Rupee ₹ Slides in International Market

 Even the wealthy nations face economic crunch

There exist Five Economies in India, of course, not officially recognized.

1. The Fifth World India Economy, of the displaced & marginalized ryot, that started emerging during the benevolent Firangi Raj, and grew at accelerated rate, now, during Swa-Raj. It survives by recycling the waste / effluence left by the elite.

2. The Fourth World India Economy, of the aborigine tribes, which started in ancient times and continues; it has been disturbed by the governments.

3. The Third World India Economy, of the agrarian society in rural India. It has been self-sustaining until colonized by Industrialization. Now it is in chaos.

4. The First World India Economy, which rules the Nation. It is internationally recognized. It is also visible in the countrywide chaos in equality.

5. The Gray Zone Economy, which is variously called: Black Money, secret accounts in foreign banks, scams and frauds, extortion, etc.

What is the rate of Rupee in each of these five Indian Economies?
Before answering this question, let us remember that currency, any currency, has no tangible value.

J. K. Galbraith (one of India's rare or very few friends) described India's society at the start in one of his essays (Ambassador's journal: a personal account of the Kennedy years): there is a horizontal line that divides the society. There are a very few above the line, and a large mass of people below it.

The rupee symbol '₹’ is a graphic representation of Galbraith's words which documents the shameful and drastic inequality and injustice.

A 'Vastu' expert opined, the horizontal line on Devanagari letter ' र ' is inauspicious to India. The Experts fumble!

Alas! None thinks of the 'Centralized Power' is a basic feature of Civilized Society since its birth 5K years ago, also called 'Urban Revolution', which has also proved to be inauspicious to 'Land, Waters and Life' on the Earth!!

(30-06-2013)
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Advice by Father to Son (Extracts from a book)

Extracts from book:

IN ONE ERA AND OUT THE OTHER

By Sam Lawson

Advice by Father to Son

"Never Depend On Strangers".

"Remember Son, if you ever need helping hand, you will find one at the end of your arm."

"And if you want your dream to come true, Don't Sleep."

"I met all challenges, reaped rewards and found myself with everything a man could ask for including an outstanding collection of doubts, misgivings and ambivalence in all sides."

"A penny is a lot of money if you haven't got a cent."

"1+1=2 fine in the school. At home 1+1=2 What?"

"1 pair of skates = 12 violin lessons."

"1 phone call = 1 carfare to a museum."

"4 movies = 1 shirt."

"1 bicycle = 10 pairs of eyeglasses."

"5 ice-cream sodas = 2 pairs of socks."

"You mustn't lie, but you don't have to tell the truth either. Just keep your mouth shut."

"For lovely eyes, seek out the good in people."

"For attractive lips, speak words of kindness."

"For slim figure, share your food with the hungry."

"For beautiful hair, let a child run fingers through it."

"For poise, walk with the knowledge that you never walk alone."

There are two types of Poverty

1. Poverty inflicted by the powerful classes of civilized societies by various means -wars, famines, monopolizing the resources of the Earth for their greed for Power and Profit on the weaker sections.
2. Poverty by Choice to live by taking minimum resources from the earth for the survival and living in harmony with nature, like the aborigine - adivasi - communities of the world.

My Strategies

• Choose only one necessity now out of two or more options for expenditure. 

• With no currency at hand, there were no problems with basic needs, what to chose. 

• Until the age of eighteen it went on like this. By then I had acquired skills in farming, cooking, house maintenance, etc. besides hundreds of errands that village kids are involved. At this level self-help is the cheapest and most economical option available for those who face scarcity.

During the study at college, learning and working to support education went together.

Even after the college studies, there never was surplus to splurge.

These strategies took shape during childhood. There was none to advice, no newspapers, no radio. One learns by watching what others do, whatever is happening around, thinking and learning by self-access.

I was six year old then. My mom, with my brother in arms, and I were displaced, marginalized and became landless peasants. We walked barefoot to another village. From that time on I was earning (working) while learning (schooling), mom's young helper.
ECONOMY IS NOT MONEY.

It was war time away in other continents. Yet in remote far away corner of our village its brunt was felt. Happily we were in village. It was far different economy then. The Land, Water and Plants did provide to those who were ready for the BROWN CALLER VOCATION.

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NOTE: In 1985, I borrowed this autobiographical book from public library. I should have noted the publisher's name etc. The book was written soon after World War II. I have been going through the resource crunch. No one was there to advice me. But I knew the difference between Needs and Wants. This advice is speaking my mind.

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Catch ’em young

Creative Imagination of the Market

by Remigius de Souza

Cars and Guns: Catch them young

Cars and Guns – toys at Rs 10/- to Rs 2000/- from roadside stalls to malls!
Cars and Guns – games at cyber cafes / at home PCs at nominal cost!
Create needs wants; Create supplies: These are Market strategies. Take it or leave it.

CREATIVE IMAGINATION of the Indian ad-world now indeed is flourishing with the advent of TV, and more TV channels on the air. But what is food for one may be poison for the other. Now the children are progressively subjected to abuse by making them ad-models, and subjecting them as viewers to induce consumerism, which, of course, is far from right education, if not to pester their pampering parents.

Sophisticated Child labour

After subjecting women to abuse, for example, “Made for each other” (comparing women companions to cigarettes/stubs/butts), now they have targeted the children. A new class of sophisticated child labour is emerging. Recently this trend has gone far beyond, the not-so-famous ad “Mummy, sach kya hota hai?” (Mummy, what is truth?), though it was banned (on protest!).

Even in the First World countries, where the TV was started, there are strict laws against targeting and using the children through advertisements. However this may not be true of First World India [FWI], in the waves of globalisation, market economy, freedom of expression etcetera. There is no sensor board here to nab the TV ads. Our governments and ministries are busy handling internal – external –natural – man-made calamities. But where are the cultural police gone? Who is supposed to intervene on behalf of the children: the parents, families, teachers, or NGOs?

