Really, does the road belong to your grandpa?

If our behaviour on the road is any indication, we have one of the worst cultures in the comity of nations.

We perform on our road a fabulous variety of functions we should be ashamed of. Besides walking and riding, we spit, squabble, scuffle, speechify, demonstrate and even conduct surgical feats! To put it in another way, we infinitely outrage the modesty of this infrastructural facility.

“Road indicates culture,” reads a road sign. If our behaviour on the road is any indication, we have one of the worst cultures in the comity of nations. Or, for that matter, will we be even categorised as cultured?

We perform, scarcely move, on the road. The other day, while walking along the main road of our township, Guntakal in Andhra Pradesh, I found an unusual legend on the numberplate of a motorbike that passed past me. “This road is the property of my grandfather,” it read. Of course, the way the road hog rode his bike amply vouchsafed for what the inscription proclaimed. He zigzagged along, passing the row of reflectors planted at spatial intervals to demarcate the median.

Instant snarl

We have in our town a moderately wide road. Tanker trucks also ply on the road. One day, I was witness to an interesting snarl here caused by two trucks. They were about to cross each other. Suddenly, they came to a screeching halt. A gentleman, who was trailing one of the vehicles, hardly escaped a crash by dint of his robust reflexes. 

The drivers of the trucks stopped the vehicles to exchange pleasantries on the middle of the road. That is our fantastic road sense! Good grief, a casualty was averted. However, as the exchange of pleasantries prolonged, other vehicles queued up behind the trucks, triggering an instant snarl. Shouts and counter shouts rent the air. Finally, the late intervention of a traffic constable cleared the chaos and anarchy. Another uncanny assault comes from the departmental people, who lay the pipeline and the cable. They dissect the road across, along or the way their whims dictate. After the completion of the work, they leave the worksite in a shabby way. And our unpredictable monsoon is there to mess up the site. 

Another tribe

Yet another tribe of intruders comprises the building contractors. They bring truckloads of construction materials and unload them on the road in an unruly manner, causing obstacles on the road for weeks and months on end. We have to go a long way to foster a civilised road behaviour. It cannot be creation ex nihilo. We have to cultivate it within us.

N. Sadasivan Pillai, TOI, 10 feb

Shed The Baggage - Focus on reform and targeted social spending.

The prime minister’s remark last week about inflation threatening growth made the bourses bearish. The latest impressive growth projection for 2010-11 hasn’t lifted the gloom much. Led by farm output’s spirited show, growth’s been pegged at 8.6% for the current fiscal. Manufacturing is also wind in the economy’s sails, expanding by an estimated 8.8%. Clearly, periodic statistical cheer alone can’t buoy investor and business confidence, flagging of late. With the budget coming up, the government has a chance to initiate big ticket reforms kept in abeyance. Correcting the economy’s structural anomalies through a second wave of reforms is the game changer India needs.

    There are inflationary pressures on the economy not least due to northbound international crude prices. But the real bad news on the domestic price front still concerns high food inflation. No wonder the RBI’s last round of relatively modest rate hikes belied expectations of hawkish action. It signalled the limits to what monetary policy can do, and that inflation and growth both need watching. As economist Raghuram Rajan has suggested, we should focus on trimming subsidies, cut government demand, contain the size of existing social schemes and hold back on new ones. While further monetary hardening will hit business and hence economic expansion, reform coupled with belt-tightening can curb inflation through supply side innovation and fiscal consolidation. 

    Power, fuel or fertilisers, it’s no secret India’s subsidy architecture promotes fiscal recklessness, waste and corruption to a greater degree than it does social good. Artificially capped kerosene and diesel prices, for instance, enrich and embolden a politically coddled fuel mafia. They also encourage consumers who can afford petrol to use diesel, which has negative economic and environmental costs. It’s imperative as well to plug leakages via which social benefits – say, NREG funds or poor-directed food – get diverted. Our focus must be on PDS’s revamp, introduction of smarter delivery channels and linking of social benefits to extended UID and banking cover for better targeting. 

