COMMUNIST STUDY CIRCLE

Free download of Dr.B.R.Ambedkar books

2011-11-07T06:51:00.000-08:00

Since caste is at the heart of the problems within Hinduism, this is a classic statement of what to do about it.

A hard-hitting and eminently scholarly masterpiece that is a must read for a Hindu wishing to be a progressive and make Hinduism progressive. This is not a piece for those Hindus who are insecure in their Hinduism and become defensive immediately.

Dead Men Talking-Arundhati Roy

2011-10-14T05:07:00.000-07:00

David Barsamian

“I have worked on Chhattisgarh, the Gujarat pogrom, Narmada dams.... But it’s all about Kashmir. The official narrative must not be contested.”

Dead Men Talking

The Indian state can silence the living, not the voice of the silent

Arundhati Roy

On September 23, 2011, at about three in the morning, within hours of his arrival at the New Delhi airport, the US radio journalist David Barsamian was deported. This dangerous man, who produces independent, free-to-air programmes for public radio, has been visiting India for 40 years, doing dangerous things like learning Urdu and playing the sitar. He has published book-length interviews with Edward Said, Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Ejaz Ahmed and Tariq Ali. (He even makes an appearance as a young, bellbottom-wearing interviewer in Peter Wintonick’s documentary film on Noam Chomsky and Edward S. Herman’s Manufacturing Consent.) On his more recent trips to India he has done a series of radio interviews with activists, academics, filmmakers, journalists and writers (including myself). Barsamian’s work has taken him to Turkey, Iran, Syria, Lebanon and Pakistan. He has never been deported from any of these countries.

So why does the world’s largest democracy fear this lone, sitar-playing, Urdu-speaking, left-leaning radio producer? Here is how Barsamian himself explains it: “It’s all about Kashmir. I’ve done work on Jharkand, Chhattisgarh, West Bengal, Narmada dams, farmer suicides, the Gujarat pogrom and the Binayak Sen case. But it’s Kashmir that is at the heart of the Indian state’s concerns. The official narrative must not be contested.”

News reports about his deportation quoted official “sources” as saying that Barsamian had “violated his visa norms during his visit in 2009-10 by indulging in professional work while holding a tourist visa”. Visa norms in India are an interesting peephole into the government’s concerns and predilections. Taking cover under the shabby old banner of the War on Terror, the Union home ministry has decreed that scholars and academics invited for conferences or seminars require security clearance before they will be given visas. Corporate executives and businessmen do not. So somebody who wants to invest in a dam or build a steel plant or buy a bauxite mine is not considered a security hazard, whereas a scholar who might wish to participate in a seminar about, say displacement or communalism or rising malnutrition in a globalised economy, is. Foreign terrorists with bad intentions have probably guessed by now that they are better off wearing Prada suits and pretending they want to buy a mine than wearing old corduroys and saying they want to attend a seminar. (Some would argue that mine-buyers in Prada suits are the real terrorists.)

David Barsamian did not travel to India to buy a mine or to attend a conference. He just came to talk to people. The complaint against him, according to “official sources”, is that he had reported on events in Jammu and Kashmir during his last visit to India and that these reports were “not based on facts”. Remember Barsamian is not a reporter, he’s a man who has conversations with people, mostly dissidents, about the societies in which they live. Is it illegal for tourists to talk to people in the countries they visit? Would it be illegal for me to travel to the US or Europe and write about the people I met, even if my writing was “not based on facts”? Who decides which “facts” are correct and which are not? Would Barsamian have been deported if the conversations he recorded had been in praise of the impressive turnouts in Kashmir’s elections, instead of about what life is like in the densest military occupation in the world? (Six lakh actively deployed armed personnel for a population of 10 million people.) Or if they had been about the army’s rescue operations in the 2005 earthquake instead of about the massive unarmed uprisings that took place on three consecutive summers? (And which received no round-the-clock media attention, and no one thought to call “the Kashmir Spring”).

David Barsamian is not the first person to be deported over the Indian government’s sensitivities over Kashmir. Professor Richard Shapiro, an anthropologist from San Francisco, was deported from Delhi airport in November 2010 without being given any reason. Most of us believe it was the government’s way of punishing his partner, Angana Chatterji, a co-convenor of the International People’s Tribunal on Human Rights and Justice, which first brought international attention to the existence of unmarked mass graves in Kashmir. May Aquino, from the Asian Federation against Involuntary Disappearances (AFAD), Manila, was scheduled to visit Kashmir in September 2011. She was deported from the Delhi airport. Earlier this year, on May 28, the outspoken Indian democratic rights activist Gautam Navlakha was deported to Delhi from Srinagar airport. (Farooq Abdullah, the former chief minister of Kashmir, justified the deportation, saying that writers like Navlakha and myself had no business entering Kashmir, because “Kashmir is not for burning”—whatever that means.) Kashmir is in the process of being isolated, cut off from the outside world by two concentric rings of border patrols—in Delhi as well as Srinagar—as though it’s already a free country with its own visa regime. Within its borders, of course, it’s open season for the government and the army. The art of controlling Kashmiri journalists and ordinary people with a deadly combination of bribes, threats, blackmail and a whole spectrum of unutterable, carefully crafted cruelties has evolved into an art form.

Photograph by Reuters, From Outlook, October 10, 2011

Cacophony of the deceased

It’s insensitive of the unmarked graves to embarrass the Government of India just when India’s record is due for review before the UNHRC.

While the government goes about trying to silence the living, the dead have begun to speak up. It was insensitive of Barsamian to plan a trip to Kashmir just when the state human rights commission was finally shamed into officially acknowledging the existence of 2,700 unmarked graves from three districts in Kashmir. Reports of thousands of other graves are pouring in from other districts. It is insensitive of the unmarked graves to embarrass the Government of India just when India’s record is due for review before the UN Human Rights Council.

Apart from Dangerous David, who else is the world’s largest democracy afraid of? There’s young Lingaram Kodopi, an adivasi from Dantewada, who was arrested on September 9, 2011. The police say they caught him red-handed in a marketplace while he was handing over protection money from Essar, an iron ore mining company, to the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). His aunt Soni Sori says that he was picked up by plainclothes policemen in a white Bolero from his grandfather’s house in Palnar village. Now she’s on the run too. Interestingly, even by their own account, the police arrested Lingaram but allowed the Maoists to escape. This is only the latest in a series of bizarre, almost hallucinatory accusations they have made against Lingaram and then withdrawn. His real crime is that he’s the only journalist who speaks Gondi, the local language, and who knows how to negotiate the remote forest paths in Dantewada, Chhattisgarh, the other war zone in India from which no news must come.

Having signed over vast tracts of indigenous tribal homelands in central India to multinational mining and infrastructure corporations in a series of secret Memorandums of Understanding—in complete contravention of the law as well as the Constitution—the government has begun to flood the forests with hundreds of thousands of security forces. All resistance, armed as well as unarmed, has been branded ‘Maoist’. (In Kashmir, the preferred phrase is “jehadi elements”). As the civil war grows deadlier, hundreds of villages have been burnt to the ground. Thousands of adivasis have fled as refugees into neighbouring states. Hundreds of thousands are living terrified lives hiding in the forests. Paramilitary forces have laid siege to the forest. A network of police informers patrol village bazaars, making trips for essential provisions and medicines a nightmare for villagers. Untold numbers of nameless people are in jail, charged with sedition and waging war on the state, with no lawyers to defend them. Very little news comes out of those forests, and there are no body counts.

Photograph by Sanjay Rawat

Lingaram Kodopi

He was arrested while apparently handing protection money from Essar. His real crime: he knows Gondi as well as the forest paths in Dantewada.

So it’s not hard to see why young Lingaram Kodopi poses such a threat. Before he trained to become a journalist, he was a driver in Dantewada. In 2009, the police arrested him and confiscated his jeep. He was locked up in a small toilet for 40 days where he was pressurised to become a Special Police Officer (SPO) in the Salwa Judum, the government-sponsored vigilante army that was at the time tasked with forcing people to flee from their villages. (The Salwa Judum has since been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court.) The police released Lingaram after the Gandhian activist Himanshu Kumar filed a habeas corpus petition in court. But then the police arrested Lingaram’s old father and five other members of his family. They attacked his village and warned villagers not to shelter him. Eventually, Lingaram escaped to Delhi where friends and well-wishers got him admission into a journalism school. In April 2010, he travelled to Dantewada and escorted to Delhi the witnesses and victims of the barbarity of the Salwa Judum, the police and paramilitary forces, enabling them to give testimony at the Independent People’s Tribunal. (In his own testimony, Lingaram was sharply critical of the Maoists as well.)

That did not deter the Chhattisgarh police. On July 2, 2010, the senior Maoist leader, Comrade Azad, the official spokesperson for the Maoist Party, was captured and executed by the Andhra Pradesh police. Deputy Inspector General S.R.P. Kalluri of the Chhattisgarh police announced at a press conference that Lingaram Kodopi had been elected by the Maoist Party to take over Comrade Azad’s role. (It was like accusing a young schoolchild in 1936 Yenan of being Zhou-en-Lai.) The charge was met with such derision that the police had to withdraw it. They had also accused Lingaram of being the mastermind of a Maoist attack on a Congress legislator in Dantewada. But perhaps because they had already made themselves look so foolish and vindictive, they decided to bide their time.

Here stands, India’s ‘gravest’ threat

Paramilitary forces have laid siege to the forest. All resistance, armed or unarmed, has been branded ‘Maoist’. Entire villages are being burned.

Lingaram remained in Delhi, completed his course and received his diploma in journalism. In March 2011, paramilitary forces burned down three villages in Dantewada—Tadmetla, Timapuram and Morapalli. The Chhattisgarh government blamed the Maoists. The Supreme Court assigned the investigation to the Central Bureau of Investigation. Lingaram returned to Dantewada with a video camera and trekked from village to village documenting first-hand testimonies of the villagers who indicted the police. (You can see some of these on YouTube.) By doing this, he made himself one of the most wanted men in Dantewada. On September 9, the police finally got to him.

Lingaram has joined an impressive line-up of troublesome news-gatherers and disseminators in Chhattisgarh. Among the earliest to be silenced was the celebrated doctor Binayak Sen who first raised the alarm about the crimes of the Salwa Judum as far back as 2005. He was arrested in 2007, accused of being a Maoist and sentenced to life imprisonment. After years in prison, he is out on bail now. Several people followed Binayak Sen into prison—including Piyush Guha and the filmmaker Ajay T.G. Both have been accused of being Maoists. These arrests put a chill into the activist community in Chhattisgarh, but didn’t stop some of them from continuing to do what they were doing. Kopa Kunjam worked with Himanshu Kumar’s Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, doing exactly what Lingaram tried to do much later—travelling to remote villages, bringing out the news, and carefully documenting the horror that was unfolding. (He was my first guide into the forest villages of Dantewada.) Much of this documentation has made its way into legal cases that are proving to be a source of worry and discomfort to the Chhattisgarh government.

In May 2009, the Vanvasi Chetna Ashram, the last neutral shelter for journalists, writers and academics who were travelling to Dantewada, was demolished by the Chhattisgarh government. In December 2009, on Human Rights Day, Kopa was arrested. He was accused of colluding with the Maoists in the murder of one man and the kidnapping of another. The case against Kopa has begun to fall apart as the police witnesses, including the man who was kidnapped, have disowned the statements they purportedly made to the police. It doesn’t really matter, because in India we all know the process is the punishment. It will take years for Kopa to establish his innocence, by which time the administration hopes the arrest will have served its purpose. Many villagers who were encouraged by Kopa to file complaints against the police have been arrested too. Some are in jail. Others have been made to live in roadside camps manned by SPOs. That includes many women who committed the crime of being raped. Soon after Kopa’s arrest, Himanshu Kumar was hounded out of Dantewada. In September 2010, another adivasi activist, Kartam Joga, was arrested. His offence was to have filed a petition in the Supreme Court in 2007 about the rampant human rights abuses committed by the Salwa Judum. He is being accused of colluding with the Maoists in the April 2010 killing of 76 crpf personnel in Tadmetla. Kartam Joga is a member of the Communist Party of India (CPI) which has a tense, if not hostile relationship with the Maoists. Amnesty International has named him a Prisoner of Conscience.

Meanwhile, the arrests continue at a steady pace. A casual look at the First Information Reports (FIRs) filed by the police give a pretty clear idea of how the deadly business of Due Process works in Dantewada. The texts of many of the FIRs are exactly the same. The name of the accused, the date, the nature of the crime and the names of witnesses are simply inserted into the biscuit mould. There’s nobody to check. Most of those involved, prisoners as well as witnesses, cannot read or write.

In plain sight

A YouTube video grabs in which Kodopi records a villager’s testimony indicting the police in the burning of three Dantewada villages .

One day, in Dantewada too, the dead will begin to speak. And it will not just be dead humans, it will be the dead land, dead rivers, dead mountains and dead creatures in dead forests that will insist on a hearing.

Meanwhile, life goes on. While intrusive surveillance, internet policing and phone-tapping and the clampdown on those who speak up becomes grimmer with every passing day, it’s odd how India is becoming the dream destination of literary festivals. There are about 10 of them scheduled over the next few months. Some are funded by the very corporations on whose behalf the police have unleashed their regime of terror. The Harud Literary festival in Srinagar (postponed for the moment) was slated to be the newest, most exciting one—“As the autumn leaves change colour the valley of Kashmir will resonate with the sound of poetry, literary dialogue, debate and discussions....” Its organisers advertised it as an “apolitical” event, but did not say how either the rulers or the subjects of a brutal military occupation that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, bereaved thousands of women and children and maimed a hundred thousand people in its torture chambers can be “apolitical”. I wonder—will the literary guests come on tourist visas? Will there be separate ones for Srinagar and Delhi? Will they need security clearance? Will a Kashmiri who speaks out go directly from the festival to an interrogation centre, or will she be allowed to go home and change and collect her things? (I’m just being crude here, I know it’s more subtle than that.)

The festive din of this spurious freedom helps to muffle the sound of footsteps in airport corridors as the deported are frog-marched on to departing planes, to mute the click of handcuffs locking around strong, warm wrists and the cold metallic clang of prison doors.

Our lungs are gradually being depleted of oxygen. Perhaps it’s time to use whatever breath remains in our bodies to say: Open the bloody gates.

Source:http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?278491

Collection of essays on Operation Green Hunt

2011-10-14T05:01:00.000-07:00

A Collection of Essays
'Against the War on People'

To download this book kindly click on the following link

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Anna Hazare's campaign-A corporate sponsored show

2011-10-07T15:01:00.000-07:00

Is Anna a true leader....? Many educated people are going behind him like a herd...! Anna Hazare is supported by (bribe giving) corporate and corporate media....! How can one support this corrupt person? By calling this corporate sponsored protest as another freedom struggle we all insulting the true freedom fighters of India......!

Before going in to the review of the Jan lokapal bill we must know about the persons involved in drafting this lokpal bill and the hidden agenda behind this bill. Even some of the members in the Anna team have a point to prove on their integrity. This article cannot be seen as a attack on some individuals, i am trying to emphasise the facts surrounding this protests and the true intentions of these corrupt individuals. Since most of the English media (corporate sponsored) and some regional media are portraying this fast by Anna as another freedom struggle. It’s high time we all must stop this kind of news (nonsense), because it directly insults the true freedom fighters of the Indian nation. Here are the serious integrity issues relating to the Anna team:

1. Anna Hazare: Termed as another Gandhi he is accused of misusing his trust money for celebrating his B’day. To add up to these allegations- I request the readers to look in to the following links about Anna`s atrocities in His own village.

I'd rather not be Anna- Arundhati Roy

The Making of Anna Hazare

2. Arvind Kejriwal: This former IIT student is being projected as next youth icon (next to/instead of Rahul!). Soon after getting a capitalists sponsored award he rose to prominence. Later he started a NGO called kabir. He is a key member in the Anna team. His NGO is said to have got donations from Ford foundation and several other unknown persons to the tune of 250,000 $. Till now the identity of the donors are not being disclosed in the organization’s official website. Here is an excerpt of the interview given by Arvind Kejriwal to THE HINDU on the donations received from outsiders. Arvind Kejriwal himself does not follow transparency in his own organization. But he is advocating transparency to the government?

THE HINDU: “Another of your NGOs, Kabir, received grants from the Ford Foundation (FF). According to the FF, Kabir received $172,000 in 2005 and $197,000 in 2008. The FF also sanctioned an “in-principle” grant of $200,000 for 2011, which you have not accepted so far. Why does Kabir not mention the FF and these specific details on its website?

Arvind Kejriwal: We did not give the specific details because we also got some other NRI contributions and these were clubbed together. I will make sure that the website gives the break-up.”

3. Kiran bedi: Abusive use of power is also a corrupt practice. So kiran bedi itself guilty of this corrupt practice. She has been projected as a straight forward IPS officer but her official work record speaks the other way! She has derailed from her duties several times. She has used her power to secure her daughter’s admission at Delhi’s Lady Hardinge College for an MBBS course through the Mizoram quota. I request the readers to read the following links to know more about it.

The True Face Of Kiran Bedi by Subir Ghosh

It’s very clear that the main leaders of the campaign itself corrupt and we are following the wrong person/ group of people and portraying them as crusaders of corruption. So it’s high time that we all must think about their true intentions and the supporting force behind the Anna teams’s protests. Maoists are seen as a terrorist outfit because they don’t believe in the Indian state and they seek to over throw the Indian state by armed struggle. Same is the case in the Anna team and its supporters –They don’t believe in the constitution of India. They seek to control the entire government under a dictatorship kind of bill. So in a way Anna team should also be seen considered as a dangerous outfit. Many of the supporting organization of the Anna team are right wing saffron terrorist’s organization like RSS, VHP and many anti reservation outfits like youth for equality team. Thus one can easily conclude that these short minded persons don’t recognize the “right to equality” clause mentioned in the constitution of India.

Will Jan lokpal bill eradicate corruption?

The answer is NO! because one must keep in mind that there are numerous laws are in place to tackle the corruption practice in India. But the fact is these laws are not being properly implemented and executed by the law enforcing agencies. If we can find a proper way and will to implement this already existing law we can eradicate corruption at the grass root levels. But as far as the big scams involving the corporate companies the government must come with a new law such as “if a company is found to involve in corrupt practices it should be nationalized or banned from any other future business, hefty fine should be imposed on them or one must make it as a non-bailable offence”. The entire lokpal bill is critical in giving punishment to the bribe accepting politicians and government servants but it does not have a mention on the extent of punishment that would be given to bribe giving capitalists and industrialists. A person who induces another to indulge in wrong doings deserves better punishment than the other. Lokpal bill deserves to be in trash it deserves nothing more than that! There are numerous articles written about the flaws in the lokpal bill some are given in the references section do please read it and spread awareness about it.

The root cause of corruption can be understood clearly when we look in to the liberalization policies that are implemented in India after the 1990`s. The primary reason said for its implementation is that it would reduce corruption in India. At that time it was widely believed that the biggest corruption takes place at the government run institutions, hence the role of private institutions is seen as an alternative to combat corruption. But after the liberalization policies were implemented the corruptions and scams grow even bigger. The amount of money associated with each scams accounted for more than thousand crores or lakhs of crores. Although before liberalization India saw some big corruptions, the scams in that period was very few and the money involved in it was very meager when compared to the present cases.

A few notable Scams before liberalization:

Jeep Scandal of 1948-Rs 80 lakh.

Bofors in 1985-86-Rs 64 crore.

Liberal Benefits?
The opening up of the economy post-’91 boosted scam monies into the stratosphere

Total scam money (approx) in Rs crore since 1992:
73000000000000

1992
Harshad Mehta securities scam Rs 5,000 cr
1994
Sugar import scam Rs 650 cr
1995
Preferential allotment scam Rs 5,000 cr
Yugoslav Dinar scam Rs 400 cr
Meghalaya Forest scam Rs 300 cr
1996:
Fertiliser import scam Rs 1,300 cr
Urea scam Rs 133 cr
Bihar fodder scam Rs 950 cr
1997
Sukh Ram telecom scam Rs 1,500 cr
SNC Lavalin power project scam Rs 374 cr
Bihar land scandal Rs 400 cr
C.R. Bhansali stock scam Rs 1,200 cr
1998
Teak plantation swindle Rs 8,000 cr
2001
UTI scam Rs 4,800 cr
Dinesh Dalmia stock scam Rs 595 cr
Ketan Parekh securities scam Rs 1,250 cr
2002
Sanjay Agarwal Home Trade scam Rs 600 cr
2003
Telgi stamp paper scam Rs 172 cr
2005
IPO-Demat scam Rs 146 cr
Bihar flood relief scam Rs 17 cr
Scorpene submarine scam Rs 18,978 cr
2006
Punjab's City Centre project scam Rs 1,500 cr,
Taj Corridor scam Rs 175 cr
2008
Pune billionaire Hassan Ali Khan tax default Rs 50,000 cr
The Satyam scam Rs 10,000 cr
Army ration pilferage scam Rs 5,000 cr
State Bank of Saurashtra scam Rs 95 cr
Illegal monies in Swiss banks, as estimated in 2008 Rs 71,00,000 cr
2009:
The Jharkhand medical equipment scam Rs 130 cr
Rice export scam Rs 2,500 cr
Orissa mine scam Rs 7,000 cr
Madhu Koda mining scam Rs 4,000 cr

Source: http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?262842

It must be noted that the above stats does not include the 2G, CWG scam, the KG basin scam and the illegal mining scam etc. If we add up the scam money involved in these scams the total scam money would grow up even bigger. Thus from the above facts we can clearly say that the root cause of the corruption lies in the liberalization policies carried out by the Government of India. The root cause of corruption is privatization policy! A classic example is the health sector. In India hospital business is seen as a great oppurtunity to earn huge amount of profits. In the name of improving the quality of health sector the GOI opened up the health sectors to the private players. But instead of improving the quality of health sector it has driven millions of poor Indian people to debt by indiscriminate collection of fees. The main slogan of private ownership is to “earn profit-no matter how they come by”. So in such a scenario no private involvement is required in key sectors such as agriculture, education, food distribution (PDS), transport, health and other social sectors. Without eliminating corporates from these key sectors we cannot eradicate corruption no matter how many laws/bills are tabled.

With most of the politicians is either coming from a business family or a corporate sponsored person, it’s up to the voters of India to prevent them from winning the elections. Without preventing the corporate-politician nexus it’s difficult to achieve a corruption free society. The Lokpal bill does not highlight the key issue of corruption involving big MNC`s, corporate sectors etc. and it remain silent on corporate scams. Even some of the English media like Times now, CNN-IBN and NDTV 24x7 that supports this Anna Team campaign is also facing serious allegations in various issues such as paid news and Redia tape case etc. When more than 50,000 trible people protested against the wrongful acquisition of their home land for a foreign company POSCO at Orissa, no one from the Anna team or the media highlighted it (this protest also happened at the same time of Anna’s so called protest!). Also till now the villagers of kudumkulam of Tamilnadu are staging a marathon protest against the building up of nuclear power plant but no one highlighted this issue. So, it’s not wise on our part to support the Anna team blindly because their true motives are even more dangerous than the corruption issue. By the time I finish writing this article a new illegal mining scam at Goa to the tune of Rs.4000 cr is being reported!!!! The so called corruption crusader ANNA HAZARE again started to give ultimatum to the union government of India to pass the lokpal bill!

Arundhati Roy on Anna Hazare's campaign:

part one:

part two:

An NGO's view on ANNA HAZARE:

Further reading:

1. I'd rather not be Anna- Arundhati Roy

2. The True Face of Kiran Bedi by Subir Ghosh

3. Liberal benefits The opening up of the economy post-’91

4. The Making of Anna Hazare

5. Many Avatars of Indian Corruption

6. Lokpal bill of the Anna Team

7. Why I cannot support the Jan Lokpal - a detailed analysis

IMPORTANT NOTE:

India third 'snoopiest' country: Google Transparency Report. The GOI have requested Google to censor the internet contents/opinions of many users who speak against the Indian government. Even dictatorship countries haven't placed such a number of censor requests to the Google. So it’s clear that the government of India is keeping an eye on its internet users and with the help of Google, GOI have acquired the privacy details of the internet users to intimidate them. The important fact is that the Indian government seeks censorship to political views, hate speech, Government Criticism etc. It is clear we the Indians don’t have freedom of speech when it comes to criticizing government in key issues.

DISCLOSURE:

Hence I hereby declare that the above article is my personal opinion and it is not being copied from any other Internet/anti-India websites.

Why I cannot support the Jan Lokpal - a detailed analysis

2011-10-07T14:53:00.000-07:00

I am pleased to post an opinion article on Lokpal bill by Mr. Sandeep Dongre, 2001 batch alumni of IIM Bangalore.

I wanted to deal with this issue in two parts:

A) The means adopted by Anna Hazare and team to drive their point of view

B) The Actual merit of “Jan Lokpal Bill”- its ability in itself to effectively deal with corruption

A) The means adopted by Anna Hazare and team to drive their point of view:

Law making is the primary function of any legislature. With the formation of the Republic of India on 26 January 1950, things changed profoundly. All Indians have a say in how laws are made and how they are implemented. We can amend or repeal laws that we do not like. There is, of course, a method to do this, which must be followed. These are the constitutional methods that Dr. Ambedkar referred to in his ‘Grammar of Anarchy’ speech.

When constitutional methods are available, there is no case for non-constitutional methods like Satyagraha, hunger strikes or the more extreme ‘Fast unto death’. No matter how good the intention is, Fasts unto the death ultimately undermines the due process. Anna Hazare is a genuine person but he should not adopt undemocratic means to drive home his point. Emotional Blackmail has no place in a parliamentary form of democracy. If two really genuine persons go on fasts until death for two opposing reasons, how are we ever going to resolve? A good example of this came to light when both the two opposing factions of the ‘Separate Telangana State Movement went on fast unto death and as is evident, the whole process came to a standstill.

India has experienced a very effective form of parliamentary democracy and it is best left to it to resolve complex matters like this. Though a very scary picture is getting portrayed, very few will disagree that India is well on its path to the top and a true parliamentary democracy has ensured it smoothly. One cannot invite the death of democracy by allowing such protests.

I will devote next few paragraphs in understanding Anna and his ‘My Way or the Highway’ style of working.

Ralegaon Siddhi has prospered under the leadership of Anna Hazare and it really looks green and fresh in an otherwise dry area. Everybody is aware of the immense hard work put in by Anna and his team and the results are there for everyone to see. Noted Journalist Mukul Sharma who has studied Anna's village community in Ralegaon Siddhi since 1919 says that Anna is a strong follower of a belief system where the people following him consider it their natural duty to obey, and the exercising person thinks it a natural right to rule. No matter what the issue, there is an absolute recognition of authority.

