A spate of neighbourliness
While the sheer scale of the flooding in Mumbai last year made relief operations difficult, there was still much that the
government could have done, but failed to do. The citizens themselves, were far more resourceful and sensitive to the
plight of others, writes
Darryl D'Monte,
who served on the Concerned Citizens' Commission.
Sponge bath future
Maharashtra's latest step towards water management has raised a large controversy, pitting strong views against one
another. But lost amidst the arguments is an important fact - the solutions for our water crises are not going to
be easy, because we've left ourselves very few options.
M Rajshekhar
reports.
Suicide in a distant land
In Vidarbha, where over a thousand farmers have taken their own lives in last the four years
over unabated distress, Venkanna Ramayya Rayee's suicide has an unusual edge.
A farmer from neighbouring Andhra Pradesh, his name won't figure as an entry in the
suicide ledger in either state.
Jaideep Hardikar
has more.
350, and counting
Inexplicably, Maharashtra's bosses have gone into hiding after announcing a
"bailout package" for Vidarbha's beleaguered farmers. Not a single pie has been distributed
yet, two months after the chief minister, Vilasrao Deshmukh, announced it.
Farmers' suicides are failing to move a heartless government, reports
Jaideep Hardikar.
Gonds nourish aspirations at annual fair
In what is supposed to be an annual religious and cultural gathering, nothing
is more mixed up than the speeches. Talks that start with the fine points of
Gondi religion, its practice and ritual, inevitably delve into subjects
with deeper socio-political resonance. From interior Maharashtra,
Aparna Pallavi
reports on the annual Kachhargarh fair.
End of a wedding-dream
"Of course I would like to be married to a nice boy and have a small
family. Who doesn't?" asks Ganga Khatale, 31, with a fleeting twinkle.
Amidst a desperate situation of suicides that even pushed two young
girls to take their lives over marriage tensions, Ganga seems courageous
in her hope.
Varada Hardikar reports.
Power-play, for the people
Chandrakant Pathak has invented power-generation gadgets tailored especially for
rural energy needs. As Pathak's gadgets are gaining popularity in rural areas
of Pune district and several neighbouring districts in Maharashtra, state
energy development agencies are taking note, reports
Aparna Pallavi.
Loan after loan
A farming family holding 27 acres in Vidarbha has become a marginal landholder in a span of few years, and a vicious
cycle of usurious debt robbed their lands and hopes.
There are hundreds of others in the lurch similarly.
The farming crisis has different shades of exploitation;
Jaideep Hardikar
presents one.
A drive through hell
It is a common perception that truck drivers are rash individuals, responsible for the deaths of numerous citizens
in accidents each year. But few know how much the work conditions of drivers contribute to making them who they
are. At an awareness camp for drivers at Chandrapur,
Aparna Pallavi
finds out more.
Another farmer ends life, villagers distraught
"In the time of crisis, when no helping hand is coming forward to rescue us, we have to manage ourselves," says Bhagwat Jadhav, a resident of Bondgavhan village in Vidarbha. His neighour, cotton farmer Ramesh Rathod committed suicide
recently. "It could be our turn tomorrow," says a worried Jadhav.
Jaideep Hardikar
reports.
Nobody touches the Act
"This building is dangerous. It may collapse at any time. Enter at your own risk." So goes a warning sign
at the entrance to a building in Mumbai. Buildings that crumble are an old tradition in this
city, with at least one cause being the Rent Control Act.
Dilip D'Souza
says the pernicious law must go.
Vidarbha distress and the end of innocence
Ten months after his father ended his life, Madhav toils from 6 am to 8 pm to herd the cattle of a big farmer for a paltry Rs 20 a day. Education? Forget it. In village after Vidarbha village where farmers have committed suicide, children have eventually dropped out of schools to take up the plough and work like beasts of burden, reports
Jaideep Hardikar.
Serving up success
Demand for the randani roti, a staple of Dalit cooking in Central India, has risen steeply in recent years, and today the
roti is the hub of a thriving small-scale industry. And alongside the mainstreaming of their food, Dalits are finding
a rare escape hatch from their economic woes too.
Aparna Pallavi
reports.
Top to bottom, water and soil
Harvesting water in the lower elevations is easier, because a lot of it gathers there, but this may be too late and too
little. Not only do those in higher reaches suffer without water, additionally valuable topsoil is washed away if
no percolation takes place at higher levels.
Surekha Sule
reports from Marathwada.
Shamrao Khatale breaks his appointment
The National Commission on Farmers team, the public at large, and even sections of the media have signalled the crisis,
its causes and its appalling human toll. Failure to intervene in Vidharbha now has no excuses at all.
P Sainath
continues his series on Vidharbha's crisis.
