Anna, Bapu, Corruption, and Democracy - An Appeal

Anna Hazare's fast unto death from 16 August 2011 at Ramlila maidan, New Delhi,  is a crusade against corruption that has taken the nation by storm. The unprecedented peoples participation was neither expected by  the organizers of India Against Corruption (IAC) nor the Government of India. Much has been said in favour and against  (for a repository of some of the write-ups see  Jan Lokpal Bill and Anna Hazare). I am not reviewing any of these positions here. I just have a few independent observations to make.

First, Anna's fast and the non-violent nature of the movement has its roots with Bapu, the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi.  This brings into our domain the parallels with other recent people power based non-violent struggle such as the Tunisian and  Egyptian revolutions or the Burmese struggle (see the two Reith lectures by Aung San Suu Kyi on Liberty and Dissent).

Second, different sections of the polity impute different meanings and have identified it in some way. It brings with it a hope for a just and fair society. Even those who disagree with team Anna's version and their method or approach agree that corruption needs to be done away with it. Put in other words, it is a call for doing away with vested interest. This is easier said than done as those powerful entities who have been benefiting will oppose. A protracted battle and dilly dallying is only expected.

At the core of contention is the Lokpal Bill against corruption, which was first introduced in the Parliament of India 42 years ago in 1968, but even after a number of modifications has not seen the light of the day. In recent years, the civil society spearheaded by IAC has come with an alternative Jan Lokpal Bill (Peoples Ombudsman Bill) and wants this version to be discussed in the parliament so that it forms a base for strong anti-corruption laws. The National Campaign for Peoples' Right to Information (NCPRI) have come up with another version. Some of the major differences in these three versions are with regard to the inclusion of the Prime Minister, inclusion of lower level Government functionaries, inclusion of civil society's that receive public funding, and separation of judiciary among others. One feels that good points from all versions can be taken to come up with a strong Lokpal Bill.

While discussing corruption, I want to take a small digression as this reminds me of a lecture given by one of my teachers (Professor Sourindra Barik, a Sahitya Akademi award winner in 1988)  when I was in college about 25 years ago. He said that  tacit toleration or in a sense acceptance of corruption is a matter of degree. For instance, if you want to meet an official and if the peon is preventing you from meeting the person then you grease the person by offering two paans or a five rupee note and you may not be happy about it but brush it aside and think that ye chalta hai (it is fine). But, after meeting the officer if you are told that your work will be done only if you pay (say, Rs.10,000 or some amount that you consider is substantial)  then it will not be at a toleration/acceptance level, but you still cannot do anything about it - either you pay  and get your work done or wait endlessly. In the current movement, the support of people is to show their solidarity to something they did not know what to do. Having got an opportunity, they are saying it loud  and clear that our toleration/acceptance levels have breached and please do something about it. 

This takes us to our last, but not the least, point - the relevance of democracy. On the one hand, we have a non-violent people-based movement. On the other hand, we have the movement raising some questions on parliamentary propriety.  The question before us in a democratic polity is whether people are supreme or is the parliament supreme - a catch 22.

 

A democracy is by the people for the people and of the people. But, then it cannot be based on peoples whims and  fancies - however  reasonable the propositions may be.  To weed out vested interests, there are some norms and institutions.  There is a basic structure required for a democracy to function. They are, as laid down in our  Constitution,  the separation of powers between the Legislature, the Executive and the Judiciary and then we have the fourth estate - the media.   The question here is if the persons  (or, a dominant section of them) manning the important institutions themselves espouse some powerful vested interest then how do we go about. 

Business as usual is not an option. In the current scenario, there is a need for peoples power indicated through the crusade against corruption to converge with Constitutional propriety. How? In this seeming disagreement, deliberative processes should be initiated to to bring about agreement and order. Some possible suggestions are the following.

First, all parties agree for a strong anti-graft law. Second, the Government agrees to initiate the deliberations in the Parliament in a sincere, honest and transparent manner and discuss all versions and takes the best points from all of these.  Third, transparency requires that the deliberations are open to public so that they know who takes what positions (if possible to include the positions that the Bureaucrats take while providing suggestions).  Fourth, this important discussion requires an open voting by each individual  based on her or his own judgment and constituencies requirement. In short, no party can issue a whip on this.  Fifth, as this is an open-ended discussion that all political parties have committed to, the outcome of the voting will not be construed as a vote for or against the Government. Sixth, all peoples representative should discuss with people from their constituencies as also the civil society and others to form a reasoned opinion.  Seventh, provision may be made by the Government to interact with different representatives of the civil society as and when the situation warrants.

Before I end, I should commend the civil society and their representatives for getting this process on. As I see, this is going to be a long drawn-out struggle. Quoting Robert Frost I can only reiterate: "And miles to go before I sleep,  And miles to go before I sleep." Hence, my humble request to Shri Anna Hazare. Sir,  please  give up your fast. If you so desire, continue it in a limited way, as per your Doctor's advise.   But, please do give up your fast.

Long live Democracy! Long live Mother India. 

(Those interested may see my earlier blog In Defense of Anna Hazare written on 13 April 2011 during his first round of fasting that led to the formation of a joint committee for drafting an anti-graft bill, but differences between them led to the Government and the civil society coming with two versions, and hence, the current logjam).

Poverty Estimates in India

Poverty Estimates in India: Old and New Methods, 2004-05 is the title of a new working paper published from the Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR), Mumbai. It has been co-authored by Durgesh C. Pathak, a post-doctoral fellow whom I have been mentoring for the last two years, and myself. This paper is dedicated to the memory of Late Professor Suresh D. Tendulkar who passed away recently on 21 June 2011. Below I give excerpts that draw from the two quotations  that the paper begins with, the abstract, introduction and concluding remarks.

