Books
TRANSACTIONS IN TASTE: The Collaborative Lives of Everyday Bengali Food
by Manpreet K. Janeja. Routledge, New Delhi, 2010.THIS book is a fascinating foray into an offbeat area of research which had hitherto been neglected by Indian academicians. The author takes up the subject of the symbiotic relationship between food and contemporary Bengali society (in both West Bengal and Bangladesh), and attempts ‘an approach towards a theory of everyday life through a study of food as agency’ (p. 166). Divided into eight chapters, it begins with an introduction which outlines the conceptual framework, drawing upon existing theories on the anthropology of food and pointing out the departures that her book makes from the hitherto prevalent theoretical trends on the subject. The author also explains her methodology – collecting data from middle class households and their kitchens, as well as restaurants, tea shops and college canteens in both Kolkata (which she spells in the old-fashioned way as ‘Calcutta’!) and Dhaka, through personal interviews with hosts, cooks and restauranteurs, among others, during 2000-2002. These interviews form the basis of the rest of her narrative which she describes as the ‘foodscape’ of modern Bengali society – implicated in the preparation, consumption and circulation of perceived ‘normal’ food. She elaborates on how the concept of ‘normality’ in the choice of victuals consolidates food tastes among sections of this community as also divides them along class (bhadralok and lower orders), territorial (West Bengal and East Bengal) and religious (Hindu and Muslim) lines, and is influenced by changing cooking methods in the commercial market of the metropolis, and the mediation of modern technology (in the form of the refrigerator and the microwave oven).
Manpreet Janeja also explains how these tastes had been transformed by successive changes in the Bengali political history, like the 1947 Partition which led to the arrival of Hindu refugees from East Bengal in Kolkata who introduced their cuisine in the city. More interesting is her analysis of the new-found need for a national identity among the citizens of Dhaka (following the 1971 liberation war that led to the formation of present day Bangladesh) who, among other attempts to carve out a cultural distinctiveness (from the same Bengali-speaking people of neighbouring West Bengal), redefined their ‘foodscape’ by reviving and reinventing their traditional cuisine. At the end of the book, in her conclusion, while wrapping up her theoretical arguments, she highlights the need for ongoing engagement with the issue of food as an agency in everyday life and its cultural dimensions, particularly in the present political context of ‘globalization’, the debates over GM foods, the current ‘food crisis’, widespread famine-like situations and malnutrition in many parts of the world. But these, as she rightly says, are ‘stories yet to be told’ – maybe under the rubric of another research programme. It is a well-organized narrative, each chapter flowing smoothly into the next, leading to the conclusion. Her theoretical arguments are well-grounded – with adequate references to the necessary historical sources of the past and the works of the present day scholars (albeit primarily in the western academic world).
Since her subjects of research, as she makes it clear in her introduction, are the modern Bengali upper and middle class homes and clientele of urban restaurants and eating joints in Kolkata and Dhaka, Manpreet K. Janeja only marginally touches upon the food habits of the masses of Bengali rural and urban poor. They hover in the background of her narrative as cooks and maids from the villages and urban slums – missing their home-grown food while required to prepare a different cuisine for their urban middle class employers. Yet, these people form the majority of the subcontinent, and their culinary habits deserve closer attention by ethnographers of food. Without any access to modern kitchens and refrigerators, and depending on the scarce resources (in their slums or on the pavements), they make the best of a bad job by innovating various techniques to create tasteful dishes on a day-to-day basis.
In the parallel ‘foodscape’ of the Bengali poor in the villages and urban pavements, their cooking style creates an alternative agency in their everyday life. For instance, googli (shellfish) in the riverine areas, kochu-ghechu (worthless edible roots) elsewhere, which are gathered by the rural underclass, and leftovers and thrown away intestines of animals and poultry collected by the urban pavement dwellers, are all transformed into palatable daily food by the imaginative culinary skills of the women of these destitute households. One misses in the book this other fascinating ethnography of food of the Bengali underclasses.
But despite this lacuna, by its distinctive theoretical approach and historical analysis, Transactions in Taste stands out far above from the hitherto available commonplace English literature on Indian cookery (which is mainly in the form of recipes or coffee table books), and will be of abiding interest to academics as well as common readers.
Sumanta Banerjee
THE RISE OF THE PLEBIANS? The Changing Face of India Legislative Assemblies edited by Christophe Jaffrelot and Sanjay Kumar. Routledge, New Delhi, 2009.
