CNS: Articles of Dr Rahul Pandey

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Would Bhagat Singh have raised slogan 'Bharat Mata Ki Jai'?

Dr Sandeep Pandey and Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnists

As we know the great revolutionary Bhagat Singh was an atheist. He wrote a famous article 'Why I am an Atheist?' Even after he knew that he was going to be hanged by the British government his commitment to his principles was not shaken. Neither did he regret his action of exploding the harmless bomb in Central Assembly at Delhi nor did he seek any apology from the British.

Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnist
I wrote these personal thoughts immediately after the 26/11 terror attacks in Mumbai in 2008 but never sent it to a publication. On the heels of terrible terror attacks in Paris, in the midst of equally horrifying attacks going on in parts of the Arab world, and on the anniversary of 26/11, as similar thoughts come to my mind I decided to dig it out. So here it goes ..

Lessons to be learned from intolerance debate

Dr Rahul Pandey and Dr Sandeep Pandey

Photo credit: CNS: citizen-news.org

A good outcome of so many writers, poets, artists, historians and scientists returning awards or writing letters in protest against growing intolerance in Indian society is that a debate has been set off in the public domain. However the arguments and counterarguments have often become bitter. In this debate most of the bitterness has been displayed by some of those who do not agree that intolerance is on a rise.

Wrong development priority in spite of Socio-Economic Census and National Sample Survey findings

Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnist

Graph credit: Dr Rahul Pandey

Partial results of two important official surveys were released recently. They point to dismal living standards of India’s rural population and rising cost of health and education beyond the means of ordinary citizens. In spite of this reality the Modi government is undermining the public health and public education sectors among other social infrastructures, as reflected in its funding priorities. This does not bode well for future living standards of India’s ordinary citizens who are already struggling with meeting basic needs.

Through the people's lens: Modi's development model so far

Dr Rahul Pandey, Bobby Ramakant and Dr Sandeep Pandey

Story of Modi’s development model so far: Cutting health and education expenditure, forcing land acquisition, buying expensive jets and unsafe nuclear power, benefitting Big Business, diluting employment guarantee, fanning communal fires, exploiting Ganga, curbing dissent and shielding governance from public scrutiny.
If we separate Modi government’s actions from mere words and assess its priorities from the former, there is now enough evidence to form a clear picture. The picture that emerges is one of grossly skewed priorities.

Dr Sandeep Pandey, Vallabh bhai,
and volunteers cleaning
Ganga in Varanasi

Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnist

In an impromptu debate in the Lok Sabha on the tragic suicide of farmer Gajendra Singh in New Delhi, Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed pain and said that farmers cannot be left to fend for themselves. He admitted that the problem afflicting the farmers is old, deep-rooted and wide-spread. While the PM appeared to be concerned about farmers’ crisis, his government’s actions on the ground tell quite an opposite story. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, about 3 lakh farmers have killed themselves in India since 1995, with an average of 46 farmer suicides every day.

Land Acquisition Bill takes away rights of farmers and pits them against 'Make in India'

Dr Rahul Pandey and Dr Sandeep Pandey, CNS Columnists

Since the past several months we have seen the NDA government aggressively pushing through changes in land acquisition policy, first in the form of Ordinance in December 2014 and then, as it was passed as a Bill with nine changes in Lok Sabha but faced roadblock in Rajya Sabha, re-promulgating it before its expiry in April 2015. With the government calling the Bill pro-farmer and pro-development and most of opposition parties and social activists opposing it as anti-farmer, it is useful to sieve through the noise and look at the changes proposed and what existed earlier.

Image credit: CNS: citizen-news.org

Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnist
Skewed Priorities of the government: Write-off in customs duty on gold, diamond and jewellery is about twice the cut in total budget for health, education, women and child development, drinking water and sanitation!

Why prefer AAP over BJP and Congress?

Dr Sandeep Pandey and Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnists

For the first time since Narendra Modi government has come to power in the centre and won state after state in assembly elections it faces a tough challenge from AAP in Delhi. AAP is not like any other political party. It has emerged from a movement and represents a changing mood in this country, giving a chance to especially the youth to get involved in political process. It is a different matter that equal or more number of youth are involved with BJP now. BJP has more effectively used methods, which AAP brought into Indian politics, to its advantage.

