The poor and hungry have lived in a dark abyss for over 60 years now, waiting endlessly for their daily morsel of grain. India’s new draft Food Security Bill, with its underlying promise of food-for-all, surely provides a ray of hope for the hungry millions. It could be a new beginning, if enacted properly, and could turn the appalling hunger in India into history.

From what I read in the newspapers, however, and from what is emerging from the hectic parleys that the Food Ministry as well as the Planning Commission are engaged in, the path being developed is unlikely to deviate from the present direction to hell for the hungry. If the primary objective of the new law is simply to re-classify below-poverty-line (BPL) families by identifying who is entitled to receive 25 kg of grain (wheat and rice) per month at a price of Rs 3/kg (approx. 6 US cents), then I think we have missed the very purpose of bringing in a statutory framework to ensure the right to food.

What makes me more apprehensive is the urgency with which the proposed law is being drafted. Meeting the deadline of putting this law into gear in the first ‘100 days’ of UPA-II (the new cabinet of Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh) without first adequately debating the finer details and trying to work out a plausible structure for a long-term food security plan, is fraught with dangers. Merely replicating the Public Distribution System (PDS) in a new avatar will not be sufficient to lift people out of hunger.

Towards Zero Hunger

There have been earlier attempts at fighting hunger. Brazil’s Zero Hunger program launched by President Lula in 2003, for instance, was the result of a year of inputs from various stakeholders, and is still far away from alleviating hunger. It was launched with the objective of providing three square meals a day to an estimated 46 million people living in hunger and extreme poverty.

By 2005, Brazil had invested US $12 billion in the Zero Hunger program, although President Lula was not satisfied and later criticized the program for being riddled with mistakes. Drawing inspiration from the Brazilian program, Egypt also launched a US $2 billion program for a food insecure population.

There are further lessons to be drawn from Mexico’s Progresa-oportunidades human development program launched in 1997, which took one year to research and roughly two years to plan. The program serves 4.2 million households, and costs almost US $1 billion every year.

Even in the United States, which invests heavily in food stamp program, hunger is on the rise. More than 31.6 million people, or one in every 10 Americans, are either a beneficiary of the food stamp program or takes part in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance program.

At present, the government of India provides 35 kg of food grains, including wheat and rice, to 65.2 million families classified as living below the poverty line (BPL). These subsidized rations are made available at a price of Rs 4.15 per kg for wheat, and Rs 5.65 per kg for rice. For the 24.3 million families classified under the Antyodya scheme (also part of the BPL category), the price of grains is reduced to Rs 2 for wheat and Rs 3 for rice.

In other words, India’s Public Distribution Scheme technically caters to 316 million people. These are the poorest of the poor, and the way the BPL line has been drawn (which in my opinion should be dubbed the ‘starvation line’) the PDS should provide them with their minimal daily food intake. If the PDS had been even partially effective, I see no reason why India should be saddled with the largest population of hungry in the world. There is no reason why the Punjab, for example, the best performing state in terms of hunger, should be ranked below Gabon, Honduras and Vietnam in the Global Hunger Index.

Any program aimed at providing food-for-all on a long-term basis has to look beyond food stamps and public distribution schemes. India must move to a Zero Hunger program by attacking the structural causes of poverty and hunger. Creating adequate employment opportunities and promoting sustainable livelihoods by involving the village communities has to be woven into any long-term food security plan. Better health care facilities, access to safe drinking water and sufficient micro-nutrient intake will ensure that food is properly absorbed.

An empty stomach cannot wait. With the passage of time it will inevitably lead to social upheavals, and the repercussions could be still more damaging to society at large. It is so painful to see that while the government is trying to fight the growing menace of naxalism on the one hand, on the other it is actually perpetuating the conditions that help promote extremism. Agriculture is being sacrificed for the sake of industry, mining and exports, and land acquisitions are divesting Indian farmers of their only form of economic security by forcing them to quit agriculture.

The proposed National Food Security Act cannot be a stand-alone activity. It has to be integrated with various other program and policy initiatives to ensure that hunger becomes history. To achieve this objective, the food security plan should essentially aim at adopting a five-point approach:

* Public Policies for Zero Hunger: A combination of structural policies aimed at the real causes of hunger and poverty, specific policies to meet the household needs for long-term access to food and nutrition, and local policies based on local needs that keep the concept of sustainable livelihoods in focus. For instance, all policies should be aimed at reversing the rural-urban migration. The more migration escalates, the more urban centers will be chocked, and the greater the burden on government support for fighting hunger. Agriculture and rural development remains the best defense against the growing threat of naxalism.

