When Will Indian Politics Wake Up To 'Climate Change'?

By Aditi Kapoor (Guest Writer)

IN FOCUS Initiatives that do not factor in climate resilience and related gender concerns cannot address development challenges, but the manner in which state-level climate action plans are being implemented shows these are yet to become electoral planks. 

The Uttarakhand floods and Cyclone Phailin, which ravaged the coast of Odisha and Andhra Pradesh in 2013, have illustrated how the effects of climate change can erode development gains, greatly impacting the lives of the poor, especially women.

'Heritage Fresh' Targets A Whopping Turnover of 1k Crores

SPONSORED: Heritage’s milk products have market presence in Andhra Pradesh,Telangana, Karnataka, Kerala, Tamil Nadu, Maharastra, Odisha and Delhi and its retail stores across Bangalore, Chennai and Hyderabad. Integrated agri operations are in Chittoor and Medak Districts and these are backbone to retail operations and the state of art Bakery division at Uppal, Hyderabad, Telangana.

From dairy, agri and bakery to a chain of 80 food and grocery retail stores, the Heritage Group has diversified business operations. Jagdish Krishnan, COO, Heritage Retail and Bakery Divisions, talks about their food and grocery retail arm Heritage Fresh and it’s strong brand positioning and ongoing expansion, with INNLIVE. Here are the edited excerpts:

AP Rivers Of Discord Between Telangana, Seemandhra?

By M H Ahssan / INN Live

Krishna and Godavari rivers rise in the Western Ghats and flow to the Bay of Bengal through the states of Maharashtra, Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh. Since the annicuts were built during the British rule a 100 years ago, they provided kharif irrigation to both the river deltas.

After Andhra Pradesh state was formed in 1956, the construction of Nagarjuna Sagar reservoir provided for rabi irrigation in the Krishna delta. Similarly, after the construction of Pochampad dam in 1969, the Godavari delta got rabi irrigation.

How Green Activism Relies On Shock-And-Awe To Deliver?

Every year since the 1980s, thousands of olive ridley turtles die entangled in fishing nets used by mechanised boats or trawlers along the Indian coast. The numbers are particularly staggering along the Odisha coast where they congregate for arribada or mass breeding. The spectacle of hundreds of dead turtles washed ashore makes news every breeding season.

The species and its habitat are protected under green Acts. The Orissa Marine Fisheries Regulation Act (OMFRA) restricts trawling in the near-shore waters. Yet, tardy enforcement allows the killings to continue. On top of that, nesting beaches are being damaged by casuarina plantations promoted by the forest department itself. There is little effort to protect these sites from artificial lighting that disorients turtles and ends up killing hatchlings.

The green activists have been raising these issues with the governments, communities and other stakeholders for decades with very limited success. Naturally, the tenor of activism has only got shriller with time. This has little enthusiasm for good news such as thousands of olive ridleys nesting at one of its three mass-nesting beaches in Odisha.

Unlike the Devi river mouth and Gahirmatha, Rushikulya has been hosting massive arribadas in recent years. These numbers do not weaken the legitimate cases for reining in the trawlers, removal of casuarina and restricting the use of artificial lights. But wary activists apparently fear that celebrating the happy news from Rushikulya will make the task of rallying support for the turtle and pushing a reluctant administration more challenging.

Unlike the ridleys, gharials (the fish-eating river crocodile with a long, narrow snout) reached the brink of extinction in the 1970s with only around 200 left in the wild. The conservation response was to declare their key riverine habitats as protected areas and launch a programme to collect eggs, rear hatchlings in captivity and release juveniles in the wild. Till now, more than 5000 gharials have been released and yet the species remains critically endangered.

Every census, enumerators scout the Chambal river in motor boats to count gharials. But the noisy engines make sure that for every gharial counted, two slide away unnoticed. No correction of this under-estimation is done in order to sustain the picture that gharials are still in need of “emergency help” through the rear-and-release programme.

