Addressing the British Parliament, as an MP over a hundred and thirty years ago, Dadabhai Naroji noted that the ?great mass of the poor people? in India had an average income of the Rs 20 per head per annum or?shocking though it may sound?about Rs 1.65 a month. He was referring to a statement made by Lord Cromer who had maintained that India'sper capita income was Rs 27 p.a. That was a high figure said Dadabhai, considering that the average took into account the income also amassed by ?European planters, manufacturers, mine owners? and others as well.
A hundred odd years later, if we are to believe the findings of the National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO), 85 crore people in India earn less than Rs 20 per day and that in many rural areas, the earning is only Rs 12 per day which won'tfetch them a cup of coffee in three-star restaurant. According to the NSSO, 10 per cent of the all-India rural population have only Rs 9 to spend per day. What does it say of our economy?and government?
As many as 22 per cent of the population exists below the poverty line and 55 per cent of the Indian population exists on Rs 12.20 per capita per day. Poverty, apparently has fallen by nine percentage points between 1993-1994 and 2004-2005 but the per capital expenditure of the average Indian is no more than Rs 23 per day. Or about Rs 700 per month. If we put these figures in the context of 10,000 millionnaires we have in the country, the great disparity between the rich and the poor becomes immediately apparent. It is immaterial whether the poor are getting poorer and the rich richer; what needs to be taken note of is the picture as a whole which is distressing.
Some of the facts indeed are frightening. A survey of 11,24,033 schools in 35 states and Union Territories conducted by the National University of Educational Planning and Administration (NUEPA) found that 2. 92 per cent of the schools had zero enrollment, some 69,353 schools of 6.17 per cent of all schools had less than 25 students and as many as 1,70,888 schools had between 26 and 50 students. About 23,000 schools had no teachers at all, while 1.3 lakh schools had only one teacher! And as many as 1,022,227 schools or 9.54 per cent of the total number of schools imparting elementary education had only one classroom. So what progress are we talking about?
Child labour is rampant in the country and the government apparently turns a blind eye to it. In one small town called Karavalnagar (bordering between Delhi and Uttar Pradesh) about 3,000 children are believed to be employed in about 25 godowns, working for close to 12 hours every day to earn about Rs 60 a day, no doubt to add to the family kitty at the cost of getting even elementary education. The Government looks the other way. After all, sixty rupees a day is not a small sum, considering that the average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) is Rs 503. About 60 per cent of that Rs 503 is spent on food. Another 16 per cent on fuel, clothing and footwear. Of what is left, the household spends Rs 34 on health and Rs 17 on education.
Actually, according to one study, there are ?countless households for whom the figure is not Rs 503 but Rs 225. According to P. Sainath, the 2007 Ramon Magsaysay Award winner and an expert on rural economy ?there are whole states whose average (earnings) falls below the poverty line?. As for the landless, writes Sainath ?their hardships are appalling?. Sixty years on, rural India is in shambles. This, no doubt, explains the growing number of suicides throughout the country, especially in rural India.
According to the Vidharbha Jan Andolan Samiti, in Vidharbha alone there have been 1,132 suicides from July 1 last year to the present day. In Punjab, one of the most prosperous, if not the most prosperous state in India, there have been 40,000 odd suicide cases over a period of 18 years while in the country as a whole there have been 112,000 suicides among farmers since 1993 or a period roughly of 15 years. Most of the suicides were driven by debt. Credit squeeze has apparently pushed lakhs of farmers into bankruptcy.
A report by Sainath indicates that ?millions move towards towns and cities? looking for jobs that don'texist. A huge pool of menial labourers and domestic servants has accumulated throughout the country and, according to one estimate, there are close to two lakh girls from Jharkhand in Delhi alone, These figures will surely partly explain the unprecedented of growth of Naxalites who believe that violence will solve economic problems.
The suicide rate seems particularly high in Kerala where communists have long been in power. According to the Kerala Government'sown estimate (as on November 22, 2006) a total of 804 farmers committed suicide from 2004 to 2006 with another 101 farmers following suit till February 2007. Nearly 60 per cent of farmers who committed suicide had land areas below one acre. About 35 per cent had land between 11 to 50 cents. Thus a majority of farmers were marginal or small farmers. Another important finding of the survey showed that nearly 42 per cent of the deceased farmers had cultivation in leased land. These figures must be assessed in the context of a fresh development around growing cities like Hyderabad-Secunderabad. Land alienation is being increasingly noticed with land values going up at unbelievably high rates. Thus it is claimed in The Economic and Political Weekly (August 4) that with the setting up of Cybercity around the Andhra Pradesh capital, most of the villagers have sold their land?a major portion of it?at around Rs lakhs an acre. Cultivable land is thus being put to use to set up industries.
One instance is recited where in 2005 an outsider purchased five acres of land from a villager at Rs four lakhs an acre which was resold in 2006 to realtor at Rs 1.1 crore an acre which in turn was resold in 2007 at Rs 3 crore an acre. There is little that the government could or would do. That it endangers food production makes no impact on government. And to think that the Government of India has a Rs 25,000 crore plan to enhance food production and rejuvenate agriculture! Who is fooling whom? Suicides, large-scale agricultural land sales are now part of rural heritage. And all this after sixty years of Independence. Whither are we heading?
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