Transcript of Many Securities talk by P Sainath

P Sainath - Many Securities
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0BoRLwoEe18

I found this talk revelatory and eye-opening. I couldn't find the transcript of it anywhere, so I wrote it myself. (mind, it took a very long time, phew!)

This needs to be shared. And internalised. It covers a lot of topics and shows exceptional insight into the reasons behind and the consequences of the distorted way in which India the State treats its citizenry.


A little about him:

Palagummi Sainath (born 1957) is an Indian journalist. He calls himself a 'rural reporter' or simply a 'reporter', and photojournalist focusing on social problems, rural affairs, poverty and the aftermaths of globalization in India. He is the Rural Affairs Editor for The Hindu, and the website India Together has been archiving some of his work in The Hindu daily for the past six years. Amartya Sen has called him "one of the world's great experts on famine and hunger".

More on wikipedia.

Here's an audio version, you can keep it playing while reading.


(only starting from P Sainath)
Thankyou very much, Keshulai, and, as Keshulai said,
I'm not going to pose as an expert on Maoism
I do work in areas like Chattisgarh, Malkangiri, Kolhapur, a lot of work in those []
I'm willing to discuss questions that you might have about
what I come across and what I run into in those areas
I'm certainly willing to do that
But I would like to approach this differently today
I'm not going to step into a frame in which 
I have neither the competence nor the content
I'm going to talk about exactly what the title is, Many Securities
The different kinds of securities that are important for the nation, for a society
I would say that a nation that condemns the majority of its people
to everyday indefinite insecurity can never be secure itself.
That's the first proposition.
Do you condemn the over.... [03.09]
....[3.29] I totally diverge from what Dr. Manmohan Singh makes as ourbiggest source of insecurity []
I would say that the single biggest source of our insecurity
is the incredible, unsustainable levels of inequality that
we have built very consciously in the last 20 years.
Those levels of inequality take us back, for any comparisons that you want to make,
the only time and period with which you can compare,
is that of the colonial Raj.
Now what's different between existing inequalities in India and earlier?
There was inequality in India, we all know that.
It's not a secret, it's not that it wasn't there before in 60 years
But, there's a big difference.
Oh, incidentally, let me digress to point out that..
what I'm talking to you about, the single biggest danger,
was Exactly the core of the speech
made by the architect of this Constitution of India
when he handed it over to the Constituent Assembly
when Dr.Ambedkar handed over the draft Constitution
for discussion and adoption
I believe that that speech that Ambedkar made that day
remains the greatest speech in Parliament before there was Parliament.
And the core of that speech says,
"Today, we live in an.. we have stepped into
an extremely dangerous and paradoxical time"
I'm not quoting verbatim, I'm paraphrasing, it's a long..
well, the core phrases are correct.
He says we enter a dangerous paradox.
We have built ourselves a fine political democracy
but in society and economy there is no democracy and that is no equality
the tension between the inequality in social and economic terms
can explode our political democracy
this was the founder, the architect,
primary architect of your constitution
as he handed over the draft constitution for discussion and adoption
that was the speech that Ambedkar made.
sixty three years later you have to say that he got it absolutely right
that is the single greatest tension in your society
the tension between what's happening in economy and society
and political democracy
So, what's the difference between the inequality or that you see today in India
post 91, and the inequality that you had in earlier periods
I would say one central difference
If you look from the 50s, the planning period,
right up to the 80s,
if you take various measures of inequality
say, inequality in wages,
inequality at the top end of the spectrum and salaries,
between 50s and the 80s inequality in those terms 
actually declined in the country
actually declined.
Maybe not as I and you would have liked to see it decline
..certainly not as I would have like to see it decline, but it declined.
From the late 80s it begins an upward trend once again
From the 90s it takes off
It really takes off at levels that you cannot imagine.
I will come to the numbers, which Keshulai was mentioning,
the UNDP - it's one measure. But still it's important
the difference there, the central difference between what happens
