October 2015 Archives

The Documentary About Beef That the I&B Ministry is Steering Clear of

“Caste on the Menu Card”, a documentary about politics centred around people’s food choices produced by students of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, was scheduled to be screened at the Jeevika Documentary Festival, which runs from October 31 to November 1, 2015. However, it was removed from the shortlist of films after the Information & Broadcasting Ministry refused to clear it for screening. A statement from the Centre for Civil Society, which organises the festival every year, stated that it was disappointed with the move as well as with the ministry’s refusal to budge despite clarifications that the film was shot before the beef-ban controversy erupted in Maharashtra. “It seems that they have opted to steer clear of the beef issue altogether, as the issue is creating conflict these days,” the statement added.

The movie was however made available on YouTube. The description reads: “The film delves into the idea of food as a site of exclusion by focusing on beef-eating practices in Mumbai. It attempts to portray the prevalence of caste differentiations as seen in the food choices of people in the city and touches upon concerns related to livelihood, social inclusion and human rights.” Here it is in full.

Why China’s New Two-Child Policy Will Not Reverse the Decline in its Labour Force

If China wishes to increase its future labor force, it needs to exploit its own diversity in reproductive preferences by letting women choose their own family size, including going beyond two children if they so desire.

If China wishes to increase its future labor force, it needs to exploit its own diversity in reproductive preferences by letting women choose their own family size, including going beyond two children if they so desire

Not One But Two Now. Credit: Webber Huang CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

The global media have been agog with news of China’s apparent reversal of its decades old one-child policy. Pragmatism seemed to have trumped again; only this time around it appears to be a pragmatism that returns to women a right over their bodies and their reproductive decisions. It would have been wonderful if the announcement of the revised policy had had the grace to state that it was also trying to increase women’s choices, not just acting out of alarm about coming shortfalls in the labor force in an aging society. But grace is not a characteristic of today’s political leadership in many parts of the world, so we must let that pass.

But not so soon. To begin with, this is not a leap at all; just an incremental change from a policy that was never really about a universal enforcement of one child per couple, that kept getting modified over time and in different parts of the country, and that had few qualms if along the way forced abortions, sterilizations and fines became the order of the day.

Not so soon also because this policy might be about ‘allowing’ women to have more than one child if they so wish, but it definitely is not about allowing them to have more than two children if they also so wish. That is, a tight control over reproduction is still very much on the cards. So maybe, the announcement was right not to say the mealy-mouthed thing about caring about women’s rights.

This new policy is not only not about women’s rights, it is also very unlikely to even meet its economic objective of reversing China’s labor force decline. The habit of stopping reproduction after one child is too well entrenched now in large parts of the population and the allure of interesting alternatives to childbearing as well as the costs of bringing up a child in an increasingly competitive and expensive world will keep it that way for most of the urban, educated upwardly mobile couples in China’s cities at least.

Old propaganda posters for the one child policy. The girl child is hand in hand with her mother and holding up a booklet. Caption reads: I have got my ‘only child certificate’! 我领到了独生证. Credit: kattebelletje/Flickr CC BY-NC 2.0

The women most interested in having a second birth are likely to be those with less enthusiasm or opportunity for alternatives to children – but these are also likely to be those least able to afford a second child. The new policy therefore needs to appeal to these women with many more supports in cash and kind to make a second child affordable – especially good, decent childcare and educational facilities – so that a rise in the quantity of children does not come with a fall in the quality of life chances.

The Chinese situation has strong parallels with India and when there is a divergence, we come out worse. Even without a harsh population policy, many parts of India have been quick to see the advantages of lower fertility. These advantages are especially obvious where the low fertility results in predominantly male births; so that even without the coercive apparatus of the state, the sex ratio of births in India at around 115 male births per 100 female births is close to the Chinese ratio of 120 and way beyond a naturally occurring ratio of 105 or so.

But a more important similarity is difficult to gauge because China’s one-child (and now two-child) policy gets in the way of a meaningful comparison. This is the fact that India’s mean total fertility rate (TFR) of around 2.3 today is achieved by huge regional and socioeconomic differences in fertility – for example, from a rate of 1.7 in Tamil Nadu to 3.4 in Bihar or from 3.6 for women with no schooling to 1.9 for those with 10+ years of school.

The point is that if China wishes to increase its future labor force, it needs to exploit its own diversity in reproductive preferences by letting women choose their own family size. That way, those who still do not want to cross a single child will be made up for by those who take on the right to have more and maybe even go further and have 3 or 4.

Complete freedom to decide on reproduction will not lead to overall high fertility – there are already enough women in China (and, increasingly, in India) who will not have a second child even if you pay them to do so. And there are also still a sizeable number who want more than two. Letting the two groups make up their own minds will result in an average fertility of two, which is what the new Chinese policy seems to be after.

Alaka Basu is a social demographer working on reproductive health and family planning and Professor in the Department of Development Sociology, Cornell University, as well as currently Senior Fellow in the United Nations Foundation, Washington DC.

After Bihar, Nitish and Lalu Set their Sights on a National Front

‘We are all students of Ram Manohar Lohia, who advocated a constant campaign against the establishment. Today, the BJP and RSS are the establishment,’says Nitish Kumar

RJD chief Lalu Prasad welcomes a woman during an election rally at Jeevdhara, East Champaran, Bihar on Friday. Credit: PTI

Patna: It appears that a critical mass of the Bihar electorate wants to reward Nitish Kumar for the good work he has done over the past several years. Everyone this writer spoke to in the parts of Bihar going to the polls in the third and fourth phase had only good word to say about the chief minister. This, indeed, is what makes it difficult for the BJP to attack Nitish on the development agenda. Even Narendra Modi characterises Nitish’s regime as marked by 10 years of arrogance, but cannot publicly attack him on the plank of development. In a big public meeting outside Muzaffarpur, when Modi asked the crowd whether Nitish Kumar’s 10 years were marked by arrogance and lack of accountability, there wasn’t much response. This won’t be lost on the BJP strategists.

It would not be an exaggeration to say that there is an authentic Nitish wave in the central-northern parts of Bihar. No wonder, the BJP is very worried about the general sentiment generated during the first three phases of polling. The party’s anxiety is reflected in the manner in which it is bringing issues like India’s “adversarial relations” with Pakistan and China into the campaign for the last few phases of the election. In a public meeting outside Muzaffarpur, the BJP’s undeclared CM candidate, Sushil Modi, fumes before a biggish crowd: “The one man both Pakistan and China fear is Narendra Modi”. Why bring India’s neighbours into the campaign at this stage, you might rightly ask. It is an unmistakable sign of the BJP’s insecurity that it should do this in an election debate which is otherwise dominated by bijli, sadak, paani, caste equations and , in the current context, dal (pulses). Dal at Rs. 200 a kilo is on everyone’s lips. At the end of it all, the BJP just might get defeated by two sources of protein – dal and beef. Beef, of course, is linked to caste.