* Sustainable livelihoods: In a country where agriculture is the mainstay of the economy, all efforts must be directed towards strengthening low external input sustainable agricultural practices. There is an urgent need to revitalize the natural resource base, restore groundwater levels, and provide higher incomes to farmers. A monthly take-home income package based on land holdings has to be worked out for farmers. The NREGA has to be integrated with agriculture, and the interest on micro-credit for the poorest of the poor has to be brought down to 4 per cent from the existing 20-48 per cent.

* Public Distribution System: There is an urgent need to dismantle the PDS except for the Antyodya families (those identified by the Indian government as the poorest of the poor who should receive state-provided wheat and rice). The present classification of BPL and APL (‘below poverty levels’ and ‘above poverty levels’) needs to be done away with. The recommendation of the National Commission on Enterprise in the Unorganized Sector (NCEUS), which states that 836 million people in India spend less than Rs 20 (40 US cents) a day, should be the criteria for a meaningful food-for-all program. The average ration per family at 25 kg also needs to be revised upwards, and there is a need to expand the food basket by including coarse cereals and pulses.

* Foodgrain Banks: The dismantling of the Public Distribution System has to be followed by the setting up of foodgrain banks at the village and taluka level. Any long-term food security plan cannot remain sustainable unless the poor and hungry become partners in the fight against hunger. There are ample examples of successful models of traditional grain banks (for instance, the famed gola system in Bihar), which need to be replicated through a nationwide program involving self-help groups and NGOs. Program and projects must be drawn up to make foodgrain banks sustainable over the long-term and viable without government support in a couple of years, involving charitable institutions, religious bodies, self-help groups (SHGs) and the non-profit organizations to ensure speedy implementation.

* International commitments: Global commitments and neoliberal economic policies should not be allowed to interfere with the food security plan. The World Trade Organization (WTO) agreements, the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) and various bilateral trade deals should not be allowed to displace farming communities and play havoc with national food security. For instance, India cannot compromise agriculture in the ongoing Doha Round of negotiations in the WTO which will allow cheaper and subsidized imports. Importing food for a country like India is like importing unemployment, thereby increasing the number of hungry.

My attention has been drawn to an article titled “Do GM crops increase yield?” on Monsanto’s web page, although I must confess that this is the first time I have visited their site.

This is how it begins: “Recently, there have been a number of claims from anti-biotechnology activists that genetically-modified (GM) crops don’t increase yields. Some have claimed that GM crops actually have lower yields than non-GM crops. Both claims are simply false.”

It then goes on to explain the terms germplasm, breeding, biotechnology, and then finally explains yield.

Here is what it says: “The introduction of GM traits through biotechnology has led to increased yields independent of breeding. Take for example statistics cited by PG Economics, which annually tallies the benefits of GM crops, taking data from numerous studies around the world:

* Mexico — yield increases with herbicide tolerant soybean of 9 percent.

* Romania — yield increases with herbicide tolerant soybeans have averaged 31 percent.

* Philippines — average yield increase of 15 percent with herbicide tolerant corn.

* Philippines — average yield increase of 24 percent with insect resistant corn.

* Hawaii — virus resistant papaya has increased yields by an average of 40 percent.

* India – insect resistant cotton has led to yield increases on average more than 50 percent.”

These assertions are not amusing, and can no longer be taken lightly. I am not only shocked but also disgusted at the way corporations try to fabricate and distort the scientific facts, and dress them up in such a manner that the so-called ‘educated’ of today will accept them without asking any questions.

Distorted Science

At the outset, Monsanto’s claims are flawed. I have seen similar conclusions, at least about Bt cotton yields in India, in a study by The International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) — although I have always said that IFPRI is an organization that needs to be shut down. It has done more damage to developing country agriculture and food security than any other academic institution.

Nevertheless, let us look at Monsanto’s claims.

The increases in crop yields that Monsanto has shown in Mexico, Romania, the Philippines, Hawaii and India are actually not yield increases at all. In scientific terms these are called crop losses, which have been very cleverly masqueraded as yield increases. By indulging in a jugglery of scientific terminologies that take advantage of the layman’s ignorance, Monsanto has made claims based on evidence that does not exist.

