Some idle thoughts on Power

My boss once said that even a 90 yr old once made to sit in a CMs or PMs chair will turn youthful and refuses to die until the chair is taken away.  Though its an exaggeration people tend to believe that there is some element of  truth in the statement.  Long time ago, when I heard from a friend that his position of power is the greatest turn-on for his girl friend, I wondered if what she was in love with was he or something he possessed.  We often see people on the roads waving involuntarily even at the dumbest, the most insignificant and non-charismatic of  ministers/chief ministers/prime ministers while they pass on the roads in an open top vehicle.  My teacher once said that when he was a student Indira Gandhi visited his town in her early political career.  Even the passersby who referred to her as 'some widow' took notice of her and waved when she was traveling in the vehicle.  Another friend recently said, when asked why he goes to religious leaders was that they are people who have seen and known power unknown to us, hence any association with them as their devotees will rub some of that power into us.  There is some entity which we call power existing in various places around us, towards which people gravitate consciously or sub-consciously. Now the questions which come to mind are, what does this entity which makes people gravitate towards it do, where is it located, and is this attraction to this entity a universal human character.

'The attraction to power is universal'.  I am searching my memory if I can find some counter examples. One image which is flashing in my mind is that of yogi vemana, the others being of insane persons.  In such a case, apart from those who are truly philosophical or truly insane every human being gravitates towards power and wants a share of it.  If he doesnt have it himself he tries to acquire it through a seat of power, by acquisition of money in the modern context, or by surrendering oneself to a person who is vested with this entity.

Why do people gravitate towards it?  We want something only if it does good to us and not evil, so we assume that the acquisition of this entity power does good for us.  The mere thought of immense power delivered to me makes my mouth water.  More the power I possess more is the good for me. Therefore every human sees power as a means of doing good for one self.

As this entity called power appears so powerful in doing me good, I am really unable to stop my mind from searching for the places where I can find it.  These are the places which come to my mind; our family in the form of the head of the family(father),  the village in the form of sarpanch, the school in the form of a teacher, in the temple in the form of a God, in ashrams in the form of God-men, in our market in the form of money, in ourselves in the form of physical strength/knowledge. 

Power in family: Father derives his power only because he has a family, and the absence of a family makes a man powerless.  Our family is then the first place where we can find power, but then its limited in quantity.  Can it be transferred to children? No, but there is something which can be learnt about power at home. It is more in the nature of how to use power. Therefore proper exercise of power can be learnt at home.

Power at school:  The teacher has power over his students.  When asked, every student wants to become a teacher once he grows up, whereas the parents laugh at the kids because they feel that the teacher is the most powerless in the village.  The bully in the class also has power, but his power is despised by other kids.  This is because the bully's power is seen as bringing evil to the other kids.  They complain to a higher power, the teacher, and see that he is punished.  Any exercise of power in ones personal interest, taking away the good of others will be crushed by a higher power(that of the teacher).  Teacher has the power to teach and punish, and the parents willingly surrender the child to that power, because they believe that it does good to the child.  We are therefore willing to subject ourselves to power if it does good to us.  The power at school imparts some knowledge to the kid.  

Power in the village:  All the villagers vest power in the Sarpanch for their common good, just as the power over kids is vested with the teacher.  I am reminded of the kids show 'power rangers' where each one of the five heros combines his powers to form into a single fighting machine. The powers of all the villagers are combined and vested at a single place, say the panchayat body.  This combined power of the village is supposed to check the following:

• the exercise of power by one individual bringing evil to another
• the exercise of power by a minority group bringing evil to the majority rest
• the exercise of power by a majority group bringing evil to the minority rest

This combined power will then have to ensure that there is no interference of the individual/group powers with those of others' powers in the village.  It means no one person or group of persons can be benefited at the loss of another.  This combined power is now appearing to have twin objectives,  

1. one of doing good to all the people, and 
2.  the other of ensuring that exercise of individual powers do not bring evil to others.

I am getting a feeling that the first objective is the mother of developmental role the State and the second objective gives rise to justice in the State.  An ideal state should ensure that the sum total of all the individual power interactions in the State results in zero evil.  Since in reality zero evil is not possible, the combined power can at best nurse the wounds of resultant evils.  Is this what we call justice in our States?

