RURAL DEVELOPMENT - Selfemployment schem...
Adecade-old scheme to organize the rural poor into self-help groups and impart training to them has brought hundreds of thousands above the poverty line, says the rural development ministry, which exe...read more...
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Funds allocated to rural jobs plan insufficient: panel report
Funds allocated to rural jobs plan insufficient: panel report
Only 51 days of work per head per year could be provided under the scheme against the guaranteed 100 days
Ruhi Tewari
New Delhi: Funds allocated for the United Progressive Alliance government’s flagship rural welfare scheme, although the highest for any single social welfare programme, are enough to meet only about half its objective, says a report by a legislative panel.
The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) guarantees at least 100 days of work a year for one member of every poor rural household.
Alternative action: Villagers in Rajasthan working under the programme. The report suggests increasing budget allocation or reducing the number of days for which employment is provided under the scheme. Priyanka Prashar/Mint
The parliamentary standing committee on rural development, which assessed demands for grants for the scheme for 2010-11, said on 16 April that only 51 days of work could be provided, on an average, by utilizing funds available for the scheme in 2009-10.
The ministry of rural development, which oversees its execution, had been allocated Rs39,376 crore for the programme that year.
Similarly, the scheme could provide an average of 48 days of employment in 2008-09 and 42 days in 2007-08, the report said.
The Budget for 2010-11 allocates Rs40,100 crore for the scheme, an increase of less than 3% from last year.
“The committee finds that in order to achieve a minimum of 100 days of employment, either the allocation has to be increased substantially or the number of minimum days for which employment is provided under MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act, under which the scheme is implemented) is reduced,” the report states.
However, the report itself adds that the department of rural development has denied a paucity of funds.
The department’s secretary B.K. Sinha is quoted in the report as saying, “It is not a fact that sufficient funds are not available for the MGNREGS. Since the scheme is implemented as per the Act, there is no limit for the budgetary demand. In the past years, several times we have obtained the funds for MGNREGA through supplementary demands for grants whenever such demand arose.”
Yamini Mishra, executive director of the Delhi-based Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, which promotes transparent and participatory governance, says, “What sometimes happens is that the government increases the provisions under the scheme without actually increasing the budgetary allocation,” she said. “Hence, in effect, officials at the lower levels by default start excluding.”
“It is also believed that if we already know a scheme will cost more, there is no point in saying additional funds will be given later because that just causes delays,” she added.
The standing committee, chaired by Sumitra Mahajan of the main opposition party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, also says officials are not implementing MGNREGS in the “right spirit”.
The report says only 40% of the work under the scheme in 2009-10 could be finished. A total of 4.1 million projects were undertaken until February, but only 1.6 million were completed.
It adds that the scheme fails to find work for all holders of job cards, which are provided to all applicants for work under MGNREGS. More than two-thirds of job card holders could not get jobs under the scheme in 2009-10; those who did get work also did not get the stipulated 100 days. Inspection of work, says the report, is also not satisfactory. But the report credited MGNREGS with increasing the minimum wages for farm workers and increasing bargaining power in the labour market.
MGNREGS has provided employment to individuals from 50.6 million households till now, generating 2.63 billion person-days of employment, the report said.
An endless loop
An endless loop
| “Delayed Justice” poignantly captures how the Forest Rights Act, in spite of being a radical one on paper, is seriously flawed in implementation… Filmmaker Shriprakash talks about his documentary to Meena Menon. |
The film shows how the letter and spirit of the Act may never be fulfilled.
Tracking government's performance: Director Shriprakash with his cast and crew.
At the end of award-winning filmmaker Shriprakash's documentary, one of the adivasis interviewed makes a simple demand, “I want my patta (title deed),” he says, before setting out into the deep forest. “Delayed Justice” is more than a film on the implementation of The Scheduled Tribes and other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006. It gives you an idea of the life of the forest dwelling communities, in this case in Andhra Pradesh, and their alienation from the rest of the world.
The purpose of the film was to document how the Act is being implemented. The Act is a radical one in Indian history and the film tackles how it is being implemented in all the regions of Andhra Pradesh (AP). “I chose AP because on the surface it had a pretty good track record,” says Shriprakash. Made in 2009, it is part of an ongoing research on the Act and produced by the University of East Anglia. “I thought AP is one of the few states where there is some governance but I found in the remote areas where I filmed, Marripalam for instance, things are the same,” he says. “If this Act cannot be properly implemented in a state like Andhra I wonder what is happening to it in the rest of the country,” he adds.
The law is tough and is the essence of democracy but the film exposes how the Panchayat Raj institutions are not doing their job. There is no confidence among the adivasis that they will be the rightful owners of their land. The forest tribes find themselves in a curious position. Till yesterday they were vilified for destroying the forest, and hey presto, now there's an act giving them land titles.
Stark portrayal
The film shows how the letter and spirit of the Act may never be fulfilled. The Act could impact future land allocations and community rights, feels the filmmaker. But is allotting forest land to the adivasis the only way out? They have been denied so many basic amenities, they are all unskilled in the real sense of the word and how can they fit into the global economy? Giving rights is not the only answer, one of the government officers says in the film, unless it is backed by other facilities like education.
The plight of the Chenchu and Gonds is enunciated in a simple sentence. One of the villagers says he doesn't even have a cot to sleep on. In some cases, land claimed by the people has plantations by the forest department over their traditional graveyards, and now the government is refusing those claims. “Things have not changed, the system always finds an excuse,” remarks Shriprakash. In one part of the forest in a tiger reserve near Pedacheru, local people caught poachers who trapped a tiger. “Did the forest guards catch them? No we did and they can't give us a small piece of land which is rightfully ours,” says one angry man. Chenchu women stand on the road for hours selling wild honey and they trudge for miles to collect forest produce.
The Chenchus of the Nallamalla forest of Rayalaseema climb steep rocks to hunt for honey, sometimes after two hours they return empty handed. They are a people still using bows and arrows and surviving off the forest. Government officials explain how the adivasis have been cut off from their own lands due to the exigencies of the market and timber smuggling. The sense of community ownership is strong among the adivasis and Sedam Arju, a Gond intellectual, lists out nature's treasures and how his clan tree is teak and how it is worshipped. “The Aryans ruined our culture,” he says. The Gonds, like most tribes, are animistic, they worship nature. Villagers in west Godavari live off hill brooms, grass and shikakai which the forest provides them. “We pray to the forest deities before our work,” says one man.
The usual impediments
The implementation of the Act seems fraught with red tape. A series of committees starting from the village level have to be formed to accept claims and process them. The Forest Rights Committee (FRC) needs to know the Act which as the film shows is not always the case. Some government officials seems meticulous, some are clueless. In some villages people are vague about the Act and what they are entitled to. The “social mobilisers” appointed to inform people about the Act have no rapport with locals. Illiterate adivasis are roped into a mire of form filling, submitting claims, and relying on the forest department to survey their land, which may not always be accurate.
In some places the surveyors are adivasis, so that there is no injustice. The film also raises questions on people who have been displaced for an irrigation project over 30 years ago from a village called Pedacheru in Prakasam district. Though they have been rehabilitated elsewhere, over 70 Chenchu families who could not survive there came back to stay there. The government says these people have been rehabilitated once, so the Act cannot apply to them and now they face dislocation again. So many Chenchu have died as a result of this back and forth movement.
In Marripalam village, which is six km from a road-head into the forest, the head of the FRC is confused about the number of claims from the area. Forest officials caught on hidden camera clearly voice their opinion against the Act and also add that the department is involved in large-scale timber smuggling.
Till the middle of 2009 the people of Marripalam were still struggling for their rights, while the people of Pedacheru face another displacement. The government received over 3.2 lakh claims of which the bulk was rejected. However, till August 2009, 1,24,652 titles were distributed.
For the wretched of our earth
HARSH MANDER
| The new draft of the Food Security Act 2010 doesn't go far enough to see that the most needy get adequate food and nutrition. In fact, it promises much less than what is currently covered under the PDS system. |
This is ominous, as it may well pave the way for eventually substituting the Public Distribution System (PDS) with cash transfers
Photo: Ashoke Chakraborty 
Hunger: Still a depressing reality for many...
A lthough the ravages of famines which decimated tens of thousands of lives are relegated to history, hunger still haunts millions of dispossessed homes and city streets across this land. State granaries are full, the economy is resurgent and many of the world's wealthiest people are Indians. Yet, one in every two Indian children is unable to access enough food for her body and brain to develop to their full potential. There is little more desperate and shaming for a parent than to be unable to feed one's child. In many homes — hidden in the shadows of our newly accumulated wealth — men and women carry on their shoulders the burden of suffering and mortification of this want, many days every year. They cut back on their own intake of food from three meals to two, and from two to one. They still have to labour strenuously to survive; they wilt and age rapidly, or succumb to curable ailments.
