India’s Planning Commission fixed the poverty-line at Rs. 29 per person per day (around ½ USD at today’s rate) attracting severe criticism that the amount is unreasonably low. The Commission’s Vice Chairperson, Montek Singh Ahluwalia, mounted a spirited defence of the poverty-line in CNN-IBN recently. He argued that the poverty line is used only to measure the trends in poverty over time, and it does not indicate the level of poverty, and so the level of poverty-line does not really matter. In other words, this number is only a benchmark based on which we can find out whether the number of people at that level has gone down or up over time, giving us a clue to how policies over this period have performed. There is a merit to this argument.

Courtesy: The Hindu

He also argued that the number of people below poverty line has gone down over the last five years, and attacked those who criticise this assessment. Specifically, he said that these people are not contributing to an intelligent debate on poverty and are instead just bent on making the political point that poverty has increased with Economic Reforms. I agree with him that there are such people. I also agree that income levels of the poor have gone up, and even though it has gone up only by a small measure, it makes an important difference to people’s lives. My agreement with him stops there.

The level of comparison

In arguing that the level of the line does not matter for comparing over time, he implicitly makes an argument that the trend of income change is the same for all income groups. This is problematic. A low poverty line helps us understand the net change in the number of people who slipped above or below the line – nothing else. It gives us no information about people who are poor by any reasonable standard but are above the poverty line, which is problematic given the number of people about whom this gives us no information. To take an extreme hypothetical example, if the line is fixed at zero, we will estimate that there is zero poverty, and this will be the case every year making the estimates uninteresting and meaningless. While the current level does give us some information, much is missed by keeping the level so absurdly low.

Why revise the benchmark?

His defence of the estimate is all the more problematic if we consider the fact that the criticism is to the revised estimate of the level of poverty made by the Tendulkar Committee. Montek argued that the poverty line is analytically useful only if it is held constant because it enables comparison. If that were the case, why appoint the Tendulkar commission, spend all that money and effort into revising the poverty line? The point of that exercise was to arrive at a more reasonable measure of poverty.

Not any expert’s business

He also argued that the estimate should not be criticised because the measure is not arbitrary and it was arrived at by experts. If the mandate of the ‘experts’ was only to estimate the number of people who are poor based on a level of poverty that was given to them, I would agree with such an exercise. While economists are trained to do that, they have no expertise to arrive at what is a level about which one could deem a person to be not poor. For that matter, no ‘expert’ is qualified to make that judgement. It is an exercise in human values and the only correct way to arrive at the level would be through a public debate by which we can arrive at a broad agreement. The commission and its experts can assist in this process and participate in it, but to say that a group of experts can do it in isolation, and that it should not be criticised is bogus.

The acceptable amount argument

On a related note, after arguing that Rs. 29 figure is not useful as a measure of poverty per se, he goes on to argue that it is a reasonable amount if we see it not as a daily level per individual and instead look at it as a monthly income per family; a cleaver way of arguing that it is an acceptable level. Similarly while arguing that the poverty line is not useful as a level, he emphasised again and again that “poverty” has declined over the last five years. A more accurate statement would be that the number of people making less than Rs. 29 per day in urban areas has gone down over the last five years. It is not surprising given that he states that POVERTY has reduced, after all that way of putting it can help in getting political support for Reforms that he has been a champion of over the years.

Do we need a level?

He has also argued that the poverty line will not be used in order to identify people who are poor for government programs, and that he is happy to use an arbitrary figure for the purpose. In my view, this is nothing but an attempt to distract attention on the level, since public attention to the level will force the commission to revise the poverty line upwards, which will in turn increase the number of people who we estimate to be poor. This will raise demands for greater state engagement in combating poverty, which goes against his politics.

Intelligent apolitical debate

He has argued that we have to have an intelligent debate on the poverty line and we should not compromise intellectually in order to score political points. There are at least two key issues under debate here: what a reasonable level of poverty is, and how poverty has changed over time by this estimation. In my opinion, he has played a useful role in arguing that things have changed for the better over the years. I believe in this and the NSS data backs this claim.

The criticism on the revised estimate poverty by the Tendulkar commission is another part of the debate, where his role has been to confuse the public and attack those who criticise without taking a stand on what this level should be. I believe that his reason for doing so is very political, and has to do with his vision for the role of government in public welfare. Thanks to his politics, while arguing for an intelligent apolitical debate on the issue, he has acted as a master obfuscator himself.

