Insisting that textbooks wrongly attribute that the British ruled India between 1600 and 1857, Dalrymple, in an interview with South Asia Times (SAT) editor Neeraj Nanda in Melbourne on the book ahead of its launch, said what is little understood is the “the corporate nature of that period of Indian history”, which turned into a “role model and” a “new factor” in world history. The British rule, according to the historian, lasted for just 90 years, between 1858 and 1974.

Already making waves, “The Anarchy” tells the story of EIC, tracing its history, how it replaced the decaying Mughal Empire up to India’s First War of Independence in 1857, after which the British Crown took control, and how EIC became the world’s first global corporate power. While EIC did receive support from the British rulers, Dalrymple suggested, back home, its success should be attributed to the finance it received from Indian trading communities.

Pointing out how it all began with EIC, Dalrymple told Nanda, “In their very first charter in 1599, they got the right to wage war. By 1718 they were growing opium in Bengal, selling it illegally in China, buying Chinese tea and selling it in India and Europe. The tea in the Boston Tea Party was exported by EIC.”

Dalrymple added, between 1740 and 1800, EIC had a “rivalry” in France. However, it succeeded in training 200,000 Indians, and for this it borrowed “money from Indian moneylenders.” It conquered “the whole Mogul empire” by adopting the double-edged tactic which – corporate violence and corporate lobbying, even as using corruption. In Britain, in 1687 EIC gave “British Parliamentarians share options.”

Talking about EIC’s “corporate violence”, Dalrymple said, there is “nothing unique about that”, insisting, it’s “very much the norm” even today, though in a more subtle way. Dalrymple explained, “It was a new business model. It was not the first corporation, probably the fourth.”

Dalrymple said, no doubt, “today, the biggest corporations, the Exxon or Walmart or Google or Facebook” do not adopt such ways, and “there is no such example now of a company holding sovereign territory as its right.” Exxon and Shell, for instance, “have small private armies… now they hold private guards only.”
 

Dalrymple with Nanda

However, today, things are “more subtle”. Now, “actually they do not need to do that (violence). Corporations now are extremely powerful and do data harvesting. They reproduce and can target the recording of this interview and send advertising to it… All these are variants of the same drive. Corporations, just as humans, have the DNA to eat, reproduce and survive. They have the thrust towards maximum profits they compulsively get away with.”

According to Dalrymple, “The book tells us how that happened, how on earth a company (EIC) that did not have more than 2,000 men on its rolls and its London head office never more than 35 people got away using Indian bankers to loan money to it to train other Indians to fight as mercenaries and to build up an army of 200,000. And they were able to fight the large Indian armies of the Marathas, Tipu Sultan, and the Mughals.”

Suggesting that what happened may be “uncomfortable for both nations”, Dalrymple said, “The British are quite vocal in talking about bringing civilization, democracy, and the railways. In fact, the company did nothing. What they built were very few public buildings, communications, hospitals or universities. In fact, you have two very different periods.”

Thus, during the EIC, or the Company Raj period, it was “extracting” business through shipping and trading company, turning itself into a “colonial occupier”, even as taxing Indians who invested in silks, kalamkari, cotton, etc. for trading. Calling it a “collaborative” period, Dalrymple said, the money was “being borrowed from financiers”, including the Jagat Seth of Calcutta and Gokul Das of Benaras.

Further, Dalrymple said, one-third of the company employees were “married to Indian women producing Anglo-Indians.” In sharp contrast, he said, the British Raj proper was “not collaborative but imperialist”. During the latter period, what you had were “whites-only clubs, cantonments and the civil lines”, making “the British and the Indians completely apart.” It is during this period that India got “universities, schools and the railways”, said Dalrymple, adding, “I can’t say which is worse or better.”
 

The company issued bonds and asked Indian financiers to invest in them with a guaranteed return.  There was no safer investment than this

According to him, “The company was of a different religion, language and colour, so Jagat Seth and EIC merged as they knew the interest rates, share prices, fluctuations of the world economy, the world they both swam in.” He added, “The Hindu bankers of Patna, Banaras, and Allahabad, in the century that followed, made the decision to cut back with the Marathas and Mughals and go with EIC to keep their capital safe. That’s a business decision they made.”

Said Dalrymple, “We can criticize this decision from our perspective, but they did it as a business decision, according to the times they were operating in. Just like companies do it today to prefer one party over the other.”

This, he said, helped the company to become “resurgent and confident” by 1780. Acting “very cleverly”, EIC broke up the big Mughal ‘jagirs’, the Indian financiers bought them over, and these were made to become a part of the company. This helped the company to project itself as a “lesser evil compared to the Marathas and the Moguls.” Opined Dalrymple, “We can judge them (the financiers) today as traitors but they thought their capital etc. was safer with the company.”

