Hunger: India’s National Shame

Yesterday’s online edition of the Times of India carries a headline that said “India tops world hunger chart”. You can read the entire article by clicking on the link below:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/India-tops-world-hunger-chart/articleshow/4197047.cms

Unfortunately, this is the India that most of the world used to know till recently. This is the India of “Slumdog Millionaire”, without the songs and happy ending. A corrupt, inefficient country that until recently repeatedly went to the rest of the world for aid, begging bowl in hand. There is another related article which shows how corrupt, incompetent and completely callous the government-run Food Corporation of India (FCI) is. The FCI is responsible for collecting, storing and distributing food-grains to the poorest of the poor. In this endeavour, it has failed miserably. Over one million tonnes of food-grains lying in FCI warehouses have been allowed to rot. One million tonnes! These food-grains would have fed over ten million hungry Indians for a year!! Statistics like these make my blood boil.

India is a crowded, overpopulated country to begin with. Resources are scarce and inefficiently distributed. To top it off, we have corruption, wastefulness and criminal negligence in government run organizations such as the Food Corporation of India. Why is nobody held responsible for allowing such huge amounts of food-grains to go to waste? Who is responsible? Does anyone in the government care?

I have heard some experts say that the facilities in FCI warehouses are poor. Apparently, these warehouses do not have proper refrigeration facilities for food-grains and they are rat infested. Many reports by impartial agencies have highlighted the need for the government to invest in a “cold chain”, since efficient refrigeration and transportation infrastructure is essential for the effective distribution of food to the hungry. So far, nothing has been done by successive governments.

The tragedy here is not that India does not have enough food to feed its people. We do. It is the gross inefficiency and negligence of the public food distribution system, as represented by the Food Corporation of India and allied governmental agencies. This is not an insurmountable problem. It does not require additional money or resources to solve. All it requires is the better use of existing resources.

Why hasn’t the government done anything about upgrading the food supply chain in the country? Why does the government not focus on upgrading these FCI warehouses? Why do you hear about this appalling hunger epidemic so rarely on national TV channels? Is it because this is not supposed to be part of the brave, sexy new India, where actresses and cricketers are paid millions of dollars for endorsements? Why is our media, which is so active in highlighting many other trivial issues so silent on this one? An issue that affects 250 million people. Is it because there is no “lobby” that speaks up for them? Or do they care only about their TRP ratings? After all, “real” news is that which sells, not that which is true. To quote eminent journalist P. Sainath: “I learned that conventional journalism was above all about the service of power. You always give the last word to authority. I got a couple of prizes which I didn't pick up because I was ashamed”. I will tell you more about Sainath later in this blog.

Anybody who has spent significant amounts of time in rural Maharashtra and North India will know the extent of the hunger epidemic. South Indian states especially Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and Kerala are better administered, and consistently score higher than their North Indian counterparts on nearly every economic parameter. Last year, there was a news article that gave a graphic account of famine in Thane district, barely a hundred kilometres from my home in Mumbai. Such deprivation so close to India’s largest city should have caused a stir. Instead, it barely caused a ripple.

If you are interested to learn more about India’s hunger epidemic and the non-existent government response to it, I highly recommend P. Sainath’s book “Everybody Loves A Good Drought: Stories from India’s Poorest Districts”. Sainath is an award winning journalist and won the 2007 Magsaysay Award for journalism, literature and creative communication arts. The book is a little dated (it was published in 1996), but it will give you a good idea of the complete paralysis and lack of action of governmental agencies to this crisis. Not much has changed on this front since 1996.

Have we become so unfeeling as a nation? Have we become so much like those government bureaucrats and politicians we despise? I sincerely hope not.

Of course, all of us in our individual capacities can help in small ways. However, this will not solve the problem. At a macro level, you can start by holding your government responsible, at both the state and central levels.

My solution would be to dismantle the Food Corporation of India, and hand over the entire task of storing and distributing food-grains to the private sector. That way, someone would be held accountable for criminal negligence. If you hear of any political party proposing this course of action, vote for them. What are your views?