RECENT years have seen considerable advance in social science research relating to the changing role and importance of different castes and communities in Indian politics, especially those belonging to the oppressed strata. Starting with the election survey conducted during the 1996 Lok Sabha elections by the CSDS, we now have new and fresh insights into the specificities of the electoral and the political process in general. The major contributions have come from the team work of Lokniti and individual scholars like Christophe Jaffrelot, who along with Sanjay Kumar is one the editors of the book under review.
The resilience of Indian democracy, despite the persistence of widespread poverty and mass illiteracy, is now well established, though appearing a paradox to a western reader. Democracy also functions well without the adequate spread of the foundations of civil society. Somewhat enigmatically, however, the main lobbies for democracy are ascriptive communities and not civic bodies. Seen thus, democracy in India provides the widest possible accommodation to a variety of particularities, normally viewed as inimical to democracy, as it seeks to fulfil, in varying measures, universal impulses of equality, freedom and dignity to these differently placed oppressed communities. This encounter between the particularities of Indian society and the universal values of democracy like those mentioned above, in part explains the specific flavour of democracy in India – the expansion and deepening of the democratic impulse and the untidy manner of its manifestation.
There is something substantive involved here, for democratic experience in India both challenges as well as adds a new dimension to received theory. Ever since John Stuart Mill, it has been commonly assumed that the poor and the illiterate are ill-equipped to become a part of democratic deliberations. In Representative Government, Mill asserted that ‘universal teaching must precede universal enfranchisement.’ This is some-what intriguing, for democracy’s working appears paradoxical only in relation to the received theory, but in relation to its own history in the context of the Indian social formation, there is no incongruity. The upsurge among oppressed communities seems to have strengthened the participatory values of democracy despite the absence of the ‘disengaged individual’ as the unit of deliberations and decisions, and without the scaffolding of liberal norms. The pervasiveness of the participatory aspirations and the weak presence of norms (all part of liberal ideology and practices) lies at the root of what many view as the ‘decline’ of Indian democracy. The evolution of democracy in India is made up of many such contradictory amalgams. One thus ought to be cautious in making judgements.
The book under review is an important intervention in our knowledge about the changing composition of social classes in politics. It aims to examine, at the level of the state legislature, the consequences and implications of the ongoing churning in Indian politics through sixteen different contributors, Indian and French, looking at as many different states in India. The discussion on the sixteen states is divided into seven different sections. This division is in itself interesting since it has less to do with geography but more with the major trends, or variations therein, in the nature and quality of political contestations among social classes. Equally, the variations within the same trend too are important; for example the marginalization of the savarnas in UP and Bihar. In the studies by Jasmine Zerinini and Cyril Robin respectively, while their decline in both states is marked by an upsurge among the OBCs, it is only in UP that this has also been accompanied by the rise of dalits as a major force in politics, a process which we are still to see in Bihar.
Similarly, the sway of the dominant castes in Karnataka in comparison to Andhra Pradesh (contributions by Sandeep Shastri and Anne Vaugier-Chatterjee respectively) are quite distinct. Since it is difficult to discuss the various studies and their implications in any detail, this review focuses on only two cases in brief, Himachal Pradesh, and West Bengal and Kerala.
Himachal Pradesh (contribution by Ramesh Chauhan et. al.,) is a case by itself. The common characterization of HP as a case of domination by ‘majoritarian upper castes’, though possibly true, is insufficient. It is likely that had the British not been generous to the Kanets just before they left, HP too would have been a case of OBC domination like much of the Hindi belt. The British in 1946 accepted the plea of Kanets (the main cultivator caste like the Yadavs or Kurmis in Bihar or UP) to be declared as Rajputs. Consequently the Kanets, who till then were not accepted as Rajputs, suddenly found themselves with an enhanced status. The original Rajputs (the people of aristocratic lineage) overnight became a small minority. That created a peculiar situation. The hill areas of HP now no longer have any significant backward caste unlike the Kangra belt where there is a significant OBC, Giriths or Bathis (the cultivating castes like Kanets), presence. A status dissonance has thus emerged between two otherwise similar groups. Given the consequent rupture between similar castes, an OBC bloc cannot emerge in HP, a fact reflected in the politics of upper hills and lower hills, as the new Rajputs of the upper hills find it easier to align with original Rajputs of the lower hills and not with the cultivators. This leads to what the authors call, ‘the domain of proportionality.’ Thus, while HP, though nominally a case of majoritarian upper caste domination, is different, a reflection how diverse histories in India create difference out of original similarities.
