 Hello and welcome yet again to Dispatches from India, a show by People's Dispatch where we bring you some of the major news developments of the past week, the issues Indians are talking about and the impact they will have on politics, economy and all aspects of life. For foodies, India is a veritable paradise with substantial differences in cuisines across geographies. But food is also deeply political in India, closely associated with religion and caste. Over the years, it has also been used as a tool for polarization in various parts of the country. There have even been incidents of people being lynched on charges of carrying or storing beef as a section of Hindus believe that the cow is holy. Recently we saw another instance of the politics of food being played out at the Jawaharlal Nehru University, one of India's leading institutions in the capital New Delhi. Students belonging to the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad or the ABVP, which is associated with the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party, reportedly attacked fellow students. Now this was because meat was being cooked in a hostile mess on the day of a Hindu festival. Despite the students agreeing to serve the meat only once the rituals were over, the ABVP group refused the bargain and took to violence. Here is a ground report. But that is not where the story ends. The following day, university students from Delhi and Ambedkar universities together with their JNU colleagues marched down to the Delhi police headquarters. They assembled to voice strong protest at police inaction in dealing with the violence on campus. Instead of getting a hearing, this is how the capital police responded. The ABVP people threaten the students that if they are working with Dalits, they should be attacked. In keeping with the theme of food and politics in stories from India, we move on to tea, a once alien but now ubiquitous part of the country's culture. The southern state of Tamil Nadu, particularly the Nilgiri Hills, is among the country's biggest black tea producers. Tea companies in the state make millions of dollars in profits, but the living and working conditions of the people have steadily deteriorated over the years. Unable to bear the harsh working conditions and poor pay, many have migrated to the plains. Last year, the state government, it's of Tamil Nadu, increased the minimum wages for plantation workers. But the private estates are not implementing it. A trade union is waging a struggle for and with the workers who remain. We had earlier covered some of the issues regarding the workplaces and here is what these workers have to say on the issue of wages. We are working on a daily basis. We are spending money on a daily basis. As you can see in the coronavirus, they have stopped working from the outside world. So, this tea has been selling well. We can give it a bonus of 20 years at this time as well. We have given a bonus of 20 years to the people of Kerala. Kerala. They are doing this because they want their people to be good. They are the owners of the living and working conditions here. Now, they have killed the workers. When the workers were brought in, they were caught by a man of Rs. 800 to Rs. 400. They have been caught by the Nankarachis. They are the workers. We are not. They are the workers of the Annalas. Then, they have given it to the people who have caught it. They have given it to the MP. Then, they will make them beg for it. The workers are not able to pay the money. So, they are begging for it. They are doing it right. They have done this. They are begging for it. The people have been sitting here. The MP. They have tested the yield of 20 years. You are not aware of the impact they have on us. We are not aware of the impact they are having on us. We are not aware of the impact they are having on us. But the government has done a good job. We don't believe that they will do the same for us. They are talking about the Nirvathas. They are going around Pugara. They are not working in this estate. They are going to their own village. They are doing the work of Nirvathas. Today, there is a shortage of workers. The reason is that there are no facilities here. There are no medical facilities here. There are many health facilities. There are no drinking facilities. There are no drinking facilities. There are no drinking facilities. There are no facilities here. What are they doing? Forbes magazine comes out with its annual rich list. And it also on its website has a real-time top 10 billionaires list. Which gets updated every day. Now, out of those 10 top billionaires in the world, two are Indians. Gautam Adani and family and Mukesh Ambani. There are seven Americans, one Frenchman and two Indians. Now, maybe many people feel proud about that. We made it. Our people are amongst the richest in the world. And that means that we are very prosperous as a country. But one would have probably believed that had it not been for the fact that around the same time, Mahesh Vyas of CMI has come out with some stark data about unemployment in India. Unemployment in March reached probably the highest level it has since the second wave ended. And by unemployment, I don't mean the unemployment rate, but the number of people who don't have work. Total number of employed right now is about 39.6 crore. That's the March 2022 data, which is lower than what it was in January and February 2022. Remember, the second third wave, not second third wave of COVID actually hit us in January and February. And by March, most restrictions were gone. And there was talk that things are coming back to normal. Everyone's out at work. Construction is taking place all around me. In Delhi NCR, I see construction taking place. So there appeared to have been a lot of economic activity taking place. And especially if you hear about what is happening in the startup and the tech space, you think that things are back to being extremely prosperous and positive. But employment is lower in March than January and February. Pundits call it the two Indians, right? That there is one India which is prosperous and there's another India which is lagged and not been able to catch up. And it appears that as if these two Indians are like that because they operate in two different ways. But that's not true. It's the same policies, same system which has made this into two Indians. It's actually one India. The rich are a handful of rich are becoming richer and the rest are becoming poorer or staying where they are because of the same system which is causing it. And the core of the system is what has been called the LPG reforms or liberalization, privatization and globalization. Liberalization is essentially where the state which had restricted entry to private entrepreneurs in some core sectors which had wanted to control the project thought was essential for the economy and for society and nation. That was opened up to private companies. Another thing that is important part of liberalization is that earlier big companies were restricted when it came to having presence in allied sectors. So if you had a big company, if you had a big company in one sector, you had certain restrictions in another sector which would be allied. Not control large parts or large sectors. Those restrictions were gradually lifted. Now the second thing that we talk about which is privatization which is actually closely allied and corollary of liberalization itself is the government withdrew, the state withdrew and public resources, public assets were sold to private entities. And the final part of this LPG reforms is globalization which is essentially earlier there were restrictions for the entry of foreign capital and foreign goods. You couldn't import things so easily and foreign companies couldn't invest in India. And from the 1990s those restrictions were gradually lifted. LPG which was supposed to essentially unleash the entrepreneurial spirits of Indians. And they were supposed to make people, enable them to show their talents, start new businesses without any restrictions, make it easy for them to start new businesses. And if they got rich, if they made profits, they would buy things. They would employ people and in that process they would set off a virtuous demand and supply cycle. They would set off a virtuous employment cycle. They would get richer and that would trickle down to others who would get prosperous as well. And India would become a prosperous nation like the developed world. Of course, unfortunately capitalism does not work in that fashion. What happens is that those with capital always have a starting advantage. They are able to price out smaller businesses with their holding power. If a smaller business tries to enter a particular sector, a big company which has a lot of money and deep pockets, can keep prices low and ensure that the small business is unable to compete. And that business either has to vacate that space, shut down, or become a supplier or a vendor to this big client. So that is how privatization causes big companies to become even bigger. Money bigots money, capital bigots capital, money flows towards money and makes it even bigger. This is essentially the three-pronged thing that has caused extreme inequality in India. And that is the problem. Because India has increasingly become a country which produces goods and services for the richest people and for just about the upper middle class maybe, there's a limit beyond which demand cannot increase. So it is consistently, constantly constrained where it comes to demand and there is no reason why rich companies would want to expand production. So big companies are simply taking over other areas looking for places to consolidate and that is causing even bigger discrepancy between the poor and the rich. Some say that India is already a plutocracy. A state or a society which is run and governed by the rich. Even if it isn't, it is in grave danger of becoming one unless there is a rethink, unless there is a political movement to stop that, unless the government decides that it has to bring in policies which equalize things. That's the only way in which democracy can continue to be a real democracy in India or else we will become a plutocracy. That's all we have time for in this episode of Dispatches from India. We will be back next week with more such stories. Until then, keep watching People's Dispatch.