Cheeni Kum! – Bitter sugar - The reed which gives honey without bees

This is my second on commodities – with the earlier one being on tea - http://ourtimes-yoursandmine.blogspot.com/2009/12/international-tea-day-15th-of-december.html


The fact that sugar prices have gone up – is now old news – you would have heard it umpteen times in the past few months – newspapers – TV Channels – articles on the net. If you were told that sugar prices are at a 30 year high – that would be a bit of a shock?

    Source: London International Financial Futures and Options Exchange. (LIFFE)

What is also interesting is the why - but, before that a few numbers.


75% of sugar comes from sugarcane in tropical countries

25% from sugar beet in temperate countries

70% the world’s sugar is consumed in the country where harvested

Only 30% left to be traded

Per Capita consumption in India is 20 kilograms of sugar

Annual Consumption in India – 23 million tones

Sugar, like all commodities; follow the high price – more production – low price – low production cycle

More than ½ of Brazil’s sugar, the world's largest producer is used for ethanol production for its cars, introduced to reduce dependence on oil

Global stocks are down 23% and

India’s stocks down by 63%

Why?

Indian production fluctuates alarmingly between 14.5 million tonnes and 22 million tonnes, due to the monsoons and price fluctuations. Low production in India, coupled with low global production (Brazil’s production is down due to more rains); low global stocks as well as low domestic stocks result in high prices for you and me.

Given that sugar is so important, one would wonder why the government can’t manage reserves which can be released during years of low production and stockpile when production is higher. You would think the government is downright stupid – can’t even add up a few figures – but viola as usual we are wrong.

Our street smart minister for agriculture is after all Sharad Pawar. With record productions in 2006-07 and 2007-08, India was sitting on ten million tonnes of sugar at the beginning of 2007-08 and that was whittled away by two consecutive releases to depress sugar prices before the national elections in April-May 2009 and Assembly elections in Maharashtra, Pawar’s home state, followed in October 2009.

To hell with you and me – to hell with prices that farmer’s get – to hell with all the millions of livelihoods that are associated with sugarcane – anything to win an election.

Governments set cane-procurement prices – so private mills don't pick up the full harvest if there's a glut. Governments determine the catchment area – mills are not allowed to buy cane outside a certain area – though it is best for mill to decide their catchment area as sugar yields from cane are the best when crushed within 24 hours. Often movement of cane and molasses movement is banned across state borders, restrictions are placed on price, sale quotas and value-additions.

Alcohol production license are expensive to obtain. Levy prices account a percentage of every mill’s production; free priced sugar sales are controlled. Imports can be arbitrarily banned and so can be trading of sugar on the commodity exchange.

More than 80 % of sugarcane comes from UP, Maharashtra, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu. In many of these areas sugar is a major industry and therefore, a key employer of both farm labour and semi-skilled mill workers. Bihar, ideally suited to grow sugarcane has been messed up by the cooperatives, 50% of state water in Maharashtra is used to grow sugarcane on 4% of its area.

Look out for higher sugar prices as sugar output in 2009-10 is most unlikely to exceed previous year's output of 15 million tonnes; ethanol requirement peaks for the automobile industry in Brazil, environmental concerns in Brazil grow over sugarcane production.

The government needs to look at the interest of the 70 million people whose livelihoods are linked to sugar - how do we increase productivity, how do we increase their incomes, how do we ensure that poor people can access sugar at reasonable costs - But who cares - it is the next election that we need to win!

Landmines! Tuberculosis!! Rats!!! Pavlov!!!!

What’s common – nothing you would say.

In Mozambique, Africa, Rats sniff out both Landmines and Tuberculosis.

Landmines, leftovers of the horrible wars that the world has seen kill or maim one person every hour across the world.

Tuberculosis is responsible for about 5,000 deaths a day.

Rats can help us fight both these problems. Not the everyday rat that you and I spend a small fortune in driving away every year – but this is a special rat.

It is the African Giant Pouched Rat or 'Cricetomys gambianus'.

