Why Patna blasts will damage Nitish Kumar’s 2014 prospect

His mahadalit base suspect, the Bihar CM needs both Muslim vote and some upper caste backing to retain power. That combination will be impossible to achieve in a polarised fray.

FirstPost, 28 October, 2013

Bihar is poised for a four-cornered fight in 2014. Lalu Yadav clearly feels betrayed by the Congress. Rabri Devi, however, sent a political signal by asserting that she and her son Tejaswi would run the RJD in “saheb’s absence as Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi are guiding the Congress”. But it is unlikely that the Congress will tie up with a tainted RJD after the ordinance fiasco and an oh-so-righteous intervention by Rahul Gandhi. 
For some time, the Congress leadership and Nitish Kumar have been warming to each other. But insiders say Nitish is no political novice to compromise his post-poll leverage — and chances of emerging as a non-Congress, non-BJP prime ministerial candidate — by opting for a pre-poll alliance with the Congress. The BJP, of course, will have to go it alone. 
How does a four-cornered fight suit the parties? Without Lalu leading the campaign, the RJD will be hamstrung. By trusting the control of the party to wife Rabri, sons Tejaswi and Tej Pratap and daughter Misa, Lalu has slighted veteran leaders such as Raghuvansh Prasad Singh, Shakuni Choudhary and Abdul Bari Siddiqui. Among them, the three have considerable command over Thakur, Koeri and Muslim votes, respectively. But they may not be comfortable taking orders from the family. 
The Yadavs may yet stick with Lalu. They never voted for Nitish whose sop schemes for Mahadalits compromised their privileged status as the chosen ones under Lalu. But the Yadavs have been susceptible to Hindutva rhetoric. Most major Hindu-Muslim riots in Bihar were between Muslims and Yadavs. A backward caste leader in Narendra Modi may hold special appeal for them. 

With Lalu out of active politics, will the Yadavs trust the RJD to defend their caste interests? Or will they shift allegiance to the BJP? While it will ultimately depend on how effectively Modi pitches himself – and reports suggest that the spontaneous turnout pleasantly surprised the BJP yesterday – in Bihar, a not-so-subtle shift is already underway. Last month, RJD leader and MLC Nawal Kishore Yadav risked suspension to praise Modi as India’s best political choice. Even Sadhu Yadav found his way to the Gujarat CM. However, the state BJP leaders, particularly Sushil Modi, are not keen to welcome the criminal Yadav elements to the BJP fold. 
The Muslim vote, the other RJD stronghold, is likely to stay undecided till late. The RJD victory in Maharajganj by-election in June showed that the minority has not abandoned Lalu. Even his conviction, say insiders, has not diminished the RJD chief’s acceptability among Muslims. But if they sense a shift of the Yadav vote towards Modi, they are likely to jump the sinking RJD ship to back the JD(U). 
But that does not solve Nitish’s problem. His predicament is evident from his refusal to take a clear stand on the acquittal of the Ranvir Sena members accused in the Lakshmanpur Bathe massacre case. Last year, after the murder of Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh, he did not even attempt to control the mayhem unleashed by Singh’s followers in Ara and Patna. His cabinet colleague Giriraj Singh praised the slain Ranvir Sena chief as a true Gandhian.
Apart from Nitish’s core backward caste constituency of 32 percent voters, a good section of the upper castes also backed the ruling alliance in the last two elections, thanks to the presence of the BJP in the coalition. Now that the JD(U) is on its own, this support has become suspect. Nitish’s desperate bid to woo Bhumihars and Rajputs with key positions has not helped. 
Soon after Brahmeshwar’s death, his son Indubhushan Singh became the president of Akhil Bharatiya Rashtrawadi Kisan Sanghathan, a front organisation of the Ranvir Sena, and charged two JD(U) MLAs with plotting the murder. This June, Singh hosted BJP MLAs on the first death anniversary of his father and vowed to unite Bhumihars against the government. 
Meanwhile, the core constituency has also weakened. Like Lalu, Nitish tried his own brand of social engineering by creating two new backward categories — Ati Pichhra and Mahadalits. Offering them sops earned him early dividends until the sheen of his Mahadalit Vikas Yojana wore off due to rampant corruption and shoddy implementation. 
Clearly, Nitish is faced with a three-pronged challenge: retaining his waning support base among the mahadalits, holding on to some upper caste vote after parting ways with the BJP and ensuring that the Muslim vote does not swing the RJD way. Of the three, staking claim to the 16 percent Muslim vote seems to be the easiest, particularly since the gravitation of Yadav votes towards the BJP is a distinct possibility. 
What can be the potential impact of Sunday’s blasts on these equations? Will Nitish crack down hard if it is indeed Indian Mujahideen’s Darbhanga module at work? Will he be tempted to echo certain Congress loudmouths who were prompt to accuse the BJP of some sort of inside job? Neither. If anything, a communally charged campaign with rhetoric of internal terrorism flying thick will doom Nitish’s already sagging prospects. 
Obviously, the JD(U) cannot afford to alienate the minorities by competing with the BJP for the upper caste votes. Not after parting ways with Modi for secularism’s sake. But, given his weakening backward caste base, only Muslim vote will not see Nitish through. He will also need some upper caste support. Achieving that combination is anyway a tough ask; in a communally polarised election, it will be impossible. More than anyone else, it is Nitish the administrator who can help Nitish the politician today.

Tiger tale

Ei Samay, 26 October, 2013

 

Sentimental, Who?

As businesses get increasingly ruthless, the system bends over backwards to facilitate mega investors. But how realistic are today’s profit expectations

Tehelka, 26 Oct, 2013

The CBI may (unlikely) or may not have a case against Kumar Mangalam Birla but the latest coalgate FIR is certainly not the most jarring episode in this scandal. Even before the agency carried out an investigation to determine if it had sufficient ground for a chargesheet, Central ministers — from veteran Anand Sharma to newbie Sachin Pilot — have jumped to Birla’s defence. It has been embarrassing, yes, but not unexpected.

All through the UPA-2, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh himself has been warning his Cabinet colleagues in the environment and the tribal affairs ministries against showing the rulebook to big investors. This year, Finance Minister P Chidambaram set up the Cabinet Committee on Investment (CCI) to bypass bottlenecks (laws to the rest of us) coming in the way of mega business.

