“We did not even shout slogans, but were standing silently with banners but unfortunately, police detained us,” Dreze told The Wire from a police van.
New Delhi: Delhi Police detained prominent activists including economist Jean Dreze and Communist Party of India leader Annie Raja over a silent display of solidarity with the people of Palestine at the APJ Abdul Kalam crossing in the national capital – despite the activists having informed cops of their protest.
The march, demanding an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and organised by the collective Indians for Palestine, which started from the Khan Market area, was stopped by the police as it headed towards the Israeli Embassy.
“We did not even shout slogans, but were standing silently with banners but unfortunately, police detained us,” Dreze told The Wire from a police van.
The protest was attended by social scientists and activists, who urged the Indian government to immediately end all ties with Israel – which began attacks against Palestine in retaliation to a Hamas strike on October 7. Israel’s attacks have been called “genocidal” by many.
“[The] Indian government along with some public and private sector companies’ complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza is well known. We have heard of Adani Defence and Aerospace Ltd., but there are other culprits as well – Munitions India and Premier Explosive, in addition to the government itself which has approved not just the provision of militarised cargo to Israel but also the shipment of Indian workers to Israel, a move that puts their lives at risk,” the protesters have said in a statement after having been detained.
The agitators noted that India has committed to various international laws and treaties that prevent it from supplying military weapons to countries involved in war crimes.
“Under the Genocide Convention, which India has signed and ratified, India is required to take all possible steps to prevent genocide. This means that India cannot export military equipment or weapons to Israel if there’s a serious risk that these weapons might be used to commit war crimes,” they have said, demanding that arms supply to Israel be stopped immediately, along with the end of all official ties between India and Israel for the time being.
The protesters also called for Indians to boycott companies and products that support the illegal occupation and take action in line with the BDS movement. The movement which stands for ‘Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions’ has the goal of ending international support for Israel’s oppression of Palestinians.
As per economic think-tank ICRIER, during the Modi government’s first term, growth in real rural wages for farm and non-farm sectors declined to 3% and 3.3% respectively. However, during the Modi government’s second term, the situation worsened as growth turned negative: -0.6% for farm wages and -1.4% for non-farm wages.
Nunera, Haryana: Vir Singh, who is about 55 years old, was born in the agricultural village of Nunera in Haryana’s Gurugram district, where he has lived and worked as a daily wage worker all his life.
Economic liberalisation in 1991, the economic boom in the 2000s, the making of Gurugram into a technology and financial hub — Singh has witnessed India’s economic transformation for more than three decades. But unlike the tens of millions of workers who left rural India to migrate to its growing cities in search of better economic opportunities, Singh never left Nunera.
Instead, he waited for years for the ‘Kuznets inverted U-curve’ to take effect. In the 1950s, American economist Simon Kuznets proposed a now-famous hypothesis according to which, as the size of an economy grows and it transforms from an agrarian to an industrial economy, income inequality first rises and then falls.
In April 2024, Ashima Goyal, a member of the Reserve Bank of India’s Monetary Policy Committee, told the Press Trust of India (PTI) that inequality has risen in India but “the famous ‘Kuznets inverted U-curve’ tells us that this is normal in a period of high growth and should come down over time”.
Nunera is only about 45 km from Gurugram, but over the years economic change has been minimal except for a finely paved two-lane road that cuts through the village, and the dozens of farmhouses that real estate builders have propped up as weekend getaways for the city-rich.
One afternoon, as warm winds lifted and blew sand, Singh was working a pool of concrete mixture to build dozens of five-foot pillars at a construction site, where he had showed up at 6 am. He would work late into the night. “For Rs 500,” Singh said, noting that during good months, he gets work for 12-15 days.
On most days, he wonders about dehadi — daily wage rate — like people wonder about the weather before leaving the house. “There is only work in the farms or at small construction sites,” Singh said. “In the farms we get Rs 300-350 per day. Here it is Rs 500. In the last four years, wages have barely increased by Rs 30-40. I have stopped asking for higher wages. Nobody here will pay more. If I won’t work, then somebody else will.”
Singh had held hope that things would become better in Nunera for his family of four — a hope founded on the economic transformation of Gurugram, the evidence for which was visible to him in the expensive sedans driving past the village, in the tales of wealth and prosperity that he had heard from returning migrant workers.
All he wanted, he said, was higher wages, but that hope has now morphed into disillusionment. Today, high inflation and his wife’s health expenses have dented his financial position, and he is in debt of Rs 25,000.
“I am seething with anger,” he said. After a long silence, Singh suddenly enquired about the time of the day. It was 11.15 am. “I get hungry by 11 am but I am still working,” he said, as he drummed his fingers on his stomach.
Growth, but for whom?
In the last three months of 2023, gross domestic product increased by 8.4% with India retaining the crown for the fastest growing major economy. And its stock market has outperformed most Asian peers. There are knock-on effects: last year, Bloomberg reported that India has emerged as a “new luxury spending hotspot”.
However, there has emerged a cavernous gap between the performance of its financial market and formal economy and the more than 170 million households in the country’s rural areas, where about 65% of the population lives.
For the last 10 years, real rural wage growth — which economist Jean Drèze has called one of the most important and neglected macroeconomic indicators in India today — has remained stagnant. Real wages are incomes after adjusting for the effect of inflation. And if real incomes do not grow, people do not possess the purchasing power to buy more goods and services, thereby affecting both demand and general wellbeing of people in an economy.
According to an analysis of government data by the Indian Council for Research on International Economic Relations (ICRIER), an economic think-tank, during the Narendra Modi government’s first term, growth in real rural wages for farm and non-farm sectors declined to 3% and 3.3% respectively from about 8.6% and 6% between 2009-10 and 2013-14. However, during the Modi government’s second term, the situation worsened as growth turned negative: -0.6% for farm wages and -1.4% for non-farm wages.
“There has been little research on the recent stagnation of wages, because few people paid attention to this until last year,” Drèze, visiting professor at the Department of Economics at Ranchi University, told IndiaSpend. “India has had a problem of sluggish growth of rural wages for a long time — most of the last 35 years. But today, this stagnation is happening in spite of fairly rapid economic growth.
“One reason for this long-standing tendency is that India has a huge reserve army of workers who have poor educational qualifications and lack marketable skills, even if they have plenty of other skills. This holds wages down.”
Plans versus reality
On May 8, Reutersreported that Prime Minister Modi has drawn up plans to increase rural per capita income by 50% by 2030, even as he is contending for a third term in India’s ongoing general elections.
To increase non-farm jobs in rural India, Modi is planning to boost investments in small scale industries, according to Reuters. Previously, on February 28, 2016, while addressing a large gathering of farmers in Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh, Modi declared that he would double farmers’ incomes by 2022, when the country would celebrate its 75th year of Independence. The crowd cheered.
However, government data found that even as average monthly incomes for a household of five people increased from Rs 6,426 in 2012-13 to about Rs 10,200 in 2018-19, agricultural households remain under considerable financial distress, with about 50% in debt and the average outstanding loan rising 59%, as IndiaSpend reported in September 2021.
About 82 million households — comprising 410 million people — cultivated crops on land of size less than or equal to 2 hectares, according to government data. In this cohort, which forms 88% of all agricultural households in the country, about 38.7 million households are in debt with average outstanding loan amounts of Rs 33,220, Rs 51,933, and Rs 94,498 for farmers with landholdings between 0.01-0.40 hectare, 0.41-1.00 hectare and 1.01-2.00 hectare respectively.
Economists say that India’s rural economy is a function of how well the agricultural sector performs, with rising farm incomes leading to a knock-on effect on rural consumption, farm and non-farm wages, and even wages in sectors such as manufacturing and construction.
Drèze refers to the years between 2007 and 2013 as an anomaly in the long trend in rural wages. “[Rural wages] were growing at about 5-6% per year in real terms. This was unprecedented for India. Quite likely, this spurt had something to do with the tightening of labour markets that followed the deployment of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act. Now, we are back to the old pattern of near stagnation of real wages, in a more severe form because it went on for 10 years even as the economy grew at a fast rate,” Dreze said.
Himanshu, an associate professor of economics at Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi who goes by just the one name, told IndiaSpend that there were a variety of factors that propelled rural wages between 2007 and 2013, when the United Progressive Alliance was in power. Apart from the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA), agricultural productivity, higher minimum support prices (MSPs) for crops, construction sector growth and urbanisation pushed rural wages high.
However today, according to Himanshu, none of these factors are working. “Whichever way you look at it, growth [in real rural wages] has slowed down. There is a palpable distress that is visible in the rural areas. Companies have noted that there is hardly any volume growth for their products. More than anything, it is a case of demand slump in the last 10 years when compared to the previous period.
“The demand from non-farm sectors such as manufacturing and construction has also slowed down and people are moving back to agriculture. Agricultural prices — in terms of MSPs — have not moved as fast as non-agricultural prices. Terms of trade have shifted against agriculture. And this has driven wages down,” Himanshu said, noting that even as the construction sector is rife with investments, there is hardly any positive movement in rural wages.
In 2021, Modi said that India would invest about $1.4 trillion — or about Rs 100 trillion — to build ports, roads, waterways and economic zones, which would also create millions of jobs. Knight Frank, a real estate consultancy, in a report in 2023 said that India’s booming housing market in its top eight cities would propel the construction sector to contribute about one-fifth to the economy by 2030, thereby employing 100 million workers, about 80% of them semi-skilled.
Between May 2019 and May 2024, the Nifty Realty index —a benchmark index for the real estate sector, comprising of 10 stocks from the National Stock Exchange — went up by more than 280%. In contrast, the average daily real rural wages of construction sector workers between 2018 and 2023 increased from Rs 182.44 to Rs 205.80 for male workers and from Rs 136.95 to Rs 157.95 for female workers. Between 2021-22 and 2022-23 the growth of real wages for the same cohort registered negative growth of -0.1% and -3% respectively, according to an analysis of data published by the Labour Bureau by Arindam Das and Yoshifumi Usami.
“The first thing a rural person does when their incomes go up is to convert their kaccha houses to pucca houses, which is what happened between 2007 and 2012,” Himanshu said. “There was a multiplier effect. And it was reflected in demand for construction labour. Where workers in construction are employed is not in major infrastructure projects, because the labour intensity of these projects is low. The contribution to GDP growth from infrastructure investments that we are [currently] seeing is very capital-intensive rather than being labour-intensive.”
