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Slicing the Central pie
Boat tragedy |
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Star treatment
Challenges in food security
Don’t take away my hills
Partnerships — new watchword for development
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Slicing the Central pie
The
Raghuram Rajan Committee was set up in the wake of Bihar insisting on a special package for the state on account of its backwardness, and its report categorises Narendra Modi's Gujarat among the 'less developed' states. This was reason enough for the UPA government's detractors to label it a politically motivated exercise, as Bihar, declared the least developed, will get more funds and Gujarat stands tarnished. However, what Rajan, now RBI Governor, has given is a very scientific and comprehensive basis to calculate the 'backwardness' of a state. His formula may have condemned Gujarat, but the state will also get more funds. There is a fair distribution of Congress and Opposition ruled states in all three categories of development created. The report gives a fixed amount to all states — irrespective of size — for basic administration, which may put larger states at disadvantage. The other two components for devolution of Central funds to states are related to the 'need' of a state, which means its ‘backwardness’, and progress on the development index. This seems only fair — the poor get help and those demonstrating good governance get an advantage. The argument against this will come from larger states that are also relatively better developed, such as Tamil Nadu, which has already protested. It gets a relatively small fixed amount, less on account of backwardness, and can show relatively less governance improvement as it is already well off. Punjab can also have similar objections to an extent, though it has poor fiscal management. At present, some of the factors on which state allocations by the Finance Commission are based seem discretionary, including special packages for the hill states. Many of these decisions had been reached on political pressures from various states. The Rajan report looks at states blindfolded. The challenge it will face is in implementation, which is again going to be politically influenced. Allocations for this fiscal are already made. Implementation will thus happen practically only under a new government. The political alignments of the time will have a major role to play. But it is an opportunity to take politics out of development.
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Boat tragedy
The
tragedy near Tarn Taran, in which nine persons lost their lives after the rickety boat they were travelling in capsized in the Beas, has again served to highlight the precarious state of commuters who have to cross the river to travel to and fro from their homes. There are a number of villages in Punjab which are not connected with roads. The residents of these villages have to take a boat ride to the nearest road before they can travel further. Indeed, it has been pointed out that there are as many as 50 places along the Beas which depend on boats. Little wonder that these boats are used not only for ferrying commuters, but also as their vehicles. Unfortunately, there is a lack of adequate monitoring of the vessels, especially with regard to safety. Every boat needs to be checked thoroughly and the permissible load should be determined by the competent authorities. The Northern India Ferries Act, 1873, places the responsibility for such checks on the district administration, but since this has largely been an unregulated sector it is difficult to enforce checks. There is no doubt about the need for boats on the river, and about the vital connectivity that they offer. However, safety has to be ensured, and for that the state government must set up a mechanism that inspects such vessels and regulates them. The boat operators, be it commercial owners, or householders who maintain their own vessels, too have the responsibility of ensuring that the vessels are not overloaded and that they are maintained in a proper manner. The district administration must also ensure that motorboats earmarked for rescue operations are fully functional so that they can be pressed into action swiftly as and when needed. The state government must also take a long-term view and look into the feasibility of providing bridges to improve the connectivity across the river.
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Star treatment
The
Punjab government, that fails to pay salaries and pensions to its employees in time due to poor fiscal management, never shies away from announcing mega projects worth crores of rupees to boost the economy. No wonder, the overall failure of the government desperately needs stars to be favourable for its ailing health and to give a much required boost to its waning reputation. Almost on the brink of bankruptcy, the government plans to rope in Bollywood stars, a la Namo style. The Gujarat government's much acclaimed "Khushbuu Gujarat ki" campaign with 15 ad films that featured superstar Amitabh Bachchan and cost the Gujarat government Rs 40 crore, helped accelerate an already on-the-track economy. It attracted top brand global automobile industries to set up manufacturing plants in the state apart from major pharma and chemical industries. Whichever star comes on board the sinking ship of Punjab will have to deal with an abysmal record of industries moving out of the state. The government's claims about attracting over a lakh crore rupees of investment in Punjab have already been proven hollow. It is also among the worst performing states in the country for checking pollution. The environment report of the state has expressed concern over the industrial scenario, causing a depressing effect on the economy. The rivers are polluted and contaminated water has earned the state the title of being the cancer capital of the country. On the sociological index the state does not have much to celebrate. The gender ratio has been crying for some concrete steps beyond gimmicks. Drug abuse is alarmingly high. A survey conducted by its own department suggested that 67 per cent rural households in the state have at least one drug addict in the family, mostly in the age group of 16 to 35 and at least one death is reported due to drug overdose each week. About the state's tourism promotion and heritage conservation the less said the better. In the absence of capital investment, without cutting down on expenditure, Punjab cannot come out of its fiscal mess. No star is powerful enough to perform that miracle.
