The Tribune, Chandigarh, India

Avoidable loss
Rainwater still goes waste in Punjab

A 20 metre-fall in central Punjab’s water table in the past decade is alarming, to say the least. A study by the state’s Agriculture Department has revealed shocking details about the ground reality in the districts of Sangrur, Barnala and Moga. The situation may not be much different in other districts barring those areas where waterlogging is a problem. What is worrying is that even when there is heavy rain — as it happened during the monsoon last year — the water table continues to decline. The data taken in October 2010 shows there was no improvement in the post-monsoon groundwater situation. This means rainwater simply goes waste as village ponds have been levelled or encroached upon.

The reason for the declining water table is well known. It is excessive paddy cultivation. Since paddy still gives the highest and assured returns to farmers, thanks to an almost yearly increase in the minimum support prices by the Centre, there is no attempt to shift to other kharif crops. The area under hybrid maize, for instance, has not increased. Though the Centre talks of extending the Green Revolution to the eastern states, it has now started encouraging the production of oilseeds and pulses in Punjab and Haryana by offering better support prices since the country relies heavily on costly imports.

However, it is Punjab’s political leadership that not only ignores the state’s long-term interests but also works at cross-purposes. On the one hand, the government departments make efforts – even if half-hearted — to promote crop diversification, on the other state politicians press for higher paddy prices/bonuses every year to cash in on farmers’ votes. The misdirected subsidy of free power also leads farmers to over-exploit groundwater. The canal water supply meets just one-fourth of the requirement for paddy. The canals and rivers lose water heavily for want of repairs and cleanup. The state leadership is yet to wake up to the need for rainwater harvesting, which ultimately has to be adopted on a mass scale to rejuvenate Punjab’s depleting water resources.

Wasteful behemoth
Rural wage scheme requires tight control

During the five years of its existence, the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) has done quite a bit for ameliorating the lot of the rural poor. But at the same time, a large percentage of what should have ideally reached the deserving has been siphoned off. Even National Advisory Council chairperson Sonia Gandhi has admitted that funds are being spent on other works and there are reports of forged job cards and muster rolls and fake names of labourers. The Centre has released Rs 1.08 lakh crore to states since 2006 under the scheme but did not carry out proper account auditing at any level. Only now that the behemoth has become a byword for corruption is it bracing up to face the challenge. The Centre has put the blame on the states which have not been careful in preventing leakage. Instead of just playing the blame game, the two should put their heads together to solve the problem. After all, quite a few states are ruled by the Congress itself. A thorough overhaul can be started right from there.

Implemented properly, the ambitious scheme can bring about a win-win situation. It guarantees employment for 100 days in a year and also helps in undertaking measures like water conservation, building rural roads, etc. Issues like lack of planning at the ground level and dearth of expert human resources need to be addressed. Due to such stumbling blocks, only 3.1 lakh of the total 68 lakh works taken up by the MGNREGS (under 5 %) have been completed so far.

The state governments ought to realise that they can win over the hearts of the people by bringing in accountability and transparency in the functioning of the scheme. Any siphoning off of money presents the governments in a poor light. It is ironical that the country’s — and perhaps also the world’s – largest rural safety net programme does not pay minimum wages to its workers. A duly elected government should not refuse to implement its own Minimum Wages Act.

Thought for the Day

There’s no limit to what a man can achieve, if he doesn’t care who gets the credit. — Laing Burns, Jr

ARTICLE

Scent of jasmine & India
Beware of anger over graft, prices
by Inder Malhotra

FOR all its faults that are many and at times serious, India is not a tin-pot West Asian dictatorship. Except for the 19-month period of the Emergency in the mid-seventies of the last century, it has been the world’s largest democracy, albeit a raucously noisy and rather undisciplined one. In broadly free and fair elections held with due regulatory, Indian people could easily dethrone so powerful a leader as Indira Gandhi and then bring her back to power. In May 1996, the government in New Delhi changed thrice in 30 days flat. Not a shot was fired. Nor did crowds demonstrate on the streets for the simple reason that people were glued to their TV sets to watch vote-of-confidence debates in Parliament.