Countries much poorer than India — in our neighbourhood as well as in the poorest regions of Africa — have fared far better in battling hunger and malnourishment. Governments in India procure and distribute millions of tons of subsidised food, run feeding centres for children, and feed a hundred and forty million students daily in schools. Yet, they fail to stem the wasting of the bodies — and spirit — of millions of our people. Official surveys admit that in an entire decade, the percentage of malnourished children has reduced by just one percentage point, from 47 to 46 per cent.
Therefore, the pledge by the UPA government to enact a food security bill carried within it the rare potential of actually altering the destinies of masses of India's poorest women and men, boys and girls. In a country which has both the resources and the food to end want among all its people, the stubborn persistence of hunger and malnutrition amounts to a spectacular — and culpable — failure of governance. Today reports of starvation from many corners of the country are brushed away only with hot denials by public officials. They do nothing to alter the diminishing daily search for food — through back-breaking underpaid toil, debt bondage, distress migration, foraging or begging — which constitutes the reality of millions of our people. It is this that the law can change.
Disappointed
I hoped, therefore, to see enacted a law which creates binding obligations on public officials to reach sufficient food to every resident of this vast land, and hold them gravely accountable for failures to do so. Instead, all that the draft Bill prepared by the Ministry headed by Sharad Pawar and approved by the Group of Ministers contains, as emerges from news reports, is a legal obligation jointly on the Central and State governments, to supply 25 kg of subsidised rice or wheat a month to families deemed by governments to live below the ‘poverty-line'. Failure to reach this quota of food grain to these poor families would entitle them to a food security allowance.
The proposed law adds nothing whatsoever to impoverished people's rights and access to sufficient food for an active and healthy life. In fact, it actually reduces these entitlements. The existing Public Distribution System already provides for moresubsidised food grain per poor household than the proposed law: 35 kg against the 25 kg promised in the law. This already has the force of law, through directions by the Supreme Court that governments cannot reduce the supply or raise prices of subsidised food grain. Many state governments cover much larger populations than the quotas of people deemed by the Planning Commission to be poor, and supply them grain at lower prices than proposed under the law.
All that is new in the law is the assurance of a cash allowance if governments do not supply the food grain. But this is ominous, as it may well pave the way for eventually substituting the Public Distribution System (PDS) with cash transfers, as is already being advocated vigorously in several official and non-governmental forums. But many studies have established that food is far more likely to actually reach the mouths of children and women in a household than cash in the hands of the male adult family head. And PDS is not just about supplying food to consumers; it involves guaranteeing a floor price to farmers for their produce, and stabilising prices by moving food grain to scarcity areas. The erosion of PDS through systems of cash transfers would further undermine food security by failing to guarantee a remunerative price to farming households, many of whom are among the most food insecure people in the country, and by diluting price stabilisation capacities of governments.
The law also does nothing to address the many near-fatal problems with the design and implementation of PDS today. Systems of identifying India's poor are seriously flawed, and many studies show that they leave out many of our most impoverished people. The official estimates of numbers of poor people, which form the basis of quotas of subsidised food grain available under PDS, are contested and vary widely, which further reduces the actual reach of cheap food to those who most need it. People are malnourished not just because they lack cereals, but also proteins and fat; but the PDS does not incorporate pulses and oil. There is nothing in the law to convince us that corruption and leakages that typically characterise PDS will be addressed, such as by eliminating private traders and entrusting Panchayats with running PDS and ensuring them realistic margins.
Ominous silence
Even more critically, the PDS is only one of many initiatives through which governments reach food to people. The law is silent about all of these other programmes, and creates no legal guarantees, such as for promoting breast-feeding for infants, pre-school feeding through the ICDS, school feeding programmes, maternity allowances and feeding, and pensions for the aged, single women headed households, and disabled people.
By contrast, the draft bill commended by Congress President Sonia Gandhi to the Prime Minister contained many of these comprehensive guarantees for securing food for infants, children, women, the aged and the infirm. Once these are contained in the law, rather than their current status just as government schemes, governments cannot withdraw or dilute these, and people can go to court against public officials and governments which fail to provide them. This draft also provided for full coverage of various vulnerable groups with highly subsidised rations, such as single women headed households, old and infirm people, the disabled, homeless people, and most disadvantaged tribal and dalit communities.
This alternate draft law went further to create new entitlements for some of the most food insecure people who are not covered by any existing schemes. For instance, school meals cover children who are in school, but the most malnourished children are those who can never enter school. Therefore, for street children, the alternate provides for secure food through residential schools. For urban migrants and homeless people, it provides for community kitchens.
It is often said far too lightly that one decision can sometimes change the course of history. But this is indeed one such decision. For people who have for centuries been condemned to live with the hopeless suffering of hunger, a comprehensive food security bill — which creates detailed obligations for governments to secure food and nutrition for people who live most with want and deprivation, whose lives still remain frozen in time as the rest of us race ahead — can indeed alter the destinies of the most wretched of our earth.
Missing: 42.7 million women
Missing: 42.7 million women
KALPANA SHARMA
| Lack of access to healthcare, malnutrition and selective abortion — all these have contributed to over 40 million women dying in India. And these are the issues the government needs to address now… |
In India, women constitute 48.2 per cent of the population, worse than Pakistan...
Photo: V. Ganesan 
A struggle all the way...
Last month, on March 8, we celebrated the centenary of International Women's Day. A day later some celebrated the passage of the Women's Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha while others ranted and raved against it. Still others asked whether 63 years after Independence, any of this made a material difference to the lives of the majority of Indian women.
The latter were, of course, right. Symbolic gestures have little meaning when every year over 40 million Indian women die for no other reason than not being able to access healthcare, if and when they do being discriminated against, being so malnourished that even if they get treatment they cannot survive, and all this only if they are not eliminated before birth or after being born.
Yes, also on March 8, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its 2010 Asia-Pacific Human Development Report titled, “Voice and Rights: A turning point for gender equality in Asia and the Pacific”. The picture that emerged of India was not a happy one. In most countries, women generally outnumber and outlive men. As a result, they are a little over half the population. But in India, they constitute 48.2 per cent of the population, worse than Pakistan where the situation is bad enough with women being 48.5 per cent of the population. Even Bangladesh is better at 48.8 per cent. The reason this has happened is a combination of the factors that have led to 42.7 million “missing” women (2007 data).
Chilling reminder
As if we needed another reminder, The Economist magazine carried a hard-hitting feature under the headline: “Gendercide – The worldwide war on babies” (March 4, 2010). “Technology, declining fertility and ancient prejudice are combining to unbalance societies”, stated the article as it reported on several Asian countries, particularly India and China and the skewed sex ratio. The article should have been titled “Femicide” as only one gender is being eliminated — the female. Still, it was a chilling reminder of the reality in the world's two most populous nations, where, as an old Chinese lady who witnessed female infanticide was quoted by The Economistas saying, “It's not a child. It's a baby girl, and we can't keep it…Girl babies don't count.”
But someone is counting baby girls and boys, men and women. In fact, thousands of people are right now fanning out across India for the mammoth exercise, one of the largest in the world, of the 2011 Census.
The 2001 census brought home the point starkly that millions of girls in India never saw the light of day. Either they were never allowed to be born, due to sex-selective abortions, or were killed shortly after birth. As a result, in the 0-6 year age group of children, there was a marked increase in boys as compared to girls in some of the richest districts in the country. Clearly medical technology, that the better off could afford, had been perversely put to this kind of use — of ensuring that girls were eliminated before birth.
The 2011 census will be significant in more ways than one. In 2001, the problem that had been lurking for years was exposed through stark, irrefutable data. As a result, the government had to act. It tightened the Pre-Conception and Pre-Natal Diagnostic Techniques (Prohibition of Sex Selection) Act 2003 (also known as the PCPNDT Act). Campaigns were run for the “girl child”, incentives given for her education, and threats held out of punishment and fines against those misusing technology for sex-selective abortions. How effective were all these efforts? Results from the 2011 census will tell us.
It is small comfort to know that this problem is not unique to India. The article in The Economist, for instance, gives startling data on the situation in China where decades of son preference and a one-child policy as well as sex selection have resulted in a marked difference between the number of young men and women. The article quotes research by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences that predicts that by 2020, China will have 30-40 million more men less than 19 years of age as compared to women. (The current sex ratio in China is 123 boys to 100 girls).