Modi's economic policy at loggerheads with Gandhi's vision

Dr Rahul Pandey and Dr Sandeep Pandey, CNS Columnist

Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary is an opportune time to assess Prime Minister (PM) Narendra Modi’s major policy thrusts on the economic front. His policy contrasts both with Gandhi’s vision and with what is needed to develop long term capabilities in India’s workforce and economic infrastructure. In a nutshell Modi’s economic policy is an accelerated version of that of former PM Manmohan Singh and his United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government.

Seeking honest politics distinguishes AAP from BJP and Congress

Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnist

Photo credit: CNS

In a recent article I wrote that most of the people campaigning for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) come from different social strata but are united by a common desire to seek honest politics. On reading the article a friend asked me if I believed that everyone in AAP was honest and everyone in Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) or Congress was corrupt. My response to him was, of course there were some honest individuals in BJP and Congress and maybe some dishonest ones in AAP, but the difference between the two sets of parties is not only relative but also fundamental. This is an attempt to understand that difference.

Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnist
For about two months I was in Khandwa in Madhya Pradesh campaigning for Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) candidate Alok Agarwal. Irrespective of what the result in Khandwa will be it appears that almost everywhere Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will make substantial gains, Congress will suffer a lot, and AAP may not get the seats they expected. And irrespective of all these outcomes certain effects of BJP’s imminent success and AAP’s emergence are evident too. Some of these I could sense on the ground in these two months. While one set of effects are worrying, the other set gives us hope. Nevertheless, they give an idea of the things that might come.

Dr Rahul Pandey, CNS Columnist
In a short period of time the Aam Aadmi Party (AAP) has shaken up India’s political landscape by offering an honest alternative to the mainstream national parties, specifically the Congress and the BJP. This article is an attempt to understand AAP’s credibility on certain crucial dimensions, namely, the integrity of senior leadership; their policy agenda for the underprivileged sections of society; and for the economy and business sector. While doing so, a brief comparison of AAP with BJP and Congress is also attempted. High personal integrity of senior leaders is a fundamental pre-requisite for good governance. It is a starting condition for a party to collectively try to envision an India without vested self interests.

Dr Rahul Pandey
In the past several days I have been a part of Aam Aadmi Party (AAP)'s campaigning in Matiala constituency of Delhi. In this small period I have been witness to some inspiring processes and moments – motivation and hard work of persons volunteering for AAP; responses of people from various strata to AAP’s canvassing; decentralized and chaotic yet, in some ways, organized management of AAP’s campaign activities at the levels of constituencies and wards; and AAP’s unique model of local and democratic governance with a hint of Gandhi’s vision of ‘Swaraj’ or ‘Self-rule’.

A lot has been bloated about Gujarat’s outstanding economic performance during Narendra Modi’s Chief Minister-ship. Many educated people believe in it too. By looking at the growth of the Net Domestic Product in the past five years, I show that this is a myth rather than reality. Several other states like Bihar, Haryana, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra have performed better than Gujarat. By looking at the whole picture, Gujarat’s performance on economic growth relative to other states can only be labeled as above-average. It cannot be called outstanding or spectacular by any yardstick.

A lot of well off and educated sections of our society are rooting for FDI in retail. There seems to be a disappointment among the middle/upper middle class consumers and the corporate world that the Government of India has put this policy on hold. There was an article published in The Telegraph on 5th December 2011 titled “How Bengal gains from FDI: Experiment that protected 6500 farmers from a curse.”

Convocation address of Dr Sandeep Pandey, who was the Chief Guest, at Indian Institute of Management (IIM-C) Kolkata
Dear friends, as you complete yet another milestone in your academic career and prepare to embark on a new professional path, I would like to offer you hearty congratulations and best wishes. Your Institute’s environment and professors at IIM Kolkata must have provided you with both managerial skills and ethical values necessary to lead a life that will be professionally, socially and spiritually satisfying. However, the inputs imbibed here are only the starting point, and you will have to constantly question, assess and evolve your values and actions as you begin living in the real society. While I hope that you will take care of your professional skills, I want to share my thoughts with you about the challenges you will face on the social and spiritual aspects, the implication they will have for your professional choices, and how you could respond to them.
I will organize my thoughts by responding to some fundamental questions that arise in everyone’s mind:
(i) Who we are?
(ii) How can we become happy and satisfied individually?
(iii) What is the implication of seeking happiness for our professional choices and decisions? Read more

What is to be done in the next five years?