As written in Monsanto’s article: “The most common traits in GM crops are herbicide tolerance (HT) and insect resistance (IR). HT plants contain genetic material from common soil bacteria. IR crops contain genetic material from a bacterium that attacks certain insects.”

This is true. Herbicide tolerant plants and insect resistant plants do perform broadly the same function as chemical pesticides. Both the GM plants and the chemical pesticides reduce crop losses. In fact, GM plants work more or less like a bio-pesticide – the insect feeds on the plant carrying the toxin, and dies. Spraying the chemical pesticide also does the same.

In the case of herbicide tolerant plants, the outcome is much worse. Biotech companies have successfully dovetailed the trait for herbicide tolerance in the plant. As a result, those who buy the GM seeds have no other option but to also buy the companies own brand of herbicide. Killing two birds with one stone, you might say.

GM companies have only used the transgenic technology to remove competition from the herbicide market. Instead of allowing the farmer to choose from different brands of herbicides available in the market, they have now ensured that you are only left with a Hobson’s choice. As several studies have conclusively shown in the US, the use of herbicide does not go down over time, but rather increases.

Here is the question that must now be asked: if the chemical herbicide used by Monsanto’s herbicide tolerant soybeans (so-called ‘Roundup Ready’) truly increases yields, then why don’t all the other herbicides available in the market also increase yields?

Surely, if all herbicides do the same job of killing herbs, then all herbicides should increase crop yields. Am I not correct? So why are we led to believe that only Roundup Ready soybeans (a GM crop) increase yields, whereas others do not?

When was the last time you were told that herbicides increase crop yields? Chemical herbicides are only known to merely reduce crop losses. This is what I was taught when studying plant breeding — a fact that is still being taught to agricultural science students everywhere in the world.

Cotton Lies

A similar story holds true for cotton. We all know that cotton consumes about 50 percent of total pesticides sprayed, and these chemical pesticides are known to reduce crop losses. I am sure that Monsanto would also agree without question that pesticides do not increase crop yields, and I repeat DO NOT increase cotton yields.

Monsanto’s Bt cotton, which uses a gene from a soil bacteria to produce a toxin within the plant that kills certain pests, also does the same. It only kills the insect, which means it does the same job that a chemical pesticide is supposed to perform. The crop losses that a farmer minimizes after applying chemical pesticide is never (and has never) been measured in terms of yield increases. It has always been computed as savings from crop losses.

If GM crops increase yields, shouldn’t we therefore say that chemical pesticides (including herbicides) also increase yields? Will the agricultural scientific community accept that pesticides increases crop yields?

This brings me to another relevant question: Why don’t agricultural scientists say that chemical pesticides increase crop yields?

While you ponder over this question (and there are no prizes for getting it right), let me tell you that the last time the world witnessed increases in crop yields was when the high-yielding crop varieties were evolved. That was the time when scientists were able to break through the genetic yield barrier. The double-gene and triple-gene dwarf wheat (a trait that was subsequently inducted in rice) brought in quantum jumps in yield potential. That was way back in the late 1960s. Since then, there has been no further genetic breakthrough in crop yields. Let there be no mistake about it.

Monsanto is therefore making faulty claims. None of its GM crop varieties increases yields. At best, they only reduce crop losses. If Monsanto does not know the difference between crop losses and crop yields, it needs to take some elementary lessons again in plant breeding.

But please, Monsanto, don’t try and fool the world by distorting scientific facts.

For the record, let me also state that when Bt cotton was being introduced in India in 2001 (its entry was delayed by another year when I challenged the scientific claims made by Mahyco-Monsanto), the Indian Council for Agricultural Research had also objected to the company’s claim of increasing yield. It is however another matter that ICAR’s objections were simply brushed aside by the Department of Biotechnology, and we all know why.

Interestingly, ISAAA and several consultancy firms (and how can we believe them anyway after their role in the economic collapse now facing the world) have been claiming that cotton yields in India increased after Bt cotton was introduced. Such claims are made about other crops too. I have seen this happening again and again over the past two decades; whenever the crop yields increase, the scientists and agribusinesses take the credit. But when the crop yields go down, the blame invariably shifts to weather conditions.

Which may make you wonder why agricultural scientists and companies never thank the weather at times of bumper harvest. As a former Indian Agriculture Minister, Mr. Chaturanand Mishra, always used to say, the only real Agriculture Minister is the monsoon.