It is known, at their tender age the children are under the burden of formal schooling and no play. They have hardly seen the ‘real’ world. At this stage if they are pushed into the dragnet of ‘virtual’ world in the ‘real’ time, the results may not be far from predictable; that they may be reduced to be robots at the hands of the vested interests that control the powers. The educated busy parents in the First World India may not be ignorant about this, though they may find some relief from the children being engaged in viewing TV etc.

Or, aren’t the people happy enough by the cinema-sports-world superstars farting in the ad-world? Or, who is ultimately paying in reality, at what price, cost, value and benefit, and for whom? Anyone could see the Geobbels’ policy is followed by the capitalist long-term agenda to catch them young.

Once the pluralistic Indian society is now pushed to polarizations, communities to be communal, and families to be nuclear. In such a situation, holistic thinking and action may prove detrimental to self-interests, or so one may think. Hence the matters of control, conflicts, corrections, cure...or care are taken over by – or given up to – various institutions, and the family, community, the collective takes the back seat. Of course the institutions work in their respective compartments. In the vigilant society it should be the other way: the family – community – the collective should take the reins / steering wheel in its hands, and the institutions (GOs / NGOs) to be used as bullocks / wheels, while navigating through any situation.

Remigius de Souza
(18-10-2006)
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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.

WAYS TO WEALTH (POEM)

Ways to Wealth (Indian Budget - Year 2006)

1 
Once a god-adored adorned
many a head of door to an abode.
Now the gods take to the road,
beg for patronage. And the rich
beggars go globetrotting for
finance, know-how and trade.

2 
Once the children of communities
cohesive received learning free
in the life-supporting skills in
branches of wholesome life-tree.

Now in the forward societies
they buy it at the trading malls
turning their clocks fast forward
until late to their adulthood
to earn their dough of uncertain
value to buy the living and life-
supporting services from expertise
at the thriving market place.

3
Now the bureaucrats – the masters
from the branches of expertise,
at their highest level of incompetence
in Peter Principle – take chairs;
replace colours faded of feudal-powers,
at the helm of the people’s affairs.

Now no wonder the prostitution goes
rampant and the pimps thrive on
as they make it quick with smile on
the by-ways and highways to wealth.

4 
Now no wonder all the world children
– you and I, yours and mine –
are the cursed ‘unwanted generation’,
as much said, the ‘growing population’
by the stakeholder – the rational animal – man
as much done: the rape of Mother Earth.

Remigius de Souza | Mumbai | 04-03-2006
(Revised and updated)

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Indian Farmers' Woes and Joys

Key Word: Art, Farming (i.e. Agriculture, Aquaculture and Horticulture (forestry) collectively or separate)

Five Elements

Traditional farmers’ lives that depend on monsoon are almost identical in many regions of the world. Hence the following text is inclusive.

Very few would ever believe farmers are artists. Farmers' art is most risky vocation, among all types of occupations, professions and vocations. Even a few may not understand this fact though they may know what is farming.

Haiku by Remigius de Souza

Farmer's art takes place on real field down to earth. Like in words, painting, photography etc. it does not create virtual reality. Farmers take the colours from Mother Nature - Srishti, of five elements, Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space, and on a canvas of small or big plot of land; he works with contemplation. They are never verbose. They are fully in contact with every nook and corner of their farm; likewise the health of all the plants.

Haiku by Remigius de Souza

Farmers are not only artists, they are also planners, but not like town planners, who flatten the lakes and land, and cut it into pieces, make their 2D drawings to build 3D art of cities. Farmers use undulating land for management and conservation of water and land.

Poem by Remigius de Souza

Farmers are management experts, too! They manage land, water, seeds, fodder, weeding, manure, tools, carting, storage, other food crops, rearing animals and birds. And equally important are the repairs, maintenance, examination, improvement and policy planning in every aspect of home and farm, which is part of their homestead. All of these, they do within available resources. Many farmers may be ill-literate but are not 'un-educated' as the elite think.

Poem by Remigius de Souza

Traditional sculptors, for years, make Ganesha, Durga idols in clay. They are aware the deities are to be immersed. Yet they work with devotion, faith, without boredom. Farmers too work with same dedication. Their labour of love, therefore, is elevated to the status of 'vocation', of art. In their karma there is element of contemplation – Dhyan – hence it is 'spiritual' too. Traditional farming also involves action by Community Participation.

Haiku by Remgius de Souza

Politicians are like white clouds.

The educated elite class have an impression that farmers work only four months (during the season) and the rest of year lazy around. Even the experts like Amartya Sen are not exception. What about the governments and bureaucrats?

Haiku by Remigius de Souza | Image by Soojung Cho

More than natural calamities, the real cause of farmers' woes and miseries are the government and bureaucracy, market and industry, and their wrong priorities of progress and development.

Note: There is lot to learn from farmers:
1. Watering the farms: Learning from the people. Governments could learn how to save resources, particularly currency spent for development, and seal its draining at the bureaucratic level - the starting point, which consumes its major part.
2. Cow dung, Rice and Amartya Sen (a critique):Challenges of 21st Century
3. SEE: Soojung Cho’s Artworks of Inner Vision (http://www.soojungcho.com/home.htm )
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

All Are Architects

Honeybees and Hive

 ALL ARE ARCHITECTS: Honeybees are architects; Spiders are architects; Weaver-birds are architects; Beavers are architects; Ants are architects... 

All are architects, because at primary level architecture is Shelter; that matters! The Title 'Architect' is protected by law in some countries, and following them in the First World India. This is so because of ignorance about real life and real issues of people.

However, thankfully, the term “architecture” is not legal.

In India now there may be about 50,000, perhaps more, qualified architects. How many of them have taken legal title is doubtful. Imagine, 1200 million people have 50K architects! They will have no time to cope up the amount of work they should have had. 

