A bold and inclusive left populist radicalism would expose the real roots of festering social problems by speaking plainly and directly to ordinary people’s needs, without pandering to their worst prejudices and fears.
Horkheimer is front left, Adorno front right, and Habermas is in the background, right, running his hand through his hair, Heidelberg, 1964. Wikicommons/Jeremy J. Shapiro at the Max Weber-Soziologentag.. Some right reserved.
Two new worlds are now struggling to be born amidst the crumbling ruins of neoliberalism and market globalisation. The first is the waking nightmare now unfolding in the United States in the glare of the international media. A reality show with a cast of horrors, its politically successful mix of faux right-wing populism and neo-fascism has inspired and emboldened autocrats everywhere and threatens in the absence of an effective counter-power to become our new global reality.
The second, a just, compassionate, ecologically sound and democratically self-managed post-capitalist world, may be detected in what Colin Ward once described as scattered ‘seeds beneath the snow’. Deeply rooted in a rich soil of ideas and grounded utopian imagination nourished by countless counter-cultural critics of capitalism, industrialism and grow-or-die economics from William Morris, Peter Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus to Gandhi, Ivan Illich, Murray Bookchin and Ursula Le Guin – as well as a long history of popular movements from below working together to resist regimes of domination and develop progressive and sustainable alternatives to them – the tender shoots of another world are emerging all around us.
They are visible in a wide range of grassroots practices, movements, and practical utopias, from Buen Vivir in the Andes, Ubuntu in South Africa, Ecoswaraj in India, Zapatismo in Mexico, and the budding degrowth movement in Europe to solidarity economies, commoning activities, permaculture projects, re-localisation movements, community currencies, transition towns, co-operatives, eco-communities, worker occupied factories, indigenous people’s assemblies, alternative media and arts, human-scale technologies, basic and maximum income experiments, debt audit movements, radical democratic movements such as Occupy and democratic confederalism in Rojava, and emerging anti-fascist fronts and coalitions uniting immigrant solidarity groups, anti-racists, feminists, queers, anarchists, libertarian socialists and many others.
The great danger we now face is that newly empowered forces of reaction will use that power to repress progressive alternatives before they are able to coalesce as an effective counter-power, sowing seeds of hatred and intolerance instead.
Walter Benjamin’s observation that every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution speaks poignantly to our current condition. It may be interpreted not only as warning, but as a grimly realistic utopian hope that we still have a fleeting historical opportunity to act before it is too late.
Many commentators of a liberal democratic or centre-left political persuasion have dismissed such warnings as scare-mongering, and suggested that the most effective antidote to ‘populist politics’ is a renewed commitment to social democracy and market globalisation with a ‘human face’. Rather than seek to understand the complex mix of reasons why American citizens voted for a demagogue like Trump, they blame an undifferentiated ‘populism’ and advocate more elite democracy instead.
The breathtaking naivety of this commentary is perhaps matched in recent memory only by Francis Fukuyama’s equally naïve and now risible prediction in 1989 of an ‘end of history’, i.e. an end to mankind’s ideological evolution with the ‘universalisation of western liberal democracy as the final form of human government’.
Walter Benjamin, Paris, 1939.
Now more than ever, it is vital that we recognise and articulate careful ideological distinctions between competing right and left wing varieties of populism, and that those of us committed to values like equality, democracy and solidarity take urgent action to oppose Trumpism and the rise of fascism not with more of the same failed elite-led liberal democracy, but with a bold left egalitarian and inclusive radicalism.
The Trump campaign gave voice to the ugly authoritarian and reactionary face of popular opposition to the political establishment. It castigated the elitism and corruption of the system, emphasised its ineffectuality in the face of sinister threats to national well-being posed by Muslims and illegal immigrants and other easily scapegoated ‘outsider’ groups, and maintained that Trump and Trump alone could ‘make America great again’. It succeeded by peddling false solutions and scapegoats for real social problems generated by the governance of interconnected political and economic elites.
By contrast, a bold and inclusive left populist radicalism would expose the real roots of festering social problems by speaking plainly and directly to ordinary people’s needs, without pandering to their worst prejudices and fears. It would offer a generous vision of a better world, and a sweeping programme for revolutionary social change that can be translated into everyday practice.
This will require a reconnection with revolutionary roots. Historically, revolutionary ideas and social movements have tended to emerge out of, and give ideological coherence to, popular democratic social forms. However, in our time once revolutionary ideologies and movements like socialism and anarchism have grown increasingly detached from their radical democratic roots, leaving a political vacuum that right-wing populists and demagogues have been quick to fill.
Walter Benjamin’s observation that every rise of fascism bears witness to a failed revolution speaks poignantly to our current condition. It may be interpreted not only as warning, but as a grimly realistic utopian hope that we still have a fleeting historical opportunity to act before it is too late.
