The Hindu Business Line : It doesn’t figure!

Reports of Commissions set up by the Government often turn out interesting and vital nuggets of information. The latest such report to come out is from the National Commission for Enterprises in the Unorganised Sector, which was set up in September 2004. One of the major highlights of the report is the existence and quantification of unorganised or informal workers and it has found that this universe now constitutes 92 per cent of the total workforce in the country. The re port also says that, of this 92 per cent, 77 per cent had per capita daily consumption of up to Rs 20 (in 2004-05) and that the number of persons belonging to this group had gone up from 811 million in 1999-2000 to 836 million in 2004-05.

Terming this group as “poor and vulnerable” the Commission has helpfully identified them as mostly belonging to categories such as Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Castes and Dalits and Muslims.

While the last bit may not be exactly “news,” scribes were left wondering how, if 836 million people of the country’s 1 billion plus population were “poor and vulnerable,” then how does this figure fit in with official claims that the percentage of people below the poverty line declined to 22.2 per cent in 2004-05!

Respecting freedoms

The IT industry is paying the price for its success. Touted as one of the shining sectors of the economy, any press-meet by this industry invariably attracts awkward questions, as happened during a recent event.

Having exhausted all possible questions about this sector, one scribe wanted a reaction on “moral” issues in the IT industry. It took a bit of time for Kiran Karnik, the President of IT industry association, Nasscom, to control himself, after which he conceded that if it was a question of financial irregularities, he was willing to comment. “But if you expect the industry to police its employees after office hours, its not our job,” he said, somewhat exasperated.

Perplexing caution

Unusual things are happening in the media world these days. Journalists wanting to protect their source of information are often known to file copy attributing the information to “sources” in the Ministry or a company. While this practice has been in vogue for long, it was a surprise when the Press Information Bureau, the official news dispensing organisation of the Government, put out a news release attributing the information to “Ministry sources.” The issue before the beat correspondents who received this release was simple. If the Government wanted to put out some information, why the need to “protect” the officials of the Ministry? Was the information not official? Or did the Government not want to own it up? To cap it all, the information in the release was innocuous, just claiming a successful implementation of the Ministry’s initiative.

OUR NEW DELHI BUREAU