This year, cotton production estimates in India have been scaled down by 14 percent. Using the same yardstick, does it not mean that the productivity of Bt cotton is also falling? But of course the blame cannot lie with Bt cotton. You guessed right — it must be the fault of inclement weather.

The elephant in this case is the parasitical global financial system. It has thrived all these years on the hungry stomach of starving millions, extracting every last available ounce of blood. Untamed and unregulated, it demolished the borders of the nation-state to emerge unfettered and free – unrestrained by governments, and liberated from society’s control. In the process, speculative and mobile financial capital has played havoc with the global economy. The elephant has been on a rampage.

Instead of placing a wreath on the tottering financial system and acknowledging that the free market cannot survive without a massive life-saving blood transfusion from governments the world over, the blind leadership has worked out a 16-week roadmap to tackle the global crisis. What appears to be a concerted plan to pave the way “for reforms to help ensure a similar crisis does not happen again,” is in reality a recipe for yet another bubble ready to burst.

The economic policies that remain in vogue will continue to impoverish workers, promote jobless growth, push developing country farmers out of agriculture, mine natural resources (and render the commons barren in the process), and allow corporate control over farming while aggressively pushing for one-way trade — from the rich to the developing countries, adding to global warming and thereby driving the world towards an unforeseen ecological crisis. In providing enormous bailouts to banks, the international leadership has not only acknowledged but applauded the role played by financial robbers and business pirates.

Isn’t this a sad travesty of the truth? If you rob a bank of a few thousand dollars, you are inevitably arrested and sent to prison. If you rob the entire international banking system, you not only receive a pat on the back but also a handsome retirement package. If you are personally unable to pay your debts to the banks, you are hauled before the courts and have both your movable and immovable property confiscated. But if the bank is unable to pay its debts, it is bailed out with catastrophic urgency. If you fail to pay your insurance premium, your policy is terminated. But if the insurance company falters, it is nationalized by the government while the CEO is relieved of his job with a multi-million dollar severance package.

The proposals of the G-20′s 16-week ‘action plan’ — boosting standards of credit rating agencies, addressing weaknesses in accounting and disclosure standards, and setting up a risk warning system for banks — are a whitewash. Yet we couldn’t have expected anything better from a blind leadership that has merrily facilitated the commodification of the Earth’s limited natural resources in the name of trade, and outsourced countless thousands of jobs in the name of competitiveness. Whether it is free trade or global warming, this entire stratagem is supposedly enacted for the benefit of developing countries — and all in the name of eradicating poverty and ending hunger. Such benevolence!

The memory of the world public is very short. We have forgotten that the last time Europe came to the ‘rescue’ of Africa, the whole continent was colonized. When the East India Company began to trade in India, the entire sub-continent was colonized for 200 years. When the British finally left, the fourth largest economy was left pauperized and hungry. In the last 30 years (including 13 years of the World Trade Organization), 105 of the 149 developing have already become food importing economies. If the Doha Development Round is successfully completed, the likelihood is that these few remaining developing countries will be turned into food dumps for surplus produce from the West.

No wonder that the blind leadership is in a tearing hurry to push through further trade agreements. Here is an incident you probably missed; just prior to the Washington conclave, Brazil’s Finance Minister Guido Mantega hosted a meeting for central bank presidents and finance ministers from G-20 countries. “We have to change the tires of the car with the car moving,” he said. “This means that in 60 to 90 days we will need the solutions for new financial regulations.” Mantega and his colleagues need to be informed that changing tires with the car moving is a prerogative of James Bond, requiring either the aptitude of 007 or the imaginative skills of Ian Fleming.

Much has already been written, analyzed and spoken about the present crisis. Although not an economist, I firmly believe that neo-economic thinking is the primary cause for all the misdemeanors currently being played out on the world stage and wreaking havoc throughout the globe – as witnessed in the financial crisis, food crisis, energy crisis, climate crisis, and the increasing crisis of international terrorism. If this is the garden path where modern economics has led us, isn’t it time to call out the elephant? It may well be politically incorrect to stand up against the might of the faulty economic system, but isn’t it time to call a spade a spade? Why wait for doomsday or Armageddon?