Weaver Bird's two nests are never same

Spider's Site Selection

Yet there is monopoly of a few architects in the profession. Forty years ago, one architect, a foreigner of credibility, (I don't mention the name) exclaimed in Ahmadabad, "these mafia architects!"    

While “shelter”, howsoever may have stood the test of time, is considered “low” in esteem by civil society; “Architecture” is “high art” surrounded by mystery. In the present scenario, “architect” belongs to a “service class” – in Indic term, “Neo-Shudra” – in the created by Industrial Civilization, on the outskirts of Global village.   

Anthills

 Well, that was a case earlier too. Emperor Shah Jahan cut off the hand of the architect who created Taj Mahal! 

Heinrich Robert Zimmer, in his book on Indian art (Myths and Symbols in Indian Art and Civilization), quotes a story of the gods’ architect, Vishwakarma, who had built a palace of Indra, the king of gods. Indra brought him virtually to tears. So he approached Vishnu, and he took Vishvakarma to Shiva for recourse. Shiva, in a guise of an ascetic, gives Indra a vision to understand that his glory is short-lived like a millions Indra that have passed away before him. The mythical story imbibes aesthetics and ethics. 


MY HOUSE IN KONKAN REGION, WEST COAST, INDIA 

My mother was the owner - architect of this house. It was built by Community Participation, where carpenters, masons, adobe wall builders came from village and surrounding area. I was in teens then. I took by first lessons 'mud house building' here.My mother exercised her autonomy about planning, size, materials to be used, in consultation with all workers: it is in regional style. This house was built by self-help.

It is a mud house - mud floor, mud walls and mud plaster; local latarite stone facia for plinth, and pillars; timber for pillars, bamboo for roof scantling, wooden doors and windows; and country clay roofing tiles. 

I worked almost in all operations as a helper, from collecting stones, and from foundations to roofing, and later regularly attended to maintenance of mud floors, mud walls and roofing. This is a case study: All over India millions of people exercise self-help, autonomy, community participation, planning, maintenance and economy. 

In rural India children learn 'life-supporting-skills' at early formative age. May the elite scorn it as "child-labour", while pampering their urban rich brats by putting them in the best school in the city or a best in the country... What contribution the parents do other than spending money! Modern India has failed to create better model of education than  that has been existing in the past ten thousand years, in past six decades.

NOTE: 1. Images are by Remigius de Souza. 

2. More on TRIBAL SKILLS: Clay country roofing tiles 

3. Traditional Mud Floors Technology 

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Ways to Wealth: Indian Budget 2006 (POEM)

(Key Word: Economy)


"Ways to Wealth: Indian Budget 2006" is review by an ordinary person, who is not an economist. Hence it is convinient to write in poetry form! I republish this on the occasion of the day of presentation of national budget of India. It will be interesting to compare theories with reality. (See previous post.) 

The Times of India on February 12, 2010 the following report: 

Rs 1 lakh crore budget funds go unspent each year

NEW DELHI: While the government is grappling with a huge fiscal deficit and hence large borrowings to fund key social sector schemes,

staggering sums of up to Rs 1 lakh crore in a year out of the money allocated to various ministries remained unspent between 2005-06 and 2007-08.

Unspent provisions of Rs 100 crore each or more alone totalled Rs 59,000 crore in these years, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General. The CAG has so far reviewed accounts till 2007-08. The Union account for 2008-09 is still being readied.

What’s worse, the CAG has pointed out that there is uncertainty even about whether all the amounts shown as spent in government accounts have actually been spent. In 2007-08, for instance, more than Rs 51,000 crore was allocated under various flagship schemes in which the money is directly transferred to the bank accounts of NGOs, autonomous bodies and district authorities.

Whether these amounts have actually been spent by the organizations or are lying idle in their accounts is a moot point, the CAG has noted,
observing that since these fall outside the purview of government accounts and hence the Centre’s checks, this is an alarming situation.

The unspent grants are a shocking indicator of the government’s poor budgeting mechanism and the failure of its monitoring tools put in place ostensibly to keep a tab on the progress of some of the key flagship schemes.

It will be interesting to see the Union budget 2010-11 in the light of this report. And follow it though the year how does it perform? We are 110 crore people but no right persons to implement the provisions of the budget, before it proves to be white elephant?. What an irony? 

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Fence sitter's View: Indian budget 1994

(Key word: Economics) 

India Budget 2010 

 

 “COMMON MAN” – “AAM ADAMI” (in Hindi) – is a slogan of the Indian Annual Finance Budget this year. Some time back it was “Pro-Poor” as election campaign slogan. Indian politicians, of all colours and brands, are clever to coin slogans to create fanfare of melodrama – budget or election!

But they fail to implement dogooder packages – provisions –projects – promises, if any, provided in the budgets or five year plans, particularly for the masses or the informal sector of peasants or the Third and the Fourth World India.  This has been going on for decades.

As India is growing in economic power (!), or so it is said by the global vested interests, who look up to India as “market place”, farmers at home are committing suicides. It is said that about 70,000 farmers have committed suicide during the last decade.

Governments – at Centre and States – may be clever. But people are wise. It is best reflected in hung parliaments in the last few decades, where political parties form consortium to cling to the power. They – the politicians – refuse to learn their lesson, decade after decade.
 
Compare the present budget of 2010 with that of 1994!

"Fence sitter's View: Indian budget 1994" is a review by an ordinary person, who is not an economist. Hence it is convenient to write in poetry form! Poetry helps escape make-believe world of expertise. I republish this on the occasion of the day of presentation of national budget of India.  I republish it as we enter the 21st Century. See Link to "Indian Budgets 12 years apart (2 Poems)" Also see "Budget India ’08: A grand cover-up act": India’s Budget – A commoner’s View"

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Cow Dung for Sustenance in India

 ---------------------------------------------

 Cow Dung for Sustenance in India

The cow dung (organic manure) helped  us to help grow food in farms and kitchen garden, to cook our food (energy), and helped us to protect our mud houses; thus helped us to sustain (ecology). We used cow dung wash on the floors and walls. Even the ashes from “Chulha” – cooking hearth made out of mud and finished with cow dung wash – were used in the farms to rejuvenate the soil.