This makes conservation a lot easier. While logic demands that we mend the hole rather than keep pouring into a leaky bucket, the convenience of hatching and releasing some gharials every season just does not compare with the challenges of fixing field problems of water shortage, sand mining, fishing or riverbank agriculture.

But the so-called long-term issues of habitat protection can be avoided only as long as a fire-fighting mode of conservation can be justified. Reporting fewer gharials serve that purpose. Ironically, gharial numbers may in fact plummet if rear-and-release stops. That, however, is far from an alarming scenario.

If it becomes evident that the gharial is struggling in the wild on its own, conservationists and managers will be forced to ask why. But as long as rear-and-release keeps destabilising the population, the natural status of the species will remain unclear and the factors threatening it unaddressed.

No other species enjoy more media space here than the tiger. Sundry experts and activists are quoted to create a spectre of poaching every time a dead tiger is found anywhere in the Indian wild. Given that the tiger’s usual lifespan in the wild is around 12 years, at least 100 of India’s 1500-odd tigers are expected to die annually due to natural causes, including territorial fights and starvation due to injury or old age. Most of these dead tigers rot or are scavenged unnoticed.

Yet, every tiger carcass found is supposed to be the handiwork of poachers. Since tiger bones fetch more money than skin these days, no poacher would leave the skeleton to rot with the gut. While forest officials are notorious for finding a natural reason of death for every dead tiger, this does not justify the other extreme of sensational take-no-chances activism.

These are just three examples of alarmist strategies popular with conservationists and activists alike. To be fair, this has evolved through harrowing experiences of even the most legitimate cases not being heard. Hard facts and logic are often poor tools to garner public support so vital for pushing indifferent policymakers and cold-hearted business interests. So activists try the green equivalent of the military strategy of shock-and-awe to achieve rapid dominance in the public space.

It works, at least spasmodically. A tiger cub or a panda melts a million hearts and keeps raising much more than a million buck. Some of the support gets translated into actionable strategies including legislations etc. But alarmist strategies play on emotions to succeed. The reaction, therefore, is often knee-jerk. So even when such strategies succeed in triggering action by the powers that be, it addresses issues mostly in all sorts of ad hoc manners.

It is easy though to be condescending. If the social consensus seems to be that no species deserve help if it is not in an imminent danger of going extinct, what choice do the green activists have? If only the ends were happy enough to justify these means.

Naxalites Still Able To Disrupt Elections In North Telangana

By Sampath Shekhar | INNLIVE

The police and politicians in Andhra Pradesh may dismiss the Maoist threat to elections in the undivided State, but a sense of fear and insecurity permeates the constituencies bordering Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh and Odisha.

Though the Maoists have suffered a setback in north Telangana, the red brigade still calls the shots in the border areas of Khammam, agency areas of Visakhapatnam, Vizianagaram and East Godavari.

Adilabad, Karimnagar, Warangal, Khammam, Visakhapatnam rural and Vizianagaram, on the radar of law-enforcement agencies, have 14 Assembly constituencies. They may not be a Maoist stronghold as they used to be a decade ago, but heavily armed squads keep darting across the border to strike and scoot before the police move in.

Despite the claims of the law-enforcement agencies that they are prepared to take on the Maoists and ensure peaceful elections, tension has been escalating with the rebels issuing a call for poll boycott.

“It is true there is some concern, but the situation is not out of control. There could be stray instances of arson or attacks, but they [Maoists] do not have cadres to extend logistical support. They fear getting hit if they venture into our area,” says a senior police officer coordinating anti-extremist operations.

‍‍‍How 'Female Egg Donors' Dupe IVF Clinics In 'Fertility Fraud' To Make Some Big And Quick Bucks?

Despite the stringent laws and absence of any regulatory authority, thousands of fertility clinics have mushroomed in the country over a period of time.

With infertility rising among couples in India, fertility clinics have become a booming business. Reports say that out of 10 lakh annual In-Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) cases in the world, 2.5 lakh, which is 25 per cent of the global share, take place only in India.

