January 12

january 12, 2013 vol xlviIi no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
28
book review
A Handbook on Contemporary India
Surinder S Jodhka
India since 1950: Society, Politics, Economy and
Culture edited by Christophe Jaffrelot (New Delhi: Yatra
Books), 2012; pp xix+914, Rs 995.
W
ith a total of 37 chapters
(apart from the editors intro-
duction and conclusion) and
an equal number of contributors, this is a
massive volume of more than 900 pages.
It is an updated English translation of the
book rst published in French in 2006.
The contributors are all French scholars
who work on India and, in a sense, the
book presents the contemporary French
perspectives on Indian society.
The collection was perhaps meant for a
French audience, as an introduction to
the different aspects and dimensions of
contemporary India as it has evolved over
the last 60 years. However, it is more
than a primer for beginners. Almost all
the chapters are written in the style of
scholarly social science research papers.
The range of subjects covered in the book
is rather extensive, from the processes
of social, political and economic change
to the history and social organisation
of Indias armed forces and the dyna-
mics of Indias contemporary theatre
and music.
As the editor rightly points out in the
opening pages of his introduction, the
western understanding of India has for
long been drawn from the classical ori-
entalist imagination about the region,
which tends to present it as a land of
frozen time with large population,
poverty and religious superstitions.
Even scholarly writings on India during
the early decades after Independence
reinforced this static and depressing
view of India. Over the last two decades,
the world has begun to look at India
differently. High growth rates experi-
enced by the Indian economy, its grow-
ing service industry and the endless
supply of technically trained human
power have made the west reimagine
India as a rapidly growing economy and
an emerging power.
However, the reality of India is not
conned to economic growth rates and
call centres. Its economy, society, culture
and politics are changing in complex and
contradictory ways. The main strength
of this book lies in its ability to capture
these complexities. Though China has
indeed been doing much better in
terms of growth rates, India has its own
strong points. It also has a very different
mode of change. Unlike China, the
editor u nderlines, India has not been a
land of revolution, of sudden changes.
Indias revolutions have been silent
and incremental within a democratic
framework. Little by little the Indian
democracy makes room for new layers
of society.
Overview of Political System
The rst four chapters of the book, written
by the editor himself, present an over-
view of the evolution of the Indian
political system over the last six decades.
Nehru, who took over the command
of the country after its independence,
initiated many changes in the social
and economic structure of the country.
However, the Congress Party under his
leadership also accommodated the con-
servative notables. It is this, socio logy of
the Congress that, in a sense, explains
the nature of change and policy of the
Indian state during the early decades
after Independence. For example, though
land reforms and several other important
changes were initiated, these did not
produce any radical transformation in
the rural/agrarian power structure or
the caste system.
The Congress Party and Indian politics
witnessed a shift after the death of
Nehru. The dominant tendencies during
the 1970s and 1980s were marked by
populist politics, authoritarianism of I ndira
Gandhi and a gradual consolidation of
right-wing parties. However, the major
shift in Indian politics came with the
introduction of economic liberalisation
during the early 1990s. At around the
same time, India also witnessed a gradual
democratisation with the rise of back-
ward castes and dalits on the political
landscape of the country. The social/caste
prole of the Indian political elite started
changing signicantly. For example, while
in 1952, as many as 64% of MPs from the
Hindi belt were from the traditional
upper castes, their numbers declined to
around 25% by 1999.
In a later section, the book discusses
the evolution and dynamics of Indias
federal structure. Apart from a discus-
sion on the rise of regional and caste-
based political parties and contentions
around the question of national lan-
guage, the book also has chapters on the
more serious challenges that the country
had to deal with, such as the rise of power-
ful identity movements in the peripheral
regions, the Khalistan movement in
Punjab, the ethnic question in Assam
and other parts of north-east India and
the escalation of violence in Kashmir
and the politics around it.
The chapters on economic change
present Indias story of development with
focus on the reforms, starting with the
1980s. However, the section also has an
interesting chapter on the sustain ability
of Indias development model. It raises
serious questions about the viability of
the classical model of economic growth
as it was experienced in the western
countries for a country like India. The
current political establishment does not
seem to realise this and expects to take
India forward primarily through the
classical model of growth with focus on
industrialisation and urbanisation. The
author of the chapter identies six chal-
lenges that a country like India will
have to confront if it wishes to grow as
the west did. These challenges are: w ater
scarcity; energy crunch; pollution and
climate change; agricultural crisis; wid-
ening wealth gap; and social friction
and political instability.
BOOK REVIEW
Economic & Political Weekly EPW january 12, 2013 vol xlviIi no 2
29
Another section of the book looks at
the evolution of Indias foreign policy and
its shift from the non-alignment of the
1950s to the present. The nuclear tests
conducted by the BJP-led government in
1998 was a reection of the changing
ambitions of India, its desire to go be-
yond the status of a regional power and
to be noticed by rest of the world as an
emerging actor at the global level. I ndia
also has one of the most powerful mili-
tary establishments, numerically the
second largest in the world today. How-
ever, the distinctive feature of India is
that despite its strength, the military in-
stitutions in India have always been sub-
ordinate to the civil authorities.
Another substantial section of the
book deals with social processes and the
dynamics of caste, class and communi-
ties in contemporary India. The chapters
in this section deal with Indias d emo-
graphics, rural social change, labour, caste
and untouchability and the scheduled
tribes. This section also has chapters on
the political sociology of religious com-
munities, ranging from the transforma-
tions within Hinduism to the minority
status of Muslims and Christians.
On Rural India
The chapter on rural India has some very
interesting observations, which in a sense,
sum up a lot of arguments presented in
different chapters. Talking about the two
complementary paths of rural develop-
ment that India followed after Inde-
pendence, viz institutional reforms and
capital and the technological approach,
the author concludes that the results
achieved in each case have been both
impressive and disappointing (emphasis
added). This can be easily said not just
about the entire experience of Indias
development planning but also about
its democratic politics and processes of
social transformation. The subsequent
chapters in the section on the subjects of
caste and untouchability demonstrate this
quite well. For example, while democratic
politics has provided dalits with repre-
sentation in the power structure, the fre-
quency and scale of caste-based atrocities
continue to be signicant. Something
similar could be said about the world of
tribal peoples. However, the experience
of the scheduled tribes during the
post-Independence period has been
more complex and less understood. For
example, the popular representation of
tribes as being i solated is not really true.
Though the extent of regional diversity
among them is very real, they also have
several c ommon issues. For example, one
of the common issues that agitate the
tribal communities all over has been the
alienation of their land and their rights
over forest produce and the mineral re-
sources of their land. Similarly, chapters
on Muslims and Christians identify and
discuss their specic experience of being
minorities and cultural communities.
The fourth and nal section of the
book is on the dynamics of Indian cul-
ture covering media and arts. This
section has nine chapters which discuss
subjects such as paintings, cinema, tele-
vision, press and literature. They deal
with the patterns of their organisation
and the changing practices in each of
these areas of cultural expression.
Speculation on the Future
In the concluding chapter, the editor
attempts to speculate on Indias future.
He seems certain that India is indeed one
of the most promising emerging coun-
tries, which has been quite s uccessful in
combining democracy with the market
economy. This would provide it long-term
stability as a political system. Economi-
cally also India will keep advancing and
by the year 2025, the editor predicts,
India would be third largest economy in
terms of its total GDP even though its per
capita income will be far from impres-
sive. However, India also faces daunting
challenges. The rst and foremost,
given the fact that Indias population is
likely to keep growing for another four
decades and, given the state of Indian
agriculture, the country is going to face
the challenge of food security. Similarly,
Indias infrastructure continues to be
poor and the challenge of meeting the
growing demands of energy and other
such requirements is likely to remain
less than satisfactory. At the social
and political levels, India will have to
deal with growing d isparities, vertically
and horizontally. Though its leaders
are aware of these challenges and the
potential sources of trouble, the response
does not seem to satisfy the editor, and
for good reasons.
As mentioned at the beginning, this
book seems to have been put together
with the purpose of providing an aca-
demically-rich introduction to the social
and economic life in India to those who
know little about it. One is impressed by
the quality of different chapters. Though
they are in some sense introductory in
nature, almost all of them are well-
researched and well-written. However,
one wonders about the value of putting
so much together into a single volume.
Perhaps it would have been much better
if it were published in three or four dif-
ferent volumes.
Surinder S Jodhka (ssjodhka@yahoo.com) is
with the Department of Social Systems,
Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi.
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NOTES
january 12, 2013 vol xlviII no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
66
A Tale of Many Cities
Governance and Planning in Karnataka
Anil Kumar Vaddiraju
Anil Kumar Vaddiraju (anilkumar@isec.ac.in)
is with the Centre for Political Institutions,
Governance and Development, Institute for
Social and Economic Change, Bangalore,
Karnataka.
Urban governance under the
74th Amendment Act has been
ignored in Karnataka. A study
of Dharwad district shows that
the Act is not implemented in
letter and spirit and governance
and planning is done through
a small section in the deputy
commissioners/collectors ofce
and has no links with the
chief planning ofce in the
zilla panchayat.
Towns, cities, are turning points, watersheds
of human history. When they rst appeared,
bringing with them the written word, they
opened their door to what we now call history.
Fernand Braudel (1992: 479)
T
his article is the product of research
in progress on district-level urban
governance with special reference
to Dharwad in northern Karnataka. The
research idea came up from a prior study
done on district planning with reference
to the Tumkur district in Karnataka. In
that study while we basically focused
on rural planning we also noticed and
touched on the problem of urban plan-
ning (Vaddiraju and Sangita 2011).
The state of urban governance and
planning vis--vis district and taluka
towns in India is deplorable. District and
taluka towns play a crucial role in deve-
lopment and form the nodal points of
the sinews of the development process.
They are the nerve centres of all deve-
lopment insofar as the majority of the
ordinary citizens are concerned.
Research Questions
The central question for this study is
how the district and small cities are gov-
erned. Does the governance process at
this level conform to what is postulated
in the Constitution?
How does the planning function take
place? According to the Constitution the
district is the place where all planning
rural and urban has to be centred and
decentralised planning is the responsi-
bility of the urban bodies. Is this hap-
pening at all?
Karnataka is one of the six most urban-
ised states in the country with 33.98% of
urban population (Sivaramakrishnan,
Kundu and Singh 2010). Most district
towns in Karnataka are neglected and the
bulk of the concentration on urban deve-
lopment and planning is on Bangalore
and Mysore, which are sought to be
made into global cities. The many small
towns, as our earlier eldwork in Kolar,
Bellary, Davangere, Chamarajanagar,
Bidar and other places shows, are mostly
urban slums. This is not in consonance
with the constitutional amendments on
urban governance. Media and civil society
attention too is limited largely to Banga-
lore and Mysore and the smaller cities
are written about only in local newspa-
pers or in the local editions of the major
dailies. What is happening in Karnataka
is clearly a reection of what Amitabh
Kundu (2003) called exclusionary urban
development. We will discuss more about
this later. Sufce to say, this urbanisa-
tion process is not friendly to the poor in
larger as well as the majority of poor in
small and medium cities.
What is more glaring is the neglect of
north Karnataka in comparison to other
parts of the state and therewith the
neglect of towns and their populations
in northern Karnataka. This comes out in
our eldwork and interviews with many
scholars in Dharwad. Indeed, scholars in
the Centre for Multi-Disciplinary Research
in Dharwad hold that at least part of the
explanation for the backwardness of
Dharwad and other towns in northern
Karnataka stems from the neglect of
overall development and conditions in
that region. Despite a number of com-
mittees being appointed to address the
question of regional inequalities, their
recommendations have not made signi-
cant impact on north Karnataka and its
towns and cities.
Exclusionary Urbanisation
We have mentioned that the nature of
urban development in India in general
and Karnataka in particular is exclusion-
ary urbanisation as Kundu (2003, 2011)
has noted. This concept points to specic
features of urbanisation. These are:
Poor Migrants from Rural Areas Are
Unwelcome: The cost of living and lack
of employment opportunities are very high
for the poor migrants from smaller towns
and rural areas. This is a marked pheno-
menon of urbanisation in Karnataka. The
NOTES
Economic & Political Weekly EPW january 12, 2013 vol xlviII no 2
67
most important one is the lack of employ-
ment opportunities for the poor in a
highly capital-intensive development
which is not conducive to the healthy
accommodation of newcomers into
the city.
Captured by the Local Elite: According
to Kundu (Kundu 2003, 2011; Sivarama-
krishnan; Kundu and Singh 2010) another
major feature of exclusionary urbanisa-
tion is the capture of the cities by the
elites of major cities who form a highly
inuential interest group that favours its
own from the state. These elite happen
to be the articulate middle class, the
business class and industrial houses that
consistently demand better services and
conditions at the expense of the poor
and newcomers to the city. The frequent
demolitions of slums in the name of beauti-
cation, and the attempts to privatise
basic services in the name of efciency
gains are some of the features of exclu-
sionary urbanisation that favour the
elite at the expense of the local poor or
new entrants. Often, privatisation and
outsourcing of basic services and the
consequent user charges imposed on them
can work against the poor. Again, the
voice of the articulate elite is often more
prominently heard than that of the poor
who are generally not only property-less
and asset-less but also voiceless.
Spatially Skewed towards Big Cities:
Another major feature of the exclusion-
ary urbanisation process is its spatially
skewed nature (Bhagat 2011). Bangalore
is highly favoured over Bidar. Mysore is
highly favoured over Chamarjanagar.
This is not limited to Karnataka alone.
Small cities and towns are losers unless
they are saved through deliberate inter-
ventions. Globalisation favours big cities.
The state provides and develops those
cities where capital and its managers are
at ease. All amenities, services and facil-
ities are provided in such places to attract
more capital. In the process, an attempt is
made to create global cities with global
standards of living for a few while the rest
are neglected. The argument of econo mies
of scale comes handy to legitimise this
process of a concentrated and distorted
development process. The urban isation
process thus is not spatially distributed
and decentralised to incorporate all the
cities, including small cities, but is limited
to a few megacities.
Methodology
Dharwad is on the Bangalore-Pune high-
way and is a link, in more ways than one,
between Karnataka and Maharashtra.
Dharwad in many respects is a remarkable
city. It is supposed to be the gateway to
the hilly region of the state (malnad)
connecting it to the plains (bayalu seeme)
in Karnataka.
We also intend to study the Naval-
gund taluka of Dharwad district with
special reference to its rural linkages in
view of the importance of linkages
between urban and rural areas in the
development process. While this idea is
found in development literature, Marxist
historians have also pointed out the spe-
cic importance of towns as radiators of
capitalism in the debate on the transition
from feudalism to capitalism in Europe.
The two poles of these debates were the
standpoints of Maurice Dobb and Paul
Sweezy. Many other historians too joined
the debate (Hilton 1978).
The major methods used in this study
are review of secondary data, inter-
views with ofcials at the district level,
interviews with key informants in the
city and eld observation. As part of
the secondary documents we have con-
sidered writings by scholars and docu-
ments on urban governance. As part of
the interviews we have spoken to of-
cials in the urban government cell in
the deputy commissioners ofce, the
chief planning ofcer and those in the
zilla panchayat ofce. We have also
interviewed scholars at the Centre for
Multi-Disciplinary Research and the
Institute for Social and Economic
Change (ISEC).
Governance and Small Cities
Some of the major problems addressed
in this article are: the implementation of
the 74th amendment to the Constitution;
the planning function within it and the
relationship between rural and urban
areas or the rural-urban continuum, which
also raises questions of addressing the
needs of the existing population as well
as planning for the future; and the prior-
ity to be given for civic amenities and the
question of preserving the distinct identi-
ty of the place. We deal with these ques-
tions vis--vis Dharwad city in particular
and Karnataka in general. We attempt to
understand the above from the point of
view of small cities and towns.
In Karnataka, the urban governance
process comes under two important laws:
the Karnataka State Municipalities Act
of 1964 and the Karnataka State Municipal
Corporation Act of 1976. The 74th Amend-
ment Act of the Constitution is
an add-on law and most of the
urban and municipal governance
is carried out under the former
two laws. The structure of urban
governance in Karnataka is as
shown in Figure 1.
There are two streams accord-
ing to which urban governance
is carried out in Karnataka. One,
the Ministry of Urban Develop-
ment and the other is the depart-
ment of municipal administration. The
ministry governs through the directorate
of urban development to which all urban
government cells in the deputy commis-
sioners ofces report. The municipal cor-
porations of the state come under this
while the town municipalities, which are
not corporations come under the depart-
ment of municipal administration. How-
ever, both streams only pay token atten-
tion to the 74th constitutional amend-
ment. The process largely involves the
bureaucracy and there is hardly any rep-
resentation of citizens.
Urban Planning at District Level
District planning in Karnataka, and for
that matter in any Indian state, is
supposed to happen via the urban bodies.
Urban Governance in Karnataka
Ministry of Urban Development Municipal Administration
Directorate of Urban Development (Taluk) Town Municipalities
and Nagarapalikas
Urban gov cell in the DCs
office
Municipal Corporation
Figure 1: The Structure of Urban Governance in Karnataka
NOTES
68
The planning function for the district
is situated in the 74th constitutional
amendment and not in the 73rd amend-
ment to the Constitution. The latter spe-
cically pertains only to rural areas. In
the light of this constitutional division of
responsibilities it would be interesting to
see how it works in reality.
It is a mystery as to why the district
planning committee (DPC) and the plan-
ning function for the district is envisaged
in the 74th constitutional amendment.
The DPC is supposed to plan for the entire
district, perform the major functions of
integration of urban and rural plans
and conduct all planning related to the
governmental schemes in rural and urban
areas. It is also supposed to plan for the
entire district rural and urban accord-
ing to the resources, opportunities and
vision that the conditions can allow to
be developed.
The DPC is supposed to be an elected
body from both urban and rural areas
and though it has no decision-making
authority, it has the major function of
advising and approving the entire plan-
ning process at the district level. It is
important to iterate this point because
most small and medium cities and towns
in the country are situated at the district
or sub-district level. Therefore, urban
planning at the district level is synony-
mous with planning for small and medi-
um towns and cities. Not only planning,
but the entire governance process of
small and medium towns is meant to be
carried out from district ofces. In this
context, it would be interesting to exam-
ine as to how these processes are operat-
ing at the district level. The megapolises
in the country are replete with their own
organisations to govern and plan for
them. It is the small and medium towns
in the country whose condition is inex-
tricably linked to district planning.
Issues of Concern
Given the above scheme of things it is in-
teresting to see as to what is happening
in Karnataka. Often the process of dis-
trict planning in general and urban
planning in particular is not unfolding
in an ideal manner. The following are
some of the features of the existing urban
planning process at the district level:
The urban cell in the DCs ofce conducts
all urban planning for the district. There
is often a small section in the deputy
commissioners ofce that looks after all
the districts urban affairs. This section is
led by an ofcer of the rank of tehsildar
and is responsible for urban governance
as well as urban planning despite the fact
that there is often great need for urban
planning in each district. This ofce
reports directly to the DC without any
accountability to either the DPC or to the
elected urban representatives. Often, the
small cell is ill-equipped in terms of
expertise, staff and scope to meet the
demands of urban governance and urban
planning. Urban governance and plan-
ning at district level not only involves
the district town but also numerous
small taluka towns or other municipal
areas. These towns are growing fast and
most of the time in dire need of govern-
ance, civic amenities and planning. We
can hardly expect the urban cell in any
district of Karnataka to meet these needs.
To make matters worse, the urban
governance cell in the collectorate is
accountable only to the DC and not to
the elected representatives. This urban
cell also does not see itself as part of the
district planning process. The chief
planning ofcers we met often felt that
the urban cells in the ofce of the DC do
not share information and data or ur-
ban plans in time. The plans are inte-
grated and consolidated in the actual
process in the zilla parishad whose
function is to plan for rural areas. Con-
sequently, often rural plans, at least in
Karnataka, are prepared ahead of urban
plans and when the CPO asks for the
urban plans from the urban planning
ofce, they are not supplied. The urban
planning cells at the district level are
reluctant to participate in the planning
process, which is done by the DPC with
elected members in it whereas the
urban cell is only accountable to the
higher bureaucracy.
The net result of the above processes
is that district plans are prepared with-
out the urban component or the integra-
tion of rural with urban plans. This is
further aggravated because the zilla
panchayat/parishad basically remains a
rural panchayat/parishad rather than a
body reecting both rural and urban
areas of a district.
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Protecting Women or Endangering the Emigration Process:
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Marriage, Work and Education among
Domestic Workers in Kolkata Samita Sen, Nilanjana Sengupta
Marriage and Migration: Citizenship and Marital Experience
in Cross-border Marriages between Uttar Pradesh,
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Matchmakers and Intermediation: Marriage in Contemporary Kolkata Madhurima Mukhopadhyay
Runaway Marriages: A Silent Revolution? Meena Dhanda
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NOTES
69
In Karnataka, rural decentralisation
has received considerable attention and
therefore the rural planning process as
well as the ofces concerning the rural
governance are strengthened but the
same has not happened with urban local
governance or planning. There is a need
to recognise and emphasise this dimen-
sion while continuing with the efforts on
rural planning.
An important aspect to consider is
why in any district the zilla panchayat
should only be the zilla rural panchayat.
There is a renewed need to consider the
importance of urban local government
and urban planning at the district level
on par with the rural government and
planning. The need for this is only going
to increase rather than decrease in
the future.
Dharwad City
Besides being a cultural centre, Dharwad
is also a major educational centre of
northern Karnataka. It is home to Karna-
tak University, a university of agricultural
sciences and a number of reputed colleges
and institutions for higher education.
Dharwad is governed by a municipal
corporation and population of the twin
cities of Hubli-Dharwad is approximately
13 lakhs while that of Dharwad alone is
around seven lakhs.
Basic civic amenities like drinking water
and sanitation are the major problems
in Dharwad. The supply of drinking
water is not on a 24-hour basis and even
the few wards which do receive it
throughout the day are doing so due to
an experiment as part of an ongoing
World Bank (WB) project. Otherwise
the city faces a severe shortage of drink-
ing water. A majority of the wards re-
ceive water only once in three to four
days and in the summer season once in
seven days. There is a proposal to
provide 24 hours supply as part of the
WB project but it does not seem likely
very soon.
Dharwad has an open drainage system.
The colonial part of the city has an
underground drainage system while the
rest, which developed later, has no
underground drainage. Often there is
no regular cleaning of the overground
drainage, leading to problems arising
from poor hygiene, especially those
related to diseases and health. In this
scenario, the most vulnerable areas are
the poorer residents.
These conditions raise the question of
governance in small cities and towns in
the country. Most of these small cities
are in transition, growing at a varying
pace and lack any planning. There are
serious questions to be asked about the
governance and planning of these towns
and the neglect and apathy that they
face (Shaw 1999).
A random sample of letters to the Times
of India (Bangalore, Monday, 25 July