Apparently, the demands of protecting the ecology and tribal rights hurt investor sentiment. Instead, governments at the Centre and in the states have been doling out subsidised resources and tax holidays. After all, investors are the ultimate nation-builders and deserve every bit of incentive. They pump in money, generate jobs and pay wages. They create wealth and eradicate poverty. They also make profit.

But is there anything sentimental about wealth creation, about rising bottom lines? The industrialist who invited the sentimental tag most frequently in recent times actually squandered his profit. Malden Mills CEO Aaron Feuerstein did not bail out with his hefty insurance when his Massachusetts textile factory was gutted but spent millions rebuilding it and paying wages to thousands of idle workers for months until the mill was operational again.

Malden Mills eventually went bankrupt, not so much because of the owner’s ‘sentimentality’ as due to price fluctuations in the international textile market. It changed hands and is still in business as Polartec. Feuerstein never rued his decision. In an interview in 1996, the devout Jew quoted Rabbi Hillel from the first century: “Not all who increase their wealth are wise.” Those words have become more prophetic than ever in the past three decades.

Until the 1980s, both corporate profit and investment remained about 9 percent of the US GDP. Then, the two curves swung in opposite directions. After the 2008 recession, the mismatch became galling. Corporate profit has crossed 12 percent of the GDP since while investment struggles to hit the 4 percent mark. The result is fewer jobs, lower wages and inflated value of shares in the stock market.

At home, Indian corporates reported a decline of 21.4 percent in profit despite a 20.2 percent rise in sales during 2008- 09. Spiralling global prices of raw material such as metals and oil played spoilsport. Even so, the cumulative net profit was eight times of what the companies bagged in 1998-99, though the net sales increased only six times in that 10-year period. Within a decade, net profit margins climbed from 4.7 to 6.3 percent.

If we consider only large companies (sales more than Rs 1,000 crore), profit margin in India peaked to 12.1 percent in 2007-08. In spite of the slowdown, it is still hovering around the 7 percent mark. In terms of percentage of the GDP, corporate profit scaled its high of 10.7 percent in FY2008, settling at almost 9 percent last year. There is no reason why investors should be shy of a market that still returns more than 6 percent of the GDP as profit — the time-tested realistic expectation — at a time when the global economy is in doldrums.

This rational expectation of profit was quantified by Warren Buffett back in 1999 and is borne out by historical trends throughout much of the past century. But greed has long settled in. According to a 2007 study by the Department of Statistics and Information Management, while the productivity of Indian manufacturing companies increased by one-fourth between 2000 and 2006, their profits went up by 17 percent per annum in the same period because the companies “did not pass the benefit from productivity improvement to consumers”.

Since much of the investment in India depends on FDI inflow and the health of the US economy, it is worthwhile to look at which way the wind is blowing on Wall Street since the 2008 recession. Much like the corporate sentiment at home, the prevailing lukewarm investment mood in the US is blamed on regulations, taxation and policy uncertainties. Yet, all these so-called impediments are not hurting soaring profits.

Writing in The New York Times in June, economist Paul Krugman explained this high-profit-low-investment phenomenon as a result of “the growing importance of monopoly rents: profits that don’t represent returns on investment but instead reflect the value of market dominance”. This “new disconnect between profits and production” may have shifted the “distribution of income away from wages in general, and towards profits”. A monopoly can be highly profitable, argued Krugman, because of its high mark-ups and may see no good reason to invest in expanding its productive capacity.

But as a nation-building instrument that conquers poverty, businesses and industries must expand. Increasing productive capacity creates jobs. Jobs and better wages create potential consumers of products and services. Demand-induced economy of scale allows lower pricing that, in turn, attracts still more consumers and demands further expansion of productivity. At a higher profit margin, a company can make the same net profit at a much smaller scale of operations but that does not help the economy or the people.

In a Financial Times analysis this July, Robin Harding quoted Botox-king Robert Grant to point out how the nature of public companies had changed since the 1980s with the arrival of leveraged buyouts, shareholder value, executive stock options, etc. Today, the focus is on earnings per share, on cost-cutting and efficiency, rather than investments that take time to pay off, Grant was quoted as saying. “If you are gaining market share then you win, even if the market contracts. If you grow the market but lose share then you could lose your job.”

None of these factors is alien to Indian corporate psyche and functioning. But, if anything, investment has been largely steady in India since the sudden surge witnessed between 2003 and 2005 when it recorded a 30 percent jump. But the plateau is causing much heartburn, even among those who themselves are holding back investment. The industry highlighted a Cushman and Wakefield report that claimed a 28 percent drop in investment in the real estate market in 2012. This July, Assocham rued a staggering loss of 75 percent in “proposed investments” in 2012-13.

In an emerging economy, this apparent reluctance of investors is often a bargain for more incentives and further relaxation of statutory norms. That is how they gotPlanning Commission Deputy Chairman Montek Singh Ahluwalia to talk about Chidambaram’s excellent idea of changing the rules of business for projects above a critical size so that “the permission that has to be given is given”. As of August, the CCI had cleared 171 projects worth Rs 1.69 lakh crore.

Granted, rules of business require simplification and decisions on investments need to be speeded up. But the delay is more often due to a promoter’s deliberate attempt to conceive projects in areas legally out of bounds and subsequent insistence on bypassing the laws of the land. That is not to deny that India certainly needs systemic reforms to do away with a dismal lack of transparency that allows the government and the industry to play the blame game and make other stakeholders pay the price eventually.

Every business requires a healthy bottom line to fund inventory, capital improvements or investment in new products and services. But the hunger for profit is now more personal than ever. Amid shipwrecks everywhere, Wall Street distributed bonuses worth $39 billion — nearly half the amount shareholders lost — in 2007. Even before the global economy recovered, $21 billion was shared as cash bonuses in 2010. A Service Employees International Union report says that 37 cents of every dollar the top six banks receive is spent on bonuses and compensation.

At home, Naveen Jindal made headlines last year with his Rs 73.42 crore salary. Despite a 10 percent drop in SUN TV’s profit, Kalanidhi Maran and his wife nearly doubled their salaries to Rs 64.4 crore each last year. A study by Aon Hewitt forBusiness Today on executive compensation for 2011-12 showed that though the median revenue of Fortune 500 US corporations were more than 20 times that of Indian companies listed on bt 500, the median US CEO salary at $7 million was just double the median package of the Indian CEO.

To rephrase stock market analyst John Hussman, who considers the present profit margin to be 70 percent higher than the historical norm, the surplus of one sector has to be the deficit of another. Rising corporate profits, says Hussman, is offset by the massive government deficit and depressed household savings — both a reality in the US and India alike. The richest 1 percent owns nearly half (46 percent) of the global wealth.

