13 held in Bengal for links with Maoist sent to judicial custody!
Troubled Galaxy Destroyed Dreams- Chapter 501
Palash Biswas
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13 held in Bengal for links with Maoist sent to judicial custody!
Thirteen people, including three city intellectuals, arrested for alleged links with Maoists in West Bengal's West Midnapore district were Wednesday remanded by a court to judicial custody for 14 days.
The 13, who have been booked for waging war against the state and charged under various sections of penal code, were presented in a lower court in Jhargram in the district.
West Midnapore Superintendent of Police Monoj Verma said all three city intellectuals -- scientist Nisha Biswas, college teacher Kaniska Chowdhury and writer Manik Mandal -- went to the villages to meet Maoists and leaders of their frontal body People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA).
They were also present in a kangaroo court besides providing financial help to the rebel outfit.
Communist Party of India-Maoist West Bengal state Committee spokesperson Khokon, however, denied any link with the three intellectuals.
'We never met them and have no links with them. The government is trying to gag the voice of people who are trying to find out the actual condition at Lalgarh,' he said.
Police in Jharkhand's Latehar District busted a fake Maoist organisation called 'Azad Hind Sena' on Wednesday.
Top Maoist leader Kishenji is currently been hiding somewhere in a forest in West Midnapore district, Superintendent of Police Manoj Verma said here on Thursday.
"Kishenji is hiding in the forests of Midnapore district. All steps have been taken in order to prevent him from escaping," Verma said.
Kishenji was a politburo member of CPI (Maoist) and in charge of the region comprising West Bengal, Bihar, Jharkhand and Orissa.
Acting on a tip-off, police raided Kochra village and arrested three men pretending to be Maoists to extort money from locals. They recovered six country-made rifles along with 50 cartridges.
"They were extorting money from people and used to threaten people. With the help of Latehar police we raided the village and caught the chief, Raju Miyan, and two other area commanders," said Kuldip Dwivedi, Superintendent of Police.
The organisation has also been involved in abduction activities!| Rapid response rips Maoist camp Forces kill 8 guerrillas in night assault | |||
| NARESH JANA | |||
Midnapore, June 16: The joint forces killed at least eight insurgents near Lalgarh this morning, inflicting the biggest loss yet on Maoists in Bengal in an operation credited to "pinpointed" information and a risky departure that let the troops respond fast by moving at night. The deaths — the largest body count in an anti-Maoist operation in the state — occurred two days before the joint forces complete a year of deployment in Lalgarh. Over the past 12 months, the forces had killed 12 rebels, mostly in ones or twos. Unlike on earlier occasions when casualties were suspected but could not be established, the forces have now shown eight bodies. The assault on the Maoist camp at Ranja forest adjoining Duli village in West Midnapore's Salboni involved 700 security personnel. The encounter unfolded between 4.30am and 10am but several key decisions and actions were put in place in the dead of night between midnight and 4am. Among the dead were two camp leaders and three women, two wearing salwar-kameez and the third a sari. The police suspect more casualties but feel that the other bodies could have been taken away by the guerrillas. An injured suspect, whose age the police put at "possibly 14", has been arrested. Officials said no security personnel was injured in the raid that took the Maoists "totally by surprise". Arms and ammunition, including an AK-47 rifle and a self-loading rifle, and improvised explosive devices have been found at the encounter spot. Some of the weapons had markings of the Eastern Frontier Rifles, whose 24 jawans were massacred and arms looted by the Maoists at the Shilda camp in February. S. Purakayastha, the law and order inspector-general, said the group of rebels functioned under Maoist leader Bikash, even though he may not have been there. The police, who had been tapping the cellphones of some Maoists, said they had come to know a couple of days ago that about 40 rebels were camping in the Ranja forest near Duli, about 25km from Lalgarh. Three days ago, the police had found some arms in Barumesia forest, about 2km from Duli, which led them to conclude that Maoists were in the vicinity. Last night, the forces received a specific tip-off that a group of Maoists was camping just outside Duli village. Usually, security forces do not advance at night because of the possibility of ambushes and mines on the roads. However, at midnight, 700 personnel derived from the CRPF, the Cobra commando force and state police set out from their camps in Pirakata, Goaltore, Salboni and Khadibandh. The decision to move at night was apparently taken on the assessment that the information was reliable and the forces still retained the surprise element. By 2.30am, the forces had reached the villages ringing Duli but learned from local "contacts" that improvised explosive devices had been planted at all four approaches to the Maoist camp. The 50-strong Cobra unit was then asked to move through the forest, scour the entry points and neutralise the bombs.
By 4am, the Cobra unit had accomplished its task and given the all-clear. The forces, which had converged from the four flanks, then split themselves into two groups and advanced. One group surrounded Duli village to cut off possible reinforcements for the rebels and the other the Maoist camp. "Around this time, the Maoists realised that the police had arrived and started shooting at us," said West Midnapore superintendent of police Manoj Verma. "We also started shooting back and the encounter lasted about five hours. We have found eight bodies. The surprise element worked in our favour." Police sources said powerful searchlights helped the forces pick out some of the rebels. "We could see the Maoists hurriedly trying to take position. So we could easily take aim and shoot," a policeman said. "We were sheltered behind trees." Eventually, the Maoists managed to escape through a narrow forest path, leaving behind arms. The police did not explain why more rebels could not be arrested. "The AK-47 had markings of the Eastern Frontier Rifles' second battalion and an SLR cartridge was that of the third battalion," Verma said. "They may have been the ones looted from the EFR's Shilda camp. We will have to verify that." DGP Bhupinder Singh described the operation as "a big success". |
The West Bengal government today announced a special package to bring Maoists back to the mainstream under a 'Special Rehabilitation Scheme' formulated by the Centre. As The CBI on Thursday named three activists of Maoist-backed PCPA as key accused in connection with Jnaneshwari Express derailment that left 148 people dead and announced a reward of Rs one lakh each for information leading to their arrest.
Ahead of shutdowns and protests called by Maoists, police stations in all West Bengal districts have been alerted to foil any rebel strikes in view of the completion of one year of joint forces' operation on Friday against the guerrillas in and around this West Midnapore district belt.
"We are alert to the possibility (of Maoist offensive)," Director General of Police Bhupinder Singh told IANS on Thursday, the anniversary eve of the joint forces' operation.
While police stations in all the districts have been alerted, special precautionary measures are in place in the three western districts - West Midnapore, Purulia and Bankura - which are considered the hotbed of rebel activity in the state.
"We have basically alerted all police stations. But maximum security has been taken in the areas of these three districts where Maoists are active," Singh said.
The joint security forces comprising central paramilitary troopers and crack units of the state armed police had launched the massive operation in and around this belt June 18 last year to flush out the Maoist guerrillas, who had virtually taken over the administration for seven months after torching police camps and driving out the civil administration.
The first anniversary of the operation comes two days after the security forces' biggest success in the zone when they killed at least eight Maoist rebels in a fierce gunbattle at Ranjha forest, about 20 km from here.
The Maoists have called a 'Kala Divas' (Black Day) on June 20-21 in the state in memory of the "martyrs" killed in the joint forces' operation.
The pro-Maoist tribal body People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) has given the call for a shutdown in West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts in protest against the deaths of the left wing guerrillas in the Ranjha forest encounter and the "killing of innocent villagers" by the security personnel during the one-year period.
A police official, who led the security forces in the Ranjha forest firefight, said: "We are apprehending some attacks."
West Midnapore Deputy Superintendent of Police (Operations) Anik Sarkar told IANS: "We have got intelligence inputs on the Maoist plans. But we won't divulge them to the media because then they will change their strategy. Rest assured, we have taken all precautions."
Lalgarh had been on the boil since November 2008 when a landmine exploded on the route of the convoy of Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and two other central ministers - Ram Vilas Paswan and Jitin Prasada.
Alleging police atrocities after the blast, the PCAPA, backed by Maoists, launched an agitation cutting off the area from the rest of West Midnapore district. The siege continued till the joint forces moved in and reclaimed the areas, though the rebels still continue to dominate parts of the terrain.
Arrested 'Maoist' mentally challenged: Parents
A 19-year-old arrested by the security forces after Wednesday's gunbattle with Maoist guerrillas in West Midnapore's Ranjha forest is "mentally challenged" and suffers from severe epilepsy, his parents and villagers claim. But the police disagree.
Rameshwar Murmu, a resident of this remote village, about 30 km from the district headquarters Midnapore, is also dumb, his father says.
"On every full moon and new moon day, my son has epileptic seizures. Then it becomes very difficult to tackle him," a downcast Bankim Murmu told IANS at the village under Salboni block.
Rameshwar had contracted high fever when he was eight. After that he lost his faculty of speech and became an epilepsy patient, Bankim said.
Police, after arresting the youth, had admitted he did not speak a word during the interrogation.
The joint forces personnel claimed that Rameshwar was a Maoist who was injured in the fierce gunbattle, which had left eight rebels dead.
The teenager was shown as "unnamed" and produced in the Midnapore district court on Thursday. He was remanded in 14 days' judicial custody after being charged under various sections of the stringent Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA).
According to the youth's mother Madina, when the joint forces were entering their village, all the residents fled to the forest to escape arrest. "I also ran with my husband. But as Rameshwar is mentally challenged, he ran in the direction of the joint forces and was arrested as they took him to be a fleeing Maoist."
It was only when Bankim and Madina returned to the village did they realise that their son has been taken into custody by the forces.
"My son is not a Maoist. He is a mentally challenged boy. He can't even talk properly," said Bankim, tears welling up in his eyes.
Rameshwar, a Class 4 drop out, lives with his elder brother and parents.
The fever he contracted when a child had left his face along with his hands and legs swollen, they said.
Till 2005, he was under the treatment of 'ojhas' or traditional healers in the village.
"Later, we took him to a doctor N Adhikari, who examined him and conducted a series of tests. Finally, he asked us to conduct an EEG (Electro-encephalograph) test which was done at a private laboratory in Midnapore," Bankim said, showing an IANS reporter the medical reports and prescriptions of his son.
The test results, prepared by Swapan Sinha, clearly stated there was an abnormal EEG finding suggestive of "postictal state" (an altered state of consciousness that a person enters after experiencing a seizure).
An aged villager, Sudha Baske, corroborated the Murmu couple's version. "Rameshwar is ill. When he has his seizures, we also have to attend to him. It then becomes difficult even for two persons to control him," she said.
However, state police chief Bhupinder Singh refused to buy the claims of Rameshwar's parents. "If he was not a Maoist, then what was he doing there? He also has a grazing bullet injury. And the Maoists have themselves admitted that their PLGA (Peoples' Liberation Guerilla Army - the Maoists' armed wing) members were at the spot," he said.
But Bankim's only aim now is to get back his son. But the agricultural labourer has no idea how to go about it. "We don't know what to do to save our son. We don't know who we need to talk and who we need to meet to save him." Hunt on for Maoists after Lalgarh battle | |||
| 2010-06-17 14:10:00 | |||
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One year of Lalgarh: 325 people, 37 cops killed by Maoists | |||
| 2010-06-17 23:40:00 Last Updated: 2010-06-18 00:12:15 | |||
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Teen 'Maoists' slain in India
- From: The Australian
- June 17, 2010
WITH her peach-coloured tunic, ponytail and chubby cheeks, the woman tied hog-style to a pole and paraded through a West Bengal village like a big-game trophy could scarcely look less like a rebel soldier.
One of eight suspected Maoists slain in a six-hour gun battle with security forces, the woman - whose unedifying end was on front pages throughout India yesterday - is the latest in a long and bloody line of casualties piling up on both sides of India's war on terror.
Police in the Maoist-struck district of West Midnapore yesterday hailed the deaths of the alleged insurgents - all aged between 16 and 23 - as one of the biggest successes of a joint state and federal counter-insurgency operation launched a year ago.
Superintendent Manoj Verma said the encounter proved Maoist rebels were using teenagers to fight their battles.
"The rebels are luring young minds into this path of mindless violence. I urge the youth to shun Maoists and return to the mainstream," he said, as he presented a cache of weapons allegedly collected from the rebel campsite.
The publicity over Wednesday's clash in thick forest less than 150km from the state capital, Kolkata, and the release of such shocking footage, are unusual.
But recent devastating attacks by Maoist rebels on security forces and civilians have posed serious questions about the country's ability to fight an insurgency Prime Minister Manmohan Singh describes as India's biggest internal security threat. India's central government faces pressure to send troops into the states of north, central and northeastern India, known as the Red Belt, to quell escalating violence.
But activists accuse security forces of ignoring the issue inflaming the insurgency - the failure of India to share its increasing wealth with landless peasants and tribal people.
Human rights groups yesterday questioned whether those killed in Wednesday's clash were rebel soldiers, accusing police of promoting their latest "success" as a smokescreen for their failure to protect vulnerable populations caught between the Maoists - who claim to be fighting for their rights - and a security force supposed to protect them.
"We often have anecdotal evidence of people being killed who may or may not be Naxalites," Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative spokesman Sanjay Patil said yesterday. "No one in these jurisdictions is safe because the violence is indiscriminate both on the part of the Maoists and, to a certain extent, the state."
India Maoists to 'protest' against killings
Page last updated at 08:04 GMT, Thursday, 17 June 2010 09:04 UK
There has been a wave of Maoist-led violence in recent months India's Maoists say they will observe a two-day protest against a security operation in West Bengal state in which eight of their fighters were killed.
The rebels, including three women, were killed by security forces in West Midnapore district on Wednesday.
Rebel spokesman Comrade Khokan said the protest would be held during the weekend.
Authorities have been under pressure following a wave of Maoist-led violence in recent months.
In late May, more than 145 people were killed when a train crashed in West Bengal after Maoist rebels allegedly sabotaged the rail track.
'Systemic action'Comrade Khokan told the BBC that the rebels could not have a dialogue with the authorities if "there is systemic and continuous police action".
Police said forces were put on high alert anticipating violence during the protest weekend.
"We would expect them to set off a few explosions in parts of West Bengal and stage a few attacks on the security forces, so we have to be on our guard," said West Bengal police chief Bhupinder Singh.
Early on Wednesday, eight rebels were killed during a six-hour-long firefight in the Rajna forests near the troubled Lalgarh enclave.
Their bodies were recovered along with some guns and ammunition which had been earlier looted from a police armoury, police said.
Mr Singh said earlier 10 villagers, two teachers and a writer had been arrested from West Midnapore because of suspected links with the Maoists.
Some of these arrested people had given the police information about the movement of the rebels, leading to the "successful operation" on Wednesday.
Thousands have died in the rebels' decades-long fight against the state.
Maoist rebels have in recent months stepped up attacks in response to a government push to flush them out of their jungle bases.
Indian forces launched the offensive in what is known as the "red corridor" - a broad swathe of territory in eastern and central India where the Maoist rebellion has been gathering strength.
Nearly 50,000 federal paramilitary troops and tens of thousands of policemen are taking part in the operation in several states.
In April, 76 paramilitary troops were killed in an ambush - the single deadliest attack on the Indian security forces by the rebels.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh has described the Maoist insurgency as India's biggest internal security challenge.
See also
Profile: India's Maoist rebels
06 April 10South Asia
Indian villagers in crossfire of Maoist conflict
09 April 10South Asia
Support slips away from India's Maoists
15 April 10South Asia
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Maoland in Midnapore
Hindustan TimesChhotomoni Mahato (65), who earns her keep by plucking saal leaves in Patri village of West Midnapore, contributed Rs 10 to a Maoist-backed organisation to dig a pond in the area.
Those employed in various jobs in the locality are asked to stump up 20-25 per cent of their income for similar so-called development projects.
This is the Lalgarh area, 160 km west of Kolkata, deep inside West Midnapore district.
Maybe extortion, but the Maoists have taken over the civic services, the law and order machinery, and even the judicial services in the area.
It is a "secret state" that seems to have survived the onslaught of 5,000 personnel of the Centre-state combined forces for the past one year.
In June last year, Hindustan Times went to discover this state within a state, carefully shielded from the public eye, emerging in different parts of West Midnapore.
The picture hasn't changed.
In Kalsibhanga village, members of the Maoist-backed People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PCAPA) have created an irrigation canal that is 1,200 feet long, 5 feet wide, and also 5 feet deep.
The canal is connected with a pond that is 10 bigha (10 bighas = 144,000 square feet) in area. "This monsoon, we expect the surrounding farmland to get the needed irrigation through this canal. It will definitely increase rice production," Manoj Mahato, PCAPA central committee member, told HT.
Inspector General (Western Range) of Police Zulfikar Hasan said: "We are aware that the PCAPA is running health centres. We have closed some of them."
While there are allegations of extortion from local contractors, traders and service holders, the rebels say the contribution of funds and labour from people is voluntary.
The rebels have built and repaired roads of 50 km in some villages of the Jhargram sub-division.
The PCAPA claims to have dug about 200 wells, besides renovating around 1,000 existing ones, in their areas of domination, which spreads over 27 police stations in the three districts of West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia.
"The CPI(M)-led government in West Bengal never carried out development in this area," said Lalmohan Mahato.
He had been a CPI(M) member before quitting the party in early 2009, in protest against corruption.
In Rameshwarpur village under the Bhimpur panchayat, the rebels run a health centre that offers service for 12 hours in the day. There are two doctors here though there are nine untrained persons who offer medical consultancy.
"This centre treats about 100 patients every day," said Mahato.
The centre was in a government building that housed an anganwadi unit (mother- and child-care centre) before the rebels took it over more than a year ago.
There are 35 such health centres in the entire district. Rameshwarpur functions as headquarters for health services and medicines are dispatched from here.
In April 2010 the combined forces raided this centre and seized medicines, which was a temporary setback for the Maoist dispensation. "The forces took away medicines worth Rs 40,000 and smashed the almirahs," said Haripada Mahato, in charge of the Rameswarpur health centre.
However, West Bengal CPI(M) State Secretariat member Robin Deb said the government had no objection to health centres, which are good for people. But if arms and ammunition is stored in them, the security forces must intervene.
The rebels are building a six-bed hospital next to the Rameswarpur health centre. "The basement has been built. It will be functional in two months," Haripada Mahato said.
"Are they really building a hospital there?" asked an incredulous Aneesh Sarkar, deputy superintendent of police (operations), West Midnapore.
He is in the dark about it.
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12 Naxals killed in encounter in West Midnapore
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In a major success for security forces, 12 Maoists, including three women, were shot dead and many more injured in an encounter on Wednesday in a forest in West Midnapore, almost a year after anti-Naxal operations were launched in the district in West Bengal.
"Twelve Maoists were killed by the joint forces. It is a major success. We found eight bodies. We have information that four of the bodies were carried away by Maoists while many more were injured," Director General of Police Bhupinder Singh told reporters in Kolkata.
"Acting on a tip off that 40 to 45 Maoists had gathered at Duli village near Ranja forest in Salboni police station area, a team of commandos and special forces of CRPF and police closed in," the DGP said.
"When the Maoists opened fire, the forces retaliated," Singh said.
He said Union Home Minister P Chidambaram and Union Home Secretary G K Pillai congratulated the joint forces for the successful operation.
"Though none of the bodies has been indentified, there is information that a big Maoist leader is among them," Singh said.
Admitting deaths, Maoist spokesperson Akash told PTI from an undisclosed location that "the joint forces attacked us in the morning. They belonged the to the People's Liberation Guerrilla Army, the armed wing of Maoists. They were asleep at the time."http://www.hindustantimes.com/rssfeed/westbengal/12-Naxals-killed-in-encounter-in-West-Midnapore/Article1-558776.aspx
Announcing the package, West Bengal Chief Secretary Ardhendu Sen told reporters that the state government would implement the surrender-cum-rehabilitation package for those who surrender arms and agree to join the mainstream.
"The cases of persons now in police custody will be reviewed. Persons who have minor charges against them may, as a special gesture, be released on bail," he said.
He said there are indications that some Naxalites might surrender and the district administration had been given necessary instruction in this regard.
About 400 to 500 persons in the Maoist zone, comprising districts of West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia, had been arrested in the last one year, he said.
A special cell would be created in the West Midnapore DM's office for planning and implementing the special package of development schemes in the district.
In Bankura and Purulia, a senior officer would be specially entrusted for the job. The government is committed to socio-economic development of backward areas in the state, particularly the Maoist- affected areas, Sen said.
Special attention would be paid for implementation of normal schemes of various departments including flagship schemes in the areas, Sen said.
Several special schemes would also be implemented for focused development of the affected blocks in West Midnapore, Bankura and Purulia districts and for improvement of economic condition in areas where Intensive Tribal Development Project (ITDP) is being implemented, he said.
Girl students of class IX and XII would be provided with bicycles to continue their studies.
Two central hostels would be set up one at Jhargram and the other at Midnapore for tribal boys and girls and the capacity of the existing hostels would be increased, Sen said.
The polytechnic institute and the ITI at Jhargram would be upgraded, while computer and vocational training centres would be set up to create self-employment opportunities.
Five Rural Piped Water Supply Schemes would be commissioned in each of these blocks, he said.
"CBI has declared a reward of Rs one lakh each for information leading to the arrest of three prominent accused - Umakant Mahto, resident of village Banksole, Manoj alias Bapi Mahto, resident of Rasua village and Asit Mahto, resident of Krishnanagar village," CBI spokesperson Harsh Bhal said.
While Asit is the convenor of People's Committee against Police Atrocities (PCPA), allegedly supported by Maoists, Umakant and Bapi too are senior activists of the outfit, he said, adding a manhunt has been launched for them.
Bhal said posters in English, Bengali and Alchiki (local language) giving their details were released on Thursday and they will be displayed at prominent places for seeking information about the absconding accused.
Bhal said the CBI has constituted a joint investigation team to investigate the incident involving the Howrah-Kurla Jyaneshwari Express on May 28 in West Midnapore in West Bengal.
He said the investigation involves close coordination and cooperation between several organisations, agencies and individuals. The JIT comprises officials from CBI, the state police, Railway Protection Force, Railway Board and forensic experts, Bhal said. The CBI had earlier arrested PCPA leader Hiralal Mahato in the case.
PM hopeful of peace initiatives in Assam: Gogoi
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh is "hopeful" of a positive outcome of the Assam government's efforts in ending the decades-old insurgency in the state, Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi today said.
"The Prime Minister is very hopeful of the peace initiatives. He is hopeful of a positive outcome," Gogoi told PTI, a day after the government gave its "green signal" to the peace talks with the banned ULFA and former Intelligence Bureau chief P C Haldar agreed to act as interlocutor.
"The interlocutor will talk to them. We will also talk. Then we will move. But there will be no talks on sovereignty demand of the outfit. The talks will be held as per provisions of the Constitution."
He said Singh has also agreed to meet a delegation of Assamese intellectuals who have been playing a key role in initiating talks with the group.
Gogoi on Tuesday had briefed Singh about his government's initiatives to hold dialogue with the banned group.
"We are moving in the right direction. It is a good beginning and we want to move step-by-step," Gogoi, who met Union Home Minister P Chidambaram yesterday, told reporters earlier. Asked whether talks will be fruitful without group's military chief Paresh Baruah, he said "if the government can bring 70 per cent of the ULFA leaders to peace process than why should we wait for.
"If he (Barua) comes, it is well and good. Otherwise we will go ahead. As of today, he is not keen on talks," he said, adding the prime minister also asked about Barua.
"I got positive response (from ULFA). Out of 18 leaders, nine are in custody in Assam and nine are abroad. We are trying to rope in those who are not in Assam including Paresh Barua," he said.
According to him, Assam government will provide "facilities" to jailed ULFA leaders in Assam so that they could hold discussion among themselves.
On whether the government was considering freeing some ULFA leaders currently lodged in jails, he said only courts can decide about the issue.
"We cannot free the jailed leaders. Only courts can decide on the issue. But we will provide all the facilities so that they can talk among themselves," he said.
Noting that he was not expecting a "miracle" about the peace initiatives, Gogoi said "Barua must read the writing on the wall."
Replying to a question whether state government would provide safe passage to Barua if he wants to come to Assam for the peace efforts, the Assam Chief Minister said government would be willing to consider such gesture.
Queried whether government would halt military operation against ULFA, Gogoi said there was no question of even slowing down the operations against rebels.
Guidelines to check corporal punishment in schools
HRD Minister Kapil Sibal today said tough guidelines will be issued to check corporal punishment in schools in the backdrop of a 13-year-old student in Kolkata allegedly ending his life after being caned by his principal.
Sibal has asked chairperson of National Commission Protection of Child Rights (NCPCR) Shantha Sinha to frame and issue tough guidelines to get rid of corporal punishment in schools.
13-year-old Rouvanjit Rawla, a student of La Martiniere School in Kolkata, allegedly committed suicide after being caned by his principal.
Sibal said that the newly-enacted Right To Education Act prohibits corporal punishment. He discussed the issue with the NCPCR chief yesterday. "Because we have a provision in the Act, we can issue guidelines. We will be in fact in discussion with NCPCR for issuance of guidelines," he said.
"We must get rid of corporal punishment. Children need to be included in the system. I think there is so much change in the methodology and the way we deliver education," he said.
The NCPCR has already issued guidelines in 2007. But those rules are not enough to check the menace.
Sibal said the school must take responsibility in the event a student gets prominently damaged following corporal punishment.
"Ultimately, the school has to take responsibility. In the event there is corporal punishment and somebody gets prominently damaged, somebody has to take responsibility," he said.
Sometimes such incidents drive students to commit suicide, he said.
"But there should be a process through which there should be inquiry about the circumstances of the death in case of a suicide. In the event anybody is found culpable, then the possible course of action should follow," he said.
Night raid wrongfoots enemy Strategy shift spells success | ||||
| OUR BUREAU | ||||
June 16: A change in strategy helped police score their biggest success against the Maoists since Operation Lalgarh began on June 18 last year. Officers said two factors contributed to the heavy toll they managed to inflict. First, was the "pinpointed" tip-off about the guerrillas. Second, and more crucial, was the change of strategy — the decision to swoop down on the forest last night itself, instead of waiting till daybreak like they often did. The police brass said at Writers' Buildings it was the decision to conduct the raid at night that lent a "surprise" element to the offensive and caught the Maoists off-guard. "Normally, the Maoists are always on their guard," an officer said. "But the police have rarely ventured into a forest at night, which appears to have made them complacent. Given the pattern of police response in the past, the Maoists were not expecting them at night." Director-general of police Bhupinder Singh echoed this. "Three things really helped," he told The Telegraph. "The pinpointed information, the tactical decision and the planning, and finally the surprise element that this led to." He added to the list a fourth factor — "the bravery of the force". Police sources said they normally did not venture into forests at night because of the fear of traps. "During the day, we can carefully examine the environs," an officer said. However, an exception was made last night because the source was very confident about his information. "Additionally, we felt the gain from the surprise element would outweigh the greater risks." So far, the Maoist intelligence network had proved better oiled than the police's. The rebels always stayed a step ahead of raiding police teams. But that machinery, run by ordinary villagers, failed them this time, also possibly because of the timing of the raid.
"In the dead of night, everyone was fast asleep and that helped keep the raid a secret. The police only spoke to their contacts in the villages along the way." Usually, the police come to know about Maoist groups very late and they flee by the time the personnel reach. This time, the information reached them well in advance. An officer said an "element of luck" could not be denied. "The Maoists had been camping at Duli for a month and not a word had got to the police about them until a few days ago. It means that their stranglehold of fear over the villagers is still very much present." The confirmation of the guerrillas' presence at Ranja forest came last night. The police activated their sources following some Maoist telephone intercepts. "But for the intercepts, we wouldn't have known about their presence in the area," the officer said. Once tipped off, the crucial difference from other occasions was the night raid. |
OO MUCH CONTROL - There is no reason to hold back the Henderson Brooks report | |
| Srinath Raghavan | |
Responding to a question in Parliament, the defence minister, A.K. Antony, recently reaffirmed the government's stance on the Henderson Brooks report. The report was the outcome of an army inquiry held in 1963 into the military debacle against China the previous year. The defence minister claimed that the report could not be declassified, for its contents "are not only extremely sensitive but are of current operational value". Antony's statement was entirely in keeping with the refusal of successive governments to make public the contents of the report. In an egregious ruling issued last year, the Central Information Commission held that "no part of the report might at this stage be disclosed" under the provisions of the Right to Information Act. This refusal to unwrap the shroud of secrecy is justified on seemingly reasonable but wholly untenable grounds. In its submission to the CIC, the army headquarters contended that reports of internal inquiries are "not even submitted to the Government", never mind declassification for public consumption. Furthermore, declassification of the report would be tantamount to "disclosure of the army's operational strategy in the North-East". Finally, the contents of the report had a direct bearing on the question of demarcating the line of actual control with China. The CIC agreed after inspecting the report that declassifying it would "seriously compromise" India's security and its relationship with China. Would it? For a start, the claim that the findings of a military inquiry are not forwarded to the government is jejune. The Indian military is very much answerable to the political leadership. The government can requisition any such report. Indeed, the Henderson Brooks report was forwarded by the army chief to the defence minister in July 1963, who in turn sent it to the prime minister. The key operational findings of the report have been well known for the last four decades. Neville Maxwell's book, India's China War (published in 1970), tore a gaping hole through the wall of official secrecy. Maxwell was able to access the main body of the report running into 222 pages. In an article published in the Economic and Political Weekly in 2001, he confirmed as much. The operational aspects of the 1962 war have also been discussed threadbare in a host of memoirs and historical studies. Most importantly, the official history of the war commissioned by the ministry of defence draws on the Henderson Brooks report and has been available on the internet for some years now. So much for the secrecy of the army's operational strategy. To be sure, it may be inadvisable to reveal some of the details of tactical deployment. But the government could have adopted a more forthcoming stance. For one thing, it could have released those portions of the report whose contents are already public knowledge. For another, it could have redacted sensitive details and declassified the report — a procedure routinely followed in many Western democracies. The argument about the report's relevance to the demarcation of the LAC is equally specious. The LAC is supposed to divide the areas that have been under Indian and Chinese control since the end of the 1962 war. It was not, however, mutually agreed upon by the two sides. In the Arunachal Pradesh sector, both India and China claim that the LAC follows the McMahon Line. The problem is that since 1959, India and China have differed on just where the McMahon Line actually runs. There are grey areas, which lie north of the McMahon Line as marked in the original treaty maps of 1914, but are actually south of the highest watershed. India's position — which China does not accept — is that the line was intended to run along the highest range of mountains dividing Tibet and Arunachal Pradesh, and, despite discrepancies, the boundary had to be accordingly interpreted. The fact that prior to 1962 there was discussion on the Indian side of this aspect of the McMahon Line is rather well documented. It is also known that the Indian government decided unilaterally to give effect to its understanding of the line. Jawaharlal Nehru revealed this in Parliament as far back as late 1959. It is not clear how declassification of the Henderson Brooks report can complicate current diplomatic efforts. What's more, China has made it amply clear over the last many years that it is not interested in demarcating the LAC. It feels that such a step would be prejudicial to its avowed territorial claims and negotiating positions. Declassifying the Henderson Brooks report, then, can hardly impair India's security or its foreign relations. For the historian, the chief interest of the report is not so much in what it may tell us about the war as in what it reveals about the impact of the war on the Indian security establishment. In the aftermath of the war, the political leadership was vociferously criticized by the Opposition, press and public opinion. In response, the government instituted an inquiry into the army's operational performance. On instructions from the defence minister, the army chief appointed a two-member "operations review committee" comprising Lieutenant-General Henderson Brooks and Brigadier Prem Singh Bhagat. The inquiry was far from perfect. The committee was unable to access documents from the ministry of defence or the foreign office. Its hearings were unsystematic; key military players like the chief of general staff and IV Corps commander, Lieutenant General B.M. Kaul, were not invited for questioning. The committee's approach and findings reflected the dominant view in the military regarding the reasons for the debacle. Among other things, the report told an admonitory tale of meddlesome politicians, a timorous military, and the ensuing but avoidable catastrophe. Determined to trespass beyond its remit, the report concluded that the higher direction of the war was "out of touch with reality". This was, it bears emphasizing, a judgment passed by two not-so-senior military officers on the elected political leadership of the country. This narrative, at best radically incomplete and at worst downright false, was congenial to the military and soon became a morality pageant. The central lesson drawn from it was the importance of 'standing up' to politicians who intruded in professional matters. In the loss of nerve induced by the war, civilians too came to believe that the military must be given a free hand. So, following the defeat against China, a convention was established whereby the civilian leadership restricted itself to giving overall directives, leaving operational matters to the military. As the then defence secretary later observed, "In the view of the public outcry since the 1962 debacle about the relative role of politicians and the Services and their chiefs", the military leadership was given "a long rope". This institutional pattern of civil-military interaction persists to date and has served us ill. The government's stonewalling over the Henderson Brooks report, however, is merely a specific instance of a wider problem: the absence of a system in which the 30-year norm for declassification is scrupulously followed by the ministries. The claim that documents pertaining to a 'live' issue cannot be declassified simply does not wash. The American and British governments have released hundreds of important documents pertaining to the ongoing conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Even Israel has followed the 30-year norm for declassification and has opened up records pertaining to past conflicts that have a direct bearing on contemporary issues: the expulsion of Palestinians during the 1948 war, for instance. Robust and well-informed debates on contemporary history are crucial in a democratic system. Unlike States that are self-consciously ideological or religious, democracies do not have the luxury of falling back on abstract principles or systems to guide their behaviour. They can only scrutinize their own history for illumination if not instruction. The greatest strength of a democracy is its capacity for self-correction. But this hinges on its ability both to come to terms with its past and to understand how the present was shaped. Calcified notions of State secrecy should not be allowed to vitiate this vital task of self-understanding. |
Mumbai ATC goes blind for 21 minutes
For 21 minutes on June 15, the Air Traffic Control at the Mumbai airport lost all contact with 19 aircraft either in the air or readying for take-off after a power cable got snapped during digging near the runway, in a major technical breakdown fraught with danger. The Directorate General of Civil Aviation and Mumbai International Airport Limited, which is modernising and developing the city airport, have instituted an inquiry into the incident, sources told PTI here today.A 4-member probe team from Airports Authority of India (AAI) has already completed its investigation into the blackout incident and submitted its report to the Member (Operations), sources said. "There was a total blackout and the radar screen at the ATC went blank for 21 miniutes precisely, making the controllers almost blind-folded," sources said.
An underground power cable got snapped during the digging close to the runway resulting in a short circuit. Compounding the problem, the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS) system also tripped, they said.
The VHF communications system, which works on battery sets, also failed to work after the UPS tripped, sources said. Consequently, flight operations were hit, sources said, adding there were 4 flights in the landing process while 15 were readying for departure when the incident had happened.
When contacted, a spokperson for Mumbai International Airport Limited said it has set up an inquiry.
Gas tragedy: Panel for curative petition against SC verdict
A committee constituted by Madhya Pradesh government after the recent judgement on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy today recommended filing of a curative petition in the Supreme Court against its 1996 judgement and formation of a Joint Task Force for extradition of the then Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson. "The five-member committee has recommended for filing a curative petition against the 1996 Supreme Court judgement as the evidence clearly suggests a prima facie case of section 304 II (culpable homicide not amounting to murder) in the matter as was sought in the charge sheet dated December 1, 1987," Madhya Pradesh Parliamentary Affairs Minister Narottam Mishra told reporters after releasing the committee report.In 1996, a two-member Supreme Court bench headed by the then CJI A M Ahmedi converted the CBI charge of culpable homicide not amounting to murder, that provided for maximum of 10-year imprisonment, to causing death by negligence, which provided for a maximum punishment of only two years. The committee also recommended forming a Joint Task Force with the Central Government and CBI for bringing Anderson to justice, Mishra said.
It further said the state should institute a fact-finding body to probe into the events that led to the escape of Anderson from the country.
Gunbattle in Lalgarh: Security forces claim 'major success'
In a fierce gunbattle that raged for nearly six hours on Wednesday morning, security forces eliminated an entire Maoist squad at the Ranja forest in Salboni in West Midnapore district. West Bengal police officials called the operation, on the eve of the first anniversary of joint operations on June 18, a 'major success' in the fight against Maoists in Lalgarh.
After the firefight, the police claimed to have killed at least 15 Maoists but could recover the bodies of eight, including three female squad members, until Wednesday evening. The operation was carried out by a special commando force of the CRPF, including Cobra.
The Maoist squad was led by commander Bikash. He was said to have escaped, using his cadres as a shield. "It was to ensure Bikash's safe passage that the Maoist squad had to take such heavy casualty," said a security official involved in the operation.
