Kalawati,Government and the NGOs

While channel-surfing after the parliamentary vote, I ran into one channel analyzing the speech of Rahul Gandhi, generally considered well-delivered. The television commentator prefaced his comments by saying that Rahul Gandhi began by making NGO-ish comments like his visit to the house of the Vidharbha widow Kalawati and talking about subjects like women’s welfare. Subsequently the anchor explained, Rahul went on to talk of more substantive things pertinent to the matter at hand. This comment of the anchor made me stop and think. Think quite a bit. Because the anchor seemed to be saying that topics like citizen’s welfare are not matters of critical concern to government and that these subjects can be left to the intervention of NGOs. If this is the thinking, than it is a sad state of affairs. It seems to by default reinforce the thinking that the government’s imagery is that of a militaristic big brother, bothered only about nuclear bombs, a strong army and police and national security and the welfare of its citizens is a second rate agenda that can be out sourced to NGOs.

Actually it could be construed that it is a shame that NGOs have to exist in the manner that do and perform the functions that they are performing – running schools, and orphanages and hospitals and feeding centers and performing other such other services. A lot of these initiatives have their origins in colonial times when church run institutions and others began this work. However it is easy enough to accept and understand that social sector investment would not be a priority for a colonial government unless it furthered their commercial or strategic political interests. That these functions still need to be performed by the voluntary sector sixty years and more after independence is actually a shame. In most developed societies, governments take care of the basics necessities of their citizens through direct provision of services as in the socialist states or through creation of viable social safety nets. NGOs typically act as watch dogs overseeing the implementation and efficacy of programs rather than actually run programs.

That NGOs would usually do in relief situations where systems have broken down and governments often do not function. The fact that government involvement in the sectors of education, health care and other social sectors is at a level that voluntary organizations need to raise resources – often from overseas and deliver services on the ground, should say some thing. From time to time, the government talks of regulating the activities of the voluntary sector and especially of those who get funding from overseas. This is seen as a way of controlling the work and activities of the sector. Well, the fact of the matter is that there is a more effective and sustainable way of controlling the activities of the voluntary sector.

If only the government would take sectors like education, health care and grass root level poverty alleviation and not just macro economic structural reforms as seriously as it deals with say issues like terrorism and national security and invest in them wisely and well- not just in terms of financial allocation though that is important too, but also in terms of the brightest and the best being assigned to administer these schemes. That would pretty well make most NGOs obsolete and out of work and there would be no further need to regulate them. and in the mean time, while the government gets its act together – that is if they wish to do so, there is a need to recognize the many groups – small and big, known and unknown who serve the many Kalavatis of the land.

The Shadow Series II : Shades of Stigma

I remember the time when I had to go for this interview for a job in an agency that worked in the field of HIV & AIDS. After a round or so questions my interviewer (and eventually boss) asked in what way could people who were HIV positive be accommodated in the organization. Having never worked in this sector before I was a little stumped. My reply was that they could be any offered job that they were qualified for and were healthy enough to do.

For added measure I added that if any one of them was better equipped for the job than me, they ought to be taken in as any other candidate would be. In spite of that some what naïve answer, I was offered the job. It was only after having accepted the job and beginning work that the import of the question that was asked in the interview came through. For, stigma against those who were HIV positive were just about every where and the effects of stigma translating into discrimination in different spheres of life was equally pervasive.

It is not easy to discover the odor of stigma – an attitude that attacks like a mad dog, without reason and rationale but bites to kill and maim. In spite of every thing an understanding of stigma in a scientific age still eludes me. I remember the time when I first met a gay person, a chap who had done his MBA from a reputed institute and was dressed like any other man in the room and looked the same. He spoke for an hour on the discrimination that he faced from childhood, wanting desperately to be like other men, attracted to girls and women and not other men but it never happened. His parents tried every thing they knew from science to faith healers, when they gave up and he grew up, he tried every thing but nothing worked. Finally when stigma caught up with him even in the starched world of his corporate sector job, he quit to lend his talents to a Trust involved with sexual minorities.

I haven’t forgotten that man yet and I doubt that it will ever will any time soon. From him I learnt the lesson that stigma not only has no reason, it is no respecter of class either. Education will not necessarily eradicate it, in a grotesque fashion; it may actually amplify your hates and dislikes. I know many, many people who have probably never really known a single gay person in their entire life as friends or even acquaintances in any depth, but have read a book or two or may be just one book…. And based on what they have read ghosts and images appear that they then learn to shun.

