Opinion Polls Predict Congress May Loose In South & Northen States While BJP's May Win In 2014 Elections?

By Likha Veer | INN Live

The Bharatiya Janata Party under the leadership of Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi seems to have impressed rural voters throughout the country as the BJP is emerging as the most favoured party in the upcoming Lok Sabha elections.

According to the poll survey conducted by CVoter, the BJP is likely to bag highest ever seats crossing all its previous tallies. The survey predicts that BJP would emerge as the single largest party by winning 188 seats while the final results of NDA is likely to be close to 220 seats. The saffron party had bagged 116 seats in the 2009 general elections.

Fair edge: Women voters outnumber men in 6 states

By Kajol Singh

More Women Show Up At Booths But Remain Under-Represented In Parliament

Political parties may be chary of agreeing on 33% reservation for women and they might still be under-represented in Parliament, but they form an influential votebank that netas can ill afford to ignore as there now are about 33 crore registered women voters, only marginally less than 36 crore male voters.

According to the 2009 electoral rolls, women voters are in a majority in six states — Andhra Pradesh, Kerala, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram and Puducherry. While Andhra has 2.86 crore women voters as opposed to 2.80 crore men, in Kerala the ratio is 1.11 crore women to 1.03 crore men and Manipur has 8.97 lakh women compared to 8.29 lakh men.

While Meghalaya has 6.48 lakh registered female voters and 6.28 lakh men, Mizoram accounts for 3.17 lakh women in comparison to 3.08 lakh men. The state of Puducherry boasts of 3.91 lakh women to 3.63 lakh men on its voters’ list.

It is no surprise that even in states where women do not outnumber men as voters, governments have made it a point to announce women-oriented schemes, with Madhya Pradesh being a good example. Chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan has announced several schemes for women and girl children. Even the Delhi government has a ‘ladli’ scheme and the poll manifestoes of parties are bound to devote more than a few paragraphs to this important constituency.

According to records, while the total number of registered female voters has increased from 32.19 crore in 2004 to 33.75 crore in 2009, the number of women-majority states has come down from seven to six.

There is a slight departure from the 2004 poll data where Tamil Nadu and the Union Territory of Daman and Diu had more registered women voters than men. But in the 2009 rolls, the number of registered male voters has overtaken women in both TN and Daman and Diu. However, Meghalaya made an entry as a state with a higher women voter registration. This is unlikely to stop the ruling DMK from announcing schemes like free stoves and gas connections.

Incidentally, turnout of women has been around 60% in the last two general elections (1999 and 2004) with Lakshadweep recording the largest number of women voters.

Participation of female voters has been traditionally 10% lower compared to male voters.

There has been an upward trend in participation of female voters. In 1962 elections, only 46.6% female voters made their way to the booths which increased to 57.86% in 1998.

The highest poll turnout was in 1984 during which 59.2% women cast their votes.

This has, however, not reflected in the representation of women in Parliament which is about 8%. In over 50 years of Independence, the percentage of women in the Lok Sabha has increased from 4.4 to 9.02%, a figure that continues to be lower than the 15% average for countries with elected legislatures.

Neighbouring countries have already implemented a quota for women — such as Nepal with 33%, Pakistan with 22%. Even Bangladesh has a 14% quota.

Encouragingly, during the last four elections, large but relatively backward states of Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan elected a higher number of women MPs compared to more developed and urbanised states like Maharashtra, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal. Women MPs from these states accounted for more than 40% of the total number of female representatives in the three successive Lok Sabhas since 1991.

On the contrary, the four relatively developed states accounted for only around 30% of the total women MPs in 1991 elections and less than 20% in 1996 and 1998 and about 25% in the 1999 elections.

Statistical Lies: How India’s UP State Fudges Crime Data

Is Uttar Pradesh (UP), India’s most populous state, better governed than richer and more advanced Maharashtra, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Gujarat? If you look at some statistics, the answer is yes.

UP has a reputation for widespread mis-governance, but official data reveal lower disease outbreaks, lower crimes and lower accidents than the other states we mentioned. And so unfolds a story of lies, damned lies and statistics.

Opinion: Why is Telangana Getting Provisional Assembly?

By Syed Amin Jafri (Guest Writer)

How long will the formation of Telangana state take under Andhra Pradesh Reorganisation Bill? When will Assembly elections be held? Will Assembly polls coincide with Lok Sabha elections or held separately? Will Telangana and residuary state of AP have simultaneous Assembly polls or go their separate ways? What are the earlier precedents? These are the questions plaguing the political parties and leaders on both sides of the regional divide.
   
The most recent instance of formation of new states — Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh — dates back to the year 2000. Madhya Pradesh Reorganisation Bill 2000 was passed by Lok Sabha on July 31 and Rajya Sabha on August 9, 2000.

Road Block: Critical Condition Of Indian Pharma Sector

By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE

RESEARCH & ANALYSIS Pharma companies are moving clinical trials out of India as the government imposes new, stricter regulations and delays approvals. Is this the end of the road for a sunshine sector?

They will come to inspect after the horse has bolted from the stable,” grumbles a visibly miffed Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw. The chairman and managing director of Biocon is seated in her tastefully decorated meeting room at the Bengaluru headquarters, where the walls are adorned with paintings by Scottish artist Tom Robertson and bright sunlight pours in through the large windows. 

The Watson & Crick meeting room is named after the Nobel laureates who discovered DNA; in fact, all meeting rooms at India’s largest biotech firm are named after Nobel Prize winning scientists. This is just another sign that Biocon takes its research seriously, the biggest indicator, of course, being that like most other large Indian pharmas, it is working at breakneck speed to be the first to launch an Indian blockbuster drug. And that explains why Mazumdar-Shaw is unhappy. 

Voters Defy Predictions

By M H Ahssan

The Congress party’s surprisingly good showing in India's state assembly elections has not only given the party a boost ahead of general elections next spring, but also provides useful pointers for political parties charting their strategies for the upcoming showdown. Voters have sent out a clear signal that they are not impressed by parties hoping to derive the maximum political mileage from terrorist attacks.

The Congress, which heads the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government, went into the assembly elections on the back foot, having to defend its rather poor performance in tackling terrorism and controlling fuel and commodity prices. However, it was able to hold on to Delhi for the third time in a row, wrest control of Rajasthan in northwestern India from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), and come to power with an impressive two-thirds majority in the northeastern state of Mizoram, after a decade in the political wilderness there.

The BJP retained control over Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in central India, while the results for the Indian-administered state of Jammu and Kashmir, which has completed four rounds of voting and has another three to go, will be known at the end of December. No date has been set for the national polls, but they must be held by May, when the current government’s term expires.

The assembly elections are important for several reasons. They have been described as the "semi-final" ahead of the general elections, and the results will help parties determine their electoral platforms for the big vote.

Congress' results are a reversal of its electoral fortunes in recent years. Since it came to power in May 2004, Congress has lost 16 out of 25 assembly elections. It has not won a single large state since 2005; and the few victories it has managed were in small states such as Goa and Puducherry.

That jinx has now been broken, and what seemed like a terminal slide for the Congress has been arrested. The victories in the polls will give it much needed confidence ahead of the general elections. And allies that might have been thinking of abandoning it ahead of the national vote for its poor electoral performance could now decide to stick with the party.

More importantly, the election results show the BJP’s harping on about the terror issue and its cynical exploitation of public alarm over the November 26 terrorist attacks in Mumbai did not work.

Of the states which went to the polls recently, only Chhattisgarh had finished voting before the attacks on Mumbai. Madhya Pradesh voted on November 27 and Delhi two days later. Polling in Mizoram and Rajasthan was held on December 2 and 4, respectively.

