WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.820 Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. 2 00:00:02.700 --> 00:00:07.000 I'm going to introduce you to an outrageously biased journalist, 3 00:00:07.740 --> 00:00:11.700 and I say that with great pride and pleasure. 4 00:00:11.900 --> 00:00:15.980 I think the whole thing about bias is one of the great nonsenses 5 00:00:16.900 --> 00:00:19.860 that are perpetrated by or on the media. 6 00:00:20.960 --> 00:00:24.740 This man, who has often been described as the conscience of India, 7 00:00:25.660 --> 00:00:27.480 is biased against injustice. 8 00:00:27.480 --> 00:00:32.100 Injustice is biased in favour of the weak and the vulnerable, 9 00:00:32.820 --> 00:00:37.720 and the bias produces in his writing and indeed in his photographs 10 00:00:37.720 --> 00:00:42.920 the most heart-wrenching images of a country 11 00:00:42.920 --> 00:00:46.020 going through an enormous and tragic transition. 12 00:00:46.980 --> 00:00:49.260 You know, farmers around the world are committing suicide. 13 00:00:50.240 --> 00:00:52.560 It's not an uncommon event in Australia. 14 00:00:53.020 --> 00:00:57.160 But in India, the number of farmers, men and women, 15 00:00:57.480 --> 00:01:01.180 who are so crushed by circumstances, debt, 16 00:01:02.180 --> 00:01:07.900 that they choose this, make this terrible decision, are increasing. 17 00:01:08.260 --> 00:01:12.320 And Sanat, P. Sanat, the conscience of India, 18 00:01:12.560 --> 00:01:15.600 has spent a great deal of time with these families. 19 00:01:16.120 --> 00:01:19.840 He's just been showing me photographs backstage that he's been taking. 20 00:01:20.020 --> 00:01:22.140 He has exhibitions of his photographs, 21 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:26.260 as well as his writings being published in The Hindu, 22 00:01:26.360 --> 00:01:27.060 which is one of the... 23 00:01:27.480 --> 00:01:28.880 the finest of the Indian papers. 24 00:01:29.440 --> 00:01:32.960 And hundreds of thousands of Indian people come to see the photographs, 25 00:01:33.060 --> 00:01:36.060 to see their own lives so vividly recorded. 26 00:01:36.560 --> 00:01:38.640 To me, he's one of... 27 00:01:39.380 --> 00:01:42.600 he's one of those few journalists that I know or deal with 28 00:01:42.600 --> 00:01:46.560 who profoundly cares about what he's writing about. 29 00:01:46.640 --> 00:01:48.360 There's no dispassion, there's no distance. 30 00:01:49.200 --> 00:01:50.680 Sanat is into it. 31 00:01:52.200 --> 00:01:54.040 Absolutely up to his eyeballs. 32 00:01:55.520 --> 00:01:55.540 I... 33 00:01:55.540 --> 00:01:57.360 I won't read you a list, 34 00:01:57.480 --> 00:01:58.800 but I'll read you a list of his achievements, 35 00:01:59.120 --> 00:02:00.200 his CVs, 36 00:02:00.200 --> 00:02:02.680 a very abbreviated version of it's in the book. 37 00:02:03.140 --> 00:02:06.020 I've known him for, I don't know, 10 years or more, 38 00:02:06.160 --> 00:02:07.840 and admire him greatly, 39 00:02:07.980 --> 00:02:12.780 and put him on the short list of the four or five best journalists on earth. 40 00:02:13.780 --> 00:02:15.400 And I don't say that too often. 41 00:02:15.780 --> 00:02:16.760 Ladies and gentlemen, 42 00:02:16.940 --> 00:02:19.580 I'd like you to meet the conscience of India, 43 00:02:19.760 --> 00:02:20.880 P. Sanat, 44 00:02:21.000 --> 00:02:24.680 who's going to take us to a party in ancient Rome. 45 00:02:36.000 --> 00:02:37.120 Thank you. 46 00:02:39.200 --> 00:02:40.320 I think... 47 00:02:40.320 --> 00:02:45.820 I had a few requests to explain the title of this talk, Nero's Guess. 48 00:02:46.140 --> 00:02:48.320 I'm not going to let you in on it till the end, 49 00:02:48.380 --> 00:02:51.880 but something about where I got the idea from. 50 00:02:53.420 --> 00:02:56.400 Tacitus was a Roman historian and official 51 00:02:56.400 --> 00:02:57.460 who lived in Rome for a long time. 52 00:02:57.460 --> 00:03:03.760 He lived sometime between the years 58 and 115 of the Common Era. 53 00:03:04.960 --> 00:03:08.340 He wrote the annals, Nero and the Burning of Rome. 54 00:03:10.780 --> 00:03:12.300 I read Tacitus first. 55 00:03:12.380 --> 00:03:14.160 I was trained as a historian, not as a journalist. 56 00:03:14.640 --> 00:03:19.180 And I think it was quite an achievement to read Tacitus on campus in the 70s, 57 00:03:19.180 --> 00:03:22.900 because I spent most of the 70s getting expelled from one campus or the other. 