Dalrymple explained, “At that time India had two important financers – Indian bankers and the company itself. The EIC issued company bonds and asked the Indian financers to invest in them with a guaranteed return. So, there was no safer investment … than the EIC bonds” The company raised money from Bengali investors, and used it to “buy arms to extend its power.”

Answering a question from Nanda that “Hindu nationalists believe the British did well by removing the Mughals”, Dalrymple said, Jagat Seth would surely agree with that, as “Jagat Seth used the company to remove the Mughals.”

But, he insisted, “It’s different from the modern Hindu nationalists. Many Bengalis also have the same opinion despite the company plundering and looting.” The level of collaboration for this is forgotten even in Britain, where they have taken a “romanticized view of our colonial encounter with India.” In India, conversely, what has been forgotten is the level of collaboration.”

Courtesy: counterview.net

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Contesting data on poor work rate participation (WRP) among women data, as calculated by the Government of India, well-known Gujarat-based economist Indira Hirway, has said that, if calculated on the basis of latest methodology, men spend 27 per cent, while women spend 38 per cent of their time on work.

Revealing this in a book, “Mainstreaming Unpaid Work: Time Use Data in Developing Policies”, published by Oxford University Press (2017), and edited by her, Prof Hirway says, the methodology, time-use survey (TUS), being adopted across the world, takes into account “unpaid work”, or the work which does not give women any direct remuneration.
 
The book contains 10 researched articles by scholars, Indian and foreign, focusing on continued gender discrimination in data collection, whether it is Latin America, Africa or Asia-Pacific.  

TUS, according to Prof Hirway, includes unpaid work that “falls within the production boundary of the System of National Accounts (SNA) as well as unpaid work that falls within the general production boundary but outside the production boundary (non-SNA)”.
 
While men’s share in SNA work is 67.89 per cent (in total person hours), it is 32.11 per cent for women, Prof Hirway, heads the Centre for Development Alternatives (CFDA), Ahmedabad, says, but adds, in non-SNA activities like free “collection of water, fuel wood, vegetables, fruits, and leaves) for meeting basic needs of the household”, women's share in India (both rural and urban) is 35.56 per cent, as against just 5 per cent of men.
 
“The total time spent on these activities also is much longer (3.11 hours per week) for participant women than for participant men (0.97 hours per week)”, calculates Prof Hirway, adding, “7.23 per cent of men and 9.27 per cent of women participate in some additional activities” like “animal grazing, making cow dung, collecting, storing, and stocking of fruits, woodcutting, and stocking of firewood.”
 
Terming all of it unpaid drudgery, Prof Hirway further says, “Women, on an aver­age, spend 28.96 hours per week on household management, that is, taking care of the household”, which includes cooking (14.59 hours), cleaning and washing (7.89 hours), care of textiles (2.31 hours), childcare and care of the old, sick, or disabled in the household (4.47 hours).
 
In yet another research paper on India in the book, “Integrating Time Use in Gender Budgeting”, Lekha Chakraborty points to how the country’s gender budgeting policies often rest on a highly restricted assumption that “all public expenditure cannot be gender partitioned.”

Senior economist at the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy (NIPFP), an autonomous research institute of the Union Ministry of Finance, Prof Chakraborty says, TUS surveys indicate that “the value of unpaid activities could be as much as 26 to 28 per cent of the relevant state domestic product (SDP).”
 
“Compared to women, the valuation of unpaid activities by men was imited to only about 2–3 per cent of the SDP in these two states”, Chakroborty notes, adding, “The unpaid work, as a proportion of SDP, is as high as 49.93 per cent in Meghalaya and 47 per cent in Madhya Pradesh.”
 
She states, “The time-use statistics revealed that public expenditure on water schemes benefit women greater than men”, adding, “Applying the population proportion of time budget data, the benefit incidence of water expenditure is estimated. The figures clearly show that women benefit more from public expenditure on water.”
 
“If gender budgeting is predominantly based on the index-based gender diagnosis, a reanalysis of the construction of the gender (inequality) index is necessary to avoid a partial capture of gender diagnosis in budget policymaking”, she insists.
 
Courtesy: Counterview.net
 

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A high-profile online survey in 23 countries, including India, claims that 63% Indians, one of the highest among the countries surveyed, insist on the need to to prioritise stopping terrorism over protecting civil rights. While the average for the 23 countries is 45%, interviewees from only two countries feel so more strongly about this – Serbia 73% and Turkey 69%.

The countries selected for the survey, carried out by Ipsos-MORI, the second largest market research organisation in the United Kingdom, are – Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Mexico, Peru, Poland, Serbia, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Turkey and the United States.

The countries which refuse to give much priority to terrorism over protecting civil rights include – US 37%, Brazil 37%, Italy 35%, Mexico 34%, Canada 31%, Spain 31%, Argentina 30%, and Japan 25%.

In all, 16,597 adults aged 16-64 across the 23 countries were interviewed between October 21 and November 4, 2016. Between 500 and 1000+ individuals participated on a country by country basis via the Ipsos Online Panel.

