NDC-CONTROVERSY

PLANNING

Direct democracy?

ERA SEZHIYAN

The National Development Council, which has been reduced to a “No-Debate Club”, played a significant role in making planning a participative process in the early decades of Independence.

R.V. MOORTHY 

Tamil Nadu Chief Minister Jayalalithaa during the 57th National Development Council Meeting at Vigyan Bhavan in New Delhi on December 27, 2012. She walked out of the meeting accusing the Centre of stifling the voice of the States.

In contrast to the popular notion regarding Jawaharlal Nehru’s role in planning, it may be noted that Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose as Congress president emphasised the objectives of planning in independent India. In his presidential address at the Haripura (Gujarat) session of the Congress on February 19-21, 1938, he declared: “I have no doubt in my mind that our chief national problems relating to eradication of poverty, illiteracy and disease and to scientific production and distribution can be effectively tackled only along the socialistic lines. The very first thing which our future national government will have to do would be to set up a Commission for drawing up a comprehensive plan of reconstruction.” In October 1938, he set up the Congress Planning Committee with Nehru as its Chairman. However, the committee could not pursue its work, with the Second World War beginning in 1939 and the Congress party proceeding with its Quit India struggle in August 1942, when most of its leaders and active members were incarcerated.

The British regime established a Planning Board as a part of the government that functioned from 1944 to 1946. Industrialists and economists independently formulated at least three development plans in 1944.

However, after India attained independence, it was left to Prime Minister Nehru to adopt a formal model of planning and to establish, on March 15, 1950, the Planning Commission by a resolution of the Union Cabinet.

At the suggestion of the Planning Commission in the Draft Outline of the First Five Year Plan, the National Development Council (NDC) was formed to be “a forum at which, from time to time, the Prime Minister of India and the Chief Ministers of the States can review the working of the Plan and of its various aspects”.

The Union Cabinet again, by a resolution, established on August 6, 1952, the NDC to perform the following functions:

(i) To review the working of the National Plan from time to time;

(ii) To consider important questions of social and economic policy affecting national development; and

(iii) To recommend measures for the achievement of the aims and targets set out in the National Plan, including measures to secure the active participation and cooperation of the people, improve the efficiency of the administrative services, ensure the fullest development of the less advanced regions and sections of the community and, through sacrifices borne equally by all citizens, build up resources for national development.

The NDC consists of the Prime Minister, Chief Ministers of the States and members of the Planning Commission, but its meetings are usually attended by others as well, particularly by Ministers of the Central government with an interest in the item included in its agenda and, at times, by experts called to give advice.

It may be noted that neither the Planning Commission nor the NDC has derived its creation from the Constitution or from a statute of Parliament.

Administrative Reforms Commission

The Administrative Reforms Commission (ARC) was established on January 5, 1966, by the Government of India to give recommendations by reviewing the public administration systems in India. The ARC was initially chaired by Morarji Desai. When he became Deputy Prime Minister in 1967, K. Hanumanthaiya, MP, became the Chairman of the ARC.

The ARC set up a Study Team with Chairman R.R. Morarka, a senior Congress MP, to “study the machinery of planning at all levels, that is, planning organisation and procedures at the Centre and in the States and the relationship of the Planning Commission at the Centre and the planning agencies in the States with other agencies”.

The Morarka Study Team made a thorough examination of the planning procedures and practices by holding 38 meetings with prominent persons, including party leaders, Chief Ministers and industrial magnates, and submitted its final report in December 1967.

The role and importance of the NDC in the formulation of planning on the whole was emphasised unequivocally by the Study Team Report thus:

“One of the major deficiencies in plan formulation procedures as they have worked in the past is that there is little communication between the planners at the Centre and planners in the States during evolution of their thinking on Plan programmes and policies” (Para 1.72).

About the important role of the NDC, the Study Team Report of 1967 on ‘Machinery of Planning’ affirmed: “We have already recommended in our Interim Report that the National Development Council should operate more continuously and systematically than has been the case in the past. This further involves that the NDC and its sub-committees should be utilised much more regularly as instruments of communication as well as consultation between the States and the Centre. It will perhaps not be inappropriate to mention here that no worthwhile consultation is possible if discussion papers are made available to participants at the last minute. A number of persons in the States, both at the political and the official levels, have mentioned this as one of the reasons for the deliberations of the NDC not being sufficiently effective” (Para 1.73).

The most important recommendations and suggestions made by the Morarka Study Team cannot be brushed aside, especially its recommendation that “the National Development Council should operate more continuously and systematically than has been the case in the past”. This needs to be considered and followed more at the present time.

The ARC formed in 1966 a Study Team on ‘Centre-State Relationships’ with M.C. Setalvad as its Chairman. Setalvad was an eminent jurist who became the first and longest serving Attorney General of India (1950-1963).

In its Introduction itself, the report of the Study Team presented a masterly analysis of the Centre-State relationships in utilising the instruments of the Planning Commission and the NDC. Below are some of the important excerpts from the report:

“Relations between the Centre and the States range over a wide area. They cover, but are not confined to, the entire field of administration and in fact overstep it into that of politics. Politics and administration are inseparable in the sense that the administration is meant to give effect to politically determined programmes and policies. But politics concerns itself also with the pursuit of power, an activity that stretches beyond the legitimate confines of administration. Of late the term ‘Centre-State relationships’ has often been used to connote the attitudes, actions and interactions of the parties in power at the Centre and in the States” (P.1).

“Centre-State relationship even in this sense can have a political nexus the nuances of which are not derived from the Constitution. This is an aspect that has assumed an acute form since the last general elections with the eclipse in several States of the party that rules at the Centre…. It is well to recognise that the political facts of the Indian scene have played a major role in development of attitudes. Where a single party has control over affairs at the Centre as well as in the States, an alternative and extra-constitutional channel becomes available for the operation of Centre-State relationships. In practice this channel has been very active during Congress party rule and has governed the tenor of Centre-State relationships. The political network connecting Centre and State leadership was used amply to resolve conflict and ease tension or even postpone consideration of inconvenient issues. In the process the Constitution was not violated, at least not deliberately or demonstrably, but was often bypassed…. Constitutional provisions went into disuse and disputes were settled in the party rather than aired through open constitutional machinery. Party prestige and party discipline worked out rather than governmental or constitutional solution” (P. 1&2).

“From the constitutional angle the situation was abnormal.... The emergence of non-Congress governments in the States has accordingly forced the problem to the forefront for the earlier political devices are no longer available…. The Constitution is clearly meant to be worked even in a multiparty situation which should be seen not as problem of Centre-State but as a normal background for their interplay” (P. 2).

About the lack of proper preparation and insufficient time allotted for the Chief Ministers in NDC meetings, the Study Team stated: “The NDC provides the Planning Commission with its most important sounding board, and the deliberations of this body give some indication of extent to which the States are prepared to accept centrally determined priorities. The Council, therefore, exercises an influence on the planning process which may not be perfectly revealed in the planning documents…. The Council meets for a day or two and, as a rule, cannot meet for longer, for the Chief Ministers are busy men. In this short period it takes up a number of important and complex issues. The organisation of these meetings is such that the Chief Ministers are left with hardly any time to study the papers, grasp the implications of all the proposals and come to conclusions after considering the different aspects of each problem” (Para 6.10).

