Indian Holocaust My Father`s Life and
Time - SEVEN HUNDRED SIXTY Four
Palash Biswashttp://indianliberationnews.com/
http://indianholocaustmyfatherslifeandtime.blogspot.com/
http://basantipurtimes.blogspot.com/
You would hardly see any Journalist belonging to Excluded Communities SC, ST and OBC to have any Status or Role in Policy Making in Indian Media, PRINT as well as Electronic! They are present in large Number Off Course as Subordinate Workers irrelvant of their Merit. Merit or Experience Never Matter! All Media owned by Brahamins or Bania class despise to see them in key role and love them to be seen SHUNTED for ever! FDI Raj and Corporate Mode of Modern Media Indian have Made Media the best tool of Mind Control to justify Economic Ethnic Cleansing!The Ruling Hegemony has closed all doors and windows of Alternative or Subaltern media to serve the Purpose to control Information about Policy Making, Governance and the Rule and Repression, Destruction and Ethnic Cleansing. Media is shaped in Entertainment mode so that the Public Opinion may be BLINDED! Media has to be used to Sustain Manusmriti Zionist Satanic Rule and has to defend the interests of the Ruling Class. Hence the Exclusion and Ethnic Cleaninghave to Covered up with False campaign and Propogating Ethnonationalism as well as Blind Nationalism.Government Decisions on Free Flow of Foreign Money and various Policy and legAl decisions are meant to ENSURE COMPLETE Brahaminical Control. Not only the SC, ST and OBC, hardly any NON Brahamin Community has the share and space in Indian Media!
The Union cabinet recently approved amendments in the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867, that governs many aspects of verification and registration of print titles, definitions and other policy issues related to print media. These amendments have come under criticism from theIndian Newspapers Society (INS), the national body that represents newspapers, which says the government has not engaged in 'proper' consultations with stakeholders.
I am a Professional journalist as well as a creative writer who has personally witnessed the continuous Persecution of Non Brahamin Journalist for at least THREE Full decades! Now, the EDITORIAL is FINISHED as corporate Heads do all the Policy Making and NOTHING has to be Published against Free Market and Economic Reforms. Editors have been reduced as Managers who Manage everything to Ensure Brahaminical Monopoly. Recruitment and PROMOTION is in all a Brahaminical affair so that there should not be any existence of any rebel voice to represented the Excluded Communities and those who have been predestined to be KILLED!
In a bid to increase the foreign direct investment (FDI) in India, the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs has approved a proposal to review the policy of approvals for foreign investment. Telecom and Media have been key sectors for FDI, and several companies including NDTV, Verizon Communications, Sify, Cable & Wireless, Dainik Bhaskar, Unitech Wireless, Devas Multimedia, UTV Software, Dish TV and others have applied to the Foreign Investment Promotion Board (FIPB) for approvals.
The changes are likely to help increase FDI in India, and make these investments attractive and easy. Remember that the Indian government is facing an ever increasing fiscal deficit this year, and may not be able to raise the Rs. 33,000 crores it was expecting from 3G auctions. According to the new guidelines, proposals involving foreign investments of more than Rs 12 billion will be looked into by the CCEA and anything below that will be handled by the Finance Minister. Until now proposals with total project cost of up to Rs 6 billion were approved by the Finance Minister and proposals above that were looked into by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affair (CCEA). These proposals also had to be first recommended by the FIPB. The changes had been proposed by the Department of Industrial Policy & Promotion.
It has also been approved that if foreign investments have prior approval from the FIPB, CCFI (Cabinet Committee on Foreign Investment) or CCEA on initial investments than the following cases would not require fresh approvals:
- Cases of entities whose activities had earlier required prior approval from the three bodies and subsequently such activities/sectors have been placed under automatic route.
- Cases of entities whose activities had sectoral caps earlier and subsequently such caps were removed or increased and the activity placed under the automatic route.
- Cases where prior approval of FIPB or CCFI or CCEA had been obtained with reference to activities/sectors requiring such approval and also from the angle of provisions of Press Note 18/1998 or Press Note 1 of 2005.
Press Note 18/ 1998 contains the guidelines pertaining to approval of foreign financial or technical collaborations under the automatic route with previous ventures or tie-ups in India. According to these guidelines, foreign financial or technical collaborators who have or had any previous joint ventures or technology transfer or trademark agreement in India require prior government approval to set up a new venture or enter into new technology transfer agreement (including trademark) in the same or allied field.
Press Note 1/ 2005 contains the new proposals for foreign investment where the foreign investor has or had any previous joint venture or technology transfer/ trademark agreement in the same or allied field in India.It was issued after the review of Press Note 18/ 1998.
FDI In India In December
Union Minister of Commerce & Industry, Anand Sharma has said that India has received FDI worth $1.542 billion for the month of December, 2009. This is an increase of 13 percent in terms of the USD as compared to December 2008 when FDI for the month was reported at $1.362 billion. Sharma further stated that the FDI inflow for all the months of the financial year starting April 2009 except September so far , have increased as compared to the same months of the financial year 2008-09. He expects that the total FDI for the financial year that ends March 2010 will exceed the FDI received during the previous financial year.
The Minster has also pointed out that despite the United Nations Conference On Trade And Development's (UNCTAD) World Investment Report, 2009 predicting a fall of 30 percent in global FDI from $1.7 trillion in 2008 to $1.2 trillion in 2009, the Indian figures stand positive.
Cumulative FDI for the period April to December 2009 have amounted to $20.92 billion as compared to $21.15 billion in FDI for the corresponding period of the previous year. For April to December 2007 the total FDI was $12.70 billion. $127.46 billion is the total amount of FDI poured into India from August 1991 to December 2009.
Who owns the media in India ?
There are several major publishing groups in India , the most prominent among them being the Times of India Group, the Indian Express Group, the Hindustan Times Group, The Hindu group, the Anandabazar Patrika Group, the Eenadu Group, the Malayalam Manorama Group, the Mathrubhumi group, the Sahara group, the Bhaskar group, and the Dainik Jagran group.
Let us see the ownership of different media agencies.
NDTV: A very popular TV news media is funded by Gospels of Charity in Spain that supports Communism. Recently it has developed a soft corner towards Pakistan because Pakistan President has allowed only this channel to be aired in Pakistan . Indian CEO Prannoy Roy is co-brother of Prakash Karat, General Secretary of Communist party of India . His wife and Brinda Karat are sisters.
India Today which used to be the only national weekly which supported BJP is now bought by NDTV!! Since then the tone has changed drastically and turned into Hindu bashing.
CNN-IBN: This is 100 percent funded by Southern Baptist Church with its branches in all over the world with HQ in US. The Church annually allocates $800 million for promotion of its channel. Its Indian head is Rajdeep Sardesai and his wife Sagarika Ghosh.
Times group list:
Times Of India, Mid-Day, Nav-Bharth Times, Stardust , Femina, Vijaya Times, Vijaya Karnataka, Times now (24- hour news channel) and many more. Times Group is owned by Bennet & Coleman. 'World Christian Council' does 80 per cent of the Funding, and an Englishman and an Italian equally share balance 20 percent. The Italian Robertio Mindo is a close relative of Sonia Gandhi.
Star TV: It is run by an Australian, who is supported by St. Peters Pontificial Church Melbourne.
Hindustan Times: Owned by Birla Group, but hands have changed since Shobana Bhartiya took over. Presently it is working in Collaboration with Times Group.
The Hindu:
English daily, started over 125 years has been recently taken over by Joshua Society, Berne , Switzerland . N.Ram's wife is a Swiss national.
Indian Express: Divided into two groups.
The Indian Express and new Indian Express (southern edition) ACTS Christian Ministries have major stake in the Indian Express and latter is still with the Indian counterpart.
Eeenadu: Still to date controlled by an Indian named Ramoji Rao. Ramoji Rao is connected with film industry and owns a huge studio in Andhra Pradesh.
Andhra Jyothi: The Muslim party of Hyderabad known as MIM along with a Congress Minister has purchased this Telugu daily very recently.
The Statesman: It is controlled by Communist Party of India.
Kairali TV: It is controlled by Communist party of India (Marxist)
Mathrubhoomi: Leaders of Muslim League and Communist leaders have major investment.
Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle: Is owned by a Saudi Arabian Company with its chief Editor M.J. Akbar.
The ownership explains the control of media in India by foreigners. The result is obvious.
Slave Mentality of Indigenous Masses
It is a psychological principle that every person who feels sense of inadequacy wants by any means to reduce his mental tension resulting from his sense of inferiority. For example if he visits a restaurant such person is prone to pay more tip than the person who do not have sense of inadequacy. If a customer treats a waiter of a restaurant like his own brother will soon observe that the waiter does not attend him promptly but serves attentively to the person who behaves with him rudely like an aristocrat. This is natural because while serving such an arrogant person the waiter feels that he is serving a big person and his sense of inadequacy is greatly reduced. But when he serves a person who treats him like his own brother he develops a feeling that he is serving an ordinary man and as a result heighten his sense of inadequacy.
Dr. B. R. Ambedkar to reveal this mentality of backward communities, use to tell following story in his speech :- An untouchable person was overflowing with joy. When asked he told that he attended an assembly where the chief of the town was guest. His child could not control his bowel action and released excreta there itself. It was he (the untouchable) who "rescued" the guest by cleaning excreta and washing the ass of guest's child. This Dalit forgot that what the has done is nothing but worst slavery nothing to be proud of. But this untouchable was happy because thus his name was associated with the chief of town. With the same reason the peon of big officer has less sense of inferiority than the peon of an ordinary officer. The same psychological principle is effective on the psyche of inferiority ridden indigenous masses at unconscious level. Therefore, when upper caste persons like Rahul Gandhi, Sonia Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi (upper caste and foreign race mixture) wave hands at them, shower fake sympathy and greetings on them their sense of inferiority is reduced, they feel obliged and are inclined to vote for their party.
This factor becomes a strong propelling force when masses are disappointed from their own parties and are inclined to protest by taking self punitive action.
The sense of inferiority of indigenous masses have become worst enemy of Bahujan mission. The Fule, Shahu, Ambedkar mission strives to aware exploited and oppressed indigenous people of India to destroy the Manuist exploitation system and establish "Bahujanwadi Samajik Gantantra", a democratic exploitation free system. Persons who lack courage to launch bitter struggle, lack patience to do continuous missionary work, showy persons who crave for instant popularity are the persons suffer with sense of inadequacy and inferiority. Most of them to reduce their sense of inferiority establish a devotional-bond and association at mental level with Bahujan liberation warriors by indulging in acts such as celebrating birth days of Fule, Shahu, Ambedkar, Periyar and singing songs in their praise. This help them to reduce their sense of inadequacy and feel satisfaction by falsely believing that they are doing missionary work.
In fact, they have become worst enemy of Bahujan mission because they do nothing to spread the Bahujanist ideology and aware people to demolish the Brahminist system of exploitation and oppression. On the contrary they waste social resources, money, energy and time on these futile activities. Therefore these "devotees" of Fule, Shahu, Ambedkar are in fact killers of the Bahujan mission. They do not want to realize this because doing so means accepting the responsibility to understand Bahujan ideology, aware masses and launch genuine continuous struggle against Brahminist exploitation and oppression. The moment his unconscious mind begins to sense slightly that his devotional activities are unproductive and futile, strong anxiety results from his sense of inadequacy. To reduce this severe anxiety his unconscious mind repress anything that suggest futility of their actions. He develops several rationalizations.
In psychology this mentality is called as 'perceptual defense' where a person is inclined to perceive only what he wants to perceive. Therefore he does not see things he does not want to perceive. Every person use perceptual defense unconsciously. We do not find faults within us; we find faults in others particularly in those whom we do not like; we also do not find faults in those we love. Mother is inclined to see only good things in her child.
Every delusion is endowed with the same inner certainty we find in primitive thinking. Many prefer to stay in the childish dreamland of ignorance to escape the responsibility of wrong knowledge and wrong actions. Why should we think ? Why should we fight to understand this world ? Why not remain in comfortable stupidity ? Because of this yearning to return to the land of morons, we are relaxed and gay when we hear the radio voices carry us back to a realm which does not require our brain. We become more and more infected with silliness and escapism. Delusion gives the person an inner certainty of omnipotence and strength. Therefore, the deluded man likes to suffer defending his delusions. The Stabilized delusion is not subject to discussion and self-correction. They fear doubt and close their ears. The deeper the regression, the less contact and communication takes place, for delusion speaks archaic language which is rooted in the period when no verbal communication between human beings existed, as we experience in the psychoanalysis of schizophrenics. The deluded rejects logic and regresses to archaic dictatorial thinking and easily resorts to pretexts and magic forces to explain his failure (such as bad-luck and so on). Objective verification of ideas is rejected since no reality beyond the dictatorial opinion exists. He is afraid that moving out of his foxhole will expose him to new and greater danger. That is why people stick to their menial jobs which rob them of self-respect.
Incompetent Bahujan leadership to escape from launching a "Real Struggle" against the exploitation system of Arya-Brahmins, started worshipping Fule, Shahu, Ambedkar and posed themselves their great devotees. Arya-Brahminists continued to burn our houses, burn alive whosoever amongst us dared to raise a voice; stripping our mothers, sisters and daughters naked and parading them in the village and towns; raping, killing , mutilating and burning their bodies. These "devotees" and "Vote-Beggars" spent not a single penny to punish these Savarna culprits. Instead they spent millions of rupees on dances, Kawwalis, lightings, decorations, lecturing, Prayers, etc. on birth day celebrations of Buddha, Fule, Shahu, Ambedkar. With these unproductive activities they are fooling themselves as well as unaware masses of doing missionary work.
When your sister, mother or daughter is being raped, instead of spending money to punish the rapist will you spend on rejoicing ? Only a person with no self respect can do that. Millions of such "devotees" shamelessly rejoice when their sisters, mothers, daughters; are raped, their huts are burnt, and they are beaten to death. Such people may call themselves followers of Ambedkar but in their deeds they are the best slaves of Brahminism. Such people devoid of self respect can never be freed from exploitation and oppression because they do not hate their class enemy but want their class enemy should shower mercy on them. Such people yearning for mercy have voted for communist-casteist Congress. The "Slave Mentality" of craving a mercy from the "Arya-Brahmin exploiter enemy" is the root cause that communal-casteist congress receive votes from such indigenous Bahujan sections. These Bahujans feel that communal-casteist congress will show mercy towards them by acting less violently than communal-fascist BJP.
Incompetent, selfish and coward "Vote-Beggars" easily became stooges of the same exploiters against which Fule, Shahu, Ambedkar fought tooth and nail. Vote-Beggars who are stooges of Arya-Brahmin exploiters will always remain "devotees" and the worst enemies of Bahujan mission. How can one free himself from slavery if he himself does not want to get free from Arya-Brahmin rule and only wants mercy from the Arya-Brahmin rulers ? How such people can even think of deposing Arya-Brahmins ? They do not want to perceive that the decisive struggle launched by Fule, Shahu, Ambedkar had compelled Arya-Brahmin oppressors to accept democratic constitution and safeguards for indigenous people against social, economical and cultural oppression. Arya-Brahmin exploiters were afraid that if they do not concede these demands Bahujan struggle may turn into communist revolution. Without destroying "devoteesm" no genuine struggle is possible. Ritualists in every robe should be rebuked. Common masses should be converted in to brave "followers" from the coward devotees.
The Secret Apparatus of Zionist-Brahminist Illuminati
Illuminati aims to rule the world by Zionist-Manuist doctrine. The Illuminati have quietly and covertly accomplished infiltration of : 1) The media 2) The banking system 3) The educational system 4) The government, both local and federal 5) The sciences 6) The churches.
Some jobs in the illuminati are :-
1) Media personnel : Controlling the media is to control the thinking of the masses. Media men write books and articles sympathetic to the Illuministic viewpoint without revealing their affiliation with illuminati. They do biased research favoring only one viewpoint, such as denying the existence of Divided Identity Disorder (DID) or ritual abuse. They will interview only psychiatrists / psychologists sympathetic to this viewpoint and will skew data to present a convincing picture to the general public. If necessary, they will outright lie or make up data to support their claim. They may confuse the whole matter.
2) High Priest / Priestess : is self explanatory 3) Readers : read from the book of Illumination or local group archives. Readers are valued for their clear speaking voices and ability to dramatize important passages and bring them to life. 4) Chanters : sing, sway, or lead choruses of sacred songs on holy occasions. 5) Teachers : teach children to indoctrinate cult philosophy, languages, and specialized areas of endeavor. 6) Child care : Infant child care workers are usually quiet and coldly efficient. 7) Commanding officers : These people oversee military training in the local groups and related jobs.
Behavioral scientists : Dr. Ewen Cameron worked closely together with Dr Green (Dr. Joseph Mengele) in Canada and the USA to program children, in underground military facilities where kidnapped children (about one million per year) placed into iron cages stacked from floor to ceiling and traumatized to create hundreds of multiple personalities each programmed to perform different jobs ranging from sexual slavery to assassinations.
Children, who were considered expendable, were intentionally slaughtered in front of (and by) the other children in order to traumatize the selected trainee into total compliance and submission. Canadian government had to compensate victims of Monarch and MK-ULTRA. Mind control projects. It paid $7 million for experiments in Montreal, Canada.
Al Bielek, under mind control, was involved in many areas of the secret Montauk Project. After slowly recovering his memories he came to realize that there were at least 250,000 mind controlled "Montauk Boys' produced at 25 different facilities similar to the underground base at Montauk, Long Island. Many of these boys were to become 'sleepers' who were programmed to perform specific task such as murder, shooting etc. at a later date when properly "triggered" and does not remember it later. Trigger is any specific programmed word, sound, action set as a signal to act. Cisco Wheeler said there were 10 million MK ultra and Monarch slaves in America in 1968 when she saw the statistics in Mengele's files.
Assassinations, school shootings, etc. are results of mind controlled experiments. Ted Bundy, the 'Son of Sam' serial killer David Berkowitz, Oswald, Timothy McVeigh, the Columbine shooters, Chapman, Sirhan Sirhan, etc. were mind controlled individuals who were programmed to perform these killings. Other Montauk Boys were woven into the fabric of mainstream American life as journalists, radio & TV personalities, businessmen, lawyers, medical professionals, judges, prosecutors, law enforcement, military men, psychiatrists, psychologists, police chiefs, policemen, military brass, elite military units, CIA, FBI, FEMA, Homeland Security brass , intelligence agencies,. etc, etc.
Most members of American congress are under control of blackmail, threats of life or security, etc.. Same for the Supreme Court.
9) Programmers : Illuminati have several illegal and legal enterprises. To run them smoothly, illuminati needs people programmed and well trained, that they do their tasks without thinking about their moral nature. Illuminati has hundreds of satanic religious cults where cult-programmers expose children to massive psychological and physical trauma, usually beginning in infancy, in order to cause their psyche to shatter into a thousand alter personalities each of which can then be separately programmed to perform any task that the programmer wishes to "install". Each alter personality created is separate and distinct from the front personality. The 'front personality' is unaware of the existence or activities of the alter personalities. Alter personalities can be brought to the surface by programmers or handlers using unique triggers.