Economics: Swami Recession-ananda’s Unsolicited Economic Advice

Times are tough. The current morning temperature in Vancouver, Canada is – 3 degrees centigrade. Taking the wind chill factor into consideration, it feels like – 9 degrees centigrade. My new-found friend, a local black squirrel, who shows up at my apartment balcony every morning looking for a food bail-out (like many of us these days), did not stop by today. It is too cold for him this morning, I guess. It is also too cold for me to go running in the local park.

So I thought I would put on my economist hat and give my blog readers unsolicited economic advice. President Obama launched his US $ 800 billion stimulus package with great fanfare day before yesterday. Why am I focusing on the US economy and not India? Because whatever people may say about China (and to a lesser extent India), the US is still the heavy hitter of the world’s economic system. Over the last six years, as the US prospered, China enjoyed 11% annual GDP growth. India had 9% economic growth. The economic fate of the whole world depends on how quickly the US economy recovers. When America prospers, the world prospers. Make no mistake about it.

If Obama's stimulus package does indeed stimulate large-scale public works in the US, it will stimulate demand, put money in the pockets of consumers, and hopefully stimulate demand in other industries. This is classical Keynesian economic theory at work.

If this happens, the US (and consequently the rest of the world) will be pulled out of the recession. If it doesn’t, things are going to get a lot scarier than they are currently.

Large-scale government spending has worked before, most notably during the Great Depression of the 1930s, when President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s “New Deal” helped pull the world out of a recession. Of course, the Second World War also played a big role in reviving the world economy, but I am not advocating a Third World War.

So how do we get out of the current economic mess? Swami Recession-ananda(me) has some unsolicited advice to give. Everybody else is weighing in with their opinions, so why should I be left behind? So here goes:

1. American banks are just not lending, even to creditworthy customers. Short-term interest rates are close to zero. As far as monetary policy is concerned, there is nothing further that the US Federal Reserve can do. Fed Chief Ben Bernanke has used up all the bullets in his arsenal. So how does Obama ensure that the flow of credit, the lifeblood of commerce, is restarted? In my opinion, he has got to temporarily nationalize banks. For example, the US government has already spent US $ 45 billion on trying to nurse the ailing Citigroup back to health. This constitutes 8% of Citigroup’s equity share capital. It hasn’t worked. Citigroup now needs another US $ 175 billion just to survive the next quarter. If Obama gives it to them, this would mean the US government will own more than 40% of Citigroup. Why not just take over Citigroup (and Bank of America and AIG while you are at it) temporarily?

This would mean that Citigroup would be forced to start lending again, which would then inject credit into the US economic system. Conservative Americans do not like the word “nationalization”, because it smacks of socialism. But what is the alternative? There is none. Go ahead, Comrade Obama, nationalize ailing US banks, at least for the next one year! Swami Recession-ananda is not alone in saying this. Many economists, including Nobel-Prize winning Paul Krugman are also saying the same thing.

Fire the current managements of these companies. Put temporary caps on salaries of top executives, at least till their companies become profitable again. Ensure that the top managements who gave themselves millions of dollars in bonuses when their companies were bleeding and begging for handouts are put in prison for defrauding investors and shareholders. Put their summer homes in the Hamptons and the Bahamas up for sale.

2. Consider re-enacting the Glass Steagall Act. This Act came into force in the 1930s, and ensured that depository institutions such as banks could not invest in stock markets. The pros and cons of re-enacting the Glass Steagall Act need to be debated before it is re-enacted.

3. Do not give General Motors and Chrysler the US $ 40 billion they are asking for, unless there is a complete overhaul of the top management of these dinosaurs. Use the bailout to force them to re-negotiate their pension contracts with auto unions. In fact, don't make it a bailout. Make it a loan instead, repayable to the US government in ten years. Force them to start investing in clean, alternative technologies. Make these conditions explicit before giving them the money. Twist their arms until they comply. If they don’t, break their arms. This may sound harsh, but it is the only way that American auto makers will become competitive. I would not have advocated a bail-out for US auto manufacturers at all, but one in ten US jobs depends directly or indirectly on the US auto industry.