in the 90s and this decade,
and India before that
is that never has inequality in independent India
been so consciously constructed
so ruthlessly engineered
on the premise that it is a good thing.
Greed is good
Accumulation is good
you have to create that wealth, then it's going to have a trickle down effect
that economics stands disgraced and discredited across the world
including in the home model from where we have adopted it.
You're looking at Europe in turmoil today.
You're looking at the United States in a.. 
completely vulnerable economic situation for the last several years
its.. whether you're looking at the United States or Europe,
you're looking at a completely.. 
you're looking at a model of trickle-down economics that has completey failed
and is utterly discredited and disgraced
here, we still stand by it
we still swear by it
it shows in every single policy dimension
of our policy making activity
well, Keshulai was talking about what our position is 
in the UN development report
even in the disgraceful position that we are,
our HDR value is 0.548
and that places us below every single Latin American nation that you can think of
when you take the multi-dimensional poverty index
however, when you factor inequality into the index,
you fall a further 30 percent
the HDR value of 0.548 comes down to 0.3741 or something.. .374
you're losing 30 percent 
in the very limited human development value that you have
once.. the moment you factor in inequality
the difference between..
see, there were two phases in the UN human development report,
I'll finish with that so we can then move on to actual,
much more alive things
One is, in 98, major changes were made in the UN human development..
the UN human deveopment report was actually a Indo-Pakistani concept.
Professors Naibibul Haq and Amartya Sen together devised the human development report.
it was a huge advance over existing ways of understanding how people did,
because it moved away from a very stupid per capita growth or per capita income measure
to include other measures of how human beings are doing
now this per capita thing is, you know, is extremely misleading
if my income is 10 million dollars a year
and all of you are earning a hundred thousand rupees a year,
the average per capita income of this room will reflect nobody's reality
and in societies which are extremely
heterogeneous in class and caste hierarchies of very very rigid and terrible nature
the averaging.. like India's literacy is an average between East UP and Kerala
ok.. your averaging doesn't help you in that kind of a dimension
unless you have many, many factors which you look at in trying to understand
inequality and how human beings are doing.
so, when you have that, you'll start...
in 98, Richard Jolly produced a report for the United Nations which angered everybody.
coz it showed us how bad things were.
so then they changed the methodology and from around [89] 2000
they started using a different methodology
whichever period you take, from the 90s,
the human development report's life is
[11.18] [quote terminas with rb from superior]
and our functioning in that has been one of declining rank
the more billionaires we've accumulated, the worse we're doing on human development.
the greater the concentration of the wealth, the worse we are doing on human development
how do we square this off, is the question
it then argues even deeper inequality
well, in the 2011 report they changed the methodology again
they brought in different indicators of indexes
they brought in the general index - the UN human development report
in which we are about 119 out of a 160~150 nations
then they brought in the multi-dimensional poverty index
where you fall to 134
they brought in the gender inequality index
in which you fall to a disastrous 126 out of just some 146 nations or so on that index
you stand completely exposed.
what's very important is not just that those latin american countries
and some african countries are ahead of you
that's not the most important thing
the most important thing is that all those poor countries that are ahead of you
not one of them has had 9% growth
not one of them is the 4th largest military power in the world
not one of them is the 6th nuclear power on the planet
not one of them has your scientific technological
human skills, capability, resource pool
and yet they've done better
how is that?
how is it that Botswana does better than you on every count?
if you take your own planning commission's human development report,
are you aware that a few months ago the planning commission wing
had a India human development report?
I quote for you from that malnourishment rate among India's children...
...so the India human development report, which is published by an arm 
of the planning commission of India, states