(Laurence Davis is College Lecturer in Government at University College Cork, Ireland, and an editor of the Manchester University Press Contemporary Anarchist Studies book series).
How much control do Indian women have over different aspects of their lives?
Not much, according to the Indian Human Development Survey (IHDS), conducted by the University of Maryland and the National Council of Applied Economic Research in 2004-2005 and 2011-2012.
Only 4.99% of women in India had sole control over choosing their husbands, while 79.8% of women needed permission to visit a health centre, according to the 2012 IHDS survey, showing little change since the IHDS survey in 2005, when 5% reported having sole control over choosing their husband, and 74.2% reported needing permission to visit a health centre.
The IHDS survey in 2012 covered over 34,000 urban and rural women between the ages of 15 and 81, in 34 Indian states and union territories.
Overall, 73% of the women surveyed reported that their parents or relatives alone chose their husbands, while as few as 5% of women reported to have had sole control over choosing their husbands.
A similar survey for men has not been conducted.
Women need permission to visit a grocery store, healthcare center
Limited control over life decisions extended to visiting a healthcare centre, and a grocery store.
Almost 80% of women said they had to seek permission from a family member to visit a health centre. Out of these women, 80% said they needed permission from their husband, 79.89% from a senior male family member, and 79.94% from a senior female family member.
Further, 58% of women reported that they needed permission to visit the local kirana (grocery) store, compared to 44.8% in 2005.
Such restrictions are also echoed in other indicators. For instance, only 27% of Indian women are in the labour force, the second-lowest rate of female labour-force participation in South Asia after Pakistan, as IndiaSpendreported in April 2016.
Women, however, seemed to have control over what is cooked in the house, a decision that 92.89% women reported making everyday. About 50% reported that the husband took part in deciding what to cook, highlighting the gendered nature of household chores.
Since 2005, there has been a decrease in the percentage of women who decide what they cook (94.16% in 2005), and an increase in the percentage of men (40.89% in 2005) who took part in the decision.
Women (In %) Who Ask Permission To Visit Health Center
A woman’s freedom to make decisions depends on where she lives
More women chose their own husband in states in north-eastern and southern India as compared to northern India, as per 2012 IHDS data.
The percentage of women who had sole say in choosing their husbands was lowest in Rajasthan (0.98%), followed by Punjab (1.14%) and Bihar (1.19%). It was the highest in Manipur (96%), followed by Mizoram (88%) and Meghalaya (76.9%).
As many as 65% of the women said they had met their husband for the first time on the wedding day, but wide variations exist across states. For instance, all women in Manipur had met their husband before the day of the wedding, while 94% of women in Bihar met their husband for the first time on the day of the wedding.
This highlights the “arranged” nature of marriages in India, a process in which prospective partners usually meet for the first time with the intention of getting married, after their family vets the spouse-to-be, and the match is backed by the support of their extended social network.
A similar trend in regional variations can be seen in the percentage of women who needed permission to visit a health care center. As many as 94% of women reported needing permission to visit a health center in Jharkhand, the highest of any state, while only 4.76% of women in Mizoram needed permission, the lowest.
The top five states, which weren’t necessarily doing well in 2005 like Mizoram, Sikkim, Tripura and West Bengal, have improved since then. However, more women in the bottom five states reported they had to ask for permission to visit the health centre in 2012 as compared to 2005.
Does higher literacy lead to greater decision-making power? Not really
A woman’s power to make decisions regarding marriage, and visits to a healthcare centre are not correlated with literacy at the state-level, or to the sex ratio (the number of females per 1000 males), suggesting the role of social norms, which might differ by state.
For example, in Chattisgarh, which has one of the highest sex ratios in the country (991), only 7.57% women said they did not need permission from another family member to visit a healthcare center.
This paradox is not being observed for the first time–despite female literacy levels being higher than before, the child sex ratio (indication of son preference) in India is at its lowest since 1951, as IndiaSpendreported in December 2016.
“The bias against daughters can only end if women’s education is accompanied by social and economic empowerment”, concluded a study conducted over a period of 30 years in Gove, Maharashtra, by Carol Vlassoff, a professor at the University of Ottawa, as IndiaSpendreported in December 2016.
In Delhi, which has a literacy rate of 86.21% (higher than the national average of 74.04%), only 2.09% women reported they had sole control over choosing their husband. Meghalaya, which has a lower literacy rate than Delhi (74.43%), ranks third from the top in terms of women who said they had sole control over choosing their husband (76.9%).
“Cultural climate also plays a role”, said Kavita Krishnan, secretary of the Delhi-based All India Progressive Women’s Association, which works on issues such as reservation for women in Parliament and violence against women. “In and around Delhi, there is no doubt a more rigid patriarchal culture that is hostile to women’s sexual autonomy–this may be far less the case in Meghalaya”, she explained.
