Economic Crisis | SabrangIndia

Dhinkia: Betel plantation destruction hits local economy

Tue, 21 Jun 2022 11:47:59 +0000

Image Courtesy: india.mongabay.com

More than half of Dhinkia villagers in Jagatsinghpur district of Odisha are protesting the loss of a local Betel plantation, their main source of livelihood, to a “development project”.

For years now, Dhinkia residents have protected their land against government-sanctioned developmental projects. The people’s movement began with the anti-POSCO movement in 2005. Locals resisted the idea citing the issue of settlement of forest rights under the Forest Rights Act 2006. It was a triumphant moment for the people when the company backed out in 2017. Still, the High-Level Clearance Authority (HLCA) chaired by Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik transferred the land to the JSW Utkal Steel Limited (JUSL).

This move in itself violated the Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement Act (LARR) of 2013. Yet, authorities even granted a forest clearance despite claims that the villagers faced severe oppression from police. By December 2021, locals voiced complaints of administrative attempts to destroy the betel vines in the area.

This forceful demolition of the traditional betel vines has particularly affected the women and children in the region. Majority of the women in the village either worked as daily labourers in the betel plantations, or were involved in the export process. With the destruction of the plantation, 50 percent villagers engaged in betel cultivation and another 30 percent vine owners have lost their main source of livelihood without any other alternative.

“They don’t have any [other] skill set. Forceful demolition of yards or vines resulted [in] them being jobless and penniless not only to them but also to their families,” said anti-Jindal movement leader Prashant Paikray.

More than 60 people were arrested then released on bail since January 2022, following 72 criminal cases against nearly a thousand people. While there are already over 400 false pending criminal cases against 2,500 people from the Anti-POSCO movement, the alleged police aggression this year adds to the physical and mental pain of locals.

Already, seven leaders have been arrested including the man who led the movement from the beginning, Debendra Swain. Aside from this Paikray spoke of how a family with an 18-year-old daughter were put in jail while their 20-year-old son had gone missing on January 14.

Impact on children and elderly

Following conflicts between local police and villagers, children have also been kept from attending schools. Police personnel occupied all nearby primary and secondary schools, making it impossible for students to attend schools.

“There is now a struggle to get a proper meal for most of the Dhinkia villagers who are mostly of a scheduled caste and were self-dependent upon their long traditional culture and were living happily before, depending upon their forest,” said Paikray.

However, with the heavy security deployed around the area, villagers also cannot remain dependent on forest produce any longer. It is noteworthy that the company has repeatedly attempted to get an environmental clearance from the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change (MoEFCC) since 2018. However, as per the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) Notification 2006, the EC requires the permission of the affected people via gram sabha consent.

Villagers claim that authorities called a public hearing that was allegedly hijacked by District Collector Sangram Mohapatra, the Land Acquisition Officer during the earlier POSCO project. Villagers then called for a “palli sabha” (Village meeting) and passed a resolution rejecting the proposed project of JSW Utkal Steel Ltd. However, since the EC request is yet to be dismissed, Dhinkia villagers have repeatedly demanded the completion of their individual and community forest rights claims on land.

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Economic Slowdown: No Improvement Even in the Festive Season

Fri, 04 Oct 2019 05:07:10 +0000

“Big players, who deal internationally, are still safe, but the small, medium and micro size players have been affected a lot due to the uncertainty in the demand and also in the market.”

Razzak Ahmad, 27, a resident of Malhaur in Lucknow, who runs a mobile shop called Razzak Communications, recently ordered 20 high-end smartphones of different brands in the view of the coming festival season, but is yet to taste any profit.

Ahmad, who has been running this mobile store for the past six years, says that this has been the first time he could not sell even a single high-end mobile phone for so many days.

“I invested a few lakhs of rupees in mobile phones and also in the accessories. Customers are coming and buying mobile accessories and getting their phone repaired, but they are not buying mobile phones even with maximum possible discounts and lucrative offers, like giving some freebies, with the mobile,” he says, adding, “I initially thought that people might be going for online shopping, but then we started giving a one-stop solution and even the after-sales services. Then, we got to know about what you call a slump or a slowdown in the Indian market.”

