Comment

What lies behind the veil?

WHEN the late Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy crafted a resounding victory for the Congress in 2004, demolishing the bastion of the ‘hi-tech’ and ‘smart governance’ CEO (not Chief Minister) of Andhra Pradesh, Chandrababu Naidu, many welcomed the result. Babu’s regime had seen mass impoverishment of rural Andhra Pradesh, distress migration and long periods of drought (the last not attributable to him) in stark contrast to the ‘sheen’ of Hyderabad. Contributing to the disillusionment were some amazingly blinkered policies which included, among others, banning goats(!) to ‘save green cover’. There was, indeed, a context to the rise to power of YSR. But once in place, the game became altogether different.

Yet, there is no doubt that the change was welcome – a leader who had walked through several villages in AP. Despite considerable misgivings and apprehension about the Andhra Congress Party considering its hitherto unhealthy record, there was hope that YSR would bring issues emerging from his padayatras to bear on policy.

Sure enough, soon after becoming the chief minister, he started work on rural AP, including distress suicides. As the election results had shown, and unlike what his predecessor learnt rather late in the day (not until early 2008, in fact), no party could ignore the rural votes. Almost immediately, he set up an independent Agriculture Commission made up of eminent intellectuals, activists, media persons and grassroots organizations to review the agrarian scenario. He gave them a fair and free hand, and all assistance, for them to eventually bring out a comprehensive report highlighting problem areas – one of which, incidentally, was the sustainable use of water resources – and suggest policy interventions.

But things started changing with the deification of YSR. Curiously enough, the deification was intrinsically linked to water, especially Godavari waters, and irrigation. One MLA hailed him as Sage Bhageeratha, for ‘taming’ the Godavari through his jalayagnam. Curiously though, Godavari for the YSR government was more about money and less about ensuring water to the parched fields of the poor farmers in AP.

Historically, the politics of Andhra Pradesh has revolved around balancing the needs of agriculture and industry. Most of its political leaders come from landowning farming classes and upper castes, and it is the same classes and castes which founded and own most of the industry today. Till date the person occupying the top seat in AP as its CM has been from these sections. Tribal groups or landless Dalits have never been central to the political rubric of Andhra Pradesh, so there was little expectation from YSR to be any different. In fact, his metaphor for prosperity was Haritandhra Pradesh, ‘green AP’, essentially verdant fields of lush green – a metaphor that does not even envisage a visual imagery of forests and wildlife, and tribal groups therein, far less the dry land semi-arid or arid ecotype, which also adds to the wealth of biodiversity of the state. It is in the backdrop of this metaphor of prosperity that YSR needs to be assessed in times to come. The metaphor of the jalayagnam is also built on the notion of a benevolent despot bringing waters to thirsty ryots.

As the keynote speaker at the World Agriculture Forum in 2007 at St. Louis, YSR said, ‘We have embarked upon a massive programme of augmenting the entire irrigation potential available in the state. The programme will bring three million hectares additionally under assured irrigation within the next five years. In the first three years, we have already spent about $4.6 billion dollars on irrigation, which is much more than what was spent in the last 15 years…’ He also conceded, missing the paradox, that ‘about 40% of our agriculture is… canal-irrigated and the rest is dry land agriculture.’

YSR had begun proselytising on irrigation (major and medium irrigation) projects around 2005-06. Jalayagnam (which the AP government hopes will be part of the central government’s National Irrigation Mission aimed at cultivating one crore hectares of land), indeed would be as intense as a sacrificial fire, both in terms of the massive scale of the undertaking as well as in terms of the human sacrifice it would entail. What started of as 30 major and 18 medium irrigation projects, later went on to become 48 projects (73 lakh acres ayacut) and currently encompasses 81 projects with a total budgetary allocation (2009-10) of Rs 17,813 crore to bring 1.3 crore acres under irrigation and stabilize another 22 lakh acres. The expenditure in the last five years was Rs 41,050 crore. The AP government also expects the Centre to declare five irrigation projects (including Polavaram dam) as national projects (meaning more investment). This announcement was made within months of the second term of the YSR-led government.

