Sehar Time

अब मत कहना मुस्लिमों को वोट बैंक!

2009-04-22T02:49:00.000-07:00

भारतीय मुसलमान की हालत फिल्म के पर्दे और राजनीति के मैदान में एक सी है। फिल्मी परदे पर उसका किरदार एक साधारण इंसान का नहीं होता। कभी वो बेइंतेहा रुमानी शायर तो कभी बेवजह अपनी देशभक्ति की मिसाल देता पुलिस अफसर नजर आता है। जिस तरीके से हम बॉलीवुड के परदे पर एक सामान्य मुसलमान की कल्पना नहीं करते उसी तरह राजनीति के मानसपटल पर भी हम एक सामान्य मुसलमान को नदारद पाते हैं।

भारतीय राजनीति में मुस्लिमों को हम देश की बाकी जनता से अलग करके देखते हैं। हर कोई मान कर चलता है कि राजनीति का सामान्य नियम मुसलमान पर लागू नहीं होता। ये विचार सिर्फ बाहरी लोगों का फैलाया हुआ नहीं है। खुद मुसलमान नेता और जनता भी ये यकीन करती है कि हो न हो वो कुछ अनूठे हैं। यहीं से भारतीय राजनीति में मुसलमानों को बंधक बनाने की कड़ियां शुरू होती हैं। मिथकों का एक ऐसा सिलसिला शुरू होता है, जहां मुस्लिम वोटर की अपनी स्वतंत्र पहचान खो जाती है। वो एक अकेला वोटर नहीं रह जाता, वो एक भीड़ में तब्दील हो जाता है। अपने आप को असाधारण मानते-मानते वो दूसरों की निगाह में असामान्य दिखने लगा है और राजनीति के मिथकों का पात्र बनने के लिए अभिशप्त है। आइए उन मिथकों की एक बानगी देखते हैं, जो मुसलमान को बाकी लोगों की तरह एक आम वोटर स्वीकार नहीं करते।

सबसे पहले है देश की राजनीति में उनकी भागीदारी का सवाल। माना जाता है की मुसलमान राजनीति में ज्यादा शिरकत करते हैं। वो देश के बाकी वोटरों से इतर बड़ी संख्या में वोट डालते हैं। ये सच है कि जिन लोकसभा क्षेत्रों में मुस्लिमों की आबादी ज्यादा है, वहां औसत से ज्यादा वोट पड़ते हैं। लेकिन इसकी वजह साम्प्रदायिक ध्रुवीकरण में छिपी है। जिसके चलते इन इलाकों में हिंदू और मुस्लिम दोनों खुलकर अपने वोट का इस्तेमाल करते हैं। लेकिन ऐसे लोकसभा क्षेत्र बहुत गिने-चुने हैं। हमारे देश में मुस्लिमों की आबादी महज 13.4 फीसदी है। मतदाता सूची में यह आंकड़ा और सिकुड़ जाता है। देश के अधिकांश चुनाव क्षेत्र ऐसे हैं, जहां मुस्लिम वोटर 10 फीसदी भी नहीं हैं। नेशनल इलेक्शन स्टडीज के जुटाये आंकड़ों से साफ है कि मुसलमानों की चुनाव और देश की राजनीति में भागीदारी बाकी समुदायों से अलग नहीं है।

पिछले चार लोकसभा चुनावों में 59 फीसदी मुसलमानों ने वोट डाले। इसके मुकाबले पूरे देश में औसतन 60 फीसदी लोगों ने अपने वोट का इस्तेमाल किया। दरअसल, अगर कोई फर्क है तो उल्टा है। साल 2004 के लोकसभा चुनाव में मुसलमान वोटरों ने औसत के कहीं कम वोट डाले। अगर हम चुनावों में प्रचार जैसी ज्यादा सक्रिय भूमिका को देखें तो मुस्लिम और हिन्दुओं में कोई बहुत फर्क देखने को नहीं मिलता। इतना ही नहीं, ये आंकड़ा बाकी अल्पसंख्यक समुदायों से अलग नहीं बैठा। शिक्षा और हैसियत जरूर राजनीति में हिस्सेदारी पर असर डालती दिखती हैं, लेकिन मजहब से कोई फर्क नहीं पड़ता।

शायद सबसे प्रचलित मिथक ये है कि सभी मुसलमान मिलकर किसी भी एक पार्टी या उम्मीदवार को वोट डालते हैं। यानी कि मुसलमान एक वोट बैंक हैं। लेकिन आम चुनावों में मुस्लिमों के वोट का रुझान यह साबित नहीं करता कि वो एक वोट बैंक की तरह काम करते हैं। पिछले आम चुनाव में पूरे देश भर में 37 फीसदी मुसलमान वोट कांग्रेस को पड़े। और 17 फीसदी कांग्रेस के सहयोगी दलों को। समाजवादी पार्टी को 16 फीसदी वोट मिले। तो बीजेपी को भी सात फीसदी मुसलमान वोट मिले। इसे वोट बैंक का नमूना कैसा बताया जा सकता है।

बेशक, अगर हम इस पहलू को राज्य की जमीं पर टटोलें तो साफ हो जाता है कि यहां मुस्लिम मतदाता कहीं ज्यादा एकतरफा व्यवहार करता है। लेकिन इसके बावजूद वो वोट बैंक की तरह काम नहीं करते। सिर्फ विकल्पहीनता की हालत में ही वो एकतरफा वोट डालते हैं। खासतौर से जब उसे कांग्रेस और बीजेपी में से किसी एक को चुनना पड़ता है। अगर उन्हें कोई तीसरी पार्टी मिल जाती है तो कांग्रेस की ओर उनका झुकाव कम हो जाता है। या फिर जहां बीजेपी और उसकी किसी सहयोगी की गैरमौजूदगी में दूसरी पार्टियों में मुकाबला सामने आता है। कुल मिलाकर राज्य में मुसलमान वोटर का व्यवहार बहुत हद तक सामान्य जातियों की तरह ही है। आजकल खासतौर पर बिहार और उत्तर प्रदेश में मुसलमान समाज के भीतर जात बिरादरी का फर्क भी उनकी राजनीतिक पसंद नापसंद पर असर डालने लगा है।

एक मिथक ये भी है कि मुसलमान एक रणनीति के तहत आखिरी घंटों तक अपने फैसले को टालते रहते हैं। कुछ इलाकों में ऐसा होता भी है। लेकिन पूरा देश एक स्तर पर आंकड़े की बात की पुष्टि नहीं करता। अगर 33 फीसदी हिन्दू चुनाव के दिन या एक दिन पहले अपना वोट तय करते हैं तो मुसलमानों में यह आंकड़ा महज 31 फीसदी था। एक और मिथक ये भी है कि मुसलमान अपना फैसला खुद नहीं लेते। इनका फैसला पारंपरिक नेताओं और मौलवियों के जरिए होता है। ऐसा भी कहा जाता है कि मुस्लिम वोटर का फैसला रोजमर्रा के जरूरी मुद्दों की बनिस्पत इस्लाम की सोच और समुदाय के मुद्दों पर ज्यादा टिका होता है। लेकिन मुस्लिम वोटर को लेकर बनी इस धारणा में भी कोई दम नहीं है। वोटिंग पर किए गए शोध ये दिखाते हैं कि बाकी हिन्दुस्तानी वोटर की तरह वो भी पहले पार्टी देखता है, फिर उम्मीदवार और आखिर में जात। मुसलमान पुरुष हो या महिला-ये दोनों ही मौलवी या किसी धार्मिक नेता से उतना ही प्रभावित होते हैं, जितना किसी दूसरे समुदाय के वोटर।

अमेरिका से चली ये धारणा हमारे देश में भी फैल रही है कि इस्लाम और लोकतंत्र का छत्तीस का आंकड़ा है। इसी सोच का एक और सिरा भारत में उभार लेता है। इसके मुताबिक भारतीय मुसलमान खुद का राजनीतिक ढांचे से अलगाव महसूस करता है। लेकिन हाल ही में दक्षिण एशिया के पांच देशों में किए एक सर्वे के नतीजे साबित करते हैं कि लोकतंत्र मे सहयोग देने को लेकर मुस्लिम और हिन्दुओं में कोई फर्क नहीं है। मुसलमान लोकतान्त्रिक राजनीति से खुद को अलग नहीं कर रहे हैं।

भारतीय मुसलमानों की राजनीतिक तस्वीर को समझने के लिये जरूरी है कि इन टूटते मिथकों के साथ-साथ हम दो बड़े सच को भी जोड़ लें। सच्चर कमिटी की रिपोर्ट के मुताबिक मुस्लिम न सिर्फ हाशिये पर हैं, शिक्षा रोज़गार, आवास और आर्थिक तौर पर भी उनसे भेदभाव किया जाता है। दूसरा एक बड़े सच से रूबरू कराया है प्रोफेसर इकबाल अंसारी ने। इन्होंने मुस्लिम सांसदों और विधायकों का आकलन किया। इनके मुताबिक राज्य स्तर पर भी मुस्लिम का प्रातिनिधित्व अपनी आबादी के अनुपात से आधे से भी कम था।

अगर हम इन मिथकों और सच को एक साथ रख लें तो हम मुसलमानों की राजनीतिक त्रासदी से रूबरू होते हैं। भारत के मुसलमान की हालत अमेरिका में अश्वेतों की तरह है। रिपब्लिकन उनके बारे में इसलिये नहीं सोचते क्योंकि वो जानते हैं कि उनका वोट उन्हें नहीं मिलेगा। डेमोक्रेट इसलिये उन्हें भाव नहीं देते क्योंकि उन्हें भरोसा है कि वो उन्हें ही वोट देंगे। मुस्लिम के आस पास बुने इस मिथकों के मकड़जाल ने उन्हें राजनितिक बंधक बना दिया है। पहले कांग्रेस उन्हें बंधक मानकर चलती थी, आज कांग्रेस के साथ-साथ समाजवादी पार्टी और आरजेडी जैसी पार्टियां भी यही सोचती हैं। दरअसल,मुसलमान को साधारण बताने और उनको बंधक बताने के बीच गहरा रिश्ता है। मुसलमान वोटर की राजनितिक मुक्ति के लिये उन्हें मिथकों के इस मकड़जाल से बाहर निकल कर देखना होगा। एक आम हिन्दुस्तानी वोटर की तरह।

इन सब के बीच मौजूदा चुनाव मुसलमानों के लिये राजनीतिक मुक्ति का एक नया दरवाजा खोलता है। अब मुस्लिम वोटर पहले से मौजूद पार्टियों से इतर नए विकल्प तलाश सकता है। असम मे एयूडीएफ कांग्रेस को चुनौती दे रही है। उत्तर प्रदेश में समाजवादी पार्टी के सामने मिल्ली काउंसिल है। बिहार में पसमांदा मुस्लिम राजनीति आरजेडी के लिये परेशानी का सबब है। केरला मे इंडियन मुस्लिम लीग के सामने पीडीपी है। इसमें कोई शक नहीं है कि ये चुनौती कमोबेश सांप्रदायिक राजनीति के भीतर से आ रही हैं। ये विकल्प अक्सर बहुत मौकापरस्त पार्टियों के जरिए आ रहे हैं। बहुत दिन तक बने रहने की संभावना नहीं है लेकिन ये नए विकल्प दीर्घकाल में मुसलमान वोटर को बाकी समुदायों की तरह इस लोकतान्त्रिक मुकाबलों मे अपने पांव पर खड़े होने में मदद जरूर करेंगे।

पोस्टेड योगेंद्र यादव
ibn se sabhar

Terror: The Aftermath

2008-12-15T22:56:00.000-08:00

The attack on Mumbai is over. After the numbing sorrow comes the blame game and the solutions. Loud voices amplified by saturation TV: Why don't we amend our Constitution to create new anti-terror laws? Why don't we arm our police with AK 47s? Why don't we do what Israel did after Munich or the USA did after 9/11 and hot pursue the enemy? Solutions that will lead us further into the abyss. For terror is a self-fulfilling prophecy. It thrives on reaction, polarization, militarization and the thirst for revenge.
The External Terror Those who invoke America need only to analyze if its actions after 9/11 increased or decreased global terror. It invaded oil-rich Iraq fully knowing that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11, killing over 200,000 Iraqis citizens but allowing a cornered Bin Laden to escape from Afghanistan. It recruited global support for Islamic militancy, which began to be seen as a just resistance against American mass murder. Which begs the question of who created Bin Laden in the first place, armed the madarsas of Pakistan and rejuvenated the concept of Islamic jehad? Israel played its own role in stoking the fires of jehad. The very creation of Israel in 1948 robbed Palestinians of their land, an act that Mahatma Gandhi to his credit deplored at the time as an unjust way to redress the wrongs done to Jews during the Holocaust. What followed has been a slow and continuing attack on the Palestinian nation. At first Palestinian resistance was led by secular fo rces represented by Yasser Arafat but as these were successfully undermined, Islamic forces took over the mantle. The first, largely non-violent Intifada was crushed, a second more violent one replaced it and when all else failed, human bombs appeared.
Thirty years ago when I first went abroad there were two countries my Indian passport forbade me to visit. One was racist South Africa. The other was Israel. We were non-aligned and stood for disarmament and world peace. Today Israel and America are our biggest military allies. Is it surprising that we are on the jehadi hit list? Israel, America and other prosperous countries can to an extent protect themselves against the determined jehadi, but can India put an impenetrable shield over itself? Remember that when attackers are on a suicide mission, the strongest shields have crumbled. New York was laid low not with nuclear weapons but with a pair of box cutters. India is for many reasons a quintessentially soft target. Our huge population, vast landmass and coastline are impossible to protect. The rich may build new barricades. The Taj and the Oberoi can be made safer. So can our airports and planes. Can our railway stations and trains, bus stops, busses, markets and lane s do the same?
The Terror WithinThe threat of terror in India does not come exclusively from the outside. Apart from being hugely populated by the poor India is also a country divided, not just between rich and poor, but by religion, caste and language. This internal divide is as potent a breeding ground for terror as jehadi camps abroad. Nor is jehad the copyright of one religion alone. It can be argued that international causes apart, India has jehadis that are fully home grown. Perhaps the earliest famous one was Nathuram Godse who acting at the behest of his mentor Vinayak Savarkar (still referred to as "Veer" or "brave" although he refused to own up to his role in the conspiracy), murdered Mahatma Gandhi for the crime of championing Muslims.
Jump forward to 6th December, 1992, the day Hindu fanatics demolished the Babri Mosque setting into motion a chain of events that still wreaks havoc today. From the Bombay riots of 1992 to the bomb blasts of 1993, the Gujarat pogroms of 2002 and hundreds of smaller deadly events, the last 16 years have been the bloodiest since Partition. Action has been followed by reaction in an endless cycle of escalating retribution. At the core on the Hindu side of terror are organizations that openly admire Adolph Hitler, nursing the hate of historic wrongs inflicted by Muslims. Ironically these votaries of Hitler remain friends and admirers of Israel.
On the Muslim side of terror are scores of disaffected youth, many of whom have seen their families tortured and killed in more recent pogroms. Christians too have fallen victim to recent Hindutva terror but as yet not formed the mechanisms for revenge. Dalits despite centuries of caste oppression, have not yet retaliated in violence although a small fraction is being drawn into an armed struggle waged by Naxalites.
It is clear that no amount of spending on defense, no amount of patrolling the high seas, no amount of increasing the military and police and equipping them with the latest weaponry can end the cycle of violence or place India under a bubble of safety. Just as nuclear India did not lead to more safety, but only to a nuclear Pakistan, no amount of homeland security can save us. And inviting Israel's Mossad and America's CIA/FBI to the security table is like giving the anti-virus contract to those who spread the virus in the first place. It can only make us more of a target for the next determined jehadi attack.
Policing, Justice and the MediaAs for draconian anti-terror laws, they too only breed terror as for the most part they are implemented by a State machinery that has imbibed majoritarian values. So in Modi's Gujarat after the ethnic cleansing of Muslims in 2002, despite scores of confessions to rape and murder captured on hidden camera, virtually no Hindu extremists were punished while thousands of Muslims rotted in jail under draconian laws. The same happened in Bombay despite the Shiv Sena being found guilty by the Justice Shrikrishna Commission. Under pressure a few cases were finally brought to trial but all escaped with the lightest of knuckle raps. In stark contrast many Muslims accused in the 1993 bomb blasts were given death sentences.
The bulk of our media, policing and judicial systems swallows the canard that Muslims are by nature violent. Removing democratic safeguards guaranteed by the Constitution can only make this worse. Every act of wrongful imprisonment and torture that then follows is likely to turn innocents into material for future terrorists to draw upon. Already the double standards are visible. While the Students Islamic Movement of India is banned, Hindutva outfits like the RSS, the VHP, the Bajrang Dal, and the Shiv Sena remain legal entities. The leader of the MNS, Raj Thackeray recently openly spread such hatred that several north Indians were killed by lynch mobs. Amongst these were the Dube brothers, doctors from Kalyan who treated the poor for a grand fee of Rs.10 per patient. Raj Thackeray like his uncle Bal before him, remains free after issuing public threats that Bombay would burn if anyone had the guts to arrest him. Modi remains free despite the pogroms of Gujarat. Congress party murderers of Sikhs in 1984 remain free. Justice in India is clearly not there for all. Increasing the powers of the police cannot solve this problem. Only honest and unbiased implementation of laws that exist, can.
It is a tragedy of the highest proportions that one such honest policeman, Anti-Terrorist Squad chief Hemant Karkare, who had begun to unravel the thread of Hindutva terror was himself gunned down, perhaps by Muslim terror. It is reported that Col. Purohit and fellow Hindutva conspirators now in judicial custody, celebrated the news of Karkare's death. Until Karkare took charge, the Malegaon bomb blasts in which Muslims were killed and the Samjhauta Express blasts in which Pakistani visitors to India were killed were being blamed on Muslims. Karkare exposed a hitherto unknown Hindutva outfit as masterminding a series of killer blasts across the country. For his pains Karkare came under vicious attack not just from militant Hindutva but from the mainstream BJP. He was under tremendous pressure to prove his patriotism. Was it this that led this senior officer to don helmet and ill-fitting bullet proof vest and rush into battle with a pistol? Or was it just his natural i nstinct, the same courage that had led him against all odds, to expose Hindutva terror?
Whatever it was, it only underlines the fact that jehadis of all kinds are actually allies of each other. So Bin Laden served George Bush and vice-versa. So Islamic and Hindutva jehadis have served each other for years. Do they care who dies? Of the 200 people killed in the last few days by Islamic jehadis, a high number were Muslims. Many were waiting to board trains to celebrate Eid in their hometowns in UP and Bihar, when their co-religionists gunned them down. Shockingly the media has not commented on this, nor focused on the tragedy at the railway station, choosing to concentrate on tragedies that befell the well-to-do. And it is the media that is leading the charge to turn us into a war-mongering police state where we may lead lives with an illusion of safety, but with the certainty of joylessness.
I am not arguing that we do not need efficient security at public places and at vulnerable sites. But real security will only come when it is accompanied by real justice, when the principles of democracy are implemented in every part of the country, when the legitimate grievances of people are not crushed, when the arms race is replaced by a race for decency and humanity, when our children grow up in an atmosphere where religious faith is put to the test of reason. Until such time we will remain at the mercy of "patriots" and zealots.

Anand Patwardhan

November 2008

An article

2008-07-11T07:25:00.000-07:00

read my article on Tehelka

http://www.tehelkahindi.com/SthaayeeStambh/KhulaaManch/768.html

Mrityunjay Prabhakar

और लेफ्ट एक बार फिर ऐतिहासिक भूल कर बैठा

2008-07-09T01:21:00.000-07:00

और लेफ्ट एक बार फिर ऐतिहासिक भूल कर बैठा

यह हमारे देश और देश की जनता की बिडम्बना ही है की अपने को जनता का प्रतिनिधि पार्टी कहने वाली लेफ्ट पार्टियाँ हमेशा से ऐतिहासिक भूलें करती आयीं हैं. उसकी ईमानदारी पर अविश्वास इसलिए भी नहीं कर सकते की वोह इसे तहे-दिल से स्वीकार भी करती आई है. कुछ-कुछ इस शक्ल में की 'लो जी फिर से एक ऐतिहासिक भूल हो गई. अब क्या करें. हम करना तो कुछ ऐसा चाहते थे. पर हो कुछ और ही गया.' इस बार भी लेफ्ट से ऐतिहासिक भूल हो ही गई. आज नहीं (क्यूंकि बैठकों में काफी वक्त लगता है) पर कल जरूर लेफ्ट वाले यह सच सबके सामने स्वीकार करेंगे की 'लो जी एक और भूल हो गई'. पर उसमें अभी काफी समय है.

आख़िर बेचारे वह भी क्या करें. मार्क्स-लेनिन ने इतना लिख डाला है की पढ़ते-पढ़ते तरुनाई में ही ऑंखें खरब कर लेते हैं. बाकि पता नही कितने विचारक हो चुके हैं. उनसे भी निपटना जरूरी होता है. आख़िर यही पढ़ाई तो उनकी 'पूंजी' है जिसके बल पर पोलिट ब्यूरो में बैठकर राजनीति करने का हक उन्हें मिलता है. वरना अगर जनता के बीच रहकर पैर घिस रहे होते तो बाटा की हजारों चप्लें घिसने के बाद भी शायद ही डिस्ट्रिक्ट कमिटी का चेहरा देख पाते. अब जब आँखों से साफ़ दिखाई ही नहीं दे तो गलती होनी तो स्वाभाविक ही है. अभी कुछ दिनों पहले ही एक पत्रकार बंधू कह रहे थे, 'परिवर्तन इतनी तेजी से हो रहा है की आपकी ऑंखें चुन्धियाँ जाएँगी. समय बिल्कुल राजधानी और शताब्दी एक्सप्रेस की तरह भाग रहा है. प्लेटफार्म पर खड़े किसी व्यक्ति को सिर्फ़ इतना ही दीखता है की कोई ट्रेन कुछ गुजर गई. उसपर लिखी इबारत नहीं दिखती.' यहाँ तो पहले से ही आँखों में मोतिअबिंद हुआ पड़ा है. ऐसे में कुछ खाक दिखेगा.

पर उनकी ईमानदारी पर आप सक नहीं कर सकते. देखियेगा कोई पांच साल बाद एक बयान आयेगा (आदत के मुताबिक) की 'लो जी एक और भूल हो गई'. कारण मैंने पहले की बताया है, आखिर लोकल कमिटियों से लेकर पोलित ब्यूरो तक कोई निर्णय लेने में इतना वक्त तो लगेगा ही. उसपर पार्टी कोई एक राज्य में थोड़े न है. तीन राज्यों में तो सरकार चला रहें हैं. उसपर थोड़ा बहुत आधार कुछ और राज्यों में भी है. कहीं आधार नहीं भी है तो क्या पार्टी तो है. वहां की भी राय सुनी जानी जरूरी है. फिर पार्टी के भीतर वाद-विवाद और बहस-मुबाहिसा का वातावरण बरक़रार रखने के लिए अलग-अलग धडे भी तो हैं. आखिर इन सबको समेटने में वक्त तो लगता ही है.

खैर, तो बात हो रही थी 'ऐतिहासिक भूल की'. लेफ्ट वाले यह समझकर सरकार को समर्थन दिए जा रहे थे की सरकार कोई भी जन-विरोधी कदम नहीं उठा रही है. मंहगाई का क्या. गलोब्लैजेशन का ज़माना है. मंहगाई भी आखिरकार ग्लोबल फेनोमेनों है. कब तक रोक पायेगी सरकार. पेट्रोल-डीज़ल का दम भी बढेगा. ग्लोबल वर्मिंग के ज़माने में फल-सब्जिओं और खाद्यान के दामों में तो आग लगेगी ही. कुछ भी है एक सेकुलर सरकार तो है. और इसे साम्राज्वाद विरोधी भी बनाकर ही दम लेंगे. मनमोहन और चिदम्बरम पहले भले ही वर्ल्ड बैंक की घुलामी बजा चुके हों. अब ऐसा कभी नहीं करने देंगे. उन्हें भी थोड़ा ह्यूमन टच भर देने की जरूरत है. वे ख़ुद ही समझ जायेंगे. कुछ ऐसा ही मुगालता पले बैठे थे हमारे लेफ्ट बंधू. कितने भोले हैं हमारे कर्णधार. इतने भोलेपन से पॉलिटिक्स करते हैं जैसे कोई बच्चा अपनी माँ के साथ पॉलिटिक्स करता है. चॉकलेट नहीं मिले तो रोने लगता है. माँ भी उसकी हर अदा जानती है. प्यार से झिड़क देती है. इतने भोलेपन पर ही शायद विनोद कुमार शुक्ल ने लिखा है: 'इतने भोले मत बन जन साथी, जैसे होते सर्कस के हाथी'. बेचारों को बिल्कुल नचा कर छोड़ दिया. चार साल तक अपना मतलब भी साधा और फ़िर ठेंगा भी दिखा दिया. साम्रार्ज्वादी आस्तीन के साँपों को तो डसना ही आता है. डंस लिया आखिरकार. पर लेफ्ट वाले बेचारे इसमे क्या करें. उन्होंने तो जी भरके कोशिश की इनका हृदय परिवर्तन हो जाए. नहीं हो सका तो समर्थन वापस भी ले ली. इससे ज्यादा क्या कर सकते थे.

अब अगर यह न्यूक्लियर डील हो जाती है. तो लेफ्ट की कोई जिम्मेदारी नही है. वो तो सरकार को अब समर्थन नहीं कर रहे. समाजवादी वाले इनके मुंहबोले भाई लोग कर रहे हैं. लालू-मुलायम को कितना चाहते थे बेचारे. क्या-क्या नहीं किया इनके लिए. दुनिया भर की तोहमतें लीं. फिर भी वे धोका देकर कांग्रेस के खेमे में चले गए. और शुक्र है की अभी तक कांग्रेस के खेमें में है. वह भी लेफ्ट की वजह से, नहीं तो बीजेपी के खेमें में चले जाते तो क्या कर लेते. लेफ्ट का पढाया पाठ की साम्प्रयादिकता बहुत बड़ा खतरा है, उन्हें याद रह गया है. आखिर सब कुछ भूलने में वक्त तो लगता ही है. वरना हो सकता है वह सीधे बीजेपी के खेमे में ही चले जाते. आख़िर अमर सिंह ने तो कह ही दिया, सुरजीत साहब की दिल्ली इच्छा थी की वह कांग्रेस के नजदीक आ जायें सो वो आ गए. कुछ अलग थोड़े ही कर रहे हैं. सुर्जितवाद को ही अपना रहे हैं.

यह भी कम बड़ी विडम्बना नहीं है की लेफ्ट बंधू जिसे पानी पी पी के कोसते हैं वह होकर ही रहता है. बीजेपी को इतना कोसा की उनकी सरकार तक बन गई. साम्प्रय्दिकता के नम पर क्या क्या और किस्से समझौता नहीं किया. पर जितना उसे कमजोर करने की कोशिश करते हैं. मजबूत होती जाती है. अभी देखिये. कांग्रेस को समर्थन दिया था की बीजेपी शाषण से दूर रहे पर उसके कदम १० जनपथ की तरफ बढ़ते ही जा रहे है. अब डील के पीछे पड़े थे वह भी अब होकर ही रहेगा. लेफ्ट की छवि भी कुछ उलटी बन गई है. अब तो खाए पिए लोग यह सोचने लगे हैं की लेफ्ट विरोध कर रहें हैं तो जरूर वह देश के हित में होगा. भाई -बंधुओं को इसपर भी जरा विचार करना होगा.

कितने मौके आए जब सरकार गिरा सकते थे पर नहीं बीजेपी आ जाएगा का भय दिखाते रहे. कुछ कुछ उस आदमी की तरह जो झूट मूठ हॉल मचाता था की शेर आया. लोग दौड़-दौड़कर परेशान. औ रजब शेर आया तो कोई भी साथ नही था. यही हाल हो गया बेचारों का. तीसरा मोर्चा का बनता पलीता फ़िर लुढ़क गया. और बेचारे अकेले खड़े हैं. कुछ कुछ उन्ही अभिशप्त आत्मायों की तरह जो अकेले रहने को अभिशप्त हैं.

हो सकता है पाँच साल वाद वाले बयान में यह भी आए, की हमने सरकार को समर्थन देना ही नहीं था. यह भी एक ऐतिहासिक भूल थी. पर इसकी सम्भावना कम है. पर कहने वाले तो कहेंगे ही की यूपीऐ सरकार को समर्थन देना भूल थी. पर ऐसा नक्सल वाले कहते हैं. या बीजेपी वाले. यह कहकर दरकिनार कर दिया जाएगा. उन्हें यह बात भी स्वीकार करने में हिचक होगी की सरकार से थोड़ा पहले समर्थन वापस ले लेते तो शायद न सरकार बच पाती न ही डील सम्भव होता. पर बेचारे क्या करते . मनमोहन ने उड़ने के बाद बोला की जा रहे हैं डील करने. लेफ्ट वाले तो समझ रहे थे. जायेंगे मौज-मस्ती कर के वापस आ जायेंगे. ऐसे सम्मिट तो होते ही रहते हैं.

पर कहीं न कहीं किसी न किसी लोकल कमिटी की फाइल में जरूर दबा रह जाएगा की 'देर हो गई थी'.

मृत्युंजय प्रभाकर

Dr. Binayak Sen ke masle par kuch sawal jawab

2008-06-01T21:33:00.000-07:00

JAI ... namaskaar....kind attention plzzz....vinayak sen wala profile kiskaa hai....ham nahi jaantey...but chahe to jiskaa profile hai wo khud use ho raha hai...yaa aaplogo ko use kar raha hai...acctually vinaayak sen kaa sympathyser apne desh kaa bhakt ho hee nahi sakta.....aapko shayad maaloom ho ke vinaayak per deshsdroh kaa aarop hai...aaur supreme court tak ne usko zamaanat nahi dee hai....so plz aap gumraah mat ho....aaur judiciary ko apna kaam karne dijiye...aap tai maaniye ke abhee bhee is desh mae 100 doshi bhale hee bach jaayein but 1 nirdosh ko saza nahi ho saktee....mai fir kehta hu aapka yeh so called frnd yaa to khud gumraah hai yaa aaplogo ko gumraah karne kaa prayaas kar raha hai chhattisgarh mae rahne ke kaaran ham naxaliyo ko behtar jaantey hai...aaur vinaayak per lage aarop bahut hee sangeen hain...uspe raham karna bharat ke saath droh karna hai...aaur chuki maamla court mae hai so court kee awmaanaa bhee....dhanyabaad.

Mrityunjay - ........bhai sahab apne baat shuru ki hai to uska jawab bhi aap sun len.. Dr. Binayak Sen agar desh ki nazar men apradhi hai .. to mera nam us desh se kat dijiye.. Jisne apna pura jeevan garibon ki seva me lagaya woh isliye kharab ho jata hai ki uspar naxaliyon ka sath dene ka arop hai...
aur wo log jo din raat garibon ka khoon pi rahe hain..
desh ke humran bane baithe hain.. wo deshbhakt hain..
aisi deshbhakti apko hi mubarak ho..

JAI - ....aadarniya bhai saahab....sen ke dedication pe koi question mark nahi hai.....uske tailent pe bhee koi shako-shubaha nahi hai kisi ke....but yahi kaafee nahi hota...is maandand pe to aap OSAMA-BIN-LAADEN ko bhee naayak kaa darzaa de sakte hain....hai naa????sawaal itnee hee hai ke aapko loktantra aaur unkee paramparaao kaa samman karnaa hee hota hai...at least ek sabse kam buree padhati ke roop mae hee sahee.....democracy kaa koi vikalp nahi hai...aaur naxali kitne gareebo ke maseeha hai...wo SALWA-JUDUM ne saabit kar diyaa hai.....mera nivedan bas itna hai ke yadi waastava mae aapke pass JANAADHAR hai....to usko saabit karne kaa CHUNAAV hee ekmaatra tareeka hai......aaur sansdiya pranaalee hee ekmaatra raasta.....thats all.

Mrityunjay - ..na to main naxali hoon, na hi unse samvedna rakhta hun, par ek patrakar hone aur rational insan hone ke nate (agar tum man sako to) itna jaroor kah sakta hun ki salwa judum ne sach men yah sabit kar diiya hai ki naxal hi garibon ke/adivasion ke sath hain.. wahaan ki sarkar nahin. kyunki jo salwa judum sarkar ne chalaya.. unhen wahan ke logon ne apne ghar/gaon se bhaga diya hai.

jahan tak rahi loktantra ki baat.. to ek loktantrik sarkar kamse kam yah nahin karti jo wahan ki sarkar apni hi janta ke sath kar rahi hai. is loktantra ne kuch hi logon ka bhala kiya hai usme main aur tum shamil hain.. baki 60-70 % janta jis tabahi ke daur se gujar rahi hai.. uska tumhe koi andaja nahin hai.. tum chahte bhi nahin kunki tumhari ankhon par woh nasha sawar hai jo har tript admi ke ankhon me hoti hai.

jahan tak rahi osama bin laden ki baat.. aisa tark tum jaise sampradayik charitra ke log hi dete hain.. tumne narendra modi ka nam laden ki jagah par kyun nahin liya.
narendra modi laden se jyada desh ke liye ghatak hai.

The Country We Live In

2008-05-31T13:18:00.000-07:00

We are the world’s largest democracy, one of the most celebrated sturdily projected facts, which need not be deny. We are a country developing as a ratio of around 9% as projected by the business experts. We are the country which is the second best preferred site of investment in the eyes of the business tycoons and multinationals of the world. We are now a country which is the lullaby of the world’s richest countries and their multinational companies. We enjoy it. Celebrate it. We love to be Indian. We feel proud when someone mentions (an NRI) mentions that now they don’t have to tell the people of the host country that what India is. They know us. Our voice is heard now a day on international level.

The national highway no. 8 which leads the wheels to the Gulabi Nagari of the country called Jaipur, shows us the symptoms of the development. Skyscraper buildings, with dark glasses are the common sight on the highway for more than 7-8 kilometres. The national capital is expanding day by day. It is reaching the soil of Rajasthan after crossing the neighbour state Haryana. It’s all evident or made evident in actuality by the Indian nation state. The reality of the fact can’t be undone.

But the nation is witnessing yet another hard fact. A cast called Gujjar of the same region had stopped the normal routine life of the area for last few days. And it is no the first time they have done so. They are doing it in the continuation of their last struggle and they seem more determined this time rather than the last one. They have learnt lessons from the earlier struggle and they are more consolidated and gritty this time. The lifeline of Indian Passengers the Indian Railway has failed to resume its services even after almost one week has crossed.

The other route, the road route is also under threat during the call of bandh and all.

Now look at their demands. The Gujjars are demanding the status of ST for them. The average Indians must be thinking that this is a complete bullshit. The movement to get the status of ST means they want to demote themselves in the social hierarchy. What, it means, do the status of SC/ST has climbed the ladder of social strata. Or do the SC/ST has have atleast a kind of respect in the society. Do they no more in that vulnerable situation like their past? Are they better off? No, the answer should be loud and clear. The SC/ST is still living in mess. They are still at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Neither, the society has overlooked their earlier view about them. The incidents of Dalit killings happening in Haryana and Rajasthan on a regular basis would convey us the ground realities. Then, obviously the reason is to get the privilege SC/ST has been given by the Indian constitution to get over from the vulnerable condition they have to live with.

Now, look at the fact again, Haryana is the most privileged state of India especially after India has adopted the neo-liberal policies and flow of capital started to boost up the Indian economy. Being, the closest neighbour state it become the hot spot for the real state lobby and the industrialist lobby of the country. It has got maximum no. of investment in all these sectors. Gurgaon, the projected picture of new India, pays the state alone the 20% of the total state revenue. But, still the inhabitant of the area, demands that they need the status of SC/ST. What it means? It simply means the whole development has little to do with betterment of the life of the local people. The local population is frustrated with the kind of development India as a state is following. A handful of persons are becoming billionaires at a glance but the local population have been even denied the fundamental services.

It clearly shows that the path India as a state is following for the development of the country is not the right one. Indian rulling class should or have to reconsider its policies of economical growth otherwise it would feel the heat like this more often in near future. The solution of the Gujjar crisis doesn’t lies in giving them reservation. It would only deepen and expand the crisis. The solution of the crisis would be the inclusive economical, social development of the society. How long the ruling class would be overlooking this fact?

By Mrityunjay Prabhakar

View on Regionalism! Case history-Maharashtra

2008-02-18T10:03:00.000-08:00

Even after so many years of independence, I think we still are missing the cord of feeling like a nation. In each and every part of our country, now and then, the demon of fraction/partition appears. We can see the example of Maharashtra, Assam, Delhi, Orissa, Gujraat and many more places. Somewhere people were targeted as being minorities, somewhere being Bihari and somewhere for being Dalits. Women and children are the worst hit, I need not to say in all these occurances. So who were left. A handful of people! Who still want to dominant and rule on the society as they were doing since last thousands of years. Although they are spread over in all political outfits but they have a plateform of there own named RSS with its sister, doughter, brother and son organizations. The politics of hatred is not new for our country and till when it is going to be there. We will lag far behind as a nation in imperial experience.
And the causes are really bullshit. They claim that Biharis, Minorities are claiming there opportunities. But no body try to put his or her finger on the other communities who are in bussiness and intelligentia and they are really very powerful. They never touch a Marbadi or Bengali for that reason, who are spread over the country. Why only Bihari's and Minoritoies are on their Radar? This is a question we should ask to ourselfs first then to others. We will come on any possible solution only when we can satisfy ourselves with some answer first rather than just questioning others. Because its our lack of confidence too on these issues which gives them upper hand.
I hope, we will stay and think before questioning others for a possible solution, which lies in our active participation to save the real character of democrary and feel like a nation, as we are supposed to apart from cricket.

Mrityunjay Prabhakar

The farm crisis: why have over one lakh farmers killed themselves in the past decade?

2008-01-16T11:16:00.000-08:00

Part II of sainath's speech on The farm crisis: whyhave over one lakh farmers killed themselves in thepast decade?

PART II of Sainath's speech:

Right now, as I speak to you, there is a second sadpart ?V we are in the spraying season. There arethree seasons when suicides shoot up. It is notcommon across the year. In some months it is verylow. In the spike seasons they are very high. Thefirst spike comes in the credit season when the farmergoes out in April-May, looking for the money to buy their inputs for the new season, trying to get thatRs. 8,000/- or whatever amount it is. I have coveredfarmers who have committed suicides because they couldnot get Rs. 8,000/- at a decent rate of interest in2003 and in early 2004. Then, I have gone back to myhouse as an urban middle class professional and got aletter from a bank, offering me a loan to buy aMercedes Benz at six per cent rate of interest with nocollateral required. What kind of justice is there inthat society? Where is the humanity, where is thecompassion and, above all, where is our sense ofoutrage? Where is the outrage about this, that I can buy a Mercedes Benz for six per cent rate of interestwithout collateral whereas a farmer who could buy aproductive investment like a tractor is bankrupted bythe terms of loan? There is no fairness in the systemat all.

Credit expansion -- to whose benefit?

The indebtedness of Indian peasants, as I said, hasdoubled and I gave you the figures from some of themajor States. We have been told repeatedly that thereis a massive credit expansion and indeed there is. Ican assure you that it is not going to the farmer. Some of you know very well as to which cooperatives itgoes to and who runs what. All these things are verywell known. What has happened to the creditexpansion? How do you expand credit when you haveclosed 3,500 banks in the rural areas? Rural areashave witnessed the closure of over 3,000 banks between1993 and 2002. And more since then. Private banks areonly now beginning to come in. It was only thenationalised banks which worked in the rural areas. There expansion of food production associated with the'Green Revolution' would actually not have taken placewithout the banks being there and providing the creditfor the farmer to do that. Banks have systemically withdrawn from credit and bank branches have closed down in thousands.