Power in the place of worship:  It appears from the aforementioned discussion that power exists and is in different forms.  If we believe that there is such an entity called power which is expressing in various forms, then there must be the original, purest and unadulterated power reservoir, which is the source of all these powers we see.  Now the only one who knows and possesses it is our God ( I am saying 'our' because though God is the same, each one of us has a different concept of God).  Therefore we go to a temple/place of worship with the hope that our God gives some of that power to us.  Sometimes  people really receive it in the form of divine inspiration.  God-man is a real-life expression of my God in this world for many people.

In the market:  The purpose of a village shandy is exchange of goods representing the various needs of the people.  A shandy is the first baby of the village, of human collaboration.  The combined power of the village sits and decides on how to equalise apples and oranges.  Goods produced reflect the villagers' needs.  There should be an exact match of the needs of the villagers and the goods produced in the village.  

If our need is satisfied it brings us good. Produced goods satisfy our needs, do us good, therefore possess power. The goods one produces are the power of that person and they are his good.  Then the goods he produces must be having some intrinsic power.  If we agree that power resides in the goods one produces, then it should reside in all types of goods.  The question arises as to what type of power and how much resides in each variety of goods.  The combined power of the village sits to decide what type of power resides in the goods.  It decides that it is the same type of power which resides in different types of goods,  names it money and blesses it with some power borrowed from its own reservoir of combined power.  Since the entity called money is given power by the combined power all the villagers now become willing to exchange their goods with this powerful money.  Money can be understood as the essence or abstract of the power in the goods/services produced by us.  We see a large number of different things in this visible world through our senses and try to arrive at essences of such things in our intellectual world.  We see various beautiful flowers in real world and arrive at an abstract concept of beauty in our intellectual world. Other examples are selfishness, courage, passion, etc.   But all of them are abstract entities incapable of perfect reproduction in the real world.  I see an exception here.  No abstraction of any other concept has ever been reproduced in the real world as perfectly as the power that exists in the goods/services.  Money is the only known abstract idea which has been brought from the world of ideas to the real world without flaws.  We agree that any abstraction is divine.  Hence I am compelled to say that money is the only visible God that exists on earth.

When we exchange our goods in the village shandy we get money.  Therefore money is one location of power.

In ourselves : The physical strength we posses and the knowledge we have are undisputed sources of power.  The villagers cannot combine forces into a combined power of the village unless each individual possesses it with or without his knowledge.  Hence all the sources of power in this world arise from out of the individual.  The only known powers in this visible world then are that of the self, the combined power of the society, and that of money; the later two originating from the power of self.  The power with God is not from our world. It exists in abstraction in our intellect.

Can we therefore say that anything which does good to us is power? We have seen that the power in the real world originates from ourselves.  Therefore we are the source of our own good.

Now the question of who commands this combined power.  In a democracy its the elected representative.  The person in charge of this combined power therefore shall have the same twin objectives of the combined power viz., the common good of the village, and the prevention of interference of powers leading to individual evils.  The successful performance of these twin objectives bestows the head of the village with honour.  Therefore any selfishness/injustice on part of the village head will leave him with a tag of being 'rich and unjust ' but not 'honourable and just'.  The consequences of such selfish or unjust acts by the person commanding the combined power are a subject of some other days write-up.

Whats wrong with our BPL cards in Andhra Pradesh

1.1    RATION CARDS

            The ration card in my opinion is the most important part of a persons life in the village.  It is misleading to call it a ration card because it is fundamentally a family card.  The main purposes for which a ration card is used in a village is three fold.  Firstly it establishes the identity of the individual and the family, secondly it is used as the starting point for delivery of all the Government services to the individual and finally to deliver subsidized ration.  The current ration card database is very slow in catching up with real time day to day changes in the families with the result that we are always confronted with an outdated database disconnected from reality.

1.1.1           PDS

            Let us first discuss the last part the Public Distribution System(PDS) as it is the reason for existence of the ration card.  PDS was introduced as a part of India’s overall strategy of poverty alleviation and income redistribution.  The primary objective of PDS is to deliver food grains at affordable prices to the poor households of the country, and to provide food security for the country.  The implementation of PDS saw many problems the most important of which was improper targeting of the poor.  In order to address this problem Government of India (GOI) introduced the Targeted Public Distribution System (TPDS) from 1997.  The problems at national level with the PDS are understood to be urban bias, low coverage in poorer regions, inefficient delivery system with high delivery costs and targeting errors.  However when we look at the problems in Andhra Pradesh(AP) we are confronted with a different set. 