In 2007, according to conservative estimates in the media, over 600 villages and over ten lakh families in AP, faced displacement by irrigation projects alone, not to mention those from mining and SEZs. Till date 1.14 lakh acres of private land have already been acquired for irrigation projects in AP, and another 1.14 lakh acres are on the anvil. According to one estimate, in the Krishna-Godavari delta region, and the Krishna and Nellore districts, more than half the land is cultivated by tenant farmers on land owned by absentee landlords. In such cases, then, has the government been compensating the rich absentee landlords at present market value while rendering the tenant farmers workless (which possibly accounts for a steep rise in NREG applicants)? This happened brazenly in the case of the Polavaram dam submergence villages in West and East Godavari districts, when Dalit tenant farmers lost their livelihoods when their upper caste non-tribal ‘landlords’ sold their land.

The industrial connection to these irrigation projects too was clear quite early on. At a press conference in Delhi in July 2006, YSR assured investors that the AP government had earmarked five per cent of all the waters from irrigation for industry. Around the same period he mooted the idea of a coastal industrial corridor stretching all the way southeast to Kakinada. The government was keen to attract private investment, assuring all clearances through a ‘single-window’ policy.

Was YSR then truly all about rural Andhra’s poorest people, the small and marginal farmer and the rural landless, especially the Scheduled Tribes and Scheduled Castes? In just a single project – the Polavaram dam – 276 villages are to be submerged, displacing the largest numbers of tribal people by any dam in modern India. Already, the officials have issued fresh ultimatums to villagers to vacate their land (already acquired by the government) and move into the R&R colonies, not yet completed, failing which ‘action’ would be taken.

We also need to critically question whether the late YSR’s obsession with irrigation projects necessarily made him ‘pro-farmer’ or pro-agriculture? If so, what kind of farmer and what kind of agriculture? Where is all this volume of water ultimately going? Is there sufficient land and water for such gargantuan projects? And finally, where is all this money coming from, and going?

In many ways the fate of the Godavari will decide the fate of Andhra Pradesh. It is worth noting that in the period of increased interest in irrigation projects, there was also a corresponding rise in real estate prices in and around Hyderabad. In most cases, the contractors for the irrigation projects were also the ones dealing in real estate (Madhucon which won the contract for Polavaram project is constructing a mammoth shopping plaza in Hyderabad, for instance).

All this has meant large-scale land alienation in the name of the rural masses. We are already witnessing ongoing agitations over the SEZ in Kakinada awarded to Apache – 400 acres handed over and another 2000 acres to be acquired. It may be worthwhile to investigate if the ‘extra ayacut’ in the irrigation projects planned will actually be ‘ayacuts’ feeding SEZ lands.

The agricultural policies of the YSR regime need to be studied critically. The larger question is that in return for free power and irrigation benefits, what is to be taken away, or what has already been taken away? It does appear that peda rythu (poor farmers) was a mere buzzword for the late YSR (and the Congress government he put in place) just as ‘IT’ was for Naidu, the politics (or political economy) behind them being one and the same.

R. Uma Maheshwari

 

An unstated political compact

INDIA is today unable to discharge its social responsibility towards as many as 77 per cent of the population, a troubling admission by economist Arjun Sengupta, member Rajya Sabha and formerly with the Planning Commission. He also points out that contrary to official assertions, over two-thirds of the nation lives below the poverty line. Hardly good news for the Congress which bucked anti-incumbency and won a second time in 2009 with a larger margin, and despite its principal opponent, the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party) mired in disarray. The Congress, in particular, has a huge responsibility to alleviate the sufferings of the rural poor who depend on agriculture and have lost a fair bit of their crops to an erratic monsoon. Claims that there are sufficient reserves of food stock to somehow tide over the crisis, however, need to be read with caution – the government needs to comes down heavily on any hoarder or black marketeer who tries to profit from an artificially created food shortage.