Polarisation strategy

Elsewhere, near Raxaul, BJP president Amit Shah is doing what he does best – playing the polarisation game. When he said Pakistan will celebrate if the BJP is defeated in Bihar, he again betrayed the fact that the party’s desperation has reached newer highs. The Seemanchal region, which votes in the fifth phase, has a high concentration of Muslims. By invoking Pakistan, the BJP thinks it can consolidate Hindu votes across castes. The party’s attempts don’t seem to be bearing fruit as the electorate knows what is going on. Large sections of the backward castes seem to be in a mood to give Nitish Kumar another chance. That, in short, is what is happening in Bihar.

Lalu Prasad is complementing the broader sentiment in favour of Nitish by holding on to his Yadav vote base – which the BJP tried to break by raising the issue of beef but failed. The Muslims, emotionally impacted by the Dadri episode, seem to have put their fullest weight behind the grand alliance. Lalu’s meetings are attracting unusually large crowds with hundreds of youths enthusiastically clicking away with their smart phones. I had seen a similar spectacle only during Narendra Modi’s public meetings in Bihar during the Lok Sabha polls in 2014.

Bihar is not turning out the way BJP had anticipated. A conversation with Lalu Prasad and Nitish Kumar suggests that both are looking at creating a new politics against the “Delhi establishment”. In his rally in Muzaffarpur district’s Meenapur assembly constituency, Lalu tells his audience that the real aim is to change politics in Delhi.

In many ways Bihar looks so much like a forerunner of events in national politics. Both Lalu and Nitish are talking the same language and the political grammar is converging around a larger strategy of creating a national front to fight the BJP’s. Hindutva agenda.

Bihar chief minister Nitish Kumar shows his inked finger after casting his vote during the third phase of the Bihar assembly elections in Bhakhtiyarpur on Wednesday. Credit: PTI

Nitish Kumar articulates this strategy cogently as he says, “We are all students of Ram Manohar Lohia, who advocated a constant campaign against the establishment. When Lohiaji said this many decades ago, the Congress was the establishment. Today, the BJP, and the forces its represents, have become the establishment. So we will forge a front against the BJP and its divisive politics.”

But doesn’t Narendra Modi also invoke Lohia? Nitish says there is no basis for Modi to lay claim to the Socialist leader. “Lohiaji would have been shocked at the nature of intolerance being spread by the Hindutva forces. Lohiaji wanted decentralised exercise of power but look at the way the BJP, after getting a majority in Parliament, started threatening various regional leaders who are elected chief ministers.” Nitish suggested that the sangh parivar’s DNA is to have a unitary political system of governance which is why Modi is so anxious to seize power in all the states.

National alternative?

Nitish Kumar’s thinking finds an echo in the manner in which chief ministers like Mamata Banerjee and Arvind Kejriwal have endorsed the grand alliance in Bihar. After talking to Nitish, one gets the sense that a national alternative to the BJP constituted by regional leaders is fast evolving.

Lalu Prasad also endorses the Nitish line by suggesting the real fight will be Delhi. The fact that Nitish and Lalu want to focus on countering the Hindutva agenda at the national level is emphasised by a book lying on Lalu’s table. It is the former RSS chief, M.S. Golwalkar’s infamous book, A Bunch of Thoughts, which outlines the sangh parivar world view of Hindutva nationalism wherein non-Hindus must live as second class citizens in India.

Lalu holds Golwalkar’s book in his hands and says, “This is the issue I want to take to the people of Bihar and at the national level. So whatever the results of the Bihar elections, there are signs of a new kind of politics evolving which will be driven by regional leaders. Narendra Modi and Amit Shah have a big contribution to this development.”

Electric Eels Sense with Electricity

The predator’s electric discharge forces them to give themselves up, paralyses its victims’ muscles, and locates them even when they are hidden. The electric eel is every fish’s worst nightmare.

Animals do the most amazing things. Read about them in this series by Janaki Lenin.

An electric eel. Credit: chrisbrenschmidt/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

Electric eels discovered electricity long before Benjamin Franklin did.

If they had to use their poor eyesight to hunt fish in the murky waters of the Amazon and the Orinoco, they’d starve. Although eel-like, they are really knifefish, more closely related to catfish than eels. These two-metre-long predators produce power and store it in stacks of flat disk-like special cells that cover most of their bodies. These cells are the inspiration for the batteries we use in our daily lives.

On a hunt, electric eels fire up to 600 volts of power at their fast-moving fish prey. That’s nearly three times the power of your home’s wall socket. Within milliseconds of electrocuting their victims, knifefish gobble them up.

Kenneth Catania, a neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, U.S.A., discovered electric eels have many uses for their self-generated thunderbolts of current. After shocking them, the knifefish use electric feedback from their prey to track them, much as bats use high-pitched sounds to locate and track insects.

In an earlier study, Catania showed the stun gun-like prolonged charge stops fish in their tracks, by interfering with neurons that cause muscles to seize up. Electric eels also use electricity to reveal well-hidden prey in situations when even fishfinders are useless. Knifefish emit two quick bursts of high voltage current, and the muscles of any concealed fish twitch involuntarily. How do electric eels then locate the creature? Do they use sight, feel, or smell? Catania answers this question in his latest study.

He placed a lobotomised and anesthetised prey fish in a plastic bag, and insulated it with a thin agar layer. He rigged the inert fish with electrodes, so it could twitch only when he turned on the current, and not when the electric eel fired its double shots of current. Wearing rubber gloves like an electrician, Catania lowered the fish contraption into his live wire subject’s aquarium.

The knifefish couldn’t see or smell the fish, nor could it sense any electrical pulses. It could, however, feel the fish’s movements.

When Catania made the prey fish twitch, the electric eel sent a torrent of high voltage pulses, about 400 a second, to paralyse it. But it was unable to find its quarry. It headed towards the fish, grew bewildered, and gave up.

Catania inserted a carbon conductor in the aquarium and flipped the switch to make the dead fish move. Since the immobile conductor bounced the electric eel’s current, the predator attempted to swallow it. More than the dead fish’s movements, it seemed to require electrical cues to make the final lunge.

Catania lined up six equally spaced, identical plastic rods with the carbon rod. This time too, the electric eel focused unerringly on the conductor. He tried to confound the knifefish further. He inserted the plastic rods and conductor into a slowly revolving disk.