Vidharbha awaits a deadly harvest
In the three days the National Commission on Farmers team toured Vidharbha, there were six suicides. In Panderkauda, the
body of the latest farmer to take his life entered that town's hospital the same day the team arrived there for a
meeting on farmer distress.
P Sainath
continues his series on Vidharbha's crisis.
Into the maze of the EGS scam
When an unexpectedly high number of people sought work recently under Maharashtra's Employment Guarantee Scheme,
a District Collector decided to investigate. Her quest unearthed wide-spread fraud in the implementing
agency, but also roused political forces determined to thwart her.
Surekha Sule
reports.
Chor Bt aur Bt chor
Fake and costly inputs have placed lakhs of farmers in grave danger. Further, despair has led many to embrace costly Bt
cotton as some kind of magic bullet. Meanwhile, Bt cotton has not only been attacked by other pests, it's been struck by
the bollworm itself. For many, the results could be deadly, writes
P Sainath.
Mortgages are out, land grab is in
Farmers weighed down by debt are now falling prey to land grab by an array of predators that includes talatis and school
teachers. A "proper" deed of sale is the preferred method.
P Sainath
continues his series on Vidharbha's crisis.
The riots and wrongs of caste
The Bhagwan Datta mandir in Belkhed, Akola, was built by Dalits when they were still Hindus. It was ostensibly the focus
of the fiery violence there earlier this month. The real reasons? Caste, the decline of organised Dalit politics, the
crisis in agriculture, and wage conflicts - all played a role, writes
P Sainath.
Of chit funds and loan lotteries
Many farmers deep in debt are trying to find a way out through playing bhishi (chit funds). Denied bank loans and
desperate for credit to run their farms and for other needs, they take huge risks. The results are usually
tragic.
P Sainath
continues his series on Vidharbha's crisis.
The farmer and his festival lights
The Ganesh festival is the most important event in Maharashtra. This season, farm distress has hit the utsav badly in
Vidharbha. Very few have money to spend. Meanwhile, farmers' suicides there are going up. There has been one almost
every 36 hours this year.
P Sainath
continues his series on the region's crisis.
Women in the audience
Sometimes, simply showing up is half the battle won. In caste panchayats in Gadchiroli district in Maharashtra, women
activists are finding that attending them regularly is the best way for women to find justice in these
community hearings.
Aparna Pallavi
reports.
It says about a city
What does it say about our priorities when a rescue team trying to get help to victims of a landslide has to
destroy other homes to reach them?
Citizens might be resilient during natural disasters, but this isn't spirit;
to find that we have to look elsewhere, and at other times, says
Dilip D'Souza.
Health as someone else's wealth
Many in Vidarbha, like millions elsewhere, have simply stopped seeking medical help for their ailments. They just cannot
afford it. Some farmers have mortgaged land to pay health bills, writes
P Sainath.
As you sow, so shall you weep
With the rains finally here, spurious seeds and other fake inputs introduce a deadly new element in the survival struggle
of the Vidharbha farmer. Fake seeds from Andhra Pradesh have come in on a large scale.
P Sainath
continues his series on Vidharbha's crisis.
Suicides: The price of power?
Despite a strongly held belief to the contrary, Maharashtra's farmers have never demanded free power. And the suicides in
Vidharbha were certainly not linked to this issue.
P Sainath
finds that the region is really paying the price of political power.
No rain, but 'snow' and waterparks
Water-starved Vidharbha has a growing number of water parks and amusement centres.
The iron laws of rural life don't apply in the entertainment complexes built right next to the poor.
In a region that scarcely receives adequate water to meet people's drinking needs, there is plenty of water for the
playgrounds of the
rich, finds
P Sainath.
Russian roulette in Vidharbha
Should farmers sow early? Or wait to be sure that the first rains aren't just temporary? Should they borrow
early, or wait until they are absolutely ready to sow, even if it means higher risks later?
P Sainath
finds that in Vidharbha, farming itself is a great gamble, with many victims.
Whose suicide is it, anyway?
In Yavatmal district alone, there's been an eight-fold increase in farmers' suicides in just four years. Yet, thanks to a
flawed counting process, even that is a huge under-estimate.
P Sainath
continues his series on the agrarian crisis in Vidharbha.
Mixed results for municipal water reforms
A new publication released by a leading UN research organisation shows that municipal water utilities may
make efficiency gains and meet increasing water demand by innovative revenue collection and limited private
sector participation. Researchers studied 4 cities in Maharashtra.
Surekha Sule
reports.
Cheques and balances, farmers have none
Thousands of cotton farmers in Maharashtra are due money from the state's procurement
agency -- the marketing federation -- for the 2004-5 season. Though officials maintain
that they have released payments, farmers are not getting money from the banks.
Jaideep Hardikar
reports.
