Author: P. Sainath

N. Sankaraiah: One Hundred Years a Revolutionary

The activist and politician’s commitment to the working class and peasantry was undiminished.

N. Sankaraiah was a freedom fighter and Marxist activist. He was one of the founding members of the Communist Party of India. He passed away yesterday, November 15, 2023, at 101 years of age.

When the crowds rushed out on to the streets of Thoothukudi town – as they did across many parts of Tamil Nadu – a very young boy ran out to join them. In moments he was part of the protest, shouting radical slogans. “You may not know or realise that today,” he tells us, “but the execution of Bhagat Singh was an emotional turning point for the freedom struggle in Tamil Nadu. People were appalled and so many were in tears.

“I was just 9 years old,” he chuckles.

Today, he is 99 years old (July 15, 2020), but retains the fire and spirit that made him a freedom fighter, an underground revolutionary, writer, orator and radical intellectual. A man who stepped out of a British jail on August 14, 1947. “On that day, the judge came to the central prison and released us. We had been acquitted in the Madurai conspiracy case. I just came out of Madurai central prison and joined the freedom procession rally.”

Batting on 100, N. Sankaraiah remains intellectually active, still delivers lectures and talks and, as late as 2018, travelled from his home in Chrompet, a Chennai suburb – where we’re interviewing him – to address the Tamil Nadu Progressive Writers and Artists meet in Madurai. The man who never completed his graduation because of his involvement in India’s struggle for freedom went on to author several political tracts, booklets, pamphlets and journalistic articles.

Narasimhalu Sankariah came close to getting that BA in History though, at The American College, Madurai, missing out on his final exams in 1941 by just two weeks. “I was joint secretary of the college students’ union.” And a bright pupil who founded a poetry society on campus while also representing the college in football. He was very active in the anti-British Raj movements of the time. “During my college days, I befriended many people with left-inclined ideologies. I understood that social reform would not be complete without Indian Independence.” By age 17, he was a member of the Communist Party of India (then banned and underground).

He remembers the attitude of the American College as being positive. “The director and a few of the faculty were Americans, the rest Tamilians. They were supposed to be neutral, but they were not pro-British. Student activities were allowed there….” In 1941, a meeting was held in Madurai to condemn the arrest of an Annamalai University student, Meenakshi, for taking part in anti-British protests. “And we issued a pamphlet. Our hostel rooms were raided, and Narayanaswami (my friend) was arrested for having a pamphlet. Later we held a protest meeting to condemn his arrest…

“After that, the British arrested me, on February 28, 1941. It was 15 days before my final exams. I never came back, never completed my BA.” Describing the moment of his arrest he would say, decades later, “I was proud to go to jail for India’s freedom, to be part of the Independence struggle. This was the only thought in my head.” Nothing about a destroyed career. That was in line with one of his favourite slogans of radical youth of that time: “We are not job hunters; we are freedom hunters.”

“After spending 15 days in Madurai Jail, I was sent to Vellore prison. At that time, many people from Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Kerala were also detained there.

“Comrade A. K. Gopalan [legendary communist party leader from Kerala] was arrested in Trichy for organising an event. Comrades Imbichi Bava from Kerala, V. Subbiah, Jeevanandham, were also arrested during the event. They were all there in Vellore prison. The Madras government intended to divide us into two groups, one of which would get ‘C’ type ration, which they gave only to the criminal convicts. We staged a 19-day hunger strike against this system. By day 10, they divided us into two groups. I was just a student then.”

It was a very surprised Inspector General of Prisons who dropped in on Sankariah’s cell to find the teenager reading Maxim Gorky’s Mother . “‘On the tenth day that you are on hunger strike, you are reading literature – Gorky’s Mother ?’ he asked,” says Sankariah, eyes gleaming with fun at the recollection.

Other famous personalities held at the time there, in a separate jail, included “Kamarajar [K. Kamaraj, later chief minister of Madras State – now Tamil Nadu – from 1954-63], Pattabhi Sitaramayya [Congress president soon after Independence], and many others. However, they were in another yard, another jail. The congressmen did not participate in the hunger strike. Their line was: ‘We are bound by Mahatma Gandhi’s advice’. Which was: ‘don’t have any stir in jail’. However, the government made some concessions. We stopped our hunger strike on day 19.”

Top left: Sankariah at his party’s state committee office in the mid-90s. Top right: At a public meeting (first person, front corner) addressed by his old comrade P. Ramamurti in the 1980s, Bottom row: Addressing an anti-corruption meeting in Chennai in 2011. Photo: S. Gavaskar/ People’s Archive of Rural India

Despite their strong differences on issues, says Sankariah, “Kamarajar was a very good friend of the communists. His companions sharing a room in the jail – from Madurai and Tirunelveli – were also communists. I used to be very close to Kamarajar. He intervened more than once to try and end our ill-treatment. But of course, there were huge arguments in the jail [between congressmen and communists], especially when the German-Soviet war broke out.

“A while later, eight of us were transferred to the jail in Rajahmundry [now in Andhra Pradesh] and placed in a separate yard there.”

“By April 1942, the government released all the students – except me. The head warden came and asked: ‘Who is Sankariah?’ and then informed us that everybody was released – other than me. For a month, I was in solitary confinement and had the entire yard to myself!”

What were he and the others charged with? “No formal charges, only detention. Every six months they would send you a written notice, stating the reasons why you were grounded. The reasons would be: sedition, communist party activities, etc. We would submit a response to it to a committee – and the committee would reject it.”

Oddly enough, “my friends who were released from Rajahmundry jail met Kamarajar at Rajahmundry station – he was returning from Calcutta [Kolkata]. When he learned I wasn’t released, he wrote a letter to the chief secretary of Madras stating that I should be transferred back to Vellore jail. He wrote me a letter also. I was transferred a month later to Vellore jail – where I was with 200 other colleagues.”

On one of his many trips to several prisons, Sankariah would also meet R. Venkataraman, the future president of India. “He was with the Communist Party of India in jail, a member in 1943. Later, of course, he went on to join the Congress party. Nonetheless, we did work together for several years.”

The school in Thoothukudi town (left) that Sankariah attended upto Class 5. He later completed schooling at St. Mary’s (middle) in Madurai. And then on to The American College (right), Madurai for a BA that he never completed. He was jailed 15 days before his final exams. Photo: M. Palanikumar, Surya Art Photography/ People’s Archive of Rural India

Many of Sankariah’s contemporaries in the American College – and in the larger students’ movement – would become prominent figures after graduation. One went on to become the chief secretary of Tamil Nadu, another a judge, a third an IAS officer who was secretary to a chief minister decades ago. Sankariah went on to frequent more jails and prisons – even after Independence. Among the jails he saw from the inside before 1947 – Madurai, Vellore, Rajahmundry, Kannur, Salem, Thanjavur….

With the Communist Party banned in 1948, he went underground once more. He was arrested in 1950 and released a year later. In 1962, he was among many communists jailed – in his case, for 7 months – at the time of the India-China war. In yet another crackdown on the communist movement in 1965, he spent a further 17 months in jail.

There’s a remarkable lack of bitterness towards those who targeted him after Independence. As far he is concerned, those were political battles, not personal ones. And his was and remains a fight for the wretched of the earth, with no thought of personal gain.

What were for him the turning points, or inspirational moments of the freedom struggle?

“Bhagat Singh’s execution [March 23, 1931] by the British, of course. The Indian National Army [INA] trials starting 1945, and the Royal Indian Navy [RIN] Mutiny of 1946.” These were “among the main events that gave the battle against British imperialism greater momentum.”

Through the decades, his involvement in and commitment to the Left grew deeper. He would be forever, a wholetimer of his party.

“In 1944 I was released from Thanjavur jail and was selected as the Madurai district committee secretary of the Communist Party of India. And for 22 years, I was elected as the state committee secretary of the Party.”

With his wife S. Navamani Ammal in 2014 on his 93rd birthday. Navamani Ammal passed away in 2016. Photo: S. Gavaskar/ People’s Archive of Rural India

Sankariah was a key figure in mass mobilisation. Madurai was, by the mid-1940s, a major base for the Left. “When P.C. Joshi [CPI general secretary] came to Madurai in 1946, the meeting was attended by 1 lakh people. Many of our meetings were drawing huge crowds.”

Their growing popularity led the British to foist what came to be known as the ‘Madurai conspiracy case’ against P. Ramamurti [renowned communist party leader in Tamil Nadu] as first accused, Sankariah as second accused, and several other CPI leaders and activists. They were charged conspiring at their office to murder other trade union leaders. The chief witness was a cart-puller who, police said, just happened to overhear them and dutifully reported it to the authorities.

As N. Rama Krishnan (Sankariah’s younger brother) puts it in his 2008 biography P. Ramamurti – A Centenary Tribute : “During the enquiry, Ramamurti [who argued the case for himself] proved that the main witness was a cheat and a petty thief who had undergone jail sentences in various cases.” The special judge who heard the case “came to the jail premises on August 14, 1947…released all those involved in the case and severely criticised the government for launching this case against respected leaders of the workers.”

There have been strange echoes of that past in recent years – though it’s unlikely in our time we’ll find a special judge going down to the prison to free the innocent and flay the government.

After the CPI was banned in 1948, Ramamurti and others were again jailed – this time in Independent India. Elections were coming up, and the popularity of the Leftists was a threat to the ruling Congress party in Madras state.

DMK leader M.K. Stalin greeting Sankariah on his 98th birthday in 2019. Photo: S. Gavaskar/ People’s Archive of Rural India

Sankariah and V.S. Achuthanandan, the last living members of the 32 who walked out of the CPI National Council meeting in 1964, being felicitated at that party’s 22nd congress in 2018 by party General Secretary Sitaram Yechury. Photo: S. Gavaskar/ People’s Archive of Rural India

“So Ramamurti filed his nomination while in detention, before the superintendent of the central jail. He contested the 1952 election to the Madras Assembly from Madurai North constituency. I was in charge of his campaign. The other two candidates were Chidambaram Bharati, a veteran congressman, and P.T. Rajan from the Justice Party. Ramamurti won handsomely, the result was announced while he was still in jail. Bharati came second and Rajan lost his deposit. The victory meeting drew over 3 lakh people to celebrate the win.” Ramamurti emerged the first leader of the opposition in the Tamil Nadu Assembly after Independence.

