35 - Oct 08

LETTERS
Issn 0012-9976
Ever since the first issue in 1966,
EPW has been Indias premier journal for
comment on current affairs
and research in the social sciences.
It succeeded Economic Weekly (19491965),
which was launched and shepherded
by Sachin Chaudhuri,
who was also the founder-editor of EPW.
As editor for 35 years (19692004)
Krishna Raj
gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys.
editor
Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

EXECUTIVE Editor
Lina Mathias
Deputy Editor
Bernard DMello
copy editors
Prabha Pillai
jyoti shetty
Assistant editorS
P S Leela
SANGEETA GHOSH
lubna duggal
ABHISHEK SHAW
ASSISTANT Editor (DIGITAL)
SHIREEN AZAM
production
u raghunathan
s lesline corera
suneethi nair
Circulation MANAGER
B S Sharma
Advertisement Manager
Kamal G Fanibanda
General Manager
Gauraang Pradhan
Publisher
K Vijayakumar
editorial
edit@epw.in
Circulation
circulation@epw.in
Advertising
advertisement@epw.in
Economic and Political Weekly

320321, A to Z Industrial Estate
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel
Mumbai 400 013
Phone: (022) 4063 8282
FAX: (022) 2493 4515
EPW Research Foundation

EPW Research Foundation, established in 1993, conducts
research on financial and macro-economic issues in India.
Director
J DENNIS RAJAKUMAR
C 212, Akurli Industrial Estate
Kandivali (East), Mumbai 400 101
Phones: (022) 2887 3038/41
Fax: (022) 2887 3038
epwrf@epwrf.in
Printed by K Vijayakumar at Modern Arts and Industries,
151, A-Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai-400 013 and
published by him on behalf of Sameeksha Trust
from 320321, A-Z Industrial Estate,
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai-400 013.
Editor: Paranjoy Guha Thakurta.
Fabricated Claims
Over 70 United Kingdom and Europebased scholars concerned with South Asia
have written to the Vice Chancellor of the
Central University of Haryana (CUH).
e, the undersigned, strongly condemn the attack on faculty members and students of the Department of
English and Foreign Languages at CUH by
members of the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi
Parishad (ABVP) for the performance of
a play on 21 September 2016. The play was
based on a short story by the eminent
Bengali writer Mahasweta Devi. We understand that the staff and students involved in the performance had sought
and received all the necessary permissions for the event, which was organised
to commemorate the literary achievements of Mahasweta Devi, the recipient
of some of the most prestigious Indian
and international awards.
We write to express our serious concern
over this attack on the freedom of academic expression of the staff and students
at your university. Mahasweta Devis
story Draupadi was written in 1971 and
represents her creative expression of the
exploitation of Indias tribal people. It is
regularly taught as part of course syllabi
all over India and the world, including
at the universities of some of the signatories to this letter. The claim by the
ABVP and the local press that the play is
an attack on Indian soldiers is manifestly fabricated. As one of the faculty members involved in the production, Snehsata, has explained, students and teachers
saw the programme as an academic and
creative pursuit and their intention was
certainly not to hurt the sentiments of
soldiers as the ABVP has claimed: In this
event, I read the epilogue of the play recounting the data about atrocities on
tribal people, especially sexual crimes
against women by the Indian army.
How ordinary soldiers are used by the
state as a tool against its own people
and how the body, especially the female
body, becomes the site of revenge in the
hands of Indian soldiers by the same
state. All the teachers and students
who were present there came up and
congratulated us.
We stand in solidarity with the courageous faculty members and students

who performed the play and strongly oppose the sedition charges being brought
on them. The university should be a
place for the free expression of ideas,
and thoughts; it should create space for
dialogue and debate, and even disagreement. It is therefore further regrettable
that the university caved in to political
pressure and has instituted an inquiry into
a matter that it had previously approved.
We appeal to you and other involved
authorities to stand in support of your
members of faculty and students who are
courageously promoting the importance
of literature and art in education.
Rashmi Varma, University of Warwick,
Kalpana Wilson, Birkbeck University,
Subir Sinha, School of Oriental and African
Studies, London,
Pritam Singh, Oxford Brookes University,
Gilbert Achcar, Nadje Al-Ali, SOAS, University
of London, and others
Power to Dalits through

Self-help Groups
fter reading the article Women Break

Hierarchies, Walk to Freedom by
Swapna Majumdar (EPW, 1 October 2016),
I am shocked that, as recently as 14 August
2016, Dalits were being discriminated
by the so-called higher castes in Uttar
Pradesh. I have heard and read of Dalits
not being allowed to enter temples earlier
but this incident is different as Dalits
have to take off their footwear while
passing by the houses of the upper castes.
According to the article, over 300
women from marginalised communities
in the villages of Jhansi district came
together to celebrate their freedom from
the tyranny of an age-old social custom
requiring them to take off their footwear
while passing the houses of the upper
castes. On Independence Day, by wearing their footwear in doing so, the women
reaffirmed not just their liberation from
this humiliating custom, but also underlined their power of self-determination
and collectivisation.
The women could do this because
they all were under the umbrella of
self-help groups (SHGs), so kudos to SHGs,
as they are not only meant for economic
October 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
Economic & Political Weekly
LETTERS
development of below poverty line (BPL)

households, but also for empowerment.
Further, according to the article, the 24
SHGs were formed with 300 women,
mostly marginalised, and the subsequent
federation of the SHGs empowered everyone. This is undoubtedly a positive sign.
More and more SHGs should be formed by
the marginalised and Dalit women of the
state so that they can express their defiance to the so-called upper-caste people.
Without any bloodshed, Dalits and the
marginalised could lead to a social change
in the area. Of course, the leaders of the
state have always had a feudal attitude.
Perhaps this is the reason that the police
and administration could not take any
measures. However, this example should
be emulated in other areas of the state as
well as in the country so that marginalised
persons are empowered.
Shankar Chatterjee
Professor & Head (CPME), NIRD &PR,
Hyderabad
Omitting Tamil Literature
n the book review On the Origin and

Progress of the Novel by Bhoomika
Meiling (EPW, 24 September 2016) of
Understanding the Novel: A Theoretical
Oveview by Albeena Shakil, Meiling mentions novels in Bengali, Marathi, Hindi,
Malayalam, English and Urdu. However,
she fails to mention Tamil, which has a
tradition of literature longer than other
Indian languages. While earlier much
of literature was in poetic form, the
novel made its appearance quite early in
Tamil. Prathapa Mudiliar Charitram
was the first novel in Tamil written in
1857 by Samuel Vedanayagam Pillai and
published in 1879.
Maithreyi Krishnaraj
According to the National Human

Rights Commission (NHRC) on the Prevention of Atrocities against Scheduled Castes,
2010, a crime is committed against a Dalit
every 18 minutes. It goes on to detail the
percentages of sexual crimes against
Dalit women, the poor state of health of
the children, the humiliation in government schools and the denial to water
sources in our villages.
With a view to prohibiting employment
of manual scavengers, the Government
of India enacted the Employment of
Manual Scavengers and Construction of
Dry Latrines (Prohibition) Act, 1993 followed by the Prohibition of Employment
as Manual Scavengers and Their Rehabilitation Act, 2013. But, despite enactment
of all such acts, manual scavenging is still
a reality in various parts of the country.
We have unashamedly doomed Dalits to
clean our gutters, our garbage and our
sewers. More than three lakh sanitation
workers, all Dalits, are manually cleaning
filth and human waste. They are working
in horrible conditions under a contract
system that is in effect a bloodsucker.
Surveys reveal that 90% of Indias sanitation workers die before they turn 60 after
contracting various infectious diseases.
Mahatma Gandhi pointed out that
Swaraj (independence) is a meaningless
term if we desire to keep a fifth of India
(untouchables) under perpetual subjection, and deliberately deny to them the
fruits of national culture. Beware the
fury of the patient man, John Dryden
had warned 300 years ago. Perhaps we
should modifty that to Beware the fury
of the patient and long-suffering people.
better health facilities for patients. The

unique joint initiative of the workers and
some doctors ultimately led to the establishment of the Sramajibi Hospital at Belur
in 1994. It was the abandoned office
house of the sister concern of IJSL that was
transformed into Sramajibi Hospital.
The organisers still remember the parallel
health venture initiated by Shankar Guha
Niyogi in Chhattisgarh.
Though the IJSL liquidated in the
second half of the 1990s, making the fate
of about 800 workers and their families
uncertain, and there was police assault
on the hospital staff and patients in
an eviction drive, the hospital survived
through a legal battle. The patients who
cannot afford private medical treatment
come to Sramajibi Hospital for treatment
at a much lesser cost.
The Sramajibi Hospital at Belur has now
grown into a 100-bed hospital. A modest
outdoor service launched in Serampore
in the adjacent Hooghly district by the
BSSPS has now reportedly been transformed into a 150-bed hospital, with 47
doctors and 200 support staff working
in these two hospitals.
It is reported that the joint initiative of
the workers and doctors is now aimed at
building a large third hospital on 33 acres
of land near Santiniketan in the Birbhum
district. It is quite remarkable that about
100 ex-workers of IJSL are still associated
with the BSSPS, which started its journey
more than three decades ago.
(Current information about Sramajibi
Hospital is taken from Bibhas Bhattacharyyas article in Hindustan Times,
11 September 2016.)
Jaydev Jana
Arup Kumar Sen
KOLKATA
KOLKATA
Sramajibi Hospital
I Stand Corrected
Bengaluru
Beware the Dalit Fury
his is with reference to the article,

Everyday Dalit Experiences of Living
and the Denials by Sitaram Kumbhar
(EPW, 27 August 2016). The country is
marching from feudalism to postmodernism, yet the practice of untouchability,
like poison, is slowly eating into the very
vitals of Indian culture.
EPW
October 8, 2016
nce upon a time, there was a steel

manufacturing company, IndoJapan
Steels Limited (IJSL), at Belur in Howrah
district, West Bengal. The workers of the
factory felt the urgent need for a health
centre and formed their own organisation, Belur Sramajibi Swasthya Prakalpa
Samity (BSSPS) in 1983. The establishment of the organisation converged with
the junior doctors movement in the city
of Kolkata in the early 1980s, demanding
vol lI no 41
am grateful to Amiya K Bagchi for

pointing out a few errors that crept
into my article The Heart Has Its
Reasons: A Story Untold (EPW, 20 August
2016). It was put together from a number
of conversations with me. Unfortunately,
the final text could not be checked since
I was gravely ill at that time. This is the
primary reason for the factual errors.
Ashok Mitra
KOLKATA
LETTERS
New Subscription Rates
Print Edition For India
Web Edition/Digital Archives
Rates for Six Months (in Rs)

Category
Individuals
Print (Plus free web access to issues of previous two years)

1,350
Print + Digital Archives

1,650
Rates for One Year (in Rs)

Category
The full content of the EPW and the entire archives are also available to those who do not wish
to subscribe to the print edition.
India (in Rs)
Category
Print (Plus free web access

to issues of previous two years)

(According to Number of Concurrent Users)
Up to 5
More than 5
7,000
11,000
Institutions
Single User
Institutions
4,200
Individuals
2,200
2,500
Students
1,300
1,500
SAARC (in US $)
Number of
Concurrent Users
Individuals
Rest of the World (in US $)
Number of
Concurrent Users
Number of
Concurrent Users
Up to Five
3,650
Up to Five
190
More than 5
8,500
More than 5
55
More than 5
400
Single User
1,400
Single User
20
Single User
35
Rates for Three Years (in Rs)

Category
Print (Plus free web access to

issues of previous two years)

Single User
Individuals
6,300
7,200
Print Edition: All subscribers to the print edition can download from the web, without making
any extra payment, articles published in the previous two calendar years.
Print plus Digital Archives: Subscriber receives the print copy and has access to the entire archives
on the EPW web site.
Print Edition For SAARC and Rest of the World (Air Mail)
(According to Number of Concurrent Users)
Up to 5
155
345
More than 5
185
645
395
To know more about online access to the archives and how to access the archives send
us an email at circulation@epw.in and we will be pleased to explain the process.
How to Subscribe:
Payment can be made by either sending a demand draft/cheque in favour of
Economic and Political Weekly or by making online payment with a credit card/net
Airmail Subscription for One Year (in US $)
Institutions
SAARC
Rest of the World
Individuals
SAARC
Rest of the World
Individual subscribers can access the site by a username and a password, while
institutional subscribers get access by specifying IP ranges.
Concessional rates are restricted to students in India. To subscribe at concessional rates,

please submit proof of eligibility from an institution.
Print (Plus free web access to issues

of previous two years)
Types of Web Access to the Digital Archives
Single User
135
205
145
225
banking on our secure site at www.epw.in.

Address for communication:
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate,
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013, India
Notes for Contributors

Contributors are requested to follow EPW's style
sheet while preparing their articles. The style
sheet is posted on EPW's website at
http://www.epw.in/terms-policy/style-sheet.html.
It will help immensely for faster processing and
error-free editing if writers follow the recommended
style sheet, especially with regard to citation and
preparation of the bibliography.
Special Articles
EPW welcomes original research papers in any of the
social sciences.
Articles must be no more than 8,000 words
long, including notes and references. Longer articles
will not be processed.
Contributions should be sent preferably by email.
Special articles should be accompanied by an
abstract of a maximum of 200 words.
Papers should not have been simultaneously
submitted for publication to another journal or
newspaper. If the paper has appeared earlier in a
different version, we would appreciate a copy of
this along with the submitted paper.
Graphs and charts need to be prepared
in MS Office (Word/Excel) and not in jpeg or
other formats.
Receipt of articles will be immediately
acknowledged by email.
Every effort is taken to complete early processing
of the papers we receive. However, we receive 70
articles every week and adequate time has to be
provided for internal reading and external refereeing.
It can therefore take up to four months for a final
decision on whether the paper for the Special Article
section is accepted for publication.
Articles accepted for publication can take up to

six to eight months from date of acceptance to
appear in the EPW. Papers with immediate relevance
for policy would be considered for early publication.
Please note that this is a matter of editorial judgment.
General Guidelines
invites short contributions to the Commentary

section on topical social, economic and political
developments. These should ideally be between 1,000
and 2,500 words.
A decision on Commentary-length articles will be
communicated within 6-8 weeks, or earlier.
Writers are requested to provide full details for

correspondence: postal address, day-time phone
numbers and email address.
EPW requests writers not to send revised versions
based on stylistic changes/additions, deletions of
references, minor changes, etc, as this poses
challenges in processing. Revised versions will not be
processed. When there are major developments in
the field of study after the first submission, authors
can send a revised version.
Keywords
Copyright
Commentary
EPW
Authors are requested to list six to eight keywords

for their articles.
Book Reviews
sends out books for review. It does not normally
accept unsolicited reviews. However, all reviews that
are received are read with interest and unsolicited
review on occasion is considered for publication.
EPW
Discussion
EPW posts all published articles on its website

and may reproduce them on CDs.
EPW also posts all published articles on select
databases.
Copyright of all articles published in the Journal
belongs to the author or to the organisation where
the author is employed as determined by the
authors terms of employment.
EPW
Permission for Reproduction
Letters
No published article or part thereof should be

reproduced in any form without prior permission of
the author(s).
A soft/hard copy of the author(s)s approval should
be sent to EPW.
Address for communication:
encourages researchers to comment on

articles published in EPW. Submissions should be 800
to 1,600 words.
Readers of EPW are encouraged to comment
(300 words) on published articles.
All letters should have the writers full
name and postal address.
Postscript
welcomes submissions of 600-800 words on
travel, literature, dance, music and films for
publication in this section.
EPW

320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate
Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013, India
Email: edit@epw.in, epw.mumbai@gmail.com
October 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
october 8, 2016
Tale of Indias War on Terror

Claiming the military prowess of a great power, Indias self-styled patriots are having a field day.
nited States (US) Secretary of State John Kerry had

cautioned New Delhi against any Washington-style war
on terror adventurism. Despite this, Washingtons junior
partner presumably went ahead with its so-called surgical strikes
targeting terror launch pads in the Pakistan-administered
part of Kashmir. We say presumably because both Islamabad
and the United Nations (UN), despite what would be New
Delhis blatant violation of international law if it did carry
out the surgical strikes, suggest that nothing of the kind
happened. If indeed the surgical strikes were a hoax, merely
for the consumption of self-styled patriots who needed to be
convinced of the prowess of (what they imagine) the great
power in the making, so be it. These patriots, especially
those in the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the commercial
media, went to town about how New Delhi has finally discarded
the shackles of strategic restraint and called the bluff of
Pakistani nuclear blackmail.
Indeed, Defence Minister Manohar Parrikar, a prominent BJP
leader from Goa, even likened the Indian armed forces to Hanuman, the mythical monkey-god in the Hindu epic Ramayana, who
on being reminded of his prowess, instantly strode across the
ocean to teach Ravana, the rakshasa (demon) king of Lanka, a
lesson. And, presumably, like Ravana, the military top-brass of
Pakistan, Parrikar claimed, have been left bewildered,
unable to react. He, of course, went on to threaten that if and
when Pakistan persists with its sponsorship of terrorism, we
will give them a befitting reply again.
Let us for the moment take New Delhis surgical strikes
claim at face value. It is unlikely that Washington, New Delhis
global strategic partner, gave its consent, tacitly at least, to
such adventurism which could have led to an escalation of
IndoPak hostility resulting in an all-out war. We do not think
that Washington endorsed the surgical strikes, dependent
as it is on Islamabad for militarylogistical support for its war
in and occupation of Afghanistan. Officials of the Obama
administration have been predictably evasive, repeating their
calls for mutual restraint, dialogue, and calling upon Pakistan
to do more to prevent cross-border terrorism. Reports in the
media suggest that hours before the 2829 September surgical
strikes, Kerry conferred with Indian External Affairs Minister
Sushma Swaraj over the phone, and so too did the US National
EPW
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
Security Advisor Susan Rice with her Indian counterpart,

Ajit Doval.
It could be that New Delhi did not want Washington to learn
about the surgical strikes from Islamabad and so Washington
was informed about them in advance. And New Delhi knew
that despite such advance intimation, it would have been hypocritical for Washington to object, for New Delhi was following
in Washingtons footsteps in the war on terror, if not exactly
carrying out surgical strikes of the kind that assassinated
Osama bin Laden, and then, Mullah Akhtar Mohammad
Mansour, the Emir of the Taliban, in May this year in Pakistan.
Indeed, Jonah Blank, a foreign policy specialist on the Indian
subcontinent with the Rand Corporation has said this in so
many words; reportedly, Doval pleaded with Rice to prevail
upon Pakistan to refrain from reacting with a counter-strike.
Thus there was never much likelihood that the US would condemn the attack (the surgical strikes), for any such criticism of India for a cross-border action would have seemed
hypocritical, as Blank put it.
Just a few days earlier, at the BJPs national council meeting
in Kozhikode, Prime Minister Narendra Modi exhorted the
Pakistani people to grill their leaders, saying that he wants
the two countries to wage war on poverty, ... on infant mortality
and maternal mortality rates ... and see who wins. Yet on
23 September, just a few days prior to such pontificating from
the pulpit, Parrikar and his French counterpart Jean-Yves Le
Drian inked the Rafale deal for 7.75 billion in favour of
Dassault Aviation, stressing the fact that the Rafale fighter
aircraft are also capable of carrying out nuclear strikes. How
shockingly indecent can one get, crowing about the fact that the
induction of the Rafales will provide India with enhanced capabilities to conduct nuclear strikes against Pakistan (and China),
in effect, threatening the Pakistani people with nuclear destruction, and then calling upon them to expose their own leaders,
to prevail upon these leaders to give up the fight in the arms
race that India has been escalating, and instead improve
human development indicators.
Pakistan has appealed to the UN to intervene, and the UN General Secretary Ban Ki-moon has offered mediation, but India is
afraid of third-party intervention in the conflict over Kashmir.
India, of course, in the immediate aftermath of the terrorist
7
EDITORIALS
attack on its military base at Uri on 18 September, without even

a cursory investigation, blamed Pakistan, and in the venomous
atmosphere that has been engineered, Pakistani actors in Bollywood have been threatened. When the popular Indian actor
Salman Khan defended these artists saying that they are just
artists and not terrorists, he was told to migrate to Pakistan.
Hindutvavadi communal patriotism, typical of this brand of

rabid nationalism, is having a field day. Like the post-Tagorean
Bangla poet Samar Sen had quipped in the 1960s, we too are
induced to alter Samuel Johnsons quotable quote to say that
patriotism is the first (not the last, as Johnson had put it)
refuge of a scoundrel.
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
EDITORIALS
An Unwanted Past
There are clear signs that India prefers BRICS to SAARC.
ust a fortnight before it was due to host a summit that

represents its ostensible coming of age on the global stage,
India pulled out of an event that for it was the detritus of
an unwanted past. The BRICS grouping (Brazil, Russia, India,
China and South Africa) is Indias bold effort in league with
like-minded countries, to step up to the world stage and bridge
the power deficits emerging in the transition from a unipolar
architecture. That clearly is where India wants to be, the kind of
company it wants to keep. The West represents the apex of power
aspirations, but Brazil, Russia, China and South Africawhich
with India make up the BRICS groupingare good company to
keep, while awaiting a permanent place at the high table.
The last place India wants to be is in a neighbourhood group
where its aspirations for regional hegemony are constantly
challenged by smaller countries, where even the internal concord essential to projecting external strength continually eludes
it. Indias disdain for the South Asian Association for Regional
Cooperation (SAARC) and its embrace of new global fraternities
of chosen nations is part of an effort to forge a new future by
transcending geography. Pakistans status as host was partly the
trigger for Indias withdrawal from the SAARC summit scheduled for November. It was a form of messaging that the conclave
would be pointless when India was in a state of undeclared war
against another member state.
In its 31-year career, SAARC has held 18 summit level meetings, on average, one every 21 months. This does not speak of a
spirit of great neighbourly cordiality since the SAARC charter
commits member states to annual summits. Every past cancellation of a summit has occurred at Indias instance, except for one
occasion when Bangladesh chose to play the spoiler.
Even as it steps onto the world stage as an assertive and entitled
player, several unfinished tasks remain in Indias neighbourhood.
Many of these are a legacy of colonial history and have eluded a
resolution for close to seven decades of Indian independence.
By virtue of size and location, India should be the political and
economic fulcrum of the region, but the divisions with neighbours, born out of contentious recent history, run deep.
If SAARC is widely regarded as the most ineffective of regional
economic groupings, the reasons have a great deal to do with
Indias visible lack of enthusiasm for it. India made its scepticism clear from the very early days when SAARC was a distant
glimmer in the eyes of regional statesmen. Precisely because of
its centrality within the political geography of the region, India
8
feared that a regional grouping could become little more than

a forum for all neighbouring countries to ventilate bilateral
grievances. A South Asian grouping was a call to great political
responsibility for which India was unprepared.
Former Indian foreign secretary J N Dixit, who spent a large
part of his diplomatic career in South Asian posts and was a major
player in the regional power architecture, has recalled in a
memoir that India only consented to SAARCs formation because
the cost of not doing so was to be seen as hegemonic and uncooperative. SAARC held its first summit meeting in 1985, with the
specific understanding, written into its charter at Indias insistence
that it would not deal with any issue of a bilateral character.
This, in effect, neutralised much of the potential of the regional
grouping because South Asias political geography makes every
issue, except the most anodyne, bilateral in nature, with India
occupying one pole and the other countries by turn, the other.
The very first SAARC summit at Dhaka in December 1985
agreed on setting up study groups on terrorism and drug
trafficking. Considering how the United Nations has struggled
since long to arrive at a consensus definition on terrorism,
SAARC was stepping into territory where agreement was a remote
possibility. Expectedly, terrorism has become a stick ever since
for the members to beat each other, rather than engage constructively. Issues of human rights have rarely come up at SAARC
meetings, though a recent summit did raise food security to a
high priority. Where common perceptions are possible because
of shared geographical features, such as South Asias mountains
and rivers, resource competition has impeded action, even at
the risk of irreparable ecological damage.
The difficulties of squaring ecological imperatives with contingent security calculations are evident in the matter of the
Siachen Glacier, now over three decades under Indian military
possession. An evacuation, it is widely believed, would serve a
vital ecological purpose and also spare the armed forces of
India and Pakistan undue budgetary stringencies and physical
hazards. India has made a security calculation that an evacuation
from Siachen would enable a strategic Chinese link-up between
the Aksai Chin regionformally ceded to it by Pakistanand the
provinces of Gilgit and Baltistan, which it believes Pakistan has
occupied illegally. That this prickly security perception does not
preclude an active engagement with China, both bilaterally and
on the BRICS platform, makes it an irony of Indias current world
power aspirations.
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENT
Crisis of Credibility
Should the Supreme Court be involved in interstate river disputes?
Alok Prasanna Kumar writes:
he Karnataka governments defiance of the Supreme Courts

orders of 20, 27 and 30 September, directing it to release
water to Tamil Nadu, was a direct challenge to the authority
of the highest court in the country. Faced with such open and wilful
disobedience, the Supreme Court did not take any steps to have
its orders enforced. It allowed the Karnataka government to escape the consequences of deliberately disobeying the Courts orders
thrice. These events suggest that the Courts authority and credibility have been seriously undermined by the constitutional authorities which are bound to follow its every order. The Court
itself has played no small role in this unfortunate turn of events.
Far from reacting to the defiance of two consecutive orders
directing release of water to Tamil Nadu and finding a way to
implement the orders, the Court chose to ignore the defiance.
On the third occasion, the Karnataka government refused to comply
with the direction of the Court, releasing the water in a manner
and time of its choosing. Even the Courts direction to the union
government to set up a Cauvery Management Board to avoid such
problems in the future is now facing resistance from the centre
on the ground that the Court has no authority to issue such directions against the provisions of the Interstate River Water Disputes Act, 1956. This U-turn by the union government has put
the Court in a bind that it will have to try and come out of this
without further damage to its already-battered credibility.
Each of the orders does not indicate how much water Karnataka should release but instead states for how many days water
must be released at a certain rate of flow. The quantity of water,
in the context of reservoir storage, is usually measured in thousand million cubic feet (tmcft) whereas the rate of flow is measured in cubic feet per second (cusec). The Court does not seem
to have appreciated this difference. This has meant the Court
has ordered completely arbitrary amounts of water to be released
ranging between 12.96 tmcft on 5 September and 1.03 tmcft on
27 September and somehow expecting these amounts would be
adjusted with Tamil Nadus ultimate entitlement without
actually being aware of the amounts it has directed to be released.
While the orders themselves reproduce arguments and extracts
of other documents in detail, they do not actually mention why
a certain quantity is being directed to be released.
EPW
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
These widely divergent orders take little note of the actual

drinking water requirements as put forth by Karnataka or
attempt to understand the situation on the ground. It is only
when faced with Karnatakas stubborn defiance that the Court
has made a belated attempt on 4 October to send a special team
to assess the actual quantities of water in the reservoirs and the
needs of Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. This is a clear case of the
failure of the judicial process. In rushing to pass orders when
the matter required careful deliberation and assessment, the
Court has needlessly put itself into a difficult position. Even the
order passed on 4 October directing Karnataka to release
2,000 cusecs for 12 days (2.073 tmcft) gives no indication why
Karnatakas assertion that only 1,500 cusecs over 10 days
(1.296 tmcft) can be released, should be ignored.
All this begs a question: should the Court even be hearing
cases related to an interstate river water dispute given that the
resolution is almost always a political settlement and not a legal
one? Article 262 of the Constitution, insofar as it allows Parliament to deprive the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction to hear
such cases, is far from clear. As lawyers such as Harish Salve
have pointed out, it does not go far enough in totally depriving
the Supreme Court of its jurisdiction to hear such disputes. The
Act of 1956 has no provision relating to appeals and this silence
has meant that Karnataka has made a plausible claim by arguing that appeals against the final order of the Cauvery Water
Disputes Tribunal under Article 136 are maintainable.
Pragmatically, political solutions to interstate river disputes
are not always readily forthcoming. As the long saga over the
SutlejYamuna Link Canal shows, even political solutions are not
permanent and inevitably find their way to the courts for resolution.
One or the other aggrieved party will attempt a judicial solution
to the problem and thereby test the Supreme Courts institutional
capacity. How it responds to such challenges and if it can find
effective ways of resolving the dispute is a test of the Courts
capability and credibility. The Courts response and approach in
the Cauvery dispute have seriously called both these into question.
Alok Prasanna Kumar (alok.prasanna@vidhilegalpolicy.in) is visiting
fellow at Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, New Delhi.
COMMENT
From 50 Years Ago
Vol I, No 8
OCTOBER 8, 1966
WEEKLY NOTES
Concern for the Public

The Fair Trade Practices Association auspiciously launched on Gandhi Jayanti day by a group of
30 businessmen in Bombay is significant, not so
much for the benefits it promises to consumers,
but for the change it denotes in the views of a
section of the business community about its own
EPW
october 8, 2016
political role. Since the objective was to get at

the economic plums through the Congress, effort
was directed mainly to gaining influence within
the Congress by a judicious strategy of material
support to the party and infiltration of the Government and the partys highest councils.
This did not call for image-building among
the general public. On the contrary, it was good
to keep out of the limelight, leaving the Congress to function as a sort of front organisation
to beguile the people with talk of socialism and
social justice. Hence the curious spectacle of the
most influential sections of the press, owned by
some of the biggest business groups, giving
generous publicity to the programmes of the
vol lI no 41
Congress, even though these were often contrary to the interests of private business.
There is more than one reason, therefore,
for the change of strategy by the business
community. Partly the objective is no doubt to
bargain better with the Congress, but partly it is
also to cut loose from the Congress and come
out in the open. The moment is opportune. The
food shortage, the inflation and the growing unemployment after three Plans have brought
planning into disrepute and the educated middle classes at any rate are more willing now
than perhaps at any time in the recent past to
give a hearing to the private sector. This is the
time for image-building.
COMMENTARY
The Cauvery Water Dispute

Need for a Rethink
S Janakarajan
The long-standing Cauvery River

water dispute between Tamil
Nadu and Karnataka continues to
be contentious and has recently
led to violent outbursts in both
states. The cumulative bitterness
and misunderstandings between
the people of the two states hide
the common needs of farmers and
the environment on both sides of
the border. These are the issues
that need to be urgently addressed
even as mechanisms to take the
discussion of water-sharing away
from politics and politicians, such
as the Cauvery Management
Board, are put into place.
S Janakarajan (janak@mids.ac.in) is a
consultant with the Madras Institute of
Development Studies and president of
SaciWATERs.
10
he events that occurred during the

first half of September 2016, following the Supreme Courts directive
to Karnataka to release water to Tamil
Nadu, were shocking. Forty luxury buses
were burnt in one depot in Bengaluru,
two people were killed in police firing
and a young boy committed suicide by
self-immolation in Tamil Nadu. The damage to property is reportedly valued at
`25,000 crore.
This is not the first time such scenes
were seen in Karnataka. Almost the same
or even worse incidents occurred when
the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal
announced its interim award in 1991,
allocating 205 tmcft (thousand million
cubic feet) of water to Tamil Nadu. At that
time, 17 people were killed and crores of
rupees worth of property belonging to
the Tamil population in Karnataka was
damaged. Lakhs of Tamils had to flee
the state.
In 200203, following the Supreme
Courts directive to the Karnataka government to release at least 0.8 tmcft of
water to Tamil Nadu, similar violence
took place. The events almost led to a constitutional crisis, unprecedented in the
history of any interstate water dispute in
India. Thanks to the strong words of the
Supreme Court, the then Chief Minister
of Karnataka, S M Krishna, not only tendered an unconditional apology for having disregarded the Supreme Courts directives, but also ordered the release of
water. However, the situation following
the release of water was quite grim in
Karnataka. Violent protests by farmers
had caused enormous damage to public
property, compelling the Karnataka government to impose curfew in Mandya.
A series of pertinent questions arise
following the latest flare-up on the
Cauvery issue. Who is responsible for
this distressing state of affairs? Is it the
Cauvery farmers/water users? They

have flatly denied it and I believe them.
No farmer would indulge in activities
like burning 40 buses. Are political
parties responsible? They deny it. Then
who else? Apparently, the violence was
almost entirely organised by people
who have nothing to do with farming or
Cauvery water. It is reported that a
small Kannada chauvinist group, backed
by vested interests and represented by
almost all political parties, is responsible
for the damage.
The River Cauvery
The Cauvery River is considered one of
the most disputed and litigious rivers
in contemporary India. Whenever the
monsoons fail, conflict between the two
major riparian states explodes. Indeed,
it was one such explosive situation (in
2003) that prompted the Supreme Court
and the Government of India to consider
seriously the possibility of linking the
Himalayan rivers with those in peninsular
India as a measure to link water-surplus
regions with water-deficit regions.
The Cauvery River is one of the most
important rivers in India. This is an
interstate river that runs a total distance
of 802 kilometre (km) passing through
Kerala, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and the
union territory of Puducherry. The total
drainage area of the basin is 81,155 km2
and it receives rainfall from both the
southwest (JuneSeptember) and the
northeast (OctoberDecember) monsoons
in the ratio of 3:7. The total annual average rainfall in the basin varies from 1,000
to 1,400 millimetre (mm). Floods and
cyclones always accompany the northeast monsoon accounting for about 70%
of the rainfall. Therefore, it destroys
more than it contributes to the welfare
of farmers in Tamil Nadu.
The Cauvery water dispute between
the riparian states is quite different from
other interstate water disputes such as
Krishna, Godavari or Narmada. In the
case of the latter, the disputes revolve
around the utilisation of untapped
potential. In the Cauvery dispute, the
issue is of resharing the already utilised
water. This is unique in the sense that in
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
this river the available water potential

has already been over-utilised. Therefore, the Cauvery water dispute should
not and cannot be compared with other
interstate water disputes.
The key issue is whether it is possible
to protect the already developed irrigation potential. For instance, Karnatakas
irrigation development was slow in the
early part of the century but became
rapid in the late 1970s. It was 1.24 lakh
hectares in 1901, 2.73 lakh hectares in
1971 and 4.53 lakh hectares in 1990.
Currently, it is reported to be close to
10 lakh hectares. Tamil Nadus irrigation
command, was already 5.77 lakh hectares in 1901. It progressed to 9.18 lakh
hectares in 1990 but is currently only
about 8 lakh hectares. Karnataka legitimises its massive irrigation expansion
by pointing to the historical injustice
meted out to it by being denied its rightful
share in the Cauvery waters for centuries.
Being a lower riparian state, Tamil Nadu
feels that it is at the receiving endboth
literally and metaphoricallyand that
it has to bear the main brunt of floods,
drought, and pollution.
In both states, food production and
livelihoods for millions depend heavily
on the availability of water in the Krishna
Raja Sagara (KRS) dam in Karnataka and
the Mettur dam in Tamil Nadu. While
Tamil Nadu finds itself at the mercy and
goodwill of Karnataka during a deficit
year, Karnataka feels that it cannot release
water when there is none for its farmers.
Tamil Nadu argues that the water released from Karnataka reservoirs is not
charity. It fulfils the well-established
rights of people of Tamil Nadu spanning
thousands of years. Consequently, the
Tamil Nadu government periodically approaches the Supreme Court for a legal
solution. Besides seeking a direction from
the Supreme Court for the release of water from Karnatakas reservoirs, Tamil
Nadu has also been pleading for a solution for a long time on two other issues
the printing of the final award in the
Union Gazette, and the constitution of
the Cauvery Management Board (CMB).
The first demand was met in 2013 after
persistent pressure from the Tamil Nadu
government. The second demand is also
almost met as the Supreme Court in its
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
order on 20 September 2016 directed the

Government of India to constitute the
CMB within four weeks.
Will the CMB Help?
The CMB is basically a body of officials to
be constituted by the Government of India.
Its job is to implement the directions of
the tribunal for water-sharing between
states. Thus the final award states,
An inter-state forum to be called Cauvery
Management Board (hereinafter referred to
as the Board) shall be established for the
purpose of securing compliance and implementation of the final decision and directions of the Cauvery Water Disputes Tribunal
(hereinafter referred as the Orders). (p 224,
Volume 5, Chapter 8, the Cauvery Water
Tribunal Final Award 2007)
The chairman of the board shall be an

irrigation engineer of repute of the rank
of chief engineer having not less than 20
years of experience supported by two
full-time members, two representatives
from the central government and representatives from all basin states. As laid
down in the final award, the CMB is
empowered to take control of all reservoirs
and distribute water among the basin
states as provided for in the final award
both in normal and deficit years. Most
important, the monthly schedule of water
release will also be strictly adhered to as
indicated in the final award. This is the
aspect that Karnataka dislikes but Tamil
Nadu celebrates. One states defeat is
another states victory.
To summarise, before 1924 and between
1924 and 1974, there were minor protests but these were sporadic and hardly
noticed. Between 1974 and 1990, the dispute got intensified and distrust had already been built up. After 1990 (post tribunal), the crisis had set in. After this,
the problem would inevitably be catastrophic, not only for the farmers of the
Cauvery basin but also for the entire
nation. Are we heading towards a catastrophic state of affairs?
Key Contestations
Karnataka maintains that the state suffered due to the discriminated past. It
alleges that the British rulers successfully frustrated all attempts to develop
irrigation infrastructure in the then
Mysore State and that they were more
vol lI no 41
interested in protecting the interest of

the then Madras Presidency. Therefore,
it is contended that the 1892 and 1924
agreements were imposed on the politically weak Mysore State. But, Tamil Nadu
argues that early irrigation development
in delta regions across the world is
primarily due to favourable soil, water
and topographic conditions. Furthermore, it points out that it is erroneous to
identify the Cauvery irrigation system in
Tamil Nadu with British rule because
Tamil Nadus history dates back to second
century AD. Therefore, it was inevitable
that successive governments sought
to protect the interests of the lower
riparian state.
Karnatakas farmers believe that the
Tamil Nadu farmers grow three paddy
crops in a year using the Cauvery water.
The main line of argument was that if
farmers of Tamil Nadu can grow three
crops in a year, should not Karnataka
farmers be allowed to grow at least one
crop? This is a wrong contestation. First
of all, kuruvai, thaladi and samba are
three different agricultural seasons and
not three crops. While kuruvai and
thaladi are short duration seasons, samba is of a long duration. The kuruvai
coincides with the south-west monsoon
seasonsown in June and harvested in
September. On the same land, thaladi is
raised coinciding with the north-east
monsoonsown in October and harvested in January. After raising two short
duration crops, the samba crop (long
duration season) cannot be grown on
these lands. Furthermore, even in good
rainfall years, water from the Mettur
dam is available only for seven and at
most eight months (from mid-June to
mid-January) during which time it is
impossible to raise three crops.
Kuruvai and thaladi season crops are
grown in areas where there is groundwater potential. The total command area
in the delta districts is 12.5 lakh acres. In
good rainfall years, kuruvai paddy is
grown only in 4.5 lakh acres and in the
same lands the thaladi crop is raised. In
the remaining segment of the command,
a single cropsamba paddyis grown.
At the moment, the kuruvai crop has
been wiped out except in some areas
where there is access to groundwater.
11
COMMENTARY
Karnataka argues that Tamil Nadu

could save lots of water by changing crop
patternfrom mono-cropped paddy to
some other less water-intensive crops.
The general belief that prevails among
farmers of Karnataka is that paddy is the
only crop grown in the entire Cauvery
command area in Tamil Nadu. This is
not true. First of all, the cropping pattern has already undergone a radical
shift from paddy to other crops such as
pulses, cotton, oil seeds, vegetables, etc,
in particular in the western part of the
delta. In the eastern part of the delta,
many have shifted from paddy wherever
possible. Paddy is grown extensively in
the eastern part of the delta due to the
prevailing soil conditions. Other crops
have been experimented with but without much success. Therefore, it is not by
choice that delta farmers have opted for
a mono-paddy culture. Furthermore, the
eastern delta is a cyclone-prone zone.
Crops other than paddy will not withstand
heavy downpours that flood the region
for weeks. The most significant fact,
however, is increasing soil salinity that
has occurred gradually over time due to
the long history of flood irrigation in the
delta districts of Tamil Nadu. At the
moment, in many sections in the eastern
part of the delta, the land has become
unsuitable for crops other than paddy.
There is a general notion in Karnataka
that Tamil Nadu has the benefit of two
monsoonssouth-west and north-east.
Therefore, Karnataka feels that the water
needs of Tamil Nadu are lower than what
it demands. On the other hand, Karnataka
feels that it has the benefit of only one
monsoon. Some clarifications are necessary here. Although the two monsoons
together fetch a rainfall of over 1,000
mm to the delta districts, it is unevenly
distributed. Furthermore, the north-east
monsoon months also see heavy downpours as well as cyclones and storms.
Given its flat topography, there is no
scope for saving water through embankments in the delta region. Consequently,
the water during these heavy rains inundates standing crops and flows into the
sea. As a result, farmers lose their crops,
more so in Nagapattinam district.
Karnataka contends that the available
groundwater potential in the delta
12
districts of Tamil Nadu is understated. In

this regard, the data published by the
Central Groundwater Board gives a different picture. Groundwater in the entire Nagapattinam district is saline and
over-exploited. Thiruvarur is also becoming saline in most parts and remains
critical. Only in Thanjavur district is
groundwater somewhat better.
It is contended that although Karnataka
contributes 425 tmcft or 53.8% of the total
supply in the basin and Tamil Nadu
contributes only 253 tmcft or 31.9% of
the total supply, Karnataka is denied its
rightful share. It is argued that if contribution of water were the criteria for distribution, Karnataka stands to gain
more. It is also indicated that such has
been the criteria used by the authorities
in the distribution of river waters of the
Beas between Punjab and Haryana and
the Bachhawat Commissions award on
the distribution formula between Karnataka, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh
of the Krishna River waters.
Looking beyond the Dispute
Historically, farmers in the Tamil Nadu
part of the delta practise the flood irrigation method through open cut channels.
In some parts of the delta, due to particular
topographic reasons, farmers practise
the plot-to-plot irrigation technique. As
the Thanjavur delta is a plain terrain
from the Grand Anicut to the sea, gently
sloping from west to east, the delta has
been subjected to flood irrigation for
centuries, that is, water flowing from field
to field. The open cut channel method is
followed in most parts of the Cauvery
command in Karnataka also. Therefore,
there is vast scope for saving water
through modernising canal networks and
through improved irrigation methods in
both the major riparian states. Through
modernisation of canal networks and by
installing appropriate modern control
structures, wastages and leakages of
water can be checked and at least 30%
of water can be saved.
Non-agricultural Uses
Cauvery water provides drinking water
for numerous villages, towns and cities
in both Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. A
large number of industries in both states
are also dependent upon the Cauvery for

their water needs. It is estimated that
urban and rural areas in Karnataka
require 16 tmcft of water. Besides,
Bengaluru city alone would need another
30 tmcft. Industries located in the Karnataka part of the basin require 4 tmcft.
Therefore, the total non-agricultural
water need for Karnataka is of the order
of 50 tmcft (including the estimated
requirement for Bengaluru city).
Tamil Nadus case is much more
severe. Over one-third of its population
lives in the Cauvery basin and depends
upon the river Cauvery for virtually all
its needs. Besides, there has been a high
degree of urbanisation in the state
(48%). In the context of non-agricultural
water needs, two issues need to be kept
in mind. One, both drinking and industrial water needs are growing along
with the increasing degree of urbanisation and population growth, and two,
non-agricultural water requirements need
to be met throughout the year.
The river and its tributaries in Tamil
Nadu as well in Karnataka are quite
heavily polluted due to discharge of sewage and industrial effluents in the river.
The major tributaries of the Cauvery in
Tamil Nadu are Bhavani, Amaravathi,
Noyyal and Kodaganaru. Large quantities of effluents from tanneries, dyeing
and bleaching, chemicals, textiles, paper
and sugar industries are discharged into
them. Numerous large and medium towns
also dump their wastes in these rivers.
Deltas the world over become fertile
because of the large amount of sediment
that flows into them. Furthermore, this
sediment flow also keeps deltas above
sea level. In other words, in the absence
of sediment flow, the sea and the delta
land (which is nothing but a plain sheet
of land at sea level) would not have got
separated. In order to have this distinction between sea level and the delta
land, regular sediment flow is critical.
Yet, the world over, sediment flows
have been either reduced drastically or
reduced to nothing due to human interventions in rivers. The Cauvery River
and the delta is no exception. The reservoirs constructed upstream have literally
withheld all the sediments and as a consequence delta subsidence is taking place.
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
Currently, over 80% of Nagapattinam

district in the eastern delta is under low
elevation coastal zone facing the threat
of delta subsidence. At the same time, all
the reservoirs upstream (such as KRS,
Mettur, etc) are losing their storage
capacity due to heavy silt accumulation.
Legal Perspectives
and Judicial Interventions
Several principles and doctrines have
evolved for resolving disputes that occur
between nations or states. These include
doctrines like the Harmon doctrine, the
principle of natural flow, the doctrine of
prior appropriation, the theory of community interest, the theory of equitable
apportionment and the Helsinki rules.
Of all these, Helsinki rules are best
known and reasonably comprehensive
and have been adopted by the International Law Association.
Let us consider the specific case of the
Cauvery water dispute. While Tamil
Nadu attempts to protect its rights over
the Cauvery by invoking the doctrine of
prior appropriation rights, Karnataka
tends to go along with the Harmon doctrine or what is called upholding absolute territorial integrity. According to
this principle, a riparian state is the sole
authority and can do what it pleases
with its waters. Both are hardline positions. The dictum that is widely appreciated is that nobody or a community or
even a nation can claim absolute ownership rights over the flowing water/river
but can enjoy the use rights.
In a federal system such as in India,
one should expect a series of interstate
water disputes. Therefore, the Cauvery
water dispute is no surprise. Unlike in
the case of international transboundary
rivers, the contending parties in an
intra-national river dispute cannot resort
to the option of armed conflict. Therefore, the options are restricted to available legal mechanisms within the national/
democratic framework. In India, the
Interstate Water Disputes Act 1956 (ISWD
Act) was enacted as per the provisions of
Article 262 of the Constitution. This act
was amended in 2002 in line with the
recommendations of the Sarkaria Commission. The Cauvery Water Disputes
Tribunal was constituted on 2 June
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
1990. Provisions of the act bar the intervention of even the Supreme Court in
the adjudication process. In the case of
the Cauvery water dispute, after the declaration of the final award in 2007, the
contending states had the right to go
back to the tribunal with a review petition
for a supplementary award. Instead, they
approached the Supreme Court with a
special leave petition (SLP). The Supreme
Court admitted the SLPs even though the
ISWD Act bars its intervention. Instead
of admitting them, the Supreme Court
could have directed the SLPs to the tribunal. It is now more than eight years since
the Supreme Court admitted these SLPs
and no resolution has been reached.
Many believed the announcement of
the final award in 2007 and the subsequent gazetting of it in 2013 would put
an end to the conflict. But nothing tangible has happened. Now the latest
Supreme Court ruling that the CMB
should be constituted within four weeks
has given new hope to Tamil Nadu.
Whether the CMB will put an end to the
dispute is a trillion dollar question. It is
precisely in this context that the Track
Two diplomacy or the alternate dispute
resolution mechanism gains significance.
The Alternative Approach
A civil society dialogue or what is
referred to as Track Two diplomacy is
basically a platform where all those
concerned are brought together for a
sustained dialogue. This is a widely
advocated measure all over the world
for resolving volatile and explosive
situations, in particular, relating to
natural resource management. In the
process of development of a society and
of the use of natural resources, conflicts
among users are inevitable. As scarcity
conditions intensify, conflicts also intensify. The use of natural resources
can be made sustainable and reasonably
conflict-free with the appropriate legal
and institutional intervention. But
when everything fails, what is the way
out? Civil society dialogues or what I
may call multi-stakeholders dialogues
(MSD) may help under such circumstances. MSD offer a cordial climate where
conflicts could be turned into opportunities for an effective and fruitful
vol lI no 41
collaboration to achieve sustainable

development.
The MSD initiative started in the Cauvery basin with two dialogue workshops
organised in 2003, one in Chennai and
the other in Bengaluru attended by 60
farmers and farmers leaders each from
Tamil Nadu and Karnataka. Subsequently,
a committee called Cauvery Family was
constituted with 12 members from each
state with the former water resources
secretary, Ramaswamy Iyer and Bhavani
Shankar from Karnataka as advisers.
Since then, the Cauvery Family has met
18 times. The last time it met was in
2012. The committee could arrive at five
water-sharing formulae that were finally
reduced to one. Due to lack of political
patronage, this initiative is currently
dormant. One thing can be said with
confidence: the Cauvery Family played a
key role in suppressing violence during
all deficit years during the period
200312 when it was active. Furthermore, no violence of the kind that was
witnessed in 1990 (when the interim
award was announced) was repeated in
2007, when the final award was declared. There is great scope to make the
Cauvery Family active provided there is
assured political patronage.
Interstate water disputes should be
seen in the overall context of industrialisation, urbanisation, overall growth rate
of the state economy, employment and
unemployment rates, per capita income
and so on. Overall prosperity and growth
rate also contribute significantly to water
demand and hence inflame interstate
water disputes. Both Tamil Nadu and
Karnataka are very advanced in all these
respects and hence the increasing intensity of the dispute. In the face of the
increasing demands from various sectors
and increasing pollution of the Cauvery
River, the contending states and water
users should act collectively. In this
context it is necessary to examine to
what extent the Cauvery basin in both
states is stressed and indicate the sources
of stress. Such information sharing between states is absolutely necessary and
ideally should be done through a common information portal.
There are several other issues that
demand immediate attention:
13
COMMENTARY
Modernisation of the canal network

and control structures in both states
which help to save water substantially.
Consolidation of knowledge on various
issues such as catchment treatment, deforestation in the upper catchment, competing demand for water across various
sectors, increasing pollution load, sand
mining, seawater intrusion and increasing
salinity in the delta and so on. Knowledge consolidation and knowledge sharing between states is very important because natural resources are at high risk.
Water management is not only about
water-sharing but also sharing of scientific details pertaining to knowledge and
experiences such as monsoon and rainfall conditions, soil conditions, crop technology, flood management and water
conservation techniques.
Sediment management and flow is
crucial for delta management and sustainability. This needs to be addressed by
both states because silt deposits in the
reservoirs have reduced the storage
levels in all reservoirs and as a consequence the delta is sinking.
In addition, overarching issues (such
as climate change impacts) in both states
should be thoroughly researched and
results should be shared.
On the whole, an engagement in its
entirety in the Cauvery River basin, usually limited to water sharing, would give
an entirely different picture of basin
management. Since rivers do not have
state boundaries, it is important to follow such a broad and mature approach
with a view to protecting the ecological
and environmental standards as well as
to ensure livelihoods security.
Conclusions
It is of utmost importance to recognise
the dictum that a river gets its meaning
only when it flows and acknowledge the
fact the river is nobodys private property.
At the moment, the states have grossly
disrespected this dictum. In the particular context of Cauvery, the issue has
been hijacked by politics and political
bosses for their political advantage.
They do not want to speak the truth.
Instead they back the agitators who are
actually not farmers; most of them belong
to Kannada (or Tamil) chauvinistic groups,
14
urban unemployed youth and some

hooligans who always take advantage of
the fluid situation.
The judicial orders may give temporary
relief to Tamil Nadu but only along with
more unpleasantness coupled with extreme forms of violence. The question
that we have to ask is whether we will
see this same situation during every
deficit year, or whether the CMB will
give a permanent solution and peace in
the basin states.
In a federal democracy such as India,
ideally everyone should strictly adhere
to judicial pronouncements. But conditions and objective reasoning are
changing over time. The Cauvery water
issue is no exception to this generalised
principle. Its ecology, environment,
command areas, water uses and water
users and politics have changed. The judiciary may not take into account these
changes while pronouncing judgments.
Under these changing circumstances,
there is a need for a rethink on all legal
instruments and their efficacy in dealing with the interstate water disputes.
Precisely for these reasons, one would
also like to raise questions regarding the

competence of tribunal members (who
are judges) in dealing with the water
needs of states.
A series of questions also need answers
rather urgently with particular reference to basin management. Do governments make conscious efforts to protect
the commons, the environment and ecosystems? Is there any plan for accounting for environmental degradation? Is
there any plan for accounting for ecosystem losses? Is there anything called a
National Adaptation Plan for the poor
and the most vulnerable? Do we have
any estimates on possible climate change
impacts on agriculture and overall gross
domestic product? In what way have
governments strengthened our early
warning systems and disaster risk reduction strategies? All coping measures
hitherto undertaken have been ad hoc
and structural in nature with almost no
effect. What we need therefore is longterm comprehensive adaptive strategies
for basin management in order to protect the livelihoods of millions, and the
environment.
Journal Rank of EPW