    Undeniably, developing India needs firm social sector commitments. But so-called redistributive disbursal of state largesse largely misdirects resources that are better spent on building schools, hospitals, irrigation, roads, ports, power grids and the like. State-sponsored employment guarantee compensates for neither higher farm incomes nor better-paying factory jobs. So, there’s no avoiding agriculture’s reform to boost productivity and supply in a country with massive and growing food needs. Ditto for framing industry-friendly labour rules. Centre-state social spending, more than doubling between 2004-05 and 2009-10, needs funding less by borrowing – which chokes credit to the private sector – than revenues efficiently mobilised. This means tax reform, price decontrols and fasttracked disinvestment. The less government hampers or presides over economic activity, the more it can fulfil its real brief: delivering education, health, infrastructure and equal opportunities.

TOI, 8 feb

Chalta Hai India... ALL IS WELL?

We groan and moan about it with much arm-wringing anguish, from the PM downwards, but truth is we do little about it.

Chalta hai!

Chaipani and baksheesh? Chalta hai.

An extra peg before the drive home? Chalta hai.

Give up smoking? Nyah, chalta hai.

Wear your helmet? Chuck it, chalta hai.

Toss an empty can anyplace? Chalta hai.

Harassing women not amiss? Sure, itna to chalta hai.

Wedding procession holding up traffic? Khub chalta hai.

Alongside, ironically, the nahi chalega murmurs…in speeches!!

Is this the way to go?

    Nowhere is the slip between the cup and the lip more evident than in our governance. Impatience over the chalta hai attitude has inspired heartfelt speeches, from the prime minister and his cabinet, asking India to snap out of its ‘chalta hai’ attitide. The finger’s pointed at them, though, in headlines that report the government’s chalta hai attitude. Just a few days ago, the Supreme Court said the Centre’s not serious — or is chalta hai — about black money, and all the scams only show it’s all chalta hai. Even Andhra Pradesh chief minister YSR’s death in a copter crash was blamed on the ‘chalta hai’ attitude. 

    Irresponsibility about our own lives, our cities, our world, drives much of India’s chalta hai attitude and much as Indians deride themselves for it, we simply shake our heads about it and move on. Chalta hai. Too much hassle, man, to change attitudes. Which may be why the buzz over six sigma quality controls in corporate circles a decade ago was greeted with much mirth. There’s no putting down the average Indian — he’s confident chalta hai has more to do with being tolerant than being thoughtless. 

    Is there a point there? For indeed, looked at in another way, chalta hai does span the entire gamut from insensitivity to sensitivity. So it’s pointed out, hey look at the bigger India. It’s saying chalta hai to inter-caste marriage, to romancing in public, to flunking that engineering exam, to not following the beaten track. Is chalta hai also about expanding the bandwidth of tolerance? Is new India talking about a different chalta hai to old India? Nahi chalega to callousness, but tolerant of different values? Of individual freedom, and choice and merit.

Undoubtedly chalta hai has caused pain, but it has also, perhaps, allowed a whole lot of space for differences to survive.

TOI, 8 feb

Why are petrol prices going up?

Petrol prices were deregulated in June 2010 and linked to international crude prices, making them market-determined. However, since June, international crude prices have increased from roughly $75 a barrel to nearly $100 a barrel, resulting in rising retail petrol prices.

The last two price increases indicate firming up of crude prices internationally, a product of global economic recovery. Before international oil prices collapsed along with the financial system in the second half of 2008, crude prices had touched $147 a barrel. Now with renewed global recovery in economic growth, worldwide demand for oil is again increasing, raising international prices.

So, is there any respite?

Respite can come from three quarters - from a fall in demand, from increased supplies and from changes in the way oil is priced domestically.

Demand for energy from oil is the maximum from the transportation sector, accounting for 55% of oil used worldwide. Now, take car sales. In 2010, passenger car sales increased by 32% while commercial vehicle sales increased by 34% over 2009 in India. In the US, car sales increased 13% in 2010 over 2009. As more cars hit the roads, demand for oil only increases.