When the communist party split in 1964, Sankariah went with the newly formed CPI-M. “From the 32 members who walked out of the CPI National Council in 1964, myself and V. S. Achuthanandan are the only two members still alive today.” Sankariah went on to become general secretary and later president of the All India Kisan Sabha, still the largest farmers organisation in India with 15 million members. He also served as the CPI-M Tamil Nadu state secretary for seven years and on the party’s central committee for over two decades.

He is proud of the fact that “We were the first to introduce Tamil in the Tamil Nadu assembly. In 1952, there was no provision to speak in Tamil in the assembly, English was the only language, but [our MLAs] Jeevanandam and Ramamurthy spoke in Tamil though the provision for it came only 6 or 7 years later.”

Sankariah’s commitment to the working class and peasantry remains undiminished. He believes the communists will “find the correct answers to electoral politics” and build mass movements on a greater scale. An hour and a half into the interview, the 99-year-old is still talking with the same passion and energy with which he began. His spirit remains that of the 9-year-old who took to the streets inspired by the sacrifice of Bhagat Singh.

Note: My thanks to Kavitha Muralidharan for her invaluable inputs in the making of this story.

This article was originally published in the People’s Archive of Rural India on July 15, 2020.

M.S. Swaminathan Will Forever Be Remembered in the Hearts of Millions of Farmers

Through the reports of the National Commission for Farmers, the agricultural scientists proposed that we measure growth in agriculture in terms of growth of farmers’ income and not merely increased output.

If there are a few words of English that almost every Indian farmer would know, those would be ‘Swaminathan Report’ or ‘Swaminathan Commission Report.’ They also know what for them is its main recommendation: Minimum Support Price = Comprehensive Cost of Production + 50% (also known as C2+50%).

Professor M.S. Swaminathan will be remembered not merely in the halls of government and bureaucracy, or even the institutions of science – but mainly in the hearts of millions of peasants demanding the implementation of the Report of the National Commission for Farmers (NCF).

Indian farmers, though, simply call it the Swaminathan Report – because of the huge input, impact and indelible imprint he made on the reports of the NCF, of which he was chairman.

The story of the reports is one of betrayal and suppression by both the UPA and NDA governments. The first of the reports was submitted in December 2004, the fifth and final one around October 2006. Let alone a special session of parliament on the agrarian crisis – which is what we desperately need – not even an hour’s dedicated discussion was ever held. And it is now 19 years since the first report was submitted.

In 2014, the Modi government came to power, to some degree aided by a promise they made of speedily implementing the Swaminathan Report, especially its MSP formula recommendation. Instead, the incoming government speedily filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court saying that would not be feasible as it would distort market prices.

Perhaps the reasoning of the UPA and NDA was that the reports were too “pro-farmer”, while both governments were trying to hand over Indian farming to the corporate sector. The report was the first thing approaching a positive blueprint for agriculture since Independence. Helmed by a man who sought an entirely different framework: that we measure growth in agriculture in terms of growth of farmers’ income, not merely in increased output.

Personally, the abiding memory I have of him goes back to 2005, when he was NCF chairperson, and I appealed to him to visit Vidarbha. Farmer suicides in the region were then occurring at the rate of 6-8 a day in some seasons. Things were as miserable as they could be, though you wouldn’t learn that from most of your media. (In 2006, we counted just six journalists from outside Vidarbha who were covering what was perhaps the largest wave of suicides in recorded history in the six worst-hit districts of the region. At the same time, the Lakme Fashion Week in Mumbai was being covered by 512 accredited journalists and about 100 more on daily passes. The Fashion Week’s theme ironically, was cotton – elegantly presented on the ramp while men, women and children who grew that cotton were taking their lives in unprecedented numbers an hour’s flight away.)

But back to 2005. Prof Swaminathan responded to that appeal from us journalists covering Vidarbha much faster than any of us had expected and arrived there very soon after with an NCF team.

The Vilasrao Deshmukh government was alarmed by his visit and tried their best to give him a guided tour which would keep him in many discussions with bureaucrats and technocrats, ceremonies at agricultural colleges, and more. The soul of politeness, he told the Maharashtra government he would visit the places they wished him to – but that he would also spend time in the field at the places I asked him to go to along with me and fellow journalists like Jaideep Hardikar.
And he did.

In Wardha, we took him to the house of Shyamrao Khatale, whose sons, the working farmers in the household, had taken their own lives. We arrived to find that Shyamrao had passed away a few hours earlier – of ill health, exacerbated by hunger, and unable to cope with the loss of his sons. The state government tried to amend the route saying the man was dead. Swaminathan insisted he would visit to pay his respects and did.

During the next few house visits, he was in tears listening to the families of those who had ended their own lives. He also attended a memorable gathering of distressed farmers in Waifad, Wardha, organised by the redoubtable Vijay Jawandhia – one of our finest intellectuals on matters agrarian. At one point, an elderly farmer in the crowd stood up and asked him angrily why the government hated them so much. Should we become terrorists to be heard? The professor, deeply pained, addressed him and his friends with great patience and understanding.

Swaminathan was already in his 80s. I marvelled at his stamina, calm and graciousness. We also observed how sincerely he would engage with people who were strongly critical of his opinions and work. How patiently he would listen – and even concede – to some of their criticisms. No one else I knew would so readily invite his critics to a seminar or workshop he was organising to say publicly the things they had told him personally.

It was surely one of the most impressive characteristics of the man that he could look back over decades and address what he now saw as the failures and shortcomings in his own work. He was shocked, and said so, by the way and the scale at which the use of chemical fertilisers and pesticides went so wildly out of control with the Green Revolution, something he had not envisaged or imagined. Over decades, he grew more and more sensitive to ecology and environment, to the use and abuse of water resources. In the last few years, he also grew increasingly critical of the unregulated, reckless spread of Bt or genetically modified crops.

With the passing of Mankombu Sambasivan Swaminathan, India has lost not just its foremost agricultural scientist, but a great mind and a fine human being.

P. Sainath is founder and editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India.

The Well That Thelu Mahato Built: Remembering a Freedom Fighter

One of the last fighters from that fast vanishing generation of those who fought for India’s freedom has passed away at his home in Purulia district, West Bengal.

Thelu Mahato, perhaps the oldest of the living freedom fighters who figure in my book The Last Heroes, died at his home in Pirra village of Purulia district, West Bengal, on the evening of Thursday, April 6, 2023. He is the first of those still living when the book was published, to pass on. He was the last survivor of the historic – though now forgotten – protest march on 12 police stations in Purulia in 1942. He was somewhere between 103 and 105 years of age. 

With his passing, we move a step closer to losing our Golden Generation, those who fought for our freedom and helped make India an independent nation. In five or six years, there will be not a single person alive who fought for this country’s freedom. Newer generations of Indians will never get to see, speak or listen to India’s freedom fighters. Never be told directly who they were, what they fought for – and why they fought for freedom.

And Thelu Mahato and his lifelong comrade Lokkhi Mahato were so keen to tell their stories. Anxious that the young and newer generations should know that they stood up for their country and were proud of having done so. Thelu can tell his own story no more. Neither will, in the next five-six years, the remaining survivors of his generation be able to tell theirs. 

And what a loss that will be for young Indians of the future. What a loss it already is, to our present generations that know so little and are unlikely to learn of the Thelus of our time, their sacrifices, or why their stories are so important to the shaping of our own.

Especially in an era where the history of India’s freedom struggle is not being so much rewritten as fabricated, invented and forcibly imposed. In public discourse, in the content of significant sections of media, and frighteningly, in our school textbooks where key truths like those surrounding the assassination of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi are steadily being erased.

Thelu Mahato never called himself a Gandhian but lived like one – for over a century. In simplicity, even austerity. In the freedom struggle, he was one of those who marched on 12 police stations in Purulia on September 29 and 30, 1942. He saw himself as a leftist and revolutionary, one pledged to non-violence unless absolutely forced to act otherwise in defence of innocent people and in self-defence.

Thelu Mahato’s tin-roofed, single-roomhome in Pirra village of Purulia district. Photo: P. Sainath

But you did participate in the attack on the police station that saw quite some violence, I asked him at his home in Pirra village in 2022. The violence came from the British, he retorted. “Their police fired recklessly into the crowd” which had gone there to raise the Indian flag on the stations. “Of course, people would retaliate when they saw their friends, family or comrades shot by police before their eyes.” 

It was our conversations with Thelu Mahato and his lifelong comrade Lokkhi Mahato, that made us understand how open to ideas and influences their generation was, yet how complex were the characters moulded by those multiple influences. Thelu was – Lokkhi still is – unswervingly leftist by passion and politics; Gandhian by moral code and lifestyle. Leftist by commitment and persuasion, Gandhian by personality. Both were for decades members of the Communist Party.

Their hero at the level of the region they had always lived in, was – and surely had to be – Netaji Subash Chandra Bose. He meant the world to Thelu and Lokkhi. Gandhi, whom they would never set eyes on, was a distant but towering, awe-inspiring figure. Their local heroes included three Robin Hood-type bandits – Bipin, Digambar and Pitambar Sardar. Bandits who could be terrifyingly violent, but also outlaws to whom little people turned to for justice against feudal landlords and other oppressors. Whose banditry was of a kind described by historian Eric Hobsbawm as one which, while brutal, “simultaneously challenges the economic and social political order.”

Thelu and Lokkhi saw no contradiction in these layers. Their attitude towards the bandits was an odd mix of revulsion and reverence. They respected them but did not follow in their violent footsteps. And for decades after Independence, remained politically active in various land and other struggles – as independent Leftists leading Gandhian lives.