They program them from sex slaves to assassins to a well respected, Christian appearing business leaders in the community. If you met them in person, you may instantly like these intelligent, verbal, likeable, even charismatic people. This is their greatest cover, since we often expect great evil to "appear" evil. Many, if not most, of these people are completely unaware of the great evil that they are involved in during their respective alter personalities are in action. (http://www.mindcontrolforums.com/svali_speaks.htm)
10) Child prostitutes : Most of them are mind controlled slaves who are specially trained to perform all kinds of sexual activities including bestiality and sadistic sex. They are also used to blackmail political figures or leadership outside the cult. From an early age, Brice Taylor was prostituted as a mind controlled sex slave to Presidents John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford and then Governor Ronald Reagan. She was called "a million dollar baby." Project Monarch Beta-trained sex slaves were called 'million dollar babies' as the large amount of money each slave brings from a very early age. (Mind Control: The Ultimate Terror http://www.theforbiddenknowledge.com/hardtruth/Dial%20Protected Thanks for the Memories: The Memoirs of Bob Hope's and Henry Kissinger's Mind-Controlled Sex Slave by Brice Taylor (Brice Taylor Trust, P.O. Box 655, Landrum, SC 29356, 312)
11) Breeders : They usually are generational mind controlled slaves chosen to have and breed children to be specialized in specific tasks through mind control programming. The breeder is told that any child born to her was "sacrificed" in satanic ritual to prevent breeder parent looking for that child.
12) Prostitutes : Prostitutes can be a male or female of any age trained from earliest childhood to perform sex with one or more adults in various ways.
13) Pornography : Child pornography is a very big business in the cult. A child used in pornography include bestiality can also be of any age or sex.
14) Couriers : They run guns, money, drugs, or illegal artifacts across state or national lines. Usually they are young and single without accountability. They are trained in the use of firearms to get out of difficult situations.
15) Informers : These people are trained to observe details and conversations with photographic recall. We all have some photographic memory. For example, we can not remember position of each letter in computer keyboard but the moment we start typing we automatically move our fingers on correct keys. Tremendous photographic memory is developed in a neonate giving its brain-stem electrical shocks at birth so it becomes more developed in the way our muscles grow tougher in weight lifting exercises. Persons with photographic memory can remember volumes of secret files and incidences.
16) Trainers : These people teach local group members their assigned jobs and monitor the performance.
17) Cutters : They are also known as the "slicers and dicers" of the cult. They are trained from early childhood on to dissect animal and do human sacrifices quickly, emotionlessly, and efficiently. They play an important role in traumatizing the children in mind control experiments of illuminati.
18) Trackers : These people will track down and keep an eye on members who attempt to leave their local group. They are taught to use dogs, guns, taser, and all necessary tracking techniques.
19) Punishers : They brutally punish / discipline members caught breaking rules or acting outside of or above their authority.
Electronic Mind Control of Masses
Neurophone is a commercial product that anybody can buy (Patent # 3,393,279 dated 16 July 1968). The sound played through the neurophone successfully transmit directly into the brains without using any speakers. A pair of heterodyned ultrasound carrier signals (200 kHz nominal) can make sound appear to emanate from inanimate objects, and if the object is a person's head, will produce "voice direct to skull" with no source. (American Technologies Corp., "Hyper-Sonic Sound System, slated to come on the market in 1999)
Every 25th frame of Computer Program 'Virus 666' contain visual that puts computer operators into a trance, and also contains a message or thought picked up by his subconscious to be obeyed. The hive mind is result where everyone shares the same thoughts, goals, knowledge and understanding.
By Spring 2004, a mind control technology known as a "Frequency Fence" makes your critical ability inactive. Invasive programming is subliminally carried through all radio broadcasts, and through the cellular and digital telephone network of towers worldwide. After 6 years, this Frequency Fence will cause a genetic mutation to manifest in the collective human gene pool and will be passed down through procreation, thereby permanently scarring humanity.
An electronic device can be used to control the thoughts of any targeted individual from a distance. This is a United States Patent number 3,951,134 filed by Inventor Malech; Robert G. (Plainview, NY) and his Assignee : Dorne & Margolin Inc. (Bohemia, NY) on April 5, 1974. Patent was granted on April 20, 1976. The technology now is far more advanced today.
The Pentagon has admitted that the U.S. intelligence agencies (N.S.A, C.I.A. and Cointelpro) has the technology to broadcast thoughts via satellites through television, radio, the internet, telephone, cellphone etc. to load thoughts and to make one do things he would not ordinarily do, including murder, suicide, madness, or purchasing items he does not want and cannot use. The television set in your home is doing a lot more than entertaining you.
Electromagnetic energy of different frequencies are capable of scanning the entire brain of a person. The signals of different frequencies transmitted penetrate the skull of the subject and impinge upon the brain where they mix to yield an interference wave modulated by radiations from the brain's natural electrical activity. The modulated interference wave is retransmitted by the brain and received by an antenna at a remote station where it is demodulated, and processed to provide a profile of the subject's brain wave patterns. Brain patterns represent certain "thoughts, emotions, and feelings."; and if a brain pattern is send to another human brain, the he will form the same "thoughts, emotions, and feelings". Pentagon can even read the private thoughts of an individual picking up the vibrations produced by his brain's electrical impulses. The Pentagon calls this mind reading technology as Synthetic Telepathy.
In studies funded by the CIA, Dr. Ewen Cameron discovered that electroshock treatment caused amnesia. Subjects could be transformed into a virtual blank mind (Tabula Rasa) and reprogrammed. Projects ARTICHOKE, PANDORA and CHATTER clearly demonstrate that "psychoelectronics" were a high priority. Former CIA agent Victor Marchetti revealed, the programs were never closed but became more covert with a high element of "deniability" built in to them as a result of immense public outcry, Few of the U.S. patients in the area of mind-controlling psychotronics are listed below :-
Silent Subliminal Presentation System, US Patent #5,159,703, Oliver Lowery, October 27, 1992.
Direct Hearing System, US Patent #4,877,027, Wayne Brunkan, October 31, 1989. A method for directly inducing sound into the head of a person, using microwaves in the range of 100 MHz to 10,000 MHz, modulated with a waveform of frequency- modulated bursts.
Method and System for Altering Consciousness, US Patent #5,123,899, James Gall, June 23, 1992.
Subliminal Message Generator, US Patent #5,270,800, Robert Sweet, December 14, 1993. Also applicable to cable television and computers.
Superimposing Method and Apparatus Useful for Subliminal Messages, US Patent #5,134,484, Joseph Wilson, July 28, 1992. is a Method of changing a person's behavior.
US Patent #4,717,343, Alan Densky, January 5, 1988. A method of conditioning a person's unconscious mind in order to effect desired change in the person's behavior, and which does not require the services of a trained therapist.
Auditory Subliminal Message System and Method, US Patent #4,395,600, Rene Lundy and David Tyler, July 26, 1983. An amplitude-controlled subliminal message may be mixed with background music.
Auditory Subliminal Programming System, US Patent #4,777,529, Richard Schultz and Raymond Dolejs, October 11, 1988.
Apparatus for Inducing Frequency Reduction in Brain Wave, US Patent #4,834,70l, Kazumi Masaki, May 30, 1989.
Apparatus for Electrophysiological Stimulation, US Patent #4,227,516, Bruce Meland and Bernard Gindes, October 14, 1980.
Method and Recording for Producing Sounds and Messages to Achieve Alpha and Theta Brainwave States and Positive Emotional States in Humans, US Patent #5,352,181, Mark Davis, October 4, l994.
Method and Apparatus for Translating the EEG into Music to Induce and Control Various Psychological and Physiological States and to Control a Musical Instrument, US Patent #4,883,067, Knispel et. al., November 28, 1989.
Method of and Apparatus for Inducing Desired States of Consciousness, US Patent #5.356,368, Robert Monroe, October 18, 1994. Improved methods and apparatus for entraining human brain patterns, employing frequency-following-response (FFR) techniques and facilitating attainment of desired states of consciousness.
Method of Inducing Mental. Emotional and Physical States of Consciousness, including Specific Mental Activity, in Human Beings, US Patent #5,213,562, Robert Monroe, May 25, 1993.
Device for the Induction of Specific Brain Wave Patterns, US Patent #4,335,710, John Williamson, June 22, 1982. Brainwave patterns associated with relaxed and meditative states in a subject are gradually induced without deleterious chemical or neurologic side effects.
Method and Apparatus for Repetitively Producing a Noise-like Audible Signal, US Patent #4,191,175, William Nagle, March 4, 1980.
Nervous System Excitation Device, US Patent #3,393,279, Gillis Patrick Flanagan, July 16, 1968. A method of transmitting audio information via a radio frequency signal modulated with the audio info through electrodes placed on the subject's skin, causing the sensation of hearing the audio information in the brain.
U.S. Patent 5,159,703 – Silent subliminal presentation system.
U.S. Patent 5,507,291 – Method and an associated apparatus for remotely determining information as to a person's emotional state.
U.S. Patent 5,868,100 – Fenceless animal control system using GPS (Global Positioning Satellite) location information.
Electronic Mind Control in India
M. S. Rao, Chief Forensic Scientist, Ministry of Home Affairs, delivered a keynote address at 2006 Forensic Science Forum, 93rd Indian Science Congress on "preventive forensics" including electromagnetic mind control tools. Mr. Rao said, "… We have to adopt the technology. It will show effect on the brain.(http://www.mindjustice.org/index.htm)
Mind control in India seems already in use :- Several people from India, especially from Kashmir, and all walks of life have contacted Mind Justice alleging targeting and surveillance with mind control technologies amounting to torture. The alleged victim sent Mind Justice a photo of a "help" poster entitled "secret mind reading system is being misused to torture people, stop them." This picture is one of several posters was taken in 2005 at Palika Bazaar, Cannought place, New Delhi (http://mindcontrolvictim.blogspot.com/ Mind Control Victim)
The alleged mind control victims are following :- 1) Name: Suresh S Kumar; Citizenship: India; Year Torture /Abuse Began: 1988. He is being confronting Electronic Stalking / Harassment /Illegal Electronic Surveillance Stalking / Harassment for about 19 years that he is aware of. His E-Mail : Somesh / starsom@mail.com 2) Name: Dr Feisal Salim A S; Citizenship: India; Year Torture/Abuse Began:2003 Email: feisal01in@yahoo.com Is a victim of Organized stalking and directed energy weapons torture, from Trivandrum, India since 2000, which he realized only in 2003. 3) Name: Simran Singh Juneja; Citizenship: India; Year Torture/Abuse Began:2000 Email: junejasimran1978@yahoo.co.in His full address is : Simran Singh Juneja house no 4146 sector 68, S.A.S Nagar Mohali(Punjab) India. Mobile no-91-9876371487. (http://www.fedame.org/phpBB2/index.php Our friends from India introduced; http://mindcontrolvictim.blogspot.com/ Mind Control Victim) The website begun to receive allegations of torture from India, where American companies have begun to outsource, not only help lines, but also programming. (http://www.i-sis.org.uk/ Bio-electromagnetic Weapons)
There are evidence of application of mind control techniques of Indian politicians. Hypno-programming is being applied in India's Government officials and people of influence in a very sophisticated manner. (http://indiadaily.com/default.asp Evidence of Extraterrestrial mind control in India – like in America politicians are forced to cover up Staff Reporter January 10, 2005)
Meditation centers can be best places for such mind-control operations.
The Satanic Zionist-Manuist World Order Plan
Federal Council of Churches in a meeting of its top officials, came out in favor of 1) a world government of delegated powers; 2) strong immediate limitations on national sovereignty; 3) international control of all armies and navies. Representatives of Council assert that "a new order of economic life is both imminent and imperative" is sure to come either "through voluntary cooperation within the framework of democracy or through explosive revolution." (In March 1942 An article in "TIME" magazine)
"If we like it or not, we will have a One World Government. The question is if it will be achieved through consent or through conquest" – J. Warburg, Illuminati and Rothschild banker.
1) The Zionist-Brahmanist Illuminati plan is to create a worldwide depression which will cause many people to lose their homes, jobs and food. Retired people may find their pensions and Social Security amount reduced or gone completely. Many will be unable to pay their mortgage and will lose their homes. Soon food supplies will be scarce resulting in rioting and looting.
2) A worldwide panic for pandemic shall set people's hearts fluttering with fear and climate of instability that destabilize nations. The public is being psychologically prepared through programs such as CNN run several specials on the Ebola virus. Massive outbreaks are inevitable.
3) Dr. Henry Kissinger, Bilderberger Conference, Evians, France, 1991 declared : "Today, America would be outraged if U.N. troops entered Los Angeles to restore order [referring to the 1991 LA Riot]. Tomorrow they will be grateful ! This is especially true if they were told that there were an outside threat from beyond …. whether real or promulgated, that threatened our very existence. It is then that all peoples of the world will plead to deliver them from this evil. .. individual rights will be willingly relinquished for the guarantee of their well-being granted to them by the World Government."
A fake alien invasion will be created by illuminati using holographic technology. The ionosphere of earth reflects most frequencies. This includes the frequency to project holographs. With these holographs they can create illusions of tanks, troops, an angry God, and even UFO's. UFO's are man made craft saucer technology invented by Nikola Tesla. People will be so terrified that they will demand governments do something. The solution will be martial law, followed by global dictatorship.
Military takeover will be region by region. Imagine 1% of the population highly trained in armaments, crowd control, psychological techniques, armed with conventional and electromagnetic weapons and linked to paramilitary groups. The Illuminati firmly believes that it can easily overcome the other 99% of the untrained, or poorly trained population. Even the local military will be overcome as the Illuminati will have regional cell groups with highly trained leaders. Covert Illuminati military bases will come above ground.
The Illuminati will announce treatment of infection to only those who accept the medical ID card. Those who refuse will be hunted down, killed or imprisoned in the underground labour camps of FEMA and military.
The Zionist-Brahmanist Illuminati banking leaders, such as the Rothschilds, the VanderBilts, the Rockefellers, the Carnegies, and the Mellons etc, will set a new system of monetary exchange.
The Beast is a gigantic three story computer located in the headquarters of the Common Market of Brussels, Belgium. It would give each inhabitant of the world a number to be used for purchase or sale. There will be 18 digits, grouped in three groups of six numbers. (000000 000000 000000) A nano-computer chip injected in the hand or in the forehead, can carry all information on any individual and is self-charging by the body's heat. Its number could be seen only through infrared scanners, installed in special verification counters or in business places. No person could buy or sell without first being given such a numbered imprint.
They will know everything – all that you buy, where and when you buy, who you phone and how much money you have, everything will be continuously inscribed onto this chip, on a day-to-day basis. And if you are classified as an "undesirable person" or perceived as an "enemy of the state," the system will simply erase your number from their central computer and you will no longer be able to buy or sell anything and shall be placed in underground labour camps where you are likely to work day and nights with little or no sleep.
Don't believe ? Read the following : Last summer Darpa, the U.S. Department of Defense's advanced-research arm, tested the drug CX717 by exposing subjects to battle conditions for four consecutive 20-hour days. Sleeping only four daylight hours, they remained alert. Modafinil can keep civilians fresh for 48 hours. Its successor, Armodafinil, poised for FDA approval, lasts even longer. Foster agrees. "We may be the first species that will genuinely occupy the 24-hour day," He says. Rats, die after 17 days without shut-eye.
The Illuminati aim is the creation of a worldwide Zionist-Brahmanist dictatorship where all shall become microchipped population connected to a global computer, that regulates our emotional state via transmitted electro-magnetic patterns and remotely monitor all. David Spangler, Director of Planetary Initiative, United Nations declared : "No one will enter the New World Order unless make a pledge to worship Lucifer. No one will enter the New Age unless he will take a Luciferan Initiation." According to Svali (mind-controlled victim) this is the tip of the iceberg of the Illuminati agenda.
MEDIA LAWS - AN OVERVIEW - Author ... - Legal Service IndiaWritten By : Aparimita Basu, A Final year student of Symbiosis Institute of Mass Communication, Pune | |
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Amendments to Press Act get cabinet approval
NEW DELHI: The Union cabinet on Thursday approved amendments in the Press and Registration of Books Act, 1867, that governs many aspects of verification and registration of print titles, definitions and other policy issues related to print media. These amendments have come under criticism from theIndian Newspapers Society (INS), the national body that represents newspapers, which says the government has not engaged in 'proper' consultations with stakeholders.
The proposed Press and Registration of Books and Publications Bill, 2010, will have provisions with respect to limits on foreign news content through syndication besides norms related to foreign investments and will ask publishers to file their annual statements. The Bill has provisions for title and circulation verification and seeks to prevent blocking of titles. It also mandates a publication will have to come out with its editions within one year of the allotment of the title among others.
It brings under its ambit all existing guidelines that govern the print media sector.
INS has expressed concerns over amendments in the Bill without any "proper consultations" with stakeholders. "The amendments cleared by the Cabinet without any proper consultation with the industry contain a section providing "penalty", which is draconian and also violative of Chapter 3 of the Constitution," said Kundan Vyas, president of INS.
He added that the penalty gives magistrates or the press registrar the power to punish or suspend a publication within 30 days and 60 days for first and second offences, respectively. It also allows them to cancel registration for a third offence and even imprisonment.
Vyas has said that the suspension of publication, restriction on registration of names similar to foreign titles are bound to have far reaching adverse consequences to the Indian print media. "Any provision that causes cessation of a publication has no place in democracy and is violative of right to freedom of speech under Article 19(1)(a) of the Constitution," he said. He urged information and broadcasting minister to take serious view on the concerns of the industry and initiate consultations with the industry before the Bill is placed before parliament.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/media/entertainment-/media/amendments-to-press-act-get-cabinet-approval/articleshow/7472599.cmsMINISTRY OF INFORMATION & BROADCASTING FOREIGN� INVESTMENT POLICY
Ministry of Information and Broadcasting is the nodal Ministry for formulation of policies on foreign investment in broadcasting, film, print and advertising sector. It invites foreign investment and frames laws keeping an eye on the widest national interest.ADVERTISING SECTOR
Following guidelines for foreign direct investment in advertising sector is being pursued : There should not be any cap on the percentage of foreign investment in a new or greenfield project. Where the proposal is for a new joint venture or enhancing foreign direct investment in an existing joint venture, foreign direct investment should be limited to 74%. In exceptional cases, the 74% limit could be relaxed to go up to 100% with the consent of the Indian partner/partners and subject to the justification being established to the satisfaction of the Government. Where a foreign company/investor already has a joint venture in this sector, a new wholly owned subsidiary shall normally not be permitted, unless there are strong reasons to make such an exception. Foreign Direct Investment would include all repatriable investment, irrespective of who or what the investor is. Such investment would be permitted through the automatic approval route.
