Showing posts with label Migrants. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Migrants. Show all posts

Thursday, March 8, 2012

Ten Issues - 21

1- Barefoot - The other side of lifeHarsh Mander -: Can anyone really live on Rs. 26 a day, the income of the officially poor in rural India? Two youngsters try it out.

2- Powerhouse on your plate! - Easily accessible and affordable, millets are making a comeback to Indian kitchens, says Shonali Muthalaly.

3- The everyday embrace of inequality :The institution of paid domestic labour produces cleanliness, meals and childcare, but it also produces and reproduces an unequal home and society.

4- Salman Rushdie & India's new theocracy :-India's secular state is in a state of slow-motion collapse. The contours of a new theocratic dystopia are already evident.

5- BCCI: Billionaires Control Cricket in India by P. SAINATH

6- 42 per cent of Indian children are underweight - Hunger and Malnutrition (HUNGaMA) report by the Naandi Foundation – were described by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh as a “national shame” at a release function here on Tuesday.

7- The complex contractor-maistry system, the devastation of agriculture, an ineffective food-for-work programme, debt and debilitating mass migrions - these are an explosive mix. P Sainath joins migrants fleeing the desperate conditions in Mahbubnagar, seeking a meagre living in faraway places : The bus to Mumbai (Part I) and The wrong route out? (Part II)

8- Looming disaster : Handloom weavers in Andhra Pradesh are in a crisis brought on by policy blindness and the emphasis on powerlooms.

9- Bt Cotton, Remarkable Success, and Four Ugly Facts.

10- Walking With The Comrades :- Gandhians with a Gun? Arundhati Roy plunges into the sea of Gondi people to find some answers...

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Rural Management - 1

Why Rural economy is always in a poor state ?

Poverty exists in both rural and urban India. Slums are visible signs of poverty in the our cities. Slums are our failure in planning to implement an affordable housing in metros for the poor migrants at the cost of welfare state.

There is an immense migration of the landless labours in cities from the rural areas. Many reasons can be cited for this state such as failure of rural economy, regional nature of growth, absence of basic civic amenities in rural India and caste discrimination in rural India. Poor people can afford the physical torture of the slums but cannot bear the mental torture of rural habitation caused due to caste discrimination. In slums people have only class identity and not caste identity.

There is a huge connection between poverty and caste system in India. Majority of land in rural India is in the possession of minority upper castes. Hence, all the subsidies and growth in the agricultural sector is enjoyed by this minority rich and relatively more educated class. Productive assets must be created for the landless rural population.

Planning and implementation in India are very centralized. Local self-governance is dysfunctional as transparency and accountability is lacking in the institutions. Social-auditing to the rural projects are absent. Local self government Institution should be involved in planning and decision making. Rural projects of the government and working of the local self government should be brought under the purview of e-governance for transparency. But a country with a low literacy rate, e- governance is still a dream.

Poverty can be well understood by this simple example. Deputy Governor of the Reserve Bank of India says that 46 percent of the farmers who own a mobile phone do not have a bank account.We need 'Financial Inclusion' for every citizen of this country. Financial Inclusion means, providing financial services to one and all, irrespective of their income and the place they belong to.

Five Articles on Social and Financial Issues in Rural India:-

1- Money for nothing. And misery for free : Afer a promising start, the microfinance story became one of desperate need on one side and greed and politics on the other, reports Rohini Mohan. Photographs by Vijay Pandey. Microfinance has created deeper crisis socially, about the creation of a life on credit.

MFIs typically borrow from banks at 11- 15 percent interest but charge 24-30 percent, including the operation cost of traveling to remote villages, and factoring in possible defaults. Unlike in an SHG, where the loan is given to the group, the MFI gives loans to an individual who is backed by a group guarantee.

2- Hiware Bazar: Model Village for the Nation ; A five pronged approach has been adopted for the socio-economic infrastructure of the village that includes : Free labour, Ban on Grazing, Ban on Tree Cutting, Ban on Liquor and Family Planning.