malnourishment rate of India's children under the NHFS
National Family Health Survey -3, is 46%,
46%, which is roughly double the rate of malnourishment amongst children
of sub-saharan Africa. This is not a UN report.
It is the government of india's planning commission human development report
Now, sub-saharan africa is not the world's greatest IT superpower 
it is not a software superpower. it doesn't have a fraction
of the kind of human resources that we do
it doesn't have the pool of knowledge and skills that we are so
inordinately and excessively proud of
how the heck did they do that?
take the global hunder index. you take any index if you want to
ok i talked about the planning commission's index,
there is a global hunger index
which looks at underweight children, proportion of hungry population
[14.46]
the global hunger index comes from the think tank which some of you might be knowing of
called the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) in Washington DC
Our position and rank in the global hunger index
has been.. has moved in inverse proportion to our wealth and accumulation
I mean, one can interpret the progress rates differently but not the rank.
Today we rank, out of 81 of the world's hungriest nations,
we rank, in descending order, 67.
67! all your south asian neighbours are ahead of you.
you rank 67 out of 81.
Here you are. 9% growth for a decade. where does it show?
Where does it show in benefits for your people?
67 out of 81 in the global hunger index.
By the way, all of the reports that I am using,
not one of them is confidential or secret
they are public, you can access them online
including the.. the India human development report - they've not yet put that up online
they haven't yet put that up online, because they're trying to sell it for money
for a while, and then they'll put it up online i guess
well, that's the fact.
look at the global hunger index. look at the countries
uh.. if you want to know who we have managed to nudge ahead of
we've beaten the pants off Zimbabwe.
I hope you're all very thrilled with that achivement.
Because, by the way, 4 years ago, Zimbabwe was ahead of us
So we make progress. They used to have another indicator which they've dropped
it's called the global hunger progress indicator. How you have
improved in your handling of hunger.
for the years that they had that index, Ethiopia was ahead of us
every year on that index. They were handling the hunger better.
Not that they were.. they were below us in the rank,
but handling of it was better. So that's how you are in the global hunger index
67 out of 81. Malnourishment : you should know today that
31% of the world's stunted children are Indian citizens. 
One in every 3 stunted child in the world is an Indian citizen. Ok,
and that is directly related to malnourishment.
I was before the parliamentary standing committee on the farm crisis a few days ago
and I made a small calculation for them
for what happens in your country for the parliament..
during a parliament session. The last parliament session was
38 days. 38 days. November 22nd to December 29th.
Typically what happens in your country in 38 days.
In 38 days, 1,786 farmers commit suicide. That's the average.
47 a day. 1 every half hour. [] that's a home ministry figure
from the national crime records bureau of the government of India home ministry.
According to police, for every suicide that succeeds, there are ten to twelve failed attempts.
that's the police calculation.
NGOs and organizations working on suicide reject that figure.
they say it's 15 to 20 -- let's take the police calculation.
which means that if a 1,786 farmers commit suicide, in 38 days of parliament,
it means between 18000 to 21000 attempted, in 38 days.
by the way, if you take the census figures of the farm population
and here it brings me back to the issue of insecurity
people are leaving agriculture at the rate of two thousand a day.
if you want the exact figure, it's 1,938.
between the 1991 census and the 2001 census, 
seven and a half million farmers quit agriculture.
you did not create 7.5 million jobs.
the marginal subsistence farmer quitting in Telangana
doesn't go into Infosys. Then, where do they go?
you don't even have a mechanism which counts
the dropouts beyond the census figure once in ten years.
So, it means that if 7.5 million people left in 10 year, it means
1,938 people on average are leaving farming every day.
you have nothing. you've created nothing by way of employment
in any sector that absorbs that kind of numbers on a round the year basis.
if we're looking at deaths related to malnourishment, hunger and birth care
then we're talking about 38 days : 17,000 deaths
if we take the government of India's measures of how many children die
if we take UNICEF measures of how they die,
that shoots up to more than 90,000

