Laugh and Lighten Up

CHAITANYA KEERTI





Gautama Buddha made a profound statement, “Be a light unto yourself.“ To this, Osho adds another, “Be a joke unto yourself.“ Osho would say , “I have to tell jokes because you are all religious people, you tend to be serious. I have to tickle you sometimes so that you forget your religiousness, your philosophies, theories, systems, and you fall down to earth.“ Because, in spontaneous laughter, the noise of the mind stops for a few precious moments, allowing us to experience mindlessness or meditation, however fleetingly . The seriousness of `religious' people, however, is heavy on the heart. It creates guilt in people: when you laugh, you feel you are doing something wrong.Laughter, according to Osho, is multidimensional. When you laugh, your body , mind and your being laugh in unison. Distinctions, divisions and the schizophrenic personality disappears.Seriousness is of the ego whereas laughter is egolessness.
Religion cannot be anything other than a celebration of life.The serious person is handicapped: he creates barriers. He cannot dance, sing or celebrate. He becomes desert-like. And if you are a desert, you can keep thinking and pretending that you're religious but you're not.
A man burdened by theories becomes serious. An unburdened man starts laughing. The play of existence is so beautiful that laughter can be the only response to it. Only laughter can be the real prayer of gratitude. Osho warned that taking man's laughter away from him is taking his very life away; it is a form of spiritual castration.

76% of world's population 'overfat'

Melbourne PTI





About 5.5 billion people -up to 76% of the world's population -are `overfat', warn researchers. They said that the new pandemic had overtaken the planet and argued for a change in global health efforts against chronic and metabolic diseases. The researchers, including those from Auckland University of Technology , have put forth a specific notion of overfat, a condition of having sufficient excess body fat to impair health. They argued that how, in addition to those who were overweight and obese, others falling into the overfat category included normal weight people. “The overfat pandemic has not spared those who exercise or even compete in sports,“ said lead author of the study Phi lip Maffetone, CEO of MAFF Fitness Pty Ltd. “The overfat category includes normal weight people with increased risk factors for chronic disease, such as high abdominal fat, and those with characteristics of a condition called normal-weight metabolic obesity,“ said Maffetone.
“We want to bring awareness of the rise in these risk factors, where the terms `overfat' and `underfat' describe new body composition states,“ said Maffetone. The study in Frontiers in Public Health also found out that 9 to 10% of the population may be underfat. “While we think of the condition of underfat as being due to starvation, those numbers are dropping rapidly . However, an ageing population, an increase in chronic disease and a rising number of excessive exercisers or those with anorexia athletica are adding to the number of non-starving underfat individuals.“
This leaves as little as 14% of the world's population with normal body-fat percentage. While it is estimated that up to 49% of the world's population, or 3.5 billion people, are obese or overweight, the well-documented obesity epidemic may merely be the tip of the overfat iceberg.

Source: Times of India, 6-01-2017

Manipur Challenge





Centre must work harder to end the punishing economic blockade imposed by UNC

With the Election Commission announcing the dates for assembly elections in five states, the focus now shifts to the challenges of actually conducting the polls. And one poll-bound state that might prove tricky is Manipur. The latter has been experiencing a punishing economic blockade imposed by the United Naga Council (UNC) since the beginning of November. This in turn sparked off counter-blockades by Meitei groups. All of this has meant increasing hardship for the ordinary people as supply of essentials has been severely curtailed. Manipur has been experiencing periodic blockades and violence for the past two years now. It all started with an agitation for an Inner Line Permit (ILP) system for Manipur, to restrict entry of `outsiders' to the state. It was under pressure from valley-based organisations that the Manipur government passed three anti-migrant bills that encapsulated the ILP demand. However, these bills were viewed by Manipur's hill tribes like the Nagas as tools to marginalise them.
It was precisely to protest against these bills that the UNC had launched the latest economic blockade.
This intensified further when the Manipur government announced the creation of seven new districts by bifurcating existing ones ­ all hill districts were affected. Nagas believe the bifurcation is a clear ploy to divide them by appropriating Naga villages and merging them with non-Naga areas. They also accuse chief minister Okram Ibobi Singh of Congress of using such methods to win a fourth consecutive term. Singh's calculations are simple ­ if the Meiteis vote for him en masse and if he can win over some hill tribes like the Kukis as insurance, it will be a winning formula.
Correspondingly , the Nagas have increasingly come to be viewed as having the support of the BJP-led central government, something that was accentuated by the Centre's signing of a peace accord with the NSCN (I-M) Naga insurgent outfit in 2015. Add to this BJP's poaching of some big Manipur Congress leaders and there are indications that the party is trying to do an Assam or an Arunachal Pradesh on Manipur.But especially given the state's geographical position, the Centre has a special responsibility to ensure it isn't periodically cut off from the rest of the country . Elections of course will demand open and safe thoroughfares. Even otherwise, it's unacceptable that the people of Manipur are repeatedly held hostage to crushing blockade politics.