3- Tiding over farm woes: Reaping the advantage - Farmers’ unions, who only organise protests demanding higher prices, have failed to educate their members. And only way to pull out farmers from the vicious cycle of indebtedness is to push them out of the Green Revolution model of farming.

4- Living with 'installments' : Many micro-credit loans do no more than allow a family to juggle its finances for a month-to-month existance. As investors embrace this 'market', MFIs are increasingly under scrutiny. Jaideep Hardikar reports.

5- UNDERSTANDING UNTOUCHABILITY: A Comprehensive Study of Practices and Conditions in 1589 Villages [PDF file]--- Navsarjan is one of the leading organizations working for advancement of Dalit rights. Based in the western Indian state of Gujarat,Navsarjan currently organizes more than 3,084 villages to fight the practice of "untouchability” and to improve the economic conditions of Dalits.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

The wind of freedom blows

1- What a country needs for development in a very long term ? Vigorous debate and absolute freedom of speech. And this makes America a great nation. The source lies in its first Amendment:

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances."

Atanu Dey puts his perspective very clear on comparison between America and India on free speech. The first amendment article and comments by readers form a very interesting read on this topic.

2- The Strange case of China and Russia: There is a denialism when an entire segment of society, often struggling with the trauma of change, turns away from reality in favor of a more comfortable lie. It has created a society where institutions are brazenly politicized, where violence has been legitimised, where the socialist state has been reduced to a narrow-visioned envy-filled individual whose dominant mindset is reverence of dead heroes and contempt for all contemporary success.

3- Pseudo Islamic countries like Pakistan falls to move towards the concept of democracy. Bernard Lewis states Islamic authorities have always had great difficulty in accommodating post-Islamic monotheistic religions such as the Bahá'í Faith, since the followers of such religions cannot be dismissed. Moreover, their very existence presents a challenge to the Islamic doctrine of the perfection and finality of Muhammad's revelation. What else can one expect from a society living in a curiously delusional state of denial, gleefully mistaking it as ‘patriotism’ and ‘concern.’ The problem with these countries is that they have people like Asma Jahangir is – they are hundreds of years ahead of their national consciousness.

Nadeem F Paracha put it as : Well, this is exactly what happens to a society that responds so enthusiastically to all the major symptoms of fascist thought. Symptoms such as powerful and continuing nationalism; disdain for the recognition of human rights; identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause; supremacy of the military; obsession with national security; the intertwining of religion and government; disdain for intellectuals and the arts; an obsession with crime and punishment, etc.

4- When a person migrates to the western countries, a new social riddle comes in the front of him. Either to be adopt in the melting pot society type structure or keep his motherland's intact with him. The 2nd generation dilemma of being dual nationality makes them to search for identity. Few acts of terrorism in the name of self righteousness also happen. This can be explained :

Generally coming from deeply conservative backgrounds, they are shocked with the free and easy lifestyle they encounter.Rather than encouraging their children to integrate, they seek to insulate them from Western values, thus causing a state of mild schizophrenia in second- generation immigrants.

Some of these young people become quickly radicalised, and seek clarity in the black-and-white world of religious extremism. Unfortunately, too many of them lack the education to realise that ultimately, no set of beliefs or values is inherently inferior or superior to another.

Morality, as we have seen, is not the monopoly of any faith: an atheist can be more ethical than a religious person. At the end of the day, what matters is that humans behave with consideration and decency, and avoid imposing their beliefs on others.

Monday, January 11, 2010

Vichaar Shoonya +4

Everywhere in the country and in the world, people left their beloved homelands to try their luck in this cold, faraway place where all one had to do, was be willing to work. Mumbai is the prime example of city of migrants in India. And America is an example of a modern country found by immigrants only. In times of economic downturn, we forget the values on which the place was built and developed. The sociopolitical climate becomes increasingly destructive towards immigrants in these times as scapegoats are used to help alleviate frustration. We are all citizens of the world–there is no place in the world that we can go and not touch something created in another land, no place where there are not immigrants. In my views, history is made by wandering humans from one place to another for trade, war or to become part of greater civilization. Human is indeed yayaver by nature and settler by culture.