Entirely besides all this, tens of thousands of more children, in 38 days
enter what are known as - i don't know if you're familiar with it,
grade 3 and grade 4 malnourishment.
grade 3 and grade 4 malnourishment are levels of malnourishment from which
there is virtually no return.
there is virtually no return.
[]
a child who has entered grade 4 malnourishment,
you can save the child's life.
you can't save the child's mind or physiology ever.
that's gone. that's finished. that child is finished.
full retrieval from - grade 3, chances are there
but grade 4 : beyond that level, there's no comeback.
there's nothing that you can do about it.
that child is damaged. mentally, cranium capacity..
all kinds of serious damage is suffered by that child.

But let's look at what is happening at the other end of the spectrum in the same 38 days
how many of you read the budget of india?
how many of you read the economic survey of india and the government of india's budget anually?
(to someone in audience) You - have to. you have no choice. but voluntariy how many of you read.
(sir, not the whole thing) ok, i suggest two pages, Two documents which you should read every year.
I'm not asking you to read more than ten pages. ok?
One is a section called "statement of revenue foregone"
it's an annexure to the budget. statement of revenue forgone talks about:
what are the taxes that the government has written off for the elite of your nation?
for the richest people in your country. for the corporate world.
hmm? this is very very important. I said.. I made one central proposition
for you at the beginning of this discussion.
1. That the biggest source of insecurity in his country is the growing inequality
2. Corollary .. is that.. the sheer, sheer indifference we show
and the justification of that inequality
even the celebration of it, which we've seen in the last 20 years
is a huge threat to your stability , cohesiveness as a society.
It's shameful to me, something very sick and degenerate
about a society that has to debate
whether it is our duty to feed the hungry or not.
The fact that you're having a debate over the food securtiy bill, nauseates
in which other society is that a huge debate?
in which of those European societies and Western societies
that we try making models, is that a debate, outside of the United States,
where you have something called social security
which there are people who want to tear it down
the standard answer is, there's no money. Where's the money?
Here's the money. Look at statement of revenue forgone
5 lakh crores in concessions under 3 heads to the richest people in your country.
Direct corporate income tax write-off
which means it benefits 4 of our guys who are on the Forbes billionaires list
oh, 55 of our guys, sorry. 55.. 4 who are in the top 15
Just direct corporate income tax writeoff, 
in this budget, 2011-2012 
88,263 crores. That's 242 crores a day writeoff
In 38 days, when a 1,786 farmers kill themselves,
that write-off is worth 9,200 crores or 1.84 billion dollars.
To the richest 0.01% of your society.

Let me, let me pose the 90,000 crores figure another way.
90,000 crores is what it costs you, the high end estimate,
to have, Sir, a universal public distribution system
the highest estimate of a public distribution system is 90,000 crores
which means that EVERY Indian citizen would have access to food.
I think the food security bill is nonsense, actually
because the Constitution of India does not have APL and BPL and priority.
it's based on citizenship. And the directive principles of state policy
tell you exactly what a citizen is due to
I believe that these bills actually water down 
what are the entitlements of the Indian people
but that's a debatable issue. The fact is,
you have 90,000 crores to write off, by the way,
what's 90,000 crores? 90,000 crores is Direct corporate income tax.