Source: Times of India, 06-01-2017Ma

Farmer suicides up 42% between 2014 & 2015

Priyanka Kakodkar

Mumbai:





5,650 Cultivators Ended Their Lives In 2014; 8,007 In 2015. Maha In Top Spot With 3,030 Deaths

Farmer suicides in the country rose by 42% between 2014 and 2015, according to newly released data from the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB). It recorded 5,650 suicides by farmers and cultivators in 2014. The figure rose to 8,007 in the latest data. Several states across the country battled severe drought in both 2014 and 2015. Some, including Maharashtra, experienced two successive years of drought.
With 3,030 cases, Maharashtra recorded the highest number of farmer suicides in the country (37.8%). Telangana was second, with 1,358 cases, and Karnataka third with 1,197. Six states of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Karnataka accounted for 94.1% of total farmer suicides.
In fact, farmer suicides shot up even though as many as nine states and seven Union territories recorded no case at all in the NCRB figures. The states which reported nil farmer suicides in 2015 include Bihar, West Bengal, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Mizoram, Nagaland and Uttarakhand.
“Highly erratic and inadequate monsoon in the last two-three years has aggravated problems for persons engaged in the farming sector.Manifestations of these in extreme situations can be seen in the form of farmers' suicides,“ the report said.
While the data showed a sharp rise in suicides by farmers, it also recorded a steep 31.5% decline in suicides by agricultural labourers in the country during the same period. This category was introduced by the NCRB in 2014, a move which was criticised as an attempt to reduce the number recorded as “farmer sui cides“. The suicides by agricultural labourers declined from 6,710 cases in 2014 to 4,595 in 2015.
Maharashtra recorded the highest number of suicides in the category of agricultural labourers as well, accounting for 1,261 cases. Madhya Pradesh followed next with 709 suicides and then Tamil Nadu with 604 cases. The overall number of suicides in the farming sector in the country recorded a marginal 2% increase. The number of suicides by those in the farming sector rose from 12,360 in 2014 to 12,602 in 2015, accor ding to the data. The figures have risen only marginally, given the major decline recorded in the number of suicides of agricultural labourers.
“Bankruptcy and indebtedness“ emerged as the single largest underlying cause behind farmer suicides in 2015 with 38.7% of the 8,007 farmer suicides linked to these factors. Farming-related issues formed the second major cause, accounting for 19.5% of the cases. The data also showed that as many as 72.6% of the farmers who committed suicide in 2015 were small and marginal farmers who owned less than two hectares of land.
“Farmer suicides tend to be higher in states like Maharashtra which cultivate cash crops. These require high investments and are also high risk,“ said farm activist Vijay Jawandhia. States like Bihar where farmers migrate during the lean season are also better able to cope with farm distress, he said.

Source: Times of india, 06-01-2017

Status of tribal development remains poor: Ministry report

The tribal population In India lags behind other social groups on various social parameters, such as child mortality, infant mortality, number of anaemic women, says the latest annual report of the Ministry of Tribal Affairs.

Tribal population, with a vast majority engaged in agricultural labour, has the largest number of anaemic women, the report states.

The community also registered the highest child mortality and infant mortality rates, when compared to other social groups, the data indicates.

