my vision for working space

Stone Soup is the place I volunteer presently few hours every week. Met some real interesting people there. I do not know how to articulate what the place is about so I have copied a call they just floated to give an idea of what that place is about

Stone Soup

CaLLinG aLL:
- Community Groups looking for meeting/office space
- Artists looking for a studio or shared space
- Individuals looking to plug in to social change movements!

Presently Stone Soup houses:
- Free school
- Worcester ROOTS –Environmental Justice and toxic soil buster collective
- EPOCA – Ex-prisoners and Prisoners Organizing for Community Advancement
-Gallery
- WOGAN – Worcester Global Action Network
- Firecracker Lending Library
- Food Not Bombs
- Earn-A-Bike

A membership-supported autonomous space.
Building community through art and activism.
JOIN USStone Soup is a membership-based organization committed to three areas of focus: the arts, community, and affordable housing. Within these areas we strive for self-sustaining, economically accessible spaces and educational activities that are open to neighbors, activists, community groups, and artists. Inspired by principles of inclusion, collective participation, and universal affordability, we will be an example of how creative community development of and for the people can stimulate local economies while being and active force against gentrification.

Not so lonely anymore

I am glad Sashi to see your voice finally! I was beginning to feel like a one woman team and slightly dispirited….
I was thinking their need to be three-stage strategy in reclaiming, deepening (borrowing Yugantar/ Sashi’s Vocab) and sustaining democracy

1. Finding a gap within the government system (like opposing stands of the two major parties) that the civil society could use in making a voice
2. A strong and informed civil society/ citizens groups
3. Unbiased media

Sashi what do you mean by the fourth estate in the comments to the last blog?

State of our democracy

This blog is inspired by a dialogue conversation café on “State of our democracy” I attended today. Though we spoke about America’s democracy, mainly I began thinking about what democracy meant to me.

To begin with, I shall state the dictionary meaning of democracy. Democracy is a “government by the people; a form of government in which the supreme power is vested in the people and exercised directly by them or by their elected agents under a free electoral system” / political or social equality/ a state of society characterized by formal equality of rights and privileges.

What is the means by which people exercise their democracy? Is it just the votes or is it more than just the votes? If democracy is about political and social equality whose voice gets heard? So we are the biggest democracy in the world. We are 1.2 billion people. If everyone would make a voice, it would be too loud and chaotic. So whose voice really gets heard?

If some one describes the way in which our government works would anyone think it is democratic. (Do not ask me how I do not really understand it). Just look at all the news happening with Walmart coming in, with farmers being displaced and killed (ironically in a state with communist government) and with SEZs coming up all over the country. So is democracy about the voice of the politically and economically powerful people? Whose democracy is it? The way it works would anyone proudly say this is my democracy?

Does this seem like a researchable topic for summer

Studying the gap between the State policy about nutrition and food security and the reality at village level

Does the State policy address the concern of the most vulnerable or work against them? (here I am thinking about the cut in electricity and increase in credit to farmers despite increasing farmer suicides cos of debt)

I would do a literature review and look at past trends and budgets
Then pick a village and see if the schemes meet the needs of village and the intended objectives of the policy makers.

When I say State policy, I am mostly thinking the budgetary allocation towards various food, agrarian and livelihood schemes because the policy is executed mainly via the budget

I think some such reserach might even link the research we do for ICRW and the food security secretariat. comments please!

Food not bombs!!

From the Union budget: 2007-08
Allocation for Defence: Rs.96,000 crore
Allocation for ICDS: Rs.4,761 crore
Allocation for NREG: Rs.12,000 crore (including NER component)

Number of farmers into the institutional credit system in 2006: 53.37 lakh
Number of farmers that would be added into the banking system: 50 lakh
Target farm credit for the year 2007-08: Rs.225,000 crore
(This would ensure that the farmers be in perpetual debt trap and be paying more than they receive as loan)

Number of people (in India) who go to sleep hungry every night 350 million
(http://wsws.org/articles/2007/mar2007/bill-m10.shtml)


me: i have one question.....that was ringing in my head...about changing food habits...that seems to be related to...pds-state policy-farmers ….I remember when speaking to some women in makthal...they said they used to eat jowar rotis, and vegetables before and now they do not

sashister: the major thing on that is the shift to rice as the main cereal - also diet becoming cereal centric instead of being balanced - apparently the basis was in NINs policy paper 30 years ago which made the number of calories as the basis for assessing food intake

me: does it also have to do with farmers moving to rice cultivation because they get a min support price and the supplies that they get a fair price shops

sashister: yes - that is part - rice is the preferred crop to grow with irrigation because price is predictive, risk is low, also it is cultural as ability to grow rice is culturally seen as a sign of a good prosperous farmer

sashister: from consumer preference rice is also on top - ease of making and liking for the taste and texture

me: so the state has a role in farmers moving from multi crops to mono crops..

sashister: now they are encouraging them to move away from rice but the farmers are not so willing - except in the delta areas where they have taken to fish farms in a very big way


me: but would the customer not like variety if they could afford and have access to it. When I say accessibility, I am thinking what they could buy using ration cards, which also might not be to, healthy as farmed fishes are not as healthy as wild fishes

sashister: true but it is more remunerative and that seems the main motive

me: hmm...

sashister: i am rediscovering economics ...

