ECONOMICS OF HAPPINESS 2014 - An Unspoken Indian Story (PART- 1)
India’s meteoric economic rise in
the last two decades has been impressive.
There is however a dark side to it, hidden or ignored.
Well over half its people have been left behind or negatively impacted; and there have been irreversible
blows to the natural environment Globalised development as it is today is
neither ecologically sustainable nor socially equitable, and is leading India
to further conflict and suffering There are, however, a range of alternative approaches
and practices, forerunners of a Radical Ecological
Democracy that can take us all to higher levels of well-being, while sustaining the
earth and creating greater equity
According to the
Tendulkar Committee on poverty estimation, which submitted its report to the Planning
Commission in 2009, the proportion of people who were poor in India in
2004-05 was 41.8% in rural areas and 25.7% in urban areas. The poverty lines
used to reach these numbers were Rs.15 per capita a day in villages and a bit
less than Rs.20 a day in towns and cities.
•
Over 80% of Indians live below its current per capita income
of Rs.150 a day.
• India
has the world’s largest number of undernourished people, more than all of
sub-Saharan Africa’s countries put together.
FAO’s estimate for the period 2004-06 is 251 million, a fourth of the country’s
population. This is only partly caused by increases in population and a rise in
life expectancy.
The number of
physically displaced and project-affected people, as a consequence of
‘development’ projects in India,
is estimated to be about 60 million since 1947. According to the Planning
Commission, in an assessment of about 21 million of these displaced persons,
over 40% are adivasis (tribal), even though adivasis constitute only 8% of
India’s total population.
•
There were 49,000 slums in Indian cities, according to NSS
surveys done during 2008-09. A 2003 UN study shows that over half of India’s urban
population lives in slums (including resettlement colonies). Across the world
one in three people live in a slum.
•
Employment in the formal (organized) sector of the Indian
economy has remained virtually stagnant around 27 million workers between 1991
and 2007. They constitute less than 6% of India’s overall labour force.
•
The daily per capita availability of cereals and pulses fell
from 510 grams in 1991 to 443 grams in 2007.
•
In April 2009, there were 403 million mobile users in India.
About 46% of them, or 187 million, did not have bank accounts. Only 5.2% of India’s 600,000
villages even have bank branches, leaving most farmers in the clutches of
moneylenders.
•
200,000 farmers committed suicide in India during 1997-2008, as a
consequence of being trapped in debt (which has risen dramatically since
reforms began). On average an Indian farmer has killed himself (much more
rarely, herself) every 30 minutes during these ten years.
• According to the
2009 Nielsen survey, 2.5 million of 220 million households in India owned both a car and a
computer. Only 0.1 million of the households could also afford a holiday
abroad.
Almost 60% of Indians
do not yet have proper sanitation facilities. According to UNICEF, improved
drinking water sources are available to 88% of the population (compared to 72%
in 1990).
A
high-net-worth-individual (HNWI) is a millionaire, someone with net investible
assets (other than owned homes, land and/or property) of at least $ 1 million
(Rs.4.5 crores). According to Merrill Lynch, in India there were 126,700 such
people in 2010. Though they make up only about 0.01% of the country’s
population they are worth about a third of its GDP.
According to a survey
by National Election Watch (NEW) the number of dollar millionaires (worth over
Rs.4.5 crores) in the present Lok Sabha has almost doubled to 300 (out of 543
members) since the last General Election in 2004. The 543 MPs are worth close
to Rs. 2800 crores ($560 million), making the average MP a dollar millionaire.
The 64 union cabinet ministers account for $100 million.
Privatization is increasingly being extended to natural
resources also. Long sections of rivers, such as the Sheonath, Kelu and Kukrut
rivers in Chhattisgarh, have been commodified and sold to corporate buyers in
different parts of India.
State of the
environment
According to a recent report, India has the world’s 3rd largest ecological
footprint, after the USA and
China.
Indians are using almost twice the sustainable level of natural resources that
the country can provide. The capacity of nature to sustain humans has declined
sharply, by almost half, in the last four decades or so.
The per capita
ecological footprint of the wealthiest Indians (top 0.01%) is 330 times that of
the poorest 40% of India’s
population. It is over 12 times that of the footprint of the average citizen in
an industrialized, high-income country. The footprint of the richest 1%
(inclusive of the wealthiest) of Indians is two-thirds that of the average
citizen of a rich country and over 17 times that of the poorest 40% of people
in India.