And finally the used cow dung in all its forms as a waste went back to the earth.
All the actions predominantly used human energy, besides animal energy, which is abundant in the Third World India. The governments, though, may not acknowledge while craving for fossil fuel and atomic energy sources. Indeed it explains how cow has been sacred to Indic People for millennia.

There is much interest in “cow dung” worldwide, which is welcome sign in view of “carbon tax”. However, the western attitude to recycling cow dung is to use mega industry, mass scale production, centralization... that are basically harmful to very concept of sustainability. (Deceases due to nuclear-electromagnetic radiation,  mad cow disease, Bird flu, Swine-flu etc. HIV-Aids, apart: Some of them travel by airplane.) On the contrary, the “processing” cow dung in India is decentralized at a household level. This, of course, is a matter of lifestyle! How helpless!!

Inevitably the industrial society goes for mass production, be it cattle, pork, meat or poultry for food, or education, or leisure... that leads to centralisation of power. To save environment – energy – ecology the invent machinery that destroys the very purpose of such intention.

Could modern science and technology replicate this cyclic process, by learning from the people, rather than exploiting the Nature, even after so much of their so-called advancement? Could, at least, any economist verify the cost, price, value and benefit of cow dung in terms of Energy-Ecology-Environment at micro-meso-macro levels?   At least I am not aware of any, neither at home or abroad.

Read more on cow dung and its relevance to Life and living:       
1. Clay–Cow dung Grain Silos of Saurashtra, Gujarat
2. Cow dung, Rice and Amartya Sen (a critique): Challenges of 21st Century
3. Collecting cow dung for Energy 3
4. Collecting cow dung for energy 2
5. Collecting cow dung for energy


Remigius d Souza
(18 June 2007)
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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Warli Tribal Woman and Cow Dung

Warli woman uses cow dung wash on new bamboo container and baskets

for their maintenance. There are no special classes or schools

to learn several uses of cow dung. The child here is learning by experience

and example, not by scholarly treatises and expert discourses.

The western (and the westernized) societies can only think of production

and use of, even local material such as cow dung on a mass scale; obviously

to keep control on the mass society and profit through centralized power.

Cow dung as building material

(This excerpt is taken from my research paper, “Tribal Housing Buddha and the Art and Science of Karvi Hut”. See LINK for full Text and Images)

Some time ago the Indian Petro-Chemicals Limited (IPCL), Baroda came out with a chemical for waterproofing treatment of mud walls. The offer came through 'Council for Advancement of Rural Technology' (CAPART), Delhi to use it on experimental basis, at 90% subsidy on its cost, on the first 50 houses built for the tribal, under RLEGP. Being sceptical about such industrial products about its cost, economy, and the after-effects etc. we declined. Instead, we suggested using traditional cow dung wash on the walls. The chemical was highly toxic. Thankfully, IPCL had a good sense of withdrawing entire stock from the market, perhaps in good time.

Traditionally the tribal and villagers use cow dung for finishing the mud floors and mud walls. They also use it for the grain silos made of mud mixed with cow dung, or apply it on bamboo silos. People must have observed that pest does not affect the grain stored in such a condition. From the Vedic times, ‘Agnihotra’ – a ritual with fire – uses cow dung, which is believed to purify environment. Are these superstitions? Perhaps the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) and IPCL could divert some of their resources to understand cow dung. We should not be surprised, though, with use of chemical fertilizes and pesticides even the cow dung may also found to be ‘fouled’!

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

IPL’s Bollywood Cricket

IPL’s Bollywood Cricket

by Remigius de Souza


CINEMA and TV among other options is a powerful media. Bollywood, here, in particular, is quite influential in the areas of personal attire – hairstyle, costumes and gestures – to house decoration by the masses. It has gone further to produce Bollywood politics, Bollywood planning, Bollywood architecture, Bollywood landscape design etc. at local, regional and national levels. No. we are not talking about the Bollywood stars – heroes and hoaxes – in the legislature.

IPL is a similar idea religiously copied in the sports i.e. cricket, from Bollywood extravaganza by the brilliant brains in Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI). Just as Bollywood does add foreign locations in their films, so does IPL adds foreign players and half-naked cheerleaders, to blow up surplus money BCCI has earned from cricket frenzy of desi fans (as they don’t know how to use it creatively) that goes into smoke: whosoever few are profited. This is a smoke screen to hide BCCI’s failure to bring quality to its cricket game. It reminds us the recent (2008) Bollywood Budget by P. Chidambaram, our Fin-Min of India.

Any number of movies such as Chak De India, Iqbal, and Lagan etc Bollywood may produce, it is not going to change and better the play-life of 200-300 million children in cities, towns and villages that they rightfully deserve.

The children (those not reached puberty), however, are not so much interested in watching cricket on TV screen as playing it themselves. They play cricket. They make a ball out of newspaper sheets, tie it up with a thread that comes from a grocery pack, and invent their own rules of the game. They play in the corridors in the building, gullies, by-lanes, and on holidays on the streets; they don’t have enough playgrounds in their neighbourhoods: that happens in Mumbai as well as elsewhere. The children anywhere in the world invent their own games, rather than look for external aids to keep themselves excited all the time. The children anywhere in the world invent their own games. They also love to sing, dance, paint and play and to tell stories: the adults don’t. Children are not interested in passive entertainment as the urbanite do.

I have failed to convince this one point even to one person. He was undergraduate student of architecture, and I was his dissertation/ thesis guide, while I was teaching architecture. His subject was stadiums – devoutly dedicated to cricket. I suggested working on smaller sports stadiums, which could facilitate several different games, sports and athletics besides cricket. His argument was (as if he was know-all): ‘nobody is interested in other games, because there is money in cricket.’