Bikash is a Maoist state committee member for Bengal-Jharkhand-Orissa region and is the commander of the Lalgarh squad. Most killings in the Lalgarh region of West Midnapore in the last two years have been attributed to the squad he leads. There were also unconfirmed reports that Akash, Maoist military commission regional chief, had been killed in the operation. "We are trying to verify the news of his death. So far, there is no confirmation. The search for bodies is still on in the forest," said an official.
Among the three female Maoists killed in the operation was Lakshmi who led the attack on the Eastern Frontier Rifles camp in Silda on February 15, killing 24 personnel. The other two were identified as Mala and Radha and they appeared to be in their teens. An official said these were given names and it could take some time to establish their real identities.
Maoist casualties confirmed that Bikash's Lalgarh squad was joined by cadres from Jharkhand. One of the bodies found was that of Arjun Munda, a Jharkhand Maoist. Another was of Sagen Mahato, a Maoist from Lalgarh.
West Midnapore SP Manoj Verma said: "The exchange of fire at Ranja forest near Lalgarh began around 4 am and continued till 10 am. The spot was 30 km from the district headquarters. We have recovered eight bodies, including those of three women. Arms and ammunition have been seized and a camp of the Maoists in the area was overrun by security forces. We believe that the Maoist toll will rise. Several of those killed or injured may have been carried into the forests. An injured Maoist has been arrested."
Another official said they received information that Maoists were camping near Pirakata. "Bikash was probably present at the spot when security forces cracked down. But it appears he directed his squad members to give him cover and he fled. We are trying to collect more information on this."
Security forces seized an AK-47 assault rifle, an SLR, 2 pistols, 4 single-barrel guns, four double-barrel guns, 100 detonators, two mines and explosives and ammunition.
CBI announces reward on Gyaneshwari train mishap prime accused
The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday announced a reward of 100,000 each for the information leading to the main accused of the Gyaneshwari Express train mishap case.The CBI has declared a reward for information leading to the arrest of three prominent accused --Umakant Mahto of Banksole, Manoj aka Bapi Mahto of Rasua and Asit Mahto, of Krishnanagar village of West Midnapore District.
Posters to for this were release today and will be displayed at prominent places for seeking information about the absconding accused.
These posters have been issued in English, Bengali and local Alchiki languages.
Any information in this regard can be made available round the clock at Special Crime Branch, CGO Complex, A-wing, DF Block, Salt Lake, Kolkata - 64 and telephone numbers 09674433351, 09051444405, 09051061000, 033-23596119, Fax number 033-23348713, e-mail : hobsckol@cbi.gov.in
Meanwhile, the CBI Director has also constituted a Joint Investigation Team (JIT) to look into the professional investigation of the accident and derailment of Train No. 2102 Howrah-Kurla Gyaneshwari Express.
In this case, death of more than 140 persons has taken place and several others have been injured.
Property worth crores has been damaged or destroyed.
The investigation involves close coordination and cooperation between several organizations, agencies and individuals.
The JIT will comprise the officers from the CBI, the West Bengal Police, the Railway Protection Force (RPF), Railway Board and forensic experts for carrying out the investigation in a time bound manner. (ANI)
DTC unlikely to cheer taxpayers, may lower I-T slabs
The Direct Taxes Code is unlikely to give much relief to income tax payers as the finance ministry today said the higher slabs, proposed earlier, may be altered in the Bill. The move is aimed at offsetting the revenue losses arising from the new proposal to drop the earlier plan to tax provident and pension funds at the time of withdrawal and levy MAT on gross assets and not profits.The government released a new DTC draft on Tuesday with clarification on a lot of contentious issues in the first draft. "The proposals in the revised discussion paper would lead to reduction in the tax base proposed in the DTC (last year)," sources in the Finance Ministry told PTI. The first discussion paper floated last year had proposed a substantial widening of the tax base.
It suggested imposing 10 per cent tax on income of up to Rs 10 lakh, 20 per cent on income up to 25 lakh and 30 per cent beyond Rs 25 lakh. These tax slabs proposals were substantially wider than even the increase implemented in this year''s budget.
The budget had imposed 10 per cent tax on income of Rs 1.6 lakh-5 lakh, 20 per cent on Rs 5 lakh-8 lakh and 30 per cent over Rs 8 lakh. Before this, the slabs were from Rs 1.6 lakh-3 lakh, Rs 3 lakh-5 lakh and over Rs 5 lakh in a year.
Women and senior citizens enjoy greater relief. The sources said the first discussion paper had said that the government would consider calibrating the tax rates in the light of the responses and comments received on the scope of the tax base proposed.
The proposals in the first discussion paper to tax long-term savings like pension and provident funds at the time of withdrawal and imposing MAT on gross assets of companies drew strong criticism. Responding to these strong comments, the revised draft did away with both the proposals.
Now MAT, the tax on profits of companies that do not come under the tax net due to exemptions, will be levied on their profits, instead of gross assets. The revised paper also retains the present provisions of giving income tax exemption on interest paid on homeloans up to Rs 1.5 lakh annually.
As such, tax slabs proposed in the first discussion paper will be calibrated accordingly, the sources said, adding tax slabs proposed in the first draft were anyway illustrative in nature. The government also claimed that the revised tax exemptions will not lead to any revenue loss to the Exchequer.
Mamata's dream in power: Turn Kolkata into London
Turning Kolkata into London will take a lot more than just tinkering with the city — it's a whole new urban challenge. The challenge involves drastic demolitions, massive rebuilding and large-scale relocation of affected people.
File photo of Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee.
One of the many "visionary" things Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee has promised to accomplish if her party comes to power in West Bengal is to turn Kolkata into London. Well, as visions go that's laudable, indeed, but, as mankind moves irreversibly into a rapidly urbanising world with worsening living conditions, visions alone won't ease the urban pressure.
Of course, Mamata is being euphemistic. No city can be a clone of another unless it's an artificial copy dropped from heaven. We take it, therefore, that her reference to London stands for what a good, liveable city should be like: clean, green, orderly, commuter-friendly, aesthetic, harmonious, and well maintained, with lots of open areas, well-laid roads, and a balanced integration of spaces for business, work and leisure.
A view of the Stephen Court building which was ravaged by a devastating fire in Kolkata.
In Kolkata's case, it would also mean banishing hand-pulled rickshaws and hand-pushed carts, permanent vendor occupation of sidewalks, festering slums -- London doesn't have any of these -- and everything else that contributes to urban chaos and unhealthy living conditions. If that's the case, her city would require massive, bold, and often unpopular reconstruction of its image. Would Mamata have the political courage to take such measures? Kolkata's ills are true of most of India's cities. London or not, they all need massive redevelopment, and the same question must be asked of all who are charged to save our cities from degenerating into urban rat holes. It's all the more urgent since we seem blithely oblivious of the magnitude and complexities of the urban challenge while the rest of economically dynamic Asia is continuously reshaping its urban future.
Nexus Lounge at the Singapore Changi Airport.
Singapore we all know. Hong Kong is an amazing example of how to stay alive and thrive within narrow geographical limits.
Kuala Lumpur has wonderfully preserved its picture-postcard image by developing a new and equally picture-perfect administrative centre, Putrajaya. Seoul has improved its look dramatically simply by relocating its business and government districts and turning the giant former centrecity traffic intersection into a park. Bangkok isn't a nightmare anymore. Even Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are transforming so nicely as to earn the world's attention. Both cities have moved out thousands of people to make room for inner-city redevelopment while building new, well-connected suburban centres to balance out the distribution of populations and activities.
People visit 'Bird's Nest' National Stadium during the Beijing Snow Festival.
But it's in China, more than anywhere else, that Asia's urban history is being rewritten. Beijing is a shining example of how a whole new city can rise on its old foundations when action blends with vision in equal proportions. Based on the concept of "one street, one centre, and four parks," downtown Shanghai has thoroughly reconfigured its residential space and created a more harmonious balance between various urban functions. Seventy other major cities around China are spending scores of billions of dollars to build a brighter urban future.
Obviously, such changes can't come from patchwork and tinkering. They involve drastic demolitions, massive rebuilding, and large-scale relocation of affected people. Beijing's old quarters, for example, are being knocked down to make room for new roads, flyovers, high-rise residential complexes, and greenbelts.
Workers clean off new fallen snow off a dragon carved out of ice at the Zhao Lin Park, where ice sculptures are featured as part of Harbin Ice and Snow Festival.
Of course, such drastic facelifts can't always be popular, and, in the face of frequent popular outbursts against such changes, the authorities have been obliged to frame new rules to make it harder to seize property and turn it over to developers without full compensation. Demolitions can't start until sales, compensation and relocation details are approved by two-thirds of affected homeowners. But, if anything, the new rules only reflect the government's willingness to mend its ways wherever necessary in order to reach its desired goal, not any inclination to step back from its course.
Meng Xiaolai, 33-year-old freelance poet, switches on the lights at his capsule apartment in Beijing.
True, China's urban programme stems from its intense craving to present to the world a dynamic, captivating, modern face. But it's also born of a clear realisation that the future city must be a place where people and their activities can exist in a healthy balance. The Germans have a new word for it -- "balancity" -- which is how they describe their presentation at the ongoing Expo 2010 in Shanghai on the theme "Better City, Better Life". Unless there's a balance between renewal and preservation, innovation and tradition, urbanity and nature, community and individual development, and work and leisure, a city can't be a good place to live in.
A Chinese couple walks past a snow sculpture of former French leader Napoleon on display during Harbin Ice and Snow Festival.
The Chinese have taken this concept to heart. One may not like the radicalism of their approach, but we'll be kidding ourselves if we think we can transform our cities by simply tinkering with them.
How will cities expand without encroaching on outlying rural areas? How are we going to build wider, straighter, newer roads unless we demolish obstacles coming in the way? How will the environment improve if there's no space to put in additional greenery? Our urban future will depend on how bold are we about answering these questions.
Source: Business StandardComment: Two tragedies, two very different responses
Look at the way two countries have responded to industrial tragedies. The US is fuming, fretting and twisting the arms of Beyond Petroleum (not British Petroleum as reported in the media) for messing up the country's coast line due to a disastrous oil spill.
President Barrack Obama has upset Britian by promising to put the boot on the throat of Beyond Petroleum (BP). But he managed to bet $ 20 Billion from BP.
President Barack Obama, already on a slippery ground due to the oil leakage where 6000 barrels of oil a day is being coughed up from the ocean floor, has said that he would make BP pay through its nose. He has also vowed that the US "will put the boot on the throat of BP" - a crude expression that has understandably not gone down well in Britain which dotes on etiquettes and civility in public domain.
The oil spill has affected the US coastline and Obama's presidency.
Obama has been accused of using "undiplomatic" language to "beat" BP while ignoring the failings of his own regulators and its silence over Bhopal gas tragedy and many industrial accidents in Africa.
Very few are also aware that while Obama is going after the throat of BP, there is absolutely no mention of the US companies involved in the oil spill -- Transocean, which owns the rig; and Halliburton, which was responsible for the sealing; or of the US authorities responsible for overseeing offshore drilling.
Under intense pressure from Obama, BP Plc agreed to set up a $20 billion fund for damage claims from its huge Gulf of Mexico oil spill and suspended dividend payments to its shareholders.
An April 20 explosion on an offshore rig leased by BP killed 11 workers and ruptured a deep-sea well. The ensuing spill has fouled 120 miles (190 km) of US coastline, imperilled multibillion-dollar fishing and tourism industries and killed birds, sea turtles and dolphins.
Union Home Minister P Chidambaram is to head the Group of Ministers to look into the Bhopal Gas Tragedy. But little can be expected from the committee.
What is India's response to a gas tragedy that killed 15,000 people in Bhopal? Set up a Group of Ministers (GoM) headed by Union committee of ministers to discuss on issues that will not get anything near the $20 billion promised by BP to Obama or any tangible benefit to the victims of the Bhopal gas tragedy.
The GoM has very little to start on. The Cabinet Meeting held soon after the Bhopal gas leakage in 1984 was headed by the then Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi. The meeting reportedly did not leave behind a shred of paper on what was discussed. The then Chief Minister of Madhya Pradesh Arjun Singh was a special invitee for the meeting.
Bhopal gas victims are yet to get adequate compensation for world's worst industrial tragedy.
So what will the GoM discuss?
On the compensation? Well, that issue was settled. On Feb 14, 1989, the Indian Government did the Union Carbide a favour. The Government and the company accepted a compensation of Rs 705 crore and all civil and criminal cases were dropped. In the US, the victims of 9/11 got a compensation of $18 million. The Bhopal Gas victims? Rs 12,000!!
On increasing the punishment for Union Carbide? Well, that too has been settled. In 1996, the judiciary did another big favour to Union Carbide by reducing criminal charges from Section 304, culpable homicide that would have attracted 10 years in jail to that of Section 304A - causing death due to negligence - that could attract just 2 years in jail for killing over 15,000 people.
New evidence has shown that Rajiv Gandhi government had promised safe passage to Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson when he come to India
On extraditing Warren Anderson, the then CEO of Union Carbide Corporation?
The GoM will never touch this question because the dirty footsteps will lead to the doorsteps of Rajiv Gandhi, who was then the prime minster. It has now come out in the open that the Rajiv Gandhi government `promised' safe passage to Anderson when he wanted to visit the Bhopal plant. This despite the fact that he was out on bail.
Mark Anderson's words in Delhi: "House arrest or not arrest; bail or no bail..I am free to go home. Goodbye India".
How can India now think of getting Anderson when the government helped him flee?
Manmohan government and the Congress are on a sticky wicket over fresh evidences coming out on the way the Bhopal gas tragedy was handled.
Will the GoM discuss who helped Anderson flee?
This too will not be discussed because it will bring Rajiv Gandhi's role to public domain. The Congress will have to do a lot of explanation.
On who will clean up the Bhopal gas plant?
Not this too. Dow Chemicals which bought over Union Carbide India has washed its hands off. To make matters worse, two ministers had earlier endorsed this view as Dow had promised to invest more in India.
So what will the GoM discuss and decide?
A lot of `gas' and nothing that will benefit the gas tragedy victims.
In six days Anderson fled India never to return, never to clean up Bhopal's mess or provide compensation. In less than two months, Obama managed to get $20 billion with promises of more to follow.
Will Bhopal's gas victims ever get justice. BP has already promised payment to the US. Two tragedies, two different responses.
Two disasters, two different responses.
But what is baffling is the US response to the Bhopal gas tragedy that killed 15,000 people. A mouth full when it comes to dealing with BP; total silence when it comes to Bhopal gas tragedy.
Two disasters, two different responses.
Obama ordered BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg to the White House to wrest the deal. In India, Anderson was allowed to flee.
Two disasters, two very different responses.http://news.in.msn.com/national/article.aspx?cp-documentid=4022294&page=0
Bhopal cleanup: Eveready never ready, so is UCC
Kolkata: The world's worst industrial disaster has turned out to be a pitch for fascinating buck-passing. At the moment, we have at least three corporate entities playing pass-the-parcel, apart from the state agencies.
Union Carbide Corporation (UCC), the former parent of Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL), has completely distanced itself from the Indian entity, in which it held a 50.9 per cent stake at the time of the disaster. Now bought over by Dow Chemicals Company, but yet retaining its identity, UCC says the Brij Mohan Khaitan-controlled Eveready Industries India should be asked any questions on liability.
The online Bhopal Information Centre provided by UCC says that if the court decides to apply the 'polluter pays' principle while fixing responsibility for the clean-up of toxic stuff at the site, then the legal responsibility would lie with UCIL. Only, that means Eveready India today, it adds.
"If the court responsible for directing clean-up efforts ultimately applies the 'polluter pays' principle, it would seem that legal responsibility would fall to Union Carbide India Ltd (UCIL), which leased the land, operated the site and was a separate, publicly traded Indian company when the Bhopal tragedy occurred. In 1994, Union Carbide sold its interest in UCIL, with the approval of the Supreme Court. The company was renamed Eveready Industries India Ltd and remains aviable company today," says UCC on the site in the updated information of November 2009.
UCC exited in 1994
Some background here: in 1994, UCC sold its entire stake in UCIL to McLeod Russell (India) Ltd, part of the Williamson Magor group, which renamed the company EIIL and took charge of the battery business. UCIL owned, operated and managed the Bhopal plant. UCC held just over half the stock, while the balance was with financial institutions and public.
Nonsense, says Eveready of UCC's ask-them standpoint. "Eveready is neither responsible for the pollution as reported, nor is it liable for the cleanup of the toxic material. It may thus be noted that Eveready cannot be involved in any cleanup action. If at all, the Williamson Magor group believes the liability for clean-up should rest with the then owners of UCIL, viz UCC USA," said a top Eveready official.
Eveready officials say that after the accident, the plant at Bhopal was closed permanently and all licences cancelled by the government. The Bhopal plant had ceased to an asset in the books at the time of acquisition of shares by the Williamson Magor group. Moreover, the land lease was revoked by the Madhya Pradesh government in 1998.
However, Eveready has been impleaded in the public interest suit filed in 2004. It was filed against the Union of India, the state of Madhya Pradesh, the MP Pollution Control Board and Dow Chemicals, among others, for clean-up of the toxic material from the plant at Bhopal. UCIL and UCC USA have also been impleaded.
While UCC has steered clear of responsibility towards UCIL, Dow Chemicals has distanced itself from UCC's liabilities. "When Dow acquired the shares of Union Carbide Corporation, UCC was no longer doing business in India. And, another important fact to note is that Union Carbide remains aseparate entity, with a separate board, separate financial reporting, and its own employees. Contrary to what activists continue to misrepresent, UCC manages its own liabilities. The Dow Chemical Company has never owned or operated the facility in Bhopal, nor does Dow have responsibility for any liability related to Bhopal," said a spokesperson for Dow. Odd, given that UCC happens to be a wholly owned subsidiary of Dow.
Responding to a query on the clean-up responsibility, the spokesperson said the state government of Madhya Pradesh revoked the lease of Eveready Industries India Limited -- formerly UCIL -- in 1998 and took control of the site. "The state owns the site today and the solution to this problem rests in the hands of the Indian central and state government," said Dow.
The empowered group of ministers, originally set up in 2008, was reconstituted recently with Home Minister P Chidambaram at its head. About two months before, after the devastating Naxalite attack in Chhattisgarh, the minister had accepted full responsibility and said, "The buck stops at my desk". It will have to be seen whether the ministerial report to be given to the Prime Minister can avoid another round of buck-passing.
Source: Business Standard
General
- CBI announces reward on Gyaneshwari train mishap prime accusedANI - 10:35 PM
New Delhi/Midnapore, June 17 (ANI): The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) on Thursday announced a reward of 100,000 each for the information leading to the main accused of the Gyaneshwari Express train mishap case.
- Bhopal tragedy: BJP stage protest demanding Anderson's early extraditionANI - 10:35 PM
Bhopal, June 17 (ANI): The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Thursday staged a demonstration here demanding to speed up Bhopal gas tragedy's prime accused Warren Anderson's extradition process.
- Botswana seeks Indian companies' investmentANI - 10:35 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (ANI): Botswanaian Vice-President M S Merafhe on Thursday invited Indian industries to invest in the African country.
- Jethmalani, Mallya, Anand Sharma makes it to Upper HouseANI - 10:35 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (ANI): The prominent candidates who were in the fray for Thursday's Rajya Sabha polls have secured victory with the help of supporting parties.
- ROK agrees to India's space launch use suggestionANI - 10:35 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (ANI): South Korean President Lee Myung-bak on Thursday agreed to Indian External Affairs minister S.M.Krishna's suggestion to launch ROK satellites on Indian launch vehicles.
Politics
- Amar to take on Mulayam in Yadav landHT - 09:25 PM
Former Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has decided to target Mulayam Singh Yadav in his home turf. Amar Singh, who has now become president of All-India Lok Manch, will hold a rally in Nidhauli Kalan in Etah district in first week of July.
- Cong eyes Microsoft technologies to reach out to rural massesIE - 09:11 PM
Congress is keen to deploy Microsoft display technologies that enable projection into any surface including walls to interact with rural masses from its headquarters in Delhi, a top official of the software giant's Indian entity said on Thursday.
- Canada needs security tsar, Air India probe saysReuters - 08:09 PM
Canada needs a security tsar to keep intelligence agencies under control and thereby avoid the "cascading series of errors" that occurred before the bombing of an Air India airliner in June 1985, a probe into the case said on Thursday.
- Congress, JMM candidates win Jharkhand Rajya Sabha pollsIANS - 06:10 PM
Ranchi, June 17 (IANS) The Congress and Jharkhand Mukti Morcha (JMM) candidates won the Rajya Sabha elections from Jharkhand Thursday.
- Paswan, Rudy make it to Rajya Sabha from BiharIANS - 05:58 PM
Patna, June 17 (IANS) Five candidates from the ruling National Democratic Alliance (NDA) and the opposition, led by the Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Lok Janshakti Party (LJP), were elected to the Rajya Sabha from Bihar Thursday despite cross-voting by some legislators.
Features
- Anupam Kher withdraws from film on HitlerReuters - 07:36 PM
Protests by India's small Jewish community have prompted leading actor Anupam Kher to pull out of a film on the last days of Adolf Hitler, a rare subject for a movie in the Bollywood film industry.
- Bachchans shine at "Raavan" world premiere in LondonReuters - 08:47 AM
Bollywood came to London on Wednesday as Indian cinema's star couple, husband and wife Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, hit the red carpet for the world premiere of the Hindi film "Raavan."
- Mandela relative's death clouds cup startReuters - Fri, Jun 11
Nelson Mandela cancelled his appearance at the opening of the World Cup on Friday after his great granddaughter was killed in a car crash, casting a cloud over South Africa's day of joy in hosting the continent's first edition of the tournament.
- Mandela cancels opening match appearanceReuters - Fri, Jun 11
Former South African President Nelson Mandela will not attend the opening match of the soccer World Cup on Friday after his great grand-daughter was killed, the Nelson Mandela Foundation said.
- Buffett lunch bid reaches $900,100, one day to goReuters - Fri, Jun 11
The high bid for a steak lunch with Warren Buffett has reached $900,100, with a little over a day to go in the annual charity auction.
Crime
- Noida BP petrol pump robbed of Rs 26 lakhHT - Tue, Jun 15
Five armed assailants struck a Bharat Petroleum petrol pump in Sector 35 here early Monday morning and robbed over Rs 25 lakh from the cash counter.
- 4 loot wine shop at gunpoint, flee with Rs 1 lakhHT - Tue, Jun 15
Four unidentified men allegedly robbed a wine shop in Parel at gunpoint on Sunday making away with Rs 1.45 lakh.
- Two men killed by unknown assailantsHT - Mon, Jun 14
Mumbai, June 14 -- Two men were attacked and killed by unidentified assailants on Sunday after two groups had an argument over a trivial issue.
- One killed over trivial issueHT - Sun, Jun 13
Mumbai, June 13 -- The Sakinaka police are on the lookout for a 22-year-old man who allegedly stabbed his friend to death over a trivial issue. The police said the accused, Afzal Ansari, and the victim, Veeru Jat, hailed from the same village in Uttar Pradesh and lived in Hadmond D'Souza Compound at Sakinaka.
- 'Pro-LTTE' elements blast rail tracks in Tamil Nadu, accident avertedHT - Sun, Jun 13
The Pro-Tamil group's protest against visit of Sri Lankan president Mahenda Rajkapsa turned violent on Saturday when suspected pro-tamil activists blasted railway tracks, just before a passenger train was to enter Perani railway station in Villupuram district, some 70 km south of Chennai in the wee hours.
National News
Canada needs security tsar, Air India probe says
Reuters - 08:09 PMCanada needs a security tsar to keep intelligence agencies under control and thereby avoid the "cascading series of errors" that occurred before the bombing of an Air India airliner in June 1985, a probe into the case said on Thursday.
- Anupam Kher withdraws from film on Hitler Reuters - 07:36 PM
Protests by India's small Jewish community have prompted leading actor Anupam Kher to pull out of a film on the last days of Adolf Hitler, a rare subject for a movie in the Bollywood film industry.
- BSE Sensex rises 7th day; Reliance, L&T gain Reuters - 04:30 PM
The BSE Sensex climbed on Thursday for the seventh consecutive session in its longest winning run in 10 months, driven by expectations for robust corporate earnings growth and improving global risk appetite.
- Rains 8 pct below normal in wk to June 16 Reuters - 03:55 PM
India's annual monsoon rains in the week to June 16 were 8 percent below normal, the India Meteorological Department said on Thursday, confirming an earlier Reuters report.
- Food, fuel inflation ease in early June Reuters - 12:19 PM
India's food and fuel price inflation eased in early June, easing pressure on the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) to speed up its process of tightening monetary policy.
- RBI: inflation is bigger worry Reuters - 11:37 AM
India's domestic inflation is a bigger concern than other global factors, Reserve Bank of India (RBI) Deputy Governor K.C. Chakrabarty said on Thursday.
- ANALYSIS - Foreign firms take shine to $70 bln India solar push Reuters - 11:17 AM
India's drive to ramp up solar capacity may trigger a stampede of firms from Asia, Europe and North America, chasing a share of the $3.5 billion of business up for grabs by 2013 and trampling over smaller domestic players.
- RBI deputy: inflation not beyond our estimate Reuters - 09:51 AM
An inter-meeting policy rate hike will depend on volatility and wholesale price-based inflation is not beyond the Reserve Bank of India's estimates, a deputy governor of the central bank said on Thursday.
- Reuters Asia Corporate Sentiment at highest in 5 qtrs Reuters - 08:53 AM
Asia's top companies are at their most optimistic in five quarters as robust economic growth in the region outweighs concerns about debt problems in Europe and renewed market volatility, a new Reuters index shows.
- Reuters survey points to improved BOJ tankan Reuters - 09:21 AM
Japanese manufacturers are more optimistic about economic conditions than for over two years, a Reuters poll showed, suggesting the Bank of Japan's tankan survey due next month will improve by a similar margin.
- Bachchans shine at "Raavan" world premiere in London Reuters - 08:47 AM
Bollywood came to London on Wednesday as Indian cinema's star couple, husband and wife Abhishek Bachchan and Aishwarya Rai, hit the red carpet for the world premiere of the Hindi film "Raavan."
- Apple iPhone 4 sets record sale pace despite gaffe Reuters - Wed, Jun 16
Sales of Apple Inc's latest iPhone blew away expectations despite an embarrassing ordering malfunction that turned away many would-be buyers, sending its shares nearly 3 percent higher on Wednesday.
- Indraprastha Gas raises CNG prices by up to 26 pct Reuters - Wed, Jun 16
Indraprastha Gas Ltd, which supplies gas in New Delhi and surrounding region, said on Wednesday it would raise retail prices of Compressed Natural Gas by 5.6 rupees per kg from Thursday due to an increase in natural gas prices.
- Reliance Capital to buy 18 pct in Bloomberg UTV Reuters - Wed, Jun 16
Reliance Capital, part of billionaire Anil Ambani's conglomerate, said on Wednesday it agreed to buy 18 percent in Bloomberg UTV, a business news channel.
- INTERVIEW - Climate chief: EU must fight for green-tech jobs Reuters - Wed, Jun 16
Europe's green-technology industries need determined political backing if they are to outpace rivals in Asia, Europe's climate chief said on Wednesday.
- Wed, Jun 16
Bangladesh were all out for 167 off 34.5 overs in their Asia Cup match against India in Dambulla on Wednesday.
- Turkey set to freeze ties with Israel - paper Reuters - Wed, Jun 16
A Turkish newspaper reported on Wednesday that Turkey would halt military cooperation with Israel and would not send back an envoy, withdrawn after an Israeli commando operation to stop an aid convoy reaching Gaza.
- Monsoon runs late, but no worries for now Reuters - Wed, Jun 16
The monsoon, crucial to its crops, is running four to five days behind schedule and has yet to reach half of its territory, though rains are expected by the weekend, senior weather department sources said on Wednesday.
- INTERVIEW - StanChart's PE arm sees 3-4 deals in India by yr-end Reuters - Wed, Jun 16
Standard Chartered Private Equity plans to invest in three to four Indian companies by the end of this year and sees opportunities in acquisition financing in Asia's third-largest economy, a top official said on Wednesday.
- Reliance Comm offers unlimited mobile internet access Reuters - Wed, Jun 16
No. 2 Indian telecoms firm Reliance Communications said on Wednesday it would offer unlimited internet access to subscribers through their mobile phones at 99 rupees ($2) per month.
National News
Anderson was assured 'safe passage' by Govt: Rasgotra
IE - 09:11 PMUnion Carbide Chief Warren Anderson had been assured a "safe passage" before he came to India in the aftermath of the deadly 1984 gas leakage incident, the then Foreign Secretary M K Rasgotra disclosed here on Thursday.
- Gas tragedy: panel for curative petn against 1996 SC verdict IE - 09:11 PM
The five-member committee constituted by Madhya Pradesh government after the recent judgement on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy, on Thursday recommended filing of a curative petition in the Supreme Court against the 1996 judgement delivered by then Chief Justice A M Ahmedi.
- Cong eyes Microsoft technologies to reach out to rural masses IE - 09:11 PM
Congress is keen to deploy Microsoft display technologies that enable projection into any surface including walls to interact with rural masses from its headquarters in Delhi, a top official of the software giant's Indian entity said on Thursday.
- Govt defends in HC 'best of five rule' for XI admissions IE - 09:11 PM
The Maharashtra Government today filed an affidavit in the Bombay High Court strongly defending its decision to issue a government resolution (GR) in February this year introducing the 'best of the five' rule for SSC students who are seeking admissions to standard XI. Under this rule, an SSC student will be able to choose five subjects in which he or she has secured better marks.
- Give reasons for installation of statues: CIC to LS Secy IE - 01:23 PM
The Lok Sabha Secretariat has been asked by the Central Information Commission to put on its website details of every statue in Parliament precincts along with the reasons for granting permission for its installation.
- Promotion issue: Navy to approach SC against Tribunal verdict IE - 01:23 PM
The Navy has decided to approach the Supreme Court against an Armed Forces Tribunal verdict directing it to consider a commodore-rank officer for promotion to the rank of Rear Admiral.
- 'India assured US that Anderson will not face any action' IE - 01:23 PM
India had assured the US that the then Union Carbide chief Warren Anderson would not be subjected to "any actions" during his visit to Bhopal after the deadly 1984 gas leakage incident, a former top American diplomat said on Thursday.
- Political heavyweights fate at stake as RS polls begin IE - 01:23 PM
Polling for 18 Rajya Sabha seats in five states began on Thursday to decide the fate of Union minister Anand Sharma, LJP supremo Ram Vilas Paswan, legal luminary Ram Jethmalani, former BJP chief M Venkaiah Naidu and liquor baron Vijay Mallya among others.
- Maoists torch industrial machinery in West Singhbhum IE - 01:23 PM
Maoists set fire to two payloaders belonging to two industrial groups at Gua in Jharkhand's West Singhbhum district, the police said on Thursday.
- Modi's anti-Gujarat list sent to Centre IE - 10:33 AM
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi gave a memorandum, listing host of issues the state has with the Centre, to union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee during his meeting with the later here.
- In two states, BJP speaks two voices IE - 10:33 AM
The elections to the Rajya Sabha has proved to be a troublesome affair for the BJP. While the selection of candidates has triggered a disquiet in the party - prompting its Rajasthan unit to even guard its MLAs to fend off poaching attempts - its strategy with regard to use of the surplus votes in Orissa and Karnataka has brought out the inconsistencies in its position.
- Amar has a new outfit, with same old faces IE - 10:33 AM
Former Samajwadi Party leader and Rajya Sabha MP Amar Singh launched a new outfit, Lok Manch, in Lucknow on Wednesday.
- One honour killing a month in Punjab IE - 10:33 AM
Every month one honour killing takes place in Punjab. As per data complied for the first time by the Crime wing of the Punjab Police, during the past two-and-a-half years - from 2008 till date - 34 honour killings have taken place in the state: 10 in 2008, 20 in 2009, four so far in 2010. Of the total 34 cases, 16 were reported from Tarn Taran district.
- HRD works on stiff rules against corporal punishment IE - 10:33 AM
Taking cognizance of the Rouvanjit Rawla suicide case, the Human Resource Development (HRD) Ministry has begun formulating stringent new guidelines against corporal punishment in schools.
- On death row in Dubai for 23 yrs, Indian's mercy plea: Hang me now IE - 10:33 AM
While India is providing legal help to 17 Indians sentenced to be shot in Sharjah for murdering a Pakistani, in next-door Dubai, a 64-year-old carpenter from Tamil Nadu - forgotten for the past 23 years - is seeking his own quick execution.
- GoM agenda: Healing touch, pressure points IE - 10:33 AM
Seeking to zero down on the right healing touch to rectify the political damage from the 26-year-old Bhopal gas tragedy, the Group of Ministers (GoM) set up by the PM will look afresh at remediation measures as well as the complexities of giving additional compensation to victims.
- British aid for SSA not misused, says HRD Ministry IE - 10:33 AM
A day after the British government said it would launch an inquiry into the alleged misuse of British aid for Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan (SSA), the HRD Ministry expressed its "dismay" and "shock" at the "unsubstantiated allegations".
- Crime rate down in Jammu zone: Police IE - Wed, Jun 16
Contesting the claim of Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that incidents of crime have sharply increased in Jammu region and there was nexus between police and gangs, the Jammu and Kashmir police today said that the crime rate has sharply dipped in the region.
- Close shave for AI passengers for second consecutive day IE - Wed, Jun 16
Passengers onboard an Air India plane had a close shave for the second consecutive day as it suffered a bird-hit while landing at the city airport today.
- Permanent commission for women in IAF IE - Wed, Jun 16
After winning a three-year-long court battle, women officers of the Air Force will now be accorded permanent commission for which an exercise has been initiated by the IAF. "Yes, we have already started the process for according permanent commission to women officers in accordance with the Delhi High Court orders," a senior IAF officer said.
National News
Amar to take on Mulayam in Yadav land
HT - 09:25 PMFormer Samajwadi Party leader Amar Singh has decided to target Mulayam Singh Yadav in his home turf. Amar Singh, who has now become president of All-India Lok Manch, will hold a rally in Nidhauli Kalan in Etah district in first week of July.
- PCRF-HT RTI awards enter second year HT - 03:05 PM
For the second year, nominations for the Right to Information awards, instituted by Public Cause Research Foundation and Hindustan Times are being invited. The awards are to honour the individuals who are keeping protecting the freedom of information.
- Horse-trading, abduction cloud over Bihar, Orissa HT - 02:40 PM
A dash of drama has been infused into the Rajya Sabha elections for three seats in Orissa and five seats in Bihar, where polling will take place on Thursday.
- Pvt schools can hike fees, but final call on July 15 HT - 02:40 PM
Mumbai, June 16 -- Private unaided schools in Mumbai may now hike their fees. The Maharashtra government on Tuesday told the Bombay High Court that it would withdraw the March 4 resolution that had said private schools could not hike their fees above 2008-09 levels without the approval of their respective Parent-Teacher Associations and the deputy director of education.
- Arjun Rampal's Lap in Beirut HT - 08:55 AM
Actor-restaurateur Arjun Rampal?s lounge bar has almost completed a year?s run in Delhi. He plans to open a Lap in Mumbai too and is on the lookout for prime real estate. He?s also in talks with Sky Bar, voted as one of the ?most rocking nightspots in the world? by Worldsbestbars.com, to take Lap to Beirut.
- Tamil pride to mark Chennai roads HT - 08:50 AM
Chennai, June 15 -- Like other metros before it, Chennai has joined the name-changing game with gusto. Visitors familiar with Haddows Road, Sterling Road and Harrington Road, among others, may soon find themselves traversing unfamiliar territories - with old roads sporting names of Tamil scholars and eminent personalities from the state.
- Bengal CPM ready to sit in Opposition HT - 08:50 AM
The CPI-M in West Bengal has admitted there is a strong anti-incumbency wave against the Left Front in the state and is prepared to sit in the Opposition benches after the assembly elections due next year.
- Routine life resumes in Srinagar after 4-day protest HT - 08:50 AM
Srinagar on Tuesday witnessed semblance of normalcy after four days of unrest, violent protests and strict security restrictions after the alleged killing of a boy in police action at Rajouri Kadal area on Friday.
- Manipur, Nagaland chief secys summoned HT - 08:50 AM
Union Home Secretary GK Pillai has summoned the chief secretaries of Manipur and Nagaland. They are expected to reach New Delhi on Wednesday to discuss steps the two state governments need to take to keep National Highway 39 open.