Let me clearly state that the END is absolutely not in question, the MEANS are. Though the intentions might not be doubted, but Anna has been exercising a set of self-made rules which everyone in the village has compulsorily followed. These rules are far removed from what a true democracy means.

a) Getting things done by way of severe punishment is the accepted way in the village to achieve the set goals. So it was decided that anybody who consumes alcohol has to be physically punished. There are instances of drunken people tied to pole outside village’s temple and beaten. Even the villagers now agree that anybody found drunken should be brought in the centre of the village and beaten. A group of 25 youth in the village has been formed who are authorized to give punishment to drunkards (could you strike the resemblance to Jan Lokpal??). They have been dutifully tying drunkards to the pole and beating overnight.

b) Several instances of using force in implementing Family planning measures.

c) Anna’s authority even peeps into making rules for ‘Eating habits’ and trust this is a severe breach of people’s freedom. We can respect people who actively propagate ‘Vegetarianism’ but definitely not by force. There are hardly any people eating non-vegetarian food in the village. Dalits in his village were categorically told that main reason other people stay away from them is because their living is dirty, thinking is dirty and even food habits are dirty. By continuously putting pressure, the Dalits were forcefully turned into vegetarians

d) Anna strongly criticizes electoral and party politics- no wonder that there have been no elections of gram panchayat in the village since the last 24 years. Even for National/State level elections, posters and pamphlets are not allowed in the village

e) Entertainment in the form of film songs or cinema is a strict NO in the village. However, religious films like Sant Tukaram, Sant Gyaneshwar can be played. Even during marriages, only religious songs are allowed. Last year, A villager

Installed a dish antenna at his home and he was severely criticized by Anna himself.

Kailash Pote, a landless Chamar, gives a different meaning to village, family and Hindu religion. “We do not call Ralegan Siddhi a village. We call it a family in which Annajee is the headman and we are the people who provide service to the family. Here Hindus mean Marathas only. We Chamars and Mahars are never called Hindus. How can we claim that everybody is equal here?”

The above explain the use of extreme means by Anna to get things done which he believes is Right.

Lastly, As BG Varghese rightly points out, Due process can be trying at times; but banishing it for quick-fix populist methods is dangerous and could lead to anarchy and counter-violence. It is legitimate to criticize venal politicians but unfair to denigrate all politicians. Without politicians there can be no politics or political process, only dictatorship. We need to secure political and electoral reforms and reform of the police and criminal justice systems to put in place an interlocking mechanism that ensures purity in public life. There is much work to be done and hopefully the government has seen the writing on the wall.

B) The merit of ‘Jan Lokpal Bill’ - its actual ability to effectively deal with corruption:

Mr. Pratap Bhanu says, The Lokpal Bill does not tackle any of the root causes of corruption. The bill amounts to an unparalleled concentration of power in one institution that will literally be able to summon any institution and command any kind of police, judicial and investigative power. In other words, in a situation where the problem is power, we create an entity that has even more power. It has even appointed officials instead of elected ones

There are many loopholes in the Bill which I have discussed below:

a) The three Pillars of Indian Democracy - namely the Legislature, Executive and Judiciary - keep checks and balances on the other, and so they must remain separate, because that’s the only way to ensure that there is no abuse of power. The Jan Lokpal intends to disturb this fine balance by virtually creating a fourth pillar. It intends to create an Executive outside the constitutional framework, answerable to nobody. Chances of such an organization getting corrupted by the sheer lust for power are much greater than the Executive functioning within a constitutional framework, where checks and balances ensure accountability

b) The appointment of the Lokpal will be done by a – Bharat Ratna awardees, Nobel prize winners of Indian origin, Magsaysay award winners, Senior Judges of Supreme and High Courts, the Chairperson of the National Human Rights Commission, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India, the Chief Election Commissioner, and members of the outgoing Lokpal board and the Chairpersons of both houses of Parliament. Only one person, the chairperson of the Lok Sabha, is a democratically elected person. The idea of a Jan Lokpal is modeled on an Ombudsman but there is no example where a country decided that Nobel Prize winners and those awarded with state conferred honors can be given the task of selecting those entrusted with the power to punish people

c) The autonomy and independence of the Judiciary is protected under the Constitution, which allows a member of the higher Judiciary to be removed only through the cumbersome impeachment process. The intent was to ensure that justice is administered without fear or favor. The Jan Lokpal proposal of putting higher judiciary under Lokpal is absurd. The consequences are even worse, when you consider that under it the Jan Lokpal Bill will have independent investigating and prosecuting agencies. Will any judge ever dare differ with the views of a prosecutor of the Jan Lokpal since he might face prosecution himself if his orders are misunderstood? Is it logical that Investigation and Prosecution be done by the same agency?

d) Since this country understands the language of cricket well, just try to imagine Indian captain Dhoni on field. During the course of play, several critical decisions need to be taken and it should be best left to the captain on the field to do that. If we start with the premise that Dhoni is likely to falter and should be under strict scrutiny for each and every decision he takes on field, it will be completely impossible for him to take out-of-box decisions. Most of the audience might not agree with his decision to let the last over of the match bowled by a new bowler but we cannot raise a suspicion every time he does so. If we don’t want the whole functioning of the government come to standstill on petty issues, the Prime Minister may be best kept out of Jan Lokpal.

e) We have to understand, there are enough strong laws available in this country to address literally every issue under the Sun. Implementation of a new bill will require a strong will and huge additional resources and that is where the whole problem lies. Consumer courts were created to give speedy justice but today a large number of cases are pending before it just because of lack of resources. The law was always there to arrest the likes of Mr. Kalmadi or Mr. Raja but it could happen only when it was backed by a strong will to do it. State Lokayukta is there in India in as many as 18 states today but only a Santosh Hegde could make a difference in Karnataka. There are strong laws against illegal construction, land grabbing and even mining, the need of the hour is to implement it and not spend time into making additional laws.

f) The resource crunch will destabilize the Jan Lokpal. If both the Central govt. and State govt. employees are to be brought under its scanner, the number of people it will have to cover will be around 10-12million. Obviously, huge machinery will be needed to deal with this. Also, the same system of corrupted civil servants, politicians, anti-corruption agencies, judges, media, civil society groups and ordinary citizens will work under the Lokpal to deal with corruption and just because they will work for Lokpal, will they become incorruptible? Won’t it mean adding another bunch of bribes to the long list of existing ones?

g) There is NO right to appeal- The right to at least one appeal against an order, which affects someone adversely, is inherent in the Constitution. There is no specific clause regarding appeals in the Jan Lok Pal Bill, and that is unconstitutional, to say the least

Noted political analyst Pratap Bhanu Mehta has nicely summed up the addition of Jan Lokpal as one more law. He says, “To many of us, this proposal seems like the way we approached educational reform: if BA is not good quality, introduce MA; since MA does not work, have MPhil; since we can’t trust our PhDs, have a further NET exam, endlessly deferring to new institutions at the top of the food chain without attending to basics..”

I sincerely feel that Jan Lokpal is a Medicine which has severe side-effects. While there are many ways which can help us effectively fight corruption arising out of political nexus, there is only one way to fight social corruption:

The RTI legislation can be the most effective tool in eradicating corruption. The many government decisions taken on critical issues have to be brought under public scrutiny and it is how the government can be made accountable for its decisions. Another effective way of dealing with corruption arising out of political nexus is with the help of electoral reforms like proportional representation, state funding of elections which will lead to uniform spending of candidates and most importantly the right to recall of elected representatives.

Corruption in day to day life is more of a social issue. It is a value system where when I benefit its desirable, when I am the victim, it’s not. Only a true introspection can get us to its roots. It has to be tackled from inside and only then a Lokpal can be effective.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

India third 'snoopiest' country: Google Transparency Report. The GOI have requested Google to censor the internet contents/opinions of many users who speak against the Indian government. Even dictatorship countries haven't placed such a number of censor requests to the Google. So it’s clear that the government of India is keeping an eye on its internet users and with the help of Google, GOI have acquired the privacy details of the internet users to intimidate them. The important fact is that the Indian government seeks censorship to political views, hate speech, Government Criticism etc. It is clear we the Indians don’t have freedom of speech when it comes to criticizing government in key issues.

DISCLOSURE:

Hence I hereby declare that the above article is the personal opinion of the author and it is not being copied from any other Internet/anti-India websites.

In support of Samacheer Kalvi

2011-08-05T06:18:00.000-07:00

I am posting this article in support of Samacheer Kalvi. On seeing some of the capitalist run news paper I am of the opinion that most of them are completely against the implementation of “Samacheer Klavi”. Most of the news paper opinion looks like as if it was written by the PRO of all private schools association of Tamilnadu and their views are in support of the private schools. In my view the syllabus of the private schools are not superior to the government schools. The reason behind the success of the private school is that they have better infrastructure facilities when compared to that of the government schools. Private schools produce students with high marks by simply giving them tests and coaching classes. For eg: private schools teach (in the name of quality education) syllabuses that are meant for higher classes (say for 8^th standard) to (6^th class students) smaller classes and burden the children. This is done because private schools see education as a lucrative business opportunity. Most of the private schools don’t even have qualified teachers. When a common platform such as samacheer kalvi is implemented the private schools cannot run matriculation schools under the guise of giving quality education and thereby they may not earn profits. A good government should provide its children equal platform to perform. In India only the rich is blessed with quality education. Whereas majority of the poor children are made to sit under the tree as their class room. That's why the admission of Erode collector's daughter in a local government school is published as big news. This vast divide cannot be cleared on a single day but a scheme like samacheer kalvi at least provide some sorts of equal platform for the students from both private and government schools.

The so called expert committee formed by the State government is an eye wash because some of the expert committee members are indeed not subject/educational experts but they are owners of private schools. A clear case of conflict of interest. How can one accept the report of this one sided expert committee. We all must remember great scientists namely Dr.A.P.J.Abdul kalam, Dr.Mayilsamy Annadurai and Dr.Sivadhanu pillai had their school education at Government schools only. How can one term the government syllabus as low quality when it produces such great scientists to the nation? The thing is not with the quality of syllabus its all about good educational environment, infrastructure, and quality teachers. Parents also should come out of the myth that only private schools are superior to the government schools. Thus in my opinion the government’s priority in education should be to nationalize the educational system and it should completely abolish the private run educational institutions

IMPORTANT NOTE:

India third 'snoopiest' country: Google Transparency Report.The GOI have requested Google to censor the internet contents/opinions of many users who speak against the Indian government. Even dictatorship countries haven't placed such a number of censor requests to the Google. So its clear that the government of India is keeping an eye on its internet users and with the help of Google, GOI have acquired the internet users privacy details to intimidate them. The important fact is that the Indian government seek censorship to political views,hate speech,Government Criticism etc.It is clear that We the Indians don’t have freedom of speech here in India when it comes to government criticism in key issues.

DISCLOSURE:

Hence I hereby declare that the above article is My personal opinion and it is not being copied from any other Internet/anti-India websites.

Biography of Karl Marx-The father of communism

2011-07-15T11:38:00.000-07:00

DOWNLOAD LINK :

KARL MARX BIOGRAPHY

War crimes of Srilankan army against Tamil people and Indian media's support to the Srilankan Government

2011-07-14T09:19:00.000-07:00

Main stream media and news print agencies such as THE HINDU, INDIAN EXPRESS, NDTV and DINAMALAR etc are still lending a helping hand to the Lankan government by publishing articles in support of the Lankan government. The main stream media is one sided and is continually keeping the people of Tamilnadu and India in dark by hiding the war crimes of the Lankan army against the innocent Tamil people in refugee camps. Although fault lie on both the Lankan and LTTE sides, lakhs of innocent Tamil people were made to pay a big price for this bloody war. Even during the war or be it now the main stream media systematically black out the Human rights violations news that is still prevalent in IDP (internally displaced people (Tamil)) camps run under the Lankan army. According to the Human rights watch more than 1 Lakh 20 thousand Tamil people were brutally killed by the Lankan army with the support of India (primarily) and China. One need not be a Tamil to condemn this war crime but all real Human beings irrespective of the religion, geographical location would/should condemn this war crime.

I am writing this because I got shocked and emotionally moved after seeing the Channel 4 documentary film, “Srilankan killing fields” that was telecasted last week in Headlines Today news channel. I feel ashamed to say we live in a civilized society/world.

In this post I would like to share my mail sent to THE HINDU and Col.Hari, Chief of the Intelligence unit of the Indian peace keeping force (IPKF) in response to his article "The moment of truth for the LTTE". At that time the civil war between the Srilankan government and the LTTE was fought fiercely. Also during that period the main stream media in India are busy in hiding the true facts of the bloody war. They did not point out the human rights violation of the Lankan army instead they published what the Lankan government has told them.

Flag this message

reg:The article in The Hindu

Saturday, 7 February, 2009 1:22 AM

From:

"selva sharma"

View contact details

To:

colhari@yahoo.com

Respected sir,

I read your article "The moment of truth for the LTTE" in Hindu news paper dated feb 5,2009.I accept your views regarding LTTE's systematic elimination of Tamil leaders to an extent. But apart from that your article is completely baseless and one sided.LTTE alone cannot be blamed for the civil war, indeed the majority sinhalas and the political parties representing the sinhalas only paved the way for the formation of an extremist LTTE organization. Tamils in ceylon first fought for their rights peacefully. But the sinhala political parties used the ethnic tension to their advantage for political gains and power. Right from the independence srilnakan government are one sided and sponsored many riots against Tamils in Srilanka. You haven't mention these facts in any part of your article!
Some Government sponsored violence in Srilanka:
*Gal oya riots 1956
*1958 riots
*1977 riots
*Jaffna library burning 1981
*Black july 1983.

The war in lanka will definitely end within few weeks from now, LTTE will be defeated. But the question is will the Tamils in Srilanka be granted equal rights? I am sure that the Srilankan government do nothing for the empowerment of Tamils. This fact is evident by seeing the killing of innocent Tamils even in so called safe zones by the Srilankan army. History shows that Srilankan government is always against ethnic Tamils.

"However,The LTTE started dissipating its goodwill in India when it colluded with its "sworn sinhala enemy" R.Premadasa to get the Indian forces off its back and send them out of Srilanka...."

The above said lines in the article are true to some extent. But one also needs to concede the grave human rights violation committed by the IPKF in Srilanka. Valvettiturai massacre, Jaffna teaching hospital massacre are some examples. But sir as an head of intelligence of IPKF you should have conceded your failure in Jaffna football ground massacre of our fellow countrymen.

Also one logical question arises sir, What is the need for the Indian government to supply weapons to this Sinhala government which is virtually against India in all aspects right from the India-China war, India-Pakistan wars. Also even our enemy Pakistan never shoots at the Indian fishermen, if they accidentally cross the fishing border. But the so called close ally of India, Srilanka has so far killed more than 600 Tamil fishermen. What does the Indian navy and government did to save my State's fishermen. Had the Pakistan has done this kind of act i am sure our country would have fought a war with Pakistan. No writer in this print media raised this kind of questions till now.

Regards,

A.Selvasharma,

M.Sc.Chemisrty,

Department of Chemistry,

Bharathiar university

Tamilnadu.

The reply to the above mail from Col.Hari was mere “Thanks for your feedbacks”. I sent a modified mail to THE HINDU too but it never got published.

I am sharing this mail and views because many innocent Children, Women and Men are brutally killed everyday all around the world in the name of war against terrorism. Its high time we all must and should join hands in condemning violence or army action against innocent people wheather it happens in our country or in Palestine, Sudan Afghanistan, Srilanka or Pakistan. I also request you to dedicate some time for the social issues and spread awareness among many educated (there are many educated illiterates in India!) and uneducated persons. Changes don't happen in a day. But if we don't start today, change may never happen. After all Revolutions don’t happen within a day…….!

IMPORTANT NOTE:

India third 'snoopiest' country: Google Transparency Report.The GOI have requested Google to censor the internet contents/opinions of many users who speak against the Indian government. Even dictatorship countries haven't placed such a number of censor requests to the Google. So its clear that the government of India is keeping an eye on its internet users and with the help of Google, GOI have accquired the internet users privacy details to intimidate them. The important fact is that the Indian government seek censorship to political views,hate speech,Government Criticism etc.It is clear that We don’t have freedom of speech here in India when it comes to government criticism in key issues.

DISCLOSURE:

Hence I hereby declare that the above article is My personal opinion and it is not being copied from any other Internet/anti-India websites.

Land mark verdict by the Supreme court of India on Salwa Judum

2011-07-14T08:41:00.000-07:00

In a landmark verdict the supreme court of India have ordered the Chattisgarh government and Union government to end salwa judum.

What is/Who are SALWA JUDUM,SPO,KOYA COMMONDOS?

SALWA JUDUM,SPO (special police officers),KOYA COMMONDOS is an armed group formed by the pro capitalistic Indian/state government comprising of young, barely literate and poorly trained innocent tribals to fight the Maoists/Naxalites in six northern states of India.

Why Human rights activists and people are against SALWA JUDUM,SPO,KOYA COMMONDOS?

SPO's were given power to execute innocent people without any law.This has resulted in several Human rights violation in tribal region.The sufferings of the innocent Tribal people due to the lawless violence of state supported SPO's is higher when compared to that of the Maoists.

Why the Government itself employing the innocent tribal youths against the Moists instead of the police and army?

Its very simple the Government does not have the will power to sacrifice its own police in combating the Maoists. Instead they are using innocent tribal youths as "cannon fodder" for the state.

Also the government does this type of strategy to evacuate the tribal people from the mineral rich forest areas so that it can be handedover to big corporate houses such as TATA,Reliance,Vedanta,Mittal steels,POSCO. (Remember the theme of hollywood movie,AVATAR).Thus in the name of curbing Maoists violence, the Indian government is supporting the big corporates. .

What the Supreme Court said in its judgment?

The supreme court of India in its judgment statement state that, "Laws cannot remain silent when the canons roar"

The court also made the link between the state's illegal counter-insurgency strategy (Salwa judam) and the wider "Neoliberal' approach being followed by the government at the central and state levels.” The Salwa judum is the illegimate product of a system that sees nothing wrong in giving tax breaks to the rich and guns to the poor to fight each other"

IMPORTANT NOTE:

India third 'snoopiest' country: Google Transparency Report.The GOI have requested Google to censor the internet contents/opinions of many users who speak against the Indian government. Even dictatorship countries haven't placed such a number of censor requests to the Google. So its clear that the government of India is keeping an eye on its internet users and with the help of Google, GOI have accquired the internet users privacy details to intimidate them. The important fact is that the Indian government seek censorship to political views,hate speech,Government Criticism etc.It is clear that We the Indians don’t have freedom of speech here in India when it comes to government criticism in key issues.

DISCLOSURE:

Hence I hereby declare that the above article is My personal opinion and it is not being copied from any other Internet/anti-India websites. The excerpts of the Supreme Court Judgments are taken from The HINDU news paper.

On Suicides of Dalit Students in India's Premier Educational Institutions

2011-06-20T06:50:00.000-07:00

I am writing this post in response to alarming raise in suicides of many dalit students studying in various premier institutes in India. Dalit students are also fellow human being so what is the need for discriminating them! Dalit students are subjected to discrimination in various forms at many educational institutions.

Many students and teachers stamp Dalit students as reserved or quota student. Quota is not an offer or an election time freebies given to dalits it is given to them in response to the century old slave like treatment meted out to them by the upper castes of India. Dalits got this reservation rights by several protests and fight.

The only way to bring social upliftment of dalits is to give them access to jobs and education hence the reservation policy has come. India alone is not the first country to offer reservation to the oppressed, countries like USA (red Indians, African black), Australia (Aborigines) offer reservation to the oppressed community. If a student get seat by money we don’t dare to discriminate him/her but the students coming through reservation alone is discriminated by upper caste students and teachers.

So friends, I request you to lend your support to the dalit students facing discrimination at your educational institution or work place.

Also I appeal to all the dalit students not to take the extreme step of suicide. If you come across any discrimination from the student or faculty side face them boldly you have nothing to lose.....!

Link:

http://www.countercurrents.org/insight300411.htm

IMPORTANT NOTE:

India third 'snoopiest' country: Google Transparency Report.The GOI have requested Google to censor the internet contents/opinions of many users who speak against the Indian government. Even dictatorship countries haven't placed such a number of censor requests to the Google. So its clear that the government of India is keeping an eye on its internet users and with the help of Google, GOI have accquired the internet users privacy details to intimidate them. The important fact is that the Indian government seek censorship to political views,hate speech,Government Criticism etc.It is clear that We don’t have freedom of speech here in India when it comes to government criticism in key issues.

DISCLOSURE:

Hence I hereby declare that the above article is My personal opinion and it is not being copied from any other Internet/anti-India websites.

Narendra Modi- a killer, rapist-Leaked SIT report exposes him

2011-02-04T08:16:00.001-08:00

Narendra Modi swore he was clean. ASHISH KHETAN scoops the 600-page report that exposes he is not

Unending agony Shaikh Kulsumbibi, whose family was massacred in the riots

PHOTO: AMI VITALE

ON 3 DECEMBER 2010, a leading national daily ran a frontpage story headlined ‘SIT clears Narendra Modi of willfully allowing post- Godhra riots.’ News channels leaped at the story. ‘SIT gives Modi a clean chit’ flashed in bold letters across television screens. The newspaper report that was attributed to anonymous sources and had little more information than the sensational caption was expanded into a certificate of innocence for Modi.

Within hours, a beguiling charade of Modi’s righteousness was constructed. While the Special Investigation Team (SIT), which had done the probe, chose to remain quiet as it was answerable only to the Supreme Court, BJP spokespersons popped up on news channels hailing the imaginary ‘clean-chit’ as a political triumph. An exuberant LK Advani called it “the most heartening news I have read in a long, long time”. Praising Modi’s personality and his style of governance, Advani wrote in his blog: “In my 60 years of political life I have not known any colleague of mine so consistently, so sustainedly and so viciously maligned by opponents as Narendra Modi.”

The BJP patriarch wrapped up his eulogy on Modi with the following remark: “Several papers have reported that the SIT has found no evidence to substantiate the charge and has exonerated the Gujarat chief minister. The country is eagerly awaiting the full text of the SIT report to the Supreme Court.”

Well, the wait is over. TEHELKA has scooped the sensational 600-page inquiry report into Modi’s alleged role in the 2002 massacre. The content is shocking and will come as a serious blow to the carefully cultivated image of Modi as an able administrator and a man of good governance. For eight years, riot victims and human rights groups have cried hoarse about the deliberate miscarriage of justice in Gujarat. About how the police and State machinery had either ignored or abetted rioters and created the space for massacres to happen; about how some ruling party politicians had goaded the public mood to new danger levels; about the State’s blatant and continuing prejudice against the victims; about public prosecutors who were subverting justice in the courts by helping the accused instead of nailing their guilt.

But as the years passed, despite the glaring evidence, the accusations lost their sting and were deemed to be, as Advani called it, merely a vicious maligning campaign. Modi won two elections and the effects of the counter-propaganda began to kick in. Both corporate heads and sections of the national media began to hail Modi as a great statesman and potential prime minister. His sins of omission and commission were set aside. The Congress, blunted by its own abysmal handling of the 1984 Sikh riots, stayed meekly quiet.

Scarred for life Shah Jaha Kabir Ali Shaikh, 18, who was set on fire by rioters in Ahmedabad

PHOTO: AMI VITALE

But now, for the first time, there is damning official confirmation of many things victims and human rights groups have been accusing Modi of. The SIT was set up by order of the Supreme Court. Far from giving Modi a clean chit, in its report dated 12 May 2010 that the Supreme Court has kept under wraps, the SIT found Modi guilty on many counts: a communal mindset, inflammatory speeches, destruction of crucial records, appointment of Sangh members as public prosecutors, illegal positioning of ministers in police control rooms during the riots, and persecution of neutral officers.

Is there a right-thinking citizen who would say that these are the attributes of a model chief minister? Are efficiency and ability to attract investments the only qualities we seek in our leaders?

This damning report, now exposed by TEHELKA, blows craters into the BJP propaganda that the SIT had exonerated Modi and vindicated his handling of the 2002 riots. The text of the report, in fact, points to exactly the opposite. The report comments that political and communal agendas ‘weighed heavily’ in Modi’s handling of the criminal justice system. It records his government’s abject failure in providing justice to the victims. It also accuses Modi of making “sweeping” and “offensive” comments against the Muslim community that “showed a measure of thoughtlessness and irresponsibility on the part of a person holding a high public office.”

But these are only a fraction of the things the report found Modi guilty of. Here are a few of its key findings:

Despite the ghastly attacks at Gulberg Society and elsewhere, the SIT says Modi tried to downplay the situation

1. The report says, “In spite of the fact that ghastly and violent attacks had taken place on Muslims at Gulberg Society and elsewhere, the reaction of the government was not the type that would have been expected by anyone. The chief minister had tried to water down the seriousness of the situation at Gulberg Society, Naroda Patiya and other places by saying that every action has an equal and opposite reaction.” (Page 69 of the report)

SIT Chairman RK Raghavan further comments that Modi’s statement “accusing some elements in Godhra and the neighbourhood as possessing a criminal tendency was sweeping and offensive coming as it did from a chief minister, that too at a critical time when Hindu-Muslim tempers were running high.” (Page 13 of SIT chairman’s comments)

The inquiry officer also notes: “His (Modi) implied justification of the killings of innocent members of the minority community read together with an absence of a strong condemnation of the violence that followed Godhra suggest a partisan stance at a critical juncture when the state had been badly disturbed by communal violence.” (Page 153)

2. The report says, in an extremely “controversial” move, the government of Gujarat had placed two senior ministers — Ashok Bhatt and IK Jadeja — in the Ahmedabad city police control room and the state police control room during the riots. The SIT chairman comments that the two ministers were positioned in the control rooms with “no definite charter”, fuelling the speculation that they “had been placed to interfere in police work and give wrongful decisions to the field officers”. “The fact that he (Modi) was the cabinet minister for Home would heighten the suspicion that this decision had his blessings.” (Page 12 of chairman’s comments)

(It is to be noted that Ashok Bhatt’s cell phone analysis showed that he was in touch with VHP leader Jaideep Patel, a key conspirator of the Naroda Gaon and Naroda Patiya massacre, and with Gordhan Zadaphia, the then minister of state for home and who is now seen by the SIT as a major culprit of the Ahmedabad massacres.)

3. The report affirms that police officers who took a neutral stand during the riots and prevented massacres were transferred by the Gujarat government to insignificant postings. SIT’S Raghavan has termed these transfers “questionable” since “they came immediately after incidents in which the officers concerned were known to have antagonised ruling party men”. (Pages 7-8 of chairman’s comments)

4. The report says “The Gujarat government has reportedly destroyed the police wireless communication of the period pertaining to the riots.” It adds, “No records, documentations or minutes of the crucial law and order meetings held by the government during the riots had been kept.” (Page 13)

(This is a shocking finding. Why were these official records destroyed? What was there to hide? It has to be remembered that the Gujarat government had constituted the Justice KG Shah Commission (which was later reconstituted as a two-member commission headed by Justice GT Nanavati with KG Shah as its member) on 6 March 2002, one month after the riots, to inquire into the circumstances around the riots and was thus dutybound to preserve police control room records and other documents and minutes of meetings as they could have been vital evidence of the partisan role played by the State machinery.)

