FEBRUARY 17, 2018 Vol LIII No 7

` 80

A SAMEEKSHA TRUST PUBLICATION www.epw.in

EDITORIALS Bringing Humanity to Prisons

Expediency and Principle
A Strategy of Tokenism
COMMENT
No Country for Justice
Rajasthan’s humane open prison system, which allows
for freer movement of prisoners, must not only be
safeguarded, but also emulated across India. page 37

LAW & SOCIETY

Of Delimitation, Demography and Democracy
Educated with Nothing to Do
What are the factors that explain the counter-intuitive
COMMENTARY
trend of unemployment rates being higher among
Bhima Koregaon and Politics of the Subaltern those who are better educated? page 43
Doubling Farmers’ Incomes

Problematising Hindi as the ‘Self’ and

English as the ‘Other’

Epidemic of Urban Floods
Taming the Monetary Beast
The Professor Goes to Moscow
BOOK REVIEWS
India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and
the Chaos of Empire
Internationalization of Higher Education
in India
INSIGHT
Prisons without Bars
SPECIAL ARTICLES
Unemployment Higher among the Educated?
Inner Line Regulation in Sibsagar–Naga Hills
Reflecting Ground Realities
India must return to the decadal revisions of constituency
boundaries so that representative institutions are
indicative of changing demographics. page 10
Memory of Bhima Koregaon
The Mahars’ role in defeating the Peshwas 200 years
ago is a potent political symbol that must be invoked
to fight upper-caste Hindutva nationalism in
the present. page 12

‘Illegal’ Bangladeshis in Akhand Bharat

Mahalanobis in Moscow
New archival evidence shows that while P C Mahalanobis
NOTES
sought closer economic ties with the Soviet Union,
Agrarian Crisis: A Ringside View—I
Soviet officials were cautious of any deeper connection
CURRENT STATISTICS with him. page 29
 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 | vol LIII No 7
Of Delimitation, Demography and Democracy
10 The freezing of the process of delimitation of constituency boundaries
till 2031 risks creating a “gerrymander-by-default” situation as
constituency boundaries stop reflecting the changing demographics.
— Alok Prasanna Kumar
Bhima Koregaon and Politics of the Subaltern
12 The violence at Bhima Koregaon is a reflection of the tension between
divisive Hindutva nationalism and resilient subaltern politics that
seeks justice. — Sai Thakur, Byasa Moharana
Doubling Farmers’ Incomes
15 Various mechanisms for increasing farmers’ incomes from the perspective
of small farmers and farm workers are critically examined.
— Sukhpal Singh
Hindi as the ‘Self’ and English as the ‘Other’
19 In the light of the ongoing prioritisation of Hindi by the central government,
the projection of Hindi as the “self” is problematic. — Reenu Punnoose,
Muhammed Haneefa A P
Epidemic of Urban Floods
23 A study of floods in Nashik highlights the need to understand urban
floods as an occurrence within a sociopolitical space. — Shilpa Dahake
Federal Reserve’s Unwinding and Global Monetary Governance
26 The pivotal role of central bank communication, the impact of monetary
policy spillovers, and the changing nature of central bank mandates are
perhaps the most important takeaways from a decade of financial turmoil
and monetary policy interventions. — Kanad Bagchi
The Professor Goes to Moscow
29 Using new archival material, P C Mahalanobis’s desire for Indo–Soviet
ties and the Soviet response to such alliances are discussed.
— David C Engerman
A Study of the Open Prison System of Rajasthan
37 Based on a report on open prisons written by the author, a series of
suggestions are made to allow the open prison system to fulfil its
potential for prisoner reform. — Smita Chakraburtty
Why Is Unemployment Higher among the Educated?
43 Whether the factors responsible for unemployment among the educated
differ from the uneducated is explored based on a multinomial probit model.
— Indrajit Bairagya
Debating the Inner Line Regulation in Sibsagar–Naga Hills
52 Regulation of the Inner Line has played an important role in postcolonial
political construction of the highland–lowland duality and in the
creation of a contested social space in the Sibsagar–Naga Hills.
— Debojyoti Das
Inscriptions of Race and Religion on Citizenship
62 Both the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the Bharatiya Janata Party
respond aggressively to the issue of “illegal” Muslim Bangladeshis, the
largest “illegal” migrant group in India. — Rimple Mehta
Agrarian Crisis: A Ringside View—I
69 This personal account traces the developments leading to the agrarian
crisis in the context of a village in Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh.
— Uma Shankari
EDITORIALS
Expediency and Principle ....................................7
A Strategy of Tokenism ....................................... 8
COMMENT
No Country for Justice ........................................ 9
FROM 50 YEARS AGO............................................. 9
LAW & SOCIETY
Of Delimitation, Demography and Democracy
—Alok Prasanna Kumar ..................................... 10
COMMENTARY
Bhima Koregaon and Politics of the Subaltern
—Sai Thakur, Byasa Moharana.......................... 12
Doubling Farmers’ Incomes:
Mechanisms and Challenges
—Sukhpal Singh ................................................ 15
Problematising Hindi as the ‘Self’ and English
as the ‘Other’
—Reenu Punnoose, Muhammed Haneefa A P ...... 19
Epidemic of Urban Floods:
Politics, Development and Ecology
—Shilpa Dahake ................................................23
Taming the Monetary Beast: Federal Reserve’s
Unwinding and Global Monetary Governance
—Kanad Bagchi..................................................26
The Professor Goes to Moscow
—David C Engerman ..........................................29
BOOK REVIEWS
India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos
of Empire—Chaos or Conquest
—Lakshmi Subramanian....................................33
Internationalization of Higher Education
in India—An International Dimension
—Lakshmi Iyer ...................................................34
INSIGHT
Prisons without Bars: A Study of the Open Prison
System of Rajasthan
—Smita Chakraburtty........................................37
SPECIAL ARTICLES
Why Is Unemployment Higher among
the Educated?
—Indrajit Bairagya ............................................43
Colonial Construction of a Frontier: Debating the
Inner Line Regulation in Sibsagar–Naga Hills
—Debojyoti Das..................................................52
‘Illegal’ Bangladeshis in Akhand Bharat:
Inscriptions of Race and Religion on Citizenship
—Rimple Mehta..................................................62
NOTES
Agrarian Crisis: A Ringside View—I
—Uma Shankari ............................................... 69
CURRENT STATISTICS ..........................................78
appointments/programmes
announcements .................................................81
Letters .................................................................4
 LETTERS
Issn 0012-9976
Ever since the first issue in 1966,
EPW has been India’s premier journal for Rejoinder to UGC Panel Audit The UGC panel, it may be recalled, was
comment on current affairs
and research in the social sciences.
specifically tasked with probing alleged
It succeeded Economic Weekly (1949–1965),
which was launched and shepherded
by Sachin Chaudhuri,
who was also the founder-editor of EPW.
L aurence Gautier’s article, “Why Does
the UGC Want to Drop the ‘M’ from
AMU?” (EPW, 6 January 2018), is a compre-
irregularities in 10 central universities
which included, among others, Aligarh
Muslim University (AMU) and Allahabad
As editor for 35 years (1969–2004)
Krishna Raj hensive account, and much needed inter- University. By raising questions about the
gave EPW the reputation it now enjoys. vention into a significant issue. However, basic character of AMU like removing
Editor certain other things seem to have been in- the word “Muslim” from the university
Lina Mathias advertently left out and need to be added. (Minister of Human Resource Develop-
Editor–DESIGNATE The University Grants Commission ment, Prakash Javadekar dismissed the
GOPAL GURU
(UGC) audit remarked that Lucknow’s suggestion as beyond the mandate of the
SENIOR Assistant editorS
lubna duggal Ambedkar University was in a state of committee), by wrongly typecasting the
ABHISHEK SHAW “complete and practically irreversible university as “feudal” and “obscurantist,”
copy editorS decline and collapse” (Hindustan Times, and by showing complete disregard for the
jyoti shetty
Tejas Harad 25 November 2017). It further stated that history and culture of the institution, the
Assistant editorS the “teachers are substandard and the UGC panel has clearly exceeded its brief.
SANGEETA GHOSH students are substandard,” and that the As for the panel’s charge of the segrega-
ANISHA GEORGE
Ishan Mukherjee “final death knell of the University is the tion of sexes in AMU, it is for everyone to
ASSISTANT Editor (DIGITAL) role of caste and the part it has played see that boys and girls study together in all
SHIREEN AZAM in completely polarising the institution postgraduate and professional courses. It
editorIAL Assistant into various groups, special interests, is true that the Women’s College of the
JEMIMAH GOMES
and political groupings.” Aligarh Muslim University does not have
production
u raghunathan What is disconcerting about this report co-education, but the reasons for this are
suneethi nair is the fact that it chooses to forget that historical and cultural. In fact, there are
Circulation MANAGER almost every campus in India has student numerous prestigious all-female institu-
B S Sharma
outfits affiliated to various political parties tions such as Lady Shri Ram College,
Advertisement Manager
Kamal G Fanibanda represented in the legislative houses. Miranda House, Indraprastha College
General Manager
Campuses like Banaras Hindu University (Delhi University), IT College (Lucknow
Gauraang Pradhan (BHU) and Allahabad University are more University) among others in the country.
Publisher infamous for caste-based factionalism Shreemati Nathibai Damodar Thackersey
K Vijayakumar than possibly any other central university. (SNDT) Women’s University is an all-
editorial: edit@epw.in
In October 1958, Ram Manohar Lohia, a women university in Maharashtra. Can
Circulation: circulation@epw.in
Advertising: advertisement@epw.in BHU alumnus, in a pamphlet, observed: exclusive arrangement for women be
Economic & Political Weekly The Banaras University has been the home of
termed as gender segregation? Do these
320–322, A to Z Industrial Estate much filth, which government commissioners colleges instill a strong sense of inferiority
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel
Mumbai 400 013 can neither report nor diagnose, for they are and inhibition among girls? If yes, as
Phone: (022) 4063 8282 part of it. Student leaders have been known suggested by the panel, will the UGC take
to build their leadership and to make money
EPW Research Foundation the lead in turning all of these into co-
EPW Research Foundation, established in 1993, conducts out of admissions and examinations. Teachers
research on financial and macro-economic issues in India. make money out of examinations also under
education institutions?
Director the table. In this, the Banaras University is a The panel also speaks about the need
J DENNIS RAJAKUMAR replica of all other universities in India, ex- for a “diverse mix of students” which
C 212, Akurli Industrial Estate
Kandivali (East), Mumbai 400 101 cept perhaps that its dealings in respect of suggests that there are, in AMU, students
admissions are somewhat more irregular.
Phones: (022) 2887 3038/41 from only one or two regions. The uni-
epwrf@epwrf.in
None of the 10 central universities versity, however, attracts students and
Sameeksha TrusT audited by the UGC have been given the teachers from all regions and sections of
(Publishers of Economic & Political Weekly)
Board of Trustees original copy of the audit report, nor has society, and there already exists a fair
Deepak Nayyar, Chairman it been tabled in Parliament. If the report degree of diversity on campus. In the
D N Ghosh, Managing Trustee purports to make the universities take same way, the panel’s charge of the
André Béteille, Deepak Parekh,
Romila Thapar, Rajeev Bhargava, necessary correctives, then why has it “seeds of a ghetto culture” at AMU ap-
Dipankar Gupta, Shyam Menon not been shared with them? Why do we pears to replicate those familiar orien-
Printed and published by K Vijayakumar, for and witness selective, piecemeal leakages of talist tropes where the colonial masters
on behalf of Sameeksha Trust and printed at
Modern Arts and Industries, 151, A–Z Industrial Estate, selected parts of the report only to the spoke about the colonised from a position
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai–400 013
and published at 320–322, A–Z Industrial Estate, media? Why has the BHU been left out of of superiority. The racial arrogance with
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai–400 013
this audit? Is it because it falls in the which they stereotyped and contemptu-
Editor: Lina Mathias (Editor responsible for
selection of news under the PRB Act) Prime Minister’s Lok Sabha constituency? ously profiled the orientals, not only
4 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol liII no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

served as a tool of subjugation, but also
legitimised it.
The panel rightly emphasises the
need to enhance students’ employability
through vocational courses. The courses at
AMU, however, are regularly updated and
revised, and are on par with those of any
top university. Though it can have more,
the university has no dearth of vocational
courses. Every university certainly needs
to keep doing a lot, but to paint the entire
culture at AMU as feudal and obscurantist,
in an extremely generalised manner,
certainly smacks of prejudice and bias.
When the panel suggested merging the
Departments of Shia and Sunni Theology
to form a Department of Comparative
Religion, it should have taken note of
the existence of Catholic and Protestant
studies departments and separate centres
on studying two prominent sects of
Buddhism at premier academic institu-
tions in the world. One further wonders
why the panel turned a blind eye to
AMU’s Centre for Interfaith Understand-
ing which does much the same thing.
Finally, the UGC panel also finds AMU’s
method of selecting its vice chancellor
faulty and recommends that a search com-
mittee does this job. It may be noted that
the university follows a far more rigorous
system whereby five recommendations
are made by the university’s 27-member
executive council. Of the five, three
names are shortlisted by the University
Court, a body of more than 150 members,
and sent to the visitor (President of India)
who ticks one of these names. It is a pro-
cess that is stipulated by the AMU Act, 1981.
It is anybody’s guess whether a govern-
ment-appointed search committee of three
members can be influenced easily or two
large bodies having members from dif-
ferent professions and places.
The highlighting of the alleged short-
comings of AMU at this time appears selec-
tive, targeted and part of a larger design.
Asim Siddiqui, Mohammad Sajjad
Aligarh Muslim University
Market Reforms for Agriculture
P rime Minister Narendra Modi de-
scribed the Union Budget 2018 as
farmer-friendly, common man-friendly,
business environment-friendly and
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
development-friendly. The major thrust
to agriculture and allied activities is the
allocation of `63,836 crore, which is an
increase of more than 12% compared to
the 2017 budget allocation. Targeting for
institutional credit increased by 10% and
is now `11 lakh crore. Minimum support
price (MSP) is to be fixed at a minimum of
50% higher than the cost of production.
The budget also provides for the upgrada-
tion of 22,000 rural “haats” into gramin
agricultural markets and for linking them
to the e-NAM (National Agricultural
Market) platform. Besides, it also includes
some schemes such as “Operation Green”
to promote farm production. The shift in
focus from a production-centric approach
to a more comprehensive approach, in
order to improve input, production, mar-
keting, and value addition of agricultural
produce, is a welcome step. However,
more needs to be done at the grass roots
to ensure that benefits get accrued to the
farming community.
Let us focus our attention on some of the
market reforms undertaken in the country.
The introduction of e-market systems in
Agricultural Produce Market Committees
(APMCs), is considered a significant step
towards market reforms. But, studies have
indicated that the three prominent stake-
holders associated with market transac-
tions within APMC, that is, traders, commis-
sion agents and farmers are not reaping
the benefits of the new system (Nidhi
Aggarwal et al, “The Long Road to Trans-
formation of Agricultural Markets in India:
Lessons from Karnataka,” EPW, 14 October
2017). It is a well-established fact that
transactions at APMCs do not take place
purely on demand and supply factors of
any commodity. Several other social fac-
tors also influence the trade. This leads to
interlocking of markets which is well-
documented in literature. An evaluation
study on the efficacy of MSPs on farmers,
undertaken by NITI Aayog in 12 major
states of India also emphasised the need
to increase awareness among farmers
EPW Engage
The following article has been published in the past week in the EPW Engage section
(www.epw.in/engage).
(1) A ‘Reading’ without History: Questioning a Flawed Reading of Left Politics in Tripura— Saqib Khan
vol liII no 7
LETTERS
about MSP, announce MSP well in advance,
and avoid delays in MSP payments. It also
highlighted the need to improve facili-
ties at procurement centres, such as dry-
ing yards, weighing bridges, and toilets
provided to the farmers, along with
setting up well-maintained godowns in
order to improve storage and reduce waste
(Report No 231, Development Monitoring
and Evaluation Office, NITI Aayog).
The weakest link even today in the
agricultural system is the exact estima-
tion of area sown under the crops, and
thereby accurate projections of arrivals
in the market, especially with respect to
perishable commodities. Mechanisms to
undertake accurate mapping of supply–
demand scenarios of different agricul-
tural commodities across the country, and
in different seasons, along with siphon-
ing and reallocation of surplus produce,
should be put in place for each of the
major commodities.
Good rural infrastructure like roads
and godowns play a vital role in estab-
lishing the network across the country.
For all major commodities, the Indian
Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR)
has established commodity/crop specific
research institutions throughout the
country. These institutions should play a
crucial role in providing vital information
required by the farmers and in extending
market intelligence. Support from private
players should also be encouraged. If
this mechanism ensures fair and remuner-
ative prices to farmers throughout the year,
it would obviously take care of farmers’
welfare. Schemes like TOP (tomatoes,
onion and potatoes) announced by the
centre should help in augmenting such
efforts. Besides, agricultural universities
should focus more on equipping the sys-
tem with trained humanpower to under-
take such formidable tasks. The need of
the hour is to evolve a holistic approach
to address the agrarian crisis.
H Chandrashekar
Bengaluru
5
LETTERS
Subscription Rates
Print Edition – For India Web Edition/Digital Archives
Rates for Six Months (in `) The full content of the EPW and the entire archives are also available to those who do not wish
Category Print Print + Digital Archives to subscribe to the print edition.
Individuals 1,485 2,065 India (in `) SAARC (in US $) Rest of the World (in US $)
Rates for One Year (in `) Category Number of Number of Number of
Category Print Print + Digital Archives Concurrent Users Concurrent Users Concurrent Users
(According to Number of Concurrent Users)
Institutions Up to 5 4,484 Up to 5 190
Up to 5 More than 5 Single User
More than 5 10,030 More than 5 55 More than 5 400
Institutions 4,500 8,850 12,980
Individuals 2,500 3,186 Individuals Single User 1,770 Single User 20 Single User 35
Students 1,450 2,006
Rates for Three Years (in `)
Types of Web Access to the Digital Archives
Category Print Print + Digital Archives Individual subscribers can access the site by a username and a password, while
Single User institutional subscribers get access by specifying IP ranges.
Individuals 6,700 8,968
To know more about online access to the archives and how to access the archives send
us an email at circulation@epw.in and we will be pleased to explain the process.
Concessional rates are restricted to students in India. To subscribe at concessional rates,
How to Subscribe:
please submit proof of eligibility from an institution.
Payment can be made by either sending a demand draft/cheque in favour of
Print Edition: Subscriber receives the print copy by post to the address given. Economic and Political Weekly or by making online payment with a credit card/
Print plus Digital Archives: Subscriber receives the print copy and has access to the entire archives net banking on our secure site at www.epw.in.
on the EPW website.
Address for communication: Economic & Political Weekly
Print Edition — For SAARC and Rest of the World (Air Mail) 320–322, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013, India
Airmail Subscription for One Year (in US $)
Print Print + Digital Archives Increase in Subscription RatesI
(According to Number of Concurrent Users)
Institutions Up to 5 More than 5 Single User
The EPW is compelled to raise the digital subscription rates on account of Goods and
SAARC 155 185
Services Tax (GST) being applicable to digital subscriptions. The GST rate for Online
Rest of the World 345 395 645
Individuals
Information Data Base Access and Retrieval (OIDAR) is 18%. The category Print plus
SAARC 135 145 Digital will also attract 18% as GST. The subscription rates quoted are inclusive of
Rest of the World 205 225 the 18% GST rate, which is applicable on digital subscriptions.

Notes for Contributors

Contributors are requested to follow EPW's style
sheet while preparing their articles. The style
sheet is posted on EPW's website at
http://www.epw.in/terms-policy/style-sheet.html.
It will help immensely for faster processing and
error-free editing if writers follow the recommended
style sheet, especially with regard to citation and
preparation of the bibliography.
Special Articles
EPW welcomes original research papers in any of the
social sciences.
• Articles must be no more than 8,000 words
long, including notes and references. Longer articles
will not be processed.
• Contributions should be sent preferably by email.
• Special articles should be accompanied by an
abstract of a maximum of 200 words.
• Papers should not have been simultaneously
submitted for publication to another journal or
newspaper. If the paper has appeared earlier in a
different version, we would appreciate a copy of
this along with the submitted paper.
• Graphs and charts need to be prepared
in MS Office (Word/Excel) and not in jpeg or
other formats.
• Receipt of articles will be immediately
acknowledged by email.
• Every effort is taken to complete early processing
of the papers we receive. However, we receive 70
articles every week and adequate time has to be
provided for internal reading and external refereeing.
It can therefore take up to four months for a final
decision on whether the paper for the Special Article
section is accepted for publication.
• Articles accepted for publication can take up to
six to eight months from date of acceptance to
appear in the EPW. Papers with immediate relevance
for policy would be considered for early publication.
Please note that this is a matter of editorial judgment.
Commentary
EPW invites short contributions to the ‘Commentary’
section on topical social, economic and political
developments. These should ideally be between 1,000
and 2,500 words.
A decision on Commentary-length articles will be
communicated within 6-8 weeks, or earlier.
Keywords
Authors are requested to list six to eight keywords
for their articles.
Book Reviews
EPW sends out books for review. It does not normally
accept unsolicited reviews. However, all reviews that
are received are read with interest and unsolicited
review on occasion is considered for publication.
Discussion
EPW encourages researchers to comment on
articles published in EPW. Submissions should be 800
to 1,600 words.
Letters
Readers of EPW are encouraged to comment
(300 words) on published articles.
All letters should have the writer’s full
name and postal address.
Postscript
EPW welcomes submissions of 600-800 words on
travel, literature, dance, music and films for
publication in this section.
General Guidelines
• Writers are requested to provide full details for
correspondence: postal address, day-time phone
numbers and email address.
EPW requests writers not to send revised versions
based on stylistic changes/additions, deletions of
references, minor changes, etc, as this poses
challenges in processing. Revised versions will not be
processed. When there are major developments in
the field of study after the first submission, authors
can send a revised version.
Copyright
• EPW posts all published articles on its website
and may reproduce them on CDs.
• EPW also posts all published articles on select
databases.
• Copyright of all articles published in the Journal
belongs to the author or to the organisation where
the author is employed as determined by the
author’s terms of employment.
Permission for Reproduction
• No published article or part thereof should be
reproduced in any form without prior permission of
the author(s).
A soft/hard copy of the author(s)’s approval should
be sent to EPW.
Address for communication:
Economic & Political Weekly
320–322, A to Z Industrial Estate
Ganpatrao Kadam Marg,
Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013, India
Email: edit@epw.in, epw.mumbai@gmail.com

6 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol liII no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 FEBRUARY 17, 2018
Expediency and Principle
In Nagaland, there are no permanent allies or enemies in politics.
W
hen Nagaland votes on 27 February, the real battle
will not be just between different political parties but
also between expediency and principle. On 29 January,
11 political parties signed an agreement to boycott the polls until a
settlement was reached between the centre and the Nagas about
their future status. Yet, within days the boycott fizzled out. Led
by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) that had also signed the state-
ment, all parties justified abandoning the principle that had
drawn them together and instead chose the path of expediency.
No party wanted to risk another party winning the election by
default as had happened in 1998 when the Congress party won
practically all seats uncontested.
As far as political alliances go in Nagaland, the fluidity of
choices exceeds anything witnessed in mainland India. Currently,
all 60 elected members of the assembly are part of the ruling
Democratic Alliance of Nagaland (DAN) headed by the Naga
People’s Front (NPF). There is no opposition. The BJP has been
an ally of the NPF for more than a decade. Eight Congress legis-
lators joined DAN in 2015. So oddly, both BJP and the Congress
were part of the same alliance. Yet in the run-up to this election,
the BJP has announced a pre-electoral alliance with NPF’s newly
formed rival, the Nationalist Democratic Progressive Party (NDPP),
a breakaway group led by former chief minister Neiphiu Rio.
Despite this, current chief minister T R Zeliang announced that
his party was not opposed to a post-election alliance with the BJP.
Thus you have two regional parties opposed to each other with
a common national partner and two national parties opposed to
each other with a common regional partner.
The explanation for this strange state of affairs is fairly evident.
The party that wins in the state has to ensure that it is aligned to
the party that rules the centre. This has been the governing
principle of Nagaland’s politics for decades. Like most other
northeastern states, Nagaland is entirely dependent on central
funds. No elected government can afford to alienate the party
in power at the centre.
Yet, while this reality might explain the way politics plays out, it
does not explain why all parties, even those critical of the ruling
party at the centre, feel they have to fall in line. The only real
opposition in Nagaland is civil society and the church. Signifi-
cantly, the powerful Nagaland Baptist Church Council (NBCC) has
suggested that the Nagas should be wary of the BJP’s Hindutva
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIii no 7
agenda and in a recent statement has asked Nagas “not to com-
promise our religion for the sake of development and political
gain.” To this the BJP, a party that has perfected the art of using
religion during elections, responded, without a trace of irony,
that “religious polarisation seems to be the choice strategy of
some people in Nagaland during elections.” Although all 20 BJP
candidates are Christian and Naga, it will be interesting to see
whether the NBCC’s statement has an impact on their prospects.
The principle that led to the call for a boycott was the long-
pending question of Nagaland’s political status. Despite being
granted statehood in 1963, the idea of a separate Naga nation
has never died. Successive ceasefire agreements between insur-
gent groups and the central government brought some semblance
of peace to the state, but conflict never ended. In August 2015,
when the largest of the insurgent groups, the National Socialist
Council of Nagaland (Isak-Muivah) reached a “framework
agreement” with the current government at the centre, hopes
were raised that there would be some form of settlement. Yet
the nature of the agreement remains shrouded in mystery till
today with the advent of an imminent announcement being
dangled every few months. It was the prospect of a settlement
that prompted Naga civil society groups, insurgent groups and
political parties to demand that elections be deferred.
The outcome of these elections is unlikely to provide any solace
or solutions. Despite there being no paucity of funds, Nagaland
suffers from acute developmental neglect on a number of fronts,
most visible in the state of its roads. It is also evident in the lack
of jobs for a highly literate young population and in the continuing
frustration of ordinary people who pay indirect taxes to the
insurgent groups to keep the peace but get no direct benefits from
either these taxes, or the central government’s largesse. Much
of that goes into the pockets of the political class that knows the
dividends of being in power. Regardless of political affiliation, it
is the patronage and wealth linked to power that guides politics.
Despite its dismal politics, Nagaland’s civil society gives hope.
Its members have pushed through a peace process, spoken out
about corruption in politics and campaigned for clean elections.
Last year, Naga women’s groups raised the contentious issue of
gender representation in institutions of governance. They failed
in their demand for 33% reservation in municipal bodies. Yet they
succeeded in triggering a debate on the issue of gender equality
7
EDITORIALS
in a traditional society. In these elections, only five women are
contesting. There has not been a single woman elected to the
state legislature, and only one woman elected to Parliament
A Strategy of Tokenism
Modi’s Palestine visit does not lessen the mutual ardour between India and Israel.
T
he term in diplomatic circles is “de-hyphenation.” In plainer
terms it means casting away the fig leaf of principle and
embracing the culture of a violent, endless colonialism.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent visit to occupied
Palestine was part of a wider tour of the region. It may have
been a way of restoring a balance gone askew since his visit to
Israel last July, reciprocated by his Israeli counterpart in January.
Neither involved the token genuflection towards the Palestinian
cause that has been customary in earlier episodes of India’s
growing intimacy with Israel.
A meaningless ritual can be discarded without anybody noticing.
Foreign policy establishments though, have their own institu-
tional momentum and Modi’s visit to the Palestinian territories
was perhaps an effort to restore older verities before they are
perceived as irreparably damaged. This also serves as a hedge
against potentially disruptive events in a highly volatile region.
It is a safe bet that Modi’s visit to Palestine does not point
towards any lessening of the mutual ardour between India and
Israel. That much is evident from the rather laboured rationali-
sation given by a former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal,
now with a right-wing think tank that has been a rich source of
recruits into the Modi administration. “With Israel maintaining
a hard posture on Palestinian demands and India favouring a
political solution based on United Nations (UN) resolutions and
other peace-making processes between Israel and Palestine,
we have the challenge of balancing these two realities,” Sibal
states. “In this regard, we have done well to de-hyphenate the
two relationships.”
In other words, since Israel has made evident its complete dis-
interest in anything like a just peace, India might as well get
used to the situation. The relationship with Israel will continue to
grow, subsidising the military–industrial complex in the Zionist
state and enabling it to stretch out its brutal occupation.
Hyphenation was never a morally sound strategy, but it at
least maintained the pretext that India intended holding Israel
to promises of good faith in peace negotiations. Prior to estab-
lishing full diplomatic relations with Israel in 1992, India played
host to the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, seemingly to secure
an assurance that the peace process was on track towards a fair
outcome. There was little to show for the peace process at
the time and the diplomatic opening was a step taken in the
extravagance of hope rather than realistic expectation.
There was a political interest served. The Soviet Union, India’s
most significant strategic partner and its principal supplier of
energy and weaponry, had passed into history. Israel seemed part
of the package that India had to take on board to ensure that its
8 FEBRUARY 17, 2018
since 1963. It is the questions that civil society groups are rais-
ing within Nagaland that represent the real politics in that state,
not the election drama that is enacted every few years.
overtures to the West, then just incipient, were fully productive. But
after the first public admission of the secret ardour, India went back
to being a reticent diplomatic partner. The only high-level exchange
that occurred through the 1990s was a foreign ministerial visit by
the dreamy-eyed Shimon Peres, who still had some credibility as
the simulacrum of a peace process began to be assembled in 1993.
By the time it came to planning a prime ministerial visit in 2003,
Israel had already put an end to all pretences. Prime Minister
Ariel Sharon had run a bloody rampage through the West Bank
under Operation Defensive Shield, with a massacre in Jenin
entering a catalogue of atrocities already overflowing with
his accomplishments.
With Yasser Arafat then under siege as the Israeli military
ringed his compound in the city of Ramallah, there was little
opportunity for the token visit by a Palestinian dignitary to provide
fake balance. That ritual was restored in 2015, when with Jordan
as springboard, India’s President Pranab Mukherjee arrived in an
occupied Palestine seething with unrest. The President’s meet-
ings with the beleaguered political leadership of the Palestinian
National Authority were given precedence over engagements
in Israel. This was part of the careful choreography of India’s
balancing act between symbolic support for Palestine and deep-
ening strategic engagement with Israel.
As then, Israel is unlikely to take Modi’s visit to Palestine amiss
or pay it any special heed. When asked on his recent visit if India’s
UN vote against the United States’ (US) recognition of Jerusalem as
Israel’s capital meant anything, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu waved it away with absolute nonchalance. Israel is
comfortable with the broader direction in which the relation-
ship with India is evolving and will have no reason to feel
aggrieved over a visit to Palestine that is mostly symbolic.
India fits perfectly well into Israel’s strategy to deal with a
situation arising from a souring of its relationship with Europe.
Netanyahu has dealt with growing European exasperation in
recent times with moral lectures on the historic culpability for
anti-Semitism and rude reminders that Israel has other more
fruitful places to go for strategic and economic partnerships.
India seems to have backed itself into a situation where
it has no option but to acquiesce in the brutal Israeli endgame
to demolish Palestinian resistance. The Palestinians have
spurned the US as a mediator, but with the continuing chaos in
Syria and the wider region, there is also an expectation that the
global focus will not return to Palestine for several years. That
may afford India the leeway to extract all it wants from the
dalliance with Israel, regardless of the corrosive impact it
could have on solidarity within and credibility outside.
vol lIii no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 COMMENT

No Country for Justice

In Kashmir, concern for the rights of army personnel glosses over the human rights of civilians.
Gautam Navlakha writes:

A
n ominous sign of jingoism triumphing over the course
of justice in Kashmir is the simulated concern over an army
officer’s plight against whom an FIR (first information
report) was sought to be filed after the firing incident on 27 Janu-
ary in Gawanpora village of Shopian district. On 12 February, a
petition seeking to “protect the morale of the soldiers” was heard
by a three-judge bench of the Supreme Court headed by the Chief
Justice of India. The Court ruled in an ex parte order that no
“coercive action” be initiated against Major Aditya Kumar of 10
Garhwal Rifles by the Jammu and Kashmir Police. A few days
earlier, on 9 February, the National Human Rights Commission
(NHRC) decided to enquire into “stone pelting and assault by an
unruly and disruptive mob on army personnel” in response to a
petition filed by children of serving armed forces officers and agreed
that “the issue of safety of soldiers” deserves consideration. By rak-
ing up the human rights of armed soldiers in a conflict area where
they also exercise the right to kill on mere suspicion, the denial
of justice to civilian victims is being glossed over. With a stay on
investigation, even recording of a complaint is now forbidden.
In a statement on 28 January, the Indian Army defended the
27 January firing and insisted they had followed “standard operating
procedure.” Three young men, Javed Ahmed Bhat, Suhail Javed
Lone and Rayees Ahmed Ganai died in army firing. The army claims
that they were “constrained to open fire in self-defence to prevent
lynching of a junior commissioned officer (JCO) and burning of
vehicle by mob.” But this claim was not backed by any detail.
The facts tell a different story. On 29 January, Chief Minister
Mehbooba Mufti informed the assembly that the police had ad-
vised the army to avoid the Gawanpora route in view of the tension
following the killing of two Hizbul Mujahideen militants in a
firefight on 24 January in Chaigund. One of the two militants killed
that day was a resident of Gawanpora. At Chaigund, the 44RR had
killed not just the two militants but also injured three civilians.
As a consequence, passions were already running high in the
area at the loss of local militants as well as civilian casualties.
The army ignored the police advisory. The first army convoy
that passed through the village in the morning had a fracas with
locals over posters paying tribute to the local militant. Around
3.30 pm, a convoy of 10 Garhwal Regiment led by Major Aditya
Kumar decided to travel through Gawanpora. In an already
volatile situation, taking the convoy twice through the same vil-
lage was a reckless move. Civilian accounts also contest the army’s
claim of lynching of the JCO, and wonder how it is possible to
drag and lynch a soldier sitting inside an armoured vehicle.
“Operation All Out” launched in May 2017 has resulted in killing
of 217 militants, 108 civilians and 125 armed forces personnel.
Nineteen out of 108 civilians were killed during encounters.
Chaigund and Gawanpora witnessed five civilian deaths.
In any case, recording an FIR is only the first step. The investiga-
tion is seldom completed against armed forces personnel. Even
if the investigation results in filing a charge sheet, the process
comes to a grinding halt because criminal courts and the ag-
grieved civilians require permission of the central government
to prosecute armed forces personnel. According to a written
submission by the union minister of defence to the Rajya Sabha
on 1 January 2018, of the 50 requests for sanction for prosecu-
tion of armed forces personnel, sanction was denied in 47 cases
while in three cases the matter is pending. Seventeen cases per-
tained to killing of civilians, 16 to custodial killings, eight to
custodial disappearance and four to alleged rape.
For 28 years, Jammu and Kashmir has remained a “Disturbed
Area” where the army and the paramilitary forces have escaped
accountability for the crimes they have perpetrated. That 28 years
later this still continues is a sad commentary on the lack of political
imagination of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) government. It
is also testimony to the futility of seeking a military solution for
something successive Indian governments have caused, prolonged
and aggravated. Javaid Ahmad Lone, the father of Suhail Lone of
Gawanpora, told the Indian Express, “We don’t want anything from
the government, we don’t need compensation, we don’t need any
job and we don’t need any probe. It is their court, their army,
their police and their administration.” When the aggrieved feel
thus, to believe that the armed forces need protection is a cruel
joke. Shopian shows that the groundswell of opinion in Kashmir
remains resolutely opposed to military suppression. Paradoxi-
cally, with no democratic political solution in sight and justice
denied, the desire of Kashmiris for “azaadi” stands vindicated.
Gautam Navlakha (gnavlakha@gmail.com) is a member of the People’s
Union for Democratic Rights, Delhi.

From 50 Years Ago
Vol III, No 7 FebrUARY 17, 1968
CAPITAL VIEW
Is the Sickness Becoming Chronic?
Romesh Thapar
Fortunately, food is no longer a threatening chal-
lenge; estimates are now crossing the 100 million
mark and there is likely to be steady progress on
this front. But the public sector needs a shaking
up. Incompetent management by ‘generalists’,
together with ministerial/secretariat interference
and ill-informed parliamentary questioning, have
made a terrible mess of this massive asset. Today,
only the most drastic measures can salvage this
industrial base. The sooner this is understood the
better, for even the induction of brilliant manag-
ers cannot resolve problems spawned by over-
staffing and high-costing, lack of specialisation
and coordination, and general non-involvement
and apathy of the working force.
The dangerous delusions that foreign experts
have the answer is now beginning to express itself.
Western collaborators and Soviet specialists are be-
ing invited to lend a hand. This development will
only deepen the frustrations of our own leading
technicians who know that the politicians are the
culprits behind the public sector’s paralysis. Unless
autonomous corporations are insulated from polit-
ical and bureaucratic interference, they cannot
deliver the goods. Indeed, those corporations who
managed to perform were able to do so only be-
cause their executives were powerfully supported.
The Administrative Reforms Commission, despite
its perambulations here, there and everywhere, is
still skirting the guts of the problem.
And so it goes on, the Delhi merry-go-round.
Even observers like us find that we are repeat-
ing ourselves. What is the medicine for our sick-
ness? That is the question. We cannot let the
sickness become chronic.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIii no 7 9
LAW & SOCIETY
Of Delimitation, Demography
and Democracy
Alok Prasanna Kumar
T
hose who have followed election
news from the United States (US)
would be familiar with the term
“gerrymandering.” It refers to the practice
of redrawing the boundaries of electoral
districts (or constituencies) to suit any
one political party. The origins of the
word go back to the early 19th century,
to Massachusetts Governor Elbridge
Gerry, suggesting that the practice is
perhaps as old as modern American
democracy itself. It stems from the per-
verse incentives created when the
power to determine boundaries of a
constituency are given to the same body
or person who seeks election.
Two judgments in the last year have
focused the spotlight on the issue once
again, as redistricting by the legislatures
in the states of Pennsylvania1 and North
Carolina2 were struck down by courts in
the respective states. The US Supreme
Court has not yet conclusively ruled that
gerrymandering along partisan lines
would be unconstitutional in the US, and
both these cases are likely to be decided
in the Supreme Court eventually. As it
stands, a stay against the Pennsylvania
State Supreme Court’s order was unsuc-
cessful (Liptak 2018), though the order
of the federal appeals court has not yet
been challenged.
It is by no means a problem peculiar
to the US. Countries around the world,
which, on paper, have followed the
“one person, one vote” principle, have
found their democracies undermined
by “majorities” created through unre-
stricted gerrymandering. With increased
political polarisation, it is possible that
this issue is likely to become increas-
ingly prominent worldwide.
The problem of partisan gerrymander-
ing was not unknown to India’s constitu-
tion framers. The term “gerrymander”
or “gerrymandering” itself occurs on at
10
least four occasions in the Constituent
Assembly debates and the US experience
features very much in the discussion
relating to the size of constituencies.3
The final Constitution had Articles 82
and 170, which gave Parliament the
power to delimit constituency boundaries
for not just the Lok Sabha, but also for
the state legislative assemblies.
As originally enacted, Articles 82 and
170 empowered Parliament to change
constituency boundaries within a state
after the census was completed. So far,
four delimitation acts have been passed,
in 1952, 1962, 1972 and 2002, with a
Delimitation Commission in charge of
drawing constituency boundaries set-up
in each case. The last commission was
headed by Justice Kuldip Singh, a retired
judge of the Supreme Court, and its report
was implemented in 2008. Apart from
including the chief election commissioner
and the state election commissioner (in
respect of each state), the commission is
also empowered to co-opt sitting mem-
bers of Parliament and members of the
legislative assembly from that state in a
non-partisan manner.4
However, this changed in 2002 when
the 84th Amendment was passed,
amending these two articles. As it stands,
the constituency boundaries are frozen
till the first census after 2026, that is, at
least until after 2031. Realistically, it
may be even longer given that the delim-
itation exercise took six years on the previ-
ous occasion. Though there was a 30-year
gap between the third and fourth delimi-
tation commissions, a 30-year gap in the
next delimitation commission could have
graver consequences.
Gerrymandering by Default
As it stands, India runs the risk of “gerry-
mandering by default”: where the con-
stituency boundaries are fixed without
FEBRUARY 17, 2018
providing enough opportunity for revision
and readjustment given the demographic
changes taking place. Consider, for
instance, the state of Karnataka. As per
the 2011 Census, the city of Bengaluru
had a population of about 84.4 lakh
out of a total population of 6.1 crore in
Karnataka. This means that the metro-
politan area of Bengaluru itself has
approximately 13.82% of the population
of the state. However, Bengaluru only
has 11% of Karnataka’s Lok Sabha and
the state legislative assembly seats (3 out
of 28 and 25 out of 225, respectively).
This may not seem like much of a dis-
parity, but consider that between 2001 and
2011, Bengaluru’s population increased
by about 66%, whereas Karnataka’s pop-
ulation increased by about 16%. The
delimitation exercises culminating in 2008
meant that Bengaluru’s representation
in the state did not decrease dramatically.
In 2001, for instance, Bengaluru had 16
out of 224 assembly seats and 2 out of 25
Lok Sabha seats from Karnataka, or
about 7% of the seats in both cases.
However, if the existing trends hold, in
the next decade, the city of Bengaluru will
be disproportionately under-represented
in the state assembly and Lok Sabha as
the delimitation exercise will not take
place till sometime after 2031, at least
15 years from now at the very earliest.
Bengaluru is just an example of the fact
that the percentage of India’s population
that lives in urban areas is increasing
with every census.5 While constituency
sizes are vastly different across India,
increasing urbanisation and freezing of
might result in the progressive disen-
franchisement of urban voters; their
vote will not count for as much as the
rural voter given the demographic trend.
With urban areas showing lower turnouts
than rural areas, this could have major
implications for democratic participation
in India.
There is one other way in which we
could be walking into a gerrymandering-
by-default situation.
The census data since 1961 has shown
that the three large South Indian states,
Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu and Kar-
nataka, have seen their share of the
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

population steadily fall. Tamil Nadu, for
instance, accounted for 7.67% of India’s
population in 1961, whereas in 2011 it
accounted for 5.96%. On the other hand,
the three largest North Indian states here,
Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and Madhya Pradesh
have seen their shares in the overall
Indian population increase steadily even
after bifurcation. However, the Delimi-
tation Act, 2002 mandated that data
from the 1971 Census was to determine
the number of seats for each state in the
Lok Sabha. This has meant a sizeable gap
between a state’s share in the overall
population of India and its share in the
overall number of seats in the Lok Sabha.
The gap between the percentage of pop-
ulation and seats is widest in Tamil Nadu
and Uttar Pradesh, but in the opposite
directions; Tamil Nadu’s share in the Lok
Sabha is greater than its share in the
national population, whereas it is the
opposite for Uttar Pradesh. The data
from the latest National Family Health
Survey-4 suggests that this gap will only
widen; Tamil Nadu has among the low-
est total fertility rates in any state (1.7%)
and Uttar Pradesh, among the highest
(2.7%). Uttar Pradesh’s population as a
total percentage of India’s is therefore
likely to increase and Tamil Nadu’s is
likely to decrease.
With the distribution of seats in the
Lok Sabha frozen till at least 2031, the
gap seen above is only likely to widen.
Uttar Pradesh will be even more under-
represented and Tamil Nadu even more
over-represented in the Lok Sabha. One
school of thought holds that this is not
necessarily a bad thing. States that have
worked to decrease their total fertility
rate (through improved investment in
health and education, especially for
women) should not necessarily be pun-
ished with lower representation in the
Lok Sabha. And, that since the southern
states have enjoyed better economic
growth as a result, and therefore con-
tribute a greater share of national taxes
than northern states, they should con-
tinue to enjoy greater representation in
the Lok Sabha (Daniyal 2018).
While these arguments are attractive,
the underlying principle—of one person,
one vote—is worth defending. While
mathematical precision may not be
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
possible (or desirable) in the context of
delimiting constituencies, the fact remains
that “hard-coding” the number of constit-
uencies per state through the Constitu-
tion itself might prove counter-productive
in the medium term. While avoiding the
other extreme—of the active gerryman-
dering that takes place in the US—there
needs to be some better way to have the
Lok Sabha be more representative across
states. To balance out the concern that
this might tilt the balance decisively away
from the southern or even the smaller
states, the Rajya Sabha should, like the US
Senate, provide equal representation for
all states irrespective of their size.6
There is one other reason to have a
flexible system for delineating constitu-
encies: Scheduled Castes (SCs) account
for 16.6% of India’s population and
Scheduled Tribes (STs), 8.6%. Clause (2)
of Article 330 mandates that the seats
reserved for SCs and STs shall be in pro-
portion to their population in a given
state. If the state’s representation in the
Lok Sabha itself does not keep pace with
the changing demographics, the SC and
ST representation across the nation is
likely to be out of sync with the actual
population across the nation.
Conclusions
Is there a case to be made for reverting
the changes made by the 84th Amend-
ment? To go back to the decadal revi-
sions of the constituency boundaries
keeping in mind the changing demo-
graphics of India? Perhaps, there is. Not
only are vast changes taking place across
states, but within the states themselves.
Given India’s multiparty democracy, it
may not be possible to immediately see
which party may benefit from this kind of
gerrymandering by default, but parties
which focus exclusively on a specific and
narrow demographic may win dispro-
portionately more seats than one which
seeks to have a broader appeal. It would
indeed be a sad day for the Indian demo-
cracy when its representative institutions
no longer reflect the ground realities.
Alok Prasanna Kumar (alok.prasanna@
vidhilegalpolicy.in) is senior resident fellow at
the Vidhi Centre for Legal Policy, and is based
in Bengaluru.
vol lIiI no 7
LAW & SOCIETY
notes
1 League of Women Voters v Commonwealth of
Pennsylvania 159 MM 2017, http://www.pacourts.
us/assets/opinions/Supreme/out/Order%20%20
GrantedJurisdiction%20Retained%20%20
10339890932033626.pdf?cb=1.
2 Common Cause v Robert A Rucho, case no 1:16-
CV-1026, 9 January 2018, https://www.bren-
nancenter.org/sites/default/files/legal-work/CC_
LWV_v_Rucho_MemorandumOpinion_01.09.18.
pdf.
3 L Krishnaswami Bharathi, speech, Constituent
Assembly Debates, 7 January 1949, http://
cadindia.clpr.org.in/constitution_assembly_
debates/volume/7/1949-01-07.
4 This is not to say that no gerrymandering hap-
pens. Karthik Shashidhar (2015) has noted the
odd manner in which constituency boundaries
have been drawn in Bangalore and its possible
impact on elections.
5 Although the increase between 2001 and 2011
is not very high, the criteria to determine what
is “urban” is hotly debated (Sreevatsan 2017).
6 A similar idea was floated in the Constituent
Assembly by certain members but was rejected
overwhelmingly in favour of the existing system
(Mehra 2003).
References
Daniyal, Shoaib (2018): “Indian Population Is
Growing Much Faster in the North—and the
South Is Paying the Price,” Scroll.in, 19 January,
viewed on 12 February 2018, https://scroll.in/
article/865569/indian-population-is-growing-
much-faster-in-the-north-and-the-south-is-
paying-the-price.
Liptak, Adam (2018): “Justices Won’t Block Penn-
sylvania Gerrymandering Decision,” New York
Times, 5 February, viewed on 12 February 2018,
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/05/us/
politics/supreme-court-pennsylvania-gerry-
mandering.html.
Mehra, Ajay K (2003): “Rethinking the Rajya
Sabha,” Hindu, 23 April, viewed on 12 February
2018, http://www.thehindu.com/2003/04/23/
stories/2003042300031000.htm.
Shashidhar, Karthik (2015): “Analysing the BBMP
Elections,” blog post, 25 August, viewed on
12 Februrary 2018, http://noenthuda.com/blog
/2015/08/25/analysing-the-bbmp-elections/.
Sreevatsan, Ajai (2017): “How Much of India Is
Actually Urban?” Livemint, 16 September,
viewed on 12 February 2018, http://www.live-
mint.com/Politics/4UjtdRPRikhpo8vAE0V4h
K/How-much-of-India-is-actually-urban.html.
Permission for Reproduction of
Articles Published in EPW
No article published in EPW or part thereof
should be reproduced in any form without
prior permission of the author(s).
A soft/hard copy of the author(s)’s approval
should be sent to EPW.
In cases where the email address of
the author has not been published along
with the articles, EPW can be contacted
for help.
11
COMMENTARY
Bhima Koregaon and
Politics of the Subaltern
Sai Thakur, Byasa Moharana
Historical events that hold
symbolic value are important
in constructing an alternative
identity for the subaltern. The
Brahminical upper caste feels
threatened by such assertions of
the subaltern and thus, tries to
marginalise them. The violence
at Bhima Koregaon is a reflection
of this tension between divisive
Hindutva nationalism and
resilient subaltern politics that
seeks justice.
Sai Thakur (thakur.sai@gmail.com) and Byasa
Moharana (bmiitb@gmail.com) teach at the
Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Tuljapur.
12
D
alits in Maharashtra celebrate
1 January as Shaurya Diwas
(bravery day). It was on this day
in the year 1818 at Bhima Koregaon near
Pune that 22 Mahar soldiers fighting on
the British side were martyred in a
battle which led to the defeat of the
Brahmin Peshwas. This last battle of the
Anglo–Maratha war marked the end of
the Maratha Empire and the ascendancy
of the British in western India. At this
site, the British raised an obelisk carrying
the names of 49 soldiers, including 22
Mahar soldiers, who died in the battle.
On 1 January 1927, B R Ambedkar paid a
visit to the British war memorial to com-
memorate this victory. Ever since, Dalits
in Maharashtra march to Bhima Koregaon
village on this day. The battle holds two-
fold significance for them. It is a standing
testimony to not only their triumph over
the Brahminical hegemony of the Pesh-
was, but also the valour of the Mahar
soldiers who fought against the Peshwa
army that heavily outnumbered their
own (Gupta 1923).
On 1 January 2018, more than three
lakh Dalits from all over Maharashtra
had gathered at Bhima Koregaon to
observe the bicentenary of the victory.
This peaceful congregation was brutally
attacked by activists of two local, Hindu
right-wing organisations—Shiv Pratish-
than and Hindu Ekta Manch, led by
Sambhaji Bhide (alias Manohar Bhide)
and Milind Ekbote, respectively. In the
violence that ensued, one Dalit youth
was killed while several others were
injured. Many of their vehicles were
vandalised. Shops belonging to Muslims
and Christians were singled out and burnt
(Dhamale 2018). Bharipa Bahujan Maha-
sangh leader Prakash Ambedkar, along
with several other organisations repre-
senting Dalits, Other Backward Classes,
and progressives, called for a statewide
febrUARY 17, 2018
bandh on 3 January 2018. Consequently,
shops, offices, schools and colleges in
many parts of Maharashtra were closed
down. Dalits rose in indignation and
took to the streets to protest against the
Bhima Koregaon violence. These inci-
dents at Bhima Koregaon on 1 January
2018 and later in various parts of Maha-
rashtra, and the public discourse that
these developments have subsequently
sparked, prompted us to pose certain
questions regarding the dominant caste
imagination of Indian nationhood and
the location of the subaltern classes
within it.
Dalits as ‘Anti-national’
The mainstream media in India has
always ignored this annual event, where
lakhs of people throng to pay tribute to
the Mahar martyrs. This year was no
different; it chose to remain silent despite
a premeditated attack being launched
on the Dalits. Moreover, when news of
violence at the gathering began to spread
like wildfire through social media, main-
stream television channels (mis)report-
ed the same as a caste war—a clash
bet ween Dalits and Marathas. More
significantly, Dalits were portrayed as
anti-nationals for celebrating the victory
of the British imperial forces over an
Indian king.
So, are Dalits “anti-nationals” for
celebrating the victory at Bhima Koregaon,
by virtue of it being a victory of the Brit-
ish army? If so, what about the alliance
between the British and Nana Saheb
Peshwa against the Maratha admiral
Tulaji Angre? It was only with the assis-
tance of the Peshwas that the British
captured the fort of Vijaydurg which was
under the control of the Angres. It was a
deathly blow to the supremacy of the
Maratha navy in 1756 (Kulkarni 2000: 43).
Further, what about the Peshwas joining
hands with the British and the Nizam
against the Mysore king Tipu Sultan?
In 1799, Tipu Sultan was defeated by the
joint army of the British, the Nizam and
the Peshwas (Kulkarni 2000: 56). Can
we then label the Peshwas as anti-
national on account of the above instances
for having joined hands with the British?
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

