Bondas, a primitive tribe in Odisha hills, get their first MLA

The Bondas, one of India's most primitive tribes living in the remote hills of Odisha's Malkangiri district, turned a new leaf on Friday.
 
Dambaru Sisha, 34, took the oath of office as the first MLA from the reclusive tribes that remained untouched by civilization for centuries.
 
Sisa, who won from Chitrakonda assembly constituency of the district as Biju Janata Dal candidate, said, "The government has initiated several development work for the Bondas, but much more needs to be done. As a priority, I want to focus on their education, health and communication."
 
The first post-graduate Bonda with masters in mathematics and law, Sisa had unsuccessfully contested for Chitrakonda for the first time in 2009 elections as a BJD candidate. His decision to join politics had come amid a festering debate between those who romanticise the Bonda tribe's isolation and others who have been pushing for their integration with the mainstream.  
 
Sisa clearly sides with the latter and argues that it is possible to protect the unique culture and tradition of the tribe while giving them access to education and everything that goes with modern civilization.
 
"I do not want framed photographs of my people decorating drawing rooms of the rich. At the same time, I also do not want influential people making money from government programmes meant to usher in development for Bondas," Sisa said.
 
Despite several development programmes, only 6% Bondas are literates and life expentancy is so low that it is threatening to make the tribe extinct.
Over time, the Bondas have come to be classified in two groups--- Upper Bondas living in the inaccessible forests and Lower Bondas who have been interacting with people in the plains after shifting down the hills in the recent past.
 
The Upper Bondas have a population of 6,700 while Lower Bondas 17,000. The numbers have remained constant for about past thirty decades. The Upper Bondas do not wear any clothes and have virtually no connection with outside world.
Sisa's mother was an Upper Bonda before she married a Lower Bonda, who paid a bride price --- a custom for the tribe whose women marry younger men.
 
The MLA is a beneficiary of a 1977 government programme designed to end the isolation of the Bondas. After completing education, he served the CRPF for five years and a cooperative bank for a year. In 2008, he joined an NGO to do social work in his area.
BJD had roped him in because of his popularity among his tribesmen.

Leaving behind the corporate world, taking on grassroots governance

Former banker Arati Devi is a sarpanch in Ganjam district of Odisha

Thirty-two-year-old Arati Devi who in 2012 left a lucrative career in banking to contest panchayat polls and become a sarpanch in Ganjam district of Odisha, has been nominated for the Rajiv Gandhi Leadership Award 2014.

The Asian Peace Foundation informed Ms. Arati about her selection through a letter. According to Ms. Arati, her recognition would surely encourage educated youth to take active role in grassroots-level governance for development of the country.

She is the sarpanch of Dhunkapada panchayat in Ganjam district, standing apart from most other sarpanches as she is an MBA degree holder and till 2012, working with IDBI Bank in Berhampur. In 2012, she decided to leave behind her career as a banker to enter politics by contesting panchayat polls.

It was a hard decision, she says, as she had spent her school and college days in urban areas like Berhampur and Hyderabad. But her mental and physical ties with her parental village Dhunkapada had not dwindled. She used her managerial skills to improve village-level governance and was able to streamline the Public Distribution System (PDS) in the village. According to her, for several decades, families were not getting wheat through PDS although it was reaching the panchayat.

She started a major literacy campaign for women in the panchayat under the name Tipa nuhe dastakhat (no thumb impression, only signature).

Under this project, all women in the panchayat would be educated to be able to write applications and to stop giving their thumb impressions for any official work. She has also been a catalyst to revive the traditional folk art troupes of her village. She says she has decided to spend rest of her life in service of rural people.

The missing economic model? The story of poverty reduction in Andhra Pradesh is about two chief ministers with vision and execution skills

In the run up to the 2014 Lok Sabha election, a debate had emerged around economic growth and poverty, and whether one economic model has done better than others at reducing poverty. Specifically, the emergence of Narendra Modi as the leading prime ministerial candidate, riding on the back of his performance as chief minister of Gujarat over three terms, has made the debate more vocal. His supporters talk of the growth in Gujarat in near-miraculous terms, while his detractors claim the state has always done well, and that in the last decade, it has actually underperformed other states. What do the numbers say? We took a close look at the 68th round of National Sample Survey Office (NSSO) data and found the sharpest poverty reduction in India in the last two decades has occurred in a state that’s in the news for very different reasons—Andhra Pradesh.

