The Baseless Development

Why Land Acquisition Really Matters? And What Could Be Done About It?

Don't Take My Land

India is growing at over 8% annually. To fuel this growth consistent supply of huge amount of resources are required. Whether it's fuel, minerals or land, everything is required at a scale that has never been experienced before. But there's a common problem that is holding all these from being input to the development cycle and that is land. The huge population has made the world's 7^th largest country a 'People Surplus, Land Deficit Country'. Adding to the problem is years of inefficient handling of land.

Since early 2000's, India's frantic pace of growth has ensured that the land and their owners are exploited to a huge extent. Earlier unawareness among farmers & their hope to benefit has largely ensured peaceful industrialization. But after years of experience & feeling of being left out they now consider industrialization a monster, which just gobble up their land. They feel that the sole beneficiaries of the whole process are corporates, who in tandem with local government officials acquire much more land than required. A waste of a precious resource that must be stopped, immediately. The proposed 'Land Acquisition, Rehabilitation and Resettlement(LARR) Act, 2011' is a good step in that direction and I am sure that it will induce some discipline among the buyers.

The bill proposes that for every acquisition of more than 100 acres of land, the consent of atleast 80% locals should be taken. Industry fears that this could make 'Land Acquisition' a tough and slow process. But I think once completed, projects can be executed at much faster pace with less probability of people protesting thereafter. Also the compensation clause will increase the cost of projects for sure but it will reduce the tendency of businesses to acquire land in much larger quantum than required and force them to use it efficiently. However there should be one modification in the bill, instead of high one time payment monthly compensation amount should be increased from Rs2000/acre/month. As experienced till now compensation beneficiaries spend lavishly in initial years and due to lack of any skills other than farming, they face a tough question for survival once that compensation finishes. The increased regular compensation will ensure that those displaced are assured of regular income. In addition guaranteed job to a member of each displaced family will make them live a respectful life.

Share It, Don't Capture It

But profit sharing can be tricky and difficult to implement, since locals lack resources to effectively audit the books of mining companies and thus probability of frauds will be high. Also the profits from mining will come slowly after the projects go on-stream. Also compensation in the form of monthly allowance, profit sharing, taxes and one time allowances may render the projects unviable. To solve this, a 'Rehabilitation Authority' should be set up which would be the sole organization responsible for rehabilitation and resettlement of displaced people and will work on non-profit basis. The organization will be responsible for facilitating all the acquisition in future from its own corpus, which will be funded by profit sharing and one time compensation from corporates who acquire land.

There are more such problems with the proposed bill, which has to be looked into. However it's clear that whatever government do, it has to do it fast and has to do it right, it can't experiment on that count or else India would risk losing it's competitive and demographic edge.

Break This Evening

Open Letter To A Madrasi Girl

Since the last few days, a blogpost by a South Indian girl is making news all over the social networks, blogs and even print media. The post on her blog Broken Morning has raged a war of comments on web. The so called 'Madrasi girl' has infact highlighted the issue of regionalism in India. Since lack of sense nationalism and increasing regionalism is one of the major issue that has and will always challenge our growth, I am taking up the matter on this blog. 

*But before starting, i would recommend you to read the blog on which my whole post will be based. It's Broken Morning.The blog has thrown light on some of the problems that the North Indian(NI) society is plagued with, but has done so in an exaggerated and harsh way. Infact, she has so much isolated herself from NI that she mentioned south as a separate country. So, you could take my points as counter views to her's.

Starting with the language 'Miss Madrasan', may be our English is bad but what about your Hindi, after all that's our unofficial national language. Aren't we suppose to speak that fluently? I have not met any Tamil speaking the language as fluently as we do. Regarding intelligence!!!!Of Course, South Indians are genius. After all, who else could mastermind a scandal worth 100k Crs. According to her, we don't like their food and they don't like us. Atleast not liking their food is not inhumane. So in that sense we are better humans than them. They are not into food like us, but what's the purpose of cracking the IIT, if their electoral choices are still based upon freebies like TV and JMG's. If they are so much educated then why the state has more BPL card holders than the population? Any one there to explain me? And who said they aren't beautiful, with their hair fresh out of dish washer and 'to die for' moustache they always look gorgeous. But here's a problem with us, we were brought up on Gurudas Mann and not Rajanikanth. After all, no one challenge his out of world powers. If she thinks that naming every thing on boy's name is wrong, than isn't it true vice-a-versa. If here in North India women cows down to man's demand we could say men there kneel down to woman’s demand!!!!