- Beer, wine at food joints HT - 08:30 AM
Soon, you won?t need to go to bar or a pub to get a swig of your favourite beer or wine, as you can have your favourite lager beer or red wine at a food joint across the road.
- CNG prices hiked by Rs 5.60 per kg in Delhi HT - 08:30 AM
New Delhi, June 16 -- Beginning Thursday, an autorickshaw ride may just turn costlier. Indraprastha Gas Limited, the company that supplies CNG in Delhi, Ghaziabad and Noida, has substantially increased the Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) prices in Delhi and the National Capital Region by Rs 5.60 per kilogram from Wednesday midnight.
- 46 dead in Maharashtra downpour HT - 08:30 AM
The monsoon has officially arrived in Maharashtra, with all 33 districts experiencing rainfall over the past few days.
- Direct Tax Code message: Capital gains tax looms big HT - 08:30 AM
Prepare to pay tax on capital gains from next year if the government goes ahead with the Direct Taxes Code (DTC) in its current form. And more so if you are in the high income tax bracket.
- India invited to join Afghan mineral hunt HT - 08:30 AM
Barely two days after reports from the United States suggested that Afghanistan has untapped mineral resources worth $1 trillion (Rs 45 lakh crore), the war-ravaged country has invited India to bid for and develop its mines to feed India's burgeoning steel industry.
- Five years on, public reunion? HT - 08:30 AM
After exactly five years of acrimony, Anil and Mukesh Ambani and their spouses may face each other amicably amid thousands of shareholders at the annual general meeting (AGM) of the country?s biggest private company Reliance Industries Limited (RIL).
- Mamata wants single railway police force HT - 08:30 AM
Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee wants to do away with the Government Railway Police (GRP) and give its powers to the Railway Protection Force (RPF).
- Orange to be the new black for bicycles HT - 08:30 AM
New Delhi, June 17 -- Cyclists in the country are faced with an orange prospect. To avert fatal accidents, the Union ministry of surface transport has written to the ministry of industries to change the colour of bicycles from black to orange and obtained the latter's in-principle approval.
- After Jaswant, will Uma return to BJP? HT - 08:30 AM
Former BJP leader Uma Bharti accompanied party leaders L.K. Advani, Rajnath Singh and Ravi Shankar Prasad in a special plane to Raipur on Wednesday, sparking speculation on her possible return to the BJP.
- No power, water in south Delhi HT - Wed, Jun 16
Tuesday spelt double trouble for several Delhi residents, especially in posh south Delhi areas, which faced long hours of power cuts clubbed with almost no water supply.
- 'Embassy advised us to make own arrangements' HT - Wed, Jun 16
An Indian medical student stranded in riot-hit Kyrgyzstan has said Indians in the Central Asian country were tense about their safety as the embassy was not prepared to take all of them back.
National News
Youths shying away from low-cost Yuva trains
FE - 05:47 PM Youths are shying away from low-cost Yuva trains if Railway occupancy figures are any indication.
Five months after its launch, the low-cost air conditioned Yuva trains have few takers.
- New solar mission norms launched FE - 01:50 AM
Welcoming the guidelines for off-grid and roof-top solar applications, launched by non-renewable resources minister Farooq Abdullah in the capital on Wednesday, solar industry leaders have expressed the hope that the government would soon follow up with guidelines for grid-connected solar power projects.
- Modi's anti-Gujarat list sent to Centre FE - 11:12 AM
Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi gave a memorandum, listing host of issues the state has with the Centre, to union Finance Minister Pranab Mukherjee during his meeting with the later here.
- No misuse of British aid for SSA: HRD ministry FE - 03:42 AM
A day after Andrew Mitchell, secretary of state for international development, UK made statements in London about launching an inquiry into the alleged misuse of British aid given for the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan, the Union human resource development (HRD) ministry hit back, expressing its 'dismay' and "shock at the unsubstantiated allegations in the press on the misuse of UK Grants for
- Gadget Buzz FE - 03:42 AM
Asus G51J 3D This 3D gaming notebook with a 15.6-inch display is equipped with Nvidia 3D Vision and bundled with specially designed 3D glasses.
- Party whips and dinner diplomacy in Patna on Rajya Sabha poll eve FE - 03:42 AM
As a sixth candidate, an Independent, has jumped into the Rajya Sabha poll fray in Bihar making an election inevitable for the five seats, political parties have issued a whip to MLAs to remain in the capital till the conclusion of the election on Thursday.
- Gunbattle in Lalgarh: Security forces claim 'major success' FE - 03:42 AM
In a fierce gunbattle that raged for nearly six hours on Wednesday morning, security forces eliminated an entire Maoist squad at the Ranja forest in Salboni in West Midnapore district.
- Haryana govt okays 4% VAT on liquor FE - 01:50 AM
The Haryana cabinet on Wednesday under the chairmanship of chief minister Bhupinder Singh Hooda, approved the proposal of the excise and taxation department to maintain VAT rate at 4% on all types of liquor when sold in the state for the first time for consumption as per Excise Policy for the year 2009-10 and 2010-11. The cabinet also accorded approval to provide 5.
- Spreadsheet FE - 01:50 AM
Cement sector The cement sector is now entering a weak quarter because of monsoon and new capacity addition.
- Quick View FE - 01:50 AM
Japan PM could need to raise $76-bn taxes Japanese Prime Minister Naoto Kan may have to raise taxes by as much as 7 trillion yen ($76 billion) to fulfill his pledge to cap bond sales in coming years, according to an independent adviser to the government.
- Report card FE - 01:50 AM
This study* presents the first empirical assessment of the robust determinants of asset price reversals.
- Letters to the editor FE - 01:50 AM
Countries are resorting to overseas acquisitions of farmlands to boost up food output ('Acquiring farmlands abroad', FE, June 16).
- The privileged pack their bags faster FE - Wed, Jun 16
A tad less than 30% of India's 1.2-billion population are migrants, data released by government on Tuesday showed.
- Haryana gives road project to Unitech, DLF FE - Wed, Jun 16
Realty majors among those with development projects along Southern Peripheral Road With pressure mounting from developers who had purchased land in the new sectors adjoining the Southern Peripheral Road (SPR), the Haryana government has decided to award parts of the work to two real estate majors who have upcoming projects along the route.
- Issues in terms of concept, structure need to be clarified FE - Wed, Jun 16
Tax reform, like all reforms, is a process and not an event", so said the finance minister in his recent Budget speech.
- Foreign firms' concerns addressed FE - Wed, Jun 16
The second draft of the Direct Taxes Code (DTC) has put an end to complaints and controversies that had emanated for foreign companies on the issue of treaty override or the change in criterion for taxing their income as resident if they do a part of their work in India for a certain period.
- No tax on PF, retirement benefits FE - Wed, Jun 16
In the absence of a social security system, the finance ministry has dropped the idea of taxing people's savings at the time of final withdrawal from instruments like provident funds and pure life insurance products.
- Indians evacuated from violence-hit Kyrgyz cities FE - Wed, Jun 16
All the 105 Indians, stranded in violence-hit Southern Kyrgyz towns of Osh and Jalal-Abad, have been evacuated to capital Bishkek and will return to India in the next few days as the death toll in five days of ethnic clashes climbed to 124.
- SBI will not want to outprice itself FE - Wed, Jun 16
With just about two weeks to go for banks to put in place a base rate, below which they cannot lend with a couple of small exceptions, there's plenty of guesswork on about where the rates will settle.
- Draft DTC drops move for MAT on gross assets, cheers India Inc FE - Wed, Jun 16
The government on Tuesday dropped its controversial plan to levy minimum alternate tax (MAT) on value of gross assets instead of book profits, giving a big relief to corporates, especially infrastructure players and those in capital-intensive businesses.
National News
Gas tragedy: Panel for curative petition against SC verdict
PTI - 10:49 PMBhopal, Jun 17 (PTI) A committee constituted by Madhya Pradesh government after the recent judgement on the Bhopal Gas Tragedy today recommended filing of a curative petition in the Supreme Court against its 1996 judgement and formation of a Joint Task Force for extradition of the then Union Carbide Chairman Warren Anderson.
- Delhi govt offers geospatial data to MCD to detect tax evaders PTI - 10:43 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (PTI) To help cash-strapped MCD improve its property tax collection, Delhi Government has offered it geo-spatial data of houses and real estates to identify defaulting properties and bring them in the tax net.
- DTC unlikely to cheer taxpayers, may lower I-T slabs PTI - 10:39 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (PTI) The Direct Taxes Code is unlikely to give much relief to income tax payers as the finance ministry today said the higher slabs, proposed earlier, may be altered in the Bill.
- Manipur does not suppress Naga rights, says minister PTI - 10:35 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (PTI) Manipur government today termed as "false and unfounded" the allegation by Naga civil society groups that it was suppressing the rights of Nagas.
- Three youths held for stealing car for joy ride PTI - 10:25 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (PTI) Three youths were arrested here with a car they had allegedly stolen for a "joy ride" in the city, police said today.
- Maya''s ''last warning'' to power, health dept to improve working PTI - 10:23 PM
Lucknow, June 17 (PTI) Unhappy with "lack of progress" in health and power sector in the state, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Mayawati today warned the officials of the two departments to improve their functioning or else "the government will be forced to look for other alternatives".
- Chemical, Fertilizer Ministry suggests removal of toxic waste PTI - 10:23 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (PTI) The Chemical and Fertilizer Ministry has suggested removal of the toxic wastes from the site of defunct Union Carbide factory in Bhopal, where deadly gas leak caused the world's worst industrial disaster in 1984.
- Chudasama''s banners akin to new age ''tweets'': Ambani PTI - 10:23 PM
Mumbai, Jun 17 (PTI) Comparing former Mumbai sheriff Nana Chudasama's banners, which he has been writing for several years, to new age 'tweets', industrialist Mukesh Ambani today said Twitter-like social sites were inspired by it.
- New JMM RS member to set up hospitals in J''khand PTI - 10:06 PM
Ranchi, June 17 (PTI) Hours after being elected to Rajya Sabha as JMM candidate, Alchemist group of Hospitals head K D Singh tonight announced to set up two hospitals in Jharkhand.
- ''Naxals on the job for 24 hrs, security men work only for 8'' PTI - 10:05 PM
New Delhi, Jun 17 (PTI) Claiming that Naxals were on the job for 24 hours while security forces worked for only eight, a member of the National Advisory Council has told Prime Minister Manmohan Singh that the government was losing the war against Maoists.
- Punjab to have evening courts PTI - 09:58 PM
Jalandhar, Jun 17 (PTI) The Punjab government today approved setting up of evening courts in some of the major towns, including Amritsar.
- Driver burnt at businessman''s house, dies PTI - 09:58 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (PTI) Mystery surrounds the death of a driver who was allegedly set on fire at the residence of a leading businessman in South Delhi over a week back.
- Same person or group behind attacks on Hyd policemen: CP PTI - 09:52 PM
Hyderabad, Jun 17 (PTI) City Police today said a particular organisation or a person was responsible for the series of attacks on its personnel in which two policemen were killed and as many injured since December 2008.
- Mumbai ATC goes blind for 21 minutes PTI - 09:48 PM
Mumbai, June 17 (PTI) For 21 minutes on June 15, the Air Traffic Control at the Mumbai airport lost all contact with 19 aircraft either in the air or readying for take-off after a power cable got snapped during digging near the runway, in a major technical breakdown fraught with danger.
- BJD sweeps RS polls in Orissa PTI - 09:41 PM
Bhubaneswar, Jun 17 (PTI) BJD today swept the Rajya Sabha elections in Orissa as all the three seats were won by the ruling party while an independent nominee backed by Congress and BJP lost.
- India may spend USD 80 bn in 5 yrs on defence acquisitions:CII PTI - 09:19 PM
New Delhi, Jun 17 (PTI) India is estimated to spend about USD 80 billion in the next five years on defence acquisitions, making it one of the most attractive markets for global defence firms, an industry study has said.
- Bid to stage fast over Justice Dinakaran land issue foiled PTI - 09:35 PM
Tiruvallur (TN), Jun 17 (PTI) Around 80 protestors belonging to CPI-M and its farmers' body were removed by police while trying to stage a 48-hour fast to demand retrieval of land allegedly encroached by Karnataka High Court Chief Justice P D Dinakaran and his family.
- GoM on Prasar meets PTI - 09:31 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (PTI) The Group of Ministers on Prasar Bharti met here today and discussed issues relating to recruitment and status of officers on duty in the organisation.
- Metro mall de-sealed by MCD after L-G directive PTI - 09:29 PM
New Delhi, Jun 17 (PTI) The MCD today de-sealed a commercial complex housing shops of reputed brands at the Inderlok Metro Station premises here after a direction from Lt Governor Tejendra Khanna.
- RS polls fallout: Four BJP MLAs may be expelled PTI - 09:26 PM
New Delhi, June 17 (PTI) Taking a serious note of cross- voting by four of its MLAs in different states during the Rajya Sabha polls today, BJP said it is likely to expel them from the party.
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The domestic benchmark indices facing huge volatility as the market after a significant decline bounce back once again on selective buying across the counters. The investors are bit calculative in boo...
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Thursday, June 17, 2010
Laal - Umeed E Shehar
Download Laal - Umeed E Shehar as mp3
http://sites.google.com/site/naxalrevolution/Umeed-e-Shaar.mp3
The person playing the guitar in the Video below is Taimur Rahman who is the band leader and Central Committee member of the Communist Workers and Peasants Party (CMKP) of Pakistan.If you like the song let him know @ http://redpakistan.wordpress.com
Video of Laal - Umeed E Shear
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Is the nation in a coma?
Is the nation in a coma?
Europeans believe that Indian leaders are too blinded by new wealth and deceit to comprehend that the day will come when the have-nots will hit the streets.
Mohan Murti
A few days ago I was in a panel discussion on mergers and acquisitions in Frankfurt, Germany, organised by Euroforum and The Handelsblatt, one of the most prestigious newspapers in German-speaking Europe.
The other panellists were senior officials of two of the largest carmakers and two top insurance companies — all German multinationals operating in India.
The panel discussion was moderated by a professor from the esteemed European Business School. The hall had an audience that exceeded a hundred well-known European CEOs. I was the only Indian.
After the panel discussion, the floor was open for questions. That was when my "moment of truth" turned into an hour of shame, embarrassment — when the participants fired questions and made remarks on their experiences with the evil of corruption in India.
The awkwardness and humiliation I went through reminded of The Moment of Truth, the popular Anglo-American game. The more questions I answered truthfully, the more the questions get tougher. Tougher here means more embarrassing.
European disquiet
Questions ranged from "Is your nation in a coma?", the corruption in judiciary, the possible impeachment of a judge, the 2G scam and to the money parked illegally in tax havens.
It is a fact that the problem of corruption in India has assumed enormous and embarrassing proportions in recent years, although it has been with us for decades. The questions and the debate that followed in the panel discussion was indicative of the European disquiet. At the end of the Q&A session, I surmised Europeans perceive India to be at one of those junctures where tripping over the precipice cannot be ruled out.
Let me substantiate this further with what the European media has to say in recent days.
In a popular prime-time television discussion in Germany, the panellist, a member of the German Parliament quoting a blog said: "If all the scams of the last five years are added up, they are likely to rival and exceed the British colonial loot of India of about a trillion dollars."
Banana Republic
One German business daily which wrote an editorial on India said: "India is becoming a Banana Republic instead of being an economic superpower. To get the cut motion designated out, assurances are made to political allays. Special treatment is promised at the expense of the people. So, Ms Mayawati who is Chief Minister of the most densely inhabited state, is calmed when an intelligence agency probe is scrapped. The multi-million dollars fodder scam by another former chief minister wielding enormous power is put in cold storage. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh chairs over this kind of unparalleled loot."
An article in a French newspaper titled "Playing the Game, Indian Style" wrote: "Investigations into the shadowy financial deals of the Indian cricket league have revealed a web of transactions across tax havens like Switzerland, the Virgin Islands, Mauritius and Cyprus." In the same article, the name of one Hassan Ali of Pune is mentioned as operating with his wife a one-billion-dollar illegal Swiss account with "sanction of the Indian regime".
A third story narrated in the damaging article is that of the former chief minister of Jharkhand, Madhu Koda, who was reported to have funds in various tax havens that were partly used to buy mines in Liberia. "Unfortunately, the Indian public do not know the status of that enquiry," the article concluded.
"In the nastiest business scam in Indian records (Satyam) the government adroitly covered up the political aspects of the swindle — predominantly involving real estate," wrote an Austrian newspaper. "If the Indian Prime Minister knows nothing about these scandals, he is ignorant of ground realities and does not deserve to be Prime Minister. If he does, is he a collaborator in crime?"
The Telegraph of the UK reported the 2G scam saying: "Naturally, India's elephantine legal system will ensure culpability, is delayed."
Blinded by wealth
This seems true. In the European mind, caricature of a typical Indian encompasses qualities of falsification, telling lies, being fraudulent, dishonest, corrupt, arrogant, boastful, speaking loudly and bothering others in public places or, while travelling, swindling when the slightest of opportunity arises and spreading rumours about others. The list is truly incessant.
My father, who is 81 years old, is utterly frustrated, shocked and disgruntled with whatever is happening and said in a recent discussion that our country's motto should truly be Asatyameva Jayete.
Europeans believe that Indian leaders in politics and business are so blissfully blinded by the new, sometimes ill-gotten, wealth and deceit that they are living in defiance, insolence and denial to comprehend that the day will come, sooner than later, when the have-nots would hit the streets.
In a way, it seems to have already started with the monstrous and grotesque acts of the Maoists. And, when that rot occurs, not one political turncoat will escape being lynched.
The drumbeats for these rebellions are going to get louder and louder as our leaders refuse to listen to the voices of the people. Eventually, it will lead to a revolution that will spill to streets across the whole of India, I fear.
Perhaps we are the architects of our own misfortune. It is our sab chalta hai (everything goes) attitude that has allowed people to mislead us with impunity. No wonder Aesop said. "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to high office."
(The author is former Europe Director, CII, and lives in Cologne, Germany. blfeedback@thehindu.co.in.)
Via - Hindu businessline
Sunday, June 13, 2010
BP Spills Coffee
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United Nations Secretary-General's Report Highlights Violations by Both Sides
Naxalite fighters exploded two bombs in Belhara High School, Jharkhand, on the evening of April 9, 2009. One bomb, on the school's lower floor, blasted a hole in the wall between two classrooms, as well as the outside wall.
Both the security forces and the Maoists in India are exploiting and harming children, destroying their chances at an education and causing damage that will affect their entire lives. The new UN report will focus international attention on this tragic situation.
(New York) - India should take immediate steps to protect children caught up in its conflict with Maoist rebels, in light of a report today by United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon, Human Rights Watch said. This is the first time that the long-running Maoist conflict in India has appeared in the secretary-general's report to the UN Security Council about the use of children in armed conflict around the world.
India should immediately review state government policies of occupying and using school buildings as part of operations against Maoist armed groups, known as Naxalites, and give schools better protection from Maoist attacks, Human Rights Watch said. Human Rights Watch also called upon the Maoists to immediately cease their recruitment and use of children, and stop attacking schools.
"Both the security forces and the Maoists in India are exploiting and harming children, destroying their chances at an education and causing damage that will affect their entire lives," said Bede Sheppard, Asia researcher on children's rights at Human Rights Watch. "The new UN report will focus international attention on this tragic situation."
The UN Security Council has stated repeatedly that it will consider targeted sanctions, including arms embargoes, against parties to armed conflict that do not end their use of child soldiers.
The secretary-general's report describes how the Maoists, particularly in Chhattisgarh state, are recruiting and using boys and girls in their ranks, and that they have carried out systematic attacks on schools to damage and destroy government structures and to instill fear among local residents.
The report also noted that government security forces have been occupying school buildings in the states of Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand. In 2009, security forces similarly occupied school buildings in Bihar and West Bengal states.
"Having security forces occupy school grounds puts children and their education at unnecessary risk," Sheppard said. "Now this practice is putting India's reputation on the world stage at risk."
In a 2009 report, "Sabotaged Schooling," Human Rights Watch documented how government security forces - both police and paramilitary police - occupy school buildings as bases for anti-Maoist operations, sometimes only for a few days, but often for periods lasting several months and even years. Sometimes the security forces take over entire buildings, while in other places they occupy parts of school buildings, with students trying to carry on their studies in the remaining space, often under distracting and even frightening circumstances.
Human Rights Watch has also documented that at least 34 schools in Jharkhand and 16 schools in Bihar were attacked by the Maoists during 2009. These do not include schools that were occupied by security forces at the time of attack. Most of the attacks occurred at night when students and teachers were not there.
Maoist attacks and school occupations by security forces unnecessarily place students at risk of harm, and lead many to drop out or to interrupt their studies. Girls are especially likely to drop out following a partial occupation of a school because of harassment, or perceived harassment, by the security forces. Often, schools are closed altogether and students may not be able to attend at all or are forced to move into inferior sites, to study outdoors, or, for those able to reach them, to travel to schools farther away. Students also reported to Human Rights Watch that it was traumatic to witness security forces beating suspects on school grounds.
In a 2008 report, "'Being Neutral is Our Biggest Crime,'" Human Rights Watch also documented the use of children in the conflict in Chhattisgarh state. The Maoists deploy children to gather intelligence, for sentry duty, to make and plant landmines and bombs, and to engage in hostilities against government forces. They organize children ages 6 to 12 into children's associations (bal sangams), indoctrinating, training, and using them as informers. Typically, children over the age of 12 are recruited into other Maoist ranks and trained in the use of rifles, landmines, and improvised explosive devices. Children in Maoist armed guerrilla squads (dalams) are involved in fighting with government security forces.
The secretary-general's report, which covers all of 2009, was submitted in response to Security Council Resolution 1882 of August 4, 2009, in which the council requested a briefing on the issue of children and armed conflict around the world. India was one of 22 countries highlighted in the report, which will be debated by the Security Council in June.
"Secretary-General Ban has brought international attention to the mistreatment of children in India's Maoist conflict," Sheppard said. "The Security Council should be prepared to take action if the Indian government and the Maoists do not act to better protect children."
Maoism in India: Panic or Panacea?
June 19, 2009
By Nandini Chandra. Guest contributor, Sanhati. Paper presented at Left Forum 2009.
"It would not be an exaggeration to say that the problem of Naxalism is the single biggest internal security challenge ever faced by our country"—Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, addressing a day-long meeting in New Delhi of Chief Ministers of six states, severely hit by Naxalism. April 6, 2006, PTI
The Maoists want to bring down the State. Given the autocratic ideology they take their inspiration from, what alternative would they set up? Wouldn't their regime be an exploitative, autocratic, violent one as well? Isn't their action already exploitative of ordinary people? Do they really have the support of ordinary people? —Arundhati Roy, 27 March, 2007, Tehelka
"Trinamool Congress workers are in cohorts with armed Maoist groups to pursue mischievous plans to keep Nandigram on the boil"—CPM general secretary Prakash Karat, in New Delhi after a two-day Politburo meeting. 12 Nov, 2007, Hindustan Times
India will in the not too distant future move into what I call 'In-Land' and 'Out-Land'. In-Land will constitute massive City States…Outside these gated City States will lie Out-Land, present day rural India, as ever out of sight and therefore, out of mind. It is entirely possible that Maoists or others like them could control this Out-Land. If some turn rogues, they could turn to 'warlordism'. —Sudeep Chakravarti author of Red Sun: Travels in Naxalite Country, Penguin, 2008, in conversation with Sarita Ravindranathan, Sify News, 24 May 2008.
It is learnt that intelligence security establishment strongly believes that Maoist and ISI have forged an alliance to wage terror war against India [sic]. In a recent development, Maoists have openly come forth to voice their sympathy for banned Students Islamic Movement of India (Simi), which is known to have joined several terrorist outfits across the border including Lashkar-e-Toiba. —Soumittra S Bose, 8 Sep 2008, TNN
Naxalism, which started off as a people's movement, has now become a nearly Rs 1500 crore organised extortion business in the form of 'levy', police and central security officials said. CPI (Maoist) and especially its splinter groups, which extort the money hardly pump it back for running the movement but instead use it to maintain luxurious life-styles for their masters, the officials said.—Snehesh Alex Philip, 7 June, 2009, PTI
Introduction
In the wake of the neoliberal shift in the official Left position, there have been massive land grabs and accompanying assaults on the most vulnerable of the rural poor. The rural masses have not taken this assault on their land and basic means of livelihood lying down. Most development and human rights activists however choose to filter this revolutionary potential of the agrarian classes through the lens of "the victims of displacement" rather than class war. While liberal outpourings of sympathy for the dispossessed poor is ultimately couched in moral rather than political terms, often concluding with admonitions for failure of governance, anarchist outcries of despair with the state of affairs are no more productive. This simultaneous attack on and concern for the rural labouring masses derives from a basic obfuscation of the fundamental and historical contradiction in the official Left's relationship to the peasantry. Added to this is the self-delusion of its relationship to the bourgeoisie shaped by its own unacknowledged bourgeois class consciousness. This obfuscation and self-delusion then provide the underlying focus of most present day discussion on the Maoists.
This paper seeks to place the present panic over Maoism in India in perspective through a consideration of the interlinking lenses of the state, media, civil society and the official/mainstream "left". It starts with examining the gaps in P. Sainath's dedicated reporting on rural misery, as expressing certain key features of official left ideology, starting with the cult book Everybody Loves a Good Drought (1996). It moves on to an exploration of the political context in which the National Commission Report on Maoist affected states (2008), authored by independent civil society activist-experts emerges. In its sympathetic approach to the Maoist menace, the report surely departs from the official Left position and yet in its skewed understanding of the problem, it remains deeply consonant with it. Finally, it points to the dangers of the merging of state, media, and civil society interests and what implications this has for a class based understanding of the rural masses.
First, two examples of reporting on rural issues—the first from the pen of Magsaysay award winner P Sainath; the second a local hack in Raipur.
The Good Person of Indian Journalism
In an article published in the Hindu titled "Where India Shining Meets Great Depression" (April 4, 2006), Sainath writes: "FARMER SUICIDES in Vidharbha crossed 400 this week. The Sensex crossed the 11,000 mark. And Lakme Fashion Week issued over 500 media passes to journalists. All three are firsts. All happened the same week. And each captures in a brilliant if bizarre way a sense of where India's Brave New World is headed. A powerful measure of a massive disconnect. Of the gap between the haves and the have-mores on the one hand, and the dispossessed and desperate, on the other. Of the three events, the suicide toll in Vidharbha found no mention in many newspapers and television channels. Even though these have occurred since just June 2 last year"[1].
The report of the local hack is gleaned from a story done by journalist Subhranshu Choudhary (ex-BBC) who learns that the local journalist accompanying him on a Salwa Judum (a state-sponsored militia of tribals in Chhatisgarh mobilized to fight "Maoist terror") rally earns around 5000 every month for not writing. "Journalism here is the art of not writing," he said… "Being journalists, we know who is doing what; the ins and the outs of corrupt practice, and the perpetrators," he continued. "We get a fee for not writing about the corruption. That is our salary."[2]
In Dantewada, the locals were extremely hostile to journalists, not allowing them to even enter their town since they knew most journalists were brokers for Essar, a multinational company trying to grab land to set up a plant. People in Dhurli told Choudhary "Tell the government, if they want to take our land they must first kill us. They can take this land only over our dead bodies."
Back in Delhi, Choudhary was amazed to read a report by the Indo Asian News Service claiming that the people of Dhurli had agreed to give their land to Essar. They were so happy with Essar's rehabilitation package, the report said, that they had written a letter to the government expressing their willingness to give away their land.
The report received prominent coverage by newspapers like The Times of India, The Hindu, Business Line and The Economic Times. Upon further investigation, it turned out to be the work of a local reporter who was in the payroll of the company.
Very superficially then, P. Sainath falls in the great tradition of committed nationalist journalists, for whom writing is a mission, while the story of the Raipur hacks confirm the lamentable selling out of an honorable profession. But obviously there is more going on here. Choudhary shows in his piece how precarious the life of a civil war-ravaged small town hack can be. Those who try to defy authority are simply killed or their careers destroyed, while the Sainaths (not too many) can afford to bridge the great disconnect between mass media and mass reality because of who they are: the grandson of a former President of India, and English speaking. What is admirable about Sainath and most crucial for my present purpose is not his selfless devotion to the cause of the rural proletariat and landless laborers, but the way in which he has managed to make the rural sector a marketable feature in the national imagination, to the extent that many of the national dailies do cover a rural story now and then. Sainath's appeal to the middle and upper middle classes (at most 30 percent of the population) (and possibly much lesser - ed.) rests precisely on knowing the language they speak, the films they watch, the songs they sing. In his book, Everybody Loves a Good Drought, from the title to the chapter headings and frequent punch lines, one is thrilled with the apposite word play and the play with one's collective conscience. Referring to the displaced rural population he opines, "if the costs they bear are the price of development, then the rest of the nation is having one endless free lunch"[3] or referring to the Koya tribals who have been denied access to the bamboo which is their lifeline, he quips: "They are the bees banned from honey. Only, these bees have no sting"[4]. These felicities do a rather good job of visually and mnemonically summarizing the plight of the rural poor. They perform the function of advertisement jingles that linger in the mind long after the fleeting message has passed.
The point I am making about Sainath is not that he is a sellout, but that in order to operate within the market some sort of spiritual concession is inevitable. This kind of reification is completely welcome moreover as long as it allows him to at least partially subvert the larger expectations of developmental journalism, pertaining to the use of facts, statistics or events. And Sainath excels in statistical analogies, bringing together disparate realities vividly and exactly like some poet-arithmetician. Moreover, the facts and figures demonstrate his ability to focus on the deep underlying processes, the linkages to economies of scale and the longer history of a particular phenomenon.
Talking about Ratnapandi of Ramnad, Tamilnadu, who climbs at least forty date palms daily, he says: "Even if these were shorter ones, between fifteen and twenty feet, it means he could be climbing upto 5000 feet a day. This is roughly equivalent to walking up and down a building of 250 floors daily, using the staircase. Only Ratnapandi isn't using a staircase. Not even a ladder. He shins up using his hands and legs. The risks accompanying him are also, quite obviously, far greater"[5]. Again comparing the distance walked daily by Paharia women in Godda, Jharkhand, he comments: "Paharia women like Guhy walk a distance equivalent to that between Delhi and Bombay-four to five times a year"[6].
Lukacs in his essay, "Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat", reserves the profoundest contempt for the journalist, akin he says to a prostitute. Detailing how the factory line division of labour invades the realm of ethics, he says:
The specialised 'virtuoso', the vendor of his objectified and reified faculties does not just become the [passive] observer of society; he also lapses into a contemplative attitude vis-à-vis the workings of his own objectified and reified faculties. This phenomenon can be seen at its most grotesque in journalism. Here it is precisely subjectivity itself, knowledge, temperament and powers of expression that are reduced to an abstract mechanism functioning autonomously and divorced both from the personality of their 'owner' and from the material and concrete nature of the subject matter in hand. The journalist's 'lack of convictions', the prostitution of his experiences and beliefs is comprehensible only as that of capitalist reification[7].
"Not a description that fits Sainath even remotely!", one might be tempted to exclaim. But when one considers the sheer creativity with which Sainath identifies the precise mechanism of the plunder of the villages by the cities, the slow throttling of agrarian populations by neoliberal policies, one is forced to wonder about his silence vis à vis the neoliberal policies of his own CPI(Marxist) (henceforth CPM - ed.) bosses in West Bengal. Why is his rage at the despair and miserabilism of the countryside only articulated in terms of abstract notions of political incompetence, bureaucratic inefficiency, and corruption? Indeed, he is smart enough not to hold individual usurers or contractors responsible for the rot. On the other hand, good administrators are always singled out for praise. The concrete evidence for the objectification of his consciousness lies elsewhere— in his complete blindness to the work of Maoists or Naxalites (officially differentiated since the merger of the PWG and MCC into CPI (Maoist) in 2004) in the very backward regions he visits.
Since the so-called communist party with which he affiliates himself is not carrying on any work in these remote regions, he refuses to recognize that anyone else could be doing political work there. Even a state authored National Commission Report glowingly acknowledges the work of the Maoists in looking after the welfare of the marginal and displaced tribals and dalits. For most of the book, we hardly find any trace of their presence although we know from government records that the districts he visited are heavily "infested" with Maoists. If on one occasion he grudgingly concedes the abrupt decline in landlord terror in Palamu district to be the outcome of their handiwork, on the only other occasion he refers to them, it is with heavy-handed censure of their ideology. One of the most poignant character sketches in the book is of Baidyanath Singh, poet, singer, and activist. In a postscript to the piece, Sainath tells us that Singh was murdered by a squad of men in uniforms normally associated with the Maoist Communist Center. The MCC is then described as an ultra-left wing group with a long history of violence. Nothing else! Only after this incriminating information are we told that Baidyanath's friends didn't actually think the MCC had even murdered him. It was the contractors in league with the irrigation department touts posing as MCC men.
Given that he has little patience for the utopian socialist Bhoodan and Sarvodaya movements, and he is acutely aware of the comprador character of leaders like Biju Patnaik (former Chief Minister of Orissa), whose corruption he exposed in Everybody Loves a Good Draught, it is strange that the contradictions of his own party's exclusively tactical politics do not force him to advance the slightest criticism. What is surprising is that the Party apparatchiks have not shied away from announcing their shift from being Marxists to marketeers. The CM of Bengal Buddhadeb Bhattacharya, in a by now (in)famous statement declared that in order to industrialize West Bengal he was willing to become an agent of big capitalists. In the case of Nandigram, it was no ordinary big capital either, but the Salim group of Indonesia (allies of Suharto implicated in the most heinous anti-communist holocaust). It seems then that the prostitution of the most honorable journalist is brought about not at the behest of capitalism per se but via the Party which has sold itself out.
What this entails is an inability to see the wood for the trees. While Sainath does a body count of the Vidharbha farmers who died by swallowing pesticide, he obviously fails to see the Maoist campaign to highlight the root causes of the agrarian crisis in the cotton belt of Vidharbha. Bernard D'Mello writing on the arrest and torture of Shridhar Srinivasan a year later wonders why the peasants haven't followed the historical precedents… of raiding food grains, burning the money lender's records instead of "turning inwards, blaming and punishing themselves by taking their own lives?"[8] In so far as Sainath never poses the same question in his subsequent reports on farmer suicides, he is complicit with institutions of mass media, civil society, and state in obstructing any view of the real or potential class mobilization of the rural proletariat. Indeed he talks of the need for politics as the only way out; but is the rise in the Minimum Support Price (MSP) of cotton from the all-time low of 1700 a quintal to 3000 as a result of pre-poll adjustments, the only example of such politics?[9] It is implied that the farmers' plight is addressed by the politicians only as a result of their negative agency, their suicides.
Feel Good Welfarism of the Experts
This brings me to the larger consensus that has been achieved in recent years on the question of the Maoists. A large spectrum of radicals of different hues- reformists, anarchists as well as communists - congregated at the World Social Forum Mumbai in 2004 and debated on the ways of fighting neo-imperialist regimes. They vowed to bring about 'another world' and push for people's struggles and movements. Yet in their charter of principles passed in Bhopal, they continued the 2003 policy of excluding "organizations that seek to take people's lives as a method of political action". The parallel Mumbai Resistance that grew out of a critique of this policy helped sharpen the debate between different shades of the Left, specifically the one between Maoists and those privileging the so called mainstream. However, it is the issue of class struggle which eventually clinched the debate on the different modes of political mobilizations.
P.J. James of the CPI (ML, former Red Flag faction) has identified the ensuing talk of several alternate models of development, and resistance through regional forums as an attempt to abandon class struggle for a new kind of political dispensation privileging "people's movements", under the stewardship of bourgeois civil society[10]. This was most visible in the unprecedented bonhomie between the official communist parties and the reformist civil society groups and NGOs.