ELECTRONIC SECTOR
Foreign investment proposals directly linked to Broadcasting will be kept pending till Broadcasting Law comes into effect. Presently, companies with 80% Indian equity may be allowed to uplink for satellite channels. The proposals related to production of software and marketing of TV rights, airtime, advertisements, etc. may be recommended with the condition that� All future laws on Broadcasting will be applicable to them and they will not claim any privilege or protection by virtue of this approval;�
They will not undertake any broadcasting from Indian soil unless specially permitted to do so;� Companies desiring to market TV software in India will in addition to conditions mentioned at (a) and (b) above will observe the Programme Law and Advertisement Codes of Doordarshan. Proposals having an Indian equity of atleast 25% will be encouraged, however, in genuine cases, even 100% foreign equity can be allowed. There is no foreign equity allowed in private FM broadcasting (to be introduced).
RINT MEDIA
Foreign ownership of newspapers and periodicals in India and publication of their Indian editions is guided by the Cabinet decision of 13th Sept., 1955. The relevant extracts of the decision are : * No foreign owned newspapers and periodicals should, in future, be permitted to be published in India. Foreign newspapers and periodicals which deal mainly with news and current affairs should not be allowed to bring out Indian editions. * Above decision was taken on recommendation of the First Press Commission, which inter-alia had observed that proprietorial interest in the daily and weekly newspapers should predominantly vest in Indian hands. It also considered Indianisation of both capital and staff desirable, especially at the higher level.
It was felt that newspapers should not be viewed similar to an industry since their true function was to influence working of democracy by shaping public opinion. Foreign participation in ownership or control of newspapers could be used for purpose of influencing Indian opinion in support of foreign interest and in some cases such participation could be at the instance of a foreign Government as well. * In pursuance of the above decision, this Ministry has since 1955, consistently denied permission for any foreign equity holding in print media or publication of Indian editions of foreign newspapers and periodicals. Due to many developments taken since then in the overall media scenario in the country and grant of Open General Licence to foreign newspapers and magazines, which resulted in their easy availability in the market, efforts are being made to review the 1955 Cabinet decision.
FOREIGN OWNERSHIP OF NEWS AGENCIES:
The existing policy of foreign ownership of news agencies in India is governed by the Cabinet decision of 1956 which was also based on the recommendation of the first Press Commission.
The relevant extracts of the decision is reproduced below : *Communication facilities should be granted to foreign news agencies only where the distribution of news within the country is to be effected through an Indian news agency owned and managed by Indians, which would have full and final authority in the selection of foreign news for distribution and which would also be in a position to supply Indian news in a reasonable volume to the foreign news agency with whom they have a working arrangement.
This decision has been the yardstick for examining requests of foreign news agencies to operate in India. Direct distribution of financial news by foreign news agencies is not violative of the 1956 Cabinet decision. Subsequent to this decision, this Ministry conveyed to its no objection to the permission accorded by RBI to M/s Reutors, subject to the condition that their financial services would be only for selected Indian non-media clients for their own use and not for reproduction and public distribution.
http://www.scatmag.com/govtpolicies/foreign.htm
Who funds Indian Media
Who is connected to whom:
NDTV
A very popular TV news media is funded by Gospels of Charity in Spain Supports Communism. Recently it has developed a soft corner towards Pakistan because Pakistan President has allowed only this channel to be aired in Pakistan. Indian CEO Prannoy Roy is co-brother of Prakash Karat, General Secretary of the Communist party of India. His wife and Brinda Karat are sisters.
INDIA TODAY
Which used to be the only national weekly which supported BJP is now bought by NDTV!! Since then the tone has changed drastically and turned into Hindu bashing.
CNN-IBN
This is 100 percent funded by Southern Baptist Church with its branches in all over the world with HQ in US.. The Church annually allocates $800 million for promotion of its channel. Its Indian head is Rajdeep Sardesai and his wife Sagarika Ghosh.
TIMES GROUP
Times Of India, Mid-Day, Nav-Bharth Times, Femina, Filmfare, Vijaya Karnataka, Times now (24- hour news channel) and many more...
Times Group is owned by Bennett & Coleman. 'World Christian Council does 80 percent of the Funding, and an Englishman and an Italian equally share balance 20 percent. The Italian Robertio Mindo is a close relative of Sonia Gandhi.
Star TV
It is run by an Australian, who is supported by St. Peters Pontifical Church Melbourne.
Hindustan Times
Owned by Birla Group, but hands have changed since Shobana Bhartiya took over. Presently it is working in Collaboration with Times Group.
The Hindu
English daily, started over 125 years has been recently taken over by Joshua Society, Berne, Switzerland. N. Ram's wife is a Swiss national.
Indian Express
Divided into two groups. The Indian Express and the New Indian Express (southern edition) ACTS Christian Ministries have major stake in the Indian Express and latter is still with the Indian counterpart.
The Statesman
It is controlled by Communist Party of India.
Asian Age and Deccan Chronicle
Is owned by a Saudi Arabian Company with its chief Editor M.J. Akbar. Gujarat riots which took place in 2002 where Hindus were burnt alive. Rajdeep Sardesai and Bharkha Dutt working for NDTV at that time got around 5 Million Dollars from Saudi Arabia to cover only Muslim victims, which they did very faithfully... Not a single Hindu family was interviewed or shown on TV whose near and dear ones had been burnt alive, it is reported.
Tarun Tejpal of Tehelka.com
Gets regular blank cheques from Arab countries to target BJP and Hindus only, it is said. The ownership explains the control of media in India by foreigners. The result is obvious.
http://intellibriefs.blogspot.com/20...-media-in.html
Sensitive cables reveal views that portrayed Indian Dalit groups as threats to US
Arpit Parashar is a Senior Correspondent with Tehelka.com.
arpit.parashar@tehelka.comhttp://www.tehelka.com/story_main50.asp?filename=Ws020911Sensitive.asp
The 'Merit' and 'Quality' Argument: Not Simply Valid in the Present Controversy Over Affirmative Action for OBCs | Main | Questions and Answers: Caste Discrimination »
MAY 28, 2006
The Caste Bias in the Indian Media
I have written earlier that the caste bias in most sections of the India-based English language media became very obvious during the debates on reservation or affirmative action benefits for OBC students. Many a Dalit leader has told me in recent years that a major part of the problem in Indian media is that Dalits have no voice. The lower castes have no voice as most of the media in India – both print and electronic –is owned and run by the upper caste fraternity. Most of them have grown up in the privileges accorded to them by the Brahmanical caste system that gave them all the privileges (in fact affirmative action!) through the discriminatory system.
The Western media ignorantly buys everything served up by the upper caste media in India and is thereby also guilty of misrepresenting the caste divide in India. The majority millions are conveniently forgotten.
The question must be asked: ''Where on earth do we find that a majority as big as 70% of the population is unable to express their own viewpoint and find their own voice?''
Are the power brokers in society and the media barons in the world listening?
Please read the enclosed story from Shivam Vij in Lucknow, representative of the struggle of the majority voiceless to find a legitimate voice and place in the system.
Caste in the Newsroom?By Shivam Vij
Lucknowhttp://www.thehoot.org/story.asp?storyid==Web2196523711Hoot122711%20AM1229&pn==1
Caste discrimination in the newsroom? Rubbish, say most upper caste journalists in Uttar Pradesh. It's all over, say backward caste journalists.
How many journalists in the Lucknow office of Dainik Jagran , India's largest selling newspaper, belong to the Schedule Castes or the 'Other Backward Castes'?
"I have never counted and I will never count. Caste is not an issue in this organisation," says Dilip Awasthi, a senior editor with Dainik Jagran. But a backward caste journalist says that Dainik Jagran in Lucknow in particular has been run as a "Brahminical paper".
Unlike Awasthi, backward caste journalists can count their numbers on the fingertips. Ask them and they start listing names — an exercise which some upper-caste scribes are also able to undertake. There are not even half a dozen Dalit journalists in Lucknow, most of whom do not handle the political beat, and no Dalit journalist works for an English paper. As for OBC's, you will find at the most one in every paper.
Why are the numbers so few?
"They don't go to schools!" says Awasthi.
And the ones who do? Has he never met a single SC/OBC journalist who's talented enough for a job?
"Never. They can't write a single sentence properly."
Is there deliberate discrimination against lower caste candidates who apply for employment?
"I refuse employment to 15 people every day, and 14 of them are upper caste Hindus. All that matters is talent. Go to media schools in the city and ask them how many Dalits or OBC's are enrolled with them. The caste situation in the media is no different from what it is in society."
Off the record, a Dalit journalist alleges: "I was denied employment by a paper because the editor said I wrote like the spokesperson of the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP), which is not true. That their reporters write like spokespersons of [the upper-caste dominated] Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) is a non-issue for the paper."
Interestingly, no one has ever heard of employment discrimination against Muslims in the Lucknow press. In fact it is said that every political bureau has at least one Muslim in it because it is felt that only a Muslim can get stories from inside Muslim society. (Since there has never been a Hindu-Muslim riot in Lucknow, communal relations here are much better than riot-affected cities.)
"Naturally," says Awasthi of Jagran, "I would like to have a Muslim to cover Muslims and a woman to cover women's issues."
And a Dalit to cover Dalits?
"But where are they?" he exclaims.
"How is it possible," questions political reporter Kamal Jayant of Aaj, "that in a country with a huge unemployment problem no Dalit comes to them for a reporter's job?"
"The root of the problem is ownership. When the media is owned by the upper caste, it has to be dominated by the upper caste," says Kashi Prasad of Eenadu TV Uttar Pradesh, who does not write his surname, Yadav, in his visiting card. Journalists belonging to castes that figure at the lower end of the caste system often hide or change their surnames lest they invite prejudice.
JP Shukla, Lucknow correspondent of The Hindu, very emphatically says there is no question of any kind of employment discrimination, because: "An educated Dalit prefers his reserved job in a government office rather than a hard life as an underpaid stringer with a Hindi daily. And English dailies take the convent educated lot." Amit Sharma, Lucknow correspondent of The Indian Express denies that there is employment discrimination, and if the backward caste journalist feels it, "it could be because of his inner feelings [read: complex] that he belongs to a lower caste."
Caste here may get inter-twined with class. An upper caste journalist privately admits that he may unconsciously discriminate on class basis, but for backward caste aspirants this discrimination is received as casteist. It is his caste because of which he lacks 'class'. Amidst all this generalisation, backward caste journalists are not short of examples. AP Dewan, a Doordarshan reporter who is Dalit by caste, knows two cases off hand. He remembers one Yogendra Singh who committed suicide because no paper would give him a job, and how Doordarshan would not even take one Dharmendra Singh as a free apprentice. The latter, an alumus of IIMC (Indian Institute of Mass Communications, Delhi), had to forgo the electronic media and work with Rashtriya Sahara in Noida. At the same time, Dewan claims as President of the now defunct Doordarshan India Journalists Association, that jobs reserved for backward castes in Doordarshan have not been filled for years.
Some backward caste journalists, very wary of being quoted, recall how they personally faced hardships in initially getting employment, as compared to upper-caste colleagues.
"A Muslim friend called me the other day to arrange a newspaper internship for her daughter. But I don't recall any backward caste person approaching me for help in employment," says Ratan Mani Lal, Director of the Jaipuria Institute of Mass Communications.
"Employment in the private sector is often given on the basis of connections, and upper caste individuals tend to have connections amongst upper castes." says Vivek Kumar, who left his job with The Pioneer in Lucknow in 2000 to become an academic. He now teaches at the Centre for the Study of Social Systems at JNU (Jawaharlal Nehru University) in Delhi.
The Dalit and the OBC suffer from stereotypes of talent. "It is presumed that a candidate won't be talented because he is Dalit," says Dewan.
About this tricky issue of talent, Kumar of JNU says: "This is exactly the same as in reserved jobs for backward castes. First it was 'candidate not available' and now it is 'candidate not suitable'. And who decides a candidate's suitability? The upper-caste editor." So would he support reservation in the private media? "Why not? Reservation is nothing but equality of opportunity."
The new Congress-led government at the centre has promised to look into the area of caste-based reservation in the private sector. If and when that happens, it will affect the media as well, and you may begin to see the bylines of a greater variety of castes.
That was about employment, but those who do manage to get a job, do they face discrimination at the work place? Once again upper caste journalists say an emphatic no and backward caste journalists say an emphatic yes.
"Between 1996 an '99 I was with Hindustan," remembers Kashi Prasad of E-TV, "I was posted in Sultanpur when the paper established its office there. As a Yadav I was the only journalist there belonging to a backward caste. I would sit in the same room as my junior upper caste colleagues, and local leaders would come and touch their feet and ignore me. So I asked them to shift to another room." These seemingly petty problems become very humiliating when an individual goes through them.
Discrimination manifests itself in the form of marginalisation. Backward caste journalists say they are marginalised not only in places like the Press Club but also inside the newsroom, where upper caste journalists may form a closely knit community.
Dewan of Doordarshan claims that in office he is not given basic facilities like a stenographer or a computer or air-conditioning, which have been given to journalists junior to him. Is he sure this is because of his caste? "Absolutely because of that!" he says, "But this is nothing. In the media in UP Dalits and OBC's face much worse. They are forced to be submissive and have to quietly endure everything."
Amit Sharma, Lucknow correspondent of The Indian Express, confirmed that backward caste journalists in UP face prejudice amongst their fraternity. "Whatever they say is taken lightly and often ridiculed," he says, "and this sometimes makes them irritable and affects their self-esteem." Sharma, however, denies discrimination in employment.
Kashi Prasad of E-TV says, "Not only is there greater discrimination in districts and small towns, a lot many journalists in Lucknow come from small town or rural backgrounds. They carry a greater burden of caste than one would ordinarily perceive in Lucknow."
However, JP Shukla of The Hindu, who says he is himself from a rural background, denies that there is any such thing as caste bias amongst journalists. Shukla, a Brahmin by caste, says that the primary caste equation in UP is that of a clash between Dalits and OBC's, and the upper-castes have no role in it. (During an earlier interview for a story on The Hoot, Shukla had read excerpts from a book of memoirs that he was writing, in Hindi, which exalted the caste system.) Secondly, says Shukla, that Maywati and the BSP are such a powerful political tool in UP that nobdu dares discriminitae against a Dalit.
After the Mandal Commission report of 1991, says Kashi Prasad, "Society was polarised into those who were for caste-based reservation in government jobs and those who were against it. Upper caste journalists, seething in anger about reservations, have been prone to prejudice against backward caste individuals in the office." There is thus a great need for backward caste journalists to 'prove' their merit. The problem with this, for one, is that a backward caste journalist is seen first as belonging to a 'low' caste and then as an individual.
Pawan Kumar, a Dalit who works as a sub-editor with Aaj , says that a backward caste scribe has to work much harder to be accepted, whereas his upper caste colleagues would be regularly promoted even when they are not meritorious.
The claim is buttressed by Vivek Kumar of JNU with the example of a friend who would file his stories only in his first name. But the day he started adding his surname Shukla, he was surprised to find his byline on page one off and on. "Now his name bore the burden of his caste," he says. On the other hand, Kashi Prasad claims he was not given an independent beat in a newspaper for years, unlike his upper-caste colleagues.
How caste biases operate in the coverage of caste politics has been documented earlier by a couple of stories in The Hoot. But apart from elections, what about the coverage of caste on issues like caste discrimination in society, cases of caste-based violence, etc.? Are they given due space? If it's newsworthy, it finds a place in the paper, says, Jayant of Aaj. "Thanks to competition," he says "if one paper doesn't carry it, another does. But what angle such stories are given may be problematic in some cases." At the height of the Mandal Commission imbroglio in 1991, he says, stories of upper caste protests were exaggerated by the media with an activist intent. It is very obvious, therefore, that you never find a feature in a UP paper about caste discrimination in society, the sort that appear in Delhi editions of papers like The Indian Express and The Hindu. Vivek Kumar of JNU says that while at the Pioneer, he once interviewed the then UP Governor Suraj Bhan, a Dalit, and asked him questions on the position of Dalits in society 48 years after independence. What should have been a page-one eight-column interview, he says, was reduced to two columns on page four. Some days later the paper sent another correspondent to interview the Governor, this time without any 'Dalit angle', and it was right there: eight columns on page one.
Vijay Dubey of Eenadu TV points out a rift between Thakur and Brahmin journalists in Gorakhpur over some local issue recently, and other backward caste journalists readily provide specifics of how a journalist belonging to a certain caste would often be assigned the task of covering the leader of that caste. The logic is that caste affinity helps you get a scoop.
But this argument is turned on its head when backward caste journalists are said to use their caste to get close to politicians and benefit in getting scoops and other necessities of life. "This is unfortunate branding," says Dewan of Doordarshan, "Before I helped save Mayawati's life in the 1995 "guest-house" attack on her, no one knew what community I belonged to. But after that the world around me changed completely. Upper-caste journalists labelled me a Mayawati stooge and in 1998, got chief minister Mulayam Singh Yadav to get me transferred out of UP. Later when Mayawati again became CM, some upper-caste journalists instigated her against me and as a result, she hasn't spoken to me for 18 months."
Journalists in the English papers may be a little more progressive, but Kumar of JNU complains that the upper-caste individual can choose to be anything in the garb of progressiveness. A source in The Times of India says, "Caste is always implicit. You are always aware of what is the caste of which person and what that means in caste hierarchy."
While local English papers remain urban-centric, Hindi papers do cover grassroots level activities, socio-religious affairs and some amount of rural reporting also finds space. But in all this, it is an upper-caste ("Brahminical") culture that is reflected; the lives and customs of a segregated, backward caste society are unimportant.
There is no dialogue over this issue; nobody seems to see the need to give so much as a patient hearing to the grievances of journalists belonging to depressed castes. The arrogance with which senior journalists like Awasthi of Jagran dismiss the issue, suggests that a Dalit journalist is persona non grata for them.
Says Vivek Kumar of JNU, "When you live life in your own group you never think you are excluding anyone. The only time you think there is discrimination is when Mayawati dismisses you as Manuwaadi."
http://www.josephdsouza.com/2006/05/the_caste_bias_in_the_indian_m.html
Where are the dalit journalists?
By Chandra Bhan Prasad
Why is it that from a population of over 205 million Dalits, roughly equivalent to the combined population of France, UK, and Germany, there is not a single Dalit with a press card in the main stream media?
Some five years back, on November 16, 1996 to be precise, BN Uniyal published his "In Search Of a Dalit Journalist", in The Pioneer. Mr. Uniyal was confronted with a 'strange' query from a foreign correspondent who wanted to meet a Dalit journalist. The foreign journalist wanted to seek the opinion of a Dalit journalist over the reported dispute between Kansi Ram and few journalists. Mr. Uniyal wanted to help his foreign counterpart, and thus begun his hunt for a Dalit journalist.
He spoke to a number of editors, media personalities, social activists, but could not find one. He wrote, "Suddenly I realized that in all the 30 years I had worked as a journalist, I had never met a fellow journalist who was a Dalit; no, not one. And worse still, was the thought that during all those years it had never occurred to me that there was something so seriously amiss in the profession, something which I should have noticed as a journalist. In all these years I have traveled almost every district of the country in the company of numerous journalists and met hundreds of others in different in different cities and towns and yet do not remember having met any Dalit journalist".
His queries at Delhi's Press Club too turned futile, and finally he examined the Accreditation Index, 1996, of the Press Information Bureau. The Index contained 686 journalists, in which, 454 bore their Caste surnames, but of those none was a Dalit. Of the remaining 232 names, Mr. Uniyal checked out 47 names at random basis, and none of them turned out to be a Dalit.