Economic and Political Weekly is indexed on Scopus, the largest abstract and citation
database of peer-reviewed literature, which is prepared by Elsevier N V (bit.ly/2dxMFOh).
Scopus has indexed research papers that have been published in EPW from 2008 onwards.
The Scopus database journal ranks country-wise and journal-wise. It provides three broad sets
of rankings: (i) Number of Citations, (ii) H-Index, and (iii) Scimago Journal and Country Rank.
Presented below are EPWs ranks in 2015 in India, Asia and globally, according to the total cites
(3 years) indicator.
Highest among 37 Indian social science journals and second highest among 187 social
science journals ranked in Asia.
Highest among 38 journals in the category, Economics, Econometrics, and Finance in the
Asia region, and 37th among 881 journals globally.
Highest among 23 journals in the category, Sociology and Political Science in the Asia
region, and 17th among 951 journals globally.
Between 2009 and 2015, EPWs citations in three categories (Economics, Econometrics,
and Finance; Political Science and International Relations; and Sociology and Political
Science) were always in the second quartile of all citations recorded globally in the Scopus
database.
For a summary of statistics on EPW on Scopus, including of the other journal rank indicators
please see (bit.ly/2dDDZmG).
EPW consults referees from a database of 200+ academicians in different fields of the social
sciences on papers that are published in the Special Article and Notes sections.
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
Both the major riparian statesTamil

Nadu and Karnatakahave taken hard
positions. The issue has reached such a
level that they have been refraining
from moving away from their respective
hard lines for fear of losing popularity.
Under changing conditions, both the
principles are seemingly insincere in
addressing the needs of both states. Indeed, electoral politics in both states and
at the centre have contributed to the
current state of bitterness in the Cauvery
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
basin states. Even if farmers fight for

what they consider their legitimate
rights, it is the responsibility of the
respective state governments and political parties to educate and create awareness among the farming community about
the significance and the need to protect
constitutional provisions. Unfortunately, the state governments have comprehensively failed in their duty in both
Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. Winning
the popularity of farmers has always
vol lI no 41
dominated the political agenda in both

the states. It is high time political parties
in Tamil Nadu and Karnataka realise
their past deeds and resolve this longpending dispute in the national interest.
After all, the governments and all pillars of democracy (including judiciary)
are supposed to work for the welfare
of people. They need to deliver and
contribute to bridging the deficit in
governance as well as to bridging the
trust deficit.
15
COMMENTARY
Research as if People Matter

NFSA Survey 2016
Abhishek Shaw
Since the implementation of

reforms enacted by the National
Food Security Act 2013, the public
distribution system provides
food security to a larger number
of people than before, and has
less leakages overall in six of
the poorer states of India. The
methods and results of a
people-centred six-state survey
are presented in brief.
The author would like to thank those who read

and commented on earlier drafts.
Abhishek Shaw (abhishek@epw.in) is with
EPW.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
irst of all, thank you everybody

for the hard work and goodwill,
economist Jean Drze said with
a playful smile. The room full of student
volunteers, who joined the National
Food Security Act (NFSA) Survey 2016
(henceforth the survey) for nothing less
than Hard Work, No Pay, chuckled and
laughed. Drze continued, We are very
impressed with all the teams I think
the survey was really a success! Drze
had just commenced the debriefing
session that was held in Ranchi,1 marking the end of the survey. Drze, with
fellow economist Reetika Khera, initiated the survey to understand the progress in implementation of reforms to
the public distribution system (PDS)
after the enactment of the NFSA 2013.
The survey was conducted during
110 June in six of the poorer states of
India (Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand,
Madhya Pradesh, Odisha, and West Bengal). The research, which included surveys and public hearings or jan sunwais,
found that PDS reforms have led to improved food security for a larger number
of people in these six states. The loss of
foodgrains due to inefficiencies and corruption has reduced considerably as
well. Bihar and Jharkhand were, however, found to still be laggards, with
inadequate coverage, and lower but
persistent levels of leakages. West Bengal
vol lI no 41
began reforming its PDS only in December 2015 and shows better coverage than
earlier. As it does not have survey data to
corroborate these findings as yet, its
results ought to be viewed with caution.
Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and
Odisha began reforms earlier, and the
PDS there is better implemented with
wider coverage in general, has low levels
of leakages, and has assured entitlements at the right prices.
A team of about 40 student volunteers
(divided into six teams) surveyed 3,600
households, in a sample biased towards
deprived districts and small villages.
Two districts in each state were selected,
with at least one of the districts being
selected for proximity to the base of
operations in Ranchi, Jharkhand. The
villages within the district were selected
through random sampling. This survey
follows in a long line of similarly organised
research exercises that run on shoestring budgets, involve student volunteers,
are largely financed by individual donations with no-strings-attached, and
involve a component of follow-up action.
Earlier such surveys studied the progress in implementation of the Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) as well.
Public hearings were conducted after
the surveys not to resolve individual
grievances, but to publicly discuss matters related to the PDS in a transparent
manner that forced the administration
to be accountable to citizens. The survey
team would make this clear from time to
time during the hearings. However, some
aggrieved persons at the hearings would
still come with the expectation that their
individual problems would be addressed.
15
COMMENTARY
I witnessed two such public hearings,

one at Bankey Bazar in Gaya, Bihar, and
another at Bharno in Gumla, Jharkhand.
At each of the hearings, more than 300
people, largely women, were in attendance, with people joining and leaving
through the day. The survey teams presented their findings to a gathering of
respondents and other aggrieved persons
from the nearby villages in the presence
of the local administrators and fair price
shop owners or dealers. There were also
independent observers like journalists,
academics and even Supreme Courtappointed advisors. Some local administrators cooperated with the survey and
attended the public hearing, while one
marketing officer (in charge of monitoring the supply of PDS rations) at Bharno
did not attend the public hearing.
The main mediators at both public
hearings were volunteers, the majority
of them women. In addition to the presenting key findings as well as questions
that arose from them, volunteers also
sang songs accompanied by the local
residents.
Slogans were also shouted quite regularly throughout the proceedings. The
Bihar team even rehearsed a skit before
the Bankey Bazar hearing, though they
did not perform it eventually. Volunteers
also video-recorded testimonials of
aggrieved individuals in order to be able
to use the evidence in public interest,
if needed.
Dealers are known to take away ration

cards, or coupons (as in Bihar). There
were other cases of dealers taking away
ration cards and not supplying rations
on time at Bharno. There were complaints of this kind raised at the public
hearing at Bankey Bazar as well.
A recurring problem in Bankey Bazar
seemed to be of dealers overcharging
beneficiaries under various pretexts;
cost overruns, bribes to higher-ups,
and so on. Manmati Devi, a resident of
Nauhar informed the gathering at
Bankey Bazar that she was forced to pay
`4 per kg for rice and `3 per kg for
wheat, when the fair price was actually
`3 and `2, respectively. This meant that
if she bought 13 kg of rice and 10 kg
of wheat, she would end up paying `82
instead of `59.
Leakages were also reported during
the survey in Bihar and again at the Bankey Bazar hearing. Persons at the hearing complained that dealers would not
provide rations every month saying that
there was insufficient supply of foodgrain.
This was discussed during the hearing
and the marketing officer, Umesh Rajak,
who was present, clarified that there
was no shortage in supply during the
period that the dealers did not distribute
rations. This meant that despite regular
supply, the dealers were not releasing
rations. The marketing officer said he
did not have the power to cancel dealership licences, and that he would inform
the higher authorities.
Issues Raised
Teresa Meenji, a 76-year-old woman
who was at the Bharno hearing, said
that she was not receiving rations, and
that her ration card had been taken
away by the dealer. Widowed at 56, she
was originally from another village,
Khartanga, but had no house to live there.
She lives alone in a dilapidated house in
Palmadipa, which she told me leaks when
it rains. One of her daughters, who was
active in a womens association near
Bharno, had passed away as had her
only son, who used to work in Ranchi.
Her other two daughters lived in Delhi.
She had come to the jan sunwai with
the hope that her grievance would be
resolved. If given a chance, she said she
would question the authorities.
16
No Clarity on Aadhaar
There is clearly still confusion, even among
local administrators, over the significance
of Aadhaar cards in availing PDS entitlements. At the Bharno hearing, the District
Supply Officer (DSO), Binod Shankar
Mishra, mentioned that Aadhaar was
required for updating household information, or to issue a new ration card.
Khera had to caution him that this cannot be so, as it would be going against
Supreme Court orders that disallow making Aadhaar compulsory to avail entitlements in anyway. The DSO who initially
continued to claim that he had written
orders, conceded to Kheras argument.
Updating information of newer members of the household in ration cards is
itself a problem. When the SocioEconomic and Caste Census was conducted in 2011, data from it was to be
used to identify those eligible for priority
card rations under the PDS. However,
what has happened since is that the process of updating household size data has
become a problem. Children born after
the survey in 2011 or persons who joined
a household through marriage, for instance, have not been included in ration
cards in many cases as a result. This updating is often contingent on the willingness of local administrators.
Another issue of grave concern has
been the governments move to shift
some Antyodaya Anna Yojana (AAY) beneficiaries to priority card entitlements
under the NFSA. The AAY beneficiary
households receive 35 kg of foodgrain
per household, irrespective of the size of
the household, while, NFSA entitlements
are allocated for each member of the
household (5 kg per person in most
states). Such a transition may be beneficial to large households as the AAY
would mean effectively less per person
(say for a household of 10). The Bankey
Bazar Block Development Officer (BDO)
Sanjay Kumar, announced at the public
hearing that orders were received to determine the AAY beneficiaries who could
be shifted to NFSA entitlements.
Odisha has been trying to do similar
kind of shifting of beneficiaries, and the
survey team from Odisha had found that
many of the AAY beneficiaries were effectively being excluded and losing existing
entitlements in the process of transition.
It is unclear how this transition is being
planned. AAY beneficiaries are the most
vulnerable. Data has been since collected
in the Bankey Bazar block, but is yet to
be compiled and computerised, according to the BDO. Kumar later told me that
the new data will help identify those
who are availing these entitlements
while not meeting the eligibility criteria.
Public Hearings
These public hearings require not only
the involvement of people, but cooperation from the local administrators and
the dealers. It could be that local
administrators may not cooperate, or
that dealers may not attend the hearing
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
(as was the case in Bankey Bazar). Further, it could be that dealers may seek to
undermine these hearings. Dealers are
usually better-off, more powerful members of the village, and have a say in relevant matters. Just before the Bankey
Bazar public hearing was to begin, the
survey team got news from a resident of
Raksa village that a dealer and his associates had tried to deter people from
Raksa and Nauhar from attending
(bribes and threats were also mentioned). However, it turned out to be a
false alarm, as most residents of the village had sent at least one member of
their households to attend the hearing.
When I asked Drze about the possibility
of disruptions, he said that sometimes
dealers came in groups or planted their
own people at these hearings. However,
it is not easy for them to disrupt such
events, and they get intimidated when
they have to answer the public or talk to
the DSO or BDO, said Drze.
The public hearings are an important
and distinctive feature of this kind of
research. According to Drze, public hearings are a very useful complement to
the survey. Both in terms of fulfilling the
ultimate purpose (which is to contribute
to the realisation of the Right to Food)
and do research. He said that there is
a certain satisfaction in being able to
do both research and action without
seeing the two as being opposed to each
other, as many academics tend to do.
The survey teams learn a lot from the
public hearing itself and peoples testimonies help them understand issues and
problems better. When they try to get
peoples complaints addressed and engage
with the administration, Drze feels
they all
discover a lot also about how the system
works and how people are disempowered
All these things are important to understand
why the PDS is where it is and how it can be
reformed. So I feel its a very satisfying kind
of approach.
Drze (2002) has discussed some of

these issues in an essay titled On
Research and Action, where he discusses
issues of objectivity and whether being
involved in action detracts from the rigour of research. He takes the view that
research must integrate the two.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
The public hearings I went to were

planned with attention to detail. Posters
were prepared with information on rules
and laws related to the PDS. Lists of entitlements were put up. Further, while the
Bihar team along with Drze and Khera
were preparing for the Bankey Bazar
hearing, the team discussedas they
pasted posters, tied banners, answered
questions from curious bystanders, and
arranged chairsif it would be better to
avoid using a stage and place the desks
and chairs at ground level. The team
agreed that the stage imposed a hierarchy, while they also felt it gave some
structure to the meeting. Khera recalled
that at an earlier public hearing, where
this was not made clear, attendees ended up sitting in chairs designated for
panellists. Eventually, it was decided
that the stage was not to be used, and
that the chairs and a row of tables would
be lined up at ground level.
Richer by Experience
The entire six-state survey, according to
Drze, cost less than `2 lakh. In large
part, this is because the student surveyors were not paid, and also because the
teams were expected to use available
public transport, live in public buildings
where possible, cook food instead of
buying it commercially, among other ways
to keep costs low. Each team, which had
about six members, worked within a
tight budget of `10,000 that included
food, travel and all expenses incurred
during the entire research exercise. Accounts had to be submitted to Khera and
Drze at the end. The Bihar team, for example, stayed in a school building in
Nauhar village in Gaya district. Staying
there was convenient because there was
a handpump for water, and a toilet right
next to the building. Usually, anganwadi
workers would be provided supplies by
the team treasurer or logistics in charge
to make food for the team. The anganwadi
workers would be paid a sum for cooking.
Speaking about what this survey
means for the students involved, Drze
said, Many of them have not been exposed to this side of India, these issues ... It
gives them a whole new perspective,
new ideas. He does not believe that
involvement in such surveys will be
vol lI no 41
necessarily life changing, but that a

significant minority of them will continue to take interest in these issues and
try to work in a different way.
The student surveyors are from various
parts of the country. Some were undergraduate students, while some were
doctoral students. Rigzin Yangdol was
one such student volunteer. She was
part of the team that surveyed Chhattisgarh. She hails from Ladakh and had
just finished her undergraduate studies
in economics from the Lady Shri Ram
College, New Delhi. Her friends had
already participated in previous surveys
like these, and she had been keen to participate in one. She found it a very good
experience, where she got to see ground
realities first-hand, including the problems people faced. When asked what she
felt about Hard Work, No Pay, she said,
It was hard work, but I would say I am a
richer person now, even though I was
not paid.
Speaking about this kind of research,
Drze said,
We rely on the peoples interest in the issue
and the goodwill. We do not pay the investigators as you know, Hard Work No Pay. You
can say well, this can detract from the quality because you have to pay them if you want
good results. Actually, I think it is exactly the
reverse. The fact that people come here not
for money but out of interest and passion, really helps us a lot to do good work. Also it is a
joy to do, because we work with people who
are actually interested in the issue and you
like working with each other. So, the cooperative angle is also important. This survey
is partly of course a research exercise, to find
out what is happening, but is partly also developing a new way of doing research.
Note
1
The session was held in a dormitory of the

Yogada Satsanga Society of India. This organisation supported the survey by providing the
survey teams with dormitories and food at no
cost in Ranchi.
Reference
Drze, Jean (2002): On Research and Action, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 37, No 9, pp 81719.
available at
Oxford Bookstore-Mumbai
Apeejay House
3, Dinshaw Vacha Road, Mumbai 400 020
Ph: 66364477
17
COMMENTARY
Liminal Spaces
Racism against Africans in India
Renu Modi, Rhea DSilva
Sporadic but virulent racial attacks

on African nationals in public
spaces contradict the ongoing
metanarratives of ascendant
IndiaAfrica political and
economic relations. This article
affirms that the Indian people at
large and the Government of
India have remained steadfast in
their condemnation of such
xenophobic attacks. Increased
people-to-people interactions
through the arts, education, state
media, and shared cultural
festivals will promote greater
intercultural understanding and
buttress the long-standing
Afrasian connections.
Renu Modi (africamumbai@gmail.com) is

a former director and senior lecturer at the
Centre for African Studies, University of
Mumbai. Rhea DSilva (rheaerica88@gmail.
com) is a research scholar at the Department of
Sociology, University of Mumbai.
18
or a country steeped in syncretism

and traditions of welcoming foreigners, the hostile attacks against
Africans in India in the last three to four
years signals a worrying trend. Though
sporadic, these events have been unsettling for the Indian and African peoples
and the ascendant IndiaAfrica relations.
Khirki Extension, a suburb of Delhi was
raided at the behest of a local politician,
Somnath Bharti, in 2014. The raid targeted
Ugandan women residents. They deposed
that they were manhandled and accused of
running a drug and prostitution racket,
and were forced to undergo medical tests.
Bhartis act was clearly outside the remit
of his jurisdiction and he was severely
criticised (Indian Express 2014).
This was not a one-off incident. Delhi has
seen similar occurrences of hostility against
African immigrants. In the same year,
violence broke out in Goa after African
nationals protested against the death of a
Nigerian national, Obodo Uzoma Simeon,
who was killed, allegedly in a drug war
with the locals. The Goa police dealt
with the issue effectively, as a local law
and order problem and the culprits were
arrested (Firstpost 2013). Such incidences
of racial stereotyping of blacks as
drug dealers and prostitutes is rife in
India and emphasises the lack of intercultural understanding between the
two communities.
The issue of racism thus far has been
brushed under the carpet, while metanarrativesof IndiaAfrica relations, of
their brotherhood grounded in the anticolonial struggle, and of Indias support
for countries in Africa during their liberation struggle and apartheidcontinue
to contour the ongoing discourse on
IndiaAfrica relations.
Virulent Attacks
In January 2016, four Tanzanian students
were attacked in Bengaluruthe three
boys were brutally beaten, while the girl
was stripped, beaten, and then paraded

naked in publicsupposedly as a retribution for the death of an Indian caused
by a Sudanese man! Less than four months
after the Bengaluru incident, a 29-yearold Congolese man, Masunda Kitada
Oliver, was beaten to death by three men in
Kishangarh, south Delhi on 20 May 2016
after an argument over hiring an autorickshaw. Oliver worked as a French language
teacher and had been living in Delhi for
the past five years. The police insist that
there is no racist angle to his murder and
that it was an unfortunate spat that took
an ugly turn. The matter is currently
under investigation (K Singh 2016).
Soon after Olivers death, on 26 May,
seven African nationals were targeted in
four separate attacks that took place in a
span of 30 minutes in Delhi. Locals hold
responsible the stark differences in the
culture and ways of life of African immigrants in their neighbourhood. Delhi
authorities firmly deny any racist motivations behind the attacks and made five
arrests by the end of May (Dutta 2016).
General V K Singh, minister of state (MoS)
for external affairs blames the media for
needlessly blowing, what he called a minor scuffle, out of proportion. He also attributes the violence to purely cultural
differences (Sultania 2016).
It is needless to state that such incidents
can potentially lead to strained diplomatic
relations between India and the African
countries, and lead to reprisals in Africa.
Indian shops in Kinshasa, the capital city
of the Democratic Republic of Congo,
were attacked shortly after the death of
Oliver, as retribution for the death of a
fellow national (Indian Express 2016).
The ripple effect of this incident has
played out in the diplomatic arena as well.
In the aftermath of Olivers death, the
African diplomatic community threatened
to withdraw participation in the Africa
Day celebrations organised by the Indian
Council for Cultural Relations (ICCR) on
26 May 2016. They ultimately attended the
event after the MoS for external affairs
General V K Singh tried to assuage their
hurt sentiments.
It needs to be noted that for the first
time the issue of prejudice and racism
was expressed explicitly in the speeches
of the African diplomatic corps in India
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
at the Africa Day celebrations (Times of

India 2016). The heads of African diplomatic missions also announced that they
might discourage their respective governments from sending more students to
India because they were targeted in
public spaces. Such steps, if undertaken,
will chip away at Indias efforts towards
capacity-building initiatives in Africa
through scholarships to African students
(Hindustan Times 2016).
In fact, like Africans in India, Indians
in other countries have been victims of
xenophobic behaviour. Indian students in
Australia have been on the receiving end
of what have been termed racist attacks
popularly known as curry bashing. The
abuse of Indians in Australia was met
with the fury of both the Indian media
as well as the people. How do we justify
the ill-treatment of outsiders in our
country while decrying the similar treatment towards our own people abroad?
Linda Peasah Owusu, a Ghanaian
student at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, claims
that the Indian mind still sees the African
as depraved, poor and perverse and believes them to be of lesser mind. She also
highlights the mob mentality operating on
misconceived notions and constructed
views of the outsider (Owusu 2016).
The Stranger
Polish sociologist Zygmunt Bauman, while
discussing Us and Them Categories,
reminds us that moral boundaries are
socially constructed, and involve social
learning and behaviour into which we
are socialised. We and They, Bauman
believes, are not two separate groups of
people, but are, in fact, two different
sets of attitudesone of trust, emotional
attachment and security, and the other
of fear, suspicion and antipathy. While
We is the group to which I belong, in
which I am comfortable and which I
understand well, They is one to which I
do not wish to belong, a group that I
understand only vaguely, making it unpredictable and frightening (Yates 2004).
Intolerance of the other can be better
understood if the problem of xenophobia
is located in a wider context. Xenophobic
attacks against the xenos (stranger) out
of phobia (fear) of the outsider have
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
become commonplace, globally. It is not

natural, but a learnt behaviour and, therefore, a cultural construct. Xenophobia and
racism translate into a gamut of existential problems that African immigrants
are forced to endure while in India.
Lived Experiences
Kuku (2009), an African American, shared
his experience of being an African
person in Delhis public space.
Discrimination in Delhi surpasses the denial
of courtesy. I have been denied visas, apartments, entrance to discos, attentiveness,
kindness and the benefit of doubt. Further,
the lack of neighbourliness exceeds what locals describe as normal for a capital already
known for its coldness.
Owusu adds to Kukus point conveying

that the discrimination against African
women in India is far worse than for
African men. A woman, as an embodiment
of both her race and continent, is subject
to additional dangers and challenges.
India does not seem prepared to extend
basic needs like jobs and accommodation to African immigrants, while at the
same time she has been upscaling her
economic and diplomatic endeavours, as
showcased in the third edition of the
IndiaAfrica Forum Summit hosted in
October 2015. Either housing societies
restrain houseowners from leasing out
their premises to Africans, or houseowners
themselves are reluctant to rent their
houses to the African people because of
their distinct cultural and dietary habits.
They admitted, however, to also refusing
to lease to other Indians who were nonvegetarians! Therefore, Africans are often
forced to stay in uninhabitable, far-flung
suburbs of the city, which are not sought
after in the rental market. Many African
immigrants also complain that the police
rarely take cognisance of their complaints,
hence denying them any form of justice
(personal communication 2015).
Africans anticipate a certain kind of
reciprocity during their stay in India.
They expect safety and hospitality in
India in return for the way Indians are
treated in Africa. Except for about a decade
of tenuous relations between the Indian
settlers and the African state, in the
immediate aftermath of decolonisation,
the Indian diaspora in Africa has been an
integral part of their respective countries
vol lI no 41
of stay in Africa. The major constituency

of African immigrants comprises, among
others, students, informal traders and
business persons who have been subjected
to racism while negotiating their dayto-day lives in Indian public spaces.
The Association of African Students in
India (AASI) made the angst and fear of
African immigrants subjected to racism
known through their Facebook page and
other social media. They organised a
peaceful demonstration to express their
apprehensions, fear and insecurity, and
work collectively to improve the situation
for all Africans, mainly the students living
in India (AASI 2014). The African migrs,
as compared to the Indian diaspora in Africa, are new entrants to India. They hope
that the level of acceptance and intercultural understanding between Indians and
themselves will increase over the years.
Countering Racism
In India, as in Africa, there are diverse
strains of thought on foreigners. As in
the case of African immigrants, they
range from xenophobia and its expression in virulent forms, to a voice of tolerance and condemnation of such mindless and unjustifiable viciousness against
outsiders. For instance, Khoj, an international artists association in Delhi
screened a film entitled Cry Out Loud. It
was conceived by visual anthropologist
Ethiraj Dattatreyan. He put the camera
back into the hands of Cameroonian,
Nigerian, Ugandan, Ivorian and Somali
men and women living in Khirki Extension, New Delhi, at the same site where
they were humiliated, encouraging them
to capture footage of their quotidian lives
and put into perspective their understanding of the violence they face as the
undesirable outsiders (Khoj 2014).
Recently, in Punjab, known for its high
population of African students as well as its
high incidence of attacks, a group of African students gained almost instant stardom for a very different reasonfor recording and uploading cover versions of
popular Punjabi songs on YouTube. They
say that attitudes in Punjab are changing
and becoming more accepting of the African students, and racial slurs are becoming
an aberration rather than the norm
(I P Singh 2016). Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the
19
COMMENTARY
founder of the Art of Living, a spiritual congregation, led a I Meditate Africa campaign, in 34 African cities via webcast with
the aim of promoting peace in the continent
through meditation (Economic Times 2016).
Tenuous relations between the host and
immigrants, therefore, could potentially
be improved through greater intercultural
understanding between the two communities, especially through the arts and
state media. Minister of External Affairs
Sushma Swaraj has promised sensitisation
programmes in the affected Delhi neighbourhoods to promote cultural understanding. Television programmes about
the rich cultural heritage of African countries, museum exhibits depicting the longstanding historical relations between Indians and Africans, shared music and cultural festivals, and educative films depicting historical connections between India
and Africa could go a long way in understanding our oft quoted shared heritage.
While racial profiling against Africans
in public spaces cannot be denied, it must
also be acknowledged that several African
immigrants have made successful careers
for themselves in India. A professional
footballer like Nigerian Ranti Martins is
one among many. They play for clubs
across India and are considered role models for Indian youth (Sugden 2013). Martins hopes that his children, who are
growing up in India, will find more
acceptance despite being of a different
race. Similarly, 23-year-old Ugochi Igwilo,
who came to India to study interior
design at Delhis Amity University, is the
first Nigerian model to walk the ramp at
the prestigious Lakme Fashion Week (Oladeinde 2015). India has been a place where
she has found recognition and success.
Africans over the past decades. Prominent

Africans like Bingu wa Mutharika, the
late President of Malawi and Salim Ahmed
Salim, the former Secretary General of
the Organisation of African Unity, for
instance, were educated in India.
For some like Martins and Igwilo, India
has been a destination of opportunities; it
has widened prospects and fulfilled aspirations. While a few other immigrants
such as the residents of Khirki Extension,
the Tanzanian girl in Bengaluru, and the
most recent victims of virulent attacks
have found themselves in liminal spaces.
Against the backdrop of the demise of
Oliver, the statement from the Ministry
of External Affairs of India rightly notes
that all criminal acts should not be
portrayed as racially-motivated. It is also
of essence to note that Indian people by
and large do not support or exhibit such
intolerance towards foreigners. The unfortunate episodes of attacks against
Africans that have been reported are
rare, but definitely unacceptable, and
the cause of their occurrence needs to be
understood and dealt with at all levels of
government. The assurance from the
ministry that we will ensure that African
students continue to find a welcome home
in India and such unfortunate incidents
do not recur (MEA 2016), though not a
recompense for the death of Oliver or for
other victims of virulent attacks, offers
optimism that xenophobia will be dealt
with at the highest political and diplomatic
levels. Enhanced people-to-people interactions between locals and African immigrants can potentially buttress the intensified trade, economic, and diplomatic
engagements between India and Africa.
References
Conclusions
The immigrants lived experiences in India
defy generalisation, as every migration trajectory is unique. Many African students,
expatriates, and patients who came to
India for higher education, work, and
access to affordable healthcare, respectively, have shared their positive Indian
experience on their return home. They
have become goodwill ambassadors for
India. India has been and continues to be
a sought-after destination for cost-effective and high-quality education for several
20
AASI (2014): Association of African Students in

India, Group Page, Facebook, viewed on 13 February 2016, https://www.facebook.com/Associ
ationOfAfricanStudentsInIndia/?fref=nf.
Dutta, Sweta (2016): African Nationals Attacked in
Delhi: In Tense Village Locals Say They Almost
Asked For It, Indian Express, 29 May, viewed
on 29 May 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/rajpur-khurd-african-nationals-attack-chatarpur-2823948/.
Economic Times (2016): People in 34 African
Countries Join Sri Sri Ravi Shankar in I Meditate Africa Campaign, 29 May, viewed on
30 May 2016, http://economictimes.indiatimes.
com/news/politics-and-nation/people-in-34-african-cities-join-sri-sri-ravi-shankar-in-i-meditate-africa-campaign/articleshow/52489661.cms.
Firstpost (2013): Nigerians in Goa: Are We Ignoring
Racism While Blaming Drugs?, 8 November,
viewed on 13 October 2014, http://www.firstpost.

com/india/nigerians-in-goa-are-we-ignoringracism-while-blaming-drugs-1218153.html.
Hindustan Times (2016): Congolese Mans Murder:
Govt Faces Tough Questions from African Diplomats, 25 May, viewed on 26 May 2016, http://
www.hindustantimes.com/india/congolesecitizen-murder-govt-faces-tough-questions-fromafrican-diplomats/story-ddsJfo8pA37xwCWYJ4Js0N.html.
Indian Express (2014): Khirki Extn Midnight Raid:
Judicial Probe Indicts Bharti, Gives Clean Chit
to Police, 2 March, viewed on 28 September 2015,
http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/delhi/
khirki-extn-midnight-raid-judicial-probe-indictsbharti-gives-clean-chit-to-police/.
(2016): Days After Congolese Youths Death,
MEA Says Indian Shops Attacked in Congo,
26 May, viewed on 27 May 2016, http://indianexpress.com/article/india/india-news-india/
congolese-youth-death-new-delhi-african-national-mea-indian-shops-congo-2820302/.
Khoj (2014): Cry Out Loud and Waiting Subjects,
Khoj International Artists Association, 5 April,
viewed on 13 February 2016, http://khojworkshop.org/programme/cry-out-loud-waitingsubjects/.
Kuku, Diepiriye (2009): India Is Racist and Happy
About It, Outlook Magazine, 29 June, viewed
on 17 April 2010, http://www.outlookindia.com/
magazine/story/india-is-racist-and-happy-aboutit/250317.
MEA (2016): Statement on Death of African Student
in Delhi Mr Masunda Kitada Oliver, Ministry
of External Affairs, Government of India, New
Delhi, 25 May, viewed on 27 May 2016, http://
www.mea.gov.in/press-releases.htm?dtl/26846/
Statement_on_death_of_African_student_in_
Delhi_Mr_Masunda_Kitada_Oliver#.
Oladeinde, Yetunde (2015): Ugochi Igwilo How
I Broke Through Indian Fashion Industry,
Nation, 17 May, viewed on 14 January 2016,
http://thenationonlineng.net/ugochi-igwilohow-i-broke-through-indian-fashion-industry/.
Owusu, Linda Peasah (2016): The Belief That Africans
Are Depraved and Perverse Lingers in India,
Hindustan Times, 8 February, viewed on 13 February 2016, http://www.hindustantimes.com/
analysis/the-belief-that-africans-are-depravedand-perverse-lingers-in-india/story-dVmCEIxobCJrQixSjgyzNJ.html.
Singh, I P (2016): Its Bhangra and Bhaichara for
Africans in Punjab, Times of India, 29 May,
viewed on 29 May 2016, http://timesofindia.
indiatimes.com/home/sunday-times/deep-focus/Its-bhangra-and-bhaichara-for-Africansin-Punjab/articleshow/52484403.cms.
Singh, Karn (2016): 23-year-old Congolese Man Dead
in Delhi, Police Probe Racism Angle, Hindustan
Times, 22 May, viewed on 26 May 2016, http://
www.hindustantimes.com/delhi/23-year-oldafrican-national-beaten-to-death-in-delhi-s-vasant-kunj/story-zwkp2CXlI5yE2DQfOdDSCM.
html.
Sugden, Joanna (2013): Nigerian Soccer Star on
Racism in India, Wall Street Journal, 7 November, viewed on 13 February 2016, http://blogs.
wsj.com/indiarealtime/2013/11/07/nigeriansoccer-star-describes-racism-in-india/.
Sultania, Devyani (2016): Attack on Africans:
Media Blowing Up Minor Scuffle, Says Gen
V K Singh, International Business Times, 29 May,
viewed on 30 May 2016, http://www.ibtimes.
co.in/attack-africans-sushma-swaraj-speakshome-minister-assures-action-680554.
Times of India (2016): African Envoys Speak in
Anguish about Prejudice, Racism in India,
27 May, viewed on 27 May 2016, http://
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/African-envoys-speak-in-anguish-about-prejudiceracism-in-India/articleshow/52457284.cms.
Yates, Roger (2004): Us and Them Categories, The
Social Construction of Human Beings and Other Animals in HumanNonhuman Relations: Welfarism
and Rights: A Contemporary Sociological Analysis,
viewed on 13 February 2016, http://roger.rbgi.net/
Us%20and%20Them%20Categories.html.
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
Not Just About Jobs and

Smart Cities
Violence and Youth Identities
Jaideep Gupte
If Indias experiment with smart

urbanisation is to succeed, there
is a critical need for investing in
the priorities of youth, creation of
jobs they aspire to have, spaces
they can engage with and thereby
connecting them with the city.
Rather than an undue emphasis
on harnessing technology for
the betterment of citizens, the
focus should be on inclusive
urbanisation, where no one is
left behind.
This article is based on a presentation made

at the Rethinking Cities in the Global South
conference at the Tata Institute of Social
Sciences in March 2016. I am thankful to
R B Bhagat for his comments and suggestions.
Jaideep Gupte (J.Gupte@ids.ac.uk) is a Fellow
and Cities Cluster Joint-leader at the Institute
of Development Studies, University of Sussex,
United Kingdom.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
ver the last decade, Indias urban population grew by over 90

million, representing a 31.8%
increase. This was 2.6 times the corresponding decadal rise of 12.18% for the
rural population. At the same time,
there is a growing disparity between urban and rural unemployment, wherein
the latter appears to be driving the rising
rate of unemployment nationally, which
rose to 4.9% in 201314. In the most recent
budget, the government has listed job
creation as one of the nine pillars to
transform the economy, and set aside `17
billion (approximately $250 million) for
1,500 multi-skill training institutes. The
budget prioritises job creation for youth
by offering financial incentives to complete vocational training through the
Pradhan Mantri Kaushal Vikas Yojna
(Prime Ministers Skill Development
Scheme). Additionally, the government
has set a skill development target of 400
million trained workers by 2022.
At the same time, recent governments
Digital India initiatives show a strong
focus on urban development and a push
towards smart cities that prioritises
internet connectivity. The governments
motivation is to create world-class cities
that will account for 40% of countrys
population, and contribute up to 75% of
its gross domestic product, by 2030.
These future milestones are important
not least because of the growing importance of the urban economy, and the
opportunities that could bring, but also
because of the challenge of catering to
the needs of urban India. Eighty percent
of the infrastructure required to accommodate urban India in 2030 has not yet
been built. The enormity of the challenge,
likened to building a city the size of
Chicago every year, is daunting enough
(and carries with it yet unanswered
questions around who will build this
vol lI no 41
infrastructure, for whom, and in what

manner). But as AbdouMaliq Simone has
argued in a powerfully crafted essay
People as Infrastructure, building infrastructure does not only mean physically laying down reticulate systems. It also
means creating spaces that individuals
will live, work and play in (Simone 2004).
In light of the governments efforts in
the areas of job creation, vocational training and smart cities, this is a moment to
pause and consider what the impacts of
incentivising vocational training are on
types of jobs and nature of work in the
long run, how vocational training interacts with youth identities in an increasingly urbanised India, and whether
young peoples priorities are actually
being articulated within the new infrastructures of smart cities. I show, using
recently gathered evidence on vocational
training for school dropouts and courtinvolved youth, that the challenge of
countering the rising levels of unemployment is not about job creation alone.
Understanding the priorities of youth,
and how their identities are changing in
an increasingly urbanised India, is
equally if not more important
Global Evidence
Evidence from around the world has
highlighted the significant economic
and psychological impact of failure to
encourage and develop young workers
(Searle et al 2014). These are important
issues in a country that stands to reap
the benefits of the youth-dividend. Globally, youth unemployment rate is currently near its highest at 12.6%, which
equates to nearly 74 million young people estimated to be unemployed (Mitra
and Verick 2013). During the recent
period of economic crisis, the duration
of unemployment has also increased.
Worryingly, a significant percentage
(12.7%) of the overall number of youth
are not in education, employment, or
training. This is creating a significant
incongruence between jobs and skills
and does not bode well for global levels
of unemployment in the future. It is important to consider that youth unemployment rates were increasing even before
the financial crisis. The onus, therefore,
is on the effectiveness of government
21
COMMENTARY
policy on these issues, and cannot be

blamed on the macro-economic conditions of the global economy alone.
Studies from across the world have
shown that career guidance methods
and instruments coupled with a relational
approach to counselling are correlated
with increased reflectivity and more socially engaged actions from students.
Evidence has also shown that vocational
training can have a positive impact on
young peoples well-being, though there
are significant differences by gender,
wherein training programmes impact
women and men differently (Cho et al
2013). Any positive effects, however, can
be massively outweighed by the impacts
of personal connections, which are often
the primary way in which young jobseekers access job openings. For obvious
reasons, this simultaneously reinforces
social and economic inequalities, and in
extreme conditions, can fuel intergenerational transfer of poverty.
Overwhelmingly, global experience
suggests that the primary motivations
for skills acquisition and healthy job
seeking behaviour amongst youth are
the narratives that define who they are,
who they want to be, and how these in
turn relate to their personal goals and
aspirations (Fugate et al 2004). These
not only take time to formulate, but are
also susceptible to changes in the social
and economic milieu. Just as successfully
translating ones qualifications into a job
placement can reinforce positive narratives of ones identity, negative changes,
like dropping out from school for instance,
can have the double impact of incomplete qualifications and the stigma of
failure. Thus, some of the most successful youth-oriented job creation policies
also provide support to develop the mental and personal resources a person has,
including hopefulness, optimism, and
confidence (Chen and Lim 2012).
Unemployment in Urban India
The Indian context is peculiar in several
significant ways. Though the absolute
size of the economy is vast, only 10% of
the Indian workforce is in the organised
sector. Just 2.5% of the countrys working
population has any vocational training,
compared to the average of 60% to 70%
22
in Organisation for Economic Co-opera- criminality. These include, for instance,

tion and Development (OECD) countries. coming from a low-income family or a
India has the largest youth population in ghettoised neighbourhood, having a difthe world with around 66% of the total ficult family background, or having parpopulation under the age of 35. Howev- ents with lower than average education.
er, of the 11 million students graduating On the other hand, however, being in
from colleges each year, only 20% get employment is not just instrumental in
fostering young peoples ability to gain
jobs relevant to their skill sets.
Data shows that unemployment rates access to income and livelihood, but the
for young male graduates in urban areas right kind of work may also have intrinsic
are particularly high, where, ironically, value and bestow a sense of self-worth to
the unemployment rate among illiterate foster well-being.
In this regard, there are some trends
youth is lower than educated youth
(Ministry of Labour and Employment that are a cause for concern: juvenile
2013). Another festering mismatch in crime in India has increased by 40% from
this regard is locational: while most of 2001 to 2010. The city of Mumbai has
the urban economy is generated in the experienced one of the most dramatic
large million+ cities, over 70% of the ur- increases, where juvenile crime has
ban population lives in much smaller risen by more than one-third in the last
Class I urban agglomerations and towns. year alone. The most recent crime statisI focus here specifically on the experi- tics from the state of Maharashtra reveal
ences of two particular groups of mar- that nearly 80% of youth arrested for
ginalised youthschool dropouts and juvenile crime have an annual houseyoung offendersas their experiences not hold income of less than `50,0001 per
only bring to bear important learnings anum (Figure 1). Nevertheless, youth
for youth-oriented job creation more who have dropped out of school and are
generally, but also, as I argue, enable us to arrested for juvenile crime2 in Mumbai, for
better understand the barriers to making example, do not necessarily cite a lack of
the city sustainable and inclusive.
money as a reason for their circumstance.
The link bet ween Figure 1: Juveniles Arrested by Economic Status:
(%)
youth who have drop- Annual Household Income (2013)
ped out of formal
schooling, those who
Indiaia
are jobless, and at-risk
groups likely to be impacted by or be involved
in delinquent crime and
violence, is one that is Maha- ra
rashtra
often made very quickly.
However, the relation0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
ships between youth
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90 100
Below `25,000
`25,001 to `50,000
`50,001 to `1,00,000
populations, crime and
`1,00,001 to `2,00,000
`2,00,001 to `3,00,000
Above `3,00,000
violence are more com- Source:
Computed by the author using Crime in India2013, National Crime Records
plex. Just as urban youth Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
populations can perpe- Figure 2: Juveniles Arrested by Current Education Status (2013)
(%)
trate violence, they are
also victims of it, and
for some, violence can
be a route to identity
Matric/
Above primary but below
IlliteHSec
and voice. On one hand, MahaPrimary
matric/Higher
Secondary
rashtra rate
and
(HSec)
it is true that the risk
Above
factors of a young person becoming a school
dropout are very simi0%
10%
20%
30%
40%
50%
60%
70%
80%
90%
100%
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
lar to the risk factors of
Source: Computed by the author using Crime in India2013, National Crime Records
becoming involved in Bureau, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
Instead, they tend to display a lack of

awareness about other courses that they
can pursue to earn livelihood with dignity (Gupte et al 2014). Data from the
National Crime Records Bureau also
reveals that most juvenile offenders have
at least some level of basic education.
Almost all such offenders have at least a
primary school education, while a significant number achieve education at levels
much higher than this. Contrary to popular perception, a very tiny minority is
completely illiterate (Figure 2, p 22).
Dropouts and Court-involved Youth
In a recent study (Gupte et al 2015), we
find that delivering vocational training
to school dropouts and court-involved
youth in cities is complex and can have
unintended consequences. Based on evidence from across urban Maharashtra
we find, on one hand, that vocational
training can be very successful in increasing pro-social behaviour. It can increase the likelihood of participants
contributing to society, community
groups, or youth clubs, for example. In a
similar vein, vocational training can
also successfully instil a sense of confidence amongst young participants, particularly for those who have committed
a crime in the past. On the other hand,
however, we also find that the same
vocational training programme can
unintentionally create an inflated sense
of entitlement amongst participants.
Youth who had been through vocational
training were more likely to use statements such as I should be allowed to
decide what is right and wrong; and
Only I should decide what I deserve.
Why is this a problem? At one level, a
very high sense of entitlement and an
ensuing lack of empathy for others are
traits associated with narcissistic personalities, and are often found to account
for a greater likelihood of criminal behaviour. That is, in trying to address unemployment and the problem of idle
youth, we may inadvertently be laying
the seeds for cycles of violent behaviour
in the future. At another level, our findings suggest that employability (the skills,
attitudes and behavioural attributes required to acquire and retain a job) is a far
bigger challenge than unemployment.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
Brings me to the issue of youth identities, which at the best of times are
delicate in terms of how they are shaped
and influenced by the environments in
which they are created. For the groups
we studied, school dropouts and young
offenders, very deep-rooted fears and
anxieties were at play. When describing
what it meant to live in the city as young
adults, respondents described their frustrations and negative experiences from
the past, such as being neglected, abused,
or humiliated, lack of parental attention
and guidance, or a chaotic family life,
continued to shape how they experienced living in a city. They described
continually treading a delicate balance
between feeling weak and marginalised
on the one hand, and being left with no
other option but to take full control of
their own life at an early age, on the
other. This invariably meant making
rash decisions, opting for immediate
gains, and not being able to make the
choices that enabled long-term success.
Youth Identities in the City
Vocational training for youth, then, is
not just about skills delivery, though this
is the necessary first step. If its true
potential is recognised, vocational training might also be a way to reconnect
marginalised youth with the citya way
for them to gain legitimate access to the
urban economy, or more functionally, a
way to get the references needed to be
able to rent their own place to live, for
example. In this light, broader paradigms of urban development need to
work in tandem with vocational training
programmes if sustainable solutions to
youth unemployment are to be found. It
is no good for young people to acquire
practical skills only to then be excluded
from the city through economic, social,
or other structural means.
Returning to Simone, investing in the
priorities of youth, creating jobs they
aspire to have, spaces they can engage
with, and thereby connecting them with
the city, also implies investing in the
infrastructure of the cities of the future.
Arguably, this is a much more meaningful way to understand how urbanisation
can be made inclusive and sustainable,
rather than to measure the smartness
vol lI no 41
of cities by metrics of internet connectivity. If Indias experiment with smart

urbanisation is to succeed, we need to
wise up to the deep-rooted frustrations
young people have in negotiating the
city, and think about how our cities can
be inclusive spaces for all to live, work
and play in.
Notes
1
The income categories used by the National

Crime Records Bureau are quite awkward, that
do not relate to most research on income-based
measures of impoverishment.
Serious crime committed by those 18 years or
younger.
References
Chen, D and V Lim (2012): Strength in Adversity:
The Influence of Psychological Capital on Job
Search, Journal of Organizational Behavior,
Vol 33, No 6, pp 81139.
Cho, Y, Davie Kalomba, Ahmed Mushfiq Mobarak
and Victor Orozco (2013): Gender Differences
in the Effects of Vocational Training: Constraints on Women and Drop-out Behavior,
World Bank Policy Research Working Paper
No 6545.
Fugate, M, Angelo J Kinickib and Blake E Ashforthb
(2004): Employability: A Psycho-social Construct, Its Dimensions, and Applications, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 65, pp 1438.
Gupte, J, T Shahrokh and J Wheeler (2014): Tackling Urban Violence in Mumbai and Cape Town
through Citizen Engagement and Community
Action, Institute of Development Studies
(IDS) Policy Briefing 71.
Gupte, Jaideep, Jean-Pierre Tranchant and Becky
Mitchell (2015): Can Targeted Transition Services for Young Offenders Foster Pro-Social
Attitudes and Behaviours in Urban Settings?,
Institute of Development Studies Evidence
Report No 136.
Ministry of Labour and Employment (201213):
Report on Youth EmploymentUnemployment
Scenario, Labour Bureau, Chandigarh.
Mitra, A and S Verick (2013): Youth Employment
and Unemployment: an Indian Perspective,
ILO AsiaPacific Working Paper Series.
National Crime Records Bureau (2013): Crime in
India2013, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
Searle, R, Berrin Erdogan, Jos M Peir, Ute-Christine Klehe (2014): What We Know About
Youth Employment: Research Summary and
Best Practices, Society for Industrial and
Organizational Psychology (SIOP) White Paper
Series.
Simone, AbdouMaliq: (2004): People as Infrastructure: Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg, Public Culture, Vol 16, No 3, pp 40729.
available at
Ideal Books
26/2082, Tutors Lane
Secretariat Statue
Thiruvananthapuram 695001,
Kerala
23
COMMENTARY
Lines on the Map