As soon as he made the fish in the plastic bag flinch, the electric eel fired a high voltage, high frequency torrent of power and tracked the moving conductor. Its reaction did not change even when Catania reduced the size of the conductor to a small thin disk. He added several plastic duds and spun the disk faster, with the same results. His video recording of the experiment shows the electric eel’s astonishing speed and accuracy in tracking with nothing more to guide it than its high voltage discharges.

When Catania removed the conductor and presented the eel with seven identical plastic rods, the electric eel seemed befuddled. It needed feedback from a conductor to direct its attack.

In the wild, an electrocuted fish would behave like a conductor, and a pursuing electric eel would have no difficulty in finding its limp prey, hidden or not, by sensing its electrical pulses.

Fish have no defence against this super-powered adversary. The predator’s electric discharge forces them to give themselves up, paralyses its victims’ muscles, and locates them even when they are hidden. The electric eel is every fish’s worst nightmare.

The study was published on October 20, 2015, in Nature Communications.

Janaki Lenin is the author of My Husband and Other Animals. She lives in a forest with snake-man Rom Whitaker and tweets at @janakilenin.

India Announces $10 Billion Concessional Credit to Africa

New Delhi: India on Thursday announced a concessional credit of $10 billion to Africa in the next five years – a doubling of its existing commitment – and grant assistance of $600 million as Prime Minister Narendra Modi urged the continent’s leaders to speak in “one voice” with it in pushing for UN reform and combating climate change and the threat of terrorism.

In his address at the 3rd India Africa Forum Summit (IAFS), Modi assured 41 heads of state and government and hundreds of senior officials from 54 African countries that India will extend all possible assistance to them including in areas of defence, security, trade and infrastructure development.

The event was the largest diplomatic event India has staged to date, with more leaders attending the summit than the 39 who came for the 1983 Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting hosted by Indira Gandhi.

Though several African leaders paid tribute to earlier Indian leaders like Indira Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru for laying the foundations of strong ties between Africa and India, Modi himself made no mention of his predecessors or of the Nonaligned Movement and the Bandung conference – key building blocks of the bilateral relationship.

In the concluding session, the summit adopted two documents – the ‘Delhi Declaration’ and the India Africa Framework for Strategic Cooperation to chart a new course of engagement in diverse areas with Modi describing it as a historic day for both sides.

“Today, it is not just a meeting of India and Africa. Today, the dreams of one-third of humanity have come together under one roof. Today, the heart beat of 1.25 billion Indians and 1.25 billion Africans are in rhythm,” he said.

On India’s development works in Africa, he said the government will strengthen the monitoring system to ensure effective implementation of the projects noting that “we are conscious of the shadow that falls between an idea and action, between intention and implementation.”

He said a joint monitoring mechanism with the African Union will be set up.

“To add strength to our partnership, India will offer concessional credit of $10 billion over the next five years. This will be in addition to our ongoing credit programme,” Modi said, adding India will also offer a grant assistance of $600 million which includes an India-Africa Development Fund of $100 million and a Health Fund of $10 million.

Eye on UN Security Council

Identifying reform of the UN Security Council as a major issue, Modi cautioned that the global body ran the risk of becoming irrelevant unless it adjusted to the changing world.

The Delhi Declaration said Africa took note of India’s position and its aspirations to become a permanent member with full rights in an expanded UN Security Council, calling for a decisive push in achieving “concrete outcomes” in reforming the top decision making body.

When asked why the African leaders did not clearly spell out their support for India’s candidature for permanent membership of the UNSC, Secretary West in Ministry of External Affairs Navtej Sarna said the summit was not about reform of the global body and that it was one of the subjects discussed in it.

Modi specifically called for stronger ties between India and Africa in the strategic areas of counter-terrorism and climate change. “Closer defence and security cooperation, will be a key pillar of India-Africa partnership. We will intensify our cooperation against terrorism and rally the world to build a common cause against it.”

On climate change, the Delhi Declaration said India and Africa looked forward to finalising negotiations on an ambitious and comprehensive agreement based on the principles of equity and common but differentiated responsibility.

It said the developing countries, while undertaking ambitious actions on their own, need to be assisted to mitigate climate change and to adapt and adjust to its impact.

In his address, Modi invited Africa to join an alliance of solar-rich nations to be announced on November 30 at the crucial climate summit in Paris. He asserted that “excess of few cannot become the burden of many”, in an apparent attack on the developed world.

Calling India and Africa two bright spots of hope and opportunities in the global economy, he said both sides must work together to defeat scourge of terrorism.

“Today, in many parts of the world, the light of a bright future flickers in the storm of violence and instability. When terror snuffs out life on the streets and beaches, and in malls and schools of Africa, we feel your pain as our own.

And, we see the links that unite us against this threat,” he said.

Modi said both sides can deepen cooperation in maritime security and hydrography as well as countering terrorism and extremism and stressed on the need to have a UN Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism to deal with the menace.

Expanded economic engagement

The Delhi declaration listed a range of sectors for stepping up engagement including in trade, energy and power sector. It was decided that the summit will be held at an interval of five years.

Pitching for deeper trade ties, Modi said India will give high priority to increase trade and investment flows between the two sides and will make trade more balanced.

“We will facilitate Africa’s access to the Indian market.

We will ensure full and effective implementation of the duty free access extended to 34 countries,” he said.

The African leaders on their part raised several issues like climate change and reform of the UN and thanked India for its development programmes while calling for their effective monitoring and implementation.

Talking about overall ties, Modi said India was honoured to be a development partner of Africa and that it is a partnership beyond strategic concerns and economic benefits.

“We will work with you to realize your vision of a prosperous Africa based on inclusive growth, empowered citizens and sustainable development an integrated and culturally vibrant Africa and, a peaceful and secure Africa, which has its rightful global place,” said Modi

Talking about trade ties, Modi emphasised the need to exploit potential of the “blue economy”.

“For me, Blue Economy is part of a larger Blue Revolution to reclaim our blue skies and blue waters, as we move on the path of clean development,” he said.

In the Delhi Declaration, both sides acknowledged that terrorism and violent extremism have emerged as primary threats to nations and condemned them in all their forms and manifestations.

“The menace of non-state actors including armed groups has acquired a new dimension as they expanded geographically, acquired resources and new instruments to spread extremist ideology and draw recruits.

“Tackling this challenge requires global strategy and cooperation. We emphasise that no cause or grievance can justify acts of terror and resolve to maintain zero tolerance against terrorism,” it said.

In the declaration, both sides also called on all countries to ensure that their territories are not used for cross-border terrorist activities.

“We strongly condemn direct or indirect financial assistance given to terrorist groups or individual members thereof by States or their machinery, to pursue such activities,” it said.

On maritime security, the declaration said India would work to support Africa, as appropriate, in the implementation of the AU 2050 Africa’s Integrated Maritime (AIM) Strategy in accordance with International Maritime Law.