While educational achievements on the whole has improved, statistics cited elsewhere in the Report shows that the gross enrolment ratio among tribal students in the primary school level has declined from 113.2 in 2013-14 to 109.4 in 2015-16. Besides, the dropout rate among tribal students has been at an alarming level.

Source: Ministry of Tribal Affair  

 

While the overall poverty rates among the tribal population have fallen compared to previous years, they remain relatively poorer when weighed against other social groups.

Health infrastructure has also been found wanting in tribal areas. At an all-India level, there is a shortfall of 6,796 Sub Centres, 1267 Primary Health Centres and 309 Community Health Centres in tribal areas as on March 31, 2015, the Report points out.

Gaps in rehabilitation

Further, it exposes the gap in rehabilitation of tribal community members displaced by various development projects. Out of an estimated 85 lakh persons displaced due to development projects and natural calamities, only 21 lakh were shown to have been rehabilitated so far, the Report states.

Responding to this figure, Sudhir Pattanaik, Odisha-based social activist and Editor Samadrusti told The Hindu that even the 21 lakh resettlement figure in the Report is questionable as there is no way to verify this data. Based on what he had witnessed in the case of displacement caused by mining plants and captive power projects set up in the past several years in Angul, Koraput, Raigadh and Kalahandi districts in the State, Mr. Pattanaik said that it was tribal land acquisition and not tribal development that was the focus of the government.

“Rehabilitation only happens on paper, and any compensation for displaced adivasi folks is siphoned off by others in their name,” he said.

In 2014, the Central government initiated the Vanbandhu Kalyan Yojana for the holistic development and welfare of tribal population on a pilot basis. However, the Annual Report points out that the token budgetary provisions being made under the scheme to the tune of Rs.100.00 crore and Rs.200.00 crore for 2014-15 and 2015-16, respectively, is minuscule and barely sufficient to meet the purpose of the Scheme given that it intends to cover 27 States across the country.

The Ministry has emphasised that more funds be provided for the Scheme from the year 2016-17 onwards.

Source: The Hindu, 28-12-2016

Neither cultural nor revolutionary

In the government’s new ‘cultural revolution’, culture becomes a mask to hide material realities

We live in ironic times where the establishment quotes Bob Dylan, an anti-establishment figure. Last month, the Prime Minister cited lines from Dylan’s song, The Times They Are A-Changin’ including “And don’t criticise/ What you can’t understand”, ostensibly targeted at the critics of demonetisation.

Demonetisation is an event of biblical proportions. But even as its economic consequences are discussed, what goes unnoticed are the new cultural imaginaries that are sought to be put in place. Rather than see demonetisation as only an economic measure to curb corruption, the government wants to usher in “a behavioural change at all levels of society”, which is a part of “the grand ‘cultural revolution’ that the PM is working on” (M. Venkaiah Naidu in The Indian Express, Nov. 29).

The problem is that this cultural revolution is neither cultural nor revolutionary. Culture becomes a mere appendage to technological transformations which still mask material exploitation. In this cultural revolution, the government still needs lucky draw contests (and prizes worth Rs. 340 crore) to incentivise digital payments and behaviourial change. Also, the revolution will be ushered in through an executive fiat from above rather than it emerging organically from the people.

Emptiness of words

Technology is the fulcrum of the new cultural revolution. As the Prime Minister puts it, in ‘Digital India’, “your phone is your wallet.” But when Dylan becomes yoked to the project of Cashless India and Digital India, culture becomes instrumental and hollow. Otherwise, how is The Times..., reflecting the American youth’s anger against imperialism perpetrated by their own government, quoted by a government that has come down heavily on dissent?

The cultural revolution is supposed to completely overhaul the system. In a reference rich with religio-cultural symbolism, the Prime Minister calls demonetisation a “yagna against corruption, terrorism and black money.” There is, of course, tremendous hardship for the people. But he asks them to endure it to make the nation great and modern. Remarkably, in this vision, there are no cultural revolutions to annihilate caste, the most important barrier to India becoming modern. Nor there are yagnas against class and gender exploitation.

In this cultural revolution without culture, anything goes, so the Prime Minister can wish that “the youth seize the moment and be the winds of change” even after his government has virtually criminalised any youth politics unpalatable to the state. Or a Union Minister can also quote Dylan to critique patriarchy in Muslim community, but not patriarchy among Hindus.