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After watching a news report on the appalling number of schools in India without even a building to house it in, I saw an advertisement mentioning “My classroom has no walls, I have no ceiling”.  I would have thought that it were a fundraising advertisement to build schools, but for the white smiling face in the ad.  It turns out in this strange world that classrooms without walls can also be sold as an opportunity.

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The level of corruption in the public distribution system has been one of the rallying points in the cry for change.  The following are some of the corruption related arguments for change:

There is large scale corruption in the system

It is undeniable that there is a lot of corruption in the PDS, and something needs to be done about it.  In arguing that we should shift from PDS to coupons or cash transfers, we have to ask if the chances of corruption will be lower in the proposed systems compared to what we have.  There is little evidence to make that argument.  India has a number of cash transfer programs such as old-age pensions, maternity benefits, family benefit, etc.  P. Chidambaram introduced a well-publicised coupon system in one of his budgets, and there are other benchmarks for the suggestions being made today.  If one wishes to do so seriously, they could examine the level of corruption in such programs and compare it with the PDS.

The proponents of PDS reform have not offered any evidence as to whether these alternatives work.  There are scattered references to a cash transfer program in Mexico, and in other parts of the world completely ignoring the reality at home.  I suspect that there are two reasons why we see no evidence that cash transfers work better: nobody has chosen to carefully evaluate the alternatives for the lack of interest in such an exercise, and in part because the unpublicized official evaluations of coupon experiments are not flattering making it difficult for proponents to use them for their purposes.  The proposed reform is thus not evidence-based in the Indian context; it is a purely ideological project based on the mainstream economics today.

The fact that the proposed reform is mainly an ideological project should not deter us from the possible merits of the reform proposals.  If a well considered idea has a promise, it is well worth giving a shot.  Is the reform proposal a well-considered idea?

Corruption is entrenched in the PDS

One serious argument is that moving to channels that we know to be less corrupt than the PDS could be a strategic way of reducing corruption.  This is certainly a serious argument to consider, especially given the deeply entrenched culture of corruption in the PDS.  While I do believe that corruption is deeply entrenched in the PDS, I do not believe that the system is irredeemably lost.  Many State governments have demonstrated that they could make the system work if it becomes a political priority, Chhattisgarh being an important example.  Beyond the PDS, one can take the example of Bihar that was considered a hopeless government, but a determined CM has shown how things can turn around dramatically with some political will.  Where the political incentive is to make money off such programs, the odds are that a proposed alternative would suffer equally.

Proponents have also argued that the banking system is less corrupt, and so using that channel would help in reducing corruption.  It may well work in areas where there is a good banking network.  It would be a move worth considering in urban areas, but then the use of banks does not eliminate every scope for corruption.  Ghost beneficiaries could continue to exist, those who issue periodic identification documents to beneficiaries could charge them, shortages in overall allocation could be created (as it gets created in PDS), which could then be used for arbitrage.  Other possibilities abound.

It does not work since the subsidy is not given directly

One curious argument that found its way to the economic survey 2009-10, and has been repeated by some prominent economists is that the PDS does not work since the subsidy is not given directly to the citizen, but is instead routed through intermediaries.  The idea that cash transfers or coupons will eliminate intermediaries is silly.  We don’t expect beneficiaries to have the direct access to the coffers of the Ministry of Rural Development from where beneficiaries will directly take their allocation of cash without the interference of any official whatsoever.  Cash transfer will have its own set of intermediaries.

If intermediaries are the problem, then replacing the PDS with coupons is the silliest idea possible.  First of all, there will have to be a system of distributing the coupons periodically to the beneficiaries.  This will necessarily involve multiple layers of the government.  Beneficiaries will then have to collect their entitlements from a grocery store or other shops, which are nothing but intermediaries.  Private shopkeepers will not have the same kind of accounting formalities, or any other measure of accountability that ration shop dealer will have to maintain.  In essence, the grocery store is an intermediary with little accountability.  The grocery store owner will in turn have to submit the coupons to a government agency which will reimburse her.  This additional channel will create its own set of opportunities for corruption.  In all, the coupon system only represents more intermediaries and less accountability.