India has been hit by a nationwide wave of terrorist attacks in recent months, and the BJP has often accused the government of being "soft on terrorism". This campaign turned shriller following the Mumbai attacks, after which the BJP issued a blood-red, front-page advertisement in the Hindustan Times, an English daily with a very large readership, ahead of the Delhi polls reading: "Brutal Terror Strikes at Will. Weak Government Unwilling and Incapable. Fight Terror. Vote BJP." It also put up hoardings in cities and sent out text messages to hundreds of thousands of voters, blaming the Congress for the attacks.

At a time when public anger with the government’s repeated failure to protect ordinary civilians from terrorism has assumed serious proportions, it was widely believed that the terrorist attacks, especially the ones in Mumbai, would favor the BJP. Analysts predicted and politicians felt voters would succumb to the BJP's fear-mongering.

Both Delhi and Rajasthani have suffered brutal terrorist attacks, and although they have a sizeable population sympathetic to the BJP’s Hindutva (Hindu supremacist) ideology, the BJP’s tough talk on terrorism did not pay off electorally. Its divisive campaign, while likely to have struck a chord in many, did not get it the number of votes it needed to win Delhi.

The BJP is not the first party to have used terrorist attacks and the fear they generate to win elections. In 1984, when prime minister Indira Gandhi was gunned down by Sikh terrorists, the Congress launched a virulent election campaign that portrayed Sikhs in general as terrorists. Advertisements and hoardings spoke of the threat they posed to national security. “Your neighbor could be a terrorist," said advertisements, which had pictures of turbaned Sikhs. The campaign worked. The Congress won with a landslide majority.

More recently, the Republicans and US President George W Bush played on American fears of terrorist attacks in the 2004 presidential election. That campaign worked too and Bush was elected for a second term.

But the Indian voters, often dismissed as illiterate and ill-informed, did not allow the BJP’s campaign to determine their electoral choices.The election result indicates that voters are unwilling to pin the blame for India’s vulnerability to terrorism on one party alone and that they are uneasy with politicizing terrorism.

The issue of credible governance was more important for voters. In Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Delhi voters returned incumbent governments to power, the BJP in the first two, where welfare programs for farmers and women played a role in keeping voters on its side, and the Congress in Delhi. In Rajasthan and Mizoram, voters endorsed the opposition Congress over incumbents.

What are the lessons that parties can draw from the polls? For the BJP, the election results should serve as a reminder that its divisive politics will not work. As for the Congress, there is a danger that it could draw the wrong lessons from the verdict and go back to its lethargic approach to tacking terrorism. But it needs to see the writing on the wall. Voters are not unconcerned about terrorism, but they also expect good governance, which includes responding adequately to development issues as well as internal security needs.

The semi-final contest is effectively a draw between India's two main parties, the Congress and the BJP, with voters putting both parties on notice. The party that draws the right lessons from the "semi-final" will hold the advantage going into the general election.

However, both parties will have to tread cautiously in drawing lessons from the assembly elections, as the factors influencing them in general elections are quite different, as previous elections have indicated. The assembly elections provide pointers that politicians and analysts will pounce on to make grand predictions for the general election, but past elections show the need for caution. Six months is a long time in politics and the mood of voters can change dramatically.

India is too large a country and too complex a democracy for politicians and analysts to make easy predictions. What the election underscores yet again is that both would do well to approach the Indian voter with more humility.

Systematic Welfare Policies, Electoral Outcomes In India

By Zoya Hasan (Guest Writer)

INSIGHT REPORT There is no disparagement of subsidies in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh because those who attack the social welfare policies of the Congress regard them as examples of good governance by a party of the Right.

Three propositions dominate explanations of the Congress party’s rout, the Bharatiya Janata Party’s impressive victory and the Aam Aadmi Party’s stunning success in Delhi in the recent Assembly elections.

NEGLECTING INDIAN FORESTS - 2 : WEALTH OF FORESTS WITHHELD

Forest departments across the country owe millions of rupees to communities. For 20 years communities toiled under the Joint Forest Management programme in the hope of getting shares in revenue from timber and bamboo sales. 

As forests mature for harvesting, forest departments apply mathematical tricks to bring down monetary share to almost nothing; a few states do away with giving cash to communities. Disillusioned, people are now abandoning the programme. One school of experts questions carrying on with the programme of joint management when Acts giving communities legal rights to manage forests on their own have come into existence. 

INN Correspondents travel to West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh respectively—five states with substantial forests under the programme—to find out how joint management of forests has fared.

When 'Telangana' Separated With Andhra Pradesh State?

By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE

ANALYSIS Fifty-eight years after the unification of Telangana and Andhra region, the Lok Sabha separated them by dividing the state of Andhra Pradesh. After blacking out the live coverage of the Telangana debate on Lok Sabha TV, the Hower House voted for Telangana state in a controversial voice vote. Interestingly, both Congress and BJP joined hands to divide Andhra Pradesh. Only the TMC and JDU staged a walkout calling it a murder of democracy.

According to experts the Congress which is staring at a rout in most parts of the country is likely to win big in Telangana which has 17 Lok Sabha and 119 Assembly seats. The Congress is expected to be decimated in Seemandhra region.

The 'Real Story' Behind The 'Fake' Hubli Terror Conspiracy

Seventeen Muslim youths, some medical and engineering students, were recently acquitted by a Hubli court of terror charges. But how did they get accused in the first place?

Conspiracy cases always make for multiple narratives and the so-called Hubli conspiracy case typifies this axiom. After seven long years, the case was thrown out last month by a trial court in Hubli and all the 17 accused were acquitted.

Indian Rural Market

By M H Ahssan

An Overview
The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers great opportunities to marketers. Two-thirds of countries consumers live in rural areas and almost half of the national income is generated here. It is only natural that rural markets form an important part of the total market of India. Our nation is classified in around 450 districts, and approximately 630000 villages, which can be sorted in different parameters such as literacy levels, accessibility, income levels, penetration, distances from nearest towns, etc.

Few Facts
70 % of India's population lives in 627000 villages in rural areas. According to the NCAER study, there are almost twice as many 'lower middle income' households in rural areas as in the urban areas.

At the highest income level there are 2.3 million urban households as against 1.6 million households in rural areas.

Middle and high-income households in rural India is expected to grow from 80 million to 111 million by 2007.

In urban India, the same is expected to grow from 46 million to 59 million. Thus, the absolute size of rural India is expected to be double that of urban India.

Opportunity
The above figures are a clear indication that the rural markets offer the great potential to help the India Inc which has reached the plateau of their business curve in urban India to bank upon the volume-driven growth.

The Indian rural market with its vast size and demand base offers a huge opportunity that MNCs cannot afford to ignore. With 128 million households, the rural population is nearly three times the urban.

As a result of the growing affluence, fuelled by good monsoons and the increase in agricultural output to 200 million tonnes from 176 million tonnes in 1991, rural India has a large consuming class with 41 per cent of India's middle-class and 58 per cent of the total disposable income.

The importance of the rural market for some FMCG and durable marketers is underlined by the fact that the rural market accounts for close to 70 per cent of toilet-soap users and 38 per cent of all two-wheeler purchased.

The rural market accounts for half the total market for TV sets, fans, pressure cookers, bicycles, washing soap, blades, tea, salt and toothpowder, What is more, the rural market for FMCG products is growing much faster than the urban counterpart.

Features of Indian Rural Markets

Large and Scattered market: The rural market of India is large and scattered in the sense that it consists of over 63 crore consumers from 5,70,000 villages spread throughout the country.

Major income from agriculture: Nearly 60 % of the rural income is from agriculture. Hence rural prosperity is tied with agricultural prosperity.

Low standard of living: The consumer in the village area do have a low standard of living because of low literacy, low per capita income, social backwardness, low savings, etc.

Traditional Outlook: The rural consumer values old customs and tradition. They do not prefer changes.

Diverse socio-economic backwardness: Rural consumers have diverse socio-economic backwardness. This is different in different parts of the country.