Few web links in mumbo-jumbo post for reading....

Copenhagen Diary : A report on Climate change by Sunita Narain.

A Celebration of Difference: Science and Democracy in India by Shiv Visvanathan

It's The Comedy, Idiots by Shiv Visvanathan

Every child learns differently by Hyderabad-based educator James Tooley

Internet Growth - Key Learning's in India

Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe

The Joy of Science and Excitement of Discovery (in the history of modern quantum mechanics)

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Observing History

Vinaas Kaale Vipareeta Buddhi: Bal Thackeray has pushed himself and Shivsena downward by commenting on Sachin Tendulkar. Sachin's recent comment that “Mumbai belongs to India. I am a Maharashtrian and proud to be a Maharashtrian, but I am also an Indian,” It is necessary for heroes like Sachin to take a stand openly on grave issues like this as an Indian. It is not any celebrity tantrum but comes from the mouth of two stalwarts of Marathi manoos.The Sena supremo signed off with 'a friendly advice, in your own interest' to keep off politics, I hope our people will now keep Bal Thackery on the brinks of politics. All Indians are welcome to visit, live, stay and become Mumbaikars, but big question remains, how long it take for the city to own you?

In Brief about History: Once that was future, now is the past. I like it because, it makes me humble and give feeling my littleness and mortality. History is my favourite subject in reading for pass time from childhood. I read 10th history book at the tender age of 8 just for fun. Primarily, history is like story book interlinked with each other. Great, good and evil all are intermingled with each other with a huge background canvas. I am now trying to read history more as an inquiry of the past. History unlike maths offer personalized conclusion to the same events, that is indeed the beauty of it.

I have now come to half baked conclusion that history is full of wars, genocide and often power games. Migrants (even refugee) are the worst affected in first phase of war but most prosperous after war times. They impact the tradition, trade and even politics in a strong way. History is always written by the conquering forces. Oppressed has more sense of justice than oppressor, hence history should be studied always from the victim point of view to stand on the neutral point of view. History is like flowing in the waves of time. It gives you insight that it is better to die as unknown than to be lived by vanity driven ego. Someday, I hope to learn in the field of anthropology evolution and big bang. For me, they are more historical archives than human history. I read few days ago, a though provoking quote : The world began without the human race and will certainly end without it.—Claude Lévi-Strauss, 1955

Warning from the Past: On 25 November 1949, Dr Ambedkar made speech in constituent Assembly of India. He speak out three warnings for the future [Source]:

1- The first concerned the place of popular protest in a democracy.

"It means we must abandon the bloody methods of revolution. It means that we must abandon the method of civil disobedience, non-cooperation and Satyagraha. When there was no way left for constitutional methods for achieving economic and social objectives, there was a great deal of justification for unconstitutional methods. But where constitutional methods are open, there can be no justification for these unconstitutional methods. These methods are nothing but the Grammar of Anarchy and the sooner they are abandoned, the better for us."

2- The second warning concerned the unthinking submission to charismatic authority. He quoted John Stuart Mill who cautioned citizens not 'to lay their liberties at the feet of even a great man, or to trust him with power which enable him to subvert their institutions. There is nothing wrong in being grateful to great men who have rendered life-long services to the country. But there are limits to gratefulness. '

"This caution is far more necessary in the case of India than in the case of any other country. For in India, Bhakti or what may be called the path of devotion or hero-worship, plays a part in its politics unequalled in magnitude by the part it plays in the politics of any other country in the world. Bhakti in religion may be a road to the salvation of the soul. But in politics, Bhakti or hero-worship is a sure road to degradation and to eventual dictatorship."

