iffco foundation bulletin aug 2013 vol.1 no.2

Contents

Priyanka Basu

Singing for a Living, Living to Sing: Some Methodological 1-17

Choices in Reading Performance Practices from

Rural India and Bangladesh

Chandrani Dutta and Dr. Anuradha Banerjee

An Inventory of Population Resources in Disaster Prone 18-37

Coastal Districts of West Bengal and Odisha:

Challenges to Risk Management

Aruna Pandey

Food Security, Field Logistics and the Promise of Delivery 38-44

Harish S. Wankhede

Development and Exclusion: Struggles of the Oppressed 45-51

Communities and the Quest for Economic Justice

The IFFCO Foundation Bulletin

Volume 1 Number 2 August 2013

1

Priyanka Basu Methodological Choices and Rural Performance Art

Singing for a Living, Living to Sing: Some Methodological Choices in

Reading Performance Practices from Rural India and Bangladesh

Priyanka Basu1

This paper engages with the literature and the modes of practice in the song-theatre genre

of Kobigaan (musical contests between two groups of poet-singers). It thus introduces the

ritual spaces where seasonal community performance practices take place and are related

to the agricultural calendar of the working populace. In the process these performances

also highlight larger issues of livelihood, and collective social behaviour. The dialogic

quality of these performances encompasses the immediacy of the audience, the performance

space and the obvious presence of the performer. Based on fieldwork in select villages of

India and Bangladesh, this paper analyses if and how performance can be used as a method

to study socio-cultural aspects. Within its limited scope, this paper will briefly engage with

certain field-based observations of the genre and will situate the specific observations

within the rubric of broader methodological choices. In this endeavour, the paper will try

to re-read performance into song genres that have jostled between literary history and

practice in search of its own performative identity.

Keywords: Kobigaan, rural performance, caste, class, ethnography, practice and identity

1. Introduction

In his ‘Introduction’ to Rabelais and his World, Mikhail Bakhtin (1968) introduces,

exemplifies and analyses the related categories of ‘folk laughter’, ‘folk festivities of the

carnival type’ and ‘folk humour’, thus offering a historical overview of ‘laughter’ in general

and how it formed a key element in the lives of the populace in the Renaissance and the

Middle Ages in Europe. Bakhtin writes:

‘The manifestations of this folk culture can be divided into three distinct forms.

1. Ritual spectacles: carnival pageants, comic shows of the marketplace

2. Comic verbal compositions: parodies both oral and written, in Latin and in the

vernacular

1 Priyanka Basu, PhD Scholar, Department of the Languages and Cultures of South Asia, School of Oriental

and African Studies Studies (SOAS), University of London, 10 Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London,

WC1H 0XG

Email: [email protected] For example, Bakhtin’s insights on the subject of ‘abuse’ and ‘abusive language’ mark a certain traditional

quality of it:

It is characteristic for the familiar speech of the marketplace to use abusive language, insulting words or

expressions, some of them quite lengthy and complex. The abuse is grammatically and semantically

isolated from context and is regarded as a complete unit, something like a proverb…Abusive expressions

are not homogenous in origin; they had various functions in primitive communication and had in most

cases the character of magic and incantations…These abuses were ambivalent: while humiliating and

mortifying they at the same time revived and renewed. (Morris, 1994, p. 203)

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3. Various genres of billingsgate: curses, oaths, popular blazons’

These three forms of folk humour, reflecting in spite of their variety a single humorous

aspect of the world, are closely linked and interwoven in many ways (Morris, 1994, p.196)

Bakhtin later emphasises on the nature and quality of the language (or forms of speech)

that develops, mutates, and continues as they churn out of the festive spaces.2 What is

interesting and worth discerning in the forms laid down by him is the innate presence of

performative genres and traditions that produce speech forms, laughter and a distinct folk

culture. This paper aims to use performance as an investigative tool into community

festivities and religious rituals as they become a point of performer-audience dialogue in

narrative traditions. This study does not seek to impose Bakhtinian exemplifications onto a

South Asian context in an attempt to universalise performance proper. On the other hand, it

sifts through the South Asian context (the village performances in West Bengal and

Bangladesh) to see whether a theorisation of performance cultures in this context is possible

at all or not.

Performance cultures are not isolated wholes but intrinsically connected with the

communities’ agrarian calendar, collective social behaviour and more importantly, their

collective/cultural memory. Individual anecdotal case studies from rural spaces will clarify

how and why performance becomes a paradigm in studying communities and livelihoods.

For example, if one considers the practice of Kobigaan in its twentieth century variant, it is

visible how the performers have emerged from the peasant community itself and claim to

have found an expression of surrounding socio-economic structure through the content of

the performance genre. Many of such performers were endorsed by the Indian People’s

Theatre Association (IPTA) and the later Left Movement in West Bengal in order to highlight

the conditions of the marginalised, especially the peasants.3 In a sense then, the practitioners

of Kobigaan link their current repertoire to the whole body of mass-songs propagated by

the IPTA; these songs speak of debates of immediate concern between the farmer and the

land-lord, factory-owner and the worker and so on.4 The songs of Kobigaan, therefore, not

only contain a repertoire of religious/mythological songs but also those speaking of the

day-to-day socio-economic concerns of the rural populace. The performers who still work

between Kobigaan performances and peasantry have thus brought the performance as a

means to their livelihood in the course of time. A number of performance genres (in this

case) make use of a similar format and sometimes similar subjects, thus hinting at a shared

repertoire in certain respects. Since this study concerns itself with performance practices

from West Bengal and Bangladesh (which once was a common geographical entity named

‘Bengal’), it is to be remembered that a gamut of performance cultures still exist having

3 Most of the performers interviewed in course of the fieldwork in West Bengal inform about their peasant

background and how for some of them economic oppression became a reason to emerge as a Kobigaan

performer.4 In Bangladesh, the district of Chittagong saw a spurge of Leftist Kobigaan performers beginning with

Ramesh Shil. For details on kobiyal Ramesh Shil, see http://www.banglapedia.org/HT/S_0341.HTM

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different names but not an entirely distinct demarcating structure.5 A common characteristic

of these genres is the use of narration or story-telling, thus hinting at the inter-textuality

embedded within the practices themselves:

‘A focus on performance brings out the obvious: that much of our relationship to reality,

even to the everyday, is negotiated through performance. The invisible is often made visible

through performance….The term orature has been used variously since the Ugandan linguist

Pio Zirimu coined it in the early seventies of the last century to counter the tendency to see

the arts communicated orally and received aurally as an inferior or a lower rung in the

linear development of literature. He was rejecting the term oral literature…But his brief

definition of orature as the use of utterance as an aesthetic means of expression remains

tantalizingly out there, pointing to an oral system of aesthetics that did not need validity

from the literary.’ (Ngugi wa Thiongo, 2007, p. 4)

Narratives as part of continuing traditions marked the performance cultures of pre-modern

or pre-colonial societies where drama, discourse, song, dance and the allied forms did not

have strict demarcations. A common myth could be enacted, sung, danced and performed

in variable ways and in tandem with the agricultural (as also the performance) calendar.

For example, a song addressed to a daughter by her mother or a community of elderly

women can be sung thematically both as part of marriage songs or as part of the Bijoya

songs for the goddess Durga on the eve of her departure after the ten-day long festival. A

typical marriage song from Bangladesh runs thus:

‘Gao tolo, gao tolo konya hey

Pendo biyaar shaari

Ei shaari pindiya jaiben

Tomaar shoshurbari

Gao tolo, gao tolo, konya hey

Pendo naaker phool,

Paata bahaar chiruni diya

Tuliya baandho chul’ (Karim, 1993, pp.26-27)6

5 Though this paper would only consider the performance practice of Kobigaan within its scope, a number

of other genres namely Tarja, Bolan, Aalkaap, Gambhira, Khawno, Badai, Leto and Ashtak have similar

structural and contextual aspects. These are seasonal performance practices relating mostly to the agrarian

calendar and also aligned with religious festivities; the principle guiding factor behind each of them is the

dialogic nature of their presentation. For details on each of these genres, see Nishith Chakraborty, 2003.

Tarjagaan. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre; Mohit Ray, 2000. Bolan. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal

Cultural Centre; Md. Nurul Islam, 2001. Alkaap. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre; Pushpajeet

Roy, 2000. Gambhira. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre; Dhananjay, 2009. Khawno. Kolkata:

Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre; Shibendu Manna, 2001. Badaigaan. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal Cultural

Centre; Barunkumar Chakrabarty, 2001. Leto. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre; Sujit Biswas,

2004. Ashtak. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre. Also, for a complete and exhaustive list of the

performers and practitioners within a range of related genres, see Directory: Folk Artistes of Bengal, 2004

by the Kolkata Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre.6 The same essay also provides a classification of performative song genres based on categories such as

region, narrative qualities, devotion, prayer, labour, festivals and social awareness. Though the author

places Kobigaan within the category of regional song genres, such water-tight divisions do not seem ap-

propriate given a range of issue that each of these genres cover.

4


[‘Wake up, wake up, dear daughter

Sport your wedding dress

You have to wear your saree

To the house of your in-laws

Wake up, wake up dear daughter

Wear your nose-stud

And with your comb of cursive décor

Tie your hair in a bun’.]7

Familiar images of the mother-daughter parlance in the household, the preparations for a

wedding, the attire and jewellery, find repetitions in numerous songs genres throughout the

length and breadth of the Indian territories as well, according a certain thematic ubiquity to

performance forms in the South Asian context.

Rural festivities mark a break from quotidian everyday work culture and engaging in a

community-based enjoyment that highlight the community solidarity, kinship and networks

of local ritual behaviour in a collective performance. Within its scope this paper will engage

with two case studies of performances and performers witnessed during rural festivals and

analyse the methodological schema that can go into reading such performance structures.

The performance descriptions are based on fieldwork undertaken in West Bengal and

Bangladesh over one year (June 2012-June 2013) and document a particular genre of musical

performance called Kobigaan.8 The following section in the form of an anecdote raises a

number of issues that will be taken up gradually in the discussion of the methodological

approaches for performance genres.

2. Songs of Discord: Performance and the Question of Class

‘I hate the word “kobiyal”! It sounds cheap

and insulting. “Kobi-sarkar” or simply

“sarkar” on the other hand makes it much

more respectable…Think of our magician

P C Sorcar! Our vocation is as magical as

that of the magician’s himself…’9

7 Translation by the author. All translations in this paper including the conversations with the practitioners

are done by the author unless otherwise mentioned.8 Kobigaan or Kobir Ladai is one of the many song-theatre genres operating within the form of verse-

duelling or poetic contest. Here, two poet-singers (kobiyal) and their team of orchestra and chorus (dohaar)

engage in a long-standing debate, both in prose and songs. The performers may even humorously inter-

weave mythological narratives with everyday political or social reports in the newspaper. There is much

debate about the origin of the genre and performers trace and historicise their discipleship and lineage

variously.9 In conversation with Manoranjan Sarkar (Basu) (29.06.2013), a Kobigaan performer from borderland

migrant communities in West Bengal. The quote and its significance will be much clearer when understood

within the context of the following section on caste; meanwhile it serves as a prelude and leitmotif to this

section on class.

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It was in the eventful month of October (2012) in West Bengal that one ventured out of the

festive mayhem of the city of Kolkata with an ‘assumed promise’ of the lull of rural rituals.

The continuity of the ‘vision’ of the rural locale as an embodiment of pristine values (both

in its inhabitant human behaviour and the surrounding ‘natural’ conservation) aided the

thoughts of a prospective fieldwork on Kobigaan–the song contests much discursivised

historically and retaining its ‘universals’.10 Axiomatic as it would sound, ‘…there is no

knowledge of the Other which is not also a temporal, historical, a political act’ (Fabian,

1983, p.1). This “knowledge of the Other” although read in its reference frames of history

and political eventfulness, rests more on its encounter with Time; thus it is not strange how

the enterprise commenced with the credentials of the “innocent” Other, gained momentum

with the perturbed ‘discovery’ of the ‘savage’ kind, proceeded to epiphanies through

cognition and continued still in efforts at understanding and formulating the Other.11

The village of Boro Sangra in the Birbhum district of West Bengal had arranged for a

Kobigaan performance on nabami (the ninth day) of the Durga Puja festival. One’s earlier

familiarity with the performance genre was made possible to a certain extent through

interviews of performers and a curtailed 45-minute long performance on the proscenium

stage, in an auditorium in the city.12 The aim was to accompany the kobiyals (performers as

they are designated in Kobigaan) as they travelled in the adjoining villages to sing through

the night. The performance in its rural set-up usually commences in the late afternoon or

evening and continues till late night or early dawn, depending upon the response of the

gathered audience. The excitement, however, was already at low ebb after waiting for the

kobiyals at the Ahmedpur station for more than three hours, being huddled into a vehicle

with nine other men thereafter and battling the bumpy muddy tract into the village. There

was, incidentally, no scope for rest and preparation before the commencement of the show.

First of all, there was no accommodation in the sense that one was assured by the performers

and the prospect of putting up with 9 men in a single room did not seem very encouraging.

This also revealed how the performers (as travellers) themselves are much less acquainted

with the host spaces where they are invited to perform. The performers of genres like

Kobigaan are inherently itinerant in nature, travelling between a group of near and far

10 The use of ‘universal history’ is crucial to the distinction of time. In Time and the Other: Anthropology

Makes its Objects (1983), Johannes Fabian introduces the ambiguity that emerges out of the alignment of

the universal and the general: ‘Universals appears to have two connotations. One is that of totality; in this

sense, universal designates the whole world at all times. The other is one of generality: that which is

applicable to a large number of instances’ (Fabian, 1983, p.3). Fabian highlights how this ambiguity continues

in the anthropologist’s quest for the universal. The author has used the concept of the universal, here, as

emerging out of the existent ethnographic-historical discourse on the performance practice of Kobigaan so

far and how it ideologically prefaced the author’s ethnographic experience.11 By stressing on the ‘Other’ the author is underlining her positionality before even trying to position the

subject that she is looking at. ‘Positionality is vital because it forces us to acknowledge our own power,

privilege, and biases just as we are denouncing the power structures that surround our object.’ The Time-

driven nature of the ethnographic enterprise gradually juxtaposes this positionality with that of the Other’s—

known as ‘reflexive ethnography’—thus challenging the universals. See (Madison, 2005, p.7).12 These interviews and performances are analysed at length in the ongoing PhD on Kobigaan, entitled

“Cockfight in Tune: Reading Nations, Communities and Performance in the ‘Bengali’ Kobigaan”, where

the documentations are discussed under the contexts of rural and urban performances respectively.