A retort I often receive is ‘where is the alternative?’ The question is asked because, in our myopic economic thinking, everything is measured in terms of ‘growth’ and ‘profit targets’, but we are never taught to calculate happiness and contentment or told that food, human genes and nature is not a commodity to be sold on the marketplace. We have never been taught, in other words, that it is sustainable ethics that leads to sustainable development. We have been too busy partying, and the hangover is too strong for us all to see the silver lining.

Before we discuss alternatives, allow me to draw your attention to another sinister design. The financial crisis is now leading us to a more terrible food crisis in the near future. The recent surge in food prices, accompanied by food riots in 37 countries in the beginning of this year, was a mere tip of the iceberg. After destabilizing the global economic structure, the financial forces are moving into agricultural markets. Speculation in commodities trading is now widely acknowledged to be the major cause behind the food price crisis. But what happens when the hedge funds and the bailout packages are used by insurance companies, banks and investment firms to purchase farm lands across the globe?

Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank are eyeing a takeover of China’s livestock industry. Morgan Stanley has purchased 40,000 hectares in Ukraine. Landkom, the British investment group has also bought 100,000 hectares of land in Ukraine. The two Swedish investing firms, Black Earth Farming and Alpcot-Agro, have purchased 331,000 hectares and 128,000 hectares of farm land in Russia, respectively. South Korean giant Daewoo has taken on a 99-year lease 1.3 million hecatres of land in Madagascar, which is nearly half of the country’s total arable land, to meet food security needs back home. Along with these private companies, the governments too are in a mad race to purchase land in Asia and Africa to grow food to be shipped back home (see my article: “Land Grab for Food Security: Corporatizing Agriculture“).

What happens when the food bubble bursts? Who will bail out the hungry?

Returning back to the ‘TINA factor’ (the assumption that ‘There Is No Alternative’ to economic globalization), there is in fact a very plausible alternative. The solution lies in the principle of self-reliance that Mahatma Gandhi advocated so many years ago. It is time to revisit Gandhi and dig out his vision for a sustainable world; where production by the masses is not replaced by production for the masses; where food security does not mean importing cheaper food; where every hand is provided a decent job; and where growth does not translate into profits, but happiness. A vision in which the earth has enough for everyone’s need, but not for everyone’s greed. Such a world is surely possible. All it requires is for us to stand up, throw away the blind covers, and be counted.

1. The story of “Blind Men and the Elephant” originated from India and comes in various versions from Sufis, Buddhists, Jains and Hindus. As recounted in the more famous version by the 19th Century poet John Godfrey Saxe:

   It was six men of Hindustan
   To learning much inclined,
   Who went to see the Elephant
   (Though all of them were blind),
   That each by observation
   Might satisfy his mind

   They conclude that the elephant is like a wall, snake, spear, tree, fan, or rope, depending upon where they touch. The moral of the story:

   So oft in theologic wars,
   The disputants, I ween,
   Rail on in utter ignorance
   Of what each other mean,
   And prate about an Elephant
   Not one of them has seen!

The national media kept quiet.

Now that the markets are crashing, the media is up in arms. “Act fast, go big. It is not only about bulls and bears anymore. It’s about India. And it’s hurting,” says a lead story in a national daily. But it didn’t hurt when the farmers were dying.

There is blood on Dalal Street (India’s Wall Street). Yet throughout all these years we refused to acknowledge that farmers were dying, and agriculture was bleeding. Farmers are children of a lesser God, it seemed, who do not belong to India. They only live in Bharat, the countryside.

Just a few months back, when the day Finance Minister P Chidambaram in his budget speech announced a Rs 60,000-crore* loan waiver for the beleaguered farming community, there was an orchestrated outcry: “Where will this money come from?” Television anchors were visibly angry at this supposed ‘windfall’ for the farmers, the print media was outraged at this ‘political and not economic’ decision just before the ensuing elections, and the industry leaders were seen sulking.

Six months later, no one is asking the same question. With the global financial crisis failing to work itself out, the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) is under pressure to intervene. Soon after the Wall Street mayhem, the RBI had pumped in Rs 84,000-crore in the domestic banking system through liquidity facility adjustment. An additional Rs 20,000-crore has been released through a 0.5 percent reduction in a cash reserve ration (CRR), to be further slashed by 100 basis points. It took RBI five years to make the first cut in CRR on Monday, and the next cut comes five days later. That sure is some urgency.

Sounds technical, but let me simplify. Liquidity in layman terms means ‘fund availability’ or, in simple words, making available more cash. All over the industrialized world, governments are stepping in to provide more cash in the hands of the private banks, and India is no exception.