sashister: PDS in hyderabad state had jowar, bajra, ragi etc. over sixty years ago. It was also more decentralized

me: yes what changed the policy from multi to mono grain?

sashister: the green revolution - and it was really a wild success

me: green revolution was a failure not a success

sashister: thirty years down the line

me: one of the western promises of making a more equal world....which had unintended/ intended impacts making it more unequal

sashister: if you read policy papers from the sixties - esp. american foreign policy on india - it was considered a basket case that could not be rescued - esp. with regard to food security - the conclusion was let them die because we cant save them anyway. Something like the HIV/Aids policies of recent times with respect to Africa

me: i have not. I did read some theoretical ones. Not the policy papers
I was reading some of amartya sen's work about hunger and some other writer's
I felt depressed and lost

sashister: everyone born needs food in the stomach till s/he dies. that’s the only entitlement that cannot be postponed

Remapping the Empire

My interest in maps is very recent. I learnt a lot about maps and the process of mapping from chats with sashi, the book ‘mapping the empire’ and my land use class.

Maps to most users are accurate and objective. They do not see the very process of mapping as political. If the history of is traced one would realize how maps are a weapon of imperialism as much as guns or political maneuvers. They are always used to assert territorial claims, to reformat and to contest landscapes. Maps are neither “inert records” nor “passive reflections” they are active: “structuring the human world which is biased towards, promoted by, and exerts influence upon particular sets of social relations. The British had created India by mapping it and had mapped India to legitimize their empire!!

I do not deny however, the other uses of maps. Mapping done with public participation could and I used to empower local communities.

Sashi is now leading this fancy experimental cadastral resurvey team at Speck. I could write it up in my own words but I do not think I could explain it as well as Sashi did. In Sashi’s own words:

sashister: its called ILIS (integrated land information systems) or Bhubharati. right now the pilot is nizamabad district 922 villages and 7800 sq. kms

sashister: its a cadastral resurvey - that is all the individual land parcels are mapped including residential and agricultural... and details ownership and some topodetails are gathered. the outputs are a village map; individual land parcel maps and a land register

sashister: so a aircraft flies first taking photographs; then these are orthorectified; control points are referenced on the ground in a grid; then large prints are taken to the fields and demarcation is done on the photos; these photos are then transferred to a digitised map; a correlated land register is prepared; then people are given their parcel maps and asked to register any objection; after the stipulated time if there are no objections the data is considered final

12:49 AM its a big job and i think the whole country will be covered over the next ten years or so at a cost of Rs.18,000 crores. For ap the budget is estimated at 1200 crores
1:05 AM quite apart from displacement due to dams etc. - mining leases - god the list is endless and most of it the poor and the government are at the receiving end and the private sector including mncs are the beneficiaries

1:06 AM me: why did you say the government is at the receiving end?? sashister: i'll check it when i get to barkatpura me: isn't the state responsible for it?

1:07 AM sashister: because lots of it is government assets which are being let go off at throwaway prices

me: btw way sashi....y don't you start a blog...your own...besides the barkatpura one and write all this sashister: the max i seem to be able to write is ten lines at a time

1:08 AM me: so does the state not have a say in it?

12:51 AM me:there is this whole discourse here of how cadastral mapping gives the people in power more power and marginalizes the people who are already marginalized....
12:52 AM me: and how indigenous communities are doing counter mapping.....to resist cadastral mapping done by the state

sashister: what you say is true
sashister: but one of things that is coming out is the extent that government lands have been occupied by the powerful - it has become a big issue - the CM had taken 900 acres that he had to return - jayalalitha's land near the city is under question etc.
end of chat

Some questions that need answering
1. Whose voices are heard in terms of assigning titles to lands?
2. Who has higher gains out of this the state and elites or the people?
3. The digitization process needs clear land holding. What happens with lands which are commonly held or have mixed and clear holding? What about the podu cultivation done by ‘konda reddis’? how do you map their lands? Will mapping their lands not change their lives?
4. Is their an alternative to the current mapping process that is more culturally sensitive and participatory?

From Aponline webstite
Andhra Pradesh is the only State in the country, which has opened up Cadastral Surveys and building up accurate, fully computerized Land Information System. This will supposedly help to arrive at a viable, speedy, economical and accurate procedure for rebuilding up-to-date Cadastral records on a larger scale, in ready to maintain Digital Format.
The stated advantage of the remapping is efficiency and ease of monitoring and incorporation of changes in title and boundary. Easy accessibility and updating of records. The data can be used by various departments for planning new projects as the vertical control (spot levels ) available without extra effort. GIS can be developed for these villages integrating survey numbers data , Electric lines data, Roads data, Telephone lines, crops data, Water channels data, trees, drainage system, Schools, bore wells, M P H S data and HDS data.

I looked up what exactly a Cadsatral map is in wikipedia: A cadastral map is a map showing boundaries and ownership of land. Some cadastral maps show, as well as boundaries and ownership details, such details as Survey District Names, Block Numbers (within each Survey District), Certificate of Title numbers, positions of existing older structures, government described runhold section and/or lot numbers and their respective areas, adjoining and adjacent street names, selected boundary dimensions and references to prior founding maps.

Sources
Chat with Sashi
http://www.aponline.gov.in/apportal/departments/departments.asp?dep=28&org=183&category=NewsandEvents
wikipedia

Pic: Slash-and-burn farm in kolleru