The system is too large to monitor

There have been reports in the media that the Chief Minister of Delhi, Ms. Shiela Dixit, advocated cash transfers since the PDS is too large to be monitored effectively.  This is curious in a lot of ways.  Delhi is one of the smaller states, and the size argument should be the least problem there.  It should be even less of a problem compared to other states, considering the fact that the state has fantastic transport and communication infrastructure that makes monitoring easier.  Curiously, the argument of size has not been offered on Public Works Department or other departments that are much larger in the state.  Will we even consider eliminating them?  Delhi also has a well established right to information movement that has focussed on the PDS from the beginning that would assist a well-meaning Chief Minister in the quest to monitor.

Delhi’s RTI activists have met the Chief Minister time and again with well-documented information about corruption in specific ration shops, only to find the CM stonewalling.  If monitoring is THE problem, we would expect the Chief Minister to act on the information she was given.  Alas, that is not the problem.  How do we know that cash transfers will work better in her government? Do we know that existing cash transfers in Delhi work a lot better?  Sheila Dixit has been a wonderful Chief Minister for Delhi in many ways, but in this case her arguments cannot be less convincing.

The promise of right to information

Given that the PDS involves straightforward entitlements to specified beneficiaries, the right to information movement offers a terrific tool to contain corruption in the system.  Using the right to information, it is possible to identify precisely whether there is corruption in the system, who is corrupt and by what magnitude.  There is much that could be done to strengthen the RTI regime including proactive provision of information via notice boards, the Internet, mobile phones and other means.  If control of corruption is a goal, then we have to focus on means that we know to work, and means that have a promise instead of focusing our attentions on ideological projects with no demonstrated or theoretical reasons for the alternatives to work better.

The bottom line is that there is no doubt that there is a lot of corruption in the PDS and that something has to be done about it, and there is scant reason to believe that the proposal to change to coupons or cash transfers will reduce the level of corruption.  The government of Chhattisgarh offers to send a text message to anyone who wishes to monitor ration shop, whenever grains are delivered to such shops.  In addition, they have introduced stricter norms of documentation including the requirement that delivery trucks have to take a picture of the truck in front of the ration shop and send an MMS to the State government.  Such measures, along with the fact that the State government has responded more actively to complaints about the PDS have contributed to a major improvement in the system.  The power of right information can be extended even further using digital technologies more effectively.

A lot could be done to redress grievances about the PDS, which will automatically have an impact on how the system functions.  For example, setting up independent ombudsman, imposing penalties to officials who do not comply with PDS regulations, initiating independent call centres that could receive and officially lodge complaints, training the judiciary to respond to at least large-scale complains on the PDS, et cetera could be done.

Those calling for reforms have paid scant attention to other alternatives for better accountability.  It is particularly surprising when Chief Ministers and other powerful officials call for the reform, especially when we know that they could do a lot to change how the system works without radically reforming the system, if only it were their priority.

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Some scholars have pointed out that the motivation to dissolve the PDS comes from the ideological belief that the government should not be engaged in providing public services, and of course the material appeal this has for the rich.  The quest for PDS reform started in the context of India’s liberalization and globalization.  Pushed by multilateral agencies, the PDS was converted into a targeted system in 1997.  The motivation of these reforms was not one of protecting people from hunger – but the zeal to eliminate most public services.  Some of the loudest support for PDS reform today has come from people who have generally shown little concern otherwise for policies to protect people from hunger.  The sudden zeal shown by these enthusiasts for cash transfers and other alternatives to PDS is only bound to give the politically conscious observer the belief that such calls to reform are mainly to undermine the PDS, and not to create a system that works for the poor.

The offer of an alternative can thus be a smokescreen to dismantle what is well established.  I do believe that there are well meaning people who are proposing such reforms.  I guess that they would be well advised to think of creating a strong framework of rights within which coupons or cash transfers can be but one alternative that could be introduced slowly.

Similarly, a lot of push for so-called public-private partnerships comes from large consultancies, and associations of large corporations.  Dismantling the PDS and creating alternate forms of delivery can be a source of profits for many organisations.  One cannot ignore the fact that a lot of political support for reforms is ultimately garnered by such groups whose main motivation is not one of making the system work for the poor.