“This study shows that denial of autonomy is in itself one of the central problems for Indian women. This problem can’t be addressed by literacy alone, and governments need to address the issue directly”, Krishnan added.
(Garg is a Research Associate with the University of Michigan.)
Full text of the vice-president's speech in which he warned that unless the problem is tackled, conflict is bound to follow.
Vice-President M Hamid Ansari on Friday called inequality the greatest risk facing the world today, saying it “corrodes social cohesion”, “breeds economic inefficiencies and limits productivity”. Delivering the inaugural address at a three-day conclave organised by The Hindu in Bengaluru titled The Huddle, he said that while living standards have improved for many in the last 30 years, this has perhaps masked a “dramatic concentration of income and wealth” in a small segment: the richest 1% in the country owns nearly 60% of its wealth while the bottom half of Indians collectively own only 2% of national wealth.
Rising inequality can lead to conflict, both at the social and national level, he warned. The growing threat of left-wing extremism, which he said has been acknowledged as the gravest security threat to the Indian state, has its roots in economic deprivation and inequality in access to resources, he added.
He cautioned against viewing rising inequity as merely “an inconvenient truth in the saga of India’s shining future”, saying that without equality, there is unlikely to be much of a future, let alone a shining one.
This is the full text of the vice-president’s address:
“When I was first told about this conclave, an odd thought came to my mind. I wondered if the theme was a verb or a noun; the definite article however settled that. I recall the tablet that was affixed to the pedestal of the Statue of Liberty in the early years of the last century, and that reads:
Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuge of your teeming shore, Send these, the homeless, tempest- tossed, to me: I lift my lamp besides the golden door.
I do not propose to dilate on the context of these lines. I do nevertheless wish to draw the attention of this gathering to the second line: the quest for freedom by human kind, and to the response patterns we have witnessed in our times.
Freedom, in the dictionary meaning of the term, signifies ‘the power to act, speak and think freely’. It implies unhampered liberty to think freely, to question anything, to be able to speak frankly, to be free to explore boundaries.
Yet freedom or liberty in itself would be quite meaningless. To enjoy these ‘freedom of,’ there is a requirement first for certain ‘freedom from’.
To survive with dignity, humans require both ‘freedom from want’ and ‘freedom from fear’. Human development is understood as the continuing expansion of human freedom and humans flourishing beyond these freedoms.
In our case, the Preamble of the Constitution specifies what ‘We the People of India’ set out to attain: justice (social, economic and political); liberty (of thought, expression, belief, faith and worship); and the equality (of status and of opportunity), and fraternity (to assure dignity of individual and unity of the nation).
Thus liberty or freedom is anchored between justice and equality; also inter-spersed is a Hegelian construct on appreciation of necessity that circumscribes this freedom. Furthermore, while equality is the premise of citizenship, the latter by itself does not guarantee substantive equality.
In advance of the world’s financial and economic elite going to Davos for their annual meeting, the World Economic Forum publishes its Global Risks Report. The 2017 edition highlights some risks facing the global system and places the issue of income inequality as the number one risk because it is associated with a rise in populism and threatens the cohesiveness of countries. It describes the present as ‘a febrile time for the world’.
Four earlier annual editions of the report had similarly identified rising inequality among the top four global risks. It is therefore not surprising that reducing inequality is one of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
And still – in this age of ‘post-truths’ and ‘alternate facts’ – deceptive appearances can be made to prevail.
The improving living standards, in segments, have perhaps masked a dramatic concentration of income and wealth over the last 30 years. A number of studies have come to the distressing conclusion that despite the increase in the number of people coming out of abject poverty, the majority of people on the planet today live in countries where economic disparities are bigger than they were a generation ago. Please consider the following:
Including capital gains, the share of national income going to the richest 1% has doubled since 1980. Within it, the largest share going to the top 0.01% – some 16,000 families – who now control almost 5% of the global wealth.
If we divide the whole income of the world into two halves, we find that the richest 8% get half, while the other half would be distributed in the remaining 92% of the population.
In almost all countries, the mean wealth of the wealthiest 10% is more than 10 times the median wealth. For the wealthiest 1%, mean wealth exceeds 100 times the median wealth in many countries and can approach 1,000 times the median in the most unequal nations.
In developing economies like India and China, despite the fact that incomes have risen for many, inequality, in both wealth and income have also risen significantly. The richest 1% in India owned nearly 60% of the country’s total wealth, with the top 20% commanding 80%. The bottom half of Indians by contrast, collectively own only 2% of the national wealth.
Nor is a reversal in sight. Rates may vary, but since the financial crisis of 2007, inequality has shown more increases than decreases in the world’s nations. Twentieth century history shows that this can be ominous.
While the economists may continue to debate the extent and causes of inequality, there can be little doubt about its implications for the political, social and economic fabric of society.