Meena Menon
The alienation felt against the

Indian government in Kashmir
has been left unresolved and an
attempt has been made to
intensify the blame game by
dragging in the human rights
violations in Balochistan. In the
light of Indias surgical strikes
along the Line of Control, will
dropping the policy of strategic
restraint work towards taking a
step forward or will it ignite
another spiral of violence
and retribution?
ne of the questions that have

been asked since independence
is whether India and Pakistan
can have everlasting peace. Kashmir,
claimed by both countries as a jugular
vein, integral part and inseparable limb
is at the heart of the confrontation and
almost 70 years have passed with the
situation only worsening in the absence
of a constructive way forward.
Nearly every time there is a glimmer
of hope of a way forward, a terror strike
has caused a setback. So it was with
the announcement of a comprehensive
bilateral dialogue in 2015, which was
waylaid by the attack on the Pathankot
airbase in January 2016. The meetings
at the national security advisers level
did not take place formally, but diplomatic efforts were ongoing.
Retaliation and Diplomacy
Meena Menon (meenamenon@gmail.com) is an

independent journalist based in Mumbai and
was the Pakistan correspondent for the Hindu
in 201314.
24
The latest attack to avenge the deaths of

20 soldiers in the Uri cantonment only
takes IndiaPakistan relations towards
a more ominous phase, even if diplomatic
efforts go on. The new mantra seems to
be a mix of retaliation and diplomacy,
which could prove to be as pretentious
as the British gunboat diplomacy of the
olden days. While Pakistan has dismissed
the strike and called it another instance
of unprovoked cross-border firing and
ceasefire violation, a day earlier, its
defence minister Khwaja Asif openly invoked the nuclear option.
A series of events caused a cascading
effect in bilateral relations since the
Narendra Modi government took over in
2014. After the Pathankot airbase attack,
there was a semblance of maturity and a
Pakistani investigation team did visit
India as part of the attempt at a joint
investigation. But, it only worsened the
blame game to some extent and resulted
in little concrete action. The arrest, two
months later, of Kulbushan Yadav, who
the Pakistani authorities claimed is a
RAW agent, set off a fresh series of accusations and counter-accusations.
With people baying for blood and

teaching Pakistan a lesson, a change in
strategy was imminent. The policy of
strategic restraint was dropped in favour
of attacks on terrorist launch pads along
the Line of Control (LoC) on the night of
2829 September 2016. The stealth attacks went viral in the media, which
warmly endorsed the move, and experts
spoke of a welcome change in strategy
that challenged Pakistan and its alleged
support to terrorists. But, even they are
asking if this is a mere chest-thumping
exercise or a long-term strategy.
The Bangladesh war has been a raw
wound and Pakistans repeated wars and
proxy wars over Kashmir have not resolved
the situation. But, training and arming
terrorists has come home to hit Pakistan,
which is also a victim of terrorism. Nearly 50,000 to 60,000 lives have been lost
since the last decade. Despite sanctions,
suspected terrorists like Hafiz Saeed,
Jaish-e-Mohammads Masood Azhar and
others move freely and hold public rallies
where they abuse India and call for
jihad to wrest Kashmir with impunity.
There are repeated assertions that
Pakistan does not support terrorism from
its soil, but that is belied by the facts on
the ground.
The two new main factors in India are
a leader playing to a domestic constituency
out for revenge, and an army that is keen
to put Pakistan in its place finally getting
the green signal. The celebrations post
the surgical strike publicity were reminiscent of the drum-beating in May 1998,
when India conducted five nuclear tests
sparking off fresh tensions in the subcontinent and matching tests in Pakistan.
Dissenters who have been critical of
the Indian Armys surgical strikes are
being frowned upon as peaceniks, and
even being stalked by jingoists. Already,
Indias action is being compared in the
media by some to the stealth operation
by Navy Seals in Abbottabad in May 2011
that killed Osama bin Laden.
It is amazing that the army camps
near the LoC and in Kashmir are so
vulnerable to repeated attacks. The
strategy to conduct a stealth attack on
terror launch pads on actionable intelligence seems to be missing when it comes
to attacks in India.
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
Spirit of SAARC
Even before the surgical strike by the
Indian Army along the LoC on 2829 September, the South Asian Association for
Regional Cooperation (SAARC) meeting
in Islamabad slated for 910 November
2016 became a casualty. India announced
that cross-border terrorism by one
country had created an environment
that was not conducive to the successful
holding of the 19th SAARC summit.
Bangladesh, Bhutan, Afghanistan, Sri
Lanka and the Maldives too had announced that they would stay away
from the summit.
Indias decision to inflict a surgical
strike against Pakistan indicated that the
spirit of SAARC to work out things in a
mutually agreeable manner had already
taken a backseat. The decision to not
attend the meeting in Islamabad seems
to be another bid to isolate Pakistan,
which has accused India of delaying
or deferring the meet in the past too.
Already Indias most favoured nation
(MFN) status to Pakistan is in danger of
being revoked and there are similar
noises being made about scrapping the
Indus Waters Treaty.
Back to Square One
So, we seem to be back to square one, from
a glimmer of peace and amity to confrontation, though some experts think this
could be the beginning of a new relationship where India has the upper hand.
Another neighbour and key player in
this regional game is Afghanistan, where
President Ashraf Ghani at first tried to
make friendly overtures to Pakistan. He
changed his stance later and accused
Pakistan of harbouring terrorists on its
land and launching attacks.
Pakistan has also been at the receiving
end of the United States repeatedly asking
it to do more to tackle the Haqqani Network, which is targeting its troops on
Afghan soil. Pakistan steadfastly maintains
that it does not favour any terror group,
but the deaths of two key Afghan Taliban
leaders on its soil points to the contrary.
It is not only Kashmir and terrorism,
but aspects of regional cooperation and
water sharing which are mired in this
IndoPak wrangling. The Indus Waters
Treaty, often held to be the only good
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
news between the two countries, seems

to be in trouble with Modi saying that
blood and water cannot flow together. In
despair, Pakistan has approached the
World Bank, a signatory to the treaty.
The treaty has worked in a spirit of
cooperation, but in 2005 Pakistan went
for arbitration for the first time over the
Baglihar Dam on the River Chenab.
Since then, Hafiz Saeed, founder of the
Lashkar-e-Taiba, has held several rallies
accusing India of water aggression, an
accusation that seems to be gaining
ground.
Pakistan once again looked to arbitration in 2010 over the Kishenganga Project
(on the Kishenganga/Neelum River), and
in 2013 the Court of Arbitration asked
India to ensure a minimum flow of water
into the river downstream of the project
at all times.
The Indus Waters Treaty cannot be
dismantled at whim. In the interest of
river basin development, it is a valuable
resource for both India and Pakistan. A
study released in May 2014 shows that
the impression that India was stealing
Pakistans share of water was not based
on any real empirical evidence.
The report, Pakistans Water Discourse,
Attitudes on Water Management Practices by the Jinnah Institute and
Chatham House, based on interviews with
experts, indicates broad-based support
for the efficacy of the treaty.
Experts from all over Pakistan felt that
India was entitled to its share of water,
including the building of dams under
the treaty. However, what was of concern

was the unverifiable water flow data
provided by India, and that a joint mechanism to measure water was missing.
Only a few felt that India was engaging
in water aggression and not obeying
the treaty in letter and spirit.
In the absence of an informed political
debate on the treaty and water sharing,
it was easy to misguide people about
water terrorism or aggression. Many
felt it offered a broad scope for cooperation between Pakistan and India, and
also helped in successful arbitration in
the two cases involving Baglihar and
Kishenganga. In the background of the
usual hostility, this was a welcome voice
which rooted for debate and cooperation.
Similarly, in terms of trade, despite all
the controversy over the MFN status,
informal trade between the two countries
accounts for $4.2 billion, according to a
study by the Sustainable Development
Policy Institute (SDPI) in Islamabad.
Clothes, medicines, alcohol and a host of
itemseven betel leavesare taken
from India through informal couriers or
khepias, and many shops sell Indian goods
in Pakistan. However, the informal trade
affects the local automobile parts industry
negatively and Pakistan loses considerable revenue as no customs duty is paid
for most of these goods, says the study.
Mutual and Assured Destruction?
These crucial issues find little place in
the discourse of hostility that overpowers IndiaPakistan relations and, as
EPW 5-Year CD-ROM 2004-08 on a Single Disk

The digital versions of Economic and Political Weekly for 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008 are now available
on a single disk. The CD-ROM contains the complete text of 261 issues published from 2004 to 2008 and comes
equipped with a powerful search, tools to help organise research and utilities to make your browsing experience
productive. The contents of the CD-ROM are organised as in the print edition, with articles laid out in individual
sections in each issue.
With its easy-to-use features, the CD-ROM will be a convenient resource for social scientists, researchers and
executives in government and non-government organisations, social and political activists, students, corporate
and public sector executives and journalists.
Price for 5 year CD-ROM (in INDIA)
Individuals - Rs 1500
Institutions - Rs 2500
To order the CD-ROM send a bank draft payable at Mumbai in favour of Economic and Political Weekly.
Any queries please email: circulation@epw.in
Circulation Manager,
Economic and Political Weekly
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013, India
vol lI no 41
25
COMMENTARY
Stephen Cohen rightly said, mutual

and assured destruction is alive and
well in South Asia (2013). This alarming
statement rings true now, with the
threat of nuclear weapons being bandied
around casually.
It is difficult for Modis isolationist
policy to be effective in a world where
polarisation begins in the subcontinent
itself, with big powers like China and
Russia not wanting to keep Pakistan out
of the way. When push comes to shove,
few will back an all-out aggression by
India or Pakistan, as history has shown
us in the past, and that cannot be a solution to the tensions.
Before he was elected, Indias Prime
Minister Modi had said on television
that Pakistan needs to be tackled in the
language it understands. There was
also the recurring theme of terror
and talks not being a harmonious mix.
However, even before he assumed office,
feelers of goodwill had been sent in the
form of a non-resident Indian friend who
visited Islamabad. In 2013, Pakistan installed a democratically elected government
for the second time running and Prime

Minister Nawaz Sharif was careful not to
indulge in India-bashing while campaigning. He extended an open hand of
friendship to his neighbour. There was
great hope that Modi, if elected, would
do one better than the seemingly dillydallying Congress.
Pakistans Expectations
from the BJP
After former Prime Minister Atal Bihari
Vajpayee, who is fondly remembered for
his bus ride to Lahore, it is the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) to which most people
in Pakistan looked to for peace and a
solution in Kashmir. In the television
debates on this issue in Pakistan then,
the discussions largely favoured Modi.
The invitation to Sharif to attend his
swearing-in ceremony in New Delhi,
and subsequent events only buttressed
that feeling of warmth.
Sharif, expectedly, was not enjoying a
smooth run at home. In mid-2014 Imran
Khans Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf and cleric
Tahir-ul-Qadris party Pakistan Awami
Tehreek jammed a high security area in

Islamabad for days, demanding that
Sharif step down for his various acts of
omission and commission. Khan had
mounted a sustained campaign against
Sharif for rigging the general elections.
The Pakistani Army was said to be
behind these democratic protests, something it has strenuously denied. Democracy seems to have its limits in Pakistan.
So while the Pakistan cabinet was set to
approve the MFN status for India in early
2014, there was a dampening announcement by Sharif that it was going to be
deferred since India was going in for
elections and Pakistan did not want to
be seen as favouring any party.
Furious debates followed in the Pakistan
National Assembly and Senate over granting India the MFN status. There was even
a proposal to change the term to nondiscriminatory market access (NDMA) in
order to mollify the opposition. Farmers,
traders and their political leaders were
dead set against India being given trade
access as the balance of trade was already
in Indias favour and they could not
ICSSR Data Access Scheme for PhD Scholars

Applications are invited from PhD students in universities and colleges for one year access to EPWRF India Time Series
(EPWRF ITS) for use in their doctoral research. This is to promote Social Science Research through Online Time Series Data Services.
(i)
Up to 50 PhD scholars will be given access to the EPWRF India Time Series for one year.
(ii)
Only students outside the ICSSR institutes can apply.
(iii) PhD scholars can request access to any ve of the following modules of their choice.
(1)
(2)
(3)
(4)
(5)
(6)
(7)
(8)
National Accounts Statistics of India

Domestic Product of States of India
Price Indices
Agricultural Statistics
Annual Survey of Industries
Industrial Production Series
External Sector
Financial Markets
(9)
(10)
(11)
(12)
(13)
(14)
(15)
(16)
Banking Statistics
Insurance
Finances of the Government of India
Finances of State Governments
Combined Government Finances
Power Sector
Health Statistics
Educational Statistics
The application form can be downloaded from our website and may be processed through the research guide/department. For
further details about the modules, interested candidates can access demo version after free registration. For further details, please
visit www.epwrts.in.
Address for sending applications and any query:
The Director,
EPW Research Foundation, C-212, Akurli Industrial Estate, Akurli Road,
Kandivli (East), Mumbai-400 101.
Phone : 022 - 2885 4995 / 96 Email : epwrf@epwrf.in
Website: www.epwrf.in and www.epwrts.in
26
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
COMMENTARY
compete on a level playing field, especially

with Indias agricultural subsidies.
Jugular Vein of Pakistan
Zulfikar Ali Bhutto had pitched for Confrontation, confrontation, confrontation,
as the key to the IndiaPakistan dispute
in his Lahore speech of December 1970.
Subsequent leaders, however, favoured
negotiation and dialogue. Indeed, Sharif
too has spared no effort to show his
goodwill for India but unfortunately,
goodwill alone cannot make peace.
In August 2013, in his first address to
the nation, Sharif made it clear that
Kashmir was indeed the jugular vein of
Pakistan. That was not a major departure in foreign policy or a conciliatory
statement but the need for friendship
and cooperation was emphasised.
The Prime Ministers of India and
Pakistan met in Paris in November 2015.
Later, in Bangkok there was a meeting
of the national security advisers and foreign secretaries. At the Heart of Asia
conference in Islamabad in December
2015, the two countries agreed to a comprehensive bilateral dialogue substituting for the earlier composite dialogue.
This was a step ahead of the earlier
eight-point composite dialogue during
Vajpayees time which was wrecked by
the 26 November 2011 terror strike. The
topics discussed were peace and security,
confidence building measures (CBMs),
Jammu and Kashmir, Siachen, Sir Creek,
Wullar Barrage/Tulbul Navigation Project,
economic and commercial cooperation,
counter-terrorism, narcotics control and
humanitarian issues, people-to-people
exchanges and religious tourism.
The national security advisers of the
two nations were supposed to meet and
discuss terrorism while the foreign
secretaries too were scheduled to work
out the details of the comprehensive
bilateral dialogue in January.
In a surprise gesture Modi, on his way
back from Kabul, made a stopover at
Lahore to meet Sharif on his (the latters)
birthday. This was unprecedented but
the bonhomie ended soon.
Establishing the Truth
The lack of a third party investigation,
by the UN for instance, is a lacuna in this
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
context and India has always resisted

this approach. In the face of denials and
accusations, it is very difficult to establish
the truth behind some incidents and even
in the 26/11 attack, doubts have been
raised during the ongoing trial in Pakistan
of the veracity of the Indian charge that
it is the Lashkar-e-Taiba which masterminded the entire terror strike.
Pictures of the terrorists, the confession
of Ajmal Kasab and the two visits by
the Pakistan Judicial Commission are
yet to convincingly nail the case which is
meandering since 2009. Every time India
rakes up the need for closure in this
attack, Pakistan has a counter demand
in the form of the Samjhauta Express
blasts in 2007.
Evidence in the Uri attack shared with
Pakistan too has been dismissed as a
piece of paper. In the face of recalcitrance on both sides, peace has a rather
slim chance and statesmanship has not
often come to its rescue from either side.
On Kashmir, the huge outpouring of
grief following the killing of the young
Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan
Wani on 8 July and the subsequent use
of pellet guns to staunch protests has
given Indias image a beating that will
not fade away soon.
Even if there are repeated allusions to
the number of Indian security personnel
who were injured or killed in the protests
in Kashmir, they are overpowered by the
images and stories of people (especially
the young) blinded and maimed by a
crude technology that should never have
been used in the first place.
Indias Kashmir Policy
The coalition governments actions in
Kashmir and the tears of Chief Minister
Mehbooba Mufti cannot wash away the
monumental failure in handling the
situation. Maintaining status quo, a
generous dose of oppression, and repeated
statements that Kashmir is an integral
part of India, capped by a complete lack
of dialogue have worsened matters.
The surgical strikes may be intended
to convey a lack of tolerance for terrorism
but it has not been accompanied by any
way forward or steps for negotiation on
Kashmir just yet. Instead India has chosen
to deepen the blame game by dropping
vol lI no 41
her restraint in another direction

Balochistan. Previously, the only time it
was mentioned was in the joint statement
in 2009 issued by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and his Pakistani
counterpart Yousaf Raza Gilani on the
sidelines of the Non-Aligned Movement
summit in Sharm el-Sheikh.
Singh was criticised by the BJP for paving the way for Pakistan to accuse India of
fomenting trouble in Balochistan. Since
then Pakistan has stepped up the accusation of Indias involvement there and more
recently it has submitted a dossier to the
United Nations outlining Indias alleged
subversive activities in that province.
The arrest of Yadav in March 2016,
has given Pakistan what it thinks is the
necessary evidence to nail Indias dubious
role. India has denied Yadav is a RAW
agent while Pakistan claims it has
uncovered a network of RAW spies acting
to destabilise Balochistan.
It is tempting to think that the surgical
strike was the only option left to tackle
an intractable country but India has fallen
back on dialogue and not moved from
the status quo situation over Kashmir
which has proved costly. The alienation
in Kashmir has been left unresolved and
instead of putting our own house in order,
there is an attempt to intensify the
blame game by dragging in the human
rights violation in Balochistan.
The sense of foreboding can only
deepen with the lack of a clear framework in either resolving the Kashmir dispute or the terror question in a way that
will not lead to more attacks, surgical or
not. At the same time, no one can question
the need for an end to terror and loss of
life and a solution to the festering Kashmir
problem. Can this policy of dropping
strategic restraint work to achieving a
step forward or will it ignite another spiral
of violence and retribution? Already there
are fresh attacks and cross-LoC violations.
But in the wake of near universal endorsement of his actions, Modi will rest content that he has found an appeasing formula to keep his legions content for now.
Reference
Cohen, P Steven (2013): Shooting for a Century:
The India-Pakistan Conundrum, Washington:
Brookings Institution Press.
27
Engagement with
Contemporary India
A R Vasavi
hat is the contemporary, especially in a nation that is experiencing expedited and unusual forms of change? How does social
change play out on the national stage?
How must academia study and represent
these trends and changes? These have
been (or should be) concerns that engage
academia. An attempt in this vein is
the edited volume by Knut A Jacobsen,
known for his repertoire of studies on
religion and classical Hindu texts of
India. The volume seeks to engage and
represent some of Indias contemporary
conditions. It draws on a structural
functional framework, and locates a
range of studies under the themes of
foundations, external relations, society
and culture, religion and diversity, and
cultural change and innovation. Matching such a framework is the collection of
essays, most of which provide succinct
summaries of trends related to some of
the key themes.
Key Issues
Instead of the now clichd postcolonial
condition that presages most essays, the
volumes essays on foundations of a
nation focus on the context and trajectories of Indias economy and polity. Quite
rightly Pippa Virdees essay invokes
memories of partition and its pain, which
as a historical event continues to mark
the nations political and cultural angst.
Essays on the economy summarise the
varied key policies that first went into
making the Nehruvian economy (Kunal
Sen) and then the shift into the contemporary liberalised one (Diego Maiorano).
None of the essays, however, engage
with the contemporary predicament of
India, where despite the key shifts to
opening the economy (and now widely
but questionably referred to as the neoliberal economy), the government welfare
28
book reviewS
Routledge Handbook of Contemporary India
edited by Knut A Jacobsen; Oxon: Routledge, 2016; pp 506,
130 (hardback).
regime has also expanded. The noting of

such a dualistic economy, which the late
Kalyan Sanyal had elaborated, and the
markings of which continue to be manifested across the nation are not represented in this volume.
Some of the key contradictions of this
new dual economy that must contend
with a highly iniquitous social structure
are highlighted by Harald Tambs-Lyche
and Nikita Sud in their essay on Gujarat.
They elaborate the economic injustices
and political tensions that such an economy has created. That such a dual, layered and differentiated economy is in
place and that it reproduces a range of
other foundational structures, which in
turn feed into the iniquitous system is
elaborated by Vimala Ramachandrans
essay on the elementary education system. Similarly, Uday Chandras essay on
the Adivasis/tribals lays out the predicament of marginalised tribals who are
increasingly incorporated by force into
the capitalist economy. Ananth Padmanabhans seminal piece on the Constitution and the Supreme Court lays out in a
succinct manner the foundations of
Indias legal apparatus and the tensions
that it must balance. That public interest
litigation continues to play a key role,
acting as the real guardian of the Constitution, indicates the strength of the judiciary as one of the pillars of democratic
India. Summarising past orientations
and current priorities in Indias foreign
policy and international relations are
essays by Rajat Ganguly, Manjeet Pardesi,
and Emma Mawdsley. Considering yoga
and ayurveda as elements of a cultural
economy, Mark Singleton and Maya

Warrier detail the circulatory dimensions that these practices have gained on
the international stage. Caste remains
that enigmatic structure, practice and
principle that reproduces itself in manifold ways. Surinder S Jodhkas essay traces
some of these trends but the larger
question of the emergence of caste as a
political player, a reinforced ethnic
marker, and an internalised identity
which now defines inter-group and interfamily relations are not represented in
the essays.
Social Class and Agency
Some of the key threads in the volume
can be subject to contestations: are
the middle class really the key protagonists of a new India (p 122)? Academia
should re-question such posers to understand if the ascription of agency and visibility to the middle class (accorded primarily by the media and market) does
not also deny visibility to others. The
chapter on the middle class by Leela
Fernandes raises such methodological
issues, debunking the idea of a large and
homogeneous middle class, which she
says is one of the most over-debated yet
under-studied social groups and which
in reality is differentiated (p 232). Similarly, should not what is happening in
rural India and to its rural residents also
indicate the trajectories of the new
India? That such invisibilisation of vast
sections of Indias population is also
reproduced in academia is evident in the
fact that few books now have a focus on
the rural and the agrarian and alas this
volume also commits this same omission. Although there is a chapter (by
Rajeswari S Raina) on agriculture and
development there is no substantial section on rural India and on the village as
a site and what its contemporary characteristics and life are.
The complexities of Indias social structures and cultures and their ensuing
contestations are played out in the inner
domain as much as they have become
key issues on the national stage. Unpacking some of these contestations in the
private sphere are essays by Mallarika
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
BOOK REVIEW
Sinha Roy on marriage and family and

Nandita Ghosh on constructions of feminity. As Ghosh elaborates, notions of
family and caste honour resurface to
challenge modernitys ideals of individualism, choice, and freedom. The section on religion and diversity draws on
several essays thereby highlighting how
religious practices continue to be subject
to change and are also a source of
national contestations.
Other Contributions
Gerald J Larson makes out a case for
understanding how myths as history and
history as myth have become central to
issues of national identity and interreligious relations. Vasudha Narayanans
is a seminal essay that details the
iconography of Saraswathi as the goddesss of learning and who now gains
prominence on Washingtons embassy
row, placed there by the Government
of Indonesia, a Muslim majority nation.
Focusing on the idea and practice of pilgrimage in Hinduism is Knut Jacobsens
essay which provides a summary of the

scholarship on pilgrimages and details
some recent trends. The essays by Eleanor Zelliot and Ronki Ram elaborate on
Navayana Buddhism and Ravidassia
Dharm respectively, thereby indicating
trends in the religious practices of subaltern groups. R Santhoshs essay on Muslims focuses not only on recent trends in
Indias Islamic communities but also
raises questions about their citizenship
rights in the context of growing religious
nationalism. Similarly, John Websters
essay on Christians highlights their
diversity and the challenges that the
community faces.
The essays by Michiel Baas, Michael
Bruckert, and Brigitte Sebastia stand
out from others in the volume as they
are based on primary and or ethnographic research. A key question that
these three essays raise relates to
whether popular culture reflects foundational structures thereby reproducing dominant structures. Representing
gyms as sites of the new urban service
economy, Michiel Baass essay highlights how a new kind of ideal type
of masculinity emerges which unites
bodily ideals with a highly idealised urban lifestyle that the body also inherently reflects (p 453). Bruckerts essay
on changing food cultures among urban
residents argues for a cultural economy
approach just as Sebastias essay on the
practice of siddha medicine highlights
the new kind of bricolage that the practitioners engage in.
Focusing on the key structures and
their constitution of Indias society,
economy and polity, this volume will be
useful for undergraduates and for those
initiating research on India. Since cultural and religious contestations are interpolated with political and economic
differences, a range of emerging cultural configurations, public events, and private practices are all sites in which the
nation lives its contemporary moment.
A R Vasavi (arvasavi@gmail.com) is a social
anthropologist based in Bengaluru.
Map the current roles of social workers within the spectrum

of mental health services and its future directions
` 850
A range of scholarly reflections on the different roles

of a social worker in the field of mental health
Exposes the different contexts within which

social workers work in the field of mental health
T
The
book provides a detailed
discussion on the theoretical and
practice frameworks that are based
on social justice and human rights
perspectives. It not only provides an
overview of intervention strategies
but also directs readers attention
tto an alternative way of addressing
mental health issues.The author
presents a cross-cultural and global
perspective of mental health, but with
specific references to India and Asia.
368 pages PB 978-81-321-1739-1
` 950
The author addresses some of

the recent debates in recovery,
partnerships and strengths-based
practices to introduce readers to
the wider issues of social work and
mental health practice. This book
offers an exposure to the many
different contexts within which
social workers come into contact
with those experiencing mental
health concerns. The specific needs
for particular community groups,
including children, young and older
people, are identified.
384 pages PB 978-81-321-1740-7
20% discount
EPW
ORDER NOW! Write to marketing@sagepub.in

with priority code EPW2016
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
www.sagepub.in
29
BOOK REVIEW
(Chapter 7) is written without any clear

sections and flow.
Inclusiveness and Viability

of Value Chains
Smallholder-based Model
Sukhpal Singh
value chain is one of the dominant frameworks used to analyse

various production and trade
sectors, and their dynamics. There have
been many studies on value chains at
the global and national levels, across
products and geographies. One major
theme in these studies has been the
exclusion of smaller players, especially
small primary producers, in the developing world. However, there are very
few studies that explore the inclusiveness of increasingly important value
chains, especially in the agribusiness
sector (Singh 2012).
In this context, the edited book by
Malcolm Harper, John Belt and Rajeev
Roy is a welcome addition to the scanty
literature as it examines value chains for
their inclusiveness and commercial viability at national and subnational or
even local levels, and demonstrates with
case studies the possibilities of organising and sustaining commercial and
inclusive value chains. Each case study
is claimed to be backed by a measurement of the impact of the value chain on
the local stakeholders.
This book contains, besides an introduction by the editors, six case studies on
non-food value chains from Africa and
India, five case studies on commodity
foods from Africa, India and Cambodia,
and four case studies on non-commodity
foods covering Africa and India. The
contributors range from academics, to
practitioners, and policymakers.
The purpose of the book as claimed by
the editors is to demonstrate with examples the possibilities of organising and
sustaining commercial and inclusive value
chains as non-corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives. The editors also
argue that commercial value chains driven
by private entities need not be exploitative of small producers or the rural poor.
They are of the view that including and
benefiting the rural or urban poor can
30
Commercial and Inclusive Value Chains: Doing

Good and Doing Well edited by Malcolm Harper,
John Belt and Rajeev Roy; Warwickshire (UK): Practical
Action Publishing, 2015; pp 200, `2,040.
be good business as well as about doing

good at the same time. Most of the case
studies included are about those enterprises that were non-subsidised and still
inclusive of small rural producers. Further, most of them do not belong to large
corporations to avoid CSR disguised as
inclusive value chains.
Missing Value Chain Maps
The most unusual case in the first part of
the book is that of khat in Somali land
(Chapter 2), which is a stimulant (drug)
illegally produced and traded across the
border. But, the case study does not provide a value chain map, which the editors claim each case study contains.
Chapter 3 describes the case of a small
local banana-based beer production
company in Tanzania, which sources
80% of its bananas from 10 large traders
who, in turn, source from at least 50
small farmers each.
Chapter 4 is about the local organiser
of contract cotton seed production and
its role in the chain in Rajasthan, but the
case study does not provide a value chain
map and, surprisingly, makes no mention of the producer company (cooperative company) through which seed production is organised at the local level,
which has been studied by this reviewer
(Singh and Singh 2014).
The case study on stove liners in Kenya
(Chapter 5) is about eco-friendly product
innovation and its commercialisation
and impact on household incomes and
the environment. The case study of the
granite value chain in Odisha (Chapter 6)
details the remuneration, and the conditions of work and the processes involved.
The case study of foreign remittances
from the Somali diaspora in Europe
The first case study in the second part of

the book examines the transformation
of a relatively neglected, but nutritious,
millet food crop in Tanzania (Chapter 8)
from traditional to modern by a private
finger millet grain processing company
working with 400 farmers. The case
study does not provide a value chain
map, but finds the value chain inclusive
of small-scale farmers based on a survey
of 20 smallholders selling directly or
via traders to the company, of whom
only 30% came out to be poor as against
85% earlier.
Another case study (Chapter 9) is that
of paddy rice production organisation in
Malawi led by a private company, which
leased out its own land to 220 farmers
for cultivating paddy twice a year, and
7,000 other farmers were provided inputs
and various services besides the output
purchase. The business model is centred
around sourcing from small-scale farmers,
and not undertaking production.
Organic contract farming of a local
variety similar to the aromatic Thai rice
(Hom Mali) in Cambodia (Chapter 10) for
export by a private rice mill is another
case of an institutional innovation in the
form of farmer associations working
with 50,000 contract growers. The case
study provides a rough sketch of the
commodity value chain from farmer to
consumer, and reports that the economics of households producing this crop
is robust and has led to improvement in
childrens schooling, housing, and in acquiring assets like two-wheelers and
televisions. The intervention also led to
some farmers opting out of the contract
farming scheme and going for the open
local market within the country. But,
this was leading to quality issues in the
market and affecting the reputation of this
variety of rice. The case study also points
to the poor design of the contract agreement as it does not specify any obligations of the company. But, the contract
design was found to be unbalanced and
farmers felt that associations were not
independent. The case study also questions the inclusiveness of its operations
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
BOOK REVIEW
as contract farmers had larger landholding than the non-contract farmers.

In the case of a private dairy value
chain in Karnataka (Chapter 11), it was
possible to work directly with smallscale milk producers as the private dairy
created a business model wherein it procured milk and sold it to processors and/
or to consumers under its own dairy
brand (Milk Route) though it faced challenges of scaling up and down marketing
presence. The second Indian case study
(Chapter 12) is the well-known case of
Suguna Poultry which organises smallholder-based contract production of broi
ler chickens, studied by many researchers
(Singh and Asokan 2005; Ramesh 2010).
It compares the Suguna business model
(integrating the input side completely
and combining it with contract farming)
with that of a producer company promoted by a non-governmental organisation (NGO), Pradan. These are, however,
incomparable as one is completely a
market-based arrangement (Suguna) and
the other is completely a producer-owned
and controlled value chain. The farmers
were able to move to a higher score of
the Progress out of Poverty Index (PPI)
after participation in Sugunas contract

farming. But, poultry farm employees
were still low on the PPI.
High-value Food Products
The third section of the book deals with
high-value food products. The case of
green beans from Senegal for export to
Europe (Chapter 13) shows how stringent quality standards in the European
markets led to the shift from vertical coordination (contract farming) to vertical
integration arrangements (production on
company-owned farms with the help of
casual daily farm labour). The participant
households had a larger labour supply
there were less female-headed and more
literate householdshigher membership
in an organisation, larger land and livestock ownership in the case of contract
farmers, and lower levels of poverty/
extreme poverty as compared to nonparticipants. The only intriguing point in
this case study is: why did the companies
not reverse lease their farms to smallholders for leveraging their labour efficiency and lower costs?
The cashew nut case study from Odisha
(Chapter 14) examines both smallholder
and worker inclusion and well-being, but

there was no direct linkage between the
processor and the farmers. It highlights
the poor conditions of work for predominantly women workers and the gender
gap in wages. The organic turmeric value
chain in Odisha (Chapter 15) developed
by a private company led to employment
generation and better prices for farmers
working through community institutions.
A small company in Peru roping in small
producers to maintain failed oil palm
plantations by leasing them to these producers (Chapter 16) is a story of turnaround in oil palm. It was able to produce
palm oil at the small-farm level, process
it at small scale, and supply local feed
companies from which farmers benefited.
Value Chain Inclusiveness
and Viability
The concluding chapter of the book
(Chapter 17) provides a comparative
table of the case study value chains of all
the 15 products in terms of the nature of
the lead firm and the number of produ
cers or workers benefited. It highlights
that most of them were small local companies that organised value chains driven
Water: Growing Understanding, Emerging Perspectives

Edited by
NEW
Mihir Shah and P S Vijayshankar

For decades after independence, Indian planning ignored the need for sustainability and equity in water resource
development and management. There was just one way forward, that of harnessing the bounty in our rivers and below the
ground. It was only in the 1990s that serious questions began to be raised on our understanding and approach to rivers.
This collection of essays, all previously published in the Economic and Political Weekly between 1990 and 2014, reflects
the multi-dimensional, multi-disciplinary character of water and spans hydrogeology, sociology, economics, political
science, geography, history, meteorology, statistics, public policy, energy and ecology.
The essays are arranged thematically and chronologically: Water Resource Development and Management, Historical
Perspectives, Social and Political Dimensions, Economic Concerns, and Water Policy.
Pp xiii + 559 | Rs 895

ISBN 978-81-250-6292-9
2016
With detailing of the huge diversity of concerns and points of departure, Water: Growing Understanding, Emerging
Perspectives will be invaluable to students and scholars of sociology, economics, political science, geography, ecology
and public policy.
Authors: Baba Amte Suhas Paranjape K J Joy Jayesh Talati Tushaar Shah R Maria Saleth Dinesh K Marothia Marcus Moench Navroz K
Dubash Rahul Ranade P S Vijayshankar Himanshu Kulkarni Sunderrajan Krishnan David Gilmartin Margreet Zwarteveen Rohan DSouza
David Hardiman Niranjan Pant Lyla Mehta Anindita Sarkar Deepa Joshi Biksham Gujja Vinod Goud Shruti Vispute Ramaswamy R Iyer A
Vaidyanathan K Sivasubramaniyan E Somanathan R Ravindranath Isha Ray Sulochana Gadgil Siddhartha Gadgil Avinash Kishore Shilp Verma
Aditi Mukherji Partha Sarathi Banerjee Mihir Shah
Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd

www.orientblackswan.com
MumbaiChennaiNew DelhiKolkataBengaluruBhubaneshwarErnakulamGuwahatiJaipurLucknowPatnaChandigarhHyderabad
Contact: info@orientblackswan.com
Economic & Political Weekly EPW october 8, 2016 vol lI no 41
31
BOOK REVIEW
by market forces and business logic, and

that small producers were a natural fit in
their operations. The interventions in
the value chain were based on an
understanding of market conditions and
viability. The new production practices
introduced by the lead firms created
higher value and improved efficiency.
The editors argue that it is not always
necessary to make use of groups or associations because they have their own cost
as well as reputational risks. In fact, the
editors suggest that if such groups are
part of the chain, then they should not
be loaded with too many responsibilities.
The concluding chapter highlights the
point made by many case studies that it
is important to focus on employment
generation benefits of the value chain,
and not harp on smallholder primary
producer inclusion in the chain every
time. But, it also highlights the concerns
on inclusive value chains not remaining
so after a while, and the need for regulation and safeguards. The editors are of
the view that the first mover advantage
of such chains may not last long if they
do not make long-term investments.
Finally, the editors recognise the limitations of the market in tackling poverty
and agree that growth is not an automatic route to poverty reduction or development. It ends with a few lessons
for NGOs, governments and donorsin
the nature of not relying on direct subsidies and focusing more on social institutions, health and education, working
more professionally, and learning from
the private sector.
Though the editors have done a commendable job of putting together so many
interesting case studies on inclusiveness
and viability of value chains, some of the
case studies, like those on Thai rice and
green beans, also show that inclusiveness
is not easy when private entities work
with primary producers as cost and competitiveness concerns overtake other
priorities. Though the book claims that
there are case studies from Southeast
Asia and Latin America, it contains only
one case from South-east Asia (Cambodia) and one from Latin America (Peru).
The inclusion of a large number of case
studies (six) from India is justified given
Indias share in global poverty, but then
it becomes more of the same and learnings become limited. In fact, 12 of the 15
cases involved farm products that were
mostly food products. Therefore, it
would have been better if the book was
more focused on Africa and India and
was titled Commercial and Inclusive
Food Value Chains in India and Africa.
Notwithstanding these small shortcomings, the book is a valuable addition
to the scanty literature on the issue and
is a must-read for all those interested
and involved in value chain research
and management.
Sukhpal Singh (sukhpal@iima.ac.in) is at the
Centre for Management in Agriculture, Indian
Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
References
Ramesh, G (2010): Mainstreaming an Unorganised Industry: The Case of Suguna Poultry,
Vikalpa, Vol 35, No 2, pp 3548.
Singh, G and S R Asokan (2005): Contract Farming
in India: Text and Cases, New Delhi: Oxford
and IBH.
Singh, S (2012): Modern Food Value Chains in India:
Emerging Potential for the Poor, New Delhi:
Samskriti.
Singh, S and T Singh (2014): Producer Companies in
India: Organisation and Performance, New
Delhi: Allied Publishers.
Books Received
Amrute, Sareeta (2016); Encoding Race, Encoding
Class: Indian IT Workers in Berlin, Durham: Duke
University Press; pp x + 268, price not indicated.
Ghosh, Anindita (2016); Claiming the City: Protest,

Crime, and Scandals in Colonial Calcutta,
c.1860-1920, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press; pp x + 329, `995.
Rao, Nitya (ed) (2016); Disciplinary Dialogues on

Social Change: Gender, Early Childhood and
Theatre, New Delhi: Academic Foundation;
pp 303, `1,195.
Godbole, Madhav (2016); Secularism: India at a

Crossroads, New Delhi: Rupa Publications;
pp x + 429, `995.
Rao, Parsa Venkateshwar, Jr (2017); The Emergency:

An Unpopular History, New Delhi: Har-Anand
Publications; pp 180, `495.
Begari, Jagannatham (ed) (2016); Mapping Human

Rights and Subalterns in Modern India, Delhi:
Kalpaz Publications; pp 305, `990.
Gopalan, Viswanathan (2016); Stress Management:

An Integrated Approach, New Delhi: GenNext
Publications; pp 119, `490.
Rao, Velcheru Narayana (2016); Text and Tradition

in South India, Ranikhet: Permanent Black;
pp xii + 477, `995.
Bharadwaj, Aditya (2016); Conceptions: Infertility and

Procreative Technologies in India, New Delhi:
Orient Blackswan; pp xvii + 292, `995/$110.
Hildyard, Nicholas (2016); Licensed Larceny: Infrastructure, Financial Extraction and the Global
South, Manchester, Manchester University Press;
pp xiii + 124, price not indicated.
Roy, Anupama (2016); Citizenship in India: Oxford

India Short Introductions, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press; pp xxix + 218, `295.
Ayyar, R V Vaidyanatha (2016); The Holy Grail:

Indias Quest for Universal Elementary Education,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press; pp xx + 708,
`1,995.
Bond, Ruskin and Namita Gokhale (eds) (2016);

Himalaya: Adventures, Meditations, Life, New
Delhi: Speaking Tiger; pp xviii + 444, `799.
Chatterjee, Biswadeb (2016); Municipal Finance
in West Bengal, 1950-51 to 2009-10: An Inter
Country, Inter State Study, Burdwan: Avenel
Press; pp 547, `600.
Chatterjee, Debtoru (2016); Presidential Discretion,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press; pp xxv + 313,
`995.
Dandekar, B B (2016); Of Royalty and Commoners:
A Romance Novel, New Delhi: Gyan Publishing
House; pp 268, `990.
(2016); The Thar Articles, New Delhi: Gyan
Publishing House; pp 248, `980.
Dickey, Sara (2016); Living Class in Urban India,
Permanent Black; pp xvi + 262, `795.
32
Joshi, Deepali Pant (2016); Womens Contribution

to Indias Economic Resurgence, New Delhi:
Gyan Publishing House; pp 171, `725.
Kalpathi, Subramanian S (2016); The Millennials:
Exploring the World of the Largest Living
Generation, Gurgaon: Penguin Random House;
pp xxx + 279, `299.
Knig, Lion (2016); Cultural Citizenship in India:
Politics, Power, and Media, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press; pp xiv + 336, `995.
Kranish, Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher (2016);
Trump Revealed: An American Journey of Ambition, Ego, Money and Power; pp x + 431, `699.
Lal, Vinay and Roby Rajan (eds) (2016); India and
the Unthinkable: Backwaters Collective on
Metaphysics and Politics, New Delhi: Oxford
University Press; pp xlvii + 228, `850.
Sarap, Kailash and Venkatanarayana Motkuri (eds)

(2016); Adivasis in India: Resources, Livelihoods
and Institutions, New Delhi: Bloomsbury;
pp xviii + 279, `999.
Sharma, Manish (2016); I Want 2 be Tendulkar!:
Passion, Pyaar, Perseverance, Politics, New Delhi:
GenNext Publications; pp 234, `199.
Singh, Raghvendra K and Shailendra K Singh (2016);
Law and Regulation of Public Offering of Corporate Securities, New Delhi: Oxford University
Press; pp xliii + 315, `995.
Upadhyay, Shashi Bhushan (2016); Historiography
in the Modern World: Western and Indian Perspectives, New Delhi: Oxford University Press;
pp xx + 781, `1,495.
Wilson, Jon (2016); India Conquered: Britains Raj
and the Chaos of Empire, London: Simon &
Schuster; pp 564, `799.
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
INSIGHT
Reliance Jio
Predatory Pricing or Predatory
Behaviour?
Jai Bhatia, Advait Rao Palepu
Reliance Jio is disrupting

the working of Indias
telecommunications industry
by taking on incumbents like
Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and
Vodafone which together control
almost three-fourths of the
market for mobile voice and data
services. Although some of its
services are free, RJios pricing
may not be considered predatory
even if its behaviour certainly is.
An earlier version of this article appeared as a

Web Exclusives in the EPW digital edition.
The writers would like to acknowledge
Aditi Roy Ghatak and an anonymous reviewer
for their comments and suggestions.
Jai Bhatia (jai.bhatia@soas.ac.uk) is a
PhD student at the School of Oriental and
African Studies, University of London.
Advait Rao Palepu (advait.palepu@gmail.com)
is an intern with the EPW.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
n 1 September 2016, Reliance Jio

Infocomm (RJio), which is part
of Reliance Industries Limited
(RIL), Indias biggest private company
headed by the countrys richest man
Mukesh Ambani, commercially launched
services to transfer voice and data through
the internet using fourth-generation (4G)
telecommunications technology. RJio has
stated that it hopes to have 100 million
subscribers in the shortest amount of
time. Said to be the biggest start-up
in the world with an investment of
`1,50,000 crore the new entrant comes
with substantial financial clout (Khanna
and Pathak 2016).
RJio is expecting data rather than
voice to be its primary source of revenue.
This represents an important shift in the
structure of an Indian telecom operator.
Currently RJios competitors such as
Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular and Vodafone earn the bulk (around three-fourths)
of their revenues through voice services.
To what extent will RJio disrupt the
telecom market in the country which
is dominated by the top three incumbent players? Bharti, Idea and Vodafone
together control close to three-fourths of
the total market for telecom services in
the country. The three have invested
heavily in older second-generation (2G)
and third-generation (3G) technological
platforms (TRAI 2016a). At present, RJio
is the only telecom operator in India
with fully data-centric services, entirely
based on voice over long-term evolution
(VoLTE) technology, which allows voice to
be transferred over an internet protocol
(IP) network at much faster speeds in comparison to traditional networks using
2G and 3G technologies.
RJios advertisements had Prime
Minister Narendra Modi endorsing its
vol lI no 41
offerings. RJios products and services

were called revolutionary. Its competitors
claimed that RJio was deploying what
its competitors call predatory pricing.
Even if this may not be a legally accurate
description, what is certain is that RJios
behaviour can be described as predatory
in keeping with practices followed by
the Reliance Group over the decades.
RJios Welcome Offer
RJios most attractive offering is unlimited voice calling for all its subscribers.
This offer comes with a selection of 10
data plans ranging from `149 for 300
megabytes (MB) of data to `4,999 for 75
gigabytes (GB) of data (Reliance Jio 2016).
The cost of data to the consumer comes
down progressively as tariffs go up. For
example, the `1,499 tariff carries 20 GB
of data making the average price of the
package `74.95 per GB. With its `4,999
tariff, the average cost falls to `66.68
per GB. RJio is offering data in various
forms, including at public WiFi hotspots
or specific areas where computers and
mobile phones can wirelessly connect
to the internet through a facility called
JioNet, which is expected to become
operational in mid-2017.
During RILs annual general meeting
on 1 September, Ambani stated that while
there is a digital revolution underway
across the planet, this country was lagging
behind others in terms of mobile broadband internet access. He claimed that
RJio will be offering data to its customers at a low price of `50 per GB and that
his new venture would put an end to
voice call charges in India (RIL 2016).
Public perception of RJios products
and its pricing strategy is that these are
affordable and better than those of
its rivals. People across cities in India
have waited in serpentine queues to buy
a RJio SIM (subscriber identity module)
card. Application forms which are supposed to be free have reportedly been
sold in the black market, each for `100
(Zacharia 2016a). RJio has been able to
reach out to over 1.5 million subscribers
during its trial phase alonea substantial portion of these subscribers are RIL
employees, their family members and
33
INSIGHT
friends who began availing these services

since December 2015.
meant to ensure fair competition and

non-predatory pricing behaviour (Hindu
Business Line 2016).
Competitors React
In their first reactions to RJios entry, its
competitors sharply reduced the prices at
which they were offering data services.
State-run Bharat Sanchar Nigam Ltd
(BSNL) decided to match RJios offering
tariff by tariff with the chairman of
the public sector corporation, Anupam
Shrivastava, stating that RJios entrance
posed an existential challenge (a question of survival) for other telecom
operators.
The entry of RJio will accelerate market
consolidation and strategic alliances. Such
alliances have already taken place and
more are expected. Airtel and Aircel
struck a 4G spectrum trading deal in July
worth `3,500 crore (PTI 2016a). Reliance
Communications (RComm) headed by
Mukesh Ambanis younger brother Anil
Ambani, and RJio arrived at an agreement
in January to allow the latter to share
the formers mobile towers by paying
`12,000 per tower (Arun 2016) in addition to a spectrum sharing deal across
17 telecom circles (or geographical areas)
(Reuters 2016). More recently, RComm
and Aircel announced that they would
mergethe merged entity would have
assets worth `65,000 crore and an active
subscriber base of 120 million, making
it the fourth largest telecom operator
in India (Gupta and Barman 2016). On
13 September, BSNL and RJio announced
an agreement whereby BSNL customers
with 4G-enabled handsets could use RJios
network while roaming outside their
circles while RJio customers could use
BSNLs 2G network to make voice calls
(Sathe 2016). On 27 September, RComm
announced that it had virtually merged
with RJio (Mint 2016a).
RJios competitors who dominate the
lobbying group, the Cellular Operators
Association of India (COAI), wrote to the
Department of Telecommunications (DoT)
alleging that existing licence agreements
do not allow any operator to conduct
prelaunch trials at the scale at which RJio
conducted its trial. The COAI claimed
that RJio had violated the terms of its
licence agreement with the DoT and the
principles enshrined therein which are
34
Anti-competitive Practices
What is meant by predatory pricing and
predatory behaviour? When a firm cuts
the price of its goods or services, it forces
its competitors to lower their prices. This
results in the profits of the competitors
falling and they may even have to incur
losses. If the competitor does not cut
prices, it loses market share and if
it does cut prices to below its average
cost of production, it runs the risk of
insolvency. The act of reducing prices
to curb competition and then increase
prices to earn monopoly profits is considered anti-competitive.
Competition laws in various national
jurisdictions aim at safeguarding longterm consumer interests from overt and
disguised predatory tactics of market
actors. These laws seek to instil a competitive market environment by regulating, monitoring and assessing competitive practices between and among firms.
In the United States, the Sherman Act protects firms from unreasonably exclusionary conduct that is dangerous and is likely
to create or maintain monopoly rents
(Mehta 2008). When a firm not only
intends to harm its competitors but also
harm its consumers, its pricing behaviour is considered predatory.
In India, the Competition Act 2002
defines predatory pricing as the sale of
goods or provision of services, at a price
which is below the cost of production
of the goods or provision of services,
with a view to reduce competition or
eliminate competitors (The Competition
Act 2002). Section 4 of the act has stated
that predatory pricing is a form of abuse of
dominance. The section also provides a
set of procedures to understand predatory
pricing by first analysing whether a firm

in question is dominant in a particular
market and whether that firm has abused
its dominant position. The act makes clear
that only firms with dominant market
positions can be considered predatory
in the eyes of the law.
The Competition Commission of India
(CCI), an independent market regulator
responsible for regulating market behaviour and competition, has investigated
a number of instances of unfair competition. For example, the CCI has investigated complaints of predatory pricing
against transport-technology companies,
Uber and Ola, as well as allegations made
against e-commerce websites, Flipkart and
Amazon. These complaints were made
after these companies started offering
large discounts to consumers. Each of
these companies have since been exonerated of any charge of predatory pricing
as none of them had a dominant position in their respective markets (Singh
2016). While investigating these cases,
the CCI considered a firms market share
as the sole determinant of dominant
position. The CCI is, however, expected
to consider a range of factors while
ascertaining market dominance.
Anti-competitive Behaviour?
In order to determine whether RJios
behaviour (in form and in substance) has
been predatory and/or anti-competitive, a
close examination is required of the telecom industrys market structure, spectrum
auctions and regulatory changes, besides
the pricing of RJios products and services and issues related to interconnection
charges and points of interconnection.
Table 1 shows that Bharti, Idea and
Vodafone together account for 75.2% of
the market in terms of revenue and 61%
in terms of subscribers. There are 220
million active unique smartphone users
Table 1: Comparing Five Incumbent Telecom Operators