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I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well. —Robert Benchley
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Challenges in food security
The
recently enacted National Food Security Act, 2013, (NFSA) is being described as a 'game-changer' to strengthen food and nutritional security in the country. It goes without saying that be it basic staples (wheat and rice) or other foods (edible oil, pulses, fruit, vegetables, milk and milk products, egg, meat, fish, etc) India has been quite successful in ensuring their ample availability to its population. But in addition to food availability, there are two more critical factors in ensuring food security for the citizen's — access to food and its absorption for better nourishment. Despite robust economic growth in recent years, one-third of India's population, i.e., more than 376 million people, in 2010 still lived below the poverty line as per World Bank's definition of $1.25 a day. Besides, the National Family Health Survey of 2005-06 highlighted that amongst children under five years, 20 per cent were acutely and 48 per cent chronically undernourished. These facts underline the relevance of safety-net targeting that makes the poor and vulnerable secure in terms of nutrition, dietary needs and changing food preferences. In this context, the NFSA marks a significant shift from the current welfare approach to a rights based approach. A legal right has now been conferred on beneficiaries to receive entitled quantities of food grains at subsidised prices. This has been supplemented with conferring a similar right on women, children and other vulnerable groups to receive meals free of charge. Such rights have been backed in the Act by an internal grievance redress mechanism that seeks to foster transparency and accountability in the last-mile governance of public delivery structures, i.e. 4.7 lakh fair price shops. The backbone of the Act, of course, is the large-scale distribution of food grains to 67 per cent of the country's population of 1.2 billion. The foremost challenge is to ensure the sustained availability of food grains with public authorities. Self-sufficiency has been achieved in grain production at 257 million tonnes despite the growing pressure on land and water. Besides, a gradual shift in the geographic cropped area has been planned over the years from north-western states to the eastern states of Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and West Bengal due to overexploitation of ground water. But despite the record food grain production, lack of marketing and procurement infrastructure in these states has been a cause of distress to the small-holding farmers. A related key issue is the efficiency of the food grain procurement, transportation and distribution chain via the Central pool by the Food Corporation of India (FCI). Though this system is applicable to the entire country, it operates primarily in a few surplus states such as Punjab, Haryana, Western UP and Andhra Pradesh. The Commission on Agricultural Costs and Prices (CACP) observes that it would be cheaper to procure food grains from states such as Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, etc, and deliver to neighbouring deficit or remote states in central, eastern and western India. This could also possibly reduce wastage. Besides, maintaining and moving the buffer stocks is another mammoth task. Additional procurement, storage and its distribution by the FCI under the NFSA would require rail head connections for all FCI storage points and increase in bulk wagon availability with the Indian Railways. One aspect that needs immediate attention is reform of the FCI apparatus with allowance for public-private partnerships in the movement and storage of grains. Thus, there is a need during the next three years to enhance strategic investments in agricultural infrastructure, especially in the grain marketing network (as has been done in Chhattisgarh), while we continue to push productivity enhancing technologies in irrigation, power, fertilisers, seeds and post harvest activities. The second challenge is to eliminate leakage and corruption and ensure stringent monitoring under the NFSA at the last-mile distribution points (fair price shops) in states. The provisions under Chapter V of the NFSA envisage a bouquet of innovative reforms that can be effected by the states. The use of fake ration cards in these shops has already been addressed by states such as Tamil Naidu and Kerala by computerisation of databases and using hologram enabled technologies. These states have also experimented successfully with running of cooperative fair price shops. Madhya Pradesh has used the private sector to computerise the Public Distribution System (PDS) and register beneficiaries with the biometric Aadhaar numbers as well as provide food coupons. What we need to achieve is a pan India scale with regard to application of communication technologies under the NFSA, especially covering remote and backward regions/districts with vulnerable populations. Rural banking also needs to be strengthened. To do so, the implementation