58 00:03:24.160 --> 00:03:26.080 But I still managed to read that. 59 00:03:26.340 --> 00:03:26.820 Thank you. 60 00:03:26.820 --> 00:03:26.860 Thank you. 61 00:03:27.040 --> 00:03:27.560 Tacitus. 62 00:03:28.480 --> 00:03:31.300 One of the famous lines of Tacitus is where he describes, 63 00:03:31.640 --> 00:03:34.660 and maybe he's putting words in the mouth of a Scottish chieftain, 64 00:03:34.740 --> 00:03:38.400 but he's talking about the Roman ravaging of Scotland. 65 00:03:38.600 --> 00:03:41.480 And he has a Scottish chieftain who says, 66 00:03:42.640 --> 00:03:45.260 they created, or he says of Pax Romana, 67 00:03:46.040 --> 00:03:48.720 they created a desert and called it peace. 68 00:03:49.940 --> 00:03:52.240 So that was one of Tacitus' famous lines. 69 00:03:52.320 --> 00:03:53.360 He was good at these one-liners. 70 00:03:54.880 --> 00:03:56.320 But above all, 71 00:03:56.820 --> 00:03:59.040 Tacitus was known for his writing on Nero. 72 00:04:00.740 --> 00:04:03.300 Now, Nero, as we all know, was nuts, right? 73 00:04:03.780 --> 00:04:06.800 Unlike so many of his same predecessors 74 00:04:06.800 --> 00:04:10.900 who routinely fed thousands of human beings to animals at the circus 75 00:04:10.900 --> 00:04:12.700 and were considered wise and just. 76 00:04:15.120 --> 00:04:19.880 So it's not just so much that this conduct was unique, 77 00:04:19.980 --> 00:04:22.180 either in Nero or his predecessors. 78 00:04:22.980 --> 00:04:26.420 History has many contenders for cruelty's crown. 79 00:04:26.820 --> 00:04:29.080 So it's not that part of it that we're going to get into. 80 00:04:29.500 --> 00:04:32.320 But Tacitus, across almost 20 centuries, 81 00:04:32.500 --> 00:04:36.180 did manage to force me to reflect on two things. 82 00:04:36.660 --> 00:04:40.200 One, on the moral matrix of inequality. 83 00:04:41.540 --> 00:04:44.620 Two, on the moral universe of the media, 84 00:04:44.760 --> 00:04:46.860 the profession that I spring from. 85 00:04:48.340 --> 00:04:50.920 Speaking of official, he was an official, Tacitus. 86 00:04:51.020 --> 00:04:54.220 Speaking of official, just a couple of days ago, 87 00:04:54.260 --> 00:04:56.380 this is an aside because it's about Australia. 88 00:04:56.820 --> 00:05:00.380 Just a couple of days ago, I read in the Sydney Morning Herald 89 00:05:00.380 --> 00:05:05.780 an item reporting on the Productivity Commission on Agriculture. 90 00:05:06.180 --> 00:05:09.020 And it was very fascinating because it read exactly 91 00:05:09.700 --> 00:05:13.620 like official reports on agriculture in 30 other countries that I've looked at. 92 00:05:14.120 --> 00:05:16.580 It spoke of a very bleak landscape. 93 00:05:17.400 --> 00:05:20.140 It spoke of agricultural workers in Australia having 94 00:05:20.140 --> 00:05:24.440 the longest working hours and the lowest wages. 95 00:05:24.660 --> 00:05:26.800 It painted a totally grisly, 96 00:05:26.820 --> 00:05:29.280 grim landscape and then ended with the line, 97 00:05:30.020 --> 00:05:32.440 I may have got this out of context, I hope I did, 98 00:05:32.600 --> 00:05:33.260 but it said, 99 00:05:33.420 --> 00:05:36.900 the commission however added that there was no cause for concern. 100 00:05:39.560 --> 00:05:43.460 You know, how I love that line. 101 00:05:43.860 --> 00:05:45.080 It's so standard. 102 00:05:45.600 --> 00:05:47.700 Someone ought to write a book if they already haven't. 103 00:05:47.960 --> 00:05:49.240 No cause for concern. 104 00:05:50.500 --> 00:05:53.660 And Paul King Horne did say we have another five billion years, 105 00:05:53.760 --> 00:05:55.180 so I might just complete that book. 106 00:05:56.360 --> 00:05:56.800 . 107 00:05:56.800 --> 00:06:03.100 So that was yet another official. 108 00:06:03.940 --> 00:06:06.420 But let me quote you a few more officials. 109 00:06:07.200 --> 00:06:08.740 Though you won't believe this one. 110 00:06:09.480 --> 00:06:11.520 Our planet is not balanced. 111 00:06:12.380 --> 00:06:14.860 Too few control too much. 112 00:06:15.660 --> 00:06:19.040 And too many have too little to hope for. 113 00:06:19.820 --> 00:06:24.980 Too much turmoil, too many wars, too much suffering. 114 00:06:25.480 --> 00:06:26.120 Nope. 115 00:06:26.180 --> 00:06:26.780 It is not. 116 00:06:26.780 --> 00:06:27.900 It isn't Mother Teresa's diary. 117 00:06:28.960 --> 00:06:32.320 Nor is it Commandante Marcos of the Zapatistas. 