What is to be done in the next five years?
Rahul Pandey

The United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has been re-elected with near majority. With the country facing a host of social, economic and political problems, its plate is full. Most sectors and people are reeling under the economic recession. At the same time the prices of some of the basic essentials like food products have been high. The poor – small farmers and landless people in villages and low skilled workers and small informal (unorganized) sector entrepreneurs in urban areas – are the worst hit. Myriad environmental problems – both local and global – stare us rudely in the face. Communal divisions and related threat of terrorism have made people insecure. The government simply does not have the luxury of a honeymoon period. It must tighten its belt and begin to act.

But before we talk about what is to be done, let us briefly look at what made the people elect the Congress and what explains the rout of the BJP and the Left? This will give us insight into what people of India want.

In the past five years Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi have steered the Congress in two different directions. Instead of conflicting politically, these efforts somehow appeared to satisfy two different but major segments of our society. This was in spite of the usual corruption and other flaws that characterize the Congress culture. Of course there were regional factors too, but here we touch upon only the main country-wide initiatives.

The well-off, urban people have grown to become enamoured of Dr. Singh. His image of an honest and intelligent person has only been reinforced in these five years. The only serious allegation, that he was a weak PM and a puppet to the Congress president, was thwarted by some of his actions like his passionate pursuit of the Indo-US nuclear deal. Although the latter meant compromising India’s neutrality and commitment to peace, it did show he was a strong willed person, unwilling to budge under pressure from heavyweights in his own party. This enhanced his credibility among the people, especially the educated middle class.

Sonia Gandhi, on her part, earnestly backed and saw through the fruition of two very important Acts – Right to Information Act (RTI) and National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). To do so, on the one hand she involved several eminent social activists to help design and draft the Acts. On the other hand, she cleverly dealt with the opposition to these Acts from vested but influential interests within her own party and outside. These Acts have strong checks built in them. Hence, despite corruption and leakage, their implementation has been reasonably well received. In many districts, several local NGOs and activist groups supported them and got engaged in their monitoring at the ground. While RTI itself has significantly increased common people’s access to governmental schemes and information, NREGA together with RTI has made perceptible improvement in rural employment and wage for the poor and curtailed distress seasonal migrations in several regions. Now many agree that these Acts constitute major institutional reform and progress, and need to be given more teeth. Such schemes helped enlist the support of the masses.

The BJP, on the other hand, had barely any positive alternatives to offer. Its personal allegations against Manmohan Singh backfired and brazenly linking terrorism to a community sounded too crude and shallow. The Left, with its disastrous pursuit of industrialization in Nandigram and Singur without any rehabilitation plan for the displaced, stood utterly discredited among the people. It appeared stripped of its own core principle.

What should be done now by the UPA government? Economic recession, poverty and unemployment, environmental problems, and terrorism loom large over India’s social-political horizon. An innovative policy response will be one that attempts to address all these problems in a synergistic stroke. Trying out a way that solves one problem while worsening another is something we have done many times in the past and will not work this time too.

Many economists and planners agree that a key solution to recession is to increase government or public spending. This would directly pump money in the economy and create jobs in public works. The money that thus reaches the hands of consumers will eventually boost consumer spending. The banks must simultaneously ease up credit schemes so that people can borrow at low interest rate, which again boosts spending and investment in the economy.

The tricky policy question is: For which kind of activities should the government increase spending and the banks offer easy credit? How much and for how long? Answer to these questions will determine the success of our economic revival. It will also determine what kind of capabilities India would acquire in the process, for instance, in technologies and management systems in agriculture, industrial, infrastructure, energy and environmental fields. More crucially, it will also determine the extent to which we will solve our social problems like poverty, unemployment and wide economic disparity.

To identify the right policy direction for India it is important to recognize certain dominant global trends. First, globalization is rapidly increasing the access of people, especially those connected with the modern economy, to information from everywhere. People are becoming more aware of the critical issues of politics, economies, development, environment and human rights in different parts of the world. Second, as the forces of globalization are also unleashing repression of ordinary communities by big capital intensive projects, the opposition of people to such forces is becoming louder. At more and more places local people are getting organized and raising voices against unjust development projects that displace them from local resource base and do not offer much in return. And more and more such people’s groups are getting networked. This is leading to greater demands for a more democratic and just society. Third, the same forces of development have caused grave environmental damage, both locally in polluted cities, rivers, lakes, forests and industrial sites, and globally in form of changing climate. These problems too have mobilized scores of NGOs, policy makers and people everywhere to lobby for environment and people friendly policies. Fourth, as organizations worldwide are under increasing pressure to offer innovative products and services that are both customer and environment friendly, these dimensions are becoming important bases of competition in more and more marketplaces.