of 2011 recommendations of the Task Force on IT Strategy for PDS (that details the use of technology in supply chain management and electronic payments) has to be fast-tracked in the coming three years. A related issue is the introduction of cash transfers (as in Brazil, Mexico, Philippines, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh) in lieu of food grain entitlements, linking it with the Aadhaar number. The idea is to avoid the pitfalls of nationwide stocking, storage and distribution of food grains across diverse agro-climatic regions. While individual states would have the freedom to devise their own systems, the CACP's observations in this context need to be viewed seriously. It suggests that states surplus in cereal production and cities with a population of 1 million or more could straightaway move to cash transfers. It would enable maintaining an optimum buffer stock, ease distribution and storage problems, and bundle cash transfer with health and education initiatives. More importantly, it would prune the estimated US $ 24 billion food subsidy for providing approximately 62 million tonnes of food grains by physical movement through the PDS. The third and long-term challenge is of qualitative improvement in food absorption, especially for women and children, by creating synergies between public health, sanitation, education and agricultural interventions. First, a comprehensive and functional "national nutrition strategy" has to identify local convergences between the Centrally sponsored Mid-Day Meal Scheme, Total Sanitation Campaign, National Rural Health Mission and the Integrated Child Development Program. Creation of quality rural and urban infrastructure through community participation under the above converged programs has to be achieved through effective public-private partnerships. The outreach programs of civil society and NGOs such as Akshaya Patra (that delivers freshly cooked, nutritious meals to 1.3 million children in government schools through 20 locations across nine states) need to be encouraged, scaled and
institutionalised.
The writer, an IAS officer, is currently a Senior Fellow at South Asia Studies, SAIS, Johns Hopkins University, Washington DC. The views expressed are personal.
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Don’t take away my hills When
Le Corbusier, the architect-planner of Chandigarh, first visited the city's site and saw the blue Shivalik hills, he wrote lyrically to his wife Yvonne, "I've never been so tranquil and solitary, absorbed by the poetry of natural things and by poetry itself. We're on the site of our city under a splendid sky, in the midst of a timeless countryside…" His frenetic on-the-spot sketch of the panorama picks up the hallmark 'monkey top' of the Kasauli hills with perfect precision. Recently standing at the piazza between the High Court and the Assembly of the city's iconic Capital complex, I gazed towards the hills. The view was blotted. Monstrous mobile towers standing menacingly between the sculptural emblem of the Open Hand and the much romanced hills had now encroached upon on the God-given landscape. There are even rooflines of buildings peeping out from the canopies of the age-old lush mango groves. Then there are plans for multi-storeyed blocks to obliterate the hills completely, one hears. The onslaught of insensitive, dehumanising urbanisation is devouring the pristine grandeur of the Himalayas everywhere. Wherever you stand in the city, the hills are getting erased by the heartless mass of brick and concrete skylines. If you go to the promenade of the Sukhna Lake, where once the azure hills shimmered with mirror images in the placid waters, now sprout up steel giants of mobile towers and ugly illegal structures; defiling the thick tree canopies of the forest area that spread, till they touch the feet of the hills in obeisance. At night, the stars that once sang a celestial symphony along with the magical, twinkling lights of Kasauli hills; now there are blazes of halogen lamps aglow at the IT Park and new colonies. Corbusier had instead dreamt of a night view of the soulful lake, where you could serenade the stars at Sukhna. It was to be a place where you could "see the stars in the sky and the stars in the mountains too, in the water and all in absolute silence". You may get nightmares now instead. With the rampant urbanisation all around City Beautiful, the primeval hills stretching out amidst lush green fields and the ancient Jayanti Devi temple may soon too be dotted with developers' fantasies of creating mini glass and steel Singapores. I'm losing my hills even at my favourite green turf — the Panchkula Golf Course. The fairways along the ninth and the 11th holes are spread out along the Ghaggar's bank. While teeing-off, one was mesmerised by the enchanting expanse of the Morni hills dotted with the historical white dome of Nada Sahib Gurdwara. But recently, dehumanising, grey and glass high-rises have started blighting the opposite bank of the river. The hills are vanishing slowly but surely. Will goddess Chandi Devi, the presiding deity of the city after which it takes its famous name, be
happy?