let's take customs duties. After petroleum,
which benefits the whole nation,
which is the single biggest customs exemption
anyone has an idea?
Gold, diamonds and jewellery
49,500 crores is the writeoff.
But you don't have money.
Look at... in the same budget, you cut 450 crores from food subsidies
in a nation that has 31% of the world's stunted children
in a nation which has double the proportion of sub-saharan Africa in malnourished children
you cut 450 crores but you have 49,500 crores as the writeoff for golds, diamonds and jewellery
the second biggest writeoff in customs
well if you add excise duty to it
if you take the write-offs.. i'm very pleased 
that after 10 years of refusing to see this, Amartya Sen finally
mentioned it in an article in the Hindu, which I suspect you saw
by the way, we have been publishing that figure in the Hindu
since 2006 when the data became available.
he has taken note of it, I'm grateful to him,
I wish he had done so 10 years ago.
But... what is 500,000 crores?
It's two and a half times your 2G scam.
At the high end estimate of the 2G scam
if you take your high end estimate of the 2G scam
1 lakh 79,000 crores, then the concessions your giving to the corporate..
these are not subsidies. These are the writeoffs.
the subsidies are something else. Those are given in the SEZs,
those are given by state governments, by central governments in concessions
in municipal taxes, in water taxes, those are millions of other subsidies
I'm just talking about corporate Karzaamat
but you don't have money for poor people,
you don't have money for health,
you don't have money for education
how many of you read yesterday's report on education in the Times of India?
50% of all your children are dropping out by class 7th.
more than half of that 50% drop out by class 3.
ok, so at one end of the world you have your IITs and IIMs 
and you are the dominant face of silicon valley.
at the other end, hundreds of millions of children are outside school.
ok? you made a great thing about your enrollment ratio being so good,
that 100% enrollment. How the heck does it matter
if of your 100% enrollment, 50% drop out by class 7, 25% drop out byclass 3?
how does your 100% enrollment matter?
the numbers again will [later]
but the idea of more securities is
that there is such a thing as food security
there is such a thing as livelihood security
there is such a thing, and extremely important thing,,
for food security called environmental security
anyone who steps up to what we've been so proud of
in the Punjab all these years
please look at the loss of soil fertility
25%, 30% loss in soil fertility
your yields have not just plateaued
they're declining rapidly
and we're using.. to fight the problem we've created with chemicals,
we're using more chemicals, and more pesticides.
it's like a medical system where we create a drug for blood pressure,
which by the way I have to take
then, we create drugs for the side-effects of that,
and other drugs for the side-effects of those drugs 
we are running agriculture on steroids in this country.
and the result.. and finally what happens with steroids, 
will happen with agriculture
there is such a thing as resource security.
if people canot be sure, of where their.. in whose hands the resources will be tomorrow
my point is that if you focus on a standard understanding of national security,
whether in terms of internal security or securing your borders,
we may be missing the wood for the trees
where many of those whose security we are concerned with, 
have no stake in either our security or our nation.
I think it's something worth thinking about.
who are you fighting for, and what do they think of what we are fighting for
what stake do they have in your nation
if you dispossess millions of people of their resources,
what stake do they have in our security and our nation?