This is where, lamentably, the caste system comes in. The trading community is dominated by Banias, purportedly the main supporters of the BJP. They are in a unique position to create political mischief, in part because the Congress is wary of antagonizing this community, far less punish its members for making money out of the suffering of the rural and urban poor. The Congress in the old days primarily came to power because of the Brahmin-Bania-Rajput nexus. The first gave the party respectability, both intellectual and ‘moral’, because India was and still remains psychologically in the Dark Ages. The second, being a business community, provided the money, and the third, the muscle to stifle opposition from the impoverished Dalits, who form the largest single caste in India.

This combine of the three most powerful castes made the Indian National Congress, even in British India, a somewhat ambiguous and dangerous political force. Mohammed Ali Jinnah, barrister-at-law, a deeply committed , modern, political being as far back as the 1920s remarked that he saw no difference between the Congress and the Hindu Mahasabha. Today, years after it was first made, this observation appears prophetic. The BJP is only a refurbished version of the Bharatiya Jan Sangh, offspring of the Hindu Mahasabha. Unfortunately, the Congress too is not very different.

In pre-independence days most of those politically active came from large families and, more often than not, were Hindus. As a consequence they suffered from divided loyalties. It was not at all unusual for the same family to have members loyal to the Congress, the Hindu Mahasabha, and on occasion, even the Congress Socialist Party or the Communist Party, whether guided from England or the Soviet Union. M.K. Gandhi, undisputed though never elected leader of the Congress, keeping in mind the mentality of the Hindu family of sticking together regardless of continuous mutual unhappiness, decided to permit dual-membership in the party. He felt, perhaps subconsciously, that the only way of keeping disparate politically active Hindus together was to gather them under the umbrella of the Indian National Congress.

The situation, of course, changed after the Partition of India in 1947. The Jan Sangh, and its cadres of Hindu militants, the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh (RSS), wanted a share of the ‘booties of war’. Acharya Kripalani and other senior Congress leaders feared that the RSS would wrest power from the Congress by indulging in violence. One wonders what this historical recap has to do with the current economic crisis in India and the world in general?

The attitude of the Congress towards the poor is quite like that of the BJP. There is, however, a difference: The Congress, notwithstanding the ideological proclivities of both its prime minister and finance minister, continues to enjoy a pro-poor image. The BJP, on the other hand, is a Hindu businessmen’s party with the primary objective of serving the interests of a certain class. The Congress, despite having long used the Muslims as a vote bank, is overtly a secular party; the BJP, on the other hand, is openly anti-Muslim. There is, though, one similarity between the two parties; both are self-serving.

The Kargil conflict with Pakistan in retrospect, seems to have been artificially created. At one plane it did help keep President Nawaz Sharif in the public eye in Pakistan, and prove his ability as a strong, patriotic leader who had kept a power-hungry army in check and engaged with a ‘perpetual’ enemy, India, in morale-boosting military combat. India, then ruled by the BJP, was fighting the ‘eternal’ enemy, the Mussalman, who had come to the subcontinent well over a thousand years ago! The truth, however, was quite different. The BJP was utterly cynical about the loss of life, the deaths of over a thousand soldiers, officers and other ranks, secretly seen as so much canon-fodder. Kargil could be used to keep the RSS ‘charged’ and promote a climate of vigilantism to keep the so-called Hindu ‘progressives’ quiet and prepare the Indian Muslims for the fear and hysteria that was to overtake them in less than three years time when Gujarat under Narendra Modi used the Godhra incident to conduct a pogrom to massacre more than 3,000 innocent Muslims in the state.

The Congress too was guilty of similar heartless cynicism earlier when it sent the IPKF (Indian Peace Keeping Force) to Sri Lanka in 1987 under Rajiv Gandhi’s prime ministership to prevent the separatist LTTE, a minority Tamil militant organization, from causing further damage: as if they had not already done enough! It was a tragic misadventure for the Indian Army. According to official reports, more than a thousand Indian soldiers lost their lives; many more came back crippled or maimed. Whatever the pay-offs for India’s image politically, it left behind many grieving widows and orphans, not to forget the handicapped.