The rift in this broad consensus comes with the CPIM's open embrace of Chinese style capitalism and ardent chaperoning of SEZs to the detriment of the urban proletariat as much as the disenfranchised agrarian class. The CPM's open advocacy of violence (dumdum dawai) towards peasants who dared to oppose the land grabs in Nandigram and Singur fit in with its violent neo-liberal shift. But attacking fact finding teams, academics, and human rights activists and stopping them from entering villages bespeak a bloodlust almost calculated to antagonize its WSF partners. When the WSF inveighed against their former allies and bemoaned the fate of farmers and peasants, did it mean they had averted their face from the heavy-handed Left model? Or did it indicate a more human face of the same model, which believed that it was possible to have equitable re-distribution within the existing bourgeois set-up, or that a free market could flourish alongside village level self-governance (panchayati raj)? The innate federalism of the NGO vision of course finds it convenient to project itself as the other end of a centralized and heavy-handed state machine, which is ironically deployed for the protection of its own class interests. The repudiation of all forms of centralism, seen as "only… imposed and maintained from above, solely by a bureaucratic and military clique"[11] then reveals a disavowal of the history of class struggle which advances through democratic centralism, as well as fear of the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In the many reports being filed from the different radical portals on the resistance to SEZs and corporate land grabs that have been triggered since Kalinga Nagar and Singur, we are again and again being asked to see the Maoists as a furtive force lurking "behind the curtain", coming to the people's rescue, but also establishing simultaneously that the people and the Maoists cannot be one and the same. In only one report on the recent Lalgarh tribal uprising by Partho Sarathi Roy in Sanhati, do we hear one of the tribal women, Arti Murmu defying this conception of the people as congenitally exterior to politics:
"Whenever there is a Maoist attack the police raid our villages and torture our women and children. For how long will we suffer this oppression by the police? All of us are Maoists, let the police arrest us. Today we have come out"[12].
To regard the Maoists as strictly an external force importing change in the circumstances of the poor would be to subscribe to a mechanical materialist and vulgar evolutionary theory, easily trumped by Maoist dialectics. It also amounts to accepting the unchanging nature of society based on the belief that change can only come from an external bigger force, rather than through the working out of internal contradictions.
The Expert Committee Report "Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas" (2008) operates on this very premise of total divorce between the Maoists and the people. The members constituting the committee are public-minded former bureaucrats, academics, NGO consultants, and journalists. They portray the Maoists as part Robin Hood and part bandit, looting and manipulating the people, helping them, but also getting them into trouble with the police. The strategy is to downplay the violent side of the Maoists and play up the Robin Hood side so as to turn the government's attention towards the deep social crisis that makes the people resort to them in the first place. The Maoists are then seen as raising the confidence of the most humiliated and oppressed subjects of the state, recovering alienated land on their behalf and giving them justice. The report argues that if like the West Bengal government in the early1970s, the government of India could grasp Mao's notion of the guerilla as a fish in the water of the masses, address the social and economic inequities that afflict the bulk of its population (water) and make it evaporate, then it will automatically learn to curb the power of the Maoists (fish).
This welfarist view, however noble, does not seem very realistic since it says nothing about tackling the forces of speculative private capital which are ruling the state currently. The appeal to the state to institute an ameliorative plan then has the basic Gandhian Bhoodan principle written all over it, in so far as it hopes that the state working for big capitalists can be made to part with its surplus on the basis of moral entreaties. It almost seems that by insisting again and again that the Maoists are not such a consolidated and dreaded force as they are made out to be, the committee hopes to awaken the authorities to the reality that it is possible to wean the peasants away from the Maoists. The chairperson of this report D. Bandhapadhyay should know since he was a field officer in the West Bengal government's Operation Barga in the early 1970s which sought to redistribute land to the middle peasants. He has written elsewhere about how the move, although partially executed was extremely successful in `(temporarily) crushing the Naxalite movement in the state. What he omits to mention is that it was accompanied by one of the most brutal massacres in the history of urban counter-insurgency. There has yet to be any public truth and reconciliation. The report makes the more powerful point that people are in any case so badly off that they will lap up even crumbs thrown at them.
In trying to quell the panic over the Maoist menace, the Report ends up creating a conundrum—that the Maoists are a bogey and that they need not be seen as a bogey. In other words, what is objectionable about them is their use of violence; but then again, the violence symbolized by them isn't all that threatening. This might be in direct response to Manmohan Singh's hailing of Maoists as the single largest internal security problem. In any case, the ambivalence towards the Maoists keeps deepening when we pursue the thoughts it has inspired vis-à-vis Islamic terror, customarily seen as an external enemy. In the same address in 2006, Singh makes the point about the necessity of assuming responsibility for the alienation of Muslims, thus attempting to turn their external terrorist status into an internal one[13]. What has brought about this shift in priorities and what has led the state to perhaps renew its focus on the Maoists both as a law and order problem as well as a political force representing people's disaffection?
There could be many reasons for deliberating on the menace of the Maoists—the merger of the two powerful streams, the MCC and the People's War in 2004 (named), the combined military and electoral victory of the Maoists in neighbouring Nepal (not named), the ongoing civil war in Chhatisgarh between the Maoists and the Salwa Judum (named), or the growing sympathy with Maoists in the face of the anti-people policies of the official Left (not named). To be sure, the Report is extremely concerned with the violation of the rights of dalits and adivasis. But there is a different kind of emphasis on civil society members, as wise counsels, conscience keepers and moderators. It is then the attack on the genuinely committed factions of civil society such as Dr. Binayak Sen whom the Report cannot name, which is the more urgent centre of anxiety. In fact, the growing ill-treatment of members of civil society not only discredits non-violent methods of protest, but more importantly, if peaceful dissenters like Binayak Sen and others are being persecuted for being Maoists, it becomes pertinent to ask what the Maoists must do to deserve such august company? In such a situation where the line between Maoists and non-violent activists is being blurred, one can imagine how the effort to re-establish a rapprochement with the official Left might become the most practical thing on the civil society agenda.
For the most part, this seems to be taking the form of chastisement for the outrageous physical and sexual violence committed against the people's resistance and the gagging of the press. For instance, without specifying any incidents, the Report recommends that it is not desirable to insulate the affected area and people "from civil society groups, media, and political organizations and penalize those who seek to establish contact with affected people to gather information about the action of naxalites and state agencies, and speak or write about their observations. Besides being undemocratic, it is counter-productive as well. Reverse this trend. Rather, seek cooperation of civil society organizations with good track records in providing credible information on the impact of the movement and of state action on the affected people, which may help in critical appraisal of the policy pursued by the state"[14]. Surely, the fact that the Left Front government is not once named as an offender, and mentioned several times as an example of model behaviour, betrays a tone of social intimacy and a desire for reconciliation. To this end, the report ironically makes the task of CPM-style reform an attractive and reasonable proposition.
While condemning the creation of state militias like Salwa Judum that pit tribal against tribal, it recommends the installation of local policing in the pattern of the old Bengal Rural Police Act 1913. Again it dubs the Public Courts of the Maoists arbitrary and barbaric especially with regard to their treatment of personal matters and recommends the setting up of local dispute settlement bodies (nyaya panchayat). Similarly, it tries to show the Maoist methods of redress to be overbearing, bringing up questions of gender sensitivity and other such tokens. The only problem is that their recommendations are presumed on an individual and property based bourgeois rights discourse. When they talk of giving women inheritance rights and factoring in discriminating structures like patri-local residence, the members reveal their deep seated elitism and inability to contextualize gender within the particular class and organizational dynamics of the poor. For instance, K Balgopal mentions how the large contingent of women in Maoist military squads would probably "put to shame the eternally unfilled promise of one-third reservation in the legislatures"[15].
The document ends on a note of warning: "market development believes in survival of the fittest, and neither the SCs [Scheduled Castes] or STs [Scheduled Tribes] constitute the fittest"[16]. This is directed against the crude methods undertaken by the state (the unnamed West Bengal) to silence the people's voice, since it actually threatens to break the clear division of ranks between social democrats functioning within the market and Maoists who are willfully outside it, a polarization consolidated during the WSF in Mumbai. It is also a final admission that a fear of the Maoists barely conceals a fear of the people and the reality of caste/class politics. It is this fear that allows the media and state to turn the Maoists into a monster force as opposed to the vastly different reality they occupy in the different states. Occasionally, one comes across Intelligence reports that question the "exaggerated" threat perception, not enough to merit bringing in the army[17].
In Nandigram, for all the hype of Maoists arming the peasants, it is well known that peasants used handmade weapons and tactics that are "all classic strategies used during the Tebhaga movement and the freedom struggle of which Nandigram was a major centre; digging trenches to keep police out, and 'liberating' the area for months", according to Kavita Krishnan, editor of Liberation. While the CPM sings the glory of the Quit India, Tebhaga, and the Telengana movements, it refers to Nandigram as 'anarchy and lawlessness'![18]
People's Politicization
A longer history of the undivided CPI reveals that the bourgeois Brahmin leadership has repeatedly betrayed the agrarian people's revolutionary aspirations. It is the protracted working out of this basic contradiction between bourgeois leaders and an agrarian revolutionary class that keeps the spiral of fear and violence alive within the CPI(M) organizational structure. Peter Custers writing on the history of the Tebhaga movement (c.1946-7) remarks that the peasants were more than ready for armed revolution[19]. It was the leaders who proved inadequate to the task, diverting their strength from class questions to the apparently more pressing one of communal violence, a constant feature of post-1930s Congress dominated nationalist politics. Neither was there any attempt to assume leadership of the national movement, both a result of Comintern diktats as well as the product of a Brahminical awe and respect towards the Congress seen as an elder brother. It is important to understand a similar Brahminical complex working among the present day loose left confederation, drawn towards the official Left in so far as they are able to command inter/national prestige and institutional legitimacy.
The official Left's attempts to pass off its anti-agrarian policies and brutalization of the peasantry under the guise of a socialist accumulation process is then totally bogus. True, extending the industrial base could ultimately create more jobs. However, apart from actually dismantling healthy Public Sector Units, the glaring lack of any policy of regulation or expropriation of surplus value to the social sector, let alone implementing any of the more progressive national policies that do exist make their claims almost laughable. West Bengal is the only state that has not yet implemented the OBC quota in institutions of higher education and it is one of the states with the lowest success rates of National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA). Their own party ideologue urges them to pay attention to the collapsing Public Distribution System for food[20]. This general neglect of peasant/backward caste interests, often misrepresented under the aegis of the spectacular token land reforms of Operation Barga or the great performance of Panchayati raj institutions in west Bengal[21], adds to the distortion in understanding peasant insurgent consciousness in Bengal, seen in purely romantic/pre-political terms.
While the CPI(M) has transitioned into extreme reformism, based on the assumption that capitalism has a long way to go before it transforms through some kind of automatic combustion into socialism, the Maoists are rightly concerned about the objective historical necessity of the moment. This has prompted them to boycott elections and more ruinously adopt the exclusive path of protracted war. It is true that Maoists do not necessarily enjoy staying underground, and it is the brutality of the state that initially forced them into the forests. Far from negotiating this blockage to maximize their class gains, they made a virtue of it. As Balagopal has shown in the case of Andhra Pradesh, they have done a good job of antagonizing and killing their own mass base, and in Chhatisgarh of walking into the trap of the Salwa Judum. In both Bihar and Andhra, their so called boycott of elections has deliberately facilitated the fortunes of the different regional parties, with little leeway gained in exchange for services rendered. As a fall out of their extreme vanguardism, they miss out on more modest opportunities to empower the people with whom they have united.
In his 1920 pamphlet, 'Left wing Communism, an Infantile Disorder", Lenin had exhorted the Left in Germany committed to regarding the parliament as politically obsolete, about the urgent task of participating in representative institutions, "You must work within them because it is there that you will still find workers who are duped by the priests and stultified by the condition of rural life, otherwise you risk turning into nothing but windbags"[22].
The low priority given to everyday class struggle does not arise from any Brahminical complex. Navlakha cites local CPI leaders in Dantewada pointing out "98% of Maoists are Adivasis"[23]. K Balgopal too attests to the organic base of most of its leadership[24]. The separation of Maoists and the people then is not about the contradiction between different stages of development. On the contrary, what we witness with the Maoists is a politics of despair, what Dipankar Bhattacharya, CPI(ML) Liberation General Secretary calls "an anarchist caricature of Mao's teachings"[25], an abstraction of class struggle instead of a real intervention. In their splendid isolationism and tendency for pure abstraction then, the Maoists end up producing the same results as Sainath, which is to paint a bleak picture of the condition of the poor without any attention to their class potentials. In Balgopal's damning words, "the people for their part have come to look up to the squads as a substitute for their own struggle for justice" or even more evocatively, the Maoists have "corrupted the masses into the receivers of justice rather than fighters for it"[26]. More specifically, he has in mind their inability (at least in Andhra) to sustain the movement beyond a generation, and their perpetual search for new ground and new recruits. In many respects then, the picture of the Maoists painted by the National Commission Report rings true at least to an aspect of the ground reality.
The National Commission Report however completely twists the picture by painting all Maoists and Naxalites with the same brush. It begins with a reference to the wide array of Naxalite groups only to focus entirely on the CPI (Maoists). This substitution of Maoism and Naxalism, Dipankar Bhattacharya has noted, is a classic case of denying the CPI ML movement, specifically Liberation, its different and perhaps more threatening revolutionary trajectory. It is possible that the great media shorthand of Maoism for all kinds of sensational activity, both heroic and easily demonized, is in fact a displacement of the threat from the everyday revolutionary class struggle of a party like CPI ML Liberation.
Everyday class battles that involve the peasants' direct involvement in seizing grains and food supplies, strikes for wage increases, launching movements against draconian anti-terror laws, organizing public hearings for the loot and corruption unleashed through the implementation of the National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA) and other ailing governmental schemes, are extremely crucial in shaping a lasting movement. The All India Agricultural Labour Association of the CPI ML (Liberation), for instance, is able to coordinate battles that perhaps avoid the problem of a people permanently outside existing political structures[27].
A politics that speaks only through the language of sacrifice grows into the impotent lament of the windbag. The fetishization of violence obscures an assessment of its true role, a crucial consideration in a world where many peoples' very survival increasingly takes on the character of a revolutionary struggle; and ends up pushing the panic button, subsuming all other battles, ideological and tactical into serving the prophesies of the ruling class.
References
[1] P. Sainath, "Where India Shining meets Great Depression", The Hindu, 2 April 2006, http://www.indiatogether.org/2006/apr/psa-depress.htm, accessed April 2, 2009
[2] Shubhranshu Choudhary, "The Art of Not Writing", http://www.binayaksen.net/2009/04/the-art-of-not-writing/, 10 April, 2009, accessed 11 April 2009.
[3] P. Sainath, Everybody Loves a Good Drought: Stories from India's Poorest Districts, Penguin, 1996, p. 77.
[4] Ibid, pp-102-3.
[5] Ibid, pp. 136-37
[6] Ibid, p. 171
[7] Georg Lukacs, History and Class Consciousness, Merlin Press, 1967, p. 15
[8] Bernard D'Mello, "Mumbai's Rebels: Those who couldn't Remain Unmoved", EPW, Vol 43, No. 18, May 3-9, 2008, pp. 17-20
[9] P. Sainath, "The Dull Days of White Gold", 8 April, 2009, http://www.indiatogether.org/2009/apr/psa-whitegold.htm, accessed 10 April 2009.
[10] P. J. James, "World Social Forum's "Many Alternatives" to Globalisation", The World Social Forum: challenging empires, eds., Jai Sen, Anita Anand, Arturo Escobar and Peter Waterman, online version at http://www.choike.org/2009/eng/informes/1557.html, published Viveka Foundation 2004
[11] Lenin, State and Revolution: The Marxist Theory of the State and the Tasks of the Proletariat in the Revolution, "Experience of the Paris Commune, Marx's Analysis", 1917, Lenin Internet Archive (Marxists.org) 1993, 1999, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/, accessed 2 April 2009.
[12] Partha Sarathi Roy, "Background of the Lalgarh Movement", Nov 13, 2008, http://sanhati.com/front-page/1083/#12, accessed 5 April, 2009.
[13] Manmohan Singh, "Full Text of Prime Minister's Speech on Internal Security", 5 Sep 2006, http://www.india-defence.com/reports-2463, accessed 10 April 2009.
[14] Development Challenges in Extremist Affected Areas: Report of an Expert Group to Planning Commission, GOI 2008, p. 77.
[15] K Balagopal, "Maoist Movement in Andhra Pradesh", EPW, Volume 41, No 29, 22 July, 2006.
[16] Development Challenges, Ibid, p. 79.
[17] Maj General Ashok Mehta, "The March of Maoists", The Pioneer, 13 December, 2006
[18] Kavita Krishnan, "Nandigram: Fact and CPI(M)'s Fiction", 25 April 2007, http://www.countercurrents.org/kavita250407.htm, accessed on 2 April, 2009.
[19] Peter Custers, Women in the Tebhaga Uprising: Rural Poor Women and Revolutionary Leadership1946-47, Naya Prakash, 1987, pp. 99-105.
[20] Jayati Ghosh, "The Left and Elections", 25 May 2009, http://www.pragoti.org/node/3443, accessed on June 10 2009
[21] Dipankar Basu, "The Political Economy of Middleness: Behind Violence in Rural West Bengal", EPW, Vol. 36, No. 16, 21 April 2001.
[22] Lenin, "Left wing Communism, An Infantile Disorder", 1920, http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/lwc/ch07.htm, accessed on 25 April 2009.
[23] Gautam Navlakha, "Maoists in India", EPW, Volume 41, Number 22, June 3 - 9, 2006.
[24]K Balgopal, ibid.
[25] Dipankar Bhattacharya, "The Three Contemporary Currents among Indian Communists", Liberation, February 2007
[26] K Balagopal, Ibid.
[27] All India Agricultural Labour Association (AAIALA) Ballia Third National Conference Document, 7-8 Nov, 2008.
3 Responses to "Maoism in India: Panic or Panacea?"
http://sanhati.com/excerpted/1601/India's Maoist dilemma: the case of Lalgarh
A battle rages on in the Indian state of West Bengal, between Maoist guerillas called the Naxalites (Naxalbari is the name of a village in West Bengal where the movement was born in 1967) and national and paramilitary forces. The Naxalites, a banned outfit deemed as "a terrorist organization" by the central government, had proclaimed the Lalgarh area of West Midnapore district in Bengal, with its 44 villages, a "liberated zone" on 16 June 2009.
Since then, state and national security personnel have been sent to flush out the Naxals and bring Lalgarh and its adjoining areas under the government's control. In the 20 days since the Special Forces were deployed, not a single Maoist leader has been arrested in the area, besides the group's spokesperson in the city of Kolkata, some 200 kms from Lalgarh. The fear is that the guerilla fighters have retreated to jungles along West Bengal's border with the neighbouring state of Jharkhand and may return once the forces currently in Lalgarh withdraw.
Prelude to the siege
On 2 November 2008, West Bengal Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharya traveled with 3 ministers of the central government in a high-security convoy through the south-west region of his state after inaugurating a steel plant. On its way to Kolkata from West Midnapore, the convoy narrowly missed being blown to bits by an improvised explosive device. When senior members of the government travel by road, a careful "sanitization" of the route is carried out. The fact that a crude bomb was triggered from a kilometer away through a wire running across open fields and narrowly missed the minister's cars, was a blatant reminder of the deteriorating law and order situation in West Bengal.
The current crisis in Lalgarh is seen as a direct fallout of this attempt to blow up the ministers' cars. The West Bengal police, shamed by the audacity of the attack, allegedly arrested innocent young men and women in the Lalgarh area, accusing them of having links with Naxalites who had already claimed the bomb to be their handiwork. The police's repressive tactics and the unwillingness of local leaders to intervene on behalf of the people was the tipping point of the population's anger, which had built over years of similar experiences with the state's security officials.
Thereafter, the people of Lalgarh have been agitating both peacefully and often violently against policemen and politicians alike, leading up to the 16 June declaration of a liberated zone.
India's Maoists are not a newly formed group and do not have any direct links with Maoist movements in neighboring countries such as Nepal. They are a domestic organization, although it remains unclear where contemporary militants purchase their weaponry from. Ever since the first Maoist uprising in Naxalbari in 1967, the movement has grown in size and covers one third of the country's districts, across 9 states. They are considered a major security threat to the country as acknowledged by successive national and state administrations and yet no concrete strategy to combat them has been undertaken.
The Maoists have spread across regions in central and eastern India where some of the country's poorest and most marginalised population is concentrated. Pratik Kanjilal writes in the Hindustan Times that a map marking some of the least developed districts in the country would easily overlap those with Naxal activity.
A failure of governance and development
The current case of West Bengal is a little out of the ordinary. When the Communist Party of India (Marxist) first received a mandate to govern the eastern state in 1977, it was after the last remaining Naxalbari activists had been driven out of the state by the then chief minster of West Bengal, Siddhartha Shankar Ray of the Congress Party. The Marxists introduced land reforms benefiting many in rural Bengal who for generations had worked as landless laborers on farms owned by "zamindars", landlords.
Today, the Marxists take credit for rooting out Maoists from West Bengal, instead of acknowledging Ray's role and it is this imaginative history that contributed to the government's arrogant and complacent attitude to the renewed Naxal threat.
Falling behind on promises to develop rural infrastructure, to create jobs for people (the Indian governments National Rural Employment Guarantee Program is yet to be implemented in the district) and to provide basic healthcare and education facilities are the root causes for disenchantment with the ruling government in West Bengal. Yet, as many commentators in the media point out, the West Bengal government could have saved these territories from falling in to the hands of the Maoists if they had woken up from their slumber when reports of Naxal activity began trickling in around 2004.
A South Asia Intelligence Review report from 2004 warns of a possible "Naxalbari Redux" in Bengal and points out how the administration, including Chief Minister Bhattacharya were aware of growing discontent and violence in West Midnapore and its surrounding districts, yet chose to ignore them as minor, local protests. In an assessment of the ongoing stand off in Lalgarh, KPS Gill, one of the country's most well-respected police officers, blames the "state denial, appeasement and progressive error; paralysis in the face of rising Maoist violence," which allowed the group to spread its operations further in to Bengal. He also faults the lack of a comprehensive strategy to root out the Naxals; since the start of paramilitary operations, the rebels seem to have simply melted away into adjoining forests and even neighboring states.
It is not simply underdevelopment that lies at the heart of people's distress. Aditya Nigam points out in the Tehelka magazine that the Left Front government has been nothing short of a totalitarian regime that allows no room for dissent and complaint. The party's cadres have been accused of high-handedness, bearing illegal arms, siphoning off state funds and preventing citizens from speaking out against the party. Their activities are unchecked by West Bengal's police force, which remains hijacked by the Left Front's leaders.
It is in this vacuum of a law and order system and out of fear of cadre violence and police brutality that the people of rural Bengal turned to groups such as the People's Committee Against Police Atrocities (PSBJC), formed after last November's police brutalities in Lalgarh and eventually the Maoists, who claim to support the populace in its uprising against the state's hubris and complacency.
Playing politics with the Maoists
Bengal's main opposition party the Trinamool Congress and its leader Mamata Banerjee picked up 19 seats in the recent national elections and is part of the coalition ruling at the centre. In her agitations against state brutality in Nandigram in 2007 and against poor land acquisition policies in Singur in 2008, Banerjee is accused of receiving help from local Maoist groups. The PSBJC's convener, Chhatradhar Mahato was once a member of her party and his older brother is a high-ranking Maoist operative sought by the police. Hence, the Left Front has been quick to accuse Banerjee of allowing the Maoists to penetrate Bengal.
However, in an interview with Livemint, Koteswar Rao, head of guerilla operations for the CPI (Maoist) dismisses the claim that his group had been receiving support from the main opposition party in the state. The Maoists claim to support only the people, and in particular the adivasis or tribals in Lalgarh and its adjoining areas. However, CNN-IBN has Rao on record saying that Banerjee should refrain from allowing the central government to send paramilitary forces to West Midnapore, as she would lose the people's support.
Whether Banerjee was seeking help from Maoists during her earlier agitations at Nandigram and Singur is unclear, yet many in Bengal's administration are more than convinced and accuse her of bringing the guerillas into the state's internal politics. Banerjee, now the Minister of Railways in Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's cabinet, denies allegations of collusion with the Maoists for her own political gains. She points out the Left Front's poor governance and the poor behavior of its cadres as the primary reasons behind the unrest in Lalgarh. For the moment, she is happy to let the state government deal with the Maoists as she doesn't want either side to use her as a pawn to blame the consequences of their decisions on.
"Good" or "evil"?
The nature and organization of people's groups such as the PSBJC has been a matter of great debate in the Indian media. The Hoot, a media watchdog traces the different representations of the PSBJC in newspapers, blogs and magazines from across the country. Some commentators assume that the PSBJC is a front for the Maoists, but several others have been skeptical of such assumptions as they point to reports of the organization undertaking small-scale relief projects in West Midnapore since it began its agitation against the state police. While mainstream newspapers and news channels are sticking to the former line, bloggers have written out against such an oversimplification.
Some extend this argument to the media's treatment of Maoists as well and claim that they cannot be labeled "terrorists" all that easily. Writer and activist Arundhati Roy has also warned the media and population at large of such a simplification of the Maoist movement in a recent article for Outlook magazine.
Nobody's battle, everyone's troubles
From being a bastion of the Left Front, Lalgarh has become the centre of a complicated battle involving a state government, its opposition, paramilitary forces, an elusive and banned guerilla group and most tragically, the local populace. The Left Front and its opposition continue to blame one another for resurgent Maoist activity in West Bengal; an elite paramilitary force tries to hunt down the Maoists with out any real action plan; and the state administration has still not acknowledged its poor governance record in West Midnapore or even announced any long term program of reform.
In the cross-fire between all these groups, the people of Lalgarh and its surrounding districts seem to have no one trustworthy to turn to who will deliver job security, roads, schools and hospitals along with access to a really democratic space where they may express their grievances freely without fear of being literally shot down. Simply flushing out the Maoist guerillas is no long term solution. The law of the land seems to have fled from the district some years ago, and no one has a roadmap for bringing it back.
Naxal bandh hits trains in BiharTimes of India - Jun 15, 2010 GAYA/ROHTAS: Maoists raided the Ismailpur railway station, about 30 km from Gaya, late on Monday evening, crippling the movement of passenger and goods ... Maoists torch station, bank in BiharThe Hindu - Jun 15, 2010 PATNA: Activists of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) set ablaze a railway station and a bank in Bihar late on Monday night to enforce their 48-hour ... Rail traffic disrupted after Maoist attack on Bihar railway stationAsian News International (ANI) - Jun 15, 2010 Gaya,June 15(ANI): A Maoist attack on a railway station led to disruption of rail traffic for hours on India's east-central Gaya- Mughalsarai section on ... Two Maoists held, explosives seizedHindustan Times - Jun 15, 2010 PTI Police and Maoists exchanged several rounds of fire following which two ultas were arrested and explosives seized from them from Bhalua forest area in ... Maoists blow up bank in BiharOneindia - Jun 15, 2010 Jamui (Bihar), June 15 (ANI): Armed Maoists blew up a bank and looted money from it in Bihar's Jamui District early on Tuesday. ... Maoists set ablaze bank, railway station in BiharThe Hindu - Jun 14, 2010 Maoist guerrillas in Bihar set ablaze a railway station and a bank as well as attacked a police station and a camp of the Special Auxiliary Police to ... Maoists attack railway station, abduct 3 railway employeesNDTV.com - Jun 14, 2010 PTI, Updated: June 15, 2010 00:30 IST, Gaya, Bihar Armed Maoists on Monday night ransacked Islampur railway station in Bihar's Gaya district and abducted ... Maoist Attack Disrupts Rail Traffic in Eastern IndiaNTDTV - Jun 15, 2010 On Tuesday, an attack launched by Maoist rebels on a railway station led to the disruption of rail traffic for hours on India's Bihar City. ... Maoists torch railway properties, loot bank in BiharPress Trust of India - Jun 15, 2010 Jamui/Gaya (Bihar), Jun 15 (PTI) Armed Maoists set fire to railway properties and blew up a bank and looted money to enforce their shutdown in the state, ... Maoist attacks railway station in BiharAll India Radio - Jun 14, 2010 In Bihar, Maoists attacked on Ismailpur Railway station on Ghaya- Mughalsari railway section of the East-Central railway last night. ... |
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AP police foil Maoists plan to target politicians
Mamata's new wish: A single railway police force
Railways may seek paramilitary to guard tracks in Naxal areas
Railways promotes Commonwealth Games
"Indian Railways will be the lead partner of the Commonwealth Games being hosted by India this year. To mark this event and also to spread the message, the railways proposes to start a Commonwealth exhibition train," Banerjee had said. more by Mamata Banerjee - Jun 16, 2010 - Hindustan Times (26 occurrences) |
A Rail Minister Distracted by Parochial Issues
Railways want CRPF cover in Naxal-infested areas
Do away with GRP: Mamata
India's clogged rail lines stall economic progress
Railways Comes Forward for Commonwealth Games
'Use force to reassert State authority, not kill a fly with a sledgehammer'
The jungle laws of Kashmir
Keep Army Off Maoist Case
Heinous AFSPA can never be sacred: Rashid
Gospel of AFSPA
Pro-Indian Leaders Fight For Repeal of AFSPA in Kashmir
Why India's AFSPA should be scrap?
:. It's a lawless law
Political leadership, not army to decide on AFSPA: PDP
Modi to report on Centre's 'unfair treatment'Indian Express - Jun 13, 2010 In the coming days, the BJP will open yet another front against the UPA government. Having consistently attacked the UPA for "misusing" the CBI, ... BJP takes on UPA, price rise, Maoist violenceSify - Jun 13, 2010 Patna: The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday ended its two-day national executive meeting with a scathing attack on the Congress-led United Progressive ... Advani criticises UPA on corruption, Maoist violenceSify - Jun 13, 2010 Senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader LK Advani Sunday criticised the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government on corruption, its tackling of the ...
Congress-led UPA targeting our popular chief ministers: BJPHindustan Times - Jun 13, 2010 The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Sunday accused the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) central government of conducting "systematic ... BJP calls for united voice against MaoistsTimes of India - - Jun 12, 2010 PATNA: The BJP on Friday said that the Centre ought to wrest the initiative and take effective steps to establish the law of land in Maoist-held areas in ... UPA II's first year a flop, says GadkariThe Hindu - Jun 12, 2010 BJP president Nitin Gadkari being welcomed by Bihar BJP chief CP Thakur at the party's two-day national executive in Patna on Saturday. ... 'UPA II speaking in different voices on Naxalism'The Hindu - Jun 12, 2010 The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on Saturday accused the UPA government of speaking in different voices on the Maoist problem. Stressing the need for proper ... Gadkari praises BJP state governments' good governanceSify - Jun 12, 2010 Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) President Nitin Gadkari Saturday congratulated the governments of the party-ruled states for good governance, noting a leading ... Gadkari targets PM over prise rise, telecom spectrum issueDaily News & Analysis - Jun 12, 2010 PTI Patna: Continuing to make price rise a major issue, BJP president Nitin Gadkari today sharpened his attack on prime minister Manmohan Singh, ... India cannot lose battle against Maoists: BJPSify - Jun 12, 2010 The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Saturday said that India cannot afford to lose the battle against the Maoists. 'We have to strengthen the security ... | Timeline of articles Number of sources covering this story
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Bengal's Alternative
Bengal CPM ready to sit in Opposition
Wagon maker\'s loan waived, TMC claims credit
This, he said, could only be achieved "through a dynamic approach, focused strategy and application of new tools of science and technology in agriculture." more by Bhupinder Singh Hooda - Jun 15, 2010 - Central Chronicle (4 occurrences) |
CPI identifies corruption as one of the reasons for the Left Front's defeat
State Pulse: Punjab: Punjab offers solution
Another jolt
Indian Muslims - problems and voting pattern
Unprecedented win for TMC in West Bengal Municipal election The tornado that ...
Jugglery of the Communists and the Indian Muslims
Bid to end India tribe excursionsBBC News - 13 hours ago Aboriginal tribespeople in India's Andamans archipelago are being threatened by tourist safaris run by local tour operators, an indigenous rights ... Human safaris threaten Jarawas in the AndamansThe Hindu - - 20 hours ago NOT A TOURIST ATTRACTION: Members of the Jarawa community in the Andaman islands. Photo: Special Arrangement Forget all those wildlife safaris promising ... India 'human safaris' threaten ancient tribeAFP - Jun 16, 2010 NEW DELHI — Indian travel companies are running "human safari tours" to enable tourists to glimpse members of a rare and endangered tribe with whom contact ... Andaman tour company ends human safarisSurvival International - 5 hours ago The company was one of four highlighted by Survival for promoting illegal visits to, or sightings of, the Jarawa. It appears to have removed the relevant ... Tourism danger lingers for tribes people in India's Andaman IslandsEarthtimes - - 7 hours ago NEW DELHI:--Following protests from an international indigenous rights organisation, four tour domestic operators have pulled out from their ... Human safaris threaten Andaman tribeSurvival International - Jun 16, 2010 The survival of the Jarawa tribe of the Andaman Islands is being threatened by human safaris run by local tour operators. Survival announced today that it ... |
- "It is a victory of the ma-mati-manush (mother, land and the people). They have given a verdict in favour of political change in the state. I salute the people."2 Jun 2010 NDTV.com (Occurrences: 54)more by Mamata Banerjee
Mamata Banerjee wants single railway police force
Hindustan Times - 22 hours agoRailways Minister Mamata Banerjee wants to do away with the Government Railway Police (GRP) and give its powers to the Railway Protection Force (RPF). ...Mamata's new wish: A single railway police force - IBNLive.com
A Rail Minister Distracted by Parochial Issues - New York Times
Do away with GRP: Mamata - Sify
NDTV.com - FV Current Waves
all 51 news articles »State Pulse: West Bengal: Mamata needs Congress
Central Chronicle - 4 hours agoMs Mamata Banerjee needs the Congress to rule a majority of municipal corporations and committees in spite of her party, the Trinamool Congress, ...Congress confident of fighting West Bengal assembly polls with ... - Daily News & Analysis
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Barun Roy: Mamata's dream
Business Standard - Barun Roy - 23 hours ago
One of the many "visionary" things Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee has promised to accomplish if her party comes to power in West Bengal is to ...Mamata's team has task cut out - Indian Express
Mamata loyalist takes over as Kolkata Mayor - Press Trust of India
all 12 news articles »Technical jobs in rlys for physically challenged
Hindustan Times - 1 hour agoAt Railways Minister Mamata Banerjee's initiative, the railways have given up the exemption it had sought from the Persons with Disabilities (equal ...
Bengal's Alternative
Times of India - Susmita Mukherjee - 1 day ago
This old saying could not be truer than in the case of Trinamul chief Mamata Banerjee. It has to be conceded, grudgingly or willingly, that the Mamata ...Wagon maker\'s loan waived, TMC claims credit - IBNLive.com
Unprecedented win for TMC in West Bengal Municipal election The ... - Organiser
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IBNLive.com - 3 Jun 2010The Trinamool Congress, led by Mamata Banerjee, on Wednesday registered an emphatic win in the Bengal civic elections, seen as a trial run to next year's ...West Bengal in sight, Mamata Banerjee may give up railways - Daily News & Analysis
Vayalar Ravi congratulates Mamata Banerjee - Hindustan Times
The Hindu - NDTV.com
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Homes planned for those living by rail track
The Hindu - Ananya Dutta - 4 days ago
The Railways would provide accommodation to those living by the track to prevent accidents, Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee announced here on Sunday. ...Don't disrupt railways for political agenda: Mamata - Sify
Mamata flats for illegal settlers - Calcutta Telegraph
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Press Trust of India - Asian Age
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Times of India - 1 day agoMore appreciative of the need to insulate Trinamool Congress chief Mamata Banerjee from the criticism of the "sellout of workers' interests" — an emotive ...CCEA clears CIL, Hind Copper divestment - Business Standard
CCEA, sans Mamata, OKs 10% sale of 2 PSUs - Asian Age
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Mamata Banerjee attends cabinet meeting after a month
Hindustan Times - 10 Jun 2010Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee on Thursday attended a cabinet meeting after a month's gap as she had been away in Kolkata to campaign for her Trinamool ...Civic poll fallout: Pranab, Didi iron out differences - Times of India
Wagon wand for Mamata - Calcutta Telegraph
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Bomb blast caused train derailment: Mamata Banerjee
NDTV.com - 27 May 2010Railway Minister Mamata Banerjee has said a bomb blast as part of a "calculated attack" caused the Mumbai-bound Gyaneshwari Express to first derail and then ...Train disaster a political conspiracy, says Mamata - The Hindu
Chidambaram pins blame on Naxals for West Bengal train tragedy - Times of India
Hindustan Times - Livemint
all 393 news articles »
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The seduction of maximum forceThe Hindu - - May 31, 2010 AP Rescuers search for bodies in the mangled compartment of the derailed train in Sardiha near West Midnapore dt of West Bengal on Saturday. ... Maoist Group Denies Involvement in India Train CrashNew York Times - - May 31, 2010 NEW DELHI — A Maoist group that was blamed for a deadly train crash in eastern India on Friday has denied any responsibility. ... India This Evening: CPI-Maoist or Front Group Behind Train Attack - ChidambaramWall Street Journal (blog) - May 31, 2010 Here is a roundup of news from Indian newspapers, news wires and Web sites on Monday, May 31, 2010. The Wall Street Journal has not verified these stories ...