Thereafter, following the fall of one government in 13 days and of the other two in quick succession, the country had to endure two elections in as many years before the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance government could complete a full five-year term. Political stability thereafter has been even more impressive. In May 2009 the Congress-dominated United Progressive Alliance returned to power for a second five-year tenure with a much stronger mandate. Constitutional and legal measures enacted during the 1980s ensure that the Emergency cannot be repeated. In these circumstances, there is neither any scope for nor any possibility of the “Jasmine revolution, now sweeping several other West Asian countries, especially the largest Arab country, Egypt, reaching Indian shores.

Even so, the powers that be ought to be worried about the consequences of their disappointing performance in the face of the rising tide of corruption and their failure to control the vicious spiral of prices, especially of food items, including onions and tomatoes. There should be no mistaking the public mood. It was sour to begin with, but is now yielding place to growing anger. Something has got to be done, therefore, and done without further delay.

It is tragic that the UPA government goes on boasting that it is acting with alacrity against mounting corruption — as against eight major scams in the 1980s, there were 26 during the nineties and as many as 150 between 2005 and 2008 — while its actions belie this claim. The mother of all scams, the 2G-Spectrum allocation, underscores the point. The gargantuan loot was obvious to all concerned as early as 2008. The man responsible was A. Raja (now arrested), a nominee in the Cabinet of the Dravid Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) and Minister of Telecommunications in UPA-I. Yet he was reappointed to the same post after the 2009 Lok Sabha poll. The Radia tapes have exposed how. Even after parliamentary and public protests against the monstrous scam the government continued to protect the errant minister because of the diktat of the DMK patriarch, M. Karunanidhi, a key ally of the Congress. Only after the Comptroller and Auditor-General’s report on the gravity of the mega scandal was Mr. Raja asked to resign.

The squalid story did not end there. The spectrum scam wrecked the entire winter session of Parliament because almost the entire Opposition demanded a Joint Parliamentary Committee (JPC) that the government resisted with equal inflexibility. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s belated offer to appear before the Public Accounts Committee but not before a JPC cut no ice. All this called for fast track investigation and prosecution of the culprits. What happened instead was that the new Telecommunications Minister, Kapil Sibal, declared that there was absolutely no loss on account of spectrum allocation. He also took the opportunity to trash the CAG for which both the Supreme Court and Parliament’s PAC chastised him. Many commentators raised the pertinent question: why Raja was sacked, and shouldn’t he be brought back?

What has further eroded the government’s moral authority and credibility as well as the Prime Minister’s positive image is the UPA’s absolute refusal to disclose the names of the criminals guilty of stashing black money in secret bank accounts overseas. This is matched by the utter inadequacy of the government’s efforts to bring back the mind-boggling hoards of money from various tax havens. Dr Manmohan Singh even stated that there was “no instant solution” to the black money problem. Since the apex court is seized of the issue because of public interest litigation, its reaction was sharp. It took exception to the government’s refusal to name those “who are plundering the nation’s wealth”.

Rightly or wrongly, the government goes on invoking the “confidentiality clause” in double-taxation avoidance agreements with foreign countries. Rightly or wrongly, an angry public believes that the government is determined to “protect its own” along with tarnished tycoons, corporate crooks and sundry other scoundrels. Whatever the government’s chief troubleshooter, Pranab Mukherjee, might say it just cannot hold water. For in 2005 India signed a UN convention on corruption and black money that could have helped expose those hoarding huge stocks of it outside the country. For five years the government hasn’t ratified it. Why? Someone indicted by the Supreme Court for gross obstruction to justice sits pretty in the UPA Cabinet despite the so-called reshuffle.