3- Ambedkar's final warning was to urge Indians 'not to be content with mere political democracy and make our political democracy a social democracy as well. Political democracy cannot last unless there lies at the base of it social democracy. Indian Society is full of inequalities and hierarchy.

"On the social plane, India a society based on the principle of graded inequality which we have a society in which there are some who have immense wealth as against many who live in abject poverty. On the 26th of January 1950, we are going to enter into a life of contradictions. In politics we will have equality and in social and economic life we will have inequality. In politics we will be recognizing the principle of one man one vote and one vote one value. In our social and economic life, we shall, by reason of our social and economic structure, continue to deny the principle of one man one value. How long shall we continue to live this life of contradictions? How long shall we continue to deny equality in our social and economic life? If we continue to deny it for long, we will do so only by putting our political democracy in peril."

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

American Desi

American Consular Officer: "How do we know you'll come back to India?"
Student: "Sir, my roots are here - my family, my property, my business... I want to study in America, but I will come back and put my education to good use."

I read this conversation from someone'sblog and idea about state of indians living abroad struck me. Thousands of Indian students have given this earnest answer at their visa interview. A significant number never return to their motherland. You have to wonder - why bother to ask? Because the idea of America, to a large extent, is to attract the brightest and the best from around the world. NRI ideally stands for Non Resedential Indians. Practically NRI means- Non Returning Indian or Non Reliable Indian.

When the race for food, clothing and shelter becomes over, then green card migrants try to find a identity for themselves. Next generation faces issues like choosing their sides between Indian family and American culture. Desi Indians may perceive herself as 'American' but the colour of her skin and country of birth still make her/him a 'foreigner who's done well' as far as (a section of) right-wing America is concerned. It is about finding identity in a country that will treat you as alien if you are born there. They become like pendulum bob swinging between Indian family and American social surroundings.

Desi is all about rediscovering your roots. Generally, Desi is turned usually associated with Indians living abroad. Now, a new term is framed for the generation born there: ABCD .

ABCD: American Born Confused Desi ;American Desi is used in short for them. The movie 'American Desi' was really upper view of lifestyle and relation of Desi youths. For cool pass time watch it with open mind and heart....
The Namesake as a novel and movie is one of the original and first attempt to address this issue from American perspective. The settling of a family in alien land for the search of livelihood. Their gradual acceptance of the new land. A bemused incomprehension of their extended family to appreciate their better (different?) way of life. Clinging on to certain customs while leaving others. The alienation of the second generation from the first. The second generation's assimilation into a more modern way of life. Halted communication of the first generation to the second. Three hardly identifiable characters mostly lost in a distant land from their own makes Namesake a passable attempt at winning western audience. And i will not spoil the plot here.

Lets put our attempt to understand about Indians living abroad. We were not much aware of America before 90's as brown skinned natives who didn't elect George Bush and live 3000 miles from Graceland. With the globalization era, the periphery of an average Indian with outside world has increased dramatically. The journey starts with Bollywood.

Watan se chitthi aayi hain” (sung on screen by Pankaj Udhas) was NRI anthem from film 'Naam' but the movie was mainly targeted to middle east based Indians. Forget Purab aur Pachim, now bollywood can make film like Salaam Namaste, Kal ho na ho, Namaste London, Kabhi khushi kabhi gum and Dostana (list cont...) . But movies like 'Provoked' gives also other face of the reality. They are entirely based on NRI life with fictional Indian value embodiment in them. Now,an overseas market are targeted with Desi junta as potential consumers. Swades was genuine Indian attempt to pull the strings of NRI to their motherland. Sivaji was also on footstep of swades but on a much broad fictional stance. Some are worth mentioning here as they have done Real Life Swades.

Worthy to mention Punjabi NRI who's mixed bhangra rhythms with hip-hop and reggae to create new genres of music altogether. I am mere observer here. Its flight of elites and plight of masses in mine motherland India.