I myself have studied in JNU, know a lot many people in Delhi, but barring one Dalit who worked for Observer of Business & Politics [now closed] I am yet to meet a Dalit who is a journalist in Delhi. But I believe there could still be one or two Dalit journalists in Delhi, who may have camouflaged their identities for the sake of survival.
I still remember that memorable day when The Pioneer had carried Mr. Uniyal's piece, and expected a heated debate in media. But nothing of that sort happened. In January last year, when The Pioneer had given its eight-page Millennium supplement to us bring out a special Dalit Millennium supplement, we approached Mr. Uniyal to write a piece. He requested us to repeat his November 16 article with following note: " The article reproduced above first appeared in The Pioneer in November 1996, but was totally ignored by our journalistic establishment. No editor, columnist or commentator, no professional association like The Editors Guild and no public organization like Press Council took any notice of it. None felt aghast or alarmed at the situation described in the article.
It did not provoke a debate. No one felt there was a need for making special efforts to draw qualified Dalits into the media".
The Pioneer's Dalit Millenium Supplement, which contained Uniyal's November 1996 article with his note, was published on January 30, 2001, but till date no editor, columnist, or any other non-Dalit public organization has reflected upon Uniyal's quest. We, as a small group of Dalit activists, took upon ourselves to draft a memorandum, where we quoted extensively the American experience of affirmative actions in media, and posted a copy to each major media establishment in Delhi. But, barring The Pioneer, no one responded.
The Pioneer has been the only newspaper to start the first weekly column on Dalits, authored by Dalits. The Dalit Diary begun on April 4, 1999, and since then, over 100 articles have appeared, but barring one or two instances, no one has taken any note of it.
However, it is all together a different question that within a year, word spread about the Dalit column in The Pioneer, and a number of Dalit organizations from all across the India are subscribing for The Sunday Pioneer. In fact, the Telugu daily Vaartha, [second largest circulated Telugu daily newspaper] reproduces the Pioneer Dalit Diary every Tuesday and the most popular Dalit web site [ambedkar.org] too flashes Dalit Diary every week. Needless to add, the Dalit Diary is being translated in several Indian languages.
The big question before us is: why from a population of over 20.59 Crore Dalits [roughly equivalent to the combined population of France, UK, Germany], there is not a single Dalit in main stream media with a Press-Card? This question needs some credible explanations, and the explanation has to come from editors/columnists/commentators of the mainstream media establishments. Further, why did, barring Uniyal, no regular columnist or editor ever took up this question for a nationwide discourse, particularly when we have been posing this question since 1996?
The Dalits' near total absence [read exclusion] from could owe to many factors. The non-Dalit commentator may say that there are no 'qualified' Dalits available! Then question arises as what kind of society we live in where from a particular social segment, which has been historically excluded from the formal notion of citizenship in the Chatur-Varna Order, there is not a single Dalit journalist? Is it due to a long legacy of hatred/exclusion against/of Dalits, or due to the failure read success] of the masters of society who have been unable to create a Social Order where inclusion of Dalits could not become a reality, or it is due Dalits' inability to sneak into the zealously guarded fortress of the media world, or a combination of all the above factors?
If India's intellectual 'class' has failed to include Dalits in the media world, or cannot come out with credible explanations over the question of Dalits' exclusion, what right do they have to speak from a high moral pedestal about unworthy politicians, or about practice of Untouchability in the countryside? To me, it seems the Indian media is still prisoner of the Chatur-Varna worldview, which we can establish if media hawks are prepared for an open debate?
http://www.ambedkar.org/News/Whereared.htm
FDI tightening its grip over Indian media spaceAdvertising through newspapers and television today is mostly by multinationals and big corporate housesFine Print | P.N. Vasanti
Traditionally, journalists, especially editors, were the gatekeepers in media. They used to have the final say in content. In today's market-driven media world, however, journalists no longer dictate priorities and direction. It is advertisers, market researchers and public relations people who dominate and determine the concerns and the content of mass media. It is these forces that have become the "new gatekeepers" of media — including the news media.
Given this context, the discussion on allowing foreign direct investment (FDI) in news media here takes a new angle (see "Should India let more foreign investment into news media?" in Mint, 1 July). Both the pros and cons of increasing FDI in news media are now well known. Those in favour have been using the high growth argument and claim that restrictive policies are retrograde in the era of convergence. Others have quoted laws of different countries that have similar restrictions specially on news media and say these are necessary to protect national interests, local cultures and diverse character of the media. The missing angle in this ongoing discussion on allowing FDI in news media is that the new gatekeepers of our media are already owned and also managed by foreign organizations.
As summarized in the table, 100% FDI is already allowed in advertising, market research, public relations, printing plants and even non-news television channels and technical journals. Total advertising spends in the country today are at least Rs12,000 crore with around 75% of this, maybe more, going to newspapers, television, films and radio. Advertising through newspapers and television today is mostly by multinationals and big corporate houses. In fact, the top 15 advertisers account for three-fourths of advertising revenue of newspapers and television channels. Today, over 13,000 brands in all are being promoted through television, newspapers, radio and films. The top five advertising agencies, mostly controlled by foreign networks that sometimes own all the equity in these firms, account for well over half of advertising business in the country. Entry of foreign advertising agencies has been going on along with simultaneous entry of foreign brands and increase in the share of foreign companies in the total advertising in the country.
In India, where newspapers are heavily subsidized — for instance, some papers are sold for Rs2 when just the ink and paper costs Rs8 per copy — the ability of these advertisers to become more powerful gatekeepers is higher than in most other countries that claim to have a free press.
With media becoming complex and also specialized, two "new" mediating functionaries have also emerged. Both these functionaries, "media planning" and "corporate public relations", in a way, erode into core prerogatives of journalists and their "editorial control" as the function of corporate PR is to ensure coverage of a particular viewpoint. Market research agencies conduct "readership" surveys and "rating" of television viewership and, thus, directly influence advertising agencies as well as the news media as to their priorities. Most surveys being done in the country are mostly at the instance of advertisers or advertising agencies and the media operators themselves. Today, the top seven or eight market research agencies, accounting for at least 75% of research, are owned entirely or partly by foreign firms. With recent mergers and acquisitions, a certain monopolistic trend is already evident in this function with an annual turnover of well over Rs1,200 crore.
Together, advertising, market research and media planning set the scope for media. These functions are already in the hands of multinational firms.
While we still debate allowing foreign investment into our news media, "foreigners" have already entered our newsrooms through these new gates.
P.N. Vasanti is director of New Delhi-based multidisciplinary research organization, Centre for Media Studies. Your comments and feedback on this column, which runs every other Friday, are welcome at fineprint@livemint.com
Editor's note: Mint has a Code of Conduct that lays down firm rules on separating advertising and editorial content. This code, which governs our newsroom, can be viewed at www.livemint.com
http://www.livemint.com/2008/08/08002512/FDI-tightening-its-grip-over-I.html
Measurement systems in media need to be robust: Ambika Soni
NEW DELHI: Information and Broadcasting MinisterAmbika Soni on Tuesday said that media measurement systems in readership as well as TV ratings need to be robust and reflective of the country's demographic realities.
Addressing the 'AdAsia 2011 Conference' here, Soni said: "Measurement of parameters was critical to the growth of advertising sector. However, media measurement systems need to be robust and reflective of the country's demographic realities and its socio-cultural and economic diversities. In view of the given situation, the measurement process needs to be constantly assessed and upgraded.
Elaborating further, Soni said that everyone was conscious of the priorities of the advertisers who as part of their business plans intended to spend their resources in the right places at the right time and at the right prices.
"A case in point was the rapid growth of the advertising market which had grown from under Rs. 10,000 crores to almost Rs. 30,000 crores in the last 10 years, a growth rate which many countries would envy," she added.
Highlighting the business opportunities available in the media and entertainment industry, Soni said the policy initiatives undertaken recently offered a perfect platform for growth.
"The growth in the Print Media Sector reflected the growing literacy levels in the country with more than 107 million copies of newspapers circulated daily. Similarly, in India, over a 100 million users accessed the internet, a number which was growing exponentially," she said.
"In order to facilitate greater access to communication facilities at the grass roots level, the Government recently approved the creation of a National Optical Fiber Network for providing Broadband connectivity to the lowest rung of administration at the village level," she added.
On the advertising initiatives of the Government, Soni said that the Ministry was in the process of revamping the Directorate of Advertising and Visual Publicity (DAVP) in an effort to horn its skills and professional abilities to match the private sectors' capabilities.
"The initiatives of the Government regarding the Bharat Nirman campaigns and the 'Incredible India' campaigns both nationally and internationally had created a positive impression and brand equity for the Government's initiatives," she added.
29 JUL, 2011, 05.22AM IST, ET BUREAU
Indian media and entertainment industry to grow at over 13%: PwC
NEW DELHI: The Indian media and entertainment industry is expected to grow at a compounded annual growth rate of 13.2% to reach a size of Rs 1.19 lakh crore by 2015, said consulting firmPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) in a media outlook report released on Thursday.
The Indian industry grew by 11.2%, one of the highest growth rates in the world, in 2010 on the back of improved economic conditions and rebound in advertising. "Buoyant advertisement spends will need to supplement subscription growth for a profitable growth in revenues of the entertainment and media sector in the next five years," said Timmy Kandhari, leader, entertainment & media practice at PwC India. He added that digitisation in broadcast space and focus on good content will go a long way in achieving this objective.
The television industry, which already contributes the largest share of 47% to the industry, is expected to grow to 50% in 2015. This segment of the industry, which is largely advertising dependent and is fighting low average revenues per consumer, is expected to grow by 14.5% cumulatively over the next five years to Rs 60,250 crore.
Marred by a slowdown over the past two years, the film industry is expected to recover and become a Rs 13,650-crore industry by 2015 with help from higher number of screens and big budget movies. According to the report, the number of multiplex screens in the country is expected to double in this period.
The print media sector is projected to grow at 9.6% during the next five years while the radio sector is expected to grow by 19.2% during this period. With the rebound in the overall advertising spends, the internet advertising segment is expected to growth the fastest over this period.
"The next five years will see digital technologies increase their influence across the industry and rapid change in technologies and consumer behaviour will continue across all media and entertainment segments. However, the pace of change will continue to be slower in India as compared to other territories," the report stated.
http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/news-by-industry/media/entertainment-/media/indian-media-and-entertainment-industry-to-grow-at-over-13-pwc/articleshow/9403557.cms
Both international and domestic media companies in India are urging the government to make significant changes to policies governing the television sector.
The Cable and Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) is calling for the adoption of an 'open sky' policy for commercial satellites to prevent a shortage of both C-band and Ku-band transponders to carry the 500 television channels that India is planning. Meanwhile, India's current foreign direct investment policy will result in missed overseas investment of US$1 billion if it is not simplified soon, reports The Financial Express.
The domestic direct-to-home (DTH) satellite TV operators are also calling on state governments to exempt their services from entertainment tax, arguing that they already pay tax to central government, which classes them as service industries. Recently, Rajasthan state government has lifted the entertainment tax for DTH operators, a move they have welcomed.
Financial Express forecasts that the six DTH operators will have to pay close to Rs 450 crore in entertainment tax to the various state governments, while the combined losses of the industry will exceed Rs 5,000 crore.
"Between Uttar Pradesh, MP, Maharashtra, Bihar, Delhi and Gujarat, over 80% of the entertainment tax is generated," Ajai Puri, director and CEO, Airtel Digital, told Financial Express. "Just as the Rajasthan government has exempted entertainment tax, we urge all state governments to keep DTH services out of [the] entertainment tax net."
CASBAA, meanwhile, says the growth of India's cable and satellite sector is also going to get badly hit if the country does not adopt an 'open sky' policy.
"Hundreds of millions of dollars-worth of investment is lined up for India. But investors and leading Asian firms are wary of actually investing in India due to various ambiguities in policies," Simon Twiston Davies, CEO, CASBAA said to the Financial Express.
"Along with the 'back haul' or long distance delivery of hundreds of satellite TV channels into India and, with DTH homes now topping an estimated 35 million connections, India's satellite market is growing at an astounding rate," Mr Twiston Davies said. "However, in order to facilitate continued expansion, it is of great importance to examine the pressing issues affecting the business."
Read more: Radical shift called for in India's media policy | News | Rapid TV News http://www.rapidtvnews.com/index.php/2011032311070/radical-shift-called-for-in-indias-media-policy.html#ixzz1eG8d53BD
COMMENTARY
14 november 19, 2011 vol xlvI no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
more likely to support the group, compared to those following OWS "not too
closely" or "not at all closely".
11
The
American left has long been distrustful
(rightly so) of the mass media, which
regularly ignore progressive social movements due to their lack of usefulness to
those who hold political power. OWS represents one of those rare opportunities
where the Democratic Party and the statereliant mass media claim to be sympathetic towards its rhetoric and demands.
This, no doubt, is due to the electoral value
that OWS retains for Democrats seeking to
get re-elected next year. The challenge
for the left will be to continue to garner
sympathetic media coverage and attention, while also finding ways to propose
a specific policy platform that represents
a challenge to Obama's corporatist, proWall Street agenda. Walking this tightrope is no easy task, but it may be the
only path towards building a movement
that is able to reach out to the masses,
while also offering serious progressive
and democratic change.
Notes
1 In thinking about these parallels, we have consulted
(among other sources) Arun Gupta, "Where OWS
and the Tea Party Are Coming From", Salon,
21 October 2011; John Avlon, "Tea Party for the
Left?", Daily Beast, 10 October 2011, http://www.
thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/10/10/occupy-wallstreet- this-is-not-the-left-wing-tea-party.html
2 Kate Zernike, "Wall St Protest Isn't Like Ours, Tea
Party Says", New York Times, 21 October 2011,
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/22/us/politics/wall-st-protest-isnt-like-ours-tea-party-says.
html?pagewanted=all
3 Douglas Schoen, "Polling the Occupy Wall Street
Crowd", Wall Street Journal, 18 October 2011,
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405297
0204479504576637082965745362.html; Marjorie
Connelly, "Occupy Protestors Down on Obama,
Survey Finds", New York Times, 28 October 2011,
http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/28/
protesters-at-occupy-wall-street-disapprove-ofobama-a-survey-finds/
4 Editorial, "The Wall Street Whiners", Washington
Times, 18 October 2011, http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/oct/18/the-wall-streetwhiners/
5 Editorial, "What's Occupying Wall Street?", Wall
Street Journal, 17 October 2011, http://online.wsj.
com/article/SB100014240529702034997045766
25302455112990.html
6 Schoen, "Polling the Occupy Wall Street Crowd",
2011.
7 Judd Legum, "Douglas Schoen Grossly Misrepresents
His Own Poll Results to Smear Occupy Wall Street",
Think Progress, 18 October 2011, http://thinkprogress.org/politics/2011/10/18/347165/breakingdoug-schoen-grossly-misrepresents-his-own-pollresults-to-smear-occupy-wall-street/
8 Project for Excellence in Journalism, "Coverage of
Wall Street Protests Keeps Growing, Gets More
Political", Pew Research Centre, 10-16 October
2011, http://www.journalism.org/index_report/
pej_news_coverage_index_october_1016_2011
9 Project for Excellence in Journalism, "The 2010
Midterms: A Tea Party Tale", Pew Research Centre,
11 January 2011, http://www.journalism.org/
analysis_report/2010_midterms_tea_party_tale
10 Our data is drawn from an analysis of Tea Party
and Occupy Wall Street print stories and television transcripts, as made available via the Lexis
Nexis academic database.
11 Pew Research Centre, "Public Divided Over Occupy
Wall Street Movement", Pew Research Centre,
24 October 2011, http://www.people-press.org/
2011/10/24/public-divided-over-occupy-wall-streetmovement/
Sukumar Muralidharan (sukumar.md@gmail.
com) is a freelance journalist based in New Delhi.
Press Council as Bully Pulpit:
A Debate on Media That Could
Go Nowhere
Sukumar Muralidharan
After the strong opinions about
the media expressed by the
chairperson of the Press Council
of India and the tone of the
counter-response from media
associations and groups, where
the debate will proceed from here
is anybody's guess. But the tone
has dropped several notches and
the media industry is unlikely to
let yet another opportunity pass
to push back against a potentially
constructive public debate on
transparency and accountability.
M
arkandey Katju was appointed
chairman of the Press Council
of India (PCI) within days of retiring as a judge of the Supreme Court.
Purely by coincidence, there was some
talk hanging in the air as he took office, of
the need for new regulatory norms in the
electronic media. Though not within his
formal jurisdiction, he was quick to ask
that the new guidelines be held in abeyance. He then plunged into a sequence of
abrasive comments about the realm he had
just been appointed to oversee and regulate, which if substantively little different
from observations made by his predecessors, has raised hackles with its added embellishment of intellectual disdain.
Where the debate will proceed from
here is anybody's guess. But the tone has
dropped several notches and the media
industry is unlikely to let yet another
opportunity pass to push back against a
potentially constructive public debate on
transparency and accountability.
The media, in its broadest definition,
touches several lives. Even if it is a small
player on most aggregate economic measures – revenue, value addition or profit – it
is an industry on which everybody has an
opinion and an urge to be heard. Media
persons, who are generous with moral
judgments and grudging in admitting the
most egregious errors, cannot really complain when the compliment is occasionally
returned. The final bulwark that the public
often finds difficult to breach, is the ability
of the media to control the message.
Rise of the Blogosphere
For long, the only recourse an ordinary
reader (or "media consumer" in current
terminology) had for being heard, was a
letter to the editor, which would, in most
cases, end up in the trash bin if it did not
pamper newspaper egos. Today, even as
she suffers the constant mortification of
being talked down to by hectoring news
anchors and leader writers, the media
consumer has discovered the blogosphere,
or the virtual media, which offers itself as
a new platform for conducting the social
dialogue. The ability of the media industry COMMENTARY
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 19, 2011 vol xlvI no 47 15
to control the public discourse is rapidly
eroding and there has yet been no credible
strategy devised from within its business
model, to counter this reality.
Legal coercion though, is an option that
still works. A sturdy platform of media
criticism in the "virtual world" recently
found itself the target of unwelcome
attention from a real world entity whose
enormous clout could be denied only at
great peril. On 14 October, the media
watchdog website, The Hoot (www.thehoot.org) received a legal notice from
the Times Global Broadcasting Company,
which owns the Times Now news channel
and is a subsidiary of Bennett Coleman
and Co Ltd (BCCL), publishers of the Times
of India. The media giant had been irked
by an article published the day before,
which raised a number of troubling questions about the coverage of a brutal attack
on the lawyer and civil rights campaigner
Prashant Bhushan, by right-wing thugs
on 12 October.