118 00:06:33.300 --> 00:06:35.740 That's James Wolfensohn of the World Bank. 119 00:06:36.960 --> 00:06:37.400 . 120 00:06:38.920 --> 00:06:40.300 Here he actually said it. 121 00:06:40.360 --> 00:06:41.040 You can check it out. 122 00:06:41.700 --> 00:06:43.000 You can take it off the net. 123 00:06:43.140 --> 00:06:47.540 This is at the Dubai meeting, joint meeting of the World Bank and the IMF. 124 00:06:47.640 --> 00:06:49.620 You see, it's a large collection of bleeding hearts. 125 00:06:50.540 --> 00:06:50.980 . 126 00:06:52.640 --> 00:06:56.760 And of course nowadays they hold their meetings in Dubai and other places known for freedom of speech. 127 00:06:56.760 --> 00:06:58.960 Freedom of expression so that protesters can't get at them. 128 00:07:00.340 --> 00:07:00.980 . 129 00:07:01.660 --> 00:07:06.580 But this was James Wolfensohn, President of the World Bank. 130 00:07:06.960 --> 00:07:07.600 . 131 00:07:08.280 --> 00:07:11.880 At that time, in September 2003. 132 00:07:12.760 --> 00:07:18.220 Two days later, the IMF contributed its drops of blood to the heart. 133 00:07:18.720 --> 00:07:19.360 . 134 00:07:19.360 --> 00:07:26.580 It admitted to the International Herald Tribune, who was something of a father confessor to the IMF. . 135 00:07:26.580 --> 00:07:31.920 You know that whole controversy about the East Asian financial crisis of 1998? 136 00:07:32.440 --> 00:07:34.780 When so many economies went down the tube? 137 00:07:36.000 --> 00:07:42.960 Actually, the IMF said, maybe Mahathir of Malaysia was right on currency controls. 138 00:07:43.580 --> 00:07:48.100 That was as brave an admission as you will ever hear from the International Monetary Fund. 139 00:07:49.080 --> 00:07:52.000 That was the second official admission in the same week. 140 00:07:52.140 --> 00:07:54.180 Then came the one that stunned me. 141 00:07:55.000 --> 00:08:01.320 Three days later, the Wall Street Journal had a very original line in its editorial. 142 00:08:02.580 --> 00:08:08.840 This was about the time that Argentina was going down the tube and six other economies were in the balance. 143 00:08:10.060 --> 00:08:13.700 The Wall Street Journal wrote an editorial original for the Wall Street. 144 00:08:15.280 --> 00:08:21.340 It said, markets are indeed a great way to organize economic activity. 145 00:08:22.440 --> 00:08:23.040 . 146 00:08:24.120 --> 00:08:27.420 But let's face it, markets need adult supervision. 147 00:08:30.440 --> 00:08:38.200 Now, I think there's a strong case that the World Bank, the IMF and the Wall Street Journal require adult supervision. 148 00:08:41.960 --> 00:08:51.740 But, now, had they figured this out some 20, 30 years ago, maybe hundreds of millions of people would have been spared an enormous amount of misery. 149 00:08:51.900 --> 00:08:52.440 . 150 00:08:52.440 --> 00:09:00.780 Maybe hundreds of millions of livelihoods would have survived the ravages of the policies they forced while believing that markets had all the answers. 151 00:09:02.220 --> 00:09:08.420 Misery brought about precisely by the idea that markets could solve every single problem of the human race. 152 00:09:09.000 --> 00:09:12.000 An idea perpetuated by these very forces. 153 00:09:12.340 --> 00:09:18.500 For two decades, any criticism of the market as God was a heresy. 154 00:09:19.120 --> 00:09:21.060 The market has all the answers. 155 00:09:21.220 --> 00:09:21.340 . 156 00:09:21.340 --> 00:09:22.820 But there is no miracle it cannot perform. 157 00:09:23.200 --> 00:09:36.420 My friend, Swaminathan Iyer, who writes the Swaminomics column in the Times of India, which is, as it never tires of telling you, the world's largest English language newspaper, believes that only the market can save the environment. 158 00:09:37.280 --> 00:09:39.640 He says any other attempt will be futile. 159 00:09:40.640 --> 00:09:46.760 Time magazine declares that hunger is merely a function of anti-market systems. 160 00:09:47.960 --> 00:09:48.560 . 161 00:09:50.720 --> 00:09:51.320 . 162 00:09:51.320 --> 00:09:51.440 ! 163 00:09:51.440 --> 00:09:56.200 The market is all that stands between millions of third-world peasants and starvation. 164 00:09:59.020 --> 00:10:01.480 The market is not just good for democracy. 165 00:10:02.240 --> 00:10:03.360 It is democracy. 166 00:10:04.840 --> 00:10:05.920 That's the line. 167 00:10:06.900 --> 00:10:21.300 Anyway, after 12 years, and this is also official, the Prime Minister of India after 12 years of denial, because he was the founder of those reforms, the present Prime Minister is Dr. Manmohan Singh, an old colleague on the Board of Trustees of National Foundation of India. 