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villages. The itinerancy of the female practitioner in Kobigaan however raises the normative

questions of the “good woman” and the “bad woman”. In most cases these women are seen

as “polluted” since they have to share the male spaces outside the domestic sphere, thus

forming the binary between the public and the private. Secondly, minutes after one had

reached the village and was looking for some corner to pen down the amassing observations,

one was hurriedly dragged to the open space in front of the village temple where the puja

had been arranged. It was unthinkable to one of the host villagers that one should not have

the blessed opportunity of viewing a prolonged animal sacrifice on such an auspicious day.

After about 20 sacrifices of goats one felt nauseated enough to go back in search of an

accommodation; there still wasn’t a vague idea as to when the performance would take

place.

The performance began rather late at around 8:00 pm in the evening after the devotees had

been fed the sumptuous non-vegetarian dinner that is mandatory on nabami. The performers

explained continually how this was only a ‘minor delay’ and narrated several incidents

where performances had finally not taken place at all. However, when there was signal

enough for this performance to begin, one did not delay further to take the place right in

front of the stage-space. There was no stage as such; it was simply marked off from the rest

of the audience by the fact that it was covered by carpets and the prior placement of musical

instruments required for a Kobigaan performance. The audience was flowing in from the

village as also from the nearby villages amidst the beating of the dhaak (drums), the k(n)aashi

(cymbals) and a casio (much to the author’s surprise since it is not one of the ‘traditional’

instruments used in the performance). The daakgaan (invocation) which is performed only

by the chorus (dohaar) as a norm continued for nearly about an hour while the kobiyals

came in and took their seats on the stage.13

The audience, it occurred gradually, was overwhelmingly male and inebriated. They were

accompanied by boys and children. It was only after the first performer had started singing

and the festival organising committee had provided them with the topic of song contest that

the audience began to respond in protest. They were put off by the Sanskrit couplets recited

by the kobiyal and vehemently expressed their inability at comprehension. In the middle of

the performance the audience roared in dissent and demanded a change of the topic of the

song contest. The dissent ensued specifically on the grounds of their disinterest in a new

topic. The thoughtful organisers, who presumed that the audience had gathered for an

educative session apart from the usual entertainment, allotted the kobiyals the roles of

Durga (the worshipped goddess and the symbol of the ‘good’) and Mahishasur (the slain

demon signifying the ‘evil’).14 The audience, on the other hand, insisted on a topic of their

13 The rough key format of Kobigaan performances in West Bengal runs: Daakgaan (general

invocation)àBhavani-Vandana (invocation to the goddess)à Kobir Ladai (main debate).14 In a typical Kobigaan performance, the two performers (or kobiyals) take up the roles given to them and

contest with each other. These roles can be particular mythological characters (as in the performance

discussed above) or more general (like the debate between male and female, young and the old, landlord

and the peasant) or more thematic (modern and pre-modern). Role-playing is a foremost and significant

aspect in Kobigaan and involves a performer-audience dialogism that allows us to enter into the broader

themes of religion in community practices. However, the idea of role-playing is variable and cannot be

assigned a generalised character within Kobigaan itself.

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choice – the debate between the Past and the Present – although they have been hearing

this over the years. One of them was inebriated enough to roll on to the stage-space up to

the feet of the singer and place his request. The others broke in a guffaw to encourage his

act, some of the saner few tried to control him, the singers looked befuddled and the

interrupted performance gave way to a pandemonium. However, the audience at the end of

it was victorious as the performers began afresh as Past and Present, which is a common

and oft-repeated theme in performance. It can be speculated, however, that the public appeal

of this topic is more than others since the kobiyals find numerous innovative ways debating,

analogising, inflicting insults and being equivocal through the medium of Past Vs. Present.

Notably, the same topic was employed at another performance (documented later in the

course of fieldwork), where the abstract concept of Past and Present was made more

immediately realisable and entertaining as Grandfather Vs. Grandson by the male and

female kobiyal respectively.

One scrawled rapid notes, adjusted the camera and tripod, exchanged a smile or two with

the performing group, continued being wary of the locals gazing and gathered around and

tried concentrating on the performance that ran mostly all night. It was later next day, while

travelling back the bumpy muddy tract on a cycle-van with the nine men, that the companion-

performer divulged, ‘you see, what you saw last night was not Kobigaan! It was more of

Kheur, the vulgar element of the genre. We could not help but give in to the unruly,

uneducated audience and sing for them. Sadly, that’s our profession. But you must have

realised last night that Kobigaan is not for everybody!’ And one travelled on.

The comprehension of Kobigaan by the public is primarily in relation to its variant in

nineteenth century Calcutta (now Kolkata). Back then, while the colonial city was expanding

and evolving, both with respect to its territories as well as its ‘tastes’, the genre was being

habitually patronised by the affluent Bengali babus. Although full descriptions of Kobigaan

performances do not feature in the contemporary literature or newspapers, the available

rough sketches signify how it would gradually tend towards the more erotic and ‘obscene’

analogies as the performance progressed through the night. The blame lay upon the kheur,

a component in Kobigaan that generally draws upon overt sexual imagery aided by a rustic

humour. It did have much to offer to the amusement of the watching plebeian who would

break into a guffaw every now and then, thus adding much to the vexation of the colonial

ruling order. Kobigaan thus suffered a backlash and was subjected to containment-an event

that ‘erased’ the genre to a certain degree but not the names of those who sang it: Anthony

Firingi, Bhola Moira, Bhabani Beney, Rashu-Nrishingho, Nitai Bairagi and others.

Discourses on Kobigaan have toggled between reminiscences and silences. The public

memory is speculative, unaware and abandoning when it comes to commenting on the

current status of the genre. Despite the public rankings of it as ‘living’ or ‘dead’, Kobigaan

still continues as a revived practice in West Bengal. Its counterpart in Bangladesh differs

strongly in content and structure and according to the shifts from rural to urban locales. In

fact, Gumani Dewan in West Bengal and Ramesh Shil in Chittagong, Bangladesh, are the

two names that are tied together in realising the changing trends of Kobigaan practices in

the twentieth century. They are remembered and revered for the introduction of social

8


issues into the content of songs. Though not altogether absent from the nineteenth century

variant of Kobigaan, the significance of social issues and themes currently revolve around

the struggles of the working class, the plight of the marginalized as well as the atrocities of

governance across social strata. The other striking inclusion in the genre is that of the

participation of female performers-a phenomenon that is absent or rarely mentioned in the

documents from yester-years.

The above prolonged anecdote to one of the very first performances witnessed in the role

of an ethnographer and as part of fieldwork was a deliberate preface to the method, scope

and most importantly the need for taking up a subject called Kobigaan. A number of

keywords ooze out of this narrative that guide and question the validity of a research on

this performance and a host of other related song-genres: performance, positionality,

itinerancy, body/bodies in interaction, Other, historicity, folklore, cultural politics, national

propaganda, class/caste identity, and cultural memory to name a few. Much more than

anything else the performance form and its constant demarcation from other allegedly

‘vulgar’ genres (as indicated in the beginning and end of the anecdote) ties itself strongly

with a class-based identity and the need for the performing community’s upward social

mobility. Not surprisingly thus, much endeavour has gone behind the ‘purification’ of the

genre in order to accord a certain sense of respectability to its subject as well as the performer

himself most of whom are also directly engaged as peasants and employ Kobigaan in

singing for mass-mobilisation. The following section, based on an interview with a

performer, discusses the act of mobilisation more in its caste-based aspect.

3. The Performing Identity: Cross-borders and the Politics of Caste15

How does identity become shaped by the help of performance? Does it change the

architecture of the performance itself in order to foreground that identity? What new parlance

is deployed in order to establish this order? A number of issues have been generated from

the anecdotal previous section and yet there remains a central problematic to the whole

discourse – the inevitability of the question of ‘class’ and the means towards upward social

mobility. In this section, the aim is to set aside the ‘class’ question for the time-being and

scrutinise the politics of caste within the folds of territorial (or geographical) relocations;

performance comes to be employed differently within such a schema (at least as the

performance parlance represents it) though not foregoing the target of upward social mobility

and most importantly, respectability.

The Namsudras, identified as part of the community of backward classes formed the second

largest Hindu caste group in the British province of Bengal and the largest in its eastern

part. They were concentrated in the districts of Bakarganj, Faridpur, Dhaka, Mymensingh,

15 This section is based mainly on the conversation with the performer Manoranjan Sarkar (Basu)

on 29.06.2013 at Talbanda, North 24 Parhanas, West Bengal.

9


Jessore and Khulna (currently in Bangladesh).16 The community, mainly associated with

the so-called ‘menial’ professions of boat-making, cultivation and serving as labourers to

the class of landlords, were considered as out-castes and dictated by the hierarchies of

caste dynamics. The oppressed community were however led under the initiative of their

leader (more revered as an avatar of the Hindu God Vishnu), Harichand Thakur and unified

under the world-view of a universal fraternity (branching out of the Vaishnavite brotherhood).

An event in 1873 – historicised as the ‘Movement for Dignity and Equality before Law’–

unified the oppressed caste who declared a prolonged strike against the ruling landlords

thus bringing the economic production to a stand-still and perforating the hegemonic

machinery of the upper class.17 Owing to the struggle upheld by the community their demands

were considered and the event came to be realised as one of the significant cornerstones of

the Namasudras’ identity as a community. The Namasudras were united under the banner

of the ‘Matua-Mahasangha’18, broadly understood in the paradigm of Hindu folk religion.

The unification and the establishment of the Mahasangha began in the birthplace of

Harichand Thakur in Odakandi, Faridpur (now in Bangladesh) and its second phase of

organisation was carried out post-1947 in Thakurnagar, West Bengal (Chatterjee, 2012).

This brief background then forms a prelude to realising a central problematic: that of a

community’s need and engagements with performance in voicing their ‘marginality’.

Manoranjan Sarkar, a kobiyal from the district of South 24 Parganas in West Bengal,

identifies himself as a part of the Matua sect and community and as a performer bearing his

lineage to the Matua kobiyals in Bangladesh. Unlike the ‘more mainstream’ kobiyals in

West Bengal, hailing from the districts of Bardhamman, Birbhum and Murshidabad, the

performers from southern Bengal use ‘sarkar’ as a self-given honorary surname in alignment

with the other members of the performing community; the practice indicates how a

performing group accords a sense of historicity to its performing identity and mobilises

itself towards a struggle against marginality. ‘Sarkar’, on the other hand, becomes more

politically significant if understood within the reference frame of a caste-based performing

community realising their elevated-ness by the token of virtuosity that makes a performer

distinct from the rest. Understandably then, there is a denial voiced by these community of

performers in grouping themselves as belonging to one singular performance tradition (of

Kobigaan) in Bengal (West Bengal and Bangladesh); the denial explains the faction of

kobiyal communities in West Bengal with respect to the structure, subject and content of

their songs. For instance, the performances stem from the textual content of Vaishnav texts

16 See, ‘The Namasudras: A Socio-Economic Profile’, in Sekhar Bandopadhyay, Caste, Protest and Identity

in Colonial India: The Namasudras of Bengal 1872-1947 (Richmond: Curzon, 1997), pp.11-12. Namasudras

are scattered over the six provinces of Dhaka, Barisal, Rajshahi, Khulna, Chattagram and Sylhet in

Bangladesh, contributing to a population count of approximately 3,161,000.17 See, Government of West Bengal, Backward Classes Welfare Department. The 1873 Movement for Dignity

and Equality before Law. <http://www.anagrasarkalyan.gov.in/pdf/1873-mvmnt-dignt-eqlty-bfr-law.pdf>18 A number of terms are defined in relation to the key term “Matua”, thus explaining the composition of the

caste and the community in relation to their religious philosophy and practices. These terms are: ‘Matua’,

‘Matua-bhakta’ (or a follower of Matua), ‘Matua-sadhu’, ‘Matua-pagal’ etc. See, Biswas, Samudra. 2012.

Itihash er Aaloye Matua Andolon. Kolkata: Dana.

10


like the Bhagwat Purana or the Chaitanya Charitamrita and most often become a preaching

tool for the practising kobiyal. The representation of the characters from these texts –

deities, devotees and avatars – aim toward the universal principles of compassion, equality

and fraternity. In the case of the other group of kobiyals in West Bengal, however, character

impersonation is not as much in demand as the representation of burning issues of social

concern: farmer Vs, landlord, worker Vs. owner, men Vs, women and so on.

‘The present epoch will perhaps be above all the epoch of space. We are in the epoch of

simultaneity: we are in the epoch of juxtaposition, the epoch of the near and far, of the side-

by-side, of the dispersed’ (Foucault, 1984, p.1). The application of the notion of space in

reading a performance in history has mostly been marred by the notion of time in its pre-

emption and essentialism. As the histories of performances would suggest—more so in the

case of Kobigaan in analysis—the task of writing has most evidently taken into account

the primacy of time over space. The bulk of biographical sketches, song collections, historical

periodisations that have gone into forming the archive of the performance form have been

concerned much less about writing within the socio-spatial (Lefebvre, 1991, p.73). dynamics.

This does not however hint in any way at the fact that ‘time’ needs to be separated from the

skein of space-time, but that it needs to be read as ‘as one of the various distributive

operations that are possible for the elements that are spread out in space’(Foucalt, 1984,

p.2). The Partition of Bengal and the cultural memories aligned with it (both individual and

collective) shape much of the identity of the Matua as a performing community. The

territorial replacements ushered in by the event of Partition, thus dividing a pan-Bengali

identity on the basis of religious majorities and minorities, have fed much into the cultural

politics of West Bengal and Bangladesh post-partition. Individuals and groups relocating

themselves within partitioned geographies have jostled with the idea of lineage, root and

legacies thereafter. Such anxieties that have bolstered later movements and initiatives on

the part of the ‘relocated Matua community in West Bengal, have also been superimposed

on the identity of the community as performers: the root of the performance genre, the

lineage of the performers and a clearly demarcated legacy of discipleship become issues

that a performer’s sense of history constantly grapples with.

Role-playing is a mainstay in the execution of a performance. Kobigaan performances in

Bangladesh in the villages of Majumdarkandi and Lamchari (in the district of Comillah)

and Pirojpur town (in the district of Pirojpur) revealed how the performer or the poet-

singer executed the role bestowed on him throughout the length and breadth of the

performance.19 It is a common practice among these performers to announce the death of

the ‘name’ and its coming back to life before and after the role-playing.20 Such practices

are universalised among the Matua performing community irrespective of their locations

in West Bengal and Bangladesh. On the other hand, the ‘more mainstream’ kobiyals of

West Bengal do not adhere to such strictures of role-playing and concentrate more on the

19 These performances were documented in Bangladesh from 13th-18th November, 2012.20 Here ‘name’ signifies the real name of the performer (e.g. Manoranjan Sarkar) which is said to be ‘dead’ as

he assumes the role of the character given to him and which is reassumed at the end when the role-playing

ends.

11


essence of the debate that for them is central to the performance genre. In the words of the

performer Manoranjan Sarkar tracing his lineage to the kobiyal-gurus in Bangladesh, ‘the

kobiyals in West Bengal lack the depth and seriousness of subject as well as the literary

aesthetics of the genre. Role-playing is no matter of joke and my forte lies in respecting the

status of the character I play. This means that I cannot step out of it throughout my

performance and I have no right to disrespect it by doing so.’

