APRIL 14, 2012 VoIXLVIl No 15

E con om ic& P oliticalw E E K L Y

A SAMEEKSHA TRUST PUBLICATION WWW.epW.in

EDITORIALS Abolish the Poverty Line

■ The Regional Betrayal A single poverty line is ultimately arbitrary and cannot
■ Captive of Hot Money reflect the many dimensions of poverty. It would be more
■ Fast Road to Disease useful to look at disaggregated data. The new Planning
COMMENTARY
Commission line has its own problems, pages 10 and 11
■ Abolish the Poverty Line
■ Issues in the New Poverty Line Taxation of Agricultural Income
■ Budget 2012: Tinkering w ith Subsidies
The draft Direct Taxes Code has refused to revisit the
■ The Nature o f Green Justice
issue of taxation of agricultural income; the code has
■ Cellphones as a Tool for Democracy
in fact further expanded the exemption base
■ PS Appu: A Tribute
of farm income, page 51
■ Remembering Krishna Bharadwaj

REVIEW ARTICLE
Locating an Identity
■ The Modern World-System:
Volumes I, II, III and IV
Early last century, lower status weavers tried to critique
the upper caste Ashraf-dominated Muslim politics
PERSPECTIVES in northern India. A documentation of how the politics
■ Canonical Traditions and of weavers unfolded in the United Provinces, page 61
Pedagogical Practices

SPECIAL ARTICLES
■ Direct Taxes Code and Taxation
Bharadwaj and Capital Theory
o f Agricultural Income A reconsideration of some theoretical aspects of
■ Muslim Weavers' Politics Krishna Bharadwaj's fundamental contributions to
in Early 20th Century Northern India capital theory. An attem pt at showing how relevant
■ Popular Research Methodology Literature they are in modern contexts, page 28
in Political Science

DISCUSSION PSAppu
■ Tuberculosis Control
A tribute to an outstanding civil servant of enormous
CURRENT STATISTICS integrity who had a deep insight into land and
■ Finances of Non-Government Non-Financial labour issues and had a different understanding
Large Public Limited Companies of "reforms", page 27

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 I Lee Kuan Yew
NUS
■ ^ 1 fc k ^ B ■
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 APRIL 14, 2012 I VOL XLVII NO 15
Abolish the Poverty Line
10 The obsession with presenting a single number as the poverty ratio must
be replaced by the study of disaggregated information and comparative
interregional studies of important facets of poverty and inequality.
On Some Contentious Issues of the New Poverty Line
11 Apart from the urban headcount ratio and use of the same poverty line basket
for urban and rural India, the new poverty line also suffers from an inability
to be defined in a straightforward way.
Budget 2012: Tinkering w ith Subsidies
15 The ray of hope in Budget 2012-13 on subsidy reduction is not the token
reduction that has been made, but the announcement of a move towards
direct cash transfer of subsidies.
The Nature of Green Justice
19 What are the factors and issues that w ill face the National Green Tribunal as
it sets out to render environmental justice?
Cellphones as a Tool for Democracy
23 CGNet Swara uses social media on cellphones for a bottom-up flow of
information especially among the adivasis of central India and though still in
experimental mode, the case for its use has been proven.
P S Appu: A Tribute
27 PS Appu, an extraordinary civil servant who passed away recently, had a
keen awareness of the problems that plague the people of India.
Remembering Krishna Bharadwaj
28 Krishna Bharadwaj had complete command over the traditions of economic
thought that underpin much of contemporary economic theory and had a
mastery of the Sraffian method.
Sociology at the Undergraduate Level
46 If one looks at the teaching of sociology as a way to inculcate critical social
analysis leading to transformative action, then the existing pedagogy needs
to be questioned.
Direct Taxes Code and Taxation of Agricultural Income
51 An attempt to reignite the debate on taxation of agricultural incomes
and the exemptions which they enjoy, something that is absent in the draft
Direct Taxes Code.
Muslim Weavers' Politics in Early 20th Century Northern India
61 The Muslim League, dominated by elite Muslim leaders, held no appeal
for the lower status weavers in the United Provinces capital, whereas the
Congress with its Gandhian symbol of the spinning wheels did.
Popular Research Methodology Literature in Political Science
71 The social sciences have to struggle to develop living, demonstrable criteria,
be subject to public scrutiny and critique and also add to knowledge because
all the social sciences in all universities have felt the axe.
Tuberculosis Control
79 A response to Nora Engel and Wiebe Bijker’s article “Innovating Tuberculosis
Control in India” (e pw , 28 January 2012).
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E co n o m ic & P o litic a lw E E K L Y
EDITORIALS
The Regional Betrayal........................................... 7
Captive of Hot Money............................................ 8
Fast Road to Disease.............................................. 8
FROM 5 0 YEARS A G O ............................................................9
COMMENTARY
Abolish the Poverty Line
—N Krishnaji ........................................................ 10
On Some Contentious Issues
of the New Poverty Line
— GC Manna ..........................................................n
Budget 2012: Tinkering with Subsidies
—MalaLalvani ...................................................... 15
The Nature of Green Justice
—Kanchi Kohli, Manju Menon ............................. 19
Cellphones as a Tool for Democracy:
The Example of CGNet Swara
—Anoop S ah a .......................................................23
P S Appu: A Tribute
—E A S S a rm a ....................................................... 27
Remembering Krishna Bharadwaj
—KVelaVelupillai ................................................ 28
REVIEW ARTICLE
The Modern World-System I: Capitalist Agriculture
and the Origins of the European World-Economy
in the Sixteenth Century; The Modern World-
System II: Mercantilism and the Consolidation
of the European World-Economy 1600-1750;
The Modern World-System III: The Second Era of
Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy
1730S-1840S; The Modern World-System IV:
Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789-1914-
Class Struggles, Ideologies, Economic
Transformations and Colonialism
—Amiya Kumar Bagchi ........................................ 33
PERSPECTIVES
Canonical Traditions and Pedagogical Practices:
Sociology at the Undergraduate Level
—Arun de S o u za .................................................. 46
SPECIAL ARTICLES
Direct Taxes Code and Taxation
of Agricultural Income: A Missed Opportunity
—D P Sengupta, R Kavita R a o ..............................51
Muslim Weavers’ Politics in Early 20th Century
Northern India: Locating an Identity
—Santosh Kumar R ai ........................................... 61
Popular Research Methodology Literature
in Political Science: An Overview
—Bonita A lea z ...................................................... 71
DISCUSSION
Tuberculosis Control
—A m itM isra ......................................................... 79
CURRENT STATISTICS....................................................... 8 l
LETTERS..................................................................................... 4
SUBSCRIPTION RATES AND
NOTES FOR CONTRIBUTORS............................................6
Econom ic& Politicalw E E K L Y LETTERS
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3 2 0 -321, A TO Z INDUSTRIAL ESTATE
state universities, many of which are like of Soviet Union on 22 June 1941, which
GANPATRAO KADAM MARG, LOWER PAREL white elephants today, rather than open­ were transmitted to the c p i leadership in
MUMBAI 4 0 0 013 ing many more institutions with poor jail by Achar Singh Chinna who returned to
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institutions of higher learning failed to recent archival evidence to substantiate
4 a p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v ii n o 15 M Economic & Political weekly

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this which has been cited by Shobhanlal
Datta Gupta in the second revised and
enlarged edition of his 2006 book,
Comintern and the Destiny of Communism
in India 1919-1943 (Seribaan, Kolkata).
The c p i delegation met Stalin much
later. If Stalin was critical of such a crucial
decision as that of the c p i on Quit India
Movement as he reportedly told the party
delegation, he would have communicated
his criticism through the Comintern or
the c p g b . I believe M Basavapunniah and
Prabhat Patnaik. But Stalin could well
have been wiser after the event.
N Madhavan Kutty
THIRUVANANTHAPURAM
For a N ew L eft Party
he tragedy of the communist move­
T ment in India has been its total sub­
servience to the Soviet Union. Whatever
direction came from it had to be accepted
as a religious gospel to be faithfully im­
plemented. After the second world war
when the Soviet Union found that impe­
rialist powers were conspiring to encircle
and weaken it, it called upon the Com­
munist Party of India (c p i) to fight to the
finish the newly independent Government
of India as it considered it to be a lackey of
British imperialism and should be dethron­
ed by all means including an armed
struggle. The party was badly bruised.
But soon the Soviet Union realised that
the bourgeois government in India was
not a lackey of imperialism. On the other
hand, it wanted to cultivate close friendly
ties with Soviet Union to build its economy.
There was a complete u-turn in its think­
ing and it called upon the c p i to build a
united front with the Indian bourgeoisie
in 1950 as it was anti-imperialist.
Thus began the downhill journey which
ultimately turned it into a party of the
retrograde bourgeois party to serve the
same vested interest and the establishment.
The Communist Party of India (Marxist)
which ruled West Bengal uninterruptedly
for more than three decades could initiate
some measures towards an alternative
path through empowering the people even
in terms of 73rd and 74th amendments of
the Constitution to empower panchayats
and municipalities to act as organs of
self-rule. Rather than distributing land to
Economic & Political w eek ly Q 2H A p r il 14, 2012
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the landless even after full compensation,
it was more concerned with acquiring
land for big corporate houses. It was pre­
cisely the unwillingness of the party to
empower the people in the real sense that
led to its degeneration and decadence.
It appears that capture of power is
not a sufficient condition for initiating
a process of radical transformation of
society. Unless the people are empowered
in a genuine manner, the gains of the
revolution will be lost and ultimately a
coterie in the party will usurp all power.
Hence the path to revolution lies
through mass upheaval where the peo­
ple organise and lead the struggles while
simultaneously reining in the party so
that it does not deviate from the cardinal
principle of “all power to the people and
their elected committees”.
The task before the revolutionaries is
to come together to form a new left party
which should eschew all types of dogma
and sectarianism and which should be
guided by the cardinal principle of all
power to the people. Educating the people
and through mass struggles, a powerful
people’s movement can be built. If people
come to the streets in a mighty wave of
protest, it will be on the crest of such an
upheaval that the ruling classes will be
forced to retreat. Such a party should
not join the cobweb of electoral politics,
but it should not give any call for boycott
of elections. It should educate the mass­
es that ultimately they will have to come
to the streets to overthrow the rule of
the bourgeoisie and its hirelings.
Kripa Shankar
ALLAHABAD
M ining in ‘Schedule V’ A reas
he Andhra Pradesh (ap) government’s
T desperate bid to mine bauxite in
Galikonda, Raktakonda, Chittamgondi,
Sapparla, Gudem, Jerrala (all come under
the Schedule V area category) by circum­
venting the law is an example of how the
trustee of the natural resources of our land
is acting like a front company for indus­
trial houses. According to the Samata
judgment of the Supreme Court in 1997,
no private company can hold or take lease
of the lands which fall under “scheduled
area” for the purpose of mining and
v o l x l v i i n o 15
LETTERS
industry. To get around this hurdle, the
state government roped in the Andhra
Pradesh Mineral Development Corpora­
tion, a public undertaking, which will
mine bauxite in the Eastern Ghats, an area
with green forests, waterfalls and a large
number of traditional tribal inhabitants.
The a p government has signed memo­
randa of understanding with Jindal South
West Holdings and Anrak, which is a joint
venture between the government of Ras
al-Khaimah in the United Arab Emirates
and Andhra-based Penna Cements. The
former will produce 1.4 million tonnes of
alumina per year, mainly for export, with
an investment of Rs 900 million, and the
latter’s production will be 1 million tonnes
of alumina and 2,50,000 tonnes of alumi­
nium a year with a $2 billion investment.
Being a power and water guzzler, the re­
fineries will consume 36,45,000 m w h of
electricity per year and eight million gal­
lons of water per day. Besides these, the
waste produced in the form of red mud
during the extraction of alumina from
bauxite is highly toxic and radioactive.
These will pose a serious threat to the
rich biodiversity of the Eastern Ghats and
also endanger the livelihood of the tribals
engaged in the cultivation of coarse rice,
jowar, pulses, varieties of beans and coffee.
Notwithstanding the social movement
of tribals of the region, who are unwilling
to part with their traditional forestlands,
both the centre and state governments
are slowly advancing their agenda of help­
ing the big corporate houses. Environ­
ment clearance was given to these projects
without a proper evaluation of the related
impacts. The state is trying its best to
vacate the tribals peacefully; if they do
not, they will soon be subjected to over­
whelming force.
Arnab Pal
KHARAGPUR, WEST BENGAL
Corrigendum
‘Why People Should Not Be Poor’
In the special article by Neera Chandhoke
published in the issue of 7 April, the title
was erroneously printed as “Why People
Should Not Be Poor?”
The correct title is “Why People Should
Not Be Poor”. The necessary corrections
have been made in the website. The error
is regretted.
5
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 E conom ic& P oliticalw E E K L Y
APRIL 1 4 , 2012
The Regional Betrayal
Regional parties are stronger than ever before, but they are no differentfrom their national counterparts.
n 2009, when the Congress Party increased its tally in the
I Lok Sabha elections, it was asked if the party was now going
to regain its earlier political predominance. This followed
the resurgence of the Congress in the parliamentary elections
after close to two decades in India’s largest state, its near sweep
in Andhra Pradesh and its retention of power in the assembly
elections in the same southern state. There was even talk of
the regionalisation of the polity having reached a plateau. The
spectacular failure of the so-called “Third Front” - a group of
regional parties along with the left - only contributed to the
belief that the Grand Old Party was headed for a renewed
“national” role in politics.
Yet, after what is widely seen as a disastrous performance in
governance over the past three years, as head of the second
United Progressive Alliance (u p a ) government, the Congress
stands substantially weakened once more as a national force. It
is not that the principal national opposition party, the Bharatiya
Janata Party, has gained from the Congress decline. In the
recent assembly elections in five states, it has been the regional
parties - who many had claimed had reached the limits of their
growth - which have re-emerged as pivotal players in the
national arena, and on whose support the government’s survival
continues to hinge.
Parties that are constituents of the u p a like the Trinamool
Congress, which enjoys enormous support in West Bengal,
hedges its support to the ruling coalition. And the Samajwadi
Party, which lends support to the u p a from outside and is now
the dominant force in Uttar Pradesh, has begun to use its influ­
ence in India’s largest state to advance its interests. Other power­
ful regional parties like the Akali Dal, the Janata Dal (United) and
the Biju Janata Dal, while sitting in the opposition in Parliament
have weathered anti-incumbency at home to entrench them­
selves in power in Punjab, Bihar and Orissa, respectively. Even
in the traditional Congress strongholds such as Andhra Pradesh,
new regional threats like the y s r Congress and the Telangana
Rashtra Samiti have emerged.
In short, the 2009 parliamentary elections were nothing but
an aberration. The regionalisation and federalisation process in
the Indian polity that began in the late 1980s only continues to
grow in strength. But the larger question is if there has been
any substantial change over the years in the character of these
Econom ic& Politicalw EEKLY BBSS a p r i l 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15
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federal/regional parties. They emerged either to articulate
federal/regional concerns that had been neglected in the
“Congress system” or were developed by newly affluent sections
of the regional bourgeoisie as new power centres. Normative
commentaries about this process have tended to argue that this is
in line with the broader democratisation of Indian society and is
therefore a positive feature. The growth of the regional formations
has also brought about a form of circulation of elites, providing
representation to the hitherto marginalised but demographically
numerous sections of Indian society. Many from the left have
also argued that the rise of regional parties will help diversify
economic policymaking, which is otherwise characterised by a
consensus on neo-liberalism among the major national parties.
Close to three decades after the process began, the experience
with the regionalisation of politics has been negative, the only
positive being the weakening of the dominance of the Congress.
The regional parties have tended to be as authoritarian as, if not
more than, the national Congress and the b jp . In many states
they have been sectarian in their concerns, their developmen-
talism has been limited to handing out patronage and they
have certainly not formulated any coherent alternative to neo­
liberalism. Most regional parties have not even provided much
of an outlook on important issues related to the national political
economy or foreign policy; they have preferred to toe policies
formulated by their dominant national partner at the centre.
Even the politics of identity - built on the upliftment and repre­
sentation of the majority middle/intermediary castes - has not
led to the weakening of the caste hierarchy or casteism. Instead,
identity politics of this kind has tended to reify these given
identities. Wearing caste labels has been shown to be a form of
assertion which has hurt the interests of the most marginalised
sections such as the dalits and adivasis.
In sum, there now needs to be a new wave of democratisation
that takes on authoritarianism, narrow identitarianism and
sectarianism that have become all-pervasive in contemporary
Indian politics. This is practised both by the dominant centre-right
and right-wing national and regional parties. Will those who claim
to offer a genuine and progressive alternative to the dominant
political parties on political economy show their mettle and
lead this wave? The answer will lie in the strength of the new
challenges that are emerging to the existing regional forces.
7
EDITORIALS =. =.
Captive of Hot Money
Given the power of hot money to steer the Indian economy public policy has become its slave.
he dramatic change in the overall balance of payments
T (bop) from the first quarter (April-June) to the third quarter
(October-December) of 2011-12, accompanied, as it was, by
a deceleration of the growth of the real gross domestic product
(g d p ), suggests that policy tinkering is not yielding the desired
effect. One might recall the rather amateurish meddling with
policy mechanisms to revive the gush of net capital inflows - a
hiking of the limits on foreign investment in government and
corporate debt instruments, a freeing of interest rates on non­
resident deposits, a more liberal definition of a “qualified foreign
investor”, and now, on the anvil, further development of the
bond markets to attract foreign institutional buyers. The sundry
financial pundits in the commercial media keep complaining of
a “policy paralysis”. And, of course, what a media storm in a
teacup over the mere mention of a proposed retroactive change
in the Income Tax Act to upturn the Supreme Court verdict on
the Vodafone case. The government is now being dubbed im­
moral and even vindictive. Besides, of course, the media col­
umnists of the institutionally-funded think tanks are crying
hoarse about what will happen to India’s net international capi­
tal flows. But rather than jumping into the fray like these doy­
ens to criticise the government, it might be better to take a quick
look at the recent b o p data and try to discern patterns, if any.
The current account deficit of the b o p has been widening
from the first quarter ($15,801 billion) to the third quarter
($19,419 billion) of 2011-12 but with the surplus on the capital
account falling from $22,253 billion to $7,988 billion, the overall
balance (after taking account of errors and omissions) turned
negative by $12,812 billion in the third quarter (October-Decem­
ber). The merchandise trade deficit has worsened quite signifi­
cantly - it was $47,721 billion in October-December of 2011-12
compared to $31,522 billion in the corresponding period of
2010-11. (All comparisons hereafter are between the two corre­
sponding quarters of 2011-12 and 2010-11.) And, exports of soft­
ware services have not been buoyant enough ($16,123 billion vs
$14,743 billion), though private transfers have done much better
($18,009 billion vs $14,081 billion).
On the capital account, it is net portfolio investment that has
fallen dramatically - in the third quarter of 2011-12 this was a mere
$1,898 billion compared to $6,299 billion in the corresponding
Fast Road to Disease
India’s fast food products must be subject to mandatory labelling.
he role of fast or “junk” food with its concentration of
T fats, sugar and salt in the rapid multiplication of non-
communicable lifestyle diseases has been the subject of
countless studies over the past few decades, especially in the
8 APRIL
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, "^ — — = =
period of 2010-11. Indeed, net foreign institutional investment in
October-March was only $1,861 billion compared to $7,158 billion
earlier, and, net commercial borrowings only $1,441 billion
compared to $3,877 billion. Non-resident deposits have, however,
done well, thanks to the greater opportunity n r i s have to
arbitrage on higher interest rate differentials.
Surely, the recent awful performance of the Indian economy on
the b o p front is due to economic stagnation in the European Union,
in Japan, as also the United States where growth is sluggish at
best. The eurozone’s financial crisis deepened in the second half
of last year, and with the sovereign debt crisis nowhere being
resolved, global capital retreated from the emerging markets to go
back to its safe haven - us treasuries. As far as India and other
emerging economies are concerned, there is a pattern to such flows
of hot money. Between 2003-04 and 2007-08, net capital flows
far in excess of the current account deficit on the b o p brought
about the “wealth effect”, the expansion of liquidity and, in turn,
consumer credit, the Le Grande Boujfe (self-indulgent, elite con­
sumption), and the release of “animal spirits” to boost private
investment, leading to high growth until 2007-08. But net capital
inflows turned quite abruptly into outflows with the outbreak of
the financial crisis in September 2008. Nevertheless, with the
first signs of an ebbing of the crisis and with easy monetary policy
in the developed capitalist world, the emerging markets, includ­
ing India, once again became favourites. There followed a repeat
of the wealth effect, liquidity, booming consumer credit and so
on, for high growth only to fall again with the eurozone’s crisis.
The fate of the Indian economy has thus become a function of
abrupt changes in the direction of net capital flows, and the
Indian government, realising this pattern, does all it can to please
the financial markets, for it is these (metaphorical) financial
shopping centres that have the power to engineer booms and
busts with the volatile inflows and outflows of capital. If the
United Progressive Alliance-11 government manages to extricate
itself from the political jam of its making, it will do all it can to
attract (foreign) hot money and retain it. This imperative over­
rides everything else. But policy tinkering of the kind that the
financial pundits keep harping on is not the answer to the real
economic problems of the Indian people. For now, however, the
Indian economy is a prisoner of (foreign) hot money.
west. (A classic book from the United States with a title that says
it all is Fast Food Nation.)
Now, the Centre for Science and Environment (c s e ), continu­
ing with its pioneering examination of our air, water and
14, 2012 VOL XLVII NO 15 DBO Economic &Political w eekly

food, has produced the first comprehensive study in India
that analyses the nutritional claims of top-selling fast food
brands/chains. The c s e finds that the 16 major brands of
noodles, burgers, fried chicken, potato chips and packaged
aloo bhujia carry more salt and trans fats in one serving than
that allowed by the National Institute of Nutrition and the
World Health Organisation. Worse, some of these brands
falsely claim that they contained zero trans fats while others
do not even mention them. Although the c s e report, backed
by laboratory testing, restates what is already known, the
facts are disturbing and ought to provoke some action. The
c s e has demanded mandatory labelling for serving size,
trans fats, saturated fats, sugars and salts in addition to the
compulsory mention of nutritional information for all pro­
cessed foods including takeaways. It has also asked that junk
food be banned from schools and places where children have
easy access to such products.
Interestingly, the Delhi High Court has already asked the
Food Safety and Standards Authority of India ( f s s a i ) to put
together guidelines for a ban on sale of junk food and carbonated
beverages within a 1,500 ft radius of schools. In January, it
gave the f s s a i six months to do so and allowed it to invite the
food processor and restaurant associations for consultation.
The high court is hearing a public interest litigation ( p il) filed
by a non-governmental organisation which is appalled by
school canteens not only selling junk food but even tying up
with certain chains. Almost all these brands appeal to young
consumers with seductive advertising that feature glamorous
celebrities, adventure sports, the offer of free toys and popular
consumer accessories. In other parts of the world, health
advocacy groups have demanded restrictions on this kind of
advertising. Something similar needs to be done in India if
we are to prevent the rapid increase of obesity amongst
urban middle class children who are habituated to fatty and
sugary snacks and drinks from early childhood. Amongst other
problems this also leads to poor concentration and physical
restlessness in such children.
Few consumers pay attention to the fine print of the
ingredients - if they are at all printed - on fast food packages.
EDITORIALS
Even those who do find it difficult to relate this information to
health risks. In India, processed food is considered trans-fat
free if it is less than 2 grams per serving. But few consumers
stop at one serving. Also, many beverages list the salt, sugar
and sodium content per 100 ml, but these drinks are hardly
had in 100 ml portions. Besides, the veracity of claims of real
fruits, multigrains and other healthy ingredients being used
in these foods is open to contestation. Added to this is the
fact that the fast food sector, estimated to be a Rs 6,750 crore
annual business, is believed to be growing at almost
35-40% per year and the big brands have service outlets in stra­
tegic places such as the highways, railway stations, cinema
theatres, exhibitions and sports stadiums. Many of them have
also customised their offerings to please the local palate by
marrying Indian and western tastes. Easy availability, attrac­
tive packaging, an all-out appeal to the taste buds, an emphasis
on hygiene and relentless advertising thus make these items
attractive to consumers from the lower middle class upwards.
Coupled with these factors is an even more significant one.
Indians, like most Asians, have a greater genetic disposition to
storing more body fat per kg.
It is important therefore that the c s e report does not go
the way of most such reports. The central government had
told the Delhi High Court that there is no system to identify
what items can be classified as junk food and stated that a
committee would be appointed under the f s s a i to do so.
This could be a first step. Other options include the imposition
of sugar and fat tax on manufacturers and restaurants
as has been done in a number of European countries. How­
ever, media reports and impressionistic data say that the
impact of such action has not been very encouraging. Ulti­
mately, like the war on smoking only relentless education
and awareness campaigns can lead to consumer resistance.
The campaigns, drawing in nutritionists and physicians,
should contain information on nutrition and healthier alter­
natives and teach consumers to read labels for health risks.
These campaigns must run parallel to the government’s moves
to make labelling of nutrition and risk factors mandatory
and prominent.

FROM 50 YEARS AGO
9 Journal o! Current economic ant) political Sflalrf
VOL XIV, NO 15, APRIL 14,1962
EDITORIALS
Asian Economic Cooperation
The political situation in many of the coun­
tries of South-East Asia still remains un­
settled and economic development is still
hampered by the divisive forces of colonial
entanglements that have by no means
disappeared with the withdrawal of the
colonial powers. Granted all that, it is, nev­
ertheless, a sad commentary on the quality
of statesmanship in the countries of
South-East Asia that, in spite of so many
things that are common in their heritage,
so much similarity in their problems of
development and opposition by all of them
to the colonial system, it has not been possi­
ble for these countries so far to make a
cooperative effort for regional economic
development, let alone achieve any measure
of political integration...
In each of these countries foreign exchange
is an insurmountable obstacle to a higher
rate of growth and hence their development
strategy has invariably been to promote import
substituting industries...
Some small countries of the region seem
to be already prepared for a measure of
regional cooperation. Malaya, Thailand and
Philippines have formed what is known as
Association of South-East Asia. And Burma
and Japan, it is reported, are shortly going to
join. True, the ASA has not been able to do
much yet; at a recent conference of the for­
eign ministers of the ASA countries, the only
significant announcement was about the in­
auguration of an inter-capital railway service
between Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. More
significant, however, was the decision of the
foreign ministers to extend their support to
the Ecafe move for a conference at a ministe­
rial level of the countries of the region to dis­
cuss the proposal to set up an organisation of
Asian Economic Cooperation. All this indi­
cates that the climate for Asian economic co­
operation is much more favourable today
than it ever was.

Economic &Political w eek ly OB53 A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 9

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 COM M ENTARY
Abolish the Poverty Line
N KRISHNAJI______________________________
There is no case whatsoever to
construct a single poverty line
based on a calorie or expenditure
norm; all such lines are arbitrary
and do not take into account
the different dimensions of
poverty. It is far better to focus on
disaggregated information on a
variety of parameters - education,
housing, clothing, health, etc -
which can give us unambiguous
information about the different
facets of poverty over the
course of time.
N Krishnaji Oi.krishnaji@gmail.conO, now
based in Hyderabad, has been a long-standing
contributor to EPW, right from the days of the
Economic Weekly.
10
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he poverty line as corresponding
T to an attainable minimal bundle
of goods and services for a nor­
mative subsistence level is at best a loose
concept and non-operational except in a
very crude sense. Since the question, who
is to set the norms and how it has to be
done cannot be answered to the satisfac­
tion of all, any poverty line referring to a
minimal bundle has to be subjective and
arbitrary. It is arbitrary, moreover, because
in practice the normative minima are
never clearly specified; indeed it is diffi­
cult to do so even if we restrict ourselves
to, say, food, clothing, shelter and access to
education and healthcare. Consequently,
all procedures to derive a poverty line
are inevitably artificial, based on contro­
versial statistical manipulation.
One such looks at the total household
expenditure level at which a specified
calorie intake norm is satisfied in per
capita terms; the expectation is that at
that level other minima are also attained
so that households with expenditures
below that level may be regarded as
poor. Other procedures relying wholly
on expenditure data are equally artifi­
cial, bearing little relation to the differ­
ent dimensions of poverty. Another ele­
ment of arbitrariness arises when a base
level poverty line is adjusted upwards to
allow for increases in prices from year to
year. It is not easy to construct price
indices for different classes of consumers.
Given the near impossibility of making
operational the concept of a minimum
subsistence level, it is no wonder that the
constructed poverty lines are subject to
much criticism.
However, the ensuing debates do not
throw much light on the different dimen­
sions of poverty and trends in them,
concentrating as they do on statistical
aspects of the distributions of total con­
sumer expenditure. It is only recently
that the crucial question of what and
how much can Rs 25 or Rs 30 buy is
A p ril 14, 2012
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being raised. The Planning Commission
has of course no answer to the question;
instead it makes the claim that whatever
poverty line one chooses the data exhib­
it a downward course in poverty. How­
ever, given the evidence of a declining
trend in food intakes, the claim cannot
be substantiated without further reference
to how the poor are faring in housing,
education, health and so on. The con­
sumer expenditure surveys do show that
even for those at the bottom on the
expenditure scale there is, for reasons
not clearly understood so far, a declining
trend in the proportion of food in the
total expenditure. The survey data are
not detailed enough to go beyond this
tendency to investigate the living condi­
tions among the poor in a satisfactory way.
‘Planning Commission
Poverty Line9
Estimated numbers of the poor derived
from consumer expenditure data have
necessarily to be arbitrary, depending
wholly on who is setting up the so-called
poverty line. One is reminded in this
context of an astute observation made
decades ago by Dharma Kumar. She said
we never refer to the poor simply as the
poor, but as “those below the poverty
line”. Indeed there is a good case now for
talking about a category of people “below
the Planning Commission poverty line”.
Part of the difficulty arises from the
aggregation of needed expenditures over
different commodities. To explain: it is not
feasible to specify minimum expenditures
needed to ensure, for example, access to
education or healthcare; however, even
under the assumption that it is possible
to do so and arrive at a corresponding
poverty line as an aggregate minimum
expenditure, it is difficult to say whether
all households above the poverty line
meet the minima for all the commodities.
This is quite similar to the problem of
specifying the cost of a recommended
balance diet and using it to estimate the
extent of malnutrition: the diets of those
who meet that cost can by no means be
certified as balanced ones without a
disaggregated and precise detail about
items of food consumed. (That diseases
v o l x lv ii n o 15 DDES Economic &Political w e e k ly

such as diabetes arise from overeating and
unbalanced diets is well documented.)
It is clear that alternative approaches
must be based on disaggregation of
different kinds that can provide us
unambiguous information on the many
facets of poverty and their course over
time. Consider education for the purpose
as an example. Statistics relating to edu­
cation are available aplenty. They cover
enrolment ratios, dropout rates and more
recently mean levels of educational attain­
ment at various regional levels. These,
along with literacy rates available from
decennial population censuses, allow us
to map inter-regional variations in both
levels and changes in unambiguously de­
fined characteristics of the status of edu­
cation. The relevant statistics are useful
in monitoring trends in the development
On Some Contentious Issues
of the New Poverty Line
G C MANNA
Controversy continues to haunt
the Tendulkar poverty line. It
may be better if the poverty
line is defined in terms of an
“exogenously fixed” monthly per
capita expenditure.
Views are of the author and not of the
organisation to which he belongs. The author
is grateful to Dipankar Coondoo for his
suggestions on a draft of this article.
G C Manna (gc.mannai@gmail.com ) is with
the Central Statistics Office, New Delhi.
Economic & Political w eek ly I33S3 A p r il 14, 2012
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of education in readily identified areas
that are extremely backward in this
respect, such as the districts of Adilabad
and Mahboobnagar in Andhra Pradesh.
Aggregation is not an issue in the analysis
of education statistics. Moreover, educa­
tional status is well defined at the indi­
vidual level, unlike poverty. There are
numerous studies based on small-scale
surveys that tell us a great deal about
the conditions that hinder access to
education among the poor.
Another useful type of classification is
by occupational category. We know that
poverty of an enduring kind is endemic to
manual labourer families both in rural and
urban areas. Contrasting the experience
of this class with that of classes of culti­
vators or of other rural or urban classes
throws light on aspects of increasing
1 Introduction
here has been a growing concern on
T the estimates built on the official
poverty lines ( p ls ) which were
originally derived for the base year
(1973-74) based on calorie norms and
suitably indexed by taking care of
changes in the price level to derive p ls
for the subsequent years. We have earlier
demonstrated by analysing the National
Sample Survey ( n s s ) data of household
consumer expenditure for two alterna­
tive base years, viz, 1972-73 and 1971-72
based on much larger sample sizes1that
base year p l was rather underestimated
(Manna 2007). And the same must have
led to underestimation of p l s as well as
headcount ratios ( h c r s ) officially made
available for the subsequent years till
2004-05 based on the earlier methodo­
logy.2 This fact of underestimation of p l
and h c r as per the earlier methodology
is also supported by our fresh analysis
based on the n s s 61st round (2004-05)
data set of household consumer expendi­
ture, which results in the p l s and h c r s
v o l x l v i i n o 15
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COMMENTARY
relative inequalities. While total expendi­
ture is unsuitable for a meaningful meas­
urement of absolute poverty, it can be
safely used for comparisons among dif­
ferent classes at different points of time.
We can discard the poverty line that
arises from an obsession with the present­
ation of a single number as the poverty
ratio. We can then replace it with com­
parative interregional studies of the im­
portant facets of poverty and inequality as
they emerge now under the new economic
regime. This can certainly lead to better
planning for the deployment of resources
for poverty alleviation programmes.
Indeed, the sensible arguments some
are now making in favour of a universal
public distribution, and for free access to
education and health hinge upon the
abandonment of the poverty line.
much higher than the corresponding
official estimates released for 2004-05
(Manna et al 2009).
In the recent years many discussions
have taken place about the need to
redefine the p l . The major arguments in
favour of the same3include (a) change in
the consumption behaviour since 1973-74
breaking the original link with calories,
(b) the crude price adjustment levels,
(c) the need to raise the p l so as to reflect
rising income levels, and (d) inadequacy
of the calorie norm criterion alone to
define the p l . In view of the above, the
Planning Commission set up the Suresh
D Tendulkar group to review the methodo­
logy for estimation of poverty and which
recommended changes in the existing
procedures of official estimates of poverty.
We shall briefly discuss in Section 2 some
of the salient features of the methodo­
logy of the new p l proposed by the
expert group and raise some contentious
issues. While defining the new p l , the
expert group “moves away” from an­
choring the poverty line to a calorie
intake norm (Expert Group 2009). How­
ever, while suggesting the new p l , it
observes that for those near the proposed
new p l in urban areas, “actual observed
calorie intake from (the) 61st round of
n s s is 1,776 calories per capita” which is
‘Very close to the revised calorie intake
norm of 1,770 per capita per day currently
11
COMMENTARY
recommended for India by the Food
and Agriculture Organisation ( f a o ) ”. The
expert group also observes that the “actual
calorie intake of those near the new
poverty line in rural areas (1999 calories
per capita) is higher than the f a o norm”.
How far the quoted 1,770 calorie norm
is valid for the Indian population is
deliberated in Section 3 by utilising the
f a o ’s recommended energy requirements
for various categories of persons and
applying those norms to the population
distribution by age-group and sex based
on Census 2001 for which data were
readily available.
2 Methodology and
Contentious Issues
The salient features of the new p l s pro­
posed by the expert group are:
(a) Moving away from anchoring the
p l to a calorie norm (since calorie con­
for updating the p l for 2009-10 (being
the year corresponding to n s s 66th round
where household consumer expenditure
data were collected based on a “large
sample”) and beyond. Estimation of p l s
for 2009-10 as per the suggested methodo­
logy first involves calculation of Fisher
index of changes in state-level urban prices
between 2004-05 and 2009-10 based on
n s s data of household consumer expendi­
ture survey for the respective years.
Application of the state-level indices of
change to urban p l s for 2004-05 would
result in state-level urban p ls for 2009-10.
Thereafter, application of within-state
rural-relative-to urban Fisher indices for
2009-10 to updated urban p ls for 2009-10
would lead to the updated state-level
rural p ls for 2009-10. Finally, the h c r for
2009-10 is available from the MRP-based
size distribution of persons by monthly
per capita total expenditure class for
on food, education and health by compar­
ing them with “normative expenditures”,
the expert group observes that “actual
private expenditures reported by house­
holds near the new p l s on these items
were found to be adequate at the all-
India level in both the rural and urban
areas and for most of the states”. The
group also observes that when compared
with the Food and Agriculture Organi­
sation’s “revised calorie intake norm of
1,770 per capita per day” actual calorie
intake (2004-05) for those near the new
p l is close to f a o ’s norm in the case of
urban and higher than the f a o norm
in the rural.
As w e see the n ew pl accepts 25.7%
urban hcr as per the original m ethodo­
logy as the starting point/benchm ark;
bases the new base year (2004-05) pl as
the MRP-equivalent o f plb correspond­
ing to this hcr on the basis o f the n ss

sumption based on n s s data set was not 2009-10 as per the n s s . Based on this 61st round and m oves the base year pl

found to be well correlated with the nutri­
tional outcomes observed from other
specialised surveys as mentioned by the
expert group);
(b) Adoption o f the m ixed reference
period (MRp)4-based estim ates of con­
sum ption expenditure as the basis for
methodology, the p ls (monthly per capita
total expenditure) for 2009-10 are esti­
mated as Rs 672.80 for rural India and
Rs 859.60 for urban India (Planning
Commission 2012). And the all-India h c r s
for 2009-10 are placed at 33.8% for rural
and 20.9% for urban.
further to 2009-10 based on a price rise
during the intervening period measured
by Fisher price indices. Although the
above hcr has been argued to be “less
controversial”, it is not free from the
lim itations o f the corresponding old
p l , w ith w hich the accepted h c r has

n ew pl (instead o f uniform reference
period-based approach corresponding to
last 30 days prevalent so far);
(c) Acceptance of urban h c r of 25.7% for
2004-05 available as per the earlier
methodology to be realistic on the ground
of the same being “less controversial than
its rural counterpart”; and
(d) Recommending MRP-equivalent of
urban poverty line basket (p lb ) corres­
ponding to 25.7% urban h c r as the new
reference p l b provided to both rural
and urban populations in all the states
after adjusting it for within-state urban-
relative-to-rural and rural and urban
state-relative-to-all-India price differentials
based on unit prices implicit in the same
survey of n s s 61st round (2004-05).
Based on the above methodology, for
2004-05, the expert group placed the new
p l (monthly per capita total expenditure)
at Rs 446.68 for rural India and Rs 578.80
for urban India. The corresponding all-
India h c r s were placed at 41.8% and
25.7% for rural and urban respectively. The
expert group also suggested procedure
12
After validation for checking the its linkage in view o f m ethodological
adequacy of actual per capita private issues relating to (a) base year selection,
expenditure near the new p l s (2004-05) (b) relevance of the calorie norms used.
Giri Institute of Development Studies, Lucknow
and IASSI, New Delhi
WORKSHOP ON PROJECT FORMULATION AND RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
M ay 1 5 -26, 2 0 1 2
Giri Institute of Development Studies, Lucknow in collaboration with the
Indian Association of Social Science Institutions is organising a Training
Workshop on Project Formulation and Research Methodology during May
15-26, 2012 at Lucknow. Preference will be given to students who have
enrolled for Ph.D. recently or intend to enrol for Ph.D. and teachers who
plan to submit research proposals to funding agencies. Persons desirous
of attending the workshop may apply giving their full CV including academic
record, topic of research, publications, etc. A proposal of about 1000 words
on the topic on which the scholar would like to work should be submitted
with the application. Applications should be addressed to Director, Giri
Institute of Development Studies, Sector O, Aliganj, Lucknow 226 024. The
last day of submitting application is 30th April 2012. For details visit our
website: http/:gids.org.in or contact by e-mail at gids@sancharnet.in
A.K. Singh
Director
A p r il 14, 2012 v o l XLVii n o 15 E3353 Economic & Political w eek ly

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and (c) method of price adjustments - Table 1: Weighting Diagram and FAQ Recommended Daily Energy Requirements
the former two being already deliberat­ Age Male Female
(Completed Years) Wt Daily EnergyRequirement Wt Daily Energy Requirement
ed at length in Manna (2007). In fact, Diag Lowest Moderate/Average Highest Diag Lowest Moderate/Average Highest
the accepted h c r seems to have a seri­ (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7) (8) (9)
0 0.843 518 649 775 0.771 464 600 712
ous downward bias (Manna et al 2009).
1 0.999 948 948 948 0.916 865 865 865
Further, adoption of same reference p l b
2 1.217 1,129 1,129 1,129 1.139 1,047 1,047 1,047
for both urban and rural population is
3 1.261 1,252 1,252 1,252 1.219 1,156 1,156 1,156
another debatable issue given the age-
4 1.248 1,350 1,360 1,360 1.152 1,225 1,241 1,241
sex-activity differentials between the
5 1.386 1,350 1,467 1,467 1.242 1,225 1,330 1,330
rural and urban population.
6 1.332 1,350 1,573 1,800 1.243 1,225 1,428 1,650
7 1.161 1,450 1,692 1,950 1.085 1,325 1,554 1,775
3 Validity of Revised Norms
8 1.577 1,550 1,830 2,100 1.448 1,450 1,698 1,950
Now let us test the validity of the fao’s 9 1.050 1,675 1,978 2,275 0.984 1,575 1,854 2,125
revised average calorie norm of “1,770 10 1.749 1,825 2,150 2,475 1.551 1,700 2,006 2,300
calories” which is met by both rural and 11 0.927 2,000 2,341 2,700 0.836 1,825 2,149 2,475
urban poor in 2004-05 as per the new 12 1.575 2,175 2,548 2,925 1.391 1,925 2,276 2,625
methodology. We do so by considering 13 0.996 2,350 2,770 3,175 0.943 2,025 2,379 2,725
the energy requirements (kcal/day) for 14 1.152 2,550 2,990 3,450 1.050 2,075 2,449 2,825
various strata of population, as recom­ 15 1.192 2,700 3,178 3,650 1.003 2,125 2,491 2,875
mended based on expert consultation 16 1.128 2,825 3,322 3,825 0.995 2,125 2,503 2,875

taken place during 17-24 October 2001 at 17 0.783 2,900 3,410 3,925 0.669 2,125 2,503 2,875

the fao headquarters in Rome,5 and ap­ 18-29 10.723 2,300 2,800 3,500 10.157 2,000 2,400 3.050

plying these norms (we shall describe
these as fao norms for simplicity) to the
number of persons by sex in various age-
groups as per the Census 2001 which is
readily available.
fao norms are available for each of
the following groups: (a) infants of age
less than one year for each completed
month separately for boys and girls;
(b) persons in the age-group 1-18 years
for each single year of completed age,
separately for boys and girls, with differ­
ent norms for light physical activity,
moderate physical activity, heavy physi­
cal activity (light and heavy physical
activity norms being applicable only for
age-groups of 6-18 years) and also for
average of all types of activities; and
(c) persons (separately for men and
women) in the age-groups 18-29.9 years,
30-59.9 years, and 60 years according
to various physical activity levels (pal)
and different mean body weights. The
fao norms for various categories of per­
sons are summarised in Table 1. As our aim
is to check the adequacy of the reported
average calorie norm, instead of quoting
energy requirements for all combina­
tions of age-group and physical activity
levels as discussed, we reproduce only the
lowest, moderate/average, and highest
norms (kcal/day) for various age-groups
and sex. Basically the lowest and moder­
ate/average norms applied to population
Economic & Political w eek ly Q 3S9 A p r il 14, 2012
30-59 15.753 2,250 2,750 3,450 14.683 1,950 2,350 2,950
60 0.880 1,850 2,250 2,850 0.888 1,750 2,100 2,650
60+ 2.802 1,850 1,850 1,850 2.899 1,750 1,750 1,750
(1) Col 2/6: Weighting diagram is as per percentage distribution of Indian population based on Census 2001.
(2) Col 3/7: Figures correspond to (a) children of age less than 1 month for age 0; (b) same norms as for moderate in case
of ages 1-3 as no separate norms are suggested; (c) lowest norm (Physical Activity Level 1.45 as per FAO report) for age 6 in
case of ages 4-5; and (d) light physical activity level in case of age 6 and onwards.
(3) Figures in cols 4 and 8for ages 1to 17 years are taken from Tables 4.2 (for boys) and 4.3 (for girls) of FAO's report and
those for age 0 correspond to average of energy requirements for completed months of 0, 1, 2,.., 11.
(4) Col 5/9: Figures correspond to (a) children of age 11 months for age 0; (b) same norms as for moderate in case of
ages 1-5 as no separate norms are suggested; and (c) highest norm (Physical Activity Level 2.20 as per FAOreport) in case of
ages 6 and onwards.
(5) For each of age-groups 18-29,30-59 and 60, figures correspond to mean weight of 60 kg.
(6) For age 60+, lowest norm for age 60 is repeated as no separate norms are recommended for this age-group.
of different age-groups and sex would hours for light leisure activities (watch­
suggest the threshold energy norms. ing t v , chatting); and one hour each for
Note that the lowest daily energy personal care, eating, commuting to/
requirement indicated in Table 1 corre­ from work on a bus, walking at various
sponds to “sedentary or light activity places without a load, and low intensity
lifestyle” of a person. And as per f a o ’s aerobic exercise.
report, for such a lifestyle, time allocation Thus application of the lowest norms
of total 24 hours of a day would be as to various strata of persons would result
follows: eight hours for sleeping; eight in the barest minimum threshold energy
hours for sitting (office work, selling norm when all persons are assumed to
produce, tending shop); two hours for light pursue only the light activities. This is
leisure activities (watchingTV, chatting); unrealistic (Swaminathan 2010) as it
and one hour each for personal care, has a serious downward bias given the
eating, cooking, general household work, diverse nature of activities/occupations
driving car to/from work, and walking pursued by people living in threshold of
at various places without a load. As absolute poverty, particularly those in the
against it, the moderate/average energy upper age-groups. Therefore, use of mod­
requirement mentioned in Table 1 corre­ erate/average norms may lead to a some­
sponds to “active or moderately active what realistic picture. In this context, it
lifestyle” with a time disposition of eight is important to note that as per our anal­
hours for sleeping; eight hours for stand­ ysis based on the n s s 55th round (1999-
ing, carrying light loads (waiting on 2000) data, according to our “proposed
tables, arranging merchandise); three classification of work” (Manna 2007),
v o l x l v i i n o 15 13

