SOROOR AHMED avers, in the backdrop of human trafficking by Babubhai Katara, that we should try to decrease our dependence on foreign resources and give full stress on developing agriculture and other internal resources.
The Babubhai Katara women trafficking debate missed a very significant point: as to why just for the sake of travelling and settling abroad a person allows his spouse to become a temporary ‘wife’ of someone else. And this is not just an isolated case. Katara himself and many other MPs and MLAs have transported ‘wives’ to the alien lands.
Parmjeet Kaur’s husband, Sandhu, paid Rs 30 lakh to the BJP MP when, according to the recent offer, one can get the Canadian citizenship for the entire family for just Rs 45 lakh. Even the United Kingdom, United States, Australia and New Zealand offer citizenship, but the charges are much higher in these countries.
We can expect the rulers of any country – politicians, generals, etc. – of all sorts of offence such as murder, rape, torture, etc. but the crime committed by our parliamentarians has perhaps no parallel in the world. A law-maker illegally facilitating citizens of his own country to settle down abroad.
And even bigger question is: as to why a woman like Paramjeet Kaur is willingly prepared to become the spouse of a strange man like Katara. Why do we resort to illegal means, when legal alternative is available for getting citizenship and that too not very costly?
The irony of ironies is the observation of the additional chief metropolitan magistrate, Ms Kamini Lau, that Paramjeet Kaur “is not an offender rather a victim of circumstances as there are numerous cases of men leaving behind their wives in villages and towns of Punjab soon after the marriage.” No doubt what she had said is true, but how can a judge jump to this conclusion on the very first sitting and make such a sweeping remark when all facts are not before her. Here is the case in which the husband has no intention of leaving his wife in Punjab but had paid Rs 30 lakh to smuggle out his wife to Canada. He in fact adopted illegal means to transport her abroad. So this case cannot be equated with those of other hapless victims of Punjab. After all why was the judge in such a hurry to make an observation of this magnitude.
Instead it would have been better for her to give the final verdict then and there and totally exonerate Paramjeet in the very first sitting. In fact, she should even let off her husband Sandhu as he resorted to this method of smuggling wife because the legal process of getting citizenship is too protracted and cumbersome. And in that way even the honourable MP has not committed any crime as it is the Canadian authorities who are to blame for putting so much restrictions in getting citizenship. For Ms Lau it would have been better to close the case after the very first sitting and let the trafficking racket flourish.
The truth is that it is our favourite pastime not to address the real issues. The additional chief metropolitan magistrate too is the part of the same system.
For our ruling ‘feel-good’ class and a large section of media India as such ceases to exist; therefore the people should be transported abroad and settled there. The most ‘nationalist’ of all the political parties, the BJP, seems to be the most ardent champion of this view.
If going abroad is not possible just depend on foreign money, be it legal or illegal. And for this we, as a society, are prepared to indulge in all sorts of practices.
The media is agog with the data that India is among the two largest remittance-earners of the world. It is locked in a tough competition with China on this count. The country earns around $ 25 billion annually in the form of money sent by NRIs. Similarly, we get $ 16 billion as the foreign direct investment, which is about 2.3 per cent of our Gross Domestic Product. We earn billions of dollars by way of outsourcing. So, as a friend sarcastically commented, the best thing for us is to just transport these huge populations, legally or illegally, to other countries as we on our own cannot achieve anything. Only their money sent back to India can keep this nation alive. Otherwise, there is no scope.
HARD FACTS
The farm sector is in a dire strait. The agriculture output was 2,093 lakh tonne in 2005-06 against 2,135 lakh tonnes in 2003-04. Officially over 16,000 farmers are committing suicide every year. According to the police record between 2001 and 2004 as high as 69,791 farmers committed suicide in the country. Fifty-four per cent of them are from the four most developed states of Karnataka, Maharashtra, Andhra Pradesh and Kerala.
The irony is that our rulers are busy in highlighting that Kerala and Andhra Pradesh are two highest remittance earners of the country and Maharashtra and Karnataka are investment wise the two best destination. Mumbai, Bangalore and Hyderabad, the three cities on which we are so much proud of, are in these states and Kerala is the state with highest literacy rate and best human resources. Yet our planners are waiting for the trickle down economy to have its magic and check the ever-increasing suicides.