1
Under particular scrutiny was the conduct of the Times Now channel, since it
had a news crew on the spot at the time
of the attack. The article, written by a
journalist with years of experience in
print and television, wondered if the presence of the news crew may not have
brought on the attacks. The thought was
not outlandish, since the vigilante group
behind the attack, the Sri Ram Sene, had a
long record – from places as far afield as
Mangalore, Bangalore and Delhi – of prearranging media coverage before foraying
forth to dispense summary justice. Once
the attack on Bhushan began, the news
crew on the site showed less than humane
instincts when it continued recording the
brutality with a steady and unswerving
camera. No member of the team even
stepped into the camera frame while
Bhushan was punched, kicked and dragged
along the floor.
Perhaps, the article said, the climate of
intolerance that brought on the attack
had been nurtured by the unique style
of the electronic media. It was a regular
feature of prime-time news broadcasts to
pit adversarial viewpoints against each
other in the most abrasive and uncivil
manner. A special mention was reserved
for the Times Now's prime-time news
anchor, who regularly sets the blogosphere
buzzing with his preachy morality and
self-righteousness.
There were points made in the article
which could have been fruitfully debated,
had The Hoot not taken it down in haste
under threat of legal action.
2
While protesting that the article had nothing by way of
defamatory content and was merely an
honest effort to advance the debate on free
speech and its attendant obligations, The
Hoot took the abundant precaution of apologising for any offence it may have caused.
The whole episode passed without seriously disturbing the stately passage of the
mighty media. A desultory debate had
meanwhile begun on the sidelines, occasioned by the expressed intent of the Ministry for Information and Broadcasting
(MIB) to revise eligibility norms for the
broadcasting industry. The stated rationale was that the norms currently in place
are notoriously lax, which few can really
question. But the antidote devised by
the MIB bureaucracy seemed worse than
the disease.
Norms for Broadcasting
The norms for cable and satellite broadcasting were put in place rather late, close
to a decade after the medium became pervasive at least in urban India. And in that
one decade, as the government dithered,
big global players had already acquired
a major presence in India, forcing open
several doors by making creative use of
policy ambiguities and the marked official
proclivity for ad hoc procedures.
The initial policy response was to
doggedly hang on to the government's
monopoly over the airwaves – at least in
the limited sense of uplinking signals from
Indian territory. In a defensive measure
against proliferating signals from satellites
high above, which could only be restrained
through the extraordinary exercise of
police powers, the principle of intermediary liability was imposed. The cable
operator would be responsible for ensuring
conformity of all broadcast content with
applicable norms.
It was another matter that there was
little consultation or agreement across
relevant sections of government, industry
and civil society, on best regulatory practices. Neither was there any concern in the
two decades of the satellite broadcasting
boom, for enforcing the basic principles
of media governance: such as the separation of content and carriage; and the prevention of cross-media ownership concentration. A landmark judgment by the
Indian Supreme Court in 1995, holding the
broadcast spectrum as a public resource,
entered the judicial annals as a finely
crafted statement of principle. But its
practical relevance has been negligible, as
corporate entities, political parties and even
religious bodies have rapidly colonised
the airwaves.
Information Ministry Awakens
The MIB's recent awakening clearly occurred under duress. Following widespread public concern over media coverage of the November 2008 terrorist attacks
in Mumbai, there was one attempt at
enforcing a code on the electronic media,
especially in situations designated as
"emergencies". The news channels, sensing
a threat to their autonomy, pre-emptively
enacted their own code, to be enforced by
a News Broadcasting Standards Authority
(NBSA) under the chairmanship of J S Verma,
a former chief justice of India. The other
main industry body, the Indian Broadcasting Federation followed after a few
months with its own complaints council,
under a former chief justice of the Delhi
High Court, A P Shah.
The NBSA has had a mixed record of
success. Its first major ruling imposing a
fine led to angry recriminations between
the offending channel and its competitors,
and an unabashed refusal to comply. Following a truce and the return of the delinquent element into the fold, a more settled
course has been in evidence. Strictures
that the NBSA issued early this year
against a channel that had telecast a news
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the articles, epw can be contacted for help.COMMENTARY
16 november 19, 2011 vol xlvI no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
item held grossly derogatory of the gay
community, were complied with in full.
Close observers of the broadcast industry
believe that despite this chastening, the
channel concerned soon went back to its
old ways, secure in the knowledge that it
could always move faster than the watchdog's capabilities of oversight and sanction.
Low Requirements
Meanwhile, the news channels' coverage
of the Anna Hazare agitation, first in April
this year and then in August, had reawakened the deepest anxieties of the government. Yet again, the debate on regulation
was resurrected in terms of the old and
discredited principles of oversight and
sanction, with little regard for how feasible such a strategy would be in a domain
where an estimated 727 channels function,
of which no fewer than 359 are categorised as news broadcasters by the MIB.
The entry threshold is ridiculously low:
principal requirements being that a company
uplinking to a broadcast satellite would
need to be registered in India, have no
more than 40% foreign shareholding and
a minimum net-worth ranging from as low
as Rs 1 crore to a high of Rs 3 crore, depending on the category of licence applied for.
As Katju assumed charge at the PCI,
a debate was underway on the need to
revise these norms. The principal measures under consideration included raising
the threshold of net worth to a figure in
the range of Rs 10 crore and stipulating
that news channels should be headed
by individuals with a certain minimum
years of editorial experience. There were
also suggestions of a "five strikes and out"
rule: that news channels held guilty of a
certain number of violations of an agreed
programme code would be stripped of
their licence.
Katju's interventions in this context
seemed less an affirmation of principle
and more a power-grab. At his first public
engagement, which was a meeting with
senior editors, Katju called for "introspection" and also questioned some of the priorities that the media seemed to be pursuing at the cost of what he considered the
really important issues. Soon afterwards,
he appeared on a widely watched interview
programme on an English news channel.
If there was an element of discretion
earlier, the tone now was all aggression
and disparagement. Indian journalists he
said, were for the most part, "of a very
poor intellectual level". Media personnel
in general, he said, have no idea of
"economic theory or political science,
philosophy, literature".
3
Powers for Council
Katju also called for investing the PCI
with statutory powers – extending to the
broadcast media – to punish organisations that step out of line of an accepted
code of conduct. "One of the reasons" that
self-regulation has not worked, he said, is
that its procedures have failed to instil
"fear in the media". In Katju's own words,
the means of achieving optimal regulatory
ends are clear:
I want powers to stop government advertisements, I want powers to suspend the licence
of that media for a certain period if it behaves
in a very obnoxious manner. I want powers to
impose fines, all this in extreme situations.
The scorn and disdain aside, these are
possible options that have been raised
by Katju's three immediate predecessors
and perhaps several more.
4
So it is not yet
evident that Katju has in any manner
advanced a debate that has been underway
for at least as long as the PCI has existed.
Evidence of a constructive role going
forward, if any, could be found from
examining the other points the PCI chairman makes about the three modes in
which the media is failing the people of
India. The substance of the former judge's
accusations are that: the media often
focuses on trivialities at the cost of the
really major issues the country faces; it
frequently divides communities by leaping to unwarranted inferences about the
identity of those responsible for crimes
such as terrorism; and finally, rather than
propagate rational and scientific thinking,
which is the need of the delicate social
and economic transition India is undergoing, the media seemingly has time for
only the most obscurantist fetishes, such
as astrology and the supernatural.
Geared towards Profit
None of what Katju says would come as
breaking news to an observer of the Indian
media. At various recent junctures when
its conduct has been seen as questionable,
the media's role has come in for incisive
and frequently, scathing analysis. But the
logic of the media as an industry geared
towards the motive of private profit, determines that it will follow a trajectory
that remains indifferent to these public
Krishna Raj Memorial Scholarships 2011
NSSKPT High School, Ottappalam, Kerala
Six scholarships have been awarded in the school where Krishna Raj studied for a few years.
The scholarships cover tuition fees, uniforms, books and special coaching. In 2011-12,
the scholarships have been awarded to Sreedevi P K, Ajayan V (VIII standard), Arun C,
Amal S R (IX standard) and Vipindas P, Induja V (X standard).
Delhi School of Economics
Summer fellowships were awarded to 17 students (M.A. Economics & Sociology) working in
eight groups, for conducting field surveys and writing reports under the supervision of faculty
of the DSE: Ashwini Deshpande, Aditya Bhattacharjea, J V Meenakshi and Anirban Kar.
The students awarded fellowships were Dheeraj Mamadule, Vimmy, Swati Sharma, Arnab Kumar
Maulik, Ashutosh Kumar, Debapriya Bhowmik, Yesh Vardhan Agarwal, Sandhya Srinivasan,
Keshav Maheshwari, Madhulika Khanna, Ravideep Sethi, Resham Nagpal (all Economics);
Shagua Kaur Bhangu, Maria Ann Mathew, Ujjainee Sharma, Trishna Senapati, Aaradhana Dalmia
(all Sociology).
The seven projects were (i) Rehabilitation and Resettlement of Slums in Delhi, (ii) Social Networks
of Migrant Women Employed at Construction Sites, (iii) Reading Spaces: A Study of Libraries
and the Reading Public in India, (iv) Marriage Practices of the Knanaya Community of Kerala,
(v) Socio-Economic Impact Analysis and Replicability Study of Alternative Energy Programme
in the Sunderbans, (vi) Impact of FPS on Slums in Delhi, and (vii) Addressing Poverty through
NTFPs: An Analysis of Madhya Pradesh.COMMENTARY
Economic & Political Weekly EPW november 19, 2011 vol xlvI no 47 17
concerns. Media growth in the last two
decades – but more so since the turn of the
century – is a sub-theme of the larger
story of the revolution of rising aspirations
of the great Indian middle class. It has
been fuelled by the advertising boom that
has accompanied this dizzying expansion
of horizons. Needless to say, the growth
of advertising – from the automobile sector,
communications, real estate, financial
services and other so-called success stories
of the two decades of liberalisation – has
reflected emerging patterns of consumption of the middle and upper strata. The
other side of the growth story, of rising
economic inequality and stagnant or deteriorating living standards at the lower
end of the scale of wealth, has been rudely
excised from the media narrative, simply
because it is of no interest to the advertiser.
These aspects of media functioning
have been in the spotlight since the early
years of independence and notably since
1952, when the Press Commission was appointed as India's first expert attempt to
evolve a doctrine on the media and society.
Political circles and journalism unions
were then suffused with the sense of
imminent betrayal, that the press was forgetting its mission and treading the perilous pathway towards profit at all costs.
The Press Commission put forward the
doctrine that the newspaper was a "public
utility", which, by definition, was essential
to the sustenance of the civic community.
Needless to say, the newspaper industry had little patience with what it regarded
as a particularly woolly-headed type of
idealism.
5
And it has since managed to
beat back every regulatory effort. As the
media environment became more complex,
independent media commentators and
journalism unions did their bit to advance
the debate, and there were also significant
developments, such as the "airwaves"
judgment of 1995, that could potentially
have had a bearing. Yet, with all the cumulative force that genuinely committed
individuals and organisations could exert, the media industry just would not be
deflected off its chosen trajectory.
Silence of Council
Set up in 1966, abolished in 1975 and then
revived three years later, the PCI has
not had a great record in stamping its
authority on media functioning. Its credibility has not been helped in any measure
by a discrete tendency towards silence at
junctures when the press has come under
attack in India's more troubled regions. In
November 2008, for instance, the Government of Jammu and Kashmir sent out a
letter warning the media against publishing any "objectionable material". Failure
to comply, it warned, would lead to action
under the applicable laws, including the
withdrawal of government advertising. In
June 2009, as civil disturbances swept the
Kashmir Valley, the state government,
almost reflexively, blamed the media for
fomenting the strife and banned all news
broadcasts on local channels. The harsh
measures continued right through to the
following year and were considerably
enhanced through the four months of mass
demonstrations in 2010, when physical
attacks on journalists became commonplace, newspapers were seized at the point
of publication, and messaging services
over the cellular network were completely
banned.
6
More recently, the Ministry of
Home Affairs has directed public sector
enterprises to deny advertising to newspapers in Kashmir that it has identified as
expressing "anti-national" views, a directive that has evoked no comment from
either the PCI or the self-appointed protectors of the freedom of the press.
Except for announcing an inquiry in
2010 that did not get very far, the PCI
remained indifferent through these events.
So the question really must be asked if a
body that fails to raise its voice when summary measures are used to muzzle the
press, can be trusted to use such powers
fairly. Katju thinks that he has the judicial
wisdom and experience to ensure the fair
application of such powers, but he has not
convinced very many. Professional bodies
such as the Editors' Guild and industry
lobbies from the print and broadcast sectors
have already dismissed his proposals out
of hand. And for former chief justice
J S Verma, his locutions seem to suggest
an "authoritarian" tendency.
Little progress is likely if the debate
remains confined within a paradigm of
controls and sanctions, to the neglect of
possible modes of allowing more voices
the opportunity to be heard. Access to the
blogosphere is still reserved for those
of relative privilege and the alternative
message that has begun to spread through
this medium, though valuable, is limited
in its diffusion. An official discourse that
emphasises control and conformity has
effectively banished the 1995 airwaves judgment from the central position it deserves
in the debate. Public service broadcasting
has languished and the ridiculous prohibition of news content over FM radio continues
to be in force. A PCI that endlessly rehearses
old themes about an augmentation of its
powers, serves little purpose today. A
more constructive engagement would look
at true measures of public empowerment,
rather than the aggrandisement of a
highly diminished body.
Notes
1 The Hoot's letter of apology and retraction can be
found at the following link: http://www.thehoot.
org/web/home/story.php?storyid=5549&mod=1
&pg=1§ionId=5&valid=true.
2 The ethical issues involved were, in fact, not dealt
with in any manner at all by the media, aside
from a report in The Hindu on 13 October, which
raised some of the questions and sought at least
preliminary clarifications from the Times Now
management. See "Attack on Prashant Bhushan
captured on Camera", The Hindu, Delhi, October
13, p 10; available at: http://www.thehindu.com/
todays-paper/tp-national/article2532909.ece.
3 See the transcript of the interview at the website
of the channel concerned: http://ibnlive.in.com/
news/media-deliberately-dividing-people-pci-chief/
197593-3.html.
4 See A G Noorani, "The Press Council: An Expensive Irrelevance", Economic & Political Weekly, 3
January 2009, pp 13-5, for the substance of what
has been said earlier on these issues.
5 This is a story that is adequately told by G S Bhargava, The Press in India: An Overview (Delhi: National Book Trust), 2005.
6 The International Federation of Journalists has come
out with situation reports on the media in Kashmir
through these three years. These are available
currently at: http://asiapacific.ifj.org/assets/docs/
118/188/54dea76-41a4dbc.pdf; http://asiapacific.ifj.
org/assets/docs/126/1132fe407e-23c0e71.pdf;
http:// asiapacific.ifj.org/en/articles/blaming-themessenger-media-under-pressure-in-jammu-andkashmir.
Media of India
 | This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (October 2011) |
.jpg)
Media of India consist of several different types of communications media: television, radio, cinema, newspapers, magazines, and Internet-based Web sites. Many of the media are controlled by large for-profit corporations who reap revenue from advertising, subscriptions, and sale of copyrighted material. India also has a strong music industry. The Indian media was initiated since the late 18th century withprint media started in 1780, radio broadcasting initiated in 1927, and the screening of Auguste and Louis Lumière moving pictures in Bombay initiated during the July of 1895 —is among the oldest and largest media of the world.[1] Indian media—private media in particular—has been "Free and Independent" throughout most of its history.[2] The period of emergency (1975–1977), declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, was the brief period when India's media was faced with potential government retribution.[2][3]
The organisation Reporters Without Borders compiles and publishes an annual ranking of countries based upon the organisation's assessment of their press freedom records. In 2010 India was ranked 122nd of 178th countries, which was a setback from the preceding year.[4]
Contents[hide] |
[edit]Print
The first major newspaper in India—The Bengal Gazette—was started in 1780 under the British Raj.[2] Other newspapers such as The India Gazette, The Calcutta Gazette, The Madras Courier (1785), The Bombay Herald (1789) etc. soon followed.[2] These newspapers carried news of the areas under the British rule.[2] The Times of India was founded in 1838 asThe Bombay Times and Journal of Commerce by Bennett, Coleman and Company, a colonial enterprise now owned by an Indian conglomerate.[5] The Times Group publishes The Economic Times (launched in 1961), Navbharat Times (Hindi language), and the Maharashtra Times (Marathi language).[5]
In the 1950s 214 daily newspapers were published in the country.[2] Out of these, 44 were English language dailies while the rest were published in various regional languages.[2] This number rose to 2,856 dailies in 1990 with 209 English dailies.[2] The total number of newspapers published in the country reached 35,595 newspapers by 1993 (3,805 dailies).[2]
The main regional newspapers of India include the Malayalam language Malayala Manorama (published from: Kerala, daily circulation: 673,000) and Madhyamam Daily", (published from: Kerala, with international editions from Dubai, Doha, Bahrain, Dammam and Kuwait), the Hindi-language Dainik Jagran (published from: Uttar Pradesh, daily circulation in 2006: 580,000), and the Anandabazar Patrika (published from: Kolkata, daily circulation in 2006: 435,000).[6] The Times of India Group, the Indian Express Group, the Hindustan Times Group, and the Anandabazar Patrika Group are the main print media houses of the country.[6]
Newspaper sale in the country increased by 11.22% in 2007.[7] By 2007, 62 of the world's best selling newspaper dailies were published in China, Japan, and India.[7] India consumed 99 million newspaper copies as of 2007—making it the second largest market in the world for newspapers.[7]
[edit]Broadcasting
Radio broadcasting was initiated in 1927 but became state responsibility only in 1930.[8] In 1937 it was given the name All India Radio and since 1957 it has been called Akashvani.[8] Limited duration of television programming began in 1959, and complete broadcasting followed in 1965.[8] The Ministry of Information and Broadcasting owned and maintained the audio-visual apparatus—including the television channel Doordarshan—in the country prior to the economic reforms of 1991.[6] The Government of India played a significant role in using the audio-visual media for increasing mass education in India's rural swathes.[2] Projected television screens provided engaging education in India's villages by the 1990s.[2]
Following the economic reforms satellite television channels from around the world—including BBC,CNN, CNBC, PTV, and other foreign television channels gained a foothold in the country.[9] 47 million household with television sets emerged in 1993, which was also the year when Rupert Murdochentered the Indian market.[10] Satellite and cable television soon gained a foothold.[10] Doordarshan, in turn, initiated reforms and modernisation.[10] With 1,400 television stations as of 2009, the country ranks 4th in the list of countries by number of television broadcast stations.[11]
On 16 November 2006, the Government of India released the community radio policy which allowed agricultural centres, educational institutions and civil society organisations to apply for community based FM broadcasting license. Community Radio is allowed 100 Watt Effective Radiated Power (ERP) with a maximum tower height of 30 meters. The license is valid for five years and one organisation can only get one license, which is non-transferable and to be used for community development purposes.