Thus, a person who owns a car and a laptop in India consumes roughly the same
resources as 17 poor Indians. Such a person consumes roughly the same resources
as 2.3 average “world citizens” (the world per capita income being about
$10,000 per annum in 2007).
According to the
MoEF State of Environment Report 2009 the “food security of India m ay
be at risk in the future due to the threat of climate change leading to an
increase in the frequency and intensity of droughts and floods, thereby
affecting production of small and marginal farms.” A significant decrease in
crop yields is expected across the country.
While
India’s
present share of global carbon emissions is about 8%, as a rapidly growing
economy it is rising every year. India’s per capita emissions are expected to triple by 2030 if present
trends continue.
Exports: Selling our future
Spurred on by active
governmental encouragement, India’s
exports grew at an annual rate of over 25% from 2003-04 onwards, reaching
US$300 billion in 2011- 12. Assuming that some level of exports is desirable or necessary, a responsible policy would have at least the following key
principles:
Access of the
country’s citizens to the products being considered for export is not
jeopardized by reduced physical availability or increased cost
Extraction or
manufacture of these products is ecologically sustainable;
Rights of local
communities from whose areas the resources are being extracted are respected;
and These communities
are the primary beneficiaries.
Unfortunately, exports under globalization have violated each of these
principles. Like mining, marine fisheries have been a key target. Exports of
marine products have risen from 139,419 tonnes in 1990-91, to 602,835 tonnes in
2008-09. From a handful of products being sent to about a dozen countries, we
now export about 475 items to 90 countries. India is now the 2nd largest
aquaculture producer (in quantity and value) in the world.
Sounds good, but at what cost?
One study showed
that in the states of Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, the social and
environmental costs of shrimp aquaculture were 3.5 times the earnings (annual
losses: Rs. 67280 million; annual earnings: Rs. 17780 million). As areas get
converted to shrimp farming, local fish that are the staple food of local
communities, like mullets (Mugilidae) and pearl spot (Etroplus
suratensis), are eliminated. As marine capture fisheries have also grown to
about 3 million tonnes in 2008, there is evidence of over-fishing in the
territorial waters (though not in the deeper seas), and overharvesting of
several species. This, according to the Report of the Working Group on
Fisheries for the 10th 5-Year Plan, is mainly due to the use of the seas as
‘open access’ with no tenurial rights given to traditional fishing communities.
Technologies have also changed.
The government claims that big operators under the new policies will be allowed to fish only
in deep waters, where traditional fisherfolk do not go. But past experience has
shown that trawler owners find it convenient and cheaper to fish closer to
shore. Also, trawlers continue to be illegally used in the fish-breeding
season. Physical clashes between trawler owners and local fisherfolk remain
common.
Internal liberalization: Towards a
free-for-all?
All industrial
countries of the world have gone through a process of tightening environmental
standards and controls over industrial and development projects, for the simple reason that project authorities and corporate houses on their own have not shown environmental and social responsibility. In India, there is a reverse process going on.
standards and controls over industrial and development projects, for the simple reason that project authorities and corporate houses on their own have not shown environmental and social responsibility. In India, there is a reverse process going on.
In 1994 a
notification was brought in, under the Environment Protection Act 1986, making
it compulsory for environmental impact assessments (EIAs) to be conducted for
specified projects. While this notification was weak, and subject to various
kinds of implementational failures, it nevertheless injected some degree of
environmental sensitivity in development planning. However, it continued to be
seen as a nuisance by industrialists, politicians, and many development
economists. A committee set up by the Indian government pointed to the need to
reduce the environmental hurdle, and a World Bank-funded process to assess
environmental governance, also suggested reforms (read: weakening) of this and
other regulatory measures. Thus in 2006, despite considerable civil society
opposition, the government changed the notification, making it much easier for
industries and development projects to obtain permission, and weakening the
provisions for compulsory public hearings. The notification also took tourism
off the list of projects needing environmental clearance, despite evidence that
in many places this was a sector out of control
http://sangeethasriram.blogspot.in/2014/03/quotes-on-globalisation.html has some write up on the various quotes of the people in the leadership
http://sangeethasriram.blogspot.in/2014/03/quotes-on-globalisation.html has some write up on the various quotes of the people in the leadership
The above is an extract of the information compiled by Ashish Kottari - an Environmentalist
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