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Partnerships — new watchword for development
TheRE
is great expectation as well as apprehension in the civil society about the new Companies Act 2013, which makes it mandatory for companies making annual profit of Rs 5 crore and above to give 2 percent of their average profit every year, over three years towards corporate social responsibility (CSR). Since there is a huge network of NGOs across the country, estimates vary from 1.2 million (PRIA/John Hopkins study of 2001) to 3.3 million (department of statistics, GoI, 2012), funds have always been a problem for the small voluntary organisations working in remote areas of the country. Will corporate sector munificence, under the new Act, benefit these NGOs? Corporate Affairs Minister, Sachin Pilot, estimates an annual CSR spending of Rs 15,000 to Rs 20,000 crore, if every company that qualifies for CSR does its bit. The canvas, he points out is large and wide open for companies to decide on the CSR activities they wish to undertake. Even as discussions happen across the country, public/private partnerships are worked out and companies change their mind-set and move out of giving just to their own foundations, it is important to keep alive the spirit and mandate of civil society. This spirit is best articulated by Amitabh Behar, executive director of the National Foundation for India. “Civil society is an important part of democracy and the nation building endeavours. It has a transformational role and not a limited one of service delivery,” he points out. The fear is that CSR work could be limited to charity….relief… with civil society expected to toe the line and if this happens it would fundamentally damage the nature of civil society and restrict its role of transformation and empowerment, he warns. Dr Rajesh Tandon, President of PRIA (Participatory Research in Asia), which has 32 years experience of working with a network of 3000 organisations bats for two sets of initiatives, both important for the country.
Philanthropy of 26 high net value individuals and 50 top corporates A recent study of the National Foundation for India looked at the philanthropic giving of 26 of the wealthiest Indians and analysed financial statements and annual reports of the top - 50 listed companies to identify the quantum and nature of their CSR spending. It also looked at the potential impact of the companies bill (now an Act) on the top 200 publicly listed companies by market valuation and major changes that can be expected in corporate philanthropy. The study found that the total CSR spending targets of the top 200 companies under the new Act will be Rs.5,874 crore. Average CSR spending, by the top- 50 companies by market valuation will be Rs.68.4 crore, after removing two outliers - Reliance and ONGC, who will have CSR spending targets of Rs.377 and Rs.405 crore respectively.
Whether it was the philanthropic spending of the wealthy or the top listed companies, money was given to run educational institutions, hospitals, for environment, vocational training programmes and livelihood. It was rare to find them trying to leverage their giving to impact larger geographies or ensure structural change in their focus sectors. Issues like urban poverty and affordable housing; hunger and malnutrition; caste, gender and religious discrimination; redressal of human rights violations were completely absent in CSR programmes and the North East and Jammu and Kashmir were underrepresented in individual as well as corporate munificence.
