced but not on the same scale as the upward spiralling that takes place once the project - be it a dam, a factory or a big bang special economic zone (SEZ) is announced. Therefore, says Solegaonkar, it has to be considered that land as an input for a project has many characteristics not shared by other inputs. The value of surrounding land increases only because of the procurement of the nearby land for the SEZ or highway or dam.
"May be the model to follow is to fix a percentage of the difference in price of procurement and the price of sale in adjoining plot sales. That should go to the ones whose lands are acquired. For this purpose, all the sales of land, say, starting five years before and going up to perhaps ten years after the project is announced, should be considered for fixing the percentage for sharing", he said in an email. I have not heard of a better case that ensures not only a basic but appropriate price and insures against the certain loss of potential earning had a particular landholder's land not been targeted.
In other words, negative impact of the lottery of life and land is neutralised and were you to look deeper into what Solegaonkar advocates, it ensures not merely equity to an individual whose land was ordained to be taken away but equalises the opportunity for gain amongst all in the vicinity of the project.
If land is a community asset, and the landholders have notional titles but the state has its 'eminent domain' rights over it, one could not ask for a better deal than this incremental pricing to overcome the mischief of differential gains. Every one gains equally.
Thank you, Solegaonkar, for that thoughtful email. I thought it should be shared with the world.
5 April 2007
Mahesh Vijapurkar, former deputy editor, The Hindu, supports an innovative farmland pricing mechanism that equalises the opportunity for gain amongst all in the vicinity of the project.
In recent times, two interesting developments, centred around special economic zones and land acquisition have taken place, One is outright cancellation of the Nandigram proposals of West Bengal where the state has decided to retreat. The second is a proposal being worked by the centre wherein the state shall not get involved in acquiring land for private industrial activity but confine its role in land acquisitions for pubic projects, like roads, dams, power generation projects, etc.
The two are not unconnected developments. If the people of Nandigram had not become agitated to the extent of becoming violent, the state would not have backed out. And in the proposal — one hopes it does see the light of the day — to shift itself out of land acquisition for the private sector is the acknowledgement that only market price mechanisms ought to work in procurement of land. However, the government may intervene if about 90 per cent of land has been bought up but patches remain. Then the government should ensure a price that is equal to the highest paid for any parcel of land.
By now, it is clear that the thinking classes have begun to worry about the substantive issues that surround the acquisition of land, where more often than not, the 'eminent domain' doctrine is invoked and land owners have no alternative but to agree to give up titles to their land. In my view, it is time that the country's collective conscience is roused; it is time the landowner is not bulldozed by the combined might of the state and big business into being forcibly alienated from his ancestral property, often the sole means of his livelihood.
Land acquisition by the government is not a new beast. It has been there right from 1894 when the first enactment emerged during the British Raj and since then, it has been a singularly effective tool to get the crucial asset to build public projects and private industrial enterprises upon. However, the sudden emergence of special economic zones with its inherent appetite for huge swaths of land has awakened the people to the need for fair and equitable deals for landowners who are forced to part with their assets.
In my column last month (See: Not low prices, but equity please!), I had suggested not just a fair price for the land plus an enterprise value to the farmer to be converted into equity in the new project that impinges on his land. That, it can be argued, would convert the landowner from a mere stakeholder in the national enterprise towards development into, quite literally, a shareholder in the project. Some alert readers have pointed out some aspects of considerable interest.
One of them is K G Solegaonkar, an alumnus of IIT, Powai, and then Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, who came up with an entirely new price mechanism. He had shed his corporate skin long ago, abandoned the humdrum and taken to spiritualism. But he was stirred enough to suggest that a model of incremental pricing for lands acquired was not only possible. That model, he implies, can prevent premature erosion of the farmers' lands.
The roots of discontent His argument is that it is difficult to pin down what would be the proper price of land, because market prices would be in relation to the demand and supply between farmers who sell to curtail their holdings and those who buy to expand theirs. I acknowledge that sale of farmlands for non-farming activities is not a normal activity and needs state approval, and the commerce is generally among the agrarian community. The terms of trade change when it is sought for non-agrarian purposes.That's when suddenly the demand surges.