Both sides also supported establishment of the Continental Free Trade Area (CFTA) aimed at integrating Africa’s markets in line with the objectives and principles enunciated in the Abuja Treaty, establishing the African Economic Community (AEC).

Both sides resolved to support the Continental Free Trade Area-Negotiating Forum (CFTA-NF) towards concluding the negotiations by 2017.

India and Africa also agreed to work towards creating conducive environment for trade facilitation in accordance with the WTO Bali Trade Facilitation Agreement.

At the end of the summit, a commemorative stamp as well as a commemorative coin was also released.

Briefing reporters after the conclusion of the Summit, Sarna said Modi held bilateral meets with a number leaders, including Egypt’s President and King of Morocco and Tanzania’s President, in which focus was on more cooperation in areas like health, education and employment generation.

Bilaterals will continue tomorrow both at the level of the Prime Minister as well as the External Affairs Minister.

Noting that the joint declaration talks about cooperation in fighting terrorism, he said India and Africa had shared goals as conflict was an enemy of development.

(With inputs from The Wire’s staff)

Intellectuals are the Eyes of Society and Without them India would be Lost

Filmmakers (L to R) Kirti Nakhwa, Harshavardhan Kulkarni, Nishta Jain, Dibakar Banerjee, Anand Patwardhan and Paresh Kamdar at a press conference announcing the return of their National Awards in protest against the government on Wednesday. Credit: PTI Photo by Mitesh Bhuvad

More than a hundred Indian scientists, an equal number of sociologists and social scientists, 50 historians, dozens of award-winning writers, artists and film makers have raised their collective voice against the growing atmosphere of intolerance in the country. Some have returned awards they had received from state bodies while others have signed statements. All are united in their sense of disquiet at what is going on in India today. What is the significance of this ?

These intellectuals are not rich or powerful people. Some among them may well have been surviving on some kind of patronage, as their critics contend. However, to my mind their action is brave and commendable.

It is worth reminding ourselves that under the fascist regimes which came to power in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, most intellectuals fell in line and either did not oppose the fascists, or became positive collaborators. India should take pride in the fact that its own intellectuals have not behaved in this manner. On the other hand, the response of the government’s spokespersons and apologists has revealed the ideological bankruptcy of the BJP and sangh parivar.

One and a half year into Modi’s rule, the failure of governance is manifest. Far from the vikas, or development, which was promised, the prices of essential foodstuffs like dal and onions have gone through the roof, and unemployment remains intolerably high.

What is the Modi government – and sangh parivar – doing to tackle this problem? They are diverting attention in a totally reactionary direction, spreading communalism and trying to throttle rational thinking. The brutal killing of Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi, the lynching of Mohammed Akhlaq and others over motivated rumours of cow slaughter, the escalation of beef politics – these are ominous signs of the times to come.

No doubt some of the intellectuals who have returned awards ought to have spoken out earlier but at least they are doing something to keep the spirit of rationalism alive in our country.

The historians issued a joint statement saying that “differences of opinion are sought to be settled by using physical violence. Arguments are met not with counter arguments but with bullets.”

They allege that appointments to various positions are being made of people who have some connection with the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh. “What the regime seems to want is a kind of legislated history, a manufactured image of the past, glorifying certain aspects of it and denigrating others, without any regard for chronology, sources or methods of enquiry that are the building blocks of the edifice of history” their statement said.

We have a Prime Minister who made a laughable comment that in ancient India we had genetic engineering and head transplants. We have a Finance Minister who calls the protests a “paper revolt” and a Culture Minister who has asked writers to stop writing. It is significant that hardly any scientist, sociologist, social scientist, historian, writer, artist of film personality has come out in support of the government – other than Anupam Kher, who is close to the BJP. That itself is proof of the depth of feeling amongst the intelligentsia in India.

In my opinion, the revolt of Indian intellectuals is of tremendous importance. The message it sends is that a regime that seeks to create an atmosphere of fear and hate everywhere will only bring about its own downfall. In a country like India with its massive socio-economic problems, the role of ideas is of great importance. India will have no future if it is going to be governed by reaction and hate, and not reason and scientific thinking. It is intellectuals who are the eyes of society, and without intellectuals a society is blind.

Markandey Katju is a former justice of the Supreme Court

This Bihar Village is Angry With Nitish But Plans to Vote for His Alliance Anyway

Bhajanpuri’s residents are still upset over the police firing that took four lives in 2011 but say they will do what it takes to defeat the BJP

Mustafa Ansari’s family is still fighting for justice against the police and the administration. Credit: Javed Iqbal

Bhajanpuri (Bihar): The surprise hit film of 2015 was Ketan Mehta’s Dashrath, the Mountain Man, in which a villager from Gehlaur near Gaya in Bihar spends his entire life cutting a road through a mountain. If Dashrath Manjhi had tried to chisel a road through the mountain of bureaucracy in Forbesganj, he’d have simply been shot.

On June 3, 2011, four people were shot dead by the police here during a protest against the blocking of a village road by a private factory. Two were young men who were barely beyond 20 years old, one a mother of three children, and the other a ten-month-old infant.

In a video recording of the incident, you can see a young man lying in the sand, breathing; his name was Mustafa, and a few seconds in, a constable from the Home Guard, Sunil Kumar Yadav, brutally jumps on him, abusing him, again and again; a senior officer can be heard saying ‘sazaa mil gayi’ (‘he’s got his punishment’) in the background.

When you visit Mustafa’s family, his mother brings out her phone to show you a recording of the shocking incident. She keeps it with her all the time – that video capturing the last moments of her son’s life, his final breath, a constant reminder of the brutality of the state. It’s been more than four years since Mustafa’s death; his father, Mohammed Falkan Ansari still sells clay drums on the streets of Forbesganj. Their second son Anwar, who was then working as a labourer in Kashmir, is now mentally unstable; he suffers from constant migraines. The parents both take Alprozolam, an anti-anxiety pill, to sleep – a habit that set in after the killing of their only educated son.

‘Kalma padne laga woh,’ (‘he started to read the kalma’) says Ansari, now 75 years old, about the last living image of his son captured on video.

In the four years since the firing, there are still cases on against the protestors. The home guard who jumped on Mustafa as he lay dying was kept in jail for some time but has since been released and is back on duty, according to the family. The protest and the movement died down, the road they fought for was blocked again.

‘Nitish never came,’ they said, blaming the chief minister and his administration, especially the police. Nitish Kumar was in power and in an alliance with the BJP when the firing had occurred.

