This year alone, the budget gifts over Rs.500,000 crores in write-offs, direct and indirect, to the Big Boys. That's Rs.57 crores every single hour on average - almost a crore a minute. Beating last year's Rs.30 crores an hour by more than 70 per cent. (See Tables 5 and 12 of the "Statement of Revenue Foregone" section of the budget.)more money being funnelled into their pockets in t he guise of agricultural credit:
More and more of "agricultural" credit will go not to farmers but corporations. Indeed, "even External Commercial Borrowings will henceforth be available for cold storage or cold room facility." The budget even says: "Changes in the definition of infrastructure under the ECB policy are being made" to foster this process. Some of those changes have already happened. Several of the loans disbursed as "agricultural credit" are in excess of Rs. 10 crore and even Rs. 25 crore. And even as loans of this size steadily grew in number between 2000 and 2006, agricultural loans of less than Rs. 25,000 fell by more than half in the same period. (See Revival of Agricultural Credit in the 2000s: An Explanation. R. Ramakumar and Pallavi Chavan, EPW December 29, 2007.)post 1991, every finance minister has been sucking upto corporate india and now that India Inc is sinking its teeth into the agriculture sector, they continue to milk us dry.
1. There is no Operation Green Hunt. Name me an officer who has said this and I will take action.but he continually draws a line between centre and state, which i found jarring and a deliberate 'washing off hands' tactic.
2. I am totally opposed to staged encounters. It’s possible that in a gun battle between the police and those who take to the gun, people could get killed, but that’s unfortunately a battle. But if you arrest a person, he must be produced before a magistrate.
3. If any civil rights group or tribal representative will organise it, I am ready to come (to the affected areas).
4. I am prepared to request the Prime Minister to freeze all these MOUs and order a comprehensive review of all the MOUs that have been signed in Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Orissa and South Bihar, and then decide which MOU should be implemented, with or without modification. I am prepared to request the PM to do that.
1. The PM should apologise to the tribals and withdraw all the troops deployed in these areas.guess that after one spends over 30 years fighting, one gets caught up in distrust and animosity.
2. (long term vision is to)...is to gain political power, to establish new democracy, socialism and then communism.
3. (on fund raising)...There are no extortions. We collect taxes from the corporates and big bourgeoisie, but it’s not any different from the corporate sector funding the political parties.
Over this past year, the Home Ministry has been planning a major armed offensive against the Naxals, particularly in Chhattisgarh. According to reports, the plan involves stationing around 75,000 troops in the heartland of India — including special CRPF commandos, the ITBP and the BSF. Scattered newspaper accounts have spoken of forces being withdrawn from Jammu and Kashmir and the Northeast; there is also talk of bringing in the feared Rashtriya Rifles — a battalion created specially for counter-insurgency work — and the purchase of bomb trucks, bomb blankets, bomb baskets, and sophisticated new weaponry. Minister Chidambaram has also said that if necessity dictates, he will bring in the special forces of the army.why is it a scary thought?
The decision to launch such a massive armed operation on home ground — due to start this November — should have triggered animated political, civil society and media debate. But Operation Green Hunt — as the offensive is being termed — has been gathering force in almost complete silence. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Home Minister Chidambaram have variously called Naxals — or “Maoists” — “the gravest threat to India’s internal security.” Perhaps a military offensive against them is the answer, but is it the only answer? Is it the best answer? Will it provide a solution? Who will be impacted by this offensive? What will be its repercussions? Who are we really declaring war on? What are we declaring war on? Are we going into this with eyes wide open? Is there anything we should have learned from the seemingly irreparable psychological mess in Kashmir and the Northeast? These are the questions a democratic society should be asking.himanshu kumar needs to be heard.
As Himanshu Kumar, a Gandhian and the only human rights activist on ground zero in faraway Dantewada where Operation Green Hunt is to be launched, says, “We can all be agreed on the premise that Naxalism is a problem, but why are these poor people attracted to a politics that will end in death? Have we created such a heinous system that death is more attractive than the deprivations and humiliations this system doles out? If that is so, why should I defend this system? All that these people want is food, health care, school, clothes and their legitimate right over their land. Yet, instead of weaning them away by strengthening the democratic process, if we are going to run our democracy only on the strength of weapons, I fear we are entering a dangerous and irrepairable state. We are headed for civil war.”i am seriously worried.
The price-rise-due-to-drought warning is a fraud. Of course, a drought and major crop failure will push up prices further. But prices were steadily rising for five years since the 2004 elections, long before a drought. Take the years between 2004 and 2008 when you had some good monsoons. And more than one year in which we claimed “record production” of foodgrain. The price of rice went up 46 per cent, of wheat by over 62 per cent, atta 55 per cent, salt 42 per cent and more. By March 2008, the average increase in the prices of such items was already well over 40 per cent. Then, they rose again till a little before the 2009 polls. And have risen dramatically in the past three months.taking on those who whined over the farm loan waiver on 2008...