If not, then why so in the case of the
Mahars? More importantly, did the idea
of India, as a nation, even exist in 1818?
We know that it emerged only towards
the end of the 19th century. Some would
argue that the earliest manifestation
of Indian nationalism was the First War
of Independence in 1857. But, Indian
nationalism took concrete shape, in the
form of the Indian National Congress,
only much later in 1885; that also being
the brainchild of a retired British civil
servant Allan Hume.
The mainstream Hindu upper-caste
nationalist discourse, media as well as
the Hindu right wing has conveniently
chosen to overlook these well-document-
ed historical facts. The amnesia is, how-
ever, only one side of the coin. The other
side shows the pseudo-histories of the
Hindu right wing that further lead to the
fabrication of certain “pseudomemories.”
For instance, Shraddha Kumbhojkar
(2012: 106) writes, among the Maha-
rashtrian upper caste-dominated middle-
class novels which depict the Peshwas
winning the battles of Bhima Koregaon
(1818) and Panipat (1761), enjoy much
popularity. In actuality, these are major
defeats of the Peshwas. Thus, the nation
that they imagine has hardly any place
for various subaltern classes. It is the
upper caste that constitutes the nation;
thus, the Peshwas represent the nation,
rendering Dalits anti-national.
The Bhima Koregaon incident alludes
to the fact that this selective amnesia
and pseudo-memories of the Hindu right
wing are politically motivated. In order
to understand the position of Dalits in
this Brahminical narrative of Indian
nationhood, we must turn our attention
to what happened two days before the
violent attack at Bhima Koregaon. On 29
December 2017, some members belonging
to the aforementioned organisations,
Shiv Pratishthan and Hindu Ekta Manch,
had desecrated the tomb of Govind
Mahar (Gaikwad) in the village Vadhu
Budruk located merely seven kilometres
away from Bhima Koregaon. There are a
number of popular accounts of how
Sambhaji, the eldest son of Shivaji, was
killed. One legend, popular in this area,
tells us that in 1689, the Mughal king
Aurangzeb ordered Sambhaji to be
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
brutally tortured to death and his corpse
sliced. Govind Mahar, a Dalit, collected
the parts of Sambhaji’s mutilated body,
stitched them together and performed
his last rites. He built a grave for Samb-
haji which remained in oblivion until it
was discovered by historian V S Bendre
in the early 20th century (Dhamale 2018).
In the Hindu right wing’s grand narra-
tive of an Indian (read Hindu) nation,
Dalits cannot be partners in the making
of the nation. Therefore, Govind Mahar’s
courageous attempt has to be obliterated
from popular memory, so also the bravery
of Mahar soldiers. In fact, the bravery of
the soldiers at Bhima Koregaon is con-
spicuous by its absence in the main-
stream narrative of Maratha history, de-
spite the historical evidence to corrobo-
rate it. There is also the hidden agenda
of creating and maintaining a rift be-
tween the Dalits and Marathas by insti-
gating the latter against the former.
How else can we explain the attempts
made by Bhide and Ekbote to distort and
erase the popular memory of Govind
Mahar? Both of them have categorically
stated that the grave of Sambhaji was
built by Marathas and not by a Dalit.
According to them, the story of Govind
Mahar was spun by the British (Gadgil
and Dhupkar 2018). It is not a mere coin-
cidence that on 1 January 2018, the per-
petrators of the Bhima Koregaon violence
were addressed and mobilised in this
Vadhu Budruk village before they at-
tacked the Dalits (Dhamale 2018).
The other political intention of the
Hindu supremacists and their apologists
in the media is to discredit and delegiti-
mise the Dalit movement by branding
Dalits as “anti-nationals.” This is because
the Phule–Ambedkarite movement has
been demanding equal rights and strongly
resisting the fascist agenda of a Hindu
rashtra. In line with its larger aim, the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh labels
all those who question their dream of a
Hindu rashtra as enemies.
Dalits sans Dalit Consciousness
Secondly, is the portrayal of the Bhima
Koregaon battle as a victory of Dalits
over the oppressive Peshwa regime a
“myth”? Anand Teltumbde (2018), for
example, argues so. He does not deny
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
the occurrence of such a battle or the
prominent presence of Mahars in it. He
clearly states that this battle took place,
the British emerged victorious in it, and
22 Mahar soldiers laid down their lives
from the British side. But he considers
them only to be “Mahar” soldiers and
not “Dalits,” because they were yet to
cultivate the consciousness of an oppres-
sed community seeking to fight their
oppressors. The lower castes, according
to Teltumbde (2018),
took caste as a natural order and their op-
pression as the fate that they had to meekly
endure. Therefore, there was no question of
any resistance to caste, leave apart physical
war against them.
Hence, he refutes the claim that it was
an instance of a Dalit uprising against the
Brahminical oppression of the Peshwas.
This interpretation of the victory, offered
by several Mahar leaders of the 19th
and 20th centuries, including Ambedkar
himself, is, according to Teltumbde (2018),
“far-fetched and unhistorical.” He con-
tends that “contrary to such myths of
bravery, there is no evidence of any mil-
itant resistance the Dalits ever posed
against the Brahminic oppression.”
To debate whether the Mahar soldiers
who fought that battle indeed viewed it
as an opportunity to get even with their
Brahmin oppressors is one thing, and
to summarily negate its possibility is
another. On what basis can we do so?
Teltumbde’s attempt to deny Mahars any
agency of their own is to be strongly
refuted. He discards any possibility of
Mahars taking up arms against their
Brahmin oppressors back then, because
they had internalised the Brahminical
caste ideology. According to him, in the
19th century, the Mahars had not devel-
oped a consciousness of being an op-
pressed class. However, a reading of the
history of Maharashtrian caste society
and polity reveals that there was intense
inter-caste hostility between Marathas
and Brahmins (Eaton 2005: 196–98).
Ambedkar himself, in his book Who
Were the Shudras?, describes the two-
centuries-long battle between Shivaji
and Shivaji’s descendants on the one
hand and their Brahmin priests on the
other (Ambedkar 1945). The Peshwa
regime, in contrast to the reign of the
13
COMMENTARY
popular king Shivaji, was known as one
of the most oppressive regimes, especially
for the lower castes. There is evidence to
show that the conflicts between other
non-Maratha castes (including Dalits)
and the Brahmins were also not rare
during the Peshwa rule (Kharat 1992:
22–53). Many would agree that the
Peshwas were infamous for having taken
caste oppression to an all-time high.
It may also be remembered that the
resistance against caste oppression might
not necessarily always take the shape of
a well-articulated and -organised revolt
by the oppressed. An absence of such a
revolt does not mean that the Dalits had
reconciled with their lot. In Weapons of
the Weak (1987) and Domination and the
Arts of Resistance (1992), James C Scott
discusses the various shapes and forms
that resistance of the oppressed as-
sumes. We do not see why it is difficult
to imagine that the Mahar soldiers in the
British army might have fought with all
their strength against the oppressors.
During Shivaji’s rule, the Mahars were
well-represented in the army and em-
ployed as village policemen. How can
we summarily eliminate the possibility
of them having the consciousness of
their brutal oppression under the Pesh-
was? Why cannot we imagine that any
human group will resent their own
oppression of extreme kinds, and given
a chance, certainly resist the same? It is,
in all likelihood, possible that the
Mahars would have rejoiced when their
oppressors were vanquished.
It is also important to see why Ambed-
kar had to invoke this memory in 1927.
We agree with Teltumbde that the
Mahars did not fight as “Dalits” and were
paid soldiers of the East India Company.
But that should not take away their
agency as an “untouchable” community.
People live with multiple identities. It is
erroneous to assume that the Mahars
thought of themselves as nothing else
but Company-enlisted soldiers perform-
ing their duty, and summarily forgot
about their caste location and the collec-
tive material deprivation and suffering
at the hands of the Peshwas. If nothing
else, one has to concede that they were
valiant Mahar soldiers of the 19th century.
That is a strong enough reason for the
14
(neo-Buddhist) Mahars of the 21st cen- and Christians. The violence at Bhima
tury (with proper “Dalit” consciousness, Koregaon is a reflection of this tension
as Teltumbde puts it) to pride upon the between divisive Hindutva nationalism
fact that they brought the Peshwa regime on the one hand, and subaltern politics
to an end, albeit as British army men. A on the other, that has carried on an un-
social movement like the Ambedkarite relenting struggle to seek justice. Brand-
anti-caste struggle creatively uses such ing them as “anti-national” is an act of
historical facts to resurrect the oppressed political debauchery, which the move-
lot from a deep-rooted inferiority com- ment has to resist.
plex that oppressed and exploited com-
munities may generally carry. Ambedkar References
could not have missed the opportunity Ambedkar, B R (1945): Who Were the Shudras?
Bombay: Thacker and Company Ltd.
to capitalise on the collective memory
Dhamale, Kishore (2018): “Ashi Ghadali Bhima
and history of the bravery of the Mahar Koregaonchi Dangal,” Right Angles, 6 January,
people in the battle of 1818. A similar https://rightangles.in/2018/01/06/bheema-
koregaon-reportage/.
example is that of Uda Devi, a 19th-cen- Eaton, Richard (2005): A Social History of the
tury Pasi woman warrior, who is hailed Deccan, 1300–1761, New Delhi: Cambridge
University Press.
as a Dalit hero from north India. The
Gadgil, Makarand and Alka Dhupkar (2018):
contemporary Dalit movement has used “Sambhaji Bhide and Milind Ekbote: The Two
the histories of such heroes from their Who Brought Mumbai to a Halt,” Mumbai
Mirror, 3 January, https://mumbaimirror.in-
own communities, who were hitherto diatimes.com/mumbai/cover-story/the-two-
excluded from mainstream historio- who-brought-your-city-to-a-halt/articleshow/
62344275.cms.
graphy (Narayan 2006). We can neither Gupta, P C (1923): Baji Rao II and the East India
afford to miss the significance of such Company 1796–1818, London: Oxford University
Press.
historical narratives nor dismiss them
Kharat, Shankarrao (1992): Athravya Shatakatil
as myths. Maratha Kalakhandatil Samajik Paristhiti,
Kolhapur: Shivaji Vidyapeeth Prakashan.
Conclusions Kulkarni, A R (2000): Company Sarkar (East India
Company), Pune: Rajhansa Prakashan.
If a nation has to be truly democratic, it Kumbhojkar, Shraddha (2012): “Contesting Power,
cannot be constructed through selective Contesting Memories: The History of Koregaon
Memorial,” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 48,
and deliberate historical erasures. His- No 42, pp 103–07.
torical events, that hold symbolic value, Narayan, Badri (2006): Women Heroes and Dalit
Assertion in North India: Culture, Identity and
are important in constructing an alter- Politics, New Delhi: Sage.
native identity for subalterns, crucial in Scott, James C (1987): Weapons of the Weak: Every-
day Forms of Peasant Resistance, New Haven:
reclaiming their space in mainstream Yale University Press.
discourses on Indian nationhood. The — (1992): Domination and the Arts of Resistance:
Brahminical upper caste feels threatened Hidden Transcripts, New Haven: Yale Univer-
sity Press.
by such assertions of the subalterns and Teltumbde, Anand (2018): “The Myth of Bhima
thus tries to marginalise them. Especially Koregaon Reinforces the Identities It Seeks to
Transcend,” Wire, 2 January, https://thewire.
after 2014, Hindutva nationalism has in/209824/myth-bhima-koregaon-reinforces-
unabashedly targeted Muslims, Dalits identities-seeks-transcend/.
Licensing by EPWI
EPW has licensed its material for non-exclusive use to only the following content aggregators—
Contify, Factiva, Jstor, Magzter and Reliance Jio.
Contify currently disseminates EPW content to LexisNexis, Thomson Reuters, Securities.com,
Gale Cengage, Acquiremedia News Bank and ProQuest.
Factiva and Jstor have EPW content on their databases for their registered users,
Magzter on its subscriber-based portal and Reliance Jio on its mobile app platform.
EPW does not have licensing arrangements with any other aggregators.
EPW requests readers to let it know if they see EPW material on any unlicensed aggregator.
EPW needs the support of its readers to remain financially viable.
febrUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Doubling Farmers’ Incomes
Mechanisms and Challenges
SUKHPAL SINGH
The government’s initiative to
increase farmers’ incomes is
welcome as it is central to dealing
with the agrarian crisis in India.
Various mechanisms for increasing
farmers’ incomes from the
perspective of small farmers and
farm workers are critically
examined. The article proposes a
focus on high-value crops and
rain-fed areas, non-farm
occupations, agro-industrialisation,
and strengthening and innovating
producer and worker institutions
in India. It also presents insights
from China’s proposed strategy for
doubling farmers’ incomes there.
Sukhpal Singh (sukhpal@iima.ac.in) is
director general, Centre for Research in Rural
and Industrial Development, and teaches at the
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
O
ne of the major policy initiatives
of the National Democratic Alli-
ance government in the agricul-
tural sector is that of doubling farmers’
incomes by 2022. This is a laudable ob-
jective and, therefore, has generated a
lot of academic and popular interest. The
need to focus on farmers’ incomes in-
stead of production or the growth rate in
agriculture stems from the fact that
there has been agrarian distress in the
sector for the last two decades. Official
recognition of the distress and the agrarian
crisis came in the form of a NSSO (National
Sample Survey Office) survey in 2003,
which reported that 40% of Indian
farmers disliked farming as a profession
due to its low profits, high risk, and the
lack of social status and, therefore,
would like to leave it at the first opportu-
nity (Agarwal and Agrawal 2017). They
were continuing to farm in the absence
of opportunities outside agriculture. Fur-
ther, there are caste-wise differences
among farmers in terms of their interest
in farming; the higher castes seem to be
more disenchanted with farming than
Scheduled Caste (SC) and Scheduled
Tribe (ST) farmers. Among the SCs and
STs, the dislike for farming diminishes
with increase in landholding size and in-
creases in the case of other castes
(Birthal et al 2015).
The need to focus on farmers’ incomes
also stems from the fact that a very large
proportion of farming households in
most of the central and eastern states
(23%–45%) live below the poverty line
(BPL), higher than the national average
(22.5%). The proportion of BPL farming
households (17.5%–22.5%), even in some
of the so-called agriculturally progres-
sive states, such as Gujarat, Karnataka,
Maharashtra, and Tamil Nadu, is close
to the national average. Further, the gap
between farm and non-farm incomes
has grown over the decades, from a
ratio of 1:3 in the mid-1980s to 1:4.08 in
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
the middle of last decade, and 1:3.12 in
2011–12 (Chand 2017).
Setting the Context
There has been much debate in the
press over the last few months about the
definition of farmers’ income and the
time frame for doubling it. If it is a dou-
bling of the real incomes of farmers,
then it is an important and challenging
goal to achieve in five to seven years.
Those who argue that it is not possible to
double farmers’ incomes in six years cite
low and unrealisable minimum support
prices (MSPs), non-remunerative prices
in the market, the low share of farmers in
the consumer rupee, poor penetration of
crop insurance, high and increasing in-
put costs, and the absence of market
infrastructure. They also cite modest
growth in the past compared to the 12%
annual figure needed for doubling in-
comes in nominal terms, which works
out to an annual growth rate of 20%–
30% to double them in real terms. It is
estimated that doubling incomes in
nominal terms requires six years and,
in real terms, 13 years, and it is going
to need longer time frames in both re-
spects for marginal and small farmers.
Further, it would need varied time
frames across different states depend-
ing on the state-level growth rates of
farming household incomes—which
vary from 6.7% in West Bengal to 17.5%
in Haryana in nominal terms, with the
average for India being 11.8%—and on
the absolute levels of farmer household
income (Satyasai and Mehrotra 2016).
Chand (2017) estimates that farmers’
incomes can be increased by 75% in
seven years, and that it would take 10
years for it to double.
Annual income per cultivator increased
from `12,365 in 1993–94 to `1,20,193 by
2015–16, at current prices. However, at
real prices, the increase has been from
`21,110 to `44,027 during this period.
This shows that farmers’ average real in-
comes doubled only over a period of 22
years. Even the total farm income of all
farmers at real prices just about doubled
during this period, from `3 lakh crore
(`3 trillion) to `6 lakh crore (`6 trillion).
This works out to a growth rate of
3.4% a year per cultivator and 3.13% for
15
COMMENTARY
total farmer income over the period
(Chand 2017).
Two Road Maps by States
Some states have already designed road
maps for doubling farmers’ incomes. For
example, Madhya Pradesh did it in 2016
and has also estimated the contributions
of various sources of increase in incomes:
increase in yields would contribute 30%,
agricultural diversification 20%, reduc-
tion in input costs and better prices 15%
each, with the rest coming from an ex-
pansion in area under cultivation (14%)
and a reduction in post-harvest losses (6%)
(Government of Madhya Pradesh 2016;
Satyasai and Mehrotra 2016). Regarding
increases in yields, the gap between pre-
sent and attainable yields was found to
be as high as 43%–131% across different
crops (coarse grains, pulses, and oil
seeds) in Madhya Pradesh.
The state government has set up a task
force on the issue of doubling farmers’
incomes and has appointed an advisory
committee of 51 progressive farmers under
the chairmanship of the minister of agri-
culture. Fifty-one districts have prepared
their own road maps for this purpose and
55,000 villages are also working towards
preparing such road maps, which would
be presented to the village panchayats
especially set up for agriculture at the time
of the Pradhan Mantri Krishi Mahotsav.
District irrigation plans have been pre-
pared under the Pradhan Mantri Krishi
Sinchayee Yojana (PMKSY). Half a million
temporary agricultural pumps are also
being made permanent with an alloca-
tion of `5,000 crore. The Government of
Madhya Pradesh identified 19 pillars in
order to double farmers’ incomes. These
include: increased irrigation from public
sources, additional electricity supply for
agriculture, interest-free crop loans, ex-
pansion of agricultural area, encourag-
ing mechanisation, agricultural diversi-
fication, expansion of modern seeds, soil
health management, new channels of agri-
cultural technology extension, farmer–
producer company organisation, expan-
sion of the food processing sector, encour-
agement to organic farming, management
of natural risk in agriculture, expansion of
agricultural storage capacity, better organi-
sation of agricultural markets, animal
16
husbandry, fisheries, silk, bamboo and
agroforestry production, and institutional
structures for achieving the objective.
So far, 142 farmer–producer compa-
nies have been set up and 300 more such
companies are planned by 2021. The
institutional structures include an agri-
cultural cabinet, a separate agricultural
budget, a task force for the agricultural
sector, a farmers’ commission for agri-
cultural development and farmer well-
being, and micro irrigation and agro-
forestry missions. It is estimated that
yield- and production-related efforts
would lead to 70% of additional farmer
income with the remaining 30% coming
equally from cost reduction, higher pric-
es, and reduced economic losses (Gov-
ernment of Madhya Pradesh 2016).
Similarly, the Government of Chhat-
tisgarh has decided to focus on seven
points to increase farmers’ incomes:
agricultural development of Adivasi
farmers, reducing the cost of cultivation,
increase in yields, improving the mar-
keting infrastructure, storage and pro-
cessing facilities, development of irriga-
tion, agricultural diversification, and a
better agricultural extension system. It
estimates that the union government’s
soil health card scheme would lead to a
saving of 10% on fertilisers and contrib-
ute to a 5% increase in yields. It also
plans to use Mahatma Gandhi National
Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme
(MGNREGS) to recharge 4,50,000 irriga-
tion wells and raise the yields of rice,
maize, pulses, and oilseeds. It proposes
to set up at least 20 farmer–producer
companies in each district and bring
half the number of farmers under a crop
insurance scheme. The expected reduc-
tion in the cost of production through
various means is estimated to be 5%–25%.
Production would increase 15%–30%,
price realisation 10%–20%, cropping in-
tensity 15%–30%, and off-farm sources
5%–30%, with extension contributing
5%–20%. Thus, incomes can increase
between 55% and 155% over the next
seven years.
It further details crop-specific increases
in income, which vary from 5%–35%
across crops due to seed replacement,
10% due to bio-fertilisers, and 5%–10%
due to mechanical sowing. It is also
febrUARY 17, 2018
expected that a 15% increase in incomes
will come from the use of check dams and
small irrigation ponds each. The area
under horticulture has been targeted to
increase by more than 60%, and the
number of onion storage structures to
rise to 100 from 12 at present. The area
under protected cultivation is expected
to more than double during this period.
Similar increases in income from animal
husbandry are estimated, with 30% due
to a rise in yields, and 10% each from
reduced costs of production, price in-
creases, better risk management, and
the expansion of government schemes.
The major activities for achieving higher
income targets include: an increase in
the seed replacement rate of maize and
lentils, expansion in issuing soil health
cards, the promotion of the system of
rice intensification, drip and sprinkler
irrigation, and enhancement of short-
term crop loans. The other major steps
include linking up of markets with the
national agricultural market, e-NAM,
expanding cold storage infrastructure
and storage capacity, building green/
shed net houses, organising new dairy
cooperative societies, expanding bulk
milk cooler and milk-chilling centre
capacities, cage culture in fisheries, and
agri-clinics and agricultural business
centres, and doubling the production of
lac (Department of Agriculture and Food
Processing 2017).
Raising Farmers’ Incomes
There could be various mechanisms to
achieve growth in farmers’ incomes
within as well as outside the farm sector.
Within the farm sector, the increase in
incomes can come from greater production
per unit area as a result of higher yields,
as there are yield gaps of the order of
25%–100% across various crops espe-
cially in dryland regions, and in some
high-value crops even in irrigated areas.
India’s average yields in most crops are
only half that of China’s. The increase can
also come from higher cropping intensity,
lower costs of production, higher prices,
or a combination thereof. But yields are
not amenable to sudden change as they
depend on the type of technology deploy-
ed, which cannot be altered in a very
short period of time. Also, high-yielding
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

varieties need irrigation facilities, which
cannot be expanded quickly.
The other mechanism to achieving
higher volumes of production, without
increases in yield, is higher cropping in-
tensity, which would happen only if there
is an increase in the area under irrigation
or a greater access to water. This again is
not achievable in the short-term despite
the fact that there is plenty of focus on the
expansion of irrigation through schemes
such as the PMKSY, and the promotion of
micro-irrigation. The latter is particularly
stuck in the face of the widespread
political practice of extending free power
to farmers to extract groundwater, bar-
ring a few states like Gujarat and Andhra
Pradesh, where there are dedicated efforts
to popularise micro-irrigation among
farmers. It is also important to remember
that higher production (from better
yields or increases in cropping intensity)
would not by themselves lead to higher
incomes in the absence of any price sup-
port mechanism or well lined-up markets
for the produce, as witnessed recently in
the case of pulses.
Reducing the cost of production (of
which 11% comprises machinery costs)
is most doable, as this requires exten-
sion education to the farmers and pro-
viding access to low-cost mechanical
services to small and marginal farmers,
who cannot afford to buy and own costly
machines and equipment. This is hap-
pening across states with the opening
up of custom hiring service centres by
cooperatives, producer companies, self-
help groups, and private individual op-
erators, as well as large agri-machinery
companies and agricultural start-ups,
with and without state support. Similarly,
despite the fact that public extension
services are more or less dysfunctional
due to various reasons, there are many
new players like agricultural start-ups
working closely with farmers to provide
extension services as part of a package.
Another mechanism of increasing
farmers’ incomes—through higher or
more stable prices—is unlikely to fructify,
given the inability of the state to imple-
ment the MSP mechanism for two dozen
crops with effective procurement across
various states, with state agencies re-
stricting themselves to a few states and a
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
few crops to meet the public foodgrain
procurement quotas. Only 25% of the
farmers were aware of MSP at the all-
India level in 2012–13 with only 8%
aware of it in Maharashtra and 11% in
Gujarat, and going up only to a maximum
of 50% even in Punjab. It was the highest
(23%–25%) in the case of cash crops—
such as sugar cane, jute and cotton—
and cereals, and was only 9% in the case
of pulses and 17% for oilseeds. Only
about 19% farmers knew of the Food
Corporation of India (FCI) and 75% did
not sell to procurement agencies (Aditya
et al 2017). Further, the government may
not be inclined to increase the MSP or set
up a price stabilisation fund as evident
in the fact that the government has
expressed its inability to implement the
Swaminathan Committee recommenda-
tion of the MSP being pegged at 50%
above the cost of production.
Diversification towards high-value crops
can help raise incomes, and are also
desirable for social and environmental
reasons, as these crops account for a
large proportion of the value of output
but cover a relatively lower area. Cereal
crops cover 77% of the gross cropped
area (GCA), but account for 41% of the
value of agricultural output. Fruits and
vegetables, on the other hand, cover
7.7% of the GCA and contribute 26% of
the value of output; all high-value crops
cover 19% of the GCA and account for
41% of the value of output. But, there are
many policy distortions that undermine
diversification, although the markets
encourage it. And, success in this sector
depends highly on reforming agricultural
markets and improving their perfor-
mance from the farmers’ perspective.
Further, new channels of procurement—
that is, contract farming, direct purchase,
and private wholesale markets in these
crops, which are much needed—are
either missing or not adequately available
due to a lack of policy direction and the
political economy of such new market
arrangements at the local level.
Another important measure that can
help farmers protect their incomes from
production risk is crop insurance, which
still has not been effectively implemented
despite the relaunch of crop insurance
schemes such as the Pradhan Mantri Fasal
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
Bima Yojana. In fact, this now also covers a
part of the market risk as it also provides
for compensation for post-harvest losses.
However, the scheme’s coverage remains
at only 30% of the GCA. There have also
been many issues regarding claims set-
tlements, in addition to the lack of
awareness about the scheme, and the
exclusion of small and marginal farmers.
The mechanisms for increasing farmers’
incomes outside the farm sector include
access to off-farm and non-farm employ-
ment and occupations—such as dairy
farming or handicrafts—as well as mov-
ing people out of the farming sector alto-
gether. Whereas the first measure can
help provide additional and more regu-
lar incomes, the second one can increase
incomes of those left behind in farming
as there will be fewer people to share the
same income. Having said that, moving
people out of the farming sector is highly
unlikely to happen as there are hardly
any opportunities for unskilled or semi-
skilled farm hands outside the sector.
Growth Targets
Chand (2017) examined the prospects of
doubling farmers’ incomes by adding up
various sources of income growth like
yield, livestock income, resource-use effi-
ciency, cropping intensity, crop diversifi-
cation, better price realisation, and
shifting to non-farm occupations, and
found that it is mainly price realisation
that can give the maximum push to in-
come (growing at 13%). It also estimated
the required growth rate in the different
components of sources of income, in order
to double farm income, as against those
achieved in the past. The growth rates
required are at least 1% higher than those
achieved in most components in the past,
except in resource use efficiency, cropping
intensity, and shift to non-farm occupa-
tions. In fact, the required growth rate in
the price of crop output is 4% higher than
that achieved in the past in Karnataka
even with the help of the electronic inte-
gration of markets within the state. It also
provided growth targets to be achieved
in various development initiatives like
quality seeds, fertilisers, irrigation expan-
sion, supply of electricity, cropping inten-
sity, area under high-value crops, and area
under high-yielding variety (HYV) seeds.
17
COMMENTARY
The targets for 2022–23 are more than
double in the case of quality seed supply,
electricity supply, and very high for
fertilisers, irrigation, cropping intensity,
and HYV coverage. In fact, the area under
fruits and vegetables is targeted to reach
26 million hectares (ha) from less than
17 million ha in 2013–14, which is a tall
order, as is the higher target for crop-
ping intensity, from 40% to 53% in 10
years. Some of the policy reforms sug-
gested towards doubling farmers’ in-
comes like the liberalisation of leasing
land, as proposed by Niti Aayog (2016),
are likely to have certain other adverse
impacts on small and marginal farmers
unless there are mechanisms in place to
ensure that they are not bypassed by
various initiatives from the state and the
corporate sector.
Beyond Business as Usual
It is important to realise that small farm-
ers in India are highly differentiated in
terms of their market participation. In
terms of marketable and marketed surplus
as a proportion of foodgrains production,
they range from highly commercial, and
a mix of subsistence and commercial, to
those who are mainly subsistence farmers.
The marketable surplus varies from a
high of 61% mainly in commercial regions
to a low of 45% in mainly subsistence
regions, and the same goes for marketed
surplus. The latter is, in fact, slightly
higher than marketable surplus for the
subsistence plus commercial and the
mainly substance categories of farmers;
they end up selling more than they are
supposed to sell, and the gap between
marketed and marketable surplus is
0.6%–4% for the two categories respec-
tively (Agarwal and Agrawal 2017).
Interestingly, it is also proposed by
some scholars, rightly, that perhaps one
of the ways to achieve the target of en-
hancing farmers’ incomes would be to
focus on rainfed areas, the eastern
region, and small farmers instead of an
undifferentiated approach (Satyasai and
Mehrotra 2016). This makes sense, as
43% of the population and more than
60% of the agricultural area in India is
in dry or rainfed regions.
For raising farm incomes, there is a
need to reorganise agriculture in terms
18
of institutions at the local level, with
farmers becoming part of collectives like
cooperatives and producer companies.
This will enable them to get involved in
domestic and global value chains, which
can help them lower the costs of produc-
tion and marketing, and achieve scale to
realise higher prices and surpluses. This
requires investment in agriculture and
agribusinesses by converting subsidies
into investments.
Livestock and agricultural wages are
significant sources of income for farming
households in India, especially for mar-
ginal and small farmers. For example, in
Bihar, on average, a farming household
earns only 47% of its income from farming,
29% from livestock, and 13% from casual
labour. It is hence important to focus
on livestock sector development and
public employment programmes like the
MGNREGS, to create income sources
other than farming.
Even the residue of major crops like
paddy and cotton, which is burnt in many
states and has become a policy and social
issue, can be utilised to create a new
source of income for landless and mar-
ginal farmers and other rural workers, as
part of the agro-industrialisation process
which is a logical corollary of agricultural
growth and development. A more proac-
tive and creative involvement of workers
in agricultural mechanisation, and of
small farmers in the agro-industrialisa-
tion process, is crucial for the overall
positive results of this intervention.
It is also important to recognise that
India is not the only country to set this
kind of target regarding farmers’ incomes.
China set this objective of doubling
farmers’ incomes in 2008, but it plans to
meet it over 12 years (2008–20), and not
five to seven years despite the fact that
China has better functioning institu-
tions and infrastructure in place. China,
though, has a limit to what it can achieve
on the yields front, as its average yields
are double that of India. The Chinese
strategy of doubling the income of farm-
ers involves expanding channels for the
generation of income, expanding the
non-agricultural sector to shift surplus
labour out of agriculture and into medi-
um and large cities, and building an
integrated labour market. This is a part
febrUARY 17, 2018
of a larger agricultural development
model, which focuses on stable grain
production, building and strengthening
farmer cooperatives, expanding agri-
businesses, food quality and safety, agri-
cultural science and technology, creating
a new social service system for agriculture
for the supply of inputs, finance, insur-
ance and extension by non-governmental
organisations, and public and large private
agencies. It also includes subsidies for
grain production and farm inputs, a
minimum grain procurement price, reform
of agricultural laws and regulations, and
opening the agricultural sector to the
world (Schneider 2016). It is good to be
ambitious but can India run faster than
China, that too in the agricultural sec-
tor, given that our federal structure and
democracy has its own dynamic in
terms of policy space for the central
government and the states?
Finally, leaving the objectives of dou-
bling farmers’ incomes to states is good
step as agriculture is a state subject. But
then how do the sources of the idea and
its promotion (Niti Aayog and the Minis-
try of Agriculture and Farmers’ Welfare
[MoAFW]) make sure that it is tried even
if it does not eventually happen? Going
by the experience of agricultural market
reforms at the state level so far, despite
the model Agricultural Produce Market
Committee Act and many other recipes
being handed out by Niti Aayog and the
MoAFW, it is unlikely that various states
would come on board for this mission of
doubling farmers’ incomes even though
it is an important objective for all states
politically. But they may like to do it in
their own ways given the diversity in ag-
riculture across states, and their under-
standing of mechanisms to achieve it. As
is clear from the example of the two states
given above, different states would need
varied strategies as they are at different
levels of agricultural development in
terms of growth rates and the level of
farmer incomes.
REFERENCES
Aditya, K S et al (2017): “Awareness of Minimum
Support Price and Its Impact on Diversification
Decision of Farmers in India,” Asia and the
Pacific Policy Studies, Vol 4, No 3, pp 514–26.
Agarwal, B and A Agrawal (2017): “Do Farmers Really
Like Farming? Indian Farmers in Transition,”
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Oxford Development Studies, Vol 45, No 4,
pp 460–78, doi:10.1080/13600818.2017.1283010.
Birthal, P S et al (2015): “Farmers’ Preference for
Farming: Evidence from a Nationally Repre-
sentative Farm Survey in India,” Developing
Economies, Vol 53, No 2, pp 122–34.
Chand, R (2017): “Doubling Farmers’ Income–
Rationale, Strategy, Prospects and Action
Plan,” NITI Policy Paper No 1, 2017, NITI Aayog,
Government of India, New Delhi.
Department of Agriculture and Food Processing
(2017): “Roadmap For Doubling of Farmers’
Income in Chhattisgarh by 2022,” Government
of Chhattisgarh, Raipur.
Government of Madhya Pradesh (2016): “Roadmap
for Doubling M P Farmers’ Income in 5 Years,”
Government of Madhya Pradesh, Bhopal.
NITI Aayog (2016): “Report of the Expert Commit-
tee on Land Leasing,” 31 March, Government
of India, New Delhi.
COMMENTARY
Satyasai, K J S and N Mehrotra (2016): “Enhancing
Farmers’ Income,” National Bank for Agricul-
ture and Rural Development, New Delhi,
12 July, http://www.agricoop.nic.in/sites/de-
fault/files/12%20July%202016%20Sat%20
kjss%20NM.pdf.
Schneider, M (2016): “Dragon Head Enterprises
and the State of Agribusiness in China,”
Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol 17, No 1,
pp 3–21, doi:10.1111/joac.12151.

Problematising Hindi as the ‘Self’ Attempts to project Hindi as the lin-

guistic emblem of a unified Indian “self”

and English as the ‘Other’ are problematic for several reasons.

First, in a diverse, multilingual, and
multicultural India, can one language
represent a unified Indian “self’? Second,
Reenu Punnoose, Muhammed Haneefa A P all Hindi can lay claim to is the numerical
strength of its speakers. Many in power

T
In the light of the ongoing he controversy surrounding Hindi favour Hindi as the default candidate for
prioritisation of Hindi by the signs in the Bengaluru Metro has national language status in India primarily
brought the issue of Hindi chau- on account of the number of speakers.
central government, the projection
vinism in India to the forefront. On According to the 2001 Census, 422 million
of Hindi as the “self” is problematic being asked to comment on the matter, people speak Hindi or one of its dialects,
for several reasons. Three the current government’s then Urban of which 258 million listed Hindi (and not
“self–other” binaries are discussed Development Minister, Venkaiah Naidu, any of its dialects) as mother tongue,
referred to Hindi as the “national lan- making Hindi the most widely spoken
in this regard: Hindi–Hindu as
guage,” adding, language in India. However, as shown in
“self,” Urdu–Muslim as “other”; Table 1, either Hindi or one of its dialects
I want that in our education policy we
Sanskrit-laden Hindi favouring should consider [promoting India’s own lan- is spoken by only 41.03% of the total
upper caste Hindus as “self,” guage]. It is our misfortune that we give too Indian population. The majority, that is,
much importance to English medium. (De nearly 60% of Indians do not speak
vernacular Hindi dialects often Sarkar 2017)
Table 1: Scheduled Languages in Descending
represented by the lower castes He also claimed that the widespread use of Order of Speakers’ Strength, 2001
and classes as “other”; and finally English would hinder the progress of the State/UT Language Speakers Percentage
(in millions)
Hindi as the epitome of “desi self,” nation. Ever since the Bharatiya Janata 1 Hindi 422.05 41.03
Party (BJP) came to power in 2014, there
English as “foreign other.” 2 Bengali 83.37 8.11
have been persistent and rather crude 3 Telugu 74.00 7.19
efforts not just to promote Hindi but to 4 Marathi 71.94 6.99
“prioritise” it above all other Indian lan- 5 Tamil 60.79 5.91
guages as well as English. The aim of 6 Urdu 51.54 5.01
this discussion is to critique the preva- 7 Gujarati 46.09 4.48
lent discourse of Hindi as the linguistic 8 Kannada 37.92 3.69
“self” in India, as the natural candidate 9 Malayalam 33.07 3.21
for national language status and equally 10 Oriya 33.02 3.21
to critique the projection of English as the 11 Punjabi 29.10 2.83
linguistic “other” in India. 12 Assamese 13.17 1.28
To understand what the projection of 13 Maithili 12.18 1.18
Hindi as “self” and as the “national” lan- 14 Santali 6.47 0.63
guage of India entails, it is important to 15 Kashmiri 5.53 0.54
examine three “self–other” binaries. 16 Nepali 2.87 0.28

First, Hindi–Hindu as “self,” Urdu–Muslim 17 Sindhi 2.54 0.25

18 Konkani 2.49 0.24
as “other,” second, Sanskrit-laden Hindi–
Reenu Punnoose (rpunnoose84@gmail.com) is 19 Dogri 2.28 0.22
at the Centre for Linguistics, Jawaharlal Nehru upper caste Hindu as “self”; vernacular
20 Manipuri 1.47 0.14
University, New Delhi. Muhammed Haneefa A P Hindi dialects—lower castes and classes
21 Bodo 1.35 0.13
(mudh.haneefa@gmail.com) is at the Centre for as “other;” and finally Hindi as the
the Study of Social Systems, Jawaharlal Nehru 22 Sanskrit 0.01 0
epitome of “desi self”—English as “for- Source: Authors’ calculation based on 2001 Census,
University, New Delhi.
eign other” are discussed below briefly. Government of India.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 19
COMMENTARY

Hindi. A few other points are also of sources, which came to be known as Hindi The prioritisation of the Sanskrit-laden
interest here. The number of “pure” (Kachru 2006: 2). Both Hindi and Urdu standard Hindi in recent times may be
Hindi speakers is 258 million and form are ultimately descendants of Sanskrit— seen, therefore, as a prioritisation of the
only 25.07% of India’s total population their grammars are nearly identical, and Hindu majority seen as the “self” over the
(Table 2). Also, Hindi is spoken by more their colloquial registers are largely indis- Muslim minority seen as the “other.”
than 50% of the population in only 11 out tinguishable, and interestingly it is Hindi It is important to remember that Hindi
of 29 states (Table 3), all of which are and not Urdu whose form and identity is not one fixed kind but like any other
located in what has come to be known have come to be chiefly associated with language is a broad continuum of dialects
as the “Hindi belt”/Hindi heartland. its Sanskrit ancestry. Kachru also com- that are characterised by region, class,
Hindi, therefore, is not representative of ments on the commonly perceived reli- and in India’s context, caste. The variety
the southern states along with those in the gious associations of these languages, of Hindi that has been promoted by the
west and north-east of the country. … because of political, social and attitudi- Government of India for decades and
Table 2: Fifteen Major Hindi Dialects, Total nal factors, Urdu became associated with the one that is prioritised by the Modi
Speakers’ Strength, and Percentage the Muslim population, and Hindi, with the government in recent times is the stand-
Rank Dialect Speakers Percentage Percentage Hindu population of India. (Kachru 2006: 2)
(in of Total of Total
ardised form of Hindi. Modern standard
millions) Hindi- Indian Table 3: Statewise Percentage of Hindi (commonly referred to as Khari
speaking Population Hindi-speaking Population in India (2001) Boli) is a heavily sanskritised form of
Population Rank State/UT Population Hindi- Percentage
1 Hindi 257.92 61.11 25.07 (in millions) speaking of Hindi- Hindi. Also known as shudh (pure) Hindi,
2 Bhojpuri 33.10 7.84 3.22
Population speaking it is written in the Devanagari script,
(in millions) Population
3 Rajasthani 18.36 4.35 1.78 India 1,028.74 422.05 41.03 which came into existence at the begin-
4 Others 14.78 3.50 1.44 1 Uttar Pradesh 166.05 151.77 91.40 ning of the 19th century (McGregor 1967;
5 Magadhi/Magahi 13.98 3.31 1.36 2 Rajasthan 56.47 51.41 91.03 Shapiro 1989; Kachru 2006). “Standard”
6 Chhattisgarhi 13.26 3.14 1.29 3 Himachal Pradesh 6.08 5.41 89.01 languages everywhere have driven out
7 Haryanvi 8.00 1.89 0.78 4 Uttarakhand 8.49 7.47 87.95 or are in the process of driving out local
8 Marwari 7.94 1.88 0.77 5 Haryana 21.08 18.46 87.56 dialects (Jesperson 1925: 45). Standard
9 Malvi 5.57 1.32 0.54 6 Madhya Pradesh 60.39 52.66 87.20 Hindi is no exception. Several scholars
10 Mewari 5.09 1.21 0.49 7 Chhattisgarh 20.83 17.21 82.61
and media reports have commented on
11 Khortha/Khotta 4.73 1.12 0.46 8 Delhi# 13.85 11.21 80.94
how the increased sanskritisation of
12 Bundeli/ 9 Bihar 82.88 60.64 73.16
Hindi has endangered other vernacular
Bundelkhandi 3.07 0.73 0.30 10 Chandigarh# 0.90 0.61 67.50
11 Jharkhand 26.95 15.51 57.56
varieties spoken by other regions, classes,
13 Bagheli/
Baghelkhadi 2.87 0.68 0.28 12 Daman and Diu# 0.16 0.03 19.45 and castes (Krishnamurti 1979; Oommen
14 Pahari 2.83 0.67 0.28 13 Jammu and Kashmir 10.07 1.87 18.57 2001; Pandharipande 2002; Ghosh 2007;
15 Lamani/Lambadi 2.71 0.64 0.26 14 Andaman and Joshua 2015; Venkatachalapathy 2017).
Source: Authors’ calculation based on 2001 Census, Nicobar Islands 0.36 0.06 18.21 Standard Hindi in its modern sanskri-
Government of India. 15 Dadra and Nagar tised, “Hinduised” form not only excludes
Haveli# 0.22 0.03 15.04
Third, Hindi appears to have a signi- other religious communities but also
16 Maharashtra 96.75 10.68 11.04
ficant link with the Hindu identity. 17 Punjab 24.29 1.85 7.62
inherently excludes lower castes. Stand-
Historically, this is better understood in 18 Arunachal Pradesh 1.10 0.08 7.39 ard Indian languages have been accused
the context of the Hindi–Urdu relation- 19 West Bengal 80.22 5.75 7.16 of perpetuating caste-based discrimina-
ship. Many linguists see them as two 20 Sikkim 0.54 0.04 6.66 tion. Dalit Gujarati poet, Neerav Patel
registers/standardised forms of the same 21 Assam 26.64 1.57 5.89 points out,
language (Masica 1991: 27; Kachru 2006). 22 Goa 1.35 0.08 5.69
As far as Dalits are concerned, the Indian
The common ancestor language is believed 23 Gujarat 50.60 2.39 4.72 languages bring with them Sanskritic tradi-
to have been spoken around the 12th or 24 Andhra Pradesh 75.73 2.46 3.25 tions, perpetuation of inequality rational-
25 Nagaland 1.99 0.06 2.86 ised in linguistic structures, and restrictions
13th century in the Delhi–Meerut region
26 Orissa 36.71 1.04 2.84 on mobility. (Kothari 2013: 66)
and developed because of contact between
27 Karnataka 52.73 1.34 2.55
the local inhabitants and the invading Patel further points out to Kothari that
28 Meghalaya 2.31 0.05 2.17
Afghans, Arabs, Persians, and Turks. Due 29 Tripura 3.19 0.05 1.68
despite Dalit dialects having been used
to various social pressures, two distinct 30 Mizoram 0.89 0.01 1.18 as a form of protest to undermine utilisa-
styles (mainly in terms of specialised 31 Manipur 2.29 0.02 1.08 tion and institutionalisation of standard
vocabulary and literary convention) repre- 32 Pondicherry# 0.97 0.00 0.45 languages and their elite registers by
sented by two distinct scripts emerged 33 Tamil Nadu 62.11 0.19 0.31 upper castes, the absence of a standard
over time: one that has a Perso–Arabic 34 Lakshadweep# 0.06 0.00 0.18 register in their speech always marks out
script, which came to be known as Urdu, 35 Kerala 31.84 0.03 0.08 a Dalit as being a Dalit. Given that it is in
# and UT—Union territory.
and the other that has a Devanagari Source: Authors’ calculation based on 2001 Census,
the Hindi belt that the caste system is
script and was influenced by Sanskritic Government of India. practised closest to the original varna
20 febrUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