‘Vote nahi denge usko, lekin uski hi gathbardan ko denge,’ laments Ansari, ‘Hamari majboori hai.’ (‘We won’t vote for him but we will vote for his alliance. We don’t see any other option’). In conversation after conversation, it was almost a given fact that between the BJP, which they unanimously see as communal, and Nitish, they saw little to choose from.

The road of death

Rais Ansari, who was shot in his face, has spent almost all of the compensation he received in multiple plastic surgeries and medications. Credit: Javed Iqbal

The villages of Bhajanpur and Rampur are dominated by small farmers belonging to the pasmanda, or ‘backward’, Muslim community, and are just 12 kilometres from the Nepal border. A majority of the young work as migrant labourers in Kashmir and in Chandigarh; a handful of young men drive trucks, some work in pharmacies and small shops across Forbesganj. Only one young man is a jawan in the Sashashtra Seema Bal (that is also known in Forbesganj to have fired on protestors demanding n investigation into a sexual assault case in the village of Batraha, 20 kilometres away from Bhajanpur).

In Bhajanpur, which lies only a few kilometres from Forbesganj town, land was acquired at throwaway prices decades ago – from Rs. 3,000 t0 6,000 per acre – for the creation of the Forbesganj Industrial Area. In 2010, some of that land was given to the Auro Sundaram Glucose Factory, whose owner has close links to the Bharatiya Janta Party. On June 2, 2011, a day before the firing, the residents were informed by the administration that the road that leads to the market, the karbala, and the town, would not be touched. They lied. The road was blocked and after juma prayers on June 3, a protest broke out in which people tore down portions of a wall that had been built, blocking their access to the road.

The police opened fire, killing Mustafa (18), Mukhtar Ansari (22), Naushad Ansari (10 months old) and a pregnant Shazmina Khatoon (35) violating standard operation procedures with the use of lethal ammunition targeting the upper portions of the body. The police even fired into the village; Rais Ansari (26) was shot in his face when he looked out of his window. Shazmina was shot in the head and killed. Eight year old Manjoor Ansari survived being shot in his neck but is partially paralysed. Naushad was killed when a bullet pierced his mother’s arm and struck him.

Anjar Bhajanpuri and Mohd Rasool, who had family members injured in the firing, at the site of the incident and where their village road used to be. Credit: Javed Iqbal

Forbesganj was only one of the many incidents related to land disputes and displacement across India that year in which the police fired onto protestors. On August 9, three people were killed in Maval, Maharashtra; in Guwahati, Assam on June 22, three were killed, Bhatta Parsaul, Uttar Pradesh, saw four killed; four were shot dead in Dhanbad, Jharkhand on April 27, one in Jaitapur, Maharashtra on April 18; in Kakkarapalli, Andhra Pradesh, three protestors were gunned down on February 28.

Yet the Forbesganj firing slowly achieved national notoriety because of the short video clip taken by local journalist Amarender Kumar. The news website Twocircles and its dedicated journalists relentlessly covered the incident and the protests which followed even though the local media – including the Urdu press – played down the story. The Bihar government would later tell the Supreme Court that was happened was ‘a small incident’, putting the entire onus of blame onto the victims themselves. Lalu Prasad and Rahul Gandhi visited the village and offered compensation and help. The Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist) and civil rights organisations such as ANHAD held protests, press conferences and small actions over the years. In 2012, under the leadership of the CPI (ML), the road the locals had been blocked from using was reopened by thousands of party volunteers and villagers. After a High Court order, it was blocked again; in its place, an alternative road was opened a hundred metres away.

The new road for Bhajanpur and Rampur. Credit: Javed Iqbal

In 2015, the state administration said it would give Bhajanpuri ‘adarsh’ village status – which comes with the promise of government jobs, better roads, irrigation, etc – and promised to withdraw the cases that had been slapped on the protestors in 2011.

Bullets, painkillers and the fear of greater pain

Raheena Khatoon can still barely use her right arm for any heavy work. She manages to wash the dishes and the clothes but she takes two paracetamol tablets every day to ease the pain. She recalls how her elder son refused to eat from her bandaged arm for six months after she came back home, after they lay 10-month-old ‘Sahil’ to rest (His name was Naushad, but they called him Sahil.)

Her husband Siddique was working in Rawalpora in Kashmir as a labourer when the firing happened. ‘We talk three times a day when he is away,’ said Raheena.

A bullet had pierced Reheena Khatoon’s right arm and killed her infant son Sahil who was in her arm. Credit: Javed Iqbal

Siddique was released from his work without complaint when he informed his malik about what had happened in his village. The rest of the workers in the camp contributed to his travel fund and he started to make his way back home. He recalls how the Kashmiris he knew spoke about the firings that took place in their state. He reached home to find his wife in hospital, his in-laws by her side, and his son dead.

Today they speak about their loss without pain, without anger; they smile often and laugh too but there is a sense of quiet outrage within them. They play with their three children. Young Somaiya was born a year after the incident. Raheena recalls she was not aware that Sahil had been shot; the bullet that shattered her bone instantly put her into shock.

Yet 70-year-old Rafiq Ansari, Sahil’s grandfather cries when he recalls his grandson. ‘Babua chalagaya chinn’ (‘our child went away’). He is still angry that Nitish never came but says, as does the rest of the family, that they will vote for the grand alliance out of ‘majboori’.

Farooq Ali, whose pregnant wife was killed that day, says the same thing. He remarried and used the compensation money to buy a tractor – which provides him a living and helps him to educate his children.

Mukhtar’s father, Farooq Ali, whose wife also passed away a year after their son was killed, said he was voting not for Nitish but for whoever can beat the BJP. “We shall see, he says slowly, we have time to decide,” he adds.

A child makes sense of state violence

Raheena’s husband Siddique and eldest son Mikhail with her x-ray, revealing the amount of shrapnel in her arm. Credit: Javed Iqbal

Mikhail was only four when his infant brother was shot dead and his mother nearly lost her arm. His grandparents had gone to the hospital, his father was on his way back from Kashmir, and in his first conversation with his mother over the phone, the boy, who was under the care of his neighbours, asked if everyone was dead, and if anyone was coming back.

When five-year-old Faizan is asked about his late mother Shazmina, he smiles sheepishly and replies woh mitti ke neche hai (‘she is underneath the earth’).

Thirteen-year-old Mohammad Rasool, who recovered from his injuries but was left partially paralysed, angrily told a government official who had visited him in the hospital that he will shoot back whoever shot him.

Eight-year-old Toheb, whose uncle Mustafa was shot by the police, wants to grow up to become a policeman, much to the chagrin of his grandparents, who are still fighting a murder case against the police.

Why Scrapping the One-child Policy Will do Little to Change China’s Population

When the one-child policy was introduced, fertility rates had already fallen drastically, though there was an apparent paradox that overall population growth rates were very high.

