The Hindu Business Line : The widening social divide

Police violence in Nandigram, and Naxalite killings in Chattisgarh, Jharkhand and Bihar. Why are we seeing so much social unrest and violence? Is the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, the urban and the rural, even as the economy rolls along at 9 per cent plus, taking the country to the brink? As citizens, is there nothing we can do to improve the quality of governance, asks RASHEEDA BHAGAT.

Forget the extravaganza of a Liz Hurley-Arun Nayar wedding; a cousin is just back from Mumbai after attending the seven-day wedding of his close friend's son. While the father-in-law gifted the groom a Merc, other gifts from relatives included a Rs 51-lakh cheque from an uncle!

Reports of the designer clothes and jewellery adorning the couple and the guests, the extra premium Scotch and the imported wine served at five different parties in star hotels and the talk during the celebrations, make one's head spin.

For instance, one businessman in the diamond trade was overheard describing, gleefully, how the value of his flat, booked a couple of years ago at Rs 15,000 per square foot, would be Rs 65,000 a sq ft when he gets possession of the property soon. An estimated Rs 5 crore was spent on the wedding. This is the "high society" of Mumbai; Delhi, one is sure, has no less razzle-dazzle.

Move to Nandigram, or Chattisgarh or Jharkhand and or almost any part of Bihar, and you get to see a starkly different India. A party that claims to protect the interests of the poor and the rights of labourers, and was perceived to be much closer to grassroots aspirations than, say, the Congress or the BJP, lets loose police fury on unarmed men and women in Nandigram.

A crestfallen West Bengal Chief Minister, Mr Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee, might have backtracked on the acquisition of land in Nandigram for a Special Economic Zone after several lives were lost, but visual images of police brutality and lathi blows raining down on defenceless people will remain in memory for long.

In the last month, other disturbing images emanated from the tribal areas of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. Last fortnight, at least 49 policemen were killed in a daring Naxal attack at a police outpost in the State's Naxalite-infested Bijapur district. Hundreds of armed Naxals attacked the police camp at night, using guns, grenades and petrol bombs.

Increasing disparity

Why are we seeing so much social unrest and violence? Is the growing disparity between the rich and the poor, and the city and the vilage, even as the economy grows at 9 per cent plus rate, taking the country to the brink? As citizens, is there nothing we can do about improving the quality of governance?

Answering some of these questions, Dr Jayaprakash Narayan, National Coordinator of Hyderabad-based NGO Loksatta, says: "Taking up the Nandigram issue first, earlier too I have said that there should be a shift in occupation from agriculture to industry and from the rural to the urban areas; that is now understood and there is no dispute on that. The issue is, how do we manage that?"

He thinks there are "very sensible ways" of addressing this issue in a manner that protects the farmers' interest and yet allows economic growth. But the problem cannot be solved by throwing money at it, because money for land is not an adequate answer in the Indian situation. "Money is a depreciating asset and land an appreciating one. Money is an expendable asset and land is permanent."

To tackle this issue, says Dr Narayan, apart from giving some money for the short-term needs of the person whose land is being taken, "more land than required should be acquired. For example, if I require 100 acres, I take 150 acres and give back 50 acres of developed land to the displaced persons, with complete rights to dispose of it when they please, because by this time the value would have gone up not just 50 or 100 per cent but maybe 50 or 100 times, so the heartburn will not be there."

Fertile Land

Dr Shaibal Gupta, Member-Secretary of the Patna-based Asian Development Research Institute, says that at the heart of the Nandigram violence lies the core issue of land being very fertile in the Gangetic plains. Giving Bihar's example, he says it has a geographical area of 93.81 lakh hectares, of which 58.5 lakh hectares are in North Bihar and 35.31 lakh hectares in South Bihar. "Of this," he says, "67.48 per cent of the land area is flood-prone, so you can imagine how fertile the land is in the Gangetic belt. Nandigram, too, is a very fertile area and in this region we have a proverb that if you defraud a man of his money... something like even Rs 5 lakh, you can get away with it. But if you take away his land, he will kill you."

Apart from land being a very emotive issue, another factor involved in the Nandigram violence, points out Dr Gupta, is the fact that while compensation was given here to the landowners and the registered share-croppers, "the very large number of unregistered share-croppers did not get any compensation. This indicates the bad quality of governance in West Bengal. Compared to Bihar, the State may have done well on land reforms, but when you have a huge number of unregistered share-croppers, who are not part of the legal system, you are going to make them unhappy when you take away their land."