In the absence of any regulatory authority, thousands of fertility clinics have mushroomed in the country over a period of time. There is no monitoring mechanism in place on their quality of services and treatment which makes stakeholders, especially couples, vulnerable to various types of fraud.
One such fraud is committed by female egg donors where they hide their personal details, religion, and donation status to cheat fertility clinics.  

IVF is a medical procedure in which a female egg and a male sperm are fertilised in a petri dish or outside the female body. After fertilization, it is placed in the female’s womb to grow as a fetus as in the case of a normal pregnancy. 

Couples, where one of the two are infertile due to various reasons, opt for IVF clinics that arrange either female eggs or male sperm depending on the need in the case.    

“If in a couple, the female partner is not able to produce enough or healthy quality eggs, we need female egg donors and if the male is unable to produce good quality sperm, we look for male donors,” Dr Suparna Banerjee, Clinical Director of Ankur Fertility Clinic, Kolkata and Institute of Reproductive Solution, Uttarpara.

“There is always a high demand for female egg donors, especially, in tier II and tier III cities. This is because while a male can give millions of sperms with natural stimulation, females are administered hormonal injections for 10 to 12 days so that they can produce some 10 to 20 eggs,” Dr Banerjee said.
Fertility experts say that a female’s egg quality deteriorates with each donation and good clinics don’t entertain a female donor more than three to four times.

“Though so far as I know, in many developed countries one female donor can donate eggs six times,” Dr Banerjee said.
Also, only healthy young females below the age of 30 years are considered good candidates for egg donation. These issues are governed by guidelines issued by the Indian Council of Medical Research as there is no law that regulates IVF procedures in India.

All these factors restrict female donors from egg donation and force them to resort to deceiving tactics. Fertility clinics say that female donors hide their age, religion, times they have donated eggs in the past, and their health status.

“While performing health check-ups we catch them red-handed. Like ultrasound can give us an idea of the history of their egg donations in the past but sometimes they can manage to get away with it,” Dr Saurav Prakash Maity, Gynaecologist and Fertility expert, Rashmika Fertility, Kolkata, said.
Dr Maity added, “We can catch them only when we retrieve poor quality eggs from them. 

These experts say that there is no centralised data of donors in India and each clinic maintains its own records. So clinics cannot crosscheck and donors exploit the situation.

“They even manipulate their age and name by getting fake government IDs like Aadhar Card or Driving license issued. Just recently I caught a lady who came with a different Aadhar card with a different name,” a fertility clinic owner in Delhi said requesting anonymity.  

Dr P Agarwal, MD, Sanjivani Test Tube Baby Centre, Sambalpur, Odisha said, “In places like Odisha where infertility among couples is a big issue, we always face a shortage of female donors and we have to depend on states like Chhattisgarh, West Bengal and Mumbai.”
  
Fertility experts say that a female donor earns between Rs 20,000 to Rs 40,000 for each donation and normally those who are in need of money come forward for that.    
Experts have differences of opinion on the question of payment as many feel that they are well-compensated while some call it exploitation by the hands of fertility clinics which force women to go for multiple donations and commit fraud. Some experts also say that since there is no regulator, IVF clinics also try and exploit these helpless women by sometimes paying them as minimum as possible. 

The government is in the process of bringing legislation and the current Assisted Reproductive Technology (ART) Bill is being deliberated upon among stakeholders. Interestingly, the bill says that a woman cannot donate eggs more than once in her lifetime. 
Fertility experts say that this will not only create a huge shortage of donors but increase many types of frauds as well.

“Unless the government maintains a national database of all the donors and gives its access to all the IVF clinics, it is impossible to ensure one donation per female donor in India. It will increase a huge shortage of donors and couples have to pay more also,” the Delhi-based fertility clinics quoted above said. #KhabarLive #hydnews

Forgery Racket Of ATM Cards Busted, Rs 50 Crore At Stake

By Patrho Dash / Bhubaneshwar

A gang involved in cheating ATM card users in Odisha and outside was busted on Friday with the arrest of nine persons including a lady constable, an advocate and the prime accused in the district. Two laptops, three data cards, 50 sim cards, more than 100 ATM cards of different banks, 16 SBI cheque books, pass books and documents of landed properties were seized from their possession.