Pronab Sen, economist and former chief statistician of India, told IndiaSpend that labour-intensive projects such as rural housing and road construction positively affect rural wages owing to higher labour intensity.
“In rural India, agriculture is no longer the driver of economic activities. And alternative occupations are simply not growing fast enough,” Sen said. “So you have a surplus of labour.”
Demonetisation and other systemic shocks
Economists look at a variety of proxies, such as two-wheeler sales, to gauge the performance of the rural economy. In fiscal year 2018, about 20.2 million two-wheelers were sold, which declined to 15.8 million in the fiscal year 2023. At the same time, sport-utility vehicles (SUVs) made up more than half of India’s record 4 million car sales in fiscal year 2023, Reutersreported.
Jayati Ghosh, a professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, said that economic shocks such as demonetisation and the Covid-19 pandemic badly affected India’s huge informal sector and the millions of workers who work in it.
“All of this impacted real wages,” Ghosh told IndiaSpend. “When real wages are down, real consumption is down. And we saw this in the [now] junked household consumption survey of 2017-18. Rural consumption was lower than it was in 2011-12–which is incredible, if you think about it. This represents the vicious cycle that the economy is now in. Stagnating wages mean low demand, which means that small enterprises who employ the bulk of the workforce do not get demand for their products. And this translates into low wages.
“Even for urban real wages, the average is going up but the median is not. Which means that half of the workers are not getting better wages even in urban areas,” Ghosh said.
Himanshu and Ghosh both argue that India’s high GDP growth is not reflected in the state of the rural economy, and the effect of this would be a hit to domestic demand as time wears on. “India is an economy which is driven by demand,” Himanshu said. “We are not an export-driven economy such as China or Vietnam. So if domestic demand is not picking up, then you are likely to have problems. For instance, take the issues with inventory build-up in the automobile sector. One of the reasons for sluggish private investment is lack of domestic demand: If companies are not able to sell, then they are not willing to invest.”
According to Drèze, this is beginning to show. “The growth of average consumer expenditure has been quite low in the last 10 years or so,” Dreze pointed out. “According to the latest data released by the National Sample Survey Office, consumer expenditure grew by just 2-3% in real terms between 2011-12 and 2022-23, compared with 5-6% between 2004-05 and 2011-12. This also suggests that official estimates of GDP growth in recent years may be exaggerated.”
Welfare spending a mirage?
After coming to power in 2014, Modi’s government prioritised expanding spending on welfare and, according to the government, it has spent about $400 billion in the 10 years on welfare provisions such as toilets, cooking gas, free food grains, piped water, electricity and a variety of cash transfer schemes, a trend that former chief economic advisor Arvind Subramanian has called ‘New Welfarism’ — a unique approach toward welfare where provision of essential goods take precedence over provision of public services such as health and education. Surveys have found a correlation between welfare spending and voting preference.
Drèze contradicts this claim. “There was a substitution from [schemes such as MGNREGA and old age pension scheme] to other schemes, focused for instance on house amenities. During the Covid-19 crisis, some of the social security schemes had to be revamped again in a big way, but this did not last long. Overall, central expenditure on welfare schemes is much the same today as it was 10 years ago, as a proportion of GDP,” Drèze said, noting that MGNREGA wages have held constant in real terms for 15 years — from 2009 onwards, wages were raised every year only in line with the price level. “This is a very long time.”
“I do not think that there is a New Welfarism,” Ghosh said. “[Consider] free food grains, for instance. Earlier, the poor were getting it at Rs 2 per kg. Now the government is providing 5 kg of grains for free but the price of the rest of [food items] has gone up. There is not much change in their net purchase. Frankly the difference between zero and two rupees is not that much.”
Ghosh refers to a statistic in the latest household consumption survey released by the government: The difference between average monthly per capita expenditure before and after government welfare transfers for rural India is only Rs 87. “The difference is marginal,” Ghosh points out. “I don’t agree that there is a huge increase in welfare spending. This is indicative of the fact that the welfare schemes are not that big on expenditure.”
According to an analysis by the Financial Times, between 2014 and 2022, India’s GDP grew at an average of 5.6% in compound annual growth rate terms while an average of 14 other large developing economies grew by 3.8% over the same period. Factoring in global economic historical trends, Drèze and Ghosh found it difficult to find a similar trend globally, where on a line graph economic growth and rural wages moved in opposite directions.
Drèze said that it would be a surprise if there were another example of a country growing so fast for 10 years with hardly any increase in real rural wages. “This is very, very rare,” Ghosh said.
Sushma, a farm worker in Chuharpur, in Haryana, who goes by one name, has been questioning this trend too, even if she cannot do so in macroeconomic jargon. Briskly walking through a large field of bottle gourd plants, picking and collecting the harvest in a basket perched on her head, she lamented the Rs 250 that she has been receiving for the last four years in return for about eight hours of work.
“Milk, vegetables, cooking oil, atta [flour], bijli [electricity]. All the prices have gone up,” she told IndiaSpend. In March 2024, vegetable inflation in India was at 28.3%; in February, it was 30.2%. Since November 2023, food inflation — including cereals, vegetables, spices, cooking oil, milk, eggs, meat — has been increasing by more than 8%.
“We don’t want to work so hard only to feed our families,” Sushma said, as she lobbed bottle gourds from the basket onto the floor of a makeshift storage room at the edge of the field.
“I want to save money for my two children’s future. I don’t know what to do. I can only pray that our situation will become better. I can’t leave my children behind to work in a big city.”
This story was first published on IndiaSpend, a data-driven, public-interest journalism non-profit.
Real wages for agricultural labour have stagnated since 2014. They had grown by 5-6% annually in the decade before Modi came to power. The spending on ICDS and mid-day meals too fell by 40%.
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New Delhi: Stagnating real wages, a decaying social security system and lack of concern for informal workers mark the Modi government’s 10-year tenure according to data collated by economists Jean Drèze and Reetika Khera.
While presenting their findings last week at a press conference organised by Loktantra Bachao 2024, the economists said that “real wages in the country had barely risen since 2014” across agricultural, non-agricultural and construction sectors.
From 2014-2024, real wages (wages that have been adjusted for inflation) for agricultural labourers declined by 1.3% every year according to data from the Ministry of Agriculture. This is in stark contrast to the increase of real wages by 6.8% each year under the Manmohan Singh-led government from 2004-2014.
“Real wages were growing very fast in the 10 years before Modiji came to power. It was nearly 5-6% a year, which is quite remarkable. It was the fastest growth of real wages in post-Independence India and now it is virtually zero,” Drèze said.
Photo:X/@JharkhandJanad1
The stagnation and decline in wages is not restricted to agricultural labour. Brick kiln workers across Rajasthan and Gujarat too haven’t seen any real growth in their wages, hounded by inflation and lack of other employment opportunities. Brick kilns are seen as labour intensive and a last resort to gain employment for India’s poorest.
Photo: By arrangement
According to PLFS data (2017-22) quoted by the economists, real wages have been stagnant for the salaried class and the self-employed as well.
Photo: By arrangement
Welfare spending and social security
Khera and Drèze said that the carefully constructed reputation of the Modi government as a big welfare spender doesn’t stand up to scrutiny.
In 2014, five flagship schemes were laying the foundation for a solid social security system in the country. These were: the public distribution system (PDS), the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA), maternity benefits, social security pensions, child nutrition schemes under integrated child development services (ICDS) and the midday-meal programme.
“All five have been undermined in one way or another by the NDA,” the economists said. It must be noted that barring pensions, all other schemes are part of legal entitlements to Indian citizens, derived through legislation or court orders, and not a gesture of generosity by any government.
Child development services
The budget allocation for ICDS and midday meals declined by 40% in real terms in the last 10 years. While earlier there was a larger umbrella of services under ICDS, the NDA government in 2021 introduced two new terms – Saksham and Samarthya – to club different schemes.
The budget allocation for Anganwadi services in 2020 was Rs 20,532 crore. In 2021, the allocation for Saksham, which along with Anganwadi included the National Nutrition Mission, was Rs 20,105 crore. This meant a loss of Rs 400 crore for a programme which now clubbed three other schemes along with Anganwadi.
Photo: By arrangement
PDS
Nearly 10 crore people have been left out of PDS due to a lack of updated figures and the Modi government’s failure to conduct the 2021 census.
Illustration: Pariplab Chakraborty. Photo: Intifada P. Basheer and Azam Abbas
“It is unfortunate that we are still stuck on the 80 crore figure from the last census because the 2021 census was never conducted – a first in Indian history. According to our laws, the National Food Security Act, 50% from urban and 75% population from rural areas must be covered under PDS. This is how the government arrived at the 80 crore figure back then. If the census were to be conducted today, nearly 10 crore people would get added as beneficiaries of PDS,” Khera said.
Apart from this, “maternity benefits have been illegally restricted to one child per family; the central contribution to social security pensions under National Social Assistance Programme (NSAP) has stagnated at a measly Rs 200 per month; NREGA wages have stagnated in real terms and are rarely paid on time,” the two pointed out.
Renaming of schemes and exaggerated results
Khera and Drèze said that while the NDA government has, to some extent, compensated for this decline by taking up schemes with focus on building toilets, improving LPG access and housing, their success is much smaller than that what the government claims.
For instance, the NDA government declared India “open defecation free” in 2019, but NFHS-5 data for 2019-21 reveal that about 20% of all households had no toilet facility.
The Modi government is also guilty of renaming schemes launched by the UPA government and glorifying them with PR and marketing campaigns.
PM Awas Yojayana was Indira Awas Yojana
Swachh Bharat Mission came from the Nirmal Bharat Mission
ICDS and Midday meal were clubbed under PM POSHAN
Rajiv Gandhi Drinking Water scheme became Jal Jeevan Mission and,
PDS was rechristened as Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana
“The teachers are not there, the quality of education is poor, infrastructure is dismal, the midday meal is of poor quality, and the DBT for textbooks and uniforms is a failure,” he said, while releasing a survey report.
New Delhi: Economist Jean Dreze said on Friday, August 4 that only 20% of students were attending classes at government primary and upper primary schools in Bihar, the Telegraph reported.
“The teachers are not there, the quality of education is poor, infrastructure is dismal, the midday meal is of poor quality, and the direct benefit transfer for textbooks and uniforms is a failure,” he said.
He said this while releasing a survey report, “Where are the kids? The curious case of government schools in Bihar”, conducted by the Jan Jagran Shakti Sangathan (JJSS).
Dreze, along with JJSS secretary Ashish Ranjan, guided the survey, the newspaper reported.