Let us first see some statistics: AP has a monthly allocation of 2.73 lakh MT of PDS rice and an offtake of 2.99 lakh MT of rice; the normal production of rice in AP is 120 lakh MT; 44500 Fair Price (FP) shops exist in the state; there are 2.25 cr cards for 2 cr Below Poverty Line(BPL) families in the state; Rs2/kg subsidized rice was introduced in AP from 2008-09; AP spends 10.2% of countries PDS subsidy for 4.2% BPL house holds in India; as per GOI there exist 16 % BPL families whereas GoAP classifies 60% as BPL; and the income limit for a BPL family was enhanced to Rs.60000 in rural areas and Rs.75000 in urban areas.  These facts indicate certain problems with our PDS system. 

Table 1:Some factors which affect the BPL list

Factor	Influence
1.  Reducing levels of poverty	Reduce the list
2.  Elections	Increase the list
3.  Marriages and nuclear families	Increase the list
4.  Births	No impact(inclusion of units)
5.  Divorce	Increase the list
6.  Deaths	Reduce the list(deletion of units/cards)
7.  Migrations	Tendency to increase
8.  Introduction of new welfare schemes linked to BPL card status	Increase the list
9.  Poor regulatory framework	Increase the list
10.  Introduction of fail safe systems using information technology	Decrease the list
11.  Magnitude of difference between GoAP issue price and market price(switchover effect)	Increase the list
12.  Changes in income limits for BPL family	Increase the list
13  Improper deletions	Increase the list(temporary decrease in list Occurs)
14. Rising prices of essential commodities	Increase the list

It is accepted that the success of any PDS is directly dependent on the targeting efficiency.  The efficacy of PDS system depends on the geographic penetration of PDS with a strong network of FP shops; good incentive structure for dealers; and a strong fail safe system capable of arresting open market diversions, bogus/duplicate/ineligible/non resident cards, under weighing and sale at higher prices. 

An examination of AP from the standpoint of traditional success indicators of a PDS system is given in table 2. 

Table 2.  Performance of AP on the PDS parameters.

Indicator	Performance(V.Good/Good/Poor/V.Poor)
1.  Targeting efficiency	Very poor
2.  Network penetration in poorer areas	Very good
3.  Incentive structure for dealers	Poor
4.  Delivery system efficiency	Poor
5.  Urban bias(lack of)	Very good
6.  Utilisation of central allocation	Very good

Though AP does not suffer from usual problems of other states such as poor network penetration or urban bias, one of the major concerns of AP is poor targeting efficiency.  Improper targeting in AP occurred due to two reasons, the first being almost universal coverage and the other due to inclusion errors.

The concern of almost universal coverage of families in AP under PDS is a result of a liberal definition of income limits for BPL family when compared to GOI norms.  The result is that almost 60% of AP population is classified BPL whereas GOI classifies 16%.  Therefore this universal coverage appears populist on the face of it.  We will reexamine this problem of almost universal coverage from a different perspective.  The BPL list of AP is bloated when viewed from the standard static parameters of GOI.  Every year sees a substantial increase of white rations cards disproportionate to the increases in BPL house holds.  There are rapid yearly increases in BPL list coupled with ever pending applications for new cards.  Table 1 indicates that there are factors not related to the PDS which put pressure on the BPL list  GoAP has linked up many of its welfare schemes to the BPL card.  Schemes such as housing, educational fee waiver, Arogya sri, etc. can only be accessed with a white card today.  Privatisation of education has led to setting up of a large number of private institutions with exhorbitant fees beyond the reach of common man.  Government as a welfare measure has provided all BPL families fee reimbursement.  The average middle class, not so poor family can neither afford the private education nor has a BPL card.  Under normal circumstances a middle class family which would not have been under pressure to obtain a BPL card is now forced to obtain one by hook or crook.  The increasing prices of building materials have pushed house construction out of reach from the ordinary not so poor family in the village.  This has resulted in a large number of people who are not so poor dependent on a BPL card in order access Government housing subsidy.  Similarly all the not so poor households of a village during the last few years of drought or flood suffered from the ever increasing prices of essential commodities such as vegetables etc.  The rising prices in the economy and loss of agricultural production due to natural calamities compelled the average family to obtain a BPL card.  The current BPL definition of AP we can say has responded dynamically to the current concerns of the common man who is suffering from the distortions of the economy, government policies and natural calamities.  In the absence of proper regulation of prices or virtuous educational/health policies a liberal BPL list is the least that any democratically elected government could have done.  It would be unfair to deny the people in a democracy the temporary advantage of having a BPL card to over come their temporary poverty during harsh times.  