Malkangiri SP Akhileswar Singh said there are around 50 members of the gang and two of them had been arrested in May this year from the district.

Exclusive: 'Invisible Strings – The IB Report On NGOs'

Anti-growth. Anti-Hindu. Movement-buster. Reactionary. Corrupt. NGOs have drawn flak for one reason or the other. While there is a clear case for cleaning up the voluntary sector, nothing justifies this attempt at muffling dissent.

The Hindu nationalist. The neo-liberal. The grassroots activist. The Leftist. Everybody, it seems, has a reason to hate NGOs.

Some, like political commentator Radha Rajan who edited a collection of essays titled NGOs, Activists and Foreign Funds: Anti-Nation Industry, have charged several NGOs with “de-Hinduising India” and sought to expose “the essentially anti-Hindu activism of some NGOs and activists… and their foreign sponsors, supporters and funders who have their own vested interests in keeping the Hindus in this state of powerlessness”.

EXCLUSIVE: 'India Is Less Hungry Now'

An NSS survey shows that almost all people are now reporting eating two square meals a day. So why then do we need a universal Food Security Bill? In what could further roil the bitter poverty debate in India, a government survey shows that close to 99 percent of Indians say they are getting two square meals a day.

This could also beg the question – is there a need for a universal food security legislation, as the UPA seems so keen on legislating?

The National Sample Survey on Perceived Adequacy of Food Consumption in Indian Households shows that the proportion of rural households saying they are getting two square meals a day throughout the year has increased from 94.5 percent to 98.9 percent between 1993-94 and 2009-10. The proportion of urban households saying the same increased from 98.1 percent to 99.6 percent.

Correspondingly, there has been a decline in the proportion of households saying they did not get two square meals in any month or got it only in some months. Only 0.2 percent of rural households said that they did not get two square meals in any month in 2009-10, against 0.9 percent in 1993-94. In the urban areas, no household said it did not get adequate meals in any month in 2009-10, against 0.5 percent in 1993-94.

These figures will be laughed out by all of us who know that there are a lot of people going hungry out there. If the survey is right, we may well ask, how come India ranks 65th in the Global Hunger Index, below Sudan, Rwanda and Burkina Faso? Can 355 million people who get to spend less than Rs 30 a day on food, medicines and education actually say they get adequate food?

Let’s get things in perspective. One, the survey isn’t about any income or poverty line drawn arbitrarily by economists ensconced in ivory towers. Nor is it based on hard data on certain indicators, as in the case of the Global Hunger Index. It is a perception-based survey. That is, households were asked whether they had two square meals a day every day throughout the year.

The survey, the report points out, did not set any standards of food adequacy.  “How much and what kind of food should be considered as adequate was left to the informant’s judgment.” So it is possible that for some people, just two dry rotis with an onion could be one square meal. Getting this twice a day will be two square meals. So let’s factor that skew in.

Two, this is a sample survey covering a little over one lakh households across different income and social groups in rural and urban India, and not a census, where each and every household is covered. So it’s quite possible for 99 percent households to say that they are getting two square meals a day and for large numbers to face near-starvation conditions.

The right way to look at the survey is to see it as the trend over different time periods. The increase in the number of people reporting that they get adequate food throughout the year and the decline in those who say they don’t is steady. So in each survey, the first category has increased and the second decreased bit by bit.

It is this that is important, regardless of what the poverty industry would like us to believe – that we are going downhill. Just as it is important to see that irrespective of the formula used to estimate poverty, there has been a significant reduction in poverty levels in recent years.

Disaggregated data in the survey shows that some sections are still not better off than others. In rural areas, agricultural and other labour accounted for a higher share of those saying they did not get adequate meals all through the year. In the urban areas, casual labour and the self-employed (hawkers, rickshaw pullers, cobblers etc) accounted for a larger share of the same category. Similarly, scheduled castes and tribes form a larger proportion of this category in both the rural and urban areas.