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COMMENTARY
percentages of sedentary and heavy
workers for both men and women are
very close in case of urban India and the
percentage of heavy workers far exceeds
the percentage of sedentary workers for
both men and women in the case of rural
India. Thus even the use of moderate
norms is also likely to result in a some­
what downward bias in the overall aver­
age norm arrived at after application of
the weights as per the weighting diagram.
Interestingly, the use of lowest norms
coupled with the weighting diagram
leads to an average norm of 1,904 kcal/
day which is much higher than the quot­
ed f a o norm. Note that this is based on
the lowest norms corresponding to
mean body weight of 60 kg for each of
the age-groups of 18-29, 30-50 and 60
years. Instead of this, if we adopt the
lowest norms corresponding to the
mean body weight of 50 kg for men and
45 kg for women (being the lowest
mean weight for which norms are avail­
able in the f a o ’s report) in respect of
each of the above age-groups, the aver­
age norm works out to 1,781 kcal/day
which is very close to quoted f a o norm
of 1,770 kcal/day. However, the use of
moderate/average norms in combina­
tion with the weighting diagram gives
us an average norm of 2,241 kcal/day.
This is much higher than the f a o norm
and at the same time this derived norm
is close to our proposed norm of 2,290
kcal/day for rural India and 2,250 kcal/
day for urban India as suggested in
Manna (2007). With a gradual shift of
the percentage distribution of persons
over age-groups leading to a higher pro­
portion of persons in the upper age-
groups over time, the derived norms of
1,904 cal/1,781 cal/2,241 cal may be
treated as the lower bound because we
have used Census 2001 data for the
weighting diagram.
4 Concluding Remarks
In conclusion, our analyses on alterna­
tive base years, calorie norms and pov­
erty lines derived afresh based on n s s
61st round data as per the earlier meth­
odology are clearly indicative of the fact
of a downward bias even in the new p l ,
although the extent of problem seems to
have been minimised in the case of rural
14
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poverty lines which are based on the large-sample n s s data set by replicating
same (better) p l basket corresponding our study based on m p c e (Manna 2009)
to the urban. In our view, the major would certainly be a valuable input.
limitation of the new poverty line is its
n o t e s _____________________________________
acceptance of 25.7% urban h c r based
1 Sample size for rural in 1971-72 survey was
on the earlier methodology as the however somewhat smaller.
benchmark and proceeding further to 2 As recommended by the Lakdawala Committee
arrive at the estimates of the poverty (1993).
3 See Press Note on Poverty Estimates (January
lines. The other problem is the use of 2011) by Planning Commission for discussions
the same (reference) poverty line basket at length.
4 MRP-based approach uses 365 days as the ref­
for both urban and rural. Finally, the erence period for low frequency items (namely,
problem is of difficulty to define the clothing, footwear, durables, education and
medical-institutional) and 30 days for all other
new poverty line in a straightforward items of consumption.
manner. It would be advantageous if 5 This was a joint FAO, World Health Organisation
(WHO) and United Nations University (UNU)
the new poverty line can be described expert consultation. The recommendations are
in simpler terms. One plausible option available in www.fa0.0rg/d0crep/007/y5686e/
y5686eoo.htm, accessed on 13 February 2012.
could be to define it in terms of an “ex­
ogenously fixed” monthly per capita ex­
penditure (m p c e ) level at a constant REFERENCES______________________________
Expert Group (2009): “Report of the Expert Group
price, which would be adequate to meet to Review the Methodology for Estimation of
the cost of food associated with the re­ Poverty”, Government of India, Planning Com­
mission, November.
vised calorie norm and also the norma­
Manna, G C (2007): “On Calibrating the Poverty
tive expenditure levels on basic human Line for Poverty Estimation in India”, Economic
needs namely clothing, housing, educa­ & Political Weekly, Vol XLII, No 30.
Manna, G C, Samanta and Coondoo (2009): “What
tion and healthcare. As regards the Does the Recent Indian Consumption Behaviour
component on cost of food, derivation Tell?”, Economic & Political Weekly, Vol XLIV,
No 32.
of the lower confidence limit of average Planning Commission (2012): Press Note on Poverty
m p c e on food and also the average Estimates, 2009-10,19 March.
m p c e on food associated with the re­ Swaminathan, Madhura (2010): “The New Poverty
Line: A Methodology Deeply Flawed”, Indian
vised calorie norm as per the latest Journal of Human Development, Vol 4, No 1.
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 COMMENTARY

Budget 2012 Surprisingly, despite the explicit men­

tion of curbing subsidies the actual allo­
cations show a hike of 34% over the pre­
Tinkering w ith Subsidies vious year’s budget estimate. It is lower
than the revised estimate ( r e ) of 2011-12
which itself overshot the target by almost
MALA LALVANI 1% of g d p . Thus the first impression
from the budget speech, of a bold step
With major issues confronting the he issue of subsidies is one that being taken to curb the sensitive subsi­
fertiliser and petroleum sector
being left untouched, the small
reduction in subsidy numbers in
T most finance ministers tend to
keep at arm’s length. The fact that
Budget 2012 raised the issue and devoted
five paras (paras 21 to 25) to it certainly
dies is not borne out by the budgetary
allocations.
In the sections that follow we look at
the issue of subsidies in the petroleum
Budget 2012-13 is mere tokenism calls for appreciation. When the finance and fertiliser sectors where curbing of
and lacks credibility. However, minister announced a cut in subsidies to subsidies are hinted at by the finance
2 % of g d p and a further reduction to minister in his budget speech.
there seems to be some thinking
1.75 % over the next three years, our past
in favour of direct cash transfers experience led us to believe that this 2 Petroleum Subsidy
as a substitute for the existing would evoke sharp reactions from the The subsidy estimates by the Ministry of
structure of subsidies. It is true beneficiaries of these subsidies. However, Petroleum and Natural Gas are based on
nothing of the sort happened. This aroused “under-recoveries” of the oil marketing
that this alternative has its
our curiosity and provided the motivation companies, what the oil companies
limitations. Just the fact that for looking at the fine print of Budget 2012 would have paid to buy products if they
an alternative is being thought relating to subsidies especially petroleum were imported from abroad (import
about in the form of pilot studies and fertiliser (the two major subsidies after parity). As such, the estimate for under
food subsidy) which the finance minister recovery should be considered as notional
for kerosene and some initiative
has hinted at putting a check on. In para losses since the actual costs incurred by
is being taken in the fertiliser 22 of the speech the finance minister oil companies are likely to be different
sector is the high point of said “The Government has decided that given that their crude oil costs would
Budget 2012-13. from 2012-13 subsidies related to food not necessarily be the same as the
and for administering the Food Security market prices elsewhere, and they do
Act will be fully provided for. All other not count refining profits or losses.
subsidies would be funded to the extent Under-recoveries exist for liquefied
that they can be borne by the economy petroleum gas ( l p g ) , kerosene, diesel
without any adverse implications.” and petrol. Budgetary subsidies are pro­
vided for kerosene and l p g . The under­
1 Explicit Subsidies recoveries of petrol and diesel companies
Table 1 looks at the share of various expli­ are shared by the government via oil
citly mentioned subsidies in the budget. bonds or cash assistance.
It shows that food, petroleum and ferti­ Sethi (2006) points out that all the
liser are the three prominent subsidies. three committees set up to look at
Table 1: Explicit Subsidies in Budget 2012 (Rs crore)
Actual 2010-11 Budget 2011-12 Revised 2011-12 Budget 2012-13
Major subsidies 1,64,516.32 1,34,210.85 2,08,502.94 1,79,554.10
Fertiliser subsidy 62,301.21 49,997.87 67,198.94 60,974.10
Food subsidy 63,843.79 60,572.98 72,823.00 75,000.00
Petroleum subsidy 38,371.32 23,640.00 68,481.00 43,580.00
Interest subsidies 4,680.20 6,868.47 5,791.31 7,967.65
Other subsidies 4,223.06 2,490.35 2,002.48 2,493.38
As % of total expenditure on subsidies
Fertiliser subsidy 37.87 37.25 32.23 33.96
Sincere thanks to Ajit Karnik, Abhay Pethe Food subsidy 38.81 45.13 34.93 41.77
and Romar Correa for their comments and Petroleum subsidy 23.32 17.61 32.84 24.27
suggestions. The usual disclaimer applies. Interest subsidies 2.84 5.12 2.78 4.44
Other subsidies 2.57 1.86 0.96 1.39
Mala Lalvani (mala.lalvani@gmail.com)
teaches at the department of economics, As % of GDP
Major subsidies 2.16 1.52 2.36 1.78
University of Mumbai.
Source: Budget Documents 2012-13, Expenditure Budget, Vol I.

Economic &Political w eekly DBfflj a p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v ii n o 15 15

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COMMENTARY
pricing of the sensitive petroleum prod­ ruled out due to the wide gap between the
ucts propose to free up pricing of petrol retail price of l p g for domestic use and
and diesel and to gradually reduce subsi­ the market price for commercial l p g and
dies on kerosene and l p g . It is his con­ also p d s kerosene and petrol/diesel as
tention that there are no net subsidies in well as for non-PDS usage (http://www.
the petroleum sector even inclusive of the thehindubusinessline.com/industiy-and-
“erroneously claimed” under-recoveries. economy/articlei52o8i4.ece). Thus re­
Contrary to the tenor of the Parikh Com­ duction of subsidies and rationalisation
mittee report, the total tax collected from of prices as a general economic principle
the petroleum sector by the central and would certainly be a step in the right di­
state governments is a multiple of the rection.
combined fiscal subsidies and the claimed A look at the details of the budgetary
under-recoveries. So according to Sethi allocations for the petroleum subsidy in
(2006) any price liberalisation must also Table 3 shows that allocation of subsidy
address oil sector taxation. on l p g , kerosene, freight is the same as
Table 2 gives details of the net contri­ the budget estimate (b e) of 2011-12 and
bution to the central exchequer in more marginally higher than the r e 2011-12.
recent years and we find that while in The subsidy allocated for supply of
2008-09 a negative net contribution was natural gas to the north-eastern region
recorded, since 2009-10 once again has been reduced by Rs 60 crore as
there is a large positive contribution. Of compared to the b e 2011-12. One cannot
course if we add the sales tax paid to the help wondering what could have
state governments then even the 2008-09 changed in this respect to merit this
figure would be a positive net contribution. reduction! Finally, much to our surprise
Table 2: Net Contribution to Central Exchequer (Rs crore)
2008-09 2009-10
Contribution to central exchequer due to tax/duties on petroleum products 71,190 78,443 1,03,580
Payout by government to oil marketing companies (OMCs)
(A) Oil bonds/cash assistance by governmenttowards OMCs' under-recoveries 71,292 26,000
(B) Subsidy on PDS SKO (kerosene) and domestic LPG 2,688 2,770
(C) Freight subsidy on PDS SKO and domestic LPG 22 22
(D) Gas subsidy for north-east 142 159
Total payout to OMCs 74,144 28,951
Net contribution to central exchequer -2954 49,492
Source: Answer to Lok Sabha Question No 588 dated 15 March 2012.
Table 3: Subsidies to Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas (Rscrore)
Budget Revised
2011-12 2011-12
Subsidy on LPG and kerosene for PDS 3,050 3,000
Freight subsidy 26 26
Subsidy to oil companies for supply of natural gas to north-eastern region 564 458
Total-Post APM subsidies and other expenditure (A) 3,640 3,481
Compensation to oil companies for under-recoveries on account
of sale of sensitive petroleum products (B) 20,000 65,000
Total subsidy to petroleum sector (A+B) 23,640 68,481
Source: Budget Documents 2012-13, Expenditure Budget, Vol II.
Thus, although from the numbers the allocation for compensation to
above it would seem that Sethi’s argu­ oil companies for under-recoveries has
ment continues to hold and there is doubled from the allocation in b e 2011-12
indeed a positive net contribution to the but is lower than r e 2011-12, a balancing
exchequer, misuse of subsidy in the sense act it would seem. Clearly the finance
of black marketeering of p d s kerosene and minister is gambling on a reduction in
l p g is rampant. The minister for petroleum world oil prices, hence the allocation is
and natural gas, S Jaipal Reddy, himself lower than r e 2011-12. At the same time
admitted that the possibility of black- he has played it safe by doubling the
marketeering/diversion of subsidised allocation for compensation of under­
domestic l p g cylinders and p d s kerosene recoveries from b e 2011-12. All in all the
by unscrupulous elements cannot be allocations suggest that no major reforms
16
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can be expected in terms of curbing
subsidies to the petroleum sector.
In the context of addressing the problem
of the petroleum subsidy the finance
minister in para 24 of his budget speech
talks of pilot projects wherein direct
cash transfer of subsidies are made. He
points out that the Aadhaar platform has
also been successfully used to validate
p d s ration cards in Jharkhand. Critics of
direct cash transfers are quick to point
out that such money transfers are prone
to being misused. There is especially the
danger of it being squandered away.
Several other accompanying problems
of cash transfers have been raised by
Kapur (2011) who argues that cash trans­
fers may not necessarily be the best
option in all cases. According to him un­
less discussions on transfers are part and
parcel of a broader strategy, any change
in favour of cash transfers will simply
amount to tactical differences and not
address long-term challenges. In the case
of kerosene subsidies Kapur (2011) points
2010-11 out that with most of India’s poor using
kerosene for lighting rather than cooking,
might it not be better to scrap the p d s
41,000 kerosene and instead of moving to cash
2,904
transfers, simply provide all rural house­
22
holds and urban below the poverty line
445
(b p l) households with solar lanterns. He
44,371
59,209
admits that this would not address the
use of kerosene for cooking purposes.
We agree with Kapur that cash trans­
Budget fers must be considered as a part of a
2012-13 broader strategy. However, given that
3,050
his scheme does not address the issue of
26
kerosene for cooking purposes we do
504
3,580
believe that pilot studies examining direct
cash transfers to address the kerosene
40,000 subsidy is an experiment worth making.
43,580 Following this line of reasoning, could
we think of a scheme to address diesel
underpricing? We could let the oil com­
panies fully pass through the cost of pro­
ducing diesel. Truck owners can claim
whatever is the subsidy involved directly
and have it deposited in their bank ac­
counts. One problem which exists is that
almost 90% of truck operators are single
truck owners but still the number cannot
be larger than the number of those who
purchase kerosene. The criticism that
the reimbursed subsidy will be misused
(as in the case of kerosene) does not
APRIL 14, 2 0 1 2 v o l x l v i i n o 15 QBE3 Economic & Political w e e k ly

apply here - if the truck owner does not
use the reimbursed subsidy his business
will close down. There is one more
advantage in this approach - the single
truck owner will have to file a claim for
the reimbursement which will depend
on the amount of kerosene/diesel pur­
chased for which bills/receipts will be
required. Of course, people will want to
inflate this bill and claim a larger amount
of reimbursement than what they are
entitled for. But this will trap them into
paying income tax: higher reimburse­
ment claim means higher purchase of
diesel; higher purchase of diesel means
higher volume of business; higher volume
of business means higher income which
will be taxed (our approach is along the
lines of the principle underlying v a t ).
Could this be an incentive compatible
mechanism which will force truck oper­
ators to be honest? This mechanism can
also be operationalised using the Aadhaar
scheme which is also referred to in para
24 of the budget speech.
In the case of petrol owners, however,
this approach need not be implemented
as they would have to pay the market
price. When considering a scheme such
as the one suggested above it must be
recognised that allowing full pass­
through of diesel prices will raise the cost
of transportation and have an effect on
inflation (see: http://www.dnaindia.com/
money/report_diesel-price-hike-could-
dash-rate-cut-hopes_i666i45). However,
this needs to be weighed against the cost
of encountering the perpetual problem of
under-recoveries followed by oil bonds.
3 Fertiliser Subsidy
The fertiliser policy of the Government
of India which decontrolled phosphatic
and potassic ( p &k ) fertilisers with effect
from August 1992 led to a sharp increase
in the market price for these fertilisers, a
reduction in demand and an imbalance
in the usage of the nutrients of Nitrogen,
Phosphate and Potash ( n , p & k ) and the
productivity of the soil. Subsequently a
concession scheme was introduced for
decontrolled fertilisers on an ad hoc
basis which continued up to March 2010
with changed parameters from time to
time. The government then introduced
a “Nutrient-Based Subsidy Policy” in
Economic & Political weekly QBQ Ap r il 14, 2012
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continuation of the erstwhile concession
scheme for decontrolled p &k fertilisers.
The basic purpose of the concession
scheme and the Nutrient-Based Subsidy
Policy has been to provide fertilisers to
farmers at the subsidised prices. Under the
present subsidy regime, fertilisers are pro­
vided to farmers at the maximum retail
price ( m r p ) , which is much below the
actual cost of fertilisers. Accordingly, the
farmers pay 25-40% of the actual cost of
fertilisers and rest of the cost is borne by the
government. However, the policy for urea,
the key fertiliser (which accounts for 50%
of all fertilisers) has remained untouched.
In Budget 2012 the finance minister has
a number of positives for the fertiliser
sector such as exemption for imports,
reduction in customs duty, lower tax
rates on interest payments arising out of
external commercial borrowings ( e c b s ),
etc. However, the two key issues of reforms
on freeing urea prices and addressing the
incentive structure to make investments
attractive have been left unaddressed.
The uncertainty on price reforms in
urea has discouraged new investment in
the fertiliser industry for over a decade.
As a result, though the demand for urea
has been rising, its supply is constrained
owing to absence of new investment.
There has hardly been any expansion in
production capacity for nearly a decade.
Consequently, urea imports have risen
sharply, from a meagre 0.64 million tonnes
in 2004-05 to a whopping 5.21 million
tonnes in 2009-10. The government's
efforts to ease import dependence by
wooing fresh investment in domestic
capacity addition came to naught when
the new investment promotion policy,
notified in September 2008, failed to
receive any response. The new investment
policy announced in February 2012 has
reported an increase in the ceiling of
natural gas prices but investors are not
happy about the band of price rise that has
been allowed hence the immediate reac­
tion from the industry is somewhat muted
(http://artides.economictimes.indiatimes.
com/2oi2-o2-28/news/3no7942_i_mmb-
tu- urea-policy-gas-price).
As regards raising the urea prices, no
reform seems to be on the anvil. Raising
the price of this fertiliser is probably
one of the more difficult decisions to take
vo l x l v ii n o 15
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
COMMENTARY
for any government in India. A strong
and vocal farmers’ lobby and serious
political backing for this ruinous attach­
ment have ensured its continuity for
long (http://www.livemint.com/2011/08/
08223814/Ourview-Decontrolling-urea-
p.html). Recently, attention was drawn
to the issue of urea prices by the chair­
man of the Prime Minister’s Economic
Advisory Council (p m e a c ) C Rangarajan
who has pitched for deregulation of urea
prices and said that “partial reforms in
the fertiliser subsidy regime of introduc­
ing nutrient-based subsidisation will not
be effective unless the price of urea is
decontrolled or at least raised substan­
tially” (http://www.business-standard.
com/india/news/decontrol-urea-prices-
raise-excise-duty-pmeac/158626/on).
An important positive announcement
in the context of the fertiliser sector in
Budget 2012 was an announcement of
a mobile-based Fertiliser Management
System (m FM s), which is a step towards
direct cash transfers. It is true that a direct
cash transfer system in the fertiliser sec­
tor suffers from limitations. Kapur (2011)
argues that given that this is a subsidy
that was intended not only as an input-
support to individual farmers, but as a
subsidy vital to both the agriculture
sector as a whole and to the domestic fer­
tiliser industry, we must consider the im­
plications of this shift at multiple levels.
He is of the view that while there is no
doubt that India will have to move to a
greater use of cash transfers, it may not
necessarily be the best option in all cases.
Sharma and Thaker (2010) too find that
a fair degree of equity exists in the dis­
tribution of the fertiliser subsidy among
farm sizes. Based on their results, they
justify fertiliser subsidies and question
the rationale for a direct transfer of the
subsidy to farmers. At the other end of
the spectrum we have the study of Gulati
and Narayanan (2003) who pointed out
that in 1999-2000 the share of industry
in the fertiliser subsidy was 54.9%. What
was more disappointing was their in-depth
analysis of urea plants, which drew
attention to the inefficiency prevalent in
the urea industry. Based on their resource
cost estimates of urea plants they observe
that unless the cost of production is
reduced, 32% of urea production would
17
COMMENTARY
Table 4: Budgetary Allocation for Fertiliser Subsidy (Rs crore)
Period Amount ofConcession
Disbursed on Decontrolled
Fertilisers (lndigenous+ Imported)
Total (P&K)
2006-07 10,298.12
2007-08 16,933.80
2008-09 65,554.79
2009-10 39,452.06
2010-11 40,766.57
2011-12 (BE) 29,706.87
2011-12(RE) 34,207.94
2012-13(BE) 28,576.10
Source: Budget Documents, Vol I, various issues.
become economically unviable if import
parity price were to prevail. With urea
prices continuing to be administered
nothing much could have altered in the
urea plants on the efficiency front. Clearly,
an issue of such importance needs a closer
look and wider debate. Thus, we believe
that despite limitations of the direct cash
transfer system controlled experiments
in the form of pilot studies and initia­
tives like the mFMS will help understand
the issue better and be a step forward.
Bearing in mind the issues confronting
the fertiliser sector in the backdrop, we
took a close look at the budgetary alloca­
tion for fertiliser subsidies in Budget 2012
(Table 4). It shows a 16% reduction in
allocation for imported non-urea fertiliser;
3.5% reduction for imported urea and a
0.5% reduction for indigenous urea when
compared to r e 2011-12. However, when
compared to b e 2011-12 it is a hike of 42%
in the case of indigenous urea and 92%
in the case of imported urea. In the case
of non-urea fertilisers (which are largely
imported) the reduction is a mere 3%
when compared with b e 2011-12. The
budgetary allocations for imported and
indigenous urea signal that the govern­
ment does not expect any major change
to happen in the fertiliser sector. Clearly
the hard decisions relating to urea price
policy and investment incentives in
terms of a further rise in price of natural
gas are not likely to come soon.
With the two major issues confronting
the fertiliser sector, viz, reforms of pricing
of urea and incentives to industry for
investment, being left untouched in
Budget 2012 we believe that the small
reduction in subsidy numbers is mere
tokenism and lacks credibility. Till the
major reforms on these two fronts are
not addressed, the budgetary subsidy
18
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petroleum and fertiliser sectors suggests
Amount ofSubsidy Disbursed on Urea Total for All the reduction is too small to make any
Fertilisers
major dent in the burgeoning subsidy
Indigenous Urea Imported Urea Total (Urea) bill. To add to this is the uncertainty that
12,650.37 5,071.06 17,721.43 28,019.55
surrounds the budgetary numbers as the
16,450.37 9,934.99 26,385.36 43,319.16
probability of its going awry on account
17,968.74 12,971.18 33,939.92 99,494.71
of changes in the world price of crude
17,580.25 6,999.98 24,580.23 64,032.29
15,080.73 6,453.91 21,534.64 62,301.21
and fertilisers is very high indeed.
13,308.00 6,983.00 2,0291.00 67,198.94 The ray of hope that we can spot in
19,108.00 13,883.00 3,2991.00 67,198.94 Budget 2012 in connection with subsidies
19,000.00 13,398.00 32,398.00 60,974.10 is not in the reduced allocations per se,
which we believe is mere tokenism, but in
numbers are a mere guesstimate with a some announcements of a move towards
high probability of missing the target. direct cash transfer of subsidies. Pilot
projects have been mentioned for petrol
4 Conclusions and the announcement of a mFMS. While
This article has looked at the crucial direct cash transfers are not necessarily a
issue of budgetary subsidies, a topic that panacea for all the ills that prevail in the
the finance minister has ventured to fertiliser and petroleum sectors, the fact
touch upon in Budget 2012. The stigma that an alternative is being thought
attached to the very issue of subsidies about in the form of controlled experi­
makes most finance ministers keep away ments for kerosene and some initiative
from it. Just the fact that he did touch has been taken in the fertiliser sector is
upon this issue calls for appreciation. for us the high point of Budget 2012-13!
We have argued that a look at the
budgetary allocation for subsidies alone r e f e r e n c e s ______________________________
is not sufficient and it needs to be under­ Gulati, A and S Narayanan (2003): The Subsidy
Syndrome (New Delhi: Oxford University Press).
stood in the context of the issues con­
Kapur, D (2011): “The Shift to Cash Transfers: Run­
fronting the relevant sector. This article ning Better But on the Wrong Road?”, Economic
has sought to look at the petroleum and & Political Weekly, 21 May.
Sethi, S (2006): “Analysing the Parikh Committee
the fertiliser subsidies against the back­ Report on Pricing of Petroleum Products”,
drop of fertiliser and petroleum policies. Economic & Political Weekly, 27 March.
Sharma, V P and H Thaker (2010): “Fertiliser
A look at the fine print of reduction in Subsidy in India: Who Are the Beneficiaries?”
budgetary subsidy allocations in the Economic & Political Weekly, 20 March.
COUNCIL FOR SOCIAL DEVELOPMENT, NEW DELHI
SANGHA RACHANA, 53 LODI ESTATE,
NEW DELHI -110003 (INDIA)
The Council for Social Development, New Delhi invites application for the post
of Sr. Fellow, Fellow and Associate Fellow in the UGC Scale of Professor,
Associate Professor and Assistant Professor respectively.
Qualification and Experience:
The candidate should posses Ph.D. in Economics/Sociology and other relevant
Social Science disciplines. Applicants with adequate research experience and
publications in the fields of education/health/agriculture and rural development
are encouraged to apply.
Other things being equal, candidates having experience of working with academic
organizations will be preferred.
We encourage equally qualified women candidates to apply.
The last date for submission of application is April 30, 2012.
Sheela Sabu
Administrative Officer
csdnd@del2.vsnl.net.in / ao@csdindia.org.
Telephone No: 91-011-24615383, 24611700,
Fax: 91-011-24616061
APRIL 1 4 , 2 0 1 2 VOL XLVII NO 15 Economic & Political w e e k ly
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The Nature of Green Justice
KANCHI KOHLI, MANJU MENON___________
The National Green Tribunal has
taken over from the National
Environment Appellate Authority
though the changeover has
not been smooth. The tribunal
has significant powers and its
rulings will affect the lives and
livelihoods of communities as
well as the future of ecologically
fragile ecosystems. A look at the
factors and issues it will have
to consider while rendering
environmental justice.
Kanchi Kohli (kanchikohli@gmailcom ) works
and writes on social and environmental issues
and is based in New Delhi. Manju Menon
(manjumenon1975@gmail.com) is a PhD
candidate at the Centre for Studies in Science
Policy, JNU, New Delhi.
Economic & Political w eek ly QS59
ecent news reports on environ­
R mental conflicts have given sub­
stantial attention to the rulings
of the National Green Tribunal (ngt) set
up under a law in June 2010. It was
enacted to allow for an efficient and
expeditious disposal of matters related
to environment protection, conservation
of forests and other natural resources.
According to this law, any person
aggrieved (as defined in law and further
elaborated through n gt orders) can
challenge any order related to the
statutes covered by the ngt and also bring
to the tribunal’s attention substantial
questions relating to the environment.
The n gt replaced the existing National
Environment Appellate Authority (neaa),
which was limping along since 1997.
The transition from the neaa to the ngt
was not smooth. Though the ngt Act was
formally announced in October 2010, the
implementing rules were not in place
until April 2011. It required several argu­
ments and a sustained push through the
Delhi High Court (in cm No 15895/2005
in Writ Petition Number 17682/2005)
and subsequently the Supreme Court of
India (Special Leave to Appeal (Civil)
No(s)i2o65/2oo9) for the Ministry of
Environment and Forests (m o e f ) to op­
erationalise the tribunal. The Supreme
Court’s critical ruling of 12 May 2011 led
to the first set of hearings by the ngt on
4 July 2011 in New Delhi. By then, the
neaa had ceased to exist leaving several
matters pending and with no specialised
forum before which to litigate on environ­
ment clearances.
As there were only routine responses
and delayed assurances from the ministry
in the same order, the sc was forced to
clarify several pending issues on the
functioning of the ngt. This included
the status of the ngt, its various benches,
appointments, and allowances of the
judicial and expert members. Till such
time that the regional benches of the
ngt were established all matters would
be heard in New Delhi. The 26 cases
A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15
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COMMENTARY
which were pending before the neaa
were transferred to this new institution.
As envisaged by the moef, the ngt is
to consist of expert members from the
fields of environment and related sciences
or administration who along with the
judicial appointees have been empowered
to issue directions for the compensation
and restitution of damage caused from
actions of environmental negligence. The
ngt has the powers to decide on a range
of laws relating to pollution, diversion of
forestland for non-forest use as well as
environmental clearances (under the
Environment Impact Assessment (eia)
notification, 2006). The remedies that can
be sought relate both to questioning the
basis of the approvals as well as raising
substantial issues regarding the environ­
ment in projects proposed or under
operation. It is important to note that the
design and implementation of the laws
and regulatory frameworks covered by
the ngt Act have a huge bearing on the
lives and livelihoods of affected commu­
nities as well as the future of ecologically
fragile ecosystems. It is through these that
the necessary precautions, restrictions and
safeguards need to be ensured towards
environmental protection. In addition to
this the ngt also has the authority to rule
on grievances related to the access to and
benefit sharing of biological material
and traditional knowledge as envisaged
in the Biological Diversity Act, 2002.
The ngt has its central bench in New
Delhi and recently four regional benches
have been established in Bhopal, Chen­
nai, Kolkata and Pune. A whole range of
administrative- and appointment-related
issues are yet to be resolved before the
ngt benches begin working with the full
capacity of expert and judicial members.
We put forward some thoughts on this
institution’s functioning based on the
existing experience of environmental
regulation, particularly with respect to
environmental clearances. Some of the
cases presented below are significant in
terms of what they indicate in regard to
the ngt’s future.
Tribunals as Regulators
Tribunals are considered to be different
from courts and other judicial bodies.
They are meant to play the role of the
19
COMMENTARY

expert in an area where judicial remedy
is being sought. It would, therefore, not
be wrong to assume that this expert
body “adds” to the knowledge on the
environmental impact produced in the
regulatory process after the project has
gone through all the basic regulatory
filters. However, recent cases seem to
indicate that the n g t is performing the
role of the regulator simply because the
1994. In its interim order, the n g t asked
the project authority, Himachal Pradesh
Power Corporation Limited ( h p p c l ) to
stop construction activity related to the
project and also prohibited compensa­
tion-related awards for the land that was
acquired for it. One of the reasons for
the order was that the facts in the e i a
report, the environment clearance letter
and submissions by the company showed
also “delaying” projects. If the agencies
responsible for clearance based on faulty
data are not penalised, and the punish­
ments are meted out only to industry
either directly through penalties or indi­
rectly through delays in the project
deadlines, it will neither improve environ­
mental decision-making nor allow for
useful development. Both agendas of the
m o e f fail due to its own oversight. The

m o e f and other state-level regulatory different figures relating to land require­ m o e f has set up a system of accredita­

bodies set up under the e i a notification,
2006 refuse to take their roles seriously.
It is through this regulation that environ­
mental impact of industrial and infra­
structure projects is to be determined
and they need to be either accorded
approval or rejected.
On 28 July 2011, the n g t passed an
interim order in the case challenging the
grant of environment clearance to the
Renuka Dam Project in Sirmour district
of Himachal Pradesh. The governments
of Delhi and Himachal Pradesh had
signed an agreement to supply water to
the National Capital Region ( n c r ) in
ment and project-affected people.
Many other cases that the n g t has
heard have also been about faulty e i a s .
This is a diversion of the n g t ’s time be­
cause its expert members end up merely
pointing to the flaws in the basic docu­
ments used for decision-making and
which should have actually been cross­
checked by the m o e f 's expert appraisal
committees ( e a c ). If this is allowed to
continue, the n g t will be burdened with
similar cases as the problem of fraud-
ulence in e i a data is rampant. The n g t
will then be kept busy with such cases
thereby delaying justice in general and
tion of consultants to ensure the quality
of e ia s but who will ensure the quality of
the ministry’s decision-making process?
Should the n g t be playing the role of
doing so systematically?
There are instances of developers
choosing to start their e i a process again
themselves, rather than face an adverse
direction from the n g t . This might be
for fear of their projects being delayed
by litigation for fraudulence. In its early
stages, the n g t had revoked the environ­
ment clearance for the 43 hectares Pirna
Iron Ore Mines of Sesa Goa (a part of
Vedanta Group) located in Pirna and

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20 A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 13353 Economic & Political w eek ly

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Nadora Villages, in Bardez Taluk, north
Goa. As part of the proceedings, Sesa
Goa contended that it wanted to with­
draw the environment clearance appli­
cation in view of the deficiencies pointed
out in the e i a report. The n g t directed
the m o e f to take a decision on this
because the company had now admitted
that its e i a report based on which
approval was granted was inadequate
and incomplete. Following this, in Sep­
tember 2011, the m o e f informed the
n g t that the environment clearance for
Sesa Goa's mine stood cancelled under
clause 8 (vi) of the e i a notification,
which allows the rejection of a project
on the grounds of deliberate conceal­
ment and/or submission of false or mis­
leading information or data.
Rationale for EIA Notification
One of the regulations covered by the
ngt Act is the e i a notification. Since the
very beginning, one of the issues that
begged clarification with respect to the
design of this notification was the basis for
bringing some projects under its ambit
and not others. The 1994 version of the
notification used the total outlay of the
project to determine if it required a
clearance from the m o e f or not. Since
the 2006 version came into being, it is
a combination of the site, scale and
technology that determines if a project
requires clearance and if yes from which
authority. However, there is still no well-
defined connection between projects
and clearance procedures based on
potential environmental impact. To that
extent, the accusation by developers
that environment clearance procedures
are mere bureaucratic exercises may
have some merit. It is only expected,
therefore, that the very premise of the
e i a notification will be challenged by
projects that feel “forced” to take regu­
latory permission. The fate of the notifi­
cation rests to a large extent on how the
n g t responds to such challenges. The
n g t is the first forum that has given
bench of the n g t . As per the 17 February
order, this highly controversial planned
hill city project has appealed against
the conditions laid out in the environ­
ment clearance granted to the project
under the e i a notification, 2006. The
matter has not progressed further at
present because another case is pending
before the Bombay High Court where
the applicability of the e i a notification
for the Lavasa project is being contest­
ed. The n g t has not taken up this
appeal as of now but it will have to
do so soon.
The relationship between clearances
and impact will also need to be spelt out
clearly in the case of projects that were
due to be heard by the n e a a but have
continued construction during this period
of transition from the n e a a to the n g t .
One such case is the challenge to the
environmental clearance granted to a
1,200 m w thermal power plant located
in Jaigad in Ratnagiri district, Maha­
rashtra to be constructed by j s w Energy
(Ratnagiri) Ltd (jswERL)-www.jsw.in.
The project received environmental clear­
ance in May 2007. This clearance was
challenged before the n e a a on the
grounds of inadequate impact studies.
The n e a a dismissed the case but ordered
the Konkan Krishi Vidyapeeth Daboli
(k k v d ) to study the impact of the ther­
mal power plant on the Alphonso man­
goes even as it allowed the developer to
take up construction and commissioning
of the coal power plant. This decision of
the Appellate was taken up before the
Delhi High Court which took a firm
stand and sent the project back to the
desks of the e a c of the m o e f which had
first cleared the project. The e a c stuck to
its earlier decision which was conveyed
For the Attention of Subscribers and
Subscription Agencies Outside India
It has come to our notice that a large number of subscriptions to the EPWfrom outside the coun­
try together with the subscription payments sent to supposed subscription agents in India have not
been forwarded to us.
COMMENTARY
to the n e a a and it fell upon the newly
established n g t to give its verdict.
In a i3-page final judgment, the n g t
specifies that the ministry and its expert
committee have taken all precautionary
measures by laying down stringent
conditions including the addition of a
flue gas desulphurisation ( f g d ) system,
dense plantations and so on. The n g t
order also states that if at any point an
impact on the mangoes is noticed, the
plant shall be shut down. The project is
now under way with its first phase
commissioned and so is the study to
investigate the effect of the power plant
on the fruit.
A Wider Context
These cases are only a preview of what is
to come up before the n g t in the future.
Having made space for both the project
affected and project developers the n g t
is expected to use its stated expertise in
law and science to adjudicate on complex
matters of environmental and social jus­
tice. In this process it is likely to encoun­
ter three problem areas that could ham­
per democratic decision-making and
justice delivery.
The first stems from the shift out of a
precautionary approach to an evidence-
based model for environmental justice.
As in the case of the Lavasa project
and the thermal plant in Maharashtra, it
will be immensely difficult to establish
causality between a project and environ­
mental impact in the vicinity. While
physical effects such as submergence
and land transformations may be quan­
tified, to establish the qualitative effects
of projects on the health of plants, animals
and human beings, in both scale and
time, is nearly impossible. To establish a

project developers and those affected We wish to point out to subscribers and subscription agencies outside India that all foreign sub­
by projects an equal opportunity to scriptions, together with the appropriate remittances, must be forwarded to us and not to unauthor­
question the procedures of environmen­ ised third parties in India.

tal clearance and their outcomes. We take no responsibility whatsoever in respect of subscriptions not registered with us.
The Maharashtra-based Lavasa Corpo­ M anager
ration has filed a case before the Pune
Economic & Political w eek ly Q 3Q A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 21

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system of justice on the evidence of
project impact on the environm ent,
especially w hen such evidence can
never be conclusive, could am ount to no
justice at all. O w ing to the com plex na­
ture of interrelatedness in hum an envi­
ronmental systems, a precautionary app­
roach that appeals to the lim its o f scien­
tific know ing is essential for environ­
m ental justice.
If the limits o f scientific know ing are
accepted, then w hat should the n g t up­
hold as the basis for decision-m aking in
the cases before it? The answer to this
may lie in the multiple interpretations
that are offered on developm ent and en ­
vironm ent at public hearings ( p h ), the
only open space in the regulatory deci­
sion-making process. Instituted in 1997
follow ing the e ia notification, the p h has
been reduced to a formatted set of
pro- and anti-project statem ents in the
decision-m aking process that now looks
like an assem bly line o f environm ent
clearances. A look at the video record­
ings of these hearings w ill provide the
n g t an understanding o f the plethora of
concerns and doubts that exist in the
local area about a proposed project. Not
all o f them are strictly environm ental
but then it is hard to draw a line b etw een
the environm ental and the social in all
hum an contexts. T hese hearings are
a valuable source of the view s o f the
public for a body like the n g t that w ill
be called upon to stop high impact
projects from bein g built as w ell as
make project developers take responsi­
bility for the im pact that the project w ill
have in tim e. The use o f the m aterial in
these hearings by the n g t w ill not only
m ake its orders more relevant to the
public but could help bring back the
p h process to the centre o f regulatory
decision-m aking.
Finally, the n g t benches have a com ­
plex system o f clearances to deal w ith
if one goes m erely by the number of
projects granted clearance each year
and the multiplicity of clearances for
each project. The recent case o f the o p g
Power Gujarat's 3 0 0 M W therm al power
plant in Mundra in Kutch district of
Gujarat dem onstrates this w herein the
Coastal Regulation Zone (c r z ) clearance,
the environmental clearance and the forest
clearance, all im plem ented as separate
procedures, intersected, in expected but
unplanned w ays during the hearing of
the case. For long, project developers
have taken advantage o f the fact that
different agencies are responsible for
different clearances that have different
tim elines and pass through offices dis­
tantly connected to each other. In order
to provide justice to those w ho bring
grievances about projects to the n g t , it
w ill now have to deal w ith the diverse
cultures of impact assessm ent that exist
in the different state-level and central-
level expert com m ittees, authorities and
ministries. These cultures o f impact
assessm ent, at the centre o f w hich are
very subjective notions of how to “balance
environment and development”, w ill have
to be understood and com m ented upon
by the n g t . It will have to be done in such
a w ay that environm ental justice is not
only the objective o f the tribunal itself but
is the purpose of all routine regulatory
environm ental decision-m aking.

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a p r i l 14, 2 0 1 2 v o l x l v i i n o 15 HBE3 E con om ic & P olitical w eek ly

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Cellphones as a Tool
for Democracy
The Example of CGNet Swara
ANOOP SAHA_________________________
The social media revolution in
the last decade was largely
powered by communication
technology advances, most
notably by the spread of the
internet. User-generated content,
which embodies the power of
each individual to get his or her
message across to the whole
world, has had a transformative
quality that has made
geographical and social
boundaries irrelevant.
Preeti Mudliar and Rahul Banerjee helped
analyse the content of posts on Swara.
The analysis is used in this report.
Anoop Saha 0anoopsaha@gmail.com) is part of
the CGNet team.
Economic &Political weekly D EB Ap r il 14, 2012
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nfortunately, despite India’s claim
U of being an information techno­
logy (it) powerhouse, the inter­
net and computing technologies have
had a minimal impact on the objective
living conditions of the majority of Indians.
The Indian internet almost in its entirety,
is Anglocentric, though the language is
spoken by less than 12% of the population,
according to the 2001 Census of India. Is
a similar paradigm-altering platform on
cheaper and more accessible technology
relevant to rural India possible? We
discuss here one such experiment in
alternative media deployed in central
India, CGNet Swara.
CGNet was started in 2004 as an online
listserv to discuss people’s issues related
to Chhattisgarh (Choudhary 2009). The
platform has grown to have a strong
network among the state’s citizens over
the years. Swara was a natural extension
in taking it beyond online communities.
This article aims to provide insight into
the experiment, from its conceptuali­
sation to deployment, adoption and
usage patterns.
Motivation
According to the “State of the World’s
Indigenous People”, a report by the United
Nations (un ), the indigenous people of
India live in conditions that are at par or
far poorer than sub-Saharan Africa. The
report states (u n Permanent Forum on
Indigenous Issues 2010:29):
the level of poverty among Scheduled Tribes
is [deep], despite the constitutional rights
that apply uniquely to them. It was also
found that while poverty among the general
population had declined between 1993-1994
and 1999-2000, there had been little change
in poverty levels among indigenous peoples.
Given this fact, it is little wonder then
that the Maoist movement in India, from
Naxalbari to Dantewada, can be classified
largely as an adivasi rebellion (barring
v o l x l v ii n o 15
A ll use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
COMMENTARY
the Maoist Communist Centre in Bihar,
whose base was among dalits).
While poverty and human development
can be treated as governance problems,
issues of lack of communication can be an
accentuating factor in aggravating this
cycle of deprivation. Owing to their re­
moteness, the issues afflicting the adivasis
are very different from those affecting
the rest of the country. Much of the dis­
cussion about adivasis in the Indian media
is through the prism of people who were
themselves raised in relatively more privi­
leged backgrounds. Well-meaning though
they are, it is almost impossible for them
to see the sheer injustice heaped on the
community by the state since Independ­
ence, without experiencing it first-hand.
This lacuna is best exemplified by the
dismal media coverage of Salwa Judum, a
private army raised by the state to combat
Maoists in Chhattisgarh, and the massive
rights violation by this group between
2004 and 2007 (Committee against
Violence on Women - cavow - 2006).
The breakdown of communication
occurs at both ends. The reach of tradi­
tional media outlets in adivasi (and even
rural) communities is extremely limited.
This is once again because of poor avail­
ability of education, roads and electricity.
Language is a major barrier. The adivasis
of India are largely oral communities,
and their languages are not spoken by
people outside these communities. Most
of these languages do not have a written
script and knowledge is passed on
through very strong oral traditions.
Neither print nor visual media, thus,
have much significance for the adivasis.
CGNet Swara, a citizen journalism
project, tries to plug this gap at both
ends.1 In the last decade, citizen media,
or publication of stories directly from
the source, has matured and taken dif­
ferent forms across the world. Swara
was originated on the same premise: as
a platform that lets rural India - the non-
English speaking majority in the country
- use the core powers of user-generated
content to amplify their voice.
Technology and Rollout
Choices of Medium and Media: Cell­
phones, in contrast to computers, are
23
COMMENTARY

quite ubiquitous now. According to
Telecom Regulatory Authority of India
( t r a i ) , the total number of telephone
connections in India exceeded 91 crores
in November 2011 ( t r a i 2012) . The pric­
ing model helps in its propagation; call
rates in India are one of the cheapest in
the world and the device needs to be
charged only once in a few days. In
India and rest of the developing world,
cellphones have been used in many
innovative ways to solve local problems.
If cellphones are the ideal medium for
participatory citizen media, audio has to
be the medium that can break the literacy,
language and technology barrier.
Concept and Deployment: CGNet Swara
is essentially a simple Interactive Voice
Recording ( i v r ) system, where cell­
phones are used for both collecting and
disseminating the news. Every caller to
the i v r can either record a news snippet
by pressing 1 or listen to those recorded
by others by pressing 2. All recorded
messages are vetted and edited by a
trained journalist before being pub­
lished on the platform, and becoming
available for others to listen to. Internet
plays a very im portant role in the
w hole process. All posts are recorded
and uploaded on the CGNet Swara
w ebsite, as w ell as em ailed to the CGNet
listserv. Swara thus acts as the bridge
that passes the m essage across the
entire spectrum .
The first version of Swara was launched
in February 2010. Although the back­
end technology has undergone complete
overhaul since then, there has been
little change in its public interface. The
system was first deployed along with
a training programme in Kunkuri, a
village in north Chhattisgarh. There
have been two more training sessions -
one in New Delhi in collaboration with
Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti
(gsds ), and another in Koraput, Orissa,
with the help of ActionAid in August-
September 2011, respectively.
Reception, Usage and Impact
Usage: Since its first deployment in
February 2010, more than 74,000 calls
have been made on Swara for either
publishing or listening to news reports.
Almost 9,000 unique numbers from 10
states have been identified, implying
almost a similar number of users (Mudliar
et al 2012). Figure 1 (p 25) shows a
monthly chart for calls and posts made
on CGNet Swara.
As is the pattern in most crowd-
sourced social media, an overwhelming
number of users only listen to reports.
Only about 2% of all callers contribute
stories to the system. CGNet Swara pub­
lished 1,174 reports till 31 December 2011.
In 794 of these posts, the callers identi­
fied their name and location. In 2011
alone, the corresponding numbers are
756 and 703. Each call is between two
and five minutes.
The stories were contributed by at least
147 non-anonymous citizen journalists.
Twenty-one of these submitted 10 or
more stories, making up a total of 37%
of all posts. Almost all of the top posters
are journalists or non-governmental
organisation (ngo ) activists. This group
of people also work as evangelists for
Swara, spreading it to newer areas and
newer sets of people. There is a very high

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24 A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 CUES Economic & Political w eek ly