Some years earlier, Joseph Stiglitz had written about the price of inequality in the context of the United States. More recently, Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson have describe the ‘pernicious effects’ that inequality has on societies and provide evidence for a strong correlation between higher levels of national inequality and a wide range of health and social problems.
More worryingly, rising inequality is seen as a contributing cause for the rise of authoritarian leaders, often with a divisive agenda fuelled by sectarianism, xenophobia and nationalism.
Rising inequality can lead to conflict, both at social and at national level. Research has shown that in contrast to oligarchic regimes; democracies avoid serious political turbulence only so long as they ensure that the relative level of inequality between the rich and the poor does not become excessively large.
Other studies, similarly, indicate that social conflicts are indeed likely to break out in situations where there are large inequalities between different groups. Some studies have concluded that ethnic groups with incomes much lower than a country’s average per capita income are more likely to engage in civil war.
New protest movements have broken out around the world, many arguably rooted in the burgeoning inequality. The Occupy Movement and the Arab Spring were both fuelled by growing public despair at the sharp inequalities and growing unemployment and the perceived inability of the existing governance structures to redress the situation. In India, the growing threat of left extremism, which has been repeatedly acknowledged as the gravest security threat to Indian state, has its roots in economic deprivation and inequality in access to resources.
It has also been recognised that growing social inequality corrodes social cohesion and can destabilise states. Some recent research has found that the likelihood of a country remaining mired in poverty or achieving sustainable growth has a strong relation to the average life expectancy of the citizenry. There, it is argued, that a shorter average life span leaves less time to reap the returns on investment in human capital.
Inequality also breeds economic inefficiencies and limits productivity. Research by IMF has shown that income inequality slows growth, causes financial crisis and weakens demand. In a recent report, the Asian Development Bank has similarly argued that if emerging Asia’s income distribution had not worsened over the past 20 years, the region’s rapid growth would have lifted an additional 140 million people out of extreme poverty.
Perhaps the time has come to move the development discourse of inequality beyond the current discussion of outcomes and opportunities. A conceptual framework is provided by Amartya Sen and some others who see human capabilities as the capacity and freedom to choose and to act; and calls for the opportunities that give individuals the freedom to pursue a life of their own choosing to be equalised.
The concepts of justice and fairness are tied to the idea of equity in development. Equity has an intrinsic value since some groups face consistently inferior opportunities – economic, social and political – than their fellow citizens. Specifically, it translates into the need for equal opportunity and avoidance extreme deprivation in outcomes. To view rising inequity as merely an inconvenient truth in the saga of India’s shining future would therefore be a folly. Without equality, there is unlikely to be much of a future, let alone a shining one.
There is a need to revisit our commitment to investing in social goods. We have to move beyond seeing corporate social activity and government welfare schemes as merely minimum relief for the misery of the masses aimed mostly at neutralising the more aggressive antagonism of those who have lost income and wealth or those whose upward mobility seems permanently blocked.
We need to ask ourselves some uncomfortable questions:
Can we ignore the great inequity as merely a by-product of progress?
Has the trickle-down model of growth failed us?
Have we paid too high a cost in terms of environmental damage for our material progress?
Are conflicts and human suffering the new normal? To what extent are they induced by failed ventures in quest for unrealisable utopias?
Can we just accept the growing insularity, intolerance and discrimination?
Have we made sufficient investments in improving our human capital and public goods, like education and healthcare?
Faced with growing global violence, poverty, and injustice, it may be difficult to retain hope for an equitable future. Yet, if the reality of global inequality inspires what Antonio Gramsci called ‘pessimism of the intellect’, work must nevertheless begin with what he termed ‘optimism of the will’ the undaunted commitment that drives radical change.
I have raised questions. I hope this Huddle will bring forth some answers.
Kairana (Shamli): Taking a U-turn, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Hukum Singh today said the “migration” of Hindus from Kairana in western Uttar Pradesh was “not communal” in nature but had more to do with the law and order situation.
Hukum Singh, who first alleged Hindus were forced to leave Kairana had later said it was “not a communal issue”.
“It is not about communal incidents… It is not about Hindus or Muslims,” the Kairana MP told reporters here on Saturday, adding it has more to do with the law and order situation.
He had earlier said that from the names of the accused, “one can grasp who are these people”, hinting at involvement of members of the Muslim community.
The MP had earlier released a list of 346 families who had allegedly been forced to flee the town, which has 85 percent Muslim population. Kairana is in Shamli district which witnessed communal riots in 2013.
Top BJP leaders raked up the issue of alleged migration of Hindus from Kairana to attack the Samajwadi Party government in the state during the Assembly election’s campaign trail.
BJP’s rebel Anil Chauhan, who joined the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD) to fight election from Kairana constituency, had earlier alleged Singh raked up the exodus issue only to prepare grounds for his daughter’s entry into politics. His Mriganka is contesting the polls on a BJP ticket.