model (Jaffrelot 2003: 6), it is reasonable
to assume that the caste-based Hindi dia-
lects constitute an active medium for dis-
crimination in the region. Standard Hindi,
with its increased affiliation to Sanskrit
and thereby its inherent caste bias, cannot
hope to evoke the same feelings of “mother-
tongue” pride across caste groups in the
same way that the upper caste Hindi–
Hindu zealots call for. The sanskritisation
of modern Hindi is not a recent process,
but its prioritisation over other Indian
languages and English has accelerated
after the BJP came to power. Considering
the sociolinguistic realities that character-
ise Hindi, a drastic increase in enforcing
its use in official domains reflects the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh ideology of
“Hindi–Hindu–Hindustan” (Joshua 2015).
Several Dalit scholars and activists
have long called for the community to
adopt English as a common language.
The attraction to English among Dalits
is not based on a fascination for any
linguistic or literary tradition but its lack
of an inherent association with caste.
English also has the potential to provide
Dalits with a unifying pan-Indian iden-
tity via one common language that does
not normalise caste in its linguistic
structure (Shepherd 2016; Kothari 2013).
Additionally, the fact that the knowl-
edge of English provides its user with
ample opportunities for upward mobility
in India makes English a better option
for Dalits than any other Indian lan-
guage. Kothari (2013: 67) points out that
when Dalit poets like Neerav Patel bring
English into the language discourse sur-
rounding Dalits, it is a gesture that
“reflects his refusal to Sanskritize or ver-
nacularize, and thus be bound by the old
terms of exchange,” and instead reflects
his desire to adopt and master a new lan-
guage altogether, a language that has no
memory of caste and a language that
even the upper castes aspire to.
The English language forms yet another
“other” to the “self” that is Hindi, or for
that matter any Indian language. Indians
have a love–hate relationship with the
English language. On the one hand, for
Indians, English is a colonial inheritance,
a language the British introduced to
serve their own imperial interests and
one that in independent India, at least
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
partly, shares the blame for endanger-
ing many indigenous tongues in the
region. On the other hand, English is
also recognised in India as a linguistic
capital and as a significant source for
generating the three forms of capital—
social, economic, and cultural capital,
and a language that a large majority of
Indians aspire to learn and master for
the opportunities that its knowledge
provides. As is the case in many outer
circle countries, even though English
has had a long history and enjoys
official status in India, it is perceived by
Indians as a foreign language; a rele-
vant indispensable “other.”
Indian English
The otherness of English seems too obvi-
ous at first to warrant a closer focus on
the politics and economics that might
form the basis of this perceived “other-
ness.” Consider these facts: although
English is numerically a minority lan-
guage in India the population of Indians
estimated to speak English in the last
decade ranges between 55 million and
350 million (Graddol 2010: 68), that is,
approximately 5% to 34% of the popula-
tion. The most reliable estimate so far is
the 2001 Census of India, according to
which, around 10% of the population
speak English. Notwithstanding the fact
that English is a minority language in
the country, India is likely the world’s
largest English-speaking country at pre-
sent (Crystal 2004).
However, because English is a global
language that wields tremendous power
nationally and internationally, this means
that the gap between the minority who
possess this linguistic capital and the
majority who do not in India, has wid-
ened. Even among the minority who
know English to varying extents, Sanu
(2007) refers to the presence of a hierar-
chy of spoken English accents in urban
India, a commonly observed phenome-
non in our daily encounters, as the Eng-
lish-based class system. Indian English
has garnered positive attention in the
recent past (Tully 2011) in both literary
and linguistic circles (Crystal 2004). Indi-
an English has a relatively young but
flourishing literary tradition with major
literary awards being bagged by Indian
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
writers in the recent past. Despite the
enormous aspiration among Indians to
know and use English and the linguists
and literary scholars around the world
taking notice of Indian English(es) as
they are used today, Indians continue
to see and be told that English is the
“other.” Time and time again, Hindi is
advocated as the pan-Indian alternative
to the lingua franca that English has
become for at least urban Indians and
as representative of “Indianness” as op-
posed to English, which is “Western.”
This Hindi as “self” and English as
“other” rhetoric must be treated with
certain scepticism. Who benefits from
“othering” English in India? What are
the consequences of “othering” English?
Since English is viewed as the foreign
“other,” the reference point (on paper)
for teaching English in India has been
and continues to be Standard Southern
British English (SSBE, previously referred
to as Received Pronunciation). SSBE is an
unrealistic model given that the over-
whelming majority of teachers teaching
English in India are not native SSBE
speakers. India’s othering of English also
greatly aids the British in strengthening
their monolithic propaganda of English
as a British language when the truth is
that a single country cannot lay claim to
the English language as purely its own.
The British also sell their standard variety
of English as a commodity across the
world, which is evident in the presence
of the 10 British Council centres across
India, with £32.7 million of revenue gen-
erated in the Indian English Language
Training (ELT) market in 2015–16 (British
Council Annual Report 2015–16).
Based on a survey commissioned by
the human resource and development
ministry, Kells (2016) reported that there
has been a tenfold increase in the num-
ber of private English medium schools
that are affiliated to the International
Baccaleurate (IB) board. This appears to
suggest that the rhetoric regarding English
as “other” is meant for only the middle
and lower strata of society. Due to the
inconsistent attitudes to English at the
level of educational policy, there is no
uniform, systematic way in which English
is taught and learnt across the class
divide in India. As it is, the multiple and
21
COMMENTARY
complex set of related factors such as
socio-economic background, domains
of English language use, and regional
languages spoken, vary greatly across
the country resulting in the different
varieties of Indian English one encounters.
Othering English while also simultane-
ously allowing private and foreign invest-
ment in the learning and teaching of
English in India creates as well as further
exacerbates the gaps in the English-
based class system. It also widens the
gap between the minority who know
English proficiently and the majority
who know little or no English.
The undesirable outcomes of project-
ing Hindi as “self” and English as “other”
hardly affect the upper classes and
“upper castes.” These groups have his-
torically had access to English language
education and can continue to access it
through their economic and social capital.
Instead, such rhetoric only serves to dis-
tance the masses, including the “lower
castes” and lower classes, from access to
quality English language education and
thereby preserving the long-standing
hegemony of the upper classes and
castes in educational development. The
projection of Hindi as self, too, is not
problematic for the “upper castes” as the
sanskritised version that characterises
modern standard Hindi is closely inte-
grated with aspects of the Hindu faith
which favour their dominance.
In spite of the regular reminder to view
English as the “other,” there is some lin-
guistic evidence for the interesting ways
in which English has been Indianised
over the years as a natural outcome of
several social, political, and economic
developments over the last three centu-
ries of its journey in India (Kachru 1986;
Sedlatschek 2009). Not only have several
words from regional Indian languages
entered global English dictionaries, but
young urban Indians appear to resist the
notion of an external standard for English
(Chand 2008). Some scholars have called
for Indians to accept English as their
own (Das 2002), and not to feel apolo-
getic because they are not monolinguals
(D’souza 1997). Perhaps it is time that we
make English more formally our own.
This could help democratise the access
and quality of English language education
22
that is provided across class strata in
India and thereby enable English to
become a true lingua franca.
Considering Hindi as emblematic of
“self” and English as emblematic of
“other” is problematic for the progress
and harmony of our country and has
significant implications for the existing
language policy of the union, which
claims that,
It has been the policy of the Government of
India that the progressive use of Hindi in the
official work may be ensured through persua-
sion, incentive and goodwill. (Government of
India 2015)
We are not advocating for English to be
made a national language or for giving it
more priority than Indian languages.
What remains questionable under the
current right-wing government is
whether the progressive use of Hindi is
through aggression instead of persuasion;
whether there are more deterrents than
incentives to learn Hindi; and whether
there is more hostility than goodwill
towards the Hindi language in the cur-
rent circumstances. Moreover, the BJP
government’s remarkable lack of finesse
in prioritising Hindi and enforcing San-
skrit is especially alarming at a time
when other modes of saffronisation are
omnipresent, be it the beef ban, “Ghar
Wapsi,”1 increased censorship of art
and culture, or the attack on minorities
and Dalits.
Note
1 Ghar Wapsi refers to mass reconversions of
non-Hindus to Hinduism initiated by the Sangh
Parivar based on their belief that all Indians
were originally Hindus.
References
Chand, Vineeta (2008): “Hinglish Identity: Changes
in Language Practices and Attitudes in Urban
India,” The 14th Conference of the Internation-
al Association for World Englishes, City Univer-
sity of Hong Kong, 5 December.
Crystal, David (2004): “Subcontinent Raises Its
Voice,” Guardian, 19 November, https://www.
theguardian.com/education/2004/nov/19/tefl,
accessed on 25 June 2017.
Das, Gurcharan (2002): The Elephant Paradigm:
India Wrestles with Change, New Delhi: Penguin.
De Sarkar, Dipankar (2017): “Mr Venkaiah Naidu and
India’s ‘English Mind’,” Livemint, 30 June, http://
www.livemint.com/Opinion/8ap2t2rAaOTsp9n
KNBaspK/Mr-Venkaiah-Naidu-and-Indias-English-
mind.html.
D’souza, Jean (1997): “Indian English: Some Myths,
Some Realities,” English World-Wide, Vol 18,
No 1, pp 91–105.
febrUARY 17, 2018
Ghosh, Arjun (2007): “‘Meanings’ of the Revolution:
Language in the Street Plays of Jana Natya
Manch,” Theatre of the Streets: The Jana Natya
Manch Experience, Sudhanva Deshpande (ed),
New Delhi: Janam, pp 117–31.
Government of India (2015): “The Official Language
Policy of the Union,” Department of Official
Language, New Delhi, http://rajbhasha.nic.in/
en/official-language-policy-union.
Graddol, David (2010): English Next India: The
Future of English in India, London: British
Council.
Jaffrelot, Christophe (2003): India’s Silent Revolu-
tion: The Rise of the Lower Castes in North India,
London: C Hurst & Co (Publishers) Ltd.
Jesperson, Otto (1925): Mankind, Nation and Indi-
vidual from a Linguistic Point of View, Oslo:
H Aschehoug & Co.
Joshua, Anita (2015): “A Yen for Sanskritised Hindi,”
Hindu,13 February, http://www.thehindu.com/
news/national/a-yen-for-sanskritised-hindi/arti-
cle6888531.ece, accessed on 15 June 2017.
Kachru, Braj (1986): “The Indianization of English,”
English Today, Vol 2, No 2, pp 31–33.
Kachru, Yamuna (2006): Hindi, Amsterdam/Phila-
delphia: John Benjamins Publishing Co.
Kells, Melanie (2016): “More Options with IB,
IGCSE,” Hindu, 13 March, http://www.thehindu.
com/features/education/more-options-with-
ib-igcse/article8346104.ece, accessed on 20
May 2017.
Kothari, Rita (2013): “Caste in a Casteless Language:
Dalit Expression in English,” Economic & Politi-
cal Weekly, Vol 48, No 39, pp 60–68.
Krishnamurti, Bhadriraju (1979): “Problems of
Language Standardisation in India,” Language
and Society: Anthropological Issues, William C
McCormack and Stephen A Wurm (eds), The
Hague: Mouton Publishers, pp 673–92.
Masani, Zareer (2012): “English or Hinglish—
Which Will India Choose?” BBC, 27 November,
http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-20500312,
accessed on 15 May 2017.
Masica, Colin P (1991): The Indo–Aryan Languages
(Cambridge Language Surveys), Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
McGregor, Ronald (1967): “The Rise of Standard
Hindi and Early Hindi Prose Fiction,” The Jour-
nal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain
and Ireland, Vol 3, No 4, pp 114–32.
Oommen, T K (2001): “Civil Society: Religion,
Caste and Language in India,” Indian Sociological
Society, Vol 50, No 2, pp 219–35.
Pandharipande, Rajeshwari (2002): “Minority
Matters: Issues in Minority Languages 213,”
International Journal on Multicultural Societies,
Vol 4, No 2, pp 213–34.
Sanu, Sankrant (2007): “The English Class System,”
South Asian Language Review, Vol 17, No 1,
pp 69–85.
Sedlatschek, Andreas (2009): Contemporary Indian
English: Variation and Change, Amsterdam:
John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Shapiro, Michael (1989): A Primer of Modern
Standard Hindi, New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass
Publishers.
Shepherd, Kancha Ilaiah (2016): “The Violence of
Caste: Why I Have Changed My Name to Kancha
Ilaiah Shepherd,” Scroll, 27 May, https://scroll.
in/article/808890/kancha-ilaiah-explains-
why-he-decided-to-add-shepherd-to-his-name.
Tully, Mark (2011): “Will English Kill Off India’s
Languages?” BBC, 29 November, http://www.
bbc.com/news/world-asia-15635553.
Venkatachalapathy, A R (2017): “Should Hindi Be
the Sole Official Language?,” Hindu, 19 May,
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/
should-hindi-be-the-sole-official-language/arti-
cle18491652.ece, accessed on 15 June 2017.
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Epidemic of Urban Floods
Politics, Development and Ecology
Shilpa Dahake
Through a study of floods in
the city of Nashik, this article
highlights the need to understand
urban floods not only as an
ecological disturbance produced
due to anthropogenic factors, but
also as an occurrence within a
sociopolitical space.
Shilpa Dahake (shilpadahake@iisermohali.
ac.in) is a doctoral candidate at the
Department of Humanities and Social
Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education
and Research, Mohali.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
A
part from meteorological and
hydrological factors, the National
Disaster Management Authority
(NDMA) of India considers encroachment
of the natural streams and watercourses
due to rapid urbanisation as a major factor
contributing to urban flooding (NDMA
2010). The encroachment, here, is a plan-
ning lexicon which is often equated with
illegality and directed towards slum
dwellers occupying waterways in cities
(Ramanathan 2005). Since 2016, I have
been conducting ethnographic fieldwork
in Nashik, exploring the urban political
ecology of the Godavari riverscape in
the city, which involved collecting nar-
ratives of the environmental activists/
groups working for the Godavari, as
well as of people living along the banks
of the river, in order to understand
public perception of the implemented
and proposed vision of the Godavari
riverfront development. For instance,
during the recent episode of flooding
in Nashik (Deccan Herald 2017), one of
my respondents, a resident of the city,
while describing the nature of the flood
suggested
The construction activities are sneaking
upon the floodplain and shrinking it, and we
are terming it as development. But since past
few years in Nashik, the Godavari floods are
uprooting such infrastructures obstructing
her flow. It seems mother Godavari herself
has taken the responsibility of alleviating
the encroachment in her floodplain. These
developmental encroachments, during the
flooding, are increasing the water level in
the low-lying areas of the old Nashik city,
severely impacting the lives of inhabitants
there. Thus, the administration should soon
realise their ignorance towards Godavari, to
reduce her wrath.
This narrative posits the disaster
within a sociopolitical framework, by
recognising the connections between
the state, private developers, and flood
risk. Such a recognition highlights the
ignored dimensions in the official dis-
course of urban flood management in
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
India. Also, the understanding of “devel-
opmental encroachments,” challenges the
typical association of “encroachment”
with the lower income groups and infor-
mal settlements. Further, following the
NDMA guidelines, the Nashik Municipal
Corporation (NMC) has focused on deve-
loping techno-managerial solutions, like
channelisation of waterways and laying
of piped storm water drains to confront
the risk of flooding in the city (NDMA
2010; NMC 2006a; DDMA Nashik 2016).
This aligns with the global discourse on
climate change in terms of “adaptation,”
which, by prioritising response to it,
“diminishes attention to the generation
of risk” (Ribot 2011). Since the 1990s,
disaster scholars have emphasised the
importance of understanding floods
within a social framework, in order to
develop an integrated flood manage-
ment discourse (Pelling 1999; Wisner
2004), but government response is still
limited to developing structural and
technocratic interventions.
Through the analysis of urban flood-
ing in Nashik, a religiously significant
and a rapidly urbanising city in the state
of Maharashtra, this article investigates
the intertwining of natural ecologies
and processes of urban development,
which are embedded in a specific socio-
cultural, political, and economic milieu.
The location of Nashik, along the Goda-
vari river makes it prone to flooding.
However flooding instances have become
persistent in the last decade, impacting
thousands of people living in the low-
lying areas of the city. This article presents
urban flooding not only as an ecological
disturbance produced due to anthropo-
genic factors, but as an occurrence in a
political space. Thus, I argue that “admin-
istrative rationalism” (Dryzek 2013) depo-
liticises the discourses on the manage-
ment of urban flooding by emphasising
the need to focus on the techno-manage-
rial, in order to cater to the hydrologic
metabolisms of the cities. Instead, what
is needed, is to understand the relations
of power that drive the socioecological
transformations, which are undermin-
ing the ecology of waterscapes in cities,
and thus producing flooding.
The postcolonial period witnessed a
sudden growth in the population of Nashik,
23
COMMENTARY
which stirred a thorough transformation
of the urban environment. By 2036, the
total population of Nashik is expected to
reach 34 million, from 14 million in 2011
(NMC 2016). Cities all across India are
experiencing recurrent flooding episodes,
which were often overlooked as sporadic
events. The Godavari river, meandering
through the city of Nashik makes it
prone to flooding, but such instances
are becoming frequent. The floods that
occurred in 2008 and 2016 even sur-
passed the magnitude of the 1969
floods, which were until then, the most
devastating floods in the city’s history
(Times of India 2016a). Unfortunately,
Nashik is again inching towards a reit-
eration of previous flooding occurrenc-
es. On 29 July 2017, incessant rains in
the catchment of the Godavari river
again resulted in the flooding of various
areas of the city (Vaidya 2017), and con-
sequently a second time within a span
of 10 days (Hitavada 2017).
The topography of Nashik is such that
the natural drainage of the city is oblique
towards the river Godavari, which
meanders through the city dividing it
into two halves. With the urbanisation
of the areas around this riverscape, the
notion of taming, controlling, and har-
nessing the river has been normalised in
the public sphere of Nashik. The river
gradually shifted from a “common” to an
“institutionalised” entity, with the con-
struction of the Gangapur dam in the
catchment of the Godavari, 10 kilome-
tres upstream from Nashik in 1954 (NMC
2006b). Due to this, the communities
living along the Godavari lost their long-
standing rights over river water (Shirwa-
dkar 1964: 46). Moreover, as the Godavari
is non-perennial, the damming of the
river obstructed its natural flow, which
resulted in the shrinking of the river
width over the years, thus exposing the
floodplains which were seen as a land
resource waiting to be appropriated and
inhabited. As the city expanded, the ex-
posed floodplains which were once used
for agriculture became prized real estate,
causing an upsurge in the growth of plan-
ned settlements along the riverbanks.
Besides, the Godavari ghats in old Nashik
undergo a thorough transformation with
every cycle of the Kumbh Mela, the
24
biggest Hindu congregation. The attempt
of the NMC to revive the Godavari ghats
for the Kumbh Melas, in order to accom-
modate the influx of pilgrims resulted in
the channelisation of the natural course
of the river, by concretisation. The con-
cretisation sprees began with the pre-
parations for the Kumbh Mela in 2003.
Not only did the NMC make the stone-
paved ghats impervious with thick lay-
ers of concrete, they also concretised
the riverbed in the ghat stretch (Balaji-
wale 2016), killing the natural springs
which fed the Godavari river stream
flowing through the city. One respond-
ent described this nonchalance of the
NMC saying, “In the name of develop-
ment, the NMC has literally poured ce-
ment in the Godavari river.” Further, the
religious significance of the Godavari
ghats has stemmed development of ho-
tels and dharamshalas to serve the
needs of the pilgrims. This has in-
creased the density and imperviousness
of the settlement around the Godavari
ghats. Rapid land-use conversions along
the Godavari are also worsening the
quality of the river water. This, accom-
panied by an increase in non-point pol-
lution sources, as well as the dumping
of inadequately treated waste water
into the stream, has made the current
state of the “religious” river deplorable.
‘Goda Park’ Project
The development pressures led to the
encroachment of the Godavari flood-
plains and the natural drainage of the
city landscape. Nashik’s flood episode of
2008 was considered one of the worst
floods witnessed in Maharashtra (NDTV
2008). However, this was just the onset
of the impact of climate change coupled
with developmental agendas transform-
ing the Godavari riverscape. In 2012,
the Tourism Finance Corporation of
India (TFCI), ahead of the Nashik Kumbh
Mela 2015, declared the Godavari too
polluted for ritual bathing, let alone for
drinking purposes (Botekar 2012). This
obligated the political party in power to
address the degrading ecological condi-
tions of the Godavari river in the city.
Following the prevailing trend of re-
claiming urban riverfronts, as in the
case of Sabarmati (Desai 2012), Raj
febrUARY 17, 2018
Thackeray, the head of the then-ruling
Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS)
party, foregrounded the idea of building
a “world-class” Godavari riverfront
under the label of “Goda Park” project
as an initiative towards conservation
(Sarkar 2014). However, the political
whims of Thackeray to compete in the
league of the “world-class” cities, which
led to the Goda Park project in Nashik,
sidelined the ecological necessities of
the river. The first phase of the project
was implemented under the Jawaharlal
Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission
(JNNURM) (Parulekar 2013), which in-
cluded construction of a concrete walk-
way along the Godavari river (Pradhan
2014). This initial version of the project
did not succeed, as it ignored the by-laws
of construction within the floodlines,
thus causing seasonal destruction due to
flooding of the river. In spite of the initial
failure, the project was revised in 2013,
and due to lack of funding, the NMC
handed it over to Reliance Foundation
(Economic Times 2013).
The revised version envisages a 13.5
kilometre-long project, with laser shows,
musical fountains, multipurpose facili-
ties and parks, to be developed upstream
of the old Nashik city on both banks of
the river (Pradhan 2014). Without any
public consultation, the riverscape, which
is an urban common, was handed over to
a private corporation. Many respondents
suggested that the Goda Park is a total
encroachment of the river floodplains.
In the midst of conflict between the NMC
and Irrigation Department, in 2014 Reli-
ance India Foundation began construc-
tion of about a 500 m stretch of the
Goda Park (Loksatta 2014). In the ab-
sence of appropriate mapping of the
floodlines of the river, the manifesta-
tion of the riverfront development pro-
ject is rapidly changing the land use of
the agricultural farms along the banks,
to development zones. This provides an
opportunity to the real estate develop-
ers in the city to reclaim the riverbanks
(Pradhan 2014). Such an ignorant atti-
tude of the NMC towards the Godavari is
further resulting in the shrinking of the
riverbed, and the destruction of the
riparian zones which are important for
flood absorption.
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Meanwhile, as a response to the risk
of flooding, in 2007, the NMC proposed
the implementation of a `400 crore storm
water drainage system, approved under
the JNNURM, which included construc-
tion of 305 km of pipeline to convey the
urban runoff outside the city (Patil
2017). In 2013, continued unprecedented
inundations in several areas of the city,
even after the implementation of this
scheme, revealed the faultiness in the
planning. The design of the storm water
drains completely overlooked the natu-
ral hydrology of the city and the pipeline
was built in the middle of the road with
many engineering defaults (Divya Mar-
athi 2013). The locals perceive these
attempts of the NMC to manage storm
water as unnecessary fund siphoning
schemes, which have further aggravated
the inundations in the city.
By tracing riverscape transformation,
it creates a link between the “develop-
mental encroachments” and risk of flood-
ing. Such transformations are making
the Godavari riverscape prone to ex-
treme conditions. In 2016, on the one
hand Nashik experienced severe water
scarcity during summer when the river-
bed was entirely dry exposing the layers
of concrete at Godavari ghats (Loksatta
2016a), while on the other, within the
span of a few months during the mon-
soon, the city was confronted with flash
floods which caused significant damage
to the environment, inhabitants, and
property (Loksatta 2016b). Even the
Goda Park was washed off in these
floods (Times of India 2016b). Thus, the
river conservation and flood manage-
ment efforts of the NMC are, in turn, be-
coming perils for the Godavari and Na-
shik. Troubled with the changing ecolo-
gy of the Godavari, the people of Nashik
have begun to create an alternate dis-
course by questioning the oblivious and
unplanned bureaucratic and political in-
terventions along the Godavari. People
are gathering under various banners,
such as Godavari Gatarikaran Virodhi
Manch (Forum against Sewage Pollu-
tion in Godavari), Godapremi Nagari
Sewa Samiti (Civil Service Committee of
Devotees of Godavari) and Nirmal Goda
Abhiyan (Mission to Make Godavari
Pollution Free), to conserve and revive
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
the river. In many cases, civic groups are
approaching the judiciary to awaken the
city administration. Overall, the produc-
tion of the Godavari riverscape as a “risk-
scape” reflects the manifestation of power
by the state and the political influences
in shaping the urban environment,
enabling us to situate the phenomena of
urban floods in a political space.
Push for Ecological Democracy
The mundane act of rainfall coupled with
the impact of climate change, and the
institutionalisation and commodification
of the riverscape in Nashik, is confound-
ing the problem of flooding in the city.
Through modernist perspectives and
developmental agendas the cities, as
Lewis Mumford (1956) illustrates, have
a tendency to loosen the bonds that connect
its inhabitants with nature and to trans-
form, eliminate, or replace its earth-bound
aspects, covering the natural site with an ar-
tificial environment that enhances the domi-
nance of man and encourages an illusion of
complete independence from nature.
The lens of urban flooding in this article
nuances the connections between humans
and nature, highlighting the power geo-
graphies (re)producing the urban envi-
ronment in the city. And thus underlin-
ing the importance of re-politicising the
urban flood discourse to formulate more
effective and integrated flood governance.
Further, the public recognition of state-
sanctioned encroachments and the nui-
sance of unplanned, irrelevant schemes,
have exposed the underlying causes of
the floods. If these recognitions become,
what Beck (1995) terms “ecological de-
mocracy,” then they can pressurise the
state to develop a more transparent, par-
ticipatory, and bottom-up planning ap-
proach. This would be invaluable in re-
ducing vulnerabilities and building
more socially just urban environments.
References
Balajiwale, Vaishali (2016): “Activists Frown Upon
Bore Well Suggestion at Ramkund,” DNA,
30 March, http://www.dnaindia.com/mum-
bai/report-activists-frown-upon-bore-well-
suggestion-at-ramkund-2195584.
Beck, Ulrich (1995): Ecological Politics in an Age of
Risk, Cambridge: Polity Press.
Botekar, Abhilash (2012): “Godavari Unfit for
Ritual Bathing,” Times of India, 11 September,
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nash-
ik/Godavari-unfit-for-ritual-bathing/articlesh-
ow/16344541.cms?prtpage=1.
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
DDMA Nashik (2016): “Disaster Management Plan:
Nashik,” District Disaster Management Author-
ity Nashik, Collector Office, Nashik, http://na-
shik.nic.in/htmldocs/DDMP_Nsk.pdf.
Deccan Herald (2017): “Godavari Swells as Heavy
Rains Lash Nashik,” 29 July, Deccan Herald,
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/6253-
64/godavari-swells-heavy-rains-lash.html.
Desai, Renu (2012): “Governing the Urban Poor:
Riverfront Development, Slum Resettlement
and the Politics of Inclusion in Ahmedabad,” Eco-
nomic & Political Weekly, Vol 47, No 2, pp 49–56.
Divya Marathi (2013): “Nashik Rain Drainage Open,”
8 June, Nashik edition, http://divyamarathi.
bhaskar.com/news/MAH-NMAH-NAS-nashik-
rain-drainage-open-4286199-NOR.html.
Dryzek, John S (2013): The Politics of the Earth:
Environmental Discourses, 1997, New York: Ox-
ford University Press.
Economic Times (2013): “Goda Park Project to be
Developed by Reliance Foundation,” 20 Septe-
mber, https://economictimes.indiatimes.com/
articleshow/22800321.cms?intenttarget=no&-
utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=-
text&utm_campaign=cppst.
Hitavada (2017): “Heavy Rains Lash Nashik,” 15
July, http://www.thehitavada.com/Encyc/2017/
7/15/Heavy-rains-lash-Nashik.aspx.
Loksatta (2014): “Clash between Corporation and
PWD Department Over Goda Park,” 9 March,
http://www.loksatta.com/maharashtra-news/
goda-park-corporation-pwd-clash-396570/.
— (2016a): “Ramkund Goes Waterless for the
First Time in 139 Years” [in Marathi], 8 April,
http://www.loksatta.com/nashik-news/maha-
rashtra-drought-nashik-ramkund-goes-water-
less-for-the-first-time-in-139-years-1224599/.
— (2016b): “Rain Triggers Flood in Nashik,” 3 Aug-
ust, http://www.loksatta.com/nashik-news/
rain-triggers-flood-in-nashik-district-1278032/.
Mumford, Lewis (1956): “The Natural History of
Urbanization,” Man’s Role in Changing the Face
of the Earth, William L Thomas Jr (ed), Chica-
go: University of Chicago, p 386.
NDMA (2010): “National Disaster Management
Guidelines: Management of Urban Flooding,”
National Disaster Management Authority, Gov-
ernment of India, New Delhi, http://www.ndma.
gov.in/images/guidelines/management_urban_
flooding.pdf.
NDTV (2008): “Now, Maharashtra Battles Flood,”
20 September, http://www.ndtv.com/video/
news/news/now-maharashtra-battles-flood-3-
9098.
NMC (2006a): “City Development Plan of Nashik
Municipal Corporation under JNNURM,” Nashik
Municipal Corporation, pp 115–16, http://nashik-
corporation.in/public/upload/download/cdp-
ch12_Chapter12.pdf.
— (2006b): “City Development Plan of Nashik
Municipal Corporation under JNNURM,” Nashik
Municipal Corporation, p 96, http://nashikcor-
poration.in/public/upload/download/cdp-ch-
12_Chapter12.pdf.
— (2016): “Nashik Draft Revised Development
Plan 2016–2036,” Nashik Municipal Corporation,
https://dtp.maharashtra.gov.in/Site/FORMS/
..%5CUploads%5CPhoto_pload%5CDPReportP
ublish%5C2d64f949-b0fd-4768-a106-dd576b-
1fe344Report%20under%20section%2026.pdf.
Parulekar, Raju (2013): “Godavari, Nashik, Reliance
& MNS: Arrogance through Ignorance,” Raju
Parulekar’s Blog, 24 October, https://rajupa-
rulekar.wordpress.com/2013/10/24/godavari-
nashik-reliance-mns-arrogance-through-igno-
rance/.
25
COMMENTARY
Patil, Vinod (2017): “Administration Keep Quit on
Drainage Issue,” 18 June, Maharashtra Times,
http://maharashtratimes.indiatimes.com/edi-
torial/ravivar-mata/administration-keep-quit-
on-drainage-issue/articleshow/59196322.cms.
Pelling, Mark (1999): “The Political Ecology of Flood
Hazard in Urban Guyana,” Geoforum, Vol 30,
No 3, pp 249–61.
Pradhan, Amruta (2014): “Goda Park Riverfront
Development Project: Violation of Court Order
and Destruction of Fertile Riparian Zone,”
South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People,
3 November, https://sandrp.wordpress.com/
2014/11/03/goda-park-riverfront-development-
project-violation-of-court-order-and-destruction-
of-fertile-riparian-zone/.
Ramanathan, Usha (2005): “Demolition Drive,”
Taming the Monetary Beast
Federal Reserve’s Unwinding and
Global Monetary Governance
KANAD BAGCHI
As the momentous monetary
policy measures by the United
States Federal Reserve—the
decade-long quantitative easing
and balance sheet expansion
programme—inch closer to an
end, this article captures some
of the lessons learnt and, more
particularly, the ones unlearnt in
the last decade. The pivotal role
of central bank communication,
the impact of monetary policy
spillovers, and the changing
nature of central bank mandates
are perhaps the most important
takeaways from a decade of
financial turmoil and monetary
policy interventions.
Kanad Bagchi (bagchi@mpil.de) is at the Max
Planck Institute for Comparative Public Law
and International Law, Heidelberg, Germany.
26
Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 40, No 27,
pp 2908–12.
Ribot, Jesse (2011): “Vulnerability before Adapta-
tion: Toward Transformative Climate Action,”
Global Environmental Change, Vol 21, No 4,
pp 1160–62.
Rediff (2005): “Rains Continue to Lash Nashik; Riv-
ers Flooded,” 28 July, http://www.rediff.com/
news/2005/jul/28rain3.htm.
Sarkar, Sumita (2014): “Green Activists Oppose
Riverfront Development,” Times of India, 6 Octo-
ber, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/City/-
Nashik/Green-activists-oppose-riverfront-de-
velopment/articleshow/44479329.cms.
Shirwadkar, Vishnu (1964): Jivan Ganga: A Cente-
nary Report of Nashik Municipal Council and
City, Nashik: Gaonkari Press, p 46.
O
n 20 September 2017, the United
States (US) Federal Reserve an-
nounced the gradual unwinding
of perhaps its biggest monetary experi-
ment in history—the decade-long quanti-
tative easing and balance sheet expansion
programme. Adopted against the back-
drop of the global financial crisis in 2008,
and with an objective to revive aggregate
demand and economic growth, the Federal
Reserve embarked upon a hitherto un-
precedented and practically unlimited
purchase of long-term US treasury debt
obligations and private asset-backed secu-
rities. The result—a bloated $4.5 trillion
central bank balance sheet representing
roughly 24% of the US’s gross domestic
product (GDP), a possibility of looming
losses for the Federal Reserve, and a fear
of the private sector being crowded out.
Notably, the Federal Reserve was not
alone in this endeavour. Central banks in
other systemic countries (United Kingdom,
Eurozone, and Japan) closely followed suit
and launched their own versions of quan-
titative easing so as to influence long-
term interest rates in their respective
economies (Borio and Zabai 2017). With
growth, investment, and employment lev-
els slacking through consecutive quar-
ters, and with no immediate indications
of a course reversal, quantitative easing
febrUARY 17, 2018
Times of India (2016a): “Downpour Brings Nashi-
kites to Their Knees,” 2 August, http://times-
ofindia.indiatimes.com/city/nashik/Downpo-
ur-brings-Nashikites-to-their-knees/articlesh-
ow/53511482.cms.
— (2016b): “Flood Does Not Spare Goda Park
Either,” 5 August, http://timesofindia.india-
times.com/city/nashik/Flood-does-not-spare-
Goda-Park-either/articleshow/53552364.cms.
Vaidya, Sagar (2017): “Heavy Rain in Nashik, Trig-
gering Flood in Godavari River,” ABP Majha,
Nashik, 29 July, http://abpmajha.abplive.in/
nasik/heavy-rain-in-nashik-triggering-flood-
in-godavari-river-436830.
Wisner, Ben et al (2004): At Risk: Natural Hazards,
People’s Vulnerability and Disaster, 1994, London
and New York: Routledge.
and unconventional monetary policies had
come to acquire the status of the new
“normal” in monetary policy parlance.
Thus, after almost a decade of unusually
low interest rates and ultra-cheap money,
the Federal Reserve’s U-turn with respect
to unconventional monetary policies and
its balance sheet normalisation agenda,
is indicative of several positive mile-
stones: the revival of growth and invest-
ment in the US and the world economy,
confidence with respect to an upsurge in
inflation and employment, and a resto-
ration of monetary policy transmission
channels. It also perhaps signals the
growing unease within the Federal Reserve
and other policymakers about the poten-
tially counterproductive impact of sus-
tained “accommodative monetary policy”
in augmenting asset price mismatches
and financial market distortions.
As the “great monetary experiment” is
inching closer to an end, this article cap-
tures some of the lessons learnt and more
particularly, the ones unlearnt in the last
decade. The pivotal role of central bank
communications, the impact of mone-
tary policy spillovers, and the changing
nature of central bank mandates are
perhaps the most important takeaways
from the last decade of financial turmoil
and monetary policy interventions.
Governing through
Communication
While conventional wisdom has invaria-
bly assigned considerable importance to
central bank communications in squar-
ing out monetary policy decisions, the
global financial crisis elevated the role
of communication as an additional tool
of monetary policy. As short term, key
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

interest rates were brought down to the
zero lower bound level in the aftermath
of the global financial crisis, central
banks increasingly struggled to transmit
monetary policy measures through in-
terest rates alone. Central bank commu-
nication through forward guidance was
adopted as an explicit monetary policy
tool, as against earlier practices of re-
porting primarily on the economic out-
look. Policy guidance on the likely path
of future interest rates presented the
theoretical possibility of bridging the gap
between current policy orientation and
short-term policy preferences. Relevant
studies have shown that, despite the
inherent limitations of forward guidance
as an instrument of monetary policy, it
has been generally found to be effective,
at least with respect to reducing volatility
in short-term expectations and in im-
proving the predictability of short-term
yields (Charbonneau and Rennison 2015).
The central role of communication was
also largely evident in 2013, when the
Federal Reserve catalysed a “taper tan-
trum” in global financial markets, by indi-
cating, rather unexpectedly, an imminent
demise of its quantitative easing program-
me. Market participants and financial in-
vestors reacted decisively, pulling out from
emerging economies, nudging local cur-
rencies and stock markets towards a tail-
spin, and significantly hiking US treasury
yields. In contrast, the Federal Reserve’s
latest taper announcement has barely
caused a flutter in the global financial
markets. What explains the shift in market
perceptions from then and now? How can
one account for the change from tether-
ing tantrums to relative calm? Much of
the qualitative difference can be demon-
strated through the Federal Reserve’s re-
newed focus on its communication strate-
gies and attuning them towards a better
management of market expectations.
Internally, the Federal Reserve adopted
several changes to its information-gather-
ing operations, broadened its surveys of
both primary market dealers and other
market participants, and disseminated
more frequently its summary of economic
projections. Externally, by infusing more
clarity, coherence, and predictability
through press releases and public engage-
ments, the Federal Reserve did not leave
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
much room for either speculation or con-
jecture. Both the certainty of balance
sheet normalisation, and its eventual
modus operandi, has surfaced in several
Federal Reserve briefings since early
2014. The Federal Reserve’s September
communication on balance-sheet unwind-
ing is similarly circumspect, and is neither
overly aggressive nor meekly submis-
sive. As opposed to “actively” and direct-
ly selling securities in the market, the
Federal Reserve indicated a “passive”
balance sheet rundown, by abstaining
from reinvesting the proceeds of the
maturing securities to buy newer ones.
Accordingly, “predictability and certainty”
underpinning the Federal Reserve’s
communication strategies predisposed
market participants towards a more con-
sidered response as opposed to a hurried
and frantic reaction in 2013.
In the Federal Reserve’s own words
expressed in a 2014 statement,
The Committee intends to reduce the Federal
Reserve’s securities holdings in a gradual
and predictable manner primarily by ceasing
to reinvest repayments of principal on secu-
rities. (Federal Reserve 2014)
Several policymakers, including Ben
Bernanke, have held similar views
regarding the pace and content of the
unwinding. Writing for Brookings, he
expressed the view that an “active” ap-
proach to unwinding could likely cause
disruptions in the financial markets and
may not allow for a more considered
response by market players, both inside
the US and abroad (Bernanke 2017).
Decidedly, Federal Reserve communica-
tions assumed significant importance as
an additional governance mechanism,
in defining an observable course of
action, with minimum disruptions.
Negative Externalities
In an attempt to conceptualise this new
age of central banking and what that means
for the international monetary system, a
plethora of new economic research on
quantitative easing, unconventional mone-
tary policies, and their effects on the
broader economy has emerged in recent
years (Bagchi 2017). While studies have
been less conclusive on the causal rela-
tionship between quantitative easing on
the one hand and economic growth on
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
the other, the cross-border effects of
quantitative easing policies on exchange
rates and stock markets have been more
forthcoming and definitive. Empirical
studies have documented that histori-
cally low interest rates in the US and
other advanced economies led to market
participants and investors flooding emer-
ging market stocks and bonds, in search
of higher yields, thereby pushing up ex-
change rates and strengthening local
currencies. Emerging markets shot back
with accusations of “currency wars” and
“competitive devaluations” while threat-
ening to bring claims before the World
Trade Organization (WTO).
Inversely, the Federal Reserve’s reve-
lation to scale back its quantitative easing
programme in 2013 caused an exact rever-
sal of capital flows from emerging markets
to advanced economies, stoking exces-
sive exchange rate volatility and threat-
ening financial stability in the region.
Such cross-border spillovers and sudden
“stops” and “reversals” of capital flows to
and from emerging economies as a result
of quantitative easing policies have re-
newed the debate on monetary policy
coordination as a means to internalise
the externalities arising out of domesti-
cally inward-looking policies. While much
of the international community has ac-
knowledged the menacing problem of
negative externalities, policy coordination
so as to alleviate such concerns has not
acquired a definitive agenda. Correspond-
ingly, emerging economies, in addition to
augmenting their presence at global coordi-
nating forums such as G20 and the Bank
for International Settlements (BIS), have
shown that capital controls and macro-
prudential policies at the domestic
level, if implemented succinctly, can be
Obituaries
The EPW has started a section, “Obituaries”,
which will note the passing of teachers
and researchers in the social sciences and
humanities, and social activists who have
contributed to a just society.
The announcements will be in the nature of
short notices about the work and careers of
those who have passed away.
Readers could send brief obituaries to
edit@epw.in.
27
COMMENTARY

instrumental in insulating the economy
from the vagaries of capital flows and
exchange rate swings. Interestingly, both
the IMF and the BIS have grudgingly rec-
ognised the utility of capital controls in
their most recent communications (IMF
2012), representing a clear break from
their erstwhile liberalisation agenda.
Monetary vs Financial Stability
Pre-crisis theoretical frameworks advo-
cated a separation of monetary policy
from other aspects of the economy,
most notably financial supervision and
regulation. While independent central
banks were tasked with the objective of
pursuing monetary stability, institution-
ally separate supervisory bodies were
created for the purposes of ensuring fi-
nancial stability. As risks arising out of
financial stability were considered too
remote for considerations of monetary
policy and vice versa, the trade-offs be-
tween the two were never seriously ana-
lysed. The global financial crisis, however,
exposed the fallacies of the separation
model and underscored the intricacies
and interlinkages between the conduct
of monetary policy and the build-up of
systemic risk. Monetary policy affects
activity both in the financial market and
in the real economy, especially through
the asset price channel and thus has im-
plications for financial stability. On the
other hand, prudent financial supervision
and regulation reduces financial distor-
tions, thus improving monetary policy
transmission. Also it cannot be side-
stepped that the largely unexplored im-
plications of quantitative easing and un-
conventional monetary policies on the
financial system confounds policymakers
with newer risks, formerly unobserved.
In recent years, therefore, an increas-
ing number of policymakers and central
bankers have sought to integrate parts of
the two, by either incorporating finan-
cial stability concerns into central bank-
ing mandates, or through improving
coordination between monetary and
financial authorities. While debunking
the traditional dichotomies in monetary
and financial stability, the last decade of
financial and monetary interventions
have brought into focus the expanding
role and mandate of central banks
within the larger economy, compelling
them towards a more systematic and
holistic consideration of the two, dur-
ing periods of normalcy and financial
turmoil, both.
REFERENCES
Bagchi, Kanad (2017): “Revisiting the Taper Tan-
trum: A Case for International Monetary Policy
Coordination,” Journal of Financial Regulation,
Vol 3, No 2, pp 280–89.
Bernanke, Ben (2017): “Shrinking the Fed’s Balance
Sheet,” 26 January, Brookings, https://www.
brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2017/01/
26/shrinking-the-feds-balance-sheet/.
Borio, Claudio and Anna Zabai (2016): “Unconven-
tional Monetary Policies: An Appraisal,” BIS Work-
ing Paper No 570, Bank for International Settle-
ments, http://www.bis.org/publ/work570.pdf.
Charbonneau, Karyne and Lori Rennison (2015):
“Forward Guidance at the Effective Lower
Bound: International Experience,” Bank of
Canada Staff Discussion Paper No 15, http://
www.bankofcanada.ca/wp-content/uploads/
2015/11/dp2015-15.pdf.
Federal Reserve (2014): “Federal Reserve Issues
Statement on FOMC Statement on Policy Nor-
malization Principles and Plans,” 17 September,
https://www.federalreserve.gov/newsevents/
pressreleases/monetary20140917c.htm.
IMF (2012): “The Liberalization and Management
of Capital Flows: An Institutional View,” Policy
Paper, 14 November, International Monetary
Fund, http://www.imf.org/en/Publications/
Policy-Papers/Issues/2016/12/31/The-Liberal-
ization-and-Management-of-Capital-Flows-
An-Institutional-View-PP4720.

Appeal for Donations to the Corpus of the Sameeksha Trust

This is an appeal to the subscribers, contributors, advertisers and well-wishers of Economic and Political Weekly (EPW), published by
Sameeksha Trust, a public charitable trust registered with the office of the Charity Commissioner, Mumbai, India. EPW has completed
50 years of publications. We have become what we are at present because of your support and goodwill. Week after week, EPW publishes
at least 80,000 words by a wide range of writers: veteran and young scholars, senior journalists and public commentators, political and
social activists; elected representatives of the people, policy practitioners, and concerned citizens.
In order to meet new editorial challenges, confront technological changes, provide adequate remuneration to our employees and
contributors, enhance our reputation and grow in stature and scale while zealously maintaining our editorial independence and autonomy,
we seek your support. Given the growing uncertainty in flows of advertising income and the fast-changing nature of publishing, it is our
endeavour to increase interest income by enlarging the corpus of the Sameeksha Trust. We seek active support from both institutions and
individuals in this endeavour.
Do donate to the corpus of the Sameeksha Trust. The Sameeksha Trust, which owns EPW and the EPW Research Foundation,
is a public charitable trust registered under the Bombay Public Trusts Act, 1950. Donations to Sameeksha Trust enjoy tax exemption under
Section 80G of the Income Tax Act, 1961. We welcome donations to the corpus not less than Rs 1,000 per individual. Donations in foreign
currency and donations from political parties are not accepted. We welcome donations from non-resident Indians (NRIs) and persons of
Indian origin (PIOs), but only in Indian currency and through regular banking channels. All donors must provide details of their Permanent
Account Number (PAN) and a covering letter, stating that this donation is to the corpus of the Sameeksha Trust. Please note that a covering
letter and photocopy of the PAN card is mandatory.
If you need more information on how to support us, please email us at edit@epw.in and we shall be happy to provide you with details.
— From the Trustees of Sameeksha Trust and the Editor of EPW

28 febrUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

The Professor Goes to Moscow
David C Engerman
Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis
has long been accused of
maintaining close ties with
the Soviet Union. However, his
communist links are mostly
asserted without documentary
evidence. Using new archival
material, especially from the
archives of Soviet institutions,
this article discusses
Mahalanobis’s desire for
Indo–Soviet ties, especially in the
economic realm, as well as the
Soviet response to such alliances.
David C Engerman (engerman@brandeis.edu)
is at the Brandeis University, Waltham, United
States, Massachusetts.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
E
ven now, more than four decades
after his death and three years
after the demise of the Planning
Commission that he helped lead, the
Bengali statistician Prasanta Chandra
Mahalanobis attracts controversy and
strong views. At the peak of his influence
in the 1950s, Mahalanobis stood close to
the centre of a kind of Cold War in Indi-
an economic circles; echoes of that dis-
pute remain. Critics portray him as a
sinister mastermind who brought about
the failed Nehruvian economic policy of
heavy industry and central planning. His
policies were—and indeed still are—
derided as autarkic, communist, and
Soviet-inspired. Meanwhile, his defend-
ers and protégés, especially those con-
nected with the Indian Statistical Insti-
tute (ISI) that he directed from its creation
in 1931 until his death 40 years later, focus
on his contributions towards institution-
building and framing of economic poli-
cies that established a base for future
economic growth. The 1991 economic
reforms re-energised his posthumous
critics; these reversed many of the policy
prescriptions that Mahalanobis had en-
dorsed; his critics also brought home the
comparison with the Soviet Union,
which met its end that same year (Bhag-
wati 1993: 53; Rudra 1996: 374–75).
Mahalanobis’s relationship with the
Soviet Union, however, was much more
interesting and complicated than such
canards about the influence of commu-
nism on his ideas might suggest. On the
one hand, “The Professor,” as he called
himself, assiduously wooed Soviet exper-
tise, Soviet funds, and Soviet connec-
tions over the course of the 1950s, and
did so in ways well beyond what his
fiercest critics might have suspected. On
the other hand, Soviet officials frequently
met his enthusiasm with a combination
of cautious engagement, bureaucratic self-
protection, and, occasionally, outright
disdain. This article studies the evidence,
especially from Soviet records but also
from Mahalanobis’s own papers, which
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
shows how calling Mahalanobis a Soviet
lackey hides the depth of his engage-
ment as well as the sharp divergence
bet ween his ideas and those of his Soviet
interlocutors.
Mahalanobis’s critics since the 1950s
were quick to identify his sympathies for
both the Soviet Union as well as commu-
nist doctrines. His own writings and
speeches, not to mention his travels, did
much to bolster such attacks. Most strik-
ing, perhaps, was a private letter he
wrote to the distinguished Polish econo-
mist Oskar Lange as part of his efforts to
entice Lange to visit the ISI. Writing in
March 1953, Mahalanobis reflected upon
that month’s big news from Moscow:
Before I conclude, I should like to mention
how stunned I felt when I heard of the pass-
ing away of the great Stalin …. The Soviet
Union and the socialised [i.e socialist]
countries will constantly miss his guiding
hand, but from what I saw in the USSR and
in Poland that the constructive work started
under his inspiring leadership will contin-
ued with unabated vigour.1
Though Lange had published a gener-
ally positive assessment of Stalin’s career
as an “economist,” many of Lange’s com-
patriots celebrated, rather than mour-
ned, the absence of Stalin’s “guiding
hand.” The years after 1953 saw upris-
ings in East Germany, Poland, and, most
dramatically, Hungary. Undaunted by
these countercurrents, Mahalanobis con-
tinued to insist that the Soviet Union
was a progressive force for world peace.
He was not alone in holding such a view,
of course; but he made this point with
particular frequency (Mahalanobis 1959).
He repeated these statements in Soviet
newspapers and in conversations with
Western diplomats and journalists who
catalogued them with unctuous precision.2
Economic Ideas
But it was Mahalanobis’s economic ideas,
even more than his statements about
politics, that accounted for his close ties
with the Soviet Union. His deep enthusi-
asm for Soviet economic policy took the
form of economic planning, finding in
the Soviet Gosplan (State Planning Com-
mission) an inspiration, a model, and a
potential partner. Writing to his protégé
and good friend Pitamber Pant—a fel-
low physicist–turned–statistician with a
29
COMMENTARY

decade-long career in the Planning
Commission—“The Professor” recalled
his first trip to Moscow which was deep
in the doldrums of late Stalinism. He
had gone, he said later, to learn more
about Soviet-style planning, which he
considered the only “path to salvation”
(or at least to prosperity). That 1951 visit,
he told Pant while back in Moscow a few
years later, “was of crucial importance
because I got a vivid impression of So-
viet planning.”3 Vivid to be sure, but
given that living standards in urban
Russia remained well below the penuri-
ous levels of the 1920s, other observers
might have drawn very different conclu-
sions about the fruits of Soviet planning
(Wheatcroft 2009).
Mahalanobis also defended his call for
rapid industrialisation in India with ref-
erences, direct and indirect, to the Soviet
Union (Mahalanobis 1958). He suggested
many other inspirations, of course, inclu-
ding “Western” approaches like that of
the Harrod–Domar growth model. How-
ever, Evsey Domar, the American econo-
mist who belonged to the latter part of
the group, suggested that Mahalanobis’s
underlying models shared core elements
with the Soviet model and not with
Western ones. The core of Mahalanobis’s
model, whatever its origins, was that sus-
tained growth required sustained invest-
ment, and focusing on investment goods
over consumer goods would lead to
substantially larger returns over the long
term (Mahalanobis 1953: 208; Domar
1957: 230 n 16). Critics in the 1950s and
since have challenged both the theoretical
basis and the practical results of Ma-
halanobis’s heavy-industry strategy,
usually tying it to the Soviet model or to
a general interest in socialism or com-
munism (Desai and Bhagwati 1975).
Ultimate Goal
Mahalanobis also responded enthusias-
tically to Soviet collectivisation. Choo-
sing his words carefully for an Indian
public, he insisted upon the need to “pre-
pare the country both psychologically
and technologically for consolidation of
operational holdings,” drawing a tenu-
ous analogy to Indian land reform move-
ments like Vinoba Bhave’s Bhoodan
movement for voluntary redistribution
(Mahalanobis 1961: 53). Speaking with-
out such circumspection in a seminar at
the Soviet Oriental Institute, he pro-
claimed that “the ultimate goal of all
agrarian policy” in India should be
mechanised agriculture on the basis of
“cooperation,” leaving no doubt in Soviet
minds that he had in mind collectivisa-
tion.4 Such efforts in the Soviet Union in
the 1930s, of course, bore little rese-
mblance to the voluntary donations of
Bhoodan and had come at extraordinary
human and financial costs that wrecked
Soviet agriculture for generations.
The Soviet Union was more than just a
model for Mahalanobis; on his increas-
ingly frequent pilgrimages to Moscow in
the 1950s, Mahalanobis sought assis-
tance of all kinds. He wanted the latest
Soviet computers, economic aid, and ex-
pertise to expand Indian planning. “It is,”
he exhorted Pant with a crescendo of
urgency, “not money, not money, not
money I am worrying about,” but “tech-
nical knowledge.”5 Yet his interests went
far beyond technique; he sought infor-
mation and inspiration. He even propo-
sed cooperation, beseeching Soviet pla-
nners to insert themselves in the process
of formulating Indian economic plans—
working in close connection, just as the
Soviet Union was operating in the Peo-
ple’s Republic of China (Jersild 2014).6
Even in an era when planning received
encomiums in India (and indeed globally),
these sorts of ideas went beyond the abs-
tract interest in central planning that
many proponents evinced, and even be-
yond the hopes of most planners outside
the socialist nations of the Soviet bloc
(Kudaisya 2009; Engerman 2015).
Mahalanobis had a double-edged app-
roach to dealing with the Soviet Union.
On the one hand, he aggressively pursued
deeper ties and sought to position him-
self as a major channel for Soviet–Indian

Regional Political Economy

November 18, 2017
Possibilities of Seeing the ‘Region’ Differently —Arjun Jayadev, Vamsi Vakulabharanam
Constructing Regions Inside the Nation: Economic and Social Structure of Space
in Agrarian and Cultural Regions —Barbara Harriss-White
Three Planes of Space: Examining Regions Theoretically in India —Sudipta Kaviraj
Delhi’s ‘Regional’ Capitalism —Rana Dasgupta
The Agrarian Question amidst Populist Welfare: Interpreting Tamil Nadu’s Emerging Rural Economy —M Vijayabaskar
First Nature and the State: Non-emergence of Regional Capital in Mandya —Narendar Pani
Regional Economies and Small Farmers in Karnataka —Seema Purushothaman, Sheetal Patil
Space and Time through an Urban-Industrial Hinterland —Atreyee Majumder
For copies write to: Circulation Manager,
Economic and Political Weekly,
320–322, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: circulation@epw.in

