Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Sep 20, 2007
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Online edition of India's National Newspaper Thursday, Sep 20, 2007 ePaper |
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The life expectancy rates are lower than in some of the poorest countries Around 837 million Indians live on less than Rs 20 a day 
well done: Sashi Kumar, chairman, Media Development Foundation (left), handing over a memento to P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor, The Hindu, at a meeting in Chennai on Wednesday. CHENNAI: The unprecedented rise in economic inequalities in the last 15 years of globalisation in India has led to dehumanisation of the poor which, in turn, has had an adverse impact on democracy, P. Sainath, Rural Affairs Editor, The Hindu, said on Wednesday. Delivering a lecture on ‘India: when rising inequalities threaten democracy’ at a meeting organised by the Indian School of Social Sciences to felicitate him for receiving the Ramon Magsaysay Award, Mr. Sainath said what was unique about the inequalities of the period was the “sheer cynicism and ruthlessness with which they were engineered.” Putting in context the unprecedented rise of the Sensex to cross 16,000 points, he recalled how when the 2004 tsunami struck, the stock markets of five badly affected countries—India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Malaysia and Thailand—boomed. “One explanation is that those affected were irrelevant to the working of the stock exchanges. Another is that the profits of the few are closely tied to the misery of the many as huge funds were expected to flow into the reconstruction business.” Six reasonsSix reasons could be cited for the growing divide: the withdrawal of the State from sectors that mattered to the poor such as water, sanitation, education and healthcare; huge cuts in development and welfare spending; the slashing of subsidies and life support to the poor while increasing subsidies to the rich; the privatisation of everything “from intellect to soul”; the unprecedented rise of corporate power across the world; and the imposition of user fee on everything in ways the poor could not afford. While India had the fourth largest number of dollar billionaires in the world, it was ranked 126th in the human development index. The life expectancy rates were lower than in some of the poorest countries. The last 15 years had seen unprecedented prosperity at the top and unspeakable deprivation at the bottom of the pyramid. Around 837 million Indians lived on less than Rs 20 a day. Shooting healthcare costs had severed access for the poor as was seen in the case of farmer suicides in Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra. “What, however, poses the biggest danger to democracy is our ability to disconnect from this growing gap,” Mr. Sainath said. Sainath’s uniquenessMr. Sainath’s uniqueness lay in being a journalist-activist who challenged the premises of journalism, from within the space of the mainstream media, Sashi Kumar, chairman, Media Development Foundation, said. He refused to remain helpless and continued to pursue the untold stories of the millions who were outside the civilisational benefits of globalisation. Mythili Sivaraman of the All-India Democratic Women’s Association, and K. N Gopalakrishnan and N. Gnanaguru, organisers of the event, spoke.
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