Meerut (Uttar Pradesh): Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) lawmaker Sangeet Som’s brother detained for carrying pistol inside a polling booth in Meerut’s Sardhana constituency in western Uttar Pradesh where polling in underway today for the first phase of the seven-phased election in the state.
A pistol was recovered from the possession of Gagan Som, the brother of the controversial MLA, when the security personnel deployed at the polling station frisked him.
Photo: Sangeet Som
He was immediately taken into custody and is quizzed by the police.
No one is allowed to carry arms and ammunition at a polling booth. Those who posses licensed weapons have to surrender them to the police when the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct comes into force, said officials. The permission to keep arms is granted in special cases only.
Earlier, Sangeet Som – an accused in the 2013 Muzaffarnagar riots who is out on bail – was booked after for screening the contents of the clippings of the 2013 communal violence in a public meetings in Fareedpur in his constituency during the campaign trail.
He was booked under several Sections, including Section 125 in the Representation of the People’s Act, 1951 (promoting feeling of enmity or hatred between people on grounds of religion, race, caste in connection with election).
Seventy-three assembly constituencies in 15 communally sensitive and highly polarized districts of western Uttar Pradesh are voting today. The first phase of the seven-phased elections is witnessing four cornered contest between the Samajwadi Party (SP)-Congress alliance, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) and the Rashtriya Lok Dal (RLD). A total of 839 candidates are in the fray. While Agra south seat has the highest number of candidates (26), the lowest – six each – are from Hastinapur (Meerut), Iglas and Loni seats. The seats that are keenly watched at are Noida where Union Home Minister Rajnath Singh’s son Pankaj is making debut in electoral politics, Mathura which is witnessing an intense battle between Congress legislature party leader Pradeep Mathur and BJP national spokesman Shrikant Sharma and Sardhana in Meerut where BJP’s Sangeet Som is challenged by SP’s Atul Pradhan.
Former state BJP president and sitting MLA Laxmikant Bajpayi is being challenged in a triangular contest by SP-Congress combine’s Rafiq Ansari and BSP’s Pankaj Jolly in Meerut city. Kairana, Thana Bhawan and Sikandarabad are other high-profile seats.
In addition, the fates of Muzaffarnagar riot accused Sangeet Som and Suresh Rana (both Hindutva poster boys of the BJP) too would be decided in the first phase from Sardhana seat in Meerut and Thana Bhawan in Shamli.
India's social-sector spending remains woefully low and despite claims of being a pro-farmer Budget, the effective allocations are nearly the same as last year.
Some commentators expected that the Union Budget 2017-’18 would craft a sharp departure from earlier budgets of this government. This it would do to mitigate the immense suffering of millions of casual workers, farmers and small traders caused by the “shock and awe” of the astoundingly callous and ultimately pointless decision to withdraw 86% of the country’s currency overnight.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Bharatiya Janata Party President Amit Shah, the government and its supporters continue to put up a brave face while talking about the demonetisation move in public, claiming that the vast majority of Indians support it. But behind closed doors, there are signs of unease in the ruling establishment.
With a fifth of the country’s voters going to polls in the days after the budget – elections to five states are being held between February 4 and March 8 – the ruling party felt compelled to shed its image of being uncaring of the poor and allied to the interests of the super-rich.
This year’s Budget was therefore one of exceptional interest and expectations, with some commentators believing it would contain dramatic and high-visibility measures for welfare and developmental equity.
No yield for farmers
However, a careful study of the Budget reveals that it gives away little to India’s long-suffering poor and takes away even less from its super rich. It hopes instead that rhetoric alone will suffice to convince the mass of India’s workers and farmers that their government is committed to their well-being.
Take firstly the claim, repeated for a second year in a row, that this is a farmers’ budget and that it will double their incomes by 2022. The route by which farmers’ incomes will double has of course not been clarified – as in the last budget – neither has the government specified if it is speaking about real income adjusted for inflation.
But the severe reality remains unchanged that although agriculture still employs more than 50% of the country’s workforce, it is allotted a miserly and shocking 2.38% of Union government expenditure.This amounts to just 0.3% of the Gross Domestic Product. Even if we combine allocations to the Ministry of Rural Development and Ministry of Water Resources, this is still as little as 0.98% of the GDP – even below the level of 1.07% of the GDP in Arun Jaitley’s first budget of 2014-’15.
Much was also made by the finance minister of the “record level” of Rs 10 lakh crore in 2017-’18 for farm credit. “For a good crop”, Jaitley declared, “adequate credit should be available to farmers in time”. But as with much else he claimed to do for India’s poor, this announcement was somewhat disingenuous.