Infrastructure Facilities: The Infrastructure Facilities like roads, warehouses, communication system, financial facilities are inadequate in rural areas. Hence physical distribution becomes costly due to inadequate Infrastructure facilities.

The rural bazaar is booming beyond everyone's expectation. This has been primarily attributed to a spurt in the purchasing capacity of farmers now enjoying an increasing marketable surplus of farm produce. In addition, an estimated induction of Rs 140 billion in the rural sector through the government's rural development schemes in the Seventh Plan and about Rs 300 billion in the Eighth Plan is also believed to have significantly contributed to the rapid growth in demand. The high incomes combined with low cost of living in the villages have meant more money to spend. And with the market providing them options, tastes are also changing.

Problems in the Booming Rural Marketing
Although the rural market does offer a vast untapped potential, it should also be recognized that it is not that easy to operate in rural market because of several problems. Rural marketing is thus a time consuming affair and requires considerable investments in terms of evolving appropriate strategies with a view to tackle the problems.

The major problems faced are:

Underdeveloped People and Underdeveloped Markets:
The number of people below poverty line has not decreased in any appreciable manner. Thus underdeveloped people and consequently underdeveloped market by and large characterize the rural markets. Vast majorities of the rural people are tradition bound, fatalistic and believe in old customs, traditions, habits, taboos and practices.

Lack of Proper Physical Communication Facilities:
Nearly fifty percent of the villages in the country do not have all weather roads. Physical communication of these villages is highly expensive. Even today most villages in the eastern parts of the country are inaccessible during the monsoon.

Media for Rural Communication:
Among the mass media at some point of time in the late 50's and 60's radio was considered to be a potential medium for communication to the rural people. Another mass media is television and cinemas. Statistics indicate that the rural areas account for hardly 2000 to 3500 mobile theatres, which is far less when compared to the number of villages.

Many Languages and Dialects:
The number of languages and dialects vary widely from state to state, region to region and probably from district to district. The messages have to be delivered in the local languages and dialects. Even though the number of recognized languages are only 16, the dialects are estimated to be around 850.

Dispersed Market:
Rural areas are scattered and it is next to impossible to ensure the availability of a brand all over the country. Seven Indian states account for 76% of the country's rural retail outlets, the total number of which is placed at around 3.7 million. Advertising in such a highly heterogeneous market, which is widely spread, is very expensive.

Low Per Capita Income:
Even though about 33-35% of gross domestic product is generated in the rural areas it is shared by 74% of the population. Hence the per capita incomes are low compared to the urban areas.

Low Levels of Literacy:
The literacy rate is low in rural areas as compared to urban areas. This again leads to problem of communication for promotion purposes. Print medium becomes ineffective and to an extent irrelevant in rural areas since its reach is poor and so is the level of literacy.

Prevalence of spurious brands and seasonal demand:
For any branded product there are a multitude of 'local variants', which are cheaper, and, therefore, more desirable to villagers.

Different way of thinking:
There is a vast difference in the lifestyles of the people. The kind of choices of brands that an urban customer enjoys is different from the choices available to the rural customer. The rural customer usually has 2 or 3 brands to choose from whereas the urban one has multiple choices. The difference is also in the way of thinking. The rural customer has a fairly simple thinking as compared to the urban counterpart.

The 4A Approach
The rural market may be alluring but it is not without its problems: Low per capita disposable incomes that is half the urban disposable income; large number of daily wage earners, acute dependence on the vagaries of the monsoon; seasonal consumption linked to harvests and festivals and special occasions; poor roads; power problems; and inaccessibility to conventional advertising media.

However, the rural consumer is not unlike his urban counterpart in many ways.

The more daring MNCs are meeting the consequent challenges of availability, affordability, acceptability and awareness (the so-called 4 As).

Availability
The first challenge is to ensure availability of the product or service. India's 627,000 villages are spread over 3.2 million sq km; 700 million Indians may live in rural areas, finding them is not easy. However, given the poor state of roads, it is an even greater challenge to regularly reach products to the far-flung villages. Any serious marketer must strive to reach at least 13,113 villages with a population of more than 5,000. Marketers must trade off the distribution cost with incremental market penetration. Over the years, India's largest MNC, Hindustan Lever, a subsidiary of Unilever, has built a strong distribution system, which helps its brands reach the interiors of the rural market. To service remote village, stockists use auto-rickshaws, bullock-carts and even boats in the backwaters of Kerela. Coca-Cola, which considers rural India as a future growth driver, has evolved a hub and spoke distribution model to reach the villages. To ensure full loads, the company depot supplies, twice a week, large distributors which who act as hubs. These distributors appoint and supply, once a week, smaller distributors in adjoining areas. LG Electronics defines all cities and towns other than the seven metros cities as rural and semi-urban market. To tap these unexplored country markets, LG has set up 45 area offices and 59 rural/remote area offices.

Study on buying behaviour of rural consumer indicates that the rural retailers influences 35% of purchase occasions. Therefore sheer product availability can affect decision of brand choice, volumes and market share. Some of the FMCG giants like HLL took out project streamline to significantly enhance the control on the rural supply chain through a network of rural sub-stockists, who are based in the villages only. Apart from this to acquire further edge in distribution HLL started Project Shakti in partnership with Self Help groups of rural women.

Affordability
The second challenge is to ensure affordability of the product or service. With low disposable incomes, products need to be affordable to the rural consumer, most of whom are on daily wages. Some companies have addressed the affordability problem by introducing small unit packs. Godrej recently introduced three brands of Cinthol, Fair Glow and Godrej in 50-gm packs, priced at Rs 4-5 meant specifically for Madhya Pradesh, Bihar and Uttar Pradesh - the so-called `Bimaru' States.

With large parts of rural India inaccessible to conventional advertising media - only 41 per cent rural households have access to TV - building awareness is another challenge. Fortunately, however, the rural consumer has the same likes as the urban consumer - movies and music - and for both the urban and rural consumer, the family is the key unit of identity. However, the rural consumer expressions differ from his urban counterpart. Outing for the former is confined to local fairs and festivals and TV viewing is confined to the state-owned Doordarshan. Consumption of branded products is treated as a special treat or indulgence.

Hindustan Lever relies heavily on its own company-organised media. These are promotional events organised by stockists. Godrej Consumer Products, which is trying to push its soap brands into the interior areas, uses radio to reach the local people in their language.

Coca-Cola uses a combination of TV, cinema and radio to reach 53.6 per cent of rural households. It doubled its spend on advertising on Doordarshan, which alone reached 41 per cent of rural households. It has also used banners, posters and tapped all the local forms of entertainment. Since price is a key issue in the rural areas, Coca-Cola advertising stressed its `magical' price point of Rs 5 per bottle in all media.LG Electronics uses vans and road shows to reach rural customers. The company uses local language advertising. Philips India uses wall writing and radio advertising to drive its growth in rural areas.

The key dilemma for MNCs eager to tap the large and fast-growing rural market is whether they can do so without hurting the company's profit margins. In case of nestle, company's product portfolio is essentially designed for urban consumers which cautions companies from plunging headlong into the rural market as capturing rural consumers can be expensive.

Role of Rural Retailing
Retailing is the final phase of the distribution channel and it is clear by now that it is availability and distribution that drives growth in rural Indian markets. Hence retailing will be significant and will undergo greater organisation and maturity as is being witnessed in the urban markets, even in the rural markets. Innovative retail models which take into account the nuances of rural markets is the way forward.

Format
Chaupal Sagar cannot be shoehorned into any of the existing retailing categories. At 7,000 square feet, it is too small to be a mall.

It has opted for self-service, stocking its merchandise on shelves lining the neat aisles, it stocks a breadth of products no supermarket can. It offers almost everything - from toothpastes to televisions, hair oils to motorcycles, mixer-grinders to water pumps, shirts to fertilisers... It defies pigeonholing. It is just a very sharply thought-out rural store.