Role of the NDC

About the conditions to make planning a truly national endeavour, the Study Team made the following recommendations about the dimensions of the role of the NDC:

“(1) All basic questions of planning policy, particularly those pertaining to goals and objectives, alternative frameworks, strategy and crucial sectors should be placed squarely before the National Developmental Council in time and debated there;

(2) The Council should give the highest importance to these basic issues to help arrive at a national consensus keeping the national good in view;

(3) The Council should be assisted by a standing advisory committee consisting of official advisers from each State, the Central Ministries concerned and the Planning Commission” (Para 6.13).

These reports were submitted 45 years ago and Centre-State relations have since worsened alarmingly.

On the basis of the observations and recommendations of the Report of the Study Team on ‘Centre-State Relationships’ and some earlier reports on the same subject, members of the ARC prepared their report. At that time, the Chairman of the ARC was the senior Congress leader and MP, K. Hanumanthaiya, former Chief Minister of Karnataka.

In its report, the ARC observed: “In our anxiety, however, to sustain and strengthen the unity of India, we should not think of indiscriminately concentrating all administrative power with the Union. There are two levels in the Indian governmental edifice—one, constitutional, and the other, administrative. So far as the constitutional structure is concerned, the Centre must have powers to safeguard the unity of India and to make any recalcitrant State conform to the concept of Indian unity. At the administrative level, over-concentration of authority should be avoided…. Concentration of administrative powers at a distant Centre tends to breed inefficiency and resentment, which in turn sets the minds of the people against the Centre” (P.5).

Further, the ARC cautioned: “A single party in control over affairs at the Centre as well as in the States with a powerful leadership at the Centre provided an alternative and extra-constitutional channel for the settlement of Centre-State problems. But this position has changed after the General Elections of 1967” (P. 6).

The above caustic remarks about “a distant Centre” and setting “the minds of the people against the Centre” were said not by any anti-Congress man to disturb the unity of India, but by the ardent and distinguished Congress leader Hanumanthaiya.

His mention of single-party control of power has become a forgotten part of political history of India. After 1989, the Congress party—or any other party—has never got a simple majority to form a government by itself at the Centre. However, once in power with alliances before or after the general elections, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.

NDC meetings

It may be noted that as long as Nehru was Prime Minister and Chairman of the Planning Commission, meetings of the NDC were held continuously for two days, and often times there were four such two-day meetings in a year. In the NDC meetings held during the time of Nehru, he allowed a large number of participants to express their views without setting any time limit.

Above all, during his 17 years (August 15, 1947-May 27, 1964), Prime Minister Nehru held 20 NDC meetings, of which 16 were two-day meetings and the rest were single-day ones, thus on the whole covering 36 days.

Regarding the NDC meetings held by Nehru, there was a curious coincidence that he presided over the first NDC meeting on November 8 and 9, 1952, and his last one was the 20th NDC meeting on November 8 and 9 1963, exactly after 11 years on the same month and date.

Dr Manmohan Singh was Deputy Chairman of the Planning Commission from January 15, 1985 to August 31, 1987. During this period of two and a half years, he held the 38th meeting of the NDC on November 8 and 9, 1985 and the next meeting, a one-day session, on April 29, 1986. No NDC meetings were held between April 30, 1984 and August 31, 1987.

Manmohan Singh has been Prime Minister since May 22, 2004. It may be noted that part of the 10th Five Year Plan (2002–2007) and the 11th Five Year Plan (2007-2011) in full have come during his prime ministerial tenure. One two-day meeting of the NDC was held on June 27 and 28 in 2005; but during the rest of the period, from 2006 to 2012, there have been only one-day NDC meetings every year. Either he does not have time or has no need for such two-day meetings to allow all the members of the NDC to express themselves fully.

Incidentally, the Union government has made Planning Commission an institution of ‘Planned Commissions and Omissions’ and converted the NDC into a ‘No Debate Club’.

On the website of the Planning Commission, there is an appeal, ‘Comments and Suggestions solicited’ on the matter given below, about ‘Approach to the Twelfth Five Year Plan’:

“To develop an inclusive and participative approach to the process, the Planning Commission has decided that the Approach Paper will be evolved through a web-based consultative process in which all interested persons can participate. We have developed a multi-dimensional strategy matrix which indicates some of the key areas we need to explore.

We invite your comments on any or all of these areas.

Any interested person can participate. Help us plan for a better future for the country.

You may send suggestions at approach-plan@nic.in”.

The Planning Commission seems to revert to the age-old direct democracy procedure practised in the panchayats of ancient India and in the Athenian democracy spelt out in Greek as dêmos (meaning ‘people’) and krátos (meaning ‘power’) as direct democracy wanted the direct participation of every citizen in the governance of a region without relying on the intermediaries, or elected representatives.

Beware! If direct democracy is adopted in India, it will cause the immediate ousting of all Ministers and members of the Central and State legislatures.

Era Sezhiyan is a former Member of the Lok Sabha.

urbanisation model -jayati ghosh

How not to urbanise

JAYATI GHOSH

The model of urban development that has been adopted recently in China takes little from the preserving and conserving approaches found in Europe that provide aesthetic value, pleasant public spaces for residents and varying and mixed use of urban locations.

VIKTOR KOROTAYEV/REUTERS 

Tomb No. 1, the largest of three pits where China's army of terracotta soldiers were buried, at the museum located about 40 km from the ancient capital of Xi'an in central China.

Xi’an is a central China city with long historical roots, dating at least three millennia. For much of its history the city has also been of exceptional contemporary importance, as 13 different (and significant) dynasties made it their capital. The current site is close to the city of the first Emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, in the first century B.C., whose awe-inspiring (and mostly still buried) mausoleum with thousands of terracotta figures of humans and animals remains one of the most remarkable wonders of the world. In the 7th century A.D. it was (as Changan) the capital of the extensive and prosperous empire created by the Tang dynasty. One of the largest metropolises of that time, it was home to at least a million people and the vibrant end point of the famous Silk Route.

In China, Xi’an is known as the eternal city, and it has indeed recorded the great changes that have swept the country for thousands of years. Visitors are inevitably attracted to the site of the terracotta warriors, as they are known, but they also come to see some of the remaining famous relics of the Tang era: the Changan city walls, the Bell Tower and Drum Tower, the Wild Goose Pagoda built to house the Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts brought from India back to China by the Buddhist traveller Xuanzang.

With such a long and variegated history, visitors can be forgiven for expecting to see at least some of the various historical phases reflected in the architecture of the city, with perhaps an “old town” that preserves some of the flavour of the past and certainly monuments and buildings of varied vintages dotting the city. But they will be disappointed, even in a place so full of potential heritage locations. Other than a few individual monuments randomly surrounded by the usual urban confusion and one charming “Muslim street” full of traditional street food and craft, Xi’an bears little trace of its once glorious past.

Instead, the city is typical of most of urban China today: endless skylines of high-rise buildings of almost unrelenting sameness and persistent ugliness. The greyness of the concrete structures is matched by the greyness of the polluted air, as huge but congested avenues of concentric ring roads intersecting radial grids mark out separated areas for different districts that all still look just the same. The only colour comes from neon signs, as green spaces are few and far between, and the very vastness of the proliferating monotony of the buildings creates a sense of constriction.

The model of urban development that has been adopted recently in China takes little from the preserving and conserving approaches found in Europe that provide aesthetic value, pleasant public spaces for residents and varying and mixed use of urban locations. Instead, it copies the model of the United States where entire cities of segregated segments were created out of dusty plains where there was little to preserve in the first place. In contemporary China, the modern and the urban are seen as necessarily “new”, which typically implies the destruction of older buildings without much regard for their individuality and little desire to create variegated and heterogeneous urban settlements.