5. The report says Modi displayed a “discriminatory attitude by not visiting the riot-affected areas in Ahmedabad where a large number of Muslims were killed, though he went to Godhra on the same day, travelling almost 300 km on a single day.” (Page 67) The SIT chairman also comments that “Modi did not cite any specific reasons why he did not visit the affected areas in Ahmedabad city as promptly as he did in the case of the Godhra train carnage.” (Page 8 of chairman’s comments)

6. The SIT confirms that the government appointed VHP and RSS-affiliated advocates as public prosecutors in sensitive riot cases. The report states: “It appears that the political affiliation of the advocates did weigh with the government for the appointment of public prosecutors.” (Page 77) The SIT chairman further comments that “it has been found that a few of the past appointees were in fact politically connected, either to the ruling party or organisations sympathetic to it.” (Page 10 of chairman’s comments)

7. According to the report, the Gujarat government did not take any steps to stop the illegal bandh called by the Vishwa Hindu Parishad on 28 February 2002. On the contrary the BJP had supported the bandh. (Page 69)

(It is important to remember that it was Hindu mobs mobilised by the local VHP and BJP leaders in the name of bandhs that had carried out the horrific massacres at Naroda and Gulberg Society on 28 February 2002.)

8. The SIT report also says that, in an inexplicable move, the police administration did not impose curfew in Naroda until 12 pm and Meghani Nagar (Ahmedabad city) until 2 pm on 28 February 2002. By then, the situation had severely deteriorated at both places.

9. According to the SIT, despite detailed reports recommending strict action submitted to Modi by field officers of the State Intelligence Bureau, the Modi government failed to take action against a section of the print media that was publishing communally- inciting reports, inflaming base emotions. This had vitiated the communal situation further. (Page 79)

10. The SIT also asserts that in August 2002, in a bid to ensure an early Assembly election, top officials of the Modi government misled the Central Election Commission by presenting a picture of normalcy when the state was still simmering with communal tension. (Page 79 to 86)

(The BJP had prematurely dissolved the Assembly on 19 August 2002, nine months before the expiry of the five-year term, and demanded an early election. The BJP clearly wanted to take electoral advantage of the communal polarisation.)

11.The SIT discovered that the state police had carried out patently shoddy investigations in the Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society massacre cases. It deliberately overlooked the cell phone records of Sangh Parivar members and BJP leaders involved in the riots — prominent among them were the Gujarat VHP president Jaideep Patel and BJP minister Maya Kodnani. If these records had been analysed and used as evidence, it could have established their complicity. (Pages 101-105)

12. Many senior police are now being investigated by the SIT for their suspected complicity in the riots. The former Ahmedabad joint commissioner of police MK Tandon, in whose area around 200 Muslims were killed, has been found guilty of deliberate dereliction of duty. (Post the riots, however, far from being censored, he got one lucrative posting after another and retired as additional director general of police in June 2007.) His junior, former deputy commissioner of police PK Gondia, has also been found guilty of willfully allowing the massacres. The SIT says that if the two had just carried out their duty hundreds of Muslims could have been saved. (Pages 48-50) Neither of these officers was held accountable by the Modi government.

13. The SIT has also found evidence against the then minister of state for home Gordhan Zadaphia (who was reporting directly to Modi) for his complicity in the riots. Another BJP minister Mayaben Kodnani has already been booked in the Naroda Patiya massacre. (Pages 168-169)

In an ‘illegal’ move, the state placed ministers Ashok Bhatt and IK Jadeja, in the police control room during the riots

IT IS significant to note that the SIT probe against Modi and his government was severely limited in its scope and authority.The report was merely a “preliminary inquiry”. The inquiry officer had no powers to carry out search or raids, effect arrests, interrogate the accused in police custody or compel the government and individuals to produce crucial records. The only method left to the probe officer was to record statements.

For a year, the officer recorded the statements of the BJP ministers, including Modi, MLAs, senior bureaucrats and police officers accused of participating in the alleged state-sponsored pogrom. The statements of some victims and private witnesses were also recorded. In all, 163 people were examined. The inquiry officer has noted with pain that hardly any bureaucrat or police officer was inclined to tell the truth as most of them had got lucrative government assignments after retirement and a few who didn’t were still not willing to antagonise the powerful chief minister.

As the probe had progressed, several civil rights groups in Gujarat had alleged that the SIT had become compromised. Despite these fears and the SIT’s own admitted constraints, several grave allegations against Modi have stuck. The question now is, what would a more persistent and powerful investigation throw up?

It is a measure of the grave difficulty of taking on the powerful in India that, despite its startling findings, while the SIT has shown keenness to investigate policemen like Tandon and Gondia and the oncepowerful state BJP politician Zadaphia (who has long since left the BJP), it is very reluctant to proceed against Modi.

Mob fury Police drag away a man suspected of inciting violence in Ahmedabad

PHOTO: AMI VITALE

In his concluding statements, SIT Chairman RK Raghavan says: “As many as 32 allegations were probed into during this preliminary inquiry. These related to several acts of omission and commission by the state government and its functionaries, including the chief minister. A few of these alone were in fact substantiated.’ He goes on to add, “the substantiated allegations did not throw up material that would justify further action under the law.”

This itself is a shocking conclusion. How much more violation of public duty will it take for something to be deemed sufficient “justification” for further investigation or penal action in India? Both through testimonies of victims, human rights groups, independent media reports and now the SIT’s own findings, it is clear that, in many cases, riots were either allowed to happen or directly abetted. It is also clear that after the riots were controlled, both the courts and the police were either manipulated or subverted; guilty officers were rewarded, upright officers were penalised or cut to size; official records were destroyed. As chief minister, Narendra Modi presided over this terrible implosion of a just and fair society. By virtue of also being the Cabinet minister for home, the entire law and order machinery — both police and intelligence — were directly under him. How much more culpability does an elected representative of India, inducted into office on Constitutional oath, have to display before further investigation and action is warranted against him? As chief minister, he did not have to physically patrol streets with mobs to be held culpable. He only needed to look away or send a tacit signal for utter mayhem to take over. That itself would have been crime enough. But from the SIT’s findings, Modi clearly did more than that.

Despite this, the SIT chairman claims that there is not enough substantiation for him to recommend further action against Modi “under the law”. The question then is do we need to change our laws? Or change their selective application? How is it that, to name just one case, men like Binayak Sen — reputed doctor and human rights champion — can be sentenced to life imprisonment on extremely flimsy evidence and on much lighter allegations?

The decision on the need for a more thorough investigation now rests with the Supreme Court. Senior Supreme Court lawyer and former additional solicitor general of India, Raju Ramachandran, who is the amicus curiae in the case, has already submitted his observations and recommendations on the SIT probe to the apex court on 20 January. Nobody except the court and the SIT knows what Ramachandran has suggested.

All eyes are therefore set on the Supreme Court Bench comprising three judges — DK Jain, P Sathasivam and Aftab Alam — which will convene on 3 March and decide the future course of action.

AMONG MANY civil rights groups and publications, TEHELKA has been at the forefront of the fight for justice for Gujarat riot victims. In October 2007, through a six month-long undercover operation, TEHELKA had got over 60 hours of footage containing unprecedented on-camera confessions of dozens of rioters, VHP and BJP leaders and public prosecutors admitting to their complicity in the riots and exulting about the elaborate conspiracy that had subverted justice in the aftermath of the riots. The TEHELKA sting led to an uproar in civil society. The National Human Rights Commission (NHRC) asked the Gujarat government to carry out a probe into the TEHELKA video recordings. But the Modi government simply refused. Following this, the CBIwas asked to inquire into the sting. The CBI seized the footage and equipment from TEHELKA and sent it to a forensics lab for authentication. The tapes were declared 100 percent genuine.

No matter what the Supreme Court decides on 3 March, TEHELKA wants to place the full truth of the SIT probe in the public domain and let readers arrive at their own perspective about Modi’s guilt in the 2002 Gujarat riots.

Reading the report is a strange experience. Right through, there is a kind of uneasy see-saw between the report’s startling findings and its weak, watered-down conclusions. This tension between findings and conclusions tells its own story.

What follows is some of the key accusations against Modi and the conclusions the SIT report drew on them.

Narendra Modi did hold a meeting on 27 February 2002. Did he tell his officers to let Hindus vent their anger freely against Muslims? SIT claims there is no conclusive evidence
The SIT probe against Modi and his government was ordered by the Supreme Court on 27 March 2009 while hearing a complaint filed by Zakia Jafri, widow of slain Congress leader, Ehsan Jafri, who along with dozens of other Muslims was hacked and burned to death during the riots. Zakia had made 32 specific allegations against Modi and other BJP functionaries, bureaucrats and police officers. The most serious allegation was that Modi had given instructions to the then DGP, chief secretary and other senior officials to allow Hindus to freely vent their anger at the Muslims for the Sabarmati carnage. This instruction was allegedly given at a meeting held at the chief minister’s bungalow in Gandhinagar on 27 February 2002.

SIT Chairman Raghavan notes: ‘The inquiry clearly established that such a meeting was in fact held at the chief minister’s residence on the night of 27.02.02 after the chief minister’s return to Ahmedabad following his visit to Godhra earlier in the day.’ (Page 3 of chairman’s comments)

According to inquiry officer AK Malhotra, a retired CBI man, the meeting lasted for about half an hour. There were eight confirmed participants:

1. Chief Minister Narendra Modi

2. Acting Chief Secretary Swarna Kanta Verma

3. Additional Chief Secretary (Home) Ashok Narayan

4. DGP K Chakravarthi

5. Ahmedabad Commissioner of Police PC Pande

6. Secretary (Home) K Nityanandam

7. Principal Secretary to CM PK Mishra

8. Secretary to CM Anil Mukim

The SIT report says the police deliberately overlooked the cell phone records of BJP leaders involved in the riots

Before the SIT, two of the senior officers present — Swarna Kanta Verma and Ashok Narayan — did not refute the allegation that Modi had uttered the shocking words of allowing Hindus to vent their anger. Instead they “pleaded loss of memory due to passage of time”. (Page 16)

Four officers — K Chakravarthi, K Nityanandam, PC Pande and PK Mishra — have categorically denied that the CM had instructed the police not to control Hindu mobs for a window of time. One officer, Anil Mukim, who is presently on deputation to the Central ministry of commerce, has curiously denied attending this meeting at all.

The selective amnesia by two senior officers coupled with Mukim’s blatant denial of having even attended the meeting suggests a massive cover-up. This becomes even more believable when seen in the light of the fact that out of the four officers who sided with Modi, two — PC Pande and PK Mishra — had been rewarded with lucrative post-retirement assignments by the Modi government. After his retirement in 2009, PK Mishra has been posted as chairman of the Gujarat Electricity Regulatory Commission with a fixed tenure for six years. While Pande, after his retirement, has been posted as chairman of Gujarat State Police Housing Corporation. The third, K Nityanandam is still serving in the Modi government and holds the post of managing director of the Gujarat State Police Housing Corporation. Ashok Narayan, who didn’t refute the allegation but pleaded memory loss, was also rewarded. After the riots, Narayan was promoted to the post of chief secretary. On 23 May 2003, he was appointed as state vigilance commissioner. He turned 60 on 31 July 2004 but was granted a two-year extension. Subsequently, he was granted four extensions of six months each till 31 December 2008. That adds up to four years of extended benefits granted by the Modi government.

Riot of pain The man who made a nation cry

PHOTO: REUTERS

Accordingly, SIT Chairman Raghavan observes “the three officers (PC Pande, PK Mishra and Ashok Narayan) had been accommodated in post-retirement jobs, and are therefore not obliged to speak against the chief minister or the state government.” (Page 4 of chairman’s comments)

The SIT report has also noted that Justice PB Sawant, a retired Supreme Court judge and Justice Hosbert Suresh, a retired judge of the Bombay High Court, who were members of the Concerned Citizens’ Tribunal that had inquired into the riots have confirmed that former Gujarat minister for state for revenue, Haren Pandya had deposed before them, implicating Modi for his role in the riots.

The two retired judges told the SIT that “Pandya appeared and deposed before the tribunal on 13 May 2002, on condition of anonymity, that he had attended a meeting on 27 February 2002 night at the residence of Modi in which the latter had made it clear that there should be a backlash from the Hindus on the next day and the police should not come in their way.” (Page 18 of the report).

Pandya was murdered mysteriously in 2003. With his death, there is no way to find out if the meeting he referred to was the same one in which senior bureaucrats had participated or if a separate meeting of BJP leaders had been convened by Modi. But since Pandya’s deposition before the tribunal was not recorded, the SITwas not willing to take the statements of the two retired judges into consideration.

The SIT’s entire approach to this, in fact, displays a singular lack of will. The enquiry officer on page 13 of his report has stated:

1. Some of the public servants, who had retired long back, claimed loss of memory as they did not want any controversy.

2. The other category of public servants, who have recently retired and provided with good post-retirement assignments, felt obliged to the state government and the present chief minister and therefore their testimony lacks credibility.

3. The serving public servants, who have been empanelled for higher posts, did not want to come into conflict with the politicians in power and incur their wrath, which affected their frank response.

As Home Minister, the entire law and order machinery was directly under Modi. How can he not be probed further?

Despite this acute awareness that officers were not deposing freely before them, inexplicably, the SIT doesn’t want to dig deep. Wrapping up his observation, the inquiry officer states: “It can be concluded that a law and order meeting was in fact held by Modi at his residence late in the evening of 27 February 2002. However, the allegation that the chief minister instructed the chief secretary, DGP and other senior officials to allow the Hindu community to vent their anger on the Muslims in the wake of Godhra incident is not established.”

Sanjeev Bhatt: Against the tide, one man is willing to speak the truth. Why has the SIT discarded him?
Though many officers have chosen the soft option — silence, a plea of amnesia — there is one other senior IPS officer who claimed he was present at the meeting convened at the CM’s residence. Sanjeev Bhatt, presently a deputy inspector general, was posted as a deputy commissioner of police in the State Intelligence Bureau at the time of the riots.

Bhatt told the SIT that it was DGP Chakravarthi who had insisted on his presence at the meeting. According to Bhatt, since the state intelligence chief GC Raigar was away on leave, the DGP had wanted somebody from the intelligence department to be present to provide answers on the intelligence failure behind the Sabarmati carnage at Godhra and tackle any other intelligence related query that might have come up at the meeting.

Bhatt, however, refused to say more. He told the SIT that since the probe against Modi was merely at a preliminary stage, he would not like to speak up. However, if a criminal case was registered he would be duty bound to testify and tell the truth. (Given the purely exploratory nature of the SIT’s mandate, as a serving officer, Bhatt’s rationale was that speaking out at this stage would jeopardise his career without necessarily having any impact.)

Curiously, however, just his willingness to testify at a later stage had a significant fallout — pointing to all the wheels grinding behind the scenes. When inquiry officer Malhotra examined Narendra Modi on 25 March 2010, Modi made a strange slip. He admitted that he had called a law and order meeting at his residence on 27 February 2002, after his return from Godhra where he had gone to inspect the Sabarmati carnage.

Asked about who was present, Modi named the seven officers, apart from himself, listed above. However, without further prompting from the inquiry officer, he went on to assert, “Sanjeev Bhatt, the then DC (Int.) did not attend, as this was a highlevel meeting.” Why did he bring up Bhatt’s name? The inquiry officer had asked him about who was present, not about who was not. Clearly, somebody had alerted Modi about Bhatt’s statement before the SIT. He had come prepared to contradict and discredit Bhatt’s version even when the question posed to him by the SIT officer had no reference of Bhatt.

The other seven officers at the meeting have also displayed strange reactions when asked about Bhatt’s presence at the meeting. Swarna Kanta Verma and Ashok Narayan have pleaded loss of memory. PK Mishra, then principal secretary to the CM, has not refuted Bhatt’s presence but claims he cannot recollect if he was there. Out of the remaining four participants, only the then DGP Chakravarthi has categorically denied Bhatt’s presence. The other three have given vague replies.

Despite this ambivalence, inquiry officer Malhotra concludes on page 149 of his report, “Since Bhatt’s presence at the meeting is not proved his statement has to be ignored.” Malhotra himself has called the testimonies of these seven officers unreliable because they were either rewarded by Modi or continue to serve in his government. When it comes to Bhatt’s presence at that crucial meeting then, why is Malhotra, quite bizarrely, willing to believe these otherwise unreliable witnesses?

The SIT chairman’s comments are equally inexplicable. He admits that “Sanjeev Bhatt, SP, Intelligence told SIT that only if there was a legal obligation arising from the registration of a regular criminal case, he would be duty bound to disclose facts of discussion at the meeting. This indicated he had some reservations about what transpired on the occasion.” But the chairman goes on to say, “Bhatt is considered an unreliable witness, especially because no official, who is known to have definitely attended the meeting has spoken of his presence there. Also he was considered too junior to have been invited to such a high-level meeting.” (Pages 3-4 of chairman’s comments)

Clearly, SIT swallowed Modi’s unsolicited information on Bhatt without a rational analysis. What makes this even stranger is that while the SIT team discards Bhatt’s claim of having attended the controversial meeting on 27 February 2002, they are quite happy to rely on other statements made by Bhatt elsewhere in the report.

Narendra Modi illegally positioned his health and housing ministers in the police control room but it’s hard to find evidence of their interference: SIT
In situations of an internal security crisis like a terror attack or communal riots, the police control room is akin to a war room. From the deployment of forces to coordination of scattered teams on the field to collection of field reports, it is from the control room that the police orchestrates its response. On 28 February 2002, as riots erupted across the state, in an extremely controversial and extra-legal move, Modi positioned two of his Cabinet ministers and their political staff in the Control Rooms.

The massacres at Naroda Gaon, Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society in Ahmedabad started at around 10 in the morning and continued till around eight at night. The state police failed to respond despite repeated calls for rescue by the victims. Under these circumstances, the presence of these ministers in the police control rooms becomes highly suspect.

Page 30 of the report states: “Sanjeev Bhatt, the then DC (Int.) has stated that he had attended a meeting at the CM’s residence on 28 February 2002 along with DGP and ADGP (Int.) GC Raiger. (Raiger had cut short his leave and had reported back on duty on the morning of 28 February). After the meeting, he returned to his chamber on the second floor of Police Bhawan at about 1100 hours and shortly thereafter went to meet the DGP on the first floor of the same building. When he entered the DGP’s chamber he found that, as instructed after the conclusion of the CM’s meeting, two Cabinet ministers of Gujarat, namely, Ashok Bhatt and IK Jadeja had already arrived and were sitting on a sofa in the DGP’s chamber. He further stated that GC Raiger, the then ADG (Int.) and Maniram, the then ADG (law and order) were also present there. Sanjeev Bhatt briefed the DGP and after taking tea he returned to his chamber. Shortly thereafter, Sanjeev Bhatt happened to go to State Control Room on the first floor to collect some documents and saw IK Jadeja and his support staff sitting in the chamber of Dy SP, Control Room.”

This leads to a very uncomfortable question. Inquiry officer Malhotra found the above narrative of Bhatt to be true and has used it to prove that IK Jadeja was indeed present in the state police control room. Malhotra has also not disputed Bhatt’s claim that he attended a meeting with the chief minister on the morning of 28 February 2002. Why then is it impossible to believe that Bhatt was present at the chief minister’s meeting the evening before, when Modi allegedly told his officers to let Hindus vent their anger freely for a few days? If Bhatt is senior enough to attend a meeting on 28 February morning, why was he too “junior” to attended a meeting on 27 February evening?

In fact, Bhatt’s claim that he did attend the controversial 27 February meeting is all the more credible as his boss, state intelligence chief Raiger was on leave, leaving Bhatt the senior most intelligence officer around. It needs to be emphasised that Bhatt, in fact, attended the 28 February morning meeting even though his boss had reported back on duty.

What makes all this even murkier is that the SIT has reported that Ashok Narayan, the then additional chief secretary (Home), lied blatantly when asked about the two ministers’ presence in the Police Control Rooms. DGP K Chakravarthi told the SIT that “he was informed by Ashok Narayan that it was decided by the government that IK Jadeja would sit in DGP’s office on 28 February 2002 to get information about the law and order situation in the state, as the State Control Room was located in his office. Ashok Narayan also informed him that Ashok Bhatt would similarly sit in the Ahmedabad City Police Control Room situated in the office of Ahmedabad city.”

IK Jadeja was the minister of urban housing while Ashok Bhatt was the health minister at the time. Neither had any business being at the police headquarters. But when he was questioned on this, Ashok Narayan denied having given any such instructions to Chakravarthi.

The then Ahmedabad police commissioner PC Pande also lied about Ashok Bhatt’s prolonged presence in the city police control room. Pande claims the minister may have been there for 10-15 minutes. Ashok Bhatt’s version tallies with Pande’s. However, when minister IK Jadeja was questioned, he claimed it was Gordhan Zadaphia, Modi’s deputy in the home ministry, who had asked him to remain present in the police control room. (Zadaphia has since fallen out with Modi and floated his own party. It is, therefore, convenient for Modi and the BJP to pass all the blame on solely to Zadaphia.)

Through all this, it is clear that in trying to pass the buck, Chakravarthi, Narayan and Pande have ended up lying and contradicting each other before the SIT.

On the other hand, it’s only Sanjeev Bhatt who appears to be consistent with his version of events. He told the SIT that he had registered his protest with DGP Chakravarthi about the presence of ministers in the control room and, with his permission, shifted them to an empty room in the same building. He says he further remembers “some of the supporting staff of Jadeja seeking certain information from the state IB on that day and on subsequent two or three days.” (DGP Chakravarthi does not refute Sanjeev Bhatt on this as it only shows him in good light.)

The critical question here is why were these ministers and their political staff seeking sensitive information like that of deployment of police forces in different regions? Was the information passed on to the rioters on the ground? In any case, what were ministers of urban housing and health doing in a police room during the riots?

SIT Chairman Raghavan states: “It has been conclusively established that two ministers were indeed operating from the two control rooms for a few days from 28 February 2002 onwards. There is however no information to establish that they interfered with police operations.”

There seems to be little use in pointing out repeatedly how the SIT failed to push its findings towards harder investigation. Instead, it is time to pose a different question: is this the way to ascertain the truth behind one of the country’s worst communal massacres? Can a massive conspiracy about a state-orchestrated pogrom be unravelled by merely recording statements of police officers who themselves were complicit in one way or the other?

The police who did take corrective action against rioting Hindu mobs were shunted out. Inexplicably, the SIT claims this is the government’s prerogative
The SIT report does not only record how compliant police officers were rewarded. In a shocking litany of cases, it also records how upright police officers were punished instantly and unambiguously for doing their job, sending out a stark message. If this does not count for mala fide intention on the part of the government, what can?

Rahul Sharma, an IPS officer of 1992 batch, is just one example. Superintendent of police, Bhavnagar district, in 2002, Sharma had done a commendable job of controlling the murderous riots by taking swift action against those Hindu leaders who were inciting communal passions. But Sharma told the SIT that three days after he had protected a mosque from being torched by a rioting Hindu mob and saved the lives of dozens of Muslim children, he was transferred out to an insignificant posting. Though Zadaphia had called and commended him, he had said the ratio of Hindus and Muslims killed in police firing was not “proper”, i.e., “that is more number of deaths of Hindus than Muslims.” Soon after, he was transferred. (Page 33)

Another police officer, Vivek Srivastava, a 1989 batch IPS officer, who was superintendent of police of Kutch district was shunted out after he arrested a BJP leader on charges of assaulting a Muslim family. According to the report, “Srivastava stated that he got a few phone calls from the office of home minister and chief minister asking him about the details of the case and whether there was adequate evidence against all the accused to which he confirmed that sufficient evidence was available. Srivastava was transferred in the last week of March 2002 and posted as deputy commissioner, Prohibition & Excise, Ahmedabad Zone.” (Page 33)

Fear is the key Riot victims huddle in the wreckage of their burnt down homes in Ahmedabad

PHOTO: AMI VITALE

Another IPS officer Himanshu Bhatt, who was SP, Banaskantha, was transferred to the State Intelligence Bureau at Gandhinagar in March 2002. Bhatt had initiated action against a sub-inspector who had assisted a rioting mob. As it happened the sub-inspector concerned had important political connections and was not only reinstated but also allowed to resume his duty at the same police station. Bhatt has since left the country and settled abroad. The SIT couldn’t examine Bhatt.

Satish Chandra Verma, who was DIG, border range at Kutch-Bhuj during the riots, had issued a formal order to arrest a sitting BJP MLA, Shankar Chaudhary, for being involved in the riots and killing two Muslims. He was transferred soon after as the principal of the State Reserve Police Training Centre, Junagadh. (Page 34)

Inquiry officer Malhotra notes that none of these officers, however, would admit that they were victimised. All of them stated that transfers were the prerogative of the government. Malhotra concludes that these transfers appear to be ‘unusual’ and ‘fishy’ but stops there. Raghavan too admits to their controversial and questionable nature. But, surprisingly, neither of them comes to the obvious conclusion that this could be one of the reasons for further investigation into the State’s collusion.

The SIT admits that police officers who allowed riots to fester were rewarded with lucrative postings. But fails to come to a logical conclusion

In a brazen statement, as upright officers were clipped for doing their duty by the Modi government, derelict officers, who had made a mockery of their uniforms and the trust reposed in them by society, were applauded and rewarded.

MK Tandon, who was the joint commissioner of police of Sector 2, Ahmedabad and in whose region more than 200 Muslims were butchered to death, was given the important posting of IG, Surat Range, soon after the riots. In July 2005, he was appointed to the post of ADGP (law & order) at the state police headquarters, a position with statewide jurisdiction. Tandon retired from the same position.

The SIT report is an uneasy see-saw between its startling findings and weak conclusions. A study in contradictions

The SIT has found that Tandon deliberately didn’t respond to distress calls from Gulberg Society and Naroda Gaon and Naroda Patiya, where some of the most gruesome massacres were underway. Instead, he got bogus cases registered in other parts of Ahmedabad to justify the presence of himself and his police force in those areas rather than Gulberg and Naroda. The SIT has also found that Tandon was in telephonic contact with Jaideep Patel and Mayaben Kodnani — the architect of massacres at Naroda Gaon and Naroda Patiya.

PB Gondia, deputy to Tandon, was DCP Zone IV at the time. He now enjoys the powerful post of inspector general of police of State CID. In his report, Malhotra says: “In my view Gondia virtually ran away from Naroda Patiya at 1420 hours when the situation was very serious and virtually uncontrollable and also did not reach Gulberg Society despite the distress calls.” The SIT also found that, like Tandon, Gondia was in regular telephonic contact with Kodnani and Jaideep Patel.