168 00:10:21.300 --> 00:10:25.740 He was the first Prime Minister of India to hold a session for India for five years of mine, a period he would not ever want to remember. 169 00:10:28.420 --> 00:10:36.240 But this month, just two weeks ago, he stood up and said, agriculture is in very serious crisis. 170 00:10:36.960 --> 00:10:39.260 I won't go into the official jargon he used. 171 00:10:39.580 --> 00:10:43.360 Translated into English, he was saying, agriculture is up shit creek. 172 00:10:45.580 --> 00:10:46.880 What were his solutions? 173 00:10:47.400 --> 00:10:50.100 His solutions were more of the same. 174 00:10:50.100 --> 00:10:51.380 More market. 175 00:10:53.100 --> 00:10:54.960 More trade liberalization. 176 00:10:55.480 --> 00:10:57.040 The rest of it. 177 00:10:58.480 --> 00:11:06.400 Between 2000 and 2005 have been the most demanding years of my 25 years as a journalist. 178 00:11:08.880 --> 00:11:15.100 And it really made me think about Tacitus, and I'll come to that in a bit, why it forced me to think about him. 179 00:11:16.200 --> 00:11:19.700 The last few years, the last decades have seen 180 00:11:20.300 --> 00:11:24.920 on the one hand the painting of the Indian Tiger economy model for the whole world. 181 00:11:25.040 --> 00:11:31.660 On the other hand, it's seen a shattering decline for hundreds of millions of people in terms of hunger and diet. 182 00:11:31.840 --> 00:11:35.600 The nutritional data now emerging from the government of India is simply horrifying. 183 00:11:36.380 --> 00:11:39.400 Yes, there was enormous progress in the last 12 years. 184 00:11:39.620 --> 00:11:42.100 Yes, there were tremendous advances in technology. 185 00:11:42.720 --> 00:11:45.660 All of which benefited 10 to 12% of the population. 186 00:11:45.940 --> 00:11:47.540 What happened to the bottom 40%? 187 00:11:47.680 --> 00:11:49.020 Here is some of the data. 188 00:11:49.020 --> 00:11:50.200 It's official. 189 00:11:53.100 --> 00:12:06.720 The average Indian family in 2003, the average rural Indian family was consuming 100 kilograms of food grain less than it did in 1991. 190 00:12:07.740 --> 00:12:09.700 Now just put yourself in that place. 191 00:12:09.880 --> 00:12:14.340 That your family loses 100 kilograms of food grain in a year of consumption. 192 00:12:14.660 --> 00:12:17.560 What does it do to people who were already on the bread line? 193 00:12:17.560 --> 00:12:23.060 The average family lost 100 kilograms of food grain. 194 00:12:23.540 --> 00:12:30.140 Per capita availability of food grain in India fell during every year of the economic reforms. 195 00:12:30.360 --> 00:12:38.020 And by 2003, the per capita availability of grain per Indian was 141 kilograms, 196 00:12:38.460 --> 00:12:45.160 which was lower by 7 kilograms than it was during the Bengal famine of 1942. 197 00:12:46.400 --> 00:12:56.200 Today, the production is back to about 154 kilograms, which is the same as the World War II years. 198 00:12:56.420 --> 00:13:03.060 And a damn sight less than the 177, 180 kilograms it was in 1990. 199 00:13:04.760 --> 00:13:08.100 Yet, some classes are eating better than ever before. 200 00:13:08.580 --> 00:13:13.400 On a lower base, it raises the question of what the bottom 40% are eating. 201 00:13:13.400 --> 00:13:19.780 I know that as a freelance journalist during those years, I could afford restaurants that I could never afford before. 202 00:13:20.240 --> 00:13:25.760 So yes, some of us did benefit, but what does it mean on a lowered cake for 40% of the people? 203 00:13:26.620 --> 00:13:32.380 The new nutritional data also shows us, the Health Ministry's data this year shows us, 204 00:13:32.420 --> 00:13:40.900 that 90% of adolescent girls, that's 9-0% of adolescent girls suffer from anemia. 205 00:13:41.460 --> 00:13:42.700 90% fully. 206 00:13:42.700 --> 00:13:45.360 The malnourishment figures are stunning. 207 00:13:45.520 --> 00:13:50.840 I come from Mumbai, my home is in Mumbai, in Maharashtra, probably the richest state of the Indian Republic. 208 00:13:51.760 --> 00:13:58.800 This February, the Attorney General, the Advocate General of the state of Maharashtra, population 80 million, 209 00:14:00.040 --> 00:14:07.300 stood shamefacedly before the High Court of Mumbai and admitted that over 100,000 babies in each year 210 00:14:07.300 --> 00:14:11.400 were dying of malnourishment in the richest state in the country. 