Wouldn’t, then, it be better for any food security legislation to focus on these categories rather than including people who may be getting more than two proper square meals a day?

In four states – Gujarat, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu – more rural households than urban households said they got two square meals a day throughout the year. The report doesn’t give any reasons for this, but this could be either because people may be growing their own food in rural areas or social support systems are more robust in villages than in towns.

There’s a wake up call in the report for those ruing the dismantling of the socialist-influenced economic management in 1991. West Bengal, with its three uninterrupted decades of communist rule, had the lowest number of rural households saying they got adequate food through the year – 95.4 percent. Even Odisha did better with 96 percent. The proportion of agricultural labour households in West Bengal reporting that they did not get adequate food was 6.9 percent. Only Manipur and Odisha did worse in this respect.

The states with the highest proportion of families saying they got adequate meals through the year are, predictably, the high growth, investment friendly states – Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Haryana, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Rajasthan (where 99.8 per cent of rural households and 100 percent of urban households said they were satisfied) and Tamil Nadu.

There’s a lesson in this, isn’t there?

Special Report: Personal Laws: A Muslim 'Reality Check'

By M H Ahssan / INN Bureau

Fragmentation of religious authority, greater debate and dissent within communities, and increasing literacy and awareness among women have transformed the landscape of personal laws and made the old debate over a uniform civil code largely irrelevant. 

In July 2013, Mumbai’s first Sharia Court was set up. Contrary to the images this might convey, this particular Sharia court is for women, will be run by women and was set up by the Bharatiya Muslim Mahila Aandolan (BMMA).

THE DEADLY REBELS: ASSAM BRACES FOR NEW 'THREAT'

By Simantik Dowerah (Guest Writer)

Barely out of the decades old Ulfa terror, Assam is staring at another similar, and potentially bigger, menace: Maoists. While there is no concrete proof yet that the red rebels have entrenched themselves in the state, stray indications point to that fact they could be in the process of doing so. Some recent cases prove that Maoist leaders from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh are trying hard to spread out in the state by recruiting local youth.

WHY INDIA IS LOSING ITS WAR AGAINST NAXALITES?

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

Five decades ago, the special forces officer Roger Trinquier set about understanding why his nation losing to enemies it outgunned and outmanned. France, he wrote, was  “in studying a type of warfare that no longer exists and that we shall never fight again, while we pay only passing attention to the war we lost in Indochina and the one we are about to lose in Algeria.  The result of this shortcoming is that the army is not prepared to confront an adversary employing arms and methods the army itself ignores. It has, therefore, no chance of winning”.

Revealed: Gross Injustice With Judiciary Budget In India

By Aniket Sharma | INN Live

At a time when the judiciary is struggling to dispose a whopping  300,00,000 cases pending in various courts, an internal study conducted by court management system reveals that as many as 18 states in India are not even spending 1 per cent of the budget allocated to them for judiciary.

An officer associated with the survey report that conducted the study stated while enumerating data of all states from 2006-2011, “Judiciary needs to be separately dealt with in the plans by the planning commission and separate allocation is necessary by the planning commission and the finance commission.”

Lok Sabha General Election 2014 To Be Held In Mid April

By Kajol Singh | Delhi

The Lok Sabha polls will be held between mid-April and early May in five or six phases and will involve about 800 million voters, highly-placed sources in the Election Commission revealed. Andhra Pradesh, Odisha and Sikkim will also elect their state assemblies along with the Lok Sabha elections. 

"The announcement of the poll schedule will be done in the last days of February or at best the first two-three days of March," the sources told INN Live. During the 2009 polls, there were 714 million voters as against 671 million voters in the 2004 Lok Sabha elections.

Analysis: Why BJP-JD(U) Split Will Be Good For India?

By M H Ahssan / Hyderabad

The impending exit of Nitish Kumar’s Janata Dal (United) from the BJP-led NDA is the best thing that could have happened to both the parties – and the polity. Reason: alliances should be based on fundamental principles and similarity of views, not mere electoral math or convenience.