The following section sums up both this and the preceding sections and offers perspectives

on performance as a methodological model based on the issues generated so far. In so

doing it will also lay down the questions concerning the epistemological shifts in the study

of the subject.

4. Reading Performance into History: The Need for Critical Ethnography

The task of re-looking into a much historicised performance genre as Kobigaan through

the lens of performance is fraught with difficulties. The first and obvious question in this

regard stems from the choices of methodology. As a subject of critical enquiry, Kobigaan

has had numerous historical documentations in the form of memoirs, song collections, and

paragraphs in books of literary histories as also folklore reports pertaining to current practices

of the genre. These documentations have aimed towards treating the subject as a universal

whole, most often deriding it on the basis of ‘obscenity’, ‘vulgarity’ and other such allied

epithets. Inevitably thus, the authors themselves have maintained ambiguous positions within

the act of reviving and highlighting the song genres; or for that matter, aligning them with

a ‘universalising’ history of traditions.21 There are a number of generalities that are witnessed

in the process especially with regard to the use of language in discussing the genre, aligning

it with a ‘national tradition’ that propagandises for a cultural-literary heritage and finally in

the treatment of the subject as part of the literary canon. The process is complex in itself

where canonisation of performers as ‘historical’ entities and the containment of the genre

itself have gone hand in hand.22 What is lost more than anything else in this complex

mechanism is the vehement and deliberate detachment of the genre from the subject of

performance. The immediate focus on the performance of Kobigaan thus ensues from the

21 For example, the histories of Kobigaan and the song compilations by figures like Ishwarchandra Gupta,

Kedarnath Bandopadhyay, Durgadas Lahiri, Prafulla Chandra Pal and others have followed a distinct

lineage in the matter of presenting the genre with other allied genres. On the other hand, scholarship on the

genre in Bangladesh by figures like Dinesh Chandra Sinha, Swarochish Sarkar or Syamon Zakaria have

focussed on the performance more from the point-of-view of viewing folklore and reporting on it (especially

in the works of Sarkar and Zakaria).22 It is interesting in this regard to consider the depiction of performers (kobiyals) in films: Anthony Firingi

(1967), a film made on the legendary figure of the kobiyal himself is regarded as one of the holy texts as per

the Bengali film canon. As recently as July 2013, the Calcutta-based director Srijit Mukherji has begun

shooting on Anthony as his subject for the film Jatiswar, beginning with his first shot in the ‘historical’

precincts of Shobhabajar Rajbari and Naatmondir in north Calcutta, as stated by him. A detailed analytical

account on the circulation of films on Kobigaan and their reception is offered in the broader research on

Kobigaan while it is important here to note the facets of living with ‘too much of history’.

12


urgent need of bringing performance back into the subject. This, however, does not signify

in any way that history needs to be forsaken in the current methodological schema but to

find on the other hand ways of doing both.

A suggested method of treating the subject of Kobigaan in this endeavour could well be the

analytical tools of ethno-history. Ethno-history allows entry into a subject from both historical

and ethnological perspectives thus taking into its ambit a variety of resources ranging from

official archival documents to memoirs to visual media to folklore and performance. On

the other hand, it differs only a tad bit more from historical methodology proper in the

sense that it applies critical use of ethnographical concepts and material to the study of

historical resources.23 Ethno-history thus can be one of the several tools that are necessary

to look at Kobigaan but not the sole analytical one for it would again mean treating the

subject under the light essentialisms. Critical ethnography allied with a study of micro-

history on the other hand allows us to bring in the category of performance back in to the

subject of Kobigaan. The study of performance demands in this regard looking at the genre

of not only actual contemporary practices of Kobigaan in its rural and urban variants, but

also to look at it in its circulation through various media: fairs, festivals, films, cds and

dvds. To bring the tools of performance back to the study of Kobigaan is not simply to fill

up the fissures in archived data by speculations but to find a link between Kobigaan as an

‘idea’ and as a practice.24

‘If man is a sapient animal, a tool making animal,

a self-making animal, a symbolizing animal,

he is no less, a performing animal, Homo

performans, not in the sense, perhaps that a circus

animal may be a performing animal, but in the

sense that man is a self-making animal—his

performances are, in a way, reflexive; in

performance he reveals himself to himself’ (Turner, 1985, p.187).

Performance is primarily and most importantly about experience. Criticisms vary upon the

occurrence of experience first or expression. Regardless of the debate, both experience and

expression entail a two-way traffic as the quotidian ordinariness ruptures towards

23 In explaining the employment of historical and ethnological methods together to enable a cultural study,

James Axtell (1979, p.2) writes: ‘…ethnohistory is essentially the use of historical and ethnological methods

and materials to gain knowledge of the nature and causes of change in a culture defined by ethnological

concepts and categories.’ For further discussions on ethnohistory as a method of enquiry into cultures, see,

Axtell, J., 1979. Ethnohistory: An Historian’s Viewpoint. Ethnohistory, Vol. 26, No. 124 This difference and the wide gap between ‘idea’ and ‘practice’ of Kobigaan is one of the crucial points of

entry into the research. At several levels of encounters with people talking about Kobigaan, it became

evident how the genre continued in an ambiguity about its existence. It’s supposed discontinuity as a

practice and the consequent death at the level of ideas places it in a more pronounced way within the rubric

of the politics of revival and later the broader cultural politics of the state. The aim is to concern oneself

with the practice itself and revisit the ideas at intervals within the analysis to understand the politics of

performance practices.

13


performance. It is here that self-reflexivity becomes a pre-condition towards the study of

performance with regard to positionality and furthers the experience of a performance.

Before even beginning to look at the performance proper for a new reading, it is crucial to

justify the researcher’s position in the process of a research. This is reiterating what D

Soyini Madison puts as a question in her discussion on positionality: ‘How do we begin to

discuss our positionality as ethnographers and those who represent Others?’, thus borrowing

the three positions in qualitative research:

• ‘The ventriloquist stance that merely “transmits” information in an effort toward

neutrality and is absent of a political or rhetorical stance. The position of the

ethnographer aims to be invisible, that is, the “self” strives to be nonexistent in the

text.

• The positionality of voices is where the subjects themselves are the focus, and their

voices carry forward indigenous meanings and experiences that are in opposition to

dominant discourses and practices. The position of the ethnographer is vaguely present

but not addressed.

• The activism stance in which the ethnographer takes a clear position in intervening on

hegemonic practices and serves as an advocate in exposing the material effects of

marginalized locations while offering alternatives’ (Fine, 1994, p.6).

The ‘absence’ of the self in the text is as impossible as the ‘knowledge of the Other’ with

respect to temporality. The first and the second positions together on the other hand lead us

to an ethnographical methodological tool that further problematises the question of

positionality, i.e., ‘participant-observation’. Does ‘participant-observation’ allow an

individual perceiving a performance to gradually emerge as an ‘insider’ in the process? Is

inheritance of performance skills from a kobiyal a method of easier access by virtue of

‘participation’? There is a subjective distance both on the part of the observer and the

informer, though this position can only be transformed to different levels of interaction in

the process of being with each other. It is here that performance becomes a reflexive

methodological tool in understanding the community practices, specifically by means of

its dialogic character. Dialogism emerges as a kind of ‘more than a definite position, the

dialogical stance is situated in the space between competing ideologies. It brings self and

other together even while it holds them apart. It is more like a hyphen than a period.’25

25 See, Clifford Geertz, ‘Thinking as Moral Act: Ethical Dimensions of the Anthropology of Fieldwork in

the New States, Antioch Review 28, (Summer, 1968), 140, quoted in Dwight Conquergood, ‘Performing

as a moral act: Ethical dimensions of the ethnology of performance’, Literature in Performance 5, No. 2

(1982), p.9. Conquergood borrows the idea of performance as a moral act thus introducing the question

of ethics into it from Geertz’s essay which clearly highlights activism as part of the act of thinking: ‘…it

has been much more difficult to regard thinking as an abstention from action, theorising as an alterna-

tive to commitment, and the intellectual life as a kind of secular monasticism, excused from accountabil-

ity by its sensitivity to the good.’

14


5. How to View Performance: Conceptual Approaches

The need for performance as a methodological tool in analysing Kobigaan brings forth

certain key categories that recur in the understanding of the genre and the socio-political,

cultural and economic paraphernalia attached to it. These categories are enumerated as

follows:

5.1 Cultural Performance/Social Performance

While cultural performance accords a sense of specificity to an act of performance by the

use of definitive ‘markings’ of a beginning, middle and end, social performances are marked

by their quality of being ‘everyday’ and ‘ordinary’. The aim therefore is to place a

performance genre – namely Kobigaan – within the networks of cultural and social

performances. While social performances occur according to a cultural script, the actors

may not be self-consciously aware that their enactments are culturally scripted. On the

other hand, as Victor Turner writes, ‘when we act in everyday life we do not merely re-act

to indicative stimuli, we act in frames we have wrested from the genres of cultural

performance’ (Turner, 1982, p.122). The reason behind placing Kobigaan at the juncture

of cultural and social performances is to reconsider the roles of the performers and audiences

in conjunction with their socio-cultural embededness. While the language of the performance

itself is of key concern, the heteroglossic quality that produces the different discourses

(and an official discourse) around Kobigaan needs to be scrutinised. This category becomes

an entry point and allows us to look at the performer and the audience, the community and

the nation, the cultural politics and the political economy of performance of which ‘class’

and ‘caste’ are two major nodes of speculation.

5.2 Translocality: Mobility, Migration and Socio-Spatial Interconnectedness

The explorative human nature towards the understanding of diverse cultures stems from

the propensity to travel. The itinerant qualities of the human subject allow him/her to

establish networks within cultures that feed data into his explorative interrogations.

Speculating more closely, if one shifts the lens of this category of itinerancy to the level of

performance, it opens possibilities of looking at both the performer and the audience as

belonging to an itinerant status. In performances as Kobigaan where the performer and the

audience are travellers together—one by professional/economic choices and the other by

socio-cultural/religious choices—itinerancy prefaces the point of connection that the

performance space finally establishes between the viewer and the performer. As a concept,

translocality is used to describe socio-spatial dynamics and processes of simultaneity and

identity formation that transcend boundaries—including, and also extending beyond, those

of nation-states. Not only does the idea of itinerancy and translocality allow us to read the

performing and audience communities in their mobility across borders, but it also allows

us to understand the loci of networks of knowledge formed continuously by such interactions.

For example, the mobility and interconnectedness between Kobigaan performers in

Bangladesh and those residing on the borderlands/margins of the state of West Bengal by

the capacity of the OBC status brings in the larger questions of caste and politics into the

rubric of performance.

15


5.3 The Anthropology of the Body

In his essay, ‘Towards an Anthropology of the Body’, John Blacking (1977) reviews the

socio-somatic implications of the body: ‘Our chief concern is with the cultural processes

and products that are externalisations and extensions of the body in varying contexts of

social interaction. The division of physical and cultural (or social) anthropology is no

longer useful…’(Blacking, 1977, p.2). The social body constrains the ways in which the

physical body is looked at and there is a continuous exchange between these two kinds of

bodies in action, specifically with respect to performance. Shared somatic states help us to

realise the domains like politics, religion, music, kinship or economic life and how such

cultural categories relate to biological functions. The most immediate reference of shared

somatic states in Kobigaan is the idea of trance-a special behaviour or technique of the

body. Since ‘music are endowed with the particular power of inducing or precipitating

trance’ (Rouge, 1977, p.233), it is a specific kind of ‘possession music’ that becomes a

unifying factor around which specific possession ceremonies are arranged. In Kobigaan

the idea of role-playing and that of trance are closely linked as are the acts of group protest,

disruption and physical fights in between performances (as the above anecdote as also

historical accounts of Kobigaan would suggest). The ‘Anthropology of the Body’ also

brings forward in this regard the concepts of laughter, transgression, carnivalesque and

subversive performances.

5.4 Memory, Reception, Circulation

The thick line of memory and historical memory, Pierre (1989) emphasises the act of

‘forgetting’ as also remembering a performance genre like Kobigaan. Memory, here plays

an important part with reference to lineage as also with learning. The play of memory

creates multiple memories on which the performer banks upon: (1) the learnt principles of

performance and; (2) whatever happens in the ‘here and now’ of the performance. There

are two kinds of knowledge systems resting upon this memory-the audience memory which

rests itself on (a) structured memory of Kobigaan ensuing from the tradition of Kobigaan

and building up a standardised memory structure and ; (b) non-structured, creating a

knowledge bank which does not come directly from what the Kobigaan is presenting. But

it is from this non-structured memory that the long time cultural memory of the community

gets enriched; such memories are more to do with the social practices. Secondly, the

performance memory, relating to a particular memory, emerges as a very single memory

relating to a singular performance. This is the memory which makes larger than life images

of performers (writings of Kobigaan history only based on biographies and memoirs). It is

through the performance memory that a then-and-there kind of relationship gets built in

between the performance and the audience. The divisions of structured and unstructured

memory allow us to witness critically the representations of Kobigaan in various media

ranging from the films, to telecasts on television, to dvds as also within the more tangible

spaces of the fairs and festivals. In a sense the distinction between the physical and virtual

spaces marks the role of the audience as manifest. For example, in a physical space the

audience actually evolves into the space itself and the performance gears up on the basis of

the audience.

16


6. Conclusion

Performance is more a method than a medium in understanding the cultural practice of a

community placed in a national-political context. The study of Kobigaan in this regard acts

as an entry point into the research on performance. More specifically, this hypothesises

how Kobigaan occurs both at the level of ideas and practice and yet remains somewhat

oblivious between the two. The purpose of this paper was to introduce the category of

performance as a part and parcel of ‘everyday’ existence and speech, engaging briefly with

performance descriptions and performer’s world-views about the genre, highlighting how

this sense of oblivion is selective pertaining to different social groups and categories and

yet how their collective imaginations have allowed the genre to mutate and embody itself

through actual practices over time. Is it possible to resituate performance practices by

taking performance as a model and mode of investigation? In the process of looking at

performances, the reference to existing archives shift epistemologically and newer forms

of archives continually get added to the existing ones. Since performance is a political act,

tradition, lineage and pedagogy have important roles to play in the dissemination of Kobigaan

as a reservoir of knowledge at the levels of individual, community-based and state/national

politics; it is here that sites of exhibitionism and heritage-building allow performances to

be morphed continually. In its broader aspect, this paper chose to introduce performance as

mode of inquisition within the existing histories of performances in order to navigate the

networks of knowledge that are formed within and around them. In so doing, it has considered

a number of categories through which performance analysis can be continued and foreground

as methodological choices.