The African Giant Pouched rat weighs between 0.7 and 1.5 kg and their average body length is 30-40 centimeters, excluding the tail size of 40 centimeters.

The African Giant Pouched Rat

Landmines

The highest vapour concentration and the lowest wind speed are found close to the ground which is why the rats would beat other animals like cats and dogs to it. Their lightweight makes it highly unlikely they would set of a mine by scratching or pointing.

On the field, the free running rats scan a 100m2 box in about 28 minutes, which means ten of these rats can clear an area of one square kilometer of landmine affected area in a day. The world needs more of these rats.

Prior to becoming operational, the rats are calibrated to the local mine types expected and have to pass an external accreditation test under International Mine Action Standards (IMAS), supervised by the National Mine Action Centres.

Tuberculosis

Case detection in developing countries mainly depends on smear microscopy, a slow and unreliable technology that has not changed over the last 100 years.

They are fast, reliable and cheap. A rat can evaluate 40 samples in 10 minutes, equal to what a skilled lab technician, using microscopy, will do in two days. Without requiring sophisticated instruments, this method is non invasive and can handle a high volume of samples, all very important factors in a pro-active screening approach. And the rats work with high accuracy and sensitivity.

"What Pavlov did with his dogs is exactly what we're doing here — very basic conditioning," said Mr. Weetjens, a lanky, 42-year-old Belgian who works for an Antwerp mine-removal group named Apopo (www.apopo.org) . "TNT means food. TNT means clicking sound, means food. That's how we communicate with them."

Can someone think of doing something similar here at least for TB in India and in other countries for both landmines and TB? This is certainly more interesting than selling biscuits, lights or a job that Corporate India or for that matter the Government or civil society has normally on offer.

Check out photographs here

http://www.flickr.com/photos/42612410@N05/

Check out a video here

http://www.pbs.org/frontlineworld/stories/tanzania605/video_index.html

Rats!!!

4-Nov-00 299 day countdown 4-Nov-10

‘A dew drop on a lotus leaf is just blown away by the breeze.
I don’t want to end my life [like a dew drop] without a purpose.’
Irom Sharmila

4-Nov-00 is significant as Irom Sharmila, a 28 year old decided that emulating the Mahatma, by going on an indefinite fast, was the best way to put pressure on the government to withdraw the Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) from Manipur.

What triggered it was the Malom Massacre; The Assam Rifles convoy was attacked near Malom, Manipur by insurgents. AR shoots at civilians at a nearby bus-stop. 10 civilian’s dead, including a 65 year old woman and an 18-year old former National Child Bravery Award winner. What followed was a brutal combing operation – more deaths, rape, plunder – the usual.

The AFSPA has been applied since 1958 in Manipur – they are headed to celebrate the platinum jubilee now that they are done with the golden jubilee.

Once this law comes into force, it allows anyone in the Indian army (or paramilitary) to shoot, arrest or search without any warrant, destroy a dwelling, and even shoot to kill – on suspicion alone. Further, the AFSPA snatches away an aggrieved citizen’s right to seek redress in courts, as no military personnel can be prosecuted without the written consent of the government.

Manmohan Singh appointed the Justice B.P. Jeevan Reddy Committee in Nov 2004 which recommended either amending the act or replacing it with a more humane legislation.

Irom Sharmila has been under a ritual of release and arrest every year because under IPC section 309, a person who "attempt to commit suicide" is punishable "with simple imprisonment for a term which may extend to one year [or with fine, or with both]". Irom is force fed nasally every day by a process called Nasogastric intubation.

The current government has promised to look into it and as a first move sent amendments to the AFSPA for the Cabinet’s approval. We hope they will repeal it before Irom gets into her second decade of fasting.

Mark 4-Nov-2010 on your Calendar!

