Issue 67 Vol III, July 15, 2008

A N A L Y S I S

Wasted grain could feed million
Gobind Thukral

INDIA’S national politics these days present a theatre of the absurd. Each political party swears by patriotism, welfare of the common people and feelings of great national pride. As traders and industrialists enter with money bags the number game to save or topple the current UPA government, one finds complete absence of principles and concern for the common people.

Here is one such case which should have drawn national attention. India has lost more than 10 lakh tonnes of food grains stored in Food Corporation of India godowns over the last decade, enough to feed six to seven lakh people for 10 years. Godowns in Punjab, the country's granary, accounted for half of this loss. This is as per the statistics handed over by the FCI to a right to information applicant on the extent of food grains damaged in its godowns. Roughly per capita cereal consumption is 150 kg per person.

And, add to this the money which the government of India spends almost each year for the safe upkeep of these grains. It is a whopping Rs 243 crores.  And our wise government does not stop there. It has spent in disposing of food grains damaged in the godowns in the last 10 years by spending more than Rs 2 crore.

Food and vegetables worth 350 billion rupees are wasted every year in India. About 1.83 lakh tonnes of wheat, 3.95 lakh tonnes of rice, 22,000 tonnes of paddy and 110 tonnes of maize were damaged between 1997 and 2007.

In the northern region - Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Haryana, Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Rajasthan, Himachal Pradesh and Delhi - the damage incurred was huge. The FCI figures show that similar grain waste also took place in eastern, southern and western India. Surprisingly, almost 50% of the food grain was damaged in Punjab, one of the leading states in agricultural production. And there's no history of floods or natural calamities in that region. Officials also revealed that 20% of the 601 million tonnes of food grain that India produces annually is eaten by rodents.

It requires as farmers and farm workers in Punjab and Haryana understand very well, millions of hands, hard labour, thousands of acres of land and huge money to produce this much of grain. India has a tradition of worshipping each grain and its producers. The implications of the damage can be understood from the fact about 27 crore people in India lived below the poverty line that barely get one meal a day. About 35 per cent of Indians live on less than Rs 50 or less, and the percentage of Indians living under Rs 100 a day goes up to 80 per cent. Eight million children in India are malnourished account for more than one-third of the world's malnourished children. 28 per cent children in India get malnourished within the first week after birth.

Food waste is a major reason for fast depleting world stocks. This grain wastage happens in India largely because of a poor supply chain due to inadequate warehouse facilities. Also, in energy-deficient societies like ours, there's a lot of food spoilage due to lack of refrigeration. Officials claim waste grains as they pocket huge money by showing that grains have been damaged by rains or eaten away by rodents.

Agricultural experts say that for India reeling under an unprecedented food crisis, this is indeed disturbing. India loses Rs 55,600 crore worth of crops each year after harvesting. This was admitted by the government before the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Agriculture. Food grain worth Rs 16,500 crore, roughly 10% of the food grain produced, is lost after harvesting every year. Considering that India has turned into a net importer of pulses as its crop productivity  has declined, it is shocking that Rs 2,000 crore or 15% of the pulse crop is destroyed each year.

The government is pushing crores of rupees for a horticultural mission to compensate for the loss in agricultural growth, yet 30% of all fruits produced, roughly worth Rs 13,600 crore, go to waste. The losses in vegetable crops are equally  bad. 30% of the vegetables the country produces worth Rs 14,100 crore are lost due to mismanagement after these are harvested. Livestock and fisheries produce worth Rs 8,400 crore too are lost annually. The Parliamentary standing committee  has observed , “The wastage of agricultural produce is massive, processing levels are very low, around 2% for fruits and vegetables, 26% for marine, 6% for poultry and 20% for buffalo meat as against 60-70% in developed countries.” Bad harvest timing, inefficient machinery, lack of storage facilities, contamination, inordinate exposure to heat, cold, and lack of moisture are the major reasons experts cite for the losses which can be prevented to some extent.

But, worse  is the fact that the agriculture ministry does not even collect actual figures. It has only rough estimates. The government does not carry out any exercise to evaluate the actual losses. How callous are we about food wastages. Even this Committee noted “ even after existence of many decades, the department of agricultural research and education or the Indian Council for Agricultural Research have no authoritative estimates of post-harvest losses till date.”