Whether you look at it in terms of... look at education for instance, again
out of every hundred children who join school
25 have dropped out within 2 years.
50 have dropped out within 5 years.
in the richest state of maharashtra,
less than 7% of girls go beyond high school in most districts
and that's a rich state. that's an incredible rich state.
how much of your wealth is concentrated in maharashtra?
it's also the state with the worst number of malnourishment deaths from melghat
which is now infamous
it is the state with the highest number of farmer suicides by far
20,000 more than the next state which is Karnataka
and beyond food security, there is something else which
those who are worried about security, should reflect on
there is something I would call, .. and not invented by me
food sovereignty. who controls the process of production in your country
today, for instance, in many third world countries, and we have begun the process here
a couple of companies control the seed 
today in India, one company controls cotton seed.
who are the biggest.. second biggest cotton producer in the world
the single biggest cotton region in the world is in our country
vidarbha, many people don't realise, is bigger than Punjab, sir.
Punjab is 50,000 square kilometers. Vidarbha is 52,500
the six districts of cotton growing are twice the size of kerala
52,000 [square] kilometers, ok, kerala has about 38,000? so one and a half times, ya.
so that is, that is the Vidarbha.
A single company controls and holds the destinies of these people
in the costliest seed in the district
going from 9 Rs a kilogram for local seed in 1991
to about 2000 Rs per kilogram now, or 950 Rs for a packet of 450 grams
whole issues of food sovereignty are coming up
of environmental security, as land and forest gets degraded
soil gets degraded.
[sound system disturbance, someone in audience jokes, we need mike security]
so, all these, but let me bring you back to the discussions and debates of the last four or five years.
how many people, how many educated indians are aware
that your government, while celebrating 9% growth, etc
has felt compelled to have set up, in four years, 
three high level bodies to look at rural poverty numbers?
if you were doing so brilliantly, why do you have 3 commissions..
well, there is a reason why governments in India 
traditionally have multiple committees on a subject
Government of maharashtra has had about 12 enquiries on farmer suicides
the reason for that is very simple.
typically governments will have 10 commissions on a subject 
until one of them gives them the report it wants.
so, that's how it happened with the poverty issue
in 2007, they got NCEUS - the national commission for enterprises in the unorganised sector
and they gave it to someone who they thought was very safe,
he had all the credentials required, he had worked with the world bank,
he had worked with the IMF, good middle of the road economist
planning commission, Dr.Arjun Sen Gupta and he produced a report which said on the first page,
836 million Indians are living on 20 Rs a day or less.
they were scandalized and outrages by the report. First page of the report says so
it also gives you a breakup of who the 836 million people are.
please look... your inequality has a face. many faces.
it tells you, 88% of all Dalits,
88% of all Adivasis,
85% of all Muslims
85% of all OBCs fall into these 836 million people who live on 20 Rs a day or less
ok, you can update that price index wise to your 32 Rs and 26 Rs a day, you can update it
as you know, your planning commission twice filed affidavits before the Supreme Court
one in April, one a couple of months ago
one last April, one a couple of months ago
in which it had adjusted its own figures
in April, it filed an affidavit, defending..
defending the 20Rs cutoff as a poverty line
then by November-December it filed a new petition,
upgrading that, which is simply a price indexing issue
to 32 Rs and 26 Rs
32 Rs as the expenditure in urban areas, urban consumer expenditure
and 26 Rs for rural areas.
which is when, as you know, many people challenged
Dr. Montek Singh to show us how to live on 32 Rs, or 26 Rs
at the one end of the spectrum, we don't even want to look at..
anyway, we were so angered by this report,
we set up a second committee. for my sins, I was a member of that.
It was the NC Saxena committee, BPL expert group
where we had scintillating expert discussions for two hours on one occasion
on whether women were really poor
by the way, that was a vast improvement on the previous BPL census
where female headed poverty was discussed in even more extraordinary terms
i have the cutoff sheet, ok, the sheet on which you tick off 
the criteria and the weightage was given to one check
how to determine poverty amongst women in the women headed households
household with one saree only. one to two saree households,
two to three saree households.
what if the household has 6 women in it? they're fine
and each of them has one saree.
they actually had such a tick-off.
on the check [list]
now here's even a more wonderful thing.
in that discussion, three of us were isolated, trying to argue
that there's no need to discuss this,
all the evidence in the world shows us
that women headed households are not poor, 
they are ultra poor. there's no...
i mean, you can go back to the evidence of the 1950s in this country
there is no report that shows you otherwise,
why are we discussing this?
this scintillating discussion was conducted by 17 people,
95% upper caste, 100% upper class,
not a person in the room earning less than 70,000 Rs a month 
and everyone of them male, no woman in sight in a mile
but we had this furious discussion on 
whether women headed households should be automatically listed as poor or not
there were three-four of us who argued that this was an idiot debate,
ok, can we just move on, you will be glad to know that finally
they sort of accepted that, they are little poorer..
they're not doing so well as us.
so something like that I think was the compromise,
but that was the second committee, it brought down the 77% figure of
Arjun Sengupta, to a more manageable 53%
which of course, still dismayed the government of india
because how the hell are you going to puff your 9% growth
when you're showing that rural poverty is higher?
so then they brought Dr.Suresh Tendulkar into the picture to lower it further
which he did, obligingly, and...
let's not even go into private sector debates on poverty
how those figures are constructed 
that's for a standup comic to take
but.. here's the fact, that Tendulkar's figures were also substantially higher
than those of the government of India.
In other words, in four years, at the peak of your 9% growth,
3 committees officially constituted by the government of India
told the government of India that it needed its rural poverty figures upwards.
we haven't done it. we're still filing affidavits to fight it
so you have this kind of insecurity.