2011, Hubli/Dharwad/Belagaum) shows
many are about overowing drains, clean-
ing of open garbage sites, unbearable
stench and the need for interior roads.
The rst aspect of the problem under
consideration is the unplanned and
haphazard nature of the growth. This
growth process has little connection with
the district planning process. The second
is that the question of civic amenities to
the growing urbanisation process is
completely ignored in the small towns
and cities. Third, the specicities of these
cities are being neglected. Dharwad
requires better transport, concert halls,
reading places, libraries and so on, in
addition to drinking water and sanita-
tion. We could not nd such amenities in
any of the small towns that we studied
in Karnataka. The fourth issue is that
the linkages between small towns and
cities with the hinterland are missed in
the process. Finally, and because of the
factors mentioned above and their com-
binations, there is little or no perceivable
governance and planning.
Conclusions
Can we generalise the Dharwad experi-
ence? Though Dharwad is exceptional in
terms of its cultural and literary achieve-
ments, the state of most district towns in
Karnataka is similar. We witnessed the
same conditions in Bellary, Chamaraja-
nagar, Bidar, Davangere, Kolar and
recently in Haveri. All these are district
towns. According to the State Institute of
Urban Development (SIUD, Mysore) the
cities of Dharwad and Udupi in Karnataka
are better governed and better planned
than most other small cities and towns
in the state. One can gauge from this what
the conditions in other small cities are.
The reasons for most of this state of affairs
can be traced to what Kundu called the
exclusionary urbanisation process in
the country. The big cities and large urban
agglomerations such as Bangalore and
Mysore are favoured over small cities and
towns. Governance and planning in the
latter languishes without being noticed.
Indeed, Karnataka has a rich history of
decentralisation and local government
reforms. But most of these are related
to panchayati raj institutions and rural
areas. The state must now concentrate
on small towns as Bangalore is increas-
ingly becoming unmanageable.
What is stated in this paper is not
limited to Karnataka. The condition of
Dharwad reects the condition of small
towns in other states as well. Since we
began this paper with a quotation from
Braudel we also end with what he says
about small cities and towns in the his-
torical process:
urban history has to be extended to cover
these small communities, for little towns
as Spengler observed, eventually conquer
the surrounding countryside, penetrating
it with urban consciousness, meanwhile be-
ing themselves devoured and subordinated
by agglomerations more populous and more
active. Such towns are thus caught up into
urban systems orbiting regularly round
some sun-city (Braudel 1992: 482).
References
Bhagat, B R (2011): Emerging Pattern of Urbani-
sation in India, Economic & Political Weekly,
Vol XLVI, No 34, 20 August, pp 10-12.
Braudel, Fernand (1992): Towns and Cities in
Civilisation and Capitalism, 15th-18th Century:
The Structures of Everyday Life The Limits of
the Possible (Berkeley: University of California
Press), pp 479-558.
Hilton, Rodney, ed. (1978): Transition from Feudalism
to Capitalism (London: Verso).
Kundu, Amitabh (2003): Urbanisation and Urban
Governance: Search for a Perspective beyond
Neo-Liberalism, Economic & Political Weekly,
19 July, pp 3079-87.
(2011): Politics and Economics of Urban
Growth, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol XLVI,
No 20, 14 May, pp 10-12.
Shaw, Annapurna (1999): Emerging Patterns of
Urban Growth in India, Economic & Political
Weekly, Vol XXXIV, Nos 16 & 17, pp 969-78.
Sivaramakrishnan, K C, Amitabh Kundu and B N Singh
(2010): Oxford Handbook of Urbanisation in
India (New Delhi: OUP).
Vaddiraju, Anil Kumar and Satyanarayana Sangita
(2011): Decentralised Governance and Planning
in Karnataka, India, Newcastle upon Tyne,
Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
EDITORIALS
8
Begging for Attention
The Twelfth Five-Year Plan has called for a holistic national policy on beggars.
Second is the inadequacy of the rehabilitation policy. Of late
the media has focused on how inmates mostly young women
and children have been escaping from remand and shelter
homes where they are detained pending court trials. The condi-
tions in these so-called homes are so demeaning that the in-
mates prefer to run away rather than stay there. The conditions
in the beggars homes across the country would be much worse
given their complete helplessness. Media and research reports
have detailed the entire legal process from the time beggars are
picked up from the streets to when they are ned or herded into
beggars homes. By all accounts, most of the beggars homes
extract free coerced l abour and vocational rehabilitation
remains only on paper. The landmark Ram Lakhan vs State
judgment by the Delhi High Court in 2006 categorised the
motives for begging and said those who beg to survive reect
the failure of the state. More memorably, it said that to subject
such people to further ignominy and deprivation by ordering
their detention in a certied institution is nothing short of
dehumanising them.
Third, while there are no central schemes specically aimed
at beggars, there are a number of poverty-eradication and
employment schemes targeting the very poor that could ac-
commodate them. However, almost all of them demand docu-
ments and identication papers that a majority of the beggars
do not have. Beggars are obviously not a monolithic section
and the various strands within these communities have differ-
ent vulnerabilities and needs. Child beggars are particularly
vulnerable to exploitation of all kinds (especially by profes-
sional begging gangs), as are the sexual minorities, particu-
larly the transgender.
In a society where it is accepted that transforming a city
into a world class one means herding the unwanted sections
like beggars and the marginalised either into custody or send-
ing them to live on the outskirts, there is unlikely to be much
sympathy for beggars. Also, the existing insensitive police
and criminal justice system is going to take a long time to
acknowledge that beggars too are citizens with rights. Against
this background, the Twelfth Five-Year Plans call for an
integrated scheme for their rehabilitation is welcome. As a
rst step, the government should initiate a nationwide survey
to collect reliable data on the number of individuals forced
into beggary.
W
hen 286 inmates of the Beggars Rehabilitation Centre
in Karnataka died over a period of eight months in
2010, for a brief moment the issue of beggars who
are visible and yet invisible in our cities came into focus. Now
the Twelfth Five-Year Plan has called for a national policy on
beggars and a model central law on begging that could be
adopted by the states. Social activists working with the very
poor and beggars have long been advocating a holistic policy on
the issue of beggary, rehabilitation of beggars and repeal of
laws that are used to victimise not only beggars but all those
who do not t into the respectable category.
However, before the rst steps are taken to formulate any
rehabilitation programme or even a policy, it is essential to have
reliable data about beggars and what they need. In 2010, the govern-
ment admitted in the Lok Sabha that it had no authentic data on
the number of beggars in the country. Making an estimate of the
number of people involved in beggary will not be easy. Those who
end up begging on the streets do so because of desperation. But
they are not a xed population; many drift in and out of begging.
In many ways, beggars are the most rights-less persons in
I ndia. They are unwanted and stigmatised and in the eyes of the
middle class they beg because they are lazy. There is little
u nderstanding of the desperate circumstances that force the
very poor to beg. Beggars end up being victimised and hounded
on three accounts in terms of the provisions of the law applica-
ble, the so-called rehabilitation that is more like punitive
i ncarceration and the ineffectiveness of the programmes aimed
at ameliorating their conditions.
First, the existing laws meant to deal with beggars that end
up punishing them and criminalising their activities rather than
rehabilitating them need to be changed. The Bombay Preven-
tion of Begging Act (BPBA) 1959, which inspired a number of
similar laws in at least 18 states, has come under re from many
quarters for its regressive, brutally punitive and custodial fea-
tures. It penalises itinerant street entertainers, homeless work-
ers, the disabled poor and sexual minorities and migrants who
may have come to the cities to escape from poor living condi-
tions in the villages. Although an expert committee appointed
by the Bombay High Court following a public interest litigation
(PIL) in 1990 looked at the actual implementation of the law on
the streets by the police and thereafter called for its abolition,
the 1959 Act remains on the statute books.
BOOK REVIEW
30
Between Donors and Recipients
Mallika Shakya
Looking at Development and Donors:Essays
from Nepal by Devendra Raj Panday (Kathmandu:
Martin Chautari Publications), 2011; pp 419, Rs 500.
N
epals home-grown discourse on
the developmental origins and
implications of its ongoing poli-
tical transformation remains mufed by
the clamour of self-styled development
expatriates who dissect development into
piecemeal projects preaching depolitici-
sation. Even though the two warring
parties in Nepal have consistently agreed
that the Maoist rebellion grew out of the
roots of undevelopment, little has been
achieved in addressing this nexus. In this
context, the current volume by Devendra
Raj Panday is a timely testimony of Nepals
50-year journey that critically analyses the
various strands linking economic and social
(un)development with political dissent.
Panday is an exceptional developmental
maverick. As secretary of nance during
the panchayat era, he walked out of
government service to protest the rise
of hardliners, following Nepals failed
natio nal referendum of 1981. In recogni-
tion of his contributions to the democratic
struggle in the decade that follo wed, Prime
Minister Krishna Prasad Bhattarai ap-
pointed him as nance minister in the
coalition cabinet that took charge immedi-
ately after the successful democratic move-
ment of 1990. How ever, Panday became
increasingly dis illusio ned with Nepals
political parties and the aid community.
A decade later, as the Maoist conict
deepened, he initiated a popular civil
society movement and was the rst inte-
llectual to meet Maoist supremo Pushpa
Kamal Dahal (Prachanda) with a simple
message: Give up violence, and enter open
politics. The entire left and social demo-
cratic space is vacant, and you will be
successful. His call was answered in kind.
Baburam Bhattarai, the Maoist ideologue,
acknowledged Pandays 1999 book Failed
Development: Reections on the Mission
and the Maladies in his own writings
and claimed that the Maoist movement
was Nepals last chance for development.
Pandays current book Development
and Donors is set in the exuberant New
Nepal of 2006 where Nepali civil society
had joined hands with political parties to
launch a popular movement which oust-
ed monarchy and negotiated a peaceful
end to the decade-long civil war. The in-
ternational civil society of aid donors
contradicted their Nepali counterparts
in this historic moment. Despite having
preached depoliticised development for
decades, they sided with the dictatorial
king in trying to dissuade political parties
from joining the popular movement even
as it was gaining momentum. Panday
writes, [I]n the nick of the [sic] time, [the
donors] forgot the poor, the women, dalits
and janajatis and others who are variously
handicapped and whose need for em-
powerment the donors never tire of
preaching (p 362). His assessment of
Nepals 2006 revolution was that it con-
stituted a poli tical victory of the people of
Nepal over monarchy and a moral victory
over its powerful international partners.
It is sad that donors have since
shrugged off their political intervention
and have gone back to preaching depo-
liticised development. The unequal pow-
er equation between donors and recipi-
ents has made it convenient to let go of
the past. Even so, Pandays caution that
such a loss of memory should be the rst
thing to be prevented if development is
to take any clear direction in a nation
deserves attention.
How does one even begin to understand
the long and complicated series of events
and counter-events that led to the massive
showdown of 2006? Panday disentangles
this conundrum through 24 essays written
over a span of almost 27 years. Some were
written during the autocratic panchayat
period, others in the time of democratic
promises and growing disillusionment,
and the rest in the immediate moments
of the Maoist civil war and their main-
streaming into democratic politics. Or-
ganised into these three broad sections,
the essays reect Pandays experiences
initially as a deve lopment bureaucrat
and later as a civil society leader criti-
quing Nepals development and politics.
The Panchayat Period (1960-90)
Chapter 2 questions the aid industrys
portrayal of Nepal as an anonymous
and timeless geography that lacked any
other character except being ripe for
objective interventions. The develop-
ment reports of the 1970s and 1980s did
not grant Nepal its individuality. No
efforts were made towards understand-
ing whe ther Nepal was declining or pro-
gressing, nor was it acknowledged how
deve lopmental interference had led to its
gra dual decline in terms of the moral
compass of sincerity. The only exception
granted to Nepal, as Panday points out,
was on its social stubbornness to resist
modernisation. Arguments were made,
for example, that the reason Nepal suf-
fered from land erosion and low agricul-
tural production was because the Nepali
continued to live in remote hills instead of
migrating to its at lands.
Panday links this imposed anonymity of
Nepals developmental issues and efforts
with its excessive dependence on foreign
aid for development. Chapter 3 points out
that the entire budget of Nepals First
National Plan (1956-61) came from foreign
aid, a dependency that continued through-
out the 1970s and 1980s. As the saying
goes, whoever has the stick leads the buf-
falo, so it should not come as a surprise
that Nepal had little ownership of its
developmental trajectory. A case in point is
the major paradigm shift Nepal made in
the 1980s, manoeuvring away from an
economic development strategy towards
a basic needs strategy. Panday says virtu-
ally no questions were asked on why and
how such a monumental change was
being proposed and accepted. It allowed
donors to evade questions about the trick-
le-down mechanism that had earlier been
assumed to automatically trigger economic
growth and achieve equitable distribution.
It also meant that the Nepali policymakers
did not have to acknowledge that they
did not have a strategy of their own.
Chapter 4 further probes the develop-
mental politics of unquestioning. For
example, the World Development R eport
BOOK REVIEW
31
(1983) underscored the importance of
institutional management and Nepali
policy makers obediently went about
setting up a new agency to do things
right; breaking one organisation into two,
amalgamating two into one; bringing in
a staff college, establishing a deans ofce,
upgrading the deans ofce to a rectors
ofce (p 101). However, little was ever
said about the massive disconnect between
the idioms of bureaucratic goals and their
popular interpretations. Nor did deve-
lopment practitioners question the con-
tradictions inherent in Nepals political
structure of developmental practice. For
example, the king consistently held the
panchayat representatives accountable
for all developmental goals while holding
supreme poli tical power and regularly
interfering in everyday governance to
impose his own feudal patronage, which
he interpreted as development. Written as
early as 1983, these uneasy questions came
to haunt Nepal in the following decades.
Democracy Era (1991-2000)
For a nation entrenched in feudal patro-
nage and mono-ethnicism, instrumental
democracy alone was never going to be
enough to achieve economic and social
progress (Chapters 5-11). It was unfortu-
nate that political parties made them-
selves vehicles for the commodication
of democratic values and neo-liberal
economic reforms, overlooking the glar-
ing inequality between ethnic, gender
and regional demographies. Panday criti-
cises political leaders for letting go of
human agency and succumbing to donor
hege mony that development was to be
achieved through piecemeal projects
alone. He also calls it unfortunate that
donor-driven non-governmental organi-
sations (NGOs) proliferated so much so
that both the state and genuine civil
society were overshadowed by it.
Insurgency and Reconciliation
(2001 and Beyond)
The volume devotes 13 chapters to dis-
cussing the key actors of development
donors, state, rebels and civil society.
This section decisively moves away from
the structure to the spirit of development.
International donors are no longer mere
providers of aid but have risen to become
de facto partners of developmental
governance, asserting policy condition-
ality to their nancial disbursements
while conveniently denying any political
connotations to their demands. Add to
this the legitimisation of aid- oriented NGOs
and prot-oriented commercial ventures
as key interlocutors of development and
the agenda of sidelining the state is
effectively complete (Chapters 12-14).
Chapters 15-17 pick up the earlier theme
on state capacity, this time expre ssed in the
new donor idioms of anti-corruption and
transparency. Donor agencies such as the
World Bank and United Nations increas-
ingly push new loans and aid packages
under a hapha zardly coined governance
sector as if it were a simple addition to the
sectors of national econo mic accounting.
Added to the irony is the practice of setting
up donor-funded NGOs as independent
watch dogs of national transparency.
Panday sees this as a repetition of the past.
For example, the 1990s debate on human
development had agreed that building
human capabilities is about achieving
a sense of dignity among the people,
possibly through deepening of demo cracy
and making human agency central to
developmental efforts (Chapter 18). In
practice, however, donors chose to conne
themselves to everyday assessment of
three simple HDI (Human Development
Index) indicators and dissociated them-
selves from the concerns of everyday deve-
lopment and demo cracy. Panday rightly
cautions that new goals on transparency
and old goals on human development
cannot be achieved until technical instru-
ments and empty indicatorisation give
way to a meaningful system of values.
Panday differentiates the 2006 popular
uprising from the other political stru ggles
of the past in that this alone marked a
genuine collaboration bet ween civil society
and political parties. However, he claries
that civil society in Nepal is not a mono-
lithic agent. While aid-oriented NGOs
continued to conne themselves to the
promises and efforts of depoliticised deve-
lopment, concerned citizens mobilised
their associations for defending human
rights, democracy and peace. Pandays
own Citizens Movement for Democracy
and Peace (CMDP) famo usly worked to
ignite a political movement against an
oppressive regime at a time when the
Seven Party Alliance (a coalition of seven
Nepali political parties seeking to end
autocratic rule) lacked credibility. Panday
argues that such a broad alliance was
necessary for what has since followed, i e,
a holistic develop mental vision that not
only brought a historic regime change,
including the end of a violent civil war, but
spoke meaningfully about the empower-
ment of socially excluded demographies
of class, caste, gender and ethnicity.
The Discourse
Panday denes the problem of political
decit as a major obstacle of develop-
ment and proposes that popular owner-
ship is necessary for sound technical
mechanisms to deliver meaningful res-
ults. What is compelling about this book
is the narrative it constructs on Nepals
developmental trajectory its eventual
transformation from an anonymous geo-
graphy to one successfully overcoming
the developmental barriers of dictator-
ship and guerrilla war. Pandays testi-
mony must be differentiated from the
rhetoric of the aid industry. Equally, it has
to be differentiated from the academic-
speak of a deconstructionist school, which
puts an elitist (and somewhat cynical) spin
on the developmental aspirations and
assessments of ordinary Nepali people.
It is only to be expected that incon-
venient voices continue to be mufed.
Despite being immensely popular among
Nepali thinkers and practitioners, Pandays
earlier book Nepals Failed Development
(1999) has been largely i gnored by aid
practitioners. Worse, academic scholars
of Nepali development have written
peer-reviewed articles on the same topic,
in one instance sharing the same title
(e g, Lauren Leves article in Anthropology
Quarterly in 2007) but without once cit-
ing Pandays book. These prompt one to
assume that Pandays chosen writing
style, of adopting a Nepali-English way
of thinking and sharing, which has been
left somewhat unedited for the non-
Nepali audience, may not only be a prag-
matic choice but also a sarcastically
deliberate one.
Mallika Shakya (Mallika.Shakya@up.ac.za) is
with the University of Pretoria, South Africa.
32
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Rs 250 (pb).
Siddiqui, Mona (2012); The Good Muslim: Reections
on Classical Islamic Law and Theology (New Delhi:
Cambridge University Press); pp vii + 232, Rs 595.
Singh, Tavleen (2012); Durbar; Hachette India;
pp xii + 312, Rs 599.
Sinha, Kaliprasanna (2012); Sketches by Hootum the
Owl: A Satirists View of Colonial Calcutta
(Kolkata: Samya); pp lxii + 288, Rs 800.
Sohal, Sukhdev Singh (2012); Credit, Rural Debt and
the Punjab Peasantry (1849-1947); Guru Nanak
Dev University, Amritsar; pp 203, Rs 200.
Sood, Atul, ed. (2012); Poverty Amidst Prosperity:
Essays on the Trajectory of Development in Gujarat
(Delhi: Aakar Books); pp x + 286, Rs 595.
Sorabji, Richard (2012); Gandhi and the Stoics: Modern
Experiments on Ancient Values (Oxford: Oxford
University Press); pp xiii + 224, Rs 995.
Srinivas, M N (2012); The Remembered Village (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press); pp xxxii + 392,
Rs 445.
Sturman, Rachel (2012); The Government of Social
Life in Colonial India: Liberalism, Religious Law,
and Womens Rights (New Delhi: Cambridge
University Press); pp xv + 289, Rs 695.
Sukhdev, Pavan (2012); Corporation 2020: Trans-
forming Business for Tomorrows World (New
Delhi: Penguin Books); pp 275, Rs 699.
Subba, T B, ed. (2012); North-East India: A Handbook
of Anthropology (Hyderabad: Orient BlackSwan);
pp xxii + 430, price not indicated.
Survey (2012); Regional Economic Outlook: Asia
and Pacic Managing Spillovers and Advancing
Economic Rebalancing (New Delhi: Academic
Foundation); pp x + 50, Rs 595.
Tartakov, Gary Michael, ed. (2012); Dalit Art and
Visual Imagery (New Delhi: Oxford University
Press); pp xxiv + 296, Rs 1,495.
Teitelbaum, Emmanuel (2012); Mobilizing Restraint:
Democracy and Industrial Conict in Post-Reform
South Asia (New Delhi: Foundation Books, Cam-
bridge University Press); pp xxii + 220, Rs 795.
The Global Social Crisis: Report on the World Social
Situation (2012); (New Delhi: Academic Foun-
dation).
Thornton, William H and Songok Han Thornton
(2012); Toward a Geopolitics of Hope (New Delhi:
Sage Publications); pp xii + 262, Rs 750.
Toussaint, Eric and Damien Millet (2011); Debt, the
IMF, and the World Bank: Sixty Questions, Sixty
Answers (Delhi: Aakar Books); pp 361, Rs 750.
Trotsky, Leon (2012); In Defence of Marxism (Delhi:
Aakar Books); pp xvi + 263, Rs 250.
Vajpeyi, Ananya (2012); Righteous Republic: The
Political Foundations of Modern India (Cam-
bridge: Harvard University Press); pp xxiv + 342,
price not indicated.
Valiani, Salimah (2012); Rethinking Unequal Exchange:
The Global Integration of Nursing Labour Mar-
kets (Toronto: University of Toronto Press);
pp xviii + 197, price not indicated.
Books Received
COMMENTARY
january 12, 2013 vol xlviiI no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
12
Flavia Agnes (aviaagnes@gmail.com) is a
womens rights lawyer and director of Majlis
which also runs a rape victim support
programme in Mumbai.
No Shortcuts on Rape
Make the Legal System Work
Flavia Agnes
The vigorous public discourse
following the recent brutal
gang rape and mutilation of the
23-year-old in Delhi is a positive
sign but hopefully the demand for
quick solutions will not ignore the
complexities involved in dealing
with all forms of violence against
women. There are also other
connected issues that require
urgent attention including the
description of a rape as a state
worse than death, making out
certain acts of violence to be
rare aberrations when they are
depressingly routine, ignoring
the sexual violence within
families and the need to make
the legal system accountable to
the female citizenry.
N
ow that the gang rape victim
christened as Nirbhaya, Brave-
heart, Indias Daughter, etc,
by the media, has nally been laid to
rest, despite the Delhi administrations
best efforts to prolong her ordeal until
the protestors at India Gate were worn
out, perhaps it is time to address deeper
concerns that surround the issue of rape
in public discourse.
Though many of us would like to
change the terminology from rape vic-
tim to rape survivor, unfortunately
that cannot be done in her case since she
did not survive. The brutal injuries
i nicted on her body during the gang
rape took her life. One is therefore con-
strained to label her a victim despite
her heroic struggle.
Had she survived (as many of us wished
she had) she could have been the mascot
for the movement against violence perpe-
trated on women. She might have come
out in the open in the wake of the massive
support she received across the nation,
and by this very act made a strong state-
ment to the world at large that a rape vic-
tim does not have to survive like a zinda
laash (a living corpse), a title awar ded to
rape survivors by our parliamentarians.
Her ght for justice would have become a
beacon of hope for many others. Her
struggle for justice may even have helped
to lessen the stigma attached to the term
rape itself in public discourse and her
struggle might have inspired many young-
sters to come out and report incidents of
sexual assault. But that was not to be. This
mantle has now fallen upon the protestors
and the political leaders who collectively
mourn her death.
Not a Living Corpse
Rather sadly, the wishes of those de-
manding the death penalty to avenge
her rape seem to have been fullled,
without any major changes taking place
in the rape law, since it has become
a case of rape and murder and the
rarest of rare maxim can be applied to
it. But if the death penalty is all that we
are seeking, then her heroic struggle
would be in vain. Her death is not some-
thing to be proud of, because death is
not what she wished for. In the few
m oments in which she could express her
wishes after the traumatic incident, she
had clearly indicated that she wanted to
live. Live life fully, not as a mere shadow
of her earlier self, like a living corpse
complete her training, earn and support
her family. I hope after this, all of us will
refrain from referring to a survivor as
zinda laash or describe rape as a state
worse than death. With death one
reaches the point of no return, but as
long as there is life, there is hope. An
i ncident of rape, not even a brutal gang
rape, ought not to have snuffed out the
hope of a 23-year-old, eager to scale new
heights. One can only hope that this is
one lesson the nation has learnt through
this episode.
The nationwide protest which this in-
cident helped to ignite and the clarion
call for reforms in the rape law are posi-
tive signs. But for the sake of easy and
quick solutions, hopefully the discourse
will not atten out the complexities in-
volved in issues concerning violence
against women and will help us to seek
answers to complex questions which do
not get resolved through retributive jus-
tice measures such as the death penalty,
public hanging, castration or instant
justice. We need to keep reminding
ourselves that the girl died due to the
brutal attack on her with iron rods which
damaged her intestines and led to the
poisoning of all her vital organs. Noth-
ing can be more brutal than this. When
we describe rape as worse than death,
we need to remind ourselves that inser-
tion of objects such as wooden splinters,
iron rods, glass bottles, knives and swords
into the vagina causes far more serious
damage to the female anatomy, but un-
fortunately it does not warrant the same
kind of punishment as rape since it is not
perceived as a state worse than death.
COMMENTARY
Economic & Political Weekly EPW january 12, 2013 vol xlviiI no 2
13
In cases of brutal sexual assault on chil-
dren one can observe this type of violence.
One can also notice this kind of mutilation
of the female body during caste and com-
munal violence such as that during Parti-
tion, the Gujarat carnage and atrocities
on dalits (like the Khairlanji rape and
murders in Maharashtra). Therefore, we
need to move away from the patriarchal
premise of vaginal purity while we are
addressing issues of sexual assaults and
stop awarding a special status for peno-
vaginal penetration as compared to other
types of violations.
Vaginal penetration is only one of the
many ways in which women are chas-
tised and humiliated. Acid attacks, slash-
ing of the face, stripping and parading,
dragging women to the ground and kick-
ing them on their abdomen, etc, are some
of the other violent ways in which wom-
en are shown their place in public. Even
while the protests were going on in most
of the major cities, a young student in a
local college in Mumbai stabbed his ex-
girl friend several times and then stabbed
himself. While the boy died instantly, the
girl succumbed to her injuries after a few
days. This violence is no less gruesome
than an incident of gang rape.
Routineness of Violence
If womens lives are endangered in so
many different ways, then castration of
the rapists cannot give us the answers
that we are seeking as it reinforces the
same old value system that continues to
view rape as a state worse than death.
It is too short-sighted and serves only to
lay the emphasis back on the patriarchal
premise of the sanctimony attached to
vaginal purity and does not help us to
move forward. We would then be forced
to move on to other barbaric and medie-
val forms of retributive justice like cut-
ting off the hands of all those who in-
dulge in heinous acts of violence against
women. This demand obscures the rou-
tineness of the violence that takes place
in our society, in our homes, in our
p rivate spaces and makes it seem like
a rare aberration.
One wonders whether the protests
would have been on this scale if they had
not raped her but only assaulted her and
her male companion with iron rods. Is it
the titillating aspects attached to a grue-
some gang rape that arouses feelings of
grief and vengeance? The brutal manner
in which the girl was attacked is indicative
of a deep-rooted hatred towards women,
particularly towards those women who
dare to cross the boundaries. They are
seen as free for all or rather, everyone
thinks that they are the custodians of
womens morality and that they have a
right to teach them a lesson.
In some recent cases of gang rape the
girl was out with a male companion. Is
the outrage against her an indication of
the societal desire to curb any expres-
sion of sexual freedom among young,
unmarried girls? Recently, in Bengaluru,
a law student of the prestigious National
Law University was gang raped when
she was in a lonely spot with a male
companion. The doctors who examined
her were more concerned about the elas-
ticity of her vagina than nding forensic
evidence of the gruesome crime. In 2010,
a young 16-year-old Hindu girl travelling
in a bus with her Muslim friend on the
outskirts of Mangalore was dragged out
of the bus by members of an extremist
Hindu fundamentalist outt and taken
to a police station. A case of rape was
foisted against her friend. Her father
was called to the police station and was
humiliated. That night the girl commit-
ted suicide.
It is these incidents that make us won-
der whether the gang rape in Delhi is
meant to be a message to all youngsters
not just to not venture out in the dark but
to not venture out with male compan-
ions. It is the same message that the
p arents and the community give their
daug hters. It is the same message that
the moral brigade has been communicat-
ing through the raids on young couples
in Mumbai under the direction of Maha-
rashtras Home Minister R R Patil, who
has now recommended the death penalty
in rape cases. Perhaps he and most pro-
testers out on the streets in India today
are unaware that around one-third of all
rape cases are led by parents against
the boy concerned when their daughter
exercises her sexual choice and elopes.
Such cases will only increase in the years
to come as the recent enactment of the
Protection of Children from Sexual Abuse
Act has raised the statutory age for con-
sent to sexual intercourse from 16 to 18
years and all youngsters who are sexually
active are prone to harassment through
collusion of the family and the state. These
types of cases have led to the use of phra-
ses like genuine cases and false cases
among the police, prosecutors and judges.
The recent Act has also shifted the burden
of proof to the accused which is an ex-
tremely dangerous proposition in the con-
text of human rights and rights of the ac-
cused within the criminal justice system.
Male Role Models
There is another question which is wor-
risome. Is it possible to examine this issue
only within the framework of men versus
women or, more particularly, middle-
class women versus lower-class men?
The girl was not alone, she was travelling
with a male companion. He, too, was beat-
en and thrown out. If he had lost his intes-
tines in the scufe that followed, what
would the public response be? What about
the death of a young 19-year-old boy of
Mumbai who lost his life while protesting
the lewd comments being passed against
a girl from his housing s ociety? Should
not his murder be avenged by awarding
the death penalty to the accused? In
a nother well-publicised incident that took
place about a year ago in Mumbai, two
young men, Keanan and Reuben, were
brutally and fatally attacked when they
protested against the sexual harassment
of some girls in their group. Why is the
loss of their lives less gruesome a crime?
These men were also role models to be
emulated by the youth of today. We des-
perately need such bravehearts who will
stand up for womens dignity in public
places because in most cases the public
just looks on while the girl is molested,
stripped, raped and dragged naked in
full public view. So it is not just women,
but also men who defend women, who
are subjected to brutal attacks.
Wrong Popular Perceptions
Despite all the positive impact of the
campaign revolving it, the Delhi gang
rape incident does not foreground the
different types of violations that take
place in our society. Rather, it reinforces
the popular perception that rape takes
COMMENTARY
14
place in lonely pla ces, late at night, by
strangers and that r apists are brutes or
psychopaths who deserve to be hanged.
But most rapes take place in the privacy
of our homes, in our schools. Rapes by
family members are seldom reported.
They come to light only when the girl is
found to be pregnant and by then it is far
too late to have an abortion. The girl is
then sent to a government run shelter
home where she languishes while her
child is put up for adoption. The risk of
sexual abuse is even greater in these
homes as some recent incidents that have
been reported in the media indicate.
In a case decided by the sessions court
in Mumbai last month, the father had
been raping his daughter for two years.
When the child conded in her mother
and the mother confronted her husband,
she was silenced by threats of desertion.
It was only when the maternal uncle was
alerted that the complaint was regis-
tered. The case resulted in conviction
only because the uncle testied, but the
mother refused to come to court and
d epose. In yet another case of a f ather
raping his daughter, the mother attem-
pted to register a case thrice and each
time was sent back as the police refused
to record her statement. Finally, the case
could be registered only after the inter-
vention of a local social worker. What
should be the punishment for f athers
who violate the most sacrosanct du-
ciary relationship of trust and sexually
violate their helpless daughters? And
what should be the punishment for those
who through their silence or n egligence
abet the crime?
The infamous ruling of the Supreme
Court (SC) in the Mathura rape case in
the late 1970s became the catalyst for a
nationwide anti-rape movement. The SC
had acquitted two policemen who had
raped a 16-year-old illiterate tribal girl
inside the police station while on duty on
the ground that since there were no inju-
ries on her body she might have consent-
ed to the sex. Further, the Court contend-
ed, since the girl had eloped with her
boyfriend and was not a virgin, she could
not have been raped. The campaign that
followed resulted in bringing some
changes in the archaic laws; the most sig-
nicant being the mandatory minimum
punishment of seven years which could
extend to life imprisonment. It was per-
ceived that it would have a deterrent
value. But when we examine the graph
of reported cases since 1983 (when the
amendment was introduced) there is a
steady increase in reported cases. It is
o bvious that the amendment has failed
to act as a deterrent. Worse still, convic-
tion rates are so low as to be negligible.
Even in these cases, the trial courts sel-
dom award the statutory seven years and
give as low as three years or at times, just
six months. Even these result in acquit-
tals at the appeal stage.
The conviction in the well-publicised
Shiny Ahuja rape case in Mumbai is not
the norm, but an exception. In this case
despite the complainants retraction, the
trial court convicted the accused based
on forensic evidence. There was a contra-
diction. While the actor denied that there
was ever any sexual intercourse between
him and his domestic help, his defence in
court was that it was consensual. The
judgment was condemned by Mumbais
socialites. A systematic media campaign
was launched to clean up the actors pub-
lic image. And it is highly plausible that
the conviction will be set aside in the ap-
peal which is pending before the high
court. Three other high prole rape cases
in Mumbai one involving the son of an
industrialist who was charged with raping
a 52-year-old divorcee in his car in his fac-
tory compound in the early hours of the
morning and in which the victim suffered
a fracture of her wrist while resisting, the
gang rape of a student of a prestigious
s ocial work college in Mumbai and the
rape of a 12-year-old ragpicker by a police-
man all resulted in acquittals, either in
the trial courts or in the appeal courts.
The retraction in the Shiny Ahuja case
brings to the fore the important issue of
witness protection and compensation
for the victim. Cases are settled before
the victim can depose, by the relatives
at times with active intervention of the
p olice, sometimes even with the knowl-
edge of the court. We do not have any
mechanism to protect a poor victim and
other witnesses against the onslaught of
a powerful rapist from the time the com-
plaint is led till the time of deposition
in a trial court which may take about a
year or two at best. There are many con-
straints that work against a girl from de-
posing in the court which calls for a
strong witness protection programme in
order to ensure convictions.
Fear of False Cases
The trauma of rape and the stigma
caused by it usually forces poor families
who le complaints of rape to change
residences to protect their wards from
the stigma of rape. In most cases, the
abuse is detected only when these young
girls in their early teens are taken to the
hospital to investigate delayed periods.
The families are so poor that they cannot
provide even the basic care to their child.
They need nancial aid and state support
to overcome the trauma, the stigma and
the adverse consequences of rape. But
each time the issue of compensation is
raised, the bogey of false cases is fore-
grounded to throttle the demand.
In Maharashtra, district boards were
set up two years ago under the district
collector with high level ofcials of the
home, health, law and judiciary and
women and child welfare departments
along with non-governmental organisa-
tion (NGO) representatives to scrutinise
applications for compensation, and the
police were mandated to send in copies
of the FIR along with medical reports.
An amount of Rs 2 lakh was stipulated
out of which Rs 20,000 is to be disbursed
initially and the balance after the girl
deposes in court and an amount set
aside for medical aid, trauma counselling
or skill training. But despite the grand
centrally sponsored scheme, the central
funds have not reached the state govern-
ment and the victims wait in vain. This
amounts to taking the most gullible and
most victimised for a ride. No one wants
to act because of the all pervasive fear of
false complaints. One shudders to
think how the family of the Delhi gang
rape victim would have dealt with the
medical bills if the case did not turn out
to be a high prole one and the state ad-
ministration had not been forced to step
in as a face-saving measure. But then, is
it wrong to expect this kind of state sup-
port to all survivors of sexual abuse?
The fear of false complaints is all
pervasive within our legal system right
COMMENTARY
15
from the time a victim tries to register
the complaint to the time of the trial. All
stakeholders: the police, the medical
o fcers who examine the victim, the
public prosecutors who are meant to de-
fend her, the defence lawyers who are
out to tarnish her reputation and the
presiding judge who is supposed to be
the neutral arbiter are plagued with this
and constantly look for evidence of falsi-
ty on the part of the victim. If this is the
present reality, one can just imagine
what will happen if the punishment is
raised to a minimum of life imprison-
ment and maximum of death penalty.
Then even the few convictions which the
judges award today will not take place,
and every accused will be given the
benet of doubt.
Accountable to Women
Instead, what we need is a criminal jus-
tice system that works with responsibil-
ity, protocols for all stakeholders which
are binding and most important, a periodic
audit that ensures that the protocols are
followed. This tedious process cannot be
replaced by sensational measures such
as death penalty and castration which
may momentarily satiate the public
thirst for blood, but will fail to have any
deterrent impact at the ground level.
What we need most of all is a clarion
call to make our legal system account-
able to the female citizenry in small but
meaningful ways.
V Geetha (geethv@gmail.com) is a writer and
publisher, and her interests include feminism,
caste and education.
On Impunity
V Geetha
Impunity is what keeps unequal
class and gender arrangements in
place. It is constitutive of power
in all its forms and the relishing
of impunity marks the exercise
of power, rendering it desirable
and attractive. Whether the rapist
is a citizen or a custodian of the
state, the relish that makes for a
particular exercise of power has
to do with sexuality, and it is this
peculiar interplay of sexuality
and power that needs to be
understood for the evil that it is.
I
must confess that I have been unable
to summon words or courage to
speak about the horric fate visited
on the young woman in Delhi who tragi-
cally did not survive it. For one, it sum-
moned up a longer genealogy of similar
horrors and, for another, it insistently
foregrounded the sheer injustice that we
continually resist and struggle against,
only to be returned to it, ever so often.
Like many others, I felt anger, rather
s orrowful anger: anger that the rapists
actually did what they did, anger at the
state for all that it fails or refuses to do.
But I felt anger on another count: that
here is a state that is clearly in crisis, for
it can only respond with more and more
violence and claim more and more im-
punity when its citizens protest and yet
we are inexorably bound to this state, by
history, by our investment in democracy
and this republic and thus again and yet
again we renew the life of the state, in
good faith and hope. Meanwhile the
state retreats into further impunity.
This set me thinking about impunity
as such: from the local police thana to
city police headquarters; from the mu-
nicipal councillor to the cabinet of min-
isters, power and authority are shielded
in this country. Impunity is what domi-
nant castes grant themselves as they
a ttack and destroy dalits and adivasis,
and impunity is what keeps unequal
class and gender arrangements in place.
Clearly, impunity is constitutive of power
in all its forms and the relishing of impu-
nity marks the exercise of power, ren-
dering it desirable and attractive.
This is something that the poor and
marginal citizens in this country know
so well. I was present at a public hearing
in Chennai in early 2012 on crimes that
ought to be tried under the (Prevention
of Atrocities) against Scheduled Castes
and Tribes Act, 1989. The rst person to
depose was a middle aged man from
the adivasi Irular community who had
undergone torture at a local police sta-
tion. In a gentle questioning tone he
spoke of the details of his hurt, the de-
tached, almost bored interjections by
the senior inspector who was in charge,
the manner in which the torture was
routinely yet menacingly carried out, his
own painful attempts at resisting, ask-
ing questions, and nally his sense of
bewilderment and sadness. He ended
by wondering and hoping if the
i nspector would not one day realise that
what he had done was unjust...and
make amends. His narration may be
read as a veritable parable of a citizens
good faith in the face of state cynicism
and impunity. But it is not for this reason
alone that I recall this witnessing: for it
revealed something more, that impunity
of this sort is not only characteristic of
the everyday business of the state, but
the everyday life of caste society. There
is a complicity here, which is as much
about shared hatred and contempt for
sections of our marginal and labouring
people, as it is about unjust power that is
parcelled out, and yet held in common in
this instance by the state and civil society.
It is this shared complicity that we
need to interrogate with regard to the
COMMENTARY
january 12, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
18
Doha 2012: A Climate
Conference of Low Ambitions
Martin Khor
After teetering on the edge of
a collapse, the United Nations
Doha conference on climate
change ended with an agreement,
but it was an agreement of low
ambitions. Avoidance of collapse
is a poor measure of success and
Doha revealed deep divisions on
how to combat climate change,
division which will surface
when negotiations resume
this year. In terms of progress
towards real actions to tackle the
climate change crisis, the Doha
conference was another
lost opportunity.
Martin Khor (mkhor@igc.org) is Executive
Director of the South Centre, Geneva.
F
or 2012, the annual United Nations
climate conference was in Doha
and concluded on 8 December with
low levels of commitments by the deve-
loped countries in two crucial areas
emission cuts and provision of climate
nancing for developing countries.
The Doha meetings of the 18th Con-
ference of Parties of the United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate
Change (UNFCCC) dubbed CoP-18 can
thus be described as a climate summit of
low ambition.
The conference adopted many deci-
sions. The main ones were on the Kyoto
Protocols second period in which some
developed countries committed to cut
their emissions of greenhouse gases for
the period 2013-20; on remaining Bali
Action Plan issues in the working group
on long-term cooperative action, which
has now terminated its work; on a new
set of activities on assisting developing
countries suffering from loss and dam-
age resulting from climate change; and
on the work programme of the Durban
Platform, which will be the main arena
of new negotiations starting in 2013.
(For a discussion of previous conferenc-
es see Khor 2010a and Khor 2010b.)
Many delegates left the Doha confer-
ence quite relieved that they had reached
agreement after days of wrangling over
many issues and an anxious last 24 hours
that were so contentious that most
people felt a collapse was imminent. The
relief was that the multilateral climate
change regime had survived yet again,
although there are deep differences
and distrust between developed and
developing countries.
The conict in paradigms between these
two groups of countries was very evident
throughout the two weeks of the Doha
negotiations, and it was only papered over
supercially in the nal hours to avoid
an open failure. But the differences will
surface again when negotiations resume
this year. Avoidance of collapse is a poor
measure of success. In terms of progress
towards real actions to tackle the climate
change crisis, the Doha conference was
another lost opportunity.
The conference was held at the end of
a year of record extreme weather events,
including Hurricane Sandy in the United
States (US) and heavy rainfall and ood-
ing in many parts of Asia. Scientists
are increasingly linking these extreme
events to climate change. As the Doha
conference started, news of the typhoon
in the Philippines which caused over
600 deaths and made 3,00,000 homeless
reminded the participants of the present
reality of the climate crisis. Before the
conference began, a new report by the
United Nations Environment Programme
(UNEP) reafrmed that there was an
enormous gap between what countries
had pledged to do to curb emissions, and
what is needed to be done if the average
global temperature rise is to be restricted
to 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial
levels. The World Bank released its own
report warning that the world is heading
towards global warming by 4 degrees if
countries do not do more.
Despite the clear signs that the climate
crisis is already with us, and that greater
disasters are just round the corner, the
dictates of economic competition and
commercial interests are unfortunately of
higher priority, especially among devel-
oped countries, which explains their low
ambition in emission reduction. They also
broke their promises and commitments
previously made to provide adequate funds
and to transfer technology to developing
countries. The prospects for effective
actions are thus rather gloomy, post-Doha.
Kyoto Protocols Second Period
The most important result in Doha was the
formal adoption of the Kyoto Protocols
second period (2013 to 2020) to follow
immediately after the rst period expires
on 31 December. However, the elements
in the agreement are weak. With original
members Canada, Russia, Japan and New
Zealand having decided to leave the
Kyoto Protocol (in the case of Canada) or
to remain but not to parti cipate in a second
period, only the European Union (EU) and
other European countries, Australia, and
COMMENTARY
Economic & Political Weekly EPW january 12, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 2
19
a few other countries (totalling 35 deve-
loped countries and countries in transi-
tion) are left to make legally binding
commitments in the second period.
Also, the emission cuts these Annex I
countries agreed to commit themselves
to add up to only an 18% reduction by
2020 from the 1990 level, compared to
the 25-40% required to restrict global
temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
The countries in the main submitted the
low end of the range of the pledges they
had made in the Copenhagen (2009) and
Cancun (2010) climate conferences as
their Kyoto second period commitments,
which was a disappointment although
expected and this was a major compo-
nent of the overall low ambition status
of the Doha conference.
A saving factor in the Kyoto Protocol
decision is the ambition mechanism
put in by developing countries, that the
countries will revisit their original
target and increase their commitments by
2014 in line with the aggregate 25-40%
goal. It was this provision that persuaded
the developing countries to go along with
the decision, as otherwise they gave
notice that they found the draft with the
low numbers on emission reduction un-
acceptable. Of course, it remains to be
seen if the 2014 review of commitments
results in higher gures.
There were at least two other points
that the developing countries had to
ght for in the Kyoto Protocol decision.
First, the decision severely limited the
amount of credits or surplus allowances
that can be used during the second period.
These credits were accumulated in the
Kyoto Protocols rst period by countries
that cut their emissions by more than the
targeted level. According to the decision,
these countries cannot use or trade most
of the surplus allowances as a means to
avoid future emission cuts. The most
important country affected is Russia, and
in the nal plenary session it strongly
objected to the way the president of the
conference, Abdullah Bin Hamad al-Atti-
yah of Qatar, bulldozed through the Kyo-
to Protocol decision even though three
countries (including Russia) tried to
raise objections to this decision.
Second, the developing countries were
adamant that Annex I countries that are
not party to the Kyoto Protocol or have
decided not to participate in the second
period should not be allowed to make use
of the protocols exibility mechanisms
that enabled countries to offset their
domestic emission reduction commitments
by paying other countries to do the miti-
gation on their behalf, such as through the
Clean Development Mechanism.
1
Some
developed countries wanted this exible
mechanism to be open to these parties.
In the draft decision oated on the eve
of the closure, the Kyoto Protocol draft
decision did not contain many of the
demands of developing countries. A deter-
mined effort by these countries, includ-
ing a like-minded group, to make their
grievances known to the ministers coor-
dinating the issue, yielded a result that
was just about acceptable to them.
No Commitment on Finance
A major criticism of the Doha decisions
is the very unsatisfactory results on the
issue of nancial resources for developing
countries to enable them to take climate
actions. In Cancun in 2010, the Confer-
ence of Parties decided that developed
countries would mobilise climate nance
of $100 billion a year for developing
countries, starting by 2020. It also agreed
that $30 billion of fast start nance
would be provided in 2010-12.
The fast-start period ended in 2012.
There is a gap between 2013 and 2020,
with no commitment for that period. The
G-77 and China, representing all devel-
oping countries, made a demand that
this gap be lled up, with a benchmark
of $60 billion by 2015. However, at
Doha, the developed countries were in
no mood to give any numbers nor even
any qualitative commitment. The decision
on nance at Doha only encourages
developed countries to provide at least as
much as they had in the 2010-12 period.
This encouragement is thus for only $10
billion a year in aggregate, which is a
climbdown from the previous fast-start
period in which the annual $10 billion was
at least a commitment. Moreover there
is no road map of a progressive increase
towards the $100 billion target in 2020.
The lack of a credible nance commit-
ment led to an outcry by developing
countries on the plenary oor. The absence
of a commitment on funding leaves a
major gap in the chain of undertakings and
actions in the climate regime. Under the
UNFCCC, developed countries made a
commitment to nance the incremental
costs of mitigation actions by developing
countries, the full cost of preparing national
communications (reports on emissions
and actions by countries) and to help
meet the costs of adaptation. Estimates
by UN agencies and other inter national
organisations show that the mitigation and
adaptation costs by developing countries
are in the order of many hundreds of
billions of dollars, or even exceed a trillion
dollars a year. Thus even the $100 billion
goal for 2020 is an underestimate, while
the lack of any clear commitment or even
target for the 2013-20 period became a
major factor for the mood of despondency
among developing countries at the close
of the Doha conference.
Long-term Cooperative Action
The Doha conference also adopted a set
of decisions under its Ad Hoc Working
Group on Long-term Cooperative Action
(AWG-LCA), which was formed to negotiate
on the Bali Action Plan adopted in
December 2007. Before and at Doha,
the developed countries were insisting,
based on a report at the end of the previous
conference of the parties in Durban in
December 2011 that there were only a
few outstanding issues left to be decided
on. The controversial report had been
prepared by the then chair of the AWG-LCA,
Dan Reifsynder of the US on his own
responsibility (meaning that it had not
been approved by the members of the
AWG-LCA). But many developing countries
had considered the report as one-sided
as it had ignored their views on several
key issues and had also omitted several
issues altogether. Before and at Doha, a
like-minded group of 25-30 developing
countries (including India, China, the
Philippines, Malaysia, Pakistan, Egypt,
Saudi Arabia, Mali, Democratic Republic
of Congo, Argentina, Bolivia, Ecuador,
El Salvador, Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba)
proposed two major things: that several
outstanding issues of interest to them
that were unresolved since the launch of
the Bali Action Plan in 2007 should be
decided on and that other issues be
COMMENTARY
20
transferred together with their contexts
and frameworks to other bodies of the
UNFCCC. Only then could there be a suc-
cessful conclusion of the work of the
working group. The chair of the working
group, Aysar Tayeb of Saudi Arabia, pro-
duced a succession of drafts that were
heatedly debated at Doha, as the devel-
oped countries were adamant that he
should not produce texts and developing
countries were strongly in favour of
them. In the end, the developing coun-
tries were satised with several of the
decisions, including specic issues or
paragraphs, including on equity in the
context of long-term global mitigation
targets, the need to continue discussions
on unilateral trade measures taken on
the grounds of climate change, and the
need for technology assessment.
On the contentious issue of intellectual
property and technology transfer, deve-
loped counties led by the US, were very
adamant in rejecting any text on intel-
lectual property, even a mere mention of
this term. They even rejected any men-
tion of the concept of access by develop-
ing countries to affordable technology.
The nal draft contains only a reference
to a report of the UNFCCCs technology
executive committee, which itself has a
reference to barriers to technology trans-
fer, including the possibility of discuss-
ing intellectual property rights based on
evidence and on a case-by-case basis. This
debate on technology transfer shows that
the developed countries, particularly the
US, do not intend to full their commit-
ments to technology transfer to develop-
ing countries on concessional terms.
Even though the decisions on these
issues were extremely weak, the US reg-
istered its disagreement or reservations
on many of them after the adoption of
the text in the nal plenary, giving a
foretaste of how it will continue to object
to future discussions on these issues.
Loss and Damage
A positive decision made in Doha was to
prepare by next years conference to set
up an international mechanism to help
developing countries deal with loss and
damage caused by climate change. So
far, loss and damage suffered by develop-
ing countries as a result of the effects of
climate change, such as increased inci-
dence and level of strength of storms,
hurricanes, heavy rainfall, ooding and
drought, have been largely excluded
from the scope of the adaptation issue in
the UNFCCC. They are thus not included
in the discussions for nancing under the
convention. At Doha, the developing
countries fought hard to get greater rec-
ognition and more detailed elaboration
of the issue, and to afrm that loss and
damage would be eligible for nancing
under the convention. Several developed
countries, particularly the US were resistant
to elements of the concept, particularly any
link to the notion of liability by countries
responsible for a signicant proportion of
the stock of emissions in the atmosphere.
It was thus a considerable advance for
developing countries that there was an
agreed decision on loss and damage, with
a preamble highlighting the important
and fundamental role of the Convention
in addressing loss and damage associated
with climate change impacts, and an
operational decision acknowledging the
need to enhance nance and technology
for actions. The decision includes the
establishment at the next conference of
institutional arrangements, such as an
international mechanism to address loss
and damage in developing countries that
are particularly vulnerable. Meanwhile,
the secretariat has been asked to carry
out interim activities, including conduct
of an expert meeting and preparation of
technical papers on non-economic issues
Women and Work
Edited by
PADMINI SWAMINATHAN
The notion of work and employment for women is complex. In India, fewer women participate in employment compared
to men. While economic factors determine mens participation in employment, womens participation depends on
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of production, while demonstrating how policies and programmes based on national income accounts and labour force
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This volume analyses the concept of work, the economic contribution of women, and the consequences of gendering
of work, while focusing on women engaged in varied work in different parts of India, living and working in dismal
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COMMENTARY
21
and gaps in existing institutional ar-
rangements on this issue.
Battles on the Durban Platform
The Doha conference also adopted a work
plan for the new working group on the
Durban Platform, which is the new negoti-
ating process launched at the 2011 climate
conference. The negotiations are targeted
to end in 2015 with a protocol or another
legal instrument or an agreed outcome
with legal force under the Convention,
applicable to all Parties, and which
would take effect from 2020.
There were major ghts in Doha over
the decision on the work plan, which
continued the battles that had begun in
Durban itself during the plenary session
that launched the platform and that had
continued through two sessions in Bonn
and Bangkok during 2012. Many devel-
oping countries, led by a like-minded
group, insisted but mention be made in
the Doha decision that the Durban Plat-
form will operate on the basis of equity
and common but differentiated respon-
sibilities (CBDR). They proposed that the
Doha decision on Durban Platform refer
to the Rio plus 20 summits outcome that
a section on climate change recalled
that the UNFCCC provides that parties
should protect the climate system on
the basis of equity and in accordance
with their common but differentiated re-
sponsibilities and respective capabilities.
However, the developed countries were
adamant in rejecting this reference to the
Rio plus 20 climate text. They even refused
to accept a compromise weak reference
to merely taking note of the Rio plus
20 outcome without any mention of the
climate section, let alone the terms equity
and common but differentiated responsi-
bilities. What was eventually placed in the
text, as proposed by Uganda and sup-
ported by China, was a reference that the
Durban Platforms work will be guided by
the principles of the Convention. This
was a small gain because in Durban the
decision only referred to the fact that the
Durban Platforms outcome would be
under the Convention without mention-
ing the key word principles. The under-
standing of the developing countries is
that equity and CBDR are among the fun-
damental principles of the UNFCCC. Even
then, the US in the nal plenary placed a
reservation that reference to guided by
the principles of the Convention has no
effect on the mandate for the negotia-
tions agreed to in Durban, and that the
provision cannot and will not be the ba-
sis upon which the US will engage in the
work of the Durban Platform group.
Another ght at Doha was over whether
there remains a difference in the nature
of mitigation obligations between devel-
oped and developing countries in the
outcome of the new Durban Platform. In
the last plenary session on the Durban
Platform, India proposed to amend the
text on ways of dening and reecting
the undertakings of the parties to
commitments and actions (instead of the
single term undertakings). To observers,
it was clear that the Indian proposal was
referring to the understanding in the
UNFCCC and in previous negotiations
(including under the Bali Action Plan)
that there is a difference between the
more binding commitments of developed
countries, and the voluntary actions of
developing counties, supported by nance
and technology. The Indian proposal was
supported by several developing countries
including China and Argentina. However
the US strongly rejected the wordings
commitments and actions, stating that
this was language used in the Bali Action
Plan but that the Durban Platform was
not the Bali Action Plan, which elicited a
response from China that the Bali Action
Plan was not poison and that the title
of the Durban Platform decision referred
to enhanced action and it could thus not
understand why the word actions could
not be used. In the end, it was agreed
that the term undertakings be amended
to ways of reecting enhanced action.
This reveals how much lacking in the
spirit of international cooperation the US
and some other developed countries
have become. They are no longer willing
to assist the developing countries, and,
incredibly, are even objecting to the
principles of the UNFCCC being applied
to negotiations to set up a new agree-
ment that will be under the convention.
More than anything else, this shows
the tragic paradox of the Doha conference.
It succeeded in adopting many deci-
sions and kept the functioning of the
multi lateral regime alive, but the actual
substance of actions to save the plant
from climate change was absent, as was
a genuine commitment to support the
developing countries.
The Process in Doha
On the process in Doha, a positive feature
was that the developing countries were
more united and coordinated than in
previous CoPs, often speaking with one
voice on some critical matters including
loss and damage, nance and the Kyoto
Protocol. There was also the emergence
in this CoP of a group self-designated as
like-minded developing countries, which
operated on several negotiating fronts.
The developing countries found the
management of the CoP to be more trans-
parent and participatory because of
the connection between the negotiators
process (in contact groups and their
informal spin-off groups) with the minis-
terial process in which a few ministers or
high-level ofcials were requested by the
presidency of the CoP (the host country
Qatar) to hold consultations to resolve
outstanding issues that could not be
settled by the negotiators. In the nal
ofcial plenary session, the president of
the CoP gavelled through all the decisions
of the working groups and the CoP one
by one in quick succession. There was a
serious objection by Russia, on the issue
of carry-over of the surplus allowances,
in the Kyoto Protocol decision, but this
was overruled by the president of the
CoP. There thus remains the uncomfort-
able issue of how the procedure of how
formal decisions are adopted at the nal
moments of CoPs. Since the Copenhagen
COP in 2009, each conference has had its
own way of adopting decisions, and
each of these have been controversial.
Note
1 Though these countries are not joining the
Kyoto Protocol or its second period, some of them
(like Japan) have their own domestic mitiga-
tion targets and their own domestic cap and
trade carbon-trade system, and the companies
taking part in this want to be able to make use
of international offset mechanisms like CDM.
References
Khor, Martin (2010a): The Real Tragedy of Copen-
hagen, EPW, Vol XLV, No 1, 2 January.
(2010b): Complex Implications of the Cancun
Climate Conference, EPW, Vol XLV, No 52,
25 December.
4
LETTERS
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Issn 0012-9976
Entrenched Problems
in Sexual Violence
T
he gruesome gang rape of a young
woman on a bus in Delhi on 16 Dece m-
ber 2012 has provoked a public restorm
in India and has raised urgent questions
about how to improve womens security
in the country. As the editorial Under-
standing the Incomprehensible (EPW,
29 December 2012) pointed out, the Indian
government should avoid a knee-jerk
response and develop policy that will
help tackle gender inequality in urban
and rural India.
The details of the tragic event are now
well known. The young woman died
from her injuries on 30 December 2012.
The brutality of this rape is hard to
understand even for seasoned observers
of sexual violence in India. Students and
womens organisations in Delhi were
quick to come out on to the streets to
express their shock and, as fear gave
way to anger, demand action from the
government. Perhaps understandably,
protesters have focused on potential
quick xes. They have called upon the
government to hang rapists, for example,
and speed up trials. The government has
started to listen, too. It recently an-
nounced it will publish the names and
addresses of convicted sex offenders.
But many of the special measures that
are being introduced or which are under
consideration are not especially promis-
ing and may be counterproductive. The
move to publish details of sex offenders
may encourage vigilante justice; the intro-
duction of the death penalty for rapists
would further reduce the conviction
rate; and the establishment of special
measures to speed up rape trials would
leave the basic institutions responsible
for justice largely untouched. What is
required is a thorough understanding of
the nature of gender inequality in society
and a comprehensive overhaul of the
policing and judicial system in India to
tackle an institutionalised culture of
gender and caste prejudice.
I have spent many years as an anthro-
pologist working in a provincial north
Indian university in the city of Meerut in
Uttar Pradesh. In that institution, there
is a pervasive atmosphere of sexual threat.
Young women do not feel they can move
around the university safely. I have yet to
meet a female student in Meerut who does
not have some personal horror story of
either being cornered by aggressive men,
subjected to humiliating taunts, or a victim
of open sexual aggression. This culture of
aggression reects young mens social and
economic insecurities they cannot nd
jobs and often feel threatened by success-
ful educated young women on the campus.
In rural north India, gender inequality
has an added caste dimension. Higher
castes are deeply concerned about the rise
of low castes and the threat this poses to
their historical privileges. In this context,
higher castes use sexual violence to police
the boundaries of their former advantage.
Higher caste men molest low-caste girls
in the elds to remind low castes of
their place in society or to teach them
lessons. Likewise, within families, men
often feel threatened by the increasing
education of women. Senior men quite
commonly prey on junior girls and young
women within large joint households as a
means to mark their authority.
Young women often nd it difcult to
obtain justice through the local state
machinery. The police often turn a blind
eye, and when cases do come to court,
judges often focus on the morality of
the victim rather than the question of
guilt. Women cannot obtain legal or
medical aid, and they go about the dif-
cult task of bringing their aggressors to
book in an environment saturated by
caste and gender prejudice and in which
access to power depends upon having
wealthy patrons in the local elite.
Tackling these entrenched problems re-
quires government and civil society work-
ing together. There are encouraging signs.
The work of Indias Human Rights Com-
mission and the All India Democratic
Womens Association is especially notable.
But an enormous amount remains left to be
done. Without a long-term, careful policy
planning process grounded in a thorough
understanding of social inequalities in
I ndia, new initiatives are likely to fail.
Craig Jeffrey
University of Oxford
OXFORD, UK
5
LETTERS
Welcome Report on Kashmir
P
eoples Union for Democratic Rights
(PUDR) welcomes the release of the
study Alleged Perpetrators by the
Inter national Peoples Tribunal on Hu-
man Rights and Justice in Indian-
Administered Kashmir (IPTK) and the
Association of Parents of Disappeared
Persons (APDP) on the culture of impu-
nity, which is ubiquitous in Jammu and
Kashmir. PUDR acknowledges that this
is the rst ever study in India which has
broken the cover of anonymity that
protects the perpetrators by raising the
principle of individual criminal re-
sponsibility which is well established
under International Criminal Law start-
ing with Nuremburg Trials and several
UN tribunals.
Equally, it raises the principle of com-
mand responsibility and principle of joint
criminal enterprise which too forms part
of international criminal law. The state
authorisations to the armed forces to
carry out every kind of operation are often
without adherence to laws and norms
under draconian legislations such as
the Armed Forces (Jammu and Kashmir)
Special Powers Act, 1990 (AFSPA) on the
pretext of combating militant violence.
They are simultaneously in breach of
bringing Indias domestic laws in line
with international conventions such as
against torture, enforced disappearance
and genocide compounds the impunity
extended to the security forces because
certain crimes are non-justiciable under
domestic law.
The report exposes the state of impu-
nity through a study of 214 cases, using
information gathered from ofcial state
documents. The documents include rst
information reports, statements before
police and/or magistrates, police nal
reports, high court petitions, objections,
other documents forming a part of
the court record such as compliance
reports, status report, judicial enquir-
ies, State Human Rights Commission
(SHRC) documents from complaints to
objections, police submissions and nal
orders. The documents in custody of the
state itself arraign the armed forces
and their culpability in specic crimes.
But the study also supplements these
documents with testimonies of victims
and other witnesses.
The study successfully refutes the claim
of the Indian state that commission of
crimes is an aberration rather than
policy. It indicts the government for pur-
suing a policy which engenders the state
of impunity by listing 500 indi vidual per-
petrators, which include 235 army per-
sonnel, 123 paramilitary personnel, 111
Jammu and Kashmir Police personnel
and 31 government-backed militants/asso-
ciates. The list of perpetrators includes 2
major generals, 3 brigadiers, 9 colonels,
3 lt colonels, 78 majors and 25 captains of
the Indian army as well as two additional
director generals of central paramilitary
forces, two DIGs and 12 commandants. It
also indicts a DG of police and a serving
IG of police.
The study shows how state violence is
institutionalised through a culture of
institutional impunity to the state forces
where the police, the judiciary and other
organs of the government perpetuate the
state of human rights violation. This has
resulted in enforced and involuntary dis-
appearance of an estimated 8,000 persons,
besides more than 70,000 deaths, and
disclosures of more than 6,000 unknown,
unmarked and mass graves as of Novem-
ber 2012. There is hardly any prosecution
and conviction of the perpetrators. The
unwillingness of the Indian state is re-
vealed in the mass grave issue where the
Kashmir Home Department on 19 Octo-
ber 2012 expressed its inability to carry
out DNA tests because there are no more
than 15-16 recognised labs in the Gov-
ernment as well as Private Sector. And
then turns the entire issue into a farce
when they ask that the blood relative
should indicate with fair amount of cer-
tainty the exact location of the grave-
yard and the grave!
The study highlights that the state
structure specically sanctions com-
mission of crimes through provisions
such as the system of cash incentives,
awards and out of turn promotions for
anti-militancy operations, and prioritis-
ing for the victims the system of mone-
tary compensation over justice. The
vener able Supreme Court has also ended
up shielding criminals by upholding in
the Pathribal fake encounter case denial
of sanction for prosecution under AFSPA
thereby raising yet another wall to pro-
tect the perpetrators.
The recent Universal Periodic Review
by a UN agency tasked with human rights
on India revealed that the government
has rejected 67 recommendations out of
168 made by the com mittee which had
among other things asked the Indian
state to repeal AFSPA, and to ratify and
bring domestic laws in accordance with
International Convention Against Torture,
Enforced Disappearance and Genocide.
This blatant refusal by the state currently
engaged in staking its claim to a per-
manent seat in the UN Security Council
only lends credence to the study which
concluded by indicting India and estab-
lishing that victims of armed conicts
stand little chance to get justice from
I ndian state institutions because they are
themselves implicated in the perpetua-
tion of impunity.
PUDR in extending solidarity with IPTK/
APDP demands:
Adherence to domestic and inter-
national obligations and punishment to all
perpetrators of human rights violations
in Jammu and Kashmir.
Withdrawal of security-related legisla-
tions that are in contravention of inter-
national humanitarian laws and norms.
Ratication of Convention Against
Torture, Convention Against Genocide
and the International Convention for
the Protection of All Persons from En-
forced Disappearance by the Govern-
ment of India.
Asish Gupta, D Manjit
Secretaries, PUDR
Web Exclusives
The following article has been uploaded in the past week in the Web Exclusives section of
the EPW website. It has not been published in the print edition.
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Of Sex Offender Databases and Chemical Castration: Avoid Criminal Justice Reforms
in Rage or Fear Vijay K Nagaraj
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EDITORIALS
9
From 50 Years Ago
Vol XiV, Nos 51 & 52, december 22, 1962
capital view / Romesh Thapar
Wasteful Civil Defence
...In the Capital, elaborate plans are being
worked out for air-raid precautions. Trenches
are being dug. Black-out drills are planned.
There is an uncomfortable feeling in the air
that much of this activity in the present
situation is designed to provide jobs for con-
tractors. Plans need to be drawn up, but their
implementation could be thought out more
sensibly. We are about to lose a great deal of
money in futile projects enthusiastically
sponsored by amateurs. This must be true
not only of the Capital, but of many other cit-
ies. The National Defence Council and the
Citizens Council, which have been in session
this week, need to intervene in this kind of
racketeering which puts money into the pock-
ets of contractors. At many levels voluntary
work would yield better results and at hardly
any cost.
Tailpiece: Some idea of the degree of austeri-
ty envisaged for the ruling elite can be had
from the announcement that in future Minis-
ters free electricity expenditure will not go
beyond a monthly Rs 250
SPECIAL ARTICLE
january 12, 2013 vol xlviII no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 58
Inequality Matters
Radhicka Kapoor
I am grateful to Mihir Shah and Vijay Shankar for providing insightful
comments and suggestions.
Radhicka Kapoor (radhicka.kapoor@gmail.com) is with the Planning
Commission, New Delhi.
If economic growth was the only factor that mattered
for poverty reduction, we should have witnessed greater
poverty reduction. Also, states with the highest growth
rate should have performed the best in terms of poverty
reduction. The pace of poverty reduction is influenced
both by changes in income distribution over time and
by the shape of the initial distribution. This empirical
analysis shows that the task of poverty reduction in India
is seriously challenged by rising inequality. In addition
to the one-shot instant impact on poverty from a pure
redistribution effect, improvements in distribution of
income have a long-run effect derived from an increase
in the growth elasticity of poverty. This gives us a strong
case for prioritising distribution and making income
distribution more equal before embarking on a high
growth path.
T
hat poverty in India has declined between 2004-05 and
2009-10 is undisputable. This is true, regardless of
which poverty line we look at. However, the extent of
the decline varies depending on the choice of the poverty line
(Table 1). Estimates recently released by the Planning Com-
mission on the basis of the Tendulkar poverty line indicate that
the poverty headcount ratio (HCR) declined by 8%, 4.8% and
5.7% in rural, urban and all India, respectively between 2004-05
and 2009-10. Himanshu (2012) has questioned the compara-
bility of the 2004-05 and 2009-10 consumer expenditure sur-
veys on the grounds that 2009-10 consumption schedules in-
cluded expenditure of the government on the Mid-Day Meal
Scheme (MDMS) as a part of household expenditure this item
of expenditure was not included in the previous quinquennial
surveys. After excluding this item of expenditure from the to-
tal consumption expenditure of households, he has computed
that the actual decline in poverty in this period was 6.63%,
4.3% and 5.7% in rural, urban and all-India, respectively.
Poverty estimates for 2009-10 using the earlier Lakdawala
method stand at 24.2% in rural India and 23.5% in urban India
(with free meals included), and 26.1% in rural India and 24%
in urban India (excluding free meals). These estimates show a
much smaller reduction from the corresponding 2004-05 esti-
mates (EPW 2012). This is attributed to the fact that food prices
rose much more than non-food prices and the Lakdawala food
weights from 1973 are much higher than the Tendulkar
weights based on present consumption patterns. Poverty esti-
mates at the international poverty lines ($1.25 and $2 a day)
also reiterate the decline in poverty.
Tables 2a and 2b (p 59) show the decline in poverty based on
the different poverty lines in rural and urban India separately.
Two things stand out here: rst, rural poverty reduction has
been much more than urban poverty reduction (except when
we look at the $2 a day poverty line) and is true for both time
periods 1993-94 to 2004-05 and 2004-05 to 2009-10; second,
the annual decline in HCR between 2004-05 and 2009-10 has
been more than the annual decline between 1993-94 and
2004-05. This holds true for all poverty lines. However, an
annual decline in rural poverty of 1.64% and 0.92% in rural
and urban India, respectively (these gures stand at 1.3% and
Table 1: Comparison of Decline in HCR according to Different Poverty Lines
HCR Tendulkar Line $1.25 a Day (2005 PPP) $2 a Day (2005 PPP)
Rural Urban Total Rural Urban Total Rural Urban Total
1993-94 50.1 31.8 45.3 52.4 40.7 49.4 84.5 71.3 81.1
2004-05 41.8 25.7 37.2 43.8 36.16 41.6 78.7 65.0 74.8
2009-10 33.8(35.2*) 20.9(21.5*) 29.8 34.2 28.93 72.5 56.7
*Estimates arrived at by Himanshu (2012) after excluding expenditure on MDMS.
Source: Planning Commission poverty data and World Bank POVCAL Net Database.
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Economic & Political Weekly EPW january 12, 2013 vol xlviII no 2 59
0.8% according to Himanshus estimates after correcting for
inclusion of expenditure on MDMs) is, indeed, disappointing
given that the average economic growth rate of gross domestic
product (GDP) during 2004-05 and 2009-10 was about 8.5%
and that the growth rate exceeded 9% in three of the ve
years. Moreover, since the Eleventh Plan aimed to reduce pov-
erty by 2 percentage points a year, i e, 10 percentage point
decline over a ve-year period, the performance has fallen
short of expectations.
There is, therefore, no questioning the decline in poverty
between 2004-05 and 2009-10. However, several more press-
ing questions need to be answered. Did economic growth
alone account for this decline in poverty? Or, was it a combina-
tion of growth and redistribution policies that explain this
d ecline in poverty? Did rising inequality hurt the pace of poverty
reduction (the Gini coefcient increased from 0.27 to 0.28 in
rural India and 0.35 to 0.37 in urban India during this period)?
Did high inequality dampen the impact of growth on poverty
reduction and lower the growth elasticity of poverty? What
factors explain the heterogeneity in poverty reduction perfor-
mance of states? We try to provide answers to some of these
questions in this paper.
Growth and Poverty
The consensus in the literature is that higher growth rates
tend to yield more rapid rates of absolute poverty reduction
(Ravallion 2001; Kraay 2006). The rationale is the following:
having xed the poverty line, any well-behaved measure of
absolute poverty will be a strictly decreasing function of the
mean income while holding the Lorenz curve constant. With a
xed Lorenz curve, the consumption of all strata changes by
the same proportion, and the poor are better-off when the
mean increases. It has been widely believed in the course of
the policy debate in India that the only thing that really matters
for poverty reduction is the rate of economic growth. A simple
scatter plot of the decline in HCR and average growth rate of
gross state domestic product (GSDP) reinforces our belief in
this proposition (Figure 1).
1
However, the scatter diagram is
not conclusive and the R-square value is not very high and it
would be incorrect to infer from it that economic growth alone
can pull people out of poverty. Point-to-point calculations of
GDP growth can be misleading on account of year-to-year uc-
tuations and a ve-year time period is too short to arrive at
such conclusions.
If a higher economic rate of growth was all that mattered for
poverty reduction, we should have expected states that wit-
nessed the highest growth rate between 2004-05 and 2009-10
to have experienced the steepest decline in poverty. But, this
does not appear to be the case from Table 3 (p 60).
2
Tripura
performed the best in terms of poverty reduction despite having
a growth rate below the all-India average. Bihar and Chhattis-
garh witnessed high growth rates, yet they observed no
decline in HCR. Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan witnessed
approximately 10% decline in HCR even though their growth
rate was below the all-India average. Meghalaya, Mizoram,
Manipur, Nagaland and Assam witnessed an increase in HCR
des pite having positive growth rates. There are several states
which witnessed average growth rates of 9%-10%, yet their
poverty reduction performances varied tremendously. For
i nstance, Odisha and Gujarat both had an average growth of
10.07%, yet Odisha witnessed a 20% fall in poverty while
G ujarat witnessed only 8.6%. Bihar, with a similar growth
rate, witnessed no decline in HCR.
Clearly, poverty reduction is not happening only in high
growth states in fact, having a high growth rate alone does
not ensure poverty reduction. It appears that in many cases
the effect of growth has not trickled down to the poor. It might
be the case that the growth elasticity of poverty has declined.
In fact, if the imputed cost of free mid-day meals is excluded
from consumption, the extent of poverty reduction would dec-
line in all states (although by different percentages since the
performance of MDMS is highly variable across states) and,
consequently, the growth elasticity of poverty reduction would
decline even more. While, growth is unquestionably necessary
for substantial poverty reduction, it appears that growth is
now getting weakly linked with poverty reduction and there
appear to be other factors at play as well. Inequality, in partic-
ular, plays an important role in explaining differences in pov-
erty reduction performances of states and this is what we
e xamine in this paper. Other factors such as the effectiveness
of poverty alleviation and public distribution schemes also
explain the heterogeneity in state performance. However, in
this paper we focus on inequality.
Table 2a: Decline in Rural HCR (All India) (%)
Poverty Line Total Decline Total Decline Annual Decline Annual Decline
(1993-94 to (2004-05 to (1993-94 to (2004-05 to
2004-05) 2009-10) 2004-05) 2009-10)
Tendulkar line 8.1 8.2(6.8*) 0.81 1.64 (1.36*)
$1.25 a day (2005 PPP) 8.6 9.5 0.86 1.91
$2 a day (2005 PPP) 5.7 6.2 0.57 1.24
*Himanshus estimates (2012).
Table 2b: Decline in Urban HCR (All India)
Poverty Line Total Decline Total Decline Annual Decline Annual Decline
(1993-94 to (2004-05 to (1993-94 to (2004-05 to
2004-05) 2009-10) 2004-05) 2009-10)
Tendulkar line 6.3 4.6 (4*) 0.63 0.92 (0.8*)
$1.25 a day (2005 PPP) 4.6 7.23 0.46 1.45
$2 a day (2005 PPP) 6.3 8.28 0.63 1.65
*Himanshus estimates (2012).
Figure 1: Growth Rate vs HCR Decline (2004-05 to 2009-10)
25
20
15
10
5
0
-5
-10
-15
D
e
c
l
i
n
e