Variable
Revenue market share (RMS)

Subscriber base (million)
Wireless subscriber base
Data revenues (as a % of total)
3G users (million)
4G users (million)
Bharti Airtel
Idea Cellular
32.7%
294
24.7%
23.7%
28.1
19.2%
175
17.03%
20.6%
30.5
1.8
Vodafone India
23.2%
198
19.26%
18.57%
27.8
(4G included)
Reliance
Communications
3.6% (Q4FY16)
100
9.54%
31.8%
25.4
(4G included)
Aircel
5.3% (Q4FY16)
65.1
8.59%
20%
Source: TRAI (2016b); Srivastava (2016); Anand (2016); ICRA (2016); authors calculations based on Q1FY17 and FY1516
results published by Bharti Airtel, Idea Cellular, Vodafone India and Reliance Communications.
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
INSIGHT
in India (Hindu 2016), making the country

the second largest smartphone market.
Analysts forecast that by 2019 there will
be around 651 million smart-phone users
in the country (Mint 2016b).
Financial leverage ratios are used to
determine how much of a companys
capital comes from debt and are used to
find out the ability of a firm to meet its
financial obligations. For the incumbent
telecom firms, financial leverage ratios are
as follows: Bharti 4.96, Idea 2.63, Reliance
Communications 2.77 and Vodafone 2.03.
For the new entrant, RJio, its financial
leverage ratio stood at 2.48, according to
the Financials.Morningstar.com website.
In 2009, RIL had insignificant levels of debt
but this had increased dramatically to
over `1,80,000 crore by the end of March
(Kumar and Mulgaonkar 2016). With the
industry likely to consolidate further,
the main telecom operators will be investing to expand and modernise their
infrastructure and also on spectrum. The
high capital expenditure will drive up
financial leverage ratios of the incumbent firms and the new entrant.
The top three telecom companies
(Airtel, Idea and Vodafone) occupy most
of the market. They each offer a variety of
products and services (2G, 3G, 4G and basic
calling/texting). While RMS and subscription base figures are a robust industrial
measure to ascertain market dominance,
in order to make a comparative assessment of the impact of the aggressive
competition initiated by RJio using 4G
VoLTE only, one would require detailed
product-specific revenue and subscription
base data from each telecom operator.
Telecom operators provide consumers
with voice services over circuit switched
(CS) networks as well as packet switched
(PS) networks. The purpose of CS networks
is to provide the caller with a dedicated
circuit for the session of the call where
the communications flowing between
phones always follow the same path with
no other network traffic interfering. These
networks provide dedicated point-to-point
connections for the caller and receiver.
PS networks, on the other hand, are used
to send datain separate blocks or packetsacross a network where the data is
broken up, transferred through an IP
network and then reassembled to deliver
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
the message. Unlike RJio which is a fully

IP-based network, incumbent operators
like Airtel, Idea, Vodafone, RComm and
BSNL use both CS and PS networks and
offer services across these networks.
The basic difference between 2G and
3G cellular technology is the rate at which
voice and data is transferred through a
network. The first sends and receives
data at speeds slightly below 50,000 bits
per second whereas 3G sends and receives
data at a rate a little more than four
million bits per second; 2G was primarily
designed to provide mobile users with a
faster method of transmitting information via voice signals whereas 3G was designed to transfer information via data
signals. The 4G technology brings to the
consumer the speed as well as the transmission efficiency of broadband internet
on a handset.
As the battle among the telecom
operators will be fought hard over the
coming years, two phenomena will
become evident. One, incumbent firms
will continue providing 2G and 3G services
and non-internet telephony voice services
on CS networks for the majority of subscribers. Two, there will also be a greater
attempt by these operators to not only replace their older technology platforms
2G, 3G and voice serviceswith 4G platforms but also make the market for 4G
services as attractive as possible for the
average consumer in the country. The
two are not contradictory since voice
services account for three-fourths of the
total revenue earned by the incumbent
operators. The transition from a technologically-fragmented industry with different types of networks, to one which is
wholly based on IP connections, will be a
long and arduous process.
RJio is competing with existing operators directly in the 4G market and hopes
to dominate the market because of its
early mover advantage. However, if its
major rivals invest substantially in infrastructure for expanding their 4G services
and until the average price of cellular
hardware falls, the disruption that RJio
will cause could end up being a relatively
short-lived phenomenon, even ephemeral.
The socio-economic inequalities in India
inhibit the majority of people from being
able to afford expensive mobile handsets.
vol lI no 41
Therefore, incumbent firms will perforce

have to continue to maintain their existing voice-based services. However, since
internet telephony and the transfer of
voice through IP networks is the future of
telecom the world over and also in India,
an important question arises: How long
will it take the industry to make the
transition from its present hybrid state
to one which is entirely internet based?
This is not an easy question to answer as
it depends on many imponderable social
and economic factors.
Auctions and Regulatory Changes
The manner in which Reliance Jio acquired
spectrum in the 2,300 MHz band during
the broadband wireless access (BWA)/4G
auctions in 2010 through Infotel Broadband Services Private Limited (IBSPL)
was controversial. A draft report of the
Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of
India leaked to the media in 2014 noted
that IBSPL had submitted an allegedly
forged bank guarantee to the DoT as part
of the companys commitment to bidding
in the auction (Guha Thakurta 2016).
The draft CAG report questioned the
transparency of the auction process as
IBSPL failed to inform the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) and the
DoT of the ongoing talks it was having
with RIL for RIL to acquire IBSPL.
The lack of disclosure by IBSPL of an
ongoing relationship with RIL during the
course of the BWA/4G auction process
which ended that day after 117 rounds of
bidding, impaired the competitive environment as other participants in the
auction were unaware of the complete
financial status of the bidder, IBSPL.
At the end of the auction process,
IBSPL had won one block in each of the
22 telecom circles in the country with a
total bid amount of `12,847.44 crore. On
17 June 2010, less than a week after the
auction ended, IBSPLs board of directors
authorised the allotment of 4.75 billion
equity shares of 10 each to RIL allowing
it to own 95% of the company. On 22 January 2013, IBSPL was renamed Reliance Jio
Infocomm Limited. Another contentious
issue raised by several observers is that
the Notice Inviting Applications (NIA) for
the BWA/4G auctions had clearly stated
that the winning bid did not confer the
35
INSIGHT
right to provide any telecom services on

the winner and specifically stated that
the BWA spectrum was not to be used for
carrying voice traffic.
A committee of the DoT was set up in
2012 to look into issues related to the
creation of a unified licence (UL) regime
which also examined the fact that the
BWA/4G spectrum was not liberalised
spectrumthat is, the specific purpose
for which the spectrum could and could
not be used is not mentioned. The committee held that the bidders during the
auction process could not take an
informed decision as their bidding patterns would have been different if they
had known that the spectrum could
have been used for both data and voice
services. In 2013, an expanded version of
the same DoT committee decided that
internet service providers (ISP) could
convert their licences under the new UL
regime, so that they could use their
spectrum to provide both voice and
data services. This meant that the precondition fixed on the BWA/4G spectrum
resource at the time of the auction,
namely, to provide only data and internet services as the NIA stated, was overturned in 2013 after IBSPL had won the
auction in 2010.
Not surprisingly, Reliance was the
first beneficiary of this scheme as it converted its ISP licence to provide voice
and data services under the UL. RJio
was granted the UL to provide voice
and data services in October 2013 and
had paid an entry and migration fee
only. The draft CAG report noted that
the total loss to the exchequer was estimated at `22,842 crore as Reliance had
acquired the BWA/4G spectrum at a
price far lower than what its competitors
had paid for during the 3G auctions conducted in 2010.
According to Mahesh Uppal, director,
Com First, a consultancy firm specialising in telecom regulatory issues, the
analysis in the draft CAG report can be
contested. An important reason why
BWA and 3G spectrum are not strictly
comparable is on account of the fact that
a robust infrastructure to support BWA/4G
services did not exist at the time the
auctions took place. BWA spectrum was
meant for internet services whereas 3G
36
spectrum was available for both voice

and data and had a good ecosystem in
place in terms of infrastructure and availability of affordable devices which BWA
services did not have. There were, thus,
different valuations for the respective
spectrum bands.
The final report of the CAG submitted
in Parliament on 8 May 2015 did not
mention the calculations made in the
draft report but merely stated that the
DoT failed to plug loopholes in the rules.
In addition, as per the liberal roll-out
conditions stated in the NIA, 4G services
were to be operationalised within five
years of the effective date of the grant of
the spectrum. The deadline of five years
for the roll-out of services on the BWA/4G
platform ended on 31 August 2015. The
final CAG report stated that the failure
to roll out services had led to a lack of
efficient use of spectrum and hoarding
of spectrum in view of absence of roll
out of BWA services (Comptroller and
Auditor General of India 2015). Uppal
added that since the winners of 3G and
4G spectrum had to make upfront payments, the delay in rolling out services
also hurt the spectrum-holders given
that the tenure of their holdings has
been fixed for 20 years.
According to Uppal and others, a
more substantive issue pertains to the
spectrum usage charge (SUC). Since the
BWA/4G spectrum was originally only
meant for data services, the SUC for the
BWA spectrum was fixed at 1%. Despite
the 2013 change by the DoT giving
the spectrum winner (RJio/IBSPL) the
opportunity to use the spectrum for
voice services as well, the SUC was not
revised thereby giving RJio a significant
advantage over its competitors since
telecom operators who were offering
voice services through various other
technologies were having to pay between
5% and 8% of their revenues as SUC
(Sridhar 2016a).
Lawyer Prashant Bhushan has accused both the Congress and the Bharatiya
Janata Party (BJP) of being culpable in
rigging the auction process as the Reliance bid took place through a benami
bidder. He added that since the motive
for the spectrum block was initially
meant for data which was later revised
to include voice traffic as well, the fact

that the Supreme Court overlooked
these facts in its 8 April 2016 judgment
was unfortunate. He remarked:
It is not a question of regulatory capture; it
is more a case of the government selling out
to Reliance. It allowed Reliance to have an
advantage by enabling it to allow spectrum,
which was only meant for data traffic, to
carry voice. The terms of the auction were
tweaked by the government, not the regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of
India [TRAI], in this case. (Sridhar 2016b)
Free Voice Calls an Illusion?

As mentioned, RJio offers its 4G services
on a pan-India basis through a new technological platform called LTE or longterm evolution. As mobile phones cannot
run 2G and 4G services at the same time,
that is, a voice and data call cannot
take place simultaneously, RJios network
uses VoLTE to ensure that the voice call
continues simultaneously with data transfers (Sridhar 2016b). RJio treats voice as
dataVoIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol)and sends the voice communications through the networks as packets.
For incumbent operators, on the other
hand, only a small part of their voice
traffic is transmitted as data.
When an incumbent firm offers its 4G
service, it transmits voice calls via 2G or
3G technological platforms when a consumer makes a VoIP call; RJio can only
transmit such information via 4G. Airtel,
Idea and Vodafone, as users of earlier
spectrum technologies, are able to ensure
that consumers who make IP-based communications are charged less, as they
consume data using 2G and 3G services.
On the other hand, RJio being a wholly
IP-based VoLTE service cannot afford to
give its consumers the option or the ability to use 2G/3G technology for making
internet-based communications.
In order to avail RJios free voice
services there are many caveats that
consumers may not be aware of. First, to
truly get the best service, that is, RJios
calling service that aims to provide HD
(high-definition) calls, both the caller
and receiver need to have VoLTE-enabled
handsets and both need to be connected
to a 4G network. Second, when a RJio
customer calls using a VoLTE handset
and the receiver is on another network,
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
INSIGHT
the call will not be HD as RJio has to convert the call from a packet-switched to a
circuit-switched network. Third, if a
particular customer does not have a
VoLTE phone then she or he would have
to use the Jio4GVoice application (voice,
text, photos and video conference), earlier called Jio Join, to ensure that the
call is free and ensure that the data used
to make such calls is not debited from a
customers account (Banerjee 2016).
Most mobile handsets in the country
at present are not 4G/VoLTE enabled
although the majority of phones released
in the market in 2016 do have this capability. If a consumer decides not to buy
a VoLTE handset, she must use the
Jio4GVoice app to make calls. Those with
2G/3G handsets can still use RJios network
but must connect to a personal and portable WiFi device called JioNet. However,
users are not debited for the data used
for calls made via the Jio4GVoice app if
they choose to use another over the top
(OTT) service like WhatsApp, Facebook
or Skype to make the same VoIP call
in which case, the data consumed
would be charged for. RJio is evidently
discriminating in favour of voice data
only and not against all other types
of information (data) sent via their
network.
We believe that unsuspecting consumers may not be fully aware of the
technological intricacies behind RJios
service, as the free voice service essentially means that the voice traffic is
carried through data packets (VoIP calls)
whereas traditionally, voice traffic (nonVoIP) takes place through CS networks.
The intricacies of RJios service and
the manner in which its offerings have
been promoted and propagated might
not legally constitute predatory pricing.
However, the fact that its customers will
have to fulfil specific conditions to avail
the full range of the free and high
quality services, can certainly be termed
as predatory behaviour, according to us.
Uppal disagreed with this interpretation
of what constitutes predatory behaviour.
He added that one should make a distinction between issues of public policy
and sharp business practices indulged
in by cut-throat competitors in the
marketplace.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
While Prime Minister Modis Digital

India dream is to connect 1.2 billion
Indians with mobile broadband connectivity, RJios free voice call service
comes with real costs. The true price that
the average consumer would have to pay
goes beyond the data tariffs quoted by
RJio and requires the aam aadmi to not
only upgrade his or her existing handset
to one which is 4G/VoLTE enabled but
also use a specific application. This clearly
makes the claims of reaching out to a
billion-plus people not just difficult and
daunting, but highly exaggerated and
arguably even spurious. RJios behaviour
can, hence, be called predatory because
it is boasting about providing free calls
to its consumers without explaining the
technological intricacies and not highlighting the fact that by merely shifting allegiance from an incumbent operator to
the new entrant a customer will not
naturally and automatically get the free
service. There is also a likelihood that
by the time a customer gets a 4G/VoLTEenabled handset and is able to make
HD calls, RJio would have revised its
tariff rates.
IUCs and PoI Issues
The extant interconnect usage charges
(IUC) regime in Indias telecom sector is
one of the most important factors that
ensure fair competition, consumer welfare,
growth of users and the equitable distribution of revenues and costs among
various service providers and their
networks. In order to connect a call,
operator A must pay an IUC to operator B,
when As customer wishes to call Bs
customer. From February 2015 till now,
the IUC has been fixed at 14 paise per call
terminated and total IUC charges comprise around `20,000 crore of revenues
by all telecoms operators put together
(Rathee 2016).
In August 2016, TRAI published two
separate documents, a consultation note
on IP-based interconnection and a consultation paper on IUC which considers a
change in the payments regime and
potentially, a reduction or a complete
doing away with the IUC on both traditional and IP-based networks. The COAI
termed this development as indicative
of a bias in favour of RJio. Since RJio
vol lI no 41
consumers do not pay for voice calls,

it is likely that its consumers would
make more outgoing calls than receive
incoming calls. This, in turn, would
result in large cash outflows for RJio. A
Bank of AmericaMerrill Lynch estimate is that in its first year operations
and assuming a subscriber base of 30
million, RJio would incur an IUC bill
worth `2,400 crore (Parbat 2016). If the
IUC is brought down to zero, it could potentially shrink the annual revenues of
the top three operators (Airtel, Idea and
Vodafone) by about `5,000 crore and
provide a distinct cost and competitive
advantage to RJio (Rathe 2016). Since
RJio customers will be calling relatively
more people on other networks, it will
have to convert the VoIP/PS signals for a
CS network, thereby incurring interconnection charges.
The incumbents have argued that
RJios free voice calls have led to a tsunami of voice traffic, congestion on their
networks and an increase in the cost
of managing interconnections. An Idea
Cellular executive was quoted in the
Economic Times as saying that the traffic
between Idea and Jio was 14.5 times
higher than normal resulting in an increase in the cost of providing the interconnections over its network (Khan 2016).
J S Deepak, secretary, DoT, in an
interview with the Economic Times, stated
that the interconnection issue was hardly
new. Fifteen years earlier when operators such as Airtel and Idea entered the
sector, they had accused BSNL, then the
only incumbent operator, of not giving
them enough POIs (points of interconnection). Today, these incumbents are
on the other side of the table, he added
(Mankotia 2016).
RJio has accused Bharti Airtel of not
releasing as many POIs as had been
agreed upon. In response to RJio statements, Airtel in turn accused RJio of
trying to mask the technical problems
in RJios VoLTE network by raking up the
POI issue. In addition, Airtel stated that
it had released a large number of POIs,
which are sufficient to serve over 15
million customers, which is much more
than ... (RJios) present subscriber base
and ... (its) demand for 10 million projected customers.
37
INSIGHT
The interconnection issue is leading

to around 10 crore call failures per day
between RJio customers and customers
of other operators, claimed RJio in a public
statement. It hit out at the incumbent
operators for not providing enough POIs,
accusing them of not demonstrating
any real intent to resolve the issue and
of violating licence conditions and TRAI
regulations on quality of service. The
deliberate move to not provide sufficient interconnection points is aimed at
hindering RJios entry into the sector
and depriving customers from enjoying
the superior HD services offered by RJio,
the statement by RJio noted (PTI 2016b).
TRAI chairman R S Sharma has said
that one of the key mandates of the regulator is to ensure that there is high quality
of services and that consumers are protected (Doval 2016). However, since the
arrangements for POIs are a bilateral
issue between operators, TRAIs abilities
to investigate, intervene and resolve disputes are limited, he stated, adding that
if regulations are violated then we will
have to take action against the party
concerned (PTI 2016c). Sharma added
that operators are being asked why they
are not providing quality services to consumers (Rathee 2016).
Sunil Bharti Mittal, chairman of Bharti
Airtel, gave a resounding response to
RJios accusation and also commented
on the mud-slinging discourse among
telecom operators that has ensued since
RJios launch. Just because you have
been successful in one or the other
industry doesnt give you the right to
be on top. You have to earn that, Mittal
said in an interview to the Economic
Times. He added that he had told RJios
chairman Ambani that POIs could not be
an issue obstructing the launch of Jio
and was at best a temporary issue that
would be resolved in weeks. Moreover,
talking about IUC, Mittal said: When
you go below that cost, that is a very
straightforward situation of predatory
pricing (Mankotia and Guha 2016).
An enlightening and sober view was
put forward by Mittal when he said:
rural, suburban people are still on to
feature phones where they want to make
calls and do a little bit of 2G. So the curve
may be accelerating toward 4G but it is not
38
going to happen that we wake up tomorrow

morning and everything is 4G In the last 16
quarters there is less voice growth and in some
cases voice de-growth Jio has accelerated
that path now. (Mankotia and Guha 2016)
The war of words between RJio and

the COAI escalated to unprecedented
levels. On 26 September, RJio dubbed its
competitors, Airtel, Idea and Vodafone,
as incumbent dominant operators (IDOs).
It said the COAI was heavily biased in
favour of the top three operators and
called for a comprehensive overhaul of
the associations rules, regulations and
procedures in a letter sent to the directorgeneral of the COAI Rajan Mathews and
the chairman of the lobby group, Gopal
Vittal, who also happens to be the CEO
of Bharti Airtel. RJios letter hoped that
a committee comprising three retired
Supreme Court judges would be set up to
ensure that COAIs governance mechanisms become more in line with democratic principles (ET Bureau 2016).
The COAI hit back immediately late
on a Sunday evening. In a letter made
public, COAIs Mathews described RJios
conduct unbecoming of a member,
claimed it had misinterpreted specific
rules and countered RJios IDO acronym
calling the new entrant a BDO or a backdoor operator. The letter by the COAI
further went on to allege that despite its
skullduggery and repeated and grave
provocations, RJio had been welcomed
into the association. Mathews then recounted the history of how RJio acquired
its licence through a front entity and
how it was prospectively allowed to offer
full voice and data services, despite
objections from the CAG and others.
After various stakeholders submit their
views on the interconnection issue in
response to TRAIs consultation papers
on IUC, the authority will have to ensure
that the future policy regime is balanced
and does not consciously or unconsciously
benefit any particular operator, be it
RJio or its rivals. This would check predatory behaviour and the possibility of
predatory pricing in the future.
Conclusions
Using revenue market share and subscription base figures as a method to
understand market dominance, RJio
cannot at present be classified as a dominant operator. As per the provisions of

the Competition Act, RJio cannot be
said to be indulging in predatory pricing. However, RJios behaviour and the
manner of its entry into countrys telecommunications industry may certainly
be considered as predatory for a few
specific reasons.
One, the manner in which it acquired
the BWA/4G spectrum in 2010 and the
fact that it doubly benefited when the
government changed its rules retrospectively to allow operators to provide both
voice calls and data services on the same
spectrum.
Two, RJio has also benefited from an
unfair cost advantage as the spectrum
usage charges (SUC) have remained unchanged and are not in line with the SUC
paid by incumbent operators who offer
similar services on their respective 2G,
3G and 4G technology platforms.
Three, the propagation of free voice
calling may mislead consumers who
might end up paying more for RJios services than they would pay for similar
services provided by other operators
given the fact that RJio is entirely data
centric and only works on 4G LTE and
4G-VoLTE mobile handsets.
Four, the timing and sequence of
events relating to probable regulatory
changes in the IUC regime indicates that
RJio is at the right place at the right
timethe regulator has been publicly
considering changes in specific regulations nearly a month before the commercial launch of RJio and the Reliance
Group has in the past displayed an
uncanny ability to take advantage of
regulatory changes resulting in the playing field becoming far from level.
Mukesh Ambani might believe that
RJio has consciously or unconsciously
jump-started the inevitable internet
revolution in telecommunications in
India. A recent survey has indicated
that RJio SIMs are being used as a
secondary SIM by over half those surveyed (Mint 2016b).
However, the larger internet revolution in telecom is a long way away. What
matters now is the manner in which
regulatory changes and spectrum auctions
take place, as well as how operators
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
INSIGHT
interact with one another operationally

and politically so that consumer welfare
and quality of services are not undermined. As Ambanis biggest competitor
Sunil Mittal has pointed out, predatory
pricing will ensue if the IUC regime is
made to change fundamentally to give
RJio distinct cost and revenue advantages
over its rivals. RJio has deployed effective
marketing and propaganda techniques
to acquire unsuspecting consumers. It
has been able to take advantage of ambiguous and lax regulatory processes
and systems of oversight. It has arguably
not provided technical and operational
information with clarity to its customers.
RJios entry has certainly taken place
through predatory behaviour. Whether
its pricing is predatory, which could hurt
incumbents and consumers in the future, depends on the steps that are taken
by the regulatory authority.
REFERENCES
Anand, N (2016): Aircel Bets Big on Data Plans for
Growth, 28 June, Hindu, http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/aircel-bets-big-ondata-plans-for-growth/article8784551.ece.
Arun, M G (2016): Mukesh Ambanis Jio Gamble:
Telcos Headache, Consumers Benefit, 8 September, India Today, http://indiatoday.intoday.
in/story/ambani-jio-reliance-airtel-telecom-4g/
1/759330.html.
Banerjee, Prasit (2016): Understanding How Calling Works on Reliance Jio, Heres the Answer
to All Your Questions on How Calling Will
Work on Reliance Jio, 5 September, Digit,
http://www.digit.in/telecom/understandinghow-calling-works-on-reliance-jio-31607.html.
Comptroller and Auditor General of India (2015):
Report No 20 of 2015Union Government,
Communications and IT Sector, 8 May, http://
www.cag.gov.in/sites/default/files/audit_report_files/Union_Compliance_Communication_
IT_20_2015.pdf.
Doval, Pankaj (2016): Trai to Take Action for Call
Failures on Rel Jio Network, 20 September,
Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.
com/business/india-business/Trai-to-takeaction-for-call-failures-on-Rel-Jio-network/
articleshow/54415814.cms?from=mdr.
ET Bureau (2016): Jio to COAI: Reform Yourself;
COAI Calls It a Backdoor Entrant, 26 September,
Economic Times, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/54516360.cms?
Gupta, Deepali and Barman Arijit (2016): Reliance
Communications, Aircel Merger Gives Birth to
`65,000 Crore Giant; Talks on with Sistema for
25% Stake, 15 September, Economic Times,
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/54332073.cms.
Guha Thakurta, Paranjoy (2016): A Call for Review:
Supreme Courts Decision on Reliance Jio,
11 June, Economic & Political Weekly, http://
www.epw.in/journal/2016/24/perspectives/
call-review.html#sthash.8K VBM WrV.dpuf.
Hindu (2016): With 220 mn Users, India Is Now
Worlds Second-biggest Smartphone Market,
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
3 February, http://www.thehindu.com/news/cities/mumbai/business/with-220mn-users-india-is-now-worlds-secondbiggest-smartphonemarket/article8186543.ece.
Hindu Business Line (2016): Telcos Cry Foul Over
RJios Test Services, 9 August, http://www.thehindubusinessline.com/info-tech/telcos-c ryfoul-over-rjios-test-services/article8965019.ece.
ICRA (2016): Reliance Communications Limited,
June 2016, http://www.icra.in/Files/Reports/
Rationale/Reliance%20Com-R-22062016.pdf.
Khanna, Sundeep and Pathak Kalpana (2016): Reliance Jio Sends a Message to Rivals: Its War,
2 September, LiveMint, http://www.livemint.
com/Companies/D4leWGTopPio6OYUQg2CEP/Mukesh-Ambani-kicks-off-Reliance-Jio-services-at-company-AGM.html.
Khan (2016): Idea to Expand Interconnect Points
to Jio, Says Asymmetry of Traffic Causing
Higher Costs, 12 September, Economic Times,
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/idea-to-expand-interconnect-points-tojio-says-asymmetry-of-tra f fic-causing-highercosts/articleshow/54295207.cms.
Kumar, Abhineet and Mulgaonkar Sameer (2016):
Reliance Industries Prefers Using Debt to Cash
for Capex, 6 August, Business Standard, http://
www.business-standard.com/article/companies/reliance-industries-prefers-using-debt-tocash-for-capex-116080501886_1.html.
Mankotia, Anandita Singh (2016): Reliance Jios
Presence will Increase Demand, Make Auctions
More Competitive: JS Deepak, Telecom Secretary, 19 September, Economic Times, http://
economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/54399675.cms?
Mankotia, Anandita Singh and Guha Romit (2016):
Points of Interconnect Wont Be an Obstacle in
Jio Launch: Sunil Bharti Mittal, 21 September,
Economic Times, http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/tech/internet/points-of-interconnect-wont-be-an-obstacle-in-jio-launch-sunil-bharti-mittal/articleshow/54435471.cms.
Mehta, Uday Singh (2008): Predatory Pricing: Lessons for Developing Countries, Briefing Paper
for CUTS Centre for Competition, Investment
& Economic Regulation (CUTS C-CIER), No 3.
Mint (2016a): Reliance Jio Preferred as Secondary
SIM, Finds Mobile User Survey, 28 September,
http://www.livemint.com/Industry/ihSoNtmspHU0qcmh9l1Z4O/Reliance-Jio-could-bethe-secondary-SIM-for-most-users-surv.html
(2016b): News in NumbersIndia to Have 651
Million Smartphone Users by 2019, Says Report,
28 March, http://www.livemint.com/Politics/
TPCtIaJodlX0SQs6ZLbWjJ/News-in-numbers-India-to-have-651-million-smartphone-users.html.
Parbat, Kalyan (2016): Reliance Jio Interconnect
Bill May Hit `2,400 crore in Its First Year, 27 August, Economic Times, http://economictimes.
indiatimes.com/articleshow/53880460.cms.
PTI (2016a): Airtel, Aircel Spectrum Trading Deal
Cleared, 11 July, Press Trust of India, Business
Standard, http://www.business-standard.com/
article/companies/airtel-aircel-spectrumtrading-deal-cleared-116071000091_1.html.
(2016b): Jio Hits Out at Airtel, Says 10 cr Calls
Failing a Day, 20 September, Press Trust of India,
Times of India, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.
com/business/india-business/Jio-hits-out-atAirtel-says-10-cr-calls-failing-a-day/articleshow
/54432209.cms?from=mdr.
(2016c): Trai Seeks Details from Telcos on
Congestion Levels, 19 September, Press Trust of
India, Business Standard, http://www.business-standard.com/article/pti-stories/trai-seeksdetails-from-telcos-on-congestion-levels116091901336_1.html.
Rathee, Kiran (2016): Trai Extends Date for Receiving Comments on Interconnect Charges,
vol lI no 41
3 September, Business Standard, http://www.

business-standard.com/article/economy-policy/
trai-extends-date-for-receiving-comments-oninterconnect-charges-116090201192_1.html.
Reliance Jio (2016): Reliance Jio Infocomm Limited;
Affordable and Simple Tariffs, https://www.jio.
com/en-in/plans.
Reliance Industries Limited Chairmans Statement
(2016): Operationalising High Growth Platforms
of New Value Creation for a Prosperous and Inclusive India, 39th Annual General Meeting PostIPO, 42nd Annual General Meeting Since Incorporation, 1 September, Mumbai, http://www.ril.
com/DownloadFiles/ChairmanCommunications/
AGM%20SPEECH%2-%20Full%200109.PDF.
Reuters (2016): Reliance Communications to Share
Spectrum with Reliance Jio for 4G, 18 January,
Indian Express, http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/tech-news-technology/reliance-communications-to-share-spectrum-with-reliance-jio-for-4g/.
Sathe, Gopal (2016): Reliance Jio Signs Deal with
BSNL to Address One of Its Potential Pain
Points, 13 September, NDTV, http://gadgets.
ndtv.com/telecom/news/reliance-jio-signsdeal-with-bsnl-to-address-one-of-its-potentialpain-points-1458089.
Singh, Prabhat (2016): The Price of Unfair Competition, 6 September, Hindu, http://www.thehindu.com/thread/economy/article9075873.
ece, Web 14 September 2016.
Srivastava, Moulishree (2016): Top 3 Telcos Grab
75.2% Revenue Market Share in Q1, 26 August,
Business Standard, http://www.businessstandard.com/article/companies/top-3-telcosgrab-75-2-revenue-market-share-in-q1-116082601001_1.html.
Sridhar, V (2016a): Spectrum Grab, 14 September,
Frontline, http://www.frontline.in/cover-story/spectrum-grab/article9103427.ece.
(2016b): The Spectrum Auction Was Rigged,
14 September, Frontline, http://www.frontline.
in/cover-story/the-spectrum-auction-was-rigged/article9103445.ece.
TRAI (2016a): Consultation Paper on Review of
Interconnection Usage Charges, Consultation
Paper No 17/2016, Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, New Delhi.
(2016b): Highlights of Telecom Subscription Data
as on 30th June 2016, Press Release No 90/2016,
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India, New Delhi.
The Competition Act of 2002, Ministry of Law and
Justice: http://lawmin.nic.in/ld/P-ACT/2003/
The%20Competition%20Act,%202002.pdf.
Zachariah, Reeba (2016a): Reliance Jio Sim Being
Sold in Black, 4 September, ET Telecom, http://
telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/
reliance-jio-sim-being-sold-in-black/54006977.
(2016b): Jio Effect: Vodafone Gets `48,000 cr
Infusion, 23 September, Times of India, http://
timesofindia.indiatimes.com/business/indiabusiness/Jio-effect-Vodafone-gets-Rs-48000crinfusion/articleshow/54472925.cms.
Attention ContributorsI
The EPW has been sending reprints of articles to
authors. We are now discontinuing the practice.
We will consider sending a limited number of
reprints to authors located in India when they
make specific requests to us.
We will, of course, continue to send a copy of the
print edition to all our authors whose contributions
appear in that particular edition.
39
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Thinking Clearly about Suicide in India

Suitable Girls and Companionate CouplesSocial Change
and Suicide in the Indian Family
Peter Mayer
Relative to men, women in India are much more likely to

take their own lives than women living in industrialised
societies. They do so at higher rates and at younger ages
than many of those in the West. Marriage does not
confer any relative protection from suicide risk for young
Indian men; this too is a notable contrast with the
evidence from developed economies. There are many
potential stressors on Indian women which might
explain the pattern of suicide risk. Changes in
expectations about marriage relationships appear to be
one potent factor in explaining the patterns.
We may think of the family in traditional society as a ship held fast

at its moorings. From every side great cables run down to bind it to
the dock [of social obligations]. The ship sails nowhere and is part of
the harbor....
In its journey into the modern world the family has broken all these ties.
It has separated from the surrounding community, guarded now by
high walls of privacy. It has cast off its connections with distant kin,
and has changed fundamentally even its relationship to close relatives.
(Shorter 1976: 3)
Introduction
n this paper, I wish to discuss fragments of evidence which

suggest to me that like the European families of the 18th
century, studied by Shorter, the Indian family has begun to
part the cables which have bound it tightly to near kin. I will
concentrate on female suicides, primarily because the overall
suicide rates for women in India are extremely high when
viewed in an international context. As Patel et al note, The
age-standardised suicide rate in Indian women aged 15 years
or older is more than two and a half times greater than it is in
women of the same age in high-income countries and nearly as
high as it is in China (2012: 2348).
Why Does Marriage Not Confer Protection from Suicide?
[Part I of this study appeared in EPW, 2 April 2016.]

The research in this article was supported by a grant from the Australian
Research Grants Committee. An earlier version was presented to the
Family Ties: Socialization, Security and Affect workshop, gLa Trobe
University, 11 September 2009.
Peter Mayer (peter.mayer@adelaide.edu.au) teaches at the politics
department, University of Adelaide, Australia.
40
Let me turn now to the sociological puzzle which lies at the heart
of this paper. If there is a sociological fact so firmly established
that it may almost be termed a law, it is that marriage confers
protection from suicide. Durkheim argued, on the basis of
existing 19th century European data, that married persons over
the age of 20 enjoy a coefficient of preservation in comparison
with unmarried persons (Durkheim 1951: 179; Kushner 1993).1
In other words, marriage lowers their risk of suicide, sometimes
by half. Durkheim found, at least in France, that marriage offered
greater protection to men than it did to women (1951: 18089).
Durkheim attributed the protection afforded by marriage to
the integration it affords, especially for those with children.
Subsequent studies have consistently replicated Durkheims
findings. Henry and Short (1954) found that suicide rates for
married persons in the United States in 1940 were lower than
for others in the same age group.
Riaz Hassan also found that married people in Australia
were less likely to commit suicide (1995). The marriage law
has been expressed in unequivocal terms by Ruzicka and Choi:
In all societies for which there are statistics available, suicide
mortality has been considerably higher among those who are
not married than among those who are married (1993: 108).
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
(2 times), Odisha (1.9 times) and West Bengal (1.7 times). Rates
were lower elsewhere and very low (60%) in the Punjab.
Here is an initial piece of the puzzle: why is the suicide risk
lower for the unmarried in North India, especially those in the
BIMARU (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, UP) states, and
higher for those elsewhere?
Figure 1: Human Development and Suicide Rates (1997)

30
30
Kerala
Kerala
25
25
Karnataka
Karnataka
Sucide rate '97
20
20
West
Bengal
West
Bengal
TamilNadu
Nadu
Tamil
15
15
y = 37.535x - 6.223
R2 = 0.3006
Maharashtra
Maharashtra
Andhra
Pradesh
Andhra Pradesh
Madhya
MadhyaPradesh
Pradesh
10
10
Odisha
Orissa
Gujarat
Gujarat
Rajasthan
Rajasthan
55
00
0.2
0.2
Haryana
Haryana
Himachal Pradesh
Himachal
Pradesh
Punjab
Punjab
Uttar Pradesh
Uttar
Pradesh
Bihar
Bihar
0.3
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
0.4
0.5
0.6
Hum.dev.tindex
Suicide rate '97 = - 10.66 + 50.851 * Hum.Dev.tindex; R^2 = 574
Source: Computed by the author on the basis of 1997 National Crime Records Bureau
(NCRB) data and Shiva Kumar (1996).
0.7
Marriage and Suicide in India
India stands as a marked exception to the received wisdom

about the protective effects of marriage. This is most palpably
obvious from an inspection of the raw figures. In 2001, for
example, 69% of the 1,08,506 individuals who took their own
lives were married; in 2014, the married percentage was 66%.
Of male suicides in 2001, 70.6% were married; for females it
was 67.02%. In 2014, the corresponding figures were 67.7% for
married males and 63.7% for married females. Males everywhere, except China, are more likely to die by suicide than
females.2 In Australia, for example, in the 20th century there
were roughly four male suicides for every female death (Hassan 1995: 34). In India the differences are far smaller than in
industrialised societies, with roughly 1.52 males to every
female (Patel et al 2012: 2345).
My colleague Tahereh Ziaian and I published a study on the
impact of marital status on suicide in India (Ziaian and Mayer
2002). What we found was quite unexpected. We found that
for Indian men as a whole, the risk of suicide increases with
marriage, while the risk of suicide for females is reduced by
almost half by marriage (cf Patel et al 2012: 2348).3
For both men and women, divorce, still quite rare and stigmatised, drastically raises the risk of suicide. The suicide rate for divorced males is 346.82 per 1,00,000 and for females it is 126.41.
Coefficients of preservation: When we looked at the Indian
states using data for 1995, we found important patterns in the
coefficients of preservation, that is the ratios of, for example,
unmarried/married suicides. For men in North India, broadly
speaking, the risk of suicide for the unmarried was either higher
(1.2 times in Uttar Pradesh [UP] and Odisha; 1.5 times in
Rajasthan) or the same (Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, West Bengal).
In the other major states, however, the risk for unmarried men
was about 80% of that for those who were married.
For women, the pattern was generally similar, though the
risk for unmarried women was generally higher than for men.
Unmarried women were at noticeably higher risk in Rajasthan
(4 times), Bihar (3.3 times), Madhya Pradesh (2.7 times) UP
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
Geographic distribution: One of the things which coefficients of preservation obscure is the differences in magnitude
of the incidence of suicide in the Indian states. As we saw in
the first paper in this series (Mayer 2016), overall suicide risks
are lowest in the Gangetic plain and increase as we move to
the South and the East. The highest incidence of suicides is in
Kerala (and in the tiny union territory of Pondicherry/
Puducherry). In terms of suicide rates, West Bengal can almost
be considered as a part of South India.4
The distinct regional pattern of suicide in India alerts us to
its association with what we know about broader patterns of
development, especially human development, in the country.
This relationship is illustrated in Figure 1, which shows the
regression of suicide rates in 1997 on the UNDP Human Development Index as calculated by Shiva Kumar (1996). The scattergram shows that as human development increases so does
the suicide rate. The noticeable outlier is the Punjab. Without
the Punjab, the coefficient of determination (R 2) between the
two variables is quite high (0.52); when the Punjab is included,
the coefficient of determination falls to 0.30, still a moderately
strong association. A similar relationship existed between levels
of female literacy and overall suicide rates in the early 1990s.
Causes of Suicide
Another piece of the evidence comes from the official determinations of the immediately antecedent causes of individual
suicides: their aetiology. With remarkable consistency over the
years, two major categories of causes are each held to be
responsible for between 15% and over 20% of suicides: those
attributed to despair over dreadful disease and those which
we may term quarrels with kin. A factor analysis which
probed associations between aetiology and socio-economic
variables produced interesting results. One set of aetiologies,
which included quarrels with close kin as well as more minor
causes, including unemployment and bankruptcy, were included in a factor associated with female literacy and levels of
civic community. We labelled this factor as one measuring crises of human development. We found that factor scores on the
Human Development Crisis Factor were highest in the South,
were more moderate in the West, moderate-to-low in the East
and were consistently low in the North.
A second factor was associated with aetiologies such as
unhappy love affairs, suspected or illicit relationships, cancelled marriages, and failure in examinations. This factor had
no strong association with any of the socio-economic variables.
We named this factor the Crises of Personal Relationships Factor.
State scores on this factor were highest in the East (highest of
all in West Bengal), at medium levels in the North and West
and medium to low in the South.
41
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 2: Housewife Suicide Rate vs Average Household Size
30
Kerala
25
West Bengal
Tamil Nadu
15
Maharashtra
10
Odisha
Orissa
Rajasthan
5
Occupation: We have suicide information for only a few occupations which allow us to relate them to corresponding categories
reported by the Census of India.6 One of the most important of
these is the lack of employment. In almost every country, those
without work are at elevated risk of suicide. This is also the
case in India (cf Patel et al 2012: 2348). States with unemployed
male suicide rates over 200 per 1,00,000 are Puducherry,
42
Andhra Pradesh
Madhya Pradesh
Other Stressors on Women
Education: When we probe the impact of education on suicide

more deeply, the results are interesting and unexpected. In
almost every state, the suicide rates for illiterate men and women
are very low, but the rates for men are usually higher than those
Table 1: Female to Male Suicide Ratio for women. At each higher
by Education Level
level of literacy and education,
Education Level
Female:
the suicide rates also riseexMale Ratio
No education
0.686 cept for those with university
Primary
1.146 graduate or higher education,
Middle
1.150 for whom the rates are lower
Matriculation/secondary
1.284 than for those with primary
Higher secondary/intermediate/
education. What is particularly
Pre-university course
1.294
striking is that the ratio of
Diploma
1.201
female:male suicides also rise
Graduate+
1.336
Source:Table computed by author on the basis at every increased level of
of 1997 NCRB data and Census of India 2001.
education. As can be seen in
Table 1, the ratio rises from 0.7 for those with no education to
1.3 for those with graduate education.
When we look at the statewise ratios, we find an equally
unexpected result. For primary and middle standards of education, the highest suicide rates for women (and usually for
men as well) are in the South: Puducherry, Kerala, Andhra
Pradesh (undivided) and Tamil Nadu. However, for matriculants, those with higher secondary and diploma education, the
highest rates are in states such as West Bengal, Madhya
Pradesh, Rajasthan, Odisha, Himachal Pradesh and Maharashtra. For Graduates+, the picture is complex with West Bengal
topping the list, followed by Tamil Nadu, Rajasthan, Karnataka,
Kerala and undivided Andhra Pradesh.
We interpreted these findings as suggesting that where
overall levels of education are lower, the female pioneers or
fugelmen of education are at the greatest risk of suicide.5 This
seems especially the case with technical qualifications. In
West Bengal, women with technical qualifications have a suicide rate of nearly 500 per 1,00,000, many times higher than
the general rate for women which is about 6.3 per 1,00,000.
y = 49.971x - 10.822
R = 0.5214
Karnataka
20
S'cide H'wife
In essence, the two patterns of aetiology mirror each other

in regional terms. When we examined the impact of gender on
these patterns, we found that male suicide rates were highly
associated with the Human Development Crisis Factor. Female
suicide rates, on the other hand, were associated nearly equally
with both factors, indicating that while women are affected as
much as men by the stresses and conflicts arising from modernisation, they are disproportionately vulnerable to crises associated with the Personal Relationship Crisis Factor.
Uttar Pradesh
Haryana
Gujarat
Himachal Pradesh
Bihar
0
0.2
0.3
0.4
0.5
0.6
IHDR Av h/h size
S'cide H'wife = 67.545 - 9.055 * IHDR Av H/h Size; R^2 = 401
Source: Computed by the author on the basis of 1997 NCRB data and Shariff (1999).
0.7
Karnataka, Himachal Pradesh, Gujarat, undivided Andhra

Pradesh, Punjab, and Haryana. Unemployed women are at very
high levels of risk only in Puducherry and Tamil Nadu.
Age: Della Steen and I investigated the age patterning of suicides in the Indian states for 1997 (2003). We found that the
risk of suicide is, on the whole, highest in what are probably
the first or second decades of marriage, that is, for those aged
between 30 and 45. The risks are only slightly lower for those
in the ages when marriages are being arranged or conducted
(1529) (Patel et al 2012: 2346; Aaron et al 2004).7 We concluded that this pattern was broadly consistent with Girards
theory that in developing countries females are more likely to
commit suicide at the usual age of marriage (1993: 558) than
are males. We found that female literacy, the level of exposure
to the media, and smaller family size, all perhaps indicators of
female empowerment, were Table 2: Housewife Suicide Rates, 2011
correlated with higher sui- State
Rate 2011
24.9
cide rates for women in these Andhra Pradesh (undivided)
12.1
age groups (Steen and Mayer Assam
Bihar
1
2003: 260).
Desperate housewives: Finally, let me consider the suicides
of Indias housewives, which
I touched on in the first paper
in this series. In 2011, housewife suicide rates in 12 of
22 Indian states were higher
than 15 per lakh (Table 2).
Their rates were at or over
25 per lakh in Puducherry,
Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh,
Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra,
Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh
(undivided), and West Bengal.
In our investigation, we
found that there was a very
strong inverse correlation
OCTOBER 8, 2016
Chhattisgarh
Goa
Gujarat
Himachal Pradesh
Haryana
Jammu and Kashmir
Jharkhand
Karnataka
Kerala
Maharashtra
Madhya Pradesh
Odisha
Puducherry
Punjab
Rajasthan
Tamil Nadu
Uttarakhand
Uttar Pradesh
West Bengal
41.1
23.2
15
12.5
10.1
3.7
6.2
23.1
22.0
25.2
37.4
15.9
46.4
2.6
12.3
28.2
3.9
4.0
24.7
Source:Table computed by author on the basis

of 2011 NCRB data and Census of India 2011.
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
between housewife suicide rates and average household size, a

measure of the strength of the traditional joint family in India.
As can be seen in Figure 2 (p 42), in the most traditional states,
where average family size was highest and extended families
are most commonBihar, UP, Rajasthan and Haryana
housewife suicide rates were lowest. Where households more
nearly approach the nuclear familyTamil Nadu, Andhra
Pradesh (undivided) and Keralahousewife suicide rates
were much higher. The correlation between the two variables
is quite strong (r = .63).
An Interpretation
Since independence in 1947, the Indian state has been a developmental state. The initial policies of import substitution and
the creation of the large state-owned enterprises, which still
dominate the industrial landscape, laid the foundations of India's
modern economy. Nevertheless, those policies proved unable to
sustain the dynamism and rapid growth which would have
achieved the nationalists dream of ending mass poverty. The
Hindu rate of growth was too slow to permit India to match
the poverty-ending achievements of China since the mid-1980s.
The reform process which began in India following the economic crisis of 1991 has certainly not followed an undeviating
path; nor has progress been especially rapid. The privatisation
of Indias state-owned enterprises, for example, has proceeded
at a bullocks pace (for example, Mayer 2002). Against the delays
and disappointments must be placed the evidence of growth
rates above 7% and some evidence that levels of poverty are being substantially reduced. Gurcharan Das reports that the poverty rate has fallen by about 1% per year (Das 2004; Behl 2008).8
If governments have devoted much attention and treasure
to matters economic, they have given relatively little attention
to the social consequences of the changes which their policies
have set in motion. Yet in historical terms those must inevitably be seen as almost revolutionary. The evidence we have
about suicide, especially female suicides, provides us with one
lens, albeit a narrow, dark and melancholy one, into the nature
of the social transformation in the nature of the family which
is occurring in India.
Recapitulation: We have seen that there is a strong geographic
suicide gradient in India. In the North, especially in the relatively backward BIMARU states, where levels of human development are lower, overall suicide rates are low. The relative
risk of suicide there is higher for the unmarried than the
married. And the risks for married women are inversely related to the average size of families; where families are larger,
the risk of suicide is lower. In those same states, the relative
risks of suicide for those women who do achieve higher levels
of education are also elevated.
In what I loosely term the South, the picture is inverted. There,
overall levels of human development are high, as are suicide
rates. Southern families tend to be smaller in size. In the South,
the suicide risk for married women is higher than for the unmarried. In the South, above all, marriage does not provide the
protection against suicide found in industrialised countries.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
How may we explain these different patterns?