There has been a diversion of credit to the uppermiddle classes, the consumption of all of us in thecities indeed. The so-called Gramina Banks areplaying with tens of crores of rupees in the MumbaiStock Exchange! The undermining and re-defining ofwhat we call priority sector lending has a lot to dowith it. We redefine it. Under agricultural loan, you can buy a Qualis or Tavera or Scorpio or other luxuryvehicle -- as an agricultural loan! Whilenon-agricultural loans go to farmers who paynon-agricultural rates of interest, non-farmers arebuying Taveras or Hero Hondas and Qualis with'agricultural loans' and this at reduced rates ofinterest. This is a very widely documented thing andI could place everything before you. It is also veryimportant in the whole crisis. Agriculture is not an island: Do not disconnectfarming from the rest of what is happening. The cost of living expenses have simply exploded across thisnation. Today, health is the second fastest growingcomponent of rural family debt. Health is the secondfastest growing component because we have the sixthmost privatised health system in the world. If you look at the NSS data, it suggests that nearly one inevery five Indians, nearly two hundred million humanbeings, no longer seek medical attention of any kindbecause they cannot afford it. This is not because of accessibility or distance. It is because they cannot afford it. The same nation boasts of boosting'medical tourism.' But that is the situation.

The farmer is hit on all fronts. The situation offarm labour is even worse. The landless labourers'plight is even worse, but he is not tied to the land(except where bonded). So, the entire series ofprocesses is buffeting the farmers in every case. Last year, Andhra Pradesh started jailing elderlyfarmers who were unable to ay their debts. Now, the APGovernment has called a halt to it. They were put injails for debt. Seventy-four- years orseventy-five- year-old farmers were put in jails, butthat is now being stopped.

India pioneered the concept of 'social banking.' Itwas a Gandhian idea. It was recognised that therewere some operations, some classes of people, who youadvanced loans without expectations of huge profits.Like marginal or subsistence farmers. We havewithdrawn from that idea of social banking. We alltalk about moneylenders. One of the things which I want to tell you is that the face of the moneylenderhas completely changed.

The new moneylenders of the countryside:

Please do not focus too much on your village sahucar. Sure, he is an exploitative creature. He is also avery pathetic creature in the new dispensation. Awhole new class of moneylenders have come to thecountryside. The village sahucar, the small sahucaris committing suicide because his clients arebankrupt. Some clients have migrated and they haverun away and nobody is repaying his debt. Who thenare the new moneylenders? They are input dealers, thepeople who sell seeds and who sell pesticides, fertiliser and other inputs to the farmer.

The people who own the shops that are selling the seeds are millionaires now. When you come topesticides, input costs have simply exploded. Let megive you an idea to prove how major it is. When wespoke about interest waiver, I begged at that time:"Do not do the interest waiver. It will be thecooperative banks that will benefit. If you want to doa waiver, do a loan waiver." After all, we havewaived loans of thousands of crores of rupees for ahandful of industrialists.

A non-performing Who's Who:

Look at your Non-performing assets (NPA) list. It isa "Who's Who" of the Indian industry. Running to tensof thousands of crores. But we could not waive theloan of Rs.25,000 per Vidharbha farmer which wouldhave wiped out 80 per cent of their bank debt. Ibegged at that time when the 'relief package' wasbeing formulated. I said: "It is more packing thanpackage." I said that the cooperative banks wouldtake the money. Indeed, the cooperative banks are, forthe first time in 10 years, on a hiring spree becausethey have so much money. They have got a Rs.712 croregift!

We also gave a moratorium of two years instead ofgiving a loan waiver. What is the result? The two-yearmoratorium comes to an end in March 2008. With theexisting loan plus the pending loan plus the currentloan, the farmer is in for a gigantic shock in March2008. There is no chance of repaying. But we did notdo that. Only in the case of Tamil Nadu, there was amajor waiver. You can reason out why Tamil Nadu wasgiven that privilege. I am very happy that they weregiven that privilege and I just hope that thatprivilege would be extended to all the others and theother Governments do the same.

Input costs now killing:

Input costs have gone up to a point where there is noreturn. If you look at cash crops, you can find it. Iwill just take input cost in respect of seeds. Takethe case of di-ammonia phosphate (DAP). One bag of DAPcost Rs.120 in 1991. It costs four times as much now. Seeds were available at Rs.7 a kilogram of localvariety. I mean, in Vidharbha, local cotton seeds wereavailable for Rs.7 per kilo. You could get the bill(for transactions of that time) even now. Just Rs. 7for a whole kilo. It was Rs.1800 for the BT cotton seed (per 450 gram packet) in 2004 before the AndhraPradesh Government took Monsanto to court. It got theprice dropped down to Rs.725. I give full credit tothe Government of Andhra Pradesh for having taken thataction. Today, the utility prices have gone up;electricity prices have gone up and the farmer isbuffeted by the entire series of price shocks. At thesame time, the output prices have crashed. The littledistrict of Wayanad in Kerala lost Rs.6,000 crore on two products of coffee and pepperwhich are not doing that badly at the global level. Injust four or five years, they lost that much.Somebody else is making the money because they havebeen locked into a trade where the Spices Board, allour institutions, are operating on behalf of theprivate corporations and not on behalf of the farmers.

When I went to the Coffee Board in Wayanad, Kerala,they were very nice to me. The moment I entered theiroffice, the Coffee Board people offered me a cup oftea! That is how they promote coffee. The farmers inthis part of Kerala are growing the coffee. Coffeedoes not grow in most Western climates. Your farmer isgrowing coffee and he gets pathetically less than 10per cent of the turnover of what goes on at the globallevel. In 2001-02, thousands of people were beguiledinto growing Vanilla. Why? It fetched Rs.4300 akilogram at the time - at the start. This is alsoone of the tricks of the corporate farming andcontract farming. It fetched Rs.4300, per kg meaningthereby $100 per kg of Vanilla. That was the price thefarmer got. I do not know what is the exact pricetoday. I think it is around Rs.86 a kg. It is not afluctuation. That is an annihilation. This volatilityhas killed them. However, we have chained our farmersto all these things. Are there solutions tothese problems? Yes, I have not covered a lot ofissues. I can take the questions from you on that.

We can turn it around:

For one thing, I would appeal to you to read thereports of the National Commission on Farmers. Thereis something very important about the reports of theNCF. They have wide acceptance. Almost every majorfarm union in this country has supported it regardlessof party ?V whether it is the Congress or theCommunist or the BJP or the Dravidian parties. Acrossthe political spectrum, people have supported therecommendations of the NCF. Then, what prevents usfrom moving ahead on at least the majorrecommendations? What prevents us from creating aPrice Stabilisation Fund for important agriculturalcommodities the way we have it for petroleum. We do have a Price Stabilisation Fund in the case ofpetroleum. The State kicks in when the price becomesunbearable and withdraws when it stabilises. Whatstops us from using social banking techniques?

There is a rule, a law in this country that 1 per centof all loans (at 4 per cent interest only) has to goto the poorest of the poor. Over the last 10 years, wehave not even fulfilled that one per cent, accordingto the bank unions of this country. The industrywideaverage is 0.25 per cent! We have given no protectionto the farmers against dumping and the Westernsubsidies. We have not sought the revival of theagricultural universities as the National Commissionhas appealed for. We could do a five-year creditcycle. You can give the farmer a loan over afive-year cycle instead of making him go back on hisknees to the corrupt bank manager every six months, every season. In five years, you will have two goodyears, two bad years and one neutral year. So you might manage.

There are many such recommendations which we coulduse. They are really very sincere ones. As I said, itis not politically difficult to get them accepted.They have been accepted across the farming politicalspectrum. You are talking about 600 million peoplehere. There are three broad principles which are onthe larger canvass.

?? First, do not treat agriculture as a headacheor a cancer. It is not. It is central to thelivelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. Wehave to approach it with reverence for what itrepresents.

?? Second, declare agriculture as a publicservice and treat it as such. Those who work inagriculture, they lose out a lot. Average incomes inagriculture are much lower than any other sector. Letthem be compensated for the food they put on ourtable. They lose out a lot. Those remaining in thesector should be compensated by society.

?? Third, let us end the hypocrisy of subsidies.There is no part on the globe where agriculture existswithout State subsidies, without State intervention. In fact, the richer the country, the greater the subsidies -- but they are not going to the farmers -- they are going to the corporations. What we give our farmers does not even qualify for subsidy but aspathetic life supports. Let us not remove them. Let us honour those who put food on our table.

I just want to tell you one thing. Many causes have been advanced why farmers are killing themselves. One is, they are killing themselves to get compensation. This disgusting explanation is in voguein Maharashtra. I do not know what to say about it. What do you do with Rs. one lakh? Do you have a wildparty when you are dead? Another thing is they are called mentally unstable. Well, I might be mentallyunstable and depressed if three people in my familyhave killed themselves and one is starving. However,the Government in its wisdom last year constituted amano vaigyanik dal ( A team of medical experts).Psychiatrists, psychologists, some very good people,very fine people, highly qualified intellectuals, weresent to the villages to find out why the farmers arekilling themselves. They did a lot of research andstudies. Finally, one old farmer got up and addressedthese top doctors from top institutions. He saidtypically in the Indian fashion: "Such an honour to have such big people come to my small village. I honour you. I touch your feet. You have asked us so many questions. You have given us such good advice. You have asked us this question: Do you drink too much? Doyou fight with your wife? You have given us goodadvice. You have said: Do not drink too much. Do not fight with your wife. Do yoga. Remove your stress." He said: "Ask us one more question. Ask us why the farmers of this country, who place the nation's foodon its table, are starving?" There was total silence.One of the doctors told a journalist much later: "Weshut up. There was nothing to say. We had all theanswers but he had the right question."

By P. Sainath
ENDS

The farm crisis: why have over one lakh farmers killed themselves in the past decade?

2008-01-10T08:00:00.000-08:00

Ist Part

We, as a nation, are in the worst agrarian crisis infour decades. It is impossible to cover such a largeissue in full. So I am going to be dealing with it infragments today. I would like to stress that thecrisis is so deep, so advanced that: firstly, no State, nobody, is exempt from this and it is not tobe seen as the crisis of one State or one Governmentor one Party. It is a national crisis and we need torespond to it as such. It is a huge thing. In thatcrisis, the suicides are merely, however tragic, justa symptom and not the disease. They are aconsequence, not the process.

Millions of livelihoods have been damaged ordestroyed in the last 15 years as a result of thiscrisis. But you will know, if you look at your media,that it is only in the last three or four years thatwe widely used the word 'farm crisis' or the 'agrariancrisis.' Earlier, there was a complete denial of anycrisis. At least today it is established that there is one.

We can sum it up in one sentence -- the processdriving this crisis: the predatory commercialisationof the countryside (int he words of Prof. K. Nagaraj of the Madras Institute of Development Studies –MIDS). The reduction of all human values to exchangevalue. As this process unleashes itself across agrarian India, millions of livelihoods have collapsed. Lakhs of people are migrating towardscities and towns in search of jobs that are not there. They move towards a status which is neither `worker'nor `farmer.' Many will end up as domestic labour, like over a lakh girls from Jharkhand in this city of Delhi working as domestic servants.

World-wide crisis of small-holder farms:

However, having said that, I want to say that thecrisis is by no means restricted to India. It is aworld-wide crisis of small holder farming. Small,family farms are getting wiped out across the planetand it has been happening for 20-30 years. It is justthat this has been very intense in India in the last15 years. Otherwise, the farm suicides have causedmajor concern in Korea. Nepal and Sri Lanka have highrates of farm suicides. In Africa, Burkina Faso, Malietc. have had high rates of farmers' suicides as thecotton product there gets wiped out by the UnitedStates and EU subsidies.

Incidentally, suicide rates among farmers in theUnited States Midwest and other rural regions havealso been extremely high from time to time. In fact,in the eighties, suicide rates amongst farmers inOklahoma, for instance, were more than twice thenational suicide rate for men in the United States --and it is rare that rural suicides are higher thanurban. I spent time last year on American farms andcould see how they're going down.

We are witnessing in many ways the decline and deathof the small holder farm. It is very important thatwe do something about it because we are the largestnation of small holder farms where the farmer ownsthat land. We are also probably the largest body offarm labourers and landless workers. If you look,there is a lesson to be learnt as to what has gone on in the United States.

In the 1930s, there were six million family farms inthe United States. At that time when India was just adecade or so away from gaining Independence, over aquarter of the American population lived and worked onthose six million farms. Today, the US has morepeople in prison than on farms. It has 2.1 millionpeople in prison and less than that on its 700,000 family farms.

We are being pushed towards corporate farming:

So what is this process driving towards? In two words:It is driving us towards corporate farming. That isthe big coming picture of agriculture in India andacross the planet. We have been pushed towardscorporate farming, a process by which farming is takenout of the hands of the farmers and positioned in thehands of the corporates. That is exactly whathappened in the United States and that is what exactlyhappened in a large number of other countries. Thisprocess is not being achieved with guns, tanks,bulldozers and lathis. It is done by making farmingunviable for the millions of small family farmholders, by just making it so impossible for you tosurvive in the structures that exist. But there is acontext to this that I am absolutely going to insiston framing that context. All these unfold in thecontext of the fastest growing inequality that Indiahas seen in her history as an independent nation. Andunderstand this, when inequality deepens in society,the farm sector takes the biggest hit.

In any case,it is a disadvantaged sector. So when inequalitywidens, the farm sector takes a hit. Devastating growth of inequality in India:

Ø Fourth rank in Dollar Billionaires: In Indiain 2007, I am sure you all will be very thrilled toknow, we have the fourth highest number of dollar-billionaires in the planet. We are ahead of allcountries in the number of billionaires except theUnited States, Germany and Russia. Incidentally, ourbillionaires are richer than those of Germany andRussia in terms of net asset worth. You can look upall these numbers on The World's Billionaires atwww.forbes.com – the Oracle of global billionaires.

Ø 126 th in Human Development: We have thesecond richest billionaires in the world in dollarsand we have the fourth largest number of billionairesin the planet. But we are 126 th in humandevelopment. The same nation that has ranks fourth inbillionaires is 126th in human development. What doesit mean to be 126th ? It means that it is better tobe a poor person in Bolivia (the poorest nation inSouth America) or Guatemala or Gabon. They are aheadof us in the UN's Human Development Index. You canget all these figures in the Parliament Library fromthe United Nations Human Development Reports of thelast 10 or 15 years.

Ø 836 million live on less than Rs. 20 a day: Weare the emerging 'tiger economy.' But life expectancyin our nation is lower than it is in Bolivia,Kazakhstan and Mongolia. We have 100,000 dollarmillionaires, out of whom 25,000 reside in my city ofMumbai, I am proud to say. Yet, 836 million people inour nation exist on less than Rs. 20/- a day accordingto the Government of India. There is no such thing asIndian reality. There are Indian realities . Thereis a multiplicity of realities.

Ø Slowing down of infant death rate decline: Thegrowth rate of our country is indeed the envy of many.But the rate of decline of infant mortality actuallyslowed down in this country in the last 15 years. Thelargest number of infant deaths 2.5 million takesplace in this country, followed by China.

Ø CEO's salaries set all time records: ChiefExecutive Officer 'packages' grew like never before inthe last ten years. Indeed, the Prime Minister ofthis country felt constrained to make some remarksabout the salaries of CEOs. You can remember the kindof pasting he came in for in the media as a result ofhaving dared to question that maybe a CEO could liveon a million less a year, or whatever it was. Butwhile CEOs salaries have gone through the roof, farmincomes have collapsed.

Ø Appalling MPCE of farm households: Accordingto the National Sample Survey, the average monthly percapita expenditure (MPCE) of the Indian farm household(across zamindars and your half acre wallas), is Rs.503.

Ø Miserable expenditure patterns: Out of thatRs. 503, 55 per cent or more is spent on food, 18 percent on fuel, clothing and footwear leaving preciouslittle to be spent on education and health. What isspent on health is twice that of what is spent oneducation because we now have the 6 th most privatisedhealth system in the world. Therefore, the MPCE showsRs.34 as expenditure on health as against Rs.17 oneducation. Rs.17 a month on education means 50 paisea day on education. That is the spending of the Indianfarm household. That is the national average. I willcome to state-wise figures a little later.

Ø Incidentally, we are very proud to tell youthat labour productivity in the decade of the reformswent up to 84 per cent according to the ILO. The sameILO report informs me that while labour productivity went up to 84 per cent, the real wages of labour inmanufacturing declined by 22 per cent (at a time whenCEO salaries were going through the roof). So, in thelast 15 years, we have seen the unprecedentedprosperity of the top of our population. And at thesame time, the net per capita availability offoodgrain actually declined for over a decade. Ø Rising hunger at the bottom: The State of foodinsecurity in the world report of the FAO of theUnited Nations shows us that from 1995-97 to1999-2001, India added more newly hungry millions thanthe rest of the world taken together. Hunger grew at atime when it declined in Ethiopia. A new restaurantopens everyday in some city of this country but asProf Utsa Patnaik, our leading agricultural economistpoints out, the average rural family is consuming 100kgs less than it did 10 years ago. The availabilitysituation figure is one placed every year inParliament in the Economic Survey which gives the netper capita availability (NPCA) of foodgrain containedin Table 1.17 (S-21). You get the numbers all the wayfrom 1951. You can see how it has declined in thelast 15 years. The NPCA was 510 in 1991, on the cuspof the reforms. That fell to 437 grams by 2003. The2005 provisional figure was 422 grams. There may be aslight rise in one or another year, but the overalltrend has been that of a clear decline over 15 years. A fall of 70-80 grams sounds trivial -- until youmultiply it by 365 days and then again by one billionIndians. Then you can see how gigantic the decline is. Since those at the top are eating much better thanever before, it raises the question of what on earththe bottom 40 per cent are eating?

Ø Two-nation theory passé. Its Two Planets now: Today, for the top 5 per cent of the Indianpopulation, the benchmarks are Western Europe, theUSA, Japan and Australia. For the bottom 40 per cent,the benchmarks are the Sub-Saharan Africa (some ofwhose nations) are ahead of us in literacy.

Ø Indebtedness has doubled in the past decade:The NSSO's 59th round tells us that while 26 per centof farm households were in debt in 1991, that figurewent up to over 48 per cent – almost double by 2003. There have been huge migrations, as I said, as aresult of this chaos and collapse of incomes,explosions of cost of living. Why is this framework ofinequality so important to our understanding? We aregetting further and further into the divide. What do Imean by predatory commercialisation of thecountryside? I will come to that soon. But manythings have happened. Policy-driven devastation of agriculture: One is that as every Minister and every PrimeMinister admits, public investment in agriculture hasdeclined very sharply to the point of collapse over aperiod of 10-15 years. It is one of the things thatthe Government now feels that it is trying to reverse. Our foremost agricultural economist, Dr. Utsa Patnaik shows us that while total development expenditure as ashare of GDP was fourteen and a half per cent in1989-90, it was 5.9 per cent by 2005. That is acollapse of Rs.30,000 crore per year or an incomeloss of Rs.120,000 crore. I have often felt it'ssimpler to send out the Air Force and bomb thevillages It would probably cause less lasting damagethan that withdrawal of investment costs us! There has been a crash in employment. Only the requirement of the last year and a half hassomewhat (but far from adequately) been met by theNREGP, a programme which I am very supportive of. Thathas not opened up anywhere as much as it should. I hope it deepens and grows because it is a vital programme for the crisis in the countryside. It is oneof the great things that we have done in the last two years. But very far from enough.

SEZs but no land reforms:

Another problem is the rack renting of tenants. Inthe Andhra Pradesh suicides, you will find that manyof those (in some regions) who have committed suicidewere actually tenant farmers. Out of the 28 bags ofpaddy they harvested, they parted with 25 bags as thetenancy or lease rate. If there is a cyclone or damageor anything else, incidentally, the reparations andthe compensation go to the absentee landlords. We haveno tenancy reforms. It seems appalling to me that wecan clear an SEZ in six months but we cannot do landreforms in 60 years across this country! Except inthree states.

Rigging costs in agriculture:

Another issue is the exploding cost of agriculture, aprocess quite heavily controlled and rigged. Yetanother one is the exploitative internationalagreements that we have entered into that areseverely damaging to the interests of our farmers.Yet another aspect is the crashing output prices asglobal corporations have taken control of trade inagriculture commodities and rig prices. Even whenWhile the coffee prices boom in the West, the men andwomen who grow coffee in Kerala commit suicide,especially between 2000 and 2003. The suicides are appalling. How many suicides havebeen there? I do not want to get into the numbersgame. We are coming with a very major story on thatin The Hindu in a while. I won't pre-empt it. However,you were given last year, I believe, a figure ofover one lakh suicides since 1993. That is ahorrifying figure in 10 years. Yet, you will find itwrong. It is not true. For several reasons. I found that four years have been included in the number forwhich firm data on farm suicides do not exist. Youbring down the average by bringing farm suicides inyears which are irrelevant! We only started collecting farm suicide data from 1995in the National Crime Records Bureau. Any new systemof reporting takes time. Most States do not reportproperly for the first two years. It takes time forthe States to get into the mode of reporting data.Real or stable data started from around 1997. So, theover one lakh suicides that you are looking at are notfrom 1993 to 2003 but they are from 1997 to 2003. Thatis an appalling figure. It is still a hugeunder-estimate for a variety of reasons which I willcome to. Suicide figures misleading and confusing: But what is important is that the numbers are not thecrucial issue . I think even the figure of over onelakh is appalling enough. What is frightening isthat if you look at the data, two-thirds of thesuicides are occurring in half-a-dozen States thataccount for just about one-third of the country'spopulation . Most of the suicides are occurring incash-crop areas. The number of food crop farmerscommitting suicide is less as compared to those incash crops. For the last 15 years, we have drivenpeople towards cash crops. We have told them toexport. Exports lead to growth. Regardless of the factwho is in power, we have pushed them towards cash cropand now we are paying the price of that movement. Wehave locked them into volatility of global pricescontrolled by rapacious corporations. It is often doneby corporations whom your farmers cannot see, who arenot accountable to your people. The other frightening thing is that thefive or six States are also, in a sense, contiguous.There are other States which are pretty bad. These arethe worst states. Maharashtra is the worst. Some ofthese States are showing an ascending trend. Someshow a descending trend. What is frightening is thatin some of the States showing an ascending trend,their numbers might double in six years. Zero farm suicides in Vidharbha? Farmer suicides in Vidharbha stopped entirely inAugust because the news came in July that the PrimeMinister was to visit them. So, people thoughtfullystopped committing suicide. There was not a singlesuicide in Vidharbha in August. In official count, atleast. They knew the Prime Minister was coming.Everybody said: "We will not commit suicide till heleaves." This is a nation deluding itself. It does nothelp you. I am not trying to point at one ChiefMinister or one party Government. It is a nationalcrisis. The more honest we are with ourselves, thebetter positioned we are to sort it out. What do the figures actually suggest? If we projectfurther the figures of the National Crimes RecordBureau, it is closer to about one-and-a-half lakh suicides in the 1997-2005 period. And that excludeseight categories of people because, for instance, inthis country whatever you do, whatever laws you pass,our machinery will not accept women as farmersbecause there is no land in their name, there are noproperty rights for them. Many suicides not recorded as farm suicides : In Anantapur district of Andhra Pradesh, 45 per centof farm suicides in 2001-02 were women farmers. Manyof the households in Anantapur rural areas arewomen-headed since the men have migrated. There aremuch larger numbers. Even nationally, 19 per cent ornearly one-fifth households in this country arewomen-headed. But we do not count women as farmers. Wecount them as the wives of farmers. So, it iscounted as a suicide but not as a farmer's suicide. Of course, farm labourer suicides will never becounted in the list of farm suicides, so that bringsit down further. Incidentally, countless eldest sons have not beencounted as farmers committing suicide because, in ourtraditional society, the land remains in the name ofthe aged-old father, who may be 75-80, until he dies.So, the elder son may be 50 or 51. He is running thefarm. He faces the pressure. He cracks and killshimself. The tehsildar says that this man is not afarmer because there is no farm in his name. InYavatmal district last month, every single claim ofsuicide was rejected by a six-member 'independent'Committee consisting of top Government officers in thedistrict plus two non-officials chosen by thegovernment! Many of these cases were rejected on the basis thatthere is no land in those names. The guy was theeldest son, he was running it and looking afterperhaps even three family units. But the land was notin his name. How do we accept him as a farmer? Thatis the criteria. I could go on about that. If youdie and if you are found to be in debt, that debt hasto be a bank debt. If it is a private money lenderdebt, it is not accepted. The Committee in Yavatmalwill not accept it. They will ask: what is therecord on that? There is no document to show it. Inthis way, thousands of people have been kept on thelist of suicides but not in the list of farmerssuicides. There is also misclassification. There are migrantfarmers who are not counted in it. People leave theplace and kill themselves in the city. I do not evenwant to conjecture what the real figure would be. Itis impossible physically. Secondly, I think thenumber (the official count, however flawed) isappalling enough to move this nation. It should movethis nation. If we have only these Governmentnumbers, I will accept them at face value. If you canaccept that it is a horrible figure, we should movethe nation forward. Common factors across regions: What is common in these areas where the crisis istaking place? Cash crop, high water stress, hugeindebtedness way above the national average. If youmake a map of indebtedness of India and the map of allsuicides, they will converge very neatly. Thehighest number of indebted households in the countryis in Andhra Pradesh which is at 82 per cent, Keralahas 64 per cent and Karnataka has 62 per cent of allfarm households in debt. The list is endless. You cansee how the suicide map matches that of indebtednesswhich is one of the important single major causes. I would like to say that almost every suicide has amultiplicity of causes, not just one. What we do inrecording them, though, is to record the last cause. I am indebted. My son drops out of college. I amunable to get my daughter married and I am humiliatedby the money lender every day when I go to the market.My crop collapses and the bank refuses to give me aloan. I go home getting drunk. I fight with my wifeand then commit suicide. The next day, it isrecorded that the reason for the suicide is that hehad a fight with his wife and, so, he killed himself. The last cause gets recorded. That is natural and thatis how it is structured. But it conceals more than ittells. The other common thing in the suicide-hit regions iswithdrawal of bank credit. Agriculture tends to bemore deregulated in these areas as in parts ofVidharbha and Maharashtra. You have a very highcultivation cost. That too, is common in these areas. Extremely high cultivation costs. In Vidharbha,in 1991, it cost Rs. 2500 to cultivate an acre ofcotton. Today it costs over Rs. 13,000 per acre usingthe new BT brand. You are talking about a 500 percent increase in the cultivation cost per acre. It iskilling. It cannot be borne. If you want to understand how gigantic input costsare, if you want to understand how massive is theindustry for seeds which we have left open to ahandful of corporations to control and loot, see whatis happening in Andhra Pradesh. You would understandhow major a cost it is. Andhra Pradesh, my own home State, is so proud of itssoftware exports. But, the seed and other input industry of Andhra Pradesh is worth more than AP'ssoftware exports. That is how big, how huge, the seedindustry is. People in this country spend more onseed than AP earns exporting software. We are running after software markets overseas,which is fine, but while allowing the seed market tobe taken away absolutely by a bunch of corporations.Which is not fine at all. That is how I said that weare moving already, at this level, towards corporatefarming. Farm incomes have collapsed: Look at income. Income collapse was a major part ofthe crisis. In several regions, farm incomes havesimply collapsed. The national average monthly percapita expenditure (MPCE) of the Indian farmhousehold, as I told you, was Rs. 503. It is prettyclose to the below poverty figure of Rs. 425 or so ofrural India. Six States on an average have been belowthe poverty line It is below Rs. 425 figure. Five orsix States exist in the country like that. There are many households existing on a monthly percapita expenditure of Rs. 225. This is according tothe National Sample Survey Organisation. The percapita monthly expenditure is Rs. 225 which translatesinto Rs. 8 a day. In that, you are going to manageyour food, clothing, footwear, education, health andtransport. What does it leave for any kind of life? You are always in debt. 55 per cent has gone tofood, 18 per cent to fuel, footwear and clothing. Inall these areas, you will find a very high proportionof school and college dropouts. People with B.Sc.degrees have dropped out to work as farm labourers onthe family farm in order to get it somehow going,while our Agricultural Universities have simply takenup the job of doing research for other parties likeprivate corporations but not for our farmers anymore. Elite view of the rural crisis: How do the elites look at the crisis at the bottom? Let me quote from a leading economic newspaper of ourcountry. One of its commentators says this with somedisappointment. "The bottom 400 million are adisappointment. " Why? They do not buy enough. I donot know what they will buy with Rs. 8 as per capitaexpenditure. She says that they do not buy enough. But they have a responsibility. "It is a difficultmarket to tap," the commentator concludes. The Vidharbha crisis: What about Vidharbha from where so much of reportinghas been done on the suicides in the last few years? As Mrs. Alva has said, what you see in the media isvery little. Dozens of local journalists have keptthis issue alive. They have to be given credit forit. How many suicides have there been in Vidharbha? Have they declined? According to one section of themedia, they have stopped. The government has in factput out several sets of figures over time which arequite contradictory. The Government has not put itsname or signature to any figure of decline at thehighest level. Why? It is because the Governmentwill be in serious trouble. There is an order from the Nagpur Bench of the HighCourt that the State Government must maintain awebsite with all the figures. It is in response to apublic interest litigation. If you look at theGovernment website, you do not need to read any of thereports. The figures in the website are so obsceneand what do they do to bring a decline? Let me tellyou the actual number from the Commissioner ofAmravati's own report and how these are thenpresented. In Vidharbha, the number of total suicides , not thefarming suicides , in six districts was not 1500. Since 2001, in the crisis years, it was not 2000, itwas not 1300 and it was not 1700. The police stationsrecord it as 15,980 for the six districts. Not allof these are farm suicides . But here is the fun. From 15,980, they will bring it down to 578 orwhatever figure is finally arrived at. We can bringthis down. Incidentally, these are 100 per cent ruraldistricts. But the final tabulation shows that lessthan 20 per cent of these 15,000 suicides werefarmers -- in 100 per cent rural districts! It isa mystery then, who those committing suicide were andare. These were not industrial districts. If just2939 were farmers, that is less than 20 per cent of15,980, then who were they? It almost as if onlyfarmers were doing well! Indeed, very well. Everybodyelse is committing suicide. Largest state distress survey ever: I give full credit to the Maharashtra Government forone thing. They did the biggest study on farminghouseholds in the state. It is only that peopleshould take some time to read that study. It willjust chill you to the marrow of your bones. Thanks tothe Prime Minister's visit due to which everybody gotbusy. They surveyed every one of the 17.64 lakhhouseholds (nearly ten million human beings). Everysingle farm household was surveyed in the sixdistricts of Vidharbha the government believes areaffected. (In all, Vidharbha has 11 districts.) Whatdoes that figure show? These are figures based on thesurvey which appear in the report of the Commissionerof Amravati (which document I have promised to giveyou.) Five of the six affected districts come underthe Commissioner of Amravati. But the data he isciting includes even the sixth, that is Wardhadistrict. It (Amravati Commissioner' s report) says that: Ø close to 75 per cent of the farm households inthese nearly two million households (17.64 lakh) arein distress.Ø It says that 4,31,000 households, if you takethe rural households having five to six people in eachhousehold, are in "maximum distress." That is theword of the Government. The other category is "mediumdistress." I have no idea what that means. But itadmits 75 per cent of the households are in distressof one kind or the other. Ø Astonishingly, over three lakh families arehaving severe problems on the marriage of daughterswhich is a big cause in several suicides. Over threelakh farmers are not able to get one or more daughtersmarried. This is an explosive situation. Ø The Government's own study shows thatindebtedness was also a factor in 93 per cent of thesuicides that it looked at. Ø Last year suicides were supposed to havedeclined after the package. Last year the policestation records show 2,832 suicides as against 2,425in 2005. It is an increase of 407, which is a verysignificant increase. Because that's an increase ofover 60 suicides per district in each of the sixdistricts in just one year. And there's a lot more in similar vein. How do they then make out a 'decline'? I think it isthe Indian national genius of handling numbers. Ijust love numbers. The first category (police stationrecords) states 2,832 suicides last year. The secondcolumn says, out of these "farmers' suicides" from2,832 it falls to 800-odd. The third column sayssuicides by "farmers' relatives" as if others on farmare not farmers. That becomes 1600. So, suicide byfarmers is different from suicides in farminghouseholds!. Then comes "cases under inquiry." Then, other tables which list cases due to "agrariandistress." With each column the number comes down. The final column is the masterpiece. It does notexist anywhere in the planet. We have a column called"eligible suicides", like eligible bachelors orbrides, etc. It means those suicides where thefamilies are deemed by government to be eligible forcompensation. So, from 2,832 it comes down to 578 inthe last column. It is this last figure of 'eligible'suicides that is put out by officials as the suicidesfigure! This month (August was the month just concluded) we donot have suicides at all because if you let ourmathematicians pursue it further, they will redefinesuicides out of existence. But the total number keepsincreasing. You can see it. This year when therewere no suicides, or suicides were in steep decline,there were 700 plus suicides according to theGovernment of Maharashtra website. Why does not theGovernment put its signature to the number? It isbecause that website is maintained under the courtorder. Then you are running into serious problems ifyou contradict your own data. We can play games withthat endlessly. Misery in the households: I'd like to narrate three personal episodes from theaffected households. For me the most painful thing isthat second and third suicides are happening in thesame households. In the 700 (suicide-hit) householdsthat I have gone to and seen over the years, the mosthurting thing is that when you are leaving thehousehold, when you make eye contact with the lady ofthe house or the eldest daughter, you know – do notask me how I know – that she is also planning to takeher life. You know that for all your boastfulnessabout the might of the Press and the power of the pen,I cannot do a damn thing to stop them because that ishow we are today as a society. That is the mostpainful thing for me. I've started avoiding that eyecontact because I do not want to see in the person'seyes that she is also going to take her life. When ayoung widow takes her life, she might kill her girlchild also because she does not want that child forcedinto prostitution. Last year, when Prime Minister came, there was totalchaos because everybody was kept on notice, becausethe Prime Minister was really worried about what wasgoing on. He took a trip which was not reallyscheduled. One month before he came there, I was inthe house of Gosavi Pawar. This was a very differentkind of Pawar, a less privileged Pawar, an adivasiPawar and not to be confused with more the illustriousPawars. Gosavi Pawar was from a Banjara family. Theclan is so poor. Incidentally, that day I was sitting in his house Ihad also read about the wedding of daughter of India'srichest man, Lakshmi Mittal at a cost of 60 milliondollars or pounds. It is obscene in whichevercurrency it is translated. Poor man, Mr. Mittal, hecould not get a wedding hall in Paris! It is verydifficult to get one there in that season. So, hehired the Palace of Versailles and held the weddingthere. But in the house of Gosavi Pawar, the clan isso very poor. They had come all over the country forthe wedding and decided to have three weddings at thesame time in order to afford them. They decided tohave three weddings at the same time because peoplehad come from different regions and states. They hadall gathered there. Gosavi Pawar, the patriarch ofthat clan, was unable to raise the money required forthe sarees for those weddings. Humiliated by themoneylender, by the bank manager, and others, GosaviPawar took his life. I saw two things. One that depressed me enormouslyand one that inspired me about the poor people of thiscountry. One that depressed me enormously is the poorhousehold had three weddings and a funeral on the sameday, because they could not cancel the wedding. Itwould have bankrupted the clan had they gone back toRajasthan, Gujarat and Karnataka or wherever and comeagain. So, they held the weddings. The brides andbridegrooms wept. The most heart- breaking moment waswhen the wedding procession went out and on thehighway met the funeral procession. Dr. Swaminathanwould remember that when he came to Yavatmal heencountered a similar situation, when suicides werebeing brought to the hospitals even as the NationalCommission on Farmers (NCF) team were holdingdiscussions with the Government officials. So, thewedding procession ran into the funeral procession ofGosavi Pawar. Then, people who were carrying his bodyran into the fields and hid so that they would notcast a bad omen on the wedding. But there was also something very inspiring. Some ofthe poorest people on planet Earth made those weddingshappen. Everybody contributed Rs. 5, quarter kilo of wheat, half a kilo of rice, one sheaf of banana, acoconut, whatever they could. They held thoseweddings. They did not have the resources to do it, Iam afraid, in the Palace of Versailles. But they heldthose weddings by community action, by public action. I felt so proud at that moment that our people showedthe decency and dignity that the elite have socompletely forgotten. When governments cheat on poll promises: Coming back to 'eligible suicides' in Vidharbha, thereis nothing that prevents the Government of Maharashtrafrom implementing its poll promise of Rs. 2700 perquintal of cotton. What did they do after coming topower? I am not singling out one Government. Let memake it very clear agriculture is in desperate shapeacross the country. All Governments are culpable. Everybody is fragile. No State is exempt. But inthis particular case, they made a promise of Rs. 2700rupees, but they lowered it by Rs. 500. They withdrewRs. 500 of the so-called 'advance bonus' payment. With that, it removed Rs. 1200 crores from thefarmers. After removing Rs. 1200 crores from thefarmers, the Chief Minister announced a package of Rs.1,075 crores. A package of Rs. 1,075 crore is beinggiven to people from whom you have taken away Rs. 1200crore! US-EU subsidies destroy cotton prices: At the same time, the US, the European Union weredrowning their cotton growers in subsidies. Cottongrowers of the US are not small farmers, they arecorporations. How many cotton growers do we have inMaharashtra? It is in millions. How many cottongrowers are there in US? It is 20,000. When weremoved Rs. 1200 crore from our farmers, how much didthe US give to its corporations? On a crop value of 3.9 billion dollars, the UnitedStates gave its cotton growers a subsidy of 4.7billion dollars. It destroyed the bottom of theinternational cotton market. The cotton price at theNew York exchange ruled at 90 to 100 cents in 1994-95fell to around 40 cents and from that date suicidesbegan all over the world as prices crashed and farmersran up horrible losses. In Burkina Faso, hundreds of cotton farmers killedthemselves. In July 2003, the Presidents of BurkinaFaso and Mali wrote an article in New York Times,"Your Farm Subsidies are Strangling Us". We were notable to take action against such subsidies, them. While our duties on cotton are 10 per cent, if youare a Mumbai textile magnate, then you do not pay eventhat ten per cent. You get it waived in lieu ofexport of garments. Incidentally, if I am a Mumbaitextile magnate, I can even get the cotton freebecause private corporations dumping cotton in India would give me six months' credit. In six monthscredit, I can run the entire cycle from cotton tocotton garment. So, I am essentially getting an interest-free loanfrom you which I return in six months and I have madehuge profits. All these games are played around thelives of millions of people. Role of the media: For me the saddest thing is your (Mrs. Alva's) commenton the media. As a journalist, I totally endorse this.The saddest thing last year that happened was whenless than six 'national' journalists were covering thesuicides in Vidharbha. Five hundred and twelveaccredited journalists were fighting for space tocover the Lakme India Fashion Week. In that FashionWeek programme, the models were displaying cottongarments while the men and women who grew the cottonwere killing themselves at a distance of one hour'sflight from Nagpur in the Vidharbha region. The ironyof it should have been a news story, but nobody didthat story except one or two journalists locally. We withdrew the money of the advance bonus of Rs. 500a quintal at the time when the US and EU wereincreasing their subsidies. I went last year to US andvisited American farms. Including corporate styledairies. The subsidy per cow every day is twice yourNational Rural Employment Guarantee Programme minimumwage. It is around three dollars per cow which is Rs.120. Double your National Rural Employment GuaranteeProgramme wage which is Rs. 60. That is why myfriend, Vijay Jawandia from Wardha, put it sobeautifully in a television interview. He was asked –Jawandia saab what is the dream of the Indian farmer?He said the dream of the Indian farmer is to be bornas an American cow because they are getting threetimes the support that we do. We have locked thefarmer into global price shocks while removingwhatever safety nets they had. We have not been ableto fight the EU-US cotton subsidies. Seed companies are being allowed to run riot: We have deregulated agriculture to an extent where thequality of seed has now been graded much lower. Inthe sense, when you bought a bag of seed, on the backof seed, it will be stamped – 85 per cent germinationrate guaranteed. That is now 60 per cent. It meansif a village buys 10,000 bags of seed, they are payingfor 10,000 bags, but they are getting 6,000 bagsbecause we have lowered the standards through MOUswith companies. The seed industry, as I said earlier,is bigger than software exports. The agriculturaluniversities have collapsed. The extension machinery,as the Government of India itself says, is in a stateof complete disrepair. At the time the advance bonuswas withdrawn, we begged the government: Please do notdo this as suicides could double. We were wrong. Insome places, they tripled. We begged - do not dothis, do not do this, do not remove this, it willreally kill these people who are in a very precariousstage. Vidharbha Vs. Mumbai: Incidentally, by the end of 2005, there was a uniqueG.O. in Maharashtra. I do not know if you are aware ofit. In Maharashtra, it has 14 hours' or 15 hours'power cut whereas the best localities of Mumbai havenever a problem of power cut, not even for one minute.The beautiful people cannot be subjected to powercuts. Incidentally, a 15-minute power cut in Mumbaiwould give two hours of power to all the 11 districtsof Vidharbha, but the children of Vidharbha were notgiven that concession even during the exams. That iswhy Vidharbha's performance in HSC exams will alwaysbe worse, though the topper is from Vidharbha. Soalongside the withdrawal of the bonus, a new G.O.came. We have exemptions for power cuts. Do you knowwhat was exempted in the new GO of 2005? Post-mortemcentres were exempted from power cuts because so manypeople were being wielded in for post-mortem. Theyexempted post mortem centres from power cuts alongwith Armed Forces, Police Stations, Fire Brigade etc.