In their 2012 book How Much Is Enough, Robert and Edward Skidelsky returned to an essay written in 1930 by John Maynard Keynes. In Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren, Keynes imagined that people in the developed world would have enough (richer by about eight times) to lead the good life and work only for about 15 hours a week. The people in his UK are already five times richer but there is no sign of that three-hour working day yet.

To reduce the incentive to work, the Skidelskys recommended a tax on consumption (not income) and no tax benefit on a company’s expenditure on advertising. That may discourage consumption but the insatiable hunger for profit means wealth spilling over many lifetimes of consumption is not enough. Perhaps, we need to ask again: how much profit is profit enough?

The question may sound naïve in a developed free market economy but, increasingly, the industry is shifting away from the values of a Feuerstein or, say, a heavily-unionised-yet profitable Southwest Airlines. Instead, the Koch brothers — Charles and David — probably best represent the psyche of the majority of contemporary corporate players chasing endless growth.

With a fortune of $35 billion, third only to that of Bill Gates and Warren Buffett, the two oil kings have been fighting for minimal taxes and social security services along with abolition of environmental and other regulations. According to a Greenpeace report, the Koch brothers doled out more money than even ExxonMobil between 2005 and 2008 to organisations to block global warming legislations. They also generously sponsored campaigns against Barack Obama’s healthcare reform and economic stimulus programmes.

The Kochs are no exception in a remorseless industry. Nor is such brashness an American preserve. In 2011, Bob Diamond, chief of Barclays, stunned the British Parliament by declaring that “there was a period of remorse and apology for banks and I think that period needs to be over”. Around the same time, wrote veteran American journalist and author of The Soul of Capitalism: Opening Paths to a Moral EconomyWilliam Greider: “American democracy has been conclusively conquered by American capitalism. Government has been disabled or captured by the formidable powers of private enterprise and concentrated wealth… Collectively, the corporate sector has its arms around both political parties, the financing of political careers, the production of the policy agendas and propaganda of influential think-tanks, and control of most major media… The objective now is to destroy any remaining forms of government interference, except, of course, for business subsidies and protections.”

Greider could be talking of any country. When Obama signed the Dodd-Frank Bill in 2010, he sounded emphatic: “Because of this law, the American people will never again be asked to foot the bill for Wall Street’s mistakes… If a large financial institution should ever fail, this reform gives us the ability to wind it down without endangering the broader economy.” Only, the president did not mention that he failed to break down the giant banks in manageable parts and their sheer size would not allow any “winding down”. Key protagonists of the 2008 crisis continued as his economic managers.

Corporate funding is the backbone of almost all political parties in India. Unlike in the US, where members of Congress cannot earn more than 15 percent of their Congressional salary from other sources, our MPs are free to pursue any lucrative vocation. And money does win elections in the land of Kuber. Over 33 percent of those with assets above Rs 5 crore won the 2009 election while 99.5 percent of those with assets below Rs 10 lakh lost. Also, money begets power begets money. The average assets of 304 MPs who contested in 2004 and then re-contested in 2009 grew by 300 percent to Rs 5.33 crore.

Yet, our MPs gave themselves a mammoth hike to take home a monthly salary of Rs 1.3 lakh. Their entitlement to numerous perks, particularly prime housing, easily amounts to at least another Rs 1 lakh. That is more than 50 times India’s per capita income, far above the fair corporate practice recommended by Infosys chairman NR Narayana Murthy of fixing a CEO’s salary at about 20-22 times that of the lowest-paid professional.

In a system where the hunger for profit is matched by the greed of entitlement, few expect the Parliamentarians or ministers to take on or restrain big money. But their giveaway acts to defend the industry and investors will hurt the people’s (read voters’) sentiment. Or maybe we have altogether lost the capacity to recognise ‘enough’.

Karnataka’s decision to catch elephants in Hassan is good news

Although anathema to many experts and most activists, removal is often the only solution for wildlife and people caught in acute, irreversible conflict.

FirstPost, 20 October, 2013

The Karnataka High Court on Tuesday cleared a proposal to catch and shift rampaging wild elephants to ease man-elephant conflict. In September 2012, the HC had set up the Karnataka Elephant Task Force to study the severe conflict in Hassan district. Now that the recommendation of the task force has been accepted, the state will soon launch a drive to capture wild elephants more than four decades after the practice was abandoned. 
The decision has upset many. Some see in it the dark revival of a cruel practice. Others call it a violation of animal rights. And some even dubbed the approach archaic. But, the move to capture and remove the marauders is actually good news — not only for the people of Alur taluka but also for the endangered elephant. 
There is a thin line separating wildlife conservation from animal welfare and it gets blurred too often. Bleeding heart activists can afford to be irrational. But even experts in the emerging science of conservation have ethical trappings. Their approach, as a result, is usually oriented towards the conservation or welfare of a few individual animals rather than — and even at the cost of — a species. 
In India, this attitude has led to a militant demand for tolerance. This is not to be confused with the traditional tolerance towards wildlife in this ancient land based on an understanding of the ways of the wild. This neo-tolerance is a construct of urban activism that itself is far removed from the theatres of man-animal conflict but demands that the rural poor tolerate wild animals no matter what. 
This means a complete embargo on killing. Even the rare permit to gun down a tiger or a leopard after recurrent loss of human lives triggers angry protests. Victims of crop-raiding herbivores are worse off because unlike loss of life, loss of livelihood does not involve the blood and gore to demand retaliatory action. Of all species, conflict elephants are potentially the most damaging because they can destroy both livelihood and life.
Forest staff then began shifting problem animals. But catching and releasing animals elsewhere turned out to be more problematic. First, since shifting was not killing, interventions became more frequent than necessary. Secondly, the intervention was more arbitrary than targeted since few bothered about tracking and identifying the problem animals. Eventually, biologists pointed out how removing animals in fact creates rather than controls conflict. New animals unfamiliar with local dynamics move in to occupy areas emptied by the removal of resident animals. Shifted animals find themselves in unfamiliar territory and try to walk long distances back home. Both scenarios increase the chances of man-animal interface and conflict. 
Soon, as on killing, the stand on shifting became rigid. Coexistence, a time-tested reality based on principles of mutual benefit, was now imposed on every victim of conflict. Herdsmen, for example, often do not mind losing a few animals to leopards because they get free forest fodder and firewood. But how does one justify frequent human casualties in a 200 sq km stretch of which merely 5 sq km is forested? 