Helping the marginalised Though India is undergoing demographic transition and is reaping demographic dividends, these benefits are tempered with social and spatial inequalities. Marginalised youth, especially Dalits and tribals face discrimination and constraints in accessing opportunities for capacity building, compared to their urban counterparts. In state like Haryana, dalit girls face double discrimination, while the tribal youth from Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand have stories to tell about naxal attacks, inaccessible schools and hospitals. Tandon's first suggestion is to build personal and vocational skills of youth/adolescents — especially girls from excluded communities in rural and urban areas. Their personalities have to be honed and self-confidence boosted. PRIA has worked on these issues with Dalit girls in Haryana, tribal girls in Chhattisgarh and Odisha and with Muslim girls in UP. The scale of intervention required is huge, says Tandon, and it is not merely about funding. Civil society organisations alone cannot deliver. Partnerships are needed. Why partnerships The second set of interventions have to do with planning, implementation and monitoring systems and capacities in local governments — panchayats, zila parishads and municipalities. There is the problem of data management, systematic and transparent planning and 'accountable implementation'. Investments in human and institutional capacities are therefore vital. Here again, Tandon points out civil society alone cannot deliver and partnerships are needed with the private sector. Other areas of cooperation between civil society and private sector, where CSR funds should be used are, violence against women and girls in public spheres, bringing water to tribal households in schedules areas and strengthening capacities of urban poor to plan and implement projects of housing, water and sanitation. To overcome the current trust deficit between private business and NGOs, Tandon says a number of joint progranmmes should be undertaken. Working together on a few programmes would be the best way to understand each other's value additions. Face-to-face dialogues with a few people from both constituencies would help. In 2009, PRIA launched a 'youth leadership programme' to empower the communities to lead a good and successful life. A five-day residential training programme was organised for Dalit girls and tribal youth, giving them access to quality personal education by developing their skills and improving their knowledge regarding their health and growth opportunities. The training programme was particularly useful for tribal youth living in the interiors who have either no or limited access to resources. In collaboration with Chetnalaya (Haryana), Society for Rural Industrialisation (Jharkhand) and Xaviers Institute for Social Action (Chhattisgarh) 133 youngsters of 15 to 18 years were trained on life skills, leadership, adolescent reproductive & sexual health and personal and professional development. This was done using various participatory methods like organising games, screening of relevant movies, conducting group discussions and enacting role plays. The programme exposed the youth to development processes and instilled the desire to lead for their personal growth. Health for the elderly Mathew Cherian, CEO, HelpAge India, is anxious to ensure that the 51 million elderly living below the poverty line with neither pension or proper health care facilities and the 21 million elderly widows are not left out of the corporate sector spending. The new Companies Act and CSR provisions do not have any specific support for the elderly and disabled. There are close to 70 million disabled children, women and elderly who have not been counted for CSR so far. In the current mood of tapping the enormous potential of CSR, there is heightened consciousness, particularly among the NGOs, of making a business of ‘shared values’ so that it does not remain just a buzzword for seminars and public discourses. Public/Private Partnerships are quite clearly the way forward and the best example of this coming together can be seen in the Humanyun’s Tomb, Sunder Nursery, Nizamuddin Basti Urban Renewal Initiative. Though the genesis of the project can be traced to 1997, the 50th year of India's Independence, when the Aga Khan gifted the restoration of Humayun's Tomb and gardens to the people of India, when the government changed, the Aga Khan Trust for Culture withdrew from Humayun's Tomb. The success story In 2005/2006, at the request of the Prime Minister of India, heritage conservation work was renewed. This time the Aga Khan Development Network (AKDN) used heritage conservation as a spring board for socio- economic development in the neighbouring community. Jyotsna Lall, senior programme officer with the Aga Khan Foundation, points out a public private partnership was worked out between Archaeological Survey of India, CPWD and Municipal Corporation of Delhi, the public partners, and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture and Aga Khan Foundation, the private partners. The project runs in two phases — from 2007 to 2012 and 2012 to 2017. However, in this case the private partners are not for profit organisations and have invested a significant amount of their own money as well as funds leveraged from Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, Ford Foundation, World Monument Fund and the American Centre of the US Embassy. For the first time the private, not-for-profit agency has worked in partnership with a government agency like ASI for restoration of a world heritage site (Humayun's tomb) and other buildings in Sunder Nursery. In the Nizamuddin basti, Aga Khan Foundation partners with the MCD, to work in the school and the polyclinic to strengthen services and the street improvement programme. It also works with the DDA to restore public spaces like parks. The project management committee has representatives of all the five partners and an advisory committee of ASI ratifies the work done in Humayun's tomb. Though PPP is the way forward, there are no precedents, says Jyotsna. Partners have to figure out what works best and what the limitations are. It works well in infrastructure development but to ensure that development is maintained, institutional arrangements have to be put in place. Working in partnership with the community needs to be given greater space in the governance environment, she says. How difficult is it for disparate groups to come together? Jyotsna says, “Every change in the position holder means building new relationships and this can sometimes delay or alter projects. Just last year there were six changes in the leadership position in the CPWD. The working styles of private and public sector are hugely different but if there is sincere desire to work out a project, the final results (as in the restoration work of Humayun's tomb) are worth the effort. The writer is a well-established environment and development journalist
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