By P. Sainath
Rural Affairs Editor,
The Hindu

Pakistan: Benazir, where is your alternative?

2007-12-06T09:18:00.000-08:00

Former Prime Ministers Nawaz Shariff and Benazir Bhutto continue to struggle to reach consensus on how to deal with the elections announced by President Parvez Musharaff. Both filed nominations. Shariff has been disqualified. Benazir announced the Pakistan Peoples Party’s election manifesto on 30 November 2007. Since then, Shariff and Bhutto have been trying to cobble together a pro-democracy alliance but so far they have succeeded only in undermining the democracy movement; the lawyers, journalists and human rights activists – have been sidelined.

Benazir Bhutto’s election manifesto offers no alternative. The proposals lack any substance. She has nothing to offer in terms of governance. There is nothing substantive on human rights.

Some of the key issues of concern are highlighted below.

I. No commitment on an independent National Human Rights Commission

At page 15 of its election manifesto under the heading “Human Rights”, the PPP boasts of introducing a Ministry of Human Rights in Pakistan and promises to respect the life, liberty, property, livelihood and right to freedom of association, expression and movement of every citizen and honour the 'International Human Rights Declaration' in both letter and spirit. This is not a real solution to Pakistan’s deeply rooted rights problems.

The Ministry of Human Rights has failed while the previous administration attempted to establish an independent National Human Rights Commission. A draft National Commission for Human Rights Bill was presented to the National Assembly in February 2005. In May 2005, the Bill was referred to the National Assembly’s Standing Committee on Law, Justice and Human Rights for further consideration and deliberations. The mechanism has not moved since.

Pakistan needs a strong National Human Rights Commission. It needs a Commission which complies with the United Nations Paris Principles on National Human Rights Institutions. Strangely, the PPP promised to establish an independent National Commission for Religious Minorities but fails to address the issues of an independent national human rights institution.

The PPP must support the establishment of a National Human Rights Commission.

II. No commitment at international level

On international commitments, the PPP states “It will honour the International Human Rights Declaration in both letter and spirit.”

Despite being targeted by successive military rulers, the PPP’s leadership appears to be illiterate on “human rights”. There is no “international human rights declaration” unless they were referring to the “Universal Declaration on Human Rights”. The issue is not about honouring a UN human rights declaration but rather more about undertaking legal obligations by ratifying the treaties and ensuring their compliance at national level. So far, Pakistan has failed to ratify International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights; International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights; the Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment; Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance; International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of Their Families; Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities; Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the involvement of children in armed conflict; and Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child on the sale of children, child prostitution and child pornography.

For a country with human rights problems on a scale of Pakistan, the poverty of knowledge on human rights is astonishing. For the PPP human rights is only to be invoked to protest the arrest of political leaders. Human rights are only for PPP leaders. When in power the PPP had an appalling record on human rights, see ACHR Weekly Review titled “Bhutto and Shariff: Be Careful of What You Wish For” of 14 November 2007.

III. Improving the plight of the minorities

The PPP promises to establish a national commission on minorities with the powers of a tribunal and review discriminatory laws. This looks like nothing more than rhetoric given that the PPP’s manifesto is silent on amending the 1973 Constitution introduced by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. The Constitution sanctions discrimination. Article 2 of the Constitution declares Islam as “the State religion of Pakistan” and the Holy Quran and Sunnah to be “the supreme law and source of guidance for legislation to be administered through laws enacted by the Parliament and Provincial Assemblies, and for policy making by the Government.” Hence, the Constitution justifies Acts or Ordinances which justify discrimination like the “Anti-Islamic Activities of the Quadiani Group, Lahori Group and Ahmadis (Prohibition and Punishment) Ordinance, 1984” promulgated by then President General Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq, which inserted draconian provisions such as Sections 298-B and 298-C in Pakistan’s Penal Code. Without amendment of the 1973 Constitution, discrimination will be sanctioned by the state.

IV. Empowerment of women

The PPP’s manifesto has a lot of promises on empowerment of women including enunciation of a national employment policy for women; increasing the job quota for women in civil services to 20%; enabling legal ownership of women over assets and resources through legislation; appointment of women judges in the family courts and upper judiciary; prevention of crimes through institutional initiatives etc.

The PPP says nothing on the need to strengthen the National Commission on the Status of Women which does not have adequate powers. If strengthened with a wide mandate and supported by adequate resources, the National Commission on the Status of Women can become the nodal agency of the Government for empowerment of women in Pakistan.

The existing National Commission on the Status of Women has not been established by the Parliament but a product of an Ordinance promulgated by General Pervez Musharraf in a state of emergency. This is required to be strengthened through enactment of a law by the Parliament. Besides, the procedure of appointment of the Chairperson and the members compromises the independence of the Commission. They are to be appointed only by the Federal Government and there is no requirement of concurrence of views of the leader of opposition either of the National Assembly or of the Senate. At present the Additional Secretary or a Director General of the Ministry of Women Development, Social Welfare and Special Education is acting as the Secretary of the Commission. The functions of the Commission are enormous and daunting and therefore, certainly needs an independent Secretary to effectively carry out the mandate of the commission. Finally the provision that the Chairperson, Members and other staff of the Commission are public servants makes the Commission an extended arm of the Federal Government instead of making it autonomous.[1]

V. PPP’s silence on the American War against terror

The PPP is silent on the policies of President Pervez Musharraf on war against terror. Although the exact number of detainees handed over to the US is unclear[2] it is believed that some 700 suspects have been arrested by the security forces. Many of them have been held incommunicado and many of them have been handed over to the United States for interrogation without any trial in Pakistan.

VI. Deathly silence on the plight of the Balochis

Apart from the promise of inducting 10,000 male health workers in Balochistan along with the North West Frontier Province there is no mention of either the plight of the Balochis or any action plans to solve their problems in the PPP’s manifesto. It makes no mention of redressing the genuine grievances of the Balochis including the killing of hundreds of Balochis by the security forces.

Similarly, it does not talk about repealing the draconian Frontier Crimes Regulation (FCR) currently in operation in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas. It only talks about amending the FCR to enable a right of appeal to the Peshawar High Court and further to the Supreme Court against all convictions under it. It seems that the PPP is not concerned about the widespread human rights violations that are being perpetrated by the Political Agents or Assistant Political Agents under this draconian legislation. The very existence of such a draconian law only in the FATA and nowhere else throughout Pakistan is a clear case of racial discrimination against the tribal peoples of FATA.

VII. Judiciary

On judicial reforms, PPP’s manifesto only promises about establishing a neutral independent judiciary.

PPP has failed to raise the issue of reinstatement of the judges illegally dismissed by General Pervez Musharraf to validate his own election as President.

Moreover, the PPP manifesto fails to state that the PPP government will implement directions/orders issued by Chief Justice of Pakistan Mr. Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhury. Most important among them is the one on missing persons. In fact, among others, it is the notices issued by Mr. Justice Chaudhury to the General Pervez Musharraf Government which brought the judiciary in direct conflict with the generals. Upon reinstatement, Mr. Justice Chaudhry again issued suo motu notices to Chief Secretary and Provincial Police Officer of Balochistan on 1 August 2007 on the rising number of disappearances of political activists in Balochistan. Again on 29 October 2007, a three member Bench of the Supreme Court headed by Chief Justice Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry told the interior and defence secretaries that failure to trace and release all individuals illegally detained by secret agencies would result in stern action according to the law.[3]

PPP once again fails to make any commitment.

VIII. Press and media Freedom

On media freedom, the PPP’s manifesto boasts of liberating the Pakistani Press. It promises to establishing a Press Complaint Commission and ensuring participation by the private sector in the press and media industry. However, there is no mention of anything about repealing of the draconian Pakistan Electronic Media Regulatory Authority (PEMRA) under which scores of journalists and media persons have been booked, arrested and convicted. General Pervez Musharraf widely misused this law to gag the electronic media. Several news channel critical of the military regime have been banned.

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto had a poor human rights record. After years of exile, she has nothing except to demand that Musharraf be replaced. If her manifesto is anything to go by it is unclear how democracy or human rights would be any better served.

[1]. See the ordinance on the National Commission on the Status of Women; available at: http://ncsw.gov.pk/modules/cjaycontent/index.php?id=6

[2]. Amnesty International’s Report, available at: http://web.amnesty.org/library/index/engasa330362006

[3]. Govt warned of stern action if missing people not released, The Daily Times, 30 October 2007

Venezuela: A People Under Fire

2007-12-02T09:18:00.000-08:00

Venezuela, whose people are heirs to Bolivar's ideas which transcend his era, is today facing a world tyranny a thousand times more powerful than that of Spain's colonial strength added to that of the recently born United States which, through Monroe, proclaimed their right to the natural wealth of the continent and to the sweat of its people.

Marti denounced the brutal system and called it a monster, in whose entrails he had lived. His internationalist spirit shone as never before when, in a letter left unfinished due to his death in combat, he publicly revealed the objective of his restless struggle: "…I am now every day risking my life for my country, and for my duty -since I understand it and have the courage to do it- to timely prevent, with the independence of Cuba, that the United States expand over the Antilles and that they fall, with this additional force, over our lands in America…"

It was not in vain that he stated in plain verse: "With the poor of this earth, my fate I wish to cast". Later, he proclaimed categorically: "Humanity is homeland". The Apostle of our independence wrote one day: "Let Venezuela call on me to serve her: I am her son".
The most sophisticated media developed by technology, employed to kill human beings and to subjugate or exterminate peoples; the massive sowing of conditioned reflexes of the mind; consumerism and all available resources; these are being used today against the Venezuelans, with the intent of ripping the ideas of Bolivar and Marti to shreds.

The empire has created conditions conducive to violence and internecine conflicts. On Chavez's recent visit last November 21, I seriously discussed with him the risks of assassination as he is constantly out in the open in convertible vehicles. I said this because of my experience as a combatant trained in the use of an automatic weapon and a telescopic sight. Likewise, after the triumph, I became the target of assassination plots directly or indirectly ordered by almost every United States administration since 1959.

The irresponsible government of the empire does not stop for a minute to think that the assassination of Venezuela's leader or a civil war in that country would blow up the globalized world economy, due to its huge reserves of hydrocarbons. Such circumstances are without precedent in the history of mankind.

Cuba developed close ties with the Bolivarian government of Venezuela during the hardest days resulting from the demise of the USSR and the tightening of the United States economic blockade. The exchange of goods and services grew from practically zero level to more than 7 billion dollars annually, with great economic and social benefits for both our peoples. Today that is where we receive the fundamental supplies of fuel needed for our country's consumption, something that would be very difficult to obtain from other sources due to the shortage of light crude oil, the insufficient refining capacity, the United States' power and the wars its has unleashed to seize the world oil and gas reserves.

Add to the high energy prices, the prices of foods destined by imperial policy to be transformed into fuel for the gas-guzzling cars of the United States and other industrial nations.
A victory of the Yes vote on December 2 would not be enough. The weeks and months following that date may very well prove to be extremely tough for many countries, Cuba for one; although before that the empire's adventures could lead the planet into an atomic war, as their own leaders have confessed.

Our compatriots can rest assured that I have had time to think and to meditate at length on
these problems.

By Fidel Castro

Pakistan's Problems Start At The Top

2007-11-25T04:42:00.000-08:00

Gen. Pervez Musharraf seized power in Pakistan eight years ago, claiming that the army had to step in to save the country from corrupt and incompetent politicians. Since then, he has run both the army and the government himself, with the connivance of a rubber-stamp Parliament put in place through rigged elections. His rule has proved to be a dismal failure, creating more problems than those it set out to solve.
Earlier this month, with opposition to his regime growing and the courts about to rule that he could not legally be president, Musharraf chose to suspend the constitution and impose emergency rule. He dismissed the Supreme Court and arrested the judges, replacing them with judges who will bend to his will. He blocked all independent television channels and threatened to punish the news media if it disparaged him or the army. His police arrested thousands of lawyers and pro-democracy activists. He ordered that civilians be tried in closed military courts. This is what is necessary, he said, to save Pakistan from a rapidly growing Islamist insurgency.
But no one should believe him.
It is true that over the last decade Islamist militants -- Pakistani Taliban nurtured in madrasas along the Afghan border -- have grown stronger and widened their reach. Each day brings news that the government's security forces have surrendered to Taliban fighters without firing a shot. Flaunting its strength, the Taliban has released many of these soldiers -- and even paid their way home. Other prisoners, especially Shiites, have been beheaded and their corpses mutilated.
Musharraf's government and his army have been woefully unsuccessful at handling this insurgency. They have lost control in many areas bordering Afghanistan and in the North-West Frontier Province. Earlier this month, the militants took over a third town in the Swat valley, only half a day's ride from the capital, Islamabad, while others captured the Pakistan-Austria Training Institute for Hotel Management in Charbagh.
Across the country, Islamists have taken over public buildings, forced local government officials to flee and promised to bring law and order. A widely available Taliban-made video shows the bodies of criminals dangling from electricity poles in the town of Miranshah, the administrative headquarters of North Waziristan.
The militants have even made their first major foray into the capital. From January to July of this year, the government allowed heavily armed extremists sympathetic to Al Qaeda and the Taliban to freely function out of Islamabad's Red Mosque. It is less than two miles from Musharraf's official residence at President House, from parliament and from the much-vaunted Inter-Services Intelligence headquarters. But the authorities were nowhere to be seen as armed vice-and-virtue squads sent out by the Islamists kidnapped prostitutes, burned CDs and videos, forced women to wear burkas and demanded that city laws be bent to their will. The government sent in clerics and politicians sympathetic to the militants as negotiators, and made one concession after another.
Amid growing public and international demands to act, Musharraf finally sent in special troops. The military action turned Islamabad into a war zone. When the smoke from rocket-propelled grenades and heavy machine guns had cleared, more than 117 people (the official count) were dead, many of them girls from a neighboring seminary. Mullahs promised revenge, and it began shortly afterward in a wave of suicide bombings across the country that has claimed hundreds of lives.
Why has Musharraf failed so dramatically to stop the insurgency? One reason is that most of the public is hostile to government action against the extremists (and the rest offer tepid support at best). Most Pakistanis see the militants as America's enemy, not their own. The Taliban is perceived as the only group standing up against the unwelcome American presence in the region. Some forgive the Taliban's excesses because it is cloaked in the garb of religion. Pakistan, they reason, was created for Islam, and the Taliban is merely asking for Pakistan to be more Islamic.
Even normally vocal, urban, educated Pakistanis -- those whose values and lifestyles would make them eligible for decapitation if the Taliban were to succeed in taking the cities -- are strangely silent. Why? Because they see Musharraf and the Pakistan army as unworthy of support, both for blocking the path to democracy and for secretly supporting the Taliban as a means of countering Indian influence in Afghanistan.
There is merit to this view. Army rule for 30 of Pakistan's 60 years as a country has left a terrible legacy. The army is huge, well-equipped, armed now with nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles and has perhaps the world's richest generals. Sitting or retired army officers govern provinces, run government agencies, administer universities, manage banks and make breakfast cereals.
Military rule has also created a class of dependent politicians who understand that cutting a deal with the army is the passage to power. For them, public office is an opportunity not to govern but to gain privilege and wealth for themselves, their relatives and their friends. Meanwhile, barely half of Pakistan's people can read and write, and one-third live below the poverty line.
The ties between the military and the Islamic militants are also well known. For more than 25 years, the army has nurtured Islamist radicals as proxy warriors for covert operations on Pakistan's borders in Kashmir and Afghanistan. Various army chiefs honed a strategy that juggled their relationship with the U.S. against the demands of local intelligence chiefs, and of mullahs, tribal leaders, politicians and fortune seekers who have contacts with the militants. Radical groups are encouraged. As they grow and start to slip out of control, these groups are tolerated and appeased to keep them loyal. When interests inevitably clash, a military crackdown follows. The innocent are caught in the crossfire.
If Pakistan is to fight and win the war against the Taliban, it will need to mobilize both its people and the state. Musharraf's recent declaration of emergency will only make this much harder.
In the short term, Pakistan's current political crisis may be managed by having Musharraf resign -- both as president and as head of the army. And before he does so, he must also restore the judiciary and constitution, lift the curbs on the media, free all political prisoners and set up a caretaker government. These are the necessary conditions for holding free and fair elections.
Credibility of elections requires that former prime ministers Benazir Bhutto and Nawaz Sharif -- whatever one might think of their personal integrity -- both be included among the contestants. Bhutto loudly announced in Washington that she will take on Al Qaeda and the Taliban as her first priority, whereas Sharif is closer to the Islamic parties. But, as their past tenures suggest, if elected, realpolitik will force both to act similarly.
Only a freely chosen and representative government can win public support for taking on the Taliban. But to do this, it will need to begin addressing the larger, long-term political, social and economic problems facing Pakistan. The country must seek a more normal relationship with India. Only then can the army be cut down to size and Pakistan free itself from the massive military expenditures and the nuclear weapons that burden it. It must address the grievous regional inequalities that feed resentment against Islamabad. The government must push to provide basic needs and sustainable livelihoods to the rural and urban poor. It must offer people hope.

By Pervez Hoodbhoy
(Pervez Hoodbhoy teaches at Quaid-e-Azam University in Islamabad.)

Is It Emancipation Or Elimination Of The Scavengers In Laar Town (Deoria)

2007-10-26T04:15:00.000-07:00

In March 2007, I visited Laar town and met many persons from the scavenger community. Many of the sweepers who came and narrated their plight had not got their salaries since the appointment in the Nagar Palika. Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, the then chief minister was on a spree to announce various schemes and one of them was 'jobs' 'reserved' of sweepers for the Valmikis or scavenger community. In the eastern Uttar-Pradesh, they do not use the term Balmikis/Valmiks for the sweeper. Instead there are people from the communities of Rawats, Bansfors, Helas, Mehtars who are engaged in scavenging work. Many of the women narrated their plight and how they wish to get out of the scavenging hell.
A report was submitted to National Human Rights Commission and after which the commission, it seems, issued notices to the state government. We realized that after it the municipal authorities approached the Sweepers and those who were engaged in scavenging to leave their work otherwise face severe consequences in the form of dismissal or jail. It was like the victims themselves were being victimized for the century old exploitation they faced without any dilution.
Pain of contract workers
That time too, all those working on contract had not got their salaries for seven months. Those who joined the municipality in the hope it would ultimately relieve them from indignity of manual scavenging later felt betrayed, for they not only lost their earlier work but now had no chance to go another work.
To find out what was the latest happening there, I visited Laar last month to find out the condition of the people and their depressing condition. As being reported here that manual scavenging is still going despite the denial by Nagar Palika. In fact, we have not only recorded the entire event in video but also got affidavit from the families and large part of text is being produced here. It is unfortunate that all the government's measures to eliminate scavenging are half hearted and lack sincerity and conviction. That time too our investigations revealed how the Swachchakar Vimukti programme has failed and gone in the hand of middlemen. The officers have got a new tool to exploit people.
It is unfortunate that the Safai Karmcharis had to resort to strike for their legitimate right just a few days ago, which ended after administration's highhandedness and duplicity. The administration played its dubious role. One month salary was paid last month but ultimately till date it has now been informed that over 8 months salary is still due and the Nagar Palika has done very little to repair the damage. Instead, the Safai Karmcharis were threatened and we are informed Rs 500/- was given to each of the karmcharis to keep away from striking further. A small penny therefore divided the community, which has lost all hope.
What will happen to a community, which does not get its legitimate amount even when that is much below the 'normal limit' of decency? Why are the safai karmcharis at the receiving end at each nagar palikas. When the work on contract was publicized by Mr Mulayam Singh Yadav, in many municipalities we received complaint or even appreciation that even the backward and upper castes were applying for sweeper's job. It has now been revealed that all these OBCs or Upper castes, working in municipalities in the name of sweeper do not really mix up with the sweeper community and some of them are benami sweepers. When the sweeper community does not get paid up salary for over 7 months, it reverse back to scavenging, a profession that government and nagar-palikas claims to have vanished. In Laar and other towns and villages of India, it is still prevalent and we have not only recorded evidence but also people on affidavit claiming they are engaged in the work.
Back to scavenging
In the Laar town the Mehtar community is still carrying the nightsoil. Around 10 women are still involved in the work. The national Scavenger Liberation Scheme has failed because of malfunctioning and corruption in the scheme, which never reach the poor. These 10 women are doing the manual scavenging work in nearly 110 houses.
As you may be aware of the fact that Social Development Foundation had earlier also given a report regarding Laar but so far we do not know what action has been taken. We have been given the impression by the scavenger community that after the report was send by NHRC, the Nagar Palika official went to the locality and threatened those who were allegedly involved in the scavenging work.
Rehabilitation of scavenger should be the utmost priority of the government but elimination of scavenging cannot be done by half hearted publicity measures, which the authorities are involved in. It will require lot of commitment and sincerity on part of bureaucracy and the officers. Unfortunately, that seems to be lacking in most of the towns in Uttar-Pradesh. If removal of scavenging is forcefully prohibited without providing an amicable and dignified solution, then we are afraid the situation would go out of control.
The municipality officials not only threatened the husbands of the women involved in scavenging but also did not give them any other opportunity of survival with dignity. No action is normally taken against the municipalities who have failed with the compliance. Women are not being given any job opportunity by the Nagar Palikas resulting in their returning to old profession. Further, none of those who are working with the municipality have got any salary for the past seven months. We are still amused as why the authorities find it difficult to pay to those who keep their cities clean. It is said that the government is providing an alternative to scavenging in the form of providing employment to those who are involved in scavenging. Yet, as our report suggest, women have got no employment as well as those who got appointment on contract basis have not got any salary for the past seven month. The result is that their wives have started returning to their traditional occupation. The condition of the scavenger community is a matter of grave concern but our governments and civil society organizations have failed to respond to the issue. They are virtually suffering in indignity and humiliation. On the one hand the municipal officials threaten them with dire consequences, on the other side, there is no way they will get a job. It is a usual phenomena in Uttar-Pradesh that the Safai-Karmcharis never get their salary on time. Normally it takes six months to get their salaries. Government expects them to be rehabilitated. Their children do not get opportunity to sit with upper caste students. The women folks later resort to manual scavenging because it help them get not only a peanut for their survival but mainly they are able to get loans for local people for running their families.
According to report appeared in local newspaper Dainik Jagaran that 46 people were charged under this. For the financial year 2006-2007 about Rs 58 lakh came to the municipality but only Rs 9 lakh were used. No one knows about other Rs 49 lakh. More than 110 houses have still dry latrines. In January, it was reported that FIR was lodged against 17 persons. In March 2006, DUDA has lodged FIR against 29 persons (Dainik Jagaran, Gorakhpur, September 8 th, 2007).
Work without payment
In his affidavit Krishna s/o Vishwnath said that he was given appointment on contract by the Laar Nagarpalika. But more than 7 months have passed and yet they have got no salary. Whenever she tried to contact the chairman of the Nagar Panchayat, he has been thrown away and is being threatened of being dismissal from the job. It is very difficult to run the family on credit. In the absence of no salary for the past seven months, his family and children are suffering in indignity, hunger and depression.
Sadabriksha has three children who do not go to school. For seven months of work, he was unable to get any salary. They go early morning at six and return at 10. Again for the day shift they go at 2.00 pm and return at 6 pm.
Gita, wife of Dilip has on record mentioned that she is still doing the manual scavenging work in more than 10 houses of Laar town. Mr Bakhsi in the Nagar Panchayat is forcing us to leave this work and got her signed at a blank paper. She was promised work under contract in Nagar Palika but never got it. However, her husband is a sweeper on contract in the Nagar-Palika and have got no salary for the past seven months. How do the government expect them to get rid of this vicious circle when they are not interested. Now, Gita claims that the municipality is threatening her husband with dire consequences if she does not leave her work.
Basanti wife of Krishna charged the municipality of threatening her to leave the manual scavenging work. ' I was promised work on contract but till date, I have got nothing. My husband was given work on contract and now it is over 7 month that we are without any money. I cannot open a shop and start selling things. One we do not have the money and second no body would buy any product from us. When people keep away distances from us how are they going to accept us other than sweeping and cleaning. But we are ready to any other work if alternative is given. Though I have left the work but what is the option. How do my children go to school in the absence of any income, she said.
Kanhaiya is a sweeper on contract at the Nagar Palika but because of non-payment of salaries his condition is worsening. He is a student of 12 th standard but unfortunately he got no work. He is married and unable to run his family. Now, even the shopkeepers do not give us things on credit.
Subhawati wife of Ram Pyare is engaged in the manual scavenging work in nearly 15 houses in Laar. She charge municipal corporations officer Mr Bakhsi for taking her signature in plain paper under the pretext that she would get work. So far she has got nothing. Instead she is being threatened that her husband would be dismissed. 'My husband is working in the municipality on contract yet nothing has been paid to him in the past seven months. Now the government says that you leave manual scavenging but what is it giving to us for our survival', she said.
Gaura Devi wife of Bechu works in 10-15 houses. She gets rupees 10 per months for her work, which cannot survive her along with her three children. Unfortunately, because of the economy of indebtedness has an important role in the community's inability to get out of the profession. Nowhere the municipalities are known to be paying salaries to sweepers on time. Most of the time they get their salaries after six to seven months. Therefore the women folks have to resort to manual scavenging as they remain in the good books of the upper castes and can extract some cash credit in the time of emergency.
Vidyawati w/o Harinder is also engaged in six to seven homes. She has the same argument that when the government does not provide them anything, how can they leave the work. Nagar Palika has promised them work but so far nothing has materialized.
Sushila Devi w/o Ramchander said that she was called by the municipality for a job but later denied me a job because my son got a job in the municipality. It is difficult to run the family and in the absence of salaried paid for over seven months. Now, we are in difficult condition as our children are virtually starving. Who will think of sending them to schools? I will have to resort to manual scavenging again to get food on credit to run my family says, Sushila.
Lilawati Devi has no work. Her husband Om Prakash is also jobless. They have four children and all starving at the moment. Municipal officials asked us to leave this work but provided no alternative. What do we do? After all, we have to work for our livelihood and we do not get anything else.
Kamala Devi wife of Basant was doing work previously but after the municipality promised them work, she left manual scavenging. I was asked to sign on a blank paper and informed that my job has been confirmed. When she went to the municipality she was told to get out. She has big family of 10 people to support and her husband has no work at the moment.
Rajan Kumar is working in the municipality on contract and is depressed at the moment as he can not go to any other job in the absence of non payment of salaries for past seven Months.
Shambhunath is a permanent sweeper in Nagarpalika, working for over 25 years. At the moment he is getting Rs 7000/- per month. He says on the discrimination against his community that he never got promotion in the municipality as a Safai Nayak. Till date not a single person from the Balmiki community has been appointed as supervisor. The other community people who never get involved in sweeping and cleaning are appointed as supervisor. We all clean dirty lanes, Nalis, sever etc but without any mask, globe or shoes. Whenever we tried to ask question regarding our safety, we have been threatened away.
According to Basant, there are number of Safai Karmacharis who can be termed as 'benami'. Many people from upper caste Muslims and backward communities have been appointed in the sweepers job on contract but they never come along with us to clean and sweep the street. They normally do office work and later many of them got promoted as supervisors.
Conclusion: The aim of this write up is to bring to the notice the persistently denigrating conditions of the swachchakar community in various parts of Uttar-Pradesh. We will continue to bring out reports on prevailing situation and where has our governance failed. We would warn the authorities not to go on exploiting our report and torturing the people who are in the profession. Aim is that the authorities should introspect and provide decent employment to people from this community. There should be income generation programme for the community and special school targeted to help the community's new young children. Most importantly municipalities must be penalized for not being able to rehabilitate the community and holding up their salaries for so many months . Special focus should be given to women, as it is they are one hundred percent involved in scavenging. Swachchakar Vimukti Yojana needs to be channalised through Non Governmental Organisations and not through the government officials. All the scavenger women should be provided alternative and decent employment. The Swachchakar community needs special treatment. May be government can fix a quota for the educated youth of Swachchakar community in the jobs other than sweeping and scavenging. That would be the first step from the government side to delink the community from its traditional occupation, a burden it still is carrying on its vast soldiers. It is time we wake up and bring dignity to our work and fellow workers and stop this greatest sin of our time.
The Swachchakar community needs to be liberated from this living hell at the moment. Their locality has no water supply. Dirt everywhere and in the absence any proper sewage system, they throw the human excreta in the stale water. I was amazed to find the same women after doing their work washed their hand in the same water they threw the garbage. It needs to be seen how this community is surviving in filth. It reflect of our betrayal to the community that even fifty years after independence we have not been able to modernize our life style and most importantly our thoughts remain completely out of date and racist in nature. That a community is made to clean your dirt and this thing is still happening in India is a shame which we all have ourselves to blame, most importantly the political class for whom they become a 'vote bank'. It is time we get out of this mindset, involve ourselves in the national mission of liberation of manual scavengers and the first thing could be penalizing the officials and Nagar Palikas if they do not rehabilitate the community and exploit them.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

(P.S: Copies of affidavits of some of the swachchakars from Laar town are being send to National Human Rights Commission, National Scheduled Caste Commission as well as Chief Minister of Uttar-Pradesh, along with our previous report and list of people.)

The Marked People

2007-10-26T04:00:00.000-07:00

In today’s world, many things have been globalised. One of these is prejudice. In the name of the global war on terrorism, an entire community has been labelled and demonised. Terror attacks, whether in Washington, London or Madrid, are followed by paranoid surveillance, strip searches and prolonged detentions of large numbers of Muslim youth, often without even tenuous evidence or respect for their elementary human rights.
The latest to join this global assault on democratic rights — in the wake of the three bomb blasts that hit Hyderabad this year — is the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh. The state Minorities Commission has reported the abduction and illegal detention and torture by the police of a large number of Muslim youth within days of the blasts on August 25, 2007. I have heard from several terrified families of many youth who “disappeared” for several days without legal trace, chilling testimonies similar to those made by youth incarcerated in Cheraiapally Jail before the fact-finding committee established by the Commission. The committee comprised advocate Ravi Chandran, Professor of forensic sciences Mahender Reddy, and activists Nirmala Gopalakrishnan, K. Anuradha and Afsar.
What emerges is that tens of — it is feared hundreds — Muslim youth have been forcibly picked up from their homes, and more often while they are on way to work or the market or to worship, without legal arrest. These detentions have been forced by men in civilian clothes presumed to be policemen. Among those illegally arrested is an autorickshaw driver, an embroiderer, a medical student and a software engineer. Almost none have criminal records.
As they struggle against their abductors, they are bundled into vehicles without number plates, their eyes covered with blindfolds that they are not allowed to remove throughout their detention, their hands bound and their mouths gagged. They are then driven to unknown destinations, possibly farm houses in the periphery of the city. In these locations they, and other youth, are subjected to various forms of torture, including denial of food for long periods, electric shocks and beatings on the soles of their feet. Their eyes continuously masked, they lose track of night and day. They are driven every few days to new torture chambers, grilled about their role in the bomb blasts and coerced to agree about their alleged role in the blasts and their sympathies with international jehad. They are continuously battered with communally-charged taunts by the interrogating policemen. Some succumb by signing blank confession papers; others stoutly resist.
Their hapless families are, of course, not informed by the police about the detention. They are sometimes informed by witnesses of the police abduction. Many are poorly educated and impoverished, desperate, but unable to comprehend how to set about finding their loved ones. They contact the police, who deny any knowledge of the missing men. Others frantically contact lawyers and human rights organisations to file habeas corpus petitions in the high court. These are heard without urgency by the judges, and the police routinely deny, in court, that the missing men are in their custody. However, in a few days, they are indeed produced by the same police before magistrates, claiming that they were arrested just a day earlier. It is not possible that the habeas corpus petitions by the families of the youth could have been filed before their arrest by the police, in anticipation of their future arrest by the police.The fact-finding committee found “tell-tale signs of bodily abuse obviously not self inflicted” in the incarcerated youth, including “noticeable small scars of 1 cm diameter noted on external ears” and “1 mm to 2 mm scars noted around nipples indicative of electricity or needle entry”. Even jail records in three cases acknowledge injuries. They were visibly traumatised, some vomited blood, and others were severely dehydrated with swollen limbs and barely able to walk. The Commission observed that since these injuries “are not self inflicted, these obviously arose during police custody... [therefore] custodial atrocities on young detainees, all minority persons, stand proved”.
What is even more worrying is that the magistrates abdicated their duties by wantonly ignoring the visible signs of torture (some even noted later in jail records), when the detained youth were presented before them. Even the high court judges ignored Supreme Court guidelines by listing habeas corpus matters for hearing only once a week, unmindful of the imminent threats to the survival of the youth.
It is remarkable that even after legal production, following prolonged interrogation under torture, the police could still not charge most youth with involvement in the bomb blasts. Instead, the police alleged the youths’ support for international jehad been ‘proved’ by possession and propagation of ‘inflammatory’ CDs and pamphlets. The remand case diaries that I have in my possession describe these CDs as containing “Gujarat communal incidents like showing burnt bodies, damaged houses, the statements of victims as well as their relatives” and the other “clippings like shooting and beheading of… western forces by jehadis”. I possess and exhibit at least the former. Is that evidence to detain me for waging war against the State, in the way that these unfortunate youth have been charged?
The dazed families of the detained men live with their loss in intense social isolation. They are not just stigmatised by people of the ‘other’ community, even their neighbours, friends and relatives avoid contact with them, for fear that they too will be suspected by the authorities to harbour sympathies with terrorism. The larger community, especially poorer Muslims in the city, subsist with the daily cold dread that their own loved one may be the next target of the police.
An agonised young woman related to one of the detained youth cried out in a solidarity rally, “We are also Indians; we love India. Why are we seen as ISI agents and traitors?” Speaking from the heart, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh warned recently against the dangers of precisely such ‘labelling’ of communities as unpatriotic or violent. It is a warning that governments led by his own party, in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Assam, do not seem to heed. He recalled that his own community of Sikhs was similarly labelled in the 1980s. What he did not mention was that thousands of youth were similarly abducted by the police in Punjab in those times, exterminated and cremated in mass graves. The story is hardly different for thousands of young people alleged to be Naxalites in Andhra, who are similarly abducted and eliminated.After terror incidents, a hamstrung police are under unbearable pressure to perform. But crippled by ramshackle intelligence, poor investigative skills, demoralised and untrained forces and the crumbling fibre of police leadership, it resorts to shortcuts like the illegal abductions and torture that Hyderabad has witnessed. As the advocate appointed by the Commission, Ravi Chandran, concludes, “What is at stake is not just the lives of 20 odd young boys living in resigned solitariness in a cell tucked away somewhere on the periphery of the modern city. What is at stake is the functioning of a healthy democracy. If you have tears, prepare to shed them now.”