Using the Tendulkar methodology, we find the poverty head count ratio in Andhra Pradesh in 1993-94 was 44% of the total population. Drilling further, we find a poverty level of 35.2% in urban areas and 48.1% in rural areas. Fast forward to the 2011-2012 numbers, and we find poverty levels in Andhra Pradesh have dropped to 9.2%, with a rural poverty rate of 10.96% and an urban poverty rate of 5.81%. This implies that the state had a decline of rural poverty of 37.1 percentage points and a decline of 29.3 percentage points in urban poverty and an overall reduction in poverty of 35.4 percentage, which is huge and compares well even with China, where poverty went down by 40.6 percentage points between 1993 and 2008. How does this compare with other major states in India?

In the accompanying table, we compare the large states of the country that had a poverty level in excess of 40% in 1993, and capture the decline in poverty between 1993 and 2012. Though Gujarat did not have a poverty level of 40% in 1993, we have added the state because it is central to the debate around how to reduce poverty quickly. We also add West Bengal and Rajasthan to complete the comparison between the large states. As you can see clearly, Andhra Pradesh is the top performer among states that had a high level of poverty in 1993.

In fact, in 1993, Andhra Pradesh belonged in the same category as Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh among the worst performing states in the country, and since then has had a dramatic turnaround. There is also no criticism that can be levelled about growth favouring urban areas, since we’ve seen earlier that poverty has come down equally in urban and rural areas. It is important to mention here that Karnataka, Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu have also done well in reducing poverty. In fact, all three states had poverty rates similar to Uttar Pradesh back in 1993 and Karnataka had a poverty rate higher than Uttar Pradesh back then, which most readers will likely find surprising. However we focus on Andhra Pradesh because one of us has done a comprehensive study on factors responsible the decline in poverty in the state.

What caused the turnaround in Andhra Pradesh? We believe it was strong and visionary leadership focused on rapid economic growth, and the credit belongs equally to chief ministers N. Chandrababu Naidu and Y.S. Rajasekhar Reddy. Naidu, who came to power in 1995, believed that investment and growth mattered above all. In fact, Naidu’s vision 20-20 envisioned a new paradigm for government, from being a controller of the economy, to an enabler of its growth. It said, “Economic growth will stimulate development in two ways. First, it will increase incomes for the people by creating employment opportunities. Second, it will generate additional resources for the government. The government will invest these resources mainly in social development, that is, eradicating poverty, improving education and health, promoting rural and urban development, and providing services such as housing, water, power, transportation, and so on.”

Reddy, who campaigned in 2004 on a populist platform, turned out to be a savvy operator who did not in fact roll back any of Naidu’s reforms as feared. In fact he strengthened many of them, making the state a top destination for investment. Having understood that redistribution without wealth creation was a non-starter, he focused on rapid growth, the gains of which he partially redistributed through popular social programmes.

Clearly, the Andhra Pradesh story is not one about one political party being superior to another because it depended on two chief ministers with vision, leadership and, most importantly, execution skills. Our hope is that the next prime minister, whoever he may be, will emulate the dramatic success of these two regional leaders, and make ending absolute poverty in a generation a real possibility in India.

Mudit Kapoor is a professor at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, and Reuben Abraham is with the IDFC Institute in Mumbai.

Financial package for Seemandhra triggers renewed demands for ‘special status’ by Bihar, Odisha 

The months before an election, and the weeks before the Election Commission's poll code kicks in, is sop season. And one of the biggest sops, in context of the controversial splitting of Andhra Pradesh into Telangana and Seemandhra, is the socalled special category status.
As a way to pacify those heavily against the splitting of Andhra and as a last-ditch effort to ward off the very real possibility that its poll tally in the region may drop to zero, the UPA government has announced a spe .. 