That is why Hassan’s conflict zone is in a permanent state of emergency. The elephants are few – less than 30 – but they depend entirely on the crowded cropland. On an average, one person is killed every four months while injuries are routine across 79 affected villages. People seldom venture out after sundown till late in the morning. The forest staff has been attacked on occasion and a number of elephants have been killed in retaliation. 
The task force found that “the current population of elephants in the Alur region did not exist there 30-40 years ago, but is a dispersing population from some larger population (most probably from the south)”. These 26-odd elephants are completely cut off from other herds of the state and by themselves do not constitute a viable population. 
The task force also ruled out building natural corridors as the animals, used to roaming the cropland, were not likely to take such paths back to the forests from where they had wandered out. If anything, such corridors would only bring more elephants to these agricultural fields. 
To create a suitable habitat, the report pointed out, the government would have to acquire around 200 sq km of private land at a minimum cost of Rs 2,500 crore and resettle tens of thousands of people. Even such expenditure would not ensure a long-term future of this small, isolated herd. So it recommended that all these elephants be captured and — since they cannot be killed or released elsewhere — trained to be used by the forest department. 
Of course, no solution is foolproof. There is yet no explanation as to why these elephants moved here from the southern forests in the first place. Though no influx has been recorded in the past two decades, it is important to identify the factors that may trigger future dispersal and put checks in place. 
The state forest department, meanwhile, ran away with the court order. It set a limit of capturing 150 animals though there are no more than 30 in Alur. Apparently, the state wants to use the opportunity to capture elephants from other troubled zones, such as Kodagu, without studying the local dynamics of conflict. It will, however, be a criminal misuse of the HC clearance which is only for Alur and Savandurga (Tumkur) as per the task force’s recommendations. 
While Rs 4 crore has been earmarked for creating elephant camps for housing and training the captured animals, the state is apparently planning to release some 30 elephants from the present stock of 91 animals in 10 camps to free up space. It is a recipe for conflict because captive-bred elephants rarely survive in the wild and are likely to gravitate towards human habitations for food. 
These deviations show the perennial dangers of ad hoc-ism but ethical or quasi-scientific absolutism is not the alternative. Instead of treating all proposals of culling or translocation as bloodthirsty or pedestrian, experts and activists should let the specifics of each situation determine decisions. The task force has shown the way in Hassan.

No One Ever Killed Dalits In Bihar, No Government Ever Cared For Justice

No party comes out clean in this bloody caste politics, but Nitish Kumar’s desperation is showing

Tehelka, 17 October, 2013

A national shame, said President KR Narayanan in 1997. But it was not the first time that Bihar’s caste violence had shamed the country. Before 58 Dalits were butchered at Lakshmanpur Bathe, another 59 were massacred in seven such incidents in 1997 alone. A year before that, 21 Dalits were killed at Bathani Tola. Not that Lakshmanpur Bathe was any turning point either. In quick succession followed the massacres at Nagri (1998, 10 dead), Shankar Bigha (1999, 23 killed) and Mianpur (2000, 33 killed).

In all, 136 victims in five major massacres. And more than 70 accused belonging to Ranvir Sena, the militia floated by the upper-caste Bhumihar landlords in the mid-1990s — almost all acquitted by the high court in the Bathani Tola (23), Nagri (11) and now in Lakshmanpur Bathe (26) and Mianpur (9) cases. There are enough eyewitnesses and the accused were handed either death sentence or life terms by the lower court. But the cases fell flat at the HC, apparently for lack of evidence.

Before concluding that shoddy investigation is the hallmark of Bihar, consider the other side of the story. In the past four decades, for roughly every six massacres of Dalits, the upper-caste landlords of Bihar have been at the receiving end of caste violence at least once. The most infamous reprisal in the 1990s was the Bara massacre of 1992.

Armed cadres of the Maoist Communist Centre killed 35 Bhumihars of the Suvarna Liberation Army, one of the harbingers of Ranvir Sena, at Bara in Gaya, prompting then CM Lalu Prasad Yadav to invoke TADA. In 2001, the Gaya district court and the special TADA court together sentenced seven accused to death and four others to life terms. The Supreme Court upheld the verdict.

For all the empowerment of the lower castes Lalu is credited with, the outlawed Ranvir Sena operated with impunity in the RJD-ruled Bihar. To be fair, the Rabri Devi government did set up the Amir Das Commission to investigate the affairs of Ranvir Sena. Nitish Kumar scrapped it immediately after coming to power in 2005.

CPI leader AB Bardhan went to the extent of accusing Kumar of taking Ranvir Sena’s help to defeat the RJD. In 2006, a media exposé claimed that the unpublished Das Commission report named the who’s who of Bihar politics, cutting across party lines. Not just in Bihar, justice tends to elude the lower castes across India. Against an overall conviction rate of 38.5 percent, the conviction rate in crime against SCs stands at only 23.9 percent.

While nobody emerges clean from this dirty caste cauldron, Kumar’s predicament stood out last year after the murder of Ranvir Sena chief Brahmeshwar Singh. Kumar’s regime did not even attempt to control the mayhem unleashed by Singh’s followers on the roads of Ara and Patna. Like Lalu, Kumar pitched his own brand of social engineering by creating two new backward categories — Ati Pichhra and Mahadalits — and offering them land and other sops. It earned him rich early dividends until the sheen of his Mahadalit Vikas Yojana was lost to rampant corruption and shoddy implementation.

Along with this core BC constituency of 32 percent voters, a good section of the numerically small but politically powerful upper castes have also backed his government since 2005, thanks to the presence of the BJP in the coalition. Ever since Kumar distanced himself from Narendra Modi, their support has become suspect. Given his waning support base among the lower castes, Kumar could not have pegged his political future on the slim 16 percent Muslim vote, which may well swing the RJD’s way. A desperate Kumar’s bid to offer plum postings to Bhumihars and Rajputs has not cut much ice.

Soon after Brahmeshwar’s death, his son Indubhushan Singh took charge as the president of Akhil Bharatiya Rashtrawadi Kisan Sanghathan, a front organisation of the Ranvir Sena, and accused two JD(U) MLAs of plotting the murder. This June, Singh hosted BJP MLAs on the first death anniversary of his father and vowed to unite Bhumihars against the government.