30 febrUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

cultural and intellectual connections.
He sought not just expanded technical
contacts in economics, statistics, and
planning, but also cultural connections
ranging from music to fiction to maga-
zines. As Soviet officials sought to broad-
en and deepen Indo–Soviet cultural ties,
they worked up a 15-page list of possible
Indo–Soviet cultural connections, many
of which ran through Mahalanobis or
his institute. He was hardly the only en-
trant in the competition to become an
impresario of Indo–Soviet cultural rela-
tions but, was likely, the most persistent;
Soviet archives hold at least 350 pages of
correspondence about his trips to Mos-
cow and his proposals for closer ties.7
At the same time, though, Mahalanobis
tried to present himself as a statistician
with little interest in politics. This pres-
entation is seemingly at odds with his
frequent insinuation, when speaking with
Soviet officials, that he held formal politi-
cal power in the Government of India,
beyond his official title in the mid-1950s
of “Honorary Statistical Advisor to the
Cabinet.” So, while he proposed close
Indo–Soviet cooperation in economic
planning, for instance—to the point that
the Indian plan would be jointly formu-
lated with Soviet economists—he reque-
sted that all arrangements be handled
through scholarly rather than official
channels. This led to the odd mismatch
of a seeming parallel between the mas-
sive Soviet Academy of Sciences and his
own, decidedly more modest, ISI. But it
would also make it easier, Mahalanobis
told his Soviet interlocutors with an air
of the conspirator, to avoid “excit[ing]
their enemies.”8
Accusations and Attacks
Within India, Mahalanobis faced a bar-
rage of attacks from many quarters:
from economists who did not consider
him one of their own as well as from
policymakers who had different ideas
about India’s economic future. The mech-
anisms of attack varied; Mahalanobis
was convinced, for instance, that low-
level officials in the Ministry of External
Affairs were actively sabotaging his at-
tempts to garner Soviet aid.9 A group of
Calcutta-based magazine editors took a
different route, boasting to American
Economic & Political Weekly EPW febrUARY 17, 2018
diplomats about their campaign to dis-
credit Mahalanobis and his ISI, accusing
the former of financial malfeasance and
bemoaning the alleged lack of academic
standards at the latter.10 Others chal-
lenged the direction of the Second
Five Year Plan or the methods used
to formulate it (Frankel 2005: 113–55;
Balakrishnan 2010: 40–99).
As details of the Second Five Year Plan
circulated in 1955, seemingly technical
issues came in for close scrutiny with a
sharp political edge. For instance, Ma-
halanobis called for a “physical plan-
ning” approach, which meant that the
plan would account for all economic
activity measured in physical terms
(tonnes of coal, grain, and so on); he con-
sidered physical planning “the heart” of
Indian planning efforts.11 The alternative,
“financial” approach, amounted to direc-
ting government investments to one or
another part of the economy. Mahala-
nobis got his way, winning Nehru’s app-
roval at a dramatic Christmas Day meet-
ing at ISI. At its Avadi session in January
1955—best known for declaring the aim
of building a “socialist pattern of society”
—the Congress party endorsed physical
planning as well.12 Mahalanobis’s most
energetic critics unleashed a barrage of
attacks on physical planning, calling it
part of the statistician’s “blueprint for
forced industrialisation”; Hannan Ezekiel
raged against the approach’s inherent
“totalitarian tendencies” (Ezekiel 1955;
S N G 1955; Freedom First 1955; Economic
Weekly 1955; Sabin 2002: 139–56). Mah-
alanobis’s interventions at a meeting of
the Planning Commission in May 1955
did little to allay such concerns. He noted
that proper planning might entail “admi-
nistrative or even constitutional changes,”
but evasively concluded that “whether
or not such changes would be made was
not his responsibility.”13 These storms
were ultimately for nothing; as the astute
I G Patel rightly observed, the Second
Plan was primarily “a statement of the
intentions for public expenditure”; talk
of physical planning was basically “rhe-
torical” rather than substantive (Patel
2002: 41; Engerman 2018: 89–116).
The Cold War conflict over the Second
Plan continued even after it was ultimate-
ly approved. Many critics, for instance,
vol lIiI no 7
COMMENTARY
laid the blame for the plan’s content on
the political inclinations of the ISI staff.
Officials in the Ministry of Home Affairs
reported to Nehru that the ISI employed
no fewer than 50 members of the Com-
munist Party of India (CPI); they blamed
Mahalanobis’s wife, Rani Nirmalkumari,
who, they insinuated, was a former party
member still close to her comrades.14
The Ministry of Finance was not as
thorough, claiming to have identified only
25 CPI members supposedly working at
Mahalanobis’s institute.15 His sympathetic
biographer Ashok Rudra (1996) devotes a
few pages to such connections—in a
chapter curiously entitled “Unorthodox
Management Style”—claiming (with no
cited evidence) that Mahalanobis “made
a direct deal” with the CPI’s general sec-
retary P C Joshi to arrange for the place-
ment of Joshi’s comrades at the institute.
This small arrangement became a pre-
cursor to an “influx of Communists” by
the late 1950s (Rudra 1996: 371–74; Ku-
mar 1997: 1323; Mitra 1996). While archi-
val evidence documenting this arrange-
ment is difficult to find, Mahalanobis did
boast to Soviet officials of his “friendly
relations with Indian Communists,” going
so far as to speculate about his own fate
should the revolution come in India.16
Western, and especially American,
observers nervously watched these grow-
ing connections which bolstered their
view of Mahalanobis as the eminence
grise—perhaps the eminence rouge—of
Indian economic policy. Starting in the
early 1950s, United States (US) State
Department records amassed an impre-
ssive catalogue of Mahalanobis’s sup-
posed political trespasses: he was “extre-
mely sympathetic to Communist Doc-
trine,” “far along the road to Communist
theory,” “emotionally and intellectually
very close to Moscow,” and hewed close
to the Soviet line on matters both eco-
nomic and political.17
Yet, for all the opponents Mahalanobis
managed to attract, and for the criticism
that he faced at home and in Washington,
Soviet officials remained wary. Even as the
Soviet Academy of Sciences agreed to
send a delegation to consult with the ISI
for formulating the Second Five Year Plan
in 1955, Soviet bureaucrats issued clear
warnings. “The task of Soviet economists,”
31
COMMENTARY
Central Committee apparatchiks demand-
ed, “should be limited to consultations,
[and to] communicating our experience.
We should not take responsibility for the
formulation of a perspective ‘plan’ or be-
come official advisors and experts work-
ing out this ‘plan.’” This order suggests a
real determination to distance visiting
Soviet economists from Mahalanobis’s
activities in shaping the Second Plan.18
They likewise expressed their doubts
about working with Mahalanobis; for all
of his Soviet enthusiasms, one Soviet
report noted, Mahalanobis exhibited
“bourgeois limitations” in his “approach
to socio-economic problems.”19
By the 1960s, as the Soviet economy
slowed down and the excitement of
India’s Second Five-Year Plan (1956–61)
gave way to a troubled Third Plan (1961–
66), Soviet observers evinced even more
concerns about Indian planning, high-
lighting the differences between the
Soviet version and what was happening
in India. Purists in the Academy of Sci-
ences denounced Indian planning as a
crutch keeping Indian capitalism alive;
others distanced themselves from the
Indian Planning Commission by employ-
ing phrases like “so-called planning”
(Clarkson 1978: 72–74; Lozovaia 1966:
104). Soviet observers, in sum, recogni-
sed that Mahalanobis’s aspirations (and
his claims of Soviet inspiration) did not
in and of themselves create central plan-
ning along Soviet lines; later on, it would
come to be termed as the “administra-
tive-command economy.”
Thus, even as Mahalanobis sought
closer economic ties with the Soviet Union,
his entreaties fell upon sceptical ears. While
Soviet officials hoped to use Mahalanobis
to expand their influence in Indian intel-
lectual life, and expressed guarded
hopes for Indian economic policy, they
steered clear of any deeper connection
with Mahalanobis. Their reasoning may
have had as much to do with Mahala-
lanobis’s personality as his economic ideas
or his politics; one official at the Soviet
Academy of Sciences praised The Profes-
sor’s intellect but cast doubt on his mo-
tives: “Mahalanobis gave the impression
of a very intelligent and cunning (khitrogo)
person, his external frankness and good
nature hiding his true intentions.”20
32
Energetic and ambitious, Mahalanobis
sought Soviet support of all kinds to pro-
mote his vision of rapid industrialisation
and central planning, willing to provoke
fierce denunciations along the way. His
fervent efforts, however, prompted a
cautious Soviet response, both in the policy
realm and in their dealings with him at a
personal level. Ultimately, then, the more
Mahalanobis invoked the Soviet Union
(and provoked his critics), the less likely
he was to win lasting Soviet support.
Notes
1 P C Mahalanobis to Oskar Lange, 18 March
1953, ISI Visitor Records (Mahalanobis Memo-
rial Museum and Library), folder: Lange.
2 Mary P Lord to George Allen, 4 May 1956, State
Department Decimal Files (SDDF), United States
National Archives (USNA), 891.00/5–456.
3 Mahalanobis to Pitamber Pant, 24 June 1954,
Pitamber Pant Papers, Nehru Memorial Muse-
um and Library (NMML).
4 Mahalanobis’s presentation to members of the
Sector for History and Economics of India and
Countries of Southeast Asia, 2 February 1954,
Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences
(ARAN), 579/3/537/2–6.
5 Mahalanobis to Pitamber Pant, 16 July 1954,
Pitamber Pant Papers (NMML).
6 M G Pervukhin’s conversation with Mahlaa-
nobis, 30 August 1957, Russian State Archive
of the Economy (RGAE), 365/2/65/170–177;
V P D’iachenko to V P Nesmeianov, 3 July 1954,
ARAN 379/3/504/58–59.
7 Central Committee Memorandum on expand-
ing economic connections between the USSR
and India, 6 April 1959, Russian State Archive
of Contemporary History (RGANI), 5/30/303/
181–91. Mahalanobis made a similar offer to
East German colleagues; see Ministry for Foreign
Affairs (Political Archive for Foreign Affairs,
Berlin), C651/70, Bl 70.
8 Central Committee memorandum to KV,
25 February 1954, RGANI, 5/30/ 70/1–9.
9 Ambassador M A Men’shikov’s conversation
with Mahalanobis, 6 November 1954, Archive
of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation
(AVPRF), 090/16/44/8/178–81.
10 Recounted in Robert M Winfree, “Campaign
against Professor P C Mahalanobis,” 18 April
1955 in SDDF, USNA, 891.00/4–1855.
11 Mahalanobis to Pitamber Pant, 7 July 1954,
Pant Papers (NMML).
12 Jawaharlal Nehru, “The Tasks before Con-
gress,” 10 January 1955, Selected Works of
Jawaharlal Nehru, second series (hereafter
SWJN) (Delhi: Jawaharlal Nehru Memorial
Fund and Oxford University Press, 1984), 27: 267.
13 Planning Commission Minutes, 2 May 1955,
Planning Commission Records (ISI), folder 116.
14 Nehru to K N Katju, 23 May 1954, SWJN, 25:
264–66.
15 Nehru to Mahalanobis, 2 August 1956, SWJN,
26: 180.
16 E N Komarov’s conversation with Mahalanobis,
12 July 1954, ARAN 579/3/535/8–13.
17 Stuart Rice’s conversation with Mahalanobis,
17 February 1953, SDDF, USNA, 891.00TA/
201753. Douglas Ensminger Oral History,
Douglas Ensminger Papers (Yale University Li-
brary), 4: B3. Jefferson Jones to Cedric Seaver,
6 May 1957, State Department Records, USNA,
Lot File 62D43, box 22.
febrUARY 17, 2018
18 V P D’iachenko to Nesmianov, 3 July 1954,
ARAN, 579/3/504/58–59.
19 V A Kondrat’ev report, 18 June 1954, ARAN,
579/1/1158/147–55.
20 I A Ershova, Report on travel to India, Novem-
ber–December 1954, ARAN, 579/3/536/1–19.
References
Balakrishnan, Pulapre (2010): Economic Growth in
India: History and Prospect, Delhi: Oxford Uni-
versity Press.
Bhagwati, Jagdish N (1993): India in Transition:
Freeing the Economy, Oxford: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
Clarkson, Stephen (1978): The Soviet Theory of
Development: India and the Third World in
Marxist–Leninist Scholarship, Toronto: Univer-
sity of Toronto Press.
Desai, Padma and Jagdish Bhagwati (1975):
“Socialism and Indian Economic Policy,” World
Development, Vol 3, No 4, pp 213–21.
Domar, Evsey D (1957): Essays in the Theory of Eco-
nomic Growth, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Economic Weekly (1955): “The Unfolding of the
Plan,” 18 June, Vol 7, Nos 24/25/26, pp 679–80.
Engerman, David C (2015): “The Rise and Fall of
Central Planning,” Cambridge History of the Second
World War, Michael Geyer and Adam Tooze
(eds), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
— (2018): The Price of Aid: The Economic Cold War
in India, Delhi: Penguin.
Ezekiel, Hannan (1955): “The Dangers of Physical
Planning,” Freedom First, No 35, pp 1–2.
Frankel, Francine R (2005): India’s Political Economy,
1947–2004: The Gradual Revolution, Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
Freedom First (1955): “Let There Be No Mistake,”
No 38, pp 1–2.
Jersild, Austin (2014): The Sino–Soviet Alliance: An
International History, Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press.
Kudaisya, Medha (2009): “‘A Mighty Adventure’:
Institutionalising the Idea of Planning in Post-
colonial India, 1947–1960,” Modern Asian Stu-
dies, Vol 43, No 4, pp 939–78.
Kumar, T Krishna (1997): “An Unfinished Biogra-
phy: Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis,” Economic
& Political Weekly, Vol 32, No 23, pp 1321–32.
Lozovaia, N G (1966): “Indiia: sostoiane ekonomiki
do vvedeniia planirovaniia ekonomicheskogo
razvitiia,” Plany-Programmy Ėkonomicheskogo
Razvitiia Stran Azii, A Z Arabadzhian and
A I Medovoĭ (eds), Moscow: Nauka.
Mahalanobis, P C (1953): “Some Observations on
the Process of Growth of National Income,”
Sankhyā, Vol 12, No 4, pp 307–12.
— (1958): “Industrializatsiia—kliuch k ukrepleniiu
nezavistimosti,” Sovremennyi Vostok, No 12,
pp 15–19.
— (1959): “Izuchenie Problem Slaborazvitykh
stran,” Sovremennyi Vostok, No 9, pp 13–15.
— (1961): Talks on Planning, New York: Asia Pub-
lishing House.
Mitra, Ashok (1996): “A Rare Man,” Economic &
Political Weekly, Vol 31, Nos 41/42, pp 2789–90.
Patel, I G (2002): Glimpses of Indian Economic Policy:
An Insider’s View, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Rudra, Ashok (1996): Prasanta Chandra Mahalanobis:
A Biography, Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Sabin, Margery (2002): Dissenters and Mavericks:
Writings About India in English, 1765–2000,
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
SNG (1955): “The Story behind ‘Physical’ Planning,”
Thought, No 8, p 4.
Wheatcroft, Stephen G (2009): “The First 35 Years
of Soviet Living Standards: Secular Growth
and Conjunctural Crises in a Time of Famines,”
Explorations in Economic History, Vol 46, No 1,
pp 24–52.
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
Chaos or Conquest
Lakshmi Subramanian
W
as India conquered? This
question is the implicit concern
of the book under review. It is
a provocative question to ask, as there is
bound to be a clamour of objecting voices
that would suggest the obvious oppres-
sions of colonial/imperial rule, and how
imperial conquest irreversibly shaped
the destiny of the Indian subcontinent,
evident in so many legacies and arte-
facts. Yet Jon Wilson argues that the so-
called illusion of British permanence
and strength in India was merely a fantasy
projection by some imperial administra-
tors. For Wilson, the apparatus of power
was at best ad hoc, and the British Empire
was never a project or system, but
rather something far more chaotic and
ruled predominantly by self-interest. The
argument is persuasive as far as British
rule between 1757 and 1857 is concerned,
but falters as imperial rule consolidated
and exercised its influence in far-reaching
ways between 1857 and 1947.
In mapping the contours of early British
domination in India, the author empha-
sises the patchy nature of conquest, the
resolute determination to preserve a few,
mostly coastal invulnerable strongholds,
and their unwillingness to actually negoti-
ate with the complex social realities of the
subcontinent, in turn perpetuating con-
ditions of conflict. This story of British
conquest is not especially new. It draws on
the existing narratives and accounts,
only adding shifts in emphasis and gen-
eralisations which are interesting reading,
but often untenable as arguments. For
instance, Wilson emphasises personal rela-
tionships as the bedrock of social and po-
litical arrangements under the Mughals,
asserting that these were displaced by the
British, while simultaneously arguing that
the British rule was a paper raj. These as-
sertions are not substantiated. What are
we to make of the unprecedented scribal
expansion and power that undergirded
Mughal and Maratha political rule, where
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
book reviewS
India Conquered: Britain’s Raj and the Chaos of
Empire by Jon Wilson, London: Simon & Schuster, 2016;
pp 564, `799.
elaborate records were maintained to ar-
bitrate minute aspects of every day aspects
of life and inheritance, and produced an
organic historical mindedness? To argue
that friendship and social conversations
were the means to political and social
survival is to empty out the potential of
precolonial political and administrative
structures. Equally, it would be far-fetched
to make much of the depersonalised
nature of the East India Company regime
after Cornwallis. Notwithstanding the
importance of the reforms that he intro-
duced in Bengal, we do know that in
other parts of the subcontinent, there
was a strong affirmation of personal rule
and charisma by British administrators,
perhaps embodied best by Thomas Munro.
The limits to effective British rule
in the first century of its articulation
remains the real focus of the first five
chapters of the work. This is interestingly
documented in the form of micro-stories
and biographies, but how they add up to
produce the sum total of an ineffective
conquest is a matter of interpretation. To
make the well-known point that British
conquest was slow, tortuous and contested,
the author refers to the difficulties that
the British faced from personalities like
the Angria or the queen of Anjengo; to
the sporadic violence that broke out
among small assertive warrior commu-
nities and chieftains in the Kanara district;
and to the protracted hostilities against
the Marathas. He provides a short analy-
sis of how grandiose projects conceived
at home were ineffectively and inade-
quately implemented, even though they
were held out as emblems of triumph
and success. Wilson insists that the new
emphasis on paper and surveys was all
vol lIiI no 7
about form, distancing the ruler from
the people, and in the process moulding
Indian consent to procedures and pro-
cesses. Implicit here is the suggestion
that this was a departure from earlier
systems of rule, and that British confi-
dence in the efficacy of their procedures
to weed out corruption or institute effec-
tive rule was just a fantasy. Indian society
went about its business pretty much
the way it had before, and British rule
remained just a fiction.
The mutiny of 1857 was a rude jolt
bringing into sharp relief the anxieties
of a ruling regime that had battled crisis
after crisis. The resentment and bewil-
derment of the ruled at the dislocation
which the English Company had created
in the wake of its wars and aggressive
policies was the consequence of a lack
of conversation between the Company
sarkar and its subjects. Wilson quotes
selectively from Syed Ahmad Khan, who
referred to the lack of voice that Indians
enjoyed in the British Raj’s legislative
councils. Such a sweeping statement about
the causes of the mutiny is surprising,
given the volumes that have been writ-
ten on the ways in which the Company’s
agrarian and commercial interventions
altered equations in rural society creating
a tinder box of disaffection waiting to be
ignited. In the volume under review the
complexities of the existing historiogra-
phy on the mutiny as the final act in a long
drama of British conquest and consoli-
dation policies are bypassed altogether.
The second half of the book looks at
the articulation of imperial rule and the
introduction of modernity in India via
the imperial experiment. Predictably
and justifiably, the focus is not on Indian
response to colonial/imperial transfor-
mation but on the impulse that lay at the
root of British initiatives in the domain
of infrastructure and public projects,
and of law and legal codification. Wilson
draws attention to individual bureau-
crats and administrators whose work
was a part of the new emphasis on rule
by technology, and on infrastructure as
the crucial instrument of control—a
mode of geological imperialism. Here
too the argument is that the empire was
33
BOOK REVIEW
not a self-conscious project with a coherent
vision. Rather it was cobbled together by
individuals who resorted to the propa-
ganda of public works and took recourse
to legislation, in order to cover up their
ignorance and lack of interest in the so-
ciety they governed. The stories of indi-
vidual administrators who built dams,
drummed up irrigation projects, experi-
mented with railways and massive public
works, and floated on a very minuscule
scale engineering and technical colleges
are fascinating. They are however not
fully developed to adhere to the one-
point agenda of the book—namely that
the conquest and the imperial project
An International Dimension
Lakshmi Iyer
H
igher education in India is bec-
oming increasingly global. This
has led to the emergence of new
models of international partnerships in
the country. Being the second largest
source-country of internationally mobile
students, it is important that India’s
efforts to internationalise higher educa-
tion at home and abroad are analysed
and understood in an academic context.
Therefore, Internationalization of Higher
Education in India is timely, as the higher
education sector grapples with access,
equity, and quality, while trying to climb
the global ranking ladder and using
that as an instrument to strengthen the
country’s place in the global knowledge
economy.
The book has eight chapters focusing
on the Indian higher education land-
scape, with a foreword by the globally-
recognised higher education expert Hans
de Wit. Chapter 1 of the book highlights
the history and evolution of the Indian
higher education system. Chapter 2 in-
troduces the concept of globalisation and
internationalisation of higher education
in India, with a section on the roadblocks
to internationalisation. Cross-border
student mobility and concerns around
technical and procedural issues are under-
lined in Chapter 3. While Chapter 4
34
that followed at all times was incoherent,
not guided by any ideology, was ineffec-
tive on the ground, and produced chaos.
If indeed empire was all anxiety, and
the Pax Britannica was but a fantasy, the
question remains why Britain remained
so doggedly wedded to the idea of retain-
ing India. On the other side of the delu-
sion was the Indian anti-colonial struggle,
which by the same logic was fighting a
phantom. If that was indeed the case,
how do we understand the historiography
of resistance that has evolved over the
last six decades? Or do we see resistance
as an ad hoc patchwork of competing
interests and shifting alliances, returning
Internationalization of Higher Education in
India by Vidya Rajiv Yeravdekar and Gauri Tiwari, New
Delhi, California, London and Singapore: Sage Publications,
2017; pp xliii + 284, `895.
explains the regulatory policies and re-
forms that have enabled and challenged
internationalisation in India, Chapter 5
draws a comparison between advance-
ments made by Indian universities and
universities in other Asian countries, with
regard to internationalisation of higher
education. Chapter 6 traces the emer-
ging patterns of mobility among Indian
students going abroad, followed by
Chapter 7, which describes India’s stand-
ing in the global higher education space.
In his foreword, Hans de Wit under-
lines the international dimension of
higher education, not only in the con-
cept of universal knowledge, but also in
terms of mobility of faculty and stu-
dents. He argues that from the second
half of the 1990s, there has been a visi-
ble shift from political to economic
rationale for internationalisation, which
the authors have analysed to some ex-
tent in the book. Amongst the many sys-
temic challenges facing India’s higher
education, some important ones are the
lack of a feedback loop and an orienta-
tion towards fixing problems that come
FEBRUARY 17, 2018
to the old and now discredited Cam-
bridge position of self-interest and fluid
alliances between men of straw? Any
process of conquest is bound to be chaotic
and even random at times but Wilson’s fix-
ation with the individualised nature of
British intervention makes for a patch-
work approach of micro-stories unan-
chored within a larger social context. I
am not entirely sure what persuades
Wilson to go back to a story of individu-
als in his attempt to decode empire.
Lakshmi Subramanian (nilgiri98@gmail.com)
is a historian and archivist with the Centre for
Studies in Social Sciences, Kolkata.
up as initiatives related to internationa-
lisation progress; the “London Model,”
which has progressed without any revi-
sion; obsolete governance structures that
are too unwieldy to enable quick res-
ponses to the advances in higher educa-
tion; archaic attitudes towards private
players in higher education; undifferen-
tiated apportionment of funds; and lack
of emphatic stratification of institutions
based on their purpose and orientation.
Chapters 3 and 4 of this book are par-
ticularly important in the present con-
text. Chapter 3 deals with cross-border
higher education, which discusses a
variety of models that may be taken into
account, given that India is seen as the
largest potential market for foreign play-
ers. Indian students who consider study-
ing abroad largely remain motivated by
the return on investment in terms of
earning a higher income. This, then,
becomes a key consideration as to why
India must consider an enabling frame-
work to allow internationalisation at
home that will be more affordable and
will make education more accessible.
However, caution needs to be exercised
to ensure that quality players are attracted.
The authors outline the considerations
for setting up academic cities and higher
education zones, emphasising the need
for overarching management that is
economically feasible and with suitable
infrastructure, quality institutions, qual-
ity assurance mechanisms, ancillary in-
dustries, interdisciplinary curriculum,
and a public–private partnership model.
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Chapter 4 looks at the regulatory land-
scape and the paucity of follow-ups on
the number of initiatives and regula-
tions conceived by different bodies over
the years. As and when India allows for-
eign institutions to operate in the country,
permission needs to be based on the acc-
eptance of the type of institutions that
would be attracted to operate in India.
Private Universities
The authors are generous in their praise
of private universities in India that have
made a space for themselves against great
odds. Moreover, in the context of inter-
nationalisation, they have successfully
operationalised models that are in exist-
ence elsewhere in the world. The authors
highlight the challenges they face around
programme mobility where the regulatory
stipulations of University Grants Com-
mission (UGC) are not sufficiently detailed.
By virtue of being self-governing and also
operating under free market conditions,
private universities have had to dig
deep, gain adaptive skills, and infuse
that energy into their operations.
The authors point out that Karnataka,
Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh, and
Tamil Nadu have traditionally attracted
international students. However, they
seem to have overlooked the role of
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
other small higher education pockets in
states like Punjab and Uttar Pradesh.
The effects of political stability and rule
of law are felt on the education ecosys-
tem and that has helped the South Indi-
an states. India’s neighbours to the west
send more students to India than those
to the east. Apart from Nepal, India does
not attract many students from the
region, especially from South East Asian
countries. This could also be because of
the increasing attraction of China as a
study destination for that part of the
world. Also, Singapore and Malaysia are
themselves well-established hubs attr-
acting students from India.
An age-old struggle we have had in India
around international higher education has
been against a perceived elitism. What
the authors rightfully point out is that
“internationalisation can be for all of us
who partake in the higher education
process” and “can be the driver of India’s
development across all realms.” The au-
thors also have some interesting sugges-
tions regarding the modernisation of ad-
ministrative services to facilitate interna-
tionalisation, which is also very important.
Importance of Internationalisation
India must develop her own ethos of inter-
nationalisation. There is no denying that
vol lIiI no 7
BOOK REVIEW
internationalisation is a major instru-
ment of soft power. Having said that, in
an interconnected world, internationali-
sation of higher education is arguably an
imperative and not a choice. The bur-
dened Indian higher-education system
with multiple players will need to move
beyond spouting platitudes to the public
who are bothered about the end result of
world rankings and employability. The
growth in Indian higher education has
happened irrespective of a disabling pol-
icy climate, as a response to the compel-
ling need to educate millions, and hence
the expansion has been unchanneled
and unplanned. The authors are una-
fraid to call this out. They have rightly
said in the introduction that internation-
alisation can be practised without mas-
sive investment. The policymakers need
to act on the recommendations and ideas
put forward on internationalisation of
higher education.
This book is highly recommended for
practitioners and researchers who want
to develop an understanding about the
nature of internationalisation of higher
education in India, especially from a
global and historical perspective.
Lakshmi Iyer (liyer@nd.edu) is at the
University of Notre Dame, United States.
35
BOOK REVIEW
Readings on the Economy, Polity and Society
Pp xiii + 559 | Rs 895
ISBN 978-81-250-6292-9
2016
Essays from the Economic and Political Weekly
Water: Growing Understanding,
Emerging Perspectives
Edited by MIHIR SHAH AND P S VIJAYSHANKAR
For decades after independence, Indian planning
ignored the need for sustainability and equity in water
resource development and management. There was
just one way forward, that of harnessing the bounty
in our rivers and below the ground. It was only in the
1990s that serious questions began to be raised on
our understanding and approach to rivers.
This collection of essays, reflecting the multi-
dimensional, multi-disciplinary character of water, is
arranged thematically and chronologically.
Social Policy
Edited by JEAN DRÈZE
The reach of social policy in India has expanded
significantly in recent years. Reaching larger numbers
of people than before, some benefits now take the
form of enforceable legal entitlements.
Yet the performance of social programmes is far from
ideal, with still a long way to go in directly addressing
the interests, demands and rights of the unprivileged.
This collection of essays is clustered around six major Pp xiv + 478 | Rs 795
ISBN 978-81-250-6284-4
themes: health, education, food security, employment 2016
guarantee, pensions and cash transfers, and inequality
and social exclusion.

Economic Growth The Problem of Caste

and its Distribution in India
Edited by PULAPRE BALAKRISHNAN
India has witnessed a macroeconomic reversal, a slow-
down in growth lasting a little longer than the boom pre-
ceding it. This volume represents a range of perspectives:
a long view of growth, a macro view of recent history, a
Pp xvi + 497 | Rs 745
ISBN 978-81-250-5901-1 study of the economy covering agriculture, industry and
2015 services, and the inclusiveness of recent growth.
Edited by SATISH DESHPANDE
The general perception about caste changed irrevoc-
ably in the 1990s post the Mandal Commission recom-
mendations. This volume discusses estab lished
perspectives in relation to emergent concerns, disciplinary
responses, the interplay between caste, class and politics, Pp xi + 425 | Rs 595
ISBN 978-81-250-5501-3
challenges in law and policy, emergent research areas,
2014
and post-Mandal innovations in caste studies.

Higher Education in India The Adivasi Question

Edited by JANDHYALA B G TILAK
The story of higher education has seen many challenges
over the decades, the most serious being a high degree
of inequity. The articles in this volume discuss, issues
of inclusiveness, impact of reservation, problems of
mediocrity, shortage of funds, dwindling numbers of
Pp xiv + 538 | Rs 745
ISBN 978-81-250-5131-2 faculty, and unemployment of the educated young.
2013
Edited by INDRA MUNSHI
Depletion of forests has eroded the survival base of
Adivasis, displacing them and leading to systematic
alienation. This volume discusses questions of
community rights and ownership, management of
forests, the state’s rehabilitation policies, and the Forest
Pp xi + 408 | Rs 695
Rights Act. ISBN 978-81-250-4716-2
2012

Women and Work Village Society

Edited by PADMINI SWAMINATHAN
Edited by SURINDER S JODHKA
For women, the notion of work is a complex interplay
The village is an important idea in the history of post-
of economic, cultural, social and personal factors. This
independence India. A collection of articles that covers
volume analyses the concept of ‘work,’ the economic
various features of village society: caste and community,
contribution of women and gendering of work,
land and labour, migration, discrimination and use of
while focusing on women engaged in varied work all
common property resources.
Pp xii + 394 | Rs 645 over India. Pp x + 252 | Rs 325
ISBN 978-81-250-4777-3
ISBN 978-81-250-4603-5
2012
2012
Decentralisation and Local Environment, Technology
Governments and Development
Edited by T R RAGHUNANDAN Edited by ROHAN D’SOUZA
The idea, from the Indian national movement, of devolving The concepts of environment, technology and
power to local governments resulted in the development have shaped our understanding of the
decentralisation of the government post-independence. world. This volume presents articles across disciplines,
A collection of papers discusses the constitutional and perspectives and ideologies that map the main
Pp xii + 432 | Rs 695 policy decisions, and various facets of establishing and conceptual lines and identify where they converge Pp x + 394 | Rs 495
ISBN978-81-250-4883-1 strengthening local self-governments. and diverge. ISBN 978-81-250-4506-9
2012 2012

Mumbai • Chennai • New Delhi • Kolkata • Bengaluru • Bhubaneshwar •

Ernakulam • Guwahati • Jaipur • Lucknow • Patna • Chandigarh • Hyderabad
Orient Blackswan Pvt Ltd
Contact: info@orientblackswan.com www.orientblackswan.com

36 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
INSIGHT
Prisons without Bars
A Study of the Open Prison System
of Rajasthan
Smita Chakraburtty
Rajasthan has had a history of
open prisons, which however
have not been emulated
elsewhere in the country. This
article is based on a report on
such an alternative prison system
written by the author as directed
by the Supreme Court. It makes a
series of suggestions about the
various issues that need to be
tackled to allow the open prison
system to fulfil its potential for
prisoner reform.
This article is based on the report “The Open
Prisons of Rajasthan,” published by the
Rajasthan State Legal Services Authority. In
the ongoing matter regarding inhuman
conditions in 1,382 prisons, the apex court has
ordered the states to examine the feasibility of
implementing the suggestions made by the
author.
Smita Chakraburtty (smita.chakraburtty@gmail.
com) is an independent researcher studying
prison systems across the country, and has
been appointed honorary prison commissioner
to study the open prison system of Rajasthan.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
J
ustice K S Jhaveri, Executive Chair-
man, Rajasthan State Legal Services
Authority (RSLSA), and Judge, Raj-
asthan High Court, appointed me as the
honorary prison commissioner to study
the open prison system of Rajasthan. I vis-
ited 15 open prisons across the state and
conducted detailed interviews of 428 con-
victed prisoners who live in these pris-
ons. It took me seven months to conduct
the study and submit my report “The
Open Prisons of Rajasthan,” to RSLSA
(Chakraburtty 2017).
The RSLSA submitted the report to the
Supreme Court. Justice Madan B Lokur
and Justice Deepak Gupta ordered all
states to study the recommendations
made in pages 27–29 of the report and
submit their response to the apex court.1
The Court ordered the Ministry of Home
Affairs (MHA) to hold a meeting of the
director general (DG) and inspector gen-
eral (IG), prisons, of all the states and
union territories, within the first week of
February, and further ordered the MHA to
invite the amicus curie, Gaurav Agarwal,
and the researcher (this author) to the
meeting. The next hearing is scheduled
on 21 February.
A conventional or closed prison is an
opaque institution while open prisons
are radically different in principle, ap-
pearance and operations. Open prisons
are prisons without bars. Unlike closed
prisons, the open ones do not have huge
boundary walls, tall watch towers or
massive metal gates. The prisoner is
allowed liberty, that is, s/he is free from
restraint imposed through confinement.
An open prison is a trust-based system
where the prisoner is kept under minimal
surveillance. Prisoners live with their
family and have the choice to leave the
prison campus during daytime. However,
vol lIiI no 7
they have to return before the evening
roll call. They are also encouraged to be
independent and bear their own expenses
and are thus allowed to take up jobs out-
side the prison campus and earn a living.
Bandi Panchayat
The Rajasthan open prisons are self-
governed institutions; with each having
its own bandi panchayat. It consists of not
less than five and not more than seven
prisoners, keeping in view the number
of prisoners in a camp. The panch or the
members are elected by the prisoners
from within them and the term of each
panchayat lasts for a year.
The panchayats deal with minor acts
of omission/commission/misconduct of
the prisoners and may impose minor
penalties on the defaulters or curtail
facilities. Such penalties are effective
only on the approval of the officer-
in-charge of the camp. Apart from being
responsible for maintaining discipline
in the prison, the members of the pan-
chayat also manage the administrative
details of the prison. They conduct two
daily roll calls of the prisoners, maintain
the attendance register, collect electri-
city bills from the prisoners and ensure
overall hygiene. In the case of a severe
breach of discipline or misconduct, the
bandi panchayat may also decide to
send the prisoner back to a closed prison
(Chakraburtty 2017: 9).
Types of Open Prisons
There are about 30 open prisons in
Rajasthan (Chakraburtty 2017: 10) and
more are under construction. The opera-
tional models of these prisons vary in
that there are no fixed rules about the
location, structure and capacity of the
open prisons. Some of the open prisons
provide both lodging and employment.
Whereas other open prisons provide
only lodging and the prisoners have to
look for their own employment.
The state also has government-run agri-
cultural research institutes like the Bikaner
Agricultural Farm (Chakraburtty 2017:
17) which houses prisoners along with
their families. The prisoners are allotted
work regularly at the research institute
37
INSIGHT
and are paid on a monthly basis. They
are free to go out of the open prison dur-
ing daytime. The prisoner is provided
with a small residential quarter, where
s/he lives with family. The quarters have
running water and electricity. In some
open prisons the electricity is not pro-
vided for free but at a subsidised rate.
In the Sanganer Open Prison (Chakra-
burtty 2017: 12), prisoners are not pro-
vided with jobs inside the open prison
campus, instead they have to look for
jobs themselves. Prisoners go out of
the open prison during daytime to earn
a living and return to the prison by
the end of the day before the evening
roll call.
Some open prisons are built immedi-
ately next to the closed prison, at times
even sharing the same boundary wall as
that of the closed prison such as in
Alwar and Sikkar. Whereas, in some
places like Sanganer the open prison is
about 30 km away from the Jaipur cen-
tral jail. Sri Ganganagar district has an
open prison in Jaitsar, which is 125 km
away from the Sri Ganganagar district jail.
The capacity of the open prisons too
varies. Sanganer is the largest open pris-
on in the state, housing nearly 400 pris-
oners along with their families in one
campus, whereas an open prison in
Bikaner houses only 12 prisoners.
Open prisons do not require huge land
area or expensive building construction.
A minimum of 300 sq feet per prisoner is
sufficient for keeping a prisoner along
with his/her family members. The pris-
oner quarters can be built in an agricul-
tural farm and/or small apartments
(two to three floors each) can be raised
as prisoner quarters in order to save on
land area. Also, most district and cen-
tral jails have land area surrounding
their boundary walls. Small quarters
can be built in these areas. There is no
rule on how and where an open prison
should be built. For example, in Jaitsar
Open Prison, prisoners stay in tempo-
rary makeshift clay huts, while in Alwar
Open Prison, they live in small cottages
(Table 1).
Several gaushalas (cow shelters) also
employ prisoners and let them stay on
the premises along with their families
(Chakraburtty 2017: 22). This is a fairly
38
new system, which was started over the jail (2,200) as compared to Sanganer
past two or three years. These gausha- (400), the cost-per-prisoner in a closed
las are privately-run institutions and prison appears less at `7,093 per month,
more often than not prisoners are paid but even then it is 14 times more than
wages way below the standard mini- the expense in Sanganer, where it is
mum wages. However, not many prison- `500 per prisoner per month.
ers complain about this, but it is also During the time of the study the Jaipur
manipulative in nature because it central jail had a staff strength of 339,
makes forced labour appear as a com- whereas the sanctioned one was 404.
pelling choice. Forced labour is a con- The total expense on the staff salary per
temporary form of slavery, which has month in Jaipur central jail is `1,20,55,000
no place in a democracy. whereas in the Sanganer Open Prison it
is `2,00,000 per month. Expense on
Cost-effective staff salary in Jaipur central jail is 60
In open prisons, the prisoners earn their times more compared to Sanganer Open
living and provide for themselves which Prison. At the time of the study Sangan-
means that the prison department does er Open Prison operated on only one
not have to spend on the prisoners’ food, staff per 80 prisoners. Whereas in Jaipur
medicine, water, electricity and wages. central jail (closed prison), one staff was
The estimated annual expense for the required for every six prisoners. The
Jaipur central jail (closed prison) is comparison shows that open prisons are
`18,72,60,000, which is a little over 78 less resource-intensive.
times (Chakraburtty 2017: 4) the annual Security-related expense forms a
expense of the Sanganer Open Prison, major part of the prison expense. Prison
which is `24,00,000 (Table 2). If only staff such as wardens and jailors form a
the staff salaries are compared in the part of prison security. Since open pris-
two set-ups, we find that the govern- on is a trust-based system and is operat-
ment spends 60 times more on staff sal- ed on the principle of self-governance
aries in closed prisons as compared to by the prisoners. Thus, utility of prison
the open ones. Due to the much higher staff for security purposes is negligible
number of prisoners in the Jaipur central in open prisons. It must be understood
here that the prison security expense is
Table 1: Break-up of Expenses, Jaipur Central Jail
Expense Head Per Month Expenses
not incurred for the safekeeping of the
(Approx) (`) prisoner but to keep the prisoner under
1 Staff salary 1, 20,55,000 surveillance for the safekeeping of the
2 Food 20,50,000 society from the prisoner. When the
3 Water and electricity 10,00,000 same group of prisoners who are now
4 Prisoners’ medicine 50,000
staying in an open prison were staying
5 Prisoner wages 3,50,000
in a closed prison, similar amount of
6 Other expenses 1,00,000
money was spent on them for security
Total: 1,56,05,000
Number of prisoners 2,200
purposes due to the perceived threat
Expense per prisoner 7,094 they posed or as presumed by society.
Source: Chakraburtty (2017: 4–5). The expenditure on security per pri-
soner is a nebulous one, founded on a
Table 2: Break-up of Expenses, Sanganer Open hypothetical assessment of threat to
Prison
Expense Head Per Month Expenses
society rather than on an objective anal-
(Approx) (`) ysis of maximum utilisation of optimal
1 Staff salary 2,00,000 resources. Incremental spending in
2 Food none closed prison structures provides di-
3 Water and electricity none minishing utility on the infrastructural
4 Prisoners’ medicine none
layout, creating excessive overhead
5 Prisoner wages none
resource burdens. On the other hand,
6 Other expenses none
an open prison system not only human-
Total: 2,00,000
Number of prisoners 400
ises penal measures but strives towards
Expense per prisoner 500 a more economically viable model of
Source: Chakraburtty (2017: 4–5). incarceration.
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

According to the Rajasthan open prison
rules, only convicted prisoners can stay
in open prisons. After spending consid-
erable amount of time in a closed prison
and after being convicted, the prisoners
are sent to an open prison. As per prison
rules they are eligible to stay in an open
prison if they have shown good con-
duct, have completed five years inside a
closed prison and have been convicted.
In reality, however, due to lack of space
in open prisons, these prisoners are
shifted to open prisons based on senior-
ity in the waiting list. It takes an aver-
age 10 years of wait/stay in a closed
prison before his/her serial number
comes to be shifted to an open prison.
Out of the 428 prisoners interviewed,
206 were moved to open prison after
completion of an average of nine to 11
years in a closed prison. Of these, 91
were shifted after completion of 11 to 13
years in a closed prison and 120 prison-
ers came to the open prison after com-
pletion of seven to nine years in a closed
prison. Eight prisoners were also found
to have spent 13 to 15 years in a closed
prison before being shifted to an open
prison and only three prisoners came to
the open prison after spending five to
seven years in a closed one. There is a
huge population of prisoners in the closed
prisons of Rajasthan (elsewhere in India
too) who are eligible for stay in open
prisons but are languishing in the closed
ones. More open prisons are required to
accommodate eligible prisoners.
Kinds of Offences
There is a long waiting period before a
prisoner gets shifted to an open prison
and therefore prisoners who are convicted
for serious offences, usually under Sec-
tion 302 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC)
(murder) are the ones who become eligi-
ble for stay in open prisons. However, the
nature of the crime does not determine
whether the prisoner is capable of reform
or not. The objective of having an open
prison is to encourage good behaviour
among inmates. They get an opportuni-
ty for social reintegration and to make a
new beginning. Thus, the rate of recidi-
vism is negligible in open prisons.
A majority of prisoners are found to
have perpetrated an unplanned or
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
accidental offence. Out of the 428 inter-
viewed prisoners (Chakraburtty 2017: 4)
347 had no previous police record. This
means that 81% of the prisoners were
first-time offenders. From the detailed
interviews or “prisoner narratives,” it
was observed that most conflicts that
they were involved in were land-related
ones and which resulted in grievous hurt
and injury, leading to subsequent death.
Some accidental deaths have happened
during a drunken brawl. Out of the 428
prisoners, 244 prisoners, that is, 57% or
more than half of the prisoners were
convicted for an offence that was un-
planned or had occurred accidentally.
Again, 175 prisoners (41%) had per-
petrated other types or pre-planned
offences, which included extortion and
offences under the Narcotic Drugs and
Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act, 1985.
Seven prisoners or 2% had also perpe-
trated revenge killing. (In these calcula-
tions, dowry-related deaths or deaths
caused due to domestic violence have
not been included in the “unplanned” or
“accidental offence”). What needs to be
observed here is that even if a prisoner
had perpetrated a revenge killing or was
convicted under the NDPS Act, after
coming to an open prison, no new of-
fence was perpetrated. The objective of
incarceration is reform; thus if a prisoner
has not reoffended while staying under
minimal surveillance in an open prison,
then the purpose of incarceration has
been served. Also, if imprisonment is
seen as a punishment then incarceration
could be considered as the final punish-
ment. And incarceration does not neces-
sarily have to be in a closed prison, since
an open prison is also a prison.
Escape and Recidivism
It was found that prisoners rarely escape
from open prisons and that a majority of
the reported escapes are actually cases
of breach of the parole rule. Parole is
temporary leave from prison, in which
he or she is allowed to go out of prison
for a fixed number of days and return on
a fixed date. In most of these instances
of breach of parole, the police had rear-
rested the prisoner from his/her home.
On prison record these instances are
recorded as absconding prisoners, because
vol lIiI no 7
INSIGHT
on the non-return of the prisoner on the
scheduled day, the prison officials file
an absconding report with the police.
Though these are hardly instances of
prison escape, yet on record it appears as
if the prisoners are absconding when
they have actually breached or jumped
parole. Breach of parole is considered an
offence, but it cannot be counted as
recidivism. The rate of recidivism is neg-
ligible in open prisons.
It must be pointed out here that obtain-
ing parole involves a highly complex
process. The prisoner has to give a per-
sonal bond, a secondary bond is given by
a guarantor, the police issue clearance
and permission is required from the dis-
trict magistrate before it is granted. It is
a time-consuming and expensive pro-
cess. Some of the problems related to
procuring parole are listed below.
To avail parole, prisoners have to
agree that on breach of the parole terms
and conditions, the bond amount will be
forfeited. The bond amount, incidental-
ly, is not paid in cash. The bond process
entails that the prisoner agrees to a cer-
tain amount of money and thereafter,
gets a guarantor.
Guarantors Are Loan Sharks
A “guarantor” is a third-party individu-
al, who stands guarantee for the prison-
er (Chakraburtty 2017: 42) but does not
pay the bond amount in cash. He or she
submits certain documents of assets
owned, such as house registration or
land registration documents as security
or guarantee against the bond amount.
In case of breach of parole terms and
conditions (if the prisoner escapes or re-
offends), the bond amount gets forfeited
as a fine or disciplinary measure.
The presence of a guarantor is used as
a pressure tactic on the prisoner since the
former is expected to be a family member
or a friend or fellow villager. Thus the
prisoner is obliged to return to prison af-
ter the parole term is over and to main-
tain good conduct while s/he is out on
parole. However, not all prisoners own
land or have individual or family assets.
Thus more often than not, the guaran-
tor is a man from the same village, who
is a moneylender. This practice in the
parole system creates loan sharks who
39
INSIGHT
exploit the prisoner’s vulnerability and
poverty in a number of ways.
Not all prisoners have family mem-
bers or family members who are willing
to stand as a guarantor.
Others do not have the property or
financial wherewithal to stand as one.
Some prisoners complained that they
own small huts in a village, which is
their only asset. The land and the clay
hut combined does not amount to the
`50,000 that is required. Others pointed
out that since their family members have
already used land and assets to take
bank loans, these cannot be reused as
bond guarantee. For a prisoner belonging
to another state, the situation becomes
more complex because s/he requires a
guarantor from Rajasthan and not the
home state because the prison adminis-
tration does not have jurisdiction in
another state and in case of breach of
parole no measures can be initiated
against the guarantor. Previously, pris-
oners from other states were not sent to
stay in open prisons, for fear that in the
absence of family or guarantor they
would be more likely to escape. Starting
with the past decade, however, prison-
ers belonging to other states are being
sent to stay in open prisons.
Steep Bond Amount
To avail of parole a prisoner has to pro-
vide two bond amounts—one for him-
self and the other for the guarantor. The
bond amount varies from district to dis-
trict and is subject to the discretion of
the district magistrate. In some districts
the standard bond amount is as high
as `1,00,000.
Every 11th month from the last parole
availed, the prisoner becomes eligible
for another one. Some prisoners moved
the high court complaining of the high
bond amount and were granted relief
but every prisoner cannot afford to move
the high court once every year. Other
prisoners informed that they had
stopped applying for parole after coming
to an open prison. Going out on parole
and the successful completion of multi-
ple paroles, is usually seen as proof of
improvement in the behavioural con-
duct of the prisoner and helps at the
time of permanent parole and remission
40
(sentence reduction). Earlier, the Ra-
jasthan prison rules also suggested that
only on successful completion of three
paroles, that is, 20 days in the first year,
30 days in the second year and 40 days
in the third year, will the prisoner be-
come eligible for permanent parole.
For prisoners staying in open prisons,
three paroles are not mandatory to
become eligible for permanent parole.
However, due to differences of opinion
among the decision-makers in the prison
administration and members of the
executive committee this new rule has not
been put into practice. However, sub-
jecting prisoners to steep bond amounts
along with getting guarantors goes
against the principle of ensuring good
conduct in prisoners. Rather, it creates
an atmosphere of discrimination within
the psychosocial ecosystem of the pris-
oner population with the more privi-
leged prisoners availing more number of
paroles and becoming eligible for per-
manent parole and remission.
Police Report
The prisoners pointed out that the police
often give negative reports, which ensure
that their parole application gets rejected
by the district or state parole committee.
The prisoners feel that the police file
such negative reports to evade conduct-
ing a fresh inquiry and update the re-
cords. They also pointed out that when
they became eligible for the first parole,
almost all of them received negative
police reports. It is an unwritten rule
that the first police report is always a
negative report and the police submit
mechanical negative reports based on
the crime that took place years ago and
not on the conduct of the prisoner when
the parole application is filed.
The above problems related to parole
explain why inmates breach parole, that
is, extend their stay at home. The number
of parole breaches may be interpreted as
an argument in defence of the open
prison system too. The number of parole
breaches indicates that though open
prison is a system of minimal restraint
imposed on the prisoner, they choose to
stay out of it.
It is commonly argued that open pris-
ons give liberty to inmates and there is
FEBRUARY 17, 2018
negligible restriction imposed on the
prisoner, so imprisonment in an open
prison does not amount to punishment
and the idea of justice is hurt from the
perspective of the victim. But this des-
peration of the prisoner to stay out of
open prison shows that it is a prison and
psychologically does affect the sense of
liberty. Though this is a negative argu-
ment it may be used in defence of the
open prison system, from the perspec-
tive of crime and punishment.
The following are the suggestions from
the report to which the states have been
told by the Supreme Court to submit
their responses (Chakraburtty 2017: 27):
(1) Open prisons are not resource-inten-
sive and are cost-effective. Thus it is sug-
gested that more open prisons be creat-
ed across the state (country) to decrease
the burden on the exchequer of the state.
According to comparative data between
Jaipur central jail and Sanganer Open
Prison:
(i) Open prison requires only one prison
staff per 80 prisoners. (ii) Open prisons
are 78 times cheaper than closed ones.
(iii) Cost per prisoner in Jaipur central
jail is `7,094 per month. (iv) Cost per
prisoner in Sanganer Open Prison is
`500 per month.
(2) Construction of a minimum of two
new open prisons in every district:
(i) An open prison can be constructed
anywhere. It does not require huge cam-
pus area. Every closed prison can have an
open prison built immediately next to its
boundary wall. For example, the Alwar
Open Prison, where a cluster of small
quarters are built immediately outside
the boundary wall of the closed prison.
(ii) It can be built as a prisoner village
like that of the Sanganer Open Prison.
(iii) It can be built as a housing complex
with each building of three or four
floors. A prisoner family can be accom-
modated in a flat of 300 sq ft.
(iv) Open prisons can also be constructed
in remote areas where a cluster of clay
huts can be built on an agricultural land
or a forest area, for example, the Jaitsar
Open Prison. Prisoners’ labour may be
utilised in agricultural or forest preser-
vation work.
(v) Open prisons can be started inside
university campuses, where prisoners can
vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

stay with their families and work inside
the campus like the Bikaner CRC.
(3) More prisoners to be kept in open
prisons: Prisoners eligible for stay in
open prisons should not be restricted
to the category of convicted prisoners.
Undertrials too should be allowed into
these prisons they are an experiment in
minimal restraint. It is a trust-based sys-
tem built on the principle of self-govern-
ance and self-discipline, which is reha-
bilitative in nature. If this system is
encouraged and expanded across the
country it will have the potential to not
only change the prison system but also
have a significant impact on crime, re-
cidivism, and eventually help eradicate
retributive form of punishment.
Earlier, more often than not, harsh re-
strictions were imposed on prisoners
like bar fetters and solitary confinement
(till they were declared unconstitutional),
not because they were pre-eminently
necessary to maintain order and ensure
security in jails but from a vague and
unfounded fear of jail breaks and pris-
oners posing a threat to society in gen-
eral. The open prison experiment would
give an opportunity in making a graded
and progressive response to the extent
of restraint and surveillance necessary
to contain prisoners in an inclusive
society. Or in other words prisoners
may, ordinarily in the first instance, be
kept in open jails and only if they show
tendencies towards violence or signs of
plotting a jailbreak, they may be con-
fined to more restrictive regimes of
closed jail systems.
The case for undertrial prisoners stands
on a better footing than for convicts, as
the former are merely suspects who are
incarcerated pending an investigation/
trial. Restrictions on this category of
prisoners ought to be kept at a bare min-
imum, so that a fine balance may be
struck between the fundamental right to
liberty, presumption of innocence on the
one hand and the requirement of fair
and just investigation, protective rights
and security of the victim and public
interest on the other. This goal can be best
achieved in an open jail scenario as the
very idea of staying under minimal restric-
tion regime would have the least impact
on the basic human rights of undertrials.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
At present, only convicted prisoners
are kept in open prisons. It is a common
practice and belief that if undertrials
are sent to open prison they will escape.
However, prior to the setting up of open
prisons prisoners were kept under severe
restraint, in the belief that if they were
left unchained and not put behind bars
they would become violent and kill each
other or escape. When open prisons were
started it was observed that prisoners did
not escape even when they were kept in
the open without any security barricades.
Similarly, if accused persons are aware
of the possibility of being shifted to an
open prison, there is a possibility of de-
crease in the number of absconding per-
sons. Even if bail is not granted to under-
trials (which would be the first priority),
they are at least not put behind bars.
Reduction in Overcrowding
On an average, there are nearly 70%
undertrial and 30% convicted prison-
ers. A lengthy trial is one of the reasons
behind the huge population of under-
trials in prison. More often than not,
undertrials go through a long period of
incarceration before being convicted.
Thus it would be humane to transfer
the convicted prisoners to open prison.
A reduction in the number of convicted
prisoners from the closed prison will
also lead to reduction in overcrowding.
Under the immediate context types of
undertrial prisoners (UTP) recommended
for stay in open prisons:
(1) Woman UTP should be considered for
stay in open prison to sustain ties with
family and children: (i) pregnant wom-
an prisoners, (ii) women with young
children, (iii) women with disabilities,
and (iv) aged prisoners.
(2) Aged and physically infirm prisoners
(male/female) should be allowed to
stay in an open prison so that they
can avail of the care and support of their
family members.
(3) Nature of offence: (i) onetime of-
fence, (ii) accidental offence, (iii) petty
offence, and (iv) low risk prisoner.
(4) Accused persons who have surrendered
in court or police station and courted
imprisonment.
(5) Cases of prisoners undergoing ex-
tradition requests. In cases of persons
vol lIiI no 7
INSIGHT
undergoing extradition trial in countries
India has signed extradition treaty with
the suggestion of keeping the accused in
an open prison. (The United Kingdom
governemnt rejected two extradition ap-
peals due to poor conditions prevalent in
Indian prisons.)
(6) Equal pay for equal work: Prisoners
face an endemic problem of being paid
lower wages compared to other workers
for the same work. Be it in a gaushala or
a farm, the pay/wages situation remains
the same. The reason for paying the
prisoner less as per some members of
the institutions is that, since they are
provided housing they are paid less.
A prisoner has to stay in the open prison
because of legal compulsions. Imprison-
ment is imposed by the law. To deduct rent
from the stay in prison from the wages of a
prisoner is a form of exploitation. The
prisoners must be paid equal wages for
equal work. And in case the institution
only employs prisoners, then it should
maintain standard sector rate for their
wages, which should not be below the min-
imum wages standardised by government.
(7) Access to legal aid: Though presently
only convicted prisoners stay in open
prisons they require legal services related
to parole rejection, higher bond amount,
transfer to another state or another dis-
trict and similar such issues. Thus it is
suggested that legal aid clinics be set up
even in open prisons.
(8) Access to health facilities: Health
camps should be arranged in open prisons.
(9) Prisoners often face discrimination
when it comes to work and remunera-
tion. Also, the prison superintendents
should speak to employers and negotiate
work shift timings because prisoners
have to return to prison before the even-
ing roll call.
(10) Prisoners should be allowed to
choose the kind of work. They should be
available at
Life Book House
Shop No 7, Masjid Betul
Mukarram Subji Mandi Road,
Bhopal 462 001
Madhya Pradesh
Ph: 2740705
41
INSIGHT
kept in open prisons in areas where
there are avenues to utilise their skills.
(11) Prisoners should be kept in their
home districts.
Relevance of Open Prisons
According to R K Saxena (Chakraburtty
2017: 1), the Rajasthan open prisons are
so in the true sense of the term. The first
open prison in Rajasthan was set up in
Durgapura near Jaipur city, around
1954–55. Prisoners were allowed to stay
with family members and allowed choice
of work.
If the purpose of incarceration is to
prepare an inmate for social reintegra-
tion and social readjustment it would be
wrong to cut him off from society for
long. One of the prerequisites of social
reintegration is the continued interaction
between the prisoner and society. There
are two ways of maintaining social
interaction. One, by allowing the society
to come inside prisons and two, by
allowing prisoners to go outside the pris-
on. Open prisons provide for this kind of
social interaction between the prisoner
and society.
Closed or traditional prisons have
high security, yet prisoners escape. But
that does not prompt the administration
to shut them down. Prisoners staying in
open prisons know that escaping from
there would mean that if they are rear-
rested, they would be sent back to a
closed prison. The fear of this prevents
them from trying to escape. Prisoners in
open prisons had maintained a fairly
good conduct while they were in the
closed ones no matter what their offence
was. Thus it was rare that a prisoner
would escape from an open prison.
Ajit Singh, a former director general
of police (DGP) of Rajasthan, observes:
Contrary to common belief prisoners are not
a homogeneous group of violent and hard-
ened criminals. To understand a prisoner,
it is important to learn about his family, the
circumstances of the offence, whether the
offence was planned, accidental, whether
committed by a onetime offender or by a
hardened habitual offender. (Chakraburtty
2017: 4)
Those unfamiliar with the system (Open
Prison), may presume that such a system
would give rise to prison escapes. The data,
however, does not corroborate this fear.
There is a general acceptance of the Open
42
Prison Rules among the prisoners. A pris- been subjected to neglect in its home
oner allowed the extent of liberty that comes state. The Rajasthan open prison model
with being in an Open Prison would not nor- and parole system should be expanded
mally want to lose it and be a fugitive again.
Escape would imply re-arrest and then face
and implemented across the country.
life back in confinement of a traditional There is no logical explanation to
prison. Thus prison escapes are rare when it continuing a closed prison system that is
comes to Open Prison. not only inhuman but also expensive.
I was commissioned to inspect all the Funds with the public exchequer should
prisons of Bihar (Chakraburtty 2015a) be utilised to combat problems of mal-
and visited all the 58 prisons there and nutrition, public health, primary educa-
also interacted with 30,070 prisoners tion and not be exhausted over per-
(on record) (Chakraburtty 2015b). After ceived sense of crime and punishment.
witnessing the horror behind bars in the Open prisons must become the norm
closed prisons, the open prison system and the closed prison must remain a
of Rajasthan seemed unreal. It is diffi- rare exception.
cult to believe that such an alternative
imprisonment system has existed in the Note
country for decades, yet it was not emu- 1 Writ Petition(s)(Civil) No(s) 406/201Re-Inhu-
lated elsewhere in the country. The Raj- man Conditions in 1382 Prisons, pp 8–9, http://
asthan open prison system is a success- supremecourtofindia.nic.in/supremecourt/
2013/18545/18545_2013_Order_12-Dec-2017.pdf.
ful and sustainable alternative to the
existing closed prison system. It is cost-
effective, leads to social reintegration of References
the prisoners, reduction in prison over- Chakraburtty, Smita (2015a): “Prisons of Bihar,”
Bihar State Legal Services Authority, http://
crowding, the rate of recidivism is negli- bslsa.bih.nic.in/prision-report.html.
gible and most importantly, it is a hu- — (2015b): “Horror behind Bars,” Frontline,
mane system, which upholds the right to http://www.frontline.in/cover-story/horror-
behind-bars/article8017626.ece.
life and dignity of the prisoner.
— (2017): “The Open Prisons of Rajasthan,”
It is also unfortunate that such a Rajasthan State Legal Services Authority, http://
unique and successful prison system has www.rlsa.gov.in/pdf/OpenPrisonBook17.PDF.
Journal Rank of EPW
Economic and Political Weekly is indexed on Scopus, “the largest abstract and citation
database of peer-reviewed literature,” which is prepared by Elsevier N V (bit.ly/2dxMFOh).
Scopus has indexed research papers that have been published in EPW from 2008 onwards.
The Scopus database journal ranks country-wise and journal-wise. It provides three broad sets
of rankings: (i) Number of Citations, (ii) H-Index, and (iii) Scimago Journal and Country Rank.
Presented below are EPW’s ranks in 2015 in India, Asia and globally, according to the total cites
(3 years) indicator.
● Highest among 37 Indian social science journals and second highest among 187 social
science journals ranked in Asia.
● Highest among 38 journals in the category, “Economics, Econometrics, and Finance” in the
Asia region, and 37th among 881 journals globally.
● Highest among 23 journals in the category, “Sociology and Political Science” in the Asia
region, and 17th among 951 journals globally.
● Between 2009 and 2015, EPW’s citations in three categories (“Economics, Econometrics,
and Finance;” “Political Science and International Relations;” and “Sociology and Political
Science”) were always in the second quartile of all citations recorded globally in the Scopus
database.
For a summary of statistics on EPW on Scopus, including of the other journal rank indicators
please see (bit.ly/2dDDZmG).
EPW consults referees from a database of 200+ academicians in different fields of the social
sciences on papers that are published in the Special Article and Notes sections.
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Why Is Unemployment Higher among the Educated?
Indrajit Bairagya
The unemployment rate among the educated is not only
higher compared to the uneducated, it also increases
with higher levels of education. This article explores
whether the factors responsible for unemployment
among the educated differ from the uneducated based
on a multinomial probit model. Results indicate that
youth, both educated and uneducated, are more likely
to be unemployed than older age groups. One of the
reasons for higher unemployment among the educated
is that the educated are not willing to join in low-grade
informal jobs, but at the same time, sufficient regular
salaried jobs are also not available for them. Both
educated and uneducated individuals with vocational
training (formal or informal) are more likely to find jobs.
Besides promoting skills through technical and
vocational education, creation of jobs through
enhancing capital formation is important to reduce both
educated and uneducated unemployment.
Indrajit Bairagya (indrajitisec@gmail.com) is with the Institute for Social
and Economic Change, Bengaluru.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7
Educated workers enjoy at least three basic advantages over less edu-
cated workers in the labor market: higher wages, greater upward mo-
bility in income and occupation, and greater employment stability.
—Mincer (1991)
T
here are a number of studies that observe a negative
relationship between unemployment and education of
workers (for example, Magnussen 1979; Sicherman
1987; Wolbers 2000; Cairo and Cajner 2014; Mirica 2014).
However, lack of demand for workers, and mismatch between
the aspirations of the well-educated and the availability of
suitable employment opportunities may result in employment
insecurity among potential job-seekers. Poor educational
standards may also be responsible, to a significant extent, for
high levels of educated unemployment and underemployment
(Stiglitz 1975). Thus, mismatches in demand and supply among
different segments in the economy can lead to educated un-
employment. For instance, the unemployment rate was 7.6%
in 2013 among the graduates in the United States (US), the
causes for which were mainly lack of employment opportuni-
ties and inadequacy of applicants possessing the required
skills desired by employers (Lawrence 2013; Ludden 2012).
However, the unemployment rate in the US varied between
4.8% and 14.7% depending on the major subject of the graduate
(Carnevale and Cheah 2013). Further, according to the World
Bank, between 2009 and 2012, unemployment rates for the
tertiary educated as a per cent of total unemployment was
well above 25% for many developing countries; 22% in Chile,
33% in Egypt, 23% in India, 37% in Jordan and Lebanon each,
25% in Mexico, 41% in Philippines, 26% in Singapore, and 36%
in Thailand (World Bank 2014).
At the individual level, education provides a certain level of
employment security; however, it entails investment in terms
of money and time. More importantly, the opportunity cost of
investing in education that involves loss of economic produc-
tivity, can sometimes make the pursuit of education less valu-
able and efficient than other productive economic activities. In
fact, the phenomenon of educated unemployment can influ-
ence policymakers into claiming that the share of the budget
going into educating the workforce could be better utilised for
the creation and sustenance of job-creating productive pro-
grammes. It must also be taken into account that besides the
direct economic cost in terms of lost productivity for a country,
long periods of educated unemployment related to structural
faults in the economy can have far-reaching social costs.
Earlier, in most of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) countries, educational levels and
unemployment rate were inversely related; in contrast, in
43
SPECIAL ARTICLE

most of the developing countries, high unemployment and different educational attainments in different countries is pre-
underemployment prevailed among the educated (O’Higgins sented in Table 1.
2001). However, probably as fallout of the 2008 global eco- Table 1 shows that the higher the education level, the lower
nomic crisis, educated unemployment and underemployment is the percentage of unemployment in the developed coun-
have become increasingly more visible, affecting both the tries. However, in developing countries such as Chile, Brazil,
developed and the developing world, with the latter hit more and Mexico, once the level of education goes up, the unem-
severely. Educated unemployment due to labour market ployment rate also climbs. This could be due to a deficiency in
imperfections such as skill shortages may be determined by demand for educated workers, skill mismatches, or the low ab-
cyclical and structural economic conditions (Quintini 2011). sorption capacity of the labour market in the developing coun-
Most available literature suggests that although dependent tries vis-à-vis the developed countries.
upon various macroeconomic conditions, functioning of In India, NSSO provides the definitional distinction between
the labour market, and the relevance of its institutions and “proportion unemployed” and unemployment rate. According
public policies, a large youth cohort size relative to the adult Table 1: Unemployment Percentage by Educational Attainments in 2011
population will negatively affect the earning levels of the (Age Group: 25–64 Years)
youth, as well as increase their unemployment rates (Biagi Country Pre-primary Lower Upper Post- Tertiary All Levels of
and Primary Secondary Secondary secondary Education – Education
and Lucifora 2005). This is determined by substitutability Education Education Education Non-tertiary Type A and
between young and adult workers and skill levels, implying (ISCED 3A) Education Advanced
Research
that more educated workers tend to be adversely affected by Programmes
large cohort sizes (Stapleton and Young 1988; Bloom et al Developed economies
1987; Wright 1979). Australia 8.2 5.3 4.1 4.3 2.7 3.8
Despite the availability of a large number of sub-standard Austria 7.6 4.4 2.3 2.9 3.5
Belgium 15.0 10.5 5.7 3.5r 4.0 6.1
informal jobs, the Indian economy continues to face a peren-
Canada 14.6 10.9 7.1 6.6 4.7 6.3
nial unemployment problem. For instance, as per National
Czech Republic 21.4 4.2 2.6 5.9
Sample Survey Office (NSSO 2010, 2014), in both the rural and Denmark 9.0 6.3 4.7 6.2
urban areas in India, not only is the unemployment rate among Estonia 25.5 11.8 9.4 7.3 11.6
the educated (secondary school and above) higher than that Finland 10.0 11.9 7.0 4.1 6.2
among those whose educational level is lower, but the rate has France 14.1 12.4 6.9 6.7 5.3 7.8
also increased with higher levels of education. This could be Germany 17.8 12.9 7.4 3.9 2.6 5.7
due to different macroeconomic reasons, a mismatch bet ween Greece 16.6 17.9 16.4 19.6 11.4 16.0
demand and supply across different segments of the economy Hungary 50.0 22.1 7.7 8.8 3.8 9.9
and also because of different socio-economic and region- Iceland 7.8 7.6 4.9 5.6
specific features of the individuals and households. The latter Ireland 23.4 21.0 13.4 17.7 6.1 12.9
Italy 12.4 8.8 5.9 9.2 5.1 7.0
cause, however, has not received much attention in the existing
Japan 5.3 3.0 4.4
literature. This article focuses on the problem of educated
Luxembourg 6.5 6.3 3.7 3.9 4.1
unemployment in India and attempts to explore whether the Netherlands 5.0 4.2 3.0 0.0 2.7 3.2
different socio-economic and regional factors responsible for New Zealand 7.5 3.4 3.3 2.7 4.5
educated unemployment differ from uneducated unemploy- Norway 5.0 3.5 1.5 2.3
ment, using a large and nationally representative sample of Poland 16.9 7.7 8.0 4.5 8.1
individual (unit level) data provided by the NSSO for the period Portugal 13.0 13.9 10.9 8.0 11.8
1983 to 2011–12. This study also examines whether the deter- Slovak Republic 2.5 38.5 8.4 5.2 11.8
minants of educated unemployment vary with the level of Slovenia 25.8 11.9 7.5 4.7 7.6
development and industrialisation of different regions. Spain 30.6 24.5 19.3 10.4 19.5
Sweden 18.7 8.2 5.1 5.4 3.5 5.3
Nature and Pattern of Educated Unemployment Switzerland 8.2 7.5 4.9 2.6 3.0 3.5
United Kingdom 14.6 4.6 3.9 6.0
Education at a Glance (OECD 2013) compiles the population
United States 13.2 17.9 10.2 4.4 8.3
and educational attainment figures from OECD, Eurostat data- Economies in transition
bases, and databases provided by UNESCO Institute for Statis- Russian Federation 14.0 8.5 2.9 5.5
tics. It creates attainment profiles taking into account the per- Developing economies
centage of the population (aged 25 to 64) who had successfully Brazil 4.2 5.5 6.1 2.9 4.8
completed a particular level of education. The OECD (2013) Chile 4.3 4.5 5.0 5.9 5.0
Israel 8.0 6.7 5.7 3.7 5.0
defines the employment rate as the number of employed per-
Korea 2.2 3.0 3.4 2.6 3.1
sons as a percentage of the working age population (that is,
Mexico 3.9 4.1 4.8 4.9 4.3
the number of employed people divided by the number of all Turkey 8.1 9.8 9.6 7.6 8.4
working age people), whereas the unemployment rate is de- OECD average 13.6 12.6 7.1 6.9 4.7 7.1
fined as the number of unemployed persons as a percentage of EU21 average 17.4 15.2 8.0 7.9 5.1 8.4
the labour force. The percentage of unemployed across Source: OECD (2013).

