Thinking about the poor

I took a train last weekend to a coastal town for a family function. I was alone and observing the scenes inside and outside the train.

As the train moved through towns and cities and along the tracks there ghettos and mud houses, many of them, it is a typical sight across India. Within the train there are hawkers, beggars and all sorts of vendors selling their vares. This is India living on the margins. It is hand to mount existence for these families. As far as my memory goes this scene has not changed in the last twenty years including the train compartments design.

Are the benefits of economic liberalization reaching these families? Are the children raised in these families having access to higher education? How about access to decent healthcare. When will these families move into decent housing, there are millions of them to be taken care. These are some of the questions bother many of us. Are our planners and bureaucrats up to the challenge of providing reasonable housing to the BPL families? Where is all the govt spend on improving public infrastructure going?

All the noise about GDP growth, all sorts of schemes for employment generation, health care programs – is it making a real difference to the lower middle class and below stratum of the country. Visibly it doesn’t seem to. Estimates of poor in the country vary by who is giving the data, obviously planning commission and other government sources give better date, however one can safely estimate 60-70% of the population earning less than <2 USD/day. A study by the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative using a Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) found that there are 421 million poor living under the MPI in 8 north India states of Bihar, Chattisgarh, Jharkand, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal and this number is higher than the 410 million poor living in the 26 poorest African nations. India’s poverty elimination/alleviation strategy is heading towards a total failure.

We need to have a serious look at the china story and how it managed to reduce poverty levels from a whopping 64% to the current 10-15% levels in flat 4 decades. Our common refrain about progress in a democracy will naturally be slow due to debate, accommodation of views etc is a poor consolation to the fact that we are having the largest number of poor and deprived in this land.

There is surely a need for a coordinated assault on this issue by the entire Indian state, human resource development, retraining, economic inclusivity, industrialization, modernization of agriculture, healthcare, driving rural youth to industrial work, infrastructure development and related investments are all the aspects in the puzzle of poverty elimination, but who will execute these plans, I think that is what we are still trying to figure out. For once let us ask the Chinese and Brazilians.

Year on Year Scam

Laying/relaying roads in the cities, towns and state highways is perhaps the biggest scam in India that is going on for decades. Roads are laid that get washed away at the lightest of down pours. If the rainfall is incessant the roads become un-motorable and are similar to unpaved dirt roads in the country side. All these are constructed again to get washed away during the subseqent rainy season.

Bureaucrats/engineers and contractors collude to do a shabby job of maintaining and construction of roads year on year and share the bounty, we hardly hear about cases of corruption being registered against any contracting agency with respect to quality of road construction. Does that mean all quality standards are met? Where are the state and central vigilance commissions?

Even the capital city is not spared, look at the condition of roads in New Delhi after this year’s monsoon. Do we really deserve the tag of an aspiring super power? We can’t get the basics right – roads, drains, footpaths, water supply etc. Corruption is breaking the back bone of the country.

With 2.1 million miles of roadways India has the third largest road network, imagine the amount of money that gets allocated for new construction and regular maintenance, it must be staggering. Not sure what percent of this changes hands as “baksheesh”.

There is no need of an RTI application to get details about quality of Road construction it is too evident, poor engineering, indifference to quality and corruption are the reasons.

Roads are the backbone for a vibrant economy and our administrators fail to get it.

Parliamentarians and Pay hikes

Our MPs have decided to give themselves a 300% hike to their compensation along with other emoluments like 30+ business class return airfare, free first class train fare for their families, medicals etc...etc there is still a demand to make it 500% by some members. It is easier to do that for this privileged class since they themselves decide whether it should be 300 or 500%, there is no pay commission to deliberate or like in the private sector performance based hikes. 30% for public servants and 300% for themselves looks plain selfish (there are arguments that the base is low, however if we add up all emoluments the cost to the tax payer is painful).

It would be unfair to brush every parliamentarian as corrupt and undeserving but it hard to erase the general perception about them being dishonest, venal etc. There are no hard numbers available on number of parliamentarians who are corrupt and have criminal back grounds, but it is said about 40-50% do fall in this category. Then why do we give hikes to this bunch. Do the likes of Lalu Yadav who are involved in scams deserve hikes?

The issue of cost to the exchequer does not arise in these undeserving hikes, in case of hikes to the public servants and armed forces govt is prompt in establishing committees to look into the matter and take years to decide.

How many policy wonks do we exactly have in the parliament who actually debate issues of national importance and legislate? It is mostly commotion and partisan behavior that the public get to see in the parliamentary proceedings. Parliamentarians are expected to debate and contribute to policy, since for most of them contribution in this area is dismal the do not deserve an increase in pay.
Shouldn’t there be a third party assessing each of the members and recommending hikes based on their performance ( attendance, contribution to policy, right use of constituency funds, participation in debates, raising issues of national importance etc).