4. Raise taxes for the rich. This is also going to be deeply unpopular, especially among the conservatives. But it will help pay for Obama’s stimulus package and also for healthcare reform, which is the next time bomb ticking away in the US. Bush’s tax cuts were only for the super-rich. Families earning less than US $ 250,000 a year are not going to sympathize if taxes on the super-rich are raised anyway. If you are rich, you can afford to pay a little more in taxes. It is not a drastic tax increase, and it won’t kill you. Other states are finding innovative ways to raise taxes. The state of California has a proposed legislation that will legalize the personal consumption of marijuana. If this happens, the cash-strapped state will earn an additional US $ 2 billion every year in tax revenue. Marijuana is a cash crop, it is non-addictive, it is less damaging than alcohol, and it is used by millions anyway. Please do not get me wrong. I am not advocating marijuana use in this blog. All I am saying is that legalizing it will bring in billions of tax dollars. If alcohol, a far more damaging drug, is legal and brings in billions of valuable tax dollars, why not do the same with marijuana? By all means regulate the sale of marijuana, just like alcohol.

In summary, do I believe in principle, that the government is better than the private sector in running the economy? No. I do not. I am a capitalist, and come from a country which has been ruined by wasteful and corrupt socialist policies for decades. I am not partisan - I am neither "conservative" nor "liberal". I am just another middle-class average joe trying to ride out tough times. I am not wealthy, and becoming rich is something I aspire to. But what we have seen over the last decade or so in America is the pursuit of wealth at the expense of everything else - regulation, equity, fair play. That is not right.

In normal times, I would have opposed many of the economic plans Obama has in mind. But these are extraordinary times. The stimulus package will have its flaws. There will be some wasteful, “pork-barrel” spending. But as long as the majority of the money is used for long-term beneficial projects, the US economy (and the world economy) will benefit. Put Vice-President Joe Biden to work. Make him accountable for the success of the stimulus package. If he needs help from a Project Manager who has considerable prior experience in managing and tracking tough projects, I am available!

Obama’s opponents, the ones who are criticizing him at the moment, do not have an alternative plan. Just reducing taxes for the rich, holding hands and singing “We Are the World” does not constitute an alternative plan and isn’t going to cut it, unfortunately.

I am not a blind Obama supporter. I do have objections to some of Obama’s ideas, such as his rhetoric opposing outsourcing and his proposal for more military aid to Pakistan, for example. But I do support his economic plan, because there is no alternative to it (at the moment anyway). He is also an intelligent man, who at least understands economics.

What are your thoughts, dear reader? Do post your comments on my blog. Thanks.

India: The Rise and Rise of Poverty Tourism

There is an old brand of tourism resurfacing in India – “poverty tourism”. This brand of tourism was fashionable in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s. It vanished for a little while in the 1990s and the early years of this century. Poverty tourism involves highlighting and promoting the wretched condition of approximately a quarter of India’s population, for the benefit of tourists from other, wealthier nations.

In the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, this elite group of tourists generally consisted of members of the Peace Corps, left-wing economists, hippies, eccentrics, do-gooders of all stripes and spiritual seekers who kept harping on India’s material poverty and supposed “spiritual” wealth. This Indian trend of promoting poverty tourism diminished in the last twenty years, as the story of India’s economic boom took centre-stage. It has now returned with a vengeance, possibly as a result of the global recession. Miserable people always feel better when they know that there are others who are worse off than them.

I will use two examples to explain the revival of poverty tourism. The first example involves our eternal political child Rahul Gandhi (better known as Rahul “Baba” despite his middle age) taking the British Foreign Secretary David Milliband to the rural, backward town of Amethi in Northern India. The idea, Rahul “Baba” said, was to show Mr. Milliband the “real India”.

The second example is the international success of the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”.

But first, let me illustrate the phenomenon of Rahul “Baba” as global ambassador for India’s poverty tourism. David Milliband, British Foreign Secretary was in India on an official diplomatic visit, ostensibly to show his support to India in the wake of the terror attacks in Mumbai. Rahul Gandhi, rich and privileged scion of the Nehru-Gandhi dynasty, saw it fit to take Milliband to a poor, backward village in his constituency of Amethi in Northern India. Mr. Milliband stayed the night in a village of “Dalits” (a supposedly backward caste tribe), without running water, plumbing or electricity, and slept in a poor Dalit’s hut for the night. Rahul Baba wanted of course, to show Milliband the “real” India.