Given the changing equations, Kumar has been evasive about contesting the acquittal of the Lakshmanpur Bathe accused in the SC. He did not even censor his Cabinet colleague Giriraj Singh for eulogising the slain Ranvir Sena chief as a true Gandhian who had dedicated his life for farmers’ betterment. Few expect his jittery government to get the massacred farmhands justice, but he can certainly spare the survivors such agony.

India bans dolphinariums but what about other less ‘intelligent’ species?

Highly-intelligent dolphins declared ‘non-human persons’ who cannot be held captive but no reprieve for other not-so-bright species

FirstPost, 14 October, 2013

Few contest the obvious privilege of intelligence in all walks of life. But what indeed is intelligence? And who decides how intelligent is intelligent enough?

The decision of the Central Zoo Authority (CZA) to ban dolphinariums or marine parks, captive facilities where dolphin shows are organized, has not made big headlines. But this is a bold move that sends a clear signal to various states planning to set up dolphinariums for tourists. And, it is in keeping with the ban on use of animals in circuses.

Like most wildlife, cetaceans — marine mammals such as dolphins, whales and porpoises — have a history of poor longevity in captivity across the world. Zoos, however, keep a wide variety of wildlife in large numbers. One would think that the cetaceans drew special attention because captive dolphins are almost always made to perform. Most zoo animals serve only as exhibits.

But the CZA circular cites a curious justification. The authority doesn’t want dolphins in zoos because scientists have found them to have “unusually high intelligence” and therefore they should be seen as “non-human persons and as such should have their own specific rights and is morally unacceptable to keep them captive for entertainment purpose”. 

This has raised certain dilemmas among conservationists. Ashish Kothari of Kalpavriksh, for example, summed it up in an online forum: “Perhaps it is a step towards the ‘rights’ of nature being recognised. However, the fact that this is happening only because dolphins have ‘unusually high intelligence’ and are 'persons' suggests that we are willing to extend rights only to something or someone who is akin to us. We are then leaving out most of nature, assuming that 'intelligence' here is used in the sense that we use it for ourselves, with various cognitive, predictive and reflective properties.”

Dolphins have fascinated us ever since we learnt how much alike we are. These marine wonders are deeply social, cooperative and competitive, follow basic language, display ‘culture’ and pass on information to successive generations. Their body to brain size ratio is second only to that of humans. They are known to help fishermen in mutually beneficial fishing practices. But the species is under threat from growing fisheries that eat into its prey base and also kill individuals by entangling in fishing nets. Tourism is the other prime threat as both dolphin swims and dolphin shows are getting increasingly popular.

In 2010, the Helsinki Group for cetaceans was formed for fostering moral and legal change. Based on the principle of equal treatment of all persons, it affirmed that “all cetaceans as persons have the right to life, liberty and wellbeing”, adding that, among other things, “no cetacean should be held in captivity or servitude” as they are not the “property of any State, corporation, human group or individual”.

That is a noble call and India’s decision shows that it is gaining international support. But ‘intelligence’ in nature can be complex. Even tiny organisms can achieve miracles far beyond humans. Toxoplasma gondii is an intracellular parasite that is flushed out in cat stool soon after its birth. Now it must return to a cat’s stomach to complete its life cycle.

So, the devious protozoan enters the stomach of a rat that has nibbled at cat dropping and executes complex neurosurgery to make the host fearless of cats. The sooner the rat becomes cat food, the brighter the chances of the Toxoplasma to reach a cat’s tummy and reproduce. The parasite also infects humans and is possibly responsible for the social menace of rash (read fearless) driving.

Primates, particularly chimpanzees, use several tools. Beavers are the world’s best dam engineers. Tiny birds make nests with the skill and judgment of a master craftsman. Spiders spin webs more resilient than stainless steel. The social system of the bees is smoother than that of any species on earth. And no matriarchal society functions as well as the elephant’s. Why, all animals manage to find their way back if moved from their habitat. Even a pea-brained crocodile covered 400 km in 20 days all around the northern tip of Australia to return to its territory.

All these species intrigue us. Yet, we set aside this “intelligence” as instinct even though we understand little about how they manage the impossible. At the still higher end of the spectrum, yet unable to fully decipher the grand scheme of nature that holds everything in fine balance, our bewilderment often seeks refuge in the supernatural.

Ultimately, it is about us. We want to save the panda because it is cute and the tiger for its charisma. The ugly crocodile or bat finds few defenders. We accept dolphins as intelligent because they accomplish a few things we too are capable of. That makes it a ‘person’ eligible for humane treatment. But we don’t have qualms confining other animal species in pathetic conditions in zoos across India.

This people-like-us syndrome is probably our biggest weakness. Most of us will be outraged if told that a doctor or an MBA is chained to a lowly clerical job. Now ask yourself if you would be half as bothered if we replace the hapless doctor with a painter or the frustrated MBA with a poet. Few of us understand the gift of a painter or a poet like we can identify with the skills of a doctor or an MBA.

Nobody grudges the beleaguered dolphin a better life. But if we honestly try to answer the question we began with, we may yet give ourselves a chance to act less self-centred. And we can turn the second question around. Can intelligence, whichever way we define it, be a measure of one’s eligibility for the most basic rights? Can we justify confining or enslaving someone or something for being less ‘smart’? Can anyone, or any species, be deemed too dumb to feel miserable?

Mass Evacuation Saved Lives But Not Livelihood

Cyclone Phailin exposes the gaping holes in Odisha’s coastal fortifications

Tehelka, 13 October, 2013

A day after Cyclone Phailin lashed the Odisha coast, full-throated praise for the Naveen Patnaik government on minimising loss of human life through mass evacuation morphed into angry protests by the survivors who lost pretty much everything except their lives to the disaster.

The 1999 super-cyclone killed more than 10,000 people in Odisha. Cyclone Phailin’s death toll did not reach triple digits. While the wind speed turned out to be less than feared, the state claimed to have evacuated more than 9 lakh people in three days. The morning after, Patnaik was a national hero. But reality sunk in too soon.

After Odisha was caught hopelessly unprepared in 1999, the Odisha State Disaster Mitigation Authority (OSDMA) was set up in 2000. “During the past two centuries,” wrote Wunderground meteorologist Jeff Masters, “42 percent of the earth’s tropical cyclone-associated deaths have occurred in Bangladesh, and 27 percent have occurred in India.” Given that 26 out of the 35 deadliest tropical cyclones in history have been reported in the Bay of Bengal, the formation of the OSDMA was a late but welcome move.