Earlier this year, an assessment was carried out in Bihar’s Araria and Katihar districts to evaluate the condition of the schooling system, after the COVID-19 crisis. The study encompassed 81 randomly selected primary and upper-primary schools in the region.
“Only around 20% of the enrolled students were present in the schools on the day the survey was conducted. This is perhaps the lowest in the world. It is a very big crisis. This is not just limited to Araria and Katihar, but is true for the entire Bihar,” Dreze told the Telegraph.
“Some of the possible reasons could be — no teaching happening in the schools, the closure of schools for two years because of Covid-19 could have destroyed the school-going habit of the children, private tuitions, fake enrolment of students, and the strange and inappropriate system of direct benefit transfer (DBT) for books and school uniform that leaves the poor with a cruel choice between basic needs and education,” Dreze added.
According to the survey, approximately two-thirds of the primary schools (classes I to V) and nearly all upper primary schools (classes VI to VIII) in the region had a pupil-teacher ratio exceeding the maximum permissible limit of 30, as stipulated by the Right to Education (RTE) Act.
Furthermore, the survey revealed that teachers frequently exaggerated student attendance figures.
It was observed that around 90% of the schools lacked proper boundary walls, playgrounds, and libraries. Shockingly, approximately 9% of the schools sampled did not even have a proper building.
In addition, the survey found that the Direct Benefit Transfer (DBT) system for providing textbooks and uniforms was a failure. Many students in the schools lacked essential materials because they either did not receive the allocated funds from the government or the funds were used for other purposes.
Educationist D.M. Diwakar argued against the DBT system, suggesting that textbooks should be directly distributed to students instead of providing monetary assistance.
He pointed out that the state government had given textbook printing and supply contracts to individuals affiliated with political parties. “If the government cannot supply, how can small players supply textbooks?…,” Diwakar told the daily.
According to the survey, government schools seem to be in danger of mass displacement by private coaching centres.
At an event at Delhi University on March 24, students and activists were detained by the police for several hours.
New Delhi: For the past 30 days, Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) workers have been protesting in New Delhi against the perceived onslaught on the Act.
Their demands to revoke the app-based attendance system, Aadhar-based payment system (ABPS), increase in the NREGA budget, timely payment of wages and release of pending wages are on top of the list. Despite a month- long protest, however, there is no word from the government yet. Meanwhile, when the protestors tried to engage with students at the Arts Faculty, Delhi University, students and activists were detained for several hours on March 24.
Delhi police abruptly stopped Jean Dreze, Richa Singh, Com. Somnath and students at Delhi University while conducting a program at DU Arts Faculty on the ongoing attack on NREGA by the central government. pic.twitter.com/7z84lHznT7
NREGA Sangharsh Morcha, the parent organisation organising the protest, in a press statement issued following the event has stated that at an event organised by a student organisation called Collective, economist Jean Dreze, Richa Singh of Sangatin Kisan Mazdoor Sangathan, Uttar Pradesh and Somnath of Jan Sangharsh Manch, Haryana were slated to speak. “The event had just begun when it was abruptly stopped by the police and the organisers, speakers and other students were taken to the Maurice Nagar police station,” the statement says. Somnath, two students from the DU and a foreign student were detained by the police for over three hours, the organisation has claimed.
The NREGA workers’ protest at Jantar Mantar. Photo: NREGA Sangharsh Morcha
Organising a demonstration at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest space in New Delhi, has not been easy, says Rajshekhar of the NREGA Sangharsh Morcha. Just a day before the police detention, the protesting workers were removed from Jantar Mantar despite having obtained prior permission to organise a protest. The workers were asked to vacate the protest site or be removed by force by police personnel in order to make way for an event organised by the Aam Aadmi Party.
The day before that as well, the workers’ right to protest was disrupted by a rally organised by BJP workers who took over most of the protest site while all other demonstrations were pushed to the sidelines, the organisation has stated in the press statement. “The protestors were unable to procure mics and even had to bring their own carpets as they were made to settle down in a tiny space beyond the police barricades,” the statement reads.
Over the past one month, the workers delegations have made attempts to meet officials of the Ministry of Rural Development (MoRD) to present their grievances. But, they say, they were “repeatedly turned away”. Union minister (MoRD) Giriraj Singh also denied having received any NREGA-related complaints in Parliament, they allege. The meeting on March 21 between a workers’ delegation from Jharkhand and MoRD secretary Shailesh Kumar Singh and joint secretary Amit Kataria ended without any concrete discussion and the organisation says the officials were “non-committal about the issues presented to them”.
Additionally, workers from West Bengal whose wages are pending since December 2021 and have not been given any NREGA work through FY 22-23, have also filed complaints with the National Human Rights Commission, the statement claims.
Indra Shekhar Singh hosts a discussion with economist Jean Dreze and former agriculture secretary Siraj Hussain to discuss the consequences of PMGKAY’s discontinuation and providing free food under the National Food Security Act.
The Union cabinet recently announced the discontinuation of the Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Anna Yojana (PMGKAY), under which free rations were provided to the poor as relief during the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead, it said that the foodgrains provided under the National Food Security Act (NFSA) at a subsidised rate to 75% of the rural population and 50% of urban population would be free for all of 2023. Apart from subsidised rations, the Act also provides for free-of-cost rations to pregnant women, growing children, and other such vulnerable groups. To discuss the consequences of this decision, Indra Shekhar Singh hosted a disucssion for The Wire with economist Jean Dreze and former agriculture secretary Siraj Hussain in a video interview that was published on December 30, 2022. They discuss the reduction in spending on social security, whether foodgrains should be provided for free under the NFSA and maintianing food security for citizens. The following is a transcript of the video, edited lightly for syntax, clarity and style.
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Jean, could you please explain to us what is the NFSA and what was the real intention behind it?
Jean Dreze (JD): So I think that the basic idea was, first of all, to end hunger and to provide minimum economic security and food security to everyone. There are huge numbers of people In India, I would say a majority of the population, who lives in very precarious conditions. We are poor to start with and they are exposed to all kinds of contingencies – sometimes it is illness, crop failure, and unemployment. Now we have new contingencies like COVID-19, climate change, and so on. So they are very insecure and the idea is to bring a minimum of economic security to their lives with these food rations – which are not very much of course, five kilos per person per month. It’s not much at all but it does ensure that there is food in the house at all times, and I think that really is important for poor people.
We should remember, however, that the Food Security Act is not just about the Public Distribution System (PDS). There are also very important provisions related to child nutrition. The provision for school meals, and also mid-day meals, under the Integrated Child Development Services. And very importantly – I think this is the most important provision of the Act – universal maternity entitlements.
Unfortunately, the provisions for maternity entitlements has been sidelined. In fact, it’s been violated by the Central government for the last 10 years, but to my mind, it’s a very important provision. Very few countries – certainly in the developing world – have universal maternity entitlements. Again it’s not very much – Rs 6000 per child is really too little – but the principle is very important. And the entitlements can be and should be expanded over time. I think that was the basic idea of the Act.
I’d like to now move to Siraj Hussain. Sir, what do you think is the real shift here? Moving from PMGKAY, which provided free food grains, now we move to a point, and that too for one year only,where people can get highly subsidised rations. Do you think that the Indian administration system and the Indian food reserves can take care of this? Are we equipped enough, strong enough, to take this burden upon our economy and upon our farmers?
Siraj Hussain (SH): Actually Indra, there is no additional burden. In fact, as far as the government is concerned, it is reducing its commitment to provide food grains because before the PMGKAY was introduced, under the National Food Security Act, the beneficiaries were only getting 5 kilograms of food grains per person, per month. Then PMGKAY gave them five kilograms of additional food grains free of cost. So now that additional food grains have been withdrawn, which means that the government’s overall commitment to provide the quantum of food grains will now be lower.
But here, I think, this is a question to both of you..
JD: So, I think what Siraj has said is correct. So basically, there are two things happening at the same time, and it’s not an accident that they have been packaged together. One is the discontinuation of PMGKAY. So the discontinuation of additional food rations that have been provided over the last two years, and the other move is the reduction of issue prices under the NFSA, from Rs 3 per kilo for rice and Rs 2 per kilo for wheat to zero. Now the reduction of prices is neither here nor there. It’s not going to help people very much. I mean, think of the person who used to pay Rs 2 for five kilos a week per month. So they were paying Rs 10 a month. Now they are going to save Rs 10 because they’re going to get it for free. So, Rs 10 a month of subsidy is not going to make a difference to anybody, nor is this going to cost the Central government very much. But what it’s going to do is sweeten the pill of the other move, which is the really big move, and that is the discontinuation of the extra free rations. Now I don’t think that the PMGKAY was sustainable as it was, because we don’t have the food stocks required for that.
Let me clear this up, because it’s important to understand the artithmetic a little bit. The NFSA requires something like 60 million tons of food grain per year – that’s the procurement level around 2013, when the Act came into force. But the procurement levels have increased by leaps and bounds in the meantime, to 70 million tons per year, 80 million tons per and 90 million tons per year, and in the last two years (2020 and 2021), for the first time more than 100 million tons per year. And that’s why the food stocks have been ballooning, despite 60 million tons being offloaded every year under the NFSA.
Now the PMGKAY has solved that imbalance – or you can say it has temporarily resolved that imbalance – in the last two years by hugely increasing the distribution. The distribution was virtually double, more than 100 million tons, and therefore the stocks have been coming down. But now, PDS with PMGKAY is more than what we are procuring. So if you continue, the stocks are going to start melting much below the buffer stock norm. So in that sense, it was not sustainable. But if you discontinue it, I feel that what you are saving from discontinuing it, which is a lot of money – Rs 1.5 lakh crore per year roughly – that should be reinvested in social security measures like giving ration cards to people who don’t have them, investing in health, in school education and pensions and maternity entitlements, including very importantly, proper implementation of the NFSA, because the Modi government has been savagely cutting the budget for mid-day meals and ICDS in the last eight years and as I mentioned earlier, violating the provisions for maternity entitlements. So that money could have been very well used by being reinvested in social security and I’m afraid that may not happen. We will get to know in the next budget, but I fear that it will not happen. In which case, what is happening now is a great reduction of social support which is being sweetened by reducing the issue price to zero under the NFSA.
Hussain sahab, you’ve written articles against this move. Could you tell us what are some of your disagreements with this policy decision?