The inclusion errors are due to a weak system of identification, election year pressures, defects in computerization of the database etc.  The aftermath of any attempt to weed out bogus or ineligible ration cards by Government will be a flood of applications for fresh white cards.  The net result of any such weeding out exercise will be further addition to already bloated BPL card list.  The aforementioned factors also exert some pressure on the not so poor people to sneak into the list.

Another concern of AP is the heavy subsidy budget which has increased abruptly from 720 cr in 07-08 to 3000 cr in the current year due to the Rs2 kg rice.  Heavy drawls of food grains from the central pool and inadequate reforms are also considered problems in AP.

Some suggestions given by experts to overcome the problems of AP have been decentralized procurement; diversification of food grain supplies (by including ragi, jowar etc. apart from rice); introduction of either food stamps or food coupons as is being proposed by GOI; redesigning of identification, targeting and delivery; and use of IT tools to put in place a fail safe system.  The pressing problem for AP currently is to reduce its subsidy burden. 

1.1.2           FAMILY IDENTITY CARD

One of the functions of a ration card as said earlier is for use as a family identity card.  It establishes the identity of a person as a resident of AP.  Any data relating to such family cards is gathered and stored either manually or electronically.  This database should reflect the family details truly at any given time.  The composition of a family is subject to continuous changes due to births, marriages, migrations, divorces and deaths.  There exists a lag between the time of occurrence of the family changes and the time of incorporation in the database.  This database is therefore dynamic and keeps adapting to real time changes.  The mechanism/system overseeing the database should ensure three things.  The changes should be made reliably and truly, easily and quickly.  Our challenge is to see that the change which occurs in a family in the remotest corner of the state is easily and correctly captured in the quickest possible time.

The family details reflected in a card are names of head of the family and other members, date of birth, age, fathers/spouses name, address, and income.  We have to first see if any changes are needed in the details currently being captured and then examine how to capture those details.  The capture of the card number of father will help in cross referencing and reliability of data.  A large number of rural families migrate during lean season from their villages.  There is a need to capture both the temporary address as well as permanent address for every family.  This will also help in removal of cards for the same family at two places.  The capture of age should be done away with and capture of date of birth in its place alone should be allowed.  Age capture creates confusion at the field level at a later date when the card is used for other purposes.  An incorporation of date of birth alone should be made and not the age in the database.  When we look at the old aged people not receiving pensions today we come across a large number of very old people with an under reporting of age in the ration cards.  All these people now are kept away from enjoying the benefits of old age pensions.  The date of births of a majority of the 0-45 age group people can be easily captured from birth certificates or SSC certificates.  Those of the older people can be ascertained with the help of rationally designed questionnaires at the village level.  Similarly because of improper deletions of death cases from the ration card a number of widows have lost the opportunity to access widow pensions.  The income assessment is another area where a proper procedure should be adopted.

The changes in the database can happen through three ways viz., intimation by the card member, gathered from databases of other departments such as medical & health, education etc., or gathered by group of dedicated functionaries like revenue/civil supplies machinery.  Most of the applications from members are for correction of errors, addition of new members, change of address, creation of new family units, or removal of members.  There is a need to create a fail safe and universally understood mechanism for this purpose.  Such a system should withstand the dumbest and the most mischievous of our employees and citizens.

1.1.3           ACCESS KEY TO ALL GOVERNMENT BENEFITS

The third main function of a ration card is that of a key which unlocks a host of other Governmental benefits.  All the services of Government revolve around the family unit of which any individual is an integral part.  Today the ration card is being used for identification of beneficiaries for many schemes such as housing, pensions, fee waiver etc.  Each of the benefit needs one type of information from the card database.  Housing requires the income data, old age pension require the date of birth, widow pensions require death data, and some other scheme could need the present address.  Therefore all the basic data provided in the card is equally important.  There is a tendency of the civil supplies department to maintain the family details and income alone with no importance given to correct capture of remaining data like date of birth.  When old age pensioners were limited very few people were concerned about right date of birth.  There was a tendency to give younger age in order to appear young in the village.  With pensions being given to all eligible this item became of paramount importance.  Such incorrect data will affect the quality of other departmental services as well.