Credit: joanetvila/Flickr, CC BY 2.0

China is scrapping its one-child policy and officially allowing all couples to have two children. While some may think this heralds an overnight switch, the reality is that it is far less dramatic. This is, in fact, merely the latest in an array of piecemeal national and local reforms implemented since 1984.

In fact the change is really a very pragmatic response to an unpopular policy that no longer made any sense. And much like the introduction of the policy in 1978, it will have little impact on the country’s population level.

The overwhelming narrative being presented today is that this is a step to help tackle population ageing and a declining workforce through increasing the birth rate – dealing with the “demographic time bomb”. According to Xinhua, the state news agency, “The change of policy is intended to balance population development and address the challenge of an ageing population.” The party line is that the policy played an essential part in controlling the country’s population and, hence, stimulating GDP growth per capita. It prevented “millions being born into poverty”. But is no longer needed.

Of course, many scholars have disputed this official view. When the one-child policy was introduced, fertility rates had already fallen drastically, though there was an apparent paradox that overall population growth rates were very high.

Popular and pragmatic

As well as being unnecessary, the policy has become unpopular because of the heavy-handed actions of some local family-planning politicians who, either through force or corruption, brought the implementation of the policy into ill repute. Indeed, the “social maintenance fees” collected for infringements of the one-child policy were often zealously enforced in order to plug local budget shortfalls. In this sense, you could go as far as seeing the policy change as an indirect result of President Xi’s anti-corruption drive.

Countless studies – as well as the experience of previous policy relaxations – have shown that the likely long-term impact of any reform would be small. Couples who are already eligible to have two children in urban areas, and also increasingly in rural areas, are choosing to have one. This means that the likely impact on overall fertility may be low. In this context, one could see the scrapping of the one-child policy as being a practical, pragmatic response to deal with an increasingly unpopular policy, safe in the knowledge that the long-term implications are likely to be minimal.

Fertility in China. Credit: Data: UN Department of Economic and Social Affairs

This is not to say, however, that today’s policy change is unimportant. Far from it. We must not forget that for many hundreds of thousands of couples, the change in policy will allow them to fulfil their dream of having a second child.

In the short term, then, there is almost certainly going to be a mini baby boom. In some poorer provinces which have had rather stricter regulations, such as Sichuan, the baby boom may even be quite pronounced. (However, it is likely that an increase in the total fertility rate would have occurred anyway because of what demographers call the “tempo effect”, where postponement of births among one generation leads to an artificially low total fertility rate.) As with anything in China, its sheer size will mean that the numbers will be striking. This will almost certainly lead to some pressures on public services in the future.

Chinese politics

The gradual move to a two-child policy is very reflective of the way policy is designed and changed in China. Scrapping the policy completely was not an option. This would have indicated that the policy was, in some ways, “wrong”.

Plus, one must not underestimate the size of the family planning bureaucracy. In 2005, it was estimated that that over half a million staff were directed involved in family planning policy at the township level and above, added to 1.2m village administrators and 6m “group leaders”. Effectively disbanding this overnight would have led to chaos.

But the fact that a change occurred indicates that major further change might lie ahead. Although it sounds counter-intuitive, after 35 years of strict anti-natalist policies, my colleague Quanbao Jiang and I recently argued that a switch to encouraging more children was not inconceivable, with China following the example of its low fertility neighbours in South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and so on. Indeed, examples already exist of family planning officials in some Chinese provinces encouraging eligible couples to have a second child. Under these circumstances the family planning apparatus could play a critical role after performing a seemingly unlikely ideological shift.

Finally, questions will undoubtedly be asked about the legacy of the one-child policy. While its likely role in driving down fertility has probably been overstated, its role in shaping the highly skewed ratio of boys born compared to girls is widely considered to have been significant. In 2005 there were 32m more men under the age of 20 than women in China.

In my view, we will only really tell some 10-20 years in the future when we will be able to see how fertility in China develops. It may well be that the policy could have been too successful if it transpires that fertility remains stubbornly low. What is the likely psychological impact of 35 years of constant messaging extolling the benefits of one-child families? And how is that internalised? We shall see.

Looking elsewhere in Asia, though, the Chinese government may find that it is much easier to “encourage” people to have fewer children than to have more.

Stuart Gietel-Basten is Associate Professor of Social Policy, University of Oxford.

This article was originally published on The Conversation.

India Inc will Invest in Africa, But Only if the Government Foots the Bill

The business end of IAFS 2015 has focused on India’s role in building Africa’s infrastructure. But will it work?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrives for a group photograph with IAFS delegations during the India Africa Forum Summit in New Delhi on Thursday. Credit: PTI Photo by Kamal Kishore

New Delhi: At the crowded plenaries at the Le Meridien Hotel, corporate honchos spoke of African infrastructure, Indian values, and billions of dollars, while ministers of trade nodded sagely, and investment banks offered upbeat assessments.

The India Africa Business Forum, part of the India Africa Forum Summit 2015, estimated the cost of building and maintaining Africa’s roads, ports, bridges, railways, power plants, and dams at a giddy $75 billion dollars a year.

Finding the money is a challenge, delegates admitted, but “the Indian PPP [Public Private Partnership] experience,” the India Africa Business Council noted, “can be emulated in the sector.”

Interviews suggest that African officials are taking the Indian PPP model quite seriously, but it is unclear if they are aware of its risks.

An India-Africa cash crunch

Prior to the event, Sudan’s Ambassador to India, Hassan E. El Talib said a temporary cash squeeze in his country had led to a new policy for private investments in infrastructure projects like toll roads due to a temporary cash squeeze.

“If the private sector comes, we provide them facilities like tax holidays,” he said, “But we expect the investor to bring expertise and some equity.”

Over lunch at the Meridien, Nhau George Chitsinde, Vice Chairman of the Zimbabwe-India Chamber of Commerce, said the Zimbabwean government and private sector were hoping Indian businessmen partnering with Zimbabwean companies would bring “equity, technology and skills.”

The Zimbabwean government, he said, was cash strapped at present, so was hoping for investors who could put cash down up front in return for tax concessions and land, a gradual pay out from the government over the life cycle of the project.

“We are coming with the land,” he said, “We are saying ‘Come lets do it, lets do a win-win’.”

While Sudan and Zimbabwe are special cases as they are both under US sanctions, a quick examination of Nigeria’s economy reveals how even apparently healthy African economies have been hard-hit by falling global commodity prices.

Nigeria is one of India’s largest suppliers of crude oil, and, in 2012, unveiled a national integrated infrastructure plan that is expected to cost nearly $3 trillion over 30 years; at least half the money is expected to come from PPPs.