In addition to these police officers, there were other controversial bureaucrats who have remained in high government favour despite their black track records. Among them are G Subba Rao, the then chief secretary; Ashok Narayan, the then ACS (Home); PK Mishra, the then PS to Modi; PC Pande, the then Ahmedabad CP; Deepak Swaroop, the then IGP, Vadodara Range; K Nityanandam, the then secretary (Home); Rakesh Asthana (presently commissioner of police of Vadodara city) and DG Vanzara (now in jail for staging encounter killings).

The SIT also notes that, while conducting the trail of the Best Bakery Case, the additional sessions judge of Greater Bombay had made adverse comments and passed strictures against K Kumaraswamy, the then joint CP, Vadodara city and Ramjibhai Pargi, the then ACP, Vadodara city for attempting to subvert justice.

But despite this overwhelming evidence of bias and prejudice, recorded in its own report, the SIT has concluded lamely that transfers and postings are the prerogative of the government.

Modi displayed dangerously communal and prejudiced conduct during the riots but there isn’t enough evidence to book him, says the SIT

What does it take to hold a chief minister morally, if not legally responsible, for the willful deaths of 2,000 people in his state?

On page 67 of the SIT report Malhotra notes, “Narendra Modi, chief minister, has admitted to visiting Godhra on 27 February 2002. He has further admitted to visiting Gulberg Society, Naroda Patiya and other riot-affected parts of Ahmedabad city only on 5 March 2002 and 6 March 2002.” Malhotra further writes: “This possibly indicates his discriminatory attitude. He went to Godhra, travelling almost 300 km in a day, but failed to go to the local areas, where serious incidents of riots had taken place and a large number of Muslims were killed.”

On 1 March 2002, as the fire of communal riots was raging in Gujarat, in an interview to Zee News, Modi made the following remark: “Kriya pratikriya ki chain chal rahi hai. Hum chahte hain ki na kriya ho aur na pratikriya (The process of action and reaction is on. I would say if action doesn’t happen there would be no reaction).”

In the same interview, Modi had stated that Godhra Muslims had criminal tendencies and they were behind the gruesome Sabarmati train fire incident. And then added that the riots in Gujarat were a natural reaction to that. (“Godhra ke is ilake ke logon ki criminal tendencies rahi hain. In logon ne pahle mahila teachers ka khoon kiya. Aura ab yeh jaghanya apraadh kiya hai jiski pratikriya ho rahi hai.”)

On page 69 of his report, Malhotra notes: “It is to be stated that Narendra Modi has clearly stated in his Zee TV interview that it was late Ehsan Jafri, ex- MP, who first fired at the violent mob and the provoked mob stormed the society and set it on fire. In this interview he has clearly referred to Jafri’s firing as ‘action’ and the massacre that followed as ‘reaction’.”

Malhotra further writes: “It may thus be seen that in spite of the fact that ghastly violent attacks had taken place on Muslims at Gulberg Society and elsewhere, the reaction of the government was not the type that would have been expected by anyone. The above discussion also shows that the chief minister had tried to water down the seriousness of the situation at Gulberg Society, Naroda Patiya and other places by saying that every ‘action’ has an equal and opposite ‘reaction’.” He also says that Modi’s remarks “implied justification of the killings of innocent members of the minority community” and reflected his partisan mindset and thus were unbecoming of a chief minister.

Raghavan has also termed Modi’s remarks as “sweeping” and “offensive”. However, Malhotra concludes by saying that such utterances itself are “not sufficient to make out a case against Modi”.

Saffron brigade members of were appointed public prosecutors in riot cases, but tough to pinpoint instances of misconduct, says SIT
As this detailed analysis shows, in almost every aspect, the SIT report is an exasperating study in contradictions. While the inquiry officer admits malfeasance on the part of Modi and his government on several counts, he has shown inexplicable reluctance in recommending a further detailed investigation.

Nowhere is this better illustrated than the section dealing with the appointment of VHP and RSS members as public prosecutors.

On page 157, Malhotra records that a pro-VHP advocate named Raghuvir Pandya was appointed as government pleader in the Vadodara District and Sessions Court in 2002. Pandya conducted the trial of the infamous Best Bakery case which resulted in the acquittal of all the accused. Malhotra further writes that the “Supreme Court of India had passed serious strictures on the role played by Pandya in this trial which deserves to be brought to the notice of the Bar Association for suitable action as deemed fit.”

Malhotra lists five more instances of VHP or RSS leaders being appointed as public prosecutors. He mentions that ‘political consideration and affiliation of the advocates weighed heavily with the government’ in these appointments. Then he contradicts himself by saying that ‘no specific allegation of professional misconduct on the part of any of the public prosecutors has come to light.’

The ugly face A Bajrang Dal rioter

PHOTO: AMI VITALE

Again and again, one is flummoxed by the SIT’S timidity in driving its own findings to their natural conclusions. For instance, the SIT found that Gujarat VHP General Secretary Dilip Trivedi was a public prosecutor in Mehsana district between April 2000 and December 2007, with more than a dozen public prosecutors working under him. Mehsana was among the worst riot affected areas. Two riot cases in Mehsana in particular — the Deepda Darwaza killings in Visnagar town and the Sardarpura massacre — were most horrific.

During TEHELKA’s sting investigation, in a conversation with the undercover reporter, Trivedi had boasted about how he had camped in every district of Gujarat holding meetings with government prosecutors, VHP workers, police officers and defence advocates to ensure bail and acquittals for the Hindu accused. He proudly told the TEHELKA reporter that out of a total 74 riot-related cases in Mehsana, only two had resulted in conviction. Yet, the same SIT that had cited this TEHELKA reporter as a prosecution witness in three riot cases, now refused to take on board the sensational and self-damning claims Trivedi had made to this reporter.

TEHELKA had also stung Gujarat government’s special prosecutor Arvind Pandya, who had given a detailed account of the systematic subversion of justice by VHP and RSS-affiliated prosecutors across the state. After the TEHELKA expose Pandya was forced to quit.

In a dismaying and self-evident roll call, at a time when a well-intentioned government would have taken every measure to build back confidence and trust, the SIT found several other Sangh members who had been appointed as public prosecutors:

Chetan Shah, a VHP member who, at one point, had faced trial under Terrorist and Disruptive Activities (Prevention) Act (TADA) for the alleged killing of nine members of a Muslim family, was appointed as public prosecutor on 17 June 2003 for a period of three years. Shockingly, before his appointment, he had defended many accused in the Gulberg Society massacre.

HM Dhruv, who had defended Chetan Shah in the TADA case, was appointed as a special prosecutor in the Gulberg Society and Naroda Patiya cases.

IPS officer Rahul Sharma protected a mosque and saved dozens of Muslim lives. He was transferred soon after

Piyush Gandhi, an ABVP and VHP leader, was appointed as public prosecutor in Panchmahal on 15 March 1996 and he continued in the same post till 1 September 2009. Gandhi conducted the trial of several riot cases including that of the Shabana- Suhang gang rape and murder case.

Many of the accused in these cases found easy bail. SIT Chairman Raghavan states: “It has been found that a few of the appointees were in fact politically connected, either to the ruling party or organisations sympathetic to it.” But, he chose not to say anything more.

The police deliberately did not investigate the complicity of BJP and VHP leaders in the riots
The SIT has conclusively stated that the Gujarat Police in charge of the investigations into the Naroda Gaon, Naroda Patiya and Gulberg Society massacres deliberately did not investigate the connection between the rioters and senior leaders of the BJP and VHP. It is important to reiterate that the police came directly under Narendra Modi, who was the cabinet minister for home, and if he had wanted, he could have easily brought the situation under control during the riots and ensured a fair and transparent investigation in its aftermath.

But the contrary happened. The SIT has found that officer Rahul Sharma, who was shunted out from Bhavnagar, had collected the call data records of all the mobile phones in operation in Ahmedabad during the riots. Sharma had submitted these call records to his superiors, besides submitting copies before the Nanavati-Shah Commission and Banerjee Commission. These phone records now constitute an important piece of evidence against culprits like Zadaphia, Mayaben Kodnani, Jaideep Patel, Babu Bajrangi, MK Tandon, PB Gondia and dozens of other Sngh Privar members who had allegedly participated in the riots.

But according to the SIT, while the investigation into the riot cases was in the hands of the Gujarat Police, the police made no attempt to analys these records and book the culprits. In turn, though, quite curiously, the SIT too is happy to lay the onus for this on a few junior police rather than fixing responsibility on the police commissioner, DGP or home minister.

The SIT states: “There appears to be an intentional lapse on the part of Tarun Barot, the then police inspector and now ACP, Special Operations Group, Ahmedabad and GL Singhal, the then ACP, Crime Branch, and now SP, ATS, Ahmedabad and the same deserves to be dealt with major penalty and departmental proceedings against them.”

Does the SITwant people to believe that the deliberately shoddy investigations had no sanction from the top? Would a few junior police have acted on their own? Who had a vested interest in not investigating the BJP and VHP leaders? A police inspector and an ACP? Or the leadership of the BJP and VHP? Sadly, the SIT has not addressed these fundamental questions.

The bodies of victims of the Godhra carnage were handed over to the VHP, inflaming passion. But SIT pins the blame on a junior officer
One of the key charges against Modi was that he allowed the bodies of the victims of the horrific Sabarmati carnage to be handed over to the VHP, who then paraded them in processions through Ahmedabad. This drove communal passions to a murderous frenzy and aggravated an already tense situation.

ML Nalvaya, executive magistrate of Godhra at the time, has testified before the SIT that the bodies of 54 victims were indeed handed over to VHP leaders Jaideep Patel and Hasmukh Patel on the instructions of Jayanthi Ravi, who was the Godhra District Magistrate at the time. But Ravi, an IAS officer, denies this and claims Nalvaya, who was her subordinate, took the decision on his own.

The SIT says the decision to shift the bodies to Ahmedabad was taken after a closed door meeting between Jayanti Ravi, Jaideep Patel, cabinet minister Ashok Bhatt, civil aviation minister Prabhatsingh Chauhan, Gordhan Zadaphia and Modi. But, bizarrely, when it comes to the question of who decided that the bodies should be handed to the VHP, the SIT blames executive magistrate Nalvaya. (Page 23-24)

Could Nalvaya, a lower-level officer, have taken such a big decision on his own? Why is the SIT willing to believe Jayanti Ravi’s version over Nalvaya’s version?

(In 2002, while testifying before the Concerned Citizens’ Tribunal, Ravi had said that she had opposed the decision to transport the bodies to Ahmedabad but Modi had overruled her. Since then Ravi has retracted her version. She is presently holding the powerful post of commissioner of higher education in the government.)

The 54 charred bodies were brought to Ahmedabad in five trucks, escorted by a police vehicle on that fateful day of 27 February 2002. (Of the 54 bodies, only 25 were finally identified as victims from Ahmedabad.) Some were handed over to their families, some were cremated en masse. The SIT, however, is silent on the question whether funeral processions were taken out in Ahmedabad, and it has swallowed Modi’s assertion that the alleged procession from Godhra to Ahmedabad did not take place. But the SIT does not back this contention with any documentary evidence. Nor has it examined any independent witnesses in this regard.

There was no delay in requisitioning the army, says the SIT, but is silent on why there was a delay in deployment
In a positive note, given the inflamed situation in the state, SIT Chairman Raghavan records that the state government had alerted army authorities on a possible need for their assistance on 27 February itself. Modi had also called Union Home Minister LK Advani about the deteriorating law and order situation. This was followed by a fax message on 28 February 2002 to the Centre. Army columns started arriving in Ahmedabad during the intervening night of 28 February-1 March. Raghavan concludes that “it is clearly established that there was no slackness on the part of the state government in summoning the army.”

However, once the army had arrived, it needed logistic support. The Modi administration could arrange all of this only by 2.30 pm on the afternoon of 1 March. At Godhra, this took up to the afternoon of 2 March. By then, a lot of the horror had already struck. The SIT report records this slackness in deploying the army, but has chosen not to comment on it.

Sreekumar prepared yet another report dated 28 August 2002 regarding internal security trends in the light of the ensuing Assembly polls. Ashok Narayan told the SIT that he could not recall the action taken by him on the said letter.

Top cop RB Sreekumar produces a mountain of evidence about unconstitutional acts by Narendra Modi, but SIT says no other bureaucrat is ready to corroborate his version of events
RB Sreekumar took over as the additional DG of the State Intelligence Bureau on 9 April 2002. However, he claims that he soon fell out of favour with Modi as he refused to carry out his illegal and unconstitutional instructions, including eliminating certain members of the Muslim community. Among the documentary evidence produced by Sreekumar, there were:

1. A report titled ‘Current Communal Scenario in Ahmedabad City’ prepared by Sreekumar and sent to the then ACS (Home) Ashok Narayan for appropriate action on 24 April 2002. The report made the following points:

a) Riot victims had lost faith in the criminal justice system. Police officers were dissuading victims from lodging complaints against BJP and VHP members

b) Officers were watering down the charges in complaints and clubbing FIRs

c) The VHP and Bajrang Dal were exhorting businesses not to give employment to Muslims

d) The VHPwas distributing pamphlets with communally inflammatory material

e) Inspectors in charge of police stations were ignoring the orders of their superiors and complying instead with direct verbal instructions from BJP leaders.

Arsonists all A mob sets fire to vehicles and other goods in the Khokhara area in Ahmadabad

PHOTO: AP

The SIT not only found this report to be genuine, it also found reports prepared by a few other officers which corroborated Sreekumar’s report. Questioned by the SIT on this, Ashok Narayan confirmed receiving this report but claimed loss of memory on whether he had placed it before Modi.

2. Sreekumar also sent another report dated 15 June 2002 advising against a proposed rath yatra by Modi because communal tension was still simmering in many parts of Gujarat. The Modi administration overruled his recommendation.

3. Sreekumar prepared another report dated 20 August 2002 highlighting continuing communal tension, and emphasising that the minorities continued to complain of unjust police action and shoddy investigations. Ashok Narayan accepted before the SIT that the government didn’t act upon this report.

4. Sreekumar prepared yet another report dated 28 August 2002 regarding internal security trends in the light of the ensuing Assembly polls. Ashok Narayan told the SIT that he could not recall the action taken by him on the said letter.

Sreekumar then filed three affidavits before the Nanavati-Shah Commission. The first detailed the failure of the state and Central intelligence bureaus in preventing the Sabarmati train carnage. The second alleged that the Modi government deliberately didn’t act on the reports of the state intelligence bureau. And in the third, he recorded how he was pressurised by Modi’s officials to give favourable reports on the law and order situation to facilitate an early Assembly election. Sreekumar then filed three affidavits before the Nanavati-Shah Commission. The first detailed the failure of the state and Central intelligence bureaus in preventing the Sabarmati train carnage. The second alleged that the Modi government deliberately didn’t act on the reports of the state intelligence bureau. And in the third, he recorded how he was pressurised by Modi’s officials to give favourable reports on the law and order situation to facilitate an early Assembly election.

He also detailed an account of a meeting chaired by the then Chief Election Commissioner JM Lyngdoh on 9 August 2002 in which the latter had castigated home department officials for presenting wrong facts. Lyngdoh had passed an order dated 16 August 2002 in which he noted: “Significantly, additional director general of police RB Sreekumar stated before the commission that 151 towns and 993 villages covering 154 out of 182 Assembly constituencies in the state were affected by the riots. This falsifies the claims of other authorities.”

In the same affidavit, Sreekumar further alleged that Modi and his bureaucrats had given him many verbal orders, which were illegal and unconstitutional. Some of these orders were: a) Illegal tapping of phones of Congress leaders and Modi rivals within the party like Haren Pandya, b) submission of reports to suit Modi’s political interests, c) eliminate Muslims who might try to disrupt Modi’s rath-yatra, d) spy on the private life of Major General Zahiruddin Shah who had been assisting the Gujarat Police in maintaining law and order.

Sreekumar had maintained a register in which he used to record these illegal verbal orders. But the SIT concluded that “the register maintained by RB Sreekumar cannot be considered a reliable document as the same appears motivated and no credence can be placed upon the same. Moreover, there is no corroboration to the oral version of RB Sreekumar by any of the independent witnesses.”

By “independent witnesses” the SIT has meant bureaucrats like Ashok Narayan, K Chakravarthi and PC Pande. But by the SIT’s own admission these bureaucrats were rewarded with post-retirement assignments by Modi and thus did not seem to have spoken honestly.

In this third affidavit, Sreekumar also produced an audio recording which allegedly proved that state home secretary GC Murmu, home department official Dinesh Kapadia and the state government’s special prosecutor Arvind Pandya had tried tutoring and intimidating him into not telling the truth before the Nanavati-Shah Commission.

The SIT found the audio recording to be genuine but has alleged that Sreekumar produced it as an act of pique only after he was superseded for a promotion. What the SIT has failed to appreciate is the consistency in Sreekumar’s stand against the Modi government’s communal and political agenda.

Sreekumar had started preparing the register from 18 April 2002 onwards, just nine days after he was posted as the state intelligence chief. He also got the register certified by the then IGP (admin & security) OP Mathur. Sreekumar regularly made entries in the register till 19 September 2002, that is, till the day he was shunted out from the state intelligence bureau. Also, all his four reports detailed above were consistent and have been found to be based on field intelligence reports. Besides, he had filed his first affidavit before the Nanavati-Shah Commission in July 2002, much before he was denied a promotion.

In keeping with its pattern, the Modi government not only penalised Sreekumar for speaking up by superseding him, it also held back his post-retirement benefits. Sreekumar, however, fought against the government and won the case before the Central Administrative Tribunal (CAT).

Despite all this, SIT Chairman Raghavan has disregarded Sreekumar and commented, ‘It has been clearly established that the register was an unofficial document that Sreekumar was not authorised to maintain,’ and adds that it has no “evidentiary value whatsoever”.

There is a certain fatigue in chasing the idea of justice. As the years pass, champions seem motivated rather than dogged

However, Raghavan has failed to comment on Sreekumar’s affidavits before the Nanavati-Shah Commission, his numerous reports prepared in his capacity of state intelligence chief and also his testimony before the SIT. Unlike other bureaucrats, Sreekumar stood up and spoke against the chief minister.

The SIT, self-admittedly, has not looked at several crucial records. What are they?
By its own admission, there are several crucial records that the SIT has not examined. Mainly, they are:

• Phone call records of fixed landlines and mobile phone records of crucial persons in the government, including Modi.

• Television channel recordings of critical events like the events at Sola Civil Hospital in Ahmedabad, where the victims of the Sabarmati carnage were taken.

• Log books and station diaries maintained at police stations during the riots.

• Case diaries maintained by police officers investigating the riots.

• Files pertaining to the appointments of public prosecutors after the riots.

• Files relating to transfers of different police officers immediately after the riots.

• Records related to intelligence inputs both by the state and Central Intelligence Bureaus both before and after the riots.

• Security logs of the chief minister and other senior officials showing their movements during the riots.

• Records of the army and Central paramilitary forces showing not just their deployment but also permissions from civil authorities to use force and firearms. Just a cursory glance at that list suggests there is a mountain of evidence that has not even been looked at yet.

The SIT, also self-admittedly, has not examined several crucial people. Who are they?
Besides this, the SIT failed to examine the following crucial witnesses: KPS Gill, who was sent to Gujarat by the Central government on 4 May 2002 and who played a key role in reshuffling the police officers only after which the riots had subsided. Major General Zahiruddin Shah, who oversaw the deployment of the army in riot-affected areas of Gujarat. The then Chief Election Commissioner JM Lyngdoh, who had pulled up the Gujarat home department officials for presenting distorted and motivated reports. Journalists from leading newspapers and news channels who covered the transporting of bodies from Godhra to Ahmedabad and then the mass cremations on 28 February 2002. The police officers who escorted the bodies from Godhra to Ahmedabad.

The political associates of the two ministers who were present along with them in the police control rooms. Constables and other lower level officers manning the control room during the riots.

Just a cursory glance at this list again shows there’s a crucial pool of first-hand testimonies that has not even been tapped yet. Does all of this — both the existing evidence and the unturned stones — not merit further investigation? The SIT was born with no teeth. Despite that, hasn’t it recorded enough material to register an offence and set up a team of officers to investigate the Modi government with full legal powers and authority?

There is a certain fatigue in chasing the idea of justice. Tired of fighting, the human spirit strains to move on. As the years pass, those who champion others’ causes begin to seem motivated rather than dogged. Why won’t they let bygones be bygones, people wonder. Why will they not let everyone retreat into the haven of “normalcy?” Why have they made this their agenda?

Many civil rights groups and sections of the media, including TEHELKA, have flagged the gross miscarriage of justice in Gujarat. Sometimes, there is a temptation to let the story pass. Enough has already been said about the Gujarat riots and Narendra Modi. There is now the danger of déjà vu, made doubly effete with inaction. But with every flagrant violation that passes without retribution into our collective memory, we become more debased as a society. We believe there is no accountability. We believe the wrong can get away. Heinous acts seem less and less heinous. Our Richter scales of outrage grow rusty. A more morally keen society would have held Modi to book for much less. As it should have held the ruling Congress to book back in 1984.

And so the dogged questions must continue to be asked. Communal speeches. Transferred officers. Destroyed official records. Prejudiced public prosecutors. A compromised bureaucracy. Is all of this not already starkly sufficient proof to establish that Modi presided over a criminally prejudiced and communal administration? Are these the attributes of a model leader? Like his chosen officers, should we all develop collective amnesia about what happened in Gujarat?

Reconciliation can only follow on truthtelling. In pursuing the story of the Gujarat riots, much more is at stake than individuals like Modi or political parties like the BJP. This story is about the future of this country. It’s about basic questions: Can we allow the horrors of the 2002 Gujarat riots or the 1984 Sikh riots to repeat themselves? Can we dull our ideas of fair play? Can we allow the idea of India to erode by the day?

The Supreme Court will make part of that decision

Whose steel? Who’s stealing?

2011-02-04T08:11:00.000-08:00

The Rs. 52,000 crore POSCO project has the figures to dazzle, but who’s going to profit from it? TUSHA MITTAL finds it is not going to be Odisha’s villagers

Crossroads Displaced people await their fate at the POSCO transit camp

PHOTOS : VIJAY PANDEY

IN A season of scams, this is another. But the story of India’s largest foreign direct investment (FDI) is a scam of an entirely different scale; it cannot be measured only in currency. This scam is in the spin that makes private profit look like development; that makes FDI look like the only measure of a healthy economy, and gives global markets precedence over the domestic. This is the story of why the world’s third largest steel producer — Pohang Steel Corporation (POSCO) — really wants to invest in India. Of how this Rs. 52,000 crore project — India’s six largest steel plants combined — got clearance despite internal objections at every stage. Of how data has been concocted, facts misrepresented, vital information withheld, official minutes manipulated, site inspections conducted from a helicopter so India can have its largest FDI. Environmentalists believe Brazil and China have rejected POSCO’s proposal. Yet India has welcomed it with open arms.

The POSCO story is now at its most critical stage. How long POSCO’s welcome will last depends on crucial choices, on the politics of environment, development and diplomacy, on what India chooses to define as its priorities. It depends on psychology — the notion of power that comes from global linkages; of investment and development as holy cows, of any regulation as a leap backward, the myth that the magic letters — FDI — are the harbinger of prosperity.

There is no estimate of what India has to gain. The only cost-benefit analysis has been funded by the steel firm

TEHELKA has learnt that when the MoU was signed, the Odisha government thought it was trading revenue land. It was when Agriculture Minister Damodar Raut raised a question in the Assembly about the exact classification of it that Revenue Minister Manmohan Shyamal went back to the records. It was only then that they realised that 3,000 acres of the land promised to POSCO was forest land inhabited by 4,000 families.

In the past five years, the project has faced stiff opposition: large-scale protests, police firing, hundreds of injuries, a sarpanch with 42 cases against him, a farmer who cultivates with three bullets lodged in his body. In the past five years, it has become symptomatic of all the major faultlines of an investment-hungry India: a flawed mining policy, land acquisition woes, the question of ownership of natural resources, of public versus private, of fundamental rights and fair compensation, and of growth.

Good harvest Farmer Nakul Bera wants to keep cultivating betel leaves

The turning point in the POSCO story is the report of a committee constituted by the Ministry of Environment and Forests (MoEF) to evaluate the project. The Meena Gupta Committee report, tabled in October, uncorked the lid off the problems spawned by the project. In a vindication of concerns raised by local residents, three members of the committee detailed gross violations of the Environment Protection Act, the Forest Rights Act and the Coastal Regulatory Zone (CRZ) notification. They recommended that all clearances be revoked.

Based on this report, the MoEF’s Forest Advisory Committee (FAC) has now recommended temporary withdrawal of POSCO’s forest clearance. Both the Environment Appraisal and the CRZ committees have asked POSCO for more data. Environment Minister Jairam Ramesh is expected to take a final decision after the sub-committees submit their reports.

There are various stakeholders in his final decision: the PMO, the steel ministry, the MEA, the Congress, the Odisha government, the BJD, the CPI, forest officers, environmentalists, 52 families driven out of their villages after a deft divide-and-rule strategy and labelled as “pro-POSCO” even though they don’t all endorse the project, thousands of farmers and fishermen who stand to lose their lands and livelihoods.

If you followed the backroom machinations of how official committees have had to dillydally on their recommendations because of pressure from the PMO, of how the FAC had to meet three times to discuss the project — something it has never done for any other project — you know this will not be an easy move for Ramesh. In that sense, POSCO is symptomatic of a new India where it is becoming increasingly impossible to do not only the right thing, but also the legal thing about the environment.

IN GOBINDPUR village, Nakula Behra, 80, is rather confused. He has never thought of himself as poor. His eyes are wide with horror at the mention of poverty, at the thought of a multi-billion dollar Korean company needing to give him employment and save him from a cursed rural life. He is self-employed in what he considers a profitable business — betel and cashew cultivation. He is so successful that he employs 10 others. He sells fish, betel leaves, drumsticks and cashew. One betel leaf sells for 60 paisa, one drumstick for Re. 1. He has an LIC policy and makes a profit of Rs. 5,000 per month. The betel vine has given him enough to marry off three daughters.

“How can you call me poor?” he asks. “Until we have the betel vine, we are selfsufficient. We earn as much as a government servant would. How are we poor? We are living with dignity.” Electricity would be nice, he says, but the only power POSCO will produce will be for itself, to run its integrated steel plant.

Reluctant Noboni and Keluri fear that POSCO will kill their livelihood

Research by a group of US-based professors and engineers has estimated that the average farmer in the project-affected area earns Rs. 40,000 per decimal of land per year. POSCO is offering the displaced a one-time cash compensation of Rs. 11,500 per decimal. They estimate the total loss by a betel vine farmer per decimal over a 30-year period would be around Rs. 12 lakh, making the current compensation package on offer less than 1 percent of their cumulative earning potential.