Firstly, farm credit is not funded from the budget from tax resources: it is a target set for banks. Second, this target is not much higher than the revised one of Rs 9.5 lakh crore in 2016-’17. And there is no roadmap for bringing in small, marginal and tenant farmers, who constitute more than eight out of 10 farmers, into the formal banking sector. These farmers depend mainly on usurious private money-lending. Interest subvention also bypasses this mass of vulnerable farmers – many of who are women farmers with the growing feminisation of agriculture – as they are unable to access bank loans.
It is once again these small and tenant farmers who are excluded substantially from crop insurance under the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana. Government admits that only about a quarter of farmers have been covered under the scheme and aims to increase this to 40% in the current year.
But, as pointed out by Yogendra Yadav, former Aam Aadmi Party leader who founded the Jai Kisan Andolan, it is not clear how the government will do this because the Budgetary provision for the scheme has come down to Rs 9,000 crore in the coming financial year, from Rs 13,240 crore in the last budget.
Moreover, these percentages exclude a majority of tenant farmers and sharecroppers who are most vulnerable but rarely recorded. We also need careful studies on whether the premium under this central scheme is benefiting insurance companies or if it is actually being extended to farmers and what the business model of this insurance scheme is.
Most of all, the claims of this being a farmers’ budget rings hollow because it side-steps three major requirements of farmers. The first is for effective farmer income protection, either through a minimum support price guarantee or a subsidy for every acre cultivated. The second is to repair the near-broken system of agricultural extension (educating farmers in the latest scientific developments in the field) and public-funded research and development for sustainable agriculture. The third is the massive need for watershed development and other measures for raising productivity of rain-fed small and marginal farmers.
Instead, the Budget announcement supporting the advance of contract farming, wherein the farmer enters into an agreement with a buyer on what to produce and how much, can also deepen the disquiet of small farmers, with another threat – of corporate takeover – adding to their multitude of everyday challenges for survival.
Krishnendu Halder/Reuters
Rural employment
There was another dubious claim of “record” allocations in this Budget speech, regarding the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. The irony of the government boasting of making the “highest” allocation to a programme that Prime Minister Modi had famously lampooned in Parliament as a “living monument” Congress’ misrule is hard to miss. But there’s another paradox in this claim too.
Last year’s initial budget allocation for NREGA was Rs 38,500 crore. At first glance, this seems like a significant 25% increase. However, the reality is that after a series of raps by the Supreme Court, the total allocations in 2016-’17 were raised to Rs 47,500 crore. Therefore, the effective increase this year is just by 1%. And we factor in inflation, this year’s allocation does not even match the previous year’s.
There have been widespread reports of job losses in the informal sector and many people are turning to MGNREGA to tide over these bad times. The Right to Food Campaign comments that the allocations are “woefully inadequate” to cope with the fall-out of demonetisation. They noted in a statement:
“The Economic Survey suggests that the number of migrant labour is to the extent of nine million. If we presume that 25% percent of them have been adversely affected and are unlikely to be absorbed in labour market in near future, they need support through MGNREGA. The additional minimum requirement would be for Rs 4,500 crore. Therefore total minimum allocation for MGNREGA should have been not less than Rs 60,000 crore keeping in view annual wage increase with commitment for need based extra allocation, if not Rs 80,000 crore as was demanded by concerned citizen groups. The budget therefore fails to ensure food security of tens of lakhs of poor migrant labour who have been adversely affected by the demonetisation exercise. By allocating Rs 48,000 crores and projecting this as highest ever the finance minister has misled the nation.”
Under-nourishing children
The claim of the budget serving the interests of the poor could have carried some credibility if the government had made significantly higher allocations in sectors other than agriculture, such as education, health-care and social protection. But here again, there is a stagnancy, and in real terms even a decline in allocations.
The Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan sees a 4% rise in allocations this Budget and for mid-day meal schemes, the increase is just 3%. If we account for inflation, which is around 5%, this is a decline. Costs norms for school meals and Integrated Child Development Services meal plans (allocation for which too has been increased by just 5%) have not been revised for many years, despite sometimes galloping food inflation. In real terms, children are being fed less and less.
The Centre for Budget Accountability and Governance, in its customary careful and insightful analysis of the Budget, notes that as a share of the total Union budget, allocations for education have remained stagnant at 3.7%. The share of school education has actually fallen from a very low 2.4% to an even lower 2.34%.
Higher education, although also very poorly resourced, has in comparative terms been prioritised over school education as has technical education over general education. The share of Union spending on education as a percentage of GDP fell further to 0.47%. Even the budget rhetoric regarding education was watered down. In his last budget speech, Jaitley spoke of “education, skill development and job creation” as one of the pillars that would transform India. This year, he only spoke of education as something that would transform the youth and did not discuss Right to Education.
With his continuing neglect of education, the finance minister has chosen once again to ignore the constitutional obligations placed on government under the Right to Education Act. The public school system is in a shambles and widely lacks the infrastructure and trained teachers that the RTE Act prescribes.