The debate could go on indefinitely. But the fact is that every person, every society and every nation have some strengths and weakness. No society is perfect and we have to adapt to their ways and instead of criticizing it, should work in tandem to resolve those issues and aspire to create a perfect society. This specially matters for India, as we have to come out from within the small circles of regionalism and be nationalistic for our country to be a prominent force tomorrow.

And apologies if anyone's hurt!! And yes these are my personal views and is not on behalf of North India. 

That's also a North Indian quality.......






Read:  HT City, Broken Morning

Investment Worth Investing

Forgetting Everything Else, Prioritize Investments in Education!!! Why? 

What's better, giving subsidies or empowering citizens to buy goods on their own? With no doubt, latter should be the answer. But the bigger question is how? How could it be done?

There are three ways for a person to be rich (or atleast not a poor):

1. Inheriting ancestral wealth.
2. By luck including hitting a jackpot in financial market or a lottery.
3. And the last one is Education.

The first two can't be controlled. But Education could be!!! Any government which strives for socio-economic development of a country, should make investments on education its top priority. They should understand that 'an uneducated rich could fall into the trap of poverty but an educated person can never be poor'.

Make Education Worth It

Now, coming to India, in this globalized world only quantity and quality of human resource is going to determine our competence. It's pity that India, despite being home to world's first university, Nalanda, is today facing the shortage of qualified professionals to fuel its economic growth. It's not that there's dearth of colleges or students who want quality education, the country today has more than half a million students studying in more that 12000 colleges and polytechnics. But forget the numbers and the picture will be clearer. Lack of funds and good faculties has led these colleges to provide an education which the industry thinks is obsolete. It's illogical to provide an education which has no use for our own industry. We aspire to be the educational hub of the world by 2020, but if our institutes are finding it difficult to match up to the Indian standards than how would they manage to keep up with much more tech-savvy and financially huge firms.

Indians spend $4bn annually for higher education abroad. Citing this, many experts are lobbying for allowing profit making educational institutions(read foreign institutes) to setup their campuses here. But will this end all the problems. I am sceptical about it. The cost of education in these institutes, will make it a privilege for few. So what could be the solution? Government Investments. Only government investments in education could solve the problem. Public support for education is essential to ensure balance between educational and social missions. It's essential that funding sources should be diversified, but excessive commercialization should be forbidden. As of now, GOI spends merely 3% of the GDP on education (nearly 0.8-1.2% on higher education) and should increase it to atleast 7-8% of GDP to ensure our competence globally. But where will the money come from. Instead of directly subsidizing students, government should make outgoing students pay for incoming students. This way, burden will not be on student's parents but on earning professionals. In addition, Industrial bodies should be asked to provide certain portion of their profits to these institutes as part of CSR.

However, cost is only a small part of the problem, there are many others and availability of good teachers is one of them. More and more students should be encouraged to take up teaching as a profession and should be provided some 10% additional teaching incentive than their industrial counter parts. Also, high ranking officials should be encouraged to be visiting faculties to institutes. Additionally, before designing syllabus AICTE should consult industrial representatives to know their exact requirements. All these steps would take time to show results and in the mean time top tier institutes should be asked to share classroom lectures online to enable students from other institutes to access the best resources.

One thing is for sure, if India could improve education then 21st century will be India's and if it can't, we will lose an opportunity of millennium.

An Evolutionary Revolution

What Made IAC The Largest Social Revolution Of India? 

THE SOCIAL CARRIER

19^th August, 2011 the date that could change the future of the world’s largest democracy, India, forever. The date was when the India’s modern day Gandhi, ‘Anna Hazare’ declared to restart his protest against corruption. The protest which has the potential, power and support to be one of the largest ever revolution in India’s history. As of now, am not going to comment who’s right (…you will be reading that soon)….But something more interesting and that’s about the support that the protest has been able to garner.