The Indian media gave this “event” a great deal of publicity, gushing over what conversations Milliband and Rahul Baba had with the poor uneducated locals, and how admirably these two gentlemen coped with the hardships they faced for the night. Very little was said about the villagers who have been living in Amethi all their lives.

The one and only important question the media did not address was – Why is Amethi, the constituency of the ruling dynasty, still so poor and backward after so many years? What has the Gandhi family done to improve the wretched lot of the people living in this village? Surely, the constituency of the Prime-Minister-In-Waiting should have had running water, electricity, literacy, jobs and schools by now? If not, why not? But our media conveniently chose to ignore this all-important question.

The next day, as Milliband and Rahul Gandhi departed for Delhi in a private plane, the charitable organizations that had donated clean, warm blankets and bed-sheets for these gentlemen quietly came by and took these items back. The villagers had served their purpose, which was the promotion of poverty tourism. They were now forgotten, and welcome to go back to their primitive, poverty-stricken lives. The cause of poverty tourism had been promoted and publicized, and that was all that mattered.

The second example I would like to highlight is the phenomenal success of the movie “Slumdog Millionaire”. I have not watched the movie yet. I am told it is an excellent movie, which it probably is. Daniel Boyle, the movie’s director, probably made the movie because it was a good story worth telling. However, it has been received very differently by many members of the Indian media. Instead of treating “Slumdog Millionaire” as a good movie, they are somehow reading much more into it than there actually is. They are treating the movie as somehow representative of the country India is, which this film definitely isn’t.

One prominent South Bombay socialite waxed eloquent about the movie, about how it portrayed the struggle of the poor in India’s slums. While this may be true, I got the distinct feeling that she was somehow suddenly proud of these slums which she has probably never ever visited or talked about before. Somehow, these slums, that she would wrinkle her nose at in disgust on any other occasion, had become a symbol of India’s “pride”, “spirit” and “resilience”. Why? Only because a Hollywood director made a famous movie about them.

She would much prefer India to be a poor country which draws the world’s attention with its misery and poverty, than a quiet, staid prosperous nation with no poverty. Look at Sweden, she must be thinking to herself – it is rich and boring, nobody talks or makes movies about it.

I am sure Daniel Boyle (the “Slumdog Millionaire” director) did not mean to portray all the residents of Edinburgh as crazed heroin addicts living in squalor, when he made the movie “Trainspotting”. That is because Edinburgh, like Mumbai, is a diverse place, with own share of rich and poor, sublime and tragic. Just like all residents of Edinburgh are not crazed heroin addicts, all the residents of Mumbai (Bombay) do not live in slums.

The fact of the matter is Boyle was only making a movie. The image of India being a miserable, poor country is promoted by many Indians more frequently than anyone else. Why? Because our poverty becomes the source of international attention, a form of celebrity. And of course, it is better to be famous for being poor, than not being famous at all. Right?

To those overseas tourists who are planning to visit India, I would like to say this. India does have pockets of abysmal poverty. This is a shameful fact of Indian life, it cannot be ignored and it is not something most Indians are proud of. But India also has a prosperous middle class, good schools and education, good jobs and yes, many of us actually live in homes with running water, electricity and indoor plumbing. All of us do not defecate on the street.

We are ashamed of the poverty that afflicts many of our countrymen and women. It distresses us as much as it distresses our foreign tourists. We would like our politicians to provide proper homes, education and jobs to the poor, instead of promoting poverty tourism.

Observations: In Between Trains

There are two sounds I love above almost everything else. The first is the sound of birds chirping. The second is the whistle of trains as they rush past, far away. Fortunately, my new home allows me to hear both these sounds every day. Every evening, after sunset, I sit out in my balcony, and listen to the mournful, lonesome wails of long distance trains as they rush through the night.

“Wooooooooaaaaaannnnnnnhhhhhh”, the long distance trains shriek, as they speed through the night. They sound like huge, metallic dinosaurs lost in the winter night fog, desperately trying to find their way back to the rest of the herd. The train lines are quite far away from where I live, about two miles, but the sound carries at night, when all is quiet. It is a sound that never fails to thrill me.