This is disgraceful, but even more disgraceful is the stinking mess the government has made over the selection of the Central Vigilance Commissioner. The choice of P. J. Thomas for the post of the watchdog against corruption was inexcusable. A lot worse is the series of shifting and shifty excuses in defence of the indefensible the government has offered in the Supreme Court. To quote R. K. Raghavan, an outstanding and upright former Director of the Central Bureau of Investigation, the Attorney-General’s “admission” that the facts of Thomas’s “involvement in the palmoelin case were not placed before the selection committee “compounds the impropriety …”. He has added: “Persons in the background who constitute extra-constitutional centres of power, who may have driven hard to bring in Thomas, must be squirming in their seats”. The crowning irony is that Thomas has now turned on his benefactors. He has contemptuously rejected their appeals to resign to avoid further embarrassment. He is showing every sign of turning out to be a Frankenstein’s monster.

The ruling combination, run by Congress president Sonia Gandhi and the Prime Minister, can no longer say that it hasn’t been warned adequately. It still has more than three years to first stem its rising unpopularity and then reverse the trend. The gnawing question, however, is whether it has the necessary will and capacity.

MIDDLE

A doyen among strategic analysts
by B.G. Verghese

Subbu, as K. Subrahmanyam was popularly known, died with his boots on. He reflected, wrote and discussed current events and their implications for the future until the last even as he gamely battled a terminal illness. He will be remembered with respect and gratitude for having tutored two generations of Indians to think holistically and strategically. That will be his enduring monument.

A member of the Tamil Nadu cadre of the IAS, Subbu was a young Deputy Secretary in the Department of Defence Production in Delhi when I first met him in 1966. I had just left The Times of India to join Indira Gandhi as her Information Adviser. Soon thereafter China exploded its third nuclear device — the first having been in 1964 — and preparations were afoot internationally to draft a non-proliferation treaty to limit nuclear weapons to the five nations that had tested up to date. This would effectively bar others, including India, from joining the exclusive nuclear club.

The official Indian response to these events seemed vague and confused and it appeared to a mere outsider like me that the problem had simply not been thought through. Conflicting and compartmentalised thinking was evident with everybody pulling in different directions and no studied effort to build a consensus or frame clear options.

I accordingly took the bit in my teeth and did a note for the Prime Minister urging a holistic study, noting that the Opposition in the Lok Sabha had sought a firm official commitment to build the Bomb and Foreign Minister Swaran Singh’s had been that it was intended to develop the knowhow and technical capability for the purpose.

Homi Sethna, Director of the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC), whom I knew, happened to drop into my office and plaintively remarked that the AEC was being administratively hamstrung. I took the cue and invited him to lunch the next day for a brainstorming session to which I proposed to invite some others. In the result, Sethna; S. Gopal, Director, Historical Division of the MEA; Pitamber Pant, Head of the Perspective Planning Division of the Planning Commission; Romesh Thapar, then a close confdante of Mrs Gandhi; K.Subrahmanyam, a promising young official who I had been informally told was an appropriate person to invite from the Defence Ministry, and I assembled at the Delhi Gymkhana Club. We formulated the outlines of what might be done after going round the table garnering preliminary insider inputs on the technical, economic, diplomatic, political and security parameters.

I reported the outcome to the Prime Minister and her Secretary, L.K. Jha. A week later, at an AEC meeting chaired by the Prime Minister in Bombay, tentative approval was accorded to a study on a nuclear weapons and missile programme. Vikram Sarabhai had taken over the leadership of the AEC from Homi Bhabha, who had tragically been killed in an air crash. Subbu was thereafter to remain a continuing link and the most persuasive, eloquent and indefatigable advocate of India’s nuclear weaponisation, placing his arguments in the wider and rapidly evolving regional and global security and strategic context.

The theroretical basis for his strategic thinking was refined and deepened when, as Director of the Institute of Defence Studies and Analyses, Subbu had time to read, travel, interact and seminar with some of the best minds on the subject anywhere. He was reasoned, not merely polemical, something that even his intellectual opponents admired. He was a regular at Pugwash meetings and other Track II engagements, notably the India-Pakistan Neemrana Initiative, where his powerful advocacy came into full play and where he was heard with rapt attention by leading Pakistani interlocutors.

Heading the Joint Intelligence Committee gave Subbu insights into areas out of bounds to most. It was no surprise that he was closely consulted and actively involved in the final phases of the country’s nuclear programme that climaxed in 1998 with Pokhran-II, to which Pakistan, not unexpectedly, responded in kind.