I suggest that a central explanatory factor is the importance
of changing expectations concerning social roles, especially in
marriage. Indias current generation is vastly better educated
than were their parents. With education come changing values
and ways of living. In other words, cultural change is an ineluctable aspect of social and economic change.
In North India, those processes are still relatively weak; too
few women are literate. Traditional expectations about womens social roles are still strong, and their ability to make independent decisions about their lives is limited. It is only in the larger
cities of the North Indian plain such as Kanpur, Patna, and Lucknow that these restrictions have begun to recede. In the North,
urban suicide rates are higher than those in the countryside.
In South India, the achievement of mass female literacy is
far more advanced. Women there have, for example, far more
access and exposure to the mass media than their sisters in the
North. They live in smaller families. In the South, we find that
rural suicide rates are greater than those in the cities. The evidence suggests that among the urban South India middle-class
cultural values have already tended to become dominant and
are now spreading out into the mofussil.
Parallels with Early Modern Europe
I believe the cultural changes which are occurring in India have

strong parallels to experiences in Europe in the early modern
period. In particular, I would suggest that the changes in the
nature of marriage relationships are strikingly similar. Students
of the family such as Lawrence Stone (1977) and Edward Shorter (1976) have traced the transition in the 17th and 18th centuries from traditional marriages, usually arranged by parents
and often lacking emotional bonds between partners, to the
emergence of the ideal of companionate marriage based on
marriages increasingly arranged by the children themselves. It
was during this same period that there was a flowering of plays
and novels which portrayed and praised marriages based on
affection and love between partners. Watt quotes the opinion of
Traer that in this literature, Dramatists and novelists portrayed
happy marriages based on inclination or love and created by
the free choice of the two spouses. They praised marriage as a
source of emotional satisfaction and stressed the equality of the
wife with her husband (Watt 1992: 270).
Watt in his study of suicide in Choosing Death: Suicide and
Calvinism in Early Modern Geneva reported an explosion in
suicides in the late eighteenth century (2001: 3435, see also
Watt 1996). Since his conclusions are so strikingly similar to
my own hypotheses about contemporary India, I asked to be
indulged for quoting several passages from his book.
Generational conflict...was more often a motive for suicide among
Genevas youth. (Watt 2001: 236)
These suicides [arising from generational conflict] reflect a certain
tension between the increasing independence that young people
asserted, on the one hand, and the persistent efforts of parents to
influence the major decisions in their childrens lives, on the other.
The growing importance of romantic love as a legitimate motive for
marrying-at times conflicted with parents interest in seeing their sons
and daughters form advantageous matches. These suicides can also
43
SPECIAL ARTICLE
be explained in part by the growing importance of sentiment in the
nuclear family. With the strengthening of the emotional bonds of the
nuclear family, family dysfunction, like marital dysfunction, became
less tolerable. (Watt 2001: 237)
All told, the evidence from Genevan suicides suggests that the companionate marriage was at the core of new attitudes about the family in late
18th century Geneva. Mutual affection was increasingly becoming the
essential factor in forming and sustaining marriages. Consequently, the
decrease in the percentage of married people among suicides after 1750
reflected greater satisfaction found in matrimony. The larger increase
in the suicide rate among the widowed mirrored the greater emotional
ties in marriage and, accordingly, the stronger emotional void when the
union ended. Desired by merchants, servants, and artisans, the companionate marriage was attractive to both men and women. Factors unrelated to marriage, love, and the family accounted for the imbalance
between male and female suicides. (Watt 2001: 251)
Simply put, in the late 18 century, Geneva in effect experienced a quiet
revolution in the family which contributed significantly to the boisterous revolution in suicide. (Watt 2001: 251)
BollywoodIndias Dream Factory of Romantic Love
Let us turn now to India. It is, I assume, self-evident that the

theme of affection and love between partners is pervasive in
contemporary popular culture: romantic love forms the staple
theme of most Bollywood films. As media exposure increases,
so too does the suicide rate among young, unmarried women-up
to a point. In North Indian states, including the Punjab, Haryana, UP, and Bihar, few girls see a film more than once a month,
and suicide rates are very low. As the percentage rises, the suicide rate shoots up, reaching a peak when around 25% go to
the movies at least once a month. But where film-going is more
widespread than thatin Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh
(undivided)then the rate falls just as rapidly.
Generational Conflict
Suicide in the Indian diaspora: There is also clear evidence

of generational conflict between parents and their children. It
is most clearly evident in the Indian diaspora, where the
impact of the host culture is overwhelming influential. Seventysix percent of South African adolescents of Indian descent, for
example, who had attempted suicide had experienced conflict
with their parents in the 12 hours preceding their self-destructive acts (Pillay and Wassenaar 1997: 158). Conflicts with
parents were found to revolve mainly around issues of individuation and developmental needs where adolescents reported that their parents opposed their requests to go on dates or
have romantic or peer-group involvement (Pillay and Wassenaar 1997: 158). Similar findings have been reported for Indian
migrant communities in Fiji (Haynes 1984; Booth 1999) and
the United Kingdom (Bhugra et al 1999).
Changes in the Indian family: Changes in the family have
been occurring for decades. For example, Robin Jeffrey reported
that already by the early 1960s less than a quarter of Nair families
in Kerala lived in the maternal house (1992: 53).
And significant changes were also occurring at the same
time in urban North India. Sylvia Vatuk, in her study of families
in urban neighbourhoods in Meerut in the 1960s, where
44
arranged marriages were the rule, reported the strong desire

of young brides to escape from the subordination of the extended family (Vatuk 1972: 69). Parents dreaded the moment when a
son and his wife would leave home. And relations bet ween
poorly educated mothers-in-law and better-educated, insubordinate daughters-in-law were a conspicuous source of tension.
Joanne Moller in her study of Kumaon in the early 1990s
also noted the tensions families experienced by bringing an
educated suitable girl into the family. [An] educated daughter-in-law is deemed more likely to forge a strong alliance with
her husband and persuade him to break off from his parents
and set up a nuclear family on their own (Moller 2003: 115).
Anecdotal evidence of the seismic shifts occurring in personal relations appear regularly in the news media. Families
are changing what they seek in a suitable boy or girl (Singh
2009), how marriages are arranged (Kapur 2009b; Lakshmi
2009; Voo 2008), in their expectations about the financial
contribution wives will make to the family (Kapur 2009a), and
courtship (Vasudev 2004). Other articles describe the emergence of de facto relationships (Grure et al 2008), the social
barriers to cross-caste marriages (Blakely 2009; Wax 2008),
love commandos who protect young lovers at risk from harm
from their families (Anand 2012; Biswas 2012) and the growing abuse of mothers-in-law by daughters-in-law (Pandey 2009).
Conclusions
It was a commonplace of 19th century sociology that one of the

consequences of modernisation was that individuals separated
themselves from the tight bonds of traditional social relations.
As Kushner notes, the fear of modernisation and urbanisation
took on a special intensity in the nineteenth century (1993:
461). It was central to Durkheims understanding that the erosion
of integration into the traditional collective was a primary
cause of suicide (1951: 210). It was equally clear to the early sociological students of suicide that marriage provided a form of integration, and that the death of a partrner or divorce placed
individuals at heightened suicide risk (Durkheim 1951: 173,
25976; Agerbo et al 2011; Krull and Trovato 1994).9 What the
historians of marriage in Europe like Shorter (1976), Stone (1977),
and Watt (1996) help us to see with clarity is that the protective
form of marriage which Durkheim identified was marriage in
its post-traditional form, that is companionate marriage.
It seems overwhelmingly likely that the desire for companionate marriage has become widespread among Indias increasingly educated young adults, especially in urban areas, even
while the vast majority still acquiesce in marriages arranged
by their parents. It is in Southern India, where female literacy
is greatest, female empowerment relatively highest, and womens
media consumption most intense, that the tensions between
the confining expectations of older social conventions and the
new romantic values of Indias emerging younger generation
are most acute. What is remarkable is how well most couples
negotiate these dangerous shoals, to return to Shorters nautical metaphor. And, as Trovato and Vos report in the context of
Canadian womens workforce participation, once the new ideas
and roles become generally accepted, the suicide potential for
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
both men and women declines (Trovato and Vos 1992; Stack
1987). We are, perhaps, already beginning to glimpse this transition in urban South India.
In a tiny fraction of cases, however, the pressures and contradictions of being caught between the rigid expectations of
Notes
1
2
3
4
5
6
8
9
For a study of 19th century ideas about social

change and suicide, see Kushner (1993).
For information on suicide rates in China, refer
to the studies by M R Phillips et al (1999; 2002;
2004).
Patel et al (2012, Table 3, p 2348) report a similar pattern in odds-ratio terms.
Patel et al (2012: 2347) present a similar regional
pattern based on a large survey sample.
This is consistent with Gibbs and Martins (1964)
theory of status integration and suicide.
At the time of conducting this study, the figures
for married men and women were not available from the 2011 Census. Hence, the numbers
were estimated from those provided in the
2001 Census.
Patel et al (2012, Figure 1, p 2346) present agespecific estimates of suicide rates based on a
large sample. Aaron et al (2004) present similar figures for Vellore district, Tamil Nadu.
For a more pessimistic view see Behl (2008).
For contemporary evidence on the enhanced
risks posed by divorce, see Agerbo et al (2011).
References
Aaron, Rita, Abraham Joseph, Sulochana Abraham, Jaya Prakash Muliyil, Kuryan George,
Jasmine Prasad, Shantidani Minz, Vinod Joseph
Abraham, and Anuradha Bose (2004): Suicides in Young People in Rural Southern India,
Lancet, Vol 363, No 9415, pp 111718.
Agerbo, Esben, Steven Stack and Liselotte Petersen
(2011): Social integration and Suicide: Denmark, 19062006, Social Science Journal,
Vol 48, No 4, pp 63040.
Anand, Anu (2012): The Love Commandos Protecting Young Indian Couples, BBC, 5 June, http:
//www.bbc.com/news/magazine-18280997,
accessed on 2 June 2016.
Behl, Tejeesh N S (2008): 42%, 28% or 6% ... How
Many Indians Are Really Poor?, Business
Today, 21 September.
Bhugra, Dinesh, M Desai and D S Baldwin (1999):
Attempted Suicide in West London, I: Rates
Across Ethnic Communities, Psychological
Medicine, Vol 29, No 5, pp 112530.
Biswas, Soutik (2012): A Hideaway for Indias Rebel
Couples, BBC, 30 July, http://www.bbc.com/
news/magazine-19010196, accessed on 2 June
2016.
Blakely, Rhys (2009): Young Love Hets Security in
India, The Australian, 15 August, retrieved from
Dow Jones Database.
Booth, Heather (1999): Patterns of Suicide: Factors
Affecting Age-Sex Distributions of Suicide in
Western Samoa and Fiji Indians, Working Papers in Demography No 77, Research School of
Social Sciences, Demography Program, Australian National University.
Das, Gurcharan (2004): The Respect They Deserve,
Time Asia, 29 November.
Durkheim, Emile (1951): Suicide: A Study in Sociology,
Trans J A Spaulding and G Simpson, G Simpson
(eds), New York: The Free Press.
Gibbs, J P and W T Martin (1964): Status Integration
and Suicide, Eugene: University of Oregon Press.
Girard, Chris (1993): Age, Gender, and Suicide: A
Cross-National Analysis, American Sociological
Review, Vol 58, No 4, pp 55374.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
the traditional social order and the dreams and aspirations of

companionate marriage may lead to suicide. It is a bitter irony
that these desperate personal tragedies throw flashes of illumination on the changing nature of personal relations and the
structure of the family in India.
Grure, Guillaume, Purvi Mehta-Bhatt and Debdatta

Sengupta (2008): Bt Cotton and Farmer Suicides in India: Reviewing the Evidence, IFPRI
Discussion Paper 00808, Washington DC: International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
Hassan, Riaz (1995): Suicide Explained: The Australian Experience, Melbourne: Melbourne University Press.
Hay nes, R H (1984): Suicide in Fiji: A Preliminary
Study, British Journal of Psychiatry, Vo 145,
No 4, pp 43338.
Henry, Andrew F and James F Short, Jr (1954): Suicide and Homicide: Some Economic, Sociological
and Psychological Aspects of Aggression, Glencoe: The Free Press.
Jef frey, Robin (1992): Politics, Women and WellBeing: How Kerala Became a Model, Houndmills:
The Macmillan Press.
Kapur, Mallika (2009a): Economy Hits Marriage
Choices in India, CNN.com/Asia, 28 June.
(2009b): Looking for Mr Rightin India,
CNN.com/Asia, 2 July, http://edition.cnn.com/
2009/WORLD/asiapcf/07/02/india.matchmaking.wedding/index.html?iref=allsearch,
accessed on 2 June 2016.
Krull, Catherine and Frank Trovato (1994): The
Quiet Revolution and the Sex Differential in
Quebecs Suicide Rates: 193186, Social Forces,
Vol 72, No 4, pp 112147.
Kushner, Howard I (1993): Suicide, Gender, and
the Fear of Modernity in Nineteenth-century
Medical and Social Thought, Journal of Social
History, Vol 26, No 3, pp 46176.
Lak shmi, Rama (2009): Its a Match: Arranged
Nuptials on Indian TV, Washington Post, 27 June,
http://chutzpah.typepad.com/slow_movement/
2009/06/washington-post-its-a-match-arrangednupitals-on-indian-tv.html, accessed on 2 June
2016.
Mayer, Peter (2002): The Hindu Rate of Reform:
Privatisation under the BJP-Still Waiting for
that Bada Kadam, South Asia.
(2016): Thinking Clearly about Suicide in India:
Desperate Housewives, Despairing Farmers,
Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 51, No 14,
pp 4454.
Moller, Joanne (2003): Responses to Modernity:
Female Education, Gender Relations and
Regional Identity in the Hills of Uttar Pradesh,
Social and Political Change in Uttar Pradesh:
European Perspectives, R Jeffrey and J Lerche
(eds), New Delhi: Manohar.
NCRB (1999): Accidental Deaths and Suicides in
India 1997, National Crime Records Bureau,
Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India.
(2012): Accidental Deaths and Suicides in India,
2011, Ministry of Home Affairs, Government
of India.
Pandey, Geeta (2009): India Mothers-in-law Fight
Abuse, BBC, 7 September, http://news.bbc.
co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/8241275.stm, accessed
on 2 June 2016.
Patel, Vikram, Chinthanie Ramasundarahettige,
Lakshmi Vijayakumar, J S Thakur, Vendhan
Gajalakshmi, Gopalkrishna Gururaj, Wilson
Suraweera, Prabhat Jha for the Million Death
Study Collaborators (2012): Suicide Mortality
in India: A Nationally Representative Survey,
Lancet, Vol 379, No 9834, pp 234351.
Phillips, M R, X Li and Y Zhang (2002): Suicide
Rates in China, 199599, Lancet, 359, pp 83540.
vol lI no 41
Phillips, M R and G Yang (2004): Suicide and Attempted SuicideChina, 19902002, Morbidity
and Mortality Weekly Report, 53(22), pp 48184.
Phillips, M R, Huaqing Liu and Yanping Zhang
(1999): Suicide and Social Change in China,
Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 23, pp 2550.
Pillay, Anthony L and Douglas R Wassenaar (1997):
Recent Stressors and Family Satisfaction in
Suicidal Adolescents in South Africa, Journal
of Adolescence, Vol 20, No 2, pp 15562.
Ruzicka, L T and C Y Choi (1993): Suicide Mortality
in Australia, 197091, Journal of the Australian
Population Association, Vol 10, No 2, pp 10117.
Shariff, Abusaleh (1999): India Human Development
Report: A Profile of Indian States in the 1990s,
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Shiva Kumar, A K (1996): UNDPs Gender-Related
Development Index: A Computation for Indian
States, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 31,
No 14, pp 88795.
Shorter, Edward (1976): The Making of the Modern
Family, London: Collins.
Singh, Kamayani (2009): Thats the Way Love Goes,
Hindustan Times, 14 July, http://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/that-s-the-way-lovegoes/article1-432276.aspx, accessed on 2 June
2016.
Stack, Steven (1987): The Effect of Female Participation in the Labour Force on Suicide: A Time
Series Analysis, 194880, Sociological Forum,
Vol 2, No 2, pp 25777.
Steen, Della M and Peter Mayer (2003): Patterns of
Suicide by Age and Gender in the Indian States:
A Reflection of Human Development? Archives
of Suicide Research, Vol 7, No 3, pp 24764.
Stone, Lawrence (1977): The Family, Sex and Marriage
in England 15001800, London: Weidenfeld
and Nicolson.
Trovato, F and R Vos (1992): Married Female Labour Force Participation and Suicide in Canada,
Sociological Forum, Vol 7, No 4, pp 66177.
Vasudev, Shefalee (2004): Rearranging Marriage, India Today, 18 October, pp 2226.
Vatuk, Sylvia (1972): Kinship and Urbanisation:
White Collar Migrants in North India, Berkeley:
University of Californial Press.
Voo, Jocelyn (2008): Arranged Marriage Gets
High-Tech Twist, CNN.com/Asia, 23 April, http://
edition.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/04/
23/web.arranged.marriages/index.html?_s=
PM:LIVING, accessed on 2 June 2016.
Watt, Jeffrey R (1992): The Making of Modern Marriage: Matrimonial Control and The Rise of Sentiment
in Neuchatel, Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
(1996): The Family, Love, and Suicide in Early
Modern Geneva, Journal of Family History,
Vol 21, No 1, pp 6387.
(2001): Choosing Death: Suicide and Calvinism
in Early Modern Geneva, Kirksville MO: Truman State University Press.
Wax, Emily (2008): Can Love Conquer Caste? Indian Government Supports Mixed Unions, But
Couples Who Defy System Face Violence,
Washington Post Foreign Service, 22 November,
http://www.pressreader.com/usa/the-washington-post/20081122/281522221934541, accessed on
2 June 2016.
Ziaian, Tahereh and Peter Mayer (2002): Gender,
Marital Status and Suicide in India, Journal of
Comparative Family Studies, Vol 33, No 2,
pp 297305.
45
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Ambient Air Pollution from Urban

Transport in India
Michael Eric Lytton, Robert W Collin, Rajesh Kumar Rai
High levels of air pollution from transport systems in

urban India pose a severe threat to public health. While
long-term challenges remain to curtail pollution sources,
immediate measures must be taken to minimise risks to
exposed populations.
he risks from air pollution are greater than previously

thought or understood, and reducing pollution is considered critical to improving the health of a population
(WHO 2016). Air pollution is the fourth highest risk factor for
all deaths globally, and is by far the leading environmental
factor for disease. Every year 4.3 million deaths occur due to
indoor air pollution, and 3.7 million deaths are attributable to
outdoor pollution. More than half of these deaths occur in just
two countries, China and India (UBC 2016).
Future of Air
Michael Eric Lytton (mlytton1@gmail.com) is principal,

Lytton Consulting, San Diego, California; Robert W Collin
(collinrobert4@gmail.com) is a community activist and member of the
Oregon Environmental Justice Task Force, Salem, Oregon.
Rajesh Kumar Rai (rajesh.iips28@gmail.com) is a senior research
scientist at the Society for Health and Demographic Surveillance,
Birbhum, West Bengal.
46
The urban air pollution is predicted to be the top environmental cause of premature mortality worldwide by 2050
(van der Wall 2015; Gouldson et al 2015). The situation in India
is already dire. Thirteen of the 20 most polluted cities globally
are in India, and the country has the worlds highest rate of
deaths caused by chronic respiratory diseases (WHO 2014a). The
World Bank reports that in 2010, at some point, the entire Indian
population was exposed to particulate matter (PM) at levels
exceeding the guidelines of the World Health Organization
(WHO) (World Bank 2015b). In March 2015, Prakash Javadekar,
former minister for environment, forest and climate change
stated that the air quality monitoring data for New Delhi provided by the Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) indicated
that the levels of PM exceeded the WHO guidelines by a factor
of 7 to 12 (Economic Times 2015). New Delhis pollution levels
frequently exceed those of Beijing, conferring on the nations
capital the dubious distinction of sporadically being the most
polluted city on earth.
In addition to the enormous disease burden imposed by air
pollution, there are outsized external and social costs. In 2013,
at the request of Ministry of Environment and Forests, the World
Bank conducted its first-ever economic assessment of environmental degradation in India and reported the amount to be
5.7% of the countrys gross domestic product (GDP) (World Bank
2013). The highest share of this was from the impact of ambient
air pollution. And in another first-of-its-kind study conducted in
2015, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) found that the air pollution-related illnesses and
mortalities cost $1.7 trillion annually in OECD countries, $1.4
trillion in China, and $0.5 trillion in India (WHO and OECD 2015).
Despite the toll in health and economic costs, it is frequently
alleged that most environmental risks are preventable, and
that urban air pollution is an avoidable cause of disease and
deaththere are things people can do to protect themselves,
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
or it can be avoided in the first instance. Certainly, some risk

factors can be mitigated by an effective action at street level,
and there are ways to protect against the worst health risks,
particularly for the most vulnerablechildren, the poor, sick
and the elderly.
We agree with the assertion by the WHO that reducing the
environmental burden of death and disease is entirely possible
through cost-effective interventions, and that local action can
be a key determinant in shaping the use of resources and management of health determinants. We also agree that municipalities are natural leaders of local environment and health
planning, but until there is a change in perception to view the
environment as an essential element of health protection, the
public health principle that creating and maintaining healthy
environments will not be a priority (Prss-stn et al 2016).
At the same time, complex health problems due to urban air
pollution are seldom amenable to simple solutions, and macrolevel environmental factors are usually outside individual control. Urban transport-related air pollution is only preventable
with sufficient time, money and political will. Its structural
causes are already in place, and it will require massive, sustained effort to reconfigure cities and their existing transport
infrastructure away from the dominance of private motorised
vehicles. The banal fact is that infrastructure projects are
highly disruptive and expensive in the short term, and even
more disruptive and expensive when postponed to the future.
This paper describes some of the immediate actions that
should be taken to mitigate health risks faced by exposed and
vulnerable populations, as well as steps towards addressing
urban transport pollution systemically by going upstream to
structures and behaviours that are responsible for harmful
emissions in the first instance.
Urban Transport: Private Motorisation Dominates
More people live in cities than in rural settlements, and by

2050, over 60% of the worlds population is projected to be
urban. India, with 410 million city-dwellers, has the worlds
second largest urban population, living in some 380 urban
agglomerations and three megacities of over 10 million (IIHS
2011). In the next 35 years this urban population is expected to
double, with medium-size cities growing faster than the megacities, and at higher rates of motorisation (UN 2014). The latter
is a troubling prospect, given that Delhi had 7.4 million registered motor vehicles in 2012, a number predicted to increase to
over 25 million by 2030 (Kumar et al 2015).
Cities are typically more cost-effective than rural settlements in the provision of essential goods and services such as
public transport, healthcare, education, housing, electricity
and sanitation. Urban dwellers also have access to larger and
more diversified labour markets, and have a tendency to enjoy
healthier lives overall. But uncontrolled urbanisation and
motorisation pose daunting challenges, threatening to undermine the sustainability of many cities. The term invaded
cities has been applied to those that have been inundated
with motor vehicles to such an extent that pedestrians and
public life have almost been squeezed out (Gehl 2003).
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
According to the World Bank, the growth of global road traffic is unprecedented and the number of motor vehicles per person is increasing at a rate never seen before in human history
(Shotten 2013). By 2050 the number of light duty motor vehicles worldwide is expected to exceed 2.1 billion, with most of
the increase in Asian countries, especially China and India.
The growing Indian middle class is moving rapidly from twowheelers to four-wheelers, purchasing 1.9 million cars in 2014
15, slightly more than the 1.8 million sold the previous year.1
Many upwardly mobile Indians are following the North American model and aspire to transition from one-car to two-car
families.
The urban transport sectorconsisting predominantly of
passenger travel and a smaller proportion of freightis heavily
skewed in favour of private motorisation at the expense of
public transit and non-motorised transport (NMT). The dominance of motorcycles, scooters, three-wheelers and cars has
negative impacts on the quality of urban life, consumption of
fossil fuels, air pollution, climate change and economic growth
and prosperity. Traffic congestion is also a chronic by-product
of motorisation in cities worldwide, and is a major factor in
slowing the movement of people in urban areas, as well as
causing enormous public health problems.
Transport Pollution and Externalities
Motorised road transport imposes a massive burden on population health. Deaths attributable to air pollution, to which
motor vehicles are an important contributor, grew by 11% over
the last two decades. Pollution from vehicles in 2010 was the
cause of 1,84,000 deaths globally, including 91,000 deaths
from ischemic heart disease, 59,000 deaths from stroke, and
34,000 deaths from lower respiratory infections, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and lung cancer (Global Road
Safety Facility, World Bank and Institute for Health Metrics
and Evaluation 2014). And recently, air pollution has emerged
as one of the leading contributors to stroke burden worldwide,
accounting for almost a third of stroke-related disabilityadjusted life years (Feigin et al 2016).
Transport also accounts for approximately 22% of global
energy use, and both carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions and
transport energy have increased nearly 30% since 2000. The
share of oil products in the final energy consumption for transport is 93%, consequently the most significant externalities of
urban transport affect the environment and human health. A
recent study calculated the value of harms caused by gasoline
and diesel fuel subsidies worldwide each year. These external
costs include $8 billion from CO2 emissions, $7 billion from
local pollutants, $12 billion from traffic congestion, and $17
billion from accidents. Traffic congestion and accidents are
rarely mentioned in policy discussions about fuel subsidies,
but there is a growing consensus that these are the largest
externalities (social costs) of driving (Davis 2016).
In 2015, it was noted for the first time that the average Indian
was exposed to more particulate pollution than the average
Chinese, and the WHO has well-documented the adverse effects
of PM on health (WHO 2013). The international guidelines on
47
SPECIAL ARTICLE
the concentration of fine particulates in the air that are dangerous to public health have been set since 2005. The WHO designates airborne particulates, a Group 1 carcinogen. The PM (inhalable coarse particles with a diameter between 2.5 micrometre and 10 micrometre, designated PM 10 and PM 2.5) is the
deadliest form of air pollution due to its ability to penetrate
deep into the lungs and blood streams unfiltered, causing permanent DNA mutations, heart attacks, and premature death. A
study conducted in 2013 has concluded that there was no safe
level of particulates, and that for every increase of 10 g/m3
(microgram per cubic metre of air) in PM 10, the lung cancer
rate rose to 22%. The smaller PM 2.5 is particularly deadly (as it
can penetrate deeper into the lungs), with a 36% increase in
lung cancer per 10 g/m3 (Raaschou-Nielsen et al 2013).
The urban air pollution from motorcycles, autorickshaws,
cars, trucks, buses and other motor vehicles is understandably
found in higher concentrations near major roads. Generally,
the more traffic, higher the level of emissions; but congestion
and stop-and-go movement can increase emissions of certain
pollutants. Two-stroke motors (two- and three-wheelers) and
diesel engines have the highest levels of emissions, and congested intersections with many lanes of traffic will be typical
hot spots for motorised pollution.2
NMT and Exposed Populations
Global transport investments are estimated between $1 trillion

and $2 trillion per year, yet less than 40% is invested in developing countries, where the vast majority (80%) of the worlds
population lives, and where NMT is a significant means of mobility in most cities (World Bank 2016). A few countries invest in
primary health prevention strategies such as developing active
transport networks for walking and biking, and a very limited
number of cities are planning public transport systems in a
holistic, sustainable manner (UNHSP 2013). In response to congestion, for example, the standard strategy has been to add
infrastructures for cars, which only exacerbates greenhouse
gas (GHG) emissions, road traffic accidents, noise, air pollution
and degraded public health. Some cities are now trying various methods to ration road space and/or limit the number of
vehicles entering urban areas, with varying levels of success.
Mirroring the limited transport investment in developing
countries is the lack of research on the mobility needs of low
income populations who are often dependent on NMT to access
employment, education and essential services such as healthcare.3 In urban India, the combined total modal shares of NMT
and public transit are higher than that of motorisedthe nonmotorised share is approximately 30% in cities with more than
one million populations and 60% in smaller cities (Wilbur
Smith Associates 2008). This statistic reflects not only economic realities, but a dense, mixed-use urban morphology that
enables short trips, and the fact that NMT is a component of
public transportthe public transit user is a pedestrian for at
least one part of the trip. However, bicycle use throughout
India is declining, largely due to inadequate investments in
NMT infrastructure, traffic congestion, and accident risk
facing cyclists.
48
Many people who are dependent on NMT have low household incomes, and cannot afford public transport or the cost of
a bicycle. They are described as living in transport poverty
(UNHSP 2013). Others who can pay the fare choose to avoid
public transit because it is uncomfortable or inconvenient (and
sometimes unsafe), while still others consider streets dangerous for cycling and take their chances as pedestrians (EPCA
2014). And there are those who cannot drive, such as the
young and old, the disabled, the homeless, and the many women who do not own private motorised vehicles.
Pedestrians make up a significant portion of urbanites using
the edges of city streets, but they share those spaces with
others, and those edges can become very crowded, especially
in developing countries. Many sidewalks in India (where they
exist) are teeming with food vendors and their regulars, trade
and delivery persons, goods and service hawkers, students,
business and restaurant patrons, mothers and children, the
homeless, and others. And in addition to the itinerant and
semi-permanent users of roadsides, are the occupants of
near-roadway buildings and spaces within a few hundred
metres of the street: homes, offices, bus stops, shops, places of
worship, schools, playgrounds, healthcare facilities, markets,
and so forth.
Among the millions of people in India travelling on or
spending a significant portion of their time in close proximity
to a major roadway are those who are more vulnerable to air
pollutants than the general population. These populations of
concern are more susceptible to harm from air pollution due
to factors including age, baseline health status, access to
healthcare, and socio-economic status (USGCRP 2016). The
young, older adults, people with compromised immune systems, and people with heart or lung disease (such as coronary
artery disease, congestive heart failure, and asthma) are the
most vulnerable to pollution.
Children are at increased risk of pollution-related illness
because their lungs are still developing, and because they are
more likely to have asthma or acute respiratory diseases that
can be aggravated when particulate levels are high. In addition, children tend to spend more time at high activity levels,
which even for the healthy, is a risk factor. Exercise and physical activity cause people to breathe faster and more deeply,
and to take more pollution particles into their lungs. Numerous studies confirm that ambient traffic-related pollution, with
exposure to ambient PM 2.5 and ozone leads to reduced lung
capacity has chronic adverse effects on pulmonary function in
children (Chen et al 2015; Lee et al 2011; Hwang et al 2015).
The poor can be especially vulnerable if they do not have
sufficient resources to deal with adverse health impacts (Awe
et al 2015) or if they lack healthcare services within walking
distance (Titheridge et al 2014). The poor might also live in
lower quality housing and can neither afford to relocate from
proximate emission sources or take measures to protect their
dwellings from ambient pollution.
It is, therefore, critical to understand urban transportation
not only in terms of motorisation as a source of air pollution
and other externalities, but also in terms of exposed and
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
vulnerable citizens. The most exposed group includes people

who do not drive, those who rely on non-motorised transport,
and those who live, work or go to school in close proximity to
major roads. The most vulnerablethe populations of concerninclude the young, old, those with pre-existing health
conditions and the poor.
These populations, along with private and commercial
motorists, are the focus of near-roadway research programmes
that contribute to the growing body of evidence on how motor
vehicle emissions influence air quality, and the relationship
between roadway pollution exposure and adverse health
effects. The areas of research include identification of
impacts, the methods to best monitor them, and protective
and mitigation actions to maximise improvements in public
health (US EPA, OAR 2016).
Intervention: First Aid
To many observers, transport-related air pollution in Indian

cities is an emergencya serious and often dangerous situation requiring immediate action. Fortunately, there are appropriate and practical public health interventions that, in the
short term, can mitigate risk factors and help to control disease in the community. And accepting the standard convention that municipalities are public bodies operating under
statute with a clear responsibility for public health, it is
assumed that creating and maintaining healthy environments is a priority of local governments. Health issues should
drive decision-making.
As urban planning has shifted its attention to sustainability,
cities have begun to integrate public health as a core element
of comprehensive plans and policies. In a largely retrospective
process of connecting the dots, planners have come to recognise how the impacts of land use, urban design and transportation decisions are inextricably linked to many of todays public health concerns such as obesity, respiratory disease and
cancer. The goal of public health is to protect the largest number of people by reducing exposure to risk factors, but health
disparities must also be identified and tackled. Consequently,
planners are increasingly attentive to inequalities, and seek
policies and programmes to maximise both health and equity
as a high priority.
Planners working in new cities or urban areas could be
responsible for such things as determining if a proposed housing site is near environmental risks, including noise and air pollution, drafting policies to minimise exposure to particulate
matter for sensitive land uses such as schools, daycare facilities and playgrounds, or ensuring adequate provision for the
NMT modes of walking and cycling. Working in existing cities,
planners might be tasked to evaluate local sources of pollution, or define and address reasonably modifiable environmental risk factors through such measures as modifying transport infrastructure or creating low emission zones.
In all cases of municipal intervention, inter-sectoral cooperation is essential. City planners must increasingly function collaboratively with their colleagues in health, transportation,
housing, and development. Often the general public is not
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
aware of their role in air quality and public health, and they
must be both informed and engaged. Planners must also bring
school administrators, business associations, non-governmental
organisations (NGOs) and others into a process of active participation, not simply consultation (Marsal-Llacuna and
Segal 2016). Timely, effective communication with decisionmakers, stakeholders and citizens is assumed. Finally, the
basic parameters of interventions are that they are sustainable
and they should improve the quality of city life, urban access,
and fairness.
In addition to planners, experts in epidemiology play an
important role in protecting the publics health. Epidemiologya
discipline within public healthfocuses on patterns and distributions of disease in order to design preventive measures.
Epidemiologists who understand a problem and the population in which it occurs are often in a unique position to recommend appropriate interventions. However, in some of the most
highly polluted regions of the world, there is a severe lack of
direct epidemiological evidence (WHO 2014b).
Epidemiology is concerned with the collective health of the
people in a community or population. In its most condensed
form, the aim of epidemiology is to decrease disease burden by
reducing exposure to a risk factor, and central to this task is
public health surveillance, sometimes called information for
action. This is the systematic collection, analysis, and sharing
of health data to help guide public health decision-making and
action (US DHHS 2012). Data and their interpretation from
health surveys and other information sources are then disseminated so that mitigation and prevention measures can be
applied effectively.
Intervention: Sequence and Steps
In epidemiological terms, interventions can be directed at controlling or eliminating the agent at source of transmission
(that is, shift transport mode, adopt electric vehicles, reduce
traffic, prevent congestion), protecting portals of entry (that
is, provide masks, modify buildings), or increasing host defences (that is, health advisories, restrict outdoor exercise,
close facilities) (US DHHS 2012). All of these are feasible within
relatively short time frames, especially when targeted to small
geographic areas.
One short-term intervention is the distribution of certified
respirators (masks) to the most exposed and vulnerable populations. Certification of masks (that is, US NIOSH or EU FFP
rated) indicate that they have been tested and meet benchmark standards to filter out small airborne particles (Delhi Air
2016). A second high-priority intervention is the establishment
of an air quality information system that would provide pollution data, and possibly post health advisories, alerting citizens
to take precautionary measures, or administrators to close
facilities. Access to accurate and timely information can significantly heighten preventive and healthcare-seeking behaviour. Three traffic management interventions that could also
be taken quickly and relatively inexpensively are the designation of low emission zones, time restrictions on movement of
high-polluting vehicles, and rerouting busy streets.
49
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Later, city officials could begin medium- and long-term

interventions like infrastructure projects to improve urban air
such as planting trees and other roadside vegetation. And they
should begin creating a network of dedicated pedestrian and
cycling lanes, based on equity of use and the safety needs of
walkers, bicycle riders and public transport usersa recommendation made in 2014 by the Environment Pollution (Prevention and Control) Authority for the National Capital Region
(EPCA 2014).
New or ongoing research from a regulatory and public
health perspective could include a vastly expanded network of
air quality monitoring, as well as intra-urban exposure assessments and health surveys such as the 2008 Delhi study of 36
near-roadway schools in different seasons (CPSB 2008). City
officials might also expand studies of health risk factors to include transportation-related noise, or investigate the extent to
which differential exposure to air pollution is responsible for
health disparities.
Air pollution exposure assessment has evolved from interurban to intra-urban studies, resulting in greater accuracy and
new information on how differential exposure is driving environmental health disparities. Although the concepts of environmental justice and inequality are understudied in India, it
is anticipated that research will find socio-economic disparities in exposure to urban air pollution is having a significant
impact on population health (Hajat et al 2015; Cartier 2015).
In any case, municipalities must lead. The first emergency
intervention step is to contact and enlist appropriate municipal officials and health authorities that have macro-level or
citywide responsibilities in public health. To the extent necessary, the scope and urgency of the crisis will be explained, and
the commitment of the appropriate agencies will be secured.
An intervention plan will then be drafted, outlining short,
medium and long-term activities. The plan will include at a
minimum: identification of responsible parties, a prioritised
list of interventions, implementation strategies, timelines,
benchmarks, and health-oriented metrics to measure and
track progress and outcomes.
Exposure Assessment
Mapping locations of high roadway emissions must be done

early and quickly. This will be relatively simple for city officials
because the busiest roads and most congested intersections in
their jurisdiction will already be known. At these locations,
subsequent formal exposure assessments can provide much
useful data, but under the warrant of a public health crisis,
absence of such data should not prevent officials from proceeding with the design and implementation of interventions.
In the meantime, traffic countshourly, daily and weekly
can be collected by devices or by observation. Observers can
also count different vehicle types and the number of people
on foot.
As indicated, certain facilities in the vicinity (within 300
metre) of locations with the highest levels of pollution are of
particular concern. They include schools, daycare and healthcare facilities, playgrounds and dwellings (including seniors
50
housing). These facilities must also be plotted and/or geocoded, another task that should not be delayed. It involves
trained people using paper and pen, or perhaps technologies
such as GPS recorders or smartphones with apps, but special
expertise is not required. Buildings and facilities can be located, their use listed, and their occupancy or enrolment recorded.
The information is then transmitted to offices of the municipality or health authority, verified and transferred to maps,
and used in the planning process.
This project is an opportunity to initiate community-engaged
researchcollaboration between two or more organisations such
as public health authorities, non-governmenal organisations
(NGOs), community groups and government agencies. Advocates of community engagement assert that it improves health
promotion and health research, and in the present pollution
crisis seems well-suited to interventions that involve numerous stakeholders (CTSA Consortium 2011; Nieuwenhuijsen 2016).
An example of community-engaged research on traffic related particle exposure involved 250 students in New York city,
who participated in an exercise that monitored and compared
diesel particulate exposure levels in two parts of the city and
one suburb. The participants also kept symptom diaries. This
project produced new data and helped to expand the understanding of the relationships between higher rates of exposures to vehicle-related particles and adverse respiratory
symptoms among children living and attending school near
heavily-trafficked roadways. The data has helped to produce
formal publications, and has offered important evidence to influence policies to reduce acute asthma morbidity (NIH 2015).
Surveying facilities (or counting traffic) could also involve
participatory monitoring, whereby research is conducted by
amateur or non-professional citizen scientists. Collecting
rudimentary information by scientists is costly, and the internet has increasingly enabled citizens to gather data to be analysed by professionals. Participatory monitoring will also raise
local awareness and help build the community expertise needed to address such urgent public health issues as air pollution.
Engaged citizens could be invaluable in such areas as communication and outreach, distribution of masks, air quality monitoring and so forth.
Health Surveillance
As emission hotspots are identified and key facilities recorded,

formal health surveillance can be started. Locating geographies of vulnerable populations is a fundamental part of health
surveillance and disease prevention. Risk factor quantification, particularly for modifiable risk factors, can help to identify emerging threats to population health and opportunities
for prevention (Forouzanfar et al 2015).
A health surveillance network, focused on intra- and interurban hotspots, should be established. Data on air quality
would be regularly collected through standardised monitoring
devices, and then linked with the health status of the population living in the catchment areas, where the devices are located.
To collect the data on morbidity and mortality, a quarterly
survey should be implemented whereby trained interviewers
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
collect information. That epidemiological data of morbidity

and mortality could help investigate whether the health status
of the population could be attributed to the air quality of that
area. Thus, proper cohort studies with health surveillance
across different sites in India are the need of the hour.
Such a health surveillance network is conceptually similar to
the nationwide health tracking network proposed by the Pew
Environmental Health Commission in the United States (US). This
proposal was in response to what was deemed an environmental
health gap, a lack of basic information that would document
links between hazards and disease, and provide communities
and public health professionals the critical data needed to reduce and prevent health problems. The comprehensive tracking network would enhance ability of localities to:
Identify populations at risk and respond to outbreaks, clusters and emerging threats;
Guide intervention and prevention strategies, including lifestyle improvements;
Improve the public health basis for policymaking;
Enable the publics right to know about health and the environment; and
Track progress towards achieving a healthier city or region
(Environmental Health Tracking Project Team 2000).
There is also an urgency to determine the scope of the population at the highest exposure risk because an intervention
such as distribution of respirators requires the quantity of supplies to be estimated with reasonable accuracy. (Alternately,
stockpiles can be assembled ahead of time in anticipation of
need.) Epidemiologists will also document vulnerabilities of
exposed populations (co-morbidities, age, or socio-economic
status) and their time-activity patterns.
Air Quality Monitoring
Air quality monitoring should also begin in the areas around

the identified hotspots, where only rough estimates of pollution
levels have been identified. Monitoring air quality more accurately is critical in predicting and documenting health effects,
especially in vulnerable populations and ecosystems. Small-area
and site-specific monitoring will support better protection of
public health and the environment by providing communities
with detailed and finer-grained data on pollution and exposure
in their neighbourhoods, information that is unaccounted for in
metro and regional scale modelling (Borrego et al 2016).
The type of vehicles and fuel used, traffic activity, and wind
speed and direction all have significant effects on pollutant
levels near major roadways. Urban roads flanked on both sides
by high buildings (street canyons) also give rise to very high
air pollution levels, and individual buildings and groupings
have a significant impact on local wind flow patterns. Collected
data will include types, quantities and times of emissions, and
sites can be differentiated based on such local factors as dispersion patterns and load levels at various times of the day,
week or season.
Air quality monitoring networks have typically used expensive, stationary equipment that provides accurate data, but
only in a few locations. Despite the importance of location to
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
assess environmental outcomes, a global data set of air pollution in cities has been lacking, and data in many countries and
at the citizen level are scarce (Brezzi and SanchezSerra 2014).
However, this is changing with the emergence of lower-cost,
easy-to-use, portable air pollution monitors (sensors) that provide high resolution data in near real time (US EPA, ORD 2016;
Piedrahita et al 2014; Borrego et al 2015). Lower cost sensors
can supplement existing networks and reduce the costs of
pollution monitoring for public agencies, and researchers.
New sensor devices are continually being introduced and are
proving effective, particularly in urban areas that often have
high spatial variability of air pollutants (Snyder et al 2013).
Recently the United Nations Environment Programme unveiled
an affordable national air quality monitoring network based
on inexpensive sensors, and is publishing the blueprint for the
monitors as a global public good (UNEP 2016).
Air quality monitors tied to advances in computing and
communication also make data more readily available, increasingly via internet portals and air quality dashboards.4 These
can serve as both public information interfaces for civilians
and visualisation/control systems for air quality experts as
well as city officials in support of pollution management and
policy development. Web-based dashboards that present public health information based on daily air quality data can also
be the sites of advisories and warnings.
Publishing high-resolution maps and data increase public
awareness, helping citizens understand the air quality in their
local area. Informing citizens with the most accurate and
detailed air quality information is essential to building public
support for ambitious air quality management programmes.
At the same time, targeted source-specific studies along roadways and in the vicinity of congested intersections are critical
tools for fast and effective interventions.
As data from exposure assessments, health surveys, and air
quality monitoring is collected and analysed, intervention priorities might change. In census terms, there will be a more
accurate tally of how many people are affected, especially
those in the most vulnerable populations. Differential exposures and potential health disparities can be revealed at a finegrained, neighbourhood level. This information allows comparison between locations, and can confirm early targeting or
reveal unanticipated patterns, all of which supports ongoing
planning and decision-making.
As soon as masks are procured and ready for distribution, a
campaign of outreach and public health education should be
launched, targeting the most exposed and vulnerable populations. The goal is to inform and educate these populations about
pollution exposure risk, and ways that individuals can mitigate those risks. But telling people that there is a way to improve their health is not often sufficient to change behaviour.
A successful campaign should tell people that a change in
their behaviour will improve their health; demonstrate and
model the behaviour; reduce barriers to its adoption; create a
system for supporting people who choose to adopt it; provide
the materials necessary to begin adoption (that is, masks), and
provide a background of support through in-person, print,
51
SPECIAL ARTICLE
radio, television, and other approaches (World Bank 2015a).

Masks will be distributed free as part of this information/
outreach campaign, and individuals will be advised on how to
use them and when to replace them.
Concurrently, the city can experiment with methods to
reduce traffic on the busiest roads and at the most congested
intersections. This is both feasible and cost-effective because
the actions are source-specific and intra-urban, not indiscriminate and citywide. Locations of high population exposure plus
high emissions are the immediate targets of traffic reduction
interventions. Using risk exposure data from the mapping exercise, officials can determine where to createeither provisional
or permanentlow emission zones, and where and when to
reroute or limit traffic near vulnerable populations and high-risk
facilities such as schools, health facilities, daycares and parks.
Behaviour Change
The final and most difficult intervention will be to make the

public aware of the role they play in the air quality problem, as
well as in its solution. This ambitious, long-term project has
two interdependent objectives, the first is to convince Indians
to reduce their motorised travel, and the second is to make the
case for government intervention. The project will involve
local public conversations and national debates about sustainable transport and the quality of city life, set within a framework of urban planning and public health. It will include government, the media, the scientific community, civil society,
academia and business.
The intent is to go upstream to the source of most roadway
pollutionprivate motorised vehiclesand create a starting
point for social change. The project also hopes to create the
political space for policy intervention. Municipal governments
are trapped in a cycle of inertia, but low public awareness
means they feel little pressure to intervene. Public dialogue
will hopefully prepare the ground for the longer-term reforms
needed in Indian cities. And while awareness-raising alone
will not be sufficient to achieve sustainable transport, it will be
necessary for the success of government policies and strategies
that are implemented. In a reciprocal manner, well-planned
and executed strategies send a powerful signal to citizens that
sustainable transport is beneficial and that government takes
the issue seriously.
Notes
1
52
Overview of the Indian Auto Industry, 2016,

available at: http://www.knowindia.net/auto.
html, accessed on 9 May.
Studies have shown in excess of a 20-fold
increase in particle number concentrations at
traffic lights during decelerating, accelerating
or idling conditions compared with free flowing traffic conditions (Kumar et al 2015).
Social Inclusion in EU Public Transport, Report prepared by European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies of the Union, Ludovica Samek Lodovici, Nicoletta Torchio, available at http://dx.publications.euro
pa.eu/10.2861/75342.
AIR-PortalAir Quality Dashboard for European Cities: ESAs ARTES Applications, 2016,
available in https://artes-apps.esa.int/projects
Conclusions
We argue that a proper response to the pollution emergency in
India must deal first and foremost with public health risk and
what can be done to mitigate it at the individual and population levels. Guided by an explicit framework of prevention and
protection, action must include: exposure assessment, health
surveillance; air quality monitoring and data mapping of
pollution sources and the proximate most vulnerable groups;
collecting and reporting daily air quality data; and, disseminating health information such as what effects may be experienced as a result of pollution exposure, and measures citizens
can take to reduce their risk. Wearing proper respiratorsprovided by the city or NGOis one of those measures.
Using the surveillance data of vulnerable populations,
municipal transport planners must then play a complementary
role within the preventive and protective health framework.
They must apply the mechanisms available to them to immediately address the worst sources of emissions in proximity to
the largest clusters of the most vulnerable. Responses include
creating temporary or permanent low emission zones as
required by monitored levels of daily emissions data. Such
actions will be targeted, based on an accurate mapped data, and
implemented in collaboration with health officials. The results
of municipal actions will be measured, evaluated in terms of
health prevention and protection, and communicated to citizens.
Surveillance and response will be continuous and flexible as
transport patterns change and climatic conditions shift.
We also recommend a public dialoguestill within a
preventive and protective health frameworkfocused on
private motorised transport and what individuals can do to reduce urban congestion, pollution and health risk to themselves
and others. This dialogue involves government communication, mass and social media, public and private discourse and
behaviour change. The broad objective is to go upstream to
the primary source of urban ambient air pollution, namely, the
private auto, and to engage citizens to learn about the interconnectedness of urban access, environmental/climate justice,
active transport, and urban livability. The key message is
simple: we must drive less. Although a daunting agenda, there
are many immediate actions possible for citizens, such as foregoing a second car, carpooling, car sharing, and walking or
cycling when possible and safe to do so.
/air-portal, accessed on 16 May; Atmosys

Home 2016, accessed on 20 May, http://www.
atmosys.eu/faces/index.jsp.
References
Awe, Yewande, Jostein Nygard, Steinar Larssen,
Heejoo Lee, Hari Dulal and Rahul Kanakia
(2015): Clean Air and Healthy Lungs: Enhancing the World Banks Approach to Air Quality
Management, Working Paper, 1 February, http:
//documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/ 610191468166143435/Clean-air-and-healthy-lungs
-enhancing-the-World-Banks-approach-to-airquality-management.
Borrego, Carlos, J H Amorim, O Tchepel, D Dias,
S Rafael, E S, C Pimentel, T Fontes, P Fernandes,
S R Pereira, J M Banderia and M C Coelho
(2016): Urban Scale Air Quality Modelling Using
Detailed Traffic Emissions Estimates, Atmospheric Environment, 131, April, pp 34151.