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Figure 1: Calls and Posts Per Month on CGNet Swara Impact: One of the most heart-rending
120 stories to appear on Swara was that of
Pitbasu Bhoi from Ambikapur. On 8 Jan­
100 uary 2011, a citizen journalist posted an
interview with Bhoi who was not paid
80 -£ his wages even after working 100 days
c
o
E under m gnrega . A week later, another
60 cl
citizen journalist ran into Bhoi and dis­
covered that his son had died due to the
non-payment of wages. After two lead­
ing national dailies, Times of India and
20
~
The Hindu, picked up the story from Swara
and followed up, Bhoi was paid his due
wages on 20 January 2011. Bhoi is now a
regular contributor to Swara, despite
bounce rate, and after someone breaks The single biggest use of Swara is to not owning a cellphone himself. (He calls
the barrier of posting a first message, he report on issues of governance (or the from someone else’s phones.)
or she is inclined to send more. lack thereof) in rural India. The griev­ In another story, D B Corp, owner of
The demography and geography of ances are of all kinds - schools not work­ the largest circulating newspaper in
the reporters tells a very important ing, salaries not being paid, poor Chhattisgarh, acquired a coal mine in
story. Of the top 21 posters, there are five conditions in hospitals, allegations of Dharamjaigarh in Chhattisgarh. Despite
adivasis, two dalits and six from the corruption, complaints against private the rigged public hearing, local media
backward castes. In all, we could identify companies and authorities. Many of ignored the story. However, following
26 adivasis out of 147 citizen journalists these are personal, affecting an indi­ two reports on Swara about the public
who have published on Swara. This vidual, but symptomatic of greater hearing, three national newspapers
number is much higher than in main­ institutional failure. did elaborate stories, leading to the
stream media; there we could not iden­ A total of 116 news items, or roughly cancellation of the allotment of the
tify a single dalit or adivasi voice in the 10% of all 1,013 published posts, mostly coal mine.
bylines. There is not much demographic categorised under “payment” above, In both the above cases, CGNet Swara
data for listeners, except for the fact were related to complaints in Mahatma acted as a channel that amplified the
that the largest number of calls are Gandhi National Rural Employment voice of the poor. The stories were then
made from the Madhya Pradesh (mp)- Guarantee Act (mgnrega ) payments. picked up by mainstream media houses,
Chhattisgarh circle. The volume implies the immense poten­ which then forced the authorities to act.
tial as well as serious mismanagement However, there have been cases, where
Content: The content of posts made on of the employment guarantee scheme the platform itself was the catalyst for
Swara is quite diverse. We have catego­ across rural India. Based on these mes­ change on the ground. For instance,
rised 1,013 posts of CGNet Swara till sages, and as has been established in after a report on Swara about State
October 2011. Each post was tagged into many other reports, in less than seven Bank of India (sbi) not giving money to
one or more of the categories, as shown years of its notification, nrega has be­ adivasis purportedly because of their
in Table 1. come the backbone of rural livelihoods. forefathers’ borrowing, the bank’s branch
Table 1: Classification of Content of Posts Another large proportion of posts in Bhopalpattnam in Chhattisgarh opened
Made on CGNet Swara are, not surprisingly, individual perfor­ two special counters for disbursing loans
Number Proportion Proportion of to adivasis.
ofTotal Total Posts (%)
mances such as songs or poems cate­
Categorised gorised in some cases under “entertain­ Another very interesting possibility
Posts (%)
Governance 660 41.22 65.22
ment” and in other cases also under that emerged through Swara was that of
Payment* 126 7.89 12.48 “event” or “anniversary” categories. Adi­ community solutions to problems, just
Living conditions 105 6.53 10.33 vasis have very strong oral traditions. as on the web. A villager from Surguja,
Event 58 3.65 5.77 Posts under this category are made in Chhattisgarh, complained about illegal
Politics 420 26.21 41.46 many different languages - Hindi, stone mining in the forestland of their
Anniversary 4 0.25 0.40
Chhattisgarhi, Gondi, Kurukh, Nagpuri, village. Despite several complaints, the
Entertainm ent 75 4.66 7.38
Santhali, Bhilali. authorities did not stop the work. A few
Health 94 5.85 9.26
Education 60 3.73 5.90
Yet another category of posts are live days after this report was posted on
1,601 100.00 reports or news bulletins including cov­ Swara, another individual from Orissa
Since some of these were categorised under multiple erage or reports on conventions, fairs or reported how under the Forest Rights
categories, the sum of all categorised posts (1,601) exceeds
the total number of posts. "MGNREGA and other payment
public rallies, categorised under “event”, Act, gram sabhas are empowered to take
for (temporary) government work. “politics” and “living conditions”. decisions on common forest area, also
Economic & Political weekly QBQ a p r il 14, 2012 VOL XLVII NO 15 25

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COMMENTARY
providing examples where this was
done successfully.
Adivasis in central India face many
similar problems. There were other iso­
lated incidents where communities were
successful in combating official apathy
to get results. Swara helps in bringing
these communities together, and allows
them to learn from each other.
Future and Challenges
Over the last two years, Swara was in an
experimental mode. It was deployed and
used by a small community. The initial
deployment proved and disproved many
of the original assumptions. The system
has scored well on the triple matrix of
social desirability, economic sustainability
and technological feasibility. Over the
next several years, this experiment needs
to be replicated in different geographies.
Scaling up will bring its own set of
unique problems. There are three main
challenges, of which two can be solved
through some innovation.
The primary bottleneck is modera­
tion. Swara has been designed and acts
as a citizen news platform. There is a
very strong emphasis on its journalism
aspect. The team of moderators are
trained in journalism, and have ensured
that messages posted on Swara are of
very high quality. Swara does not
encourage anonymous reporting. This
centralised structure, however works
against scaling. A person can only mod­
erate or edit so many messages in a
day. The team is currently working on
creating smaller hyper local models,
which can be replicated anywhere with
minimal effort (Venkatraman 2012).
Each deployment will work on its own
model for processing and distributing
the content.
The second and related challenge lies
in the technology. The cGNet Swara
team would like to expand the model to
create a full-blown audio portal. This
is, however, easier said than done. Voice
is a complicated medium. It is easy to
collect and distribute audio content
using cellphones. What is hard, and
currently non-existent, is automatic
processing of audio content, especially
in Indie languages. Speech synthesis,
to allow further scaling of audio or
26
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voice-based networks, is still a decade of
research away.
The third and most difficult part is
ensuring the security of citizen journalists.
The spate of attacks and murders of right
to information ( r t i ) activists across the
country is testimony to the resistance
to accountability of people in power.
Journalists are accorded a tiny bit of
safety owing to their professional status,
through their organisations, unions and
international press freedom monitoring
bodies. Despite this, India is regarded as
one of the most unsafe places for report­
ers. This threat is magnified for unat­
tached individuals when they report on
personal or social grievances.
Conclusions
No extensive technological or social
research went into developing and deploy­
ing Swara. The system was developed
through a clear understanding of the
ground realities, translated for the engi­
neering team to develop a solution. The
engineers had to fiddle with many tech­
nologies before zeroing in on the ideal
architecture. But extensive research or
technological breakthroughs were not
required to make it a reality.
So, is social media on cellphones the
ultimate panacea for bottom-up flow of
information? The case is wide open.
Swara is a just a baby step in this direc­
tion. CGNet Swara is still in experimental
beta mode. The case for its use among
the adivasis has been proven by the
initial experiment; the creases in the
model have been ironed out. The deploy­
ment also proves that the dynamics of
social media remain the same, whatever
be the platform. The adoption rate has
been very high and despite its limited
Permission for Reproduction
of Articles Published in EPW
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prior permission of the author(s).
A soft/hard copy of the author(s)'s approval should be sent to
In cases where the email address of the author has not been published along with the
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Ap r il 14, 2012
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
reach, the model has actually had signi­
ficant positive impact on many individual
lives and livelihoods.
NOTE______________________________________
1 The seed of innovation for Swara came from
Shubhranshu Choudhary. Bill Thies and Arjun
Venkataraman plugged the technical gap and
led the engineering effort, helped by the team
of engineers who worked on Swara at various
stages - Latif Alam, Devadatta Sahoo and
Samujjal Puryakastha. Smita Choudhary was
extremely helpful in conceptualising and
bringing Swara to a deployable shape. Swara
was financially supported through a fellowship
from the International Center for Journalists
(ICFJ). Elisa Tinsley and Benjamin Crowley of
ICFJ guided and supported the project from its
conception to the present.
Swara is available at (080) 41137280 on phone
and at http://www.cgnetswara.org on the in­
ternet. One can reach the team at shu@cgnet.
in or cgnetswara@gmail.com
REFERENCES______________________________
CAVOW (2006): “Salwa Judum and the Violence on
Women in Dantewara, Chhattisgarh” Report
of a Fact-Finding by an All India Women’s
team, Nagpur.
Choudhary, S (2009): “CGNet and Citizen Journal­
ism in India”, eJournal USA, 1 June. Retrieved
31 January 2012: http://www.america.gov/st/
peopleplace-english/2oo9/June/2oo9o6i6i75
845mlenuhreto.1840588.html
Mudliar, P, Jonathan Donner and William Thies
(2012): “Emergent Practices around CGNet
Swara: A Voice Forum for Citizen Journalism
in Rural India”, Proceedings of the International
Conference on Information and Communication
Technologies and Development (Atlanta: ACM).
UN Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (2010):
State of the World's Indigenous Peoples (New
York: Department of Economic and Social
Affairs, Division for Social Policy and Develop­
ment, UN).
TRAI (2012): “Highlights of Telecom Subscription
Data as on 30 November 2011”, Information
Note to the Press, Press Release No 05/2012,
New Delhi, 9 January 2012. Retrieved 31 Janu­
ary 2012, from: http://www.trai.gov.in/Wri-
teReadData/trai/upload/PressReleases/859/
Press_Release_N0v-11.pdf
Venkatraman, A (2012): “Voices across the Digital
Divide - Using Audio Portals to Connect Com­
munities”, Linux For You, January. Retrieved 31
January 2012, from: http://www.linuxforu.com/
2012/oi/digital-divide-audio-portals-connect-
communities/
epw.
vo l x l v ii n o 15 BBO Economic &Political weekly

P S Appu
A Tribute
E A S SARMA_____________ _________________
P S Appu, an extraordinary
civil servant who had a keen
awareness of land issues
and who also had a different
understanding of reforms, died in
Bangalore on 29 March. A tribute.
E A S Sarma (ieassarma@gmail.com ) is a former
secretary to the Government of India.
Economic & Political weekly Ap r il 14, 2012
This content downloaded from 192. 190. 180.53 on Tue, 06 Nov 2018 11:58:50 UTC
COMMENTARY
in this country. Those who work with
courage and conviction, who accord the
highest priority to transparency in the
functioning of the public authorities, and
who ensure accountability to the people,
they alone can lead the civil services in
the country. Unfortunately, such leader­
ship is in short supply these days.
S Appu was 14 years senior to me When P S Appu announced his volun­
P in the Indian Administrative Serv­ tary retirement from the i a s in 1980, I
ice ( ia s ) . He belonged to the Bihar was a director in the Ministry of Power.
cadre of the service, whereas I had Though I did not know Appu personally,
worked all along in Andhra Pradesh. I, along with a few other service col­
However, these distances never stood in leagues, thought it imperative to meet
the way of my following his work and and express our solidarity in support of
sharing his views and values. his decision. The principled way in
I first heard about P S Appu from my which Appu chose to quit the service left
highly respected i a s colleague, Syed Riz- a deep impression on my own mind. In a
vi, who worked with him when the way, this had something to do with my
former was director of Lai Bahadur Shas- own decision to quit the service volun­
tri National Academy of Administration tarily, two decades later.
( l b s n a a ) at Mussoorie. When Appu
found a young i a s trainee guilty of mis­ Problems of People
conduct, he recommended to the govern­ The problems of the majority of the peo­
ment that the officer’s services should be ple in India revolve around land and ag­
terminated forthwith. He felt that the of­ riculture, not around the stock markets,
ficers belonging to the premier civil serv­ luxury housing and modern car manu­
ices in India should be fully aware that facture. Reforms that address the inse­
the people of the country expected them cure landownership rights, informal
to show exemplary conduct. However, owner-tenant relationships biased heavily
when the government dragged its feet in against the tenants, capital-scarce agri­
following his advice, Appu promptly sub­ culture, and lack of sufficient education
mitted his papers for voluntary retire­ and public healthcare facilities should
ment from the i a s . This had an electrify­ have been at the top of the agenda of re­
ing impact on the civil services in the forms in the country. Unfortunately, the
country. As a result of the resolve dis­ post-1991 reform programme hardly ad­
played by Appu the government had to dressed these concerns. It was in this
relent and accept his advice, though context that the contribution made by
Appu himself stuck to his decision to quit. Appu assumed great relevance.
Anita Agnihotri, an i a s trainee who was For example, his article “Tenancy
at l b s n a a at that time, aptly recalled the Reform in India” in August 1975 in e p w
collective response of most young officers read like a treatise on the subject, founded
by saying, “his resignation from service firmly on his own hands-on experience
prematurely on a matter of principle.... with tenancy problems in Bihar and his
had sent ripples through the Union Home excellent analytical overview of the sub­
Ministry and the entire bureaucracy and ject at the national level. He chaired the
has left a lasting impact on our minds till Committee on Land Reforms set up by
date. Uncompromisingly, with great clari­ the Planning Commission and the plain-
ty of mind combined with erudition, Shri speaking no-nonsense report of that
Appu was an admirable example of cour­ committee spoke volumes about his
age and principle. As a senior colleague, he insights and ideas on the subject.
was a true leader orienting his juniors In October 2009, 1 came across a com­
towards a pro-people accountable and tran­ prehensive, well-argued article contrib­
sparent public service delivery system.” uted by P S Appu on the improvements
What Agnihotri said conveyed a very called for in the implementation of the
important message for the civil services National Rural Employment Guarantee
vo l x l v ii n o 15 27
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
COMMENTARY
Scheme ( n r e g s ) . While conveying to him
my views and reservations on what he
suggested in that article, little did I realise
then that I would get into a regular cor­
respondence with him thereafter, on a
variety of topics of mutual interest. In our
email correspondence that went on unin­
terrupted until June 2011, we exchanged
views on the need to strengthen the pan-
chayati raj system, the implications of the
post-1991 economic reform programme,
the necessity to strengthen the public dis­
tribution system and the need to provide
adequate food subsidies, the ways and
means to address the problem of food-
grain storage, the issues that are relevant
to tribal empowerment and development
and so on. We even discussed the pros
and cons of nuclear power and the ad­
verse implications of imposing a cap on
civil nuclear liability! I would seek his
views on my own articles and letters to
the government. He was prompt in pro­
viding me valuable feedback.
When he came across a report that the
central government had asked a multina­
tional corporation to make recommenda­
tions on the problem of foodgrain storage
in the country, he expressed his deep an­
guish by saying, “What a fall, my country
men! We have lost not only our pride and
self-respect, but also our common sense”.
What he meant was that there was enough
professional expertise available in India to
address such problems. He added, “I am
not a jingoist....I recall the sound advice
given by (Nicholas) Kaldor, (Daniel)
Thorner, (Wolf Isaac) Ladejinsky”.
While P S Appu is not physically
among us today, his ideas and views, his
aspirations and vision, I am sure, are
deeply embedded among all those who
had the fortune of working with him in
one capacity or the other. Persons like
Appu will always remind us that the civil
services can justify their existence only
when they are fully attuned to address­
ing the concerns of the majority of the
population. Their accountability should
be to that majority, not the self-serving
political and bureaucratic elite!

Remembering Omkarnath (2005) has documented

quite handsomely3 the approval with

Krishna Bharadwaj which even the legendary silences of

K VELA VELUPILLAl_____________________
On this, the 20th anniversary of
the untimely death of Krishna
Bharadwaj, this article tries
to reconsider some theoretical
aspects of her fundamental
contributions to capital theory
by showing how applicably
relevant they are in modern
contexts. Krishna Bharadwaj
had an admirable mastery
of Sraffian methodology and
remained loyal to that tradition
in a most enlightened manner.
Her theoretical contributions to
Sraffian scholarship enhanced
and enlarged the frontiers of
applicable capital theory. One
particular application of two
Bharadwaj Theorems is also
considered in this article.
K Vela Velupillai ( kvelupillai@gmail.com )
is at the department of economics/ASSRU,
University of Trento, Italy.
28
Sraffa - especially with regard to com­
ments on his own contributions - were
broken by the elegance and competence of
Krishna Bharadwaj’s maiden foray into
the world of p c m c . I shall not traverse
1 A Preamble on Anniversaries, these well-trodden noble paths anew. I
Realism and Parables aim to use the traditional intellectual
[Krishna Bharadwaj] ‘did not then [in 1962] excuse of anniversaries to try to point out
know of the more fundamental critique of a neglected aspect of Sraffa’s concerns
economic theory heralded by Piero Sraffa’s on anchoring serious theory on obser­
work’ (Bharadwaj 1992: 38). This came in
vational realism, without idle construc­
1962 when ‘Sachin Chowdhury [sic], the
editor of The Economic Weekly [which subse­
tion of non-relevant parables that do not
quently becam e The Economic and Political aid understanding reality but obfuscate
Weekly],.... drew out of his drawer [Sraffa’s] and obscure the distinction between
slim volume ... [which K rishna...] agreed to relevant abstractions and irrelevant ap­
re v ie w ... in a month or so!’ (ibid: 39).
proximations to a non-observable reality.
- Harcourt 1993-94: 301; italics in the original.
For this purpose I invoke two Bhara­
ifty years ago, just as Krishna dwaj Theorems, in the next section,
F Bharadwaj was being made aware which are then used as a springboard to
of Sraffa’s book, Peter Newman’s compute an index number in a computa­
significant review of Sraffa (i960, hence­ tionally efficient manner to compare two
forth referred to as p cm c; Newman 1962)1 productions systems, characterising two
appeared, and elicited one of only two alternative economies. Neither Sraffa,
public reactions by Piero Sraffa to his slim, nor Krishna Bharadwaj, indulged in
terse, book (the other was his response “abstraction-mongering” in “ahistorical”
to Harrod’s misleading review of p cm c, intellectual exercises, without anchor­
Harrod (1961)2 and Sraffa (1962)). Ironi­ ing their theories in relevant realism,
cally, as it seems now, 1962 was also the free of parables.
year Paul Samuelson’s story of “parables Even in the context of the deepest
and realism in capital theory” appeared issues of the theory of value, Sraffa’s
(Samuelson 1962), which has been given anchoring - and Krishna Bharadwaj’s, too
a new lease of life in Anwar Shaikh’s re­ - was in the observable entities of pro­
cent reflections on the empirical (insig­ duction, and not pseudo-metaphysical
nificance of reswitching (Shaikh 2012). psychological bases of so-called rational
Ap r il 14, 2012 vo l x l v ii n o 15 I33Q Economic & Political weekly

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behaviour. In a note written in summer
1928, as Heinz Kurz has recently remin­
ded us (Kurz 2011), Sraffa emphasises
(italics added):
The question asked o f the theory of value
is the following: Given (from experience)
the prices of all commodities ..., find a set of
conditions that will make these prices ap­
pear to be necessary. This m eans, given the
unknowns, find the equations (i e, the con­
stants)... (Sraffa Papers D3/12/9: 65).
The immediate implication is that the
economic analyst faces a Diophantine
Decision Problem (as I have argued in
Velupillai 2005). The “given (from expe­
rience) prices” cannot be other than - at
best - rational valued. The same applies
to the “constants” (defined by techno­
logy). Such problems are naturally algo­
rithmic - i e, procedural. It is this aspect
that is highlighted in the key result I
have called Bharadwaj’s Theorem /, in
the next section.
Bharadwaj noted, in the concluding
lines of her review of p c m c (Bharadwaj
1963:1454; italics added):
Written in an unusually compact style and
em bellished w ith chiselled logic, [PCMC]
bears the imprint o f sustained reflection.
Unmistakably, this is the work of a m as­
ter written w ith authority and insight.......
[T]ime has dealt kindly with Sraffa’s con­
tribution. It is as relevant today as it was
when conceived [over seven and a half
decades ago].
No one understood better than Krishna
Bharadwaj that the “chiselled logic” em­
bodied in the theoretical propositions of
p c m c , proved with impeccably faultless
mathematical reasoning, albeit uncon­
ventional,4 were motivated by intensely
applicable and observational relevance.
2 Two Bharadwaj Theorems
Methodologically, [Sraffa] explicitly states
that his immediate concern is the proper­
ties of the system which do not depend
upon change. Erroneously interpreting this
as invariance to change or changelessness,
some have regarded Sraffa’s analysis as re­
stricted to a stationary equilibrium or, when
extended, to signify steady states. There
have been repeated charges about the ahis-
toricty of the exercise, which appears as
merely abstraction-mongering (Bharadwaj
1989: 321, italics added).
Neither Sraffa nor Bharadwaj stated
any of their results or propositions in
terms of the formal notion of a theorem,
Economic & Political weekly Q3S9 Ap r il 14, 2012
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although that is what they should have
been called, given the pseudo-mathemati­
cal jargon of economic theoretical prac­
tice. Not calling them theorems has led
various economists, with only a modi­
cum of formal mathematical training, to
carp and find lacunae in Sraffa’s rigor­
ously derived demonstrations of his ex­
act, impeccably unambiguous, proposi­
tions. Even worse misunderstandings
have resulted in Sraffa avoiding the use
of the word “proof’ to indicate the rigor­
ous procedures with which he demon­
strates the validity of his propositions
(i e, theorems).5
Krishna Bharadwaj followed Sraffa’s
noble example and did not refer to her
results and propositions, particularly in
Bharadwaj (1970) as theorems; nor did
she allude to her procedural demon­
strations as proofs. In what can only be
termed a truly prescient and remark­
able footnote, Krishna Bharadwaj poin­
ted out (ibid, footnote 13, p 415; bold
italics added):
Analytically there is no loss o f generality
involved in a procedure o f successive con­
sideration o f production systems using a
different method of production for only one
of the commodities common to them as,
given all possible systems of production, it
could not lead to any different outerm ost
boundary o f wage-profit curves. Inciden­
tally, it would be noted that whatever be
the number o f com modities produced by
different m ethods in the tw o systems the
maximum number of switching possibilities
would still be equal to the total number of
distinct (without double counting) basics in
the two systems together.
In the language of conventional mathe­
matical economics there is (at least) one
formal theorem in this observation -
that which gave the paper its title “The
Maximum Number of Switches between
Two Production Systems”. More impor­
tantly, there is also a clear hint on stat­
ing, as a theorem, a result on the unique­
ness of the “outermost boundary of the
wage-profit curves”, but that is not all.
There is also a clear statement of a way
to use - a mode of constructing a proce­
dure - this unique outermost boundary
of the wage-profit curves in comparative
studies between production systems,
algorithmically. The precise computa­
tional complexity of the procedure is, of
course, not mentioned, but such things
v o l x l v ii n o 15
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COMMENTARY
did not exercise the mind or the pen of
many economists then, and they do not
do so even now, despite much hype
about computable general equilibrium
theory (even in developmental contexts)
and computational economics.
The above observations are summa­
rised in three numbered statements, in
the concluding Section iv of this classic
paper, simply referred to in terms of the
phrase, “To sum up”. They encapsulate,
again in the jargon of the more formal, if
less justified, mathematical economist
two absolutely fundamental theorems,
both of which have important applicable
richness. To state them more formally,
giving them the completely justified
prefix “Bharadwaj”:
Bharadwafs Theorem I (ibid: 423-24):
At a switch point the adjacent production
systems differ in the method of production
for only one o f the com modities common to
them. The m aximum number o f switching
possibilities betw een tw o such systems is
equal to the number of distinct (i e, without
double counting) com modities entering, di­
rectly or indirectly, into the tw o alternative
methods w hich respectively characterise the
tw o systems.
Bharadwafs Theorem II (ibid: 424):
The choice of the value unit does not affect
the m aximum number of switching possi­
bilities.
If I succumb to the temptation of
pseudo-mathematical practice, then I
would add what those who indulge in
such mumbo jumbo call a “Remark”:
Remark
The econom ic content of Bharadwafs Theo­
rem II is simply that the choice o f the nume­
raire does not affect the content o f Bharad­
wafs Theorem I.
As for Bharadwaj’s Theorem I, it may
be useful to recall Sraffa’s remark (sic!)
on the different way orthodox, marginal,
theory interprets and utilises the exist­
ence of switch points, as clearly brought
out in Kurz (op cit: p 4):
The characteristic feature of switchpoints
is that both distributive variables, wages, w,
and the rate of profits, r, are rigidly fixed and
are the same in both systems. Sraffa found
this marginalist presupposition unaccept­
able. In a note written on 15 December 1943
he stressed that:
[T]he so-called determination is due to
circumstances, which exist, not in the
real world of actual production, but only
29
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in the world of im agination and possi­
bilities: they are not intrinsic to the [ac­
tual] system and other levels [of w and
r] cannot be ‘inconsistent’ w ith it. As far
as the real, existing, system described
by the equations is concerned, any levels
[of w and r] are consistent w ith it (Sraffa
Papers D 3 /12/35:43(2)).
In other words, the orthodox - i e,
marginalist - mode of analysing a given
system of production is, counterfactually,
to postulate the existence of hypoth­
etically “adjacent” - i e, “marginally dif­
ferent from” - production systems. The
important qualification by Sraffa is that
such orthodox counterfactual reasoning
is valid “only in the world of imagination
and possibilities: they are not intrinsic
to the [actual] system”, i e, in the world
of parables and have nothing to do with
realism.
Bharadwaj’s Theorem I is entirely con­
sistent with Sraffa’s strictures and has
nothing to do with counterfactual, hypo­
thetical, “adjacent” production systems.
3 Tractably Computing
Wage-Profit Frontiers
If one measures labour and land by heads
or acres the result has a definite meaning,
subject to a margin of error: the margin is
wide, but it is a question of degree. On the
other hand if you measure capital in tons the
result is purely and sim ply nonsense. How
many tons is, e g, a railway tunnel?6 (Sraffa
(1936); italics added.)
Some 20 years ago I noted7:
Production structures carry with them natu­
ral prices corresponding to particular ana­
lytical assumption about the economics of
the production system. What is needed is a
device for extracting these prices from the
observed data of a functioning economy.
Now, 20 - or so - years later, Stefano
Zambelli has developed an algorithm to
compute the index I constructed, based
on wage-profit curves, to compare pro­
duction systems, to measure technologi­
cal progress. The connection with the
Bharadwaj Theorems is the relevant
point in the implementation of the algo­
rithms. Briefly, so-called “brute-force”
algorithms are of exponential time-
complexity, as the methods of prod­
uction, for any production system, is
increased in number. Using the two
Bharadwaj Theorems, the exponential­
time computational complexity can be
Economic &Political weekly BBSS! Ap r il 14, 2012
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COMMENTARY
reduced to polynomial-time complexity in turn, were the basis on which I con­
in increasing the number of methods structed an index, which now can be
of production. computed with measurable computa­
tional efficiency, as a result of Zambelli’s
Outline of the Brute-Force Algorithm understanding of the relevance of the
(Zambelli and Fredhom 2010): Bharadwaj Theorems for this purpose.
(1) Organise input data - for example Surely, this is an effective counter­
standard input-output tables - in terms example to the pointless and ceaseless
of multidimensinal arrays (say using accusations of abstraction-mongering
Matlab). and ahistoricity of the Sraffian frame­
(2) Enumerate all possible combinations work? And it was achieved by a combi­
of methods of production. nation of theoretical ingenuity on the
(3) Compute, sequentially, the wage- part of Krishna Bharadwaj, intuitive
profit frontier for each of the combina­ knowledge of the procedural nature of
tions of methods of production. the demonstrations of propositions in
(4) Retain the dominating value of wages p c m c by Bharadwaj, felicitously com­
(compared to its value for the preciously bined with Zambelli’s desire to circum­
computed wage-profit frontiers). vent the neoclassical counterfactual
The proverbial “curse of dimension­ fudge of productivity comparisons using
ality” enters copiously in the above algo­ untenable production functions, having
rithm because, for each rate of profit, all as arguments non-measurable inputs.
possible combinations of methods of
production have to be evaluated. For ex­ 4 Brief Reflections of Krishna
ample, for N countries, each with n pro­ Bharadwaj’s Sraffian Methodology
duction sectors, the total number of wage- [T]he review, ‘Value through Exogenous
profit frontiers are i\P. In the applications Distribution’, appeared in August 1963. In
order to write it, she followed a dem anding
in Zambelli and Fredholm (op cit), N = 64 intellectual pilgrim’s progress, taking the
and n = 23, which implies M1 = 6423« same journey that Sraffa him self had taken
over the 30 to 40 years prior to the publica­
3.5X1041. A standard computer, running
tion of the book. She read, as he did, Smith,
one whole year, must evaluate 1.1X1034
Ricardo, Malthus, Marx, Mill, Jevons, Mar­
wage-profit frontiers per second. No shall, Walras, Wicksell. The result w as her
computing facilities existing in standard outstanding review a rticle...
format or at “normal” institutions have - Harcourt, op cit, p 301.
the capacity to do any such computing I believe the Sraffian basis of Krishna
today - or in the reasonable future. Bharadwaj’s scientific methodology is
This is where the Bharadwaj Theorems most clearly evident in Bharadwaj (1970).
enter and help dissipate the “curse of In particular, in her mode of discussing
dimenionality”: if the computational the nature of the economically motivated
complexity measure of a brute-force difference between the Sraffian catego­
algorithm is given by S, then utilising the ries of basic and non-basic commodities
Bharadwaj Theorems this measure can and the mathematical distinction bet­
be reduced to the order of SVn. ween decomposable and indecompos­
I shall not enter into technical detailsable matrices. This difference, when ob­
of the algorithm that has been devised, fuscated by ill-digested mathematics,
using the Bharadwaj Theorems, in this grafted on to an economic theory and its
paper (the interested reader can see the categories without serious anchoring in
details in Velupillai, 1994 and Zambelli observable relevance, grounded in the
and Fredholm 2010). The point I wish to traditions of economic thought, leads to
make, in this homage to the memory of the kind of appeals made to “aggre­
Krishna Bharadwaj, is the following. gation” by Peter Newman (op cit) and
Theoretical results, entirely motivated Levhari’s (1965) hasty conclusions. Her
by empirical anchorings, devised by concluding remarks on this double dis­
Krishna Bharadwaj, based on the frame­ tinction are worth their economic
work developed by Sraffa in p c m c , sug­ weight in gold (ibid: 423):
gested an algorithmic procedure for The classification of commodities into basics
computing wage-profit frontiers. These, and nonbasics in a given system uses more of
vo l x l v ii n o 15 31
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 the available information about the system
than does the classification of the system
as decomposable or indecomposable. The
additional information incorporated in the
former distinction is essential for the dis­
cussion of switching possibilities between
two systems.
It is not surprising, then, that it was
Krishna Bharadwaj who derived the im­
portant two theorems that enabled us to
construct an algorithm and compute ef­
ficiently an intractable measure and use
it for the eminently empirical purpose of
comparing the productive capabilities of
two economic systems.
Krishna Bharadwaj had an admirably
complete command of the traditions of
economic thought that underpinned
much of contemporary economic theory.
She, like Sraffa, may not have had com­
mand over the formal side of mathe­
matics, but had an unsurpassed intui­
tion to guide her towards an under­
standing of the way economic theory
had to be developed to serve in the inter­
pretation of the evolution of economic
institutions - and how they might be
shaped to further humane ends, in their
future development.
[Krishna Bharadwaj, whose Sraffian Scholarship
w as supreme, died on 8 March, 20 years ago.
Krishna Bharadwaj began her remarkable jour­
ney towards a m astery of Sraffa (i960) in 1962,
a half a century ago. My own studies of Sraffa
began 10 years later, in 1972, but it was only in
1992, the year Krishna died, that I was able to
develop an applicable index, based on Sraffa’s
magnum opus. This particular saga was com­
pleted by Stefano Zambelli, who constructed an
algorithm to use my index, based on a deep and
abstract result in Bharadwaj (1970). I am in­
debted to my colleague and friend (of 30 years),
Stefano Zambelli, whose ow n adherence to
Sraffian m ethods has been a beacon of light in
my eternal struggles w ith Production o f Com­
modities by Means o f Commodities.]
NOTES_____________________________________
1 Guglielmo Chiodi drew my attention to a hand­
written letter by Sraffa to Gareganani, dated
22 June 1962, referring to Newman’s review as
“E tipico effetto della troppa (e troppo poco di-
geribili) matematica”, which in my ‘free trans­
lation’ would read: “[Newman’s review is] a
typical outcome of too much (and little digest­
ible) mathematics”.
2 Sraffa, in the above letter to Garegnani, refers
to this review in blunt terms as: “‘Harrod k una
perdita di tempo’ (again, a ‘free translation’
by me would render it as: ‘Harrod is a waste
of time.’”).
3 Curiously, the one issue of EPW inaccessible
via JSTOR is Vol 27, # 12 (1992), which is
32
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supposed to contain Deena Khatkhate’s ‘Letter
to the Editor’ referring to Sraffa’s own letter to
Sachin Chaudhuri stating that the Bharadwaj
review of PCMC “was one of the three best re­
views” of his book (Omkarnath, op cit, p 460).
Omkarnath has kindly made available to me a
copy of this Letter to the Editor of EPW, a
perusal of which leaves the “mystery” of the
other two “best reviews” unresolved, however.
4 I have maintained, ever since I noted it in my
review of Pasinetti’s Lectures on the Theory of
Production (Velupillai 1980), that every proved
proposition in PCMC is mathematically rigor­
ous and all attempts at recasting the formalism
employed in the book in terms of linear algebra
are unnecessary (Velupillai 2008). In particu­
lar, it is not at all necessary to invoke the cele­
brated results of Perron & Frobenius to “prove”
Sraffa’s “theorems”.
5 Two unfortunate examples of this mischief by
so-called mathematical economists are those
by Burmeister (1968) and Hahn (1982), as I
have pointed out in Velupillai (2008).
6 The quote goes on (italics added):
If you are not convinced, try it on someone
who has not been entirely debauched by
economics. Tell your gardener that a farmer
has 200 acres or employs 10 men - will he
not have a pretty accurate idea of the quanti­
ties of land & labour? Now tell him that he
employs 500 tons of capital, and he will think
you are dotty - (not more so, however, than
Sidgwick or Marshall).
7 In a paper prepared for the World Bank, with
the collaboration of Stefano Zambelli (Velupillai
1994). The paper had the “tragic” fate of being
approved for publication as a World Bank Dis­
cussion paper (on the basis of one supportive
referee’s report, by Lance Taylor, although
heavily “denounced” by the second referee,
T N Srinivasan), and then the commitment to
publish it in that mode completely ignored!
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November.
- (2008): “Sraffa’s Constructive Mathematical
Economics”, Journal of Economic Methodology,
Vol 15, No 4, December, pp 325-48.
Zambelli, Stefano and Thomas Fredholm (2010):
“An Algorithmic Measurement of Techno­
logical Progress”, ASSRU Discussion Paper
10-06, December.
EPW Index
An author-title index for EPW has been
prepared for the years from 1968 to 2010.
The PDFs of the Index have been uploaded,
year-wise, on the EPW web site. Visitors can
download the Index for all the years from the
site. (The Index for a few years is yet to be
prepared and will be uploaded when ready.)
EPW would like to acknowledge the help of
the staff of the library of the Indira Gandhi
Institute for Development Research, Mumbai,
in preparing the index under a project
supported by the RD Tata Trust.
v o l x l v i i n o 15 13221 Economic & Political w e e k ly
Class Struggles, Ideologies, Economic
Transformations and Colonialism
AMIYA KUMAR BAGCHI
The World-System Perspective
s we live in the shadow of the
A strikes by tanks, stealth bombers
and drones destroying hundreds
of thousands of lives, and relics of some
of the oldest civilisations in the world,
vast shopping malls in place of neigh­
bourhood groceries and drug counters,
the extravaganza of fashion parades and
the ostentatious display of wealth in every
possible form, side by side with endemic
hunger of billions and death in famines
and preventable diseases of uncounted
numbers in Africa and elsewhere, we
continually wonder, “How has it all come
about?”. Great writers and artists have
been driven by this question to create
novels, plays, poetry, paintings of ago­
nised intensity, and films that have lived
since the days of silent cinema. But some
historians and social scientists have
spent their lives trying to answer this
question, and fighting with their pens
and voices to do something to change
this horrendous scenario. Immanuel
Wallerstein belongs in the company of
that distinguished minority am ong the
social scientists.
The four volumes of Immanuel Waller-
stein’s magnum opus (I will label them
as wi, W 2, W3 and W4) contain a com­
prehensive account of his most outstand­
ing achievement as a historian and
sociologist, wi opens with three epi­
graphs, one from Marc Bloch, the second
from the article by Fernand Braudel and
Frank Spooner on price changes in
Europe in the 16th century (Braudel and
Spooner 1967) and a third from Marx’s
Capital, Vol 1 (Marx 1867-87).
Marc Bloch: “C’est par unecrise des
revenusseignneuriauxque se termine le
moyen-age et s’ouvrent les tempsmod-
ernes”, which can be roughly translated
as “The crisis in the seigneurs” incomes
Economic & Political w eek ly Q353 A p r il 14, 2012
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REVIEW ARTICLE the rise of the west, or that of the unique
birth of capitalism from the class strug­
The Modern World-System I: Capitalist
Agriculture and the Origins of the European
World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century by
Immanuel Wallerstein w ith a n e w p ro lo g u e (o rig in a l
e d itio n , A ca d e m ic Press), 1974; p p x x x + 410, $29.95.
gles waged by undifferentiated agrarian
capitalists of England or that of the tri­
umphal march of capitalism once it had
begun its ascent as the dominating polit­
The Modern World-System II: Mercantilism
ico-economic system the world over. The
and the Consolidation of the European
World-Economy, 1600-1750, w ith a n e w p ro lo g u e time span of these volumes ranges really
(o rig in a l e d itio n , A ca d e m ic Press), 1980; p p x x v ii+ 3 7 0 , from the 14th to the beginning of the
$29.95. 20th century of global history.
The Modern World-System III: The Second Era
Some of the themes bound within the
of Great Expansion of the Capitalist
World-Economy, 1730s-1840s, w ith a n e w p ro lo g u e covers of the four volumes discussed
(o rig in a l edition, A ca dem ic Press), 1 9 8 9 ;p p x v ii+ 3 7 2 , $29.95. (“reviewed” is too grand a word for the
The Modern World-System IV: Centrist Liberalism small compass of this essay) are also
Triumphant, 1789-1914,/?/? x v ii+ 3 7 7 , $26.95.
(All the four volumes published by University of
pertinent to a fresh scrutiny of the way
California Press, Berkeley, California, 2011.) many of us have viewed the world for a
long time. The depth of my discussion
marks the end of the Middle Age and the will necessarily fall far short of the
beginning of modern times. fathoms to which Wallerstein’s probes
descend, for several reasons. One of them
Braudel and Spooner: “This collapse in is that his is a meta-narrative, and in
real wages [in Europe] formed the coun­ the grand style - consciously combining
terpart to the revolutionary rise of prices history, sociology and political economy
in the sixteenth century. The operation all along his five-century-long tale. A
was fully paid for by the increased toil, second reason is that he commands the
hardships, impoverishments and dejec­ secondary literature in all these disci­
tion of the majority. Contemporaries plines in at least four European languages,
were often aware that the deterioration namely, English, French, German and
was taking place.” Italian. My knowledge extends only to
English and Bangla, and the secondary
The Epigraph from Marx Reads: “The literature translated in these two lan­
discovery of gold and silver in America, guages. The only advantage I can claim
the extirpation, enslavement and entom­ is that I am also acquainted with some
bment in mines of the indigenous popu­ archival materials on India, and that
lation of that continent, the beginnings I have always viewed the world from
of the conquest and plunder of India, the perspective of the populations of
and the conversion of Africa into a pre­ ex-colonies of European powers and
serve for the commercial hunting of imperial Japan and the poor of capitalist
black-skins, are all things which charac­ nations: these probably help in provid­
terise the dawn of the era of capitalist ing a slightly different point of vantage
production. These idyllic proceedings on what went on in the world during the
are the chief moments of primitive accu­ periods covered by W 2, W3 and W 4.
mulation” (Chapter xxxi, “The Genesis One of Wallerstein’s major intentions
of the Industrial Capitalist”, p 751). was to strike a blow against modernisa­
These epigraphs signal that his grand tion theory beloved of the cold war esta­
history will be neither a simple story of blishment sociologists and economists of
v o l x l v i i n o 15 33
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 Essays from the Economic and Political Weekly

Village Society
E d ite d B y

SURINDER S JODHKA
The idea o f the village has occupied an im portant place in the history o f post-Independence India.This volum e presents
a set o f readings which prim arily focus on the social, political and cultural aspects o f village life.

A comprehensive introduction provides a detailed historical analysis o f the study o f rural India, the changes in rural
social life, and the forces shaping life in villages today.

The articles, drawn from w ritings in EPW over four decades, cover various features o f village society: caste and community,
land and labour, migration, discrim ination and use o f common property resources. They include w ritings by some o f

Pp x + 252 Rs 325 the pioneers o f the study o f the Indian village as well as by contemporary experts. This volume caters to a renewed

ISBN 978-81-250-4603-5 interest in village society born partly by the need to understand caste discrim ination in post-liberalised India and partly
2012 by the concern about contemporary agricultural stagnation and environmental degradation.

Authors:
M N Srinivas • Andre Beteille • Surinder S Jodhka • G K Lieten • K L Sharma • Mukul Sharma • G K Karanth • Partap C Aggarwal • Jishnu Das
• Roger Jeffery, Patricia Jeffery and Andrew Lyon • Leela Gulati • Sudha Pai and Jagpal Singh • Anil Kumar Vaddiraju • Dipankar Gupta • John Harriss,
J Jeyaranjan and K Nagaraj • N S Jodha

Environment, Technology and Development

E d ite d B y

R ohan D 'S ouza

Many political battles, policy initiatives, academic debates and our understanding o f the w orld in general have been
shaped by the ideas that have developed around the concepts o f environment, technology and development.

How do these concepts influence each other? How have they subverted established ideas and dogmas? How have
they developed over tim e and w hat are its varied meaning? This volume brings together w ritings across disciplines,
perspectives and ideologies that answer these questions, map the main conceptual lines and identify the points where
they converge and diverge.The articles have appeared over the past four decades in the Economic and Political Weekly.
The introduction provides a brief chronological overview o f the theoretical underpinnings that led to the emergence
o f the current notion o f environmental development.The chapters are selected and arranged in a non-linear manner
tha t allows the reader to get a sense o f the wide-ranging debates.

Authors:
T R Thankappan Achari • Manshi Asher • P A Azeez • Jayanta Bandyopadhyay • Charul Bharwada • Philippe Cullet
• Mahasveta Devi • Sumita Gupta Gangopadhyay • Hiren Gohain • Rahul Gupta • Barbara Harriss-White • L C Jain
• Annu Jalais • Ashwin Kumar • John Kurien • Vinay Mahajan • Arjun Makhijani • Dinesh Mohan • Dipti Mukherji • Chandrika Parmar • K Krishna Prasad
• P P Nikhil Raj • M V Ramana • C H Hanumantha Rao • Amulya Kumar N Reddy • Sunali Rohra • Vandana Shiva • Nigel Singh • Sudha Srivastava
• Geetam Tiwari • G Vijay • Gregor Meerganz von Medeazza • Shiv Visvanathan • Arundhuti Roy Choudhury.