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Paying cash instead of grains will give people a choice

Another strong argument for coupons or cash is that the recipients will have the choice to spend it on what matters most to them.  Proponents of reform have argued that the Indian policymakers tend to be paternalistic, and often argue that if the government gives cash instead of grains, poor people may misuse it, including by drinking it away.  They have argued that it’s important to trust poor people to make choices that matter most to them.  I fully subscribe to that argument.  Even if there is a condition that beneficiaries should only buy food using the cash transfer, having the option of buying cheaper grains instead of rice or wheat offered in the PDS could be attractive to many a poor family.   Ashok Gulati argued that such choice could also bring about diversity in diet, which is a desirable goal.

If choice is something that we really care about, it is possible to introduce it in a limited extent in the ration shop itself.  Beneficiaries often have the choice of getting rice or wheat, choosing kerosene over other alternatives, et cetera.  The range of goods that are sold through the PDS could be increased, and a limited set of choice could be easily introduced within that system.  PDS reformers of a different brand have argued for a long time that the range of goods available through the PDS should be expanded, some of which should be sold commercially, in order to make the ration shop the more viable.  Such a system exists in Kerala.  While the range of choices may be increased at the ration shop, cash transfers are clearly superior alternative from the perspective of choice.

Poor people will use the cash transfer for the intended purpose

In response to the argument that men in poor families may use the cash for alcohol instead of food some have pointed out that 92% of the people who received cash to buy bicycles bought them in Bihar.  This was given as an incentive to send girl children to higher secondary school.  The assessment that money was used to buy-cycles as intended seems to be correct.  That said, it is a poor analogy to how cash transfers for food will be used.  In the example, girl children were expected to buy bicycles and provide proof of the purchase to the school teachers.  Such a mechanism would be totally infeasible in the case of monthly quota of food grains.

Kaushik Basu among others have argued that cash transfers should be made to adult women in the household, and this has proved around the world to result in higher spending by the families on food, education, health and other desirable ends.  I feel that this is a much more serious basis of arguing for cash transfers than the bicycle example.  Similarly, I am sympathetic to the argument that we have to trust the beneficiaries to use it for what they consider are the best reasons, even though it will result in some cases of what the society can judge reasonably to be a misuse of such benefits.

Coupons give a choice of shops

Another choice argument made by the proponents of reform is that cash transfers and coupons make it possible for the beneficiaries to go to an alternative shop in case the one that they’re dealing with is corrupt.  Today people are tied to a particular ration shop, and if the shop does not deliver they cannot do much about it.  The idea that people should be allowed to take their entitlements to a different place is powerful, and that can actually put a lot of pressure on corruption.  While that idea is powerful, it has strong limitations in a lot of rural areas that are serviced by very few shops.

The coupon system in particular will be vulnerable because of the fact that a private shopkeeper will have to recover her money from the government by providing the coupons, which could involve delays, corruption, et cetera.  This may prevent most shopkeepers from taking coupons, while the rest can merrily charge what they want without any accountability to the holders of the coupons.  Shopkeepers can cite this as an excuse and charge what they want from the coupon holders.  Since there will be no obligation for the shopkeepers to sell the goods at a particular price, they can hold the coupon holders to ransom without any legal accountability .  In other words, they can do exactly what a ration shop dealer would do in terms of charging excess price but the act will be totally legal.  It would be a case of eliminating a crime by eliminating the law.

The coupon system makes corruption a very attractive proposition since legal accountability is considerably reduced in public-private partnerships.  The argument of choice of shops hinges on the idea that there will be unrestrained competition between shops.  In most areas the choice of shops will be limited and the possibility of collusion is large.  Further, officials can easily ensure that honest shopkeepers do not get reimbursed on time and thus keep them away from the system.  If the profit motive of a shopkeeper will drive competition, it can also drive collusion and corruption to the last penny that can be extracted.  The removal of legal accountability, accounting norms and other features that now govern ration shops will only increase the attractiveness of corruption with the coupon arrangement.

Such a risk will be lower in the case of cash transfers, though it is possible that beneficiaries will be tied to either a bank or some intermediary from where they will have to collect the benefits; instead of paying a bribe at the ration shop, they will pay this at a different place.