By Harsh Mander

Advanced US Preparations For War On Iran

2007-10-05T02:38:00.000-07:00

A lengthy article by veteran journalist Seymour Hersh published in the New Yorker on Sunday provides further confirmation of the Bush administration’s well-developed military and political preparations for attacking Iran. According to Hersh, the Pentagon has drawn up new war plans, the CIA has allocated substantial extra resources and the White House has already sounded out US allies, including Israel, Britain and Australia, for support in any military strike.
The article “Shifting Targets: The Administration’s plan for Iran” focusses on the changing pretext for war: from allegations that Tehran is building a nuclear bomb to a new propaganda campaign claiming that Iran is arming, training and supporting insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan who are killing US troops. The cynical ease with which the White House has switched from one unsubstantiated claim to another underscores the fact that a US attack will have nothing to do with any threat posed by Iran, but will aim at furthering US ambitions for the domination of the resource-rich region.
Like the lies that were used to justify the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration is casting around for a casus belli to try to stampede public opinion behind an attack on Iran. At the same time, however, the White House confronts deep-seated suspicion, hostility and opposition—in the US and internationally—to any new US military adventure.
Hersh told CNN on Sunday: “The name of the game used to be, they’re a nuclear threat... Sort of the same game we had before the war in Iraq. And what’s happened is in the last few months, they’ve come to the realisation they’re not selling it. It isn’t working... So they switched really.”
According to Hersh, the new bombing plan targets the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corp (IRGC), which Washington alleges has been assisting Shiite militias in Iraq. “The strategy calls for the use of sea-launched cruise missiles and more precisely targetted ground attacks and bombing strikes, including plans to destroy the most important Revolutionary Guard training camps, supply depots, and command and control facilities,” he wrote in the New Yorker.
A former senior American intelligence official told Hersh: “[Vice President Dick] Cheney’s option is now for a fast in and out—for surgical strikes. The Navy’s planes, ships, and cruise missiles are in place in the Gulf and operating daily. They’ve got everything they need—even AWACS are in place and the targets in Iran have been programmed. The Navy is flying FA-18 missions every day in the Gulf.”
Hersh also cited a Pentagon consultant who explained that the air war would be accompanied by “short, sharp incursions” by Special Forces units against suspected Iranian training sites. “Cheney is devoted to this, no question,” he said. Ominously, the consultant also explained that while the initial bombing campaign might be limited, there was an “escalation special” that could also include attacks on Iran’s ally Syria, as well as against the Hezbollah militia in Lebanon. “[A]dd-ons are always there in strike planning,” he said.
In the early northern summer, Hersh reports in the New Yorker, President Bush told Ryan Crocker, the US ambassador to Iraq, via a secure videoconference that he was thinking of attacking Iranian targets across the border and that the British “were on board”. Bush concluded by instructing Crocker to tell Iran to stop interfering in Iraq or it would face American retribution. In a separate interview with DemocracyNow, Hersh admitted that Bush had been even blunter. “The President was very clear that he is interested in going across the border and whacking the Iranians,” he said.
The New Yorker article presents the new war plans as limited, precision strikes against specific IRGC targets, but such acts of aggression always entail the danger of rapid escalation into all-out war for which military planners prepare. Moreover, other recent articles in the British press have pointed to a discussion in Washington of a far more extensive “shock and awe” bombardment aimed at levelling Iran’s military, industrial capacity, transport and communications.
As Hersh acknowledged in an interview with DemocracyNow, a limited military strike appeared to be a tactical factional compromise in the White House between Cheney and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who has previously advocated extended diplomatic moves. “She [Rice] favours a limited bombing, so I hear,” Hersh said. “If you want to really get a dark scenario, Cheney has gone along with the limited bombing. Basically, they call the limited bombing the third option, because there’s one option to do nothing, the other is to bring in the Air Force and rake...everything.”
Not only the military, but the CIA has now made Iran the top priority. A recently retired CIA official explained: “They’re moving everybody to the Iran desk. They’re dragging in a lot of analysts and ramping up everything. It’s just like the fall of 2002 [prior to the invasion of Iraq]... The guys now running the Iranian program have limited direct experience with Iran. In the event of an attack, how will the Iranians react? They will react, and the Administration has not thought it all the way through.”
Hersh told CNN that the CIA has established “something called the Iranian Operations Group. We had the same kind of a group for the Iraq war... It’s suddenly exploded in manpower. And they have been going around, just dragging a dozen people here, a dozen there. They built it up into a large, large operational group.” He also explained that “the National Security Council inside the White House is focussed much more on attacking Iran and what’s going on in Iran than it has been before.”
Diplomatic feelers have already been put out to a number of countries. But as Hersh explained, even among close US allies there is scepticism and resistance. One of the reasons for scaling back the attack plans and shifting emphasis is to secure backing in Europe in particular, where few believe that Iran will have the capacity to construct a nuclear bomb, even if it wanted to, in less than five years. Plans for a strike have received the “most positive reception” from the British government. Hersh explained to CNN that the White House had received “expressions of interest” from Australia and other countries. While backing the strikes, Israel is still insisting on a more extensive war that includes the destruction of Iran’s nuclear facilities.
The new casus belli
The Bush administration’s new justification for war is just as riddled with holes as the previous one. Beyond repeated bald assertions that Iran is helping to kill US troops and lurid stories fed to a compliant American media about the sinister activities of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force in Iraq, the only publicly presented “evidence” has been the occasional display of Iranian manufactured weapons. No attempt has been made to rule out other obvious sources for such arms, including the region’s extensive blackmarket in weapons and the huge stockpiles of arms that existed in Iraq prior to the 2003 invasion.
In his interview with DemocracyNow, Hersh pointed to the scepticism in US military and intelligence circles over the Bush administration’s claims. “There is a tremendous dispute about all of those assertions inside the American government. There’s just a lot of questions about it inside the government. They don’t see the case as being nearly as strong as the White House is saying in public,” he said.
Some of the most telling comments have been those of David Kay, former CIA adviser, UN weapons inspector and the man who headed the large US team hunting for evidence of WMDs following the 2003 invasion. Even though he was a vigorous proponent of the pre-invasion lies about Iraqi WMDs, Kay was forced to conclude that Saddam Hussein’s regime had no biological, nuclear or chemical weapons, their precursors or any plans for their future construction. To deflect attention from the lies concocted by the Bush administration, Kay attributed his findings to a massive “intelligence failure”.
Kay told Hersh that his inspection teams had been astonished, in the aftermath of the two Iraq wars, by “the huge amounts of arms” it had found. “He recalled seeing stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators, as well as charges that had been recovered from unexploded cluster bombs. Arms also had been supplied years ago by the Iranians to their Shiite allies in southern Iraq,” Hersh explained. The existence of “stockpiles of explosively formed penetrators” or EFPs, is particularly significant as one of the Pentagon’s chief accusations is that Tehran is currently supplying EFPs to Iraqi insurgents. It raises the possibility that these weapons were looted during the US invasion and obtained by militias, either directly or through the blackmarket.
Commenting on Bush’s campaign, Kay told Hersh: “When the White House started its anti-Iran campaign six months ago, I thought it was all craziness.” Even as he repeats the current White House line, Kay is cautious in his assessment: “Now it looks like there is some selective smuggling by Iran, but much of it has been in response to American pressure and American threats—more a shot across the bow sort of thing, to let Washington know that it was not going to get away with its threats so freely. Iran is not giving the Iraqis the good stuff—the anti-aircraft missiles that can shoot down American planes and its advanced anti-tank weapons.”
Well aware of public scepticism, Patrick Clawson, from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, advised the Bush administration to provide some evidence for its increasingly improbable claims. “If you are going to attack, you have to prepare the groundwork, and you have to be prepared to show some evidence,” he told Hersh. Clawson also cautioned that an attack on Iran could compound US problems in Iraq, where it relies on a government headed by Shiite parties with longstanding ties to Tehran. “What is the attitude of Iraq going to be if we hit Iran? Such an attack would put a strain on the Iraqi government,” he said.
Hersh noted that the Bush administration would not be deterred from war by the potential impact on the Republican Party. A former intelligence official explained: “There is a desperate attempt by Cheney et al. to bring military action to Iran as soon as possible. Meanwhile the politicians are saying, ‘You can’t do it, because every Republican is going to be defeated, and we’re only one fact from going over the cliff in Iraq.’ But Cheney doesn’t give a rat’s ass about the Republican worries, and neither does the President.”
The New Yorker article explained that the Bush administrated planned to counter any objections from the Democrats by pointing to the record of the Clinton administration in unilaterally bombing Afghanistan, Sudan and Iraq during the 1990s. But there is already ample evidence that the Democrats would support a new war on Iran. The main Democratic presidential candidates—Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards—have already declared that all options are on the table. A majority of Democrats supported a Senate amendment last week calling on the administration to provocatively declare the entire 125,000-strong Iranian Revolutionary Guard to be a “terrorist organisation”.
Even the support of the Democrats, however, will not halt the eruption of mass antiwar opposition. To energise its own rightwing base, the Bush administration desperately needs to goad the Iranian regime into a confrontation, or, failing that, to concoct an incident that can be blamed on Tehran. Asked about his assessment of the new US war plans, a retired four-star general candidly told Hersh that the revised bombing plan “could work—if it’s in response to an Iranian attack. The British may want to do it to get even, but the more reasonable people are saying, ‘Let’s do it if the Iranians stage a cross-border attack inside Iraq.’ It’s got to be ten dead American soldiers and four burned trucks.”
All of Hersh’s sources stressed that the President had not yet issued a final, formal “execute order”. But in emphasising that the US military is not about to attack Iran tomorrow, their comments only confirm that the administration’s plans for war are far advanced and can be executed at short notice.

By Peter Symonds

My Last Conversation WithAung San Suu Kyi

2007-10-05T02:37:00.000-07:00

As the people of Burma rise up again, we have had a rare sighting of Aung San Suu Kyi. There she stood, at the back gate of her lakeside home in Rangoon, where she is under house arrest. She looked very thin. For years, people would brave the roadblocks just to pass by her house and be reassured by the sound of her playing the piano. She told me she would lie awake listening for voices outside and to the thumping of her heart. "I found it difficult to breathe lying on my back after I became ill, she said."
That was a decade ago. Stealing into her house, as I did then, required all the ingenuity of the Burmese underground. My film-making partner David Munro and I were greeted by her assistant, Win Htein, who had spent six years in prison, five of them in solitary confinement. Yet his face was open and his handshake warm. He led us into the house, a stately pile fallen on hard times. The garden with its ragged palms falls down to Inya Lake and to a trip wire, a reminder that this was the prison of a woman elected by a landslide in 1990, a democratic act extinguished by generals in ludicrous uniforms.
Aung San Suu Kyi wore silk and had orchids in her hair. She is a striking, glamorous figure whose face in repose shows the resolve that has seen her along her heroic journey.
We sat in a room dominated by a wall-length portrait of Aung San, independent Burma's assassinated liberation fighter, the father she never knew.
"What do I call you?" I asked. "Well, if you can't manage the whole thing, friends call me Suu."
"The regime is always saying you are finished, but here you are, hardly finished. How is that?"
"It's because democracy is not finished in Burma . . . Look at the courage of the people [on the streets], of those who go on working for democracy, those who have already been to prison. They know that any day they are likely to be put back there and yet they do not give up."
"But how do you reclaim the power you won at the ballot box with brute power confronting you?" I asked.
"In Buddhism we are taught there are four basic ingredients for success. The first is the will to want it, then you must have the right kind of attitude, then perseverance, then wisdom . . ." "But the other side has all the guns?"
"Yes, but it's becoming more and more difficult to resolve problems by military means. It's no longer acceptable."
We talked about the willingness of foreign business to come to Burma, especially tour companies, and of the hypocrisy of "friends" in the West. I read her a British Foreign Office press release: "Through commercial contacts with democratic nations such as Britain, the Burmese people will gain experience of democratic principles."
"Not in the least bit," she responded, "because new investments only help a small elite to get richer and richer. Forced labour goes on all over the country, and a lot of the projects are aimed at the tourist trade and are worked by children."
"People I've spoken to regard you as something of a saint, a miracle worker."
"I'm not a saint and you'd better tell the world that!"
"Where are your sinful qualities, then?"
"Er, I've got a short temper."
"What happened to your piano?"
"You mean when the string broke? In this climate pianos do deteriorate and some of the keys were getting stuck, so I broke a string because I was pumping the pedal too hard."
"You lost it ... you exploded?"
"I did."
"It's a very moving scene. Here you are, all alone, and you get so angry you break the piano."
"I told you, I have a hot temper."
"Weren't there times when, surrounded by a hostile force, cut off from your family and friends you were actually terrified?"
"No, because I didn't feel hostile towards the guards surrounding me. Fear comes out of hostility and I felt none towards them."
"But didn't that produce a terrible aloneness ...?"
"Oh, I have my meditation, and I did have a radio . . . And loneliness comes from inside, you know. People who are free and who live in big cities suffer from it, because it comes from inside."
"What were the small pleasures you'd look forward to?"
"I'd look forward to a good book being read on 'Off the Shelf' on the BBC and of course to my meditation .... I didn't enjoy my exercises so much; I'd never been a very athletic type."
"Was there a point when you had to conquer fear?"
"Yes. When I was small in this house. I wandered around in the darkness until I knew where all the demons might be . . . and they weren't there."
For several years after that encounter with Aung San Suu Kyi I tried to phone the number she gave me. The phone would ring, then go dead. One day I got through.
"Thank you so much for the books," she said. "It has been a joy to read widely again." (I had sent her a collection of T S Eliot, her favourite, and Jonathan Coe's political romp What a Carve Up!.) I asked her what was happening outside her house. "Oh, the road is blocked and they [the military] are all over the street . . ."
"Do you worry that you might be trapped in a terrible stalemate?"
"I am really not fond of that expression," she replied rather sternly. "People have been on the streets. That's not a stalemate. Ethnic people, like the Karen, are fighting back. That's not a stalemate. The defiance is there in people's lives, day after day. You know, even when things seem still on the surface, there's always movement underneath. It's like a frozen lake; and beneath our lake, we are progressing, bit by bit."
"What do you mean exactly?"
"What I am saying is that, no matter the regime's physical power, in the end they can't stop the people; they can't stop freedom. We shall have our time."

By John Pilger

"Capitalism Is The Worst Enemy Of Humanity"

2007-10-05T02:25:00.001-07:00

I would like greet the panel, and on behalf of the Bolivian peoples, I want to say that I am pleased that there is such a great gathering to debate global warming and climate change.
Today in our discussions, we must be very sincere and very realistic about the problems faced by our peoples, humanity and the entire planet.
I feel that we are not speaking truthfully if we talk about life and the future of humanity, while each day we are destroying the future of humanity. It is important to pinpoint who our enemies are, what the causes are of the damage being done to the planet, damage that may put an end to humanity.
I’d like to sincerely apologize if some countries or some groups are affected by the survival of my country, the survival of the indigenous people. I think that that capitalism is the worst enemy of humanity and if we do not change the model, change the system, then our presence, our debate, our exchange, and the proposals that we make in these meetings at the United Nations will be totally in vain.
Capitalism has twins, the market and war. The market converts life into commodities, it converts land into a commodity. And when capitalists cannot sustain this economic model based on looting, on exploitation, on marginalisation, on exclusion and, above all, on the accumulation of capital, they rely on war, the arms race. If we ask ourselves how much money is spent on the arms race — we are never concerned about that.
This is why I feel that it is important to change economic models, development models, and economic systems, particularly those in the western world. And if we do not understand and thoroughly discuss the very survival of our peoples, then we certainly not will not be addressing the problem of climate change, the problem of life, the problem for humanity.
It is important that we learn lessons from some sectors, from some regions. Let me avail myself of this opportunity: I come from a culture based on peace, from a lifestyle based on equality, of living not only in solidarity with all people, but also living in harmony with Mother Earth. For the indigenous movement, land cannot be a commodity; it is a mother that gives us life, so how could we convert it into a commodity as the western model does?
This is a profound lesson which we must learn in order to resolve the problems of humanity that are being discussed here, climate change and pollution. Where does this pollution come from? It comes from, and is generated by, the unsustainable development of a system which destroys the planet: in other words, capitalism.
I want to use this opportunity to call on sectors, groups and nations to abandon luxury, to abandon over-consumption, to think not only about money but about life, to not only think about accumulating capital but to think in wider terms about humanity. Only then can we begin to solve the root causes of these problems facing humanity.
Because if we don’t think that way, if we do not change, it won’t matter if business owners have a lot of money, no matter if they are a multinational or even a country — no one can escape these ecological problems, environment problems, and climate change. No one will be spared, and the wealth that some country, some region or some capitalist may have will be useless.
I feel that it is important to organise an international movement to deal with the environment, a movement that will be above institutions, businesses and countries that just talk about commerce, that only think about accumulating capital. We have to organize a movement that will defend life, defend humanity, and save the earth.
I think that it is important to think about some regions, some sectors and some countries repaying what has often been called the ecological debt.
If we do not think about how this ecological debt will be paid, how are we going to solve the problems of life and humanity?
I want to say, dear colleagues and friends, that we must assume the responsibility as leaders or as presidents, as governments — we must save life, we must save humanity, we must save the entire planet.
Thank you very much.

By Evo Morales
(Speech by Bolivian President Evo Morales Ayma during the United Nations meeting on Climate Change, New York, September 24, 2007)

RE-ENVISIONING SOCIALISM - Prabhat Patnaik

2007-10-05T01:54:00.000-07:00

I

Socialism, and economic liberalism, paradoxically share the same intellectual origin, namely Adam Smith’s idea of the bourgeois society as a self-acting, self-driven economic order (1). Any restrictions placed on the functioning of this order by meddlesome sovereigns or governments is at best futile and at worst pernicious since it destroys the coherence of its functioning. Adam Smith saw this order as being in conformity with the laws of nature, and, in its consequences, benign and productive of “progress”, in the sense of an augmentation of the “wealth of nations”. He and his followers therefore drew the implicit conclusion that nothing lay beyond capitalism, that we had come to the end of history. As Marx was to say of classical political economy (1976, 174): “…there has been history, but there is no longer any.” (2)
While accepting the fact however that bourgeois society constitutes a self-acting, self-driven order, if we see this order analytically not as being benign and productive of progress, but as being antagonistic and exploitative, giving rise to the growth of wealth at one pole and of misery at another, then the quest for human freedom, precisely because government intervention cannot mend it, must require a transcendence of this order. The same “spontaneity” (to use Oskar Lange’s (1963) term) which underlies the bourgeois economic order and constitutes the case for economic liberalism if its consequences are seen to be benign, gives rise to the very opposite conclusion, of the need for a revolutionary overthrow of this order, if its consequences are seen as destructive and de-humanizing.
This of course was Marx’s argument. His case for socialism was “scientific” in the sense that it took classical political economy as its starting point but came to different conclusions precisely by re-examining classical questions at greater depth. It did not entail placing a capitalist and an imaginary socialist order side by side and establishing the comparative superiority of the latter; it did not entail asking questions like: “what is the justification for a separate group of persons, the capitalists, earning profits, when the society could function just as well if the means of production are collectively owned?” (3) In short, it did not make out an ethical case for socialism, a case based on an abstract extrinsic comparison between systems on ethical grounds. True, it took mankind’s quest for freedom as given, but it showed that this quest necessarily entailed going beyond capitalism. This is also why Marxism must not be confused with a theory of the inevitability of socialism (4). To say that the quest for freedom cannot be satisfied within capitalism is not the same as saying that socialism is inevitable. The matter in short is one of praxis, not of prediction.
Marx’s argument however was not just this; it went deeper. Capitalism is inimical to human freedom not just because it spontaneously produces wealth at one pole and misery at another as a condition for its self-reproduction, and not just because inequality, insecurity, and the non-availability of the means to satisfy a certain minimum level of material needs (which may itself be changing over time), all of which are conditions for freedom in the sense of the realization of one’s creative potential, are incapable of being achieved under capitalism; it is inimical to human freedom precisely because within it mankind is trapped in a self-acting and self-driven order where individuals become the objects of external coercive forces. This is true not just of workers, but even of the capitalists whom Marx in Capital (Volume I), described as “capital personified”, that is, as human agents through whom the immanent tendencies of capital are mediated.
Not only is it the case that the outcome of the functioning of the system is different from the intentions of the individuals participating in it, but these intentions themselves are neither a matter of individual volition, nor autonomously sociologically caused (like the desire to “keep up with the Joneses” etc.). The very logic of the functioning of the order imparts to the different individuals specific motivations which they can ignore at their own peril, the peril of getting displaced from their positions within the economic order. For instance, a capitalist who chooses to opt out of the Darwinian struggle of survival, in which all capitalists are caught, will get displaced as a capitalist; and so on.
In his discussion of commodity fetishism, Marx had talked of the fact that social relations within capitalism appeared as the relations between things, and that the outcome of social relations appeared as the inherent property of things (such as for instance the “fantastic” notion of bourgeois economics that profits arise because of the productivity of “capital”, seen as a set of means of production detached from its relational aspect). In fact however his analysis went further: human beings under capitalism were actually indistinguishable from things; human beings under capitalism became “objectified”. As against the criticism made of Ricardo that his theory of wages rested on a view of workers as if they were no different from animals, Marx argued that this was actually the case under capitalism and that Ricardo’s greatness lay precisely in the fact that he did not flinch from speaking the truth about capitalism.
This “objectification” is different from, though related to, “reification” and “alienation”, both of which are phenomena characterizing capitalism. “Objectification” refers neither to how things appear under capitalism, nor to the fact of the products of labour appearing in the alienated form of capital; it refers to the phenomenon of capitalism being a self-driven self-acting order, in which the immanent tendencies of capital are mediated through human beings, who therefore cease to be subjects and are reduced to the status of mere objects. This objectification is a denial of freedom: capitalism is incompatible with human freedom because it objectifies human beings. The case for socialism is that it alone creates the condition for human freedom by overcoming this objectification, for which a necessary condition is the social ownership of the means of production.

II

The above argument for socialism differs in a basic sense from the arguments usually advanced in favour of socialism. And it is important to emphasize this difference because from these different arguments different visions of socialism follow. The usual arguments are of two kinds: “productivist” arguments and “distributivist” arguments. Let us consider the former. A very common argument for socialism is that it carries forward the development of productive forces which at a certain stage gets arrested by the relations of production characterizing capitalism. This “march-of-the-productive-forces” argument for socialism, can at first sight derive sustenance from several of Marx’s writings, notably his famous preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy; but it represents a superficial reading of Marx, especially when, as is usually the case, “productive forces” are defined exclusively in material terms. This superficial reading which informs a good deal of current official Chinese literature on socialism, was epitomized by the former Soviet Prime Minister Alexei Kosygin’s remark that socialism was synonymous with a 7 percent growth rate(5)!
Marx did not see productive forces exclusively in material terms. And his remark that a mode of production becomes obsolete when it has developed the productive forces to the highest level it is capable of, should not be given a crude and exclusively material interpretation. This is borne out by his own statement in The Poverty of Philosophy (1976, 211): “Of all the instruments of production the greatest productive power is the revolutionary class itself. The organization of revolutionary elements as a class supposes the existence of all the productive forces which could be engendered in the bosom of the old society.” A “revolutionary proletariat” in short is not just a productive force, but represents the highest level of development of the productive forces in a bourgeois society.
This statement however is in keeping with Marx’s perception of socialism as essential for human freedom. The break from the human condition of unfreedom under capitalism, starts with our knowledge of this unfreedom, i.e. starts with a scientific as opposed to an ideological understanding of the roots of this unfreedom. “Freedom”, Engels had said in Anti-Duhring echoing Hegel, “is the recognition of necessity”. The immanent laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production constitute, in this context, this realm of necessity. Freedom from these laws begins with the knowledge of these laws and culminates in the formation of a revolutionary proletariat in which this knowledge has developed to a point where it can break into revolutionary praxis.
In the process of the development of this knowledge, particular episodes in the development of capitalism, such as crises and stagnation, no doubt play an important role, in providing practical proof of the validity of this knowledge, but this is not the same as saying that the existence of crises and stagnation is what constitutes the case for socialism or that there is some final phase of stagnation which constitutes the denouement for capitalism (which is what Bernstein had interpreted Marx as saying and which Lenin had explicitly attacked by saying that “there was no such thing as an absolutely hopeless situation for capitalism”).
The same goes for the “distributivist” argument. While no doubt egalitarianism and “distributive justice” cannot be achieved under capitalism, and require socialism for their realization, they are not synonymous with socialism, which, to repeat, seeks to end the objectification of human beings and constitutes a major step towards human freedom.

III

The objectification of individuals in bourgeois society is not a matter relating exclusively to the esoteric realm of the political economy of such societies; it permeates their very being. The realm of the economic after all does not stand alone, in isolation from the other realms; it is embedded within the whole. The realization of the immanent tendencies of capital requires therefore that the functioning of these other realms must also be in conformity with what is needed for such realization. The State in a bourgeois society, for instance, must be such that it aids the realization of its immanent tendencies. It may of course under certain exceptional circumstances, slow down such realization in the interests of the system as a whole, by placing temporary restrictions upon it; but it cannot altogether prevent the realization of the immanent tendencies of capital.
It is for this reason that bourgeois society is fundamentally anti-democratic. Human beings cannot be objects in the realm of the economy and subjects in the realm of the polity, save in very exceptional situations, which are invariably transitory, where there is a disjunction between the economy and the State.
To say that bourgeois society is fundamentally anti-democratic may appear odd at first sight, since its own claim has always been that it alone can guarantee democracy. But implicit in the notion of a self-acting and self-driven economic order functioning independently of human will and consciousness, is not just a denial of freedom but also a denial of democracy. This denial however is camouflaged in various ways. Formal bourgeois democracy invariably operates under layers and layers of insulation against the possibility of the people actually intervening actively in the political process as subjects.
The process of putting in place of these insulations becomes especially transparent in societies like ours for a specific reason. Bourgeois democracy with universal adult franchise was introduced in our country shortly after independence itself, prior to the consolidation of bourgeois rule, unlike in countries like Britain and France where universal adult franchise came nearly three quarters of a century after the climacteric marking the start of the consolidation of bourgeois rule. The process of consolidation of bourgeois rule in countries like ours therefore requires, as it were, a “counter-revolution” against the existing democratic institutions and practices. This counter-revolution of course also entails inter alia a change in the relationship between the big bourgeoisie and imperialism, for without the latter’s help the consolidation of bourgeois rule cannot be carried out (one of the visible symptoms of this change at present being the Indo-US Nuclear Agreement); but the counter-revolution in the realm of democracy, involving efforts to snuff out the political activism of the people, is quite evident (with the judiciary, which is neither directly nor indirectly accountable to the people, playing a leading role in it).
The means of attenuation of democracy in a bourgeois society are several: the first, which Lenin had emphasized, is the ossification of the State where the bureaucracy and the standing army become the core of the State apparatus, and the elected governments become increasingly ornamental. The second is the fragmentation of the people into ethnic, linguistic, or even religious groups, or even into sheer atomized individuals incapable of collective praxis. (The invoking of Christian fundamentalism on issues like abortion and gay rights has been a potent weapon in recent years in the hands of the Republican Right in the United States for obtaining majorities which have then been used to serve corporate interests). The third is the denial of meaningful choices to the electorate, since the agendas of the different political Parties, each trying to appease a middle-class constituency in thraldom to the bourgeois order, tend to converge ( a fact used with great effect of late in India where the imperative of so-called “development” has made Parties belonging to very different segments of the political spectrum adopt almost identical pro-capitalist policies). The very fact that despite the opposition to the Iraq war by the majority of people in each of the advanced capitalist countries engaged in the war, the war still drags on, shows the scant respect shown to popular opinion in capitalist democracies; and a major factor explaining this phenomenon is the absence of any significant difference among the political Parties. The fourth is the inculcation of insecurity among the people, which encourages mutual distrust among them, prevents united action and creates a favourable ground for the maintenance of status quo through violence. Given the fact that resistance, no matter in what form, is ever-present in any bourgeois society and its periphery, to capitalist and imperialist exploitation, the inculcation of such insecurity is by no means difficult. One segment of the people can always be made to feel insecure through demonizing another segment which happens at the time to be engaged in such actions of resistance. The fifth is the deliberate promotion of mindlessness among the people by the media and the peddlers of popular culture. One can go on listing such factors and much has been written on this subject anyway. The basic point is the incompatibility of authentic democracy where the people are the political subjects with capitalism where they are the objects.
Socialism, it follows, constitutes a necessary condition for the authentic realization of democracy. The proposition that socialism and democracy are incompatible is part of the propaganda of capitalism. On the contrary, socialism which aims to overcome the objectification of the people in bourgeois society, is alone compatible with democracy; it alone can create the conditions for the full flowering of democracy. But more than that, socialism is the full flowering of democracy, a proposition which we shall examine later. Since the claim that socialism and democracy are incompatible is usually supported with reference to the actual practice of former socialist countries, a brief discussion of that experience is in order here.

IV

Old socialism came as a result of revolutionary expediency, through seizing an opportunity created by the war, in order to save mankind from the barbarism of that and other similar wars. It appeared in a relatively backward country; it appeared abruptly; it did not spread, as was originally expected, to other countries, especially to the relatively more advanced countries; and it was encircled, and isolated and had to fight for its very survival against vastly superior forces throughout its existence. As a Communist character puts it apropos the Soviet Union in Graham Greene’s last great novel The Human Factor: “My country has been at war since 1917”. It is within this context of isolation, of desperate efforts to develop the productive forces to overcome the challenge of encirclement, including increasingly from Nazi Germany, and of the estrangement from the peasantry arising from this desperate bid for raising the productive capacity of the country, that the political institutions of the Soviet State were formed. And these institutionalized a dictatorship of the Party in the name of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
True, this isolation of the Soviet Union was overcome in the post-second world war years when the socialist camp became much larger, but the new entrants to this camp were also relatively backward countries, and in the case of many even the entry was a result of the Soviet Red Army’s victorious march against Nazism. Far from providing succour to the Soviet Union they were often a source of strain on it; and far from contributing to a reconfiguring of Soviet political institutions, they themselves imported the Soviet political “model”.
The fact that this “model” represented a far cry from the vision of the Soviet State which had informed the revolution is obvious. On the eve of the revolution itself Lenin had said: “we can at once set in motion a state apparatus consisting of ten if not twenty million people.” The vision clearly was of a State that had got dissolved into the class itself; a State that was an association of workers, vastly different from the bureaucratized, ossified bourgeois State, where a tiny coterie of persons takes crucial decisions behind closed doors affecting the lives of millions of people, without the people having any say in the matter; a State that unleashed the political praxis of the working class. But the actual political institution that came into being was a highly centralized dictatorship of the Party, which eventually brought about a de-politicization not only of the working class but also of the Party itself (where, as we know in retrospect, a person could become the General Secretary of the CPSU without believing in socialism).
To what extent this was the result of specific mistakes, or of “personality factors”, whether, even within the constraints of the circumstances, a different course could have been taken, are matters that need not detain us here. The basic point is that old socialism, even while it overcame the “spontaneity” of capitalism, even while it got rid of the old problem of capitalist “objectification”, ensured full employment, and set up the most gigantic Welfare State the world had even seen, introduced a very different and altogether novel form objectification itself. The substitution of private ownership of the means of production by State ownership (which is supposed to express social ownership) and the accompanying substitution of commodity production by national planning, may overcome bourgeois objectification, but the only way that the people can acquire the role of being subjects in a socialist society is through political praxis. (The old Yugoslav model, reminiscent of the syndicalist position, which believed that subjectivity can be restored to the people in the realm of the economy itself by having worker-managed factories, did not overcome commodity production and hence bourgeois objectification.) The de-politicization of the working class meant that this subject-role was never acquired by the people. They escaped bourgeois objectification, but got trapped into another kind of objectification in a society which also had its own form of fetishism. This latter objectification is lucidly captured by Jean-Paul Sartre (1965) in his satirical remark: “Budapest’s subway is in Rakosi’s mind; if the subsoil does not allow it, then the sub-soil must be counter-revolutionary!”
The foregoing must not detract in any way from the enormous historic achievements of old socialism. Leaving aside what it achieved internally in those societies where it prevailed, it was responsible for the defeat of fascism, for making possible the entire process of decolonization, and for putting a check on the depredations of imperialism for well over half a century. As Professor Joan Robinson used to say in her Cambridge seminars, “we would not be sitting here today but for the Soviet Union”. Nonetheless, the fact remains that old socialism was a product of its times. Apart from anything else, the times today are vastly different. For instance, inter-imperialist rivalries which played such an important role in Lenin’s thinking, are far more muted today. The socialist project today must be based on very different foundations for this reason at least, if not for the more basic reason that the realization of its vision of overcoming the objectification of human beings requires such a re-foundation.

V

Central to any such re-foundation must be the people’s political praxis. Since authentic democracy consists in unleashing this praxis, socialism must be seen as the full flowering of democracy. An economistic perception of socialism as consisting essentially in State ownership of the means of production is not enough; socialism must mean the unleashing of authentic democracy in the sense of political praxis of the people. This praxis is limited at any time by lack of understanding of the conjuncture. The role of the revolutionary Party is to provide this understanding. The revolutionary Party locates and opens doors when no doors are visible. It points the way forward for people’s political praxis at every stage, so that the process of unleashing of democracy, which constitutes the essence of socialism, does not get stymied. The role of the revolutionary Party is not to substitute itself for the people, not to de-politicize them as a counterpart of the establishment of its own dictatorship; it is on the contrary to politicize them, to ensure that their political praxis is not thwarted, by pointing at every stage the way forward.
This however requires not just a right set of institutions through which the relations between the Party and the people, the relations between the Party and other Parties etc. are mediated, but also the right approach to Marxism. The old socialist view canonized Marxism, saw it as a closed and complete system, which only had to be grasped, like a religious text, through perseverance, and “applied” to specific contexts. According to old socialism there was a “thing” called Marxism (or rather Marxism-Leninism, since Lenin too was canonized in hyphenated splendour), and Mao “applied” it to China, and we have to apply it to India. This fundamentally erroneous attitude has been a predominant characteristic of Left thinking to this day.
It is erroneous because it arbitrarily separates “theory” from its “applications” and does not recognize that “application” too is theory. It is erroneous because via this separation it implicitly presents a religious attitude to Marxism, as a closed complete theory. It is erroneous because it refuses to recognize the progress of knowledge which mankind acquires and which should be a source of enrichment of Marxism; instead it arbitrarily and unjustifiably selects only those strands of the advance of knowledge which in its view support canonical Marxism, and treats the rest as inconsequential if not reactionary. And it is erroneous because in the process it devalues theoretical endeavor on the Left, and discourages creativity. (The attitude becomes: “Since Marx has said everything of importance that there is to say, what more can I say except simply finding more evidence of his correctness?”).
All this is usually sought to be justified by saying that if we abandon the “texts” then we will be in a world of theoretical free-for-all which would stand in the way of praxis. To believe this however is to believe that people cannot act except with reference to canonical texts, i.e. they cannot act except when inspired by a religion, which itself constitutes a fundamental epistemological negation of socialism. The people cannot acquire the role of subjects in social and political life, if they do not acquire the role of subjects in the theoretical domain. To say this is not to applaud half-educated cocky self-assurance; it is simply to break the religious approach to Marxism, to treat it as essentially an open system.
There is in other words at every moment an attempt to understand the present through a reconstruction of Marxism(7).Every attempt at understanding the present is a theoretical endeavor, based not on an “application” of a given closed set of doctrines, but a creative effort to reconstruct Marxism. Its validity has to be judged, as in all theoretical efforts, not with reference to whether or not it deviates from the “text”, but whether or not it is correct, i.e. whether or not it enables us to understand the present. Every person who thinks, every person who wants to carry the cause of socialism forward, is thus engaged in reconstructing Marxism. Debates in society are inter alia debates among alternative reconstructions of Marxism, each seeking to make the present comprehensible through the use, in different ways, of concepts left to us by Marx, Lenin, and others, but not necessarily confined to these concepts alone (which is another way of saying that Marxism must be continuously nourished by advances in knowledge).
It is in this rich atmosphere of discussion that the revolutionary Party must function, for this alone can provide a check against its going horribly wrong in its assessment of the present. Free scientific discussion is like oxygen for a revolutionary Party; without such discussion it cannot survive. But such free discussion in turn requires not just complete intellectual freedom, but also the existence of a multiplicity of opinions (which in turn entails a multiplicity of political Parties), and a redefinition of the concept of “democratic centralism” as the organizing principle of a revolutionary Party. It is not often appreciated that Bukharin and other “Left-Wing Communists” who opposed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk were freely bringing out their own newspaper even during the most difficult post-revolutionary times, which argued against the official position of the Bolshevik Party. And while Lenin, the strong advocate of “democratic centralism” as the organizing principle of the Bolshevik Party, entered into fierce polemics with the Left-Wing Communists, the question of silencing them through disciplinary action never arose. Such silencing of dissent was a later and altogether unwholesome development.
The dictatorship of the Party under old socialism was typically justified through a dichotomy between “science” or “theory” which was the preserve of the few, who happened to be in leading positions, and “politics”, where the masses participated, increasingly without enthusiasm, in conformity with this “theory”. The “theory” in this conception was necessarily a closed system. Once we see theory as open, once we eliminate the dichotomy between theory and “politics” or theory and “applications”, or “theoreticians” and “activists”, the intellectual ground for any dictatorship of the Party would have been removed.

VI

A basic question which has been raised in the context of socialism relates to the motivation for work in a socialist society (8). In a feudal society, people work because of the pressure of customs and traditions, backed by force; if the serf does not put in his labour in the lord’s field or does not hand over product rent (where labour rent has been so commuted), then he will be physically punished, and if he does not work in his own field sufficiently hard, then his income net of rent will force him to starve. In a capitalist society, people work because of the existence of the reserve army of labour, which acts as a coercive, disciplining device. If a worker is suspected to be a “laggard” or a “troublemaker”, then he is dismissed and some one else takes his place, such substitutes being always available owing to the existence of the reserve army. But in a socialist society, where there is neither the fear of the Monseigneur’s whip, nor the fear of being unemployed, since the economy is operating at full employment and in any case substantial Welfare State measures are available to all, what will be the source of the motivation for work? Some would even suggest that political authoritarianism, as expressed through the dictatorship of the Party, becomes indispensable for the functioning of a socialist society, precisely because it operates close to full employment and has an array of Welfare State measures, i.e. the modus operandi of such a society must include an element of coercion.
The old Yugoslav answer to this, which paralleled something tried briefly in the Soviet Union during the Gorbachov era, was to make peer pressure an instrument for work discipline. In worker-managed factories, the workers’ collective itself would take on the role of pulling up laggard workers, and this social pressure from one’s own fellow workers would be sufficient to inculcate work motivation among workers. In Gorbachov’s time when contracts were signed between the State and workers’ collectives, again the question of imparting work motivation was relegated from the domain of the State to that of the workers’ collectives which could bring peer pressure to bear on workers. But Yugoslav socialism was afflicted with substantial unemployment even in the heyday of self-management, so that while peer pressure was dubious, the fear of the “sack” was very real. And the Soviet experiment did not last long, quite apart from the fact that had it continued, it might have reproduced features of the Yugoslav system, based as it was on similar syndicalist perceptions.
The Yugoslavs always said that workers’ management did not negate social property, that it was workers’ management of social property; it simply entrusted the management of social property to individual factory-based workers’ groups. The system does nevertheless mean a fragmentation of the working class, not into atomized individuals but into atomized groups of factory workers. Since the relations between the different worker-groups managing different factories are mediated through the market, “market socialism” is a form of commodity production which reproduces the well-known features of commodity-producing bourgeois societies, such as inflation, unemployment, and huge inequalities. “Market socialism” of this sort is a contradiction in terms, a negation of socialism (from which it follows that the concept of “socialist commodity production” which China has been talking about of late is equally untenable, though the idea of using markets for certain specific purposes in socialist societies is not).
A socialist society clearly needs social commitment as the basis of work-motivation (apart from the fact that work must itself become a source of joy). All the solutions to the problem of work-motivation discussed so far take it for granted that the workers are motivated exclusively by individual self-interest, and then examine how to coerce them into work despite this. This may have been an accurate reflection of the reality of old socialism, especially in its later years, but it cannot form the basis of a socialist society. Such a society clearly needs social commitment and an overcoming of the exclusive pre-occupation with individual self-interest which bourgeois society tries to inculcate. Indeed the overcoming of such exclusive pre-occupation with individual self-interest is what underlies combinations among workers (9) within bourgeois society itself, and hence constitutes the starting point of the journey to socialism. And the journey to socialism which begins with the overcoming of the exclusive pre-occupation with individual self-interest among workers, culminates in the formation of a revolutionary proletariat.
Marx clearly therefore saw in politics, in the fact of struggle of which politics is the expression, a means of overcoming the individual self-interest that characterizes bourgeois society. Old socialism de-politicized the workers. Our vision of the socialism of the future must entail a resurrection of politics, a perennial engagement with politics on the part of the working class, which will also provide the answer to the problem of work motivation in socialist societies.

VII

The two and a half decades after the second world war witnessed the most ambitious effort to “reform” capitalism that has ever been undertaken. Keynesian demand management by capitalist States brought down unemployment rates to unprecedented low levels. The boost to demand created a strong inducement to invest and hence rates of growth unprecedented in the history of capitalism. These were accompanied by high rates of labour productivity growth, because of which, in the context of near-full employment conditions, the workers succeeded in obtaining high rates of growth of real wages. These, together with social security measures introduced by Social Democratic governments, made capitalism appear as a humane system. On the other side, decolonization rid capitalism of the stigma of keeping the majority of the world’s people under its oppressive political yoke. It seemed for a while that capitalism had indeed changed, and made the case for socialism redundant, exactly as Keynes had wanted, predicted and theorized about : “a somewhat comprehensive socialization of investment will prove the only means of securing an approximation to full employment…It is not the ownership of the instruments of production which it is important for the State to assume” (1949, 378).
The end of this long boom, which has been called the “Golden Age of Capitalism”, constitutes proof that the “spontaneity” of the system cannot be overcome, save temporarily and that too under exceptional circumstances. The hegemony of capital over labour gets undermined by the near full employment conditions that prevail: the “sack” loses its power, and inflation gathers momentum over time as workers feel emboldened to press higher wage claims,(10) which in turn creates pressures from capital for the restoration of a substantial reserve army of labour. Adding to these pressures is another fact, namely the capacity of the State, which naturally is a nation-State, to carry out Keynesian demand management, gets undermined as the immanent tendency towards centralization of capital gives rise to globalization of finance and hence an international finance capital. Since ignoring the caprices of this international finance capital, including its preference for government-expenditure deflation, entails the risk of capital flight, the nation-States willy-nilly have to fall in line and eschew Keynesian demand management.
Keynesianism in retrospect therefore must be seen as a transient phenomenon, based on an exceptional post-war conjuncture. As the conjuncture passed, undermined inter alia by the immanent tendencies of capital, the programme of “reformed capitalism” was given a quiet burial. Not only did growth rates in world capitalism plummet, not only did unemployment in the advanced capitalist countries approach double-digit figures and remain stuck there, not only did the absolute real wage rate of the workers show a virtual stagnation in the post-“Golden Age” period, but even the tendency towards decolonization got reversed, with imperialism making a determined attempt to re-appropriate the world’s natural resources, especially oil, for itself.
In this re-colonization attempt it enjoys the backing of the third world big bourgeoisie, which has done a volte face, from leading the people against imperialism, to collaborating with imperialism against the people’s interests. And the people are back to a situation reminiscent of the pre-decolonization experience: of an acute agrarian crisis, of secularly adverse movements in the terms of trade against primary commodity producers, of expropriation of peasants’ land by corporate interests, of the grinding down of petty production, and in general of an unleashing of primitive accumulation of capital, or what I would prefer to call “accumulation through encroachment” in the periphery. Since all this is not accompanied by any significant increases in employment in the modern capitalist sector within the periphery, the outcome is growing unemployment, destitution, hunger, poverty, and insecurity. In short, all talk about the “reform” of capitalism has come to naught.
The socialist agenda therefore remains as relevant today as ever. And unless the socialist movement gathers momentum, the anger against imperialism will continue to take the most violent, destructive, inhuman and unproductive forms, like terrorism. The choice before us today, as it was at the time of Lenin and Luxemburg, is between socialism and barbarism, between a situation where a predatory imperialism remains locked in perennial combat with equally ruthless groups of terrorists, thus threatening the very survival of our civilization, and one where the very system that produces both imperialism and its terrorist “other”, is overthrown.
This revival of socialism of course will take time. The old Comintern perception of a “general crisis of capitalism” giving rise, within a comparatively short period of time, to the overthrow of the system, lacks relevance in today’s context, where, apart from anything else, the inter-imperialist rivalries that had produced such a prognosis, are far more muted. George Lukacs’ view, expressed in an interview in the New Left Review, that just as the transition from feudalism to capitalism was a long drawn-out one, spanning almost three hundred years, likewise the transition from capitalism to socialism is likely to be a long drawn out one, appears more plausible at this moment. If this perspective is accepted, then the collapse of the Soviet Union or the recent distortions in China would appear simply as episodes in this long transition. But anyone who has faith in the future of mankind, cannot remain skeptical about the occurrence of this transition.
The precise mode of this transition, and the precise problems that would arise in the course of this transition are issues whose discussion must await another occasion. What is important however is the overall vision that we have of the socialism that will emerge. That can only be of a socialism which accords centrality to human freedom, which remains continuously “open” and untainted by ossification in any form, and which constitutes an unleashing of democracy and a perennial engagement of the people with politics.