Thelu Mahato was a Kurmi – a community involved in many struggles in the rebellious region of Jangalmahal. The Kurmis were punished by the British, who robbed them of their tribal status in 1931. Restoration of that Adivasi status remains their greatest goal and the very day Thelu died was marked by a new phase of action in the ongoing agitation raising that demand in Jangalmahal.

Thelu never received a freedom fighter’s pension, nor recognition of his role in the freedom struggle. He was living on an old-age pension of Rs 1,000 when we last met him. In a home that was a dilapidated, tin-roofed single room. Not far from it, stands a well he created with his own hands that he was most proud of and wanted to be photographed beside.

Thelu (foreground) stands in front of the well he created with his own hands. Besides him (right) is Lokkhi Mahata, his lifelong comrade. Photo: P. Sainath

The well that Thelu dug remains. The well of memories of those who fought for India’s freedom sinks ever lower.

You can read the full story of Thelu, Lokkhi and those 14 other freedom fighters in P. Sainath’s book The Last Heroes: Foot Soldiers of Indian Freedom. Their photo albums and videos are available at The Freedom Fighters Gallery on the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).

P. Sainath is founder and editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India.

This article, first published at 7.19 pm on April 7, 2023, was republished at 10 am on April 8, 2023.

To the CJI, On His Lament that Investigative Journalism Is Vanishing From Indian Media

Alas, the consequences these days for journalists doing such stories can be serious. Even for those doing straight reporting. Siddique Kappan, arrested en route to Hathras to meet the family of the gang-rape victim, has languished in jail for over a year now, unable to get bail.

Dear Chief Justice of India,

Thank you for your most pertinent observation that “the concept of investigative journalism is unfortunately vanishing from the media canvas…When we were growing up, we eagerly looked forward to newspapers exposing big scandals. The newspapers never disappointed us.”

Rarely in recent times have truer words been said about the media. Thank you for remembering what was, if only briefly, your old fraternity. I went into journalism just months after you did when you joined Eenadu in 1979. 

As you recalled in your recent speech at a book release function – in those heady days, we woke up and “eagerly looked forward to newspapers exposing big scandals.” Today we wake up, sir, to reports of journalists exposing those scandals being charged, even jailed, under draconian laws like the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA). Or even the appalling misuse, which you have recently strongly criticised, of laws like the Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA). 

“In the past,” as you observed in your speech, “we have witnessed newspaper reports on scandals and misconduct creating waves leading to serious consequences.” Alas, the serious consequences these days are for the journalists doing such stories. Even for those doing straight reporting. Siddique Kappan, who was arrested on his way to Hathras to meet the family of the gang-rape victim in that appalling atrocity in Uttar Pradesh, has languished in jail for over a year now, unable to get bail and watching his case bounce around from court to court, while his health swiftly deteriorates. 

With that example before us, surely a lot of journalism – investigative and otherwise – will vanish.

You say quite rightly, Justice Ramana, as compared to the scam and scandal exposures of the past, that you “don’t recall any story of such magnitude in recent years. Everything in our garden appears to be rosy. I leave it to you to arrive at your own conclusions.” 

With your deep knowledge of both law and media and being a keen observer of Indian society – I wish, sir, you had gone a little further and laid out the factors that have overwhelmed not just investigative, but most Indian journalism. As you have invited us to arrive at our own conclusions, may I offer three sets of causes for your consideration? 

Firstly, the structural realities of media ownership concentrated in the hands of a few corporate houses pursuing mega profits.

Secondly, the unprecedented levels of the state’s assault on, and ruthless repression of, independent journalism.

Thirdly, a decaying of moral fibre and the eagerness of numerous very senior professionals to serve as stenographers to power.

Indeed, as one who teaches the craft, I ask my students to choose which of the two remaining schools of thought in our occupation they would wish to belong to – Journalism or Stenography?

Prime Minister Narendra Modi poses for the selfies with reporters during the Diwali Mangal Milan at BJP headquarters in New Delhi. Credit: PTI/Files

Prime Minister Narendra Modi poses for the selfies with reporters at BJP headquarters in New Delhi. Photo: PTI/Files

For about 30 years, I had argued that the Indian media are politically free but imprisoned by profit. Today, they remain imprisoned by profit, but the few independent voices amongst them are increasingly politically imprisoned.

It is crucial to note, is it not, that there is so little discussion within the media itself of the awful state of media freedom. Four leading public intellectuals, all of them connected to journalism, have been assassinated in the past few years. Of these, veteran journalist Gauri Lankesh was a full-time mediaperson. (Of course Shujaat Bukhari, editor of Rising Kashmir also fell to the bullets of gunmen). But all the other three were regular writers and columnists in the media. Narendra Dabholkar founded and edited a magazine fighting superstition that he ran for almost 25 years. Govind Pansare and M.M. Kalburgi were prolific writers and columnists. 

Also read: Injustice, Intolerance and Intimidation in the Making of a ‘Hindu Rashtra’

All four had this in common: they were rationalists and also journalists who wrote in Indian languages – which increased the threat they posed to their killers. The assassinations of all four were carried out by non-state actors obviously enjoying a high degree of state indulgence. Several other independent journalists are on the hit lists of these non-state actors. 

Perhaps the abject state of journalism could be somewhat improved if the judiciary confronted the reality that press freedom is at its lowest ebb in independent India’s history? The capacity for repression of the modern technological state – as you doubtless observed in dealing with the Pegasus case – dwarfs even the nightmares of the Emergency.

India plummeted to rank 142 in the World Press Freedom Index put out by the France-based Reporters Without Borders in 2020.

Let me share my direct experience of this government’s approach to press freedom. Furious with the humiliating 142 rank, the Union cabinet secretary, no less, called for the formation of an Index Monitoring Committee that would set the record straight on press freedom in India. Asked to be a member, I accepted on the assurance that we would be more focused on the real state of press freedom in India than with rebutting the WPFI ranking. 

There were 11 bureaucrats and government-controlled-institution researchers in a committee of 13. And just two journalists – in a committee dealing with freedom of the press! And one of those never spoke a word in the couple of meetings he attended. The meetings went off smoothly, though I found myself the only one speaking up, raising questions. Then a ‘draft report’ was drawn up by the working groups, notable for the absence of the word ‘draft.’ The report reflected nothing of the serious issues raised in the meetings. So I submitted an independent or dissenting note for inclusion in it.

At once, the report, the committee, everything – vanished. A committee set up on the directions of the country’s top bureaucrat – who reports, perhaps, to only the two most powerful men in India – disappeared. RTI enquiries have failed to unearth the report – on freedom of press! I do though have my copy of that ‘draft.’ The original exercise was not even investigative journalism – it was investigating journalism, as it functioned in India. And it disappeared at the drop of a dissent note.

There are many in journalism eager to do the kind of investigative reporting you were nostalgic about in your speech. Investigation of scams and corruption in high places, particularly in government. Most journalists attempting this today fall at the first major hurdle – that of the interests of their corporate media bosses who are so closely interlocked with government contracts and powerful people in high places. 

Those giant media owners making a lot of money from paid news, obtaining licenses for exploitation of public-owned resources, from government privatisation orgies handing over thousands of crores of public property to them, and who handsomely fund the election campaigns of ruling parties – are unlikely to permit their journalists to upset their partners in power. Having reduced a once-proud Indian occupation to just a revenue stream, often smudging the distinction between Fourth Estate and Real Estate, they have no appetite for a journalism that speaks the truth about power.

I think you will agree with me, sir, if I say that the public of this country have never needed journalism and journalists more than they did and do in this pandemic era. How did the owners of the powerful media houses respond to that desperate need of the public, including their own readers and viewers? By sacking anywhere between 2,000-2,500 journalists and many times that number of non-journalist media workers.

The ideal of serving the public has vanished. The economic collapse of 2020 made the media even more dependent than they had been on government advertising. And so today, we have large sections of media, forgetting their own (admittedly few) stories on COVID-19 mismanagement and playing to the government myths of India having performed brilliantly in fighting the COVID-19 pandemic, leading the world in just about everything. 

Family members of a man who died due to the coronavirus disease (COVID-19), mourn before his cremation at a crematorium ground on the outskirts of Bengaluru, India, May 13, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Samuel Rajkumar

This period also saw the formation of the opaque ‘PM Cares Fund.’ It bears the words ‘Prime Minister’ in its title, displays his visage on its website, but argues it is not a ‘public authority,’ nor subject to RTI and in fact “is not a fund of the government of India.” And that it is not bound to submit to any institutional audit by an arm of the state.

It was also the period, sir, when some of the most regressive labour legislation in this country’s independent history were rammed through first as ordinances by state governments, then as ‘Codes’ by the Centre. Some of the ordinances promulgated set Indian workers back by a century, by suspending that gold standard of labour rights – the eight-hour day. Obviously, there is little space for investigating any of these in a media owned by corporates employing many workers. And several of those journalists who would have been game to take this on – are jobless, having been thrown out by their media owners.

What troubles me equally, your honour, is that I did not see the judiciary stepping in to stop this mayhem, whether on governmental corruption, on the mass retrenchment of journalists, the gutting of labour rights, or the misuse of the PM’s title to raise funds free of any kind of transparent audit. I fully admit to the intrinsic and structural faults of the media that have reduced it to such a compromised and payer-friendly phenomenon. But surely, the judiciary’s intervention in some of these matters could help journalists breathe better?

The raids on offices of independent media, the intimidation and vilification of their owners and journalists as ‘money launderers,’ the relentless harassment of these entities proceeds at a furious pace. Sure, most of these cases will collapse in court – the agencies executing the government’s diktat know as much. But they’re working on the principle: the process is the punishment. It will take years, and many lakhs of rupees in lawyers’ fees, and promises bankruptcy for the few independent voices in the media. Even that rare independent voice in Big Media – Dainik Bhaskar – was raided like a den of the underworld. No discussion of that in the rest of a very frightened Big Media.

Perhaps, sir, the judiciary could do something to deter this conscious abuse of law?

Alas, the judiciary did not distinguish itself on the issue of the now repealed farm laws either. I never studied law but always understood that one vital duty of the senior-most constitutional court was to review the constitutional validity of such contentious legislation. Instead the court formed a committee, ordered them to produce a report with solutions to the farm law crisis – and has since consigned both report and committee to oblivion.