Maoists to 'punish' rogue rebelsBBC News - May 30, 2010 A Maoist leader in India has said that they will "punish" any rogue rebels if they are found responsible for Friday's train crash which left 148 people dead ... India Crash Toll Now 145Wall Street Journal - - May 30, 2010 NEW DELHI—The death toll from a train derailment Friday in India's West Bengal state that the railways minister blamed ... Maoist insurgencyDAWN.com - May 30, 2010 Rescue workers work at the site of the train wreckage in Sardiha, some 135 kms west of Kolkata on May 29, 2010. - Photo by AFP. ... UK & World News: Sabotage blamed for train smash carnage in India which killed 108Scottish Daily Record - May 30, 2010 MAOIST rebels were last night accused of sabotage after a train crash in India which left 108 people dead. The passenger express train was heading from ... Maoists behind train disaster, says West Bengal DGPNDTV.com - May 30, 2010 Twelve Maoist activists went to the site of derailment an hour before it happened, 2 were Naxal supporters currently out on bail. India Maoist train sabotage toll climbs to 146AFP - May 30, 2010 KOLKATA — Indian rescue workers completed search operations on Sunday after pulling out 146 bodies from the site of a train wreck blamed on Maoist saboteurs ... Police say death toll from train crash in eastern India rises to 145TODAYonline - May 30, 2010 CALCUTTA, India (AP) - A police official says the death toll from a train crash blamed on saboteurs in eastern India has risen to 145 after some of the ... | Timeline of articles Number of sources covering this story
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Rights And Wrongs Of Armed Resistance
By Gautam Navlakha
17 June, 2010
Frontierweekly.com
Civil Liberties/Democratic Rights groups have for long grappled with the problem of their relationship with groups and organizations which subscribe to armed resistance and/or have been proscribed by the authorities. In truth it is a senseless policy to suppress any political ideology, because ideas and issues should not be shackled. It is not acceptable that just because the State has declared some ideas to be abhorrent, and proscribed proponents of such views. People are witness to systematic abuse by authorities of these arbitrary powers for their self-interest or for narrow consideration. Especially because the provision invoked for imposing a ban fall under the genre of "national security" guided legal provisions where parliamentary oversight and judicial redressal in reality get circumscribed. What compounds the problem is when a crackdown ensues even the routine formality of what passes for 'rule of law' gets suspended to the exigencies of war where kill or get killed becomes the reigning doctrine.
Thus from fighting legal provisions, accompanied by procedures and rules that enhances the power of police and prosecutor at the expense of the accused, and simultaneously relaxes the exacting standards for collecting, collating and use of evidence, to the next where rules of military engagement take over and general demand becomes asking the warring sides to adhere to international covenants and protocols governing war [protocol III of Geneva Convention which apply for non-international conflicts] a seminal jump in public understanding is compulsorily brought about.
At the time Operation Steeplechase was launched by the Eastern Command of Indian army against the Naxalites in 1971 (few months before the war with Pakistan) 45,000 crack troops were deployed. Indian Express (October 14, 2009) quotes Lt General Jacob to claim that there were neither a written order nor record of this operation. At that moment Naxalites did not have much of experience with weapons, armed resistance, or art of war either. Going by what Shivraj Patil told the Lok Sabha on March 1, 2006, Maoists in 60-70s possessed country made guns, axes and swords rather than guns or had squads and PGLA. But there was hardly any notice taken of the war then. It passed un-noticed except for those who became its victims. But one thing remains unchanged. State's approach remains essentially unchanged.
Of course, there are many who believe that Maoists have brought this war upon themselves and in turn this will invite repression on adivasis lured by them. How a force which has "modest capabilities" according to the PM, speaking to the CMs on 6th January 2009, with an approximate total of 8000 weapons, large quantities of explosives and country made weapons can pose a threat to Indian State which possesses fourth largest armed force in the world and which has deployed 75,000 central para military forces trained in jungle warfare colleges backed by, at least 150,000 state armed constabulary, air support and using light to heavy weaponry, is somehow never explained. What is important is that questions of ethics are, however, posed to CL-DR groups; how can they, under any pretext, justify use of violence to achieve political ends?
For one thing by outlawing a political manifestation State succeeds in criminalising an idea and destroying an organization, especially one which enjoys mass support. In past experience outlawing ideologies and ideological organizations acts as a 'force multiplier' in that these laws accord legitimacy to armed resistance. How? Because if non-violent activism i.e. dissemination of literature, mobilizing and organizing people to politically articulate their demands, hold mass meetings….are outlawed; if Maoists, their sympathizers or anyone who even remotely speaks the language of resistance, can be hunted, arrested, tortured, killed or persecuted, even denied humanitarian assistance then the State forecloses the appeal of what passes for "mainstream politics". By allowing such groups to organize, work, hold mass meetings, as any other organization increases the appeal and persuasive powers of other ways of offering resistance. In other words, appeal of un-armed resistance gets enhanced only when the State begins to cease to wage war against its own people. It is this that forms part of the world view of CL/DR groups and informs their activities.
However, history moves in a different way. Without armed people, organized and therefore properly harnessed violence, there can be no transformation of society. Without the protracted people's war and PLA as well as people's militia it would have been well nigh impossible for Nepal Maoists to compel the political formations to forge a front with them in 2005. In fact they would have never reached the status of strength from which to bargain/negotiate had they remained unarmed. Indeed in Nepal after a long debate the party has agreed that had it not been for their armed cadres they would have faced a bloodbath probably at the scale of Indonesia. Nepal Maoists do not however, believe that they need to renew military operations. What they say is that the fact that they are armed, legitimized through the UN sanctioned agreement, provides them with a strength and their opponents know that they cannot be crushed militarily.
Without this to believe that ruling classes, so well armed, will peacefully submit/surrender may remain a wishful thinking. True, revolutions may have failed after the initial phase of success but there are few instances of revolution which has managed to retain power without arms. Either armies have split to lend support to the rebels or the ruling left combine has managed to neutralize the army of the ruling classes by arming the people or in some other ways. But nowhere has any revolution ever succeeded simply by remaining non-violent.
VIOLENCE
Question of means and ends, of natural aversion of people towards violence, the fact that an armed group/party can end up using its weaponry to impose its will etc have been employed to argue against violence. And yet, it cannot be denied that violence has and will continue to play an emancipatory and empowering role. How else can one describe the fight against imperialism in Indochina or elsewhere? Did not the victory of Japanese against Russia in 1905 enthuse Asian people to challenge European racism? Did not the experience of Indian soldiers who fought for the British Empire in Sudan, Iraq, China, Crimea bring to realize that they were as good, if not better, than the European soldier colleague of theirs. Did it not persuade many to become radicalized and get inspired by 1917 Russian revolution? Can one deny that the heroism and bravery of Russians led then by Stalin during the second world war, especially the defeat of the German elite forces in Stalingrad mark the beginning of the end of the defeat of German Nazi army? Why should one dismiss this reality? Some argue that they are not against war but use of political violence to achieve political goals? Thus the opposition is not per say against violence, only to organized violence because the very fact of organization is anti-democratic. This is a strange argument and actually diabolical. There is nothing more harmful than so-called spontaneous uprising of the people where mob mentality takes over and killing spree ensues. This causes more harm than good. In France after the war 45,000 "nazi collaborators" were lynched to death. How is this superior to relatively fewer deaths at the hands of say Maoists in last 42 years? It is claimed that presence of a force with weapons intimidates dissent. But when every second person is armed who intimidates whom? Indeed violence demands that it be harnessed and used sparingly which it can only be with training and discipline.
But are not means important? Can one reach the ends people desire by recourse to means which are violent? As Prof Randhir Singh says "it is axiomatic that the means are justified by the end they achieve; there is simply no other way to justify them." Now, if the state and its votaries can justify its monopoly of violence by referring to the use of force to restore law and order say in a situation of rioting, civil strife etc, notwithstanding acceptance that state also engages in use of force/violence to militarily suppress people's movements, then why is it that political activists should fight shy in accepting that use of force in pursuit of freeing people from exploitation and oppression is wrong, even when everybody acknowledges that not every act of theirs furthers people's cause?
Even the most ardent proponents of non-violence concede that violence in certain conditions/circumstances is legitimate and needed. Stopping a riotous mob from lynching those less privileged, raping women, killing children….Death of a tyrant or mass murderer does not melt the heart of the most peaceable person. Which is to say, that people do condone violence. Besides, citizens are trained to accept legitimacy of state using violence, even when it can be demonstrated that in 63 years since 'transfer of power' not a single year has passed when the Indian military has not been used against their own people demanding and raising the most valid concerns. The enumerable crimes committed by the military in the ignoble task of military suppression has not resulted in the 'good' people in India ever demanding that war as a matter of state policy against their own people under any pretext ought to be ruled out. If the PM on July 7, 2009 on the floor of the Lok Sabha could declare that war as an option is ruled out against Pakistan, a country painted in the most vile manner by the media and establishment, then why not rule it out against his own people? If engagement and dialogue is the only way out why not pursue the same approach with the aggrieved people. If constituency for peace exists in India and rapprochement with Pakistan will see it expand then why cannot the government have the same approach towards its own people? Now if one does not do that and instead prepares for war what are the people supposed to do? Sue for peace? Surrender?
The point is as Prof Randhir Singh points out "(s)ound ethics requires us to always to judge the action by the results, good or bad, and not by its conformity to a rule, regardless of results". And then goes on to argue that "(t)he principle that it is never right to depart from moral principles, even to achieve some good end, no matter how many people would suffer if the rule were not broken, far from reflecting a superior ethical standpoint, is supremely unethical and is generally regarded as such." And therefore, draws public attention to the "real issue….over means and ends is not therefore as to whether we may or may not adopt means involving evil to attain a good which outbalances that evil or to avoid a still greater evil, but as to whether the good attained is really worth the cost, or whether there is another route to that good involving less evil".
This writer begs to differ from Prof Randhir Singh. Violence plays an emanicipatory role, when the weaker is able to defend themselves, when they can save people from being trampled upon by ruthless military which invariably in matters of rich and poor sides with the rich and the powerful and the privileged. To pick up guns, to learn to handle guns, to harness it for a purpose which is greater common good, why should one consider such violence per say as "evil"? Which is to say, that people need to consider violence as value neutral. It is how it is used, harnessed, for what purpose is used that becomes more relevant. Thus people have to look closely before concluding one way or another. To assume that just because communal fascists use violence and therefore there is no difference between how they use and anyone else uses it, or that it is one and the same, is grossly erroneous. In fact the big difference is that for the communal fascist a community becomes enemy and taking civilian lives is considered perfectly legitimate. Then they are invariably backed and patronized by the state, Indian State in so far Hindu communal fascists are concerned, which molly coddles them, reduces the nature of their homicidal crimes, treats them with kid gloves, refuses to accept that they are the treacherous force which targets Indian people. This is something Indian security apparatus refuses to accept.
There are some who point to certain action of the Maoists, (beheading, people's court awarding death, killing of 'informers', attack on economic 'assets'), and from that arrive at the conclusion that these acts carry within them "social impact", and insist that no achievement lasts if it is brought about violently. There are others who go a step further and argue that whether or not crimes get committed the very fact that they are armed and justify violence suffices to raise questions about strategy and tactics of a movement, its understanding of social reality, and mars the chances of a state and society, where weapons in possession of one party can be used to cow down people in general and dissidents in particular. Both arguments have to be addressed. Furthermore, it is the 'poorest among the poor' who are used as foot soldiers and they are the ones who suffer most? Finally, how will an armed movement agree to disarming itself in order to ensure that others are not harmed who too work among the people, albeit may not agree with the politics of armed movement?
Unless one party seizes power and imposes its diktat over everyone such a situation cannot arise. Because it took place in China or Soviet Union does not mean that this will happen in India in the 21st century with its own political history. In fact it did not happen in Nepal where a protracted people's war pitch-forked CPN(Maoist) to become the leading political force. In contrast to CPN(M) all the other parties have used and see National Army (NA) and police as their force, there to protect them. In India political parties who accept the present status quo know that when they acquire government power they have access to a huge repressive force at their command. And even as opposition parties they are not defenseless. Even in the best of circumstances the forces commanded thus by political parties is many times stronger than that of the left wing rebels.
Besides, the unfolding dynamics of a political development are not predictable or uni-linear. Maoists in Nepal, once they reached strategic equilibrium with Nepal's royal military, decided to replace strategic offensive with democratic closure. In conditions which apply in India, where one party hegemony is difficult to envisage considering the diversity and political plurality with which people have lived for more than six decades to believe that CPI(Maoist) can impose their one party rule is good for fear inflators but for any sober scholar this is well nigh impossible. This way or that without having armed cadres and without recourse to using weapons in some areas where war is imminent, social transformation of Indian State and society is not possible. But this does not mean that in every instance and everywhere there has to be or will be war. Those who work in say Delhi do not feel the need for arming themselves because so far they are able to work un-thwarted. Of course Delhi is a bad example because in some places in India state has had no compunction in assassinating a dissident. Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that the conditions which operate in DK for instance do not operate everywhere, uniformly, across India. But in J&K, NE and now tribal region of central India are different. Conversely, where left and progressive sections dominate and spearhead popular resistance use of weapons may not be necessary. In any case, size and spread of political consciousness in India is vastly different than elsewhere in the world.
It is often argued by some that any organized military force is in itself anti-democratic whereas violence which ensues as a result of mass uprising is alright. Contrarily it should be pointed out that a spontaneous recourse to violence can cause greater harm. In France as mentioned earlier after 2nd war more than 45,000 people were lynched for being "collaborators" of Nazi occupation force. Would people justify this lynching in the name of spontaneous reaction of masses freed from Nazi tyranny? In fact it is in the nature of violence, as with fire, that it must be harnessed or else it can cause greater damage than good. Therefore, what is regarded as anti-democratic i.e. training, hierarchy and discipline, are of utmost necessity. Indeed fascist political formations use the spontaneous mass violence path to gloss over their deliberate targeting of minorities or left and progressive elements. It is when force is organized that one stands chance for compelling them to ensure that those who violate ethics of war can be brought to justice. This writer's experience is that working to get armed rebels to agree to abide by ethics of war, or be held publicly accountable, is best possible when they are a disciplined and organized force. A rag-tag band is incapable of adhering to this and tends to be less accountable. When armed forces are sent to suppress a people it is part of their brief to terrorise the civilians. They are expected to burn, loot and kill precisely in order to crush an insurgency. Whereas insurgents cannot afford to do that or else they will lose what is their biggest advantage; mass support. Indeed pitting mass spontaneous violence is a patently irresponsible, if not convenient, way to accuse left radical rebels.
Finally, it is intriguing as to how the left radical rebels whose numbers are variously said to be 5600, 8000, 10,000 and even 20,000 pose a threat? While they are better armed than before, they are organized better and receive fairly rigorous arms training, incidents of violence were confined to 400 police station areas out of 14,000. Yet, why is it that possession of 8000-10,000 guns by Maoists and explosives a bigger problem when, according to International Action Network on Small Arms India has more than 40 million private guns. And most of it is with the upper class/caste men. Besides, is possession of weapons more important than who possess them, given the power equation in the society? Or is it that people resent that Maoists refuse to give up armed struggle?
There is violence and violence. Therefore, a distinction must be drawn between spectacular raids such as for looting armouries, freeing prisoners and defending what is called "janta sarkar" as in Bastar and heinous acts such as beheading or custodial killing. But not all crimes attributed to Maoists/Naxalites have been committed by them. In the Nayagarh (Orissa) in 2008 incident the media carried unsubstantiated report of Maoists mutilating the bodies of dead soldiers. And some eminent persons issued a statement without even bothering to verify the facts of the matter. The Khagaria massacre in September 2009 was attributed to them although it later turned out to be a caste conflict over 40 bighas of land. Thus, Jehanabad jail break, for example, was criticized by 'good' people of India for inviting possible retaliation by landlord armies in Bihar upon the poor. This did not happen. But it exposed the administration as being capable of stopping landlord armies if it so wishes. This enhanced rather than eroded the sense of security of landless dalit agricultural labour.
This is not to say that Maoists have been upright in all circumstances, and above criticism or fault. The recurring mistakes committed by the armed cadres and targeting of passenger train etc do raise question about the socalled 'people's war' when they have yet to curb such attacks on civilians. However, their critics should know that Maoists have been rather forthright in accepting criticism as well as engaging in debate. In fact no other Naxal group has ever engaged in debate with so many groups and individuals over the past 40 years as the Maoists and their forerunner PU and PWG. The question is all that is fine but what about killing of 'informers' and the role of the so called 'people's court', which is cited against them? As a DR activist this writer damns mad at them for engaging in custodial killing. But four years of efforts has at least brought them to accept that the party will consider the issues raised as well as take a position on compliance with Geneva protcol III. And rights activists must remain engaged with them, precisely because they form an integral and leading part of resistance against neo-liberal policies which continue to rule the roost.
Under such circumstances to essentialize the issue of Maoist violence is the way in which class society dehumanizes struggles and movements. There are, besides, as many instances of movements degenerating because they use violence as there are of those, which use non-violent methods. But the bottomline is that reproduction of social inequality is unacceptable. Those who believe in step-by-step process, and others in leap or qualitative jump, from one stage to another, must accept that there will remain a divide and both must respect each other. Those who decry armed struggle claim that popular movements can make existing institutions responsive to people's needs. The point is that these movements get crushed, co-opted and contained before they ever reach a stage where they can challenge authority. These efforts have not come to standstill because of Maoist rebellion, but, actually gained some space and used their presence to espouse their politics, which would probably have been ignored otherwise.
Here is a quote from a very senior IPS officer and believer in crushing Maoist movement RK Raghavan : "to say that … (the tribal person) would have remained mute and soft forever is being somewhat naïve, especially at a time when the divide between… (them) and the rest of the lot is becoming more and more galling. The average tribal person believes he/she has nothing to lose in life, and the only way he/she could make himself/herself heard is by fighting an unjust social order".
The rout of NDA government in 2004 was directly related to its pursuit and promotion of predatory global capitalism. The experience of the 'silenced majority' under UPA rule I and II has been of big words and small deeds. The biggest deal for "aam aadmi" was NREG. But was it not the fear of Maoists, which ensured passage of 'national rural employment guarantee scheme' and the formulation of the forest bill? Why NREGA but the recent decision of the Jharkhand administration to withdraw cases filed against at least one lakh adivasis to wean them away from Maoists not something where credit goes to Maoists? Maoists have their use too for reformers who leverage them for pushing reforms.
Consider, for instance, what the Home Minister told the Lok Sabha on last 7 July, that "(n)axalism is no longer a disjointed or uncoordinated actions by groups in states. Today naxalism is directed by CPI(Maoist) which is now a very structured organization. It even has a Central Military Command." In other words they are now a strong organized military force capable of launching multiple simultaneous attacks, in which several groups of 200-500 armed cadres, travel long distances, escaping a network of surveillance/intelligence/informers. Equally important to note that without people identifying themselves with the Maoists, voluntarily and not out of fear, this fairly large social support base cannot be sustained.
To vanquish such a force is of course not impossible. Indian state possesses immense arsenal and laws to suppress rebels. But, it is not improbable that the Indian State may find for once its resilience tested. So, it is unlikely that the war will end by 2012, as the UPA government believes. But now even the Union home minister has begun hedging his bets by saying that it will be a "long drawn" out war. One reason is because unlike what intellectual detractors of Maoists have to say, when the State cracks down on Maoists they will not be cracking down on some alien armed cadres, but will be taking on the people because there is no difference between people and Maoists. Moreover, it is in the nature of sub conventional warfare, an euphemism for counter-insurgency, that first task is to wean away the people from the rebels. On all sides of the jungle exit and entry is now controlled by armed forces. Medicines, food stuffs, pencil (lead is dual use) and notebooks are not allowed into areas held by Maoists. It is yet to hear the mealy mouthed pacifists ever open their mouth to condemn the government. Recent experience of the team which visited Nendra in south Dantewada district of Bastar is noteworthy because after the SP Dantewada threatened the team members; anyone seen in the jungle will be shot dead it was left to Union home secretary GK Pillai to order that they be allowed. Those who do not have access to the home secretary stand little chance of getting in or getting out. Strangely enough, some even deny that there is a war being launched against the Maoists!
Now Indian State propagates that Naxalites are irredeemably bent upon waging a war against the Indian State and are anti-development. Thus short of suppressing them there is no other option. Of course Maoists want to seize power. And certainly those who take up arms cannot escape opprobrium for violations of principles, in what they themselves regard as 'people's war'. But the more important question is what brought this about? It did not happen overnight but over forty three years? In this period several groups gave up this path to pursue non-violent parliamentary or extra parliamentary struggle. Their experience hardly inspires confidence that the Indian state has become amenable to people's concerns now that some of these left wing rebels gave up arms. In this sense, appeal if not prospect of non-violence has been undermined, by the state itself. What is so remarkable about this? How does it make non-violent political transformation attractive? If struggle for power requires positioning for strength why should Maoists try what is not possible (peaceful way), and not do what is necessary (offer armed resistance)?
Or else what are the Maoists supposed to do, say in Bastar? Surrender to enable corporation a free run of forest, land and waters of adivasis? Will this provide tribals a better deal? Has the condition of people improved since Maoists retreated from north Telengana? Will the three districts of Purulia, Bankura and West Mednipur in West Bengal usher in prosperity were the Maoists to pullout from there? Will the UP government bother about the 30 year long struggle of dalit 'patta' holders to get possession of land when they woke up to their plight only when Maoists began to organize them? Will the NDA government in Bihar, engaged in distributing arms, begin to distribute land were Maoists not around? Will the UPA II give up its corporate led "development" program? Will they return the land grabbed through coercion and fraud? Reverse privatization of rivers in Chattisgarh? Will they allow adivasis to return to their village from where they have been displaced? Let critics of Maoists ponder over these issues first.
www.frontierweekly.com
Vol.42, No.45, May 23-29, 2010
Gautam Navlakha is Editorial Consultant, Economic and Political Weekly.
http://www.countercurrents.org/navlakha170610.htm06 April, 2010
Globalisation And Terror
By Helena Norberg-Hodge
To really understand the rise in religious fundamentalism and ethnic conflict, we need to look at the deep impacts of what might be described as the jihad of a global consumer culture against every other culture on the planet. Doing so not only allows us to better understand the September 11 tragedy, but to see a way forward that lessens the violence on all sides
Coke: Black Spring In Plachimada
By Prabhat Sharan
Not many knew about Plachimada 10 years back. But today it has become a sign of a Goliath vs David clash
03 April, 2010
Beyond The Monoculture: Strengthening Local Culture, Economy And Knowledge
By Helena Norberg-Hodge
Despite the fact that almost every news item today brings information about the seeming endless list of crises there is hope that we have the power to turn things around. Localisation is a positive and realistic alternative to economic globalisation. It is the best way to ensure our future wellbeing and that of the planet
27 February, 2010
Going Local
By Helena Norberg-Hodge
Today, the planet is on fire with global warming, toxic pollution and species extinction, with fundamentalism, terrorism and fear. The most powerful solutions involve a fundamental change in direction - towards localizing rather than globalising economic activity. In fact, "going local" may be the single most effective thing we can do. Localisation is essentially a process of de-centralisation - shifting economic activity back into the hands of local businesses instead of concentrating it in fewer and fewer mega-corporations
26 February, 2010
The Economics Of Happiness
By Helena Norberg-Hodge
Global warming and the end of cheap oil demand a fundamental shift in the way that we live. The choice is ours. We can continue down the path of economic globalisation, which at the very least will create greater human suffering and environmental problems, and at worst, threatens our very survival. Or, through localisation, we can begin to rebuild our communities and local economies, the foundations of sustainability and happiness
12 February, 2010
Globalization Is Killing The Globe:
Return To Local Economies
By Thom Hartmann
Globalization is killing Europe, just as it's already wiped out much of the American middle class
18 November, 2009
Globalization Unchecked: How Alien Media Is
Suffocating Real Culture
By Ramzy Baroud
Globalization is not a fair game, of course. Those with giant economies get the lion's share of the 'collective' decision-making. Those with more money and global outlook tend to have influential media, also with global outlook. In both scenarios, small countries are lost between desperately trying to negotiate a better economic standing for themselves, while hopelessly trying to maintain their cultural identity, which defined their people, generation after generation throughout history
19 April, 2009
From Corporate Strategy to Global Justice
By Jessica Ludescher
It has become fashionable to laud corporate social responsibility as a win-win practice for business and society. Yet CSR is a misleading and distracting doctrine that blinds us to the political realities of corporate economic globalization, writes Jessica Ludescher
02 January, 2009
Beyond Resistance And Cooption
By C.R Bijoy
Resisting privatization and promoting a people's agenda for reclaiming and controlling public services in this era of neo-liberal globalization cannot be achieved under the neo-liberal frame!
25 February, 2008
India And China: Conflict, Competition,
And Cooperation In The Age Of Globalization
By Dr. Aqueil Ahmad
India and China are two of the world's most ancient civilizations. For centuries they shared advanced ideas, inventions, religious and philosophical traditions. But their economies and societies stagnated during the colonial period. In the post-colonial era mutual relations suffered a setback due to political and boundary disputes. In contemporary times they have reemerged as leading techno-economic nations. It is high time for them to move beyond conflicts and start cooperating politically, economically, and technologically for mutual benefits
12 February, 2008
Towards Corporate City-States?
By Aseem Shrivastava
While the details are unclear, the broad political consequences of SEZs are fairly clear. By shifting the very mode of governance towards the corporate sector, they will render unaccountable and opaque decision-making which will have long-lasting and widespread consequences for the citizens of the country. Not only will the formal success (and consequent expansion)of SEZs threaten more lives and livelihoods in the countryside, they will institute an autocratic labour regime in the workplace. In this and other ways already explored in the essay, they will undermine democracy in India in profound respects and might well pioneer a full-scale transformation of the political system in the direction of formal corporate totalitarianism through the via media of autonomous corporate city-states
10 September, 2007
Book Review:Making Globalization Work
By Jim Miles
Review of Joseph Stiglitz' book Making Globalization Work
22 June, 2007
Displacing Farmers: India Will Have
400 Million Agricultural Refugees
By Devinder Sharma
Almost 500 special economic zones are being carved out. What is however less known is that successive government's are actually following a policy prescription that had been laid out by the World Bank as early as in 1995
07 June, 2007
Paradoxes Of Globalization
By Md. Saidul Islam
Evidence shows that Freedman's propagation on globalization is nothing but a "mere dream" and a form of deception, as even in the USA the middle class is gradually shrinking. On the other hand, the middle class/Disney land is now moving to the wretched of the earth. From priests to prostitutes all are selling their labors in capitalism as long as their labor is valued in the market. The capitalists will move to any place where labor is poor and cheap
28 May, 2007
The Growing Abuse Of Transfer Pricing By TNCs
By Kavaljit Singh
Transfer pricing, one of the most controversial and complex issues, requires closer scrutiny not only by the critics of TNCs but also by the tax authorities in the poor and the developing world. Transfer pricing is a strategy frequently used by TNCs to book huge profits through illegal means
26 May, 2007
Globalization And Democracy:Some Basics
By Michael Parenti
The fight against free trade is a fight for the right to politico-economic democracy, public services, and a social wage, the right not to be completely at the mercy of big capital
30 April, 2007
Free Trade vs. Small Farmers
By Walden Bello
Today, perhaps the greatest threat to small farmers is free trade. And the farmers are fighting back. They have helped, for instance, to stalemate the Doha round of negotiations of the World Trade Organization (WTO). This tug of war between farmers and free trade is nowhere more visible than in Asia
India Needs Her Small Farmers
By Vandana Shiva
India is a land of small farmers, with 650 million of her 1 billion people living on the land and 80 per cent farmers owning less than 2 ha of land. In other words, the land provides livelihood security for 65 per cent of the people, and the small farmers provide food security for 1 billion
21 April, 2007
Human Rights And Globalization
By Dr Samir Naim-Ahmed
If economic corporations became transnational and that much powerful what is needed is a powerful transnational government based on real democracy for all the countries and citizens of the world . A government which is capable of issuing and implementing global rules aimed at realization of the maximum use of all humankind achievements for the sake of all the dwellers of our globe . A government which is capable of making economy in the service of man instead of making man a victim and a slave for the market economy
11 April, 2007
Globalisation, Yes, Globalisation, No
By Sirajul Islam
In reflecting on the good and bad sides of globalisation we find that whatever good has come out of it is actually a by-product. The very motive, maximising profit is responsible for its bad sides. So, globalisation may well be one of the most serious challenges ever to the integrity of human civilisation. As a citizen of an underdeveloped country, Bangladesh, how can we deal with this challenge?
03 March, 2007
Migrants: Globalization's Junk Mail?
By Laura Carlsen
Migrant workers are central to cross-border economic integration. A political system that ignores them -- or worse, treats them as junk mail -- is not only hypocritical but severely out of touch with reality
26 February, 2007
Market Fundamentalism Versus
Sustainable Development:
A Titanic Struggle To Save The World
By Dr Zeki Ergas
I will confess: I am pessimistic about the future of the planet. I think that NLG and MF are like a train that has left the station and cannot be stopped. In the following years, and even decades: China, India, Russia and Brazil – not to mention the other medium-sized 'powers' -- will continue to industrialise at neck-breaking speed. The thousands of billions of tons of carbon dioxide that will have accumulated in the atmosphere probably cannot be removed. Neither is the bridging the great divide between the rich and the poor in the cards. Extreme poverty will persist. It is probable that the no-holds-barred competition between the great powers for natural resources and standards of living will end in a world war. I agree with the British scientist who predicts that we have a 50 per cent chance to reach the end of the century
Markets Hate Farmers
By Devinder Sharma
Farmers in United States, Europe and for that matter in other rich and industrialised countries are quitting agriculture. That makes me wonder. Why? After all, they get huge subsidies. They have the advantage of being literate and techno-savvy. They can take benefit of future trading and commodity exchanges. Linked to supermarket retail stores, they supposedly get a bigger share of the consumer price
The Other Side Of Globalization
By Paul Buchheit
Corporate leaders are driven by the profit motive, and from a business standpoint they're unmoved by the plight of the 50% of the world's population that can't take advantage of capital gains
22 February, 2007
Whither Globalisation?
By Bal Patil
Even after more than half century of freedom in India the gulf between rich and poor is ever widening and with all the glitter of globalisation hunger, starvation and suicide deaths are increasing amidst agricultural surplus, and sometimes fifty million tonnes of grain in godowns rots but cannot be sold at subsidised prices for fear of pushing the market prices down. That is the harsh economic reality!
17 December, 2006
The New Maharajas Of India
By Devinder Sharma & Bhaskar Goswami
What is it like to be a modern-day Indian prince? Devinder Sharma and Bhaskar Goswami explain how the laws of the land are being redefined to bring in the reality of the royal tag for the rich and beautiful in the name of Special Economic Zones
04 December, 2006
Monga, Micro credit And The Nobel Prize
By Anu Muhammad
While Muhammad Yunus must be credited highly for his contribution in innovation in banking and opening up vast sea of market for the huge accumulated finance capital, linking of poverty alleviation with this corporate success is ridiculous and may not be very innocent one
20 November, 2006
Avoid Farmers Suicide In Ladakh
By Stanzin Dawa
The Government while advocating in the WTO to protect the due interest of the Indian farmers also need to act locally by reforming its own distorting policies and programmes, so that farmers in Ladakh can also be pride of their own production, their own wisdom, their own economy which is based on organic, cooperation and compassion. This way we can avoid 'Farmers Suicide' in Ladakh
07 November, 2006
Seeing Globalization From The Other Side
By Bob Wise
Here was the industry we would have seen in the northeast and around the great lakes half a century ago. It has migrated to the other side of the planet, while the US builds little more than houses and weapons
05 November, 2006
U.S. Corporate Mafia Fighting Chinese
Efforts To Help Workers
By Joel S. Hirschhorn
Greedy and powerful American companies not content with using economic inequality to devastate working- and middle-class Americans are now using their clout to fight efforts in China to combat economic inequality there. They want to keep wages low there so they can drive wages down here and everywhere else
31 October, 2006
Pushing India Toward A Dollar Democracy
By Aseem Shrivastava
You cannot hide 300 or 400 million starving mouths, and the insistently unjust social reality of India will break through into one or another rear-view mirror, disturbing the fantasies of financiers' wives and girlfriends
30 October, 2006
The Battle In Seattle
(Looking Back Seven Years)
By Mickey Z.
Infighting and compromises aside, those five days in Seattle injected American dissidents into an internationalist movement
18 October, 2006
Capital Invading Spaces Of The Poor
By Vidyadhar Date
Thousands of textile workers in Mumbai are now being evicted from central parts of the city with the closure of the mills and the rich taking over their spaces which are highly coveted by the property market
07 October, 2006
Resisting The Canadian Capital In South Asia
By Harsha Walia
Let us strengthen our end of this resistance by demanding an end to Canadian and other Western countries projects for the corporatization, militarization, and NGOization of the people of South Asia
25 September, 2006
The Geopolitics Of Latin American Foreign Debt
By Pablo Dávalos
The adjustment and structural reform policies of the IMF and the World Bank and now the strategic plans of the IADB and the CAF are part of this perpetual war. A war whose purpose is conquest, territorial control, domination and pillage, as in any war
23 September, 2006
Kerala High Court Quashes Ban On
Coca-Cola, Pepsi
By Karthika Thampan
Just after the judgement was delivered, employees of a cola company distributed press notes welcoming the judgement. They also distributed cola to the assembled lawyers and journalists. Advocate Ramakumar who represents the Perumatty Grama Panchayath where the Coca Cola factory is situated alleged that the cola companies had prior knowledge of the judgement
Task On Running Unions -Role Of The State
By V.Krishnamurthy
Present environment in India is reflecting the spirit drawn from the fascist ideals. Some ardent believers are for honest implementation. So, State, an oppressive power is slowly erasing the rights of trade union. The freedom expression to voice against corporates is being slowly chocked. Judiciary is speaking Liberalisation of economy and curbing of labour rights
22 September, 2006
Society And Suicide
By Amit Chamaria
Sociologically, the incident of farmer suicides in Punjab, Andhra Pradesh, and Maharashtra due to indebtedness is actually the result of the combined effect of 'Relative deprivation' and 'Sudden crises', which came in the category of anomic suicide. Significantly, the feelings of relative deprivation are the outcome of the first green revolution and these feelings has been augmented by the present market policy of Globalization
11 August, 2006
Arrogance And Impunity - Coca-Cola In India
By Amit Srivastava
In what can only be characterized as arrogance and impunity, we are learning that Coca-Cola and Pepsi have continued to sell soft drinks in India with dangerously high levels of pesticides - three years after even the government of India confirmed that these products were dangerous
25 April, 2006
The Corporate Control Of Society
And Human Life
By Stephen Lendman
As corporations have grown in size they've gained in power and influence. And so has the harm they cause - to communities, nations, the great majority of the public and the planet. Today corporate giants decide who governs and how, who serves on our courts, what laws are enacted and even whether and when wars are fought, against whom and for what purpose or gain
22 April, 2006
Coke Slammed At Shareholders Meeting
For Practices In India
By Haider Rizvi
As the level of anger and resentment against Coca Cola touches new heights throughout India, rights activists in the U.S. have increased pressure on the company to mend its ways of doing operations in rural areas
13 February, 2006
Indian Villages For Sale
By Devinder Sharma
Harkishanpura is a non-descript village in Bathinda district of Punjab in northwestern India. It suddenly made its way into news when in an unprecedented move the village panchayat announced that the village was up for sale. That was in Jan 2001. Since than five more villages in Punjab - in the midst of the food bowl of the country - are awaiting auction
19 December, 2005
Empire Of Shame
A Conversation With Jean Ziegler
Translated from the French By Siv O'Neall
Jean Ziegler, rapporteur at the UN on questions of food resources has just published a book translated in 14 languages: Empire of Shame. Here in this interview Jean Ziegler presents his work
17 December, 2005
The WTO in Hong Kong
By Mark Engler
Is market access the answer to poverty?