Because of this orientation, the drabness and uniformity of the greater number of spanking new cities and towns in China today are startling. But this may reflect the sheer scale and rapidity of the entire project of urbanisation. It coincides with one of the most rapid and extensive processes of urbanisation in human history. Since 1980, more than 500 million people in China have moved to cities and towns. By 2011, more than half of China’s population lived in urban areas, a transition that occurred much more quickly than anyone expected. At current rates, it is projected that more than a billion people will live in urban China by 2030.

DERMOT TATLOW 

At the main shopping district in Shanghai, a 2002 photograph. It is projected that more than a billion people will live in urban China by 2030.

This reflects a major policy change, from the state strictly controlling migration to gradually loosening the internal controls that have prevented people from moving from their place of birth. For much of its post-revolution history, the Chinese government (unlike in India where people were always free to move across States and urban and rural areas) used the household registration system or hukou as residence permits that served to define people’s rights, including the right to reside in particular localities and their abilities to access their entitlements as citizens. From the 1980s, some controls on movement of people to live and work in other areas were progressively lifted, although rural migrants still typically lack many of the rights and public entitlements that those with urban hukou take for granted.

In the 1980s and 1990s, urbanisation was allowed rather than encouraged. It was only in the 2000s that the massive public investments that generated the newer expansion of cities and towns really flourished. The current regime is explicitly pro-urbanisation, and has taken it as both a goal and a challenge.

It is hard to separate the processes of urbanisation and industrialisation in China: the two have definitely fed off each other, making demand and supply variables also hard to distinguish as the urban construction boom led to more migrant jobs. The cities of the southeastern coast were the first to experience the great waves of rural-urban migration associated with industrialisation. The architecture reflected this, mimicking what was seen as the most “modern” in the developed Western world in the form of a concentration of upward thrusting buildings, often so similar in imitative design as to seem like optical illusions.

The past decade has seen a significant geographical spread across the country of this relatively unimaginative design of urban spaces. Whether it is Harbin in the cold north-east of China or Chongqing in the west-central region or Tianjin near the capital Beijing, all new urban development is similar, based on the proliferation of repetitive concrete structures (with the occasional glass building) so that it is really hard to distinguish one city from another. In the process, the past has been unceremoniously trashed, except for a few iconic buildings here and there, and the less regimented and more colourful neighbourhoods that characterised the residential patterns of the working class have been bulldozed and turned into a series of new Lego-lookalikes.

A new book by Tom Miller ( China’s Urban Billion: The story behind the biggest migration in human history, Zed Books 2012) captures this extraordinary process that is simultaneously impressive and depressing. Miller notes that in terms of both speed and extent, the urbanisation of land has far outpaced the urbanisation of people: since 1980, the urban population has increased by 120 per cent, but the amount of land that can be classified as urban because its built-up space has increased by more than 300 per cent.

A lot of this is occurring at breakneck speed. For example, Pudong—the megacity across the river from older Shanghai—emerged into a full-fledged and densely populated urban conglomeration modelled physically on Manhattan in less than a decade. Some cities are expanding so rapidly that they are doubling their population in a decade and their land area in even less time. This has definitely been associated with declining poverty and improved economic conditions for millions of people. But there is a downside as well.

Urban ugliness and unremitting architectural monotony are only some of the negative fallouts of this speedy transition. While the rural-urban migration has lifted many boats, it has done so unevenly, and involved deteriorating or more fragile conditions for many, both older residents and newer (typically younger) migrants. The economic model generates problems of pollution, congestion and over-extraction of natural resources that are making this process unsustainable. And this boom is also closely associated with rapidly increasing inequalities and a growing urban underclass.

To the casual visitor to China, this may seem surprising. Chinese cities do not seem to have the festering slums and destitute urban underclass that are so openly evident in countries such as Brazil or Nigeria, and do not show the obvious contrasts between glittering opulence and degraded squalor that characterise Indian cities. But, in fact, China’s urbanisation has also generated slums, albeit those that are more effectively hidden from public view and more confined to a shifting migrant category. Some are shanty areas, others are crowded and hastily built apartment blocks, but the control over movement and social mobility render them more amenable to repression and easier to keep out of public sight. This may be another reason why Miller argues that “China’s cities will continue to shock and awe —but they will struggle to inspire hearts and minds.”

Clearly, a more inclusive, less polluting and congested, and more healthy and pleasant model of urban development is required. Otherwise, China risks becoming a country where the inequality gets solidified in its urban structures: with “pockets of extreme wealth and an educated middle class, but whose cities teem with enormous slums and suppurate with entrenched social divisions”. In turn, what happens in China matters not only for that country, since China is currently seen as a model worthy of emulation by so many developing countries. For a really sustainable and attractive urban future, we all need a very different model.

dangers of austerity-jayati ghosh

Dangers of austerity

JAYATI GHOSH

The widespread acceptance of the goal of fiscal austerity is bad news for macroeconomic rebalancing that would allow recovery in the currently deficit countries.

It may be true that there is nothing new under the sun: it certainly feels like that when it comes to economic policy debates. The debate on the need for fiscal austerity in India is now particularly tiresome because it has gone on for the better part of three decades, spurred by governments that declare their intention to balance budgets even when their actions hardly suggest such an inclination. But the debate moves from being simply tiresome to becoming actually dangerous when it determines policies that encourage economic contraction rather than recovery while simultaneously reducing the kinds of public spending that deliver citizens their social and economic rights. The currently dominant view in the economics profession (not just in India, but also in major developed economies) is that fiscal austerity in the midst of a slowdown is to be welcomed because it will reduce macroeconomic imbalances and provide positive signals to private investors. It is this— along with an excessive obsession with containing government debt to gross domestic product (GDP) ratios to some supposedly acceptable level—that is driving the attempts to cut public spending in many parts of the world even as GDP growth decelerates and unemployment increases.

This argument has a long history: it was the basis of the so-called “Treasury view” in England in the 1920s and 1930s that Keynes demolished so effectively. Unfortunately, despite the flaws in reasoning of that approach, it did not die a natural death. Rather, it re-emerged with even greater force in the closing decades of the last century, aided actively by financial interests that sought to reduce the role of the state in different ways. Notwithstanding a very brief flirtation with Keynesian recovery policies just after the Great Recession of 2008, the “Treasury view” is not only alive and well but even dominates macroeconomic policy thinking in a wide range of developed and developing countries.

Globally, it is evident that fiscal tightening in stressed economies is self-defeating. By reducing GDP growth and thereby fiscal revenues, it makes economic recovery more difficult and is counterproductive in terms of improving fiscal indicators. It is difficult if not impossible to reduce debt to GDP ratios in a period when the rate of interest on debt far exceeds the nominal growth rate.

Further, widespread acceptance of the goal of fiscal austerity (as evidenced in the European Union’s recent agreement on budget rules) is bad news for macroeconomic rebalancing that would allow recovery in the currently deficit countries. Trade surplus countries show no willingness to reduce surpluses or enlarge fiscal deficit, and this bodes ill for global growth prospects. What will drive growth—globally and nationally —when countries persist in following austerity programmes that cut incomes and demand?

It is true that not all major capitalist countries have followed such a counterproductive strategy. In this context the contrast between the United States and the United Kingdom after 2008 is instructive. The Barack Obama administration followed the massive financial bailouts with significant increases in the fiscal deficit. One can argue about their size, direction and scope, but even so the weight of this countercyclical spending operated to prevent a further downslide and allowed some recovery of both output and employment. By contrast, the U.K. chose the path of austerity— largely self-imposed since it is not a member of the eurozone and did not face the same external constraints of some of the eurozone deficit countries. The U.K. economy is still limping along at levels of output and employment that are well below pre-crisis levels.