SH: Actually, what I have written is that the move to make it totally free is not desirable because the government has declared that these free food grains will be available until December 2023. It means that in the run-up to parliament elections, which are due in May 2024, it is very unlikely that the government will start charging anything for the central issue price, which means it is going to continue at least till May 2024 and even after that, it is very unlikely that it will continue.
In the process, the central government is taking an additional burden of about 15,000 crores. I agree with Mr Jean Dreze that there is a need to increase the budgetary allocation for several welfare schemes. I have myself written several articles with Mr Jugal Mahapatra, who was secretary, rural development, for increasing the old age pension, widow pension. You know there are additional amounts. Many state governments like Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have added to that out of their own budget, but the poor poorer states of India – northern India, eastern India – have not done that much.
In addition to that social welfare scheme, I would have recommended the government that there is a need to invest more in agricultural research, so that we can develop climate-resistant technologies. Mr. Dreze works in Jharkhand, he knows very well that from time to time, there are droughts. For example, this year itself there is a drought, then there are floods in Bihar. So there is a need to develop technologies for both paddy, wheat, and other crops so that we are able to produce enough to feed our large population.
This is a question to both you, whoever wants to answer. Now, the Act allows for 75% of the rural population to be covered under the scheme and 50% of urban residents. Now how many people do you think will actually be taking the benefit of this scheme? Can there be any guesses at all?
JD: Let me stress once again, that the reduction of issue price to zero from virtually zero – because you know two rupees per kg for wheat is virtually zero – that’s not of any consequence. The big move is not that. The big move is the discontinuation of PMGKAY and that’s where I think there’s objectionable going on. The reduction of price, as I said, it’s partly sweetening the pill and also very importantly, it’s a very clever political move to steal the show, and steal the credit of the NFSA, because what is going to happen now, is that people are going to get the impression – and the impression will be created – that they are getting free food from Modi or from the Modi government, when actually they are getting it from the NFSA and the Modi government is just adding a tiny extra subsidy. So, I think what we need to focus on is the reduction of food rations under the PMGKAY and how that money should be reinvested.
Now, you ask the question about coverage. The coverage is built into the Act. It’s 75% of the rural population, and 50% of the urban population. Personally, I feel this is quite reasonable. In fact, if anything, I would say it is on the low side. We must also remember that the actual coverage now is much lower, because the population has increased and the coverage has not been adjusted accordingly because the government didn’t conduct the 2021 census. So the actual coverage now is below 60% and that’s another way in which I feel that the present government is undermining the NFSA. So the money that’s being saved by discontinuing PMGKAY, I think should at least partly be used to provide ration cards to some people who don’t have them – we must remember that many poor people don’t have a ration card. For example in Jharkhand, where I live, as Siraj Hussain mentioned, there’s a big problem of young couples not having ration cards because they got married after 2011, when the Socio-Economic and Caste Census was conducted and that is the basis of the distribution of ration cards in Jharkhand. So those who married after that, for them it’s very hard to get a ration card. So why not give them a ration card, now that you’re saving all this money? I think that will be much better than, you know… agricultural research, I don’t dispute it’s important, of course, it’s important. But I think the budget for health, education and social security in India is far too low, and what you’re saving from it now, should be reinvested within that sector.
Mr Hussain, a question for you. It’s already been mentioned that the Indian stock food reserves are at their lowest and we did not have a good paddy harvest and neither wheat. Now, if again, we see a repeat of that in 2023, will this scheme burden the food economy further? Schemes like this, will they push India toward food inflation?
SH: If, God forbid, the wheat crop is again impacted by high temperatures in February and March – as it did last year, then it is quite possible that the procurement level will not be adequate to meet the requirement of NFSA. So I’m hoping that the winter will be good and the temperature will be low enough, about 15°C, so that the wheat crop matures well. As I said, if there is a shortfall, then it may be difficult for the government to procure.
So, what that will entail is very unpleasant. That will attract and persuade the government to bring measures which will force the farmers to sell to the government at MSP – which means that the government will do everything to bring down the market prices so that it is able to procure from the farmers at MSP. So that will harm the farmers’ interest. There are many number of other consequences, I am not going into the details, and therefore we are all hoping, praying, doing everything in our power to ensure that there is good rabi crop, and the rice procurement in the current season is also good.
You see the government has done its bit. Many people have not liked it but I supported the government’s move of banning the export of wheat and then restricting the export of rice by imposing 20% duty on non-basmati rice. These were all measures to ensure food security for Indian citizens, a move which would have harmed the farmers’ interest to some extent, but they were necessary to ensure food security for a large population of India.
Now, where I slightly differ from Mr Jean Dreze is the number of people who are covered. You know, many experts have argued in different reports – for example, the Shanta committee report – that the public should be reduced to 40%. But in the absence of a consumption expenditure survey, we do not know where the poverty are going. Even though Dr. Sujeet Bhalla and Ashok Virmani have said that poverty is down to 1%. The World Bank paper says that poverty is down to 10%. So there should be, from the government side, an informed view as to what is the level of poverty. So if it is possible to bring down the coverage, the government is able to do that.
JD: Can I differ on this?
Sure, please go ahead.
JD: You know, the NFSA is not just for people who are below the poverty line set by the Indian government’s abysmal criterion. That’s why I began by stressing that it’s about protecting people from insecurity. Because there are people above the poverty line who are nevertheless, at risk of poverty. And we need to protect those people as well. Let us not forget that when the Act began in 2013, now let us think of the 75% coverage in rural areas, what does it mean? It means, or it meant at that time – roughly – households that did not earn more than Rs 6000 a month. Now, are you saying that anyone who earns more than Rs 6000 a month – maybe today it would mean Rs 10,000 a month – doesn’t deserve any kind of social support? I cannot agree with that. I think that, you know, we have to cover a broad range of the population well above the poverty line, also bearing in mind that there are big exclusion errors, and we have to take those into account. I think taking all that into account, a coverage of 75% rural areas, frankly, I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all. The priority today should not be to reduce it but to implement it because as I said the actual coverage is at 60%.
An employee inspects a godown of Food Corporation of India (FCI) where rice bags are being stored in Srinagar, April 14, 2020. Photo: PTI /S. Irfan
Now, I’ll move to my last question and I’ll allow both of you to answer that. This one deals with economics. On one hand, India is telling the world that we want to be the world leaders, we will have a $5 trillion economy. And here we have, a necessity to feed 75% of our rural population – which is mainly producing the food – with subsidised rations. What does that say about our economy, our internal strengths, that people in our economy can’t even earn enough money to get themselves nutritious food, and the government has to provide for it?
JD: Well I don’t have a lot [unclear] that India is a world leader, it doesn’t correspond to anything and it’s just a delusion of the Indian elite. The facts are in front of us. India is still a very poor country in per capita terms. It may have a large GDP because the population is so large but in per capita terms, it’s still one of the poorest countries in the world. In terms of nutrition, it is among the very worst off countries in the world. So I don’t think there’s any doubt that India is a poor country where there’s a great need to provide some security to poor people and to help them in the terrible situation in which they are.
As an economist, and strictly, as an economist, if you’re thinking and reflecting on the stats – certain people in India, are going debt free, the GDP is booming, the stock market’s booming. And here, you have a vast majority of Indians who need rations from the government and subsidised rations from the government. There is an active need for that.
JD: It doesn’t tell me anything that I have not known for the last 40 years. I mean we have known the facts all this time. We know that there are huge numbers of poor people. We know that there’s huge insecurity. We know that under-nutrition levels are among the highest in the world in India and we also know that measures like the NFSA, mid-day meals, maternity entitlements, pensions, school education, and healthcare – all these things can do a great deal of good to help them. So I think that for me this is nothing new in the picture that you described.
SH: This GDP growth – of course, we are a very fast-growing economy compared to other countries, our inflation levels are lower. But you see, there is this question of inequality. GDP does not tell you anything about inequality and what is happening to the distribution of wealth. Now, India happens to be a very unequal country, and the poor people, the workers in the unorganised sector, agricultural labourers and women, are not benefiting from employment opportunities and income-generation activities which are primarily concentrated in the organised sector.
So, a lot of India continues to be very poor, as Mr Jean Dreze mentioned, despite the growth in GDP, and despite the promise of a $5 trillion economy. A large majority of India continues to be very poor. Now whether you know, 75% of rural India needs grains at Rs 2 or Rs 3 is a different point. But we must acknowledge that our growth is not equitous growth, and a lot more effort and policy changes are needed to address this question of inequality.
Thank you to both our panelists for being on the show, and I urge all the viewers to do your own research and understand this Act fully, because it does not only affect rural India and malnutrition but also affects the food economy and our thalis. So thank you for being with us and watching the show.
Nearly 90% of students in the schools surveyed belong to Dalit or Adivasi communities. About 20% of these schools have only one teacher – a violation of the Right to Education Act.
New Delhi: Most schools in Jharkhand are facing serious shortages of teachers, and lack basic infrastructure such as functional toilets, electricity and water supply, a new report has found.
The report, titled Gloom in the Classroom, is prepared by economist Jean Drèze and researcher Paran Amitava, on behalf of Gyan Vigyan Samiti Jharkhand (GVSJ). It said that most schools in the state are yet to comply with the minimum norms prescribed by the Right to Education Act, 2009.
GVSJ surveyed a total of 138 schools in 16 districts of Jharkhand between September and October 2022. Of the 138 surveyed schools, 72 were of primary level and the remaning 66 were of upper-primary level. The report was released recently in December.
Out of the 138 schools surveyed, none of them had functional toilets, electricity and water supply, the report said. Almost 90% of students in these schools belong to the Dalit or Adivasi communities.
The authors of the report slammed the government for the dismal state of the schooling systeminJharkhand, saying “this apathy is both a mistake and an injustice. Itisamistakebecausequality education for all could transform theeconomyandsocietyof Jharkhand. Itisaninjustice because it keeps oppressed classes and communities where they are”.
Shortage of teachers
At least 20% of these schools, during the survey, had only one teacher. As per the RTE Act, all schools should have at least two teachers. And, a majority of these single-teacher schools were being run by para-teachers (as opposed to permanent teachers).
The survey also found an acute shortage of female teachers in primary schools and upper-primary schools.
It also described the awful state of single-teacher schools in the state. For instance, a school in Koday Dih, Giridih, has 78 students but only one teacher, who shuttles back and forth between two classrooms. But, when he’s busy in non-educational work, students just while away time.
In Dhanbasha, Dumka, a school, located inside a jungle, has only a para-teacher, who is recruited as an administrator. In another school in Harilakol, Dhanbad, if the only teacher leaves, the school must be shut down.