The Centre is therefore defying and disobeying laws passed in Parliament that oblige it to commit sufficient budgetary resources to enable all people to access their legal rights to education, rural wage work and food. There are specific provisions for educating children outside the formal schooling system who are in the toughest circumstances, such as street children, migrant workers’ children and child workers.
Ailing health sector
The public health sector does only marginally better. The Centre for Budget Accountability and Governance observes that the Centre’s allocations for the health sector as a proportion of the GDP saw a marginal increase to 0.30%, from 0.26% in 2016-’17.
However, this falls distressingly short of the long-standing demand to increase allocation to the health sector to at least 2.5% GDP, despite the fact that India has one of the most shamefully privatised systems of health care in the world. National Sample Survey Organisation data tells that nearly 70% of out-of-pocket expenditure is on medicines. Making free medicines available in all public health facilities would substantially reduce distress due to health costs and improve the access and the credibility of the public health system. But this Budget misses the opportunity of ensuring the availability of free generic medicines in all public health facilities.
Stagnating social spending particularly hits those sections of the population that are most vulnerable and actually deserve the greatest state support. The National Social Assistance Programme (which covers old age pension, widow pension and disability pension schemes) has been allotted Rs 9,500 crore rupees in 2017-’18 – the same level as 2016-17.
In real terms this is a decline. With nine out of 10 workers in informal and mostly uncertain employment, it is only the state that can secure pensions for all through public spending. It is unconscionable that government covers only those older people that it designates through its notoriously poor targeting to be BPL or below the poverty line, and that too with a Union government contribution of as low as Rs 200, unchanged for several years. Contrast this with the small percentage of us in the formal sector who will retire and receive half their last drawn salary continuously, indexed for inflation.
Likewise with maternity benefits. The National Food Security Act mandated the payment of Rs 6,000 to most women during pregnancy, but the Union government refused to fulfill its legal obligation for this. Modi chose to use his much-awaited end of 2016 speech – in which he was expected to give the country a report card on demonetisation but instead offered homilies and some welfare promises – to announce near-universal maternity benefits. But despite the imperatives of the law, and the prime minister’s prime-time announcement, the budget provision for maternity benefits is only Rs 2,700 crore for 2017-’18.
The Right to Food campaign estimates that about Rs 16,000 crore (0.2% of the GDP) is required for near-universal maternity benefits (Rs 9,600 crore from the Centre, as the amount is divided 60:40 with states). I have argued earlier in Scroll.in that the law provides for 26 months of fully paid leave for all women working in the formal sector. Rs 6,000 would be less than a quarter even of statutory minimum wages for unskilled work for 26 weeks. Even this has come so late and so reluctantly, and yet the Union government has not made the necessary budgetary provisions for this despite the law and the prime minister’s public pledge.
Danish Siddiqui/Reuters
Pro-rich Budget
Overall, India remains what development economist Jean Dreze memorably described as the “world champions of social under-spending”. As the Lokayat, a socialist group of activists in Pune, observes in a scathing press statement on the Budget, the total social sector expenditure of the government (Rs 4,92,635 crore) as a percentage of the GDP is only a lowly 2.92%.
This is even lower than the 3.23% level budgeted by Finance Minister Jaitley in his first budget of 2014-’15, and 3.43% in the 2010-’11 Budget of the United Progressive Alliance government. The total social sector spending of the governments at the Centre and states combined is a mere 7% of the GDP, which is far lower than not only that of industrialised countries (where it is upwards of 30%) but also other emerging market economies, like the Latin American countries, which spend about 18% of their GDP on the social sector.
In the end, below a very thin veneer, this remains a routine pro-rich Budget, with as little to offer the farmer, the worker, the woman, the child, the aged and the disabled as past budgets. To expect differently from this government would mean it was willing to move far from its ideological moorings of market fundamentalism and fiscal prudence.
In the first place, this would have required the government to substantially raise the levels of public spending. However, as calculated by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, the total Union government expenditure as a percentage of the GDP has further fallen from 14.2% in 2012-’13 to 12.7% in the current budget.
The tax effort of the UPA government was already very low by global standards, but the BJP-led government contracts this effort further. The refusal of the government to expand its tax base means there just aren’t enough public resources for agriculture, education, health care and pensions. In the global recessionary context, it makes even less sense for India to adhere to the neo-liberal dogma of contractionary fiscal prudence. Higher levels of public spending will boost economic growth.
But a larger tax effort would require the government to tax big business much higher than it does at present. Economist Amartya Sen has criticised the budgets over the last several years for “revenues foregone” or gigantic tax holidays to the private sector of over Rs 5 lakh crore annually, enough to fund universal health care and substantial improvements in public education. Since criticism mounted as these tax holidays grew further under the Modi government – with no convincing evidence that this proportionately benefited the economy – this regime responded to these criticisms typically by simply changing the system of calculations and presentation of figures in the current budget document. However, experts observe that there is no evidence these tax concessions have been withdrawn or reduced.