No revolution or protest in independent India has ever seen such a youth participation, especially when it is lead by an old man (Anna Hazare in this case). A person, who till a few months back was unknown and could not even bank upon his celebrity status (like Baba Ramdev). So what was different this time around? It’s Technology. Team Anna didn't shied away from usin
g technology for the promotion of their cause and protest. The revolution, ‘India Against Corruption’ has inarguably become India’s biggest social revolution. Whether it’s social networks, bulk mails and SMS’s or phone lines, the campaign initiators and supporters have used all the networking channels available to ensure the success of the campaign. As is quoted in Wall Street Journal, the campaign is ‘previously unseen social media-fuelled revolution’. The movement has more than 8.2lakh likes on Facebook, while twitter has more modest 35000 followers. It's twitter page experience more than 3 tweets every minute. The missed call hotline number of the organization got more than 1.3crore rings. Just look through these statistics and you would come to know about the main cause of such a huge support IAC has been able to get. Their marketing team has ensured that no one is left unaware about the movement.

MYSPACE 

The event has clearly shown the power of communication, the power of social networks!!! They have shown that as is generally thought, technology is not only for the youth….it’s universal and should be used by other organizations in active manner to promote their cause. However, it has also increased the fear of stricter government control over the virtual lives of people, as they are becoming more and more wary of the consequences that such unmonitored communication could result in.

But as of now, am supporting ‘INDIA AGAINST CORRUPTION’.




See Also: Corruption Magnet

Slow Judiciary = No Judiciary

Including The Tale of Noida Extension

The fate of over a lakh homes in Delhi NCR, one of the largest industrial and residential hubs of India, is hanging nowhere due to judicial interference at a time when physical structure of buildings are almost ready and hundreds of crores have already been pumped into these projects. After sleeping over farmers PIL for almost a year, judges have suddenly woken up to their responsibility of providing justice to them and ordered the local governing authority and builders to return land to farmers citing their exploitation.

JUSTICE IS SUPREME

But what’s the logic behind such a decision at this point of time. Due to mass construction activities, the land has been rendered useless for farming and will be of no use to farmers. Even builders would not be in position of to provide refunds to investors due to losses that they will suffer in abandoning half built projects and if more such projects were stopped they would not be even able to relocate them.

So, who would you blame for such an irresponsible behaviour? Farmers!! Who filled the case or Realtors, who started construction after getting possession of land? Or may be the investors who dreamt of owning their own house? I would blame the JUDICIARY. Had judiciary acted on time I am sure that the loss would have been much less. But as it has been till now, the judicial machinery in India is cumbersome and is marred with delays. They never look at cases on urgent basis and infact just keep on giving future date in synchronization with the famous dialogue…..

तारीख पे तारीख| तारीख पे तारीख|

The GoI has to understand that by not investing in judiciary, it is denying people the right to have free and fair justice. Already Judge to people ratio in India at 6 per 10lakh people is one of the lowest in the world and is behind even Bangladesh. Going forward this could create resentment among people and can have serious social and political implications. I think, GoI has forgotten the famous saying,

‘Justice Delayed is Justice Denied’

There are lakhs of cases pending in courts; and many of them are of such a pity magnitude that if tried they could be solved through out of court settlements. Fortunately the process has started, albeit at too few places like Delhi and the response has been amazing. Disposing off thousands of cases in a day through ‘special courts’ is a not a mean achievement and the same should be applied elsewhere.

In addition to this, cases like that of traffic violation should not be referred to courts instead there should be separate office to deposit penalties. Also, jail terms of less than 1 year should be stopped and a steep fine should be imposed on culprits, this would prevent additional burdens on both courts and prisons.   

Is India Still A One Sport Nation?

World says that India loves cricket only.....It's true!!!!

  Let's get to its roots........ 

Olympics 2008 -> 3

CWG 2010 -> 101

Asian Games 2010 -> 64

These are the best figures in terms of medal wins that India has ever won in its sporting history of these tournaments. So, what has led to such a spike in India’s medal tally? Is India’s love for athletic games increasing? Is India no more only a cricketing nation? I would recommend you to not go with these numbers. In the past 2 years, Indian athletes may have performed at their best, but simply saying our best is not really the best. Even when compared to smaller nations like Japan and Korea, we are so much lagging them that it would be wrong to even compare our self with them.  

MAKE A LONG JUMP INDIA!!! 

Even after its best performance, we cannot say that our love for athletics is increasing. Because increase in popularity is coupled with increase in bench strength in games, which ultimately leads to more competition and thus better players. However, in our case it was not so. The medals were won only by a selected few who have already proved there mettle and rarely has there been any new surprise. Infact, I would say that India’s performance has nothing to do with our passion for sports(non-cricketing). I would dedicate India’s success to a few individuals and the government of India’s(GOI) support. 