All Politics

After the UPA-II pushed the Telangana Bill in the last parliament session of the 15th Lok Sabha, the Planning Commission worked overtime to come out with a formula to grant special category status or at least an economic package to Seemandhra. But in reality this has more to do with politics than plain economics. 

As the Congress is gearing up to sweep 17 Lok Sabha seats that fall in the Telangana region, it does not want to draw a blank in the remaining 25 seats in Seemandhra. It remains to be seen whether this pre-poll gimmick will work for the Congress among the disgruntled people there, but the move has certainly damaged the party's electoral prospects in Bihar and Odisha which for long lobbied to get a backward tag and gain economically.

Bihar chief minister and JD(U) chief Nitish Kumar w .. 

To make things fool proof, Chidambaram constituted a panel under chief economic adviser, now RBI governor, Raghuram Rajan to arrive at some criteria for determining backwardness of a state. "The level of development of a state is the consequence of a complex set of historical, cultural and sociological factors," states the Rajan panel report, submitted in September, 2013. The panel which figured out a new formula to determine backwardness found 10 out of 28 states "least developed". 

Read more at:
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/31229036.cms?curpg=2&utm_source=contentofinterest&utm_medium=text&utm_campaign=cppst

India witnessing NGO boom, there is 1 for every 600 people Dhananjay Mahapatra

India witnessing NGO boom, there is 1 for every 600 people
NEW DELHI: For a country which till recently had a weak civil society movement, India is now witnessing a boom in the NGO sector. With a population of 1.2 billion, the country could well be the land of opportunities for non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with the Central Bureau of Investigation conservatively estimating 20 lakh of them already operating in states and union territories.

The mind-boggling figures boil down to one NGO per every 600 people. Compare this to the latest government data on police. According to the latest figures from the Union home ministry, India has just one policeman for every 943 people.

But there is an accountability deficit among the NGOs. And that's how CBI got into the picture as the Supreme Court responded to a PIL. Many don't submit details of receipt of grant and spending to income tax authorities, the CBI told the apex court.

On the SC's order, the CBI sought information from the states and UTs about operation of NGOs and status of audit of their funds. Major states — Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Delhi, Haryana, Karnataka, Rajasthan, West Bengal, Odisha, Tamil Nadu, Chhattisgarh and Himachal Pradesh — have provided no data about the number of NGOs operating in their territory.




Without the statistics from these major states, the CBI was informed by other states about the existence of 13 lakh NGOs making the agency conservatively estimate that their number could go well be over 20 lakh. In Uttar Pradesh alone 5,48,194 NGOs are operating.

Kerala had 3,69,137 NGOs, Maharashtra 1,07,797, Madhya Pradesh 1,40,000 and Gujarat has 75,729 NGOs. While Kerala and Maharashtra have given details of finances of the NGOs operating in their area, Madhya Pradesh gave partial information about their funding. Gujarat was completely silent.

According to information received through RTI queries by Asian Centre for Human Rights, the Union and state governments between 2002-09 released Rs 6654 crore to various NGOs, averaging almost Rs 950 crore per year.

For the financial year 2010-11, available data show that about 22,000 NGOs received a total of more than $2 billion from abroad, of which $650 million came from the US.

On a PIL filed by advocate M L Sharma alleging misuse of funds by Anna Hazare's NGO Hind Swaraj Trust (HST), a bench headed by Justice H L Dattu had last year asked additional solicitor general Sidharth Luthra to engage the CBI to find out details of the funding of NGOs across the country and whether these were filing their income tax returns.

From the information made available by the state governments and presented in tabular form by the CBI to the Supreme Court, it was apparent that most NGOs had not filed income tax returns regularly.

Responding to Sharma's PIL alleging that large amounts of government funds were being doled out without taking proper account of utilization of grants by NGOs, Council for Advancement of People's Action and Rural Technology (Capart) in an affidavit denied any wrongdoing by HST and annexed an audited account for the utilization of Rs 1 lakh.

Capart had given a grant of Rs 1 lakh to Hazare-led HST for watershed development in three villages in 1999-2001,but more than 90% of the money was spent on honorarium, travelling, printing and stationery, the Supreme Court was told.