Despite the Finance Minister saying that the fundamentals are strong, the banks are on a massive borrowing spree. In the first week of October alone, they borrowed Rs 90,075-crore every day from RBI through liquid facility adjustment. In the days to come, the RBI is under pressure to release another Rs 30,000-crore through the CRR, and also to cut the repo rate — the rate at which it lends to banks. And thanks to the loan waiver, the banks will receive another Rs 50,000-crore in the coming weeks as part reimbursement for the farm loan waiver and fertilizer loan.

Isn’t it a fact that Rs 60,000-crore loan waiver (later enhanced to Rs 71,000-crore) was actually a relief to the banks? What seemed to be a ‘political’ decision in the name of pulling out the indebted farmers was actually meant to maintain and sustain the health of the banking system. If the government had not provided the loan waiver, banks would have been in a terrible liquidity crisis. With farmers unable to repay, these banks would have been saddled with massive non-performing assets (or a shortfall in liquidity) or non-availability of Rs 71,000-crore in cash.

In other words, the loan waiver was a partial bailout for the banks. Now no one is asking: “Where will this money come from?” On the contrary, most analysts are asking for more ‘speed and sagacity’ to tide over the crisis. The industry has already demanded a bailout package of Rs 100,000-crore.

If only such ‘speed and sagacity’ was shown to tide over the terrible agrarian crisis sweeping throughout the country for over a decade now, thousands of farmers would have been saved from committing suicide. If only the RBI had stepped in to make more cash (or liquidity) available, the nation could have easily provided an assured employment to each and every Indian, not only for 100 days but for all the 365 days in a year. The National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme (NREGA) can be easily extended to bring every unemployed Indian under its gambit.

It is here that I fail to understand the sagacious logic of keeping the poor hungry, and then expecting a higher economic growth trajectory; of paying a multi-million dollar salary (in addition to lucrative perks) to the bosses of the banks and corporate houses, and then to make the man on the street pay for the losses; in other words, the logic behind privatizing the profits and socializing the losses.

Take the case of the bankrupt Lehman Brothers. While the shareholders in the company have been wiped out, Richard Fuld, its chief executive, walked away with US $480 million as his personal remuneration over eight years, which includes a $14 million ocean-front villa in Florida, and a home in an exclusive ski resort. Lawmakers investigating the bailed out insurance company AIG were shocked to learn that days after the government rescued the company, it unashamedly spent US $44,000 on a posh California retreat for its executives, complete with spa, banquets and golf outings.

Why blame the American corporate leaders when US president George Bush himself had given them a free rope: “Government should not decide the compensation for America’s corporate executives.” What he probably meant was that come what may, the US government will continue to provide funds to meet obscene corporate salaries and perks.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh had also removed the upper ceiling on corporate salaries. According to Merrill-Lynch and Capgemini, driven by impressive economic gains and robust market capitalism growth in 2007, India led the world in high net worth individual (HNWI) population growth at 22.7 per cent. Two year earlier in 2005, there were 83,000 high net worth individuals with a wealth of at least $1 million (without including immovable property). And you guessed right – the number of millionaires has gone up quite considerably in the meantime.

This brings me back to the same question. How long will the world go on encouraging an economic system that makes the rich richer and the poor poorer? While 36 billionaires in India have a collective economic wealth equivalent to one third of the country’s GDP, the country’s 600 million farmers collectively account for only a 17 percent share. With every passing year, the share of agriculture in GDP continues to slide down even further.

The average monthly income of a farm household (which includes five members of a family and two cattle) does not exceed Rs 2,400 (US $60). The value erosion in real farm income over the past few decades has never been discussed, but the erosion in paper wealth of shareholders is being projected as a national disaster.

Bailing out the farmers from a distressing situation is always considered to be bad economics. It is branded as a political compulsion, and the sooner politicians emerge out of it the better it is supposed to be for economic growth and development. This economic prescription, which every economist worth his title is willing to endorse, is invariably given for the farming community, the landless workers and the marginalized communities. They need to learn to be enterprising, is the assumption, and therefore must stop living on government subsidies.

But when it comes to the enterprising millionaires — corporates and leading bankers — government bailouts are not only a must, but should be done speedily. ‘Where will the money come from?’ is not a question to be asked when you are subsidizing the rich and the elite. That, we must understand, is their birthright.

* one crore = 10 million