Borrego, Carlo, Miguel Coutinho, A Margardia Costa,
J Ginja, C Ribeiro, A Monteiro, I Ribeiro, J Valente,
H Martins, J H Amorim, D Lopes, A I Miranda
(2015): Challenges for a New Air Quality Directive: The Role of Monitoring and Modelling
Techniques, New Sensing Technologies and Methods for Air Pollution Monitoring, 14, Part 3, December, pp 32841, doi:10.1016/j.uclim.2014.06.007.
Brezzi, Monica and Daniel SanchezSerra (2014):
Breathing the Same Air? Measuring Air Pollution
in Cities and Regions, November, Organisation for
Economic Co-operation and Development Regional Development Working Papers, http://www.
oecd-ilibrary.org/urban-rural-and-regional-development/breathing-the-same-air-measuring-airpollution-in-cities-and-regions_5jxrb 7rkxf21-en.
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Cartier, Yuri, Tarik Benmarhnia and Astrid Brousselle (2015): Tool for Assessing Health and
Equity Impacts of Interventions Modifying Air
Quality in Urban Environments, Evaluation
and Program Planning, 53, December, pp 19,
doi:10.1016/j.evalprogplan. 2015.07.004.
CPCB (2008): Study on Ambient Air Quality, Respiratory Symptoms and Lung Function of Children in Delhi, Central Pollution Control Board,
Ministry of Environment and Forests, http://
cpcb.nic.in/upload/NewItems/NewItem_191_
StudyAirQuality.pdf.
Chen, Chi-Hsien, Chang-Chuan Chan, Bing-Yu Chen,
Tsun-Jen Cheng and Yue Leon Guo (2015): Effects of Particulate Air Pollution and Ozone
on Lung Function in Non-Asthmatic Children,
Environmental Research, 137, February, pp 4048,
doi:10.1016/j.envres.2014.11.021.
CTSA Consortium (2011): Principles of Community
Engagement (Second Edition), Clinical and
Translational Science Awards Consortium, https:
//www.atsdr.cdc.gov/community engagement/
pdf/PCE_Report_508_FINAL.pdf, Maryland, United States: National Institutes of Health.
Davis, Lucas W (2016): The Environmental Cost of
Global Fuel Subsidies, National Bureau of Economic Research, http://www.nber.org/papers
/w22105.
Delhi Air (2016): Pollution Masks, available at:
https://delhiair.org/what-to-do/pollution-masks/.
Environmental Health Tracking Project Team
(2000): Americas Environmental Health Gap:
Why the Nation Needs a Nationwide Health
Tracking Network: Companion Report, Johns
Hopkins School of Hygiene and Public Health,
Pew Environmental Health Commission, http:
//www.jhsph.edu/research/centers-and-institutes/center-for-excellence-in-environmentalhealth -tracking/tracking_history.html.
EPCA (2014): Report on Priority Measures to Reduce Air Pollution and Protect Publich Health,
Delhi: Environment Pollution (Prevention and
Control) Authority for the National Capital Region, February.
Economic Times (2015): Air Pollution Level in Delhi
Exceeds WHO Limits, 19 March, http: //articles.
economictimes.indiatimes.com/2015-03-19/
news/60286663_1_monitoring-stations-airpollution-ambient-air-quality-standards.
European Parliament, Directorate-General for Internal Policies, Policy Department B: Structural and
Cohesion Policies, Ludovica Samek Lodovici,
Nicoletta Torchio and Italy Istituto per la ricerca
sociale Milan (2015): Social Inclusion in EU Public Transport, Brussels: European Parliament,
http://dx.publications.europa.eu/10.2861/75342.
Feigin, Valery L, Gregory A Roth, Mohsen Naghavi,
Priya Parmar, Rita Krishnamurthi, Sumeet Chugh,
George A Mensah, Bo Norrving, Ivy Shiue,
Marie Ng, Kara Estep, Kelly Cercy, Christopher
J L Murray and Mohammad H Forouzanfar
(2016): Global Burden of Stroke and Risk Factors
in 188 Countries, during 19902013: A Systematic Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease
Study 2013, Lancet Neurology, June, doi:10.
1016/S1474-4422(16)30073-4.
Forouzanfar, Mohammad H et al (2015): Global,
Regional, and National Comparative Risk Assessment of 79 Behavioural, Environmental and
Occupational, and Metabolic Risks or Clusters of
Risks in 188 Countries, 19902013: A Systematic
Analysis for the Global Burden of Disease Study
2013, Lancet, 386, Issue 10010, pp 22872323.
Gehl, Jan (2003): Public Space: Winning Back the
Public Spaces, http://www.publicspace.org/en/
text-library/eng/a006-winning-back-the-public-spaces.
Global Road Safety Facility, World Bank and Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (2014):
Transport for Health: The Global Burden of Disease from Motorized Road Transport, Seattle WA:
Washigton DC: IHME, World Bank.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
Gouldson, A P, S Colenbrander, A Sudmant, N Godfrey,

J Millward-Hopkins, W Fang and X Zhao
(2015): Accelerating Low Carbon Development in the Worlds Cities, http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/90740/.
Hajat, Anjum, Charlene Hsia and Marie S ONeill
(2015): Socioeconomic Disparities and Air Pollution Exposure: A Global Review, Current Environmental Health Reports, 2(4), pp 44050.
Hwang, Bing-Fang, Ya-Hui Chen, Yu-Ting Lin, XiaoTang Wu and Yungling Leo Lee (2015): Relationship between Exposure to Fine Particulates and
Ozone and Reduced Lung Function in Children,
Environmental Research, 137, February, pp 38290.
IIHS (2011): Urban India 2011: Evidence, Bengaluru: India Institute for Human Settlements.
Kumar, Prashant, Mukesh Khare, Roy M Harrison,
William J Bloss, Alastair C Lewis, Hugh Coe,
and Lidia Morawska (2015): New Directions:
Air Pollution Challenges for Developing Megacities Like Delhi, Atmospheric Environment,
122, December, pp 65761.
Lee, Yungling Leo, Wen-Hua Wang, ChiaWen Lu,
YaHui Lin and Bing-Fang Hwang (2011): Effects
of Ambient Air Pollution on Pulmonary Function
among Schoolchildren, International Journal
of Hygiene and Environmental Health, 214(5),
pp 36975.
Marsal-Llacuna, Maria-Luisa and Mark Evan Segal
(2016): The Intelligenter Method (II) for Smarter Urban Policy-Making and Regulation Drafting, Cities, doi:10.1016/j.cities.2016.05.006.
Neira, Maria (2014): Air Pollution Now Linked to 1
to 8 Deaths Worldwide, UN Health Agency Reports, UN News Center, 25 March, http://
www.un.org/apps/news/story.asp?NewsID=
47426#.V9JVyPB95kg.
Nieuwenhuijsen, Mark J (2016): Urban and Transport Planning, Environmental Exposures and
Health-New Concepts, Methods and Tools to
Improve Health in Cities, Environmental Health,
15 (1), pp 16171.
NIH (2015): Advancing Environmental Justice:
Contributions of the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences Division of Extramural Research and Training to Environmental Justice: 19982012, Washington DC:
National Insitutes of Health, US Department of
Health and Human Services.
Piedrahita, R et al (2014): The Next Generation of
Low-Cost Personal Air Quality Sensors for
Quantitative Exposure Monitoring, Atmospheric
Measurement Techniques, 7(10), pp 332536.
Prssstn, Annette, J Wolf, F Carlos, R Corvaln,
V Bos and M Neira (2016): Preventing Disease
Through Healthy Environments: A Global Assessment of the Burden of Disease from Environmental Risks, Geneva, Switzerland: World Health
Organization; http://www.who.int/quantifying_
ehimpacts/publications/preventing-disease/en/.
RaaschouNielsen, Ole et al (2013): Air Pollution
and Lung Cancer Incidence in 17 European Cohorts: Prospective Analyses from the European
Study of Cohorts for Air Pollution Effects (ESCAPE), Lancet Oncology, 14(9), pp 81322.
Shotten, Marc (2013): Global Road Safety Facility:
Mothers of Pain, http://go.worldbank.org/
PB1O9T8LO0.
Snyder, Emily G, Timothy H Watkins, Paul A Solomon,
Eben D Thoma, Ronald W Williams, Gayle S W
Hagler, David Shelow, David A Hindin, Vasu J
Kilaru and Peter W Preuss (2013): The Changing
Paradigm of Air Pollution Monitoring, Environmental Science & Technology, 47 (20), pp 1136977.
Titheridge, Helena, R L Mackett, N Christie, D Oviedo Hernndez and Runing Ye (2014): Transport and Poverty: A Review of the Evidence,
http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/1470392/1/transportpoverty %5B1%5D.pdf.
UBC (2016): Poor Air Quality Kolls 5.5 Million
Worldwide Annually, The University of British
vol lI no 41
Columbia News, 12 February, http://news.ubc.

ca/2016/02/12/poor-air-quality-kills-5-5-million-worldwide-annually/.
UN (2014): World Urbanisation Prospects: The 2014
Revision: Highlights, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, and Population Division.
(2016): UNEP Air Quality Monitoring Unit,
accessed on 16 May, http://uneplive.unep.org/
theme/index/2#.VzpN1pMgtIa.
UNHSP ed, (2013): Planning and Design for Sustainable Urban Mobility: Global Report on Human
Settlements, United Nations Human Settlements
Programme, Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge.
US DHHS (2012): Principles of Epidemiology in
Public Health Practice CDC, pdf. US Department of Health and Human Services.
US EPA, OAR (2016): Near Roadway Air Pollution
and Health, Overviews & Factsheets, United
States Environmental Protection Agency,
accessed on 9 May, https://www3.epa.gov/
otaq/nearroadway.htm.
US EPA, ORD (2016): Next Generation Air Measuring Research, Overviews and Factsheets, accessed
on 22 May, https://www. epa.gov/air-research/
next-generation-air-measuring-research.
USGCRP (2016): The Impacts of Climate Change
on Human Health in the United States: A Scientific Assessment, US Global Change Research
Programme, Washington DC.
van der Wall, EE (2015): Air Pollution: 6.6 Million
Premature Deaths in 2050!, Netherlands Heart
Journal, 23(12), pp 55758.
WHO (2013): Review of Evidence on Health
Aspects of Air Pollution REVIHAAP Project
Technical Report, World Health Organization,
Regional Office for Europe.
(2014a): WHO Ambient (outdoor) Air Pollution
in Cities Database 2014, World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/phe/hea lth_topics/
outdoorair/databases/cities-2014/en/.
(2014b): WHO Expert Meeting: Methods and
Tools for Assessing the Health Risks of Air
Pollution at Local, National and International
Level, Meeting report Bonn, Germany, 1213
May, Copenhagen: World Health Organization,
Regional Office for Europe.
(2016): WHO Global Urban Ambient Air Pollution Database (update 2016), World Health Organization, http://www.who.int/phe/health_
topics/outdoorair/databases/cities/en/.
WHO and OECD (2015): Economic Cost of the
Health Impact Air Pollution in Europe: Clean
Air, Health and Wealth, World Health Organization, Regional Office for Europe, Copenhagen.
Wilbur Smith Associates (2008): Study on Traffic
and Transportation Policies and Strategies in
Urban Areas in India, Study, Ministry of Urban
Development.
World Bank (2013): India-Diagnostic Assessment of
Select Environmental Challenges: An Analysis
of Physical and Monetary Losses of Environmental Health and Natural Resources, Washington DC: World Bank, http://documents.worldbank.org/curated/en/2013/06/18009327/indiadiagnostic-assessment-select-environmentalchallenges-vol-1-3-analysis-physical-monetary-losses-environmental-health-natural-resources.
(2015a): World Development Report 2015: Mind,
Society and Behaviour, Washington DC: World
Bank, http://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/book
/10.1596/978-1-4648-0342-0.
(2015b): The Little Green Data Book 2015, Washington DC: World Bank, http://elibrary.worldbank.org/doi/book/10.1596/978-1-4648-0560-8.
(2016): A Global Opportunity for Sustainable
Transport, Washington DC: World Bank, accessed on 7 May, http://www.worldbank.org/en/
news/feature/2015/07/31/a-global-opportunity
-for-sustainable-transport.
53
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Diasporas Transforming Homelands

Nuancing Collective Remittance Practices in Rural Gujarat
Sudeep Basu
This study of a village in North Gujarat is not based on

why people migrate nor on why they develop emotional
and material stakes in the homeland but rather on the
effects and meanings that migration and collective
remittances would hold for individuals or groups in
places of origin. This search for meanings would entail
an understanding of the values, structures and
expectations that inhere in acts of giving.
This paper is an outcome of the broader research work undertaken on

Migration, Diaspora and Social Transformation in India, during my
stint as C R Parekh Fellow 201213 at the Asia Research Centre, London
School of Economics. This paper is another version of my ARC working
paper 59, July 2013. My sincere gratitude to Ruth Kattumuri and Athar
Hussain of the ARC for their valuable suggestions on this theme. My
heartfelt thanks are due to all the village respondents for sharing their
experiences.
Sudeep Basu (sudeepbas@gmail.com) teaches at the School of Social
Sciences, Central University of Gujarat, Gandhinagar.
54
iasporic communities that advance their ancestral

homelands through forging links with them can be
best shown in the context of the history of migration of
these communities and the culture of developing stakes in
the homeland through material and emotional investments
of various kinds. Notwithstanding the span and stretch of
the Indian diaspora, it is only recently that this entity has
received policy attention in India. Relatively recent moves by
the Indian government to upgrade the Indian diaspora on its
list of foreign policy priorities are seen in response to the
contours and compulsions of international geopolitics. The
Indian government mounted a major initiative to build closer
links with the Indian diaspora culminating in the first Pravasi
Bharatiya Divas in January 2003 (GoI 2002). Every kind of
diasporic Indian group has its own particular relationship
with India or homeland, which builds upon and complicates
the complexity of the diasporic experience as a whole (Sidel
and Zaman 2004: 220).
The differing affiliations of Indian diasporic communities
and their practices of giving back to the homeland have a
role in transforming the lives of co-ethnics back home. The
complex and diverse affiliations are important in the context
of philanthropic practices of the Indian diaspora, because they
yield considerable influence over the allocation of individual
or collective philanthropic resources back to their country of
origin (Merz, Chen and Geithner 2007: 3).
There is growing debate among scholars and students of
the field about the impact of diaspora transfers on poverty,
development, and equity in home countries. There is also
growing interest in the potential to increase both the quantity
and impact of diaspora giving, targeted at effective social
change. Many countries are recognising the potential of
their diasporas to contribute to their nations economic and
social development through a range of contributions, including
financial investment, political advocacy, and philanthropic
giving (Kapur 2004; Khadria 2008). Such countries have
established policies to cultivate ties with their diaspora communities and to encourage both economic and social investment. Aid agencies and global financial institutions are also
encouraging such investments, and a growing number of
non-profit organisations are offering expertise and infrastructure to support them. At the same time, there is growing
global appreciation for the unique and potent roles of both
the non-profit sector and private forms of giving (Tandon
2000; Shah 1998).
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
This study seeks to examine the specific contributions of the

Gujarati diaspora to its homeland, given its complex migration
history and the inherited cultural practices of philanthropy
among non-resident Gujaratis (NRGs). The NRGs contributions
to the development of their state provides a diagnostic marker
to map the scope, scale, and impact of these practices of
giving to the homeland, epitomised through various charitable works undertaken by NRGs belonging to different castes,
religion and creed. The major forms of charity/donations,
other than the remittances/gifts at individual family levels,
consist of contributions that are set aside for social causes,
such as community-based amenities for drinking water,
roads; institutional support for health and education, etc; aid
during disasters and conflicts; besides support for building
religious sites, crematorium, organising religious festivals,
feeding the poor, providing scholarships to a local school,
entertainment, etc.
This study attempts to analyse these migration flows
through collective remittances, apart from remittances to individual households as one of the ways by which emigrants keep
helping their local communities or places of origin. It explores
the meanings and expectations that inhere in practices of
giving at a distance, since unlike the Mexican case (Cohen
2001; Massey and Parrado 1994), the social and physical
distance between international migrants and their co-ethnics
back home is far greater. Hence, the impact of time and space
on relations between co-ethnics and communities across
borders will thereby differ.
While migration is enmeshed in a whole range of social, political, and economic factors, the focus of this study is not on why
people migrate but rather on the effects and meanings that migration has on origin sites. What ties the emigrant/diasporics
with the places of origin are collective meso-structures of
village communities/associations and hometown networks
which integrate and manage the changes induced by migration,
in maintaining and constructing boundaries, village spaces,
resources, hierarchies, norms, and practices. While reconstructing
the local reception of the emergent practices of giving, principally that of charitable givingthe Indian equivalent of dan
(donation) vis--vis philanthropic giving, the secular version
towards development works in a village setting, what impingements they may have on local development processes in place of
origin will be interrogated. In addressing the question of power
and symbolic negotiations taking place between remittance
senders and receivers/migrants and non-migrants and between
receivers and non-receivers, this study revisits the notion of
collective remittances, its uses and heuristics in apprehending
stratification, village prosperity, social inequality, and change.
Of Collective Remittances in Societies
Within the transformative processes of migrant transnationalism (Glick-Schiller et al 1992), we can begin to understand
remittances which are the core of almost of every migrant
journey. Remittances have meaning and implications beyond
their financial value and are associated with powerful emotions
of debt and gratitude; expectation and obligation; and pride,
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
shame, and aspiration.1 In remittance exchanges, both

migrants and non-migrants are seen to enact some aspects of
their lives simultaneously, though not equally, in multiple
settings. Till date much of the literature on migration has
focused on the migranthost relationship, stemming in part
from the predominance of the statist paradigm in the study
of migration orders corresponding with the nation-state
container theory of society (Beck 2000). This line of thinking has had the tendency to neglect migrants ties to their
homeland, nurtured not only through idea of the myth of
return but also through concrete links with the homeland.
Few studies have grappled with the transformative possibilities of migrants practices in terms of collective remittances
flowing into places of originrural societies.
Collective remittances (also called communal remittances)
are monies or material transfers sent by diaspora groups, such
as migrant associations or religious groups, to their home communities. Unlike household or individual remittances, collective remittances are typically intended for community infrastructure, other local development initiatives, or the construction
or improvement of religious structures (Vargas-Lundius
2004). Collective remittances can best be described as diaspora
charity or philanthropy. Though collective remittances are
almost negligible in volume relative to overall migrant remittances, they may be critical to the recipient community and
the society as a whole. Regrettably, there has been a general
absence of reliable and systematic data relating to the contribution of the diaspora towards their homeland in collective
terms. There is eloquent testimony to the generous impulses
that abound in the diaspora. The task therefore is to simply
document the contributions made by committed NRGs in terms
of material and non-material benefits extended by them
towards the development of their region of origin.
Diaspora philanthropy as a form of collective remittance
is a relatively new term with many variations, including
homeland philanthropy, migrant philanthropy, and transnational giving (Viswanath and Dadrawala 2004). It has several
fundamental elements. They include: (1) charitable giving
from individuals or groups who reside outside their homeland,
(2) maintain a sense of identity with their home country,
(3) give to causes or organisations in that country, and (4) give
for public benefit (Johnson 2007). Collective remittances
have recently drawn attention not because of their amounts
alone, although they are difficult to calculate because of the
informality behind some of these initiatives, but rather because
of the sociopolitical, historical, and economic dimensions entailed in group interactions across borders which characterise
the bundle associated with these remittances. What distinguishes these projects is that it is for the collective good they
provide. In addition to involving collective fundraising, they
imply collective enjoyment and not private gain. The outputs
from collective remittances are seemingly more objectified,
visible, durable, consumable by a wider net of people, and
imbued with symbolism.
While the literature on the economics of remittance behaviour
considers purely fiscal aspects seen in terms of the economic
55
SPECIAL ARTICLE
gains from transfers (Guha 2011: 79), the researches on

collective remittance direct attention towards that part of remittances which are set aside for social causes such as setting
up educational institutions and hospitals, drinking water
projects, and microcredit initiatives. Distribution channels are
critical to diaspora philanthropy, because they affect both the
volume and the purposes of giving. Since social remittances
that are strategic in character emanate from clear sources
and travel through identifiable pathways to clear destinations, certain kinds of remittance flows can be purposefully
stimulated. Social remittance impact therefore depends on
how easy a particular remittance is to transmit, who carries
the message, and the receivers gender, class, and life-cycle
positions (Levitt 1998: 93839).
Few studies have tried to relate the changing nature of
remittance transfers within the existing social and political
context in order to assess the effects that such transfers can
have on groups and the region (Dekkers and Rutten 2011). The
more precise, personalised, and identifiable pathways of
remittance transmission raise interesting questions about the
nature of remittance as a social factthe societal implications
of the continuities and discontinuities between the ad hoc,
diffused diasporic practices of giving as we see in the case of
dan expressed in a religious idiom to more strategic forms of
giving through tightly connected, dense, and structured social
networks between clearly recognisable set of individuals or
groups belonging to a geographic area.
Collective remittance can also occur when migrants return
to live in or visit their communities of origin; when non-migrants
visit their migrant family members or through interchanges of
letters, videos, cassettes, and telephone calls. Social remittance impact therefore depends on how easy a particular
remittance is to transmit, who carries the message and the
receivers gender, class, caste, and life cycle positions. Some
remittances have a stronger effect because they travel with
other remittances. Remittances travelling through multiple
pathways also wield a more significant effect. The force of
transmission effects remittance impact. If many remittances
are emitted consistently during a short time, their impact is
greater than transfers emerging on a more periodic basis.
While these concerns are typical to the Dominican case,
substantiated in Peggy Levitts (1998) work, it suggests the
need to further probe the nature of social remittance transfers
involving countries that are culturally and geographically
farther apart.
Situating Javalpur through the Indian
DiasporaHomeland Lens
Using the banyan tree metaphor for Indias diaspora, where

the tree that has thrust down roots in the soil which is stony,
sandy and marshy draws sustenance from diverse unpromising conditions and where the banyan tree itself has changed in
response to its different environments (Tinker 1977; Jayaram
2004: 15), allows social scientists to fashion their research
framework in ways that show clearly how migrants intensively conduct activities and maintain substantial commitments
56
that link them with significant others (such as kin, co-villagers,

political comrades, fellow members of a religious group or
ethnic groups) (Vertovec 2004) who dwell in places other
than those in which the migrants themselves reside.
Like other movements and displacements of people, the
Indian diaspora and particularly the Gujarati diaspora grew
out of many causes and crossing (Lal et al 2007: 10). Gujarat
has had a long history of international migration, and Gujaratis
are one of the largest Indian communities abroad (Jain 1993:
36). Though generally ties between the early Indian communities and their homeland weakened over time, migrants from
Gujarat have always maintained connections with their home
region (Pocock 1972: 71). Many of the early settlers in East
Africa made regular visits to their home village. Remittances
were made to family members in India and capital acquired
abroad was often invested in agriculture and real estate back
home (Dekkers and Rutten 2011: 5). Results were showing as
far back as the 1930s, where funds used in boring new tube
wells resulted in an increase in tobacco cultivation in central
Gujarat region (Chandra 1997: 163).
From the mid-1960s, many Gujaratis left East Africa for
Britain on account of political radicalism associated with
several Africanisation programmes (Michaelson 197879: 351;
Tambs-Lyche 1980: 41). Since the early 1970s, the migration
partially shifted to the United States (US) and Canada. The nature
of migrants connect to the homeland has been markedly different within the migration order that emerged in the closing
decades of the 20th century. Contrary to historical patterns
and received social science notions, neither settlement nor
severing of home country ties was inevitable (Waldinger and
Fitzgerald 2004: 1180). This leads us to think as Kyle does of
an emergent transnational social reality, involving migrants and
non-migrants alike and not simply an international movement
of labor as in a New Economics of Labour Migration (2000:
9). The point about non-migrants is significant here in which
the transnational social reality incorporates and infuses the
bifocality2 of many people left behind (Vertovec 2004).
Javalpur, situated in the district of Mehsana, north Gujarat, is
typically a multi-caste village comprising of Patels (landowning castes) (896), Brahmins (8), Thakor (Other Backward Classes
(OBCs) or Rajputs) (1,078), Rawal (Rajputs) (382), Prajapati
(Rajputs or OBCs) (18), Mistry (16), Suthar (22), Rabari (68), and
Dalits (122). It has been a relatively new entrant in the history of
international migration in Gujarat, recording the first case of
migration abroad in 1968. Estimating the total population of a
village in dry land regions, where migration is a way of life, is
fraught with difficulties owing to absence of residents some of
whom have either gone abroad or have seasonally migrated to
nearby cities. The total population after corroborating from
various sources is 2,610, with an approximate population of 388
(all from the Patidar community) living in the US in New York,
New Jersey, and Atlanta. The village sarpanch and her family
recalled two Patels having migrated to the US back then.
With the dominant Patels and insignificant number of
Brahmins occupying areas near the village centre, residential
segregation is strictly along caste lines. Due to remittances and
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
conspicuous investments in houses and temples, this village

clearly bears witness to international migration since the late
1960s. Situating Javalpur, known sometimes in a pejorative
sense as a Dollariya gaon (Dollar village), within an intervillage kin (agnatic/cognatic) and non-kin (affinal) networks
based on an extended hierarchical system of endogamous
marriage circles called gols (Pocock 1972; Hardiman 1981), is
critical to understanding the effects of transnational flows on
a set of villages (big and small). This perspective connects the
village to a regional canvas of marriage alliances, market
transactions, and horizontal solidarities/exchanges between
sub-castes. Any remittance flow to the village will have immediate resonances within the gols and vice versa. The efficacy in
keeping the national or regional optic/effects of transnational
flows into origin countries, while important in itself, should
not divert attention from the need to take into account the
effects of tangible/intangible resource flows into specific places
of origin, such as a village or a town.
Organising the Field
How to organise fieldwork when connections spread outwards

into distant places and back? Fieldwork in Javalpur village was
conducted over a period of five months. The villages with high
degree of international migration are productive settings for
understanding pathways abroad, chains and its links with
those left behind because of their well-defined boundaries. Yet
access and continued access is always a problem due to the
spectre of illegal international migration extant in these villages. An incident occurred while conversing with a Thakor
family member (male head of the household) in the village. As
our conversation veered towards the issue of migration, a Patel
lady who happened to be their landlord appeared as if to interrupt our talk. She was informed by the wife of the respondent
(I learnt later that non-Patels do inform their landlords from
the Patel community about anyone who is seeking information
from them on international migration-related issues). Interviewing under these circumstances was trying because of the
community surveillance that kept tab of what information
goes in and out and who is to be and not to be given information concerning migration.3
Primary data was collected using in-depth interviews and
observation and group discussions. Data was collected keeping in mind the following class of respondents: households
with members who have migrated; representatives of the organisations involved in remittance related issues and leaders
of the community to which the migrant belongs; key informants in the community; return migrants who have engaged
in productive activities; and non-migrant members belonging
to different castes. Use of purposive/random/snowball sampling methods in consultation with key informants or concerned organisations in the area, enabled access and interaction. The additional problem was locked houses which broke
the networks at certain junctures.
Sample size: In total, there were 93 respondents. The sample
included: Patidar35 respondents (six households with
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
members having migrated abroad, one household not having

migrated abroad, two return migrants, sarpanch, seven members
from the trusts/associations in the village, and in addition
group discussion with five Patidar youths); Brahminthree
respondents (one household). The non-migrant non-Patel
castes included were: Thakor15 respondents (three households); Rawal10 respondents (two households); in addition
group discussion with five Thakor and Rawal ladies together;
Prajapatifive respondents (one household); Mistryfive
(one household); Dalitsfive (one household and group discussion); Rabarifive (group discussion).
Looking for Collective Remittances:
Sites, Structures and Expectations
What visibly demarcates the Patidar-occupied areas of the

village from the rest is the 30 feet tall village memorial gate.
Constructed with remittance money, the gate is situated not at
the edges of the village but next to the Meldi Mata mandir
(temple) near the village centre, a large open space which is
host to Navratri and Diwali functions every year. Conflicting
accounts of why the village gate was built at that spot abounded.
On asking non-migrant Thakor residents why the gate had to
placed there, they replied saying, The gate was built by one
Prahlad Bhai Patel in his parents name. Earlier the gate was to
be built from (sic) the back but then they built it here. We were
never told. Patel logo ka ghar [Patel residences] starts from the
gate.4 Members of the Patel castes revealed that the gate
served to usher in outsiders into the Meldi Mata mandir, the
Meldi Mata being the greatly revered deity in the region.
Diasporic philanthropic activities in India encompasses a
wide range of activities, with an avowed religious or secular
intent. Further the remittance literature to date has been inconclusive on whether altruistic or self-interested motives
have dominated. It is donations to temples or other religious
establishments which predominate, particularly the commonest
and widespread forms of religious giving, including diasporic
ones, such as putting coins, milk or foodgrains at the feet of
the idols in temples, giving alms to beggars, offering of grain
or ice to the departed, and offering raw or cooked food or
dakshina (offering) to gurus, priests, and mendicants. Not to
lose sight of the tradition of giving foodgrains also to birds
and animals (pinda danofferings to the deceased) evident
in the building of chabutras (platform) meant for feeding birds
(constructed through NRG remittances in Jasalpur). Well-off
rural folks and their counterparts abroad perform several
dharmada (charity) functions such as feeding the poor and
needy during festivities as a means to earn puniya (virtue).
The variety of forms of giving shows that there is no single
logic of giving or dan shared by participants and givers in Indian society, which requires that one must make a careful distinction between self-interested and altruistic giving on the one
hand and also between altruistic/philanthropic giving and
dan, selfless giving constituting the purest form of giving on
the other. Complexity arises when we understand the phenomena of dan from the point of view of the recipients and
also those who do not receive.
57
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Classically, the act of philanthropy and dan in order to gain

merit has to be based on the need of the recipient and worthiness (Copeman 2011: 1062). Who is worthy and needy of
receiving gifts/remittances from abroad in this context in an
Indian village? How can dan be used properly? Copemans
discussion of rakt-dan (blood donation) which makes need
the index of a reformulated notion of worth is useful in
understanding the many ways in which donations/gifts to
recipients can be tracked and accounted for and trustworthiness testified. The majority of the recipients of remittances in
Indian villages like in Javalpur are those who are not in need
(non-migrant members of the dominant caste communities
who have members abroad) and are therefore considered
unworthy of it in the classical sense. Therefore, the gift does
not merit being called a dan or philanthropy, particularly when
the givers are generally intensely suspicious of temple priests
or temple foundations. Yet religious organisations continue to
be important destinations for donations from nonresident
Indians (NRIs). Transnational connections forged by religious
movements often result in moderation or support for religious
reform movements such as Islamic reform (Simpson 2003).
The Meldi Mata Yuvak Mandal, comprising of 11 members
nominated from the Patidar community, both home and
abroad, was established in 1970 with the purpose of overseeing the rebuilding and expansion of the Meldi Mata mandir.
The relative success of Javalpurs migrants abroad is attributed to what residents say as the pratibha (persona) and
kripa (blessings) of Meldi Mata. The diaspora and their
contribution to their homeland has grown together with the
aura of Meldi Mata, the village patron deity which emerged,
as folklore has it, from a stairwell. Having chosen to make
her permanent abode at Javalpur, Meldi Mata has given its
inhabitants anchorage and zeal to triumph abroad and give
back. The pioneering journeys abroad, the eventual success in
the diaspora, and the diasporics desire to develop Javalpur
are bound up with this intense religious sentiment surrounding the founding and expansion of the Meldi Mata temple
and the newly constructed Ramji temple, exclusively for the
Patidars, built entirely with NRGs donation amounting to
`2 crore.
A senior trust member of the Meldi Mata Yuvak Mandal,
Dilipbhai Patel, spoke about the conjoining of two significant
eventsthe emigration of the Patidars abroad together with
the nirman of the mandir.
That the temple had to be made big was an idea that struck those in
America. When the Yuvak Mandal had the wish that the temple had
to be expanded, then members of the trust went to Saurashtra to a
village called Sara. There was something like a Meldi Mata mandir
there, and on seeing the mandir, we got lost in its beauty. We had
to build a mandir like that. We went to the architect of that mandir
in Saurashtra. He said that a mandir like that will cost `3 lakh to
begin with and may even be higher. Three lakhs those days was a big
amount. The Yuvak Mandal had the trust that Mataji will give them
money. We had no money that time, but we got together and started
work on the foundation.
We held a function and pleaded to Mataji, Ma take this forward, we
have nothing with us, it is now up to you. Foundation stone was laid
and the main work was to begin. We began to hold an auction. That
58
time there was K C Patel (now expired) who had come down from
America. He was brave and giving type. On the auction day, he sent
his nephew and told him, wait for everyone to give their price and
in the end give the highest price and do the khas muhrat [auspicious
work] yourself. He gave `1,11,111. Others also gave, and we had seven
lakh rupees to begin with. Mataji had told us not to beg for money
from anybody, I will get the paisa [money] for you. She got the money,
and see we had `3 crore to build this temple, and she won the trust of
everybody.5
Migration is associated with intense competition between

social groups and individuals at home, where religious practice
(how they worship) and consumption/giving (how they spend
their earnings) come into play. Glory of the homeland, glory of
the temple, and the glory of the samaj (society) at home and
abroad is part of the celebratory discourse of the diaspora and
their co-villagers back home.
The managing trustee of the Meldi Mata Seva Trust,
Mayankbhai Patel (age 56 years), who has a garment business
in Ahmedabad added
Others have a question that how come Javalpur in such a short time
got so much recognition in Gujarat and abroad? The answer is that
the village started with one Patidar family and that is why there is
no fighting, and we can work together and build our village in all respects. If Patidars are united, so is the village united. Another thing,
there must be pull towards the village (referring to their members in
the diaspora).6
The glimpse of the intense status competition within the

Patidar community and with the outside world is noticeable
here parallel to the rhetoric of unity, producing what Vinay
Gidwani calls a ruptural unity, an achieved hegemonic alliance always multiple and always troubled by internal fissures
(2008: 38). Patidars wished for an exclusive temple for themselves. They constructed the Ramji temple in 2005, exclusively
through NRI Patidar remittances at a cost of `2 crore. Incidentally, the Umiya Mata mandir was built two years before in
2003 by the Patidar samaj in Macon, Atlanta. On asking him
why was there a need for another temple next to the Meldi Mata
temple, he replied somewhat ambivalently, Patidars everywhere have a mandir of their own. So we decided to have a
mandir for bhagwan and a mandir for Mataji in one place.7
Rhetoric and Practice of Migration
We can observe here a way of differentiating us and them in

the sacred realm. The gulf between the rhetoric of migration
and the practice of migration comes out clearly in the way the
fruits of migration are imagined, created, divided, and seemly
distributed for the benefit of all. The member of the committee
to oversee this process has to be, as the secretary of the Yuvak
Mandal said, one who can take decisions, is educated, has
money power, and can take out one lakh whenever required.8
The ideological role of Hindu communalism which influences many overseas Patels to donate to temples and religious
organisations cannot be ruled out. Although it is difficult to
arrive at conclusions based on evidence, since the donations
are not routed through formal channels (Dekkers and Rutten
2011: 1618). Temple donations has its critics from within the
community. The secretary of the Palliyad hospital expressed
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
his discontent with remittance funds going into temples and

not hospitals.
I know a person from my village who had donated two crores towards a Jain programme in Sabarmati. Next day the Godhra riots
took place. They could not go to Mumbai by road. I told them to be
ready by 10 in the morning. We kept their luggage in an ambulance
and took them to the railway station. I arranged for their ticket. He
offered me Rs 500 only as donation. I risked so much but he could
offer only that. The challenge is to get donations from those abroad.
They should give out of their own choice. There should be no pressure from our side.9
In many such cases, we do see how conspicuous consumption of migrants, return migrants and those non-migrants related to them by kinship and community lifestyles, are denigrated and loathed upon by non-migrant others in the village. A Thakor community member, Rajesh Thakor, aged 38
years, who owned a tea stall, remarked when asked what NRGs
staying abroad do when they come back to their village, They
come mainly in Diwali and Navratri. They do not do anything
but move around. They only have a good time. That big house
which you see, it is only for show. Our village maybe called
dollariya gaon, but we do not get grains or dal even to eat.10
The cynicism and a sense of relative deprivation of the local
people towards the way of life of the Patel migrants when they
come home for their annual visits rubs onto some of the migrant-funded development projects and houses. The non-Patel
non-migrants perceive these projects as investments towards
migrants own social status.
Donations have been towards the renovation of the secondary school and making of the boundary wall in 2011, for
which money was pooled together by the Salahkar committee (comprising Patidars) in the US. About `40 lakh was spent
on renovation. The government, in turn, provides grant-inaid to the school, which covers salaries and 35% of the maintenance cost. About 90% of the children enrolled in the
school belong to non-Patel castes, whereas only 10% belong
to Patel families, who prefer to send their children to English
medium or better Gujarati medium schools in nearby Kadi
and Kalol. The Salahkar committee has been in touch with
the school trust via the internet and phone. A member of the
Sarvajanik School Trust mentioned that for two years fees
was given towards the education of needy and meritorious
students and school dress was provided, yet many of them
left school in between. We have tried to get them to finish
10th standard. No result from our side, so our America people stopped giving this.11
The P H Bhagwati Sarvajanik hospital came up in the village
25-year ago. An ambulance was bought from donations. Its
lack of staff and inefficient management has been the frequent
complaint of the village residents, with the management,
presided over by one member, having been at odds with the
panchayat office as well as other trusts in the village. The
hospital caters to the needs of mainly the non-Patel community members, with the Patidars choosing hospitals in nearby
towns for medical treatment. Drinking water facility has been
provided for residents and visitors to the village through NRG
contribution. Besides donations have been used for building a
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
Pankhighar situated at one corner of the village square near

the panchayat office at a cost of `5 lakh. A community hall
with a garden having a volleyball court and a watch tower was
built as well. Its use is, however, restricted to the members of
the Patidar community.
Alongside these donations, plaques of different sizes with
names of donors engraved on them are seen on the structures
built with non-resident Patidar money. What emerges from
private conversations with both Patidars and non-Patidars,
during unguarded moments, is that migrants who aspire to
have their plaques engraved on the structures are not the ones
who gain merit or esteem in public. A non-migrant Patidar
derisively remarked saying that migrants are particularly
attracted to having their names on a plaque wherever they
donate.12 Those migrants able to give dan, that is disembodied giving in which donation is done selflessly and anonymously, are the ones who are privately held in higher esteem
and gain recognition in the Indian system of gifting in public.
Though such selfless modes of giving are infrequent and
irregular, they do set the standards for judging and evaluating
the worth of a gift and the worthiness of the giver.
Bonding through Dan and Other Forms of
Collective Giving?
What is a good donation? Several respondents have invoked

what in common parlance is called gupt-dan (secret donation),
which is particularly revered and extolled because as Laidlaw
says, it is immune from the immediate reward of an increase
in a donors public status and people say that because of this
the unseen reward which comes as a merit or good karma will
be greater (1995: 297). Gupt-dan is mobilized as a counter to
the quite familiar public accusation that India does not possess
a socially favourable giving culture Dan may thus be invoked
online as a response to the hurt national sentiments of the
religious patriot; its public life consisting of claims that dan is
frequently not public (Copeman 2011: 1097).
The anonymity of the donor and who is unaware of the
recipient of their donations as in a classical dan mode of giving
can work well and made in tandem with philanthropic activity,
provided the need and worthiness of the recipient is carefully
selected. The donor can forsake his/her identity in the act of
giving and achieve desired results in terms of ensuring that
the donation reaches the really needy and worthy only when
institutions of care, such as the blood bank, as Healy suggests,
performs its duty to elaborate the meaning and nature of
donation to all concerned parties such that the result is not
only a practical system of procurement and distribution but
also a moral order of exchange (2006: 17).
Although the potentially life-threatening risk factors associated with offering blood donors incentives in the practice of
rakt-dan are more, compared to other types of dan/collective
remittances, yet status enhancing motives that donors have in
relation to contribution towards development activities can have
deleterious results. This is visible in what Charles Tilly (1998)
calls opportunity hoarding, heightening schisms between
castes and attendant social psychological feelings of envy,
59
SPECIAL ARTICLE
loathing, and deprivation among non-migrant-non-Patidars in

the village. For instance, a Darbar respondent, Jayeshbhai
(a tea shop owner), bitterly complaining about the migrant
indifference to the plight of non-migrant non-Patels alleged,
The Patels often take money from the temple trust funds to
go to America. We know that some have taken 20 lakhs which
they then sent back as remittance to the village. This is what
they do.13
It is these instances of mistrust and utter contempt and the
corresponding weakening of vertical ties between castes in a
village that leads us to begin in a preliminary way to work out
strategies and understand the modalities or conditions for the
possibility of a convergence between elements/principles of
dan and other types of exchange/philanthropy in order to
facilitate forms of giving towards productive ends.
Numerically preponderant, the Thakors and Ravals during
the pre-migration years worked in the households of Patels as
casual labour, particularly the women. They also nurse the
desire to go abroad like their Patel counterparts, a kind of
contagion, but they are unable to do so for lack of funds, capital,
and networks. Thakor respondents often spoke of how Patels
would give them hope of going abroad if they do good work
here. They have managed to go for seasonal work to nearby
towns and educate some of their children in schools in the
nearby towns of Kadi and Kalol for the last two decades or so.
This begs the question how far non-Patel migrant agency arising out of their migratory experiences leads to what Gidwani
and Sivaramakrishnan (2003: 198) say as an oppositional
consciousness, spaces of cultural assertion which undermines
the sedentarist metaphysics of modern forms of domination.
Though there has not been any formidable challenge to
Patidar authority, yet resentment was expressed through conscious choices by non-Patidars regarding work. With Patel emigration in the last two decades of the 20th century, there has
been greater opportunity for non-Patidars to cultivate the
lands owned by Patidars. Yet the young men in the 2045 years
age group have begun to prefer daily migratory work in the
dairy farming units and in the newly set up factories such as
Hitachi, Torrent, ceramic companies and oil mills in nearby
towns, like Kadi and Kalol in the Mehsana and Gandhinagar
districts respectively to evade agricultural work under Patel
employers. The pecuniary benefits are more in factory work
(`250 per day) than agricultural work (unfixed), although the
pecuniary and non-pecuniary benefits of agricultural and
non-agricultural work would amount to the same.
The Patidars often voice their concern that there is hardly
any one left to work in their fields. Agricultural labourers have
to be brought from outside, and around 276 of them are working on 761 hectares of agricultural land. But as Thakors and
Darbars say, Patels speak in roundabout ways. They know
that if they begin to help Thakors migrate, then Thakors will
get their own co-castes abroad. Who will labour their lands
then? They can help a Mistry or a Darji caste to go abroad perhaps but not a Thakor.14 The Patidars tactics to immobilise
and mitigate the loss of control of labour power is through giving futile hopes/aspirations, incentives to stay and cultivate on
60
their lands, assisting in samuh lagn (mass marriage) ceremonies

and exercising control over gauchar (waste) lands.
The narrative at the national level is one where the Indian
state is showing greater interest in tapping the potential of the
Indian diaspora by framing policies and rules that would
encourage the diaspora to contribute to their homeland. A fullfledged Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs has been formed.
Central and state level offices have been set up for overseeing
diaspora affairs. Report of the High Level Committee on Indian
Diaspora stressed the need to create fast track mechanisms for
attracting donations for developmental purposes. In response
to the long-standing demand of the Indian diaspora and the
recommendations of the High Level Committee, the Indian
Parliament passed the Citizenship (Amendment) Bill 2003, to
grant dual citizenship to people of Indian origin (PIOs) belonging to 16 countries in December 2003.
The Vatan Sewa Project by the NRG Foundation, Government
of Gujarat is there to enable NRGs to contribute to their state.
Information containing different schemes for Vatan Sewa has
been prepared to assist NRGs in deciding the kind of work they
would like to take up in their homeland and on donating to the
Gokul Gram Vikas Fund which has been registered under the
Bombay Charitable Trust Act. Those who donate `5 lakh or
more, can have a plaque mentioning that the village is adopted
by the donor. Any asset created through such donations shall
remain the property of the gram panchayat.
Yet the donors distrust towards formal institutions in India
is underscored by the fact that many individuals choose to use
family and close friends from their own community caste as
conduits for charitable gifts and social investments, believing
that they are the most trustworthy of intermediaries and those
best able to identify local needs. Once these focused, strategic
forms of giving begin addressing local issues or problems, the
larger concerns of equitable development or social justice in a
village setting falls by the wayside. The migrant and their cocaste members distrust for formal institutions has unintended
consequences for village residents. A Darbar resident annoyingly mentioned that the migrant and non-migrant Patidars
would often tell a state functionary that we have a lot of money
and that we have developed the village, you need not come
here.15 This creates a situation where the government neglects
some basic civic amenities, although it has provided for street
lights and drainage facilities over the years.
This particular strand of the mutual links between the Indian diaspora and state-centric expectations relates to the idea of a secular,
globalising economy and a deeply territorial, nationalist idea of India.
In variance with the above strand is one where the diaspora has deep
and powerful provincial local affinities at the village level which can
be at once religious, filial and developmental. (Chaturvedi 2005: 165)
Concluding Remarks
Diasporas engagement with collective giving communicates

their concern with promoting the welfare of the group to
which the giving is intended. Though dan, disinterested giving,
as Copeman (2011: 1061) says, functions in public largely as
an unproblematic indicator of Indian charitya genius of
Indian culture, partaking from the metaphysic of renunciation,
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
SPECIAL ARTICLE
collective remittances emanating from clear sources and travelling across national spaces through identifiable pathways
can have one-sided results for a community in a village space.
How to make possible the culture of giving, given the
particular context in which religious and secular practices of
giving coexist and are in a state of creative tension? Clearly
few individuals have the capacity and will to give repeatedly
and freely without any kind of external reward. We also find
competing claims by groups who seek to have a share of the
diasporic offerings in both material and non-material terms
that places the givers in a situation of resentment, particularly
when realities on the ground are contrary to their expectations.
Generalisation of social approval and esteem such that the
practice of giving brings overt approval from others, recipients
and non-recipients alike, and internalised reactions of good
conscience and enhanced self-image is a way to ensure democratic inclusion, credibility and accountability within and
between groups in rural social life touched by modernity.
Non-membership of non-migrant non-Patidar communities
in village associations/trusts such as we find in Javalpur is a
major obstacle towards realising this end. The question local
trusts/organisations and the diaspora have to ask is not only
who do we represent but more importantly what do we representdo we represent a village, a community or kutumb, forces of development, a region, a country, or an ethos. These significations does and can reconstitute the idea and materiality
of the village, in which the original bounds of a village get
stretched, while hierarchies/statuses get reconstituted around
the axis of migration/non-migration.
Notes
1 Nowhere is the aspiration associated with remittances more clearly marked on the landscapes of migrants home regions that in the
form of housing. For many migrants and their
families, the priority in using remittances after
paying off debts is the construction of a new
family home.
2 How such bifocality is structured and how it
functions depends upon a number of variables
and contextual conditions. Bifocality is hard to
measure, but its workings are clearly discernible in social practices and conveyed in individual narratives.
3 Katy Gardner (1995) in her study of Sylheti
migration also showed the pitfalls of conducting
research on international migration in places
where illegal migration is rife. Any data regarding international migration is thereby sensitive. Fictitious names of respondents and of the
village have been used to ensure anonymity.
4 Interviews with non-migrant Thakor residents
held between 22 and 25 November 2012 in
Javalpur, Gujarat.
5 Interview with a senior trust member, Dilipbhai Patel, aged 62, held on 4 December 2012 in
Javalpur, Gujarat.
6 Interview with the managing trustee of the
Meldi Mata Seva Trust, Mayankbhai Patel, aged
56 years, held on 2 January 2013 in Javalpur,
Gujarat.
Gujarat.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
10
11
12
13
14
15
The centrality of migration among all groups in dry land regions like in and around Javalpur village points to the fact that
migrant connections with their places of origin, have varied
effects on not only those who have lived mobile lives but also
those who have stayed behind as part of the unequal struggle for recognition, acquisition, and domination in a place. In
the context where members of a particular community/associations have the monopoly over norms and modes of giving and
belonging, participating and contesting, a particular social
project through diasporic giving fails to have the legitimating
force that has worth and benefits for all villagers.
States in setting their political and administrative goals
need to work alongside migrant associations in villages without excessive regulatory intent, identify non-beneficiaries of
migration, set issues that are in common with transnational
migrants, and integrate both migrants and non-migrants
alike into the development processes in the region. Marketing
diasporas for commercial or productive ends and the obligation to give on the part of diasporics in response to popular
religious sentiment has to be carefully assessed taking into
account how groups or individuals receive donations. In forging a transnational relation, philanthropic transfer should not
be a one way street. Information from educators, non-governmental organisations and other professionals, and government agencies serving local communities in the country of
origin could help their counterparts in the diaspora be more
effective and sensitive in their motivations and acts of giving,
notwithstanding the relative social and historical differences
between sending and receiving countries.