With this, it added to what was essentially a ‘death-by-committee’ sentence with the death of the committee itself.

Also read: ‘Will Release Report on Farm Laws If Apex Court Doesn’t’: SC-Appointed Panel Member

Again, the conflicts of interest in the ‘mainstream’ media on the farm laws are huge. The individual corporate leader set to gain the most from the laws, is also the biggest media owner in the country. In the media he does not own, he is very often the biggest advertiser. So it was not surprising to see the ‘mainstream’ media serving as shills and touts for the laws in their editorials.

Would any of them tell their readers or viewers that the two corporate behemoths the farmers named in every other slogan – that the combined worth of those two gentlemen was far greater than the Gross State Domestic Product of either Punjab or Haryana? That just one of them had amassed a personal wealth, according to Forbes magazine, rivalling the GSDP of Punjab? Surely such information would have given their audiences a better chance of arriving at an informed opinion? 

Also read: ‘Forbes’, India and Pandora’s Pandemic Box

Very few journalists now – in even fewer media outlets – have the capacity to do the kind of investigative journalism you expressed a nostalgic longing for in your speech. Fewer still are engaged in what we call investigation of the human condition – reporting on the social and economic situation of hundreds of millions of ordinary Indians. I write as one of those who has mostly practised that latter track for 41 years.

But there are others who investigate the human condition – and try their best to improve it – even if they are not journalists. Precisely those non-profits and civil society organisations that the government of India has declared war on. FCRAs cancelled, raids on offices, accounts frozen, charges of money laundering – until they’re devastated and bankrupt – or about to be. Especially on groups dealing with climate change, child labour, agriculture and human rights. 

So there we are sir, with the media in the abysmal state they are – but with the institutions that should be protecting them also failing to do so. It was those brief but insightful remarks in your speech that made me write you this letter. That the media need to do better is unquestionable. May I suggest the judiciary could help it do better – but also needs to do better itself? I believe both our institutions, and all of us, will be judged harshly by each additional day that a Siddique Kappan spends in jail.

Yours sincerely,
P. Sainath

Farmers Win on Many Fronts, Media Fails on All

The repeal of the three farm laws came about not because the PM failed to ‘persuade’ some farmers, but because many farmers stood resolute, even as a craven media devalued their struggle and strength.

What the media can never openly admit is that the largest, peaceful democratic protest the world has seen in years – certainly the greatest organised at the height of the pandemic – has won a mighty victory. 

A victory that carries forward a legacy. Farmers of all kinds, men and women – including from Adivasi and Dalit communities – played a crucial role in this country’s struggle for freedom. And in the 75th year of our Independence, the farmers at Delhi’s gates reiterated the spirit of that great struggle.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced he is backing off and repealing the farm laws in the upcoming winter session of Parliament starting on November 29. He says he is doing so after failing to persuade ‘a section of farmers despite best efforts’.  Just a section, mind you, that he could not convince to accept that the three discredited farm laws were really good for them. Not a word on, or for, the over 600 farmers who have died in the course of this historic struggle. His failure, he makes it clear, is only in his skills of persuasion, in not getting that ‘section of farmers’ to see the light. No failure attaches to the laws themselves or to how his government rammed them through right in the middle of a pandemic.

Well, the Khalistanis, anti-nationals, bogus activists masquerading as farmers, have graduated to being ‘a section of farmers’ who declined to be persuaded by Modi’s chilling charms. Refused to be persuaded? What was the manner and method of persuasion?

By denying them entry to the capital city to explain their grievances? By blocking them with trenches and barbed wire? By hitting them with water cannons? By converting their camps into little gulags? By having crony media vilify the farmers every day? By running them over with vehicles – allegedly owned by a Union minister or his son? That’s this government’s idea of persuasion? If those were its ‘best efforts’ we’d hate to see its worst ones.

Also read: ‘Battle Half Won’: Kin of Lakhimpur Dead Demand Justice Amidst Law Repeal Victory

The Prime Minister made at least seven visits overseas this year alone (like the latest one for CoP26). But never once found the time to just drive down a few kilometres from his residence to visit tens of thousands of farmers at Delhi’s gates, whose agony touched so many people, everywhere in the country.

Would that not have been a genuine effort at persuasion?

A farmer at the Singhu border on November 19, 2021. Photo: PTI

From the first month of the present protests, I was barraged with questions from media and others about how long could they possibly hold out? The farmers have answered that question. But they also know that this fantastic victory of theirs is a first step. That the repeal means getting the corporate foot off the cultivator’s neck for now – but a raft of other problems from Minimum Support Price and procurement, to much larger issues of economic policies, still demand resolution.

The anchors on television tell us – as if it is a stunning revelation – that this backing off by the government must have something to do with the upcoming assembly elections in five states next February.

The same media failed to tell you anything about the significance of the bypoll results in 29 assembly and 3 parliamentary constituencies announced on November 3. Read the editorials around that time – see what passed for analysis on television. They spoke of ruling parties usually winning bypolls, of some anger locally – and not just with the BJP and more such blah. Few editorials had a word to say about two factors influencing those poll results – the farmers’ protests and COVID-19 mismanagement.

Modi’s announcement yesterday shows that he at least, and at last, has wisely understood the importance of both those factors. He knows that some huge defeats have taken place in states where the farmers’ agitation is intense. States like Rajasthan and Himachal – but which a media, parroting to its audiences that it was all Punjab and Haryana, could not factor into their analyses.

Also read:

When last did we see the BJP or any sangh parivar formation come third and fourth in two constituencies in Rajasthan? Or take the pasting they got in Himachal where they lost all three assembly and one parliament seat? 

In Haryana, as the protestors put it, “the entire government from CM to DM” was there campaigning for the BJP; where the Congress foolishly put up a candidate against Abhay Chautala, who had resigned on the farmers’ issue; where Union ministers pitched in with great strength – the BJP  still lost. The Congress candidate lost his deposit but managed to shave a bit off Chautala’s margin – he still won by over 6,000 votes.

All three states felt the impact of the farmers’ protests – and unlike the corpo-crawlers, the Prime Minister has understood that. With the impact of those protests in western Uttar Pradesh, to which was added the self-inflicted damage of the appalling murders at Lakhimpur Kheri, and with elections to come in that state in perhaps 90 days from now, he saw the light. 

In three months’ time, the BJP government will have to answer the question – if the opposition has the sense to raise it – of whatever happened to the doubling of farmers’ incomes by 2022? The 77th round of the NSS (National Sample Survey, 2018-19) shows a fall in the share of income from crop cultivation for farmers – forget a doubling of farmer incomes overall. It also shows an absolute decline in real income from crop cultivation.

Representative image of a farmer spraying fertilizer. Photo: IFPRI/Flickr CC BY NC ND 2.0

The farmers have actually done much more than achieve that resolute demand for the repeal of the laws. Their struggle has profoundly impacted the politics of this country. As it did in 2004.

This is not at all the end of the agrarian crisis. It is the beginning of a new phase of the battle on the larger issues of that crisis. Farmer protests have been on for a long time now. And particularly strongly since 2018, when the Adivasi farmers of Maharashtra electrified the nation with their astonishing 182-km march on foot from Nashik to Mumbai. Then too, it began with their being dismissed as ‘urban naxals’, as not real farmers, and the rest of the blah. Their march routed their vilifiers.

There are many victories here today. Not the least of which is the one the farmers have scored over corporate media. On the farm issue (as on so many others), that media functioned as extra power AAA batteries (Amplifying Ambani Adani +).

Between December and next April, we will mark 200 years of the launch of two great journals (both by Raja Rammohan Roy) that could be said to have been the beginning of a truly Indian (owned and felt) press. One of which – Mirat-ul-Akhbar – brilliantly exposed the angrezi administration over the killing of Pratap Narayan Das from a whipping ordered by a judge in Comilla (now in Chittagong, Bangladesh). Roy’s powerful editorial resulted in the judge being hauled up and tried by the highest court of the time.

The Governor General reacted to this by terrorising the press. Promulgating a draconian new Press Ordinance, he sought to bring them to heel. Refusing to submit to this, Roy announced he was shutting down Mirat-ul-Akhbar rather than submit to what he called degrading and humiliating laws and circumstances. (And went on to take his battle to and through other journals!)

That was journalism of courage. Not the journalism of crony courage and capitulation we’ve seen on the farm issue. Pursued with a veneer of ‘concern’ for the farmers in unsigned editorials while slamming them on the op-ed pages as wealthy farmers ‘seeking socialism for the rich.’

The Indian Express, the Times of India, almost the whole spectrum of newspapers – would say, essentially, that these were rural yokels who only needed to be spoken to sweetly. The edits invariably ended on the appeal: but do not withdraw these laws, they’re really good. Ditto for much of the rest of the media.

Also read: ‘Forbes’, India and Pandora’s Pandemic Box

Did any of these publications once tell their readers – on the standoff between farmers and corporates – that Mukesh Ambani’s personal wealth of 84.5 billion dollars (Forbes 2021) was closing in very fast on the GSDP of the state of Punjab (about 85.5 billion)? Did they once tell you that the wealth of Ambani and Adani (who clocked $50.5 billion) together was greater than the GSDP of either Punjab or Haryana?

Well, there are extenuating circumstances. Ambani is the biggest owner of media in India. And in those media that he does not own, probably the greatest advertiser. The wealth of these two corporate barons can be and is often written about – generally in a celebratory tone. This is the journalism of corpo-crawl.

Already there is bleating about how this cunning strategy – the backing off – will have significant impact in the Punjab Assembly polls. That Amarinder Singh has projected this as a victory he engineered by resigning from the Congress and negotiating with Modi. That this will alter the poll picture there. 

But the hundreds of thousands of people in that state who have participated in that struggle know whose victory it is. The hearts of the people of Punjab are with those in the protest camps who have endured one of Delhi’s worst winters in decades, a scorching summer, rains thereafter, and miserable treatment from Mr. Modi and his captive media. 