We now turn to the Left dominated states of Kerala and West Bengal. Here the large presence or domination of upper castes in the legislatures has been the subject of much negative commentary. However, for many of us who have been close to the organized Left, this is no surprise, even though one may not be happy with it. To understand this phenomenon one has to know how one moves up from being a cadre to occupying different higher levels of leadership in the CPs. To become a leader in an ascending order in the party organization, one has to go through a process of selection and screening in terms of the principles of democratic centralism. In this process of selection and screening, the higher leadership exercises strict surveillance. The problem may well be in the way this surveillance is exercised. Here the principle of centralism comes into play.
The screening is done in term of three criteria – firm ideological adherence to party programme, organizational allegiance and strict discipline, and ability to understand and abide by the party line as determined from time to time on a range of issues concerning the different class and mass activities. All this involves acquiring a fairly high level of mental capability to discharge work in term of the criteria hinted above. Therefore, education in its wider sense, prior exposure and the confidence one creates among the higher leadership, all become decisive in the way one moves up in the party.
It should be obvious from this, ‘unfortunately’ for the plebeians, that certain social backgrounds enjoy a differential advantage. Though there are a large number of people from disadvantaged caste and class backgrounds in the party, most of them are in the mass and class fronts; in fact, the party fronts are teeming with them. These members are a part of the process of selection and screening and feel a part of inner-party democracy. Nor, in my view, is there any discernible unhappiness among the members about party functioning, their sense of involvement clearly manifest in their dedication and commitment in popular struggles and electoral campaigns and other mass activity. In fact, as one moves from mass fronts into the party as a member, a similar process of selection and screening takes place. Consequently, self-representation, as may have happened in many other parties, is unlikely to be a feature of communist presence in legislatures.
Stated otherwise, the mere fact of a lower representation of people from marginal classes in the legislatures or the party hierarchy, despite the party having a large base among them, needs to be understood in the specific context of the ideology and working of the communist parties, within the received wisdom of democratic centralism.
1There are many other valuable contributions in this volume, including those by the editors themselves. Sanjay Kumar’s article, ‘Changing Face of Delhi’s Politics: Has it Changed the Face of Political Representatives?’ and Christophe Jaffrelot’s ‘The Uneven Rise of Lower Castes in Madhya Pradesh’ are both good examples of the rise of the oppressed in politics. Unfortunately, given space constraints, it is not possible to discuss them.
Finally, to a general point which has to do with the central contention of the book. Who is a plebeian in India? Or are there plebeians in India? The book places a question mark after the use of this word in the title. It is obvious that there are no social classes like the plebeians as in the Roman empire, though all the direct producers were either backward castes (OBCs, MBCs, etc.) or dalits. All of these were dependent jatis in the Indian social formation, dependent on the non-producers who together made up the class of superior upper caste, the dwijas or the savarnas. The question we need to ask here has to do with the nature of this dependence. Since the earlier debate about whether there was slavery in India generated a lot of heat without producing any light, it might be useful to focus on the nature of dependence of the direct producer. These populations were dependent upon upper castes, not as individuals but as entire jatis; this is quite unlike the situation of the European feudal serf or the earlier slaves who were individually dependent upon the lord or the slave owner. Consequently, whether slaves or not, all the direct producers in India were unfree as different low or untouchable castes but this unfreedom was collective not individual in nature. In brief, the Indian social formation was marked by collective unfreedom.
The question remains: Why was this unfreedom so deeply differentiated? The European slave was relatively undifferentiated, constituting thereby a single class. In India, however, since the direct producers were split up into different caste and jatis, the division remained deeply hierarchical. Here the specificity of the varna order becomes important. Productive work in India was organized not only under a system of domination, as in all class societies, but was also graded into numerous levels of impurity and degrees of pollution if it came into physical personal contact. Given the lesser or greater level of impurity and pollution, the direct producers were hierarchically graded into a descending scale, the lowest being the most impure and, therefore, made untouchable. The Indian varna system thus created sects (of ritual belief) out of direct producers, the working class (!). Not only has this become a source of violent caste sectarianism, but because the producers were also shut out from public spaces of deliberation in complex ways of social distancing, they are also marginalized – voiceless masses of population. The use of the term plebeian in the Indian context has thus to be read and understood differently. Despite these misgivings, the book under review forces us to engage with the concepts deployed. The process is both constructive and rewarding.