23 September, 2005
Globalisation Of Education
By K V Sagar
Any hasty involvement in the global educational market can end up in harming the vital interests of students, and particularly of poor and downtrodden for generations to come
20 August, 2005
Coca-Cola Ordered To Stop Production
By The Hindu
The Kerala State Pollution Control Board on Friday ordered stoppage of production at the Palachimada unit of the Coca-Cola Company in Palakkad district for failure to comply with pollution control norms
04 June, 2005
Court To The Rescue Of Coca Cola
By Karthika Thampan
In an unprecedented judgement Division Bench of the Kerala High Court directed Perumatty gramapanchayath (local council) to renew within one week from Wednesday, the licence granted by the panchayat to Hindustan Coca Cola Beverages Ltd to run its plant at Plachimada in Palakkad district, in the south Indian state of Kerala. The court ordered that if a formal licence is not issued by the panchayat within the time prescribed, it should be deemed that the company possesses the renewed licence
27 April, 2005
Coca-Cola Refused Licence
By Karthika Thampan
The Perumatty grama panchayath (local council) yesterday refused to renew the licence of Hindustan Coca-Cola Beverage Limited at Plachimada, in the Indian state of Kerala
18 April, 2005
How Coca-Cola Gave Back To Plachimada
By Alexander Cockburn
An on the report of the water theft done by Coca Cola company at Plachimada, Kerala, in India, with institutional and judicial support
India Adopts WTO Patent Law
With Left Front Support
By Kranti Kumara
In a move designed to make India's patent legislation conform with the World Trade Organization's Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) patent regime, the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government has pushed a patent amendment bill through India's Parliament with the support of the Left Front
07 March, 2005
An Evening With P. Sainath
By Niranjan Ramakrishnan
Fluent in his subject and familiar (rather too well, it appeared at times) with the American lecture circuit, Sainath sprinkled his talk with interesting factoids about the rich-poor divide, the politics of SARS, why he stopped drinking Coke and Pepsi, and a host of other gems
06 March, 2005
An Economic Hit Man Speaks
By Kathyayini Chamaraj
One of the exciting events at the World Social Forum (WSF) at Porto Alegre in Brazil this year in the last week of January, was a dialogue with John Perkins, the author himself, who, from being an economic hit man, has now crossed over to the "other side" and joined those who have all along believed that "Another world is possible"
22 February, 2005
The Law For Food Facism
By Vandana Shiva
The Food Safety Law 2005 p is a dismantling of the PFA. It is in effect the legalizing of adulteration of India's entire food system with toxic chemicals and industrial processing
21 February, 2005
U.S. Dominates World Bank Leadership
By Alex Wilks
There is a vacancy for the most senior post in official world development circles, a job that is of direct interest to billions of people across the globe. The process and candidates are shrouded in secrecy and the only candidates in the running are U.S. citizens
15 February, 2005
The Indian Seed Act And Patent Act:
Sowing The Seeds Of Dictatorship
By Vandana Shiva
In India two laws have been proposed – a seed Act and a Patent Ordinance which could forever destroy the biodiversity of our seeds and crops, and rob farmers of all freedoms, establishing a seed dictatorship
13 January, 2005
Why Boycott Coca Cola
By Mohammed Mesbahi
Coca Cola's appalling human rights record, combined with its high boycott vulnerability ratio make it the ideal target for a boycott. Max Keiser, investment activist, and Zak Goldsmith, editor of the Ecologist, have formed a partnership to target Coca Cola by bringing down the value of its shares
12 November, 2004
Hedge Fund To Target Coca-Cola
By Adam Porter
American Max Keiser has teamed up with some other "high net worth individuals" to create a boycott-based financial assault on Coca-Cola
09 November, 2004
Things Grow Better With Coke
By John Vidal
Indian farmers have come up with what they think is the real thing to keep crops free of bugs. Instead of paying hefty fees to international chemical companies for patented pesticides, they are spraying their cotton and chilli fields with Coca-Cola
06 November, 2004
Crime and Reward: Immunity To The World Bank
By Anu Muhammad
The government of Bangladesh has submitted a bill seeking legal immunity for multilateral lending agencies, especially the World Bank on 31st October 2004 in the national parliament
11 October, 2004
Globalization And The Agenda For A Free
And Democratic South Asia
By Anu Muhammad
The increasing collaboration of ruling classes in the form of unity and conflict demands much more increasing collaboration in the form of unity in thoughts and in struggles from the democratic and revolutionary forces
26 August, 2004
WTO Tricks
By Devinder Sharma
The July 31 WTO framework agreement, agreed upon by 147- members in Geneva has drawn a structure that needs to be implemented for furthering the Doha Development Agenda.No sooner the details began to be analysed, it became clear that the developing countries had not only been duped but robbed in the daylight
11 August, 2004
Funding For Vanuatu's Rural Electrification
By Ching Ching Soo
Who can provide the investment for an energy supply for small communities who do not have significant cash incomes, who are dispersed over mountains and seas, usually without local experience in technical and financial aspects of an energy system and largely without the economic linkages for exploiting electricity-based small enterprises?
05 August, 2004
Monsanto Prevails In Patent Fight
By Kristen Philipkoski
The Canadian Supreme Court upheld a ruling against a farmer who used genetically modified canola seeds patented by Monsanto while replanting his field. The farmer maintained that he inadvertently used seed that had blown into his field
01 August, 2004
Kerala - Loss Of All Hope
By Saji P. George
The student community has joined the farmers in seeking the 'final solution' in the economically and socially ravaged state of Kerala, a classic case study of neo-liberal globalisation
20 July, 2004
Mounting Sucides: Urgent Need To
Save Wayanad Farmers
By P Krishnaprasad
In the recent years, Wayanad, a tiny hill district in Kerala famous for its spices and coffee plantations, has been in the news for the widespread suicides by distressed farmers - a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly commonplace in rural India as a result of implementation of free market economic policies
18 July, 2004
US Prisons vs Indian Call Centres
By Indo - Asian News Service
Competition is brewing for Indian call centres from an unlikely source, American prisons.
15 July, 2004
The Fantasy of "Fair Globalisation"
By Sukomal Sen
The recent publication" Fair Globalisation: Creating Opportunities for All", produced by the World Commission on Social Dimension of Globalisation, appears as a formal recognition of the unfair and inhuman character of globalisation
29 June, 2004
Indian Farmer's Final Solution
By Devinder Sharma
Ever since Andhra Pradesh chief minister Y.S.Rajasekhar Reddy took charage on May 14, more than 300 farmers have committed suicides. This was the official death toll in the suicides register till June 25. Unofficially, the death toll is estimated to be much higher
22 June, 2004
World Bank Rebuked For Fossil Fuel Strategy
By Paul Brown
The World Bank's drive to promote fossil fuel-generated power for 1.6 billion people lacking electricity will drive developing countries deeper into debt
20 June, 2004
Debt Trap Or Suicide Trap?
By RM Vidyasagar and K Suman Chandra
About 3,000 Andhra Pradesh farmers committed suicide in the past five years owing to debt trap, drought and crop failure. After the government of Y S Rajashekhar Reddy announced free electricity for agriculture , waiver of electricity dues and a Rs.150,000 financial assistance for the relatives of the farmers who committed suicide , there is a spate of suicides, on an average 70 farmers a week
18 June, 2004
Let's Plant Ideas
By Fidel Castro
The dilemma into which humanity has been dragged by the system is such that there is no option now: either the present world situation changes or the species runs a real risk of extinction. But let's not lose heart, Let's plant ideas
27 May, 2004
Suicide For Survival
By Binu Mathew
According to official figures, 50 farmers have died since the Y S Rajashekhar Reddy government took over on May 14. However, according to the Andhra Pradesh Rythu Sangam, a farmers outfit of CPI(M), 92 farmers have killed themselves in the last two weeks. According to another estimate, 220 farmers have committed suicide from Jan 1 to May 13
28 April, 2004
Earth's Riches Should Help the Poor
By Desmond Tutu and Jody Williams
It is a cruel irony that countries around the world that suffer from some of the highest rates of poverty, disease, corruption, violent conflict and human rights troubles are also - at least on paper - some of the richest
05 April, 2004
The Suicide Economy Of Corporate Globalisation
By Vandana Shiva
The Indian peasantry, the largest body of surviving small farmers in the world, today faces a crisis of extinction. More than 25,000 peasants in India have taken their lives since 1997
30 March, 2004
Coca-Cola Hunger Strike Ends In Union Win
By Jana Silverman
A 12-day-old hunger strike to protest Coca-Cola labor policies in Colombia ended March 27 in a rare victory for the National Food Industry Workers Union
26 March, 2004
Outsourcing In The Developing
And Developed World
By Huck Gutman
Outsourcing is despair for some, and job and jubilation for others. But it is always a race to the bottom, a search for the lowest wages and the highest profit for the multinational corporations
17 March, 2004
India Reacts With Dismay To US
Legislation On Outsourcing
By Kranti Kumara
Outsourcing has become a phenomenon that's restructuring the labour relations around the world, undermining the life source of some and benefitting some others but always benefitting the transnational corporations. No solution is possible outside of a political struggle waged by the working class against the profit system as a whole
13 March, 2004
Consensus Is Emerging On The Destructive
Effects of Globalization
By Joseph Stiglitz
A new report, issued by the International Labor Organization's commission on the social dimensions of globalization, reminds us how far the Bush administration is out of line with the global consensus
07 March, 2004
The Sale of India : ONGC Disinvestment
A U.S. financier, Warren Buffet, who has close links with the "military-industrial complex" is the main buyer in the disinvestment of the state owned oil company ONGC of India.It is a take-over of India's oil resources by American oil-interests
06 March, 2004
Outsmarting Terrorism With Outsourcing
By Naomi Klein
Thomas Friedman's argument that outsourcing "low-wage, low-prestige" jobs will prevent the third world youngsters becoming suicide bombers and make life safer for the American youth smacks of racism
31 January, 2004
Fighting The Cola Giants In Kerala
By R Krishnakumar
The World Water Conference at Plachimada adds immense strength to the local people's fight against the exploitation of their groundwater resources by Coca-Cola and Pepsi
13 January, 2004
Towards A People Centred Fair Trade
Agreement On Agriculture
By Vandana Shiva
All rewriting of trade rules for agriculture is being driven by the same forces and interests that brought agriculture into the Uruguay Round of GATT, with its genocidal impacts on peasants and the poor
05 January, 2004
Coffee In The Times Of Globalisation
By Josh Frank
The global coffee industry has endured colossal changes over the past fifty years. Production of beans has shifted from country to country in the interest of transnational corporations pushing the price to historical lows and impoverishing millions of farmers
05 November, 2003
Fuzzy Words And Sharp Bullets
By Satya Sagar
Smokescreen of the global media has been dispensed with and the real messages in our times come from the armed forces of the imperialist powers. While their words have become fuzzier, their bullets have become sharper
30 October, 2003
Outsourcing Culture
By Jeremy Seabrook
Call centres may be creating thousands of jobs for Indians - but the price they pay is a loss of culture and alienation
26 October, 2003
The Flight To India
ByGeorge Monbiot
The jobs Britain stole from the Asian subcontinent 200 years ago are now being returned
22 October, 2003
Global Trade Keeps A Billion Children In Poverty
By Maxine Frith
More than one billion young people in the developing world are now living in conditions of severe deprivation, according to a report for the Unicef
15 October, 2003
IMF Confidential
By Greg Palast
To reduce its deficit per IMF decree, Argentina had cut $3 billion from government spending-a cut that was necessary, the authors note here, to "accomodat[e] the increase in interest obligations." The Secret Documents the Masters of the Universe Would Rather You Not See
19 September, 2003
Why It's Good That The Trade Talks Broke Down
By Anuradha Mittal
Cancun is not a failure -- for it offers a lesson: Strong-arm tactics are not going to work any more. And no agreement is better than a bad agreement
17 September, 2003
Cancun, A New Beginning
By Devinder Sharma
First Seattle in 1999, and now the sudden death at Cancun 2003, the developing world has demonstrated that it will no longer take it lying down. Their anger and rebellion has already caused the biggest derailment to the development agenda. And, rightly so
16 September, 2003
The Collapse In Cancun And
The Transformation Of The Global System
By Andreas Hernandez
The collapse of the WTO negotiations in Cancun was the result of a tremendous organizing by the global south. It directly challenged the neoliberal world and might be the first visible signs of the possibility of a social democratic turn in the global system
WTO Kills Farmers: In Memory of Lee Kyung Hae
By Laura Carlsen
On September 10, opening day of the Fifth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization, Lee Kyung Hae climbed the fence that separates the excluded from the included and took his life with a knife to the heart
14 September, 2003
Free Trade Is War
By Naomi Klein
The brutal economic model advanced by the World Trade Organization is itself a form of war because privatization and deregulation kill--by pushing up prices on necessities like water and medicines and pushing down prices on raw commodities like coffee, making small farms unsustainable
11 September, 2003
Developing Countries Take Early Initiative
By C. Rammanohar Reddy
On the eve of the formal opening of the World Trade Organisation's ministerial conference, a 20-member coalition of developing countries led by India, Brazil, China, South Africa and Argentina, has taken centre stage with its distinctive proposals for reform of global trade in agriculture
10 September, 2003
Battle Lines Drawn At Cancun
By Stephen Castle
Europe and the United States - so often economic enemies - arrive at crucial world trade talks today lined up against some of the poorer nations, insisting that developing countries must make their share of concessions
Protectionism Trumps Free Trade At The WTO
By Mark Weisbrot
At the Cancun ministerial conference one bone of contention is the international trade in pharmaceuticals. On one side are most developing countries and humanitarian groups who want poor people to have access to cheap, generic, essential medicines. Against this proposition stand the big pharmaceutical companies, backed by their governments in the United States and Europe
06 September, 2003
The Real Cancun: Behind Globalization's Glitz
By Marc Cooper
A de facto economic and social apartheid keeps the two worlds of Cancún--the served and the server--quite distant except when conducting necessary business
19 August, 2003
Heat On Cold Drinks
By Arjun Sen
Coke and Pepsi may be following the Enron foot steps in India, unless they do not answer the grave environmental and safety questions raised against them
07 August, 2003
No More Coke And Pepsi
In Indian Parliament
Indian Parliament banned from its premises the soft drinks manufactured by Pepsi and Coca-Cola following allegations by a non-governmental organisation that they contained toxic pesticides
Tests Confirm Toxicity In Sludge From Coke Plant
By P. Venugopal
Tests conducted by the Kerala State Pollution Control Board (KSPCB) have confirmed recent media reports about the toxic nature of the sludge generated by Coca-Cola's bottling plant at Plachimada, in Kerala's Palakkad district
06 August, 2003
Residues Of Toxic Pesticides In 12 Soft Drink Brands
The Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) today announced that 12 soft drink brands collected for testing from in and around Delhi contained residues of four extremely toxic pesticides and insecticides — lindane, DDT, malathion and chlorpyrifos
02 August, 2003
Abandoning Agriculture
By Devinder Sharma
The dreams of billions of farmers have been completely shattered,who were initially promised the stars when the WTO was formally launched. It is only a matter of time before the collapse of agriculture in the developing world triggers massive displacements from the rural areas
01 August, 2003
Coke Accused Of Supplying Toxic Fertiliser To Farmers
By George Iype
BBC investigative report reveals that the sludge produced by
the Coca Cola factory in Kerala contains dangerous toxic chemicals that are polluting the water supplies, the land and the food chain
31 July, 2003
WTO In Montreal
By Aziz Choudry
Wherever we live, let's make sure that the world's free traders get no satisfaction in Montreal, Cancun and beyond
28 July, 2003
One Billion suffer Extreme Poverty
By David Rowan
The UNDP report notes that 54 nations are poorer now than they were in 1990.The populations of 21 countries are hungrier today than in 1990.
24 July, 2003
Coke vs People
By Paul Vallely, Jon Clarke and Liz Stuart
In the Kerala state of India impoverished farmers are fighting to stop drinks giant 'destroying livelihoods'
Boycott Coca-Cola!
By Andy Higginbottom
An international boycott of Coca Cola products have been launched after eight Colombian Coca Cola workers were assassinated
20 July, 2003
We Are Sitting On A Volcano
By Arthur Mitzman
It is centuries since humanity anticipate an alarmingly bleak future for its coming genearations
15 July, 2003
A Global Left Turn?
By Andreas Hernandez
As the imperialist forces were waging a war to colonize Iraq a silent revolution was occuring on the other side. Signs of a new global order have begun to unfold. This tremendous organizing on a global scale, directly challenges a uni-polar world
10 July, 2003
Global Poverty and Progressive Politics
by Thabo Mbeki
If Progressive Politics is to Have Any Meaning, it Must Start From the Reality That You Can't Overcome Global Poverty Through Reliance on the Market
09 July, 2003
Our water, Their Profits
By Jonathan Leavitt
Twenty years from now, there will be a war somewhere in this world, but that war will not be an "oil war" but a "water war"
25 June, 2003
Coffee, The Deadly Embrace
By Ben Gregory and David McKnight
A report of the Seventh Welsh Delegation to Nicaragua -Nicaragua's economy is slowly being strangled by the dictates of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund
I Was Wrong About Trade
By George Monbiot
George Bush seems to be preparing to destroy the WTO at the next world trade talks in September not because its rules are unjust, but because they are not unjust enough. "Our Aim Should Not Be To Abolish The World Trade Organization., But To Transform It", says George Monbiot
17 June, 2003
We Can seize The Day
By George Monbiot
Economic globalisation has made us stronger than ever before, just as the existing instruments of global control have become weaker than ever before
07 June, 2003
On The Defensive : Coke And Pepsi
By R. Krishnakumar
Popular struggles against Coca- Cola and Pepsi in Palakkad district of Kerala gather momentum
Battling Coke In Sivaganga
By S. Viswanathan
The people in Sivganga in Tamil Nadu are agitating against Coke's plans to exploit large amounts of water from the region, which is already facing water scarcity
04 June, 2003
Another Fiasco At Evian
By John Lichfield in Evian
Evian was another choreographed summit of fixed smiles that evaded all the most contentious issues, from the plunge of the dollar to the explosion of Aids in Africa
Lausanne Solidarity Declaration
In Support Of Activists At The G8
30 May, 2003
Showdown In Evian
By Mark Engler
The French city of Evian is getting ready for a showdown between the super rich and the antiglobalisation activists
Patents and Pharmaceutical Access
By Sanjay Basu
The 56th World Health Assembly held in Geneva was alive by a controversy over a resolution mandating the WHO to advise governments about patent rules and access to medicines
12 May, 2003
The New Peasants Revolt
By Katherine Ainger
All of us, affected by trends in the global economy, in the most intimate and fundamental way possible - through our food
Bechtel And Blood For Water
By Vandana Shiva
In Iraq blood was not just shed for oil, but also for control over water and other vital services
11 May, 2003
"Corporism: The Systemic Disease
That Destroys Civilization"
By Ken Reiner
Huge corporations now control America's body politic by reason of their bald-faced purchases of the three branches of the American government and America's major media
11 April, 2003
Privatizing Water: What the European Commission Doesn't Want You to Know
By Daniel Politi
Leaked documents and an exchange of e-mails reveal that the European Union has asked 72 countries to open up their markets to private water companies.
Why Does the WTO Want My Water?
By Lori Wallach
A leak of European negotiating demands in WTO service sector negotiations reveals that it will be extremely difficult for countries, states and local governments to reverse privatization experiments that fail if the demands are incorporated in GATS.
Zero Tolerance for Farm Subsidies
By Devinder Sharma
Indian farmers are starting to feel the direct impact of the farm subsidies provided by rich nations to their farmers. American wheat is available at Chennai at a landing price much lower than that of the home grown golden grain while the wheat surplus in the north western parts of the country rots in the open
Confronting Empire
By Arundhati Roy
Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness — and our ability to tell our own stories. Arundhati Roy's speech at Porto Alegre , for the world social forum
Statement OF The Asian Social, Mass And Peoples' Movements And Organisations gathered for the Asian Social Forum held at Hyderabad from January 2-7,2003
Produce and perish - The Fallacy of Raising Crop Yields
By Devinder Sharma
To ask the third world farmers to increase productivity and thereby reduce the cost of production to remain competitive in a globalised world is a fallacy since it is impossible for them to compete with the farmers of the developed world ejoying huge amount of state subsidy.
Now Corporations Claim The "Right To Lie"
By Thom Hartmann
Kasky v. Nike case in U.S. Supreme court poses a serious challenge to the corporate claim of personhood.
The two faces of Mr. Gates
By C. P. Chandrasekhar
Microsoft chairman Bill Gates' visit to India was part of a strategy to check the growing trend of developing countries preferring open source software over proprietary software.
The Great Myths Of Globalization
In perhaps the most comprehensive study to date, Scorecard on Globalization 1980-2000, Mark Weisbrot, Dean Baker and other researchers at the Center for Economic and Policy Research documented that key measures of progress have declined globally in the past twenty years
Selling India to Bill Gates
by C. Ram Manohar Reddy
Bill Gates needs India more than India needs Bill Gates. But we don't seem to want to see that.
UN Consecrates Water As Public Good,Human Right
by Gustavo Capdevila
The United Nations Committee on Economic, Cultural and Social Rights declared access to water a human right and water a social and cultural good, not merely an economic commodity.
PSDS: The Latest Chapter in the World Bank's Privatization Plans
by David Tannenbaum
World Bank's new Private Sector Development Strategy (PSDS) promises to intensify the Bank's support for privatization, extend its privatization advocacy to sectors still generally conceived of as public, and introduce novel approaches to create private markets where none now exist.
Paradoxes
by Eduardo Galeano
About some of the paradoxes that we see in daily life
The Passion for Free Markets- Exporting American values through the new World Trade Organization
by Noam Chomsky
A Moment Of Deep Hope
An interview with Vandana Shiva
by Geov Parrish
Export at Any Cost - Oxfam's Free Trade Recipe for the Third World
by Vandana Shiva
The Bankruptcy of Globalisation
by Vandana Shiva
Speech made at the World Social Forum, 2002
IMF'S FOUR STEPS TO DAMNATION
by Gregory Palast
How crises, failures, and suffering finally drove a US Presidential adviser to the wrong side of the barricades
Privatisation: from the Guru himself
by Prashant Bhushan
Joseph Stiglitz, the World Bank's Chief Economist for three years until January 2000 and the winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001, speaks out with brutal frankness about the Washington Consensus institutions' hypocrisy and the effects that the globalisation programme has had on the developing world.
They Are Systematically Destroying Economies
An interview with George Monbiot who is one of the leading voices of the global justice movement worldwide.
Book Review
Global Self -Organization From Below
by Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello
Based on material from the new Second Edition of Jeremy Brecher, Tim Costello, and Brendan Smith, GLOBALIZATION FROM BELOW: THE POWER OF SOLIDARITY
Review Of Defying Corporations, Defining Democracy
by Robert Jensen
http://www.countercurrents.org/globalisation.htm
13 June, 2010
Who's Afraid Of Caste Census?
By Kancha Ilaiah
Let all castes — not just OBCs — be counted for strengthening our democratic system. I know that even mine is a blind-spot theory but it may have the effect of an antidote
11 June, 2010
Whither Dalit Politics?
By Neerja Dasani
Reflections on Dalit identity and politics in the context of a documentary film festival held in Chennai called 'Imaging Dalit Reality: Politics of Visual Representation'
24 May, 2010
Mr. Bachchan, Caste And Being An Indian First
By Joseph D'souza
According to Bollywood star Mr. Amitabh Bachchan being an Indian first means not to believe in caste. That could be one great definition of being an Indian first and putting India first. Yet when Mr. Bachchan told the census enumerators that he does not believe in caste and is an Indian first, did he unwittingly reveal the discomfiture the privileged castes feel in coming to terms with the caste issue in modern India?
10 May, 2010
Who Is Afraid Of Caste Census And Why?
By S.R.Darapuri I.P.S. (Retd)
Actually higher Castes are allergic to the Caste Census because it will expose their low numbers and the share of development and national wealth they have usurped at the cost of lower Castes. Their fear is further accentuated by the probable high number of OBCs who are bound to demand a greater share in services and benefits of development and national wealth. That is why higher Castes are afraid of Caste Census
10 May, 2010
Modi Vomits Caste Venom
By Dr. Anand Teltumbde
On 25 April 2010 Narendra Modi is reported to have observed while releasing his book Samajik Samrasata that Dalits were like mentally retarded children. Earlier, Modi had said that Valmiki community was involved in manual scavenging for a "spiritual experience"
07 May, 2010
Where Is Brahmeshwar Singh 'The Great'?
By Subhash Gatade
Myth of the Misuse of Laws meant for the protection of dalits and tribals
03 May, 2010
Manual Scavenging: Must Be Eradicated
Right Away
By Ram Puniyani
Manual Scavenging was officially supposed to have been banned in 1993 by the Government of India. Official lapses and apathy apart, the surveys by the activists working against this practice show that even now over 14 lakhs of scavengers are still suffering ignominy and nearly 95% of these workers are women
29 April, 2010
Interview: Iqbal Ahmad On Dalit-Muslim Unity
By Yoginder Sikand
Bangalore-based advocate Iqbal Ahmed Shariff is an activist associated with the Bahujan and Dalit-Muslim unity movements. Author of numerous books in Urdu, he was also the editor of the Urdu and Hindi Dalit Voice. In this interview he talks with Yoginder Sikand on a wide range of issues, including Dalit-Muslim unity and the problems of the Muslim leadership in India
25 April, 2010
Why No Dalit Personal Law?
By Prabhat Sharan
Recently in a seminar "Modernity, Tradition and Resistance in South Asia," organized by Mumbai University, during an informal talk, a radical sociologist, Dr. Neshat Quaiser from Jamia Millia Islamia Central University, raised a startling proposition and a query. Dr. Quaiser's proposition was that since Dalit community has always been outside the realm of Hindu fold and the Brahmanical structure, Dalits should have their own Personal Law since they have an independent identity
20 April, 2010
Pakistan's Dalits Demand Their Rights
By Zia Ur Rehman
Long accustomed to discrimination, Pakistan's Hindu Dalits are fighting a new form of harassment that is driving them from their ancestral villages in the Tharparkar District of Sindh. About 70 Dalit families have left to protest the growing incidence of kidnapping of their young women. The kidnapping typically leads to rape or forced conversion to Islam and marriage
15 April, 2010
Ambedkar's Idea Of A Humanist India
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Ambedkarism is an idea for all democratic struggle who are fighting for social justice and support equality, liberty and fraternity. Let the tribes of Ambedkarites grow and work for social change and human rights. Let it reach on every nook and corner of the country to develop it as 'Prabuddha Bharat', as Baba Saheb had visualized so that people do not pick up guns to counter any hegemony but arguments to demolish historical myths of the ruling elite. It is the right moment in our history and we have to accept the challenge and use Ambedkar's thought to develop counter culture of democracy, freedom and humanism
13 April, 2010
Mayawati's Mega Service To The Nation
By Anand Teltumbde
Every other move of Mayawati has shattered the sanitized sensibility of middle India and left it gasping for the expression. It invariably ended, "Oh, it is too much!" Whether it is her mega memorials or her rallies, her style evokes stunning responses of this kind. The point to ponder is whether, beyond her deliberately designed-for-Dalit demeanour, there is anything essentially novel or unique. The answer would be in definite negative. Mayawati is essentially the product of the system and she represents it in full measure albeit in her inimitable way. Insofar as it appears excessive, it only helps us to see the system in its naked form
11 April, 2010
Dimensions Of The Revolution Against Casteism
A Preliminary PROUT Synthesis
The UN Human Rights Commission in October 2009 declared casteism as a form of human rights abuse and has begun the process of criminalizing casteism. However, this will not end casteism in South Asia. The UN can only create a little pressure internationally. To annihilate casteism (jati pranasha), an internal revolution is required
18 March, 2010
Sree Narayana Guru, The Left, And Chitralekha
By Joe.M.S.
In spite of the cultural specificities of northern Kerala where these atrocities were perpetrated on Chitralekha, I think a general study of the impact of Srinaraynism on the whole of Kerala may be of some help to analyse the increasing backward caste arrogance on Dalits. This is particularly so as the discourse on the assumed efficacy of SriNarayana Guru's metier is invoked constantly by the civil society of Kerala, eternalising his importance in all spheres. So I think, a glance at the impact of his life and efforts can shed light on the of the constitution/ construction of modern Ezhava identity and the problems associated with it
17 February, 2010
Jayaram And Tamil: Some Scattered Thoughts
On The Anti-Black Mass Culture In Kerala
By Joe MS
The recent 'jest 'of film star Jayaram against the Tamil as black skinned , buffalo like and therefore less human has been taken as just a joke by the cultural scene of Kerala. Not only that sympathy was expressed for the poor victim that he is, inadvertently cracking an innocent joke and thereby exposing himself to the ire of 'violent' Tamil,even solidarity was expressed with the right to crack such jokes by the 'ordinary folks'. The latent ideological and cultural premises hidden behind this whole controversy needs to be enquired into to understand the reality
07 February, 2010
Three Idiots: A Film With A Message
By Dr. Shura Darapuri
The film "Three Idiots" is a great satire on the education system and the attitude of society. It tells us rote learning can be very harmful and why and how a casteistic eduactional system promotes it
19 January, 2010
Trade, Corporate Market And Indigenous People
By Goldy M. George
The Copenhagen drama is over. Nothing came out of it. It was predicted the same by many expert and many intellectuals, activists, professional experts kept a distance from this proscenium. But what is that concerns the ordinary people of this nation? How does market and market values related with people at large and particularly the Dalits, Adivasis and the exploited sections of Indian society? What is the correlation between trade, corporates, market and indigenous communities of this land who still have the noble quality of surviving on a minimum basis?
Dalit: Towards The Search For
Alternative Strategies
By Rajkumar
This paper argues for the need for some strategies that suits the emerging scenario in the given context of democratic space available in the Indian and the mass psychology. I try to portrait a frame of analysis for this argument which needs further debate and refinement at various circles and level
11 January, 2010
"Honouring Dalits With Blood"
By Pardeep Singh Attri
A look into the increase in the number of Khap Panchayat's illegal decrees, 'fatwas' against Dalits
04 January, 2010
Salute To Women Liberator - Savitribai Phule-
On Birthday, 3rd January
By Pardeep Singh Attri
It is indeed a measure of the ruthlessness of elite-controlled knowledge-production that a figure as important as Savitribai Phule fails to find any mention in the history of modernIndia. Her life and struggle deserves to be appreciated by a wider spectrum, and made known to non-Marathi people as well
01 January, 2010
1st January, 1818: 'The Battle Of Bhima Koregaon'
By Pardeep Singh Attri
January 1st 1818, when everyone around the world was busy in celebrating the 'new year', when everyone was in cheerful mood, but not for a small force of 500 untouchable soldiers were preparing them to for battleground. Who knows this battle is going to write future of 'Brahmin Peshwa Baji Rao-II'? It wasn't just another battle; it was a battle for self respect, esteem and against the supremacy of Manusmriti. This battle is important in history, as everyone know that after this battle rule of 'Peshwa Rao' ended
Tribal Rights
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
I can only wish if the tribal had their own Kanshi Ram who could have made them emerge as an independent entity and not look for messiahs. Dalits in India salute Kanshiram for this political contribution that he has made them an entity where they can stand at their own in this democratic polity. Tribal need political leaders who can stand at their own and fight their battle at their own and not look for imported messiahs. Once they have this, they will win the democratic battle and their own survival as their political class will not remain unaccountable as it seems today
28 December, 2009
Salute To The Indefatigable Spirit Of Struggle Of
Subedar Jasram
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Struggle of Subedar Jasram to get justice for over 150 landless Dalit families in Shaheed Udham Singh Nagar
22 December, 2009
Bhagat Singh On Dalit Question
By Ashok Yadav
Bhagat Singh's article 'Achoot Samasya' (The Untouchability Problem) is very important because we get glimpses of his revolutionary thoughts on this basic problem of Indian society. Now when in the post-mandal phase caste and dalit questions have acquired paramount importance in socio-political discourse it has become relevant to understand his thoughts on this question
17 December, 2009
Kerala's So Called Dalit Terror: How A Dalit Minister
Turns Against His Own Community
By B.R.P Bhaskar
Inquiries have revealed that Balan, who is himself a Dalit, turned down the proposal for a visit to Thoduve by a team headed by the chief minister, saying it was impractical. He termed the proposal for rehabilitation of the colony residents also as impractical. He effectively killed the proposal for an impartial inquiry into the police conduct by referred it to the DGP
16 December, 2009
Udit Raj's Fast For Reservation In Private Sector
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Udit Raj on fast unto death against non implementation of reservation in private sector
14 December, 2009
Savarna Terror Erupts In Kerala
By J Devika
Dalits are on the receiving end in Kerala, be it from the police, sangh parivar or the so called saviours of the downtrodden, Communist Party of India (Marxists)
10 December, 2009
How Long Casteism?
By Garda Ghista
The Times of India on December 7 reported that Dalits in Gujarat are banned from Hindu temples. Yet, they are Hindu, isn't it? If they are banned from their own Hindu temples, then why on earth should they remain Hindus? Better they become Buddhist, Christian or Muslim. Tragically, even by converting to one of these other religions, they remain Dalits. We have here in India such a thing as Dalit Christians and upper caste Christians. Is it not mad? If I tell this to friends back in America, their jaws will drop in disbelief
08 December, 2009
The Legacy Of Criminal Tribes Act
In The Present Context
By Goldy M. George
How long the criminal tribes or denotified tribes are supposed to face the brute inhuman demeanour of the state and society? Do they have any rights of claiming to be citizens of this free nation? It is time to find answers to these persisting questions; or one has to turn to be a fatalist and keep dreaming of the day when everything would be fine automatically
05 December, 2009
Concepts Of Reservation
By Ashok Yadav
The creamy layer concept is nothing but a ploy to protect upper caste hegemony in job and education. It is not without reason that the BJP and the Congress like forces support the creamy layer concept. The democratic forces of India have yet to realise the importance of reservation in job and education to the SC/ST/OBC in their struggle for democratising the Indian polity
29 November, 2009
The Hindu: The Insensitivity Of A Sensitive Paper
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
In a November 27th write up by Praveen Swamy on Mumbai's horrific incidents under headline ' where style has trumped substance' has unnecessarily compared the issue of scavengers with police men
28 November, 2009
Uncivil Society, Apathetic Administration
Fact Finding Report issued by Nagrik Adhikar Manch and Yuva Samvad
The situation in the Gadarwara Sub Division of District.Narsinghpur (Madhya Pradesh) has been in a state of constant flux for the last 3-4 months. The Dalits living in the villages adjoining Gadarwara have been condemned to a life of fear and intimidation.Their human rights and dignity are being at stake
22 November, 2009
Encountering Ambedkar In Hungary
By Pardeep Attri
The Romas, a discriminated minority in Hungary, turn to Ambedkar and Buddhism in their quest for dignity and equality. Pardeep Attri journeys to Sajókaza and Budapest to find out how the Dalits and Romas connect
20 November, 2009
Ambedkar's Lost Boys?
By Ajit Sahi
A dalit organisation in Kerala is accused of terrorist links
16 November, 2009
Feminism And Dalit Women In India
By Cynthia Stephen
Thus, Dalit women are slowly attempting to come to grips with their invisibility in the discourse, and are beginning not just to speak out, but also to theorise and build wider solidarities so as to earn the place, hitherto denied, under the sun
14 November, 2009
Understanding Existential Castes
Through Atrocity Metrics
By Anand Teltumbde
Brief of the paper "Understanding Existential Castes through Atrocity Metrics" presented at the seminar Caste in Contemporary India, Columbia University on 16 October 2009
19 October, 2009
UN Anti-Caste Charter: Annihilation Of Caste
By Ram Puniyani
Today sixty years after Independence and coming into being of Indian Constitution, the prevalence of untouchability and caste practices are a matter of shame for us. It is time we intensify our own efforts to eradicate it and join the global efforts to end this carry over from our past
14 October, 2009
Is It Not Time For The Minorities
To Become The Majority?
