Digging holes

Phirturam has what looks like a credit card in his hand. It has his photo, a magnetic strip on the back, electrical contacts of some kind, and a series of digits at the bottom. It also says "Dena Bank" on top. But this is not a credit card. It is the key to accessing his wages under the National Rural Employment Guarantee scheme. The money is credited to this account in Dena Bank, and he can use this card in an ATM to withdraw money from the account.

Only, there's no ATM in his village, Kamtha in Chhattisgarh.

Still, he can trek to Dalli, about 6-7 km distant, and use the card at one of the ATMs there; probably no Dena Bank, but it doesn't matter.

Tomorrow is the last day this year that Phirturam will work under the employment guarantee scheme. He has been digging out a tank near Kamtha. Every day he has to dig a 12ft by 12ft square, 1 foot deep. For this, he gets paid Rs 122. But no more for the rest of the year.

What happens now, what kind of work will you do? I ask him.

Farm work, he says, tersely.

You have your own land? I ask.

No, I'll work as labour on somebody else's land. Some farmer in the village, needs some work done, he'll call me.

And what will you get paid? I ask.

Rs 50 or 60 a day.

And you'll work every day? I ask.

He laughs. No, not every day. Two, maybe three days a week.

In his home, the only other earning member is Phirturam's brother, who also works like this. So between them, they'll bring home something like Rs 350 a week. Call it Rs 1400 a month. I'm struck by that figure, because just before I graduated from my engineering college, I struggled through a campus interview and was offered a job by the company.

They offered me Rs 1100 a month.

Thirty years later, two men together earn just a little more than that and it has to take care of half a dozen people in the family, including Phirturam's 11 year-old son who is just getting over a fourth bout of malaria.

Yes, I too might go dig holes for the Government, to pocket a few dozen daily pay packets of Rs 122.

Pain, suddenly

Four of us at dinner at a Bombay institution, one of the city's oldest Chinese restaurants, last night. As it turns out, I haven't been there since I was about 13 or 14, which by my calculations comes to, let's see, hmm, about 67 years.

Anyway. When we were done, we emerged from the restaurant and two of us walked over to the nearby paanwala to get, you guessed it, a paan. The other two, a friend and I, stood chatting on the pavement.

A small girl approached and asked for money. Also asking us for money were an ancient man sitting on the pavement behind us, and an equally ancient woman sitting on the pavement a few feet on the other side of us. After a few moments during which the girl kept asking, I fished in my pockets. No coins. I pulled out my wallet. Found a Rs 5 note. Gave it to her.

She ran off to the corner, and almost immediately two or three other girls emerged from there, also asking for money. Behind me, the old man grumbled. "You gave her money, you didn't give me any!" Then the first girl returned. With a smile, she said, "The note is torn!"

I took it back. It was indeed badly torn. Looked in my wallet again, no more Rs 5 notes. I pulled out a Rs 10 note and gave it to her.

The old man grumbled some more. The other girls asked again for money. My friend spoke to them, asking their names and where they were from.

Our other two friends came back with their paan. We turned to walk away, homeward bound.

Suddenly I felt an excruciating pain on the back of my knee. I turned around, hobbling for a few seconds. The old man had hit me with a long stick, the size and thickness of a police lathi.

"You didn't give me anything!" he shouted at me.

I just stood there, still in pain, looking at him.

Two photographs, and a third

When I saw the picture, I made a mental note to go dig up the earlier one. I should have done it right away -- as often happens, I got distracted and never got around to it.

So I was glad to find, some days ago, that Rahul S had the same purpose in mind and did the digging. Take a look at his Spot the difference.

After you take a look, consider this detail that's mentioned in Rahul's comments: the young man in the first photograph here, described in that report as a "suspected Maoist", is a "mute and mentally challenged youth".

Poor numbers

Another Tendulkar, this one by name Suresh, has been getting some newsplay in recent weeks. (Gratuitous facetious question: why "another Tendulkar", is there somebody else people think of when they see that name?)

You know why. The Suresh Tendulkar Committee has done substantial damage to the complacency with which we've long assumed that we're well on the way to eliminating poverty in this country. Only a few years ago, we heard from government and commentators that "only" 26 per cent of India fell below the poverty line, a great reduction from 1991 when the "reforms" began. Well, this Mr Tendulkar tells us that according to his estimates, now accepted by the Government, it's more like 37 per cent of India that's below the poverty line: 370 million people in 2005. That's projected to rise to 405 in 2011 according to today's Hindustan Times.

A few completely random thoughts about these numbers.

* 370 million is greater than the population of India in 1947. (So, for that matter, is 405 million). That is, we have far more poor Indians today than we had Indians at Independence. I think this is a statement that we could have made at any time in every one of our 62+ independent years.

* 370 million is also the number of dollars that brought an IPL team to Pune in the recent round of bidding. (As an aside about the Pune team, check Girish Shahane's sharp eyes). That is, the guys who bid for the Pune team could have used their money to hand out one dollar to each of India's poor millions, possibly nudging them over the poverty line for a day. Gives me some perspective.

* 370 million poor in 2005 rising to 405 million in 2011 is an annual growth rate of just over 1.5 per cent. (Check the numbers yourself). According to various estimates, that's comparable to how fast India's population as a whole is growing (e.g Wikipedia says 1.548, World Bank says 1.34, CIA World Factbook says 1.407, etc). In other words, the number of poor Indian is growing just as fast as the Indian population as a whole (and maybe faster). That is, we are making zero progress in reducing poverty.

Someone tell me what, if anything, I am missing.

***
Postscript: Above, I said: I think this is a statement that we could have made at any time in every one of our 62+ independent years.

Not true of course, lazily written, let me hasten to correct it. Just doing some quick calculations in my head, I suspect it's a statement that we could have made at any time in at least the last 35 or 40 years.