And perhaps the most important thing the protestors have achieved is this: to inspire resistance in other spheres as well, to a government that simply throws its detractors into prison or otherwise hounds and harasses them. That freely arrests citizens, including journalists, under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act, and cracks down on independent media for ‘economic offences’.

This isn’t just a win for the farmers. It’s a win for the battle for civil liberties and human rights. A win for Indian democracy.

P. Sainath is founder and editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India.

‘Forbes’, India and Pandora’s Pandemic Box

In a year the GDP contracted 7.7%, as we brace for another round of ‘reverse’ migrations and as farmers wait unheeded at the gates of Delhi, Indian billionaires reached record levels of wealth.

The ranks of Indian dollar billionaires swelled from 102 to 140 in 12 months, if the Forbes 2021 list is to be believed (and when it comes to billionaires and their wealth, Forbes is mostly to be believed). Their combined wealth, it notes, has “nearly doubled to $596 billion” in just the past year.

This means 140 individuals, or 0.000014% of the population, had a cumulative worth equivalent to 22.7% (or well over a fifth) of our Gross Domestic Product of $ 2.62 trillion, bringing, as they always do, that whole other meaning to the word ‘gross.’

Most major Indian dailies carried the Forbes pronouncement in that approving tone they reserve for such feats – omitting to mention what the Oracle of Pelf says in a more upfront and honest way.

“Another COVID-19 wave,” says Forbes in the first paragraph of its report on this country, “is sweeping across India and total cases now exceed 12 million. But the country’s stock market has shrugged off its pandemic funk to scale new peaks; the benchmark Sensex is up 75% from a year ago. The total number of Indian billionaires rose to 140 from 102 last year; their combined wealth has nearly doubled to $596 billion.” 

Also read: Wealth of Indian Billionaires Rose by Over a Third During the COVID-19 Lockdown

Yup, that combined wealth of these 140 plutocrats went up by 90.4% – in a year when GDP contracted by 7.7%. And the news of these achievements comes in as we watch a second wave of migrant labourers – once again in numbers too large and dispersed to seriously enumerate – leaving the cities for their villages. The resultant job losses won’t do the GDP any good. But mercifully, shouldn’t harm our billionaires too much. We have Forbes’ assurance on that.

Migrant workers at Thane railway station to board outstation trains for their native place, amid the rise in Covid-19 cases across the country, in Thane, Thursday, April 15, 2021. Photo: PTI

Besides, billionaire wealth seems to work in inverse logic to COVID-19. The greater the concentration, the less the chance of any super-spreader effect.

“Prosperity rules at the very top,” says Forbes.

“The three richest Indians alone have added just over $100 billion between them.” The total wealth of those three – $153.5 billion – accounts for over 25% of the combined wealth of Club 140. The wealth of just the top two, Ambani ($84.5 billion) and Adani ($50.5 billion), is far greater than the gross state domestic product of either Punjab ($85.5 billion) or Haryana ($101 billion). 

In the pandemic year, Ambani added $47.7 (Rs.3.57 trillion) to his wealth – that is, Rs. 1.13 lakh every single second on average – more than the average monthly income (Rs.18,059) of 6 Punjab agricultural households (average size 5.24 persons) put together.

Also read: It’s Time for a Solidarity Tax

Ambani’s total wealth alone almost equals the GSDP of the state of Punjab. And that’s before the new farm laws take full effect. Once they do, it will swell even more. Meanwhile, do remember that the monthly average per capita income of the Punjab farmer is roughly Rs 3,450 (NSS 70th Round). 

Many newspapers simply carried (or modified) a PTI report that does not anywhere make the juxtapositions or connections that the Forbes story does. The words COVID-19 or coronavirus or pandemic are absent in the PTI story. Nor does it, or any other story, emphasise as the Forbes report does, that “Two of the ten richest Indians get their wealth from healthcare, a sector that’s enjoying a pandemic boost around the world.” 

The word ‘healthcare’ does not appear in the PTI or most other stories. Even though Forbes places 24 of our 140 dollar billionaires in the ‘healthcare’ industry.

Within those 24 Indian healthcare billionaires in the Forbes list, the top 10 together added $24.9 billion to their wealth in the pandemic year (Rs 5 billion every day on average), boosting their combined worth by 75% to $58.3 billion (Rs 4.3 trillion).

Remember that stuff about COVID-19 being the great leveller?

Also read: Hunger Haunts Millions in Brazil as Billionaires Roll in Cash Amid COVID Pandemic

Our Make-in-India-Rake-it-in-Anywhere moneybags are right up there on Forbes Peak. Just two places away from the top. Batting on 140-not-out, India now has the third highest number of billionaires in the world after the United States and China. There was a time when pretenders like Germany and Russia would nose past us on those lists. But they’ve been shown their place this year. 

The $596 billion combined wealth of the Indian moneybags, by the way, is roughly Rs. 44.5 trillion. That is equal to a little more than 75 Rafael deals. India has no wealth tax. But if we did, and we levied it at a modest 10%, it would raise Rs. 4.45 trillion – on which we could run the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme for six years, just retaining the current annual allocation of RS. 73,000 crores (for 2021-22). That could generate almost 16.8 billion persondays of work in rural India in the next six years.

As the second wave of migrants flee the cities and towns – in their saddening but fully justified vote of no confidence in us as a society – we could need those workdays in the MGNREGS more than ever before.

Labourers at an MGNREGA construction site in Navsari on Monday. Photo: PTI

The wondrous 140 did have a little bit of help from their friends. Massive tax reductions for corporates, racing along at break-neck speed for over two decades – accelerated even faster from August 2019.  

Consider that in the pandemic year, not a paisa’s concession was made to farmers by way of guaranteed MSP; that ordinances were passed allowing workers to be made to do 12 hours labour daily (in some states with no overtime payment for the additional four hours); and ever more natural resources and public wealth were handed over to the corporate super rich. A pandemic year during which food grain ‘buffer stocks’ at one point reached 104 million tonnes. But all that people were ‘granted’ – was 5 kilograms of wheat or rice, and 1 kg of pulses free for six months. That too, only for those covered by the National Food Security Act, which excludes a significant proportion of the needy. This, in a year when hundreds of millions of Indians were hungrier than they’d been in decades.

The wealth “surge,” as Forbes calls it, has been worldwide. “A new billionaire was minted every 17 hours on average over the past year. Altogether, the world’s wealthiest are $5 trillion richer than a year ago.” India’s richest accounted for nearly 12% of that new $5 trillion. Which, back home, also means that of all sectors, inequality remained unchallenged as the fastest growing one.

Such a wealth “surge” usually rides on a misery surge. And it isn’t just about pandemics. Disasters are a fabulous business. There is always money to be made in the misery of the many. Unlike what Forbes believes, our guys did not “shake off the pandemic funk” – they rode its tidal wave superbly. Forbes is right that healthcare is enjoying that “pandemic boost around the world.” But these boosts and surges could happen with other sectors, depending on the catastrophe involved.

Barely a week after the tsunami in December 2004, there was a stock market boom all around – including in the countries worst affected by it. Millions of homes, boats, and all kinds of assets of the poor had been destroyed. Indonesia, which lost well over 100,000 lives to the tsunami, saw the Jakarta Composite Index break every earlier record and reach an all-time high. Ditto, our own Sensex. Back then, it was the scent of the reconstruction dollar and rupee driving a giant boom in construction and related sectors. 

Also read: A Long Look at Exactly Why and How India Failed Its Migrant Workers

This time, ‘healthcare’ and tech (especially software services) among other sectors, did well for themselves. India’s top 10 tech tycoons in the list together added $22.8 billion in 12 months (or Rs 4.6 billion on average every day), to reach a combined wealth of $52.4 billion (Rs 3.9 trillion). That’s an increase of 77%. And yes, online education – even as tens of millions of poor students in mainly government schools were excluded from any kind of education – did bring benefits to some. Byju Raveendran added 39% to his own wealth to arrive at a net worth of $2.5 billion (Rs 187 billion). 

I think it’s fair to say we showed the rest of the world its place. Err…we were shown our place too, on the UN Human Development Index – rank 131 in 189 countries. With El Salvador, Tajikistan, Cabo Verde, Guatemala, Nicaragua, Bhutan and Namibia all ahead of us.  

I guess we must await the results of a high-level probe into an obvious global conspiracy to shove us down a rung compared to the previous year. Watch this space.

P. Sainath is founder editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India.

Drought Is Not Simply a Natural Calamity, It Is Also Driven by Commercial Greed

In his foreword to Kavitha Iyer’s book ‘Landscapes of Loss’, P. Sainath writes about the commodification of water and the thriving ‘thirst economy’ in the Marathwada region.

As India witnesses its largest-ever farmers’ agitation, Landscapes of Loss: The Story of an Indian Drought, a new book by Kavitha Iyer, takes a close look at several of the deeper issues that have been afflicting the country’s farming community for decades now and brought it to this desperate pass.

In writing about the cyclical drought in Maharashtra’s Marathwada region, she presents a story representative of the unrest in large parts of rural India. 

Below is an excerpt from the foreword written by Magsaysay awardee journalist and author P. Sainath for the book.

She had paid a full rupee for a litre of water and had picked up some fifteen litres. That wasn’t the regular price but an extraordinary one, she patiently explained, seeing our startled expressions. At the start of the scarcity season in this Aurangabad area, Shantabai was paying 20–25 paise a litre. But now, with scarcity at a peak, she stood for hours in the queue and paid whatever was demanded. ‘The public taps are dry,’ she said.

Kavitha Iyer
Landscapes of Loss: The Story of an Indian Drought
Harper Collins India (February 2021)

Considering what the beer and alcohol factories were paying for water in the same region at the same time, that was quite a price. There were about ten of them at the time, in 2016, and they were paying 4 paise a litre for 3-5 million litres daily. They had, in fact, paid 1 paisa a litre for ages, before a non-governmental organisation took the matter to the courts. Anyway, the issue was settled with them having to pay ‘four times more’. Yes, 4 paise.