About half of the primary schools and 80% of the upper-primary schools surveyed had a pupil-teacher ratio of more than 30. According to the RTE Act, the pupil-teacher ratio must not exceed 30 in any school at the primary or upper-primary level.
This particular finding is, however, consistent with earlier data suggesting that Jharkhand has the worst teacher shortages among all major Indian states, the report said.
At least 15% of the surveyed schools had no water supply at all within the premises. “Where water is short, it becomes difficult to maintain toilets, ensure good hygiene, and run the kitchen,” it said.
The report added that UDISE data of Jharkhand was misleading as the survey found that 15% of primary schools and 5% of upper-primary schools had no functional toilets at all. (The UDISE data said that 98% of primary and upper-primary schools in Jharkhand have functional toilets, and 97% have a separate functional toilet for girls.)
“The toilets had bushes growing inside and it felt like they had notbeenusedsincetheyhadbeenconstructed,” a school in Saruka of Deogarh district said.
The survey further found that “many schools continued to function without proper fans and lights due to stealing, vandalising or lack of maintenance.”
At least two-thirds of the respondent teachers also said that their school didn’t have adequate funds for the mid-day meal. In fact, 10% of the schools were not serving eggs twice a week – which is a violation of the government policy.
“MDM [mid-day meal] funds have run out. The principal spends from her own pocket tokeep the mid-day meal going. Kids are complaining that the meal is not good,” a school in Karwakala of Garhwa district said.
At the time of survey, salaries of many para-teachers and cooks had been delayed for months.
The findings from the survey show how the COVID-19 pandemic has impacted children of underprivileged communities.
When most of the schools reopened in February 2022, after a gap of two years, “most” of the children enrolled in classes III to V had forgotten how to read and write, a majority of respondent teachers said.
“This crisis called for a major investment in school education in 2022-23. Well before the 2022-23 Budget was prepared in Jharkhand, states like Tamil Nadu had already shown the possibility of helping disadvantaged children in this situation, for instance by organising special tuitions outside school hours. Efforts were made to persuade the Government of Jharkhand to initiate similarmeasuresaswellasalastingupgradeoftheschoolingsystem. Unfortunately, the state government went back to “business as usual” when schools reopened,” the report said.
In most of the schools surveyed, little has been done to help the children who had forgotten how to read and write during the COVID-19 pandemic, the report said.
In a letter to Nirmala Sitharaman, 51 economists said that two previous proposals with similar suggestions had been ignored by the government.
New Delhi: Several economists have written to finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman asking her to take up their recommendations to increase social security pensions and provide adequate maternity benefits in the next budget.
In a letter, 51 economists said that the Union government’s contribution to old-age pensions under the National Old Age Pension Scheme (NOAPS) scheme has “stagnated at just Rs 200 per month since 2006”. It should immediately be raised to Rs 500 – if not more – and would require an additional allocation of around Rs 7,560 crore to help 2.1 crore pensioners.
They said that though maternity benefits of Rs 6,000 per child are a legal entitlement of all Indian women who are not covered by the formal sector under the National Food Security Act, 2013, the Union government has not acted on this for many years. While the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana was started in 2017 for this purpose, the provisions made in the Union Budget never exceeded even one-third of what is required based on NFSA norms.
“The Union Budget 2023-24 should provide for full- fledged implementation of maternity entitlements as per NFSA norms. This requires at least Rs 8,000 crores (assuming a birth rate of 19 per thousand, effective coverage of 90% and 60:40 ratio for centre:state contributions). Along with this, the illegal restriction of maternity benefits to one child per woman should be removed,” they said.
The economists said that they had sent two similar letters to Sitharaman’s predecessor Arun Jaitley in December 2017 and 2018 with similar proposals, both of which were ignored.
Among the signatories of the letter are Ashwini Deshpande, Jean Drèze, Pulapre Balakrishnan, Sukhadeo Thorat, Vijay Joshi, Farzana Afridi and Naresh Saxena.
§
Social Security Pensions and Maternity Entitlements
This is a follow-up to our letters of 20 December 2017 and 21 December 2018 (addressed to your predecessor, Shri Arun Jaitley), where we tried to flag two priorities for the next Union Budget: an increase in social security pensions, and adequate provision for maternity benefits. Since both proposals were ignored, we are writing again, well in advance of the next Budget, with the same recommendations. Our argument, much as before, is as follows.
1. Social security pensions: The central government’s contribution to old-age pensions under the National Old Age Pension Scheme (NOAPS) scheme has stagnated at just Rs 200 per month since 2006. This is unfair. It is also a missed opportunity: NOAPS is a good scheme (with low leakages and administrative costs) that reaches some of the poorest members of society. The central government’s contribution should be immediately raised to Rs 500 (preferably more) at the very least. This requires an additional allocation of Rs 7,560 crores or so, based on the current NOAPS coverage (2.1 crore pensioners). Similarly, widow pensions should be raised from Rs 300 per month to Rs 500 at the very least. This would cost just another Rs 1,560 crores.
2. Maternity entitlements: Maternity benefits of Rs 6,000 per child are a legal entitlement of all Indian women (except those already covered in the formal sector) under the National Food Security Act 2013. For many years, the central government did not act on this. In 2017, a scheme was finally launched for this purpose: the Pradhan Mantri Matru Vandana Yojana (PMVVY). However, the provision made for it in the Union Budget never exceeded Rs 2,500 crore – less than one third of what is required based on NFSA norms. Further, in flagrant violation of the Act, PMMVY restricts the benefits to Rs 5,000 for just one child per woman. The Union Budget 2023-24 should provide for full- fledged implementation of maternity entitlements as per NFSA norms. This requires at least Rs 8,000 crores (assuming a birth rate of 19 per thousand, effective coverage of 90% and 60:40 ratio for centre:state contributions). Along with this, the illegal restriction of maternity benefits to one child per woman should be removed.
It is also important to streamline payment systems so that pensions reach the recipients on time every month, i.e. by the 7th day of the month as directed by the Supreme Court in its order of 28 Nov 2001.
We urge you to accept these modest recommendations.
Yours sincerely,
Signatories (in alphabetical order)
1. Abhijeet Singh (Assistant Professor of Economics, Stockholm School of Economics)
2. Aditya Bhattacharjea (Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
3. Arjun Jayadev (Professor of Economics Azim Premji University)
4. Ashwini Deshpande (Professor of Economics, Ashoka University)
5. Atul Sarma (Visiting Professor, Institute for Studies in Industrial Development, Vasant Kunj)
6. Bharat Ramaswami (Professor of Economics, Ashoka University)
7. C. Rammanohar Reddy (Editor, The India Forum)
8. Debraj Ray (Professor of Economics, New York University)
9. Deepti Goel (Associated Professor of Economics, Azim Premji University)
10. Dibyendu Maiti (Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
11. Dilip Mookherjee (Professor of Economics, Boston University)
12. Dipa Sinha (Assistant Professor, Ambedkar University, Delhi)
13. Farzana Afridi (Professor of Economics, Indian Statistical Institute, New Delhi)
14. Gaurav Datt (Associate Professor of Economics, Monash University)
15. Himanshu (Associate Professor of Economics, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
16. Jean Drèze (Honorary Professor, Delhi School of Economics)
17. Jeemol Unni (Professor of Economics, Ahmedabad University)
18. K. Nagaraj (Adjunct Professor, Asian College of Journalism)
19. K.P. Kannan (Honorary Fellow, Centre for Development Studies, Trivandrum)
20. Kirit Parikh (Chairman, Integrated Research and Action for Development, New Delhi)
21. Leela Visaria (Honorary Professor, Gujarat Institute of Development Research, Ahmedabad)
22. Maitreesh Ghatak (Professor of Economics, London School of Economics)
23. Mausumi Das (Associate Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
24. Nalini Nayak (retired Associate Professor, PGDAV (M) College, New Delhi)
25. Naman Garg (Research Scholar, Columbia University)
26. Naresh Saxena (retired Secretary, Planning Commission)
27. Partha Sen (Retired Professor, Delhi School of Economics)
28. Paul Niehaus (Associate Professor of Economics, University of California San Diego)
29. Pranab Bardhan (Professor Emeritus of Economics, University of California Berkeley)
30. Pranab Mukhopadhyay (Professor of Economics, Goa University)
31. Pulapre Balakrishnan (Professor of Economics, Ashoka University)
32. Pulin Nayak (retired Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
33. R. Nagaraj (Professor of Economics, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai)
34. Raji Jayaraman (Professor of Economics, ESMT Berlin)
35. Ravinder Kaur (Professor, Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi)
36. Reetika Khera (Professor of Economics, Indian Institute of Technology Delhi)
37. Rohini Somanathan (Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
38. S. Mahendra Dev (Director, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research, Mumbai)
39. S. Subramanian (former Professor of Economics, Madras Institute of Development Studies)
40. Santosh C. Panda (Vice President, South Asian University)
41. Shreekant Gupta (Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
42. Srijit Mishra (Professor of Economics, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research)
43. Sudha Narayanan (Associate Professor, Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research)
44. Sugata Bag (Associate Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
45. Sujata Visaria (Associate Professor of Economics, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology)
46. Sukhadeo Thorat (Professor Emeritus, Jawaharlal Nehru University)
47. Sunil Kanwar (Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
48. Swati Dhingra (Associate Professor of Economics, London School of Economics)
49. Tridip Ray (Professor of Economics, Indian Statistical Institute)
50. Uday Bhanu Sinha (Professor of Economics, Delhi School of Economics)
51. Vijay Joshi (Emeritus Fellow, Merton College, Oxford University)
From the world of politics and diplomacy to security and sports, culture, ideas and society, there is no denying the salience of these names for Independent India.
This list is intended to provoke debate and disagreement–even consternation– rather than to be definitive. It is entirely personal, drawn up by a 60-year-old who was born just before the war with China; who left India at around the time the first Janata Party government was collapsing; and who has never, for all his years abroad, ceased to support the Indian cricket team.
In it, I nominate one person, object or event as the most consequential in a set of different categories. Some nominations are whimsical, some much less so.
POLITICS & STATECRAFT
1. Prime Minister: P.V. Narasimha Rao—The unlikely saviour of modern India, he rescued the country from imminent and possibly irreparable bankruptcy with his economic reforms, enabling us to grow at a rate that had previously seemed inconceivable.
2. President: K.R. Narayanan—A president of quiet and steely dignity at a time of intense political upheaval, he played the impeccable constitutional umpire, drawing all the while on his skills as a diplomat and his own impressive personal integrity.