Overall, this book is a useful and timely contribution to an understanding of Indian politics. The changing nature of representation in India and the growing importance of self-representation remain important concerns. This book allows us to talk more precisely and intelligently on these issues.
Javeed Alam
Footnote:
1. For my understanding of democratic centralism, see Javeed Alam, ‘Can Democratic Centralism be Conducive to Democracy?’, Economic and Political Weekly, 19 September 2009.
TROUBLED PERIPHERY: Crisis of India’s North East by Subir Bhaumik. Sage, New Delhi, 2009.
Subir Bhaumik draws upon three decades of his impressive experience as a journalist to bring us a magisterial understanding of the ‘troubled periphery’ – North East India. It is a region scarred by ethnically mobilized conflicts that stand tumultuous witness to the gaps in India’s integrationist project; it is where the Indian state’s mistrust of democracy has prompted skullduggery, and produced the corrosive nexus of overground and underground politics, defeating the possibility of real democratic politics growing in these ethnic homelands.
Bhaumik tracks the political, economic and culturally hegemonic processes that sparked off endless prairie fires of ‘self-determination’ insurgencies, institutionalizing a national security state that further alienated not only the ‘tribal communities’ but eventually mainland Assam. However, he also suggests that the generation which grew up hating India is now coming to see it as a land of opportunity, as Tata Salt and Maruti cars herald the expanding opportunities of a common market, and the journey of North East students to mainland universities, national sports honours, high positions in federal jobs, holds out the advantages of becoming part of India’s mobile middle class.
Bhaumik gives us a tour d’horizon of the historical making of a frontier into a distinct region. He maps a trajectory flagged by the British colonial power’s policy of ‘inner line’ segregation that set in to motion a differentiated political course for the hills, thus excluding it from the integrationist mobilization of the nationalist movement. During the visit of the Simon Commission, 27 North East groups made representations against merger with ‘India’, egged on by the British imperial dream of creating a Hong Kong style crown colony. Bhaumik argues that ‘British manoeuvres had slowly turned this diverse hill area from a listless frontier into an administrative region held together to promote imperial interests’ (p.11). The North Eastern Areas (Reorganisation) Act divided up the province of Assam, achieving what ‘the likes of Hutton, Parry, Reid and Mackenzie had failed to carry out – the separation of the plains of Assam from its enchanting Hills.’ Bhaumik, however, is unsparing of the Assamese upper caste leadership ‘nation-province’ mindset that led to its failure to accommodate the aspirations of the tribes peoples.
For some scholars, the North East is a region that challenges the assumption of the ‘separation of the colonial from the national’, while those like Aditya Mukharji see the region as demonstrating India’s democratic capacity to accommodate, and still others, like Sanjib Baruah, deem the region as constituted into a zone of ‘durable disorder’. Bhaumik’s exploration of the triple crises – of identity, of governance, and of development – posits a more complex reality of the Indian state’s negotiations with multiple autonomous aspirations from the state’s militarist rejection of the competing pull of local nationalisms to accommodating power sharing arrangements with neo-literate, militant counter-elite spearheading the ethnic movements.
He analytically explains the Indian state’s North East strategy as structured around Kautilya’s four principles of sam (political reconciliation), dam (monetary inducement), danda (force) and bheda (split). The pattern can be picked out in the trajectories of the region’s multiple, conflict-peace accords. However, a closer scrutiny unsettles some of the assumptions implicit in this explanatory framework. Even as Bhaumik brings a nuanced approach to understanding the state’s multifaceted policy, which most often has been seen only within a militarist lens, he also claims that it has not been a stand alone militaristic approach, but one aimed at neutralizing the strike power of insurgents to force them to a negotiated settlement.
Indeed, there is a decisive difference between a military strategy aimed at eliminating all opposition as evinced in the Sri Lankan state’s crushing of the LTTE, and one that keeps aloft the concern for winning hearts and minds and the possibility of the return of ‘our misguided boys and girls’ (p. 91). However, the documented accounts of gross human rights atrocities, especially systematic sexual violence and rape (as reflecting the ‘otherness’ of the enemy), the inhumanity of the experience of tens of thousands forcibly regrouped in villages who starved to death, among other charges, raise questions about Bhaumik’s uncritical acceptance of the army fighting with one hand tied behind its back. For instance, while he draws attention to the prohibition against the use of air power in the Naga conflict theatre, he fails to add that it was part of the Mizo operations.