Consider this: the highest – extortionist – rate that the poor agricultural worker Shantabai paid was twenty-five times higher than the standard rate the alcohol industry enjoyed for nearly two decades. The ‘standard’ summer rate she said she normally paid was still five times greater than the highest rate the beer factories paid in 2016.

Public outrage over the grossly unequal access to water flared up across Maharashtra that year. The Indian Premier League was forced to shift games scheduled in the state to venues outside it. (Stadiums hosting major sporting events consume massive quantities of water.) The Aurangabad bench of the Bombay High Court called for a 60 per cent cut in water to liquor factories in twelve districts of Maharashtra. Buildings coming up with a swimming pool on every floor – ‘balcony pools’ – were compelled to shelve that part of their plans, at least for a while. And after further protests, even the beer factories had to pay – one and a half paisa more. The rate for them, since 2018, is 5.5 paise per litre. I’m sure Shantabai is still paying the rates she did, or more.

Marathwada is painful proof that drought is not simply a natural calamity, that it is so largely driven by human agency and commercial greed. That insatiable plunder for profit has given rise to a thriving ‘thirst economy’. There are some months in the year when two sectors of Maharashtra’s thirst economy make profits that would stoke envy in Dalal Street and the many chambers-of-commerce fraternities: the borewell industry and the tanker industry.

P. Sainath is the founder-editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India.

Rich Farmers, Global Plots, Local Stupidity

It’s an astonishing achievement of this government that it has united a huge and unlikely spectrum of social forces, including some traditional adversaries.

Cutting off water and electricity to lakhs of human beings, exposing them to serious health hazards by doing so, having police and paramilitary barricade them into cut-off zones while imposing dangerously insanitary conditions on them, making it almost impossible for journalists to reach the protesting farmers, punishing a group that has already seen perhaps 200 of its own die, many from hypothermia, in the past two months. Anywhere in the world this would be seen as barbaric and an assault on human rights and dignity.

But we, our government and ruling elite are preoccupied with far more pressing concerns. Such as how to smash the conspiracy of dreaded global terrorists Rihanna and Greta Thunberg aimed at defaming and humiliating the greatest nation on earth.

As fiction, that would insanely funny. As reality, it’s merely insane.

While all of this is shocking, it should not be surprising. Even those who bought the slogan minimal government, maximum governance should have figured it out by now. The real deal was government muscular maximus and maximal gory governance. What is worrying is the studied silence of so many otherwise articulate voices, some of whom have never failed to spring to the defence of power and cheerlead all such laws. You’d think even they would disapprove this everyday trashing of democracy.

Every single member of the Union cabinet knows what really stands in the way of a resolution to the ongoing farmer protests.

They know there was never any consultation with the farmers on the three laws – though the peasants were seeking it from the day they knew these were being promulgated as ordinances.

There was never any consultation with the states in the making of these laws – though agriculture is in the state list in the constitution. Nor was there any with opposition parties, or within parliament itself.

Bharatiya Janata Party leaders and Union cabinet members know there were no consultations – because they were never consulted themselves. Neither on this, nor on most other critical issues. Their task is to roll back the waves of the ocean when so ordered by their leader.

Also read: Bad Girl Diplomacy Takes Ministry of External Affairs By Storm

So far, the waves seem to be doing better than the courtiers. Massive protests in Uttar Pradesh. Rakesh Tikait is a far more imposing figure today than he was before the government tried to demolish him. January 25 saw a very large farmers’ protest in Maharashtra. There were also significant ones in Rajasthan, in Karnataka – where tractor rallies were barred from entering Bengaluru – Andhra Pradesh and elsewhere. In Haryana, the government struggles to function in a state where the chief minister seems unable to attend public meetings.

In Punjab, almost every household identifies with the protestors – many itching to join them, some already in the process of doing so. For the urban local body polls due on February 14, the BJP struggled to find candidates. Those it does have – old faithfuls – are wary of using their own party symbol. Meanwhile, an entire generation of youth in the state has been alienated, with very serious implications for the future.

It’s an astonishing achievement of this government that it has united a huge and unlikely spectrum of social forces, including some traditional adversaries like farmers and arthiyas (commission agents). Beyond that, it has also united Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, Jats and non-Jats, even the khaps and the Khan Market crowd. Impressive.

But the now quiet voices spent two months assuring us this was “just about Punjab and Haryana”. No one else was affected. It didn’t really matter.

Funny. When last verified by a committee not appointed by the Supreme Court, both Punjab and Haryana were a part of the Indian Union. You’d think what happens there matters to all of us.

Those once-articulate voices also told us – and still do in more hushed tones – that these were all “rich farmers” resisting reforms.

Fascinating. The average monthly income of a farm household in Punjab according to the last NSS survey, was Rs 18,059. The average number of persons per agricultural household was 5.24. So monthly per capita income was about Rs 3,450. Lower than the lowest paid employee in the organised sector.

Watch: ‘Modi Govt’s Iron Nails Are Not Embedded on the Grounds but in Our Hearts’

Gee! Such wealth. The half was not told unto us. The corresponding figures for Haryana (farm household size 5.9 persons) was Rs 14,434 average monthly income and roughly Rs 2,450 per capita. Sure, these abysmal numbers still place them ahead of other Indian farmers. Such as those, for example, from Gujarat where the average monthly income of the agricultural household was Rs 7,926. With an average of 5.2 persons per agricultural household, that’s a monthly per capita of Rs 1,524.

The all-India average for the monthly income of an agricultural household was Rs 6,426 (about Rs 1,300 per capita). By the way – all these average monthly figures include income from all sources. Not just from cultivation, but also from livestock, non-farm business and income from wages and salaries.

This is the condition of the Indian farmer as recorded in the National Sample Survey 70th round ‘Key Indicators of Situation of Agricultural Households in India’ (2013). And remember the government has pledged to double those farmers’ incomes by 2022 – in the next 12 months. A tough task, which makes the disruptive interference of the Rihannas and the Thunbergs that much more annoying.

United Hindu Front supporters burn posters of international activists and celebrities, who supported the ongoing farmers protest against the new farm laws, at Jantar Mantar in New Delhi, Thursday, Feb. 4, 2021. Photo: PTI

Oh, those rich farmers at Delhi’s borders, who sleep in metal trolleys in temperatures of 2 degrees Celsius or less, who bathe in the open in 5-6 degrees – they’ve certainly improved my appreciation of the Indian rich. They’re a hardier lot than we thought.

Meanwhile, the Committee appointed by the Supreme Court to talk to the farmers, seems unable to talk to itself coherently – one of its four members quit before its first meeting. As for talking to the actual protestors, that has happened not at all.

On March 12, the Supreme Court-appointed committee will have exhausted its two-month mandate (about the maximum life span of insect pollinators so crucial to agriculture). The committee will by then have a long list of people they did not speak to, and a longer list of people who would not speak to them. And perhaps a short list of those they should never have spoken to.

Every attempt to bully and intimidate the protesting farmers has seen their numbers swell and grow. Every act aimed at discrediting them has gained great traction in the establishment’s captive media – but achieved the reverse on the ground. The scary thing is that this will in no way deter this government from intensifying those efforts which will get more authoritarian, physical, and brutal.

Many in the corporate media know, and many within the BJP know even better, that perhaps the most insurmountable hurdle in this dispute is personal ego. Not policy, not even that promises made to the richest corporations have to be kept (they surely will be, some day). Not the sanctity of the laws (which by the government’s own admission could do with multiple amendments). Just that the king can do no wrong. And admitting to a mistake and worse, retreating from it, is unthinkable. So, no matter if every single farmer in the country is alienated – the leader cannot be wrong, cannot lose face. I find not a single editorial in the large dailies even whispering this, though they know it is true.

How important is ego in this mess? Consider the response to a simple tweet by a rhythm and blues star on the internet shutdowns: “Why aren’t we talking about this?” But the debate around it descends to the Ministry of External Affairs leading kamikaze counter-terrorism heroics on the matter, inspiring a patriotic Celebrity Light Brigade to make its own cyber charge. (Into the Digital Valley of Doom, where tweets volleyed and thundered, undeterred by the rising gloom, rode the noble Six Hundred.)

The original offending tweet, in simply wondering why we’re not talking about this, took no explicit stand or side – unlike statements from the IMF’s chief economist and director of communications both of whom have publicly praised the farm laws (while adding ‘cautions’ about ‘safety nets’ – with all the sincerity of nicotine peddlers in the statutory warnings they stamp on their cigarette packs).

Nope, an R&B artist and an 18-year-old schoolgirl climate activist are obviously the dangerous ones here, to be dealt with firmly and uncompromisingly. It’s reassuring to know the Delhi police are on the job. And if they move beyond global conspiracy to discover an extra-terrestrial dimension to the plot – today the globe, tomorrow the galaxy – I shall not be amongst those who mock them. As one of my favourite sayings floating about the net goes: “The surest proof of the existence of extra-terrestrial intelligence, is that they’ve left us alone.”

P. Sainath is founder editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India.

Did You Think the New Laws Were Only About the Farmers?

The laws contain among the most sweeping exclusions of a citizen’s right to legal recourse in any law outside of the Emergency of 1975-77.

“No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie against the Central Government or the State Government, or any officer of the Central Government or the State Government or any other person in respect of anything which is in good faith done or intended to be done under this Act or of any rules or orders made thereunder.”

Welcome to Section 13 of The Farmers’ Produce Trade and Commerce (Promotion and Facilitation) Act, 2020 (the one aimed at gutting the APMCs).

And you thought the new laws were only about farmers? Sure, there are other laws that also exclude prosecution of civil servants for carrying out their legal duties. But this one goes way over the top. The immunity given to all those in respect of anything, acting ‘in good faith,’ whatever they do, is sweeping. Not only can they not be taken to the courts for a crime they may have committed ‘in good faith’ – they’re protected against legal action for crimes they are yet to commit (‘in good faith’ of course).

Just in case, you missed the point – that you have no legal recourse in the courts – S. 15 rubs it in.