And a whole community, which has been tied to the land for generations, suddenly feels threatened. And as the Asian Development Bank pointed out recently, it is not just the landed but also the landless dependent on the land directly or indirectly get drawn into the new maelstrom. It is not as if a patch of land is changing hands within the village; a new economic intrusion is going to take place and rapidly, their lives would undergo vast changes. The money that is swapped for their lands would hardly constitute enough resources to develop a new livelihood.
These people in the ruralscape sense that from the centre of their own universe, they would move to the fringe of another where they are no more masters. Their hitherto predictable life stands on its head and uncertainties loom large, including the prospect of the seller getting far less than the neighbour whose land was not being bought up. This is where Solegaonkar has a refreshingly new perspective to offer. Land prices of those not bought up always go up because of the project that is built. Others whose lands were untouched in the acquisition stand to gain more.
For instance, the price of land, even on the most generous terms and far exceeding the Ready Reckoner prices would be no patch on the nearby piece of land, which would eventually get converted into real estate, for instance, to cater to private housing or commercial use in close proximity of the project.
Let us consider a dam. The price paid for the land to be submerged would be nothing compared to the land on which shops come up to cater to the project staff. And it would be miniscule compared to the value that is put on land, which gets irrigated elsewhere because of the dam.
It is axiomatic that land prices escalate once the project is announced but not on the same scale as the upward spiralling that takes place once the project - be it a dam, a factory or a big bang special economic zone (SEZ) is announced. Therefore, says Solegaonkar, it has to be considered that land as an input for a project has many characteristics not shared by other inputs. The value of surrounding land increases only because of the procurement of the nearby land for the SEZ or highway or dam.
"May be the model to follow is to fix a percentage of the difference in price of procurement and the price of sale in adjoining plot sales. That should go to the ones whose lands are acquired. For this purpose, all the sales of land, say, starting five years before and going up to perhaps ten years after the project is announced, should be considered for fixing the percentage for sharing", he said in an email. I have not heard of a better case that ensures not only a basic but appropriate price and insures against the certain loss of potential earning had a particular landholder's land not been targeted.
In other words, negative impact of the lottery of life and land is neutralised and were you to look deeper into what Solegaonkar advocates, it ensures not merely equity to an individual whose land was ordained to be taken away but equalises the opportunity for gain amongst all in the vicinity of the project.
If land is a community asset, and the landholders have notional titles but the state has its 'eminent domain' rights over it, one could not ask for a better deal than this incremental pricing to overcome the mischief of differential gains. Every one gains equally.
Thank you, Solegaonkar, for that thoughtful email. I thought it should be shared with the world.
Not low prices, but equity please!22 March 2007
(Published on March 22, 2007 on www.domain-b.com and the link is: http://www.domain-b.com/economy/general/2007/20070322_equity.htm
'Inclusiveness' also implies equity for farmers whose lands are to be handed over for special projects, argues Mahesh Vijapurkar, former deputy editor, The Hindu.
The Tatas have entered the farmland allotted to them in Singur. The Maharashtra government has assigned a swath of what is farmland in the vicinity of Chakan, near Pune, to Volkswagen AG, at prices half of its own scale of rates. The Prime Minister has spoken of having to give what has to be given to sustain the programme of setting special economic zones (SEZs). However, so far, one has not heard of any focused attempt at meeting the demands of the farmer for a fair deal and equitable price for his critical asset. In fact, the farmer deserves more.
There is no explanation yet as to why a farmer be paid a pittance, and then the land transferred to Volkswagen at Rs14.30 lakh per acre when the asking price in the neighbourhood of Chakan near Pune is Rs40 lakh an acre. It is difficult to explain to a farmer that when private developers have bought land at Rs20 lakh per bigha (an unstandardised measure of land generally approximating 3,025 metres) in villages along the route of the proposed Taj Expressway linking New Delhi and Agra, but he should part with his property for Rs3.2 lakh a bigha to build that highway.