For this to happen properly all the departments of the Government must have easy and quick access to the real time ration card database.

Current day needs of a villager in Andhra

Every human being has certain basic needs as an individual.  In order to fulfill these needs efficiently and survive, they gather into societies.  The most elementary form of such a grouping is the village.  The villages as we see in rural India are the most ancient and surviving human habitations anywhere in the world both in their age as well as the principles on which they are built.  These villages have been part of hundreds of years of human history in those areas.  Their fundamentals also have not changed much from the times when they have been founded in ancient times. 

Every one of us needs food, shelter and clothing to survive.  Provision of food, shelter and clothing to all the inhabitants was therefore the cornerstone on which habitations started to evolve.  The responsibility of the habitation as a collective is to ensure adequate provision of the three basic needs to each and every resident.  The economy of an elementary habitation should therefore involve exchange of goods and services relating to food, shelter and clothing.  A look at any of the villages in our country will make this very clear.  Even today the social, political and economic life in a village revolves around food production or agriculture.  A typical village of 300 houses will have some 1000 acres of agricultural land, wherein some 250 houses will be agriculturists, some 30 houses agricultural labour, 20 houses of washermen/hair cutters/priests/traders/weavers/potters/builders etc.  The payments to the artisans are even today made in kind, in terms of bags of paddy by the agricultural families.  Agricultural produce is the currency of the village.  A drought year or a flood year will hit the village economy very badly.

            There are two ways of looking at the needs of a human being, one as an individual and the other as a village; these correspond to 'at home' needs and 'at common place' needs'. We will confine ourselves to the current day assessment of human needs from governance stand point here. 

INDIVIDUAL NEEDS(at home needs)

            On todays date the individual basic needs are reflected in the three activities of our government viz., ration cards, housing and pensions.  Then there are other needs relating to credit, revenue record keeping, certificates of caste/income/birth/death/marriage, electric connections, telephone connections, etc.  These are needs which can be satisfied, carried back and enjoyed at home.

VILLAGE NEEDS(at common place needs)

            A village is similar to a living being having its own needs.  There are certain needs specific to the village as a unit and some needs for a group of villages. These needs can be classified into intra-village needs and inter-village needs.  We will examine these needs from the stand point of services rendered by our government.

            The basic intra-village needs for survival of a village are drinking water, sewer disposal, rain water disposal, internal roads, garbage disposal, electric supply, and dead body disposal.  Then we have other important village needs such as education, health facilities, place for governance, places of worship, places of gathering, place for conduct of business, place for common facilities, rations shop, and veterinary facility. These needs can only be satisfied and enjoyed at common places in the village.

            The Sarpanch or the village headman(in case of a dummy Sarpanch), the ration shop dealer and the Village Revenue Office(VRO)  form the governing trio of the village.  These three people influence the major decision making in the village including whom to vote for during election times.  The other functionaries who become important politically at village level are anganwadi worker, the priest, Self Help Group (SHG) leaders and community leaders.  They too can exert some influence during voting in an election.

The governance of a village requires a panchayat where the governing body and the panchayat secretary are located and an office for a VRO where different certificates/documents are issued.  Ration shop is another focal point in a village where people frequent for issue of subsidized food grains and is located at a convenient place fixed by Government.  The ration shop dealer also exerts his influence on other matters relating to the welfare benefits to inhabitants such as pensions, housing etc.  The health of the inhabitants is taken care by the local community health worker and the health assistant.  The educational needs are satisfied in the anganwadi centre, the primary school / high school.  The anganwadi worker is another functionary who has influence over some young ladies.  Rachabanda is usually where people gather in the evenings for deliberations and santha(shandy) is the market place where conduct of business takes place.  There are certain common facilities such as warehouses, threshing floors, drying platforms, cold storages etc. which are used for the livelihood activities in the village. 

            The inter-village needs are those which are common to a group of villages such as connecting roads, transport facilities, irrigation systems, major rural water supply systems etc.