Another myth blown

Dr Narayan too is shocked that this kind of violence happened in Nandigram under a Left regime.

"The CPI(M) is supposed to have its ears to the ground, so such incidents in its area indicates the complete disconnect between the state and the people. I can understand this happening with other parties, about which some of us are cynical, but the Marxists have always been credited, and rightly so, with the view that they understand the pulse of the people. So this appears bizarre to me and indicates that the political process has all but collapsed."

Of the Naxalite violence, which he thinks, is a far more serious issue, he says: "India is definitely growing, and people like us are benefiting with more assets, better skills and jobs. But in much of India... except for some people with access to a cell-phone and many with access to a television... people's lives haven't changed much." Dr Narayan says that in the old days when this group of people watched the opulence of "demi-gods" like an MGR or an NTR in films, they accepted it because "in their perception they were not real human beings. But today thanks to television they know exactly what is happening in our lives." The stark difference between the lives of affluent Indians and the poor is naturally disturbing for them, and "they are going to resent and resist".

Describing himself as a "liberalist," he says: "I have no opposition to liberalisation in principle but look at the difference between principle and application. When the UPA Government came to power, it did so largely in the name of the aam aadmi, and probably meant it too, but it didn't know what to do about it. And to be very candid, except for symbolic tokenism, such as the Employment Guarantee Scheme, where are the fundamentals in terms of delivery?"

Short on delivery

He adds that such schemes have only turned out to be "prescriptions" or "short-term palliatives" and failed to address the long-term objectives of health care and education. "The consequence is that people feel desperate about education and health care; allocations are there but where is the delivery and the outcome?" Giving the example of the US President, Mr George W. Bush, Dr Narayan says: "None of us is an admirer of George Bush, thanks to Iran, Iraq, etc., but in his State of the Union address, the leader of the most powerful nation devoted 36 minutes to the health-care system. That shows the sensitivity of the system, even if not of the man. When have we last seen this in India?"

When reminded that the recent Budget did talk quite a bit about education and agriculture, he quipped: "Words without substance. Unless we reshape and redefine politics and start with a clean slate, we cannot get out of this mess. Right now, all parties, without exception, are part of this political culture, it's only a matter of grades. If the educated Indian cannot summon the will and the courage to reshape politics, the country is in for bad times. I'm a great optimist and believe we'll be able to overcome this, but if we underestimate the magnitude of the crisis, it will be at our peril."

Dr Gupta also points to the race between States to compete for industrialisation. "In the earlier Five-Year Plans regional disparities were taken care of by the Centre. But now every State has to pursue industrialisation and economic development autonomously. To attract investment at any cost, if governments don't have infertile land for industrial development, they are giving away fertile land. So, in the process of attracting investment, the market is creating a grotesque situation. Unlike Gujarat or Maharashtra, a State such as Bihar has no dry areas."

Pan-India strategy

As a solution he suggests a "pan-Indian strategy where all States do not have to pursue an aggressive and unsustainable industrialisation policy. Why should you have a motor-car factory in the most fertile part of your State? If Tamil Nadu is turning out to be the Detroit of India, so be it. Why should West Bengal compete with it?"

Dr Gupta adds that only when our political systems create frustration and social unrest "it gives the Naxalities a chance to fish in troubled waters. Only when you create troubled waters can they fish there."

Finding the "Indian state collapsing under its own weight," Dr Gupta gives the example of Bihar, the poorest State. This year Bihar has come out with its own Economic Survey, which found that the State has the highest per capita expenditure on government employees. "It is Rs 1.8 lakh a year, higher than the Central Govenrment's expenditure of Rs 1.2 lakh a year. Can we afford it?" he asks.

Response may be sent to rasheeda@thehindu.co.in

More Stories on : Economy | Politics | Lifestyle

Article E-Mail :: Comment :: Syndication :: Printer Friendly Page

Stories in this Section
Going rural with smart finance

The inverted anomaly

The widening social divide

Reaping the whirlwind

The tragedy of top-down democracy

Labour law reforms can benefit workers too

The two `w's and two `h's of retail

North-East development

Panic in wheat