[edit]Communications
The Indian Government acquired the EVS EM computers from the Soviet Union, which were used in large companies and research laboratories.[12] Tata Consultancy Services – established in 1968 by the Tata Group – were the country's largest software producers during the 1960s.[12] The 'microchip revolution' of the 1980s had convinced both Indira Gandhi and her successor Rajiv Gandhi that electronics and telecommunications were vital to India's growth and development.[13] MTNL underwent technological improvements.[13] Between 1986–1987, the Indian government embarked upon the creation of three wide-area computer networking schemes: INDONET (intended to serve the IBM mainframes in India), NICNET (network for the National Informatics Centre), and the academic research oriented Education and Research Network (ERNET).[14]
The Indian economy underwent economic reforms in 1991, leading to a new era of globalisation and international economic integration.[15]Economic growth of over 6% annually was seen between 1993–2002.[15] The economic reforms were driven in part by significant the internet usage in India.[16] The new administration under Atal Bihari Vajpayee—which placed the development of Information Technology among its top five priorities— formed the Indian National Task Force on Information Technology and Software Development.[17] Internet gained a foothold in India by 1996.[12] India had a total of 100 million Internet users—comprising 8.5% of the country's population—by 2010.[18] By 2010, 13 million people in India also had access to broadband Internet— making it the 10th largest country in the world in terms of broadband Internet users.
India had a total of 34 million fixed lines in use by 2011.[19] In the fixed line arena, BSNL and MTNL are the incumbents in their respective areas of operation and continue to enjoy the dominant service provider status in the domain of fixed line services.[20] BSNL controls 79% of fixed line share in the country.[20]
In the mobile telephony sector, Bharti Airtel controls 24.3% subscriber base followed by Reliance Communications with 18.9%, Vodafonewith 18.8%, BSNL with 12.7% subscriber base as of June-2009.[20] India had a total of 880 million mobile phone connections by 2011.[21]Total fixed-line and wireless subscribers reached 688 million as of August 2010.[22]
[edit]Motion pictures
The history of film in India begins with the screening of Auguste and Louis Lumière moving pictures in Bombay during the July of 1895.[23]Raja Harishchandra—a full length feature film—was initiated in 1912 and completed later.[23] Alam Ara (released 14 March 1931) —directed by Ardeshir Irani—was the first Indian movie with dialogues.[24]
Indian films were soon being followed throughout Southeast Asia and the Middle East—where modest dressing and subdued sexuality of these films was found to be acceptable to the sensibilities of the audience belonging to the various Islamic countries of the region.[25] As cinema as a medium gained popularity in the country as many as 1, 000 films in various languages of India were produced annually.[25]Hollywood also gained a foothold in India with special effects films such as Jurassic Park (1993) and Speed (1994) being specially appreciated by the local audiences.[25] Expatriates throughout the United Kingdom and in the United States continued to give rise to an international audiences to Indian movies, which, according to The Encyclopædia Britannica (2008) entry on Bollywood, "continued to be formulaic story lines, expertly choreographed fight scenes, spectacular song-and-dance routines, emotion-charged melodrama, and larger-than-life heroes".[26]
[edit]See also
[edit]Notes
- ^ See Thomas 2006 and Burra & Rao 2006.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k Thomas, 105
- ^ On the whole, the press functions with little government censorship, and serious controls have been imposed only in matters of national security, in times of emergency, or when it is deemed necessary to avoid inflaming passions (e.g., after communal riots or comparable disturbances) —Schwartzberg (2008)
- ^ "A Press Freedom Index 2010". Reporters Without Borders. Retrieved 15 July 2010.
- ^ a b Thomas, 105–106
- ^ a b c Thomas, 106
- ^ a b c "World Association of Newspapers (2008), ''World Press Trends: Newspapers Are A Growth Business''". Wan-press.org. 2 June 2008. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^ a b c Schwartzberg (2008)
- ^ Thomas, 106–107
- ^ a b c Thomas, 107
- ^ CIA World Factbook: Field Listing – Television broadcast stations.
- ^ a b c Desai (2006)
- ^ a b Chand, 86
- ^ Wolcott & Goodman, 568
- ^ a b Sharma (2006)
- ^ Wolcott & Goodman, 564
- ^ Wolcott & Goodman, 564–565
- ^ See The World Factbook: Internet users and Internet World Stats.
- ^ CIA World Factbook: Rank Order – Telephones – main lines in use.
- ^ a b c From the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India see Study paper on State of Indian Telecom Network and Telecom Regulatory Authority of India Press Release No. 89 /2006.
- ^ CIA World Factbook: Rank Order – Telephones – mobile cellular.
- ^ Tripathy, Devidutta (25 July 2008). "Reuters (2008), ''India adds 8.94 mln mobile users in June''". Uk.reuters.com. Retrieved 1 September 2010.
- ^ a b Burra & Rao, 252
- ^ Burra & Rao, 253
- ^ a b c Watson (2008)
- ^ Encyclopædia Britannica (2008), Bollywood.
[edit]References
- Burra, Rani Day & Rao, Maithili (2006), "Cinema", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 1) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 252–259, Thomson Gale,ISBN 0-684-31350-2.
- Chand, Vikram K. (2006), Reinventing public service delivery in India: Selected Case Studies, Sage Publications, ISBN 0-7619-3489-8.
- Desai, Ashok V. (2006), "Information and other Technology Development", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 2) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 269–273, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31351-0.
- Schwartzberg, Joseph E. (2008), India, Encyclopædia Britannica.
- Sharma, Shalendra D. (2006), "Globalization", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 2) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 146–149, Thomson Gale,ISBN 0-684-31351-0.
- Thomas, Raju G. C. (2006), "Media", Encyclopedia of India (vol. 3) edited by Stanley Wolpert, pp. 105–107, Thomson Gale, ISBN 0-684-31352-9.
- Watson, James L. (2008), Globalization, Encyclopædia Britannica.
- Wolcott, P. & Goodman, S. E. (2003), Global Diffusion of the Internet – I India: Is the Elephant Learning to Dance?, Communications of the Association for Information Systems, 11: 560–646.
[edit]External links
- [1]
- India: the media, U.S. Library of Congress.
- Monthly newsletter on the Indian media industry, Free to download.
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An author-title index for EPW has been
prepared for the years from 1968 to 2010.
The PDFs of the Index have been uploaded,
year-wise, on the EPW web site. Visitors can
download the Index for all the years from the
site. (The Index for a few years is yet to be
prepared and will be uploaded when ready.)
EPW would like to acknowledge the help of
the staff of the library of the Indira Gandhi
Institute for Development Research, Mumbai,
in preparing the index under a project
supported by the RD Tata Trust.
http://epw.in/epw/uploads/articles/16760.pdf
SPECIAL ARTICLE
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 41
Why Worry about Inequality in the Booming
Indian Economy?
Thomas E Weisskopf
An earlier version of this paper was presented at the conference on
"Inequalities in India", organised and sponsored by the Center for
South Asian Studies of the University of Michigan under a grant from
the Trehan Foundation. I am grateful to participants in the conference
(in particular, Suresh Tendulkar), as well as to Arthur MacEwan for
comments that have been helpful to me in revising the paper.
Thomas E Weisskopf (tomw@umich.edu) is professor emeritus
of Economics at the University of Michigan, Ann-Arbor, USA.
This paper makes the case that, even in a poor country
such as India, decision-makers should aim not only to
eradicate poverty but also to reduce economic
inequality. After providing an overview of various
dimensions of economic inequality in India, it is argued
that such inequalities – both among individuals and
between identity groups – are a matter of concern even
independently of their implications for the extent of
poverty. It is discussed as to how government economic
policies can be oriented to reduce economic inequality
without reducing economic growth.
O
ver the last two decades India has emerged on the global
scene as a rising economic power. Although still a relatively poor country, India's huge population and its rapid
rate of economic growth since the early 1990s have combined to
make it an important player in the world economy.
1
More significantly for the Indian people, the higher rate of economic growth
in recent decades has contributed to a decline in the proportion
of the population living below a very modest poverty line. While
there is much dispute over the precise extent of poverty in India,
it is indisputable that standards of living have improved for a
significant share of India's poor during the period of rapid
economic growth since the early 1990s.
In the context of a booming Indian economy, in which poverty
is being reduced, concerns about inequalities in the distribution
of income and wealth have taken a back seat. Why should it matter if
the gains of economic growth are being unequally distributed, so
long as significant headway is being made in combating poverty?
My objective in this paper is to answer this question. I will try to
make the case that, even in a poor country such as India, we
should indeed be very concerned about economic inequality.
For many, especially in the academic arena, the injustice of a
high degree of economic inequality is self-evident, just as the
injustice of a high incidence of poverty is self-evident; so one
should aim at reducing both. Among economists, however, it is
commonly suggested that there is a trade-off between growth
and equity: increasing inequality is seen as a necessary concomitant – if not an actual contributor – to economic growth, and
efforts to curb inequality are seen as likely to retard the pace
of growth and thereby impede the effort to reduce poverty.
2
In arguing against this position, I will try to make my case
persuasive to sceptics.
Economic Inequality among Individuals
Whereas poverty involves absolute deprivation in terms of
economic resources such as income, wealth, and access to public
services, economic inequality involves relative deprivation – i e,
where one stands in relation to others in one's society. The arguments for limiting economic inequality that I find compelling are
of four broad kinds: moral, political, economic and social. I will
characterise each argument in terms of the societal goal to which
greater economic equality is likely to contribute.
Moral Arguments
People differ greatly with respect to what they consider a fair distribution of income or wealth. There is quite widespread agreement, SPECIAL ARTICLE
42 novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
however, on the importance of the following two goals for a
good society:
(1) To ensure that all citizens are respected and treated as fundamentally equal: But how one is treated depends a great deal on
one's economic status and resources. People with far fewer economic resources than the societal average are likely to be disrespected and disfavoured in a variety of ways, whereas people
with far more resources than the societal average will tend to be
treated with undue deference and granted undue favours.
(2) To promote equality of opportunity: But highly unequal economic resource endowments result in corresponding inequalities
of opportunity. Much evidence suggests that the degree of social and
economic mobility in a society is inversely correlated with the
degree of economic inequality,
3
arguably because opportunities for
advancement depend significantly on initial economic resources.
Political Arguments
There is widespread agreement that a good society needs to be
democratic – i e, it needs to have a political system in which
citizens have reasonably equal opportunity to influence governmental decision-making and therefore have reason to accept the
legitimacy of governmental power. This implies the following
societal goals:
(1) To limit the role of money in politics: Democracy is undermined if some people can deploy enormous economic resources
to influence political decisions, while others cannot. Great wealth
passed on across generations – whether in physical or in financial
assets – limits social mobility and leads to a hereditary aristocracy, which is antithetical to democracy.
4
(2) To promote societal cohesion: A political system – and the
power it vests in the government – will only be respected as
legitimate if people have a real sense of community with one
another as fellow members of the larger society. Substantial
economic disparities between individuals, however, inhibit the
development of such a sense of community; the resultant lack
of societal cohesion tends to undermine the legitimacy of the
political system and the governmental power it entails.
5
Economic Arguments
In a variety of ways economic inequalities generate significant
economic costs for a society, which could be curtailed – if not
eliminated – by a more equal distribution of economic resources.
Greater economic equality can promote greater economic efficiency
by contributing to the achievement of the following goals:
(1) To improve the allocation and development of human resources:
The greater the degree of economic inequality, the less likely it is
that full advantage can be taken of people's innate capacities to
make productive contributions. Many poor people with considerable innate talent, ability and drive will be consigned to a poor
education and to jobs of little responsibility; and many rich
people with little innate talent, ability and drive will nonetheless
be able to get a good education and access to positions of responsibility in society. Moreover, a more equal distribution of economic resources will improve the nutrition, health, and education of the poor, thereby increasing not only their well-being but
also their productive potential.
(2) To reduce social tensions and political instability: Economically deprived and socially disrespected people are often tempted
to challenge the established order in a variety of disturbing and
sometimes violent ways – such as strikes, protests, sabotage, and
crime. The resultant tensions and instability can easily render
property rights less secure and is likely to give rise to costly
efforts to combat disturbances and to pay for security systems,
prisons, etc.
(3) To reduce popular opposition to needed economic reforms: A
high degree of inequality is likely to generate suspicions that growthoriented reforms will only benefit the rich at the expense of the
poor, thereby intensifying popular opposition to such reforms.
6
This is especially true of reforms that increase the scope of market forces, which are likely to increase allocative efficiency but
also to distribute the resultant gains in a disequalising fashion –
absent systematic efforts to limit economic inequality.
(4) To foster cooperation as a basis for low-cost solutions to
"coordination failures": Ordinary market transactions, as well as
complex multi-party economic projects, work much more smoothly
when the individuals and groups involved can count on one
another's honesty, trustworthiness, and cooperative behaviour.
In the absence of widespread norms of trust and cooperation,
substantial resources must be devoted to monitoring, supervision,
and contract enforcement in order to assure that the terms of a
market transaction are respected or that inter-related economic
activities are well coordinated. But it is difficult to develop
and maintain norms of trust and cooperation in a society characterised by large economic disparities between the rich and
the poor.
7
Social Arguments
There are a number of respects in which economic inequalities
generate significant social costs for all members of society, in
ways that are not reflected in conventional measures of economic
well-being. Greater economic equality can reduce such social
costs by contributing to the achievement of the following goals:
(1) To improve health throughout the population: There is much
evidence that not only those who are the most economically
deprived, but all segments of society, suffer from worse health
outcomes the greater is the overall degree of economic inequality.
8
This evidence identifies stress as an important variable affecting
health outcomes and shows that stress levels throughout all
strata of a population tend to vary positively with the degree of
economic inequality. Moreover, the ability of a society to limit the
spread of disease and other public health problems is impaired to
the extent that a relatively poor segment of the population lacks
access to good nutrition and health facilities.
(2) To promote a better quality of life by reducing competitive
consumerism: The desire to improve one's relative position tends
to drive consumers into a competition in which the purchase of more
and more goods ends up at best just maintaining one's relative
position – a kind of "arms race" that adds little to overall well-being.
9
Less economic inequality, and hence a smaller gap between the
consumption norms of the rich and the consumption levels of the
bulk of the population, would reduce the salience of competitive
consumerism and permit a shift of resources towards goods, or SPECIAL ARTICLE
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 43
indeed leisure activities, that do more to improve the quality of
people's lives. Moreover, a shift from a quantitative to a more qualitative pattern of economic growth would reduce the pace of natural
resource destruction, waste product disposal, and air and water pollution, thereby promoting greater environmental sustainability.
10
Economic Inequality among Identity Groups
An identity group is a community of people who share characteristics that are physical or cultural and rarely alterable.
11
Economic
inequality between identity groups – each treated as a single
collective entity, with economic characteristics reflecting those
of the average member of the group – is at least as likely as economic
inequality among individuals to impede the achievement of some
of the key societal goals referenced in arguments raised in the
previous section. Most of the same arguments made for reducing inter-individual inequality can be made persuasively for
reducing inter-group inequality, but in the latter context the
following have a somewhat different character.
To Promote Equality of Opportunity: In the case of members of
an identity group that has been historically marginalised by
group-based negative discrimination, ensuring equal opportunity by eliminating all such discrimination may well prove insufficient to erode historically-generated differences in outcomes –
differences that have nothing to do with individual choices and
actions by group members. Economic decisions made in an unbiased
and non-discriminatory market context are unable to overcome
past negative discrimination when there is a tendency towards
clustering and social segregation in associational behaviour,
whereby members of a particular identity group prefer to intermarry, to live in the same residential neighbourhoods, and to join
the same community institutions.
12
This is because the acquisition of productive characteristics and skills by an individual child
depends significantly on the richness of upbringing that parents
can offer her/him and on the quality of the quasi-public resources
– such as neighbours, peers and schools – that local communities
can offer to children. These parental and community influences
convey advantages or disadvantages that cannot be equalised
by market forces; so full equality of opportunity requires that
compensatory steps be taken to reduce economic disparities
between groups and thereby provide more equal access to
important non-market resources and social networks.
To Promote Societal Cohesion: A political system – and the
power it vests in the government – will only be respected as
legitimate if people have a real sense of community with one
another as fellow members of the larger society. However, if
some identity groups are far more highly represented than other
groups in powerful and prestigious decision-making positions in
a society (within and outside of government), the legitimacy of the
political system and of the governmental power it entails will tend
to be undermined for members of the latter groups. The integrity
of a political system will thus benefit from reduction of inequalities
between groups and, in particular, by efforts to make the group
composition of the societal elite more broadly representative of
the population as a whole.
13
To Improve the Allocation and Development of Human
Resources: If some identity groups are far better represented
than others in the upper echelons of a society, then many members of the poorly represented groups may lack sufficient motivation (due to doubt about their ability to succeed) or sufficient opportunity (due to lack of access to useful connections) to develop
and apply their capacity to make productive contributions. Such
constraints on truly meritocratic human resource allocation are
likely to result in a significant loss of economic potential.
To Reduce Social Tensions and Political Instability: Inequalities between members of different identity groups within the
same society are likely to some extent to be attributable to – and
(even more so) to be seen as explained by – discrimination
against members of less-well-off groups. As a consequence, intergroup inequalities in a society are considerably more likely to
evoke strong feelings about the unfairness of the social order,
and are considerably more likely to lead to social and political
tensions and divisions, than inter-class inequalities. Even when
negative discrimination has largely been curbed, ongoing intergroup inequalities can reasonably be seen as attributable in part
to past negative discrimination; and the failure to address the
unequal consequences of such past discrimination can pose a
continuing challenge to social and political stability. Members of
relatively deprived groups in a society are therefore likely to
challenge the system in a variety of ways that are costly to all.
To Reduce Popular Opposition to Needed Economic Reforms:
A high degree of inequality between identity groups fortifies suspicions that growth-oriented reforms will benefit more powerful
groups at the expense of less favoured groups, thereby generating opposition to such reforms on the part of the latter.
To Foster Cooperation as a Basis for Low-Cost Solutions to
"Coordination Failures": It is more difficult to develop and
maintain widespread norms of trust and cooperation in a society
characterised by multiple identity groups than in a culturally
more homogeneous society. The difficulty is compounded if there
are large economic disparities between identity groups, whose
members are then all the more likely to distrust or disrespect
members of other groups.
Focus on Inequality Over Poverty
Where poverty is a problem of huge proportions – as in India –
rapid economic growth is a compelling objective, for growth does
generate resources with which to alleviate mass poverty. But there
are two major reasons why a focus on spurring economic growth,
to the exclusion of reducing economic inequality, is ill-advised.
The Independent Benefits of Inequality Reduction: In most
contemporary nations – certainly including India – the current
degree of economic inequality is too inequitable, in the sense that
a reduction in economic disparities would contribute positively
to overall societal welfare along lines elaborated earlier on. If
economic growth were increased and poverty were reduced
without a concomitant reduction in inequality, then the overall SPECIAL ARTICLE
44 novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
gains would be far less substantial than if inequality were simultaneously reduced. A few of the goals of reduced inequality might
be met simply by a reduction in poverty – e g, goals (the first moral
argument, the fourth economic argument and the first social argument). However, poverty reduction without inequality reduction
can contribute little or nothing to the achievement of most of the
other goals of inequality listed earlier.
It is worth noting too that inequality is usually measured in
strictly relative terms – e g, as shares or ratios of consumption,
income or wealth as between different economic classes or social
groups. But if such shares or ratios remain unchanged during a
period of overall economic growth, then the absolute size of the
disparities actually increases – and what happens to absolute disparities over the course of time is arguably more salient to people
than what happens to relative disparities.