In western societies like America plenty of food leads to wastage of the other kind.  Estimates show Americans generate 30 million tones of food waste each year, accounting for 12% of the total global food waste. But the cause in India is the lack of food processing plants, even though it is the third largest food producer in the world. It is time to improve our grains, pulses, vegetables and fruit storage and processing system and feed hungry millions. Should the government still be in deep slumber and playing little political games when prices are touching the sky and people are suffering hunger and malnutrition? We should save each grain and improve the public distribution system.

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Kabul embassy attack: India must reconsider foreign policy
Sawraj Singh

THE Indian embassy in Afghanistan was just attacked in Kabul by a suicide bomber. Many people lost their lives. This tragedy should make us ponder about the cause of the terrorist attack. One cannot help to think that there could be some relationship with the India U.S. nuclear treaty since that issue is being very passionately discussed in India. The leftists feel that the treaty, in reality, is the beginning of an anti China alliance of the U.S. and India. The Muslims feel that by signing the treaty, India is joining the U.S. and Israel in an anti Islamic alliance When Mayawatti, the chief minister of the U.P. expressed opposition to the deal, the Muslim leadership of the UP came to her to show their appreciation for this.

It may not be an exaggeration to say that the attack on the Indian embassy in Afghanistan could be a warning from the fundamentalist Muslims to warn India that it should not sign the nuclear treaty with the U.S. They want to give India the message that if India aligns with the U.S. then it will be considered in the same category, as are the U.S. and Israel.

The attack on the Indian embassy in the most secure area of Kabul, was the worst terrorist attack in Afghanistan since the war started in 2001 It shows that no area in Afghanistan is safe from the Taliban, who continue to gain influence in Afghanistan. India should understand that if it is labeled anti Islamic country by the Islamic fundamentalists then it could pose very serious internal and external security problems for India.

India has to seriously consider the implications of an alliance with the U.S. Will such an alliance serve India’s fundamental interests? No matter how hard India tries to justify it’s alliance with the U.S. yet most of the world will see it as and anti China and Anti Islamic alliance. Therefore, India should be fully prepared to face the consequences of such a perception. Russia and China have already formed an alliance and most of the countries of the third world are supporting this alliance.  Many countries of the third world are Islamic countries.

The balance of power has already shifted away from America and the west. Even if India joins America and Israel yet it will be unable to reverse the shift in the balance of power. The only thing India can do is to change the American feeling that it is worthless to fight and it should accept the new world order of a multipolar world. An alliance with India can give America the impression that it still has a chance to preserve its only super power status. Therefore, it can start a third world war, which it cannot win.

However it should be clear to India that if America and the west can not defeat two small countries such as Afghanistan and Iraq then how can they win a third world war. India should also look at its neighbors. None of the neighbors such as Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, Sri Lanka or Burma is willing to support India against China. India should clearly understand that in the case that it joins America, it couldn’t expect support from any third world county.

he only option India has is to join an alliance of Russia and China. This is the only way to solve the problem of terrorism. On the other hand if India joins the alliance of America and Israel then the problem of terrorism will only get worse. An alliance of Russia, China and India will make the transition from the present unipolar world smoother and peaceful.  Such an alliance will also help to find an amicable solution to the problem of terrorism.

India is a multinational, multicultural and multireligious country. Fundamentalists and fanatic type of Hinduism is not compatible with the ground realities of India as well as with the fact that historically the greatness of the Hindu religion has been its tolerance and acceptance of diversity. India can stay united with the principle of  “Unity in Diversity”. Shri Guru Granth Sahib preaches the principle of unity in diversity. Therefore the teachings of Shri Guru Granth Sahib can promote love, tolerance peaceful coexistence and unity of mankind.

[Sawraj Singh, M.D.F.I.C.S., Chairman Washington State Network for Human Rights]

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Karzai says Pakistan behind Indian embassy bomb

BOTH India and Afghanistan have squarely blamed Pakistan for the July 7 attack on Indian embassy in Kabul. 58 persons including officials from the embassy and others were killed and scores wounded in a suicide attack.  In fact, India’s national security advisor M.K.Narayanan has said that Pakistan’s Intelligence agency, the ISI should be destroyed.