As for the policy of bheda, Bhaumik acknowledges that while as short term strategy of military containment it worked well, it became an impediment in the search for a durable solution. Arguably, the Mizo exception of a durable settlement owes its singular place to the capacity of the MNF leader Laldenga to carry the politico-military Mizo nationalist movement with him. In contrast, the Naga nation-ness was factionally re-tribalized by state agencies that used a diverse arsenal – accords that divided (1975 Shillong Agreement); monies and promise of office by fair and foul means that subverted the possibility of a democratic process; suborning of militants into becoming renegades, and so on. It weakened the movement, but in the long run also resulted in a ‘post-conflict’ disorder characterised by murky undemocratic politics.
Bhaumik is critical of the state’s flawed or ‘false federal’ accommodation of autonomous aspirations in the creation of problematic ethnic homelands in a multi-ethnic reality, sowing the seeds for new conflicts. Even the success story of ethnic homelands – the Mizo exception, is today being challenged by the self-determination movements of the Chakmas, Hmars, Brus, Reangs and Lais. These non-dominant tribes were part of the MNF fighting the Indian Army shoulder to shoulder with the Lushais, the major tribe of the Mizo Hills, but after 1986 all these tribes want their own homeland. The last days of colonial rule saw ethnicities getting consolidated and generic identities constructed – the Nagas, the Mizos, Tripura upjatis – but later years of the Republic saw a splintering and fragmentation of ethnicities. Bhaumik highlights the retribalization that saw deshi Tripuras who had identified themselves as local Bengalis, now asserting a tribal identity.
Bhaumik captures the working of this paradox of ethnicity consolidation and fragmentation, but stops short at providing a conceptual explanatory framework beyond the lure of the dividends attendant on ethnic politics. Also, given that the nature of institutional politics does not change, there can be no assumption that the politics in the new autonomous entity will be any more democratic. Similarly, in the Assam movement, the Bodos, Karbis, Dimasas and Rabhas all joined the movement to expel foreigners. But within months of the Assam Accord, there was disaffection over the Assamese having taken the cake and left the crumbs for the rest of the peoples of Assam. ‘Ethnic imbalance in power sharing led to re-tribalization which has limited the capacity of local nationalism to challenge the state,’ states Bhaumik. ULFA, in contrast, seeks to explore the multiethnic and assimilative formation of the Assamese nationality formation, which was disrupted by racial linguistic chauvinism of upper class Assamese elite (p. 35, 38).
Bhaumik, demonstrates an ease with the scholarly literature of the region to which he adds his inimitable treasure-trove of interviews and personalized communications. Also, he deploys with insight his experience of reporting on these multiple conflicts. What is particularly striking is his capacity to construct the dense tracts of concurrent and often interdependent conflict lines (including the satellite groups spawned by the Naga militants). This is further layered by the external dimension of support which begins with Phizo hopping across to Sylhet in East Pakistan in 1956, followed by training in China, collaboration with Burmese rebels, and sanctuary in Bhutan. Bhaumik asserts that the ‘foreign hand’ has been crucial for the sustainability of these insurgencies. That India too plays the ‘foreign hand’ card is succinctly illustrated in his recollection of Indira Gandhi’s peremptory directive: ‘Get us those Chakma leaders who want to fight Bangladesh’, following the military coup that killed Sheikh Mujib (p. 165, 180).
As part of his positional identity – Bhaumik is a Bengali settler of Tripura – some of the book’s most perceptive sections deal with the tense and complicated relationship between the Bengali settlers and indigenous peoples. In particular, the focus on the land question as the root of the insider-outsider politics is an important contribution to our understanding of the North East dynamics. Ironically, as Bhaumik notes, the land question finds little or no mention in the articulated demands of movements or in the public discourse.
Bhaumik’s collection of essays on the troubled periphery is an important addition to our understanding of the crisis in the region and its vivacity of style will invite a much wider circle of specialized as well as general readers.
Rita Manchanda
CHALLENGE AND STRATEGY: Rethinking India’s Foreign Policy by Rajiv Sikri. Sage, New Delhi, 2009.
