For thousands of years, the people in India have considered the cow to be the most sacred piece of creation that walks on the earth. And even now it pretty much is the same.
In economics the Pareto index, named after the Italian economist and sociologist Vilfredo Pareto, is a measure of the breadth of income or wealth distribution. It is one of the parameters specifying a Pareto distribution and embodies the Pareto principle. As applied to income, the Pareto principle is sometimes stated in popular expositions by saying 20% of the population has 80% of the income. In fact, Pareto’s data on British income taxes in his Cours d’économie politique indicates that about 30% of the population had only about 70% of the income.<quoted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_index>
But what do we have in common between this peaceful animal and this uncomfortable truth about the unequal distribution of income?
The commons are more uncomfortable. According to the World Bank estimate, in 2001, there were 2.7 billion people in the world who lived with an income of less than 2$ per day. And out of this, 1.1 billion, which is roughly equal to the entire population of India, lives with an income of less than 1$ a day.
And each one of the 130 million cows in Europe, receive a subsidy of 2.2$ per day on an average. An average European cow is richer than 2.7 billion people who does not have proper access to food, clean water, health care, school or the internet.
The cow is indeed holier than thou! But this time, not in India.
The unequal distribution of wealth and resources had been denying opportunities for billions of people all over the world, especially in Africa, South America and South Asia.
The people who live with an income of less than one dollar a day, they have to pay for their rent, electricity, school fees, clothing and transportation from the same one dollar that they have as income. On the other side, the cows, does not have to pay for any of these, and therefore the entire 2.2$ are spent on nutrition and healthcare.
The population of 2.7bn, which is roughly equal to twice as many people in China, who has an income of less than 2$ a day are seriously lacking in terms of nutrition, primary healthcare facilities and even access to safe drinking water.
This is in a world where we are spending 286 million dollars a day, just to ensure that the beef and dairy products which is exported from European union is superior in quality so that people in North America can eat it without getting concerned! Collectively, this amount reaches 4175600 million rupees an year, which is 44.79 times higher than the combined amount granted for education, health and broadcast for 2007-2008 in Union Budget of India. These statistics show a wider gap between the living standards of people in a country like India and say America or Japan.
The farm products from India or Colombia will never be able to compete with the products of EU or America, unless we find out a way to address this. The surplus products from the heavily subsidized European and American farms keep flooding the open markets of developing nations and in effect drive away the domestic products out of the market.
This is just one side of the story.
As per the Union Budget, India will be spending 15895 crores of rupees during 2007-2008 as interest payments, which is roughly 8% more than what we have spent for the previous year. If I quote the Ministry Of Finance Press Release, “At the end of September 2007, India’s external debt stock stood at US $ 190.5 billion (Rs.757,967 crore), increasing by an amount of US$ 9.9 billion (5.5 per cent) over the quarter (Table), of which around US$ 5 billion is explained by valuation change arising out of weakening US dollar against major international currencies and Indian Rupees.”
http://finmin.nic.in/press_room/2007/dec_details.htm#ExtDebt_Qsep07
Despite the billions of dollars that are being ‘granted’ to us, India still has the world’s largest number of poor people living in a single country. Of its nearly 1 billion inhabitants, an estimated 350-400 million are below the poverty line, 75% of them in the rural areas. 40% of our people still cannot read or write.
The question is how many billions of this collective debt has reached the people who live in extreme poverty. What is the amount of rupees granted to start schools and hospitals in villages ranging from Rajasthan to Nicobar Islands? What is the amount provided as loans to farmers ranging from Punjab to Palghat?
This huge burden of interest, which is getting bigger year by year, is strongly under-capitalizing the grants which could have been directed to eradicate poverty and to develop better living conditions. This could have been used to provide clean drinking water to people in Orissa and Andhra Pradesh.
This could have been used to help enabling 40 crores of people learn to read and write.
The past is past. It is high time to realize that the future lies in implementing the mechanism of micro planning and development.
How many of the Private/Multinational banking giants will be ready to provide low interest loans to the people in villages? This is out of question as such loans generate little or very less amount of short term profit.
The need is to strengthen financial institutions that will take on this task and to provide required subsidies to those. This will ensure that the collective debt that we have turns to micro debts and reach the people who are really in need.
10% of the amount that the nation spends to fuel its military per year is sufficient to provide subsidies worth 6666 rupees per year to 10% of its poorest farmers. They will be able to utilize this to buy a water pump, or to buy a cow which can give milk.
And this can only be achieved if the government opens its eye to the need of implementing micro credits with long term repayment schedules.
It is equally important to identify, which are the right institutions to do this also.
Unless and until we learn to globalize care and concern, there is no point in embracing the policies of free and open trade.
And a foot note:
The international trade in beef for 2000 was over $30 billion and represented only 23 percent of world beef production (Clay 2004). Targeting the unexplored market of around $90 billion, the European and American cows will definitely continue to receive subsidies in the future. It is time for the third world countries, which have already opened the gates, to be prepared.
Lest, we will have to take pride in the fact that the richest man in the world lives in India, hiding the fact that 40 crore people in the same country cannot read that in the newspaper!
Also, since North America houses only 15% of the world’s overall population but 85% percentage of the world’s internet users, it is 5.66. times probable that a North American reads this, rather than anyone else in the world!
PaperPuli 