References

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Axtell, James, 1979. Ethnohistory: An historian’s viewpoint. Ethnohistory, Vol. 26, No. 1, pp.1-14

Biswas, Samudra, 2012. Itihash er aloye matua andolon. Kolkata: Dana; Somnath Das

Biswas, Sujit, 2004. Ashtak. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre

Bakhtin, Mikhail M., 1968. Rabelais and his world. Cambridge, Mass; London: M.I.T. Press

____1981. The Dialogic Imagination: Four Essays. Austin: University of Texas Press

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1947. Richmond: Curzon.

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Available at: http://www.indianexpress.com/news/one-more-festival-in-govt-list-this-for-namasudras/1003450/

Accessed 17 September 2012

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Directory: folk artistes of Bengal. 2004. Kolkata: Folk and Tribal Cultural Centre

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Fabian, Johannes, 1983. Time and the Other: how anthropology makes its subjects. New York: Columbia

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A., ed., 1994. Power and Methods. New York: Routledge, pp. 13-55. Quoted in Madison, D. Soyini., 2005.

Critical Ethnography: method, ethics, and performance. Thousand Oaks, CA, p.6.

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states. Antioch Review, Vol. 28, p.140. Quoted in Dwight, Conquergood, 1982. Performing as a moral act:

ethical dimensions of the ethnology of performance. Literature in Performance, Vol.5, No. 2, p.9.

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equality before law.

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Oaks, CA: Sage, p.150

18

Chandrani Dutta and Anuradha Banerjee Disaster Management

An Inventory of Population Resources in Disaster Prone Coastal Districts of

West Bengal and Odisha: Challenges to Risk Management

Chandrani Dutta

Dr. Anuradha Banerjee1

Natural hazards like earthquakes, floods, cyclones and droughts have on many occasions

turned into major disasters in India. These have jeopardised millions of lives and have

disrupted the entire functioning of the society. Disasters are a result of both climatic

externalities, as well as, low levels of social and economic development. Hence, backward

regions of the country become more vulnerable in times of such climatic events. Instead of

only focusing on relief activities in the aftermath of a disaster, preventive measures need to

be harnessed. In such cases, reducing risks needs to take into account socio-economic

development of the region, in addition to its existing political environment. In this paper,

drawing on census data (2001-2011), analysis of the social and economic composition of

selected rural West Bengal and Odisha district has been done, to draw attention to the

various factors constraining effective implementation of disaster management.

Keywords: cyclones, disaster risk management, socio-economic vulnerabilities

1. Introduction and Background

Many regions of India are regularly exposed to climatic extremities like floods, droughts,

landslides, cyclones and earthquakes. When such extreme climatological, hydrological

and geological processes take place in the vicinity of human habitation, they often lead to

disasters. In any form, disasters disrupt the entire functioning of the society and result in

widespread human, material, and environmental losses. A climatic hazard is not singularly

responsible in creating disasters. Broad based vulnerabilities are strongly related to the

occurrence of disasters: dangerous locations, limited access to resources, illness and

disability, old age, poverty, lack of appropriate institutions, low education and training and

skills, population expansion, uncontrolled development, environmental degradation etc.

Rural population living in fragile mountain regions, on lands very close to sea and in

settlements located in river deltas have been found to be at high risk in view of their

geographic location and inappropriate and much underdeveloped physical and social

infrastructure.

1 Chandrani Dutta, Senior PhD scholar, Centre for the Study of Regional Development (C.S.R.D.),

School of Social Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University (J.N.U.), New Delhi-67.

Email: [email protected]

Dr. Anuradha Banerjee, Associate Professor, Population Studies and Geography, C.S.R.D.,

School of Social Sciences, J.N.U., New Delhi-67.


19


All over the world natural disasters have claimed more than 1.5 million lives. Five countries

with the highest number of disasters during the period 1900-2002 were United States of

America (655 disasters), India (459), China (429), Philippines (355) and Indonesia (276)

(UNDP cited in Johnson, 2004, p.14). The impact of natural disasters is mediated by context

and population specific features and vulnerabilities. As such, the outcome of disasters is

worse for countries with low human development indicators, especially for the poor and

deprived living in these countries, which together accounted for 53 per cent of the disaster

related deaths in and around the world (Dayton-Johnson, 2004). The adaptive capacity of

such backward regions is usually low, social assistance infrastructure is negligent, poverty

and social inequality are high and disaster policies are non-functioning. Such negative

externalities get augmented in these regions due to their huge rural population base living

on the peripheries. While earthquakes claim an average of 130 million people every year,

droughts affect an average of 220 million, and about 119 million people are exposed to

tropical cyclones, with some experiencing an average of more than four events every year

(UNDP, n.d.).

In India natural hazards are common and many have turned into major disasters. On different

occasions, earthquakes, floods and droughts have shook the country and bared regional

economies to nature’s fury. The impact is magnified in case of a poor monsoon and a lean

agricultural season since agriculture is the mainstay of more than half of the country’s

population, and as such the livelihoods and food security of vulnerable and marginalised

sections likely to be living in rain-fed areas are more affected. This paper focuses on tropical

cyclones along the Indian coastlines which have usually occurred in socially and

economically less developed regions of the country.

Despite the presence of elongated coastline on the west and east which serve as threshold

to natural hazards like tropical cyclones, storm surges, floods and tsunamis, the entire

Indian coastline is subjected to severe winds and cyclonic storms from the Arabian Sea

and the Bay of Bengal. States like Gujarat in the west and Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, and

West Bengal in the east, lie in the trajectory of cyclones originating in the Arabian Sea and

Bay of Bengal respectively. In terms of their physiography and greater susceptibility to

natural hazards, these states are best understood as fragile, and their population at greater

risk of exposure. Low lying districts like South 24 Parganas and Midnapur in coastal West

Bengal, and Balasore, Cuttack, Puri and Ganjam from coastal Odisha, having an approximate

elevation of one to two metres, are at greatest risk as they lie in the route of the cyclones

originating in the Bay of Bengal (NDMA, GoI, 2008).2

At the national level, disaster management underwent a paradigm shift after the 2004 tsunami

which hit major parts of coastal South Asia. Now, apart from identifying danger areas, the

nodal disaster management authority is doing an inventory of vulnerable, discriminated

and marginalised population segments and their specific requirements, so as to effectively

2 National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Government of India (GoI)

20


address the needs of children, aged and marginalised sections, in the process integrating

disaster mitigation with the development process.

As such, this paper is an inventory of population facing greatest threat from environmental

disasters. This inventory is important to identify weak sections and poor infrastructure,

and accordingly ensure effective preventive measures and service delivery including relief

operations and long-term aid and rehabilitation, independent capacity building and

sustainable growth. This exercise also helps us to understand how regional socio-economic

specificities and the regional and macro political context constrain or enable disaster

management. Here, the coastal districts of Odisha and West Bengal have been chosen for

detailed study because over the years they have been battered with disasters time and again,

and despite concerted efforts they have continuously reported low levels of development

(GoI, 2009a).

The paper is structured in the following manner. In the first section a temporal study of the

occurrences of tropical cyclones along the eastern and western coasts of India depict the

vulnerability of the area with respect to climatic externalities. In the next two sections,

social and economic development of the coastal districts of the two states have been analysed,

which along with other factors posing challenges to disaster mitigation in India, finds mention

in the third section of this paper.

2. Cyclone affected Coastal Districts of West Bengal and Odisha

‘A long coastline of about 7,516 km of flat coastal terrain, shallow continental shelf, high

population density, geographical location and physiological features of its coastal areas

makes India, in the North Indian Ocean (NIO) Basin, extremely vulnerable to cyclones and

its associated hazards like storm tide (the combined effects of storm surge, astronomical

tide, high velocity winds and heavy rains’ (NDMA, GoI, 2008).3

A low pressure area with winds circulating at a speed of more than 61km/hr is called a

cyclone or tropical storm. Though the frequency of tropical cyclones in the NIO covering

the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea is only 7 per cent of the global total, its impact on

India’s east coast and Bangladesh’s coast is particularly devastating. In the last 270 years,

twenty-one of twenty-three major cyclones, killing 10,000 or more lives worldwide, have

occurred in the east coast of the Indian subcontinent and have been accompanied with

related disasters probably due to the intense storm tide effect. Coastal districts of Tamil

Nadu, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, West Bengal and Puducherry on the east and Gujarat on

the west are most vulnerable to climatic hazards associated with tropical cyclones (see

Tables 1 and 2).

3 Storm surge is an abnormal rise in the water level along a shore resulting primarily from high winds and

low pressure generated with tropical cyclones. Astronomical Tide refer to the tidal levels and the character

which would result from gravitational effects, e.g., of the Earth, Sun and the Moon, without any atmospheric

influences.

21


Table 1: Major Tropical Cyclone Disasters over Past 270 Years in Terms of Human Loss

East Coast of India

State Coastal Districts No. of Cyclones

West Bengal (69) 24 Parganas (North and South) 35�

Midnapur 34

Odisha (98)

Balasore 32�

Cuttack 32�

Puri 19�

Ganjam 15

�

Table 2: Number of Cyclones Crossing the Coastal Districts of

West Bengal and Odisha (1891-2002)

Source: Indian Meteorological Department, GoI, n.d.

S. No. Year Country Deaths

1 1737 Hoogly, West Bengal, India 300,000

2 1779 Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India 20,000

3 1782 Coringa, Andhra Pradesh, India 20,000


5 1788 The Antilles, Carribean Islands, West Indies 22,000

6 1822 Barisal/Backergunj, Bangladesh 50,000

7 1831 Balasore, Odisha, India 22,000

8 1833 Sagar Island, West Bengal, India 30,000


10 1864 Machilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh, India 30,000

11 1867 Contai, West Bengal, India 50,000

12 1876 Backergunj, Bangladesh 200,000-250,000

13 1881 China 300,000

14 1897 Bangladesh 175,000

15 1942 Contai, West Bengal, India 15,000

16 1961 Bangladesh 11,468



19 1970 Bangladesh 300,000

20 1971 Paradip, Odisha, India 10,000

21 1977 Divi Seema, Andhra Pradesh, India 10,000

22 1991 Bangladesh 138,000

23 1999 South of Paradip, Odisha, India 9893* (15,681,072

pop. Affected)

�Source: NDMA, GoI, 2008

22


Coastal Odisha and West Bengal, comprising deltas of varied sizes and shapes, are

characterised by flat inundated deltaic plains. These areas witness concentration of runoff

post heavy rainfall brought in by cyclonic storms in short duration (Khatua and Panigrahi,

2001). Storm surges cause maximum damage to these areas and their communities. More

generally, it has been observed that the degree of disaster potential depends on the storm

surge associated with the cyclone at the time of landfall, characteristics of the coast, phases

of the tides and vulnerability of the area and the community. It has been found that the

Probable Maximum Storm Surge (PMSS, see Figure 1) is highest along the West Bengal

coast ranging from 9 to 12.5 metres, which gradually reduces to 3.8 metres in Khurda

district of Odisha. In 1999, the super cyclone in 1999 generated a wind speed of 252km/hr

followed by a storm surge of 7 to 9 metres close to Paradip coast in Odisha (NDMA, GoI,

2008).

Fig. 1 : Cyclone Wind and Probable Maximum Storm Surge (PMSS) Map of India

Source: (NDMA, GoI, 2008)

�

23


Frequent cyclones along with storm surges, heavy rainfall and inundation of coastal tracts

have pushed millions to the margins of the economy and society, often resulting in their

destitution and pauperisation and completely depleting their coping capacity (Fuentes and

Seck, 2007). The implications are particularly devastating in rural areas where income

sources and assets are anyway extremely limited, and sudden shocks at short intervals can

push them in a downward spiral. Approximately 32 crore people or one-third of the country’s

total population is exposed to cyclone related hazards and the number rises each year

(NDMA, GoI, 2008).

Lindell and Prater (2003) have identified two types of disaster impacts i.e. physical and

social impact at the local and household levels. Physical impact relates to different

geographical and natural hazard agents. Hazard mitigation practices, emergency

preparedness practices and institutional capacity are effective instruments to minimise the

intensity of the impact. On the other hand, even in situations of substantial physical impact,

presence of community recovery resources, households’ coping mechanisms with extra

assistance and advanced socio-demographic and economic development, goes a long way

in reigning in social impacts. Others have similarly stressed upon the importance of

communal resources and capacity building, mitigation practices, social and economic

development of the population and other institutional mechanisms (Rodriguez-Oreggia, et

al., 2008).

This type of geographical, physical, social and economic profile severely handicaps

prevention and risk mitigation activities, which has been further investigated in case of the

low lying coastal districts of West Bengal and Odisha (see Figure 2). Low human

development levels especially found in Odisha makes this state more vulnerable compared

to West Bengal, in times of disasters (GoI, 2009b).

Figure 2: Coastal Districts of West Bengal and Odisha

Source: Location map generated with the help of Arc GIS 9�

24


2.1 Social, Demographic, Economic Profile of Population in the Coastal Districts of West

Bengal and Odisha

From the above it follows then that a demographic, social and economic profiling of this

region is imperative to understand the challenges to disaster management. This has to be

the first step in designing appropriate preventive and remedial strategies.

As mentioned previously, these West Bengal and Odisha districts lie on the eastern coast

and have a high proportion of rural poor engaged in primary activities, mostly agriculture

and fishing. Housing conditions are also of very poor quality, living as they do in kutcha

(made of grass, thatch, mud, hay) structures. Tables 3 to 6 (see annexure) detail the

demographic, economic and social profile of the 13 coastal districts of West Bengal and

Odisha identified above. A detailed distribution of pucca and kutcha (permanent or non-

permanent) housing structures, disaggregated on the basis of scheduled caste and tribe

population and based on 2001 census is presented in tables 7 to 10 (see annexure). This

exercise clearly brings out the evolving trends reflecting on the nature of socio-economic

change that has occurred, if at all. The purpose is to see if, over the years, these districts

have become better equipped to deal with disasters.

Data shows a rise in the proportion of population living in urban areas along with

corresponding rise in literacy levels as well as scheduled caste and scheduled tribe population

over the 2001-2011 period. There remains however many districts in Odisha with a strong

concentration of rural population, for instance, Kendrapara, Jagatsinghapur, Baleshwar

(94.2 per cent, 89.8 per cent and 89.1 per cent respectively). On the literacy front, significant

improvement is seen in female literacy over 2001–2011 in both West Bengal and Odisha

districts. The sex ratio pattern makes for a troubling picture in the state of Odisha, where

especially the rural areas of most of the selected districts have revealed a fall in sex ratio

with a consecutive gain in urban sex ratio. This pattern however has not taken place in the

district of Baleshwar, nor is it so evident in the five districts of West Bengal. A possible

reason for this gain in urban sex ratio could be female out-migration from the rural areas of

Odisha, but this needs further investigation (see annexure).