Kavita Joshi’s powerful nine minute movie on Irom Sharmila, My Body My Weapon can be viewed at YouTube @

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5xw5vSrRkjE

Details of AFSPA can be found here

http://www.amnesty.org/en/library/asset/ASA20/025/2005/en/41fc59d2-d4e1-11dd-8a23-d58a49c0d652/asa200252005en.html

Poverty How much and how do you measure – Hooray it is higher – States get more money – Government scores brownie points – Where are the solutions – Darling?

Further to my earlier post on the much maligned poverty line – here is more on it.

The much awaited REPORT OF THE EXPERT GROUP TO REVIEW THE METHODOLOGY FOR ESTIMATION OF POVERTY is out; Commissioned by the Planning Commission, Government of India and published in November, 2009 and authored by Suresh Tendulkar, R Radhakrishna and Suranjan Sengupta.

Quoting from the report “The rural all-India headcount ratio derived as a population weighted average of state-level headcount ratios using the new poverty lines is 41.8 per cent compared to 28.3 per cent using the old poverty lines. All the state-level rural headcount ratios are higher using the new poverty lines than those in the earlier official estimates.”

The Tendulkar committee has fundamentally changed the way poverty has been measured so far in the country. If these estimates are applied to earlier data, then the all-India poverty line would have been 45.3%. Therefore poverty has seen a marginal decline in the last 15 years.

The most controversial point of the Tendulkar committee report is that it has abandoned the calorie-anchored estimates of poverty – true calorie intake and has no correlation to economic prosperity in relatively better off households, but that may not be true for the poorest who depend on manual labour for making a living.

The committee has also rationalized the basket of goods and services that are consumed by households at the poverty line. Finally the current poverty estimate pegs poverty at a per capita rural expenditure level of Rs15 per day up from the previous estimate of Rs12. Is that enough for a life with dignity is a big question mark. The current revision is still closer to a “starvation line” rather than a poverty line.

Two problems which have been ignored in thi study are the sheer absence of Insurance whether it is for health, life, vehicle, house, transport in rural areas; which we are so used to in urban India and the damage which can happen due to weather pattern changes– floods, hailstorm, drought. Urban India is more or less weather proof.

Urban India has seen several innovations in products or processes targeted at making our lives more productive, whether it is

Transport (large projects like the metro; small informal shared autos on Kolkata roads);

Safe drinking water (whether it’s the ubiquitous mineral water bottle, the 20 litre jar for domestic and small offices;

Communication (started with PCO booths and onto mobiles and more importantly the innovative schemes offered by the various service providers)

Health (Docs and Hospitals) – the effective physician-to-population ratio among India's better-off citizens is about 1 per 500, approximately the physician concentration in the United Kingdom. It is common knowledge that "India has enough physicians," while “many Indians, in fact, never receive the services of allopathic physicians at all”.

Education The choice that one sees in today’s towns in India, makes you wonder how things have changed in a couple of decades. When I graduated, there were three engineering colleges in the state and the fourth – the first private one had started operating out of a garage and its students did practicals, when the students at the government run engineering colleges went on summer holidays. Today the capital of that state has 40 engineering colleges.

With economic reforms and the government acting more as a regulator (however inept) rather than an implementer; Urban india has seen the results of the combination of entrepreneurship and private capital which have tapped into a large (300 million) and increasingly richer market.

Rural India, in contrast, is substantially poorer and lacks the infrastructure but has closer to triple the numbers. Enterpreneurship and private capital will do the same to rural india as it did to urban india.

What is required is for us to demonstrate models which are scalable in the areas of improved productivity, irrigation, safe drinking water, decentralized off-grid electricity production and supply, paraskilled health workers, e-market places for the goods of artisans and many such.

And the government needs to realize that selling stock in public enterprises and funding food for work is not a solution.

Rather diverting that money and using it to incentivize such models, will help entrepreneurs develop and demonstrate models which provide solutions that work in Rural India. With proven models, private capital will not hesitate to flow in.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime

The Suresh tendulkar Committee report is available here http://planningcommission.gov.in/eg_poverty.htm . Thank you Deepu, for sending me the report.