Serious consequences
Such a situation fraught with serious sociological consequences, not the least of which is the shortage of brides. In India, in states like Haryana this has already come about with brides from other states being bought by young men who just cannot find a woman from their own region. Every other day we read stories about women from as far away as Kerala or Assam who have made Haryana their home. Nothing wrong with such cross-fertilisation in a country that is so divided by caste, religious and regional identities as long as the women know their rights and have a way out if things don't work out. What is disturbing is the reason this is happening — not free choice but no choice.
Tragically, none of this kind of data seems to create any ripples amongst those in a position to make a difference. Take Maharashtra, for instance, one of the richest states in India. This year's Economic Survey revealed that by 2011, the state's sex ratio would be 915 women to 1000 men, down from 922 in 2001 when it was significantly lower than the national average of 933. Maharashtra also has the dubious distinction of ranking 15 out of 28 states in India in terms of its sex ratio.
Yet, what is preoccupying the men who govern the state? Chief Minister Ashok Chavan has been tying himself up in knots trying to explain how the actor Amitabh Bachchan, who has chosen to identify with Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi as the state's brand ambassador, came to share a dais with him at an official function. How does any of this matter? States like Maharashtra need governance, not showbiz.
The Economist referred to India as “that super giant”. But such compliments count for nothing if our government does nothing about “femicide” and those “missing” women.
Ash in the belly
Ash in the belly
HARSH MANDER
The Hindu Hard lessons of survival... Photo: Sumit Dayal
Glimpses into lives of people condemned to hunger, who yet find a space for dignity and hope in their lives…
The evening light is fading over an indigent rural hamlet in eastern Uttar Pradesh. We take shelter from the rain in a small earth home. Sitting on the uneven mud floor under a dripping thatch roof, a clutch of Musahar women talk of many things: of the diverse ways they negotiate their difficult lives, without land, without work, often without food, and without hope. As the rain ebbs more women gather, and the talk turns eventually to the raising of their children amidst want. They speak then of the most terrible of lessons that each of them has to teach their children.
This is the lesson of how to sleep hungry.
‘Half the week we are able to eat roti or rice with either vegetable or dal. The other half, it is just roti, or rice boiled with salt and turmeric. But there are four or five days in a month when there is no food, and we have little option except to fast. If there is any food, we give it to our children, adding a lot of water to fill their stomachs. Any additional food goes to our men folk, because we women are used to staying hungry'.
Dark days
On these desolate days each month when there is absolutely no grain in the house and no work to be found, the entire family sets out literally in search of food. They look for undigested grain in the dung of cattle, and by burrowing in the stores of field rats. They glean grains of paddy or wheat that may have fallen on farmers' fields that have been harvested, or forage for stale vegetables which are discarded after the weekly village market. If the family is fortunate, a full day's quest yields just a fistful of grain. This is boiled in a large pot of water to create the illusion of plenty, with chilly powder and salt.
But the children's bellies are still empty, and they are restless and clamour for more food. ‘It is difficult for us to bear their weeping', the women continue. ‘When the wailing of infants gets too much, we lace our fingertips in tobacco or wild intoxicants and give the fingers to the babies to suck. It helps them sleep even with nothing in their stomachs. If they are small, we beat them until they sleep, but as they grow older, we try to teach them how to live with hunger. It is a lesson that will equip them for a lifetime. Because we know that hunger will be with us the rest of our lives.'
Other lives
Dialogues with people for whom hunger is a way of life has helped some of us who have never personally known involuntary hunger, to try to comprehend, even if just very little, the ways that people condemned to hunger cope, and still find ways to live and hope. It is these dialogues with people who live with hunger — to which I will return repeatedly in this column — that have constantly challenged my detachment. They will yours.
Arkhit, and elderly widower from Orissa, cooks rice once a day, and that too only if he is able to muster the energy and will necessary to cook for just himself. If not, he just brews black tea, drinks it and goes to sleep. For aged Somaiah in Andhra Pradesh, most days are preoccupied with finding some dalto eat with boiled rice. His neighbours on occasion share some dal from their kitchens after diluting the leftovers with water. Many aged people go to the village government school and beg for a little dalor sambhar (spiced lentil soup) from the mid day meal prepared for school students. Aged widow Malti Bariha craves for curry with her rice, but cannot afford the spices. She sometimes does not have the energy even to collect enough firewood; at such times the rice and potato that she customarily eats is half cooked.
Widowed early, Antamma was abandoned by her children when she grew in years. She confesses that most of each day, her thoughts centre on how she will procure her next meal. There are times she wants to beg, but worries that her neighbours will gossip when her back is turned. She once begged at the school for morsels from the State-funded school meal for children, but was torn by guilt afterwards that she had eaten the children's share of food. When Rajasthani widow Mani Yadav cannot get work even after begging for employment, and her government pension is depleted, she drinks tea and hot water and tries vainly to convince herself that her stomach is full.
Sankari, an Oriya widow, used to collect bamboos that were soft and small, and crushed these into a paste for her family. Another meal was of kaddi — a poisonous wild plant, which she cut into small pieces and pressed into a basket which she immersed in the river for a day. The river water drained away some of the poison and the family got its food. It tasted foul, so she mixed it with a little jaggery and salt. June and July were good months for Sankari, as shemanaged to collect wild fruits (tholand kusum) and exchange these for broken rice (usually fed to chicken) and salt. Only during the monsoons, her children were able to taste meat, as she collected snails and scooped these for their flesh. Her hours of toil were rewarded because the children relished this. When she was able to get work in the fields, she was paid one and half kilograms of mahua. Now that her children are grown and she is alone, she spends her entire State old age pension on buying rice. However, this rice is not enough to last the whole month.
Long struggle
Udiya Bariha, now frail and wasted at 75 years, lost both her eyes as a child to small pox. She became an orphan at the age of 15, and says, ‘from that day till now I am struggling, yet death has not come to my door'. Alone she has survived 60 long years of unmitigated want, after her father died. All these years later, she says it is still difficult for her to light a fire on her mud stove. Udiya trudges most days to the forest to collect dry wood for fuel and to sell; then she cooks rice and eats it with water and spinach. In the evening, she cleans cowsheds and in return gets cooked rice. On days when she was not able to go anywhere due to exhaustion or illness, she begs in the village for food.
When it was discovered 14 years ago that Dhonu Badiya suffered from leprosy, his brother turned him out of his home, and he was reduced to surviving by begging. He lived alone in a small hut at the edge of their fields in the village Burumal in the chronically drought-ravaged district of Bolangir in Orissa. Years later, the health worker insisted that he was cured, and his brother finally relented and gave him shelter in an open veranda of the cowshed of their home. His entire belongings are one frayed change of clothes strung on a rope, and a couple of dented aluminium vessels. The food his brother gives him in return for grazing his goats in the scrub hill near the village is small quantities of baasi or fermented rice water cooked one day earlier. It takes Dhonu more than an hour to painfully scoop up this liquid with his fingerless hands and bring it to his mouth. He longs for a pension from the government, so that he can buy enough food to fill his stomach, solid food that he can eat with greater dignity. He also wants soap to clean his body. These are his only dreams.
Sunday, April 25, 2010
Are they slum children or ‘slum dogs'?
Are they slum children or ‘slum dogs'?
Chandigarh administration terms slum children as ‘slum dogs'
Slum children have better eyesight than urban students: survey
CHANDIGARH: While comparing the refractory errors of students in urban areas with slum dwellers, the Chandigarh administration has addressed the latter as ‘slum dogs' while concluding that they have better eyesight.
In a release issued on Sunday, the administration states: “The slum dogs of Chandigarh, wallowing in illiteracy, poverty and ignorance, have beaten their blessed brethren in the urban areas, to better eyesight honours. Sounds incredible, but it is true.”
The claim is based on a health survey of children, studying in Alternate Innovative Education Centres (AIE), conducted by the Health department of the Union Territory Administration. According to the survey, only 3.27 per cent of those living in slums against 8-10 per cent of those coming from the urban areas, were found to have refractory errors.
Paramjyoti, Programme Officer, School Health Programme, Chandigarh, said, “The survey was undertaken in the light of such common occurring ailments as malnutrition, anaemia and worm infestation.” As many as 6,852 students of 88 AIE centres were medically examined. The teams carried out complete eye check-up of children for refractory errors and other eye ailments. Only 224 children (3.24 per cent) were found to have refractory errors. Thirty of them had been given spectacles free of cost under the Blindness Control Programme. “Out of these, 134 [1.81 per cent] children were found to be suffering from Bitot's Spots, and they are being treated with Vitamin A supplements. Three children had cataract problem and two of them have been operated upon successfully, and the third one would be operated upon soon,” said Dr. Paramjyoti.