i
n

H
C
R
Growth Rate of GSDP
4 6 8 10 12 14
R
2
= 0.165
Source: Authors calculations.
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Inequality
Poverty is a function not just of mean incomes but also of
i ncome distribution. Importantly, the relationship between
growth and poverty is mediated by inequality. The literature
outlines two channels through which inequality can matter to
poverty reduction (Ravallion 1997; Bourguignon 2002; Lopez
and Servn 2006). First, the level of inequality determines
what the share of the poor in the growth process will be. In
countries with high initial inequality, the poor tend to have a
lower share of the gains from growth. This can be explained as
follows: if we assume a growth process in which all levels of
income grow roughly at the same rate, high levels of inequality
will entail that the poor gain less in absolute terms from
growth and that they will have a smaller share of both total
income and its increment through growth. Consequently, the
rate of poverty reduction will be lower. Put simply, Ravallion
argued that, unless there is a sufcient change in the distribu-
tion, people who have a larger initial share of the pie will tend
to gain a larger share in the pies expansion.
3
This suggests
that high initial inequality could hurt the pace of poverty
r eduction by lowering the growth elasticity of poverty reduc-
tion. The second channel through which inequality may mat-
ter for poverty is the induced growth argument. This argues
that higher inequality may entail a lower subsequent rate of
growth in income,
4
and consequently, lower rate of progress in
reducing absolute poverty. In the induced growth argument,
there are two links one from initial income distribution to
growth, and the other from growth to poverty reduction.
The pace of poverty reduction is therefore inuenced both
by changes in income distribution over time and by the shape
of the initial distribution. (Table 4 reports the decline in rural
and urban HCR between 2004-05 and 2009-10.) Increases in
inequality hurt the poor and the recently released NSS data
point in the direction of rising inequality in India. The Gini
coefcient for rural India increased from 0.27 to 0.28, with
rural inequality rising in 11 states. In general, states which saw
an increase in the rural Gini coefcient performed more poorly
in poverty reduction than states with comparable growth rates
which saw a decline or no change in inequality. For instance,
Bihar, despite having high growth did not witness reduction in
rural HCR as the rural Gini coefcient increased from 0.19 to
0.22. Even though a high growth rate would have increased
mean income and pulled people out of poverty, the adverse
changes in distribution, i e, increase in inequality, might have
nullied the effect of growth causing virtually no change in
HCR. Maharashtra, on the other hand, had a comparable
growth rate and a decline in Gini coefcient and these two
e ffects attributed to much more substantial rural poverty
r eduction in the state. Odisha, which had a high growth rate
and constant Gini coefcient (0.25), witnessed very rapid rural
poverty reduction.
On the other hand, urban inequality increased in 18 states
and in some states quite sharply. The urban Gini coefcient
increased from 0.35 to 0.40 in Kerala, from 0.34 to 0.40 in
Uttar Pradesh, from 0.26 to 0.35 in Himachal Pradesh, from
0.33 to 0.38 in Odisha and from 0.32 to 0.36 in Punjab. How-
ever, despite witnessing an increase in urban inequality,
Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, Rajasthan and Maharashtra were
amongst the top performers in terms of urban poverty reduc-
tion. In fact, Odisha witnessed one of the largest increases in
the Gini coefcient from 0.33 to 0.38; yet it saw about a 12%
decline in poverty. The fact that we observed a decline in poverty
in these states despite increases in inequality should not be inter-
preted to mean that inequality does not matter. We observed
poverty reduction in these states despite increases in the Gini
coefcient because the effect of growth in mean income
on poverty was so large that it overturned the effect of any
adverse changes in the distribution on poverty. In other words,
the negative growth component was large enough to overturn
the positive distribution component and decrease poverty. If
inequality had not increased and growth had been distribu-
tion neutral, poverty would have declined by even more.
Kerala, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh also performed well
in terms of poverty reduction (decline of 6-7%) despite in-
creases in the Gini coefcient. Haryana, Assam, Jharkhand
and Himachal Pradesh saw an increase in poverty despite pos-
itive growth rates. Perhaps, this is because of the increase in
the Gini coefcient adverse distributional changes over-
turned the effect of increase in mean income causing HCR to
increase. In general, urban inequality increased in more states
Table 3: Growth Poverty Relationship
across States (in %)
Rank State Average Decline
Growth Rate in HCR
(2004-05 to (2004-05 to
2009-10) 2009-10)
1 Tripura 6.85 22.6
2 Odisha 10.07 20.2
3 Sikkim 13.23 17.8
4 Uttarakhand 13.88 14.7
5 Maharashtra 10.76 13.7
6 Himachal Pradesh 8.19 13.4
7 Tamil Nadu 10.18 12.3
8 Madhya Pradesh 6.44 11.9
9 Karnataka 8.85 9.7
10 Rajasthan 5.51 9.6
11 Gujarat 10.07 8.6
12 Andhra Pradesh 8.62 8.5
13 Kerala 8.95 7.6
14 West Bengal 7.02 7.5
15 Jharkhand 6.36 6.2
16 Arunachal Pradesh 10.03 5.5
17 Punjab 7.23 5
18 Haryana 9.52 4
19 Jammu and Kashmir 5.58 3.7
20 Uttar Pradesh 6.83 3.2
21 Bihar 10.37 0.9
22 Chhattisgarh 9.10 0.7
23 Meghalaya 7.46 -1
24 Assam 5.25 -3.5
25 Mizoram 9.12 -5.7
26 Manipur 6.37 -9.2
27 Nagaland 7.28 -12.1
All-India 8.44 7.4
Source: Poverty data is from the Planning
Commission (2012). Real growth rates of GSDP
are from Directorate of Economics & Statistics of
respective state governments and for all-India
CSO; Data from 2004-05 series based on base
year 2004-05.
Table 4: Rural and Urban Poverty
State Decline Decline
in Rural in Urban
HCR HCR
Andhra Pradesh 9.5 5.7
Arunachal Pradesh 7.4 -1.4
Assam -3.5 -4.3
Bihar 0.4 4.3
Chhattisgarh -1 4.6
Gujarat 12.4 2.2
Haryana 6.2 -0.6
Himachal Pradesh 15.9 -8
Jammu and Kashmir 6 -2.4
Jharkhand 10 -7.3
Karnataka 11.4 6.3
Kerala 8.2 6.3
Madhya Pradesh 11.6 12.2
Maharashtra 18.4 7.3
Manipur -8.1 -11.9
Meghalaya -1.3 0.6
Mizoram -8.1 -3.6
Nagaland -9.3 -20.7
Odisha 21.6 11.7
Punjab 7.5 0.6
Rajasthan 9.4 9.8
Sikkim 16.3 20.9
Tamil Nadu 16.3 6.9
Tripura 24.7 12.5
Uttar Pradesh 3.3 2.4
Uttarakhand 20.2 1
West Bengal 9.4 2.4
All-India 8.2 4.6
Source: Poverty Data is from Planning
Commission (2012).
SPECIAL ARTICLE
than rural inequality. Moreover, the Gini coefcient increased
more steeply in urban India (from 0.35 to 0.37) than rural India
(increase in the rural Gini coefcient was from 0.27 to 0.28).
This could be one of the reasons why the pace of urban poverty
reduction was lower than pace of rural poverty reduction.
The Asian Development Outlook (ADB 2012) argues that des pite
its impressive growth performance, the task of poverty reduc-
tion in India will be seriously challenged by rising in equality.
Their statistics indicate that from the early 1990s to late 2000,
the Gini coefcient in India increased from 0.33 to 0.37. While
the Gini coefcient presents an aggregate measure of inequal-
ity in the distribution, it might hide detailed patterns of differ-
ences across different levels of income. Planning Commission
estimates indicate that the ratio of per capita i ncome between
the top 15% and bottom 15% of the population has risen from
3.9 in 2004-05 to 5.8 in 2009-10 in rural areas. In urban areas,
the ratio has gone up from 6.4 to 7.8, indicating that not only
the inequality between the two groups is on the rise but also
that the benets of economic growth have not trickled down
to those at the bottom of the distribution.
In India, we have neglected the dangers of rising inequality
since we have believed that in a global context, inequality is
low here. It has often been argued that Indias Gini coefcient
is lower than that of Brazil (0.54) and China (0.45). However,
we need to interpret this comparison with caution. Indias ine-
quality measure is based on consumption rather than incomes
and consumption inequality tends to be lower than income in-
equality because of consumption smoothing by households.
Also, savings (as percentage of income) are generally larger
for higher income households implying that inequality of in-
come is greater than inequality of expenditures. It is believed
that the average consumption expenditure derived from the
National Sample Survey (NSS) data is lower than the estimates
derived from National Accounts Statistics (NAS), and the gap
between the two has tended to increase over time. While the
discrepancy between survey and national accounts estimates
is far from unique to India, the extent of this discrepancy for
India is large by international standards, with aggregate con-
sumption based on the sample surveys being not much more
than half of the household consumption component of the
NAS. The most likely reason for this is that the NSS fails to cap-
ture the top income groups whose share has been increasing
over time. Under representation of the rich underestimates
both the per capita expenditure and consumption inequality,
derived from NSS data. India may, therefore, not be a low
inequality country, as we believe.
Empirical Analysis of the Poverty-Growth-Inequality
Triangle
So far, we have examined the poverty data for the period
between 2004-05 and 2009-10 to understand the dynamics of
the poverty-growth-inequality relationships. However, look-
ing at data over a ve-year period is not enough to arrive at
strong conclusions. Macroeconomic variables like income,
consumption and Gini coefcients, in particular, change slowly
and it would be incorrect to draw inferences on the basis of
data over a short period of time. To examine the relationship
between growth, redistribution and poverty, we need to
undertake a time series analysis over a sufciently long period
of time. However, the comparability of 2009-10 data with
earlier datasets has been impaired by the inclusion of the MDMS.
To examine contribution of growth to poverty reduction, the
impact of increases in consumption inequality and the shape
of the initial distribution on the pace of poverty reduction, we
therefore look at poverty data till 2004-05 only. In fact, 2009-
10 was the year of the worst drought in 30 years and it would
be best to drop this while understanding the long-run relation-
ships between poverty, growth and inequa lity in India.
We examine the relationships between poverty, growth and
inequality within a statistical framework using the two-
parameter log-normal distribution. HCR, which is the propor-
tion of individuals in the population below the poverty line,
z can be dened as
H
t
= F
t
(z)
The change in poverty headcount ratio (H) between two
points of time, t and t is given by:
H = H
t'
H
t
= F
t
(z) F
t
(z) ...(1)
The change in poverty can be thought of as being made of
two components: the rst is a growth component, which com-
putes the change in poverty measures when there is a propor-
tional change in all incomes but the distribution of relative in-
come remains unchanged; the second is the distribution com-
ponent, which computes the change in poverty measures
when there is a change in the distribution of relative incomes.
Understanding this decomposition empirically would involve
regressing changes in poverty measures, g
i
(H
it
), on changes in
mean income, g
i
(
it
), and changes in inequality measures,
g
i
(Gini
it
)
g
i
(H
it
) =
o
+
o
g
i
(
it
)

+
o
g
i
(Gini
it
) +
it
...(2)
However, such a specication assumes that growth and dis-
tribution elasticity across states is the same. But this is not nec-
essarily true. The size of the growth component varies sub-
stantially across states, and for the same growth rate some
states witness substantial poverty reduction while others wit-
ness limited changes in poverty. The growth elasticity of pov-
erty varies across states and understanding the factors behind
this heterogeneity is important.
Assuming a log-normal distribution of income, Bourgui-
gnon (2002) hypothesizes the growth elasticity of poverty, ,
to be an increasing function of the level of development as
measured by the inverse of the ratio z/ y
t
, and a decreasing
function of the degree of relative income inequality as meas-
ured by the standard deviation of the logarithm of income, .
He denes the growth elasticity of headcount ratio (H) as:
]
2
) y z/ log(
[
1
H ) y log(
H
t
t
HCR
y

V V
'
'

where (.) stands for the ratio of the density to the cumulative
function (or hazard rate) of the standard normal (Bour-
guignon 2002). This tells us that the higher the initial level of
economic development (higher initial average income and
lower poverty line), the larger will be the poverty reduction
SPECIAL ARTICLE
with a given growth rate provided that the growth process
does not change inequality. This implies that it is easier to
r educe poverty in richer states than poorer states even if they
have same growth rate of per capita income. Also, the higher
the initial level of inequality, the lower the absolute magnitude
of growth elasticity. Thus, the extent of poverty reduction dur-
ing growth period will be higher in states where the initial
i nequality is high.
To examine the heterogeneity in growth elasticity and dis-
tribution elasticity empirically, we introduce interaction terms
between growth and distributional changes with initial level
of development and initial inequality in Equation 2. The coef-
cients
1
and
2
capture how the initial level of development
and initial inequality impact the growth elasticity of poverty,
respectively. The distribution effect is more difcult to trans-
late in terms of elasticity because it generally cannot be repre-
sented by a scalar. We therefore assume the effect of the distri-
butional change on poverty reduction to also depend on the
initial level of development and the initial level of inequality
(captured by
1
and
2
respectively). Finding the optimal func-
tional specication is left to econometrics.
g
i
(H
it
) =
o
+
[
o
+
1

|
|
.
|
\
|
z

it
+
2
Gini
it

]
g
i
(
it
)+
[
o
+
1

|
|
.
|
\
|
z

it
+
2
Gini
it

]
g
i
(Gini
it
)+
it
...(3)

In order to address these comparability problems and gener-
ate poverty estimates that are comparable over the time
p eriod under study, we follow Himanshus approach (2007).
He computed poverty estimates for the contentious 1999-2000
Consumer Expenditure Survey round from the consumption
expenditure schedule from the Employment-Unemployment
Survey (EUS). The 55th round of the EUS has an abridged
schedule for consumption expenditure, which is identical to
the schedule in the 61st

and 50th EUS rounds. Since recall
periods in these schedules are the same and questionnaires
almost identical, poverty numbers from the EUS round are
likely to be much more comparable than the comparisons from
the Consumer Expenditure Survey for these rounds.
These surveys give the size distribution of consumption
e xpenditure for individual states and India as a whole. Using the
World Banks POVCAL software and applying the Parameterised
Lorenz Curve Approach, we construct estimates of poverty
and inequality. The poverty lines used to calculate these meas-
ures correspond to the ofcial poverty lines used by the Plan-
ning Commission. A task force of the Planning Com mission in
1979 dened the poverty line as that per capita expenditure at
which the average per capita per day calorie intake was 2,400
calories in rural areas and 2,100 calories in urban areas.
The Tendulkar poverty line abandoned the calorie norm for
estimating the poverty line and was arrived at after assessing
the adequacy of private household expenditure on education
and health. The earlier calorie-anchored poverty line did not
explicitly account for these. Undoubtedly, the Tendulkar
poverty line is broader in scope and an improvement in the
measurement of consumption poverty. However, given the
lack of comparable poverty estimates according to this poverty
line, we are compelled to undertake our empirical analysis
a ccording to the calorie-based poverty line.
We will now examine the results from the above-mentioned
empirical specications. Table 5 reports the results for rural
HCR using the xed effects approach. The rst column presents
the results of the basic model and suggests a negative elasticity
of poverty with respect to growth. When we incorporate dis-
tributional changes, we nd the coefcient on the change in
the Gini coefcient to be positively signicant. Moreover, in
the rst column, R-square is 0.658 and adding the distribution
component increases it to 0.757. This suggests that it is largely
heterogeneity in growth rates that is responsible for variation
in poverty reduction. On introducing interaction terms bet-
ween the growth component with the initial poverty line to
mean income ratio and the initial Gini coefcient, we nd
some interesting results (column 3 of Table 5). The two inter-
action terms are signicant and go in the same direction as
predicted in the literature. States with a higher level of initial
development have a higher growth elasticity of poverty. This is
perhaps a result of the fact that for the same growth rate,
states with a higher initial mean income observe a larger
i ncrease in mean income than states with a lower initial mean
income and consequently a larger decrease in HCR. This sug-
gests that economic growth has a double poverty reducing
e ffect: rst, the direct effect of income growth on the average
level of income; and, second, the indirect effect that arises
from the higher average income via the correspondingly high-
er growth elasticity of poverty.
On the other hand, states with a higher level of initial ine-
quality have a lower growth elasticity of poverty. This could be
due to the fact that when initial inequality is high, the poor
gain less in absolute terms from growth and have a smaller
share of both total income and its increment through growth.
This suggests that poverty is more responsive to growth the
more equal is the initial income distribution. Thus progressive
distributional change will have, in addition to the one-shot
Table 5: Bourguignons Benchmark Regression Explaining Heterogeneity in
Growth and Distribution Elasticity of Poverty
(Dependent Variable: Percentage Change in Rural HCR)
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Variables
Y=percentage change -3.241*** -3.453*** -11.872*** -11.156***
In mean income (-9.671) (-10.106) (-6.113) (-5.720)
Dgini=Variation in 1.543*** 1.796*** 5.681***
Gini coefficient (5.822) (7.787) (2.893)
Y* (poverty line/mean 3.372** 3.694**
income) (2.086) (2.229)
Y* (Initial Gini 0.261*** 0.227***
coefficient) (4.733) (3.962)
Dgini* (poverty line/ -2.622
mean income) (-1.305)
Dgini* (Initial Gini -0.089
coefficient) (-1.576)
Constant 0.103 0.181** 0.032 0.008
(1.426) (2.735) (0.683) (0.152)
Observations 137 137 137 137
R-squared 0.658 0.757 0.812 0.821
Robust t-statistics in parentheses. State and time dummies are not reported. Stars denote
statistical significance at conventional levels (* for 10%, ** for 5% and *** for 1%).
SPECIAL ARTICLE
instant impact on poverty from the pure redistribution effect,
a long run effect derived from an increase in the growth elasti-
city of poverty. This has an interesting implication in terms of
sequencing growth and distribution. If poverty decline in res-
ponse to a unit increase in income is higher in a society with a
less unequal distribution of income as compared to the one
with a more unequal income distribution, there is a strong
case for prioritising distribution and making income distribu-
tion more equal before embarking on a high growth path. This
gives a strong justication for pursuing redistributive policies
in the early phase of growth as also the path of extensive
growth by prioritising employment and inclusion before mov-
ing on to efciency and high GDP growth.
Table 6 reports results for urban HCR using xed effects. In
the rst column, on regressing changes in HCR on observed
changes in mean income, we nd the coefcient on the latter
to be negative but not statistically signicant. The R-square is
very low at 0.037. However, when we control for distributional
changes in the second column, we nd both the growth and
distribution elasticity of poverty to be statistically signicant
with the expected signs. The R-square now increases to 0.202,
suggesting that it is largely heterogeneity in distribution (Gini
coefcient in this case) that is responsible for variation in
u rban poverty reduction. Importantly, distribution elasticity
of poverty is higher in urban than rural areas, suggesting that
increases in inequality hurt poverty reduction more in urban
than rural areas. In columns 3 and 4, we introduce the rele-
vant interaction terms. We nd that states with a lower level of
initial development have a lower growth elasticity of poverty
and a higher distribution elasticity of poverty. The coefcient
on the interaction term between the initial Gini coefcient and
the growth component is positive, suggesting that high initial
inequality lowers growth elasticity of poverty. However, this
effect is not statistically signicant.
So far we have looked at only one measure of poverty, i e,
HCR. However, HCR, which is the proportion of the population
below the poverty line alone, is inadequate; it ignores inequality
in distribution of income and does not take into account inten-
sity of poverty. We therefore need to look at other measures of
poverty that are more sensitive to the distribution of income.
For this purpose we use the poverty gap. The poverty gap is
given by the aggregate income shortfall of the poor as a pro-
portion of the poverty line and normalised by population size.
It is the mean distance below the poverty line expressed as a
proportion of that line, where the mean is formed over the en-
tire population, counting the non-poor as having zero poverty
gap. It is much more sensitive to changes in distribution, and it
is useful to look at this measure too when examining the het-
erogeneity in poverty reduction performance of states. Some
states may have high incidence of poverty but low poverty gap
(when most households are just below the poverty line). In
such a case, where a state has many households bunched im-
mediately below the poverty line, a small increase in con-
sumption would lead to a signicant reduction in terms of HCR
and the elasticity of poverty reduction (HCR) to growth would
be very high. Other states, may have a large proportion of ex-
tremely poor households (i e, very high initial inequality in the
initial distribution of income) and a similar rate of growth
would have a much smaller impact on poverty even with no
change in inequality. Such states would report smaller reduc-
tion in poverty.
The growth elasticity of poverty is not constant across vari-
ous measures of poverty. Bourguignon (2002) denes the
growth elasticity of the poverty gap (PG) using the following
formula:
y
PG
] 2 / / ) / [log( ] 2 / / ) / [log( * ) / (
] 2 / / ) / [log(
o o [ o + o [
o o [
=
t t t
t
y z y z y z
y z
where (.) and (.) are, respectively, the cumulative distribu-
tion and density functions of the standard normal variable. As
is the case with HCR, the growth elasticity of PG also depends
on the level of development as measured by the ratio of z/ y
t