By Dr.K.Vidyasagar Reddy
Since the majority-Lower castes are found oppressed socially and otherwise at the hands of Upper castes, they wish to break the chains of Hinduism only to join the religious minorities of Islam, Christianity, Sikhism, Buddhism and Jainism as a larger entity. Since the idea is based on apprehensions of the marginalised communities, its implementation would certainly alter the social composition of the majority and minority notions. Ultimately, this larger entity would make them majority for political purpose that would ensure political power over a period of time
12 October, 2009
The Pointing Finger Of Babasaheb Ambedkar
By Dr. Shah Alam Khan
I am sure if he was alive today Ambedkar would have been pained to see the contemptible misuse of money in building parks and statues. Mayawati too needs to learn from this message of salvation and social elevation. Political power is temporary, social elevation permanent. Statues can be a way to display social arrival and arrogance but surely it would be better if the same money is used for genuine emancipation of the most depressed sections of the Indian society
08 October, 2009
Caste And Land : Message From
Chengara And Khagaria
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Both the Bihar and Kerala experience shows how the governments which are in power have used particular ideological formulations to build their own political empire and how they manipulate people's sentiments. Such stories are emerging from everywhere and they will always happen as long as the movements are not democratic and their leaders embedded with a particular formulation dictate their fancies to the people. The condition of both the Dalits and Adivasis remain a matter of concern in all these states whether they come to power in the name of social justice or Marxism
19 August, 2009
Dalits And The Arts As An Intrument Of Repression
By Gauthama Siddharthan
If only we become aware of these evil designs in Art and Literary forms, identify them and understand their layers of covert interpretations and connotations and raise against these, taking all necessary initiatives to expose and destroy them we would be able to save ourselves and our suffering brethren from the cruel and bitter cultural onslaught that has been going on from time immemorial. Only then we can emerge as an emancipated and liberated wholesome human race
18 August, 2009
(De)Meritized Reservation
By Goldy M. George
Howsoever, unsatisfactory the results of the implementation may be, the importance of reservations from the Dalit viewpoint cannot be overemphasized. As could be evidenced by the organized private sector, where it would be difficult to find a Dalit employee
17 August, 2009
Rethinking The Dalit Muslim Movement
By Khalid Anis Ansari
All in all, the crux of the argument submitted here is that Pasmanda Movement (PM) needs to grow beyond quota politics and rethink its abnegation of the social/cultural/economic aspects of the movement. Along with its present accent on democratisation of the state it would do well to also consider the more far-reaching issue of the democratisation of society at large. PM needs to engage in a balancing act between the political and social. This will create the much desired synergy necessary for launching the libratory promise of PM on track
22 July, 2009
Rape As An Instrument Of Politics
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
What Rita Bahuguna said was not an outburst but a continuous assumption of our patriarchical political thought that does not want to address the root cause but use the incident for political purposes
17 July, 2009
Mayawati's Idolization And The Questing Of
Dalit Emancipation
By S.R.Darapuri
The emancipation of dalits can be achieved not by installation of statues but by working out a Dalit development agenda and implementing it honestly. Instead of spending crores on the statues, establishing educational institutions, hospital, libraries and useful institutions in the name of Dalit icons will be a true honour and memorial to them
13 June, 2009
Caste And Democracy In India
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Only a modern democratic theory with republican ideas as envisioned by Dr Ambedkar can be their true emancipator otherwise, caste based identities are threatening basic Dalit unity in the country and it is fast becoming a self defeating exercise
28 May, 2009
Fire At Vienna Exposes Ugly Realities Of
Caste Discrimination In Punjab
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Punjab is burning. The Dalits are at the street. The government is seeking peace and every one is amused why the Dalits have taken to the street. Some are amused as why attack on Sant Niranjan Dass, head of Dera Guru Ravidas Sachkhand Balan and death of Sant Ramanand could spark such violent protest in Punjab. Unfortunately, they forget to understand the first question itself as why such Deras face attack by the fundamentalist Sikh groups. Is it because these Deras have provided a glimpse of hope and identity to a massive Dalit population in Punjab? Is it also not true that these Deras are also giving the upper caste Sikhs a run for their money and power?
Identity And Religious Conversion
By Tomichan Matheikal
Put an end to the discriminatory caste system. This would engender a sense of respectability among the adivasis and the lower castes. Then there would be no need for religious conversion as a means of attaining respectability. Give economic independence to the adivasis and the lower castes. This would put an end to the Maoist violence as well as the charm held out by poverty to Christian missionaries
02 April, 2009
Hypocrisy Of Brahminical And Mainstream
Feminist Movements
By Surendra Gopinath Rote
Mainstream feminist movement could focus on the livelihood issues of women. However, the point is not to feed the stomach only but it is question of self respect, dignity and of equal status which all denied by caste system. My question still stands there those feminist who worships Rama, Krishna, Shiva and Ganesh how could they become the emancipatory force for Dalit women or even for mainstream women?
04 March, 2009
Dalits In 'Hindu Rashtra'
By Subhash Gatade
All over Gujarat one finds thousands and thousands of boards put at prominent places by one of the affiliates of the Sangh Parivar that 'you are entering this or that locality of Hindu Rashtra' which is completely illegal and an open proclamation of 'secession' from the rest of the society
18 February, 2009
Rethinking Pasmanda Movement
By Khalid Anis Ansari
Pasmanda, a word of Persian origin, literally means 'those who have fallen behind', 'broken' or 'oppressed'. For our purposes here it refers to the 'dalit' and 'backward' caste Indian Muslims which constitute, according to most estimates, 85% of Muslim population and about 10% of India's population
07 February, 2009
Reservation In Faculty Recruitment,
Viva 'Academic Untouchability'?
By Subhash Gatade
The return of 'academic untouchability' with due sanction of the parliament and the further legitimisation it would provide to the 'merit' versus 'quota' debate need to be questioned and challenged uncompromisingly
18 December, 2008
Buddhism: Beyond The Dalit Shadow
By Rahul Gade
Buddhism is spirit that has overcome the dalit shadow. Buddhism is the hope for the broken dalit. If the past has been dalit the future has to be Buddhist, anything lower would be less than honoring full human potential
12 November, 2008
Obama And Mayawati: A Comparison In Contrast
By S.R.Darapuri
From a brief comparison between Obama and Mayawati it becomes evident that it is not very appropriate because there is a world of difference between their personalities and deeds. Rather it can be said to be a comparison in contrast. Obama is to be judged in the near future but Mayawati has already been judged
03 November, 2008
Ayyankali: Legacy Of Organic Protest
By Muhammed Nafih
Book review- Ayyankali:A Dalit Leader of Organic Protest by Nisar.M.and Meena Kandasamy
26 October, 2008
Peace, Non-Violence And Secularism
In Dalit Perspective
By Ratnesh Katulkar
Ignorance and negligence of Dalit ideology by the mainstream secularists and the upper-class Muslims are harming Muslims to fall prey before Hindu fascist and it is dangerous in building the real foundation of secularism in India
24 October, 2008
The Struggle Of Dalitbahujan For Their Identity
And In Quest Of Their Spiritual And Political Destiny
By Dr. Kancha Ilaiah
Speech delivered on the occasion of presentation of 'LISA Book Award – 2008 for 'Why I am Not a Hindu'
18 September, 2008
Why Go For Conversion?
By Dr. B.R. Ambedkar
In 1935 at Nasik district, Maharashtra, Dr.Babasaheb Ambedkar had declared his firm resolve to change his religion. He had declared that he was born as a Hindu but will not die as Hindu. About a year later, a massive Mahar conference was held on May 30 and 31, 1936, in Mumbai, to access the impact of that declaration on Mahar masses. In his address to the conference, Dr.Ambedkar expressed his views on conversion in an elaborate, well- prepared and written speech in Marathi. Here is an English translation of that speech by Mr.Vasant Moon, OSD to the committee of Govt. of Maharashtra for publication of Writings & speeches of Dr.B.R.Ambedkar
02 September, 2008
Even In Flood, India's `Untouchables' Last Rescued
By Gavin Rabinowitz
In the two weeks since a monsoon-swollen river burst its banks, ancient prejudices have run just as deep as the floodwaters. India's "untouchables" are the last to be rescued — if at all — from a deluge that has killed dozens and made 1.2 million homeless
What Mayawati Has Done To The Dalits Of U.P.?
By S.R.Darapuri
Without a vision and definite Dalit liberation agenda the attaining of political power is not going to solve the problems of the Dalits as well as that of the State. Structural changes and improvement in the delivery system only can remove the poverty syndrome prevailing amongst the Dalits. Grass-root level movements are the key to keep the political leaders under control and make them answerable to the people
31 August, 2008
"Let The Hindus Also Do Missionary Work"
By Kancha Ilaiah & Yoginder Sikand
Interview:Kancha Ilaiah on Dalit-Bahujans, Hinduism and Spiritual Fascism
Dr. Ambedkar On Women Liberation
By Ratnesh Katulkar
Dr. Ambedkar's first academic paper "Caste in India: Their Mechanism, Genesis and Development" also begins with his concern towards women, where he located the linkages between caste and gender by observing that "Superimposition of endogamy on exogamy means creation of caste" and concluded that there is no divine or natural cause of origin of caste but Brahmins of ancient India craftily designed it by enclosing their class through means of controlling and subjugating their woman
15 August, 2008
Dalit Digital Media:- Shuddering
The Hinduized News Media!! Part I
By Saint
Anyone who goes through these alternate digital news blogs and sites would appreciate the sear knowledge, straightforward analysis of events by these individual writers can stand distinctively than that of Times of India, Hindu or New York Times. Is this is the beginning of demolishing the bigotry in the established trational media in the world which is simply owned by few people and they make billions through selling news that are made up stories, to the most part, but nothing to do with helping people and uplifting the needy society?
18 June, 2008
"Only Ash Knows The Experience Of Burning"
By Dr. Nilanshu Kumar Agarwal & Dr. Jai Prakash Kardam
An Interview with Dalit Writer Jai Prakash Kardam
06 June, 2008
Gujjars Of Rajasthan And S.T. Status
By Dr Javaid Rahi
This article examines whether the ST demands of Gujjars of Rajasthan is a genuine one and is it falling within the criteria of ST status as provided by Schedule Tribes Act
19 April, 2008
Dalits In U.P. Face Hunger Deaths And Suicides
By S.R.Darapuri
When George Bush is admonishing India for eating too much, Dalits in the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh face hunger deaths and suicides
18 April, 2008
The Tikait Treatment
By Ravikiran Shinde
Jat leader Mahendra Singh Tikait finally surrendered meekly before the court after resisting arrest by UP Police. The dust has finally settled two weeks after his castiest remarks but it has raised a serious question. How 'normal' is the casteist abuse in day to day life of Dalits? If a chief minister can be abused publicly, what does it speak of common Dalits?
04 April, 2008
Mayawati's Burgeoning Wealth: Who Gains?
By S.R.Darapuri
In April, 2007 while filing her nomination papers for Assembly elections Mayawati had declared her assets to be worth Rs. 52 crores. While filing her income tax return for the assessment year 2008-09 she estimated her income to be Rs. 60 crores and had deposited Rs. 15 crores as advance tax. The actual income is likely to exceed this estimate at the end of this financial year. Now the question arises as to what are the sources of her income and what are the consequences of this amassing of wealth by her. It is also pertinent to discuss as to apart from Mayawati who else are the beneficiaries of this money game. What is the loss and gain of Dalits in this game of exchange of money?
26 Februay, 2008
What Reservation Implies?
By Amit Chamaria
"Caste reveals work or work reveals Caste"-these seem to be different in writings but are still carrying a similar message for the prevailing complex realities in a country like India. This fact is clearly reflected when the Central government and the Haryana state government associate the caste identity closely with work or vice- versa. It means - if some one belongs to a lower caste, he/she is bound to work as Safai Karamchari or very similar to this avocation
11 Februay, 2008
Stuck In A Hole
By Ashok Bharti
Despite committees, schemes and five-year plans, manual scavenging thrives in India. Ashok Bharti tells the story of failed reforms
21 Januay, 2008
Norwegian Medicine For Vedanta
By Kavaljit Singh
At the face of protest from the Dongria Kondh tribals of the Niyamgiri hilly region of Orissa Norwegian sovereign fund sells off its stake in Vedanta Resources which was preparing to build the upcoming $850 million aluminium refinery and bauxite mining project at Lanjigarh
18 December, 2007
Manual Scavenging: Nations Shame
By Sunil Kuksal
Despite laws abolishing the inhuman practice of manual scavenging, over a million dalits in 'superpower India' are caught in a vortex of severe social and economic exploitation. Cleaning and carrying headloads of human excreta, these 'night soil'
17 December, 2007
The Adivasi Question In Assam
By Moirangthem Prakash
Recent violence involving Assam's adivasis highlights the region's uniquely complex realities
05 December, 2007
Ambedkar As A Human Rights Defender
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Ambedkar championed the cause of the down trodden. But to confine him to mere as a leader of Dalits will do him great injustice. He was the most accompalished political leader and philosopher among his contemporaries.No human rights discourse in India could be complete with out detailed discussion on the outstanding work of Dr Bhim Rao Ambedkar
05 November, 2007
Equal Rights And Opportunities
By Nishikant Waghmare
Why the upper castes are not interested in giving up caste? Because caste (jati) helps him to exploit his fellowmen better — as it has a theological sanction under the Hindu religion. In the jungle of Hinduism this law has the blessings of its sacred scriptures. That is why in India wealth is getting accumulated in the bands of top 10% to 15% of the upper castes and the rest are getting pauperised. And yet there is no public debate on the merits of caste anywhere, not even among our university eggheads
25 October, 2007
Is It Emancipation Or Elimination Of
The Scavengers In Laar Town (Deoria)
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
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
12 October, 2007
Hated, Humiliated, Butchered
By Mahasweta Devi
The mob murder of Nats in Bihar was no accidental atrocity, writes an outraged Mahasweta Devi. It was the consequence of preserved brutalities
07 October, 2007
Dalit Theology
By Sathianathan Clarke & Yoginder Sikand
Sathianathan Clarke talks about what Dalit Theology means to him in an interview with Yoginder Sikand
02 October, 2007
In Conversation With Mr Bhagwan Das
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
'It is good to break and bad to continue with a tradition that has subjugated the Dalits'
27 September, 2007
Land After Thirty Years Of 'Entitlement'
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Story of Land Reclamation of Dalits in village Rupchandrapur
13 August, 2007
Tsundur : A New Milestone In
The Movement For Dalit Emancipation
By Subhash Gatade
As rightly noted by an analyst the victory ( albeit a partial one) at Tsundur has come as breath of fresh air in the already smouldering world of dalit oppression. And it is high time that its fragrance is spread far and wide, so that people are told that oppressed people united would always be victorious
25 July, 2007
Hungry World Of Dalits In Poorvanchal
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Four districts of Poorvanchal (Eastern Uttar-Pradesh) namely Maharajganj, Kushingar, Deoria and Gorakhpur witness the dance of death every year. Two of these district Kushinagar and Gorakhpur were selected for the NREGA programme while Maharajganj has also been selected for the same from this year. All these districts saw a large number of deaths due to hunger and malnutrition despite all these programmes
16 July, 2007
Will Dalit Christians Get Justice?
By M. Madhu Chandra
After constitutional denial of Scheduled Caste origins converted to Christianity and Muslims after the Presidential Order 1950, a million dollar question remains in the minds of Indian Dalit Christians "Will the Judicial system of India give justice to Indian Dalit Christians now after 57 years of injustice done to them?"
03 June, 2007
India's Lower Castes
By Nishikant Waghmare
An empowered India bereft of the respect for women, values of civilised existence and morality will collapse in the face of the disaffection and discontent of those who have suffered for centuries. Day in and day out we take pride in claiming that India has a 5000-year-old civilization. But the way the Dalits and those suppressed are being treated by the people who wield power and authority speaks volumes for the degradation of our moral structure and civilized standards
01 June, 2007
The Only Solution To Reservation Imbroglio
By Satinath Choudhary
100% reservation for all segments of the society (as far as practicable) is the best way for amicable and peaceful coexistence. Otherwise a segment that has bigger control over power will succeed in appointing larger and larger percentage of its members to positions of power leading to what we currently see in the judiciary, armed forces and the media
20 May, 2007
India's Political Quake- Mayawati
By Ravikiran Shinde
Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati is the winner. After handsomely winning the assembly elections in the biggest state in India, she has declared that she is on her way to capture "Delhi" and that plans to give UP the best government and Sarvasamaj (all sections of the society) the power to share with her
12 May, 2007
Defining Moment Of Dalit Empowerment
In Uttar-Pradesh
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Dalits defeats Hindutva with the help of Brahmins: Will it work?
09 May, 2007
Dalits, Panchayat Raj And Power Equations
By Goldy M. George
It is evident that the upper castes controlled the affairs of the village cannot tolerate the changes being brought about by the decentralized democratic institutions. In the backdrop of such incidences an array of question raises with reference to Panchayat Raj vis-à-vis Dalits. The initial prediction of decentralization envisioned through Panchayat Raj hasn't become a reality. It also tells us how Panchayat Raj is utilised as a tool of disempowerment of Dalits and consolidation of caste system
02 May, 2007
Mandal II: The Struggle For
An Egalitarian Society
By Feroze H. Mithiborwala
India is again in the midst of an OBC upsurge and this "MANDAL II" has been instigated and provoked by the Supreme Court Bench comprising Justices Arijit Pasayat and Lokeshwar Singh Panta. This two bench judgement has issued an interim order staying the Reservations of OBC's in higher educational institutions and this has sent convulsions across the political and social landscape
24 April, 2007
Get Under Society's Skin
By Gail Omvedt
The Supreme Court's recent decision and reiteration to stay the order regarding OBC admissions until accurate data is available has brought forth the expected reactions. Defenders of 'equality' won by ignoring caste are hailing it; proponents of reservations are trying to put on a brave face. But in one way, the decision is helpful: the Supreme Court has given cogent arguments for the need for information to underlay policy. However, what many of the opponents of reservations may not appreciate is that this brings up squarely, once again, the argument for a caste-based census
19 April, 2007
Status Of Manual Scavengers In Laar, Deoria
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Time has come for all of us to scrutinize government's programmes and action to eliminate manual scavenging and take the officials of the department to task. India's 9% growth rate or shining India is absolutely farcical if this large community remains outside the ambit of global change
13 April, 2007
Valmiki's Illustrious Son Challenges The Hegemony Of
Knowledge And Merit In India
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Profile: Dr Bachchu Lal Valmiki
31 March, 2007
Mandal Will Have The Last Laugh
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Shockingly, the judgments in the past few years reflect of the growing trend to keep the middle classes happy. We have judges who speak for Hindutva terming it as a way of life. We have a former Supreme Court Judge who did not implicate a single politician in the anti Sikh riots in Delhi in 1984 and later became a Member of Parliament against all the ethics of impartiality of an institution. Right to Strike was also banned by the Kerala Highcourt, which was appreciated by the media and industries
27 March, 2007
Touch Me Not
By Chandi Sinnathurai
Nazism was based on racial purity and superiority. The system of Casteism determines a human's destiny purely on the basis of caste. If Nazism and slavery were abolished, why then Casteism cannot be demolished and its evils uprooted?
24 March, 2007
The Case Of Academic Complicity In The Violence
Against Dalit And Dalit Women In India
By Abhinaya Ramesh
I wish to suggest to the UN related researches that unless sufficient scrutiny is not done by the respective authorities such reports should not be published because they are intentionally crammed with deceived information to create the confusion and further delay in the justice to the relevant communities
25 February, 2007
Status Of Manual Scavengers
In Gorakhpur, Uttar-Pradesh
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat, Ram Bhuvan & Kirti Singh
Scavenger community has all along been living in the urban areas serving the middle classes, upper elites, feudal lords, Hindus and Muslims every one alike, yet none of them ever bothered whether they have cared and bothered about those who clean their shit, enter deep into the sewage pit to continue the sewage line. In the coming days, we are going to cover a large part of Uttar-Pradesh and bring reports on this aspect
16 February, 2007
Dr. B.R.Ambedkar's Contribution
To Buddhist Education In India
By Nishikant Waghmare
Buddhism makes enlightenment the sole aim of life. This was the philosophy that Ambedkar accepted and tried to revive. Besides this there was another reason. Buddha, whose life and movement Ambedkar had studied, was a believer of the educatability and the creativity of the people. Under the influence of those teachings, the most rejected peoples of India has once risen and uplifted their life as well as that of the whole society. If that was once possible in India, it must be possible again. He had a solid historical basis to trust India's ordinary folk as India's future democrats
07 February, 2007
Debating Discrimination, Differences
And Dissent In Our Part Of The World
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
The issue of racial discrimination has been in the news for quite some time. Some Indian pretended that they have been discriminated against in Britain while rarely speaking that India does not have its own house in order. Despite 60 years of independence India has not been able to transform itself into a modern state
03 February, 2007
A Tribute To M A Khan
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Remembering a man who committed his life for the tribals of Sonbhadra
30 December, 2006
P.K. Mahanandia: Salute To A Living Legend
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
A Dalit as India's cultural Ambassador in Europe
Democracy And Reinforced Building
By Amit Chamaria
Almost 90% of decision- makers in the English language print media and 79% in television are of the upper caste, although the upper castes are about 16% of the country population; Brahmin alone constitute 49% of this segment, and 71% of the total are upper caste men
23 December, 2006
Shame, Not In Doha But In India
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
I hope that India will grow simultaneously with diversity and dissent in the coming years. How can a nation and a society grow with such scandalous officials and reporters who criminalise the sexual deformity of a person and whose fight for people's right confine to the cases of certain high profile cases of page three parties, and who continue to ignore the bigger issues of dissent and disgust in India and whose ignorant reporters can simply call these dissenters as terrorists or Naxalites, both clearly meant for Muslims and Dalits respectively in the unofficial code of the officials too
20 December, 2006
Is Death Better Than Life For
Mushahars Of Kushingar
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
While politicians in Uttar-Pradesh are preparing for polls, the Mushahars, Bansfors and other such marginalized communities think of meal next day
06 December, 2006
Khairlanji: Conspiracy Of Silence
Government agency report agency report indicts officials in Khairlanji massacre
04 December, 2006
Hindutva Strategies And Dalit Movement
By Ram Puniyani
Book review of Vidya Bhushan Rawat's book "Ambedkar, Ayodhya aur Dalit Andolan"
02 December, 2006
A New Dalit Movement Emerging From Maharastra ?
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
The uprising in Maharastra has a signal for the self styled mainstream Dalit political leaders and parties. Mend your ways or get lost as the young Dynamic Dalit leadership would emerge out of a crisis from Maharastra. It is certain that incidents like Khairlanji and Gohana would fuel the Dalit anger and turn them to streets. Out of this anger and frustration would emerge a leadership which would not compromise like their leaders
Why Are Maharashtra's Dalits So Angry?
By Kalpana Sharma
Instead of looking at whether the protests by Dalits against the Khairlanji incident and against the desecration of Ambedkar's statue were "spontaneous" or part of an organised plan, we need to understand the basis of this fury
01 December, 2006
Khairlanji's Strange And Bitter Crop
By Satya Sagar
The latest incidence of this 'strange and bitter crop' was in Khairlanji, a small village in Bhandara distict near Nagpur in the western Indian province of Maharashtra and a horrific 'harvest' it was too
18 November, 2006
Khairlanji : All Nero's Brethren
By Subhash Gatade
Looking at the fact that a militant mass movement has arisen to protest the killings, one can surmise that the legal wranglings in the Kherlanji massacre would not lead us to a blind alley and the perpetrators of the massacre would receive exemplary punishment. But there is no guarantee that it would be the case
14 November, 2006
Khairlanji's Dalit Victims Want
Justice With Dignity
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
The fire of Khairlanji in Bhandara district of Maharastra refuse to recede and has now entered in Delhi also
10 November, 2006
N.G.Uke: Remembering A True Humanist
By V.B. Rawat & N.G.Uke
N.G.Uke, a great Ambedkarite, a friend and guide died on November 4th, 2006 at his Vasant Kunj residence at the age of 82. Uke Saheb, as I would fondly call him was among the rare breed of Ambedkarite who saw Baba Saheb and was selected by him as a scholar though he had already got the same
31 October, 2006
An Open Letter To Rajdeep Sardesai
By Ravikiran Shinde
If you feel you have been at fault, then better be late than never. Cover the Kherlanji case and its legal proceedings. Awake the people on the gruesome caste realities in India. Telecast a half and hour program dedicated specially to Dalit atrocities every week
19 October, 2006
Buddha As Untouchable
By Raja Sekhar Vundru
Buddhism in India has a predominantly Dalit following, as a result of the revival by Ambedkar. For this reason, it appears that our society prefers to treat Buddha as an untouchable. In 2005, this event, which attracted an estimated 10 lakh people to Nagpur, escaped the national media attention
10 October, 2006
A Tribute To Kanshiramji
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
If India's politics has grown through a radical change with Dalit becoming the mainstream political force, the one man who made is possible was Kanshi Ram. He worked diligently and religiously to develop a cadre who could bring the party to National mainstream and ultimately to the power in Uttar-Pradesh
30 September, 2006
Building Up A New Movement Against Scavenging:
Tirunalveli's Dalits Show The Way
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Gram Udhayam is a great reflection of the power and vision of Dalits all over India. Their achievement would definitely help the communities living in other parts of the country to think about their self and work for a socio cultural revolution that would free from the bondage of the caste based discrimination
28 September, 2006
India's Shame: Some Unanswered Questions
From The Frontline Reports
By Vidya Bhushan Rawat
Those who create a fascinating world of 'great' social cohesion outside West Bengal should try to sneak into the den and report independently on the conditions of Dalit in West Bengal. Hiding the pathetic condition of Dalits in West Bengal and particularly that of the scavengers is the bigger shame for India
27 Sepember, 2006
Mayawati: "No Promises,
No Manifesto, Only Performance"
By Vidya Subrahmaniam & Mayawati
Mayawati: "The BSP is more a social revolution, a political movement than a political party." - An Interview
24 September, 2006
Past As Living Present: Calamity And Discrimination
By Subhash Gatade
Water is said to be a great leveler. But even the ravaging flood waters which have created a havoc like situation in the districts of Barmer and Jaisalmer in Rajasthan just failed to crack an age old structure - the walls between caste
21 July, 2006
Indian Dalits: Law As Paper Tiger!
By Subhash Gatade
Thus India, a country of billion plus people, which is itching to get a superpower status, which takes pride in its ancient tradition and culture and whose elite goes gaga over the booming sensex, rather presents a strange spectacle of a nation. But a close look at the goings on within the society makes it clear that there is a disjunction between the world of economics and the lifeworlds of its people. The core of the society bears its encounter with barbarism in abundance
11 July, 2006
Ghettos Of A New Kind-Autonomy And Discrimination
By Subhash Gatade
The heated debate revolving around 'autonomy' of AIIMS ( All India Institute of Medical Sciences) and its alleged 'intrusion' has papered over the quantum jump in the discrimination faced by the reserved category students there. 'Parts of AIIMS hostels are turning into SC/ST ghettos. Reserved category students said they were being "hunted out of the remaining rooms" by upper-caste students and driven to two floors of the hostels.'
10 July, 2006
Racism And Castiesm
By Jai Birdi & Indira Prahst
"Racism and Castiesm discussed at the World Peace Forum" By Jai Birdi Chair, Ending Racism Casteism Working Group for World Peace Forum and Indira Prahst, Race and Ethnic Relations Instructor, Department of Sociology, Langara College
08 May, 2006
Reservation Debate: A Great Opportunity
To Restrengthen Dalit Bahujan Alliance
By V.B.Rawat
It is time the Dalits, backwards, Adivasis come together and give a fitting reply. Organise debates and debunk the upper caste merit
22 April, 2006
War Against Naxals In Chhatishgarh:
Will Brahmanical Alternative Work
By V.B.Rawat
If the government wants to tackle the Naxal threat it has to introspect on its own position. It cannot deny tribals and Dalit their legitimate right over their resources. If the state apparatus continue to become more brahmanical by giving huge, palatial land to the corrupt Babas while the marginalized languish of hunger and malnutrition, nothing will move
18 April, 2006
Why Reservation For OBC Is A Must
By V.B.Rawat
Let Reform mean breaking age old Brahmanical hegemony
31 March, 2006
Fake Dalits, Bogus Tribals?
Whither Affirmative Action
By Subhash Gatade
While one is aware of the non filling of seats meant for scheduled castes and scheduled tirbes in various institutions of education and other employement opportunities, the filling of such seats with fake dalits or bogus tribals is a phenomenon which has rarely received the attention it deserves
20 March, 2006
Why Do India's Dalits Hate Gandhi?
By Thomas C. Mountain
As Dalits organize themselves and begin to challenge caste based rule in India, it behooves all people of good conscience to start to find out what the Dalits and their leadership are fighting for. A good place to start is with M.K. Gandhi and why he is so hated by Dalits in India
02 March, 2006
Re-reading Periyar
By Ravikumar
There are many appelations attached to Periyar, the main one being the saviour of the Untouchables. But instead of debating whether we should accept 'their god' as 'our god', the question is whether Periyar deserves to be regarded as the saviour of the untouchables?
15 February, 2006
Exposing An Abhorrent Practice
By S Viswanathan
Review of "India Stinking: Manual Scavengers in Andhra Pradesh and their work" By Gita Ramaswamy published by Navayana
30 January, 2006
Dawn Of Dalit?
By Ashok K Singh
A three-day seminar held recently to debate and deliberate on introducing Dalit Studies in universities provided fascinating insights into the space this emerging but exciting area of research could occupy in higher education
08 December, 2005
Salam Bhimrao!
By Goldy M. George
The only way to salute Bhimrao is by truly standing against oppressive structure, for equality and justice
31 October, 2005
Stranger In Their Own Land
By V.B.Rawat
150 kilometer away from Vishakapattanam towards Orissa in the Akru Valley and Anantgiri Mandal areas, Malaria has emerged as a major epidemic killing about 2000 people in two months
25 October, 2005
Untouchability In A Flat World
By Kancha Ilaiah
My visit to the famous Wheaton College in Chicago to deliver two lectures on caste and untouchability was an eye-opening experience. It struck me how students remained ignorant of the world around them even in a globalised world. It is an alarming thought that these are the future citizens of the world
05 October, 2005
Ali Anwar's Struggle
By Ali Anwar &Yoginder Sikand
Ali Anwar is the founder of the Pasmanda Muslim Mahaz ('Marginalised Muslim Front'), Patna, Bihar, a union of several Dalit Muslim and Backward Caste Muslim organisations. In this interview with Yoginder Sikand, he talks about his involvement in the struggle for the rights of the Backward Caste/Dalit Muslims
30 September, 2005
Ilayaperumal: A Dalit In The Congress
By Ravikumar
An important Dalit leader L Elayaperumal died at the age of 82 on September 9 in Chidambaram, Tamil Nadu. What BP Mandal did for the OBC-shudras, Elayaperumal did for the Dalits way back in 1969. However, given that Elayaperumal was a Dalit in the Congress, his report was never implemented
28 September, 2005
Iyothee Thass & The Politics Of Naming
By Ravikumar
Today, even uttering the name of Iyothee Thass in the Tamil public sphere has become an act of a rebellion. The Dravidian parties, communists and Tamil nationalists - nobody has any regard for Thass. No wonder his name has been dropped from the National Center for Siddha Research. This is an insult not just to Dalits but Tamils as such
27 September, 2005
A New Order For Today
By Chandrabhan Prasad
Strange as this might sound, several constituents of Indian society are turning abnormal. Unnoticed by sociologists, this exceptional phenomenon is taking place on a mass scale
23 September, 2005
Dalits In Pakistan
Book Review By Yoginder Sikand
Caste, the scourge of Hinduism, is so deeply entrenched in Indian society that it has not left the adherents of Islam, Sikhism, Christianity and Buddhism-theoretically egalitarian religions-unaffected. So firmly rooted is the cancer of caste in the region that it survives and thrives in neighbouring Pakistan, where over 95% of the population are Muslims
10 September, 2005
Guilty Of Gohana- In Search Of The Real Perpetrators
By Subhash Gatade
On 31 st August the town of Gohana witnessed burning of 50-60 houses belonging to Valmiki community in broad daylight. As it has been reported in the media a 1,500-2,000 strong of mob of upper caste people mainly belonging to the Jat community attacked their houses in a systematic manner
04 September, 2005
The Brahmanic Conspiracy
By Revd. Barnabas Alexander & Dr. Kristoffson Somanader
Cultural/spiritual corruption came via the Brahmins as they conspired to enslave the Tamils, inter alios, politically, intellectually, and spiritually
Buddha, The Feminist
By Chandrabhan Prasad
According to a UNICEF study conducted in 1984 in Mumbai, out of 8,000 sex determination cases, where fetuses were terminated, 7,999 were of females. According to another study, in Jaipur alone, about 3,500 female fetuses are terminated annually
23 August, 2005
Dalit Situation In Tamil Nadu
By K. Nagaraj
Painstaking chronicle of the deprivations, discriminations and atrocities faced by the Dalits in Tamil Nadu
17 August, 2005
Let's Talk Representation
If Reservation Is Against Merit
By V.B.Rawat
The supreme court verdict on the issue of unaided minority institution gives a freehand to the people who have always wanted the education to be the domain a few people and communities. Unfortunately, these institutions serving in the name of minorities will end up creating more brahmins for our country. The very purpose of educating poor andminorities gets defeated
11 August, 2005
Reservations In Private Sector:Not A Charity,
But A Social Necessity
By Dr. K. Vidyasagar Reddy
This concept of private reservation cannot be considered as charity, but a right from a government that exposed its hollowness. Further, it is a necessity as the government failed to create jobs to its qualified aspirants
09 August, 2005
Dalit movement At The Cross Road
By V.B.Rawat
It is time for us to provide our own democratic secular progressive vision and rather then just work on an agitation mode forever. We need to introspect and bring the last man into our mainstream, otherwise these contradiction are powerful enough to destroy the legacy of a powerful man, named as Ambedkar
23 July, 2005
Reservations- By Merit or birth?
By Vimlaksh Gautam
The caste Hindus have to realise that reservation is a direct result of our unkind past and it will take some adjustment and understanding on their behalf when the SC/ST's feel confident enough to pursue their progress without any state help
03 June, 2005
Cultural History And Emergent Dalit Alternatives
By Goldy M. George
Dalit's search for alternative media is in fact the search for a counter-culture, that will stand as a paradigm to protect human existence; re-write history and evolve a new culture of love and caring
02 June, 2005
Education For Wealth Creation
By Chandrabhan Prasad
Around 30 million Dalit and Adivasi children are enrolled in thousands of primary schools. Out of them, 49.35 per cent drop out before joining junior high school
22 May, 2005
Muslim-Dalit Relations
By Gail Omvedt
A solid Dalit-Muslim alliance for the future should be directed to building a prosperous, equalitarian, caste- and patriarchy-freeIndia
27 April, 2005
The Question Of Dalit Human Rights
By Goldy M. George
The question of Dalit Human Right is not just a matter of addressing the atrocities, but at large it corroborates to the affirmation of land rights of Dalits, resisting the forces of globalisation, communalism, casteism, patriarchy and so on. This paves the way for collective action
23 April, 2005
A President To Be Proud Of
By Mari Marcel Thekaekara
Interviewing the former President of India, K.R. Narayanan, was an experience. One wanted his personal story to be incorporated into the school syllabus, for Dalit children to have a role model. So that they would be able to dream dreams beyond buckets and brooms...
