Justice will be done.

When this comes from the President of the United States of America, we believe it. Obama stated this in response to the brutal killing of the US ambassador to Libya yesterday. 

Barack Obama vowed on Wednesday to hunt down the killers of US ambassador Chris Stevens and three other Americans during an assault on its mission in Benghazi as suspicion grew that the diplomat was the victim of an organised attack by an Islamist group.

Yes, they will avenge the killing for sure. But if I am to shift this scenario to India my mind refuses to conjure such an image. Can you imagine MM Singh uttering such words and even if he ever utters them will you believe him? We are yet to punish Kasab. We don’t have even have any clue of the Indians who helped him. Never mind terrorism, let us talk about the other burning issue: corruption. Scan after scam has eroded every Indian’s trust in our democracy, yet has he done anything to restore the trust. Instead of assuring us that justice will be done, he discredits the institution that was only doing it’s job. It is similar to a company’s CEO ranting against the auditors whose only job is to set accounts straight.

Yesterday MM Singh was in Kerala to inaugurate “Emerging Kerala” and did open his mouth to give nothing to Kerala. He only promised yet again (this was promised 8 years ago) that he shall give an IIT. God knows when! 

Prime minister Manmohan Singh on Wednesday said the proposal to set up an Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Kerala was under Centre's consideration

 

But our much ‘beloved’ economist who asserted that 32 RS is enough to live in India said that Kerala should not look for food security and but use the paddy fields and import food from other states! It really proves that he knows nothing about Kerala.

Vice-Chairman of the Planning Commission Montek Singh Ahluwalia, speaking at the end of the session, said that Kerala could as well forget paddy cultivation as the State’s food security requirement could well be met by import from other States.

 

For Kerala the low lying lands are necessary for many other reasons, ground water table being the main one. If one is to raise land and construct concrete structures it will be a total disaster. As for food security, Kerala has not forgotten what happened when Mullperiyar Dam issue was at its peak. Tamilnadu stopped sending vegetables and milk and there was none from the center to intervene. In fact one wondered if Tamilnadu was not part of the Indian states but from Pakistan!

Anyway like every other Keralaite let me dream of a Kerala which shall indeed emerge from its lethargic state. Let me also hope that India will one day have a leader like Obama.

Tall dreams I am sure!

28 Rs per day

Our planning commission still doesn’t get it I think. They insist that a citizen in India should join the group of privileged or the rich if they earn 28 Rs per day! Guess the only way to make them see the truth is to force them to show it to the nation. Let our media also have a field day in airing their woes live to the nation while they try subsisting at 28 a day for at least a month.

It was for this same reason that two youngsters, Tushar Vashisht and Mathew Cherian  tried this experiment.

Late last year, two young men decided to live a month of their lives on the income of an average poor Indian. One of them, Tushar, the son of a police officer in Haryana, studied at the University of Pennsylvania and worked for three years as an investment banker in the US and Singapore. The other, Matt, migrated as a teenager to the States with his parents, and studied in MIT. Both decided at different points to return to India, joined the UID Project in Bengaluru, came to share a flat, and became close friends.

Rs100aday is an attempt by two friends to bring to light the issues affecting the common man in India through direct experiences.

This blog has its beginnings in an effort to live on India’s average income - Rs. 100/person/day without rent – to observe and understand the constraints that come with life at a monthly income of 3000.

However, after the Planning Commission came out with the proposed poverty line of Rs. 32/person/day, we decided to spend one week living at that income level in addition to three weeks at Rs. 100/day. Besides coming to the realization that the Rs. 32 figure is nonviable, we also gained some key insights into the lives of the poor

While they were at it:

Hardly a day went by during the past month, in which we didn’t think of food. And no, it wasn’t because we couldn’t get our minds off of planning the first meal we would have at the end of our experiment. Rather, it was because, food was the largest component of our budget at both Rs. 100/day (50%) and Rs. 32/day (68%).

  States like Kerala had a well set up PDS system much earlier than the rest of the country.

It is well known that Kerala had one of the best run and most effective PDS networks in India. Prior to the introduction of targeting, Kerala was the only state in India with near-universal coverage of the PDS.

If these youngsters had a tough time in a state like Kerala, it would be even tougher in other states. Since APL (Above poverty line) and BPL(Below poverty line) is fixed as per the planning commission’s figure of poverty line, the poor of India is yet again squeezed.

Planning Commission on Monday further reduced poverty line to Rs.28.65 per capita daily consumption in cities and Rs.22.42 in rural areas, scaling down India's poverty ratio to 29.8 per cent in 2009-10, the estimates which are likely to raise the hackles of civil society.

It is not as though India does not have enough to distribute through it’s PDS scheme but this very important “Poverty Line” determines who shall get it, even when half of it rots away.

According to information revealed from a RTI petition filed in Delhi, the FCI has spent crores of rupees over the past decade in just disposing off the rotten foods lying in the go-downs.

Will those at the Planning Commission, specially Dr. Montek Singh Ahluwalia dare to take up this experiment?


Source:http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/india-poverty-line-now-lowered-to-rs-28-per-day/1/178483.html

http://rs100aday.com/about/
http://planningcommission.nic.in/news/index.php?news=prbody.htm
http://ccs.in/ccsindia/downloads/intern-papers-08/PDS-in-Kerala-204.pdf
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/columns/Harsh_Mander/article2882340.ece