Now Afghan President Hamid Karzai has accused Pakistani agents  who were behind the Indian embassy bombing in Kabul last week. It is for the first time he has directly accused Pakistan of involvement in the suicide attack. Afghan officials have previously maintained the July 7 attack bore all the hallmarks of a foreign intelligence agency. They did not any country. India was the first to go direct. Pakistan has stoutly defended itself and denies any hand in the attack.

Afghanistan leaders like their counterpart in India believe Pakistan is secretly helping Taliban insurgents as a strategic asset to counter Indian influence, keep the war-torn country weak and allow Pakistani forces to concentrate on defending the border with India.

Afghanistan has already blamed Pakistan for a string of attacks, including an assassination bid on Karzai in April and a June assault on a prison that freed about 400 militants. Karzai said that Pakistani agents were behind the embassy attack, the beheading of two Afghans in Pakistan last month, the killing of two women in Afghanistan's Ghazni province and 24 people in a suicide bomb in Uruzgan provinceKarzai last month even threatened to send troops into Pakistan to fight militants there if Islamabad failed to take action. "We will take revenge for these two sisters of ours very soon ... and we are telling the enemies of Afghanistan that we will protect the honour of this country."

This is what America has wanted to do. In fact, it has done by aerial attacks.

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Capitalist economy: food shortages, rising oil prices & credit crunch - II
Pritam Singh

AS global capital moves East, developing economies need to understand the importance of not aping the entrenched lifestyles of the West. There are three interlocking crises currently haunting the global capitalist economy: food shortages, oil-price hikes and the credit crunch.

Reverse colonialism?

The spatial shift in global capitalism, in the shape of the emergence of new economic powers in Asia (China and India), Latin America (Brazil) and the ex-Soviet bloc (Russia and Ukraine), is manifesting itself not only in the rise in demand for more food and energy sources, but also in the geopolitical ambitions of the nation states in these regions. Business groups based in these countries, both in the public and private sector, are dramatically expanding and consolidating their transnational ventures. In 1990, the emerging economies accounted for just five percent of the flow and eight percent of the stock of global foreign direct investment (FDI). By 2006, FDI (including mergers and acquisitions) from developing countries accounted for 14 percent of the world’s total, giving these countries a 13 percent share of the stock of global FDI.

Although the phenomenon of ‘third-world’ multinationals is not new, the scale of operations of some recent Chinese and Indian business ventures abroad is significant. China’s sovereign wealth funds – ie, those owned by the Chinese government – have been investing massively in the UK and the US. Though resistance was experienced in the latter, these funds were welcomed in London. The Indian group Tata’s takeover of the British Land Rover and Jaguar group in March 2008 is symbolic of the changing balance in the global capitalist economy. More recently, in early May, India’s Essar Steel was poised to take over Esmark of the US in a USD 668 million cash deal, underlining the determination of Indian companies to continue acquisitions in spite of the global credit crunch. The latest in the Indian companies’ takeover battles in the West is the bid by Religare Enterprises – the New Delhi-based brokerage controlled by billionaire brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Mohan Singh – to takeover Arden Partners, a mid-sized stockbroker in London.

It is important to note, however, that these developments are not necessarily a sign of the emergence of any ‘reverse colonialism’ or ‘reverse dependency’, as has been suggested by some. Indian and Chinese multinationals that acquire Western multinationals continue to have a negligible role in the economic, business and political decision-making that goes on in Western countries. That is one reason that there has been hardly any opposition to their acquisition ventures, except in Germany and France. It is also important to remember that, in spite of impressive aggregate growth rates in China and India, both of these countries continue to have massive numbers of very poor people due to the uneven nature of the development paths they have pursued. This mass poverty limits the potential for growth of the internal market, and also defines the nature of their competitive power in the world economy. Chinese growth is highly dependent on the export of manufactured goods produced with low levels of technology. Indeed, it is precisely due to low labour costs that China has been able to compete successfully in the international market.