14
This implies there
must be some reduction in conventionally-measured inequality
in order to avoid setbacks to the achievement of the various goals
served by reduced inequality.
The Prospect That Inequality Reduction Can Boost Economic
Growth: Economists often assert that, at least in the early stages
of economic development, rapid economic growth cannot be
achieved without a rise in economic inequality. Some argue that
government efforts to reduce inequality in the context of economic growth will restrain the rate of economic growth and thus
hamper efforts to reduce poverty. The potential costs most
often cited by critics of redistributive policies are that they will
(a) reduce short-run economic efficiency (for example by reducing individual incentives to work, or by generating administrative costs and creating more opportunities for corruption), and
(b) reduce long-run economic growth (for example by reducing
incentives to save and to invest in enhancing personal capabilities
or in societal capital accumulation).
Certainly, some kinds of government redistributive policy are
likely to have adverse effects on aggregate output and overall
economic growth. Examples are policies that impose a high tax
rate on business profits in order to raise resources to transfer
directly to the poor, or policies that limit flows of capital and
productive activity from one locality or region to another in an
effort to limit geographical disparities. But there is no iron law
that requires a trade-off between achieving more rapid growth
and reducing inequality. For one thing, statistical studies of trends
in growth and inequality across developing economies do not
support the notion that more rapid growth in output is correlated
with increases in inequality.
15
Furthermore, there is a growing
scholarly literature that distinguishes between bad inequalities
(or "unproductive disparities"), which hinder economic growth,
and good inequalities (or "productive disparities"), which promote economic growth.
16
Bad inequalities are rooted in market
failures, or coordination failures, or governance failures that
have the effect of impeding economic efficiency as they limit the
ability of poor and marginalised people to improve their economic well-being in productive ways – e g, by investing in human
or physical capital. Good inequalities incentivise and reward economic dynamism on the part of individuals (both rich and poor)
in the private and in the public sector.
If inequality is reduced primarily by policies that remove
unproductive disparities, it follows that reducing inequality can
actually contribute to economic growth and thereby contribute
both directly (via the reduction in inequality) and indirectly (via
more rapid economic growth) to the reduction of poverty. But it is
critical, in considering ways to reduce inequality, to identify and
promote those redistributive policies that cut back on unproductive disparities, while avoiding redistributive policies that inhibit
truly productive disparities.
Economic Inequality in India
I aim here to review the available evidence on several different
kinds of economic inequality in contemporary India.
17
I will draw
attention here to trends in inequality over time since Indian
Independence, focusing on differences between the period before
and after the adoption of a market-oriented reform policy of
controlled liberalisation in 1991.
18
By any measure of income distribution, India is currently
neither among the most economically unequal countries of the
world nor among the most equal. The most equal include most of
the nations of western and central Europe, Canada and Australia
– all relatively affluent countries. As compared to other developing countries of substantial size, India is certainly less unequal
than South Africa and Brazil and probably less unequal than
China. Income inequality in India is more comparable to that in
Argentina, Russia, Indonesia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Turkey.
19
Wealth inequality in India appears to be less unequal than in the
United States, but more unequal than in most other affluent
countries and China – especially in the distribution of land.
20
Brief Summary
Throughout the last 50 years inequalities of income and of consumption expenditure by individuals have been greater in urban
than in rural India. In the pre-reform period the urban/rural gap
fell at times and rose at times; but after 1991 it widened in most of
the Indian states as well as in India as a whole. Within rural areas
inequality appears to have declined, slowly and unsteadily, from
the late 1950s to the early 1990s; it then rose considerably in
the post-reform period. In urban areas inequality declined a bit,
also unsteadily, from the late 1950s to the early 1990s; and it
rose sharply thereafter. The ratio of consumption in urban areas
to that in rural areas did not differ much as between the poor
and the rich in the pre-reform period, but in the post-reform
period the ratio was significantly higher for the rich than for the
poor. There is clear evidence that in the post-reform period disproportionate shares of consumption gains have gone to better
off urban residents.
In the late 1980s, when the degree of economic inequality was
considerably lower than it is now, the top 1% of consumers in
India are estimated to have enjoyed on average about 25 times as
much real consumption per person than the bottom 1%;
21
the gap
in income was much higher. One of the few studies of trends
among the richest Indians found that the income share of the
richest 1% declined from above 10% in the late 1950s to about 5%
in the early 1990s and then rose again to roughly 10% by 2000.
22
There can be little doubt that it has increased further since then.SPECIAL ARTICLE
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 45
For the distribution of wealth among individuals in India there
are no reliable data prior to the early 1990s; and the available data
are widely recognised to understate significantly the amount of
wealth held by the rich. The most extensive study yet done estimated
that in both the early 1990s and the early 2000s the wealthiest 10%
of wealth-holders held at least 50% of total assets, while the least
wealthy 10% held at most 0.4% of total assets and 0.2% of net
worth.
23
Land is the most important single asset in India, and it is
more unequally distributed than wealth as a whole. The ownership
of financial assets is even more concentrated, as almost all financial
wealth is held by well below 1% of the population. The limited evidence available on trends over time points to increasing inequality
in the distribution of wealth in India since the early 1990s.
Data on economic inequalities across religious and caste groups
in India are considerably sparser than data on inequalities among
individuals, but in recent decades more information has become
available. In the rural areas of India there is a clear hierarchy of
economic inequality across social groups. Hindu "forward castes"
(H-FCs) fare much better than the national average; Hindu
"backward castes" are close to the average; Muslims are somewhat
worse off; dalits and adivasis are by far the worst off. In urban areas
H-FCs are even more dominant, Hindu backward castes are still
close to the national average, but Muslims are a little worse off
than urban dalits and adivasis. At the all-India level, the hierarchy
of social groups is similar to that of the rural sector, but the
differences between groups are greater. Starting from the lowest
levels, dalits and adivasis as a group have recorded from the
1980s to the late 1990s the most rapid growth in earnings and in the
proportion of college graduates among persons in their 20s;
Muslims have recorded the slowest growth in these respects.
Class Inequalities
The kind of economic inequality most often discussed by economists is that of the distribution of income across households or
individuals. In India, however, the inequality data collected most
frequently and most systematically – by the National Sample Survey
(NSS) – involve the distribution of expenditure on consumption
rather than income. Because the rich tend to save a significant
fraction of their income, while the poor tend to use all of their
income – and often some borrowed money as well – for consumption, the distribution of consumption is considerably less unequal
than that of income. Furthermore, the NSS has a practice of oversampling the poor and undersampling the rich (often missing the
super-rich altogether), so its survey results tend to understate the
degree of inequality even of consumption. Thus measures of inequality calculated for consumption in India significantly understate the actual degree of inequality in income.
24
Because economic growth in India in recent decades has spawned an increasing number of super-rich,
25
the understatement of the degree of
inequality in consumption and in income is most likely to have
become more serious over time, resulting in an understatement
of the growth in these economic inequalities as well.
Table 1 presents a series of estimates of Gini coefficients
26
measuring the degree of inequality in consumption in rural India,
Table 1: Data on Class Inequality – Gini Coefficients (%) of Per Capita Consumer Expenditure
Rural Year 1957-58 1963-64 1968-69 1970-71 1973-74 1977-78 1983-84 1987-88 1990-91 1993-94 1997-98 2004-05 1973-91 1991-97
Jha (2005) 33.7 29.0 30.7 28.3 31.2 30.1 30.2 27.7 28.5 30.1
Dreze and Sen (2002) 1960-61: 32.5 28.8 28.5 30.9 30.1 29.4 27.7 28.6 30.6
Jain and Tendulkar (1989, 1992)* 28.7 28.1 31.1 33.1 30.2
Datt (1999) 28.5 30.9 30.1 29.4 27.7 28.6 30.6 27.98 29.5
Himanshu (2007)** 30.4 29.9 28.6 30.5
Dev and Ravi (2007)** 30.8 28.6 30.5
Topalova (2008) 31.2† 30.1 28.5 29.8
Sarkar and Mehta (2010) 31.9 29.8 32.0
Urban Year 1957-58 1963-64 1968-69 1970-71 1973-74 1977-78 1983-84 1987-88 1990-91 1993-94 1997-98 2004-05 1973-91 1991-97
Jha (2005) 35.9 36.5 32.9 31.5 33.7 33.4 35.6 34.0 34.5 36.1
Dreze and Sen (2002) 1960-61: 35.6 35.7 30.8 34.7 34.1 34.6 34.0 34.3 36.5
Jain and Tendulkar (1989, 1992)* 34.4 31.6 33.7 33.4 35.6
Datt (1999) 30.8 34.7 34.1 34.6 34.0 34.5 36.6 34.79 36.04
Himanshu (2007)** 33.9 30.5 34.4 37.6
Dev and Ravi (2007)** 34.1 34.3 37.5
Topalova (2008) 34.0† 34.9 34.3 37.8
Sarkar and Mehta (2010) 36.7 35.7 38.9
All-India Year 1957-58 1963-64 1968-69 1970-71 1973-74 1977-78 1983-84 1987-88 1990-91 1993-94 1997-98 2004-05 1983-88 1994-97
Ravallion (2000) 32.06 33.08 31.21 31.52 37.83 32.94 35.67
Topalova (2008) 31.9 31.3 30.3 32.5
Sarkar and Mehta (2010) 33.7 34.7 37.6
Vakulabharanam (2010) 32.6 36.3
* Fractile-price-adjusted data; ** Uniform recall period; † 1982-83
Sources: Jha 2005 Table 4
Dreze and Sen 2002 Table A.6
Jain and Tendulkar 1989 Table 3
Jain and Tendulkar 1992 Table 6
Datt 1999 Table 1
Himanshu 2007 Tables 1 and 2.
Dev and Ravi 2007 Table 3
Topalova 2008 Table 3
Sarkar and Mehta 2010 Table 6
Ravallion 2000 Table (un-numbered)
Vakulabharanam 2010 Table 3
For full bibliographical citations, see the list of References.SPECIAL ARTICLE
46 novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
urban India, and India as a whole, for various years from the late
1950s to the mid-2000s and over the two periods 1973-91 and
1991-97. All these estimates are based on NSS surveys, which are
done separately for rural and urban India (representing on average
roughly three-fourths and one-fourth of the total Indian population
over the five-decades under consideration). All-India estimates are
also included in the table; these are less often calculated because
to do so requires complex integration of primary data from the rural
and the urban areas.
27
There are several reasons why the estimated
Gini coefficients for any given year differ from one another. For one
thing, there are often inconsistencies in the questions asked from
one survey round to another, and different analysts make different
kinds of adjustments to deal with that problem. For another, to get
figures comparable across time periods and regions, it is necessary
to adjust for differential changes in the prices of commodities
consumed; and this may be done by different analysts in different
ways. In principle, one also ought to take account of different
prices faced by consumers in different fractile groups; but this is
rarely done.
28
With these caveats in mind, one may summarise
the evidence in the table – supplemented by some key studies
29
whose findings cannot be fitted into the format of Table 1.
The Gini coefficient of inequality in rural consumption has
averaged about 30% over the whole five-decade period. It appears to
have declined from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, then
risen in the early 1980s, then declined to reach a low point in the
early 1990s, and finally risen again through the mid-2000s. It has
been higher in the post-reform period since 1991 than in the two
previous decades. Sen and Himanshu (2004) found a slow decline in
rural consumption inequality from the late 1970s to the early
1990s, followed by a sharp rise in the early 2000s. Looking at the
rate of growth of real consumer expenditure in the 1990s by the
poorest 40% of consumers, they found that per capita consumption by the rural poor increased only one-fifth as much as the
average increase in national per capita consumption. Sarkar and
Mehta (2010), comparing growth rates of consumer expenditure
before and after the 1991 reforms, estimated that in the pre-reform
period the poorer fractile groups registered a faster rate of growth
than the richer fractile groups, whereas in the post-reform period
consumption growth rates were significantly higher for the top
20% than for the rest of the rural population.
The Gini coefficient of inequality in urban consumption has
averaged about 35% over the whole five-decade period – reflecting a
significantly higher degree of inequality than in the rural sector.
It appears to have declined a bit from the late 1950s through the
mid-1970s, then risen a bit in the early 1980s, then changed little
until the early 1990s, and then risen noticeably through the mid-
2000s. As in the rural sector, urban inequality has been higher in
the post-reform period than in the two decades prior to 1991. Sen
and Himanshu (2004) found that in the 1990s, per capita consumption by the urban poor increased only half as much as the per
capita national average rate of growth of consumer expenditure.
Sarkar and Mehta (2010), comparing growth rates of real consumer
expenditure for the decade before and the decade after the liberalising reforms of the early 1990s, estimated that the average rate of
growth for all urban consumers was 0.75% in the pre-reform period
and 1.77% in the post-reform period. Comparing patterns of growth
of consumer expenditure across fractile groups before and after
1991, they found that the pro-rich bias in the post-reform period
was even more striking in the urban than in the rural sector.
The degree of inequality in consumption for all of India depends
both on the degrees of inequality within the rural and urban sectors
(just discussed) and on the degree of inequality between those
two sectors. Numerous studies have found evidence that the latter
has been rising in recent decades. Datt and Ravallion (2009)
found that the ratio of average real per capita consumption in urban
areas to that in rural areas fell from about 1.33 in the early 1950s
to 1.17 in the early 1960s, then rose slowly to 1.25 by the mid-1990s
and more rapidly to about 1.30 in the mid-2000s. Topalova (2008)
reported that in the 1980s, and even more so in the 1990s, the
urban/rural consumption gap widened in most of the Indian
states as well as in India as a whole. Sarkar and Mehta (2010)
investigated how the urban/rural ratio of average per capita consumption varies across different fractile groups. They found that
this ratio did not differ much as between the poor and the rich in the
pre-reform period, but that in the post-reform period the ratio
was significantly higher for the richer than for the poorer groups –
indicating that in the post-reform period a disproportionate share
of the consumption gains went to better off urban residents.
Increasing Post-Reform Consumption Inequality
Gini coefficients for the degree of consumption inequality in
India as a whole, which are available only for the post-1980 period,
are presented at the bottom of Table 1. The estimates in the table
show that all-India Gini coefficient averaged about 32% from the
early 1980s through the early 1990s and then increased significantly in the post-reform period to a level of at least 35%.
30
Ravallion
(2000) calculated decile shares of consumption in India from 1983
to 1997. He found that over this period the share of the poorest
two deciles remained quite flat, the share of the middle deciles
fluctuated around a slight downward trend, and the share of the
richest two deciles showed a clear upward trend; within the 1990s
the upward trend of the latter was even more marked. These findings were corroborated by Topalova (2008), who concluded that
"all measures point to a significant increase in overall inequality
in the 1990s, particularly in urban areas" and that "in the 1990s,
the top of the population enjoyed a substantially larger share of the
gains from economic growth compared to the previous decade".
Even before the disequalising trend that began in the early 1990s,
the degree of consumption inequality in India was substantial: in
the late 1980s, when the all-India Gini coefficient was upwards of
30%, the top 1% of consumers are estimated to have consumed
on average about 25 times as much as the bottom 1%.
31
One study has attempted to compensate for the two major
shortcomings of the NSS data – the focus on consumption rather
than income and the undersampling of the rich. Banerjee and
Piketty (2003) used data on individual income tax returns to
chart the evolution of the share of top income earners in India
from 1956 to 2000. They found that the income shares of the top
0.01%, the top 0.1% and the top 1% declined very substantially
until the early-to-mid-1980s, but then rose again by the year
2000 to reach levels not far below those of the year 1956. The
share of the top 1% of income earners dropped from roughly 13% SPECIAL ARTICLE
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 47
in the late 1950s to about 10% in the late 1960s and down to 5% in
the early 1990s, then rose sharply to over 10% in the late 1990s.
I turn finally to some data recently compiled on the distribution
of wealth in India. Wealth – whether measured as the total value
of assets, or as net worth (assets minus liabilities) – is everywhere
far more unequally distributed than income or consumption. Many
people have no significant assets at all, or have liabilities that outweigh their assets; while a small number of people have been able
to accumulate enormous holdings of wealth. Data on the distribution of wealth in India – as elsewhere – are subject to more shortcomings than data on income and consumption. Not only do the
rich tend to be undersampled in surveys, but even when surveyed
they have every incentive to under-report their wealth holdings,
to report below-market values for their assets, and to hide illegitimately acquired wealth. The available data are thus bound to understate the full extent of inequality in the distribution of wealth; but at
least they yield estimates of the lower bound of that inequality.
Data on the distribution of wealth ownership in India come
primarily from two NSS household surveys of debt and investment
throughout India, one in 1991-92 and the second in 2002-03. The
most extensive study based on these surveys was carried out by
Jayadev et al (2007);
32
they estimated Gini coefficients for all-India
per capita total asset ownership of 64% in 1991-92 and 65% in
2002-03. The corresponding figures for net worth were almost
identical: 64% and 66%. To express the degree of inequality in
more easily comprehensible terms: in both years the wealthiest
10% of wealth-holders held roughly 50% of total assets and 50% of
net worth, while the least wealthy 10% held roughly 0.4% of total
assets and 0.2% of net worth. Land is the single most important
asset for most Indian wealth-holders, and it is more unequally
distributed than wealth as a whole – with a Gini coefficient of 73%
in both years. The ownership of financial assets is even more concentrated, with an estimated Gini coefficient of 99% in both years;
at most 5% of Indians participates in the stock market, and almost all
financial wealth is held by just a fraction of 1% of the population.
There is little evidence from NSS surveys of any significant
change in the degree of wealth inequality between 1991 and 2002.
However, Ahya and Sheth (2007) have estimated that in the
following four years there was a huge increase in wealth – more
than the value of total Indian GDP – in financial equity, residential
property and gold, and that most of this increase accrued to a
relatively small segment of the population.
Group Inequalities
In a nation as multicultural as India, a great deal of interest attaches
to inequalities between identity groups as well as inequalities across
Table 2: Data on Social Group Inequality (1999-2000 unless otherwise indicated)
ST SC SC+ST H-OBC H-FC Hindu Muslim All*
Rural (72% of total)
% of the population 9.6%** 16.5%** 30.2% 19.3% 75.6% 17.3% 100%
% poor and % well-off*** 50.9 2.7 42.9 3.4 33.7 6.1 16.9 14.0 37.5 5.5 33.6 7.3
% poor minus % well-off 48.2 39.5 27.6 2.9 32.0 26.3
MPCE 2004-05 86% 100% 129% 95% 100%
(as % of overall average)
Gini coefficient 2004-05 23% 25% 28% 26% 28%
Urban (28% of total)
% of the population 2.9%** 14.0%** 27.2% 38.3% 82.30% 12.0% 100%
% poor and % well-off*** 42.6 5.7 43.1 2.0 36.0 3.7 4.9 17.1 46.5 2.5 28.5 7.8
% poor minus % well-off 36.9 41.1 32.3 -12.2 44.0 20.7
MPCE 2004-05 62% 73% 113% 62% 100%
(as % of overall average)
Gini coefficient 2004-05 30% 32% 34% 32% 36%
All-India
% of the population 24.4 80.5 13.4 100.0
MPCE 2004-05 74% 92% 144% 90% 100%
(as % of overall average)
Growth in weekly earnings 4.72% 3.61% 3.38% 3.60%
(annual rate 1987-1999)
% of professionals 1999-2000 5.7% 6.0% 15.4%**** 11.5% 12.4%
(among household heads)
College graduates
% of persons aged 24-29 1983 0.8% 1.3% 6.5% 2.5%
1999-2000 3.0% 3.2% 11.7% 4.4%
* Other religious groups (Christians, Sikhs, etc), amounting to 7.1%, 5.7% and 6.1% of the rural, urban and all-India populations, are not shown in the table.