Gujarat.
Interview with the secretary of the Palliyad
hospital, Aswinbhai Patel, aged 79 years, held
on 6 January 2013 in Palliyad village, which is
part of the 42 village samaj of the Patidar community and includes Javalpur in Gujarat.
Interview with a Thakor community member,
Rajesh Thakor, aged 38 years, on 18 February
2013 in Javalpur, Gujarat.
Interview with the member of the Sarvajanik
School Trust, Bharatbhai Patel, aged 66 years,
held on 2 January 2013 in Javalpur, Gujarat.
Interview with a non-migrant Patidar, Bharatbhai Patel, aged 45 years, on 22 February 2013 in
Javalpur, Gujarat.
Interview with a Darbar respondent, Jayeshbhai (a tea shop owner), aged 42 years, on 6
March 2013 in Javalpur, Gujarat.
Interviews with Thakors and Darbar residents
between 22 and 26 March 2013 in Javalpur,
Gujarat.
Interview with a Darbar resident, Ramanbhai,
aged 54 years, 6 March 2013 in Javalpur, Gujarat.
References
Beck, U (2000): The Cosmopolitan Perspective:
Sociology in the Second Age of Modernity,
British Journal of Sociology, Vol 5, No 1, pp 79107.
Bhabha, Homi (ed) (1990): Nation and Narration,
London: Routledge.
Castels, Stephen (2002): Studying Social Transformation, International Political Science Review,
Vol 22, No 1, pp 1332.
Chandra, V P (1997): Remigration: Return of the
Prodigals, an Analysis of the Impact of the
vol lI no 41
Cycles of Migration and Remigration on Caste

Mobility, International Migration Review,
Vol 31, No 1, pp 16270.
Chaturvedi, Sanjay (2005): Diaspora in Indias
Geopolitical Visions: Linkages, Categories and
Contestations, Asian Affairs, Vol 32, No 3,
pp 14168.
Cohen, Jeffery H (2001): Transnational Migration
in Rural Oaxaca, Mexico: Dependency, Development, and the Household, American
Anthropologist, Vol 103, No 4, pp 95467.
Copeman, Jacob (2011): The Gift and Its Form of
Life in Contemporary India, Modern Asian
Studies, Vol 45, No 5, pp 105194.
Dekkers, Natascha and Mario Rutten (2011): Diaspora Philanthropy from a Homeland Perspective: Reciprocity and Contestation over Donations in Central Gujarat, India, Provincial Globalization Working Paper No 2.
Gardner, Katy (1995): Global Migrants, Local Lives:
Travel and Transformation in Rural Bangladesh,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Gidwani, V (2008): Capital Interrupted: Agrarian
Development and the Politics of Work in India,
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Gidwani, V and K Sivaramakrishnan (2003): Circular Migration and the Spaces of Cultural Assertion, Annals of the Association of American
Geographers, Vol 93, No 1, pp 186213.
Glick-Schiller, Nina, Linda Basch and Cristina
Szanton-Blanc (1992): Towards a Transnational
Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity
and Nationalism Reconsidered, New York:
Academy of Sciences.
GoI (2002): Report of High-level Committee on
Indian Diaspora, Government of India, Ministry of External Affairs, Non-Resident Indians
61
SPECIAL ARTICLE
and Persons of Indian Origin Division, http://
indiandiaspora.nic.in/.
Guha, Puja (2011): Economics of Migration and
Remittances: A Review Article, Provincial
Globalisation Working Paper No 3, Bangalore:
NIAS and AISSR.
Hardiman, David (1981): Peasant Nationalists of
Gujarat: Kheda District 19171934, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Hannerz, Ulf (1996): Transnational Connections:
Culture, People and Places, London: Routledge.
Healy, Kieran (2006): Last Best Gifts: Altruism and
the Market for Human Organs, London: University of Chicago Press.
Held, D, A McGrew, D Goldblatt and J Perraton
(1999): Global Transformations: Politics, Economics and Culture, Cambridge: Polity.
Itzigsohn, J and S G Saucido (2002): Immigrant
Incorporation and Sociocultural Transnationalism, International Migration Review, Vol 36,
No 3, pp 76698.
Jain, R K (1993): Indian Communities Abroad: Themes
and Literature, Delhi: Manohar Publications.
Jayaram, N (ed) (2004): The Indian Diaspora, New
Delhi: Sage Publications.
Johnson, P (2007): Diaspora Philanthropy: Influences, Initiatives and Issues, The Philanthropic
Initiative Inc and the Global Equity Initiative,
Harvard University, http://tpi.org/downloads/
pdfs/Diaspora_Philathropy_Final.pdf, accessed
on 8 January 2012.
Kapur, Devesh (2004): Remittances: The New
Development Mantra?, G-24 Discussion Paper
Series No 29, United Nations Conference on
Trade and Development, New York: United Nations, http://media.sas.upenn.edu/casi/docs/
about/remittances.pdf.
Khadria, Binod (2008): India: Skilled Migration to
Development Countries, Labour Migration to
the Gulf, Migration and Development: Perspectives from the South, S Castles and R Delgado
Wise (eds), Geneva: International Organisation
for Migration, pp 79111.
Kyle, David (2000): Transnational Peasants: Migrations, Ethnicity and Networks in Andean Ecuador,
Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
Laidlaw, James (1995): Riches and Renunciation:
Religion, Economy and Society among the Jains,

Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Lal, B V, P Reeves and R Rai (eds) (2007): The Encyclopedia of the Indian Diaspora, New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Levitt, Peggy (1998): Social Remittances: Migration Driven Local-Level Forms of Cultural Diffusion, International Migration Review, Vol 32,
No 4, pp 92648.
(2001): Transnational Migration: Taking
Stock and Future Directions, Global Networks:
A Journal of Transnational Affairs, Vol 1, No 3,
pp 195216.
Massey, Douglas S and Emilio A Parrado (1994):
Migradollars: The Remittances and Savings of
Mexican Migrants to the United States, Population Research and Policy Review, Vol 13, No 1,
pp 330.
Merz, B J, L C Chen and P F Geithner (eds) (2007):
Diaspora and Development, Boston, MA: Global
Equity Initiative Asia Centre Harvard University.
Michaelson, M (1978/79): The Relevance of Caste
among East African Gujaratis in Britain, New
Community, Vol 7, No 3, pp 35060.
Pocock, D F (1972): Kanbi and Patidar: A Study of
the Patidar Community in Gujarat, Oxford:
Clarendon Press.
Portes, A (2003): Theoretical Convergences and
Empirical Evidence in the Study of Immigrant
Transnationalism, International Migration
Review, Vol 37, No 3, pp 87492.
Rapport, N and A Dawson (eds) (1998): Migrants of
Identity: Perception of Home in a World of
Movement, Oxford: Berg Publishers.
Rouse, Roger (1995): Questions of Identity: Personhood and Collectivity in Transnational Migration to the United States, Critical Anthropology,
Vol 15, No 4, pp 35180.
Sidel, Mark and Iftekhar Zaman (eds) (2004):
Philanthropy and the Law in South Asia, Asia
Pacific Philanthropy Consortium.
Simpson, Edward (2003): Migration and Islamic
Reform in a port town of western India,
Contributions to Indian Sociology, Vol 37,
Nos 12, pp 83108.
Smith, R C (1997): Transnational Migration,
Assimilation and Political Community, The
City and the World: New York City in Global

Context, M Crahan and A Vourvoulias-Bush
(eds), New York: Council on Foreign Relations.
Shah, T (1998): The Art of Giving: Supporting
Creative Initiatives Through Endowments, A
Discussion Paper for Sir Ratan Tata Trust.
Szanton-Blanc (1992): Towards a Transnational
Perspective on Migration: Race, Class, Ethnicity
and Nationalism Reconsidered, New York:
Academy of Sciences.
Tambs-Lyche, H (1980): London Patidars: A Case
Study in Urban Ethnicity, London: Routledge
and Kegan Paul.
Tandon, R (2000): Civil Society in India: An Exercise
in Mapping, Society for Participatory Research
in Asia, Delhi.
Tilly, Charles (1998): Durable Inequality, Berkeley:
University of California Press.
Tinker, Hugh (1977): The Banyan Tree: Overseas
Emigrants from India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vargas- Lundius R (2004): Remittances and Rural
Development, Paper prepared for TwentySeventh Session of International Fund for Agricultural Developments (IFAD) Governing
Council Rome, Latin America & Caribbean
Division: IFAD.
Vertovec, S and R Cohen (eds) (2002): Conceiving
Cosmopolitanism: Theory, Context and Practice,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Vertovec, S (2004): Migrant Transnationalism and
Modes of Transformation, International Migration Review, Vol 38, No 3, pp 9701001.
Viswanath, Priya and Noshir Dadrawala (2004):
Philanthropic Investment and Equitable Development: The Case of India, Diaspora Philanthropy and Equitable Development in China
and India, Geithner et al (eds), Cambridge:
Global Equity Initiative and Harvard University Press, pp 25989.
Voigt-Graf C (2002): The Construction of Transnational Spaces: Traveling between India, Fiji
and Australia, PhD thesis, Geography, University of Sydney.
Waldinger, Roger and David Fitzgerald (2004):
Transnationalism in Question, American
Journal of Sociology, Vol 109, No 5, pp 117795.
New in EPWRF India Time Series
Module on Educational Statistics

Features
Presents all-India
and state-wise
annual data from
1981 onwards.
Structured in three
sections :
Literacy in India
School Education
Higher Education
Includes data on
SC/ST students and
school education in
rural areas.
With this, the EPWRF ITS now has 16 modules covering a range of macro-economic, nancial and social data.
For more details visit www.epwrts.in
62
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
NOTES
Ancient Risks, Current

Challenges in the Himalayas
Reinmar Seidler, Kamaljit S Bawa
In the face of climate change,

disaster risk management must
drive development and not vice
versa. Seismic tremors, surface
slippage of fragile sedimentary
soils generating landslides,
monsoon weather and cyclonic
storms producing massive run-off
are all relatively well understood,
inherent to the Himalayan region,
and by and large predictable.
Yet governments, communities
and international agencies
repeatedly appear to have been
taken by surprise when each
of these occurs. What needs to
be understood is that systems of
mitigation and response are at
the very foundation of economic
development, built into the
understanding of disasters.
Reinmar Seidler (reinmar.seidler@gmail.com)

is with the Department of Biology, University
of Massachusetts, Boston, US. Kamaljit S
Bawa (kamal.bawa@gmail.com) is with the
Ashoka Trust for Research in Ecology and the
Environment, Bengaluru.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
ormal reconstruction efforts began

and thousands of Nepalis remained
at risk after the 7.8-magnitude
earthquake in 2015, which destroyed lives,
homes and livelihoods. Just two years
prior to that, flash floods induced by
heavy monsoon rains and high-altitude
landslides washed away thousands of
residents and religious pilgrims in the
Kedar Valley of Uttarakhand. In September 2011, a major earthquake shook
Sikkim, destroying some 12,500 homes
and blocking roadways with hundreds
of landslides. Two years before that, in
May 2009, cyclone Aila made its landfall at the Bay of Bengal, devastating
Bangladesh and West Bengal and triggering fatal landslides in Darjeeling town.
As the pattern of large-scale tragedies
combining geomorphological and meteorological shocks continues across the
Himalayas, we must ask whether we
as a societyare responding commensurately, and with the necessary knowledge, tools and institutions. Neither seismic nor climate-induced disasters can
truly be described as surprises. The natural drivers are well-known: seismic
tremors, surface slippage of fragile sedimentary soils generating landslides, monsoon weather and cyclonic storms producing massive run-off. These are all
relatively well-understood, inherent to
the region, and predictable, in general,
though not specific terms. Underlying
aetiologies such as tectonic shifts and
climate change are difficult to study, but
the outlines are clear. Yet, governments,
communities and international agencies
repeatedly appear to be surprised.
This can only indicate that attitudes
and activities preceding the event do not
match up to the certainty of an event
occurring at some point. In the Himalayas,
the realistic expectation is that crises
will recurthe question is not if, but
vol lI no 41
when. Therefore, systems of mitigation

and response are at the very foundation
of economic development. They must be
solidly built in. Without these, the social
investments required for development
will almost certainly be wasted.
The accumulated costs of disasters add
up to a vast socialeconomic burden
inhibiting and distorting regional development. Some estimates suggest that the
cost of rebuilding Nepal after the earthquake will exceed a third of the countrys total gross national product (Government of Nepal and World Bank 2015).
Regionally, average annual losses exceed
10% of national annual social investmentsat least five times the proportion seen in Europe and Central Asia
(UNISDR 2015). And, of course, this figure excludes the incalculable losses in
social capital due to trauma and social
disruption. All these losses constitute a
chronic drain on resources for investment in social protection, public health
and education, all of which are indispensable for Sustainable Development
Goals. Thus, unless disaster risks are
minimised, these goals cannot possibly
be met.
These already-unsustainable costs are
mounting rapidly due to a combination
of factors. On the one hand, there are
growing socio-economic vulnerabilities,
with expanding populations and infrastructure. On the other, there are climatic
factors. There has been a clear uptick
since 2000 in the number and magnitude of extreme weather events in South
Asia, and this trend is expected to continue. Geomorphological risks, of course,
have not changed, but when a strong
earthquake happens to coincide with
extreme monsoon rains, as in Sikkim in
2011, the outcome is a major disaster.
Policies are failing to keep up with the
increasing risks from the synergies of
environmental crises adding to the severity of risks in the Himalayan environment. The public reaction to each of
these tragedies tends to be focused on
the poorly coordinated and inefficient
relief efforts. For instance, Bhatt and
Pandya (2013) have called for a New
Deal for disaster relief subsequent to
63
NOTES
the floods in Uttarakhand, emphasising

cash transfers, micro-insurance and other
forms of imaginative relief work. Just
last year, Nambiar (2015) reviewed the
many frustrations and few successes of
the decade after the enactment of the
Disaster Management Act in 2005. Some
of these analyses tend to focus on
preparation, response efficiency and
recovery. We argue, instead, that this
focus on readiness is the result of a conceptual and practical disconnect between
disaster risk management (DRM) concerns
and economic development concerns.
DRM is currently perceived as a necessary constraint, rather than a driver of
development. As long as this is so, society will only be catching-up to the increasing risks posed by development and
climate change. Due to the inherent
regional challenges, economic development plans must be based on assumptions specific to the region, rather than
on models simply imported from the
plains (and ultimately from Europe and
North America). In this survey we,
(i) examine the weaknesses in the existing DRM and climate change adaptation
(CCA) frameworks and their implementation; and (ii) propose a set of modifications to current frameworks that could
create incentives for integration of DRM
and CCA into Himalayan development.
Although we do advocate for stronger
regional cooperation in developing risk
management systems, we focus specifically on the Himalayan states of
India. Cross-border comparisons can often be useful, though they must be taken
as illustrative and suggestive, rather
than definitive.
The year 2015 saw the declaration of a
new set of UN Sustainable Development
Goals (in September); a potential shift in
climate change negotiations in Paris (in
December); and major human migrations (ongoing) that may be linked indirectly to drought (Kelley et al 2015).
Given that further changes in climate
and population are predicted over the
coming decades, a new convergence of
DRM, CCA and sustainable development
pathways is not optional but essential
for approaching development goals
and more broadly, for stability and progress in the region. In the lack of policy
64
interventions, the inherently unstable

Himalayas will continue to be plagued by
increasing human, economic, political
and environmental disasters.
Existing DRM
Frameworks and Deficits
A decade ago, India established a centralised National Disaster Management
Authority (NDMA) system along the
lines of the UN global Hyogo Framework
for Action 200515. Under the Disaster
Management Act of 2005, the NDMA was
envisioned as an agency that would set
national standards and publish guidelines for states and ministries. Unfortunately, the agency was given no explicit
responsibility for disaster response at
the national level and has no power to
ask the states to organise themselves
adequately. Consequently, many states
were slow in constituting State Disaster
Management Authorities (SDMAs). By
2015, each Indian state had one SDMA, or
its equivalent, on paper, but the functionality of many of these agencies
remains low. The third level of organisation for disaster management, the District Disaster Management Authorities
(DDMAs), is often described as the most
vital disaster response unit; yet huge
numbers of districts remain without
functional DDMAs. In short, a full decade
after Hyogo and the Disaster Management Act 2005, the mere skeleton of the
intended national system exists. In the
absence of district-level agencies, community organisations or NGOs have none
to coordinate with at the ground level in
matters of planning or response. We often
hear calls for the involvement of all
stakeholders [and that] the vision of
achieving a disaster resilient India cannot
be realised by the government alone
(Singh 2015). But deputed government
agencies must begin by establishing
workable organisational frameworks to
interact with other stakeholders.
At the same time, there is little assigned
responsibility for actions or outcomes at
the top. When confronted with the weak
NDMA response to the 2013 Uttarakhand
disaster, NDMA Vice-Chairman, M Shashidhar Reddy, denied responsibility, even
as he claimed that the Disaster Management Act gives the NDMA merely advisory
powers. He further faulted the Uttarakhand state for failing to set up statelevel machinery to carry out the NDMA
recommendations (for example, First
Post 2013). Thus, the structure meant for
coordinated action among central and
peripheral bodies became an excuse for
shifting responsibility.
An acute irony of the Uttarakhand
tragedy was that it followed on the heels
of several major programmes enacted to
reform and improve disaster preparedness
in the state and nation. In the months
leading up to the ill-managed char dham
yatra of 2013, three major documents
were publisheda UNDP joint project
(GoIUNDP 2013), a Ministry of Home
Affairs (MoHA) special task force report
(2013) and a Comptroller and Auditor
General (CAG) report (2013)each of
which gave scathing critiques of the condition of national disaster readiness,
eight years after passage of the Disaster
Management Act, 2005. Uttarakhand
was singled out (as were the Darjeeling
hill district and other mountain areas)
for the absence of minimal response
plans and basic preparedness measures.
Clearly, authorities across the country
had relegated the urgent demands of the
act to one of low priority. The good news
is that fatalities and numbers of people
affected by large-scale Himalayan disasters over the decade of 200515 were
fewer, overall, than during 19952005.
However, economic losses were 4.5 times
more, and the localised, recurrent disasters associated with poverty, inequality,
poor governance, environmental degradation and climate change also increased (EMDAT nd).
In March 2015, the Sendai Framework
for Disaster Risk Reduction 201530 was
signed as successor to Hyogo. An important innovation in Sendai is the attempt
to forge a consensus on the meanings of
risk and of risk reduction. The final programme review of Hyogo (UNISDR 2015)
points out that under Hyogo, most
countries continued to practise disaster
management rather than disaster risk
management. The focus of the former is
event-response efficiency; in contrast,
the latter adopts the broader goal of
understanding and reducing underlying
risk factorswhatever their sourcein
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
NOTES
likely future conditions. Disaster risk

management is thus intimately and unavoidably tied to economic development
planning. In the Himalayas today, economic growth and development pathways have themselves become drivers of
increased risk. The Hyogo review rightly
suggests that managing risk, rather than
managing disasters now has to become
inherent to the art of development
(UNISDR 2015).
Climate Change Ups the Ante
This lack of institutional preparedness
for the familiar kinds and quantities of
disasters will only be exacerbated by
oncoming climate distortions. India has
been vocal in international negotiations
over the last two decades. Is climate
being similarly brought into nationallevel disaster risk management discussions? The Ministry of Environment and
Forests (MoEF) was redesignated as Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate
Change (MoEFCC). This move appears to
mark a step forward by giving the issue
of climate change in India an official status and an administrative home base. At
the same time, it has the effect of segregating the issue, labelling it an environmental concern related to forests and
biodiversity but not to industrial and
urban livelihoods. Climate is then further
isolated as a separate unit within the

ministry hierarchy (MoEFCC 2015), with
no direct contact with affected environmental units, such as dessertification,
river conservation, or coral reefslet
alone with source areas, such as coal
mining or trade and environment. Thus,
intimate linkages bet ween development
activities and climateand bet ween
climate and disaster riskare obscured.
Under this arrangement, comprehensive
cross-sectoral debate and planning requires coordination among multiple
agencies and ministries, including some
with very limited budgets. To make things
worse, there are reportedly no more
than a handful of full-time staff working
on climate change at the MoEFCC
(Dubash and Joseph 2015).
Climate Change Policy
and Inter-agency Cooperation
In India, the National Action Plan on
Climate Change (NAPCC) has been organised in a multi-tiered hierarchy that
parallels the Disaster Management Authority system. This makes it vulnerable to
the same problems, in adition to some
of its own. The NAPCC adopts a strategy
of dividing responsibility for its various
goals among eight sectoral missions,
each headed by a committee (with the
Narendra Modi government recently
adding four new missions). This ad hoc

approach dissipates focus, providing little
incentive for coordination. Moreover, the
individual missions are housed in different ministries. Since the ministries
are already committed to their own
agendas, it is difficult for them to propose interdisciplinary work without conflicts of interest; yet this is precisely the
kind of disciplinary flexibility and independence that the missions model ought
to provide.
For example, the National Mission for
Sustaining the Himalayan Ecosystem
cannot be successful without a broad
interdisciplinary approach, but it is
entrusted to the Ministry of Science and
Technology, where its research focus
seems to have narrowed to glaciology.
On the other hand, the National Mission
on Strategic Knowledge for Climate
Change could provide an overarching
framework for knowledge gap analysis
across all the missions, but it is assigned
no such coordinating role. But what is
most damaging, is that minimal personnel resources are devoted to these issues,
revealing the low priority accorded to
them despite high-flown rhetoric.
State action plans on climate change
(SAPCCs) are indispensable to interpret
the broad NAPCC directives in terms of
the varied regional biophysical and
Review of Womens Studies

April 30, 2016
Feminist Research Is a Political Project
Kalpana Kannabiran, Padmini Swaminathan
Studying Women and the Womens Movement in India: Methods and Impressions
Real Life Methods: Feminist Explorations of Segregation in Delhi
Stories We Tell: Feminism, Science, Methodology
Joan P Mencher
Ghazala Jamil
Banu Subramaniam
The Erotics of Risk: Feminism and the Humanities in Flagrante Delicto
Brinda Bose
Feminist Critical Medical Anthropology Methodologies: Understanding Gender and Healthcare in India
Cecilia Van Hollen
Impractical Topics, Practical Fields: Notes on Researching Sexual Violence in India

Globalisations, Mobility and Agency: Understanding Womens Lives through Womens Voices
Pratiksha Baxi
Bhavani Arabandi
For copies write to: Circulation Manager,

Economic and Political Weekly,
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate,
Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: circulation@epw.in
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
65
NOTES
social realities of individual states. Ideally, SAPCCs should provide the basis for
updating notions of environmental sustainability to include climate resilience
(Dubash and Jogesh 2014) and bringing
them into development planning to be
implemented by sectoral departments at
the district level. Unfortunately, the Indian
approach has been relatively inflexible
(as compared to the smaller Himalayan
countries) in that the SAPCCs have tended
to dictate terms at a level of detail that
cannot possibly be applicable to all districts in a large stateto prematurely
view state climate plans as vehicles for
generating implementable actions rather
than as opportunities to redirect development toward environmental sustainability and climate resilience (Dubash and
Jogesh 2014). Thus, implementation on
the ground tends to fall into businessas-usual default patterns. Forestalling
this and bringing climate change into
the mainstream of Indias development
discussions will require far more active
attempts to engage civil society, business and academia.
New Perspectives
Clearly, economic and social development of the Himalayan region requires a
different approach. We propose that by
modifying existing policies, the same
landscape traits that currently present
inherent challenges to development can
be converted to drivers of development.
DRM must be made an integral part of
Himalayan economic development processes and both must be firmly linked to
climate awareness. In particular, DRM
and climate adaptationmust be integrated with rural and urban employment opportunities. These efforts must
not be allowed to be at cross purposes
with the mainstream of public economic
activity. There can be no sustained economic progress in the Himalayas without improved physical security. Thus,
what is required is real movement
towards the Green Economy (touted
by various missions but showing no visible signs of life as yet). What is a green
economy, if it is to be more than a slogan? One useful definition would be:
economic development that works with
the constraints imposed by the local
66
natural environment. In the Himalayas,

those constraints are relatively severe,
and will become more so as climate
change progresses. Yet they must not
be ignored.
Administrative Organisation
for DRM
First and foremost, the progressive legislation that has been enacted must
be fully implemented. A reconstituted
central authority such as NDMA is indispensable, but the Disaster Management
Act 2005 must be amended to give the
institution real weight and influence
within the overall government. The
NDMA must be fully staffed and funded
to be capable of interacting strongly
with multiple agencies. NDMA must be
given authority to seek establishment of
functional SDMAs and must have adequate information to oversee the operation of DDMAs as well. One administrative option for consideration would be
to divide up the NDMA into state-level
clusters which face common environmental risks. A cross-state Himalayan
group, for instance, would benefit greatly from closer technical and regulatory
cooperation.
Disaster Risk and Climate
Awareness Linkages
The NAPCC system should be interlinked
much more closely with the NDMA system. As presently constituted, the climate
missions have little futurethey are
administrative orphans. A more radical
proposal would be to merge the disaster
risk and climate change administrative
systems and raise the profile of the combined system within the government.
Climate concerns are firmly tied to disaster mitigation, and both must become
integral parts of development planning.
Science, Technology
and Social Policy Instruments
All these concerns must be inserted into
existing educational, social employment
and livelihood security programmes
across the Himalayas. This is where the
New Deal metaphor (Bhatt and Pandya 2013) becomes essential; this cannot
happen, at the scale and pace required,
without a concerted effort on part of the
central government to bend existing

institutional resources to these ends. In
many cases, it may not take a tremendous sea-change. Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee
Scheme (MGNREGS), for instance, has
been using up to 30% of its funds in
building rural roads (DoRD 2013). In the
Himalayas, at least some of these are
exacerbating landslide risks. Meanwhile,
climate resilience measures such as winter
drought-proofing, groundwater rehabilitation and steep slope bio-engineering
(Dhital et al 2013) are being performed
at much slower rates. However, Sikkim
has responded to the worsening drought
with major changes in the emphasis of the
MGNREGS projects (IRMA 2010; Tambe
et al 2012b). The same can be done in
other Himalayan states.
Similarly, the Pradhan Mantri Grameen Swarojgar Yojana (PMGSY) needs a
strong injection of engineering professionalism in the Himalayan states. Convergence of PMGSY with MGNREGS is
underway to aid in rural road maintenance (MoRD 2011). In mountain areas,
however, such a synergy could be counterproductive, unless quality standards
are substantially raised and protected
(Venkatesh and Patel 2015). It seems
that a national security profile lends
considerable professionalism to many
tasks. Despite criticisms (PIB 2015), for example, the Border Roads Organisation
(BRO) seems several steps ahead of
PMGSY in the efficiency of road building
and design. Is there any more serious
national security issue than protecting
citizens and essential infrastructure
from the next major earthquake and the
oncoming severe risks posed by climate
change?
Furthermore, for housing, traditional
light construction techniques and materials should be studied for adaptation to
modern requirements, especially in rural
areas (Tambe et al 2012a). Engineers
must receive training in earthquakeresistant technologies, and these should
be made mandatory in new construction. Property owners and lending institutions too must be informed, educated
and then made responsible for demanding that construction standards be
upheld (NDMA 2010).
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
NOTES
If the goal is society-wide change,

youthperhaps Indias greatest single
assetand civil society must be involved.
But the missions lack clear opportunities
for linkages with higher education institutions. According to MoEFCC (2014), six
new centres relevant to climate change
have been established under the National Mission for Sustaining the Himalayan
Ecosystems; yet collaborative, interdisciplinary knowledge generation and project implementation, involving government agencies, NGOs and community
organisations are either fairly basic or
virtually non-existent. Crowd-sourcing
of information from citizens and their
engagement in DRM and response are
further under-explored resources. Following the recent Nepal earthquake, researchers and citizen scientists provided
important real-time information to relief agencies (Shrestha et al 2015). Science volunteerism could be even more
effective if pre-disaster planning were to
involve networks of NGOs and citizens.
Conclusions
In South Asia, by and large, high-level
policy statements on DRM reform consistently run far ahead of on-the-ground
implementation. This implementation
deficit is common wherever policy is
designed by one set of actors and implemented by another (Dupuis and Knoepfel
2013). Yet, effective policy must incorporate the means for its own implementation. If large-scale programmes like
MGNREGS, the NDMA system, NAPCC and
the SAPCCs in India make explicit the
growing links between development and
risk, they will help move DRM and climate
awareness into policy mainstreams all
along the Himalayan arc. There is tremendous scope for peoples involvement
in labour-intensive programmes promoting landscape security and sustainable
natural resource use. These programmes
can (and must) be strengthened and
harmonised under the umbrella of DRM
and CCA. Achieving this will require
efforts on a comprehensive scale, but the
investment would yield high returns in
driving regional development forward
along sustainable pathways. What is
required is leadership and a realistic
sense of urgency about priorities.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
References
Bhatt, Mihir R and Mehul Pandya (2013): Floods
in Uttarakhand and A New Deal Relief,
Economic & Political Weekly, 7 September.
CAG (2013): Report No 5 of 2013Performance Audit
of Civil Disaster Preparedness in India, Comptroller and Auditor General, Ministry of Home
Affairs, Government of India, 23 April, http://
saiindia.gov.in/sites/default/files/audit_report
_files/Union_Performance_Civil_Ministry_Home_
Affairs_Sector _5_2013.pdf.
Dhital, Y P, R B Kayastha and J Shi (2013): Soil Bioengineering Application and Practices in Nepal,
Environmental Management, 51(2): 35464.
DoRD (2013): Additional Joint Convergence Guidelines MGNREGS & PMGSY, memo, Department of Rural Development, 7 November, http:
//nrega.nic.in/Netnrega/WriteReaddata/Circulars/conv_gui_mgnrega__pmgsy.pdf.
Dubash, Navroz K and Anu Jogesh (2014): From
Margins to Mainstream? Climate Change Planning in India as a Door Opener to a Sustainable
Future, New Delhi: Centre for Policy Research
(CPR), Climate Initiative.
Dubash, Navroz K and Neha B Joseph (2015): Building Institutions for Climate Policy in India, New
Delhi: Centre for Policy Research.
Dupuis, Johann and Peter Knoepfel (2013): The
Adaptation Policy Paradox: The Implementation
Deficit of Policies Framed as Climate Change Adaptation, Ecology & Society, 18(4): 31, http: //
dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-05965-180431.
EM-DAT, Centre for Research on the Epidemiology
of Disasters (CRED), Emergency Events Database, http://www.emdat.be/.
First Post (2013): States Have to be Proactive about
Disaster Management: NDMA, http://www.
firstpost.com/india/states-have-to-be-proactiveabout-disaster-management-ndma-938643.html.
Government of IndiaUNDP (2013): Final Report,
Disaster Risk Reduction Programme (200912),
Implemented by Uttarakhand Disaster Management Authority & Disaster Mitigation and
Management Centre, Department of Disaster
Management, Government of Uttarakhand,
http://dmmc.uk.gov.in/files/pdf/final_report
_DRR. docx. pdf.
Government of Nepal (National Planning Commission) and World Bank (2015): Nepal Earthquake
2015: Post Disaster Needs Assessment, Executive
Summary, Kathmandu, http://www.worldbank.
org/content/dam/Worldbank/document/SAR
/nepal-pdna-executive-summary.pdf.
IRMA (2010): An Impact Assessment Study of the
Usefulness and Sustainability of the Assets Created Under Mahatma Gandhi National Rural
Employment Guarantee Act (MGNREGA) in
Sikkim, Anand, Gujarat: Institute of Rural

Management.
Kelley, Colin P et al (2015): Climate Change in the
Fertile Crescent and Implications of the Recent
Syrian Drought, Proceedings of the National
Academy of Sciences, 112(11): 324146.
MoEFCC (2014): Indias Progress in Combating Climate
Change, Briefing Paper for UNFCCC COP 20
Lima, Peru, Ministry of Environment, Forest
and Climate Change, Government of India.
(2015): Organisational Structure of Ministry
of Environment, Forest and Climate Change
(Divisions Under Environment Sector), http://
envfor.nic.in/sites/default/files/1%20Environment%20.pdf.
MoHA (2013): Report of the Task Force: A Review of
the Disaster Management Act 2005, March 2013,
Ministry of Home Affairs, Government of India,
http://ndmindia.nic.in/Rpt_TaskForce_300913.
pdf.
MoRD (2011): Final Report, Working Group on Rural
Roads in the 12th Five Year Plan, Ministry of Rural Development, Government of India, http://
planningcommission.gov.in/aboutus/committee/wrkgrp12/transport/wgrep_rural.pdf.
Nambiar, Malini (2015): A Decade of Disaster Risk
Management in India, Economic & Political
Weekly, 31 January.
NDMA (2010): National Disaster Management
Guidelines: On Ensuring Disaster Resilient
Construction of Buildings and Infrastructure
Financed through Banks and Other Lending Institutions, National Disaster Management
Authority, Government of India.
PIB (2015): Administrative Control of BRO, Press Information Bureau, Government of India, http://pib.
nic.in/newsite/PrintRelease.aspx?relid=121587.
Shrestha, Uttam B et al (2015): Letter, Science, 349:
699700.
Singh, K M (2015): India on the Path to Disaster
Resilience, Sunday Guardian, New Delhi,
25 July, http://www.sunday-guardian.com/extra/india-on-the-path-to-disaster-resilience
Tambe, Sandeep et al (2012a): How Safe Are Our
Rural Structures? Lessons from the 2011 Sikkim
Earthquake, Current Science, 102, pp 139297.
(2012b): Managing Rural Development in the
Mountain State of Sikkim, India, Mountain
Research and Development, 32(2), pp 24252.
UNISDR (2015): Making Development Sustainable:
The Future of Disaster Risk Management,
Global Assessment Report on Disaster Risk
Reduction, Geneva: United Nations Office for
Disaster Risk Reduction.
Venkatesh, Anand and Falguni Patel (2015): Roads
Facilitating Rural Accessibility: A Critique of
the PMGSY, Working Paper 275, Institute of
Rural Management Anand (IRMA).
EPW E-books
Select EPW books are now available as e-books in Kindle and iBook (Apple) formats.
The titles are
1. Village Society (ED. SURINDER JODHKA)

(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CS62AAW ;
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/village-society/id640486715?mt=11)
2. Environment, Technology and Development (ED. ROHAN DSOUZA)
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CS624E4 ;
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/environment-technology-development/
id641419331?mt=11)
3. Windows of Opportunity: Memoirs of an Economic Adviser (BY K S KRISHNASWAMY)
(http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CS622GY ;
https://itunes.apple.com/us/book/windows-of-opportunity/id640490173?mt=11)
Please visit the respective sites for prices of the e-books. More titles will be added gradually.
vol lI no 41
67
NOTES
Readings on the Economy, Polity and Society

Essays from the Economic and Political Weekly
NEW
Water: Growing Understanding,

Emerging Perspectives
Edited by Mihir Shah and P S Vijayshankar
Pp xiii + 559 | Rs 895

ISBN 978-81-250-6292-9
2016
For decades after independence, Indian planning

ignored the need for sustainability and equity in water
resource development and management. There was
just one way forward, that of harnessing the bounty
in our rivers and below the ground. It was only in the
1990s that serious questions began to be raised on
our understanding and approach to rivers.
This collection of essays, reflecting the multidimensional, multi-disciplinary character of water, is
arranged thematically and chronologically.
Economic Growth
and its Distribution in India
Edited by Pulapre Balakrishnan
Pp xvi + 497 | Rs 745

ISBN 978-81-250-5901-1
2015
Pp xiv + 538 | Rs 745

ISBN 978-81-250-5131-2
2013
India has witnessed a macroeconomic reversal, a slow

down in growth lasting a little longer than the boom preceding it. This volume represents a range of perspectives:
a long view of growth, a macro view of recent history, a
study of the economy covering agriculture, industry and
services, and the inclusiveness of recent growth.
Pp xii + 432 | Rs 695

ISBN978-81-250-4883-1
2012
Edited by Satish Deshpande

The general perception about caste changed irrevocably in the 1990s post the Mandal Commission recom
mendations. This volume discusses established
perspectives in relation to emergent concerns, disciplinary
responses, the interplay between caste, class and politics,
challenges in law and policy, emergent research areas,
and post-Mandal innovations in caste studies.
Edited by Indra Munshi
The story of higher education has seen many challenges

over the decades, the most serious being a high degree
of inequity. The articles in this volume discuss, issues
of inclusiveness, impact of reservation, problems of
mediocrity, shortage of funds, dwindling numbers of
faculty, and unemployment of the educated young.
Depletion of forests has eroded the survival base of

Adivasis, displacing them and leading to systematic
alienation. This volume discusses questions of
community rights and ownership, management of
forests, the states rehabilitation policies, and the Forest
Rights Act.
Pp xi + 425 | Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-250-5501-3
2014
Pp xi + 408 | Rs 695
ISBN 978-81-250-4716-2
2012
Village Society
Edited by Surinder S Jodhka
For women, the notion of work is a complex interplay

of economic, cultural, social and personal factors. This
volume analyses the concept of work, the economic
contribution of women and gendering of work,
while focusing on women engaged in varied work all
over India.
The village is an important idea in the history of postindependence India. A collection of articles that covers
various features of village society: caste and community,
land and labour, migration, discrimination and use of
common property resources.
Decentralisation and Local

Governments
Environment, Technology
and Development
Edited by T R Raghunandan
Edited by Rohan DSouza
The idea, from the Indian national movement, of devolving

power to local governments resulted in the
decentralisation of the government post-independence.
A collection of papers discusses the constitutional and
policy decisions, and various facets of establishing and
strengthening local self-governments.
The concepts of environment, technology and

development have shaped our understanding of the
world. This volume presents articles across disciplines,
perspectives and ideologies that map the main
conceptual lines and identify where they converge
and diverge.
Contact: info@orientblackswan.com
Pp xiv + 478 | Rs 795

ISBN 978-81-250-6284-4
2016
The Problem of Caste
Edited by Jandhyala B G Tilak
MumbaiChennaiNew DelhiKolkataBengaluruBhubaneshwar
ErnakulamGuwahatiJaipurLucknowPatnaChandigarhHyderabad
68
The reach of social policy in India has expanded

significantly in recent years. Reaching larger numbers
of people than before, some benefits now take the
form of enforceable legal entitlements.
Yet the performance of social programmes is far from
ideal, with still a long way to go in directly addressing
the interests, demands and rights of the unprivileged.
This collection of essays is clustered around six major
themes: health, education, food security, employment
guarantee, pensions and cash transfers, and inequality
and social exclusion.
The Adivasi Question
Edited by Padmini Swaminathan
Pp xii + 394 | Rs 645

ISBN 978-81-250-4777-3
2012
Edited by Jean Drze
Higher Education in India
Women and Work
NEW
Social Policy
Pp x + 252 | Rs 325
ISBN 978-81-250-4603-5
2012
Pp x + 394 | Rs 495
ISBN 978-81-250-4506-9
2012
Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd

www.orientblackswan.com
OCTOBER 8, 2016 vol lI no 41 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
DISCUSSION
West Bengal Elections

Unchanged amidst Change
Ayan Guha
Despite the rising influence of the

subaltern classes in West Bengal
politics, the predominance of the
bhadralok culture largely remains
intact. A response to Ranabir
Samaddars, West Bengal
Elections: The Verdict of Politics
(EPW, 11 June 2016).
he populist and plebeian brand

of politics practised by the All
India Trinamool Congress (TMC)
has continually come under scrutiny
from the educated bhadralok. Giving
credence to the general perception of a
wide gulf between Mamata Banerjee
and the common bhadralok Bengali,
Ranabir Samaddar has highlighted the
uneasiness of the bhadralok with this
kind of politics in his article titled
West Bengal Elections: The Verdict of
Politics (EPW, 11 June 2016). Though
such a perception has some practical
basis, one has to be careful about overemphasising it.
Samaddar has observed that the
results of the assembly elections point
to the increasing subalternisation of
Bengali politics leading to the political
retreat of the bhadralok or the intellectual classes of Bengal. Does this
retreat mean that the political culture
of the state has fully freed itself from
the bhadralok influence? For finding
answer to this query, we need to understand the complex interaction between
the Bengali bhadraloks and an apparently non-bhadralok political force and
also have to investigate the commonly
held proposition that the TMC and its
mercurial leader, Mamata Banerjee,
stand for values which are not only
alien, but also antithetical to the
bhadralok culture.
Roots of Elite Resentment
Ayan Guha (mailgooho@gmail.com) is a

research scholar at Dr K R Narayanan Centre
for Dalit and Minorities Studies, Jamia Millia
Islamia, New Delhi.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
Samaddar has argued that the high

intellectuals in Bengal, unhappy with
lost authority and injured legitimacy to
speak for the society, articulated the
call for democracy putting forward the
idea of an abyss (p 24). The attitude of a
section of the bhadraloks, still mentally
situated in a world of pristine bhadralok
values, can most aptly be summarised
vol lI no 41
by quoting former Left Front finance

minister Ashok Mitra:
She (Mamata Banerjee) has one basic
loyalty. That is to her primal constituency,
the formidable army of lumpens made up of
the various under-classes in Calcutta and
across the state; slum-dwellers leading a
wretched existence under the most unsanitary conditions and with uncertain, often
shady, means of livelihood, laid-off workers
out of a job for years on end, petty officegoers and teachers of diverse academic
streams who are convinced society has been
deliberately unfair to them, second or third
generation migrants from what was once
East Pakistan barely scraping a living and
unable to get reconciled to their immiserised conditions, the multitude of frustrated
youth who try to earn some money by hawking whatever they can lay their hands on,
shirkers and lazybones, misfits and misanthropes of all descriptions and, finally,
thugs and rowdies. The lady, reared by
streetfighting, speaks a language and uses
a vocabulary that bewitches them. She has
an ample stock of foul abusive words to run
down the organised Left. They believe
her because she is so much like them.
(Mitra 2012)
Thus, the bhadralok dismissal of

Banerjee is largely premised upon the
basic allegation that politics under her
regime has increasingly come under the
control of lumpen elements. They openly
defy laws. They have a common culture
of civility through their frequent divergence from the soft and gentle political
lexicon that, in common perception, has
come to be associated with the quintessential Bengali politicians draped in
white dhoti and kurta. However, in the
extreme form of virulent denunciation
of so-called lumpenisation, represented
by Mitras critique, all less privileged
and subaltern social categories, generally spawned by the economic failure
of the left regime and lower echelons
of the bhadraloks like schoolteachers,
once the most towering pillars of the
left support base, have been coalesced
into a single, undifferentiated social
category of lumpen proletariat with a
homogeneous social consciousness. Critiques like these are unmindful of the
fact that often the victims of lumpenisation are precisely the classes of people
Mitra mentions in his long list of TMC
suppor ters. They are chiefly the people
69
DISCUSSION
who have been pushed beyond the

domain of civil society and compelled to
take their place within the political
society thriving on political patronage or
entitlements rather than rights.1
However, the assertion of lumpen
elements has also robbed the socially
privileged of their sense of security.
When Tapas Pal, the TMC Member of
Parliament, threatens the rural women
supporting the Communist Party of India
(Marxist)CPI(M) of rape, it impairs
the urban bhadraloks sense of security
besides rattling the notions of civility of
speech and morality of behaviour. The
CPI(M) politicians, though regarded as
more culturally refined than their TMC
counterparts, had repeatedly used foul
language against Banerjee. Such verbal
abuses drew flak, but they did invite proportionate amount of castigation. This
was because those abuses were only intended to malign a particular individual
and did not produce the effect of damaging the bhadraloks sense of security.
Hence, the condemnation of the TMC is
more to do with deterioration of the law
and order situation rather than any erosion of morality or civility. Therefore,
against this backdrop, we need to ask
ourselves the question as to whether
Banerjee is an unadulterated antithesis
of whatever the bhadralok culture stands
for or not.
Cultural Reconciliation
Till the Singur and Nandigram movements Banerjees modest upbringing,
vitriolic way of expression, rustic speech
and lack of sophistication and scholarly
demeanour had posited her in a zone
which was not amenable to bhadralok
sociability. But from the Singur days her
cultural makeover started with increasing appropriation of political and cultural idioms drawn from the vast ideological reservoir of the left. Such a
political strategy was possibly born out
of the understanding that it is necessary
for wide public support to earn the backing of the bhadralok society through a
rapprochement with bhadralok cultural
icons and pivotal bhadralok values, particularly Marxism.
In 2006, the TMC chief announced
in Nandigram that her party was the
70
new heir to the 1946 Tebhaga movement.