The high growth of gross domestic product in India has been driven by developments within the services sector. But while this growth is impressive in its contribution to overall growth, as in China it remains dependent upon relatively low labour costs in order to compete with US and European multinationals. Meanwhile, labour productivity in China and India remains far below that in these two areas. At this point, the technological superiority of advanced capitalist countries over emerging capitalist countries is simply too entrenched to start making statements about the emergence of China and India as superpower rivals of America and Europe.

What is important in deciphering the changing balance of global capitalism, however, is the emergence of new economic alliances. In various ways, China has allied itself with Russia, Japan, West Asian oil-rich countries, and countries in Latin America and Africa; likewise, India has allied with Pakistan, its traditional ‘enemy’, as well as Iran, Japan and African countries, among others. Each of these connections is leading to the development of a range of technological, economic and financial ties.

Of particular interest is the nascent imperialist competition between China and India in Africa. Chinese and Indian multinationals, backed by their respective governments and supported by international finance capital, are making massive forays into Africa. Recently, Bharti Airtel, India’s leading mobile operator, made a multi-billion-dollar bid for the Johannesburg-listed MNT, which would make it one of the largest telecom companies in an emerging market. Even more imperialistic is China’s recent decision to buy large swaths of land in Africa and South America, in order to grow food for its own consumption.

Law of ecology

In spite of relatively low per-capita income levels in China and India, the sheer size of these economies makes them significant economic players on the global field, even if one is still justified in discounting descriptions of these economies as rivalling the advanced capitalist economies. The most significant implication of the high growth rates in China and India is the likely impact on ecological limits to the growth of global capitalism. Given their large populations, even a marginal increase in income levels in China and India would lead to significant increase in overall consumption of natural resources – not to mention the subsequent waste and pollution likely to be generated.

Given the populations in China and India, it simply would not be ecologically possible to sustain a level of capitalist growth that is anywhere close to what has been experienced by advanced capitalist economies in the past. During the long period of capital accumulation throughout the history of advanced capitalist economies, there was neither the material reality of the scarcity of natural resources, nor the theoretical comprehension of the ecological implications of economic growth, in any way similar to what is being experienced today. Even the critics of capitalism, such as Karl Marx, visualised the communist alternative as an era of abundance. That imagined abundance is not possible ecologically, though the end to dehumanising poverty is certainly not only desirable but within the realm of possibility.

One consumer item that most symbolises modern prosperity is the car. At present, there are about 10 cars in China for every 1000 people. In the US, on the other hand, that number stands at 480. If China were to aim to achieve the present American level of car ownership, it is simply not possible to see a way that the planet would be able to sustain itself, if for no other reason than the resultant pollution. The solution, therefore, is not for emerging economies to try to copy the lifestyles of advanced capitalism, but rather for advanced capitalist countries to reduce their own levels of consumption and waste generation. Ecologically sound global policy demands a critique of consumerism in the West, as well as a reduction of poverty (and a move away from aping Western lifestyles) in developing countries.

The relative decline in the economic powers of older advanced capitalist economies, and the emergence of new economic powers such as China and India, certainly arouses strong passions of nationalist pride in these nation states. One can even invoke the discourse of global justice to go so far as to celebrate the possible decline of the old, rich countries and the rise in living standards in countries that were once poor. However, neither nationalist pride nor global-justice arguments should hide from us the realisation that the alternative to ecologically unsustainable advanced capitalism cannot be another ecologically unsustainable capitalism in the newly developing countries.

The alternative to modern capitalism – whether in the old, rich countries or in the emerging economies – is to imagine and build economic and political systems that are based on the principles of ecological sustainability, social justice and democratic participation. Cuba’s success in organic farming, along with many transport, housing and recycling initiatives by Green party councillors in some British cities, are some examples of sustainable, just and democratic experiments that need to be further developed. That is an intellectual and political challenge that the critics of capitalism need to grasp at this very moment of great historical possibility, danger and hope.

[Courtesy http://www.himalmag.com/2008/june/cover_balance.htm
Dr Pritam Singh is the Director of the Postgraduate Programme on International Management and International Relations at Oxford Brookes University Business School. He is the author of Federalism, Nationalism and Development: India and the Punjab economy published recently by Routledge, London and New York.]

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