and the inequality of the distribution of income as given by the
standard deviation of the logarithm of income.
Table 7 (p 64) explains the heterogeneity in growth and distri-
bution elasticity of rural PG. Here too we nd a negative and
signicant growth elasticity of poverty; the distribution elas-
ticity of poverty is signicant and positive. It is important to note
here that distribution elasticity is larger with respect to PG as
compared to HCR. This is because poverty measures such as PG
are much more sensitive to changes in distribution as com-
pared to HCR and place more weight on changes in distribution
of income than growth. The initial level of development does
not appear to have a signicant impact on the growth elasticity
of poverty gap. Higher initial inequality, however, does lower
the growth elasticity of poverty, which is again not surprising
given that PG is more sensitive to inequality. On the other hand,
the initial level of development and inequality does not signi-
cantly affect the distribution elasticity of poverty. Table 8 (p 64)
explains the heterogeneity in growth and distribution elasti-
city of rural PG. Here the growth elasticity of poverty is nega-
tive but not always statistically signicant. The distribution
elasticity of poverty is positive and statistically signicant,
Table 6: Bourguignons Benchmark Regression Explaining Heterogeneity
in Growth and Distribution Elasticity of Poverty
(Dependent Variable: Percentage Change in Urban HCR)
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Variables
Y=percentage change -0.763 -1.323** -6.820* -6.390***
in mean income (-1.674) (-2.264) (-2.006) (-3.312)
Dgini=Variation in 1.672* 1.480* 9.577***
Y* (poverty line/ 8.246** 6.761***
mean income) (2.258) (3.365)
Y* (initial Gini 0.030 0.047
coefficient) (0.307) (0.595)
Dgini* (poverty line/ -11.497***
mean income) (-3.247)
Dgini* (initial Gini -0.030
coefficient) (-0.406)
Constant -0.227*** -0.089 -0.197* -0.204***
(-4.960) (-0.876) (-1.732) (-3.246)
R-squared 0.037 0.202 0.273 0.474
SPECIAL ARTICLE
suggesting that increases in inequality matter much more when
we look at the distribution-sensitive measures of poverty.
Initial inequality does not have a statistically signicant i mpact
on growth elasticity of poverty.
It is clear from this empirical exercise that inequality mat-
ters for poverty reduction. Increases in inequality lower pov-
erty reduction and this is evident from the positive and statis-
tically signicant distribution elasticity of poverty we observe.
The distribution elasticity is larger in magnitude in urban areas
and hurts poverty reduction more as compared to rural areas.
Moreover, distribution sensitive measures of poverty such as
squared poverty gap place greater weight on changes in distri-
bution than HCR. High initial inequality lowers the growth
elasticity of poverty reduction and this effect is statistically
signicant in rural areas.
It is important to bear in mind that the empirical exercises
conducted in this paper are in terms of average consumption
expenditure and inequality of consumption expenditure
Table 7: Bourguignons Benchmark Regression Explaining Heterogeneity in
Growth and Distribution Elasticity of Poverty
(Dependent Variable: Percentage Change in Rural Poverty Gap)
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Variables
Y=percentage change -4.287*** -4.662*** -14.485*** -13.194***
in mean income (-8.407) (-9.102) (-3.321) (-3.341)
Dgini=Variation in 2.731*** 3.168*** 9.301**
Y* (poverty line/mean 1.642 1.556
income) (0.534) (0.478)
Y*Initial Gini 0.361*** 0.314***
coefficient (2.912) (2.869)
Dgini*poverty line/ -2.050
mean income (-0.808)
Dgini*Initial Gini -0.196
coefficient (-1.641)
Constant 0.120 0.259** 0.100 0.037
(1.132) (2.568) (1.016) (0.346)
R-squared 0.549 0.696 0.726 0.738
Table 8: Bourguignons Benchmark Regression Explaining Heterogeneity
in Growth and Distribution Elasticity of Poverty
(Dependent Variable: Percentage Change in Urban Poverty Gap)
(1) (2) (3) (4)
Variables
Y=percentage change -0.751 -1.862*** -5.658 -5.046
in mean income (-1.213) (-2.958) (-1.089) (-1.345)
Dgini=variation in 2.868** 2.543* 12.303***
Y* (poverty line/ 5.207 7.616
mean income) (0.917) (1.634)
Y*initial Gini 0.035 -0.010
coefficient (0.187) (-0.063)
Dgini*poverty line/ -17.130
mean income (-1.365)
Dgini*initial Gini 0.003
coefficient (0.012)
Constant -1.453*** -1.296*** -1.459*** -1.611***
(-9.621) (-7.367) (-5.949) (-7.346)
R-squared 0.048 0.213 0.205 0.320
d erived from NSS data. These serve as proxies for economic
growth and income inequality, respectively. As mentioned in
the previous section, the average consumption expenditure
derived from NSS data is lower than the estimates derived
from NAS, and one could question the appropriateness of using
NSS consumption expenditure as a proxy for GDP. However,
there is not much that one can do to resolve this problem since
poverty depends not only on average consumption but also on
its distribution, particularly at the bottom of the distribution,
and NAS cannot by itself provide a direct estimate of poverty.
Moreover, we are using the Gini index, which is not necessarily
the best way of measuring inequality from the point of view of
explaining differences in progress against poverty; however, it
is the most widely understood measure.
Conclusions
Over the last few decades, India has lifted millions out of pov-
erty at an unprecedented rate. We have always believed that
high economic growth can alone pull people out of poverty;
however, growth, though necessary, is not a sufcient con-
dition for poverty reduction. The relation between growth and
poverty is mediated by many other variables. In this paper, we
looked at the role of consumption inequality. Rising inequality
can lower the pace of poverty reduction by dampening the
growth elasticity of poverty reduction and the duration and
basis of the growth process itself. This is evident from the
empirical analysis here. We nd that in addition to the one
shot instant impact on poverty from a pure redistribution
effect, improvements in distribution of income have also a
long-run effect derived from an increase in the growth elasticity
of poverty.
The fact that we have witnessed poverty reduction in India
despite increases in inequality should not be interpreted to
mean that inequality does not matter. We observed poverty
reduction despite increases in the Gini coefcient because the
effect of growth in mean income on poverty was so large that
it overturned the effect of any adverse changes in the distribu-
tion on poverty. Indeed, if inequality had not increased and
had growth been distribution neutral, we would argue that
poverty would have declined even more signicantly. This is
particularly true in urban areas where the rise in inequality
has been more than that in rural areas.
The danger of rising inequality adversely affecting the
growth elasticity of poverty can also be seen in global com-
parisons. Ravallion (2009) in a comparative study of poverty
reduction in Brazil, China and India nds large differences in
the growth elasticity of poverty reduction using a $1.25 a day
poverty line. Using comparable national sample surveys, he
nds that the elasticity was highest for Brazil (about -4.3 for
growth in GDP per capita over 1981-2005) while for China and
India, the corresponding elasticity was about -0.8 and -0.4.
Furthermore, he nds that if India had Brazils elasticity,
I ndias growth rate would have delivered a rate of poverty re-
duction of 15% per annum. Even with Chinas elasticity, Indias
rate of poverty reduction would have been more than double
implied by the surveys. He argues that one of the main reasons
SPECIAL ARTICLE
behind the large differences in elasticity of poverty reduction
to economic growth is inequality. The Gini index rose in ini-
tially low inequality countries (India and China), while it fell
in Brazil, which had initially high inequality.
In this paper, we focused on just one aspect of inequality,
though an important aspect, namely, the inequality of con-
sumption. This is about inequality of results not inequality
of opportunities, which may be more important but much
harder to measure. There are dimensions of inequality other
than those based on consumption or income, such as inequali-
ties associated with gender or caste, access to key social serv-
ices, particularly health care and schooling and access to credit
markets. To achieve a higher rate of poverty reduction, India
will need to address the inequalities in asset and income distri-
bution and in opportunities that impede poor people from par-
ticipating in the growth process.
In the quest for higher economic growth, we cannot afford
to ignore inequality. Unfortunately, in India, the overall em-
phasis on redistribution has been singularly lacking and ine-
qualities have tended to persist and increase with growth.
Our ndings in this paper show that the poverty-reducing
impact of growth is much more if it is combined with policies
for reducing inequality. In fact, there is a strong case for pur-
suing redistributive policies in the early phase of growth as
we are likely to achieve greater poverty reduction for the
same growth rate in more equal societies. These include
changes in distribution of assets, direct redistributive trans-
fers, increased spending on education and health, and crea-
tion of quality jobs and social safety nets for the poor and
vulnerable. In the debate on what is an appropriate poverty
line for India, we must not lose sight of the impending crisis of
rising inequality.
Notes
1 Goa, Pondicherry, Dadra and Nagar Haveli,
Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh,
Lakshwadeep, Delhi and Daman and Diu have
been dropped from this scatter.
2 Even though, the Planning Commissions esti-
mates need to be re-estimated to correct for in-
clusion of MDMS, we can still look at these
numbers to get a rough estimate. Performance
of MDMS has varied greatly across states and
we might be overstating the decline in some
states (by about 1%-2%).
3 The distribution of the poor around the poverty
line also matters, though. If the poor population
is bunched around the poverty line, even small
increases in income can pull them above the pov-
erty line and lead to overall rapid poverty
d ecline. This is a statistical illusion, born out of
the use of an articially drawn line the condi-
tion of the poor will not change materially at all
in spite of this apparent reduction in poverty.
4 Both the theoretical and empirical literature are
divided on the potential causality from inequa-
lity to growth with some studies concluding
that inequality leads to faster growth and
others suggesting that inequality is likely to
lower growth.
References
ADB (2012): Asian Development Outlook-Confront-
ing Rising Inequality in Asia, Asian Develop-
ment Bank, Manila, Philippines.
Bourguignon, Francois (2002): The Growth Elas-
ticity of Poverty Reduction: Explaining Hetero-
geneity across Countries and Time Periods,
DELTA Working Papers 2002-03, DELTA (Ecole
normale suprieure).
EPW (2012): Planning Commissions Poverty
Charade, Economic & Political Weekly, 7 April,
pp 7-8.
Himanshu (2007): Recent Trends in Poverty and
Inequality: Some Preliminary Results, Econo-
mic & Political Weekly, 10 February, pp 497-508.
Himanshu (2012): India Undercounts Its Poor,
http://www.livemint.com/articles/2012/03/
26003504/India-undercounts-its-poor.html
Kraay, Aart (2006): When Is Growth Pro-poor?
Evidence from a Panel of Countries, Journal of
Development Economics, Vol 80(1), pp 198-227.
Lopez, Humberto and Luis Serven (2006): A Nor-
mal Relationship? Poverty, Growth and Ine-
quality, Policy Research Working Paper Series
3814, The World Bank.
Planning Commission (2009): Report of the Expert
Group to Review the Methodology for Estima-
tion of Poverty, Planning Commission, Gov-
ernment of India.
Ravallion, Martin (1997): Can High-inequality De-
veloping Countries Escape Absolute Poverty?,
Policy Research Working Paper Series 1775,
The World Bank, Washington DC.
(2001): Growth, Inequality, and Poverty:
Looking Beyond Averages, Policy Research
Working Paper Series 2558, The World Bank,
Washington DC.
(2009): A Comparative Perspective on Poverty
Reduction in Brazil, China and India, Policy
Research Working Paper Series 5080, The
World Bank, Washington DC.
REVIEW OF URBAN AFFAIRS
December 1, 2012
Urban Poverty in India: Tools, Treatment and Politics at the Neo-liberal Turn Karen Coelho, Anant Maringanti
Understanding Poverty and Inequality in Urban India since Reforms:
Bringing Quantitative and Qualitative Approaches Together Vamsi Vakulabharanam, Sripad Motiram
The Spatial Reproduction of Urban Poverty:
Labour and Livelihoods in a Slum Resettlement Colony Karen Coelho, T Venkat, R Chandrika
On the Sabarmati Riverfront: Urban Planning as Totalitarian Governance in Ahmedabad Navdeep Mathur
New Policy Paradigms and Actual Practices in Slum Housing:
The Case of Housing Projects in Bengaluru
Lalitha Kamath
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
H T PAREKH FINANCE COLUMN
10
Is the Global Financial
System Safer?
T T Ram Mohan
T
he nancial crisis that erupted in
2007 and is still unfolding prom-
pted a search for reforms that
would make the global nancial system
safer. Several initiatives have emerged.
They represent an attempt at addressing
aws in the system that rendered it v ulner-
able to a crisis on the scale we have seen.
It is worth asking: what effect have
these measures had so far? Perhaps the
question is premature because many of
the initiatives are in the early stages of
implementation and others are yet to be
implemented. Still, it is useful to take
stock. That would help us understand
how urgent the need for reform is
and what corrections or additions are re-
quired to the reforms undertaken thus
far. The International Monetary Funds
(IMF) Global Financial Stability Report
(October 2012) devotes a chapter to such
a stocktaking.
IMF Highlights
The report highlights three trends in the
nancial system that contributed to
gre ater vulnerability: (i) the move away
from traditional banking, which relied on
deposits and loans to corporate and house-
holds, towards non-traditional sour ces
of funding and revenues; (ii) consolida-
tion in the nancial sector which led to
greater concentration; and (iii) greater
globalisation of banking which took the
form of greater penetration of emerging
markets by banks in advanced economies.
This cannot be said to be an exhaus-
tive list by any means. One factor that is
left out in the above list but is touched
upon later in the report is the increase in
nancialisation, which took the form of
a nancial sector that was bloated in
r elation to the overall economy. But, yes,
they are among the signicant ones. To
what extent have these trends been
r eversed, if at all?
Let us begin with the rst factor. In
r espect of market-based intermediation,
we have a mixed bag. Reliance on nan-
cial markets for short-term funding and
on trading and fee income has fallen in a
few advanced economies, namely, the
United States (US), France, Spain and
Germany but has gone up in the United
Kingdom (UK), Switzerland, Japan and
Canada. (The comparison is for the period
2008-11 with respect to 2003-07.) If we
take selected advanced economies as a
whole, the share of market-based inter-
mediation has changed very little. In
emerging markets, its share was much
lower than in advanced economies be-
fore the crisis. The share has remained
static in Asia and Latin America, and it
has declined in emerging Europe.
The share of non-banks in intermedia-
tion has also changed little in most
countries. The use of some complex
products has fallen, notably of mort-
gage-backed securities, collateralised
debt obligations and over-the-counter
derivatives, but the use of others has
gone up (interest rate and cross-currency
swaps, and exchange traded products).
Overall, the report notes, if we look at
three important constituents of market-
based intermediation non-traditional
banking, the share of non-banks and the
use of complex products there has
been some reduction in the rst but not
much in the other two.
As for the second factor in the list,
concentration in banking has gone up in
some economies as distressed banks
have been merged with healthy ones
and governments have merged several
distressed banks and then taken them
over. The US is one economy where con-
centration, measured by the share of the
top three banks in total bank assets, has
risen sharply. For advanced economies
as a whole too, the share has gone up.
At the same time, interconnectedness
among nancial institutions represented
by interbank assets, liabilities and whole-
sale funding has increased.
The report notes that higher concen-
tration has gone hand in hand with a
d ecline in the net interest margin a
crucial driver of bank prots in some
advanced economies (excluding the US).
This is surprising as such a decline is
normally associated with greater com-
petition, not greater concentration. One
plausible explanation is that it reects
poor demand for loans and hence low
yields in those economies. On the positive
side, nancialisation shows a welcome
decline. The nancial sector, measured
by the sum of bank assets, and the market
capitalisation of bonds and stocks, has
shrunk relative to the size of economies,
despite poor growth in gross domestic
product (GDP) in these economies.
Globalisation
Turn now to the last structural factor res-
ponsible for the crisis, namely, globalisa-
tion. The decade before the crisis had
seen an increase in the globalisation of
nance. This manifested itself in differ-
ent ways: nancial institutions investing
in another economy, nancial institu-
tions being funded by another economy,
banks setting up subsidiaries and bran-
ches across borders, and interconnect-
edness of various nancial centres.
The report suggests that the evidence
is rather mixed. In the advanced econo-
mies, when one looks at foreign holdings
of assets as a proportion of GDP, banks
investment in other economies appears
to have fallen since the crisis. However,
cross-border ows in advanced econo-
mies do not appear to reect this. The
report is of the view that the crisis
had not reversed the long-term trend
of globalisation.
In sum, going by the three factors
l isted at the outset, it is hard to resist the
conclusion that the nancial system is
not any safer today than before the
crisis. As the report makes clear, it is
not as if all these factors are inherently
undesirable. There is certainly merit
in banks boosting fee income and in
H T PAREKH FINANCE COLUMN
11
greater globalisation. The point is that
there is an optimal level that must not
be breached because, then, the adverse
consequences of any disruption are
hard to contain.
The disconcerting fact is that some of
the very reforms that have been set in
motion with the objective of addressing
vulnerabilities in the nancial system
may well end up having the opposite
effect they may encourage behaviour
in banks that reinforces the vulnerabili-
ties at the aggregate level. Similarly, the
policy interventions intended to shore
up the nancial system in the short
term could have adverse implications
for the longer term. The IMF report
touches upon both these aspects of the
current situation.
The best known proposal in banking
is the new Basel III rules under which
banks will be required to hold more cap-
ital as well as capital of higher quality.
Capital requirements will be even higher
for systemically important banks. It is
expected that higher capital require-
ments would push banks towards
de-leveraging, that is, reduce the debt
on their balance sheets and thus make
them less risky.
Push to De-risking
However, higher capital requirements
could just as well push banks towards
de-risking, that is, de-emphasising
activities that require more capital (typi-
cally interest-income generating activi-
ties) and focusing instead on activities
that require less capital, namely, acti-
vities that generate fee income. This
would imply a move away from tradi-
tional banking and towards market-
based intermediation.
Higher capital requirements could
also cause banks to exit businesses (such
as xed income, commodities and cur-
rencies) which require higher capital.
This would push these businesses into
the laps of a few strong banks, thus con-
centrating these activities in a few
banks. Some portion of these activities
could head for non-banks as these do not
face higher capital requirements. Thus,
one way or another, reforms at the micro-
level could result in an outcome that we
wish to correct at the macro-level.
The broader point is that the new regu-
lations have the effect of lowering banks
return on equity. This also goes for the
new liquidity rules that require banks to
hold more liquid short-term assets, on
which the yields will be lower than on
illiquid, long-term assets. It applies as
well to restrictions on the business model
that are contemplated. In the US, the
Volcker Rule will restrict proprietary
trading. In the UK, retail activities will
have to be ring-fenced from investment
banking activities. These are both at-
tempts to restrict the scope of banking
activities. Since the expansion in scope
was prompted in the rst place by com-
mercial considerations, any such limita-
tion brings banks return on equity
u nder pressure.
Towards Non-Bank Sector
Past experience suggests that changes
that depress banks return on equity
tend to drive banks towards avenues
that promise a higher return. One such
avenue would be increased fee income,
which means again a lurch towards
market-based intermediation. There is
also the distinct possibility that in the
face of the Basel III rules some of the
higher-risk activities such as investment
banking and trading move out of banks
and into the non-bank sector. This
means risk has merely been transferred
from a regulated to a relatively unregu-
lated area of the nancial sector. This
will call for greater regulation and
supervision of the non-bank sector.
Lastly, the report highlights the struc-
tural implications of some of the crisis
intervention measures. Many of these
measures, such as funding support for
banks during the crisis or even low policy
rates were meant to be temporary but
they have stretched out as economies
a ffected by the crisis did not revive as
expected. As a result of these measures,
central banks have substituted for inter-
bank lending, they hold large amounts
of government securities and, in the
e uro area, they have substituted for
cross-border intermediation. These in-
terventions reduce the pressure on banks
to change their funding structures and
thus allow factors that underlie the crisis
to persist.
Low policy rates depress yields on
bank assets. Quantitative easing, which
is aimed at lowering long-term interest
rates, comes in the way of banks riding the
yield curve. Propping up banks in distress
was necessary in order to maintain con-
dence in the banking system. However,
the persistence of such support comes in
the wake of badly needed restructuring
the weeding out of insolvent institutions
and restructuring of viable ones.
The upshot of all this should be clear
enough: the nancial system is not safer
today than before the crisis. One could
accept this as inevitable in the transition
to a safer system, except that there is little
assurance that the measures unveiled to
usher in greater stability will have the
desired effect. Rather, as outlined above,
they could well create incentives for
greater risk-taking within the traditional
banking system while moving riskier
activities to the non-bank sector. The IMF
report is alive to these dangers but the
agenda for reform it outlines does not
go beyond what has already been talked
about resolution mechanisms for large
institutions, better monitoring of the non-
bank sector, more transparency, etc.
Policymakers may soon have to come to
terms with the distinct possibility that the
present set of reforms may not go very far
in creating a safer nancial system. They
may need to embrace more radical meas-
ures: a higher level of equity in relation
to total assets and not just risk-weighted
assets, limits on bank size, and diversity
in ownership in banking, with some
public sector presence. Over to Basel IV?
T T Ram Mohan (ttr@iimahd.ernet.in) is
with the Indian Institute of Management,
Ahmedabad.
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
Economic & Political Weekly EPW january 12, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 2 41
Music in the Balance
Language, Modernity and Hindustani Sangeet in Dharwad
Tejaswini Niranjana
For their support and sharp questions, many of which I have yet to
answer, I am grateful to Ashish Rajadhyaksha, Urmila Bhirdikar, Amlan
Dasgupta and Ashwin Kumar A P. For stories that set me thinking,
I am indebted to Girish Karnad, Jayant Kaikini and the late Ashok
Ranade. Early versions of some of the arguments in the paper were
rst rehearsed in an essay published in Sangeet Natak, XLIII(2) (2009).
Research for this paper was supported by the Wissenschaftskolleg zu
Berlin and the Institut detudes avancees de Nantes.
Tejaswini Niranjana (tejaswini.niranjana@gmail.com) is with the
Centre for the Study of Culture and Society and the Tata Institute of
Social Sciences.
The paper examines the social role of Hindustani music
in the Dharwad-Hubli region, situating the musics early
20th century emergence and proliferation against and
within the debates on language that were central to
cultural transformation in that area. What was the
problem of Kannada and more broadly the language
question in the mid to late 19th and early 20th centuries?
What might have been the role of vocal music in
negotiating the language conflict? The paper suggests
that Hindustani music is part of the cultural labour
undertaken in the region during the rise of Kannada
nationalism. The phrase draws attention to the nature
of the work involved in cultural practice and
performance, and the nature of performers activity,
through teaching, singing, playing, evaluating and
arguing about music. Cultural labour references a visible
aspect of social transformation and social process, the
latter to be seen as marked by elusive shifts in ways of
living, thinking and creating. The formation of the taste
for Hindustani sangeet in Dharwad is one result of
such shifts.
Kannada Pride on the Marathi Stage
1
I
t was around 1930. In Pune, the cultural capital of Mahar-
ashtra, a play was being performed. An actor came on
stage and began to sing in a unique voice. There was a
commotion amongst the spectators, and someone called out:
Kaanadi appa (a derogatory term used for Kannadigas in
Maharashtra). Others picked up the cry. The accompanying in-
struments stopped playing. The actor came to the front of the
stage, and said: You are showing this intolerance because I
am from the Kannada desh. Show me someone amongst you
who can sing as well as I do, and I will engage him in a contest.
Having said this, he sat down for a baithak. He sang for a good
three to four hours. The spectators fell silent. As the man n-
ished singing, garland after garland was heaped around his
neck. Everyone began to praise his display of erudition. The
actor who conquered Marathi intolerance with the light of his
knowledge was Sawai Gandharva.
2

How do we interpret this scene? The lens of Kannada pride
lters Sawai Gandharvas Hindustani sangeet (music) per-
formance into the celebration of Kannadiga competence. Why
was it relevant that he was a Kannadiga? Was his performance
all the more laudatory because he was Kannadiga? Why if
this is implied in the scenario is it more remarkable for a
Kannadiga to succeed in Hindustani sangeet than a Marathi-
speaking person? And conversely, why would the audience as-
sume a Kannadiga would not perform as well? Whatever the
status of this assumption, the answer perhaps lies elsewhere,
in the language-music conjuncture that the cultural landscape
of the Dharwad region presents to us in the 20th century.
Another glimpse of the issues at stake can be seen in my
second example, also involving music and musicians.
Saving Marathi Pride in Marathi Country
It was in the early 1940s that Bade Ghulam Ali Khan of Lahore
had triumphantly toured northern India and come to Bombay
to perform. Rasikas from Pune and Kolhapur had gone there to
listen to him. Impressed by his brilliance, they invited him to
Kolhapur. What would I do in such a place? What sort of sing-
ers do you have there? commented the Khansaheb. Touched
to the quick, the Maharashtrians came to Alladiya Khan, the
court musician in Kolhapur, and related this incident to him.
Alladiya Khan declared that they must organise a concert
that could provide a tting response. The organisers invited
Bade Ghulam Ali Khan and he agreed to come. But who would
sing as his opponent? Everyone knew that the Khansaheb was
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january 12, 2013 vol xlvIiI no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 42
no ordinary singer. Alladiya Khan was perfectly capable of
challenging him, but he was now quite old. He was further
diminished by the deaths of his two sons, Manji Khan and
Burji Khan. Alladiya Khan then thought of a young pupil of his
gharana, and sent a telegram to summon him to Kolhapur. The
backdrop of the concert, and the Khansahebs comments, were
relayed to the young man. Alladiya Khan said to his pupil that
he must sing boldly and save the reputation and honour of Ma-
harashtras music tradition.
At the appointed time, Bade Ghulam Ali Khan came to the
concert hall. A huge audience had gathered. The Khansaheb
was a broad-shouldered and well-built man. To have a skinny,
weak-looking young fellow singing in front of him seemed
laughable to many. But the young singer climbed onto the plat-
form. He began with Raag Nand and sang it effortlessly. Then
followed Nayaki Kanada. The audience was clapping loudly.
People uttered cries of praise. Then, Ghulam Ali came onstage.
First, he sang Raag Bahar, which did not go down well. Then,
Raag Malkauns, which also did not have an effect. Lastly, he
sang a thumri. That too sounded as though it was without
savour. The Khansaheb grew angry. Did you organise this
concert to humiliate me? he roared. The aim of this concert
was to show that we too have good singers, said the organis-
ers. The young singer who challenged the Khansaheb was
none other than the Kannadiga Mallikarjun Mansur, who that
day as the story goes saved not only the honour of Maha-
rashtra, but that of the whole of southern India.
3
Both these instances refer to musical contestations that also
seem to manifest themselves as a tussle over linguistic domi-
nance. However, the language terrain on which such contesta-
tions were mounted is not amenable to easy understanding,
either then or now. What was the problem of Kannada and
more broadly the language question in the mid to late 19th and
early 20th centuries in the region known in ofcial British
records as the Southern Maratha Country? What might have
been the role of vocal music in negotiating the language ques-
tion? My attempt in this essay is to situate the early 20th cen-
tury emergence and proliferation of Hindustani sangeet in the
Dharwad region against and within the debates on language
that were central to cultural transformation in that region. My
focus will be on anecdotes, to try and make them yield
through close reading a sense of the range of questions
thrown up by the music-language conjuncture.
Marathi and Kannada in Dharwad
The anecdotes in this essay are embedded in the historical
context of the hegemonic spread of the Marathi language
towards southern, western (Gujarat) and northern (central
region) India from the 17th century onwards. The context, in
brief, is one in which the Maratha Confederacy of chieftains
who carried forward the legacy of the empire built by Shivajirao
Bhonsle (1630-80) strengthened Marathi as an administrative
language, even if mixed with Persian the main language of
government and diplomacy in west and south Asia where
necessary.
4
In 1818, the British defeated the Peshwas, origi-
nally the brahmin advisers to the Bhonsle family, who had
controlled the Maratha state for the entire 18th century. In
that time, they had directly or indirectly dominated three lin-
guistic-cultural regions, Maharashtra itself, Gujarat and the
Bombay Karnatak.
5
In the last-named region, called the
Southern Maratha Country in the early 19th century, the pop-
ulation was divided into Kannada-speaking Lingayats, Jains
and other castes (of cultivators and traders), and Marathi-
speaking brahmin or Maratha landowners. The administra-
tors were also Marathi speakers, from the traditionally literate
castes Chitpavans, Deshasthas, Karhadas and also from the
Saraswats and Prabhus who were at the time of lower social
rank (Roberts 1971). The caste-language equation is an impor-
tant point of reference for the decisions taken on education
matters by the British after the Southern Maratha Country
was incorporated into the Bombay Presidency, as my next
anecdote shows.
After incorporation of the Bombay Karnatak region into
Bombay Presidency, the younger administrators in the Presi-
dency, who were less sympathetic to the old Marathi elite,
worked for the substitution of Kannada for Marathi as the ofcial
language in 1836. Starting government Kannada schools was
part of the larger plan for decreasing what the British saw as
the dependency of the peasants on the elite. Marathi was seen
as a foreign language in this region by the Reverend
U Taylor, who was asked by the British government to express
his expert opinion on the language issue. He went on to declare
that this state of things is not natural (Parulekar and Bakshi
1957: 47). The Reverend Taylor narrates the story of a Kanarese
man being tried for murder. His confession was supposedly
written in Marathi, which the Reverend learnt afterwards that
he did not speak or understand. The confession was read by a
clerk before the magistrate, and explained in Hindustanee,
upon which the magistrate asked the prisoner whether that
was his confession. The prisoner unwillingly expressed his
assent, not realising he could not actually be convicted
because of lack of evidence. But because he gave assent, by
that very confession he was convicted and afterwards executed.
I could not help feeling, says the Reverend, that the man
caused his own death warrant to be signed by giving his assent
to a statement in a language which he did not understand
whatever might have been his verbal confession before the
Mamlutdar in his own Native tongue (ibid: 48). Schooling in
Kannada is what the Reverend recommends as an antidote to
such predicaments.
As early as 1831, however, sub-collector Elliott had started a
Kannada school in Dharwad and paid the master out of his
own pocket for a few years. In a letter to Mr Nesbet, the principal
collector, dated 12 October 1833, Elliott draws attention to the
fact that the Marathi school in Dharwad provides instruction
only to brahmins and does not benet the great mass of the
people, using the Canarese language exclusively (ibid: 42-43).
The British government, acknowledging that the administra-
tive records were in Marathi and civil servants would need
prociency in that language for some time to come, decided in
1836 not to shut down the existing Marathi schools in the
Dharwad and Belgaum collectorates, but declared that all new
SPECIAL ARTICLE
schools would use Kannada as the medium of instruction. Ena-
bling the use of Kannada as the language of public business
was the ultimate goal of training students in Kannada schools,
since the British could not countenance the use of a foreign
language such as Marathi.
The determination of the British ofcials to create vernacu-
lar monolingual identities and map them onto geographical
regions historically marked by considerable polylingualism,
had far-reaching consequences in many regions of the country
including the southern Maratha area. This determination was
additionally fuelled by British anxiety in this region over brah-
min complicity with the older Marathi-dominated administra-
tion, especially that of the Peshwas who had preceded the Brit-
ish as rulers. The Marathi-speaking brahmin elite, connected
through an elaborate network of kinship and patronage, pro-
liferated even under the new regime in spite of British efforts
to minimise their inuence (Roberts 1971: 258). It was in this
context that the British attempted to bring in people from
other caste-language backgrounds into the civil service. The
Kannada schools, which would also cater to a large Kannada-
speaking non-brahmin Lingayat population, would serve as
sites for the production of modern Kannada-language materials
intended to strengthen the written language.
The rise of Kannada nationalism in the early 20th century
owed much to the efforts to popularise the use of Kannada in a
range of domains. But Kannada nationalism has had a curious
relationship to the language question, as though the assertion
of a Kannada (linguistic) identity can actually be done through
a sleight-of-hand that both puts forward and masks Kannada
simultaneously. Witness this astonishing story from Nanna
Jeevana Smritigalu (1974), the memoirs of Alur Venkata Rao,
one of the earliest proponents of a distinct Kannada identity.
The year appears to be 1905. Alur and his friends from north-
ern Karnataka were undergraduate students at Fergusson Col-
lege in Pune. They were beginning to experience, along with
pride in the nation, says Alur, some amount of pride in their
mother tongue Kannada. One day they decided to put up a
play in their college. It was decided that the play should not
be in Marathi. Then should we do it in Kannada? If we did,
then we would have been both the players and the audience.
How could they nd a way out of this dilemma? After a good
deal of discussion, we asked that the Kannada-speaking stu-
dents should be allowed to put up their own play, in English.
The Marathi speakers wanted to know why they were being
excluded from acting in an English play. The debate was a
heated one. Finally, the administrators ruled in favour of the
Kannada students, who tossed their caps to the ceiling in joy.
This was perhaps the rst of the Marathi-Kannada wars that
broke out heedlessly from this time on (Alur 1974: 69).
Did this linguistic tension prevail in relation to the music
that came to dominate this region? Not quite in the same way,
although the simultaneous putting forward and masking of
Kannada-ness is to be seen in relation to singers of Hindustani
sangeet as well. My approach to this music is not an ethnolo-
gical one. My intention is not to pursue a line of inquiry that
focuses on questions like what is Hindustani music in the
region? or how it is different from Hindustani music else-
where in India? My interest lies more specically in asking
what Hindustani sangeet both as cultural practice and aspi-
rational horizon came to mean in Dharwad, or north Karna-
taka more broadly speaking, in the period between the 1890s
and the 1940s. The route by which I came to Dharwads music
is an unusual one, and I will outline it here because my earlier
preoccupations have deeply informed my current interests.
From Port-of-Spain to Dharwad
My last project focused on analysing Caribbean popular mu-
sic in terms of the centrality to it of the Indian question,
and in terms of the history and current provenance in Trini-
dad of people of Indian origin, descendants of indentured
labourers taken there to work on the sugar plantations after
the abolition of slavery. The book, Mobilizing India: Women,
Music and Migration between India and Trinidad (2006), was
followed by a documentary lm called Jahaji Music (directed
by Surabhi Sharma, 2007). The lm engaged with the musical
culture of the Caribbean through the journey and collabo-
rations of an Indian musician, Remo Fernandes. The Remo
project, which tried to pursue the possibility of connection in
another sphere, that of actual musical practice, seemed to be
a logical if somewhat unexpected outcome of the earlier
scholarly endeavour.
Perhaps the most predictable direction I could have taken
next would have been to pursue the story of the Indian di-
aspora and its musical negotiations in the United Kingdom for
example, where once again the Indian and the African come
together to form different sorts of cultural equations. How-
ever, the insights I gained from thinking about music, nation-
alism and race in Trinidad took me in another direction
altogether. The point of the comparative frame I proposed in
my book was not simply to look at two different contexts, but
to see how the questions I was asking could be brought back
home to India.
What did I gain from thinking about popular music in
Trinidad? That consolidation and displacement occur together
and form part of a continuing process. (Here the consolidation
and displacement had to do with notions of racial identity and
citizenship.) That this complicated process is often manifested
most visibly as cultural practice, and as music production in
particular. That in our modernity fashioned as it is through
and in the wake of colonialism thinking about the music
might help us see one of the important ways by which ideas of
who we are/who we want to be are put together, circulated,
and gain purchase. That music is related to the structure of
social aspiration and issues of social mobility. That the making
and remaking of gender distinctions is central to processes of
nation-making and the processes by which modern subjects
are produced, and that music is one such important process.
Thinking about these issues has brought me to my own primary
cultural context, which is that of southern India, and as I
began thinking of music in that region, I thought not just of
Carnatic music but of the signicant numbers of major singers
of Hindustani music.
SPECIAL ARTICLE
After Trinidad, I began to look more carefully for the music
question in discourses of modernity in India. Often, this ques-
tion seemed to be part of a larger effort in colonial society that
gathered momentum in the early 20th century to work to-
wards the re-codication of musical texts (texts authorising
certain kinds of musical practice as well as the actual text or
bandish/sahitya of a composition) and the recasting of perfor-
mative traditions. If I had come directly to Hindustani music,
either as a student or a lay analyst, solely from within an
Indian context, I suspect it would have appeared before me as
a tradition with its own strict and inviolable rules. This
would have had more to do with received notions with maybe
just a hundred-year history, the emergence of which coincides
with the codication and assertion of national cultural prac-
tices in India. Scholars have pointed to other contexts, espe-
cially those involving women, where notions of tradition and
modernity take shape and acquire solidity as part of a colo-
nial contestation (Chatterjee 1993; Sarkar 2001), leading to the
xing of certain elements of cultural practice as authentic and
traditional. What I am referencing here is not music alone, but
a range of other social and cultural practices that went through
a process by which they came to be named as traditional
(Peterson and Soneji 2008).
Formation of Hindustani Sangeet
While a few scholars have tried to give us historical insights
into the formation of what is today called Hindustani music,
and the social background of its practitioners and patrons
(Manuel 2010; Trivedi 2000), the general disposition of audi-
ences and singers today is to eternalise that music, seeing it as
part of that which in the 20th century came to be called
Indian culture. Although the musical strands that today
form the Hindustani archive go back many centuries, the
consolidation and emergence of a recognisable and distinct
body of music took place over the last 400 years or so (Trivedi
2000).
6
As Hindustani sangeet evolved through the forma-
tion and dispersal of several courtly cultures in northern India
(Bor and Miner 2010), by the mid-18th century courtesans and
dancing girls came to be signicant practitioners of both music
and dance, challenging the pre-eminence of professional com-
munities of musicians.
Nearly a century later, the establishment of the British
Empire and the dwindling power of the princely states led to
the dismantling of the elaborate establishments that had pro-
vided patronage to musicians and other cultural practitioners
(Sundar 1996).
7
These performers, including tawaifs and
courtesans, began to move out of the northern regions and
travel westwards and southwards looking for new patrons
who they found in the rising Gujarati merchant class of
Bombay and the heads of the small princely states that dotted
the region below the Vindhya mountains. New performative
genres took shape, including the western India sangeet natak
or musical play covering present-day Gujarat, Maharashtra
and northern Karnataka, and using at least three to four
languages which brought trained musicians, both Muslim
and Hindu, to a wider audience.
In the late 19th century, efforts were made by members of
the professional classes in the cities to engage in discussions
about music pedagogy, and to start modern music schools as
opposed to the traditional gharana/gurukul system, where the
student lived with the teachers family. The performance
which Muslim men and courtesan women dominated was
sought to be puried, and returned to the Sanskrit texts which
were supposed to have authorised the musical practice (Farrell
2000; Qureshi 2000). Similar processes were undertaken with
other kinds of performance, as, for example, with the south
Indian dance form, sadir, which transformed through nation-
alist intervention into Bharatanatyam (Natarajan 1997).
In their new and nationalised forms, these performative tra-
ditions were assimilated, often by Hindu middle-class women
and men, and relocated to a different social space. Thus relocated,
it was possible to celebrate these as truly Indian, sometimes
even as Hindu. The early 20th century brahmin codiers and
teachers of Hindustani music, like V N Bhatkhande, claimed to
be democratising the music by making it part of a seemingly
transparent pedagogic process (Bakhle 2005). Especially after
the 1950s, the new subjects of musical training, a training that
was now also done through graded national examinations and
eventually also through regular courses within the university
system, were mostly middle-class women men always being
fewer. However, earlier in the century it was the women who
were fewer, and those women who took to music were mainly
from the caste-occupation groups involved in the performing
arts. Large numbers of women singers, for example, were to be
found in the sangeet natak, as evidenced by the names to be
found in histories of Kannada and Marathi theatre of that
period (Marathe 1994; Ranade 1986; Amingada 2007).
Some work now exists on the establishment of the music
schools in Lahore and Bombay, and later in other parts of
northern and western India in the early 20th century. Scholars
have also discussed the efforts of V N Bhatkhande and Vishnu
Digambar Paluskar in creating a new pedagogy and a new
sense of what constituted Indian classical music (Bakhle
2005). Even a cursory glance at music CDs available today
would reveal that a large number of singers without Muslim
names are brahmins from Maharashtra in western India. But
to see this as the primary direction taken by Hindustani music
today would be to miss out on what has happened in a region
in northern Karnataka, which has contributed at least ve of
the dozen most important singers of the last 50 years or more.
The existing scholarship on Carnatic music or Hindustani mu-
sic suggests that the consolidation of diverse older genres into
national traditions was the problematic achievement of na-
tionalist discourse. I suggest that the process was neither uni-
directional nor did it achieve anything resembling a hegem-
onic set of conventions, and questions of caste, of language
and region, and of religious identities continued to play a
crucial role in musical negotiations.
Hindustani in North Karnataka
Some of the best-known names in Hindustani music are from the
north Karnataka region: Sawai Gandharva, Kumar Gandharva,
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Mallikarjun Mansur, Bhimsen Joshi, Gangubai Hangal, Basavaraj
Rajguru. Unlike Maharashtra, where musical practice and
performance came to be dominated by brahmins, in the Dharwad
region Lingayats competed with brahmins, both on the popu-
lar stage and in classical music. The lone woman in the list
above is from a devadasi family, even if this tradition was
disavowed in her mothers lifetime.
8
Nowhere else in Karnataka
was Hindustani music taught widely in the early to mid-20th
century, or for that matter to this day. Before the early 20th
century there was not much evidence of such music in the region.
By this I mean that the development from dhrupad to khayal
that happened over several centuries in northern India did not
have any parallel in Karnataka (see Deshpande 1987). Instead,
khayal and other genres like thumri erupted into visibility in
the early decades of the 20th century, gaining acceptance
through the spread of the gramophone and the radio, and
through the musical plays.
Before this time, there would have been, of course, Persian-
Arabic intersections with local musics (folk and ritualistic),
even before the time of Ibrahim Adilshah II (1580-1627) of the
Bijapur empire, who wrote the musical text Kitab-i-Nauras in
the Dakhni language.
9
In the Deccan Plateau region includ-
ing areas of present-day Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and
Karnataka Hindu, Islamic and folk religious practices, and
the merging of several musical traditions can be seen. One
example is the performance of tattvapada (philosophical
song) in northern Karnataka (Allen and Viswanathan 2004:
120-21). But while this may have been the cultural terrain on
which Hindustani music made its mark, the past history of the
region does not entirely explain how it was in that period,
that is, in the early 20th century, that Hindustani music became
such an important and widely-appreciated cultural form. If so
many great names have emerged, what does it indicate
about how many are learning music, how many teachers and
patrons exist, and what sort of audiences turn out for Hindus-
tani music? From all accounts, the popularity of this kind of
music is only growing, and there are people teaching vocal or
instrumental music in Hindustani style in almost every town
in the region.
To the question of why there is so much Hindustani music in
the Dharwad region, some of the common answers are along
the following lines:
(a) Abdul Karim Khan, founder of the Kirana Gharana and
court singer of the Baroda state, was often invited by the
Maharaja of Mysore to sing at his court or in the Dasara festival.
Abdul Karim usually stopped at Dharwad for performances on
his way to Mysore. He began teaching music to Sawai Gandharva
and others, thus creating a wave of interest in Hindustani
music in the region. They, in turn, taught many more. Many
ustads came to Dharwad for long visits, and sometimes to
settle there, because of the pleasant weather. Indeed Dharwad
used to be called Chota Mahabaleshwar in those days.
(b) Large numbers of Maharashtrians (Marathi-speakers) lived
in Dharwad. They were the patrons of Hindustani music.
(c) Because Dharwad was in Bombay Karnatak, the inuence
of Marathi culture was predominant. Marathi popular plays
had Hindustani music and Kannada plays were derived
from these.
(d) The chillies and spicy food of northern Karnataka clear the
throat and make for voices more suited to Hindustani music.
The answers are inadequate even on their own terms. If
Abdul Karim Khans nal destination was Mysore and he went
there frequently, why did he not teach disciples there? Why
was the Dharwad region such fertile ground for the spread of
this sort of music? What sort of musical networks were formed
that allowed Belgaum, Miraj, the smaller princely states
(Jamkhandi, Kurundwad, Ramdurg, Ichalkaranji) and the
Hubli-Dharwad region to become the catchment area for the
practice of Hindustani music? Why is Kannada cultural practice
perceived as derived from its Marathi counterpart, when all
the evidence points to the simultaneous growth of theatre in
the region and experiments carried out roughly at the same
time? Answers to questions about the emergence of Hindustani
music usually work with implicit theories of cultural inuence
or the importance of individual teachers who happened to visit
Dharwad. But these, I argue, do not take us very far in under-
standing the signicance of Hindustani music in that region.
Significance of Sangeet Natak
The popularity of Hindustani music in the north Karnataka
region is closely tied to its role in the Kannada sangeet natak.
The language question is not prominent in the musical play, I
suggest, precisely because it is displaced onto the question of
musical form. What happens with the musical play could well
give us an indication as to what is happening in the cultural
space of the region itself, and how eventually the language
issue nds a tentative resolution.
The modern Kannada theatre drew on folk forms such as
the Doddaata (big play) and the Sannaata (small play), the
parijaata (plays about the god Krishna), and yakshagaana (the
more recent name for an old tradition of enacting with music
and dance stories from the epics and Puranas), even as it came
in contact with Parsi theatre in Bombay, the rst proscenium-
style Indian theatre modelled on Shakespeare plays, Sanskrit
plays, Persian epics, and northern and western Indian folk
theatre. Parsi theatre introduced to its audiences genres such
as the thumri, ghazal and hori, and also drew on the Hindustani
music that was prevalent in the western region by the 1880s
(Gupt 2005).
10