Songs of the Indian Peoples Theatre
Association began to be played at her
rallies and families of people belonging
to those who sacrificed their lives in
Marxist-led struggles such as the food
movement of the 1960s were also
honoured (Gupta 2012: 13132). Thus,
she appropriated the social and political
space once occupied by the left and
created for herself a unique cultural realm,
into which the renowned bhadraloks
could gain admission without much
embarrassment.
On the one hand, she refashioned herself as a connoisseur of Rabindra Sangeet,
an able reciter of Tagores poems and a
respectful follower of spiritual traditions represented by Ramakrishna and
Vivekananda. On the other hand, carefully manoeuvring with left rhetoric,
idioms and cultural imageries she
emerged as a street fighter and a radical
activist in peoples movements vaguely
belonging to the agitational genre of the
left politics. This cleared the way for
rapprochement between her party and
the bhadralok society that seemed to
be slowly shaking off its inhibitions
about her brand of politics.2 However,
NE
there are limits to any reconciliation or

accommodation. To the high priests of
bhadralok culture her reincarnation as a
chaste bhadralok politician still remains
an unfinished project.
Therefore, her cultured persona is
often alleged to be a facade and she is
accused of putting on a veneer of refined
values which she is actually unable to
internalise. If that be the case then one
needs to ask as to why her accommodation of bhadralok culture becomes necessary. Banerjees adjustments in her
style and repertoire in the direction
of bhadralok deportment bring out the
importance of bhadralok values as constituting the normative structure of
legitimation in Bengali society. One can
speak the language of the masses, but
this may not be enough to gain social
respectability even in their eyes. A leader
needs to appear culturally refined and
fairly enlightened to establish her/his
claim to leadership. Perhaps that is the
reason why just like former chief minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, Banerjee
has also kept the ministry of culture
under her charge. The highest leader
needs to be a man or woman of art,
letters and culture.
EPWRF India Time Series

Expansion of Banking Statistics Module
(State-wise Data)
The Economic and Political Weekly Research Foundation (EPWRF) has added
state-wise data to the existing Banking Statistics module of its online India Time
Series (ITS) database.
State-wise and region-wise (north, north-east, east, central, west and south) time
series data are provided for deposits, credit (sanction and utilisation), credit-deposit
(CD) ratio, and number of bank oces and employees.
Data on bank credit are given for a wide range of sectors and sub-sectors (occupation)
such as agriculture, industry, transport operators, professional services, personal
loans (housing, vehicle, education, etc), trade and nance. These state-wise data are
also presented by bank group and by population group (rural, semi-urban, urban
and metropolitan).
The data series are available from December 1972; half-yearly basis till June 1989
and annual basis thereafter. These data have been sourced from the Reserve Bank
of Indias publication, Basic Statistical Returns of Scheduled Commercial Banks
in India.
Including the Banking Statistics module, the EPWRF ITS has 16 modules covering
a range of macroeconomic and nancial data on the Indian economy. For more
details, visit www.epwrts.in or e-mail to: its@epwrf.in
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
DISCUSSION
The powerful rhetoric of culture became manifest in Gopalkrishna Gandhis

incisive comment, in how many places
can one find a bibliophile chief minister
who also writes poetry with sensitivity
and an opposition leader who sings and
paints with feeling? (Special Correspondent 2009). This comment made in
the backdrop of the electoral battle
between Buddhadeb Bhattacharya and
Mamata Banerjee pointed out that both
these political figures were engaged in a
contest as much political as cultural.
While both of them claimed cultural refinement, Banerjees language and style
looked pale in comparison to the lefts
apparently polished and sophisticated
sense of culture. Still she had no option
but to wage a battle for cultural space
and put on the veneer of high culture.
This means that the cultural models and
idioms shaped by the left over the years
have not been denounced by the TMC,
but they have only been subjected to required dose of adjustment in tune with
political necessities.
If we look at the development initiatives of the TMC government, the divergence from the bhadralok values does
not seem to be as prominent as is often
made out to be. Banerjee has made higher
education as one of the main planks
of her development initiatives. Within a
short time span a host of government
colleges and new universities have been
established. Due to this massive drive in
the higher education sector, the number
of institutes of higher learning has more
than doubled within five years. This
tells us a great deal not only about the
Mamata Banerjee regime, but also about
the general sociocultural disposition.
Focus on higher education means that
political functioning is still dictated by
the social imagination and aspirations
shaped by the cultural standards set by
the bhadralok. The reason for this lies
in the fact that the general societal
acceptance of the bhadralok values is
a deep-rooted social phenomenon. This
is not to suggest that the masses have
fully imbibed the bhadralok values and
always observe them, but they tend
to accept them as the model codes of
social conduct and cultural activity. The
dhoti-kurta-clad bhadralok politician has
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
to some extent receded from the political

space, but the bhadralok values still
retain their hold to a great extent.
Though the culturally refined urban intelligentsia may still choose to see the
TMC as a caricature of high culture, the
rural masses are likely to place it in a
bhadralok genre for its avowed commitment to higher education, which might
have remained a distant dream for them
till now. Thus, the road to social legitimacy for Banerjee follows the same
bhadralok-dictated cultural trajectory.
Post-bhadralok Politics
Thus, the current political dispensation
also seems to be largely swearing by the
same old bhadralok values, which being
thoroughly entrenched in society, have
become an unbending social force resistant to regime change. This, however,
does not mean that the bhadralok culture remains intact in its unadulterated
form. Gupta has rightly argued that a
pristine unadulterated bhadralok culture
might have disintegrated (2012: 15).
This has perhaps been made possible
by the articulation of the bhadralok culture by the leaders who may not fit into
the standard definition of bhadralok. But
the bhadralok values still continue to
constitute the desirable model directing
the delineation of broad contours of West
Bengals political culture. Banerjee, today,
effortlessly straddles between different
and often divergent traditions and cultural worlds, which are only united in
being bhadralok in their orientation.
Thus, her great admiration for Tagore
does not appear to militate against her
act of naming metro stations after revolutionary terrorists such as Khudiram
Bose and Mastarda Surya Sen, whose
methods had been disapproved by Tagore.
Similarly, the otherwise sceptical and
culturally sensitive bhadraloks feel nothing odd when proud invocation of spiritual heritage of Ramakrisha and
Vivekananda blend with reverence for
the leftist poets like Subhash Mukherjee
and Sukanta Bhattacharya. Banerjee said,
We dont want be confined with the
political boundaries. We always tried to
give respect to the noted persons who
had worked for the development of
society (IndoAsian News Service 2016).
vol lI no 41
Thus, Banerjees political culture is

too fluid and elastic to be amenable to
confinement within a single straitjacket
formula offered by standard theories of
politics. However, such political culture
is clearly bhadralok in orientation, drawing upon the diverse ideological streams
from the rich legacy of overall bhadralok
tradition. In this way, Banerjees lack of
clear ideology enables her to combine
and manipulate diverse bhadralok norms
as per the situational requirement. Therefore, contrary to the general belief, her
lack of clear-cut political ideology is
not a non-bhadralok attribute. Rather,
her eclecticism helps her to negotiate
with the bhadralok world to the best of
her abilities and retain an essential left
liberal bent while keeping a distinction
between the overall cultural pattern of
her party and that of the CPI(M). Thus,
the eclectic politico-cultural model of
the TMC comprises a heavy dose of leftist
cultural imagery as well as elements of
traditional and spiritual heritage of
Bengal. Seen in this light, possibly, a
post-bhadralok political era rooted in
cultural eclecticism has begun. But, this
post-bhadralok scenario is only an outgrowth of the bhadralok value system
rather than a contradiction of it.
Notes
1
Here the point of reference is Partha Chatterjees

model of political society. For details see
Chatterjee (2011).
Before the 2011 assembly elections, Banerjee
got the support of a large section of prominent
Bengali intellectuals, mostly left-minded.
References
Chatterjee, Partha (2011): Lineages of Political Society:
Studies in Postcolonial Democracy, New York:
Columbia University Press.
Gupta, Manobina (2012): Didi: A Political Biography,
New Delhi: Harper Collins.
IndoAsian News Service (2011): Mamata Names
Two Kolkata Metro Stations after Journalists,
Yahoo News, 7 February, viewed on 6 June 2016,
https://in.news.yahoo.com/mamata-names-twokolkata-metro-stations-journalists-20110207074526-920.html.
Mitra, Ashok (2012): Lumpen Land: The Cause of
West Bengals Gloom Lies in Its Peoples Naivete,
Telegraph, 4 May.
Samaddar, Ranabir (2016): West Bengal Elections:
The Verdict of Politics, Economic & Political
Weekly, 52 (24).
Special Correspondent (2010): At Farewell, Gopalkrishna Gandhi Calls for Change in Mindsets,
Hindu, 27 February, viewed on 26 June 2016,
http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/atfarewell-gopalkrishna-gandhi-calls-for-changein-mindsets/article64508.ece.
71
DISCUSSION
democracy campaign. Besides, it also

makes contentious claims about the contribution of the TMC politics in strengthening the process of political participation
and empowerment of the subalterns.
Interrogating Some
Interpretations
Restoration of Democracy
Buddhadeb Ghosh
To interpret the results of the

West Bengal assembly elections in
terms of a verdict of the contest
between development and
democracy or as an endorsement of
Mamata Banerjees authoritarian
style of governance is wrong. But
to announce that the restoration
of democracy and integrity in
public service are issues of the
upper classes and non-issues for
the subalterns is not only wrong,
it is retrogressive.
Buddhadeb Ghosh (ghosh_buddhadeb@yahoo.

co.in) is with the Institute of Social Sciences,
Eastern Regional Centre, Kolkata.
72
he issues that were highlighted by

the opposition, especially by the
LeftCongress alliance, during the
campaign for West Bengal assembly elections held in 2016, were twofold:
(1) restoration of democracy from the
damages caused by the All India Trinamool Congress (TMC) to the democratic
institutions and norms, including the
attack on civil and political rights of
people. (2) Integrity in public service, as
the ruling party was reported to be sunk
in the mire of fraud and dishonesty, stark
examples of which being its involvement
in the scams like Saradha chit fund and
Narada sting operation. Apparently, these
issues could not make an impact on the
voters, as a result of which the Mamata
Banerjee-led TMC won more than twothirds of the total seats of the legislative
assembly. (The LeftCongress alliance
got a little more than 39% of the total
votes polled and could manage to win
less than one-third of the seats.)
The media has tried to explain this
phenomenon in various ways. The oftrepeated argument being offered is that
the common people consider the direct
benefits received from governments
welfare schemes to be more important
than the issues of democracy and corruption.1 If this argument gains ground, one
may be led to form an utterly cynical
view about the electorate, the voters,
particularly the non-elite voters, appearing as self-seeking and self-centred individuals devoid of moral values and without any concern for protection of the core
values of democracy and preservation of
integrity in public service.
The purpose of this article is to challenge such interpretations of the verdict
of West Bengal elections. We shall try to
pursue this objective by putting Ranabir
Samaddars (2016) article under scanner.
For, it conveys broadly similar views
about the voters and makes untenable
observations on the failure of the save
Samaddar is of the view that unlike the

post-Emergency election of 1977, the
democracy issue of 2016 West Bengal
assembly elections had no mass response, as there was no social input for
the lower classes, nor any specific
political discourse for them (p 24). It is
difficult to understand what the author
wants to convey through these vague
expressions. Do those expressions mean
that discourses on democracy and integrity in public service are too complex
and abstruse to be understood by the
masses? If so, the author is wrong. For,
the campaign for save democracy slogan
of the LeftCongress alliance in the last
elections of West Bengal was not conducted in thin air. It did contain references to the life experiences of common
people for whom a feeling of deprivation
in the form of loss of political freedom
and democratic rights was a reality.
Besides, like basic physical needs, the
desires for freedom from fear and the
urge for keeping the head high are
common among all human beings, and
hence, to suffer for not being able to
register ones voice or to activate ones
agency against attempts to damage political freedom of individuals is as natural
among people belonging to the so-called
lower classes, as it is among people
belonging to the upper or middle
classes. It is not, therefore, understood
as to why a special kind of political
discourse for the common masses would
be necessary in order to enable them to
respond to the call for restoration of
democracy.
In fact, the author seems to be giving
an impression that the subalterns are
least disturbed by the damages done by
the TMC regime to the democratic institutions (such as empowerment of the
local bureaucracy at the expense of the
panchayats) and norms or practices (for
example, setting fire to the huts of poor
people, as they vote for the opposition
parties). Curtailment of the civil and
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
DISCUSSION
political rights would not provide

enough ground for expressing anger
against or being disenchanted with the
ruling party. Between development
and democracy their preference is for
the former, the latter being of not much
significance to them. They are incapable
of appreciating the intrinsic values of
social and political freedoms. Consequently, to be prevented from the
participation in the political life of the
community is not considered a major
deprivation by them.2 Such portrayal of
the subalterns is possible if one proceeds
with the assumption that for them the
enjoyment of political and democratic
rights occupies a lower place in the hierarchy of their needs. It is also interesting
to note that in the above profile of the
subalterns, there is no place for their
agency role. They are conceived to be
the passive recipients of benefits and not
ones who can act and bring about
change. It seems strange that the author
finds nothing wrong with this.
Subalternisation of Politics
According to the author, the restoration
of democracy slogan raised in the electoral campaign of the LeftCongress
alliance turned into an enlightenment
project in which only people in the higher echelon could become interested, not
the subaltern. Why? The latter group,
we are told, was not interested since,
among other things, there had been
subalternisation of politics in West
Bengal after the advent of the TMC. Even
though not clarified, the author probably
wants to say several things through
this phrase. First, TMC has enabled the
poor people to enter politics. Second,
the common people consider TMC as
their own party. Third, Mamata Banerjee
has emerged as the representative of
the masses.
Without trying to substantiate these
assertions, the author talks much about
the trust the subaltern masses repose in
the TMC and its supreme leader. But he
desists from talking about the process
through which political empowerment
of the masses takes place. Do they have
any role in the decision-making processes,
either in the party or in the government?
Is sharing of power made possible for
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
them? Or, is their involvement in politics

restricted to play the role of followers
only? These questions remain answered.
The author also notes that the subalterns envisage the TMC as their protector
(Samaddar 2016: 24). By making this
strange statement, he lets the cat out of
the bag. For, it exposes the fact that the
subalterns at the grass roots are not free
individuals enjoying freedom and exercising rights that are guaranteed to
them by the Constitution. They need political patronage to protect themselves
from various kinds of threat including
the threat to life. (Thousands of villagers who are known to be supporters of
the left do not receive such patronage
and they are reported to have been subjected to torture and harassment including eviction from homelands.)
Even gaining access to their legitimate
entitlements is contingent upon the
promise of protection they receive from
the ruling party. For receiving this
favour they obviously have to provide
support to their benefactor. There is,
thus, a kind of benefactorbeneficiary
relationship between the TMC and its
subaltern voters from where the relationship turning into a kind of patronclient
form is just a step away. If the subalterns
have remained indifferent to the issues
of democracy, one of the strong reasons
could be that they are not free agents to
exercise their choice. Once they accept
the TMC as their protector, their freedom to exercise their political rights is
lost. For them, there is no other option
but to dance to the tune that is played
by their patron. To view this situation as
politics of empowerment of the poor
masses (or subalternisation of politics)
amounts to a distorted representation
of reality.
TMCs Entry Doors
It is also necessary to point out that the
TMC does not appear to be a natural habitat of the subalterns. Some of them may
be with the party and may also participate
in the political activities of the party. But
by definition they remain far away from
the position of dominance within the
party. The entry doors of the party were
open to all who opposed the Communist
Party of India (Marxist)CPI(M)and
vol lI no 41
the Left Front. Consequently, a large

number of people belonging to the upper
echelons of society including those
whom the author calls intellectuals
joined the party, as they felt that under
the left rule they remained excluded
from the power structure. A cursory
look at the socio-economic status of the
leadership of the party would substantiate the point.
It is also interesting to note that in the
last assembly elections the highest number of candidates belonging to the group
of crorepatis came from the TMC. Many
of the big landholders of the former
times who had been nursing a feeling
of deprivation during the left regime
have now become local leaders of TMC
in the rural and semi-urban areas. Most
of the film and theatre personalities,
writers, poets, journalists of both print
and electronic media of this state have
remained loyal to the TMC since 2011 or
even from before that year. In this context, the authors claim that the TMCs
emergence was a response of the subalterns to the rule of the Left Front
(Samaddar 2016: 24) appears to be an
absurd interpretation of an important
political event.
Mamatas Governance Style
The author makes some observations on
Mamata Banerjees style of governance.
It is characterised by the marginalisation of opposition through various means,
fair or unfair. It is developing a model of
governance which has a very powerful
leader at the top and is, according to the
author, highly centralised, bureaucracydriven, stable and populist. Its populist
programmes, it is believed, can manage
the distribution of state largesse in an
efficient and skilful manner to earn the
loyalty of the voters. It is also quite
appropriate for the subaltern masses in
the trying times of globalisation. The
call given by the opposition for restoration of democracy and eradication of
corruption was, therefore, destined to
be a wasteful exercise in such setting.
The author thinks that this is a new
model of governance which has been
emerging in West Bengal and also in
other parts of the country, such as Bihar.
It is devoid of the trappings of liberal
73
DISCUSSION
emocracy (such as rule of law or neud

trality of bureaucracy) giving untrammelled and extensive power to the
supreme leader of the ruling party to
take decisions. It may produce some
amount of anarchy and corruption, but
it also empowers the poor, the author
claims, through their entry in politics. Its
populist programmes are safeguards that
can protect the poor from the onslaughts
of liberalisation and globalisation.
Bizarre Claims
The author expresses these views with
an air of nonchalance. It is difficult to
put up with such views without loud
protest for several reasons. First, a
bizarre claim is made by asserting that

the populist measures of the Mamata
Banerjee government without any worthwhile steps for creating livelihood opportunities in agriculture, industry and
value-added services are safeguards for
the poor against the ill-effects of liberalisation and globalisation. Second, it
supports the outdated idea based on
insufficient empirical evidence that the
governments led by the popular and
authoritarian leaders are efficient and
can promote rapid growth and development. Third, by overlooking completely
the authoritarian features of the governments led by the leaders like Lalu Prasad
Yadav of Bihar and Mamata Banerjee of
West Bengal, the author provides an
ideological justification for the rise of a
new kind of leaders who come to power
through elections and then rule like
a despot.
The author also announces with a
sense of finality that there is a kind of a
trade-off between democracy and development and in the last elections the poor
favoured the latter giving up the claim
for the former.3 As indicated in this article,
there is no positive evidence to show
that the poor voters made a distinction
between democracy and development
and then made an independent choice
between the two in either/or format.
Besides, there cannot be any trade-off
between development and democracy.
In fact, to delink democracy from
development is to hurt development
itself, because apart from its instrumental

value for development, democracy is a
74
fundamental human right and in that

sense its advancement is considered as
a measure of development. Since the
author has no concern for the issue
of democracy-development linkage, the
question as to whether in the scheme of
development politics of the TMC is there
any place for free agency of the subaltern masses is not addressed at all. As
argued in this article, under the TMC rule
the masses are e xpected to be passive
beneficiaries of the welfare projects, not
active agents of their development.
Needless to say, this is an ideal situation
for the authoritarian rulers who do not
like to be questioned about what he or
she is doing.
To interpret the last West Bengal election results in terms of a verdict of the
contest between development and demo
cracy or as an endorsement of Mamata
Banerjees authoritarian style of governance is wrong. But to announce that the
restoration of democracy and integrity
in public service are issues of the upper
classes and non-issues for the subalterns

is not only wrong, it is retrogressive.
This kind of political analysis, based on
inconclusive evidence, makes the journey
of democracy unnecessarily perilous.
notes
1 Roy (2016) does not subscribe to the view that
corruption was a non-issue in the elections.
2 For a discussion on the values of democracy
and civil and political rights, see Sen (1999a)
Chapters 6 and 8. Also see Sen (1999b).
3 See Samaddar (2016): So with the verdict out
on the save democracy versus the poor needs
development campaign, can we say that a Bengal
model of governance is emerging? (p 25).
References
Roy, Rajat (2016): Nothing Succeeds Like Success
in West Bengal, Economic & Political Weekly,
28 May.
Samaddar, Ranabir (2016): West Bengal Elections:
The Verdict of Politics, Economic & Political
Weekly, 11 June.
Sen, Amartya (1999a): Democracy as Freedom, New
Delhi: Oxford.
(1999b): Democracy as a Universal Value,
Journal of Democracy, 10 March, accessed from
http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/files/Democracy_as_a_Universal_Value.pdf.
Subscribe to the Print edition
What do you get with

a Print subscription?
50 issues delivered to your door every year
All special and review issues
Access to Archives of the past two years
Web Exclusives
And a host of other features on www.epw.in
To subscribe, visit: www.epw.in/subscribe.html

Attractive rates available for students, individuals and institutions.
Postal address: Economic and Political Weekly,
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, GK Marg, Lower Parel,
Mumbai 400 013, India.
Tel: +91-22-40638282 | Email: circulation@epw.in
OCTOBER 8, 2016 vol lI no 41 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
CURRENT STATISTICS
Wholesale Price Index
Foreign TradeMerchandise
The WPI based inflation rate rises, on year-on-year basis, to a 23-month high of
3.7% in August 2016 from (-)5.1%, a year ago. The index for primary articles
increased sharply by 7.5% in August 2016 against (-)4.2% in August 2015, with
index for food articles rising substantially by 8.2% compared to -1.2% in the
corresponding period last year. After declining for 21 months in a row, the index
for fuel and power index increased by 1.6% in August 2016 against (-)16.2% in
August 2015. The index for manufactured products rose by 2.4% in August 2016
against (-)2.0%, a year ago.
The merchandise trade deficit narrowed to $7.7 billion (bn) in August 2016
compared to $12.4 bn, a year ago. Exports shrunk by (-)0.3% to $21.5 bn in August
2016, from $21.6 bn in August 2015, and imports declined by (-)14.1% to $29.2 bn
from $34.6 bn in the respective month last year. During AprilAugust 201617,
the trade deficit narrowed to $35 bn compared to $58 bn, in the same period last
year. Cumulative exports fell by (-)3.0% to $108.5 bn and imports by (-)16% to
$143 bn, during AprilAugust 201617 from $111.9 bn and $170.2 bn, respectively,
in the same period last year.
Consumer Price Index
Index of Industrial Production
The CPI inflation rate was 5.1% in August 2016, higher than 3.7% in August 2015,
but lower than the 23-month high of 6.1% in July 2016. Consumer food price
inflation was higher at 5.9% in August 2016 than 2.2% in August last year, but
was lower than 8.4% in July 2016. The rural and urban inflation rate grew by
5.9% and 4.2%, respectively, in August 2016 compared to 4.5% and 2.8%, in the
same period last year. As per the Labour Bureau data, the CPI inflation rate for
agricultural labourers and industrial workers increased to 5.3%, respectively, in
August 2016 from 3.0% and 4.3%, respectively, in August 2015.
The y-o-y growth rate of IIP declined to -2.4% in July 2016 compared to 4.3% in
July 2015, with manufacturing segment witnessing a fall of (-)3.4% in July 2016
against 4.8%, a year ago. Mining sector reported a fractional growth of 0.8% in
July 2016 from 1.3% last year, and electricity generation grew at a slower pace of
1.6% from 3.5% in July 2015. As per use-based classification, growth in capital
goods segment fell substantially to -29.6% in July 2016 against 10.1% in July
2015, and that in consumer goods increased marginally to 1.3% compared to
1.1%, in same period last year.
Movement of WPI Inflation JanuaryAugust 2016
Merchandise Trade August 2016
Year-on-Year in %
4
3.7%
2
2016
August 2016
($ bn)
Over Month
(%)
21.5
29.2
7.7
-0.8
-0.9
-1.1
Exports
Imports
Trade deficit
Over Year
(%)
(AprilAugust)
(201617 over 201516) (%)
-0.3
-14.1
-38.1
-3.0
-15.9
-40.6
Data is provisional. Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Components of Trade August 2015 and August 2016
-2
2015
-4
-5.1%
-6
January
February
March
April
May
June
July
$26.6 billion
Non-oil Imports
30
$21.6 billion
Exports
August*
$21.5 billion
$22.4 billion
$7.4 billion
Oil Imports
* Data (2016) is provisional.
$6.7 billion
Trends in WPI and Its Components August 2016* (%)

Weights
All commodities
Primary articles
Food articles
Fuel and power
Manufactured products
Over Month
100
20.1
14.3
14.9
65.0
Financial Year (Averages)

201314 201415 201516
Over Year
-0.4
-0.2
-0.6
-3.0
0.2
3.7
7.5
8.2
1.6
2.4
6.0
9.9
12.9
10.3
3.0
2.0
3.0
6.1
-0.9
2.4
-2.5
0.3
3.4
-11.7
-1.1
* Data is provisional; Base: 200405=100; Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
$7.7 billion
$12.4 billion
Trade Deficit
-15
2015 AUGUST
2016 AUGUST
Oil refers to crude petroleum and petroleum products, while non-oil refers to all other commodities.
Movement of IIP Growth JanuaryJuly 2016

Year-on-Year in %
Movement of CPI Inflation January 2015August 2016
Year-on-Year in %
4.3%
Consumer Food
2015
5.9%
5.1%
4.2%
CPI
3
-2
-2.4%
2016
-4
January
February
March
April
May
June
July*
* July 2016 are quick estimates; Base: 200405=100.
Miscellaneous
Industrial Growth: Sector-wise July 2016* (%)

0
Jan
2015
Jan
2016
J August*
Weights
Over
Month
100
14.2
75.5
10.3
-3.7
-7.3
-3.4
-2.8
-2.4
0.8
-3.4
1.6
2.8
1.5
2.3
8.4
2.4
2.2
2.0
5.6
45.7
8.8
15.7
29.8
8.5
21.3
-3.7
-8.1
1.3
-4.5
-0.5
-7.2
2.0
-29.6
3.4
1.3
5.9
-1.7
7.0
6.4
1.7
-3.4
-12.6
2.8
3.6
-2.9
2.5
3.0
11.3
-1.8
General index
Mining
Manufacturing
Electricity
* Data is provisional.
Source: Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Base: 2012=100.
CPI: Rural and Urban August 2016* (%)

Latest
Month Index
Over
Month
Over
Year
Financial Year (Avgs)

201415 201516
Rural (2012=100)
133.5
0.4
5.9
6.2
5.6
Urban (2012=100)
128.4
-0.5
4.2
5.7
4.1
Industrial workers (2001=100)
278.0
-0.7
5.3
6.3
5.6
Agricultural labourers (198687=100)
876.0
-0.1
5.3
6.6
4.4
CPI: Occupation-wise
Over Year
Financial Year (Avgs)

201415
201516
Industrial Growth: Use-based

Basic goods
Capital goods
Intermediate goods
Consumer goods
Consumer durables
Consumer non-durables
* July 2016 are quick estimates; Base: 200405=100; Source: Central Statistics Office.
* Provisional; Source: CSO (rural and urban), Labour Bureau (IW and AL).
Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates are available at: http://www.epwrf.in/currentstat.aspx.
EPW
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
75
CURRENT STATISTICS
Indias Quarterly Estimates of Final Expenditures on GDP

201415
` crore | at 201112 Prices
Private final consumption expenditure

Government final consumption expenditure
Gross fixed capital formation
Change in stocks
Valuables
Net trade (Exportimport)
Exports
Less imports
Discrepancies
Gross domestic product (GDP)
Q1
1406817
294338
832420
48976
42871
-40831
620869
661700
-49687
2534903
Q2
201516
Q3
Q4
(8.2) 1422029 (9.2) 1495823 (1.5)

(9.0)
322557 (15.4) 261886 (33.2)
(8.3)
828754 (2.2)
843733 (3.7)
(23.0)
48434 (20.6)
45077 (16.0)
(16.3)
38194 (0.3)
37174 (10.8)
-55355
-45813
(11.6) 625875 (1.1)
636468 (2.0)
(-0.6) 681230 (4.6)
682281 (5.7)
-36835
21305
(7.5) 2567778 (8.3) 2659185 (6.6)
1539614
223826
903344
52521
55036
-13988
625191
639179
29933
2790285
Q1
(6.6)
(-3.3)
(5.4)
(21.6)
(32.2)
1504442
293720
891627
50754
43138
-60253
585324
645577
761
2724188
(-6.3)
(-6.1)
(6.7)
Q2
(6.9)
(-0.2)
(7.1)
(3.6)
(0.6)
(-5.7)
(-2.4)
(7.5)
Q3
1511464
333116
909117
51068
42932
-78201
599264
677465
-7146
2762350
(6.3)
(3.3)
(9.7)
(5.4)
(12.4)
1618333
269808
853858
48547
42192
-59076
579684
638760
78020
2851682
(-4.3)
(-0.6)
(7.6)
201617
Q1
Q4
(8.2) 1666888 (8.3)

1605527
(3.0)
230308 (2.9)
349059
(1.2)
886147 (-1.9)
863956
(7.7)
55448 (5.6)
54345
(13.5)
45549 (-17.2)
22129
-15520
-3901
(-8.9) 613471 (-1.9)
604052
(-6.4) 628991 (-1.6)
607953
143210
26232
(7.2) 3012029 (7.9)
2917348
(6.7)
(18.8)
(-3.1)
(7.1)
(-48.7)
(3.2)
(-5.8)
(7.1)
Indias Overall Balance of Payments (Net): Quarterly

201415 ($ mn)
Q4
Current account
Merchandise
Invisibles
Services
of which: Software services
Transfers
of which: Private
Income
Capital account
of which: Foreign investment
Overall balance
-707
-31560
30854
20036
17382
16425
16600
-5607
30085
22993
30149
201516 ($ mn)
Q2
Q3
Q1
-6132
-34175
28043
17751
17512
16153
16267
-5861
18637
10226
11430
-8559
-37173
28614
17835
18058
16263
16421
-5484
8121
3150
-856
201617 ($ mn)
Q1
Q4
-7121
-33975
26854
18013
18556
15250
15305
-6408
10915
11256
4056
-338
-24755
24417
16077
17328
14961
15146
-6621
3455
7259
3274
-299
-23833
23535
15769
17569
13965
14161
-6200
7104
6192
6969
201415 (` bn)
Q4
201516 (` bn)
Q1
-44 [-0.1]
-1964
1920
1247
1082
1022
1033
-349
1872 [5.6]
1431
1876 [5.6]
Q2
-389 [-1.2]
-2169
1780
1127
1111
1025
1033
-372
1183 [3.7]
649
725 [2.3]
Q3
-556 [-1.7]
-2415
1859
1159
1173
1057
1067
-356
528 [1.6]
205
-56 [-0.2]
201617
Q1
Q4
-469 [-1.4]
-2240
1770
1187
1223
1005
1009
-422
720 [2.1]
742
267 [0.8]
-23 [-0.1]
-1671
1648
1085
1170
1010
1022
-447
233 [0.6]
490
221 [0.6]
-20 [-0.1]
-1594
1574
1055
1175
934
947
-415
475 [1.4]
414
466 [1.3]
Figures in square brackets are percentage to GDP.
Foreign Exchange Reserves
Variation
Excluding gold but including revaluation effects
23 September
2016
` crore
$ mn
2300200
346733
25 September
2015
31 March
2016
2175620
330627
2229020
337605
Over
Month
Financial Year So Far

201516
201617
Over
Year
14760
3951
124580
16106
165220
9318
Monetary Aggregates
` crore
Money Supply (M3) as on 16 September

Components
Currency with public
Demand deposits
Time deposits
Other deposits with RBI
Sources
Net bank credit to government
Bank credit to commercial sector
Net foreign exchange assets
Banking sectors net non-monetary liabilities
Reserve Money as on 23 September 2016
Components
Currency in circulation
Bankers deposits with RBI
Other deposits with RBI
Sources
Net RBI credit to Government
of which: Centre
RBI credit to banks & commercial sector
Net foreign exchange assets of RBI
Govts currency liabilities to the public
Net non-monetary liabilities of RBI
Outstanding
2016
Over Month
Over Year
12190570
80310 (0.7)
1688030
1047750
9440390
14400
14990
43300
21630
400
(0.9)
(4.3)
(0.2)
(2.9)
253990
148250
799190
-1110
3637430
7845480
2612110
1927050
2183190
-68820
34780
15090
-99260
13130
(-1.9)
(0.4)
(0.6)
(-4.9)
(0.6)
411370
632000
177730
22740
277270
201516
1739740
429020
14440
624300
622320
-4910
2462870
22600
921670
7610 (0.4)
5560 (1.3)
-30 (-0.2)
-44190
-44700
32190
15520
0
-9620
(-6.6)
(-6.7)
(-86.8)
(0.6)
(0.0)
(-1.0)
1200320 (10.9)
Aggregate deposits
Demand
Time
Cash in hand
Balance with RBI
Investments
of which: Government securities
Bank credit
of which: Non-food credit
Capital Markets
S&P BSE SENSEX (Base: 197879=100)
S&P BSE-100 (Base: 198384=100)
S&P BSE-200 (198990=100)
CNX Nifty (Base: 3 Nov 1995=1000)
Net FII Investment in equities ($ Million)*
Outstanding
2016
Over Month
30 September
2016
27866
8864
3720
8611
173111
(6.5)
(9.7)
(11.0)
(8.3)
(4.4)
64710
42680
22020
660
3850
15920
16050
34370
41890
(0.7)
(4.7)
(0.2)
(1.1)
(1.0)
(0.6)
(0.6)
(0.5)
(0.6)
Month
Ago
28343
8986
3754
8744
171486
201415
201516
322660
40486
218620
16297
Financial Year
201415
201314
(3.5)
(0.9)
(4.6)
(6.3)
90780
57920
425310
-1050
(5.7)
(5.9)
(4.7)
(-6.8)
104760
58760
965330
-1270
(9.2)
(7.8)
(14.9)
(-39.2)
140360
79650
800140
12620
(11.3)
(9.8)
(10.7)
(640.6)
211070
98200
757320
860
(15.2)
(11.0)
(9.2)
(5.9)
(12.8)
(8.8)
(7.3)
(1.2)
(14.5)
218670
163760
183730
127290
-22540
(7.3)
(2.3)
(8.2)
(7.2)
(-1.2)
398950
42410
78390
-52520
2450
(12.3)
(0.5)
(3.1)
(-2.7)
(0.1)
335850
777430
287280
275010
217860
(12.4)
(13.7)
(17.6)
(16.8)
(14.4)
-37480
604430
326710
-137050
195710
(-1.2)
(9.4)
(17.0)
(-7.2)
(11.3)
231090
753350
283070
202550
252280
(7.7)
(10.7)
(12.6)
(11.4)
(13.1)
(45.0)
(45.5)
(-110.6)
(7.0)
(9.5)
(3.1)
43940 (3.0)
-67460 (-14.5)
980 (6.7)
65970
66730
-156340
175160
1220
108550
(9.9)
(17.3)
(9.2)
(7.5)
(3.3)
(7.5)
(7.5)
(9.3)
(9.6)
(-1.8)
(0.8)
(3.1)
(-0.2)
(3.7)
375100
8710
366390
5070
6920
150060
150140
149470
141150
1127560 (13.4)
76280 (4.6)
-72810 (-14.5)
-1020 (-6.6)
(18.1)
(18.5)
(-77.2)
(8.2)
(6.3)
(13.8)
199310
197760
-309450
79390
700
-32510
(46.9)
(46.6)
(-101.6)
(3.3)
(3.2)
(-3.4)
Variation
201617
(4.4)
(1.1)
(4.7)
(9.5)
(1.9)
(6.0)
(6.0)
(2.3)
(2.2)
463680
52520
411160
5350
5210
213890
213390
60360
69620
(5.0)
(5.9)
(4.9)
(9.3)
(1.3)
(8.1)
(8.1)
(0.8)
(1.0)
201516
Trough
Peak
24674
7656
3193
7546
-
22952
7051
2938
6971
-
147250 (11.3)
35860 (8.3)
12640 (644.9)
215140 (14.9)
36270 (7.8)
860 (5.9)
108120
107150
14070
244460
2000
150810
-334180
-336610
145030
324760
2080
-58050
60470
63520
102030
256200
2480
168910
955110
51620
903480
5380
34080
206720
207540
733640
731610
(18.3)
(18.1)
(32.4)
(15.7)
(13.0)
(21.8)
22386
6707
2681
6704
149745
(-47.8)
(-48.2)
(0.0)
(18.0)
(12.0)
(-6.9)
Financial Year
201415
(14.1)
(7.8)
(14.8)
(13.3)
(12.1)
(10.3)
(10.4)
(13.9)
(14.2)
827730
80110
747620
7490
56730
279000
278570
542320
546350
(10.7)
(11.2)
(10.7)
(16.3)
(17.9)
(12.6)
(12.6)
(9.0)
(9.3)
End of Financial Year

201415
201314
29044
8980
3691
8834
-
1067450 (10.1)
110090 (9.2)
109020 (34.0)
-1280 (-39.5)
201314

Trough
Peak
29045
9203
3844
8953
-
1032780 (10.9)
201516
47860
7870
383440
920
Year
Ago
26155
8077
3352
7949
165874
251570
16769
(17.7)
(16.5)
(9.2)
(-7.2)
Over Year
882580
138770
743800
4360
12660
197510
197430
624080
630830
82800
-485
Financial Year
201314
572960 (4.9)
201516
9790970
941510
8849450
62790
392650
2839390
2837330
7309970
7213980
108086
-14361
Variation
201617
Scheduled Commercial Banks Indicators ( ` crore)

(As on 16 September 2016)
201213
440090 (4.2)
247480 (16.6)
30920 (7.8)
-1140 (-7.3)
193810
194550
-51080
160430
1960
27850
71180
9128
201112
(18.8)
(18.1)
(17.2)
(18.0)
(9.9)
27957
8607
3538
8491
168116
(24.9)
(28.3)
(31.9)
(26.7)
(12.3)
(16.6)
(17.6)
(0.0)
(12.0)
(12.8)
(21.5)
201516
794000
94960
699030
4080
14370
133680
134180
713190
702360
(9.3)
(12.0)
(9.0)
(7.6)
(3.9)
(5.4)
(5.4)
(10.9)
(10.9)
201516
25342
7835
3259
7738
166107
(-9.4)
(-9.0)
(-7.9)
(-8.9)
(-1.2)
* = Cumulative total since November 1992 until period end | Figures in brackets are percentage variations over the specified or over the comparable period of the previous year | (-) = not relevant | - = not available | NS = new series | PE = provisional estimates
Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates are available at: http://www.epwrf.in/currentstat.aspx.
76
OCTOBER 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
POSTSCRIPT
GOVERNANCE
Waterboarding No More
An experience at the Delhi Jal Board regarding a complaint of overbilling reveals that the attitudes of public
servants have changed, thanks to technology and grass-roots democracy.
Shobhit Mahajan
a few minutes while he entered the details. After doing this,

he water bill was a bit smudged. Or so I thought since
he told me to go and get the reading of the new water meter
the amount payable seemed to be in five figures. I was
which I had installed so that the latest bill can be generated.
supposed to pay `30,156 by such-and-such a date. I
I told him I will come tomorrow and give him the reading.
thought that there had been a mistake. However, getting the
No, no, sir, there is no need to come here again. Here is
whole thing sorted out gave me an opportunity to see how
my mobile number. Just WhatsApp the photograph of the
something seems to have changed with the way the bureaumeter to me! I could not believe my ears. That my work
cratic machine now works.
was being done after the regular hours, that I was being
It turns out that the tenants living in the flat for the last
offered a chair, spoken to politely and now this! My innate
seven years had stopped paying the water bill since 2010.
suspicion of all things bureaucratic told me that something
Add to that late charges, surcharge, etc, and pretty soon we
must be missing.
were talking real money. I didnt even know where to start
And so I went again the next day with the photograph of
trying to get this issue resolved. So I checked out the website
the meter on my phone. This time, the operator tried to put
of the Delhi Jal Board and got the address of the local water
in the details but was not successful and so he called his
office. Except that I had no idea of its location. So I, without
boss who also spent some 30 minutes, but the server would
any hope, called the landline number of the officer mentioned on the website. And lo and behold, not only The mohalla sabhas, just not accept the details. At this point, the
bossa soft-spoken ladydecided it was not
was the phone answered but I was also very
the referendums
going to work that day. So she gave me her
politely told what I needed to do and where
on mobile apps
mobile number, took down my mobile number
exactly the office is located.
and the massive
and asked me to call her again in a week when
I got all the documents required and finally
advertisement
she would update me on the status of my applicadecided to go to the office. Reaching the office at
campaigns
tion. No need to visit the office again. And sure
3 pm, I found the compound desertednever a
regarding public
enough, after a week or so, I got a call from the
good sign at a government office. Sure enough,
services, coupled
boss to tell me to check the website. I did and
the board said in bold letters: Public Dealing
with a dedicated
realised the whole matter had been sorted out!
9.302.30, Lunch 1.302.00. Pretty much giving
cadre at the grass
This episode reminded me of the situation 20
up hope, I very diffidently ventured to knock on a
roots, have led
years ago when I was allotted the flat. At that
slightly ajar door since all the windows were
to people being
point, I had to make 15 trips to the office to get a
closed. The person sitting inside called me in and,
far less docile
water connection. And it was only when the permore importantly, asked what the problem was. I
when it comes
son concerned got sick of seeing me every day
explained and he did something which was unto demanding
that he condescended to do the work.
believablehe actually took out the register in
what they think is
So what has changed in the intervening two
which the papers and application details had to be
rightfully theirs
decades? Technology, of course, but that couldnt
entered, did the entry and gave me a receipt. I
be the sole reason since even with the latest online tools, the
thought I was in cuckoo land!
operator and his boss had to struggle for half-an-hour to
I was told that I dont need to do anything till the details
enter my details. Another reason could be, I suspect, that
are entered in the system (something which will take a week
the staff is on contract from a service provider. But again,
or so) after which I can check on the website and find the
the boss was clearly an employee of the water department
amount due after appropriate rebates, etc. I was mighty
and she did take a lot of initiative to get the problem solved.
impressed with not just the fact that the work got done but
And it was also not because I was clearly someone who
also the helpful attitude of the person concerned. Little did I
knew his rights and so could make things hard for them
know that there were more surprises in store.
if harassedI saw the staff there displaying exactly the
After about 10 days, I visited the office again. Same time
same attitude towards an old woman who had come from a
3 pm (since I have classes before that). This time, another young
nearby slum cluster.
computer operator asked me what I wanted. I explained that
Herein, I think lies a clue to the remarkable change in
the details had not yet appeared on the website. He looked
attitudes of public servants. The government in Delhi, for all
at the papers I was carrying, checked and told me to wait for
EPW
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
77
POSTSCRIPT
GOVERNANCE
its faults, certainly has given a fillip to grass-roots democracy.

The mohalla sabhas, the referendums on mobile apps and the
massive advertisement campaigns regarding public services,
coupled with a dedicated cadre at the grass roots have led to
people being far less docile when it comes to demanding
what they think is rightfully theirs. As a consequence, the
bureaucracy is possibly far more diffident and wary of throwing its weight around. Whether this will be a lasting thing or
not is hard to say. After all, the trains did run on time during
the Emergency but pretty soon afterwards, it was business as
usual. Nevertheless, it was an extremely heartening sight to
see the old lady from the slum walk out happily from the
Water Department office.
Shobhit Mahajan (Shobhit.mahajan@gmail.com) is Professor of Physics and
Astrophysics at the University of Delhi.
78
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
POSTSCRIPT
FILMS
by the director to connect with the historical events that

form the thread of this movie; instead, he goes on to discuss
the life of the hero, Kabaleeswaran.
Kabaleeswaran, the protg of Tamilnesan (Nassar), a
don who fought for the rights of Tamilians who worked
in Malaysia, takes over the reins of the empire after the
latters murder. The film does not deal much with the struggles of the labourers but focuses on the transformation
of Rajinikanth from Kabaleeswaran to Kabali, the don.
Most of the narrative of the film revolves around the Free
Life Foundation School, a shelter home and counselling
centre set up by his friend Ameer (John Vijay) to look after
the welfare of young Tamilians in Malaysia who were
drug addicts and sexually exploited, while Kabali was in
jail. While the film points to the rising drug culture among
the youth, it fails to offer any positive message about the
issue. The Indian version of the film ends with the screen
turning black as we hear a gunshot at a function organised
by the Free Life Foundation School where a youngster
named Tiger (Hari) walks up to Kabali with a gun. The
Malaysian version of the film, however, offers a less draThe recent Tamil film Kabali, starring the
matic and more concrete ending, stating that Kabali surrenflamboyant and popular actor Rajinikanth, raised
dered to the police. This alternate ending was created at
plenty of expectations but fell flat since it chose to
the behest of the Film Censorship Board of Malaysia, which
ignore the history of its setting.
frowns on policemen being charaterised as those who
encourage violence.
Aju Aravind
One of the reasons why the film failed to move beyond
the clichs of a conventional Rajinikanth movie was its
abali, the recent Tamil blockbuster film directed
setting in an unfamiliar local environment. Also, in the film,
by Pa Ranjith and starring the style Mannan
there was more of Rajinikath the Superstar than Kabali
Rajinikanth, has failed to excite and energise audithe Hero. Most of Rajinikanths earlier films focused on the
ences. Kabali, which revolves around the lives and gang
social and political issues in the state of Tamil Nadu, which
rivalries of the Malaysian dons Kabaleeswaran (played
was familiar to the local masses. In them we see Rajinikanth
by Rajinikanth) and Tony Lee (Winston Chao), premiered
as a hero with a moral commitment, who fights to bring
in over 3,200 screens across India on 22 July, the same day
about social and economic change for the betterment of
the state of Sarawak in Malaysia celebrates its independthe masses, as in the films of the legendary Tamil actor
ence day.
M G Ramachandran (MGR) and others of his ilk
The Kingdom of Sarawak, located on the island
By choosing to
who ruled the Tamil cinema of yore.
of Borneo, was established in 1841 by James
ignore any sort of
Rajinikanths films draw audiences from all
Brooke who was granted the landmass of Sarawak
historical setting
sections
of society, irrespective of gender, even
as a reward for helping the Sultanate of Brunei
or context, Ranjith
though female characters ordinarily have only
fight piracy and insurgency among the indigenous
and Rajinikanth
minor roles in his films. Usually what connects
peoples. Sarawaks identity as a sovereign country
sacrificed critical
his films with the local masses is the humble
was first recognised by the United States in 1850
interest for mere
origin of his heroes. Interestingly enough, in most
and then by the United Kingdom in 1863. Sarawak
sloganeering
of his films Rajinikanth enacts the role of a Hindu
gained its independence from the British on 22
hero, and temples play an important part in them. Kabali is
July 1963 and formed the Federation of Malaysia together
no exception.
with Singapore, North Borneo and the Federation of Malaya
The film would have received a more rousing reception
on 16 September 1963.
had director Ranjith situated it in a historical context right at
The plot of Kabali is set against this sociopolitical backthe beginning. The history of Tamil migration to Malaysia
ground, hopefully with the intention of foregrounding the
dates back to the precolonial era. For the British, India was
hardships and achievements of the Tamil population in Maalso a land from where they could export cheap labour to
laysia. Today 90% of Malaysian Indians are Tamilians, who
work in their plantations in different parts of the world. A
enjoy considerable clout in the economic and political
large number of immigrants from Tamil Nadu had worked
spheres of the country. Yet, in Kabali, there was little attempt
Sans History, Sans Style
78
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
POSTSCRIPT
FILMS
in the plantations of the White Rajhas in the Malaysian

island. Kabaleeswarans surge as a leader begins with the
struggle for equal wages in one such plantation site of the
White Rajhas, a dynastic monarchy of the Brooke family,
when he speaks to the White Rajha in English, claiming that
Tamils work harder than the Chinese, and threatens to strike
if their demands are not met.
Ranjith would have probably presumed that the popularity
of the superstar would automatically ensure critical acclaim
for his film. But in Kabali, unlike in his earlier films, the
superstar appears weak in style, action and speech. Generally
most Rajinikanth films are replete with his landmark, characteristically flamboyant gestures and antics, which many of
his fans mimic. Kabali, however, does not offer anything of
that sort. Even in the speech he delivers to the inmates of the
Free Life Foundation School, we fail to see the bombastic
Rajinikanth of yesteryear.
In Chennai on 22 July, the date of the release of the film,
several private companies declared a holiday, many parents
kept kids away from schools and government offices in
the city recorded extremely low attendanceall these
indicated the expectations of the masses of cinemagoers. By
choosing to ignore any sort of historical setting or context,
Ranjith and Rajinikanth sacrificed critical interest for mere
sloganeering. They wrongfully assumed that the masses
could reflexively connect with the political and historical
events of a foreign land. They also fallaciously assumed that
the hero is above the film.
Aju Aravind (aaravind13@gmail.com) is Assistant Professor at the Department of
Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology (Indian School of Mines),
Dhanbad, Jharkhand.
EPW
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
79
POSTSCRIPT
BOOKS
A Cussed Letdown
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, the latest offering
in the saga of magic and wizardry created by
British author J K Rowling, is a disappointment in
its own right.
Srishti Chaudhary
ne of the better terms to describe Harry Potter and

the Cursed Child is author-sanctioned fan fiction.
In reality, the eighth story19 years after the
release of the first novel, Harry Potter and the Philosophers
Stoneis fan fiction that has been blessed by J K Rowling. It
has been written by Jack Thorne, but the story has been conceptualised by Rowling, with the help of Thorne and John
Tiffany. Its safe to assume then that Rowling must have had
the final veto as well, when it came to wrapping up the twopart West End stage play, for she is the ultimate authority of
the creative process.
EPW
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
When reading the play script, it is best not to expect it to be

a literal eighth story in the Harry Potter saga, hoping it to
continue with that magical experience where the seventh
book endedfor the simple reason that this is a play
and not a novel. If we are to believe that the medium is the
message, then it must be read differently; there will be no
beautiful paragraphs describing the many eccentricities of
the magical world, no third-person voice to narrate whats
happening in the background, no descriptions of the body
language of the characters.
As a play, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child is quite a disappointment. The characters, who I had always held in the
highest regard, failed to move me; the dialogue lacked depth;
the humour was lame and forced; and the plot unnecessarily
convoluted and relying on earlier tropes of reinstating the
Dark Lord.
Given that there are reams of some really good fan fiction
circulating in the literary world, this one, sanctioned by
Rowling herself, not only does not quite live up to their
standards, but also fails to come off as an interesting read.
Not having seen the play enacted live on stage, I cannot comment on its theatrical possibilities; the book, however, quite
simply dashed all hopes.
The dialogues sound especially
Nothing can spoil
forced,
coming from the old charthe memory of
acters:
Ron
is not funny; Hermione
Harry Potter and
is
rather
obnoxious
and preachy;
the depth and
and
Harry
sounds
as
if
he finally let
richness with which
the
fame
go
to
his
head.
The one
the series was
person
who
sounded
a
bit
plausible
written, least of all
was Ginny, and that was only bea play which seems
cause we didnt see very much of
more like an inane,
her in the series, and she seems to
alternate reality
have now developed a personality
as opposed to the
in the play. Draco has none of his
eighth story in a
old flair, and McGonagall doesnt
series of magical
inspire the same awe.
fantasy
The new characters, on the other
hand, come off slightly better, primarily because we didnt
know them earlier, which goes to show that we cant help
but compare the play to the earlier books (which is only
fair, considering the publishers call it the eighth story).
Scorpius Malfoy is delightful, and even the growing pains of
Albus Potter are understandable. Delphi, to be sure, is
downright comical.
The storys premise takes off on a bad notethe dysfunctional relationship between Albus Potter and Harry Potter is
not believable, and not because Harry cant be a bad father
(he totally can) but because the other two children of
Harrys do not suffer the same burden of their fathers fame
as he does. That kind of baggage mostly always comes in
lieu of being the only child/son. The few glimpses we have
of James Potter show him as a merry little kid, and the
same goes for Lily. However, James and Lily, despite being
79
POSTSCRIPT
BOOKS
mentioned at the beginning, disappear later on in the plot,

which is disappointing considering that they too could have
played important roles in the story.
The plot might have had potential but it was very badly
built up. While in the main Harry Potter series, each plots
turns and twists are justified, and later on tied up with
overall story, the entire plot in Harry Potter and the Cursed
Child struggles for plausibility. The twists and turns of the
time-travelling plotthe main narrativedevice have so
many problems that we really wonder how Rowling gave the
go-ahead for this as it tends to rather trivialise the delightful,
magical world earlier created by her.
There are some saving graces, though, like the relationship between Albus Potter and Scorpius Malfoy, one of the
few believable creations in the play. Additionally, Albus Potter
being sorted in Slytherin also broke the traditional stereotypes of Slytherin (bad) and Gryffindor (good) in the Harry
Potter universe, and frankly, may quite well be among the
best portions of the play.
Harry Potter and the Cursed Child was like an old tape
playing, the one you wish you hadnt found; yet Im surprised
when I hear people complaining that it will spoil their
memories of Harry Potter.
Are you kidding me? Nothing can spoil the memory of
Harry Potter and the depth and richness with which the
series was written, least of all a play which seems more
like an inane, alternate reality as opposed to the eighth
story in a series of magical fantasy. Rowling may have given
Jack Thorne the right to take the story into such weird
directions, but the time has gone when Harry Potter belonged to her alone. Loved by millions of readers, Harry Potter has a life of his own, just as the series itself does. Its up
to us to fathom the magic and believe in the wizarding
world of Harry Potter, and not be bogged down by what has
been shown and given.
Srishti Chaudhary can be contacted at srishti.chaudhary2@gmail.com.
80
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW
POSTSCRIPT
POEM
Somewhere But Here

Sahana Mukherjee
When you first wrote to me

of the man in the sun,
I took him to be a soldier.
So, I put out the light. I fell
asleep. I dreamt mine fields
of love. Mundane, youd smirked,
and wrote to me again:
What did you think of my man in the sun?
I thought of August,
I told you, and all my poems
on rain, how they cut down
branches of my tree in
Summer. I thought of Tigris
and Euphrates, how they form
Shat al-Arab and time stood
still between us.
About your man in the sun,
I only dreamt. How does he die?
I wanted to ask.
But, before you could reach out,
and speak differently,
I read the end of your letter:
In your country and mine, old men smoke water pipes.
As a child, I was scared of thunder as you wondered
whether Mother was safe at work. But, in your country,
unlike mine, you dont get shot under order, at sight.
While dying inside water tanks, we dont even cry out
for help. We dont know how to thump on walls.
We are but linked by paper, after all, and paper,
as you know, burns here throughout the night.
(For Ghassan Kanafani)
Sahana Mukherjee (sahanamukherjee95@gmail.com) is an undergraduate
student at the Department of English, Jadavpur University. Her poems have
previously been published in Muse India, Bangalore Review, Cafe Dissensus and
Coldnoon Diaries.
80
october 8, 2016
vol lI no 41
EPW

35 - Oct 08

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

35 - Oct 08

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

LETTERS

Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

Economic and Political Weekly

EPW Research Foundation

We stand in solidarity with the courageous faculty members and students

Power to Dalits through

fter reading the article Women Break

Economic & Political Weekly

development of below poverty line (BPL)

Omitting Tamil Literature

n the book review On the Origin and

According to the National Human

better health facilities for patients. The

Arup Kumar Sen

Beware the Dalit Fury

his is with reference to the article,

nce upon a time, there was a steel

am grateful to Amiya K Bagchi for

New Subscription Rates

Print Edition For India

Web Edition/Digital Archives

Rates for Six Months (in Rs)

Print (Plus free web access to issues of previous two years)

Print + Digital Archives

Rates for One Year (in Rs)

Print (Plus free web access

Print + Digital Archives

Rest of the World (in US $)

Rates for Three Years (in Rs)

Print (Plus free web access to

Print + Digital Archives

Airmail Subscription for One Year (in US $)

Concessional rates are restricted to students in India. To subscribe at concessional rates,

Print (Plus free web access to issues

Types of Web Access to the Digital Archives

banking on our secure site at www.epw.in.

Notes for Contributors

Articles accepted for publication can take up to

invites short contributions to the Commentary

Writers are requested to provide full details for

Authors are requested to list six to eight keywords

EPW posts all published articles on its website

Permission for Reproduction

No published article or part thereof should be

encourages researchers to comment on

Economic & Political Weekly

Economic & Political Weekly

Tale of Indias War on Terror

nited States (US) Secretary of State John Kerry had

Security Advisor Susan Rice with her Indian counterpart,

attack on its military base at Uri on 18 September, without even

Hindutvavadi communal patriotism, typical of this brand of

Economic & Political Weekly

ust a fortnight before it was due to host a summit that

feared that a regional grouping could become little more than

Economic & Political Weekly

he Karnataka governments defiance of the Supreme Courts

Economic & Political Weekly

These widely divergent orders take little note of the actual

From 50 Years Ago

Concern for the Public

political role. Since the objective was to get at

The Cauvery Water Dispute