“No civil court shall have jurisdiction to entertain any suit or proceedings in respect of any matter, the cognisance of which can be taken and disposed of by any authority empowered by or under this Act or the rules made thereunder.”

Who is the ‘any other person’ doing things ‘in good faith’ who cannot be legally challenged? Hint: try listening to the names of corporate giants that protesting farmers are chanting. This is about the ease of business – of very, very Big Business.

“No suit, prosecution or other legal proceedings shall lie….” It’s not just farmers who cannot sue. Nobody else can, either. It applies to public interest litigation too. Nor can non-profit groups, or farm unions, or any citizen (driven by faith good or bad) intervene.

These are surely among the most sweeping exclusions of a citizen’s right to legal recourse in any law outside of the Emergency of 1975-77 (when we simply suspended all fundamental rights).

Every Indian is affected. Translated into English, the legal lingo of these laws also convert the (low-level) executive into a judiciary. Into, in fact, judge, jury and executioner. It also magnifies the already most unjust imbalance of power between farmers and the giant corporations they will be dealing with.

Watch: ‘It’s Not Farmers But Modi Who’s Being Misled By Ambani-Adani’

An alarmed Delhi Bar council asks this in a letter to Prime Minister Narendra Modi: “How can any litigation having civil consequences be given for adjudication to structures involving administrative agencies, controlled and run by executive authorities?”

(Among executive authorities, read sub-divisional magistrates and additional district magistrates – all famed for their independence and bursting with good faith and good intent, as every Indian knows). The Bar Council of Delhi goes on to term the transfer of judicial powers to the executive as “dangerous and a blunder.” And notes its impact on the legal profession: “It will substantially damage district courts in particular and uproot the lawyers.”

Still think the laws are only about farmers?

More such transfer of judicial power to the executive lies in the law about contracts – The Farmers (Empowerment and Protection) Agreement on Price Assurance and Farm Services Act. 2020.

Section 18 regurgitates the “in good faith” argument. S. 19 states:

“No civil Court shall have jurisdiction to entertain any suit or proceedings in respect of any dispute which a Sub-Divisional Authority or the Appellate Authority is empowered by or under this Act to decide and no injunction shall be granted by any court or other authority in respect of any action taken or to be taken in pursuance of any power conferred by or under this Act or any rules made thereunder.”

And to think that Article 19 of the Indian Constitution is about freedom of speech and expression, peaceful assembly, freedom of movement, the right to form associations or unions….

The essence of this S. 19, of this farm law, also strikes at Article 32 of the Constitution, which guarantees a right to constitutional remedies (legal action). Section 32 is considered part of the basic structure of the constitution.

Surely the ‘mainstream’ media (a strange term for platforms whose content excludes over 70% of the population) cannot be unaware of these implications of the new farm laws for Indian democracy. But the pursuit of profit drives them far more than any notion of public interest or democracy.

Shed any delusions about the conflicts of interests (in plural) involved. These media are also corporations. The Bigg Boss of the largest Indian corporation is also the richest and biggest media owner in the country. ‘Ambani’ is one of those names the farmers at Delhi’s gates invoke in their slogans. At other, lower levels too, it has been a long time since we could actually distinguish between the Fourth Estate and Real Estate. The ‘mainstream’ media are too deeply embedded in this universe to put the interests of citizens (let alone farmers) above those of corporations.

The demonisation of the farmers in their papers and channels – rich farmers, only from Punjab, Khalistanis, hypocrites, Congressi conspirators and more – in the political reports (with some brilliant – and usual – exceptions) has been steady and relentless.

The editorials of Big Media, though, take a different tack. Crocodile compassion. Essentially, the government should have handled it better. These are after all a bunch of ill-informed yokels who cannot see, but should be made to understand, the genius of the establishment economists and the prime minister – who have made such caring laws, so important for farmers and also the larger economy. That said, they assert: these laws are important and essential and should be implemented.

Also read: Allay Fears of Farmers: Newspaper Editorials Call on Centre to Engage in Dialogue

“The fault in this whole episode,” says an editorial in the Indian Express, “lies not in the reforms, but in the way the farm laws were passed, and the government’s strategy of communication, or lack of it.” The Express is also worried that this mishandling will hurt other noble plans which, “like the three farm laws” are “reforms necessary to harvest the true potential of Indian agriculture”.

The primary task before all governments, says The Times of India in its editorial is “Undoing the misconceptions among farmers of the MSP regime’s impending demise…” After all, “The Centre’s reform package is a sincere attempt to improve private participation in the farm trade. Hopes of doubling farm incomes rest on the success of these fledgling reforms…” And reforms like these “would also correct harmful distortions in India’s food market”.

“There is sound rationale for the move [the new laws],” says an editorial in the Hindustan Times. And “Farmers will have to recognise that the reality of the laws will not change.” It too, bleats about the need for being sensitive. With the very farmers it sees as “flirting with extreme-identity issues” and aligning with extremist rhetoric and action.

The government may be grappling with questions of which gaggle of conspirators the farmers unknowingly represent, at whose behest they function. The editorial writers have far greater clarity on who they represent and are in no danger of biting the corporate claws that feed them.

Even on the best-meaning, relatively least prejudiced television channels, the questions in the discussions are always within the framework of the establishment and its captive experts and intellectuals.

Never once a serious focus on questions like: why now? And what about the labour laws also pushed through in such haste. Narendra Modi won a massive majority in the last polls. A majority he will have another 2-3 years at least. Why did the BJP government feel that the height of the pandemic was a good time to push through these laws – when a thousand other things are demanding more urgent attention?

Also read: Farmers Denied Rs 1,900 Crore Due to Sales Below MSP in Last Two Months

Well, the calculation was that this was a time when, cowed down by COVID-19, paralysed by the pandemic, the farmers and workers would not be able to organise and resist in any meaningful way. In short, this was the best time. In this they were egged on by their experts some of whom saw in the situation, ‘a second 1991 moment’, a chance to push through radical reforms, exploiting demoralisation, distress, and chaos. And by prominent editors who begged the regime to “never waste a good crisis.” And by a NITI Aayog chief who has declared himself peeved by India being too “too much of a democracy”.

And no more than passing references, superficial and insincere, on the extremely important question of the laws being unconstitutional. The Centre blasting through legislation on a state subject with no right to do so.

Not much discussion either, in the editorials, on why the farmers dismissed with such contempt the government’s offer of Death by Committee. If there is one committee report that every farmer across the country knows of and demands implementation of, it is that of the National Commission on Farmers – which they call the ‘Swaminathan Report’. The Congress and the BJP have competed in burying that report while promising to act on it.

And, oh yes, in November 2018, well over a lakh of farmers gathered near parliament in Delhi demanding implementation of key recommendations of that report. They also sought a debt waiver, guaranteed MSP, and many other demands – including a special session of parliament to discuss the agrarian crisis. In short, many of the very things the farmers now challenging the Dilli Darbar are demanding. And they were from 22 states and four union territories, not just the Punjab.

What the farmers – who refuse to accept so much as a cup of tea from the government – have done is to show us those calculations of fear and paralysis were wrong. They were and are willing to stand up for their rights (and ours) and resist these laws at great risk to themselves.

They have also said something repeatedly that the ‘mainstream’ ignore. They have been warning us of what corporate control of food will mean to the country. Seen any editorials on that lately?

More than a few of them know they are fighting for something much larger than the repeal of three laws, for themselves, or for Punjab. The repeal of those laws does no more than take us back to where we were – which was never a good place. To an awful agrarian crisis. But it would halt these new add-ons to agrarian misery or slow them down. And yes, unlike the ‘mainstream media’ they see the importance of these laws in dismantling the citizen’s right to legal recourse and in eroding our rights. And even if they may not see or articulate it that way – theirs is also a defence of the basic structure of the Constitution and of democracy itself.

P. Sainath is founder editor of the People’s Archive of Rural India.

In India, Neither Tokenism Nor Panic Can Help Counter this Unique Crisis

Most of the elements of the ‘package’ that the Union finance minister announced are sums allocated for schemes already in existence.

With his first speech on the coronavirus, prime minister Modi got us to scare evil spirits away by having people bang the hell out of their pots and pans.

With his second, he scared the hell out of all of us.

With not a word on how the public, particularly the poor, are to access food and other essentials in coming weeks, it sparked off a panic waiting to happen. The middle classes thronged the stores and markets – something not easy for the poor.

Not for migrants leaving the cities for their villages.

Not for small vendors, domestic help, agricultural labourers.

Not for farmers unable to complete the rabi harvest – or stuck with it even if they have.

Not for hundreds of millions of marginalised Indians.

The Union finance minister’s package – just announced – has this one saving grace: 5 kg of free rice for each person for three months in addition to the five already given under PDS. Even there – it is not at all clear if the earlier 5 kg will also be free or must be paid for.

If the latter, it won’t work.

Most of the elements of the ‘package’ are sums allocated for schemes already in existence. The MNREGA wage hike of Rs 20 was due anyway – and where is there any mention of an additional number of days? And how if they get down to it at once, and with what kind of work, will they maintain their social distancing norms?

What will people do in the many weeks it will take to roll out the scale of work needed? Will their health be up to it? We must pay MNREGS wages daily to every labourer and farmer for as long as the crisis lasts, work or no work.

Also read: Two Days Into Lockdown, Sitharaman Announces Rs 1.7 Lakh Crore Package to Help Poorest

The Rs. 2,000 benefit under the PM-KISAN was already there and due – what does it add? Instead of being paid in the last month of the quarter, it is advanced to the first month.

Nowhere did the finance minister give a clear break up of the Rs. 1.7 lakh crore; what are its new elements? What part of this sum is old or existing schemes re-cobbled together to make the numbers?

Those hardly qualify as emergency measures. Further, pensioners, widows, and disabled will get a one-time amount of Rs. 1,000 in two instalments over next three months? And 20 crore women with Jan Dhan Yojana accounts will get Rs 500 each for three months?

That’s worse than tokenist, it’s obscene.

