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The IPL V/s BPL
India
WSN Bureau
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An overwhelming majority of
Vidharbha’s farmers do not gain from the farm loan waiver
because they are too “big.” But the IPL waiver goes to some of
India’s richest millionaires and billionaires. They aren’t too
big. |
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 For Diaspora in the
Americas, perhaps cricket is not a very hot game. India however is
awashed in cricket these days. The IPL cricket. Major film stars,
liquor barons, media houses, real estate companies etc have bought
player after player in open auctions, bidding crores for each
player, and the matches are telecast every single day. Newspapers
are full of news about cricket matches, the controversies ('who has
used whose toothbrush' variety), which starlet was seen with which
cricketer and which cricketer beat up which wayside passerby.
Such is the flavour
of Indian Premier League cricket.Nothing else has changed. People
are still dying in Delhi underneath local buses meant to transport
them, boats are still capcizing with regularity, police is
continuing with its 'encounter-as-panacea' policy, and the Central
Government has finally put in writing what it was often accused of
-- it has asked the states to get the poor, destitute migrants from
Bangladesh by the scruff of their neck (they don't have clothes
enough to sport a collar) and put them in concentration camps kind
of place.
 So, we have two
Indias now. The IPL India and the BPL India.
Punjab Government
has not even squeaked after initially saying the state has been
discriminated against in the matter of a loan waiver. But conditions
elsewhere where the kirtis are commtting suicide is worsening.
Farmers in Maharashtra, one of the most distressed among the
agrarian people, have been denied the benefit of the ‘farm loan
waiver.’ That is the BPL India. Now, see what the IPL India is
doing: The government is said to waive crores in entertainment tax
that the Indian Premier League cricket matches would normally
attract.
Media
reports in Mumbai on this score reckon that means a loss of up to
Rs.10 crore in revenue. The direct beneficiaries would be Mumbai’s
millionaires and billionaires, that is, film stars and corporate
bosses who did not find it difficult to spend crores on buying teams
and players. So even the hiring of cheerleaders will have its tax
waived off.
True, this is not
the first time that entertainment tax has been waived on cricket
matches in Mumbai or elsewhere. The BCCI and its affiliates have
always enjoyed political patronage. The difference, which has got
even members of the ruling front worked up, is that those raking in
the crores in exemptions are for-profit-only groups and individuals.
By law, any event, musical or cultural, performance or other, staged
for profit must pay entertainment tax. But not the IPL, which will
have held 10 matches in Mumbai including the Final.
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This crisis of
farmers is not reflected in the mass media. There is a growing
disconnect between the mass media and mass reality. The voice of
70 per cent of the population, including farmers "do not make
news" as the mass media is giving importance only for the
"elite" section of the society. |
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It’s an odd
situation. The overwhelming majority of Vidharbha’s farmers do not
gain from the farm loan waiver — because they are too “big.” That
is, they hold more than two hectares of land. But the IPL waiver
goes to some of India’s richest millionaires and billionaires. They
aren’t too big. And the only reason Vidharbha’s farmers have
holdings that exceed the loan waiver’s two-hectare cut-off is
because they are dry-land farmers. Their fields are poor,
un-irrigated and less productive. The very places whose misery had
sparked the idea of a loan waiver now stand mostly excluded from it.
T he
IPL waiver reports come within three weeks of the Comptroller and
Auditor General’s report on “Farmer’s Packages” in the State. A
performance audit the government of Maharashtra chose to present to
the Assembly on April 27, the last day of the session. A day on
which, as MLAs say, “there isn’t enough time to count the pages, let
alone read the many documents they push at that time.” Clearly, they
were not eager on a discussion of the contents.