44 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

to them, proportion unemployed is defined as the number of Figure 1: Types of Occupation of Educated and Uneducated, 2011–12
(in million)
persons/person-days unemployed per 1,000 persons/person- 120
days, whereas unemployment rate is defined as the number of 100
persons/person-days unemployed per 1,000 persons/person- 80
Uneducated
days in the labour force. The labour force includes those who 60
Educated
40
were either “working” (or employed) or “seeking or available
20
for work” (or unemployed) during the reference period. Again, 0
NSSO defines the category of “not in labour force” as those who Own account Employers in Worked as Regular Casual wage Casual wage Un-
workers in household helper in salaried/ labour in labour employment
were neither working nor seeking or available for work for household enterprise household wage public in other
enterprise enterprise employee works types of
various reasons during the reference period. Persons in the (unpaid family work
worker)
“not in labour force” category include students, those engaged
Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO unit level data for 2011–12.
in domestic duties, rentiers, pensioners, recipients of remit-
tances, those living on alms, infirm or disabled persons, very unemployment rate over time in India based on the usual status
young persons, prostitutes, and casual labourers not engaged method by different educational categories are given in Table 2.
in work due to sickness. Table 2 illustrates that though the unemployment rate has
It is important to note that NSSO measures employment and decreased across categories over time, overall, it shows an
unemployment rates in three ways: usual status, current increasing trend with an increase in educational levels in
weekly status (CWS), and current daily status (CDS). Usual status the survey rounds, with diploma/certificate course holders
approach measures the magnitude of persons unemployed for accounting for the highest unemployment rate. More impor-
relatively longer periods during the reference period of 365 tantly, the unemployment rate among “graduates and above”
days. In this context, it is imperative to keep in view that those is much higher compared to “secondary and above” categories
persons treated as unemployed under the usual status might over the survey rounds. Unemployment rates across different
be engaged in some subsidiary work. Thus, NSSO also esti- educational categories over time in rural and urban areas are
mates the number of unemployed excluding those employed in given in Table 3.
a subsidiary capacity during the reference period. This is From Table 3, it is clear that the rate of unemployment in
termed as usual status-adjusted. CWS and CDS provide the urban India is lower than that in rural India at the higher levels
average number of unemployed on a weekly and daily basis of educational categories (secondary and above) and also for
respectively. However, throughout the paper, for measuring all the study periods. However, it is higher for urban India
the unemployment rate, usual status (principal) and usual than rural India at the lower levels of educational categories
status-adjusted categories are considered. Changes in the (less than secondary). The possible reason could be that well-
educated people are better positioned in urban areas to find
Table 2: Unemployment Rates (per 1,000) in India by Education Categories
over Time (Based on Usual Principal Status Category) employment than rural people, while the less educated gener-
Education Level 1983 1993–94 2004–05 2011–12 ally find themselves unable to find sufficient employment
Not literate 6 4 7 6 opportunities in urban areas. It is important to note here that
Literate and up to primary 22 12 18 14 the rate of educated unemployed has increased corresponding
Middle 71 43 37 25 to an increase in education levels both in rural and urban
Secondary 114* 79 61 33
areas. And also, in both rural and urban areas, the unemployment
Higher secondary – 109 81 56
rate among graduates and above is much higher than among
Diploma/certificate course – – 133 97
those with secondary and above education.
Graduate and above 110 110 100 84
Secondary and above 113 96 82 58
Since this discussion brings to the fore the fact that the un-
For 1983, there is no separate information for the higher secondary category. employment rate is higher for the educated than for the uned-
Secondary and higher secondary categories are merged together. ucated in both rural and urban regions in India, it is important
Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO data (various rounds).
to examine why the unemployment rate is lower for the uned-
Table 3: Unemployment Rates (per 1,000) across Different Educational ucated, and also the occupation categories of the uneducated.
Categories over Time in Rural and Urban in India (Based on Usual Principal
Status Category) Figure 1 shows that the uneducated are mostly engaged as
Education Level 1983 1993–94 2004–05 2011–12 own account workers in household enterprises and as casual
Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban Rural Urban
wage labour in other types of work (not public works). A sub-
Not literate 5 15 3 9 6 10 5 9
stantial number are also engaged as helpers in household
Literate and up to primary 15 43 8 27 16 26 12 21
Middle 59 94 33 66 30 57 24 26
enterprises on an unpaid basis. However, the educated are
Secondary 123* 105 79 79 59 64 34 29 mostly engaged in regular salaried jobs. Thus, one of the reasons
Higher secondary – – 114 104 89 70 55 57 for higher unemployment rate among the educated as against
Diploma/certificate course – – – – 154 116 126 70 the uneducated is that the educated do not take up informal
Graduate and above 150 94 152 89 117 90 108 71 jobs such as own account work, casual wage labour, helper in
Secondary and above 128 101 103 89 84 80 59 56 household enterprises, and so on. At the same time, sufficient
For 1983, there is no separate information for the higher secondary category.
Secondary and higher secondary categories are merged together.
regular salaried jobs are also not available to absorb all of
Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO data (various rounds). them. Therefore, this raises the question whether enhancement
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 45
SPECIAL ARTICLE

of educational capabilities always improves the choice bundle Figure 2: Different Types of Jobs Held by Technically Educated People,
2011–12 (in million)
and the freedom to choose from among these choices. At least 5
in this case, enhancement of capabilities through education Technical education in agri, etc
4
Diploma or certificate
does not improve the choice bundle in the Indian job market. 3 (below graduate)
In fact, it is restricting the choices. 2
Diploma or certificate (graduate
Table 4 shows that the percentage of people unemployed and above)
1
among the young age group (15–29 years) is much higher than
0
older age groups (30–44 years and 45–59 years) for both the Own account Employers in Worked as Regular Casual wage Casual wage Un-
workers in household helper in salaried/ labour in labour employment
educated and the uneducated. Even as the highest percentage household enterprise household wage public in other
enterprise enterprise employee works types of
of educated people across all the age groups are engaged in (unpaid family work
regular salaried jobs, the percentage of regular salaried people worker)
Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO data (various rounds).
is higher among the educated older age groups compared to
the youth. Both educated and uneducated youth are largely Figure 3: Magnitude of Educated and Uneducated Unemployment
engaged as helpers in household enterprises without pay, and (in absolute numbers in million)
6
as casual wage labour in other types of work (not public
works). However, as they grow older, they shift towards per-
manent settlement either by finding a regular job or by work- 4

ing as own account workers or employers in household enter- Uneducated unemployed

prises, that is, as self-employed. 2 Educated unemployed

Table 4: Age Groups of Educated and Uneducated People by Percentage of

Different Types of Occupation, 2011–12 0
Job Codes Educated Uneducated Formal training Informal training No training
(Different Age Groups) (Different Age Groups) Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO data (various rounds).
15–29 30–44 45–59 15–29 30–44 45–59
Own account workers in could increase the unemployment among the technically-
household enterprise 14.8 36.2 40.8 15.5 34.6 44.6 educated, leading to a huge loss of human capital investment.
Employer in household enterprise 0.6 2.9 4.1 0.3 0.7 1.3 Since unemployment for both the educated and the unedu-
Worked as helper in household cated is higher among those without vocational training than
enterprises (unpaid family worker) 22.5 10.5 2.7 24.5 13.8 9.8
Regular salaried/wage employee 33.3 38.6 47.3 13.8 10.6 9.5
those who have had formal or informal vocational training, it
Casual wage labour in public works 0.4 0.4 0.2 1 1.3 0.9 can be argued that vocational training undoubtedly helps
Casual wage labour in other an individual to find a job. However, at the same time, a sub-
types of work 14.5 9.9 4.5 41.1 38.6 33.6 stantial number of people are unemployed even with formal
Unemployment 13.8 1.6 0.5 3.9 0.4 0.3 and informal vocational training. This again clearly indicates
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 that possessing vocational training by itself does not guaran-
Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO data (various rounds).
tee employment. Thus, the creation of employment opportu-
More importantly, considering the present focus of the Indi- nities is also very important along with the promotion of
an government on solving the unemployment problem by pro- vocational education.
moting technical education and vocational training, it would Further, studies argue that “information asymmetry” and
be interesting to look at the present situation on different “search and matching” problems can also result in unemploy-
types of jobs held by technically-educated and vocationally- ment to a great extent. In this respect though, employment
trained people (Figures 2 and 3). exchanges try to solve such problems to some extent by main-
Figure 2 clearly shows that technically-educated people taining a register of biodata of the people registered with them
across all the three categories (technically educated in agricul- and informing them, from time to time, of the availability of
ture and other subjects, diploma or certificate below graduate suitable vacancies. Thus, an analysis of educated and un-
level, and diploma or certificate above graduate level) are educated unemployment of people registered with different
mostly engaged in regular salaried jobs. However, it has to be employment exchanges can be very useful in understanding
noted that possessing technical education by itself does not whether “search and matching” is a crucial factor in determin-
necessarily guarantee employment. In fact, a number of tech- ing educated unemployment in India.
nically-educated people coming under all the three categories The number of unemployed is higher for both the educated
are also unemployed. Thus, besides promoting technical edu- and the uneducated among those who are not registered with
cation, the government needs to focus more on creation of jobs employment exchanges than those who have registered either
and demand for workers since industries are unable to create in a government employment exchange or in a private place-
sufficient job opportunities for all the technically educated ment agency or both. This clearly indicates that search and
people. As the number of technically educated people increases matching problem may also be an important reason for edu-
due to several special intiatives undertaken by the present Indian cated unemployment in India. However, a large number of ed-
government, the creation of jobs for engaging them should, at ucated are unemployed even after registering with govern-
the same time, expand at a more rapid rate. Otherwise, it ment employment exchanges.
46 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Figure 4: Educated and Uneducated Unemployed Persons Based on
Registration with Different Employment Exchanges (in million)
5 120
Uneducated unemployed
4 High industrial states
Educated unemployed
3 Medium industrial states
2 Low industrial states
1 20
0 Not literate
Government employment Private placement Both government
exchanges agencies and private
Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO data (various rounds).
Figure 5: Unemployment Rates (per 1,000) in the Developed, Developing,
and Underdeveloped States in India across Different Educational Categories
200
Developed states
150
Developing states
100
Underdeveloped states
50
0
Not literate Literate and Middle Secondary Higher
up to primary secondary
Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO data (various rounds).
Further, as the nature and extent of educated unemployment
vary between developed and developing nations, it may also vary
across different regions with different levels of development
within a country. We, therefore, have classified all states/union
territories in India into three categories: developed regions,
developing regions, and underdeveloped regions. However, a
detailed discussion about the level of development across states is
given in Appendix 1 (p 51) while a comparative picture of un-
employment rates across developed, developing, and underdevel-
oped regions by different levels of education is given in Figure 5.
Figure 5 reveals that the unemployment rates among edu-
cated people are much higher than for uneducated in all the
regions in India, irrespective of their level of development. In
fact, within India, the developed states account for a higher
unemployment rate among educated people than the develop-
ing and underdeveloped states. This may be due to the fact
that the developed states have a much larger number of edu-
cated people than the developing and underdeveloped re-
gions, and as such, a convex relationship is well expected be-
tween unemployment rate and the number of educated peo-
ple. More importantly, the unemployment rate has increased
with an increase in educational levels in all the three types of
states, and is highest for those with a diploma or certificate
course. This could be due to the fact that high social sector
development as well as a large migration of educated people to
the developed states creates more supply of educated labour
seeking higher wages than the demand in these states.
At the international level, developed countries promote a
high rate of industrialisation, which generates high demand for
educated workers. However, one may argue that in India, the
classification of states based on Human Development Index
(HDI) may not reflect the true demand for jobs in high HDI
states; it may rather reflect the higher supply of educated
labour in these states. Therefore, we have again classified the
states into three categories based on per capita private capital
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Figure 6: Unemployment Rates (per 1,000) in High, Medium and Low
Industrial States in India across Different Educational Categories
100
80
60
40
0
Literate Middle Secondary Higher Diploma/ Graduate Secondary
Not registered and up to secondary certificate and and
primary course above above
Source: Author’s estimation based on NSSO data (various rounds).
formation. These categories are high industrial states, medi-
um industrial states, and low industrial states. The details
of the classification are given in Appendix 2 (p 51), and the un-
employment rates across these three categories of states are
presented in Figure 6.
Figure 4 shows that although unemployment rate increases
with increase in education in all the states regardless of their
Diploma/ Graduate industrialisation status, the highly industrialised states account
certificate and above
course
for lower unemployment rates across educational categories
than medium and low industrial states. This could be because
highly industrialised states are able to create more jobs for
educated people compared to other states. However, they are
also unable to employ all the educated people in the produc-
tion process, which clearly shows the deficiency in demand for
educated workforce in India.
Determinants of Educated Unemployment
The descriptive analysis at the macro level is not rigorous
enough to identify the socio-economic factors responsible for
educated unemployment in India. However, with the above
macro background of educated unemployment in India, this
limitation can be overcome by following the econometric
approach based on the multinomial probit model, using unit-
individual-level large sample national survey data.
This section presents the determinants of educated unem-
ployment in India. NSSO defines “educated” individuals as those
who have attained an educational level of secondary and above,
which in the Indian context includes diploma/certificate holders.
We follow the NSSO definition of educated to divide the individu-
als into two groups: educated and uneducated. Our analysis is
restricted to the working age group of 15 to 59 years and we
have used a multinomial probit model, which in the present
context gives us some advantage over multinomial logit model.
One should note that the sample consists of two groups:
educated and uneducated individuals, who can be further
categorised as employed or unemployed. Stated otherwise, the
model considers four possible final outcomes for each individual:
educated employed, educated unemployed, uneducated em-
ployed, and uneducated unemployed. However, if one wants
to arrange these categories in a nested manner he/she can
either place education status first and employment status sub-
sequently, or education status may follow employment status.
Given such ambiguity in ordering, it is advantageous to con-
sider final outcomes only while analysing. In this context, the
multinomial probit model provides an edge over other models.
47
SPECIAL ARTICLE

First, it gives an estimation of coefficients for each outcome
separately. Second, it is free from the assumption of independ-
ence of irrelevant alternatives (IIA). Most importantly, the model
does not require a nesting structure though it is qualitatively
similar to the multinomial nested logit model (Train 2003;
Cameron and Trivedi 2005; Jepsen 2008).
In multinomial probit model, every individual obtains utility
from each alternative. Following Cameron and Trivedi (2005)
and Jepsen (2008), the utility by individual i of alternative j
can be written as:
Uij = Xi 'αj + Zi’βj + Vi’µj + εij
where, Xi is the vector of age, household size, formal and infor-
mal vocational training, gender, and marital status. Consider-
ing the fact that India exhibits heterogeneity in terms of socio-
economic characteristics such as religion, culture, social groups,
and so on, it is important to examine educated and uneducat-
ed unemployment against different socio-economic character-
istics at the individual and household levels. Zi is the vector of
religion and social groups, and Vi includes regional factors.
Out of the four possible final outcomes, we have set “educated
employed” as base category. Therefore, our analysis provides
the coefficient of the variables for the other three outcomes
(that is, educated unemployed, uneducated employed, and
uneducated unemployed) and their interpretations will be in
comparison with the base category.
NSSO 2011–12 unit-level data on employment and unemploy-
ment is used for accomplishing the objective and we have a
sample of 1,51,874 individuals at the national level who belong
to the working age group and also included in the labour force.
The explanatory variables considered for estimation are
described in Appendix 3 (p 51).
Estimation Results
The estimation results of the multinomial probit model at the
national level are presented in Table 5.
Table 5 presents the result (both coefficients and marginal
effects) of the three multinomial probit models with three dif-
ferent specifications of variables. In the first specification,
there are a few controls. The number of controls increases in
the second and third specifications subsequently. Irrespective
of the specifications of the model, the sign and statistical
significance of the common variables (formal and informal voca-
tional training, age, household size, gender, and marital status)
remain the same, which shows the robustness of the coefficients.
In some cases, it is seen that the sign of the coefficients is dif-
ferent from their marginal effects. This is because of the fact
... (1)
that the coefficients in multinomial model indicate the chang-
es in the probability of one outcome divided by the probability
of the baseline outcome, whereas the marginal effects indicate
changes in the probability of one outcome. A variable may in-
fluence the probability of one outcome and the probability of
baseline outcome in such a way that it may have a positive
effect on the ratio, but a negative effect on the one probability.
The negative and significant signs of both formal and infor-
mal vocational training for educated unemployment reveal
that educated individuals with formal and informal vocational
training are more likely to find jobs compared to the educated
individuals without vocational training. In fact, the impact of
both formal and informal vocational training is found robust
as the signs and statistical significance of these variables re-
main same across all the three specifications. The sign of the
coefficient for age is positive as expected and also statistically
significant, whereas the coefficient for age-square is negative
as expected. This supports the findings of Table 4, which shows
that the youth are more likely to be unemployed than older
age groups, and that with the increase in age people move
towards permanent settlement by either finding a regular
job or working as own account workers or employers in
household enterprises.
Further, household size is also an important factor in deter-
mining educated unemployment, that is, larger the household

Table 5: Multinomial Probit Estimates of Determinants of Educated Unemployment in India

Specification 1 Specification 2 Specification 3
Coefficients Marginal Effects Coefficients Marginal Effects Coefficients Marginal Effects
Educated unemployed
Formal vocational training -0.128*** (0.035) 0.008*** (0.001) -0.165*** (0.037) 0.006*** (0.001) -0.136*** (0.038) 0.005*** (0.0007)
Informal vocational training -0.842*** (0.053) -0.01*** (0.001) -0.885*** (0.06) -0.011*** (0.001) -0.845*** (0.061) -0.01*** (0.001)
Age 0.125*** (0.02) 0.002*** (0.0001) 0.017 (0.017) 0.0006*** (0.0001) 0.007 (0.017) 0.001*** (0.0001)
Age-square -0.003*** (0) 0*** (0) -0.001*** (0.0003) -0.00001*** (0.000002) -0.001*** (0.0003) 0*** (0)
Household size 0.021*** (0.004) 0.0001*** (0) 0.027*** (0.004) 0.0003*** (0.00004) 0.021*** (0.004) 0.0002*** (0)
Female 0.911*** (0.023) 0.006*** (0.001) 0.8*** (0.024) 0.005*** (0.001) 0.815*** (0.024) 0.005*** (0.0005)
Married -0.999*** (0.025) -0.01*** (0.001) -0.923*** (0.027) -0.009*** (0.001) -0.894*** (0.027) -0.008*** (0.0008)
Hindu -0.115*** (0.024) -0.001*** (0.0002) -0.007 (0.026) 0.001*** (0.0002)
SC and ST 0.102*** (0.024) -0.001*** (0.0003) 0.082*** (0.025) -0.002*** (0.0003)
Rural 0.022 (0.023) -0.002*** (0.0003) 0.017 (0.023) -0.002*** (0.0003)
MGNREGA 0.137*** (0.052) -0.004*** (0.001) 0.094* (0.053) -0.004*** (0.0006)
Registered with government
employment exchanges only 0.601*** (0.025) 0.018*** (0.002) 0.601*** (0.026) 0.017*** (0.0018)
Registered with private placement
agencies only 0.305*** (0.076) 0.005*** (0.001) 0.295*** (0.077) 0.004*** (0.0008)
Registered with both government
and private placement agencies 0.735*** (0.091) 0.018*** (0.002) 0.797*** (0.091) 0.018*** (0.0021)
(Continued)

48 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE
Table 5: Multinomial Probit Estimates of Determinants of Educated Unemployment in India (Continued)
Specification 1 Specification 2 Specification 3
Coefficients Marginal Effects Coefficients Marginal Effects Coefficients Marginal Effects
Developed states 0.369*** (0.041) 0.005*** (0.0006)
Developing states -0.039 (0.029) 0.001*** (0.0003)
High industrial states -0.402*** (0.034) -0.004*** (0.0005)
Medium industrial states -0.299*** (0.03) -0.003*** (0.0004)
Belongs to a state where English language
has been promoted from 1st standard -0.126*** (0.026) -0.002*** (0.0003)
Constant -2.301*** (0.26) -1.02*** (0.235) -0.676*** (0.232)
Uneducated employed
Formal vocational training -1.656*** (0.027) -0.456*** (0.007) -1.309*** (0.03) -0.361*** (0.008) -1.262*** (0.03) -0.348*** (0.008)
Informal vocational training 0.316*** (0.014) 0.096*** (0.004) 0.367*** (0.015) 0.111*** (0.004) 0.379*** (0.015) 0.113*** (0.004)
Age -0.097*** (0.003) -0.027*** (0.001) -0.077*** (0.003) -0.02*** (0.001) -0.074*** (0.003) -0.02*** (0.001)
Age-square 0.001*** (0) 0*** (0) 0.001*** (0) 0.0003*** (0.00001) 0.001*** (0.00004) 0*** (0)
Household size 0.009*** (0.002) 0.002*** (0.001) 0.002 (0.002) 0.0002 (0.001) -0.002 (0.002) -0.001 (0.001)
Female 0.613*** (0.012) 0.162*** (0.003) 0.567*** (0.012) 0.15*** (0.003) 0.584*** (0.012) 0.155*** (0.003)
Married 0.148*** (0.014) 0.05*** (0.004) -0.019 (0.015) 0.004 (0.004) -0.036** (0.015) -0.002 (0.004)
Hindu -0.091*** (0.012) -0.024*** (0.003) -0.154*** (0.012) -0.043*** (0.003)
SC and ST 0.435*** (0.011) 0.119*** (0.003) 0.455*** (0.011) 0.125*** (0.003)
Rural 0.493*** (0.01) 0.137*** (0.003) 0.471*** (0.011) 0.131*** (0.003)
MGNREGA 0.887*** (0.02) 0.243*** (0.005) 0.88*** (0.02) 0.242*** (0.005)
Registered with government
employment exchanges only -2.252*** (0.028) -0.628*** (0.008) -2.217*** (0.028) -0.617*** (0.008)
Registered with private placement
agencies only -0.367*** (0.047) -0.103*** (0.013) -0.331*** (0.047) -0.093*** (0.013)
Registered with both government
and private placement agencies -2.045*** (0.124) -0.571*** (0.034) -2.037*** (0.122) -0.568*** (0.034)
Developed states -0.362*** (0.021) -0.106*** (0.006)
Developing states -0.233*** (0.013) -0.065*** (0.004)
High industrial states 0.053*** (0.016) 0.019*** (0.004)
Medium industrial states -0.024* (0.013) -0.003 (0.004)
Belongs to a state where English language
has been promoted from 1st standard 0.128*** (0.011) 0.035*** (0.003)
Constant 1.646*** (0.057) 1.23*** (0.06) 1.326*** (0.061)
Uneducated unemployed
Formal vocational training -0.956*** (0.078) -0.0006 (0.0008) -0.769*** (0.08) -0.001 (0.001) -0.735*** (0.081) -0.001 (0.001)
Informal vocational training -0.567*** (0.065) -0.007*** (0.0006) -0.551*** (0.066) -0.008*** (0.001) -0.493*** (0.067) -0.007*** (0.001)
Age -0.22*** (0.009) -0.002*** (0.0001) -0.214*** (0.009) -0.002*** (0.0001) -0.219*** (0.009) -0.002*** (0)
Age-square 0.003*** (0) 0*** (0) 0.002*** (0.0001) 0.00002*** (0.000002) 0.002*** (0.0001) 0*** (0)
Household size 0.032*** (0.005) 0.0003*** (0) 0.026*** (0.005) 0.0003*** (0.0001) 0.023*** (0.005) 0*** (0)
Female 0.692*** (0.03) 0.004*** (0.0003) 0.672*** (0.031) 0.004*** (0.0004) 0.7*** (0.031) 0.004*** (0)
Married -0.59*** (0.035) -0.007*** (0.0004) -0.66*** (0.036) -0.007*** (0.0004) -0.655*** (0.037) -0.006*** (0)
Hindu -0.132*** (0.031) -0.001*** (0.0003) -0.066* (0.034) 0 (0)
SC and ST 0.304*** (0.03) 0.001** (0.0003) 0.275*** (0.031) 0 (0)
Rural 0.155*** (0.03) -0.001*** (0.0003) 0.151*** (0.03) -0.001*** (0)
MGNREGA 0.641*** (0.055) 0.002*** (0.001) 0.616*** (0.056) 0.001*** (0.001)
Registered with government
employment exchanges only -0.891*** (0.052) 0.003*** (0.001) -0.942*** (0.052) 0.002*** (0.001)
Registered with private placement
agencies only -0.22* (0.127) -0.0003 (0.0014) -0.242* (0.129) -0.001 (0.001)
Registered with both government
and private placement agencies -0.865*** (0.275) 0.0025 (0.0031) -0.818** (0.275) 0.003 (0.003)
Developed states 0.523*** (0.056) 0.007*** (0.001)
Developing states -0.001 (0.036) 0.001*** (0)
High industrial states -0.486*** (0.046) -0.005*** (0)
Medium industrial states -0.35*** (0.039) -0.003*** (0)
Belongs to a state where English
language has been promoted from
1st standard 0.181*** (0.031) 0.001*** (0)
Constant 1.953*** (0.143) 1.926*** (0.15) 2.078*** (0.152)
Log likelihood -116285.28 -105056.62 -104380.74
Number of observations 151874 151874 151874
Wald Chi-square (54) 15264.04 26215.33 26778.95
Probability > Chi-square 0 0 0
Standard errors are given in parentheses. *, ** and *** indicate statistical significance at the 10%, 5% and 1% levels, respectively.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 49
SPECIAL ARTICLE

size, higher is the unemployment rate. Stated otherwise, indi- among educated people as against the uneducated is that the
viduals belonging to large household sizes (if some other former are not willing to accept lowly, informal jobs like own
members are earning) can afford to remain unemployed for a account work, helper in household enterprises, etc. At the
longer time searching for a better job. same time, sufficient regular salaried jobs are also not avail-
It is seen that educated females are less exposed to the job able to absorb all the educated labour force. Even as the highest
market than educated males. In a developing country like percentage of educated people across all age groups are
India, men are still considered the principal income earners of engaged in regular salaried jobs, the percentage of regular
households. However, earnings from women are generally salaried people is higher among the educated older age groups
treated as secondary income for the household. Most impor- compared to the youth.
tantly, females often take up household duties and take a Likewise, the coefficient of the variable “rural” is positive
break from jobs because of childbirth and childcare. Educated and statistically significant for uneducated unemployment,
married persons are noticeably more likely to be employed while it is insignificant for educated unemployment. This also
than unmarried persons. For married persons, most of the may be because the presence of relatively large number of un-
times, it is in fact mandatory to take over responsibility for educated people in rural areas enhances the competition to
the household. find a job. Further, an individual belonging to a state where
Apart from the aforementioned common variables, the neg- English language has been promoted from the first standard is
ative and significant coefficient for religion can mean that edu- negatively related with educated unemployment, whereas it is
cated Hindus are better exposed to finding jobs than other mi- positively related with uneducated unemployment. Perhaps
nority religious groups. Moreover, the sign of coefficients with for an educated individual having a soft skill like English lan-
respect to socially disadvantaged groups are same with our guage enhances the chance to find a job, which is not the case
expected signs in that coefficient for Scheduled Tribes and for uneducated individuals.
Scheduled Castes—positive and significant. The reason could However, the remaining variables such as formal and informal
be that the socially disadvantaged groups do not get enough vocational training, household size, gender, marital status,
exposure in the job market like the general castes and Other religion, social groups and regional factors have shown similar
Backward Classes. relationship in terms of sign and level of significance for edu-
Surprisingly, the coefficients for educated people registered cated unemployment and uneducated unemployment.
only in government employment exchanges or only in private
placement agencies or in both government employment ex-
changes and private placement agencies are found positive
and statistically significant. It is possible that since educated
people are better aware about employment exchanges, the
number of educated people registered in these exchanges is
higher than uneducated people. Alongside, the availability of
formal jobs for educated people is much lower than the number
of people registered in employment exchages.
Even unexpectedly, educated individuals belonging to
developed states have a higher probability of being unem-
ployed. This could be due to the fact that developed states
account for a large number of educated people compared to
developing and underdeveloped states because their social
sectors such as education and health are better developed,
and also because of in-migration of educated people, which
creates more supply of educated labour for better paying jobs
than the demand for such jobs. In contrast, as expected, the
negative and significant coefficients of the high- and medium-
industrialised states show that capital formation increases
the demand for educated workforce, which in turn reduces
the likelihood of unemployment.
A comparison of the determinants of educated unemploy-
ment with another alternative outcome, that is, uneducated
unemployment from Table 5, shows a clearer picture. Differ-
ences have been found which relate to the coefficients of a few
variables in terms of their sign or statistical significance, or
both. For instance, age is positively related with educated un-
employment, while it is negatively related with uneducated
unemployment. One of the reasons for high unemployment
50 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE
References MoWCD (2009): “Gendering Human Development Appnedix 3: Variable Description for Identifying
Biagi, F, and C Lucifora (2005): “Demographic Indices: Recasting the Gender Development the Determinants of Educated Unemployment
and Education Effects on Unemployment in Index and Gender Empowerment Measure for Variables Description
Europe: Economic Factors and Labour Market India,” Ministry of Women and Child Develop-
Individual characteristics
Institutions,” IZA Discussion Paper No 1806, ment, Government of India.
NSSO (2010): Employment–Unemployment Situa- 1) Vocational training D1 = 1, formal vocational
Bonn, Germany: Institute for the Study of
Labour, October. tion in India 2009–10, 66th Round, National training
Bloom, D, R Freeman and S Korenman (1987): “The Sample Survey Office, Government of India. = 0, otherwise
Labour Market Consequences of Generational — (2014): Employment–Unemployment Situation D2 = 1, informal
Crowing,” European Journal of Population, in India 2011–12, 68th Round, National Sample
Survey Office, Government of India. vocational
Vol 3, No 2, pp 131–76.
OECD (2013): Education at a Glance 2013: OECD training
Cairo, I and T Cajner (2014): “Human Capital and
Unemployment Dynamics: Why More Educated Indicators, Paris: OECD Publishing. = 0, otherwise
Workers Enjoy Greater Employment Stability,” O’Higgins, N (2001): Youth Unemployment and No training (omitted)
Finance and Economics Discussion Series, Employment Policy: A Global Perspective, Inter-
2) a) Age
Divisions of Research and Statistics and national Labour Office.
Monetary Affairs, Federal Reserve Board, Quintini, G (2011): “Over-qualified or Under-skilled: b) Age-square
Washington DC. A Review of Existing Literature,” OECD Social, 3) Gender D3 = 1, female
Cameron, A C and P K Trivedi (2005): Microecono- Employment and Migration Working Papers = 0, otherwise
metrics: Methods and Applications, New York: No 121, OECD Publishing.
Cambridge University Press. Rajeswari T, A S Ray and H Sahoo (2009): “Estima- 4) Marital status D4 = 1, married
Carnevale, A and B Cheah (2013): Hard Times: tion of Capital Formation at State Level,” Jour- = 0, otherwise
College Majors, Unemployment and Earnings, nal of Income and Wealth, Vol 31, No 1, pp 27–33. 5) Registered in D5 = 1, government
Georgetown Public Policy Institute, Washing- Sicherman, N (1987): Human Capital and Occupa- employment employment
ton DC. tional Mobility, Doctoral Thesis, Columbia
University, May. exchanges exchanges
Jepsen, C (2008): “Multinomial Probit Estimates of
College Completion at 2-year and 4-year Schools,” Stapleton, D and D Young (1988): “Educational = 0, otherwise
Economics Letters, Vol 98, No 2, pp 155–60. Attainment and Cohort Size,” Journal of Labor D6 = 1, private placement
Lawrence, J (2013): “Today’s College Graduates: Economics, Vol 6, No 3, pp 330–61. agencies
In Debt and Unable to Find a Job,” 28 May, Stiglitz, J E (1975): “The Theory of Screening, = 0, otherwise
https://obrag.org/2013/05/todays-college-grad- Education and the Distribution of Income,”
uates-in-debt-and-unable-to-find-a-job/#.VcCee_ American Economic Review, Vol 65, No 3, D7 = 1, both in govern-
Oqqko. pp 283–300. ment and private
Ludden, J (2012): “College Grads Struggle to Gain Train, K E (2003): Discrete Choice Methods with = 0, otherwise
Financial Footing,” National Public Radio, Simulation, New York: Cambridge University Not registered either in
10 May, https://www.npr.org/2012/05/10/ Press.
government or private
152354154/college-grads-struggle-to-gain-finan- Wolbers, M H (2000): “The Effects of Level of
cial-footing?sc=twandcc=share. Education on Mobility between Employment (omitted)
Magnussen, O (1979): “Further Aspects of the Educa- and Unemployment in the Netherlands,” Household characteristics
tion–Employment Relationship: Youth Unem- European Sociological Review, Vol 16, No 2, 6) Household size Number of members in a
ployment and Education,” European Journal of pp 185–200.
household
Education, Vol 14, No 3, pp 285–88. World Bank (2014): World Development Indicators:
Mincer, J (1991): “Education and Unemployment,” Unemployment, www.worldbank.org: http:// 7) Religion D8 = 1, Hindu
NBER Working Paper No 3838, National wdi.worldbank.org/table/2.5. = 0, otherwise
Bureau of Economic Research. Wright, R (1991): “Effects of Cohort Size on Earn- 8) Social group D9 = 1, ST and SC
Mirica, A (2014): “Higher Education—A Solution to ings: The Baby Boom Babies’ Financial Bust,”
= 0, otherwise
Unemployment? Case Study: Romania,” Journal of Political Economy, Vol 87, No 5,
Romanian Statistical Review, Vol 3, pp 63–75. pp s65–97. General and OBC (omitted)
Regional characteristics
9) Rural D10 = 1, rural
Appendix 1: Development Category of States/Union Territories by HDI Score, 2006 = 0, otherwise
Category States/Union Territories 10) MGNREGA D11 = 1, working in
Category–1 (0.701 and above) Chandigarh, Goa, Kerala, Delhi, Pondicherry, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, MGNREGA
Manipur = 0, otherwise
Category–2 (0.601 to 0.700) Nagaland, Daman and Diu, Lakshadweep, Maharashtra, Mizoram, 11) Level of D12 = 1, developed states
Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Sikkim, development = 0, otherwise
Tripura, Uttarakhand, Arunachal Pradesh, Haryana, West Bengal, Gujarat, of the states D13 = 1, developing states
Meghalaya, Karnataka = 0, otherwise
Category–3 (below 0.600) Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, Andhra Pradesh, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh, Underdeveloped states
Rajasthan, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar (omitted)
Source: MoWCD (2009).
12) Industrialisation D14 = 1, high
of the states industrialised
Appendix 2: Industrial Category of States/Union Territories in India for 2006 Based on states
per Capita Private Capital Formation
= 0, otherwise
Category States/Union Territories
D15 = 1, medium
High industrial states Chandigarh, Dadra and Nagar, Daman and industrialised
(Above `12,000) Diu, Goa, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Maharashtra,
states
Pondicherry, Tamil Nadu, Uttarakhand
= 0, otherwise
Medium industrial states Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Andhra Pradesh, Less industrial states
( `5,000 to `12,000) Chhattisgarh, Delhi, Lakshadweep, Punjab, Sikkim, Karnataka, Manipur,
(omitted)
Odisha, Rajasthan
13) Promotion of D16 = 1, belongs to a state
Low industrial states Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Jammu and Kashmir, English language where more than 50%
(below `5,000) Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Meghalaya, Mizoram,
in the states individuals study English
Nagaland, Tripura, West Bengal
from first standard
Source: Author’s estimation based on private capital formation data from Rajeswari et al (2009) and population projection
figures for 2006 from the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Government of India. = 0, otherwise

Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 51
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Colonial Construction of a Frontier
Debating the Inner Line Regulation in Sibsagar–Naga Hills
Debojyoti Das
An examination of the emergence, shifts and
perceptions surrounding the Inner Line Regulation in the
North East Frontier reveals that the Inner Line seems to
be more of a civilisational frontier than a territorial one.
Regulation of the Inner Line has played an important
role in postcolonial political construction of the
highland–lowland duality and in the creation of a
contested social space in the Sibsagar–Naga Hills.
The author would like to thank the anonymous reviewer for their
valuable comments and suggestions; the Felix Scholarship for
supporting ethnographic and archival field research in Nagaland; and
the Christopher Von Furer-Haimendorf Fieldwork Grant, the Royal
Anthropological Institute’s Emslie Horniman Grant, and the University
of London’s Central Research Fund for supporting 14 months of
fieldwork among the Yimchunger Nagas. The author is also grateful to
Johan Pottier, Willa Zhen, and Brian Morris for their valuable advice,
guidance, and mentorship during the writing of this paper.
Debojyoti Das (ukdebodas@yahoo.com) is at the University of Sussex.
52
T
his paper critically engages with the text (colonial
records and correspondences) and the social context
that led to the adoption of the Bengal Eastern Frontier
Regulation, 1873, commonly known today as Inner Line Regu-
lation, and further draws attention to its subsequent imple-
mentation in the Naga Hills as what is popularly known as the
Sibsagar Inner Line, which demarcated the administered and
unadministered territories of British India in Sibsagar district
(Seebsaugor, as per colonial records), bordering the Naga Hills
of the then colonial Assam. The central argument of my paper
revolves around the idea that the Inner Line was a political
rather than protective tool introduced by the colonial govern-
ment in the North East India. Contemporary explanations of
the Inner Line in social science, historical, and official litera-
ture on the North East have a singular understanding of this
strategic and complex legislation that altered once and for all
the relation of administration over hill tracts with control over
population mobility.
The Inner Line, as I will argue, was not just an administra-
tive boundary between administered British subjects and
those that were unadministered under the common codes of
British India jurisprudence; it was also instrumental in the
inclusion of territories that were strategic for revenue genera-
tion within the general administration of British India. It also
acted as an instrument of panoptic control over population
mobility between the Assam plains and the Naga Hills. Fur-
ther, the Inner Line, as I will show, was never static and per-
manent in the Sibsagar frontier as it constantly oscillated to
include and exclude territories that were central to tea planta-
tions and the creation of forest reserves and included tracts
that had been identified in surveys as potential sites of rich
mineral deposits, primarily coal.
Nowhere in the colonial records can we see references to the
Naga1 people’s customary rights over the land being main-
tained by the legislation. Colonial correspondences refer to
boundary disputes, claims for wasteland creation, contest over
reserving forest, and using the Inner Line to extend control
over unclaimed territories of the Nagas. The Inner Line was
used conveniently to deny the Nagas the right over their
unused (fallow) territories: land used for jhum (slash and
burn) agriculture. The populist discourse of the Inner Line,
being a type of benevolent protectionist paternalism of the
colonial government constituted to safeguard the interest of
the hill people in the Naga Hills, broadly undermined the
administrative and strategic significance of the Inner Line. In
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

fact, looking at the nature of its adoption and subsequent mod-
ification, we see that it denied the native Nagas their claim
over territories bordering Sibsagar district. Further, the legis-
lation was strategically used to politically control the hill
tribes while protecting the interests of villages and popula-
tions in the Assam plains and tea garden estate that were
British subjects.2
This historiography is aimed at engaging with the text
and context of colonial policymaking in the frontier that was
part of the excluded and partially excluded areas of Bengal’s
East India frontier. Postcolonial academic and administrative
as well as civil society literature gives a very ambivalent
picture of the regulation that has been in place for more than a
hundred years defining the territorial space of native commu-
nities and outsiders (people entering from the plains) in the
Naga Hills. The ambivalence of postcolonial writings lies in
their underexplored historiography and the claims made based
on secondary sources and on personal opinions of colonial
writers. Even anthropological writings do not skip populist
discourses that appear to be inspired by colonial ethnography
that championed “protectionism of tribal culture” rather than
systematic critical enquiry of existing writings and opinions.
In fact, there is no historiography that directly deals with the
sociopolitical and economic implications and realpolitik of
the Inner Line Regulation and how it aided colonial empire
building and expansion of state spaces in the North Eastern
Frontier of British India.
This paper makes a small beginning in this direction, looking
at colonial policymaking and how the Inner Line Regulation
acted as a governmentality tactic of the colonial local govern-
ment, interpreted uncritically by postcolonial academic and
non-academic spokespersons. While discussing the Inner Line
Regulation in the Naga Hills and the policies that guided its
adoption and subsequent modification, one has to critically
engage with the colonial text focusing on three vital points.
First, to investigate the correspondences between the different
departments involved in the implementation and modification
of the Inner Line. Second, to look at the differences in opinion
shared through official queries and responses between local
military, administrative, forest, political, and foreign department
officials. Third, to analyse the very nature of the regulation
and the history of how it came into existence.
The idea of the Inner Line emerged in the North East Frontier
out of the constraints upon the British Indian government
to maintain its territorial boundaries. As one colonial official
observed, the limits of the district were at first thrown very far
forward, too far to exercise jurisdiction all the way up to the
hills; it therefore became necessary to draw a line up to which
the colonial administration intended to work. This was the
“Inner Line.”3 The limit of the district as originally proposed
became the outer line, and in the intermediate tract it was
only proposed to use personal influence. Beyond this Inner
Line, the tracts were left unadministered. The outer line was
purposely left indefinite so that the Inner Line could be adv-
anced as and when necessary. Arthur Hobhouse, who coined
the term “Inner Line” observed, “I would call the line by some
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7
SPECIAL ARTICLE
neutral term, say the ‘Inner Line,’ and leave its use to be
explained by the detailed regulation.”4
Genesis of the Inner Line
One of the earliest works on the North East Frontier in the
post-independence period comes through a volume of Problem
of Hill Tribes of North East Frontier, 1873–1962 by H K Barpujari
(1981). Barpujari’s seminal history-writing on Assam and
Anglo–Assamese relations gives the reader a clear sense of the
self-patronising historical narrative that advocated the Ahom
ruler’s central role in the Brahmaputra Valley. Barpujari recon-
structed the history of the Ahom rulers based on the reading of
burunjis (chronicles written during the Ahom rule) and an
extensive survey of colonial records that contain Anglo–
Assamese relations. His historiography privileged the Ahom
kingdom as central to the regional polity of the North East
Frontier. He referred to the relations that the Ahoms main-
tained with the Naga chiefs: the Nagas maintained territorial
boundaries with the Assamese, locally known as khats. This
boundary was natural and flexible. The Ahom kings allowed
the Nagas and other hill chiefs to collect posa tax from the
foothills in order to maintain friendly relations with tribal
chiefs and village heads who acted as vassal tributary states.
With the defeat of the Ahom rule and the extension of colo-
nial administration over the Brahmaputra plains after the
Treaty of Yandabu, the British stepped into the shoes of the
Ahom rulers (Chatterjee 1952; Mackenzie 2012). Soon, the East
India Company—and later the British Crown—discovered
prospects for tea plantation in Assam. In the mid-1860s, tea
plantations started on a successful scale in the Brahmaputra
Valley, and the tea plantation workers (indentured coolies)
subsequently came into conflict with the tribes of the Naga
Hills in Sibsagar district.
The Naga raids on the tea garden plains, tea plantation
coolies, and British-protected villages intensified as the Assam
Tea Company officials and British entrepreneurs had come
into contract with local Naga chiefs and extended their planta-
tion all over Sibsagar district, going beyond Loadighur (which
was recognised as the natural territorial boundary of the
Ahoms with the Naga chiefs). These unannounced incursions
into Naga territory made the Naga tribes living in Mokokchung,
Mariani, and Amguri angst-ridden. The repeated clashes and loss
of lives created panic and insecurity among the tea planters
and the working coolies in the tea gardens.5 Colonial capital-
ists (tea planters) who had formed contracts with local Naga
chiefs and who now realised their trust was breached called
for protection. The colonial government, on the other hand,
found it difficult to protect the interests of the unadministered
Nagas and colonial subjects under the existing rules of ar-
rangement and respect for territories. The British tea planters
as well as the native chiefs had come into arrangements and
contracts for land grants that completely bypassed the
administrative consent of the colonial government and com-
plicated Naga chiefs’ claims over forest territories (Blake 1989).
The other concern that necessitated a fast-track demarca-
tion of an administrative line with the Naga Hills was the
53
SPECIAL ARTICLE
extraction of rubber from these unadministered tracts. In a
series of correspondences between the colonial local govern-
ment of the North East Frontier and the Government of Bengal
regarding a case dealing with an appeal by a British entrepre-
neur to extract rubber from the Naga Hills and Singpho coun-
try, it comes out clearly that the colonial government was tac-
tical and shrewd in rejecting native rights over contracts with
Europeans that were privately negotiated without the sanction
of the colonial government.6 While responding to a clarifica-
tion made for the approval of a grant for rubber extraction, the
colonial office of the deputy commissioner of Sibsagar made
some insightful observations in its correspondence. The deputy
commissioner wrote that the land was obtained by a British
investor and part of a rubber syndicate, Mark Vangulin, from
the Naga chiefs and had no approval from the colonial local
government. In response to a further query by the chief com-
missioner on the fate of Vangulin’s residence in the area, the
deputy commissioner observed:
He does not recommend adopting the latter course, for it will only
make the Nagas still more [aware] as to what belongs to them and
what does not; moreover, it may lead to other people taking up land
south of the (Loadighur) and eventually cause complications, perhaps
with the tribes. Certainly, if we allow settlers to take up land south
of the [Loadighur], we tacitly admit the land does not belong to us.
(British Indian Government)7
Upon a further correspondence between the governor
general of Bengal and the deputy commissioner of Sibsagar, it
was upheld that
Although the British Government elects to entirely abstain from any
interference with such cultivation as the Nagas may carry on with-
in British jurisdiction, but beyond our regular settled mouzahas (an
Assamese term meaning tax-paying land under a mauzadar), it nev-
ertheless does not recognise the right of the Nagas to lease or alienate
those lands in favour of anybody, whether European or native, and
they must strictly abstain from doing anything of the kind.8
These contingencies alarmed colonial administrators to
espouse an administrative boundary that would delimit Brit-
ish administered territories from the unadministered tracts,
and the boundary would act as an instrument to mitigate the
complexities caused by native Nagas and European settlers
who had come into agreements for leases and grants of land
without the consent of colonial local government. Similarly,
the tea gardens in Assam that now encroached on the Naga
territories on the Sibsagar, Lakhimpur, and Cacher frontiers
necessitated the drawing of a boundary line (Saikia 2011).
However, if we study the colonial records, the Inner Line mate-
rialised as an administrative measure to contain raids by the
hill tribes—Nagas, Lushais, Apatanis, and Bhutias—of the
North East Frontier of Assam.
The Inner Line played a very important role in defining the
revenue limits of the colonial governments. A thorough bound-
ary and revenue survey preceded the adoption of the Inner
Line, and wherever it was impossible to adjudicate the bound-
ary line because of hostile tribes’ repeated claims to unadmini-
stered territories, a chaotic uncertainty prevailed that led to
numerous interchanges of the Inner Line along with the
54
question of settling boundaries between the adjoining districts
of Assam (Kar 2009).
Official Debates and Modification
Debates on the implementation, extension, and inclusion of
territories beyond the Inner Line limit in Sibsagar district
leads one to gather valuable insights on how the regulation
was used as an instrument to access the unclaimed lands of
the Nagas. In one of the first correspondences relating to the
implementation of the Inner Line in Sibsagar district, H J Peet,
Officiating Secretary of the Chief Commissioner of Assam, in
his letter to T H Thornton, Secretary to the Government of
India, writes that the Inner Line should follow the survey limits,
meaning the revenue survey limits of Sibsagar district.9 How-
ever, in a subsequent correspondence dated 11 May 1876, he
wrote that the Inner Line should be included within British
jurisdiction in Sibsagar district. This observation was made in
lieu of the fact that T H Thornton observed that there were few
existing grants, as described by the deputy commissioner;
only four to five tea gardens that mostly belonged to the Assam
Tea Company were situated outside the revenue limit.10 In
response to this observation on 29 May 1876, S O B Ridsdale,
secretary to the chief commissioner of Assam, observed that
the query on tea gardens existing beyond the Inner Line was
misconstrued. Ridsdale writes that even if some planters had
made arrangements for the collection of seeds from wild tea
plants located beyond the Inner Line, such undefined tracts
could not be termed tea gardens.11 With this clarification, the
Sibsagar Inner Line was drawn (on the Assam–Nagaland border
where Sibsagar district bordered on Naga Hills district) by a
notification dated 21 June 1876.
The line as the notification reads shall follow the southern revenue
survey boundary of the district from its eastern limit, namely, a
point on the Disang River, to its western limit, namely, a point on the
Doyang River.
Under the provision of the section, the Governor General in Council
was further pleased to prohibit all British subjects from going beyond
the Inner Line hereby notified without a pass under the hand and seal
of the Deputy Commissioner.12
In less than a decade of the adoption of the Sibsagar Inner
Line with the Naga Hills, there was a need for revision and
extension of the Inner Line to the natural boundary the foot-
hills of the Naga Hills. In a series of correspondences between
the chief commissioner of Assam and his local political coun-
terpart, the deputy commissioner of Sibsagar district, along
with the secretary of the foreign department of the Govern-
ment of India, it was proposed to alter the existing Inner Line
of Sibsagar district. The proposed alteration read as follows:
Mr Elliot wishes to put forward the Inner Line, that boundary part of
the Sibsagar district on the south, where it abuts upon the territory
under the nominal occupation of the Naga tribes, up to the very foot
of the hills which form the natural boundary between the two tracts
of country. The sketch map shows exactly the piece of land that the
change would include. The whole area is something inconsiderable,
but it contains four small patches of rent-paying land and two pieces of
valuable forestland that it is a matter of importance for reserve [forest
reserve]. I have marked off roughly in red chalk on the large map of
North Assam beneath the tract that corresponds with that shown in
Mr Elliot’s sketch map.13
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