The official said the result was a matter of further study. “I think it may be because of less exposure of the slum dogs to new technology. They go to school late, view TV less, and eat whatever their mothers give them coated with mother's affection and love.”
The report says children of as many as 42 AIE centres did not have refractory errors. A higher number of children of GMHS Vikasnagar were suffering from refractory errors (16.90 per cent).
Menu, rich and precise, for rural job meet
Menu, rich and precise, for rural job meet
Thoughts with poor, thoughtful on food
Architects of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme will be gratified to know that the blockbuster programme is putting food o the table in Bengal.
Sample the menu: baby corn tossed salad, aloo pineapple salad, chicken butter masala, fish Irani kebab (dry), butter naan, aloo meth masala, yellow methi dal and chocolate mousse.
Sample the event: a twoday workshop of 130-plus officials and panchayat representatives on the job scheme. Officials taking part in such workshops are not expected to run on empty stomach, though the food bill (Rs 1.79 lakh) is certain to raise some eyebrows, especially since the purported beneficiaries at the end of the chain are paid only Rs 100 each a day for their labour.
But a note attributed to a rural developm ent czar offers a fascinating -and fastidious, if the eye for detail is given due credit -picture of how a bureaucracy that is often labelled insensitive functions when it comes to food.
The note -"copy forwarded for favour of information and necessary action to" as many as six officials in various state government departments -also tries to live up to the standards pursued by the followers of Sir Humphrey Appleby , the permanent secretary in Yes, Minister.
The "food arrangements" for the workshop held last week at Stadel, the hotel in Salt Lake stadium, literally take the cake for precision planning -something usually not in evidence when the Bengal government tackles graver affairs.
After the multiple-course meal (see chart), the note takes care to remind the recipient (a Stadel official) that "2 times tea and coffee with assorted biscuits to be served as complementary". The main meal cost Rs 517.50 a plate (Rs 460 plus 12.5 per cent tax per head). In keeping with the egalitarian spirit of the scheme and the government of the day, item number eight on the note adds: “100 food parcels for the drivers and securities on 23rd and 24th April 2010, the parcels should contain: Peas Pulao, Chicken Curry, Mix Veg, Yellow Dal, Hot Gulab Jamun”. The bill for this: Rs 225 a parcel (Rs 200 plus 12.5 per cent tax).
The note is attributed to R.K. Maiti, special secretary in the panchayat and rural development department in the Bengal government. He is also the additional chief executive officer of WBSRDA (the West Bengal State Rural Development Agency).
Alas! The special secretary’s culinary drafting skills do not appear to have won too many admirers in the dour corridors of power.
“When the order was issued, I was in Delhi and hence was not aware of it. It is indeed a childish order and dilutes the very importance of the two-day workshop that we had,” said M.N. Roy, principal secretary, panchayat and rural development.
“Participants in a workshop need to be served with lunch but there is no doubt that such a frivolous order on what is going to be served shouldn’t have happened,” Roy added.
Roy’s personal assistant was among the six who received a copy of the note with the diligent entry: “For favour of information with
reference to the telephonic discussion held on 15th and 16th April 2010.” Maiti could not be contacted.
The meeting and the expenses did not flout any rules. The note mentioned that the bill for the workshop would be paid out of the MGNREGS contingency fund, which the state government can use for meeting administrative expenses like purchasing furniture, conveyance of local office bearers and monthly meeting expenses.
Roy pointed out that the workshop did tuck into weighty matters. “We deliberated on our achievements over the past one year and the shortcomings that need to be taken care of to cover more people under the scheme,” the principal secretary said.
Not all will agree on the scale of the “achievements”.
Against the national average of 40 days of average employment in 2008-09, about 72 per cent of eligible households in Bengal did not get even 15 days of employment a year.
The scheme has provided employment to only around 34 lakh households in Bengal, which is way behind others like Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu in terms of number of persondays, work completed and expenditure. But the Centre did acknowledge recently the turnaround in two districts — North 24-Parganas and Burdwan — in terms of implementation.
Lessons from BPL Censuses
Lessons from BPL Censuses
V. K. Ramachandran, Y. Usami and Biplab Sarkar
To perpetuate a system that assigns a household to a single BPL/APL category in circumstances in which poverty is multi-dimensional is not only bad economics, but unconscionable as well.
The pilot surveys for the next Census of BPL (below-poverty-line) households are due to begin. Discussions are now on to finalise the methodology for the survey, and as the BPL Census is a matter of the subsistence and survival of hundreds of millions of India's households, it is important that we draw lessons from the experience of past BPL Censuses.
Poverty alleviation programmes in India can be categorised into universal programmes (or programmes whose beneficiaries are self-selected), and targeted programmes (or programmes that are exclusively for predetermined target groups). An example of the former is the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, for participation in which any “rural household whose adult members volunteer to do unskilled marginal work” qualifies. Most anti-poverty programmes, however, are targeted programmes. The Public Distribution System (PDS) for the provision of fair-priced food, and the Indira Awas Yojana (IAY), India's major rural housing scheme, are examples of targeted programmes.
The criterion for targeting is, most often, whether or not a household is below the poverty line. Identifying BPL households as on the ground is thus crucial to the implementation of targeted anti-poverty schemes. Indeed, the XI Plan Working Group on Poverty Elimination Programmes has written that the “best course in future would be to rely increasingly on the aggregation of BPL Survey data for the policy decisions at the state and central level and for monitoring the progress of poverty elimination.”
Since 1992, the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) has conducted three BPL Censuses in rural areas.
The BPL Survey of 1992 used an income criterion to determine poverty, and the annual income cut-off was fixed at Rs. 11,000 per household. The BPL Census of 1997 was conducted in two stages. First, some families were excluded on the basis of certain criteria. In the second stage, each remaining household was interviewed to determine its total consumer expenditure, and was identified as a BPL household if its per capita consumer expenditure was below the poverty line set by the Planning Commission.
Unlike the previous BPL Censuses, the BPL Census 2002 used a “score-based ranking.” Each household questionnaire had two parts. Section A recorded some introductory characteristics of households. These were the “non-scoring parameters,” which did not figure in the final assessment of the household's poverty status. Section B, which recorded 13 “scoring parameters,” was intended to evaluate the quality of life of the households. A score (0, 1, 2, 3 or 4) was assigned for each parameter. The aggregate score of the thirteen parameters for each household was calculated and the absolute and relative position of each household in a village in respect of its poverty status was set.
The BPL Census 2002 has been widely criticised by the rural poor and their organisations, and by scholars. Even the expert group set up by the MoRD to advise it on the methodology for the next BPL Census said that, although the number of parameters needed to measure poverty had gone up from one in the 1992 survey to thirteen in 2002, the errors of exclusion and inclusion remained above acceptable limits. Targeting errors involved exclusion errors, which exclude poor households from the category of the poor, and inclusion errors, which include non-poor households in the category of the poor.
We recently conducted a study of the reliability of the BPL Census of 2002, comparing household-level data from the MoRD website for four villages (one each in Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh) with village-level socio-economic data collected by the Foundation for Agrarian Studies in the same villages.
There were four types of causes for exclusion and inclusion errors in BPL household identification. First, there are errors involved in the survey, i.e., in the questionnaire and in the investigation process. The selection of indicators and the scoring scheme for each parameter have rightly been criticised for their inconsistency. There were two major types of problems with respect to the stipulation of scoring parameters. The first set of problems relates to specification. With regard to many variables there are problems of mis-specification, under-specification, or vagueness, allowing for no certainty in how a household is to be classified. The second set of problems relates to gradation. It is not always true that a higher score in the questionnaire represents lower poverty in practice. For instance, with respect to the indebtedness parameter. although a household that has a few paltry household assets and no debts could be one that is in fact too poor to be considered creditworthy by even an informal-sector lender, such a household receives a score of 4, which is higher than the score assigned to, say, a rich landlord who borrows only from commercial banks.
Secondly, there was data-cooking or manipulation after the survey. Even the expert group wrote that “in actual practice no detailed survey was done and survey sheets were filled up within the office itself.”
Thirdly, one of the most serious flaws in the methodology of BPL household identification was in the aggregation of scores of 13 parameters to establish the absolute and relative position of each household with respect to poverty status in a village.