All these are irreversible trends which are strengthening and spreading widely. The policy prescriptions that directly address India’s internal social-economic-environmental problems and are, at the same time, in sync with these global trends will be the most robust ones.

To begin with, a drastically enhanced government spending is required on rural infrastructure and environment – roads, wells, water supply, electricity supply, upgraded primary and higher schools, schools for women, training centers in useful employable skills, community centers, planting trees, etc. All such works must be linked with NREGA. This will simultaneously create many productive jobs and build useful infrastructure. Given the current state of such infrastructure, these works can consume most of NREGA’s budget for years.

In order to be environment friendly and sustainable, rural infrastructures like water harvesting and electricity supply must be small and based, as far as possible, on locally available and renewable resources. Fortunately, different parts of India are enriched with at least one renewable resource like solar energy, wind, water, and several types of biomass. Agricultural practices must be based on modern but organic and low energy intensive methods as much as possible. Industries must be energy efficient and source energy first from renewable resources. All waste must be recycled.

Once set up, the facilities for water, electricity/energy, agriculture, education, waste handling, etc. will offer a lot of employment opportunities to operate and maintain them. Hence the newly established training centers must provide training in these and a host of other skills useful for local youth and women to start various entrepreneurial activities relevant for the local society.

Most crucially, for all these initiatives to be useful to local economy, be environment-friendly, and reach all communities and people, they must be governed and monitored locally in the most democratic manner. This can be done only by local bodies that constitute representation from all communities, are democratically elected, and linked with other decentralized institutions of governance. This, in turn, requires that the local institutions of governance are strengthened and made fully decentralized and democratized. This will ensure that local people are the ones who have maximum say in the decisions of fund allocation, selection and monitoring of works, and choice of infrastructures, skills and economic activities. Any large industrial or infrastructure project that impacts local resource base and livelihoods, along with necessary rehabilitation scheme, too must be approved by the local governing bodies.

What about the urban areas? Their design too must change to eco-friendly and people friendly one in which people do not commute much to work, roads are neither congested not polluted, there is high enough capacity of public transport systems, there are many parks and community places for children and adults to enjoy, trees are abundant, houses and buildings are fitted with renewable systems of electricity and water supply, most of the waste is collected and recycled, and there are no slums as all low income people live in proper houses with proper sanitation facilities provided by the government. A lot of urban poor can be engaged and employed in the process of such transformation of urban landscape.

And what about the modern industries? They must be forced through regulation to acquire new technological innovation and management capabilities to become highly energy efficient, environment friendly, and customer friendly. Besides benefiting the society and the environment around them, such capabilities will enable industries to become globally competitive. This is a huge challenge for the Indian industry and will require change in mindset and a lot of work. The surplus manpower in current times of recession can be usefully trained and engaged to build the new systems and capabilities required in this process.

The government must enhance spending and the banks must offer easy credit to directly support the activities that lie within the ambit of strategies proposed above. This will enable the Indian society to transit to a new development path that entails people-driven decentralized governance systems, sustainable and environment friendly infrastructure, agriculture and industrial systems in rural areas, eco-friendly cities, and modern industries with energy efficient and environmental innovation capabilities. The support must be offered until such a transition is achieved. As for terrorism, it will be rendered a secondary concern if we set out seriously on the task of building a prosperous, sustainable and just society.

Rahul Pandey

Engaging lower income countries in climate change mitigation efforts

Engaging low-income countries in climate change mitigation
Dr Rahul Pandey

With Obama administration adopting a progressive outlook toward climate change, a consensus seems likely this year among the high income countries about post-Kyoto mitigation commitments. With growing realization that drastic and early greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions cut will be necessary in order to achieve Carbon di-oxide (CO2) stabilization level of 450 ppmv (or 550 ppmv CO2 equivalent of total GHG), CO2 mitigation targets of 20-30% by 2020 and 50-70% by 2050 (compared to 1990 level), besides the call for ‘low carbon society’, are being heard in the various international forums for more than a year now. Several countries of the European Union and Japan have already begun taking serious actions. The next Conference of Parties, to be held later this year, will most likely witness a formalization of this consensus.