The proportion of main workers to marginal workers has declined, more so in districts of

Odisha which are more rural in comparison to West Bengal districts. In the category of

main workers, the number of agricultural cultivators has fallen and that of agricultural

labourers has risen (see annexure, Table 5). These trends are a reflection of the increasing

scarcity of secure and regular wage employment in agriculture dominated rural economies.

Majority are engaged in low paid, casual and oppressive work and petty modes of exploitative

self-employment which have exacerbated their vulnerability to climatic shocks. For example,

in Odisha, a large number have taken up fishing (inland and marine) which continues to be

labour-intensive and not completely commercialised. These fishing communities are largely

classified as living below the poverty line, completely exposed to climatic vagaries and

consequences thereof, according to the estimates provided by the Directorate of Fisheries,

Government of Odisha (GoO, 2010). West Bengal also has a huge section of its population

engaged in fishing; almost 76981 marine fishermen families, in the period 2004-11, were

found to pursue this activity signifying similar dangers associated with this profession

25


(GoI, n.d.). However, the extended coastline of Odisha, stretching across six districts,

adds more to the risk. Given their almost complete dependence on this risky venture for

livelihoods, weather forecasts are mostly ignored and families attempt to maximise income

by sending out children as well on fishing expeditions. So acute is economic distress that

even past experiences of devastating disasters like the 1999 super cyclone have not led to

the adoption of safe fishing methods in tune with the local ecology. Moreover, an

overwhelming proportion of this region’s population is scheduled caste and scheduled tribe

and data shows that these marginalised and discriminated sections have lesser access to

improved living standards (for example, see annexure, Tables 7-10).

Latest census results report a decline in the number of agricultural cultivators and an increase

in agricultural labourers as evident in all the selected districts of West Bengal and Odisha.

This is but one indication of immiserising growth. So it is not just vulnerable livelihoods

but also the structural context of wage scarcity and reproduction squeeze that underlies

occupational multiplicity with their attendant forms of exploitation.

2.2 Housing Scenario in the Districts of Odisha and West Bengal with Special Reference

to their Rural Population

Housing in rural India mostly presents a landscape of non-permanent structures with kutcha

roofs and mud walls. Kutcha construction but obviously cannot withstand a cyclone. In

fact, much of the population is left homeless post disaster. Building appropriate housing

structures in disaster-prone areas is thus of utmost importance and not only because of loss

of shelter but also because of associated loss of valuables, cattle and crucial means of

production like fishing equipment or agricultural implements. The last decade has seen

some improvement on this front as evident in the declining number of kutcha houses (see

annexure, Tables 7 to 9 and 11). Nonetheless, several low lying regions of the country like

the South 24 Parganas in West Bengal, have a preponderance of kutcha construction which

increases the damage potential in times of storm surges and floods.

Safe housing is only a beginning towards ensuring better safeguards against environmental

and geographical disasters. Disaster insurance can bring critical respite to the affected

during crises. However, in developing countries delivery of such services remains a major

challenge given poor banking and information and technological communication coverage

in rural, ecologically or politically sensitive and peripheral areas. In addition, there is need

to educate people on using formal banking services for saving as opposed to traditional

mechanisms, for example, burying savings and assets in dug chambers in households.

Introduction of other banking services accompanied with socially sensitive financial

inclusion can go a long way in extending financial security to families in hazard prone

regions. Since 2001, people’s access to banking has shown an improvement (see annexure,

Tables 10 and 11).

An important aspect of intervention in the area of disaster management is adoption of a

balanced regional approach and linking these interventions with other developmental

initiatives. In Jagatsinghapur, post 1999 supercyclone, strong correlation was noted between

rehabilitation measures and improvement in housing. But this was not observed in other

26


similarly affected areas. Why this was the case is a matter of further research. More generally,

other possible areas where greater action is required includes building of shelter belts,

levees, bridges; putting up stations with advanced communication systems to alert people;

ensuring wage security; access to formal institutions; individual and community capacity

building etc. Mitigating and managing disasters can never be a one-dimensional objective.

The capacity to ‘snap back’ to the original state after a disaster does not always depend on

geography, but also on administration, political will and leadership and quality and efficiency

of governance, specifically the bureaucracy. Importantly, as is evident from above, there is

an urgent need to prioritise socio-economically deprived and underdeveloped regions and

these are primarily rural/peripheral areas. However, this should not be read as undermining

the importance of disaster management in urban areas.

3. Challenges to Disaster Risk Management

An important mention with regard to disaster mitigation is Indian government’s National

Cyclone Risk Mitigation Project, initiated with World Bank assistance. The main focus of

this project has been to strengthen structural and non-structural cyclone mitigation efforts

and reduce vulnerability of coastal districts prone to cyclones. Structural measures include

construction of cyclone resistant buildings, road links, culverts, bridges, canals, drains,

saline embankments, surface water tanks and communication and power transmission

networks. Non-structural measures comprise early warning systems, communication and

dissemination, management of coastal zones, awareness generation, disaster risk

management and capacity development (NDMA, GoI, 2008). This project has to be

understood against the backdrop of a shift from a post disaster management to a pre-disaster

risk reduction and management approach, focusing on preparedness and awareness.

Catastrophic calamities like the Latur earthquake in1993, 1999 Odisha super cyclone, the

Maharashtra and Gujarat earthquake in 2001 and occurrences of floods and droughts in

different parts of the country had failed to bring about a desperately required change in the

disaster risk management approach. The 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami changed this. According

to National Disaster Management Guidelines, disaster risk reduction is a combination of

two important factors- preparedness and mitigation. In it’s National Policy on Disaster

Management (2009), the Government of India, for the first time, introduced key concepts

like prevention and preparedness through knowledge, innovation and education; mitigation

with the help of technology aiming towards environmental sustainability and integrating

disaster management and development planning process. More specifically, creation of

avenues for financial security through mechanisms like disaster risk insurance, micro-

financing, provision of home loans to construct safer living structures and encouraging

community participation in developing and building a ‘culture of preparedness’, find a

mention. A logical question then is that, is this achievable in a country like India where the

most exposed population does not possess basic social and economic capabilities to bring

forth innovation and sustainability in creating a ‘culture of preparedness’ in disaster risk

management? Moreover, a weak, rent-seeking and ill-equipped administrative machinery

further saps the resilience and adaptive capacity of the region in question.

Though the National Policy on Disaster Management (2009) recognises the critical

27


importance of the three tiers of the government acting together in the field of disaster

management, disaster management is still listed as a state subject. Consequently, the central

government is seen in a supportive role. States have depended on their budget or plan funds

for disaster management and risk mitigation. In fact, a guideline issued by the Central

Government to the states clearly states, ‘Funds available under the ongoing schemes may

be used for mitigation/preparedness’. Even the Calamity Relief Fund, set up in 1990-91 by

the Central Government to reduce states’ burden on relief expenditure, has not proved

effective. On the administrative aspect, the policy clearly identifies the Ministry of Home

Affairs as the nodal agency tasked with relief and rehabilitation, the department of revenue

at the state level or the collector as the chairman of the coordination review committee at

the district level and panchayati raj institutions and urban local bodies at the local level

(Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, 2005). On the other hand,

implementation of the new policy remains a challenge. For example, there have been focused

interventions in drought area development plans, but none of these have a pre-disaster

mitigation aspect built in. Despite identification of vulnerable areas and a policy stressing

on prevention in place, the 2009 Aila cylone in West Bengal and the recent Uttarakhand

tragedy completely laid bare the unpreparedness of state machinery and their archaically

casual attitude to implementing the new policy paradigm. In the latter case, it is telling that

the chief minister headed State Disaster Management Authority, constituted in 2007, had

not even prepared the mandatory disaster management plan till the time of the tragedy i.e.

even after more than five years of its formation and had not even bothered to shift populations

identified as vulnerable to safer locations-and this in a state where landslides are a regular

phenomena (Tripathi, 2013). The Comptroller and Auditor General of India’s report

submitted to the Parliament on 23rd April, 2013, is even more telling-according to it the

national executive body of the National Disaster Management Authority had not met even

once between 2008 and 2012-and this in a country like India where 76 per cent of the

coastline is prone to cyclones and tsunamis, 59 per cent of the landmass is earthquake

prone, 10 per cent is prone to floods and river erosion and 68 per cent to droughts (Tripathi,

2013). It is imperative that every authority, at every level, should approach disaster risk

management seriously and on a high priority and focus on increasing capabilities of the

people and the region alongside good governance built on efficiency, transparency and

accountability.

Long term measures like creation of sand dunes, mangrove forests and construction of

sluice gates are necessary to combat floods and cyclones. However, in the context of a

large poor population, conserving natural safeguards against desperate efforts to secure

daily livelihood fails. This has happened in the destruction of the mangrove forests in the

name of shrimp farming in the coastal areas of West Bengal and Odisha. People from these

developing regions practice shrimp farming in the mangrove swamps as land is cheap and

there is no effective government regulation (BBC News, 2004). Provision of minimum

decent work and extending social protection is one answer to conserving fragile coastal

ecology as a natural safeguard against strong cyclonic winds and tides. A long term

perspective, such as this, will in the end benefit not only the local population but the region

as a whole.

28


4. Conclusion

Disaster management should be based on an integrated approach factoring in physiography,

human development and the political and administrative machinery of the region. In

developing countries, the growing incidence of natural disasters correlates to the increasing

vulnerability of households and communities which exacerbate the impact of disasters and

make recovery all the more difficult (Vatsa and Krimgold, 2000; Carter, et al., 2007). If

disaster risk management practices continue to be given lip-service only, then human

development of concerned regions remains compromised.

References

BBC News, 19 May 2004, Shrimp farms ‘harm poor nations’

Available at: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3728019.stm

[Accessed 31 August 2013]

Carter, M. R., Little, P., and Mogues, T. (2007). Poverty traps and natural disasters in Ethiopia and Honduras.

World Development, Vol.35, No.5. pp.835-856.

Centre for Budget and Governance Accountability, 2005. Public policy towards natural disasters: disconnect

between resolutions and reality

Available at: http://www.cbgaindia.org/files/working_papers/

Public%20Policy%20towards%20Natural%20Disasters%20in%20India.pdf


Dayton- Johnson, J., 2004. National disasters and adaptive capacity. OECD Development Centre, Working

Paper No. 237.

Available at: http://www.oecd.org/dev/33845215.pdf


Department of Animal Husbandry, Dairying and Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of India.

Fishery resources and their utilisation of West Bengal

Available at: http://www.dahd.nic.in/dahd/WriteReadData/Fisheries%20States%20Profile/West%20Bengal.pdf

[Accessed 6 September 2013]

Directorate of Fisheries, Government of Odisha. 2010. Inland Sector and Marine Sector.

Available at:http://www.orissafisheries.com/website/stakeholders/fishermen.htm

[Accessed November 2011)

Fuentes, R., Seck, P., 2007. The short and long-term human development effects of climate related shocks:

some empirical evidences. Human development report 2007. Fighting climate change: human solidarity in a

divided world. Occasional Paper.

Available at:

http://hdr.undp.org/en/reports/global/hdr2007-2008/papers/backgound_ricardo_papa_2007.pdf

[Accessed November 2011]

Indian Meteorological Department. (n.d). Damage potential of Tropical Cyclones. New Delhi. Indian

Meterological Department.

Khatua, K., Panigrahi, S., 2001. Flood and Cyclone in Coastal Odisha.

Available at: dspace.nitrkl.ac.in


Lindell, M. K., Prater, C.S., 2003. Assessing community impacts of natural disasters. Natural Hazards Review,

Vol. 4, No.4. pp.176-185.

29


Ministry of Environment and Forests, GoI, 2009a. World Bank assisted integrated coastal zone management

report. New Delhi: Ministry of Environment and Forests.

Ministry of Home Affairs, GoI, 2004. Disaster Management in India-A Status Report.

Available at: http://www.ndmindia.nic.in/eqprojects/

disaster%20management%20in%20india%20%20a%20status%20report%20-%20august%202004.pdf

[Accessed 13 December 2011]

Ministry of Women and Child Development, GoI, 2009b. Gendering human development indices: recasting

the gender development index and gender empowerment measure for India.

Available at: http://www.undp.org/content/dam/india/docs/gendering_human_development_indices.pdf


National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India, 2008. Management of cyclones. National

disaster management guidelines. New Delhi: National Disaster Management Authority, Government of India

Available at: http://ndma.gov.in/ndma/guidelines/Cyclones.pdf


Rodriguez-Oreggia, E., et al., 2009. The impact of natural disasters on human development and poverty at the

municipal level in Mexico.

Available at: http://www.preventionweb.net/english/hyogo/gar/background-papers/documents/Chap3/LAC-

overview/Mexico/Mexico.pdf


Tripathi, P.S., 2013. State of Paralysis. Frontline, July 26, pp.34-40.

Vatsa, K., Krimgold, F., 2000. Financing disaster mitigation for the poor. In: A. Kreimer and M. Arnold, eds.,

2004. Managing disaster risk in emerging economies. Washington: World Bank.

UNDP, n.d. Reducing disaster risk: a challenge for development.

Available at:

http://www.un.org/special-rep/ohrlls/ldc/Global-Reports/UNDP%20Reducing%20Disaster%20Risk.pdf


30


Annexure

Table 3: Growth Trends in Urban Population and Sex Ratio in Coastal Districts of

Odisha and West Bengal between 2001-2011

Source: Computed from Census of India 2001 and 2011

* In the 2011 Census, data has been disaggregated into Paschim and Purba Medinipur.

