Larger issues, however, underpin the efforts of getting food to those who most need it. Encouraged by a generous system of financial subsidies and of technical developments in the agriculture sector, India has a surplus of grains and a bigger stockpile than any country apart from China. Produce is exported to other countries. Political debates in India over the last five years or so point out that no one need go hungry, provided that a reform of existing programmes is undertaken so as to include more people and eliminate ‘leakages’, as corruption is euphemistically labelled. The World Bank estimated that less than 50% of the grain collected by the states from the federal warehouses reached those it was supposed to benefit.
However, something clearly is not working with the PDS – a continuing 21% of India’s 1.3 billion population remain undernourished, a proportion that has not changed much over the last two decades despite a 50% increase in food production. Again, a number of horror stories appeared on a regular basis in the newspapers documenting the shortcomings of the PDS. These included the large number of people mistakenly excluded from the scheme, erratic supply and poor quality of the food and, above all, the massive corruption by the numerous ‘middlemen’ and those along the chain from warehouse to shop. Some people were unable to obtain the ration card as they were unable to pay the requisite bribe.
However, so great have been the improvements in the last year or so that commentators are referring to the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ food security system. New reforms encompassed within the 2013 National Food Security Act proposed doubling the number of eligible participants, increasing the quantities of food that could be bought, providing more choice and building new silos for the storage of grain. New technology would be used to track food and ensure most people obtained their ration cards.
The delivery and operation of the PDS differ obviously on a state by state basis. But as Dréze and Sen point out, great improvements are clearly becoming visible. In Tamil Nadu for example, PDS is universal, regular and relatively corruption-free. The big example of what was possible, however, was in the state of Chhattisgarh, traditionally seen as almost ungovernable and characterised by massive corruption. A range of statistical tables is available demonstrating the turnaround of the state in the efficiency and inclusiveness of the reforms. Massive ‘leakages’ have been reduced. That is not to argue that all is well with the ‘new’ improved PDS as Dréze and Sen explain and document in their book. Lurid stories in the newspapers in early 2015 for example documented the PDS scam in Chhattisgarh involving several high-level state officials. Corruption continues to plague the system despite the improvements in structural features.
A third policy initiative that I came across and which focusses on India’s poor is the 2013 National Food Security Act (also known as the Right to Food Act). As one local commentator put it, “After vacillating for four years, India’s United Progressive Alliance (under the Congress Party) finally did something worthy and had the National Food Security Bill passed.” Seen as a ‘pet project’ of Sonia Gandhi, President of the Congress Party and introduced just before the 2014 general election, the Act was seen as a controversial development. It was, said Sonia Gandhi, India’s chance “to make history” by abolishing hunger. The aim of the legislation is to provide subsidised foodgrain to about two-thirds of India’s 1.2 billion people – 75% of the rural population and 50% of those in urban areas. Beneficiaries will be able to purchase 5kg of grain per month at a rate of 3 rupees per kg, 2 rupees for wheat and millet at 1 rupee per kg. Critics alleged that the costs of the programme will be prohibitive (3% of gross domestic product), increase price inflation, squeeze out the private sector, reduce competition and promote cereal production at the expense of fruit and vegetables. For some critics such as Vivek Kaul, the programme is a disaster – “the passage of the Food Security Bill might turn out to be our biggest mistake (since Independence).” By way of contrast, Jean Dréze (of the Dréze and Sen book) who was closely associated with the legislation, wrote that: “the Bill is a form of investment in human capital. It will bring some security in people’s lives and make it easier for them to meet their basic needs, protect their health, educate their children, and take risks.” Others stated that the legislation did not go far enough; Right to Food campaigners wanted 35kg a month instead of the agreed five.
The success or fate of the National Food Security Act will depend on the Bharatiya Janata (BJP) government, elected by a landslide in the 2014 general elections. It is clear, however, that historically there have been a number of policy initiatives – some of them very expensive – which have attempted to engage with and ultimately reduce the country’s appalling levels of poverty. Equally clear is that the promised ‘transformative’ claims of such initiatives are not working although many millions will be grateful for any supplements to meagre diets. Lack of food is obviously the most important feature of ‘being poor’; but as the central message of Dréze and Sen’s An Uncertain Glory hammers home chapter after chapter, the poor in India are poor because of numerous interrelated reasons as is explored below.