Meanwhile, it is estimated the extraction of iron ore alone allows POSCO Rs. 6,500 crore per year for the next 30 years. This means POSCO will recover its initial investment of Rs. 52,000 crore after eight years. From then on, it is pure profit.

While the current land demarcated for POSCO has a thriving agrarian economy sustaining 22,000 people, there is alternative barren land available 5-7 km from the current site. POSCO has refused to consider it. Sources say it is because POSCO’s costs would go up by about Rs. 4,000 crore. The former site is abundant in natural sand — the essential raw material for construction. In the latter site, POSCO would have to bear additional costs for construction and transporting sand. The spin says otherwise but this is maybe India’s deadliest scam — unbridled private profit in the name of development.

That is why reading the Meena Gupta Committee report is like holding a mirror to a cracked face and asking uncomfortable questions. There are ideological and economic questions: How do we want to use our scare resources? How do we define ‘optimal’ allocation of resources? India is already among the top 10 countries in the world with highest foreign reserves. Is there any analysis of what net impact this FDI will have? Is it worth it? What if the environmental and social costs of the project outweigh the benefit?

POSCO will displace 22,000 people, fell 3 lakh trees, and could destroy the nesting grounds of the Olive Ridley turtles

Nearly 22,000 people displaced, another 20,000 fishermen with no access to the waters, nearly 3 lakh trees felled, waterfalls red with iron, entire fisheries disrupted, forests turned into concrete, coastlines eroded, vanishing beaches, elephants left with no migratory pattern, and the possibility of destroying the world’s largest nesting grounds for the endangered Olive Ridley turtles — how far are we willing to go? Who is bearing the costs and who is getting the benefits?

But the POSCO story is not only about the development verus environment debate. It is about something more rudimentary: about development versus law, about how many laws we are willing to subvert for the great Indian Dream.

To understand the horror, consider this: Since all clearances have been obtained piecemeal, that too for only the initial 4 million tonne (MT) plant, there has been no comprehensive appraisal of the combined environmental impact of the entire project. Though POSCO’s steel plant will have an integrated township, a railway line and a 86 km pipeline — POSCO has applied for clearance for only the plant itself.

Three years after it got environmental clearance no one actually knows exactly what impact the project will have on the region — on the coastal ecology, on the water availability, on the possibility of a large-scale natural disaster.

AN INDEPENDENT review of the Environment Impact Assessment (EIA) made by an American green law alliance notes: “The EIA fails to asses the impacts of a worse-case spill and direct POSCO to use double-hulled tankers,” as is mandatory by international guidelines. India and South Korea are members of the International Maritime Organisation. Yet no one has made it mandatory for POSCO to follow the rules.

An MoEF committee has itself noted that ‘marine ecological status’ was not covered in the environment assessment. It concludes that the “the methodology used by the agency which prepared the EIA for POSCO is woefully deficient.” The port was given environment clearance based on a rapid assessment made during the monsoon months — something that the EIA notification forbids.

The Government of Odisha has agreed to build police stations for POSCO. It is a sign of that deeper malaise

In the five years since the project was proposed, the POSCO saga has become indicative of a much deeper malaise — that of the State giving up its responsibility as a regulator and acting as a private agent of corporate interests. In many ways, POSCO is symptomatic of the problems of India’s mining policy. The industry has seen unprecedented profits in recent years, with the price of iron ore going from Rs. 300 per tonne in 2002 to between Rs. 5,000-7,000 at present. The prices are expected to reach Rs. 10,000 next year.

World over, companies pay fair-market rates for the iron ore reserves they mine. India is one of the rare exceptions that has offered mining leases on a royalty basis. Until last year, it was 27 per tonne. This year, a revised policy has increased the royalty to 10 percent of the pre-shipping price. In June 2005, bypassing nearly 200 companies, including PSUs, who applied for access to the mines, the Odisha government signed an MoU with POSCO. India’s total iron ore reserves stand at 18 BT of which 4.5 BT are in Odisha. This is what the MoU allowed POSCO: 600 MT of the highest-grade iron ore available in India, an integrated 12 MT plant, a hydel plant, a railway line, a township, a pipeline that will supply water from Cuttack’s drinking water source, and most significantly, its own port — unprecedented in India so far.

THE MOU also allows access to another 400 MT of iron ore that POSCO can export for use in its South Korean plants. Of the 600 MT designated for the production of steel, the MoU allows POSCO to swap 30 percent of Odisha’s high-grade iron ore with a lower-grade quality from Brazil. posco says this will make better steel. However, research shows that the low phosphorous content in Odisha’s iron ore makes it far more profitable to sell.

The private port is of concern too. The Central government policy itself says that there can’t be two ports within 25 km. POSCO’s port is about 10 km from an existing major Paradip port. POSCO classifies it as a ‘minor’ port but the data shows its depth is actually greater than Paradip. The port is going to be constructed on sand dunes that had once protected surrounding villages from the super cyclone in 1991. Hundreds had died.

But POSCO says that Paradip port will not be able to bear the additional traffic. The acting chairman of Paradip Port has himself challenged this. Even Shipping Minister TR Baalu opposed the idea. When questioned, POSCO Senior General Manager Saroj Mahapatra said: “POSCO is known for operating port-based steel plants. It is our specialisation.”

“Before the MOU, I had raised several flags,” former Odisha minister Panchanan Kanungo told TEHELKA. He was the deputy when Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik held the finance portfolio. “I raised questions about why we need a new port, how we will supply adequate water for this when our own water resources are dwindling, and where are the mountains of ash going to be dumped since this is a fertile area. I did not get a reply to any of these queries.

“Earlier the swapping ratio was higher. About 40-60 percent was being contemplated. After objections, it was reduced to 30 percent. But nobody will be able to check how much of Odisha’s iron ore will be exported or swapped by posco,” he adds. This is because the MoU has allowed POSCO both a private port and SEZ status. The premises within an SEZ are “deemed foreign land”, allowing for a few token officials, but making it nearly impossible for the government to monitor on a daily basis. The SEZ also allows tax concessions and zero export duty. (This means POSCO can export much or all of the steel it will produce at cheaper rates.)

The MOU also allows POSCO to set up its plant in three phases, beginning with a 4 MT plant and expanding every three years. Everything POSCO has asked for — land, iron ore, water — is based on the projection of a 12 MT plant. But there is nothing that binds POSCO to it. In a shocking reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha, the Ministry of Steel admitted that it has “no guideline regarding implementation of large-scale steel projects”, and that the phase-wise expansion is decided “by the investors themselves based on commercial considerations”.

What this means is POSCO could continue mining the iron ore for a 12 MT plant without necessarily expanding to produce 12 MT of steel. It presents an uncomfortable question: What is POSCO’s objective? Is it Odisha’s development? Is it steel production? Or is it exporting iron ore at a time when prices are skyrocketing? All evidence points to the latter.

It is becoming increasingly evident that mining is not really directly proportional to the upliftment or development of a state. Government data shows the number of workers employed to produce 1 MT of iron ore dropped 32 percent from 2005 to 2009. Shockingly, even the official report on Regional Imbalances shows that Odisha’s top three mining areas have actually registered a ‘downward mobility’ in terms of development.

According to labour ministry data, jobs in the mining sector per 1 lakh of output fell from 0.03 percent in 2000 to 0.009 percent in 2006. In Keonjhar, one of the prime mining areas, labourers claim that life expectancy has declined by about 50 percent, many dying before the age of 40. The trend of increasing mechanisation in the mining sector suggests that employment generation is usually much lower than projected.

The irony of the POSCO story is that India may have little to gain from its largest FDI. That the only existing costbenefit analysis that measures what India has to gain has been funded by POSCO itself. That the project may have been justified not on solid empirical data but on the symbolism of a large FDI. Much of the Rs. 52,000 crore FDI will actually end up flowing out. POSCO’s biggest expenditure will be on machinery, which as Mahapatra admitted will be “globally sourced”.

The rationale for an FDI is usually access to better technology and global markets, explains Jayati Ghosh, leading economist and member of the National Knowledge Commission set up by the prime minister. “The reason you want an FDI is because you feel as an economy that you are getting something out of it,” she says. “It is not clear what we are getting out of this one. The argument that POSCO is bringing new technology is laughable. We don’t need it. One could purchase the technology separately. That is what POSCO itself did while growing into a steel giant. “I am not against industrialisation, but it makes more sense to process raw material here than export it. This is the first project where we have agreed to export raw iron ore because the South Koreans have insisted on it. I am against this kind of export. The POSCO project is an example of how we have completely lost imagination about the project of development,” she adds.

Still Odisha and POSCO have made tall promises: 8.7 lakh jobs, 11 percent addition to the state’s GDP, unemployment wiped out of Odisha, thousands of crores in tax revenue. Put the number through scrutiny and the horror, the malaise becomes evident. In 2005, the Odisha government said the revenue from POSCO would be Rs. 89,000 crore in taxes to the Centre and Rs.22,500 crore in revenue to the state government. But these figures include sales tax, excise tax, service tax and local tax, all of which SEZ developers are exempt from.

The government did not offer any revised calculations until the ncaer report of 2007. Quoting from the National Council of Applied Economic Research (NCAER) study — funded by POSCO — the government now claims it will get Rs. 17,4970 crore as tax revenue over 35 years, of which Odisha will get Rs. 77,870 crore. How the expected tax revenue jumped from Rs. 22,500 crore in 2005 to almost three times that amount in 2007, is a mystery.

“The government has offered misleading and false projections. The numbers seem to imply that the corporate tax that POSCO would owe the state would be higher if it has SEZ status, than if it doesn’t!” says a study by a group of US-based business professors and engineers.

The study also shows that POSCO’s employment claims are exaggerated. “A careful breakdown of the much-touted 8.7 lakh man years for 30 years shows only a 1.7 percent reduction in current unemployment levels,” the report says.

POSCO offered them a cheque. They accepted it. A few months without their land and they already want it back

Too late Tribals of Polang village regret giving up their land for POSCO

That such an MoU was signed in the first place, that the Odisha government has been bending over backwards to ensure it is implemented (appointing a nodal officer, agreeing to facilitate clearances, bear the cost of any litigation, and even build police stations for POSCO if necessary) is a troubling indicator of the Great Indian Dream.

With $2.7 billion already invested in brands such as Hyundai, Samsung and LG, South Korea is the seventh largest investor in India. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak was the Chief Guest at this year’s Republic Day celebrations. Lee had hoped his visit would coincide with the commencement of the POSCO project. When it became clear the he would not be able to visit the project site due to a ‘minor’ people’s agitation, Odisha CM Patnaik flew to New Delhi to provide the necessary assurances. The Ministry of External Affairs reaffirmed that the government was trying its best to “pave the way for the initiation of the project” and admitted that the project had not ‘evolved’ at the desired pace. “Both the Central and State governments are committed to the project. But we would like to move ahead mush faster,” said MEA Joint Secretary Gautam Bimbawale.

That both the PMO and the MEA have put their weight behind POSCO, that despite large-scale violations being reported, a proactive Environment Minister Ramesh has not yet been able to scrap the project is indicative of the murky politics of environment.

To understand the horror, follow the events that allowed POSCO to get forest clearance. It was given conditional forest clearance contingent on the Odisha government implementing the FRA — an Act that recognises that forest dwellers have a legitimate right to their land.

On 19 December 2009, Jagatsinghpur district collector NC Jena wrote to the village sarpanches to get the consent of the forest dwellers. But the letter read like an order, an instruction to implement what appears to be a formality, an impediment in the way of Rs. 52,000 crore FDI.

“Forest land is to be diverted for a construction of a mega steel plant,” Jena wrote. “As per the instruction of the Odisha chief secretary, the said proposal is to be approved by the pallisabha (gram sabha) of the panchayats concerned. You are, therefore, instructed to take immediate steps to convene the pallisabha and submit its resolution.”

As per instructions, a pallisabha was convened by sarpanches of two of the three gram panchayats. But the impediments to the country’s largest FDI chose to come alive and exercise their constitutional right.

ON 3 FEBRUARY, the Nuagaon pallisabha passed the following resolution: “It was unanimously passed not to convert the occupied forest land into non-forest land. We are protesting the POSCO plant construction at our cost. This pallisabha has unanimously passed the right not to deliver (this land) to the administration to set up the plant forcefully and illegally. We are demanding the government to issue pattas (a certificate that establishes forests rights) in order to respect the people’s mandate in this pallisabha.”

The scrawny villagers that a multi-billion dollar company was supposed to save issued a referendum that they didn’t need to be saved after all. Copies were immediately sent to the collector.

On 23 February, the collector wrote to the state government, stating the exact opposite: “Pallisabhas have been conducted in all three gram panchayats covering the POSCO project area and no claim for settlement of rights from tribals and traditional forest dwellers have been received,” he wrote. “Since no tribals or traditional forest dwellers are residing in the area, the question of settlement of rights of under the FRA does not arise.”

By July, the Odisha government began land acquisition. Potitiopavan Behra is one of the 96 families who had to comply. “They came with the police to acquire the land,” he says. “We had no choice but to accept the compensation.”

These violations were only discovered when a FRA monitoring committee happened to pick Jagatsinghpur district for its evaluation. It relayed the violations to the MOEF, which then ordered land acuquistion to stop and later constituted the Meena Gupta Committee. If this had not happened, the project would have gone through in its current format.

That is why Noboni Mallik would rather not trust the government version of development. “Our paan kheti is like our elder son and fishing is our second,” she says, tying three fish around her waist. “We will die if POSCO comes. It will be like killing both our sons.”

Free Download of Karl Marx's Das Capital-Repost

2011-02-01T10:59:00.000-08:00

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Spirited fight of the workers against the multinational company Foxconn amid police threats in Tamil nadu

2010-11-03T13:56:00.000-07:00

S. DORAIRAJ

Striking workers at Foxconn India in Sriperumbudur near Chennai take on the corporate giant, demanding better wages.

B. JOTHI RAMALINGAM

Foxconn workers demonstrating in Kancheepuram on September 29.

WORKERS at Foxconn-India in Sriperumbudur in Kancheepuram district, Tamil Nadu, have been on strike from September 24 demanding better wages. They also want the reinstatement of 24 suspended colleagues and the withdrawal of an eight-day wage cut slapped on some workers. That they have held out for so long is remarkable, not least because they are mostly young. Various trade unions and political parties have come out in support of their cause.

Aged between 19 and 25, many of the 1,800-odd regular and 3,000 contract workers and trainees have just completed Standard X or Standard XII. A considerable number of them are diploma holders and a few are graduates. Union sources say that their average salary is around Rs.4,500. Most have migrated from other districts during the past four or five years and are children of small peasants, farmhands, construction workers or daily wage labourers. Their employer, the Taiwan-based Foxconn, is a giant mobile phone component manufacturer.

Rallying under the banner of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU), a large number of the workers have rejected the wage accord reached between the management of Foxconn India and the Labour Progressive Federation (LPF), the trade union wing of the ruling Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK).

According to A. Soundararajan, State general secretary of the CITU, most of the regular workers, including functionaries of the LPF union at Foxconn, have left the organisation and joined the trade union affiliated to the CITU.

How it started

Though the management turned a deaf ear to its pleas for recognition, the CITU-affiliated union went ahead and submitted a 30-point charter of demands on August 24. It demanded a minimum basic pay of Rs.10,000 with a 10 per cent annual increase; disbursement of Rs.1,000 as city compensatory allowance; Rs.100 as night shift allowance; Rs.25,000 as leave travel allowance; and Rs.2,000 as children's education allowance. It also asked for medical leave, insurance cover, a bonus adding up to three months' salary and a provision for housing loan up to Rs. 5 lakh.

The management responded by writing to the Assistant Commissioner of Labour saying that it was willing to negotiate with the union that represented the majority of the workers. “Kindly facilitate us to show their majority through proper election mode whereby the management can talk to appropriate forum,” it said. However, the government authorities concerned failed to act in this regard and no secret ballot was held to ascertain the strength of the unions. The Foxconn management, which had already initiated talks with the LPF, stayed away from the meeting called by the Assistant Labour Commissioner on September 2. This prompted the CITU union to serve a strike notice on September 7.

In the wee hours of September 22, workers owing allegiance to the CITU began a sit-in against the management for withholding recognition to their union and refusing to talk to its representatives. However, the Deputy Labour Commissioner persuaded the union that a negotiated settlement could be reached on the contentious issues, and the protest was withdrawn with immediate effect.

The very next day, the management declared an eight-day wage cut against those who participated in the sit-in. It also announced that a wage settlement would be signed with the LPF. The following day the workers resumed the sit-in, and the management responded by suspending 24 workers, CITU sources said. It described the sit-in as illegal and the workers' protest on the factory premises as “serious misconduct as per the standing orders of the company”.

“From September 25 to October 4, we were pleading with the Labour officers to come out with a consent advice that the management should revoke the suspension of the workers, the trade union should suspend the protest and the pending issues could be sorted out through talks. This suggestion was not acceptable to the management. Only against this backdrop, we had to intensify the protest,” Soundararajan said.

In a related development, the owner of a building who had agreed to give a portion of his space on rent to house the CITU union office in Sriperumbudur backtracked on October 6, owing to alleged intimidation by a group that warned him of “dire consequences”. The CITU wrote to the Chief Minister about it and sought his intervention to ensure safety for the union activists.

On October 9, along with Soundararajan and E. Muthukumar, Kancheepuram district unit secretary of the CITU, 220 workers were arrested under Sections 147 (rioting), 294 (b) (obscene act and songs), 341 (wrongful restraint) and 506 (i) (criminal intimidation) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). They were lodged in the Vellore central prison.

While most of these remand prisoners were released on bail, Soundararajan, Muthukumar and 10 Foxconn workers were arrested in a new case on October 13. Shortly before they were taken to a court in Uthiramerur, they were all asked to stand in rows of two and handcuffed. Though the Director-General of Police and the Labour Minister have denied this, Soundararajan has written to the National Commission for Human Rights seeking action against those who were responsible for humiliating the trade union activists. He said handcuffing of remand prisoners was a clear violation of the directions of the Supreme Court and various other courts.

The CITU leaders and the Foxconn workers were released on conditional bail on October 22. During the time that the CITU leaders spent behind bars, a “long-term wage settlement” was reached between the management and the LPF union under the Section 18 (1) of the Industrial Disputes Act, 1947, for three years.

According to the settlement, publicised by the management through a circular on October 12, the gross monthly salary for the first year ending in June 2011 has been fixed at Rs.7,830 for workers with two to three years of service, Rs.9,000 for workers with three to four years of service and Rs.9,300 for those having more than four years' service. In the next two years, the first category will be given an additional amount of Rs.465 and the remaining two categories would get Rs.500 more. Apart from this, a marriage gift of Rs.3,000, a marriage advance of Rs.25,000 and a festival advance of Rs.3,000 will be disbursed to the workers.

Workers' resolve

Neither the wage accord nor the management's appeal to the workers' parents to persuade their wards to return to work could break the workers' resolve to continue with the strike until their demands were met. While most workers from far-off places such as Tirunelveli, Tiruvarur and Theni have returned to their native villages, their colleagues residing in Kancheepuram district and neighbouring Vellore, Tiruvannamalai and Tiruvallur districts assemble at Sriperumbudur every day and demonstrate near the tahsildar's office.

The Foxconn India workers' struggle for labour rights and better wages acquires significance in a State that ranks third in the country in terms of the number of SEZs (special economic zones) approved by the Government of India. So far formal approvals have been given for 69 SEZs, in-principle approvals have been accorded for 20, and 57 SEZs have been notified.

Over 400 hectares of land has been allotted for various SEZs to house 48 industrial units with an investment proposal of about Rs.30,000 crore, promising direct and indirect employment for 1.77 lakh persons. This was announced in the State Assembly in the last Budget session.

Support of political parties

The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK), the Marumalarchi Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (MDMK), the Communist Party of India (Marxist), the Communist Party of India (CPI) and the All India Forward Bloc have criticised the State government for “not taking any positive step to resolve the labour issues” in Foxconn as well as the public sector Neyveli Lignite Corporation.

The Left parties and trade unions have sent out a clear message to the government that they will be forced to observe a State-wide bandh if the unrest escalates. Different forms of protests have been staged by the trade unions and the Left parties throughout the State. In Chennai, a massive demonstration was staged on October 21 in support of the Foxconn and NLC workers. Addressing the activists, leaders of the CPI(M), the CPI, the AIFB, the AIADMK and the MDMK criticised the DMK government's “pro-management policy and its attempt to prop up the LPF at the cost of the workers' interests”.

In a joint statement on October 13 , leaders of the INTUC, the AITUC, the CITU, the Anna Thozhirsanga Peravai and the AICCTU said MNCs such as Foxconn were not adhering to labour laws. Accusing the government of backing MNCs, they called for immediate steps to release the union activists and to arrange for a secret ballot in Foxconn.

State CPI(M) secretary G. Ramakrishnan said the State government's approach to labour disputes betrayed its keenness to please MNCs. Its stance on labour issues, including those in SEZs, revived memories of the repressive measures of the early 1970s when the State witnessed struggles on an unprecedented scale for labour and trade union rights, he said. He recalled that Chief Minister M. Karunanidhi had declared then that the government would crush the workers' agitations with an iron hand.

S.S. Thiagarajan, general secretary of the Tamil Nadu unit of the AITUC, said workers' rights could not be compromised under the guise of wooing foreign investments. “Unfortunately the labour laws of the country are not followed in the MNC units. There is a marked difference between the approach of the governments in Left-ruled States and other States on the issue,” he said

C.V.M.P. Ezhilarasan, president of the Foxconn India Thozhilalar Munnetra Sangam, denied that the government propped up the LPF union. He said it was the first union to be started in Foxconn India.

In a democratic country, workers were free to launch unions but it was the prerogative of the management to accord recognition. The LPF union had the backing of 600 regular workers and the majority workers had welcomed the wage settlement, he claimed.

The World Federation of Trade Unions has expressed solidarity with the striking workers. In a message on October 25, the WFTU secretariat said, “We unite our voice with the voice of the workers in Foxconn Factory in India who fight against exploitation, against capital and against anti-labour policies.”

Government stance

State Labour Minister Anbarasan also denied the charge that the government was promoting the LPF, particularly in the SEZs. The DMK government would always strive to protect workers' rights and welfare, he said. He claimed that the dispute in Foxconn India was “precipitated by a section of the workers owing allegiance to the CITU” who “damaged” company buses and machinery while the management was speaking to the LPF union on labour demands. He alleged that the CITU agitation was aimed at tarnishing the State government's image.

What the workers say

S. Deepa of Mangadu, who had completed four years of service, said the workers would not resume work until the suspended workers were reinstated. M. Kalaivani, daughter of a construction worker, complained that workers at Foxconn had to run from pillar to post to seek leave. “We have to get the signatures of six persons – the team leader, group leader, cell leader, manpower controller, superviser and manager – affixed on the leave application,” she said. B. Nirmala of Vayalur in Tiruvallur district alleged that some of her colleagues who participated in the sit-in were treated badly by the police while being evicted from the factory premises.

M. Muruganandam of Tirukkuvalai village in Nagapattinam district said safety measures were inadequate in the factory. He added that Rs.750 was deducted from his salary during his stay at the dormitory run by the management at Sunguvarchatram for male workers.

K. Kalaivani of Kancheepuram said medical facilities at the factory site were pathetic. A. Asim, one of the suspended workers, said as cheap labour was available in villages, the management brought them in buses even from places that were 80 km away from the factory site.

Licence to kill -Armed Forces Special Powers Act

2010-11-03T13:48:00.000-07:00

PTI

Irom Chanu Sharmila (centre), who has been on a "fast unto death" since November 2000 seeking the withdrawal of the AFSPA, in a March 2009 photograph. She is in judicial custody and is lodged at Jawaharlal Nehru Hospital in Imphal, where she is force-fed. Her fast is still on.

ARE India's Army and paramilitary forces the only ones in the entire world to combat armed militancy? What is the actual need for the Armed Forces (Special Powers) Act, 1958 (AFSPA)? No other Indian law has incurred such odium at home and abroad, especially and repeatedly in the United Nations Human Rights Committee, as this. The Supreme Court's judgment upholding it is pathetically perfunctory. It dealt with every aspect, except the fundamental right to life and personal liberty guaranteed by Article 21 of the Constitution. It is not mentioned even once ( Naga People's Movement of Human Rights vs Union of India (1998) 2 Supreme Court Cases 109). Is that how our apex court acts as the guardian of our rights?

Section 4 of the Act empowers any officer of rank to, “if he is of opinion that it is necessary to do so for the maintenance of public order after giving such warning as he may consider necessary, fire upon or otherwise use force even to the causing of death, against any person who is acting in contravention of any law or order for the time being in force in the disturbed area prohibiting the assembly of five or more persons on the carrying of weapons… ammunition…”.

Five features stand out in this statutory obscenity. First, even the warning hinges on the officer's opinion, it may not be a warning “due” or “necessary in the circumstances”. Secondly, even an unarmed assembly of five or more can be fired upon if it violates any order prohibiting any such meeting. Thirdly, it hinges on the subjective opinion of the officer (“if he is of opinion”) in maintaining public order. Fourthly, totally absent is any directive for reasonableness or proportionality. There is no objective test – if it is necessary to do so, or “use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances” to restore public order. On the contrary, there is, lastly, a licence to kill with impunity – “even to the causing of death” without any qualifying conditions. Are you surprised that peaceful demonstrators are shot at?

In Kashmir, unlike in Punjab, whole homes have been blown up by the security forces in crowded areas merely to nab a militant or two. Section 4(2) gives a carte blanche, based again on a subjective opinion, to “destroy” any “shelter” from which inter alia armed attacks are “ likely to be made” or “any structure” used as a hideout by “absconders wanted for any offence”.

One wishes that a scholar or law collective would prepare a study of the background to the Act, especially the parliamentary proceedings. Which genius provided the licence to kill – “even to the causing of death”? The hoary A.V. Dicey writes in his classic Law of the Constitution: “A soldier has, as such, no exemption from liability to the law for his conduct in restoring order. Officers, magistrates, soldiers, policemen, ordinary citizens, all occupy in the eye of the law the same position; they are, each and all of them, bound to withstand and put down breaches of the peace, such as riots and other disturbances; they are, each and all of them, authorised to employ so much force, even to the taking of life, as may be necessary for that purpose, and they are none of them entitled to use more; they are, each and all of them liable to be called to account before a jury for the use of excessive, that is, of unnecessary force” (emphasis added, throughout). Note the contrast. The magnitude of power (even to the taking of life) is conditional on necessity and the soldier is accountable to law.

In India, accountability does not exist. The sanctions provision in the Code of Criminal Procedure (Section 197) requires the Centre's permission for a prosecution. The British soldier had a far more onerous task to perform in Northern Ireland, where preventive detention was discarded as useless after a trial of three years, and the Irish Republican Army (IRA) is better armed and more skilled and sophisticated in the use of firearms. The insurgency lasted for 30 years (1968-2007). The law is that a soldier “for the purpose of establishing civil order is only a citizen armed in a particular manner”.