3. Chief Minister: K. Kamaraj—A Tamil titan, and the penultimate Congress chief minister in a state where power has been exclusively with Dravidian parties since 1967, he was an exemplar of the federalist nature of the Indian Constitution as conceived by its framers. Also promoted mid-day meals for school students.
4. Governor: Anthony Lancelot Dias—A forgotten figure today, he was the sophisticated governor of a politically contrarian border state (West Bengal) at a time of great domestic and international volatility, offering a model for noninterventionist but sage stewardship that our present-day governors would do well to emulate.
Clockwise from top left to right: K. Kamaraj, Anthony Lancelot Dias, Jayaprakash Narayan, Justice H.R. Khanna, J.M. Lyngdoh, Kanhaiya Kumar. Photos: Wikimedia
5. PM India never had: Vallabhbhai Patel—This nomination is wholly uncontroversial: Patel was a formidable statesman. Sadly, he predeceased Nehru but a term or two in the highest political office would have denied present-day Hindutva apologists of their most cherished counterfactual narrative—that he was at odds with his own Congress Party.
6. Opposition leader: Jayaprakash Narayan—JP saved Indian democracy from potential death-by-Emergency. Period.
7. Supreme Court judge: Hans Raj Khanna—For his lone dissent in a Supreme Court decision that suspended the right of habeas corpus during Indira Gandhi’s emergency, the New York Times wrote that “someone will surely erect a monument to Justice H.R. Khanna.”
8. Election commissioner: James Michael Lyngdoh–He supervised the conduct of elections in India with a courteous but adamant adherence to the rules, and did so without any of the unnecessary showboating of the more celebrated T.N. Seshan.
9. Hindutva leader: Atal Bihari Vajpayee—As prime minister he surprised even his opponents with his equanimity and sense of fair-play, proving surprisingly secular (for an RSS man, that is), with little of the inclination shown by his successors to bludgeon the country’s minorities.
10. Orator: Kanhaiya Kumar–This JNU firebrand leapt into India’s consciousness with a series of impromptu public speeches–recorded by bystanders and spread on YouTube and WhatsApp–that electrified listeners with the audacity of his language and the freshness of his militant vocabulary.
11. Slogan: Talk Less, Work More—Coined by Sanjay Gandhi and consequential because it epitomised the bankruptcy of the Emergency and presaged Indira’s ignominious defeat when elections were eventually held in 1977.
12. State: Kerala–Tolerant and educated, this state offers a model of civilised living to other states, even to those who don’t have Kerala’s advantages: a high female literacy rate, large remittances from workers in the Gulf, and an enviable tradition of religious coexistence.
DIPLOMACY & SECURITY
13. Diplomat: K.P.S. Menon—India’s first foreign secretary, he was the pilot of a callow India’s foreign policy in its first sortie into the world of international relations, and Prime Minister Nehru’s co-pilot in the journey to nonalignment.
14. Defence strategist: K. Subrahmanyam—The Father of Indian grand strategy, he was the first Indian defence consigliere to embrace Realpolitik and was the brains behind India’s nuclear doctrine, including the country’s “No first use” policy.
Clockwise, left to right: K.P.S. Menon, K. Subrahmanyam, K.F. Rustamjee and Field Marshal Sam Manekshaw. Photos: Wikimedia
15. General: Sam Manekshaw—Predictable, of course, that we reach here for the name of “Sam Bahadur,” but India has never had a military leader quite as accomplished since Hari Singh Nalwa commanded the troops of Maharaja Ranjit Singh.
16. Top cop: Khusro Faramurz Rustamji–A name that should have readers reach for their history books, he crowned his distinguished tenure as a police chief with a series of proposed reforms – which successive governments chose to ignore, and successive top cops preferred not to pursue.
Albert Ekka. Photo: honourpoint.in
17. Param Vir Chakra winner: Albert Ekka—This is an invidious category, I’ll admit, for each winner is a warrior without equal, but there is something truly special about an Adivasi man laying down his life in stirring battle for a country that won’t treat his own people with dignity.
18. Military Battle: Rezang La—This was a defeat in the India-China War of 1962, but the battle has always stood as an example of the valour under pressure of the Indian soldier, here shown by outnumbered, underequipped jawans, fighting a larger Chinese force to the last man.
19. Neighbour: Bangladesh–Indians have a tendency to look down on Bangladesh, and our political establishment is frequently guilty of Bangla-bashing. Which is perplexing, as that country–at least under Awami League governments–is an unwavering friend of India. This erstwhile “basket case” also has lessons to teach India, its social indices having come to be notably better than ours.
20. International ally: The Soviet Union–For decades India’s protector and chaperone in the Big Bad World, the Soviet Union was thought to offer India a counterweight to a perceived American bias toward Pakistan. The old loyalty persists, alas, in the form of a dalliance with Putin’s Moscow. Old habits die hard.
Soviet leaders Alexei Kosygin and Leonid-Brezhnev with Indira Gandhi, Swaran Singh and T.N.Kaul. Photo: Soviet Land
21. Pakistani Prime Minister: Nawaz Sharif–Tempting though it may be to thank Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto for handing Bangladesh to India on a platter, Nawaz Sharif must count as the Pakistani PM with whom India worked best. A consummate Punjabi, he understood both post-Partition sensitivities as well as the importance of cross-border trade and commerce.
22. U.S. President: George W. Bush—Yes, Bill Clinton broke the ice with India as no U.S. president before him had done, but it was Dubya who gave India a breathtaking nuclear deal—which India continues to squander—while paving the way for a strategic alliance with Washington that can get as intimate as India wants it to be.
CULTURE
23. Novel: “The Guide”, by R.K. Narayan—A book of calm beauty, written with the sort of contemplativeness and verbal economy that gave way, with later Indian writers in English, to a more showy form of prose.
24. Poet: Amrita Pritam—The first woman to win the Sahitya Akademi Award, this Punjabi captured in her poems the anguish of Partition (‘Ajj aakhaan Waris Shah nu‘) as well as themes of sexuality and female emancipation that were notably daring for a woman of her era and milieu.
25.Film song: “Mera Joota Hai Japani,” from Shree 420—A song of lilting perfection and exquisite message from an age when Indian cinema and its music were gentle and—yes—altogether more wholesome.
26. Film: Sholay—An unabashed blockbuster that broke new technical and narrative ground, this “curry Western” kept India’s spirits up during the years of the Emergency, distracting us with its panache from the realities that confronted us outside the escapist world of the cinema hall.
27. Bollywood actor: Dev Anand—If Dilip Kumar embodied loss and Raj Kapoor a certain sadness, Dev Anand the optimist greeted adversity with a smile. Moving ahead was his only motto, and the future, with him, was most certainly better. Mein zindagi ka saath nibhata chala gaya, hur fikr ko dhuein mein udata chala gaya. This was Dev Anand a few years after independence, reflecting the never-say-die spirit of a people who don’t want drama but a modern spirit.
28. Bollywood villain: Ajit (né Hamid Ali Khan)—The Bad Guy par excellence, with his preposterous dyed hair and his menacing diction, he started his acting career as a romantic hero but best personified the villain in an era when there was no crime worse in protectionist India than smuggling goods from abroad.
Bollywood actor Ajit
29. Bollywood actress: Rekha—Dusky in an industry which was (and is) as colour-conscious as Jim Crow America, she brought a smouldering glamour and histrionic range to her performances on the screen that few actresses after her have been able to match.
30. Non-Bollywood actor: Rajnikanth—The South has a vice-like grip on this category, and tempting though it may be to nominate MGR, “Super Star” Rajnikanth—born Shivaji Rao Gaekwad—is an irresistible winner.
31. Non-Bollywood actress: Madhabi Mukherjee—This delicate and understated Bengali has no equal as an actress in Indian cinema, her roles in Satyajit Ray’s “Mahanagar” and “Charulata” being among the finest performances in world cinema in the 1960s.
Madhabi Mukherjee and Soumitra Chatterjee in ‘Charulata’ (1964). Credit: IMDB
32. Film director: Satyajit Ray—In Indian cinema, certain matters are beyond dispute. This is one.
33. Hindustani vocalist: Kumar Gandharva—It breaks the heart to have to pick one singer: why not Mallikarjun Mansur? Bhimsen Joshi? Malini Rajurkar? Yet Kumar Gandharva is my choice for those for whom music is, above all, a spiritual experience.
Sanjukta Panigrahi. Photo: From Julia Varley, ‘Sanjukta Panigrahi: Dancer for the Gods’, New Theatre Quarterly, 2009.
34.Hindustani instrumentalist: Bismillah Khan—His was not only the most difficult instrument (arguably) on which to attain perfection, it was also one that he elevated into the classical pantheon. Bismillah redefined the shehnai.
35. Male playback singer: Mohammed Rafi—The perfect Punjabi tenor, Rafi never had to rely on vocal gimmicks such as yodelling in the manner of Kishore Kumar. The purity of his voice was always sufficient.
36. Female playback singer: Asha Bhosle—The sexiest of the playback singers of her generation, Asha always sounded like a real, adult woman, unlike her more celebrated sister Lata, whose voice, while technically pure, was arrested in a permanently adolescent pitch.
37. Classical dancer: Sanjukta Panigrahi—In a land of sublime dancers and dance forms, she must stand out for singlehandedly reviving and reinventing the Odissi idiom, which arguably would not exist today but for her efforts.
38. Carnatic instrumentalist: Kunnakudi Vaidyanathan—Who can resist his showmanship, his flights of fancy, his sheer genius on the violin. When he plays, it is hard to believe that the violin came to India with the East India Company in the late 18th century, and that it was not conceived in a kuppam or agraharam in the Tamil country.
39. Carnatic vocalist: D.K. Pattamal—A self-taught singer, she was an authority on the music of Muthuswami Dikshitar and a true revolutionary in the male-chauvinist world of Carnatic music.
40. Painter: M.F. Husain–Perhaps not the most gifted or original of India’s painters, Husain was certainly the most controversial, and came to be so without actively courting anyone’s ire. He was the helpless victim of Hindu bigots, who drove him out of the country.
41.Folk musician: Allah Jilah Bai–Well-versed in classical forms, this singer from Bikaner found her metier in folk music. Her rendition of ‘Kesariya Balam’ helped spread the sounds of Rajasthan across India and the world.