“It has been about four months that sales have fallen to a drastic low and despite getting easy finance schemes and other lucrative offers, people are not investing money. I do not know what the reason is, as Modi ji is doing so good and Pakistan is begging for money. But the cash flow in the market has decreased, which is not a good sign for business,” he says.

Meanwhile, Dishad Hussain, a Rashtrapati award-winning artist of brass metal in Moradabad has been running from pillar to post to get a new order from any firm of any size, as he claims to be sitting without any order for the past six months.

“Our industry hardly gets hit by a recession or any slump because it is related to utensils or home décor. But this kind of situation has arisen where the brass businessmen have been sitting idle for the last few months and have only been eating from their savings,” he says while speaking to NewsClick.

“Big players, who deal internationally, are still safe, but the small, medium and micro size players have been affected a lot due to the uncertainty in the demand and also in the market. Initially, the note ban [demonetisation] broke us while the rest of our capacity was killed by the very bad execution of the GST; and now, this slowdown is going to make our kids starve,” he says.

The brass artisan further says that now the kids of the most skilled workers in the Peetalnagri (Moradabad) are not ready to join this profession.

“If this continues, then China and Malaysia will take over us very soon and Indian artisans will not get any work like what happened with Bangladesh in the late 90s. The market is crumbling with every passing day and I do not know about other sectors, but the brass work has been hit badly,” says Hussain.
Hussain is even contemplating writing a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi to fetch his attention towards the metal industry of Moradabad.

Om Kumar, an architect with a leading firm in Lucknow—which has designed many five star properties in India—says that the firm has kept all the projects on hold.

“The situation has become even more serious than it was during the demonetisation. There is hardly anyone who wants to invest in the real estate sector these days and the condition is getting worse every day,” he said, adding, “The banks have also stopped lending loans and private investors are washing off their hands.”

“Earlier, a lot of people used to invest money in our sector because the rate of return was too high. A man, by investing lakhs of rupees, could get twice or thrice in return within two or three years, but now the market has drowned. The rate of properties remains sky-high with no people left to invest the money,” he says.

Talking about the project his firm is doing, he told NewsClick, “At the moment, we are working only on two high-rise projects because over 70% of the work had been done and on a few floors, we have also given the possession. We have kept our four high rise projects one three star hotel and a mall project on hold, as there is not enough money with the firm to start the construction. We have failed in raising investment because due to uncertainty, we were unable to tell the investors about the return on investment and other important things.”

Courtesy: Newsclick.in

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Slowdown: Family Savings Dip, Debts Mount

Thu, 19 Sep 2019 06:02:59 +0000

The savage effects of the ongoing economic crisis will destroy not just the present but the future of Indian families.

Representational image. | Image Courtesy: Rediff.com

The ongoing economic crisis, marked by a steady decline in economic growth, widespread job losses (coming on top of an already grim unemployment situation) and stagnating incomes of working people has a hidden component that will cast a long shadow into the future.

Families are being forced to use up their savings and take loans in order to make ends meet, according to latest available figures from Reserve Bank of India (RBI). This means that future spending – for which savings were made – will be affected, and future incomes will have to be spent on repaying loans taken now. In other words, the slowdown is eroding the future living standards too, not just of today’s.

Household savings as a share of GDP have steadily declined from 23.6% in 2011-12 to 17.2% in 2017-18, the last year for which RBI data is available. [See chart below] It is believed that 2018-19 data will continue in the same declining direction, propelled by the slowdown impact. Taking savings as a share of GDP is necessary to bring out the real (inflation-adjusted) decline.

These household savings are made up of financial savings (like bank deposits, etc.), savings in physical assets (like houses) and savings in the form of gold and silver ornaments. Financial liabilities of households – like bank loans – are deducted to arrive at gross financial savings.

What is the other side of the coin – the liabilities of households? The same RBI source shows a slight dip in household liabilities from 3.3% of GDP in 2011-12 to 2.8% in 2015-16, and then a huge spike going upwards to reach 4.3% of GDP in 2017-18, the last year for which data is available. [See chart below] These are liabilities incurred annually.