Lastly, another serious cause for exclusion errors is the way cut-off scores were set for each State, district and village. According to the MoRD guidelines, the State-level cut-off was set at the level of the official Planning Commission poverty line plus 10 per cent as an allowance for including the “transient poor” in the BPL category. The determination of the cut-off for administrative divisions within the State (district, block, and village, for example) was left to State governments. As a consequence, the aggregate cut-off score for the determination of BPL households could vary across those administrative entities. In our study, in one State the cut-off varied even from village to village in the same block.
Two main methods of conducting the fourth BPL Census are now under discussion. The first, suggested by the Expert Committee chaired by N. C. Saxena, proposes a method that will identify those who will automatically be excluded, “ensure that the poorest and most vulnerable sections are automatically included,” and grade the rest to identify the poorest among them. The second proposes that identification be broadly on the basis of exclusion and inclusion.
Past experience teaches us important lessons. First, any system of score-based ranking to identify the rural poor is inevitably — in theory and practice — arbitrary, unfair, and inequitable. Secondly, poverty is multi-dimensional, that is, people can be poor with respect to some or all of a range of criteria — for instance, with respect to income, hunger, health, schooling and education, housing, access to the means of sanitary living, and so on. Why then should a single classification of poverty — whether based on criteria set by the MoRD or the Planning Commission or a combination of the two — be considered adequate to measure whether a person is income-poor, nutrition-poor, education-poor, housing-poor, and so on? The natural beneficiaries of a scheme that provides housing should be the population without adequate, safe and clean housing, just as the natural target group for a scheme to provide sanitary toilets is those who have no access to such facilities. Why should access to such schemes be determined by arbitrary reference to fictitious BPL categories? And why should State governments be forced to fit welfare policies to the Procrustean bed of the MoRD's current BPL measure?
In India today, BPL and APL (above poverty line) are not used merely as analytical categories, but as categories that determine inclusion in and — more important — exclusion from anti-poverty programmes. The basic welfare of households and their access to facilities that should be basic rights — food, education, health, and sanitation, for example — is made or broken by the system of BPL-APL segregation in our administrative system. To perpetuate a system that assigns a household to a single BPL/APL category in circumstances in which poverty is multi-dimensional is not only bad economics, but unconscionable as well.
( V. K. Ramachandran is a Professor at the Indian Statistical Institute, Yoshifumi Usami is a researcher at the University of Tokyo, and B. Sarkar is a Research Assistant at the Foundation for Agrarian Studies.)
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Distress cattle sale rampant in Jhabua
Distress cattle sale rampant in Jhabua
Mahim Pratap Singh
Drought, increased reliance on cash crops and lack of fodder are the primary reasons
Jhabua (M.P.): A combination of drought, increased reliance on technology-intensive cash crops and lack of fodder has resulted in Jhabua farmers selling off their cattle, most of which are smuggled to Gujarat, according to sources.
The weekly cattle haat in Raipuriya block reveals a disturbing pattern of cattle sale that is actually a self-perpetuating vicious cycle involving changing agricultural practices.
These haats have been a common part of rural life in Jhabua. However, the reasons for selling cattle have changed from being primarily exchange or upgrade-based in the past to being distress-based now.
Extensive use of herbicides in this region has resulted in a steep decline in fodder cultivation alongside the main crop. This, coupled with a shift to non-fodder cash crops such as tomato and chilli, means there is nothing to feed the cattle with.
The only option is to sell them. And since most of them are largely malnourished, they fetch less than encouraging prices in the market.
Also, the current crop trends in the region require the farmers to hire tractors and threshers, often forcing them to sell off their bulls and other cattle. This means they lose out on a crucial livestock product — cow dung — which is used both as cooking fuel and organic manure.
As a result, farmers have to grow cotton (especially MCH-1) in the lean January-February season as cotton stems serve as cooking fuel to make up for the shortage of cow dung. This has further resulted in an increased BT cotton cultivation in the area.
Also, a shift to chemical fertilizers becomes inevitable since there is no organic manure.
Asked why they were selling off cattle, all except one cited maintenance reasons. “What do we feed them with, there is no fodder. The common grazing land has been encroached upon and they are growing strange plants on it,” said Likhmi, a woman selling goats.
S.K. Dhuriya, Assistant Veterinary Doctor, Petlawad, agrees that there has been a decline in cattle population, but disagrees with distress being the cause.
“There has been a decline primarily because of the use of grazing lands for agriculture,” he says. “Also, people have fewer but better cattle now than before.”
The village commons, used for community cattle grazing, has increasingly been taken up by the State government for growing Jatropha, the much-hyped “bio-diesel” plant. Rows of Jatropha plants can be seen dotting grazing lands and “protected” forest lands.
At the same time, while the number of cattle has declined, meat production in Madhya Pradesh has increased consistently, from 10,200 tonnes in 2001-02 to 23,300 tonnes in 2008-09, according to data from the MP economic survey.
Dalaals flourish
The distress cattle sale in the region has spelled good business for a lot of middlemen, called dalaals.
When approached, these dalaals offered any number of any cattle for sale secretly. “People are ready to sell, but since the markets are down, nobody is willing to pay a good price. If you are willing to pay up, I can get you any number of buffaloes,” said a dalaal.
“Some of them are also sent to Delhi. But we have to be very careful, as VHP men are constantly on the lookout for us,” he said.
Sources said that while some of the cattle are bought off within the village, most of them are smuggled to slaughterhouses across the border to Gujarat.
The district police, however, are reticent in admitting this.
“I don’t believe there is any organised illegal cattle trade in this region, but there have been some incidents and we have intercepted vehicles carrying animals to Gujarat from time to time,” says Abhay Singh, Jhabua SP.
Jhabua on its way to becoming Vidarbha-II?
Jhabua on its way to becoming Vidarbha-II?
Mahim Pratap Singh
If it does not rain over the next week, farmers of Petlawad tehsil and its neighbouring regions in Jhabua might have to go the same way as their brethren in Vidarbha did.
Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Shivraj Singh Chauhan recently declared Jhabua, along with 36 other districts, drought-hit.
The agricultural apparatus in Jhabua is choking under the same processes that led to the ‘Vidarbha catastrophe.’
These include a shift from pulses, coarse grain and oilseed dominated organic and semi-organic farming to a high-input cash cropping system, a vicious debt-cycle with a simultaneous decline in cattle population and an agricultural landscape dotted with BT cotton crop.
Add to this, “a good drought” looming large and the result will mean small and marginal farmers running short of options in the event of a crop failure.
Failure of BT cotton crop
“Like most other farmers, I opted for BT-1 and BT-2, the latter I still grow,” says Mangal, a farmer from Thikariya village, “The companies promised a 25 quintals output. I managed 3 quintals. Others had much less. It didn’t even cover the production costs.”
By the time the farmers learnt that all was not hunky dory with this much advertised “white gold,” they were knee-deep in debt, as almost the entire agricultural production process in this region runs on non-institutional credit.
The only option they had, in order to pay their debts, was to move to other water-intensive cash crops such as tomato, chilli and soyabean along with BT-2. However, by this time, the region, like the rest of the State, was reeling under water and power crises. When the BT revolution practically failed and some farmers decided to question the multi-national corporations that sold it, they were offered bribes and issued threats.
“Officials from a major multi-national seed firm [Monsanto] came to my house and offered me a bike, and then Rs.70,000 to keep quiet,” says Ranchhod Laal, a farmer from Timariya village.
The debt process
Seeds, pesticides and chemical fertilizers are usually provided by local shopkeepers on credit through middlemen who have mushroomed in these times of agricultural crisis.
“Ninety nine per cent of our transactions are on credit,” says Mukesh Chaudhary, owner of a pesticide shop. “Sales have increased since 1999. People buy more fertilizers to get a larger produce from their small land holdings,” he adds.
Farmers in Jhabua use about 600 kg of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and other related products per hectare of land. Chaudhary puts this figure even higher, at 700-800 kg.
These products, however, come with a rider. They are provided at 200 to 300 per cent higher prices than the original cost, and at a compound interest of around 24 - 48 per cent annually, by either the shopkeeper or the local moneylender.
The estimated percentage of non-institutional debt is over 60 per cent of the total debt. Next, come loans from acquaintances, followed by cooperative societies and banks. The much celebrated Self Help Groups make up for the smallest percentage of loans availed by villagers in Jhabua.
So, when the State government waived a Rs. 60-crore loan taken by farmers here under an ill-designed and unsuccessful lift irrigation scheme, it hardly offered any respite, it was only 35 - 40 per cent of the debt the farmers were reeling under.
In Lalaroondi, where the combined annual income of all families of the village is Rs.5,02,997, the combined annual debt stands at Rs.16,07,200. For Kaajbi, these figures are Rs.13,93,234 and Rs.63,29,558 respectively. There are similar figures for other villages of the district. Per capita debt, at Rs.35,000 approximately, is the highest in Semlaapaara village.