There used to be a time when there used to be a lot of leprosy colonies and leprosy homes. Belonging to another century very literally – most were set up in the late nineteenth or early twentieth century, these colonies used to house cured or deformed leprosy patients who had been cast out by their families. Those who had children, used to send them out to stay in these homes where they could go to school away from their “tainted “parents. Those who were not lucky enough to find place there used to beg on the streets with open sores crudely bandaged. Similarly the water the Dalits drink is differently designed, and their tea cups in the tea-shop are located in different time and space. and the shelter under the tree for a landless Dalit is not really made of an equal summer. That was stigma, out in the open and pretty much in your face and it was correct.

But stigma is not always out up front, in your face. No one can explain women who became HIV positive after sleeping with no one but their husbands face stigma — or for that matter why their children do not get admission to schools. Why sexual minorities face discrimination just because of their orientation is different and not because they have been seen “having carnal intercourse against the order of nature” using the language of the penal code or why even well-to-do Muslims find it tough to make headway when it comes to buying property even in so called progressive cities like Mumbai.

Yes stigma is certainly an open sore; very much of the sort that we see on those chronic leprosy patients out there begging on the streets. But the greater stigma is the one lurking in the shadows. It lies in wait like an unseen phantom present every where but visible no where except in the nearest mirror. There it stares back at us glassy eyed, as we preen ourselves in front of it – about our education, our awareness and most of all our empowerment from all those notions that others but not us are captive to. That unspoken stigma is the bigger fear and it will not be so easily overcome without a long and arduous battle.

Will Food Shortages Return ?

The other day I was in a board meeting of a reputed educational institution which is doing well and has expansion plans in mind. The plans were presented for new buildings and then the time frame. When some members questioned the lengthy time frame, the explanation provided was that that the land being purchased was agricultural land and that there were several procedural formalities involved in converting agricultural land into non agricultural use.

Agriculture has come into the news in several ways and for several reasons in the last months – be it in the context of the agitation at Singur or Nandigram or Amitabh Bacchan posing as a farmer , first in U.P and then in Maharashtra or in the manner in which agricultural land is routinely acquired in the name of infrastructure projects. Typically agitations have been launched when this has happened but this has largely focused on the perceived injustice to the farmers in terms of the compensation paid for the land or the rehabilitation package promised to the displaced farmers but not delivered. Medha Patkar has been among the people who have agitated along these lines.

While the manner in which farmers are treated when land is acquired is certainly an issue, there is also a need to examine the whole matter of acquiring agricultural land in other contexts. The farm sector sustains nearly two-thirds of the country's billion-plus people - but millions of rural households are in distress due to declining agricultural productivity and low wages. Indian agriculture has been in steady decline after an era of high productivity in the 1970s. There are no more areas to be brought under cultivation, so the limitation of land is there. But the basic thing is that productivity is not increasing, while the population is increasing, and that is what is creating an imbalance between availability and demand

For the last couple of years now, India has been importing food, a phenomena that had disappeared with M.S.Swaminathan’s Green Revolution. The 60s when India was dependant on food imports and the consumer on serpentine ration cards seems a long away but it may not be long before those days are back. While improving infrastructure – roads, highways and expressways etc are important and they would require acquiring land , there needs to be a re look at how agricultural yield can be increased and land under cultivation can be increased. Typically fallow land needs to be revisited to see if they can be reclaimed for agriculture. 417. While probably nothing can be done to increase the size of land holdings since the notion of population control is all but forgotten, increasing mechanization, investment in irrigation infrastructure a policy regulating cash crops that are often grown for short term profits at the cost of long term food security needs to be regulated.

The emergence of private buyers of food grains as against the erstwhile monopoly of the Food Corporation of India Mandis has been heralded as an unmitigated boom. But while these private wholesalers score in terms of service and often offer better prices, they are leading to a phenomenon where farmers by compromising house hold food security are selling off their entire harvest because of the attractive prices offered. But these retailers will offer these food grains for sale in attractive retail malls in the cities leading to a migration of food grains from the villages where they were grown to the mega cities where they would be consumed.

As we continue to be bedazzled by the spectacular economic growth of the past years, let us also recognize that over the years , the fuel the needs of the industrial economy, agricultural land has been diverted for other requirements related to establishment of industries, need of educational institutions and other myriad needs. But some where, we need to stop in our tracks and ask – by neglecting the reforms in the agricultural sector and focusing only on industrial reforms, are we bringing back the specter of famine and food shortages, which are not too distant a memory?