then you have the insecurity that the 
departure of seven and a half million people from agriculture is causing 
the government has lined up all its pet demographers 
to start screaming at the moment to talk about this
but migrations have gone out of hand in your country.
incidentally if you look at the 2003 human habitat report,
on the planet, and slums on the planet
the prediction for the world, for 2030 [he mistakenly says 1930],
which is what, 18 years away,
by 2030 [correction from 1930], a third of humanity will live in urban slums
the two biggest concentrations will be africa and india
now, visually you can see that happening.
you have the evidence of your eyes, around you in the cities.
by the way, just get out from here, go to the homeless shelters that have been
setup around the city. Look at the thousands of people coming from Bihar and elsewhere and look at
try measuring their dispair if you can creat an index for that.
now, what's happening in the countryside as agriculture collapses
apart from the fact that you've had a quarter of a million farmers commit suicide
between 1995 and 2010, and in those 16 years
the second 8 years are much worse than the first 8 years
the clock is ticking. one every 30 minutes, is the average.
I don't see what security as a nation you can have
if your farmers are committing suicide 
at the highest rate of suicide seen in recorded human history.
what is your security? what does your security mean to that family?
what sort of national security do we have when we undermine
the security and livelihood security of hundreds of millions of people?
I find it almost... somewhere there's something kafkaesque about this
that we completely destroy the security of millions
their livelihood security, their resource security
their food security, their food sovereignty
their control over their daily lives
and try understanding national security in the terms that we traditionally do
somewhere, we are going horribly, horribly wrong
but in the same 20 years, oh, let me put it this way to you
let's accept the government of India's figures on BPL
which is nonsense. I'm not getting into that debate
because I think the BPL APL debate is rubbish
but if we accept the government of India's figures
on the number of people below the poverty line
that happens to be, by the way, the fourth biggest nation in the world.
ya. it's bigger than indonesia.
so it is the fourth biggest nation in the world.
what security are we talking about? 
we're talking about the 4th biggest nation in the world
dispossessed, hungry, malnourished, huge rates of infant mortality
terrible rates of stunting, terrible rates of cranium damage
capacity damage, physiological damage, psychological damage
and then we talk about security
the same period with 9% growth, India produced
55 dollar billionaires.
that makes you, by the way, as Keshulai told you at the beginning,
ranking 4th now, or 5th, in the latest Forbes list of billionaires.
what it also means, by the way if you add up the wealth, Keshulai
of those 55 billionaires, they account for 1/5th of your GDP
probably gone up because they hold their wealth in dollars
their wealth is estimated in dollars
the rupee, which once used to be a currency, has now to be measured differently
what's it now, 53 bucks? yeah
so these guys, notionally, they've gone up
you know what 55 dollar billinaires means?
uh.. you didn't have one in the first [case], you have 55 now
and your rank in human development has fallen by every parameter in..
Rank. I'm not talking about interpretations of progress,
which you can do endlessly, which is what one of ... 
our genius lies in doing that, interpretation of progress
but, 55 billionaires on the one hand, 
836 million people who live on 26 Rs a day or less on the other hand
what security will you provide for that nation?
55 guys accounting for a 5th or a 6th of your GDP, notionally at least
equivalent of that wealth, ya,
and seven and a half million people leaving [correcting],
seven and a half thousand people leaving farming every year
2000 leaving every day, what kind of security will you possess?
You know, in the list of billionaires, 
the US is of course the 800 pound gorilla at the top
the only two nations that have moved ahead of us,
are China and Russia. But, let me, 
let me whet your patriotic fervor 
by telling you that China and Russia are pretenders.
They have more billionaires, but their billionaires are poorer than our billionaires
Our dads are richer than their dads.
The average net asset worth of the Chinese billionaire is
what, about one and a half to two billion.
The net asset worth of the Indian billionaire is 
three and a half billion, 3 billion plus
and then there is our obvious moral superiority, we're a democracy.
At the end of every five years, the Russian send all their billionaires to prison,
we send ours to Parliament.
Look, the levels of obscen.. the levels on inequality that we have developed
the levels of hunger, insecurity, livelihood insecurity, food..
these are now obscene
the only way you go forward from here is down
that's the only way you go from here
you're in trouble on all these parameters
I didn't, as I said, I've skipped, we can.. discussion.. 
to Maoists and Malkangiri and everything else that you wish to
Oh ya, I think the.. we are also involved in a number of other 
active processes that undermine your [in]security
including the UID, ok,
by the way, that outsourced biometric work
you can buy that data on the streets of Mumbai.
It's already made its way there 
What sort of national security will you have, when your biometric data
is up for grabs all around the planet?
you outsourced it to sub-contractors who have subcontracted it to further people
it's now available in the streets of mumbai. biometric data.
Another thing, let me tell you about this stupid, stupid idea
anywhere in the world, anywhere in the world,
there is no.. no one who has made a success of the UID system
The UK started this kind of national identification system,
abandoned it in four months.
Australia it collapsed at the discussion stage.
No other country has made a success of it,
and no one claims that it is technologically infallible 
and three, very importantly, in any society,
there is 5% to 7% of the population that do not have fingerprints
In India, that is 15% plus, because of agricultural labour,
they do not have fingerprints.
ok, the.. washer women don't have fingerprints
a lot of professions in India...
and those are the very people who will get dis..
de-accessed from your public access distribution system using the UID.
the very people who need your public distribution system,
the very people who need your social sector benefits, 
will be the very people excluded from it, because they don't have fingerprints
you are asking for big, big trouble with this project.
Now, I told Keshulai at the beginning and I should have told you
you're welcome.. you were welcome to have interrupted me [end]