GoI has woken up to the task of promoting sports and has increased spending on providing better sporting facilities and coaches. However, with the budget constraints these have been provided only to the well established players and athletes and not to budding ones. This reduces the interest among children who aspire to be a sportsperson.

So is only GOI is responsible for the pathetic condition of non-cricketing sports in our country? That would be wrong to say.  Cricket became popular after 1983 world cup win of India over famed West Indian team. However, there’s no such interesting and challenging win by India in any other sport. I could bet that if somehow India wins a FIFA cup, the game’s popularity will leap forge and would make football a rage in our country. But, is that going to happen? Could India do in football, what it once does in cricket in 1983? As of now, that seems to be difficult.

But I would like to add that one time win is not all. It has to be augmented with consistently good performance in order to make a sport popular and there can’t be a better example than hockey to prove that. Once popular, the Indian national game hockey has now reduced to shambles. Consistent losses and no major tournament wins have dented its fan base and peoples love for the game tumbled. After all, we need to accept that love can’t be blind forever, it has to produce results and if favourable ones don’t come, love can’t last for too long.

So, I would conclude that it’s the responsibility of all the stakeholders to popularize a game and not just of governments to do that. Also promoting sports would help in reducing health problems especially because India has become world capital of diabetes. But, that would be distant reason for popularising sports and would require political foresightedness.

And as of now…..Yes India is a single sport nation!!!!

Feasting on Fast Food

A small thought over the problem of fast food addiction 

McDonald's, Subway, Domino’s...what’s common among all these names? Firstly, they all are well known household names and have earned it by selling unhealthy food and more importantly selling it in tonnes everyday. Over the time, fast food chains have evolved as corporate majors with market cap worth billions of dollars and employing millions across the globe. But what has made these chains about all that fuzz?

With the growing income and aspiration to live a better lifestyle, people are spending  less time to cook themselves. Instead, they consider fast food chains as an ideal place to spend their time and money with family especially on weekends. They aren't much worried about the death trap they could fall into by addicting themselves to such foods. They don't realize that fast foods are much more addictive than smoking, drinking and doping and spending on fast foods is like paying to suffer.

DON'T GOBBLE IT UP

Indifference on part of school authorities is adding to the problem. Schools are increasingly encouraging and inviting fast food giants to set up shop in their campus to increase revenues which exposes children to fast foods from much smaller age. Many schools defend this by saying that they teach students about such health risks, but what's the point in teaching when during intervals they experience no immediate health problem after having these unhealthy foods. After all, fast foods leads to diseases that build up over the time like High BP, Diabetes etc.
Considering the pace with which the fast food chains are expanding their operations, coupled with decreasing levels of physical work and exercises among people, the quantum of damage that fast food chains could do to people’s health would not be a daunting task. Already, obesity levels among children are at highest levels ever in history and if it continues as such for a decade or two, it would not be surprising if majority of the world’s population gets affected by obesity related diseases.
So what could be done to prevent such a scenario? Given the number of people they employ, closing them can’t be a viable solution. However, policy makers could impose some additional taxes and restrictions on them. Importantly, Fast food chains should be barred from setting up shops in schools and colleges. Also, they may be told to put up pictorial warnings on their products, similar to those on tobacco product packets. YES!!! I mean tobacco products because they both posses same degree of danger to human body......
But the question is....IS THIS GOING TO HAPPEN? I have a negative view on that because such decisions require farsightedness and as of now we lack it. However the process seems to have started with ban on sale of fast food at Delhi University....but where are the schools, after all they are the most vulnerable ones.

Closed Mindedness: There's something we don't lack

Economically, wee are fast growing, but where's our inner growth....Are we growing, socially?.....Read on.....

It's Locked

India will be a knowledge superpower of the world!!! It sounds great and the one liner is enough to boastfully expand any Indian chest. But, have we ever had the reality check. India may be producing (literally!!!) millions of engineers, doctors and managers, but how many of them are worth what they are? The answer is a ‘very few’ and it will remain so, until and unless we don’t open up our minds. Open up our minds to the world around us and instead of just criticizing it, learn and strive to improve it.