Kannada professional theatre gave rise to a popular new
musical genre called ranga sangita or natya sangita (Garud
1998: 196). The Kannada sangeet natak, which began around
the 1870s as middle-class entertainment, soon attracted a
large rural audience, as is evidenced from the many venues
where it was performed. The plays were performed by natya
mandalis or drama companies, the earliest of which may have
been established around 1869 (Marathe 1994: 50-51). The
themes of the plays ranged from the mythological, including
religious stories such as those about Akka Mahadevi or Basa-
vanna or Kabir, to the historical such as a play on the anti-
imperialist queen Rani Chennamma, to the social, lampoon-
ing modern education or manners, and on social reform issues
SPECIAL ARTICLE
like widow remarriage, such as Vishama Vivaha. Some were
translated Marathi plays. There were often up to 50 songs per
play (Marathe 1994: 22), and at least 30 raags, most of them
from Hindustani sangeet, were in common use (Amingada
2007: 75).
11
The plays immense popularity also indicates the popularity
of Hindustani sangeet, which occupied a central place in the
unfolding of the plot.
12
Accounts of the time indicate that the
audience, both urban and rural, was more than familiar with
the raags that tended to be used in the natya sangeet (ibid).
The opening invocation or naandi haadu was usually sung in
Bhimpalas, Yaman, Bihag, Deshkar or Hameer because the
play usually began around 11 at night, and these raags were to
be sung at that time according to the principles of Hindustani
music. Malkauns was used for the songs sung around mid-
night. As the play ended, by early morning, Bibhaas, Todi,
Bhairav, Bhairavi, Jaunpuri, or Jog would be used for the
songs. The nal benediction or mangala would be sung in any
raag. Malkauns, in particular, was very versatile it could be
sung in karuna rasa (in compassion), in raudra rasa (in rage),
or in bhakti rasa (in devotion) (ibid: 77-78).
In Amingadas account, Yenagi Balappa the singer-actor nar-
rates the story of Badshah Master of Bevoor, Bijapur district, a
close relative of the famous women singers Amirbai and
Goharjan Karnataki. Once, Badshah appeared in the play
Rani Rudramma in the part of Mallasarja. One of the songs
of that character was in Malkauns. Badshah sang it beauti-
fully. The spectators applauded him, and called out once
more. Now, Badshah sang the same song as before, but this
time in Bhairavi. The audience loved this too. Again, they
called out a once more. Then, Badshah sang the song in Lalit.
This sort of musical ball-tossing between actor and specta-
tors created a joyous atmosphere (ibid: 121).
Music was so central to the plays that all actors had to be
able to sing. Some were trained in classical Hindustani style,
like Gadgoli Nilakantha Buwa, who acted in Garud Sadashiv-
araos famous play Satya Sankalpa. Sripadarao Garud, who
acted in his familys theatre repertory, relates this incident:
Once when he was alone on stage, Nilakantha Buwa started singing at
length in Malkauns so that it appeared as though there was a baithak
in the middle of the play. He would not stop singing. It was as though
he had a parwanagi to sing. There was a cry of once more. He sang for
ten more minutes. Again, once more, and ten minutes of singing.
Once more rang out again, and ten more minutes of singing followed.
Garud lowered the curtain. Nilakanth Buwa went in front of the cur-
tain. Another curtain fell. He went in front of that too. Garud was furi-
ous. He told the audience that he would not tolerate any once mores
for singing, otherwise Nilakanth Buwa would sing till morning. If you
want to listen to his singing, why do you come to a play? Invite him to
sing for you separately. This happened in 1932. To ensure the smooth
onward movement of the play, Garud planned not to leave anyone
alone on stage from that time on (Sripadarao Garud, Interview,
22 February 2007).
This discussion of the centrality of Hindustani sangeet in
the sangeet natak leads us to entertain the possibility that in
the musical play the language question became displaced onto
the music question, so that the genre of stage song was not
rendered intelligible through the language of the lyrics, but
through the kind of music that was used. To go back to the
story of Sawai Gandharva with which I began, the displace-
ment was not allowed to the singer who was performing on the
Marathi stage and not on the Kannada stage. So what is being
challenged in Pune is his linguistic competence. He would ob-
viously have been speaking Marathi on stage before (and af-
ter) singing, since it was a play which included dialogues, too.
Is the implication therefore that his Marathi diction is faulty
because he is not a native speaker? Is the objection of the Pune
audience to his speaking or his singing? Can the two be sepa-
rated out in performance? Instead of showing the audience
that he can use Marathi well, Sawai Gandharva demonstrates
that he can sing Hindustani! Is the triumph, narrated to us in
the story of Sawai Gandharva shifting gears out of natya san-
geet and into Hindustani sangeet proper, where his language
cannot be challenged, because that belongs in a sense to the
music and not to any ethnic or linguistic group?
Towards a Hypothesis
How do we explain the simultaneous growth of Hindustani
music in the same area that rst articulated a demand for the
unication of the Kannada-speaking territories, which at the
time were spread across 19 different administrative regions?
The Kannada identity movement, like many others in India as
well as in other parts of the world, was premised on the idea of
a distinct and unied culture, distinct language, and common
history. Did Hindustani music, which was not sung in Kannada,
pose a problem for the assertions of Kannada nationalists? The
obvious answer would be that it did, and that Hindustani
musicians of northern Karnataka must have resisted the cul-
tural homogenisation suggested by the Karnataka Ekikarana
or unication movement. But the very obviousness of the
answer must make it suspect.
Was Hindustani music inconsistent with the Karnataka
Ekikarana project, rst articulated by Alur Venkata Rao in
Vagbhushana (February 1907 issue, cited in Alur 1974: 231), the
organ of the Karnataka Vidyavardhaka Sangha, or could we say
it made the project possible in the rst place? (The Ekikarana
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
movement was intended to bring about the integration of
19 administrative regions under the Bombay and Madras Pres-
idencies and a variety of princely states in which Kannada-
speaking people were scattered.) If, as Alur saw it, there was
no contradiction between the concept of India (nation) and
Karnataka (region or praantha), was Hindustani music simply
part of national culture? Then, what happens to that which
was not national? Truly, I do not see any difference between
nationalism (rashtreeyatwa) and karnatakatwa (Alur 1974:
103). He also introduced the concept of pradeshika rashtreey-
atwa or regional nationalism (ibid). As Shivarama Padikkal
and other scholars have suggested, there was no contradiction
in the simultaneous birth of Kannada nationalism and devo-
tion to Bharat Mata (Mother India), since these two were
actually complementary, unlike in other parts of India, such as
Tamil Nadu, for example (Padikkal 2001).
One of the most signicant aspects of the cultural milieu of
Dharwad in the early 20th century was the production of
literary texts in a variety of genres from poetry to drama, to
the novel and essay contributing substantially to the canon
of modern Kannada literature. Did literature and music com-
pete for cultural space? Or is it more likely that there was a di-
vision of cultural labour? The rst, reaching out to the Old
Mysore regions with its insistence on building canons of Kan-
nada literature, and helping carve out the contours of Kan-
nada nationalism/linguistic identity; the second, reaching
northwards to Maharashtra and beyond, inserting itself into
the story of a national modernity with its own denitions of
the classical?
Perhaps it can be argued that it was the spread of Hindus-
tani music that allowed literature (including both ction and
non-ction) to become the key site for Kannada sub-national-
ism. The articulation of the distinctive Kannada nation, which
was presented as the daughter of Mother India, may have been
enabled through this particular cultural conguration. The su-
turing of the gap or potential conict between the social aspi-
ration of the music and the political desire of Dharwad district
for the unication of Karnataka along linguistic lines was
made possible, I suggest, because of the way in which Hindus-
tani music took hold of the cultural imaginary.
In the writings of Aa Naa Krishna Rao, a key leader of the
movement, singers like Mallikarjun Mansur are represented as
kannadada raayabhaari or the ambassador of Kannada in the
rest of the country, even if this notion ies in the face of the
fact that most listeners of Hindustani music are not always
aware of the linguistic or regional background of the musi-
cian. Krishna Rao takes the credit for having urged Mansur to
sing also in Kannada, by suggesting that the Shaivite vachanas
and the songs of the daasas in particular, could be adapted to
the Hindustani style (Krishna Rao 2007).
But, what of the present? The unication of the state happened
several decades ago, and has not resulted in better facilities for
the region that spearheaded the movement. The agricultural
and industrial wealth of the state is concentrated in the south
and along the coast, leaving the northern regions with
depleted resources and decaying institutions. However, the
institutional structures for the teaching of music, informal
though they are sometimes, show remarkable robustness.
Hindustani music continues to grow in strength in the Dharwad
region. Now there are several generations of singers, with
children learning this music in every village and small town.
Often the poorest and most disadvantaged (even in terms of
physical disability) turn to the music, unlike in the metros in
other parts of the country. The Veereshwara Punyashrama, a
Lingayat ashram in Gadag, for example, has been training or-
phans, children from poor families, and physically challenged
children, irrespective of the caste they come from, for over
half a century in both vocal as well as instrumental styles.
Unlike elsewhere, in Karnataka state, Hindustani music is
one of the three courses you can choose in the 11th grade in
this region. It is also one of the three courses you can select for
your bachelors degree in the humanities and social sciences.
There is also a separate bachelors degree in music. Some of
the best singers in the region teach in these colleges. For those
who want to supplement the ofcial pedagogy and the limited
exposure in the classroom, there are equally good teachers on
every other street in Dharwad town, the better known among
them having more than 30 students each. There seems to be
no memory of a time when anything other than Hindustani
sangeet was the dominant music in the region.
Conclusions: Cultural Labour
I return in conclusion to the notion of cultural labour, which I
have used in this essay to refer to the work of suturing, of
smoothing out contradictions in the body politic and creating
a coherent cultural identity. The phrase draws attention to the
nature of the work involved in cultural practice and perform-
ance, and the nature of performers activity, through teaching,
singing, playing, notating, evaluating, and arguing about mu-
sic. Cultural labour references a tangible and visible aspect of
social transformation and social process, the latter to be seen
as marked by elusive shifts in ways of living, thinking and cre-
ating. A particular cultural act, such as the play put up by
Alur and his friends in Fergusson College, works like a conden-
sation. The condensation, as it were, throws a spotlight on,
illuminates, through an event/moment, that which has hap-
pened already, even as it indicates what impasse it tried to
resolve. It could also be proleptic, suggestive of what is to
come. The emergence in Dharwad of a cultural practice such
as Hindustani music could well work like a condensation in the
manner I have just described.
Thus, understanding the signicance of Hindustani sangeet
in Dharwad gives us a glimpse into one set of processes by
which what it meant to be modern in the 20th century was
assembled in India. The rise of Hindustani music in this region
involved a set of social choices, or cultural directions taken.
These choices can be disaggregated only in hindsight, so I am
not suggesting that they were intentional and deliberated
upon. Instead, they must be seen as choices thrown up by the
historical moment that was a conjuncture of so many different
strands. The word balance in the title of my essay refers to
the notion of Dharwad takkadi, the idea prevalent among
SPECIAL ARTICLE
NOTES
1 I use the contemporary term Kannada (the
language) in my own text, but have retained
Kanarese and Canarese while quoting from
historical records.
2 Paraphrased from Krishna Rao (2007: 41). Sawai
Gandharva was the stage name of Rambhau
Kundgolkar, whose guru was Abdul Karim
Khan of the Kirana gharana. Sawai Gandharva
acted in Shankarrao Sarnaiks Yaswant Natak
Mandali, then acted with Hirabai Barodekar
(Abdul Karims daughter) in 1929 in the Nutan
Sangit Vidyalayas drama section. They acted
together in Mirabai, Saubhadra and other
plays. Hirabai left the troupe in 1932, and soon
after, Sawai Gandharva also ended his stage
career.
3 Narrated in Mathapathi (1991: 70-71). While
living in Mumbai, Mallikarjun Mansur was in-
troduced to Manji Khan, son of Ustad Alladiya
Khan, and began learning from him in 1935. In
1937, Manji Khan died. Mansur asked Alladiya
Khan to be his guru, but the ustad was old and
bedridden. He asked Mansur to study with his
other son Burji Khan, and this discipleship con-
tinued for several years.
4 See Guha (2004: 29), When foreign authorities
were to be impressed [by the Peshwas after the
early 18th century] it was done by incorporat-
ing large amounts of Persian.
5 For a detailed discussion of the linguistic and
caste divisions in the Bombay Karnatak, see
John Roberts (1971).
6 Scholars of music have pointed out that around
the mid-17th century, when the Mughal capital
shifted from Agra to present-day Delhi, the
classical traditions of the Mughal court incor-
porated the regional musical patterns of Delhi
(Trivedi 2000: 281). When Muhammad Shah
(1719-48) came to the throne during the politi-
cal turmoil of the late Mughal period in Delhi,
Hindustani sangeet went through a period of
transformation, with folk traditions inuencing
prevailing courtly genres. These inuences,
among others, enabled the khayal to become
the most prominent musical form, as also the
qawwali. After Muhammad Shahs death and
the decline of Delhi, musicians dispersed to
other centres of power. Lucknow, seat of the
Awadh court, became an important artistic and
cultural centre when it provided refuge to those
leaving Delhi as the Mughal empire fell apart;
this phase ended when Awadh was annexed by
the British in 1856 (Bor and Miner 2010).
7 These states, which were under the Indirect
Rule system and were nominally headed by In-
dian kings and princes, constituted over 30%
of the area in British India.
8 Gangubai claimed a musical lineage going back
to the legendary Kirana Gharana singer Abdul
Karim Khan and his student Sawai Gandharva.
Her mother sang in the south Indian Carnatic
tradition, and came from a devadasi back-
ground. By the early 20th century, changing
structures of patronage had led to the domesti-
cation of devadasis and their giving up danc-
ing-and-singing for more respectable perfor-
mative modes like vocal music. Like her mother
before her, Gangubai too acquired a brahmin
patron with whom she had children. What
were the trajectories of social aspiration in the
period when Gangubai started learning music
that propelled her in the direction of a different
musical style than her mothers? The hypothe-
sis I propose in this paper could point us in the
direction of a possible answer.
9 As Richard Eaton among others has pointed
out, the Dakhni dialect was developed by the
Muslims in south India and achieved literary
status long before Urdu in northern India
(Eaton 1996).
10 Garud (1998: 199) and Gupt (2005). The inu-
ence of the Parsi theatre can be demonstrated for
example in the plays put up by the Konnurkar
Kaadasiddheswara Sangita Nataka Mandali,
established by Konnurkar or Shivamurti Swami
Kanaburgimatha, Konnur, in 1901. Some records
suggest that the Mandali was actually estab-
lished in 1899. Konnurkar brought Bombay-
style scenarists, a dynamo for transfer scenes,
and rich costumes to the stage. The Mandali
lasted until 1921.
11 The heyday of the sangeet natak lasted until
about 1940, when the theatre split into two
tendencies: one, a largely amateur and elite
theatre concentrating on social realist plays, and
two, a popular professional theatre that con-
centrated on plays containing farce and sexual
innuendo. This split has continued to this day.
The emergence of sound in cinema also con-
tributed to the demise of the musical play.
12 The actual notation of the composition is not
provided; in the plays, the dramatic instructions
merely indicate the name of the raag or say this
should be sung like(followed by the rst line
of a thumri or chhota khayal). Witness the
instructions in Sri Rukmini Parinaya Natakam
by Polepalli Padmanabhayya (1908). One com-
position is supposed to be sung in Hin.
Bhairavi in aaditaala and as though it were
Dekho chaman ka bahaa; another in Bihag as
though it were mukhda dikhla jaa re; another,
not named by raag or taal, but to be sung as
though it were aayi mujhe dard de jigar ne
sataaya. Some plays had a mixture of songs
sung in Hindustani as well as Carnatic style
(such as Bihag and Kedar coexisting with Kam-
bodhi and Kalyani, in Karnataka Shakun tala
Natakam by Bellave Narahari Shastri (1928), or
a Carnatic aaditaala with something called
Raag Hindustani).
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Mathapathi, Siddharamayya V (1991): Hindustani
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musicians that Hindustani sangeet audiences in Dharwad are
among the most discerning in India, and any singer would be
grateful to have been weighed in that takkadi (balance,
weighing scales) and gained their appreciation. My attempt
has been to throw light on the process by which the prevailing
taste in Dharwad was formed.
EDITORIALS
9
T
he year gone by has been a gloomy one for Nepals
M aoists. Notwithstanding their earlier big achievements
(Nepal as a republic and a secular state), the democrati-
sation of the Nepal Army and federalism, which they had also
set out to achieve as part of their short-term transformative
agenda, are still not within their grasp. The constituent assem-
bly (CA), which was to draft and approve a new constitution,
failed to do so and had to be dissolved upon the completion of
its term and the extensions given to it. The stumbling block was
the design of a federal system that would satisfy the needs of
Nepals oppressed nationalities and ethnic communities, with
the Maoists lending the lone voice of full support but unable to
drive the process in the face of signicant behind-the-back re-
sistance to it from the other two big parties, the Nepali Congress
(NC) and the Communist Party of Nepal (Unied Marxist-Leninist)
[UML]. Besides, the NC kept demanding (and continues to do so)
the prime ministers chair, but refused to agree about the date of
the elections to a new CA and other important matters.
As if this was not enough of the bad news of 2012, the Unied
Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) [UCPN(M)] itself split into
two, with the faction led by the partys erstwhile vice-chairperson,
Mohan Baidya Kiran, forming the Communist Party of N epal
(Maoist) [CPN(M)] in June. Soon thereafter, the CPN(M) submit-
ted a list of 70 demands to Prime Minister Baburam Bhattarai,
which included the scrapping of the Nepal-India B ilateral
Investment Promotion and Protection Agreement that was
alleged to be Bhattarais contribution to Indian expansionism.
Will 2013 be a better year for Nepals Maoists and, in turn, for
the Nepali people? We frame the question thus because, pres-
ently it is UCPN(M) leader Prachanda who is doing all he can to
break the political impasse and take the constitutional process
forward; NC and UML leaders have only been trying to defer
crucial constitutional decisions or stall the process a ltogether.
CPN(M) is holding its general convention this month and
UCPN(M) its equivalent congress the following month. UCPN(M),
has come a long way since giving up its strategy of protracted
peoples war. It has given up armed struggle, dissolved its peo-
ples g overnments and peoples courts in the areas it controlled,
dissolved its Peoples Liberation Army and integrated those of
its combatants who wanted to join the Nepal Army with the lat-
ter, and is now committed to returning the property, including
land, that had been conscated as part of its radical land reform
in the countryside. What then of its goal of New Democracy?
Can it be achieved through winning elections and holding
p ower in a multiparty, bourgeois democratic republic?
In his original formulation following the October 2005 Chunbang
party meeting, Bhattarai had in mind a transitional republic,
which was to be superior to an Indian-style republic based on
parliamentary democracy in that it was also to provide for gen-
uine representation and participation of the exploited classes,
ethnic communities, women and backward regions in the
structures of the state. Of course, this was seen as a stage in the
transition to New Democracy with multiparty electoral compe-
tition. To be fair, the Maoists have tried to incorporate their
ideas of the transitional republic in their draft constitution
of the federal democratic republic. For instance, with regard to
the federal design, there are 12 provinces with sub-units
(autonomous areas, protected areas and special areas)
that provide autonomy to geographically bunched ethnic or
linguistic communities, protection to marginalised groups,
and development of backward areas. Now, will their general
convention in February nd newer ways to take this constitu-
tional process forward or will UCPN(M) go the way that UML
went from the early 1990s on?
CPN(M), on the other hand, has far greater challenges to sur-
mount. It will have to confront the fact that military victory in a
protracted peoples war will be hard to come by in a post-
September 2001 world. Indeed, even setting up stable base areas
and holding power in district headquarters will be very difcult
tasks. And even if these were to be achieved, how would it and
its Peoples Liberation Army deal with possible I ndian military
intervention with US support? Surely, CPN(M) is aware of all of
these challenges, and if it then decides against going back to
peoples war how will it distinguish itself from UCPN(M) whom it
has dubbed revisionist? After all, it is the failure of the re-
vised strategy of UCPN(M) that is pressurising CPN(M) to return
to the path of peoples war. CPN(M) has already formed the Peo-
ples Volunteers that has militantly engaged in a few factory
seizures. Revolutionary art and culture are being resuscitated.
Is a new course to revolution then being charted out? Frankly,
we do not know, but the idiom of revolution seems to be back in
Nepals air once again.
Of Revolutionaries and Revisionists in Nepal
Prachanda is trying to drive the constitutional process; his former comrade Baidya a revolutionary one.
COMMENTARY
15
V Geetha (geethv@gmail.com) is a writer and
publisher, and her interests include feminism,
caste and education.
On Impunity
V Geetha
Impunity is what keeps unequal
class and gender arrangements in
place. It is constitutive of power
in all its forms and the relishing
of impunity marks the exercise
of power, rendering it desirable
and attractive. Whether the rapist
is a citizen or a custodian of the
state, the relish that makes for a
particular exercise of power has
to do with sexuality, and it is this
peculiar interplay of sexuality
and power that needs to be
I
must confess that I have been unable
to summon words or courage to
speak about the horric fate visited
on the young woman in Delhi who tragi-
cally did not survive it. For one, it sum-
moned up a longer genealogy of similar
horrors and, for another, it insistently
foregrounded the sheer injustice that we
continually resist and struggle against,
only to be returned to it, ever so often.
Like many others, I felt anger, rather
s orrowful anger: anger that the rapists
actually did what they did, anger at the
state for all that it fails or refuses to do.
But I felt anger on another count: that
here is a state that is clearly in crisis, for
it can only respond with more and more
violence and claim more and more im-
punity when its citizens protest and yet
we are inexorably bound to this state, by
history, by our investment in democracy
and this republic and thus again and yet
again we renew the life of the state, in
good faith and hope. Meanwhile the
state retreats into further impunity.
This set me thinking about impunity
as such: from the local police thana to
city police headquarters; from the mu-
nicipal councillor to the cabinet of min-
isters, power and authority are shielded
in this country. Impunity is what domi-
nant castes grant themselves as they
a ttack and destroy dalits and adivasis,
and impunity is what keeps unequal
class and gender arrangements in place.
Clearly, impunity is constitutive of power
in all its forms and the relishing of impu-
nity marks the exercise of power, ren-
dering it desirable and attractive.
This is something that the poor and
marginal citizens in this country know
so well. I was present at a public hearing
in Chennai in early 2012 on crimes that
ought to be tried under the (Prevention
of Atrocities) against Scheduled Castes
and Tribes Act, 1989. The rst person to
depose was a middle aged man from
the adivasi Irular community who had
undergone torture at a local police sta-
tion. In a gentle questioning tone he
spoke of the details of his hurt, the de-
tached, almost bored interjections by
the senior inspector who was in charge,
the manner in which the torture was
routinely yet menacingly carried out, his
own painful attempts at resisting, ask-
ing questions, and nally his sense of
bewilderment and sadness. He ended
by wondering and hoping if the
i nspector would not one day realise that
what he had done was unjust...and
make amends. His narration may be
read as a veritable parable of a citizens
good faith in the face of state cynicism
and impunity. But it is not for this reason
alone that I recall this witnessing: for it
revealed something more, that impunity
of this sort is not only characteristic of
the everyday business of the state, but
the everyday life of caste society. There
is a complicity here, which is as much
about shared hatred and contempt for
sections of our marginal and labouring
people, as it is about unjust power that is
parcelled out, and yet held in common in
this instance by the state and civil society.
It is this shared complicity that we
need to interrogate with regard to the
COMMENTARY
16
act of rape: and this means we ask ques-
tions about the everyday existence of
sexual violence and brutality in our
many contexts. In what follows I shall do
some of these questions. I am not sure
that either the questions or my observa-
tions add up to a coherent argument, but
I do hope that they push some of our
d ebates into other and newer directions.
***
Impunity of the Routine
Let me start with the nature of those acts
which are both brutal and routine, and
ask what makes for impunity in these mat-
ters. Verbal abuse of women, lewd ges-
tures, stalking and sexual threats mark
and make our experience of public spaces;
while humiliating speech acts and rou-
tine unwelcome sex, if not sexual torture,
dene conjugal authority and rights. In
both instances, silence, however per-
turbed, angry, impatient and desperate,
renders these acts invisible. This silence is
due partly to the sexual nature of vio-
lence, which women experience as shame,
and partly due to the furtiveness the ag-
gressor invests in his actions but which he
displaces onto his victims.
In the context of the family, we are all
familiar with the dont report, dont tell,
it can only get worse for you phenome-
non, which fathers, husbands, brothers,
uncles and others deploy as a sign of
their intimidating power, which is now
additionally charged with punitive in-
tent, so that the victim is made to feel
that she deserves punishment should she
break the terror spell cast on her. In a
public context, whether in a bus or a
market, or a police thana, the furtiveness
is of a different order: the aggressor
knows and has a deep and wretched
sense of doing something that is forbid-
den, yet he is imbued with the con-
dence that it is ne to do this, for it makes
for an exultant assertion of authority,
whether paltry or grand.
This sense of relish at crossing the
line, in doing what is forbidden in fact
lies at the core of impunity. For all their
nasty disdaining of dalit womens bodies
routine verbal abuse ung by domi-
nant caste men at dalit women is directed
at their wombs, their vagina dominant
caste men insist on their forceful right of
access to them. In 2002, in Gujarat, the
hatred invested in Muslim womens bod-
ies in pamphlets, slogans and other
forms of incendiary communication
was only matched by the gruesome vio-
lence that acted out that hatred. What is
reviled is thus what is sought out, and in
both instances punishment and relish
constitute each other.
Where the state is concerned, doing
the forbidden becomes a mandate al-
most, and one that its personnel learns
to savour. In Chilean writer Ariel Dorf-
mans play Death and the Maiden, Dr Mi-
randa who is called in to medically
s upervise the systematic custodial vio-
lence inicted on political dissidents and
is afterwards made to confess to his
crimes by one of his victims says:
Were at war, I thought they want to install
a totalitarian dictatorship but even so they
still have the right to some form of medical
attentionbut afterwardbit by bitthe
mask of virtue fell off it and the excitement,
it hid, it hid, it hid from me what I was doing,
the swamp of whatEverything they have
forbidden you since ever, whatever your
mother ever urgently whispered you were
never to do. You begin to dream with her,
with all those women
Interestingly, this confession is ex-
tracted out of him, and the play is am-
biguous on what brings it forth: his vic-
tims ability to read his torture, or his
own reective sense of what he did,
when he is forced to account for his
a ctions. In any case, torture that has its
o rigin in what is considered virtuous
by the torturer makes us ask questions of
virtue itself; or by implication the inter-
ests of the state, which in our secular
parlance constitute virtue. Nandita Hak-
sars Hanging Afzal, Framing Geelani
alerts us to the virtue that the state
claims for its acts of impunity, and which
it then actions through a series of ex-
tremely unvirtuous and corrupt acts,
which implicate its personnel as well as
its key citizens.
As far as rape is concerned, whether
the rapist is a citizen or a custodian of the
state, the relish that makes for this par-
ticular exercise of power has to do with
sexuality, and it is this peculiar interplay
of sexuality and power that needs to be
***
Sexual Violence
Whenever rape is under scrutiny, several
people are at pains to point out that rape is
not about sex, but about power; some have
complicated these arguments to a rgue
that we cannot thus bracket sex away en-
tirely. In this context I would like to inter-
rogate the sexual as it is r eceived and prac-
tised for there cannot be a rape culture
that is completely outside of what passes
for the sexual and it may not be enough
anymore to annotate a richer, more lay-
ered sense of the erotic in response.
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COMMENTARY
17
Sexual violence always crosses the
line but it is not therefore a singular or
exceptional act. It has a family resem-
blance to more quotidian acts, which are
seldom viewed, experienced or even
u nderstood as such. The scanning of
womens bodies, marking them, with
numbers, adjectives, the reducing of a
being to an object of appraisal, stalking,
surveillance: the forbidden unpacks as a
s eries of acts that structure our every-
day. These acts are repeated where sexual
minorities, especially trans-people are
concerned: they are constantly marked
in the public eye as more or less mascu-
line or feminine, which marking then
invites different levels of abusive and
v iolent attention. These public acts of
appraisal also have their domestic coun-
terparts: reading through at random
any of the matrimonial columns in our
dailies, or visiting the various dotcoms
that specialise in appropriate conjugality
should acquaint us with the grammar of
scanning, identifying and marking of
sexual and conjugal mates.
These acts of scanning and marking
dene male public behaviour, set stand-
ards for maleness, make for levels of
male bonding and comradeship. While
women dislike such gestures and resist
them, they are not viewed as excep-
tional the hope is that the men who
are thus inclined are not our kind,
and so their modes of being are not
s ocially r elevant to our situation. Trans-
people have responded in various ways,
atte mpting to balance their own sense
of what they are with how the world per-
ceives them, resisting sexualisation in
some cases, and deliberately courting it
in others.
The question is, how do these acts de-
ne and inform intimacy and affection,
regard and interest, even as these young
men must experience these emotions.
When does marking a woman or a
trans-person turn into hostility to-
wards her in public? What is the trigger
point? Does it lie outside the act of mark-
ing and scanning? Or is it inherent in it?
When does a marriage that is brokered
on caste or faith lines falter and turn
into a sexual nightmare for the woman?
The answers are not clear, but the con-
nections cannot be wished away. Within
the world of the accepted and accept-
able, the exceptional and the horrid are
already present, lurking at the fringes.
If the forbidden marks the extreme
limits of what we hold to be normative,
we must expect fudging of the norm and
its other, of what is allowed and what is
not, making for a dangerous play of the
desire and horror. Let me argue through
another example: If there is one gesture
that is symptomatic of the sexual in
an everyday sense, it is groping: at once
stealthy, intentional and obsessive. How-
ever, groping today enjoys cultural visi-
bility and sanction in one of the most
popular cultural signs of our times: the
item number or kuthu paatu, as it is
called in Tamil. In lming the item num-
ber, the camera does not ever get away
from particular parts of the womens
body, navel, breasts or buttocks, and if
it does it does so only to capture the
frankly leering men around, whose hands
grope for but never quite or do not always
touch the womans body. In a bus or in a
crowd, a woman resists groping, but
where the item number is concerned, the
dancing woman who is the focus of the
grope relishes and exults in the a ttention
she receives.
Here is a fantasy that extends every-
day behaviour, lifting it from the zone of
the forbidden into the realm of the desir-
able. Transgression and relish come to-
gether in this ubiquitous fantasy. In the
Tamil context, unsurprisingly, the item
number bears the marks of caste and
race. Often, the dancer is buxom and
fair-skinned, while the men who gather
around her are darker-skinned subaltern
men, who both desire her as well as hold
her in contempt. Her fair-skinned status
marks her out as a sexual outsider the
stand-in for the forbidden upper caste or
northern Indian woman. This fantasy,
when acted out in public, has disastrous
consequences, because the woman is not
exultant, rather she is terrorised or de-
ant. Fantasy, in this sense, is always
a lready a nightmare, a dangerous play
with the fragmented female body.
A different kind of fragmentation hap-
pens in the domestic context. Abuse is
one kind, and a second has to do with
sexual torture or unwelcome sex. But
there are other more noticeable indices
of fragmentation. Submitting to mar-
riage and sex, against ones will, or in a
state of blank indifference or out of a
sense of inevitable duty is still quite com-
mon. That women have learned to work
this to their relative advantage is what
we have come to understand from our
studies of and interest in female agency.
We have also come to accept that there
may be moments of pleasure that cannot
be so easily taken out of this unjust equa-
tion that is conjugality in India. But this
is still a cross-hatched picture of domes-
ticity, intriguing but uneven.
Coming to the obverse of this so-
called normal situation: In the stories of
runaway love that we hear of, love and
desire pull the girl towards her loved
one, whereas caste, familial authority
and her own sense of shame compli-
cate this pull of desire. Running away,
that is, deserting the terrain which
threatens to dissolve her being, often is
the only ruse available to her. The for-
bidden in these instances is freeing.
Then there is the love that may not be
spoken for or spoken of non-heterosex-
ual love or non-procreative sex which
belongs to a different realm of the for-
bidden, and one that is only inadvert-
ently the subject of fantasy. Expressions
of such love are furtive, stealthy, private
except where they have created their
own subcultures.
***
Rape: Ultimate Mark of Impunity
If the carrying out of forbidden acts will-
fully and with relish constitutes power
that is exercised with impunity, then
sexual assault as such resists account-
ability. This is why it is repeated, even as
one protests its illegitimacy; and by
those very agencies the police, the
army that have to punish it. Rather
than see rape as an exceptional crime,
we may want to see it as the ultimate
mark of impunity: with the sexual be-
ing marshalled to render that impunity
given. In this sense, to challenge impu-
nity is to challenge the sexual as well,
and at the same time as we challenge
the structures that make for public
i mpunity. In fact, it is clear that we may
not do the one effectively without doing
the other.
PERSPECTIVES
Economic & Political Weekly EPW january 12, 2013 vol xlviIi no 2 33
The author would like to acknowledge inputs
from Suresh K Reddy and Arvind Sardana, whose
sharp comments and critical insights made the
article meander less and nd its focus.
Disha Nawani (dishanawani@yahoo.com) is at
the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai.
Continuously and
Comprehensively Evaluating
Children
Disha Nawani
Continuous and Comprehensive
Evaluation is a key educational
reform in assessment proposed by
the Central Board of Secondary
Education for primary and upper
primary classes in afliated
schools. This article makes an
attempt to analyse the teachers
manual for class sixth to eighth.
The premise of such an evaluation
framework is sound but the
manual actually goes against its
very spirit. CCE is not so much
about assessment per se as it is
about understanding the ways in
which children learn, reecting
on the teaching-learning
processes employed in schools
and empowering both students
and teachers in processes related
to schooling.
T
he Indian school education system
has often been subjected to severe
criticism, ranging from its inequi-
table and hierarchical nature to the
poor quality educational experiences
that chil dren go through in its class-
rooms. Among the several limitations
pointed out, the nature and manner in
which students learning is examined has
also been a central and oft-repeated con-
cern of educationists, policymakers,
teachers and parents alike. At the mo-
ment, India is at a crucial juncture with
education having been made a funda-
mental right for all children in the age
group 6-14 years. Concerns are simulta-
neously being expre ssed about providing
uniform good quality educational experi-
ences to all children, irrespective of their
socio- economic and cultural backgrounds.
The need for meaningfully assessing
childrens growth in schools features in
the recently enacted Right to Education
Act (RtE) (Ministry of Human Resource
Development or MHRD 2009) as well. It
states that a comprehensive and con-
tinuous evaluation of the childs under-
standing to knowledge and his or her
ability to apply the same will now be
made. While the need for meaningful
examination reforms can hardly be
under stated, it is important to exercise
caution in proposing reforms and in un-
derstanding their potential, both in
terms of addressing the malaise associ-
ated with the existing examination sys-
tem and implications for facilitating
enriching and equitable teaching-learning
processes in classrooms.
Continuous and Comprehensive Eval-
uation (CCE) is a term currently being
used in the context of educational re-
forms, particularly reforms in assess-
ment. The Central Board of Secondary
Education (CBSE) proposed it for stu-
dents in the primary classes (rst thr-
ough fth) in 2004 and upper primary
classes (sixth through eighth) in 2006 in
schools afliated to it. In 2010, the 10th
class board examination was also made
optional for students continuing in the
same schools. Several other school boa rds
are now emphasising the importance of
CCE and have taken measures to imple-
ment it with the cooperation of state
education departments.
The CBSE has been publishing CCE
manuals and sourcebooks on different
subjects for teachers teaching at different
levels. This article makes an attempt
to analyse their Manual for Teachers
Classes VI-VIII, with particular focus on
understanding the assessment of the co-
scholastic components of the students
personality. The article has been divided
into following sections: one, the histo-
rical backdrop of examination reforms;
two, CBSEs articulation of CCE; three,
implicit assumptions and potential achiev-
ability; four, shifting focus and skewed
emphasis and ve, reections on the
way forward.
It must be stated at the outset that
the scope of this article is limited to an
analysis of the CBSE manual alone,
which was prepared with inputs from
Australian Council for Educational Re-
search. The manual is in the nature of
guidelines for teachers to implement
CCE; the way it will actually unfold in
schools located in differential contexts
still needs to be exa mined to fully
understand the implications. Recently,
CBSE also tied up with Pearson, a private
education company, to set up a Centre
for Assessment, Evaluation and Research,
which will evaluate its examination
system, carry out research on imple-
mentation of its schemes and develop
resources to help teachers. Though the
implications of this partnership with
Pearson need to be examined, one
thing that is clear is that initiatives of
this kind willy-nilly set international
standards for assessment that may not
always be sensitive to the diverse social
contexts in which they are meant to be
uniformly applied.
PERSPECTIVES
january 12, 2013 vol xlviIi no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly 34
1 Backdrop
Assessment of students learning has
always been an important concern, fea-
turing centrally in almost all policy
documents. Committees and policies such
as the Kothari Commission 1966 (Ministry
of Education 1966) and the National
Policy on Education (NPE) (MHRD 1986)
have in the past outlined the futility of
an examination system that caused stress
for students and essentially tested their
ability to rote memorise the content of
prescribed textbooks. Learning without
Burden, popularly known as the Yashpal
Committee Report (Department of Educa-
tion 1993) pointed out ways in which a
skewed examination system aggravated
the academic load on school children,
burdened as they already were with the
incomprehensibility and joylessness of
learning situations that the formal schools
placed them in.
The more recent National Council of
Educational Research and Training
(NCERT) position paper on examination
reforms (2005) also criticised the present
system of examination, particularly the
boards. It reiterated Kumars (2005) views
that examinations have their roots in the
colonial system of education introduced by
the British. This not only converted test-
ing into a screening device for eliminating
students but also made it textbook-centric.
It took away teachers auto nomy in assess-
ing students, placing them instead in the
hands of anonymous examiners. The
National Focus Group further noted that
besides failing to test higher-order skills
like reasoning and analysis, the system
was inexible and unjust and did not
make any allowance for different types
of learners and learning environments.
One common thread running through
all these important policy statements
and documents is the expressed need to
have a regular and comprehensive school-
based assessment of all the aspe cts of
students personality, interests and atti-
tudes, which could then be meaning-
fully used by teachers to help in all fac-
ets of their growth. It is interesting to
note that whereas in the western con-
text, debate around assessment reforms
essentially revolves around formative
and summative forms of assessment, in
the Indian context, one often comes
across the term school-based, continu-
ous and comprehensive assessment.
Desforges (1989: 6-7) explains these
concepts as follows:
Assessment aimed at inuencing how and
what is learned as a course proceeds is called
formative evaluation ...assessment aimed at
summarising a pupils achievement at the end
of the course is called summative evaluation.
In the Indian context, even though
CCE is proposed as a panacea for all
examination-related ills, there is no
clear explication of its meaning and the
way it is to unfold in an actual classroom
setting. Therefore, examining its rst
clear articulation by CBSE becomes even
more important. While recognising fully
the challenges involved in this task, one
must not lose sight of the fact that since
the manual is being used as a template/
blueprint by other state education de-
partments as well, its implications need
to be carefully understood.
2 CBSEs Articulation of CCE
CCE refers to a system of school-based evalu-
ation of a student that covers all aspects of a
student development. It is a developmental
process of student which emphasises on
two- fold objectives. These objectives are
continuity in evaluation and assessment of
broad- based learning and behavioural out-
comes on the other (CBSE 2010:7).
CCE thus places teacher judgment
at the heart of assessment. They are
regar ded as the key enforcement agents
of these reforms. There is also an impli-
cation that an assessment of this kind is
not only about assessing learning as an
end in itself, but also as a means for
improving teaching-learning processes
in schools and assisting students to opti-
mally develop their potential in both
scholastic and non-scholastic domains.
Evaluation not only measures the pro-
gress and achievement of the learners
but also the effectiveness of the teaching
materials and methods used for transac-
tion (CBSE 2010: 5).
CCE has three parts scholastic, co-
scholastic and co-curricular activities,
presented in a tabular format (Table 1).
The scholastic domains are to be assessed
on a ve-point scale, grades for which vary
from A (4.1-5.0) to E (0-1.0). Formative
assessments (FA) and summative assess-
ments (SA) are to be used for assessing
the scholastic components. Under the
scheme, formative assessment refers
to using techniques like assignments,
quizzes, projects, debates, elocution, group
discussion, etc, and summative assess-
ment refers to written, end of term exam
including both objective and short and
long answer types.
Table 1: The CCE Matrix
Subjects Overall Grade (average calculated on the basis of
four formative assessments (FA) and two summative
assessments (SA) in a year (i e, two academic terms))
Part 1: Academic Performance: Scholastic Areas
Language I
Language II
Language III
Mathematics
Science
Social science
Additional subject
Descriptive Indicators Grade
Part II: Co- scholastic Areas
Life skills (10)
Work education
Visual and performing arts
Attitudes (3) and values (10)
Part III: Co-Curricular Activities (any two)
Literary and creative skills/scientific
skills, information and communication
technology/organisational and
leadership skills
Health and physical education
Work education
Visual and performing arts
Source: Based on CBSE (2010).
PERSPECTIVES
The co-scholastic domains are to be
assessed on a nine-point scale, grades for
which vary from A1-(91-100) through E2-
(0-20). Each student has to be graded on
each of the 10 life skills, work education,
visual and performing arts, three attitudes,
10 values, two co-curricular activities and
any two health and physical education-
related activities. Each of these domains
has descriptive indicators against which
the students are to be continuously ob-
served and allotted marks. An average
then needs to be calculated by dividing
the total score obtained by a student by
the number of items in that component.
Finally, the average score in each do-
main is to be converted into its corre-
sponding grade.
If one were to differentiate between
conventional systems of assessment and
the CCE as articulated by CBSE, one would
perhaps come across the differences out-
lined in Table 2 both manifest and
implied (given in italics).
While the rst ve variables emerge
as the manifest differences, the last four
are implied in the manual and will be
examined in the discussion below.
3 Implicit Assumptions
3.1 Reducing Stress on Students
CCE hinges on certain assumptions. Some
of them are implicit, while a few others
are more explicitly stated as goals. One
of them (both an implied and stated
objective) is that (CBSE 2010: 5):
when evaluation is seen as an end of the
learning exercise, both teachers and the
learners will tend to keep it outside the
teaching-learning process, rendering assess-
ment broadly irrelevant and alien to the cur-
riculum. Further such a perception associ-
ates anxiety and stress with evaluation for
learners. On the contrary, if evaluation is
seen as an integral part built into the teaching-
learning process, learners will not perceive
tests and examination with fear.
The multiple modes of assessment
proposed are supposed to reduce the
emphasis on recall-type questions (which
usually causes stress) and enhance em-
phasis on questions which test higher-
order thinking skills of students. The
manual further asserts (CBSE 2010: 14),
Overemphasis on examination marks that
focus on only the scholastic aspects in turn
makes students assume that assessment is
different from learning, resulting in learn
and forget syndrome. Besides encouraging
unhealthy competition, the overemphasis on
SA system also produces enormous stress
and anxiety among the learners.
Reduction of stress on students is also
linked to the fact that under the RtE, no
student can be detained till class VIII.
While it is possible that these measures
may reduce stress for children, it is also
possible that CCE may throw up new
challenges for them. This is because it is
possible that the focus may now shift
from teaching-learning to continuously
assessing students in varied ways. One
must be careful in not confusing substi-
tution of middle/end term summative
kind of exam with a series of small and
multiple assessments as a fundamental
reform in education that will be less
stressful for students. Whereas CCE
may reduce the pressure of memorising
textbooks for one big exam, it is possible
that it may aggravate the pressure on
students to develop all aspects of their
personality. Especially in the context of
co-curricular arenas, all spaces will now
become public spaces and anytime may
be a good time to observe and record
students behaviour. As Bernstein (1978)
would say, that under the new regime,
the whole child is now being exposed,
subject to observation, surveillance and
control. The fuzziness of previously
boun ded spaces along with the emphasis
on the whole self being examined may
actually aggravate stress for students.
3.2 Grades are Non-oppressive
Another assumption behind replacing
marks with grades is that grades are
innocuous, non-evaluative and non-
judgmental. However, the validity of this
argument needs to be re-examined. All
grades have values attached to them in
terms of marks and that is common
knowledge known to students as well. CCE
dossiers with grades mentioned have as
much of an evaluative dimension as report
cards with marks. Grades are likely to be
differentially perceived and rewarded
in institutions of higher learning or any
other space where the child needs to
show a proof of his ability/perform-
ance. Getting an A would have the same
implication as a score of 90 and above
and it is difcult to fathom how grades
would be less threatening or less op-
pressive for students than marks.
3.3 CCE Does Not Label Children
The manual also cautions the teachers
against labelling students as bright or
dull. However, there are suggestions in
more place than one that indicate classi-
cation of students into these categories
so that they could be given requisite
support (CBSE 2010:35).
Schools shall diagnose learning difculties
through formative tests right from the begi-
nning of the academic year and bring it to the
notice of parents at appropriate intervals of
time... Similarly, especially gifted children
should be provided with further reinforce-
ment by giving them additional assignments,
enrichment material and mentoring.
Having a sense of where different
children should be placed in terms of
Table 2: Differences between Conventional Assessment System and CCE
Conventional Assessment CCE
Assessment on a quarterly, half-yearly and Continuous and periodic (multiple ways and
annual basis, with disproportionate occasions of assessment) with even
weightage to annual exams weightage across them
Scholastic abilities Scholastic and non-scholastic
Limited tools of assessment Multiple tools
Marks allotted Grades awarded
Assessment of what has been achieved over Assessment of an ongoing process of growth
a period of time (essentially summative) (includes summative but is largely formative)
Mechanical task for teachers-assessment Creative endeavour which can be supported
on a clear set of defined criteria with training and materials.
Stressful for students Non-stressful
Assessment as an end in itself Assessment used to both improve one's
teaching and enhance support given to students
identification and classification of
learners for requisite support.
Skewed development of scholastic abilities, Overall growth and personality development
limited to rote memorising
Source: Based on CBSE (2010).
PERSPECTIVES
their growth is not problematic per se
because one would assume that this
would help in facilitating appropriate
support/guidance for the learner. How-
ever, one is not clear about the way in
which CCE with its system of differential
grade allotment would not lead to labe-
lling of students into closed and damag-
ing categories of good and dull.
3.4 CCE Facilitates Overall Growth
It is assumed that multiplicity in assess-
ment tools may give a complete and
more realistic picture of each student.
While this may be a valid hypothesis, it
is not quite clear how this focus on mul-
tiple assessments alone will lead to ena-
bling and supporting teachers in facili-
tating their students to learn in multiple
ways. The manual in one of its appended
circulars asserts that (CBSE 2010: 115):
The objective of this exercise is to shift the
focus of academic activities towards enrich-
ment of the total personality of the learners
and to facilitate learners to address to vari-
ous facets of learning encompassing the cog-
nitive, affective and psychomotor domains.
While this assertion is made rather
emphatically, the manual does not discuss
or even suggest ways in which this could
be achieved. For instance, there is an as-
sumption that the schools will have
abundant resources, skilled personnel
and will be able to provide opportuni-
ties to students to support their growth
in multiple dimensions. Similarly, there
is an assumption that teachers will have
the requisite competence, time and re-
sources to help students develop in all
these respects.
3.5 Diagnostic Strength of CCE
The manual states (CBSE 2010: 10):
Continuous evaluation serves to diagnose
weaknesses and permits the teacher to
ascertain an individual learners strengths
and weaknesses and her needs. It provides
immediate feedback to the teacher, who can
then decide whether a particular unit or
concept needs a discussion again in the
whole class or whether a few individuals are
in need of remedial instruction.
In the very next paragraph, it conti-
nues (CBSE 2010: 10):
by continuous evaluation, children can
know their strengths and weaknesses. It
provides the child a realistic self-assessment
of how he/she studies. It can motivate chil-
dren to develop good study habits, to correct
errors, and to direct their activities towards
the achievement of desired goals.
It is quite possible that an already
overworked teacher by sharing the re-
ports with students and parents may
actually place the responsibility on the
child for improving their study habits, as
is implicit in the suggestion, rather than
proactively trying to help them. While
one would assume that both parents and
school have an equally important role to
play in the childs education, in the con-
text of providing equal opportunities
for children, one cannot deny the need
for a relatively greater role for the for-
mal institution of school, an agency with
clearly the monopoly and wherewithal in
imparting education to children. This is
particularly so in the case of children
from disadvantaged backgrounds, where
the school cannot shirk from its respon-
sibility and put the onus of not learning
on the learner and his background.
4 Shifting Focus:
Skewed Emphasis
In its attempt to shift the emphasis from
lopsided and stressful rote memorisation
by children, CBSEs focus has now oscil-
lated to the opposing but extreme direc-
tion of constantly assessing just about
everything that a child does. As the dis-
cussion below will show, this has impli-
cations for learning and assessment, the
aims of education, the construction of
the ideal student and the understanding
of teachers role.
Citing the National Curriculum Frame-
work (NCF) (NCERT 2005), the Manual
ass erts that underlying CCE is an
acceptance of a theory of learning
which recognises that (CBSE 2010:2), All
children are naturally motivated to learn
and are capable of learning. Children learn
in a variety of ways. They also express
this learning in manifold ways. Therefore
opportunities must be given to allow
both for learning and its expression.
However, the manuals sole focus seems
to be on identifying ways of assessment
and determining behavioural indicators
for these. The centre of attention seems
to be the quality of data and information
collected. There is detailed description
of the type of tools which could be used
for collecting data on students.
Questions such as how a comprehensive
assessment of students will ensure the
development of well-rounded personali-
ties, how opportunities in schools will be
created, how and when teachers will nd
space and time to engage with students,
the nature of feedback and support teach-
ers need to give students, especially those
belonging to socially and economically
disadvantaged sections of society, the
ways in which teachers themselves need
to be supported in this exercise nd no
mention in the manual. Besides these,
the manual in its understanding of CCE
and apparent thrust suffers from several
lacunae, which violate the very spirit of
CCE, as illustrated in the next section.
4.1 Celebrating Behaviour
The manual asserts that (CBSE 2010: 39),
Learning in Scholastic and Co-scholas-
tic Areas is demonstrated by change in
behaviour in the learner. This assertion
and its further elaboration reminds one
of the behavioural objectives model of
teaching the rationale for developing
this type of curriculum model was to
provide clarity of purpose where none
previously existed (Scott 2008: 21). As
Tyler (1949: 106) argues:
Since educational objectives are essentially
changes in human beings, that is, the objec-
tives aimed at are to produce certain desira-
ble changes in behaviour patterns of the stu-
dent, then evaluation is the process of deter-
mining the degree to which these changes in
behaviour are taking place.
The manual further asserts that (CBSE
2010: 39), Behaviour is of two kinds
covert and overt...As a teacher you can
judge a student only by his/her overt
behaviour. It makes a rather simplistic
distinction between covert and overt
behaviour (CBSE 2010:39) when the
student explains to you the concept, you
know for sure his/her level of under-
standing. In this example, explain is the
overt behaviour and understand is the
covert behaviour. Besides this fuzzy dis-
tinction, this assumption even fails to
address the possibility that the expla-
nation given by the student could be a
memorised response and not a reection of
any deeper understanding on his/her part.
PERSPECTIVES
Tylers model also reiterates the need
for periodic assessment and gathering
valid evidence through a series of meth-
ods and tools. This means that we must
nd situations which not only permit the
expression of the behaviour but actively
encourage or evoke this behaviour (Tyler
1949: 112). The manual asserts the need
to repeatedly assess students behaviour.
In the same vein it states that (CBSE
2010:39), Overt behaviour of a student
provides us evidence to assess his/her
level of learning. Evaluation is all about
collecting evidence and interpreting the
human behaviour based on the evidence.
From a cognitive framework, this would
imply that all assessments are approxi-
mations and interpretations to a large
extent, based on available evidence and
in that sense, are a little less denite.
An assessment is a tool designed to
observe students behaviour and pro-
duce data that can be used to draw
reasonable inferences about what stu-
dents know (Pelligrino, Chudowski and
Glaser 2001: 42). However, the manual
gives a new meaning to this understand-
ing and states (CBSE 2010: 40):
If a student is courteous to you most of the
time, and courteous to all your colleague
teachers most of the time, you can safely
conclude, the student is very courteous, is
not it?
Even if one were to interpret most
of the time rather cautiously, it is
quite possible that the student knows
that he is being evaluated and may
delibe rately choose to display a certain
kind of behaviour.
There is an overwhelming emphasis
on identifying and assessing the displayed
behaviour. For example, as reg ards the
measurement of life skills, the manual
states (CBSE 2010: 43), Although all or
most of the Life skills can be measured
by standardised tests and inventories,
such skills can also be reasonably as-
sessed on the basis of displayed behav-
iour by the student.
These are to be observed and recorded
in a diary, whenever the teacher obser-
ves such instances, for example (CBSE
2010: 43-44), Sarbari differed with my
viewpoint; she argued but never got
irritated; but Shanti got angry because
Sarbari was arguing with me ...In the
above case, Sarbari gets ve, but Shanti
gets two or one. Here, 5 stands for de-
sirable and 1 for undesirable behaviours.
It is important to point out the difference
between Tylers use of the term behaviour
and behaviourism, a learning theory. Tyler
talked about measuring achievement of
learning objectives to assess the efcacy
of curricular and pedagogic plans and
making changes thereby. Specifying
student behaviours for Tyler (Anderson
and Krathwohl 2001: 13):
was intended to make general and abstract
learning goals more specic and concrete,
thus enabling teachers to guide instruction
and provide evaluation for learning. If the
teacher could describe the behaviour to be
attained, it could be recognised easily when
learning occurred.
An overwhelming emphasis on iden-
tifying behavioural objectives as ends
and measuring displayed behaviour
as has been done in the manual takes
us back to a conservative approach.
This is an approach that views the
learner as passive, teaching as a de-
nite unilateral transmission and learn-
ing as a dull, assimilative process of
incorporating and manifesting desired
behavioural expressions.
4.1.1 Not Measurable,
Not Worthy?
This kind of a reductionist framework
for identifying objectives and assessing
behaviours in accordance with them
reeks of a technicality in procedure, with
little space for understanding teaching-
learning as dynamic processes. The idea
behind stating objectives unambiguously
is that it leaves no scope for misinter-
pretation. Willy-nilly, this also implies
exclusion of those behaviours which may
not lend themselves to being measured
and practically veried (Scott 2008). A
clear articulation of manifested behav-
iour as evidence precludes the possibi-
lity of noticing, leave alone assessing
behaviour or growth which could be
similarly expressed.
4.1.2 Measuring Behaviour:
Bordering on the Absurd
Besides the fact that the CCE brings into
focus the primacy of identifying and
developing overt behavioural indicators
and the validity of such an approach, it is
also next to impossible to meaningfully
assess learning in terms of indicators
specied. Indicators such as knows the
difference between assertive, aggressive
and submissive manners of communica-
tion, is decisive and convincing, seem
to be a bit far-fetched. One is left won-
dering whether a teacher could be trai-
ned to make such ne distinctions be-
tween such behaviour, whether a child
that young should or will know the dif-
ference between them, and whether a
child will display such behaviour con-
sistently. Similarly, one is left wondering
about ways to assess students step by
step approach to solving a problem and
has a clear understanding of the output
to be generated (CBSE 2010: 49).
It is difcult to imagine how children
studying in classes VI-VIII could be gauged
and assessed on ideals (CBSE 2010: 54-56)
such as takes interest in the national
freedom struggle, stays alert and raises
voice against divisive forces, takes up
issues in case of indignity to women,
does not afliate to groups and commu-
nities who believe and promote violence;
remains cool and calm under adverse
conditions, is able to identify different
stress-related situations (pp 48-49).
While the NPE (1986) recognises that
knowledge and respect for values associ-
ated with our national freedom struggle
and those enshrined in the Constitution
should form part of the core curricula,
the need is to think of more meaningful
ways of assessing children on these con-
cerns. In any case, they can only be
framed as a guiding principle and not
as a statement of behaviour that can be
identied after the event (Scott 2008: 27).
4.1.3 Measuring Behaviours
Devoid of Their Context
Most descriptors identied in the manu-
al view situations as unidimensional and
devoid of any context. As Scott (2008: 27)
notes: The language used in the fram-
ing of the objective therefore has to be of
a technicist nature, which means that
the language itself has been stripped of
all the elements that refer to context.
Descriptors such as confronts anyone
who criticises school and school-based
programmes are really tied down to
PERSPECTIVES
specic situations, and for students to
express such behavioural traits such
situations must either be created or ob-
served by the omnipresent teacher as
and when they arise. Other descriptors
(CBSE 2010: 47-48) nds it natural and
easy to share and discuss the feelings
with others, shares his/her feelings
with peer group, teacher and parents,
condes problems with teachers; feels
free to ask questions, respects opposite
gender and is comfortable in their com-
pany (pp 51-52) are dependent on inter-
personal dynamics. Relationship be-
tween school boys and girls are often
laced with sexual undertones, and rela-
tionships between teacher and students
are often unequal and hierarchical. To
expect a child to conde with ease in a
teacher or be comfortable in the compa-
ny of the opposite gender are, therefore,
not unilateral behavioural expressions
of a students personality. A few others
are rather bizarre and ambiguous in
terms of expectations placed on stu-
dents: deals with aggre ssive behaviour
(bullying) by peers tactfully. It is dif-
cult to explain the tact that an 11-13 year
old child is supposed to exhibit when be-
ing bullied by others.
Participation and initiative in organis-
ing an event are again contingent on
several factors. Very often, school teach-
ers decide which student will participate
in which programme and the nature of
their participation. Student assessment
for parental participation in school
programmes also often has gendered
implications. It is the mothers who are
often pressurised by students for partici-
pating in the same.
4.1.4 Relevance of Valued
Behavioural Manifestations
The relevance of some of the traits iden-
tied is also suspect. Asking that a child
be able to identify his/her emotions,
manages his/her emotions and remains
cool and calm under adverse conditions
again sounds a bit preposterous. Quali-
ties such as these often have class, caste
and gender dimensions and may be used
to subvert dissent and discomfort expe-
rienced by children belonging to the
socially disadvantaged sections of society.
Uses gestures, facial expressions and
voice intonations to emphasise points
does not seem to be quite relevant or
sensitive to children coming in from dif-
ferent socio-economic-cultural contexts
and children with special needs.
4.2 Designing Ideal Learners
Underlying the CCE framework is an im-
age of a desirable learner. The presence of
such traits is specied and graded highly,
and its absence is given poor grades.
This also hints toward a human capital
theory (Schultz 1963) which regards
investment in education of humans as
being economically more fruitful for
society than investment in physical cap-
ital. Specication of skills, attitudes,
dispositions and knowledge, etc, which
supposedly have a high economic pre-
mium are specied; a prototype for
children to emulate is created. Similar
learning expectations are placed on
everyone, irrespective of their worth
and oblivious of the pluralities that chil-
dren belonging to different communi-
ties may represent.
An assessment framework favouring
certain kinds of skills and attributes per-
force is also favourably inclined towards
children belonging to the socially afu-
ent sections of society. At the same time,
it excludes parents from socially disad-
vantaged backgrounds who lack the req-
uisite cultural and social capital to pass
onto their children.
While the standard system of summa-
tive assessment with its skewed focus on
memorising bits of information focuses
on development of a particular facet of a
students personality, the all-encompass-
ing framework of a CCE has a certain
vision of a complete learner it aspires to
develop. This learner is
cheerful and friendly, exhibits ne eti-
quettes and other social skills, nds it natu-
ral and easy to share and discuss the feelings
with others, understands the importance of
colour, balance and brightness and displays
artistic temperament in all his/her actions
in school and outside.
One would imagine that a document
that supposedly celebrates diversity of
learning styles would also celebrate
differences and not aim at homogenis-
ing individuals. Among other things,
the student is graded on whether he or
she (CBSE 2010: 50-51) shows aesthetic
sensibilities, generates computer anima-
tion, show awareness and appreciation
of works of artists, reads and shows
a degree of awareness of parti cular do-
main of art, displays artistic tempera-
ment; composes poems and lyrics,
writes literary criticism, shows a high
degree of awareness in the eld of litera-
ture, and appreciate well-written or
spoken pieces representing various gen-
res (p 57). These requirements are
clearly biased towards a privileged few.
This kind of comprehensive assess-
ment is likely to put pressure on parents
to groom their children in ways that are
considered desirable by the school, fur-
thering the divide between those who
can socialise their children in these asse-
ssed and valued ways and those who
cannot. The pressures to place children
in school early and expose them to a
variety of scholastic and other hobby
classes, including English language, dic-
tion, pronunciation, etc, are not unknown.
Parents are even known to spend huge
amounts of time, money and energy in
making and even hiring professional
help for fancy and elaborate school
projects for their children.
The social class position of the child
therefore will have a bearing on the way
in which the child will be assessed, ensu-
ring the exclusion of some parents from
their childrens learning. Despite its several
limitations, the earlier assessment model
was at least understood by all parents.
This new emphasis on innumerable
dimen sions of a childs personality is
likely to cut off many more parents from
understanding the whys and ways in
which their children are being assessed.
(Bernstein 1978).
The image of this ideal, well-rounded
and wonderfully integrated child also
has implications for those children who
do not belong to the urban metropolis,
and even within this class, those that
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PERSPECTIVES
belong to the 25% reserved from socially
and economically disadvantaged sections
of the society. How these children, be-
reft of the valued social and cultural
capital that their more privileged coun-
terparts bring, will fare in this gloried,
well-rounded imagination of CCE is not
difcult to imagine.
4.3 Perceiving Teachers
as Skilled Technicians
CCE brings the teacher to the centre-
stage, establishing her or his legitimacy
in assessing the students. It claims to
make a transition from an anonymous
examination situation, which is distrust-
ful of the teacher, to a situation in which
the teacher is in command and trusted
for her or his ability to assess those
whom she or he teaches. Though the
manual acknowledges the possibility of
subjectivity on the part of tea chers, it
does not really address it. In fact, it over-
simplies the problem (CBSE 2010: 40):
For example, a student expresses his/her
difference of opinion to a stated view/posi-
tion with respect to a concept or a practice in
the class. A classical teacher will construe it
as indiscipline and ask her to behave, where-
as a neo-modern teacher will construe it as
divergence and enter into a discourse with
an open mind. The latter will rate the same
behaviour as very positive and creative.
One is not quite sure whether this
kind of categorisation of teachers into
classical and neo-modern represents
the diversity. Second, it also implies the
possibility of a smooth transition, per-
haps with training, from being classical
to a neo-modern type of teacher. The
reality of such a change may seem a bit
far-fetched.
The issue of fairness is a valid concern,
especially when teachers and students
belong to two different cultural back-
grounds and needs to be addressed
sensitively. Pelligrino, Chudowski and
Glaser argue that (2001: 240):
In particular, differences between the cultural
backgrounds of the teacher and the students
can lead to severe difculties. Teachers...
may make self-conrming assumptions that
certain children will never be able to learn,
and may misinterpret or ignore assessment
evidence to the contrary.
However, the manual does not add-
ress this issue but instead focuses on
the technique of measuring as if that
would alone take care of the probable
biases that may creep into this kind of an
assessment system. There is an assump-
tion that if the teachers are trained in
the philosophy and technique of CCE,
then it will automatically ensure its suc-
cessful implementation and the achieve-
ment of the underlying objectives, irre-
spective of the severe constraints under
which most teachers work, including the
large numbers of students in their classes
and the lack of proper infrastructure.
4.4 Increased Workload
Teachers are expected to keep a watch-
ful eye (CBSE 2010:43) on their students
and record any signicant behaviour that
may shed light on the various des criptors
under different domains. The en tire CCE
evaluative framework is quite exhaustive
and elaborate. The various steps outlined
for assessing the co-scholastic aspects
of a student by teachers include identi-
fying qualities, specifying behaviours/
indicators, collecting evidence, recording,
analysing, reporting, converting marks
into grades, averaging them and nally
putting them in a report card. Very
clearly, all this has implications for not
just the workload of teachers but also
their perceived role as skilled techni-
cians capable of implementing the refor-
matory scheme with nesse.
The manual in its Preface asserts that
(CBSE 2010: vii):
It is necessary to discuss the salient features
of the CCE scheme with the teachers and
convince them that assessing children is not
a separate activity nor is it an extra burden
which requires additional effort and time. It
needs to be woven into the teaching-learning
process as an integral part.
While one may get the impression that
this scheme empowers teachers to assess
their students, in effect, it highlights the
shortcomings of their situation. Another
reform is thrust upon them, with prepara-
tion geared to convince and train them
so that they can manage, implement and
execute the scheme.
The CCE scheme does create the addi-
tional pressure of constantly requiring
teachers to be on the lookout for those
proposed indicators against which rele-
vant information on students has to be
collected and the extra task of lling up
those elaborate formats. It is possible
that they may either resort to doing
these jobs mechanically, and not as
the creative exercise they are imagined
to be, or do it at the cost of actually
teaching in class. The logic of the be-
havioural objectives model has been
commandeered to produce a perform-
ance framework in which teachers are
held accoun table for both the produc-
tion of good ends and the efcient fol-
lowing of means (teaching approaches)
specied by outside bodies (Scott
2008: 28). It is also quite possible that
the CCE dossiers are in fact used to
assess teachers performance by the
authorities above them.
5 Reections: The Way Ahead
So where does one really place the CCE
in the context of progressive reforms in
assessment? One would like to place on
record here that this article is not a cri-
tique of CCE per se but of (1) CBSEs
under standing and explication of the
CCE and guidelines for its implementa-
tion, and (2) the positioning of CCE as the
polar opposite. There is no denying the
fact that CBSEs intention in proposing
CCE is laudable and that the convention-
al system of assessment is replete with
problems and in need of fundamental
chan ge. The premise on which the CCE is
based is sound. There are enough valid
reasons to redesign the conventional
system of examining students. However,
besides examining CBSEs articulation of
CCE and the premise on which it is
based, one also needs to exercise caution
against the tendency to place alterna-
tives to educational problems in polar
categories and in both suggesting solu tions
which are diametrically opposite to the
prevailing practices and also presuming
that the assumed features will materia lise
on their own.
Having said that, the central focus of
this article is on explaining ways in
which the CBSE manual actually goes
against the very spirit of a CCE frame-
work. Tho ugh the manual makes explic-
it references to the NCF 2005, it appears
to contradict both the spirit and the
manner suggested for its execution. At
the outset, one needs to recognise the fact
that CCE is not so much about assess-
ment per se as it is about understanding
PERSPECTIVES
the ways in which children learn, reect-
ing on the teaching-learning processes
employed in schools and empowering
both students and teachers in processes
related to schooling.
One must also recognise that isolated
reforms in techniques of measurement
will not have much meaning unless ac-
companied by concomitant changes in
the classroom culture, where they are
no longer seen as places for delivering
textbooks or competitive spaces where
children compete with each other. Chan-
ges are necessary in the ways in which
one views learning, teaching and assess-
ing, for example, the notion of wait
time or giving extended time to students
to think about any question posed, ask-
ing them to discuss their ideas in pairs,
before being asked to respond, not labe-
lling answers as right or wrong, but in-
stead asking students to explain their
reasons (Black and William 2004).
Indian schools need reasonable teacher-
student ratios and changes in the nature
of the teacher-student relationship, from
an unequal, hierarchical relationship to
that of co-participants in a joint process of
knowledge construction. So also the cre-
ation of adequate resources and oppor-
tunities in schools for the development of
the multiple facets of students personal-
ities, involving students and parents both
in understanding the aims of assessments
and ways of achieving it. It is critical to
resist the tendency to use assessment
results for multiple purposes, especially
as a tool to evaluate teachers and
schools. Most importantly, the key is not
simply training teachers to implement
the framework, but empowering them
by involving them in all aspects related
to teaching, learning and assessing and
having a realistic understanding of the
conditions under which they work.
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Delhi: Sage Publications).
Ministry of Education (1966): Education and
National Development: Report of the Education
Commission 1964-66 (New Delhi: NCERT).
MHRD (1986): National Policy on Education (New
Delhi: MHRD).
(2009): The Right of Children to Free and Com-
pulsory Education Act 2009 (New Delhi: MHRD).
NCERT (2005): National Focus Group on Examina-
tion Reforms (New Delhi: NCERT).
(2005): National Curriculum Framework (New
Delhi: NCERT)
Pelligrino, J W, N Chudowski and R Glaser (2001):
Knowing What Students Know: The Science and
Design of Educational Assessment (Washington:
National Academy Press).
Schultz, TW (1963): The Economic Value of Educa-
tion (New York: Columbia University Press).
Scott, D (2008): Critical Essays on Major Curricu-
lum Theorists (London: Routledge).
Tyler, R (1949): Basic Principles of Curriculum and
Instruction (Chicago: University of Chicago
Press).
Decentralisation and Local Governments
Edited by
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The idea of devolving power to local governments was part of the larger political debate during the Indian national
movement. With strong advocates for it, like Gandhi, it resulted in constitutional changes and policy decisions in the
decades following Independence, to make governance more accountable to and accessible for the common man.
The introduction discusses the milestones in the evolution of local governments post-Independence, while providing an
overview of the panchayat system, its evolution and its powers under the British, and the stand of various leaders of the
Indian national movement on decentralisation.
This volume discusses the constitutional amendments that gave autonomy to institutions of local governance, both rural
and urban, along with the various facets of establishing and strengthening these local self-governments.
Authors:
V M Sirsikar Nirmal Mukarji C H Hanumantha Rao B K Chandrashekar Norma Alvares Poornima Vyasulu, Vinod Vyasulu Niraja Gopal Jayal
Mani Shankar Aiyar Benjamin Powis Amitabh Behar, Yamini Aiyar Pranab Bardhan, Dilip Mookherjee Amitabh Behar Ahalya S Bhat, Suman
Kolhar, Aarathi Chellappa, H Anand Raghabendra Chattopadhyay, Esther Duflo Nirmala Buch Ramesh Ramanathan M A Oommen Indira
Rajaraman, Darshy Sinha Stphanie Tawa Lama-Rewal M Govinda Rao, U A Vasanth Rao Mary E John Pratap Ranjan Jena, Manish Gupta
Pranab Bardhan, Sandip Mitra, Dilip Mookherjee, Abhirup Sarkar M A Oommen J Devika, Binitha V Thampi
Pp xii + 432 ISBN 978-81-250-4883-1 2012 Rs 695
Mumbai Chennai New Delhi Kolkata Bangalore Bhubaneshwar Ernakulam Guwahati Jaipur Lucknow Patna Chandigarh Hyderabad
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W
COMMENTARY
25
Political Arithmetic
of Yeddyurappas Secularism
Shivasundar
B S Yeddyurappa has declared
his new Karnataka Janata
Partys secular beliefs, but it
would be reckless to support him
just because he can wreck the
Bharatiya Janata Partys chances
of returning to power. Rhetoric
aside, Yeddyurappas and the
KJPs ideological afnity to the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh
remains and this cannot be
wished away.
B
S Yeddyurappa, former chief minis-
ter of Karnataka and the man be-
hind the Bharatiya Janata Partys
(BJP) rise to power south of the Vindhyas,
has formed his own Karnataka Janata
Party (KJP). On 9 December, at a huge
convention held in the north Karnataka
town of Haveri, which is dominated by
the Lingayat caste (to which Yeddyurappa
belongs), he declared that his new party
would follow the teachings of B R Ambed-
kar, Mahatma Gandhi, and Jayaprakash
Narayan, and that secularism would be
its backbone.
What has transformed Yeddyurappa
from a staunch Rashtriya Swayamsevak
Sangh (RSS) worker into a votary of
regional parties and secularism? What
will be the impact of the KJP on the BJP,
and the politics of Karnataka? More
i mportantly, can the KJPs political dis-
tance from the BJP be construed as a
measure of its ideological distance from
the RSS?
The last question assumes importance
because leaders from other political par-
ties as well as intellectuals with secular
credentials are said to be a part of the
KJP think tank. The rationale for this is
apparently the view that Yeddyurappa
presents the best chance of defeat-
ing the BJP, which, they believe, will
amount to the defeat of Hindu commu-
nalism, at least for the time being.
Yeddyurappa began preparing to form a
new party nearly ve months ago, once
it became clear that he would neither
get back the chief ministers post nor be
made the state president of the party.
The BJP high command had been clue-
less about what to do with him after
the Lokayukta made it clear that the
chief minister and others had been
involved in massive corruption. It is an-
other matter that the same high com-
mand had earlier wholeheartedly sup-
ported his rise on a foundation of un-
seemly practices. When the BJP wanted
to capture the anti-corruption plank
at the centre for obvious political gains,
Yeddyurappa became inconvenient. At
the same time, Yeddyurappa wanted
the high command to believe that the
charges against him had been conjured
up by the opposition and some of his de-
tractors within the party, like Ananth
Kumar and K S Eshwarappa.
The high command, especially the
L K Advani camp, did not want to enter-
tain Yeddyurappa after a charge sheet
was led against him and a Central
Bureau of Investigation (CBI) enquiry
was launched. He was asked to resign
and wait till the judiciary cleared him of
all charges. To Yeddyurappa, this was a
bolt from the blue because he had
thought the high command would come
to his rescue, as it had done with Ananth
Shivasundar (shivasundar35@gmail.com) is a
freelance journalist based in Bangalore.
COMMENTARY
26
Kumar, who had also faced corruption
charges. Disheartened and disgruntled,
he decided to quit the party to teach it
a lesson.
The KJP has no real secular roots.
Rather, it is using an opportunistic strat-
egy to gain electoral mileage. The op-
portunism of the BJP high command is,
of course, even more patent.
Impact on Karnataka Politics
Now that the KJP is a reality, what will
be its impact on Karnatakas politics?
While it is clear that the BJP will suffer,
it is not very evident who will gain,
though Yeddyurappa claims he is not
keen on anything other than becoming
the king. That the BJP state unit has
been reduced to a passive spectator was
apparent when it could not take any
disciplinary action against the 14 BJP
Members of the Legislative Assembly
(MLAs) who participated in the Haveri
convention. The compulsion of numbers
in the assembly and the BJPs desire to
cling to power till the next election
in mid-2013 has given Yeddyurappa an
initial advantage. The BJP wants to
have the opportunity to present a popu-
list budget in February 2013 just before
the elections that are due in May. An
emboldened Yeddyurappa has warned
the BJP that the present dispensation
should be considered a coalition gov-
ernment of the BJP and the KJP, and
that he will bring down the government
if his supporters are harassed or dis-
criminated against.
The meteoric rise of the BJP in
Karnataka and its impending fall is
closely tied to Yeddyurappas own polit-
ical rise and fall in the party. From the
Jan Sangh days to 1983, for three and a
half decades, the BJPs vote base was
conned to an upper-caste urban consti-
tuency in south Karnataka. In the 1983
election, the BJP won 18 seats, gaining
from an anti-Congress and pro-Janata
wave in Karnataka. In the 1985 and
1989 elections, it lost heavily rst to the
Janata Party under Ramakrishna Hegde,
and then the Congress, winning only
two and four seats, respectively. But
a fter the Janata Dal (Secular) (JD(S))
b egan to be seen as a party favouring the
Vokkaligas, and the Congress as be-
traying the i nterests of Lingayats after
Veerendra Patil was unceremoniously
dumped, Lin gayats slowly started drift-
ing towards the BJP. In the 1994 and 1999
elections, the BJP under Yeddyurappa
got 40 and 44 seats respectively, with
most of its gains in the Lingayat belt.
Even though the Congress made a
comeback in the 1999 election and the
Lingayats were evenly divided between
it and the BJP, S M Krishna, a Vokka-
liga, became the chief minister, giving
Yeddyurappa the opportunity to con-
solidate Lingayat support.
Rise of BJP
This paid off in the 2004 election with
the BJP emerging as the single biggest
party with 79 seats, even though its vote
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COMMENTARY
27
share was less than the Congress.
Most of the new MLAs were from north
Karnataka and from Lingayat-dominated
areas. In 2008, Yeddyurappa made
political capital out of the betrayal
by H D Kumara swamy, a Vokkaliga, who
refused to step down as chief minister
after 20 months under an arrangement
the JD(S) had drawn up with the BJP. The
BJP under Yeddyurappa won 110 seats in
the 2008 election.
The 2008 election gures throw light
on the effect Yeddyurappas exit could
have on the BJP. In the poll, there was
a substantial 5.4% swing of votes in
favour of the BJP, from 28.5% in 2004 to
33.9%. The Lingayat-dominated areas
of north Karnataka and some parts of
central Karnataka accounted for this
rise. The Congress lost 0.7% of its vote
share and the JD(S) 1.5%. So the BJPs
5.4% increase, which yielded it
31 more seats, came largely from inde-
pendents and others. In the coming
election, the BJP will obviously not have
a consolidated vote base (according to
one estimate, 77% of the Lingayat vote
went in favour of Yeddyurappas BJP
in 2008), the nancial backing of the
Reddy brothers (now in jail), or sympa-
thy for having been deceived by the
JD(S). If no miracle takes place before
the election, one can safely say that
BJP will be back where it stood in 1994
40 seats, give or take a few, from its
traditional support base in south and
coastal Karnataka.
Yeddyurappas Calculations
Knowing well that the Congress and the
BJP have a share of the Lingayat vote,
Yeddyurappa is trying to forge a Lingayat-
Muslim-Other Backward Class (OBC)
combine, also including a section of
M adigas from among the dalits. There
are more than 20 constituencies in
north Karnataka where Muslims make
up more than 20% of the electorate.
Yeddyurappa has already said that he
will give seats to Muslims where they
number more as well as to Madigas,
who constitute around 6% to 10% of the
voters in some constituencies. Mean-
while, B Sriramulu (a former minister
and strongman of the Reddy camp)
has formed the BSR Congress, which
will attempt to garner votes from his
community one that had stood with
the BJP the last time and has a presence
in central Karnataka.
Thus, a four-cornered contest (Con-
gress-BJP-JD(S)-KJP/BSR Congress/Ba-
hujan Samaj Party) is possibly on in the
next election, and no party without a
dependable vote base will feel comfort-
able. The KJP and the BSR Congress
have the potential to attract both Con-
gress and BJP votes, while the BSP has
shown in past elections that it can spoil
the chances of Congress, BJP and JD(S)
candidates. The JD(S) has a vote base in
the south, but its chances of extending its
reach to north Karnataka and among
Muslims and dalits are seriously lim -
ited by the emergence of the KJP and
the BSR Congress. In the absence of any
wave, Yeddyurappa will cast himself
as a martyr who has been rejected by
the party he built over four decades.
And by claiming that all the populist
programmes launched by his adminis-
tration were his own and by blaming
the BJP for not continuing them, he will
try to shake off any anti-incumbency
feeling against his two years as chief
minister.
Everything suggests that no single
party will come to power in the next
election. While the BJPs chances seem
very slim, the Congress appears to be in-
capable of seizing the opportunity. Giv-
en this, any party that wins 30-plus seats
will have the potential to tilt the balance
or even emerge at the head of a ruling
front. This is the reason for Yeddy-
urappas loud proclamations on social
justice and secularism.
Worryingly, progressive forces are lin-
ing up to support Yeddyurappas KJP and
Sriramulus BSR Congress, hoping that
they will help defeat the BJP and the
Hindutva agenda. Even while Yeddy-
urappa was declaring his adherence to
secularism in Haveri, his party leaders
and his son, B Y Ragha vendra, a BJP
Member of Parliament (MP), were mak-
ing it clear that they would look to the
RSS for ideological and political guid-
ance. Immediately after the Gujarat
election, Yeddyurappa expressed his
support for the idea that Narendra
Modi be the BJPs candidate for prime
minister. All the MLAs who have openly
associated with the KJP support have
supported the anti-minority and anti-
farmer Prevention of Cattle Slaughter
Bill. So, a tinge of saffron is all too
e vident in the KJPs political and ideo-
logical stands.
There is little doubt that Yeddyurappa
will keep the BJP far from power this time.
It is also true that communalism without
state power is less harmful. But there is no
reason to believe that the KJPs ideological
proximity to the RSS is a gment of the
imagination. The cause of secularism will
not be served if genuine secular forces do
not develop alternative and democratic
political spaces to counter the RSS and its
ideology. It is foolhardy to discount Yeddy-
urappas ideological afnity to the RSS and
presume he is secular just because he
stands at a political distance from the
BJP right now.
Survey
September 8, 2012
Revisiting Communalism and
Fundamentalism in India
by
Surya Prakash Upadhyay, Rowena Robinson
This comprehensive review of the literature on
communalism and its virulent offshoot,
fundamentalism in India considers the various
perspectives from which the issue has sought
to be understood, from precolonial and colonial
times to the post-Independence period. The
writings indicate that communalism is an outcome
of the competitive aspirations of domination
and counter-domination that began in colonial
times. Cynical distortions of the democratic
process and the politicisation of religion in the
early decades of Independence intensified it. In
recent years, economic liberalisation, the growth
of opportunities and a multiplying middle class
have further aggravated it. More alarmingly,
since the 1980s, Hindu communalism has
morphed into fundamentalism, with the Sangh
parivar and its cultural politics of Hindutva
playing ominous roles.
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate,
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel,
Mumbai 400 013.
january 12, 2013
7
Protesting Rape
State and society both have to transform if we are to reduce violence against women.
T
he past fortnight has seen unprecedented protests in Delhi
over the gang rape and brutalisation of a young medical
student. It has taken most people by surprise to see the
manner in which thousands of people have come out to protest
the lack of safety for women in the public spaces of the capital,
and in other cities of India. While this has been similar in many
respects to the other instances of the public outpouring of anger
which we have seen, parti cularly in Delhi, during the second
term of the United Progressive Alliance government, there is
something unique about these protests. For the most part they
have not been organised by any political party or civil society
organisation. Further, they have remained, even a fortnight after
all attempts by political parties to appropriate them, much larger
than any political agenda and much wider than any particular
political stream. Lastly, what is remarkable is that every time their
energy seemed to sag they have revived from the dispersed pro-
tests of students to the gathering at India Gate and Raisina Hill
and then to Jantar Mantar. We now have the massive Take back
the night walks by students and others of residential areas to
assert a womans right to the city without fear of violence, for
freedom to the woman, for azadi as the chants insist.
The government has displayed an all too familiar inattentive-
ness to popular feelings and has reacted either with force or in-
difference. Protests have been dealt with beatings, tear gas and
water-cannons, and with a display of crass opinions on gender. It
is unbelievable that what claims to be a democratic government
shuts down the metro in central Delhi to prevent people from
gathering in peaceful protests. At one level the government did
provide the best possible medical treatment to the woman, but it
also used this to move her out of the country against medical
opinion only to protect itself from political pressure. Every move
of the central and Delhi gov ernments has been at best reactive
and at worst cynical to scuttle the growing public solidarity and
stie peoples right to express themselves.
The popular protests, while they have successfully braved
the repression of the government, have themselves contributed
to building an atmosphere where in some respects repressive
and regressive ideas have found fertile ground to grow. The
amorphousness of the protests and the social/political base of
the protestors has meant that demands for death penalty and
castration of rapists have gained shrill popularity, despite all
attempts by the feminist and left-wing sections in these protests
to push them back. Today there is a real danger that the death
penalty as well as castration will be legally added to the punish-
ments for rape. More, there is a proposal to create a database of
sexual offenders and make it public a form of naming-shaming
exercise. There are also proposals to change the burden of proof
in grave cases of sexual assault from the accuser to the accused.
There are various other suggestions for increasing the powers of
the police and for curtailing due process in investigation, trial and
judgment to help fast-track the cases of sexual violence. Apart
from this a host of measures have been announced by Union
Home Minister Sushil Kumar Shinde to increase policing powers
and surveillance which may or may not help reduce crimes against
women but would surely make the city far more daunting for the
migrant, the homeless, the unorganised and the informal. An
indication of the dangerous political context this has created can
be found in the refusal of lawyers of the Saket courts in New Delhi
to represent the gang rape accused. It is just as well that the chief
justice of the Supreme Court has pointed out while inaugurating
the new fast-track courts to try rape cases that a swift trial should
not be at the cost of a fair trial.
The government has announced the formation of a three-
member committee headed by retired chief justice of the
Supreme Court, J S Verma, to suggest amendments to the law to
remove loopholes and ambiguities and make it more stringent.
It will be a great advance if the Verma Committees recommen-
dations help change many of the laws, rules and denitions that
stigmatise the victim of sexual assault, create false distinctions
of legitimate and illegitimate rape and discourage victims of
sexual crimes from approaching the police.
For much of this to happen actually little change in the exist-
ing laws is necessary. What we require are reforms in the police
and greater gender sensitisation among the force as well as
within the judicial system. The latter has often been extremely
patriarchal in its judgments. More importantly, we require a
transformation in relations in our society and within our fami-
lies. We require the anger to focus as much inwards at the way
we socialise our children in discriminatory gender roles, at the
manner in which we have gone along with the sexualisation of
our public spaces, and at the growing amounts of dowry and
ostentation at weddings. It is essential that we hold the
EDITORIALS
8
gov ernment and state institutions to account for all their acts of
omission and commission, and they are many, on matters of
gender justice. But to not extend it further to a critique and re-
form of society is to leave untouched the cesspool of reactionary
i deas and practices from which germinates sexual violence.
Even as we reform the police and judiciary, it is crucial to
e ngage with this larger and long-term battle.
The anger of the protestor has started off a welcome con-
versation on issues that have till now remained in the twilight
zone. There has been a perceptible and positive change in
the way matters of sexual violence and harassment are now
being discussed and debated. However, it would be unfortunate
if this energy is harnessed only to legislate draconian laws and
strengthen the surveillance and repressive functions of the state.
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Identifying BPL Households
A Comparison of Methods
Sabina Alkire, Suman Seth
We are grateful to Jean Drze, Himanshu, Reetika Khera, Rinku Murgai,
K L Datta and Abhijit Sen for comments on previous versions of this
draft. All errors remain our own.
Sabina Alkire (sabina.alkire@qeh.ox.ac.uk) and Suman Seth (suman.
seth@qeh.ox.ac.uk) are at the Oxford Poverty and Human Development
Initiative, University of Oxford.
Exercises to identify households living below the
poverty line have taken place three times, and a fourth
one is under way. Though the latest method aims
to improve upon previous methods, its empirical
implications and precise justification are not yet clear.
This paper empirically examines the Socio-Economic
Caste Census methodology and compares it empirically
with alternative proposals to show the choice of a
particular methodology matters. It also points out
how state-level BPL poverty caps will vary if they reflect
multiple deprivations such as malnutrition and housing
rather than only expenditure-based poverty rates.
1 Introduction
T
he Indian government conducted below the poverty
line (BPL) censuses in 1992, 1997 and 2002 to identify
households that were eligible for certain benets, and a
fourth census, known as the Socio-Economic Caste Census
(SECC 2011), is currently under way.
1
A household that is identi-
ed as BPL is entitled to receive a BPL card. BPL-related benets
vary by state, but may include subsidised food, schemes to
construct housing, and self-employment activities. In 2002,
households were identied as BPL using a 13-item census ques-
tionnaire, but the 2002 BPL identication exercise was severe-
ly criticised for corruption, low data quality and coverage, im-
precise scoring methods, and poor survey design (Sundaram
2003; Hirway 2003; Jain 2004; Mukherjee 2005; Jalan and
Murgai 2007; Alkire and Seth 2008; Saxena 2009; Roy 2011;
Alkire and Seth 2012). The SECC 2011 Census questions are ar-
gued to be easy to answer, easy to verify, and not to create
perverse incentives. The SECC 2011 also outlines an alternative
identication method (GOI 2011a). It aims to correct the large
targeting errors observed in the BPL 2002 exercise by intro-
ducing different exclusion and inclusion criteria, indicators,
and scoring methods. But is the SECCs proposal the most ac-
curate identication method possible using the 2011 Census
questions? This article explores that question empirically.
For the fourth BPL identication exercise, alternative target-
ing methodologies were proposed and debated. The Ministry
of Rural Development (MoRD) appointed an expert group
committee chaired by N C Saxena, to propose a new methodol-
ogy for identifying BPL households. The committee recom-
mended a three-step method (Saxena 2009) automatically
exclude those that satisfy certain exclusion criteria; then auto-
matically include those that satisfy certain inclusion criteria;
and identify the rest of the BPL recipients using a 0-10 scoring
method based on a weighted sum of key census questions. The
order of exclusion and inclusion can be debated, and the exclu-
sion and the inclusion criteria can be variously combined to
identify the BPL poor (Drze and Khera 2010). Similarly, the
Saxena inclusion and exclusion criteria and scoring method
might be altered as indeed was done in the SECC 2011 (GOI
2011a) and in other documents.
2
But on what ground should
such changes be assessed?
A number of empirical studies have been conducted that ex-
plore the divergent proposals for the new BPL exercise empiri-
cally (Himanshu and Murgai 2011; Roy 2011; Sharan 2011).
Himanshu and Murgai (2011) analyse the pilot census for SECC
SPECIAL ARTICLE
household and individual characteristics of our interest. Our
nal sample size represents 84.5% of rural households from 28
Indian states and covers 91.1% of the rural population in India
when sampling weights are applied.
4