Section 3(1) of the Criminal Law (Northern Ireland) Act, 1967, says: “A person may use such force as is reasonable in the circumstances in the prevention of crime, or in effecting or assisting in the lawful arrest of offenders or suspected offenders or of persons unlawfully at large” – not for violation of any “order” for maintaining “public order”. Lord Diplock ruled that it would not apply to the arrest of a person of a banned organisation “not also believed on reasonable grounds to be likely to commit actual crimes of violence. ( A.G. for Northern Ireland's Reference No. 1 of 1975 (1977) A.C. 105, (1976) 2 AER 937 at 947.) He added: “What amount of force is reasonable in the circumstances for the purpose of preventing crime is, in my opinion, always a question for the jury in a jury trial, never a ‘point of law' for the judge.” The court would balance the risks of escape with the harm likely to be caused bearing in mind the tension in the situation. But accountability is not avoided and the test of reasonableness remains. Why is the AFSPA barren of this civilised condition?

R. vs Clegg ((1995) A.C. 482) also decided by the House of Lords in a case from Northern Ireland, applies directly to the behaviour of our security forces in Kashmir and the north-eastern region. A soldier was on patrol to catch joyriders when a stolen car accelerated away towards him, with its headlight full on, ignoring an order to stop. All four members of the patrol fired at the approaching car. One of them, Clegg, fired three shots at the windscreen and a fourth after the car had sped away, killing a passenger on the rear seat.

His plea of self-defence was accepted in respect of the first three shots. But the fourth “was an aimed shot fired with the intention of causing death or bodily harm”. He was convicted of murder. The Appeal Court felt it was an offence of manslaughter. The House of Lords disagreed. The fourth shot “was, in the circumstances… grossly disproportionate” to the danger to be averted (page 498). In India, the Army would have seen to it that he was not prosecuted. A Major who killed Jalil Andrabi, a senior advocate in Kashmir, was allowed to escape by the Army. Governments are as cynical.

Sections 3(1) of the Criminal Law Act, 1967, and 117 of the Police and Criminal Evidence Act, 1984, also impose the condition of reasonableness for effecting arrest. Authorities on the law hold likewise (A.W. Bradley and K.D. Ewing; Constitutional and Administrative Law, 12th edition, page 668; O. Hood Phillips and Jackson; Constitutional and Administrative Law, 8th edition, pages 388 and 397; Brownlie's Law of Public Order and National Security, 2nd edition, pages 330-331; R.F.V. Heuston; Essays in Constitutional Law, 2nd edition, page 147). It was well said by a judge that “a gun should never be used or used with any specified degree of force if there is any doubt as to the necessity”.

The AFSPA relieves the forces from all such constraints. Members of the U.N. Human Rights Committee have grilled successive Attorneys-General of India on this law. On March 26, 1991, a member, Wako, pointed out that powers conferred by the Act “went well beyond those provided in the [U.N.'s] Code of Conduct for Law Enforcement Officials, which stipulated that firearms could be used only as an extreme measure and in the event of armed resistance. In particular, Section 4 of the Act seemed to be open to abuse” – the one that gives a licence to kill.

On July 24-25, 1997, Eckart Klein of Germany and Thomas Buergenthal of the United States criticised the AFSPA. On May 23, 2008, at the Working Group of the Human Rights Council, on the Universal Periodic Review, member after member criticised the Act – from Britain, Canada and Germany. They criticised also the vagueness of India's reports which are full of generalities unrelated to the realities. We shall hear more on the subject at the next session.

It is nearly a year since the Union Cabinet has been deadlocked on amendments to the AFSPA because of the Army's opposition. “In the interests of constitutional government and the rule of law, the exercise of the physical might of the modern state must be subject to democratic control,” an authority of constitutional law writes. Defence Minister A.K. Antony is well qualified to exercise that control. He is a confirmed democrat of sturdy independence. He must not fail us.

A.G. Noorani

INDIA FOR SALE-POSCO STORY CONFIRMS IT

2010-11-03T13:23:00.001-07:00

The law isn’t such an ass after all. It knows which side the bread is buttered and sucks up to the rich and powerful. Public policy, too, despite its pretensions to being compassionate, is generous with the rich, stingy with the poor. The first of these observations is proved by how the government has laboured to ease South Korean steel giant Posco’s path to clearance for a plant near the ecologically sensitive Orissa coast. The plant had been cleared by UPA-I, but that was deemed questionable in law. So the Union ministry of environment & forests of UPA-II, headed by Jairam Ramesh, set up a new committee to decide on the project. Three of the four members of the committee—tribal affairs expert Urmila Pingle, ex-DG of the Forest Survey of India Devendra Pandey and senior advocate and human rights activist V. Suresh—have recommended scrapping the clearance. The fourth member, Meena Gupta, a former environment secretary, differed: she opined that, instead of scrapping the clearance (given despite violations of the law by Posco), a few more conditions should be imposed. The ministry is yet to decide on the committee’s report. But considering how big corporates work their way around conditions, and considering how low the rate of enforcement of laws and rules is in India, should the clearance be upheld, Posco may well laugh its way to millions of more steel-billions.

Here are some of the serious lapses in the granting of clearance to Posco, as pointed out in the committee report:

The Posco plant, to come up in Paradeep, is planned for a capacity of 12 million tonnes per year—equivalent to the combined capacity of existing plants in Bhilai, Bokaro, Durgapur, Rourkela, Burnpur and Salem. But clearance was given on the basis of a rapid environmental impact assessment (REIA) that took account only of a production level of 4 million tonnes, set only for the first phase.
REIAs were done separately for the steel plant, its captive power plant and an associated port. Ideally, they should have been assessed together to estimate their full impact.
The plant will affect eight villages and 1,620 hectares (of which 1,253 hectares is forest land). This, and the sheer size of the project, should have called for a comprehensive environment impact report (CEIR), but clearance was granted on the basis of a REIA conducted during a single season—that too monsoon. This is not legally permissible.
Steel plants are not permitted in eco-sensitive areas categorised as Coastal Regulation Zones 1 and 3. A National Institute of Oceanography study, commissioned by Posco itself, had pointed out that the proposed plant falls within such zones. Despite that, the project was cleared.
The Orissa government suppressed the fact that the area was home to some tribals, and, instead of certificates from gram sabhas, as required under the Forest Rights Act, clearance was granted on the basis of a certificate from the district magistrate of Jagatsinghpur.
Rehabilitation of fisherfolk, tribals and other inhabitants likely to be uprooted has not even been considered.
The environment impact assessment hearings were held far away and under heavy police bandobast, ensuring that few turned up. Copies of the report were not given to people, as required by law.

The second observation, about public policy bearing down on the needy, is borne out by the dithering—even by as high-minded a body as the National Advisory Council (NAC), headed by none other than Sonia Gandhi—in universalising the PDS and including aspects of nutrition in the proposed Food Security Bill. Jean Dreze, a well-known economist and NAC member, pointed this out in his dissenting note, saying the council had succumbed to constraints imposed by the government.

Instead of recommending universalisation of the PDS, the NCA has persisted with a targeted approach, replacing the old BPL and APL categories with the new ‘priority’ and ‘general’ categories. The ‘priority’ numbers will be disputed, as were the old poverty figures. Why, the Planning Commission itself has declared that 50 per cent of the names in the BPL list are undeserving. With this general mindset in the administration, the truly deprived will continue to remain so. And differential pricing of commodities for the two categories will ensure that massive corruption, too, continues.

Now for a fact to drive home the point about the state’s callousness: the government told the NAC it didn’t have Rs 1.80 lakh-crore to universalise the PDS, making dal and edible oil available; it didn’t blink while allowing tax concessions of Rs 5 lakh-crore to big corporations.

Of course, our resources are for the rich, not the poor.

The Woman Who Walks on Water

2010-11-03T13:23:00.000-07:00

State apathy hasn’t killed the Medha Patkar-led Narmada Bachao Andolan. SANJANA CHAPPALLI discovers that 25 years later, it still inspires and galvanises similar struggles for justice across India

PHOTOS: SHAILENDRA PANDEY

A group of 12 boys encircle three in the centre - one wears a ghoulish mask and carries a bow and arrow; another is riding a toy horse while the third is dressed as a girl. Drum beats accompany the Adivasi boys as they make their way through the motley crowd gathered in Dhadgaon, Maharashtra. It has been 25 years since the Narmada Bachao Andolan - a people's movement that has brought the struggle in the Narmada valley to the fore - started.

The boys' colourful headgears, the bells tied securely around their waist and anklets, a string of dry gourds and plastic bottles strung around their slim shoulders and the painted faces are enough for the cameras to surface. As people whip out their mobiles for that one shot at memory, there is no change in the boys' pace or expression. But it is really the interactions between the three boys in the centre that are most instructive. It is a searing reflection of the ongoing struggle in the Narmada valley - the girl and the boy on the horse dance defiantly in front of the ghoul, ignoring his repeated aims to shoot them down with his bow and arrow. For at least 25 years now, unmindful of the State's frequently violent postures, the people in the valley have stuck to their rhythm. Danced in front of policemen wielding lathis and guns and raised slogans as they raised their batons. Adivasis, peasants, landless labourers, fish-workers from the valley have walked streets in protest only to watch government after government walk away, refusing to meet their gaze or answer their questions. On 22-23 October, people gathered in Dhadgaon, about 380 km from Mumbai, to remember the streets they have walked in protest. And to remind themselves of the injustice that continues to unravel in the Narmada valley.

For the uninitiated, Narmada is one of India's longest rivers. Rising near Amarkantak in Madhya Pradesh, it flows westwards through Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat before draining out into the Arabian Sea. In 1961, in step with his “dams are temples of modern India” mantra, Jawaharlal Nehru, India's first prime minister, laid the foundation stone for the Sardar Sarovar Project (SSP), the largest dam in a series of 30 large dams, 135 medium dams and 3000 small dams planned on the river Narmada. The dams, collectively termed the Narmada Valley Development Project, were the government's attempt to harness water that was otherwise, in their opinion, flowing out wastefully into the sea. It was possible, the project conceivers argued, to deliver water to drought-prone areas hundreds of kilometers away from the river, irrigate agricultural fields and electrify villages in the three states - if the SSP and the project as a whole was implemented.

While protests and questions from the estimated 2.5 crore people living have always taken place, the formation of the Narmada Bachao Andolan in 1985 gave the protests much-needed momentum. Among the team of social science researchers and social workers who came to the valley to study the impact of dams, was then 31-year-old Medha Patkar - one of the founders of the NBA. An unstoppable force of energy, Medha has over the years become synonymous with the Narmada Bachao Andolan. Instrumental in charting the course of the NBA and in channeling much of its energy, Medha is today a familiar face across people's movements in India. From Nandigram in West Bengal to Nandagudi in Karnataka, she has travelled across the country to raise her voice in protest along with hundreds of others. While criticisms surface about Medha's constant presence in the media, on the ground, it is impossible to deny that her presence alone at times has galvanised much needed public attention.

‘The NBA has had a lasting influence on the way rehabilitation has been viewed,’ says researcher Thakkar

Staunchly Gandhian in its ideology, the NBA has firmly held on to its strategy of non-violence even in the face of extreme provocation. A fundamental question that the NBA has raised has been about the financial costs incurred by the State on huge development projects such as the SSP and the social costs incurred by ordinary people for the sake of a privileged few. Inherent in these questions have been the role of the state as it unequivocally alters the lives and livelihoods of lakhs of people through its persistent and seemingly blind facilitation of this unequal cost-benefit balance.

By any stretch, this is a simplistic, dumbed-down version of the NBA's trajectory over the past 25 years. It says nothing of the methods adopted to raise these questions - the jal satyagrahas, dharnas, hunger fasts, rasta rokos, rallies. Or the several milestones. The 50,000 people who gathered in Harsud, Madhya Pradesh in September 1989 to raise the slogan of vikas chahiye, vinas nahin (we want development, not destruction). Months later, inspired by the movement, Baba Amte, a miracle worker in his own right, decided to join the struggle and settle down on the banks of the river. The much-lamented July 1993 Jal Samarpan (sacrifice by drowning in the Narmada river). The 1993 victory rally as the World Bank decided to withdraw from the project. The July 1999 'Rally for the Valley' cry - the launch of satyagraha against submergence in Domkhedi and Jalsindhi - two villages that emerged as the epicentres of the struggle. The stillness that set in when the Supreme Court in October 2000 dismissed the NBA petition and ordered the construction of the SSP to its full height. The 21-day hunger-fast in Delhi in April 2006 by Medha and seven others. And several thousand other rallies and protest marches as the NBA took on gram panchayats, district collectors, the state and central governments. The World Bank even.

But even these say nothing of the imaginations that the NBA has triggered over the years. Fired by stories of the struggle, thousands of people have consistently arrived in the valley from Montreal to Mangalore. And stayed. And left. And come back. I was 17 when I first landed in the Baroda office of the NBA. When a senior activist, who had by then spent 11 years with the struggle, asked why I was there, all I could muster was a feeble, “ want to know more”. And two days later, I walked into a meeting led by Medha in Domkhedi, an Adivasi village that was slated for submergence. I stayed on for seven weeks. And left. And returned three more times over the years. I was only of many thousands whose lives in the valley (and since) have been stamped indelibly by the NBA and its struggles. Friends who sit across their partners and talk shyly of meeting them at NBA rallies (“We were there for the Harsud rally... we couldn’t find him one night and I went looking for him”). Others who have sharp memories of relationships being triggered by letters sneaked from jails following an NBA protest (“The connect is strong because our political journeys began from the Valley”). Yet another who grew up in the NBA (“I was four when my father took me for the first rally”) and continues to live there. The simplicity of the questions that the NBA asked and the energy of the struggles that echoed in the valley touched people who lived there and those who visited; the political and the personal.

The flood of people who arrived at the valley soon earned them the label of 'middle-class activists' who were frequently under question. Would they stamp the struggle in the valley with their own ideological baggage? Impress and influence the Adivasis and the farmers - 'the primary affected' - who lived in the valley? Sitting in the tiny Badwani office of the NBA, I had broached this issue with Ashish Mandloi, an NBA activist and farmer in the Nimad region of Madhya Pradesh. Only to be faced by a fiery response. Ashishbhai had been affronted. “It isn't merely an action of support. People come to work with us because they see themselves as part of the struggle. It is as much their responsibility to ask questions of the development paradigm that India is following as it is the compulsion of the Adivasis and the farmers who stood to lose if the dams were completed.” (Tragically, Ashishbhai died of a heart attack on 20 May this year. He was 38).

And yet we have to look beyond the imaginations that the struggle in the Narmada valley triggered if we have to understand why the NBA today occupies a seminal position in the political landscape of Indian movements. Since the movement began, the articulation of development politics in this country has been transformed. Says Himanshu Thakkar, a researcher with South Asia Network on Dams, Rivers and People and a former NBA activist, "The NBA changed the contours of the debate on the development politics in the country. It has had a lasting influence on the way rehabilitation has been viewed in this country."

At a policy level too, the NBA's influence is hard to ignore. The Environmental Sub-Group of the Narmada Valley Development Authority (a nodal agency set up by the Madhya Pradesh government “to oversee water resources development in the Narmada basin”) has been consistently monitoring the project in an unprecedented manner. While environment governance for most projects stops with the grant of the environmental clearance, in the case of the Narmada project, a legally empowered and independent sub group was set up to monitor the project at every level - no mean achievement in the bureaucratic wrangle that defines India.

Important as it is to recognise the influence exerted by the NBA, there are fundamental questions to be asked of the movement. Ideologically, the NBA has been almost adamantly Gandhian. At a time when India's political sphere is punctured by debates triggered by the Maoist movement and their insistence on armed struggle (among other methods) as the path to achieve social and political change, how relevant is a movement that refuses to move away from the Gandhian path of ahimsa or non-violence? It is easy to notice that the State's (the government, the judiciary and the police force) preoccupation with the Maoist movement far outweighs its response to an NBA hunger-fast.

Expectedly, the State's response to the Maoist movement is a visibly violent one; but what of its continued apathy to the questions raised by the NBA through its non-violent methods? Does a continued ignorance or a blatant dismissal (the Supreme Court decision on 18 October 2000 dismissed the NBA's petition and ordered the construction of the SSP to its full height of 138.68 m) indicate a failure of non-violence as a strategy to demand justice? "This is a question that should trigger serious introspection from the Indian State. By ignoring the demands for justice from the Narmada valley, what is the message they are putting out for other movements?” asks Swami Agnivesh, a social activist at the 22 October press conference organised by the NBA in the valley. Others are far less direct in their questions. “The nature of the state has changed,” Rakesh Dewan, a senior activist of the NBA. “For years, I have maintained that Gandhian methods such as hunger fasts have zero impact on the government. That we need to introspect and reflect on ways we can push forward our demands for justice.” Even within the Gandhian paradigm, there are endless possibilities - history bears testimony to Gandhi's own ability to experiment with methods.

If 25 years of a movement is an important moment to consider the actions of the past and reflect on the way forward, it did not figure in the two days' events in the valley. What we witnessed instead was an affirmation to continue on the path of struggle even as several movements from across the country vowed to join hands and confront the state under the united banner of the National Alliance of People's Movements.

For every question that needs to be asked is a memory of the trail that the NBA has blazed in its 25 years. How can we not remember a young Adivasi girl who climbed a tree in a police station as the police attempted to arrest her? She had raised slogans against the dam for hours. How can we not remember the young boys who continue to dance defiantly even as the ghoul attempts to shoot them down?

The Shape of the Beast

2010-11-03T13:12:00.000-07:00

Middle-class Indians might hate Arundhati Roy, but shutting her out would leave us a poorer society. Shoma Chaudhury explains why

No quarters Roy’s positions on all big issues have evolved into a strident critique of the State

PHOTO: ABID BHATT

Arundhati Roy’s position on Kashmir is just the latest provocation. The truth is her very existence — her persona and her politics — has become a sort of affront to a certain strata of Indians. White-collared terrorist. Serial offender. Activist butterfly. Secessionist. Attention-monger. Rabble-rouser. Hate-merchant. Watching the enraged epithets being shot at her on national television a few days ago, it was difficult to remember that Arundhati Roy is a writer and public intellectual who has, at many crucial junctures, brought the nation’s attention to chasms that threatened to tear it apart.

OVER THE last decade, in fact, Roy has been there first at almost every trench line: illuminating, dissecting, warning, presaging. Taunting the cosy out of their towers. Magnifying the fights of the voiceless. Few other contemporary Indian writers have engaged so fiercely and urgently with the idea and reality of India. And none have taken it apart as unflinchingly.

It is impossible to understand the profound, yet scrappy and conflicted, impact of Roy’s political writings and utterances on India unless one recalls the dizzy euphoria of her arrival and the irony of the journey she picked for herself afterwards. Watching her now, few will remember that Roy was first announced to the world by a breathless article in a leading Indian magazine. The year was 1996. Liberalisation was just five years old. An ebullient middle-class was looking for a mascot. Roy came tailor-made from heaven: she had an elfin beauty, a diamond flash in her nose, a mane of gorgeous hair, a romantic backstory and a manuscript that triggered an international bidding war. India loved her. From the moment The God of Small Things was published, Roy was deemed the chosen one. As the successes of the book piled up — the huge advances, the translations in 40 languages, and finally the Booker (the first time any resident Indian had won it) — it was a done deal: Arundhati Roy was India’s triumphant entry on the global stage. She was the princess at the ball.

If she had stuck to script, Roy would have remained the celebrated first of a series of triumphant notes: Aishwarya Rai winning Miss World, Tatas taking over Jaguar, Indian billionaires making the top of Fortune 500 lists, an awesome 8 percent growth and a burgeoning consumer class. The India Shining story was all stitched up. Everyone was raising a toast.

No one could have anticipated that the princess would strike the gong even before the midnight hour. Willfully bust the party. Pick open the seams of the gown. Show the chariot for a pumpkin. Smash the glass slipper.

But that is what she did. In May 1998, barely a few months into her Booker win, India tested the nuclear bomb. In August, Roy wrote The End of Imagination, an angry impassioned critique of the bomb, her first piece of writing after the novel.

Since The End of Imagination, there has never been a silence from Roy. It was the first in a series of essays that would grow in moral strength and clarity, moving from the shrill, somewhat over-emotional hyperbole of the nuclear piece to the clear-eyed discomfitures of her later ones.

The fact is 21st century India is not one country: it is two continents. If you are moneyed, middle-class or English-speaking, your continent is a great place to live in. There is a lot of opportunity: great jobs, great bars, many houses to buy, many holidays to afford. Elections are held with exhilarating freedom and democracy has never felt more robust.

If you are underclass, tribal or Muslim, your continent is much darker. Roy had crossed over to the dark side.

With each counter-narrative she has written since, Roy has set herself more askance from mainstream India’s wishful idea of itself. At each step, she has rejected the shoe that would allow her to slip back into a rose-tinted world. Instead, she has steadfastly worked at growing into her own ideal: to be a “troublesome citizen”. Expressing her love through critical vigilance.

This is not a love middle-class Indians understand. This is not a continent they have ever visited. At the heart of the constant and angry face-off between Roy and the India that had once toasted her, therefore, there is a fundamental disagreement: what is the nature of the Indian State?

Dam activist With other protesters at the Narmada

PHOTO: LAKSHMAN ANAND

THE CRITICISMS of Roy are manifold. In fact, to say someone is an “Arundhati wannabe” has become a kind of abuse in media studios and swish urban salons. This is the sum of what Roy’s detractors dislike about her. They say she sees no greys: she is too polemical, too one-sided, too untempered, seeing only the negatives about India, never the positives. That she flits from issue to issue — a serial crusader with no real locus standi. That she is hypocritical because, while she herself lives in one of the most tony neighbourhoods in Delhi and has made considerable money on her book out of a globalised market, she is ruthlessly — often mockingly — scathing about rich and middle-class Indians. That she is unforgivingly critical of the Indian State and its instruments even while she enjoys the privileges and freedoms it accords. That she paratroops into situations. That she overstates things. That she uses this to seek attention. That she is too self-regarding. And finally, that she is incapable of understanding how complex it is to govern a country because she has no stake in anything and her only creative position is opposition.

A lot of this is pure chagrin. But in nano measures, some of it is true. For instance, Roy is indeed fiercely impatient of those who have never taken a ride to the dark side. She does not seek to be a gentle persuader, does not seek to whisper to middleclass conscience. She is not interested in people’s comfort zones. She is a striker of gongs. She is in the business of laying bare, not building.

She may not always persuade, therefore, but she certainly challenges. Last week, then, it was terribly dismaying to see the frantic attempt by the electronic media to isolate and outlaw Arundhati Roy. The discussions were not centred on why she said what she did on Kashmir. The discussions were: had she crossed the line? Should she be arrested for sedition? The point is, even if one disagrees vehemently with her tone or her positions, does it make what she is saying illegal? Far from “arresting or ignoring” our intellectuals — as several television anchors urged us to do — should we not engage with and debate their positions?

Democracies are built on some foundational stilts: free speech and free votes are two of the most key ones. It should be obvious then for a country that counts itself as the world’s largest democracy that peaceful dissent is the fundamental right of a citizen. For a writer: even more so. Governments might be tasked to protect the territorial integrity of nations: writers and intellectuals are tasked to protect a society’s soul. They are meant to think and speak and push the boundaries of how we see and understand ourselves. They are not meant to be court poets, toeing the government line. The self-righteous prescriptions that flowed at Arundhati Roy last week — how she should have behaved, what she should have said, what causes she should pick up — show that we are forgetting the catalytic role of a writer in a society.

With the Booker, Roy was India’s proud entry on the global stage. She was the princess of the ball, but she bust the party. Showed the chariot for the pumpkin

Even the worst of Roy’s detractors cannot claim she is a dilettante. Over 12 years of urgent public interventions, she has grappled with all the big issues of our time: big dams, displacement, land acquisition, industrialisation, privatisation, globalisation, terrorism, US imperialism, Hindutva nationalism, Maoist insurgency and, now, Kashmir. Far from being erratic positions, this has evolved into a strident but coherent critique of the Indian State. And, though every time she has diagnosed she has been reviled, with time, she’s been proved right on most of these issues. India is riven by conflicts today, born out of unjust approaches to land and development: the colonisation of the darker continent by its fairer half. Exactly as she presaged. The absurd witch-hunt last week, therefore, drummed up mostly by the media, was not really about the offence of sedition. It was about India’s increasingly narrow ideas about what counts as patriotism and citizenship. It was proof that all key conversations in India have moved away from freedoms to security. From nationalism to jingoism. From citizenship to compliance. It was proof that the media, the middle-class and the Indian State are no longer creative counters in a healthy society. They have morphed into one entity. Not just in interests but in self-image.

Middle-class Indians therefore can continue to hate Arundhati Roy, but it might be a colossal mistake to do so. Like the valiant people’s resistance movements on the ground that have stopped corporate juggernauts and forced the media and Indian Parliament to revise its views on issues like the Land Acquisition Act and the Special Economic Zones Act, Roy is a crucial rung in the ladder of deterrence — the vital pushback — that keeps the idea of the Indian State on its toes, forcing it to remain alive and dynamic. Out of this deterrence arises new thought. Possibilities of change. New conscience. New ways of looking.

Shut the door on Roy — shut the door on voices that taunt and dissent and challenge — and Shining Indians will find they are suddenly left with a poorer society.

SO WHAT exactly did Arundhati Roy say on Kashmir that invited sedition? Going by accounts in the media, in giving voice to the Kashmiri demand for self-determination, Roy committed the apparently cardinal crime of saying, “It is a historical fact that Kashmir is not an integral part of India.”

“This is not India’s official position,” gasped many television anchors and commentators. “How could Arundhati Roy say such a thing?” Set aside the rights and wrongs of the premise for a moment. Ask the basic question: is Arundhati Roy the prime minister, home minister or foreign minister of this country? So what if her “endorsement” of the popular sentiment on the street is uncomfortable for many Indians? Why does she need to mouth the official line? As a writer, is she not meant to voice the world as she sees it? (Was it right that Nobel- winning Chinese dissident writer Liu Xiaobo, Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk and Iranian activist Shirin Ebadi were jailed because their views on their countries did not match that of their States’? Should America’s writers and intellectuals not engage with the epic revelations of Wikileaks on Iraq and Afghanistan because Hillary Clinton has said it will harm national interest and US army morale?)

Last resort Roy has been outspoken about the Maoists too

PHOTO: SHAILENDRA PANDEY

Ironically, if Roy had been booked for sedition, she would have had illustrious precedents. Mahatma Gandhi was charged with sedition in 1922 for his views in Young India. At the trial he said, “I have no desire whatsoever to conceal from this court the fact that to preach disaffection towards the existing system of government has become almost a passion with me… Sedition, in law, is a deliberate crime… but it appears to me to be the highest duty of a citizen.” Inspiringly — displaying the rare commitment to the liberal values that were the founding ideas of this nation — he went on to say, “Section 124 A, under which I am happily charged, is perhaps the prince among the political sections of the Indian Penal Code designed to suppress the liberty of the citizen… If,” he continued, “one has no affection for a person or system, one should be free to give the fullest expression to his disaffection, so long as he does not contemplate, promote, or incite violence… Some of the most loved of India’s patriots have been convicted under it. I consider it a privilege, therefore, to be charged under that section.”

