An Open Letter to the Chief Economic Advisor of India (original) (raw)

India Today, 2018

'Lords of the Files', which looks at how a bloated and corrupt administrative culture borrowed from the British Colonial Raj era is choking the Indian administration today. The Indian bureaucracy is an anachronism. A bullock cart of statism in an age where even automobiles are poised to go driverless. In fact, a time-travelling civil servant from the British Raj a century ago would feel at home in a government office near the end of the second decade of 21st century India - armies of peons, musty offices and the slow, enervating pace of decision-making where the march of a nation's progress is measured one file at a time. Failure to transform the Indian civil service from a colonial rent-seeking institution of the British Raj era into one focused on economic development, poverty alleviation and social transformation is the biggest hurdle on India's road to progress.

My Book on Corporate in Agri business

The history of agriculture is a central element of human history; as agricultural progress has been a crucial factor in worldwide socio-economic change. Wealth building and militaristic specialisations rarely seen in hunter-gatherer cultures are commonplace in agriculture and agro-industrial societies-when farmers become capable of producing food beyond the needs of their own families. Others in the village/city-state were freed to devote themselves to projects other than food acquisition. Historians and anthropologists have long argued that the development of agriculture made civilizations. On the 26 th January 2008, ET captioned as" Global Economists predict that India's going to be a standout in global economy". It was though very pleasing to read but the hard facts are that the growth is far from inclusive in India. How can small and marginal farmers in India be considered as inclusive if they live in dungeon.

Impact of Social Schemes on the Empowerment of Aam Aadmi - A Study on MGNREGS and Food Security Bill

Aam aadmi has achieved tremendous transformation from the stage of isolation to the stage of decision maker in the era of globalisation. Increasing political concerns, neglecting the confidence on Aam aadmi has resulted in huge loss to the dictators. In view of the importance of Aam aadmi, a great change has occurred in terms of concern for Aam aadmi in the present era. Increasing initiations of social schemes including Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) and National Food Security Bill, 2013 are some of the best examples which show that the government is highly concerned for the development and as well as empowerment. In view of the emergence of two of the most popular schemes by the government, the present paper will critically examine the need for social schemes for Aam aadmi. Further, the paper also contributes the benefits of the schemes. Further, the challenges ahead for the successful implementation of the scheme have also been presented in the paper. The present paper is mainly based on the secondary data. The data pertaining to the opinions of the common people especially in rural India have also been considered. The paper provides the valuable observations on examining the impact of social schemes for the upliftment of Aam aadmi.

Poverty and the state of nutrition in India

India is often thought of as a development paradox with relatively high economic growth rates in the past few years, but with lower progress in areas of life expectancy, education and standard of living. While serious inequalities in growth, development and opportunity explain the illusion of the paradox at the country level, still, a significant proportion of the world's poor live in India, as do a significant proportion of the world's malnourished children. Poverty and undernutrition coexist, and poor dietary quality is associated with poor childhood growth, as well as significant micronutrient deficiencies. Food security is particularly vulnerable to changes in the economic scenario and to inequities in wealth distribution. Migration from rural to urban settings with a large informal employment sector also ensures that migrants continue to live in food insecure situations. While food production has for the most part kept pace with the increasing population, it has been with regard to cereal rather than of pulses and millet production. Oil seeds, sugar cane and horticultural crops, along with nonfood crops are also being promoted, which do not address nutrition security, and, coupled with the increase in the consumption of pre-prepared food, may indeed predispose towards the double burden of malnutrition. Access to food is also particularly susceptible to poverty and inequality. Many strategies and policies have been proposed to counter undernutrition in India, but their implementation has not been uniform, and it is still too early to assess their lasting impact at scale.