In a related response to the statement, “To fix the country, we need a strong leader willing to break the rules”, 65% Indians answered in the positive, which is higher than all but six countries – France, Israel, Italy, South Korea, and Turkey (80%, 69%, 68%, 66%, 66%, and 65% respectively).
 

While the world average is 49%, the interviewees of the countries which feel the least for such a need are Japan, Argentina, Spain, Sweden, and Germany (39%, 36%, 35%, 23%, and 21% respectively).

Despite the need for a strong leader willing to break rules, India has the least percentage of people interviewed among 23 countries who believe that society is “broken” – just 32%. Just one country, Japan, has a higher percentage than India on this score (31%).

While the average of 23 countries is 58%, the people of the countries where people strongly feel their society is broken are Poland 79%, Spain 78%, Brazil 77%, Mexico 76%, and South Africa 74%.

Providing answers to seven different queries on what people think about seven different issues, the survey, whose results were released on January 31, 2017, found that 56% of Indians support prioritising jobs for national citizens, as against the world average of 43%, again one of the highest among the 23 countries surveyed.
To the question, “To what extent, if at all, do you agree or disagree with the following statements – Your country is on decline?”, least percentage of people surveyed from India, 22%, answered in the positive, as against the average of 57% among 23 countries.

The countries where the highest percentage of people thought their nation is on decline are South Africa, South Korea, Italy and Brazil, with 77%, 73%, 73% and 72% respectively.

In yet another question, whether they felt that they have the least confidence in government, just 35%, lowest among 23 countries, agreed. While the average is found to be 71%, the countries where the confidence level in their governments is worst are Mexico, Spain, South Korea, Poland and Hungary (90%, 89%, 84%, 82% and 82% on an average).

Courtesy: Counterview.net

Download survey results HERE

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ऐसे ही एक चार पेज के फोल्डर में सेंटर फॉर बजट एंड गवर्नेंस अकाउंटबिलिटी (सीबीजीए) दिल्ली की एक संक्षिप्त रिपोर्ट थी, जिसमें गुजरात को सबसे पारदर्शी राज्य बताया गया था। जिन दस राज्यों का सर्वेक्षण किया गया था, उनमें पारदर्शिता के मामले में गुजरात शीर्ष पर था। ट्रांसपेरेंसी इन स्टेट बजट्स इन इंडिया शीर्षक से प्रकाशित इस रिपोर्ट में गुजरात को बजट में पारदर्शिता 100 में से 61.7 अंक मिले थे। जबकि अन्य दस राज्यों का औसत अंक था 51.6 । मध्य प्रदेश को 60.2 अंक मिले थे। आंध्र प्रदेश का स्कोर 51.8 था। छत्तीसगढ़ का स्कोर 56.1 था। ओडिशा, असम, झारखंड, महाराष्ट्र और राजस्थान का स्कोर क्रमशः 52.6, 51.1, 48.4, 48.3, 44 और 43.5 था।

मुझे इन आंकड़ों पर भरोसा नहीं हो रहा था। मुझे लग रहा था कि सीबीजीए जैसा एक प्रतिष्ठित और गैर लाभकारी संगठन इस तरह के निष्कर्ष कैसे पेश कर सकता है। इसे लेकर मैं अपने दोस्त जेठमलानी से थोड़ा नाखुश भी हुआ। क्योंकि गुजरात के सर्वे के लिए वही जिम्मेदार थे। लेकिन उनकी सफाई पर विश्वास किया जा सकता था। उनका कहना था कि उन्हें सीबीजीए के फॉर्मेट में यह सर्वे करना था। उन्हें बजट निर्माण के सभी पक्षों चाहे वे अधिकारी हों, पत्रकार हों या बिजनेसमैन, के बीच ही सर्वे करना था।

मुझे बड़ा आश्चर्य हुआ। क्या गुजरात की तुलना में दूसरे राज्य कम पारदर्शी थे? हालांकि मेरा मानना था कि इन राज्यों की ब्यूरोक्रेसी काफी ढीली थी। यही वजह थी कि वहां से पूरी जानकारी समेत स्कैम उजागर होते रहे। मैंने 1997 से 2012 तक गुजरात सरकार को कवर किया था और मेरा मानना है कि 2001 में नरेंद्र मोदी के मुख्यमंत्री बनने के साथ ही इस राज्य में पारदर्शिता में कमी आने लगी। असल में इसके बाद पावर कॉरिडोर के उच्च स्तर से सूचनाओं के प्रवाह को लगातार काबू किया जाता रहा। सूचनाओं का एक मात्र स्त्रोत अखबारों को भेजे जाने वाले प्रेस नोट रह गए थे। या फिर टीवी चैनलों को भेजे जाने वाली सीडी। यहां तक क कि मीडिया ब्रीफिंग भी बंद हो गईं।