No critical pedagogy

Such a conjuncture is itself a result of India’s failure to build a critical pedagogy. Instead of questioning the fundamental bases of exploitation, the entire pedagogy has been built on a technocratic understanding of society catering to building “meritorious” citizens, a society which merely reinforces existing hierarchies. In this pedagogy, as the philosopher Ivan Illich put it, “medical treatment is mistaken for healthcare, social work for the improvement of community life, police protection for safety, military poise for national security, the rat race for productive work.”

It is on this ground already ploughed by conformist currents that the seeds of the new cultural revolution are sown. How else does one explain sections of the most “educated”, including in the bureaucracy, with a bird’s-eye view of governance, seeing demonetisation as a panacea to all our ills? The crux of technocratic thinking is to paper over systemic causes of issues such as poverty and prescribe technological fixes.

The root cause for our misery in this technocratic vision is a culture steeped in corruption. While there is truth in this, the decadent culture is not caused by the ruling classes in general, but only, as a government representative puts it, “encouraged by Congress and its friends all these years in power.” Again, the accumulation of privilege by the upper castes/classes or of the state-sanctioned plunder of public wealth, forests, minerals, etc. by the ruling classes goes unmentioned.

When one identifies the problem as such, the solution can only be superficial. Demonetisation becomes a magic wand to end corruption. When the Prime Minister tells a rally that the rich are queuing up at the houses of the poor to seek their help in depositing black money, he is not referring to the ultra-rich in India. So, the cultural revolution is already making a distinction between the rich themselves.

In this cultural revolution, culture becomes a mask to hide fundamental material realities. Thus, it does not tell us that the top one per cent of people own 58.4 per cent of the country’s wealth. When the bottom 50 per cent own only 2.1 per cent of the wealth, how does the promised manna of a few thousand rupees in Jan Dhan accounts alter anything?

The staggering levels of inequality have very little to do with black money held in high denomination notes, but are a result of a skewed distribution of wealth, resources and power legally enforced. That among the prominent economies of the world, India is only second to Russia, which is known for its mafia capitalism, in terms of the wealth owned by the top one per cent says something about our rapacious model of development, especially under liberalisation.

The cultural revolution does not tell us that the revenue foregone by the government in corporate income tax, excise and custom duty since 2005-06 is Rs. 42 trillion — an amount which can fund the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act for over 100 years! Neither does it tell us that state-owned banks have written off Rs.1.14 lakh crore of bad loans from 2013 to 2015 or that just two corporate houses alone owe over Rs.3 lakh crore in debt to the banks.

The tragedy is that the questions not asked by the cultural revolution are left unasked by popular discourse. And they will not be until we are prisoners of what the cultural theorist Henry Giroux calls as the “relentless activity of thoughtlessness” fostered by dominant power through its cultural apparatuses. What they do is to transform the genuine aspirations of the people for equality, a corruption-free society and anger against the existing system into sanitised expressions like demonetisation which do not fundamentally challenge the system.

It is in the absence of a genuine cultural revolution that we have reached a conjuncture in which a nation as diverse and unequal as India is asked to place its hopes on an individual leader as a talisman for a cultural revolution. A cultural revolution in which mobile phones will herald a corruption-free society. To unveil this cultural revolution, we need to go back to deciphering Dylan ourselves.

Nissim Mannathukkaren is Chair, International Development Studies, Dalhousie University, Canada. E-mail: nmannathukkaren@dal.ca

Source: The Hindu, 28-12-2016

What can governments do when jobs run out?

Martin Ford writes in the Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future that around 47% of total employment in the US, around 64 million jobs, have the potential to be automated perhaps within a decade or two. Europe is already facing a crisis of jobs. Youth unemployment in Italy stands around 36% while it is nearly 44% in Spain. Thanks to offshoring and automation, we are seeing a polarisation in the labour market that is split between low-wage service jobs and highly-paid top end with middle class jobs disappearing everywhere. India has a mass of low-paying jobs (which masks the problem); its pace of job creation pales in comparison with the millions entering the workforce each year and, according to the World Bank, 69% of jobs in India are threatened by automation. Education and skill training no longer guarantee jobs as the tech landscape is changing and making jobs scarce.