The alternation of the boundary in the existing Inner Line
was prompted by the need for the creation of forest reserve
and to include those tracts that had been opened for planta-
tion and exploitation of the grants which had been made by
the deputy commissioner himself under his special jurisdic-
tion, where no administrative inconvenience seemed likely to
result. As an outcome, the deputy commissioner approved two
grants: one to a certain A Buckingham in the neighbourhood
of the Amguri Garden, on the Jhanzi river, and the other to a
Lawrie, Manager of the Jhanzi Tea Association. Simultane-
ously, the attention of A C Campbell, the deputy commissioner,
was called upon these changes. His correspondences with
D’Arcy, the chief conservator of forests, resulted in certain
valuable questions being asked, which called for reserving
certain forests on the Jhanzi and Dosoi rivers, which con-
tained valuable timber in the neighbourhood of Jorhat.14
Local Concerns Ignored
These correspondences clearly testify to how colonial administra-
tors, forest officials, British tea planters, and mining syndicates
lobbied for permission to work these unadministered tracts that
necessitated the modification of the Inner Line in their favour.
The local concerns of the Nagas were always brushed aside in
such decisions. The deputy commissioner, in his recommenda-
tion, had called for the abolition of the Inner Line; that was unac-
ceptable to the chief commissioner, who had proposed an exten-
sion of the Inner Line further towards the Naga Hills. The com-
missioner of Assam Valley district, on the other hand, proposed
the land beyond the Inner Line to be declared as “Frontier Tract”
without any definition of its furthermost boundary.15 This meas-
ure, he felt, would also put the Assam Company’s mining opera-
tion in the neighbourhood of the Dikhu river under the special
administration of the deputy commissioner. He observed,
If the tract is … declared a frontier tract, there will be no difficulty
about setting aside any suitable part thereof as a forest reserve, even
without declaring the Forest Act to be in force in the tract.16
However, the decision to open up the inner frontier and sug-
gestions to bring the territory beyond the Inner Line under
Regulation 2 of 1880 were found to be negatively placed.
Therefore, the chief commissioner of Assam was of the opin-
ion that the Inner Line should be modified from its original
adoption in 1873.17 One of the points that came out very clearly
in these correspondences, and that led to the modification in
the Inner Line of 1876, was the neglect of native Nagas’ claims
to the forest that was now brought under general administra-
tion of the British government. A C Campbell, in his letter
dated 16 November 1880, addressed to the commissioner of the
Assam Valley, suggested that if his recommendation to extend
the Inner Line beyond its present jurisdiction was accepted, he
could guarantee that no complication would emerge with the
native Naga tribes while conducting the forest survey. He fur-
ther noted, “Some of the Naga tribes may raise groundless
objection to a reserve being made, but I do not think I shall
have any difficulty in dealing with them, should they arise.”18
While accepting the modification to the Sibsagar Inner
Line in 1882, J W Ridgeway, officiating undersecretary to the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Government of India, in his letter to the chief commissioner of
Assam noted that while accepting the modification it was also
necessary to proceed very cautiously in regard to the reservation
of any forest tracts situated outside the existing line and that
every care should be taken not to arouse groundless apprehension
on the part of the Naga tribes of any encroachment upon what
they deemed to be their rights.19
In 1884, tensions surfaced as the forest officials who had
entered the Jhanzi Reserve forest now brought under the
Inner Line met with resistance from Naga villagers.20 It was
later realised that the notification issued on 16 October 1884 to
include six Naga villages within the general administration of
the Government of India could never be communicated to the
Naga inhabitants as the proclamation was served only to the
mauzadars in the plains (of Assam). Additionally, no steps were
taken by the district officials to give intimation to the Nagas or
to invite a statement of their claims (note 20). The need for
forwarding the Inner Line to five villages in Lakhimpur dis-
trict was determined by the mining operations of the Assam
Railway Trading Company in the Naga-inhabited forestland
that lay beyond the Inner Line.21 In the following months, as
events unfolded in favour of the colonial local government
towards Naga claims for their native forest, the Jhanzi Reserve
forest was declared a district forest.22 However, the Inner Line
was not revoked; native Naga village claims towards the use of
forest resources were rereleased.
In 1899, a fresh notification was made towards amending
and extending the existing Sibsagar Inner Line boundary of
1882. The proposal was to include tracts of the Mokokchung
subdivision that lay in the plains and were greatly demanded
by tea planters. In a letter addressed to the secretary to the
Government of India dated 18 January 1899, the chief commis-
sioner of Assam writes:
That the existing Inner Line that was notified on 24 February 1882
needs modification in lieu of the fact that this law, as at present accepted,
leaves out of the district, for some reason which is now not very appar-
ent, a considerable tract of low country at the foot of the hills to the
south and extends (as may be seen from the tracing enclosed) right
up to the confines of some of the best known and most prosperous tea
gardens in the district. The line also borders on the alignment of the
Assam–Bengal Railway. The plain land in question, which at present
forms part of the Mokokchung subdivision of the Naga Hills district,
is well suited for tea and other cultivation, and various application for
it has been received from time to time. The greater part of the land is
uninhabited, and there can be no objection to retaining it as a portion
of the Mokokchung subdivision. The Chief Commissioner therefore
proposes to transfer it to the Sibsagar district. There are no political
objections to this proposal, and the transfer would be in the interest of
the tea industry as well as of the administration.23
However, the notification, which seemed simple and persua-
sive, favouring colonial frontier policy at the outset, was con-
strained by legal questions that became inevitable with the
inclusion of Mokokchung subdivision within Sibsagar district.
The modification was constrained by the administrative regu-
lations that were never applicable in these frontier tracts.
Mokokchung subdivision was never part of the general
administration of Sibsagar district. Thus, the extension of judi-
cial enactments of the Calcutta High Court could not be
55
SPECIAL ARTICLE
extended. Moreover, frontier affairs were looked upon by the
foreign department that now called for the intervention of the
home department.24
In response to these legal contingencies, some amendments
were made and compromises struck to safeguard the interests
of planters and British capitalists who proposed to invest in
these forested plain tracts of Naga Hills district. While accept-
ing the draft resolution for the modification of the Sibsagar
Inner Line, the proposal was “administratively accepted,”
meaning that “civil, criminal, and revenue jurisdiction” were
substituted by “administrative, including revenue purposes.”25
In a draft correspondence between the chief commissioner of
Assam and the undersecretary to the Government of India
dated 28 July 1899, six notifications were forwarded to bring
the portion of Naga Hills district under the ordinary law in
force in Sibsagar district. The legal complications were over-
come and the tracts were integrated within the general admi-
nistration of Sibsagar district. It was also made expedient by
the deputy commissioner in his correspondence.
That the tract transferred is believed to be without any population at
present, and the procedure proposed appears to involve an amount
of trouble incommensurate with the importance of the object under
consideration; but when the transfer is effected, it may be expected
that the cultivation and population will gradually extend to these
tracts, and if the simple notification originally proposed is deemed to
be insufficient for changing the law in force, the Chief Commissioner
does not think that the object can be attained by any less elaborate
means.26
Naga Chiefs and Control over Forests
Nonetheless, in the coming years, these modifications were
further complicated by rights to control over forests that were
claimed by the Nagas in these tracts. In 1910, the Sibsagar Inner
Line was once again modified to include certain coal-bearing
tracts that lay in unadministered territories. The very natures
of these systematic modifications were arbitrary and forcefully
pursued. The Naga chiefs rarely consented, by any lure of com-
pensation, to sacrifice their ancestral rights over these tracts of
land. This is well reflected in the correspondence of H L Thomas
with the chief commissioner of Assam dated 16 December
1909. He writes that the Naga chiefs declined all compensa-
tion offers citing that, “it was like selling their ancestors and
that to lose part of their land would bring them to bad repute
among the neighbouring tribesmen.”27
In response to the unyielding stand of the Naga chiefs not to
part with their claims to ancestral land, the colonial govern-
ment decided to integrate these unadministered territories of
Naga Hills in Sibsagar district before deciding upon the ques-
tion of compensation. P R T Gurdon, while addressing B C Allen
on this issue, writes that the decision to pay compensation
should be taken after the government acquired these tracts.
This, he believed, seemed to be the more reasonable as well as
dignified decision that could have been taken in this case.28
By 1907, the boundary of the Inner Line came to be alterna-
tively used as the district boundary. This was unique to the
Sibsagar Inner Line as, initially, the line was drawn outside the
district limits in 1876. In the subsequent years, the Inner Line
56
came to be associated with the district boundary.29 The politi-
cal intent of the Inner Line Regulation was thus achieved as the
Inner Line became synonymous with the administrative
boundary of Sibsagar district. The Inner Line was instrumental
in bringing areas of frontier tract under the revenue limits and
general administration of the colonial government. However,
these actions also complicated British relations with the Nagas
and led to reorganisation of boundary limits between Sibsagar
and Naga Hills districts. The proposal for the modification of
the Inner Line reappeared in 1929, when there was a need to
transfer certain areas from Sibsagar district to Naga Hills district.
The Inner Line modification now called for a reverse osmosis
of the ongoing plan of bringing land beyond the Inner Line
into the regular rule of the district administration. The case in
question was an unadministered territory 12 miles wide that lay
entirely separated from the main district, which ordinarily could
only be approached by a detour through Sibsagar district.
The Sibsagar Inner Line had moved far beyond the Loadi-
ghur boundary by 1910. When disputes arose on the independ-
ent Naga claims for rights to cultivation in the Tanglam Ridge
by Zusa (also appears as Rusa in colonial correspondence), a
village in the unadministered territories, as promised to them
in 1917 by the colonial local government, an arrangement was
made with the independent Nagas that the Tanglam Ridge
should remain with them for jhumming (shifting cultivation).
However, this arrangement changed for good when the Dilli
reserve was constituted.30 When the arrangement was brought
to light, a fresh notification was published and the area was
excluded from the reserve.31 The rights of the independent
Naga to jhum areas were once again recognised.
Conversely, the Assam government had given orders for
wasteland grants in this area. This was done because Robert
Handerson, a well-known British investor, wanted a grant in
this area.32 The grant was someway dropped, and the constitu-
ent forest was turned into a reserve forest. However, when the
district boundary was altered to include part of the transfrontier
area, an explicit promise was given to Zusa that the Tanglam
Ridge would be definitely reserved for the local Nagas for cul-
tivation. It was only with this understanding that Zusa agreed
to part with its rights and accept the share of the cash which
was paid to the villagers on the inside range for the loss of
their exclusive dominion over the land right up to Loadighur
(note 20). This promise was never kept.
In 1907, owing to the discovery of a coal-bearing tract just
across the boundary, the demand to shift the Inner Line boun-
dary resurfaced, and with it, the demand for the boundary of
Sibsagar district to include this area. Finally, with the sanction
of the government, the Inner Line was fixed in its present posi-
tion by Notification 67 P, dated 1 February 1910. When the
boundary was shifted, the question of compensating the inde-
pendent Nagas for any losses they might sustain through the
inception of coal mining in the area was taken up, but the mat-
ter was dropped as it was decided that there was no immediate
likelihood of the coal being quarried. In 1918, the question was
taken up again in connection with a proposal to establish a tea
garden in the area. A full enquiry was made by Barnes, a forest
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

service official, on the rights of the Nagas. The terms agreed
to with the head of Zusa were that, in return for a lump sum
payment of `300, the village was to abandon all claims to land
on the north of the Tanglam Ridge, and while they were per-
mitted to cultivate on both sides of the range down to the
plains, it was agreed that, in the event of any land on the range
being required for coal mines, the necessary area would be
given without asking for further compensation.33
It was further decided that all the lands included in Sibsagar
district would not be at the disposal of the government with
the exception that Zusa villagers would have right to jhum on
the Tanglam Ridge, though not in the plains north of it. The
claim on the part of Zusa villagers to the land between the foot
of the Tanglam Ridge and Loadighur, the unadministered
territory of 12 miles, was abrogated, and the rights to its further
use were transferred to the revenue authorities of Sibsagar district
as the local officials believed that the Zusa villagers had been
compensated for the use of these lands for mining purposes.
By modifying the Inner Line or Sibsagar boundary deep to
the foothills of Naga Hills district, the colonial government ef-
fectively brought Naga territories into the administrative juris-
diction of Sibsagar district. Subsequently, coal-bearing tracts
were acquired through partial grants of compensation to Naga
chiefs who lay claim to these territories. The compensation
terminated the rights of the Naga chiefs over these unadminis-
tered territories. Simultaneously, wasteland grants were
entertained by the deputy commissioner for tea plantation and
converted these tracts into revenue lands, transferring them to
the jurisdiction of the revenue department. The confusion
over settling the district boundary of Naga Hills with Sibsagar
was suggested to be resolved by a joint tour of the deputy com-
missioners of Naga Hills and Sibsagar, or alternatively, the
subdivisional officers of Mokokchung and Sibsagar.34 As one
colonial official observed,
It seems impracticable now to separate from the Sibsagar district the
area between the Loadighur and the present boundary or even the
area between the Tanglam Ridge and the present boundary. It can-
not be included in the Naga Hills district as it is separated from that
district by intervening unadministered territory. Nor is it desirable to
throw the area back into the unadministered territory.35
Subsequently, the commissioner of Assam Valley Division
suggested that orders should be issued as he proposed prohib-
iting settlement of the Tanglam Ridge or the hills to the south
of it without a reference to the government. In the Inner Line
modification of 1929, the Tanglam Ridge was not shown as part
of Naga Hills district. What comes out very clearly in these of-
ficial correspondences and clarifications made by the different
departments of the colonial office is a strict panoptic control of
the state over territories that lay on the frontier of the British
Empire. The foreign, revenue, and political department corre-
spondences with the district and divisional offices clearly
bring out the strategic and administrative nature of the Inner
Line that was used simultaneously as the Sibsagar boundary.36
The very nature of the Inner Line Regulation in letter and
spirit was to restrict the free flow of people from the adminis-
tered revenue settlements of the Assam Valley to the scheduled
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7
SPECIAL ARTICLE
tracts, later adopted as the excluded areas. If we compare the
Sibsagar Inner Line with the Cacher Inner Line, which was
later abolished in favour of the Lushai Inner Line in 1930, it
becomes very clear that besides administrative purposes, the
Inner Line was also used as a political tool to monitor and
check the “unauthorised” mobility of population into the Lushai
Hills. The appeal for redrawing the Inner Line as the Lushai
Hills Inner Line lay in the contest of authority that seemed
misplaced, as the power to issue passes for entry into the
Lushai Hills was vested with the deputy commissioner of
Cacher Hill district instead of with that of Lushai Hills. This
political constraint ultimately led to the abolition of the Cacher
Inner Line and the adoption of the Lushai Inner Line in 1930
with authority to issue passes transferred to the deputy com-
missioner of Lushai Hills.37 The uniqueness of the Cacher Inner
Line lay in the fact that the line divided the two districts Cacher
Hill and Lushai Hills whereas the general purpose of the Inner
Line in the rest of Assam frontier had been to divide adminis-
tered territories of British India from the unadministered.38
The Inner Line Regulation was a political tool that was ins-
trumental in the administration and boundary delimitation
between British administered territories and the land that lay
beyond the general rule of administration. The colonial frontier
officials suitably applied the act and modified the Sibsagar Inner
Line in favour of British capitalist interest for mining leases,
tea plantation, and the creation of wastelands as well as forest
reserves that subsequently were transformed into state forest
and revenue land. In the postcolonial literature, the nature,
motive, and purpose of the Inner Line Regulation has been
undermined. Instead, the context of the notification of 1873 is
repeatedly invoked in all writings that obscure the very nature
of its implementation in the Sibsagar–Naga Hills frontier.
Postcolonial Representation
In the postcolonial official literature and correspondences, we
see the same notion deeply ingrained in policy circles. In notes
on the border dispute between Assam and Nagaland in 1967,
D K Zeliang, the officiating Indian Forest Service officer in
Kohima, observes that the Inner Line Regulation was enforced
by the British with the sole purpose of protecting the Nagas
from exploitation by outside invaders. He goes on to say that
the ongoing boundary dispute between the two states should
not have been discussed under “Boundary Disputes of the Gov-
ernment of India.”39 Rather, the whole matter was a controver-
sial point centred around the illegal felling of timber on the
sides of the Nagaland state boundary. Zeliang also writes that
such action had led to the loss of national property. These forest
tracts that were now protected by state laws were once un-
claimed forests of the indigenous inhabitants, the Nagas, much
before the colonial invasion. The colonial frontier policy and
the modification of the Inner Line facilitated the creation of
reserves carved out of contiguous forestland in the Sibsagar–
Naga Hills boundary. In the postcolonial period, they had
become national assets and state spaces that then came under
threat from poachers, smugglers, timber mafia, and woodcutters.
By citing the historical context of the relationship between
57
SPECIAL ARTICLE
the Naga chiefs and the Ahom kingdom, Zeliang dispels the
boundary dispute now complicated by illegal logging of valua-
ble timber from the reserve forest. The official discourse of the
forest department romanticises the Inner Line Regulation as a
benevolent act while dispelling the nature of its implementa-
tion and periodic modification during the colonial period that
gave birth to the contemporary boundary disputes between
Nagaland and Assam.
Similar evidences can be found elsewhere in the colonial
records. These observations by postcolonial forest, revenue, and
district officials who were also acting as administrator anthro-
pologists, as agents of the British Empire, must surely have influ-
enced post-independence academic and administrative writings
that bring to light the shallow understanding of the Inner Line
Regulation. Relatedly, a couple of individual cases leading to
the violation of Inner Line Regulation throw fresh insight into
the strategic use of the regulation right after independence.
Strategic Use
The case in question is that of Trilokinath Parwar. In 1954, Par-
war, member of the Communist Party, was prosecuted and
sent to Noagong Jail after being fined `30 for entering the
Naga Hills without a pass. While investigating the case, it was
found that Parwar had been found freely mixing with reac-
tionary elements in the Naga Hills. His second plea to enter the
Naga Hills was therefore looked upon with suspicion, and it
was feared that he would go underground with the help of
Naga National Council activists. It was in the best interests of
the Indian government to prohibit him from undertaking such
a “misadventure.” However, Parwar did manage to enter the
Naga Hills without a pass, and for this he was arrested.
One of the early postcolonial official documents refers to the
Inner Line Regulation of 1873 as a legislation “which kept it
[the hill tribes] isolated by banning the entrance of outsiders,
the object being neither the repression nor the artificial preser-
vation of primitive culture, but was designed to protect the hill
man from exploitation” (Bareh 1970: 51). Two interesting ref-
erence books, The Naga Path by Ursula Graham Bowers and
Tribal Awakening: A Group Study edited by M M Thomas and
R W Taylor, cited by the general editor of the Gazetteer of
India, Kohima District (Bareh 1970) supported this observa-
tion. A study of these texts reveals that the observation on the
Inner Line was drawn based on personal opinion of the writ-
ers and missionaries as reflected in their texts, rather than
from primary sources of official correspondences that osten-
tatiously explain the need for implementing the Inner Line in
the North East Frontier. In fact, John Thomas, in his book
Evangelising the Nation: Religion and the Formation of Naga
Political Identity (2016), observes that the missionary publica-
tion Tribal Awakening was not broad in scope. It retained the
word “tribe” defining the indigenous groups such as Nagas
who had by the 1980s demanded for nationality status. The
Christian theologians were still following the old ideas of
modernity and improvement and projected the tribal world of
the Nagas as premodern. In this context, the report prepared
by church leaders and Baptist missionaries saw the Inner Line
58
Regulation as a benevolent policy to “protect” tribal identity
in the North East.
Similarly, it is interesting to observe that Hamlet Bareh, a
prominent Khasi scholar, could gloss over the colonial corre-
spondences relating to the Inner Line Regulation given the fact
that he had claimed in the preface to the Gazetteer of India,
Kohima District (Bareh 1970) the intensive use of archival
sources to support his writing. This was perhaps a Himalayan
miscalculation. As Bareh himself highlighted, earlier ethno-
logical and administrative works had much bearing on the cul-
tural aspects of the Naga world but had little historical pro-
spective. He wrote, “Historically reconstructed work, to be au-
thentic, would have to be, therefore, based upon the records
available with the record room and archives” (Bareh 1970: vii).
However, to the utter disappointment of his readers, Bareh
failed to utilise the records in explaining the Inner Line Regu-
lation, like his colonial counterpart B C Allen whose gazette on
the Naga Hills had similar limitations.
For this, Bareh cannot be solely blamed. In its place, we have
to examine the legacy of colonial ethnography that played an
ideological role in informing policymaking for the Excluded
Areas of the Naga Hills frontier. Colonial administrator anthro-
pologists and political officers deputed in the hills were
influential in promoting a policy of “preservation” of tribal culture.
This school of thought emerged as a vocal minority within the
British Commonwealth anthropological tradition, promoting the
ideas of scientific and humanitarian preservation of tribal culture
and customs.40 In the Assam administration, the “idealist preser-
vationist” school triumphed over the “pragmatist realist” one,
with the colonial administration vouching for it. The intention
of the administration was to extend the remit of administrative
control without disrupting native culture. This policy was adopt-
ed with the objective of lowering the expense of administra-
tion in the hill district, where strategic political control swayed
consensus over revenue concerns. The policy of non-interfer-
ence with Naga culture helped to create the colonial adminis-
tration’s “benevolent humanist” image of the colonial govern-
ment and maintain the isolation of the tribes from “exploitation
by outsiders” who came from the plains by adopting the legis-
lative smokescreen that the Inner Line controlled migration
and mixing of the plains natives with the hill tribes.
The “scientific preservationist” Indian Civil Service officials
and deputy commissioners of the Naga Hills, J H Hutton and
J P Mills, who authored the Naga monographs such as The An-
gami Nagas (1921), The Sema Nagas (1921), and The Lotha Nagas
(1922), among others, were complicit in colonial imperialism
because they treated the Nagas as objects for scientific enquiry
and would, in effect, deny them their right to self-determination.
Verrier Elwin, who was appointed as the tribal advisor to the
North East Frontier Agency by Jawaharlal Nehru, carried for-
ward the colonial administrator–anthropologist view in the
post-independence period, which furthered the “idealist–
humanist” preservationist dogma for the protection of tribal
culture in North East India (Elwin 1959). Bareh’s observation in
this context took on board the emotionalisms of his colonial and
post-independence predecessors, the “idealist anthropologists.”
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Consequently, these valuable gazetteers that represented
the official descriptions of the Naga Hills produced discourses
on the Inner Line that lacked in academic rigour and misrepre-
sented the spirit of the regulation. Nonetheless, postcolonial
understanding of the Inner Line Regulation of 1873 by local
scholars, bureaucrats, and policymakers should not be expl-
ained in such light manner. If we look at the colonial produc-
tion of gazetteers, policy documents, annual reports, parch-
ments, and census reports, we will observe that these official
dossiers were used to inform colonial administrators on duty
about tribal life. The general purpose of preparing district gaz-
etteers was the political motive of introducing the natives,
their social life, village organisation, customs, norms, taboos,
rituals, and social practices to the colonial administrators. A
detailed analysis of any event or phenomenon in gazetteer
writing was not the official mandate. These were just another
tool that fostered views on the “universal goodness” attached
to the Inner Line Regulation, based on protecting ethnic iden-
tities and the native way of life, that were endorsed by the
pedagogy of colonial ethnographies on the hill tribes and the
sense of paternalism spread through notifications that circu-
lated in public and the colonial office. The recurrent use of cer-
tain language at the end of every notification relating to
implementation or modification of the Inner Line convinced
postcolonial spokespersons to believe that the regulation of
1873 was part of British paternalism and a mark of respect for
native culture and tradition, which needed protecting from
outside influence.
Colonial ethnographic accounts published in monographs
were the first written documents specifying the heterogeneity
of Naga groups. Before this, military documents and reports
rarely classified the natives of Naga Hills into clear-cut identi-
ties (West 1994). As West notes, monographs were the first
written anthologies that make legible the multitude of tribes
residing in the Naga Hills (1994). He further adds, “Such tribes
were less apparent in the nineteenth century reports, ‘Angami’
being the most prominent group or name, apart from refer-
ences to ‘Seema’ [Sema] and ‘Loota’ [Lhota]” (West 1994: 67).
The construction of the exotic tribal identity was that of a
pristine, undifferentiated, and simple people vulnerable to
instruments of modernity introduced with the spread of
Christianity, Western education, and the intermixing of the
population from the plains with the simple natives. The Inner
Line in this respect was looked upon as an instrument for pro-
tecting native identity. The pedagogy of ethnographic textual
descriptions represented the natives as the “noble savage”
(Guha R 1999), “head-hunters of Assam” (Hodson 1909),
“naked Nagas” (Von Furer-Haimendorf 1939, 1969), warriors,
and primitives needing protection (Hutton 1921a, 1921b).
These ethnographic representations were responsible for the
“ethnogenesis” (Van Schendel 1992) or “ethnic involution”
(Guha S 1999) of the tribes and caste communities in the
plains. During the first half of the 20th century, the discus-
sions on Assam legislative assembly representation that
emerged in the vernacular assamese press and the Assam
Sahitya Sabah—with the creation of excluded areas for the
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7
SPECIAL ARTICLE
hill districts in Assam—further sharpened the debate on
protecting the identity of the hill tribes in Assam from the
plains majority. In later years, this was christened in the trib-
al policy panchsheel (five principles) advanced by Verrier El-
win for the North East. The Inner Line in this light came to be
internalised by indigenous intellectuals as a paternalistic tool
to safeguard tribal interests in the hills. However, these
anachronistic representations of the Nagas were effectively
used to create differences between tribes and the non-tribes,
which necessitated the fostering of the Inner Line as part of
British paternalism and their strategy to subjugate the auton-
omy of the hill people under a common administration.
In a similar vein, many of the contemporary texts maintain
matching views on the Inner Line Regulation. Arya and Joshi,
in their visual narrative of the Naga way of life, produced an
interesting observation on the Inner Line that is worth quoting.
Do tradition and isolation hold back Naga youths from an exciting
world outside? A boy from Longsa village opens out a window pasted
over with a picture of his international sport heroes. The Inner Line
Restriction of 1873, which is still operative, restricts other Indians and
foreigners from entering into most of the North Eastern states without
a visit permit. Arguably an anachronism now, the Inner Line Restric-
tion has become more of a political tool than a protective one. (Arya
& Joshi 2004)
Likewise, the Inner Line as argued in the preceding sec-
tions, was essentially a political tool. It facilitated the adminis-
tration of the colonial state in the North East Frontier tracts
and also acted as the administrative boundary that divided
administered from politically controlled native territories on
the frontier.
An Uncritical View
Civil society and pressure groups in North East India have looked
at the Inner Line Regulation uncritically. The Naga Students
Federation in their annual pamphlets and souvenirs proclaim
that the British Empire, in order to safeguard the heritage, values,
and interests of the Nagas, introduced the Bengal Eastern Frontier
Regulation Act, 1873. However, these claims fit into the populist
jargon or self-patronising entitlements that have limited aca-
demic or policy relevance. The post-independence Indian state
in the North East had adopted and implemented the colonial
strategies of governance in which the Inner Line was used tac-
tically to control and monitor population mobility to these
restricted and scheduled “disturbed areas.” The Inner Line
Regulation was used strategically to deny access to people who
were capable of bringing about political turmoil in the region.
The case of prosecution in the early 1950s referred to earlier
proves this point. In other parts of the North East, where the
Inner Line was abolished long back, such as the Khasi–Jaintiya and
Garo Hills of Meghalaya, there has been fierce agitation, since
Meghalaya attained statehood, to extend the Bengal Eastern
Frontier Regulation of 1873 to these frontier spaces. However, we
need to look at the history of the Inner Line in these areas and
explore why the regulation was revoked after its adoption in
1873 in certain parts of the hill region while it continues to be
in force in the remaining tracts. Much of the contemporary lit-
erature on the Inner Line has gained strength from these early
59
SPECIAL ARTICLE

writings, which present a completely grotesque picture of the
regulation in operation in the North East Frontier.
Conclusions
The identification of the Inner Line Regulation of 1873 as a restric-
tion to protect the ethnic identity of the native Nagas of the then
Naga Hills district and present-day Nagaland state has been
much romanticised in civil society and official as well as aca-
demic texts. The purpose of the Inner Line Regulation on the
Assam–Nagaland border (the Sibsagar Inner Line) is explained
in the nature of its implementation and the debates that sur-
rounded its modification since its inception in 1876. This was
not a simple act of goodness shown to the native tribes of the
Naga Hills but a ploy adopted by the British government to
demarcate the boundary of general administration beyond which
personal influence was the rule. In the postcolonial period, the
India reborn as a decolonised nation state fixed its political ter-
ritory with the drawing of international boundaries with
Myanmar, Bangladesh, China, and Bhutan in the North East.
This marked the end to unadministered territories in the Naga
Hills. In this consolidated frontier space, the Inner Line has
attained an ethnic dimension wherein the regulation is pas-
sionately seen by local as well as foreign scholars writing on
the politics and historiography of the North East as an instru-
ment of protecting tribal culture and identity. However, it has
to be admitted that colonial records and correspondences tell a
completely different story to the spirit in which the regulation
is read, interpreted, and advocated in populist discourses.

Notes
1 The Nagas are a tribal group geographically
spread over North East India and Myanmar.
They are a conglomeration of many subtribes,
some recorded by the government census and
others remaining unlisted. According to differ-
ent sources, Naga subtribes number between
20 and 60 ethnic groups. Nagamese acts as the
creole for the Naga people.
2 Letter No 409 F of 4357, dated 19 October 1899,
from the Secretary to the Chief Commissioner
of Assam to the Secretary to the Government of
India, Foreign Department. As seen in Modifi-
cation of the Inner Line in Sibsagar district,
1899, Record Cell, Nagaland State Archives, p 17.
3 Notes K W of Political Department A, May 1872,
No 205–11. Record Cell, Nagaland State
Secretariat.
4 Original source unknown. As seen quoted in
Modification of the Inner Line in Sibsagar dis-
trict, 1899. Political Department A, No 603/
206, p 2. Record Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
5 Between 1854 and 1865, there were 19 Angami
raids, in which 232 British subjects were killed,
wounded, or carried off. Many of these men
were plantation labourers. See Mackenzie
(2012).
6 Appeal of Vangulin against Prohibiting from
Cutting Rubber, etc. In the Singpho country and
Naga Hills and Correspondences Regarding
Government Officials Speculating in Assam.
File No 27/32 of 1873, pp 1–32. Political Depart-
ment, Record Cell, Nagaland State Archives.
7 Letter No 760, dated 10 August 1873, Sibsagar,
from A W Campbell, Deputy Commissioner,
Sibsagar to the Personal Assistant to the Com-
missioner of Assam. As seen in Appeal of Van-
gulin against Prohibiting from Cutting Rubber.
In the Singpho country and Naga Hills and
Correspondences Regarding Government Offi-
cials Speculating in Assam. File No 27/32 of
1873, pp 2–3. Political Department, Record
Cell, Nagaland State Archives.
8 Letter No 1603 T, dated 24 August 1872,
Shillong, From J J S Driberg, Officiating Personal
Assistant to the agent, Governor General,
North East Frontier and Commissioner of Assam.
9 Letter No 319/1220, dated 29 March 1876,
Shillong, from H J Peet, Officiating Secretary
to Chief Commissioner of Assam. As seen in In-
ner Line Correspondences Regarding the South
of Sibsagar, 1876, p 1. Political Department, Re-
cord Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
10 Letter No 320/60R, dated 11 May 1867, from
T H Thornton, Officiating Secretary to the Gov-
ernment of India, Foreign Department, to
R H Keating, Chief Commissioner of Assam. As
seen in Inner Line Correspondences Regarding
the South of Sibsagar, 1876, p 2. Political De-
partment, Record Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
11 Letter No 321/2063, dated 29 May 1876,
Shillong, from S O B Risdale, Secretary to the
Chief Commissioner of Assam, to T H Thorn-
ton, Officiating Secretary to the Government of
India, Foreign Department. As seen in Inner
Line Correspondences Regarding the South of
Sibsagar, 1876, p 3. Political Department, Record
Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
12 File No 322/1486 P, dated 21 June 1876, Shimla.
Notification by Government of India, foreign
department. As seen in Inner Line Correspond-
ences Regarding the South of Sibsagar, 1876,
p 4. Political Department, Record Cell, Naga-
land State Secretariat.
13 Proposed Alteration of the Inner Line in the
Sibsagar district, Political Department A,
Nos 36–46, March 1882, p 1. Record Cell, Naga-
land State Secretariat.
14 Proposed Alteration of the Inner Line in the
Sibsagar district, Political Department A, No 38,
March 1882, p 2. Record Cell, Nagaland State
Secretariat.
15 Letter No 39/356, Political Department A, 24
January 1881, Guwahati, from S O B Ridsdale,
Officiating Commissioner of the Assam Valley
District to the secretary to the Chief Commis-
sioner of Assam, pp 3–4. Record Cell, Nagaland
State Secretariat.
16 Proposed Alteration of the Inner Line in the
Sibsagar district, Political Department A, No 39,
March 1882, p 5. Record Cell, Nagaland State
Secretariat.
17 Proposed Alteration of the Inner Line in the
Sibsagar district, Political Department A, No 43,
March 1882, p 8. Record Cell, Nagaland State
Secretariat.
18 Proposed Alteration of the Inner Line in the
Sibsagar district, Political Department A, No 40,
March 1882, p 7. Record Cell, Nagaland State
Secretariat.
19 Proposed Alteration of the Inner Line in the
Sibsagar district, Political Department A, No 46,
March 1882, p 9. Record Cell, Nagaland State
Secretariat.
20 Letter No 938, dated 12 June, 1885, from Chief
Commissioner of Assam to the secretary to the
Government of India, Foreign Department,
pp 89–91. As seen in Correspondences Regard-
ing Issue of Inner Line Regulation Between
Southern district of Seebsaugor and the Naga
Hills, p 6. Record Cell, Nagaland State Secre-
tariat.
21 Letter No 1058, dated 25 July 1884, Shillong,
from Officiating. Secretary to the Chief Com-
missioner of Assam to the Secretary to the
Government of India, Foreign Department,
pp 81–84. As seen in Correspondence Regarding
Issue of Inner Line Regulation Between South-
ern District of Seebsaugor and the Naga Hills,
p 5. Record Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
22 Letter No 1.1.68, dated 25 July 1885, Shimla,
p 93. As seen in Correspondence Regarding Is-
sue of Inner Line Regulation between Southern
District of Seebsaugor and the Naga Hills, p 6,
Political Department, Record Cell, Nagaland
State Secretariat.
23 Letter dated 18 January 1899, from the Offici-
ating Secretary to the Chief Commissioner of
Assam to the Secretary to the Government of
India, Foreign Department, p 1. As seen in File
No 603/206, Modification of the Inner Line of
the Sibsagar district, 1899. Political Depart-
ment, Record Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
24 Letter No 1436, dated 17 September 1900, to
the Registrar, High Court, Calcutta, Appellate
Side. As seen in File No 603/206, Modification
of the Inner Line of the Sibsagar district, 1899,
p 10. Political Department, Record Cell, Naga-
land State Secretariat.
25 Letter No 1437, dated 29 September 1900, Mod-
ification of the Inner Line of the Sibsagar dis-
trict, 1899, p 6. Foreign Department, Record
Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
26 Letter No 1114 E–B, dated 28 July 1899, Shimla,
from J B Wood, Officiating Undersecretary to the
Government of India, Foreign Department, to the
Chief Commissioner of Assam. As seen in File
No 603/206, Modification of the Inner Line of the
Sibsagar district, 1899, p 14. Political Depart-
ment, Record Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
27 Letter No 33 and enclosure A, dated the 18 Jan-
uary 1910, to the Government of India, Foreign
Department, No 29P. As seen in File No F–9P,
28–54 July 1910, Political Department A, Incl-
usion of certain coal-bearing tracts within the
administrative limits of the Sibsagar and the
Naga Hills district, p 10. Record Cell, Nagaland
State Secretariat.
28 As seen in File No F–9P, 28–54, July 1910,
Political Department A, Inclusion of certain
coal-bearing tracts within the administrative
limits of the Sibsagar and the Naga Hills district,
p 8. Record Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
29 In the Darrang district, the Inner Line since its
inception corresponded with the district boun-
dary, while in Cacher, it was said to correspond
with the defined tract in advance of the line.
30 Government Notification No 4428 F, dated
20 June 1919, Political Department A, Nagaland
State Archives.
31 Letter No 1505 G, dated 17 August 1928, from
J H Hutton, Deputy Commissioner, Naga Hills,
to the Deputy Commissioner of Sibsagar. As seen
in Political Department A, March 1929, No
200–07, Proposal to modify the Boundary to
the Sibsagar district between the Tick river and
the Dilli Forest Reserve so as to include certain

60 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

areas within the Naga Hills, p 18. Record Cell,
Nagaland State Secretariat.
32 Letter No 114 G, dated 19 March 1928, from
J H Hutton, Deputy Commissioner, Naga Hills,
to the Commissioner, Assam Valley Division.
As seen in Political Department A, March 1929,
No 200–7, Proposal to modify the Boundary to
the Sibsagar district between the Tick river and
the Dilli Forest Reserve so as to include certain
areas within the Naga Hills, p 20. Record Cell,
Nagaland State Secretariat.
33 Letter No 429R, dated 6 February 1929,
Shillong, from H M Prichard, Secretary to
the Government of Assam, Revenue Depart-
ment, to the Commissioner, Assam Valley
Division. As seen in Political Department A,
March 1929, No 200–7, Proposal to modify the
Boundary to the Sibsagar district between the
Tick River and the Dilli Forest Reserve
so as to include certain areas within the
Naga Hills, p 23. Record Cell, Nagaland State
Secretariat.
34 Political Department A, March 1929, No 200–7,
Proposal to modify the Boundary to the Sibsa-
gar district between the Tick River and the Dil-
li Forest Reserve so as to include certain areas
within the Naga Hills, p 13. Record Cell, Naga-
land State Secretariat.
35 Note 34, p 14.
36 Government of East Bengal and Assam; Letter
No 3886-J, 6 July 1907, p 2. Record Cell, Naga-
land State Secretariat.
37 File No 30–6, Political Department A, Decem-
ber 1930, Abolition of the Cacher Inner Line
and prescription of an Inner Line for the Lushai
Hills District, pp 1–112.
38 Note 37, p 40.
Module on Educational Statistics
The EPWRF ITS has 17 modules covering a range of macro-economic, financial and social sector indicators on the Indian economy
For more details visit www.epwrfits.in
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
39 Notes on Border Disputes Between Assam and
Nagaland, by D K Zeliang, Indian Forest Ser-
vice. Boundary Confidential, 1967, No 82, p 4.
Record Cell, Nagaland State Secretariat.
40 For a critical study of colonial ethnography, see
Bodley (1992).
References
Arya, Aditya and Vibha Joshi (2004): The Land of
the Nagas, Art Book International, London and
Ahmedabad: Mapin Publication.
Bareh, Hamlet (1970): Gazetteer of India, Kohima
District, Kohima: Nagaland district Gazetteer
Unit.
Barpujari, H K (1981): Problem of Hill Tribes of
North East Frontier, 1873–1962, Guwahati:
Spectrum Publications.
Blake, David M (1989): Interview with Father Wil-
lam Kempson Lumley Webb, 21 April, Audio re-
cording, London: India Office Records, British
Library.
Bodley, John H (1992): “Anthropology and the Poli-
tics of Genocide,” The Paths to Domination,
Resistance and Terror, Carolyn Nordstrom and
JoAnne Martin (eds), Berkeley: University of
California Press, pp 37–51.
Chatterjee, Nandalal (1952): “The Campaign of
1824–25 in Assam, Sylhet and Cachar during
the First Anglo–Burmese War,” Bengal Past and
Present, Vol 71, No 134, pp 1–14.
Elwin, Verrier (1959): A Philosophy for NEFA,
North East Frontier Agency, Shillong: North
East Frontier Agency, Research Department.
Guha, Ramachandra (1999): “Savaging the Civi-
lised: Verrier Elwin, His Tribals and India,”
Berkeley: Oxford University Press.
EPWRF India Time Series
vol lIiI no 7
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Guha, Sumit (1999): Environment and Ethnicity in
India: 1200–1991, Cambridge: Cambridge Uni-
versity Press.
Hodson, T C (1909): “Head Hunting among the Hill
Tribes of Assam,” Folklore, Vol 20, No 2,
pp 131–43.
Hutton, John Henry (1921a): The Angami Nagas,
London: Macmillan.
— (1921b): The Sema Nagas, London: Macmillan.
Kar, Bodhisattva (2009): “Historia Elastica: A Note
on the Rubber Hunt in the North Eastern Fron-
tier of British India,” Indian Historical Review,
Vol 36, No 1, pp 131–50.
Mackenzie, Alexander (2012): History of the Rela-
tions of the Government with the Hill Tribes of
the North East Frontier of Bengal, 1884, Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press.
Mills, James Philip (1922): The Lotha Nagas, Ann
Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Library.
Saikia, A (2011): Forests and Ecological History of
Assam, 1826–2000, Delhi: Oxford University
Press.
Thomas, John (2016): Evangelising the Nation: Reli-
gion and the Formation of Naga Political Identity,
New Delhi and Oxford: Routledge.
Van Schendel, Willem (1992): “The Invention of the
‘Jummas’: State Formation and Ethnicity in
Southeastern Bangladesh,” Modern Asian Studies,
Vol 26, No 1, pp 95–128.
Von Furer-Haimendorf, Christoph (1939): The
Naked Nagas, London: Methuen and Co.
— (1969): The Konyak Nagas: An Indian Frontier
Tribe, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
West, Andrew (1994): “Writing the Nagas: A British
Officers Ethnographic Tradition,” History and
Anthropology, Vol 8, Nos 1–4, pp 55–88.
Features
Presents all-India
and state-wise
annual data from
1981 onwards.
Structured in three
sections :
• Literacy in India
• School Education
• Higher Education
Includes data on
SC/ST students and
school education in
rural areas.
61
SPECIAL ARTICLE
‘Illegal’ Bangladeshis in Akhand Bharat
Inscriptions of Race and Religion on Citizenship
Rimple Mehta
Both the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh and the
Bharatiya Janata Party respond aggressively to the
issue of “illegal” Muslim Bangladeshis, the largest
“illegal” migrant group in India. Such a response is
rooted in the racial underpinnings of Hindutva ideology,
which right-wing political formations have attempted to
bring into mainstream discourse, especially after the BJP
came to power at the centre in 2014.
I am grateful to the anonymous reviewer for her valuable comments
and suggestions. I would also like to thank Aditya Nigam and Nandita
Dhawan for their comments on initial drafts of this article. It was
presented at the international workshop titled “Race, Criminal
Justice, and Migration” organised by Border Criminologies, Centre
for Criminology, University of Oxford, in September 2016. I thank the
organisers Mary Bosworth, Yolanda Yazquez, and Alpa Parmar, as well
as the participants of the workshop, for critical discussions.
Rimple Mehta (rimple.mehta@gmail.com) is at the School of Women’s
Studies, Jadavpur University.
62
I
ndia is a diverse society, with a range of ethnic and religious
groups. But India does not function with a clear articulation
of race. Unlike their counterparts abroad, Indian scholars
have spent little time examining the relevance of race in
Indian society. Yet, as this article will show, some discussion of
race and its impact on Indian society has implicitly existed in
this country for some time. The challenge for contemporary
scholars lies in unpacking the relevance of some long-standing
ideas for examining how we understand the world today.
“Race” is not a term that is used in criminological studies in
India. The presence of large numbers of Muslims and Dalits in
Indian prisons (Tiwari 2016) has caught the eye of criminologists
and has been discussed and critiqued at length (Raghvan and
Nair 2011, 2013). The importance of exploring the intersection
of race and religion in the study of criminology, specifically
border criminology, emerges when we begin to understand
the contemporary treatment of “illegal” Muslim Bangladeshis
in India through the lens of Hindutva ideology. The “illegal”
Muslim Bangladeshis are the focus of this article, as they
comprise the largest number of “illegal” migrants in India. But
they will serve as an exemplar to understand the position
of not only Muslim migrants from other countries but also
Muslims within India.
The term Hindutva1 was coined by Vinayak Damodar
Savarkar in 1923, and has become the predominant ideology
of Hindu nationalism today. In contemporary India, various
organisations within the Sangh Parivar—its cultural wing, the
Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS); its political wing, the
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP); its economic forum, the
Swadeshi Jagaran Manch (SJM); its world council, the Vishva
Hindu Parishad (VHP), etc—align themselves with Hindutva
ideology. Its foundations were laid first by Savarkar and later
by M S Golwalkar in the 1960s.2 There have been concerted
efforts by the BJP and the RSS to put this ideology in the main-
stream. Their objective is to influence a majority of the popula-
tion and to shape “everything from national security to gen-
der, science and economics to secularism, and identities in
diaspora” (Reddy 2011: 439). This mainstreaming process is
carried out through cartographical, legislative, and socio-
religious processes. I refer to these processes as the “politics of
purging”: first an attempt to consolidate the territorial space of
Akhand Bharat (undivided India) and then to “cleanse” the
space of the “other.” The construction of the “other” draws
upon links that Hindutva ideology already has with the idea
of Aryanism.
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

It is difficult to make sense of the cartography of India with-
out referring to partition. Critics have pointed out that parti-
tion has long been the focus of border studies and that we need
to move beyond it. However, its use as a reference, while using
different analytical frameworks, remains inevitable given that
the partition of the subcontinent was a territorial settlement
based on religious majoritarianism. It is important to under-
stand partition in terms of its varied forms and implications.
The Hindutva forces were against partition. Since then, it has
been RSS’s resolve to reunite India into Akhand Bharat, includ-
ing present-day India, Bangladesh, and Pakistan. Some carto-
graphic representations of India by RSS also include Afghani-
stan, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, and, sometimes even Tibet.
The RSS purposefully misrepresents the borders of India in
most of its publications by using the map of undivided India.
Basu et al (1993: viii) point out:
Hindu right talks in two languages: the language of democracy and
that of authoritarianism, the language of law and that of force. The
BJP claims to function within a constitutional, democratic, legal
framework, but the activities of the RSS, VHP and the Bajrang Dal (mil-
itant youth wing of VHP) often draw their commitment to legality into
question. The politics of the Hindu Right derives its dynamic from the
complex relationship between these seemingly opposing tendencies:
from their complementarity and contradiction.
Despite being a much-debated issue, it is assumed here that
BJP and RSS work in tandem with each other to further the
Hindutva ideology. This article aims to outline the political
aspirations of the BJP in the context of its reactions to “illegal”
Muslim Bangladeshi migrants in India since it formed a gov-
ernment at the centre in May 2014, and the aspiration of RSS to
create an Akhand Bharat. The aim is to explore whether the
responses towards the Bangladeshis is really about concerns
over protecting the sovereignty of the Indian state or whether
it is based on the Hindutva idea of national belonging predi-
cated on certain conceptions of race and religion. The Hindut-
vavadis (followers of Hindutva ideology) have mostly been as-
sociated with communalism, but the racial underpinnings of
their agenda have largely remained unexplored. I argue that
the sociocultural and religious agenda of the Hindutvavadis,
together with their racial agenda, work towards the goal of
building a “pure” Hindu nation. BJP’s responses to Bangladeshis
in India may not be easily decipherable as racial in nature
because postcolonial identities in India are primarily articu-
lated in terms of communal, regional, and caste identities, and
not race or colour.
Historical Background
The Indo–Bangladesh border and the map of India have a colo-
nial legacy. The British sought to mark a single entity, politi-
cally and territorially, as their imperial space (Ramaswamy
2001: 97–114). At the time of partition, the chairman of the
Boundary Commissions, Cyril Radcliffe, was charged with
dividing 1,75,000 square miles (4,50,000 km2) of territory
comprising 88 million people. Radcliffe had never visited India
before. He was responsible for marking out the border in a span
of six weeks (Butalia 1998: 83–86; Chatterji 1999: 185–242).
The commission used maps for the most part, rather than
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7
SPECIAL ARTICLE
working on the ground. The result was an arbitrary border
that ran through some thickly populated regions and even
parts of houses such that some rooms were in one country
while others fell in another (Chatterji 1999: 25–31). It is esti-
mated that about 12 million people left their homes, either for
crossing over to India or to migrate to East or West Pakistan. In
1971, after a prolonged struggle, East Pakistan became inde-
pendent from Pakistan, and came to be known as Bangladesh
(Muhith 1992).
Apart from creating territorial disputes for future genera-
tions to negotiate and resolve, the border between India and
Bangladesh engendered problems of border maintenance and
security. Absolute separation of an area, which consists of
plains, riverine land, hills, and jungles, with hardly any natu-
ral boundaries, made the Indo–Bangladesh border extremely
porous and, in practice, ambiguous. Regions on either side of
the West Bengal and Bangladesh border are economically
underdeveloped. The porous border, along with its socio-
political history, provides a fertile ground for informal border
markets, smuggling, and trading in commodities and persons
(Sur 2012: 127–50).
The Indian nation state has constantly tried, albeit without
much success, to discipline the flows of goods and people
across its borders. There are three main security concerns that
India has with respect to Bangladesh: territorial disputes,
cross-border terrorism, and illegal immigration of Bangla-
deshis into India. In addition, firing upon and killing Bangla-
deshis (suspected of illegally crossing over) by the Indian
Border Security Force (BSF)3 have continued to be contested
issues in Indo–Bangladesh relations. Partly for economic rea-
sons (such as the additional burden of thousands of illegal
migrants; revenue losses on account of the “black” cross-border
economy) and partly for security reasons (for example, terro-
rists and criminals taking refuge across the border, money
laundering, smuggling of arms) India has been increasingly
focusing on extreme border-control practices with respect to
Bangladesh. However, due to close sociocultural and economic
ties, it is difficult to make the Indo–Bangladesh border com-
pletely impermeable. To prevent trafficking, illegal crossing,
smuggling of humans, arms, and products, a border-fencing
project led by the Government of India was started with Bang-
ladesh in 1986 (Schendel 2005: 212). Fences have been erected
after due consideration of various constraints in the area, such
as availability of land, presence of nullahs, rivers, villages, etc,
and concerns of the local population. Gates are provided to fa-
cilitate access of villagers to their lands, which sometimes lie
beyond the fences.
Given the nature of the Indo–Bangladesh border, it is impor-
tant to understand what the response of the Indian state has
been towards the flow of Bangladeshis into India at different
points of time. Immediately after partition in 1947 a large
number of Hindu refugees from East Bengal entered West
Bengal and other parts of the country. In the immediate post-
partition period, the concern over movement of people was
not so much communal, as the majority of refugees were
Hindus. Gradually, with increasing socio-economic pressures,
63
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Government of India tried to deter people from entering India
by not recognising them as refugees and not providing them
with rehabilitation, regardless of their religion. The passport
system was initiated in 1952 and migration certificates began
to be issued from 1956. By 1971, the year of the Bangladesh
Liberation War, political discourse had begun to identify the
movement of refugees as a communal issue and not as a mat-
ter of concern about their rehabilitation (Datta 2008). Datta
(2013: 74) points out that in 1971 various individuals and orga-
nisations raised objections about treating Hindu and Muslim
refugees from Bangladesh in the same way. They argued that
India was being unnecessarily generous in providing refuge to
both Hindus and Muslims, as it was only the Hindus who were
escaping religious persecution in Bangladesh. Historically,
Bangladeshi Hindus migrating to India have been viewed as
“victims” of Bangladeshi majoritarian politics and, therefore,
worthy of “refuge.” Bangladeshi Muslims, in contrast, were
considered “infiltrators” who threatened the socio-economic
structure of India. The influx of refugees at different points of
times has resulted in “a reconceptualisation of the notion of
citizenship and who should be allowed to remain within India’s
territorial borders, through a series of measures designed to
create a more ‘effective’ border” (Datta 2013: 83). The political
and socio-economic context has been changing; border con-
trols have become more stringent as a response to the threat of
terrorists and insurgents who seek shelter across the border.
However, despite several controls and anti-immigration laws,4
everyday cross-border movement of Indians and Bangladeshis
continue to this day.
‘Illegal’ Bangladeshi Muslims in Indian Politics
Border crossings between India and Bangladesh have been an
everyday affair ever since partition. What has changed over
the years is the legitimacy or illegitimacy that is attributed to
certain forms of border crossings. Bangladeshis without valid
documents constitute the largest number of Muslim immi-
grants5 in India. They have been a cause for concern since the
late 1980s. Different political parties that formed national
governments at various points of times have dealt with the
issue of Bangladeshi migrants in their own ways. Some have
used Bangladeshis in West Bengal and other neighbouring
states as “vote banks”6 by providing them with region-specific
benefits (Times of India 2012). At the same time, political
parties have been averse to migrants from Bangladesh. While
right-wing political organisations perceive the Muslim Bangla-
deshis as “infiltrators,” posing a threat to the country (Mal et
al 2012), left-wing political parties have sometimes responded
adversely to lower caste Hindu refugees (mostly Namasudras)
from Bangladesh. In 1979, for example, the Communist Party
of India (Marxist)—CPI(M)—government in West Bengal
imposed an economic blockade and, later, evacuated thousands
of lower caste Hindu Bangladeshi refugees from an island in
the Sundarbans. This was after the government had invited
these refugees to come back to West Bengal from Dandakaranya
in Chhattisgarh in 1977. The CPI(M) government changed its
political strategy and began to perceive the lower caste Hindu
64
Bangladeshi refugees as a burden on the state (Sen 2015). This
episode popularly came to be known as the Marichjhapi
massacre. In January 2003, about 200 snake charmers, seasonal
migrants who crossed the border at certain times of the year,
were stranded in the no-man’s-land in the Indo–Bangladesh
border at Satgachi in the Cooch Behar district of north Bengal.
This was because neither the Indian nor the Bangladeshi BSFs
would let them in. The Bangladeshi forces argued that they
were Hindus as they worshipped the Hindu goddess Manasa
and performed Hindu rituals. Therefore, they claimed that the
snake charmers were Indians. The Indian BSFs claimed that
they were “illegal” Bangladeshis trying to enter India to make
money and create trouble. The situation was resolved with the
CPI(M) government in West Bengal facilitating their entry by
considering them as Hindu refugees facing persecution in
Bangladesh. However, in February of the same year, this group
of snake charmers disappeared with no clear evidence of
where they went (Ghosh 2015; Sen 2003).
In 1992, the Congress government at the centre tried to
deport hundreds of suspected Bangladeshis without valid
documents under the banner of “Operation Pushback.”
Ramachandran (2003) draws a link between the widespread
communal violence in the early 1990s and the state response
towards unauthorised immigrants through this operation.
According to her, the unprecedented rise of the BJP in the
1990s provided a powerful incentive to the Congress-led gov-
ernment to expel undocumented Bangladeshis from Delhi.
But the visibility of the Bangladeshis in India came to the
forefront with the strengthening of Hindu nationalism. She
further points out, “The Sangh Parivar’s relentless quest in
the early 1990s for political legitimacy and authority or
hegemony so to speak had, in the first instance, much to do
with the sudden hyper-visibility of undocumented Bangla-
deshis in India” (Ramachandran 2003: 645). In January 1993,
right after the Babri Masjid demolition in December 1992, the
BJP “declared a war” on illegal Muslim Bangladeshis in India
and this issue has since then been a prominent theme in
national campaigns of the party (Gillan 2002: 78).
The issue of Bangladeshis residing illegally in India has come
to the fore since the BJP formed a government at the centre in
May 2014. On 20 April 2014, BJP’s prime ministerial candidate
Narendra Modi proclaimed in an address in West Bengal:
“Note this down. After May 16 [when he would take over as
Prime Minister if he won the election] I will send these Bangla-
deshis beyond the border with bag and baggage” (Barooah
Pisharoty 2016). After May 2014 the Union Minister of State for
Home Affairs, Kiran Rijiju, referred to the Bangladeshis as “illegal
migrants,” who were a “concern” and a “national problem.”
The Prime Minister thought that Bangladeshi infiltration was
an “act of aggression” on India and hence he needed to launch
the Bangladeshi Bhagao Abhiyan (Operation for the removal
of Bangladeshis). According to him, removal of Bangladeshi
infiltrators would imply honouring the Supreme Court of India,
which directed the central government in December 2014 to hold
talks with Bangladesh to initiate steps for deporting identi-
fied illegal immigrants. The BJP member of Parliament (MP)
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