Yet a recent analysis by Strategy&, a global strategy team at PwC, estimates that the country needs a “fiscal breakeven crude oil price” of $81 per barrel to balance its budget every year. Seventy per cent of the government’s income comes from crude oil exports, and a 20% decrease in price leads to a 60% increase in government deficits.

Oil, at present, is trading at about $45-50 a barrel.

Corporate India’s debts

Even if the Nigerian government finds the cash to finance its end of the deal, Indian infrastructure companies are struggling with their own debt.

Corporate India has some of the worst debt to equity ratios in the world, according to a report by the office of India’s Chief Economic Advisor. The possibility of default of infrastructure loans extended by Indian public sector banks is putting pressure on the country’s banking system and making fresh loans hard to come by.

“Over 70% of the projects awarded in the highway sector are with 30-40 highways development companies,” notes a recent report by the government-run NITI Ayog, “This has resulted in saturation of the appetite of these companies and most of them have highly leveraged balance sheets with little or no residual financial capacity to participate in fresh projects.”

A recent downward trend in toll revenues, the report continues, has made “several of the projects financially unviable.”

Thus far, Indian companies in Africa have pursued straightforward construction contracts, called EPC contracts, where the money has come from national governments or multilateral donors like the World Bank.

“Indian infrastructure companies will continue to pursue construction projects in Africa where the funding from national budgets or multilateral funding sources,” said Manish Agarwal, an infrastructure analyst with PwC India, “But, at present, it is unlikely that they will take on self-financed projects as they already have high levels of debt.”

Agarwal said he expected things to change as the business environment improved, “Indian private investment in Africa is likely to be a function of two things: A revival of appetite to invest, which depends on how their debt burdens come down in the coming years. And, on the investment readiness of the project itself.”

All eyes on Exim

INDIA INC WANTS A FREE RIDE: Prime Minister Narendra Modi in a battery operated car to visit the Velodrome for an exhibition during the India Africa Forum Summit 2015 in New Delhi on Thursday. Credit: PTI Photo by Kamal Singh

With cash hard to come by, Indian companies have put their hopes on the Indian Exim Bank that has extended $7.5 billion line of credit (LOC) to Africa. As per the terms of the LOC, African governments must apply to the Exim bank for a soft loan, at interest of between 1 and 2 percent a year, for a project on the condition that at least 75% of the contract is awarded to an Indian firm.

Thus an LOC is credit source for India Inc, facilitated by the Indian government to India Inc, and financed (at very low rates) by a foreign government. Thus far, 29% of the funds approved under the LOC have been allocated to Power projects, while roads and transport account for another 14%.

In an interview on Wednesday, Rahul Sikka, Larsen & Toubro’s Africa Head for the Power Transmission & Distribution, called on the Exim Bank to make more money available to Indian companies. “The Chinese have stolen a march on us, big time,” he said, “We are now hoping that Exim will take some steps.”

L&T, he said, had completed projects in Algeria and Tanzania using funds from the respective governments and multilateral funding and was looking to work with the Indian Exim bank.

“We are not investing ourselves, it has to be funded as a project,” he said, explaining that L&T does not finance projects itself. “A PPP would typically be whenever you would be assured of a return. The assurance of returns or the ability to stay long enough in a particular geography can be a bit dicey for Africa so we don’t see too much of that opening up as an opportunity, so its mainly EPC at this point in time.”

Businessmen invested in Africa say that many companies are now interested in working on LOC contracts as the returns are much higher than normal contracts.

“In LOC contracts the host African nation prepares the financial feasibility plan and awards the contracts. The Exim bank only disburses the money,” explained a businessman who has worked across the continent, “So it becomes a way for African officials and Indian companies to inflate the cost of the project and earn outsized returns.”

Opacity in bidding, a recent report in the Indian Express newspaper reveals, has also meant that a lion’s share of the LOC business has gone to 4 Indian companies.

Bad experiences with China

Some African nations are already grappling with the unanticipated complications of signing LOCs and PPP deals with Chinese companies on similar terms to those offered by the Indians.

In an interview in Addis Ababa in July, Uganda’s Minister for Planning and Economic Development, Matia Kasaija said his country welcomed Chinese soft loans at 1.5-2% a year, “But loans and grants from China are tied to Chinese companies. This speeds up negotiations and tendering, but reduces competition.”

The Chinese loans, he said, were denominated in US dollars, and the Ugandan shilling had depreciated over 25 percent in the last year, making the loans more expensive than previously anticipated.

Uganda has also signed PPP deals with Chinese companies to build three toll roads on terms where the government guarantees the Chinese company an assured rate of return; a clause that has caused some heartburn in Kampala.

“Should you not recover your money, because the volume of [toll] traffic estimated does not materialise then government will make good,” Kasaija said, “If you want your PPP to be successful, I’m afraid you have to give that kind of guarantee.”

Agarwal from PwC says such complications can be avoided if governments – both in India and in African countries – rethink how to design and implement PPPs with private companies.

“African governments should not see this as a simple model that does not place any burden on the government, “ he said, “Toll road projects, for example, lead to a misalignment of risks. The government is basically a choosing a developer who has the most aggressive view on future traffic, and not one who would build the best quality road, fastest and in the least cost.

“If debt is raised locally in African banks, the project risk is effectively still in the country. Governments need to involve private players, partly for their finance, but primarily for locking in efficiency commitment in executing a project faster, better, and short-circuiting corruption in traditional contracts.”

The New Face(book) of the Welfare State in India

As technology critic Evgeny Morozov points out, this is welfarism funded by clicks and not taxes and is accompanied by the erosion of citizen privacy and public interest.

As technology critic Evgeny Morozov points out, this is welfarism funded by clicks and not taxes and is accompanied by the erosion of citizen privacy and public interest

Facebook Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg during an interaction with IIT students at IIT Delhi on Wednesday. Credit: PTI Photo by Shirish Shete

When the folks at Wall Street Journal ran a five-point listicle about how much Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had in common, they had little idea that a few weeks later Zuckerberg would take a leaf out of the page of one of India’s most loved political traditions.

A few months ago, the King of Social Media finally realised that the best way to sell Internet.org – the name given to the company company’s quest to provide free Internet – to developing countries would be to adopt the language that its citizens understood; that of freebies and subsidies.

‘Internet.org’, a suite of online applications whose data charges are subsidised by Facebook and a handful of telecom companies, therefore becomes ‘Free Basics’. It would be ingenious if it weren’t so deceptive.

Behind the rebranding

The shift in name works well for Facebook on two different levels.