ARTICULATE, persuasive, obviously well-read and highly intelligent, Rajiv Sikri was born to be a diplomat. And for 36 years he served India with distinction, both in our missions abroad as well as in Delhi. Then, when he was Secretary (East) in the Ministry of External Affairs, within reach of the coveted office of Foreign Secretary, he, for reasons best left unmentioned, took voluntary retirement. A pity, that. The Indian Foreign Service is far too thinly manned, thanks to decades of poor recruitment and a dozen things worse, to afford any bloodletting.
Fortunately for us, Sikri’s service to the nation did not stop with his retirement, for soon thereafter he started writing a book (Challenge and Strategy) on what he knows best, India’s foreign policy. Don’t be put off by the stuffy title. It is a gem of a book, adrenaline-charged perhaps, but inspired by genuine concern, written with much care, and though only 300 pages long, crammed with facts that every educated Indian should know. For one, it tells us, like no book before it, why, with so many things going for India, we have mismanaged, often disastrously, so many of our foreign policy problems right from the start.
No, the book does not wash any dirty IFS linen (except, perhaps, between the lines.) Nor does it seek to impress us with the author’s own feats in the service of the nation. In fact those dreaded words, I, me and my, feature nowhere in the book, a remarkable feat, considering that almost every important observation in the book springs from the author’s own experiences and knowledge. And the book freely gives credit where credit is due, most notably to Mahatma Gandhi (whose forays in foreign affairs, though few, were telling because they were backed by immutable moral principles) but also to many others (including Atal Behari Vajpayee, for adroitly avoiding being drawn into America’s Iraqi misadventure.) And even when the book is critical – and it spares no one, not Pandit Nehru, not Rajiv Gandhi, not Manmohan Singh, and not, horror of horrors, even Sonia Gandhi – it focuses on the sin rather than the sinner. Indeed, the villain of the saga, the one that is messing up our foreign policy, is no particular individual; it is the system, the way our government functions, as explained in disturbing detail in the all-important Chapter 14 of the book, disturbing because at the top of the heap is the PMO itself, nothing less. Unwittingly or otherwise, it has caused more harm to India’s interests abroad than we will ever know, RTI or no RTI, especially whenever the prime minister of the day has sought to play a solo hand. (An American diplomat once told me, in a moment of rare candor at a cocktail party years ago, that the Simla Agreement was an example of how to win a war and lose peace, so badly had it been negotiated by India, i.e., Indira Gandhi.)
The past, of course, is ever a prologue, certainly in our ancient land, and the author has treated it as exactly that while ‘rethinking India’s foreign policy’ and mapping for us a detailed route that the country might follow in the years to come. Understandably, it is a large map. Terrorism, climate change, the nuclear skirmishes, energy, WTO, the diaspora, cross-border trafficking, refugees, drugs, money-laundering …we have every headache that all the rest of the countries in the world together have, and then some. Nightmarish possibilities stalk the future of our relations with a dozen countries in our immediate and intermediate neighbourhood, and every step in our relations with the USA, the sole super power, is a step in a minefield.
Understandably also, the author’s touch is surer in the parts that he had trodden while in service, a little less sure elsewhere. And yes, some of the paths recommended by him are far too full of potholes to serve us well in the near future. But the main contours of the map are sharp and accurate – and unquestionable. Of course, wisdom in India comes from the chair that one is occupying, not from books. And it is possible that regardless of whether we have good governance or not, we will become a great power some time soon. It is also possible that, miraculously, those that wish to cause harm to India will come a cropper some day, and leave us alone thereafter. Unfortunately, it is equally possible that we, and they, do not do so. If, therefore, you have anything to do with whither India in the years to come, read this book – no, study this book. I am sure that they, those others, are doing so.
Kiran Doshi
INDIA’S ENERGY SECURITY edited by Ligia Noronha and Anant Sudarshan. Routledge, Milton Park, Oxon, 2009.
THE book under review emanates from a conference organized by TERI and the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung in New Delhi in 2006 and consequently predates the events of 2008 and the great global meltdown. Nevertheless, some of the material used has indeed been revised and updated for the eventual publication, and so many of the concerns expressed are as relevant today as before the meltdown.