Most of the brands it sells are national such as Marico, LG, Philips, torches from Eveready, shirts from ITC's apparel business, bikes from TVS, and tractors from Eicher.

Facilities
Spread over 5 acres of land at Sehore in Madhya Pradesh: -

Rural shopping malls will be open from 6 am to 9 pm.

Features and facilities at these ITC malls can overshadow those in the metros. The ITC store sells everything that a rural consumer may ask for - sarees to kurta-pyjamas to shirts (in the range of Rs 99-500), footwear, groceries, electronic durable from TVs to microwaves, cosmetics and other accessories, farm consumption products like seeds, fertilisers, pumps, generators and even tractors, motorcycles and scooters.

Banking and automated teller machines will be standard at the malls.

Insurance products for farmers.

Entertainment facilities, restaurants, public facilities and parking space will also be available.

There is even a fuel pump in tie-up with BPCL and a cafeteria.

Parking lot for 160 tractors.

There will be a primary healthcare facility to be serviced by a private healthcare service provider.

Information centres: The company will create the facility for providing online information on commodity rates and weather.

Shopping malls will have a training facility on modern farm techniques.

Farmers can come and log on to the Internet and check the pricing and sell their commodities.

There will also be godowns for storing the wheat and soybean and also for stocking products retailed at the mall.

Business Model
The business model of Chaupal Sagar is linked closely with the E-chaupal initiative of ITC.

Role of ITC is to create infrastructure such as space, computers, and building.

ITC will charge a fee for the services and items sold at the mall.

E-CHAUPAL: E-Chaupal is the backbone of these rural malls. While the first layer (E-Chaupal) provides the farmers necessary information about weather and prices, this hypermarket initiative will provide them another platform to sell their produce and purchase necessary farm and household goods under the same roof.

The e-Choupal model required that ITC to make significant investments to create and maintain its own IT network in rural India and to identify and train a local farmer to manage each e-Choupal.

E-Choupal combines a Web portal in the local language and PCs with Internet access placed in the villages to create a two-way channel between ITC and the villagers. The project started with a pilot in June 2000 in Madhya Pradesh with Soybean farmers. Currently, it covers six states, and multiple commodities like prawns, cotton and coffee with 4000 Choupals.

Plans are to reach 15 states by 2010, covering 100,000 villages with 20,000 Choupals.

Each e-Choupal (equipped with a PC with Internet connectivity, printer and UPS) typically housed in the farmer's house, is linked to the Internet via phone lines or, increasingly, by a VSAT connection, and serves an average of 600 farmers in 10 surrounding villages within about a five kilometer radius. Using the system costs farmers nothing, but the host farmer, called a sanchalak, incurs some operating costs (The IT part of each e-Choupal costs about Rs 1.3 lakh, each e-Choupal is estimated to pay back for itself in 4.5 years) and is obligated by a public oath to serve the entire community; the sanchalak benefits from increased prestige and a commission paid him for all e-Choupal transactions. The farmers can use the computer to access daily closing prices on local mandis, as well as to track global price trends or find information about new farming techniques-either directly or, because many farmers are illiterate, via the sanchalak. They also use the e-Choupal to order seed, fertilizer, and other products such as consumer goods from ITC or its partners, at prices lower than those available from village traders; the sanchalak typically aggregates the village demand for these products and transmits the order to an ITC representative. At harvest time, ITC offers to buy the crop directly from any farmer at the previous day's closing price; the farmer then transports his crop to an ITC processing center, where the crop is weighed electronically and assessed for quality. The farmer is then paid for the crop and a transport fee. "Bonus points," which are exchangeable for products that ITC sells, are given for crops with quality above the norm. In this way, the e-Choupal system bypasses the government-mandated trading mandis.

Farmers benefit from more accurate weighing, faster processing time, and prompt payment, and from access to a wide range of information, including accurate market price knowledge, and market trends, which help them decide when, where, and at what price to sell. Farmers selling directly to ITC through an e-Choupal typically receive a higher price for their crops than they would receive through the mandi system, on average about 2.5% higher (about US$6 per ton). The total benefit to farmers includes lower prices for inputs and other goods, higher yields, and a sense of empowerment. At the same time, ITC benefits from net procurement costs that are about 2.5% lower (it saves the commission fee and part of the transport costs it would otherwise pay to traders who serve as its buying agents at the mandi) and it has more direct control over the quality of what it buys.

By building a network of warehouses near the production centres and by providing inputs to the farmers and test output at the individual farm level, ITC is able to preserve the source and quality information of produce purchased. By helping the farmer identify and control his inputs and farming practices and by paying better for better quality, ITC is able to improve the quality of produce that it purchases. In the commodities market, these two combine to help ITC create the differentiator that it set out to establish in the beginning.

ITC gains additional benefits from using this network as a distribution channel for its products (and those of its partners) and a source of innovation for new products. It is also being used to provide services like rural market research to those interested.

Strategy for Success

Use of ITC warehouses
This will help in cost control as well as better utilisation of space in these warehouses. It will also provide convenience and familiarity with the target customer.

Targeted at Farmers selling to ITC warehouse through E-chaupal
With its network of e-chaupals, ITC communicates its latest commodity prices to the farmers via the Internet or VSAT lines. If they find these attractive, they sell their produce to ITC. The sanchalak (the person who operates an e-chaupal; most of them are farmers) of villages near these malls reckons that half the farmers in his village deal only with ITC. Now, by setting up the mall next to the warehouse, ITC is trying to monetise the footfalls from farmers; that is every time sanchalaks- and farmers visit ITC's soybean factories in MP to sell their produce, they also have the opportunity to spend their freshly earned cash.

ITC realised that the farmers had just got money, that they would spend it anyway, and that they had an empty vehicle with which they could lug the stuff back.

ITC intends to capture the rural folks' out-of-village shopping
The warehouse is one bulwark of its strategy, obviously. But the farmers will come here only after every harvest. To ensure that they keep coming to Chaupal Sagar even at other times, the company is offering a slew of other goodies. Another building is coming up next to the main warehouse. When completed, it will house a bank, a cafeteria, apart from an insurance office and a learning centre. ITC has tied up with agri-institutes to offer farmer training programmes. Then, plots of land have been earmarked to display large agricultural machinery like threshers. Other parcels of land have been earmarked for pesticide and fertiliser companies for demonstrating their products. A petrol pump is coming up as well.

To attract footfalls during the lean season, ITC plans to organise various activities and events including melas,training programs, demonstrations.
The hubs are strategically located to attract suburban crowds as well.

Retail channel for its own brands as well as for other brands
Working through the sanchalaks, ITC first pushed its own products, like salt, into the hinterland, and then invited others like Parachute and Philips to ride on this distribution chain. Today, it plans to similarly create revenue streams around its warehouses.

Financing Scheme
ITC is investing initially Rs 3 crore (Rs 30 million) in each such shopping mall. However it is working out a strategy to make it cost-effective for them.

To keep its own investment to the minimum, ITC is encouraging the samyojak - a local broker or middleman co-opted by ITC - to pick up equity and manage these shops as part owners.

Assisted by four ITC salesmen, the samyojaks will assess demand, ensure just-in-time delivery, manage customer service and keep accounts.

Uniqueness Of the Model: lies in the fact that it works equally well for ITC as the buyer of farm produce and ITC as the seller of desirables.

Charge fees from the brands being showcased at the mall as well as for the services being provided at the Mall.

Results & Expectations
During the peak season, a hub sees traffic of about 200 tractors per day on an average, as farmers come to sell their crops at the hubs.

Initial response: On the first day the store notched up a business of about Rs 70,000-80,000. Footfall of about 700-800 people on weekdays and soaring to 1,000 on weekends with conversion levels of 35%.

Future Plans
ITC chairman Yogi Deveshwar has promised his shareholders that the company would open 1,000 rural malls in India. This is the first one to have come up.