‘Arrey, they are poor farmers’
Government officials, however, totally negate the living experiences of the farmers.
“No no, what are you talking about?” asks Sunil Dube, DDA, Jhabua district. “Farmers still grow traditional crops like urad. They do not have money to buy chemical fertilizers and cash crop seeds,” he contends.
But do they buy these on credit? Dube does not think so. “ Arrey, they are poor farmers. Who will give them credit? They are not even creditworthy,” he says with conviction.
The Bharatiya Janata Party government, in its Assembly election manifesto, dedicated an entire page promising to make Madhya Pradesh an “organic state.” Almost a year later, these promises have translated merely into half-hearted training programmes.
“When the government promoted GM farming and chemical pesticides, did it reduce its efforts to training programs only?” asks Nilesh Desai, a local activist leading the fight against the proliferation of GM farming. “Government officials still keep visiting local farmers, encouraging them to take to cash-cropping,” he says.
Saturday, April 24, 2010
Put your money down, boys
Put your money down, boys
Ganjam migrants in Surat send home Rs. 400 crore a year, a fourth of that through the unique Tappawala courier system. But global recession has seen remittances take a hit, writes P Sainath.
How do migrants send money home to their families, and how much? "Our conservative estimate is that Ganjam's migrant labourers remit Rs.500 crores a year back to their villages" says Lokenath Misra of the NGO Aruna, whose "Sethu" project attempts to serve as a bridge between Ganjam migrants and their homes. "Of this, Rs.400 crores comes from Surat alone. A full picture is not possible, as the industry is illegal."
So what does a Tappawala do, anyway?
"I spend 15 days in Surat and 15 days here in this Ganjam village each month," says the Tappawala who has been in the trade for 20 years. "In Surat, I contact the 200-300 labourers I service and ask them if they would like to send money home. Each sends around Rs.2500 a month." This implies his handling between Rs.5 and 7.5 lakhs a month. But this is for nine months only, since the migrant to Surat normally spends three at home each year. So our Tappawala is handling between Rs.45 and 67.5 lakhs annually. "When in the village, I collect parcels for the migrants in Surat from their families. That includes hot pickles and other foodstuffs."
Does the returning Tappawala carry all that cash on him from Surat? "Not the whole distance. Typically, he would buy a bank draft with that in Surat on a branch in Berhampur (Ganjam's main town). He would cash that in Berhampur and reach the village by bus or jeep. So he'd really carry cash only for about three hours and 80-100 kilometres."
"There are about 100 Tappawalas," says the main one speaking to us. (Tappawalas in other villages confirm his figures.) "Of these 80 are minor to middling, like I was" He insists he is 'retired,' though the respect shown by those around him suggests otherwise. "In this league, you handle a maximum of Rs.7.5 lakhs a month." So 80 of them deal with between Rs.36 and 54 crores a year. "There are about 20-30 big Tappawalas. They move over Rs.10-15 lakhs a month each, some of them much more." Implying they handle anywhere between Rs.18 and 40 crores a year as a group, or "much more." Remittances "peak between May and October owing to wedding and festival seasons."
"But remittances have taken a big hit with the recession," he says, (using the word recession in English). "Our volumes are badly down." The collapse of the export sector in urban Gujarat has had hard-to-imagine ramifications in Orissa's villages. That collapse has seen nearly 50,000 of close to half a million (overwhelmingly male) migrants in Surat return to Ganjam.
Migrant remittances are the mainstay for Ganjam's roughly 3.5 million people. This has been a high-migration district from British times, particularly after the great famine of 1866. Ganjam labourers have been to myriad destinations, including Burma where some joined Netaji's Indian National Army during the freedom struggle. Three "Burma Streets" in Berhampore remind us of the link. Today, Ganjam migrants are all over India. A small group even works as plumbers in Ladakh. Nobody knows the total number of migrants from Ganjam, but they could number up to a million.
Lokenath Misra of Aruna says: "On average, Ganjam migrants from all places send in maybe Rs.10,000 a year each. We reckon all migrants making remittances send home at least Rs.500 crores a year to this district, totally. Of this, perhaps Rs.400 crores comes from Surat from where people send home much higher amounts. But even there, poorer ones who come home only once a year bring their savings with them and do not use the Tappawala."
Some big Tappawalas have prospered enough to be elected Corporators in Surat. Suggesting these individuals are handling much more than the annual average of Rs.1.35 crores for members of their league. "Our rates are normally Rs.30 per thousand," says our Tappawala, who earns around Rs.2.5 lakhs a year. "For that your money gets delivered within 8-15 days. 'Next-day delivery' charges are Rs.40 per thousand."
Next day delivery? How? "Oh, we now have networks of our relatives. Usually urgent transfers involve just a few thousand. So we ring up our relatives here who may withdraw it from the bank and give it to the family." Sometimes, he adds virtuously, "the man wanting to send money home may not have any ready, so we advance it ? interest free." But an interest rate of Rs.5 per hundred per month ? the standard rate of the local moneylender ? kicks in from the second month.
Technology helps. "Earlier, we'd have to physically meet all our contacts in Surat. Today, some one in that group would have a cellphone so enquiries are a lot quicker." Also, he reveals, "a few of us are using the Internet for money transfer." He's cagey about the details of this method but it is mostly about sending an email from Surat to a contact in Berhampur. (Probably an illegal moneylender.)
Why should people use him? Why not a bank or post office? "Several do use banks, but most of us have never had a bank account," point out those sitting around the Tappawala. And, he adds, "people feel intimidated in a bank." And the post office? "Even if you are literate, which most migrants are not, you cannot fill out your money order form in Surat in the Oriya language. Getting someone to write it in poor English risks having your money order going astray."
Orissa has recently seen a few postmasters making off with crores of rupees in savings and money orders entrusted to their care by mostly illiterate people. Migrants feel more secure with the Tappawala as his family usually lives in their village or in one nearby. "But we have a security problem," says one. "Once identified, there's a risk." Tappawalas have faced lethal attacks on that cash-carrying stretch from Berhampur to Ganjam's interior villages. Maybe that's why most of them insist they've "retired." They're silent about when they did so. But their money talks. ⊕
P Sainath
15 Aug 2009
Money talks, ... and walks
Money talks, ... and walks
B V Narasimham
March 2004 - Orissa has a long history of supplying substantial numbers of migrant workers to various parts of India, including the economically important pockets of Mumbai, Calcutta and Gujarat. Rough estimates put the figure of migrant Oriya labourers in Gujarat at about 800,000. Of this number, about 80 per cent work in the power loom and diamond polishing businesses in and around Surat. The remaining are spread across the state, working in various factories including plastics, textiles, salt manufacturing, pharmaceuticals, brick manufacturing, and fertilisers.
Orissa has been a source for such migration for more than a half century. Some important reasons are frequent cyclones and natural calamities in the state, a substantial reduction in the availability of forest produce, and the lack of employment opportunities, all resulting in heavy indebtedness amongst its peopl. To cope, the poor, mainly from the drought-affected parts of western Orissa, temporarily migrate to other districts and states – Bhubaneswar and Cuttack in Orissa, Raipur and Bilaspur in Chhatisgarh. They come back during the monsoons to plant the kharif crop, and later to harvest it. Migration is more permanent among people from places like Khurda, Nayagarh and Ganjam. These migrants are generally better off economically, with some education. They migrate to other states mainly in search of better employment opportunities, and not so much because of a vulnerability to drought or famine, like people in western Orissa. They migrate primarily to Gujarat, Maharashtra, Punjab, Jammu & Kashmir and neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.
Among the many problems that migrant workers face, a crucial one is the limited scope to save their earnings, which are temporary in nature. When workers do not have any work, they have to return to their homes for money. In the villages, their dependents (wives or mothers) opt for conventional methods of saving when there is some money (purchasing land, jewellery and cash). They cannot address emergency situations. This creates further indebtedness and migration, and the vicious circle continues. Since there is no support system available, the bargaining power of the migrant workers is negligible and they are compelled to work at low wages. It has come out in discussions with migrant workers that most of them return permanently to their places of origin after ten or 15 years, without any savings, and their poverty persists generation after generation. Though at their place of work, workers may earn reasonable wages, they tend to squander their earnings due to the lack of avenues for saving.
The majority of migrant workers who send a part of their incomes to their families back home do it through money-orders of the Indian postal department. A very small proportion of workers send money through bank drafts, because people in villages normally do not have accounts with banks. Even if a migrant worker has a bank account and purchases a bank draft, once the draft reaches his family, it has to be encashed at a branch of the same bank in their village. In case the bank on which the draft is made does not have a branch in the village, the draft is useless. Thus, unless banks expand their operations to every corner of the country, a bank draft as an option for remittance to families has very limited scope.