पत्रकारों के पास येन-केन-प्रकारेण अपने स्त्रोत विकसित करने के अलावा और कोई चारा नहीं रह गया था। सरकारी सूचनाओं को गलत तरह से हासिल करना पड़ता था। कई चीजें ऑफ द रिकार्ड जुटानी पड़ती थी।

इससे पहले वित्त सचिव मुझे आसानी से एशियन डेवलपमेंट बैंक की दो वॉल्यूम की वह रिपोर्ट सौंप देते थे, जिसमें बिजली सेक्टर के लोन के लिए गुजरात सरकार के ढांचागत बदलाव के वादों का जिक्र होता था। लेकिन मोदी सरकार में सूचनाओं पर इस कदर नियंत्रण हो गया कि वित्त आयोग का फंड हासिल करने और अन्य जरूरतों के लिए गुजरात सरकार की समय-समय पर सौंपी गई रिपोर्टों को हासिल करने के लिए दिल्ली में मशक्कत करनी पड़ी।

इसमें कोई शक नहीं कि आरटीआई के जरिये सूचनाएं हासिल करना थोड़ा ज्यादा आसान रहता था लेकिन मैंने शायद ही कभी इसका इस्तेमाल किया हो। बाद में कई आरटीआई कार्यकर्ताओं से मेलजोल के बाद मुझे पता चला कि अमूमन कई दफा अधिकारी सीधे-सीधे सूचनाएं देने से इनकार कर देते हैं और फाइल दबा कर महीनों और कई बार वर्षों बैठ जाते हैं।

कुछ दिनों बाद मैं गुजरात के पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री सुरेश मेहता से मिला। 2002 में वह मोदी सरकार में उद्योग मंत्री भी थे। इन दिनों वह बीमारी से उबर रहे हैं। उन्होंने गुजरात सरकार से जो लिखा-पढ़ी की थी, उसका बड़ा सा गट्ठर दिखाया। इसे देख कर मैं आश्चर्यचकित था। सुरेश मेहता ने बताया कि उन्होंने और उनके समर्थकों ने एमबी शाह आयोग की रिपोर्ट हासिल करने के लिए राज्य सरकार के पास आरटीआई के तहत 100 से ज्यादा आवेदन लगाए थे।

आयोग को मोदी सरकार के खिलाफ भ्रष्टाचार के 14 आरोपों की जांच करनी थी। विपक्षी दल कांग्रेस के नेता अर्जुन मोढ़वाड़िया की ओर से लगाए गए इन आरोपों में टाटा के नैनो प्रोजेक्ट को बेहद रियायती दर पर गुजरात शिफ्ट कराने, मुंदरा में एसईजेड और पोर्ट के लिए अडाणी को बेहद सस्ती दर पर जमीन देने और एस्सार समूह को वन भूमि आवंटित करने और गुजरात स्टेट पेट्रोलियम कॉरपोरेशन में अनियमितता की शामिल थी। मेहता कहते हैं, ‘ रिपोर्ट हासिल करने की तो बात छोड़ ही दीजिये। रिपोर्ट का आधिकारिक स्वामी विधि विभाग भी तीन साल तक यह कहता रहा कि रिपोर्ट उसके पास नहीं है। यह सभी आरटीआई आवेदनो को कार्मिक विभाग के सामान्य प्रशासन विभाग (सीएडी) को भेजता रहा। यह विभाग यह कह कर रिपोर्ट देने से टालता रहा कि इसे सिर्फ विधि विभाग ही मुहैया करा सकता है। सामान्य प्रशासन विभाग यह भी कहता रहा कि रिपोर्ट सार्वजनिक करने से पहले असेंबली में पेश करनी होगी।

मुझे याद है कि 2012 दिसंबर में विधानसभा चुनाव आचारसंहिता लागू होने के एक दिन बाद ही मोदी कैबिनेट के प्रवक्ता जयनारायण व्यास ने आनन-फानन में प्रेस कांफ्रेंस बुला कर ऐलान कर दिया कि एमबी शाह आयोग की रिपोर्ट सौंप दी गई है। इसे कैबिनेट ने जांचा और इसमें मोदी सरकार के खिलाफ लगाए गए भ्रष्टाचार के 14 आरोपों में एक भी सही साबित नहीं हुआ। उन्होंने रिपोर्ट जारी होने की तारीख के बारे में पूछे गए एक भी सवाल का जवाब नहीं दिया।

मेहता ने जो कागज मुझे सौंपे थे। उसमें सरकार के उस प्रस्ताव ( तारीख 16 अगस्त,2011)का जिक्र था जिसेमें कहा गया था कि जब देश भर में सार्वजनिक जीवन में भ्रष्टाचार के खिलाफ मजबूत जनमत बनता दिख रहा है तो ऐसे समय में गुजरात सरकारों के खिलाफ लगाए गए आरोपों की सच्चाई जानने के लिए इस आयोग का गठन किया जा रहा है।