3 Do Different Methods Identify the Same Beneficiaries?
This section explains how we match NFHS-3 criteria to the BPL
methodological proposals, and presents our results, which
show that relatively minor methodological differences lead to
the identication of different sets of poor households.
Matching the Criteria to NFHS-3
To compare the methodologies, we match the criteria using
the NFHS-3 data set for rural households,
5
and compare three
methods by applying respective pseudo-criteria. This is similar
in spirit to our earlier work (Alkire and Seth 2008).
Table 1 provides an overview of how we have matched BPL
criteria using the NFHS-3 data set. The second column lists the
indicators we were able to match. The next two columns report
the type of the criteria exclusion or inclusion or the score
structures. The last column reports the proportion of house-
holds that satisfy the respective indicators. Saxena (2009)
and the alternative method proposed ve exclusion criteria
(Appendix I, p 57). NFHS-3 data are only able to closely match
three exclusion criteria for Saxena and two for the alternative.
They could not match two exclusion criteria having house-
hold income of more than Rs 10,000 and having paid income
tax. We use a fourth indicator in Table 1 as a proxy for both of
these indicators, which is the type of health insurance that any
Table 1: The Pseudo-Criteria for Saxena (2009) and the Alternative Method
No Criteria from NHFS-3 Saxena Alternative Percentage of
Committee Method Households
1a Household having double the land than the PSU average if the land is
irrigated or three times the PSU average if it is unirrigated Exclusion - 5.6
1b Household having at least two hectares of agricultural land - Exclusion 10.5
2 Household owning a car Exclusion Exclusion 1.0
3a Household owning a thresher or a tractor Exclusion - 4.0
3b Household owning a tractor - Exclusion 2.5
4 Any member of the household having health insurance and the household
not falling in the bottom two quintiles of the wealth score Exclusion Exclusion 2.4
5 Household headed by a single woman Inclusion 4 12.0
6 Household headed by a minor Inclusion 0 0.3
7 Any member of the household being a bonded labourer Inclusion 4 0.2
8 Household being considered as destitute Inclusion 4 0.4
9 Household being scheduled caste (SC)/scheduled tribe (ST) 3 3 31.2
10 Household being Muslim/Other Backward Class (OBC) 1 1.5 48.5
11 Any member in the household having tuberculosis 1 2 2.4
12 Household headed by an old person 1 2 16.3
13 Primary occupation of the household is landless agricultural labour 4 3.5 12.2
14 Primary occupation of the household is share cropping 4 3 3.3
15 Primary occupation of the household is artisan or casual work 2 3 8.3
16 Primary occupation of the household is marginal farmer 0 3 4.2
17 Primary occupation of the household is small farmer 0 2.5 6.0
18 Primary occupation of the household is agricultural labour and the
households own some land 3 0 10.5
19 No household member (older than 30 years) studied up to class 5 1 0 45.5
Households excluded by Saxena (2009) 10.9
Households excluded by alternative method 13.9
2011 and nd that an extended set of exclusion criteria would
automatically exclude 28% of the rural population compared
to only 8.3% by the set of exclusion criteria proposed by Saxe-
na. Roy (2011) compares the 2002 BPL methodology and the
Saxena proposal using the survey data from 18 wards of four
gram panchayats in two districts in West Bengal and Bihar,
and nds Saxena to be more accurate. For example, nearly
30% of casual worker households in 18 rural wards of Bihar
would have been wrongly excluded if BPL 2002 methodology
were used in place of Saxena (2009). Sharan (2011) compares
the proposal of Saxena (2009) to the exclusion-inclusion ap-
proach of Drze and Khera (2010) using a study on ve villages
and 469 households in Udupi district of Karnataka and nds
the exclusion-inclusion approach to be more transparent and
much faster.
This paper compares three identication methods that use
both the exclusion-inclusion criteria
and a scoring method to identify the
poor SECC 2011, Saxena (2009),
and an alternative method. Unlike
the previously mentioned studies,
our analysis is representative at the
national level. We outline the data
used for analysis in Section 2. Sec-
tion 3 presents results, comparing
combined exclusion and scoring
methods, and each of these sepa-
rately. Section 4 shows that a better
t may be obtained by a 10-item bi-
nary scoring method using the vari-
ables that have already been intro-
duced in the SECC questionnaire.
Section 5 explores state-level caps.
Section 6 concludes.
2 Data
In this paper we use the third round
of the National Family Health Sur-
vey (NFHS-3) data set for 2005-06 to
complement other studies that have
used National Sample Survey (NSS)
data, the BPL pilot data, and special
small surveys.
3
In a companion pa-
per (Alkire and Seth 2012), we also use the NFHS-3 to show
which of these BPL-identication methods best proxy a multi-
dimensional measure of poverty, which includes anthropo-
metric data on under-nutrition (undoubtedly one of the most
salient deprivations for BPL identication), as well as child
mortality, water, sanitation, and other variables.
The NFHS-3 data set is nationally representative and repre-
sentative of all 28 states and the union territory of Delhi. This
paper focuses on rural households and their members in 28
states. In our analysis, we use certain information on individu-
al characteristics such as occupational status that are not
available for all household members. Our nal sample con-
tains 49,209 households with information available for all
SPECIAL ARTICLE
members of a household receive from different sources.
6
This
fourth exclusion criterion excludes 2.4% of rural households,
which is more or less of the right magnitude because less than
3% of the Indian population pays income tax (Piketty and
Qian 2009), and this rate will be even lower in rural areas.
Also, the per capita expenditure of the top 10% of the rural
population in 2007-08 was just above Rs 1,229 per month (GOI
2010). We conjecture that the fraction of households with one
member earning Rs 10,000 or more would be much lower.
Hence, the fraction of households excluded by the nal two
exclusion criteria of Saxena (2009) would not be too different
to the fraction of households excluded on the basis of the
health insurance information, although, importantly, they
might not necessarily be the same households.
The next four criteria i n Table 1 are called inclusion criteria.
Any household satisfying these criteria must be automatically
identied as BPL. We were able to match only four of the eight
inclusion criteria listed in Panel A of Appendix I because the
NFHS-3 does not identify households in the Maha-Dalit groups,
households with a disabled person as bread-earner, and those
that are homeless. We have been able to identify those headed
by single women or minors, but the identication of destitute
and bonded labourers is not straightforward. We identify a
household as destitute if both the respondent and her partner
(if available) are unemployed, own less than 0.5 hectare of
land (irrigated or unirrigated), and fall in the bottom two
quintiles of the wealth index.
7
Similarly, we proxy the indica-
tor bonded labourer using NFHS-3 information that an adult
member, male or female, is working as an agricultural labour-
er on someone elses land without being paid in cash.
Implementing the matched exclusion criteria using NFHS
data, the Saxena exclusion criteria exclude 10.9% of house-
holds, whereas the alternative exclusion criteria exclude 13.9%
of households.
The rest of the households are identied according to their
weighted deprivation scores. We were able to match most of
the scoring indicators, including scheduled castes, scheduled
tribes and Muslims and Other Backward Classes. We could
only identify households in which a member had tuberculosis,
but could not identify leprosy, disability, mental illness, or HIV/
AIDS. Criteria 13-18 are based on occupational categories that
are only available for the respondents and their partners (if
available), not for the entire household.
8
The nal criterion on
education could be matched easily; 45.4% of households in
rural India have no member older than 30 years who has com-
pleted ve years of schooling .
9
Table 2 shows how we approximate the exclusion criteria
and scoring indicators for the SECC 2011 listed in Panel C of Ap-
pendix I. The rst six exclusion criteria are straightforwardly
matched, while the last two are imperfect proxies. Criterion 7
is the same as criterion 4 in Table 1. Criterion 8 is used as a
proxy for high-prole jobs. We assume that having someone in
a professional, managerial, or technical position makes a
household ineligible. The exclusion criteria require that house-
holds satisfying any one of these eight criteria be excluded
from BPL cards and excludes 24.3% of rural households,
compared to 10.9% and 13.9% by the other methods. This is
only slightly less than the 28% that Himanshu and Murgai
(2011) found using the BPL pilot data set.
Although the NFHS-3 data set contains information on the
extent of landownership, it does not contain information on
the ownership of irrigation equipment or number of crop ses-
sions. This information is required to implement SECC exclu-
sion criteria x, xi, and xii in Panel C of Appendix I. Excluding
households based solely on landownership may lead to large
errors, so we omit land-based exclusion indicators in the main
analysis. However, we check the robustness of our results using
three alternative land-exclusion criteria a household is exclud-
ed if (1) it owns at least 2.5 acres of irrigated land or 7.5 acres of
any agricultural land; (2) it owns at least 5 acres of irrigated
land or 7.5 acres of any agricultural land; and (3) it owns at
least 7.5 acres of agricultural land. Addition of the rst land-
exclusion criteria to the eight exclusion criteria listed in Table 2
excludes 30.6% of rural households. Similarly, the addition of
the second and third land-exclusion criteria to the eight
exclusion criteria listed in Table 2 exclude 27.2% and 25.8%
rural households, respectively.
Among the ve inclusion criteria of SECC 2011, we have been
able to match only two (criteria 9 and 1 0 in Table 2), which are
the same as criteria 7 and 8 in Table 1. We have been able to
match six of the seven scoring indicators of SECC 2011. The cri-
terion that we have not been able to match is disability. We
have used a very imperfect proxy that attaches a score of one if
there is any member in the household with tuberculosis this
has a low incidence at 2.4%.
10
Recall from Appendix I that an
indicator including tuberculosis had been proposed by Saxena
(2009) while scoring the households, hence our use of it.
Because the matches are imperfect and because the NFHS-3
data are for 2005-06, the following results are only illustra-
tive, but will provide some approximation of the differences
Table 2: The Matched Exclusion Criteria and Scoring Indicators of the SECC 2011
No Criteria Type of Percentage of
Criteria/ Households
indicators
1 Has a four-wheeler, car or jeep Exclusion 1.0
2 Has a tractor or a thrasher Exclusion 4.0
3 The housing is pucca with more than 3 bedrooms Exclusion 2.2
4 The household has a refrigerator Exclusion 6.8
5 The household has a phone Exclusion 8.2
6 Has a motorised cycle Exclusion 11.6
7 If the household has health insurance Exclusion 2.4
8 The respondent or her partner works in a professional,
managerial, or technical position Exclusion 6.4
9 Any member of the household being a bonded labourer Inclusion 0.2
10 Household being considered as destitute Inclusion 0.4
11 Households with only one room kutcha house Scoring 12.5
12 No adult member between the ages 16 and 59 Scoring 0.1
13 Female headed households with no adult male
member between 16 and 59 Scoring 7.7
14 Any household member with tuberculosis Scoring 2.4
15 Scheduled caste/scheduled tribe households Scoring 31.2
16 Households with no literate adult above 25 years Scoring 34.3
17 Primary occupation of the household is manual labour
and owns no land Scoring 23.2
Households being excluded by the exclusion criteria 24.3
SPECIAL ARTICLE
between methodologies, and signal issues that can be further
scrutinised.
Households Identified as BPL by the Three Methods
In this section we compare the Saxena and alternative scoring
methods, after applying the respective inclusion and exclusion
criteria, and show that despite having similar criteria, the dif-
ferent methods identify a very different set of households. Sec-
ond, we compare these two methodologies with the SECC 2011
methodology using a three-way Venn-diagram and show how
all three methods overlap and diverge.
For our rst exercise, we select four different poverty caps.
The selection of national poverty caps in the BPL context has
been hotly debated because different measures identify a dif-
ferent number of people as poor. For example, the rural ex-
penditure-based poverty headcount ratio in 2009-10 is 33.8%
(GoI 2011b), whereas the rural acute multidimensional poverty
headcount ratio in 2005-06 was 66.6% (Alkire, Roche and
Seth 2011). Saxena (2009) recommended at least 50% of the
rural population be identied as BPL. Sengupta (2007) argued
that nationally 76.6% of the population in 2004-05 was poor;
the gure would have been larger for rural areas. As we illus-
trate below, if the global Multidimensional Poverty Index
(MPI) uses a lower poverty cut-off such that 75% of rural
households are BPL nationally, state-level caps vary from 25%
to 94%. So our four sets of caps fall within this range.
We select the poverty cut-offs so that the Saxena method
and the alternative scoring method each identify a similar
proportion of poor households. We cannot match the head-
count ratios precisely because of the bunching in the scoring
distribution. Our intention is clear though. We compare
which households each approach would identify as BPL if
different fractions of households were to be selected as BPL
poor after applying the respective exclusion and inclusion
criteria. If the scoring structure did not matter much, the
same households would more or less be identied by both
methods and for all fractional cut-offs. We nd, however,
quite a different story.
Using a simple cross tabulation of the rural househol ds, in
Table 3 we see how these two methods agree or disagree. Four
different poverty caps are reported in the rst column. We
refer to the poor identied by the Saxena method as S-poor
and those by the alternative method as A-poor. The second and
third columns report different percentages of households iden-
tied as BPL. The fourth column reports the percentage of
households who are BPL by both methods. The fth column
reports the percentage of households that are only either
S-poor or A-poor in other words, the percentage of house-
holds for which both methods disagree.
When the poverty cap is 35%-36%, both methods agree on
26.9% of households, but disagree on 16.7%. When the poverty
cap is around 45%-47%, both methods agree on 33.5% house-
holds, but disagree on 25.1% of rural households. An interest-
ing point to note here is that the disagreement increases more
sharply than the agreement 16.7% to 25.1%. When the pov-
erty cap is between 56% and 59%, both methods agree regard-
ing 49.5% of households and disagree on 16.6%. When the
poverty cap is around 78%-83% (state-level MPI caps would
have been above 78% for eight states in 2005-06), both meth-
ods agree on nearly 75.5% of all households, and diverge on
10.1% by far the best agreement. What this means is that if
both methods are reasonable, targeting errors are likely to be
largest in those states having somewhat lower poverty caps,
and lower in the poorest states.
Now, we compare the Saxena and the alternative scoring
method to the SECC 2011 scoring method, after applying the
corresponding exclusion and inclusion criteria for each of the
three methods. It would have been interesting to match these
three methods for several poverty caps, but we must use one
poverty cap because bunching in pseudo-SECC scoring does
not permit us to identify more than 55% of rural households as
BPL at the national level.
11
Figure 1 compares the three methods
using a three-way Venn diagram. When these three methods
identify between 55% and 59% of households as BPL, they all
agree that 41.4% of households are BPL, and that 26.8% are above
the poverty line (APL). The remaining 31.8% of rural house-
holds are identied as BPL by one or two methods but not by all
three. If we just compare SECC 2011 and Saxena (2009), they both
identify only 45.4% of households as BPL; 21.2% of the house-
holds are identied as BPL by only one method, not by both.
Households Excluded by the Three Methods
Next, we explore whether different sets of households are dis-
qualied by different exclusion criteria. The Saxena recom-
mendations were tested using a pilot SECC census, and nd-
ings from 161 villages across India were analysed by Himanshu
Table 3: Identification of BPL Poor by Saxena (2009) and the Alternative
Method
Poverty Cap S-Poor A-Poor S-Poor & A-Poor S-Poor or A-Poor,
(%) (%) (%) (%) But Not Both (%)
35-36 35.5 35.1 26.9 16.7
45-47 46.5 45.6 33.5 25.1
56-59 57.0 58.9 49.6 16.6
78-83 82.5 78.5 75.5 10.1
Figure 1: Comparison of Saxena (2009), Alternative and SECC 2011 Methods
Non-Poor 26.8%
Alternative Method
Saxena
57%
55.1%
SECC
2.7%
7.0%
8.2%
6.6%
58.9%
4.0%
3.3%
41.4%
SPECIAL ARTICLE
and Murgai (2011), who found that nearly 8.3% of the national
rural population would have been automatically excluded.
The extended exclusion criteria proposed in the SECC 2011,
they found, would exclude nearly 28% of the national rural
population. We explore whether the households excluded by
the Saxena (2009) criteria are a subset of households excluded
by the SECC exclusion criteria. If they are not a subset, even the
use of exclusion criteria would require careful scrutiny. We
undertake this exercise using the NFHS-3 data and compare
the results with the alternative exclusion criteria.
What appears from Figure 2 is that while it might seem ap-
pealing to rely only on slightly more extensive exclusion criteria
to identify BPL households, exclusion criteria are not necessarily
unproblematic. The Venn diagram in Figure 2 shows that 30.7%
of households are excluded by any one set of exclusion criteria.
But the three methods only agree to the exclusion of 6.9% of rural
households. Let us rst compare the Saxena exclusion criteria,
which exclude 10.9% of households, and the alternative exclu-
sion criteria, which exclude 13.9% of households. They agree on
only 8.4% of households and disagree on 8%, where only one of
them identies a household as poor and not the other.
Let us compare the SECC exclusion criteria to the two other
methods. Naturally, the matches will be more imperfect be-
cause the percentage of excluded households is much higher
for the SECC 2011 (24.3% versus 10.9% or 13.9%). Out of the
24.3% households excluded by the SECC criteria, 58.5% 14.2%
of rural households would not have been excluded by either
Saxena or the alternative method. Further, there is active dis-
agreement about whether these 14.2% of rural households
should be excluded or whether some are actually BPL. For ex-
ample, 2% of all rural households were automatically excluded
by the SECC criteria, but would have had been automatically
included as BPL by the Saxena criteria.
12
Also, 4.2% of all rural
households were automatically excluded by the SECC criteria,
but would have scored three or more by the Saxena scoring.
They would have been identied as BPL if, nationally, at least
57% of people were identied as BPL. We reported elsewhere
(Alkire and Seth 2012), that 6.4% of all rural households would
have been excluded by the rst six SECC exclusion criteria,
but would also have been poor according to the MPI. Of these,
76.9% have at least one undernourished woman or child,
78.9% do not have improved sanitation facilities, 91.9% use
unimproved cooking fuel, and 56% do not live in houses with
improved oor material. Thus at a conservative estimate, up to
a quarter of those excluded by the SECC criteria could have
been BPL by various other criteria. So even if exclusion criteria
alone are used, they need to be closely scrutinised and care-
fully justied, particularly if they are to be uniformly applied
across all rural areas and if all information on inclusion
criteria is to be disregarded.
In summary, there can be signicant disagreement over the
identication of the poor when the score structures differ.
Also, distinct sets of exclusion criteria identify different house-
holds as BPL. Of particular concern is when exclusion criteria
are alone implemented, households that would have been
identied as BPL on other grounds may be excluded. In other
words, the selection of criteria, sequence, and score structure
all matter. Although we could not match the proposed criteria
exactly, and although the NFHS-3 data set did not allow us to
set caps at the district level, the results indicate a need for em-
pirical analysis to complement political and qualitative inputs
into targeting methods because methodological differences
generate different results.
4 Precision and Bunching
As discussed earlier, the SECC 2011 census is conducted in
three stages automatic exclusion, automatic inclusion, and
scoring. Matching the SECC exclusion criteria as closely as pos-
sible using NFHS-3, we have seen that nearly 24.3% of house-
holds were automatically excluded. Although we could not
proxy all automatic inclusion criteria, these criteria are quite
specic and each identies relatively few rural households.
Therefore, in states having lower poverty caps, additional BPL
households must be identied using the third stage of the
method, which relies on household scores. However, the SECC
2011 method uses only seven indicators, which cause bunching
in scoring.
13
In other words, those particular seven items do
not provide enough variation in deprivation counts to be able
to match state poverty caps precisely.
Figure 3 plots the score distribution for the seven SECC 2011
criteria that we have been able to match. The horizontal axis
Figure 2: Comparison of Excluded Households by the SECC 2011 Method
with Saxena (2009) and Alternative Methods
Not-Excluded 69.3%
Alternative Method
13.9%
Saxena
10.9%
24.3%
SECC
0.9%
14.2%
1.6%
1.5%
3.9%
6.9%
1.6%
Figure 3: The Bunching of Scores for the SECC 2011 Criteria
60
50
40
30
20
10
0
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