Remigius de Souza
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Inflation? Take Ju-Jitsu Action

Inflation? Take Ju-Jitsu Action

On the heals of the Budget 2008 India comes inflation at 7.4%, highest in the last three years, as if an earthquake at 7.4 magnitude on Richter Scale. While one pinches a belly, the other sends physical tremors. But inflation is manmade unlike an earthquake which is natural. In both cases the people suffer.

Market now in modern times is omnipotent, omnipresent force in our lives. Inflation, recession, or even famines, are works of human hands: All works of human hands are perishable, but all human problems have answers. The damage caused to humans due to earthquakes is also a human problem, hence have answers.

I heard on a TV news channel, a Negro man (he must be a celebrity) was making a statement “INFLATION WILL AFFECT ECONOMY” (as if humans are nonentity). They, the concerned people, also add “IT WILL AFFECT THE GROWTH” (after exploiting all the resources of the Earth that belong to all the living beings on the earth). Whose growth anyway?

What could our government do? It will give some promises. It will play some jugglery with numbers to take care of production, trade, industry… blah – blah – blah. They will postpone the problem for some time, like those newly built flyovers in Delhi, Mumbai etc. to solve traffic congestion created by city planners, only to shift the traffic jam to the next point. But the problems created by buildings – civil works are going to stay until next earthquake.

We all know what Ju-Jitsu Action is. Yet we go over it briefly to give a boost to the idea. The Buddhist monks, in self defense, developed it to face the menace of thugs, dacoits, thieves thy met on the way to China some two thousand years ago. They used no weapons but only the force of the attackers to defeat them.

There is no need to mention who the enemy is and its cronies are (inside or outside).

What Ju-Jitsu Action possible in the present situation, without using any force, without spending any energy? Just in two words:

BOYCOTT MARKET

Boycott market, at all levels, just for ONE DAY – 24 HOURS all over India, or Bharat, or Hindustan – whatever you call her.

Don’t travel by train, passenger bus, car, two wheelers, and/or planes.

Switch off radio sets, TV sets, telephones, mobile phones… Don't visit cinema houses, theatres, entertainment houses.

Don’t attend work – even the so-called essential services, schools – universities, examinations for a day.

Don’t buy newspapers.

Don’t go for any shopping, not even essential commodities, which are putting hardship due to inflation, even if it means to go hungry, fast.

One day’s fast is not going to kill us. There are 200-300 million persons below poverty line who are not sure of their tomorrow’s meal. There are millions among Hindus, Muslims, Jain, Christians who observe abstinence / fast for a period of time of year. There are tens of thousands of adivasis who for lack of food drink toddy to kill their hunger during lean period of summer.

There are 300 million mobile phones in operation in India. Imagine what effect it wrought on the market if they stop working for a day!

OBSERVE INDIA BANDH, as if it is a day of national mourning.

No agitations. No protest marches. No slogans. No placards.

Imagine who will yellow their pants (or sarees, or salvars, or whatever), not only in India but all over the world!

So much energy shall be saved!

TWENTY FOUR HOURS OF INDIA BANDH will break the backbone of the omnipotent, omnipresent MARKET and its great religion, the creed of Consumerism and its manipulators and their cronies.

We have heard of Gandhiji’s STATYGRAHA. I don’t know what truth is; but the truth will be out in just twenty four hours.

Ju-Jitsu Action works. (I have personally tested it on many occasions in my personal and public life, even though it may sound silly, impractical, even to some it may seem impossible, it works.) It is time tested weapon for those not in powers, for those who do not wield weapons. Even if they get to know such an idea is floated, they shall be shaken.

Remigius de Souza
12-04-2008

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

We must carry our own burden

We must carry our own burden

Remigius de Souza

My Grandma

 

The decade and half, when Mai, my grandma, was on her last lap, and I was in my early formative years, when we were in close contact, was the most benevolent period for me. 

Mai and her daughter (my mother) were my first teachers, my first school, and it was the first chapter of the countrywide open book that is India; they remain with me forever. It was teaching by example – learning by experience – on the real ground (not in virtual reality).

My Mother

Though Mai taught me Catholic Doctrine (in Konkani – our mother tongue) as per the convention, she never talked about God, Heaven and Hell. Only three or four times, in ten years or so, she said to me, ‘Jesus carried his burden of suffering; ours is nothing before his. We must carry our own burden.’ 

Those were the trying times for her (there is no need make the details public). I had also heard this expression from other women of her genre and generation in our community. The community, spread over fifty miles, even in those days, was cohesive, but had started withering.

As I reflect now, this expression doesn’t suggest Jesus suffered for their salvation of the mankind i.e. to convert everyone to Christianity, which has been a loud propaganda by Holy Catholic Church for two thousand years.

(However, I met at least one priest, in Gujarat, who preached Gospel to the lowly who accepted the Faith and practiced it, but he refused to Baptise them, even on their earnest request, and of course for the ire of his superiors.)

The expression is similar to the indigenous custom of reconciliation initiated by the tribal of Papua New Guinea that they practiced on Easter. It is also similar to the great reverence for Sita Mai – the daughter of the Earth (more than and above Rama; he is almost treated with contempt) – expressed by the peasant women in parts of Maharashtra.

These and there are many examples that show independent thinking of the so-called masses beyond the Authority. Perhaps these lowly anonymous people must have been one of the factors that caused the great civilizations and empires to vanish; but the people prevail.

Some time ago I wrote a comment (see: Land and Peasants in Development in India) on reading an essay by Amartya Sen on ‘rice’. How would Mai respond if she were told the contents of Amartya’s discourse on rice? In our typical local manner and dialect, Mai would have said, ‘It is half-cooked rice.’

It is half-cocked rice

Any peasant would say that, then and now. They have been managing farming for their life time from their childhood; they have been managing it for last ten thousand years. Even today they shall manage it well if the invisible tentacles don’t gag them.

