Feature Article

A response to “A Rational Taxation System of Bidis and Cigarettes to Reduce Smoking Deaths in India” (EPW, 15 October 2011). It is important to first have better information on the production of tendu leaves and bidis, and then to correct the prices of inputs (including wages) if tax policies are to have a salutary impact on bidi smoking.

This article attempts to estimate how India’s trade in agricultural products will be affected by tariff reductions according to the tiered formula of the 2008 draft modalities in the Doha round of the World Trade Organisation. The estimates indicate that the reductions in agricultural tariff rates will lead to an increase in India’s imports of agricultural products by about 1% and an increase in its exports of agricultural products to the us and us markets by about 2% to 4%.

The politics of inclusion in the Sabarmati Riverfront Development project, an urban mega-project in Ahmedabad, has been predicated on a “flexible governing” of the residents of the riverfront informal settlements. Such flexible governing has allowed state authorities to negotiate grass-roots opposition and mobilisation, modify the project to gentrify the riverfront further, and even officially represent the project as inclusive although questions of social justice have been profoundly disregarded over the past decade and continue to be insufficiently addressed.

Not only are the Forest Rights Act and the Panchayats Extension to Scheduled Areas Act routinely violated in Chhattisgarh, the adivasis are also short-changed on legislative representation and reservations in government jobs. As the state cedes land to capital while reducing the adivasis to an ornamental presence, there is increasing assertion of adivasi identity, born out of class predicaments and experiences of displacement as much as notions of indigeneity.