REFERENCES
Althusser L. (2003) The Humanist Controversy and Other Writings, Verso, London.
Dobb M.H. (1973) Theories of value and Distribution Since Adam Smith, CUP, Cambridge.
Kalecki M. (1971) “Political Aspects of Full Employment” in Selected Essays on the Dynamics of Capitalist Economies 1933-1970, CUP, Cambridge.
Keynes J.M. (1949) The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, Macmillan, London.
Lange O. (1963) Political Economy Volume 1, Pergamon Press, Warsaw and Oxford.
Marx K. and Engels F. (1976) Collected Works, Volume 6, Progress Publishers, Moscow.
Patnaik P. (1990) Economics and Egalitarianism, OUP, Delhi.
Patnaik P. (1998) “The Communist Manifesto After 150 Years” in Prakash Karat ed. A World to Win, Leftword Books, Delhi.
Sartre Jean Paul (1965) The Problem of Method, London.
Schram S. (1973) ed. Mao Zedong Unrehearsed, Pelican, Harmondsworth.
Zizek Slavoj (2006) edited (with an Introduction) Revolution at the Gates: Lenin’s Writings in 1917, Verso, London.
________________________________________________________________
1. On this Smithian conception see Dobb (1973).
2. Marx was to add, by way of explanation (1976, 174): “There has been history, since there were the institutions of feudalism, and in these institutions of feudalism we find quite different relations of production from those of bourgeois society which the economists try to pass off as natural and as such, eternal.”
3. This is how “Ricardian socialists” like Hodgskin and Bray argued for socialism.
4. The notion of the “inevitability” of socialism has been criticized strongly by Althusser (2003).
5. Quoted by Mao Zedong in an interview published in Schram (1973).
6. Quoted in the Introduction to Zizek (2006)
7. This point has been argued at length in Patnaik (1998).
8. A fuller discussion of this issue can be found in Patnaik (1990).
9. See Marx’s (1976, 206-11) discussion on this subject.
10. This is lucidly discussed in a prescient essay by Kalecki written in 1943 and republished in Kalecki (1971)

By Prabhat Patnaik

Myth, History And Politics

2007-09-30T01:42:00.001-07:00

Ever since Ayodhya became a disputed territory, Rama has been at the centre stage of the political mobilisation by Hindu communal forces. The incidents associated with the Rama Katha were invoked one after the other to appeal to the religious sentiments of Hindus. It began with a claim to the birthplace of Rama at Ayodhya, around which Hindu religious sentiments were so aroused as to lead to the destruction of the Babri Masjid. In the movement culminating in this vandalism, several symbols linked with Rama such as Rama Jyoti, Rama Paduka and Rama Shila were floated.

Yet, over the years, the political appeal of Rama has waned despite his strong presence in the religious life of believers. The temple issue was indeed kept alive through occasional religious assemblies and demonstrations. Nevertheless, Rama ceased to be of much emotional value that would provide political advantage to Hindu communal forces. In the elections of 2004, the Ram temple did not figure as an issue at all. This can be taken as an indication that believers were inclined to abandon the Sangh Parivar’s aggressive Rama and return to worshipping his benign image, looking upon Rama Katha, as they had for centuries, as an “allegory of the life of the spirit as it journeyed through the world”.

Rama was almost lost to the political Hindu and was being resurrected to his rightful place in the religious life of believers. It is in this context that the Ram Sethu project has come in handy for the Sangh Parivar, to revive the appeal of Rama in order to breathe some life into its sagging fortunes. Once again the Parivar is bracing up to claim Rama for the communal cause. In the process it is attempting to turn myth into history, blurring the distinction between the two, in order to gain legitimacy for its political project.

The question of whether the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) should have filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court denying the historical existence of Rama has led to differences of opinion. The government has hastened to disclaim the affidavit and withdraw it, obviously fearing a Hindu backlash. Unlike the Ayodhya issue, even the secular voice has been rather muted. However, implicit in the affidavit is an important question regarding our approach to the past: Is there a distinction between myth and history?

Mythic Character

The ASI, it appeared, was conscious of this distinction in projecting the mythological character of Rama. The distinction does not imply a counterposition of myth and history as false and true. Myth is a way in which the human mind comes to grips with reality, and therefore, it can be said that it refers to reality. Yet, myth in itself is not reality. What the ASI has tried to state is that Rama was not a historical figure but a mythic character.

Similarly, the Ramayana being a literary piece, which was not originally a religious text but only sacralised later, contains many events and incidents that are products of imagination. It would therefore be futile to try to correlate them with historical fact and establish their authenticity. Such a view is not in any way a denigration of Rama or a critical reflection on the Ramayana. The Ramayana’s literary quality, whether in the original Sanskrit or in regional languages, is well known. So are the ethical and moral values it foregrounds, which exercise considerable influence over the life of believers.

However, devotion to Rama and the influence of the epic have nothing to do with the historical veracity of Rama Katha. Devotees consider Rama an incarnation and do not test his deeds by the yardstick of historical truth. They are moved by their devotion and hardly approach the epic from a rational viewpoint or try to locate it historically. Whether the Ramayana is historically true or not is not a factor in their devotion. The Sangh Parivar has been trying for long to impute to incidents in the epic a historical quality to legitimise popular belief, under a false notion that belief would be reinforced by historical truth.

The panic reaction of the government in withdrawing the affidavit in effect endorses the Sangh Parivar’s attempt to equate myth with history. Like the Sangh Parivar, the government seems to subscribe to the view that ascribing mythic character to Rama and the Ramayana is to undermine their importance and to injure the sentiments of believers. It overlooks the fact that believers consider Rama an incarnation. Traditional religious sources represent him so. The Matsya Purana, for instance, gives the following account: “There is also the account of the pastimes of Lord Rama, spoken by Valmiki – an account originally related by Brahma in one billion verses. That Ramayana was later summarised by Narada and related by Valmiki, who then presented it to mankind.” What accounts for the devotion to Rama and the veneration of the Ramayana are not their historical veracity but their divinity.

Many Ramayanas

In an attempt to attribute historical authenticity to the epic and its protagonist, the Sangh Parivar has been striving to privilege one single version of the Ramayana. But the Ramayana has several versions. It is difficult to ascertain the exact number as all of them are not written but are orally transmitted, both in India as well as in other Asian countries. A.K. Ramanujan has argued that these different “tellings” – a term he prefers to versions or variants as these imply an invariant or original text – differ from one another. They are not mere divergences from Valmiki’s rendering but entirely different tellings.

Highlighting the multivocal existence of Rama Katha, Paula Richman has drawn attention to the many Ramayanas, of which Valmiki’s composition is one, Tulsi’s another, Kamban’s another, the Buddhist Jataka yet another and the Jaina tradition yet another. Along with them, there are also innumerable folk narratives, extant not only in India but also in almost all the countries of Asia. They were not Valmiki’s Ramayana adapted to local conditions but substantially different from one another, both in form and content. In the Buddhist version, Rama and Sita are originally brother and sister, a fact that once aroused the ire of the Sangh Parivar.

Women’s folksongs from Andhra Pradesh challenge the accepted values of a male-dominated society by questioning the integrity of Rama and foregrounding the theme of the suffering that husbandly neglect causes a wife. Thus, the Rama Katha prevalent in different communities is vastly different and defies any attempt to identify a universally applicable text. All of them draw upon locally specific cultural traits, which impart to them a distinct character. Recent studies on different Rama Katha traditions demonstrate the different tellings of Rama’s story that vary with regional literary tradition, social location, gender, religious affiliation, colonial context, intended audience, and so on.

K.R. Srinivasa Iyengar’s edited work highlights the Asian variations of the Ramayana, and the essays in the volume edited by Avadesh Kumar Singh focus on the way the epic has found expression in regional languages. The many Ramayanas connote that the events and incidents in the different versions of the epic are not historical facts but mythical representations or literary imaginations. The debate on whether the Ramayana is a true story or whether Rama is a historical figure is, therefore, off the mark.

The issue of Ram Sethu requires to be situated in the general context of the mythological character of the Ramayana. The Sethu Bandhan encapsulates within it several qualities of Rama and the character of the epic. Sethu Bandhan was a humanly impossible task that was made possible only by the divine powers of Rama. The description of Sethu Bandhan in one version of the Ramayana is as follows: “During the first day of construction, monkeys laid a hundred and twenty miles of rocks, which floated upon the ocean. They worked very swiftly, and were happy to see the bridge take shape. The second day, they set down a hundred and sixty miles of rocks; the third day, a hundred and sixty-eight miles; and the fourth day, their strength increasing, they completed a hundred and seventy-six miles. On the fifth and final day, the monkeys constructed a hundred and eighty-four miles of bridge, up to Mount Suvala on the northern shore of Lanka. Thus when the bridge was finished, it was eighty miles wide and eight hundred miles long.”

Obviously, a vanar sena would not have achieved this feat. The question, however, is not its possibility or impossibility but how it enriches the mythical and divine quality of Rama. Obviously Sethu Bandhan is a myth.

But then, when myths become part of the belief system, they can be put to use for different purposes. Nobody in India has understood this better than the Sangh Parivar as is evident from the manner in which they have manipulated the myth and history of Ayodhya. Ram Sethu is an opportunity they are unlikely to let go of easily.

The distinction between history and myth is well recognised. Myths are in a way the opposite of historical facts, in the sense that, unlike historical facts, what constitutes a myth is not verifiable. Despite this, myths and history cannot be counterpoised as true and false.

In fact, myths also represent reality but represent it symbolically and metaphorically. Yet, myth masks reality. Therefore, myths are illusory representations of man and his world. Given their illusory nature, myths may not help to unravel the historicity of an event. Most myths are in a way timeless. Nevertheless, myths being a reflection of reality constitute a source of historical reconstruction and a means to understanding reality. Given this overlap, myths are used for a variety of purposes. They often serve as an agency of legitimisation, as in the case of Parasurama reclaiming land from the sea. They may also be employed for explaining a natural phenomenon, as in the case of Helios’ chariot in Greek mythology.

The use of myths has been integral to the politics of the Sangh Parivar. Beginning with the movement for the construction of the temple at Ayodhya, the Sangh Parivar has been engaged in providing authenticity to various myths surrounding the life of Rama. The central issue of the Ayodhya movement was the identification of the exact birthplace of Rama, which was difficult to ascertain owing to the lack of evidence. Local tradition identifies Ayodhya through a popular myth, which runs as follows: “After Treta Yuga when Ram was supposed to have been born Ayodhya could not be located. While Vikramaditya was looking for Ayodhya, a saint told him to leave a calf loose and the place at which the calf secreted milk would be the place where Ayodhya was located. Vikramaditya did as he was told, and where the calf secreted milk he located Ayodhya.” This mythical story became the basis for the identification of Ayodhya as well as the birthplace of Rama.

In the accounts given by leaders of the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP), the place of birth becomes an indisputable fact of history. Following this identification, the VHP accorded historical status to a series of myths. These include the existence of the Ram temple at the site of the Babri Masjid and the attempts by Hindus to reclaim the temple through 77 battles against the Muslims in which 300,000 sacrificed their lives. These myths have now become authentic histories; not only are they paraded as historical facts, they have found place in textbooks as authentic history. Over a period of time, many of these facts could become part of popular history also.

The politics of the Sangh Parivar is essentially irrational. The attempt to turn myth into history and to use it for political advantage is rooted in irrationality. Now that Ayodhya is no more a potent force, Ram Sethu has emerged as a possible alternative. The Sangh Parivar is gearing up to exploit it. Would the ruling establishment take a rational and scientific stand and not succumb to the fear of the irrational?

By K.N.Panikkar
(K.N. Panikkar, a former professor of history at Jawaharlal Nehru University and a former vice-chancellor of Sree Sankaracharya University of Sanskrit, is currently the chairman of the Kerala Council for Historical Research.)
Copyright © 2007, Frontline

Burmese Troops Gun Down Protestors

2007-09-30T01:38:00.000-07:00

Over the past two days, the Burmese military regime has brutally suppressed large anti-junta protests in the major cities of Rangoon and Mandalay, breaking up crowds with tear gas, batons, rubber bullets and live rounds. The state media reported that nine people died in clashes on Thursday, but reports from activists, diplomats and a handful of foreign journalists suggest the figure could be considerably higher.

The crackdown began on Wednesday night and early Thursday morning when troops raided monasteries, including the Shwedagon Pagoda and Sule Pagoda in Rangoon, arresting hundreds of Buddhist monks. Five key monasteries, which have been centres of opposition, were declared no-go areas and sealed off to prevent protestors from gathering.

In one incident, soldiers forced their way into the Ngwe Kyar monastery in South Okkalapa, a suburb of Rangoon, Wednesday night and arrested about 100 monks. Thousands of people gathered in nearby streets and began pelting the troops with stones. Eight people, including a high school student, died when soldiers opened fire with automatic weapons.

Up to 70,000 people defied a military ban and marched in Rangoon on Thursday. Protests reportedly took place in Mandalay and other centres, including Sittwe, Pakokku and Moulmein. In central Rangoon, near the Sule Pagoda, some 20 truckloads of troops and police set up roadblocks. As protestors threw stones and bottles, the security forces responded with shots and tear gas. Eyewitnesses said the military gave people 10 minutes to disperse and started firing.

Among the dead was a Japanese journalist, Kenji Nagai, 50, who was photographing the clashes. The state media claimed that a stray bullet had killed him, but amateur video shown on Japan’s Fuji television showed him being deliberately shot.

Reports of protests yesterday were scanty. The country’s main Internet connection had been cut, blocking the stream of photographs, video and reports that were reaching the outside world in previous days. The mobile phone network was also not functioning. While officials reported damage to an undersea cable, there is little doubt that the generals have ordered the censorship.
A correspondent for the London-based Times described smaller protests near the Sule Pagoda and clashes of young demonstrators with heavily-armed security forces. “It was a loose, ragged, frustrating day in Rangoon, a day of baton charges, beatings and many rumours of much worse. I saw soldiers levelling guns, firing volleys of hard rubber pellets, as well as chases and arrests,” he wrote.

Agence France Presse reported that up to 10,000 people were involved in protests yesterday in central Rangoon and repeatedly confronted troops and police. A separate group of around 500 marched through the streets and were applauded by onlookers. In Mandalay, thousands of young people on motorbikes rode down a major thoroughfare toward a blockade set up by security forces, but were driven back.

The police round up of opposition leaders, including members of the National League for Democracy (NLD) led by Aung San Suu Kyi, is continuing. An NLD official told the media that two prominent leaders, Hla Pe and Myint Thei, were arrested in raids on their homes. Members of the 88 Generation Students Group, an organisation formed last year by veterans of the 1988 protests against the junta, have been detained.
International hypocrisy

Students, young monks and ordinary people are displaying great courage in confronting the junta and its troops, and demanding basic democratic rights and better living standards. However, the limited character of the opposition’s political perspective is underscored by its appeals to the UN and major powers to intervene.

The condemnations of the junta by US President George Bush, British Prime Minister Gordon Brown and other leaders reek of hypocrisy. The Bush administration and its allies are no more concerned about democratic rights in Burma than in Iraq, where the US military is every bit as ruthless as its Burmese counterparts in suppressing popular opposition to its continued occupation.

Washington’s objection to the Burmese junta is not its suppression of democratic rights, but its close alignment with China. Over the past week, the American media in particular has tried to pin the blame for the junta’s violence on the failure of Beijing to take sufficiently strong action. A Washington Post editorial on Thursday, for instance, was entitled “Save Burma: Will China and Russia give green light to a slaughter of monks?” It criticised the two powers for blocking a UN resolution condemning the violence in Burma.

No doubt, China and Russia are cynically supporting repressive regimes to advance their economic and strategic interests. But they are not alone. In the case of Burma, India quietly dropped its criticism of the junta and is seeking to extend its economic and diplomatic influence in the country. Burma’s largest trading partner is not China, but neighbouring Thailand, which is ruled by a military dictatorship with tacit US support. The Bush administration’s campaign on Burma is not motivated by concerns for ordinary Burmese, but is aimed at establishing a pro-US regime in Rangoon as part of its strategic encirclement of China.

Moreover, one can safely predict that the present media adulation for the protestors would rapidly change if the demonstrations and marches began to take a more radical direction. Unlike the protests of 1988, which involved significant sections of workers, the recent demonstrations have been, to date, largely dominated by monks and students. The entry of substantial sections of working people into political action would not only shake the junta, but would reverberate through the region and internationally.

Far from being endowed with great strength, the Burmese junta is acting from a position of weakness. Despised by the majority of the population, the generals are confronting a profound economic crisis. Despite the development of offshore gas fields, the economy is plagued by inflation, which is running at an estimated annual rate of 20 percent, and chronic shortages of investment and foreign exchange. Economic analysts generally treat the official claims of high growth rates with scepticism. In 2003, the regime declared a growth figure of 5.1 percent, even as it confronted a private banking crisis and banned the export of six major crops.
The gulf between the pampered lifestyle of the generals and the poverty confronting the majority of the population is staggering. More than 90 percent of the population live on less than 300,000 kyat (about $US300) a year. An estimated 43 percent of children under the age of five are malnourished. On average, nearly 70 percent of household income is spent of food—that is, surviving from one day to the next. Spending on health care and education amounts to just 1.4 percent of GDP—less than half that of Indonesia, the region’s next lowest spender.

The latest protests were triggered last month by the junta’s decision to slash price subsidies on petrol, diesel and gas, increasing transport costs and sending the price of basic items skyrocketting. Opposition leaders, however, have not sought to mobilise the social discontent of ordinary working people to bring down the junta, but rather deliberately limited the protest demands.

A statement released by the 88 Generation Students and the All Burma Monks Alliance last week listed just three demands: the release of political prisoners, economic well-being and national reconciliation. Like Aung San Suu Kyi and the NLD, these groups are seeking to use the protests and international diplomacy to pressure the regime into dialogue and a compromise power-sharing arrangement. The NLD’s basic program, which consists of implementing IMF-dictated reforms to open Burma up to foreign investors, would be just as catastrophic for ordinary working people as the junta’s economic policies.

The conclusion that some of the veterans of the 1988 protests appear to have drawn is that their previous demands were too radical. In fact, the opposite is the case. In 1988, the junta was reeling under the impact of strikes in the oil industry, transport, postal services, telecommunications and factories, as well as widespread protests. It managed to cling to power by striking a deal with the NLD to end the protests in return for elections in 1990. Having stabilised their rule, the generals simply ignored the outcome of the poll, suppressed the opposition and continued in power.

Burmese Military Cracks Down On Escalating Protests

2007-09-27T23:26:00.000-07:00

The military in Burma (Myanmar) unleashed its troops yesterday on unarmed demonstrators in a bid to stamp out mounting protests against the junta’s stifling rule, and price rises that have made life for broad layers of working people unbearable.
A series of clashes took place in the former capital Rangoon (Yangon) as protestors, including many Buddhist monks, took to the streets in defiance of the military. On Tuesday, the junta imposed a dusk-to-dawn curfew in Rangoon and Mandalay, the country’s second largest city, and banned assemblies of more than five people. Heavily-armed troops were stationed in key positions, including outside major monasteries that have become centres of protest.
The state media yesterday reported that at least one protestor was killed in clashes in Rangoon between demonstrators and security forces. An unnamed official told the AFP that three people were dead—one was killed after trying to seize a soldier’s rifle and two others were beaten to death. Other reports from individuals and opposition groups indicate that the toll could be higher. Another 300 people were reportedly arrested.
The clashes began outside the Shwedagon Pagoda but failed to deter an estimated 10,000 young monks and students from marching toward the Sule Pagoda in downtown Rangoon. Hundreds of troops fired warning shots and tear gas then broke up the protest using batons. Several hundred monks also tried to reach the house of detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi, followed by trucks carrying troops. In Mandalay, an estimated 10,000 people took part in protests.
The protests have been building since the junta’s decision on August 15 to suddenly double the price of diesel and raise the price of natural gas by 500 percent. Within days, as transport prices jumped, the cost of essential items rose by between 10 and 50 percent. Eggs, cooking oil and poultry increased by an average of 35 percent. The regime, which has a monopoly on fuel sales, had previously subsidised prices.
Initially the marches, which were organised by students and began on August 19, were quite small. The protests, however, have continued to swell despite arrests and police violence. Over the weekend, tens of thousands took part in demonstrations in Rangoon. On Monday, protests took place in at least 25 cities including Mandalay, Stitwe and Pakokku. The march in Rangoon was estimated at between 50,000 and 100,000 people.
The demonstrations are by far the largest since 1988 when huge protests involving students, workers, monks, and the urban and rural poor challenged the military dictatorship, demanding democratic rights and improved living standards. The army responded by gunning down hundreds of protesters, jailing opposition leaders and suppressing any form of political opposition. An estimated 3,000 people were killed by the military and many more were detained and tortured.
Speaking over state radio on Monday night, the junta’s religious affairs minister, Brigadier General Thura Myint Maung, denounced the “destructive elements” behind the protests and warned “actions will be taken against the monks according to the law”. On Tuesday, police arrested U Win Naing, a senior leader of Suu Kyi’s National League of Democracy (NLD) and Zaganar, a popular comedian who is known for satirising the regime. Zaganar had appealed for people to join the protests. Yesterday the crackdown intensified.
The international media has highlighted the role of Buddhist monks in the current protests. Their prominence, however, is a function of the timidity and conservatism of Suu Kyi and other NLD leaders, who appear to have been caught off guard by the demonstrations. Far from seeking to challenge the junta, the NLD is seeking to limit the protests and exploit them as a bargaining chip to establish negotiations with the generals.
The British-based Times noted yesterday: “Opposition leaders in Rangoon are struggling to contain the energy of the demonstrations to prevent anything that could be used as a pretext for a crackdown by the State Peace and Development Council (SPDC), as the junta calls itself. They fear a split between radicals, who want to bring down the regime, and moderates, who believe that the most important thing is to avoid frightening off ordinary Burmese and bring them out in an overwhelming display of moral authority.”
NLD leader Sann Aung told the Times: “There should be no agitation to topple the military regime. It will make people much more wary of a military response and people will become reluctant to join the movement.” The newspaper also pointed to the limited character of the demands made by senior monks: an apology for abuse by the regime, a reduction in fuel prices, the release of political prisoners and political dialogue with the junta.
These appeals for restraint are, however, opening the door for further military repression. By confining the anger of ordinary working people, the opposition leaders will only embolden the generals to go on the offensive against the protests. That is the central political lesson of the events of 1988, when Suu Kyi and the NLD struck a deal with the junta to hold elections and shut down the protest movement. The junta seized the deal with both hands, stabilised their rule and then ignored the outcome of the 1990 poll, in which the NLD won an overwhelming majority.
For nearly two decades, the NLD’s perspective has been confined to using the pressure of sanctions imposed by the major powers to reach a compromise with the junta. As for its professions of concern for the Burmese population, the NLD supports the IMF and World Bank’s free market policies of opening up the country to foreign investors. The social consequences are evident in the junta’s slashing of fuel subsidies last month, entirely in line with this agenda.
Even before the latest price rises, inflation was running at more than 30 percent and 90 percent of the population lived below the poverty line of $US1 a day. The 450,000-strong army accounts for 40 percent of the annual national budget. An unemployed economics graduate told the Sydney Morning Herald: “Many people can no longer afford to send their children to school. They’re down to one meal a day, it’s that bad. As a result many are malnourished and they’re falling ill. But then they can’t even find the money for medical bills. Sure, we had difficulties before, but the price rises broke the camel’s back. Living standards have gone down and down. The middle classes have become poor, and the poor have become destitute.”
International rivalries
The military crackdown has produced an outpouring of hypocrisy from world leaders, led by President Bush, and in the international media. Speaking at the UN General Assembly on Tuesday, Bush condemned the Burmese junta and announced the imposition of new sanctions against individual leaders. British Prime Minister Gordon Brown denounced the regime as “illegitimate and repressive” while French President Nicolas Sarkozy urged the EU to impose tougher penalties against the junta. An emergency meeting of the UN Security Council was convened behind closed doors yesterday to consider the situation.
None of this has anything to do with concern for the Burmese people and their rights. Elsewhere in South Asia, the Bush administration maintains the closest of relations with the Pakistani military dictator General Pervez Musharraf and keeps a diplomatic silence on India’s police-state measures in Kashmir, the repressive activities of the military-backed regime in Bangladesh and the autocratic methods of the Sri Lankan government as it wages a vicious communal civil war.
Washington’s objection to the Burmese junta is not its repressive methods, but its close alignment with China. Burma is strategically situated between China and India, next to South East Asia and close to key shipping lanes, in particular the Malacca Straits. The country also has significant natural resources, including an estimated 3 trillion cubic metres of natural gas and 3 billion barrels of crude oil.
For Beijing, Burma is an important strategic and economic partner. China provides weapons and diplomatic support to the military and is involved in developing the country’s infrastructure. In return, Beijing is seeking rights over the country’s oil and gas as well as strategic access to Burmese ports and military bases. During the first seven months of this year, China-Burmese trade reached $US1.1 billion, up 39.4 percent compared to the same period last year.
At the same time, there is growing rivalry for influence in Burma between China and India. High-level visits by Indian officials have been on the rise, two-way trade is increasing and India has provided loans and aid to the junta in a bid to win favour. In 2004, junta leader Than Shwe was given the red carpet treatment when he became the first Burmese head of state to visit India in 24 years. This year Indian oil company ONGC made a bid to buy Burmese gas, but lost out last month to Petro-China. Thailand is also investing in a huge $6 billion hydroelectricity project.
The steady stream of articles, particularly in the US, insinuating that China is to blame for the Burmese junta and demanding action from Beijing, is not matched by similar comments about India, an increasingly close US ally, or Thailand, another military dictatorship, which enjoys tacit US backing. The Bush administration’s calls for “democracy” in Burma are a pretext to press for the installation of a pro-US regime.
The US administration is no more concerned about democratic rights and the plight of the population in Burma, than it is in Iraq. As far as Washington is concerned, the ousting of the Burmese junta is an element of a broader US strategy of encircling China, which is emerging as a key strategic and economic competitor, as well as gaining access for American corporations to Burma’s natural resources and cheap labour.

By Sujeewa Amaranath

IFJ Protests as Journalists are Counted among Victims of Burma Violence

2007-09-27T22:49:00.000-07:00

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today called on the Burmese authorities to end the violent attacks on demonstrators and journalists covering the events there following the killing of one Japanese photographer and reports of another media death and intimidation of local and foreign media.

The IFJ condemnation follows the confirmation that Kenji Nagai was one of 8 people killed during demonstrations in the capital Rangoon. The IFJ is concerned for the safety of another journalist, a German photographer who is reportedly also a victim of a shooting by security forces.

“Once again we see that it is journalists who are in the front line facing violence from unrestrained security forces dealing with peaceful protest,” said AW. It is essential that the Burmese authorities lower the temperature and allow journalists and peaceful demonstrators to exercise their right to work safely and protest peacefully.

Japanese agency APF News has confirmed the death of Kenji Nagai, who was working for the agency. The Bangkok Post reported that a German photographer covering the demonstration was also killed by security forces.

According to the BBC, a hotel in which foreign journalists have been staying in Rangoon has been surrounded and ransacked.

The IFJ is also concerned by reports that the Burmese military junta ordered Rangoon-based journals and newspapers to publish a declaration denouncing the protests. According to the Burma Media Association, the Burmese junta's director of the Press Scrutiny and Registration Division, Major Tint Swe, instructed all Burmese print media at a meeting last Sunday to publish a declaration stating they were not interested in the ongoing protest.

Authorities have issued a night-time curfew and a ban on public gatherings of more than five people, measures which will be enforced for 60 days. The protest against the military junta is the biggest since the nation-wide pro-democracy uprising of 1988 led by students, which ended in bloodshed as the military killed many of the protesters.

Develop, Displace, Forget The Poor

2007-09-25T00:32:00.000-07:00

"What else did you expect me to do?" was her reply when I asked her why she had pulled her son out of school to turn him into a child labourer. She is one of four lakh parents to have done so in Assam alone, all of them displaced in the name of national development and left to fend for themselves. Assam claims to have displaced 4,51,252 people from 3,91,773 acres between 1947 and 2000. The real figures stand at 19,09,368 people from 14,01,186 acres. West Bengal has done the same to 7 million people from 4.7 million acres in the same period. Similar numbers are found in other states .

Leave alone rehabilitation, most of them are not even seen as displaced. Assam has rehabilitated those displaced by just about 10 projects out of 3,000 and West Bengal has partially resettled around 10 percent of them. Fifty-six percent of the displaced in Assam and 49 percent in Bengal have turned their children into child labourers. When that is not possible, women sell their bodies to keep the hearth fires burning. Crime is another option.

Studies indicate that India has deprived some 60 million people of their livelihood in the name of national development. Fewer than 20 percent have been rehabilitated. Since colonial land laws continue and recognise only individual ownership, Assam has not counted the 1 million acres of common land from which it displaced 14.5 lakh tribals, Dalits and others. It has been their sustenance for centuries but the colonial laws declare it State property. The official claim that compensation is rehabilitation is untenable. But the ruling class does not have to worry about them because they are powerless. Tribals are more than 20 million of these 60 million, Dalits are 12 millions and other rural poor are some 10 million. They can be displaced and forgotten.

That is the future trend too. Nandigram and Singur hog headlines but not Navi Mumbai, other SEZs and the 2.26 lakh acres that West Bengal has committed to industries with private profit as the only criterion. One hundred and sixty eight massive dams are being planned in the Northeast. Former PM Vajpayee declared in May 2002 the dams will turn the Northeast into the powerhouse of India. Many more lakhs of people who will be impoverished by them were ignored.

Greater poverty is intrinsic to this Shining India approach. Crime for survival, prostitution and child labour are its result. Is this the only alternative or is development with a human face possible?

By WALTER FERNANDES
Fernandes is director, North Eastern Social Research Centre

Land after thirty years of 'entitlement'

2007-09-25T00:23:00.000-07:00

Story of Land Reclamation of Dalits in village Rupchandrapur

Mutuna's face was expressionless even after the greatest event of her life when she entered her field of one acre for the first time after 1976 when her husband Furtidin was given land entitlement by the then prime minister Indira Gandhi. She never knew about the place as since then they tried to occupy their land but the powerful neighbors wont allow them to map. In fact, Mutuna's issue reflect the dilemma of India's farmers movement which not only remained caged in tainted caste structure of the powerful upper castes but highly violent also. On August 11 th August, 2007 when I witnessed the whole thing, many memories of the past reminded me how the land issue would always remain violent and volatile as it affect the local power equations, unite the oppressed and give them dignity and self respect. It also shows how the powerful communities try to circumvent and subvert the due process of law by delaying and disturbing the entire process.

Ramchandra, eldest son of Furtidin informed me how the local powerful people are still creating hurdle. On the first ay when the land was being measured, I personally asked the women to take control over the land immediately as they would be trapped in saying 'come tomorrow'. Do not wait for another day, I said to them. But the question was that the local Yadava (a powerful farming community of northern India) family which has illegally grabbed that land had maze crop over the land. Now, there was tension in the area as the Dalit families wanted to occupy the land immediately while the Yadava was taking shelter under the maze crop. Immediately, all decided that Yadava must get away with this. The Dalit women asked Yadava family to collect his maze crop or face its destruction. It was an amazing site to see when a powerful exploitative family cutting their crop and behind them were Dalit women leveling the land and making the boundary wall of their portion. It was a great show of how things change if the administration is with you. When the Lekhpals and others in the village were mapping the land, there was deliberate taunting by the upper caste Hindus and the powerful people. Virtually abusing to provoke the Dalits, they would claim that the Dalits are lazy, as they never aspired to get land. ' We have tilled this land, made this concrete to a workable land, said a local Thakur. But when the land at the Yadava family's backyard was being measured, the issues, which often comes was that right now there was a maze crop and it would not be good to destroy the crop. This time, the Dalits knew it very well that such pretensions of the powerful people in the village in front of the officials results in further complicating the issue.

Ramchandra, migrated to bigger town as a labour has now decided to remain the village and cultivate his land. " I am very happy to look after my land as my two other brothers would remain in cities to earn for themselves but I will help my family and my mother.'

This story is being written over a period of one month. The gap was deliberate. Having worked in deeply crisis driven condition, I know how the official switch their loyalty and the poor has to run from pillar to post for every small thing. Once the initial work was done and the official gone, we all know, power elite will start creating the same hurdle. After all, how many times, we will come and monitor the situation. But this time around, the villagers were determined come what may and their strength were doubled by some of the outstanding workers of Bharatiya Jan Seva Ashram, Badlapur. Ms Renu, the fire brand women leader of the Ashram actually faced some of the toughest questions of her life right from the officials to rural power folks but she remained un-relented. In those trying time, her determination yielded result and now people's control over their land is complete, of course, there are certain problematic areas for which the community, the individuals have decided to go to the court.

Rupchandrapur village, which falls under Badlapur block of district Jaunpur in Eastern Uttar-Pradesh witnessed this historic land acquisition. This village is dominated by the Thakurs, the upper caste Hindus claiming to hail from Kshatriya i.e. warrior clan. It also reflect how 'efficient' our administrative system is which despite legal validity and by its own standard, it does not follow rules of the law. In 1976, the then prime minister Mrs. Indira Gandhi went for a massive sterilization programme and one of her issues was to give land entitlement to not only Dalits and Muslims but also to those who opt for the sterilization process thus adopting government's family planning programme.

74 people were given land entitlement in 1976 and the land was to be distributed through the village communal land, which is called Gram Panchayat land. These days normally land is illegally occupied by the powerful communities in the villages. Soon, the government fell in 1979 owing to massive protest against Indira Gandhi and the issue of entitlements of the poor Dalits remained unresolved. The new power equations were used by the powerful communities in their favour by forcing the officials not to visit again and provoked them to cancel the measurement under some pretext or other. Every time, an effort was made and equally resisted by the power elite of the village. Every time the Dalits asked for their land, there was complete lack of sensitivity on part of the officials who would give plenty of arguments regarding the status of their land. Government came and go and the situation at the ground remained unaltered.

One of the important factors of Dalit empowerment in India is democracy. Democracy is essentially a number game and the Dalits and other marginalized communities have understood that their number make majority and hence all of them have become politically very mobile and articulate at least in Uttar-Pradesh. In May 2007 the state saw a shift in power and a Dalit woman Maywati became the chief Minister of the state for the record fourth time.

A change in the government in Lucknow has a lot of meaning for Dalits, particularly those women and wage workers who have been denied dignity and human rights. With a Dalit woman at the thrown of Uttar-Pradesh, a new wave of energy entered into the communities. Bhartiya Jan Seva Ashram, Badlapur realized this important change and went for an all out offensive on the issue of possession being given to those who were allotted land. It approached the district authorities and asked them to take action to provide land allotment soon. In fact, this is one of the strategies used by the International land Coalition's partners here and essentially part of SDF/UPLA's land literacy programme to do village mapping, find vacant land and count the rural landless of that area and do issue based advocacy. We have found from our own experiences that issue based advocacy is far better than a generalized form of advocacy which has all ingredients of 'political manipulations and heavy dose of ideologies' and very less for the individuals who suffer from incapacities and victim hood.

We have suggested on many occasions that the organizations must have primary data of the targeted village such as the total number of people, land status, status of landless and homeless people with particularly reference of the communities such as Dalits and tribals. The Community Empowerment Facility ( CEF) programme of BJSA came handy for the same and a team of organization visited the village several time to assess the ground situation and the status of land both in term of illegal gratification as well as community wise landlessness. Once they finished their paper work, it was difficult for the authorities to deny them right as the land was already allotted to 74 Dalit families nearly 31 years back. Government machinery often makes use of the ignorance of the village people. By ignorance they mean that villagers are not 'techno savvy and do not have relevant documents. Officials are very particular about data and documents which the poor villagers do not have.

I was fortunate enough to witness this historical event when people really got land in their hand. A team of 10 land revenue officials ( Lekhpals), Revenue officer, Sub Disctrict Magistrate ( SDM) went to the village and promised the people that the land would be handed over to them. The local power community was also equally vehement in opposing but differences started coming to the fore. The head of the village Mr Shiv Naraian Singh came out openly with the Dalits and said that he would do everything to get these people land. Shiv Narian was elected Sarpanch with a large number of Dalit votes. The opposition was powerful. They questioned the motives of people getting land. A local politician who could not win a single election actually tried every attempt to thwart the land redistribution effort. Upper castes always wanted to get the Patta cancelled. There were several efforts made to redistribute the land but every time the powerful people in the village created some short of issues which ultimately restricted the authorities to go further on this issue.

Ram Bali is father of 9 children. I acre was allotted to him in 1976. Every time they went to the officers, nothing happened. There were efforts made in the past thrice to measure the land but was met with stiff resistance. The upper castes and particularly one powerful family which had controlled the entire area actually planted trees in the hope that after such a thing happen they would have unquestioned control over the land. When the pressure from the Dalits became tremendous the upper castes resorted to blackmailing. This land is now gone to the forest department. We have planted trees and we will not allow you to uproot these trees. So one can understand the kind of pulls and pressures happens in the village when the land is actually handed over the rural poor. Rambali is a happy man that finally he has got justice and that his family would be able to eat his two-time meal. We are ready to work harder to make the land workable.

Mutuna, wife of late Furtidin whose one acre land was actually being tilled by a Yadava family was satisfied that finally she has got her land. She has three sons and now she hope that the land would be sufficient enough to keep the family going.

Temmal got allotment for one acre. Every time efforts were made to give control of land to them these people try to create obstacles. They would abuse us and would not allow us to have safe passage. They have control over the work. We do not even get work under the NREGA programme.

Village Sarpanch Shiv Narian Singh, though is a upper caste Thakur yet seems to reconcile with working for the rights of the Dalits. He says', The allotment were made in 1976 but the government officials are very careless. A total 51 bighas of land was allotted that time but the powerful people of the village are still trying to occupy that land. We want to give the small ponds and other such land to landless people but problems are being created.

The village Lekhpal who actually is the villain in most of the cases says that so far 48 people have been given possession. The lekhpal also speaks like the upper castes that the Dalits normally do not take of possession saying that the land is a barren and useless land. But he threatens that if the Dalits do not take the possession of land this time, he would be forced to dismiss their entitlement.

Dulari Devi has 5 children. She ahs been waiting for this day to come as the upper caste Hindus do not allow her to reach her land. Land is bad in shape. Lot of weed has surrounded it and it would need tremendous will power to make the land working. But the positive side is that the Dalits are now doing work in their land, weeding out the trees and the grass, leveling the land. It will take time but definitely with the enthusiasm, it will not take much effort.

Ram Charan is very happy to get the land after 30 years. He plan to sow Arahar, Tori, and other vegetables.

Sangeeta says that she is a 'Dalit' and landless. She has six other male members as partner in her father in laws land. It is just one 10 th of a bighead very miniscule piece of land. She is not very happy with that. The food situation at her house is understandably very bad.