It is only now in the modern times the professional economists and scientists invent theories and technologies to cause subordination of large majority of people, at the hands of the visible invisible power mongers and profiteers, garbed in sugar-coated words of salvation of the mankind.

India, as projected by the rulers, Authority, the experts etc. is not the whole truth (as much as any Indians who may believe that it is all glamorous life for the people in the West), not that everyone believes them. In their projections they fail to do the fieldwork, the field study, the ground work. In crisis they look for some white angles will come to their rescue.

The people, the so called masses, the second class citizens, despite receiving the occasionally distributed doles and charities, do not trust them. The open proof is the successive coalition governments in India. Any coalition government, anywhere, is only a caretaker government until the next election, or a coup.

~~~~
Remigius de Souza

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

She Lived Her Living Doctrine

She Lived Her Living Doctrine
 Remigius de Souza

My Grandma

Mai, my grandma, was a peasant. She worked round the year like millions of peasant women across India. Round the 365 days a year her daily chores also involved writing on the earth – preparing for the monsoon, the season for paddy and vegetable farming that depended on rain. (Of course, Mai’s literacy and education has no official recognition in India of Democratic Socialism.)

And like all other peasant women, Mai would carry her daily household work, which extended beyond the family members. It involved keeping, rearing, caring a couple of cows, a dog, chickens, a cat, plants – coconut, mango, chikoo, jackfruit, banana… and the helpers, women and men, who worked on paddy farm during the season – all of them a vital part of the household, of economy; they were active participants in balancing the environment, ecology and energy (the much hyped terms today), thereby sustenance. Indeed a larger family. (That keeps with universal definition of Sant Jnaneshwar.)

Her family was better-off economically than most. However they had no servants. Helpers were called in during the monsoon, and for occasional errands. For example, the south wall of the house needed protection from rains, so also the eaves also were extended prior to monsoon. For this they used they used wooden bullies (in stock) and bamboo that grew in the compound hedge. For the cladding they used mats made from coconut leaves. Grandpa himself used to weave the half-coconut-leaf mats. I took opportunity to participate in many of the actions, whenever possible.

Mai was no workaholic. During the afternoons, while others were taking siesta, Mai also had her break. She would squat on the cow dung washed mud floor in the shaded veranda facing the east. She would silently say her Rosary – all fifteen mysteries. Her rosary was made of blue glass beads for all the fifteen mysteries, homemade.

She had short prayers while getting up in the mornings and going to bed at nights, and angelus in the evening with the family. She would go only once in a year to the village chapel. That was on the feast day of the patron saint – St. Joseph. Others – the young and the old – would go to the chapel on Sundays to say Rosary in the community, and on Good Friday to join Way of the Cross.

A priest used to visit the village three or four times in a year. Meanwhile the faithful would conduct the rituals to Baptize the newborn or to burry the dead. During his visits the priest used to celebrate the Mass in Latin. Later Latin was replaced by Konkani, our mother tongue.

Mai occasionally used to smoke bidis taken from grandpa’s stock. Grandpa made his own bidis and would not buy from the market. Mai stitched he own long-sleeved blouses by hand. Only at latter age she got them made by a local tailor. Her bed was a homemade quilt from recycled sarees, spread over a bamboo mat, on the mud floor.

I never saw Mai wearing gold ornaments, except, perhaps, earrings, not that she had no gold. She used a couple of pairs of glass bangles, a traditional symbol of a married woman whose husband is living. Silver ornaments were meant for Catholic widows, who could afford.

Mai used to tell me true stories of real people and real places, not about kings-queens-princes-princesses-fairies, without malice and taboos; she did not subscribe to Victorian values like the elite. Her stories had been as real s her work…

WORK! Her work wan not an occupation or a profession that is marked by a bottom line. Whatever she did was her vocation – her living doctrine higher than one prescribed by Church. Her work had contemplative value, and never was mechanical. She must have surely enjoyed it: Work became Leisure, Education and Health simultaneously (hence no bottom-line). Her work had arrested entropy, simply put.

Mai, also, was never, never affected by boredom, the malady that so common among the so-called advanced-elite-urbanite – rich or poor – who look for excitement 27x7. I never heard any complain from her about whatever work she did. Each day, each action had been new, though seemingly same. Work and Reward were no different from each other. Means and goal were same – one was not separate or different from the other.

Work, now, is a much abused word, much abused action. As I type this, a word on a sheet or screen, I call it my work (duly attached with copyright, as if the whole world depends on my writing)! We tend to ignore that ‘word’ (spoken, written, or in print) and a ‘picture’ (drawn, painted, or moving) are ‘virtual reality’ that takes us away from reality, which depends on depth and breath of our perception. Does it nourish any one, even me, other than my inflated ego? It constantly dissipate enormous amount of energy.

I never saw her sick or lying down by illness or fatigue. She was small, thin, frail looking, with wrinkles and dark complexion. She seemed to have arisen from the earth. Mai was daughter of the soil like millions of them across India, and elsewhere too. Whenever I travelled the countryside, over decades, I witnessed her silent presence everywhere. She reminds me of Sita Mai of epic Ramayana, whom the peasant women revere and have composed many poems (in Marathi) in her honour.

The establishment – Agency – does not recognise their education, intelligence, wisdom, skills, labour…, not even their presence, except in electoral rolls. No economist, no statesman, no self-ordained leader – in social, political, religious or any other fields – would ever be able to comprehend the universal – primal phenomena of Mai.

They – egocentric hypocrites with their blinkered view of the world, in the frenzy of development and desire for coveted rewards – have failed to discover any political, economic, scientific, social formula (theory) to understand them, or to discover any tool (technology) to elevate them. Their creative potency has hit the lowest. In the development-mad world the drudgery of this universal – primal Mai has rocketed down to the bottom of the pit.

Ironically, the legend of Sita Mai is now taken over by Nano–Maruti (Maruti is one of the names of Hanuman in epic Ramayana. Tiger and Tiger-god of the tribal have vanished with the vanishing forests and now taken over by the modern legend of Jaguar-the-sick. Such is the economic (money) power of India. Of course, we don’t deny the social responsibility of the ruling minority that is the Fist World India and the Corporate: Neither the farm land nor the forest nor the tiger is society!

Now tiger only will be seen in memorials in the Natural History Museums and in the idols of Kali Mai!!
~~~~
Remigius de Souza
23-03-2008


© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Singur Land: Small Print - Fat Money

Small print - Fat money for Singur SEZ
by REmigius de Souza

Here is a news item that appeared in the Times of India, Mumbai Edition, on page number 23, a size 4 cm x 8 cm. We wonder who and how many may have noticed it.