Greek tragedy

The tragic—and ongoing—experience of Greece confirms this analysis. The aggressive cutbacks in public spending forced on the Greek government by successive bailout packages of the European Union-International Monetary Fund (E.U.-IMF) worsened the macroeconomic situation to such an extent that the economy has been contracting for the last five years. The rate of decline has far exceeded the most pessimistic projections of the IMF or the E.U. Since tax revenues can hardly improve in this situation even with the most sweeping attempts at improved collection, fiscal balances cannot improve, even with further harsh public spending cuts. And the ratios of public debt to GDP continue to deteriorate, simply because the denominator is falling so rapidly. This, in turn, keeps the yields on Greek government bonds high, which makes it harder and more expensive for the Greek government to finance any planned spending. In this extreme case, the only solution must come from a combination of debt restructuring and expansionary policies, including higher public spending. Quite simply, the Greek economy has to grow out of the crisis; pushing it further into contraction can only make matters worse.

All this international experience is not just a matter of idle curiosity about the rest of the world but one that has direct relevance for India. It is particularly relevant today because all the signs are that the government intends to push for fiscal austerity even as the economy slows down. There is already evidence that the Finance Minister is attempting to prevent the fiscal deficit from going much beyond his projections by clamping down on expenditure in the remainder of the current fiscal year, reducing the release of financial flows to Ministries and State governments through a variety of methods. It is not yet official, but fiscal austerity is already being introduced in practice.

Meanwhile, the economic downswing is more than just straws in the wind. GDP growth has decelerated quite sharply. It is likely to be only 5 per cent for the year from April 2012 to March 2013 if the CSO’s latest projections are to be believed, and maybe slightly more if the Finance Ministry is correct in assuming some revival in the last quarter. Industrial production has been flat over the financial year so far, growing at only 0.1 per cent at an annual rate. Mining (-1.5 per cent) and capital goods production (-11 per cent) have both fallen absolutely over April-November 2012 compared with the same period in the previous year. Agriculture is also likely to perform poorly: on current projections foodgrain output (estimated to be 118 million tonnes) will fall by around 6 million tonnes in 2012-13 compared with the previous year, and the poor winter rain suggests that the final harvest may be worse.

Meanwhile, inflation still remains unacceptably high, with the wholesale price index (WPI) increasing at more than 7 per cent per annum and the consumer price index (CPI) still at double digit levels, hitting 11 per cent for the month of December 2012 over December 2011. Food inflation has recently accelerated again and is more than 9 per cent. Despite the slowdown, the trade deficit has worsened, reflecting the headwinds from global export deceleration.

Some officials claim that all this is proof that the imbalances in the economy are too high and need to be restrained by cutting down on the deficit by reducing public spending. In fact, this strategy is likely to be counterproductive, especially if—as seems likely—the fiscal cutbacks are directed towards areas with high multiplier effects, such as public service provision and “welfare” schemes. Cutting down on these is not just bad from the perspective of ensuring better conditions for the mass of people but politically stupid in a pre-election year. It is also wrong macroeconomics because it adds further downward pressure on an economy that is already slowing down.

In any case, in the presence of unutilised capacity and unemployment, more spending does not have to generate higher deficits as the increased incomes will also cause government revenues to rise. In the case of sectors with apparent supply constraints, such as agriculture, spending designed to reduce these bottlenecks can have positive results.

Cost-push inflation

The idea that it is necessary to cut the fiscal deficit in order to control inflation is also wrong in the current situation because much of the inflation—particularly in food items—is of the cost-push variety. But many of the government’s moves have been such as to increase these cost-push factors. The diesel price hike is an important case in point that exposes the contradictory nature of this strategy. The government says that it wants to meet fiscal targets in order to fight high inflation that is eating into the real incomes of workers and salaried persons.

Yet it attempts to do this by cutting subsidies on energy and food, which lead directly to higher prices and also contribute indirectly to more inflation because fuel enters into all other prices. This policy obviously cannot succeed and will only intensify the inflationary pressure.

Of course, it may be naive to believe that all this is happening simply because the Indian government (along with some others) has been persuaded by a wrong economic theory. It may well be that this really reflects the continuing political power of financial lobbies and those who wish for cutbacks in public spending so that there is more freedom for private profit-oriented activity in these areas. But even such interests are mistaken if they think that private corporate activity can flourish in such a context of wider economic decline.

standard and poors-financial regulation

No standards, not poor

C.P. CHANDRASEKHAR

The rising tide of litigation in the U.S. against ratings agencies could force an end to, if not lead to an overhaul of, a system that makes scores provided by a paid examiner the basis for financial regulation.

BRENDAN MCDERMID/REUTERS 

A view of Standard & Poor's building in New York's financial district on February 5. The U.S. government is seeking more than $5 billion in a lawsuit against the rating agency over mortgage bond ratings.

In early February, the Department of Justice (DoJ) of the United States government—represented by the United States Attorney General and supported by Attorneys General from 16 states—filed civil fraud charges against the ratings giant Standard & Poor’s. S&P is the largest of the big three agencies—the other two being Moody’s and Fitch—which, for a fee, take on the task of assessing securities of different kinds issued by financial firms to determine how risky and robust they are.

The charges were not minor. The DoJ argues that for more than three years, between September 2004 and October 2007, S&P “knowingly and with the intent to defraud, devised, participated in, and executed a scheme to defraud investors” in mortgage-related securities. This was the period when S&P was raking in huge earnings by granting high ratings to complex and opaque derivatives named “collateralised debt obligations” (CDOs) based on mortgage bonds. The DoJ’s case reportedly focuses on 40 such CDOs created at the height of the U.S. mortgage bubble, the rating of which gave S&P $13 million in fees. These bonds went bust, resulting in losses to investors. The DoJ claims that S&P not only knew this could happen when it gave them high ratings or left them unrevised, but it also misinformed investors by arguing that its ratings “were objective, independent, uninfluenced by any conflicts of interest.”

Progress on punishing institutions seen as responsible for the 2008 crisis has been slow. So it has not just been business as usual for these firms; they are now doing things that seem substantially aimed at regaining the credibility they lost in the aftermath of the crisis. The most controversial of these was S&P’s decision to downgrade the long-term credit rating of the U.S. from AAA to AA+ in August last year during the standoff between Democrats and Republicans over ratifying an increase in the prevailing ceiling on U.S. public debt.

But now the heat is finally on with the DoJ charging that “contrary to its representations to the public, S&P’s desire for increased revenue and market share in the RMBS (residential mortgage-backed securities) and CDO ratings markets, and its resulting desire to maintain and enhance its relationships with issuers that drove its ratings business, improperly influenced S&P to downplay and disregard the true extent of the credit risks.”

As of now the U.S. government is talking tough. It refused to settle (without trial) unless S&P agreed to pay a penalty in excess of $1 billion and admitted to wrongdoing on at least one count of fraud. The penalty would have consumed a whole year’s profit of McGraw-Hill, S&P’s parent. So the rating agency offered to pay $100 million to settle. And fearing that admission of guilt would set off more litigation from investors who lost money, S&P wanted a deal in which there was no admission or denial of guilt. When negotiations fell through, charges were filed. Now the DoJ wants the agency to pay up a hefty $5 billion in penalties to cover losses to investors like state pension funds, federally insured banks and credit unions. That would be many multiples of S&P’s earnings.

Moreover, the government is being savvy when it comes to choosing its plea. The DoJ has filed a civil, not criminal, suit. Besides the fact that civil suits are easier to win, the prosecution is under the Financial Institutions Reform, Recovery and Enforcement Act designed (after the savings and loan crisis of the 1980s) to protect federally backed financial firms from fraud, which has a low burden of proof.

