Showing posts with label UPA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label UPA. Show all posts

Thursday, May 23, 2013

Stinking Mad Kitchen

Sunaina Panigrahi and Sabita Patil don't really have much in common except the fact that both are married and have kids that are growing up. One is a resident of Odisha and a school teacher. The other lives in Maharashtra and helps her husband in his materials supply business. The first one adores Naveen Patnaik while the latter thinks Raj Thackeray is nothing short of a Messiah. The first one is a Masters in Computer Applications while the latter discontinued her graduate studies when her first kid was born. The two are as different as chalk and cheese when it comes to ideology and world view and personal interests. Sunaina cannot keep her eyes off the idiot box when Big Boss is on air while Sabita tries her best not to miss an episode of Kaun Banega Crorepati.

And yet, both share one passionate feeling: a sense of betrayal and hurt coupled with a deep and abiding anger at Dr Manmohan Singh. The reasons are threefold: tomatoes, bananas and eggs. Or rather their prices. Sunanina says it was routine for tomato prices in her locality to drop to less than Rs. 5 a kilo during winters. " In the last few years, it simply doesn't drop below Rs. 20 a kilo even during peak season. How is that possible. Manmohan Singh is an economist. Doesn't he understand this?"she complains. Sabita is outraged because her kids love omlettes for breakfast and her pocket hurts when she buys eggs. "My husband tells me that India is the largest producer of eggs in the world. Then how come prices per dozen have gone up from about Rs. 20 a dozen to about Rs. 60 now? What is Manmohan Singh doing?" she asks. Both Sunaina and Sabita recently got a Facebook post that claimed banana prices in India were higher than those in America. They don't know if it is fact or not. But they know one thing: inflation has been a curse and they openly accuse Manmohan Singh and his UPA government for this.

Try telling them the following: that food inflation that hurts their family budgets so badly is not entirely the fault of Manmohan Singh. That rising income levels amongst the poor has led to a massive increase in demand for products such as tomatoes, eggs and bananas. It won't cut much ice. Both have a startlingly similar riposte: " If mobile call rates and prices of TV sets can fall every year, why do prices of such daily needs go up every year?" Manmohan Singh is himself a distinguished economist and his core team has many star economists. But can they answer these questions raised by Sunaina and Sabita? The hard truth is: housewives and working wives are very pissed off with the UPA government because it has been a miserable failure when it comes to controlling prices and helping families retain control over household budgets.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
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Sunday, May 5, 2013

The scope for resettlement and rehabilitation

Even after much delay over a controversial bill on land acquisitions, the same questions over the extent of required consent and the scope for resettlement and rehabilitation continue to obstruct the creation of a sound law

Even otherwise, it has been observed that the bill has been heavily diluted. “It is extremely unfortunate that putting aside every possible democratic precedent and institutions, progressive pronouncements of the Supreme Court, the UPA government is bringing a law to legitimise forcible acquisitions by the government for private and PPP projects in the name of development,” says Medha Patkar, leader of the National Alliance of People’s Movements (NAPM). NAPM’s opposition to the bill in its current form, is based on the fact that it fails to accommodate key recommendations of the Parliamentary Standing Committee comprising members from different political parties. The standing committee on land acquisitions has said that no acquisition should be allowed for private and PPP projects. “Small benefits like a house plot to those displaced are being taken away by increasing the time of residence from three years to five years prior to displacement,” said NAPM in September. It further pointed out that a separate legislation on urban evictions and displacement was the only way out.

Reportedly, Jairam had convinced Sonia that the new Bill has the best Resettlement & Rehabilitation (R&R) package as it covers families of all farmers, landless and livelihood losers who have resided in the area for five years or more with a house or one-time financial grant in lieu thereof plus annuity of Rs.2,000 per month per family for 20 years, adjustable to inflation, or employment. However, the UPA chairperson is said to have insisted that the broad contours of the bill drawn up by the National Advisory Council were in public interest and should not be rejected ‘because of lobbying by the vested interests’. Other dilutions in the bill from its earlier form include compensation of four times the land value and not six times as proposed earlier. Land size thresholds on private purchases have also been left to the discretion of states instead of the 100 acre in rural and 50 acre in urban areas decided earlier.

Rajagopal says that the biggest problem with the bill is that it refuses to see the sufferings of the people. “It is more progressive than the first one. But again, it is not a land redistribution bill, it is a land acquisition bill. That is my problem – without considering land redistribution as a major agenda, the government is acquiring land for industry,” he says.

Recently, a group of farmers, who met the rural development minister also sought stringent provisions for acquiring farm land. Disappointed with the watering down of the draft of the bill by the GoM, the farmers who had come together under the banner of Kissan Mahasangh, said that while initially, land owners had given up surplus land to the landless immediately after independence to help establish a social set up with equitable assets and opportunities, it was ironical that laws are being made to facilitate accumulation of thousands of acres of land by private companies and individuals. “Over 300 SEZs have come up on the fertile land of farmers who have not benefited from them in any way. As per the Ministry of Finance the nation has lost over Rs.1.63 trillion in revenues till 2010,” the delegation has claimed. That the delegation has also objected to the acquisition of land for private companies; creation of land pool of unutilised land and leaving the decision of the calculation compensation of land vague, was confirmed by Devinder Seharawat, the co- convener of the Kissan Mahasangh.


Source : IIPM Editorial, 2013.
An Initiative of IIPM, Malay Chaudhuri
For More IIPM Info, Visit below mentioned IIPM articles
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