Massive unpaid dues by big corporations also continue to be handled with kid gloves and taxpayers’ money. As the Right to Food Campaign observes, the government continues to use public money to safeguard the interests of big business by bailing out banks that have huge non-performing assets. The finance minister said government has provided Rs 10,000 crore for the recapitalisation of banks and has also raised the allowable provision for non-performing assets from 7.5% to 8.5% “in order to give a boost to the banking sector.” For corporate tax as well, there have been concessions with a reduction of tax rate to 25% for 96% of companies.
A truly redistributive budget would require the government to marshal the courage to tax the country’s super-rich higher, more resolutely and more transparently, with an inheritance tax or higher corporate and wealth taxes. The government would also have to reduce significantly the many tax exemptions and subsidies to the rich, instead of offering them sky-high tax concessions.
The influential French economist Thomas Pickety made a strong economic and moral case for an inheritance tax, but there is little chance of this becoming a reality in India in the foreseeable future. There are also no signs on reviving the wealth tax.
As I have observed elsewhere, I am anguished by the newest Budget of the Modi government, but not surprised. Even with its back to the wall, I do not expect this government to muster the moral and political resolve required to undertake large redistributive expenditures for India’s poor masses. To do so would run entirely against its ideological grain.
Madhya Pradesh ATS has arrested a Pakistani spy, who was allegedly a member of the BJP’s IT cell.
According to ABP News, 11 Pakistani spies nabbed by Madhya Pradesh ATS on Friday, also included Dhruv Saxena, who has been with the BJP’s IT Cell since last year.
Madhya Pradesh is governed by the BJP’s Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
The arrested spies are accused of taking out confidential information on government of India and sending them across the border to Pakistan. According to reports, Saxena chose to sell the information for earning quick buck.
Reacting to the development, veteran Congress leader, Digvijay Singh tweeted, “Not a single Muslim among the ISI agents arrested in Bhopal. Do ponder, dear bhakts of Modi.”
ATS Chief Sanjeev Shami, who’s credited with busting the racket, had made the disclosure about the arrests in a special press conference.
Time of India reported that the suspects were involved in espionage, money laundering and fraud, say police.
Besides the crime of spying against the country, they also caused significant loss to the telecom department.
“They were running a parallel telecom exchange, enabling cross-border handlers posing as senior Army officers to call up military personnel posted in Jammu and Kashmir and dig out details of operations, deployment and installations,” said Shami.
Noting that the job of literature is to question the ruler, veteran Hindi writer and poet Ashok Vajpayee today said at a time when dissenters are being called anti-nationals and traitors, if democracy doesn’t respect dissenters, who will.
The writer, who was in news last year for returning his Sahitya Akademi award, also supported “the right to dissent” at the inaugural session of the ongoing Delhi Literature Festival.
“Those who don’t agree with the government’s policies are being called anti-nationals and traitors. If a democracy doesn’t respect dissenters, then who will?” he asked.
“Literature, in one word, is a constant opposition. While people come into power or sit in the opposition, literature can never be on the ruler’s side. It is the job of literature to question the ruler,” said Vajpayee.
Highlighting the importance of literature in current times, he noted how it has become more important to revive it.
“Today when political powers are creating chaos, running after each other, wanting to destroy, at a time like this it is the job of literature to re-establish the connect in language and truth,” he said.
Urging people to read more, the poet said, “If literature can do so much for you, shouldn’t you do something for it in return?”
“And you don’t need to do anything of great measure, you just need to read. (That) we can read is the only difference between us and animals, birds and trees. We created a revolutionary thing called language and books are the biggest gift of language to us,” he said.
The session was attended by BJP MP Babul Supriyo, AAP minister Somnath Bharti, NASSCOM CEO Srikant Sinha and senior journalist Mark Tully.
The literary festival also aims to push the Indian Public Library Movement to save and develop the institution.
On behalf of NASSCOM, which is also the host of India Public Library Movement, Sinha emphasised the importance and need of public libraries in the country, saying he was here because of Delhi Public Library.
“You don’t see people in libraries today. But I’m proud of being here because it was Delhi public library which helped me study when I was growing up,” said the NASSCOM CEO.
On the need to revive the “library culture”, Sinha said that libraries today need to be open spaces where people can talk and discuss.
“World is changing and there can’t be a finger on mouth at libraries. We will have to turn them into open spaces. We will have to ensure people can discuss, talk and understand important matters. Libraries today should be community points,” he added.
He also mentioned the need for digital libraries and better books that can be read.
Supriyo and Bharti also talked about the need of literature and books.
While Bharti said they have “found reduced crime rate in areas where they opened libraries”, Supriyo stated if nothing else “reading leaves tender memories in you heart”.