How will raising loan limits for self-help groups change a situation where getting an existing loan amount is a nightmare? And how exactly will this ‘package’ help those countless migrant workers stranded far away, trying to return to their home villages?

The claim that it will help migrants is unsubstantiated. If the failure to produce a serious set of emergency measures is alarming, the attitude of the packagers is terrifying. They seem clueless on the kind of situation developing on the ground.

Lockdowns of the kind we are into – with no serious social support or planning for the vulnerable –can lead, perhaps already have led, to reverse migrations. It is impossible to get a fix on the extent or intensity of those. But reports from several states suggest that large numbers of people are heading back towards their villages as the cities and towns they work in, lockdown.

Many are using the only transportation now available – their own feet. Some are cycling home. Several find themselves stranded midway when trains, buses and vans stop functioning. It’s scary, the kind of hell that might break loose if this intensifies.

Volunteers prepare food for homeless people and daily wage earners at a shelter in Thane during the lockdown. Photo: PTI

Imagine large groups walking home, from cities in Gujarat to villages in Rajasthan; from Hyderabad to far-flung villages of Telangana and Andhra; from Delhi to places in Uttar Pradesh, even Bihar; from Mumbai to no-one-knows-how-many destinations. If they receive no succour, their rapidly diminishing access to food and water could trigger a catastrophe.

They might fall to age-old diseases like diarrhoea, cholera and other. 

Besides, the kind of situation that could build up with this mounting economic distress would see those deaths very largely amongst the working and younger populations. As professor T. Sundararaman, global coordinator of the People’s Health Movement, points out:

“The whole lockdown process as it is being rolled out is even displacing other essential health services – so, along with this economic distress, we may end up substituting deaths from other diseases for coronavirus deaths.”

“The 8% of the population in their 60s and above are most at risk from the coronavirus. The outbreak of other diseases, along with decreased access to and curtailment of other essential health services, could see working age people and the younger population taking a huge hit.”

Dr. Sundararaman, a former executive director of the National Health Systems Resources Centre, asserts there is a desperate need to:

“…identify and act on the reverse migrations problem and the loss of livelihoods. Failing that, deaths from diseases that have long tormented mostly poor Indians could outstrip those brought about by the coronavirus.” 

Particularly if reverse migration grows – with migrant workers in the cities gripped by hunger, failing to receive even their meagre wages. 

Many migrants live on their worksites. As the sites shut down, and they’re asked to leave – where will they go? Not all of them can walk gigantic distances. They have no ration cards – how will you reach food to them? 

The economic distress is already picking up speed. 

In this video grab provided on Thursday, March 26, 2020, a group of young men are made to hop on the road by policemen for violating prohibitory orders during the nationwide lockdown, in Budaun. Photo: PTI

What’s also surfacing is demonisation of migrant workers, domestic maids, slum-dwellers, and other poor by housing societies convinced that they are the problem. The truth: the carriers of COVID-19, as also of SARS earlier, are the flying classes: us. Rather than recognise that, it seems we are trying to sanitise the cities by purging them of these undesirable elements. Consider this:  if our flying carriers have passed on the infection to any of those returning migrants – what could be the outcome when they reach their villages? 

Also read: Expert Gyan: Why Centre’s Lockdown Relief Package for the Poor Is Not Enough

There have always been some migrant labourers walking back to their villages, if those were in the same or neighbouring states. The traditional way was to work at tea stalls and dhabas along the route to earn their meals – sleeping there at night. Now, with most of those shut down – what happens?

Somehow, the better off and middle classes seem convinced that if we stay at home and practise social distancing, all will be well. That, at least, we will be insulated from the virus. There is no recognition of how the economic distress will work its way back to us. For several, ‘social distancing’ resonates differently. We invented its most powerful form nearly two millennia ago – caste. Class and caste factors seem embedded in our kind of lockdown response.

It doesn’t seem to matter to us as a nation that close to a quarter of a million Indians die of tuberculosis each year. Or that diarrhoea claims up to 100,000 children’s lives annually. They aren’t us.

Panic sets in when the Beautiful People find they have no immunity to some deadly diseases. So it was with SARS.

So it was with the plague in Surat in 1994. Both were terrible diseases but killed far fewer people in India than they might have.

But they did get a lot of attention.

As I wrote at the time on Surat:

“Plague germs are notorious for their non-observance of class distinctions…. worse still, they can board aircraft and fly club class to New York.”

The idea that we’re fighting just one virus, and all will be fine once we’re on top of it – is dangerous.  Sure, we need to fight COVID-19 desperately – this could be the worst pandemic ever since 1918 and the misnamed ‘Spanish Flu.’ (India lost between 16-21 million lives to that between 1918 and 1921. In fact, the 1921 Census remains the only one ever to record a net reduction in the rural population). 

But focusing on COVID-19 to the exclusion of the larger canvas – that’s attempting to mop the floor dry with all the taps open and running. We need an approach which pushes ideas that strengthen public health systems, rights, and entitlements.

In 1978, some great minds in the field of health drew up the Declaration of Alma Ata – in  days when the WHO had not been brought to heel by western government-backed corporate interests. It was that declaration which made famous the phrase “Health for All by 2000.”

Something it believed all people of the world could attain “through a fuller and better use of the world’s resources…” 

And from the 80s, the idea of understanding the social and economic determinants of health was growing.

But another idea, too was growing. More rapidly. Neoliberalism. 

From the late ’80s and the ’90s, the idea of health, education, employment – as human rights were trashed worldwide. 

With the mid-1990s came the globalisation of communicable diseases. But instead of building universal health systems to meet this deadly challenge, many nations further privatised their health sectors. In India, it was always private dominance. We have one of the lowest health expenditures – barely 1.2% (as share of GDP) – in the world. From the 1990s, the public health system, never terribly strong, was further weakened by conscious, policy-driven measures. The present government is inviting private management takeover of district level hospitals.

Also read: The Coronavirus Fighters: Six Health Workers in the Combat Zone Speak to The Wire

Health expenditures across India today are possibly the fastest growing component of rural family debt. In June 2018, the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), analysing diverse data sets on health, concluded that 55 million people had been pushed into poverty in the single year of 2011-12, because of having to fund their own health issues – it also said 38 million of these had fallen below the poverty line due to spending on medicines alone.

One of the most striking common features among many thousands of households hit by farmers’ suicides across India is this: outrageous health expenditures, often funded by borrowing from the moneylender.

We have the largest population that is least equipped to cope with a crisis like COVID-19. And here’s the tragedy: there will be COVIDs by other names in coming years. Since the late ’90s we have seen SARS and MERS (both also from coronaviruses) and other global-spread diseases.

In India in 1994, we had the plague in Surat. All signals of what was to come, of the kind of world we’d built and entered.

As professor Dennis Carroll of the Global Virome Project recently put it: “We’ve penetrated deeper into ecozones we’ve not occupied before…”

Activities like oil and mineral extraction in areas earlier having few human populations, he says, have come at a price. Our incursion into fragile ecosystems have triggered not just changes in climate but potential health disasters as wildlife-human contact increase the potential for the spread of infection, of viruses we know little or nothing about.   

So yes, we’re going to see more of these.

As for COVID-19, there are two ways this can go. 

The virus mutates (to our advantage) and dies out in weeks.

Or: it mutates to its own advantage, worsening the trend. That happens, all hell breaks loose. 

A homeless woman cooks food at a roadside, during the complete lockdown to contain the coronavirus spread, in Chennai, Thursday, March 26, 2020. Photo: PTI

What can we do? I make the following suggestions – over and above, or alongside and in concurrence with, some of those already put forward by some of the finest minds amongst India’s activists and intellectuals. (There are also ideas that consider measures is in a larger global context of debt, privatisation and financial market failure). And accepting as inspirational, some of the measures announced by the Kerala government. 

  • The very first thing that needs doing: preparing for emergency distribution of our close to 60 million tons of ‘surplus’ foodgrain stocks. And reaching out at once to the millions of migrant workers and other poor devastated by this crisis. Declare all presently shut community spaces (schools, colleges, community halls and buildings) to be shelters for stranded migrants and the homeless.
  • The second – equally important – is to get all farmers to grow food crops in the kharif season. If the present trend persists, a terrible food situation looms. They will not be able to sell cash crops they harvest this season. Going in for more cash crops could prove fatal. A vaccine or cure for the coronavirus seems many months away. Meanwhile food stock will dwindle. 
  • Governments must help, pick up and buy big time, the produce of farmers. Many have been unable to complete the rabi harvest – social distancing and lockdowns being in force. Those who have, can’t transport or sell it anywhere. Even for food crop production in the kharif, farmers will need an ecosystem of inputs, support services and marketing assistance.
  • Government must be prepared to nationalise private medical facilities across the country. Advising hospitals to have a ‘corona corner’ – so to speak – within themselves, simply won’t cut it. Spain last week nationalised all its hospitals and healthcare providers recognising that a profit-driven system can’t meet this crisis.
  • Safai karmacharis must be immediately regularised as fulltime employees of the governments/municipalities employing them with Rs 5,000 a month added to their existing salaries, and with full medical benefits they have always been denied. And supplied protective gear that they’ve never been given. We spent three decades further devastating millions of already vulnerable sanitation workers, shutting them out of public service, outsourcing their jobs to private entities – who then re-employed the same workers on contract, at lower wages and with no benefits. 
  • Declare and rush free rations for three months to the poor.
  • Immediately regularise ASHA, anganwadi and midday meal workers – already on the frontlines of the battle – as government employees. The health and lives of India’s children are in their hands. They too must be made full employees, provided proper wages, given protective gear.
  • Give MNREGS wages daily to farmers and labourers till the crisis tides over. Urban daily wagers to get Rs 6,000 a month in the same period. 

If the virus trend persists for the next two weeks, urging farmers to grow food crops for the kharif season becomes the single most important thing to do.  

At the same time, can we be detached enough to see COVID-19 as a spectacularly revelatory moment in history?

A junction from where we decide which way to go. A moment to renew and pursue debates on inequality and health justice.

P. Sainath is founder editor of thePeople’s Archive of Rural India.