Issue 50 Vol III, October 31, 2007

E D I T O R I A L

Defiant Poor Seek their Rights

India’s voluble ruling political class is in a celebratory mood. It is not because of the Dewali, the festival of lights and victory of truth over evil. It is the shooting Sensex, nearly touching 20,000 mark. India’s rich and the rising middle class too are happy as they have quickly more money to roll over. India can boast of Ambanis and Mittals, Tatas and Birlas who are part of the richest people of the world. India is the new destination for foreign financial conglomerates to invest in the ever rising stock market. Several hundred crores are being pumped that push the stocks in the capital market of India each working week. Indeed India is flushed with scary hot money. As against last year, the average per capita income has shot up from Rs 3,222 to Rs 29,382. However, averages do not tell the true story.

As Sensex rises, poverty also increases. That is a sad phenomenon. India has clocked in 94th in the Global Hunger Index. It is fourth at the bottom among 118 countries. Even Ethiopia had done better. And as this neo rich India surged forward with joy on the stock markets, it clocked in as the leading country in the number of women dying in childbirth. These 1.17 lakh deaths of women in childbirth are mostly poor and rural. Latest worldwide maternal mortality figures released by the WHO showed that some 5, 36,000 women died in childbirth in 2005. Of these, every fifth one was an Indian. India matched Nigeria, Afghanistan and Congo put together. Almost 99 per cent of all these deaths worldwide occurred in developing countries. Much of this, again, is amongst the poorer sections of the population. 850 million people or one seven go hungry each day worldwide. Does it shame the leaders any way? There is a glut of food and our capacity to grow more has increased tremendously.

International Food Policy Research Institute’s Global Hunger Index estimated that between 1995-97 and 2000-02, hunger grew in India at a time when it fell in Ethiopia. In 1990s it was far below India, but it has improved. Pakistan ranks ahead of India at 88. China is at 47. India is a poor cousin in the backwaters to the countries like Pakistan, Nepal, Sri Lanka and even Maladies fair better. Only Bangladesh is listed as worst. Yet none of these countries boast of an economy growing at 9 per cent a year.  National Commission on Enterprises recently estimated 77 per cent or 840 million people survive on apathetic Rs 20 per day.

Similarly, a WHO study in six Indian provinces found that 16 per cent of households were pushed below the poverty line by heavy medical costs. Nearly 10,000 families from lower income groups were covered by the survey for 2002-05.  12 per cent had to sell their assets to meet health expenses and 43 per cent had to borrow to pay the exorbitant medical costs. Reforms have meant costly healthy care and added suffering.

Those sitting in the comfort of Planning Commission or enjoying power may find poverty, hunger and disease as kind of a myth created by their political adversaries or by a section of the media. They could benefit if they just visit the backyards of kitchens of hotels and restaurants of New Delhi to discover the ugliest face of poverty. Children as small as seven or eight years old and elders too pick up the food thrown in the dustbins. In many places along side the animals. This scene is visible all across the country.

Focused protests as violence rages

Recently over 25,000 landless tillers, labourers, Dalits and tribals marched to Delhi covering some 340 kilometers from all across the country to tell the rulers they no longer tolerate this injustice. They have been deprived of their land rights as they did not have valid deeds despite having been living on that land for centuries. They have been denied the land rights under a premeditated plan. Now this land is being grabbed by the rich and the powerful on one pretext or the other.  They have resolved not to return unless the government accepted their demands and came up with concrete plans.

Under the banner of Janadesh 2007, these tribals and Dalits want their rights back regarding water, forests and land. The March, which began from Gwalior on October 3, has been organised by the Ekta Parishad, a grassroot organisation which has been working in many parts of India for the past 30 years to ensure poor people access to livelihood. These non-violent campaigners are demanding the government to establish a National Land Commission and formulate land policies, provide direction to state governments, and monitor progress on land distribution and entitlement by state governments; ensure that the national land policy takes into account the needs of the poor and set up fast-track courts to oversee.

Among those participating in the padyatra are 11,000 people from Madhya Pradesh as well as people from Orissa, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Tamil Nadu and Kerala. Also among the campaigners are hundreds of women and even children.

This human train has eaten washed and slept on the roadsides since early October. At least three marchers were killed by a speeding lorry. One journalists writing about this march observed: “With fists and voices raised, the scene is a world away from Indian newspaper headlines about the country's new luxury goods market or its soaring stock markets. Nowhere is this process of concentrating wealth in a tiny segment of the population more visible than in the ground beneath Indians' feet. They are carrying a unique message of defiance to the country's leaders: "Give us back our land."

It is well recognized even by the government that India has one of most iniquitous systems of land ownership in the world, worse than China. Last week, India's biggest real estate baron made a paper fortune of Rs. 4000 crore in a day. Government figures show that the average expenditure of a rural household is just 500 rupees a month for a family of five.

The issue is certainly explosive in India as it is elsewhere, where incomplete reforms have left much of the country in the hands of a few. Extreme leftwing groups, the Maoists and the Naxalites   have tapped the rising anger in the poverty stricken rural areas to wage a guerrilla war in 172 of India's 600 districts.

Land is an important and sensitive issue in most developing countries and growing numbers of poor people are demanding reform of its ownership and use after centuries of inequitable distribution.

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