Remember the great loan waiver of 2008, that historic write-off of the loans of indebted farmers? Recall the editorials whining about ‘fiscal imprudence?’ That was a one-time, one-off waiver covering countless millions of farmers and was claimed to touch Rs. 70,000 crore. But over Rs. 130,000 crore (in direct taxes) has been doled out in concessions in just two budgets to a tiny gaggle of merchants hogging at the public trough. Without a whimper of protest in the media. Imagine what budget giveaways to corporates since 1991 would total. We’d be talking trillions of rupees.
Simply put, the corporate world has grabbed concessions in just two years that total more than seven times the ‘fiscally imprudent’ farm loan waiver. In fact, it means that on average we have been feeding the corporate world close to Rs. 700 crore every day in those two years. Imagine calculating what this figure would be, in total, since 1991. (Er.., what’s the word for the bracket above ‘trillion?’) Ask for an expansion of the NREGS, seek universal access to the PDS, plead for more spending on public health and education — and there’s no money. Yet, there’s enough to give away nearly Rs. 30 crore an hour to the corporate world in concessions.and to his ardent critics who say that he does not offer solutions...
It could launch, among many other things, the pond-in-every-farm programme. It could restructure farm loan schedules. It could start getting the idea of monsoon management into its thinking. It could curb forward trading-linked speculation that was driving one of our worst price rises in history long before the drought was on the horizon. And it could declare universal access to the PDS. That cost could probably be easily covered by, say, cancelling the dessert from the menu of the unending corporate free lunch in this country.
"We can no longer sit back and let these attacks overwhelm us. Our response has to be effective and it has to be decisive," she said at the meeting of the party's highest policy-making body, Congress Working Committee, in New Delhi on Wednesday night. (emphasis mine)clearly means that the UPA has to shelve their long-term, high-investment ass-expansion programmes.
"They (people) must feel they have a government that is taking all possible measures to give succour to those who need it and, more important, to ensure that there is no recurrence of such traumatic acts of terror," the Congress chief said. (emphasis mine again)overjoyed that the people's feelings are the topmost priority of the idiots.
for example, the water supply situation...Typical of such small urban centres is Nawada, the district headquarters of Nawada district in South Bihar. Barring a few reasonably broad paved roads, the rest of the city appears to be connected and disconnected with narrow pot-holed roads where all manner of vehicles jostle for space with vendors, pedestrians, and animals. The winners are the ones who are more dexterous.
Electricity comes sporadically. The rich have diesel generators and invertors. Most manage with kerosene lamps after dark. Many homes depend on handpumps either inside or just outside their houses for water. Sanitation facilities are suspect although there must be some sewerage, and there is little evidence of garbage collection as you see the piles of garbage around every corner with pigs and dogs competing for access.
Yet, this town has a history studded with the names of men and women who played an important role in the freedom struggle -- like Jayaprakash Narayan. The Sarvodaya Ashram he established is a couple of hours away from the city. And there are older reminders of a distinguished past that residents will tell you about, including its link to Buddhism and Jainism. Nawada is also home to the master of dhrupad and thumri, Siyaram Tiwary.
Its past notwithstanding, Nawada’s present reflects little that distinguishes it from other towns of an equivalent size. It exemplifies the acute problems that urbanisation poses in India – the absence of investment in infrastructure, the lack of planning and developmental norms and the poor status of structures of governance that could make a difference. There is a silent crisis afflicting these places that is affecting the lives of millions of people, yet no one seems to notice or care.
According to figures quoted in ‘Status of Water Supply, Sanitation and Solid Waste Management’ prepared by the National Institute of Urban Affairs (June 2005), there are literally dozens of fairly major towns in India that get water twice a week or every alternate day. Although the figures quoted in the study are from 1999, and the situation in some of these towns could have improved, it is indicative of the extent of the water crisis in these cities. The worst off, according to the 1999 data, were towns in Gujarat. Surendranagar, for instance, got water for 30 minutes once a week, Gondal was slightly better off with water supplied for 20 minutes once in four days while Amreli received a supply of 60 minutes once in three days. Nine towns in Tamil Nadu had water either twice a week or on alternate days. Even Bangalore got water on alternate days.entire article is here.
... enhance livelihood security in rural areas by providing at least 100 days of guaranteed wage employment in a financial year to every household whose adultthe act now covers all areas of the country (except 100% urban districts).
members volunteer to do unskilled manual work.
Wages are to be paid according to the Minimum Wages Act 1948 for agriculturalother salient points are:
labourers in the State, unless the Centre notifies a wage rate which will not be less
than Rs. 60/ per day. Equal wages will be provided to both men and women.
| city | budget | per capita |
| greater mumbai | 4162 | 3417 |
| surat | 662 | 2577 |
| pune | 507 | 1890 |
| ahemdabad | 599 | 1668 |
| chennai | 591 | 1385 |
| hyderabad | 338 | 964 |
| delhi | 880 | 872 |
| bangalore | 369 | 810 |
Micro-hydroelectric plants (dams) would have to be set up along the Amravati river, which flows close to the cave, to generate the electricity needed to operate the cooling panels.guess that we should definitely stop expecting them to have any time for the aam aadmi.