Try telling it to a farmer and he would laugh his head off because it is weird. But he dare not defy the order, because the government has the prerogative of virtually seizing his land and paying a pittance in return because the mighty state often invokes – less the exception, more the rule - the doctrine of 'eminent domain' by which it can acquire lands for public purpose. In the case of SEZ's the public purpose is the private investor who wants to develop the land into new centres of economic activity.
Now, in the wake of continued protests in Nandigram in West Bengal, which had led to over 11 deaths on Wednesday last week, there is talk of the government wanting to assist farmers find alternative land for them to plough and raise crops – in short, remain farmers. The idea is to use the compensation money to buy new patches.
It would not be long before the government finds itself up against a wall finding such land of equal measure and similar productivity for land in the open market with the money it paid to get the land for the Tatas.
The farmer resists his land being taken away because he does not like being forced to part with it at prices that bear no relationship to the prevailing market rates. By all accounts, the price of land in the vicinity of new projects, either because of that or despite the new projects, is certainly higher than what is being offered. A cultivator with title to a land does not like being pushed into a sale on the buyer's terms. Going by every land acquisition for any project so far, the offered price has always been lower than the market price.
If a better price alone were a consideration, he would have sold it anyaway, grabbing the best offer in the open land market and held his peace. He hangs on to it, despite even poor returns in most cases because farming is not remunerative. He does so because the land confers an identity on him. Extreme distress alone forces him to sell. He does it to marry off his daughter, or to pay off usurious moneylenders who anyhow have entrapped him with his own thumb impression on various IOUs. He does not sell his land because he he does not visualise a better life without it. That's because he has not seen others improve their lives after being parted from their land.
No wonder the discontent spills over to the streets, as was evident recently in West Bengal and sometime ago, around Maan village close to Pune when landholders opposed acquisitions for setting up IT parks. Seeing how economic activity brings people from far away to what was once his land and people prosper into higher economic, white collar status, it is unlikely that a farmer can be expected to just sit at the edge and watch others prosper at his cost. He wants a share, and a fair one at that. Instead of being persuaded to sell, landholders are forced to sell. Neither is he told that he has a vital resource which could be converted into useful equity. But he has realised it now and unwilling to countenance being short-changed.
It is not that lands were not acquired in the past. They were parcels that were taken away at notional prices and since they were scattered, the collective capabilities of the farming community did not come to the fore. Yes, lands were acquired for big dams but that was in the distant past before the farmers marshalled their strength together. But things have changed because the farmers have realised that land is the most vital resource for industrialisation. With huge swathes required for SEZs, the issue has gained dominance. Some of them would compete for size with major existing cities.
However, instead of discussing alternative land acquisition models without resort to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 to suit the times, where the farmer too has his aspirations to be met, we have Chief Ministers writing to the Prime Minister that investors who had come forward to set up SEZs are getting edgy. It is not anyone's case that lands should not be acquired but the country has to engage itself in finding ways and means of going about it. It is as if the farmer does not matter, that he can be quietened sooner or later.
It is seldom realised that in the new order the world is moving into, where new aspirations are emerging by the day, where people no longer have the patience to wait long for gains to percolate down to them – lack of speed and corruption being the two major speed breakers – dependence on old, draconian laws like the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 can no longer be brought into play. That archaic legal provision has the inbuilt enabler: forceful acquisition which does not jell with the increasingly democratic regime. Inclusiveness is the thing; the demand is for equity – nothing more, nothing less.
Viewed in that perspective, actually the only valid perspective, why should a farmer have his land commandeered when the promoter of the new enterprise that comes up on that piece of land pays the market rate for everything else, be it cement to construct the factory, the machinery that would hum to churn out stuff and everything else, including salaries, are at market dictated prices? Why should only the farmer forgo his everything as if he is the only benefactor for others at the behest of the State? Why should not the farmer's land be treated as his equity contribution, reckoning the market price of the land, the future earning on it and the value that accrues to the project when built upon it? This would be paying him the due enterprise value.