Munni Lal has two sons and one daughter. Nearly 30 years later he is now taking control of a very bad land which has thorny bushes and lengthy weed. He knows it well that to refuse taking control of an otherwise waste land would mean giving the upper castes a chance to condemn them as if they do not want it. He says, " My allotment letter gives me one acre of land which is to be distributed among the two brothers but we only got 50 decimal. It will take nearly take a month to level the land and make it workable'.

Chandrabhan, a Dalit youth working with Bhartiya Jan Seva Ashram is another happy person today. Born in a landless family, he and his brothers were not even allowed to pass through the area. While he got one acre of land yet again the power people have made mess of the land laws. He has got one fourth of his allotted land as the person who had illegally grabbed the land has manipulated things with revenue officials and done lot of changes in the land map. ' We will fight against this and go to the court to rectify it. They do not have anything to save their face after full support from BJSA and the administration and still they wanted to delay the process after many ifs and buts'. Chandrabhan has a sense of relief, as he is leveling his land and cutting the unwanted bush and weeding them out.

A Dalit woman Sukraji bi is very happy. I feel powerful today she says. ' We will work harder now and definitely grow on our land rather than working at some body else's land. When I ask her about the caste equations and untouchability in the village she says ' the upper castes now know that they can not get in untouchability directly as they would penalized but they do. When they want our votes in elections, they would come here, sit on our charpoys ( cots) and eat with us but once that is over, they refuse to sit with us and do not allow us the same at their place. She is happy that the women will change as a woman and that too from her own community is now heading the State'. How does she feel seeing a Dalit woman with her head high rules the state, I ask. " yes, we are proud that Bahinji ( elder sister, referred to chief minister Mayawati) is a very strong woman. Her elevation to power will definitely help Dalits and women to get their honour and pride.'

While there is absolute truth in Sukraji's statement as here too in Rupchandrapur, it is women like Renu who made it possible that the land is transferred to the Dalits. She along with other women activists ensures that the officials do not play foul under some pretext or others which she had been facing. Some time, the illegal land grabber who was a local leader said that the land is now under forest department as he has planted Babul trees while on other occasion he made other pretensions. Some time it was provocations and abuses while other time threatening them with dire consequences. All this failed under the determined women's group of Bharatiya Jan Seva Ashram. They now plan to speak to district authorities to grant some funds under the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to the Dalits of Rupchandrapur to level their land and make it cultivable.
The change in power equations have shown their first result though in a small way in Rupchandrapur where the 74 Dalits are now enjoying their land, though with much difficulty of crude exploitative social system which remain shameless even in these times of democracy yet it shows that officials if work persistently and honestly can really do the needful for the power. It is hard to believe that they would change over night but strong signals from the power structure can change their attitude towards rural poor. Another important point for the rural poor is to grab the opportunity of whatever comes in their hand and continue their fight for the rest as snatching land from the hands of then power elite is very difficult as they have not only administration and political leadership with them but also make use of laws. It is advisable to continue our fight and make use of whatever comes in our hand to make our way to the land we have waited for so long. Land is not only matter of laws but a matter of attitude of the law makers and law implementing agencies and sooner they learn it the better it would be for the people. Rupchandrapur is a great lesson for us in this regard.

By Vidya Bhushan Rawat

IFJ Warns over US Detention of Al-Jazeera Cameraman

2007-09-24T23:18:00.000-07:00

IFJ Warns over US Detention of Al-Jazeera Cameraman, Calls for International Campaign for His Release

The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ) today issued a new call for the immediate release of Al-Jazeera cameraman, Sami al-Haj, the only journalist being held by the United Sates in Guantanamo Bay, after his lawyers described him in “a serious physical and mental decline,” following a 250-day hunger strike.

Sudan-born Sami Muhyideen al-Haj has been held at Guantanamo since he was picked up at the Pakistan/Afghanistan border in December 2001. He has been tortured and accused of terrorism offences, although he has never been charged or brought to trial.

“Our colleague’s health is rapidly deteriorating and his relatives now fear for his life. The time has come for journalists all over the world to take up his case and join the campaign to get him freed” said IFJ President Jim Boumelha.

Al-Haj began his hunger strike on 7 January 2007, the fifth anniversary of his incarceration without trial. His lawyer, Stafford Smith, who last visited his client in July, said al-Haj, has lost 18kg (40lb), is losing his memory and is “fixated on his death.”

Al-Haj has been accused without proof of having interviewed Osama bin Laden and to have been involved in arms trafficking for Islamic terrorists.

The US alleges that he worked as a financial courier for Chechen rebels, and that he assisted al-Qaeda and extremist figures He has been held on the basis of secret evidence; he has not been convicted or even charged with a crime. And until last year the military would not even acknowledge he was in custody.

Boumelha made a special call to British journalists asking them to highlight al-Haj’s plight in the same way they supported BBC correspondent Alan Johnston during his captivity in Gaza adding, “Al-Haj had no history in terrorism and the US authorities have not been able to produce any credible evidence. They should either put him on trial or release him.”

Myanmar monks stage biggest anti-junta march

2007-09-24T03:01:00.000-07:00

YANGON (Reuters) - At least 5,000 monks and nuns, applauded by thousands of onlookers, marched in Yangon on Sunday, the largest demonstration yet in Myanmar in a rare wave of protests against the ruling generals.
A day after a dramatic appearance of support for the marchers by detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi, monks prayed at the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, devoutly Buddhist Myanmar's holiest shrine, then marched through the city.

About 100 nuns joined one band of more than 2,000 monks, then marched to the centre of the former capital.

It was one of five protest marches by monks in the city and there were at least two in Mandalay, a major centre of the monkhood, ahead of a quarterly summit of the generals who have ruled the former Burma for 45 years.

There were no signs of trouble at Sunday's protests.

Plainclothes police kept watch, but there were no uniformed officers or soldiers in sight and people on the streets applauded as the marchers passed.

Protest marches by monks have become more regular, a sign that what began as civilian anger at last month's shock fuel price rises is becoming a more deep-rooted religious movement against the generals.

In New York, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice expressed sympathy for the protesters and denounced the military.

"The Burmese people deserve better. They deserve (the) right to be able to live in freedom, just as everyone does," she said.

"The brutality of this regime is well known and so we'll be speaking about that and I think the President (George W. Bush) will be speaking about it as well," she told reporters.
The mood was cheerful in Yangon, with many people seeing the emergence of Suu Kyi from her lakeside villa as a sign the military, which has put down a 1988 uprising ruthlessly, was being flexible.

"OVERWHELMING"

It was the first time she had been seen in public since her latest detention began in May 2003. For many onlookers, already stunned by police allowing marching monks through the barricades sealing off her street, it was overwhelming.

Wearing an orange blouse and a traditional wraparound skirt, she emerged from a small door in the iron gate to the house, her hands held palm to palm in a gesture of Buddhist supplication.
"Some of us could not control our tears," one witness told Reuters after 1,000 monks held a 15-minute prayer vigil at the house to which Suu Kyi is confined with no telephone and needing official permission, granted rarely, to receive visitors.

However, on Sunday, the barbed-wire barricade at the entrance to her street was reinforced by four fire engines, several police vans and dozens of police carrying riot shields who refused to allow a group of 200 marching monks through.

News of Suu Kyi's appearance incident spread rapidly on a day when the monks marched despite Yangon being lashed by 11.54 inches (29.31 cm) of rain, the highest recorded in 39 years.

"The monks showed their courage, strong determination and discipline while the regime showed flexibility," a retired government official said. "I think this incident has shown us that we can sort out any problem among us amicably."

The generals are due to hold a quarterly summit in their new capital of Naypyidaw, carved out of the jungle, perhaps as early as Monday. Dealing with the protests is sure to top the agenda.
The protests, which began on August 19 after huge fuel price increases prompted a midnight round up of the democracy activists who organised them and now face up to 20 years in jail, appear far from over.

On Sunday, a group of monks, one of them wielding a bullhorn, chanted a new slogan: "Our uprising must succeed".

A group calling itself the All Burma Monks Alliance urged ordinary people for the first time "to struggle peacefully against the evil military dictatorship" until its downfall.

By Aung Hla Tun

Seeds Of Distress: Story Of Cotton Seed Growers In AP

2007-09-23T23:56:00.000-07:00

Distress in Cotton cultivation is extended its boundaries and reached to Cotton seed production. The area under Cotton seed production is on a shrinking trend. This can be attributed to the exploitive nature of companies. Farmer both as a consumer and producer of seed is exploited by the seed companies. Farmer as a consumer of seed has to pay more price and inturn he is getting less price for his seeds. To get maximum yields companies promoting input intensive methods in seed production. These methods increases cost of cultivation and made seed production labor intensive activity. After a tedious work cotton growers getting very little profits which lead the farmers into distress.
Hybrid cottonseed production is concentrated in Andhra Pradesh which alone account for 62% of the total seed production in India. Within AP, nearly 90% of seed production is concentrated in Mahaboobnagar and Kurnool districts. Area under cotton seed production in these two districts is around 14,000 acres. Though seed production is carried out in most of the mandals in these districts there is high concentration of seed production in Gadwal, Dharur, Maldakal, Gattu, Iza, Atmakur, Jadcharla in Mahaboobnagar and Allagadda, Nandhyala, Sanjamala, Koillkuntla, banaganapalli, Uyyalawada, Emmiganur, Mantralayam, Kodumur mandals in Kurnool districts.
The other districts where cottonseed production is carried out are Randareddy in Telangana and West Godavary, Krishna, and Vijayanagaram in Coastal Andhra region and Kadapa in Rayalaseema. The basic reason for concentration of seed production in this region is availability of cheap labour and also suitability of climatic conditions.
Monsanto, JK seeds, Rasi seeds, Krishidhan, Ankur, Nandi, Nuzuveedu seeds etc are the major players in Cotton seed production. According to one seed organiser (middleman between Seed Company and farmer) there are around 10 companies involved in Cotton seed production. Companies develop their seed programmes prior to the season based on their market analysis. These seed companies work with seed organizers for implementing their seed programme. There is no direct link between seed companies and farmers, but the companies will make an agreement with farmer for supply of the predetermined quantity of seed. This agreement is made between company, seed organiser and seed grower.
Seed production activities broadly can be divided into three stages. Farmer's responsibility is to submit the seeds which are passed all the GOT tests. The first stage includes production at farmer's field, second stage includes the processing at ginning mills and the third stage includes seed treatment with chemicals and packing. Farmer is involved up-to the second stage and third stage will be done by the companies themselves. All the costs involved up-to second stage will be bared by the farmers.
In many places seed production activities begin in the month of April and ends in December. These activities will be beginning with making a contract with the seed organizer for producing certain quantity of seed of a particular company. Farmers are generally not aware of the variety of seed which he is going to produce and even he is not aware whether it is a breeder seed or foundation seed or it is Bt or Non-Bt seed. This contact is made between the farmer, seed organizer and the company. Usually after signing the contract seed organizer will supply the money to the farmer as advance (credit @2% interest) for inputs. This advance will vary from Rs.20, 000/- to Rs.40, 000/- depend on the trust between farmer and seed organizer. There are no formal bond papers etc for this credit. This system is entirely depending on faith.
Seeds will be supplied by the seed organizer on cost basis to the farmer. Cost of a packet of foundation seed of 450grs packet is around Rs.2000/-. Seed rate is 900grs (two packets). Male lines and female lines were sown separately. In case of Bt certain companies are keeping male lines as Bt and female lines as Non-Bt and others are using vice versa.
In the entire seed production "seed organiser" plays a vital role. The basic qualification to become a seed organiser is to supply the required credit to the farmers. This amount ranges from Rs.20, 000/- to Rs 40, 000/- . Some times, small companies will supply the money to seed organizers. The interest rates are fixed and from the company to seed organiser and it is 1% and from seed organiser to seed grower it is 2%.
The entire credit system runs on the basis of trust. There are no bond papers between any one of them. The amount of credit is depends on the trust between the seed organiser and seed grower. Each seed grower has dealings with 4-5 companies. There are around 200-250 seed organizers in both these districts. Most of the time seed organisers are not disclosing any details of the seed to the growers.
In addition to the credit supply, seed organisers also give extension support to the growers. Under each organizer there are 3-4 people for monitoring the fields. Companies pay the organisers for monitoring; this payment varies from company to company and ranges from Rs.1/- to Rs. 5/- per packet of seed produced. This means on average he will get around Rs.400/- to Rs.2000/- per acre (by assuming average yield is 400packets/acre). In addition to the supervision costs he will also get Rs.20/packet as commission.
Extension support provided by the seed organizer is basically about spraying of pesticides and fertilizers. They always suggest farmer to use more and more fertilizers and pesticides. Interestingly most of the seed organizers also have fertilizer and pesticide shops. This extension support increases the cost of cultivation and ultimately pushes the farmer into distress.
In addition to the seed organisers extension support, some companies also organizing trainings for farmers to get maximum yields and in all these trainings they advocate dumping of fertilizers and pesticides. One example for this is Monsanto's -Target 400. Farmers who followed these practices and using more and more inputs to get higher yields, ends at higher cost of cultivation and distress among the seed growers.
The entire seed production activities are labor and input intensive. It needs around 620 labor days spread across 120 days of seed production. Out of this 620 labor days 300 are for crossing. Labor costs accounts for Rs.50, 000/- per acre. To achieve higher yields farmers usually apply more fertilizers than commercial Cotton cultivation. Around 15- 20 bags of fertilizers, which includes Urea, DAP, Potash and other fertilizers are also applied. Proportion of DAP and Potash is more when compared to Urea. These costs accounts for Rs.7, 000/- per acre. Farmers use more pesticides to avoid any damage to the bolls and seeds. They use all kinds of pesticides and all most all stages of crop growth. The cost of pesticides accounts for Rs.10, 000/-. The total cost of seed production varies between Rs.80, 000/- to Rs.85, 000/-.
Scarcity of labor, increased labor costs and child labor are the major concerns in cotton seed production. Migrations of labor to work at constructions of irrigation projects and to urban areas are the major factor for scarcity of labor. Due to NREGP and the intense agriculture activities, as a result of timely rains are responsible for increased labor costs. According to U.Venkatesh of Bingidoddi "farmers don't have any other option but to withdraw from seed production as the cost of seed production increased tremendously due to labor costs".
Engaging child labor is still continuing even though companies are giving incentives for the farmers who avoid child labor in their fields. Companies paying only Rs.15/- per packet in the name of incentive, which is insufficient to meet the additional costs bared by the farmer for hiring adult labor. This incentive accounts for Rs.6000/ - (if the farmer gets a yield of 400 packets) but the additional cost incurred by the farmer for hiring adult labor for crossing is around Rs.21, 000/-. According to U.Venkatesh of Bingidoddi "companies are forcing farmer to use adult labor by sending NGO people and police, but they are not paying the required amounts for hiring adult labor, this effort is pushing the farmers into more troubles rather than resolving the issue".
After harvesting, farmers dry the fiber for one week to ten days. Farmers are allotted specific dates by the organizer to take their produce to the ginning mills. Few companies have their own ginning mills but most of the companies depend on the private ginning mills. In ginning mills processing is done by ginning, delinting, cleaning, GOT and treatment. The entire cost incurred at this stage will bared by the farmer. Farmer presence is must for the entire process. Farmer has to pay Rs750/- per quintal as the service charge to ginning mill, Rs 400/- as wages. The total costs accounts for Rs. 1150/- per quintal. If farmer has a yield of 8quintols he has to pay Rs.9, 200/- .Companies will pay the amount to the farmer only after passing all the tests and it will take two to three months time. Up-to this time farmer has to pay the interest to the seed organizer. The interest amount may reach a minimum of Rs.4, 000/- per acre.
Farmers who are producing cotton seeds are spending around Rs. 85,000/- per acre and in turn they are getting Rs.96, 000/- (if they get 400 packets per acre) which mans a net income of Rs.11, 000/-. If we look at the total economics of seed production it is clearly visible that companies exploiting the farmer at all the stages. Companies supply the foundation seed not only at a higher rate but also at low quantity packets. Farmer has to supply 750gr packets at a cost of Rs.240/- but the companies will sold the seeds at Rs. 800/- per packet of 450grs. According to U.Venkatesh of Bingidoddi "there is not much change in the price paid by the companies to the farmers in last ten years, but the selling price of companies was hiked many times".
The economics of Bt Cotton seed production is also the same as Non Bt cotton seed production even though companies promoting Bt Cotton is more profitable. According to the seed growers even though Boll worm incidence was reduced, other minor pests particularly sucking pests incidence was increased and the costs was increased at the same proportion.
The more dangerous trend in Cotton seed production is the encroachment of Bt seed production, which leads to termination of the farmer's rights on seed. One can visualize easily that with in a very short span of time extinction of all other varieties and hybrids. In the entire Cotton seed production belt of Andhra Pradesh, not even a single acre is under hybrids or verities other than Bt Cotton. This has serious implications on erosion of varieties, farmer's knowledge on breeding methods and economics. Loss of rights on seed means loss of Rs.11, 00 crores (share of cotton seed industry in India).
In these two districts we met many farmers and all of them explained their problems in detail. All of them expressed their desire to withdraw from the seed production. Some farmers are not able to with draw from seed production due to their debt trap. It is very clear from the study that there is an urgent need for shift to farmer centric seed production from company centric seed production.

By K. Jayaram
(K.Jayaram, is an agriculture economist working with Centre for Sustainable Agriculture, Hyderabad based NGO, working for sustainable agriculture. The author can be contacted at jayaramcsa@gmail.com)

Leftists Should Take Care Of Peace And True Democracy

2007-09-23T23:52:00.000-07:00

After a decade long bloodbath Nepali people had started hoping, a genuine hope for peace and for meaningful democracy. It was not only good news for Nepalese but also for the peace loving people of neighbouring country. As we al know that Nepali King Gyanendra was forced to surrender his powers in April 2006 after the Maoists and other Communist and democratic forces joined forces with a coalition of seven political parties in a sustained campaign of street protests against his direct rule. Afterwards an interim government was formed accommodating the Maoist in the cabinet, fixed a roadmap to general election and constitutional reform to abolish monarchy had been adopted unanimously. Suddenly, on 18th September the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) quitted the interim government demanding the immediate abolition of the monarchy ahead of constituent assembly elections due to be held in November. International Herald Tribune reported on 20th September that Nepal's former communist rebels refused to rejoin the coalition government despite efforts by the ruling parties, which is going to deepening the Himalayan nation's political crisis.
Prime Minister Girjia Prasad Koirala called an emergency meeting of leaders of the ruling alliance and the former rebels, who just walked out of the government on 18th September after it failed to meet several of their demands, in an attempt to overcome the crisis.
Despite the demand from the Nepalese Prime Minister that his initiative to overcome the crisis was sincere enough, but still there is a doubt. As Mr. Koirala had taken a firm line in refusing to bow to the Maoists' demand that King Gyanendra be stripped of his title and the monarchy abolished. That’s why one of the Maoists in the interim cabinet, Krishna Bahadur Mahara, blamed Prime Minister Girija Prasad Koirala for the breakdown in talks. Also Iswor Pokhrel, of the United Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Nepal, another major partner in the coalition said the prime minister asked Prachanda, the head of the CPN (Maoist), to reverse the decision to withdraw from the government. Prachanda said he would discuss the matter with his party colleagues and reply later. However, according to reports of many Nepalese news media, primarily the negotiation process has not yet been succeeded.
Previous political history of Nepal clearly indicates that this failure of the political process will again invite conflicting consequences in Nepal. Although the former Maoist minister Mr Mahara ruled out any return to armed conflict and said that they will focus on peaceful protests to meet their demands. Nevertheless, the Maoists warned they would begin street protests, organize a general strike and boycott an upcoming election for a Constituent Assembly that will decide the country's future political system and rewrite its Constitution. Therefore, it is quite normal that the ordinary people of Nepal are seriously worried after the Maoist withdrawal from the cabinet as because the previous nightmare is still alive in their mind. Leading Nepalese newspaper Katmandu Post signaled on 20th September that there is a high probability of Army deployment countrywide if the Maoist does not change their mind.
Therefore, the present political scenario clearly indicates further havoc in this impoverished country. That will definitely devastate the national economy, foreign trade, especially tourism industry of Nepal. Moreover, it will also negatively influence the business with its neighboring countries. If the peace initiative fails, innocent people of Nepal will pay the ultimate cost for democracy. Because gun is always not the answer. Necessarily, this will not strengthen the support base for the CPN (Maoist). The current action taken by CPN (Maoist) has been criticized by some Nepalese analyst as ‘anxiety disorder’. According to them ‘they have lost the self-confidence to face the general public, mainly due to their past activities’.
For this reason it is the high time for the Nepali Maoists to win over the peoples mind and prove themselves as true peace lover and to achieve their ultimate goal in a democratic manner.Because the there are conspiracies from imperialist forces to portray the leftists of Nepal as undemocratic.

By Hasan Tarique Chowdhury
[Hasan Tarique Chowdhury: Secretary, Bangladesh Peace Council. Email: htarique@gmail.com]

जेल जाने के डर से चुप नहीं रहा जा सकता

2007-09-23T23:20:00.000-07:00

इलीना सेन की पहचान डॉ विनायक सेन की पत्नी के बजाय एक सक्रिय मानवाधिकार और सामाजिक कार्यकर्ता के रूप में अधिक है. चार माह पहले जब डॉ विनायक सेन को छत्तीसगढ़ सरकार ने गिरफ्तार किया था तो आशंका जतायी जा रही थी कि इलीना सेन को भी गिरफ्तार किया जा सकता है. डॉ विनायक सेन के आरोपपत्र की जो भाषा थी, उससे साफ पता चलता है कि सरकार और प्रशासन बेहद विनम्र इस महिला के बारे में क्या धारणा रखती है. शनिवार को इलीना सेन पटना में थीं. उनसे प्रभात खबर के लिए की गयी बातचीत के कुछ हिस्से यहां प्रस्तुत कर रहा हूं.

पीयूसीएल के राष्ट्रीय उपाध्यक्ष विनायक सेन कोई अनजाना नाम नहीं रह गया है. उन्हें गत मई में नक्सलियों का समर्थक होने के आरोप में गिरफ्तार कर लिया गया. इलीना सेन बताती हैं कि असल में डॉ सेन छत्तीसगढ़ में मानवाधिकारों पर हमलों, कारपोरेट लूट, सरकारी दमन के खिलाफ लगातार बोलते रहे. सलवा जुडूम के बारे में सबसे पहले डॉ सेन की ही पहल पर जांच की गयी और लोगों को पता चला कि आदिवासियों पर किस तरह आतंक थोप दिया गया है. इन सब कारणों से डॉ सेन सरकार के निशाने पर थे.

सेन ने डॉ सेन पर लगाये गये आरोपों को असंबद्ध और बकवास बताया. उन्होंने बताया कि पुलिस ने एक सबूत यह दिया कि राजनांदगांव में मुठभेड़ के बाद भागे नक्सलियों से छूटे दस्तावेजों में डॉ सेन का नाम था. मगर जो दस्तावेज प्रस्तुत किया गया, वह धुंधला (दिखने में अस्पष्ट) था. जब पुलिस से कहा गया कि वह मूल प्रति दिखाये तो उसने बताया कि मूल प्रति (जो मिली वह) तो है ही नहीं. इसी तरह एक और आरोप डॉ सेन के ऊपर लगाया गया कि वे माओवादी नेता नारायण सान्याल से जेल में मिलते थे और उनकी चिटि्ठयां भाकपा (माओवादी) तक पहुंचाते थे, जिसके कारण माओवादी अपनी गतिविधियां जारी रखे हुए थे. इलीना सेन ने प्रतिप्रश्न किया कि जेल सुपरिटेंडेंट की अनुमति से जेलर के सामने वे मुलाकातें हुईं, ऐसे में क्या यह संभव था?

इलीना सेन ने कहा कि जब माओवादियों की तरफ से आम नागरिकों के प्रति हिंसा होती है तो हम उसे भी कंडेम करते हैं. छत्तीसगढ़ में गृहयुद्ध चल रहा है और ऐसे में पुलिसिया कार्रवाई करके कुछ भी हासिल नहीं किया जा सकता. छत्तीसगढ़ की जनता भूखी है, उसे कोई बुनियादी सुविधा मुहैया नहीं है, न स्वास्थ्य, न शिक्षा. ऐसे में वह क्या करे अगर वह दखल न दे? राज्य के अनेक इलाकों में लोग बहुत न्यूनतम स्तर का जीवन जीते हैं. यही वे इलाके हैं, जहां माओवादियों की पकड़ लगातार मजबूत हुई है. आज़ादी के बाद से 60 साल बीत गये. लोग कब तक धीरज धरे रहेंगे? वे कुछ न कुछ तो करेंगे ही.

इलीना सेन ने महिलाओं के शोषण को उजागर करने में काफी काम किया है. उनका कहना है कि राज्य में महिलाओं की स्थिति बेहद खराब है. सलवा जुडूम और दूसरी कार्रवाइयों में उन पर अत्याचार और बढ़ा है. स्वास्थ्य की स्थिति तो बहुत खराब है. उनमें भारी कुपोषण है. जो आजीविका के साधन थे इलाके के लोगों के, वे चौपट हो गये हैं. सैन्य बल महिलाओं का काफी शोषण करते हैं. 100 से ज्यादा मामले सिर्फ हमने दर्ज किये हैं- और न दर्ज हो पानेवाले मामलों की संख्या इससे कहीं ज्यादा होगी. सरकार महिलाओं के लिए कुछ नहीं करती. बस चटनी-आचार बनाने के प्रशिक्षण दिये जाते हैं, पर वह कोई समाधान नहीं है.

इलीना सेन बताती हैं कि सलवा जुडूम के दौरान उजाड़े गये लोगों को जिन सरकारी राहंत कैंपों में रखा गया था, उन कैंपों को स्थायी राजस्व ग्राम में बदले जाने की बात आयी है. और इन राहत कैंपों में रहनेवाले जिन गांवों को छोड़ कर आये हैं वे उजाड़ दिये गये गांव एमएनसीज को दे दिये जायेंगे. असल में सलवा जुडूम अभियान ही इसीलिए चलाया गया था कि जमीनें खाली हों तो उन्हें बहुराष्ट्रीय कंपनियों को दिया जाये. लोहंडीगुडा में आदिवासी ग्राम सभा ने जमीन बेचने की अनुमति नहीं दी तो फर्ज़ी ग्रामसभा बना कर उससे अनुमति दिला दी गयी. अब कहा जा रहा है कि एक बार ग्रामसभा ने अनुमति दे दी तो दोबारा उस पर विचार नहीं किया जा सकता. स्थानीय लोग इसका विरोध कर रहे हैं तो उन्हें माओवादी बताया जा रहा है, जबकि वे सीपीआइ से जुडे़ हुए हैं.

इलीना सेन बताती हैं कि राज्य में बौद्धिक माहौल में गिरावट आयी है. कोई भी सरकार के और इन कार्रवाइयों के विरोध में बोलना नहीं चाहता. उनलोगों को लगता है कि ग्लोबलाइजेशन से उन्हें फायदा है.इलीना सेन के अनुसार डॉ सेन इतने सिंपल हैं कि उनके बारे में यह सोचा भी नहीं जा सकता कि वे हिंसक कार्रवाइयों को सपोर्ट कर सकते हैं.

इलीना सेन थोड़ा हंसती हैं-डॉ सेन की चार्ज शीट की जो भाषा है उस पर. उसमें कहा गया है कि डॉ सेन का काम डॉक्टरी रूप से शून्य है. इलीना बताती हैं कि जब छत्तीसगढ़ बना था तो पहली सरकार ने राज्य में स्वास्थ्य सेवाओं में सुधार के लिए जो सलाहकार समिति बनायी थी, उसमें डॉ सेन एक प्रमुख सलाहकार थे (इलीना सेन भी उस समिति की सदस्य थीं). अब यह भाजपा सरकार आयी है तो इसे पता ही नहीं कि उनका डॉक्टरी योगदान क्या है.

पूरे छत्तीसगढ़ की स्थिति पर इलीना सेन ने कहा कि सरकार सैन्यीकरण को बढ़ा रही है. युवाओं के लिए सारे अवसर बंद हैं. केवल सेना में नौजवानों की भरती हो रही है. बड़ा बजट है नक्सलियों को खत्म करने का. नक्सली समस्या है तो कइयों को फायदा है इससे. स्थास्थ्य बजट से अधिक का बजट है नक्सली उन्मूलन का.

कहा जाता है कि वहां सीआरपीएफ लोगों की सुरक्षा के लिए हैं. जो उनकी चौकियां हैं उनमें बाहर एसपीओ रहते हैं और उनके सुरक्षा घेरे में सीआरपीएफ. एसपीओ तो स्थानीय लोग ही बनते हैं. आप देखिए कि कौन किसकी सुरक्षा कर रहा है.मानवाधिकार कार्यकर्ताओं पर बढ़ती दमनात्मक कार्रवाइयों से चिंतित इलीना सेन कहती हैं कि जेल जाने का शौक किसी को नहीं होता. अगर कोई गलत काम होता है तो उस पर जेल जाने के डर से चुप भी नहीं रहा जा सकता. पीयूसीएल के पास जो भी रास्ते हो सकते हैं, उन्हें वह अपना रहा है अपना विरोध दर्ज कराने के लिए.

Response From An Ordinary Indian Citizen To Mr. Vishwaranjan

2007-09-23T23:13:00.000-07:00

After his detailed seven part interview with Daily Chhattisgarh, I was glad to see Chhattisgarh DGP, Mr. Vishwaranjan's article that appeared in this newspaper on 15th September. I am highly impressed by his deep knowledge of naxalism, police and the history of this country in general as is evident from that interview. Although I don't agree with him on most of the points of the latter article "ardh satya, tadarth chintan and rumaniyat se pare naxalwaad ka satya", it is rare in this country that one sees a top ranking government official responding to public questions and criticisms. I have heard from a lot of people that Mr. Vishwaranjan is one of the most brilliant police officers in the country and the fact that the DGP took time to present his views publicly, proves that assertion once again. A person is judged by not what he/she believes in, but how he/she reacts to the people with oppossing views.
I have pointed out that I don't agree with him. Let me specify why and how. Firstly, I am surprised to see Mr. Visharanjan say that, 'ordinary indians is used to static thinking and can be easily misled '. I am responding as a very ordinary Indian citizen. The entire Chhattisgarh police's salary, as well as the money for campaigns like Salwa Judum, comes from the taxes paid by this 'ordinary Indian citizen'. Hence to term them as static and nonserious is not only an affront to democracy; it is actually questioning one's own infallibility. As an ordinary Indian, I would not mind my taxes to fund any genuine anti-insurgent operations, I would encourage higher salaries and better facilities for the police who are working for my safety, and would be glad if more money is pumped into improving infrastructure, health and education of all Indians, especially in naxal affected areas. But this is not what I see from the ground. What I do mind is if my money is being used to fund arson, rapes and murders of innocent villagers in the name of Salwa Judum. There has been several serious allegations against this movement, which I found convincing enough to distress me a lot. If even 1 percent of those are true, then my culpability in the crime increases if I don't speak up against the wrongs. Forget about Salwa Judum for a moment, there are rape allegations against one of the top district police officers of Chhattisgarh, and I as an ordinary citizen, haven't seen any action taken against that particular 'alleged rapist police officer'. Assuming that most of the policemen/women in Chhattisgarh are honest, upright and hardworking, what can be more demoralizing for them than such serious charges not being acted upon against one of their senior officers? How can morale be kept up in any department if an "alleged rapist" is promoted and preserved?
I have also seen the video of Chhattisgarh police hitting old men and women using their shoes in Ambikapur a couple of months back. Being a student of psychology, I know about the famous Milgram's obedience experiment conducted during 1961-1964. The results of the experiment was that "Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority". In other words, given an explicit order from an authority, normal people will rather follow the order, than ponder about the moral and legal obligations of it. That explains much of the behaviour of the police in Ambikapur. Most of the times whenever such injustice happens, it happens because "orders came from the top". So, if people at the top are not being acted against, then nothing can be more damaging in sinking the morale of an ordinary policeman/woman. This disgruntlement can then be used by forces like naxalites to further their agenda. Like NGOs, the police become equally vulnerable to infiltration by the naxalites. How equipped is our police in handling such scenarios?
It is also puzzling to see Mr. Vishwaranjan define strategic hamletting as segregating the part of the population that supports the army, and use them to enclose the rebels from all four sides to cut their supply lines. He is wrong!!! Being an ordinary citizen, who unlike his claim does not look for easy ways out, and who is also not scared of technical terms, let me clarify the true meaning of this term. Internationally, strategic hamlets as a military strategy have only one meaning, as defined and implemented by british military strategist RKG Thompson in Malaya. In the years during 1948 to 1960, he "took villages and fortified them, and then controlled the flow of rice and food and ammunition and so on and so forth". Since then this tactic has been used across the world, most notably by the US during the Vietnam War. Initially, like in Malaya, the villages were fortified with barbed wire fences erected around them and heavy security were deployed around these fortified villages. When this was not found to be working because of the sheer volume of the villages, the people were forcefully shifted to many designated camps in Vietnam-Cambodia border. The basic aim of strategic hamletting was/is "isolating the rural population from the (Viet Cong) communist guerrillas". These camps were notorious for keeping their inmates in forced detention inside and that was the reason the whole program failed miserably and the eventual defeat of the US in that war. How different is Salwa Judum? Why is it that all public amenities in the other side of the Indravati river has been suspended since the start of Salwa Judum? I have seen sworn affidavits from the people living there. Why is it that the people living in villages are not allowed to come to the haats? Why do they need to go to as far as Narayanpur to get a packet of salt?
I am not sure if somewhere in some police or home ministry office, someone actually sat down and said, "Aha!! Look, this thing called Strategic Hamlets is a nice little thing that the americans had tried in Vietnam against the communist guerillas. Let's do the same thing here in Dantewada". Such a meeting might not have ever happenned. What I do know is that there is a remarkable similarity between the acts and execution of Salwa Judum with what we read/hear about Strategic Hamlet program. People are forced to shift in designated camps. The camps are fortified. Those who don't come to camps are attacked. The people who choose to live in villages have their houses burnt down, their crops destroyed, hitting them economically. All connections between those living in the villages and the outer world are systematically broken down. All allegations are summarily dismissed as naxal propaganda.
(For more details please read JFK's biography 'To Move a Nation: The Politics of Foreign Policy in the Administration of John F. Kennedy' by Kennedy's pointsman in Vietnam and one time advocate of strategic hamlet program Roger Hilsman. The pentagon papers describe what went wrong in Vietnam in quiet detail. Also see "The Vietnamese 'Strategic Hamlets': A preliminary report" by Donnell and Gerald and 'The Journal of Strategic Studies 1947-1972' by Sylvia Potter)
The DGP also points out that there is little similarity between Darfur crisis and Salwa Judum. David Loyn of BBC, who visited both Dantewada and Darfur was the first person to point out the similarities between the two. It might be too simplistic to claim that Darfur crisis is nothing but sectoral violence between two ethnic groups of Arab and Black muslims, as does the Sudanese government. I am sad to see our DGP's summary dismissal of this most reprehensible genocide in Darfur. Like Dantewada, the roots of the problem lie in the years of neglect that the Darfur province faced in the hands of Sudanese government. Darfur had a massive famine in 1983-84 killing thousands of people, and that laid the seeds of rebellion. (Bastar also had a famine in 1966-67 during which popular Raja Pravir Chandra Bhanj Deo was killed in a police firing). Water, a precious resource in Sahara lies in the root of the conflict. After two rebel groups started an armed uprising in 2003, the Janjaweed, that is a ragtag bunch of private goons with sophisticated arms, attacked the entire population. Janjaweed would burn the entire villages. They would rape the women, and kill at random. The rebels of Darfur also suppressed the people, but their attrocities appear tame when compared to that done by Janjaweed. Janjaweed would, after burning the villages and doing their loot, take possession of the limited number of water points. On monday, 17th September, UN Secretary general said that "this region's future also depends on supplies of water". The kind of stories that came from Darfur is not very dissimilar to what the people of Dantewada are saying in sworn affidavits. Why did the Darfur crisis aggravate so much that around 200000 people killed and 2.5 million people are living in refugee camps of Chad. Of course, the scale of casualties in Dantewada in last two and a half years is nowhere close to what's happenned in Darfur. But the politics and philosophy behind the crisis is the same.
The philosophy is that of "arming local resistance groups". In May 2005, the top Janjaweed leader, Musa Hilal, admitted that his militia was funded and supported by the Sudanese national government. He said that in many regions, it was the government that backed and directed the militia activities. This has been proven as fact in numerous international fact finding missions. It is this philosophy of forming, arming and supporting private armies to do the state's bidding, is what sets the parallels between Salwa Judum and the events across the globe. Another place where such things were successfully tried is in Peru in the 90s, where its ex-president, Alberto Fujimori armed private gangs to suppress a maoist kind of uprising in that country. Last month Fujimori was proclaimed a human rights offender in his country, and is now an absconder from Peru. Why would the state ever arm and support private militia? Is the police not smart, capable and equipped enough to fight insurgency? In almost all cases, these untrained and unaccountable private militias are recruited to do the dirty job. The jobs that the state armed forces cannot do because of international obligations and the limits imposed by the constitution of India. Who are these private armies accountable to?
Let me remind the DGP that such tactics, although might seem to give results in short term, they have always had disastrous consequences in the end. The private militia always had proven to be a larger headache than the original rebellion. Like, in Sierra Leone, the private militia turned into a private army doing the bidding for diamond giant Debeers. They solved by force the conflicts that the international diamond company had with the local population. What is the future of Salwa Judum? What will the SPO do after, let's suppose, the naxalites are driven out of Bastar. Will they be regularised in the police force? Or will they end up doing the bidding for Tata and Essar, two organisations that have already turned notorious in Bastar for cheating the public.
Six years ago, George W Bush asked the world to choose between liberty, freedom and democracy on one side and mass murder, slaughter of innocents and terrorism on the other. But using his excuse of protecting liberty, promoting freedom and preserving democracy, Mr. Bush soon turned his attention towards the oil-rich Iraq even before the attack on Al-Qaeda could reach a logical conclusion. Some American companies considered close to the republicans, like Haliburton (the oil company), Blackwater (the private security group) , Dyncorp and CACI, to name a few, benefited immensely from this war. But Al Qaeda has gotten stronger, America is more hated now, and more than 1 million Iraqis lost their lives in the ensuing years.
Whatever genuine might be his intentions, we don't want to be led down that path ever again. Mr. Vishwaranjan asked us to take our pick between ''constitution and democracy' vs 'people who want to destroy it using violence'. There is going on a very prominent civil war in Dantewada district of Chhattisgarh in the name of Naxalism and Salwa Judum. All of us have a right to know who the real beneficiaries are in this civil war. The stories of Essar and Tata steel plants, essar funds for Salwa Judum camps, their mining leases, the MOUs being kept under wraps, the forced, undemocratic and unconstitutional acquisition of land for these plants, the arrests, the murders, the rapes, and the brazenness of the whole affair might give us some clues.
Being an unabashed constitutionalist and democrat myself like our DGP, I wish chhattisgarh police all the success in their war against the naxalites. I would also offer all my technical expertise in helping the police in their fight. But, just like you cannot have sex to preserve virginity, you cannot destroy or mess with the constitution to preserve it. If there are serious questions regarding police's conduct, it is the moral responsibility of the DGP to own them, and to find out ways to correct the institutional maladies. I know that if there is anyone who is courageous enough to admit mistakes and punish the wrongdoers, it is the current DGP of Chhattisgarh, Mr. Vishwaranjan. Doing so will be the biggest morale booster for Chhattisgarh police.

By Anoop Saha
Courtsey Countercurrents.org

The High Court of Rajasthan steps in to expose Urmul Trust's ill deeds

2007-09-23T23:10:00.001-07:00

It is an open fact that there is very little control over the NGOs by the State and that most of the NGOs have become a law unto themselves and that mere lip service is being offered to agendas relating to real community development in whose name millions of rupees is being pumped in every year. There is every need for NGOs to become accountable towards the communities whom they claim to represent. The need of the hour is for the Govt. to introduce laws/system mechanisms that is utmost necessary for regulating these so called ‘civil societies’.