आरटीआई के जरिये सुरेश मेहता एक मात्र जानकारी जो हासिल कर सके वह यह थी कि एमबी शाह आयोग ने अपनी अंतरिम रिपोर्ट 28 सितंबर 2012 को जारी की थी। कैबिनेट ने इसे 10 अक्टूबर 2012 को ‘मंजूर’ किया था। अंतिम रिपोर्ट 6 नवंबर, 2013 को सौंपी गई थी।

मेहता ने कहा, जब सरकार में कोई भी इस रिपोर्ट की जिम्मेदारी लेने और इसे सार्वजनिक करने से इनकार कर रहा था तो गुजरात की पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री आनंदीबेन पटेल ( जो जून, 2014 में मोदी की उत्तराधिकारी) ने असेंबली में कहा कि शाह आयोग की रिपोर्ट गुजरात के गवर्नर के पास है। जबकि राजभवन के पास दाखिल एक आरटीआई आवेदन से खुलासा हुआ कि रिपोर्ट गवर्नर के पास नहीं थी।

मेहता ने शाह आयोग की रिपोर्ट पाने की आखिरी कोशिश 29 अक्टूबर 2014 को की। लेकिन हमेशा की तरह विधि विभाग ने कहा कि रिपोर्ट उसके पास नहीं है और आवेदन सामान्य प्रशासन विभाग को भेज दिया। 7 नवंबर, 2014 को उन्होंने विधि विभाग के सार्वजनिक अथॉरिटी में आवेदन दिया। इस बार भी मेहता को कहा गया कि रिपोर्ट सामान्य प्रशासन विभाग के पास पड़ी है। आखिरकार गुजरात के इस पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री को 6 अप्रैल, 2015 को गुजरात सूचना आयोग को आवेदन देना पड़ा।

इसके  लगभग डेढ़ साल बाद गुजरात सूचना आयोग ने विधि विभाग के लोक सूचना अधिकारी की मौजूदगी में मेहता के आवेदन पर सुनवाई की सूचना दी। इस अफसर ने एक बार फिर कहा कि शाह आयोग की रिपोर्ट इसके पास नहीं है।

गुजरात के सूचना आयुक्त आर आर वरसानी ने अपने दो पेज के आदेश में कहा कि वह इस बात से सहमत नहीं हैं कि रिपोर्ट राज्य के विधि आयोग के पास नहीं हैं। शाह आयोग का गठन सरकार के प्रस्ताव पर हुआ था न कि सामान्य प्रशासन विभाग की ओर से। इसलिए उन्होंने विधि विभाग को 20 दिनों के भीतर इस बारे में सही सूचना देने को कहा।

गुजरात सूचना आयोग में बहस के दौरान आरटीआई एक्टिविस्ट पंक्ति जोग के आवेदन में सामान्य प्रशासन विभाग के उस जवाब का हवाला दिया, जिसमें कहा गया था कि शाह आयोग की रिपोर्ट, अंतिम रिपोर्ट सौंपे जाने के छह महीने के भीतर असेंबली में पेश कर दी जाएगी। लेकिन मेहता ने कहा कि इसके बाद तीन साल बीत गए यह रिपोर्ट कभी पेश नहीं की गई।

मेहता ने गुजरात सूचना आयोग के 9 सितंबर, 2016 के उस आदेश के बारे में भी बताया जिसमें कहा गया था- कानून में ऐसा कोई प्रावधान नहीं है कि गुजरात असेंबली में रिपोर्ट पेश करने के बाद इसे सार्वजनिक किया जाएगा। तो  क्या यह रिपोर्ट कभी सार्वजनिक होगी। मेहता कहते हैं, यह सिर्फ शुरुआती जीत है। पहले तो विधि विभाग को यह स्वीकार करना पड़ेगा कि उसके पास रिपोर्ट है। इस रिपोर्ट की जानकारी देने के लिए निर्धारित 20 दिन तो बीत गए हैं। देखते हैं आगे क्या होता है। 

(यह लेख पहली बार टाइम्स ऑफ इंडिया के ब्लॉग सेक्शन में प्रकाशित हुआ था। लेखक की अनुमति से इसे यहां प्रकाशित किया जा रहा है।)

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It was the summary of a report prepared by the Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability (CBGA), Delhi, which qualified Gujarat as the most transparent of the 10 states had it surveyed. Titled “Transparency in State Budgets in India”, it gave a score of 61.7 to Gujarat for budget transparency, as against the average of 51.6 for the 10 states it surveyed. The score of other state was Madhya Pradesh (60.2), Andhra Pradesh (51.8), Chhattisgarh (56.1), Odisha (52.6), Assam (51.1), Jharkhand (48.4), Maharashtra (48.3), Rajasthan (44), and Uttar Pradesh (43.5).

I wasn’t quite convinced. How could a non-profit think-tank like CBGA, which I believed was reputed, come up with such a conclusion? I was also a little displeased with my friend Jethmalani – because he was responsible for the Gujarat survey. His explanation seemed convincing: What could he do? He had to carry out a survey under a CBDA format among “stakeholders” in budget-making, be it officials, journalists or businessmen.