Plight of the Indian Farmers and way ahead for their resurrection

Agricultural activity in India for small and marginal farmers currently is unsustainable. This phenomenon stems from: 1. Fragmented lands that cannot absorb technology nor mechanisation 2. Suffer from perpetual indebtedness that incapacitates input provisions 3. Difficult to source labor; if sourced, tough to get productivity 4. Poor storage to keep produce safe from parasites and price variations 5. Strings of middlemen who deny the worth of farmer's meager produce 6. Bureaucratic ineptitude, to tackle their problems, to mention a few Central and State Governments provide help and assistance to these farmers through consistent budgetary allocations every year besides providing ad-hoc reliefs when either floods or droughts strike. However, the relief is slothful and corrupt. This is one big reason for the abysmal state of these classes of farmers. Ironically, some Government staff becomes rich at the cost of poor. This is pathetic. It is time that the Government turned their focus differently on agriculture. Instead of the dole, the government would do well to move on to provide enduring infrastructure in the form of building roads, connecting rivers, building reservoirs at appropriate places, build canals, from these canals create an intelligent network of rivulets to ensure irrigation for all lands. In addition, provide adequate and quality power supply and provide power connection without harassing farmers. Further, simplify and hasten the process of land registration / transfer, bring the digital technology of the Internet browsing and the like. The money spent on these measures will benefit the farming communities a great deal more than any other help or assistance. These efforts will build capital assets and avoid revenue expenditure (loss) through dole. With these measures, the farm sector will begin to look up. Small farmer will contribute to GDP growth like never before. Done in right earnest, the need for subsidy will peter out. The other worrisome factors that encumber farmers are unpredictable weather, depleting water resources (60% of the cultivable land, is still under rain fed farming), adulterated seeds, inefficient power supply, lack of availability of the farm labor and hounding farm debts. All these collapse the farmer. With disillusionment, the farmer takes to extreme steps and even commits suicide. The youngsters desert their older ones in the villages to migrate to larger towns, ostensibly to seek employment. With poor education and lack of skills, they are unable to get suitable jobs and end up to fall a prey to tumultuous activities. Farmers with bigger lands also suffer from similar predicament. A plethora of local NGOs, many with foreign origins have been in agri-space. All of them are engaged in advising farmers on how to do farming, how to make use of modern technology, how to improve farming methods and how to develop managerial abilities to run their vocation better. These advices do not help these classes of farmers. These advocators forget that farmer's deep impoverishments, added with their lack of resources, education, competencies and comprehensiveness do not enable farmers to adapt to these measures, however right these may be. In fact many narrative exist about fund misappropriation by the NGOs barring a very few. Thus, piles of such measures have failed to alleviate the miseries

THE JOHNSON TREATMENT: COLD WAR FOOD AID AND THE POLITICS OF GRATITUDE

In 1966, President Lyndon Baines Johnson declared, “India is a good and deserving friend. Let it never be said that bread should be so dear, and flesh and blood so cheap that we turned in indifference from her bitter need.” The sweeping presidential rhetoric, however, did not match the record. While Johnson promised India vital U.S. food aid to combat a worsening famine, he also bristled at Prime Minister Indira Gandhi’s public criticism of the U.S. military escalation in Vietnam. In this context, he ordered a review of American economic and agricultural assistance to India and pushed ahead with the implementation of the “short tether” policy – placing authorization of U.S. food aid shipments to India on a month-to month basis, and making future deliveries contingent on the Government of India’s adoption of market mechanisms and modern technical inputs including pesticides, fertilizers, and mechanized irrigation to increase the nation’s food production – a strategy based on the U.S. agribusiness model. While surplus U.S. grains, made available to India and other nations through the “Food for Peace” program, provided relief to low-income, urban populations, this thesis, drawing extensively on documents from the Lyndon B. Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, emphasizes Washington’s use of food aid as a Cold War weapon. For a decade and a half, prior to Johnson’s “short tether” policy, U.S. policymakers hoped that generous U.S. economic aid would spur a grateful, post-colonial Indian government to modify its foreign policy of Cold War nonalignment, support Washington’s global anti-communist agenda, and forge better terms with its regional rival and U.S. military ally, Pakistan. American officials also reasoned that U.S. generosity would encourage the developing nation to adopt market oriented economic policies. Borrowing from the colonial theorist Frantz Fanon and other scholars, this study illuminates how these expectations reflected common cultural assumptions that aid recipients owed their benefactors “gratitude.” I argue that the metaphors of “gifting” and “gratitude,” language commonly used by U.S. officials and members of Congress, actually disguised the exercise of hegemonic power as moral beneficence. President Johnson, who had initially perceived India’s recently-installed first, female leader as girlish and deferential to U.S. leadership, implemented the short tether initiative not simply to spur Indian agricultural reforms – but to punish the nation and its new prime minister for challenging U.S. power and violating his own code of personal and political conduct.