The suit and the surprise

The substance of the suit is no surprise. The financial crisis of 2008 showed that many instruments, especially mortgage-backed derivatives of various kinds, which had been rated high by the likes of S&P, Moody’s and Fitch, could quickly turn into junk. This had badly damaged the credibility of these agencies. In addition, an intensifying battle among the big three (besides some new entrants) for a larger share of the ratings business, had led to each accusing the others of shoddy and inadequate research to back their ratings. Thus, the industry itself gave credence to the view that the scores they award are not to be trusted, even if for partisan reasons. As a result, the rating agencies have little credibility left. But they still ply their business and are routinely quoted because the financial industry does not want them replaced.

What comes as a surprise, however, is that the DoJ has moved the way it did. Ratings agencies were not brought to book in the past because of the firewall they built, and continue to build, around themselves. In disclaimers in the fine print in documents giving their scores, ratings agencies normally indemnify themselves from any claims against losses incurred by investors on investments motivated by these ratings. In addition, they hide behind the claim that their ratings are just opinions, and were, therefore, protected by constitutional guarantees of freedom of speech, especially the First Amendment in the U.S. Above all, it is difficult to establish conscious negligence when assessing a wrong rating, making victory in a case of fraud against a ratings firm difficult to achieve. So courts have tended to dismiss cases alleging fraud by ratings firms.

These protective walls have since been breached. In 2009, a case was admitted by Manhattan District Judge Shira Scheindlin, in which a set of institutional investors, including Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and King County in Washington State, accused Moody’s and S&P of having engaged in fraud by giving inflated ratings to a set of derivative products backed by subprime mortgages that Morgan Stanley issued through a structured investment vehicle called Cheyne. The admittance placed on a jury the burden of assessing whether the ratings agencies were misleading investors.

Messages as evidence

The case was admitted on the basis of evidence in the form of instant messages between two S&P analysts, which seemed to suggest that they were in the know that they were inflating ratings for poor products. “That deal is ridiculous,” one analyst reportedly messaged, and declared: “We should not be rating it.” “We rate every deal,” the other analyst reportedly replied, leading to the following response from the first analyst: “It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.”

Even though it is not certain that this conversation was about Cheyne, it does suggest that analysts were being pressured into rating and offering good scores on products they held worthless. The judge ruled that the First Amendment did not apply in a lawsuit over ratings because the relevant mortgage-backed securities had not been offered to the public at large and the “plaintiffs have also offered sufficient evidence from which a reasonable jury could infer that the rating agencies did not believe the ratings when they issued them”. She also noted that “Morgan Stanley manipulated the Cheyne SIV modelling process to create the ratings it desired,” and that it “can be liable for aiding and abetting fraud”.

The result of the weakening defence has been a spate of efforts to bring down the ratings business. Standard & Poor’s has been sued by States like Illinois and Connecticut, besides numerous angry investors. It managed to get some of these suits dismissed on First Amendment grounds, but judges have admitted several, including the one by Illinois.

Other government agencies are also getting into the act. S&P is being investigated by the Securities and Exchange Commission over a complex mortgage security called Delphinus issued in 2007, when the housing market had begun to collapse. New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman has launched a broader investigation of credit rating agencies and his office has subpoenaed S&P and requested information from Moody’s and Fitch.

YURI GRIPAS/REUTERS 

At the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, Attorney General Eric Holder, along with federal and state officials, announces to the media the financial fraud enforcement action against S&P, on February 5.

All this matters because the evidence against S&P, though challenged by the agency, seems strong. Particularly damaging is some among the 20 million pages of e-mails sent by S&P employees, and procured as evidence. As early as December 2006, one executive had warned about mortgage-related investments, saying: “This market is a wildly spinning top which is going to end badly.” Another S&P employee is reported to have noted in the same month that: “Rating agencies continue to create an even bigger monster—the C.D.O. market,” and expressed the “hope we are all wealthy and retired by the time this house of card falters.”

The documents also indicate that there was a debate of sorts going on within the company between those who wanted to have less demanding rating models to garner business and increase profits and those who opposed dilution of standards for market considerations.

Evidence like this could stick because of the obvious conflict of interest involved in the ratings system. Issuers of financial products turn to private firms to provide “independent” certificates of the safety and strength of their offers. That certificate is useful when canvassing buyers for these products among investors. In time, regulators made the rating given by a recognised agency mandatory, especially because products became more complex and beyond the ken of investors or asset managers to comprehend and assess fully. In fact, in many instances, those with fiduciary responsibilities (such as managers of pension funds) are required to invest only in AAA or similar rated products. So a rating determines the market an issuer has.

Finally, in many contexts, ratings are used to calibrate the risk-weights attached to financial instruments when implementing the capital adequacy requirement for banks under Basel norms. Banks would be more willing buyers of highly rated securities because they are required to set aside less regulatory capital against them. In sum, the ratings system and, therefore, the ratings firms have become a part of the regulatory framework in many countries.

There is a catch here, however. The independence of the agency could, in principle, be compromised because the issuer pays to get the rating done, especially since ratings agencies are corporates treating their work as a source of revenue and profit. An agency having a reputation of being strict when awarding a rating could see business shifting to competitors. On the other hand, having a reputation for being lenient could damage one’s standing among investors, making issuers turn to agencies with better reputations. As a result, the agencies perform a tightrope walk between colluding with issuers to win business and winning a reputation among investors of being independent so as to attract issuers seeking their certificate. The evidence seems to be that during the pre-crisis boom they had fallen off the rope, erring on the side of being excessively optimistic.

Clearly, it is time to resolve the fundamental conflict of interest involved in making scores provided by a paid examiner the basis for financial regulation. That was a conclusion forced on the system by the 2008 crisis. Hopefully, the rising tide of litigation will force an end to or at least a reform of the ratings system.

low arsenic rice

Low-arsenic rice

Scientists have identified a variety of aromatic rice in Bangladesh with a very low arsenic content compared with non-aromatic rice. The work has been published in Biomedical Spectroscopy and Imaging. Vast populations in Bangladesh are exposed to arsenic through drinking water and rice, the staple food, grown in soil and water containing high amounts of arsenic. Because the rice plant is highly efficient at absorbing arsenic from soil and water, it is reported to be the highest arsenic-containing cereal. Long-term exposure to arsenic can lead to the development of different types of cancer and serious cardiovascular, neurological and other health problems.

A team of scientists led by Parvez Haris from De Montfort University, Leicester, in the United Kingdom has been carrying out research to remove arsenic from water and to identify ways of reducing human exposure to arsenic through diet. This latest work was carried out in collaboration with Michael Watts of the British Geological Survey. Earlier studies showed high concentrations of arsenic in Bangladeshi rice, but the rice samples were mainly from regions where irrigation water contains high levels of the element.

The team carried out a detailed study on rice from the greater Sylhet region in the north-east, which generally has a lower groundwater arsenic concentration. Ninety-eight rice samples were analysed using a technique called Inductively Coupled Plasma-Mass Spectrometry to determine the total arsenic content and also the arsenic species in a selected group of samples. Aromatic rice is generally cultivated during the wet season and is therefore less dependent on groundwater for irrigation. It also requires less fertilizers and pesticides. The results showed that Sylheti rice had far lower arsenic concentrations than similar types of rice from other regions and that its arsenic concentration was 40 per cent less than that of non-aromatic varieties. It also contained higher concentrations of the essential elements selenium and zinc.