** ST and SC figures were calculated by applying SC and ST proportions from the 2001 Census of India to the total SC+ST proportion from the Sachar Report.
*** rural/urban poor = below rural/urban poverty line; rural/urban well-off = above 775/1,500 rupees MPCE. **** Includes both H-OBC and H-FC.
Sources:
% of the population Rural and Urban GoI (2006) (Sachar Report), Table 1.1, except as indicated in note ** above.
All-India 2001 Census of India.
% poor and % well-off Rural and Urban Deshpande S (2003), Tables 1 and 3.
MPCE Rural, Urban, All-India GOI (2006) (Sachar Report), Figure 8.2 and related text.
(Monthly per capita expenditure)
Gini coefficient Rural and Urban GoI (2006) (Sachar Report), Figure 8.7.
Growth in weekly earnings All-India Bhaumik and Chakrabarty (2006), Table 1.
% of professionals All-India Desai and Kulkarni (2008), Table 1.
(among household heads)
College graduates All-India Desai and Kulkarni (2008), Table 2 (average for males and females).
% of persons aged 24-29
For full bibliographical citations, see the list of References.SPECIAL ARTICLE
48 novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
households or individuals. Among the most salient identity groups
in contemporary India are social groups distinguished by caste and/
or religion.
33
Data on such social group inequalities are considerably
sparser than data on household or individual inequalities; but in
recent decades more attention has been paid to the former. Table 2
(p 47) presents relevant data on economic inequalities in India as
between Hindus and Muslims and – among Hindus
34
– four major
caste groups: adivasis or "scheduled tribes" (ST), dalits or "scheduled
castes" (SC), Hindu "other backward classes" (H-OBC), and H-FCs.
Before summarising some of the key findings reported in the
Table 1 reiterate that, because most of the group data are based on
NSS surveys that under-sample the rich, the data tend to understate the degree of inequality between richer and poorer groups.
In the rural areas of India there is a clear hierarchy of social
groups when it comes to basic economic inequality. Whether one
looks at the percentage of group members living below the official
poverty line, or the difference between the percentage of those in
poverty and the percentage of those labelled "well-off" (i e, middleclass or above), or average monthly per capita expenditure (MPCE),
the pattern of group-wise economic inequality is the same: Hindu
FCs fare much better than the national average, Hindu OBCs are
close to the average, and Muslims somewhat worse off, while SCs
and STs are by far the worst off. The Hindu FCs are even more
dominant with respect to economic well-being in urban areas, but
the hierarchy is somewhat different for the other groups. Urban
Muslims are if anything a little worse off than urban SCs and STs
in their economic well-being, while urban Hindu OBCs are still
the closest to the national average. The Gini coefficient of withingroup inequality is a bit lower for SC+STs than for other groups,
and highest among Hindu FCs, both in the urban and in the rural
sector – no doubt reflecting the lack of well-off people among
SC+STs and the presence of many among Hindu FCs.
At the all-India level, the hierarchy of social groups in terms of
average MPCE in 2004-05 is similar to that of the rural sector, but
the differentiation between groups is sharper.
35
Hindu FCs are
considerably further above the national average, Hindu OBCs and
Muslims are both somewhat below that average, while SC+STs
are by far the furthest below the average. Interestingly, however,
the SC+ST group recorded the highest rate of growth in earnings
between 1987 and 1999, while the Muslims as a group recorded
the lowest. The pattern of inter-social-group inequality in the occupational and educational spheres is similar to that in the economic sphere: Hindu FCs and OBCs as a single group are far
ahead, and SC and STs well behind, in both the proportion of professionals among household heads and the proportion of college
graduates among persons 24 to 29 years of age. In the educational sphere it is again the SCs and STs who have advanced most
rapidly (in relation to their low starting points), and the Muslims
most slowly, from the 1980s to the end of the 1990s.
A limited amount of information is available on the distribution
of wealth by social group, also based on the NSS investment and
debt surveys of 1991-92 and 2002-03. Jayadev et al (2007) estimated
that in 2002-03 Hindus had per capita asset holdings on average
about 50% greater than Muslims, and that among Hindus FCs
were much wealthier than SC+STs, with OBCs in the middle.
Zacharias and Vakulabharanam (2009) compared per capita mean
and median wealth holdings of urban and rural STs, SCs and
Hindu "other castes" (OC = FC+OBC) in 1991-92 and 2002-03.
They found that urban wealth levels were significantly higher than
rural wealth levels for all groups in both years. Not surprisingly,
urban and rural Hindu OCs occupied the top two positions. Rural
SCs and STs occupied the bottom two positions at average wealth
levels less than half of Hindu OCs, while urban SCs and STs had
slightly higher wealth levels at a little more than half of Hindu OCs.
Percentage changes between the two years were rather similar for
all groups, except that the mean value of per capita wealth for urban
STs rose at a significantly more rapid pace, even though the corresponding median value rose much more slowly – indicating that
a relatively small number of urban STs with relatively high wealthholdings made big gains over this period, though not enough to
change their position in the rank ordering of the six groups.
Alternative Government Policies
The reduction of inequality requires a deliberate effort to limit the
flow of economic gains to the relatively rich and to expand the flow
of economic gains to the relatively poor. If such an effort is to be
carried out on a large scale, it will have to be undertaken by governmental authorities with the power to implement policies that significantly affect the distribution of economic resources. Some policy
measures taken to reduce economic inequality may impose costs in
terms of reduced economic efficiency and dynamism. I seek therefore to identify below the kinds of inequality-reducing policies that
are least likely to have such adverse effects on economic growth.
Limiting the Economic Gains of the Rich
(1) Progressive Taxation of Individual Income: Income tax
rates that rise with the level of income are reasonably grounded,
in that the ability to pay rises as income rises while the utility of
additional untaxed income arguably falls as incomes rise. But tax
rates on the well-to-do should not rise beyond the point where
the supply of labour by the well-to-do is significantly impaired by
the reduced after-tax return to labour.
(2) Progressive Taxation of Individual Wealth: Wealth taxes
that rise with the level of wealth are justifiable on the same basis
as income taxes, but it is analogously important in this case not to
avoid reducing the after-tax return to saving to the point where it
significantly reduces the incentive to save or invest. The best way
to tax wealth is upon its inheritance, in the form of progressive
taxation of estates or bequests, since the disincentives from such
taxation are relatively indirect and thus less forceful.
(3) Taxation of Business Profits: This kind of taxation is less
desirable than income or wealth taxation, because it directly
impacts productive enterprises. If it is to be employed, it would be
best to exempt reinvested profits and target distributed profits, so
as to encourage further investment. On the other hand, where
business profits are subsidised by government through various
forms of "corporate welfare", the elimination of such subsidies
will simultaneously promote economic efficiency and reduce
economic inequality.
36SPECIAL ARTICLE
Economic & Political Weekly EPW novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 49
(4) Expropriation of Productive Assets from the Wealthy:
Expropriation of assets – for example land, plant and equipment,
housing – reduces the incentive to invest and creates potentially
damaging uncertainty in the business climate; so it is a policy
that should be implemented, if at all, on a one-shot basis and with
great care. However, if assets are initially distributed highly unequally (as is often the case with land), redistribution from largeholders to smallholders or non-holders can bring significant gains
– as detailed under policy number 4 below.
(5) Antitrust Action to Reduce Monopoly Power: It is a fundamental tenet of economic theory that monopolies and nearmonopolies generate both inequalities and inefficiencies by limiting
market competition. Breaking up monopolies and near-monopolies,
and encouraging more market competition, simultaneously reduces
the monopoly profits of the rich and improves the allocation of
resources as well as the incentive to invest productively.
(6) Limitation of the Inter-regional Movement of Capital:
National governments are often tempted to limit or counter such
movement, in order to reduce economic disparities between rich
and poor regions of the country. Such disparities, however, may
well reflect comparative advantage, or the dynamic advantage of
agglomeration and clustering, or superior economic policymaking
at the regional level. Rather than restricting inter-regional movement of capital, which may well reduce economic growth, it is
better to address excessive regional economic differentials by using tax revenues to stimulate development in poorer areas.
Expanding Economic Gains of the Poor
(1) Cash or In-kind Transfers to the Poor: Such transfers are
justifiable on humanitarian grounds, when people lack the
resources for a decent standard of living through no fault of their
own. Insofar as they improve the nutrition and health of the ablebodied poor, such transfers can increase not only their well-being
but also their productive capacity. The transfers should be
tailored, however, to avoid impairing to any significant extent
the incentive to work.
(2) Labour Subsidies: In a poor country a large proportion of the
poor are likely to be working in jobs or activities with very low
remuneration. Transfers to the working poor, in the form of progressive negative income taxes whose size declines as incomes
rise, increase the return to labour supplied by the poor.
(3) Improved and/or Subsidised Access of the Poor to Credit
Markets: It is widely recognised that unequal access of the rich
and the poor to credit markets leads to an inefficient allocation of
capital (both human and physical).
37
Governmental efforts to
reduce this inequality and to facilitate accumulation of productive
assets by the poor are not costless, but they can yield a high return in
more rapid growth through more efficient capital markets.
(4) Transfers of Expropriated Physical Assets to the WealthPoor: In the many contexts where all-encompassing contracts
are hard to specify or to enforce, it is often more efficient for
persons actually working productive assets to own those assets,
and thus to have rights to the residual income generated from the
assets, because those persons bear directly the consequences of
decision-making about the assets.
38
For example, ownership of
land by cultivators is often preferable to tenancy arrangements
with absentee landowners in which the gains from increases (or
the losses from decreases) in production do not accrue fully to
the cultivators.
(5) Public Investments That Improve Labour Quality: Just as
unequal access to credit markets leads to inefficient capital
allocation, unequal access to public educational institutions (or
subsidised private ones) leads to inefficient allocation of human
resources. Government spending that expands educational
opportunities and distributes them more widely and efficiently
(according to innate potential rather than financial means) is
arguably the form of public investment with the greatest simultaneous pay-off in economic growth and inequality reduction. A
similar argument can be made with respect to public investment
in healthcare facilities, especially where lack of sufficient nutrition and/or lack of adequate medical care impairs the capability
to work of a substantial part of the population.
(6) Affirmative Action for Historically Marginalised Groups:
Overt discrimination against members of marginalised groups
both aggravates economic inequality and hinders economic
efficiency and growth, so affirmative action policies that combat
such discrimination are clearly desirable ways to reduce inequality
between individuals and groups. The same is true of measures to
ensure that information about educational, job and economic
opportunities is made available to members of marginalised groups
as widely as to others. More controversial are affirmative action
policies that provide preferences to members of marginalised
groups, for in this case it is arguable that such policies may interfere with economic efficiency by favouring less qualified candidates from the beneficiary groups over more qualified competitors, and that they may increase inequality within marginalised
groups while reducing inequality between such groups and
dominant groups. Yet the stronger form of affirmative action can
nonetheless be justified by the fact that continued adherence to a
group-blind standard cannot lead ultimately to outcomes that do
not reflect prior discrimination.
39
It is especially appropriate to
concentrate affirmative action policies on equalising educational
and residential opportunities, for these are key arenas where
historically discriminated-against minorities continue to face
barriers to social and economic mobility from group clustering of
the corresponding local public goods, which result in inefficient
allocations of human and social capital.
Conclusions
There is much that the government of a poor country such as
India can do to reduce economic inequalities while promoting
economic growth and combating poverty. The most promising
policies that limit the economic gains of the rich are those that
tax their income and (especially) wealth progressively, that reduce SPECIAL ARTICLE
50 novemBER 19, 2011 vol xlvi no 47 EPW Economic & Political Weekly
"corporate welfare", that break up monopolistic market positions,
and that shift ownership away from absentee asset-owners (especially of land). The most promising policies that expand the
economic gains of the poor and the marginalised are those that
improve their health, that increase their access to good-quality
education institutions, that improve their access to credit markets,
that promote higher employment, and that shift asset ownership
to actual producers (especially cultivators). That the above policies
are not pursued to a much greater extent nowadays is a sad commentary, not on any iron laws of economics, but on the current
constellation of political power in most countries around the world.
The recent experience of Brazil demonstrates how rapid
economic growth can indeed be combined with reduction of
Notes
1 During the four decades from 1950 to 1990, the
rate of growth of the Indian economy was relatively modest: gross domestic product (GDP)
increased at an average annual rate of about 4%,
and GDP per capita at about 2%. In the 1990s the
corresponding figures increased by roughly two
percentage points each, and in the 2000s they increased by another 2-3 percentage points.
2 See, for example, Tendulkar (2010). I am grateful
to Suresh Tendulkar for a lengthy e-mail dialogue
about many of the issues I address in this paper.
3 See Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), Chapter 12. On
p 169 they conclude: "Bigger income differences
seem to solidify the social structure and decrease
the chances of upward mobility. Where there are
greater inequalities of outcome, equal opportunity
is a significantly more distant prospect."
4 The US Supreme Court Justice Brandeis put it well:
"We can have concentrated wealth in the hands of
a few or we can have democracy, but we can't
have both" (quoted by Jeffrey Madrick in an op-ed
column in the New York Times, 14 December 2010).
5 As Nicholas Kristof has written: "Economic polarisation also shatters our sense of national union
and common purpose, fostering political polarisation as well" (op-ed column in the New York Times,
6 November 2010).
6 This point has been well made in the Indian context by, among many others, Chaudhuri and
Ravallion (2006).
7 See Bardhan (2004), especially Chapter 2, "Distributive Conflicts and the Persistence of Inefficient
Institutions".
8 See Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), Chapters 6 and 13.
9 This point has been made most forcefully by
Robert Frank; see Frank (2007).
10 See Wilkinson and Pickett (2009), Chapter 15.
11 In this paper I consider identity groups based on
race, caste, tribe, region of origin, mother tongue,
religion, and/or cultural tradition, setting aside
groups based on gender or sexual preference
because these raise rather different issues.
12 See Loury (1987) for a convincing exposition of
the argument presented in this paragraph.
13 Anderson (2002) has argued persuasively that
this is the single-most important rationale for
positive discrimination in favour of historically
marginalised groups.
14 This point has been persuasively made, in the
context of Indian economic development, by
Ravallion (2005).
15 See, for example, Bruno, Ravallion and Squire
(1999).
16 A good example is Chaudhuri and Ravallion
(2006).
17 As Rohini Somanathan has reminded me, the
data on economic inequality that I review in this
appendix do not reflect the effects of taxation and
public expenditures on individual economic wellbeing; this remains an under-researched issue.
18 Elements of the new reform policies were foreshadowed in the early 1980s, but it was not until
the 1990s that a major shift was undertaken.
19 It is difficult to place India in a world rank order of
income inequality, not only because data on income
distribution in most countries vary greatly in
terms of how inequality is defined and measured,
but also because most distributional data collected
in India are for consumption expenditure rather
than for income received. The rough comparative
information provided in this paragraph is drawn
from standard UN and World Bank sources.
20 See Jayadev et al (2007) and Bardhan (2009).
21 These estimates are from Tendulkar and Jain (1995),
who have done the most meticulous research on
the distribution of consumption expenditure,
adjusting carefully for different prices faced by
consumers at different levels of consumption.
22 These estimates are from Banerjee and Piketty
(2003).
23 All the figures mentioned in this paragraph are
from Jayadev et al (2007).
24 The degree to which measures of consumption
inequality understate income inequality in India
may be gauged by comparing estimates of the Gini
coefficient for all-India consumption in 2004-05,
which average roughly 35% as shown in Table 1,
with an estimated Gini coefficient of 54% for
all-India income calculated by the Indian National
Council for Applied Economic Research (NCAER)
from a household survey carried out in the same
year (as reported in Bardhan 2009).
25 See the list of India's wealthiest individuals at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Indians_by_
net_worthon-line
26 The value of a Gini coefficient can range from 0 to 1,
with higher values denoting greater inequality.
The Gini coefficient is usually expressed in percentage terms; and it should be noted that a difference
of just a few percentage points represents a considerable difference in the degree of inequality.
27 I could not find any detailed and methodologically
transparent studies of the all-India distribution of
consumer expenditure prior to the early 1980s.
28 To my knowledge only Jain and Tendulkar (1989,
1992) have adjusted consumption distribution
data to take account of the different prices faced
by consumers in different fractile groups.
29 Notably Sen and Himanshu (2004) and Sarkar
and Mehta (2010), whose careful studies of trends
in consumption inequality examined differences
between the experiences of richer and poorer
fractile groups; see also Topalova (2008).
30 Bhalla (2007, ch 11) reported that "in the low
growth period 1950-1980, consumption inequality
in India improved [i e, declined] by about 15 to
20%". It is not clear, however, what his sources
were for this estimate. He went on to write that
"since 1983, inequality levels have stayed within a
tight 1 to 3 Gini point range around a mean of
31[%]." It is very hard to reconcile this assertion
with all the evidence cited in this paper on the
increase in rural, urban and all-India consumption
inequality, as well as the evidence of a widening
gap between average urban and rural consumption levels since the early 1990s.
31 These estimates are from Tendulkar and Jain
(1995), who – as noted earlier – adjusted carefully
for different prices faced by consumers in different
fractile groups.
32 All the figures mentioned in this paragraph are
from this study.
33 Gender is of course also an important basis for
distinguishing identity groups; but measurement
of economic inequalities between men and women
raises complex issues that are beyond the scope of
this paper.
34 Following a curious convention in Indian data on
social groups, STs are included here within the
Hindu population.
35 This reflects the fact that only Hindu-FCs constitute a higher proportion of urban dwellers than
rural dwellers, and MPCEs are higher in urban
than in rural areas.
36 I am indebted to Arthur MacEwan for stressing
this point.
37 See, for example, Bruno, Ravallion and Squire
(1996).
38 See Bardhan, Bowles and Gintis (2000). As the
authors note, there may also be a loss of efficiency
when ownership of productive assets shifts from
wealthy owners to less wealthy operators, insofar
as the latter are likely to be more risk-averse than
the former. However, the authors conclude that
asset redistribution from the wealthy to the nonwealthy is more often productivity-enhancing
than the other way round.
39 As Loury (1987) has shown, only government action
in favour of members of marginalised groups can
hope to erase inter-group inequalities resulting
from past discrimination.
40 For an analysis of the decline in economic
inequality in Brazil since the early 1990s, see
Ferreira et al (2006) and Seidman (2010).
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