I have reasons for loving trains. When I was a small boy, air travel was nowhere near as ubiquitous or inexpensive as it is today. Every time my parents wanted to go on a vacation, we piled onto a train. We usually vacationed in winter, and travelled to places far away. This meant preparing for the train trip days in advance. My dad, with his usual precision and eye for detail, would make long lists of what needed to be taken along for the trip. For my mother and him, travelling anywhere meant days of advance preparation. It felt more like an expedition than a vacation. But that was all part of the experience. My parents are still amazed at how I pack for a trip (my packing takes no more than thirty minutes). For them, travelling involved a lot of preparation – material and mental.

Winter is the best time for travelling by train in India. The weather is great, and the early morning fog adds an element of romance and mystery to any train trip, especially if you are travelling in North India. Take a look out of your train compartment on a winter morning anywhere in North India, and you will feel like you have stepped into the pages of a Raj-era E.M. Forster novel.

I still have so many vivid memories of travelling by train in winter. Some of them are permanently etched in my mind. Watching the towering Howrah Bridge materialize out of thin air as the train pulled into Howrah Station on a Calcutta winter morning is one such memory. I guarantee you that the first sight of Howrah Bridge from the train will leave you speechless. It looks like a flawless structure, a shiny beast straight out of a science fiction movie.

Another such memory is that of the great Sanchi Stupa outside the little town of Vidisha in Central India. When travelling from Mumbai (Bombay) to Delhi on the Central Railway, you will suddenly see the “chhatra” or roof of the main Sanchi Stupa rising from behind the tree-line by the side of the tracks. The roof of the Stupa appears to float in mid-air, thanks to the heavy early morning fog. The Stupa is a marvellous complex of buildings dating back to the third century B.C. Its construction was started in the reign of Ashoka the Great – India’s greatest king. The Stupa is part of the living history of India, and in my opinion, should qualify as one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. The contrast of the Stupa seemingly floating in mid-air, with the emerald-green fields of Central India as a backdrop, is stunning, and is something that will stay with you for a long time.

Unfortunately, steam powered trains are a thing of the past. These engines were once the backbone of the Indian Railways and were very much in service until about twenty years ago, especially on the smaller and lesser known train routes. Watching several steam powered engines huff and puff their way into the railway sheds in Lucknow is another enduring memory of my childhood. When you travelled in a train pulled by a steam powered engine, you knew that travelling could be a pretty tiring and strenuous affair. You could sense the little engine giving it all it had, as the soot from the coal fired engine settled on your clothes. It took a long while for the engine to finally get up to high speed, by which time it was groaning and gasping for breath. When the train finally pulled into a station, you heard the little engine exhale, and take a break from its labours. It was truly fascinating stuff, in my opinion.

Steam engines are no longer in service on the Indian Railways. They have become extinct and gone the way of the dodo. There may be a steam engine heaven somewhere, where these sturdy engines built more than a century ago frolic and play. If so, I would like to go there when I die. The one steam engine that is still in service is the one going up to Himalayan mountain town of Darjeeling, in Northern West Bengal. This little engine, more than a hundred years old, is lovingly preserved and taken care of, and is still in daily use. Travelling on that train is one of the things I intend doing before I die. The sight of the world’s third highest peak, Kanchenjunga, wreathed in clouds as it first appears from the train, is something I would not want to miss.

Of course, Indian train stations tend to be unhygienic, crowded, chaotic places. Watching a crowd of travellers at an Indian railway station, writer Paul Theroux remarked that they looked like “a crowd of lazy refugees fleeing an ambiguous catastrophe”. That pretty much sums it up.

Apart from the real pleasures, sights and sounds of train travel, there is also another factor that is responsible for my love of trains. As a child, train travel for me meant vacations, a change from the mundane and routine. It meant pleasurable anticipation, and a chance to leave one’s boring and sometimes difficult life behind for the irresistible charm of new places and adventures. Like Jimi Hendrix once sang:

“I hear my train a’comin’
Comin’ to take me
From this lonesome town”

I know what Jimi meant. Trains were a way to reinvent oneself; a way to new adventures and a new life; a way to leave behind those parts of yourself that you did not like; a new start.

Air travel doesn’t have the same appeal. Even today, when I feel uncertain or apprehensive about the future, I convince myself that I am in between trains. Sooner or later, my train is going to pull into the station and take me away from this lonesome town.