S.No. Name of the

District TRU

% Urban

Pop. 2011

% Urban

Pop. 2001

2011

Sex

Ratio

2001

Sex

Ratio

2011

Child Sex

Ratio

2001

Child Sex

Ratio

1 North Twenty

Four Parganas

Total 57.27 54.30 955 926 956 958

Rural

-

947 942 960 963

Urban 961 912 951 950

2 South Twenty

Four Parganas

Total 25.58 15.73 956 937 963 964

Rural

-

954 942 964 965

Urban 961 913 957 955

3 Paschim

Medinipur*

Total 12.22 - 966 963

Rural

-

- 965 962

Urban - 974 972

4 Purba

Medinipur*

Total 11.63 - 938 946

Rural

-

- 939 945

Urban - 929 958

5 Kolkata

Total 100.00 100.00 908 829 933 927

Rural

-

Urban 908 829 933 927

6 Bhadrak

Total 12.34 10.58 981 974 942 943

Rural

-

985 979 942 941

Urban 956 934 938 957

7 Cuttack

Total 28.05 27.39 940 938 914 939

Rural

-

945 964 919 939

Urban 927 874 899 940

8 Ganjam

Total 21.76 17.60 983 998 908 939

Rural

-

995 1011 907 943

Urban 941 939 913 913

9 Jagatsinghapur

Total 10.20 9.88 968 963 929 926

Rural

-

976 984 933 928

Urban 900 787 899 907

10 Kendrapara

Total 5.80 5.69 1007 1014 926 940

Rural

-

1010 1018 928 942

Urban 954 948 897 914

11 Khordha

Total 48.16 42.92 929 902 916 926

Rural

-

959 972 924 931

Urban 898 817 906 917

12 Baleshwar

Total 10.92 10.89 957 953 943 944

Rural

-

957 957 943 943

Urban 959 920 947 945

13 Puri

Total 15.6 13.57759 963 968 932 931

Rural

-

963 976 933 932

Urban 963 921 926 920

�

31


Table 4 : Growth Trends in SC/ST Population in Coastal Districts of Odisha and West

Bengal between 2001-2011

S.No. Name of the District TRU % SC

2011

% SC

2001

%ST

2011 %ST 2001

1 North Twenty Four Parganas

Total 21.67 20.60 2.64 2.23

Rural 29.28 29.60 4.60 4.13

Urban 15.99 13.02 1.18 0.62

2 South Twenty Four Parganas

Total 30.19 32.12 1.19 1.23

Rural 33.95 35.03 1.48 1.36

Urban 19.24 16.51 0.34 0.51

3 Paschim Medinipur

Total 19.08 - 14.88 -

Rural 19.92 - 16.43 -

Urban 13.02 - 3.73 -

4 Purba Medinipur

Total 14.63 - 0.55 -

Rural 15.04 - 0.53 -

Urban 11.50 - 0.66 -

5 Kolkata

Total 5.38 6.01 0.24 0.21

Rural - - - -

Urban 5.38 6.01 0.24 0.21

6 Bhadrak

Total 22.23 21.50 2.02 1.88

Rural 23.95 22.78 1.84 1.90

Urban 10.04 10.65 3.27 1.77

7 Cuttack

Total 19.00 19.08 3.57 3.57

Rural 21.54 21.18 4.32 4.47

Urban 12.48 13.52 1.64 1.20

8 Ganjam

Total 19.50 18.57 3.37 2.88

Rural 20.53 19.89 4.07 3.35

Urban 15.80 12.36 0.86 0.65

9 Jagatsinghapur

Total 21.83 21.05 0.69 0.82

Rural 22.69 22.21 0.44 0.55

Urban 14.19 10.49 2.88 3.28

10 Kendrapara

Total 21.51 20.52 0.66 0.52

Rural 21.65 20.62 0.65 0.49

Urban 19.26 18.87 0.74 1.05

11 Khordha

Total 13.21 13.54 5.11 5.18

Rural 16.23 16.71 5.81 6.06

Urban 9.96 9.33 4.36 4.00

12 Baleshwar

Total 20.62 18.84 11.88 11.28

Rural 21.67 19.79 12.34 11.60

Urban 12.10 11.07 8.12 8.73

13 Puri

Total 19.14 18.23 0.36 0.30

Rural 20.71 19.65 0.31 0.31

Urban 10.66 9.21 0.66 0.21

�Source: Computed from Census of India 2001 and 2011

32


Table 5: Growth Trend of Male and Female Literate Population in Coastal Districts of

Odisha and West Bengal between 2001-2011

S. No. Name of the District TRU

% Male

Literates

2011

% Male

Literates

2001

% Female

Literates

2011

% Female

Literates

2001

1 North Twenty Four Parganas

Total 79.23 74.17 72.65 63.11

Rural 72.52 65.53 64.21 51.94

Urban 84.27 81.33 78.89 72.66

2 South Twenty Four Parganas

Total 72.91 67.31 62.39 49.90

Rural 71.30 65.62 59.70 47.05

Urban 77.63 76.23 70.21 65.41

3 Paschim Medinipur

Total 75.37 - 62.35 -

Rural 74.46 - 60.76 -

Urban 81.90 - 73.68 -

4 Purba Medinipur

Total 81.72 - 71.94 -

Rural 81.53 - 71.56 -

Urban 83.12 - 74.84 -

5 Kolkata

Total 81.76 77.00 77.63 70.29

Rural - - - -

Urban 81.76 77.00 77.63 70.29

6 Bhadrak

Total 78.43 72.23 66.73 53.92

Rural 79.03 72.77 67.00 54.09

Urban 74.26 67.70 64.82 52.47

7 Cuttack

Total 81.54 75.31 71.43 58.70

Rural 80.34 73.36 68.44 54.66

Urban 84.59 80.23 79.19 69.96

8 Ganjam

Total 70.97 63.56 54.14 39.66

Rural 68.35 60.42 50.05 34.98

Urban 80.12 77.78 69.27 62.43

9 Jagatsinghapur

Total 83.25 77.92 72.97 61.29

Rural 83.39 77.86 72.84 60.92

Urban 82.04 78.42 74.16 65.02

10 Kendrapara

Total 80.80 74.96 70.49 58.13

Rural 80.70 74.76 70.22 57.66

Urban 82.34 78.19 74.97 66.10

11 Khordha

Total 82.04 77.24 73.07 61.60

Rural 79.17 73.55 67.88 54.89

Urban 85.03 81.77 78.84 71.39

12 Baleshwar

Total 76.10 69.68 63.35 50.33

Rural 75.71 69.03 62.37 48.94

Urban 79.24 74.86 71.32 61.90

13 Puri

Total 81.45058 76.81 70.44843 59.27

Rural 81.2743 76.67 69.49561 58.03

Urban 82.38643 77.66 75.7105 67.33

�Source: Computed from Census of India 2001 and 2011

33


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34


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35


Table 7 : Distribution of Households with Kutcha Roof Structures in

Coastal West Bengal and Odisha, 2001

S.

No. Districts

Total Rural Urban

Total SC ST Total SC ST Total SC ST

1 Baleshwar 70 78 90 73 79 91 43 60 80

2 Bhadrak 89 94 92 91 94 94 68 85 81

3 Cuttack 57 74 81 68 80 87 23 46 45

4 Ganjam 40 64 76 50 66 79 19 48 33

5 Jagatsinghapur 73 81 75 75 83 79 56 65 70

6 Kendrapara 85 90 91 86 91 93 57 81 66

7 Khordah 47 61 75 65 69 86 24 43 54

8 Puri 70 80 70 75 81 76 38 63 44

9 Midnapur 40 51 75 43 54 77 13 23 34

10 North 24 Parg. 6 12 27 14 20 43 1 2 2

11 South 24 Parg. 30 36 53 36 40 63 1 1 1

12 Kolkata 1 3 3 - - - 1 3 3

�Source: Computed from Census of India 2001

Table 8: Distribution of Households with Pucca Walls in


S.

No. Districts

Total Rural Urban


1 Baleshwar 12 7 4 8 6 2 45 27 15

2 Bhadrak 11 5 7 9 5 5 35 17 22

3 Cuttack 50 31 20 39 25 14 82 63 56

4 Ganjam 58 38 23 54 37 20 81 53 70

5 Jagatsinghapur 31 22 27 28 20 23 53 43 35

6 Kendrapara 17 11 10 15 10 8 52 24 40

7 Khordah 53 38 23 35 29 12 75 55 42

8 Puri 37 23 32 32 21 24 73 50 65

9 Midnapur 20 12 4 15 9 2 62 45 44

10 North 24 Parg. 60 39 38 36 25 19 79 60 69

11 South 24 Parg. 37 30 25 28 25 16 78 70 72

12 Kolkata 91 77 84 - - - 91 77 84


36


Table 9: Distribution of Households with Pucca Floors in


S.

No. Districts

Total Rural Urban


1 Baleshwar 12 6 3 8 4 2 51 31 16

2 Bhadrak 13 5 7 10 4 5 39 18 23

3 Cuttack 46 26 15 34 18 8 85 66 57

4 Ganjam 52 31 19 47 28 16 83 56 69

5 Jagatsinghapur 31 20 27 27 17 20 63 49 39

6 Kendrapara 17 9 10 15 9 8 54 23 39

7 Khordah 54 37 22 34 27 8 79 59 46

8 Puri 34 18 30 28 15 20 76 52 71

9 Midnapur 15 7 4 9 4 2 60 42 43

10 North 24 Parg. 52 30 29 20 13 7 78 56 65

11 South 24 Parg. 25 18 17 16 13 8 68 58 60

12 Kolkata 93 81 90 - - - 93 81 90


Table 10: Distribution of Households with Banking Facilities in


S.

No. Districts

Total Rural Urban


1 Baleshwar 25 18 12 22 17 11 47 37 17

2 Bhadrak 22 15 10 20 14 9 39 28 17

3 Cuttack 28 15 10 20 12 7 53 30 32

4 Ganjam 24 15 14 20 13 11 50 29 42

5 Jagatsinghapur 28 20 27 24 19 18 57 43 42

6 Kendrapara 24 16 18 23 16 18 44 24 25

7 Khordah 36 21 18 20 15 9 56 34 34

8 Puri 23 14 21 18 12 15 58 41 50

9 Midnapur 36 28 21 34 27 20 58 43 42

10 North 24 46 35 25 28 28 14 61 47 44

11 South 24 28 26 19 23 23 14 54 51 45

12 Kolkata 70 56 60 - - - 70 56 60


37


Table 11: Access to Pucca Walls/Floors, Kutcha Roofs and Banking Facilities among

Households in Coastal Districts of Odisha and West Bengal, 2011

S. No. Name of the District TRU Pucca

wall Pucca floor Kutcha roof

Banking

Facility

1 North Twenty Four

Parganas

Total 70.23 59.38 6.69 59.45

Rural 49.63 25.40 13.51 41.27

Urban 85.95 85.27 1.48 73.31

2 South Twenty Four

Parganas

Total 50.04 32.78 23.70 39.60

Rural 39.40 20.00 31.10 32.23

Urban 76.85 67.25 3.75 59.48

3 Paschim Medinipur

Total 22.87 20.70 26.17 50.22

Rural 16.65 13.83 28.70 47.72

Urban 68.10 70.24 7.79 68.40

4 Purba Medinipur

Total 41.82 21.99 19.59 41.30

Rural 38.37 17.58 21.06 38.57

Urban 69.80 58.05 7.74 63.38

5 Kolkata

Total 94.07 95.99 1.94 83.76

Rural - - - -

Urban 94.07 95.99 1.94 83.76

6 Bhadrak

Total 26.19 26.52 72.46 43.63

Rural 23.32 23.26 75.16 42.75

Urban 48.44 51.80 51.66 50.41

7 Cuttack

Total 67.30 62.56 36.66 53.91

Rural 59.97 53.37 44.24 47.50

Urban 89.29 90.11 13.94 73.11

8 Ganjam

Total 73.49 67.47 25.64 47.61

Rural 70.27 62.36 29.50 43.33

Urban 86.01 87.39 10.66 64.25

9 Jagatsinghapur

Total 62.14 58.46 41.99 57.97

Rural 61.83 56.68 41.52 57.12

Urban 64.78 73.51 45.96 65.18

10 Kendrapara

Total 38.31 36.35 64.47 59.50

Rural 36.97 34.83 65.69 59.40

Urban 64.54 66.05 42.40 61.36

11 Khordha

Total 67.94 68.13 29.09 52.09

Rural 52.90 50.07 42.34 34.42

Urban 83.38 86.43 15.50 70.22

12 Baleshwar

Total 27.80 23.53 50.88 47.59

Rural 24.03 18.92 53.65 45.40

Urban 59.73 62.55 27.44 66.15

13 Puri

Total 56.33 51.41 47.76 46.81

Rural 51.61 45.38 52.23 43.88

Urban 84.78 87.80 20.76 64.51


38

Aruna Pandey Commentary: Food Security

Food Security, Field Logistics and the Promise of Delivery

Aruna Pandey1

In India, food has always been a critical concern for a variety of social, political and

economic reasons. This commentary, highlights the rights conferred by the National Food

Security Bill on India’s poor and hungry. Institutional and implementational challenges

are also considered. Clearly, an efficient delivery mechanism and an articulate civil society

that understands its democratic responsibilities of engagement and rights are must to deliver

on the promise of redistributive growth and economic and social gains, as envisaged by the

National Food Security Bill.

Keywords: Food security, entitlements, supply chain network, public distribution

Amidst the cacophony of spasmodic parliamentary proceedings the National Food Security

Bill (NFSB) has finally received a nod from the Lok Sabha. The legislation holds the

promise of empowering a country with one of the highest incidences of hunger and

malnutrition. The extent and outreach of coverage, costs associated and the infrastructure

involved, makes the NSFB, one of the most ambitious efforts in food security ever envisaged

in the world.

The Bill seeks ‘to provide for food and nutritional security in human life cycle approach,

by ensuring access to adequate quantity and quality of food at affordable prices to people

to live a life with dignity and for matters connected therewith and incidental thereto’.2 For

the beneficiaries, this means legal food entitlements that emphasise the duty of the

government to provide subsidised food grains to 63.5 per cent of the country’s population

(75 per cent rural population and 50 per cent of the urban population) through a robust

system of procurement and technologically enabled distribution networks. This would mean

a supply chain that has the capacity to maintain the quality and safety standards of an

estimated 63 million metric tons of food grains annually.

Much has been written to establish the current context of food insecurity in India. Data

from Nutritional Family Health Surveys (NFHS), India State Hunger Index 2008, and the

2012 Global Hunger Index (GHI), all point to the abysmal performance of Government of

1 Aruna Pandey, PhD Scholar and Senior Teaching Fellow, Department of Development Studies, School of

Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, 10 Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London,

WC1H 0XG. This commentary is part of a working paper on ‘Food Security: A promise of Delivery’

currently under progress.

Email: [email protected] The National Food Security Ordinance (NFSO) 2013 was signed by the president on July 05, 2013. The

ordinance required the approval of the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha within six months of promulgation

to be established as a legislative measure to secure the Right to Food for beneficiaries covered under the

proposition. The ordinance was cleared by the President on grounds that, if passed in the parliament, the

ordinance would provide for a window period to streamline enforcement requirements of the legislation.

39


India (GoI) in addressing concerns of food security. India is ranked at 67 in the Global

Hunger Index 2012.3 The index estimates that undernourished population is 21 per cent

and the percentage of underweight children under five years is 43.5. While the nutritional

indicators have stagnated, per capita calorie consumption and the GHI in India show a

downward trend in the last twenty years.

The GHI and the NFHS data, viewed against the economic growth data of the country,

point to three distinctive governance problems–resource distribution/allocation (economic

and institutional), adaptive management and, democratic politics (perceptions of rights

and entitlements; active citizenship).

Entitlements under NFSB:

1. Eligible Households are divided in two categories:

a) Priority households are entitled to 5 kgs of food grains per person per month

b) Antyodaya Ann Yojana (AYY) households are entitled to 35 kgs per household

per month.

2. The PDS issue prices in Schedule I of NFSB: Rs 3/2/1 for rice/wheat/coarse grains

subject to revision in three years.

3. Children shall be entitled to,

a) 6months–6 years old: free, age-appropriate meal through the local anganwadi.