This is one more instance of insensitive behavior by our parliamentarians, while the common man is fighting inflation. With all the above I would still say please take care and pay well for those Parliamentarians who are trying to make a difference, not to the majority who are not.

A faltering UPA -2

The UPA magic is waning a year into the second term, the administration looks more fragile than ever. Infighting amongst the cabinet ministers, Kashmir situation, Maoist violence, Foreign affairs goof ups, Price rise and to top all these the brazen Common wealth scandal.

Dr Man Mohan Singh’s much applauded strengths of cool, calm and collected are becoming his nemesis, he is appearing indecisive as days pass by, how can he let the Kashmir situation get out of hand. It is sad to see the Hurriyat dictating terms to the center. It is a meek response to the challenge at hand. The usually smug Home minister appears lost. Where is the promise to create more jobs to the Kashmiri youth, jobless men will throw stones and do whatever is necessary to kill time.

One can agree Kashmir is a difficult situation to handle with a myriad of complexities but the incoherent response to the Maoist violence shows lack of conviction on part of the Home Minister. His colleagues do not agree with his assessment on handling the violence. The iron clad defense of Mr. Chidambaram on critical issues is breaking.

The Aam aadmi slogan is fast appearing a mirage. Price rise is killing the Aam admi and there seems to be no clear strategy to check the price rise. PDS is in shambles, FCI is letting the food grains rot in godowns. Where is the promised efficient administration? It is a crime to let people go hungry while food stocks rot. Sharad Pawar has other priorities.

Less said about handling foreign affairs with Pakistan. Pakistan seems to pull a fast one on us on every occasion. We should stop complaining to US and the whole world on Pakistan exporting terrorism to Indian soil, what is our response, just complain?

Young but not wise enough

Like me most Indians would have felt relieved when Farooq Abdullah gave away the J&K chief ministers post last year to his youthful and energetic son Omar Abdullah. It was expected Omar with his clean image and youthful energy would reach out to the masses and change the mood in the valley.

Alas, what a mistake it was, the recent happenings i
n the valley show Omar has no idea about the ground situation, feelings of the people nor has complete administrative control. He is simply a helpless observer looking towards New Delhi for direction. A huge let down from whom a lot was expected. Omar needs to be moved to the center into some listless ministerial role, his father was a better option to run the state to maintain status quo. Omar is creating a mess in the valley.

Another youthful MP Naveen Mittal was not far behind in disappointing every one with his stance on Khap panchayats in Haryana. Though real politik would have forced him to support Khaps, he has shown poor choice of words in supporting the Khap panchayat's stance on various issues.

Food Security Act

The newly launched National Food security Act promises to give 35kg of grain every month at Rs 3/kg to every poor family in the 200 poorest districts of the country. This is a laudable initiative. However like all other social welfare programs this is bound to score low in term of effectiveness due to the involvement of multiple layers before it reaches the beneficiary.

With a host of problems like identification of the beneficiaries, ensuring stocks reach the districts and taluks every month on time, vigilance on the private distributors to ensure there is no shifting of the supplies to the open market etc are real problems on the ground. To add to all this interference of local politicos and their influence on the distribution process is a hindrance.

Direct cash transfer programs underway in Mexico and Brazil branded as Oportunidades and Bolsa Familia are considered to be successful in reducing corruption, elimination of intervening bureaucracy and ensuring that the government subsidy reaches the beneficiary. Results show that Oportunidades and Bolsa Familia have increased school enrollment and contributed to healthy child development amongst other successes.

Government needs to partner with UID project and hasten the process of issuing identification cards for the real poor along with a bank account to the family. We need to put cash in the hands of the poor directly to ensure effectiveness of the Act.Else there are middle men, traders, bureaucrats and politicians waiting to take the food away from the plates of the poor.

From just Planning to a Development commission

Minister Kamalnath’s outburst on the role of planning commission is justified. The commission played a key role in the license raj and quota days where it controlled all central ministerial and state allocations and advised on them on aspects of investments, prioritization of development programs etc . The question is in the current liberalized economic context do we need such centralized planning institutions anymore?

In many ways the planning commission is a vestige of the License raj, Socialistic economic agenda of independent India, it should be given a new name and agenda or should be wound down. Planning commission in some ways has contributed to the restrictive regulatory environment that existed in the country up to the early 1990s and some of those still exist.

With the private sector fully involved in the development process and government actively disinvesting the role for a centralized commission is rapidly becoming less relevant.

The central ministries and state governments today enjoy financial autonomy and they should be further handed over authority to decide on the investments, modes of raising finance etc and hasten the overall development agenda.

Montek Singh and other capable colleagues of his need to be moved to a development commission and given the target of executing large scale development projects than producing voluminous reports on all and sundry aspects.