The idea of giving a choice of shops could be done in a limited fashion within the PDS without compromising on accountability mechanisms.  In urban areas, users can be given the choice of going to any ration shop, and this can be made possible easily with the use of smart cards.  An official in Tamil Nadu told me that they consider such a proposal within the current PDS with respect to Kerosene, where the subsidy is high.  They proposed to open kerosene bunks that can provide an alternative to ration shops, and under measurement could be controlled more easily in mechanised kerosene bunks.  Running ration shop involves overheads, and the possibility that people may go to some other ration shop to collect their entitlements will threaten excessively corrupt ration dealers, and create a similar kind of pressure that coupons and cash transfers will accomplish.

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Many have argued that half the PDS entitlements reach the “non poor”.  I believe that resources are scarce, and the government should spend the money on people who need it most.  We should thus be concerned if resources are being spent on those who do not need it.  In considering whether resources reach the right people, we should remember that we have a rather poor system of identifying the poor.  The poverty-line based on which we classify a person as poor is woefully out of date and so people who would be identified by the society as living in abject poverty could be officially classified as ‘non-poor’.  As a result, the argument that PDS entitlements reach people who do not need is grossly exaggerated.

In addition to the definition problem, even those who could be officially classified as poor often get excluded given the problems with identification.  Proponents of reform are correct in identifying identification to be a problem; but then, they focus mainly on the non-poor being identified (which is an exaggerated problem), whereas my concern is that the poor are often left out in targeted systems.

Further, proponents of reform have made no argument on why the shift to coupons or cash transfers will improve the identification situation.  There is absolutely no reason either in theory and practice for the shift from the PDS to lead to an improvement in this dimension.  In fact, shifting to cash transfers will only worsen the identification problem:  The quality of PDS grains, the need to wait in line to get the grains, and other reasons make the PDS inherently unattractive to most middle-class and rich people.  As a result a lot of people who are well-off select themselves out of the PDS, which would not work with a cash transfer program.  Further, there are rich possibilities of providing different sets of grains (e.g. coarse grains) that may find a larger set of takers among the poor than those who have the means.  Cash offers no such means of self-selection.

UID will solve the identification problem

On a related note some have argued that the introduction of Unique Identity Cards will solve the identification problems for cash transfers.  The idea that the use of unique identity cards would solve the identification problem is perhaps the most ill thought solution for the problem of identifying who all need food support.  The use of biometric identification will have a limited but significant impact in reducing the number of ghost cardholders, and perhaps in ensuring that the same person does not get multiple entitlements.  UID offers no way of identifying whether a person is poor are not.  In addition, if the UID is able to offer any help in identification, it can do so equally well for PDS as for cash transfers.

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In evaluating alternatives including cash transfers, it is first important to identify both contributions and failures of the system.  Proponents of reforms today have focused exclusively on the problems, without dwelling on the things that it has done.  There is a reason why the PDS is so popular in Tamil Nadu, Kerala, Andhra and increasingly in other states including Chhattisgarh.  In all these cases the PDS has worked and means a lot to the life of poor people.  It has failed in other parts of India, and sometimes miserably.  Given that the basic structure of PDS is the same across India, one should ask whether the failure of the PDS is due to the design of the system, or whether it is due to larger problems in how these states function.  If it is the former, it makes immense sense to reform or even replace the system.  If it is the latter, we may spend a lot of resources and energy into replacing the system only to find that the alternative will suffer the same fate in the states where it does not deliver.  One problem with the arguments to replace the PDS lock, stock and barrel is that they do not ask serious questions as to why the PDS has failed in some parts of India; and instead they assumes that the PDS has been a failure overall.

Apart from the fact that the PDS has functioned well in some states, we should also take into account some of the inherent advantages in its design compared to cash transfers.  For example, it is more versatile at critical times such as galloping food inflation in its ability to get the government to absorb some costs, compared to cash transfer programs or anything else.  While it is possible in theory to adjust the amount of the cash transferred by taking into account inflation, such a process is politically unlikely to respond to massive food inflation unlike the PDS, where there is a prefixed commitment to provide the entitlements at a certain price.  Further, such as system will automatically respond to differing levels of inflation across regions of India, whereas the cash transfer system will have to have a massive input of information about differing levels of prices in every region, and it has to be accompanied by very complex arrangements to provide different amount of support to people in different regions.