There is a difference between an alliance and a power-sharing agreement. An alliance has to share some core ideas and principles. A power-sharing agreement is about compromising principles and ideals to gain power. In this sense, neither NDA nor UPA is an alliance. They are pre- or post-election power-sharing arrangements.

General Elections 2014 - The 'New India' With 'Power One'

By M H Ahssan | INNLIVE

Almost exactly a decade ago, the day after the 2004 Lok Sabha elections were announced, INNLIVE launched its special ‘General Elections 2014’ coverage, bringing readers a 360 degrees ringside view of one of the great wonders of the modern world. 

In every election since, whether general or state, ‘General Elections 2014’ has sought to empower, entertain and enlighten you with ground-level reportage, numbers-driven analyses, and agenda-setting thought pieces. We will do all that and more in the weeks to come, capturing the sights, smells and sounds of the mother-of-all political carnivals on earth, even as we help you separate choice from noise. 

Sterilisation: Does Government Even Care About Women?

The government of India needs to set up a high-level body to review the entire family planning programme to make it more gender-sensitive.

Jitni Devi broke down as she narrated her experiences in a sterilisation camp in Kaparfora Bihar in January 2012, where 53 women were operated upon at night in the light of a torch in a filthy and dilapidated school, by a doctor who did not even care to wash his hands or even change his gloves during the procedure. 

When benches ran out, women who had undergone the surgery were made to lie down in an open yard, even when some were bleeding and still in pain. Jitni Devi was already pregnant and miscarried soon after.

Tribute: 'Ganti Prasadam', Return of 'Political Killings' In AP

By N Venugopal (Guest Writer)

Assassinated by the enemies of the people on 4 July in Nellore, Ganti Prasadam's legacy, which has taken root in the political culture of the Maoist movement in Andhra Pradesh, will grow and bear fruit. Assassinated by the enemies of the people on 4 July in Nellore, Ganti Prasadam’s legacy, which has taken root in the political culture of the Maoist movement in Andhra Pradesh, will grow and bear fruit.

With the assassination of Ganti Prasadam, a popular Maoist ideologue, trade unionist, writer and public speaker, on 4 July in Nellore, the state seems to have thought it has succeeded in intimidating those who question its brutalities. The horrifying murder might have been planned as a threat to all those involved in public activity through democratic forums.

INN IMPACT: Compared To 2G, Farm Loan Waiver Isn’t Even A Scam

It is tempting to label any report put out by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) as a scam. But unlike its reports on 2G spectrum and coal block allocations (Coalgate), the CAG report on the UPA’s farm loan waiver scheme is not indicative of a scam.

This is not a report the UPA should get apoplectic about, nor anything for the opposition to salivate over. The scheme more or less achieved its social purpose – of providing debt relief to small and marginal farmers – and also its political purpose, which was to give the Congress party an edge in the 2009 elections.

What the CAG report uncovers is the systemic flaws that partially neutralised the objectives of the scheme – and this is not something unique only to UPA schemes. If anything, the Congress should brandish the report to show low the element of scandal really was in this scheme.

The “scam” element is nowhere near the Rs 1.76 lakh crore reported in 2G or Rs 1.86 lakh crore in Coalgate; if at all one should put a figure to it, by projecting the CAG’s negative observations from its sample audits to the whole scheme, the total amount involved in “lapses” would be around 22.32 percent. Given the Rs 52,000 crore spend on the scheme, the amount involved would be around Rs 11,600 crore, the lapses were extrapolated to the entire universe of beneficiaries. Little of it can be equated to graft.

This is what CAG did and what it found out.

The scheme, intended to provide 4.29 crore small and marginal farmers either with complete debt writeoffs or a one-time settlement of dues, was implemented in 2008-09, just in time for the Congress to benefit politically from it.

The auditor sampled 90,576 beneficiaries in 25 states and 92 districts to come up with a report on how the scheme was implemented or mis-implemented. And this is what it found.

One, 13.46 percent of those found eligible for debt waivers did not get them. This is a problem of exclusion, and the worst you can say is the UPA’s commitment to inclusion didn’t work here.