Tatas and the media have done their duty to make it public. Of course, those filed the case in the Calcutta High Court must be aware about this verdict. So what next?

What remains to be seen is how the money would be disbursed, among whom? How much part the people would receive? How would be spent for the West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation, over the next 90 years? What may be the condition of Tata Motors in the fast changing environment of industry and natural resources? How long Tata Motors will continue to produce the same product, or will it change in the coming years? And what the long-term and short-term plans are for rehabilitation of the affected people? The government and its agencies may continue to get money from Tatas for 90 years, but who guarantees that people will continue to receive the compensation?

There are more questions than answers.

I quote the news here:

Tatas to pay Rs 1k cr for Singur land
Kolkata: Tata Motors on Wednesday informed the Calcutta high court that it would pay West Bengal Industrial Development Corporation an amount in the region of Rs 1,000 crore in a phased manner for the Singur land lease of 90 years for its small car project. Stating that the land was not gifted to the Tatas, their counsel produced the deed of lease executed between WBIDC and firm indicating the premium and rent that Tata motors would have to pay on different slabs of increase.
The case was heard by a bench of chief justice S S Nijjar and justice P C Ghose on a PIL challenging the acquisition of land at Singur. AGENCIES
Publication:Times Of India Mumbai; Date:Aug 23, 2007; Section:Times Business;
Page Number:21