There have been a few – actually rare – alternative models already available in which the farmers are better treated but no much is heard about it. For a start, they could be replicated, if not immediately improved upon. For instance, Bharat Forge's intent of a long term stake in the SEZ project which would give landholders revenue streams in the future too. Much prior to the opposition in Raigad to Reliance SEZ and in Singur against land for the Tata small car project, landholders near Pune became participants in a project to build Magarpatta City, a cybercity-cum-residential complex. They are not losing lands, but are partners.
They have assurances of future incomes, thanks to a complex but unique model. They would have the right to operate taxi services, housekeeping, eating houses, etc. Living as they do on the fringe of development, they have seen enough about opportunities that could come their way but did not because a pact between the developer and the critical asset owner was never in place in other projects. But such a pact appears to be the lynchpin of the arrangement between the landholder and the Bharat Forge's proposed SEZ.
While Bharat Forge's reported model includes providing a share in the total office spaces to be created to the original owner to rent out, the Reliance SEZ's offer includes, apart from prices higher than what the State Government's Ready Reckoner entails, returning 12.5 per cent of the developed land to the original landholder. However, this model is rather old hat, since Maharashtra's CIDCO used that in its deals with the farmers for lands on which it built Navi Mumbai. However, this is only a start, not the end of the search for new models. It brooks no delays.
(Published on March 22, 2007 on www.domain-b.com and the link is: http://www.domain-b.com/economy/general/2007/20070322_equity.htm
'Inclusiveness' also implies equity for farmers whose lands are to be handed over for special projects, argues Mahesh Vijapurkar, former deputy editor, The Hindu.
The Tatas have entered the farmland allotted to them in Singur. The Maharashtra government has assigned a swath of what is farmland in the vicinity of Chakan, near Pune, to Volkswagen AG, at prices half of its own scale of rates. The Prime Minister has spoken of having to give what has to be given to sustain the programme of setting special economic zones (SEZs). However, so far, one has not heard of any focused attempt at meeting the demands of the farmer for a fair deal and equitable price for his critical asset. In fact, the farmer deserves more.
There is no explanation yet as to why a farmer be paid a pittance, and then the land transferred to Volkswagen at Rs14.30 lakh per acre when the asking price in the neighbourhood of Chakan near Pune is Rs40 lakh an acre. It is difficult to explain to a farmer that when private developers have bought land at Rs20 lakh per bigha (an unstandardised measure of land generally approximating 3,025 metres) in villages along the route of the proposed Taj Expressway linking New Delhi and Agra, but he should part with his property for Rs3.2 lakh a bigha to build that highway.
Try telling it to a farmer and he would laugh his head off because it is weird. But he dare not defy the order, because the government has the prerogative of virtually seizing his land and paying a pittance in return because the mighty state often invokes – less the exception, more the rule - the doctrine of 'eminent domain' by which it can acquire lands for public purpose. In the case of SEZ's the public purpose is the private investor who wants to develop the land into new centres of economic activity.
Now, in the wake of continued protests in Nandigram in West Bengal, which had led to over 11 deaths on Wednesday last week, there is talk of the government wanting to assist farmers find alternative land for them to plough and raise crops – in short, remain farmers. The idea is to use the compensation money to buy new patches.
It would not be long before the government finds itself up against a wall finding such land of equal measure and similar productivity for land in the open market with the money it paid to get the land for the Tatas.
The farmer resists his land being taken away because he does not like being forced to part with it at prices that bear no relationship to the prevailing market rates. By all accounts, the price of land in the vicinity of new projects, either because of that or despite the new projects, is certainly higher than what is being offered. A cultivator with title to a land does not like being pushed into a sale on the buyer's terms. Going by every land acquisition for any project so far, the offered price has always been lower than the market price.