The PDS also provides some means of social intervention when there is coalition among traders to artificially increase the price of grains.  It has served as an outlet of grains bought by the government to insure farmers with a minimum price for their produce.  The PDS also serves to transport grains from many of the grain surplus states into places where it is required.  I will not claim that these functions cannot be done by alternate arrangements; but, if we have to evaluate the system, we have to take into account what it has done along with what it has not; and we have to take into account what the costs of doing it through an alternate system would be.  The calls for replacing the PDS have generally been accompanied by a dismissal of the PDS system as an unqualified failure that accomplishes nothing.  The reality of the PDS is far more nuanced.

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“Do you want to wear an anklet or do you want to go to prison?” said a US consular officer in Hyderabad about the tagging of some Indian students in the United States to monitor their movements. These anklets contain a GPS device that closely monitors the movements of the students, and will alert officials in case they move beyond areas that they have been authorised to. The anklets provide a useful analogy to the Unique ID (UID) project by the government of India. Let me explain.

In an article entitled Prison without walls, Graeme Wood argues that such radio tags were originally created by BI (the market leader in such tracking systems) for cows. Radio tags containing a unique ID would be attached to one cow each. When a cow goes to the feeding station, the station would provide the cow with its ration by recognising the ID. Subsequently, if the cow comes back for a second helping, the unique ID would help the feeding station recognise that the cow has already had its share, and will not serve it any additional helping.

The system was later extended to people. For example, such a device (often in the form of anklets) would be attached to someone under house arrest. The radio tag will be monitored constantly by a sensor at the house, and if the person leaves the house, it would immediately intimate the police about it. This system was later extended in powerful ways by adding a GPS device to the radio tag.

The GPS device allows authorities to provide additional kinds of restrictions and freedoms. For example, a person under house arrest could be monitored, and it also allows other kinds of geographical restrictions on a person. For example, sex offenders are prohibited from going near schools and other areas that have a lot of children. Alcohol related offenders can be asked to stay away from bars, and a police officer will be intimated if such a person stays close to a bar for more than 60 seconds. It can also be used to monitor if the person attends a meeting of alcoholics anonymous, as they have been mandated to, by monitoring if the person is present at a given location on the given time and date.

Norms, freedoms, influences

The system could be understood by focussing on three key components. First of all, there are a set of norms that detail what the subject should and should not do. In the case of cows, the norm is one ration per segment of the day. For someone under house arrest, she is expected to stay within the geographical boundary of the house. For those who have committed sex/alcohol related offences, they are expected to stay away from certain areas.

Secondly, these norms circumscribe the freedoms of the subject. They selectively allow certain cows, certain students, certain people (the sex offenders), and others to do certain things and they prohibit them from doing certain things. They thus determine what kind of freedoms the subjects enjoy.

Thirdly, the anklets and other such IT devices give those in possession of power tremendous influence over the subjects. They do so by helping those in positions of power to establish the identity of the person. This identity helps the influential to closely monitor the actions of the subjects, and this in turn enables them to carefully permit or deny various actions of the subjects. This is often achieved by the threat of a greater punishment if the subject violates the norm that they are supposed to adhere to.

The UID Project

Different IT devices would be required to monitor different kinds of actions. For example, a GPS device would be able to establish if a person is in a bar, but cannot detect it if a person is having alcohol at home. There are other devices that can monitor alcohol content in the body by measuring the nature of sweating in a person’s body. They too have been used in the United States. The UID project by the government of India belongs to a class of such IT projects that can help those in positions of power to identify, monitor and regulate the freedoms of those within the Indian Territory, and Indian citizens abroad.

For example, the government has announced that it will use UID in the Public Distribution System to provide rations to people. They argue that the UID card will prevent people from overdrawing the rations, especially in the names of those who are either not authorized or those who do not even exist in reality. The home ministry is reportedly building the National Intelligence Grid (NATGRID) that will use the UID to closely monitor where we travel (based on our ticket purchases), who we talk to (using mobile phone data), and an assortment of other things. Such close monitoring will provide the government, especially the security agencies a degree of influence over people: from terrorists to those who oppose corruption vigorously.

By associating such devices with cows and prisons, I may have given a sinister tone to such devices. I should clarify that I’m not entirely against the use of such devices. They are the tools, and their merits should be understood by how they are used, and how they could be used. I will take that up in a subsequent article.

