आज का विचार

हम क्या थे, क्या हैं और क्या होंगे अभी? आओ मिलके सोचें ये योज़नाएं सभी....................

LUCKY SPERM CLUB

With his election as BJP’s Lok Sabha MP, T.P.S. Rawat has become the latest entrant to what Warren Buffet calls the ‘Lucky Sperm Club’. Although the American billionaire used the term to describe children who inherit great fortunes, it can be applied equally to heirs of famous names in two distinct fields that sometimes overlap – films and politics. Both spheres require no qualifying test and many of the recipients of this biological largesse are lucky to be there because they do not have the brains or the ability to make the grade on a level playing field. Like India, America too has its political bigwigs. Most of them are offspring of senators, governors or even presidents. It helps financially and psychologically to have a familiar brand name. It gives its bearer a head start, but it also helps to cover up some of his, or her, weakness.

The most famous recipients of the lucky sperm today are, of course, the Bushes, with one being the president and other a governor. But the drawbacks of the system, too, have made obvious by the current flag-bearer of this name whose advanced state of befuddlement will, no doubt, be a setback for the dynastic cause. As in India the inheritance of political legacy in America is not confined to the offspring of bigwigs. The lucky list includes four siblings, four widows, and several wives, including one Sen Hillary Rodham Clinton who may one day be making a pitch for the top job. Their number was barely 24 in 1986, but sisters and daughters (and widows and wives) are now pushing their way into an area that was earlier marked only for brothers and sons among relatives. So the number is going up and up. The world’s oldest and the largest democracies have at least one thing in common.

CUT THE FLAB

Food and fertilizer subsidies are sacred among the pro-poor brigade. Take these away, one is told, and mass starvation will break out. Food subsidies help by putting food in the mouth of the poor, while fertilizer subsidies help indirectly by reducing the cost of inputs for producing food. Sure, and pigs can fly. The reality is that, if not mass starvation, large-scale malnutrition has already broken out. Amartya Sen assures us mass starvation cannot happen in a democracy. But his studies also show that in terms of endemic hunger, India does much worse than sub-Saharan Africa. This is despite food and fertilizer subsidies ballooning over the past decades. Fertilizer subsidies rose from Rs 5 billion in 1980-81 to Rs 163 billion now. Food subsidy has gone from Rs 25 billion in 1990-91 to Rs 266 billion currently. Sub-Saharan Africa doesn’t have this much money to throw at the problem, yet does better than us. What gives?

Obviously, the money isn’t reaching intended beneficiaries. There’s a much better way – directly distribute it among those it is meant for. According to the Social Development Report recently released by the Council for Social Development, 260 million Indians live below the poverty line of whom 193 million are in rural India. Back-of-the-envelope calculations show that if we abolish food and fertilizer subsidies, and distribute the Rs 430 billion that becomes available directly to the rural poor, the government could pay Rs 2,227 to each beneficiary, or Rs 6 per day for every single man, woman and child. This could be in the form of food stamps, so that it’s spent only on food and nothing else. The market would then work to make food available to the poorest consumer. If each individual gets to spend Rs 6 on food, chronic malnutrition is history. The only ones to get cut out will be FCI babus, foodgrain smugglers, fatcats owning fertilizer factories, and rich farmers who benefit from high minimum support prices. But they have other means of fending for themselves. There’s an additional advantage in targeting this subsidy exclusively to the rural poor. It will reverse some of the incentives to migrate to cities, and thus ease the pressure on urban India.