In the next few years, the state government built 500 cyclone shelters along the coastline, thanks to generous Central funds and World Bank aid. Besides, points out Cuttack-based environmentalist Biswajit Mohanty, most coastal villages benefited from the Indira Awas Yojana and only temporary Nolia beach huts have remainedkuchcha for obvious reasons.

Unlike 1999, what helped this time, besides the shelters, was the timely and effective warning from the Met department based on tested models. The changing intensity, the timing and, most importantly, the landfall location were all predicted fairly accurately to help the state and the National Disaster Management Authority deal with the onslaught.

While no administration can stave off the fury of such natural calamities, preparedness can minimise damage. But preparedness does not begin and end with merely constructing shelters and rushing people there when a cyclone strikes. Unfortunately, apart from the actionable warning from the Met department, that is all our disaster management apparatus achieved since 1999.

Over the past decade, the OSDMA did precious little to identify areas vulnerable to inundation at different surge and wind speed levels. Since the vulnerable areas along the coastline are at different elevations, such a study could have helped the administration identify specific target areas. Instead, last week’s evacuation drive involved herding all and sundry with a “move or perish” threat.

Of course, it saved thousands of lives. But a targeted evacuation at a smaller scale would have allowed people time and space to minimise other losses. Their livestock could have been salvaged. Evacuated families could have carried more assets to safety. The relief and rehabilitation operation to follow would have been less difficult, faster and more effective.

“In fact, the evacuation figure (9-10 lakh) itself is suspect. There are about 300 cyclone shelters and, say, a similar number of school and other pucca buildings. Do you see 1,500-2,000 people in each camp? This ‘world record’ will make a lot of money. On paper, you need 500 tonnes of grain to feed 10 lakh people twice a day,” says a local official handling relief work in Ganjam district.

Whatever be the actual numbers, the mass scale of evacuation soon turned out to be unmanageable. It did not help that officials shifted focus to facilitating the chief minister’s visit too soon. So many hungry, angry survivors blocked Patnaik’s cavalcade that he decided to fly back to Bhubaneswar.

Already, Phailin-induced floods had caught the Balasore and Mayurbhanj administrations off guard. Nearly 3 lakh stranded people are now banking on the army and navy to perform the rescue act.

It is one thing to rush lakhs of people to crowded shelters for a night; quite another to help them return home and resume their lives as before. In 1999, more than 15 lakh people lost their homes and at least 4 lakh farm animals were left behind to die. The total economic loss was an estimated $2.5 billion. Phailin turned out to be weaker but the true extent of the loss of livelihood caused by the surge of seawater into agricultural land is yet to unfold.

While restricting itself to building shelters, the state government allowed illegal shrimp farms to destroy precious mangrove cover, the first line of defence on the coast against a cyclonic surge. Promises of massive mangrove plantations following the 1999 disaster remained promises. The funds for mangrove plantation idled as the state failed to acquire suitable coastal land from shrimp farms and other private owners and encroachers.

Deforestation of the coastal mangroves was also responsible for the high death toll in 1999 as — according to a 2009 study by Institute of Economic Growth and Duke University — “villages with wider mangroves between them and the coast experienced significantly fewer deaths than ones with narrower or no mangroves”. Few remember that though the super-cyclone lashed 250 km of Odisha’s coastline, it was only in a severely deforested zone — about 100 km between Basudevpur in Bhadrak district and Astarang in Puri district — that the high tidal surge moved inland and killed thousands of people.

Even within that 100-km devastation zone, Kendrapara suffered the least damage thanks to its relatively high mangrove cover. The above-mentioned study (S Das and JR Vincent, 2009) concluded that “the average opportunity cost of saving a life by retaining mangroves was Rs 11.7 million per life saved” which was less than the value of life in India estimated by different studies to be between Rs 13.7-60.6 million per avoided death.

While mangroves fight sea surges, sand dunes work as natural wind barriers. In the late 1970s, the state started flattening sand dunes, many rising up to 75 feet, for beach plantation. Rows of casuarinas that replaced the dunes faced their first test in 1999 and snapped like matchsticks within minutes. In 2011, the World Bank-funded Integrated Coastal Zone Management Project reported that 187 km of Odisha coastline was facing erosion. While the districts of Puri and Jagatsinghpur are the most affected, erosion is obvious to the north of Gopalpur, Paradip and Anantpur ports and to the south of Dhamra and Astarang ports.

A day after flaunting minimal loss of human life, Odisha also reported loss of paddy crop in 5 lakh hectares, which is 20 percent of the total area under paddy cultivation in the state. It is unclear how many of these fields suffered long-term damage. “The agricultural land is unprotected in the absence of natural barriers,” points out Mohanty. “Loss of livelihood due to saline ingress and sand casting by tidal surges is the real issue now. How will the survivors fend for themselves for the next 3-4 years before the land becomes cultivable again?”

Be it the 2011 earthquake in Sikkim, frequent massive landslides in Uttarakhand or cyclones in Odisha, the warnings have failed to trigger any correction in our blueprint for development. Multiple dams are still coming up on every Himalayan river. Along the Odisha coast, the state has resolved to set up a dozen new ports. This will flatten more sand dunes, destroy natural tree cover, including mangroves, and trigger heavy beach erosion.

In the process, one of the world’s most populous and cyclone-prone coasts is being laid bare, rendered more vulnerable than ever. The next time a cyclone intensifies on the warm waters of the Bay of Bengal, absence of natural barriers will again force a defenceless Odisha to scramble for cover. Fortifications may again save lives, only to leave survivors without livelihood. “Unless,” winces a former BJD MLA, “we learn to shift our cropland to cyclone shelters.”

Sikkim's Hydel Sell-off

The state is flouting every law and risking the future of its people to allow dubious private players a free run

Tehelka, 11 October, 2013

On its website, the Sikkim Energy and Power department says that the state’s swift rivulet systems have huge hydropower potential — “8,000 MW peak with a firm base of 3,000 MW”. With a liberalised power policy and the opening up of this sector to private developers, it claims, “Sikkim is poised to gain in a big way”.

We have heard this sales pitch elsewhere. Other Himalayan states — particularly Arunachal Pradesh (Another Disaster in the Making, Volume 10 Issue 28) — are also chasing the ‘hydro-dollar’ dream. But Sikkim’s desperation is singular. Here, the authorities are not only bending the regulatory framework, but, for certain projects, have altogether bypassed it.