If the service and industry sectors are doing better, it is just and just because of the foreign money. The truth is that in the adverse situation we can not survive. Ours will be the first economy to collapse if things go wrong globally or if the job market is disturbed in the oil-rich Middle East.
What happened in 1990-91 is known to all. When hundreds of thousands of Indian labours were forced out of Kuwait and several other Gulf countries after the Iraq’s invasion of that country and subsequent US action India was among the worst hit. It had to overnight devalue its currency. The country faced balance of payment crisis and the new Prime Minister Narasimha Rao had to induct a man called Manmohan Singh from the World Bank as the finance minister. The country had to adopt the policy of liberalization, privatization and globalization.
Now the criteria of the most developed state has changed. It all depends on how much foreign investment a state attracts or how much remittance it gets. There are innumerable Kataras all over the country who along with the senior bureaucrats indulged in trafficking of human resources as they have been systematically indoctrinated by the philosophy that there is nothing left in this country. Either bring money from outside or send your human resources in whatever way you like.
Take the example of West Bengal. In the last decade or so its growth in the agriculture sector was phenomenal. Agriculture alone changed the overall picture of the state though in the industrial sector it witnessed a slowdown. Yet nobody talked about its achievement. The constant propaganda forced the Left to take a U-turn. None else, but the state chief minister, Buddhadev Bhattacharya, started talking of Special Economic Zones and foreign investment. Overnight Narendra Modi became his hero. And now the lush green farms of Singur and Nandigram became the killing fields of the state. Let the agriculture sector now take a nose-dive here too.
CASE OF BIHAR AND WEST BENGAL
Bihar’s case is all the more unique. True it has always been the most backward state of the country. Yet in the 12 years between 1993-94 and 2004-05 it witnessed the fastest growth rate, that is, 4.89. This was highlighted on April 25 in the Economic Times by none other than the famous economic journalist, Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar. He was responding to the observations made by Lord Meghnad Desai of London School of Economics on the 15 years of Lalu-Rabri regime. The Asian Development Research Institute recently highlighted phenomenal growth made by Bihar in the field of agriculture, horticulture and dairy. It is perhaps because of these reasons that states like Bihar and West Bengal witnessed least number of suicides by farmers or starvation death in that period. It is only recently that Bihar once again started witnessing the cases of suicides and starvations. But the big question is as to why the journalists and research institutes are silent when so much propaganda was being made about the so-called backwardness of these two states. The only crime of the leaders of these two states was that they failed to pursue the policy of liberalisation, privatisation and globalisation and did not invite FDI.
Development just does not mean a handful of industries, most of them built on the strength of foreign money. It does not mean allowing thousands of farmers to perish as they are unable to pay interest to the banks and money-lenders. Development just does not mean illegally transporting people abroad.
True, the world has shrank and people will always look for the greener pastures and go to other countries. But we can not wait just on that and say that the growth rate is inceasing. Economists agree that growth rate is a great trap.
The 1990 Gulf War clearly indicated how much we relied on the NRI money. The war was not fought against India, yet it shattered country’s economy. In 2003 War this did not happen simply because there was no worker left in Iraq and the country did not face any decline in remittance.
If India suffered economic crisis after 1962, 1965 and 1971 wars it is understandable but why in 1990. True the 1973 Arab-Israel war, which took place within two years of the India-Pakistan war, did have a great impact on India as the oil-prices increased four times in a few months yet the country, somehow, managed to survive without devaluing its currency the way we did in 1991.
If the Indian economy is surviving today it is just because of remittances, outsourcing and to some extent investment from abroad – that is on foreign factors. But a country can never trust foreign investment, outsourcing and remittance for ever.
Whatever India achieved in 1950s, 1960s, 1970s and even early 1980s it was on its own resources with little help from abroad. Millions of NRIs had not been pumping billions of dollars into the country then. The situation was much adverse than today, yet there is no debate on this issue.
Now everything foreign is fine. The truth is that had Sandhu decided to return to India with Rs 30 lakh, which he gave to the honourable MP, he would have spent another 20-25 years of his life quite comfortably. And even if he had decided to apply for Canadian citizenship for his wife it would have been possible without much hassle. But the lure of quick and easy money took its toll.
The Indian media, on the other hand, is perhaps deliberately taking the issue in a different direction. Law-maker Katara has taken a backseat. The media is spending more time focussing on the arrest of travel agents and passport agents as if they are the real culprits and Katara, the man who was caught red-handed innocent.