But as oil prices increase, people tend to cut back on consumption levels, for example, by driving less. The higher the price, the greater the tendency to cut back consumption. Nevertheless, due to rising prices even if demand moderates, aggregate demand is likely to scale newer peaks in 2011.

Next comes supply. After demand crashed in 2008 and 2009, oil-producing countries were quick to decrease extraction and supply. They are yet to ramp up production. Although they promised to do so on January 24, which should moderate international crude prices, beyond a certain level, supply adjustments to demand become difficult. On the back of sustained demand, there is a peak level of production possible. This is called the 'peak oil' theory. Until then, prices rise. Only after the peak is reached does the price rise trigger a fall in consumption to the level of available supply.

In conclusion, we can expect greater supplies in 2011 that should moderate prices, but these efforts will merely slow the rise in international crude prices.

Retail price of petrol also depends, significantly, on government-imposed taxes and levies.

The retail price minus all taxes is actually less than what oil marketing companies (OMCs) pay to buy, refine, transport and sell oil. The difference or loss to the OMCs, popularly called 'under recoveries', is the subsidy burden, made up (partially) by issuance of oil bonds by the Centre.

Customs duty, levied by the central government, is 5% on crude oil and 7.5% on petrol and diesel. It also levies excise duty of Rs 14.35 per litre on petrol, comprising nearly 25% of what we pay. The excise duty on diesel is Rs 4.60 a litre.

Almost 40% of the Centre's indirect tax revenue comes from the petroleum sector. Tax revenue from fuels has been three to four times the subsidy which the government had paid on them in three of the last four years. The state governments also impose sales and value added taxes. Sales tax varies from 18% in Orissa to 33% in Andhra Pradesh. There is an urgent need to rationalise and harmonise state-level taxes and levies.

The central government can substantially reduce the burden on the common man by slashing excise duty on petrol by Rs 5-6 per litre. Similarly, scrapping customs duty on crude will help. Together it can reduce petrol prices to Rs 50 per litre. This can be done in the next Union Budget. Deregulation of petrol prices removed the subsidy element to OMCs. This can be used to cut taxes on petrol.

In the long run, diesel price deregulation is inevitable, especially if the huge differential in retail prices between petrol and diesel remains. It encourages greater diesel consumption through higher sales of diesel-run vehicles which pollute more. Worldwide, this price differential does not exist. By reducing taxes on petrol and thereby reducing retail prices, the incentive for greater diesel consumption will reduce, thus helping manage the diesel subsidy bill.

As for kerosene, according to oil ministry estimates, more than 10 million tonnes of kerosene go for sale through ration shops every year, but 40% or more is siphoned off by "organised gangs of mafia proportion", who also smuggle it into neighbouring Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Nepal and Bangladesh where it fetches double the price. The illegal market is more than Rs 10,000 crore every year.

The government should effect several small price increases for kerosene and LPG, aligning them with the market rates. Kerosene and cooking gas subsidies end up benefiting semi-urban and urban consumers more (respectively), rather than the rural poor. Fuel consumption patterns in rural areas still show heavy reliance on biomass. 

Besides reducing subsidies, it can also save the likes of Yeshwant Sonawane!

- Dilip Modi. (in TOI - OPINION, dated feb 8)

Dilip Modi is President of Assocham. 

INDIA - A Different Vision!?

This idea of India could not but be a monstrous perversity of the one imagined by Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar or Bhagat Singh. In fact India of the present has no use for them or any of the fundamental ideas put forward by them: non-violence, secularism, social justice and a classless society. Of course, the Bhagat Singhs and the Gandhis do make an appearrance in the present, but defanged and domesticated, completely in sync with the shining India.
Watching Rang De Basanti and Munna Bhai, one would be forgiven for thinking that they stood for was changing society through either killing politicians or magical hugs.

India@61: An idea gone astray

The signature of India at 61 is one of unbridgeable divide, between billion-dollar homes and millions living in slums. Without inclusive development, the idea of India will remain the privileged domain of a few.