Readings on the Economy, Polity and Society

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the us. For neoclassical economists, the
corresponding template of “modernisa­
tion” theory was the theory of trickling
down of incomes from the wealthy to
the poor as the markets are allowed to
work throughout the world. That theory
pervades policymaking in most coun­
tries under the neo-liberal heel. For that
reason alone, if for no other reason,
these books deserve a close reading by
all who are seriously troubled by the
current state of the world. Therefore, it
is post-Eurocentric without being post­
modernist or irrationalist.
The instrument Wallerstein fashioned
for attaining his scholarly objectives is
that of the world-system (ws) theory,
one of whose core ideas is that ws is a
system which is interconnected in all its
parts through trade and financial ex­
change, and that it contains a hegemonic
power that dominates its working, until
a new hegemonic power comes up to
challenge the old one. The system may
go on expanding even if some parts of it
may decline. In fact, uneven develop­
ment of the different parts is essential to
the working of the system (for serious
appraisal of the ws theory, see Skocpol
1977; Ragin and Chirot 1985; Arrighi and
Goldfrank 2000; Robinson 2001 and
several others). This concept is a gener­
alisation of Fernand Braudel’s idea of a
world economy, and it is partly as a trib­
ute to Braudel, and partly to apply the
ideas of ws theory to history in all its di­
mensions and to contemporary develop­
ments as well that Wallerstein founded
the Fernand Braudel Center ( f b c ) for the
Study of Economics, Historical Systems,
and Civilisations at the State University
of New York, Binghamton. The ws school
has had very distinguished associates
such as Samir Amin, Giovanni Arrighi
and Andre Gunder Frank, all of whom
had been treading parallel trajectories
of analysis before Wallerstein floated his
ws theory. Terence Hopkins joined the
team at the f b c . Later on Frank fell out
with Amin, Arrighi and Wallerstein, who
contested the validity of Frank’s idea of a
5,000 year-old ws theory. But the ws
framework has caught on and been
diffused not only through the journal
of the f b c . Review, which is now in the
35th year of its publication, but also
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through The Journal of World-Systems
Research, which is now in the 17th
research of publication.
The ws theory is an envelope, both in
the sense of the mathematicians, namely,
that it is a curve or a facet of many
dimensions that traces the outer con­
tours of other curves or facets and in the
day-to-day sense of a container that
holds many objects. It can be useful in
both senses, and it has its limitations in
both senses. Since it spans at least five
centuries and often harks back to another
two centuries, the enveloping curve or
facet struggles to support all the changes
in the contours. On the other side, many
of the objects sought to be contained in
the envelope spill out of them, and the
spills are often as interesting as the con­
tents held by the envelope. For instance,
Wallerstein disagrees with the orthodox
Marxist definition of capitalism as a
mode of production in which the means
of production are owned by a small
group (“capitalists”) and workers who
have to work for wages in order to make
a living. He would put trade and finance
in the core definition of capitalism and
include within the capitalist ws many
social systems in which the strict separa­
tion between workers has not taken
place but have nonetheless come under
the dominance of the hegemonic power.
On the other hand, when talking about
the core countries of the capitalist ws, I
found him repeatedly referring to “own­
er-producers” as the principal economic
agents. An orthodox Marxist might argue
that they are really the capitalist farm­
ers, manufacturers (skilled master crafts­
men and employers of journeymen be­
fore the arrival of machine-dominated
production) or industrialists and so the
core social system conforms to the ortho­
dox Marxist definition, although no so­
cial system can be free of some other
types of socal relations.
The basic contribution of the ws app­
roach has been to insist that capitalism
always has a tendency to cross the bor­
ders of any particular state or territory
and that the ability of a particular state
or system of states to dominate others
has always depended on particular geo­
political conjuncture as well as the
strength of the particular state or the
v o l x l v i i n o 15
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REVIEW ARTICLE
coalition associated with it. But that suc­
cess has perhaps been bought a little
dearly because of the insistence of the
leader that changes within the capitalist
ws or as between the capitalist ws and
the others are secondary to the vision
embodied in the conception of ws itself.
I will try to retell some of the most sig­
nificant portions of Wallerstein’s grand
narrative, with the warning that it is my
way of telling it, and other students
might find other bits more compelling.
So let me start with a characterisation
of the basic intentional and uninten­
tional drives that push capitalism for­
ward. In order to make profits, capital
has always needed natural resources,
labour and markets. Finance has been
the means with which to mobilise all
three. Competition for markets, natural
resources, raw materials, labour and
territories and use of all instruments
including war, have been an essential
part of the spread of capitalism from the
Italian city states to north-west Europe
and then to the rest of the world. That
kind of competition has also meant the
exclusion of regions and multitudes
from the benefits of capitalism.
Exclusivist Character
This exclusivist character of capitalism
was already understood by the Italian
theorists of the 16th and early 17th
centuries, with Giovanni Botero and
Antonio Serra as the leading proponents
of the adoption of capitalist logic by
more “backward” regions such as Pied­
mont (in Botero’s case) and Naples (in
Serra’s case, so that they could be as rich
as Genoa or Venice). Botero emphasised
the possibility of population growth
pressing against the supply of subsist­
ence under the city-centred capitalism
he idolised, and thus became a precursor
of the Malthusian theory, which served
an insidious ideological purpose from
the 19th century in denying the poor a
decent standard of living and limiting
their sexual and familial freedom. Soon
after this, Francis Bacon advocated the
decimation of the unruly “many-headed
hydra” of the working class as a device
of control, if the need arose (Bacon
1627, 1986; Linebaugh and Rediker
2000). It is instructive to re-examine
35
REVIEW ARTICLE
the arguments of Botero and Serra in
order to get away from the historical
syllogisms of Eurocentric historians of
capitalism such as Eric Jones, David
Landes and Robert Brenner (for a
critique, see Bagchi 2005-06). This will
also help us better understand the com­
plex narrative that unfurls in the tomes
ofWallerstein.
Botero was a Piedmontese monk and
in his 1588 book on the Greatness of Cities
(Botero 1588-1606) emphasised that cit­
ies needed to attract merchants and
others as seats of both power and profit­
making opportunities. While cities requi­
red supplies of grain and other commod­
ities to support the urban population, a
fertile land as such. For example, Bote-
ro’s native Piedmont would not produce
great cities although it was very fertile
and supported armies of France and
Spain with grain and other agricultural
produce because it lacked facilities of
transport, both inland and across the
seas and the ingredients of thriving
profit-making exchange. Going further,
Botero also regarded the attraction of
luxuries and entertainment to the rich
as contributing factors to the growth of
cities. Writing over a century later, Daniel
Defoe (1724-26-1971) also considered
that one of the reasons for the greatness
of London was that the rich from all over
Britain set up houses in that city in order
both to exploit the profit-making oppor­
tunities and to enjoy themselves, in the
process attracting custom from all over
the kingdom.1
Writing shortly after this, Antonio
Serra, a Neapolitan scholar published
his Breve Trattato in 1613 (Serra 1613-
2011). Just as Botero had compared the
greatness of Venice and Rome with the
lack of cities (and by implication, the
lack of comparable profit-making oppor­
tunities),2 so also Serra pondered the
reasons for the poverty of Naples com­
pared with the affluence of Venice.3 He
cited the dominance of nobility in
Naples, which neither managed their
land nor let the dependent peasants
work it properly as a major factor. Serra
had a sophisticated understanding of
what makes a region rich when capita­
lism has already diffused its variety of
inequality over space. He considered
36
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the following man-made or institutional
causes (which he termed accidental
causes) as factors facilitating the increase
in riches of a state: (a) “a multiplicity of
manufacturing activities”; (b) “an enter­
prising population”; (c) “extensive trade”;
and (d) “effective government” (Reinert
2011: 63).
Venice vs Naples
Comparing Venice and Naples by this
criterion, he found Naples to be deficient
in all these qualities or institutions. He
particularly stressed that Venice had an
enormous range of manufactures, and
posited that in manufacturing the cost of
production per unit goes down as the
scale of production goes up, whereas the
produce of the land cannot be increased
in the same way as in the case of manu­
factures (ibid: 64-65):
In manufacturing activities it is possible to
achieve a multiplication of products, and
therefore of earnings. The same cannot be
done with agricultural produce w hich is not
subject to multiplication. If a given piece of
land is only large enough to sow a hundred
tomoli of wheat, it is impossible to sow a 150
there. In manufacturing, by contrast, pro­
duction can be multiplied not merely tw o­
fold but a hundredfold, and at a proportion­
ately lower cost.
Serra also pointed out that while
Naples exported a large value of agricul­
tural products, Genoa and Venice impor­
ted grain and other products for feeding
their respective populations (Serra,
Breve Trattato, Part One, Chapter vm).4
Putting together Botero’s and Serra’s
writings, it can be seen that these early
theorists of industrial capitalism regard­
ed both inequality of economic circum­
stances and the existence of regions that
would not industrialise but act as suppli­
ers of produce and workers driven from
poorer regions as essential to the growth
of industries and cities that would be
home to those industries.
Botero and Serra had cited the agglo­
meration of people and their activities as
factors promoting the cities and their
neighbourhoods. However, medieval
cities as such did not promote capital
accumulation. Much of the potential cap­
ital was wasted in luxury consumption
and in the maintenance of retainers.
This was true also of Italian city states in
Ap r il 14, 2012
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most respects (Le Goff 1972; Procacci
1973 Chapters 4 and 5). But as in Italian
city states (Plumb 1964:118-35; Procacci
1973, Chapters 3-4), so in other capitalist-
imperialist states, the capitalists have
needed a labour force which they could
capture for exploitation but exclude from
all political rights and most civil (and
human) rights as well. This need was
succinctly expressed, a century after Serra
by Bernard Mandeville, who obviously
enjoyed shocking his contemporaries by
blurting out unpleasant truths:
...in a Free Nation where Slaves are not
allowed of, the surest w ealth consists in a
multitude of Laborious Poor; for besides
that they are the never failing Nursery of
Fleets and Armies, w ithout them there
could be no enjoyment, and no Product of
any Country could be valuable. To make the
Society Happy and People Easy under the
m eanest Circumstances, it is requisite that
great numbers of them should be Ignorant
as w ell as Poor. Knowledge both enlarges
and multiplies our Desires, and the fewer
things a Man Wishes for, the more easily his
Necessities may be supplied (Mandeville
1723-1989: 294) (quoted in Bagchi 2005-06,
Appendix 1 ^ 3 8 5 ).
I would conclude this part of my nar­
rative by pointing out that while capita­
lism started in the city-states of Italy,
and the essential requirements for con­
struction of capitalist states were spelled
out by two Italian savants from two lag­
ging states, Italy as such did not make
the grade as a part of the advancing front
of capitalist states, because geopolitical,
geoeconomic and domestic class situa­
tions demanded the construction of ter­
ritorial states that would help rather
than hinder the growth of the bourgeoi­
sie. While Spain and Portugal became
territorial states already in the 16th cen­
tury, domestic class relations militated
against their forging ahead in compe­
tition with the Netherlands and England.
Italian states such as Venice and Genoa
fell behind because of all the three factors
mentioned earlier, and they never man­
aged to break the shackles of many char­
acteristics of feudalism (for an insightful
but controversial analysis of the reasons
for the Italian failure, see Aymard 1982).
Wallerstein gives a detailed account
of why the price inflation of the 16th
century harmed Spain which owned the
silver mines and helped the process of
vo l x l v ii n o 15 tM i Economic & Political weekly

accumulation in the Netherlands, England
and France. (Felix 1956 and Vilar 1956
along with Batista I Roca 1971 give a full
analysis of the limits of the Hamilton-
Keynes thesis of price inflation unam­
biguously helping profit inflation and
productive investment.) wi also debates
issues of transition from feudalism to
capitalism. Implicitly, Wallerstein con­
siders this debate to be unhelpful, be­
cause according to him feudalism was
not a system but a civilisation (see below
the citations from W 2 ) , in the sense that
it was incapable, unlike capitalist ws, of
diffusing through various countries.
There is another implicit critique of the
importance attached to this issue, and it
is that most other countries did not after
all have a feudal system in the west Eu­
ropean sense, and yet they had to submit
to the embrace of the capitalist ws.
Without entering into the debate over
the issue of transition, I would argue
that the literature on the transition de­
bate (for authoritative statements on
this debate, see Hilton 1976a and 1976b;
see also Byres 2006a, 2006b and Heller
2011) is important because it demon­
strated how a social system can break
from within, even though some external
events such as the growth of inter­
national trade (part of which can itself
be endogenous to the system) can act as
catalytic agents.
w2 moves forward from the origins to
the development of the capitalist ws
from 1600-1750. That volume rightly
focuses on mercantilism as a general in­
strument of the core capitalist states. But
then in the new prologue of 2011, Waller­
stein engages in a terminological pole­
mic, which may obscure rather than
illuminate the thrust of his analysis.
He writes:
This volum e starts w ith the question of
how to describe w hat w as going on in Eu­
rope during the 17th century. The great
debate of the 1950s and 1960s about the
“crisis” of the 17th century laid a great deal
o f em phasis on the “feudal” character o f its
processes. Most authors interpreted this to
m ean that there w as a “refeudalisation” of
Europe. Volume 2 is an attem pt to refute
these characterisations and to insist once
again that the European world-econom y
had becom e definitively capitalist during
the long 16th century. In m any ways, Vol­
um e 2 is the crucial volum e of the w hole set
Econom ic & Political w eek ly 13309 A p r il
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in that it m akes the case for a certain vision
and definition of capitalism as a historical
system ... (p x iii).
***
We talk of the “feudal system” to
describe this period I wonder about the
word system, since feudal Europe was
neither a world-economy nor a world-
empire. As a “system”, it can be at most
described as the remains of the disinte­
gration of the short-lived Carolingian
world-empire. It is perhaps better to call
it a “civilisation”, which would mean it
was a series of small systems (or divi­
sions of labour) linked, to the extent they
were linked, by a shared religious struc­
ture and to a limited extent by the lingua
franca of Latin... (p xv).
***
The politics of a capitalist world-
economy were quite different from the
politics of a feudal civilisation. The states
became the key units of political organi­
sation, rather than the local unit with
the manor at the centre. The first prob­
lem was the creation of significant
bureaucracies, both civil and military,
such that the rulers were no longer pri­
marily dependent for their revenues on
their personal landholdings, but instead
had a taxation base (p xx, W 2) .
One problem with all this is that it
obscures the fact that the Holy Roman
Empire continued to operate down to
the time when the French Revolutionary
army and Napoleon showed it to be a
terminal patient, and that dynastic
claims continued to decide the fates of
large territories such as Savoy, Pied­
mont, Sardinia and even Poland down to
the end of the “Holy Alliance” of the 19th
century. The second problem is that
while Italy and Russia may both belong
to the semi-periphery of the ws in the
18th century, the fate of the peasants
and even artisans was considerably
worse than in earlier times. Moreover,
the enserfment of the Russian peasantry
who had been free until the 15th century
and had been accelerated under Ivan iv
(“the Terrible”) was more or less con­
cluded by Peter the Great and Catherine
the Great, and that development was
precipitated in conflicts with nascent
14, 2012 v . XLVII NO 15
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REVIEW ARTICLE
capitalist powers, such as Sweden which
failed at that time to emerge as success­
fully capitalist-imperialist powers be­
cause of geopolitical factors (Bagchi
2007; Hilton and Smith 1968; Bagchi
2005-06, Chapter 4).
However, Wallerstein’s perspective is
perhaps better captured in another
passage in W 2 :
In a capitalist world-economy, owner-
producers w ish the state to perform two
key functions on their behalf. They want it
to help them gain or maintain advantage
in the market by limiting or expanding the
“freedom” of this market at a cost less than
the increased profit, regardless o f whether
this is a positive or negative intervention by
the state...The owner-producers in addition
want the state to help them extract a larger
proportion of the surplus than they could do
otherwise...H ence, for the owner-producer,
the strong state is not necessarily the one
with the m ost extensive state-machinery
nor the one w ith the m ost arbitrary decision­
making processes. Quite often the exact
opposite is true.
Needless to say, a state’s strength corre­
lates w ith the econom ic role of the owner-
producers of that state in the world-economy;
but of these assertions are not to be mere
tautologies, w e must have some independent
political m easures of this strength. We sug­
gest five possible such measures: the de­
gree to which state policy can directly help
owner-producers compete in the world
market (mercantilism); the degree to which
states can affect the ability of other states
to compete (military power); the degree to
which states can mobilise their resources
to perform these competitive and m ilitary
tasks at costs that do not eat up the profits
(public finance); the degree to which states
can create administrations that w ill permit
the sw ift carrying out of tactical decisions
(an effective bureaucracy); and the degree to
w hich the political rules reflect a balance of
interests among owner-producers such that
a working “hegem onic bloc” (to use a Gram-
scian expression) forms the stable underpin­
nings of such a state. This last elem ent, the
politics of the class struggle, is the key to
others (p 113).
I have argued (Bagchi 2005-06, Pref­
ace and Chapter 3) that successful, front
line capitalist states, from the 16th
century always combined the first three
strategies, and that merchants, capitalist
farmers and manufacturers, financiers
and profit-seeking landlords formed
the “hegemonic bloc”, whereas the hege­
monic bloc in the Netherlands consisted
mainly of merchants, manufacturers
37
REVIEW ARTICLE
and financiers. The construction and
deconstruction of an absolutist govern­
ment could only be a way-station but
not a stopping point of an ascendant
capitalist state, because such a state
would lack the flexibility necessary to
rearrange elements of the hegemonic
bloc and meet the challenge of other
contending powers.
Although W 2 specifically refers to
mercantilism in its title, temporally mer­
cantilist strategies stretched all the way,
in England, the voluble propagandist of
free trade, from the policies initiated by
Henry vn in the 1580s to the abolition of
the Navigation Acts in 1849 (Zahedieh
2009). The 18th century saw the flower­
ing of theories of free trade from David
Hume, Adam Smith to Edmund Burke,
but it was also the century during which
the British effected their industrial revo­
lution largely through imitative and
innovative import substitution of Indian
and Chinese textiles (Allen 2009; Inikori
2002). It was during this century that
protectionism reached new heights in
Britain (Davis 1966). The doublespeak
of the spokesmen of colonialism and im­
perialism has a venerable history (cf
Bagchi 1992; Chang 2007). Practising
protectionism at home and imposing
one-way fre trade on colonies or neoco­
lonial countries have been strategies
pursued by imperialist countries, espe­
cially since the 19th century.
Under the logic of uneven develop­
ment, when a country catch up with the
front line capitalist powers, it may be­
come a direct colony or a politically in­
dependent and economically dependent
country (such as one of the newly inde­
pendent countries of Latin America in
the 19th century). In either case, land­
lords become the intermediaries between
the imperial powers and the local popu­
lation and peasants (and more rarely,
artisans and miners as well) live under
feudal-type restrictions on their free­
dom. Within Europe, Ireland and the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies are prime
examples of the former. Of course, Spain
did not belong to the core of the capita­
list world-system during the epochs
covered by Wallerstein’s volumes, and
Ireland had been a colony of England
since the 12th century. But in terms of
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the distinction adumbrated by Harlow
(1952), Ireland remained a “colony of ex­
ploitation” as well as a “colony of settle­
ment” down to the 18th century and a
colony of exploitation down to the be­
ginning of the 20th century, and the
Kingdom of the Two Sicilies remained a
colony of exploitation of Spain until the
creation of an independent kingdom
under a Bourbon ruler.
Italy in the Gyrating
Nets of Capitalism
It is highly instructive to look at these as­
pects of the history of Italy, where capi­
talism originated, from the time. Charles
v i i i , the king of France, invaded Italy.
France was defeated by Charles v, who
was also the king of Spain and his son,
kept the Spanish crown and hence the
Kingdom of Naples which was already a
Spanish colony. Naples was taxed heavily
in order to finance the numerous wars
that Spain fought against the Dutch rebels
in Spanish Netherlands, the French and
the English. One of the devices it used for
getting more money out of the Neapolitans
was to sell patents of nobility, in the
process creating increasing numbers of
dukes, marquises, counts, counts and
other titolati, who enjoyed many feudal
privileges and exercised arbitrary power
over the common people (Braudel 1973:
717). Spanish exactions continued in the
17th century also, and people tried to
stave off starvation by eating melons
and other vegetables with little nutri­
tional value (Pagden 1988-2000). “By
1636 the public debt had reached 40
million ducats, and the interest alone
exceeded ordinary income” (Robertson
2005: 61). The desperation of the ordi­
nary people provoked one of the largest
revolts of the 17th century, led by Tom-
maso Masaniello, a fish-seller, in July
1647, and it continued till May next year,
despite Masaniello’s murder in late 1647.
The Spaniards returned in 1648, and the
exactions eased a little but the sociopo­
litical system changed little.
In 1734, Naples became an indepen­
dent kingdom under the house of
Bourbon, with Carlo Borbone as king.
While the external drain of wealth to
Spain ceased, the tax system changed
little nor did the control of the land and
A p r il 14, 2012
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bureaucratic privileges of the baronial
class (Procacci 1973: 239-45). Most of
the attempts at reforming the system
were defeated by baronial opposition.
Naples witnessed a dreadful famine in
1764 (ibid: 243). Naples and Milan saw
the flowering of enlightenment thought
in the persons of Cesare Beccaria, Celes-
tiano and Ferdinando Galiani, Antonio
Genovesi, and many others: but their
advice either fell on deaf ears or they faced
active persecution (Ibid; Bellamy 1987;
Reinert 2005). Genovesiand Galianiwere
both Neapolitans and are credited with
advances in the analysis of a commer­
cialised society (Schumpeter 1954:176-81;
Reinert 2005). Genovesi was severely
critical of the feudal system as impeding
the economic and social development of
Naples (Robertson 2005:401).
In other parts of Italy, such as Piedmont,
reform of the social system began and
was then stopped. There was no ques­
tion of reform in the Papal States. In the
Po valley, agriculture benefited from im­
proving landowners investing in land in
response to external demand from the
rest of Europe and from the growth of
population in the 18th century. But that
area remained an exception. During the
so-called age of reform in Italy, per capita
income seems actually to have declined
(Van Zanden 2002). So many progres­
sive Italians such as Fillippo Buonarroti
hailed the advent of the French Revolu­
tion, and many of them welcomed the
Napoleonic conquest, with the hope that
it would lead to the end of the ancient
regime, the spread of civil freedom, and
the improvement of the standard of liv­
ing of the general run of population
(Procacci 1973, Chapter 9). Of course,
Napoleon’s conquest disappointed those
who had expected a thorough social re­
form of an independent Italy in fulfil­
ment of the ideals of the French Revolu­
tion. Italy became totally subservient to
French interests. “The Kingdom’s finan­
cial and fiscal policy in fact remained
subordinate to French military needs:
out of a budget of 86 million in 1802 49
million went to war expenses and
payments to France. Besides money,
Napoleonic France demanded men, and
resorted to compulsory conscription...”
(Procacci 1973: 263). Nonetheless this
v o l x l v i i n o 15 BSS1 Economic & Political w eek ly

interlude led to some administrative
reforms, and young Italians obtained
military and technical training in the
academies founded by Napoleon. Most
of the reforms of land relations were
reversed in most parts of the Italian pe­
ninsula after the defeat of Napoleon
(Procacci 1973, Chapter 10).5 The King­
dom of the Two Sicilies was wracked by
a number of revolutions, and every res­
toration cost a large sum, generally
raised by foreign, often French loans.
For instance, “The restoration of Ferdi­
nand I to the throne of Naples in 1815
cost his country more than 50 million
francs for the army of occupation and
related expenses in the first two years
alone”. The house of Rothschild in
France raised loans to liquidate the costs
of the revolution of 1820-21 (Cameron
i960: 431). On the eve of the Risorgi-
mento, the condition of the kingdom can
be briefly sketched as follows:
With more than 40% of the land area and an
alm ost equal proportion of the population,
the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies was the larg­
est and m ost populous of the Italian states.
It was also the most highly urbanised; Na­
ples had a population in excess of 4 ,0 0 ,0 0 0
by midcentury, twice as large as the nearest
competitor, Milan; Palermo counted more
than 1,00,000 inhabitants. Nevertheless,
agriculture occupied more than five-sixths
of the labour force; a large proportion of
even the city dwellers, especially in Sicily,
trudged great distances to work the estates
of indigent absentee landlords....
The government tolerated the most vicious
and degraded elem ents in the population
in return for assistance in repressing revo­
lutionary disturbances and frightening the
fragile middle class into silent submission to
the regime. It treated Sicily more as a con­
quered province than as an integral part of
the kingdom, imposing upon the island a
separate administration, different tariffs,
and even different systems of coinage and
currency...
The few paved roads in the vicinity of Na­
ples were not duplicated elsewhere; 1,300
of 1,800 communes had no roads at all. ...
(ibid: 428-30).
Contrast between India and Italy
The tribulations of Italy6 and especially
of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies from
the time of Spanish rule until the
Risorgimento and up to the first world
war, have often reminded me of the
situation of India under British rule and
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just after Independence. There was the
similar burden of tribute extraction by a
foreign ruler, there was the similar use
of intermediaries titolati in the kingdom,
and distribution of titles of Rai Baha­
durs, Rao Sahebs, Khan Bahadurs, Raja
Bhadurs to loyal subjects of the British
Crown, the similar oppression of the
peasantry under the mezzadria or share-
cropping system, and rampant use of
non-market power by landlords and
moneylenders. In Italy, there were signi­
ficant differences between the pre-
Risorgimento states, and later the com­
ponent regions in the weight of improv­
ing farmers and the bourgeoisie as com­
pared with the absentee and unproduc­
tive nobility. In India also there were
great interregional variations, especially
from the late 19th century in the weight
of the improving farmers and the Indian
capitalists in the economy and society.
Then why was India so impoverished
compared in 1950 compared with Italy
in say, 1913, let alone 1950? A complete
answer would require a book, but some
of the outstanding differences can be
noted. First, the post-Napoleonic Italian
states and unified Italy had considerable
autonomy in policymaking so that they
could not be flattened to a Procrustean
bed under the kind of one-way free trade
that the British imposed on India. Sec­
ond, from the 19th century, Italy bene­
fited along with most of the other states
of the western European periphery from
the expansion of demand from the
industrialisation of Britain, France, and
a little later, Germany (Senghaas 1985).
This benefited the domestic producers of
agricultural products including viticul­
ture directly and when migration to the
Americas became a flood from the 1870s,
from the remittances sent from employ­
ment in the continents. The enormous
importance of such remittances to the
Italian economy has been summarised
as follows:
Just between 1870 and 1913, more than 45
million Europeans left their homeland in
search of better opportunities in the New
World, mainly in the us (23.8 million im­
migrants), Argentina (4.4 millions), Canada
(4.3 millions), and Brazil (3.1 millions). On
the other side of the Atlantic, the principal
European emigration countries were Italy
(14.1 million emigrants), the u k (10.8 millions),
vo l x l v ii n o 15
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REVIEW ARTICLE
Austria-Hungary (4.3 millions), Spain (3.4
m illions), and Germany (3.0 m illions). Or,
w hen m easured as a share o f total popula­
tion, Ireland (11.0%), Italy (10.1%), the u k
(7.3%), Norway (6.6%), Portugal (6.0%),
Spain (5.6%), and Sweden (5.2% )...as a
share o f g d p betw een 1880 and 1913,...
Italy registered the highest levels of remit­
tances (2.8%), followed by Portugal (2.7%),
Austria-Hungary (1.5%), Spain (1.2%), Swe­
den (0.8%) and the u k (0.4% )....remittances
represented an additional income that al­
lowed a significant part of Italian families
to improve their lifestyle: more diversified
diet, better clothing, larger and more com ­
fortable houses, etc. In addition, remittances
stimulated savings, especially in Southern
Italy.... To some extent, it is even possible to
maintain that the migration process brought
about an increase in the level of regional
inequalities, since remittances were more
widely invested in productive development
projects in Northern Italy, while economic
elites in the Mezzogiorno preferred to make
financial investm ents to the detriment o f
local development initiatives (Esteves and
Khoudour-Casteras 2008:4-9).
Indians could not have shared in this
kind of external income flows because
they were barred from migration as
free workers under the racialism that
had grown up as European capitalism
crossed the Atlantic and Indian Oceans
(Chaplin 2009). Indians were taken as
slaves to Africa before the formal aboli­
tion of slavery in the British Empire or
transported as indentured labourers to
European-run plantations, under “a
new system of slavery” in Hugh Tinker’s
apt characterisation (Tinker 1974). I
have used this sketch of a comparative
history to show the relevance of geopo­
litical factors as well as internal socio­
economic change and barriers to
change in determining the vicissitudes
of the fates of large population groups
over centuries. Now I turn back to
Wallerstein’s ws narrative to see how it
illuminates, but at the same time
escapes from the confines of the strict
ws framework.
The French Revolution
and the Industrial Revolution
One of the most erudite and most
instructive pieces of analysis in W3 con­
cerns the interpretations of the French
Revolution, extending from the work
of Alexis de Tocqueville (1850-1988)
through that of Marxists such as Albert
39
REVIEW ARTICLE
Soboul and Georges Lefebvre (195 7 -6 2 )
to revisionists such as Albert Cobban,
Francois Furet and Denis Richet (W 3 :33-
5 3 ). The French Revolution may not have
been led by the bourgeoisie when it
started, nor were the bourgeoisie fully in
control when it was over, but that its
effect was to create the legal framework
and the property rights can be denied by
only flouting all the historical evidence.
The fight over the various interpreta­
tions was not simply an academic squab­
ble. As Wallerstein puts it (W3, p 50):
I don’t believe w e should try to preserve
the im age of the French Revolution in or­
der to preserve that of the Russian Revolu­
tion as a proletarian one. But I also do not
believe w e should try to create the image
of the French Revolution as a liberal one in
order to tarnish that of the Russian one as a
totalitarian one.
Implications for Perspectives
Interpretations of basic changes or revo­
lutions are never innocent, because dif­
ferences in interpretation do have impli­
cations for ideological perspectives and
policies or strategies of revolutionaries
and governments. For that matter, inter­
pretations of changes in the structure of
the economy and resulting growth or
decline of incomes have led to formula­
tions of theories of development and
adoption of national strategies.
Wallerstein rails in different contexts
against historians who regard the indus­
trial revolution, defined as a decisive
change of the structure of the economy
in the sense of a drastic fall in the share
of the primary sector in the national (or,
let us say, territorial) employment and
income, accompanied by the rise of
factories utilising strong economies of
scale and specialisation, a steady growth
in the share of urban population in the
total, and the growth of a proletarian-
ised and wage-earning labour force. For
example, in W3 (p 78) he writes:
In this context, what is usually called the in­
dustrial revolution should in fact be thought
of as the re-urbanisation and re-concentra­
tion of the leading industries alongside an
effort to increase scale.
But surely, the growth of urban popu­
lations in England and from the 19th
century in western Europe was far high­
er than any similar development in
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earlier history. Moreover, economies of
scale were important at different stages
in the history of capitalism. For example,
the shipping industry of the Netherlands
benefited from the very large merchant
fleet and navy. On the other hand, the
size of the total protected market of the
British Atlantic empire and a larger home
base of production of raw wool in the
second half of the 17th century became
decisive in enabling England to beat the
Dutch woollen textile industry in inter­
national competition (Wilson 1965;
Zahedieh 2009). Again, while the Italians
had built factories for production of
manufactures before the English indus­
trial revolution, the English spinning
mills and later on engineering factories
dwarfed those earlier factories in em­
ployment, capitalisation and use of non­
animal energy and other inputs. Waller-
stein’s real targets are those analysts who
regard only these features of capitalism
as the motive force of capitalism: the aim
of capital is to make profits and it does
not care whether it utilises coerced
labour of slaves, peasants of colonial or
dependent countries or proletarianised
labour in the core countries. For exam­
ple, Wallerstein reproduces in W3 a car­
toon by James Gillray which portrays the
struggle between England and France
during the Napoleonic wars as William
Pitt and Napoleon trying to get the best
share of the globe as a cake to be divided
between them. In each case of his disa­
vowal of the more orthodox interpreta­
tion of the factors causing the industrial
revolution and their significance for the
continuance of the capitalist ws, it is pos­
sible to cite passages where he acknowl­
edges the importance of these factors.
For example, in tracing the growth of the
bourgeoisie in France before the French
Revolution, he writes (W 3, p 7 4 ):
The division of the commons (in France) was
generally supported by larger land-owners
who could obtain a third of the land through
the droit de triage. ....The French laboureur
was being led in the same direction as of
proletarianisation as the English yeoman.
Indeed, Le Roy Ladurie tells us, speaking
of 18th century France and not of England,
“proletarianisation replaced the cem etery”.
While capitalist countries of the core
have used in different periods all the
strategies listed by Wallerstein in W2
A p r il 14, 2012
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(p 113), and have used all kinds of
coerced labour in different countries, in
the periods of their ascent to the core,
they have depended a great deal on
proletarianised labour in their home
base and have displayed their superior
competitiveness in production as well as
marketing, finance and warfare. Waller­
stein recognises this and, as one of many
examples to support my point, I cite his
detailed analysis of how superior the
Netherlands was in many branches of
production to its closest competitors in
the days of Dutch hegemony of the
world economy:
The United Provinces was not only the lead­
ing agricultural producer at this time; it was
also, and at the same time, the leading pro­
ducer of industrial products. So much ink
has been spilled to explain why Holland did
not industrialise that w e tend to overlook
the fact that it did so (W2, p 42).
In the same chapter Wallerstein writes:
We have argued that the sequence of Dutch
advantages in the world-economy is pro­
ductive, distributional, financial. If the first
part of the sequence is controversial, the
second is conventional wisdom ; but it is
often presented as som ething a bit sham e­
ful, the transformation of the noble ascetic
(commercial entrepreneur into a an ignoble,
luxury-loving rentier. The turn to finance is not
a sign o f decline, much less o f decadence;
it is in fact a sign of capitalist strength that
the Amsterdam stock exchange can be con­
sidered “the Wall Street o f the 17th century”
(w2, p 57)-
Yes, but... Inequality in the country
increased from the latter part of the 17th
century, population of the Netherlands
stagnated in the 18th century (Soltow
and Van Zanden 1998; Van Zanden 2002,
Figure 3; Bagchi 2005-06, Chapter 6),
and the growth of industries and trade
fell behind those of England and France.
In fact, per capita income of the Nether­
lands fell in the 18th century. The Nether­
lands became a province of Napoleonic
France in the late 18th century. It was in
fact the post-Napoleonic setdement, when
in the name of legitimacy the Dutch
Republic was converted into a monarchy
and the British handed over the Dutch
East Indies to the new monarchy that the
Dutch began to recover a little of their
prosperity. It was the plunder of Indonesia
by the Dutch government and Dutch
v o l x l v i i n o 15 BBSS Economic & Political w eek ly

businessmen that allowed the Netherlands
to become again an industrialised econ­
omy. All this is well-known to Waller-
stein. The journal, Review, edited by him
published a canonical article on merchant
capitalism by Van Zanden (1997). But his
attention is so riveted on the working of
the ws as a whole that he often seems to
understate the fates of whole archipela­
gos in his quest to demonstrate the resil­
ience of this virus-like mutating system,
called capitalism. A reader has often to
wrestle with Wallerstein’s arguments and
show that the evidence marshalled by
him in some other part of his minutely
referenced disquisitions may go against
another part of his work. But in the proc­
ess he again learns something new.
Imperialist Conquest of the Rest
of the World (1830-1914)
In some ways, the latest volume Waller-
stein has written (W4) is to me the most
appealing. In this volume, he confronts
the ideological foundations of liberalism
and shows with detailed discussion of
political and economic changes in Eng­
land and France how this ideology was
robbed of the kind of revolutionary con­
notation it had acquired, say, with Con-
dorcet, Godwin or Tom Paine, and was
converted into a technocratic and re­
formist dogma of rule over colonies and
the frequently revolting workers and
their generally timorous bourgeois asso­
ciates. My favourite chapters in this
volume are “The Liberal State and Class
Conflict, 1830-75” (Chapter 3) and “The
Citizen in a Liberal State” (Chapter 4 ).
The first paragraph of Chapter 4 can
serve as an epigraph to the whole book:
Inequality is a fundam ental reality of the
modern world-system, as it has been of every
known historical system. What is different,
what is particular to historical capitalism
is that equality has been proclaimed as its
objective (and indeed as its achievement) -
equality in the marketplace, equality before
the law, the fundamental social equality of
all individuals endowed with equal rights.
The great political question of the modern
world, has been how to reconcile the theo­
retical embrace of equality w ith the continu­
ing and increasingly acute polarisation of
real-life opportunities and satisfactions that
has been its outcome (w4 , p 143)*
The years 1830 to 1875 cover the real
beginnings of French colonialism in
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Africa, the parcelling up of Africa among
the European powers from the last quar­
ter of the 19th century, the rounding out
of the British empire on the Indian sub­
continent and Myanmar, the subjugation
of China to western interests without
actual territorial conquest, the establish­
ment of neocolonial regimes in Latin
America and the rise of the working
class as a political force in Europe.
Wallerstein shows in a neat aside how
liberal opposition to French aggression
in Algeria in the 1820s vanished once the
so-called liberals got, as a result of a
coup, the so-called Citizen King, Louis
Philippe, who became a tool for the
aggrandising financiers and speculators.
Then, as now, aggression abroad was a
way of diverting attention from the woes
created by official policies at home.
From 1830 to 1848, Europe was con­
vulsed by various movements aiming at
changing the political order, increasing
the reach of formal democracy, and in
some cases, with the slogan of socia­
lism on the lips of the revolutionaries,
changing the whole sociopolitical order
(Hobsbawm 1962, Chapter 6; Hobsbawm
1975, Chapter 1; Dorothy Thompson
1984; W4, Chapters 3 and 4).
Wallerstein points out that during
the early part of the period covered the
“artisans” were generally the militant
vanguard of the working class. But these
artisans could include workers in many
sunrise as well as declining industries,
because they w e r e all made insecure by
the competition unleashed by a market
and state that had little regulation or
provision for workers’ employment or
even subsistence (Dorothy Thompson
1984, Part 2). In most west European
countries were still illegal, but artisans’
associations could still function. Arti­
sans and skilled workers in textile and
engineering industries had better levels
of education and higher earnings than
the navies working to build railroads or
doing other unskilled work. Then, of
course, their skills were threatened by
new, especially labour-displacing machine-
based technologies:
The most dramatic expression of protest
by the “artisans” was that of the canuts (a
nickname for the silk workers: a k b ) of Lyon,
first in 1831 and then in 1834. The struggles
vo l x l v ii n o 15
REVIEW ARTICLE
began right after the July Revolution, and
included machine destruction and eviction
of “foreign” workers. The background to
this was an 18th-century militancy which
had erupted in 1786 in the so-called tuppeny
riot (emeute de deux sous), in which jour­
neymen sought to obtain a fixed minimum
rate for finished cloth. The ongoing conflict
continued up to the French Revolution and
the enactment of the Loi Le Chapelier’ (W4,
pp 81-82).7
It is interesting to note that as in the
case of women, whom the (male) revolu­
tionaries of the French Revolution de­
creed to be passive citizens, without
political rights and took away some of
their residual rights to property, so also
in the case of the workers, the (ultimately)
victorious bourgeoisie forced back some
rights the workers had enjoyed.
The Lyon silk workers’ strike in 1831
failed but discontent continued and
erupted in a general strike in 1834 with
both economic and political demands.
This second strike was brutally sup­
pressed and some 300 were killed. In
Great Britain, soon after the electoral
reform act of 1832 was passed, demand
for extension of the suffrage to include
all males, the institution of a secret ballot,
abolition of property qualification and
payment for Members of Parliament
(embodied in the People’s Charter of
1836) took the form of the huge mass
movement, namely, the Chartist move­
ment. A petition was sent to Parliament
in 1842 with more than three million
signatures. After a number of strikes,
arrests and trial of the leaders, ultimately
the movement dissolved, but by the
end of the 19th century, most of the
demands for extension of the suffrage
had been met.
There are continuities and disconti­
nuities between the revolutionary move­
ments involving the old-style workers
and new-style wage-earners in large
industrial organisations, railways and
mines. The biggest workers’ party, the
Social Democratic Party of Germany,
derived its descent from the German
General Workers’ Association (the Eng­
lish translation of the German name)
founded by Ferdinand Lasalle, long be­
fore there was a unionised working class
in Germany and in the 1870s adopted
Marxism as its official ideology (Miller
41
REVIEW ARTICLE
and Potthoff 1983-86, Chapters 1-2).
That ideology took shape in the crucible
of the economic depression and revolu­
tionary upsurge in the 1840s. Independ­
ently of that influence, in Britain, the
increasing urban concentration of new
industries, the huge increase in coal
mining and the railway network and the
growing importance of the workers in
the electoral arithmetic defined a more
organised working class by the last dec­
ades of the 19th century (Hobsbawm
1987, Chapter 5; Hobsbawm 1998b).
The series of revolutions that con­
vulsed western Europe in 1848 collapsed
and most governments were back in the
saddle by 1850. In France, Louis Napo­
leon founded the Second Empire in 1851.
But the rulers followed the policies that
hastened the growth of the bourgeoisie,
in essence following the recommenda­
tion made by List (1841-1909, Chapter x),
List’s prescription was that the “civi­
lised” nations, which had already justi­
fied their claim to be civilised by getting
manufactures to be the driving force of
their economies, should allow (or force)
the “barbarous” nations to introduce
free trade and thus get acquainted with
the benefits that civilisation brings, and
those nations which have no five man­
aged manufactures to be the leading
sectors of the economy should imitate
the strategies of the English, who beat
the Dutch and the Indians by restricting
the entry of their products into England,
imitating those products and ultimately
beating the Indians and the Dutch in
export markets as well (ibid, Chapter 4).
If necessary, war should also be used as
an instrument for getting even in this
competitive game. Essentially, this List-
ian strategy led to the industrialisation
and military preparedness of western
Europe, and of Tsarist Russia as well,
with consequences we are familiar with.
Wallerstein defines “Centrist” liberal­
ism as the liberalism of neither the radi­
cal, T H Green variety, nor the liberalism
of the right, the conservatism of the lib­
erals who supported Bismarck’s policies
of unification of Germany through war,
and the suppression of socialist parties
and trade unions for the sake of stability
of the status quo. In a sense Wallerstein
is right. As Marx (1852-1962, pp 354-55),
42
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writing about England in the 1850s,
pointed out:
The Whigs as w ell as the Tories, form a frac­
tion o f the large landed property of Great
Britain. Nay, the oldest, richest and most
arrogant portion of English landed property
is the very nucleus of the Whig party... What,
then, distinguishes them from the Tories?
The Whigs are the aristocratic representa­
tives of the bourgeoisie, of the industrial and
commercial middle class. Under the condi­
tion that the Bourgeoisie should abandon to
them, to an oligarchy of aristocratic fami­
lies, the monopoly of government and the
exclusive possession of office, they make to
the middle class, and assist it in conquering,
all those concessions, w hich in - the course
of social and political development - have
shown them selves to have becom e unavoid­
able and undelayable. Neither more nor less.
And as often as such an unavoidable m eas­
ure has been passed, they declare loudly that
herewith the end o f historical progress has
been obtained; that the whole social m ove­
m ent has carried its ultimate purpose, and
then they “cling to finality”.
Whenever this notion of finality, or
the end of history rewarding the centrist
or right liberals with the victors in the
capitalist game is threatened, the pre­
tence of liberalism is given up. Generally
then the ruling classes of the metropoli­
tan countries resort to some foreign ad­
venture, and that is preceded or accom­
panied by a severe restriction of the citi­
zens of that country and its allies. The
extreme form the change in policy takes
is fascism at home and war, preferably
against powers that are judged to be
unprepared or weaker. So continual im­
provement in weapons of mass destruc­
tion has been a feature of existing capi­
talism. Economies of scale in production,
research and marketing and the promo­
tion and manipulation of big media have
played a very important role also in the
ongoing militarisation of power.
Bolshevik Revolution
When the most important systemic chal­
lenge to capitalism occurred in the shape
of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the
capitalist-imperialist powers at once
sent their armies to help the White Rus­
sians fighting the infant Soviet regime.
As soon as formally fascist regimes came
to power in Italy and Germany, commu­
nists and the Soviet regime became their
chief targets. That regime had then
Ap r il 14, 2012
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
perforce to choose industrialisation and
development of lethal weapons follow­
ing the same route as the us and its
allies in order to prevent their own
destruction and the mass genocide and
mass enslavement of the peoples of eastern
Europe openly proclaimed by the Nazis
as among their principal war aims. This
is not the place to discuss why the Soviet
regime turned into a one-party dictator­
ship and the systemic challenge ulti­
mately collapsed in 1989. But it is not
accidental that after 1989 (a) the capitalist
powers have openly mounted wars under
any pretext against any regime that seems
to be inimical to the interests of their
ruling classes and (b) that they have
mounted a systematic attack against the
social entitlements of the workers and
the civil rights of all residents, including
their own. So the protection of the values
proclaimed by the advocates of capitalism
when it was still fighting the forces
favouring a return to a hierarchy deter­
mined by status and religion required a
political and military threat from a
systemic challenger, however short of
socialism and democracy that challenger
might be. But as the perceived threat
from that challenger became weaker,
those values of freedom were also
watered down in the politics of the rul­
ing classes. Wallerstein’s geopolitically-
oriented view is extremely valuable for
understanding the gyrations of the
capitalist order even now.
There have been many revolts against
the capitalist juggernaut led by workers
as well as peasants. Even when major
revolts have not been mounted by the
subject peoples, they have mounted
campaigns against financial or cultural
policies of the colonial powers.8 One has
only to think of Rabindranath Tagore,
Rosa Luxemburg, Mao Zedong, Jawahar-
lal Nehru, Mahatma Gandhi, Frantz
Fanon, Ben Bella, Aim£ C^saire, Ho Chi
Minh, Jose Marti, Fidel Castro, W E B
Dubois, Kwame Nkrumah, Julius Nyerere,
Nelson Mandela and Amilcar Cabral as
political and cultural contestants of
Eurocentric, racist hegemony of the
colonial powers. Many of the revolts by
workers and peasants collapsed because
of disunity among the Left forces (see,
for example, the analysis of the failed
vo l x l v ii n o 15 (BB53 Economic &Political weekly

German Revolution of 1918-19 in Har­
man 1997); many national liberation
movements have ended in corrupt and
neocolonial regimes because of both the
poor preparedness of the leaders and the
machinations and aggression of the im­
perialist powers (Amin 2006, Chapters
3-8; Chabal 1983; Prashad 2009). But
new forces of revolt against the system
have come up in Latin America, and the
“Arab Spring”, starting in Tunisia are not
just the result of imperialist manipula­
tion. Wallerstein’s densely packed analy­
ses demonstrate that neither the dogma­
tism of a revolution to be led by an
organised working class or the volunta­
ristic optimism of a social movement
leading to the installation of a democratic
regime has any sanction in history. Fur­
thermore, resource and capital-intensive
industrialisation is unlikely to be the tra­
jectory for the development of the full
human potential of all the peoples.
These volumes are also meant to disturb
our complacent beliefs about the correct
way out of the current impasse and they
have accomplished that objective, even
if we might often disagree with the
author about the interpretation or signi­
ficance of particular events, such as the
French Revolution or the pioneering
industrial revolution in England.
Wallerstein has treated the histories
of the countries outside Europe only
when they come into the shadow or pe­
numbra of the capitalist world-system.
In this review article, I have deliberately
tried not even to sketch what was going
on in the rest of the populated world
during the centuries the rulers of the
promontory of Europe was emerging as
the dominant capitalist-imperialist pow­
ers in the world. From a non-Eurocentric
perspective, some aspects of that history
have been captured in brief accounts
(Amin 2011; Bagchi 1982, 2005-06;
Dirlik, Bahl and Gran 2000; Mote 1999;
Parthasarathi 2011; Wong 1997)- How­
ever, an analysis of their history since
the 16th century from a unified perspec­
tive, without losing the specificity, let us
say, of the Aztec and Inca empires in the
Americas or the Ottoman empire of west
Asia, eastern Europe and north Africa,
the Ming and the Qing empires of China,
the Mughal empire and the sultanates
Economic &Political weekly BBSS a p r il
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and kingdoms of southern India, or the
Islamic regimes of west and sub-Saharan
Africa or the Safavid empire of Iran will
require the lifetime labours of another
Fernand Braudel, Eric Hobsbawm, Irfan
Habib or Immanuel Wallerstein. In the
meantime, we have to depend on the
multi-volume histories of China, Japan,
and other major countries that are coming
out of Cambridge, Oxford or other leading
university presses. One of the marks of
our own inability to shake off the legacy of
colonial dependence is that official efforts
to preserve, catalogue and publicise the
immense records that have escaped the
attack of pests, damp, floods and sheer
callousness on the part of the holders of
records fall far short of what are required.
Wallerstein’s work indicates that in­
stability and geopolitical strategies to
combat that instability have been con­
stant companions of capitalism. While
the demise of capitalism is not yet cer­
tain, perhaps it has by now exhausted
most of the devices with any positive im­
port (such as comprehensive social in­
surance or globally enforceable labour
standards with the security of life, health
and education everywhere). But it still
has any number of negative devices in its
arsenal. In the process it has already
posed a threat to survival of many spe-
ciesof flora and fauna, killed millions
during the two decades of its feebly chal­
lenged rampage. Instead of an organised
working class, which it has succeeded in
disarming, if not dissolving, in most
countries, 90% of humanity are now
ready to challenge its continuance.
Wallerstein’s narrative should strengthen
the determination of the challengers.*1
Amiya Kumar Bagchi (amiya.bagchi@gmail.com)
is at the Institute of Development Studies Kolkata.
NOTES_____________________________________
1 While Botero is justly celebrated (for example,
Schumpeter 1954, pp 254-56) for having anti­
cipated, in The Greatness of Cities, Book 3, the
basic analytical structure of Malthus’s theory
of population, his contribution to the formula­
tion of capitalist and urbanised growth is less
well-known.
2 Incidentally, Botero considered Europe to be far
inferior to the east (especially China) in respect
of the greatness of cities and the variety of prod­
ucts, including manufactured commodities.
3 Serra, along with his great predecessors such as
Dante, greatly admired the Venetian Arsenal, and
took it as his model in portraying the superiority
of manufactures to agriculture. Reinert 2011
14, 2012 v o l x l v ii n o 15
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REVIEW ARTICLE
follows Serra in this respect, without, however,
pointing out that the main use of the Arsenal
was the expansion and defence of the Venetian
empire and without paying attention to the op­
pressive conditions of work on Venetian gal­
leys, a fate they shared with the sailing ships of
later maritime powers such as the Netherlands
and England. See in this connection Romano
1954-68, and Linebaugh and Rediker 2000.
4 Serra was also remarkable in pointing out first,
that agriculture was far more subject to uncer­
tainty caused by nature than manufacturing,
that the prices of manufactures a were more
stable than those of agricultural products and
that the profit obtained from manufactures was
greater than from the sale of unprocessed raw
materials (Serra 1613-2011, Part One, Chapter HI).
Serra may be also credited as a pioneer of the
advocacy of export-led growth, because he re­
peatedly mentioned that internal trade alone
does not lead to “extensive trade”.
5 Hobsbawm (1962, Chapter 8) tends to over­
estimate the immediate effect of the French
Revolution on the rest of continental Europe
and underestimate the degree to which the
Holy Alliance was able to reverse many of the
Napoleonic reforms.
6 For a slightly different reading of the problems
of Italy shaking off feudal fetters - a reading
that adheres more closely to the framework of
WS - see Aymard 1982.
7 This law, passed by the National Convention of
France in 1791, banned guilds and strikes and
organisations of workers.
8 For an analysis of contestation over the stand­
ard of the Indian currency in the late 19th cen­
tury, see Bagchi 1997.
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45
 PERSPECTIVES
Canonical Traditions
and Pedagogical Practices
Sociology at the Undergraduate Level
ARUN DE SOUZA__________________________
With the institutionalised
separation of postgraduate and
undergraduate departments of
sociology, the latter have suffered
from a mad rush for
marketability, leading to
formulaic content and an
emphasis on common sense
discourse. A constructivist
understanding of learning should
be emphasised that takes social
location seriously, allows the
possibility of critical engagement
with social reality, and stimulates
the learner’s multiple
intelligences. Going beyond
standardised texts and
experimenting with literature,
film and art will help learners
learn to “do sociology” rather
than merely “study” it.
This article originated as a presentation at the
national seminar, “Sociology in India and the
Bombay School: Retrospect and Prospects”,
organised by the department of sociology,
University of Mumbai and the Indian
Sociological Society on 23*24 September 2011
in Mumbai. I thank the organisers and
participants for the stimulating comments that
enabled me to rework the paper. Its
shortcomings are entirely due to my
own limitations.
Arun de Souza (arun.desouza@xaviers.edu)
is with St Xavier’s College, Mumbai.
46
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ithin the different genealogies
W of sociology as a teaching­
learning discipline, there have
been two important trajectories. One
can be traced to revolutionary France, as
represented by Marx, and the other the
more accommodating discipline of French
Durkheimian sociology. Most Indian
universities built on both genealogies:
the Jawaharlal Nehru University ( j n u )
stream stressed a radicalised sociology
and the Delhi School of Economics ( d s e )
stream stressed a more rigorous apolitical
and theoretical orientation. This has been
the dual tradition, inherited in different
degrees by most postgraduate sociology
departments in India. Within Mumbai
University, for instance, it was the con­
flict between the G S Ghurye school and
the later A R Desai school of sociology
that most characterised this split.
Unfortunately, most undergraduate
departments seem to have followed
neither genealogical tradition and were
slowly converted into teaching shops that
sought to cater to the largest number of
students in the easiest way possible.
Masters-level departments were con­
sidered research-oriented, while under­
graduate courses were seen as glorified
high schools wherein students not as
bright as the science stream students
could be given some sort of education
before they were thrown out into the big
bad world of work.
This separation between the post­
graduate and undergraduate departments
is institutionalised through a variety of
arrangements. Standardised tests that
emphasise definitional style sociology
like the National Eligibility Test ( n e t ) /
State Eligibility Test for Lectureship ( s e t )
act as gatekeeping mechanisms for the
“right” kind of teacher; undergraduate
teachers are given a heavier lecture
APRIL 1 4 , 2012
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
workload (which has become even worse
after the Sixth Pay Commission); senio­
rity defines the status of an undergraduate
teacher, not her publications (see, for
instance, the difference between proce­
dures at the undergraduate level and
postgraduate level that sanction who can
become the head of department);1bodies
like the board of studies which sanction
standardised syllabi and so on. One can
detail these out in greater measure but
this is not the thrust of my article. Suffice
it to point out that there is a large gulf
between the masters-level and the under-
gaduate departments. This article is
only concerned with the teaching of
sociology at the undergraduate level.
These institutional arrangements, at
the undergraduate level, bred their own
consequences in Maharashtra as is well
documented by researchers like Edward
Rodrigues (2011), George Jose (2003)
and Sharmila Rege (2011). Rodrigues
(2011) has shown that in the mad rush to
make sociology a marketable commodity,
the teaching-learning context has been
reduced to catering to the lowest common
denominator. Dictated notes, easy formu­
laic examination questions, and generous
marking have ensured that many take to
sociology. This has been facilitated, as
Jose (2003) points out, with boards of
studies that have acquiesced in making
syllabi as easy as possible. Journalistic,
common sense discourse that legitimises
the unequal status quo has been enshrined
in academic syllabi. Linguistic divisions,
wherein students belonging to regional
language groups are seen to have poor
access to sociological texts, have been
used as supporting arguments to down­
grade syllabi and teaching-learning.
There is a constant refrain, whenever
syllabi are sought to be revised, that the
revision should not be too drastic since
very little material is available in the
regional language.
This downplaying of regional language
access is neatly finessed by the national
centres for the teaching of social sciences
that use English as their sole teaching
language. Rege (2011) is sharply critical
of “centres” of sociology that tended to
downplay the kind of sociology being
taught at the “provincial” regional levels.
vo l x l v ii n o 15 OBS3 Economic &Political weekly