The contributing authors have between them covered many facets of the complex question surrounding India’s energy security ranging from security of maritime supplies and the emergence of energy security as a foreign policy agenda to more complex questions of energy poverty and growth and the influence of changing lifestyles on energy consumption and carbon emission patterns. Contextualizing India’s energy security, Sudarshan and Noronha succinctly sum up the Indian situation in the following words: ‘The comforting opiating belief of possessing huge quantities of coal has contributed to a stagnation of energy policy initiatives and an insufficient investment in research and infrastructure that might have aided the use of alternatives such as natural gas or distributed renewables.’
A complex maze of cross-subsides, both apparent and hidden, and a closed coal industry with tight price controls has made it impossible to determine the true costs of the current pattern of energy use in the overall economy. Meanwhile, the decisions that have gone into making this the only road possible have irrevocably bound the country to the highly coal dependent pattern of energy consumption it finds itself in. Insulated by policy, the coal sector has unsurprisingly remained untouched by the winds of reform that have swept other sectors to different degrees.
Rather than look at the issue in narrow terms of security of supplies, the two overarching threats to energy security are seen to arise from growth concerns on the one hand and poverty concerns on the other. This is also the definition of energy security adopted in the Integrated Energy Policy of the Planning Commission. Holding path dependence as responsible for setting constraints on present and future choices, the editors suggest that India’s future for the next three to five decades is inextricably linked to high use of fossil fuels. Therefore, ‘There is a real need for India to prepare itself to move off its current fossil fuel intensive energy path.’ Unfortunately, however, the book lacks a focused discussion on alternative energy technologies for India and thus does not go into the challenges facing any significant policy shift in that direction. For instance, the two concluding essays on nuclear power present two diametrically opposite viewpoints on the viability and feasibility of the three phase nuclear programme adopted by India, while the renewable sector, though frequently alluded to (sometimes wistfully), does not find much room for any serious discussion.
Sethi correctly points out that the foremost ‘supply’ option for India in order to secure its energy remains energy efficiency and conservation even as the book refrains from going into a greater discussion on policy or policy constraints that hamper both.
Gupta and Sudarshan show how inequalities in the use of and access to modern energy are growing between urban and rural households. While access to electricity and LPG is increasing all over, the rate of penetration is far slower in rural areas because of low purchasing power and availability constraints. Universal LPG subsidies have been regressive. The decline in the use of kerosene for cooking in urban areas has been far more dramatic than the decline in the use of biomass in the ten tears preceding 2005. The slack has been taken by LPG use of which increased to 57.1% from 29.5%. Rural areas have shown a growth from 1.9% to just 8.6% by comparison. Obviously, the present subsidies have failed miserably in that they have limited rather than increased access to commercial fuels like LPG, especially in rural areas.
Talmiz Ahmad and R.K. Batra separately make a strong case for the role of oil diplomacy in securing supplies especially of natural gas. India, though surrounded by countries with abundant gas resources, has still not been able to tie up a single project: geopolitics and security concerns being attributed as the primary reasons. Raja Mohan explores the emerging options for an expanded role for Indian foreign policy in securing its growing energy interests abroad as more and more Indian companies step out in increasing numbers and demands of energy security would require India to rethink its neighbourhood.
Overall what the collection lacks is a fuller examination of why and how energy policy in India, despite such a high degree of import dependence, has resisted all attempts to better integrate energy markets in India with markets even in the immediate neighbourhood, not to speak of the larger world markets. This lack of integration and an obdurate insistence on insularity has not been conducive for the growth of the necessary infrastructure or commercial tie-ups for ensuring long term supplies of energy. Batra, however, refers to the problem rather obliquely as the ‘diffidence’ of the Indian government in negotiating gas prices.
Eventually, the book, in spite of some singularly good contributions which make excellent reading, remains a disparate collection of essays on different aspects of India’s energy security with widely varying degrees of coverage. Many of the graphs and charts have not been properly converted to read well in black and white format which lowers their utility for reference. In a book examining the question of India’s energy security, the vexed political economy of pricing reforms, that has remained the key reason for the many distortions and inefficiencies so apparent in the economy today, perhaps needed closer examination. Pricing issues remain central not only to the much berated and ubiquitous diesel, kerosene and LPG subsidies, but go far beyond those to the country’s inability to better exploit and expand the potential of the railways to their fullest potential and put in place more effective national transport policies.
Finally, at the end of the day, the biggest threats to a country’s energy security are not so much extraneous but rather spring from uncertainty and procrastination within the internal policy domain.
Sunjoy Joshi