Encouraged by its image as a fair and reliable buyer of farm produce, ITC decided to invest in 5-acre malls, costing between Rs 3-5 crore each, across 15 states. The first five - four in Madhya Pradesh and one in UP - will be inaugurated by March 2004.

The first shopping mall is being set up near Sehore, and the second one will come up in June near Itarsi in Oshangabad district.

ITC is planning to set up 40 rural shopping centres in those. states where it has a presence through its e-chaupals and IT hubs spread across rural Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh.

Haryali Bazaars Bring Organised Retailing to Farmers
Having successfully pioneered a new concept of Haryali Kissan Bazaars in 2002 in Hardoi, agri-inputs focused DCM Sriram Consolidated Ltd. (DSCL) opened eight more (Ladwa in Haryana, Ferozepur in Punjab, Kota in Rajasthan and four locations in UP).

The store complex is spread over 2-3 acres and caters to all the farmers requirements (both DCM Sriram products & other sources): farm inputs ((fertilizers, seeds, pesticides, animal feed), farm implements, spare parts, irrigation equipment, spraying equipment. Further, the uniformed salesman, an agricultural graduate, gives free agricultural related advice in personal interactions or through mobile phones (averaging 20 calls a day). Twenty such stores, each catering to 100 villages, are planned by 2005.

Innovative Rural Retail Models
Indian FMCG firms with rural experience have typically used three rural retail methods--direct distribution structures, van operations and super-stockist structures. Each of these methods need to be evaluated taking into consideration the current network, cost impact of the proposed structure and quality control issue associated with each of these structures.

Direct Retail/Distribution Structures

Project Shakti
Project Shakti - Hindustan Lever Ltd's (HLL) rural self-help group initiative to push the penetration of its products to reach areas of low access and low market potential.

Objective
HLL's conventional hub-and-spoke distribution model, which it uses to great effect in both urban and semi-urban markets, wouldn't be cost-effective in penetrating the smaller villages.

The effort is to create a WIN-WIN SITUTAION.

Through a combination of micro-credit and training in enterprise management, women from self-help groups have turned direct-to-home distributors of a range of HLL products and helping the company plumb hitherto unexplored rural hinterlands.

Concept
The Project is a retail/distribution model that HLL established in late 2000 to sell its products through women self-help groups who operate like a direct-to-home team of sales women in inaccessible areas where HLL's conventional sales system does not reach.

Strategy for Success

1. Social Angle
Create "income-generating capabilities for underprivileged rural women by providing a sustainable micro-enterprise opportunity".

To improve rural living standards through "health and hygiene awareness".

2. Commercial Angle
For HLL, it is "enlightened self-interest".

Creating opportunities to increase rural family incomes puts more money in their hands to purchase the range of daily consumption products - from soaps to toothpastes - that HLL makes.

It also enables HLL access hitherto unexplored rural hinterlands.

How Does It Work?

To get started the Shakti woman borrows from her SHG and the company itself chooses only one person. With training and handholding by the company for the first three months, she begins her door-to-door journey selling her wares.

A Shakti entrepreneur receives stocks at her doorstep from the HLL rural distributor and sells direct to consumers as well as to other retailers in the village.

Each Shakti entrepreneur services 6-10 villages in the population strata of 1,000 - 2,000 people.

Typically,a Shakti entrepreneur sets off with 4-5 chief brands from the HLL portfolio - Lifebuoy, Wheel, Pepsodent, Annapurna salt and Clinic Plus. Other brands which find favour with a rural audience are: Lux, Ponds, Nihar and 3 Roses tea.

The women avail of micro-credit through banks. Some of the established Shakti dealers are now selling Rs. 10,000 - Rs. 15,000 worth of products a month and making a gross profit of Rs. 700 - Rs. 1,000 a month. Each Shakti dealer covers 6-10 villages, which have a population of less 2,000. The company is creating demand for its products by having its Shakti dealers educating consumers on aspects like health and hygiene.

HLL-SHG Business Model
Hindustan Lever Ltd (HLL) India's largest consumer goods company has a large distribution network comprising 5,000 re-distribution stockists and 40 C&FAs (Clearing and Forwarding Agent). Yet this network covers only 75,000 villages directly out of the total 6,00,000 villages in India. A tie up with SHGs can take HLL products to many more villages directly.

Trading opportunities with stable companies with established rural brands (Lifebuoy, Lux, Wheel, Clinic and 3 Roses tea etc) could be a boon to women members of SHGs.

How Does It Work?

A pilot project (christened Project Shakti) was launched in Nalgonda in December 2000 in a small cluster of 50 villages with 50 SHGs and 3 MACTS (Mutually Aided Co-operative Thrift Society, a federation of around 20 SHGs).

There are 3 partners and their roles are: -
MACTS/SHGs: sell/retail HLL products
HLL: supplies products, provides marketing and promotion support
MART: facilitates the process, provides business training inputs

Capacity Building of MACTS and SHGs

Achievement Motivation Training programmes have been conducted to create a desire among women for starting their own business.
Formal training of group leaders and other members have been conducted to help them become successful entrepreneurs.
Level 1: Basic orientation to HLL business and brands.
Level 2: Enterprise management and marketing.
Animators have been appointed (stipend paid by HLL) to promote sale.

'Shakti Day', an artificially created market place in the village with specially devised communication kits is conducted regularly where special discounts and schemes are offered to increase sale.

Results & Expectations

Accounts for 10-15 per cent of HLL's rural sales. The statistic assumes significance as the rural market constitutes over 40 per cent of HLL's total sales of about Rs 10,000 crore.

HLL has seen 15 per cent incremental sales from rural Andhra, which contributes 50 per cent to overall sales from Andhra of HLL products.

Lot of consumer understanding and insights comes from an exercise like Project Shakti, which in turn can lead to product innovation.

I-Shakti', an IT-based rural information service that will provide solutions to key rural needs in the areas of agriculture, education, vocational training, health and hygiene.

Future Plans

Given the success of the model piloted in Nalgonda in Andhra Pradesh in 2001, the company has plans to expand Project Shakti in 400 districts by 2006. By the end of 2004, it plans to cover 100 districts. At the moment, it reaches about 10,000 villages in Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Karnataka and works through 800 self-help groups (SHGs).

The company intends to extend the model across Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and UP and TamilNadu markets. The Shakti vision, is to have by 2007 at least 10,000 Shakti dealers, covering a lakh villages and touching at least 100 million consumers.

Company is in dialogue with non-competing companies like Philips (bulbs) for a partnership to distribute their products through the network that HLL has established. The company is in talks with insurance companies such as ICICI Prudential and Max New York Life to sell policies through its `Shakti dealers'. Sources said that a battery maker is also in talks with the company as it is not a product in the HLL portfolio.

Super-Stockist Channel

Project Streamline
The company had earlier also launched Operation Streamline to further increase its rural reach with the help of rural sub-stockists. It had appointed 6,000 such stockists, the distribution network directly covering about 50,000 villages reaching about 250 million consumers. HLL conceptualised Project Streamline to enhance its control on the rural supply chain through a network of rural sub-stockists based in these villages. This gave the company the required competitive edge, and extended its direct reach to 37 per cent of the country's rural population.

Key Points

To increase the reach in rural areas.

Rural Distributor will have around 20 stockists attached to him who performs the role of driving distribution in villages using unconventional means of transport such as tractor, bullock, etc.

This gave the company the required competitive edge, and extended its direct reach to 37 per cent of the country's rural population.

This strategy has supposed to increase the market share of HLL in rural areas by about 3%.

Control on the rural supply chain through a network of rural sub-stockists, who are based in the villages only.

Others
Marico launched a major initiative into rural markets by appointing 2,400 sub-stockists in the last two years. Recently, Dabur also finished a pilot project for its super-stockists in Patna and has now rolled it out in Bihar, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan. Reckitt has also adopted the super-stockist system in Tamil Nadu and plans to set up such a system all over the country in the next year, with the target of covering one million outlets in the next three years.