Keeping in mind the need for the much needed social reforms within the NGOs of Rajasthan, a D.B. Civil Writ has been filed in the High Court of Judicature for Rajasthan at Jodhpur pointing out the serious irregularities being committed by Urmul Rural Health Research and Development Trust, Bikaner (Urmul Trust) under the stewardship of Sh. Arvind Ojha as the Secretary.

The Public Interest Litigation attempts to expose the inside story of how Mr. Ojha, holding the post of an ordinary cooperative inspector at Urmul Dairy, Bikaner and using all his influence with powerful Govt. bureaucrats including the IAS/RAS lobbies, gets himself deputed (and that too, the deputation lasting for over two decades!) to a private NGO, Urmul Trust, rises up above all laws, takes all national and international funding agencies for a ride and earns a name for himself as an "honest, committed, transparent, democratic and selfless social worker" and the "champion of the downtrodden".

In this connection, the honorable judges of the Hon. High Court, Hon. Justice Mr. P.B. Majumdar and Hon. Justice Mr. Dev Narayan Thanvi have found prima facie evidence against the gross misdeeds committed by Mr. Arvind Ojha and has passed orders on the 14th of September 2007 for issuing notices to the non-petitioners including the (1) Chief Secretary, Rajasthan, (2) Dist. Collector, Bikaner, (3) CMH&O, Bikaner, (4) Director General of Police, Jaipur, (5) Director, C.B.I., New Delhi, (6) Inspector General of Stamps, Ajmer, Rajasthan, (7) Principal, Medical College, Bikaner, (8) Managing Director, Urmul Dairy, Bikaner, (9) Sh. Ashok Shekhar, I.A.S., (10) Asst. Commissioner, Devasthan, Bikaner, (11) Commissioner, Devasthan Dept. Udaipur, (12) Superintendent of Police, Bikaner, (13) Registrar, Cooperative Society, Jaipur, (14) Ms. Karin Potma, Financial Officer, Oxfam Novib, The Netherlands, (15) Director, FCRA Division, Ministry of Home Affairs, New Delhi, (16) Managing Director, RCDF, Jaipur, (17) M/s Daiya & Tiwari Associates, Chartered Accountants for Urmul Trust, (18) Secretary, Colonization Dept., Jaipur, (19) Commissioner, Colonization Dept., Bikaner, (20) Registrar, Societies Registration, Cooperative Dept, Bikaner etc. for filing their replies against the charges made in the Civil Writ by the 30th of October 2007.

This news was prominently covered by all the leading dailies as well as eminent TV news channels on the 15th and the 16th of September 2007.

P.S : Kindly note that this info. is being shared with you as we feel together, we can prevent the rot which is at present giving the civil societies a bad name. It is high time that the goodwill of the NGOs is restored back. This forum is not anti-NGOs. We are anti-dishonest, corrupt NGOs with hidden agendas. There can be no argument about the necessity for NGOs in the country’s present context….but…ONLY honest NGOs please…

For Social Workers Forum, Rajasthan
Advocate Mukesh Sharma & Anil Purohit, Writ Petitioners

CONDEMN KILLINGS!! CONDEMN COMMUNALISATION OF SETHUSAMUDRAM PROJECT!!

2007-09-23T22:52:00.000-07:00

We, the undersigned civil society groups, people's movements, humanrights organisations and concerned individuals condemn the killings ofinnocent people and destruction of public property by Hindutva-inspiredcommunal forces recently. A mob, now identified as members of SanghParivar organizations, attacked a Tamil Nadu public transport bus inBangalore recently and burned down the vehicle that was carrying 26passengers. Two passengers were killed and their bodies were charredbeyond recognition. This attack was a part of conscious and systematicefforts of the religious fundamentalist forces to undermine the realissues concerning Sethusamudram Project and to make political capital byflaring up the emotions of the people and dividing them on religious andprovincial lines.The Sethusamudram Project was introduced by the BJP while they were inpower at the centre without considering the ecological and human problems.The Sethusamudram Project will endanger a rich biosphere reserve with400 endangered species, including sea turtles, dolphins, dugongs andwhales. The project will destroy the livelihood of 15 Lakh people whodepend on fishing and allied areas in the waters where the canal will bedug. Several fisher people's organisations and human rights groups hadprotested against the project for a long time without getting anyrecognition from the mainstream political parties. Today the effort bythe communal-fundamentalist forces is to divert the real issuesconcerning the project and generate political gain in view of theforthcoming elections.We feel that there is an immediate need to stop any further violence &communalisation of this issue. Hence we call upon all secular forces andsocial movements to take a strong stand to condemn these efforts ofcommunal forces and recognise the real struggles of fisher people. Wecall upon the civil society to support the fisher people's struggles toprotect the coast from all destructive developmental projects includingSethusamudram project

The Undersigned
1.Just. H. Suresh, Formal Judge, High court Mumbai 2.Praful Bidwai, Journalist & Writer 3.Arundhati Roy, Activist, Writer 4.Vinod Raina, BGVS, New Delhi 5.Gabriele Dietrich, NAPM 6.Prasad Chacko, Action Aid 7.Shripad Dharamadhikary, Mandhan 8.Bruce Rich, Environmental Defense 9.Dunu Roy , Hazards Centre 10.Kamala Bhasin, SANGAT, New Delhi 11.T.Peter, President KSMTF & Secretary, NFF 12.Gilbert, Tamil Nadu - Pondicherry Fisher people's Forum 13.Anton Gomus, National Union of Fisherpeople 14.Madhumitha Dutta, Corporate Accountability Desk 15.Nityanand Jayaraman, Corporate Accountability desk 16.R. Mangaiyarselvam, Founder, Meenavar Viduthalai Vengaigal(Fisherpeople Liberation Tigers)17.V. Gowrilingam, President, Kancheepuram District Fisher peopleFederation, 18.Dr. M. E. Raja, Ph D, General Secretary, National Union of Fishermen, 19. J. Kosumani, President, Tamilnadu Fisherpeople Progressive Assoociation, 20. K. Bharathi, President, South Indian Fishermen's Welfare Association, 21. B. Maran, President, Tamilnadu Fisher People Movement. 22. Anivar Aravind, moving Republic, Kerala 23. Wilfred D'Costa, INSAF 24. Benny Kuruvia, FOCUS on Global South Mumbai 25. Mohaji BHAP, Chandigad 26. Jacob Nellithanam, Richaria Campaign 27. Mahendra Kumar Rauson, NCDHR, Bihar 28. K.P. Sasi, Visual Search 29. Jai Prakash, PEACE 30. Himanshu Upadhyaya, Intercultural Resources 31. P.T. George, Intercultural Resources 32. Abhishek Srivastava, Freelance Journalist 33. Navin Kumar, Star News 34. Lalit Batra, researcher 35. Hitendra, Human Rights Law Network 36. Amarjit Singh, 37. S. Majumdar, HRLN 38. Nandini Oza , Manthan, Badwani 39. Praveen, Delhi University 40. Anja K , Researcher 41. Geetanjali, NBA 42. Supriya , DU 43. Ankitha, DU student 44. Amit , JNU student 45. Harsh Dobhal , Combat law 46. Renu Khanna , PUCL, Baroda 47. Debaranjan, PSSP, Kashipur 48. J.John, Centre for Education & Communication, New Delhi 49. Badar, PEACE, Delhi 50. Surekha, HRLN 51. Andrea Wright, TISS.MADS 52. Lalhlieupuii , JNU student 53. Lalrindiki , Student, Mizoram 54. Nima Lamu Yolmo, JNU student, Darjeling 55. Preeti, Activist 56. Rajesh rangarajan, Activist 57. Vidya Rangan, Activist 58. Sunayana JNU student 59. Simpreet Singh, NAPM 60. Sheena kanwar, Activist 61. Swastika Sanghmithra, Activist62.Subir Dey , JNU Student63.Kasturi Sharma, JNU Student64.Shrikanth , HRLN65.S. Hussaini, IT consultant66.Sanja Sharma, HRLN67.Sarojini, Samad68.Ritwik69.Anshu Malviya, poet, Activist, UP70.Grace Pelly, HRLN71.HR Hiramat, NCPNR, Karnataka72.Smriti, HRLN73.E.P Menon, IDF , Bangalore74.Pradeep Kumar, SVP, UP75.Jharna Jhavera, Janmadhyam76.Aruna roy77.Mihir Engineer , BOSS institute Kolkotta,78.Sulak Sivaraksa, SEM, Tailand79.Irfan Ahmed, Lokmach, Insaf80.Kousal K, Activist Bihar,81.Binod Tyagi, Lok Manch, Bihar82.Rakesh, PEACE83.Jitendra C, PEACE84.Anant Deo N, INSAF Bihar85.Ganesh Prasad, INSAF, UP86.Ranjeet Kumar Singh, PUCE, INSAF, UP87.Chittaranjan Singh, PUCL, INSAF, UP88.Raghavendra kumar Advocate MP89.Jithendra Kumar, Journalist90.Umpiliha DSW91.Mohan Rao, JNU92.Beena, SAMA93.Sarojini, SAMA94.Riwik, SAMA95.Pakhi, SAMA96.Jacqulin J, NAPM97.Deepa Naveen, Activist98.Swathi Mukharji, JMIICR99.Mallika Virdi MAATI, Utharghand100.Jasamia Sarma, Student

“TWO NATIONS”

2007-09-20T23:43:00.000-07:00

KRUPSKAYA tells us in her Memories of Lenin that when she and Lenin were in exile in London at the beginning of the twentieth century, they would often take omnibus rides in the areas of London frequented by the bourgeoisie; they would also walk along the streets of the working class areas, where omnibuses did not ply. Lenin was so struck by the contrast between the two Londons that he would often refer to “two nations” within one country. Now, six decades after India’s independence, which came as the result of a prolonged anti-colonial struggle, in the course of which the modern Indian nation was born, we are in the process of slipping into the reality described by Lenin: “two nations” within one country. The so-called “two nation” theory which was used to justify the partition of the subcontinent was palpably false: the Hindus and the Muslims did not constitute separate and distinct nationalities. But neo-liberalism has spawned a more plausible division of the country into two “nations”, a term that may not stand up to strict scrutiny under the canons of Marxist theory, but nonetheless contains a rich description, reminiscent of Lenin, of the Indian context.

What is striking about this hiatus is that one of these two nations, the “nation of the rich”, believes that it belongs to the first world, would like to be accepted within the first world as belonging to it, and is even in the most “fortunate position”, in its own perception, of being acceptable to the first world, though as a slightly inferior relative. The other, “the nation of the poor”, remains stubbornly stuck in the third world, experiencing the same agrarian crisis, the same unemployment, and the same privations on account of cuts in government expenditures in areas that matter to it, that pervade the entire third world. Some have referred to this hiatus as the “secessionism of the rich” within the third world, but, no matter how we describe it, the phenomenon is unambiguously present: a fracturing of the nation into two quite distinct components.

COLLOBORATION WITH IMPERIALISM

This transition from a situation where the whole nation-in-the-making was waging an anti-colonial struggle, to one where the nation-that-came-into-being is getting fractured into two distinct components, can be understood in class terms as a shift in the position of the big bourgeoisie vis-à-vis imperialism. From leading the anti-imperialist struggle of the people, and hence belonging to the camp of the people, notwithstanding all its tendencies to vacillate and compromise, it moves into a position where it carries its collaboration with imperialism to a point at which it effectively deserts the people, or does a volte face against the people. It does so not only because of the intense pressures upon it from the side of imperialism in the era of globalisation, but also because its ambition of building a relatively autonomous capitalism, autonomous, that is, vis-à-vis imperialism, runs into serious contradictions, even as imperialist globalisation opens up new pastures for it.

The two most significant components of the policy of the post-colonial State, both aimed at asserting this relative autonomy, were: the public sector, and non-alignment. The distinguished Marxist economist, Michael Kalecki, whose overall characterisation of the post-decolonisation regimes as “intermediate regimes” was rather off the mark, was nonetheless accurate in identifying these two elements as the key elements of State policy. The public sector, built up in most third world countries with the support of the Soviet Union, was a bulwark against metropolitan capital. It was used for building up a domestic industrial base, for achieving technological self-reliance, for developing the skill base of the economy, and for providing the overall setting in which domestic capitalists, including the newly emerging peasant and landlord capitalists of the agricultural sector, could prosper. And non-alignment made it possible to keep the requisite distance from imperialism, to keep a door open to the Soviet Union which was so essential for the relative autonomy of the capitalist development path that was pursued.

Imperialism had always attacked both these elements of third world State policy viciously. It had attacked the public sector first by boycotting it, and later by infiltrating and subverting it through the so-called “aid” provided by its agencies like the World Bank. And it had attacked, and does so to this day, the policy of non-alignment. From the days of John Foster Dulles right down to the days of Condoleeza Rice, this attack has been relentless.

It is instructive that precisely these two elements of State policy are being sought to be abandoned in the period of globalisation. The public sector is being sought to be privatised, and would have been privatised but for the intervention of the Left. And non-alignment is being sought to be abandoned in favour of a closer strategic alliance with imperialism, of which the Indo-US nuclear deal is a clear example. What this points to is the volte face on the part of the big bourgeoisie, the shift in its position vis-à-vis imperialism, the replacement of its project of a relatively autonomous development of capitalism by an alternative project of bourgeois development through greater collaboration with imperialism in the context of globalisation. To go back to the Leninist description, one of the “two nations”, the “nation of the rich” consisting of the big bourgeoisie and its hangers-on, wants to become part of the first world.

OBLITERATING THE MARGINALISED

It is a hallmark of this “nation of the rich” within the country that it sees itself as the sole and true nation, as the embodiment of the nation as a whole. It simply pretends that the other “nation” within the country, the one facing the massive agrarian crisis thanks to the same process of globalisation, the one reeling under the impact of unemployment and underemployment, the one steeped in debt and hunger, the one consisting of the marginalised and the economically disenfranchised, does not exist. And the media at its command, the opinion-forming devices it controls, work overtime to obliterate the marginalised, to present the “nation of the rich” as the “true nation”. The la dolce vita of the former is passed off as “India shining”. The economic bonanza reaped by the former is passed off as the “nation’s progress”.

And nowhere has this role of the so-called “opinion makers” manifested itself so clearly as in their response to the Left’s rejection of the Indo-US nuclear deal. One commentator was simply amazed how anybody could reject such a relationship with the US, when “our children” go there! One newspaper (The New Indian Express August 23) editorially commented: “the Left’s knee-jerk opposition to the Indo-US nuclear deal again suggests a lack of empathy for the national consensus, and a sympathy for China’s position on the issue.” Obviously, since no sample survey covering the entire country has been conducted on the issue, the “national consensus” referred to in the editorial is the consensus among the SMS-sending crowd! The nation apparently consists of those whose children go to the US, and those who send SMS messages to the questions accompanying the so-called TV “discussions” where the audience is drawn from the same crowd. The “nation of the rich” simply appropriates for itself the mantle of the Indian nation!

The more sophisticated defenders of the deal do not explicitly refer to the strategic alliance with the US. They continue to profess commitment to non-alignment but argue the need for the deal in terms of the country’s energy requirement. And the still more sophisticated defenders even drag in climate change, which makes carbon-based energy sources dangerous, to buttress their argument. Interestingly however no cost-benefit analysis has ever been cited to argue the case for nuclear energy. No convincing case has ever been made out on purely energy grounds for having such a deal. The energy argument serves as a cover for having a strategic alliance with the US, which is the objective of one of the “two nations” into which the country is getting increasingly divided.

CONTRADICTORY INTERESTS AND IMPLICATIONS

Non-alignment, autonomy vis-à-vis imperialism, breaking loose from the shackles of globalisation that leads to the dispossession and expropriation of petty producers, and having an autonomous State that can intervene in favour of the marginalised, and will do so because of the pressure of having to face the electorate, are what the “nation of the poor” needs. But this is precisely what the “nation of the rich” abhors. The interests of the “two nations” are sharply contradictory. (This explains why the prime minister’s “packages” for the peasants have not stopped the spate of suicides, since these “packages” have been worked out ensuring their compatibility with imperialist globalisation).

The fracturing of the nation into “two nations” and the growing ascendancy of the “nation of the rich” for which it needs the support of imperialism, has serious implications for the country’s future. The most obvious relates to democracy. Broad-based democracy, democracy based on universal adult franchise as we have known it, is basically in the interests of the poor, since political empowerment gives them some opportunity for arresting or even reversing the process of their economic marginalisation. On the other hand, such broad-based democracy which threatens the ascendancy of the “nation of the rich” is anathema for the latter. Its attempt therefore is always to attenuate democracy, to make it hollow, to reduce the effectiveness of the people’s political choice. Not that it necessarily wishes to do away with universal adult franchise, but it wishes to enfeeble its significance. It wishes to institutionalise the kind of democracy which the Americans push everywhere: “the government must be chosen by the people but must follow the policies we like”. Indeed the very instance of a government pushing ahead with a nuclear deal (which it would have done but for the opposition of the Left), even though a majority in the parliament is opposed to such a deal, throws light on the kind of “democracy” that the “nation of the rich” and its imperialist backers want.

There are a number of ways in which a democracy that has struck roots among the people, that has captured the people’s imagination, and that is vigorously used by them to assert themselves, is sought to be enfeebled. These vary from a substitution of parliamentary democracy by a presidential form of government; to a substitution of politicians by bureaucrats and technocrats as the heads of government even within a parliamentary democracy (to facilitate which a process of vilification of politicians is unleashed by the bourgeois media and “opinion makers”); to the institutionalisation of a uniformity among all political parties on policy issues, ostensibly for the sake of “development”. One national daily has even called upon both the prime minister and the CPI(M) to quickly reach a settlement (for which, needless to say, the latter must abandon its opposition to the nuclear deal), so that the “stock markets are not disturbed”! The interests of finance capital in short must take precedence over the people’s interests, and the country’s future.

The introduction of capital account convertibility greatly increases the voice of finance capital in the country’s affairs; and it is instructive that in the very midst of the stand off between the prime minister and the Left, a committee has been appointed to work out the modalities of introducing capital account convertibility. You may think it is a case of bull-headed obtuseness; but it is not. It is a part of a strategy.

By Prabhat Patnaik

Ram Sethu: Man Made Or Natural

2007-09-20T23:38:00.000-07:00

Different agitations are on to oppose Sethusamudram project linking Gulf of Mannar with Palk straight. Dharam Sansad (religious Parliament, a VHP initiative) has been mobilized around 'faith', on the ground that this project will destroy Ramar Sethu, the one which was built by Vanar Sena (Army of Monkeys) to help Ram cross over to Lanka to rescue Sita. The project was supported by most of the political parties in the past including NDA alliance Government. When complete, it will cut short the long journey of the ships from east coast to the west coast, and vice versa. Like Panama Canal it has been conceived to promote the transport, employment and to improve trade. Half way now, it has been facing two oppositions. The one is from the environmentalists, who are worried about the destruction of flora and fauna and the dangers of silting in the canal. These are the arguments which need to be taken seriously.

The other ground, the one based on faith need to be dealt with at another ground. RSS and its affiliates are promoting a view that building this Sethusamudram will involve be destruction of Ramar Sethu which will be detrimental to our faith. The story goes that Ravan, the King of Lanka had abducted Sita to avenge the insult meted out to his sister Shurpnakha, whose proposal for marrying her was turned down by the Lord Ram. Assisted by his loyal devotee Hanuman, the Lord mobilized monkeys and built this bridge. It is claimed that this bridge is a marvel of engineering achievements of the Indian engineers of that time. The assertion is that it shows the acme of technological achievements of this land, and that there are other noteworthy achievements like the advances in aeronautical technologies like aero planes, missiles to name the few.

How do we understand these claims, how do we comprehend this peep in to the past? How do we distinguish fact from fiction, history from mythology? To reconcile history, science and mythology are the complex questions in our public life. To begin with history of events has some definitive characteristics, though their interpretations do vary with the political ideologies. But what about mythology? Here these accounts have been put forward as the fictional accounts of the past. Some of these accounts have been associated with faith. Faith to some extent is natural and sometimes it is being manufactured and asserted for political goals.

As far as Lord Ram's story goes there are several versions of Ramayana, (Many Ramayanas, Richman, OUP). Some of these are very popular like Valmiki Ramayana and Tulasidas Ramcharitmanas. Surely the most popular one currently is the one from Maharashi Ramanand Sagar's mega serial which captivated the nation for couple of years. There are other versions, which have been undermined and attacked mostly for political reasons. Sahmat exhibition on different versions of Lord Ram's story was attacked few years ago. Some politically motivated people could not bear one of the versions presented in this exhibition. It showed that according to Jataka version of Ram Katha, in post Brahminical Buddhist Dashrath Jataka Sita is both as sister and wife of Ram. As per this version Dashrath is King not of Ayodhya but of Varanasi. The marriage of sister and brother is part of the tradition of glorious Kshtriya clans who wanted to maintain their caste and clan purity. This Jataka tale shows Ram to be the follower of Buddha. Similarly in Jain versions of Ramayana project Ram as the propagator of anti-Brahminical Jain values, especially as a follower of non-violence. What do both Buddhist and Jain version have in common is that in these Ravana is not shown as a villain but a great soul dedicated to quest of knowledge and is a spiritual soul, with majestic commands over passions, a sage and a responsible ruler. Popular and prevalent 'Women's Ramayan Songs (of Telugu Brahmin Women), put together by Rangnyakmma, keep the women's concern as the central theme and present alternate perspective. These songs present Sita as finally victorious over Ram and in these Surpanakha succeeds in taking revenge over Ram.

Many people dispute that the Lanka mentioned in Ramayana is not the current Sri Lanka. Since mythology does not require any proof it can be modulated and constructed in to a faith for political purposes. Recently in the Shabri Kumbh held in Dangs in Gujarat, the mythology was modulated in to the service of politics. It was said, and that too with great amount of precision, that a particular hillock, which was earlier called Chamak Dongar, which adivasis used to worship as Shivar Deo (protector of crops), was the precise place where Shabri had offered berries to Lord Ram. It was rechristened and a Shabri temple was built on the spot. Nearby, a river six kilometers away, Purna was named as the one where Guru Matang rishi use to take bath. On the mountain on the stone there were three marks which are being presented as the marks where Laxman had sharpened his arrows.

This Ramar Sethu has been shown to be the pre human structure, called tombol, a sand deposition due to natural process. The Geological Survey of India ruled out its being the manmade (or monkey made), construction. Same way the inference from NASA satellite pictures is that it is due to sedimentation of clay and lime stone. It is tombol in NASA language, connecting one land with another, and that it is from times when human habitation is doubtful.
It is easy to construct a fly over to the future but difficult to prevent the formation of mythological bridges of the past. Mythology can easily be constructed and planted in the peoples psyche as it is driven by political goals and rides on horse of emotion. Reason and logic have no place in this scheme of things. One knows that some Mullahs, having faith in the infinite power of djinns advocated their rulers to invest in the research for making more djinns so that power crisis can be solved. Also with the resurgence of fundamentalism one is hearing that Creation science is back in the race to compete with the theories of evolution. The question is, should we misuse faith, faith which can be an assuaging balm, for building political agendas?

By Ram Puniyani
(Author is secretary of All India Secular Forum)

Religions: For the Nation

2007-09-11T02:17:00.000-07:00

The World Parliament of Religions, opened on September 11, 1893 in Chicago where Swami Vivekananda was the greatest figure, reminds us of the importance of religion in every sphere of human life. A nation is not just a conglomeration of people unrelated to any religion or ideology. Religion plays a significant role in shaping a nation. The Indian society has been religiously and culturally pluralistic for a long time, more than any other country in the world. Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism originated and grew on the Indian soil. The Semitic religions of Christianity and Islam came to this country as missionary movements. The tribal and primal religious traditions have their own unique features expressed through oral traditions and distinctive cultural life.
Religions have played an ambiguous role throughout Indian history. Very often religions have hindered social and scientific progress by clinging on to outdated beliefs and practices, such as the ideas of fate and predestination. Religions have justified and legitimized structures of injustice and oppression such as caste discrimination and patriarchal system in our society. Moreover, religions allied with political power have caused communal tensions and conflicts.
But religions also provide visions, values and spiritual resources for purposeful living. They provide spiritual and cultural resources for the survival of different people in their search for identity and dignity. Religions provide strength and resources to fight against injustice in society and propose different solutions to human problems. The plurality of religions introduces an element of choice by providing alternative visions of reality and alternative ways of life. There are peace potentialities, liberating streams or prophetic voices in every religion. Another great advantage of plurality of religions, cultures, ethnic groups and languages is that it can be a guarantee against fascism because it will refuse to accept any ‘‘one and only’’ imposition of a religious or political ideology on all people.
The unity and integrity of our nation is of primary importance. There is a constant fear of terrorism, militancy and other divisive forces operating within and across the borders. For national integration, our first and foremost identity should be as Indian citizens, then our religion or region. For instance, an Indian Hindu should be dearer than a Bangladeshi Muslim to an Indian Muslim and likewise for an Indian Christian vis-a-vis a Christian in the West. Our religious convictions should not contradict patriotism which is inherent in all religions. A Hindu prayer says Om Shanti; Islam means ‘‘peace or submission’’; and a Christian believes Jesus as the ‘‘prince of peace’’. Thus, there is no reason why people of all faiths cannot work together for peace in society.
Historically, it is true that the gap between profession and practice in any religion has been almost unbridgeable and that religious fanaticism has caused untold harm to the society. All religions can play important roles in the process of national integration: by teaching each community to practise what is professed; to be tolerant and respectful toward other religions; to avoid fanaticism and fundamentalism; and then to collaborate with other communities in matters of social and humanitarian concerns towards the making of the nation. Moreover, interfaith relations and cooperation can foster communal harmony and remove misconceptions and prejudices of one community against other communities, thus building trust and fraternity among them.
The basis for interfaith relations should be the common concerns of all religions such as search for peace and justice in society, and unity and integrity of the nation in which religions can play a very vital role. This envisages certain issues that can be sorted out. The great advantage of religions playing significant role in our country lies in our secular democracy. Our secular democracy provides perspectives and challenges where people can enjoy religious freedom and equality and can come together for dialogue and collaboration to tap religious resources in bringing about greater communal harmony, to generate common action to correct social evils, and to work together for national reconstruction. Therefore, interfaith cooperation in this attempt is both disirable and inevitable in our country.

Aziz-ul Haque
(The writer is the Pastor of Guwahati Baptist Church)

UN Warns of Unrest as Food Prices Soar

2007-09-10T23:56:00.000-07:00

Copied below is an article of why "development" is death. Development means losing the ability to produce food and other necessities locally. Even if they develop agriculturally, they turn from producing food forthemselves to producing food for export. Consider, for example thatduring the so-called Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s, England wasimporting food from Ireland. England had gained control over Ireland such that Ireland had been turned into an export economy, and even ifmillions starved, England could demand, through law and through force,that Ireland export food.

When a people must import food from around the world, those in control of the system will always be able to starve people into compliance. Theprice of Wheat in Chicago will starve the people of India. That isinsanity.

When growth occurs such that populations rise beyond the ability of the local environment to support them without either outside food orwithout chemicals and technology, then those people can be controlled. Those people are also disposable.

Read the article below, and then think about the perspective from which it is written. The article contains two stories, one overt, manifest,the other covert, latent. The overt message is about how food shortagescould be a problem. The latent message is about the developed world's risk of "unrest." The article is NOT about food shortages. It is aboutpoor people rising up because the system would just as soon they starveas live, and the risk that entails for the rich. The article is written to an audience of those in power, a warning to them to prepare fordanger from the poor, for the rich to be prepared to kill.

Buried in the article is the word "warning." Take it seriously.

Those of us lucky enough to have the opportunity need to teach, educate, inform about principles of social justice and human rights. Asa so-called educated person, I am obliged as a person of conscience tohelp use my skills to transform. So, I choose to work in education, and help others also develop this type of skill and knowledge so they canwork in their own domains. To transform the world, we need peopleworking together with a wide variety of skills and talents.

Kind Regards

Daniel Jordan,

------------------------

UN warns of unrest as food price inflation hits developing countries

Developing countries face serious social unrest as they struggle to cope with soaring food prices, the United Nations' top agriculture official has warned.

Jacques Diouf, director-general of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation, said surging prices for basic food imports such as wheat, corn and milk had the "potential for social tension, leading to social reactions and eventually even political problems".

Mr Diouf said food prices would continue to increase because of a mix of strong demand from developing countries; a rising global population, more frequent floods and droughts caused by climate change; and the biofuel industry's appetite for grains. "

That combination of factors would most likely lead to increases in food prices," Mr Diouf told the Financial Times.

Signs were seen in Mexico this year where mass protests were triggered by rising corn prices. Mr Diouf said food represented about 10-20 per cent of consumer spending in industrialised countries, but up to 65 percent in developing nations. "

If we continue to see an increase in their [food] prices and in their import bill for food, there is a serious potential situation," Mr Diouf said.

The warning comes as wheat prices are at a high, forcing developing countries such as India and Egypt to pay record prices for imports in what cereal traders described as "panic buying" to beef up reserves.

Wheat prices this week rose to a record $8.86 a bushel in Chicago, up about 60 per cent since January. Dairy product prices have also set records, while other commodities, such as corn and soyabeans, are trading well above historical averages.

Mr Diouf said although the biofuel industry directly increased the consumption of only a handful of agricultural commodities, such as corn and rapeseed, its effect spread to other food products because less acreage was devoted to non-biofuel crops and the cost of feeding livestock with grain was pushed up. "

The biofuel industry is a new factor creating demand for food for a non-food use," he said.

Fears about the inflationary impact of biofuels on global food prices have prompted Cargill, the world's largest agricultural company by revenues, to question the White House-led push for an increase in ethanol production through tax subsidies.

By Javier Blas in Rome
Additional reporting by Eoin Callan in Washington
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2007

Join the solidarity fast in support of Irom Sharmila

2007-09-10T23:50:00.000-07:00

In this age of donor-driven programmes and agendas, and 'career' oriented 'professionals' working on development issues, there is a person like Irom Sharmila, who has been waging a singular battle against the state to repeal AFSPA - she has been fasting since past 7 years now. She has no NGO, no 'strategy', no media/PR liaison, no press release, no banner, and nothing conventional - like no institutional or political or ideological backing, except a STRONG STEELY WILL AND RESOLVE to be true to her own strongest convictions. Join the solidarity fast... from 13 September 2007 onwards...

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Irom Chanu Sharmila, who has been fasting since last 7 years, and government has been forcibly keeping her in hospital confinement for most of the period, has a clear demand: repeal the amended 1972 Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act (AFSPA).

The Armed Forces Special Powers Act (AFSPA) which is operative at the time of a â€˜suspectedâ€™ riot(s) in order to â€˜maintain public orderâ€™, allows killing by shooting, entering and search of property, and arbitrary detention, etc., its abuse is currently spawning grave human rights violations in some parts of India. Under the powers of AFSPA, on 2 November 2000, the Indian military opened fire on its own citizens in the state of Manipur. Since then, Irom Sharmila, a resident of the tragic state, has refused to eat and drink anything in resistance to indiscriminate use of the AFSPA against civilians. The response of the Indian government to her resistance has been repetitively evasive: the government has repeatedly arrested her on a charge of â€˜attempted suicideâ€™, confined her in hospitals, and then freed her under applicable law, but, up until now, has failed to provide any fundamental alternative to the law in question.

North-East India abounds with sordid sagas of rape and molestation of women with alleged involvement of Armed Forces personnel. Who can forget the stunning sight three years back, of about three dozen naked women protesting on the street outside the then Assam Rifles headquarters at Kangla Fort in Imphal carrying placards saying â€˜Indian Army rape us,â€™outraged by the rape, torture and murder of 32 year old unmarried Thangjam Manorama?

The AFSPA has been used in the north-east of India, to carry out extra judicial killings, extra judicial deprivation of liberty to people by illegal imposition of curfew, long periods of detention at army posts and camps and use of churches and school as detention or interrogation centers. Torture, with a view to extract confessions, includes beating with rifle butts, kicking with boots and hitting with blunt weapons, giving electric shocks, breaking limbs, depriving persons of food, drink and sleep, hanging persons upside down and beating on soles, burying persons alive, stripping, stuffing chilli powder in nose, eyes and private parts, hands and feet tied, and the whole body suspended over fire with a bamboo in between the hands and legs and threat to shoot, interrogation at gun point. Most of these would be considered a serious offence under sections 330 and 331 of the IPC. Provisions of AFSPA make it extremely difficult for a person to seek any legal recourse for justice.

She has no banner, no organization, no vested interest, no press-release, no statement â€" except a compulsive singular demand to repeal AFSPA.

She hasnâ€™t resorted to violence, rather has sacrificed her life to her strongest conviction â€" repeal AFSPA for the larger benefit to humankind, especially to women in conflict-stricken areas.

This is indeed one of the most peaceful non-violent struggles one can come across, and as Dr Pandey noted â€œI am an atheist. But if there is any divinity it is this. If this is not spiritualism then what is? She is the epitome of purity."

The protest of Irom Sharmila represents the most ideal form of peaceful struggle for a democratic demand. Her victory is essential for the strengthening of democracy in India and for the respect for human rights around the world. Her victory will determine whether the voice of common citizen will be heard or the state will trample over people's rights with anti-people laws and policies. A fast in solidarity, from wherever-you-are in the world, is just one of the easy ways to express your solidarity and strengthen Iromâ€™s voice.

JOIN HANDS... __._,_.___

Supreme Court for another Committee on Shipbreaking

2007-09-10T23:47:00.000-07:00

Concerned about Alang workers' health Parliamentary Committee seeks National Policy, Court seeks legislation on ship breaking
Blue Lady still has huge amount of radioactive material besides asbestos, PCBs, Ballast Water, Incineration ash, lead acid batteries and Freon Gas

The Supreme Court today passed an order on the general directions pertaining to ship breaking activity in India. The arguments were heard by the bench presided over by Justice Arijit Pasayat and Justice S. H. Kapadia. In the order Supreme Court has said that the report submitted by the Technical Experts Committee on Hazardous Wastes relating to ship breaking and the guidelines given by the Supreme Court shall continue to operate till legislation is brought into the effect.
The Supreme Court has also directed that the Committee consisting of MoEF, GPCB, GMB, AERB shall verify all the documents before ship is allowed for breaking. Giving these directions, the Supreme Court has referred to the earlier directions given in the comprehensive order dated 14.10.2003 on Hazardous Waste, Basel Convention and ship breaking. The order on Blue Lady (S S Norway), which was reserved on 5th September, 2007 shall be pronounced later. Now there are three kinds of directions. One, the 14th October, 2003 order. Two, the Supreme Court order in the September 2007 and three, the recommendations of the Parliamentary Committee.
Meanwhile contrary to the admission of Gopal Subramanium, Additional Solicitor General in the Supreme Court on 5 September, 2007 that there is radioactive material only in 12 such smoke detectors on the ship named Blue Lady, Tom Haugan, the former Project Manager of the ship has written saying, "Please be adviced that the total numbers of "IONE, BJ-31" detectors with Americium 241 source counts more than 1100 units. These are installed mainly in areas which should have a quick respond to a fire for "warm" smoke and installed in ALL technical rooms engine room spaces etc. In accommodation areas there are installed optical detectors "BH-31" which are detecting smoldering fire better than Ione detectors. This is my confirmation and statement as former project manager for fire detection installation onboard SS Norway." This has been sent on 5th September, 2007.
Haugan has referred to his report that has been submitted in the court wherein it says, "The new fire detection system with Autronica BS-100, installed in 1990 s, was designed with approximately 5500 detection points and have 1100 of radio active elements, Americium 241. All sensors connected to the installed system from 1980 was replaced with Autronica smoke detectors, all loop cabling used and remaining, existing /old detectors from Signalco product was then destructed. From me and all partners within fire detection system equipment deliveries, we are very concerned for any removing / dismantling of all installed radio active detectors from its original back in 1960 and the new system installation. "
Even as the Supreme Court is all set to pronounce its orders in the case of Star Cruise Ltd' ship, Parliamentary Petitions Committee's Report on Blue Lady has been tabled in the Lok Sabha on 22 August. What is noteworthy is the fact that Environment Ministry has neither informed the apex court nor the Parliamentary Committee that the ships have radioactive material, handling of the same is fraught with hazardous consequences. The officials of both at the Ministry and the Gujarat Maritime Board have been guilty of dereliction of duty of not letting the workers and the concerned authorities know of the radioactive materials of the ships which come for dismantling.
In its recommendations the Committee has noted "The very fact that the Hon'ble Supreme Court had to intervene in the matter, underlines the failure of the Government to formulate till now any policy to regulate environmentally safe ship breaking activity in the country." The Committee are extremely concerned that the ship contain an estimated 1240 MT of Asbestos Containing Material and tonnes of Polychlorinated Biphenyl (PCBs) as in-built material and as part of structure. In case the asbestos fibres are inhaled or human being consumes the PCBs, the same may cause cancer unless the workers take proper precautions for safe handling of these materials.
"The Committee strongly deprecates the repeated stand taken by the Ministry that since no hazardous wastes has been allowed on board as cargo, there is no violation of the Hon'ble Supreme Court directions." The Ministry has misled the Committee by not informing it about there being admittedly containers full of toxic incineration ash and non-examination of Ballast water, which are likely to have alien microorganisms.
Taking note of the fact that hazardous material meant for disposal even when it is part of structure must be deemed hazardous wastes, it said, "The Committee need not emphasize that the hazardous wastes whether as cargo or in-built material are equally detrimental to the environment and human health." It further recommended, "a National Policy should be framed by the Government to regulate ship breaking activities and dumping all toxic waste in the country. The policy should also cover establishment of facilities of international level for managing and disposal of hazardous materials such as asbestos, PCBs and other residues…The Committee also desire the Ministry to strongly campaign to create awareness amongst the people about the ill effects of asbestos and possible carcinogenic affects…"
The Committee unambiguously recommended, "…in no case, the ship breaking activities should be permitted at the cost of environment or safe and healthy life of workers." The Parliamentary Petitions Committee report came in response to the petition raised in Lok Sabha by Basudev Acharya, MP, CPI (M) in August 2006. The petition had argued that the sovereignty of the country is being infringed due to dumping of hazardous wastes from developed countries and sought examination of the role of the authorities in allowing entry to the ship Blue Lady in Indian territorial waters.

For details: Indian Platform on Ship-breaking, Mb: 9818089660
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We don't have to go to the gallows, but tend to the grassroots

2007-09-10T23:43:00.000-07:00

We must rejoice on this 60th anniversary of our freedom from colonial rule and breathe the fresh air of freedom.
It is also a day to remember that 'what comes free today was once fought for.' And how. The masses waged a long struggle, lakhs courted imprisonment, thousands paid with their lives -- all selflessly smilingly at the altar of freedom.

That part of our history is generally better known to the present generation in varying details. But what is not sufficiently known is that during the freedom struggle there were serious discussions as to what we shall strive for after the attainment of Independence. And, a prior question: How free India shall be best governed.

Gandhiji asked us to reflect how Britain a tiny nation located 8,000 miles away succeeded in establishing its rule over India -- a vast country with huge population. The answer lay in the fact that, at the time in history, India was not governed by her people through popular will, but by autocracy -- the maharajas, nawabs and feudal lords. It made it easy for the British to either co-opt such rulers by inducements or by setting them one against another -- divide and rule, or defeat their individual small armed force one by one.

The moral was that in order to secure freedom, when won, it was imperative that political power was not concentrated in a few hands but universally dispersed -- entrusted in the hands of each and every citizen for safekeeping.

The citizens were to be the rulers and exercise their right through democratic means. It is thus that in 1950 our Constituent Assembly adopted the system of adult franchise -- one person one vote -- political equality to the core.

The passage of adult franchise was, however, not all that smooth. The objectors were concerned about the prevailing massive illiteracy. They advocated deferment of adult franchise till every citizen had been educated at least to a minimum level. The assembly recognised that illiteracy had not stood in the way of millions to fight for freedom. They had thus earned the right to rule via vote from day one. It decided to introduce adult franchise straightaway but adopted Article 45 to universalise elementary education within a period of 10 years.