It is clear that the roots of the current crisis go much beyond just the recent months. Besides bad monsoons and catastrophic events like the demonetisation of end-2016, the incipient jobs crisis and the inability of the first Modi government. to tackle the gathering crisis (visible in declining or stagnant credit flows, low capital formation, stagnating private consumption expenditure, etc.) led to the whole economy stuttering and fumbling into the current crisis. That’s why, savings have been dipping and household liabilities rising for the past few years.

Now, let us turn to total outstanding debt of households incurred from banks. As the chart below shows, such outstanding personal loans have steadily increased from 2014, when they were 9% of the GDP to March 2019 when they had risen to 11.7% of the GDP.

What are these loans for? Mainly – about half of them – are housing loans. But there are also education loans, consumer durable loans and the rapidly rising credit card dues. Remember that these figures are total loans outstanding not annual additions, which is what makes these figures different from the financial liabilities discussed earlier.

Note that this spike in loans really takes off since Modi stormed into power in 2014. Till then it was stagnating. The Modi government has driven this debt-based spending, increasing the debt burden of families.

Taken together, these figures reveal the strain that government policies have put on families. Add to all this the fact that unemployment has been high and rising in this period, wages have been stagnating, earnings from agriculture have been abysmal and the small and medium sector of industries has been ruined by increased imports, and the twin shocks of demonetisation and GST – and you get a picture of the tremendous economic hardship that this government has caused. It seems unbelievable that it is the same government that promised achche din (good times).

Courtesy: News Click

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“Economic Slowdown is a Deep, Long-term and Structural Problem”

Mon, 16 Sep 2019 05:38:07 +0000

India, presently, is facing a grave economic slowdown, with sales dropping across all sectors.

India, presently, is facing a grave economic slowdown, with sales dropping across all sectors. But what is more worrying is that this slowdown is also being accompanied by significant increase in financial fragility which manifests itself in various forms. In his talk at a seminar titled ‘Dreams and Reality: Unpacking India’s Economic Crisis’, Professor CP Chandrasekhar from Jawaharlal Nehru University talks about how this problem is not a cyclical one, but is a deep, long-term and structural problem.

Courtesy: News Click

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Was 2016 Just 1938 All Over Again?

Sat, 31 Dec 2016 01:33:47 +0000

Bowled over by the news this past year, one can be forgiven for grasping for the crutches of historical analogy. Indeed, a number of eminent historians of inter-war Europe have discerned thunderous echoes of the 1930s.

Demonstrators march on international migrant day 2016. EPA

On December 31 1937, Cambridge classicist and man of letters F L Lucas embarked on an experiment. He would keep a diary for exactly one calendar year. It was, as he put it: “an attempt to give one answer, however inadequate, however fragmentary, to the question that will surely be asked one day by some of the unborn – with the bewilderment, one hopes, of a happier age: ‘What can it have felt like to live in that strange, tormented and demented world?’”

Lucas sought to preserve an affective archive, and to write about how it felt to live in an era of spiralling crisis.

As someone who wasn’t born in 1938 I cannot help but feel that Lucas’ solemn hope that his generation was living through the worst of it – and that lessons would surely be learned – have been well and truly dashed. Has 2016 been 1938 all over again?

Bowled over by the news this past year, one can be forgiven for grasping for the crutches of historical analogy. Indeed, a number of eminent historians of inter-war Europe have discerned thunderous echoes of the 1930s.

At present, as in the “Devil’s Decade”, we are experiencing the capricious convergence of historical forces: the fall-out of economic crisis and the extreme polarisation of the political spectrum from far-right to hard-left – the centre doesn’t hold. A tidal wave of refugees is being met by proportionately more xenophobia than compassion. Militant isolationism is thriving. Doors are being closed and walls built. Culture wars are punctuated by attacks on “experts” and intellectuals. 2016 has even seen open an unashamed airing of anti-Semitism.

The historical parallels between 2016 and 1938 are abundant. There are important differences in detail, in time and place, but the pattern of events, and of cause and effect, is striking.

Civil war raged in Spain then – as it rages in Syria today. Then as now, these internecine conflicts provide mirrors to existing fissures in international relations and deepening ideological antagonisms. By the end of 1938, and after Abyssinia, Spain, Anschluss, and Kristallnacht, not much faith was left in the ideal of internationalism or in the League of Nations – and this too sounds all too familiar.