Two, 8.5 percent of those who got waivers were not eligible for it. This is where the scheme has the whiff of a scam, but it is not huge. Even when extrapolated over the entire Rs 52,000 crore writeoff mentioned by CAG, the amount involved would be around Rs 4,420 crore. Peanuts, compared to 2G or CWG or Coalgate.

Three, in 6 percent of the cases, or 4,826 checked accounts, farmers were not given their waiver entitlements correctly – 3,262 cases got “undue benefits” and the rest got less than they were entitled do. Undue benefits certainly reek of a smallish scam or bad implementation.

Four, banks and institutions made hay by claiming things they were not entitled to. For example, CAG found that in some cases the lenders did not incur any interest costs, but they still claimed reimbursements from the centre.

Five, the lenders did shoddy paperwork in helping farmers. If the main purpose of the scheme was to write off farm loans and make them eligible for further borrowings from banks, CAG found that banks did not give debt-relief certificates to 34 percent of farmers in order to entitle them to further loans.

But the real problem thrown up by the CAG report lies not in its main conclusions, but in what one can infer from the figures presented.

CAG figures show that Andhra Pradesh (Rs 11,354 crore) and Maharashtra (Rs 8,951 crore), two Congress-ruled states, apart from Uttar Pradesh (Rs 9,095 crore) were the biggest beneficiaries from the loan waivers. Congress won both Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra (in partnership with NCP), and made unexpectedly huge strides in Uttar Pradesh.

Forty-five percent of the eligible loan waivers (here the CAG mentions Rs 65,318 crore and not Rs 52,000 crore) went to these three states.

But here’s the real issue to investigate. Andhra Pradesh, as the biggest beneficiary, gave birth to the next localised financial crisis – the microfinance boom and subsequent bust soon after the loan waivers of 2008-09.

Andhra Pradesh has been over-penetrated by microfinance institutions, and by 2006 over 85 percent of microfinance beneficiaries were recipients of multiple loans.

As loans were turning bad, microfinance institutions were using strong-arm methods to recover loans, and by 2010 the Andhra government, rattled by a spate of farmer suicides, imposed an ordinance to restrain microfinance institutions (MFIs). By 2011, the Andhra microfinance boom story was over.

Connect the dots, and this is what needs further research.

Andhra Pradesh farmers received the highest amount of loan waivers (Rs 11,353 crore) in 2008. This enabled them to raise more loans from banks, but the waivers would have enabled them to also raise more from MFIs – thus creating a further buildup of loan burden that led to the final MFI bust in 2010-11.

Under the Centre’s debt waiver scheme, loans extended by microfinance companies were not eligible for waivers. But this is what CAG says: “During audit in five states (Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Odisha, Tamil Nadu and West Bengal), it was noticed that a private scheduled commercial bank have received reimbursements for loans extended to MFIs.”

The questions to examine are the following:
Did the centre’s loan waiver contribute to the buildup of MFI exposures and subsequent collapse? Did MFIs use the scheme to recover their own dues? Given that Andhra and Maharashtra were the biggest beneficiaries, was the loan waiver scheme hijacked by Congress politicians in these two states?

More important from a systemic viewpoint, do extensive loan waivers create a moral hazard for further overborrowing and defaults?

Aurobindo, Vivekananda And Gandhi Too Oxymorons?

By S Gurumurthy (Guest Writer)

I am nationalist. I’m patriotic. Nothing is wrong. I am born Hindu. Nothing is wrong. So I’m a Hindu nationalist. So yes, you can say I’m a Hindu nationalist because I’m a born Hindu,” The moment Narendra Modi said this in his interview to Reuters last week, the secular hounds set upon him.

One of the secular hounds is Salman Kurshid, India’s External Affairs Minister. First, Khurshid being a Muslim, his secular credential is presumed. But, he has more claims to be secular. In the Indian political theatre just as hounding Modi is sufficient to prove one’s secular credential, admiring him is adequate to prove the lack of it.