The British colonial government may have given way to the Indian State, but surely the principle of free thought and speech survives. So the key question many forgot to ask last week was — did Arundhati Roy incite people to take up arms? Did she brew disaffection where there was none? She was accused of “hate speeches” — but is hate really what she was preaching?

Roy’s positions on Kashmir are quite evident from her essays and speeches: in a line, she thinks India deserves azadi from Kashmir as much as Kashmir deserves azadi from India. She thinks it is a colossal waste of material resources and human life to maintain a 7,00,000-strong security force in the Valley. She stridently decries the huge human rights violations by the forces that are routine in Kashmir. She sees India’s heavy militarisation there as akin to an occupation. And even as she supports the rising call for azadi on the street, she urges Kashmiris to think more rigorously about the nature of the society they want to create: What space will minorities have in their country? How will they accommodate the aspirations of Kashmiri Pandits, the people of Ladakh and Jammu and the nomadic tribes? How will a religious state sit comfortably with civil liberties? Do not be selective about justice and injustice, she warns.

The pity is, in the furious noise over arrests and anti-national stances last week, the real tenor of the two seminars on Kashmir in Delhi and Srinagar were lost. While the optics of Roy sharing a dais with separatist leader Syed Ali Shah Geelani, who has a long and chequered past, and Maoist ideologue Varavara Rao may have clouded the picture, the truth is even Geelani’s speech was marked by a new moderation. According to one of the speakers, Shuddhabrata Sengupta, Geelani said he wanted to see a strong and resurgent India; he pleaded with Kashmiri Pandits to return to the Valley; he quoted Gandhi to assert that he understood the necessity of conducting a non-violent struggle; he said a free Kashmir would have to be a just Kashmir in which all minorities would be guaranteed security and freedom. And he said he was only advocating for a plebiscite. If the outcome of a free and unhindered plebiscite was that the majority in Kashmir voted to stay with India rather than merge with Pakistan or opt for independent Kashmir, he would bow to that.

Is Arundhati Roy the prime minister, home minister or foreign minister of the country? Why does she need to mouth the official line then?

IT IS true the story of Kashmir is an impossibly complicated and complex one. Any statement on it — almost every version of it — can always only be a partial truth. Just a cursory glance at its milestones tells you that: a Muslim-majority state ruled by a Hindu king in the fraught year of 1947. The invasion of Pakistan army and tribesmen to free “fellow Muslims” from the Dogra king. The king’s hurried plea for help from India; the hurriedly signed Instrument of Accession; the arrival of the Indian Army. Nehru’s promise of a plebiscite when the situation is under control. Three bloody wars with Pakistan. A dismal history of jailed chief ministers and puppet governments. Dozens of UN Resolutions. Dilutions of Article 370. The rigged elections of 1987. The explosion of militancy in the 1990s. The tragic and forced exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. The apocalyptic and internecine killings that followed: army, civilian, militants, mercenaries. The continuing infiltrations. The eternal ISI hand. The thousands of crores the Indian government has spent in developing Kashmir. The daily human rights violations. The suffocating security grid. India’s legitimate security concerns. The spells of peace. The economic blockade. The competition between National Conference and the PDP. The relations between Centre and state. Dozens of rounds of failed talks. Fluctuating moods. The stone-pelting. The deaths. The cry for azadi.

It would be easy to lose one’s way in the morass of this history. Lock oneself in old formulations. But even a week’s visit to Kashmir now tells you that, propelled by a new generation, the place is ripe for creative intervention. Former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee once captured the Valley’s imagination by promising that the issue of Kashmir would be solved within the boundaries of humanity — “insaniyat ke dayare mein”. Why not let others prise open new conversations? (Even if one disagrees with them.)

The greatest learning any society can have is that the protection of the collective lies in the exercise of individual conscience.

Some parts of this appeared originally in an article by the same author in the New Internationalist.

A WEEK IN THE VALLEY- LISTEN TO THE STONES

2010-11-03T12:57:00.000-07:00

It is a mistake to stop at the surface violence on the streets. Kashmiris of every inclination are longing for moderation. And most of all, reprieve, says Shoma Chaudhury. With Zahid Rafiq

Ready for more A stone-pelter prepares for another day’s battle in Srinagar

PHOTO: ABID BHATT

IT IS tempting to think of Kashmir as an old story you know everything about. For 20 years, it’s been one of the most reported conflict zones in the world. In a sense, everything about it has been said. But familiarity is not necessarily the same thing as understanding. Or empathy. No coverage you see on your television screen, for instance, can prepare you for the devastating landscape of lived pain in the Valley. It cuts through all the conspiracies. It quivers everywhere beneath the skin. It spills out of every stranger you meet. It flows beneath everything that happens. How Fancy Jan was shot dead by the security forces, just drawing the curtains in her room before her marriage. How Umar was five the first time he felt the cold nozzle of an army gun at his neck. How Tamim was getting a haircut before Eid, when drunken troops barged into the saloon and he thought he was going to die. How 10-year-old Shafiya, searching for her brother in school, got caught in army and militant crossfire and watched a 80-year-old man fall head first into a drain when a bullet whizzing past her hit him instead. For most of us, Kashmir is nothing more than an opaque geo-political riddle in a far away corner of the country. But for those who live there, just one afternoon’s conversation with one ordinary family in downtown Srinagar can straddle all these accounts of fear and untimely death. Imagine what the Valley’s collective memory holds. Wounded is an inner state of being in Kashmir.

OVER THE past four months of enraged stone-pelting then, Kashmir has again been trying to tell India a profoundly complex story. Words have failed the Valley before. So have guns. Now even its stones are starting to get hoarse. It’s suicidal to still not be listening.

Yet, if you go by the average talk in India, the dominant mood towards Kashmir is fatigue, bewilderment and prejudice. What do Kashmiris want? most Indians ask. What does “azadi” mean? What’s this “political solution” they go on about? India is pumping so much money into Kashmir, why are they still so ungrateful? Why are they so communal?

Over these past months, in fact, as thousands of young boys have hurled themselves bare-bodied at security forces, pelting stones with a kind of unprecedented fury, India has contented itself with merely asking the surface question: Who is behind this? Who is orchestrating it? Not even the sight of young boys willfully daring death, unarmed — boys born in the shadow of militancy and aware of the might of the gun — has evoked enough curiosity to ask: Why are they doing this? What’s driving them? What’s changed? (As a young stone-pelter says with angry frustration, “Why can’t you understand, we are not just a piece of land, a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan. We are human beings with emotions.”)

It took 110 dead boys for India to send a high-profile all-party delegation to the Valley. Still, Kashmiris counted it as a soothing gesture. Suddenly the stone-pelting stopped: Perhaps too many boys had already been arrested (the official police estimate is 2,219); perhaps the immediate upsurge had exhausted its shelf-life; perhaps the pelters’ “handlers” were persuaded to call for a temporary break. Or perhaps, people’s expectations just went up: What would India concede?

Unfortunately, India has done very little. First the Centre came up with a disappointing eight-point formula yielding nothing but cosmetics. Then it announced its interlocutors — journalist Dileep Padgaonkar, academic Radha Kumar and bureaucrat MM Ansari: eminent but toothless. Where Kashmiris had been waiting for a breakthrough idea — a multi-party parliamentary Standing Committee on Kashmir led by seasoned politicians like Pranab Mukherjee, Digvijay Singh, Arun Jaitley and Sitaram Yechury — it got a little more of the same old, same old. Track two well-wishers with no political clout.

Sitting in Delhi, it is difficult to imagine the despair these decisions must send through the Valley. Kashmir is hostage to many cankerous dualities: Power struggles between India and Pakistan; power struggles between the Centre and the state; power struggles between the National Conference and the People’s Democratic Party (PDP); the moderate separatists and hardliners; the army and the police; the myriad intelligence agencies. Pigeon-holed between all of this, Kashmir might seem like an old intractable story no one really wants to tackle. But, ironically, that’s exactly what the desperate stones being hurled at India are saying: Life here is unbearable. Why aren’t you listening to us? Why aren’t you doing something?

It is the most direct one-way conversation Kashmiris have had with the Indian State in decades. With the bruising years of militancy now several years behind it, it’s as if a whole new generation in Kashmir is poised on a psychological tipping point. It could go either way. But the key thing is, beneath the apparent violence and arson of the last few months, new things are brewing: A new mood, a new generation, a new window of opportunity. But as a Valley journalist puts it, “India needs to stop taking our temperature now and start treating us.”

Aurally, the visceral cry for azadi rising out of Kashmir might seem like a daunting and non-negotiable dream. How can Kashmir survive as an independent nation with China, Pakistan, India, Afghanistan and the US all foraging in it? But azadi means many different things to different Kashmiris — ranging from complete independence to porous borders to new trade routes to autonomy to a pre-1953 position to, at least, a primary freedom from the security apparatus that overwhelms every aspect of a Kashmiri’s daily life. Beneath all of that, the great discovery of visiting the Valley after the surface violence has abated is that ordinary people of every inclination are longing for moderation, dialogue and resolution. And most of all, reprieve.

A few weeks ago, Congress president Sonia Gandhi said, “We must ask ourselves why people in Kashmir are so angry and hurt.” Union Home Secretary Gopal Pillai also said, “There is no doubt India has made many mistakes in Kashmir. We have spent a lot of money in the Valley but not been able to win the hearts and minds of the people. We have to ask ourselves why.”

The answers are literally being hurled back. It will be tragic if India remains deaf to this moment. Or mistakes the lulls for “normalcy”.

Praying for peace Women on a roof listen to hardline Hurriyat leader Geelani

PHOTO: SHOME BASU

THE PECULIAR opportunity and neurosis of this moment in Kashmir lies in the nature of the stone-pelters. More than the separatist leaders — Syed Ali Shah Geelani, Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Yasin Malik — who have traditionally voiced dissent in the Valley, it is these young boys who now hold the key.

If you were to go by intelligence inputs, you would dismiss them as mere “miscreants”, as Chief Minister Omar Abdullah did in the beginning. Disaffected, unemployed youth rented for a few rupees to create trouble. If you went by police inputs, the appraisal would be roughly the same. “Fifty percent of them are students and you know how easy it is to brainwash young minds,” says Shiv Sahai, IG, Kashmir Police. “The remaining 50 percent are drug addicts and out-of-work shikhara walas, vendors and small shopkeepers.” The underlying assumption is that the boys are being orchestrated and have no political agency of their own.

There may be a small grain of truth in this. There are signs that underground leader Masarat Alam, the general secretary of the hardline Geelani-led Hurriyat faction, is a big inspiration for the pelters. But he is by no means the sole architect of the campaign. In 2008, after the Amarnath land row, he had come up with the hugely popular “ragda” campaign, which involved a furious rhythmic stamping of feet to scathing slogans about India. This time round, he has coined the ‘Go India Go Back’ slogan, and has been urging pelters to consolidate opinion on the Internet. Alam is about half of Geelani’s age, who is 83; he has the pulse of the new generation, and the talk in Srinagar is that at least part of this upsurge has been a flexing of muscles in the succession battle heating up for the aging Geelani’s position.

(Several thought leaders in Srinagar, in fact, are worried that Delhi is playing dangerously with the “Bhindranwale card” again: Allowing a hardline leader to grow in stature to serve its own labyrinthine purposes. Alam, incidentally, was released from jail just a few days before the stone pelting swelled to a crescendo.)

Yet none of this seems the whole truth. Alam, who has been endorsing the stone pelting while other leaders have remained silent or ambiguous, seems to merely be riding a popularity wave. The pelters themselves have swirled out of the range of any specific leadership. To Delhi, it looks as if Geelani has emerged as the undisputed guardian of the ‘Kashmiri sentiment’ — the timekeeper of its anger, the high priest of its hartal calendars and school lockdowns. But both Geelani and the boys know that he is merely reflecting the mood on the street. Significantly, Geelani is a known votary of Pakistan, but this year when he tried to mark 14 August as Independence Day, the pelters refused to comply. They even burnt Pakistan-based United Jihad Council commander Syed Salahuddin’s effigy for suggesting that the hartals should be called off.

After the surface violence abates, you realise people of every inclination are longing for moderation, dialogue and resolution. And most of all, reprieve

IT IS clear these boys are different from the generation that crossed the border in the 1990s to trigger the militancy. They have been born out of conflict and have seen its ravages: This makes them both angry and aspirational. They are viscerally anti- India but also anti-Pakistan. They are speaking a dogged new language of non-violence but are not above picking up the gun. They threaten to engulf India in a new round of bloody militancy but keep cajoling it not to push them that far. They have a disarming collegiate politeness but are floating on a lethal helium of rage. Their talk has an undertow of radicalised Islamic rhetoric, but they are proud of Kashmir’s syncretic traditions. They are uncomfortable with being typecast.

“We have grown up in the debris of a burnt house. At least the earlier generation knows what they want to go back to. We only know the burnt house,” says one young journalist and pelter sympathiser. “We are the fire and India is throwing petrol on us,” says another, vividly illustrating how they perceive the Indian security forces’ shoot orders.

In a sense, Rafiq (names changed) epitomises this new generation. He is one of downtown Srinagar’s most committed stone-pelters. He’s about 23 and a BCom graduate. His father is a government servant who has already paid Rs. 60,000 to the police as a bribe to keep Rafiq out of jail. But Rafiq persists behind his back. He’s one of the front-line boys — “We assess each others’ gurda (guts) and decide who’ll be in front,” he says. We are sitting with Rafiq’s younger brother Muzamil and friend Nawaz at the edge of Pari Mahal, a beautiful hilltop garden in Srinagar. The boys have the easy, fidgety energy of the young. There is nothing to connect them with the dark pictures Rafiq is showing on his mobile. Pictures of himself swaddled in a mask hurling stones at Indian security forces. Pictures of friends shot at close range through the neck and abdomen. Pictures of seething mobs carrying away bodies. The disjunctions are surreal.

Rafiq says he’s written a poem and pinned it on his cupboard. “I don’t want my teenage going,” it says, “give me some stones/ if I die in the battle zone / box me up, pack me home / put my medals on my chest / tell my mom I did my best / tell my love not to cry / I am a young Muslim born to die.” The naivete is almost teary. The boys have also cut themselves an anthem online. “We have no army, we have no land, we only have the stones in our hand,” goes the song. When you task yourself to step out every day, unarmed, to face security forces geared with tear gas shells, pellet guns, and lethal weapons you take what motivation you can get.

Unequal battle More than 2,200 boys have been arrested during the recent crackdown

PHOTO: ZULFQAR KHAN

It’s been difficult to bring the boys up to Pari Mahal. They are all on the run from the police. They meet us furtively in downtown Nawa Kadal, looking frequently over their shoulders for informers or cops. As the car pulls away, Rafiq begins to talk. At almost every turn, he points to a milestone: This is where my friend Shaheed Muntazar was shot in the stomach. This is where a bus conductor, Tango Charlie was shot. He had three kids. He wasn’t a friend but I had shared a cigarette with him just before he was shot. Other names trip off his tongue. Sameer, the 8-year old boy shot in Batamaloo; Abrar 18, shot in the chest. Thufayil Mattoo shot playing cricket. Abid, shot in January this year. Hasan Pacha shot in 2008. A boy they call Mandela, who’s been shot twice, once in the heart, once in the leg, but who’s survived and is still pelting.

Rafiq is 23, but all his talk is of the untimely dead. It slides off him with unnerving ease. You wonder what such proximity to death has done to the boys. Then he talks of an episode that turned him into a lead stone-pelter. “We were protesting the economic blockade when they shot a boy straight in front of me. His brains came out. I just went mad. I leapt on the police jeep with bare hands. The man standing on top fired on me six times. Somehow, he missed me. From that day, I’ve been pelting stones.

WE HAVE three very clear reasons why we are on the streets,” he continues. “We are protesting the atrocities by security forces. We are asking for the right to self-determination. And we are asking for azadi. No one is orchestrating us. We have lots of stones here; we don’t need Pakistan’s help. This time we haven’t started with the gun, ma’am. We are a non-violent, peaceloving people. Everything is now in India’s hands. This time do something, show something for Kashmir. Please, please, please ma’am. If we are burning buildings, there is some reason for it. We are not being used by any leader. When we are on street, they are on stage. But if they don’t reflect our views, we’ll cast them aside.”

The “please, please, please ma’am” echoes incongruently. Just as we’re leaving, I ask him what lies ahead for him. He’s applied for a MBA course in Delhi, he replies sheepishly. The collision of anger and aspiration. What will happen to his revolution, I ask. I’ve reached my retirement age, he laughs. There are many kids behind me.

Fifty kilometres away in Anantnag, a similar tableau plays itself out: the broken, heart-constricting stories of death; the attendant anger and despair. We are at young Intiyaz’s home. He was shot dead on June 29; he was 15. His father is a taxi driver. They had just saved enough to start building a house. It was a big event. The workers were on food wages because they could not afford more. We ask the parents what they most remember about their son. It is a terrible moment. Something akin to an electric shock goes through them. “He loved cricket,” the father says, and both his wife and he crumble, rasping for air. Apparently, Intiyaz never used to do any work. On that fateful day, his father asked him to drop his cricket and sent him to buy bread for the labourers. There was some stonepelting on the main road. The CRPF chased Intiyaz, along with the mob, a kilometre and a half off the road, back in front of his house and shot him in full view. “They could have burnt my house down,” the mother cries repeatedly, “why kill my son, why kill my son.” The sister says in the kitchen stoically. “We want azadi.”

The stone pelters are viscerally anti-India but also anti-Pakistan. They are speaking a new language of non-violence but are not above picking up the gun

Later, in the same neighbourhood, a group of stone-pelters don masks and allow us to interview them on video. Fascinatingly, the same reiterations flow: the dogged insistence on non-violence, the protest against zulm (injustice); the dismissal about any particular leader as central to their movement and the plea to India to do something this time.

Here, even more than with the boys in Pari Mahal, one can feel a palpable despair. “We are not against Indians, ma’am,” says one boy. “We are not even against the CRPF — they are also human. So many boys have been killed, has a single jawan been killed? We just want them removed from our lives. We want azadi.”

Scarred lives Broken windows and shattered dreams are a common sight all over the Valley

PHOTO : KAVI BHANSALI

Collateral damage A protester in Srinagar shows injuries on his back caused by pellets

Kashmir is like a hall of mirrors where for every image, its reverse reflection is also true. But when you talk directly to these boys, it’s easy to forget the cynical theories floating around about them.

ZULM IS a big corrosive phenomenon in Kashmir. It looms over everything like a giant cat’s paw over a country of mice. Even more than azadi from India, people in Kashmir first unanimously want azadi from the security forces. For the boys certainly, it seems the primary goal.

But it’s not just the boys on the street. Alienation courses through every strata of society. “How can we feel a part of India,” says a systems assistant in a hotel, who has studied in Bengaluru. “We live here. This is our home. We are educated, we have college degrees. But we can still be stopped by a CRPF jawan from Bihar who may be just a Class VI pass and we have to explain where we are going and who we are. It should be the reverse. We should be asking others where they are from, and what they are doing here. There are no jobs here, but I still want azadi.”

“Kashmiri Muslims feel powerless and marginalised,” says Mohammad Gul Wani, a political science professor at Kashmir University. “The feeling of being a minority is not merely a numbers game.”

It’s true. Alienation in Kashmir arises from a variety of things: daily frisking, humiliations, fear, curfews, hartals, abusive encounters, random arrests. Almost every window pane in Kashmir is smashed. Almost a decade after militancy was crushed, the security prism through which the government looks at Kashmir has not shifted. Democratic dissent is the demon now. Rallies and demonstrations are never allowed. The local cable television network has been forcibly shut down, the human rights course in Kashmir University has been withdrawn, research papers on contemporary Kashmiri politics are disallowed.

Even doctors are not immune. In a small anteroom in one of Srinagar’s major hospitals, two doctors show pictures of stone-pelters shot in the neck and chest. There is a CT scan of a skull sprayed by a pellet gun. It is a daunting sight. Pellet guns were meant to stun animals during hunts, but it was too painful and was disallowed. Now the same gun is being used on the pelters. “Most of these have been targeted killings,” says one doctor, but he’s too afraid to put his name on record. There are plainclothes policemen everywhere in the hospital; sometimes the forces come into the operating theatre; once they threw a tear gas shell into the hospital lobby. The doctor talks of how he had turned a militant- patient away once, too scared to treat him for fear of repercussions. “A doctor is supposed to treat anybody. I have never told anyone about it before,” he says, “but that episode made me ashamed of myself. That is what this place does to you.”

By the security agencies own admission, there are only about 250-500 militants left in Kashmir. During the PDP-Congress government, some of these confidence building measures had begun: POTA was revoked, CRPF bunkers began to be withdrawn from civilian areas, the army was asked to monitor only the borders. Still, it would be a colossal mistake to imagine that merely minimising the security apparatus in civilian life can substitute for the “political solution” Kashmir seeks.

A day in the life... The young generation (far right) has been born out of the Kashmiri conflict and seen its ravages

PHOTO : SHOME BASU, ABID BHATT

LIKE THE enveloping feeling of zulm, a sense of unfinished history stalks almost everybody in Kashmir. Even a vendor on the footpath will take you back to 1947 and say, “Nehru ne bola tha ki aam aadmi ka vote lenge…. (Nehru had promised a plebiscite to determine whether Kashmir should accede to India or Pakistan).”

With its internal implosions, in many ways, unlike the tumultuous 80s and 90s, merging with Pakistan no longer seems a dominant object of desire in Kashmir, but the community still wants a restoration of essential dignity: it wants to discuss the terms of its identity as a conversation between equals conducted under due process. “If Dr Manmohan Singh would just make a statement acknowledging that a section of Kashmiri people have a grievance and these are the reasons his government can’t give in to those demands, but he would be happy to talk about it, half the battle would be won,” says People’s Conference leader Sajjad Lone.

Unfortunately, neither the Centre nor successive state governments in Kashmir have been sensitive to this. After the tribal invasion and Maharaja Hari Singh’s hasty letter of accession to India in return for Indian army help, the Centre has continuously eroded Kashmir’s autonomy under Article 370. With Sheikh Abdullah jailed, and a pliant government under Chief Minister Ghulam Mohammad Bakshi in power, the Centre revoked many of the clauses that had protected the Kashmiri idea of self, including two that allowed Kashmir’s political head to be called a Prime Minister and the governor to be elected by the Assembly. A murky history of rigged elections and substitute governments followed. As a top police officer says, “Kashmir’s real tragedy has been the denial of democracy. If the Centre would stop setting up puppet state governments, things would improve automatically.” And as Lone says, “India forgets it does not have to give us autonomy, it has to restore it.”

But to untangle these vexed questions of history, one needs inspired leadership at both ends. Kashmiris still remember former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee with admiration and gratitude for coming to Srinagar and offering a hand of friendship to Pakistan, saying India was willing to discuss the Kashmir problem “insaniyat ke dayare mein” — within the “boundaries of humanity.” Former Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf’s offer to look for “out-of-the-box solutions” and Manmohan Singh’s remark that the “sky was the limit” as far as his flexibility would go, have all been equally welcome.

‘Most of these have been targeted killings,’ says one doctor, but he’s too afraid to put his name on record. There are plainclothes policemen in the hospital

But that’s where the conversations have largely ended. Kashmir’s own leadership has been infamously flawed and internecine. Backed by the ISI and Jamaat-e- Islami, the Hurriyat faction led by Geelani has been inflexibly obdurate demanding a plebiscite and refusing to talk to India. Mirwaiz Umar Farooq and Sajjad Lone’s fathers were both assassinated, allegedly by hardline factions, for toeing a more moderate line. Neither scion — elite by lineage and temperament — has really managed to expand their political base. Yasin Malik, the JKLF commander who declared a unilateral ceasefire, also could not keep his party from fracturing. For all the emotional voltage that the call for azadi generates then, it is difficult not to notice that 20 years into their struggle, there is no unified leadership or sustained programme of political resistance in Kashmir. This is why, perhaps, grievance in Kashmir only expresses itself as cyclical eruptions.

Despite this, the current scenario offers India a tremendous opportunity. Whatever their failings, all three leaders — the Mirwaiz, Malik and Lone — have very reasonable positions. All of them recognise that, learning from the cataclysm of the militancy, Kashmiri society is collectively transiting into a non-violent phase of resistance. “The boys who once carried AK- 47s and LMGs are now not killing but getting killed. This transition needs to be respected and preserved,” says Malik. In fact, he says he has had much to do with this subliminal psychological shift. In 2003, he launched a signature campaign across Kashmir over two years, visiting schools, colleges and migrant camps in Jammu, to awaken people to the fact that Kashmir was not merely a territorial dispute between India and Pakistan, but that Kashmiri people too had a say in it. He collected 1.5 million signatures. In 2007 again, he launched a Freedom March over 116 days, meeting over three million people. Inspired by Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela and Mahatma Gandhi, he says, “I want to build a disciplined movement. For that you have to prepare people mentally.”

MALIK, IN fact, has no fixed position on a ‘Kashmir solution’. “I firmly believe solutions arise from the process,” he says. “We have to sit across the table and understand and accept each others’ compulsions. Most importantly, we have to seek common ground with Jammu, Azad Kashmir, Gilgit, Baltistan, Kargil and Leh. We all know that dividing this region up on communal grounds would have disastrous consequences for the subcontinent.”

Let us be An old man pleads with securitymen during a curfew in Srinagar

PHOTO: ZULFQAR KHAN

The Mirwaiz too has been introspecting. “We have made a mistake in not institutionalising the resistance movement,” says he. “It is a very encouraging sign that right now, no one in Kashmir is looking towards Islamabad. This is our battle; it is a homogenous, indigenous movement. All of us have invested a lot in keeping this process peaceful. But we have not managed to build any social organisations that can reach out to the people who suffer when there are hartals and curfews. I am now trying to call an all-party meeting to build a more sustainable platform.”

But here too, the ball lies in India’s court. In a curiously cynical move, successive governments at the Centre have systematically diminished the moderate leaders in Kashmir and discredited the dialogue process. Each time a leader has reached out to them to talk conditions of peace, they have sent them back emptyhanded — looking effete and sold out. Or they have compromised their reputation with selective leaks and statements. Firdaus Syed, a contemplative man, better known once as Baba Badr, the commander of Muslim Janbaaz Force, recalls the time he first reached out to talk peace from across the border in 1996. He was sickened by the cycles of violence that had engulfed society. He mentions how an ikhwani (counter-insurgent) was forced by the army to rape a former comrade’s sister as a humiliation for not being able to track him down.