SPORTS
42. Cricket captain: Ajit Wadekar—A quirkier choice than most on this list, for he had no great philosophy of cricket; but he gave Indians the first real taste of Test victories, winning away in the West Indies and later in England, at a time when the latter still treated Indian cricket with barely disguised disdain.
43. Batsman: Virat Kohli—Let his current slump not blind us to the fact that Kohli is the most destructive, versatile, globally feared wielder of a cricket bat who has ever played for India.
44.Bowler: Jhulan Goswami—Arguably the greatest fast bowler of her generation in the women’s game. In a country that was, until recently, starved of decent fast bowlers—in both men’s and women’s cricket—that should be enough to get her our vote.
Jhulan Goswami. Photo: Facebook.
45. Cricket commentator: Ravi Chaturvedi–An unfashionable name in this era of ex-cricketers in the commentary box, Chaturvedi was the first person to commentate in Hindi–on All India Radio in 1961–and his arrival, as well as that of commentary in a language many more people understood, extended the reach of cricket to the small towns of India. And those are now the places where our best players come from.
46. Hockey player: Balbir Singh Sr.—Three Olympic gold medals: which drag-flicker da puttar would argue with that?
47. Football player: Bhaichung Bhutia—India isn’t spoiled for choice in football, but Bhutia, from Sikkim, sturdy, tireless, and skillful, was the closest we’ve come to having a player who could hold his own on the world stage.
File photo of Vijay Amritraj on court. Photo: Twitter/@Vijay_Amritraj
48. Tennis player: Vijay Amritraj—He didn’t win anything of note, but the exquisitely elegant Amritraj was once spoken of in the same breath as Borg and Connors—he was the “A” in the “ABC” of young tennis stars in his generation.
49. Test match win: India v. Australia, Kolkata, 2001: Among the finest victories by any Test side over another in the history of cricket, Kolkata 2001—”Laxman’s Test”—was entirely improbable and also game-changing. It led, in effect, to the death of the follow-on as a strategic option.
50 Hockey victory: India v. Germany, Tokyo Olympics, 2021: This was a bronze medal worth much more than that seemingly base metal would suggest: It was India’s first medal of any kind at the Olympics since its gold in a depleted field at Moscow in 1980, and allowed Indian fans to move past their nostalgia for the glory days when hockey was played on grass.
51. Game-changer: Lalit Modi–A businessman of questionable taste and standards, currently a fugitive (from Indian law-enforcement) in London, Modi was the founder of the Indian Premier League, which has turned cricket from a still-genteel game into a gaudy, gladiatorial contest. Thanks to the IPL, India now “owns” world cricket.
IDEAS
52. Historian: Romila Thapar—Her work on ancient India was as rigorous as it was accessible, now in her 90s her status as independent India’s most respected historian is unquestionable.
53. Philosopher: Bimal Krishna Matilal—The foremost logician in the Indian philosophical tradition, Matilal’s erudition was matched only by his almost painful shyness, not a good thing, necessarily, in a city full of bluster such as Oxford, where he held a chair in eastern religion and ethics once held by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan.
54.Economist: Amartya Sen—Tempting though it is to consider him as a philosopher, Sen must be judged as he judges himself, and as an economist he has no peer among Indians—both in terms of formal accolades and in the richness and originality of his ideas.
55. Scientist: M.S. Swaminathan—An agronomist and plant geneticist, he was our very own “green revolutionary,” working with Norman Borlaug on an enterprise that would ensure that a hungry India could feed itself.
56. Foreigner who changed India: Jean Dreze–A Belgian who moved to India to work as an economist and took up Indian citizenship, his work on human development, education and nutrition led him to make the case for mid-day meals for schoolchildren and an employment guarantee for the rural unemployed — measures that provide an important welfare cushion for India’s poorest citizens.
Clockwise from top left: Bimal Krishna Matilal, Amartya Sen, M.S. Swaminathan, Jean Dreze, Salman Rushdie, Wendy Doniger, S. Mulgaocar and A.G. Noorani.
57. Indian Abroad: Salman Rushdie–Tempting though it is to opt for the Pichais and the Nadelas, no Indian has had a greater impact on global culture–defined in political as well as literary terms–than Rushdie.
58. Explicator of Indian Thought: Wendy Doniger–This American scholar and Sanskritist is reviled by the Hindu right for her rigorously analytical and forthright examination of Hinduism and its sacred texts. Her book “The Hindus,” deemed blasphemous and irreverent, is banned in India.
59. University: The Indian Institutes of Technology–Conceived as temples of science by Jawaharlal Nehru, the IITs are India’s only institutions of higher learning that are even remotely world class. Competition to study there is fierce, as is the stampede out of them, upon graduation, to America.
60. Newspaper editor: Srikrishna Mulgaokar—The fearless editor of the Indian Express from 1973-81, he steered his newspaper through a torrid time for the Indian media and moulded it into a scrappy fighter for democracy.
61. Columnist: A.G. Noorani–A lawyer who found his true calling as a learned commentator and writer on an astonishingly wide range of subjects, from diplomacy and human rights to law, politics and modern history.
File photo of the Illustrated Weekly of India
62. Magazine: The Illustrated Weekly of India–Now defunct, this publication, under the editorship of Khushwant Singh, informed, amused and entertained a nation starved for respectable reading that wasn’t, at the same time, dowdy.
SOCIETY
63. Building, post-1947: Hall of Nations, by Raj Rewal, at Pragati Maidan, New Delhi–Now demolished, this was one of the few instances of original modern architecture in a land where most modern buildings are under-confident (and ugly) imitations of styles from elsewhere. Its leveling was a form of artistic murder.
Raj Rewal’s iconic Hall of Nations at Pragati Maidan in New Delhi, destroyed to make way for a new exhibition complex despite protests from architects around the world. Photo and copyright: Raj Rewal
64. Business House: Tatas–A somewhat unfashionable choice, some would say, given the blaze of new corporations and conglomerates in the land; yet Tata continues to set the bar for corporate integrity (despite taking a knock or two in that department in recent years).
Air India Maharaja ads. Collage: Seniors Today
65. Advertising campaign: The Air India Maharaja: This puckish, turbanned figure was for decades the glamorous and genial face of an increasingly dowdy and dysfunctional airline that failed to match the panache of its mascot.
66. Car: The Hindustan Ambassador–For long years the king of India’s roads, this beloved motor-car combined legendary sturdiness with a stately roundedness of design so sadly absent in any vehicle today.
One of few Ambassadors still being driven on Delhi’s roads. Photo: The Wire
67. Soft drink: Rooh Afza–This sickly-sweet and crimson cordial has more than matched its competition, whether desi or foreign. Coke or Thums Up may come and go, but Rooh Afza is here forever. (Just don’t spill it on your clothes…)
68. Alcoholic beverage: Old Monk–Most urban Indians still grow up learning how to handle alcohol with a glass of this rum in their hands. It’s not subtle; it’s not refined; and it’s much too sweet, but generations of Indians have gargled it back with gratitude.
69. Chef: Tarla Dalal—Madhur Jaffrey may have cornered the international glory with her breathy TV shows and picture-laden cookbooks, but Dalal was the first Indian chef to capture the Indian imagination.
70. Criminal: Harshad Mehta–Hot on the heels of economic liberalisation came Harshad Mehta, a stockbroker who engaged in 1992 in stock manipulation of a kind never before seen in India–perverse proof, one might say, that the country was leaving its socialist ways behind.
THE POWER OF ONE
71. Human Rights activist: Hriday Nath Wanchoo–A Kashmiri Pandit who stayed in the Valley in the murderous early 1990s to document the violence by Indian security forces against his fellow Kashmiri Muslims. He was shot dead by “unidentified gunmen.”
Left: Hriday Nath Wanchoo. Photo: Kashmir Life. Right: rom Sharmila (PTI)
72. Conscience-keeper: Irom Sharmila–An activist from Manipur, Sharmila went on a hunger strike for 16 years–the Mahatma’s longest was 21 days–in protest against the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act 1958, which gives the Indian security forces almost total impunity in its conduct of anti-insurgency operations.
73. Ordinary citizen: Shah Bano—An unlettered Muslim divorcée from Indore, she sued her husband when he abandoned her without alimony—in the process unleashing forces that would transform the politics of India and, in effect, weaken the foundations of Indian secularism.
74. Style icon: Jawaharlal Nehru–In a land of potbellied netas, Nehru stood out with his trim figure and tailored sherwanis, which evolved into the jacket that bears his name. His appearance was as flawless as his diction: Which politician today would dare wear a rose in his lapel?
75. Anthem: “Ma Tujhe Salam”—Composed in 1997 to mark India’s 50th anniversary, the words of this song and its accompanying images recall an India that was less angry, less majoritarian–and with not a synthetic “tiranga” in sight.
JAI HIND.
Tunku Varadarajan, a contributor to the Wall Street Journal, is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and at New York University Law School’s Classical Liberal Institute.
The demand for a fast rollout of ‘One Nation-One Ration Card’ grew stronger when the plight of migrant workers became visible to urban elites in the 2020 lockdown. Here are some of the challenges it faces.
In India, migration is mainly seasonal and circular in nature, and not of permanent type. Almost a third of the Indians are internal migrants. According to an estimate by Ravi Srivastava, an expert on migration, the population of short duration migrants is roughly 50 million. Therefore, the ONORC scheme is considered to be one of the best and most effective solutions to provide rations under the public distribution scheme to the footloose, internal migrant workers (mainly either semipermanent or long-term circular migrants or seasonal or short-term circular migrants) under the National Food Security Act, 2013 (NFSA).
The demand for effective and fast rollout of ONORC grew stronger when the plight of migrant and informal workers became visible to the urban elites after the sudden announcement of countrywide lockdown on the evening of March 24, 2020.
Before the ONORC came into existence, ration card holders could access their entitlements only at a Fair Price Shop (FPS) or ration shop, where they were registered. So, a migrant worker who moved to another city or town usually had no other option left to access PDS ration except to forgo it. She had to shell out extra money from her purse to purchase food grains from grocery shops at open market rates, instead of buying food grains at subsidised prices from FPS. The newly launched ONORC allows a migrant worker to access the food entitlement at any FPS in the country, thanks to an attribute called ration portability.
A new study by Dalberg in collaboration with Kantar, and with support from the Omidyar Network India, reveals how effectively the ONORC is serving PDS ration to migrants as well as non-migrants in five states of India, namely Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh, and Jharkhand.
But the ONORC scheme has also been facing some challenges since its rollout. Some of the points mentioned here have already been discussed at length in the Dalberg report, and studies conducted by others.
