The raging bulls

Jallikattu ban gave a reason to the young to express their anger. But the cause of discontent may lie in the crisis gathering in rural Tamil Nadu — of falling farm incomes, rising costs of education, lack of jobs

to consequent high interest private debt. Among landless households, the quantum of employment from agriculture has been falling consistently. Payments for work done under the MGNREGA have been delayed for months. While farmers from the Cauvery delta and elsewhere made their way into the protests in Chennai, many students too identified themselves with cultivators.

Among the many placards fluttering on the Marina, a particularly striking one was that of Nammazhwar, a pioneer in organic and sustainable farming. He had quit his job as an agricultural scientist to devote his life to propagate alternate farming practices. Another poster highlighted how the water from the Thamirabarani, a river in southern Tamil Nadu, was being sold to a multinational water and soft drink bottling plant even as farmers suffer from water shortage. Slogans were also raised against multinationals selling seeds, fertilisers and pesticides. In Namakkal, a small town in the western region, soft drink bottles were dumped on the road. Some trader associations promised to stop selling of soft drinks in the state. In short, the demand for Jallikattu was also articulated in terms of a return to better agro-ecological farming methods. Such demands resonated with the state’s youth.

According to the report of the All India Survey on Higher Education 2014-15, 45.2 per cent of Tamil Nadu’s youth in the age group of 18-23 years was engaged in some form of higher education. This is not only much more than the all-india average (24.3 per cent), but was the highest by a sizeable difference among all major states. With the privatisation of higher education, the state also accounted for more than one-fifth of all educational loans availed in the country through C R Sasikumar

public sector banks. Such debt-backed investments are not backed by quality jobs commensurate with the educational qualifications. Most of the jobs in the state have been created in construction and low-end services that are clearly out of sync with the expectations of the students and their investments. Since many of them are first generation students, the rural continues to be a source of security amidst an uncertain urban present and future. Retreat to the rural allows them to counter uncertainties in the job market. Though agriculture may not be the sole source of income for many cultivating households, it continues to be an important source of income security. All these anxieties appear to have coalesced around the ban on Jallikattu.

When the government agreed to pass a bill through a special ordinance to allow the conduct of Jallikattu, political leaders and popular personalities claimed a victory for the students and requested them to give up the protests. However, the protestors were not convinced. They were wary of the statements made by the political establishment. A deep mistrust of political tokenism was evident all through the protests. More likely, the youth also did not see the government’s legislation as a victory because the protests were not just about Jallikattu.

In the course of the agitation, some speakers had asserted that Jallikattu was only the beginning and there was more to come. They listed farmer suicides, water crisis and privatisation of higher education. The protestors, I imagine, were still waiting when the police came down on them.

The writer is with the Madras Institute of Development Studies TODAY, A MAJORITY of the world’s population lives in cities, and the global urban population is on track to double by 2050. In much of the developing world, the first residence for a migrant in the city is in the slum. Life here is often fraught with significant health risks. The illegal nature of housing makes slum dwellers susceptible to extortion by slumlords on the one hand and government officers on the other. The fact that slums are often located on prime real estate compounds the problem: Governments lose significant revenues they could otherwise redistribute to the poor.

Reflecting these realities, the agenda of “Make cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, which was enshrined in the UN’S Sustainable Development Goal 11, was complemented in the October 2016 Habitat III summit in Quito, Ecuador by a “New Urban Agenda” of giving slum dwellers upgraded housing with basic services by 2030. How to accomplish such ambitious goals? A common approach is to build higher quality, affordable housing for the poor on the city’s periphery. This is a central pillar of the Indian government’s housing initiative, the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (PMAY), which aims to achieve “Housing for all by 2022”.

But a report in May last year put the vacancy in urban housing built under the PMAY at 23 per cent. Why are slum dwellers and new urban migrants rejecting this housing? One possibility is the lack of affordable housing finance. In his New Year Eve address to the nation, the prime minister announced two new interest-subsidy schemes under the PMAY; some anticipate further breaks in the upcoming budget. But reality is more complex. In my research with Sharon Barnhardt of Flame University and Erica Field of Duke University, we tracked female beedi workers drawn from Ahmedabad’s slums who had entered a lottery to receive improved housing at far below market cost, 12 km from the city centre.in2007,14yearsafterthelotterywinners received their houses, we conducted detailed surveys with lottery participants.

Winning the lottery represented a financial windfall and a chance for home ownership in cleaner, safer environs. The monthly mortgage payments, which were guaranteed for 20 years, were roughly half the monthly rent that the lottery participants paid for their slum dwellings. Yet, 34 per cent of the winners chose not to move to the colony. A further 32 per cent returned to the slums within 10 years.

Poor people were turning down an apparent golden opportunity, and it wasn’t because of high interest rates. What’s more, this group represented a best-case scenario, compared to typical PMAY participants: Beedi work is done at home, so one of the