National, generously-funded central insti­
tutions represented themselves as crea­
tive enclaves for the production of socio­
logical knowledge, while the regional
departments of sociology came to be
characterised as the consumers of second-
rate textbook sociology.
Where does one go from here? Is there
a way out of this impasse that under­
graduate Indian sociology finds itself in?
What I seek to do in the following sec­
tions builds on the work of Alito Siqueira
and Manish Thakur (2011) and Rege
(2011) even as I branch out into tentative
exploration of newer possibilities. The
next four sections seek to explore my
own tentative ideas: (a) a constructivist/
constructionist understanding of learn­
ing, (b) the need to take social location
seriously, (c) reinstating the possibility
of a critical engagement with social
reality, and (d) incorporating methods
that stimulate multiple intelligences.
Constructionist Paradigms
of Learning
Socialising into any set of disciplinary
practices, as most education seeks to do,
is not a bad thing in itself. After all, one
cannot reinvent the wheel at every
stage. Thus the study of social theory
and research methods has always had
an important role to play in the trans­
mission of sociology as a discipline.
However in so doing, the educationist,
may easily fall into the positivist trap
that Comte fell into. We may unwittingly
lead the student to presume that there is
only one correct meaning of a text and
that a specific definition of a concept is
the only right way of understanding it.
Constructivist paradigms of learning
however question this presumption.
In the 1960s, Piaget and his co-workers
began to espouse a constructivist paradigm
of learning. According to this learning
paradigm, students should be encouraged
to engage actively with classroom mate­
rials by drawing on their own personal
experiences, in order to construct their
own sense of the world. Within the
sociology of knowledge, Thomas Kuhn
(1970), followed by scholars like Paul
Feyerabend (1993), have tried to show
how knowledge is based on certain
assumptions that go to make up a
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seemingly coherent paradigm of knowl­
edge and its related practices. Postmod­
ernism has furthered this understand­
ing with its own explorations into the
fractured and contradictory genealogies
that make up a seemingly coherent body
of knowledge (e g, Foucault 1969). If
knowledge is based on assumptions, and
contains inherent contradictions, should
we not allow the student greater leeway
in understanding sociological texts?
Who is to gainsay that the learner’s
assumptions could not lead to a newer
understanding, or at the least curiosity
to delve deeper into the social sciences?
Edward Said (1994: 65-85), in a reflec­
tive piece on the role of the intellectual
in society, points to two dangers of
“specialisation” within any discipline.
One, it restricts the horizon within which
we think (much like the old image of a
blinkered horse); two, it tends to put one
in the field of the discipline’s power
effects, i e, as we begin to rise in the aca­
demic hierarchy through this successful
socialisation, we are less likely to radi­
cally critique it. (How academia reacted
to early feminism is a case in point.) Said
thus recommends that we put on the
stance of the “amateur”, not in order to
trivialise an issue, but to allow us to look
at it from a fresh perspective. Feyerabend
advocates a similar stance, when he calls
on us to look at reality counterfactually
(1993: 25, 61). Any social theory arises
from a counterfactual attempt (i e, a
critique of past theory) to construct an
analytical framework to understand
society. Reading against the grain should
be encouraged for learner not yet fully
indoctrinated into the ways of institu­
tionalised sociology, and may lead to
new critical ways of perceiving and
articulating social reality.
Given this, is it still possible to hold on
to any one canonical interpretation of
sociological texts? Are students to be
treated as empty receptacles for the
teacher’s monolithic version of what
goes for sociological knowledge, or are
they to be treated as ongoing creators of
varieties of sociological understand­
ings? If we have a variety of Marxian
readings by different scholars, should
students not also be allowed to articu­
late their own interpretations? I have
v o l x l v ii n o 15
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PERSPECTIVES
experimented with giving students orig­
inal texts from the classical tradition
and have been surprised that quite a few
of them show originality in the way they
respond to these texts. While these may
not yet be worked out analytical readings,
they may in some senses be as insightful
as a Horkheimer’s or an Adorno’s read­
ing of Marx. Unfortunately we still
espouse a canonical understanding of
sociology and its interpretative practices.
This is unconsciously taken to such
ridiculous lengths that students are ex­
pected to even know the arcane origins
of Marx’s titles!2
Socially Located Learning
This problem of knowledge construction
also has to take into account the social
location of its subjects of learning. A pre­
digested, formulaic sociology wherein
one-size-fits-all should seem problemat­
ic by all of sociology’s modern epistemo­
logical understanding. Human beings
do not “know” in the abstract, they
know from, in and through their social
location. While this is well accepted in
the sociology of knowledge, we seem to
find it difficult to apply to our classroom
contexts. Syllabi and teaching, if they
are to be seen as meaningful and rele­
vant, must begin from the experiences
and questions thrown up by the learner’s
own context. Paulo Freire (2000) raised
this issue long ago, but we seem to be
condemned like Sisyphus to continually
rediscovering this seminal insight.
This is not to reinstate a retrograde
and outmoded indigenisation of knowl­
edge that critics like Claude Alvares
(2011) espouse. Alvares criticises Indian
social science syllabi as being overly
dependent on western sources. He calls
for the indigenisation of reading material.
While his suggestion to include more
Indian authors and perspectives is well
taken, I would disagree with his sugges­
tion that we liberate ourselves (what this
means is not too clear) from western
authors. Subjectivities today are multiple,
shifting and transnational. This would
mean that the study of Marx, Weber and
Durkheim is no longer foreign to the
learner in whatever context she/he in­
habits. Globalisation has allowed access
to a variety of sources and subjectivities.
47
PERSPECTIVES
As Appadurai (1997) has noted,
markets, media and migration have
opened up the possibility of experiment­
ing and living out multiple subjectivities.
This is as true of a Maharashtrian lan­
guage speaker in a village as it is of an
English language user in an urban con­
text. We are all transnational subjects
today. Therefore the question of finding
some sort of authentic Indian or Mahar­
ashtrian texts for the study of sociology
to the exclusion of “western” others does
a disservice to the learner whose world
is larger than the geographical location
she/he is sought to be tied down to.3The
geographical location from which we
experience cultural reality must not be
confused with the outmoded idea of
cultural essences that older anthropo­
logy espoused. Local concerns must be
brought into the syllabi, and should be
the starting point for any pedagogical
practice, but without the baggage of
being tied to some sort of cultural au­
thenticity or essentialism.
Academic bureaucracies enjoy the
game of standardisation, but could we
experiment with at least some parts of
our syllabi that respond to locally situa­
ted concerns, capabilities and resources?
For students from disadvantaged back­
grounds, taking up issues of reservations,
corruption, caste conflicts or farmer
problems may give rise to an interest in
sociology based on local problematics.
This should also take care of the growing
stigma being attributed to the provin-
cialisation of Indian academia. Literature
produced at the local level can be taken
as a starting point for discussion and
theorising, for instance, the vibrant dalit
literature in Maharashtra. Rege’s (2011)
narration of Kumud Pawade/Somkuwar’s
story would be a wonderful starting
point for a class discussion on caste within
society and academia. Laxman Gaikwad’s
Uchlya and many other such biographies
are sociological texts as much as they
are good works of literature. One could
easily move from here to B R Ambedkar’s
own idea on caste, Kancha Ilaiah’s work
critiquing Hinduism and then finally
segue into the theoretical aspects of
stratification systems.
My own students come from a middle-
class background and I once began an
48
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entire discussion on caste and reservations
via Shashi Tharoor’s (2007) account of
his visits home and the fraught caste
relationships that had changed over time
in his home village. Tharoor’s is clearly
an upper middle-class liberal perspec­
tive that is not too far from my student’s
own sensibilities, and yet the article
does hint at our own need to question
stereotypes around caste and reserva­
tion. It is from this vantage point that I
was then able to introduce Satish Desh-
pande’s (2006) article on reservations in
higher education. Again, higher educa­
tion is the social location from which my
students own angst over reservation is
best articulated. Perhaps if I had to try it
the other way around (i e, begin with
Deshpande’s article), I would have faced
a barrage of resistance given my own
students comfortable middle-class loca­
tion that fails to perceive their own priv­
ileged position within academia and
social life in general.
Middle-class learners’ experience of
cell phone and eating cultures could also
become starting points to discuss sym­
bolism, status symbols and the taken for
granted inequality of social life. One
could thus experiment with a variety of
starting points depending on the social
location of the learner. Starting points
may differ for students coming from
different social locations, but critical
thought can be fostered any which way.
Reinstating Critical
Engagement with Social Reality
This brings me to the next section of my
paper - the need to reinstate a critical
component. Bringing into the classroom
locally problematised issues and engag­
ing in serious reflection along these lines
would already inscribe a critical compo­
nent into education. But, we also need to
question the canonically accepted texts
that we have brought into the syllabus.
Why is it that W EB DuBois remains an
unknown entity to our students while
Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer are
necessary to all introductory courses?
Introducing DuBois would allow us to
contrast this with Parson’s theoretical
formulations and the social context
within which they were formulated.
How much did Talcott Parson’s own
APRIL 14, 2012
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White Anglo-Saxon Protestant (w a s p )
background of privilege influence his way
of writing? How much of DuBois’ racial
background and his espousal of the black
cause lead to his being marginalised
from mainstream sociology? Tracing the
personal, social and intellectual contexts
of theoreticians could make for more
interesting classroom discussion than
merely an introduction to dry theoreti­
cally abstract concepts divorced from
their social origins. Through this, the
politics of knowledge production could
easily begin to be understood and dis­
cussed even at a beginner student/under-
graduate level.
If one is willing to engage in another
challenge, looking at the Ghurye-Desai
difference could easily be another entry
point into the politics of knowledge pro­
duction and institutional power. Texts
could then be seen as living entities with
their own politics of production, inter­
pretation and institutional reproduc­
tion. In teaching first-year students, I
have found that this could lead to
vibrant discussions around issues of
power and the social locatedness of
knowledge production, canonical appro­
priation and circulation of texts (with­
out necessarily using all these technical
words, of course!).
Most introductory courses at the jun­
ior college and first year b a levels take
definitions straight out of a functionalist
reading of society. Reading DuBois
together with Ambedkar could lead to
questions about taken for granted social
theory that fails to problematise its
political origins. Why have we arrived at
a definitional style of sociology that
masquerades the everydayness of social
reality as the one that we study in a class­
room? Even worse, “sociological uses of
common sense in the classroom are in
fact practices aimed at legitimising dom­
inant caste and class perceptions of
Indian society within the classroom”
(Rodrigues 2011: 251). The common
sense of middle-class India is blended
with functionalist thought to create a
tame and boring sociology. The subject
of sociology as the science which prob-
lematises the obvious, takes a backseat
to classroom practice that deals with
inanities. No wonder sociology is seen as a
VOL x l v ii n o 15 BSQ Economic & Political weekly

discipline for those who have better
things to do in life and need only cram up
for the finals a few days before the exams!
Engaging the Learner's
Multiple Intelligences
Part of the reason for the boring nature
of sociology is that we get stuck with the
canonical texts that we have accepted as
sociological. What would happen if we
allowed art, literature and film into our
classrooms? Imagination as a way of
learning needs to be explored. After all,
C Wright Mills did speak of the socio­
logical imagination as the ability to
imagine one’s personal problematics as
linked to the social. Regional language
art forms like powadas and tamashas
could become creative and stimulating
entry points to discuss social inequality
and gender stereotyping. Rege’s (2002)
work on lavani and powada make us
aware of the complex ways in which
bahujan art forms were marginalised by
bourgeois practitioners of theatre. The
jalsa of the late 19th century used the
tamasha form to critique inequality while
the bourgeoisie sterilised the erotic lavani
into an art form that could be watched
in comfortable parlours of the rich.
A critical examination of these art forms
could lead a regional language learner
to the multiple ways in which art, caste,
inequality and nation get constructed
and enacted. These ideas may seem far­
fetched to us urban intellectuals, but as a
(Jesuit) schoolteacher in rural Ambatha,
I am aware of the intense pleasure and
interest that these art forms evoke and
how they can be utilised to stimulate
classroom discussions. There are many
popular literary texts in Maharashtra that
could be used to introduce basic socio­
logical ideas. Take, for instance, Godavari
Parulekar’s (1970) Jevha Manus Jaga
Hoto. This text that speaks of her own
life and work among the Warlis of Thane
district could easily be used as a starting
point for a Marxist analysis of social ine­
quality. Lakshmibai Tilak’s (1973) Smruti
Cbitre could be utilised to stimulate dis­
cussion on gender and family issues.
Translation of canonical sociological
texts as one source of knowledge is nec­
essary, but we should not privilege these
to the extent that other ways of knowing
Economic & Political w eek ly BSEB a p r i l 14, 2012
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and representing reality are ignored or
downplayed. The incessant bemoaning
of the lack of canonical texts translated
into the regional languages leads to a
false impasse. Along with canonical
texts, the teaching of sociology has priv­
ileged mental activity as the only way of
learning. Teaching as it is traditionally
practised in India emphasises at best,
learning from books, or at worst, what
the teacher dictates.
If we are to take Howard Gardner’s
(1993) thesis of multiple intelligences
seriously, we must engage the learner
through a multiplicity of media. In
Gardner’s terms, we utilise and test two
intelligences: linguistic and the logical-
mathematical. Gardner (1993), for in­
stance, lists out the musical, spatial,
bodily-kinaesthetic and personal as other
intelligences that we could develop. We
need to engage with other ways of
embodied learning, e g, visual and
kinaesthetic. The body as a site for
learning, memory and cultural enactment
is well accepted anthropologically. We
need to explore these alternative ways
of knowing.
I once had a student who began to
question gender stereotypes because of
the experiences she had as a bodybuild­
ing enthusiast! Theatre, song and dance,
which engage the body through multiple
sites, have been well documented by
performance studies. Susan Reed (1998)
reviews this genre of performance as an
academic discipline and its political
implications, with “dance as an expres­
sion and practice of relations of power
and protest, resistance and complicity”
(p 505). Andree Grau’s (2007) study of
Mallika Sarabhai’s academic and politi­
cal challenges to Hindutva and feminism
show how dance can become a political
and academic critique of mainstream
totalising discourses on the nation.
The possibilities are endless, but we
need to move out from our one-size-fits-
all model. In order to reclaim other ways
of knowing, we must begin to reprovin­
cialise our so-called higher centres of
learning which have dictated one way
of knowing. The tired cliches that stand
in for Marxian sociology, and gender
critiques need to be reinvigorated with
the examination of literary, visual and
v o l x l v i i n o 15
PERSPECTIVES
audio media that allow the reader/
viewer/listener/embodied actor to be
thrown up against questions that have
no easy answers.
A Challenge to Teachers
As sociology teachers, we have all been
used to teaching from a fixed repertoire
of texts, usually those that begin with
the classical founders, the trinity of
Marx, Weber and Durkheim and then
go on to more contemporary authors
dealing with themes like inequality,
religion, and social institutions. All these
topics and authors have been drawn
from within the field of sociology as it
has been understood and practised by
departments and universities of repute.
Usually all these ideas are further dis­
tilled out and presented through text­
books or teacher-dictated notes. If one
accepts this pedagogical process as the
only way to teach the social sciences,
then two standard, oft-heard observa­
tions are surely in order. One, regional
language learners are disadvantaged
since such material is not easily availa­
ble to them; two, sociology as a disci­
pline will require standardised easy
formulaic tests that can determine
competence in the discipline. But if one
looks at the teaching of sociology as a
way to inculcate critical social analysis
leading to transformative action, then
this pedagogy needs to be questioned.
What I have been advocating is going
beyond our standardised texts in order
to experiment with literature, film and art
in general. This will allow the learner to
engage with material she/he is familiar
with in order to examine it critically and
thus learn to “do sociology” rather than
merely “study” it. Further, to go beyond
our present linguistically oriented teach­
ing practices, we need to engage the
learner at multiple levels of his/her be­
ing. Varied intelligences have to be stim­
ulated and challenged in order to make
for a lived experience rather than dry in­
tellectual exercises done for the sake of
ensuring a minimum certification for
the job market. This does not mean we
throw out all our recognised texts, nor
does it mean that we stop using linguis­
tic techniques, just that we broaden our
horizons. This will also help regional
49
PERSPECTIVES

language teachers discover a wealth of
resources that could enable students to
think sociologically.
Many years ago, I was visiting a village
in Thane district. In one home, a middle-
aged tribal woman regaled me with an
analysis of the feudal system (speaking
a mix of Warli and Marathi, she called
this sanrajamshahi) prevalent in the
district. She had not been to any school
and was technically illiterate. When I
asked her where she had learnt all this,
she said from the Kashtakari Sanghatana’s
shibirs. The shibirs are the left-leaning
organisation’s teaching camps that involve
lectures, skits, songs, games and fellow­
ship meals. If activists had enabled this
unlettered woman to develop her analyti­
cal and articulation skills, what stops us
teachers from helping our own literate
students develop a transformative and
critical social science?
n o t e s ___________________________________________
i At the undergraduate level, the head of depart­
ment is a permanent functionary and is ap­
pointed purely on the basis of seniority, i e, the
seniormost teacher in the department becomes
the head and remains so till he/she retires. At
the postgraduate level, only professors (pre­
sumably with some publication) become head,
and the post usually rotates every three years
between the recognised professors in the con­
cerned department.
2 Chaudhuri (2003: 5-7) gives the example of a
professor who disdainfully spoke of a student
who did not understand the word “Brumaire”
in Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis
Bonaparte. Chaudhuri rightly suspects that the
meaning of this word was not absolutely nec­
essary for a student to claim a legitimate in­
terpretation of Marx’s thought inthis work.
3 At the end of this article, I give an example of
a rural illiterate woman who could articulate
one version of Marxian historical materialism!
R E F E R E N C E S ____________________________________
Alvares, Claude (2011): “A Critique of Eurocentric
Social Science and the Question of Alternatives”,
Economic & Political Weekly, 46(22): 72-81.
Appadurai, Arjun (1997): Modernity at Large: Cul­
tural Dimensions of Globalisation (New Delhi:
Oxford University Press).
Chaudhuri, Maitreyee (2003): “Introduction” in
Maitrayee Chaudhuri (ed.), The Practice of
Sociology (Hyderabad: Orient Longman), pp 1-37.
Deshpande, Satish (2006): “Exclusive Inequalities:
Merit, Caste, and Discrimination in Indian
Higher Education Today”, Economic & Political
Weekly, 41(24): 2438-44.
Feyerabend, Paul (1993): Against Method (London:
Verso).
Freire, Paulo (2000): Pedagogy of the Oppressed,
30th anniversary edition (Original Portuguese
edition 1968) (London: Continuum).
Foucault, Michel (1969): The Archaeology of Know­
ledge (London: Routledge).
Gardner, Howard (1 9 9 3 ): Frames of Mind: The
Theory of Multiple Intelligences, 1 0 th anniver­
sary edition (New York: Basic Books).
Grau, Andree (2 0 0 7 ): “Political Activism and South
Asian Dance: The Case of Mallika Sarabhai”,
South Asia Research, 27(1): 43-55.
Jose, George (2003): “Make It Soft and Easy: The
Undergraduate Syllabi” in Maitrayee Chaudhuri
(ed.), The Practice of Sociology (Hyderabad:
Orient Longman), pp 97-128.
Kuhn, Thomas (1970): The Structure of Scientific
Revolutions, second edition (Chicago: Univer­
sity of Chicago Press).
Parulekar, Godavari (1970): Jevha Manus Jaga
Hoto (Mumbai: Mouj Prakashan).
Reed, Susan A (1998): “The Politics and Poetics of
Dance”, Annual Review of Anthropology, 27:503-32.
Rege, Sharmila (2002): “Conceptualising Popular
Culture: Lavani and Powada in Maharashtra”,
Economic & Political Weekly, 37 (11): 1038-47.
- (2011): “Exorcising the Fear of Identity: Interro­
gating the ‘Language Question’ in Sociology and
Sociological Language” in Sujata Patel (ed.), Doing
Sociology in India: Genealogies, Locations and
Practices (New Delhi: Oxford University Press),
pp 213-40.
Rodrigues, Edward A (2011): “Knowledge Production
and Transmission: Learning Sociology at the
Undergraduate Level” in Sujata Patel (ed.), Do­
ing Sociology in India: Genealogies, Locations and
Practices (New Delhi: Oxford University Press),
pp 241-65.
Said, Edward (1996): Representations of the Intel­
lectual: The 1993 Reith Lectures (New York:
Vintage Books).
Siqueira, Alito and Manish Thakur (2011): “Of
Centres and Peripheries: Sociology in Goa” in
Sujata Patel (ed.), Doing Sociology in India:
Genealogies, Locations and Practices (New
Delhi: Oxford University Press), pp 103-26.
Tharoor, Shashi (2007): “Scheduled Castes, Un­
scheduled Change” in Shashi Tharoor, India:
From Midnight to the Millennium and Beyond
(New Delhi: Penguin Books), pp 80-112.
Tilak, Lakshmibai (1973): Smruti Chitre (Nasik:
ADTilak).

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50 APRIL 14, 2012 VOL x l v i i n o 15 0253 Economic & Political w eek ly

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 SPECIAL ARTICLE
Direct Tax Code and Taxation of Agricultural Income
A Missed Opportunity
D P SENGUPTA, R KAVITA RAO
Given the pressures on government expenditure and the
need to generate additional revenues w ith o u t
generating too many distortions, it is im portant to bring
back to the discussion table the need to deal w ith
taxation o f agricultural incomes. The issue has been
discussed at length by a number o f reports on taxation
as well as in the literature on tax policy in India. This
paper seeks to reignite this debate at tw o levels: one by
asking for a more comprehensive taxation o f incomes,
implying thereby taxation o f agricultural incomes as
well. The second is the need to use current legislation
to ensure that the exemption base o f agricultural
income from taxation is kept as narrow as possible as
against expanding it.
D P Sengupta (dpsengupta@gmail.com } and R Kavita Rao (kavita@nipfp.
org.iri) are with the National Institute of Public Finance and Policy,
New Delhi.
Economic &Political w e e k ly DB9 a p ril 14, 2012 v o l x lv ii n o
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ost agricultural income in India today is not subject
M to tax. While agriculture accounted for about 12.3%
of gross domestic product (g d p ) in 2009-10, its
contribution to taxation is limited to the value added tax ( v a t )
paid on some of the products and the agricultural income tax
paid on a few plantation crops like tea. The other sectors in the
country usually face income tax in addition to indirect taxes
such as v a t and Cenvat/service tax. A hypothetical question of
how much additional revenue could have been mobilised, if
agricultural incomes too were treated on par with other
incomes and subject to income tax, yields an answer of a
potential revenue in the range of Rs 50,000 crore for 2007-08,
i e, about 1.2% of g d p or about 9% of the g d p of agriculture
(see Appendix (p 59) for some computations). While additional
revenues of this size would not substantially alter the profile
of overall government receipts in India, it represents a
sizeable amount of revenue for states, adding about 19% to
the revenues of the states.
Apart from revenue considerations, it is commonly accepted
that exemptions generate incentives to under-report taxable
incomes, thereby undermining the revenues from taxable
sources as well. The Report of the Taskforce on Direct Taxes
(Kelkar Committee), for instance, discusses the under-reporting
of incomes under the guise of exempt agricultural income.
Given the pressures on government expenditures and the
need to generate additional revenues without generating too
many distortions, it is important to bring back to the discussion
table the need to deal with taxation of agricultural incomes.
These issues have been discussed at length by a number of
reports on taxation in India as well as in the literature on tax
policy in India. This paper seeks to reignite this debate at two
levels: one, by reiterating the more established argument,
asking for more comprehensive taxation of incomes implying
thereby taxation of agricultural incomes as well. The second
is the need to use current legislation to ensure that the base
referred to within exemption of agricultural income is kept
as narrow as possible, as against expanding it. The paper is
organised as follows: Section 1 provides a background to the
study by highlighting the changes in the structure and organi­
sation of agricultural operations in India in recent times.
These changes indicate that the agricultural sector now has
players who cannot solely be described as small farmers strug­
gling to meet the food security challenge of India. There is an
increasing presence of both commercial crops and commercial
participants in this sector. Section 2 provides a summary of the
15 51
state of taxation of agricultural incomes today. Section 3
briefly presents some of the current controversies in the treat­
ment of this sector. While recognising the difficulty of achiev­
ing a pan India reform of comprehensive state level taxation of
agricultural income, Section 4 brings to light the dilution of
provisions within the Direct Taxes Code (dtc ), which defeats
the purpose of more comprehensive taxation. Section 5 presents
a summary of policy options available.
1 Change in Structure and Organisation
The conventional view of Indian agriculture is that of a sector
producing largely foodgrains, meant for self-consumption and
for the market. This is considered a sector which supports 65%
of the population for livelihood. Over the years, however, there
is some change in the composition of the crops cultivated as
well as in the forms of organisation in the agricultural sector.
There is an increase in mechanisation in this sector which is
changing the pattern of livelihood. The number of tractors per
100 sq km has increased from 50 in the late 1980s to about 200
by 2008 (Figure 1). While the total cropped area has increased
from 185 to 195 million hectares since 1990-91, the share of
foodgrains has remained static around 122 to 125 million
hectares. This suggests that there has been some increase in
the area devoted to non-foodgrain crops (Figure 2). This would
include the fibre-yielding crops, like cotton and jute, oilseeds
and spices as well as the entire range of horticultural crops like
fruits and vegetables and in recent times, floricultural crops.
Figure 1: Tractors Per 100 Sq Km of Gross Cropped Area
140------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Source: Computed using Table 3.33 of Agriculture Research Data Book 2007 and Table 24 of
H a n d b o o k o f S ta tistics o n In d ia n E c o n o m y 2011.
Figure 2: Percentage of Land Cultivated
80 --------------------------------------------------------------------
Non-foodgrains
0 ,--------------- ,--------------- ,--------------- ---------------- .--------------- «--------------- »
1960-61 1970-71 1980-81 1990-91 1995-96 2000-01
Source: Computed from H a n d b o o k o f S ta tistics o n I n d ia n E c o n o m y 2011, Tables 19 and 24.
While the change in the acreage is not dramatic, it has
increasingly been reported that the returns on the cultivation
of non-foodgrains are significantly higher than those from cul­
tivation of foodgrains.1This is borne out by evidence from the
composition of the value of agricultural output as well. Figure 3
shows that while the share of cereals in the total value of
52
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Figure 3: Share in Value of Output of Agriculture (%)
60 ---- ---- -----------------------
Cereals
5 0 .......... i
/ ' x- J. Fruits andvegetables
40
^ Other crops
1950-51 1956-57 1962-63 1968-69 1974-75 1980-81 1986-87 1992-93 1998-99 2 0 0 4 -2007-
OS 08
Source: Computed from the N a tio n a l A c c o u n ts Sta tistics, 2011.
output has declined over the years, especially since the 1970s,
these crops have been systematically yielding space to the pro­
duction of fruits and vegetables. The share of cereals has de­
creased to almost 30% from over 45%, while the share of fruits
and vegetables has increased from 15% in the 1970s to 25% in
recent times. It should be mentioned that this category of fruits
and vegetables includes the value of output from floriculture
as well. Some available details of the composition of this sector
suggest that while the traditional crops of potato and banana
have seen some increases in production, floriculture as well as
an expanded range of horticultural crops has contributed to
this increase in value of output somewhat disproportionate to
the increase in acreage. This is an interesting trend, indicating
that in terms of value of output there is a larger share of agricul­
tural output which is responding to market signals and em­
bracing diversification and higher value generation.
Another important dimension in Indian agriculture, which
is finding a lot of place in discussions on this sector, is the
growing presence of the corporate sector in various activities
associated with this sector. There are corporates/companies
reporting agricultural income and income from the sale of
various agricultural products. (Table 1 (p 53) provides some
summary statistics of companies from the prow ess database
of companies which reported agricultural income.) While the
number of companies is not large, the corresponding incomes
are not inconsequential, with over 50 companies reporting
agricultural incomes of over Rs 100 crore, with their total agri­
cultural incomes amounting to Rs 31,313 crore in 2009-10. It
may be noted that all the companies in this compilation do not
specialise in agricultural products alone. They include a variety
of companies, for some of whom agricultural income is only a
small fraction of the total sales. It should also be mentioned
here that the incomes reported here would be an underesti­
mate to the extent these companies have integrated operations
and are utilising their own agricultural produce in their non-
agricultural operations. For instance, any company which
produces cotton and uses it to produce yarn or fabric for sale in
the market, may not report the same as income from cotton.
Further, since this compilation does not include firms and indi­
viduals with similar operations, the quantum of agricultural
income reported by taxpayers reporting both categories of
income too would be larger. What this does underscore is the
noticeable presence of the corporate sector in agricultural
operations. The presence of corporates in this field suggests that
the traditional notion of agriculture as a small farmer cultivating
A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x lv ii n o 15 GEES Economic &. Political w eek ly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE
for his sustenance alone is undergoing some change. While it products to be procured by the contracting company or by
is true that the small farmer and agricultural labour house­ providing support in marketing the product. While the jury
holds may not have been assimilated into this process of cor­ is still out on whether this move is necessarily beneficial to
porate farming, these do not remain the only categories in the the farmers in India, what seems to be clear is that new
agricultural sector today. institutions have emerged to address some of the concerns
Table 1: Corporates Reporting Income from Agriculture of the cultivators and thereby improving the returns to
2007-08 2008-09 2009-10 cultivators. The PepsiCo initiative in potato, it is argued, has
1 Number of companies with positive income 617 682 608 been able to protect the farmers from the effects of a sharp
2 Number of companies with agricultural income
fall in potato prices in the local market.2 The initiative of
above Rs lOOcrore 51 65 68
2a Total agricultural income of these companies
the Tata Group, through its company Rallis India, provides
(Rs crore) 23,580 27,850 31,313 technical inputs as well as support to market the produce.
3 Number of companies with over 50% Appachi Cotton provides a third model where the price of the
of income from agriculture 270 296 252 product is not pre-negotiated, but the farmers, as a group, can
3a Total agricultural income of these companies
negotiate with the company for the price, the market price
(Rs crore) 17,630 20,689 25,777
Taxes forgone corresponding to 2a 4,716 5,570 6,263
being the benchmark. All of these initiatives indicate that
Taxes forgone corresponding to 3a 3,526 4,138 5,155 there are changes in the structure of agricultural operations
Taxes forgone are computed assuming an effective tax rate of 20%. in India with an increase in the focus of technological inputs
Source: Compiled from Prowess. and some interventions to stabilise the price or at least to
Another form of interaction of the corporate sector with reduce price uncertainties.
the agricultural sector is through propagation of contract
farming. (Table 2 provides a list of some of the well-known 2 Present System o f Taxation
interventions in the form of contract farming.) This interven­
tion of the corporate sector into agriculture has two main 2.1 D efinition o f Agricultural Income
components. The first component involves providing techni­ Entry No 82 of the Union List of the Seventh Schedule read
cal inputs into cultivation, thereby improving the quality and with Article 246 of the Constitution empowers Parliament to
quantity of the crop produced. The second component relates make laws with respect to taxes on income “other than agri­
to providing some form of cushion from the fluctuations in cultural income”. Similarly, Article 246(3) read with Entry 46
the price for the crop - either through prefixed prices for in List 11 of the Seventh Schedule empowers the state legisla­
Table 2: Contract Farming in India: Some Initiatives
ture to make laws relating to tax
Sr No Nameof the Company States Commodity on agricultural income. Accord­
1 Appachi Cotton Company Tamil Nadu (TN), Karnataka Cotton ingly, Section io (ia) of the Income
2 AVT Natural Products Karnataka Marigold Caprica Chilly Tax Act, 1961 provides for exclu­
3 Cargill India Madhya Pradesh (MP) Wheat, maize and soybean sion of agricultural income in the
4 Escorts Punjab Basmati computation of total income. Simi­
5 The Global Green Company (Naan) Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh (AP) Gherkin, babycorn, paprika lar was the position relating to
6 Hindustan Lever MP Wheat taxation of agricultural income
7 Ion Exchange EnviroFarms TN,MP, Gujarat, Haryana, Maharashtra Organic products of banana, pineapple, even under the Government of
papaya, wheat, basmati, cotton
India Act, 1935 and the Income
8 ITC-IBD MP Soybean
9 Ken Agritech Karnataka Gherkin
Tax Act, 1922. Vide Article 366(1)
10 Marico Maharashtra, MP, Gujarat, Karnataka, Safflower of the Constitution, the expres­
Chhattisgarh, Rajasthan sion “agricultural income” for the
11 Mahindra Shubhlabh services Maharashtra, Punjab Many crops above entries means agricultural
12 Natural Remedies Karnataka Coleus income as defined for the purpose
13 Nestle India Punjab Milk
of the enactments relating to
14 Nijjer Agro Foods Punjab Tomato and chilly
Indian income tax.
15 Pepsi Foods Punjab, TN, West Bengal Chillies, groundnut, seaweed, tomato
and basmati rice
Except for some occasional
16 Rallis India Punjab, UP, MP, Maharashtra, Basmati, wheat, fruits, vegetables changes, which we shall discuss
Karnataka, TN subsequently, the core definition of
17 Satnam Overseas Punjab Basmati “agricultural income” both under
18 Super Spinning Mills TN Cotton the 1922 Act and the Income
19 The Ugar Sugar Works Karnataka Barley Act, 1961 remains remarkably
20 Unicorn Agrotech Karnataka Gherkin
unchanged. Accordingly, although
21 United Breweries Punjab Barley
there have been many litigations
22 CG Herbals Chhattisgarh, Orissa Patchouli, veiver, aromatic crops for
essential oil in regard to what constitutes agri­
23 Sanjeevani Orchards MP Pomegranate cultural income, the jurisprudence
Source: http://agmarknet.nic.in/ConFarm.htm in this regard has been more or
Economic & Political WEEKLY QD Q APRIL 14, 2 0 1 2 VOL x l v i i n o 15 53

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SPECIAL ARTICLE
less settled. The seminal case in this regard is the case of c i t v s
Raja Binoy Kumar Sahas Roy.3 The essential elements of agri­
cultural income as has been laid down by the Supreme Court
in that decision are as follows:
• The primary sense in which the term agriculture is under­
stood is the cultivation of the field and in that sense relates to
basic operations like tilling of the land, sowing of the seeds
and planting and similar operations on the land. These basic
operations require expenditure in terms of human labour and
skill upon the land itself.
• There are operations which are not basic in nature but are
performed after the produce sprouts from the land like weeding,
digging of the soil around the growth, preservation against
insects and pests, tending, pruning, cutting, harvesting, etc,
or rendering the produce fit to be taken to the market. These
subsequent operations must necessarily be in conjunction with
and a continuation of the basic operations. One cannot dissociate
the basic operations from the subsequent operations and say
that the subsequent operations can constitute agricultural
operations by themselves.
• The nature of the produce raised is not relevant, the
produce could be either vegetables or fruits necessary for
human consumption or pastures grown for beasts or for items
like betel, coffee, tea, spices or tobacco or for the growth of
commercial crops.
• Mere association with land as in the case of breeding
and rearing livestock, dairy farming, butter- and cheese­
making and poultry-farming cannot be treated as constitut­
ing agriculture.
Almost all subsequent decisions have been rendered in the
touchstone of the test as laid down in the aforesaid judgment.
1970 Amendment: The definition of agricultural income in
the Income Tax Act, 1961, inter alia, contained the following:
any rent or revenue derived from land which is used for agricultural
purposes and which is either assessed to land revenue in India or is
subject to a local rate assessed and collected by the officers of the Gov­
ernment as such;...
Assessment to land revenue, etc, was the condition prece­
dent before the income could be categorised as agricultural
income. Thus, where the land in question was not assessed to
land revenue or local and it was situated within the jurisdic­
tion of the municipality of Dehradun, it was held that the in­
come derived from such land could not be treated as agricul­
tural income and the sale of lychee fruits was not agricultural
income and was not exempt from taxes.4
By the Taxation Laws (Amendment) ( t l a ) Act, 1970, a
change was made in the above said definition of agricultural
income. It was pointed out that in the recent years, agricul­
tural operations were extended to the Terai areas or canton­
ment, where land is not assessed to land revenue and is not
subject to any local rate and accordingly, income derived by
agricultural operations of such land was outside the scope of
the agricultural income, and hence, liable to central income
tax. The definition of agricultural income was, therefore,
amended so as to drop the condition that the land from
54
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which income is derived should be assessed to land revenue or
any local rate.
2.2 Change in th e D efinition of Farmhouses
Agricultural income also includes income attributable to farm
buildings which is required by farmers for residence, storage
of grains and such other purposes. Hence, income from such
farmhouses was also allied to the definition of agricultural
income and was exempt. By the t l a Act, 1970, another change
was brought about. While the condition of the land being
subject to land revenue was dropped in the case of agricultural
land, per se, in respect of farmhouses, this was a condition
precedent. Where the land was not subject to land revenue,
the farmhouse was to be situated outside urban areas to enjoy
the benefit of the exemption.
The effect of this modification was that income attributable
to farmhouses situated in such “urban areas” was not treated
as agricultural income unless the land on which the farm­
house was situated was assessed to land revenue or any local
rate. However, in the case of farmhouses situated in “rural ar­
eas”, the income there from was treated as agricultural income
even where the land on which the farmhouse was situated,
was not assessed to land revenue or any local rate.5
2.3 Change in th e D efinition o f Capital Asset
By the same t l a another change was brought about though
not in the definition of agricultural income. This concerned
the definition of a “capital asset”. Prior to 1 April 1970 capital
gains from transfer of agricultural land were not subject to
tax as agricultural land was excluded from the definition of
“capital asset”. Through the amendment, it was laid down that
the agricultural land situated in any urban area would be
considered as capital asset, and hence, any gain arising from
the transfer of such agricultural land in urban area was
brought within the purview of capital gains taxation.6
Thus, agricultural land in urban areas would henceforth
constitute capital asset subject to capital gains taxation.
1973 Amendment: The Committee on Taxation of Agricul­
tural Wealth and Income (Raj Committee) suggested several
measures for mobilising resources from the agricultural sec­
tor. The committee, inter alia, observed:
The temptation to dress up large chunks of taxable income as agricul­
tural in origin would be curbed to a considerable extent if the tax
liability in respect of non-agricultural income is linked in some way
with the aggregate income of an assessee comprising the receipts from
both agricultural and non-agricultural sources. In other words, eva­
sion through the device of camouflaging taxable income as gains from
agriculture would cease to be paying if the disclosure of agricultural
incomes entails a heavier burden of tax on non-agricultural incomes.
We, therefore, propose that both the agricultural and non-agricultural
components of a taxpayer’s income be aggregated and the tax on the
non-agricultural portion be levied as if it were placed in the top slabs
of the aggregate income...
The committee thus suggested that agricultural and non-
agricultural components of a taxpayer’s income should be
aggregated and the tax on the non-agricultural portion levied
APRIL 14, 201 2 VOL x l v ii n o 15 DEB Economic &Political w eekly
as if the latter were placed in the top slabs of the aggregate the definition of agricultural income for the purpose of
income. Integration of agricultural and non-agricultural incomes enhancing or contracting the scope of agricultural income.
should take effect only if a taxpayer has taxable non-agricultural
income exceeding the minimum exemption limit laid down for 2.4 Taxation o f Agricultural Income
the levy of income tax. Within the present constitutional assignment of tax powers in
The Finance Act, 1973 accepted this recommendation and India, taxation of agricultural income is placed within the State
provided for partial integration of agricultural income. The List. However, though the states have the right to tax agricul­
same situation continues till date although with the gradual tural income, very few states have attempted to enter this
flattening of the top tax rates, its effectiveness is doubtful. arena. Table 3 shows the number of states that have a system
The validity of this provision was challenged in some cases of taxation of agricultural income in place today. Of these, for
but has been upheld by the courts.7 the most part, the tax is on plantation crops. While Assam
does have a comprehensive levy, the revenue it gets is largely
1989 Amendment: Despite the change in the definition of from tea. The rest of agriculture remains outside the purview
capital asset by the t l a Act 1970, certain courts, however, held of taxation at the present juncture.
that profits from sale of agricultural land itself constituted In terms of the revenue that these states have been able to
agricultural income and since agricultural income was exempt, mobilise from this tax, Table 4 shows that none of the states
the capital gains could also not be bought to charge. Therefore, have been able to mobilise even 0.5% of their gross state
an explanation was inserted by the Finance Act, 1989 to clarify domestic product ( g s d p ) from this source. The maximum
that revenue derived from land shall not include any income revenue mobilised is that by Assam at 0.3% of g s d p for only
arising from the transfer of such land. This provision too was one of the five years covered in the table. In nominal terms, the
challenged but was upheld - the Madhya Pradesh High Court revenue collections of the states have varied between Rs 8 crore
held that under Article 366(1), the Constitution has adopted for Karnataka and West Bengal and Rs 78 crore in the case of
the definition of “agricultural income” as has been defined in Assam for the year 2009-10.
the Indian Income Tax Act. Therefore, the amendment which Table 4: Receipts from Agricultural Income Tax as a Percentage of 6SPF (in %)
was made by Parliament by inserting an explanation was States 2004-05 2005-06 2006-07 2007-08 2008-09 2009-10
within the competence of Parliament.8 Assam 0.045 0.049 0.018 0.020 0.093 0.336
Karnataka 0.008 0.005 0.004 0.008 0.023 0.017
2000 Amendment: The definition of agricultural income, as Kerala 0.029 0.032 0.046 0.099 0.049 0.105
we have seen, includes any income derived from any building Tripura 0.015 0.007 0.007 0.005 0.000 0.000
owned and occupied by the cultivator or receiver of rent, etc. West Bengal 0.004 0.003 0.002 -0.005 0.006 0.012
As a measure of widening the tax base, the Finance Act intro­ Maharashtra 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
duced an explanation in 2000 to clarify that any income from Rajasthan 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
such building or land arising from the use of the building or Sikkim 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000

land for any purpose other than agriculture shall not be Tamil Nadu 0.003 0.001 0.000 0.000 0.000 0.000
Source: Computed from budgets of individual states.
included in the definition of agricultural income. For example,
if a person has income from using such building or land for While the revenue from agriculture can be substantial,
purposes such as letting out for residential purposes or for the there is very little possibility of any individual state attempting
purpose of any business or profession, then, such income shall to explore this option and mobilising revenue there from.
not be treated as agricultural income. Given the considerable strength of the agricultural lobby in all
A conspectus of the legislative amendments and the case major states, no state government can individually attempt to
laws emerging out of the challenge to such amendments introduce a comprehensive tax on agricultural income. The
indicate that the centre has the power to bring in changes in only way such a reform can be implemented by the states is if
Table 3: Coverage and Rates of Tax
States Coverage Single or Multiple Rates? Exemption Threshold Categories of Taxpayers
Assam All agricultural income (revenue from tea) Multiple rates Rs 30,000 for individuals Individual, companies, firms
Karnataka Cardamom, coffee, linaloe, orange, pepper,
rubber and tea Multiple rates 30 to 50% Companies, firms
Kerala All agricultural income excluding crops like
paddy, tapioca, plantain, ginger, ragi, pulses,
sesame, sweet potato, tubers, sugar cane,
jackfruit, mango, pineapple, orchid or other
flowers, vanilla, turmeric and guava Multiple rates 20 to 60% Rs 40,000 for individuals Individual, companies, firms
Tripura Total agricultural income Multiple rates 20 to 60% Rs 1,500 Individual, companies, firms
West Bengal Tea Single 30% Individual, companies, firms
Maharashtra Abolished on 1 April 2004
Tamil Nadu Abolished on 1 April 2004
Rajasthan Inoperative
Source: Compiled from the notes submitted to the 13th Finance Commission.