I was left wondering: Were other states even less transparent? I had though, their bureaucracies were quite loose, lest major scams with complete information wouldn’t ever come out. My impression of the Gujarat government, which I covered between 1997 and 2012, was that it had become increasingly non-transparent after Modi came to power in 2001.

In fact, there was an increasingly tighter control over all the information trickling from the top corridors of power. The only official source of information was the press note to newspapers, and, often, a simple CD disc to TV channels; even media briefings had been stopped!

The scribes were left with no option but to cultivate sources by hook or crook and elicit even official information, that too off the record! If earlier, the finance secretary would gladly pass on the Asian Development Bank’s two-volume report on the structural adjustments Gujarat would have to undergo to for obtaining a power sector loan, things became so tight under Modi that, often, I had to hunt for sources in Delhi to obtain reports the state government would officially submit from time to time, including the Finance Commission, to obtain Central funds.

No doubt, I thought, things would have become easier for those who took the Right to Information (RTI) route. But I rarely used it. However, my recent interaction with RTI activists of various hues suggests that, more often than not, the public authorities would just refuse to pass on any information, keeping things pending for months, often years.

A few days back, I met former Gujarat chief minister Suresh Mehta, who was also industries minister under Modi in 2002. Now around 80, he is currently recuperating from an illness. I was shocked by what he told me: Showing me volumes of communications with the Gujarat government, he told me he and his “supporters” had made at least 100 RTI applications to get the MB Shah Commission report, submitted to the state government.

The commission was mandated to “inquire” into 14 corruption charges against the Modi government by former Opposition Congress leader Arjun Modhwadia – including the now well-known shifting of Tata Nano project to Gujarat at a highly concessional rate; allocation of land at a very cheap price to the Adanis for the port and SEZ in Mundra, Kutch; allocation of forest land to the Essar Group; “irregularities” in the Gujarat State Petroleum Corporation, a state sector PSU, and so on.

“Let alone the report, for three long years the legal department, which is the official owner of the report, has been saying it doesn’t have it, forwarding all RTI pleas to the General Administration Department (GAD), in charge of personnel. The GAD, in turn, refuses, saying it could only be obtained from the legal department, which owns it, and that the report had to be first placed in the state assembly before making it public”, Mehta told me.

I remember how, in 2012, a day after of the announcement of the code of conduct for the December assembly polls, Cabinet spokesperson Jay Narayan Vyas hurriedly called a press conference to announce that the MB Shah Commission report had been “submitted” and  “examined” by the Cabinet, and “nothing was found” in any of the 14 charges of corruption, leveled against the government. He refused to take any other question on when the report would be made public.

Scanning through the papers Mehta gave me, I found that the government resolution (GR) dated August 16, 2011 had stated that the commission was being set up “in public interest”, as “people in Gujarat must know whether there is any substance in the allegations, particularly at the time when a strong public opinion is building across the country against corruption in public life.”

The only information Mehta (and others) could get from the government under RTI was that the MB Shah Commission had “submitted” its interim report on September 28, 2012, it was “approved” by the Cabinet on October 10, 2012, and its final report was submitted on November 6, 2013.

Mehta said, “At a time when none in the government wants to own up the report or make it public, speaking inside the assembly, former Gujarat chief minister Anandiben Patel (who succeeded Modi in May 2014), said the MB Shah Commission report was with the Gujarat governor. An RTI plea with the Raj Bhawan, however, revealed that this wasn’t the case.”

Mehta made his last plea on October 29, 2014, when, again, the legal department said it “did not have” the Shah Commission report, forwarding the application to the GAD. In his appeal to the legal department’s public authority on November 7, 2014, Mehta was again told that it didn’t have the report, and that it is “lying with the GAD.” This made the ex-chief minister approach the Gujarat Information Commission (GIC) on April 6, 2015.

Nearly one-and-a-half years later, on September 6, 2016, the GIC called for a hearing on Mehta’s application in the presence of the public information officer, legal department, who again repeated that it “doesn’t have the report”. In his two-page order, all that RR Varsani, Gujarat Information Commissioner, did was, it did not agree that the report wasn’t with the legal department, as it was its GR which formed the MB Shah Commission, and not GAD’s. He asked the legal department to just authenticate the matter “in 20 days”.

During the arguments at GIC, referring to a GAD reply to the RTI application moved by a senior activist, Pankti Jog, that the commission report would be placed in the state assembly within six months after the “final report” was submitted, Mehta argued this has not happened even three years later.

Mehta also said, as quoted by the GIC order dated September 9, 2016, that “there is no such provision in law that the report would be made public only after it is placed in the Gujarat state assembly”. So, will the report now be made? With crossed fingers, Mehta tells me, “It’s only an initial victory. We know, finally, that the legal department has to admit it has the report. It’s already 20 days and they have not admitted it. Let’s see.”