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Binayak Sen has just received a life-term jail sentence for sedition or waging war against the state. The specific crime, according to the judgement, was that he conveyed three letters written by a Maoist leader to a Calcutta-based trader. This was supported by a broader claim that Binayak Sen and his wife Ilina have known Maoists, and that Binayak even had Maoist literature at his home!

Callous evidence

The evidence presented for the critical claims of the case have been disputed. He met Narayan Sanyal several times in jail, under the supervision of jailors and was searched before and after the visit that it would not have been easy to get these letters in the first place. There was no concrete proof that Binayak conveyed these letters. Binayank had never met the trader to whom he allegedly conveyed the letters, and no evidence was presented on that account.

Among the evidence to show that Binayak not only knew the Maoists but also acted for them, was a typewritten letter he had allegedly received from a Maoist leader. The letter asked him to send a fact-finding team to Surguja district to probe police atrocities. This letter was allegedly seized when the police raided Binayak’s home. According to the law, seized materials were listed and signed by the police and by the accused during seizure. No such letter was listed during the raid. This letter was subsequently added to this list by the police, with a convenient explanation that it was stuck between some papers. It did not carry his signature that was done on all the other seized materials. Not surprisingly, this letter purportedly written two years ago was a still crisp piece of paper. Other evidence presented of Binayak’s Maoist link included a police testimony that he overheard someone discussing in his village that the Maoist leader Binayak had come to their village.

What if he did convey the letters?

The quality of evidence produced has been callous, to say the least, and we have every reason to believe that these letters are cooked up. As a thought experiment, let us assume for a moment that Binayak did convey these letters.  Is the content of these letters seditious? According to well-established precedents, sedition requires a call to arms and for the violent overthrow of the state. These letters to not do so and there is no evidence ever that Binayak Sen has ever called for violence, leave alone the violent overthrow of the state.

The crime then?

Binayak Sen’s real crime is not an attempt to overthrow the state, but an attempt to change the state of things. As an office bearer of one of India’s finest civil rights organisations, the PUCL, he has consistently questioned state excesses. He has questioned why so many people should go hungry in such a resource rich state. He has questioned extra-legal encounters and other excesses by the police. He has questioned the creation of private armed militia that has ravaged many a village. In all this, he has been a persistent pain in the neck of the state – a great crime indeed.

Victims we can agree on

You, my reader, may be against Naxalism and may support the effort to rout it. I am no sympathiser of Naxal violence either and I agree that the state has to respond to it. But there is the question of how it is to be done. We as a nation may disagree on many issues over this complex thing called Naxalism – but I believe that we will mostly agree on the idea that innocent people and those who have not indulged in violence themselves should not be victimised.

There are tens of thousands of victims today. Thousands of tribal people have been arrested and are languishing in jail without trial, many among those who would have committed no crime. Tens of thousands have been summarily evicted from their villages – for no crime they committed. Paramilitary forces have started accumulating in these regions and even sympathisers have argued that they have to operate with little ‘intelligence’ i.e. they have little or no information on who they are fighting with. Under these circumstances, many many more will be victimised.

I believe that security personnel are as humane as the rest of the society. Among thousands who are engaged in this war, I expect that most of them will exercise restraint, on occasions at the risk of their lives. It is sadly a story that is little said. A good friend of mine was almost killed on two occasions when he was merely on probation as a police officer, for no crime that he had committed. I will never fully understand what he went through, but I can understand his anger or the anger of the police force against Naxals whose targets they have become. There are indeed many victims in this sordid game.

Why we need Binayaks

The war today is happening under this climate of fear and animosity. While many among them are humane, many are human as well. The police and the paramilitary men whose lives are in danger are unlikely to be discerning in all situations. Many among the armed personnel will inevitably carry with them the established prejudices and disregard for tribal people, just as many in our society do. This is combined with a war-like situation and the absolute ignorance of who is who (called “intelligence failure” in more fancy terms). When adherence to law and due process are thrown to the winds, this concoction will inevitably lead to widespread injustice to absolutely harmless people.

Such are the circumstances, and very few of us will disagree that many are victimised unjustly by the state. Most of us will also agree that such injustice should be mitigated, and the victims compensated. Human rights activists are the most potent force working for such justice today, and it would be hard to quarrel against their mission. We cannot quarrel either with their methods of careful documentation, research, writing and the use of petitions and law suits. After all, it is not too much of a crime to demand that the law be implemented.