Van Operations

Project Bharat
In 1998 HLL's personal products unit initiated Project Bharat, the first and largest rural home-to-home operation to have ever been prepared by any company. The project covered 13 million rural households by the end of 1999.

During the course of operation, HLL had vans visiting villages across the country distributing sample packs comprising a low-unit-price pack each of shampoo, talcum powder, toothpaste and skin cream priced at Rs 15. This was to create awareness of the company's product categories and of the affordability of the products.

The personal products unit subsequently rolled out a second phase of the sampling initiative to target villages with a population of over 2,000.

Project Bharat, a massive rural sampling initiative in two phases. They have carried out one of the largest sampling exercises for this purpose to overcome barriers like lack of brand awareness, ignorance of product benefits and complete absence of any first-hand experience of usage.

Recommendations
The business model for rural retail can be successful only when integration between the profit and social motive is apparent. The social angle needs to be pronounced for it to be acceptable.

Empowerment in terms of economic power, purchasing power, knowledge and information dissemination is crucial for rural retail ventures to succeed. The model should empower the rural consumer and at the same time take advantage of this empowerment through creation of demand for its own products and that of its partners.

The level of penetration except for certain products, has been negligible so far. However, so far as the rural share in consumer expendables like cooking oil, tea, electric bulbs, hair oil, shampoo, toilet soap, toothpaste, washing cakes and washing powder is concerned, their share on an average, is much higher than consumer durables. Though the rural-urban differentials are not so pronounced in the case of durables, the rural market penetration is low with respect to urban areas. However, in case of health beverages and cosmetics like shampoos, nail polish and lipsticks, large gaps exist. Hence these products provide substantial opportunity to enter the rural markets.

Definitely there is lot of money in rural India. But there are hindrances at the same time. The greatest hindrance is that the rural market is still evolving and there is no set format to understand consumer behaviour. Lot of study is still to be conducted in order to understand the rural consumer. Only FMCGs with deeper pockets, unwavering rural commitment and staying power will be able to stay longer on this rural race and hence should venture into this territory.

Now, It's Time For Interospection, Political Calculations And Strategical Moves For All Political Parties In India

By Sonia Rathod | INN Live

INDEPTH ANALYSIS  The results, while anticipated, have clearly shaken up the Congress. But the history of elections in the four States shows no direct correlation can be drawn between victory in the latest round and a general election.

In the end, one result eclipsed all others as the curtain came down on what can easily be called the most watched set of Assembly elections in recent years. The verdict was out on Sunday for the first four of the five States that went to the polls through November-December — Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Mizoram.

The Strange Case Of India's Missing Dams

A complete and accurate database of dams and rivers in the country is the first pre-requisite for analysing hydrological issues and safety, but an analysis by INN shows that the authority entrusted to maintain such records clearly has a long way to go. 

The latest NRLD seems to have been uploaded only recently, since for a number of states, it claims to have been updated till January 2013. The NRLD is certainly a useful document, the only list of large dams in India and it also gives a number of salient features of the large dams in India. The South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People (SANDRP) has been using this document and doing some analysis of the information available in the NRLD.

As per the latest edition, India has 5187 large dams (height above 15 m in most cases, height of 10-15 m in the case of some with additional criteria). 371 of these dams are under construction and the rest have been completed. In case of 194 large dams in NRLD, we do not know the year of construction, which means most of these dams must have been built before independence.

NRLD is not an exhaustive list
NRLD follows the definition of large dams given by the International Commission on Large Dams for inclusion of dams in its records. However, it is far from what you could call an exhaustive list of large dams in India. A significant number of large dams built for hydropower projects in Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, North East India, among other states, do not figure in the list, even though all of these would come under the definition of large dams as given in the NRLD.

To illustrate, in Himachal Pradesh alone, the following dams are all under construction as per the Central Electricity Authority, many of them in advanced stages, but they do not figure in NRLD: Allain Duhangan, Kashang, Sainj, Swara Kuddu, Shongtong Karcham, Sorang, Tangnu Romai, Tidong. This poses a serious threat to safety, especially since many of them are under construction by private companies.

For example, in December 2012, heavy leakage was detected in the surge shaft of the 1000 MW Karcham Wangtoo Project on Sutlej River in Kinnaur district in Himachal Pradesh. The project had to be shut down and the repairs are still going on. Had there been a serious mishap at the project, the impact would also be felt by the cascade of projects downstream, including the 1500 MW Nathpa Jakhri HEP (India's largest operating hydropower project), 412 MW Rampur HEP, 800 MW Kol Dam HEP and the Bhakra complex further downstream.

Incomplete records or omissions make prevention, tracking and management of such emergencies difficult.

The missing dams
Earlier in 2010 and 2011, SANDRP filed a number of applications with the CWC under the Right to Information Act to ask them how a very large number of dams that were listed in earlier NRLD records of 1990, 2002 (both printed versions) did not figure in the NRLD 2009, and many of the large dams listed in 1990 also did not figure in NRLD 2002. The CWC response in most cases was to transfer our RTI application to the relevant states, stating that it is not responsible for the accuracy or completeness of information in the NRLD, it merely compiles the information given by the respective states.

This was a far from satisfactory response from India's premier technical water resources organisation. Was CWC acting only as a post box on such a serious issue as listing of large dams? It was not applying its mind to the information supplied by the states, not raising any questions, nor clarifying the contradictions and gaps with respect to the earlier editions of NRLD? Needless to add, this reflects very poorly on the CWC.

Here, it is notable that the CWC is also responsible for the monitoring policies and practices related to the safety of dams in India as also a number of other aspects. What kind of diligence then can we expect from CWC under these circumstances? Our analysis also showed that many dams that should have figured in the earlier versions (considering the date of completion stated in the subsequent editions of NRLD) were not there. Again, our applications for clarification in such cases were transferred to respective states.

We did get some response from the Central Water Commission and Maharashtra, which was once again hardly acceptable. In case of over a hundred dams, the CWC Director, Design and Research Coordination Directorate accepted the errors in NRLD and promised that 'Data entry errors/ omissions as indicated above will be rectified' without any satisfactory explanations.

Where are our dams located?
A quick review of the latest NRLD raises some fresh questions. In one of its exercises, SANDRP wanted to check how many dams there were in the different river basins/sub basins. This is an important question from a number of perspectives including cumulative impacts, optimisation of dam operations, hydrological carrying capacity and cumulative dam safety issues, to name a few. Ostensibly, this should have been a simple enough exercise.

However, when we started looking at the 5187 large dams of India listed in the NRLD, we found that in most cases, there is no name for the river on which the dam is constructed. When counted, we were shocked that in case of 2687 or 51.8% of large dams of India, the NRLD does not mention the name of the river! In most cases they just write 'local river' or 'local Nallah,' or the box under river is left blank. Under the circumstances, it is not possible to get a clear picture of any river basin, or use the list to identify cumulative impacts or safety aspects or possibility of optimisation of the dams in any one river basin. The absence of such basic information reflects very poorly on the quality of the NRLD, and on the CWC and respective states.

The worst performers
India's largest dam builder state, namely Maharashtra, also has the largest number for which it does not know the name or location of the rivers or tributaries. Out of 1845 large dams in Maharashtra, for 1243 cases, Maharashtra does not know the name of the rivers on which these are constructed! That means in case of 67.37% of its dams, the state has not specified the names of the rivers. It is not just for the old dams, but even for 81 of the dams completed after 2000, that this holds true - for example, the relatively larger 61.19 m high Berdewadi dam (completed in 2001) and the 48 m high Tarandale dam (completed in 2007).