(This article was first published on Times of India Blog It has been republished with the permission of the author.)

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A major plank of young Jignesh Mevani, widely projected as the new Dalit icon of Gujarat, is that the state government should provide five acres of land to each Dalit family, and it should part of the solution to rehabilitate those doing the despicable job of manually scavenging of dead cattle. The view apparently stems from the understanding that agriculture is a respectable profession, and can certainly provide a good livelihood option. Mevani has threatened, in case five acres land is not offered by September 15, he would launch a “rail roko” agitation.

Trained as a lawyer under late Mukul Sinha, a well-known Gujarat High Court advocate who shot into prominence for his tough counter-questions to those who appeared before the Nanavati-Shah Commission of inquiry into Gujarat riots, Mevani’s “passion” for land is not new. It existed five years ago, too, when I first met him in the Times of India office in Gandhinagar. He had told me how most of the land, which had been rendered surplus under the Gujarat Agricultural Land Ceiling Act, 1960, hadn’t been “handed over” to the Dalits.

A couple of months back, talking in the same strain, Mevani, a hardcore city dweller, told me on the sidelines of a land rights meet, that a Gujarat government affidavit before the High Court had claimed, it wasn’t “physically possible” for the state revenue department officials to survey the land that hadn’t been handed over to the Dalits. “I would like to meet the state revenue secretary in Gandhinagar to find out why is the state government so indifferent”, he seemed to plead.

I don’t know if he could meet the top official, but, clearly, he wasn’t speaking in the air. I knew: Based on a information (RTI) plea, he had found out last year how there was an “extremely tardy” progress in the allocation of surplus land to the landless. Records with him showed the Gujarat government, in all, had “acquired” 1,63,808 acres of land. Of this, he estimated, quoting official sources, nearly 70,000 acres was “under dispute” with the revenue tribunal or in courts, yet there were 15,519 acres on which “there is no dispute”; yet this land hasn’t been handed over to the landless.

Be that as it may, a major question that has for long puzzled me is, how could land become a panacea  for Dalits’ and other other marginalized communities’ ills? Wasn’t there much truth in Niti Aayog vice-chairman Arvind Panagariya’s view that the share of agriculture in the GDP is just about 15 per cent, while half of the workforce is dependent on it? This contradiction, he believes, is a major reason why the rural people are poorer than the other half, employed in industry and services. And this, he thinks, is the main reason why, in the longer run, “the potential of agriculture to bring prosperity to a vast population remains limited.”

I approached Prof Ghanshyam Shah, a well-known social scientist, who has been studying the marginalized communities of Gujarat for several decades, to know if land could be a solution of the Dalit problem. Pointing towards the demographic shift of Dalits in Gujarat, Prof Shah told me, “The urge for land is mainly Dalits in rural areas mainly of the Saurashtra region, and not entire Gujarat”, he told me, adding, “Nearly all of them are either landless workers or marginal farmers.”

Elucidating, he said, “I was looking at the data. They suggest that the proportion of Dalits living in rural areas in Saurashtra remains high compared to the state average. However, it just the opposite in the rest of Gujarat. In fact, a a higher than the overall proportion of Dalits lives urban areas of the rest of Gujarat.”

“The urban Dalits face a different set of problems than rural Dalits. Even the proportion of atrocities on Dalits is pretty high in the Saurashtra region and other rural areas”, he said, adding, “A peep into the data of atrocities against Dalits showed this quite clearly.” Indeed,  the districts and areas which have been declared “sensitive” from the Dalit atrocities angle are mainly rural – Ahmedabad (Rural), Vadodara (Rural), Rajkot (rural),and  nearly most of the Saurashtra region and Kutch.

Interestingly, it is not just the agitators who view agriculture and allied sectors are the panacea for the marginalized communities. The view is equally strong among traditional economists. They do agree, for instance, that agriculture contributes less than 20 per cent of the Gujarat economy, down from 50 per cent during 1970s; yet they insist that agriculture is the “backbone of the economy” because  because more than half of the working population is dependent on agricultural activities for their livelihood! Hence the “solution”: Priority should be given to agriculture in order to reduce poverty and malnutrition and for inclusive growth.

This is just contrary to what the available surveys suggest. One of them is by the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies (CSDS), Delhi, which finds that, given an employment opportunity, 61 per cent of India’s farmers would like to “shift” to cities, with 50 per cent of farmers said they are “ready to quit farming” if such a possibility arises.

Conducted in 2013-14 in 274 villages spread over 137 districts of 18 Indian states, including Gujarat, and based on interview with 8,220 individuals, 20 per cent of whom are Dalits, the survey report says, “When farmers were asked whether they want their children to settle in the city, as many as 60 per cent said they want their children to settle in the city. Another 14 per cent do not want their children to settle in the city, whereas 19 per cent said they will prefer their children’s choice on this matter.”