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SPECIAL ARTICLE
majority of the states agree to take on the reforms simultaneously.
Coordination among the states, however, has not proved to be
an easy process, as is demonstrated by the process of introduction
of state v a t in place of existing sales taxes, and now in the context
of the introduction of the Goods and Services Tax. Another
alternative route that has often been recommended by various
studies is for the states to adopt a tax rental agreement with
the union government, where the latter collects tax on income
from agriculture as well, with the receipts being passed on to
the respective states. While administratively this would be
easier than the states attempting to set up the entire regime
individually, it still requires the concurrence of majority of the
states to be implemented.
3 Change in the Composition o f Agriculture:
Recent Controversies
Agriculture has undergone a massive change in India. There
are many activities in this sector now which are either akin to
or allied to manufacturing activities. Considerable research
and development activities also are taking place. Naturally,
such activities beyond the traditional farming methods create
tension with the tax department with the latter trying to deny
the benefits of the exemption to income from such activities. In
this connection, we examine some of the case laws relating to
such emerging activities.
3.1 Nurseries and Pot Cultivation
One of the important issues of dispute relates to the treatment
of nurseries and the related sale of saplings and plants.9 In one
of the notable cases, the assessing officer ( a o ) found that the
assessee was maintaining a nursery at his residence. The a o
was of the view that the nursery was maintained and run as a
business quite independently of agriculture and that even if
keeping of the nursery necessarily involves the use of some
land and earth for the purposes of rearing plants, that would
not by itself amount to carrying on a primary agricultural
operation in the sense of cultivation of the soil. The a o noted
from the photographs produced before him that all the plants
were grown in earthen pots and these pots were placed on a
concrete structure, which was either on the floor of the house
or terrace. He also noted that most of the plants were placed in
polythene bags and no use of land was evident from these
photographs. Hence, he was of the view that the activities of
the nursery were being carried out in earthen pots and no
agricultural process was involved. In this case, the tribunal held
that the a o should bring on record the nature of operations,
viz, primary as well as secondary on the specific land area, and
thereafter, apply the law laid down in the decided cases to the
facts of the present case; he has to examine how the assessee
can be said to be carrying on agriculture in the primary sense,
i e, tilling of the land, sowing of seeds and planting and doing
other operations of the land. After examining this aspect, he has
to examine the secondary operation carried out by the assessee.
Such direction issued by the tribunal was upheld by the high
court observing that mere performing of the secondary operation
will not make the assessee’s activity an agricultural activity. It
56
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may be noted here that for a number of nurseries, the primary
activity is procurement and sale of plants and saplings rather
than the cultivation of saplings and plants per se.
Surprisingly, however, through the Finance Act, 2008, an
explanation was added to the definition of agricultural income
to the effect that any income derived from saplings or seed­
lings grown in a nursery shall be deemed to be agricultural
income. Accordingly, irrespective of whether the basic opera­
tions have been carried out on land, such income will be
treated as agricultural income, thus qualifying for exemption
under Sub-section (1) of Section 10 of the Act.
3.2 Tissue Culture
The taxpayer was in the business of growing and exporting of
ornamental plants and claimed entire income as exempt.10 The
a o , after visiting the premises came to the conclusion that the
taxpayer was carrying on tissue culture methodology and some
of the activities were non-agricultural and accordingly, he
bifurcated the income. In appeal, the tribunal held that the plant
tissue culture is used to reproduce clones of a plant with the
same traits by placing various tissues of the mother plant in
containers and required medium which is definitely not land
or soil and that when any operation is not carried out on land,
such an operation cannot be called as an agricultural operation.
3.3 Seed Companies
In recent years, there have been quite a few tax cases, involv­
ing seed companies which employ modern methods of genera­
tion and propagation of seeds. While the Mumbai Tribunal in
the case of Monsanto has held the income from sale of seeds
to be agricultural income, the Delhi Tribunal in the case of
Pioneer Overseas and Proagro Seeds has held the same to be
non-agricultural in nature.11
In the case of Pioneer Overseas, the multinational used to
make scientific studies of parent seeds and through hybridisa­
tion of different varieties of the parent seeds evolve the high-
yielding variety of hybrid seeds, which were then sold to the
farmers. The sale proceeds were claimed to be exempt for
being agricultural income in nature. It was found that the
hybrid seeds are so engineered that when the crops from it are
used as seeds, the yields are much less. The seeds are thus gen­
erated by certain involved processes, which an ordinary
farmer cannot do and he has to again revert back to the pro­
ducer of the hybrid seeds for a subsequent crops if he wants
similar results of high production in the subsequent crops. The
claim of exemption was thus denied.
3.4 Contract Farming
In the case of Namdhari seeds, the taxpayer declared income
generated from the sale of hybrid seeds on land taken for
contract farming as agricultural income.12It was in the busi­
ness of cultivation, production and marketing of open-hybrid
seeds both for domestic and international markets and it
entered into an agreement with farmers for production of
open-hybrid tomato seeds. The farmer owned the land and
agreed to cultivate the hybrid seeds specified by the assessee.
a p r i l 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 GEES Economic & Political w eek ly

He also undertook to observe all the conditions regarding the
cultivation and other incidental matters; agreed to allow the
personnel of the company to operate on the land, machinery,
implements and accessories. He further undertook to hand
over all the hybrid seeds and not to sell or part with or retain
for himself any portion of the seeds. In exchange, the company
agreed to pay him compensation at the rate of Rs 3,200 per
quintal for hybrid tomato seeds.
On an analysis of the agreement and the terms, the Karna­
taka High Court held that the entire terms of agreement would
only indicate that the foundation seeds grown by the farmer
would be purchased by the assessee at the end for a certain
price provided the seeds qualify the specifications as per the
agreement. In the words of the high court:
It is nothing short of a fertile womb being offered by a surrogate mother
for the growth o f child of som eone else. The assessee supervises and
oversees the sowing, cultivation right from the process o f sow ing till
the end in order to get the qualified foundation seeds as per the speci­
fications so as to carry on his trade in selling certified seeds. The main
interest of the assessee is to see that good and healthy seeds are pro­
duced by the farmer m eeting the requirement specified by it.
The court held that such input or scientific method in giving
advice to the farmer cannot be termed as either basic agricultural
operation or subsequent operations ordinarily employed by
the farmer or agriculturist. If the basic operations of agriculture
are not carried on by the assessee-company, then the harvested
foundation seeds purchased by him and converting them to
certification seeds cannot be termed as integrated part of the
foundation activity of agriculture.
3.5 Changes Proposed by the DTC
Having seen the development of the law and having observed
the judicial analysis, the following features can be noted. The
legislature in the past has restricted the meaning of agricultural
income and such measures have passed muster. Courts have
also not given a very wide meaning to the term “agricultural
income” and have in many cases adopted a restrictive mean­
ing. Thus, when a new beginning was being made in the d t c ,
it was possible to make intelligent use of the leeway given by
the judiciary and bring in provisions which would restrict the
scope of agricultural income particularly in areas like hybrid
seeds, where the market is immense and scope of profits large.
It is against this backdrop that we can now examine the
changes proposed by the d t c in this regard.
4 Im plications of DTC Provisions
The current definition of agricultural income has three com­
ponents: (1) the rent from the agricultural land; (2) the income
derived from such land by agriculture; and (3) income from
farmhouses (Table 5, p 58).
Insofar as the first element is concerned, there is no difference
between the current definition and the definition that has been
proposed in the d t c except for the fact that the reference to
“revenue” from the agricultural land does not find place in
the new definition. The main component of the definition of
agricultural income is the income derived from the land by
Economic & Political weekly QSSi Ap r il 14, 2012 vo l x l v ii n o
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
agriculture. The current law also restricts the process that can
be applied to agricultural produce by stipulating that the proc­
ess should be such as ordinarily employed by a cultivator to
render the produce fit to be taken to the market. It is also stipu­
lated that the sale of the final produce should not be subject to
any process other than that necessary for rendering the pro­
duce fit to be taken to the market. It is by reference to these re­
strictions that courts and tribunals have, in cases involving
modern-day agriculture, turned down the claim of exemption.
However, the language used by the d t c in this regard is “any
profits and gains derived from cultivation of agricultural land”.
The language is completely different and is capable of encom­
passing within its fold all incomes which might be derived from
the cultivation of the land. The restriction that the process em­
ployed must not be beyond what is employed by a cultivator to
render the produce fit to be taken to the market, no longer finds
the place. Accordingly, it can be concluded that the ambit of
agricultural income has been significantly extended.
Agricultural land has been defined in the d t c as land which
is used for agricultural purposes and is assessed to land revenue
in India. The assessment to land revenue was a condition prior
to 1970. As we have seen above, the t l a Act removed this con­
dition, on the ground that there may be land itself not assessed
to land revenue. Accordingly, it is possible to take a view that
in respect of those states where no land revenue is charged,
the income from agricultural land will no longer be considered
as agricultural!
Insofar as the farmhouses are concerned, the existing condi­
tion for treating income therefrom as agricultural in nature is
that the building must be in the immediate vicinity of the land
and that the same must be required by the cultivator as a
dwelling house, store house or outhouse and the land must be
assessed to land revenue. Where it is not so assessed, the farm­
houses must not be situated in any urban area. In the d t c ,
“farmhouse” has been separately defined and incorporates the
condition of being in the vicinity of the agricultural land and
exclusively for dwelling house, store house or outhouse or for
carrying out any process for taking the agricultural produce to
the market. However, the condition of being subject to land
revenue is absent as also the stipulation that where the land is
not subject to land revenue it should be outside the urban areas.
As we have seen, an explanation was inserted in the Finance
Act, 2000, whereby the income from house of farmhouse for
any purpose other than agriculture was not considered as
agricultural income. This explanation or components thereof
do not find a place in the d t c . Accordingly, it is possible to argue
that any income from any farmhouse whether rural or urban,
whether used for the purpose of renting out for marriage party
or not, will now be considered as agricultural income.
The d t c also specifically gives exemption from the income
derived from saplings or seedlings grown in a nursery. This
was an explanation introduced in 2008 and has been carried
over in the d t c .
To sum up, it is not clear whether the stipulation of the
agricultural land being subject to land revenue is a deliberate
attempt to change the coverage of agricultural income. There
15 57
SPECIAL ARTICLE

Table 5: A Comparison of the Provisions Pertaining to Agricultural Income__________________

Present Provisions_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ Provisions as per PTC
(1A) "agricultural income" means- (11) "agricultural income" means the following income, namely:-
[a] any rent or revenue d e riv e d fro m land which iss itu a te d in In d ia a n d is (a) any profits and gains d e riv e d fro m c u ltiv a tio n o f a g r ic u ltu r a l la n d ;

u se d fo r a g r ic u ltu r a l purposes; (b) any rent derived from any agricultural land;
[b] any income derived from such land by- (c) any rent derived from any farmhouse; and
(i) a g ric u ltu re ; or (d) any income derived from saplings or seedlings grown in a nursery.
(ii) the performance by a cultivator receiver of rent in kind of any process (12) "agricultural land" means any land "situated in India" which is "used for
ordinarily employed by a cultivator or receiver of rent in kind to render, agricultural purposes" and: -
the produce raised or received by him fit to be taken to market; or (a) is assessed to land revenue in India; or
(iii) the sale by a cultivator or receiver of rent in kind of the produce raised (b) is subject to a local rate assessed and collected by the officers of
or received by him, in respect of which no process has been performed the government as such;
other than a process of the nature described in paragraph (ii)
of this sub-clause;
[c] any income derived from any building owned and occupied by the receiver 314(96) "farmhouse" means any building which fulfills the following
of the rent or revenue of any such land, or occupied by the cultivator or the conditions, namely:-
receiver of rent-in-kind, of any land with respect to which, or the produce (a) it is situated on, or in the immediate vicinity of, the agricultural land;
of which, any process mentioned in paragraphs and (ii) of sub-clause (b) (b) the building is used exclusively --
is carried on: (i) as a dwelling house, store-house, or other out-building, for agricultural
[Provided that ~ purpose; or
(i) the building is on or in the immediate vicinity of the land, and is a (ii) to carry out any process to render the produce raised or received by the
building which the receiver of the rent or revenue or the cultivator, owner fit to betaken to the market; and
or the receiver of rent-in-kind, by reason of his connection with the (c) the building is --
land, requires as a dwelling house, or as a store-house, or other (i) occupied by the cultivator or the receiver of rent-in-kind; or
out-building, and (ii) owned and occupied by the receiver of rent.
(ii) the land is either assessed to land revenue in India or is subject to a
local rate assessed and collected by officers of the government as such
or where the land is not so assessed to land revenue or subject to a
local rate, it is not situated-
(A) in any area which is comprised within the jurisdiction of a municipality
(whether known as a municipality, municipal corporation, notified area
committee, town area committee, town committee or by any other name)
or a cantonment board and which has a population of not less than
10,000 according to the last preceding census of which the relevant
figures have been published before the first day of the previous year; or
(B) in any area within such distance, not being more than eight kilometres,
from the local limits of any municipality or cantonment board referred
to in item (A) as the central government may, having regard to the
extent of, and scope for, urbanisation of that area and other relevant
_______ considerations, specify in this behalf by notification in the Official Gazette].
Explanation 1 - For the removal of doubts, it is hereby declared that revenue derived
from land shall not include and shall be deemed never to have included any income
arising from the transfer of any land referred to in item (a) or item (b) of sub-clause
(iii) of clause (14) of this section.________________________________________
Explanation 2 - Forthe removal of doubts, it is hereby declared that income
derived from any building or land referred to in sub-clause (c) arising from the use
of such building or land for any purpose (including letting for residential purpose
or for the purpose of any business or profession) other than agriculture falling
under sub-clause (a) or sub-clause (b) shall not be agricultural income.___________
E x p la n a tio n 3 - F o r th e p u rp o s e s o f this clause, a n y in c o m e d e riv e d fro m sa p lin g s

o r seedlings g r o w n in a n u rs e ry s h a ll b e d e e m e d to b e a g r ic u ltu r a l in c o m e . ___________

The portions in italics refer to content that has undergone change.

is no discussion in the discussion draft or the revised discus­ had never filed any return of income.13 Most probably, all
sion draft released at the time of introduction of d t c , as also these persons would have shown income from agriculture.
no discussion in the press in this regard. It is possible that this There is absolutely no justification for such a state of affairs
could be a mistake. However, apart from the above, the other to continue. Considering the division of legislative power
changes discussed above increase the scope of agricultural between the centre and the states, the following are the alter­
income rather than restricting the same. natives available:
(i ) Within the present dispensation of tax powers, the right to
5 The Way Forward tax agricultural income lies with the state governments. How­
A recent report at the time of the Punjab elections indicated ever, it is well recognised that while most of the state govern­
that there are candidates from political parties across the ments can benefit from the additional revenue this could pro­
spectrum who had income of more than Rs 100 crore, but vide, it may be politically unacceptable for any political party
58 APRIL 14, 2012 vo l x l v ii n o 15 BBSS Economic &Political weekly

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 SPECIAL ARTICLE

to attempt such a measure unilaterally. State-level reforms
would, therefore, need either a consensus to jointly implement
the tax on some common agreed norms, or even to enter into a
tax rental arrangement with the union government. If this is
considered a significant enough source of revenue, it might
even be worthwhile for the finance commission to assess the
potential and find some means of incentivising the introduc­
tion of such a tax. This route clearly worked for the adoption of
Fiscal Responsibility Acts by the state governments.
Here it may be mentioned that while the state governments do
seek to safeguard their autonomy, the right to choose not to
levy a tax should be accompanied by the responsibility to bear
the cost of the resultant short fall in revenue as well!
(2) In the absence of the above, it may be a difficult proposi­
tion for the centre to bring all such people under the tax net.
To tax such income, therefore, one has to explore the possi­
bilities of taxing at least a part of agricultural income within
the present parameters. It is in this context that the definition
of “agricultural income” under the Income Tax Act can be
used to at least bring a part of the income from agriculture to
tax by restricting the ambit of agricultural income to only
some crops or processes. In the past, attempts have been
made to restrict the income from farmhouses. Such legisla­
tions have also withstood judicial scrutiny. Therefore, the
d t c provided an ideal opportunity to attempt an exercise in
that direction. Unfortunately, no attempt has been made. The
discussion paper released at the time of the introduction of
the d t c is completely silent in regard to this vital aspect of
taxation. Obviously, no suggestions have also been received
in this regard. To begin with, income from cash crops and
similar produces can be taken out of agricultural income by
stipulating that the processes involved therein would not con­
stitute agricultural income. Of course, for this purpose, a
thorough study has to be made to properly identify the proc­
esses and describe the same. The income of multinationals
from growing and selling hybrid seeds has been held to be
non-agricultural by some courts. It is necessary to actually
spell this out in the form of an explanation rather than leave
the litigation to fester. The d t c , by using a different language,
seems to bring such income also under “agricultural income”.
Wherever there is a significant value addition after the
produce is brought out from the soil, it can be kept out. On the
contrary, the d t c seems to omit any reference to the “process”
itself.14 Similarly, there is absolutely no reason why income
from farmhouses, particularly those in the vicinity of urban
areas should not be taxed. The d t c , in fact, is quite regressive
in this regard in that instead of restricting the scope, it seems
to have enhanced the same.

n o t e s _____________________________________
1 Sushil Kumar et al (2001), “Higher Yields and
Profits from New Crop Rotations Permitting
Integration of Mediculture with Agriculture in
the Indo-Gangetic Plains”, Current Science,
80 (4), pp 563-66. Surabhi Mittal (2007), “Can
Horticulture Be a Success Story for India?”
ICRIER Working Paper No 197.
2 See http://www.livemint.com/2010/03/25213353
/Problems-of-plenty-for-West-Be.html.
3 32ITR466(SC).
4 Smt Anand Bala Bhushan vs CIT [217ITR 144
(Allahabad)].
5 Any area which is outside the jurisdiction of any
municipality or cantonment board having a
population of not less than 10,000 persons and
also beyond the notified distance outside the limits
of any such municipality or cantonment board.
6 Area comprised within the jurisdiction of a
municipality or a cantonment board (having a
population of not less than 10,000) or in any
area outside the limits of any municipality or
any cantonment board (having a population of
not less than 10,000) up to a maximum distance
of eight kms from such limits as notified by the
central government.
7 In KJ Joseph vs ITO, 121 ITR 178, the Kerala High
Court held that the charge of tax is still on non-
agricultural income. No part of the agricultural
income is subjected to tax. For the purposes of
determining rate at which non-agricultural in­
come is to be taxed, the agricultural income is
taken into account. This and the differential
rates are based on the different sources of in­
come available to the persons concerned. It is
only in respect of persons who have agricultural
income, in addition to non-agricultural income
that the mode of computation of the rate of tax
as provided by the impugned provisions is
adopted. This classification is reasonable and
based on the intelligible differentia.
In KV Abdulla vs Income-Tax Officer and Another
161 ITR 589, the Karnataka High Court held that
making the burden of tax on the net income
heavier in proportion to the increase in the ag­
ricultural income cannot be said to be unrea­
sonable. An assessee with agricultural income
occupies a position of economic superiority by
reason of his larger income and to make his tax
liability heavier is not arbitrary, but is only an
attempt to proportion the payment to capacity
to pay and then arrive, in the end, at a more
genuine quality.
8 Singhai Rakesh Kumar vs Union of India [227
ITR81].
9 Jugal Kishore Arora vs Deputy Commissioner of
Income-Tax [269 ITR 133].
10 Invitro International vs Deputy Commissioner of
Income Tax [2ou-TIOL-445-ITAT-Bang].
11 Monsanto India vs Addl Commissioner of Income
Tax [2ou-TIOL-i69-ITAT-Mum], Proagro Seeds
Company Limited vs Joint Commissioner of
Income Tax [2oo3-TIOL-so-ITAT-Del], Pioneer
Overseas Corporation vs Dy Director of Income
Tax [20io-TIOL-54-ITAT-Del].
12 The Commissioner of Income Tax vs M/s Namd-
hari Seeds Pvt Ltd[ Manu/KA/1614/2011].
13 “Punjab Crorepati Politicians Don’t Fill IT Returns”
=Timeshttp://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/
india/Punjab-croreppati-politicians-dont-fill-
it-returns/articleshow/n630574.cms
14 Except in the case of farmhouses.

Appendix crop-specific agricultural income (per unit of

Total Potential Agricultural Income Tax Revenue in India: An Estimate
This exercise is an attempt to estimate the total
potential income tax revenue from agriculture
in India. The estimation is done through a land-
based, crop-specific, agricultural income calcu­
lation for all major crops: foodgrains, pulses,
cereals, oilseeds, fibre crops, horticulture and
floriculture. The estimate is for all India and is
for the year 2007-08.
First the area, production and yield1figures
are obtained for each crop. Since cropping
intensity affects the yield, yield of crops, that
are sown more than once a year, are adjusted
for double cropping (assuming there are no
multi cropping). This is done by obtaining the
“span” for each crop, i e, the time required for a
crop to mature from seed to crop. Then, for
crops with span less than six months, we double
the yield. For annual crops, the yields are kept
unchanged. We call this new set of yields “ad­
justed yield”. The adjusted yield for every crop
is then multiplied with the annual average of
their respective mandi (market) prices.2 This
gives us crop-specific revenue (per unit of area).
Assuming costs are 15% of the total revenue,
area) is calculated by adjusting revenue for
these costs.3 Area at which the activity breaks-
even for tax purposes is calculated for every
crop, based on the following formula:
(Rs 1,50,000/Income per unit of area).
The assumption applied on the above calculation
is that the threshold at which income becomes
taxable is Rs 1,50,000.
The analysis, hereinafter, is divided into two
parts. Crops are divided into two categories:
Crop Group I: (Foodgrains, Pulses, Cereals,
Oilseeds)
Crops in these group yield moderate income
(~ Rs 25,800 per hectare on an average), and

Economic &Political w eekly APRIL 1 4 , 2 0 1 2 VOL XLVII NO 15 59

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breakeven (lower limit of tax bracket) at an
area ~ 6 hectares on an average.
Crop Group II: (H orticulture and Floriculture)
These crops yield very high income ( ~ Rs 2,68,840
per hectare on an average), and breakeven
(lower limit of tax bracket) at two hectares on
an average.
It may be m entioned that tea and coffee and
rubber have been kept out of this exercise,
since they face som e form of taxation even
within the present regime.
For Crop Group I, we then look into the
estimated number of household with opera­
tional landholdings greater than 7.5 hectares in
rural India from the National Sample Survey
report (2002-03) on operational landholding.4
It also provides us with average operational
landholding for every landholding class.
Assuming income per hectare = Rs 2 0,000
(Rs 1,50,000/6) and given, the average opera­
tional area, w e calculate total income of house­
hold, for each operational landholding class,
which is greater than six hectares. Appropriate
rates of taxation are applied to the taxable income
(where income is greater than Rs 1,50,000) to
obtain average tax revenue for each operational
landholding class. These average tax revenues
for each operational landholding class are then
multiplied to the respective estim ated number
of households in that class to obtain total tax
revenue for every operational landholding class.
This is done separately for both kharif and rabi
crops. The sum of the total income from rabi
and kharif crops give us the total potential agri­
cultural income tax revenue from Crop Group 1:
major foodgrains, pulses and oilseeds.
For Crop Group 11, the area at w hich the
cultivators of these crops cross the exem ption
threshold is small. The total income from
these crops is derived by multiplying the area
under cultivation by the incom e per hectare.
Further, it is assumed that all these households
pay tax at 10% rate. This provides the first
approximation of the tax that can potentially
be collected. However, it is not possible to
get information on the size classification of
households cultivating these crops. Therefore,
it has been assum ed that the distribution of
households by size class in these crops is
the sam e as that for cereals and pulses. So as
to exclude the sm all taxpayers even in this
category of crops, the share of land cultivated
by households cultivating over tw o hectares
in the total land cultivated is used to derive
the incom e tax that can justifiably be antici­
pated. Given that the average tax rate is as­
sum ed to be 10%, which is the low est statu­
tory rate, this may be considered a fair esti­
mate, since it does not attribute higher revenue
from higher rates of tax as w ell. For the tax­
able households in the case of cereals, the
1 Total potential agricultural income
tax revenue (in Rs crore) (2+3)
2 Total potential agricultural income
tax revenue from m ajor foodgrains,
cereals, pulses and oilseeds
3 Total potential agricultural income
tax revenue from vegetables, fruits,
spices and flowers
4 Percentage o f total direct tax revenue 2007
5 Percentage ofGDPMp (at constant price) 2007
overall average tax rate works out to 13.3% of
total income.
Limitations
These estim ates need to be read with som e cau­
tion, for the following reasons: (1) The analysis
is based on household income, while the tax
brackets are based on individual income, (2) the
reporting of data relating to span o f some crops
are informal, and (3) agricultural cost is as­
sumed to be 15% of total revenue (yield X
price). Agricultural costs in reality may vary
across crops and regions.
NOTES TO APPENDIX______________________
1 Area, Production and Yield Source: Agricultural
Statistics at a Glance 2 0 1 0 , Department of Agri­
culture and Cooperation, Ministry of Agricul­
ture; CMIE Agriculture, 2 0 1 0 , FAO Statistics
for India 2 0 0 7 .
2 Average mandi prices for 2 0 0 7 are calculated for
every crop, using the commodity wise daily price
data available in Agricultural Marketing Infor­
mation Network, Directorate of Marketing and
Inspection (DMI), and Ministry of Agriculture.
3 The computation of domestic product from
agriculture in the national accounts statistics
gives an overall number of 2 9 % for agriculture
50,395 and livestock put together. After segregating
the inputs for these two sub-sectors of activities
and proportionately allocating any common
12,701 inputs like electricity, the ratio of inputs to value
of output for agriculture works out to 17.5 6 %.
These inputs however include seed. Since seeds
are also a part of the agricultural sector, if
37,694 inputs are corrected for this overstatement, the
costs reduce to 15 % of total output.
15.8
4 NSS Report No 4 9 2 : “Some Aspects of Opera­
1 tional Landholdings in India, 2 0 0 2 -0 3 ”.

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Authors include Deepak Nayyar • Rakesh Mohan • Atul Kohli • Arvind Panagariya • Kunal Sen • Neeraj Hatekar • Jessica Seddon Wallack • Pulapre Balakrishnan
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
Muslim Weavers' Politics in Early 20th Century
Northern India
Locating an Identity
SANTOSH KUMAR RAI
Throughout the early 20th century, lower status weavers
tried to critique the upper caste Ashraf-dominated
Muslim politics in northern India. From sharing an
occupational class identity, the weavers mobilised and
asserted themselves as a caste group, seeking special
recognition as Momins or Ansaris within a broader
Muslim identity. The multiple axes around which their
identities had to be asserted and negotiated lend a
special character to their political articulation. Yet due to
both the complexities of religious dichotomies and local
exigencies, the All India Momin Conference could not
lend effective voice to a counter-hegemonic stance in
Indian Muslim politics. This paper documents the
multiple ways in which the politics of weavers unfolded
in early 20th century United Provinces.
Santosh Kumar Rai (skriooo@gmail.com ) is with the department of
history, SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi.
Economic &Political weekly DEQ Ap r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v ii n o
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he politics of weavers in early 20th century United Pro­
T vinces (up ) unfolded in multiple ways. The Muslim
Julaha weavers who formed almost 90% of the weav­
ers’ workforce were at the centre of this politics. From sharing
an occupational class identity, the Julahas mobilised and
asserted themselves as a caste group, seeking special recogni­
tion as Momins or Ansaris within a broader Muslim religious
identity. The multiple axes around which their identities had
to be asserted and negotiated lend a special character to their
political articulation. Weavers’ politics was not just about for­
mation of organisations and interaction with political parties
like the Indian National Congress or the Muslim League. Their
politics had local meaning shaped by local circumstances.
The continuing interaction of the hereditary pre-industrial
occupation of weaving with evolving capitalist relations also
provided a framework for the weavers’ political stance. Thus
the emerging nationalist political environment, the late colo­
nial state and the rising tide of communal politics in the period
under study provide the backdrop for understanding the emer­
gence of political organisations like the Jamait-ul-Ansar and the
All India Momin Conference. Their politics displayed a quest for
an alternative worldview, seeking to challenge existing social
hierarchies on the one hand and create an autonomous political
space on the other. In this attempt, Islamisation was one of the
most important strategies in staking wider political claims. But
the process of Islamisation itself spawned several contradictory
tendencies which went on to shape weavers’politics.1
Local pressures and competing community identities fur­
ther accelerated this process. The politics of the Julahas
presents an interesting paradox. Here was a community which
was undergoing a process of Islamisation which tended to
sharpen their differences with their communal “other”, i e, the
Hindus. Yet at the same time, their main political formation,
the All India Momin Conference scrupulously avoided identifi­
cation with the Muslim League which emerged in the period
under study as the proponent of Muslim separateness from
the mainstream nationalist politics of the Congress. Instead,
the Momin Conference identified itself with the Congress
based on a shared antipathy to British rule, and common
cause on swaraj and swadeshi ideas of indigenous cloth pro­
duction. What proved crucial for this identification was the
pronounced antipathy of the Julahas as caste group towards
the upper class/caste Muslim elite who were the main political
15 61
SPECIAL ARTICLE
base of the Muslim League. These cross-currents of political
articulation however were deeply contingent on local configu­
rations of power.
The weaving localities of the eastern u p were sites of
nationalist political mobilisation. Yet, the weavers’ political
issues and aspirations were varied and guided more by local
concerns and configurations of power. Under the nationalist
umbrella were grouped a variety of responses from weavers.
After the intense activity during the Non-Cooperation-Khilafat
movement of 1920-22 when a large number of Muslim weavers
were actively involved, from the mid-i92os onwards, police re­
ports began noticing the emergence of more organised politi­
cal formations such as the Jamait-ul-Ansar and the All India
Momin Conference.
Politics o f Muslim Weavers
By the mid-i920S, the formation of an all-India body to organise
Julaha weaver communities became imperative. Local and
regional Ansari associations had already begun to rise in the
second decade of the 20th century. But a resurgence of caste
and sectarian organisations at an all-India level, aimed at
upward mobilisation of their respective communities, would
have certainly influenced this community as well. Immediately
before the formation of a national level body, several local Ja-
maits were active in u p and Bihar to work for the unity and bet­
terment of the Ansari community. The nature of their demands
as well as the work of these organisations focused on assertion
of a distinct political and social identity for the Julaha weavers.
Migrant Julaha weavers from u p in Bengal initiated
attempts to organise the community. In 1912, Maulana Hafiz
Obedullah Ghazipuri and some others established the social
welfare organisation Anjuman-i-Islah-Bilfalha (Organisation
for Reform for Success) in Calcutta. Migrant Julaha workers
working in the mills of Calcutta were the initial members of
this organisation. It was the forerunner to the local Momin
Conference held at Kakinada in 1915, chaired by Hakim Abdul
Gani Ghazipuri; other participants were Maulana Abu Shoeb
Saif “Banarsi”, Maulana Abu Shoeb “Khurjawi” and Maulana
Maathe Yaihyya “Sahsrami” 2
Attempts to organise the community as a socio-political
movement began at Calcutta in 1914 with the formation of
Falah-ul-Mominin, followed by another association called the
Calcutta Jamait-ul-Mominin in December 1923. This organisa­
tion was the precursor to the All India Jamait-ul-Mominin or
the All India Momin Conference established on 25-26 Decem­
ber 1926 under the leadership of Hajiram Mohammad Farkhund
Ali of Sasaram. The initial objectives of this organisation were
to revive the traditional crafts of the weavers, to promote self-
respect, devout religious conduct and economic independence.
Reconsolidation and unity of the community had to be
achieved for these objectives.3
This organisation worked as an effective body for the Julahas’
social upliftment and political expression and as a trade union,
drawing support from provinces where the Julaha population
was significant, namely, Punjab, u p , Bihar and Bengal. The
first session of the All India Momin Conference took place at
62
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Halliday Park, Calcutta on 7-9 April 1928 and was presided
over by Abdul Majid from Benaras. About 200 delegates, 300
“local Musalmaans” and 100 volunteers attended the session.
Deliberations began with a focus on the history of the rise and
fall of the Momin community. Mohammad Sulaiman, the
chairman of the reception committee, blamed the English-
educated class for their downfall and advised the audiences to
stick to their own profession, weaving. The president advo­
cated a system of national education by opening Madrasas.
The conference passed the following resolutions:4
(1) It appealed to the community to use cloth manufactured
by their own men, especially on festive occasions, marriage
ceremonies, etc.
(2) It advised their sardars and ulemas to induce Momins to
give up extravagant marriage and other social expenditures.
(3) A special area be selected to organise their community
and to enforce improvements. To start with Allahabad was
selected as such a place.
It is evident that at its inception, the All India Momin Con­
ference scrupulously avoided an explicit political orientation
and instead promoted introspection within the community.
Traditional community bonds were emphasised and no
demands were made of the government as such.5
In fact, immediately before the formation of this national-
level body, several local Jamait resolutions indicate a recog­
nition that a distinct identity, even one bearing a shell of
“conservatism” had to be formed. The claim for an “as­
sumed” higher social status had to be clearly established.
Syed Mahmud and Abdul Bari of Azamgarh were both asso­
ciated with the Muslim Nationalist Party formed in July 1929
to garner support for the Congress in general and the Nehru
report in particular. Though this party served as a platform for
nationalist groups like the Jamait-ul-Ulema, All India Momin
Conference, Ahrars and Khudai Khidmadgars, it could not ex­
tend its base outside Congress circles.6
By 1931, the Momin Conference started making claims for
getting Julahas enumerated as Momin during the ongoing
census. The mobilisation of the community by the All India
Momin Conference or the Jamait-ul-Ansar points to the local and
broader politics of the weavers’ community. In the rural areas
as well as semi-urban qasbas like Mubarakpur and Maunath
Bhanjan, the Momin Conference wielded less influence
because here the community was already organised around
traditional panchayats having their own hierarchies.7 But in
urban centres where Julahas pursued other occupations and
the caste identity overlapped with a strong occupational identity,
the new organisation could become a rallying point.
The provincial organisations also fought against discrimina­
tion on the basis of class and caste. Significantly, they asked for
equal status along with other communities on the basis of their
numerical strength. In 1933, the provincial Jamait-ul-Ansar
of u p resented the non-inclusion of its representatives in the
provincial Haj Committee, arguing that out of the 7.7 crore
Muslim population in India, Momin Ansars were three to four
crores, or nearly half. The districts of Gorakhpur, Basti, Azamgarh,
Mirzapur, Benaras, Bareilly, Muradabad, Meerut and Saharanpur
Ap r il 14, 2012 vol x l v ii no 15 QB59 Economic &Political weeklv

were predominantly inhabited by these craftsmen. Moreover,
their representation specifically mentioned that, “in charitable
endowments and devotion to the sacred religious ordain they
are second to none of the other Muslim communities”.8
Thus the social demands of the community were accompanied
with claims to superior religious observance. Representation
in the provincial Haj Committee was demanded on this basis.
The government however did not give heed to this demand
for representation in spite of claims that the community
numerically, “outnumbered] any other Muslim community in
these provinces also”.9 It seems that the government suspected
the loyalty of the Momin Conference.
At the same time, organisations with pro-government lean­
ings were given representation. One such organisation, the
Jamait-ul-Quraish which claimed to represent 60 lakh Qurashis
nationally helped the government “at the time of the opposition
against the Congress and that of the Khilafat”, and “repeatedly
defeated the Unity Conferences”.10 It was given due represen­
tation in the Haj Committee in recognition of its services.
Meanwhile the provincial Jamait-ul-Ansar in spite of repeated
representations over the years claiming that the “Ansars
command a greater bulk of the population and a representative
on their behalf in the above Committee is deemed most
essential”, was paid no attention. Rather the government
opined that “it would not be advisable to encourage organisa­
tions like the Jamait-ul-Ansar to seek representation on the
Haj Committee by government nomination.”11
Weaver Id en tity
Drawing on weavers’ industrial identity, in the 1920s and early
1930s, Maulana Azad Subhani, an alim of Kanpur, adopted the
symbol of garha or handwoven coarse cloth produced mainly
by Muslim artisans, in an attempt to form political organisa­
tions of Muslim working class groups throughout u p and to
mobilise them for pan-Islamic and nationalist movements.
Maulana Subhani spearheaded a campaign to boost the mar­
ket for garha and to revive its production. He saw the garha
movement as a means of regenerating the depressed economic
conditions of Muslim weavers and contending with what he
argued were their extreme poverty and the destruction of
their independent artisanal status. Subhani also made British
rule squarely responsible for the decline of Muslim weavers,
and urged all weavers to fight against imperialism.12 The
Momin Conference also picked up the cause of indigenously
produced garha. This emphasis on importance of indigenous
handwoven cloth brought the Momin Conference close to
the Congress.13
Nowhere was the perception of the handicrafts sector as
clear and forthright as in the politics of Mohandas Gandhi.
Gandhi demanded that Indians wear only handwoven cloth to
affirm their commitment to Indian weavers. By wearing hand-
spun cotton khadi, Indians could resist British imports of
cheap machine-made cloth. Even then, the nationalists urging
to use the swadeshi yarn itself did not have substantial influ­
ence over the work of weavers. Moreover, the Gandhian appeal
was more in favour of spinning, affordable for everyone
Economic & Political weekly B3Q A p r il 14, 2012 vo l x lv ii
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
instead of specialised hand-weaving. Even by the mid-i92os,
Gandhi argued that:14
Even as I write, I have letters from coworkers saying that in their cen­
tres they have to send away weavers for want of yarn. It is little known
that a vast number of weavers o f m ill yarn are in the hands of sowcars,
and they must be, so long as they rely upon the mill product..... .The
second great difficulty is the absence of a ready market for khaddar. I
confess that it cannot for the time being compete with m ill-cloth...
Over twelve lacs worth of khaddar was sold only last year.
Gandhi expected to use khadi to unite the various religious
communities as well. He had no objection to khaddar being used
in different style of dressing among different communities.15
During the Civil Disobedience Movement, Mahatma Gandhi
visited Azamgarh on 3 October 1929 and spoke on the uplift
of Harijans, prohibition and the use of swadeshi. Next day he
inaugurated the Khadi Vidyalya in Azmatgarh.16 But some
Hindus, far from using the khadi as a symbol of unity with
Muslims actually refused to wear the cloth because the khadi
available in the region was produced by Muslim weavers.17
Rather the Gandhian call of boycott of English yarn made the
life of Julaha weavers more miserable as the khadi yarn was
neither well-suited nor easily available for their looms. At this
juncture, the Congress policy of promoting swadeshi was
going against the weavers’ interest. Now instead of compara­
tively cheaper mill-spun yarn, they were under the nationalist
pressure, been both moral and circumstantial, to opt for
expensive hand-spun varieties. In Benaras, it was reported
that some merchant dealers refused to buy cloth from weavers
if it was spun from non-khadi yarn.18The limited success of the
programme of domestic manufacture of yarn by spinning
wheels is evident from the fact that even in 1940, only 14% of
yarn used by handloom weavers was hand-spun, compared to
7% imported, and 79% Indian mill yarn.19
Politics of Communal Space
In the post-war circumstances, nationalist politics claimed
mass support, linking many a backward communities with
nationalist issues. It has been argued on the other hand
that communalism worked as an independent force, sharply
conscious of its own interests, very keen on preserving itself
and not allied to the Congress or the British. The promulgation
of the Government of India Act of 1935 not only reinforced
separate electorates on the basis of religion but also led to a
dramatic change in the nature of communalism in the Indian
subcontinent. This is the story of how the different political
forces in u p - the Congress, the Muslim League, the landlords
and the Hindu Mahasabha - responded to the new political
context, and how they strove to establish control over the
available political space.20
In this context, the political allegiance of groups and
communities should not be analysed in terms of monolithic
Hindu and Muslim identities. The politics of the times had
to negotiate the complex socio-economic realities of the
Gangetic plains. The case of Muslim Julaha weavers repre­
sented by Jamait-ul-Ansar and All India Momin Conference
clearly indicates the diverse forces at work alongside the
no 15 63
SPECIAL ARTICLE
consequent polarisation of the so-called monolithic blocks.
The Muslim political space in u p was not solely occupied by
the Muslim League. Certainly communal politics, ideologies
and strategies played a vital role in political processes. But
again the conflict between upper-caste landlord Muslims
and the low-caste poor Muslims clearly shaped outcomes of
the political process. Thus in spite of changes in the size of
political space for different contestants, the victory was
earned by already well-off socio-economic groups.
At the end of 1936 in Allahabad, the All India Momin
Conference declared its lack of confidence in the u p Muslim
League.21 It is worth noting that Gandhi never emphasised the
divisions within Indian Islam. Enrolling Muslims for the pur­
pose of bringing them into Congress was never Gandhi’s goal
though “the Congress has been serving thousands of Muslim
sisters and brothers through All India Spinners Association
organising carding, spinning and weaving among them”.22
After the introduction of the Government of India Act
of 1935, provincial elections took place in 1937. Communal
politics reached its zenith. As a representative of the down­
trodden Muslim communities, the role of the All India Momin
Conference became very important to political discourse. The
community’s marginalisation in the social hierarchy of Islam
in India was one of the major factors deciding the course of
its actions. The All India Muslim League was seen as the repre­
sentative body for high-class Muslims. The All India Momin
Conference had to maintain a distance from it to protect its
own identity. Under these circumstances, the Congress was
seen as a political alternative with which the Momin Confer­
ence could align.
Jawaharlal Nehru observed that, “in u p and Bihar the
Momins (chiefly the weaving class) and the Muslim peasantry
were far more for Congress because they considered the
League an upper class organisation of feudal landlords”.23
Jawaharlal Nehru had assured Bihar Jamait-ul-Mominin on
the eve of the 1937 elections that “we are fully aware of the
importance of the Momin community and we shall gladly do
everything in our power to help it.” Thus immediately after the
elections, the working committee of the Bihar Jamait-ul-
Mominin demanded Momin representation in the Bihar Con­
gress cabinet, particularly the portfolio of textile and other
cottage industries. Meanwhile, the Muslim League also criti­
cised the Congress for attempting to split the Muslim community
through mass literacy and the Muslim mass contact campaign.
The grant of Rs 10,000 for the upliftment of the Momins was
also resented. The Muslim League asked the Momin members
of the Bihar Legislative Assembly to resign if they were not
prepared to join the Muslim League. The Momin organisations
retaliated by disassociating themselves from the Muslim
League and showing an inclination to form a separate party
with Congress affiliation.
The Muslim mass contact campaign started by the Congress
Party after the 1937 elections saw the Ansari community mobi­
lise in favour of the Congress in parts of u p and Bihar. In u p ,
the Ansaris of Ghazipur, Mirzapur and other adjoining areas
were weaned away from the Muslim League in very large
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numbers under the vital and favourable influence of the
Momin Conference.24
By this time, the Indian political scenario was polarised into
Congress and anti-Congress political forces (including the
Muslim League). The Muslim League had started claiming the
status of “sole spokesman” of Indian Muslims. The Congress
refuted this assertion by claiming the neutrality or support of
various Muslim groups and organisations. Replying to
Muhammad Ali Jinnah’s assertion about “the Muslim League
as the authoritative and representative organisation of the
Mussalmans of India”, Jawaharlal Nehru talked about Muslim
organisations like, “the Jamait-ul-Ulema, the All India Shia
Conference, the Majlis-i-Ahrar, the All India Momin Confer­
ence, etc”, which shared the same political platform as the
Congress. Another Congress leader, Rajendra Prasad argued
that “the Momins who constitute a very large proportion, if not
a majority of the Muslims, who are organised in a separate
Jamait of their own and... have openly and repeatedly repudi­
ated the Muslim League claims.”25
As Paul Brass observed:26
the Muslim League dominated by elite Muslim leaders, had no appeal
to the momins whereas the Congress, w ith its Gandhian symbol o f the
spinning w heels w ith its pledges of support to the indigenous handi­
crafts appealed to the economic interest of the Muslim handloom
weavers.
But more than the Gandhian programmes, the Congress
promise, at least at face value, of engaging all classes by elimi­
nating elite dominance proved more attractive for the Momins
as well. In fact, the internalisation of discrimination genera­
tion after generation and attribution of inferior status would
have been more decisive than proximity to the Gandhian pro­
gramme in deciding the community’s political affiliation.
Provincial Politics
After the formation of the provincial government in 1937, an
era of mutual distrust and competition commenced between
two major political parties, i e, the Indian National Congress
and the Muslim League. During the two years of Congress raj
after the election of 1937, Congress Muslims as well as the
Momin Conference were closely monitored and stigmatised by
the Muslim League for supporting the Hindu raj of the Con­
gress and failing to give priority to the mazhab. Meanwhile,
the Congress arranged for a Syed Nasim Gorganvi to control
Momin affairs.
Abul Qayum Ansari, the leader of the All India Momin Con­
ference was charged with watching in silence when Momins
were being killed, injured and beaten during the riots at Tanda,
Bhagalpur, Amongaon, Jamui, Majhaul and Tiokri, because he
feared his Congress masters.27 In these circumstances, the All
India Momin Conference decided to remain a representative of
downtrodden Ajlaf and maintained equal distance from both
the parties. Addressing a meeting of about 400 members of
Jamait-ul-Momin in Kanpur, Mohammad Said Momin advised
them to remain aloof from politics, but “if they must join a
party, they throw in their lot with Congress”.28 Another meet­
ing of Jamait-ul-Ansar at Allahabad advised members not to
Ap r il 1 4 , 2 0 1 2 vo l x l v ii n o 15 Q2S9 Economic & Political weekly