“The most difficult position in a conflict is the moderate position. Delhi sees us as Kashmiri and Kashmiris see us as sell outs. But even as we were talking with Home Minister SB Chavan, Krishna Rao, who was the governor then, made a statement that the boys had no option but to surrender. Dialogue immediately became surrender and we were utterly discredited,” he says. “Besides, their only goal was to turn us into counter-insurgents. We thought of ourselves as instruments of peace. We had not set out to become their clients and fight our own people.”

This story repeats itself with depressing frequency. Earlier this year, when Home Minister Chidambaram invited the Mirwaiz for “quiet talks”, he found himself similarly exposed by a journalist. Earlier, on the invitation of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Sajjad Lone spent a year writing up a document on Achievable Nationhood, but when he finished apparently Singh never gave him time to discuss it. In doing all of this — in systematically cutting the moderates to size — the Indian government has inadvertently played a huge role in building up the seemingly unassailable aura around the more hardline Geelani. Again and again, thought leaders in Kashmir assert Delhi has to make up it mind whether it really wishes to address the problem in Kashmir. If not, it probably suits them to have Geelani around making Kashmir look an insoluble issue.

The furious stones being hurled at India’s security forces come bearing all these questions. Is India really looking to “sort this out”? Interestingly, Geelani himself looks in a mood to talk. Having pitched himself too high, and with a 110 deaths on his hands, he’s looking for a dignified climb-down. A senior police officer says, “This time Geelani’s four points look very encouraging. The fifth point about an ‘international dispute’ is merely a matter of semantics.” Geelani himself says much the same. “If India is already talking to Pakistan and other separatist Kashmiri leaders, it is already acknowledging that there is a dispute. Or else, why would it be talking? So what’s the harm in accepting my five points?”

This brings us back to the question everyone in Kashmir is asking: why is India not seizing the opportunity?

Shock treatment A terrified family surveys the damage after yet another round of firing

PHOTO: ABID BHATT

IF YOU talk to Kashmiri journalists at Cafe Arabeca in Srinagar, you will be filled with dread. There is a sense of impending doom. If this narrow opportunity for peace is not seized, the sense is a second cycle of militancy, much more convulsive than the first, will kick in. The rumour is that the Taliban, the Maoists and the second generation Kashmiri underground are starting to form an axis.

For too long, India’s response to a crisis in Kashmir has been to send big economic packages. “Imagine you are a rich businessman and an absent father. You can keep opening your wallet for your child and he might keep taking your money, but will that substitute for parenting?” asks Firdaus. Malik agrees. “When you are governing a place, you owe it some responsibilities. The British Raj too built railways and schools and roads in India. But that could not stop India from asking for its independence through a political process.”

There is a growing sense of doom. The rumour is that the Taliban, the Maoists and the second generation Kashmiri underground are starting to form an axis

Lone puts it more bluntly. “It is true that India does not even send rice to Bihar while it sends cream to Kashmir. But this cannot substitute a political response because instead of giving it to us with dignity, it serves it to us in a slipper.”

Unfortunately, three senior Congress leaders turned down the offer to lead the political process in Kashmir. But BJP leader Arun Jaitley, who was part of the all-party delegation, says he was moved enough to change some of his stances. “I have come to believe that the issues of discrimination in Jammu and Ladakh must be addressed separately. The issues of the Valley cannot be linked to that. In the Valley, the policy should be to weaken the separatist leaders’ hold and win people’s hearts.”

Another leader, requesting anonymity, suggests that there should be a five percent reservation in India in schools and jobs for the North-east and Kashmir. We must increase their stakes in India. This will go a much longer way in national integration than any artificial assertion of it.”

In a curious twist, it is probably going to prove difficult to sustain a Kashmiri independence movement in a globalised, consumerist world. This generation of stone-throwers is also a first generation of highly educated aspirants. In Kashmir, the resentment against daily humiliations often segues into a larger idea of azadi. But if you remove these oppressions, that energy is as likely to reach for modern, contemporary ambitions. Like Rafiq, every bright Kashmiri who can is leaving for wider horizons — both in India and abroad. This might sharpen their sense of home. Or it might make the idea of porous borders and diluted nations the more attractive option.

It all depends on the answers India provides to the questions Kashmir’s stones are posing.

Exploitation of workers by the owners of Tirupur garment factories in Tamilnadu-Another example of crony capitalism

2010-09-26T00:38:00.000-07:00

S. DORAIRAJ
in Tirupur

Trade unions and labour rights activists blame the high suicide rate in Tirupur, Tamil Nadu, on the practices of the garment industry.

M. BALAJI

Workers coming out of the Tirupur Export Knitwear Industrial Complex.

TIRUPUR has carved out a niche for itself in the world of garments. Its phenomenal growth in the highly competitive global scenario, particularly in the past two decades, has been made possible by the entrepreneurial spirit of its manufacturers and exporters and the sweat and labour of thousands of workers, both local and migrants from other parts of the State and from other States.

Of late, however, Tirupur has been in the news for the wrong reasons, particularly in the wake of reports relating to the rising number of cases of suicide and attempts to commit suicide. According to the police, 879 cases of suicide have been reported during the past 20 months – 491 cases last year and 388 (including 149 women) until September 11 this year. In July and August this year, 75 persons, including 28 women, committed suicide. According to informed sources, over 20 suicide attempts are made every day in the district, which was formed in February last year.

The State Crime Records Bureau data show that the rate of suicide cases in Tirupur has remained higher than the State average during the past three years. In 2007, a total of 526 cases were recorded in the six subdivisions – Tirupur, Avinashi, Palladam, Udumalpet, Dharapuram and Kangeyam – that form the newly carved out district, as against the State average of 373. In 2008, 555 cases were reported in these subdivisions, while the State average was 380.

Even last year the number of suicide cases in Tirupur district exceeded the State average by 40. Of the 491 cases reported in 2009, 315 were men and the rest women. Among them, 81 were unemployed persons, 114 were employed in the private sector and 94 of the women were housewives.

Clearly, the dark side of the “Dollar City” calls for a concerted effort to eliminate the factors that contribute to it.

Medical personnel in the Government General Hospital in Tirupur say men outnumber women in the victim count. They say that every day seven or eight suicide-attempt cases are attended to at the emergency ward of the hospital. The victims consume pesticide, oleander seeds or chemicals such as malachite green.

Informed sources in the district administration and the police department say most of the victims are migrant workers or their kin. Migrants form almost 80 per cent of the over-four-lakh-strong workforce employed in over 6,200 garment units in the Tirupur cluster and several hundreds of ancillary and home-based units.

Tirupur district Superintendent of Police A. Arun said the garment workers, who were mostly from rural backgrounds, faced a culture shock in the new environment. The police were thinking in terms of issuing them identity cards so as to protect them from anti-social and criminal elements.

The district administration has taken a series of efforts to ascertain the facts and remedy what it sees as an alarming situation. The steps initiated by District Collector C. Samayamoorthy include the setting up of a suicide prevention panel, besides a helpline and a counselling centre at the Government General Hospital (interview on page 20). Committees have also been formed at the taluk level to look into the land and property disputes that have the potential to drive people to ending their lives.

K. ANANTHAN

A slum along the Noyyal where the garment industry workers reside.

Tamil Nadu Labour Minister T.M. Anbarasan says the government will look into the issue and take necessary steps. Arrangements will be made for providing counselling to the affected workers, he told Frontline. He made it clear that the government would not tolerate any violation of labour laws by factory managements. “The government will not compromise on the workers' welfare,” he said and added that even at the last State Labour Advisory Board meeting the issue was not raised by the trade unions.

The rising number of suicide cases among workers in the garment industry has brought to the fore issues pertaining to the work environment and living conditions of workers and how they cope with stress linked to work pressure. On many occasions, say experts, accumulated stress – both physical and mental – pushes them into a state of depression that can ultimately lead to suicidal tendencies.

Low income

One of the major factors contributing to stress is inadequate income in view of the seasonal nature of the industry. Though family quarrels and illnesses are cited as causes, the underlying fact is non-payment of a living wage to ensure a smooth-sailing for the family in a town known for its high cost of living. Lack of money even for basic needs often results in disharmony in the family and at times leads to psychological problems, say experts.

Said M. Vijayabaskar, Assistant Professor, Madras Institute of Development Studies: “Cost-cutting measures assumed great importance in the competitive global market, particularly in the post-MFA era.” [The multi-fibre agreement imposed quotas on exports by developing countries to developed countries. It was in force from 1974 to 2004 end.]

As manufacturers could not do much about cutting the cost of power or transportation or controlling foreign exchange fluctuations, they tinkered with the wages of workers by adopting methods such as the camp coolie system. Under this, workers were accommodated in hostels and dormitories and did not have to be paid the same salary as those who came under the purview of the wage accord reached with the trade unions, said Vijayabaskar.

“There is a lesson to be drawn for Tirupur from the Chinese experience. In China, during the last three-four years, some kind of social security has been introduced across all sections of workers,” he said.

Uncertain future

A major reason for the frustration of the migrants is the perennial uncertainty. They are aware that their endeavour in Tirupur cannot be long lasting. The migrants come in the hope of repaying their debts and saving some money to start something on their own, but soon realise that this is not easy. “For instance, if you look at Tirupur, it is difficult to find tailors who are over 40 years of age….. The kind of continuous stitching in that speed takes a toll on their hands and fingers…. So the migrants always think of going back after some time and do not see the work as a long-term option,” said Vijayabaskar.

In his paper presented at the International Labour Organisation-sponsored subregional meeting on “Garment Industry in South Asia” in September 2001, Vijayabaskar cautioned thus: “The need for a more flexible workforce portends a serious threat to the working conditions of the garment workers.”

Workers were found to work intensively for long durations, sometimes for over 90 hours a week, with short tea breaks, particularly during the peak season so as to meet delivery schedules, said union leaders. While the major exporters gave money for the overtime work, others did not, they alleged.

Gita Menon, a clinical psychologist in Chennai, said long working hours could produce physical exhaustion and stress, more particularly in the absence of any recreational facility (interview on page 16).

How far manufacturers have fulfilled their corporate social responsibility (CSR), besides maintaining labour standards, has become a contentious issue between trade unions and factory managements.

Trade unions and labour rights activists express satisfaction over the progress achieved in terms of containment of child labour in the industry and the compliance with statutory benefits such as Provident Fund and the Employees State Insurance Scheme and the adherence to international standards such as ISO 9000 and Social Accountability 8000 in the large export units because of the conditions imposed by the buyers.

On the flip side are the acts of union busting, the practices of employing more women than men and attracting migrants from the rural areas of Tamil Nadu and other States, restrictions on their movement in the hostels or dormitories, and putting in place a labour market that is conducive to flexible accumulation.

Camp labour system

The issue that evoked outright condemnation from trade union functionaries and labour rights activists is the camp coolie or “camp labour” system adopted by managements under a “hostel scheme”. This is akin to the Sumangali Scheme implemented in the textile sector. The Sumangali Scheme promised each girl taking up a job in the textile industry a lump sum amount, varying from Rs.20,000 to Rs.50,000, at the end of three years of employment ( Frontline, October 19, 2007).

A. Aloysius, convener of the Tirupur People's Forum for Protection of Environment and Labour Rights, said the situation in the garment industry betrayed the fact that in the economically globalised situation, securing social security, freedom of association and the abolition of all modern forms of slavery of workers in the informal sector had become increasingly difficult.

“Trade unions face several hurdles in bargaining for the rights of unionised workers and for enrolling the large number of non-unionised workers. In the post-MFA situation, the unionist's task is turning out to be tougher than before because employers adopt diverse strategies with the single objective of creating textile mills and garment factories without trade unions,” Aloysius said.

S.M. Prithiviraj, executive director of the Community Awareness Research Education Trust, who headed a team that studied in detail the Sumangali Scheme, recalled the stiff opposition put up by NGOs and trade unions to the scheme on the grounds that it violated labour laws. The struggle culminated in a public hearing held in October last year by the Tamil Nadu Commission for Women. Court orders also protected the rights of these workers. All this forced the State government to take action against erring managements in the textile sector.

K. ANANTHAN

In a residential school run by Social Awareness and Voluntary Education, an NGO, for children of garment industry workers in Tirupur.

However, the same scheme found its way into the garment sector in 2002-03, in the name of the hostel scheme, said Prithiviraj. “The managements have accommodated a large number of young women in the 15-21 age group in hostels located within the factories or at a place that is under their control. The movement of the women is restricted and some of the managements allow them to go on a guided tour of the town for purchases,” he said. Almost 90 per cent of the residents of these hostels are migrants. They are promised around Rs.50,000 at the end of the three-year contract period.

Hurdles for unions

A survey that Prithiviraj conducted for the Tirupur People's Forum for Protection of Environment and Labour Rights in 2007 revealed that 32,545 women were employed under the camp coolie system by 191 garment factories. The study covered 1,702 companies.

He said: “Until recently, the male-female worker ratio was 80:20. But now we can safely say that women workers outnumber men in the garment industry. Though none can oppose the empowerment of women, the hostel scheme is a retrograde step as it has taken away the trade union's strength. It effectively prevents the unions from reaching out to those staying in the hostels and organising them.” Though there are seven major trade unions in the garment industry, only 10 per cent of the 4,00,000 workers have been brought under their fold, he claimed.

C. Murthy, leader of the Centre of Indian Trade Unions (CITU) and general secretary of the Banian and General Workers' Union, criticised the managements for “curtailing the rights of the workers”.

“The managements, which hitherto employed migrants from other districts of Tamil Nadu, now recruit young men in the 18-25 age group from other States, including Orissa, Bihar, Rajasthan and Jharkhand. As many as 40,000 of them have come here to work for different garment units. As a concomitant development, a sizable number of migrants from other districts of Tamil Nadu have begun moving to their native villages. This is evident from the fact that as many as 5,000 schoolchildren obtained their transfer certificates and left the school last year,” he said.

“The migrants from North India are subjected to all sorts of humiliation. They are paid less than others on the grounds that they are provided board and lodging,” he said.

A strange situation has arisen in the town where holding gate meetings is no longer in vogue and union activists cannot meet workers at the factories. “The game plan seems to be aimed at pushing the workers into total alienation and keeping them inaccessible,” said a labour rights activist.

“The CITU has redefined its strategy to organise the workers by launching a campaign to reach out to them at their dwelling places located in congested slums and in the tiny row houses constructed in thickly populated areas,” said M. Chandran, district secretary of the union. Several hundreds of pamphlets had been printed in Tamil and Hindi so that the activists would be able to inform workers belonging to the State and the Hindi-speaking migrants about the importance of joining the trade union, he added.

The Labour Minister categorically said that the garment industries had been told that they should not force workers to work for more than 48 hours a week as stipulated by the Indian Factories Act, 1948. Action had been taken against factory managements for violating the labour laws in the current year. A total of 218 cases were registered and Rs.15 lakh was collected as fine from erring managements, he added. However, official sources said the managements were allowed to extend working hours during the peak season with assured overtime payment after getting permission from the Deputy Inspector of Factories.

On the camp coolie system, Anbarasan said the Tamil Nadu government had already brought an amendment that only 20 per cent of the workforce could be apprentices in a firm and that they should not be made to work for more than six months continuously. The Bill had been sent to the President for her assent, he added.

But the manufacturers are not satisfied with such arrangements. They have launched a sustained campaign for “flexibility in working hours in the form of more overtime per calendar quarter in view of the seasonal nature of the industry and the high dependence on export orders”. Claiming that the labour laws in India are “quite inflexible and rigid”, they have asked the Central government to “liberalise labour laws since the existing rules and regulations are constraints to the overall growth of the textile industry”. They raised the issue forcefully at the meeting of the Industrial Tripartite Committee on Cotton Textile Industry held in New Delhi on July 15. However, the proposal was shot down by the trade unions.

Unions have come out strongly against the exporters' demand to legalise the contract labour system in the garment industry and extend the National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme to it. Union leaders have dubbed as “ridiculous” the manufacturers' offer of employment for six million people in the garment sector under the scheme. At a time when labour unions have demanded a ban on the camp coolie system the idea of the employers should not be entertained, Chandran said.

The exporters deny that the suicides have anything to do with the garment industry. A. Sakthivel, president of the Tirupur Exporters' Association, said CSR was built-in in the garment-manufacturing sector. “Compared with the situation that prevailed 10-15 years ago, now our factories have undergone a sea change” in providing facilities to workers, he claimed (interview on page 19).

“This is because we have found that unless we change, buyers will not come to us. The realisation that we have to fulfil our responsibilities has paved the way for our voluntarily effecting necessary changes in the factories, besides meeting the compliance requirements of the buyers and the government,” he said

Sakthivel said the exporters paid wages as per the accord reached with the trade unions for a period of four years. In the existing situation where there was a shortage of labour, if a management paid less workers would not stay with the factory, he added. “Sometimes we pay wages higher than the agreed rates,” he said. He also refuted the charge that the camp coolie scheme had been implemented in the garment industry.

However, he admitted that the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act and the freebies announced by the Tamil Nadu government had made a dent in the so-called flexibility of the workforce. Facilities had been provided to migrants from other States, including Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal, he said.

Another issue that causes much concern to labour rights activists and trade unions is the health of the workers. Vijayabaskar in his paper referred to a study finding that the high work intensity and the cotton dust permeating the town had led to serious ailments such as mouth ulcers, respiratory problems, stomach pain and giddiness among workers, including children.

The unions criticised the government for the inordinate delay in setting up a 100-bed multi-specialty ESI hospital in Tirupur though the Central government had announced the project five years ago. Delaying the project on the grounds of non-availability of a suitable site amounted to a case of denial of free health care for garment workers, particularly the over one lakh employees insured under the ESI scheme, they said.

As experts have pointed out, intense working hours alternate with long periods of unemployment. During the latter period, the workers have to depend on private moneylenders. According to K. Subbarayan, leader of the All India Trade Union Congress, prevalence of usury, or kanduvatti in Tamil, is common in the town. He called for steps to curb the activities of those who indulged in the practice.

“When we put forward the demands of workers, we also keep in mind the health of the industry. Expressing concern at the upward trend of yarn prices, which will adversely affect the garment units, we have held demonstrations urging the Central government to impose a ban on the online trading of cotton and thus bring down the yarn prices in the domestic market,” said CITU leaders.

Just as the population of Tirupur town has risen steadily (Census 2001 puts it at 3.44 lakh), providing quality housing to workers continues to be a nagging problem. According to labour rights activists, over 60 per cent of the migrant workers live in slums. According to official sources, over one-third of the population lives in 87 slums.

Even as the exporters and manufacturers claim that they are unable to extend statutory and other benefits, including quality housing, to the migrant labour, as they frequently shift from one factory to another, trade unions describe it as a lame excuse. They point to the several instances where managements have not extended the benefits even to workers who have been in service in the same firm for over 10 years.

Labour rights activists, trade union leaders and experts feel that sincere efforts must be made to rescue the migrant workers from the quagmire of depression, which drives them to commit suicide.

The sorry state of labours working in Tirupur garment factories

2010-09-26T00:37:00.000-07:00

S. DORAIRAJ
in Tirupur and Usilampatti

It is an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” experience for many who flock to Tirupur from across Tamil Nadu.

K. ANANTHAN

The row houses in Tirupur where the migrant workers of the garment industry stay.

K. SUBRAMANIA PILLAI was at the end of his tether. “Around 32 years have rolled by since I came to Tirupur. But I can't see any progress in my life…. The unpaid debt has accumulated to Rs.21,660 as on July 5, 2010…. I have been under severe stress for the past four months as I find no way to clear the debt. I do not want to live any more either, as I am unable to bear the humiliation. All my efforts to find a way out have failed…. I am just commencing my journey without a destination in mind. I have no problem with my children. My humble request is to find a good bridegroom for my youngest daughter,” wrote the 75-year-old man in a note he posted to his son, S. Kaliappan, who lived at S. Periyapalayam on the outskirts of Tirupur. His body was found two kilometres away from S. Periyapalayam a couple of days later.

Pillai, a native of Tuticorin district, had migrated to Tirupur in 1978 seeking a job in the garment industry. With his Secondary School Leaving Certificate qualification, he got a “kanakkupillai” (accountant) job in a garment factory with a starting pay of Rs.500. The last monthly salary he drew was Rs.3,000.

The father of four daughters and a son, Pillai mentioned in his suicide note that he had realised that he could not continue in the job for long, particularly in a world where man competed with machines. With his meagre earnings he was not even able to buy a house of his own despite serving the factory for over three decades.

Sitting at his gloomy, rented single-room “row house”, a grief-stricken Kaliappan, who is a “cutting master” in a garment factory, said, “We were living here with my father. I moved out with my wife and daughters only recently as landlords don't want joint families.”

Shortly after receiving Pillai's suicide note, Kaliappan launched a frantic search for his father in Tuticorin, Kovilpatti and Tirunelveli, thinking that he might have gone to see some of his relatives living there. But he got a terrible shock as he came to know that the unidentified body in the mortuary of the government hospital, about which a newspaper had reported on July 9, was his father's. He did not have the nerve to see his father's body lying there in a highly decomposed state.

Pillai's case is also the typical example of how insensitive and hostile the bureaucracy can be to the sufferings of people working in the informal sector. Two months later, 44-year-old Kaliappan is Kaliappan's plea to the police and the hospital authorities is to find a way out of the dispute and issue the death certificate to him. He has another appeal to the authorities: “Please upgrade the facilities such as air-conditioning in the mortuary so as to at least ensure a proper burial to the victims.”

K. ANANTHAN

A worker sorting defective garments and unused material for sale in the local market in Tirupur.

The story of Muthiah (name changed), 25, a resident of Chellam Nagar, shows how garment factory workers are driven to the edge, particularly given the seasonal nature of the industry, which mainly depends on export orders. It is difficult to find employment during the off-season, which may last for weeks together between July and December.

Muthiah's father, a farm worker from Theni district, settled in Tirupur 15 years ago and became a construction worker. All the family members in the joint family had to work to supplement the family income. Muthiah's brother works as a tailor in a garment unit.

One day, his father scolded the unemployed Muthiah for not trying to find a job in the garment units. Already under tremendous stress, he consumed pesticide. He was rushed to hospital, where he died the next day.

Another case of poverty-driven suicide is that of Suganthi (name changed), the mother of two daughters. Suganthi, 27, was residing at Kumarananthapuram in Tirupur. A native of Vriddachalam, she married a garment worker, who had migrated to the hosiery town from the industrially backward Tiruvannamalai district a few years earlier. One day, a fight broke out between the couple as they did not have money to buy milk powder to feed their eight-month-old daughter. Cursing her fate, she drank malachite green (a dye) mixed in water and ended her life.

Another example of impulsive behaviour among the garment factory workers due to lack of counselling, as the police say, is the suicide of Ilango, a native of Tiruvannamalai, who was staying at Avinasilingampalayam village, 12 km from Tirupur. He immolated himself following a quarrel with his wife over the purchase of a new mobile phone when the family was already reeling under debt. The young widow has left for her native place not knowing what the future holds for her.

Crime records maintained by the police mention the cause of suicide or attempts to commit suicide as illness or family problems. But experts say only a detailed study will bring out the real reasons. For instance, to a large number of the unemployed who flock to the hosiery town – which is still a hot destination – from across 20 districts of Tamil Nadu, it is an “out of the frying pan, into the fire” experience.

K. GANESAN

P. Asaithambi and A. Veeran of Nalliveeranpatti near Usilampatti in Madurai district, who have only tales of exploitation and misery to tell.

A lot of young men and women from several villages in Madurai district, including Usilampatti, Keeripatti, Pothampatti, Kalyanipatti, Pannaipatti, Veppampatti, Nalliveeranpatti, Thadayampatti and Athipatti, have migrated to Tirupur to work in the garment factories. Several others work in spinning mills, an allied industry, in Dindigul and Coimbatore districts.

Interaction with a cross-section of the migrants who have returned to their villages in and around Usilampatti in Madurai district reveals their bitter experience in the fast-growing industrial town. Originally farmhands or small peasants, mostly Dalits or members of the most backward communities, they migrated to Tirupur to earn some money which they needed badly to clear debts or to meet wedding expenses. This was necessary for them as agriculture in the rain-fed area was no longer sustainable and remunerative, said M. Vasudevan, Assistant Director of the Society for Integrated Rural Development, a non-governmental organisation.

The migrants were generally recruited by labour contractors who had clear instructions from the managements that they should catch them young. The garment industry by and large does not want to employ persons above 30 years. Teams from garment units descend on the villages and present video shows on the facilities available at workplaces and hostels, and promise good payment.

A. Veeran, a resident of Nalliveeranpatti, who went to Tirupur in 1997 to work in the garment factories, returned to his village after eight years. He said the company paid him no overtime benefits though he worked long hours. When he insisted that he be given the benefits for the extra hours he put in, the management asked him to opt for “piece-rate jobs”.

“Only those who are mentally prepared to adjust to the whims and fancies of the management can survive in the industry,” he said. Neither he nor his colleagues in the factory where he worked as an expert tailor has got any statutory benefits such as Employees' State Insurance or Provident Fund.

Veeran earned Rs.125 for an eight-hour shift. He had to pay Rs.900 towards rent for a single-room house, Rs.25 for drinking water and Rs.15 for electricity every month.

Meanwhile, his marriage broke down. He was ousted by the management for raising his voice against it for not providing the statutory benefits. It took a long time for him to recover from the stress. “However, I feel immensely relieved now. My wife [he married again] works in a bakery in Usilampatti and I am earning a small amount by stitching, and repairing old clothes. My daughter is studying in Standard III in a government school,” he said, adding that he ignored the feelers sent by the management to return to Tirupur.

P. Asaithambi, a resident of the same village, migrated to Tirupur in 2000 to become a load man in a garment factory for a wage of Rs.100 for a 12-hour day. A couple of years later, his wife died. His 22-year-old son, who was also a garment factory worker, died in a road accident in 2008.

“I went there with the fond hope of helping my family to wriggle out of financial problems. But I returned to my village with all my dreams shattered,” he lamented. He now lives with his 80-year-old mother in the village.

K. ANANTHAN

S. Kaliappan, a worker in the garment industry, shows the photograph of his father, K. Subramania Pillai, and the note he left.

Mallika (name changed), the 19-year-old daughter of a farm worker of Athipatti village, said she would never return to the spinning mill at Sulur in Coimbatore where she had worked under the Sumangali Scheme for three years from June 2007. She said girls were forced to work for 12 hours and if they refused to do so, it was taken as an act of defiance. Many times she was woken up rudely even past midnight to attend to some work such as the maintenance of the machine.

“I have seen some of my co-workers attempting to commit suicide by slashing their wrists or consuming whatever poisonous material was available to them, including nail polish,” she said.

Mallika says she was lucky to get Rs.55,000 at the end of the three-year contract period against the promised amount of Rs.60,000, but some of the girls who could not complete two years in the factory have not been paid any amount at all.