from Jorhat in Assam, Kamakhya Prasad Tasha, told reporters
shortly after their landslide victory at the centre:
The campaign [to remove Bangladeshis] will be initiated by Bharatiya
Janata Yuva Morcha (BJYM), the youth wing of the party, within the
next 15 days. In the first phase of the campaign, we will appeal to il-
legal immigrants to leave our land voluntarily in next 15 days. We are
also going to launch a house-to-house campaign urging people not to
engage these immigrants in any kind of work.7
Such a scenario threatened the livelihoods and, therefore, the
survival of Bangladeshis working without valid documents in
India. How does one analyse the political rhetoric of the BJP
and their vendetta against “illegal” Muslim Bangladeshis?
Race and Hindutva Ideology
Historians like Romila Thapar (1996) argue that it was only in
the early 20th century that some of the founding members of
the RSS tried to develop the concept of Hindutva or Hindu-
ness. This was because a specific definition of who a Hindu
really was did not exist in the past. According to her, the RSS
developed the concept by positing the “original” Hindus as
Aryans—depicted as a distinctive people indigenous to India—
and caste Hindus as their descendants. Although Aryan was
“specifically a label for a language, [it] came to be used for a
people and a race as well, the argument being that those who
spoke the same language belonged to the same biological
race” (Thapar 1996: 6). Savarkar, the president of the Hindu
Mahasabha—an organisation which was formed to protect
Hindus after the formation of the All India Muslim League
(AIML) in 19068 —argued in his 1923 monograph Hindutva:
Who Is a Hindu?:
[T]he Aryan who settled in India at the dawn of history already
formed a nation now embodied in the Hindus. Hindutva … rests on
three pillars: geographical unity, racial features, and a common cul-
ture. (qtd in Jaffrelot 1999: 26)
Savarkar disassociated Hindutva from Hinduism. According
to him, “Hindutva embraces all the departments of thought
and activity of the whole Being of our Hindu race” (Savarkar
1923: 4). He further argued that at the core of the Hindutva
ideology was the identification with India as simultaneously
pitribhumi (fatherland) and punyabhumi (holyland).
He translated jati as race, a term that encompassed rites,
rituals, ceremonies, and sacraments, as well as identification
with a sacred geography (Reddy 2011). Savarkar writes:
The Hindus are not merely the citizens of the Indian state because
they are united not only by the bonds of the love they bear to a com-
mon motherland but also by the bonds of a common blood. They are
not only a Nation but also a race-jati. The word jati derived from the
root ‘Jan’ to produce, means a brotherhood, a race determined by
a common origin, possessing a common blood. All Hindus claim to
have in their veins the blood of the mighty race incorporated with and
descended from the Vedic fathers, the Sindhus. (1923: 84–85)
Savarkar, therefore, understood Hindus as a race, bound
within a sacred space by a common bloodline and deriving their
origins from the Vedic fathers. According to him, Muslims
and Christians cannot be counted among Hindus because,
though their fatherland is India, their holyland is elsewhere.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7
SPECIAL ARTICLE
RSS leader Golwalkar predicated national belonging on
race, defined as ‘‘a hereditary society having common cus-
toms, common language, common memories of glory and dis-
aster [and] common origin under one culture’’ (qtd in Reddy
2011: 441). Like Savarkar, the racialist argument is implicit in
Golwalkar’s proposition that the people of a nation possess
unassailable commonalities and a common origin. Gyanendra
Pandey refers to Golwalkar’s discourse in We or Our Nation-
hood Defined (1939) as an “upper caste racism” which takes the
form of sociocultural domination rather than biological claims
and racial purity (Jaffrelot 1999: 57). Although there is an
inherent tension in Savarkar and Golwalkar’s definition of
national belonging as to whether it is based on sociocultural
unity, territorial belonging, or racial purity, both of them show
a fervour for cultural unity and an implicit reference to
racial homogeneity.
On the one hand, Golwalkar’s idea of racism appears to be
different from that of Adolf Hitler, because the former laid em-
phasis on organic harmony in society and not on racial purity,
and it is with the latter that Hitler was preoccupied (Jaffrelot
1999). On the other hand, in We or Our Nationhood Defined,
Golwalkar refers to race (with culture and language as insepa-
rable components) as an important ingredient of the idea of
the “Nation.” In this way, he models his idea of cultural nation-
alism after Adolf Hitler:
German race pride has now become the topic of the day. To keep up
the purity of the Race and its culture, Germany shocked the world by
purging the country of the Semitic Races—the Jews. Race pride at its
highest has been manifested here. Germany has also shown how well-
nigh impossible it is for Races and cultures, having differences going
to the root, to be assimilated into one united whole, a good lesson for
us in Hindusthan to learn and profit by. (Golwalkar 1939: 87)
Hindu nationalists are known to have displayed their support
for the European fascists since the 1930s. Savarkar is also
known to have written approvingly of the occupation of
Sudetenland by Germany on the ground that its inhabitants
shared “common blood and common language with the
Germans” (Jaffrelot 1999: 51). Further, it is important to compare
Golwalkar’s ideology with certain aspects of Nazism, as there
are obvious affinities between the two due to their strong
emphasis on ethnic homogeneity (Jaffrelot 1999: 61). While
both Savarkar and Golwalkar are known to be appreciative of
the racism practised in Europe, they were also quick to contrast it
with the “civilised” situation in India. Jaffrelot (1999: 52)
labels this as the strategy of stigmatisation and emulation of
the “threatening Others.” While both Hitler and Golwalkar
looked at the state as not an end in itself, Hitler emphasised its
importance for the preservation of race and Golwalkar for the
preservation of a Hindu culture and society. Though used dif-
ferently, both aimed at maintaining homogeneity amongst a
group of people with an assumed common origin.
These arguments need to be seen in the context of the “Aryan
theory” that was propounded by Max Mueller between 1849
and 1874. According to this theory, the original Aryan home-
land was in Central Asia; from there it branched off into two
directions, one towards Europe and the other towards Iran.
65
SPECIAL ARTICLE
The Iran stream was further split and one group went towards
north-western India. The group that came towards India was
believed to have conquered the dark-skinned dasas. This theory
became the lynchpin in the justification of Christian missionary
efforts to save the lower-caste dasas from the upper castes who
claimed their lineage from the Aryans. According to Thapar
(1996), Hindutva ideologues insisted that there was no Aryan
invasion because the Aryans were indigenous to India, they
spoke Sanskrit, and were responsible for the spread of Aryan
civilisation from India to the West. The confrontations, they
propounded, were a result of the arrival of foreigners such as
Muslims, Christians, and, more recently, the Communists.
None of them considered India either their pitribhumi or pun-
yabhumi. This made the Hindu Aryans the victim of invasions
and battles waged by foreigners, providing a strong justifica-
tion for the treatment they advocate towards Muslims. The
Aryan theory has been discussed at length and disputed by the
Hindutva ideologues in order to focus the national identity on
the “antiquity and continuity of the Hindu Arya as the major
component of the Hindu nation” (Thapar 1996: 10). The ques-
tion of the roots of Indian identity has become the mainstay of
contemporary Indian politics.
Indianness and the ‘Other’
Dipesh Chakrabarty argues that, in India, racism is understood
as “something that the white people do to us. What Indians do to
one another is variously described as communalism, regionalism,
and casteism, but never as racism” (qtd in Reddy 2005: 570).
Countering such an argument, Ratna Kapur (2016) propounds:
“Indianness,” which is a modern, racial and cultural construction and
equated with Hinduness, can only accommodate the idea of Indians as
victims and whites as perpetrators. Any hint of racial injustice through
even the slightest taunt or gesture against any Indian anywhere pro-
duces a barrage of official complaints of racism and racial targeting
stretching from America to Australia. “Indianness” cannot broker the
idea of being a perpetrator of racial intolerance and hatred. And yet it
is precisely this feature that is integral to the idea of the Indian nation
and the religious, cultural and racial exclusions along which it has
been constructed.
Kapur’s contentions are reflected in the ways in which the
rhetoric of race and the argument of racial apartheid towards
Indians have been used by the BJP at an international level to
mask the debates on caste, class, and religious marginalisa-
tion in India by projecting threats to the Indian nation as
external. The BJP has resisted the accusation of practising
communal and sectarian politics by presenting Indian society
as one living in organic harmony. Shampa Biswas (2001)
points out that the use of the term “nuclear apartheid” by the
BJP in 1998 to protest against the reprimands, resolutions,
and statements that international bodies made against India’s
decision to nuclearise itself is significant. The BJP sought to
emphasise that Indians as a “race” were being discriminated
through the Non-Proliferation Treaty and the Comprehensive
Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty. She argues that by pointing towards
contemporary exclusions in the global arena, the BJP was using
the category of race in the imagination of the Hindu/Indian
nation and drawing upon a racist global discourse on Muslims
66
and Islam. In a similar vein in 2001, when Dalits sought to take
their struggle to the United Nations (UN) by putting forward
their issues at the World Conference against Racism, Racial
Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance held at
Durban in South Africa, they were severely condemned by the
then BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) government.
It was argued that this was an “internal matter” which could
be addressed by the available laws in India (Thorat and Uma-
kant 2004: xxiii). In this way, from Savarkar and Golwalkar in
the early phase to the BJP in the 1990s, one sees a strategic use
of the rhetoric of race in the construction of an Indian identity.
Kapur (2016) points out that being Indian is perceived as being
heterosexual, male, Hindu and non-Dalit, where exclusions
are justified on the ground that the difference is threatening,
or that it might dilute the purity of the race and its culture. She
further points out that this was endemic in the writings of the
early Hindutva ideologues, but has today become a normalised
feature of the Indian mentality.
In this context, the BJP has created an angst against, and
“hatred” towards, the Bangladeshis in India by tapping into a
covert or latent reserve of emotions against the “other.” This
was done by using the rhetoric of “development” to construct
Muslim immigrants as the regressive “other.” The epistemology
of the right wing as a political conglomerate finds continuity in a
neo-liberal economy, because both Savarkar’s and Golwalkar’s
texts deal primarily with identity and place, the two analyti-
cal categories that are constantly used to understand neo-
liberalism. Gautam Ghosh (2015) points out that the so-called
“infiltration” by Bangladeshi refugees in West Bengal is an
unwanted interruption in the nationalist narrative of the
bhadralok (Bengali caste-Hindu middle class) whose presump-
tions and aspirations regarding their own position in the
Indian nation’s trajectory-cum-temporality are believed to be
threatened by the presence of the Bangladeshis in India. He
further propounds that their fears are grounded in the inter-
mission in their nationalist narrative dating back to the two
partitions of Bengal—in 1905 and in 1947—as much as they
are premised upon a transgression of territorial integrity.
Therefore, economic, ethnic, cultural, and historical factors,
when coupled with the Hindutva ideology of race, help one to
locate the position of the illegal Muslim Bangladeshis as
the “other” in Akhand Bharat. Though Bangladesh may be
geographically located within Akhand Bharat, the Muslim
Bangladeshis will remain a threat to Indian citizens; the Hin-
du Bangladeshis, however, can reunite with the “Hindu” race
in the undivided Hindu nation.
Legality and Illegality
While there are discursive ways in which Bangladeshi Mus-
lims are projected as the “other,” the processes of redefining
citizenship involve definite legal action that aim at “othering”
some migrants and marking the contours of “Indianness.” On
19 July 2016, the BJP government introduced a bill to amend
certain provisions of the Citizenship Act of 1955. The bill has now
been referred to the Select and Joint Committee of Parliament.
The object of the proposed bill is to enable Hindus, Sikhs,
FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 SPECIAL ARTICLE

Buddhists, Jains, Parsis, and Christians who have fled to India
from Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Bangladesh—without valid
travel documents or whose valid documents have expired in
recent years—to acquire Indian citizenship through naturali-
sation. Under the bill, such persons shall not be treated as illegal
immigrants for the purpose of the Citizenship Act (Suryanarayana
and Ramaseshan 2016). Rohingyas from Myanmar,9 Muslims
from Bangladesh, and Ahmadiyyas from Pakistan, who face
religious persecution in their countries, are excluded from the
scope of the bill, thus indicating a clear religious bias. An anal-
ysis by PRS—an independent research initiative that works for
strengthening the legislative process by making it transparent,
better informed, and participatory—points out that granting
citizenship on the basis of religion may violate Article 14 of the
Constitution which guarantees the right to equality.10
The Citizenship Act of 1955, which was meant to deal with
conditions of acquisition, termination, and deprivation of citi-
zenship in the aftermath of partition, actually ended up being
dominated by issues of religious loyalty (Roy 2010: 91). The act
underwent a series of amendments, with the latest one being
in 2003.11 This last amendment, carried out during the BJP-led
NDA government, introduced the category of Overseas Citizen
of India (OCI) for those having ties of blood and descent with
India. Furthermore, Indian citizenship was now based upon
the citizenship of both or either of the parents. In cases where
one parent was in India at the time of the child’s birth, the other
should have been a legal resident of India and not an illegal
immigrant. Through a series of amendments and proposed
amendments to the Citizenship Act of 1955, the BJP has dis-
played an obvious bias in favour of non-Muslim minorities
fleeing from other countries. In addition, attempts at inclusion
of the larger “Hindu race” within the fold of Akhand Bharat,
through measures such as the introduction of the OCI category,
demonstrates the effort at making the Hindutva ideology
mainstream. This suggests that though there has been an overt
democratisation of the ideas of the Sangh Parivar by Golwalkar
in the 1960s, the racial idea of Akhand Bharat, as propounded
by Savarkar, persists in the discourse on “illegal” Bangladeshis
in India. As Muslims, they do not qualify for Indian citizenship
even if India happens to be their fatherland, because their
holyland is said to be lying in West Asia. Savarkar’s religio–
racist ideology and Golwalkar’s hereditary conception of the
rashtra (state/nation) seem to determine BJP’s reaction towards
“illegal” Muslim Bangladeshi migrants to India and their invi-
tation only to non-Muslim refugees to live in India. The goal of
Akhand Bharat can, therefore, only be achieved through the
politics of purging: cleansing the territorial space of undivided
India of all the people who do not fit the frame of the “Hindu”
race as defined by the Hindutva ideology.
Conclusions
The strategic ways in which racial, religious, and nationalist
ideologies are being deployed in contemporary India highlight
the ways in which the BJP and the RSS, together or independently,
are trying to raise questions of legality and legitimacy around
the presence of Muslim Bangladeshis in India. Under the garb
of these questions lie the “politics of purging,” which is sought
to be achieved through the process of “othering.” Bringing this
discourse into the mainstream is essential to the politics of
Akhand Bharat, where the “other” is seen as a threat to the
sanctity and purity of the nation state. Hierarchies and differ-
ences are created through a discursive unity of race, religion,
and culture. This is reflective of the inherent tensions and
continuities between Savarkar and Golwalkar’s ideas of what
constitutes a nation—racial purity, territorial belonging, or
sociocultural unity. The Sangh Parivar has used both sociocul-
tural and legal tools to instigate an upsurge against Muslim
Bangladeshis while defining notions of belonging, that is,
citizenship and “foreignness.” Citizenship has been used as a
proxy for racial and cultural purity. This construction of
“Hindu” identity is juxtaposed with the newly constructed
Muslim Bangladeshi “infiltrator” as a racial “other” who needs
to be criminalised and ousted from India. The Hindu Bangla-
deshi, who may be equally “illegal,” is deemed worthy of inclu-
sion by way of formal citizenship. The ultimate goal is that of
homogeneity and limiting spaces for pluralism to flourish.

Notes
1 A range of communal organisations and move-
ments use the banner of Hindutva. It is not the
same as Hinduism. Hindutva refers to a com-
munal ideology while Hinduism is a religious
belief.
2 The other organisations of the Sangh Parivar
may also have a role to play in the anti-Bangla-
deshi campaign in India; but, for the purpose
of this article, I am restricting my focus to the
BJP and the RSS.
3 The Border Security Force (BSF) is a paramili-
tary force charged with guarding India’s land
border during peace time and preventing
transnational crime.
4 In the absence of a refugee policy, the Indian
state deals with all entrants from outside its
borders under the Foreigners Act of 1946, the
Passports Act of 1967, the Registration Act of
1939, and the Passport (Entry into India) Act of
1920. The Foreigners Act of 1946, under which
foreigners without valid documents are arrested,
has a colonial legacy and predates the Citizen-
ship Act of 1955 (Banerjee 2010: 11–33).
5 Different records give different figures for the
number of Bangladeshi migrants in India.
Neither India nor Bangladesh have any strict
citizenship identification tool in place yet. This
makes the identification of nationalities difficult. It
is estimated that about 15 million Bangladeshis
are living illegally in India (Datta 2004: 336).
The 2001 Census reported about 5.1 million
persons as migrants by last residence from across
the international border, and of these 3.0 million
persons were from Bangladesh. Former BSF
Additional Director General P K Mishra stated
in May 2014 that nobody can verify the trend of
Bangladeshi migrants in India, but it may be
estimated that no less than 20 to 60 million live
in India (IANS 2014).
6 In several instances, Bangladeshis are found to
possess a voter’s ID card in India as well as
Bangladesh. India does not recognise dual citi-
zenship and Bangladesh allows for dual citi-
zenship in exceptional cases.
7 There is a long history of struggle against.
Bangladeshis in Assam, which revolves around
issues of ethnicity and economic opportunities.
For details refer to Dutta (2015).
8 Bengal was partitioned into West Bengal and
East Bengal in 1905. AIML was formed in East
Bengal.
9 In the last few years India has witnessed a spate
of Rohingya refugees from Myanmar. The arti-
cle focuses only on the Bangladeshis because of
their presence in mainstream discussions and
mobilisation against them. The attention re-
ceived by Bangladeshis in India is because of
historical as well as economic reasons, and the
large numbers in which they are visible.
10 See the document in the PRS website: http://
www.prsindia.org/uploads/media/Citizen-
ship/Legislative%20Brief%20Citizenship%20
Amendment%20Bill%202016.pdf.
11 To deal with the large number of immigrants in
Assam, the Indira Gandhi government enacted
the Illegal Migrants (Determination by Tribunal)
Act (IMDT) in 1983 to detect foreigners and

Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 67
SPECIAL ARTICLE
expel them from Assam. The Supreme Court
struck down this act in 2005. The IMDT Act
was different from the Foreigners Act of 1946
because in case of the latter the burden of proof
lay on the accuser. This made the process of de-
portation of illegal immigrants from Assam a
difficult one.
References
Banerjee, Paula (2010): Borders, Histories, Exist-
ences: Gender and Beyond, New Delhi: Sage
Publication.
Barooah Pisharoti, Sangeeta (2016): “Can the BJP
Fulfill Promise to Deport Undocumented
Immigrants If It Wins Assam?” Wire, 22 April,
https://thewire.in/30911/can-the-bjp-fulfill-
promise-to-deport-undocumented-immigrants
-if-it-wins-assam/.
Basu, Tapan et al (eds) (1993): Khaki Shorts and
Saffron Flags: A Critique of the Hindu Right,
New Delhi: Orient Longman.
Biswas, Shampa (2001): “‘Nuclear Apartheid’ as
Political Position: Race as a Postcolonial
Resource,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political,
Vol 26, No 4, pp 485–522.
Butalia, Urvashi (1998): The Other Side of Silence:
Voices from the Partition of India, New Delhi:
Penguin Books India.
Chatterji, Joya (1999): “The Fashioning of a Frontier:
The Radcliffe Line and Bengal’s Border Land-
scape, 1947–52,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol 33,
No 1, pp 185–242.
Datta, Antara (2008): “Trouble on the Friendship
Express?” Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 43,
No 21, pp 13–15.
— (2013): Refugees and Borders in South Asia: The
Great Exodus of 1971, London: Routledge.
Datta, Pranati (2004): “Push–pull Factors of
Undocumented Migration from Bangladesh to
West Bengal: A Perception Study,” The Qualita-
tive Report, Vol 9, No 2, pp 335–58.
Dutta, Nabajyoti (2015): “Immigration in Assam: A
Historical Perspective,” International Journal
of Humanities and Social Science Invention,
Vol 4, No 1, pp 30–32.
Ghosh, Gautam (2015): “An ‘Infiltration’ of Time?
Hindu Chauvinism and Bangladeshi Migration
in/to Kolkata, India,” Journal of Comparative
Research in Anthropology and Sociology, Vol 6,
No 1, pp 263–88.
Gillan, Michael (2002): “Refugees or Infiltrators?
The Bharatiya Janata Party and “Illegal” Mig-
ration from Bangladesh,” Asian Studies Review,
Vol 26, No 1, pp 73–95.
Golwalkar, M S (1939): We or Our Nationhood
Defined, Nagpur: Bharat Publications.
IANS (2014): “Two to Six Crore Bangladeshi
Migrants in India,” DNA, 13 May, http://www.
dnaindia.com/india/report-two-to-six-crore-
bangladeshi-migrants-living-in-india-says-ex-
army-officer-1988037.
Jaffrelot, Christophe (1999): “The Hindu Nationalist
Movement and Indian Politics 1925 to the
1990s: Strategies of Identity-Building,” Implan-
tation and Mobilisation, India: Penguin.
Kapur, Ratna (2016): “Racism Is Every Bit a Part of
“Indianness” as Religious Bigotry, Sexism,”
Wire, 10 June, http://thewire.in/41808/racism-
is-every-bit-a-part-of-indianness-as-religious-
bigotry-sexism/.
Mal, Jagadamba et al (2012): “Bangla Muslim Infil-
trators Attack Bodo Villages, Torch Houses,
Hamlets,” Organiser, http://www.organiser.
org/Encyc/2012/7/29/Bangla-Muslim-infiltra-
tors-attac-Bodo-villages,-torch-houses,-ham-
lets.aspx?NB=&lang=4&m1=&m2=&p1=&p2
=&p3=&p4=&PageType=N.
Muhith, A M A (1992): Bangladesh: Emergence of a
Nation, Bangladesh: The University Press.
Raghavan, Vijay and Roshni Nair (2011): “A Study
of the Socio–Economic Profile and Rehabilita-
tion Needs of Muslim Community in Prisons in
Maharashtra,” Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai.
— (2013): “Over-Representation of Muslims: The
Prisons of Maharashtra,” Economic & Political
Weekly, Vol 48, No 11, pp 12–17.
Ramachandran, Sujata (2003): “‘Operation Pushback’:
Sangh Parivar, State, Slums, and Surreptitious
Bangladeshis in New Delhi,” Economic & Politi-
cal Weekly, Vol 38, No 7, pp 637–47.
Ramaswamy, Sumathi (2001): “Maps and Mother
Goddesses in Modern India,” Imago Mundi,
Vol 53, pp 97–114.
Reddy, Deepa S (2005): “The Ethnicity of Caste,”
Anthropological Quarterly, Vol 78, No 3,
pp 543–84.
— (2011): “Hindutva: Formative Assertions,” Reli-
gion Compass, Vol 5, No 8, pp 439–51.
Roy, Anupama (2010): Mapping Citizenship in
India, New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Savarkar, Vinayak Damodar (1923): Hindutva: Who
Is a Hindu, Bombay: Veer Savarkar Prakashan.
Schendel, Willem van (2005): The Bengal Border-
land: Beyond State and Nation in South Asia,
London: Anthem Press.
Sen, Jhuma (2015): “Reconstructing Marichjhapi:
From Margins and Memories of Migrant Lives,”
Partition: The Long Shadow, Urvashi Butalia
(ed), New Delhi: Zubaan Publications.
Sen, Satadru (2003): “Border of Insanity: Deport-
ing Bangladeshi Migrants,” Economic & Politi-
cal Weekly, Vol 48, No 7, pp 611–12.
Sur, Malini (2012): “Bamboo Baskets and Barricades:
Gendered Landscapes at the India–Bangladesh
Border,” Transnational Flows and Permissive
Polities: Ethnographies of Human Mobilities in
Asia, Barak Kalir and Malini Sur (eds), Amster-
dam: Amsterdam University Press.
Suryanarayan, V and Geeta Ramaseshan (2016):
“Citizenship without Bias,” Hindu, 25 August,
http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/op-ed/.
Citizenship-without-bias/article14587201.ece
Thapar, Romila (1996): “The Theory of Aryan Race
in India: History and Politics,” Social Scientist,
Vol 24, Nos 1/3, pp 3–29.
Thorat, S K and Umakant (2004): Caste, Race, and
Discrimination: Discourses in International
Context, New Delhi: Rawat Publications.
Times of India (2012): “Court: Bangla Immigrant
Votes Hamper Eviction,” Times of India, 25 Jan-
uary, https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/
delhi/Court-Bangla-immigrant-votes-hamper-
eviction/articleshow/11622875.cms.
Tiwari, Deeptiman (2016): “Share of Muslims in
Jail Bigger Than in the Population, Show NCRB
Data,” Indian Express, 3 November, http://indi-
anexpress.com/article/explained/muslims-
daliots-undertrials-in-prison-ncrb-3734362/.

Nation-making in Partitioned India

January 27, 2018

Legacy of Partition: Foundations of the Indian Nation —Anwesha Sengupta, Ishan Mukherjee
Unthreading Partition: The Politics of Jute Sharing between Two Bengals —Anwesha Sengupta
Enter the NGO: Development as Destiny in India’s New Borderlands —Jack Loveridge
Education, Training and Refugee Rehabilitation in Post-partition West Bengal —Kaustubh Mani Sengupta
The Purusharthi Refugee: Sindhi Migrants in Jaipur’s Walled City —Garima Dhabhai
Refugee Legal Challenges to Bombay Government’s
Land Requisition Housing Scheme —Uttara Shahani

For copies write to:

Circulation Manager,
Economic and Political Weekly,
320–322, A to Z Industrial Estate, Ganpatrao Kadam Marg, Lower Parel, Mumbai 400 013.
email: circulation@epw.in

68 FEBRUARY 17, 2018 vol lIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
NOTES
Agrarian Crisis
A Ringside View—I
Uma Shankari
The 70th round of the National
Sample Survey Office estimates
the average income of a farm
family at `6,426 per month from
all sources such as cultivation,
animal husbandry, wages, etc.
This personal account, which
has been divided into two parts,
traces the developments leading
to the crisis in the context of
a village in Chittoor district,
Andhra Pradesh. Needless to say,
it is important to understand the
ground realities as much as the
statistical data for suitable policy
and administrative interventions.
Much of the material in this article is derived
from Dilemmas in Agriculture: A Personal Story
written by Gorrepati Narendranath and edited
and supplemented by me. I thank the reviewer
for their insightful comments.
I acknowledge with gratitude the valuable inputs
and suggestions on an earlier draft of the article
by my friends, Ramana Murthy, Uma Chakravarti,
Ananda Chakravarti and Jasvir Singh.
Uma Shankari (umanarendranath@gmail.com)
is a farmer and a social activist from Chittoor
district, Andhra Pradesh. Water and
agriculture are her areas of interest.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
T
he agrarian distress that has been
raging since 20 years is now threat-
ening to become a full-blown crisis,
with farmers taking to the streets in
several states—Maharashtra, Madhya
Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, etc. This article
traces the developments leading to the
crisis in the context of a village in the
Chittoor district of Andhra Pradesh.
Needless to say, it is important to under-
stand the ground realities as much as
the statistical data for suitable policy
and administrative interventions.
In the past 30 years, many villages in
Chittoor district, Andhra Pradesh have
been transformed from a viable agricul-
tural region—which grew a variety of
crops—to a semi-arid region. The ground-
water level has depleted drastically,
farms are filled with mango trees and a
few farmers are left with malnourished
cows. The income from neither mangoes
nor milk is sufficient to run a family.
Farmers as well as agricultural labourers
are moving out of the village to urban
areas for better options. The village com-
munity is diminished, frustrated, and
dragging and limping with old people.
Today, many farmers feel that they can
save money by leaving their land fallow.
Young farmers are finding it difficult to
get brides. The challenges we face are:
how to stop further groundwater deple-
tion, how to restore the agricultural
biodiversity, how to restore dignity and
respect for the farmer, and how to
increase income from farming. However,
the economic and political situation of
Dalit agricultural workers seems to be
improving, although people avoid overt
untouchability practices. Farmers need
their labour. The rising wage of agricul-
tural labourers and falling income of the
farmers make the situation worse.
In 1987, my husband Naren and I
decided to move back to our village as
vol lIII no 7
we were both interested in doing environ-
ment-friendly work in the village, includ-
ing organic farming. Our 32-acre farm
was a joint family property of three
brothers. We started to manage the farm
and shared the profits and losses equally.
We received a small allowance for manag-
ing the farm and for agricultural expenses
such as feeding the farm workers, process-
ing of crops at the homestead, maintain-
ing cattle, etc. The farm was scattered into
five different plots. Plot 1 was a mango
garden of 22 acres on one side of the vil-
lage; all other plots were on the other
side of the village. Plot 2 was a 2.5 acre
land of mixed coconut–mango gardens.
Plot 3 was also a mango garden. We had
800 mango trees, mostly of Totapuri and
Neelam varieties, but also of Alfonso,
Malgova and other special varieties which
were locally popular. Altogether, we had
25 varieties of mango, each with its own
taste and flavour. Inside the mango gar-
dens we had 600 coconut trees.
Plots 4 and 5 were about five acres of
land under the irrigation tank, which
has good open wells and borewells. We
used to cultivate paddy and sugar cane
there. Plot 5 has now been converted
into a mango garden. We drilled bore-
wells in five different places to supple-
ment four open wells. Our fellow farmers
were also drilling and installing bore-
wells with much enthusiasm for irrigation
purposes. Till the 1990s, we received com-
paratively better income from sugar cane
cultivation. Naren managed the super-
vision of farms and maintenance and
repairing works while I supervised all
the homestead-level operations with
hired women workers.
Things were going pretty well until
2000 with profits in one plot being
ploughed into another loss-making one,
and supplemented by income from my
earnings and our reserves. We already no-
ticed that the groundwater had started
declining soon after we moved. There-
fore, we were actively involved in advo-
cating for restoring small waterbodies
and tank restoration, and our efforts did
find an echo in government policy in
the form of a programme called Neeru-
Meeru (Water and You).
69
NOTES
A seven-year drought struck the region
from 1998 to 2004. Groundwater disap-
peared and water had to be brought from
outside to simply save the trees. By 2000
due to various reasons apart from the
drought, such as farm experiments, social
work expenses, and crash in bank interest
rates, collapse of the Unit Trust of India
(UTI), ever-increasing cost of cultivation,
stagnating prices, inflation, etc, our
savings and incomes evaporated and we
ended up with a debt of `2 lakh.
In 2009, Naren passed away and we
partitioned the land among the three
brothers, and I got 10 acres as my share.
This was followed by another severe
drought from 2012 to 2015. I lost over
300 coconut and mango trees. We faced
acute groundwater shortage and drink-
ing water was carted in by tankers from
nearby village borewells for three years.
Each family was supplied with 10–15
pots of water per day (around 150 litres),
out of which a cow alone would drink
three pots of water! We were literally
hunting for drinking water, with the
tankers going around the neighbouring
villages day and night requesting the
owners of the borewells to allow them to
fill their tankers, of course, for a fee. As
there was no drinking water, the ques-
tion of doing any farming did not arise;
in fact, the farmers mutely witnessed
the death of the trees they had planted.
In December 2015, when Chennai
faced a disastrous deluge, we had copi-
ous rains and our tanks and wells filled
up with water again. I resumed some
minimal farming by growing paddy and
groundnut. There was no income from
the land, but I tried to save existing trees
and to regenerate the soil and the land
by spending my income from other
sources. Again, the rains continued to
evade us throughout 2016.
This article is divided into two parts:
the first part deals with crops and our
experiments with them, and the second
part brings into the limelight the relation
between farmers and agricultural workers.
Agroecology of Chittoor
As part of the eastern Ghats, Chittoor
district is studded with hills. The region
has no major rivers, or canal projects.
However, it enjoys the benefit of both
70
south-west and north-east monsoons,
getting about 800 millimetres (mm) of
annual average rainfall, drained by hun-
dreds of rivulets and streams. Tradition-
ally, several chains of small tanks had
been built on these monsoonal streams
and rivulets, especially during the reign
of the Vijayanagara kings; and these
formed the backbone of irrigated agri-
culture in the district in the absence of
any major river or canal projects.
In fact, throughout the medieval period,
from 7th century to the British period,
“tanks” (cheruvulu, kuntalu) were construc-
ted with great passion throughout South
India, so that rainfed lands could be
transformed into irrigated lands through
which the state realised higher revenue
and farmers realised higher yields. The
salubrious climate and easy drainage of
water in most areas enabled the farmers
to cultivate a variety of crops, from pan
and banana to sugar cane, paddy, ground-
nut, and flowers and vegetables.
The district has three eco-agricultural
zones: eastern, middle and western. We
are in the middle zone. When there was
enough water in the open wells, the
farmers in our area used to grow paddy
for one season and followed it up with
two years of sugar cane cultivation. This
was the cycle. Sugar cane and jaggery
were the main sources of cash income.
There were seven sugar factories in the
district, but most of the sugar cane was
made into jaggery, because it was mainly
used for making country liquor and sweet
dishes. Different varieties of paddy grown
in the farms were consumed within the
village itself as paddy was also given as
a part of payment along with cash.
In the dry unirrigated lands, farmers
used to grow groundnut, intercropped
with pulses and millets. Finger millet,
sorghum and pearl millets were grown
for food as well as fodder. Pulses included
pigeon pea, cowpea, field bean, black
gram, and horse gram. Groundnut and
sesame were the main oil-seed crops.
Apart from the main crops as above,
several vegetables (brinjal, tomato, onion,
cluster bean, creeper bean, ladyfinger,
pumpkins, bottle gourd, bitter gourd,
ridge gourd, several kinds of greens,
etc), spices like chillies, turmeric and co-
riander, betel leaves, and even tobacco
FEBRUARY 17, 2018
were grown for home consumption. Trees
like tamarind and gongura were com-
mon; a variety of edible greens (almost a
dozen) collected from the fields supple-
mented the cultivated vegetables in
different seasons. Various kinds of trees
were grown to provide green leaf
manure, which we used for paddy culti-
vation, and timber for various purposes.
Animal husbandry was always an
important allied activity in Indian farm-
ing. Bullocks were used for ploughing,
water-lifting and transport, and cows
for milk, dung and urine. Since 1983, a
district-level milk cooperative society,
set up by the government, has been
functioning in our village and it has led
to an introduction of cross-breed cows
for increased milk production. Sheep
manure was considered as valuable and
goats were also kept for meat and milk.
Almost everybody had backyard poultry.
Fish was available in plenty in water-
bodies like tanks and wells as well as
in paddy fields. Our elders used to say
that nothing except for salt would be
bought; everything needed was grown
or gathered from the neighbourhood
villages and forests.
From Tanks to Borewells
In Chittoor district, there are about
8,000 tanks today. Due to the hilly ter-
rain, most of them are chains of tanks
with the surplus of one tank flowing into
the one below and are generally small in
size, irrigating 30–100 acres.
The first thing I did after going to the
village was to undertake a survey of tanks
in the district (Shankari 1991). Thirty
years ago, the main problems were the
lack of a government budget for regular
maintenance and neglect of feeder chan-
nels. Loss of water was reported because
of indiscipline in water distribution, main-
ly not closing the sluices for storing wa-
ter in the tank; so that whatever water
flowed in got emptied out within a few
days. We did a lot of work on tank resto-
ration in our own village.
Subsequently, in the 1990s, tank res-
toration became a component of the
Neeru-Meeru project and our panchayat
took full advantage of it. But, nowadays,
the tanks are not being used for irrigat-
ing the fields directly. They are now
vol lIII no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

used as percolation ponds for recharg-
ing the wells and borewells in the com-
mand area. Removing the silt from the
tank beds continues under the Mahatma
Gandhi National Rural Employment
Guarantee Act (MgNREGA), and today
most tanks in the district have been
deepened and feeder channels have
been cleared of vegetation.
Hundreds of check dams and perco-
lation tanks have also been constructed.
But the old system has changed beyond
recognition. The farmers are not only
growing paddy, but are growing different
crops in the tank commands—groundnut,
ragi, sugar cane, vegetables, mango—
and their watering schedules are differ-
ent. They have dispensed with the servic-
es of the neerugattis (local persons ap-
pointed by the farmers collectively to
regulate water flows to different farms).
Now, the sluices of several tanks are also
closed; the tanks are serving the pur-
pose of percolation rather than irriga-
tion. Most farmers have switched to
borewell irrigation.
Borewell Technology and
the Electricity Tangle
The advent of independence saw no per-
ceptible change in the attitude of the
authorities. The government was still
considered the owner of the tank system
(and other common property resources),
and, therefore, the onus was on the
government to repair and maintain it or
not. Small waterbodies continued to be
neglected as in the British period. Intro-
duction of diesel engines in the early
1960s meant that more water could be
pumped out with less physical effort. The
problem was further accentuated with
the introduction of electric pumpsets
and supply of cheap subsidised electric
power during the 1970s and 1980s. With
the earlier bullock-drawn moats, re-
charging of the wells kept pace with the
water drawn out from them. But, with
the diesel and cheaper electric motors,
the water table in the wells was depleted
faster than their capacity to recharge.
This necessitated deepening of wells
and use of rigs to blast the rocks.
But, very soon, the water table went
beyond the reach of the rigs and the
farmers were forced to go for in-well
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
bores. If one struck good water in the
bore inside one’s well, it only meant that
the neighbour’s well would go dry and
he would have to bore deeper. This kind
of one-upmanship has meant that by the
early 1980s the water table, which was
around 40–50 feet, went down to 200
feet. Today, it has gone down to 1,000 ft!
Soon in-well bores gave way to surface
borewells, now going up to 500 feet and
beyond, necessitating the use of more
powerful motors and pumpsets to suck
the water from deep down, implying
greater use of electric energy.
The current scenario is that all land-
holders who were earlier irrigating their
fields with tank water (supplemented by
wells towards the end of the season) now
irrigate the same land with deep bore-
wells, pumping water from 500 to 700
feet and more below the surface. In this
process many borewells have gone dry
and water has not been struck in new
places. The lucky few also survive for an
average period of five years. The bore-
wells under tanks would get recharged
when there is water in the tank.
By 1997–98, we faced a severe drought,
which lasted for seven years till 2004–05.
Copious rains followed, but our happi-
ness was short-lived. By the end of 2011,
our borewells went dry again. Another
severe drought followed from 2011 to 2015
and we faced acute drinking water short-
age. Thousands of trees died irreversibly
throughout the district. Farmers lost
heavily and most able-bodied men mi-
grated from the village, leaving only older
people, women and children at homes.
The last borewell we drilled in our
land was in 2002, which served us till
2011. When this borewell dried up in
2011, I did not drill another one. I am
managing now with my open wells, try-
ing to save the standing trees, and grow-
ing millets in small plots, leaving the
rest of the land fallow. Meanwhile, rains
have been becoming erratic and there
have been abnormally long dry spells.
These have led to more borewells and
more expenses, more borewell failures
and more crop failures! We were caught
in a cycle of borewell failures and crop
failures. The area got transformed from
a viable agricultural area to an area bereft
of water and uncertain crop yields.
vol lIII no 7
NOTES
We made a small calculation: during
the 1980s–90s the rainfall was around
700–800 mm per year, the recharge at
10% percolation was 70 crore litre per
year, whereas the total discharge was
around 290 crore litre per year, four
times the recharge! By 2015, the rainfall
had declined to around 350 mm per
year, the recharge had declined to 35
crore litre per year, and the discharge
had declined to 25 crore litre per year,
with most of the borewells going irre-
versibly bone dry!
On an average, a farmer would have
spent `2 lakh per well (at current rates).
This is a modest estimate taking into con-
sideration the cost of digging an open
well, lining with stones, going in for an
electric motor, then deepening the well,
blasting with rigs and sinking a borewell,
installing a compressor or a more power-
ful electric pumpset and then abandon-
ing the whole thing and going in for a
fresh surface borewell, which may or
may not strike water. Very little of this in-
vestment has come from the banks or
other state agencies. As the surveys on
suicides of cotton farmers revealed,
most of the credit (80%–90%) availed of
by farmers came from private sources at
a heavy rate of interest. But, the farmer
still prefers to go in for borewell at such
a huge expenditure and risk because it
makes eminent sense to him. If a farmer
were to spend `50,000 for sinking a bore-
well and fixing a motor, and were to irri-
gate one acre of land with the water (the
average per borewell is about two acres
in this area) by planting sugar cane he
would be able to clear his loan within
two to three years. However, he does not
want to recognise that in the next two or
three years the borewell would go dry
again, forcing him to go in for another
borewell, much deeper this time! He
keeps hoping his individual luck would
be better and his borewell would serve
him longer. When the borewell goes dry,
he curses his bad luck and keeps on drill-
ing borewells till the income nowhere
matches the expenditure.
With the advent of borewell technology,
Pandora’s box has been opened, with an
each-one-for-himself-and-the-devil-take-
care-of-the-rest attitude. Competitive
drilling of borewells is not confined to
71
NOTES
the land under the tanks, but to dry-
lands which are being converted into
mango gardens on a large scale, actively
promoted by the government under the
MgNREGA. The individual-oriented bore-
well technology has further aggravated
the problem of neglect of tanks and,
gradually, those having lands adjacent
to the tank bed have started encroach-
ing on to them, often sinking borewells
right in the tank bed and occupying
large parts of it. Today, in most villages
of Chittoor district there is no question
of drinking water if there is no electric
supply. Drinking water wells have disap-
peared or have gone irreversibly dry.
Thanks to the way the borewell technol-
ogy has been used or allowed to be used
today, the farmers in Chittoor district
are completely dependent upon electric
supply for their water needs. This is
more or less the case in all the upland
areas of the state as well as the country.
Agitations for Free Power
In 1995, before the state elections, the
chief ministerial candidate Chandrababu
Naidu promised rice at `2 per kg, power
at `50 per hp and the prohibition of liquor.
But he did not fulfil his promises when
he became the chief minister.
In 1999, the Electricity Board of And-
hra Pradesh released a white paper, in
which it was stated that farmers were
paying only 3 paise per unit, whereas
the state was spending `2 per unit for
agriculture. Their consumption has
increased to 45% of the total power uti-
lised. Meanwhile, industrial consump-
tion had gone down from 48% to 28%,
so there was no other option except to
increase power tariffs for agriculture. It
was increased by 8–10 times, that is,
800% to 1,000% at one go! Then, we
formed a group called the Rashtriya
Raithu Seva Samithi (RRSS) and started
studying electricity matters.
In the meantime, despite the opposi-
tion parties’ boycott, the new electricity
act was brought in and the Andhra
Pradesh Electricity Regulatory Commis-
sion (APERC) was appointed to conduct
public hearings on power sector matters.
With the help of a retired engineer of the
electricity department, we made our
own calculations and argued that since
72
power consumption in agriculture was
not metered, the government had wrong-
ly identified the loss of power due to
theft as agriculture consumption. But,
again, electricity tariff was increased
and farmers started agitations all over
the state (Narendranath et al 2005).
In Tirupati, we started a committee with
all the farmers’ organisations to protest
against the increase in power tariffs. We
undertook a tour of the district and spoke
in public meetings to farmers about how
we were being made scapegoats for their
inability to curtail power thefts. We
asked the farmers not to pay such unjust
power tariffs till the government rolled
back the increase. We participated every
year in public hearings on accounts sub-
mitted by DISCOMS (distribution compa-
nies) and TRANSCO (transmission com-
pany). We also conducted trainings for
farmers on electricity matters. In due
course the RRSS was asked to be a mem-
ber of the advisory council of the APERC
on behalf of farmers.
Elections came again, and although
we only demanded the rollback of the
increased tariffs, the opposition leader
promised free power for agriculture and
won the elections on that slogan. Today we
are enjoying the so-called free power;
actually they are charging a minimal
amount of `130/connection/year as fixed
charges and giving us only seven hours
of power per day as against nine hours
during the previous regime. Power break-
downs are very common, mainly because
of overload, illegal drawing of power,
and so on. Lines for agriculture have been
separated from the lines for domestic
consumption. More transformers have
been installed. A service charge of `130
per pumpset is being collected for agri-
culture power; meters have been
installed in homes and people do pay
power charges quite promptly.
There is one water canal running
through our village which is actually a
part of the water transfer project from
the Krishna river, called Handri–Neeva
Sujala Sravanthi project. Farmers are hop-
ing this project would get completed soon
and our water problem would be solved.
But, actually, the problem needs a multi-
pronged approach. Rainfed crops should
be encouraged with better marketing
FEBRUARY 17, 2018
facilities and better prices and incomes.
Rainwater harvesting, watershed deve-
lopment programmes and afforestation
programmes should be implemented
properly. Water-intensive crops such as
paddy and sugar cane should be prohi-
bited. Trees which do not need watering
should be encouraged with backward
and forward linkages.
Crops for Cash, or Food?
The biggest dilemma farmers have been
facing is whether to grow food crops or
the so-called cash crops. In heavily irri-
gated areas the traditionally preferred
crop is always paddy. But, in areas such
as my village, water sources have always
been limited and most of the areas were
under rainfed conditions where millets
like ragi, jowar, and bajra used to be
widely grown and consumed as food,
along with pulses and oil seeds. These
cereals contained valuable nutrition,
provided fodder and fibre and protected
the farmers from malnutrition. But rice
was traditionally considered an elite
crop and people generally longed to
become paddy farmers with assured
irrigation.
In the 1980s, N T Rama Rao brought
down the price of rice distributed
through the public distribution system
(PDS) and also increased the amount
supplied, which led to the consumption
of more rice by poor people. Therefore,
farmers started cultivating more rice.
Millets simply disappeared from the field
and the plate. Or, they became animal
feed, instead of food. It is only recently
that civil society groups are actively
reviving millet cultivation and consump-
tion, especially in drought-prone areas
under rainfed conditions. The govern-
ment has also woken up at last to the cri-
sis and is now trying to promote millets
in various ways.
Crops Grown till 2012
Paddy–Srivari: In our area, farmers used
to grow paddy for self-consumption.
Since we were advocating prohibition,
we started to grow rice. We used high-
yielding varieties of the government, as
well as some traditional varieties of other
nearby regions (Tamil Nadu, Kerala and
vol lIII no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Telangana). Again, for ethical/ideological
reasons, we refused to give our land for
tenancy farming and tried to cultivate
using hired labour. We ended up paying
enormous amounts for labour for two
acres. We had heavily invested in organ-
ic and leaf manure and groundnut cake
which were labour-intensive operations
and we ended up spending much more
than others.
Our paddy crop was an average yielder,
meaning as much as anybody else’s.
Most of the farmers neither selected
their seed carefully, nor treated the
nursery properly. They often planted late
but tried to make up with the application
of urea and/or nitrogen (N), phosphorus
(P) and potassium (K) (NPK). While the
crop of paddy we produced was almost
equal to what most of the other farmers
were producing per acre (20–22 bags),
only a very few farmers could produce
30–40 bags per acre, our costs were
twice or thrice of others, mainly on
labour and organic manures. We were
putting double the farm yard manure
as others.
Ultimately, the rice we grew was rath-
er expensive and very exhausting as we
had to take care of so many vagaries like
truant labour, diseases, timely applica-
tion of various organic inputs (searching
for them), timely weeding, proper har-
vesting and drying, and finally storing.
We could avoid all this if only we had
given our land on tenancy! Besides, if we
hired labour we would have to cook the
afternoon meal for them and also hear
complaints about how badly the meal
was cooked! No wonder most small
farmers, including those owning one or
two acres of wetland, gave their land on
tenancy. We hardly sold any of the paddy
we produced. Most of it was consumed
by us and hired workers for various
works. After three years of such expen-
sive experiments we opted for share-
cropping like the others.
We had been growing organic paddy
since 1993, but, whatever seed we sowed,
or organic manures we used, or plant
protection methods we tried, the yields
were always low. It was then that the
System of Rice Intensification (SRI),
called Srivari (can be translated from
Telugu as auspicious paddy) came like a
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
boon. It was developed in Madagascar
by a French Christian priest. However, it is
not a different variety of paddy, but its
cultivation method is different. It does
not need continuous flooding and sub-
mergence, as is the usual practice. Spac-
ing between the transplanted seedlings
is wide, almost 25 centimetres, whereas it
is about 5–10 cm in traditional method.
The roots grow into a big bunch, tillering
is profuse (30–60 to even 100 per plant—
once we counted 140 tillers, whereas in
the traditional flooding method there
are up to 15–20 tillers), yield is more. We
grew this paddy in the SRI method for
three seasons. The first time we got 20
bags for one-third acre, which means 60
bags per acre! The second time we got
caught in drought and our fellow farmers
did not give us water, and we left the
crop halfway. The third time tillering was
very good but yield was medium—30
bags/acre. We analysed and came to the
conclusion that we should have weeded
earlier, we did not as there was not much
weed growth. But we were told that re-
gardless of weed growth, early weeding
is a must in SRI, since weeding promotes
aeration and sunlight.
We have also experimented with
Subhash Palekar’s methods,1 especially
with his Jeevamrita fertiliser mix,
which is showing excellent results. We
are keen to further experiment with
his methods.
Sugar cane and jaggery: The district is
known for its jaggery. The jaggery comes
in two categories, the white and the
golden yellow-coloured, mostly from
Aragonda, in Chittoor district. Farmers
have increasingly taken to adding bleach-
ing agents such as sodium thiosulphate
(Hydros), which is prohibited for human
consumption. Another variety is black-
coloured due to the nature of the soil.
Generally, soils that are alkaline will
give rise to paler jaggery; it looks attrac-
tive but is not as sweet as the darker one.
The latter fetches a slightly lower price
than the yellow variety (by about `100
to `200 per quintal).
We have been growing organic sugar
cane for which our expenditure is higher
than the profit. After much trial and error
we have been making it into powdered
vol lIII no 7
NOTES
jaggery and selling it directly to consum-
ers for a slightly higher price. And that is
how we managed to overcome our losses.
The dilemma in jaggery is that while
sugar is unhealthy, the demand for jag-
gery is decreasing because of the smell
and colour. Sugar cane cultivation, how-
ever, has declined with back-to-back
droughts in the last 20 years.
Groundnut: The groundnut cultivation
is the mainstay of the dryland, rain-fed
farmers and most marginal farmers
double up as agricultural workers. Un-
fortunately, the crop is very much
dependent upon the mercy of timely and
frequent rains in the kharif. For every
one season of good crops there will be
two bad years of heavy loss and two
years of bare sustenance. Of late, the
cost of raising the groundnut crop has
also been rising, pushing the farmers
into greater debt. The brunt of the price
crash due to the import of cheap palm
oil from Malaysia was borne by these
farmers. The yields are also very low—
depending on timely rains, from 5–15
bags per acre. But, in the flat sandy soils
of the eastern taluks of Chittoor, it is
raised as an irrigated dry crop in the rabi
season with heavy doses of chemical fer-
tilisers and the yield goes up to 30–40
bags per acre.
Coconut trees: We had about 500 coco-
nut trees in two different plots in the
midst of mango trees. These trees were
planted more than 50 years ago when
there was no water scarcity. With the
advent of borewells, water shortage be-
came frequent. Added to this was the
disease attack, which started about 15
years ago, and is still going on. But, now,
we have to handle a monkeys menace
too as they break tender coconuts and
drink up the juice before they can develop!
The only people who have the skill and
are officially allowed to catch these
monkeys belong to a gypsy tribe called
Guvvalavaallu (nari kuravar in Tamil).
The men of this tribe are specialised in
hunting and the women live by making
bead necklaces.
We called them once to set up the
traps. They spent three days in the
garden and we had to spend almost
73
NOTES
`2,000, but no monkey got trapped!
Recently, I had to call them again.
With all these problems, our income
from the coconut trees had reduced to
absurd levels. Many farmers have cut
down coconut trees and started to grow
other crops. But, we were reluctant to do
that. Our coconut garden was a beauti-
ful place with two huge open wells like
swimming pools. But the recent drought
dealt a fatal blow to the coconut trees
and out of 300 in one garden hardly 40-
odd trees survived, and these also may
have to be cut down, as they need a lot of
water to survive. This was the same story
in the other garden as well.
Mango: Climatically, the area is suited for
mango. Mango yields well every alter-
nate year. Once a mango garden is
raised (in about seven years) it requires
little maintenance and fetches a fairly
good income. While the income from
mango for the last three decades has been
steadily rising, the costs have also been
rising, especially for spraying pesticides,
ploughing and irrigation. Of late, since
two decades, the returns are not as much
as they used to be. Although the price of
mango is highly volatile from year to
year depending on the production in
the district and elsewhere, it tends to
give a steady income in a lump sum
annually to the farmer with the least
maintenance problems. Most farmers sell
their mango crops to merchants for one
or two years at a time and use the money
for some urgent needs, such as marriag-
es, house construction or sinking bore-
wells or for medical bills. A number of
juice-making factories have sprung up
in the district, which are seasonal in op-
eration. Their fortunes also fluctuate
with the mango market.
Till the 1960s nobody sprayed any
pesticides on mango, or for that matter on
any other crop. It started in the late
1960s with the advent of DDT and Endrin.
One spray was enough to take care of all
the pests then. Soon it stopped working
and farmers started spraying Endosulfan,
Chlorpyrifos, followed by Monocrotophos
and synthetic Pyrethroids. Minimum two
sprays, one preventive spray before the
flowering and one after, are the norm
nowadays. Sometimes, if the pest attack
74
is severe, three sprays have to be carried
out. All these pesticides are deadly and
countries in Europe would not consent
to import these fruits. But, in our coun-
try the fruits are freely eaten, there is no
testing, no regulation. We were afraid
we would lose all income if we switched
all 25 acres of mango garden to organic
farming. Therefore, we kept aside two
mango gardens in another part of the
village, each two to three acres, for our
organic experiments.
We searched in books, consulted with
experts and followed organic methods
to keep the pests away. We sprayed neem
cake soaked in a water solution on the
flowers; when it did not work, we mixed
neem oil, 5 ml to 25 ml per litre of water
with soap and sprayed. Once when we
sprayed 25 ml per litre, the leaves got
“burnt” and withered. Another time we
soaked neem seeds, ground them into a
paste, and filtered and sprayed it. After
that, we sprayed cow urine with water
solution in the ratio of 1:6. Once we
bought factory-made Azadirachtin solu-
tion and sprayed according to their
instructions. Another time we sprayed
chilly-garlic solution. All these trials had
only a limited effect in a few seasons;
the pest attacks continued.
Let me explain the yearly operations
of mango crop. Flowering starts from
December, goes on till January, and
happens in one or two spells. Farmers
usually do a preventive spray of pesti-
cides, followed by another spray after
the flowering is completed; and a third
one if pests continue. If the weather is
dry, and if there is no fog in the mornings,
pests are less. Cloudy, moist weather
breeds pests. When the fruits start form-
ing amidst the flowers, watering is done
around once a week or 10 days, for the
next two months. There should be at
least two spells of rains, one around
Shivaratri, in late February or in the be-
ginning of March, and another around
Ugadi, late March or beginning of April.
These rains will make the mangoes
grow in size. From May, there are sum-
mer showers, which may bring wind
storms or hailstorms and there may be
heavy loss because of fruit drop. From
the beginning of June, the south-west
monsoon starts, and fruits may ripen
FEBRUARY 17, 2018
fast. If there are good rains, then worms
infest the mangoes!
Climate change is now for real. In
2016, mango trees bloomed in four in-
stalments, right from November to Feb-
ruary end. The south-west monsoon
rains come a month later and the north-
east monsoon often fails or vice versa.
There are long dry spells, and the temper-
atures are unusually hot with little
breeze. The main lesson we learned in
farming is that every season is a differ-
ent story, a surprise, and that climate is
the most important factor. Climate can
make or mar the crop, and we are utterly
helpless when the weather is unfavoura-
ble. Our efforts in the form of irrigation,
fertilisers and pesticides have only a
limited impact.
There is also no point in blindly copy-
ing organic methods followed by another
person in another area. For instance,
Bhaskar Save, the veteran organic farmer
in Maharashtra, grows mangoes, and
sapota. He does not plough, he does not
water around the trees, and he has made
2-foot deep trenches running criss-cross
between the trees, with mulch material,
and he waters these trenches selectively.
We wanted to try it in our garden, but we
realised our groundwater is just 8-feet
deep in Save’s area, whereas in our area
it is very deep, and selective watering
during the fruiting season is essential
for getting a good crop. However, I
stopped ploughing the whole garden ex-
cept around the canopy of the trees,
made shallow trenches, and fed them
with manure, mulch and water. By not
ploughing, I brought down the expendi-
ture from `20,000 to `5,000, but the
garden became infested with partheni-
um weeds, and I spent another `2,000–
`3,000 to pull them out.
Our organic mango garden has another
nuisance. Red ants are aplenty and
workers find it very difficult to climb on
the trees and harvest the fruits! These
are almost entirely absent in chemical
gardens. Thus, every garden, every field
has its special problems and one has to
tailor one’s interventions according to
the specific needs of the trees/crops. The
other thing to remember is: every season
is a surprise, for whatever we may or may
not do, the results are unpredictable.
vol lIII no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