As the high income world is coming out of its internal differences, the focus of heated international debate on climate change is now shifting to the lower income world whose countries are often referred by ideologically loaded labels of ‘less-developed’, ‘developing’ and ‘emerging’ economies. The uppermost concern on everyone’s mind is to figure out a way to get the lower income countries, especially the major ones like China, India and Brazil, to make concrete commitment. The reasons for this overarching concern are simple – Economic growth and resultant emissions of these countries are growing at a rapid pace; China and India are already among the top five GHG emitters; and even if the rest of the world stabilizes its emissions at 1990 level while China and India continue to grow as expected, the world emissions cannot stabilize anywhere close to 450 ppmv in this century.

India and China have so far argued, with reason, that the high income world is responsible for most of the historical rise of GHG emissions. Despite high growth the per capita emissions of the lower income nations will remain much below that of the high income nations for several decades in the future. In addition, they argue, that more critical domestic economic imperatives of growth and poverty reduction will be compromised by aggressive climate change mitigation efforts. These concerns are as valid as those outlined in the previous paragraph.

This begets the question: what kind of strategies and commitments can the lower income countries make that will satisfy the two sides? It is now widely accepted that even if these countries do not make reduction commitments in the near future, they cannot escape from the responsibility of undertaking drastic emissions cut in the longer run, say, after two decades when, by conservative estimate, their per capita GDP would be over three times and emissions more than twice the current levels. In the absence of any commitment in the next two decades, their economies would become locked into high emissions and unsustainable development trajectory. On the one hand, the cost of reversing the trend will become prohibitively high then. On the other hand, it would be foolish if we do not learn from both the past folly and current but belated corrective efforts of the West.

Therefore, the practical questions is: even if the lower income countries do not make direct GHG mitigation commitment in the short run, what preparatory actions can they commit to that will lay the platform for them to transit to a drastic mitigation path in the longer run? And what support can the high income world guarantee them to facilitate such laying of platform and smooth transition?

These are two interlinked parts to the solution. First, to identify near-term strategies and implementation roadmap for the lower income countries that would enable them to move on to a drastic mitigation path in the longer term without compromising domestic development goals. Second, to work out a package of support that they would receive from the high income countries for this purpose. The near-term (say, 2020) post-Kyoto targets for the lower income countries must derive from such a solution for them to be acceptable to all the parties.

In the next couple of decades, countries like China and India have two sets of domestic goals to meet – (i) Economic goals, like economic prosperity and poverty eradication, and (ii) Environmental-ecological goals, like local pollution control and sustainable use of natural resources. The government, non-government and private agencies are going to invest significant resources towards various economic and social ends. The policy challenge is to channel those investments in such a way as to meet the above two sets of goals simultaneously with the third one, i.e. to put the economy on to a low carbon path in the longer run.

The strategies that lie at the intersection of these three goals – economic, local environment-ecological, global climate change – will meet the challenge. The following paragraphs will illustrate such strategies with examples relevant for India.

As one example, the government spending for infrastructure, especially the infrastructure of road and rail (as part of public transport systems), decentralized water supply and decentralized electricity supply systems in the rural areas, can meet multiple objectives of rural employment generation, recovery from economic downturn, sustainable resource use, and greenhouse gas mitigation. Laying of road and rail transport infrastructure to rural areas will facilitate supply of modern products and services to rural markets. Simultaneously establishing services of installation, maintenance and financing of clean and efficient technologies in rural areas will remove barrier to diffusion of such technologies. Using such infrastructure and services to push efficient end-use technologies like energy efficient architectures, compact fluorescent lamps and efficient electric pumpsets, and decentralized and clean energy supply systems like solar PV, solar thermal, wind, small hydro and biomass gasifier can benefit both the economy and the environment.

As another example, planning new and expanding urban areas in such a way as to build in features like waste management and recycling of waste and water, use of solar thermal and PV systems for houses and commercial buildings, use of eco-friendly architectural designs, expanding public transportation, creating pedestrian and bicycle-friendly pathways, and co-locating work places with residences, can cut energy use drastically besides improving the quality of life. Training and engaging the urban poor in the management of resultant new services like waste management and recycling, supply of solar systems and public transport systems, can simultaneously create employment opportunities. Such economy and environment friendly urban designs can be easily planned and implemented from scratch in the new urban concentrations that countries like India and China will witness as part of rapid urbanization in the next few decades.