For children below 6 months, breastfeeding shall be promoted exclusively.

b) 6-14 years old/up to Class VIII: one free mid-day meal shall be provided every

day (except on school holidays) in all government and government aided

schools.

c) Children who suffer from malnutrition will be identified through the local

anganwadi and meals will be provided to them free of charge through the local

anganwadi.

4. Pregnant and lactating mothers are entitled to a free meal at the local anganwadi

(during pregnancy and six months after child birth) as well as maternity benefits of

Rs 6,000, in instalments. Other priority beneficiaries include homeless persons,

destitute persons, emergency and disaster affected persons, and, persons living in

starvation.

(Source: NFSO, 2013)

3 The National Family Health Survey of India (2005-2006) indicates that 45.9 per cent of the children in the

age group of 0-3 years are underweight and 79.6 per cent are anaemic; the incidence of anaemia among

ever married women in the age group of 15-49 years is 56.2 per cent, 24 per cent among men and 58% for

pregnant women; 33 per cent of women and 28 per cent of men have a Body Mass Index (BMI) below

normal. For a detailed discussion on the Hunger index and India’s performance vis-à-vis the world, please

refer to 2012 Global Hunger Index: The Challenge of Hunger: Ensuring Sustainable Food Security under

Land, Water, and Energy Stresses. Available at: http://www.ifpri.org/ghi/2012. Data of 2012 IFPRI esti-

mates can be downloaded from http://www.ifpri.org/book-8018/node/8058.

40


1. Food Security and Field Logics

The right to food security is a very complex proposition considering the economic and

institutional resources it commands and the expanse of co-ordination across the supply

chain it involves. The complexity of the proposition is further enhanced with the lack of

well-defined entitlements and responsibilities in the NFSO, 2013.

1.1 Entitlements and Responsibilities under the NFSB

The National Food Security Bill (NFSB) defines food security as ‘food and nutritional

security’ through an ‘assurance of access to adequate quantity and quality of food’.

Beneficiaries are identified in two distinct categories of priority households and AYY

households. For both categories of beneficiaries, the Bill lays down the benefits offered.

This constitutes the ‘what’ of the entitlement. One of the most contentious arguments under

NFSB entitlement provisions has been the provision of alternative cash based food security

allowance for beneficiaries covered under the scheme. The legislation outlines that such

allowances shall be made available only in situations of non-fulfilment of entitled distribution

of food grains/meals. While Aadhaar based e-cash transfer systems increase the possibility

of plugging leakages associated with targeted public distribution system (TPDS), it exposes

beneficiaries to the volatility of the food market and does not, in any which way, guarantee

expenditure of these allowances on food and nutrition items by households.4

The process of identification of beneficiaries, i.e. the ‘who’ and ‘how’ of the NFSB, is one

of the biggest upcoming challenges for the government. The responsibility of identification

of eligible households has been left to respective state governments. While this creates

space for contextualisation and adaptive implementation of the proposed scheme, one cannot

deny the need for a guided process, with established protocols and verification systems; a

process which ensures effective and efficient delivery to the deserving beneficiaries. Lack

of a clearly outlined institutional process with appropriate signposted checks will leave

manoeuvring spaces for corrupt malpractices. This brings us to the question of ‘who’ should

be held accountable within the current delivery mechanism.

The complex nature of the concept of food security creates difficulties in identifying the

exact nature of responsibilities associated with the right to food. The primary accountability

is definitely with the state because it is the state that controls and allocates economic and

institutional resources associated with the legislation. Also, the state becomes the primary

accountable authority for safeguarding the rights specified under the NFSB. However, in a

country marred with severe vulnerabilities associated with gender, caste and class; there

are serious difficulties in making the right to food a reality. This is one of the reasons why

all successful programmes of public food distribution, across the world, have been those

4 Aadhaar (Unique Identification Authority of India), as a system of biometric identification and mainte-

nance of public records, has been not yet been approved by the parliament. It currently faces debates on

issues of information safety and security of citizens and impingement of civil liberties of subjects through

surveillance and tracking. The legal status of the Aadhaar is questionable and its use within the NFSB is

seen as illegitimate, opportunist behaviour on part of the current government to leverage Aadhar.

41


that have gone in for universal or near universal access. This reduces the transactions costs

associated with implementation of such security measures and allows for better public

provisioning. This is one of the reasons why states like Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Andhra

Pradesh have been able to plug leakages in the public distribution system (PDS), i.e. by

including a vast majority of the population under the scheme. Other measures by these

states include reductions in price, computerisation of systems, de-privatisation of shops

(from private dealers to co-ops, gram panchayats and self-help groups). Such provisioning

at a national scale commands institutional and economic capacity of the state apparatus to

be able to re-allocate and distribute resources upholding the principles of distributive growth

and broad based economic development.

It is in this context that possibilities of radical change, associated with NFSB, become a

function of political awareness and participation of underprivileged groups in democratic

politics. Ensuring food security in such social contexts is likely to counter challenges of

exclusion and intentional wrongful inclusions.

1.2 Resource Distribution and Allocations

Food security has often been linked to poverty alleviation, increased per capita income and

high economic output. The logic of redistributive growth further comprehends that a

sustainably progressing economy needs to re-distribute its benefits. This facilitates creation

of a consumer base that has social and economic access to goods produced by the economy,

as well as the ability to contribute to/sustain economic growth through appropriate economic

output. In the past 66 years, India has failed to address the severe problem of malnutrition

and rising poverty through a strong welfare security mechanism for its citizens. The Food

Security Bill seeks to strike the heart of this very problem. However, the delivery of such

legislation involves a much deeper engagement.

The end to end delivery mechanism under the NFSB commands multiple stages of

performance, coordination and provisioning by a robust network of organisations. This

includes sustainable agricultural production supported by appropriate technologies and

knowledge support to producers; decentralised, technology equipped aggregation and

procurement centres; modular, in-situ warehousing and storage solution for these

decentralised satellite aggregation and procurement centres; cost-effective transport links

that connect procurement centres to distributive networks-a long-term solution could mean

reduction of actual distance between the procurement and distribution points; and a socially

conscious distribution network that understands the value proposition of food security (see

Figure 1).

42


Fig. 1 : The NFSB Supply Chain Commands a Robust, Efficient,

Effective Supply Chain Network

Although the existing supply chain network under the TPDS has been often labelled as a

decentralised system of procurement, 70 per cent of rice procurement is done from Punjab,

Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Uttar Pradesh. 80 per cent of the total wheat procurement

is done from the states of Punjab, Haryana and Madhya Pradesh alone. Other than concerns

of concentrated procurement from specific regions of the country, this also imposes the

angle of centralised warehousing and storage by the Food Corporation of India (FCI) wherein

large amount of grains are brought to central storage facilities and are then transported to

respective states for storage and distribution. Such systems of centralised procurement and

storage automatically increase the pressure on existing infrastructure and associated costs.

The NSFB could have addressed it through decentralised satellite procurement and

distribution networks with modular well equipped decentralised storage solutions. Given

the projected rise in stock requirements and associated costs, such systems of decentralised

supply chain networks would be of immense long term benefit.

�

43


The impact of policy neglect of agricultural value chain over the past two decades is likely

to be visible once the NSFB is rolled into action. While the pressure on production

requirement of grains is likely to increase manifold in the coming years, the Bill is yet to

contemplate the modus operandi to revitalise agriculture and create a decentralised system

of procurement highlighted in schedule 3 of the legislation. Diversion of agricultural land

for other economic activities, rising costs of inputs, inadequate delivery of agricultural

research and extension services, inadequate access to institutional credit for farmers, and

the ever-posing challenges of climate change are bound to make things difficult in the

current scenario.

One clear measure that could ease the pressures of performance from the shoulders of

NFSB is to establish close relationships with other legislations/schemes/provisions that

address the growing needs of the agricultural value chain. To illustrate, the recent efforts of

the government to establish Farmer Producer Organisations (FPOs) and Producer Groups/

companies could be directly linked to procurement and distribution networks envisaged

under NFSB. While the FPOs could function as unified procurement entities in specific

regions/states, linking them to distribution networks within the same region and state will

automatically decrease costs associated with to and fro transportation to FCI storage and

warehousing facilities. Another example could be that of linking the agricultural

revitalisation clauses under schedule 3 of NSFB to existing networks of agricultural training

and extension services offered under various schemes of the central government.

Such inter-linkages, however, are dependent on three important components:

a) Establishment of a central coordination authority that serves as an implementation

agency with responsibilities of facilitation of joint operations across all departments

and ministries associated with the agricultural value and supply chain.

b) Diversification of food commodities covered under the NFSB for decentralised,

contextual and relevant procurement and distribution networks on the basis of nutrition

value and quantity of current and possible production.

c) Inclusion of specific directions relating to actions required by specific line authorities

to achieve the components of schedule 2 and 3 of the NFSB 2013.

2. The Promise of Delivery

It is not difficult to comprehend the complexity of the National Food Security Bill. With

varying entitlements, costs and coverage envisaged and challenges of institutional reforms

within existing practices, the NSFB has extra-ordinary amounts of work cut-out for the

government.

To illustrate, PDS with a network of 4.89 lakh fair price shops (FPS) is perhaps the largest

retail system of its type in the world. However, the PDS has virtually collapsed in several

states in India due to weak governance and lack of accountability. In north India, about half

of the grain meant for distribution to poor households through the PDS seems to end up in

the black market, rising to 80 per cent in Bihar and Jharkhand (Ghosh, 2010). Endemic

corruption, errors in inclusion, inefficient handling of agricultural stocks and poor monitoring

44


mechanisms are some of the reasons for such an appalling condition of the PDS. The

NFSB proposes inclusion of the PDS infrastructure within its operation. Effective delivery

of NSFB mandates would require complete overhauling of existing institutions like the

PDS.

The proposal for modernisation and computerisation of PDS by the states is likely to induce

some amounts of transparency in the system. In most cases, PDS within the NSFB involves

an investment of 50 per cent of the associated costs by state governments, with an exception

of north east states and Jammu and Kashmir (where the central government shall bear 90

per cent of the costs). With little or no provisions in the state budgets to accommodate such

costs, the extent of costs associated with the implementation of the NSFB is grossly

underestimated. The stated expenditure of Rs 1,24,827 crores annually is merely the tip of

the iceberg. Enhancement of production, warehousing and transport systems, market

infrastructure, and delivery mechanisms will require unaccounted additional expenditures.

These unaccounted expenditures are yet to be listed by respective state governments on the

basis of target beneficiary numbers advised under the NSFB.

The estimate of food subsidy, after the introduction of the NFSB, will depend on associated

economic costs, number of beneficiaries covered annually, central issue price of food grains

and the quantities of food grains allocated. This is likely to gallop given the yearly projections

of food grain requirements in coming years. The need to keep raising the minimum support

price (MSP) to cover the rising costs of production and to incentivise farmers to keep

producing is further going to add to the expected costs of the NFSB. These issues raise

serious doubts on the sustainability of the legislation and governance obligations involved

in the coming years.

Having said that, the National Food Security Bill does hold the promise of an India that can

guarantee food for 63.5 per cent of its population. While the regulation intends to open

pathways to a hunger free India, the entitlements for the deserving require an efficient

delivery mechanism and an articulate civil society that understands its democratic

responsibilities of engagement and rights. The logic of redistributive growth through the

NSFB promises larger gains, both on economic and social principles. The challenge is for

us to be able to maximise the prospects.

References

Ghosh, Jayati, 2010. The Political Economy of Hunger in 21st Century India. Economic & Political Weekly,

Vol. 45, No 44. pp.33-38.

Government of India, 2013, National Food Security Bill

Available at: http://www.nac.nic.in/foodsecurity/explanatory_note.pdf


45

Harish S. Wankhede Commentary: Development and Exclusion

Development and Exclusion: Struggles of the Oppressed Communities and

the Quest for Economic Justice

Harish S. Wankhede1

The tribal and dalit movements accuse the present developmental model for its exclusionary

and oppressive mode of production and simultaneously propose alternatives based on the

demand for fair inclusion, economic justice and eco-friendly sustainable development.

Future policy framework must reconsider these fundamental issues raised by the oppressed

communities while formulating the economic agenda.

Keywords: Dalits, tribals, Maoists, ethics, globalisation, public policy

1. The Problem

The assertion that liberal market reforms bring prosperity to majority of the citizens has

always been a highly contested judgment. In the process of economic development, exclusion

and marginalisation, mainly of the poor sections of society is seen as a natural outcome.

Discrimination of working classes, exploitation of natural resources and circumventing the

democratic processes of decision making in the favour of corporate run capitalist

development is seen as an integral part of the dominant public policies on economic reforms

today. Conditions created by profit seeking economic arrangements have primarily benefited

a niche section of the population (mainly educated middle class urban people) and have

produced new forms of hierarchies at the level of gender, regions, caste and the community.

In India, the Scheduled Castes (SCs) and Scheduled Tribes (STs) are understood to be the

worst sufferers of the new model of capitalist development given their social and regionally

disadvantaged position, exclusion from the dominant Hindu civilization and animistic

backward living conditions. Both the groups hardly feature in the economic agenda, even

peripherally. They are treated as subsidiary elements and on occasions the state flags some

nominal concessions claiming that economic planning has defended the interests of the

poor and marginalized sections. The policy provisions adopted by the state vis-à-vis these

communities proposed greater assimilation and inclusion of these ‘primitive’ groups into

the higher and ethical prospect of modernity and civility (Ghurye 1963). The constitutional

directives endorse special recognition, protection of cultural and linguistic affinities and

also guide the state authorities to protect their exclusive economic interests.

In reality, the majority within these sections has remained as the country’s worst-off group

on most criterions of human development and the state has little basis to celebrate its

policies of integration. With economic liberalisation, the possibility that the state will further

abide with its constitutional principles comes across as a suspicious anecdote. The dalits

1 Harish S. Wankhede, Visiting Scholar, Centre for South Asia, Stanford University, California, United

States of America.


46


and tribals face similar problems of exclusion, discrimination and poverty. The tribals have

been further marginalised due to brutal displacement and eviction from forest lands. Both

these groups have churned out their independent opposition and critique of the new liberal

economic agenda and have proposed an ethical argument based on the demand for fair

inclusion, economic justice and eco-friendly sustainable development.