This May, the National Board for Wildlife (NBWL) chaired by the prime minister sent a team to inspect the 520 MW Teesta IV project that had applied for wildlife clearance. In its report to the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) this August, the team drew a parallel between some hydel projects of Sikkim and iron ore mines of Goa and quoted the Justice Shah Commission report to underline how “approvals have been granted… in the eco-sensitive zones without placing the project proposals before the NBWL”.

Following a 2006 Supreme Court order, all projects within 10 km of national parks and sanctuaries must seek prior clearance from the NBWL standing committee. The inspection team, however, stumbled upon the construction sites of two hydel projects — the 1,200 MW Teesta III near Khangchendzonga National Park and 96 MW Dik Chu next to Fambonglho wildlife sanctuary — for which NBWL clearance had never been sought.

The Sikkim government stonewalled queries but based on available records, the NBWL team concluded that “with the notable exception of the Teesta IV project, none of the other projects… appear to have sought/obtained this compulsory SC-NBWL clearance”. Apart from Teesta III and Dik Chu, at least two other hydel projects in the Teesta basin — Panan and Tashiding — have ducked NBWL scrutiny. The list would have been longer had the Ting-Ting and Lethang projects not been scrapped in February 2012.

In its report, the NBWL team said it could not ascertain the status of many other proposed/ongoing hydel projects situated close to sanctuaries and national parks and asked the MoEF to investigate why such widespread violation of the SC order took place, suspend work on the illegal projects, and punish the guilty. The ministry sat on this report for a month before putting it up on its website.

On the Teesta IV project, the NBWL team urged the standing committee not to consider the developer’s request for clearance separately, but treat it as part of a larger set of hydroelectric projects in the Teesta Basin. The report listed the existing and proposed tunnels — Teesta III (13 km), Teesta IV (11 km), Teesta V (17 km) and Teesta VI (11 km) — to point out the grave cumulative impact on the river’s ecology.

Coming after the devastating Uttarakhand floods, the report expressed deep concern about such large-scale manipulation of mountain river systems against “all reasonable scientific advice”. As recently as on 3 October, a noontime tremor hit Sikkim. It recorded 5 on the Richter scale but what scared the residents more was the location of its epicentre: near the NHPC dam site of Teesta V in Dik Chu at Sangtok in NorthSikkim.

But safety is not the only concern. Buddhism was introduced here in 749 AD by Guru Rinpoche, who compiled the holy scripture Lama Gongdue in Tashiding by the Rathong Chu river that passes through 109 sacred lakes (Tsos). Now, a 97 MW hydel project is coming up where the ceremony of Bhum Chu (Holy Water Vase) is observed in the first month of the Buddhist calendar every year.

“If we don’t follow Dharma, if we destroy cliffs and rocks, if we dig up the land, plunder the trees and change the course of rivers, we will face the consequence,” warns Tseten Tashi Bhutia, convener of the Sikkim Bhutia-Lepcha Apex Committee, which moved the court after the Tashiding project obtained environmental clearance in 2010.

In May 2012, the SC  referred two writ petitions to the Sikkim High Court. Around the same time, the MoEF woke up to the fact that the project had not obtained clearance from the NBWL and asked the state to immediately stop construction work at Tashiding until further orders. But nothing stopped project developer Shiga Energy from carrying on.

This April, the HC reiterated that the project’s fate depended on the final outcome of the petition and that the project developer was “continuing the works at its own risk”. The promoters claimed they have already spent Rs 260 crore borrowed from public institutions. The court will soon take a final decision if it is too late to call off this illegal project.

The course was charted in 1974 by the Central Water and Power Commission that proposed “cascade development” to harness the hydel potential of the Teesta and Rangit. By 1990, the National Hydro Power Corporation (NHPC) stepped in. In 1999, under pressure from the power ministry, the Teesta V project was cleared on the condition that none of the other five cascade projects would be considered without studying the river’s carrying capacity.

The study was commissioned by the NHPC in 2001 and the Centre for Inter- Disciplinary Studies of Mountain and Hill Environment submitted its report in 2007. By then, all six projects on the Teesta had been given preliminary clearances in violation of the MoEF own conditions.

The floodgates were thrown open soon after the Central Electricity Authority ranked the hydroelectric potential of key rivers in 2001. The emphasis was on the Brahmaputra basin, which included the Teesta. Since 2002, Sikkim has proposed 31 hydel projects. Between January and June 2012, under public pressure mounting since the 2011 earthquake, the state cancelled six of these (Ting-Ting, Lethang, Bop, Bhimkang, Lachung and Teesta Stage-I).

Of the remaining 25 projects, only two — the 60 MW Rangit III and 510 MW Teesta V — are operational today, both run by the NHPC. So much for opening the power sector to private developers. But before rushing to blame green ‘red tape’ or local religious sentiments, consider these:

• Central guidelines require all hydel projects above Rs 100 crore to be awarded through competitive bidding except for joint ventures in which the state holds a majority stake. Soon after he was re-elected in 2004, CM Pawan Chamling set a 100- day deadline for signing MoUs worth 3,000 MW and decided that the state would take 26 percent equity — a minority stake — in projects proposed by independent power producers (IPP)

• After diluting the Central guidelines, the Sikkim government further compromised its interest. It signed the mou for Teesta III in July 2005 but did not hold a single share in Teesta Urja Limited (TUL) for seven years. The state raised the issue only in 2012 and tul, despite being a private enterprise, went on to obtain sundry government clearances and raise Rs 4,560 crore from government financial institutions (FIs) illegally

• TUL was no exception. Prodded by the power ministry, which was pushed to look into the matter by the Parliamentary Accounts Committee, the Sikkim government asked 27 private developers for company details. None of them replied and, subsequently, fended off RTI queries as private limited companies. Clearly, none of these operates as joint ventures

• Rules are there in Sikkim for bending. For example, Cosmos Electric Supply, promoted by former ITC chairman KL Chugh, and not Athena Advisors, was the initial choice for the Teesta III in October 2004. Only when T Nagendra Rao, a director in Cosmos, inexplicably demanded some concessions, the project was awarded to Andhra Pradesh Genco-Athena Consortium in February 2005 and TUL was formed. At present, Singapore-based Asian Genco, set up only in 2007 and run by TV Vijaykumar (an aide of former AP CM the late YS Rajasekara Reddy), holds 50 percent stake in TUL.