Although mango cultivation is consid-
ered as relatively easy, it has its own tra-
vails—chemical or organic. Organic
farming is easier for small farms with
annual crops, rather than big farms and
horticulture crops. Whereas a small
farm of one or two acres would need just
a drum or two of such mixtures.
Vegetables: We used to grow vegetables
earlier for domestic consumption; what-
ever was surplus used to be sold. Today
it has become a specialised crop, with
new hybrid seeds, demanding a heavy
dose of chemical fertilisers and pesti-
cides. After a few trials, we stopped
growing vegetables because vegetable
cultivation is labour- and capital-intensive
work. Since they are highly perishable,
prices fluctuate a lot. Farmers prefer to
grow them in small plots of one or
two acres generally. As there are not
enough cold storage plants, farmers
often face heavy losses in vegetables,
when the prices crash due to a glut in
the market.
Thus, in the choice of crop, price or
profit is the primary motivating factor.
But the farmer will make the choice of
crop depending upon a variety of factors
apart from the price, like cost and easy
availability of labour in season, ability of
the crop to withstand shortages of water
supply and easy marketability and disease-
proneness of the crop. It is the risk of rejec-
tion by the factory (apart from the inten-
sity of labour) that dissuaded many
farmers from taking to gherkin cultiva-
tion under contract farming for a com-
pany in Kolar, Karnataka, although it
promised high returns of `50,000 per
acre apart from supply of seed, pesticide,
fertiliser and credit and buy-back of the
produce at a fixed, predetermined price.
It is for the same reasons that crops
like sugar cane are preferred to the rest.
Sugar cane can withstand shortage of
water for over a month. Even if one or
two wettings are missed, it would result
in some crop, unlike paddy or vegetables,
which will be wiped out completely.
Besides, it is the least disease-prone and
jaggery-making can be managed with
family labour with one or two hired
labourers, so that even at current low
prices (not counting family labour) one
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
can earn up to `20,000– `30,000 per
acre (gross income). If dairying could
take care of the running costs of labour,
etc, then one could end the season with
a lump sum. It also has a long shelf life
under good storage conditions. This has
been the main attraction of sugar cane.
Crops since 2012
Till 2012 we were growing some field
crop or the other, as mentioned above, as
well as tree crops—mango and coconut.
My borewell dried up in December 2011.
Normally it would get recharged with
the onset of monsoon, but that did
not happen. Till 2015 there was no re-
charge; in fact, the submersible bore
pump got stuck and I had to give up
trying to get it out.
As for my fellow farmers, even they
themselves have chosen mango cultiva-
tion. The first motivation is that the
government started promoting mango
cultivation on a huge scale under the
MgNREGA from around 2008. It pays for
the fixed costs of digging pits and plant-
ing; with some begging and borrowing
from the neighbours, the farmers man-
age to water the saplings for the first few
years. Once they are established, they do
not need as much watering as rice, sugar
cane and other field crops to survive.
The second motivation has been that
since the introduction of the MGNREGA,
hiring workers has become an expensive
proposition, as well as a vexing and frus-
trating exercise, with workers becoming
truant and undisciplined.
The third motivation is that agriculture
does not pay well, whatever crop one
may go for. Therefore, farmers are in
search of other occupations for an addi-
tional income; since mango does not need
close supervision, the farmers can take up
additional occupations more easily, such
as a regular job, trading, etc. Hundreds
of thousands of trees have been planted
with government support in private
gardens, with little forward linkages.
Whether the farmers would realise a
good income or not is anybody’s guess.
The government promotes horticul-
ture crops in good croplands, instead of
food field crops in a foolish manner.
Farmers are also taking to these because
of water and labour shortage, high cost
vol lIII no 7
NOTES
of inputs and low prices for the produce;
or simply because the subsidy is availa-
ble. But, once horticulture perennials
are planted, regular annual field crops
cannot be grown. It saddens me to see
the lands in our villages which used to
be cultivated with a variety of food
crops, from bund to bund, without leav-
ing an inch, have been converted into
mango gardens. The district has become
a site of monoculture of mango. It is often
thought that mango is a less water-
consuming crop. But this is questionable
at the scale it has been done in the
district. For, it has to be watered almost
daily during the first few years till it
starts yielding; after that, it has to be
watered once in a week or two weeks in
peak summer for good yields and size.
Compared to paddy, it, of course, re-
quires less water. It is alright if you have
just one or two mango trees, but if it is
done on such a huge commercial scale as
it is being done today, then everybody is
watering them in the summer, just when
water is scarce!
With food crops, even if the crop fails,
there is something to eat through the
year; whereas only a few mangoes can
be eaten in a year for about two months.
For instance, the best yield for ground-
nut in our area is around 30 kg per bag
per acre. Even if the yield is three bags
per acre, it would still be used as a food
at home and fodder for cattle. Today, as
food crops disappear, all the food items
have to be purchased at a high cost.
Food crop residues were also used as a
valuable fodder for the livestock earlier
and fodder came entirely free! Now,
villagers buy all types of fodder from
outside at high prices, and they do so as
there is no choice; or they have to grow
them in mango gardens. The farmers
depend on sale of milk for day-to-day
cash flows and have to purchase feed
and fodder at high prices. The govern-
ment policy failed to make food crops
remunerative and had been promoting
the so-called cash crops, often resulting
in neither food nor cash with farmers.
Although the farmers understand this,
there is an ever-increasing need for cash
for all kinds of purposes, and they are
forced to grow cash crops instead of
food crops.
75
NOTES
It is important to remember here that
farmers have a certain mindset: if they
grow something they would eat it, or if
some food item is freely available in the
vicinity, they would collect it and eat it;
otherwise they would go without it.
They do not usually buy and eat. This is,
of course, also changing, but still contin-
ues to a large extent. For instance, if the
cow goes dry, they would go without
milk. A rupee saved is a rupee earned.
There is reluctance to spend cash on
food. Cash is meant to be spent on
“luxury” or on needs that cannot be ful-
filled locally: allopathic medical care,
English medium education, college fees,
plastic/aluminium/steel vessels, machin-
ery, footwear, clothes, mobile phones and
motorbikes. The only exception to this
rule is the meat on Sundays and festivals
that is readily bought and eaten. So,
even if a son is earning comfortably, the
money would be saved to build a house, to
perform marriages, to buy gold, or for
health emergencies, not on food.
Milk Economy: Who Milks Whom?
Cattle are an important link in farming.
As already mentioned, bullocks have
almost disappeared from the scene,
making way for milch cows. The func-
tions which the bullocks performed are
being done by tractors, electric pumpsets
and automobiles. We too tried our hand
at dairying. We employed one person to
look after the cows at a modest salary
(which he would make up through the
hearty meals three times a day at our
house and other perks). We raised grass
and bought groundnut cake every month
along with rice bran. We often ran out of
rice straw which sometimes had to be
bought at a high price.
Initially, we were thinking of raising
some local breeds—the famous Punga-
nur breed, which is now not traceable
due to extensive cross-breeding. But,
they were not available easily and we
settled for cross-bred cows with a greater
percentage of the local/natural blood.
We raised grass and during the first cou-
ple of years we did not incur any loss as
we were using some of the milk for our
home consumption and selling the rest.
But, gradually, the price of oil cake be-
gan to rise. Initially, it was the same
76
price as the milk. But now milk sells at
`25 per litre while groundnut cake costs
nearly twice and more! Then we started
to lose money. This was unsustainable.
So, we retired our cowman. As for the
cows, we decided the better thing would
be to lease them out for half the share of
milk, dung and urine, but it did not work
out for long. I still have one cow, I have
given up on milk money; instead, I have
told my worker to keep the cow and the
milk money in exchange for dung and
urine for making organic manure.
A farmer has to feed at least one kilo-
gram of oil cake and half a kilogram
of rice bran every day to keep a cow
healthy. He should also supplement
these with horsegram or cowpea when-
ever possible. All these are too costly. So,
most of the farmers do not go by the
rules. They feed their cows on the grass
that they gather from the fields and
what they grow, during the six months
from July to December. From January
they feed them on sugar cane leaf, which
is available when farmers are making
jaggery, till April; and in lean summer
months, from April to June on ground-
nut leaf and horsegram leaf and so on.
They feed only lactating cows with oil
cake and rice bran.
Nowadays, after the lands have been
converted to mango gardens, crop resi-
dues from field crops such as millets-
pulses-oilseeds, which used to provide
most of the fodder, have become scarce.
Farmers are buying factory-made cattle
feed, which is slightly cheaper, instead
of the traditional mix of bran-oilcake-
pulses-crop residues. As rains have been
failing frequently, there is acute short-
age of green grass. Farmers are buying
dry paddy straw and supplementing this
with factory-made feed during the sum-
mer season. During the monsoon season,
there would be grass in the mango gar-
dens and the cows would be happy to
graze. The cows are taken out for graz-
ing everyday even when there is not
much grass available, for it is believed
they need exercise. They are also bathed
and reasonably kept clean, although wa-
ter shortage makes that difficult too.
In Chittoor district, dairying is as
important as farming, since the region
suffers from frequent droughts and
FEBRUARY 17, 2018
farming is not always profitable. Opera-
tion Flood, launched in 1970, brought a
lot of relief to farmers in the district
who earned a steady income from dair-
ying (Shankari 1989). Today, most
farmers depend on milk for daily and
mango for yearly cash flow. But, as I ex-
plained above, that too is becoming
more and more difficult and farmers are
leaving it just as they are leaving farm-
ing. Studies have shown that the price
of milk offered by milk companies does
not even cover the cost of farmers’ la-
bour and capital costs of buying a cow
(Murthy et al 2012).
Most of the dairying work is done by
the women. They milk the cows, clean
the cowshed, stall-feed the cows, bathe
them and take them out for grazing.
Men also pitch in, especially for grazing, if
they are free. With the breakdown of
joint families, and all the children going
to school and colleges, the women have
to do both house work and help in agri-
cultural-dairying operations, without any
help from either family members or
workers. I find farmers are giving up
dairying gradually, although that gives
them ready cash flow for their house-
hold expenses, preferring to buy milk
than go into all this trouble.
In the meantime, what is saddening is
the way the government has killed the
milk cooperative, which was initially
promoted by it. When the cooperative
dairy was at its peak, milk sales were
high and did a lot for improving the
farmers’ financial situation. Traditionally,
milk was never an essential item in the
diet of people in this region. Cows were
kept to breed bullocks and the little milk
they gave was used for children, and
buttermilk was consumed. When milk
cooperatives were started, farmers start-
ed to keep hybrid cows with much en-
thusiasm, since they were paid every
week or 15 days. The cash took care of all
the minor routine expenses.
Elections to the cooperatives right
from the village to the district level were
a big political affair, and even the secre-
tary of the cooperative at the village
used to make a lot of money, taking a
little extra milk officially for testing and
asking people to pour over the brim of
the litre measured, etc. The milk for
vol lIII no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

testing would never be tested. Promot-
ing dairy by the government was soon
reeking of corruption and it could not
pay farmers for milk supplied to them
for over a year! After much agitation, the
bills were paid, but the cycle repeated.
At this juncture, the government allo-
wed private dairies to operate. Heritage
Foods, a firm of Chandrababu Naidu’s
wife, took a lead by starting a big dairy
in 1992. Since then, private dairy com-
panies have mushroomed and formed a
cartel and they do not raise the price of
milk, despite there being several compa-
nies (so much for the multi-buyer model
of the World Bank).
In fact, today, the smaller companies
are disappearing in favour of the bigger
private companies like the Heritage
Foods again. Now, one cannot see big
dairies of milk producers anywhere in
our area because they are simply not
economical. Selling milk as middlemen
is more profitable! So, farmers manage
their cows by grazing them and feeding
them as little as possible. In fact, incre-
asingly many farmers do not even keep
cows; they just graze calves and sell
them when they are about to deliver,
because even keeping cows has become
uneconomical. Good yielders would cost
`50,000– `60,000 and many farmers
find it uneconomical. Instead, they buy a
female calf and graze-feed it, insemi-
nate and sell it when it is about to deliver
(Shankari 2015).
Sheep and Goats
Sheep and goats were also very much
priced for their meat and dung, but
keeping them has now become a special-
ised profession, and very few farmers
are maintaining them. Sheep and goats
are different kinds of animals altogether
and need to keep different kind of daily
routines, especially in grazing practices.
The goats keep climbing up and down
mounds and hillocks to reach to bushes
and like to nibble at tree leaves of differ-
ent kinds. The sheep eat grass in fields,
where crops have been grown. Nowa-
days, in the whole panchayat only one
or two persons keep sheep and goats.
Backyard poultry still exists on a small
scale as the local chicken meat is pre-
ferred over the broiler chicken meat.
Economic & Political Weekly EPW FEBRUARY 17, 2018
People also fear that broilers are fed
with all kinds of chemicals and things
which are not good for them.
This area has a strong meat-eating
culture; previously the farmers used to
rear livestock for meat, hunt regularly
for wild pigs, deer, rabbits, and even
field rats (supposed to be a very tasty
meat, as they eat paddy grains from
paddy fields, I was told); pick fish, crabs
from ponds and streams, and so on.
Dalits picked up the dead cattle minutes
after death, and ate beef. But, with
wildlife laws in place, this hunting cul-
ture is disappearing. Backyard livestock-
keeping for meat is also no more viable
as family labour is not available with all
the children going to schools, and with
joint families splitting into nuclear ones.
In effect, farmers are turning into net
consumers of food from being net pro-
ducers of food. With that, a whole cul-
ture is disappearing. Earlier, every
house always had extra food cooked at
least for one or two persons. If nobody
was there to eat the extra food, there
were always, beggars, cattle, poultry,
dogs, cats, and birds. As soon as you
enter a house (even of the poorest per-
son), you will hear, “Are you fine? Come,
eat a meal.” Nowadays, since everything
is purchased, no extra food is cooked,
people hesitate before inviting a visitor
to a meal, and beggars are turned away.
Most youngsters, even if they do stay
within the village, do not know how to
carry out various agriculture work/
operations and other rural skills, for
example, milking cows. In fact, they
cannot even endure exposure to the sun,
rain and cold.
A reaction to all agrarian crises has
been the growing organic movement
which asks the farmers to grow crops
with traditional seeds, drought resistant
crops, including millets, water-saving
practices, with low external input sus-
tainable agriculture (LEISA), with local-
ly available organic manure and bio-
pesticides. Lowering the cost of produc-
tion, organising the producers into pro-
duction and marketing collectives, crop
shift to millets, awareness creation and
motivating the consumers to consume
safe food, and to save the farmers and
support low-cost organic agriculture,
vol lIII no 7
NOTES
working with farmers’ organisations
and political parties and advocacy with
the government to formulate farmer-
friendly policies and programmes, have
been the main thrust of this movement.
Several civil society organisations have
come up enlisting the support of all sec-
tions of people who are participating in
the organic agriculture movement in a
big way. In our village, too, we took a few
farmers on exposure visits to villages
like Ralegan Siddhi, Hiware Bazar, etc.
They are slowly getting convinced that
the borewell is after all not an unmixed
boon, that we cannot bet on groundwa-
ter endlessly, indefinitely, that chemical
fertilisers and pesticides are not good
for the land, trees or our bodies, and so
on. The government has also initiated a
zero-budget-natural-farming programme.
One can only hope that there will be
some good news for farmers in the
near future.
Note
1 Zero budget spiritual farming, http://www.
palekarzerobudgetspiritualfarming.org.
References
Appu, P S (1996): Land Reforms in India, New Delhi:
Vikas Publishing House.
Murthy, M R K, K H Rao and G P Reddy (2012):
“Evaluating Value Chain and Retailing of Milk
in Chittoor, Andhra Pradesh”, International
Journal of Engineering Research and Technology
(IJERT), Vol 1, No 9.
Narendranath, G, K Rajendra Reddy and Uma
Shankari (2005): “To Free or Not to Free
Power: Understanding the Context of Free
Power in Agriculture,” Economic & Political
Weekly, Vol 40, No 53.
Shankari, Uma (1989): “What Is Happening to the
Cows and Bulls of Sundarapalle?” Economic &
Political Weekly, Vol 24, No 21.
— (1991): “Major Problems in Minor Irrigation,”
Economic & Political Weekly, Vol 26, No 39.
— (2015): “Cow and Bull Story of Venkatrama-
puram,” Knowledge for Change: In Memory of
Dr N K Sanghi, Hyderabad: WASSAN Founda-
tion and Permanent Green.
available at
CNA Enterprises Pvt Ltd
27/13 Ground Floor
Chinna Reddy Street, Egmore
Chennai 600 008
Ph: 44-45508212/13
77
CURRENT STATISTICS EPW Research Foundation

Wholesale Price Index Foreign Trade–Merchandise

The year-on-year (y-o-y) WPI inflation rate increased to 3.6% in December 2017
from 2.1% a year ago, and lower than 3.9% recorded a month ago. The index for
primary articles rose by 3.9% in December 2017 compared to 0.1% in December
2016, but lower than 5.3% registered in November 2017. The index for food
articles was higher by 4.7% in December 2017 from 0.1% a year ago, and lower
than 6.1% reported a month ago. The index for fuel and power increased by
9.2% in December 2017 from 4.3%. The index for manufactured products inched
up by 2.6% in December 2017 compared to 2.5%.
The merchandise trade deficit widened to $14.9 bn in December 2017 compared
to $10.5 bn a year ago. Exports grew by 12.4% to $27.0 bn and imports by 21.1%
to $41.9 bn in December 2017 compared to $24.1 bn and $34.6 bn, respectively,
in December 2016. The oil imports went up by 34.9% to $10.3 bn in December
2017 from $7.7 bn a year ago and non-oil imports by 17.2% to $31.6 bn from $26.9
bn. Cumulative value of exports (April–December 2017–18) increased by 12.1%
to $223.5 bn from $199.5 bn in the same period last year and that of imports by
21.8% to $338.4 bn from $277.9 bn.

Consumer Price Index Index of Industrial Production

The CPI inflation rate increased to 5.1% in January 2018 from 3.2% in January
2017, however, it eased compared to 5.2% registered a month ago. Consumer
food price inflation rose to 4.7% in January 2018 from 0.6% a year ago but slowed
down compared to 5.0% reported in December 2017. The CPI-rural inflation rate
stood higher at 5.2% and the CPI urban inflation rate at 4.9% in January 2018,
compared to 3.4% and 2.9%, respectively, a year ago. As per Labour Bureau
data, the CPI inflation rate of agricultural labourers stood higher at 2.7% and
that of industrial worker at 4.0% in December 2017 from 2.2% a year ago.
The y-o-y growth rate of IIP increased to 7.1% in December 2017 from 2.4% in December
2016 with growth in the manufacturing segment rising to 8.4% from 0.6% a year ago.
Growth in the mining segment decreased to 1.2% and that in the electricity generation
to 4.4% in December 2017 compared to 10.8% and 6.4%, respectively, a year ago. As
per use-based classification, production of capital goods increased by 16.4% and that
of consumer non-durable goods by 16.5% against -6.2% and -0.2%, respectively, a
year ago. Growth in infrastructure goods segment rose to 6.7%, and that in consumer
durable goods segment to 0.9% from 5.5%, and -5.0%, respectively, a year ago.

Movement of WPI Inflation April–December Merchandise Trade December 2017

December 2017 Over Month Over Year April–December
($ bn) (%) (%) (2017–18 over 2016–17) (%)
Year-on-Year in %
Exports 27.0 3.2 12.4 12.1
6
Imports 41.9 4.7 21.1 21.8
3.6% Trade deficit 14.9 7.6 41.1 46.4
3 Data is provisional. Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
2017–18 2.1%

0
Components of Trade December 2016–December 2017
$26.9 billion $31.6 billion
2016–17 32
$24.1 billion Non-oil Imports $27.0 billion
-3 Exports
Apr May June Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov* Dec*

* Data is provisional; Base: 2011–12 = 100.

$7.7 billion $10.3 billion
Oil Imports

Trends in WPI and Its Components December 2017* (%)

Financial Year (Averages)
Weights Over Month Over Year 2014–15 2015–16 2016–17
All commodities 100 -0.5 3.6 1.3 -3.7 1.7
$10.5 billion
Primary articles 22.6 -2.9 3.9 2.2 -0.4 3.4 -15 Trade Deficit
$14.9 billion
Food articles 15.3 -4.3 4.7 5.6 2.6 4.0
2016 DECEMBER 2017 DECEMBER
Fuel and power 13.2 1.6 9.2 -6.1 -19.7 -0.3
Manufactured products 64.2 0.1 2.6 2.6 -1.8 1.3 Oil refers to crude petroleum and petroleum products, while non-oil refers to all other commodities.
* Data is provisional; Base: 2011–12=100; Source: Ministry of Commerce and Industry.
Movement of IIP Growth April–December
Year-on-Year in %
Movement of CPI Inflation April 2016–January 2018 10
Year-on-Year in % 8
9
7.1%
6
Consumer Food 2016–17
4
6 2017–18 2.4%
2
5.1%
CPI 4.7% 0
3.8%
3 -2
Miscellaneous Apr May Jun Jul Aug Sep Oct Nov Dec*

* December 2017 are quick estimates; Base: 2011–12=100.

0

Industrial Growth: Sector-wise December 2017* (%)

-3 Weights Over Over Financial Year (Avgs)
Apr M J J A S O N D Jan F M A M J J A S O N D Jan* Month Year 2015–16 2016–17
* Data is provisional. General index 100 3.3 7.1 3.3 4.6
Source: Central Statistics Office (CSO), Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation, Base: 2012=100. Mining 14.4 7.5 1.2 4.3 5.3
Manufacturing 77.6 2.7 8.4 2.8 4.4
CPI: Rural and Urban January 2018* (%) Electricity 8.0 2.7 4.4 5.7 5.8
Latest Over Over Financial Year (Avgs)
Month Index Month Year 2015–16 2016–17 Industrial Growth: Use-based
Primary goods 34.0 5.9 3.7 5.0 4.9
Rural (2012=100) 139.3 -0.4 5.2 5.6 5.0
Capital goods 8.2 4.3 16.4 3.0 3.2
Urban (2012=100) 134.1 0.0 4.9 4.1 4.0
Intermediate goods 17.2 3.4 6.2 1.5 3.3
CPI: Occupation-wise# Infrastructure/construction goods 12.3 3.6 6.7 2.8 3.9
Industrial workers (2001=100) 286.0 -0.7 4.0 5.6 4.1 Consumer durables 12.8 -3.5 0.9 3.4 2.9
Agricultural labourers (1986–87=100) 900.0 -0.6 2.7 4.4 4.2 Consumer non-durables 15.3 2.8 16.5 2.6 7.9
* Provisional; # December 2017; Source: CSO (rural and urban), Labour Bureau (IW and AL). * December 2017 are quick estimates; Base: 2011–12=100; Source: Central Statistics Office.
Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates are available at: http://www.epwrf.in/currentstat.aspx.

78 february 17, 2018 vol LIiI no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 CURRENT STATISTICS EPW Research Foundation
India’s Quarterly Estimates of Final Expenditures on GDP
2015–16 2016–17 2017–18
` crore | at 2011–12 Prices Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
Private final consumption expenditure 1453347 (2.0) 1484050 (3.9) 1602945 (5.9) 1722032 (12.1) 1575613 (8.4) 1601797 (7.9) 1780914 (11.1) 1848300 (7.3) 1680481 (6.7) 1705978 (6.5)
Government final consumption expenditure 286327 (0.1) 326759 (4.1) 267516 (5.1) 229123 (2.4) 333761 (16.6) 380561 (16.5) 323603 (21.0) 302161 (31.9) 391080 (17.2) 396284 (4.1)
Gross fixed capital formation 849973 (4.7) 848892 (5.0) 881093 (7.0) 938488 (3.9) 912768 (7.4) 874494 (3.0) 895740 (1.7) 919040 (-2.1) 927506 (1.6) 915211 (4.7)
Change in stocks 67160 (9.7) 68126 (12.3) 64908 (15.3) 74252 (41.4) 73118 (8.9) 72171 (5.9) 69029 (6.3) 76862 (3.5) 73979 (1.2) 77000 (6.7)
Valuables 40244 (-13.6) 46978 (13.2) 44081 (9.1) 48972 (-11.0) 34687 (-13.8) 36783 (-21.7) 35273 (-20.0) 41958 (-14.3) 105716 (204.8) 75408 (105.0)
Net trade (Export–import) -40536 -57914 -32963 -652 -25702 -23572 -22817 -10583 -101668 -63488
Exports 583423 (-6.1) 599072 (-4.4) 581297 (-8.7) 614896 (-1.6) 594947 (2.0) 608293 (1.5) 604510 (4.0) 678256 (10.3) 602159 (1.2) 615706 (1.2)
Less imports 623959 (-5.8) 656986 (-3.7) 614260 (-10.0) 615548 (-3.7) 620649 (-0.5) 631865 (-3.8) 627327 (2.1) 688839 (11.9) 703827 (13.4) 679194 (7.5)
Discrepancies 69359 53206 15159 30079 37601 36584 -40978 50689 33052 59271
Gross domestic product (GDP) 2725873 (7.6) 2770097 (8.4) 2842737 (7.4) 3042294 (9.0) 2941846 (7.9) 2978817 (7.5) 3040763 (7.0) 3228427 (6.1) 3110145 (5.7) 3165664 (6.3)

India’s Overall Balance of Payments (Net): Quarterly

2016–17 ($ mn) 2017–18 ($ mn) 2016–17 (` bn) 2017–18 (` bn)
Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2 Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 Q1 Q2
Current account -401 -3467 -7976 -3452 -15017 -7227 -27 [-0.1] -232 [-0.6] -538 [-1.4] -231 [-0.6] -968 [-2.5] -465 [-1.2]
Merchandise -23835 -25612 -33273 -29722 -41994 -32798 -1594 -1715 -2243 -1992 -2707 -2109
Invisibles 23434 22146 25297 26270 26977 25571 1568 1483 1706 1760 1739 1644
Services 15745 16295 17780 17636 18285 18421 1053 1091 1199 1182 1179 1184
of which: Software services 17573 17650 18002 16839 17304 17965 1175 1182 1214 1128 1115 1155
Transfers 14002 13902 13894 14186 14458 15640 937 931 937 951 932 1005
of which: Private 14161 14048 13996 14368 14603 15776 947 941 944 963 941 1014
Income -6312 -8051 -6377 -5552 -5767 -8490 -422 -539 -430 -372 -372 -546
Capital account 7181 12835 6073 10392 25776 16365 480 [1.4] 859 [2.3] 409 [1.1] 696 [1.7] 1661 [4.3] 1052 [2.6]
of which: Foreign investment 5985 23050 -1607 15796 19624 14464 400 1543 -108 1059 1265 930
Overall balance 6969 8512 -1242 7312 11405 9499 466 [1.3] 570 [1.6] -84 [-0.2] 490 [1.2] 735 [1.9] 611 [1.5]
Figures in square brackets are percentage to GDP.

Foreign Exchange Reserves Variation

2 February 3 February 31 March Over Over Financial Year So Far Financial Year
Excluding gold but including revaluation effects 2018 2017 2017 Month Year 2016–17 2017–18 2012–13 2013–14 2014–15 2015–16 2016–17
` crore 2551970 2300510 2254320 88740 251460 71490 297650 82800 251570 322660 218620 25300
$ mn 398316 341574 347765 9653 56743 3969 50551 -485 16769 40486 16297 10160

Monetary Aggregates Variation

Outstanding Over Month Over Year Financial Year So Far Financial Year
` crore 2018 2016–17 2017–18 2014–15 2015–16 2016–17
Money supply (M3) as on 19 January 13413300 140920 (1.1) 1306560 (10.8) 489120 (4.2) 621360 (4.9) 1032788 (10.9) 1067452 (10.1) 1174320 (10.1)
Components
Currency with public 1660270 44390 (2.7) 746790 (81.8) -683770 (-42.8) 396140 (31.3) 140362 (11.3) 211068 (15.2) -333120 (-20.9)
Demand deposits 1234230 -35720 (-2.8) 66300 (5.7) 178090 (18.0) -162510 (-11.6) 79652 (9.8) 98208 (11.0) 406900 (41.1)
Time deposits 10492810 129150 (1.2) 483010 (4.8) 994730 (11.0) 382830 (3.8) 800144 (10.7) 757306 (9.2) 1094910 (12.1)
Other deposits with RBI 25990 3100 (13.5) 10460 (67.4) 80 (0.5) 4890 (23.2) 12620 (640.6) 860 (5.9) 5650 (36.6)
Sources
Net bank credit to government 4041380 102210 (2.6) 121980 (3.1) 680920 (21.0) 184770 (4.8) -37476 (-1.2) 231086 (7.7) 618130 (19.1)
Bank credit to commercial sector 8747240 76970 (0.9) 808880 (10.2) 135290 (1.7) 335750 (4.0) 604434 (9.4) 753346 (10.7) 608420 (7.8)
Net foreign exchange assets 2771400 63400 (2.3) 219910 (8.6) 17760 (0.7) 213170 (8.3) 326709 (17.0) 283081 (12.6) 24500 (1.0)
Banking sector’s net non-monetary liabilities 2172320 101770 (4.9) -155000 (-6.7) 347750 (17.6) 112840 (5.5) -137041 (-7.2) 202541 (11.4) 79910 (4.0)
Reserve money as on 2 February 2018 2234960 26640 (1.2) 700490 (45.7) -646260 (-29.6) 334480 (17.6) 195710 (11.3) 252270 (13.1) -280250 (-12.9)
Components
Currency in circulation 1739560 34650 (2.0) 690250 (65.8) -614140 (-36.9) 404300 (30.3) 147250 (11.3) 215130 (14.9) -328190 (-19.7)
Bankers’ deposits with RBI 474340 -5570 (-1.2) 4780 (1.0) -32260 (-6.4) -69790 (-12.8) 35860 (8.3) 36260 (7.8) 42310 (8.4)
Other deposits with RBI 21060 -2440 (-10.4) 5460 (35.0) 140 (0.9) -30 (-0.1) 12630 (644.4) 870 (6.0) 5630 (36.4)
Sources
Net RBI credit to Government 440740 -64720 (-12.8) 57870 (15.1) -42130 (-9.9) -180070 (-29.0) -334180 (-47.8) 60480 (16.6) 195810 (46.1)
of which: Centre 435640 -65060 (-13.0) 54630 (14.3) -43550 (-10.3) -183950 (-29.7) -336610 (-48.2) 63520 (17.6) 195030 (45.9)
RBI credit to banks & commercial sector -52650 43780 (-45.4) 331250 (-86.3) -688440 (-226.1) 256630 (-83.0) 145020 (252.3) 102040 (0.0) -613820 (0.0)
Net foreign exchange assets of RBI 2702260 94720 (3.6) 253910 (10.4) 64870 (2.7) 305050 (12.7) 324760 (18.0) 256200 (12.0) 13730 (0.6)
Govt’s currency liabilities to the public 25600 0 (0.0) 790 (3.2) 2900 (13.2) 510 (2.0) 2090 (12.1) 2480 (12.8) 3180 (14.5)
Net non-monetary liabilities of RBI 880980 47130 (5.7) -56670 (-6.0) -16530 (-1.7) 47630 (5.7) -58040 (-6.9) 168900 (21.5) -120830 (-12.7)

Scheduled Commercial Banks’ Indicators ( ` crore) Variation

Outstanding Over Month Over Year Financial Year So Far Financial Year
(As on 19 January) 2018 2016–17 2017–18 2014–15 2015–16 2016–17
Aggregate deposits 10977980 92860 (0.9) 532870 (5.1) 1117820 (12.0) 220320 (2.0) 827730 (10.7) 794000 (9.3) 1430370 (15.3)
Demand 1121410 -35490 (-3.1) 66860 (6.3) 165550 (18.6) -160030 (-12.5) 80110 (11.2) 94970 (12.0) 392440 (44.1)
Time 9856570 128350 (1.3) 466010 (5.0) 952270 (11.3) 380350 (4.0) 747610 (10.7) 699040 (9.0) 1037930 (12.3)
Cash in hand 63280 -8300 (-11.6) 180 (0.3) 5660 (9.9) 1920 (3.1) 7490 (16.3) 4080 (7.6) 3920 (6.8)
Balance with RBI 452320 4650 (1.0) 20320 (4.7) 44560 (11.5) -56450 (-11.1) 56730 (17.9) 14370 (3.9) 121330 (31.3)
Investments 3375520 31540 (0.9) -197010 (-5.5) 947020 (36.1) 344550 (11.4) 279010 (12.6) 133680 (5.4) 405460 (15.4)
of which: Government securities 3374090 31800 (1.0) -196150 (-5.5) 946310 (36.1) 344350 (11.4) 278560 (12.6) 134180 (5.4) 405810 (15.5)
Bank credit 8171400 74670 (0.9) 781870 (10.6) 139910 (1.9) 329930 (4.2) 542320 (9.0) 713200 (10.9) 591850 (8.2)
of which: Non-food credit 8112790 82500 (1.0) 827280 (11.4) 141150 (2.0) 325250 (4.2) 546350 (9.3) 702360 (10.9) 643180 (9.0)

Capital Markets 9 February Month Year Financial Year So Far 2016–17 End of Financial Year
2018 Ago Ago Trough Peak Trough Peak 2014–15 2015–16 2016–17
S&P BSE SENSEX (Base: 1978–79=100) 34005.76 (20.0) 34443.20 28329.70 (17.9) 29319.10 36283.30 24673.84 29648.99 27957 (24.9) 25342 (-9.4) 29621 (16.9)
S&P BSE-100 (Base: 1983–84=100) 10851.72 (19.4) 11175.60 9091.71 (23.0) 9438.57 11547.46 7655.79 9494.36 8607 (28.3) 7835 (-9.0) 9494 (21.2)
S&P BSE-200 (1989–90=100) 4583.1 (20.1) 4745.60 3817.53 (23.7) 3982.66 4880.57 3192.63 3991.85 3538 (31.9) 3259 (-7.9) 3992 (22.5)
CNX Nifty (Base: 3 Nov 1995=1000) 10454.95 (19.1) 10637.00 8778.40 (20.3) 9103.50 11130.40 7546.45 9173.75 8491 (26.7) 7738 (-8.9) 9174 (18.5)
Net FII Investment in equities ($ Million)* 170143 (0.9) 169065 168624 (3.0) - - - - 168116 (12.3) 166107 (-1.2) 174637 (5.1)
* = Cumulative total since November 1992 until period end | Figures in brackets are percentage variations over the specified or over the comparable period of the previous year | (-) = not relevant | - = not available | NS = new series | PE = provisional estimates
Comprehensive current economic statistics with regular weekly updates are available at: http://www.epwrf.in/currentstat.aspx.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW february 17, 2018 vol LIiI no 7 79
 80
Secondary Market Transactions in Government Securities, Forex Market and Money Market—January 2018
1 Settlement Volume of Government Securities Transactions 2 Netting Factor 3 Instrument-wise Break-up of Securities Transactions (` Cr)
Settlement Outright Repo Daily Average (Outright) Daily Average (Repo) a Securities b Funds a Outright Trades b Repo
Period Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume Gross Net Netting Gross Net Netting Central Govt Treasury State Central Govt Treasury State
of Trades (` Cr) of Trades (` Cr) of Trades (` Cr) of Trades (` Cr) (` Cr) (` Cr) Factor (%) (` Cr) (` Cr) Factor (%) Dated Bills Govt Dated Bills Govt
January 2018 80660 869666 18395 2356857 3666 39530 766 98202 3226524 1374535 57.40 3227333 638794 80.21 779985 53246 36435 845861 235161 94939
January 2017 105957 1342704 14107 2098117 5046 63938 613 91222 3440821 1278589 62.84 3607259 566751 84.29 1156441 145367 40896 766748 246734 27515
2017–18* 798040 10100861 168074 21676425 3912 49514 750 96770 31777286 12932671 59.30 32542103 5609074 82.76 8723933 895129 481800 7689384 2322889 792459
2016–17* 1205808 15185204 141014 19586047 5969 75174 621 86282 34935972 12683733 63.69 36490875 5142778 85.91 13782476 918426 484303 7956898 1388287 460635
4 Tenor-wise Settlement Volume of Central 5 Deal Size Analysis (%) 6 Market Share of Top ‘n’ Securities (%)
Government Dated Securities Settlement Period < 5 Cr 5 Cr > 5 Cr <=10 Cr >10 Cr<=20 Cr > 20 Cr Period Jan 2018 Jan 2017 2017–18* 2016–17*
Year January 2018 2017–18* 2016–17* % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total Top 5 84.12 80.38 71.33 68.60
CURRENT STATISTICS

2017 - 4718 (0.05) 118438 (0.86) Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value
Top 10 88.55 88.13 80.14 86.90
2018 1321 32374 (0.37) 96762 (0.70) January 2018 3.20 0.42 61.88 28.69 18.44 17.07 6.56 10.33 9.93 43.49 Top 15 91.55 91.82 85.00 91.19
2019 9593 58888 (0.68) 212086 (1.54) 2017–18* 3.35 0.40 55.56 21.95 20.91 16.49 7.12 9.57 13.06 51.59 Top 20 93.72 94.00 88.66 93.32
2020 14532 255909 (2.93) 863804 (6.28)
2021 9860 91134 (1.04) 224653 (1.63) 7 Intercategory Member Turnover Activity for All Category 8 Market Share of Top Five Members
Buy Sell (Category-wise) (%)
2022 55480 333545 (3.82) 146952 (1.07)
Category Outright Reverse Repo CBLO Lending Uncollateralised Forex Outright Repo CBLO Borrowing Uncollateralised Forex Categories Jan 2018 Jan 2017 2017–18*
2023 9921 297547 (3.41) 1054581 (7.67) (Funds Lending) Money Market Money Market
2024 8099 222501 (2.55) 406791 (2.96) Lending @ Borrowing @
Cooperative Banks 68.01 52.43 58.47
2025 7718 227480 (2.61) 566442 (4.12) Foreign Banks 78.74 86.52 80.41
Cooperative Banks 3.44 0.21 1.08 36.06 0.18 3.25 2.62 2.07 0.86 0.18
2026 10094 888903 (10.19) 4521331 (32.87) Public Sector Banks 57.17 47.32 59.35
Financial Institutions 0.23 0.28 0.34 - 0.01 0.18 0.16 9.55 - 0.00
2027 271195 2630380 (30.15) 66924 (0.49) Private Sector Banks 86.69 79.29 80.45
Foreign Banks 24.73 41.14 3.67 5.50 37.55 22.94 10.93 3.55 7.18 38.81
2028 101996 161741 (1.85) 54926 (0.40) Mutual Funds 58.95 59.17 56.28
Insurance Companies 2.91 5.15 10.61 - - 2.15 0.00 0.27 - -
2029 3083 1964043 (22.51) 2000686 (14.55) Primary Dealers 89.04 93.45 91.62
Mutual Funds 12.54 30.65 62.99 - - 13.36 0.06 11.86 - -
2030 7587 261845 (3.00) 3065633 (22.29) 9 Market Share of Top ‘n’ Members (%)
Others 4.38 0.04 15.30 - - 2.67 4.93 4.71 - -
2031 250922 975518 (11.18) 0 (0.00) Period Jan 2018 Jan 2017 2017–18* 2016–17*
Primary Dealers 12.97 2.42 0.01 0.00 - 16.39 27.01 6.27 30.15 -
2032 3106 37813 (0.43) 26859 (0.20) Top 5 29.81 29.97 28.93 30.42
Private Sector Banks 21.60 14.54 2.49 20.50 33.13 21.00 19.68 12.13 31.23 33.06
2033 3210 79397 (0.91) 36489 (0.27) Top 10 46.01 44.97 45.56 45.41
Public Sector Banks 17.21 5.56 3.51 37.95 29.13 18.05 34.61 49.59 30.58 27.95 Top 15 56.50 55.00 55.59 54.91
2034 2068 69181 (0.79) 80479 (0.59)
2035 238 10654 (0.12) 14328 (0.10) Total 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 100.00 Top 20 63.54 62.58 63.05 62.34
2036 963 6533 (0.07) 11809 (0.09)
10 Trading Platform Analysis of Outright Trades 12 Settlement Volume of Collateralised Borrowing and Lending Obligations (CBLO)
2037 21 21 (0.00) 0 (0.00)
Period OTC NDS-OM Period Overnight Term Total
2038 21 21 (0.00) 0 (0.00) Trades % Share Value (` Cr) % Share Trades % Share Value (` Cr) % Share Number Volume Number Volume Number Volume
2039 102 2895 (0.03) 7973 (0.06) of Trades (` Crore) of Trades (` Crore) of Trades (` Crore)
January 2018 4745 5.93 167512 19.46 75315 94.07 693229 80.54
2040 1485 8484 (0.10) 9912 (0.07) January 2018 17356 2664519 2440 323787 19796 2988306
January 2017 6126 5.79 267459 19.95 99687 94.21 1073244 80.05
2041 165 5492 (0.06) 8334 (0.06) 2017–18* 151997 21215701 19185 2527190 171182 23742891
2017–18* 56949 7.14 2390523 23.70 740266 92.86 7696425 76.30
2042 456 8853 (0.10) 11943 (0.09)
2043 169 3431 (0.04) 18598 (0.14) 13 Top 5 Securities—Basket Repo 14 Top 5 Securities—Special Repo
11 Type-wise Settlement Volume of Government Securities Transactions (` crore)
2044 3050 33212 (0.38) 49984 (0.36) Security Trades Value Rate Security Trades Value Rate
Period Outright Repo
2045 2375 13734 (0.16) 47341 (0.34) Proprietary Constituent Proprietary Constituent 6.35% GS 2020 125 33263 5.90 6.79% GS 2027 784 77979 5.85
2046 690 15653 (0.18) 13814 (0.10) Trades Volume Trades Volume Trades Volume Trades Volume 8.27% GS 2020 110 32788 5.88 6.68% GS 2031 730 56377 5.75
2051 378 20484 (0.23) 7513 (0.05) January 2018 69676 743656 10984 126010 8914 1121429 251 54532 7.80% GS 2020 92 27445 5.88 6.79% GS 2029 349 37674 5.85
2055 87 1548 (0.02) 9687 (0.07) January 2017 94125 1194629 11832 148075 6645 979654 379 61343

FEBRuary 17, 2018

8.20% GS 2022 68 23432 5.88 7.72% GS 2025 263 33748 5.82
Total 779985 8723932 (100) 13755072 (100) 2017–18* 687007 8636942 111033 1463918 81214 10255464 2787 549267 6.97% GS 2026 61 22339 5.87 7.80% GS 2020 170 30860 5.91
15 Forex Settlement
Settlement Period Cash Tom Spot Forward Total Average Netting Factor: Forex 16 Category-wise Forex Activity—Deal Type
Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value Gross Net Netting Category Cash Tom Spot Forward
(` Cr) ($ Mn) (` Cr) ($ Mn) (` Cr) ($ Mn) (` Cr) ($ Mn) (` Cr) ($ Mn) (` Cr) ($ Mn) ($ Mn) ($ Mn) Factor (%)
Foreign Banks 37.47 39.26 38.02 38.25
January 2018 2793 549876 86420 4124 617658 97049 215466 2056586 322910 9245 717092 108746 231628 3941212 615125 11581 197061 30756 615125 22761 96.30 Public Sector Banks 17.75 16.74 34.28 30.60

vol lIII no 7
2017–18* 25694 4951247 768829 40211 6493372 1007733 1654251 17150125 2661306 82557 6165129 922968 1802713 34759873 5360835 9151 176446 27212 5360835 220696 95.88 Private Sector Banks 44.66 43.92 27.43 31.04
17 Forex Deal Size Analysis (%) Cooperative Banks 0.10 0.07 0.26 0.10

EPW
Settlement Period < 1 mn 1 mn > 1 mn <= 5 mn > 5 mn <= 10 mn > 10 mn <= 20 mn > 20 mn Financial Institutions 0.01 0.01 0.00 0.01
% to Total Trades % to Total Value % to Total Trades % to Total Value % to Total Trades % to Total Value % to Total Trades % to Total Value % to Total Trades % to Total Value % to Total Trades % to Total Value
January 2018 27.71 4.81 50.18 18.90 15.93 17.60 2.59 9.34 1.28 8.55 2.30 40.81
2017–18* 31.32 4.81 45.40 15.27 13.58 12.29 1.53 4.69 1.04 5.76 7.13 57.19
20 Forex Trading Platform: FX Clear
(Amount in $)
18 Market Share—Forex (%) 19 Tenor-wise Forward Trade Analysis (%) Period Spot Daily Average
Period January 2018 January 2017 2017–18* 2016–17* Settlement Period < 30 Days > 30 Days & <= 90 Days > 90 Days & <= 180 Days > 180 Days & <= 365 Days > 1 Year Trades Value Trades Value
% to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total % to Total January 2018 72244 52224 3284 2374
Top 5 33.57 30.55 33.60 29.85 Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value Trades Value
Top 10 55.96 51.05 56.05 50.41 January 2017 70665 41586 3365 1980
January 2018 14.35 22.15 24.77 30.42 17.74 16.78 35.55 25.82 7.58 4.83
Top 15 70.12 65.05 69.96 64.74 January 2017 18.41 24.48 27.19 28.53 14.58 14.28 34.91 28.22 4.91 4.49 2017–18* 562128 374279 2756 1835
Top 20 78.88 75.23 79.58 74.79 2017–18* 14.51 25.38 21.44 26.20 18.07 16.19 42.02 29.48 3.95 2.74 2016–17* 432887 241815 2143 1197
EPW Research Foundation

Economic & Political Weekly

* Data pertains to April–January @: Call and Term Money Segment. (i) Figures in brackets are percentage to total, (ii) Tables 1 to 11 relate to Government Securities Market, (iii) Tables 12 to 14 relate to Money Market, and (iv) Tables 15 to 20 relate to Forex Market. Source: Clearing Corporation of India Limited (CCIL).
APPOINTMENTS/PROGRAMMES/ANNOUNCEMENTS ADVERTISEMENTS

In today’s rapidly changing world, and one often dominated by
the western media, Third World Resurgence offers a much-needed
alternative view from the perspective of the Third World.
It is produced by a team of journalists and writers who,
with equal measures of passion and professionalism, strive to pro-
vide a greater articulation of
the needs and rights of peoples
in the South.
Published by the Third
World Network, the magazine
covers and provides a critique
and analysis on a whole range of issues such as the environment,
health and basic needs, international affairs, politics, economics,
technology, culture, etc.
This resurging voice of the South invites you to be in soli-
darity with the Third World – subscribe now and extend this unique
invitation to your friends.
• “The most courageous ‘distant voices’ are in the Third World,
and ... (they) produce literature and journalism that have no equiva-
lent in the developed world (like the analyses in Third World Resur-
gence, published in Malaysia) ...”– John Pilger, in the introduction to
his book, Distant Voices.

Subscription rates by airmail (12 issues)

Developed countries (Institutions) US$60

Developed countries (Individuals) US$45
Developing countries (Individuals and groups) US$35

If you would like to purchase a year’s subscription to Third World Resurgence, please email
us at twn@twnetwork.org or fax us at 604-2264505

PRESIDENCY UNIVERSITY
86/1 COLLEGE STREET, KOLKATA - 700 073
Ref. No : PU/DIST/INF_ECON_CHR/2018/01 Dated : 02.02.2018

Infosys Foundation Distinguished Chair Professor of

Economics at Presidency University, Kolkata
Nominations are invited for the “Infosys Foundation Distinguished Chair Professor
of Economics” from any branch of Economics. The nominee should have an
outstanding academic record with a potential to provide academic leadership in
the University. (S) He is expected to take part in both teaching and research
activities of the Department.
The post carries a monthly remuneration commensurate with the experience of
the candidate along with research support and travel.
Nominations should be sent to the Vice Chancellor (vc@presuniv.ac.in), before
31st March 2018. Sd/
Registrar

EPW Index
An author-title index for EPW has been prepared for the years from 1968 to 2012. The PDFs of the
Index have been uploaded, year-wise, on the EPW website. 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
of Development Research, Mumbai, in preparing the index under a project supported by the
RD Tata Trust.

Economic & Political Weekly EPW February 17, 2018 vol liIi no 7 81
APPOINTMENTS/PROGRAMMES/ANNOUNCEMENTS ADVERTISEMENTS

82 February 17, 2018 vol liIi no 7 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
 INDIRA GANDHI INSTITUTE OF DEVELOPMENT RESEARCH
(An Advanced Research Institute Established by Reserve Bank of India)
DEEMED TO BE UNIVERSITY
ADMISSION NOTICE

Indira Gandhi Institute of Development Research (IGIDR) invites applications for admission to the following
programmes:

1. M.Sc. (Economics): This is a two-year programme commencing on July 23, 2018.

Eligibility: Minimum qualification for admission to M.Sc. programme includes one of the following degrees
or their equivalents: B.A./B.Sc. in Economics/B.Com./B.Stat./B.Sc. (Physics or Mathematics)/B.Tech./B.E.
with at least 55% aggregate marks for Economics discipline and 60% aggregate marks for other disciplines.
The applicant must have studied mathematics at the higher secondary or higher level.

Need-based scholarships are available for Masters students as per Institute’s norms.

2. M.Phil./Ph.D. (Development Studies): These are interdisciplinary programmes commencing on July 23, 2018.
The duration of M.Phil programme is two years and that of Ph.D. programme is four years.

Eligibility: Minimum qualification for admission to the M.Phil./Ph.D. programme includes one of the following
degrees or their equivalents: M.A./M.Sc in Economics/M.Stat./M.Sc. (Physics or Mathematics or Environmental
Science or Operations Research)/M.B.A./M.Tech./M.E./B.Tech./B.E. with at least 55% aggregate marks for
Economics discipline and 60% aggregate marks for other disciplines. The applicant must have studied mathematics
at the higher secondary or higher level.

Stipend: M.Phil./Ph.D. students will receive a monthly stipend of Rs. 25,000/- in the first two years. Those
students, who fulfill the terms and conditions for Ph.D. registration, will receive a monthly stipend of Rs. 35,000/-
after Ph.D. registration in the third year.

Selection Procedure: All candidates will be selected on the basis of their performance in an Online test and an
interview. The Online test will be separate for M.Sc. and M.Phil./Ph.D. candidates. The Online test for both
M.Sc. and M.Phil./Ph.D. will emphasize general aptitude, analytical ability and mathematical skills at appropriate
levels. In addition M.Sc. students will have to answer a section either on Economics or on Mathematics at the
undergraduate level.

The Online test will be held on Sunday, April 22, 2018 at the following centres: Ahmedabad/Gandhi Nagar,
Aizawl, Bangalore, Benares, Bhopal, Bhubaneswar, Chandigarh-Mohali, Chennai, Dehradun, Guwahati, Hyderabad/
Rangareddy, Jaipur, Jammu, Kolkata/Greater Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai/Greater Mumbai/Thane/Navi Mumbai,
Delhi NCR, Patna, Raipur, Ranchi, Shillong, Thiruvananthapuram. The test venue will be notified in the call letter.
Based on the performance in the Online test, short listed candidates will be called for an interview at IGIDR
around second or third week of June 2018. Second class return rail fare by the shortest route from the place of
residence will be paid to the candidates interviewed. The decision of the Institute will be final.

3. Online Application and payment of Fee: Candidates can fill the application form online available at
www.igidr.ac.in

General Category: The online application fee is Rs. 500/- only.

SC/ST/PD: The online application fee is Rs. 100/- only. Relaxation in eligibility criteria and reservation of
seats for SC/ST/Physically disabled categories will be as per Govt. of India norms.

Last date for receipt of Online Application form is April 6, 2018.

Registrar, IGIDR
Published on Saturday, February 17, 2018 Regd No MCW-238/2018-20
WPP Licence No MR/Tech/WPP-197/West/2018. Licensed to post without prepayment. Posted at Patrika Channel
Sorting Office, Mumbai-1 on every Tuesday-Wednesday. Regd. with the RNI – No 14089/66

84