The available literature perceives dalit and tribal critique of economic orthodoxy

independently of each other. In the post-liberalisation era, it has been argued that the steady

withdrawal of the state’s protective mechanisms from the economic order have further

blocked the possible avenues which the dalits had so far utilised to enter the market and

benefit from emerging opportunities.2 It has been demonstrated time and again that the

market is not free of discrimination and nepotism in allocating resources, employment,

loans and other facilities. As such, the dalit paradigm wages new forms of democratic

demands to correct the ‘insensitive’ and ‘pro-rich’ avatar of the liberal state. These demands

are as diverse as arguing for effective affirmative action policies (including reservations in

the private economy) to reconstruction of the state on the socialist model.3 On the other

hand, tribal groups are geographically isolated communities which remain mostly dependent

upon the natural resources available on forest lands. Under the aegis of private capital and

the imperatives of neoliberal development, hundreds of acres of forest land have been

acquired for various developmental projects without any challenge to the blatant private

capitalist profiteering or adequately addressing the basic questions of compensation and

rehabilitation. Tribal communities have resisted the state and its capitalist allies through

various means. In recent times, they have been influenced by the radical Maoist model and

have proposed ‘revolutionary’ alternatives to their ‘liberal’ dalit counterparts.4

At this juncture, there are four distinct players that are crucial to the current question of

economic liberalisation in India. On the one hand, the international capitalist forces are

interested in India’s rich natural resources, availability of cheap and skilled labour and its

vast consumer market. It praises the Indian political elites for opening the economy and for

taking measures to ensure continued profit generation and accumulation by the powerful

industrial and corporate houses. Hence, on one side, there is a formation of a powerful

alliance between the super rich and the political elites for economic interests, while on the

2 For example, the privatisation of various public sector units and other service sectors previously owned

and operated by the government has allowed the new controllers to forgo the SC/ST reservation policy

which was one of the most effective way to ensure the participation and representation of these communities

in the modern economy.3 One such gesture is the establishment of ‘Dalit Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry’ (DICCI) by

some Dalit entrepreneurs with the objective of promoting a ‘Dalit Capitalist Class.’ This initiative understands

globalisation as a new avenue by which the economic emancipation of the Dalits is possible. This group

demands that the state should make provisions through which an independent Dalit entrepreneur-business

class can emerge within the current form of capitalist development.4 The persistent opposition of the local tribals against the Posco steel plants in Orissa and Karnataka is one

such example. These protests are supported by various groups, including the Maoists, environment activists,

human rights organisations and the Left parties (mainly the Communist Party of India).

47


other side there is rupture among the oppressed classes on certain crucial political questions.

The dalits and tribals have not deliberated on common issues that could bring them together

and help to formulate a new indigenous model of economic agenda that will be beneficial

for the greater empowerment of the deprived and marginalised masses in India.

2. Overview

Within the wide upsurge of many New Social Movements during the 1970s, the two

movements which caught greater attention, mass support and convincingly radicalised the

contemporary socio-political and economic spheres in India were the dalit and the naxalite

movements. It was the advent of a new era of political radicalism. On the one hand, the

dalit movement provided an offensive critique of the existing socio-political relationships

and argued that the current oppressive socio-economic inequalities are due to the hegemonic

appropriation of all the resources by the Hindu social elites. On the other hand, the naxalite

movement, disillusioned by the parliamentary Left parties and influenced by the Maoist

ideology, gave a revolutionary élan for a violent overthrow of the state and the feudal

system in India. Both these movements are non-parliamentary political assertions and though

they consciously kept distance from each other, they have shown some camaraderie against

the existing order on various ideological and strategic issues.

As per the political legacy of B. R. Ambedkar, the contemporary dalit movement has adopted

a corrective liberal mechanism and is demanding new forms of affirmative action policies

in the service sector and the extension of reservation policy in the private economy (Thorat

and Newman, 2007). One section of the educated urban dalits has become too cosy with

the neo-liberal economic development and has assumed that with some proactive state

interventions, the market economy can benefit urban educated dalits. Both these groups

have little difference and understand the possibility of economic justice mainly through a

liberal logic. It accepts the inevitability of industrial development and claims for ‘recognition’

of the oppressed groups, and welfarist ‘redistribution’ of resources as a crucial necessity in

correcting the current economic exclusion of the dalits.

The tribal perspective questioned the overall necessity of the modernist project of ‘inclusive

development’ and problematised their coercive integration into it. In many regions (known

as the ‘red corridor’) they have been mobilised by the ultra-left forces (Naxals-Maoists)

and have resorted to non-constitutional means (armed upsurge and violent tactics) to oppose

multinational companies from seeking control over natural resources. They emphasize

anomalies in the ‘redistributive’ model of economic justice and argue for greater autonomy

for tribal groups in the making of economic policies. The economic and socio-cultural link

between tribals and their forest habitat and their rejection of the capitalist model of economic

development has been a primary subject in the current context of economic justice.

Both, the tribal and dalit movements accuse the present developmental model for its

exclusionary and oppressive mode of production and simultaneously propose alternatives

to the current neo-liberal economic ideas pursued by the international capitalist lobbies in

alliance with the Indian state.

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In social science discourse, dalit and tribal movements have garnered rich academic interest,

though unfortunately they have mostly been read independently of each other Ideological

tensions between these two movements has normally been viewed as a battle between

prioritising ‘caste and class’ or cultural identities. It is normal to argue that the dalit and

Maoist movements have perceived their independent goals from two distinct locations of

political ideology and therefore they are two distinct movements. Dalits are committed to

the liberal democratic discourse and function under constitutional modalities. Tribals, under

Maoist leadership, have no faith in parliamentary functioning of democracy and want to

establish ‘people’s democracy’ by mobilising tribals and rural poor for armed struggle

against the state. The current socio-economic scenario provides space in which the two

separate rationales of the oppressed communities can deliberate amongst themselves to

promote an alternative based on a consensus acceptable to both claimants of justice.

3. The Assessment

In the current scholarship on economic development, dalit issues and the tribal question

have been posited as separate entities and operationalised as exclusive normative methods.

There is need to bring multiple aspects of social marginalisation and economic exploitation

together to flag a theoretical model attempting to reconcile the contesting dalit and tribal

groups. This creative space can be utilised by policy makers and other institutions of the

state to reformulate the strategies of development. Current theoretical literature lacks the

empirical locations on the basis of which a critical analysis of the economic order can be

done. Considering the perspective of the ‘worst affected groups’ of the society substantiates

the need to redraw public policies and secure interests of the most marginalised and

vulnerable communities of India. The possible reconciliation by the state to include their

concerns and interests will promote an inclusive strategy of economic justice.

The contemporary phase of economic liberalisation being witnessed in India has come

under criticism because of the unapologetic instrumentalisation of state institutions to

provide the infrastructural and logical support to big capitalistss for establishing business

in India. It has divested itself categorically from welfare oriented methods and exercises

(health, food, education subsidies) and has failed considerably in scuttling the chronic

destitution of dalits and tribals. As the state has decided to work under the new directives

that support the capitalist industrial expansion as its primary concern, it hardly has the

capacity and conscience that can satisfy the growing demands of the worst-off communities.

The period of liberalisation has thus produced and is characterised by two parallel economic

systems. One is represented by the urban economy based on industrial outputs and

technological innovations mostly channeled and governed by the international capitalist

forces. These niche service sectors are mainly profitable to the smaller but dominant section

of the educated middle class. On the other side, is the marginalised majority (rural poor

and uneducated and socially deprived groups like tribals, women and Muslims), who have

little share in the new economy. The dalit and tribal opposition to the neo-liberal economy,

in a cumulative way, represents the concerns and interests of the vast voiceless marginalised

majority.

49


4. A Case for Ethical Public Policy

Contemporary public policy for economic development is determined in accordance with

the western model of industrial capitalism and technological advancement. Since the collapse

of the socialist model of economic development in Russia and Eastern Europe in the early

’90s, there has been an overt absence of alternative conceptualisations that can serve the

actual socio-economic and cultural needs of the society. This vacuum, an unqualified

acceptance of the western experience and the pressure to secure financing for developmental

purposes, allowed the educated upper middle class junta to strategise and push economic

planning on the lines of an advanced form of capitalist growth without understanding its ill

effects and unjustified consequences on the people. It is therefore very crucial to question

the current merits of industrial development that most of the time, belittle other modes of

economic planning (Socialist/Gandhian models or the current Latin American experiences)

as backward and unfit to the current churnings.

The second aspect of economic planning must address the claims of justice of the worst off

sections of the society. Both, the dalits and tribals, have registered two specific kinds of

problems with the model of capitalist development currently being pursued in India. Dalits

have argued that the contemporary social system based on the canonical values of caste

hierarchies limits the free and fair participation of dalits in the modern economy. Against

the hegemonic and exploitative socio-cultural sanctions, dalits need effective directives

and safeguards from the state that will protect their economic and social rights as an

individual from any form of discriminative subjugation. Hence, ‘socio-cultural’ aspects of

the populace must come in the picture while deciding the future of economic development

in India.

The tribal community has hardly shown any enthusiasm to become an integral part of the

modern civilization. On the contrary, they wish to conserve and sustain their conventional

ways of life which are mostly dependent on the natural wealth and resources of forests,

rivers and mountain ranges. Any unwanted intervention into their world is not only seen as

imperialist and hegemonic in tendency, but also reflects an insensitive and coercive attitude

towards those who wish to live autonomous lives. Economic policy must then be tempered

with human compassion and respect for other civilizational ethics that are different from

the contemporary principles that guide the modern industrial world.

In addition, planners also need to satisfy the arguments flagged in support of ecological

protection against the brutal exploitative impact that large-scale industrial production has

on the environment. The environmental hazards posed by big chemical industries puts the

lives of millions in jeopardy and can possibly lead the climatic cycle to an irreversible

change. The projects of big dams, residential cities and plazas for tourist destinations on

the river valleys are not only destructive towards the flora and fauna of the site, but they

also dislocate the original habitus of many towards a dangerous and precarious future.

Hence, without effectively addressing the concerns and issues raised above, any economic

planning will remain exclusive and distant from the majority of the poor in India. And

more so for rural poor, whose voice is more often than not lost in the cacophony. An ethical

50


stance of public policy will necessarily have to have passionate democratic content that

envisages participation of the historically marginalised groups as equal partners in the

future of economic development. These three essential correctives-recognition of social

inequalities, fair redistribution of economic assets for inclusive growth and reconsideration

of the development agenda with ecological merits-need to be factored in to promote social

and economic justice. This will further help to uncover common strategies and irresolvable

differences between these groups. As a conclusive argument, based on the vital experiences

of the struggling groups, a possible alternative consensus can be proposed, capable enough

to connect the state, economic policies and the poor as equal partners.

5. Conclusion

The constitutional directives of the state endorse that public policy related to economic

development shall respect the diversity of its populace and shall be formulated with an

ethical concern of empowering the socio-economic capacities of the marginalised and the

poor communities. However, since the very beginning of planned economic development

in independent India, the executives remained interested mainly in advancing the growth

of big capital intensive industries and neglecting its impact on the huge labouring surplus

and ecological order. The ruling elites of the country drafted public policies not in the

favour of the poor masses, but mostly to serve the interests of the newly emerged bourgeois

capitalist class. The posturing of India as a ‘welfare state’ was only rhetorical as most of

the poor and deprived masses remained excluded from the mode of development even

during this period. Furthermore, with the World Bank and International Monetary Fund’s

imposition of neo-liberal policies in recent decades, the possibility that the state will function

in defence of the worst off sections of the country is again an incorrect assumption.

The first regime of the UPA government showed some merit when it introduced various

legislations in the Parliament concerned with the welfare and protection of the marginalised

and the poor. For example, the Forest Act. However, though the Act may appear eco-friendly,

socially relevant and in defence of the tribal rights, it poses no categorical challenge to the

actual ideals of capitalist development in India. The state remains committed towards the

interest of the globalised economic order and has facilitated the value of economic growth

over other ethical principles.

The opposition against such anti-people economic policies is not massive. In fact, it is

fragmented and limited to certain regions. Though there are struggles around the country

that showcase how the current model of liberalisation and privatisation of economy is

harmful for the vast majority, most of these struggles (democratic and revolutionary), with

their separatist tendencies, are quite inadequate in understanding the maladies of a market

economy in a clinical way. The capacity of these struggles and movements to bring

impressive political change depends on them first forming a certain basic consensus about

the idea of economic justice and contesting the capitalist hegemony as a unified force. An

impressive formulation of a new model of economic alternative, respecting the interests

and welfare of dalits and tribals, has the moral capacity to pressure the state to work in the

defence of marginalised people.

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References

Ghurye, G. S., 1963. The Scheduled Tribes. Bombay: Popular Prakashan.

Newman, Katherine S. and Thorat, Sukhadeo, 2007. Caste and Economic Discrimination: Causes,

Consequences and Remedies. Economic & Political Weekly, Vol. 42, No. 41. pp.4121-4124.

52


The IFFCO Foundation Bulletin: Information for Contributors

One of the key areas of work identified by the IFFCO Foundation is the research and

analysis of agrarian and more broadly, rural developments in the Indian context. One way

of doing this is by being a print forum for critical theoretical deliberation and field based

scholarship. This is also an important way of responding to the challenges facing rural

India. By incorporating the voices of researchers, policy-makers and grass-roots

organizations, a dialogue can be initiated and possibly outcomes be influenced. In line with

the Foundation’s objectives, the Bulletin would be a medium for original work that can

help us understand emerging trends in specific contexts; provide important insights relating

to structures of hierarchy and governance in rural India; and more generally, contribute to

and question existing knowledge bank and policy debates and identify alternatives. In

particular, it would attempt to promote young, upcoming researchers who, through their

articulation, give voice to the marginalised sections of the Indian society.

The IFFCO Foundation has identified certain broad areas of work such as agriculture,

producer/farmer organisations, rural development, environment, micro-enterprises and skill

development, gender, art and culture, governance. Each of these can be deconstructed into

a multitude of specific topics. For example, agriculture could relate to its technological

aspects, land relations, debates on models of farming, impact on farmers of government

policies such as liberalisation of the trade regime and decontrolling prices and related

global trends. Similarly, relating to gender, prospective studies could be on labour market

organisation, impact on female farmers of increasing costs of cultivation and instability of

earnings and more so in the face of male out-migration, how gender and other social identities

intersect and relate to local power matrices, women’s participation in local governance and

institutions, improving their access to and effective ownership of critical assets etc. Rural

development could relate to agrarian relations, poverty, food insecurity, health conditions,

social protection, labour migration, agricultural technology etc.

Submissions from prospective contributors can take several forms:

i) Commentary on a topical issue or policy review (for example, cash transfers)

ii) Analysis of models, mobilizations (for example, small holder farming model, farmers’

movements)

iii) Theoretical/conceptual explorations (for example, the relevance or not of the

‘peasantry’)

iv) Field based research (qualitative and/or quantitative)

The above are only indicative and the Bulletin would welcome other enterprising studies

as well. Though the articles would be India specific, a comparative analysis drawing on

evidence from other countries in the process of analysing implications for India, would be

welcomed. The Bulletin will be published in three issues per year, comprising four to five

articles of not more than twelve thousand words each. Authors are encouraged to use simple

and precise writing style so that it can be easily understood by non-academic readers as

well. Diverse analytical styles are welcomed. Selected submissions will be reviewed

internally and externally. Articles should be emailed to: [email protected]

53


iffco foundation bulletin aug 2013 vol.1 no.2

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