If a wider, more global perspective is taken, it isn’t all bad news. As the United Nations (UN) reported in 2015 at the conclusion of its Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) campaign, one billion people worldwide had been lifted out of extreme poverty in “the most successful anti-poverty movement in history.” In the previous 15 years the MDGs had pushed to meet 8 goals – on poverty, education, gender equality, child mortality, maternal health, disease, the environment and global partnership – and had delivered some impressive results. The number of people for example who lived on less than $1.25 a day has fallen from just under 2 billion to 836 million in 2015. Between 1990–2015, the proportion of undernourished fell from 24% to 13% or around 800 million chronically malnourished people today. Child mortality has declined by more than half over the past 25 years. In other areas, the results have not been not so impressive – for example, in maternal mortality rates and HIV/Aids. As was noted, nearly 60% of extremely poor people live in five countries – India, Nigeria, China, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Successful examples from Brazil with its Zero Hunger programme, Bolivia, Nicaragua and Ecuador illustrate what can be achieved with a concerted political campaigning from grassroot organisations together with legal reforms. In the case of India, these battles on the streets and in the courts are what resulted in the National Food Security Act of 2013.
Working, India style
Any policy discussion today of ‘poverty eradication’ will usually be coupled with ‘sustainable livelihoods’. The latter is the new buzzword and is strongly associated with global heavyweights such as the United Nations and their various branches (such as the United Nation Conference on Environment and Development, UNCED, or the various world conferences on women). These global summits, reports and conferences are largely invisible to most people but do provide a small political space within which activists can seek to move forward their agendas. As was mentioned, the recently concluded Millennium Development Goals (and their replacement by the Sustainable Goals programme) demonstrated selectively what could be done with a concerted push, financial support and political will. (They also illustrated valuable lessons in what not to do!)
This notion of ‘livelihoods’ is a difficult one to grasp for visitors to India although it is an issue that interests many of us. How people obtain their food, what health care is available, safe and secure housing, how work or labour is understood and structured are all examples of ‘tourist invisibility’ for us. We know that most people do not ‘work’ in the sense we understand. Yes, there are trade unions and employers’ organisations, campaigns for better wages and workplace health and safety just as in the Western economies. This is the organised sector and what most overseas tourists are familiar with. Within this organised sector, around two-thirds are national and regional government employees – some 21 million. What characterises Indian ‘livelihoods’, however, is the informal sect
or – some 90% of the working population. As an Indian colleague patiently explained to me, this unorganised or informal workforce covers a wide variety of jobs from working in households, small enterprise units, night watchmen, sweepers, farm or agricultural workers, working from home or on construction sites, and domestic work. For the overwhelming majority of people in India (or other countries in the developing world), having an employer, a workplace or wage is not a reality. Instead as the excellent website InfochangeIndia details, most ‘workers’ have to create diverse and complex strategies to survive economically, especially in rural areas. India might be the pin-up global economy and destined for greater economic success in the years ahead, but it seems unable to provide the most basic of employment rights for the vast majority of its working population. The country’s unmatchable growth rates continue to exclude most of the poor yet is constructed on the backs of the poor – an ‘economic law’ that characterises most economies from around the world.
Replacing the notion of ‘work’ by ‘sustainable livelihoods’, it is argued by the UN, helps address some of these anomalous issues that have been ignored and provides a better understanding of all the complex means by which people make a living, or simply survive. A focus on ‘sustainable livelihoods’ in other words provides a better framework for poverty reduction strategies.
Sensible as all this sounds, there are problems. There are for example numerous different understandings of what is meant by ‘livelihoods’. Many of the current definitions leave untouched the causes of poverty, of why there is such a huge number of people living in desperately poor conditions. Untouched also is the basic truth that improving the material conditions of most of the poor requires wealthy executives in the West (in the coffee, tea or grain businesses for example) acknowledging that their fat salaries and bonuses are dependent on keeping ‘livelihoods’ as little as possible.
The big footwear companies in the West for example have been cited in recent years for their use of ‘cheap labour’ in the production of trainers and sport footwear. India is the second largest global producer of footwear, accounting for over 13% of the world’s production, is valued at around $35 billion and provides around 2 million jobs. 70% of the workforce is in the unorganised sector. It is the home-based, exploitative nature of the sector that underpins the entire industry. For every factory-based worker in the sector there are ten home-based workers existing on piece rates. Homeworkers are not covered by minimum pay legislation, have insecure employment, no safety or health coverage, no sick pay or any other entitlements. Unknown to most tourists on their way to the Taj Mahal in Agra are some 4,500 home-based units in this footwear capital of North India – all invisible workers in the supply chain of the footwear industry. Specialising in one of the five major shoe production activities – cutting, upper stitching, upper closing, pasting and finishing – these homeworkers symbolise the artisan-based, low technology oriented manufacturing that characterises much Indian industry. And because of their invisibility, trade unions have been unable to reach these workers. Other organisations, however, have evolved to involve homeworkers, to press for ethical solutions such as ‘fair trade’ agreements and to raise awareness of transparency, human rights and ethical supply chains.
Many other examples or case studies could be identified which reproduce similar or worse conditions of employment than the shoemakers of Agra. A recent report of 2011 entitled “Captured by Cotton” for example documents the interwoven context of garment manufacturing in Tamil Nadu with dowry payments, unacceptable working conditions, bonded labour and child labour.