Small-scale farmers’ decisions in globalised markets: Changes in India, Indonesia and China

Asia accounts for 56 per cent of the world’s agriculture GDP (FAO, 2011); the primary contributors to it include the overwhelming majority of Asia’s smallholders (some 435 million). Most small farmers in Asia cultivate land parcels smaller than 2 hectares and often under rainfed conditions, that is without irrigation. Many produce for subsistence and require other livelihood activities to sustain themselves. However, small producers are subject to the influence of globalised markets for their inputs, choice of crops, quality parameters for their farm output and price realisation..

Economic Crisis and Livelihoods

This paper is the overview chapter of the State of India's Livelihood Report 2013. It analysis the key segments of the economy from the perspective of livelihood generation and its growth. It also discuss the implications of various macro-economic factors that has direct impact on the livelihoods.

'I am India Shining' : Investor-Citizen and the Indelible Icon of Good Times

Journal of Asian Studies , 2016

This paper addresses the highly publicized failure of the spectacular 'India Shining' mega-publicity campaign (2003-4). This state sponsored campaign aimed to communicate the success of 1990s economic reforms in transforming India from an aid-recipient developing nation to a lucrative 'emerging market' in the global economy. Instead of 'uplifting' the mood of the nation, it brought to surface the underlying acrimony and exclusion experienced by a vast majority of the population. Reading the controversy against the grain, I argue that far from being a failure, the mega-campaign actually boosted the flagging economic reforms project. I argue that the discourse of failure is built upon a popular conflation of the 2004 electoral defeat of the Bharatiya Janata Party with that of the neoliberal project of economic reforms itself. I show how the India Shining images helped popularize the reforms at an unprecedented mass scale that until then had largely been limited to elite policy debates and reform packages. And how the public discontent accrued from one's exclusion from the 'good times' ushered by the reforms, and not reforms per se. The controversy allows us to witness the making of a new form of 'investor-citizenship' shaped around the language and logic of loss/profits. The very edifice of failure, in fact, makes apparent the shift to a capitalist dream world and the withering away of the old order.

Prof. Vibhuti Patel on Indian Economy and Food Price Volatility, Janata, January 28, 2018

Each time prices of grain, pulses, vegetables and milk shoot up, either foods or drought are blamed, while at a grass root level farmers report bumper crop. The Corporate Houses buy vegetables-tomatoes, potatoes, onions and pulses at through away price. International pressure through World Trade Organisation and General Agreement on Trade and Tariff pressure the poor countries not to give farm subsidies in terms of support price and let market reign supreme without accepting the fact that there is no perfect competition.

Prof. vibhuti Patel on Food Price Volatility, MEDC, September 2017

Though India adopted Policy of Economic Liberalisation in 1991, the agrarian sector was liberalized in 2004 when more than 400 agrarian commodities were exposed to global competition. Food price volatility became perennial problem after that. “Price fluctuations are a common feature of well-functioning agricultural product markets. But when these become large and unexpected – volatile – they can have a negative impact on the food security of consumers, farmers and entire countries. Since 2007, world markets have seen a series of dramatic swings in commodity prices. Food prices reached their highest levels for 30 years during the summer of 2008, collapsing the following winter, before rapidly rising again in the months that followed. Food prices today remain high, and are expected to remain volatile.”

Prof. Vibhuti Patel on "Union Budget 2018-19: A Gender Analysis", JANATA 15 April 2018.pdf

Gender Responsive Budgeting (GRB) is a means of integrating a gender dimension into all steps of the budget process. It is about taking into account the different needs and priorities of both women and men without gender exclusivity. Gender Responsive Budgeting ensures that budgets are gender sensitive and not gender neutral, which means that they are geared towards establishing gender equality. GRB consists of the use of tools to analyse the gender dimensions of budgets, and adoption of procedures to ensure that the budget supports the achievement of gender equality.