Read the CAG report:
“No evaluation of the implementation of the packages, in terms of
reduction in agrarian distress, was made.” We also learn that tens
of crores of rupees aimed at reducing farmer distress were, in fact,
never spent. The value of the packages themselves was exaggerated by
over Rs.200 crore. Crores were released under some heads with no
reference at all to the actual requirement of funds. Other funds,
such as those meant “for increase in production,” were released
late. Cheques given to some ‘beneficiaries’ “were dishonoured for
want of cash in the bank.” The “self-help groups were paid subsidies
in excess of admissible norms.” Parts of other funds were not
released at all. In head after head, funds were underutilised. This
is how lackadaisical the governments were with packages worth a
total of Rs.4,825 crore. So what’s Rs.10 crore for the IPL?
Now, while
reimbursing banks for interest waived on loans, sanction of fresh
loans was not ensured. Fresh credit is very hard to come by.
Distress has not come down. There have been over 360 farm suicides
since January this year, about 200 of them post-loan waiver. In the
official count, there were 153 in January and February. And of
these, only 18 were considered “eligible suicides.” That is, only 18
families had any hope of being compensated for losing a breadwinner.
The figures for March and April will turn out to be much worse.Unfortunately, the farmer’s world is not driven by agriculture
alone. Farmers, whose incomes have been plummeting, have been
hammered by education and health costs. The commercialisation of
those sectors has hurt them, as it has countless millions of other
Indians, very badly. That is on top of the stick they’ve taken in
agriculture.
It is a shame the
way governments are responding to agrarian distress in India. The
complete apathy, the corruption, the cover-ups, even the contempt
for the farmer, that come across. All the attention is on the
brilliantly-lit, power-guzzling matches of the IPL. There is no time
for the population which is BPL.
Where is the media?
 But this crisis of
farmers is not reflected in the mass media. There is a growing
disconnect between the mass media and mass reality. The voice of 70
per cent of the population, including farmers “do not make news” as
the mass media is giving importance only for the “elite” section of
the society. The television channels and newspapers did not think
that it was news when Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar
admitted in Parliament that about 1.6 lakh farmers committed suicide
in the country between 1997 and 2007.
The Budget
announcement of waiving of farm loans of over Rs. 50,000 crore was
described as “unprecedented” in the mass media, when such
concessions were being given to the corporate sector every year. The
mass media even failed to report the outcome of a house-to-house
survey of farmers, conducted by the Maharashtra government, which
revealed that 2 million farming families were in a highly distressed
state.
This, when 512 media
representatives covered a week-long Lakme India Fashion Show held
every year in Mumbai.
What the elite India gets all the time?
Between 2000-04,
banks wrote off over Rs. 44,000 crores. Mostly, this favoured a tiny
number of wealthy people. One ‘beneficiary’ was a Ketan Parekh group
company that saw Rs. 60 crore knocked off. (The Indian Express, May
12, 2005). However, those ‘waivers’ are done quietly. In 2004, last
year of the NDA, such write-offs went up by 16 per cent. Such
‘waivers’ have not slowed down since 2004. And all this is apart
from the annual Rs. 40,000 crore ‘giveaway’ to the rich, mainly
corporate India. That has been the average in the budget every
single year for over a decade. Then there are the straight handouts.
No one knows how many thousands of crores are lost by handing out
spectrum the way it’s being done. But we know it’s a staggering
amount. Tot up the ‘tax holidays,’ exemptions and the rest of it and
you’re looking at sums that make the ‘unprecedented’ one-time farm
loan waiver look like loose change.
When the budget
rolled out, one anchor said: “And now for the budget bad news. India
Inc.’s plea for a cut in corporate tax rates went unheeded.” Isn’t
that cute? If a budget is pro-poor, it cannot be good for the
country. If it does not give the corporate world more goodies, it is
bad. And of course, the elite panellists mostly rued this “gigantic
giveaway.”
For three years,
while the misery and suicides mounted in Vidharbha, there was not
even the admission that a loan waiver was possible. Indeed, it was
shot down by those now taking out full page ads claiming credit for
it. As they complain in Vidharbha, this is not about karza maafi. It
is about seeking voter maafi (voters’ forgiveness) in election year.
The only time the
IPL India shakes hands with the BPL India
21
May,
2008
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