In percentage terms, Madhya Pradesh fares even worse than Maharashtra, as it does not know the names of the rivers for 90.17% of its dams (817 dams out of total of 906). Chhattisgarh is the worst in this aspect, as it does not know names of the rivers for 227 of its 259 large dams. These three states of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh collectively do not know the names of the rivers for 2287 of all dams listed in NRLD. Some of the other states that should also share the 'honours' here are Gujarat (138 dams out of 666 for which names of rivers are not known), Andhra Pradesh (124 out of total of 337) and Rajasthan (71 out of 211 large dams).

It is a disturbing situation that the agencies that are responsible for our large dams do not even know the names of the rivers on which they are located. Every river in India has a name, so if someone were to argue that these rivers do not have names, it wouldn't be an acceptable excuse. Without the names of the rivers and locations of the various dams on specific rivers, we cannot even start looking at crucial issues such as dam safety, cumulative social and environmental impacts, and hydrological carrying capacity and optimum utilisation of the storage created behind the dams. We clearly have far to go to even start knowing our dams and rivers. 

Division: Hyderabad To Add Another Chapter To Its History

By Ramesh Reddy / INN Bureau

Hyderabad is all set to add another chapter to its 422-year-old history by becoming the joint capital of Telangana and Andhra Pradesh for 10 years.

Located in the heart of Telangana, the city will also serve as the capital of Andhra Pradesh, the name which the non-Telangana region called Seemandhra (Rayalaseema and Andhra) is likely to retain.

Under the formula worked out by Congress, Hyderabad will serve as joint capital for 10 years and during this period, Andhra Pradesh will build its own capital.

Which New State Is Being Created: Telangana Or Andhra?

By M H Ahssan / INN Live

In the December of Year 2000, India's 26th, 27th and 28th states, namely Uttarakhand, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, were born. They came out of the shadows of their parent provinces split from -- Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh, respectively. With new capitals, they were to find their separate identities. But the case of the upcoming 29th state, Telangana, is starkly different. 

Its birth would eclipse the parent state itself, reducing it to nothing but a small block (Rayalseema) and a coastal strip (Coastal Andhra) on the map of the country. In case of UP, MP and Bihar, their names and respective capitals remained the same. In case of Telangana, Andhra Pradesh would cease to exist. And Hyderabad will not be capital of Andhra, but Telangana. In the scheme of states, it's Seemandhra that will be born. Telangana would just acquire the name Telangana.

'ARUNACHAL' TOPS IN HANDLING 'CHILD NUTRITION'

By M H Ahssan / New Delhi

The problem is likely to be less severe than UN statistics indicate, given faulty yardsticks. If asked to name the state with the lowest incidence of child malnutrition in India, readers will overwhelmingly pick one of Kerala, Goa, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra, Punjab or West Bengal. But they will all be wrong by a wide margin: none of these states appears among even the top five performers. 

Adivasis: Cheated Of The Constitution

By MOHAN GURUSWAMY | INNLIVE

Tribal people who account for 8.2% of India’s population can be broadly classified into three groupings. The first grouping consists of populations who predate the Indo-Aryan migrations. These are termed by many anthropologists as the Austro-Asiatic-speaking Australoid people. The Central Indian Adivasis belong to this grouping. 

Where Are Our Missing Children?

In India, a child goes missing every eight minutes, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Almost 40 percent of those children haven’t been found.

If you are a parent, go hug your child before you read this piece. We have an epidemic on, an epidemic that gets but a passing mention in the newspapers, an epidemic that is real and tangible only for those parents who wait for the call that never comes, the child who never returns, who do the rounds of the police stations, photographs in hand, who put out advertisements in the newspapers, describing what their child was wearing when he or she went missing, who live a life in limbo. Our children are going missing. One child every eight minutes across India. 

“In India, a child goes missing every eight minutes, according to data from the National Crime Records Bureau. Almost 40 percent of those children haven’t been found.” Wall Street Journal India Realtime.

On October 25, 2012, firstpost.com stated, 

“According to the police, a newborn boy was kidnapped from Wadia Hospital in Central Mumbai. The day-old boy was stolen during visiting hours when his mother, Jasmine Naik (28), was taking an evening walk in the corridor of the hospital, they said. She had left the baby unattended in the ward and was taking a stroll when someone took him away, police said, adding the hospital, run by a private trust, didn’t have CCTV cameras.” 

DNA pointed out in its October 26, 2012 issue, 

“The Bombay High Court in 2009 issued 23 guidelines for enhancing security in government, semi-government and BMC-run hospitals after a four day old baby of Mohan and Mohini Nerurkar was kidnapped from the maternity ward of BMC-run Sion hospital. The HC order said that sensitive areas such as the neo-natal, post-natal and paediatric wards should have CCTV cameras. The court said they should also be installed at all entry and exit routes. However, not one camera has been installed inside the premises of Wadia Maternity Hospital. The management has left a proposal to install CCTV cameras worth Rs 1 lakh pending for three years.” 

In its July 8, 2012 issue, DNA pointed out, 

“Three year old Sangita, who was kidnapped from the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (CST) on June 10, was rescued from her kidnapper at the Haridwar bus station by the Haridwar Police on Saturday afternoon. The alleged kidnapper, identified as Raju, was also arrested by the Haridwar police. The Government Railway Police (GRP) of Maharashtra recently released shocking CCTV footage of the kidnapping. It shows a limping man alighting from a train and wandering about the station before spotting the sleeping family and three year old Sangita, who was not asleep at the time. The man then sat beside her and took her away.” 

Sangita’s parents were lucky that she was found. Not all kidnappings have a happy ending; some children are never found, or are found dead. 

Perhaps the most chilling are the 2006 Nithari killings, where remains of 17 children were found in drains outside a bungalow. 

“For the last two years, more than forty young children and women went missing from a small urban hamlet of Nithari, at the centre of Noida, a satellite town bordering Delhi (India). The local media regularly covered the incidents of missing children; the National Commission for Women also took cognisance of the matter, but the children continued to vanish in thin air. However, in the last week of December 2006, by sheer chance some human remains were spotted at the backyard of a palatial house situated at the edge of the village of Nithari. When the spot was searched further what emerged was a chilling tale of cold blooded serial murders that perhaps qualify as the biggest serial killings any where in the world.” http://www.pucl.org/Topics/Child/2007/nithari.html 

The unimaginable horror of Nithari killings, were further abetted by a lackadaisical police force that refused to take complaints of missing children. 

According to the National Crime Records Bureau (NCRB), almost 60,000 children were reported missing in 2011. Of these, 22,000 are yet to be located. However, according to a report by Bachpan Bachao Andolan (BBA), nearly 11 children go missing every hour, and at least, 4 of them are never found. According to BBA, the number of missing children could be as high as 90,000 per year. West Bengal topped the charts of missing children with 12,000 children missing in 2011. Madhya Pradesh followed with 7,797 cases, while Delhi had 5,111 cases. These are merely reported cases that discount those children who might run away due to various factors, ranging from abuse to dysfunctional homes, and exam stress, or some who might get lost while families travel. Majority of the missing children are just taken away. The statistics are scary – in 2011, 15,284 cases of kidnapping were reported. This was up 43 percent from the previous year. 

Children are kidnapped for human trafficking, illegal organ transplantation, prostitution, child porn racketing, child labour in factories and unpaid domestic help. Many children are forced to beg; some are mutilated to evoke sympathy for more earning potential, and a small percentage for ransom. 

Kidnappings for ransom are on the rise, and in some cases even after paying up, the parents never see their children again. According to a report in the Guardian, 

“Figures from Delhi police show that kidnap for ransom is on the rise. In 2008, there were 1,233 cases in the national capital; by last year that had soared to 2,975. In the first three months of 2011, 802 cases were registered.” 