Jinhe naaz hain hind par vo kahan hain? -Sahir Ludhianvi

On January 8, 2011, Gokul Singh Gond, of Druminia village, Madhya Pradesh, places his dead daughter Sohagvati on the back of his bicycle and pedals 10 km to the nearest district hospital for an autopsy. On the same day, cricketer Gautam Gambhir was auctioned for 2.1 million dollars for the fourth edition of IPL, the highest amount of money offered for the services of a cricketer in the history of the game. If there are two images that could capture the idea of India in the 62nd year of its republic, they are these. On the one hand, India is poised to send its business classes to take over the world when, on the other, it condemns vast sections of its citizens to subhuman existence. The signature of Indian Republic at 61 is the almost seemingly unbridgeable chasm between the worlds of the Gokul Singh Gonds and the rest. Of course, there was always contempt for the poor by the rich, but the biggest change in the post-liberalisation era is that the have-nots are not looked down upon, but they simply don't exist!

It is fascinating to see countless young Indians, especially in the West, so passionate and committed to the idea and cause of India. Keeping in with the tectonic shifts in the Indian economy in the last two decades, this generation is hardly marked by the diffidence and risk averseness of the generations who lived under ‘Hindu growth rate'. It is also weighed down less by the psychological scars of colonialism. This is the generation that will soar and take India to its tryst with destiny. But most curiously and painfully, it will soon dawn on one that this generation's idea of India is divested from any interest in how majority of Indians live. It does not feel that there is anything obscene in building a $1 billion home in a city in which 40 crore people live in slums. For it, the idea of India does not extend beyond the Tatas taking over Jaguar or the nation doing well in cricket. The angst about the staging of the Commonwealth Games is not seen when millions of tons of grains rot in granaries in a nation where more than 75 percent of the population live under Rs. 20 a day. The heart that swells up with pride when the rupee got a symbol or when “Slumdog Millionaire” wins an Oscar goes cold when it actually sees a person from the slum!

No spirit left

It is the ultimate Faustian bargain in which the Indian soul has been sold comprehensively at the altar of the worship of mammon. In the Republic Plato told us that the soul consists of three parts, logos (reason), thymos (spirit) and eros (appetite) and for justice to be attained, all the three have to be in proportion. But the idea of India in circa 2011 is overrun by reason and appetite. It does not have thymos. The spirit has gone out of it. There is nothing in the imagination of the youth that has got any semblance of idealism. That is why it falls in love with “3 Idiots”, the anthem of our times. Here the protagonist mounts a scathing criticism of our educational system, which is nothing but a totalitarian factory for producing engineers and doctors; but his idealistic disassociation from the system is ultimately rewarded not only with the girl, but also multi-million dollars worth of patents.

Ironically, when the material underpinnings of the idea of India are falling in place, the idea itself is in danger of being stunted, for, it lacks the courage of imagination that can further enrich it. This is especially tragic considering that India has one of the youngest populations in the world.

Of course, there is still a section of the citizenry, and including the ‘generation text,' that would virulently defend the idea of India, even at the cost of their own lives. Thymos is alive and kicking in this idea of India. But such heightened love for the nation often takes a pathological turn and is mainly expressed through activities like the defence of sedition laws crafted by our colonial masters. Consider for example, a position articulated by a young and committed officer of the Indian Police Service: “The [Kashmiri] separatist cause is morally, historically, legally and tactically, against the idea of India itself...Despite the 6,000 [security personnel] dead and counting, there is no shortage of young men in India who will proudly don the uniform and continue to man the peaks and valleys of Kashmir, ready to kill and die for the idea of an indivisible India.” Here India becomes a feudal lord violently trying to prevent his long-suffering third wife from running away lest it provoke a dissension among the other two. What is shocking about this dangerous imagery — a staple feature among genocidal projects in other parts of the world — is that it has resonance among large sections of the educated middle classes.