The families of migrant workers face a number of problems in remitting money through the post office too. A time lag of 20 days between sending money and its receipt by their families back home is typical. Post offices charge a fee of Rs 50 for every Rs 1,000 sent. Sometimes the family in the village is not informed about the arrival of such money – they get to know of the remittance through letters from the migrant worker. The postal staff sometimes uses the money for money-lending activity and do not pay the families for a long time. One postmaster was transferred and sacked for this reason. In many cases, several visits have to be made to the post office to recover the money that rightfully belongs to the family. In a few cases, money orders are not delivered to the designated recipient.
Migrant workers sometimes send money through friends and relatives from their village, but this method is fraught with problems including robbery on the way and non-delivery of cash to families.
Adhikar, a non-government organisation working for more than a decade in parts of Orissa, has identified an opportunity to address, in a unique way, issues related to money remittance from Gandhidham in Gujarat. Adhikar implements a number of activities of micro-finance through women’s self-help groups, legal counselling to villagers, and livelihood generation and restoration. Adhikar staff visiting Gujarat in 2001 to undertake relief assistance for people affected by the devastating earthquake found about 10,000 Oriya people who had migrated and were working in various activities in and around Gandhidham – at the Kandla port, free-trade zone, IFFCO and for the Railways. Most of them were from Khurda district in Orissa where Adhikar operates. In the three blocks of Tangi, Khurda and Kanas in the district, more than 60 per cent of the population lives below the poverty line. Young members of more than 1,500 families of these blocks have migrated to Gujarat to earn their livelihood. During a brief survey, Adhikar found that among other things, a pressing need of the migrant workers is a safe and efficient way of remitting money to their family members, and an avenue to save part of their daily earnings which will be useful during lean periods.
To address the issue of remittances from Gandhidham, Adhikar came up with an initiative with support from the research and innovation fund of CARE India’s CASHE (Credit & Savings for Household Enterprises) project. The mandate of the CASHE project is to identify and promote innovative initiatives in micro-finance such as Adhikar's. The objectives are to establish an appropriate mechanism (safe, fast and cost-effective) for transferring migrant Oriya workers' funds to their places of origin, to provide micro-finance services (primarily savings) to migrant workers and their families back home, to provide the legal counselling whenever required to families of migrant workers, and to organise people in the proposed project area to benefit from government schemes.
Shramika Sahajoga was incorporated in August 2002 exclusively to look after remittance services for migrant workers. Shramika Sahajoga has its head office in Tangi in Orissa and a project office at Gandhidham. At both ends, bank accounts have been created in the name of Shramika Sahajoga in Corporation Bank. Through these accounts the money is transmitted from Gandhidham to Orissa. The most difficult part of the initiative is convincing workers at Gandhidham about the credibility of Shramika Sahajoga, especially in the initial stages. Mr Amin, the secretary of Adhikar, along with his staff conducted door-to-door meetings at Gandhidham, to build awareness about the initiative, its objectives and how it will help workers. The advantage Adhikar had was that Oriya workers in Gandhidham are from places where the organisation has had microfinance operations in place for quite some time. By cashing in on the goodwill of their Ma Bank (women’s bank), Adhikar won the confidence of Oriya workers.
Subsequently, workers have been registered as members of Shramika Sahajoga and money has been transmitted from Gandhidham to Orissa using a well-thought and assured plan. (See box "Money walks") Shramika Sahajoga mobilises family members of migrant workers to form self-help groups to provide micro-credit for small income generation activities. At the time of remitting the money to the family, with the family’s consent, Rs 100 is set aside by the organisation as savings of the family withShramika Sahajoga. Apart from that, there is an option of voluntary savings by the members. The savings thus mobilised from the members are used as a revolving loan fund for lending to needy members. Currently Shramika Sahajoga is mobilising savings only in the form of voluntary deductions in Orissa and will start lending once the groups are strengthened in terms of organising regular group meetings and understanding the basics of savings and lending. In Gandhidham, the organisation offers recurring deposit and voluntary savings products to the members.
So far, progress on the initiative has been encouraging. The membership has grown from a mere 13 at inception in September 2002 to 280 at the end of December 2003. Cumulatively, Rs 1,650,000 has been remitted, with an average remittance of Rs 3,400 per remittance per member. The growth in membership, and thereby remittance, has been very steep in the last four months, as a result of the demonstration effect. There is scope to expand the service to other pockets of Gujarat, especially Surat, where a large number of Oriya migrants from Ganjam district live. Shramika Sahajoga with seven staff members (two in Gandhidham and five in Orissa) will break even by February 2005 if it continues its current performance, coupled with lending operations in Orissa.
In the long run, a number of benefits are expected from the project:
- Smooth, safe and cost-effective transfer of money of migrant workers to their families back home.
- Establishment of a viable micro-finance institution for the families of migrant workers of Orissa.
- Family members of migrant workers will undertake income-generating activities.
- Economic development of migrant workers and their families as a result of savings promotion among them.
- The associated improved understanding of families of migrant workers of various social and economic issues.
If this model of remittance succeeds, money transfer will attract the imagination of many development agencies that aim to serve migrant workers in a meaningful way. It must be noted, however, that remittance alone will not be sufficient for an initiative to be effective in the long run. It must be supplemented by other micro-finance services like savings and credit, and most important, insurance for workers. In collaboration with mainstream insurance companies, Shramika Sahajoga offers insurance free of charge to about 35 members.
The choice of areas for remittance service is important. As in the case of Shramika Sahajoga, it is desirable to choose places where people from a pocket or a couple of pockets have migrated. It would otherwise become an unwieldy service, both at the source and destination of migration. The choice of the category of migrant workers to be covered under money transfer services is crucial because the average remittance per member per remittance is critical for the organisation providing these services to recover its costs. ⊕
B V Narasimham
March 2004
MIGRANT VOTER
ওঁরা মাইগ্রেন্ট, ওঁরা ভোটার নয়
চন্দন দে
শিবপুরী
২২শে নভেম্বর, ২০০৮— ডেটলাইন কী হবে, তা নিয়ে মহা ধন্দ।
গোয়ালিয়র থেকে শিবপুরী যাওয়ার পিচঢালা রাস্তা। বাঁদিকের জানলাজুড়ে যত দূর দৃষ্টি চলে, শুধুই রুক্ষতার বড়োসড়ো বিজ্ঞাপন, শুধুই এবড়ো-খেবড়ো। ডাইনে তবু খানিক সবুজ, কাছে-দুরের পাহাড় তুলোট কাগজে ওয়াসের ছবির মতো ঝাপসা।
সেপথের ধারেই তাঁবু পড়েছে ওঁদের। গাড়ি থামতেই মহিলার দল আড়াল-তফাত। ‘বলতে চাই না, চাই না’— করেও অনেক কথা বলে ফেললেন অমর সিং, হেমরাজরা। ঘরছাড়া মানুষের এই দলটায়
১৩জন ‘জেন্টস’ আর তেরো জন ‘লেডিজ’। বাচ্চা-কাচ্চার সংখ্যা জানতে গিয়ে অবশ্য হিমসিম খেলো। তিন মরদ মিলে জনে জনে জিজ্ঞাসা করে জানিয়ে দিলেন— ষোলো।
বৃত্তান্ত সেই একই। এরা ঘর ছেড়েছেন আহ্লাদে নয়, অভাবের তাড়নায়। এসেছেন সেই রায়সেন জেলা থেকে। গ্রামের নাম কুন্ডরী। দেওয়ালি মিটতেই আশপাশের গোটা তল্লাটের গাঁ-ঘরের বেশিটাই খালি। কেউ এসেছেন পরিবারজুড়ে, কেউ বা একাই। আসতে পারেননি বয়স্করা। পাঠিয়ে দিয়েছেন ছেলেপিলেদের, এমনকি যুবতী মেয়েদেরও। কোনো কোনো মহিলা অবশ্য গ্রামেই থেকে গিয়েছেন, গরু-ছাগল দেখার জন্য।