211 00:14:12.460 --> 00:14:19.180 In the late 90s and in 2000, since 2000, for the first time in the history of the Indian Republic, 212 00:14:19.520 --> 00:14:26.660 the Supreme Court of India, the apex court of the Indian Republic, has pulled up state governments six times 213 00:14:26.660 --> 00:14:29.800 for increasing incidents of hunger deaths. 214 00:14:29.940 --> 00:14:34.760 It's admirable that the Supreme Court did it, but it's the first time it's happening in our history 215 00:14:34.760 --> 00:14:40.860 that the Supreme Court of the land censured six state governments, all of them fairly well-off and rich governments, 216 00:14:41.600 --> 00:14:49.040 most of them well-off governments, for hunger deaths occurring on a scale not seen since the colonial Raj. 217 00:14:50.680 --> 00:14:57.700 Through this period, now I'm a city guy, born and bred in a city, working in a village, I'm a rural reporter, 218 00:14:57.960 --> 00:15:05.460 I spend 270 odd days in the village each year as a reporter for the Hindu, now, and as a freelancer earlier. 219 00:15:05.980 --> 00:15:10.520 Say, in the last year, I spent 302 days in the countryside. 220 00:15:11.980 --> 00:15:16.720 The contrasts are what are making me think, one, about the moral matrix of our inequality, 221 00:15:16.840 --> 00:15:20.000 and two, about the moral universe of our media. 222 00:15:21.440 --> 00:15:26.560 It's something, it's really something, to look at this decline in food intake on the one hand, 223 00:15:26.620 --> 00:15:32.520 and come back to cities where the number of weight loss clinics are increasing by the dozen. 224 00:15:35.020 --> 00:15:38.200 It's also something to look at how the media functions on this. 225 00:15:38.320 --> 00:15:40.500 The biggest annual event of the year, 226 00:15:40.520 --> 00:15:46.080 the number one event of the Indian media, let me take you through the 2004 event, 227 00:15:46.320 --> 00:15:49.620 it's called Lakme India Fashion Week. 228 00:15:51.820 --> 00:15:57.000 Now, incidentally, if you look at the website of the Indian fashion industry, 229 00:15:57.320 --> 00:16:05.040 it tells you that less than 0.2% of Indians use anything approaching designer clothes. 230 00:16:05.480 --> 00:16:08.880 That's not my figure, that's the fashion industry's figure. 231 00:16:09.680 --> 00:16:14.020 Less than 0.2% of Indians use designer clothes. 232 00:16:17.280 --> 00:16:21.680 2003-04 saw our worst agrarian crisis in history. 233 00:16:21.780 --> 00:16:24.060 It's been on for 12 years, it's not going away. 234 00:16:24.180 --> 00:16:27.840 It could even make my friend Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister, notice that there is, 235 00:16:27.900 --> 00:16:32.640 he stood up on June 28 and said, agriculture is in serious crisis. 236 00:16:33.020 --> 00:16:34.400 Gee, I wonder who told him. 237 00:16:35.480 --> 00:16:37.040 Because it was in the media. 238 00:16:38.460 --> 00:16:45.180 The Lakme India Fashion Week, this one week, produced their website figures, 239 00:16:45.800 --> 00:16:51.940 400,000 words in print, 360,000 photographs, 240 00:16:53.160 --> 00:16:58.840 1,000 minutes of television coverage and 180 hours of video footage, 241 00:16:59.080 --> 00:17:02.720 and countless cover stories in magazines, newspapers. 242 00:17:02.800 --> 00:17:05.000 This was the 2003 edition. 243 00:17:06.500 --> 00:17:12.120 At the height of our worst agrarian crisis, I checked how many correspondents of national media 244 00:17:12.700 --> 00:17:16.380 were out in the sticks looking at what was happening to people. 245 00:17:16.560 --> 00:17:21.800 Believe me, hundreds of young journalists do these stories, want to do them, 246 00:17:21.940 --> 00:17:24.860 but are preempted by the need media owners. 247 00:17:25.580 --> 00:17:29.000 Their stories are spiked by the newspapers they work for. 248 00:17:29.200 --> 00:17:32.000 They're not carried by the channels they report for. 249 00:17:34.020 --> 00:17:34.980 When I checked, I found that the media was not only spiking, 250 00:17:34.980 --> 00:17:35.120 but also spiking. 251 00:17:35.120 --> 00:17:39.520 I checked how many correspondents had gone out of the major outlets to spend one week, 252 00:17:39.560 --> 00:17:44.020 because I wanted to equate it with Lakme Week, seven days in the countryside. 