H
o
u
s
e
h
o
l
d
1 2 3 4 5 6
Score
55.1
30.7
12.2
3.1
0.8 0.6
SPECIAL ARTICLE
reports the score and the vertical axis reports the percentage
of households that have that score or more. It is evident that
55.1% of households are identied as BPL if their score is at
least one. Only 30.7% of the households experience two depri-
vations, and only 12.2% experience three deprivations. There
are no households with a score of seven and only a very few
households with scores of ve and six. This makes the scoring
system quite imprecise. For example, if a state government,
informed by budgetary constraints, decides to target 45% of
households, then 30.6% could be identied because they have
a score of two, but the remaining 15% one-third of all BPL
households would need to be identied using a fourth stage
with additional criteria, which would incur further costs and
may not improve accuracy.
One way of addressing this situation is by increasing the
number of indicators for scoring, and ensuring that the indica-
tors used are such as to provide a relatively more even and
accurate reection of the intensity of poverty across sampled
households. For instance, a 10-item binary criteria score using
SECC variables allows greater precision (Alkire and Seth 2012).
Table 4 reports the 10 criteria. The deprivation score of each
household is the number (count) of deprivations that each
household faces. So a households deprivation score ranges
from zero to 10. Each of these 10 criteria is contained in the
SECC questionnaire.
Panel I of Figure 4 plots the distribution of household scores
that are obtained using the 10-item binary scoring indicators
and after applying the SECC 2011 exclusion criteria. It can be
seen that bunching is partially mitigated as the differences of
the percentage of potential BPL poor is much lower between
score categories. The percentage of people between score
equal to one and score equal to two is less than 10 percentage
points. The differences between scores equal to two versus
three, and three versus four are between 13 and 16 percentage
points. If we use the scoring indicators without rst imple-
menting the exclusion criteria (Panel II), the bunching in scoring
is still lower than the SECC method.
5 Poverty Caps
A nal crucial concern is how accurate it is to set the state pov-
erty cap using national estimates of consumption poverty.
Which levels of poverty should be used to cap the percentage
of BPL households by district or state and union territory? Nat-
urally, states are free to increase their caps, as some states
(Kerala and Tamil Nadu) already do.
18
In both BPL 2002 and SECC 2011, the poverty caps reected
the Planning Commissions expenditure-based poverty esti-
mate, but this approach has been criticised for lacking any jus-
tication (Hirway 2003). It is assumed, implicitly, that a multi-
dimensional measure of direct deprivation would provide
similar levels of poverty caps to an expenditure-based mea-
sure. How accurate might this assumption be? Ideally such a
comparison would use a national MPI, but to illustrate the is-
sue, we compare the expenditure-based poverty headcount
ratios of the Tendulkar Committee (Tendulkar 2009) to state-
wise headcount ratios of an international MPI that has been
implemented for India and other countries (Alkire and Santos
2010). Nationally, 66.6% of the rural population is identied as
poor according to the global MPI, where a person is identied
as poor if he or she is deprived in at least one-third of the
weighted indicators (often written as k = 0.333). In contrast, if
we look at expenditure poverty from the nearest year, 41.8% of
Table 4: The 10-Item Binary Scoring Indicators
No Indicator Definition of Indicator Deprived (%)
1 Landlessness 1 if household is landless; 0 otherwise 40.7
2 Housing (wall) 1 if the roof of the house is built with unimproved material; 0 otherwise
14
45.7
3 Housing (roof) 1 if the wall of the house is built with unimproved material; 0 otherwise
15
27.8
4 Community 1 if household is SC/ST; 0 otherwise 31.2
5 Singleness 1 if household head is a single woman, a minor, or elderly, and there is no adult male in age group 16-59; 0 otherwise
16
9.9
6 Occupation 1 if any household member is engaged as a plantation labourer, casual labourer, or agricultural labourer; 0 otherwise 49.9
7 Education 1 if no household member is educated beyond class 4; 0 otherwise 30.1
8 Disability 1 if any household member has tuberculosis; 0 otherwise 2.4
9 Over-crowding 1 if three or more members live per bedroom, 0 otherwise 48.3
10 Dependency 1 if the child plus elderly-to-adult ratio is larger than two; 0 otherwise
17
8.8
Figure 4: The Bunching of Scores for the 10-Item Binary Scoring Indicators
Panel I: Scores after Applying the Exclusion Criteria
75
60
45
30
15
0
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