আসলে কী আর করবেন। চাষ করে যা আয় হয়, তাতে কুলোয় না। সেচের জল বলে কোনো কালে কিছুই ছিল না ভিল আদিবাসীদের ঐ জমিতে। বৃষ্টি হলে চাষ, না হলেই সর্বনাশ। খেতে যা ফসল হয়, তাতে তিন-চার মাসের বেশি চলে না।
তাই সোয়াবিন তুলেই সোম সিংরা নেমে পড়েছিলেন ‘সর্দার’-র খোঁজে। তবে খুঁজতে হয় না বেশি। গ্রামের ধারেকাছেই তাকেন এই সর্দাররা। তাঁরাই সব সুলুক-সন্ধান দেন। কোথায় গেলে কাজ মিলবে, কত মজুরি পাওয়া যাবে— এই সব। এরাই ট্রেনে চাপিয়ে দলকে দল মানুষকে নিয়ে যান কাজের খোঁজে। বদলে সর্দার পান মজুরির একটা অংশ। তেমন খোঁজ পেয়েই এখানে ওঁরা এসেছেন এক বেসরকারী টেলিকম কোম্পানির লাইন ফেলার কাজে।
কত টাকা নিয়ে ফিরতে পারবেন? মুখ চাওয়া-চাওয়ি শুরু করলেন অমর, সোমসিংরা। বোঝা গেলো সবটাই আন্দাজে ঢিল ছোঁড়া। একট গভীরে বোঝার তাগিদে জানা গেলো, ‘দেখুন এক মিটার গর্ত করে বোঝাই করা পর্যন্ত শেষ করলে ৫০টাকা পাওয়া যায়। ছেলেরা গর্ত খোঁড়ে, মেয়েরা মাটি সরায়। গোটা দিন কাজ করলে দু’জনে মিলে একশো টাকা হয়ে যায়।’
ঘুরতে ঘুরতে ভোপাল হয়ে পৌঁছে যাওয়া গেলো রায়সেন জেলায় অমর সিংদের গ্রামে। বাড়িতে ওর বৃদ্ধ বাবা-মা, আর দেখভালে অমরের ন’বছরের মেয়ে। গোটা গ্রাম খাঁ খাঁ করছে। তবু তার মধ্যেই চোঙা ফুঁকে চলেছে ভোটওয়ালা অটো রিকসা, ভোটের হাওয়া তুলতে। কিন্তু ভোটের প্রচারের কথা শুনতে হাজির নেই এ তল্লাটের বহু গ্রামের মানুষ। পেটের দায়ে তাঁরা অন্যত্র পাড়ি দিয়েছেন। ভোটের আগে ফিরেও আসবেন না।
প্রশ্ন ছিল হেমরাজকে, ভোটে ফিরবেন না গ্রামে? বললেন, ফিরতে হলে তো যা কামিয়েছি গোটাটাই চলে যাবে।
তাহলে এই বাছা বাছা প্রতিশ্রুতির কী হবে? বি জে পি যে সেদিন কোন্ডরায় বলছিল, ‘সরকার তোমাদের জন্য কতকিছু করছে, আরো অনেক কিছু করবে।’ আর কংগ্রেস বলছে, ‘তোমাদের জন্য ওরা কিছুই করলো না। আমাদের ভোট দাও, আমরা করবো।’
কিন্তু ঘরছাড়া মানুষ জানেন, ভোটপর্ব মিটলেই এদের টিকি মিলবে না। আবার সেই রুটি-ভাতের তাগিদে অন্য গ্রামে, অন্য জেলায়, কখনও অন্য রাজ্যে পাড়ি। হেমরাজের প্রশ্ন, ‘আদিবাসী কা কৌন শৌচতা হ্যায়।’
Orissa's labour industry
Orissa's labour industry
A conniving chain of regulators, police, and contractors is profiteering upon the backs of gruelling labour by migrants. Jaideep Hardikar reports on the exploitation.
June 2004 - Dashrath Suna is a very busy man these days. His two-storied house stands out amid the cramped huts of Katabanji, a small town in Bolangir, Orissa. From a poor migrant of the 80s, Suna amazingly grew richer, and richer, in the past decade or so. Having grasped the tricks of the ugly labour market while once toiling hard to excruciating physical limits, he now trades himself in western Orissa's biggest industry - labour.
Oddly, in this no-industrial belt, known for poverty and deprivation, migration of people is a big business, which runs into crores of rupees. People like Dashrath Suna make a lot of money from it, while poor migrants run into greater depths of despair every year. The more the number of migrants, more is the money earned by these agents. Suna knows what he does is blatantly illegal and inhuman, but in this business, even otherwise, no laws apply.
Picture: An old woman grapples for two square meals in a village in Nuapada, Orissa, after a labour contractor coaxed her son into migrating to Andhra Pradesh with his wife and children for work. She's desperate, and hungry.
Sardars, the middlemen or labour contractors, emerged as a new set of usurers when the rural credit folded in early nineties. Their job is simple: They coax the poor people and farmers of these poorest areas of the country into migrating for work to other states where the rich industrialists, brick-kiln owners or road contractors savour the cheap but skilled labour. It's a mutual need. The industrialists outside need cheap labourers. And, the gullible farmers or the landless labourers here need work round the year.
"We send the labour to many parts of the country," says Abdul Kadar aka Babloo Khan. Kadar has been sending hordes of farmers for work since past two decades. Today, he says, it is enough. Exploitation is taking an ugly turn these days. From women being forced into prostitution to migrants being served with highly adulterated food, it's all happening out there, he laments these days. The deals, he says, are struck in Orissa, but the labourers have to work in other states. The labour machinery of a host state can't act against the contractors since the deals are struck in Orissa.
Moreover, these labourers don't qualify as migrants under the Inter-State Migrant Workmen's (Regulation of Employment & Conditions of Service) Act of 1979, since they migrate on their own volition. "The labour contractors are making a mockery of laws," laments Kadar.
While Dashrath Suna refused to speak to this reporter, Kadar was more than willing to speak about this ugly trade. "The labour contractors would not speak to you because they know what they are doing is illegal," explains Kadar. But a local tells me that Kadar is a transformed man today because he believes that God has taught him a lesson for all his sins – his young son lost both his legs a year ago in a ghastly accident.
The deals are struck in Orissa, but the labourers have to work in other states. The labour machinery of a host state can't act against the contractors since the deals are struck in Orissa.
Without delving deep into the reasons for larger-scale distress migration from the Kalahandi-Bolangir-Koraput belt, Kadar explains that the Sardars lay a trap for villagers just before the Nua-Khai festival, shortly after the harvest. That is the time when people desperately need hard cash for household chores, and to purchase good food and clothes. Sardars give them advances ranging from Rs.2,000 to Rs.7,000, and book them for the next six months.
With a dropping rate of rural employment in this region, villagers who are reeling under abject poverty and drought of policies accept these deals unhesitatingly without realising that these advances are nothing but a binding form of loans. These loans force the small farmers and the landless to migrate to the places these Sardars would drive them to shortly after the harvest season. This money is later deducted with a heavy interest from the earnings of migrants at their new destination.
Kadar says: "One family can save up to Rs.7,000 to Rs.10,000 after six months of grueling work." But what a Sardar could earn sitting at home on these migrants in six months could be mind-boggling. "Just calculate," Kadar quips. On one 'Pathri' - a unit of three persons - a 'Seth' invests Rs.30 lakhs towards material costs of brick at their kilns. A 'Pathri' makes on an average three lakh bricks in the span of six months. On every thousand bricks, the unit earns Rs.70 to Rs.111 depending upon the city you are in. On every thousand bricks made by this unit, a Sardar gets his commission of Rs 10. So, per Pathri, an agent earns on an average Rs.3,000 for a season.
Picture: Villagers of Katabanji, near Bolangir, speak about the paucity of work and abject poverty - and drought of policies - that force them to move out of their villages in distress. Something that the agents love to capitulate on, to earn a handsome commission.
"This year, I've sent around 30,000 people to many brick kilns in Andhra Pradesh, Raipur, Maharashtra and as far away as Ayodhya. That is about 10,000 Pathris," discloses Kadar. Simply put: He'll earn a commission to the tune of - hold your breath - Rs 3 crore! People like Suna earn even more because they pack more migrants to new places of work. The Seth on the other hand benefits too. The cost of labour he pays to the migrants comes to just about one per cent of the total investment in raw material cost. A Sardar's commission is deducted from the wages of the labourers on a weekly basis.
Kadar says a long chain of people waits for its share in his commission. The local police, the Railway Police Force, the office of labour commissioner, and many more high profile officials get their kickbacks from these Sardars. "There's a good incentive for them to keep quiet," he chuckles. "We have license to send people for work outside, but that does not permit us to send so many of them on such meagre daily wages," he explains. Who says there's no industry in this belt? "Come here," Kadar says, "and I'll show you Orissa's biggest cheap-labour industry!" ⊕
Jaideep Hardikar
June 2004
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