The aftermath of the Kristallnacht. Bundesarchiv, CC BY-SA

The rescue of refugee children through the Kindertransports was just as symbolically important, yet as negligible, a solution to an immense humanitarian and moral crisis as has been the response to lone children refugees holed up in Calais this year. And what of Aleppo? Shame was, and is, a dominant feeling.

Where next?

The Munich Agreement of September 1938 was perceived by many of its British critics as an act of national suicide. The Brexit decision has likewise, again and again, been described as an act of self-harm, even of national hari-kari.

Writing at the end of the year, contemporary historian R W Seaton-Watson had no doubt that 1938 had “resulted in a drastic disturbance of the political balance on the Continent, the full consequences of which is still too soon to estimate”. Treaties weren’t worth the paper they were written on in 1938 – and at the end of 2016 it is worryingly unclear where Britain will stand after triggering Article 50.

Meanwhile, George Orwell’s assessment of the disarray of the political left post-Munich could just as well apply to Momentum and Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour party. As Orwell saw it:

Barring some unforeseen scandal or a really large disturbance inside the Conservative Party, Labour’s chances of winning the General Election seem very small. If any kind of Popular Front is formed, its chances are probably less than those of Labour unaided. The best hope would seem to be that if Labour is defeated, the defeat may drive it back to its proper ‘line’.

Full circle

One could go on seeking coordinates but the sum total would still be the same. The rug has been pulled out from under the assumed solidity of the liberal democratic project. A delicate tapestry of structures and ideas is coming apart at the seams.

Even more specifically, it is the psychological experience, the search for meaning, and the emotional cycle, the feelings – collective and individual – of 1938 that are uncannily familiar.

Post-truth politics is anti-rational. Emotion has unexpectedly triumphed over reason in 2016. Love and/or hate has beaten intellect. That’s true for Hillary Clinton’s “love trumps hate” slogan as much as it is for her opponent.

The referendum result shook many. PA

New political technologies render older ones obsolete. In both Britain’s referendum campaign and in the American election, traditional opinion polls failed to capture the emotion being expressed across social media platforms.

Back in 1938, it was British Gallup and the rival Mass-Observation that were the innovative political technologies. Using very different techniques, each offered fresh insight into the psychology of political behaviour and tried to unseal the stiff upper lip of the British electorate.

Mass-Observation tried to get into people’s heads, and diagnosed an increasing occurrence of “crisis fatigue” as a response to nervous strain and “a sense of continuous crisis”.

Almost immediately after the EU referendum, therapists reported “shockingly elevated levels of anxiety and despair, with few patients wishing to talk about anything else”. And the visceral nature of the US election campaign contributed, tragically, to the exponential increase of calls to suicide helplines. National crisis is inevitably internalised.

Reflecting on the psychological fallout of the Munich Crisis, novelist E M Forster observed that: “exalted in contrary directions, some of us rose above ourselves, and others committed suicide.”

As 1938 drew to a close, serious conversations were dominated by the verbal and physical expressions of fatalism, anxiety, sickness, depression, and impending doom. Lucas wrote in his diary:

The Crisis seems to have filled the world with nervous break-downs. Or perhaps the Crisis itself was only one more nervous break-down of a world driven by the killing pace of modern life and competition into ever acuter neurasthenia [shell shock].

It is too simplistic to say that history repeats itself. And yet, throughout this past year I could not escape the feeling that we have been here before. We share with those who lived through 1938 overwhelming sensibility of bewilderment, suspense, desperation and fear of the unknown. I can’t help but wonder what future historians will make of 2016.

It’s probably sage advice to go see a good movie over the holidays – and La La Land, already tipped to win an Oscar, may provide just the kind of escapism that is needed. However, when someone comes to make the movie of 2016, the soundtrack will probably be the late Leonard Cohen’s You Want it Darker. It certainly feels like 1938 all over again. Time to start keeping a diary.

(Julie Gottlieb is Reader in Modern History, University of Sheffield).

(This story was first published on The Conversation).

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