The news get old very fast; life of people, land and waters, however, continues to get affected for decades, centuries, when planners and producers have passed away long ago.
~~~~
Remigius de Souza

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Govt. of India must file Returns

Govt. of India must file Return to the citizens


There is a customary ritual pre-budget address by the President of India to the nation on a previous day. It should be authenticated with facts and figures, which should include the following:

1. To take an account of the previous budget's provisions;


2. The actual expenses incurred, and where it was not consumed;


3. The areas where the budgetary provisions where utilized, and not utilized, and how many people were benefited, how many are left over;


4. How much amount of the provisions were spent for the government executive machinery - personnel, transport, allowances, salaries, perks etc.


5. What were the success and failures of each project, mission, campaign, Abhiyan etc. in terms of reaching the target groups, and implementation, and usefulness.

In other words, the governments - at the centre, states, districts, cities and village panchayat levels (i.e. local self-governments) must file their annual returns just as individuals and associations are made to file the return on their income and expenditure and performance.

In fact, all the corporations and undertakings of the governments and local self-governments must also be subjected to file their returns of their performance every year to be scrutinized by the citizens.

According to the region - the nation or the states - should file their returns in all the regional or the respective languages of the regions, and should be published in the national and local newspapers.

It is unfortunate that budget speech is in English, and our government cannot afford to make it available in all the regional languages, at least those mentioned on our currency notes, so that a larger number of citizens could access it.

Why the Budget Speech should be only in English? Why this Neo-Brahminism in the secular India?

Let the citizens too do the Monitoring and Evaluation of their government's performance every year rather than waiting for the election times to hear the lies and concocted stories by the contestants!

~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Budget India ’08: A grand cover-up act

Budget India ’08: A grand cover-up act:
India’s Budget – A commoner’s View

by Remigius de Souza

Episode: India’s Finance Budget 2008, │ Main Cast: Finance Minister (Fin-Min) P. Chidambaram │ Date: Friday 29 February 2008

India’s Budget – A commoner’s View

The first World India has harnessed so much wealth that it (not she, not Mother India: note it) can waive 60K crore rupees bank-debts to the farmers: indeed a great cover-up. Very, very sexy! As expected it created a great buzz in the media.

The dead-by-suicide farmers and those had paid their loans, and those dying by hunger and malnutrition (reported / unreported) – the second-class citizens, the Third World India (and the Fourth World India) – are redundant.

The peasants and adivasis, displaced due to development euphoria, e.g. special economic zones (SEZs), dump themselves in the slums in metropolises, cities and towns to earn their daily bread with dignity rather than begging, in the past sixty years that still continues, are redundant.

This is apart from atrocities by the ranks and files the fundamentalist, the extremist, the regional/ provincial chauvinist of many colours and shades, the law and order lapses, the black money economy, the scams, rampant bribery and corruption – the man-made calamities that affect the poor most. When there are natural calamities we need foreign aid.


By waiving 60,000 crore rupees debt, the government has not really given the farmers anything tangible. Fin-Min says, it is ‘the accumulated dust’ (Interview, Times of India, March 2, 2008, p.15), perhaps, in the files or the system! No one really knows how many farmers, and where they are? They begin the count now, not when the calamities started.

Engines to uplift the poor

To uplift the poor (they are in great majority) the rulers have devised many engines, in the past and now, of course, with benevolent intentions. The engines, Bharat Nirman (literally Bharat Creation. They conveniently change India to Bharat on occasions: here it actually means the Third World India that also includes the Fourth World India, who are beneficiaries.), Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, National Rural Health Mission… to mention a few are from the long list. Several thousand crores of rupees are provided in the budget. But no one knows how these will be managed, who will manage them, and when would they materialise? This is sixty-one years old story. Time now flies faster.

It took sixty years for the rulers of the Republic of India to wake up to the fact (though not fully yet) that neither the great trickle down development/ prosperity nor the great engines, mentioned above, succour the poor (there are about 200 – 300 million persons below poverty line (BPL); their numbers, however, fluctuate with new definitions of BPL devised by the Planning Commission of India, time to time). The great engines remain promises if they fail to deliver results in time bound frame.

They are now devising yet another engine, Monitoring and Evaluation (Ref: Fin-Min’s Budget Speech, 115 and 116) that I quote below:

Monitoring and Evaluation
115. Robust economic growth has thrown up many new challenges, among them the need to put in place effective monitoring, evaluation and accounting systems for the large sums of money that are disbursed by the Central Government to State Governments, district level agencies and other implementing agencies. I think we do not pay enough attention to outcomes as we do to outlays; or to physical targets as we do to financial targets; or to quality as we do to quantity. Government therefore proposes to put in place a
Central Plan Schemes Monitoring System (CPSMS) that will be implemented as a Plan scheme of the Planning Commission. A comprehensive Decision Support System and Management Information System will also be established. The intended outcome is to generate and monitor scheme-wise and State-wise releases for about 1,000 Central Plan and centrally sponsored schemes in 2008-09.

116. Government also intends to strengthen evaluation. Some ministries have started concurrent evaluation. This needs to be supplemented by independent evaluations conducted by research institutions. The Planning Commission will authorise such evaluations of the major schemes and complete the task by the time of the mid-term review of the Eleventh Plan.

For the last sixty years the same stories repeat. The Five Year Plans are not implemented to the end; thousands of court cases remain pending and get accumulated; budgetary provisions are not fully utilized – either because of ignorance of the people or apathy of the executive bodies, or both; money and resources meant for the people do not reach the remote places (not by distance and time). Besides how much, what proportion of the money, provided to make engines work, goes for the executive personnel, and how much is hijacked by the undeserving persons is not known?

But why, why does this happen? Any sane person can tell that there are not enough persons – educated or even literate – motivated / rewarded persons to work in the rural areas.

The second reason: There is no scientific, economic and environmental evaluation of peasants’ work and their form produce. None of the social and natural scientists has done this study in the last hundred years from the late Justice M. G. Ranade to this date (I am ignorant if there is any). We are speaking of organic, labour intensive traditional faming, not mechanised farming with chemical fertilizers and pesticides. Instead the feudal practices of yesteryear to treat peasants as subjects- now called beneficiaries continue. Are there any exception/s in foreign countries?

The third reason: The ‘haves’ do not want to share with the ‘have not’, their work, knowledge, education, skills and resources, which they monopolize, and which ethically should belong to all: occasionally they give out dole and charities. Why otherwise the planners, experts, policymakers, the creators of great engines to uplift the 80 percent people should fail to deliver?

The reason: They, in the first place, are the products (or victims?) of the great engine of education (that gives them the blinkers of compartments / departments) devised by the British rule. Hence, they continue to copy, collaborate and borrow from the West, and compare with the West, and ironically, also, want to compete with the West on borrowed technologies.

They don’t meet the 80 percent people on equal ground, on one plane. They utterly lack any sense of community participation – the millennia old ancient tradition that still prevails. It could have opened them to many time tested vital aspects of the people’s wisdom, knowledge and skills. The government could learn from the farmer’s action of watering the farms how to save money/resources during their distribution from pilferage and waste.

Even the street vendors (migrated from the hinterland) are better economists and planners; they sustain with right and affordable tools and right place, and don’t miss an opportunity to upgrade. Even a spider knows where and how big or small web it should place. Even a weaver bird (male), knows what resources to use, and where to place his nests; in fact all birds know.

To this date more than 60 percent people are illiterate; in some places, in any of the regions, up to 100 percent illiteracy prevails. This amounts to politics of literacy and politics of education of the First World India by denying the peasants and adivasis the right to education and the right education. Whatever model education they are receiving, if continues, will do more harm to them and the country, both.

The changing times demand appropriate education to all in all 600,000 villages and habitats in India.

"By the direct proportion to places and people in rural India (and the migrants in urban areas), the managers of country’s affairs should have started farming schools, colleges and universities, by the rule of majority then, and now.

As the count goes, the anticipated 600,000 schools should lead to 60,000 colleges and 6,000 universities spread over entire country, all of them from primary to higher education in the farming discipline to enhance the farming skills, knowledge understanding and practices of the people of India’s agrarian society; these must be added with non-formal education. To supplement these, the Farming Training Institutes (FTIs) similar to Industrial Training Institutes (ITIs) and polytechnics should be started for the adults and the school dropouts." (Farming and the Politics of Education in India: Challenges of 21st Century)

This must be stupendous job! The present rulers are not even mentally equipped even to think of it because it doesn’t fit their departmental protocol. It demands many disciplines to come together and above all the decentralization of power.

This is only a glimpse into one part of the budget, which is meant for peasants – the unorganized sector the Third World India. There are many aspects besides education that are ailing the peasant in India. The great promises will never work without the people’s participation; but here again the first requisite is the decentralization of power.

The other part of the budget is the reality management of the great realty bazaar of the First world India – the organized sector.

The two parts expose the Bharat – India dichotomy, the promises and the reality – the great Indian divide. Fin-Min’s great cover up act exposes the naked truth. Any half-naked, illiterate, the so-called backward peasant could tell you that, if he could even the text in any language.

The peasants have sustained themselves with their education and within their limited local resources – land and waters – for more than ten thousand years. This place then had no name – India or Hindustan or Bharat, there was no boundaries, and was no civilized society. They had then (as the scientists say) domesticated plants and animals (biotechnology), without any laboratory.

They, we, don’t need either Nuke-deal with the US, or we don’ need to go on the Moon.

We are 1100 million people strong human energy spread over 3,287,263 square kilometers land.

The first step is to put to creative work this immense human energy, and to reach the realities Down to Earth.
Remigius de Souza (06-03-2008)
~~~~~

© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.