253 00:17:44.300 --> 00:17:50.340 I managed to count six correspondents in a country of one billion people, 254 00:17:50.560 --> 00:17:54.200 where 65% of the population depends on agriculture. 255 00:17:55.320 --> 00:17:55.920 Six. 256 00:17:56.280 --> 00:17:58.920 Number of correspondents covering agrarian crisis? 257 00:17:59.160 --> 00:17:59.580 Six. 258 00:18:00.480 --> 00:18:04.960 Number of accredited correspondents covering Lakme India Fashion Week? 259 00:18:06.120 --> 00:18:06.840 412. 260 00:18:07.980 --> 00:18:10.740 Plus another hundred on daily passes. 261 00:18:11.920 --> 00:18:18.960 So 500 journalists were covering an event that affected 0.2% of the population, 262 00:18:18.980 --> 00:18:24.400 and six journalists were trying to tell the story of the largest agrarian crisis 263 00:18:24.400 --> 00:18:26.920 in India's history since the Green Revolution. 264 00:18:31.440 --> 00:18:34.420 Also the contrast that I'm forced to look at repeatedly, 265 00:18:35.280 --> 00:18:37.640 was late in the last wedding season. 266 00:18:39.140 --> 00:18:40.800 We're into themed weddings now. 267 00:18:40.880 --> 00:18:44.900 I'm proud to tell you that an Indian holds the record for the most expensive wedding ever held. 268 00:18:44.940 --> 00:18:45.880 Did you see it on telly? 269 00:18:46.760 --> 00:18:52.960 Mr. Lakshmi Mittal hired the entire palace of Versailles in France for his daughter's wedding, 270 00:18:53.600 --> 00:18:58.140 at a cost of 60 million pounds or 60 million something. 271 00:18:58.860 --> 00:18:59.720 It's bad enough. 272 00:18:59.860 --> 00:19:01.180 I mean, it doesn't matter which currency it is. 273 00:19:02.280 --> 00:19:04.400 I heard it was 60 million pounds, and I said, 274 00:19:04.400 --> 00:19:05.560 I suppose that's right because that's UK. 275 00:19:08.020 --> 00:19:11.060 But we are not far left behind in Delhi and Mumbai. 276 00:19:11.560 --> 00:19:13.760 How many of you have ever attended a themed wedding? 277 00:19:15.380 --> 00:19:18.180 When we're talking about the prosperity of India, understand this, 278 00:19:18.400 --> 00:19:21.900 you will never look, I mean, I believe that you can never understand 279 00:19:22.780 --> 00:19:25.460 the poverty of India without understanding the wealth of Indians. 280 00:19:26.080 --> 00:19:27.900 The Indian rich are incredibly rich. 281 00:19:28.260 --> 00:19:32.180 And one of the latest forms of expression now is themed weddings. 282 00:19:32.300 --> 00:19:33.720 Anyone here attended a themed wedding? 283 00:19:34.400 --> 00:19:35.220 Ha, I have. 284 00:19:36.200 --> 00:19:36.700 Okay. 285 00:19:37.080 --> 00:19:44.940 Now, a themed wedding is one where you create a replica of the Taj Mahal 286 00:19:44.940 --> 00:19:50.100 at maybe a cost of 20 million rupees, the modest price of 20 million rupees. 287 00:19:50.840 --> 00:19:54.000 Of course, if you're into high culture like some of my friends in Kolkata, 288 00:19:54.080 --> 00:19:56.240 then you recreate the Sistine Chapel. 289 00:19:58.420 --> 00:20:01.740 Or if you're a very patriotic person like those living in Delhi, 290 00:20:01.740 --> 00:20:06.500 you can even have the Kargil War between India and Pakistan as a theme. 291 00:20:08.240 --> 00:20:12.420 One and a half acres of white canvas tent with dead plastic soldiers, 292 00:20:13.600 --> 00:20:17.560 doubtless to remind the young couple of the solemnity of the occasion of holy matrimony. 293 00:20:21.440 --> 00:20:26.020 The themed weddings have spawned a new industry within the fashion industry 294 00:20:26.020 --> 00:20:29.440 to create the clothes and replica of that period. 295 00:20:30.240 --> 00:20:34.520 At the same time, in the countryside, weddings are collapsing. 296 00:20:35.300 --> 00:20:39.160 Farmers are committing suicide because they're unable to get their daughters married. 297 00:20:39.800 --> 00:20:41.340 No one has the money. 298 00:20:42.840 --> 00:20:48.440 In Wayanad in Kerala, once the richest district in the best of state in human development, 299 00:20:48.740 --> 00:20:52.700 Wayanad district of Kerala, I checked the registers of the churches. 300 00:20:52.760 --> 00:20:59.420 Weddings were down by 50% in 2004 because people could not afford to get their daughters married. 301 00:20:59.420 --> 00:21:04.200 One of the common links in the suicides is that the man takes his life 302 00:21:04.200 --> 00:21:05.880 because he could not get his daughter married. 