depend upon the British, Muslims or Hindus. “They should join
neither the Congress nor the Muslim League but become mem­
ber of the Momin Conference”.29
In places like Kanpur, relations between the Muslim League
and the Momin Conference were becoming worse. In a
4 September meeting of Jamait-ul-Mominin, the Muslim
League was severely criticised. The very next day, a clash oc­
curred between some Momins and “Muslims”, resulting in the
death of one Momin, three days later. It was alleged that the
Mohammedan gundas of the Muslim League were responsible
for that.30
Subsequently, a meeting of about 3,000 Momins was held in
Kanpur. They were advised not to be excited by the recent clash
between Momins and others but to remain calm; the death of
the Momin volunteer as the result of the clash was to be taken
as a signal of success “which is always followed by sacrifices”.31
Again an annual meeting of the All India Jamait-ul-Mominin on
22-23 October was held in Kanpur and attended by about 1,500
people. Here the Muslim League was criticised for its attempt to
absorb Momins into the party.32
In a way the caste and class bonds were antagonistically
ranged against religious identity.
By this time, the weavers and artisans hardly had the right
to vote. Even so, the Muslim League did not neglect this com­
munity. At a meeting in village Kopaganj, Azamgarh, a refer­
ence was made to an article in the Aftab newspaper which
alleged that cow-slaughter should be stopped at the point of
the sword. A committee of 12 Hindus and 18 Muslims has been
formed in village Mubarakpur of the same district to enquire
into the truth of the rumour that the Hindus were preparing to
resist cow slaughter.33
A Muslim League speaker in a meeting in Benaras in Sep­
tember 1938 informed the audience that due to the khadi and
charkha movement, 45 million Muslim weavers had been
thrown out of work.34 At Shahjahanpur, a meeting of 1,000
Muslims was organised by the Ansaris to protest against the
handwritten posters which fondly abused them. In Gorakhpur,
two meetings of the Julaha community were held. The sudden
awakening of the Julahas caused some anxiety in the minds of
Muslim leaders who realised that they could not afford to lose
the help of this very strong community. In Gorakhpur, there
were two meetings of the Julaha community.35
Abdul Razzaq, president of the u p Ansar Jamait and other
influential supporters were organising the provincial Jamait
conference in Gorakhpur. Several enthusiastic meetings were
held with capacities of 200-400.36 Pilibhit, Aligarh, Meerut
and Bareilly also saw Jamait-ul-Ansar meetings. Daily parades
were organised by Jamait-ul-Ansar volunteers in Aligarh city.37
In Mau, Azamgarh, M Mirdad Shah and Abdul Latif lectured
in a meeting of a thousand about a book named Hundred Lives.
Their main objection was the inclusion of Prophet Muhammad
along with other lives, including Mahatma Gandhi. Proscrip­
tion of the book was demanded.38 About 500 Julahas attended
a Momin meeting, the proceedings were entirely social.39 The
month of September saw celebratory processions on the anni­
versary of Jamait-ul-Ansar in several districts. In Sitapur, 250
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
members of a procession were armed with spears. In Aligarh,
Jamait-ul-Ansar strongly objected at the Aligarh district au­
thorities’ insistence on applications for arms licence to carry
out such processions.40 In Allahabad, about 100 Jamait-ul-Ansar
volunteers performed squad drill and rifle exercises with lathis.
Leaders of the Jamait-ul-Ansar, particularly Hakim Bashir Ahmad,
Ali Hasam Azim and Abdul Qasim mobilised the Ansars at
Muradabad.41 The political mobilisation expressed itself in
local terms alone.
The League versus the Momins
The political preferences of the Momin Conference were very
much a result of its caste and class sensibilities. In 1939, the All
India Momin Conference in its representation to the Viceroy
pointed out the community’s own assessment of its status
within Muslim society. The petition claimed that the Momins
or Ansars were a distinct and separate group or class by them­
selves. The petition lamented that the community had fallen
into contempt of certain high-placed sections of the Muslims in
India though Islam, the religion of equality, does not believe in
the caste system and nobility of birth. It was further alleged
that being influenced by the “Brahamanic idea of supremacy
and domination”, upper-class Muslims, for all practical pur­
poses, divided Indian Muslims into several castes and sections.
Followers of Islam in India were divided into two groups, viz,
the Shareef (superior or high) and Razeel (inferior or low). All
the Muslim occupational classes were placed in the second
group. In spite of being in the majority, Momins remained in a
minority in the Census record because:42
in order to escape the agonising humiliation and degradation o f being
counted and classified among the inferior and low castes, a vast
number of the Momins and others got them selves recorded in the cen­
sus paper as “Shaikh”, that is, the fourth or the last class of the Superior
Group-Muslims, and, in a few cases, even as “Syed” or “Pathan”
In fact, this petition encapsulates the mass sentiment of suf­
fering from caste/class polarisation. With their high position,
education and wealth, upper-class Muslims placed the down­
trodden groups in a disadvantageous position, monopolising
all privilege and forcing the Muslim occupational classes
towards landlessness and begar. Inferiority was further enfor­
ced through literature, fatwas and ban over marital relations
with the lower groups.
The representation to the Viceroy identified the All India
Muslim League as a party of rich sections or superior groups,
antagonistic to the interests of the inferior groups of Muslims
in India. The Ansars had neither faith nor confidence in the
Muslim League. As a separate political entity, the Momin Con­
ference started a campaign and presented demands popularly
known as nukat-e-Momin or “the six points of the Momin”,
seeking representation in central, provincial and local govern­
ment and assemblies, reservations in government jobs and
education and state protection to the handloom textile industry.
But the Government of India did not consider these demands.
The case was closed without any reply as the government “did
not want to recognise sub-sections of a community for the
purposes of communal representation”.43
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The identification of the Momins as Congress sympathisers
and their low-caste status certainly put them apart from the
general discourse of Muslim League politics. At the same time,
the intelligence categorisation of the Momin-Congress rela­
tionship as purely economic explains the official desire to
impose a religious identity on the Momins as being part of the
larger Muslim community favouring the demand for Pakistan.
The Congress could never engage with the Momin Conference
beyond a point to use it as a bargaining pawn against the Muslim
League. It could not exploit the class and caste barriers bet­
ween the Ashraf and Ajlaf Muslims. It followed its practice of
avoiding highlighting divisions in Indian society at large, since
this was essential for it to claim of uniting under an all-India
umbrella for the Indian masses.
The All India Momin Conference felt that Jawaharlal Nehru
was afraid that if the low caste claims and reservation
demands of the Momin Conference were accepted, several
castes among the Hindus would start demanding the same
status, and that would be impossible to fulfil.44
The Congress fight against communal representation and
Gandhian politics in the Poona Pact vis-a-vis Hindu dalits in
1932 certainly strengthen this claim. In a way, to avoid the
divisions within its larger constituency, the Congress could not
challenge or exploit the elite-controlled constituency of the
Muslim League as well. The nature of the Congress’s own
hegemonic politics forced it to compromise with the Muslim
League’s hegemonic claims over the Muslim constituency,
without seeking to take advantage of the dissenting voices of
the backward Muslims represented by the Momin Conference,
etc. The failure of the All India Muslim Mass Contact Pro­
gramme points to the lame-duck attitude of the Congress
towards the Muslim constituency. This may also perhaps
explain the failure of the Congress and Mahatma Gandhi to
effectively take up the issue of weavers in a direct way. Most of
the Indian weavers, particularly in the Gangetic plains, were
Muslims and that may be why the Congress khadi or khaddar
politics gave preference to the spinners over the weavers. One
does not find any parallel to the All India Spinners Association
of the Congress among weavers’ organisations.
M obilisation in Contrast
The Momins recognised this dilemma and responded by mobi­
lising themselves. During 26-29 December 1939, a joint session
of the All India Momin Conference and the Provincial Ansar
Conference was held in Gorakhpur. The All India session was
presided over by Maulvi Sheikh Mohamed Zahiruddin of Ambala
and the provincial session was chaired by Maulvi Mohammad
Mustafa of Ghazipur. On 26 December, a procession of 20,000
people through Gorakhpur city concluded with an Ansar flag­
hoisting ceremony. The necessity for solidarity among the
ranks of the Momins was stressed, independent both of the
Congress and the Muslim League. Among other resolutions,
the need for the organisation and promotion of hand-weaving
and spinning industry was emphasised. An Ansar swadeshi
exhibition was also held. The conference was attended by dele­
gates from u p , Punjab, Bihar, Central Provinces and Bengal.45
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The 25-26 February 1940 annual meeting of the All India
Momin Conference was held in Kanpur in the presence of
about 1,000 people. Throughout this period, the Momin Con­
ference tried to contrast itself to the Muslim League. Immedi­
ately after the Lahore resolution of the Muslim League in
March 1940, the All India Azad Muslim Conference (an organi­
sation of nationalist Muslim parties under the leadership of
Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind), in its session at Delhi in April 1940,
unanimously carried the official resolution declaring “Inde­
pendence - Goal of Indian Muslims”, in opposition to the
Muslim League’s demand for a separate Muslim state. The All
India Azad Muslim Conference repudiated the charge that
Muslims were opposed to India’s freedom. Zahiruddin, presi­
dent of the All India Momin Conference, attended this session
and supported the resolution.46
In the larger politics of the Congress-Muslim League, the All
India Momin Conference always tried to intervene as a repre­
sentative of downtrodden Momins. For the Momin Confer­
ence, the Muslim League remained the party of high-caste
elite Muslims. In a telegram dated 9 October 1939 to Rajendra
Prasad, Abdul Qayoom Ansari, Vice-President of the All india
Momin Conference, stated:47
Momin Conference warns against the news published in the new s­
papers about the League-Congress agreement. The Momins never
recognised League and no pact would be acceptable (to the) Momins
unless their advice is taken in this regard, ignoring four and half crore
Momins in any type of communal or other agreements will be fruitless.
In November 1939, the Viceroy invited Mahatma Gandhi
and other Congress leaders for Constitutional talks. Abdul
Qayoom Ansari again sent a telegram to Mahatma Gandhi and
Rajendra Prasad:48
Momin Conference formed from four and half crore of Momins do not
recognise Muslim League as their representative. Any agreem ent
betw een Congress and League ignoring benefits o f Momins w ill not be
acceptable to Momin Conference. Please keep this in m ind when
m eeting Mr Jinnah.
By the beginning of the 1940s, the All India Momin Confer­
ence was showing tendencies towards mobilising on the lines
of other groups like Khaksars or Ahrars. It was reported that
Zahiruddin, president of the All India Momin Conference, on
his way from Delhi to Kanpur was welcomed at Aligarh rail­
way station by about 60 Jamait-ul-Ansar volunteers armed
with lathis. In the February annual meeting of the All India
Momin Conference in Kanpur, the main concerns were the
reform of the Momin community and the acceptance by the
Government of India of the demands presented to the Viceroy
by the Momin community in August 1939.49
Mohammad Ansari of Bihar addressed three Jamait-ul-Ansar
meetings in Bareilly. The average attendance was about 200
people. He urged unity among the Ansar community and com­
plained that they were treated like untouchables by the wealthy
Muslims. Interestingly, these meetings were packed with local
Muslim League supporters who warned the speakers in advance
that no criticism of the Muslim League would be tolerated.50
Two Jamait-ul-Ansar meetings attended by 500-600 per­
sons respectively were held in Fatehpur. Speakers including
A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 EQ53 Economic & Political w eek ly

Asim of Bihar, president of the All India Jamait-ul-Ansar and
Bashir Ahmad Jehangirabadi, editor of the Momin Gazette,
urged their audiences to unite and work for the upliftment of
their community.51
A Momin Conference meeting was held in Nazibabad from
27-30 September 1940, presided over by Nizamuddin of Alla­
habad. Attendance at the conference averaged between 500
and 700. Speeches stressed unity and organisation in the com­
munity and urged that they be granted greater representation
in the council and assemblies throughout the country.52
At a propaganda meeting of Jamait-ul-Ansar held in Bareilly,
exception was taken to the use of the term “Julaha” for mem­
bers of the community; they were advised to have themselves
entered under the term Ansari in the coming census. A resolu­
tion was passed requesting early acceptance by the Govern­
ment of India of the Jamait’s demands for representation in
the Viceroy’s Council and Advisory Committee, the formation
of an Ansar regiment and full representation of the commu­
nity in the newly-formed military industrial centres.53
In Allahabad, Maulana Abdul Kalam Azad held meeting
with Maulana Habib-ur-Rahman, president of the All India
Majlis-i-Ahrar, and Maulana Husain Ahmad Madni, the All
India Jamait-ul-Ulema leader. Under strict secrecy, it was
decided that both the Majlis-i-Ahrar and the Jamait-ul-Ulema
would cooperate fully with the Congress in its ongoing Satya-
graha campaign. For this purpose, lists of individual satyagrahis
were to be prepared by the respective organisations in the
various provinces.54
In Agra, at the third annual All India Jamait-ul-Ansar con­
ference held between 12 and 14 April, where the attendance
averaged 400-500 persons, concerns about the upliftment of
the community.55
Intelligence reports about the political situation in neigh­
bouring Bihar explained the Momins’ passive attitude to­
wards the ideal of Pakistan and their support of the Con­
gress as purely economic: “a Momin’s livelihood depends
very largely on the khaddar he produces for the Congress
and even so there are signs that religious consideration are
beginning to effect his outlook.” But the same report also
acknowledged that persistent Pakistan propaganda had
created among the Muslims an attitude of defiance against
the state, in turn helping the Congress. This report had
identified the Momins as carders, weavers and other low
caste Muslims.56
Politics o f Numbers
The numerical strength of the various communities remained
a major concern of the colonial government in deciding its
political approach. The numerical strength of Muslim Julaha
Momins also remained a major issue in the last one decade of
the colonial regime. In 1931, the Hindu Mahasabha had fer­
vently campaigned for the harijans to be counted as Hindus
and not as a separate caste in the census. Their argument was
that the British were playing a divisive game and separate
counting would divide and weaken the Hindu community and
that. Ten years later, the Muslim League followed the Hindu
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
Mahasabha in both letter and spirit. On the eve of the 1941
Census, the provincial secretary of the Bihar Muslim League,
Syed Badruddin Ahmad - an Ashraf as the name makes clear
- issued an appeal to Muslims to mention their religion but not
their caste. He saw inclusion of the caste category in the census
as divisive and hence against the “community”. Taj Muhammad,
a district leader of the low-caste Muslim movement called
Jamait-ul Mominin, forcefully countered the Muslim League’s
appeal. In open opposition to the Muslim League’s position, he
appealed to the colonial, “ethnographic state” that Momins
must necessarily be counted and registered as a separate caste.
In a letter published in The Searchlight on 10 September 1941,
Taj Muhammad pleaded his case:57
Frightened w ith the numerical strength of the Momins, the veterans
of the Muslim League, w ho have always looked down upon Momin as a
class, have left no stone unturned to enlist them not as Momin but merely
as M uslim s...In this context, the exploited and the deprived Momins
make a humble request to the government that to m aintain their
representative character, which others want to annihilate, it directs
the census department to register the Momins as a separate caste.
The All India Momin Conference also countered political
manoeuvring about its status by challenging the statements of
Secretary of State for India Leopold Amery who had dismissed
the claims of the Momin community as unworthy and exag­
gerated on the basis of census report of 1931. In fact the British
House of Commons saw major debates over the issue. Two
members of the House R W Sorensen (of the Labour Party) and
Silverman raised the All India Momin Conference claim in
Delhi of representing 45 million Muslims. The issue was dealt
in the following manner:58
Outside the ranks of the enfranchised are large numbers o f Momins
and other poor Moslems who may stand aloof from the Moslem
League. The Momins (weavers and the like) have proclaimed their dis­
sent, as I w ell know by the many cables that have reached me. During
the war one of these stated that on behalf o f 4 5 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 Moslem Mo­
mins they repudiated Mr Jinnah. Mr Amery, then Secretary of State
for India replied, w hen I drew his attention to this, that the cable must
have meant “four to five m illion” and the House laughed at m y appar­
ent discomfiture. A w eek later I had a further cable stating it was
“4 5 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 ”. Whereupon Mr Amery still insisted that w as false but
that they might number six or seven m illion ...
In his reply, Amery questioned the population strength and
political influence of the Momins. The controversy which fol­
lowed his replies to the parliamentary gathered momentum.
The working committee of the All India Momin Conference
passed a resolution indicating the inconsistencies and limita­
tions of the census report of 1931, which had failed to cover
Momins other than those engaged in weaving. Many Ansari
Momins, it argued, had concealed their Momin identity to
avoid the social stigma attached to this identity. The census
had neglected Momins residing in Assam, Madras, Central
Provinces, Berar, Hyderabad, Mysore and Travancore. The All
India Momin Conference asserted that:59
the population of the Momin community is under no circumstances
less than forty-five m illions and it comprises not only weavers and
agricultural labourers, as stated by Mr Amery, but, like other commu­
nities of India, also of lawyers, legislators, Government servants,
business men, cultivators, artisans and factory workers.
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SPECIAL ARTICLE

Due to various causes, a large number of weavers had left
their hereditary calling. The social stigma and economic
degradation attached to the caste of Julaha and work of weav­
ing had forced many to leave the occupation. When the hand­
weaving industry in India came under severe competition
from machine-made imports, the position and prospects of the
industry were affected, and as a result, large numbers of weav­
ers belonging to the weaving castes took up other professions
generally connected with trade or agriculture.
On the other hand, weavers who prospered by dealing in cloth
gradually became businessmen and remained only nominal mem­
bers of the weaving castes. They, along with a few others, got into
the liberal professions by utilising educational facilities and had
taken their place among the urban middle classes. Those who
changed over to menial jobs still took pride in calling themselves
by the old class names, but those who prospered in the business
or the liberal professions soon gave up their caste contacts.
These changes were noted in the periodical censuses. It was
believed that considerable numbers of the chief weaving caste
had given up weaving by 1921.60 This controversy about the
category of the Momins in the census shows deliberate colo­
nial confusion that whether the Momins should be identified
as a caste or occupational category. The constant requirement
to demarcate the identities of the community by identifying
“self and other” forced the Momin Conference and other simi­
lar organisations to reclaim new or lost boundaries.
On 9 February 1943, a private meeting of the working com­
mittee of the All India Momin Conference was held in Alla­
habad. Zahuruddin of Lahore was re-elected as president for
the coming year. It was also decided that an annual general
meeting would be held at Delhi during Easter, “at the same
time as the annual session of the Muslim League”.61
The Idea of Swaraj
The eighth session of the All India Momin Conference held in
New Delhi in April 1943 continued to assert its separate identity
by condemning the demand of Pakistan on “behalf” of four
and a half crore Momins. Unlike the Congress, which could
not forbid its members from holding simultaneous member­
ship of other political organisations like the Hindu Maha-
sabha, the Momin Conference took a stand disallowing even
its primary members from becoming members of any other
political organisation. Anticipating the post-Independence
struggle of the downtrodden, Momin Conference President
Sheikh Mohamed Zahiruddin believed that the “amelioration
of millions of Momins in India, who are in the same position in
the Muslim community as the Depressed Classes are among
Hindus, is only possible under swaraj.”
The main resolution of this session called for the complete
independence of India; swaraj was seen as the only alterna­
tive. By this time, the Momin Conference had some 500 com­
mittees in the districts and villages of India, mostly in u p and
Bihar, where the bulk of the community was concentrated.
The president of the conference Zahiruddin expressed keen
disappointment about the absence of a Momin representative
on the Fact-finding Committee of 1942 with regard to the
handloom industry, although as weavers their interest in the
committee’s work was obviously intimate. At the same time,
the central committee of the Momin Conference supported the
war effort and resolved to wait in a deputation to the commerce
member and the Viceroy, to discuss how best the resources of
the Momin Ansari community could be harnessed to the war
effort. The committee deplored the indifference of the central
government towards utilising the resources of the Momin
Conference in manpower, skilled and unskilled labour.62
Even by 1943, the Conference did not believe that the Muslim
League either had mass appeal or that it cared very much for the
common people or that it had sympathy for any programme
for upliftment of the underdog. Zahiruddin, president of the
All India Momin Conference, left the League on the basis of
this belief. When he was urged to bring about a rapprochement
between the Muslim League and the Momin Conference, he

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68 A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 Q 3 S3 Economic & Political w eek ly

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 SPECIAL ARTICLE

wrote to Jinnah to ask whether the League had any intention the Muslim League in all the constituencies and to collect
of changing its attitude towards the masses. He did not receive Rs 2 lakh for election work.66
any reply. At the same time, the organisation tried to avoid The u p Momin Conference held in Muradabad on 4 October
being seen as a political bulwark against the Muslim League. It 1945 was attended by 15,000 people and adopted resolutions
decided to sever all connections with the Congress as well as promising help to nationalist Muslims, expressing abhorrence
the Muslim League to refute the charge that Momins were for the rowdyism of League members, and showing sympathy
working with the Congress to divide the Muslim community,63 for the Indonesian patriots, the Palestine Arabs and the Indian
though it shared the Congress ideal of complete independence National Army ( i n a ) soldiers.67
for India. The president of the All India Momin Conference asked the
In fact, by this time, Muslim League had started countering Ansars to vote for nationalist Muslims and the working com­
the separate agenda and status of the Momin Conference by mittee of the All India Momin Conference on 27 December
going to the extent of spreading rumours about cancellation of 1945 met in Aligarh to deliberate upon the nomination of the
Momin Conference sessions. A meeting of the working com­ Momin candidates for the provincial assembly.68
mittee of the All India Jamait-ul-Ansar was held in Kanpur on In the beginning of 1946, election propaganda was in full
20-21 June 1943 under the presidentship of Zahiruddin. The flow. Support for the nationalist Muslims was canvassed at
meeting deplored the response of Muhammad Ali Jinnah to the the district Momin Conference meeting held at Ghazipur on
letter written to him by Gandhi and regarded his attitude as a 19 January. The Provincial Momin Ansar Conference also
challenge to the spirit and tradition of Islamic chivalry. It stated issued a circular exhorting Momins to vote for nationalist
that he had prejudiced the country's effort for early settlement Muslim candidates.69
of her problems. The meeting passed the following resolutions:
(1) With a view to accelerating the war effort and to ensuring Legacy
complete and willing cooperation of the country, the govern­ At this juncture, the leadership of the Momin Conference
ment should release all the political prisoners and focus their suffered a major setback due to the League's manoeuvres,
attention on formation of a national government at the centre, when Zahiruddin also decided to join the Muslim League.
representing all important elements in Indian national life. Thus he had to be suspended and replaced by Abdul Qayum
(2) To request the Government of India to nominate the repre­ Ansari of Bihar as the president.70
sentative of the Jamait-ul-Ansar-i-Hind to the Textile Advisory A meeting of 50 people in Mau criticised Zahiruddin for join­
Board, which was to be established shortly. ing Muslim League. A resolution was sent to the Momin Con­
(3) To wait in deputation on the commerce member of the Gov­ ference in Allahabad stating that the Momins of Mau were not
ernment of India with a view to discussing the best way to harness prepared to join Muslim League under any circumstance71
the resources of the Momin community for the war effort. The failure of the Momin Conference to manoeuvre within the
It was decided to move the office of the All India organisa­ available political space led to the emergence of other alternatives.
tion from Kanpur to Delhi. Every member of the community The year 1940 saw the emergence of two new organisations in
had to subscribe a rupee per head to start a factory for the ben­ the Azamgarh district. The first group was the Communist Party
efit of the community. The members of the community “should of India. The second, the Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind, was formed in
not join any political organisation other than the Jamait-ul- Azamgarh district at the instance of Maulana Habib-ul Rehman
Ansar”. A subcommittee consisting of Maulvi Zahiruddin, of Mau, Nath Bhanjan and Hakim Ishaq of Azamgarh.
Sheikh Said Ahmed of Bombay, the president and the general Only immediately after Partition does one find references to
secretary and Bashir Ahmad of Kanpur the editor of the Momin its resurgence in the district. A meeting of 200 people was held
Gazette was appointed to tour Indian states and to study and in Mau on 5 March 1948 with Maulvi Abdul Latif as the chair. It
report on the conditions and requirements of the Momins liv­ was said that the Jamait-ul-Ulema would fight against the new
ing there. The working committee meeting referred to the the government just as they fought against the British government.
district Jamait-ul-Ansar conference in Kanpur where the gov­ The speakers were President Ahmadullah and Ghulam Rasul.
ernment was criticised for acting unjustly in arresting Con­ They gave fiery speeches saying that their organisation was to
gress leaders and harassing them in jail; the release of the a large extent instrumental in bringing about independence.
Congress men was urged as necessary for the successful pros­ But now that the Congress was in power, it was not doing
ecution of the war. The trend of the All-India and district con­ justice and proving even worse than the British government,
ferences was pro-Congress and anti-Muslim League.64 in ignoring the welfare of kisans and mazdoors, it had further
The working committee of the All India Jamait-ul-Mominin imposed a ban on the newspaper Al-Jamiat. The following
met in Kanpur under the presidentship of Zahiruddin on 17-18 resolutions were passed at the meeting:72
October 1943. A resolution was passed to persuade Momins to (1) Handloom cloth should be exported to Pakistan.
resign from the Muslim League.65 (2) No tax should be imposed on the sale of this cloth.
On 7-8 October 1945, 50 nationalist Muslims representing (3) 25% of the cloth to be sent outside the country should be
the Majlis, the Ahrars, the Congress, the Jamait-ul-Ulema, the handloom cloth.
Khaksars, the Momins and the Sunni Board held a private (4) The ban imposed on newspaper Al-Jamiat should be
meeting in Lucknow. They decided to field candidates against withdrawn.
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
The antagonistic hierarchical class/caste relations were sit­
uating the Momin Ansars in such a position where even the
idea of a separate nationality for the Indian Muslim was not
lucrative enough to bring them together with the Muslim
League. After the formation of two nations on the subconti­
nent, fewer Momin Ansars migrated from u p compared to the
elite and high-class Muslims as they had nothing to lose except
their “handlooms”.73
So the political aspirations and religious activities of the
weavers clearly establish an attempt to carve out an independ­
ent space for socio-economic mobility. Lower status Julahas
tried to critique the Ashraf (upper caste) dominated Muslim
politics in northern India. For the Momin Ansaris to develop as
a counter-hegemonic force in Indian Muslim politics, they had
to consistently critique the social and religious articulation of
Ashraf dominance. This was a stance that could not be success­
fully voiced by the All India Momin Conference due to the com­
plexities of religious dichotomies and local exigencies. The reli­
gious categorisation of people created a polarisation on com­
munal lines. Different identities were adopted at various times
by these groups, yet the main agenda of having a social status,
occupational upliftment and sense of empowerment was central
to every move. Their socio-economic deprivation ensured that
instead of taking up their cause, larger forces used them for
their own agenda. But their pro-nationalist overtones carried an
earnest desire to overcome the odds of inherent inequalities.

NOTES1
1 The argument here is that multiculturalism
only operates at the level of the “great tradi­
tions”, to the detriment of “little traditions”,
which are inherently plural. In anthropological
usage, “great tradition” refers to the culture of
priests and theologians. Since the community
of priests and theologians is also in a sense a
textual community, the concept maybe used to
highlight the textual reading of religion. A tex­
tual reading of religion reifies identities to the
exclusion of other practices. The little tradition
is a repository of inherited customary practices
which may not necessarily be compatible with
the textual religious tradition.
2 Ashfaque Husain Ansari, Momin Conference ki
Dastavezi Tareekh (Documentary History of
Momin Conference), Delhi, 2000, pp 17,19.
3 Hasan Nishat Ansari, The Momin Congress
Relation (A Socio-Historical Analysis), Patna,
1989, pp 2-3.
4 Police Intelligence Department, Secret Police
Abstract of Intelligence, United Provinces
(henceforth PAI), Lucknow, No 3,28 April 1928.
5 Ibid.
6 Mushirul Hasan, “‘Congress Muslims’ and Indian
Nationalism: The Dilemma and Decline, 1928-34”,
South Asia, 8(1-2), 1985, pp 11-12.
7 Sheikh Abdul Majid undated diary entry (1902-
1934?), unpublished Urdu manuscript, Maulvi
Kamaruzzaman Mubarakpuri, Muhalla Sufipura,
Mubarakpur, Azamgarh, UP.
8 Letter from the Provincial Jamait-ul-Ansar, UP
to the Home Member, Government of UP, File
No 122/ 1930, Boxes 279-281, Political Depart­
ment, UP State Archive (henceforth UPSA),
Lucknow.
9 Ibid.
10 Report of the Proceedings of the Executive Com­
mittee of the All India Jamiat-ul-Quraish, held
on 18-20 February 1933, Agra.
11 Letter from the Provincial Jamait-ul-Ansar, UP
to the Home Member, Government of United
Provinces, File No 122/ 1930, Boxes 279-281,
Political Department, UPSA, Lucknow.
12 PAI, No 40,10 October 1931; No 25,25 June 1932;
No 33,20 August 1932; No 45,12 November 1932.
13 Nandini Gooptu, The Politics of the Urban Poor
in Early Twentieth Century India (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press), 2001, pp 264-66.
14 “Handloom vs Spinning-Wheel”, Young India,
11 November 1926, The Collected Works of Ma­
hatma Gandhi, Volume 37 (New Delhi: Publica­
tions Division Government of India), 1999.
15 Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume 23,
March 1922-May 1924, Ahmedabad, 1979,
P 59-
16 Swatantrata Sangram Ke Sainik, Zila Azam­
garh, UP, Information Department, Lucknow,
undated.
17 Collected Works of Mahatma Gandhi, Volume
24, Ahmedabad, 1967, p 426.
18 PAI, No 24,21 June 1930.
19 Indian Cotton Textile Industry Annual, 1949,
Bombay, p 152.
20 Salil Misra, A Narrative of Communal Politics:
Uttar Pradesh, 1937-39 (New Delhi: Sage Publi­
cations), 2001.
21 The Pioneer, 20 December 1936.
22 Gandhi on Hindu Muslim Unity, G-34/ 1939-42,
All India Congress Committee Papers, Nehru
Memorial Museum and Library (henceforth
NMML), New Delhi.
23 Jawaharlal Nehru to Krishna Menon, not dated,
Selected Works of Jawaharlal Nehru, Vol XIV,
Delhi, 1984, p 97.
24 Basudev Chatterjee, ed. Towards Freedom: Doc­
uments on the Movement for Independence in In­
dia, 1938, Volume 2 (Delhi: Oxford University
Press), 2002, pp 1409-1413; Hasan Nishat Ansari,
The Momin-Congress Relation, p 8; Papiya Ghosh,
“Partition’s Biharis” in Comparative Studies of
South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume 17,
No 2,1997.
25 Syed Sharifuddin Pirzada, ed. Quaid-e-Azam:
Jinnah’s Correspondence (New Delhi: Metro­
politan Book Company), 1981, pp 271-74; Rajendra
Prasad, India Divided (Delhi: Anmol Publica­
tions), 1986, p 153.
26 Paul R Brass, Language, Religion and Politics in
North India (London: Cambridge University
Press), 1974, p 246.
27 Star of India, 22 December 1938; 17 July 1939;
26 September 1938.
28 PAI, No 2,15 January 1938.
29 Ibid, No 29,29 July 1938.
30 Ibid, No 37,17 September 1938.
31 Ibid, No 38,24 September 1938.
32 Ibid, No 44,5 November 1938.
33 Ibid, No 4,29 January 1938.
34 Ibid, No 4 0 ,8 October 1938.
35 Ibid, No 23,10 June 1939.
36 Ibid, No 24,17 June 1939.
37 Ibid, No 25,24 June 1939.
38 Ibid, No 27,8 July 1939.
39 Ibid, No 31,5 August 1939.
40 Ibid, No 37,16 September 1939.
41 Ibid, No 38, 23 September; No 41,14 October
1939.
42 Representation from All India Momin Conference
to the Viceroy, 28 August 1939, Home Department
(Public Brandi), File No 185/39, National Archive
of India (henceforth NAI), New Delhi.
43 Ibid.
44 Jawaharlal Nehru to Abdul Qayoom Ansari,
Letter dated 14 November 1939, Cited from Ali
Anwar, Masawat Ki Jung (Battle for Equality)
trans Mohammad Imran Ali and Zakia Jowher,
Delhi, 2005, pp 201-03.
45 PAI, No 1,6 January 1940.
46 The Leader, 1 May 1940, Accession No 1484,
Private Papers, UPSA.
47 Mushirul Hasan, “ ‘Congress Muslims’ and Indian
Nationalism: The Dilemma and Decline, 1928-34”;
Hasan Nishat Ansari, The Momin Congress
Relation, p 19.
48 Ibid.
49 PAI, No 10,9 March 1940.
50 Ibid, No 16,20 April 1940.
51 Ibid, No 29,20 July 1940.
52 Criminal Investigation Department (CID), UP,
“Weekly Appreciation of the Political Situation
for the Week Ending 4 October”, PAI, 1940.
53 Ibid, 15 November 1940.
54 Ibid, 13 December 1940.
55 Ibid, 18 April 1941.
56 Director of Intelligence Bureau’s Report of the
Political Situation in Bihar, Home Department
Political (I) Branch, File No 31/1/1941-Police (I),
NAI.
57 Ali, Anwar, Masawat ki Jang (Battlefor Equality),
pp 24-30; Irfan Ahmad, “A Different Jihad:
Dalit Muslims’ Challenge to Ashraf Hegemony”,
Economic & Political Weekly, 15 November 2003,
P4889.
58 R W Sorensen, My Impression of India (London:
Meridian Books), London, 1946, p 117.
59 Nripendra Nath Mitra, ed. The Indian Annual
Register, January-June 1942, Volume I, Calcutta,
1943, PP 329-30; Hindustan Times, Delhi,
7 April 1942; Statesman, Delhi, 7 April 1942.
60 P J Thomas, chairman. Report of the Fact Finding
Committee (handloom and mills), 1942, Delhi,
1942, pp 64-65.
61 CID, UP, Weekly Appreciation, ending 12 Feb­
ruary 1943.
62 The Indian Annual Register, January-June 1943,
Volume I, Calcutta, 1944, p 292.
63 Ibid, pp 290-92.
64 CID, UP, Weekly Appreciation, ending 25 June
1943.
65 Ibid, 22 October 1943.
66 Ibid, 12 October 1945.
67 Ibid, 9 November 1945.
68 Ibid, 23 November, 21 and 28 December 1945.
69 Ibid, 25 January and 1 February 1946.
70 Ayesha Jalal, Self and Sovereignty: Individual
and Community in South Asian Islam since 1850
(London: Routledge), 2001, p 520.
71 Intelligence Papers, Local Intelligence Unit,
Police Office, Azamgarh, 2 April 1947.
72 Intelligence Papers, Jamiat-Ulama-i-Hind, Local
Intelligence Unit, Police Office, Azamgarh,
12 March 1948.
73 Interview with Qazi Zafar Masood, Mubarakpur,
Azamgarh, 01-02-1998; Report on the General
Administration of the United Provinces, 1948,
Allahabad, 1951.

70 APRIL 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 13323 Economic &Political w eek ly

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SPECIAL ARTICLE
Popular Research Methodology Literature
in Political Science
An Overview
BONITA ALEAZ
A survey o f library catalogues o f some o f the leading
universities w o rld w id e offering courses in political
science reveals th a t new publications on research
m ethodology used in the discipline and published
during the last 20 years alm ost equal, if not surpass,
other areas o f major concern in the discipline. It
appears th a t the internal and external turm oil
experienced by states and the waxing and waning
o f ideologies have influenced the disciplinary
concerns o f researchers. Has this influenced a
w idening or closeting o f the horizons o f knowledge
creation and its correlate, the tools o f enquiry?
W hat kinds o f texts are popularly used? How useful
are they fo r the developing world?
The author expresses her gratitude for the Erasmus Mundus Visiting
Scholarship to the Roehampton University, London during 2010 and for
extensive use of its library for carrying out the research for this article.
Bonita Aleaz (aleazbonita@gmailcom ) teaches political science at the
University of Calcutta.
Economic &Political w eek ly BS59 A p r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15
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his article enters into the continuing contestations over
T methodology1bogging the discipline since much of the
last century. In the first two sections it attempts an
overview of the trends in research methodology visible in the
discipline of political science during the contemporary period
and in the final section it tries to locate and analyse some of
the researcher’s own work through these emerging trends.
1 Questioning th e Q uantitative Base
The concern of political science with its methodological postu­
lates can be traced to the inception of the discipline itself. It was
bom with the intrinsic ambition to provide foolproof environs to
the States’ political functioning, and in the process to facilitate
and secure not only the internal juridical structure, but its exter­
nal parameters as well. Political theory became the primary tool
to complement the strengthening of the discipline; at this stage,
the methodological interests were to authenticate the structur­
ing and validation of political theory. Subsequently, this obses­
sion with theory, more specifically its engagement with the spe­
cific tools of theory construction, was to prove all too confining,
so much so that the legitimacy to carry forward the appendage
“science” has been seriously questioned. In many cases this
inner critique has led departments to rename themselves as
policy studies or public administration.
In regions such as West Bengal the subject still remains one
of the most popular at the undergraduate and postgraduate
levels in the social sciences. But elsewhere in the country its
existence has considerably dwindled. Under the University of
Madras, for instance, one does not find a department of politi­
cal science at all! Now this story has oft been told and does not
require retelling. What does require emphasis is the trend that
has been set in motion, the directions that have been traversed
and the inputs that have been gained in the process. Have
the social sciences gained through the emergence of new
approaches or have they lost out to those espousing more of
scientific investigations?
As far back as 1944, Franz L Neumann had strongly opposed
the dilemmas faced by the discipline. Political theorists could
not appropriate to themselves the role of moral philosophers
neither could they become epistemological explorers. To him
the “Behemoth”, invariably, was the state and it used concepts
solidified by theory to “police” exclusions and inclusions.2
Neumann had experienced such discomfiture in wartime
71
SPECIAL ARTICLE ^ ^ ^ ^ - ~ ^ -= -
Europe and was justified in warning the discipline, emergent
in post-war Europe, from replicating the same eclectic judg-
mentalism which had proved so fatal to communities in the
past and unfortunately continues to be so. Political science,
through its methodological disciplining, had put political
theory under the rubric of political ideology, and this had suc­
ceeded in bringing about the exclusivity of domains built up
either by political science or political theory (Kettler 2006:
238). Neumann, quite surprisingly spoke of two concerns that
he fervently wished to accomplish: to be associated with the
Free University of Berlin and to be involved with a process of
bildung3 or political education. Neumann strongly referred to
the binding of the process of the institutionalisation of poli­
tical education, the shape of political enquiry and also the
logic of political action. “Openness”, “freedom of speech and
expression” were not tactical ploys to be flaunted in a vacuum by
constitutions, but to be practised energetically by researchers/
academics at universities (Kettler: 238).
It is not a coincidence that other theoreticians had experi­
enced the same sort of closures in other places. Helene Cixous,
the French post-structuralist feminist, for instance, could
write and express herself freely only at the “open atmosphere”
of the Universite de Paris vm founded in May 1968 (Aleaz
2011). Academics even today feel constrained due to the sub­
suming of political theory under political ideology. University
administrations, course materials and research have all been
affected by this orientation.
...all political questions ought to be discussed openly and without
rancor, that no scholar and teacher has the obligation of accepting a
political system, but that each of them has the obligation, knowing his
own prejudices, of discussing openly and rationally every political
action and conception ... free scientific enquiry in a free society is
indispensable for the self-determination of man (Neumann 1957:215).
Emphasis upon methodology and epistemology and a sense
of crisis in political theory have been shared by others as well.
Dissatisfaction with the way political theory has handled crisis
resulted in a blame game of sorts - some laid it at the door of
its penchant for the natural sciences, some with its inordinate
engagement with historicism or even its perforce search for
alternative methodologies. All these periodic engagements
have been under the scanner since some of the recent litera­
ture in political science, or under the broader rubric of the
social sciences have seriously engaged with these issues.
The Strength of Naturalism
Geoff Stokes (1990) writing in the International Political Sci­
ence Review shows that a lack of ethical orientation to the prob­
lems confronting modern politics has largely been responsible
for the current crisis. However, there is no uniformity in the
conception of what constitutes “crisis” in political theory
(Geoff: 48). The impetus to theorise, to provide a uniform sin­
gular template for the problems existing in society, exists with
equal urgency among all: the classicists or preferably those
labelled as the “epic” theorists as well as the traditionalists,
even though the relative differences between their respective
standpoints maybe significant (ibid).
72
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Stokes directs our attention towards “epistemologies” as
identified by Karl Popper and Charles Taylor. These were not
as rigidly cast as those that advocated the scientific mould!
The Popperian notion, for instance, can be aligned with the
notion of “fallibilism” - knowledge is both uncertain and cor­
rigible, and thus an open, liberal and democratic condition is a
necessary. Similarly Taylor (pp 52, 53) points out that the
strength of naturalism lies in its underlying image of human
agency and the self, and a particular view of human dignity
and freedom, not so much in the quality of epistemological
arguments. Putnam, Habermas, Gadamer, Richard Rorty,
Bernstein, even Hannah Arendt, have all found answers to
crisis in human society not in increasing levels of theorising
but in “the Idea of good” as extolled by Putnam, or good life as
elucidated by Habermas in conversation, dialogue, undis­
torted communication, or in the type of “rational wooing” that
can take place when individuals confront each other as equals,
as alluded to by Bernstein (Stokes 1990:53).
John Law has been more scathingly critical about the situa­
tion in the social sciences. His book (2004) is called After
Method: Mess in Social Science Research. When social science
tries to describe things that are complex, and diffuse, “it
makes a mess of it” (Law 2004: 2). This is because simple
clear descriptions do not work, if what is being described is
itself incoherent. There are things that have clear coherent
images - income distributions, global carbon emissions, the
terms of trade and the boundaries of nation states. These are
stable realities that the social and the natural sciences deal
with more or less effectively. But alongside these clear-cut phe­
nomena are the complex aspects of reality that the social sci­
ences are unable to comprehend by relying upon clear-cut
“scientific methods” (ibid). In order to relate to the “slippery”,
enigmatic reality new ways of knowing should be evolved in
the social sciences.
However, it is interesting to know why social scientists such
as John Law feel so constrained about the methodological
developments in the social sciences. The problem does not lie
in the lack of variety in the practice of methods in the social
sciences, rather he would categorically label the propensity as
the “dominant Euro-American enactments (that) produce and
presuppose forms of manifest absence that are independent
and prior to an observer; definite in shape and form; and also
singular (there is only one reality)” (Law 2004:145). The alle­
gation is that a generality is unilaterally applied, with the as­
sertion that if one wishes to understand reality properly then it
is important to follow methodological rules. One does not
refute the requirements of discipline in research or the necessity
of wide variety of data for scores of developmental purposes,
but the rigour of its imposition is refuted. The idea that the
methods generated in the Euro-American context are inevita­
ble and also guide the type of data that ought to be collected,
how they should be collected, and anything not falling within
such methodological rigour should be down classed infuses
hegemony in research methods that is unacceptable.
The truth is that methods not only help describe but they
also produce the reality that they describe. To substantiate this
APRIL 14, 2012 VOL x l v i i n o 15 Em Economic &Political w eek ly

argument Law gives instances from a scientific laboratory,
revealing that the methodological practices of the natural sci­
ences, which the social sciences have been so eager to emulate
since their inception, are not so sacrosanct after all. In other
words, laboratory methods may be constructed rather than
following a natural course of discovery. Bruno Latour and
Steve Woolgar observed the working of scientists and reported
their observations in their 1979 published book Laboratory Life
(Knorr and Karin 1981). They show how scientists actually lose
sight of the materials used in the initial process of the experi­
ment relying rather for their ultimate discovery on the appear­
ance of similarities and differences in the subsequent mathe­
matical equations that are formed.
John law maintains that the ethnographers of science are
usually more or less “constructivist”. They argue that scientific
knowledge is constructed in scientific practices. “The tools and
practices of construction include instruments, architectures,
texts-indeed a whole range of participants that extend far be­
yond people. Energy, money, chemicals, people, animals along
with tools, instruments move into the laboratory at the same
time as people along with paper and debris move out, in this
process, the product of the laboratory emerges as constructed
texts” (Law 2004:19).
This is indeed a long description and does not concern us
here, what is important to be known is that the sacrosanct na­
ture of the scientific process of knowledge production has been
shorn of its halo.
Evolution and Theory
The problem with methodology and methods and to a certain
extent with content in political science, and with its wider
correlate the social sciences in general rose to a crescendo
with research such as Ira H Carmen (2007) and even earlier
with works such as that produced by Alford, Funk and Hibbing
(2005). The latter showed that genetics had a lot to influence
political behaviour, even political ideological orientation. It is
proposed that evolutionary biology can supply political science
with a theory of the ultimate causes of human preferences and
behaviours that it otherwise lacks. For the most part, political
scientists are either unfamiliar with the social side of evolu­
tionary theory or they misidentify its key features (Alford,
Funk and Hibbing 2005: 703).
Far from being genetically deterministic, or leading exclusively to pre­
dictions that all human behaviour will be selfish, modern evolutionary
theories stress that adaptive behaviour is frequently characterised by
a guarded sort of cooperation.
The authors present scientific evidence, drawn from re­
search on autistic individuals and monozygotic and dizygotic
twins, of the startlingly important role genetics plays in shap­
ing politically relevant attitudes and behaviours. Carmen, a
political scientist as well as a genetic biologist, shows likewise
how the transition from genetics to genomics can be made
through scientific experiments that chart variations in human
behaviours. He presents a new theory - sociogenomics - to re­
place the “shopworn” conceptions of “yesterday’s” political sci­
ence. It is then demonstrated how social scientists can employ
Economic &Political weekly E33S2 Ap r il 14, 2012 vo l x l v ii n o 15
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
the tools of molecular biology to study and analyse genes, that
can in turn help in coding for baseline political attitudes
and behaviours. The theory and methods of sociogenomics,
according to Carmen, will serve to synthesise the social
sciences with the natural sciences in a broader consilient (unit­
ing) framework, so that the laboratory of Darwinian investiga­
tion can become the laboratory of Aristotelian investigation
(Carmen 2007: 34).
Each of these studies may have their scientific utility, but for
a study of society and politics asking for free and open discus­
sion such methods unnecessarily complicate and “mess up”.
The mess that we are in has been eloquently emphasised by
two books: Bent Flyvbjerg’s Making Social Matter (2001) and
the subsequent edited volume by Sanford Schram and Brian
Caterino Making Political Science Matter: Debating Knowl­
edge,, Research and Method (2006). In fact, the present article
was inspired by the hard-hitting arguments very cogently
presented by the collection of articles in the latter volume.
Schram and Caterino’s volume represents the chain reaction
to what has been referred to as the “hegemony of scientistic
social science” (Schram 2006: 31). The realisation that the
very realm of social science was being taken over resulted in a
series of movements, which was referred to as the renegade
movement to promote perestroika in political science. In fact
some years ago an eponymous “Mr Perestroika” had drawn
attention to the growing constraints in the disciple, via the
theories of rationality that proposed predictions and cumu­
lative actions. It is a growing body of scholars, students
included, who adopt either of the following criticisms
(Schram 2006:18):
(1) the overly abstract nature of work done in the social sciences
today; (2) lack of nuance in decontextualised, large-sample empiri­
cal studies; (3) the inhumanness of thinking about social relations in
causal terms; and (4) the inability to produce meaningful knowledge
applicable to social life.
The paradigm upon which “scientific” social sciences are de­
pendent has become overly exclusive since it refuses to recog­
nise “single case studies”. These are not considered worthy of
knowledge creation and are often refused by leading journals
for publication, considered unfit for knowledge-creation, and
thus unscientific.
Perestroika
As against this argument perestroika puts forward the possi­
bility to question the idea that political science research
exists as a unitary enterprise, dedicated to the accumulation of
an expanding knowledge base of universal, “decontextualised
generalisations about politics” (Schram 2006: 19). Perestroika
puts emphasis upon a more plural connection between
thought and action, a blossoming of contextual, contingent
and multiple political truths that involve a greater tie be­
tween theory and practice in specific settings. Such an
approach is obviously not obsessed with development or
modernisation per se but the contextually sensitive ways of
comparisons of change. Through this method political
science is obviously “freed” from the necessity of having to
73
SPECIAL ARTICLE
prove itself as a scientific knowledge base, instead, this
approach (Schram 2006:19)
would encourage scholars to draw on a wide variety of methods from a
diversity of theoretical perspectives, combining theory and empirical
work in different and creative ways, all in dialogue with political actors
in specific contexts. Problem-driven research would replace method-
driven research. This becomes the formulation of social and political
theory out of practical wisdom as Aristotle referred to in his “phronesis”.
In the same volume edited by Schram and Caterino,
Peregrine Schwartz-Shea talks very forthrightly about the
“Conundrum in the Practice of Pluralism”, the opinion may be
generated that by abjuring the “scientific” method of political
science and advocating perestroika researchers merely wish to
establish another form of exclusivity; they wish to publish
their own perspectives, to monopolise research and get access
to granting agencies! This has to be correctly understood. Per-
estroikans have argued not for eliminating statistics but for
“balance” in the curriculum. Three suggestions are offered
that have great significance for the flux that has been created
in the discipline. Pluralism in method connotes (1) to not criti­
cise “rules, logic, sign and rationality in them”. The situation is
one of a happy pluralism in which researchers imagine them­
selves to contribute to knowledge, to different wings of the
structure; (2) it is not the perspective of pluralism that is ques­
tioned but the significance of the problems researched by dif­
ferent research approaches; and finally (3) researchers should
think critically about the value of their research and its ulti­
mate use, not only in a pragmatic but in a political way as well
(Schwartz-Shea 2006: 219).
The very next year after the path-breaking Flyvbjerg
volume, Peregrine Schwartz-Shea along with Dvora Yanow
undertook a painstaking research to review 14 books used as
research methods texts for graduate and undergraduate pro­
grammes in western universities. They started out with two
significant questions (Schwartz-Shea and Yanow 2002:457):
To what extent do research methods texts reflect the breadth of meth­
ods used in political science and its fields? To what extent do they re­
flect contemporary ferment concerning questions of social reality and
its “knowability”? These questions are intertwined with each other -
epistemological positions on what counts as “science” affect the meth­
ods presented - and with the misleading distinction between “quanti­
tative” and “qualitative” methods.
Peregrine and Dvorak research is extremely significant
since, in the course of their work, they find that all these books
eulogise the scientific method and these are used widely
across universities. The other non-quantifiable methods are
rendered invisible in the texts.
The Q ualitative-Q uantitative Quandary
The problem reached a climax after the voluminous contribu­
tions by the trio Gary King, 0 Keohane and Sidney Verba in the
field of social enquiry through their landmark contribution
Designing Social Inquiry: Scientific Inference in Qualitative
Research (1994). It is important to give a brief overview of their
approach before we can move on. The latter are still consid­
ered as having established path-breaking ideas in the approach
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to social enquiry and the book is considered compulsory read­
ing in a majority of institutions offering research methodology
courses in western universities.
King, Keohane and Verba had a significant impact on the
discipline by providing a codified approach to each step in
research design - formulating questions, specifying testable
theories, choosing observations, reporting results, etc. “The
book encouraged methodological self-consciousness in politi­
cal science, and this legacy can only be seen as beneficial”
(Mahoney 2000: 121). King, Keohane and Verba’s central
assumption was to establish the superiority of quantitative
research; for this “they prioritised a thorough grounding and
use of, in particular, regression analysis to overcome the short
comings of qualitative research” (ibid). In other words, they
had assumed that a template of quantitative research was nec­
essary to hone and finalise qualitative research as well. The
superiority of the method of scientific investigation shaped by
quantitative analysis was unquestioningly infallible.
A large amount of research was produced along similar
lines, either attempting a re-evaluation of what King, Keohane
and Verba had done or proposing alternative lines of investiga­
tion. James Mahoney reviews a number of outstanding books,
all of which were published after King, Keohane and Verba’s
contribution; obviously the intentions of the researchers were
to reopen the debate about methodologically sound usable
principles in the social sciences. Mahoney refers to the period
as the “after k k v ” period, implying significant breakthrough
had been achieved in the field of social science query using
qualitative methods.
A thorough reading of the books however indicates that the
obsession with the scientific method continues unabated. Based
on the books reviewed, and Mahoney’s own research, the fol­
lowing innovations in methodology are proposed: (1) process
tracing and causal process observations, (2) set-theoretic meth­
ods and logic, and (3) strategies for combining qualitative and
quantitative research (Mahoney 2010: 120). While explicating
these, Mahoney divulges his own predilections: the usefulness
of causal-process observations (c p o s) used in qualitative re­
search and data process observations (d p o s) widely used in
quantitative research. While sets have their uses he says in a
large number of cases of process-tracing, non-comparable
observations are impossible to be included but remain useful as
causal inferences. In the ultimate analysis, the alignment of the
two types remains necessary. This dual legacy of King, Keohane
and Verba - beneficially increasing methodological awareness
while controversially, and perhaps unproductively, promoting
a singular quantitative approach - constitutes an important
backdrop for what happened subsequently among researchers
looking for answers in and through research methodology in
political science (Mahoney 2010:121).
Political Contingency as a Solution
The basic question of whether and exactly how qualitative and
quantitative approaches can be combined still needs to be
resolved according to Mahoney. This challenge involves not
only practical problems but also philosophical ones. What is
Ap r il 14, 2012 v o l x l v ii n o 15 mavi Economic &Political weekly