Our society has been blessed with immense cultural and lingual wealth, however we have closed our minds to such an extent that we seize to learn from them. Instead, we have fallen into the trap of caste, religion and gender based discrimination which has limited the extent to which we could analyze and observe the things with an open and free mind. Our this attitude has led to development of a society where every one is limited to himself. We have developed into a society where women wants reservation for them while opposing caste based quota and various caste groups want quota for themselves while opposing religion based reservation. A society, where being included in a backward category is of so much pride that people go even to the extent of rioting. 
In a country like ours, where the burden of expectations are put upon the shoulders of children since early years, the quality of professionals that are passing out is very much surprising. It itself shows the truth that we are not ready to understand that innovation and management are the qualities that can only be developed intrinsically and not by learning loads of books for a couple of years. It can be attained only through learning with open minds. We don’t need to go too far to experience the management skills that can be developed without studying. Many Indian housewives inspite of being uneducated, take care of households with brilliance. Infact, innovation and management are an art of human mind and not some scientific concepts that can't be gobbled up. 

To be the real innovators, we should try to develop our minds like an open garden where everyone (read experience), whether good or bad, could enter because each one could teach us something that no other can. However, we have made our brain like a closed room with a door, where only those with permission could enter and in process we miss on some important learnings. 

The biggest problem that’s holding us back from proceeding towards more constructive and open environment is lack of discussion. Whether its parliament or a school competition, whatever happens is a ‘Debate’. In a debate, we could not change our stance, because if done, we will be considered a loser. So, even if we realize that our position was wrong, we could not admit it and we forcefully convince our brain that we are right, which eliminates the whole purpose of learning through debate instead what is produced is arrogance. Thus, it is not very surprising that all around the world during parliamentary debates public representatives resort to violence. In contrast,discussion is much more down towards and constructive. During discussion, the participant could change his perspective at any time and cold do so without the fear of loosing. However, inspite of these advantages barring some 5-10 minutes of GD during job screening discussions are rarely popular in our country.
So if we really want to make an impression on the world and if we really want to make our own India, a country that leads the world from front like it always has been in past, we all will need to change our minds and would need to do that urgently..... 

Corruption Magnet

India has been rocked by recent scandals, see what's going wrong

“सरकारी नौकरी में उपरी कमाई बहुत है ”(There’s lot of additional income in government jobs). Ask any person why he prefers the government job over the private one and this will be one reason every person will tell, for sure. In fact, the problem has become so grave that people are not as worried about their legal income as they are about their so called additional income.

Talk to these people about corruption and there will give you two responses. The first one being that, with such a high inflation there’s no option other than asking for bribes, for survival. And what’s included in there list of survival is cars, bungalows, jewellery and servants.

In case of second excuse, it’s much trickier to gauge their views. They will tell you that government should hang the corrupt but scope to earn an additional income(bribes) is one of the reasons to join public service.

However, in light of these notorious views, exchanging the bribes has become a routine exercise and it is now asked so often and openly, that many even don’t call it a bribe. They think, it’s their right to earn for what they do, forgetting that they are already paid to do so.

Show Me The Money

So what's the reason that bribery has become a part of our society? I think it's their Confidence. Confidence that government will not take any action against the culprits. Government employees are assured of their job security so they do whatever they want. People know that until proven guilty (which usually take years) they are not going to be punished. This makes corruption a great tool of earning due to negligible risk to return ratio.

In a country, where ‘Dr. Sen’ was given life term for just speaking against the government, people wander around freely even after acting against the country. So, should Raja not be terminated from parliament or his perks and salary be withhold? Or should election commission not bar him from appearing in next term elections? The answer should be a YES, but unfortunately it's not.  And as long as it remains so, there’s no reason why Raja or Kalmadi or any other person should not commit such a crime.

The only way to prevent corruption from further expanding its wings is transparency. And to start, government should make it compulsory for each and every government employee ranging from ‘President’ to ’Peon’ to be open to public scrutiny and bringing them under the purview of RTI. A strong 'Lokpal Bill' could be the perfect start but as of now, it looks like GoI is not serious on eliminating corruption. The proposed bill have left all the lower level employees out of its ambit and it lacks enough teeth to nab the culprit.  

In addition to this, those under trial should be barred from getting any compensation or perks against their work till proven guilty. If proved, he should be immediately suspended without giving the arrears and should not be allowed in other government jobs and if proven innocent all their arrears should be cleared. This will go a long way to reduce corruption as the punishment will be immediate and eminent.

In addition, government should make it rewarding for people to inform about corrupt officials by giving them preference for their work and jobs.

All these may be small baby steps but if implemented properly , it will certainly clip the wings of corrupt.