303 00:21:06.100 --> 00:21:12.800 A year later, the girl commits suicide believing she was responsible for her father's death. 304 00:21:14.940 --> 00:21:17.060 On the one hand, the themed weddings. 305 00:21:17.320 --> 00:21:19.120 On the other hand, no weddings. 306 00:21:20.800 --> 00:21:26.120 It was also something, the themed wedding I attended, 307 00:21:26.120 --> 00:21:30.700 had this phenomenal dinner party. 308 00:21:31.200 --> 00:21:35.280 I think they had a boast of having something like 112 dishes or something, 309 00:21:35.400 --> 00:21:39.040 various things including the savouries and snacks and whatever. 310 00:21:40.420 --> 00:21:47.020 I returned from there to a part of Rajasthan in Udaipur. 311 00:21:47.100 --> 00:21:48.960 It's called Kottara Tehsil. 312 00:21:49.720 --> 00:21:55.420 And was staying with the indigenous people there, what we call the tribals, the scheduled tribes. 313 00:21:56.740 --> 00:22:00.180 The Adivasis is what I call them, the first dwellers. 314 00:22:02.960 --> 00:22:06.180 I had just come from gorging on that themed party. 315 00:22:07.160 --> 00:22:11.740 I was staying with a family of eight which were practicing something that, 316 00:22:11.760 --> 00:22:15.860 it is very difficult for me to explain to you what they were practicing. 317 00:22:16.040 --> 00:22:19.020 They were practicing rotating hunger. 318 00:22:19.440 --> 00:22:21.280 Do you know what rotating hunger means? 319 00:22:21.740 --> 00:22:26.100 It means that they were going without food for very long periods of time. 320 00:22:26.100 --> 00:22:30.780 So that even when a little employment or physical work came, 321 00:22:30.960 --> 00:22:32.640 they were in no condition to do it. 322 00:22:32.760 --> 00:22:41.000 So what they did instead was that every day two members of the family would eat well. 323 00:22:41.120 --> 00:22:42.960 The others would go hungry. 324 00:22:43.560 --> 00:22:49.620 Those two members of the family would go out and work, earn some money, come back. 325 00:22:49.660 --> 00:22:52.560 The next day, another two would eat well. 326 00:22:52.740 --> 00:22:55.500 The others would eat minimum or nothing. 327 00:22:56.860 --> 00:22:58.580 That was their themed party. 328 00:23:03.480 --> 00:23:08.520 Worldwide, it seems to me that the suicides go on, the hunger goes on, the deprivation goes on, 329 00:23:08.600 --> 00:23:10.820 and the parties also go on. 330 00:23:12.340 --> 00:23:14.240 You know, you look at it worldwide. 331 00:23:15.380 --> 00:23:20.520 I don't think, I mean, I'm all for Live Aid and especially for the music. 332 00:23:21.120 --> 00:23:22.000 It feels good. 333 00:23:23.640 --> 00:23:25.480 But it isn't going to address some of the problems. 334 00:23:25.480 --> 00:23:26.980 It's going to address the basic issues that bring this about. 335 00:23:27.300 --> 00:23:28.880 Take the African continent. 336 00:23:30.620 --> 00:23:34.880 Subjected to forcibly imposed policies of the bank and the fund, 337 00:23:35.280 --> 00:23:39.320 Africa lost nearly a fourth of her income in the last 20 years. 338 00:23:39.520 --> 00:23:43.480 In 20 years, the continent lost 25% of her income. 339 00:23:45.420 --> 00:23:52.780 Even as the producers of the cheapest cotton in Burkina Faso, Mali, commit suicide, 340 00:23:53.660 --> 00:23:58.120 American cotton producers get subsidies of a million dollars or more per producer. 341 00:23:59.000 --> 00:24:03.900 I don't know if you've ever looked at the poor starving farm households in North America that get subsidies. 342 00:24:04.140 --> 00:24:08.360 Believe me, the small farmer in North America was finished a long time ago. 343 00:24:08.640 --> 00:24:12.880 He and she suffered the same fate as small farmers all over the world. 344 00:24:14.420 --> 00:24:17.720 I took a look at who gets the subsidies in USA. 345 00:24:18.400 --> 00:24:19.960 I don't call them cotton farmers. 346 00:24:20.040 --> 00:24:22.260 I call them producers because they're not farmers, many of them. 347 00:24:22.260 --> 00:24:24.060 And it was fascinating. 348 00:24:24.280 --> 00:24:28.020 The Associated Press created a database of where the checks went. 349 00:24:28.520 --> 00:24:33.800 Among the poor starving farm households of the United States receiving millions of dollars 350 00:24:33.800 --> 00:24:42.180 was poor old Ted Turner, Scotty Pippin, an heir to the Rockefeller fortune, 351 00:24:42.320 --> 00:24:46.620 and seven out of every ten dollars went to 26 Fortune 500 companies. 