As yet another example, building R&D and innovation capability in the lower income countries in new technology systems that are radically efficient and environment friendly, will add to competitive advantage of their industries besides helping to mitigate climate change. The governments of these countries have a major role to play in catalyzing such innovative capability creation, for instance, by supporting initial R&D investments in both public and private organizations, creating initial demand, and helping establish the supply chains for making new innovations reach the markets efficiently. However, the rich countries and the international agencies have the responsibility to put in place certain mechanisms that facilitate transfer of not only technology but also innovation capability to the lower income countries. Although several CDMs have been implemented in countries like India and China, they have mostly led to incremental efficiency improvement. This was because CDMs have been passive instruments of technology transfer and do not offer opportunities for building real innovation capability and core competence in industries in the lower income nations. For them to be meaningfully acceptable and contribute to drastic mitigation, CDMs need to be integrated with active international industry collaborative arrangements.

These examples are merely to illustrate the feasibility of innovative strategies that can help the lower income countries meet both domestic economic and environmental goals and global climate change mitigation goals. The workable strategies have to be specific to each country depending on its domestic policy imperatives and resource endowments. Both high and lower income countries need to jointly work out these strategies for the latter, implementation roadmap, measures of performance, periodic (post-Kyoto) targets and monitoring mechanisms. The implementation roadmap must include actions on the part of both domestic (lower income nations’) governments and high income nations. The measures of performance, in order to be comprehensive, need to cover both quantitative and qualitative aspects of the implementation process.

These are the hard challenges of the post-Kyoto negotiations. The sooner the nations realize these realities, the better it will be for everyone and for the humanity.

Dr Rahul Pandey

(The author is a former faculty member of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow.

He is currently a founder member of a start up venture that develops mathematical models for planning and policy analysis. Some of the key points of this article were presented by the author in a workshop on climate change organized by the Cabinet Office of the Government of Japan in Tokyo in late February 2009. He can be contacted at rahulanjula@gmail.com)

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The Politics of Big Capital and the Poor in Narmada Valley

The Politics of Big Capital and the Poor in Narmada Valley
Dr Rahul Pandey

On the 5th of November I was in Khandwa, a town in central India, taking part in a rally organized by the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA), or Save the Narmada Movement. About 20,000 rural people, mostly landless farm labourers or small-medium farmers, many of them tribals, had traveled 50 to 400 km on tractors, trucks and buses to participate in the rally, all at their own expense. Every family carried a packet of food cooked at home to last for a day or two. The women with babies carried them along as well.

The day long rally and mass gathering looked like a sea of people - women in colourful saris and men in white dhoti-kurta - united by common peril and anger. The peril of them and their children becoming pauperized. The anger at being taken for a ride. These people represented more than 100,000 families, or over half a million citizens, who have been displaced because their original villages and lands are either submerged or about to be submerged by the reservoirs of six big dams built on the river Narmada. The dams are Indira Sagar, Onkareshwar, Maheshwar, Maan, Upper Veda, and Bargi. The people in the rally narrated their woes and demanded land for the lost land that is guaranteed by the government's own resettlement and rehabilitation (R&R) policy but denied to them.

The experience of these people from the Narmada valley is the story of how the poor always get a raw deal by the politics of the market driven economic paradigm. It is the story of how inequality and poverty are reinforced by the current system. Broad contours of this story are the same all over the globe wherever the profit and growth objectives of big money come in conflict with the basic livelihood rights of the economically weak - landless labourers, small farmers and artisans in villages, tribals in forests, fishing communities in coastal regions, and city based vendors and workers living in slums and other low income areas.

Here is what has happened to the people in the Narmada valley. Some time back a team of five persons from academic institutes, including myself, carried out an independent survey of 429 families displaced due to Indira Sagar dam, to understand how their living conditions have changed after displacement. At the time of the survey these families had been already displaced for 3-5 years and living either privately or on government resettlement sites. We visited eleven such sites. Most of resettlement sites lacked basic amenities like access to markets and employment opportunities, proximity to affordable and cultivable land, trees, clean water, grazing land for cattle, and drainage.