He was natural choice to lead the first National Security Advisory Board which produced a national threat assessment and a national security doctrine after extensive debate. Subbu had strong views but he never sought to impose them on others preferring, patiently, to build consensus. This was evident in his deft handling of the NSAB debate on prescribing a nuclear doctrine for India posited on no-first use, a credible minimum (second strike) deterrent, and a triad-based (air, sea and land) delivery system. These recommendations were accepted by the government without demur.

Few perhaps know or recall a very incisive paper on the Kashmir question that Subbu wrote, maybe in the 1980s. This deep interest combined with his security-intelligence background led to his being appointed chairman of the Kargil Review Committee, with Lt-Gen K.K. Hazari (retd), and me as members and Satish Chandra, Secretary, National Security Council Secretariat, as member-secretary. Many scoffed at what they perceived to be the limited and innocuous terms of reference of the committee and its lack of judicial powers or those of a commission of inquiry. All it was armed with was a letter from the Cabinet Secretary to all concerned, civil, military, intelligence and others, soliciting full cooperation and candour.

The result was astonishing, Subbu decided that all those invited to depose should meet the committee and be given a transcript of their remarks which they were then invited to correct, amend or rewrite with whatever additions or excisions they desired and submit the amended version under their signatures. The formula inspired confidence and worked wonders. The responses were utterly candid and much was revealed that might have otherwise remained hidden. Security deletions were effected in the main report and 22 Annexures but that was nevertheless a frank and open account of events and assessments.

The report was accepted by the government, which set up four Task Forces to flesh out the salient recommendations with regard to higher defence management, internal security, border management and intelligence. These, too, were broadly adopted and set in motion a major overhaul of structures, procedures and archaic doctrines that had remained sacrosanct and untouched since the British left.

The fallout of the Kargil Review Committee was perhaps Subbu’s greatest achievement even if much of it remains work in progress.

The man will be missed. His work and ideas will not fade.

OPED HEALTH

Undernutrition poses a herculean challenge
It is shocking to find that even in Haryana the calorie intake is lower than the all-India average
Rajeshwari

Agricultural progress in the last decade has made India self-sufficient in major foodgrains. Yet, undernutrition continues to be a major nutritional problem, especially in rural populations. The National Family Health Survey (NFHS-3) statistics reveal shocking proportion of child malnutrition (children under three years). In terms of the proportion of underweight children its levels are exceptionally high in India - higher than the average for all of sub-Saharan Africa. The irony is that India's per capita income is much higher and the growth record much better than that of sub-Saharan Africa.

Undernutrition of children directly affects many aspects of their development. In particular, it retards their physical and cognitive growth. Literature reveals that most growth retardation occurs by the age of two and is largely irreversible. The consequences of child undernutrition for morbidity and mortality are enormous. It has been estimated that pediatric malnutrition is a risk factor for 16 per cent of the global burden of disease and is responsible for 22.4 per cent of India's burden of disease. Studies show that malnutrition increases susceptibility to infection and diseases in childhood and adulthood. Undernutrition also undermines educational attainment as it increases their dropout due to ailments. Moreover, the consequences of undernutrition go beyond the individual affecting total labour force productivity and economic growth.

FactFile
* India is home to 40 per cent of the world's malnourished children and 35 per cent of the developing world's low-birth-weight infants
* Every year 2.5 million children die in India, accounting for one in five deaths in the world
* More than half of these deaths could be prevented if children were well nourished. India's progress in reducing child malnutrition has been slow.
* The prevalence of child malnutrition in India deviates further from the expected level at the country's per capita income than in any other large developing country
* India has many nutrition and social safety net programs, some of which (such as Integrated Child Development Services [ICDS] and the Public Distribution System [PDS]) have had success in several states in addressing the needs of poor households. All of these programmes have potential, but they do not form a comprehensive nutrition strategy, and they have not addressed the nutrition problem effectively so far, according to the International Food Policy Research Institute