All this will of course put restraints on the government, and restraints will make it difficult for it to pursue its goals. But then what is a government without constraints? Even the constitution is a constraint, after all! Civil rights activists like Binayak Sen strive peacefully, and work using the law as their tool. Incarcerating him and other such people has made such work impossible in Chhattisgarh, at a time when such work is needed most. It is our task now to ensure that he is back in action, and that activists like him become a powerful force in these troubled times.

In case you wish to contribute to the movement, you could start by signing a petition supporting Binayak here.

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In a press conference following the massive victory in the election, the Chief Minister Nitish Kumar remembered the massive changes that have happened in the electoral atmosphere of Bihar. As soon as the election got over, we would visit hospitals or families of dead people. It did not look like an election; it looked like war, he recalled. He also characterised erstwhile strategies of political parties during elections as logon ka kayal kam, booth ka kayal jadha i.e. more thinking went into managing the voting booth than into seeking people’s mandate. This election has been remarkably different: free from violence, free from complaints of malpractice, and focused relentlessly on performance of the government.

The percentage of women who voted went up by nearly 22%, and for the first time a greater proportion of women voted in the election compared to men. This is in part due to a conscious attempt by Nitish Kumar to cultivate a support base among women. As it happens always in India, the poor and long marginalized communities voted in significant proportions. All these put together, it is clear that the voice of the common voter was best reflected in this election than any held before.

Voices that shape the government

The voice of the Bihari voter was loud, clear and unambiguous. Can they now rest and wait for the next election? Unfortunately, the voices that shape politics are not spoken only during elections. The limit of the influence of voters was illustrated on the day of elections itself: BJP leaders made strident announcements that this election will prove that only good performance will count in politics, and that the Bihar election has changed Indian democracy forever. Between these announcements, the spokesperson came out to announce that they will retain their corrupt Chief Minister in Karnataka. So much for the fear of voters and the pressure to deliver!

If people speak only when they cast the ballot, they will only have a limited voice in how the government performs over time. We live in a world where corrupt politicians, contractors, officials and others in positions of power mobilise every day for their private benefit. The common person has to compete in this brutal atmosphere for the attention of the government. Having a voice requires persistence, and consistent engagement.

Participation beyond choosing governments

This would be true even if one has a well-meaning government. Voice represents not just a protest, it represents collaboration. Our needs and circumstances are different as men, women, Dalits, Brahmins, poor or a middle class person. Solutions created with one community in mind in state capitals may not work for another community elsewhere. For example, one former BDO explained to me that a scheme to construct free latrines in houses will have a limited appeal in rural India, since each house has to maintain a sufficient area for the sceptic tanks. When houses themselves are small, most people are unwilling to sacrifice 1/4^th or more area for sceptic tanks. He suggested a system of pipes to connect houses to a common tank for each village, instead of the privatised model for each family that is common among the middle-classes.

Such feedback would not be possible if common people are unable to voice their concerns over programmes, and kick them upstairs to the corridors of power. The citizen has to raise her voice and contribute to the design of policies if we have to create solutions that are lasting. We cannot just vote and hope that all will work well i.e. a deliver-ative democracy is no substitute to a deliberative democracy.

Family, society & democracy

This would require every social group to participate in debates and to be taken seriously by others in the society. This means, for example, that a poor Dalit woman should be treated with respect in the Panchayat, the Block office, media and other influential spaces. It means that she should have the space in the family to go out of the house and to represent her case to others freely. It means that she must have the skills and the knowledge to craft effective solutions for her issues; a skill that will grow with participation, trial and errors. True democracy cannot be created without changes in all these spheres.

Such changes in the family and the society would represent a major social revolution. Is Bihar ready for that? We know that major social changes have happened in the past few decades, and the representation of those who were long marginalized has grown. Measures such as 50% reservation for women in Panchayats will contribute to strengthening women’s voices, and political competition will force every party to take all social groups more seriously. Much has happened in Bihar that we should all cherish. But have these changes been enough for the common Bihari to keep the government on its toes? The Bihari voter has spoken…but will the Bihari citizen now speak?

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