For someone consuming 500 grams a day of non-aromatic or aromatic rice from Sylhet, the daily intake of arsenic from rice would be approximately 48 per cent and 69 per cent lower, respectively, than that of someone consuming non-aromatic rice from other parts of Bangladesh. This finding may also have health benefits for other groups of people who eat large quantities of rice daily, such as those suffering from celiac disease. “It is essential that further research on aromatic rice from different parts of Bangladesh and other regions of the world is conducted,” says Haris.

cross media currents

Cross media currents

SASHI KUMAR

What emerges from TRAI’s “Consultation Paper on Issues relating to Media Ownership” is that the media need to be mapped so that there is a clear picture of who owns what and, in some cases, who is a front for whom and how, or which big corporate is bankrolling which media.

A screenshot of a page on the TRAI website, which has uploaded its "Consultation Paper on Issues relating to Media Ownership". The paper is available for viewing until March 15.

FOR some time now, rearguard action legitimising faits accompli has been passing for state initiative in framing legislation in the Indian media sector. What has come to be has come to be, seems the rationalisation; let’s see how to let it be, or give it a cosmetic tweak without ruffling too many feathers. Given the high stakes involved, this approach would almost appear complicitous, if we did not also know from tiresome experience that the state and the bureaucracy are just congenitally late and lazy in such matters.

So, more than two decades after cable and satellite TV came, saw and conquered; after much of the turf there is to be occupied has been occupied, indiscriminately; and a monopoly media regime is entrenched, fully and firmly, the government comes alive to the peril that rampant cross media ownership poses to democracy and the citizen’s right to information. Technological convergence has engendered media conglomerates that combine print, television, radio and the Internet, and businesses that exceed these categories like DTH (Direct to Home), HITS (Headend in the Sky), the yet incipient podcasting and IPTV (Internet Protocol Television); and push applications across delivery platforms to 2G, 3G and 4G devices, electronic tablets, and so on. They draw on finite radio spectrum so that there is also implicitly an overlap of the purviews of the Ministries of Information and Broadcasting (I&B) and Telecommunications in their management. The business logic and opportunity of such vertical integration have led to the emergence of big corporate entities straddling many of these businesses.

It took until mid-2008 for the Ministry of I&B to take cognisance of the situation and seek the opinion of the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) on how to tackle it. The following year TRAI made a number of recommendations aimed at curtailing monopolistic growth and at ensuring pluralism and diversity in the sector. The I&B Ministry then commissioned a study the same year by the Administrative Staff College of India (ASCI), which went into the state and extent of cross media holdings in the industry, the international experience in this matter, the need for caps on vertical holdings, and for transparency and public disclosure of ownership and holding patterns in the media sector.

After three years, in May 2012, the Ministry of I&B again sought TRAI’s expertise to evolve a comprehensive approach to balancing the technological and business logic of vertical integration and cross media holdings with the need for pluralism and diversity and the need to protect the citizen’s right to credible choice and competitive pricing of the media he consumes. TRAI has— after updating the ASCI data on 54 companies invested across print, broadcasting and new media, with further information on them provided by 20 Registrars of Companies, and domain information about market share and extent of cross holdings of media companies from the Ministry of I&B and the Registrar of Newspapers of India (RNI)—come up with a “Consultation Paper on Issues relating to Media Ownership”, which is posted on its website (www.trai.gov.in) for comments by stakeholders, including the public concerned.

The paper recognises the growth potential of the entertainment and media industry in India as the best in the world, with industry estimates projecting a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of 17 per cent for the five-year period between 2011 and 2016. China with a projection of 14 per cent, Russia with 12 per cent and Brazil will 11 per cent over the same period come second, third and fourth respectively in this survey of the top 15 nations in the field, making the BRIC formation (comprising Brazil, Russia, India and China) the rising media constellation of this decade. The potential in India is underscored by the further fact that the average per capita annual spend on media and entertainment in 2011 was only US$ 6.6, as against $65 in Brazil and $22 in China.

The Confederation of Indian Industry and PricewaterhouseCoopers India’s “India Entertainment and Media Outlook 2012” cited in the paper projects that the combined advertisement and subscription revenue from the sector, which was Rs.68,500 crore in 2010, and rose by 17.52 per cent to Rs.80,500 crore in 2011, is slated to reach Rs.1,76,400 crore by 2016. Of this, broadcasting shows the biggest gain. Television grew from Rs.29,400 crore in 2010 to Rs.34,000 crore in 2011, a-year-on-year growth of 15.7 per cent, and is expected to touch Rs.67,400 crore by 2016, registering a CAGR of 14.7 per cent from 2012 to 2016. The corresponding figures for radio are Rs.1,300 crore for 2010 and Rs.1,400 crore for 2011, a 10.8 per cent rise over the year, and Rs.3,000 crore for 2016, representing a CAGR of 16.7 per cent over the same four-year period. Print posted a relatively modest revenue growth of 7.2 per cent between 2010 (Rs.17,800 crore) and 2011 (Rs.19,000 crore) but, bucking the international trend of steep decline, is set to accelerate ahead to touch a revenue of Rs.29,600 crore in 2016, with a CAGR of 9.2 per cent over 2012-16. The other media—a miscellany of Internet, gaming, music, and out of home (OOH) media—account for the rest.

Warped growth

But it has been a warped growth because the financial benefits accrue to a few pockets and there is no evidence of a commensurate social or intellectual dividend reaped by the public at large. A consultation paper, understandably, cannot be a position paper; but a clearly stated political will is what is missing both in it and in the situation it seeks to discuss. The core and crucial issue in the media sector is that the pattern and trajectory of growth has systematically eliminated or marginalised the small and medium player in favour of the big corporation. Entry barriers that are operational against the small or medium entrepreneur are as much a function of monopolistic exertions in the market as are disabling rules and prohibitive fees prescribed by the government for the new entrant of relatively modest means. In October 2011, for example, the net worth requirement of an applicant seeking to launch a general information or entertainment channel was raised from Rs.1.5 crore to Rs.5 crore and, in the case of a news channel, even more sharply, from Rs.3 crore to Rs.20 crore. Interestingly, the net worth stipulation for an additional channel by one already up and running was only Rs.2.5 crore for the general entertainment category and Rs.5 crore for news.

C.H. VIJAYA BHASKAR 

Direct-to-home services seem to have reached all sections in India, making for a huge market. Here, at Vambay Colony in Vijayawada. A file photograph.

This was a blow to the notion of diversity. It was made out that the move was meant to keep non-serious players out and to place a reasonable limitation on the number of applicants. These are valid considerations, especially given that 848 channels had been licensed until December last year and about 650 of them are operational, including 350 news channels. But the profusion of channels has not meant democratic difference and variety. And privileging existing channels by making it cheaper for them than for a fresh entrant to get the licence for a new channel may at best lead to market specialisation and segmentation catering to niche viewership constituencies; which, again, would be a mode of market optimisation and not the same as diversity in the democratic sense.

The consultation paper’s pious reference to democratic values of diversity and pluralism in advocating caps on the market size and cross media holdings of media organisations seems more rhetorical flourish than an article of faith. There are also Freudian slips which confuse regulating the media market with controlling media behaviour and content, as, for instance, when it states: “The inherent conflict of interest which arises from uncontrolled ownership in the media sector gives rise to manifestations such as (i) paid news (ii) corporate and political lobbying by popular television channels (iii) propagation of biased analysis and forecasts both in the political arena as well as in the corporate sector, (iv) irresponsible reporting to create sensationalism.” How or what any of these, admittedly corrupt and unethical media practices, has to do with the market reach of a media house or its cross holdings in the sector is not clear.