Pointing out that better education was cited as a major reason why farmers want their children to settle in cities, followed by better facilities, and employment opportunities, the study says,  “When asked whether they would like to see their children engaging in farming, only 18 per cent responded positively, 36 per cent said they do not want their children to continue farming as their occupation, and 37 per cent said they will prefer their children’s choice.”

The study underlines, “The sentiment that their children should not continue farming is strongest among landless and small farmers (39 per cent) and weakest among large farmers (28 per cent)” — a big proportion of whom are Dalits. The study adds, in a separate interview with youths from farmer households, “60 per cent said that they would prefer to do some other jobs, whereas only 20 per cent said they would continue farming.”

Ironically, it is no other than BR Ambedkar – in whose name most Dalit leaders (including Mevani) are never tired of swearing for any and every issue – who exhorted Dalits to flee villages and move to cities in order to escape caste shackle. Ambedkar wrote,  “What is a village but a sink of localism, a den of ignorance, narrow-mindedness and communalism?”

Intelligent Dalit intellectuals are found to have taken a cue from Ambedkar on the land issue. They say, land cannot be the panacea for Dalits’ fight against “oppression”. Senior Dalit intellectual Ratan Lal of the Delhi University, says land can at best be only be a “small part in the overall fight”, insisting, the main focus should be right to equal participation in public life, government and private sector. He says, Ambedkar termed villages “feudal bastions.”

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A report by a top Delhi-based think tank, National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER), prepared under the direct leadership of Amitabh Kant, ex-secretary, Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP), Government of India, has claims that Gujarat ranks No 1 in the NCAER State Investment Potential Index (N-SIPI), though there is a dig.

N-SIPI has been divided into two separate indices. The first one includes five “pillars” based on which the index has been arrived it. These pillars are: labour, infrastructure, economic conditions, political stability and governance, and perceptions of a good business climate. It is called N-SIPI 21, as it includes a survey of 21 states out of 29.

The second index, called N-SIPI 30 (29 states and one union territory), is based on an index arrived at on the basis of four of the five pillars, labour, infrastructure, economic conditions, political stability and governance – but excludes the “perceptions of a good business climate”, as seen by top Indian business executives.
 
Funded by the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, British High Commission, India, the report finds that in N-SIPI-21, Gujarat ranks No 1 in two of the five pillars, which are — political stability and governance, and perceptions of a good business climate. As for N-SIPI-30, Gujarat is nowhere near No 1 in any of the four pillars analysed to arrive at the ranking.

To quote from the report, “In N-SIPI 21, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka top the list under the labour pillar. In the infrastructure Pillar, Delhi tops followed by Punjab and Gujarat. In the economic climate pillar, while Delhi comes out top again, it is closely followed by Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra.”

As for N-SIPI 30, where only secondary data has been analysed, and perceptions of businessmen have been excluded for analysing any of the four pillar, Gujarat ranks No 4 in the first pillar, labour, with first three rankings going to Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. In the second pillar, infrastructure, Gujarat again ranks No 4, with Delhi, Goa and West Bengal occupying the first three positions.
 

In the third pillar, economic conditions, Gujarat ranks No 5, and the states which rank above Gujarat are Delhi, Goa, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. And in the fourth pillar, governance and political stability, Gujarat again ranks No 5, with four states ahead of the state – Tripura, Mizoram, Nagaland and Tamil Nadu.

The report states, it provides “a single composite investment rating of how the 29 Indian states and the Union Territory of Delhi are positioned to encourage and attract investment”, adding, it also provides “an entry point in thinking about new investment for domestic and overseas firms and encouraging a more competitive ethos among India’s states.”

Revealing Government of India hand in preparing the report, it states, “We are grateful to DIPP Secretary Amitabh Kant for his leadership in our consultations with his department officers during the course of this work. We also greatly welcome the enthusiasm shown by Kant’s successor, Ramesh Abhishek, in the work at NCAER for N-SIPI, and for Kant’s continuing interest in N-SIPI as the new CEO of the NITI Aayog.”
 
 
Analysing performance of two industrial sectors, pharmaceuticals and automobiles, the report does not find Gujarat No 1 in either of them. It says, “In terms of profitability in the pharmaceutical industry, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh (including Telangana), and Gujarat appear to be the top players followed by Karnataka and Uttarakhand.” It adds, “In terms of the market demand for pharmaceutical products, Kerala, Punjab and Karnataka top the list followed by Jammu and Kashmir and Tamil Nadu.”
As for automobiles, it says, “The dominant states in the automobile sector, on the other hand, are Delhi, Maharashtra, and West Bengal, followed by Haryana and Goa. In the retail sector, Delhi, Goa, and Kerala come out as the top three states with the highest potential for growth, followed closely by Maharashtra and Karnataka.”

http://www.counterview.net/2016/03/gujarat-no-1-in-govt-of-india-pushed.html
 

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