According to an estimate by NGOs, only 50 percent of missing children are actually reported to the NCRB. Urban slum children are the most vulnerable as they are easily lured into promise of good food and clothes. According to news reports, there are over 800 gangs with 5,000 members involved in the kidnapping and trafficking of children, much in the same way they would traffic drugs, or contraband. Some parents are so poor; they don’t have recent photographs to give the police. Children between the ages of 6 and 13 are the most targeted and vulnerable. Infants are also taken; sometimes from the very hospitals they are born in, or from railway stations, and other crowded places. The children, who are lucky enough to be found and rescued or have the presence of mind to run away, speak of being sold into agricultural or factory labour. 

Why do we have so many missing children and why are they not found? 

It starts with how the investigation is done. Very often, First Information Reports are not registered; just an entry is made into a list of missing persons at the police station, and a photograph of missing child sent across city police stations. Cases are only investigated if the person reporting the missing child files a case of kidnapping. 

Delhi scores better in this regard – if a child is not found within 24 hours, a case of kidnapping is to be filed mandatorily. An initiative called Pehchaan (recognition) in Delhi has policemen taking pictures of children in slums for record, and copies are provided to their families. The Crime Branch has launched an exclusive portal (www.trackthemissingchild.gov.in) to track down missing children across the country. All states have to compulsorily put this facility into place. A PIL filed by Bachpan Bachao Andolan, states that over 1.7 lakh children have gone missing in the country between January 2008 and 2010. In response to this PIL, Supreme Court has instructed the chief secretaries of all states and union territories to ask police stations to register an FIR, and start an investigation. Supreme Court also directed that all police stations should have a special juvenile police officer. 

This may be too little, too late for those parents who have waited endlessly. For those children, who have already become statistics in the long lists, these measures might not be of any help. But we can, and we must push for more attention to the growing menace; we cannot let this get brushed under the carpet.

Nobody’s Missing Children

NGO’s working in the field estimate that barely 10 percent of all missing children cases are registered with the police. An overwhelming 90 percent disappear into the great morass of the Never Seen Never Heard of Again.

“Nobody seems to be concerned about the missing children. This is the irony,” stated a bench of the Supreme Court on Feb 5. The remark is indicative of the apathy shown by the Centre and state governments toward the issue of missing children. The court had directed the Centre and the various states to file status reports on the status of the missing children in the country and in their states in March 2012. The notices were issued by Justices Altamas Kabir and SS Nijjar in response to a Public Interest Litigation by the NGO Bachpan Bachao Andolan on the escalating numbers of missing children in India. Unfortunately, a year later, these status reports are still to be filed by the Centre and several state governments.

The Supreme Court, taking serious note of the absence of the chief secretaries of Arunachal Pradesh, Gujarat and Tamil Nadu despite being directed to be physically present and not through their counsels, threatened to issue non bailable arrest warrants against them. The West Bengal counsel incidentally submitted that the status report had not been filed since there was no instruction, which the SC took exception to. Of the five States whose chief secretaries had been specifically asked to be present, only the chief secretaries of Goa and Orissa were present. Not only the Centre but also the governments of Haryana, Madhya Pradesh, Meghalaya, Uttrakhand, West Bengal and Union Territories of Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Daman and Diu, NCT of Delhi and Lakhshadweep have not filed their status reports, the court noted.

The numbers are scary. According to the figures filed by BBA in its PIL, over 1.7 lakh children had gone missing between January 2008 and January 2010. The exact figures given were 1,17,480 children who had gone missing, of which 41,546 children were still untraced. According to the National Crime Records Bureau, one child goes missing in India every eight minutes. Forty per cent of these children will never be found and will end up as mere statistics in an ever growing list of missing children in this country, children who are picked up from streets, from outside their homes, from railway stations, even from hospitals as newborns. Many of these children will end up trafficked, either as cheap labour, or to beggar syndicates or into the sex trade. For their parents it is a nightmare they live through every single day, the waiting for news that their child has been found, the hoping against hope, catching a sudden glimpse of someone in a crowded place who resembles their child, receiving information from distant places, that perhaps their child has been spotted there, only to rush there and be disappointed.

In 2011, 15,284 children were kidnapped, up 43 percent from the previous year. Around 3,517 cases of child trafficking were reported in the same year, buying and selling girls for the sex trade, for marriage, as well as trafficking of children for the organ trade, as drug mules, into bonded labour in the unorganised sector and to begging syndicates across the country. According to unconfirmed reports, there are close on 800 organised child trafficking gangs across the country. Traffickers target children from the lower income groups, where the families do not have the financial strength or the political connections to pursue their cases with the authorities. They pick up children who aren’t watched over too carefully from slums and congested areas. Merely a handful of the children who get kidnapped are taken for ransom. Sometimes, if the parents pay up, or the police locates the kidnapped child, the child is reunited with its family. Sometimes, despite paying up, some kidnapped children are brutalised and killed.

The highest number of untraced children are from Delhi, followed by Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore, city wise. According to the BBA, the number of missing children is highest in Maharashtra followed by West Bengal, Delhi and Madhya Pradesh and the number of untraced missing children is highest in West Bengal followed by Maharashtra, Karnataka and Madhya Pradesh. Sadly, 75 per cent of missing children in Kolkata and 65 per cent in Delhi “continue to remain untraced” according to a two-year study, titled ‘Trafficking of Women and Children in India’, compiled by Shankar Sen and P M Nair, with a team of ISS researchers. The report also found that sometimes, these children are actually sold to traffickers by their own family or people who know them, at times for as little as Rs 5,000. The survey interviewed over 500 rescued children who were now in homes. Of these, 40 percent told the surveyors that they had been sold when they were younger than ten, the rest were sold when they were between 11 and 14 years of age. Of these, only a mere seven percent of the rescued children stated they had been trafficked by total strangers.

India has the largest number of child labourers in the world, even though child labour is prohibited by the law. Data suggests that 12.66 million children are employed illegally in cigarette, bidi, firework and carpet weaving factories. Children are also employed at construction sites and in homes as domestic workers. Many of these are victims of child trafficking.

NGO’s working in the field estimate that barely 10 percent of all missing children cases are registered with the police. An overwhelming 90 percent disappear into the great morass of the Never Seen Never Heard of Again. The way missing children are investigated by our authorities is another reason why recovery rates are so low. Except for a few states, FIRs are not registered for missing children. The name of the missing child is just entered into a list of missing persons at the police station where it is reported. This does not lead to an in depth investigation. Photos of the missing child are sent to all police stations in cities like Mumbai but no active investigation into the disappearance of the child is done, unless the person who reports the child missing asks the police to file a case of kidnapping. Post the horrific Nithari murders in 2006, the law in Delhi requires a case of kidnapping to be filed by the police if a child is not located within 24 hours of being reported missing. In the Nithari killings, children had begun going missing from the neighbourhood for two years, but the police refused to register complaints or investigate the cases.

As a start, the police have begun sharing an integrated database of missing children, www.zipnet.in, as well as unidentified children found. Some of the parents of the children on the database are so poor, they don’t even have a recent photograph of the child they can provide. There is an interesting recent initiative by the Delhi police where it goes into the slums, photographs and registers all the children so that in the event of the child going missing recent photographs and details of the child are available. What is of immediate need though is an integrated country wide database that allows states to track missing children who are trafficked across states and work in tandem to rescue trafficked children, as well as trace children who might have run away for reasons ranging from dysfunctional homes, to exam pressure to a desire to see a big city. A standard protocol procedure to deal with a case of missing children needs to be put into place across the country by investigation and law enforcement agencies.

The Supreme Court’s annoyance on this issue is well justified. The “last opportunity” given to the Centre and the states to file their affidavits is now February 19. Whether the status reports will be filed by February 19 or not remains to be seen, but the fact remains that we, as a country, are not concerned about our missing children. They disappear into files, remain photographs on posters and morph into mere statistics. The parents live through the nightmare every single day of not knowing whether their child is alive or dead, or if alive, living under what unimaginable conditions. And we need to hang our heads in shame at our collective apathy to this terrifying issue.