The message is loud and clear, especially to the vast dreary hinterland where the Gokul Singh Gonds live: you might live the life of a worm in a democratic India, but you better be patriotic and sing the national anthem. This idea of India with a gun to your head is also patriarchal. The vulgar misogynist venom spewed on Arundhati Roy shows the depravity of the idea in which patriarchy and jingoism coagulate into a toxic mix. More than her ‘anti-national' views, it is her femininity that transforms even liberal commentators into a khap panchayat.

This idea of India could not but be a monstrous perversity of the one imagined by Gandhi, Nehru, Ambedkar or Bhagat Singh. In fact India of the present has no use for them or any of the fundamental ideas put forward by them: non-violence, secularism, social justice and a classless society. Of course, the Bhagat Singhs and Gandhis do make an appearance in the present, but defanged and domesticated, completely in sync with the shining India. Watching “Rang de Basanti” and “Munna Bhai”, one would be forgiven for thinking that all that they stood for was changing society through either killing politicians or magical hugs.

Inequities

One could argue that ideas like secularism is thriving considering that urban India spends more on Christmas than Diwali and that malls in Delhi heralded in a white Christmas last year with snow, elves, reindeers, and trees studded with 4,00,000 Swarovski crystals! But real India will take another half a century to see Santa. Till then, the Chamars and Madigas will continue to be lynched alive for daring to wear sandals, or ride a scooter. We are still in denial that something like caste or heinous oppression based on it exists. While the Indian state would do anything to question the equation of casteism with racism in international fora, the ‘ forward' castes among the generation text are willing to immolate themselves if there is a semblance of threat to the order decreed by Manu. Thymos, alright!

The idea of India, as it is put into practice, is built on the segregation and humiliation of large sections of its citizens on the basis of caste and colour (even if it recoils in injured innocence when the same treatment is meted out in the form of New Zealand television anchors and Australian police officers). That is why we expend reams of paper and thousands of sound bytes on the Radia affair without thinking it important to comment about Ms. Radia's jocular allusion to Mr. Raja's colour.

After 61 years of the Republic, can we name one dalit icon, in the domain of popular culture (music, arts, cinema, cricket), business, and the private sector that has captured the imagination of India? The fact that we cannot shows the horrendous record of the idea of India. But we can always comfort ourselves saying that it could be that there isn't anybody who is talented enough from among a dalit population of nearly 18 crores, large enough to constitute the sixth largest country in the world! And meanwhile we always have Karan Johar's idea of India to fall back on, the India that lives in New York and London and populated by the Khannas and Kapoors, and the Sharmas and Pandeys.

All international opinion surveys of Indians (read, the elites and middle classes) show their tremendous optimism on the economic front (even in these globally bleak times) and overwhelming confidence in a free market economy. But it would be a chimera to believe that the idea of India can be sustained by a galloping economy. This much-celebrated growth is in any case fracturing the idea of India by building oases of wealth amidst a desert of want. 

Destructive path

For the past few years, I have been teaching a class on India to a group of white university students who have been fascinated by the idea of India. While some of this fascination is due to romantic notions of the East, it is also largely due to a disenchantment with the soul-sapping and environmentally destructive path of development trod by the West. Little do they know that the idea of India is hurtling down the same path.

A few months ago, Beebi Lumada, an Indian ‘housemaid', was stranded at Muscat airport, having lost her passport. After five days at the airport, she turns delusional and dies of shock. Even when India plans to send a man to the moon, it could not send a man from its own embassy to help a poor woman in distress. The idea of India in the present is one which curiously does not include most Indians. It is the idea of India without the Gokul Singh Gonds and the Beebi Lumadas. Perhaps its greatest failure is to understand why people like Binayak Sen exist and why he has been incarcerated: jinhe naaz hain hind par vo kahan hain? 

- Nissim Mannathukkaren. (in The Hindu - MAGAZINE, dated 6 feb 2011) 
Dr. Nissim Mannathukkaren is Director of Graduate Programme, International Development Studies, Dalhousie University.