If a better price alone were a consideration, he would have sold it anyaway, grabbing the best offer in the open land market and held his peace. He hangs on to it, despite even poor returns in most cases because farming is not remunerative. He does so because the land confers an identity on him. Extreme distress alone forces him to sell. He does it to marry off his daughter, or to pay off usurious moneylenders who anyhow have entrapped him with his own thumb impression on various IOUs. He does not sell his land because he he does not visualise a better life without it. That's because he has not seen others improve their lives after being parted from their land.
No wonder the discontent spills over to the streets, as was evident recently in West Bengal and sometime ago, around Maan village close to Pune when landholders opposed acquisitions for setting up IT parks. Seeing how economic activity brings people from far away to what was once his land and people prosper into higher economic, white collar status, it is unlikely that a farmer can be expected to just sit at the edge and watch others prosper at his cost. He wants a share, and a fair one at that. Instead of being persuaded to sell, landholders are forced to sell. Neither is he told that he has a vital resource which could be converted into useful equity. But he has realised it now and unwilling to countenance being short-changed.
It is not that lands were not acquired in the past. They were parcels that were taken away at notional prices and since they were scattered, the collective capabilities of the farming community did not come to the fore. Yes, lands were acquired for big dams but that was in the distant past before the farmers marshalled their strength together. But things have changed because the farmers have realised that land is the most vital resource for industrialisation. With huge swathes required for SEZs, the issue has gained dominance. Some of them would compete for size with major existing cities.
However, instead of discussing alternative land acquisition models without resort to the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 to suit the times, where the farmer too has his aspirations to be met, we have Chief Ministers writing to the Prime Minister that investors who had come forward to set up SEZs are getting edgy. It is not anyone's case that lands should not be acquired but the country has to engage itself in finding ways and means of going about it. It is as if the farmer does not matter, that he can be quietened sooner or later.
It is seldom realised that in the new order the world is moving into, where new aspirations are emerging by the day, where people no longer have the patience to wait long for gains to percolate down to them – lack of speed and corruption being the two major speed breakers – dependence on old, draconian laws like the Land Acquisition Act, 1894 can no longer be brought into play. That archaic legal provision has the inbuilt enabler: forceful acquisition which does not jell with the increasingly democratic regime. Inclusiveness is the thing; the demand is for equity – nothing more, nothing less.
Viewed in that perspective, actually the only valid perspective, why should a farmer have his land commandeered when the promoter of the new enterprise that comes up on that piece of land pays the market rate for everything else, be it cement to construct the factory, the machinery that would hum to churn out stuff and everything else, including salaries, are at market dictated prices? Why should only the farmer forgo his everything as if he is the only benefactor for others at the behest of the State? Why should not the farmer's land be treated as his equity contribution, reckoning the market price of the land, the future earning on it and the value that accrues to the project when built upon it? This would be paying him the due enterprise value.
There have been a few – actually rare – alternative models already available in which the farmers are better treated but no much is heard about it. For a start, they could be replicated, if not immediately improved upon. For instance, Bharat Forge's intent of a long term stake in the SEZ project which would give landholders revenue streams in the future too. Much prior to the opposition in Raigad to Reliance SEZ and in Singur against land for the Tata small car project, landholders near Pune became participants in a project to build Magarpatta City, a cybercity-cum-residential complex. They are not losing lands, but are partners.
They have assurances of future incomes, thanks to a complex but unique model. They would have the right to operate taxi services, housekeeping, eating houses, etc. Living as they do on the fringe of development, they have seen enough about opportunities that could come their way but did not because a pact between the developer and the critical asset owner was never in place in other projects. But such a pact appears to be the lynchpin of the arrangement between the landholder and the Bharat Forge's proposed SEZ.
While Bharat Forge's reported model includes providing a share in the total office spaces to be created to the original owner to rent out, the Reliance SEZ's offer includes, apart from prices higher than what the State Government's Ready Reckoner entails, returning 12.5 per cent of the developed land to the original landholder. However, this model is rather old hat, since Maharashtra's CIDCO used that in its deals with the farmers for lands on which it built Navi Mumbai. However, this is only a start, not the end of the search for new models. It brooks no delays.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)