Rao turned a promoter himself. In 2008, the state Cabinet decided to withdraw a Letter of Intent (LoI) issued to him in 2006 due to his “dubious credentials” and yet Rao eventually landed multiple projects. Sikkim’s Hyderabad connection runs deep. YSR’s son Jaganmohan Reddy’s Sandur Power sold shares to the Lanco group (Teesta VI). He also picked up stake in Teesta V through Navayuga Engineering. Jagan’s wife Bharathy has stake worth Rs 4 crore in and virtual control of Himurja Infra (Teesta II)

• Companies changed names and holdings overnight to bag hydel projects. For example, UVJ Marketing became Shiga Energy but it was awarded the Tashiding HEP before the new company was incorporated. DANS IT Systems was renamed DANS Energy but the company was issued the the LoI for the Jorthang project before “power generation” became one of the objectives in its memorandum of association. Both Shiga and DANS floated by Nagendra Rao had Rs 1 lakh paid-up capital when they were awarded projects worth Rs 466 crore and Rs 403 crore respectively

• One of the standard clauses of the hydel MoUs, points out Dawa Lepcha of Affected Citizens of Teesta, states that one member of each family affected by land acquisition for the project will get employment which “shall cease immediately on completion of construction of the project”. No wonder most locals are opposed to these projects.

• For any delay in project implementation, the quantum of penalty is usually linked to the loss of projected royalty. But Sikkim levies a standard fine of just Rs 10,000 per MW per month. This meagre penalty, described by a Comptoller & Auditor General (CAG) report as arbitrary, is a prime reason why IPPs seldom care for deadlines.

• From earning Rs 1,500 crore annually from its hydel projects by 2015, Sikkim has “rationalised” the annual revenue target to Rs 900 crore this year. Already, the state has borrowed Rs 600 crore from the Power Finance Corporation to fund its 26 percent stake in Teesta III, IV and Rangit IV. It needs to borrow at least Rs 300 crore more to fund equities in other projects.

But delay and cost overruns are making hydels in the state very expensive. The project cost of Teesta III, for example, has gone up to Rs 8,353 crore from Rs 5,700 crore due to damages suffered in the 2011 earthquake. The 2008-09 CAG report noted that “delays in project completion by developers have resulted in a loss to the state exchequer… (of ) Rs 2,514.49 crore to Rs 2,622.76 crore per annum”. Forget revenue, Chamling has given his state a few white elephants.

“This hydel scam can cost Sikkim over Rs 50,000 crore. Instead of setting realistic targets, a nexus of politicians, bureaucrats and promoters just made money. Today, our people are becoming minorities at home, losing cultural space and facing frequent landslides, floods and tremors. The CM’s trusted forest officers, particularly those deputed to non-forest departments, are much to blame for this mess,” rues a retired IFS officer.

The state’s anti-dam activists are pinning their hopes on a string of PILs in the HC. And, they are waiting for the CBI to reach Sikkim following Jagan’s investment trail and put the Chamling government under the scanner.

A great Indian middle class fraud we should talk about

Estimate the size of the domestic help sector, factor in the minimum wage requirements and what you actually pay your help. The maths should shame you.

FirstPost, 7 October, 2013

On 1 October, the Delhi media reported the plight of a 15-year-old domestic help who was rescued from a Vasant Kunj house by cops and activists the previous evening with a deep gash in her head and severe knife and dog bite injuries.

The same day, South China Morning Post reported that Hong Kong’s domestic helps were "very disappointed and angered" by the government’s decision to increase their minimum wage by just 2.3 per cent to HK$4010. That is more than R30,000 a month.

India has its own minimum wage legislation. Both Centre and states can fix these wages in various sectors for skilled, semi-skilled and unskilled labourers. If one is refused minimum wages, he or she can complain to labour inspectors or respective trade unions. Section 22 of the Minimum Wages Act, 1948 says that contravention of the rules formed under the Act is punishable with fine and imprisonment which may extend to period of six months and payment of arrears by the employer.

But domestic helps are not covered under any minimum wage rule, except in Karnataka where they are entitled to at least Rs 191 daily. For 26 days, that works out to be Rs 4,966 a month. This, however, does not take into account the cost of living in big cities, such as Bangalore that employ most domestic helps. Delhi, our only city state, is a case in point where the minimum monthly wage for unskilled workers in any sector – the list did not mention domestic helps though – was raised from Rs 7,722 to Rs 8,086 this month.

It is perhaps pointless to compare the status of our domestic helps to their counterparts in Hong Kong or Singapore where minimum wage ranges between Rs 23,000 and Rs 30,000. But there is no reason to deny them the minimum wage for unskilled or even semi-skilled labourers. At least in the big cities, if we follow the Delhi benchmark, they deserve to be paid a minimum of Rs 8,000 a month.

In practice, a domestic help in India earns anything between Rs 1000 and Rs 6000, depending on where she works and if she is a live-in, full-timer or part-timer working in multiple homes. Except in a few posh housing societies and neighbourhoods of Delhi national capital region, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Bangalore and Chandigarh, their average monthly wage remains below Rs 2000. Employers who pay more often pay directly to placement agencies. There is nothing in lieu of annual or weekly leave forgone because helps, particularly the live-ins, are rarely entitled to any.

There is no way to tell how many are employed as domestic helps in India. Estimates vary wildly, from 90 million to 4.2 million (NSSO, 2004-5). But if India’s 300 million-strong middle class population makes for at least 60 million households and if even half of those employs at least one domestic help, we are looking at a 30 million-strong workforce. At a conservative average of Rs 6000 per month, we are duping them of Rs 18,000 crore every year; year after year. The actual figure may well be double or triple that amount.

Women and children are the bulk of this workforce and are vulnerable to torture and abuse. It is illegal to employ children below 14 years. At the same time, there is no denying the reality that the domestic help sector is vital for the livelihood of millions of poor families who are desperate to send any member out to earn whatever little possible. Also, not all of us can get over our ingrained dependence on ‘servants and maids’ overnight.

The practice may be a necessary evil but domestic helps deserve secure work atmosphere, reasonable entitlements such as leave, insurance and other basic benefits. While the government must step in to reform the sector and make schemes such as medical and retirement funds mandatory, the urban, educated and affluent employers have no excuse for treating their helps as bonded labour and pay a pittance just because they can.

While cribbing about the culture of corruption among the ruling elite, the middle class should also look inward. In the last decade alone, it has directly duped some of India’s poorest of hundreds of thousands of crores, certainly more than what the coal scam is worth. It is never an excuse that nobody (read a regulatory authority) was looking. Probity begins at home.