Governments need to wise up to the political implications of the lack of opportunities in their economies. There is also the wider crisis of capitalism to contend with; a lack of jobs naturally means a decline in the number of consumers for goods and services, a fact compounded by the millions who retire each year and spend less as their savings deplete. Ford writes that “if automation eliminates a substantial fraction of the jobs that consumers rely on, or if wages are driven so low that very few people have significant discretionary income, then it is difficult to see how a modern mass-market economy could continue to thrive”.

One way of managing social tensions, he argues, is for governments to implement a guaranteed minimum income for all citizens. Also known as a universal basic income (UBI) or a guaranteed basic income, the idea of an income for all has been around for years – it was backed by the Left and even libertarian thinkers like Milton Friedman and Friedrich Hayek and is beginning to gain traction again among economists.

Proponents like Ford feel that a cash boost via a universal basic income mitigates the political problem of creating jobs and it provides disposable income that can be used to pay for goods and services, which companies depend on. The idea appeals to some conservatives because (a) it boosts the economy, (b) it is easier to administer and (c) it can potentially downsize the bureaucracy which currently manages a range of welfare programmes.

Universal basic income has been criticised and reckoned as unfeasible on two grounds. One is that it reduces beneficiaries’ incentive to work and encourages delinquency and, two, that it would be too expensive to implement in mass societies.

There are good counterarguments to both these contentions. Studies have shown additional income does not really reduce the incentive to work. Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook and a backer of UBI, points to research which shows that people in the US used cash transfers for mostly housing and food costs and that less than 1% of the money was spent on alcohol or drugs. The Freakonomics radio show this year discussed UBI and referred to an income transfer experiment in the town of Dauphin, Canada, which was implemented in the 1970s but not properly evaluated owing to lack of

funding. Research subsequently showed that in poor families that received up to $15,000 a year, hospitalisation rates fell, high-school completion rates increased (as families chose to keep boys in schools rather than press them to work); those with full-time jobs did not reduce the number of hours they worked and women spent more time with their new-borns and pace their return to jobs.

Implementing basic income is, of course, expensive. Ford calculates that an unconditional $10,000 basic income for all adults in the US would cost around $2 trillion. This cost, according to him, can be offset to an extent by reducing or eliminating numerous federal and state anti-poverty programmes – but it would still require around $1 trillion in new revenue. Ford says that governments will need to tax businesses a lot more, rather put this burden on workers and employees who already pay for existing welfare programs. He writes “if you accept the argument that our [US] economy is likely to become ever less labour-intensive over time, then it follows logically that we ought to shift our taxation scheme away from labour and toward capital”.

These discussions in the developed world seem far removed from India as the costs seem prohibitive and as the country grapples with more foundational issues like ease of doing business, addressing education and skill deficits and kick-starting investments while banks are stuck with bad loans. But given high poverty levels and the anger among youth that will inevitably rise following failure to find rewarding jobs, policymakers will need to serious consider basic income, or at least some form of it.

Tadit Kundu reviewed the debate among economists about the scope of implementing universal basic income in India. The idea has the support of prominent experts like Pranab Bardhan and Jean Dreze. Bardhan says that a basic income of Rs. 10,000 per year – about three quarters of the official poverty line – would entail a cost equivalent to 10% of GDP, far more than the 4.2% that the government spends on explicit subsidies. He writes that discontinuing some or all of the subsidies (including tax exemptions for the corporate sector) while retaining expenditures on health, education and rural and urban development programmes can secure a reasonable basic income for all. Kundu points to research which shows poor families in Madhya Pradesh which received unconditional cash transfers ended doing more labour and work (not less). There was also a shift from casual wage labour to more self-employed farming and business activity and there was also reduction in migration caused by distress.

Ideas such as universal basic income are yet to be mainstreamed in India. But as developed countries increasingly warm to the idea (Finland is set to implement its version in 2017), policymakers may find it difficult to avoid discussing guaranteed minimum income.

Source: Hindustan Times, 27-12-2016