The paper recapitulates the partial cross holding restrictions in force, particularly in the licensing of FM radio; the extent of equity a broadcaster or DTH platform owner can hold (not more than 20 per cent) in a company providing HITS-based broadcasting and vice versa, whereas there is no such restriction between a cable TV operator and a HITS service provider; and a similar equity cap between any mobile TV service and a channel broadcaster, again not applicable between DTH and mobile TV, and so on. They seem, for the most part, measures to protect the specific markets for different parts of the industry from aggrandisement by the other parts rather than to safeguard the interests of the end receiver or the public.

TRAI’s belief that political and religious bodies, government Ministries and departments and urban and rural public-funded local bodies should not be allowed to own broadcasting channels or uplink stations would be unexceptionable but for the glaring example of Doordarshan which, although behind the fig leaf of the autonomous corporation Prasar Bharati, continues to be pretty much a broadcaster of, by and for the government. A conspicuous absence in the consultation paper is the interesting experience of Lok Sabha TV, which has charted a somewhat different and independent course (being under the Speaker of the House and not the government) of intelligent debate, discussion and docu-features, and oftentimes offers refuge to the weary channel surfer emotionally drained by the high-strung fare on the private news channels.

One chapter in the paper skims over the key aspects of regulations in eight international markets, namely, the United Kingdom, the United States, Canada, France, Germany, Australia, South Africa and South Korea. These pertain to four broad restrictive aspects: of those ineligible to operate a media business; of the extent, in terms of percentage of market share, to which a publication, a TV channel or a radio station can dominate a given market; limitations on cross media holdings; and conditions and caps on mergers and acquisitions. While how these countries have tackled these issues in their separate contexts is instructive, it is not clear whether the suggestion is to follow the one or the other example or to arrive at an eclectic mix of the lot best suited to our purpose.

What emerges from the consultation paper is that the media in India first needs to be mapped thoroughly—and this may need some diligent investigative work—so that there is a clear picture of who owns what and, in some cases, who is a front for whom and how, or which big corporate is quietly bankrolling which media. The voluntary or even mandatory disclosures the paper makes frequent reference to are unlikely to reveal the real situation. A perspective informed by a sense of the political economy of the media in the country is necessary to frame an alternative media dispensation which is more inclusive, relevant, transformative and democratising.

In the absence of this paradigm shift, it makes no difference, in the final analysis, whether concentration in a media market is measured by either of the empirical methods the paper proposes: C3 or HHI (Herfindahl-Hirschman Index). Nor does the quibble over whether “entity” is a more appropriate appellation than “company” in the media sector—as though just calling it an entity will help expose information the company is withholding. As for the suggested permutations and combinations towards arriving at the most foolproof, or least damaging, formula for keeping cross media holdings in check, they tend to read like the riddle, or parable, of the boatman who has to ferry a lion, a bundle of grass and a goat across the river, and can only carry any two of them in each trip, and the lion cannot be left alone with the goat, nor the goat with the grass, lest the one eats the other. Both situations need some figuring out.

dalit poetry-namdeo dhasal

Songs from the underworld

K SATCHIDANANDAN

Namdeo Dhasal, whose poetry is open to the beauty as well as the brutality of life, is a pioneer not only of Dalit poetry but also of contemporary Indian poetry.

Namdeo Dhasal:“ I did not have to consciously turn to poetry. Ever since I learnt to speak my mother tongue as a child, I started playing with words.”

MY reservations about Namdeo Dhasal’s present political positions have in no way reduced my admiration for his unmatched poetry—a deeply innovative, almost Baudelairian, poetry of the bohemian and the flâneur, that alternates between indignation and playfulness. This Marathi poet living in Mumbai remains one of the pioneers not only of modern Dalit poetry but of contemporary Indian poetry in general. The excellent translations of his selected poems by another significant Marathi/English poet, the late Dilip Chitre, published by Navayana, carry the essential features of the original—as I gather from my Marathi friends—of course, with all those transmission-losses natural to the translations of poetry that employ a community idiom.

“I did not have to consciously turn to poetry. Ever since I learnt to speak my mother tongue as a child, I started playing with words.” This is how Namdeo opens his statement on himself appended to the poems. Here he recollects in some detail his early life in his native village of Pur near Pune: watching closely the seasonal performances of the tamasha troupe led by his uncles and grandfather; the robust ribaldry of lavani songs; the melodious tamasha songs, ovis, bhajans and lyrics sung by his mother; the nightly community gatherings rich with dance and song; the shehnai played by his grandfather Raoji Buva Dhasal, who was a respected musician acknowledged by the Indore court; the harmonium, tabla and mridang played with the same expertise by Narayanbuva, his father’s brother steeped in the Varkari pilgrims’ musical tradition, the readings at home of Shivalilamrut, the Natha text and Jnaneshwari, the Varkari text, especially in the month of shravan; the kirtans of Gadge Baba; the Shimga festivities following Holi when the children put on masks and special dresses to play fictitious roles; his own dance as a woman in sari that was a real hit with all the villagers… these recollections tell us the story of a sweet childhood spent in the village, full of music, dance and festivities despite the untouchability and the communal divide that existed there. There is no bitterness here; there is instead a robust acceptance of all that was positive within the community life and even pride about his family, with its artistic and spiritual traditions.

Namdeo also remembers the great wave of conversion to Buddhism that swept Pune after 1957, in the wake of the mass movement launched by Dr B.R. Ambedkar. The mahars stopped doing their caste-assigned chores; they held concerts and meetings to spread the message of liberation from the hierarchy. Namdeo, then a third grade student, also wrote a song inspired by what was happening around him. He pays glowing tributes to Narayan Shankar Kokate, his teacher at the Baney Compound School in Mumbai who prepared him to be a writer, teaching him classical Marathi literature, nurturing his taste and providing him with a sense of quality in writing.

He also mastered Marathi prosody under his training and developed a taste for traditional poetry. The reference library at Janata Kendra opened before him a vast treasure house of literature, complementing what he had learnt from his masters.

Namdeo first wrote romantic lyrics on nature and love; the literary magazine Satyakatha and the avant-garde magazines where he came across translations of modern European poets changed his very attitude towards the art of poetry. The casteism he encountered in the context of a love affair in the apparently progressive sections of establishment politics led to his disenchantment with the Praja Samaj Party with which he had so far been associated.

Revolt against the system

He revolted against the whole system that sustained communalism and casteism. The frustration turned him into an anarchist: he boozed and visited brothels and plunged himself headlong into life in the backyard of the city. He threw out all the rule books and was free as a poet. He sharpened his weapons; nothing could stop him now. He was a taxi driver; he had no fixed time for reading or writing; he wrote at eateries during his brief intermissions. He never consulted others about his poetry nor compared himself with others; he followed his instincts and just decided to be faithful to the nuances and subtleties of the life that opened up before him in all its beauty and brutality. The poems/excerpts translated from Namdeo’s eight collections reflect the range and variety of his poetic oeuvre. The opening excerpt from Golpitha, the poet’s first collection, is a powerfully ironic piece that at first appears nihilistic and destructive:

BY SPECIAL ARRANGEMENT 

He threw out all the rule books and was free as a poet.

Man, you should drink human blood, eat spit, roast human flesh, melt human fat and drink it

Smash the bones of your critics’ shanks on hard stone blocks to get their marrow,

Wage class wars, caste wars, communal wars, party wars, crusades, world wars

One should become totally savage, ferocious and primitive….