In two years, the trust spent Rs 63,243 on paying honorarium, Rs 20,347.50 was accounted towards travel expenses and Rs 6,487.50 was spent on printing and stationery. This means, of the Rs 1 lakh granted for watershed development in three villages, the trust spent Rs 90,078 on honorarium, travelling and printing and stationery.

Capart functions under the ministry of rural development and assists over 12,000 voluntary organizations across the country in implementing a wide range of development initiatives.

Why this sarpanch is headed to meet Obama

SUMMARY

From revamping PDS to building roads and planning for electricity in Dalit areas, Dhunkapada’s Arati Devi, India’s youngest sarpanch, can be proud of her two years

Uday Gouda, a septuagenarian in Dhunkapada, a small village in Ganjam’s Polasara block, remembers the ordeal he would face every monsoon. The 200-metre stretch between the main road in the village and his house was “a nightmare”. Often, he would have to raise his dhoti above his knee and wade through slush. Now a concrete path marks that stretch. “I had given up the hope of seeing any change, but for the sarpanch who raised funds for its construction,” says Gouda.

It is for bringing about such changes that Dhunkapada’s Arati Devi — a 28-year-old MBA and former investment banker who became the country’s youngest sarpanch less than two years ago — has won an invitation from the US State Department for the International Visitors Leadership Programme on state and local governments. During her three-week visit beginning February 18, she will meet President Barack Obama and attend the US Congress in session. The only Indian among the 21 foreign invitees, Devi joins the ranks of former prime ministers Indira Gandhi, Morarji Desai and Atal Bihari Vajpayee, and former presidents K R Narayanan and Pratibha Patil — all previous participants on the programme.

“In the relatively short time that she has headed the village council, she has earned admiration from villagers not only for her new approach to gender issues but also the public distribution system,” says Padmaja K, Information Assistant, Public Affairs Section, US Consulate, Hyderabad.

A much larger number of women now attend the palli sabha meetings at the Dhunkapada panchayat, which comprises three villages. Earlier, they would keep away as in the patriarchal and feudal hamlets, men would shout them down. “More than 1,000 people attend the palli sabha now. Earlier, palli sabhas would be rare and held without notice, so few people would come,” says Gitanjali Bhuyan, a villager. Routine domestic conflicts get sorted in panchayat meetings now. “We approach the local police station as a last resort,” says Bipracharan Padhi.

Devi’s first achievement was overhauling of the PDS, particularly helping APL families get wheat. When she found that APL families were being denied wheat by the PDS shops, she calculated that the families numbered around 800 and made sure each got its 5 kg of wheat a month share. Also, under her, the panchayat took over the public distribution of kerosene, that was  pilfered by the previous sarpanch.

Among the things the villagers are particularly grateful for are the roads. Two months ago, she got a 12-km road project worth Rs 1.25 crore sanctioned. The last time the roads in the panchayat were repaired was more than a decade ago. Another gap she’s tried to fill is that of schoolteachers. In one village high school, the physical education teacher and the Hindi teacher would take all the classes. She hired three more teachers on contract without waiting for help from the Orissa School and Mass Education Department. “The revenue we generated from village ponds was used to pay salaries,” she says. The department has agreed to pay the salaries of the teachers from this year.

Devi is now working on supplying electricity to Khadala Nuagaon, a Dalit-dominated locality of the panchayat, in the next two-three months. “We hope to watch TV at home,” laughs Sadana Sethi, a Dalit.

Devi’s open-door policy has gone a long way in helping her meet villagers’ expectations. Every day villagers converge at her home with their grievances — some with a demand for a house under the Indira Awas Yojana, some with a widow or old-age pension issue, and others about non-availability of PDS items. “By 9 am, I am out of my home travelling around the villages and following up with officials,” she says.

Her tenure has not been without bureaucratic challenges though. Dhunkapada, for example, is yet to be reimbursed for the money it spent on relief after cyclone Phailin hit Orissa last year. “To provide food, we spent Rs 30,000 from our meagre funds without waiting for help from the administration,” she says.  Villagers still remember the efforts she put in following the cyclone. “She convinced over 1,200 villagers to move to the panchayat office. She brought sackfuls of rice and jaggery on a bicycle for the villagers even as winds howled outside,” says Trinath Nayak.

