Economy
Devinder Sharma writes: After a month of demonetisation, the picture in the rural areas remains too bleak. I know of villages where the farmers had to return empty handed even after seven days of queuing up. As a TISS study points out, nearly 81 per cent of the villages do not have access to banking….
Read More about Demonetisation, not drought, behind farmers’ woes
Development/Growth
Colin Todhunter writes: Data from the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index indicates that 20 years ago, India had the second-best social indicators among the six South Asian countries, but now it has the second worst position. Bangladesh has less than half of India’s per-capita GDP but has infant and child mortality rates lower than that of India….
Read More about What has neoliberal capitalism ever done for India?
Economy
Shankar Gopalakrishnan writes: Demonetisation’s biggest impact will be on the distribution of resources within the economy, whatever happens to the economy as a whole. Demonetisation’s a giant vacuum, sucking up the resources of the weak and delivering them to the powerful, while acting like it’s doing the opposite. More importantly, this transfer will be permanent….
Read More about Demonetisation is a permanent transfer of wealth from the poor to the rich
Economy
Live Mint reports: The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of the country’s wealth, according to the latest data on global wealth from Switzerland based Credit Suisse Group AG. In the last two years, the share of the top 1% has increased at a cracking pace, from 49% in 2014 to 58.4% in 2016….
Read More about The richest 1% of Indians now own 58.4% of the country’s wealthFood/Farming
Suraj Kumar Thube writes: Much of the naturalisation of the suicides has also got to do with the urban perception of rural areas and rural lifestyles. The oriental imagination still does not cease to colonise our minds in terms of perceiving the rural as a stagnant and unchanging space characterised by divisive notions of caste-consciousness….
Read More about Are we working harder to make India’s farmers suffer?
Artists impression of Gujarat International Finance Tec-City (GIFT)
Development/Growth
G. Sampath writes: The smart city paradigm signals a momentous shift that takes the agenda of privatisation beyond the takeover of public utilities, and inaugurates the formal privatisation of governance itself. An exclusive focus on technology in discussions of the smart city paradigm can blind one to its real driver—the global crisis of capital accumulation….
Read More about Smart cities: Too smart for their own good?
Food/Farming
Devinder Sharma writes: The real cost of economic reforms is being borne by rural India. The first-ever Socio Economic Census has now clearly brought out this stark reality… The economic wealth of 15 families in India equals that of 600 million people… On the other hand, 60-crore farmers are paying the price for unjust economic reforms….
Read More about India has sacrificed agriculture on the altar of GDP
Consumerism/Lifestyle
C.P. Chandrasekhar writes: Even the kind of economic growth that liberalisation actually delivered is proving unsustainable. So, the belief that growth would remain high for years to come, delivering benefits even to those at the bottom of the income pyramid and those steeped in poverty and deprivation, has now revealed itself to be a myth….
Read More about 25 years of ‘economic reforms’: The myth of growth
All pics by P. Sainath/People's Archive of Rural India
Consumerism/Lifestyle
From Ruralindiaonline.org: Rampant deforestation, extensive damming of the rivers, huge diversions of water for industrial projects and even elite resorts can be seen across the state. All these underlie Maharashtra’s terrible water crisis. They won’t get washed away by the monsoon, even if the media coverage of it dries up with onset of the rains….
Read More about P. Sainath: The sacred waters of a tankerPoverty/Inequality
Photographer Johnny Miller wanted to capture South Africa’s dramatic rich-poor divide from a new perspective, and decided to shoot many areas from several hundred feet in the air. The result, as seen in the series titled ‘Unequal Scenes’ , are startling. They also make us us wonder; what if Miller had attempted the same in today’s India?…
Read More about The stark divide between rich and poor, from aboveFood/Farming
Catch News reports: In a new initiative by Speaker Ram Niwas Goel, proceedings for the day at the Delhi Assembly were kickstarted by a lecture series. The first lecture was delivered by veteran journalist P. Sainath, who spoke on ‘Water and Farm Crisis in India’, which he said were the defining crises of our times….
Read More about Video: P. Sainath at the Delhi assembly: Water and farm crisis are the defining problems of our time
CLIMATE CRISIS
Deaths due to heat waves in India have been in the thousands–in the years 1998, 2002, 2003 and 2015 in particular. Numbers, which are how the deaths are usually reported, are class- and gender-neutral. It’s one of the grave ironies of global warming that those least responsible for it are affected the most by it….
Read More about India’s heat waves spell doom for the working poor
P.Sainath, People's Archive of Rural India
Consumerism/Lifestyle
A resident of Pune, Maharashtra’s second-most developed city, uses five times as much water as her counterpart in Latur, the district most ravaged by drought in south-central Marathwada region. That’s the extent of water inequality in Maharashtra, according to a new analysis, characterised by disproportionate availability and consumption of water across regions, crops and consumers….
Read More about Consume more, pollute more, pay less, ask for more dams: The average Indian city’s water policyConflict/Dispossession
Environmental activist and water expert Himanshu Thakkar tells Business Standard that India needs a comprehensive water use policy immediately. Making it clear that India is facing its worst drought ever, he says: “I do not think it is statement of pessimism but possibly reflects a reality. What we are seeing this year is unprecedented in many respects….
Read More about India facing its worst water crisis ever: Himanshu ThakkarConflict/Dispossession
Speaking at a National Consultation on Drought, journalist P. Sainath explains how India’s ‘thirst economy’ makes profits. “If we think we are facing is only a drought, we’re in serious trouble. You’re in the midst of a mega water crisis,” he says, debunking the idea that a good monsoon will solve India’s crippling water crisis….
Read More about P. Sainath: “You are in the midst of a mega water crisis”
Food/Farming
Sumit Chaturvedi reports: The 2011-’12 agricultural census and caste census, summarises the failure of India’s land reforms: No more than 4.9% of farmers control 32% of India’s farmland. A “large” farmer in India has 45 times more land than the “marginal” farmer. 101.4 million – or 56.4% – of rural households own no agricultural land….
Read More about Failure of reforms: 5% of India’s farmers own a third of the land
Amit Verma/Forbes India
Economy
Debarshi Das writes: The neoliberal State seeks to cut down welfare expenditure, hence it is against PDS. It also relies on the market. Although contemporary advocates of free market are not motivated by extraction of colonial revenue, in terms of policy prescription they do not differ from the advocates of free market of colonial era….
Read More about Famines and Public Distribution System in India
The Hindu
Conflict/Dispossession
Nikhil Inamdar writes: India has the world’s largest number of people without access to clean water. The financial burden of this has fallen on its poorest agrarian communities, but the crisis is now spilling over to industries too. In Marathwada, the tanker business is the only one booming. The rest of the economy has collapsed….
Read More about India’s looming water wars can destroy everything, from Make in India to smart cities
NEWS ARCHIVE
The Guardian reports: According to a new NASA study, the average global surface temperature in February was 1.35C warmer than the average temperature for the month between 1951-1980, a far bigger margin than ever seen before. The unprecedented leap led scientists, usually wary, to label the new record a “shocker” and warn of a “climate emergency”….
Read More about NEWS UPDATE #87
P.Sainath, People's Archive of Rural India
Development/Growth
This series on rural India’s water crisis won P. Sainath a World Media Summit award under the category of Exemplary News Professionals in Developing Countries. It zeroes in on the stark contrasts in the consumption and access to water between the rich and poor to illustrate the alarming trend of inequalities in India and abroad….
Read More about Special: P. Sainath’s award-winning series on rural India’s ‘Thirst Economy’