Any understanding of ‘sustainable livelihoods’ must therefore be situated in contexts that address issues of inequity, of global exploitation of poor countries by rich countries and of tackling structural privileges. If the inequality facing Dalits in India is to be addressed, for example, this will involve reducing the power and influence of the upper castes. However, the opening up of the Indian economy in the 1990s and their acceleration under the current Modi government has reinforced the marginalization of the poor in favour of big business. Numerous stories make it through to the press of the disastrous change in policies and practices flowing from the pursuit of short-term, market-driven policies over the last 2–3 decades – of the switch from rice to prawn cultivation or the decimation of small textile weavers as ‘their’ industry was ‘modernised’ through subsidies, inducements and tax breaks that favoured big business and technology intensive ‘solutions’. Hundreds of thousands of poor and vulnerable weavers had their ‘livelihoods’ destroyed in the name of progress and national interest.
Poverty wages have a variety of knock-on effects such as fuelling a modern slave trade. It is estimated that there are around 5–10 million children working in semi-slave conditions throughout India. Figures are difficult to collect but it has been estimated that many of this total of around 10 million child labourers are ‘employed’ by third parties in carpet making (around Varanasi), cigarette making and match making. Strong laws against trafficking, child labour and bonded labour exist but are enforced spasmodically. School truancy rates are estimated to be around 40 million. Semi-slavery in India persists because it is remains profitable and is enmeshed in a web of corruption and bribery involving the police and traffickers, says Kailash Satyarthi. Over 100,000 children are employed as domestic servants in Delhi alone.
In 2014, Kailash Satyarthi from Delhi was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize together with Malala Yousafzai, the teenage girl from Pakistan. Satyarthi received the award because of his lifelong work around the rights of children. His activities have included rescuing dozens of children from the trafficking of boys from the state of Bihar through to exposing the trade in girls from the tea estates in Assam. Satyarthi’s recognition and work are symbolic of what is not working in India. It’s the tip of the proverbial iceberg. The contrast of wealth and economic success for the few with continuing and desperate levels of poverty for the vast majority is difficult to grasp. The textbook story of development – gradual economic growth involving more and more people – seems to have failed. Maybe today, this development paradigm is exhausted.
“The monster that crosses your path”
For us tourists wandering around city centres, visible dimensions of India’s gross economic inequality are clear and stark. While this is true for most grand cities in the world, the contrast in India’s case is extreme and therefore more visible. Less visible to us, however, is the social differentiation that is as pernicious as the economic divisions; in fact it is largely invisible to us but very visible in thousands of ways to Indians. Central to an understanding of this social world and therefore to dimensions of inequality – whether of an economic, political, gender or class-based nature – is the issue of caste. We as visitors to the country together with most people around the world associate caste with India but have only a flimsy grasp of the nature and consequences of these divisions. Even this flimsiness, however, provokes bewilderment and astonishment.
The complexities surrounding the historical nature, evolution and status today of castes provides a continuing debate in India, as evidenced by contemporary studies and commentary in the media and elsewhere. Caste permeates every pore of Indian society but usually in hidden and insidious ways. Put at its most simple, castes are ranked, named and endogamous (permitting marriage only within the group), and where membership is gained only through birth. As the prominent India sociologist Andre Beteille puts it, “In the old order the hierarchical relations between men and women were expressed in the ritual idiom of purity and pollution, perhaps the most compelling idiom devised by human ingenuity for keeping a social hierarchy in place. While the idiom of purity and pollution was all pervasive, it bore most heavily on the weaker sections, notably untouchables and women.”
Modern India is often marketed as a land of opportunities but those opportunities are structured and filtered by caste. Caste remains as a powerful regulator of these economic opportunities. Altho
ugh of ancient origin, caste today has adapted and reproduced itself in the fast-growing Indian capitalist economy. There are thousands of castes and subcastes which are linked to occupational specialisations, are usually locally based but also connect to complex networks across the region and country. For many sociologists, the caste system is seen as an intricate division of labour and method of exercising social control and maintaining social order – in other words, knowing one’s place. Its power, as Thekaekara reports in the New Internationalist, is that the caste system is underpinned and legitimated by religious beliefs originating thousands of years ago, the Laws of Manu. According to these ‘laws’, society has four broad social orders or varnas. At the top were the Brahmins, the priestly class and most ‘pure’ group. Beneath the Brahmins came the Kshatriyas (the warriors and rulers), then the Vaishyas (the traders), and finally, the Sudras, the lowest caste whose purpose in life was to serve the other varnas. Apart from the four broad social orders, there are over 3,000 subcastes, or jatis. Below these four varnas are the ‘Untouchables’ or Dalits as they are called today, so unclean and impure that they were not included in the Manu system.
Banyan Tree Adventures Page 21