H
o
u
s
e
h
o
l
d
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Score
72.8
64.3
50.9
34.9
20.2
9.4
3.4
1.2
0.7 0.6
Panel II: Scores without Applying the Exclusion Criteria
96
81
66
51
36
21
6
9
P
e
r
c
e
n
t
a
g
e

o
f

H
o
u
s
e
h
o
l
d
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Score
92.3
75.9
56.7
37.3
21.1
9.7
3.5 1.3 0.7 0.6
SPECIAL ARTICLE
the rural population was identied as poor by the Tendulkar
Committee in 2004-05. How would the state poverty caps of
these two methods differ? We implement two new multi-
dimensional poverty cut-offs a cut-off of 40% (or k = 0.4),
which generates a national rural multidimensional poverty
headcount of 48% closer to the Tendulkar rural poverty rates
in 2004-05; and a cut-off of 25% (or k = 0.25), which corre-
sponds to a national rural cap of around 75%. The objective of
the rst poverty cut-off (k = 0.4) is to compare the state-level
multi dimensional poverty caps with those that would be set by
the Tendulkar method, and of the second poverty cut-off (k = 0.25)
is to show how many people would be identied as poor across
states if a higher rural poverty cut-off were selected.
Figure 5 plots the Tendulkar committees rural expenditure-
based poverty headcount ratios for the year 2004-05 and the
headcount indices of multidimensional poverty estimated
from the NFHS-3 data set for 19 major states of India. The states
are ranked by the MPI for k = 0.4. It shows us that the state
caps differ somewhat between the Tendulkar method and the
Alkire-Santos method (k = 0.4) with the Kendalls tau rank
correlation coefcient being only 0.62. Multidimensional pov-
erty is lower than consumption poverty for least poor states
such as Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, Tamil Nadu and
Uttarakhand, and higher in the poorest states such as Rajas-
than, Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Jharkhand.
A mixed picture is found for the states in the middle, where the
expenditure-based poverty headcount ratios jump around the
multidimensional poverty headcount ratio. Thus, a measure of
direct deprivation may differ from an expenditure-based
poverty measure at the state level. Hence, the poverty caps
should also be justied insofar as they prove to be an accurate
proxy for measures of direct deprivations that BPL benets will
address, such as undernutrition and poor housing conditions.
6 Conclusions
This paper has shown that apparently small differences in
scoring structures and inclusion or exclusion criteria make
large differences in identifying BPL households. Using the best
feasible matches from NFHS-3 data, we compare Saxena
(2009) and an alternative with the SECC 2011 BPL identication
method. We nd that when 55% to 58% of rural households
are identied as BPL by each method, only 41.4% of households
are identied as BPL by all three methods. Nearly one-third of
rural households 31.8% are identied as BPL by some method
but not by another. Second, we compare the set of households
automatically excluded by three sets of proposed exclusion
criteria and nd a wide mismatch. Part of this was predictable
due to different magnitudes of exclusion. But the surprise is
that nearly a quarter of SECC-excluded households would
have been included using inclusion or scoring criteria, and
more than a quarter of the excluded households were multi-
dimensionally poor. Hence any targeting method including
exclusion criteria needs to be carefully justied and we have
proposed an approach by which to calibrate a targeting method
(Alkire and Seth 2012).
If a scoring method is used, we note that a 10-item counting
approach using SECC variables would reduce the bunching
problem. Finally, we observe that if state-level poverty caps
are set using a multidimensional poverty measure, which
includes malnutrition, child mortality, housing, water, sanita-
tion, and so on, state-level caps differ from caps based on
expenditure poverty.
The debates between whether and how to target BPL house-
holds or provide universal coverage of certain benets are
long-standing. This paper shows that even if the SECC census
data meets high quality standards, and even in the absence of
corruption, the methodology used to target BPL households
and x state-level poverty caps matters different methodolo-
gies generate different outcomes. Any nal set of targeting cri-
teria and poverty caps should therefore be justied care-
fully, probed extensively, and used self-critically.
Notes
1 For a more detailed discussion on BPL methods
for the years 1992 and 1997, see Saxena (2009).
2 To test this, we implement an alternative method
is similar to that in Mehrotra and Mander
(2009). The second author was a member of
the Saxena Committee expert group and the
rst author was a former member (see Datta
2009).
3 For example, Jalan and Murgai (2007) use the
2004-05 NSS data set to explore the mismatch
between the identication method of the third
BPL census to consumption expenditure poverty.
4 The nal sample used for our analysis is not
fully nationally representative. To understand
the deprivation status of dropped households,
we conducted bias tests by selecting eight indi-
cators that capture direct deprivations among
households housing conditions, access to
electricity, sanitation, clean drinking water,
clean cooking fuel, asset ownership, years of
schooling, and the status of children in the
household (see Alkire and Seth 2012). Depriva-
tions are signicantly higher among the house-
holds in the dropped sample in housing, electri-
city, sanitation, clean cooking fuel, asset own-
ership, and years of schooling. No statistically
signicant difference was found in access to
clean drinking water. Deprivation among chil-
dren is higher in the retained rather than
dropped sample. The primary reason is that
the retained sample does not include house-
holds headed by old members, which tend to be
smaller in size and have fewer children. This
difference in the retained sample and the
dropped sample will somewhat affect our
results and may under-report elder poverty.
However, this does not reduce the meaningful-
ness of our analysis. Given that we cover 84.5%
of rural households, a disagreement over say
10% of rural households in the retained sample
implies a disagreement over at least 8.45% ru-
ral households in the full sample. This absolute
number could not be lower even if information
were available for all rural households.
5 The Planning Commission appointed a sepa-
rate Hashim committee expert group to pro-
pose a methodology for conducting the SECC
in urban areas (GOI 2011a).
6 The available health insurance schemes are the
employees state insurance scheme, central
government health scheme, community health
insurance programme, health insurance through
employer, medical reimbursement from
Figure 5: Rural Poverty Headcount Ratios across 19 States by Tendulkar
(2009) and the MPI Constructed Using Poverty Cut-offs k of 25% and 40%

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MPI, k = 0.25
MPI, k = 0.4
SPECIAL ARTICLE
employer, and privately purchased and com-
munity health insurance.
7 We consider the bottom two quintiles because
the rural income poverty headcount ratio is 41.8
or more than 40% (Tendulkar 2009). Of the
0.4% of rural households that are destitute by
our match, 55% belong to the poorest quintile
and 45% belong to the second poorest quintile.
8 Note that the occupation information is avail-
able for those households where there is at
least one woman in the age group of 15-49 and
at least one man in the age group of 15-54.
There is no occupational information for the
rest of the household.
9 The education variable should, in our view, be
handled with caution. This is because 29.9% of
households do not have one adult member (15
years or older instead of above 30 years) who
has completed ve or more years of education.
Thus, 15.6% (45.5%-29.9%) of households
would be given an extra point by Saxena
(2009) only because they do not have any
member older than 30 years nishing ve or
more years of schooling, although they do have
members in the age group of 15-30 who have
nished ve years or more of schooling.
10 As Himanshu and Murgai show, based on the
pilot survey data set for SECC 2011, the propor-
tion of households with the disability criteria
would be around 5% to 6%.
11 Even when the three alternative land-exclusion
criteria are implemented, the maximum number
of BPL poor that can be identied ranges bet-
ween 52% and 55%.
12 The extent of disagreement with the set of
SECC exclusion criteria varies when the alter-
native land-exclusion criteria are added to the
SECC exclusion criteria. When each of the
three land-exclusion criteria is added, then all
three methods exclude 8.2%, 8% and 7.3% of
households, respectively. When the rst land-
exclusion criterion is added to the set of SECC
exclusion criteria, the match between the
SECC exclusion criteria and Saxena (2009) ex-
clusion criteria improve dramatically and only
0.6% of households excluded by Saxena (2009)
are not excluded by the SECC exclusion crite-
ria. However, when each of the second and the
third land-exclusion criteria is added, 1.3% and
2% of households that are excluded by Saxena
(2009) are not automatically excluded by the
SECC exclusion criteria, respectively. Thus,
disagreement exists. However, each of these
three land-exclusion criteria is not an accurate
match and thus it is not possible be have any
conjecture on the true extent of disagreement.
13 GOI (2011b) proposes to solve the bunching
problem by using the percentage of SC/ST pop-
ulation in the panchayats concerned.
14 The roof of a house is considered unimproved if
it is made of thatch/palm leaves, mud, mud
and grass, plastic/polythene sheets, rustic
mats, palm/bamboo, raw wood planks/timber,
unburnt bricks, and loosely packed stone. Or if
there is no roof.
15 The wall of a house is considered unimproved if
the wall is made up of cane/palm/trunks, mud,
grass/reeds/thatch, bamboo with mud, stone
with mud, plywood, cardboard, unburnt brick,
and raw/reused wood. Or if there is no wall.
16 A minor is someone who is less than 18 years
old. An elderly person is a member of the
household who is older than 59 years. Note that
our sample does not cover all those households
headed by the elderly. Or else, the headcount
would have been much higher.
17 A child is any member who is younger than 18
years. An elder is any member who is older than
59 years. The child and elderly to adult ratio is
the ratio of the number of children and elderly
members to the number of adult members in
the age group 16-59 years in the household.
18 Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and other states have moved
to a universal rather than targeted public dis-
tribution system. See Drze and Sen (2011).
References
Alkire, S, J M Roche and S Seth (2011): Sub-
national Disparities and Inter-temporal Evolu-
tion of Multidimensional Poverty across Deve-
loping Countries, Oxford Poverty and Human
Development Initiative, University of Oxford,
http://www.ophi.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/
OPHI-RP-32a-2011.pdf?cda6c1, accessed on 16
May 2011.
Alkire, S and M E Santos (2010): Acute Multidi-
mensional Poverty: A New Index for Develop-
ing Countries, Working Paper No 38, Oxford
Poverty and Human Development Initiative,
Univers ity of Oxford.
Alkire, S and S Seth (2008): Determining BPL Status:
Some Methodological Improvements, Indian
Journal of Human Development, 2, pp 407-24.
(2012): Selecting a Targeting Method to Iden-
tify BPL Households in India, Social Indicator
Research, forthcoming.
Chen, S and M Ravallion (2010): The Developing
World Is Poorer Than We Thought, But No
Less Successful in the Fight against Poverty,
Quarterly Journal of Economics, 12, pp 1577-1625.
Drze, Jean and Reetika Khera (2010): The BPL
Census and a Possible Alternative, Economic &
Political Weekly, 45, pp 54-63.
Drze, Jean and Amartya Sen (2011): Putting
Growth in Its Place, Outlook, 14 Nov, http://
www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?278843
Government of India (2010): Household Consumer
Expenditure in India, 2007-08, National Sam-
ple Survey Ofce, Ministry of Statistics and
Programme Implementation, March.
(2011a): Socio Economic and Caste Census 2011
in Rural India, Ministry of Rural Develop-
ment, 25 July, http://rural.nic.in/sites/BPL-
census-2011.asp, accessed on 29 October 2011.
(2011b): DO No Q14016/6/ 2011/AI-(RD),
Ministry of Rural Development, New Delhi,
30 May.
(2012): Press Note on Poverty Estimates,
2009-10, Planning Commission, New Delhi,
19 March.
Himanshu and R Murgai (2011): Identication of
Poor: Preliminary Results from the Pilot Survey
for Socio-Economic Caste Census, mimeo.
Hirway, I (2003): Identication of BPL Households
for Poverty Alleviation Programmes, Economic
& Political Weekly, 38, pp 4803-38.
IIPS and Macro International (2007): National
Family Health Survey (NFHS-3), 200506: In-
dia, Vols I and II, International Institute for
Population Sciences, Mumbai.
Jain, S K (2004): Identication of the Poor: Flaws
in Government Surveys, Economic & Political
Weekly, 39, pp 4981-84.
Jalan, J and R Murgai (2007): An Effective Target-
ing Shortcut? An Assessment of the 2002
Below-Poverty Line Census Method, mimeo,
New Delhi: World Bank.
Mehrotra, S and H Mander (2009): How to Identify
the Poor? A Proposal, Economic & Political
Weekly, 44, pp 27-44.
Piketty, T and Qian N (2009): Income Inequality
and Progressive Income Taxation in China and
India, 1986-2015, American Economic Journal:
Applied Economics, 1 (2), pp 53-63.
Roy, I (2011): New List for Old: (Re-) construct-
ing the Poor in the BPL Census, Economic &
Political Weekly, 46 (22), pp 82-91.
Saxena, N C (2009): Report of the Expert Group to
Advise the Ministry of Rural Development on
the Methodology for Conducting the Below
Poverty Line (BPL) Census for 11th Five-Year
Plan, Ministry of Rural Development, Govern-
ment of India, New Delhi.
Sengupta, A (2007): Report on Conditions of Work
and Promotion of Livelihoods in the Unorga-
nised Sector, National Commission for Enter-
prises in the Unorganised Sector, Government
of India, New Delhi.
Sharan, M R (2011): Identifying BPL Households:
A Comparison of Competing Approaches,
Economic & Political Weekly, 46 (26), pp 256-62.
Sundaram, K (2003): On Identication of House-
holds Below Poverty Line in BPL Census 2002:
Some Comments on Proposed Methodology,
Economic & Political Weekly, 38, pp 4803-08.
Tendulkar, S D (2009): Report of the Expert Group
to Review the Methodology for Estimation of
Poverty, Planning Commission, Government of
India.
REVIEW OF RURAL AFFAIRS
January 28, 2012
Agrarian Transition and Emerging Challenges P K Viswanathan, Gopal B Thapa,
in Asian Agriculture: A Critical Assessment Jayant K Routray, Mokbul M Ahmad
Institutional and Policy Aspects of Punjab Agriculture:
A Smallholder Perspective Sukhpal Singh
Khap Panchayats: A Socio-Historical Overview Ajay Kumar
Rural Water Access: Governance and Contestation
in a Semi-Arid Watershed in Udaipur, Rajasthan N C Narayanan, Lalitha Kamath
Panchayat Finances and the Need for Devolutions
from the State Government Anand Sahasranaman
Temporary and Seasonal Migration:
Regional Pattern, Characteristics and Associated Factors Kunal Keshri, R B Bhagat

For copies write to: Circulation Manager,
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Appendix II: Indias Rural Poverty Headcount: MPI with Varying Cut-offs and Tendulkar Estimations 2004-05 and 2009-10 (in %)
Official MPI Headcount MPI Headcount MPI Headcount Tendulkar Rural Tendulkar Poverty
(Rural) k = 33% (Rural) if k = 25% (Rural) k = 40% Poverty Estimate Estimate
(NFHS 2005-06) (NFHS 2005-06) (NFHS 2005-06) (NSS 2004-05) (NSS 2009-10)
State
Andhra Pradesh 54.7 65.5 30.7 32.3 22.8
Arunachal Pradesh 58.5 66.5 37.1 33.6 26.2
Assam 67.2 77.5 50.2 36.4 39.9
Bihar 84.9 90.5 72.0 55.7 55.3
Chhattisgarh 80.4 85.6 56.4 55.1 56.1
Goa 29.3 38.7 12.8 28.1 11.5
Gujarat 57.1 67.8 36.6 39.1 26.7
Haryana 47.8 59.8 26.4 24.8 18.6
Himachal Pradesh 32.6 44.8 12.8 25.0 9.1
Jammu and Kashmir 50.8 63.9 29.4 14.1 8.1
Jharkhand 87.8 94.9 76.0 51.6 41.6
Karnataka 57.2 68.6 34.0 37.5 26.1
Kerala 14.8 25.2 5.1 20.2 12.0
Madhya Pradesh 80.2 87.7 60.6 53.6 42.0
Maharashtra 57.8 68.6 35.6 47.9 29.5
Manipur 47.9 56.7 25.6 39.3 47.4
Meghalaya 67.5 75.9 50.8 14.0 15.3
Mizoram 34.2 46.7 19.3 23.0 31.1
Nagaland 59.6 68.8 40.1 10.0 19.3
Orissa 69.5 79.1 52.3 60.8 39.2
Punjab 29.5 41.8 15.2 22.1 14.6
Rajasthan 75.7 84.1 57.5 35.8 26.4
Sikkim 36.7 45.4 19.8 31.8 15.5
Tamil Nadu 40.5 54.3 17.3 37.5 21.2
Tripura 59.0 69.8 36.2 44.5 19.8
Uttar Pradesh 77.2 85.4 59.8 42.7 39.4
Uttarakhand 48.3 59.1 28.3 35.1 14.9
West Bengal 70.8 78.7 52.6 38.2 28.8
India 66.6 75.7 48.0 41.8 33.8
i. Motorised two/three/four wheeler/ fishing boat
ii. Mechanised three/four wheeler agricultural equipment
iii. Kisan credit card with credit limit of Rs 50,000 and above
iv. Household with any member as a government employee
v. Households with non-agricultural enterprises registered with
the government
vi. Any member of the family earning more than Rs 10,000 per month
vii. Paying income tax or professional tax
ix. Three or more rooms with all rooms having pucca walls and roof
x. Own a refrigerator or a landline phone
xi. Own 2.5 acres or more of irrigated land with at least one
piece of irrigation equipment
xii. Five acres or more of irrigated land for two or more crop seasons
xiii. Owning at least 7.5 acres of land or more with at least one
piece of irrigation equipment
i. Households without shelter
ii. Destitute/living on alms
iii. Manual scavengers
iv. Primitive tribal groups
v. Legally released bonded labourers
Appendix I: Criteria for Identifying BPL Households Recommended by Saxena (2009), Alternative Scoring, and the Socio-Economic Caste Census (2011)
Panel A: Saxena Committee Expert Group Criteria (2009)
First Stage (Exclusion) Second Stage (Inclusion) Third Stage (Scoring)
i. Families who own double the district average of
agricultural land per agricultural household if partially or
wholly irrigated (3 times if completely un-irrigated).
ii. Families who have three or four wheeled motorised
vehicles, such as jeeps, SUVs, etc.
iii. Families who have at least one piece of mechanised farm
equipment, such as a tractor, power tiller, thresher, harvester, etc.
iv. Families who have any person who is drawing a salary of
over Rs 10,000 per month in non-government/private
organisations or is employed in government (including
para-statals) on a regular basis with pensionary or
equivalent benefits.
v. Income taxpayers.
i. Designated Primitive Tribal Groups
ii. Designated most discriminated against
SC groups, called Maha Dalit Groups, if so
identified by the state
iii. Households headed by single women
iv. Households with a disabled person as
bread-earner
v. Households headed by a minor
vi. Destitute households which are dependent
predominantly on alms for survival
vii. Homeless households
viii. Any member of the household is bonded
labourer
i. SC/ST: 3 points; Denotified Tribes and Designated Most
Backward Castes: 2 points; Muslim/OBC: 1 point.
ii. Landless agricultural worker: 4 points; agricultural labourer
(with some land): 3 points; casual workers: 2 points; self-
employed artisans or self-employed fisherfolk (including
those employed by others in such professions): 2 points.
iii. No adult (above 35 years of age) has studied up to class 5 in
the household: 1 point.
iv. Any member of the household has TB, leprosy, disability,
mental illness or HIV-AIDS: 1 point.
v. Household headed by an old person of age 60 and above: 1
point.
i. Households with only one room, kucha walls and kucha
roof
ii. No adult member between the ages of 16 and 59
iii. Female-headed households with no adult male member
between 16 and 59
iv. Households with a disabled member and no able-bodied
adult member
v. Scheduled caste/scheduled tribe households
vi. Households with no literate adult above 25 years
vii. Landless households deriving a major part of their income
from manual casual labour
i. Destitute/dependent on alms: 4
ii. Forest gatherer: 4
iii. Landless worker: 3.5
iv. Tenant/sharecropper: 3
v. Marginal farmer: 3
vi. Small farmer: 2.5
vii. Self-employed artisan and worker: 3
i. SC/ST: 3
ii. MBC (Designated Most Backward Castes):
1.5
iii. Muslims: 1.5
iv. Designated Primitive Tribal Group: 5
i. Household headed by single woman: 4
ii. Disabled worker: 4
iii. Bonded workers (workers or dependent): 4
iv. Household headed by elderly person: 4
v. Worker with HIV-AIDS, leprosy, mental illness: 4
vi. Worker with TB: 2
vii. Disabled dependent: 2
Panel B: Alternative Scoring Criteria
Occupational Social Group Vulnerable
Panel C: Socio-Economic Caste Census (2011) Criteria
First Stage (Exclusion) Second Stage (Inclusion) Third Stage (Scoring with equal weights)
Source: Alkire and Seth (2012).
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The Need for an Everyday Culture of Protest
Vol - XLVIII No. 02, January 12, 2013 | Rukmini Sen Web Exclusives
Will some of the same people who have vented their anger in protest against this gang-rape at least raise voice in
support of a sex workers livelihood, a heterosexual persons right to live with a partner without marriage, a single
parent, a lesbian or gay persons right to chose a partner, walk with the women while they reclaim the streets at night
not just on 31
st
December but every night; and not pass moral judgments on these groups of people?

Rukmini Sen (rukmini@aud.ac.in) teaches sociology and gender studies at Ambedkar University, New Delhi.

There is a lot of despair in me at this moment. I am angry and helpless at the same time. Anger in seeing the way
media wants to give a name to the namelessAmanat (trust), Damini (lightning), Anamika (one without a name),
Nirbhaya (fearless), brave-heart. It seems to be connected with the patriarchal practice of renaming the daughter-in-
law when she comes to the husbands family in many upper caste Hindu families in India. I felt anger in seeing how
immediately she has become the daughter of the nation;
Indias daughter, brave heart daughtera daughter who had fought bravely till the end, and finally gave in; how
politicians suddenly turned mothers, sisters and fathers to understand her pain. Wonder whether she would still have
been a brave daughter if she had died immediately after reaching the Safdarjung Hospital, whether the politicians and
the middle class would have been equally pained if she was out on the streets at 1.30 in the night with her male friend
instead of 9.30 pm? Why cannot she remain anonymous? Why do we continuously refer to her as a rape victim
because she did not survive in life? But why victimise her, make her a national symbol, a birangana as somebody
among the crowds in Jantar Mantar said? Are we not reminded of the way Bangladesh named its women who were
raped by the Pakistani army as biranganas?
Suddenly this has become an issue that the nation identifies with, how her death seems to have shaken the
conscience of the nation. One wonders why the conscience of the nation does not get shaken every day given that
there is a reporting of some incident of violence against woman that we see in the newspapers or television channels.
It is for the same reason that one wonders how in a democracy ensuring freedom to women but not protection of
women, has never been a political issue although rape and sexual assault came out of our homes since the early
1980s through the womens movement. Or is it that only when the violence is of a particular extentnamely the extent
of its brutality and the violence occurs to an otherwise good woman from a middle class family of urban Delhi that the
conscience gets impacted. When Manorama was raped and killed she became an alleged militant, when Bhanwari
Devi was raped the courts denounced the charges by claiming that rules of purity could not possibly allow a Brahmin
to rape a woman from a lower caste, when dalit women were raped in Khairlanji their caste status did not allow public
protests of this nature, and of course when lesbian women committed suicide, the nation which still continues with
Section 377 in its Penal Code could not legitimately have its conscience shaken. Ironically, this is true for both the
politicians as well as the protestors. One needs to be a perfect rape victim to generate these responses. Of course
this notion of the perfect changes with time, but there is a continuous re-creation of the perfect victim.
Demands
There are many demands that are being made by various womens organisations and students organisations. Of
course reiterating that capital punishment cannot be the solution and should not be a demand at all, I want to actually
introspect about whether legal punishment could resolve an issue which is so intrinsically structural? One is referring
to the need for each one of us to reflect upon what we teach our daughters and sons within the family. Do we
continuously remind our girls to restrict their mobility, return home before dark reinforcing the myth that all incidents of
violence happen outside the home and at night; encourage them towards higher education yet make them internalise
that marriage is the best thing that can happen to them. Teach them that only if her husband and in-laws concede can
she work outside the home, have a career; propagate that their careers are secondary to their husbands, they might
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January 12, 2013
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have to leave their jobs, albeit willingly, when a child is born? Do we not engage ourselves with what is it that the
schools are teaching the young minds? The culture of fear that we perpetuate everyday in our institutions through
informal/formal norms and sanctions goes a long way in shaping our attitudes. So when we discuss the need for
changing mindsets and attitudes, all of us need to ask ourselves whether we are contributing our bit to maintain the
patriarchal order in some manner or the other. It is by no means to suggest that the state, the police; the judiciary is
cleared off their responsibilities. We need to carry on the pressure of speedy trials, fair trails, higher convictions, taking
complaints, effective and regular public transport, enacting laws based on feminist jurisprudence.
The helplessness that I feel in me comes from trying to grapple with the meaning of democracy. If we are democratic
why is it that the government is making every possible effort to curb dissent? The 27
th
December protest march from
Nizamuddin to India Gate which got blocked near Zakir Hussain Marg had slogans Delhi Police Hai Hai, to Delhi
police Halla Bol to also Delhi Police Saath Doit was a good example of how there can be polite collective dissent.
But the government only responded by closing down 10 metro stations on 29
th
December and making certain parts of
the city completely inaccessible to its democratic citizens. The same metro that the government prides in increasing
connectivity for the people of Delhi can take away from these same people through one order. Is the meaning of
democracy limited to the Constitution? --has it partially extended in some aspects of our public lives but without any
meaning inside the homes. At the same time, inspite of taking away democrartic freedoms from the citizens, there
were thousands who joined the protests, and the prayers at Jantar Mantar on the 29
th
of December. Thus, there is still
hope in peoples struggles and collective voices. Will some of the same people who have vented their anger in protest
against this gang-rape at least raise voice in support of a sex workers livelihood, a heterosexual persons right to live
with a partner without marriage, a single parent, a lesbian or gay persons right to chose a partner, walk with the
women while they reclaim the streets at night not just on 31
st
December but every night; and not pass moral
judgments on these groups of people? Moreover, would we as democratic citizens of India continue to protest when
we witness the undemocratic nature of the everyday lives of most women in our country? That is what the long term
strategy of this struggle needs to be, not just punishment for the rapists in this case and stricter laws on violence
against women.
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COMMENTARY
22
What Are the Limits?
Working on Political Issues in Kashmir
Seema Mustafa, Kamal Mitra Chenoy, Anuradha Chenoy
This article is a brief account
of the work over the past three
years of the Delhi-based Centre
for Policy Analysis in Kashmir,
where it started an initiative to
connect people in the Valley with
actors of political and civil society
from the rest of the country over
issues that concern Kashmiris.
This initiative included bringing
students of the national capital
together with students of Kashmir
and sharing information and
perceptions about events in the
Valley. The CPAs work has shown
that Kashmir and its people are
subjects of multiple and
coexisting transformations.

P
eople in Kashmir, as in any conict
zone, are wary of strangers. So,
gaining their condence is the
rst major task. This is because politics
in Kashmir is not normal, as we under-
stand it; the real politics of the Valley
centres around a deep alienation between
the state and the people where nobody
trusts the other. This is complicated by
the fact that persons hired by or on the
temporary payroll of Indian agencies
like the Research and Analysis Wing,
I ntelligence Bureau and Special Service
Bureau are scattered throughout the
Valley. As a result, relations between
people and institutions are mediated by
these agencies. The military and para-
military and several intelligence ser-
vices keep a close eye on insiders, outsid-
ers and all visitors, and are especially
suspicious of activists interacting with
Kashmiri civil society. While institutions
of democracy such as the state legisla-
ture and judiciary exist, their substance
and signicance is negotiated through
the military and intelligence agencies in
collaboration with the various layers of
the union home ministry. Indeed, the
militarisation of the Valley is evident
through the repression of dissent by the
use/threat of force.
The almost complete absence of news
of happenings in Kashmir in the so-
called national media does not help
matters either. Except for government-
sponsored news about terrorism per se,
media in other parts of the country
ignores and often blacks out news from
Kashmir in a systematic manner. This
makes civil society work in Kashmir
difcult and requires patience and high
levels of self-condence to face hostility
on the ground from the state government,
security forces, intelligence agencies and
those who work for them. The authori-
ties are intolerant of criticism and dis-
sent, and often intervene to scuttle such
meetings organised by civil society
groups. Kashmiris, of course, are virtually
barred from holding protest meetings.
Not surprisingly, civil society organisa-
tions are hesitant to work in Kashmir for
fear of being charged with subversion.
As a result, Kashmir has been left out of
the national agenda.
Our experience in the last three years
of working actively in Kashmir has been
complex and intense. It has been a tight-
rope walk between the hostility of the
state agencies on the one hand and the
lack of trust from Kashmiris, who have
been on the receiving end of several
such fruitless endeavours, on the other.
The fact that Kashmiri society is broken
into groups and factions with the common
person looking out for shadows on a
continual basis has not helped matters
either. Indeed, distrust has become second
nature to Kashmiris. However, it is also
true that once the ice has been broken,
Kashmiris are a warm and hospitable
people full of stories and experiences
about human rights violations, discrimi-
nation and targeting by the state.
Inclusive Platform
Our approach to Kashmir was to rst
establish an inclusive platform by making
it clear that we were not taking sides and
not working for anybody. We let it be
known repeatedly that we did not make
any distinction between groups and that
all persons separatist leaders, main-
stream politicians, students and women
were welcome on our platform to
present their views without hesitation.
This worked well for us and after the
initial suspicion we realised the distrust
was waning and that Kashmiris had
started viewing us as an organisation
that could be trusted. We simultaneously
sought to connect parliamentarians, civil
society, womens organisations, and youth
from the rest of India with the direct
narrative of the Kashmiri people. We
wanted to take to the Valley people who
were not rmly embedded in the national
security discourse and who were willing
to challenge the dominant stereo types of
the Kashmiri as an enemy.
In all the meetings that we organised,
there were surprises for both sides. To cite
one instance, a team comprising Members
of Parliament (MPs) that included D Raja
Seema Mustafa (seemamustafa@gmail.com)
is a senior journalist; Kamal Mitra Chenoy
(kamalchenoy@gmail.com) and Anuradha
Chenoy (chenoy@gmail.com) are with the
School of International Studies, Jawaharlal
Nehru University, New Delhi.
COMMENTARY
23
(CPI), Ram Vilas Paswan (LJP), Moham-
med Salim (CPI(M)) and Nages hwar Rao
(Telugu Desam Party), whom we took to
Srinagar for a three-day interaction with
political leaders, youth, civil society
representatives and women, was all
shocked by what they heard and could not
believe that the injustice and violence
against the people had not been reported
in the national media. For instance,
none of them had heard the term half
widows, which refers to a sizeable
number of Kashmiri women whose hus-
bands have disappeared for years with-
out any security force claiming responsi-
bility for their disappearance. Needless
to say, these women have not received
any closure reports, not to speak of any
compensation whatsoever. Such a wide-
spread phenomenon is unheard of in any
other part of India.
The visiting MPs were also shocked by
the testimony of ofcers and members
of the Kashmir bar council who had
been jailed under the notorious Public
Safety Act (PSA), which was promul-
gated by the Sheikh Mohammed Abdullah
government to check timber smuggling.
Those of us who have some experience
in the Valley know this law is misused
regularly by the security forces to arrest
and detain individuals for harmless
acts. The MPs also met families of
schoolboys who had been dubbed
stone-pelters and shot dead by the
Jammu and Kashmir Police in 2010. It
was heart-rending talking to Tufail Mat-
toos father who remembered his son
leaving for school in the morning and
being brought home hours later as a
corpse. Mattoo informed the MPs that
not a single person from the government
had visited him to offer condolences, let
alone apologies and offer compensation
for his young sons death in police ring.
Incidentally, a Kashmiri woman watch-
ing the events from her rst oor balcony
was also shot dead.
We tried to get our delegates to interact
with as many political actors of the
Valley as possible. The Hurriyat leaders
always responded to our requests warmly,
meeting each delegation and explaining
their point of view. Political blocks in
Kashmir are splintered: the Peoples
Democratic Party has little interaction
with the National Conference; and the
Congress, though aligned with the Na-
tional Conference, does not share all its
policies and opinions. It would not be an
exaggeration to state that the main-
stream parties have become callous and
have lost their lustre, mired as they are
in corruption and nepotism. They re-
main relevant only because they are
viewed as parties of governance. How-
ever, this too is sorely lacking and thus
the increasing dependence on security
forces. The mainstream parties have
failed to mobilise the people through
mass movements and mass campaigns,
further weakening their links with the
people. Not surprisingly, they have be-
come more sceptical about the efcacy
of political parties and their capacity
to deliver. As a result, this vacuum has
been lled by separatists, especially the
Hurriyat Conference that also has a vital
international connection with Pakistan,
which has high stakes in Kashmir.
Role of the Hurriyat
The Hurriyat itself is not a monolith party
but a coalition. Prominent separatist
leaders like Mirwaiz Omar Farooq, Yasin
Malik and the Lone brothers, who do not
advocate armed struggle, are viewed as
moderates and are well-respected in the
Valley. On the other hand, Syed Ali Shah
Geelani is a hardliner who has long
supported Kashmirs integration with
Pakistan though in recent months he
appears to have taken a softer line by
considering the possibility of azadi, i e,
independence from both India and
Pakistan. The separatists are protected
by Indias paramilitary forces and
Jammu and Kashmir Police, which also
monitors their movement, placing them
under house arrest regularly and so
forth. For example, the Mirwaiz was not
allowed to attend Id prayers this year.
Geelani is not allowed to visit a mosque
for Friday prayers. However, the separa-
tists work in their own ways. For example,
some years ago Yasin Malik toured all of
Kashmir to collect signatures in support
of the Hurriyats demands. Since the
Hurriyat and Geelani maintain their links
and contacts with the people, their parti-
cipation in a peace dialogue would be
essential in reducing the severity of the
problems faced by the Kashmiris, not to
speak of squarely dealing with problems
like Article 370 and azadi.
Meeting Geelani is especially important
for opening political interactions with
the Kashmiri people for if the separatists
indicate distrust of any group, they
would nd it difcult to continue their
work. In our meetings with these leaders,
it has been made quite evident that they
wished for more regular contacts with
New Delhi to discuss their concerns to
resolve some of the problems they faced,
including the issues of demilitarisation
and withdrawal of laws like the Armed
Forces (Jammu and Kashmir) Special
Powers Act, 1990 (AFSPA) and PSA. The
moderate Hurriyat factions felt that
contact with the Delhi leaders should be
a sustained and important step. Signi-
cantly, none of the separatist leaders we
met referred to the demand for azadi,
not even Geelani who in his meetings with
political leaders said one of his demands
was for government to recognise Kash-
mir as a dispute and reach a solution
through a dialogue involving Kashmiris
along with India and Pakistan. The com-
mon demands of all Kashmiris are clear-
ly demilitarisation, ending AFSPA, and jus-
tice and compensation for victims of vio-
lence. The missing men should be traced
and if they had been killed by agencies
of the state, compensation should be ac-
companied by justice. The rape of wom-
en and the grief of the half-widows is
one of the major issues of human rights
abuse and injustice. As in all societies
where there have been years of political
violence, women wear the symbols of
identity on their bodies.
In a meeting we held recently in a
Srinagar school whose two students
were amongst those killed during the
2010 police ring, there was collective
outrage. And just to drive home the
point, the only leader the students were
willing to listen to was the 82-year-old
S A Geelani.
Youth, Media and Women Issues
After gaining some experience in build-
ing signicant contacts in the Valley, we
decided to organise a visit to Srinagar of
a large youth delegation to interact with
the young people in Kashmir. While the
COMMENTARY
24
Kashmiri youth were pleasantly surprised
that two busloads of 60 young people
from Delhi as well as guest speakers
empathised with them, the Delhi students
were shocked and horried by what they
heard from their counterparts in Srinagar.
The Kashmiri youth spoke about mal-
governance and economic distress in the
Valley and felt that if more such meetings
took place at regular intervals, the youth
and people of India would have a much
better grasp of the realities Kashmiris
faced ranging from harassment by secu-
rity forces to un warranted detention to
disappearances everyday.
The Kashmiri youth also mentioned
Parliaments lack of response to the reso-
lutions by the Jammu and Kashmir
a ssembly for the promulgation of auto-
nomy and Article 370. They were vehe-
ment in their criticism of happenings
in Kashmir not being reported in the na-
tional media. Interestingly, girl students
were critical about many separatist o rga-
n isations not having women in leader-
ship positions.
The youth delegation from Delhi was
categorical in its support for democratic
rights in Kashmir and against all forms
of repression and corruption. Moreover,
they promised to speak of what they had
heard in the meeting in forums in Delhi
and elsewhere. As a consequence of this
frank and emotional expression of soli-
darity, Kashmiri parti cipants realised
there were a substantial number of I ndians
who shared their sorrow and dismay.
The students wanted a lifting of the ban
on student unions and political activity;
they felt Kashmiris should also have the
same freedom to voice dissent as every-
one else in India.
We also met journalists, including
editors. They told us of the immense
pressure under which they worked, both
from the security forces and on several
occasions the military, who demand that
their version of events be published.
There is a perception in Valley that you
can publish a scathing criticism of the
chief minister but not of an army major.
Advertisements from the government are
also a source of pressure. This demon-
strates the limitations of democracy in
the Valley and the disproportionate in-
uence and sometimes untrammelled
power of the security forces, allowed and
indeed encouraged under the political
vigil of both the state and the centre.
This is a reality known in many inuential
institutions and sources abroad, including
the United Nations, but not in India.
Journalists and editors repeatedly told our
civil society and youth delegations that
when 125 youth were killed in p olice ring,
not even one rst infor mation report
(FIR) was led against any constable.
The Kashmiri youth are not terrorists;
they want their rights and true justice.
Taking representatives from a number
of national womens organisations to a
huge meeting in Srinagar University was
a revealing exercise and a part of our
series of interactions. This delegation
included Subhashini Ali and Farooqi
of the All India Democratic Womens
Association, Jyotsna Chatterji of the Joint
Womens Programme, Laila of the Young
Womens Christian Association, Annie
Raja and Premila Loomba of the National
Federation of Indian Women, Zakia of
the Bharatiya Muslim Women Andolan
and others. The major issues discussed
included the impact of mili tarisation on
women and the multiple aspects of
women living in such an atmosphere of
violence against women; uneasy ques-
tions such as state violence and its rela-
tion to domestic violence and whether
rape by security forces personnel was
equivalent to rape by militants or other
criminals were also raised.
Hameeda Nayeem pointed out that
there had been a proliferation of stake-
holders in Kashmir, and with the Indian
Army also becoming an independent
stakeholder, how political structures had
become subservient to military deci-
sions. She argued that Kashmir is a
model and laboratory for the rest of In-
dia for establishing the supremacy of
the security structure over and above
the democratic structure.
Conclusions
All the meetings resulted in the creation
of joint working groups so that the con-
nections would outlast our visits. Reso-
lutions drawing attention to specic
problems and issues and aspirations of
the Kashmiri people were drafted and
adopted by political parties as well as
the conventions of youth and women
held in both Delhi and Srinagar. The de-
mands, as pointed out earlier, include
demilitarisation, withdrawal of AFSPA,
PSA and other draconian laws as well
as time-barred commissions to inquire
the enforced disappearances and mass
graves, fast track courts to try cases of
rape and molestation and bring speedy
justice for the victims, return and reha-
bilitation of Kashmiri Hindu pundits,
with the demand for justice and rights
being made central to our initiative and
efforts in the Valley.
Our work has shown that the Kashmir
Valley and its people are subjects of
multiple militarisations that coexist as a
series of transformations take place.
First is the physical overwhelming pres-
ence of the military in all public and in-
stitutional spaces it has captured. Huge
cantonments, barbed wires, sandbags and
barriers are the boundaries between
people, institutions and the rest of India.
Second is the political inuence of the
military that has the power to say No
when elected representatives ask for the
withdrawal of the AFSPA or other draco-
nian law. Third is the militarisation of
the civilian mindset and ideology of the
political class that accepts this militari-
sation and has not taken creative steps
to challenge it. Fourth is the intersection
between militarisation and patriarchy
where women are stereotyped and are
a tool in both nationalist and identity
politics and victims of this ideo logy.
Fifth is militancy, which is a militarised
response from Pakistan as well as various
non-state actors who continue to threaten
people and institutions like panchayats.
Sixth is the new form of militarisation
where human rights abuse is a substitute
Appointments/Programmes/
Announcemnents
For the convenience of readers and advertisers,
al l adver ti sement s on appoi ntment s,
programmes, call for papers etc are now
placed together at the end of each issue
every week.
This section is also listed in the Contents page
Advertisements for books are published as
before in the Book Review section.
COMMENTARY
25
for oppression, and human rights defend-
ers are targeted. In sum, when Kashmiris
talk of demilitarisation, they want
freedom from this multiple and com-
bined militarisation.
We see our work in Kashmir at two
levels. One, to share their problems and
suffering and jointly condemn the atroc-
ities and violence that have affected
almost every household in the Valley
and through this solidarity establish
links with civil society and political
groups in Delhi and other states of India.
Two, to help create a level playing eld
for Kashmiris where their problems and
aspirations are recognised by Indias
Parliament and media so that a solution,
as and when it comes, is just and peace-
ful. The rst signicant step by civil
society representatives to help change
the situation in Kashmir is to build soli-
darity with Kashmiris, truthfully report
what is happening in the Valley, and
build enough links with Indian civil
society to create a democratic and ac-
countable space for the people in the
Kashmir Valley.
Postscript
Questions are always raised about the
source of funds for groups (such as
ours) working in Kashmir. This is done
at the behest of agencies and parties
who do not want a rapport to develop
and grow between civil societies of
Delhi and Srinagar. Ironically, the same
groups are begging for foreign direct
investment in every sector of the economy,
wanting to import more and more
weapons, and yet raising questions
about the small funding used for raising
issues that concern ordinary people.
Nonetheless, to make it clear, the
Centre for Policy Analysis (CPA) through
which we are doing this work has no
foreign funding but we do work with or-
ganisations that have open, accountable
foreign funding.

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january 12, 2013 vol xlviIi no 2 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

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