19 April, 2005
Display Dalit Power
By Chandrabhan Prasad
Compared to the American Blacks, the Dalits have nothing but small grocery shops or manufacturing units here and there which don't find any mention even in the community's media
12 April, 2005
Growing Discontent Of Adivasis In Assam
By Kirti Mishra
Across Assam, the Adivasis face multiple deprivations which have their root in the historic exclusion and denial of tribal status to the community
22 March, 2005
No Land Even For Burial
By C.K Janu ,Jaison Chacko & Subhash Gatade
"Adivasis are the real owners of land. Our lands were snatched away from us. None of the governments came into power in the state took any serious initiative to provide this land back to these real owners." An interview with C.K. Janu, leader of the indigenous people of Kerala
10 March, 2005
Sustaining The Mutuality Of Life
By Goldy M George
An enquiry into the sustainable life style practices of the dalit and tribal population in the Indian state of Chattisgarh
06 March, 2005
From Manu To Manav
By Chandrabhan Prasad
There is a conflict brewing between the OBCs and the Dalit in North India. But will it lead it to a historic alliance between Brahmins and Dalits, asks Chandrabhan Prasad
http://www.countercurrents.org/dalit.htm
30 April, 2010
U.P. Tops In Encounter Killings
And Custodial Deaths
By S.R.Darapuri
This State has won the notoriety of killing the maximum number of suspects in police encounters for the last many years. As per the statistics available during 2006, out of a total of 122 encounters for whole of India, U.P. had the figure of 82. In 2007 out of a total of 95 for whole of India, U.P. had 50 % i.e. 48. In 2008 as against 103 for whole of India U.P. had reached a figure of 41 and in 2009, U.P. attained a figure of 83 which puts the state on the top in encounter killings
16 April, 2010
Daniel McGowan
By Robert Meeropol
Daniel McGowan is one of more than a dozen "green scare defendants" now serving time in Federal prison. During the 1990's several groups of young, militant environmental and animal rights activists engaged in property destruction actions such as burning SUV's or destroying a horse slaughterhouse. After the passage of the USA PATRIOT Act, and more recently, the Animal Enterprise Terrorism Act, federal prosecutors have been arresting those supposedly involved, treating them as domestic terrorists even though no people or animals were killed or even injured in any of their actions, and imposing long prison sentences upon them
03 April, 2010
China's Documentation Of US Human Rights Abuses
By Stephen Lendman
China's is accurate and revealing. It could have included more, but presents a disturbing account of the real America, not the fictional one portrayed daily on TV screens, films, major publication accounts, what's taught in schools or preached in houses of worship - a sanitized version of what growing millions experience daily and what Blacks, the poor, Muslims, Latino immigrants, and Native Americans have known all their lives as well as America's global victims
16 March, 2010
America's Secret Prisons
By Stephen Lendman
Besides Guantanamo, Afghanistan and Iraq, UN Human Rights Council said the CIA runs scores of offshore secret prisons in over 66 countries worldwide for dissidents and alleged terrorists - in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, Morocco, Syria, Libya, Tunisia, India, Pakistan, Russia, Uzbekistan, Sudan, Zimbabwe, Ethopia, Djibouti, Kenya, Poland, Romania, Bosnia, Kosovo, Thailand, Diego Garcia, and elsewhere
09 March, 2010
Human Rights Learning
By Shulamith Koenig
For all to know human rights as a way of life
06 March, 2010
In This Country Of Cant----10, 000 Dead
Do Not Count
By Trevor Selvam
Forget all the recent incidents in Dantewada of babies' fingers being chopped off, mass rapes by the CRP and Salwa Judum, chopping off the breasts off 80 year old adivasi women, shooting up or arresting women who have dared to launch court cases against the police for the disappeared (Sodi Sambo). Teflon PCC! let us now talk about the over 10,000 Naxalites who were killed since 1967 to 1990. Was that violence or were those benign accidents? Is there some lawyer in India who will take up the case of the violence of the Indian State since 1967?
Holocaust Denial re Armenian Genocide And
Ongoing Palestinian, Iraqi And Afghan Genocides
By Dr Gideon Polya
The Foreign Affairs Committee of the US Congress House of Representatives has just voted 23 to 22 on Resolution 252 that recognizes the 1915-1923 Armenian Genocide as a genocide. The 23-22 vote enables the measure to go to the full House of Representatives - if the House leadership decides to bring it up. Turkey subsequently withdrew its ambassador to the US and the Obama Administration attacked the vote, Secretary of State Clinton declaring : "The Obama administration strongly opposes the resolution that was passed by only one vote by the House committee and will work very hard to make sure it does not go to the House floor
03 March, 2010
Shaker Aamer: Guantanamo's Last British Detainee
By Robert Verkaik
He was supposed to return to Britain in 2007 – but Shaker Aamer is still being held inside Camp Delta. Who is this charismatic prisoner? And what happened to him at the hands of MI5?
Habeas Challenges For Bagram Prisoners
By William Fisher
Four men who have been imprisoned for over a year – some for almost two years – are going to U.S. federal court to challenge their detention at the notorious Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan
02 March, 2010
African Americans Have Seven Times
Greater Chance Of Imprisonment
By Sherwood Ross
Many factors contribute to the incarceration today of more blacks than whites even though blacks make up just 13 percent of the U.S. population. For example, of nearly 250,000 state inmates serving time for drug offenses in 2004, 113,000 (or 45%) were blacks compared to 66,000, (or 26%) whites and 52,000, (or 21%) Hispanics
28 February, 2010
The Monoculture Of 'Human Rights'
By Satya Sagar
The standards of human rights should in fact be seen as being like the ethics of the medical profession. Just as no ethical doctor can refuse to treat a patient because of his own or his patient's personal political beliefs so is the civil or human rights activist duty bound to oppose all rights violations irrespective of who its victims are or who commits them. This is the minimum standard that has to be established- defending the fundamental human rights of even your political opponents if necessary
27 February, 2010
Abuse Of Immigrant Workers In South Korea
By Ben McGrath
An Amnesty International report, entitled "Disposable labour: Rights of migrant workers in South Korea," documents the abhorrent working conditions that immigrants face. The study, released last October, clearly establishes that while South Korea was one of the first Asian countries to formally recognise the rights of foreign migrant workers, its Employment Permit System (EPS) does nothing more than legitimise the brutal exploitation of cheap labour from poorer countries
25 February, 2010
Global Sweatshop Wage Slavery
By Stephen Lendman
In today's globalized economy, capital is highly mobile, free to go anywhere for the highest return by fleeing locales with high taxes, strict labor laws, or rigorous environmental protections yielding lower profits by raising costs, the main one being labor that's easy to get cheap in developing states eager to grow and needing to new businesses do it. The result is a race to the bottom
22 February, 2010
The Battle Of Ideas, Part 1;
Private Property vs. The Commons
By Tom Stephens
The vicious circle of private property destroying human rights and the commons is becoming clearer all the time, as their system collapses and fails to deliver
16 February, 2010
Meet Maryam Ruhullah: A Victim Of MK-ULTRA
By Stephen Lendman
MK-ULTRA was the code name for a secret CIA mind control program, begun in 1953, under Director Allen Dulles. Maryam Ruhullah explains the torture she experienced as a victim of MK-ULTRA experimentation
28 January, 2010
There Is No Constitution In Chhattisgarh Anymore
By Harsh Dobhal
Anybody can be picked up, branded as Maoist and jailed, beaten up, smashed, charged with dubious cases, ordinary people are killed, tribal women get raped and assaulted, no peaceful protests are allowed, journalists, academics and filmmakers are followed, terrorised and not allowed to go inside villages, a general reign of fear stalks this poverty-stricken landscape
27 January, 2010
The Constitution Of India As A Tool Of Resistance
By Bobby Kunhu
It has become important to read the history of the Constitution of India as being rooted in the Poona Pact, re-appropriate the Constitution of India as a document representing the aspirations of marginalized communities, be it Dalits, Adivasis, religious or sexuality minorities, women or whomsoever and use it as a tool of resistance against subversions by State and non- State actors!
11 January, 2010
The Horror State Of Chhattisgarh
By Nandini Sundar
Ujjwal Kumar Singh, Professor of Political Science, Delhi University and Nandini Sundar have just returned (January 1st) from a visit to the police state of Chhattisgarh. A firsthand account from the belly of the beast
The Jan Sunwai That Never Was :
Listen To The Voices From Chhattisgarh!
By Peoples Union for Democratic Rights
In Dantewada a team of around 30 activists from NAPM and other organizations, Medha Patkar and Sandeep Pandey among them, were heckled, pelted with eggs and sewage and attacked by a large gang of tribal youth, accusing them of being Maoist sympathizers on Saturday
India's Inhuman Gunmen
By Gladson Dungdung
When the people of the entire world were greeting to each other, bursting crackers and enjoying delicious food on the occasion of the new year 2010, the police of Chhatarpur, Town and Sadar police stations of Palamu district, (which is the most Maoist infested area according to the government and the media reports) in Jharkhand, were engaged in humiliating, torturing and beating to death Rajendra Yadav of Telaria village (Chhatarpur) alleging him as a Naxalite
19 December, 2009
Plight Of The Stranded Pakistanis In Bangladesh
By Abdus Sattar Ghazali
December 16 marks the 38th anniversary of the breakup of Pakistan when the Eastern wing of the country emerged as Bangladesh after an India-backed secessionist movement. The occasion calls for highlighting the plight of about 250,000 so-called Biharis or stranded Pakistanis still languishing in unsanitary camps in Bangladesh
Kevin Cooper - Victimized By American Injustice
By Stephen Lendman
On November 30, the US Supreme Court denied Kevin Cooper justice by not reviewing his wrongful murder conviction despite overwhelming evidence of his innocence. Cooper is Black and was framed for a multiple homicide he never committed. He's imprisoned on death row at San Quentin State Prison, Marin County, CA, a victim of American injustice
17 December, 2009
Targeting Lawyers: The Case Of Paul Bergrin
By Stephen Lendman
"My life is in crisis and I don't know where to turn....I really attempted to treat these soldiers and defend them like they were my own children." For that and threatening the powerful, Bergrin faces a possible life sentence if convicted in his 2010 trial. Until then, he's imprisoned without bail under a system rewarding high crimes while targeting lawyers who try to expose them
16 December, 2009
Justice For Mumia Abu-Jamal
By Mary Shaw
Rights groups call for Justice Department probe into Mumia Abu-Jamal case
Alban Toppo Describes His Illegal Detention
By Alban Toppo
Note from Alban Toppo, Advocate, Human Rights Law Network
13 December, 2009
The Curious Case Of Vikram Buddhi
By Dr. Shah Alam Khan
On December 11, 2009 Vikram Buddhi was handed a four years nine months prison sentence. So much for posting hate messages against the then President George W Bush and his team of gangsters. I suppose if this was his crime, then at least half the world's population would be behind bars! We all know how popular the butcher of Baghdad was
08 December, 2009
Apology To The Native American Indians
By Dr. Mary Hamer, M.D
This essay is an Apology to the Native American Indians for 500+ years of domination, oppression & genocide by invading, occupying & colonizing people & governments – for a time span extending from Columbus' discovery of America in 1492 up until the present day
06 December, 2009
Democracy Encountered:Rights Violations
In Manipur
By Fact Finding Team
Independent citizen's fact finding report to the nation
25 November, 2009
Everyone Should Be Aware Of Their
Inalienable Human Rights
By Shulamith Koenig
Allow me humbly to ask you to walk with me into this discourse about human rights as a way of life, slowly and thoughtfully. Let us bring a new expansive meaning to this overarching holistic vision and practical mission through learning and dialogue
11 November, 2009
Lynne Stewart: Heroic Human Rights Lawyer Jailed
By Stephen Lendman
The situation remains fluid, dire, and complicated by Stewart's battle with breast cancer. She has surgery scheduled for December 7, unlikely now, but if done in prison or where authorities direct, it won't be the quality she deserves
10 October, 2009
Remembering Balagopal:
A Fearless People's Advocate
By Mahtab Alam
Prof. K. Balagopal, who was at the forefront of the human, civil and democratic rights' movements throughout the country especially Andhra Pradesh for over a quarter of a century left this world on 8th October late night following a heart attack. He was selfless intellectual, tireless human rights' defender, fearless People's advocate and a great human being
09 October, 2009
Why Human Rights Groups Targeted?
By Gladson Dungdung
The Union Home Minister P.Chidambaram even threatened to the Human Rights Groups by saying that the Human Rights Groups have to choose, which side they are. He also questioned, "Why are human rights groups silent now when Naxals attack innocents?" However, he said, "Human rights groups need to speak more strongly against the Naxals."
23 September, 2009
Whether Human Rights Of Prisoners
Stand Suspended?
By Subhash Gatade
The letter sent by an undertrial Mukesh Kumar, as present lodged in Karnal Jail (Haryana) through his counsel to the Chief Justice of India makes depressing reading. The letter talks about the manner in which he was brutalised by the Jail staff for disobeying their orders. It is learnt that the Jail wardens compelled him to clean the toilets calling him names and 'reminding' him of his 'caste profession'. His refusal to continue the dehumanising work led to his public thrashing and tonsuring/shaving of his head and moustache
14 September, 2009
Encounters Are Murders
By Bernard D'Mello
The title of the Tarkunde report, Encounters Are Murders, needs reiteration in the present ambience of "cultivated ignorance" in the sphere of "governance" that brushes off extra-judicial killings as mere aberrations. That encounters are murders also needs restating in the context of the pathological, persistent mendacity in public life in India and the absurd claim of po-mos that each "narrative" is as true as the other
Honour Killings In Haryana
By Kavita Krishnan
Mahendra Singh Tikait's outrageous and offensive remarks once again raise the question: why do the khaap panchayats of Haryana and Western UP which open issue 'death sentences' for couples who defy their caste-diktats on love and marriage, enjoy impunity?
18 August, 2009
Indian Police: Broken System
By S.R Darapuri
The recently published Human Rights Watch report documents a range of human rights violations committed by police, including arbitrary arrest and detention, torture and extrajudicial killings. It documents the failings of state police forces that operate outside the law, lack sufficient ethical and professional standards, are overstretched and outmatched by criminal elements, and unable to cope with increasing demands and public expectations
04 August, 2009
Adivasis' Atruggle Against Displacement
In Jharkhand
By Gladson Dungdung
Jharkhand is witness of unending struggle for mineral resources as the state contains 40 percent of India's precious minerals like Uranium, Mica, Bauxite, Granite, Gold, Silver, Graphite, Magnetite, Dolomite, Fireclay, Quartz, Fieldspar, Coal, Iron and Copper. 102 MoUs have been signed for establishing steel factories, power plants and mining industries with the estimated investment of Rs 4,67,240 crore, which require approximately 200,000 acres of land, which directly means the displacement of approximately 1 million people
03 August, 2009
Your House, My House: Batla House
By Amit Sengupta
The eminent members of the NHRC should have visited the dingy bylanes of Batla House and Jamia Nagar next to the Jamia Millia University in Delhi soon after the encounter: the white fear of the Special Cell of the Delhi Police was as visible as colour white, as cold and as cutting as ice, you could slash it with a knife and find its cold edges inside the skin and eyes. So intense was the fear
23 July, 2009
Citizens Statement On The NHRC Clean Chit
To Special Cell On Batla House
By Concerned Citzens
Statement on the NHRC report on the alleged encounter at Batla house
17 July, 2009
Unratified India And Tortured People
By NM Salih
In the wake June 26, which marked the International Day against torture, the Asian Centre for Human Rights released a report named 'Torture in India 2009', compiling the true facts of ill-treated human rights in India. This report has zeroed in on custodial tortures especially by the police, armed forces and armed opposition groups etc. It reveals several accounts of atrocities by the so called law enforcement officers from all over India. The panoptic narrative of deaths in the police custody with detailed state wise account of such incidents rules the roost in this report
09 July, 2009
A Tale Of Two Encounters:
Dehradun And Batla House
By Manish Sethi & Adeel Mehdi
Jamia Teachers' Solidarity Group reiterates its demand for a judicial probe into the Batla House incident, and the application of the same standards of justice for Atif and Sajid as those applied in the unfortunate and tragic case of Ranbir Singh
Child Labour-A Hindrance In Development
By Divya Bhargava
Child Labour is not only a hindrance in child's development but also a hindrance in nation's development. Children are universally recognized as the most important asset of any nation and child Labour, in the recent past, has evoked a great concern among all. Children have been the main focus of attention especially after proclaiming the year 1979 as the International Year of the Child by the United Nation's General Assembly
15 June, 2009
New UN Report Denounces America's
Human Rights Record
By Stephen Lendman
On May 26, the UN Human Rights Council issued a report titled "Promotion and Protection of All Human Rights, Civil, Political, Economic, Social and Cultural Rights, Including the Right to Development - Report of the Special Rapporteur (Philip Alston) on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions." Alston was damning in his criticism regarding "three areas in which significant improvement is necessary if the US Government is to match its actions to its stated commitment to human rights and the rule of law:"
03 June, 2009
Democratic Space- What Is That?
By Dr. Shah Alam Khan
As if the Chhattisgarh government was not good enough to rain destruction on a soul like Dr Binayak Sen, we now have the Madhya Pradesh government arrest Mrs. Shamim Modi, a social activist and a law graduate working among the tribals in Betul district of the state. Geographically they seem to be different states with different issues; the fact that they are ruled by the same party is uncanny. What is even more interesting is the fact that both Dr Sen and Mrs Modi were involved in raising issues of the local people; their health, their employment and very importantly their environment
30 May, 2009
Draconian Laws, Delete Them
By Dr. Mookhi Amir Ali
If the legal fraternity and the Delhi High Court Bar Association can stop this amendment to Section 41 of the Criminal Procedure Act from being notified why can they not protest against the anti-people draconian laws being enacted or being misused? Why can we not revise our books to get rid of laws which violate human rights and right to liberty?
25 May, 2009
Binayak Sen Released On Bail
By Bobby Ramakant
Bail was granted to the paediatrician Dr Binayak Sen who was jailed in Raipur prison since more than two years now, on alleged false charges of abetting maoist activities in Chattisgarh, sedition and waging war against the state
04 May, 2009
A Moralistic Doublespeak Of Man Mohan Singh
By Anand Teltumbde
Binayak Sen's case ought to nibble at our national conscience for long time to come!
29 April, 2009
Binayak Sen: Prisoner of Conscience
By Anand Patwardhan
May 14 this year will mark an ignominious date for Indian democracy the start of the third straight year of Binayak Sen's incarceration in a Chhattisgarh jail. I wonder if there are words left to describe this travesty. What is left to say that has not been said?
23 April, 2009
Dr. Binayak Sen Is In Danger
By Ilina Sen
lina Sen's SOS Message on Conspiracy by Chhattisgarh Administration
22 April, 2009
Lies And Torture - When Policies
And Words Diverge
By Emily Spence
If American government leaders cannot uphold the law and universally apply it across the board, then all of the underlying principles of our nation's founding fathers, our justice system, itself, and the ethical underpinnings that make our country truly great are without value. They are merely empty platitudes and nothing more
21 April, 2009
Roxana Saberi And Vikram Buddhi –
Compel A Comparison
By Dr. Buddhi Kotasubbarao
A comparison of the case of 31 year old Iranian-American journalist Ms. Roxana Saberi sentenced by Iranian Court and the case of 37 year old Indian Graduate Student of Purdue University Mr. Vikram Buddhi awaiting sentencing after a helpless jury found him guilty in US District Court, has much to show the entrenched preferences of the United States of America
05 April, 2009
Towards The Second Year Of Mockery
By Jhuma Sen
A month to go and India will again show that the cost of dissent a peaceful man pays in this country is a detention for two years on fictitious grounds. Binayak Sen is held in prison inspite of international pressure for his release
02 April, 2009
Bring On The Misery!
By Charukesi Ramadurai
Article on a recent photoessay that was published in the Washington Post documenting the procedure of female genital mutilation of a 7 year old in Kurdish Iraq - the article questions the photographer's (and publication's) insensitivity to the victim by revealing her name and face in the essay
25 March, 2009
Human Rights Evicted
By Jhuma Sen
A Review of the UDHR: From in'adequate' Housing to Forced Evictions and the Myth of Adequate Housing in India
18 March, 2009
Treatment Of Imprisoned Muslims At Terre Haute's
Communications Management Unit (CMU)
By Stephen Lendman
In February 2007, it was learned that Washington had a secret new facility for so-called "high-security risk" Muslim and Middle Eastern prisoners in violation of federal law that prohibits severely limiting or cutting them off entirely from other inmates as well as outside contacts and communications. Segregating prisoners by race, national origin, or language violates the Supreme Court's February 2005 decision in Johnson v. California that affirmed 14th Amendment protection against racial discrimination. Specifically, the Court
07 March, 2009
Exposing Human Rights Violations In Pakistan
By Q. Isa Daudpota
Brave women such as Mukhtar Mai and Minallah backed by women's organizations such as Women's Action Forum, work to highlight and undue the prejudices and help outdated and diabolical customs. PPP women such as Sherry Rahman, Shahnaz Wazir Ali, Shazia Marri, Sassui Palejo, Farzana Raja and, ace-researcher on Karo Kari, Nafisa Shah must speak out in the public forums against guilty fellow legislators and ministers. They have seriously violated the human rights and particularly that of women. To date, however, their silence is deafening
06 March, 2009
Modern Slavery In America
By Stephen Lendman
Called human trafficking or forced labor, modern slavery thrives in America, largely below the radar
11 February, 2009
Children Of A Lesser God?
Abandoned And Stricken Too!
By Anjali Singh
In the first ever incident of its kind the state of Uttar Pradesh is struggling with its growing disabled population. As grim as that sounds the fact remains that a single seven year old blind and deaf destitute child has become a huge challenge for not only the government of UP but its citizen's at large as well
31 Janurary, 2009
Manichean Echoes: Terrorists As Sub-Human
By Binu Karunakaran
The opinion expressed recently by one of the senior judges in the Supreme Court of India, shows that the judiciary too has started to feel the pressure imposed by politicians who feed the rhetoric on terror as a means to garner votes and a society that feels terrorised in the absence of security. Such thoughts render the concept of fair trial invalid. The fact that such a statement came from top echelons of our judiciary means that list of worries of India's civil society is a growing list
02 Janurary, 2009
India Sleepwalks To Total Surveillance
By Binu Karunakaran
The Information Technology (Amendment) Bill, 2006 passed by the Indian Parliament recently allows the government to intercept messages from mobile phones, computers and other communication devices to investigate any offence. Not just cognizable offence, the kind you witnessed in Mumbai 26/11, but any offence. Any email you send, any message you text are now open to the prying eyes of the government. So are the contents of your computer you surfed in the privacy of your home
20 December, 2008
India's New Terror Law Shows Old Genes
By Binu Karunakaran
The 2008 amendments made to UAPA show that several POTA genes have been transplanted. Clauses added to section 43 of the Principal act now blatantly asks the courts 'to presume, unless the contrary is shown, that the accused has committed such offence' if evidence suggesting the involvement of the accused has been found at the site
Our Politicians Are Still Not Listening
By Colin Gonsalves
In a knee-jerk reaction to the Mumbai terror attacks, Government of India proposes to enact The Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Amendment Act, 2008. Under section 15, the prosecution is to be granted upto 180 days to file a chargesheet (it is a 90 day limit today after which the accused is granted bail mandatorily), the provisions for bail are stricter, and if arms or explosives are proved to be recovered from the accused, then the court is entitled to presume that the accused has committed a terrorist act
India's New Anti-Terror Laws Draconian
Say Activists
By Praful Bidwai
Following the late November terror attacks in Mumbai, India has passed two tough laws being seen by rights activists as potentially eroding the country's federal structure and limiting fundamental liberties
Amnesty International Criticises
India's New Terror Laws
By Amnesty International
India's New Anti-terror Laws Would Violate International Human Rights Standards
01 December, 2008
Hospitals or Hell?
By V. Sasi Kumar & Sundar Ramanathaiyer
Mental hospitals in India are very much like hell. No one
seems to be bothered about what happens there. People, even journalists, are not allowed to visit the wards. Very little news comes out of their prison-like campuses. Once in a while we even hear reports of rape and sodomy. Becoming a mental patient is often worse than death
28 November, 2008
Sri Lanka: Human Rights Situation
Deteriorating In The East
By Human Rights Watch
Many abuses in the Eastern Province appear to have been carried out by armed elements of the Tamil Makkal Vidulthalai Pulikal (TMVP). The TMVP was originally the political wing of the armed faction earlier known as the Karuna group. It enjoys the strong backing of the government of President Mahinda Rajapakse
03 November, 2008
Humanrights Defenders
As Petty Swindlers: It's All Maya!
By Subhash Gatade
It has been more than one and half year that 'Dalit ke Beti' Maya rode to power in the state promising end to 'goondaism' of the earlier regime. Little could people have the premonition that under the new dispensation the police itself would become another 'synonym for terror'
30 October, 2008
Repression Escalates: Reporter Pedro Matías
Kidnapped And Tortured In Oaxaca
By Scott Campbell
Pedro Matías, a well-known reporter who writes for Noticias, a local daily paper, as well as the national weekly Proceso, was kidnapped, beaten, tortured and robbed on Saturday night in Oaxaca
29 October, 2008
Targeting Dissent: The San Francisco Eight
By Stephen Lendman
Support the San Francisco Eight. Demand their exoneration and release. Their struggle is ours
26 October, 2008
Can Georgia Do Right?
By David Morse
Is the legal system of the state of Georgia up to the task – when the task is to rectify the flawed trial of a black man accused of killing a white police officer? The world is waiting to see if justice can prevail. Fortunately, on Friday, October 24, the U.S. Court of Appeals for Georgia's 11th Circuit issued a stay of execution that narrowly prevented accused cop killer Troy Davis from being put to death by lethal injection the following Monday
24 October, 2008
Seyed Mousavi: Guilty Of Being Muslim
In Police State America
By Stephen Lendman
In a climate of fear, Muslims risk harassment, prosecution and incarceration. Especially prominent ones like Mousavi. His defense will appeal and seek exoneration at the appellate court level. For now, he's incarcerated and subjected to dehumanizing treatment. For being Muslim in America at the wrong time. Only his inner strength sustains him. And the love and admiration of his family, friends and supporters. In today's disturbing climate, we're all Seyed Mousavis
20 October, 2008
Case Of Shahbaz Ahmed Arrested In connection
With Serial Bomb Blasts In Jaipur
By PUCL-PUHR
A PUCL-PUHR fact finding report on accused in Serial Bomb Blasts In Jaipur
08 October, 2008
Justice For Yemini Sheik
By Stephen Lendman
This time is different for Yemini Sheik Mohammed Ali Hassan Al-Moayad and his assistant Mohammed Mohsen Yahya Zayed. On October 2, the 2nd US Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously reversed their unjustifiable convictions. More on that below
22 September, 2008
US Backed Arroyo Regime Terrorizes
Media And Artists In The Philippines
By E. San Juan Jr.
Patronized by the war-mongering Bush administration, the corrupt militarist Arroyo regime in the Philippines continues its systematic repression of journalists, writers and media personnel to preserve its brutal oppression of millions of workers, peasants, women, and professionals
19 September, 2008
India's Terror Laws: Fighting Terror
The Terrorist Way
By Badri Raina
And those questions are not being asked just by India's Muslims; they are also being asked by India's Christians, Dalits, women, forest-dwelling tribals, disenfranchised oustees, landless farm labour, ethnic minorities. They are in the eyes of the hundreds of thousands of children who suffer malnutrition, abuse, denial of education, and whose lives expire prematurely from labour and disease. They are being asked, in short, by some 77% Indians who spend less than fifty cents a day
09 September, 2008
An Encounter With The Terror Police
By Sandeep Pandey
An eyewitness account of what happened when the police came to search the house of a terror suspect in Lucknow, and the high handed action that followed
29 August, 2008
Warriors Against The State
By Harsh Mander
It is alleged by the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh that Lateef Mohammed Khan is what the local police like to describe as a "jehadi" terrorist. Ajay T.G. is accused by the BJP government of Chhatisgarh of abetting Maoist Naxalite insurgency. There is much that these two men share in common. They both come from relatively modest backgrounds. Unsung and relatively unknown, in quiet ways they have effectively strived fearlessly and with passion to find ways to work for what they believe to be justice, using the law of the land and constructive social resistance
26 August, 2008
Dr Binayak Sen, My Brother, Our Hero
By Dipankar Sen
Twenty two Nobel Laureates pleaded for him in an appeal to the Prime Minister of India. He was given the highest American medical award, honours by medical colleges and doctors in recognition of his protracted work for the poor in remote interiors. And yet, he is condemned in jail on fabricated charges by the BJP government in Chhattisgarh. Dr Binayak Sen's younger brother arrives from Belgium to seek justice for his Dada, and discovers a saga of pain and injustice
07 August, 2008
Australian Federal Intervention In
Indigenous Communities In The Northern Territory
By Chris Wilson
My time over the last six weeks has enabled me to see some of the effects of the Intervention and while I have to agree that there are some positive effects, there are huge problems and structural issues that have been completely ignored and many others that have been created as a result
04 August, 2008
Why Is Habeas Corpus Such A Threat
To Those In Power?
By Maher Osseiran
Why is the Supreme Court's decision to uphold habeas corpus rights for the Guantanamo detainees so scary that Senator Lindsey Graham, with the support of McCain, will "explore the possibility, if necessary, of a constitutional amendment to blunt the effect of this decision"? What is so fundamentally wrong with the Supreme Court's decision, whose members are conservative or Bush appointees, to warrant amending our constitution? Have Senators Graham and McCain lost their minds?
18 June, 2008
Standing With The Poor Is A Crime
By Gladson Dungdung
Binayak Sen, Prof. Jean Dreze and Kirity Roy are paying the price for their passion, courage and extraordinary work for the poor
09 May, 2008
When Lawyers Masquerade As Judges
By Subhash Gatade
Ismail Jalagir, a senior counsel from Hubli (Karnataka) and Mohammad Shoaib, a senior advocate from Lucknow (U.P.) might not have heard about each other. But even their strongest critics would admit that they are made of the same mettle.If there are rewards meant for lawyers who are ready to go the extra mile to defend rigths granted to citizens under the constitution then both these worthy citizens of the country would be the first on the list
30 April, 2008
Governing Human Rights Violation
And Dr. Binayak Sen
By Arpita Banerjee
The unethical detention of Dr. Binayak Sen is one of the many glaring examples of state repression. On May 14th 2008, it will be one year since Dr. Sen was arrested under various sections of the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act, the Chhattisgarh Special Public Security Act and the Crimes Against the State Chapter of the Indian Penal Code. The Supreme Court of India has denied the bail petition, ironically on the International Human Rights Day on December 10, 2007
18 April, 2008
Updating Sami Al-Arian - His Ordeal Continues
By Stephen Lendman
The Tampa Bay Coalition for Justice supports Al-Arian proudly, it's backed him from the start, and it urges everyone of conscience to contact their elected officials, DOJ and DHS to demand that justice delayed him no longer be denied. His imprisonment term ended April 11, yet he remains confined. His plea bargain stipulated that his long ordeal end and that he be deported expeditiously
India: Rot In The prisons
By Colin Gonsalves
Applying even the most retrogressive standards, Indian prisoners are the pits — a level of perversity matched only by our pious, moralistic and sanctimonious preachings abroad. In the land of Gandhiji and non-violence, prisons remain depraved and brutish. Internally the prisoners rot
Who Would Wipe Professor Sanaullah Radoo's Tears?
By Subhash Gatade
Perhaps it is high time that the honourable Prime Minister is told that 'Dr Haneef' is not just the name of doctor who was wrongly apprehended in Australia rather it is another name for a phenomenon which is quite rampant in this part of the earth. And the case of Pervez Ahmad Radoo is one such important case which demands his immediate intervention. Such a move only can bring back the smile on Professor Sanaullah's face !
15 April, 2008
Tibet Exposes Genocidal
Australian Human Rights Abuses
By Dr Gideon Polya
Australia and other Western nations have been properly chiding China for human rights abuses in Tibet. However Australia has an appalling human rights record as assessed by the horrendous avoidable deaths of its domestic and overseas Indigenous subjects. Indeed White Australia's appalling and genocidal human rights record has prompted formal complaint to the ICC over Australia's involvement in ongoing Aboriginal, Iraqi, Afghan and Climate Genocides
29 March, 2008
Armed Together Against Civil Liberties
And Human Rights
By Wali Laskar
Although there is no indigenous Armed Opposition Group operating in Barak Valley, the southern part of the North Eastern state of Assam in India comprising of Cachar, Karimganj and Hailakandi districts with a population of about four million, has been notified as 'disturbed area' under the infamous Armed Forces (Special Power) Act, 1958
26 March, 2008
Sami Al-Arian's Long Ordeal
By Stephen Lendman
Sami Al-Arian is a political prisoner in Police State America. This article reviews his case briefly and updates it to the present
25 March, 2008
UN Scolds Washington For War On Migrants
By Cyril Mychalejko
The United Nations released a report this month scolding the United States for disregarding international law and violating the human rights of migrants
19 March, 2008
Human Rights Situation In Barak Valley In Assam
By Waliullah Ahmed Laskar
Some recent grave cases of violation of human rights perpetrated in the valley, which are documented by BHRPC, would drive home the points made above. So some of them are given below as samples
Uprooted, Abandoned
By Gladson Dungdung
Everything has changed in the last 60 years of independence in India but the unending pain of "displacement" has become as part and partial of the life of 50 years old Satish Kishku of Takkipur village, situated near Canada Dam widely known as Mayurakshi Dam of Dumka district in Jharkhand
04 March, 2008
Two African American Students Under Suspension
Over Chewing Gum!
By Kendra Perry
A teacher overheard Marcus speaking with another student, Stacy Guess (also a Black student), and him mentioning that he made money selling candy and that teacher notified the Principal, resulting in both students' suspension. Neither of the two students was caught selling anything on school grounds, nor were they found to be in possession of any candy or gum. Because of the implication of said action, the school felt it was necessary in suspending both children for 5 days off hearsay and speculation, and not the result of a particular action or inaction
27 February, 2008
To Hang Or Not To Hang?
By Bal Patil
In India death penalty is awarded in the rarest of the rare cases. As a protagonish of the abolition of capital punishment I would like to reproduce my comments in my article "To Hang or Not To Hang" published in The Illustrated Weekly of India, dated. 18.02.1979 which I venture to think are still relevant originally published about three decades back because judicial perspective or the lack of it has not changed over the course of three decades
21 February, 2008
Juno: Fact And Fiction
By Mirah Riben
The comedic fictional movie Juno has garnered praise, awards and nominations. It also created uproar among those of us for whom adoption is not a comedy, but our life
19 February, 2008
Australian Aboriginal Genocide Continues
Despite Historic Apology
By Dr Gideon Polya
PM Rudd's speech and Apology was largely confined to the Stolen Generations – indeed the word "Aboriginal Genocide" was NOT used even though what happened to the Indigenous Australians has been recognized as an Aboriginal Genocide
An Invisible Refuge
By Vinod K. Jose
Military excesses in Myanmar are forcing thousands of ethnic Chins to flee to Mizoram, but India won't accept them
12 February, 2008
How Neo-Liberalism Has Created
The World's Immigration Crisis
By Jerry D. Rose
We like to think, of course, that we are more "enlightened" than the religious fanatics who carried out the Salem witch trials. That remains to be seen, as he have yet to see whether an "enlightened" path can be found from witch-persecution to the recognition of the common humanity of the earth's peoples
15 January, 2008
Afghan Prison Looks Like Another Guantanamo
By William Fisher
It is a prison located on the U.S. military base at base in the ancient city of Bagram near Charikar in Parvan, Afghanistan. The detention centre was set up by the U.S. military as a temporary screening site after the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan overthrew the Taliban. It currently houses some 630 prisoners -- close to three times as many as are still held at Guantanamo
14 January, 2008
Face To Face With Munir Malik
By Baber Ayaz
We are publishing an interview with Munir Malik, the former president of the Pakistan Supreme Court Bar Association who was imprisoned and given drugs under the pretext of painkillers which caused him renal failure and liver damage, but who continues to be an inspiration for the movement for the independence of the judiciary and the rule of law in Pakistan
03 January, 2008
Advertisements Need To Respect Human Rights
By Anil Gulati
A TV advertisement concerning Happydent teeth whitening gum represented the worst case of human rights violation; the advertisement is still being run. May be it is a call to act
Right To Education At Crossroads In Jharkhand
By Gladson Dungdung
More than 4 lakh children are still engaged as child labourers in the state
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Posts
June 20th, 2009 at 10:19 am
Nandini Chandra has correctly analysed the issue. She has in fact succeeded in removing the "confusion" created by neoliberal intellectuals and CPM-type social democrats alike in a deliberate attempt to obfuscate the socio-political reality. Many thanks.
June 24th, 2009 at 1:54 pm
a razor-sharp indictment of the faults on all sides. But I keep reading conflicting reports about the success/failure of NREGA. Just last Sunday, The Hindu carried a big article on how it was successful, in part at least. Though I always tend to believe the negative opinion, I am not able to trust any report about this particular scheme. Perhaps I haven't read the correct one yet. Could anyone point out?
Nandini Chandra mentions the 'tendency towards pure abstraction' in her critique of the Maoists. V.S.Naipaul, in the 70s, talking to urban ex-naxals, noticed the same tendency. He read it as a symptom of a Hindu theological beliefs. My personal opinion is that Hindu theology does have the 'tendency towards pure abstraction', and clouds clear vision. It is a very powerful drug, this type of abstraction.
July 17th, 2009 at 11:45 pm
A brilliant piece on the socio-economic aspect of the Lalgarh resistace