1. Access to PDS ration by the income poor
Among other things, the survey by Dalberg researchers have found that over three-fourth of low-income households (i.e., 77%) who possessed no ration card, wanted to get enrolled in the PDS. However, due to various reasons, such households could not apply for a ration card and therefore, remained outside the PDS net. While 36% of income-poor households surveyed lacked necessary documents, almost one-fourth of them faced problems with their Aadhaar authentication.
It is important to discuss here how many people are outside the NFSA net despite being eligible. Under the National Food Security Act, subsidised food grains is extended upto 75% of the rural population and upto 50% of the urban population at the national level. As a whole nearly 67% of the entire population of the country is eligible for subsidised food grains under the NFSA. The proportions of rural and urban population eligible under the NFSA varies across states and UTs.
In short, it means that more than 100 million(i.e., over 10 crore individuals) needy persons, were entitled to receive food rations under the NFSA but were unable to access that due to outdated data in 2020. The situation has not changed a bit in 2022.
A recent article published in IndianExpress informs us that the offtake of PDS food grains was higher during the COVID-19 pandemic years in comparison to the offtakes in the post-NFSA years i.e., in each of the years from 2013-14 to 2019-20 at the national level.
Almost similar trends were noticed in the three poorest states (as per NITI Aayog’s National Multidimensional Poverty Index) of India i.e., Bihar, Jharkhand and UP.
State
Offtake of PDS food grain in 2013-2014
Offtake of PDS food grain in 2019-2020
Offtake of PDS food grain in 2021-2022
Jharkhand
1.2 million tonnes
1.9 mt
3.1 mt
Bihar
4 mt
5.6 mt
9.8 mt
Uttar Pradesh
7.5 mt
9.5 mt
17.3 mt
In India, the offtake of rice and wheat under various government schemes grew from 92.9 mt in 2020-21 to 105.6 mt in 2021-22. The average offtake of PDS food grains in the country was 62.5 mt every year in the period from 2013-14 to 2019-20.
However, as per the calculation done by Drèze, Khera and Mungikar, in 2020, around 17.7 million persons in Bihar, 4.4 million persons in Jharkhand, and 28.5 million persons in UP were excluded from accessing PDS ration from the NFSA. Had these many persons been part of the NFSA net, the offtake of PDS food grains would have been much higher during the pandemic years.
Without further issuance of PDS ration cards to the excluded at the state-level and adequate budgetary support from the Union Government, many of the income-poor persons (who are likely to be migrant workers, casual workers and self-employed in the informal sector) would remain left out of the ONORC.
The Supreme Court order of June 29, 2021, which was delivered by Justice Ashok Bhushan and Justice M.R. Shah, clearly mentions the following:
“Section 9 provides for coverage of population under Targeted Public Distribution System, which is to be determined by the Central Government and the total number of persons to be covered in such rural and urban areas of the State shall be calculated on the basis of the population estimates as per the census of which the relevant figures have been published. The State-wise coverage under National Food Security Act was determined by the then Planning Commission (now Niti Aayog) by using the NSS Household Consumption Survey data for 2011-2012. More than 10 years have elapsed from determination of State-wise coverage. In event, Central Government undertakes fresh determination of the State-wise coverage under National Food Security Act, number of beneficiaries State-wise are bound to increase benefitting the large number of eligible persons. We, thus, are of the view that Central Government need to take steps to undertake exercise under Section 9 of the National Food Security Act, 2013 to re-determine the total number of persons to be covered under Rural and Urban areas of the State, which shall be beneficial to large number of persons.”
2. Access to cooking gas, cooked meals, and community kitchens
Unlike portability of ration, portability of LPG cylinders has not been given much thought by policy thinkers. The food grains bought from the FPS needs to be cooked properly at one’s home or shelter. House-owners do not generally cooperate to certify that a migrant worker is staying in their house as a tenant on rent, which is a major obstacle in getting an LPG connection. Therefore, a migrant worker in most cases is compelled to purchase LPG cylinders from the black market at exorbitant rates.
Although PDS kerosene is available in FPS, the Union government’s policy to phase out kerosene is a work in progress. Kerosene oil, which is available in FPS, is sold at market rates now.
It should be noted that in order to ensure food security of the migrant and informal workers, the Supreme Court in 2021 passed two important orders. The Supreme Court had directed that provision of dry ration and cooked food through community kitchens to migrant workers and workers in the informal sector must continue till the pandemic continues.
The apex court directed all the states and Union territories to make operational community kitchens to provide food to migrant workers all over the country and ensure wide publicity of the locations of community kitchens against the backdrop of the pandemic. The plea to universalise food from community kitchens and provision of dry ration to all migrant workers across India was accepted.
Prayagraj: Migratory workers stand in painted circles maintaining social distance to collect free food outside Ishwar Sharan college community kitchen during the nationwide lockdown in 2020. Photo: PTI
The provision of cooked meals and access to community kitchens is also helpful to migrant workers who are either outside the NFSA net or do not have access to fuel for cooking PDS food grains.
Aside from ONORC, experts have suggested that portability of Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS) scheme, mid-day meals (now termed as National Programme of PM POSHAN), immunisation, health care services, and other social welfare schemes should also be facilitated.
3. Aadhaar-based biometric authentication
One can enjoy the ONORC only if the Aadhaar-based authentication is successful, says the Dalberg report. Unfortunately, the extent of Aadhaar seeding of ration cards varies across states. Their report also mentions that ePoS (electronic point-of-sale machine) based transactions related to ONORC fail many times due to biometric authentication or connectivity failure.
A new report by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) clearly states:
“[T]here were instances of issue of Aadhaars with the same biometric data to different residents indicating flaws in the de-duplication process and issue of Aadhaars on faulty biometrics and documents. Though UIDAI has taken action to improve the quality of the biometrics and has also introduced iris-based authentication features for enrolment for Aadhaar, the database continued to have faulty Aadhaars which were already issued.”
Elderly persons and those who perform manual work often face issues with Aadhaar-based biometric authentication during ePoS transactions because their irises or fingerprints are diluted or obscured. That’s why, even after seeding of Aadhaar with ration card, one is unable to get ration through ONORC because of authentication failure.
4. Aadhaar seeding
It may happen that the seeding of Aadhaar with ration card fails because the individual’s personal information (such as date of birth, gender, and name, etc.) mismatch (such as due to spelling errors). Many people who access or want to access PDS ration are unable to recognise the mistakes or mismatches in their ration cards and Aadhaar on their own. The wrong personal details do not get corrected on time. Later, income poor persons face difficulty in seeding Aadhaar with ration cards.
The Dalberg report mentions that recently separated or divorced women were unable to get new ration cards because of lack of documents. If the Aadhaar and ration card carry the husband’s surname after the woman’s name, then it would be difficult to make name changes – by dropping the surname of the husband and taking the surname of the father or just having the name without any surname – in both these documents after separation or divorce.
Similarly, in the absence of a marriage certificate, it would be difficult to get a woman’s name with the husband’s surname on Aadhaar and ration card because her school certificates and other documents would carry the surname of her father. In the case of a woman, it is often difficult to get PDS ration after marriage due to relocation to another place (a different village, city or town, away from her original residence). Usually, she requires a new ration card with her husband’s residential address, with her name (along with her husband’s surname) on that ration card.
‘Many people who access or want to access PDS ration are unable to recognise the mistakes or mismatches in their ration cards and Aadhaar on their own.’ Photo: Joegoauk Goa/Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0)
5. Threats to PDS ration
In many states (examples are here, here, here and here), there have been efforts, on a pilot basis, to move towards cash transfer in lieu of the PDS, perhaps for some items, instead of entire sets of items sold through FPS. The cash offered is often inadequate for the same quantity of that item from the open market. This is because of the huge gap in prices between FPS and the local grocery shops.
6. PDS ration quality
The quality of food grains supplied may vary across FPS, both within a state and between states. In some states, the PDS basket may have more items or more quantity of an item, whereas in others, the basket may be limited to just a few items.
A few examples will suffice to illustrate this. Although most states offer rice and wheat, in Maharashtra, only wheat is provided to below poverty-line families. Only rice is provided in Andhra Pradesh. Although a below poverty line household gets 20 kilograms of rice per month in Tamil Nadu, a BPL household receives 5 kg of rice per member per month in Karnataka. The latter state also provides ragi or jowar.
Although rice is sold at Rs 3 per kg in Bihar and Uttar Pradesh, 20 kg rice per month is given free of cost in Tamil Nadu to BPL households. BPL households in a few states such as Himachal Pradesh and Chhattisgarh also receive pulses.
The price variation for the same item and in items sold across states may make things difficult and complicated for the floating population who opt for portability of ration.
In some states, the state government provides additional food subsidies. As a result, those states are able to give subsidised ration at prices below the level designated by the Union government. Such states may not be willing to share the additional subsidy with a person from another state. So, cooperation among the states is essential to take care of the welfare needs of the interstate migrant workers.
Representative image. Photo: Reuters/Rupak De Chowdhuri
7. Problems with the ‘Mera Ration’ app
Some of the salient features of the Mera Ration mobile app application are:
Beneficiaries can easily check details of their foodgrain entitlement, recent transactions, and the status of their Aadhaar seeding.
Migrant beneficiaries can register their migration details through the application. This particular piece of information helps the states in advance planning and provisioning of food grains under ONORC for those beneficiaries.
More functionalities will be added in the application with time to improve its utility and extend additional services.
The app is available in 10 languages: English, Hindi, Kannada, Odia, Gujarati, Punjabi, Telugu, Malayalam, Marathi and Tamil.
The creation of such mobile applications presumes that those who opt for ONORC have access to a smartphone that can be used to run it. However, a large chunk of the floating population is quite poor.
Given the adverse impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the livelihoods and income security of the majority of the informal and migrant workers, many of them would be unable to purchase such a phone and also pay for the internet data.
Digital divide due to socio-economic differences is quite prominent in our country.
8. Adequate availability of PDS ration stocks and low awareness about portability
Inadequate stocks with PDS dealers or the FPS is one of the key impediments in accessing portability, says the Dalberg report. Among other things, it has suggested allowing flexible stock requisition for PDS dealers.
Both PDS dealers and news media should be involved by the state governments to inform beneficiaries about the availability of portability. During awareness campaigns, efforts should be made to reach out to vulnerable groups like migrant construction workers and marginalised women. PDS dealers should be made aware about the possibility of interstate portability.