However, Devi has her share of critics. Bipracharan Padhi, an elderly farmer, wants BPL families to be given power connection. Champa Behera, whose house was damaged by Phailin, complains it has still not been rebuilt. A few months ago, some Dalits lodged a police complaint accusing Devi of using casteist language against them. “I was surprised. When I met the Dalits, they said they had no idea what was written in the FIR. They were tutored by a few opponents of mine, who offered them BPL rice. They withdrew the FIR,” she says.

The incident led her to start an adult literacy programme called ‘Tipa nuhen dastakhat (No thumb impression, but signature)’ for villagers above 40. “None of the villagers should be taken for a ride,” she says.  On Devi’s list of agendas still is saving peacocks that get run over by vehicles and promoting the folk art of Ganjam. Few doubt she will be able to meet these.

15th Lok Sabha to end up as worst performing ever

NEW DELHI: In less than a month's time, the 15th Lok Sabha's term will come to an end with the dubious distinction of being the worst performing House since independence, passing the least number of bills (165) in a five-year term.

Of the 126 bills pending in Parliament, 72 are pending in the Lower House which means they will die when the new Lok Sabha is constituted. The remaining 54 bills pending in Rajya Sabhawill live to see another day but considering that the Indian Medical Council (Amendment) Bill has been waiting for passage since 1987, there is not much hope for them either.

According to PRS Legislative Research, 39 bills lapsed at the end of the 14th Lok Sabha, 43 after the 13th Lok Sabha, 20 at the end of the short-lived 12th LS while only seven each lapsed after the first and second Lok Sabha. The fifth Lok Sabha was the most enterprising as 482 bills were passed during its term while the 12th Lok Sabha was the worst with only 56 bills passed, although in a truncated tenure.

One of the bills, championed by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, which will survive but is unlikely to be passed is the 119th Constitution Amendment Bill to implement the Indo-Bangladesh Land Boundary Agreement. The bill is in Rajya Sabha.

Human resource development ministry, which introduced a slew of legislations during Kapil Sibal's three years at the helm, has 13 bills pending in Parliament. Of these, 11 bills pending in Lok Sabha will become history, taking away the hard work and consulwtation involved in the process. This includes the Higher Education and Research Bill that would have subsumed UGC, All India Council for Technical Education and National Council for Teacher Education; Universities for Research and Innovation Bill which could have facilitated setting up of universities devoted exclusively to research and innovation.
Judicial Appointments Commission Bill and 120th Constitution Amendment Bill that will replace the collegium system of appointment of judges are both awaiting the Rajya Sabha's nod. The two will survive but it remains to be seen if the new government takes them up or puts them on the backburner.


Congress scion Rahul Gandhi claims zero tolerance for corruption but a whole series of anti-graft legislations are waiting to be passed. Prevention of Corruption (Amendment) Bill, which seeks to amend the definition of bribery and bring other changes is in the upper House and is likely to survive but Prevention of Bribery of Foreign Public Officials and Officials of Public International Organizations Bill and the Whistleblowers' Bill, if not passed in the coming session of Parliament, will lapse as they are in the lower House. RTI Amendment Bill, which is facing stiff opposition from civil society groups, will also lapse.

The 15th Lok Sabha will disappoint women again. The Women's Reservation Bill proposing to reserve one-third of all seats in Lok Sabha and state legislative assemblies was passed in Rajya Sabha but not introduced in Lok Sabha so that it does not lapse. But it remains a mere promise. However, two separate constitution amendment bills promising 50% reservation to women in panchayats and municipalities are stuck in Lok Sabha with little possibility of getting passed.

Times View

Legislators are elected to make laws. By not doing so, they fail in their primary duty and waste public money. The government and opposition will be quick to try and blame each other, but this represents a collective failure on the part of our MPs and shows a woeful lack of respect for the responsibility vested in them by the people they were elected to serve. Politicians often accuse courts of judicial overreach, but the truth is, the judiciary is being forced to step into a void that has been created because legislators are not legislating.