But it turns around towards the end, leading to a tender and moving conclusion:

One should regard the sky as one’s

grandpa, the earth as one’s grand

ma,

And coddled by them everybody

should bask in mutual love

Man, one should act so bright as to make the Sun and the Moon seem pale

One should share each morsel of food with everyone else, one should compose a hymn

To humanity itself, man, man should sing only the song of man (“Man, You Should Explode”).

“Ode to Ambedkar” is rich with evocative imagery:

“ The skin of the untouchable parched by cycles of untouched life is moistened by your Heavenly stream; You have smashed the head of the god-given wind/ That created room for a wobbly nation and its restless people”, “ The parrot of existence perennially pecks at the unending agony of thought”, “ An earthen owl of compassion and a black rose of blood grow out of my arse”, “ If I don’t uproot this society of mere onlookers,/ A hard rock will separate you and me: and I will not be able to see/ Your radiant disc surrounded by lotuses growing among crystals, rejecting all material things..”, “ For, at the very point of the needle, one is introduced to love and to the green blade of wheat”, “ That Sun flows perennially through shouts of victory”, “ That sun flies like the New Year’s butterfly and spreads light,/ That Sun grows parallel to railway tracks,/ That Sun loosens the stone walls of universities;/ It moves only from one freedom to the next”.

These and other dynamic lines remind readers of a Pablo Neruda or a Cesar Vallejo by their raw force and sheer creative energy. A similar energy also characterises “Water”:

Water is like Siddhartha

Water is like the ashoka tree

Water is also nitric acid.

At times the lines become soft and fluent like the lines of a folk song:

Speak water, what colour are you

Son, it’s like your eyes…

Tell me water, what your colour is

Daughter, it is the colour of your thirst.

At times the lines turn red with wrath:

The rising day of justice, like a bribed person, favours only them

While we are being slaughtered, not even a sigh for us escapes their generous hands

(“The Orthodox Pity”).

The idiom grows darker and more complex as we move forward to poems like “Approaching the Organised Harem of the Octopus”. Black becomes a positive colour as in the poetry of Senghor and the poets of negritude. “ We are all over the streets spread out long and wide as tar on the road” (“By the Side of the Crucifix”). The legs of homeless urchins in the graveyard, the moon hurt all over the body like a prostitute, grotesque people eating starvation underlined in decimals in the womb of 1970, the eunuch cropping up in the harvest to castrate the shit, the sewage that gushes out in a torrent from the face: clear and blurred images try to capture the horrid reality of our time. “Mandakini Patel: A Young Prostitute, My Intended Collage” is another poem that foregrounds the gory violence perpetrated upon a 16-year-old girl by a brutalised society. The poet’s tone grows tender as he thinks of the girl:

Manda,

Your mind is neither ash nor marble

I feel your hair, your clothes, your nails, your breasts

as though they were my own

They reveal to me, within myself colonies of the dead…

Never before had I seen a face so

devoid of light

As was yours…

But the poet does not lose hope:

Manda,

my peahen,

Look out of the window, and a new

world is born.

Troubled nation as a tree

The poet’s troubled yet untiring voice goes on recounting atrocity after atrocity, sin after sin in the other poems in the collection extracted from the later collections. The style is basically the same, but sometimes it grows more ironic as in “The Tree of Violence” where the tree becomes the central metaphor for the state of the nation constantly troubled by waves of violence whose roots lie in the basic inequalities in society. It is a tree that grows thousand-fold when cut down.

Those who brought up the tree

walked out on their homes

They laughed their way to the

gallows

Because they knew it for sure

That as long as the circumstances that gave birth to the tree were not rooted out

The tree was not destined to die.

The tree finally becomes the cornucopia for the newborn nation.

The poems grow even more strident in Tuhi Yatta Kanchi (What is Your Grade?). Poems like “Kamatipura”, “Hunger”, “Ode to Ambedkar” and “Sweet Baby Poverty” are all poems of deep anguish and concern for the underprivileged whose anger and frustration become the poet’s own.

The poems from Khel (Play), however, are more introspective and deal with the questions of the self. The “Untitled Poem 1”, for example, begins like this:

I have seen him

I have rejected him often

My corpse that wanders

From town to town.

The next poem begins with:

The Self sheds its dead skin in water

Again a growing creeper climbs the new skin…

Each thing unfolds its inner space.

The style also becomes softer and more sober in the later poems:

There are neither flowers

Nor leaves;

Neither trees

Nor birds.

All this is mimicry by mercy of His grace

Sealed fragrance of musk

Thus the chains on one’s legs are transformed

into music…

(“Arse-fuckers’ Park 1”).

The irony is still there as the poet speaks about the politicised crows listening to the proceedings of pimps confessing to a study of streetwalkers, and home guards performing their drills on a sterile field of silence. And there is the choking pain: “ Behind every word/ There is a naked face hidden”, “ A wound has found its home in my heart—even words cannot open its doors”. And the surrealist images:

Horses are being tattooed on my arms.

The creeping plant of my penis is about to flower.

Ibsen’s doll is about to get married…

The black truth seeks to ride the tortoise (ibid.).

The poet revolts against the total cleanliness of the shirt of a non-worker and the uncompromising purity that grows heartless:

A human being shouldn’t become so spotless.

One should leave a few stains on one’s shirt.

One should carry on oneself a little bit of sin

(“Speculations on a Shirt”).

“ I am a venereal sore in the private part of language”, the poet declares meaningfully in the poem “Cruelty”; “ The living spirit looking out of hundreds of thousands of sad, pitiful eyes/Has shaken me”. He seeks release from his “infernal identity” as he sees a sigh “standing up on lame legs”. The longing for liberation keeps coming back: “ I do not wish to get chained to this God-created hell” (“Worry”); “ Gradually people start coming out of the body” (“People”).

The poem “December 6” is a powerful reminder of the crisis of our secular ethos:

Now

This city is no longer mine

It was only yesterday that you told

us

That this country belonged to us…

The walls of my own house charge

upon me

They want to assassinate me.

Digging up dead bodies from the

past the enemies are busy

Playing the politics of

chastisement…

Yesterday they murdered Gandhi

Now they want to put the whole

nation to death…

The poet’s idiom gets more direct on occasions like these. He finds his face stirred up on the surface of water like Narcissus did; he sheds his skin like a snake and asks the reader not to blow a breath on the water as with that his memoirs will lose their face—a reminder of the fragility of human life (“Autobiography”).

Tragedy and comedy become one for him, fate’s tamasha and pain’s dasavatar. He sums up his life thus:

This soil created me as an outsider;

This air turned its back on me;

What took pity on me in the end was the sky that has no limits (“Miracle”).

He is anxious about tomorrow when people would present nuclear warheads, instead of roses, to one another as symbols of love (“With a God who Isn’t”). He tells van Gogh, “ You’ve forgotten to paint/ One of the colours of the sun!” Kabir has disappeared from the bazaar: “ This chatter of freedom does not accept my tradition” (“Poetry Notebook”). Still he knows that “ it’s started to rain/ On the untouchable earth” (“Comes the Day, Passes the Day”).

The poet’s testament is summed up in these lines:

The wicked have injured the earth

Poets know all about it

Only poets can save the Earth

From extinction.

Namdeo Dhasal’s poetry is at the same time personal expression and the expression of his traumatised community.

As Dilip Chitre remarks: “It is the nimble and graceful movement across the fault-lines of alienation that gives his poetry its artistic distinctiveness. At times a cleansing fury rages in his writing. At other times, it is moistened by sensitive compassion and a spiritual clarity. Namdeo’s is a rooted and located human voice that demands to be heard on its own terms.”