Alas, this deadline has been honoured more in the breach, and not implemented fully till date. True, there is a sizeable number of those who have since scaled the Everest of higher education and done us proud. But, we have failed to provide the necessary cement of elementary education to all and thus fortifying our political edifice built on adult franchise.

Those looking today for challenges ahead could lend their shoulder to extend education facilities to every child in a mission mode.

Political stability is inseparable from ever increasing social and economic progress. In fact, this was another aspect highlighted during the freedom struggle. When embarking on public life Gandhiji wrote to Dadabhai Naoroji, 'I am inexperienced and young -- guide me -- Indians look upon you as children to the father.' Dadabhai advised that all the three great purposes -- political, social and industrial -- must be set working side by side. The progress in each will have its influence on others.

Thus, it was emphasised that after securing political freedom we would also have to win economic social and moral freedom. These freedoms Gandhiji warned were 'harder than the political, if only because they are constructive, less exciting and not spectacular. He proposed an all embracing Constructive Work Programme, which evokes the energy of all, the millions.' Get a copy, knowing it is a must.

In the social and economic sphere what was to command prior attention was hunger and unemployment. The stomach is a biological tyrant. It demands food at least twice a day. It is universal -- it affects each and every human being. To answer this character and compulsion of the demand for food, it was plain that the supply of food must be easy of access. Possessed of this realisation, Gandhiji formulated in 1928, what he called the Economic Constitution of India:

'According to me the economic constitution of India and for the matter of that of the world, should be such that no one under it should suffer from want of food and clothing. In other words everybody should be able to get sufficient work to enable him to make the two ends meet. And this ideal can be universally realised only if the means of production of the elementary necessaries of life remain in the control of the masses. These should be freely available to all as God's air and water are or ought to be; they should not be made a vehicle of traffic for the exploitation of others.'

We have millions of farms -- largely marginal and small, and millions engaged in agricultural labour. They have all been deprived of support -- be it credit, technical advice, minimum wages or organisational framework for increasing local production of food for local consumption and thereby ensure local employment opportunities and purchasing power.

What we have done instead in the past 60 years is the very reverse of it. While in absolute terms agricultural production has increased substantially the pattern of production promoted has created a few small pockets of high output.

Only 15 per cent of our 500 districts produce the surplus grains, which are then transported across from north to south, to east at tremendous cost. Worse still the food grains do not reach the hungry stomachs in time or if they do the hungry have little purchasing power. Consumption has been divorced from local production.

Is it surprising then, as the finance minister stated in his recent Budget speech that in our population of over one billion, 47 per cent of our children in the age group 0 to 5 years are suffering from malnutrition. Imagine it is half of our future generation. Of course in the next breath he praised our economic growth rate which was embracing 9 per cent which alas shines fully only on ten percent of the population.

Imagine also the likely impact of such gross disparity in income, education and food in-take (hunger-malnutrition) on the stability of our political system based on arithmetical equality: One person, one vote. Added to this is mounting discrimination and injustice heaped on women, dalits and the tribals. These are all a threat to our political system, which rests on equality.

The fault is not in our freedom but how we are milking the magnificent opportunity it has afforded. Should we not ponder and correct the course -- in both the direction and pattern of our economic growth, and then align it with our political foundations of equality?

The likes of Bhagat Singh did it for us. We don't have to go to the gallows. We could instead tend to the grassroots -- and morally bask under the Kite Runner Khalid Hossein's new title: A Thousand Splendid Suns.

By L C Jain
(Dr L C Jain was an active participant in the Quit India movement and has been engaged in economic-social development for the last 60 years. He was a member of the Planning Commission and India's high commissioner to South Africa.)
Courtsey from Rediff

Open Letter to the Prime Minister of India on the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA or AKI)

2007-09-10T23:36:00.000-07:00

Dear Friends,

Greetings! Pasted below (and attached too) is an Open Letter to the Prime Minister of India on the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture (KIA or AKI), which was signed at the same time as the 123 Nuclear Deal. However, as we can see, the nation (political parties, individuals and media institutions) has chosen to express loud concerns on the nuclear deal, ignoring that the KIA also has serious ramifications for this country. We cannot afford to remain invisible or silent on this front.

Given the whole interest generated with regard to the nuclear deal, this is the right time to express our concerns yet again on the Knowledge Initiative on Agriculture too and to not let it be implemented in a business-as-usual attitude, without the many serious concerns being addressed. This letter draws from the discussions that happened during a national workshop organised in Hyderabad in December on this bilateral agreement. This open letter to the PM also draws some of its demands from the nuclear deal experience - of stalling implementation until concerns are taken on board seriously and addressed.

We hope that you all join us in endorsing this letter which we intend to put out in a week's time or so. It would be great if agricultural scientists too, in addition to any elected people's representatives that you can all individually draw into endorsing this, would sign up.

Do send me your consent on my email address above with the required details against your name and please do circulate this widely to collect more endorsements and pass them on to me. Thanks.

Kavitha Kuruganti
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To
September 4, 2007
Dr Manmohan Singh,
Hon'ble Prime Minister,
Government of India.

Dear Sir,

Sub: Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Research, Services and Commercial Linkages – Demand for an immediate hold on implementation

Respected Sir, this letter is being written to you after looking at the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative on Agricultural Education, Research, Services & Commercial Linkages (being referred to as the KIA or AKI) in close detail, after extensive discussions held amongst agriculture scientists, farmers' leaders, civil society representatives, science policy experts and others on the implications of KIA on Indian farmers, especially small and marginal farmers. Through this letter, we would like to convey our deep concerns related to this bilateral deal that you had signed with the US President.

The current agrarian crisis and farmers' livelihoods:

The KIA hardly makes a mention of the deep agrarian crisis present all over rural India today. In fact, there is very little mention of farmers in the KIA proposals. Where the current problems in Indian agriculture are mentioned, they are described as "exciting challenges and opportunities" – we wonder for whom? How can a high-profile bilateral agreement coming at a juncture of such a crisis ignore the crisis and fundamental ways of addressing it?

The agrarian crisis in India is to be seen as a livelihoods crisis – the government has to answer why agri-business corporations are not in a crisis while farmers are attempting to commit suicides in thousands, if it is truly a farming crisis? The agri-industry is in fact posting growth figures that are impressive.

Increased production and productivity from farmers will not come if the State takes away their very dignity, their resources, their interest in their occupation, erodes all support systems and leaves them only with heavy debt burdens. Productivity cannot just be a factor of a miracle technology that someone introduces but a factor that is closely related to farmers' self-worth, dignity and morale.

The Indian economy (which is seen as the only domain of development) is appearing to declare its independence from Indian farming and the distress of farmers because the contribution of agriculture to the GDP is going down and your government measures development only in economic growth and GDP terms. We need to get out of this framework to understand farming better and the sustenance it provides to millions of lives.

What farmers need is income security, especially given that the liberalized trade policies that subsequent governments have pursued have pushed them into unfair disadvantage from all sides, even as technologies promoted by the NARS and agri-corporations are unsustainable.

Our analysis also shows that the KIA proposals are certainly not in tandem with other dominant policy discourse related to agriculture in India now, be it the Planning Commission's approach paper to the 11 th Plan or the draft Kisan Policy drafted by the National Commission on Farmers [NCF]. The Planning Commission and the NCF have at least run a semblance of consultative processes while drawing up their recommendations and while adopting a particular discourse. The KIA, however, is at contrast to these other policy articulations.

It is apparent that the National Agricultural Research System [NARS] had never done any deep-thinking workshops institutionally about its role in the entire crisis being experienced by farmers today and about unsustainable and unsuitable technologies foisted upon farmers. Since no such analysis exists, the crisis does not inform decisions on any front, including the Indo-US Knowledge Initiative.

India 's Green Revolution & the 'Second Green Revolution':

Numerous studies and papers have brought out the ecological, socio-cultural and other fall-outs from the Green Revolution. The Planning Commission chose to portray the repercussions in terms of 'technology fatigue' and the 'ecological disaster'. While the Green Revolution at least had a stated thrust on improving national food security (that concept of food security is questioned by numerous experts now) and ran on a principle of social contract, it seems that the Second Green Revolution is meant only for agri-corporations.

Before making plans for a Second Green Revolution, the country should have first drawn up a comprehensive balance sheet on the first Green Revolution. Learnings should have been picked up from such an analysis and critique of the earlier Green Revolution. Such learnings should have been internalized and incorporated into all your pronouncements on the second Green Revolution and into the KIA.

Our analysis says that while the country might have obtained self reliance on the food front (that too based on two grains which don't assure nutrition security and are known to have caused other adverse impacts), Green Revolution has completely eroded farmers' self-reliance. Farmers' natural resource base has been degraded almost irrevocably. Our bio-diversity has been eroded irreversibly along with farmers' knowledge about management, creation and conservation of such resources. While food security is touted to have been achieved, quality of food in terms of safety and nutrition has been badly affected. A diverse variety of foods that used to be accessible and affordable have been lost to the millions of poor in the country. Bio-mass has disappeared on a large scale and organic cycles of crop-livestock-tree-living soil resources have been broken through reductionist science. Local economies have only pumped out their wealth with very little coming back into the villages. In recent decades, any public support system that used to exist for even that kind of intensive agriculture that GR ushered in, is being systematically dismantled, leaving farmers to the mercy of greedy markets of agri-corporations.

We find that the agri-research establishment has been indoctrinated into thinking that "There Is No Alternative" (TINA) to intensive farming using ever-increasing quantities and varieties of external inputs. This TINA syndrome runs deep in the entire NARS to the extent that they cannot even start looking at ecological alternatives with any amount of objectivity or scientificity. The Green Revolution did not happen overnight on the strength of the science behind it but because of massive public investments in creating huge support systems to address pre-production, production and post-production issues. Ecological agriculture however has received no such support in the country and without such public investments going into this paradigm, will not start appealing to our scientists either. When the GR began, no one wondered about where we will get the tonnes of chemical fertilizers/pesticides and HYV seeds that were to drive the GR – the country just set about arranging these through a variety of policy and public investment measures. However, whenever there is a discussion on alternative paradigms, the first question that is asked preposterously is, where will we find so much of organic inputs?

Now, with the Second Green Revolution that you are shaping, there is a formal institutionalization of American corporate interests driving our research agendas and public policy frameworks. This will further indoctrinate the NARS and other systems into the industrial/intensive model of agriculture. You have chosen to give the Monsantos of the US, documented earlier for their anti-farmer policies and known for their lawlessness, a formal place to guide the future of Indian agriculture as suits them, through the KIA. Why did your government not think of placing some key farmers' organizations and other civil society representatives in the country on the Board on this side?

The Second Green Revolution in the form of the KIA has no mention of farmers, leave alone farming livelihoods or national food security. Who then is this Second Green Revolution for, at the expense of public funds, we wonder.

Finally, why do your government and the NARS shy away from understanding, supporting and promoting an ecological agriculture paradigm – can your scientists compete with some of the best natural and organic farmers in this country on a variety of parameters related to production, productivity, economic viability, sustainability, social benefits and so on, before promoting any other paradigms [given that we have already seen the results of your paradigms]?

India & the USA :

The socio-economic and agro-ecological situations with regard to Indian and American farming are vastly different. In their model of agriculture, less than 2% of the American population depends on farming whereas in India, around 65% of our population continue to depend on farming and allied activities for their very survival.

In India, agriculture is a way of life connected closely with knowledge evolved over centuries of experiential learning from Nature, connected deeply with the culture of our peoples and their livelihoods. On the other hand, in the USA, agriculture is an industry, driven mostly by big agri-business corporations. Even though they claim that it is an efficient model of agriculture to be emulated here in India to attain higher productivity levels and so on, it is a farming model that is constantly propped up by ever-increasing amounts of subsidies. The true efficiency of that model will be clear only when the subsidies are removed. On the other hand, Indian farmers, with very little support from the government and in the face of highly adverse conditions created by the government, have proven that theirs is a more efficient system of farming by feeding millions of Indians and also showing steady increases in production and productivity.

Also important is the fact that the USA has not signed the Convention on Biological Diversity [CBD] or the Kyoto Protocol or the Cartagena Protocol on Biosafety. What is interesting to note is that the main themes of these protocols to which India subscribes to through ratification and which USA discounts or fights in the international arena – biological resources including biodiversity, climate change and safety with regard to living modified organisms - are also key parts of the KIA.

These protocols enshrine some principles – for instance, biological resources are sovereign resources of nation-states (CBD), climate change is a big threat to the planet and immediate interventions are needed to reverse it and stop it (Kyoto) and living modified organisms need careful impact assessment and handling and prior informed consent for transboundary movement (Cartagena) which are not respected at all in the KIA or by the USA. Why is India partnering the USA in such an agreement then?

The USA, to this day, has not allocated any resources for the KIA whereas India is paying the USA for unneeded and hazardous technologies from the taxpayers' money. Ironically, the deal is all set to ultimately benefit American corporations than Indian farmers. Is this kind of unequal partnership what one could call as a bilateral agreement?

Why did you not think of having such a bilateral agreement with Cuba, which has shown the world how to produce more through organic methods even with economic sanctions imposed upon it – is there any reason why India should not learn from such a model of agriculture, to drive its next Revolution in agriculture?

On many of the themes included in the KIA where Indians are supposed to learn from the USA, there is no dearth of knowledge, skills and capabilities within the country. It is not clear why we need to learn from the USA on water management, drought proofing, food processing etc., when some of the best models on these themes are right here in the country within the people's knowledge domain. While the agriculture research model pursued by the country constantly erodes such rich knowledge right here, you would like to learn from distant USA at a charge, that too technologies that do not suit our needs nor address the present agrarian crisis!

The Americans are clearly proposing through the KIA, and in Board Meetings after Board Meetings, that they would like to use the bilateral deal to make changes in our regulatory regimes related to IPRs or particular technologies like Genetic Engineering. These changes are to suit their interests and not to ensure the basic rights of Indian farmers and consumers. In return, what are you planning to suggest as changes at their end through this bilateral deal? Can you bring down the huge subsidies that American farming is propped up with, to protect Indian farmers' interests from your side?

Coming to the comparative picture between India and USA again, the Indian IPR regime related to agriculture is very different from the American regime. Whose regime will be applied in this collaborative research? Who will have patents and what will be the implications for Indian farmers and their apriori rights on many resources and technologies?

In the USA, patents are possible on everything from a plant to a gene. As you know, all the notorious cases of bio-piracy from this country involved American scientists and corporations. What guarantees are you providing to the citizens of this country that the collective heritage of this country in the form of its biological resources and knowledge will be protected and given legitimately back to the communities without American bio-piracy now acquiring a legitimate passage you gave them?

The Biological Diversity Act of India, flowing out of the CBD, requires that permission be obtained from the National Biodiversity Authority before any biological resource is accessed by any foreigner. The KIA is not fulfilling any such obligations (Annexure 1). From all accounts, not even Material Transfer Agreements are in place while valuable genetic resources are already being taken to the US laboratories by Indian public sector scientists visiting the USA under exchange programmes or fellowships and so on under the KIA.

India 's Science & Technology and Development framework:

Our development framework focuses only on national economic growth rates and forgets the livelihoods of millions of Indians eking out a living through farming. As a polity, we seem to be feeding the endless lifestyle aspirations of millions of urban, middle class Indians who only want to emulate the Americans and others. This is obviously extremely destructive in an ecological sense – the ecological foot print that we would be leaving as a country would be far higher than the developed countries', if this development model is pursued mindlessly.

At another level, the S & T framework adopted in the case of agriculture was always one that sought to gain control over nature, rather than working in cooperation with/tandem with nature. The latter, as thousands of years of Indian farming has shown, is the one that ensures sustainable resource use – it took only 4 to 5 decades of intensive farming to erode and degrade our resources to the present situation whereas our forefathers did farming for thousands of years without leaving the future generations gasping for life.

The S & T framework governing Indian agriculture has been one that requires intensive use of external inputs which has its own ecological, economic and political ramifications. Commodification of all inputs has only meant that local economies got drained to fill the coffers of agri-business companies whose sole aim is to seek more and more markets for their products.

Our S & T frameworks should have been reviewed as a response to the farming crisis all around. This did not happen; through the KIA we want to further accelerate adoption of the same S & T approaches in agriculture as in the case of Green Revolution. Those approaches have already been proven as unsustainable and destructive of our natural resources.

This is in fact a destruction of democracy itself. Electoral democracy, as you are aware, is only a narrow understanding of democracy. Participation, public debate, accountability, referendum & recall systems are glaringly absent in our democracy in the context of agriculture. We actually need a Constitution that respects plurality of knowledges, not just what passes off officially as "Science & Technology". We need a Constitution that is ecologically embedded. We need a Directive Principle of State policy that orders protection of Indian agriculture and the diversity that exists there.

S & T policy makers sitting in the Ministry of Science & Technology or Department of Agriculture Research & Education or in the Planning Commission have not learnt anything from other countries about incorporating alternative paradigms and knowledge systems into the making of an S & T policy. There is ample positive experience to learn from, elsewhere.

National Agricultural Research System [NARS] in India and its orientation:

The NARS is supposed to have been designed along the Land Grant College system in the USA. However, the accountability mechanisms that are apparent in the Land Grant system there are completely missing here. It is a top-down model of institution building that has gone into our NARS, with no accountability at all towards the clientele – the predominantly poor, small and marginal farmers of this country.

The scientific orientation of the NARS is reductionist, piece-meal and fragmented – agriculture being a complex process of synergies and interactions amongst various factors, such a reductionist approach will not solve the real life problems of the farmers. This has been proven again and again – the scientific experiments and their results in a controlled setting in the agriculture research stations are not replicable in real life conditions of farmers.

There should be an inter-disciplinary, dialectical and holistic scientific approach that should be adopted by agriculture scientists. Such an inter-disciplinary approach should encompass other scientific spheres like anthropology, sociology, political science etc. in addition to different specializations within agriculture science. Synergies between crop-livestock and crop-tree husbandry have been completely ignored by the agri-research system, for instance. The sociological ramifications of a particular technology on different kinds of farmers in different locations are not worked out before large scale promotion of a technology. Another example of the narrow orientation of the agri-research establishment is the neglect that dryland farming suffers in the country today.

Even the research agenda of the NARS is not driven by the real life conditions of the farmers. It is a top-down, linear, lab-to-land model that is adopted in almost all research projects. There is no participation apparent from the side of the farmers in individual research projects, leave alone whole institutions and their overall directions of work.

The NARS do not recognize any other knowledge domain other than what gets classified officially as "scientific". It is this blind approach that had resulted in the erosion of precious knowledge and natural resources amongst farming communities in India. The largest knowledge bank is with the smallholding farmers of India which consists of knowledge of centuries of experiential learning. This technological arrogance is also ignoring larger experiences evolving across the country to sustain farming concurrently with initiatives of farmers, individuals and organizations. Such ready knowledge is constantly being discounted and actively eroded by the NARS in a variety of ways. Today NARS suffers more from 'Innovation fatigue' than 'Technology fatigue'.

There is nothing in the KIA that promises any changes in the existing deep-rooted maladies of the NARS. In fact, the technologies chosen by the KIA will push agriculture scientists farther away from the fields of farmers, deeper into their laboratories (and laboratories in the USA). Agriculture research orientation is now going to be shifted from applied and adaptive research to basic and strategic research, as per the KIA. When it is clear that applied research itself had failed in the Indian agriculture research establishment, what is the rationale behind moving to basic research? How will they then translate it to farmers' real needs and conditions on the ground?

Worse, the agriculture education and extension models are also being re-cast to shift these services away from farmers.

Historically, there has been an excessive orientation of these NARS institutions to gear their research towards only production and productivity questions rather than looking at farmers' livelihoods. There are many others, however, in the UN system and elsewhere, who are changing their S & T institutions, curricula, research design and frameworks and so on to meet the Millenium Development Goals. Does the Indian NARS have nothing to learn from them, other than learning from the USA about orienting agriculture research for improving the commercial potential of agri-corporations?

As mentioned before, the so-called modern technologies in agriculture have only proven to be a drain on the local economies of farmers rather than improving their livelihoods in a sustainable manner. It is imperative that any research and extension intervention from the NARS should only be defined and achieved in a livelihoods context and no other context.

The NARS should realize that in today's complex world, reductionist techno-centricity will not solve any problems. The new mandate of the NARS has to be evolved out of the failure of the earlier mandate and it does not help to continue in the same technological determinism framework. That is the key cornerstone of post-modern agriculture.

It is also important to re-cast completely the reward and incentive system that drives the agriculture scientists today. It is not publication of papers or number of patents that should be the driving parameters of assessing the fulfillment of the mandate of NARS. It is possible for knowledge flows to occur in a manner that farmers derive benefits, without going through the formal, expensive, discriminatory and exclusive intellectual property regime – this has been the experience of civil society work time and again. Agriculture scientists' reward system should be linked to the quality and effective time spent with farming communities in drawing the research agenda from the farmers, by developing technologies in a participatory manner and by using an interdisciplinary and "expert & non-expert co-inquiry" approach.

At present, the NARS is only turning itself into an outsourcing agency for private corporations. Private corporations want to use the public sector institutions for their own research needs and profit-seeking mandates with the lure of some money put into PPP research collaborations and the agriculture research establishment is ready to forget the needs of their primary clientele. The foundations for this are already laid out in the form a parallel initiative 'National Agriculture Innovation Project' supported by the World Bank.

Specific KIA proposals:

· Re-orienting Indian agriculture research to basic and strategic research will mean further cutting off of farmers from these institutions, when the current farming crisis calls for the reverse – of all public sector institutions related to agriculture having to move closer to farmers and work along with them.
· Transgenic agriculture has been given a prominent place in the whole deal, under the theme of Emerging Technologies. It is not clear how this decision has been taken since the debate is unresolved about the very need for such technologies and the various implications from the deployment of such technologies in farming. What is the basis for decisions related to transgenics by the government, given the ever-emerging evidence on the lack of predictability and scientificity in this technology and the hazards that the technology poses? There is no evidence that GM crops increase productivity of crops or can withstand climate change vagaries (In fact, there is USDA data that shows that GM crops might actually mean lowered yields compared to their non-GM counterparts – if the USA is teaching us through the KIA, it is hoped that they are teaching us such facts too). There is clear evidence that such crops are stress-intolerant which means that our national food security itself could be jeopardized by adopting such technologies in the era of climate change.
· Transgenics by the public sector, without MNC presence, is being projected as being farmer-friendly reducing the whole discussion to pricing and IPRs. The reality however is that there are very few farmers who actually demand for and are able to access such public-sector bred seeds in crops like cotton. Further, experience in collaborative research from the University of Agricultural Sciences , Dharwar and CICR, Nagpur shows that our IPR literacy is very poor and we more or less get cheated during the R & D process in these collaborative projects involving proprietary technologies. Patents and royalties are brought into the picture preventing the institution from actually releasing seeds to farmers. What lessons are we learning from such experiences?
· When it comes to proposals related to food processing technologies, they all seem to favour American capital investments more than the needs of Indian farmers or consumers. Such technologies have to be assessed for their employment potential to begin with, since the food processing sector is being projected as the one that will absorb rural population displaced from agriculture.
· There is also clear evidence of using the KIA for the entry of big (food) retail chains into India, at the front-end too. It is very unclear what share of the retail price will actually reach the farmers of the country.
· The government has to decide whether we as a country should focus on food security and sovereignty of the nation or food processing and value addition meant for export markets. The KIA certainly gives importance to the latter but is that what the country needs?
· On themes like bio-fuels too, there is an urgent need for careful thinking regarding alternate use scenarios for precious resources like land and biomass. The KIA proposals seem to be in contradiction to the dominant discourse with regard to bio-fuels in this country – so far, we have talked about bio-diesels on wastelands in this country. The KIA talks about ethanol-based bio-fuels. The KIA has no mention about such technologies which will assist in backyard production of bio-diesels for community level energy needs by integrating native, hardy bio-diesel crop species into farming, through cooperative institutional structures. The KIA proposals are meant to create technologies that will essentially result in a competition between urban (fuel) and rural (food) needs.
· The KIA has water management as one of its themes of collaboration. India, which is famous for being a 'hydrological society' and for the organic socio-cultural links between communities and water resources, would have nothing to learn from a country like the USA on water management and drought-proofing. There is ample experience within this country for the NARS to learn from. No amount of techno-centric solutions will take care of water resources – their conservation or preserving the quality. No remediation of contaminated waters can take place through the NARS especially given the impunity with which contamination from industrial effluents takes place. Only a radically different view and value system associated with water as a basic resource of life will change things.
· As mentioned earlier, the IPR regimes in India and the USA are vastly different and this is an area of great concern with relation to the KIA. Precious germplasm is already moving out of the country in the name of collaborative research and it is not clear what IPR arrangements are in place. There do not seem to be any material transfer agreements in place either. We seem to be legitimizing bio-piracy as never before. On the other hand, communities who are original contributors to our germplasm collections in various NARS centres are being denied access to what is legitimately theirs!

The process of formulating the KIA:

This deal has been projected by you as the harbinger of the Second Green Revolution, which means that it has great significance attached to it. Yet, you chose not to debate it with our elected representatives or with state governments. From all accounts, it did not even get discussed properly within the NARS. This is completely unacceptable.

Further, it is not clear what accountability mechanisms exist in the case of KIA – what reviews, what monitoring, who will be accountable and how. What needs to be done in case an American party needs to be made liable for a particular project, for instance?

OUR DEMANDS:

We invite you to reverse the possibilities with the KIA by rescuing America from itself, its farming and its agri-corporations. Please get into a bilateral deal that teaches Americans alternative paradigms in agriculture and rescues America from the 'monoculture of mind' that has evolved there. We want you to understand and make the Americans understand that democracy is not just liberty, equality and fraternity but also sustainability, plurality and generosity.

Given that Indian agriculture does not have anything in common with American farming, given that we have vast amounts of experience, knowledge and capabilities on a variety of subjects within the country, given that the KIA does not seem to have any benefits for farmers but only negative implications, given that the Second Green Revolution if any has to be launched in the country only after due deliberative and democratic processes, given that the IPR implications from the deal are stacked against Indian interests and given that the current agrarian crisis facing Indian farmers needs other fundamentally different solutions, we demand that your government :

· Put the implementation of the KIA on hold immediately. Review the whole deal with credible agricultural, political and social scientists along with farmers' union and civil society representatives, like you are ready to do with the 123 Nuclear Deal, after pressure from other political parties. Further, debate the agreement within the Parliament and state Assemblies and discuss it with state governments.
· Draw up a fresh research agenda for the Indian NARS and its different local institutions after a broad based consultative process with farmers all over the country.
· Provide income security to all farmers in the country by providing them an assured monthly salary from any special financial mechanism that you evolve for the purpose.
· Allocate all the funds meant for agriculture extension in the hands of the targeted clientele after organizing the farmers for better accountability.
· Allow immediate access to indigenous germplasm collections to communities who wish to access such resources for conservation and use, through legislative and administrative means.

Requesting you to intervene in this matter immediately and take all our concerns on board,

Signed & endorsed by:

1. Dr G V Ramanjaneyulu
Agriculture Scientist
Centre for Sustainable Agriculture
Hyderabad
2. Kavitha Kuruganti
Researcher & campaigner
Centre for Sustainable Agriculture
Hyderabad

The Agony Of The DeprivedIndian Muslims

2007-09-10T00:21:00.000-07:00

“My husband was in Phool Sawangi, hundreds of miles away from Malegaon when the blasts took place in Malegaon a year before. The whole village is witness to this fact. Tell me, how can he plant a bomb in Malegaon when he was miles away?” asks Salma Bano, a resident of Phool Sawangi near Nanded and wife of Zahid Akhter. Zahid is one of the accused in Malegaon September Blasts case. With sheer helplessness written large in her eyes and almost bewailed, she adds, “No way! But he is still lingering into the jail.”
Ironically, this is not an aberration in the country; the Muslims have been at the receiving end from the Police Department and other Government officials in India ever since the Independence. Whenever something happens in any part of the country, finger of suspicions are immediately raised towards the Muslims without taking into account the impact of such attitude on the community, “This is nothing but a mental torture and it looks sort of state sponsored pestering through the machinery”, says Altaf Ansari, an activist. And once this is done, the Muslims are now lucky if they can avoid indiscriminate detentions of their educated youngsters.
Very recently, the same thing was observed after the Makkah Masjid Blasts in Hyderabad as well. Like in Malegaon, as soon as the blasts took place, the speculations of the Muslim involvement started circulating even before any investigation actually took place.
God forbid saying, the State Machinery is working on some pre-planned strategy to nab the Muslims. However, a close study of the Sachar Committee Report confirms this notion to some extent. It is worth recalling what the report says about the trauma, to which the Muslims are subjected to, when such things make rounds in the society.

Report Brief

The Prime Minster of India constituted a High Level Committee led by Justice Rajendra Sachar for assessing the Social, Economic and Educational Status of the Muslims in India. After an extension of few months, the Committee ultimately handed its report to the Prime Minister in November last.
And the report! It was as if, someone has counted the bleeding wounds of an injured body! Beyond doubt, first time after the independence, any report has succeeded in addressing the actual grievances of a beleaguered community on official level in such a comprehensive manner! The grievances, which were cleverly kept hidden from the world till now!
As expected, it was a near storm everywhere in the country when the report was made public. And after the dust settled down, it became clearly known to everyone that the Muslims in India are far behind, in almost every field, in comparison with their fellow countrymen. Worst, they are forced to live under the dilemma of being treated as Anti-National.

The burden (or price?) of loyalty

Along with many other torments the community is forced to live with, the report has highlighted ‘the mental torture’ by the media and the agencies that keep on questioning the loyalty of the Muslims towards the country. The Report has observed, “They carry a double burden of being labeled as “anti-national” and as being “appeased” at the same time. While Muslims need to prove on a daily basis that they are not “anti-national” and “terrorists”, it is not recognized that the alleged “appeasement” has not resulted in the desired level of socio-economic development of the Community.”
It further says, “Concern was expressed over police highhandedness in dealing with Muslims. Muslims live with an inferiority complex as ‘every bearded man is considered an ISI agent’, ‘whenever any incident occurs Muslim boys are picked up by the police’ and fake encounters are common. In fact, people argued that police presence in Muslim localities is more common than the presence of schools, industry, public hospitals and banks.”
The report goes on to add, “Communal tension or any untoward incident in any part of the country is enough to make Muslims fear for their safety and security. The lackadaisical attitude of the government and the political mileage sought whenever communal riots occur has been very painful for the Community.”
Now the most awful act on the part of the Government! The Muslims had expected from the Government that it would have taken some immediate corrective measures at least in this regard. However, very unfortunate to state that one really fails to find anything the Government has done in this regard.

Is the Government really serious over the Report?

Not a single day is passed when a leader, however small or big, forgets to reiterate the Government’s seriousness over the Sachar Committee Report and its concern for the revival of the Muslim Community. Some even suggest, backdoor high-level activities are underway and some thing good for the community will definitely come out of it. They even advice to hold on for sometimes as the Government policies take time for implementation.
True, the Government initiatives, schemes and policies take time and if they are related to the Muslims, they take even more time. However, the Muslims wish to know what steps the Government has taken for easing out the “burden of suspected loyalty” from the beleaguered community. What the Government has done to counter the malicious propaganda against the Muslim community and what it has done about the alleged atrocities against the Muslims.
Just in case you are listening dear Prime Minister
Lately, we have seen some statements by the Prime Minister and other ministers urging the concerned departments for restrain and when the Prime Minister said, he had not slept for the whole night after watching the TV images of Glasgow accused’s parents, it was really mother of all statements in this regard. Nonetheless, one is sorry to say that the attitude of the officials and various departments towards the Muslims remain the same and ceases to show any kind of reversal. Otherwise my dear PM, why is Zahid still behind the bars when Haneef is enjoying into the free air? Why is Salma still away when Firdous Arshiya has found her love?
And it is here that the suspicion comes into one’s mind about the sincerity of the Government over the report. It is high time for the Government to realize at least now that, more than bread and butter, what the Muslims in India need today is a better peace of mind. Enough of the rhetoric, it is time for the action now.
It is really interesting to recall what Hasan Kamal, a senior journalist and activist had said in a recent meeting on ‘Islam and terrorism’, “Give us TEN years of peace, I just ask TEN years of peace for the Muslims, then you would see, to what height we take this country to.”

By Aleem Faizee

The Girl Blogger From Baghdad Leaves Home

2007-09-10T00:18:00.000-07:00

Two months ago, the suitcases were packed. My lone, large suitcase sat in my bedroom for nearly six weeks, so full of clothes and personal items, that it took me, E. and our six year old neighbor to zip it closed.
Packing that suitcase was one of the more difficult things I’ve had to do. It was Mission Impossible: Your mission, R., should you choose to accept it is to go through the items you’ve accumulated over nearly three decades and decide which ones you cannot do without. The difficulty of your mission, R., is that you must contain these items in a space totaling 1 m by 0.7 m by 0.4 m. This, of course, includes the clothes you will be wearing for the next months, as well as any personal memorabilia- photos, diaries, stuffed animals, CDs and the like.
I packed and unpacked it four times. Each time I unpacked it, I swore I’d eliminate some of the items that were not absolutely necessary. Each time I packed it again, I would add more ‘stuff’ than the time before. E. finally came in a month and a half later and insisted we zip up the bag so I wouldn’t be tempted to update its contents constantly.
The decision that we would each take one suitcase was made by my father. He took one look at the box of assorted memories we were beginning to prepare and it was final: Four large identical suitcases were purchased- one for each member of the family and a fifth smaller one was dug out of a closet for the documentation we’d collectively need- graduation certificates, personal identification papers, etc.
We waited… and waited… and waited. It was decided we would leave mid to late June- examinations would be over and as we were planning to leave with my aunt and her two children- that was the time considered most convenient for all involved. The day we finally appointed as THE DAY, we woke up to an explosion not 2 km away and a curfew. The trip was postponed a week. The night before we were scheduled to travel, the driver who owned the GMC that would take us to the border excused himself from the trip- his brother had been killed in a shooting. Once again, it was postponed.
There was one point, during the final days of June, where I simply sat on my packed suitcase and cried. By early July, I was convinced we would never leave. I was sure the Iraqi border was as far away, for me, as the borders of Alaska. It had taken us well over two months to decide to leave by car instead of by plane. It had taken us yet another month to settle on Syria as opposed to Jordan. How long would it take us to reschedule leaving?
It happened almost overnight. My aunt called with the exciting news that one of her neighbors was going to leave for Syria in 48 hours because their son was being threatened and they wanted another family on the road with them in another car- like gazelles in the jungle, it’s safer to travel in groups. It was a flurry of activity for two days. We checked to make sure everything we could possibly need was prepared and packed. We arranged for a distant cousin of my moms who was to stay in our house with his family to come the night before we left (we can’t leave the house empty because someone might take it).
It was a tearful farewell as we left the house. One of my other aunts and an uncle came to say goodbye the morning of the trip. It was a solemn morning and I’d been preparing myself for the last two days not to cry. You won’t cry, I kept saying, because you’re coming back. You won’t cry because it’s just a little trip like the ones you used to take to Mosul or Basrah before the war. In spite of my assurances to myself of a safe and happy return, I spent several hours before leaving with a huge lump lodged firmly in my throat. My eyes burned and my nose ran in spite of me. I told myself it was an allergy.
We didn’t sleep the night before we had to leave because there seemed to be so many little things to do… It helped that there was no electricity at all- the area generator wasn’t working and ‘national electricity’ was hopeless. There just wasn’t time to sleep.
The last few hours in the house were a blur. It was time to go and I went from room to room saying goodbye to everything. I said goodbye to my desk- the one I’d used all through high school and college. I said goodbye to the curtains and the bed and the couch. I said goodbye to the armchair E. and I broke when we were younger. I said goodbye to the big table over which we’d gathered for meals and to do homework. I said goodbye to the ghosts of the framed pictures that once hung on the walls, because the pictures have long since been taken down and stored away- but I knew just what hung where. I said goodbye to the silly board games we inevitably fought over- the Arabic Monopoly with the missing cards and money that no one had the heart to throw away.
I knew then as I know now that these were all just items- people are so much more important. Still, a house is like a museum in that it tells a certain history. You look at a cup or stuffed toy and a chapter of memories opens up before your very eyes. It suddenly hit me that I wanted to leave so much less than I thought I did.
Six AM finally came. The GMC waited outside while we gathered the necessities- a thermos of hot tea, biscuits, juice, olives (olives?!) which my dad insisted we take with us in the car, etc. My aunt and uncle watched us sorrowfully. There’s no other word to describe it. It was the same look I got in my eyes when I watched other relatives and friends prepare to leave. It was a feeling of helplessness and hopelessness, tinged with anger. Why did the good people have to go?
I cried as we left- in spite of promises not to. The aunt cried… the uncle cried. My parents tried to be stoic but there were tears in their voices as they said their goodbyes. The worst part is saying goodbye and wondering if you’re ever going to see these people again. My uncle tightened the shawl I’d thrown over my hair and advised me firmly to ‘keep it on until you get to the border’. The aunt rushed out behind us as the car pulled out of the garage and dumped a bowl of water on the ground, which is a tradition- its to wish the travelers a safe return… eventually.
The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.
The trip was long and uneventful, other than two checkpoints being run by masked men. They asked to see identification, took a cursory glance at the passports and asked where we were going. The same was done for the car behind us. Those checkpoints are terrifying but I’ve learned that the best technique is to avoid eye-contact, answer questions politely and pray under your breath. My mother and I had been careful not to wear any apparent jewelry, just in case, and we were both in long skirts and head scarves.
Syria is the only country, other than Jordan, that was allowing people in without a visa. The Jordanians are being horrible with refugees. Families risk being turned back at the Jordanian border, or denied entry at Amman Airport. It’s too high a risk for most families.
We waited for hours, in spite of the fact that the driver we were with had ‘connections’, which meant he’d been to Syria and back so many times, he knew all the right people to bribe for a safe passage through the borders. I sat nervously at the border. The tears had stopped about an hour after we’d left Baghdad. Just seeing the dirty streets, the ruins of buildings and houses, the smoke-filled horizon all helped me realize how fortunate I was to have a chance for something safer.
By the time we were out of Baghdad, my heart was no longer aching as it had been while we were still leaving it. The cars around us on the border were making me nervous. I hated being in the middle of so many possibly explosive vehicles. A part of me wanted to study the faces of the people around me, mostly families, and the other part of me, the one that’s been trained to stay out of trouble the last four years, told me to keep my eyes to myself- it was almost over.
It was finally our turn. I sat stiffly in the car and waited as money passed hands; our passports were looked over and finally stamped. We were ushered along and the driver smiled with satisfaction, “It’s been an easy trip, Alhamdulillah,” he said cheerfully.
As we crossed the border and saw the last of the Iraqi flags, the tears began again. The car was silent except for the prattling of the driver who was telling us stories of escapades he had while crossing the border. I sneaked a look at my mother sitting beside me and her tears were flowing as well. There was simply nothing to say as we left Iraq. I wanted to sob, but I didn’t want to seem like a baby. I didn’t want the driver to think I was ungrateful for the chance to leave what had become a hellish place over the last four and a half years.
The Syrian border was almost equally packed, but the environment was more relaxed. People were getting out of their cars and stretching. Some of them recognized each other and waved or shared woeful stories or comments through the windows of the cars. Most importantly, we were all equal. Sunnis and Shia, Arabs and Kurds… we were all equal in front of the Syrian border personnel.
We were all refugees- rich or poor. And refugees all look the same- there’s a unique expression you’ll find on their faces- relief, mixed with sorrow, tinged with apprehension. The faces almost all look the same.
The first minutes after passing the border were overwhelming. Overwhelming relief and overwhelming sadness… How is it that only a stretch of several kilometers and maybe twenty minutes, so firmly segregates life from death?
How is it that a border no one can see or touch stands between car bombs, militias, death squads and… peace, safety? It’s difficult to believe- even now. I sit here and write this and wonder why I can’t hear the explosions.
I wonder at how the windows don’t rattle as the planes pass overhead. I’m trying to rid myself of the expectation that armed people in black will break through the door and into our lives. I’m trying to let my eyes grow accustomed to streets free of road blocks, hummers and pictures of Muqtada and the rest…

How is it that all of this lies a short car ride away?

By Baghdad Burning