The bank and the big bang
The World Bank continues to push its agenda on water privatisation even though its much-heralded examples from
recent years turned out to be such dismal failures. The result will destroy countless small farmers and
hand over agriculture to the rich and corporations, says
P Sainath.
Maharashtra's coming water wars
A new law could put irrigation beyond the reach of most farmers in Vidharbha.
Huge hikes in water charges, penalties against farmers with more than two children, and prison terms and large fines
for non-payment, all signal the transfer of agriculture to a few rich farmers, observes
P Sainath.
Water: How the deal was done
Why were more than a dozen bills introduced late on the last day of the session, giving legislators no time to
even read them? Why was there no debate?
Questions are now being asked about how the Maharashtra Water Resources Regulatory Authority Bill was passed,
reports
P Sainath.
Moral police not moral policing
The demand from citizens demonstrating in Mumbai that the Marine Drive rapist be handed over to them is
yet another illustration of their growing frustration with state institutions. This is a
dangerous signal that both the government and the police need to heed, says
Kalpana Sharma.
RTI finding : Cities subsidising the rich
Property prices have gone up over the decades, but Mumbai leases land to
private interests at rates as low as Rs.7 per sq.m. In the last three years alone,
revenue authorities have on average lost close to Rs.48 crores, estimates
Shailesh Gandhi.
A self-help success story
In Maharashtra, the Golden Jubilee Urban Employment Scheme can point to
many successes for families below the poverty line.
Surekha Sule
reports on the social, economic, and psychological upliftment created by
unusually diligent administration of a government program.
Forget Shanghai, remember Mumbai
We need to put aside our obsession with becoming "world class". Let us
make our cities liveable for all the people, says
Kalpana Sharma.
Cut-off by the date
Not least because affordable rental housing in Bombay is an urban myth, the jobs we invite our fellow Indians to fill
so that we can have all those good things of a booming economy, are filled by people who have little choice but to live
in slums. And then we raze those slum homes. Cavalier, says
Dilip D'Souza.
'The second freedom struggle'
Noted anti-corruption crusader Anna Hazare says that enforcing a new central RTI law
is not going to be a cakewalk. "The rulers regard themselves as owners, dictators especially the
bureaucrats", says Hazare in this interview. But he warned that a national agitation may leave
New Delhi no choice.
Poll freebies not relieving Vidarbha farmers
Last year saw Maharashtra go to the polls and the incumbent government offer freebies to farmers.
But cotton growers in Vidarbha saw their problems only worsen as they entered 2005. None of the political
parties seem interested in a real way out, finds
Jaideep Hardikar.
Cotton marketing fails Vidarbha farmers
The Maharashtra State Cotton Growers Marketing Federation was originally setup to procure cotton from growers at
reasonable prices and sell it to mills and traders. Instead, with government policies not helping,
it has trapped itself and farmers in a vicious cycle of debt and losses, reports
Jaideep Hardikar.
Vidarbha 2004: a suicides diary
The simple man silently walked out of his hut that fateful day, went to the backyard and
consumed pesticide in the veil of darkness. Rising family debt had forced his children
out of school, and that proved the last straw.
Jaideep Hardikar
recounts the stories of this and two other farmer suicides.
Whose garbage is it, anyway?
Municipalities are outsourcing city waste collection to private
contractors. As a result, rag-pickers face a loss of their
livelihood, unless the informal sector itself is institutionalised within the
hierarchy of solid waste management.
Surekha Sule
reports.
RTI may check Narmada dams
Much debate over the massive dam projects on the Narmada has been on costs
vs benefits as well as poor rehabilitation measures. But one of the
original questions activists raised years ago was over the Right
to Information. The 'RTI' factor may be finally hitting home,
reports Jaideep Hardikar.
Classes everywhere, not a stop to think
Many teenagers in Mumbai are spending their evenings on the
"untiring toil" of tuitions, trying to learn what their teachers should
have been teaching them in junior college but don't. This is a system
that unthinkingly takes away these kids' leisure time, says
Dilip D'Souza.
The future of Pune's public transport
A round table gathering of citizens and planners has identified ways to
improve the city's transportation services. If successful, this
initiative could
serve as a model for active participation by residents in solving
a problem every metropolitan area faces.
Pankaj Sekhsaria
reports.
Subsidy to nowhere
Offer to build 320,000 houses for slum-dwellers. Deliver only 1146. In two years, only a tiny
fraction of the
number of houses a Maharashtra government plan called for
actually got built. Dilip D'Souza dissects an infamous cross-subsidy
fiasco that was born as an election promise.
What happened in Vidarbha
In the Lok Sabha polls, the BSP devastated the Congress-NCP alliance. In the Maharashtra elections, the Sonia Gandhi factor appears to have bailed the Congress out of big trouble. But this time, the BSP wrecked the BJP-Shiv Sena combine in many places, notes
P Sainath.