352 00:24:47.780 --> 00:24:49.640 That's who gets the agricultural subsidies. 353 00:24:51.080 --> 00:24:51.660 Okay? 354 00:24:52.900 --> 00:24:54.600 That's an Associated Press story. 355 00:24:54.700 --> 00:25:00.340 Unfortunately, it got bombed out because it came the same day as 9-11 in the newspapers. 356 00:25:02.060 --> 00:25:08.680 The Americans, when I was in Iowa, I was teaching at the University of Iowa for a semester in 1998, 357 00:25:08.860 --> 00:25:13.120 and I witnessed a unique demonstration of the last small hog farmers. 358 00:25:13.980 --> 00:25:19.780 They came to the town square and released hundreds of little pigs neatly tied with ribbons and stuff. 359 00:25:20.820 --> 00:25:23.380 So I went up to the demonstrators and asked, what are you doing? 360 00:25:23.460 --> 00:25:25.300 One of them gave me a pig and said, want a hog? 361 00:25:27.500 --> 00:25:31.020 So I said, that's very sweet of you, but what is your problem? 362 00:25:32.280 --> 00:25:38.520 They then pointed out to me that while supermarket prices of pork had risen over the years, 363 00:25:39.300 --> 00:25:44.580 farm gate prices for the hog farmer had fallen 40% in the same period. 364 00:25:44.860 --> 00:25:46.480 That's happening all over the world. 365 00:25:46.660 --> 00:25:49.760 The prices of the supermarkets, the profits of the corporations, 366 00:25:49.760 --> 00:25:54.580 are going up while the farm gate prices of the small producers are collapsing. 367 00:25:56.780 --> 00:26:04.020 So great, but Africa's overall crisis, why does it go far beyond live-aid and throwing pennies at Africans? 368 00:26:04.860 --> 00:26:12.460 It's because if you look at it, in 2001, the entire continent of Africa, 600 million people, 369 00:26:13.760 --> 00:26:19.740 had 20,000 engineers and scientists serving the entire population of Africa. 370 00:26:19.760 --> 00:26:27.560 More African scientists and engineers live and work in the United States than in the entire continent of Africa, 371 00:26:27.740 --> 00:26:30.860 and no number of live-aid programs will address that problem. 372 00:26:34.080 --> 00:26:40.660 If 400 low-paid jobs go out from USA to Africa, you'll never hear the end of the squawking. 373 00:26:42.000 --> 00:26:49.600 But Africa is having a demographic and health disaster, because her scientists, her doctors, her nurses, 374 00:26:49.640 --> 00:26:49.740 they're all dying. 375 00:26:49.760 --> 00:26:51.900 And the lives of African Americans have left in thousands. 376 00:26:52.760 --> 00:26:58.180 South Africa, perhaps a country that needs her doctors and nurses more than any other country in the world at this moment, 377 00:26:58.280 --> 00:27:03.620 with the AIDS pandemic, has lost billions of dollars worth of human capital 378 00:27:03.620 --> 00:27:10.200 in terms of nurses and doctors to the United States. 379 00:27:11.700 --> 00:27:14.800 Those are the problems that don't get addressed by charity. 380 00:27:16.320 --> 00:27:17.400 Latin America. 381 00:27:17.400 --> 00:27:26.400 Long the most unequal region of the world, inequality rose very sharply in the 1990s in Latin America. 382 00:27:26.640 --> 00:27:33.320 In the 1980s itself, 100 million people in that continent fell below the poverty line of their respective countries. 383 00:27:34.420 --> 00:27:39.880 The shock therapy of the 80s was followed by the neoliberal panaceas of the 90s. 384 00:27:40.220 --> 00:27:45.800 Mexico alone added 11 million people between 1990 and 1996 to those below the poverty line. 385 00:27:46.800 --> 00:27:47.780 Come to China. 386 00:27:47.860 --> 00:27:49.000 Anybody remember SARS? 387 00:27:50.740 --> 00:27:51.440 Oh boy. 388 00:27:51.480 --> 00:27:52.660 It was all the rage in India. 389 00:27:52.720 --> 00:27:54.560 Front page for weeks and weeks and weeks. 390 00:27:54.840 --> 00:27:55.980 And then I did a check. 391 00:27:56.300 --> 00:27:57.060 And found. 392 00:27:57.140 --> 00:27:59.140 How many people died of SARS in India? 393 00:28:00.440 --> 00:28:00.920 Zero. 394 00:28:02.360 --> 00:28:02.840 WHO. 395 00:28:03.200 --> 00:28:03.680 Website. 396 00:28:03.680 --> 00:28:04.080 We'll show you. 397 00:28:04.160 --> 00:28:06.380 How many established cases of SARS in India? 398 00:28:06.540 --> 00:28:06.980 Three. 399 00:28:08.500 --> 00:28:09.840 What was all the noise about? 400 00:28:10.840 --> 00:28:14.460 It's because SARS was a disease affecting the flying classes. 401 00:28:14.460 --> 00:28:15.680