It is true that there are large inter-state variations in our country and all-India figures may get affected by this. Paradoxically, in case of Haryana too, which is economically one of the most developed state, NFHS data shows that in all three measures of child malnutrition, i.e. in stunting, underweight and wasting, it fares very poor (i.e. 46, 42 and 19 per cent respectively). Stunting is deficit in height-for-age, wasting is low weight for height and underweight is low weight-for-age. It must be noted that several studies have repeatedly shown that given similar opportunities, children across most ethnic groups, including Indian children, can grow to the same levels, and that the same internationally recognised growth references can be used across countries to assess the prevalence of malnutrition. These measures of nutrition are expressed in standard deviation units (z-scores) from the median for the international reference population. Children who are more than two standard deviations below the reference median on any of the indices are considered to be undernourished, and children who fall more than three standard deviations below the reference median are considered to be severely undernourished. It may also be noted that in many cases being short or lean is not a serious impairment. However, there are evidences that pronounced stunting and wasting in childhood is associated with serious deprivation, such as ill health, diminished learning abilities or even higher mortality.

Nutritional status of children in Haryana is shockingly poor, whether it is measured as prevalence of underweight, stunting or wasting. This is a puzzling pattern and hence requires a closer scrutiny. The prevailing situation is perhaps due to these reasons. The all-pervasive spatial pattern of undernutrition among children do points to unbalanced dietary practices prevalent in the state. People in rural areas are largely vegetarians and their diet lacks diversification in terms of intake of fruits, vegetables and pulses. Most of the rural population is dependent on the foodcrops grown in the fields and non-cereal crops are missing from the cropping pattern. Secondly, this is also associated with low women status in the region and literature shows that that there is little attention paid to mother's health. According to NFHS and district level household survey (DLHS), the state does have a high proportion of children born as low weight babies. Thirdly, the lack of education among women and awareness regarding balanced diet also have a telling impact on women and child health.

Further, the nutritional intake statistics of National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO 61st round, 2004-05), which presents data on calorie intake vis-a vis monthly per capita consumer expenditure classes (a surrogate of income classes) shows that except upper quintile, per capita intake of calorie intake is much below the norm in the state. In lower monthly per capita expenditure classes (3 lower MPCE classes combined together represent lower 20 percent population), the per capita calorie intake is less than 1500 kcal. It is shocking to find that in food surplus state the intake of calorie is lower than the all-India average. The food basket however shows that proportion of expenditure on food items is 60 percent, meaning thereby that the rest of income is spent on non-food items. It should not be taken that money is spent on other items when food need is completed. Rather it also points to the fact that like food, clothing, housing, education etc are necessities of life and population in lower quintile too is forced to spend on these by cutting on food items, which is reflected in lower calorie intake and consequently reflecting poor nutritional status of children. There is no tight link between health and nutritional status and calorie consumption, yet calories are important and one can obtain from NSS data that in case of Haryana, large amount of calories are obtained from the consumption of cereals only. The bio- availability of iron in cereal-based diets is low and is, therefore it is important that the diet must include adequate intake of fruits, vegetables and pulses.

Here emerge some pertinent questions. Is adequacy or surplus with respect to foodgrains production sufficient? Though the state has managed to have large stock of foodgrain production which is largely wheat and rice and there is a neglect of pulses, millets and vegetables. Diets exclusively based on rice or wheat will be deficient in a range of micro-nutrients, apart from being relatively poor in protein quality. Though milk intake is above national average in the state, but its per capita consumption has declined over a period of time. Further, the intake of pulses is also low. With neglect or decline in area under these crops, the intake of protein which was otherwise easily available to its population has reduced over a period of time, which has its reflection in mothers and children health, both in short term and long term nutrition.

There is an urgent need to take short and long-term measures to achieve nutritional security in the state. Among short term measures, it suggests the need for awareness campaign for healthy dietary practices as well as special attention towards maternal health as more than 60 per cent of expectant mothers were found anaemic and a high proportion born to them were low weight babies (NFHS-III). Among long-term measures, there is a need to seriously think over the fact that diversification of food production is necessitated not just because of play of market forces but more importantly, due to nutritional considerations.

The writer is Associate Professor in Geography, Kurukshetra University