Rajiv Gandhi, post the assassination of Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, had led his party back to power with an overwhelming victory in the parliamentary elections, winning over a record 400 seats. It is rumoured that the RSS had worked tirelessly to ensure his victory. Somewhat earlier, when Indira Gandhi was assassinated by her two Sikh bodyguards, presumably for her clumsy, if not callous handling of militancy in Punjab, Delhi erupted. Thousands of innocent Sikhs were killed by lumpen elements, reportedly hired by Congress functionaries. Many believe that the RSS too had a hand in this affair.

Though one party (Congress ) may be in power and the other (BJP) out, there seems to be an unspoken understanding between the two, or at least between important members of both parties, capable of influencing significant decisions. The common enemy seems to be the downtrodden Dalit and/or tribal who is becoming increasingly vocal, even militant, asking for his/her rights to earn a decent living and be treated as an equal of the upper castes and wanting equal opportunity to contribute to the process of nation building, and not nation looting, as the privileged two per cent who control 98 per cent of the nation’s natural resources have been doing. Is it not significant that 135 of India’s 623 districts are under Maoist control, many comprising large numbers of Dalits and tribals?

Binayak Sen, a highly respected medical practitioner was in jail for two years in Chhattisgarh, a BJP ruled state. It is alleged that he had links with Naxalites in the region. No substantive charges were, however, framed by the state police against him. The real reason behind his detention was possibly different. He had ‘dared’ to provide affordable health care to poor tribals, routinely regarded as being less than human by successive administrations. So if some of the tribal men and women joined the militant Naxalites in search of dignity and justice, should one be surprised? Nor that this was seen as sufficient proof of Binayak Sen’s Naxalite links. Nevertheless, it is intriguing that though over a year back, the prime minister, after receiving a petition from fourteen Nobel Laureates, including Amartya Sen, reportedly asked the National Security Advisor, M.K. Narayanan, to arrange the release of Binayak Sen, no action was taken. Why? It is not common for a state government to disregard the wishes of the prime minister. Or, are we to understand this as a case of shadow boxing, of both sides being in collusion? Fortunately, after the UPAs repeat victory in 2009, Binayak Sen was finally released on bail. No apology was, however, forthcoming from the government – central or state. Nor was any reason provided for why Sen had to be kept in jail.

Maqbool Fida Husain’s enforced exile is another example of a compact between the Congress and the BJP. The RSS claimed that Husain had shown disrespect to Hindu gods by portraying them in the nude in his paintings. The fact that it was routine in ancient Indian temple sculpture to portray Hindu divinity in the nude was conveniently ignored. It was as if they were determined to punish Husain for being India’s most celebrated painter, this despite being a Muslim and from a modest background.

While the Congress does pay lip-service to secularism, it has done little to bring the Muslims into the mainstream or provide them some economic security. The RSS and the Jan Sangh, in contrast, barely disguise their derision for these marginalized groups. It almost appears that the pauperization and the ‘second-class’ status of the Muslims gives them a sense of security.

Once the BJP came to power in 1999, it ensured that M.F. Husain, India’s most charismatic artist and the darling of the secularists was fixed right away. First, a series of fake cases were filed against him in a number of lower courts in the country, followed by hysteria whipped up by RSS cadres. Husain was forced to leave India, his country, in utter bewilderment and great sadness. It is noteworthy that once the Congress came back to power in 2004, it too completely forgot M.F. Husain. Evidently, it does not want to offend the RSS and hence the BJP.

It is foolish to think that the Congress shall ever forcefully act against the RSS because both share an unspoken but deep cultural and economic affinity. They are both committed to keep the Dalits and Muslims in their place and prevent them from making any economic progress and take pride in their selfhood, lest they begin to challenge the Brahmin-Bania-Rajput hegemony. True, the RSS does wield power amongst the trading classes, but its extra-constitutional authority runs only in pockets of northern India, Gujarat and Maharashtra. It can be quelled if there is political will. But the Congress is not, it appears, willing to galvanize itself into action, leave alone address the myriad problems, most urgently that of hunger, facing the marginalized 77 per cent of India.

Partha Chatterjee