The poor are a part of necessary furniture of the earth, a sort of perpetual gymnasium where the rich can practice virtue when they are so inclined. - Francesco Guicciardini (Discorsi Politici)

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams beneath your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams...
- W. B. Yeats

Abstract

This paper provides estimates of poverty and inequality across states as also for different sub-groups of population for 2004-05 by using the old and new methods of the Planning Commission. The new method is critically evaluated with the help of some existing literature and its limitations discussed with regard to doing away with calorie norm, use of median expenditure as a norm for health and education when the distribution is positively skewed, difficulty in reproducing results for earlier rounds acting as a constraint on comparisons, and using urban poverty ration of the old method as a starting point to decide a consumption basket. More importantly, it discusses the implications on financial transfers across states if the share of poor is only taken into account without accounting for an increase in the total number of poor. Despite these limitations, on grounds of parsimony and prudence the state-specific poverty lines suggested in the new method, as also in the old method, are used to calculate incidence, depth (intensity) and severity (inequality among poor) estimates of poverty for different sub-groups of population, viz., NSS regions, social groups and occupation groups.

Introduction

In India, the quinquennial rounds of national sample survey (NSS) of consumption expenditure have been instrumental in providing us with an estimation of head count ratio. The Report of the Task Force on Projections of Minimum Needs and Effective Consumption Demands (Government of India, 1979) looked into the age, sex and activity specific nutritional requirements and arrived at a per capita norm of 2400 calorie for rural and 2100 calorie for urban and based on this a monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE) of Rs.49.09 in rural and Rs.56.64 in urban was identified as the poverty line for 1973-74. This was updated to accommodate price changes over time. The Report of the Expert Group on Estimation of Proportion and Number of Poor (Government of India, 1993) proposed the use of independent poverty lines for each state and updating them by looking into the state specific changes in prices. This formed the basis for official estimates of poverty provided by the Planning Commission till recently (hereafter, old method).

Some of the criticism of this approach is that the updated prices may not represent the calories norm that they were initially pegged to,  that the calorie norms should change because of demographic shifts in age and sex and change in occupational patterns, that basic requirements like health, education, sanitation and housing are not included in the calculation of poverty line, that a reference period of 30 days may not be appropriate for low frequency items of consumption expenditure among others. These have been partly addressed in the Report of the Expert Group to Review the Methodology for Estimation of Poverty (Government of India, 2009) leading to a new set of poverty estimates for the year 2004-05 that have now been accepted by the Planning Commission (hereafter, new method).

The current exercise focuses on three points. First, it discusses critically the new methodology in the light of a brief review of some recent literature by various scholars. Second, it analyses the change in shares of poverty across states and union territories (hereafter, states) that will occur due to this shift. It also tries to briefly hint the possible repercussions of these changes on poverty reduction efforts in states.  Third, it provides estimates of proportion of poor (head count ratio or incidence of poverty), depth (poverty gap or intensity) and the severity (poverty gap squared or inequality among the poor) at various levels of disaggregation like states, NSS regions, social groups and occupational categories.
...

Concluding Remarks

The Planning Commission accepted the suggestions by an Expert Group that it had constituted leading to a new method for estimating poverty in India using NSS's consumption expenditure data for 2004-05. The new method replaces the uniform recall of 30 days for all consumption items to a mixed recall where consumption of five low frequency items were collected for the last year (365 days) and appropriately adjusted to get a monthly per capita expenditure. It also takes into consideration health and education needs that the old method had not incorporated in its calorie norm. While doing these, it also opened up a number of other issues.

First, it did away with the benchmarking of a poverty line with a calorie norm that the old method was based on. They did not let the calorie norm go away totally. A reference is made to an FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization) calorie norm being achievable around its poverty line, but then this norm is for light and sedentary activities that may not adequately capture the energy needs of the poor who put in hard labour.  Second, while factoring in health and education expenditure is a positive step, using median expenditure as a norm for a positively skewed expenditure distribution may not represent the actual requirement of a poor person.  Third, having done away with a calorie norm, it begins with the poverty ratio for urban India from the old method as given. Using this ratio on the mixed recall it generates a consumption basket at the aggregate level for urban India and then uses this to generate a poverty line for states around this basket. This means that instead of using state estimates to compute a weighted all India average, it begins with the latter. A bottom-up method is replaced with a top-down approach. Fourth, the computation of consumption basket requires use of data from other rounds of NSS as also from other sources. The whole procedure is quite cumbersome and replicating it for earlier rounds or even for thin rounds is difficult and in many cases not possible. This will also have implications on the usage of time series poverty trends in macro modelling.

From a policy perspective, the new method will lead to change in share of poor. If financial transfers across states do not account for an increase in the number of poor or have a budget constraint then this means that the poorer states would end up getting less.

Despite these limitations, on account of pragmatic considerations as also for parsimony and prudence, the state-specific poverty lines have been used for computation of poverty at various sub-groups. This has been attempted in this paper for NSS regions, social groups and occupation groups for both the old and new methods. The relatively higher incidence of poverty among scheduled tribes in rural areas and scheduled castes in urban areas for social groups and that of agricultural labourers and other labourers in rural areas and casual labourers in urban areas for occupation groups have been discussed.

Though they do not play any active role in poverty estimation, yet the poor have maximum stake in poverty analysis as they are at the receiving end. Thus, a move towards a bottom-up approach where the poor get involved in the understanding of vulnerability, particularly in the implementation of policies (including on identification of poor and poverty alleviation) so as to bring in greater accountability and transparency is called for . In its absence, every attempt to define and measure poverty is like treading on the dreams of poor. If poverty measure chosen is going to help them, at least some of these dreams would become a reality. Otherwise they dry like leaves fallen from trees.

For details see the paper, Poverty Estimates in India: Old and New Methods, 2004-05.