For one, it is an effective counter to the popular “Internet.org is not the real Internet” argument. This particular line of defence is best exemplified by Josh Levy, the Director of Advocacy at Access Now, who in a piece for Wired argues that Internet.org is really “Facebooknet, a glorified app store that masquerades as the open and free Internet”. Levy’s concerns are echoed to a certain extent by researchers at LIRNEAsia, whose work shows that only a small section of the developing world believes that when they use Facebook, they aren’t using the Internet.

Internet.org, to its critics and detractors, was deceptively named; an attempt at pulling a fast one over the uneducated masses. Free Basics, however, could not be more honestly titled.

If Internet.org was about Facebook watering down the Internet, Free Basics is about acknowledging that impoverished people typically use the Internet in a more limited capacity. If Internet.org was about Facebook creating a poor man’s or two-tier Internet, Free Basics is about viewing the Internet as a resource that can be provided in varying degrees of quality. After all, the mixies and grinders that are handed out for free by Indian politicians aren’t usually top-end appliances; they serve their purpose but also nudge their owner into aspiring for a better, shinier model.

In a recent article for Mint, Osama Manzar, head of the Digital Empowerment Foundation – which played host to one of Zuckerberg’s India visits – points out sorrowfully that Internet.org is not the Internet and that fooling the masses will ultimately lead to Facebook’s undoing. After listing a litany of advantages that the social networking service brings, he declares that he will “not miss even one critical thing in our lives if we don’t have Facebook.”

With Free Basics, however, Zuckerberg and Facebook are no longer claiming to provide the “open and free Internet” that Levy and Manzar cherish. The company, and by extension most other actors in Silicon Valley, is instead looking to provide the unconnected with a critical resource that allows them to communicate, network and have access to basic government, education and health services.

This re-branding runs contrary to many of Silicon Valley’s most cherished principles: In California, the Internet is viewed as an unbounded, almost metaphysical, entity that dispenses innovation and brings about creative disruption. Libertarian CEOs and engineers view any attempt (government-driven or otherwise) at breaking the open and free nature of the Internet with suspicion and wariness.

In Chandoli, Rajasthan however – a village that Zuckerberg visited a year ago – Facebook adopts a more neoliberal, development-studies approach. Here the Internet can be broken, stripped down and simplified as long as it allows people to connect to the global data market. Here, technology companies have no qualms of working hand-in-hand with local governments, who, in turn, are more than happy to outsource their welfare state responsibilities.

When the ideology surrounding the Internet is removed, and we are forced to confront more practical and developmental questions involving Internet access and elimination of poverty, Facebook’s capacity for plausible deniability only increases. After all, if you’re a company that is looking to offer a basic resource for free, you can’t possibly also be a malicious gatekeeper that violates net neutrality; the company’s role as a provider of Internet access gives it the perfect reason to exclude applications that aren’t fundamentally of use to an impoverished person.

Unfortunately for supporters of net neutrality, a number of the criticisms that were initially levelled against Internet.org and Free Basics carry less force after Facebook tweaked its programme, making it slightly more open and accepting of other partners.

A list of questions assembled by a number Internet activists shows that a good number of their current grievances deal with issues of security, privacy, data sovereignty (which apply equally to Facebook as a whole and not just its zero rating attempt) and the practical issues of implementing Free Basics.

The most burning question regarding Facebook – despite allowing any company to apply to be a part of the Free Basics initiative – reserving the right to reject any applicant is unlikely to be resolved in the near future; India’s Internet activists justifiably refuse to compromise and it will be up to India’s regulators to balance the lure of greater Internet penetration against public interest.

No more ambiguity

Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook calls on Narendra odi in Delhi. Credit: PMO

The fact that many of critiques posed against Free Basics also applies to Facebook as a whole is a pity for two reasons. Firstly, the blinkered focus on zero-rating has stopped us from asking other questions: for instance, when looking at the Internet as a purely developmental resource, what method of free data produces the best economic and social results? While it may be popular to state that rural inhabitants and the poor don’t wish to be trapped in Facebook’s walled garden, the results of a recent Observer Research Foundation survey point out that for Indians who spend the fewest hours online, Facebook is indeed the Internet. For Tier-2 city users who spend less than two hours a day online, over 90% of that time is spent on Facebook; in this case, will the demand for Facebook really fluctuate depending on whether it deploys zero-rating?

On the other hand, Aircel offers a net neutrality-certified, basic free Internet package that is “free” for three months and allows users to browse the web at 64 kb per second. Will this, and other initiatives such as Janaa, prove to be more useful to the unconnected in India? Clearly, more empirical research regarding the effectiveness of non-neutral and neutral free data initiatives is necessary.

Secondly, the focus on the free market and competition concerns that arise from Internet.org needs to be supplemented by a strong critique of Facebook and Silicon Valley’s assault on social democracy.

‘What’s in a name?’ Shakespeare once asked. A name like ‘Free Basics’ removes the ambiguity that surrounds Silicon Valley’s broader attempts at providing digital connectivity to the developing world: technology companies are not simply looking to make a nickel by serving up advertisements to the unconnected. As Zuckerberg put it in the town-hall that he hosted on Wednesday at IIT Delhi, “We want to get the next billion people online and that’s why I am here.”

Private provision of public good?

Facebook, and a number of other Silicon Valley companies, are slowly assuming the role of the government and other public sector actors as a provider and caretaker of public goods: in short, they are helping countries around the world build their respective welfare states. For the Indian government, this is a sweet bargain: by having Facebook and Google provide digital connectivity, it can side-step embarrassing questions regarding the implementation and unfeasibility of the national optical fibre network (NOFN) and the failure of the universal service obligation fund (USOF).

The participation of Silicon Valley-based companies in the construction of a new welfare state manifests in different ways: In Western democracies for example, despite the taxi lobbies that oppose the rise of taxi-hailing applications, Uber is seen as an efficient way of achieving public transport. Earlier this year, in the city of Boston – a few weeks after the state of Massachusetts recognized taxi-sharing platforms as a legitimate form of transportation – Uber “generously offered” to give the city access to its valuable troves of user data; data that will help the city solve traffic congestion problems, fix potholes and decide where to lay new roads. Depending on Uber as a method of public transportation, and using its data as a means of improving the quality of city navigation, comes with its own flaws: The data generated from taxi-sharing platforms for instance, valuable as it may be, will not prioritise public-friendly transportation methods such as bicycles and walking paths.

While Silicon Valley companies and welfare may appear to have nothing in common, their business model of providing services for free and creating value out of user data gels well with the general concept. As technology critic Evgeny Morozov points out, this is a welfare state funded by clicks and not taxes and is accompanied by the erosion of citizen privacy and public interest.

Whether this is the welfare state that India wants is something that needs to be answered. Existing critiques of net neutrality violations and zero-rating would do well to also address the broader question of Facebook and Silicon Valley’s agenda.