the relationship between studies that seek to develop compre­
hensive explanations of outcomes in particular kinds of cases
versus studies that seek to estimate the average effects of par­
ticular independent variables across a large number of cases?
Can approaches grounded in set theory and logic be combined
with approaches grounded in probability theory and statistics
(Mahoney 2000:144)?
If we turn to Gregory Huber (2007) perhaps part of the ques­
tion is addressed, through his emphasis on the study of non-
events, rather than significant events. The question that still
remains to be encountered is as Huber puts it “how should po­
litical science incorporate the fact that important political in­
teractions are embedded in situations where outcomes are un­
known prior to their occurrence” (Huber 2007:205)?
The answer lies in the fact that political scientists have so
long been influenced by the downstream effects of political
contingencies, that they have always wanted to be prepared to
face these eventualities, it is for such reasons that it has been
important to categorise, to tabulate, to “provide answers”, so
that in the process of policy formulation they are not caught
off guard. However, the incongruity of not being able to pro­
vide all the answers despite our best efforts draws attention to
the fact that we should perhaps look at the mediating effects of
the contingent events which Huber refers to as “non-events”,
not the events themselves. Such untoward directions of our
research might provide a greater strengthening of our confi­
dence in facing the wayward and the dramatic political situa­
tions. An example given by Huber (2007: 215) is interesting to
relate vis-a-vis the question raised: is strategic behaviour
really relevant for understanding the contingencies that mani­
fest in successful democratic consolidations and those that
result in returns to military rule or authoritarianism? The con­
tention is that focusing too much on the success or failure of
observed efforts at democratisation may overlook the strategic
interactions that explain when and how autocratic leaders or
exclusionary regimes choose to experiment with democratisa­
tion in their own interests!
Some contingencies are completely unforeseen and are best
avoided, rather “political science should make primary those
foreseeable contingencies around which strategic political actors
manoeuvre”. These like their unforeseeable counterparts are
fundamentally probabilistic. Nonetheless, they matter because
political actors have beliefs about the probabilities that they
will manifest, and these beliefs shape the strategic interactions
among political actors. The second argument is that “political
science already has the capacity for incorporating this second
form of contingency, knowable uncertainties, into analysis of
strategic behaviour” (Huber 2007: 206). The way to account
for this form is, not to study the observed probabilistic mani­
festations of contingent outcomes, but instead to study how
strategic actors behave in light of those potential contin­
gencies. Huber does not lose sight of the importance of game
theory and probability theory in influencing human behaviour
or events having links with human actions (ibid).
George Thomas (2005), on the other hand, focuses on the
greater qualitative turn. Like Mahoney he undertook a review
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
of a number of books all produced in the post kkv period, such
as John Gerring (2001) Social Science Methodology: A Critical
Framework; Barbara Geddes (2003) Paradigms and Sand Castles:
Theory Building and Research Design in Comparative Politics;
Charles Ragin (2000) Fuzzy-Set Social Science and Colin and
Miriam Elman’s (2001) work, in a review article in the
Perspectives on Politics. Thomas feels that the focus on aspects
of the scientific process beyond the testing of hypotheses con­
tinues - science being “a systematic, rigorous, evidence-based,
generalising, non-subjective, and cumulative” way of discover­
ing the truth about the world (Gerring 2001: xv). So he feels
that if science is the systematic gathering of knowledge, test­
ing hypotheses - the central concern of statistical inference -
is an important part of this. The scholars argue that whatever
the methodological bent, qualitative or quantitative, there
should be shared sense of evaluation and a common language;
it is in this sphere that important differences are revealed.
Geddes, for instance, writing for comparativists with a qual­
itative bent, adheres to the foundational logic of statistical
inference. She says the main task is theory testing for social
scientists and in this the rational choice approaches clearly are
better suited since they deduce hypothesis from a particular
model that has been tried and tested, and this makes them a
better choice. “The big argument should be broken at its
branching points, and hypotheses that purport to explain
choices at different nodes should be tested on additional cases
that fit appropriate initial conditions” (Geddes 2003:14). Most
of the authors affirm that the main task is the continual move­
ment between theory and evidence that enables the clarifica­
tion of theory. Theories from which prepositions are derived
are an inherent part of the empirical world and are part and
parcel of the scientific endeavour, not a pre-scientific attempt.
Thomas categorically sets the tone of his analysis by stating
that there has often been a consensus that quantitative and
qualitative research share a “unified logic of inference”; that
the differences between these “traditions are only stylistic and
are methodologically and substantively unimportant”. All of
the above-mentioned books share these convictions. Thus the
dominant view of science within political science being drawn
from physics and chemistry continues to build on the use of
more and more math. Yet this exhortation, to be more scien­
tific, has now led to a rebellion against this narrow conception
of science; these books illuminate how science itself has quali­
tative foundations. Thomas’ own views enhance this (2005:
862, 864):
many of the concerns associated with qualitative methods increasing­
ly find expression in quantitative forms. Conversely concept formation
and theory building are just as important to quantitative research as
to qualitative researchers.
What was once effect has now become cause, perhaps re­
vealing that political science itself moves in a complex and
nonlinear way? (2005: 864).
2 The Greater Q ualitative Turn
It should be noted that the perestroika underlined in Section 1
has been in the making for quite some time and a whole lot of
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other kinds of research techniques have established their
legitimacy in the social science research arena. Some of them
are reviewed below. Hollway and Jefferson’s book is worth
looking at in the overall repertoire of usable political science
methods. What is needed first of all, which we ourselves
perceive, is the need to appropriately interpret the voices of
people; this is a felt need and is a democratic one (Hollway
and Jefferson 2000: 3):
Who are we to note now any better than the participants when it is
after all, their lives? If we are prepared to disagree, modify, select and
interpret what they tell us, is this not an example of the kind of power
that we as researchers have that should be kept in check by being
faithful to the voices of those we are researching?
The problem is how to give voice to another’s experience
without an adequate experience of the same oneself. We
have ambiguous representations of another’s experience
through text, talk, interaction and interpretation. “If justice
has to be done to the subject of research then an interpretative
approach is unavoidable” (Hollway and Jefferson 2000:3). It is
“unpatronising” since it allows people to know about others
through their own accounts, but researchers should be seen
as neutral vehicles for representing knowledge in an uncon­
taminated way as possible. The researcher should not be ex­
cluded due to any special objective as being of a different
status as the subject of research. However, the “interpreta­
tive circle” creates its own problems, and the fact that inter­
preting the various representations rather than the experi­
ences itself as ambiguously as possible has become a prob­
lem. The authors tend to argue for “the need to posit re­
search subjects whose inner worlds cannot be understood
without knowledge of their experiences in the world, and
whose experiences of the world cannot be understood with­
out knowledge of the way in which their inner worlds allow
them to experience the outer world” (Hollway and Jefferson
2000: 4). It is made clear that in such cases the research sub­
ject cannot be known “except through another subject, in
this case the researcher. Such a subject is named ‘psychoso­
cial’” (ibid). The method is a blend of intuitive social re­
search locating the subject exactly in the context/location of
her experiences. This, it is believed, gives the subject abso­
lute freedom to voice her concerns to the researcher in as
real a manner as possible.
Discourse analysis, hermeneutics and such “interpretative”
approaches had already influenced the intuitive turn in politi­
cal science; perestroika definitely opened the floodgates of
enquiry to a host of other techniques. The influencing factors
have been manifold and the field of enquiry seems to have
boundless seams, yet the main crux of the query seems to be to
provide as wide a platform as possible to researchers, to main­
tain ethics and to be inclusive. For this, drawing upon knowl­
edge possible through a variety of techniques, is not a dispel­
ling factor and there is no compulsion in proving the sound­
ness of one’s findings.
Use of “unobtrusive methods”, “mobile methodologies” and
“phronesis” or “practical wisdom” in the field are some of the
additions made to the repertoire of advanced qualitative methods
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to achieve maximum results in explaining and providing
answers to problems encountered by political scientists.
M aking Methodologies Plastic
The propensity of social scientists to observe the world in its
totality has given birth to the use of mobile methodologies
inspired, no doubt, by the heightened awareness of the impor­
tance of a better understanding of the movement of bodies
through space. The methods proposed are varied, however,
some of it has been explored by ethnomethodologists quite
comprehensively. Even though geographers, sociologists and
those specialising in urban studies had adopted these prac­
tices, the methodology itself has not been comprehensively de­
veloped. The trio of Ben Fincham, Mark Mcguiness and Lesley
Murray bring out, perhaps for the first time, a publication on
how to use the collection of methods referred to as Mobile
Methodologies (2010). The researcher and the subject are both
in a state of mobility, the intention therefore is that post hoc
reflection, the idea of real time data gathering or the experi­
ence of the same is reflected as accurately as possible; and this
in turn lends a real time or “verite credibility” to the analysis
(Fincham, Mcguiness and Murray 2010: 9). Explorations of
mobile methodologies have included commuting by any trans­
port, walking, autoethnography or even photo diaries.
The entire effort rests on the realisation that there is dis­
tinctness in the understanding of the social world in motion,
it is important to understand that data generated in motion
captures moods otherwise not perceived. Even though the
movement may have the impression of corporeal passivity,
these are not to be treated as periods of absence, or that are
devoid of meaning but that which can have significant impact
or contribution to the overall analysis. Yet they are not durations
that should be interpreted by filling them with overactive text
and meaning. Therefore narrative practices must be developed
that are more responsive to these other, rather more refractory,
registers of mobile subjectivity. Another justifiable implication
is that in an increasingly speeded up output-driven research
climate, where the legitimacy of research is more prone to sti­
fling rather than acceptance, “it is only through these fractured,
shifting and critical styles of empiricism that a more responsive
narration of subjectivity emerges: responsive not only to the
vast range of corporeal sensibilities but also to the limitations of
empiricism itself’ (Fincham, Mcguiness and Murray 2010:68).
Along with the above-mentioned, off the mainstream, re­
search methods, Raymond M Lee adds his Unobtrusive Methods
in Social Research (2000). The book may be called a companion
volume to the initial research done by Eugene J Webb in 1966
entitled Unobtrusive Measures: Non-reactive Research in the
Social Sciences. The intention behind the propagation of
unobtrusive methods in the social sciences is that “the more
anonymous the method, that is the less it is involved in face-to-
face contact, the more likely respondents were to admit to
socially undesirable behaviour” (Lee 2000: 3). How people
respond to certain words also varied significantly. For instance
Lee cites various surveys showing that the word “welfare” in
questions about financial benefits received by beneficiaries drew
Ap r il 14, 2012 vo l x l v ii n o 15 DE53 Economic &Political weekly

“lower levels of positive response than the word poor” (ibid).
Therefore the need to accomplish the “interrogation of experi­
ence, attitude and belief in other less direct ways” (Lee 2000:1).
The phrase “unobtrusive measures” was coined by Webb to re­
fer to data gathered by means that do not involve direct elicita­
tion of information from research subjects, these measures are
non-reactive, in the sense they are presumed to avoid the prob­
lems caused by the presence of the researcher herself. Social
researchers should devote more time and attention to sources of
data such as physical traces (the evidence people leave behind
in various ways as they traverse their physical environment),
non-participant observation being among them (ibid: 2).
3 Notes from the Field
In the period of economic liberalisation, when governments’
have to compete with a host of other agencies to make them­
selves most effective, policy research has been adopted as an
important instrument not only to push development through
but also to legitimise governmental functioning. However, one
finds that the desperate need to use information from the field
for “correct” results has put intense pressure on policy analysts
and a multiplicity of methods is proposed for result-oriented
output. A few points raised very appropriately by Albert Cherns
(1986) regarding the pitfalls of “policy research” ought to be
stated. These relate very categorically to the compulsions and
untoward outputs associated with policy research. In the light
of his observations I wish to briefly state some of my own expe­
riences obtained in the course of research work in the “field”.
All funded research is inevitably associated with a utilisa­
tion justification; this is associated with the fact that all
research has a “result”. Cherns draws attention to the fact that
this compulsion suggests an altogether misleading sense of
what a great deal of social research provides. Physical experi­
ments and mathematical investigations produce “results”
which are authoritative, till proved otherwise. “Nothing so
straightforward is the lot of social research ...the word con­
veys inappropriate connotations.” Social inquiry has many
outcomes, “but they do not necessarily, even usually, take the
form implied by the natural science model” (187). In other
words the results need not be as expected but are useful
nevertheless in the social sciences.
Second, quite often policy research takes on the form of
community development projects defined as “action research”.
In such projects the role played by the various groups negotiat­
ing in the project, their ideological affiliations, their motives,
all have significant impact among the plethora of groups and
committees that may ultimately intervene in the projects. In
such instances it is interesting to know what end results are
ultimately produced and/or who stands to gain ultimately.
In 2005 the Institute of Mass Communication Film and Tel­
evision Studies of the University of Kalyani (im c ftsk u , West
Bengal) started a radio programme “Kalyani” under the Gov­
ernment of India (goi)’s communication policy which allowed
universities to run radio programmes for the benefit of rural
masses. This was in line with the government’s policy to use
innovative measures for development purposes (Aleaz 2010).
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SPECIAL ARTICLE
The article shows how the methods used for the daily broad­
cast were prepared by the institute keeping in mind the cul­
tural, health, economic and related needs of the people. The
objectives were actually dual - entertainment of marginalised
rural communities and, through subtle means, to elicit their
opinion and engage their attention towards development and
better lifestyle. An interactive session via letter writing was
encouraged to obtain the responses of the audience to the vari­
ous segments of the programme.
The results obtained were completely unexpected, way
beyond anything the organisers of the year-long programme
could have ever envisaged. The broadcasters were particularly
conscious of the methodology, since the objective was clear
(entertainment with information) it was constantly monitored
keeping the variegated requirements of policy, innovativeness,
along with the needs for development. The programme fell
within the repertoire of participatory research since the target
audience could air their opinions on the broadcasts through
the interactive sessions; on the basis of their opinions even
desired segments of the broadcasts were envisaged. However,
nothing could foretell that the large segment of female listen­
ers would use the platform provided by the broadcast channel
to air love poems and such compositions; to them the pro­
gramme symbolised a human person to whom they could
relate emotionally! The broadcast channel provided an outlet
of sorts allowing pent-up emotions, creative impulses and
the very obvious need to relate to someone/something while
remaining behind the veil of anonymity!
The results of this venture were not totally a waste, so far as
the government’s communication policy was concerned. It did
provide a valuable channel for interactive entertainment to
farflung communities, informed them about various local
areas of development and was an indispensable avenue of
knowledge creation. To the researcher, however, it revealed
the various untoward nuances of methodological application
and its outputs in social research!
Conclusion: The A ssem b la g e a n d B eyon d
We come to the conclusion of an extremely contentious subject.
Do we validate existing methodology in the social sciences that
substantiates existing theoretical knowledge and leads on to
“credible” policymaking or do we vouch for an open methodo­
logy that contributes to “living theories”? We make sense of
what we are doing through researching it. We gather data and
generate evidence to support our claims that we know what we
are doing and why we are doing it, and we test these knowl­
edge claims for their validity through the critical feedback of
others, these are our “living theories”. Such an approach be­
comes imperative today when each individual clamours for the
right of expression. Any preordained universal moral principle
militates against a lived form of life.
Life should have its own free space not only for formal com­
munication but for any form of creative expression. Thus it is
in this sense that we need to develop living, demonstrable cri­
teria, which are subject to public scrutiny and critique, and yet
adds on to knowledge.
15 77
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The social sciences have to struggle inordinately at this
because all universities, driven by the market compulsion to
produce have felt the axe in comparison to the natural sci­
ences. The entire perspective towards social sciences is very
obvious, downsizing of departments, total eclipse of some of
centres or their merging with other departments, renaming of
departments to help greater market-orientedness, etc, is all
very visible, not just in India but globally. But ultimately the
social sciences go much further than either explicit monetary
motives or exact prescriptions as visible in their forced associa­
tion with the natural sciences. This leads us to a strong propo­
sition of methodological “assemblage” (Law 2004: 144). We
can on no account countenance the hegemonising of the disci­
pline by any one approach, epistemological contribution or
ontological position. The perestroikan influences have become
too widespread for such limited visions.

n o t e s ___________________________________________
1 In this article, “methodology” refers to a theory
of how we do things. This is distinct from
“methods” which are the specific techniques
for finding something out. The former invaria­
bly influences the latter.
2 David Kettler (2006) provides an excellent cri­
tique of Neumann’s Behemoth.
3 Bildung (German) Education in the largest sense,
that which has a formative effect on the mind,
character or physical ability of the individual.
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78 a p r i l 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15 DBS3 Economic & Political w eek ly

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 DISCUSSION
Tuberculosis Control
A M IT M ISR A ___________________________________
While appreciating Nora Engel
and Wiebe Bijker for their
insightful article “Innovating
Tuberculosis Control in India”,
which can make an impact on
policy formulation, this critique
stands in favour of public-funded
laboratory research, drug and
diagnostic manufacturing and
clinical practice.
Am itM isra (amitxdri@gmail.com) is w ith
the pharmaceutical division of Central Drug
Research Institute, Lucknow.
Economic &Political WEEKLY ™
“ i n n o v a t i n g Tuberculosis Control
I in India” by Nora Engel and Wiebe
JLBijker ( e p w , 28 January 2012) is a
timely, well-researched and insightful
article on tuberculosis ( t b ) control. But
I hope the authors and the readers of
this journal will tolerate a critique that
admits to a bias in favour of public-funded
laboratory research, drug and diagnostic
manufacturing, and clinical practice.
M issing Points
The complaints first: it should be obvious
to the most naive among us that t b will not
be controlled unless nutrition, sanitation
and clinical judgment-based access to
healthcare are available without hindrance
to all in need. An analysis of innovation in
diagnostic and chemotherapeutic inter­
vention for t b control from a social science
perspective, without referring to the core
of the political problem contributing to
the prevalence of t b somehow appears
to miss a crucial point.
Next, Engel and Bijker have not
addressed what I (and a few others, e g,
Bharadwaj et al, Tuberculosis, Edinburgh,
2011) might call a significant happenstance
in the supply-side of t b control; relating
to innovative, and more significantly,
“open source” drug discovery, drug devel­
opment, drug delivery, and diagnostics
development ( o s d d ) , that about 5,000
researchers and students across 130 coun­
tries have subscribed to since 2008. The
o s d d initiative is a sort of second cousin to
“control”, choosing, as it does, to inter­
pose “understanding” and “participation”
between innovation and control.
Who profits if I develop t b ? In order of
financial profit, it would probably be the
supplier of drug treatment, diagnostic
method, prescriber and controller (who
is paid his salary only so long as people
like me develop t b ) . The authors state:
International organisations, donors and
pharmaceutical companies are concerned
with innovating t b control in order to stop
APRIL 14, 2012 VOL x l v i i n o 15
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transmission of t b . The emphasis is on
research and development ( r & d ) of new
drugs, diagnostics and vaccines (p 113,
emphasis added).
The authors then reveal an insight
acquired from a “consultant”:
The lack of r & d in t b diagnostics is general­
ly attributed to the rigid price control of anti-
t b drugs and diagnostics by the Indian gov­
ernment which prevents even established
pharmaceuticals from entering the market,
as a pharmaceutical consultant explains...
This lack of focus, coordination and compe­
tition leaves the research potential within
India for t b diagnosis underused. It means
that actors conducting r & d often come from
outside and lobby through international
donors or organisations.
The worldwide market for anti-TB
drugs is just about $ 300 million - add
diagnostics to reach $ 5 00-700 million,
and what kind of profit is the financial
world left with? If the dominant para­
digm of innovation being led by profit
is accurate, the world w ill witness no
laboratory or clinical research innovation
in t b until this figure climbs to at least
10 times its current financial value.
Putative Actors
The last complaint - the authors use
the word “actors” for pharmaceutical
producers, policymakers and clinicians.
This is disturbing to a lab-rat, who
assumes that these putative actors are
real people imbued with goodwill, rather
than the aggregate that the authors
introduce (p 112) as some sort of captives
of a sociological milieu:
Partly because t b is a social problem as much
as a clinical problem, the ground level realities
for innovation are very complicated... control
strategies represent a particular balancing act
between operational feasibility, biomedical
knowledge and socio-cultural factors, ...the
efforts of coping with t b are a continuous
struggle about the right balance between
innovation and control. (Note lack of inter­
position of “understanding” and “participa­
tion” between “innovation” and “control”.)
Not very different is their (sympa­
thetic?) perception that:
Qualified private practitioners resent...super­
vision. They experience the supervision by
r n t c p staff, often less senior than qualified
private practitioners, as disturbing, inadequate
79
DISCUSSION
and suspect. Private practitioners tend to
perceive the public sector workers as arrogant
and claim ing to occupy a morally superior
position....This arrogance is particularly felt
with regard to the r n t c p ’s moral judgment
of private practitioners’ being only interested
in profit....the t b programme makes use of
various forms of supervision and a command
and control style management. Qualified
private practitioners have, in general, strong
apprehensions against rule-based managerial
practices which are different to the medical
practice o f private practitioners. The latter
is based on ideals such as individualism,
discretion and autonomy which are linked to
their focus on individual health rather than
public health (p 115, emphasis added).
It is significant that the authors choose
the word “qualified” over “competent”
to describe medical practitioners, and
apparently reduce the t b pandemic to
a problem amenable to solution using
“management” and “governance” appro­
aches rather than the politically fraught
approach of “understanding”. I acknow­
ledge the need to be polite in academic
discourse, but to absolve the private
sector of responsibility on the basis of no­
ble ideals (individualism, discretion and
autonomy) putatively embraced by it, is
much too generous to sit comfortably with
academic rigour. I would love to be proven
wrong by facts and figures when I say that
our country is full of technically quali­
fied, but clinically incompetent private
practitioners who cannot diagnose t b (es­
pecially, extrapulmonary t b ) from medical
examination, lab tests and clinical acu­
men, have no idea that standard treatment
guidelines and best practices are in place,
or, despite clinical competence, are either
too vain or too scared to refer patients to
the public-funded t b chemotherapy pro­
gramme. Vain, because they might think
they know better, and scared, because the
government programme, more often than
not, it is politically correct to point out,
does not deliver on its promise of directly
observed therapy - either there are no
medicines, or there is no observer. I could
expand on horror stories (based on un-
verifiable anecdotal evidence), that adult
patients weighing 40-45 kg presenting with
haemoptysis are asked for bribes before
admission to inpatient care in public-
funded facilities and that residents (junior
doctors) obsess continually about their
own body weight while posted to the t b
ward, but that would be beside the point.
Notable Insights
Before this turns into a diatribe that is too
long to print, I would like to reiterate my
congratulations to the authors for their
insights: (p 114): “there is no coordinated
fostering of the innovative potential for
new diagnostics within India...There are
smaller players in Indian medical colleges,
who have developed their own in-house
test for multi-drug resistant tuberculosis
( m d r -tb ) ... but who are not considered by
the government for these evaluation
studies. They feel excluded and blame the
government for not taking them into
account... (p 116): Current policy mecha­
nisms that are focused on implementing
one solution to a multiple and complex
problem such as t b are outdated. These do
not work... (p 116): There is thus also a
need for policy innovation: how differences
in practices of control and innovation can
be constructively discussed and bridged
(understood?) in order to cope with power
relations, social hierarchies, vested inter­
ests, acts of blaming and apprehensions
among actors involved.” ...and so forth.
As a mildly cynical but eternally hopeful
researcher, I venture to offer hope that
their article will make an impact on the
radar screen of policy formulation in
India, and we should be grateful for their
diligent documentation and analysis. Let
us hope that policy will take the hard
decision to support public expenditure
in manufacturing and distribution of t b -
control logistics, so that financial profit
may gracefully take the backstage, while
t b is controlled in a profit-indifferent
manner throughout the world.

Economic&PoliticalwEEKLY
REVIEW OF RURAL AFFAIRS
January 28,2012

Agrarian Transition and Emerging Challenges in Asian Agriculture: ~ P K Viswanathan, Gopal B Thapa,
A Critical Assessment J a y a n t K Routray, M o k b u l M A h m a d

Institutional and Policy Aspects of Punjab Agriculture: A Smallholder Perspective - S u kh p al Singh

Khap Panchayats: A Socio-Historical Overview - A ja y K u m ar

Rural Water Access: Governance and Contestation in a Semi-Arid

Watershed in Udaipur, Rajasthan - N C N a ra y a n a n , L a lith a K a m a th

Panchayat Finances and the Need for Devolutions from the State Government - A n a n d S a h a sra n a m a n
Temporary and Seasonal Migration: Regional Pattern,
Characteristics and Associated Factors - K una! Keshri, R B B h a g a t

For copies write to:

Circulation Manager,
Economic and Political Weekly,
320-321, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: circulation@epw.in

80 Ap r il 14, 2012 vo l x l v ii n o 15 CQS9 Economic &Political weekly

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 CURREN T STATISTICS EPW R esearch Foundation
The finances of non-go v ernm ent non-financial large public lim ited com panies show th a t th e grow th in gross fixed assets accelerated from 29.6% in 2004-05 to 40.7% in 2006-07, b u t slow ed to 11.3% in 2007-
OS. It recovered to 43.9% in 2008-09, b u t decelerated significantly to 10.8% and 8.5% during 2009-10 and 2010-11 respectively. Profit after tax to n et w orth w as in th e range o f 17.1% and 19.4% b etw een 2004-
05 and 2007-08, b u t d ro p ped to a range o f 12.9% -1 4 .0 % b etw een 2 008-09 and 2010-11. The dividend payout ratio increased from 20.4% in 2007-08 to 26.3% in 2010-11.
Macroeconomic Indicators
Index Numbers of Wholesale Prkos* R a tion (%):Mnt-to^int
(Base Year: 2004-05 = 100)A Weights February Over Over 12 Months Fiscal Year So Far Full Financial Year
2012 Month 2011 2010 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07
All Commodities 100.0 158.4 0.4 7.0 9.5 6.0 8.7 9.7 10.4 1.6 7.7 6.7
Primary Articles 20.1 201.5 0.9 6.3 15.9 7.1 14.3 13.4 22.2 5.4 9.6 12.8
Food Articles 14.3 192.3 0.5 6.1 11.0 7.4 10.8 9.4 20.6 8.0 5.6 13.2
Non-Food Articles 4.3 186.7 2.1 -2.6 34.4 -2.3 27.5 27.1 20.4 0.6 16.3 10.6
Minerals 1.5 329.6 1.6 25.3 17.7 23.6 13.6 15.2 37.9 -2.8 28.2 13.8
Fuel & Power 14.9 173.2 0.2 12.8 12.4 9.8 9.6 12.6 13.8 -3.4 7.4 1.1
Manufactured Products 65.0 141.7 0.4 5.7 6.3 4.4 6.2 7.5 5.3 1.7 7.1 6.3
Food Products 10.0 153.4 0.0 5.7 0.0 5.6 2.4 2.5 15.1 6.3 8.4 4.3
Food Index (computed) 24.3 176.3 0.3 5.9 6.8 6.8 7.7 6.8 18.5 7.3 6.7 9.6
All Commodities (Monthly average basis) 100.0 155.5 - 9.0 9.6 8.9 9.6 9.6 3.8 8.1 4.7 6.6
A The date of first release of data based on 2004-05 series wef 14 September 201 0 .
* Consequent upon the decision of the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) held on 24 January 2012, weekly release of Wholesale Price Index (WPI) forthe commodities/items under the Groups "Primary Articles" and
"Fuel and Power" is discontinued with immediate effect. WPI shall, henceforth, be released on a monthly basis only. The last Weekly WPI forthe weekending 14 January 2012.
Variation (%): Point-to-Point
Cost of Living Indices Latest Over Over 12 Months Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year
Month 2012 Month 2011 2010 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 2005-06
Industrial Workers (IW) (2001=100) 1992 0.5 7.6 8.8 7.6 8.8 14.9 8.0 7.9 6.7 5.3
8.8
Agricultural Labourers (AL) (1986-87=100) 6212 0.5 6.3 8.6 6.2 9.0 9.1 15.8 9.5 7.9 9.5 5.3
Note: Superscript numeral denotes month to which figure relates, e g, superscript 2 stands for February.
Variation
Money and Banking (Rs crore) 9 March Over Month OverYear Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year
2012 2011 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09
Money Supply (M3) 7283040 71150(1.0) 842680(13.1) 783550(12.1) 837660(15.0) 896790(16.0) 807920(16.8) 776930(19.3)
Currency with Public 1031910 15380(1.5) 110660(12.0) 117710(12.9) 153750(20.0) 146700(19.1) 102043(15.3) 97040(17.1)
Deposits Money with Banks 6249100 55910(0.9) 734440(13.3) 667470(12.0) 683260(14.1) 750230(15.5) 707606(17.2) 683375(19.9)
of which: Demand Deposits 670160 6210(0.9) -4980(-0.7) -47500(-6.6) -42830(-6.0) -310 (-0.0) 129281 (22.0) 10316(1.8)
Time Deposits 5578940 49700(0.9) 739420(15.3) 714970(14.7) 726090(17.7) 750540(18.2) 578325(16.4) 673059(23.5)
Net Bank Credit to Government 2364010 45050(1.9) 468120(24.7) 381240(19.2) 226700(13.6) 313580(18.8) 391853(30.7) 377815(42.0)
Bank Credit to Commercial Sector 4807590 106910(2.3) 657660(15.8) 572190(13.5) 658530(18.9) 744000(21.3) 476516(15.8) 435904(16.9)
Net Foreign Exchange Assets 1479900 11250(0.8) 100660(7.3) 86560(6.2) 97780(7.6) 111880(8.7) 367718 (-5.2) 57053 (4.4)
Banking Sector's Net Non-Monetary Liabilities 1382180 92070(7.1) 384880(38.6) 257420(22.9) 146670(17.2) 274130(32.2) -9050 (-1.1) 94672(12.4)
of which: RBI 557570 17210(3.2) 186540(50.3) 189220(51.4) 69390(23.0) 66710(22.1) -86316 (-22.3) 177709(84.5)
Reserve Money (23 March 2012) 1414830 25510(1.8) 118740(9.2) 38010(2.8) 140440(12.2) 221170(19.1) 167652(17.0) 59696(6.4)
Net RBI Credit to Centre 517990 29690(-) 202290(-) 123950(-) 104120(-) 182460 149819 176397
Scheduled Commercial Banks (9 March 2012)
Aggregate Deposits 5853370 52910(0.9) 709050(13.8) 645400(12.4) 651500(14.5) 715143(15.9) 658716(17.2) 637170(19.9)
Demand 598980 5720(1.0) -1160(-0.2) -42720(-6.7) -45470(-7.0) -3905 (-0.6) 122525 (23.4) -1224 (-0.2)
Time 5254390 47190(0.9) 710210(15.6) 688130(15.1) 696970(18.1) 719048(18.7) 536191 (16.2) 638395(23.9)
Investments (for SLR purposes) 1765130 33720(1.9) 268350(17.9) 263510(17.5) 112020(8 .1) 116867(8.4) 218342(18.7) 194694(20.0)
Bank Credit 4486680 104290(2.4) 628720(16.3) 544600(13.8) 613180(18.9) 697294(21.5) 469239(16.9) 413635(17.5)
Non-Food Credit 4402840 102030(2.4) 610950(16.1) 525040(13.5) 595590(18.6) 681500(21.3) 466961 (17.1) 411825(17.8)
Commercial Investments 171650 4780(2.9) 33271(24.0) 24049(16.3) 20308(17.2) 28872(24.5) 11654(11.0) 10911 (11.4)
Total Bank Assistance to Comml Sector 4574490 106810(2.4) 644221(16.4) 549089(13.6) 615898(18.6) 710372(21.4) 478615(16.9) 422736(17.5)
Note: Government Balances as on 31 March 2011 are after closure of accounts.
Index Numbers of Industrial Production January* Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year Averages
(Base 2004-05=100) Weights 2012 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07
General Index 100.00 187.9(6.8) 169.0(4.0) 162.5(8.3) 165.4(8.2) 152.9(5.3) 145.2(2.5) 141.7(15.5) 122.6(12.9)
Mining 14.157 137.2-(2.7) 125.5-(2.6) 128.9(6.3) 131.0(5.2) 124.5(7.9) 115.4(2.6) 112.5(4.6) 107.6(5.2)
Manufacturing 75.527 202.4(8.5) 179.9(4.5) 172.3(8.9) 175.6(8.9) 161.3(4.8) 153.8(2.5) 150.1(18.4) 126.8(15.0)
Electricity 10.316 151.1(3.2) 148.8(8.8) 136.8(5.3) 138.0(5.6) 130.8(6.1) 123.3(2.8) 120.0(6.4) 112.8(7.3)
* Indices forthe month are Quick Estimates.
Fiscal Year So Far 2010-11 End of Fiscal Year
Capital Market
30 March 2012 Month Ago Year Ago Trough Peak Trough Peak 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09
BSE Sensitive Index (1978-79=100) 17404(-9.8) 17753 19290(9.7) 15175 19702 16022 21005 19445(10.9) 17528(80.5) 9709(-37.9))
BSE-100 (1983-84=100) 9164(-8.6) 9321 10032(7.7) 7805 10262 8540 11141 10096(8.6) 9300(88.2) 4943(-40.0)
BSE-200 (1989-90=100) 2158(-8.8) 2191 2366(7.4) 1824 2427 2034 2753i 2379(8.1) 2200(92.9) 1140(-41.0)
S&P CNX Nifty (3 Nov 1995=1000) 5296(-8.5) 5385 5788(10.0) 4544 5912 4807 63121 5834(11.1) 5249(73.8) 3021 (-36.2)
Skindia GDR Index (2 Jan 1995=1000) 2316(-26.5) 2485 3151(9.4) 1875 3441 2477 34791 3151(9.3) 2883(134.2) 1153(-56.2)
Net Fll Investment in (US $ Mn Equities) - period end 110465(9.1) 108780 101220(31.5) - - 101454(31.5) 77159(43.1) 51669(-18.6)
February* Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year
Foreign Trade
2012 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07 2005-06 2004-05
Exports: Rs crore 121040 1274840(27.0) 1003785(33.2) 1118823(32.3) 845534(0.6) 840754(28.2) 655863(14.7) 571779(25.3) 456418(21.6) 375340(27.9)
USSmn 24618 267410(21.4) 220241(39.0) 245868(37.5) 178751 (-3.5) 185295(13.6) 163132(29.0) 126361(22.6) 103091(23.4) 83536(30.8)
Imports: Rs crore 195595 2069643(35.3) 1529295(24.4) 1596869(17.1) 1363736(-0.8) 1374434(35.8) 1012312(20.4) 840506(27.3) 660409(31.8) 501065(39.5)
USSmn 39782 434160(29.4) 335502(29.7) 350695(21.6) 288373(-5.0) 303696(20.7) 251654(35.5) 185749(24.5) 149166(33.8) 111517(42.7)
Non-POL US $ mn 27122 301599(24.9) 241491(33.9) 249006(23.7) 201237(-4.2) 210029(22.2) 171940(33.5) 128790(22.4) 105233(37.1) 76772(33.2)
Balance ofTrade: Rs crore -74555 -794803 -525510 -478047 -518202 -533680 -356449 -268727 -203991 -125725
USSmn -15164 -166750 -115261 -104827 -109621 -118401 -88522 -59388 -46075 -27981
* Provisional figures.
Foreign Exchange Reserves (excluding Variation Over
gold but including revaluation effects) 23 March 25 March 31 Mar Fiscal Year So Far Full Fiscal Year
2012 2011 2011 Month Ago Year Ago 2011-12 2010-11 2010-11 2009-10 2008-09 2007-08 2006-07
Rs crore 1344990 1245424 1245284 41770 99570 99710 73178 73038 -57826 33975 359500 189270
USSmn 264189 278930 278899 -1394 -14741 -14710 19239 19208 18264 -57821 107324 46816
Figures in brackets are percentage variations over the specified or over the comparable period of the previous year. (-) not relevant.
[Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates, as also the thematic notes and Special Statistics series, are available on our website: http://www.epwrf.in].

Economic & Political w eek ly ESSEI a p r i l 14, 2012 v o l x l v i i n o 15

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 STATISTICS
00
N) F in an ces o f N o n -G o v e rn m e n t N on-Financial Large P u b lic L im ited C o m p a n ies (Rscrore)
Year N um ber Sales Value of Mfg Rem uner­ O ther Depre­ Gross Interest O perating N o n -o p er Profit Tax Profit Dividend Profits Gross Fixed A ssets
of Total Rate of Production E xpenses ation to Expenses ciation Profit Profit Surplus(+) before Provision after Retained Total Rate of
C o m panies G row th in Em ployees* Provision Deficit (-) Tax Tax Grow th in
PerC ent P erC ent
1995-96 807 149420 152524 93790 12186 23151 5348 23284 7831 15453 955 16408 3206 13201 3467 9734 126678
1996-97 820 137026 (-8.3) 135977 86303 10978 19301 5709 18564 8256 10308 709 11017 2621 8396 2784 5612 124122 (-2.0)
1997-98 655 165923 (21.1) 167732 106105 13251 24574 8369 21645 10519 11126 1073 12199 3037 9163 3254 5909 173023 (39.4)
1998-99 964 163689 (-1.3) 164144 103927 13489 25791 8589 18036 10789 7247 1139 8386 2448 5938 2686 3252 176215 (1.8)
1999-00 990 153601 (-6.2) 156256 101648 13011 24676 7073 14832 9248 5584 1257 6841 2403 4438 2575 1863 152650 (-13.4)
2000-01 997 239890 (56.2) 240100 159888 16669 34170 11988 24961 13805 11156 2069 13225 3583 9642 4228 5415 216283 (41.7)
H
2001-02 1015 216315 (-9.8) 215239 140169 15242 30301 11675 23391 11350 12041 -818 11223 3587 7636 4440 3196 211979 (-2.0)
2002-03 964 283550 (31.1) 287175 181772 23405 41931 14807 32685 12462 20223 1730 21954 5699 16255 6258 9997 269501 (27.1)
2 003-04 1064 333087 (17.5) 333446 214543 26297 45450 16315 39993 10718 29274 2062 31336 8091 23245 7372 15874 291270 (8.1)
2 004-05 1431 456972 (37.2) 460195 305726 28774 57198 21212 61005 12440 48566 3015 51581 12489 39092 8657 29089 377554 (29.6)
o
2 005-06 1526 638319 (39.7) 649150 431907 45442 78009 25607 84498 13943 70555 4571 75126 18875 56251 4440 41004 518386 (37.3)
s
>o 2006-07 1558 999476 (56.6) 1022391 660064 75020 120561 38124 154058 21783 132275 4388 136663 33336 103326 22354 80973 729341 (40.7)
2007-08 1752 1107870 (10.8) 1109402 718773 82924 133297 39890 177756 24896 152860 2380 155240 37476 117764 25198 92567 811555 (11.3)
2 008-09 1438684 (29.9) 1454253 974438 114796 198683 54727 184635 41383 143252 12792 156044 37039 119006 26072 90063 1167810 (43.9)
2009-10 1632333 (13.5) 1651185 1114067 119802 194337 66839 242346 46521 195823 8219 204042 51904 152138 37809 111636 1294065 (10.8)
2010-11 2072 1998975 (22.5) 2032092 1407178 143109 221791 78398 269810 52746 217064 11184 228249 58857 169391 44637 121081 1404544 (8.5)
Selected Financial Ratios (%)
Year N um ber D ebt to Short-Term Sundry Sales Inventories Sundry Export to Gross Raw R em uner­ In terest Tax Gross Gross Profit Tax R etained Payout
of Equity Borrow ings C reditors to Gross to Sales D ebtors Sales Value M aterials ation to to Provision Profits Profit after Tax Provision Profit Ratio@
C om panies (equity to to N et Fixed to Sales A dded to C onsum ed Em ployees Gross to to Total to to Net to to (Dividend
ad ju sted for Inventories W orking A ssets Gross to Value of to Sales Profits Gross Net Sales W orth Profit Profit to Profit
revaluation) Capital Fixed Assets P roduction Profit A ssets b efo re Tax after Tax after Tax)
v> 1995-96 807 57.3 63.5 83.5 118.0 21.0 17.6 8.5 30.5 48.3 8.2 33.6 13.8 11.7 15.6 15.4 19.5 73.7 26.3
1996-97 820 62.4 68.4 92.4 110.4 20.5 19.5 8.5 27.3 50.3 8.0 44.5 14.1 9.4 13.5 10.4 23.8 66.8 33.2
■£. 24.9 64.5 35.5
1997-98 855 66.8 74.1 145.3 95.9 19.5 18.9 10.6 23.9 49.0 8.0 48.6 14.0 8.5 13.0 8.8
fo
O 1998-99 9 64 81.4 73.1 103.9 92.9 19.0 17.3 10.6 22.2 49.0 8.2 59.8 13.6 7.2 11.0 6.1 29.2 54.8 45.2
fo
1999-00 990 74.6 63.2 123.0 100.6 22.9 19.5 11.9 22.5 49.8 8.5 62.4 16.2 6.8 9.7 5.3 35.1 42.0 58.0
<
O
f 2000-01 997 73.6 64.0 175.8 110.9 18.4 13.9 24.0 53.6 6.9 55.3 14.4 8.1 10.4 8.2 27.1 56.2 43.8
14.6
X
§ 2001-02 1015 70.0 65.3 203.1 102.0 16.7 15.5 14.4 23.1 52.8 7.0 48.5 15.3 8.2 10.8 6.8 32.0 41.9 58.1
o
z 2002-03 9 64 62.1 77.8 214.7 105.2 16.1 15.4 14.6 25.8 51.0 8.3 38.1 17.4 9.0 11.5 11.4 26.0 61.5 38.5
c o
H 2003 -0 4 1064 50.5 81.0 282.0 114.4 15.0 14.7 16.8 28.1 52.9 7.9 26.8 20.2 9.9 12.0 13.7 25.8 68.3 31.7
n cn
2 004-05 1431 50.9 72.3 309.7 121.0 14.8 13.5 17.5 29.3 53.9 6.3 20.4 20.5 11.3 13.3 17.4 24.2 74.4 25.6
2 005-06 1526 46.1 76.4 138.6 123.1 15.6 14.5 18.4 30.0 54.2 7.1 16.5 22.3 11.2 13.2 17.1 25.1 72.9 27.1
2006-07 1558 43.8 69.2 119.8 137.0 17.4 14.2 19.0 36.1 51.7 7.5 14.1 21.6 12.5 15.4 19.4 24.4 78.4 21.6
2007-08 1752 40.2 83.9 112.1 136.5 17.1 14.8 18.8 36.6 51.1 7.5 14.0 21.1 11.9 16.0 17.5 23.3 79.6 20.4
g. 2008 -0 9 44.0 117.3 234.0 123.2 15.4 14.6 19.2 29.8 51.5 8.0 22.4 20.1 8.8 12.8 12.9 21.3 79.5 20.5
o
*T3 2009-10 42.5 87.8 149.5 126.1 16.0 14.9 18.1 32.9 52.5 7.3 19.2 21.4 10.2 14.8 14.0 23.9 75.6 24.4
O
2010-11 2072 39.5 91.4 135.4 142.3 16.1 15.0 18.9 34.5 55.0 7.2 19.5 21.8 9.7 13.5 13.4 24.4 73.7 26.3
@ Payout ratios are an obverse of ploughback or retained profit/PAT ratio.
* Remuneration to em ployees comprises (a) salaries, wages and bonus, (b) provident fund and employees' welfare expenses.
PI Large public limited com panies referto com panies with paid-up capital of Rs 1 crore and above.
X
5 Source: RBI (2012): "Finances of Large Public Limited Companies, 2010-11", Reserve Bankof India Bulletin, February and previous respective issues.
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