Although no family received any land as mandated by the R&R policy, the government provided them some cash compensation against the fixed property lost in submergence. This compensation was grossly insufficient to help families make productive investments. We did not find a single family that could rebuild its lost livelihood even after 3-5 years of displacement. Most farmers lost substantial farmland to submergence but could purchase at best a small fraction as the cash compensation for land was much below the market rate. Small farmers became either landless labourers or more dependent on farm labour work to supplement insufficient income from farming. The landless farm labourers were pushed further to the brink of precarious survival. Their income fell sharply and became more uncertain as both farm labour demand and wage rates were squeezed in the areas in the vicinity of submergence.

As economic hardship deepened and common grazing land was no longer available, almost all families were forced to sell all or part of their cattle. Several children were withdrawn from schools. Health problems like physical illness and psychological depression had increased. With earning opportunities shrinking locally, seasonal migrations had become common and some families were contemplating longer-term migration. The irony was that people were not sure which would be a good place to migrate and whether their economic condition would improve after that. In retrospect, almost everyone we met felt they should have been given land for land.

When people, whose main skill base is in agriculture and local resources, are suddenly uprooted, there are only two ways to rebuild lost livelihoods. Either they get back good quality agricultural assets (i.e. cultivable lands along with support systems) and other natural resources which they can harness with the skill and knowledge they already possess. Or they are provided with alternate productive assets with potentially attractive markets and granted sufficient material support and cushion of time to acquire new skill base required to operate new assets economically, source new inputs, market new outputs, and begin lives afresh.

The people who came for the NBA rally were the ones for whom sparing a day from farm work and traveling up to Khandwa was not easily affordable. But they came because they are convinced that the only hope to gain their right is to come together and make their voices heard. They also have faith in NBA activists like Chittaroopa Palit, Alok Agarwal and others who have stood behind them like a rock and have patiently pursued countless court cases on their behalf.

Though justice has been repeatedly repudiated, persistent struggle has also brought some successes like the recent High Court judgment that land for land with a minimum of 2 hectare be allotted to each displaced family. However, the State Government, as always, wants to reject this demand and has challenged it in the Supreme Court. So yet another tiresome phase of court hearings lies ahead. Every flicker of hope has been followed by long spell of despair. The disciplined march and gathering of 20,000 people, all carrying in their heart such memories of years of frustration and struggle, yet displaying remarkable resolve and calmness, resonated in such a way that it felt like emanating spiritual energy of 20,000 individuals meditating together.

A friend of mine who was shocked at listening to this story, asked, "How could the Government subject half a million citizens to such cruelty?" The answer is: our political structures are not democratic enough to empower the ordinary people. On the contrary, such people are constantly denied their right to livelihood when they come in the way of commercial projects that demand large scale acquisition of land, water, minerals, forests and other natural resources. The state has almost always sided with the big business. This is how the free capital driven markets work. They strip the poor of whatever capital they have and pass it to those who are already overloaded with it. In case of Narmada dams, for instance, the State Government has granted several concessions to the corporations owning the dams. As for the displaced families, it says there is no land available in the state. At the same time it has doled out more than 100,000 acres for biodiesel crop plantations and thousands of acres for industrial parks and special economic zones.

Interestingly, the GDP of the nation may often rise in the process as most of lost wealth of the poor was not accounted in the formal markets whereas most of new wealth acquired by the rich is. Hence the process of pauperization of the poor does not raise hackles of those policy makers, economists and intellectuals who are worried mainly about economic growth and capital investments. It also does not bother many politicians as their funds come from supporting the rich and votes from dividing the vulnerable poor. Thus the poor like those living in the Narmada valley remain perpetually caught in a recessionary spiral. The recent global financial recession is no news to them.

So, what can be done when years of chasing court cases and appealing to the governments have not yielded much? The only non-violent way is for the people to reorganize with greater vigour and numbers and make the system accountable. The people's movements like the NBA do not oppose industrialization. They oppose the process that unilaterally takes away resources from the displaced communities and makes their living conditions worse, and channels most of the benefits of industrial projects to the affluent. As an alternative, they demand a much more democratic way of deciding who will give up what resources, how the displaced will be rehabilitated, and how the benefits of projects will be shared.

Dr Rahul Pandey

The author is a former faculty member of Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Lucknow, and is currently a member of a start up venture that develops mathematical models for planning and policy analysis. His areas of interest include mathematical modeling, biological evolution, physics, development and environment, sustainable economics and industry, and social change. He can be contacted at rahulanjula@gmail.com

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