A New Praxis in a changed world

Largesse to Private Explorers

2011-08-03T21:41:00.001+05:30

An audit of production-sharing contracts reveals violations that have hurt the interests of the public.

The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG)’s draft performance audit report on petroleum/natural gas production-sharing contracts (PSCs) – the first of its kind by the audit officer on the petroleum sector – suggests favours by the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government to private players, especially Reliance Industries (RIL), and has expanded the already long list of “scams” associated with this government.

Well before the CAG’s audit, overpricing of natural gas produced by Reliance in the Krishna-Godavari (KG) basin had shown the UPA government in a poor light. In September 2007, an empowered group of ministers had recommended, against the advice of officials, that the sale price of natural gas from the KG basin be set at $4.2 per million British thermal unit (MBTU). This was despite estimates of Reliance’s production costs not exceeding $1.43 per MBTU. This very generous decision by the government allowed Reliance to garner super profits from the basin. Now, in 2011, the CAG has come up with more evidence which proves that large private players have violated the PSCs.

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Local poll results in Lanka - Another push for a political solution

2011-08-03T21:38:00.001+05:30

Ahilan Kadirgamar, spokesperson of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, suggests that the Tamil National Alliance's victory combined with international pressure after the Channel 4 Documentary and the UN Special Panel Report have brought upon added impetus for the Sri Lankan government to proceed with steps towards a "political solution" in that country. The peoples' mandate in the Northern Province in the local body elections held there in July this year, were clearly a rebuff to the Rajapaksa regime's efforts to limit the discourse to "development".

Media Diversity in India - Antidote to Murdochisation

2011-07-29T07:41:00.000+05:30

Editor of The Hoot - a media watchdog website, Sevanti Ninan comments on the differences and similarities between Murdoch's media empire and what exists in India. She is interviewed in the context of the "phone hacking" scandal that has brought media moghul Murdoch in the dock in Britain.

Yingluck's win positive for Thailand

2011-07-26T20:27:00.002+05:30

Chanida Bamford from the Focus on The Global South, speaks on the election results in Thailand. The decisive victory for Yingluck Shinawatra's Pheu Thai party is a positive development for Thailand which has suffered autocratic rule in the near past, she says.

Decolonising knowledge systems

2011-07-26T14:15:00.001+05:30

A conference on “Decolonising Our Universities” held in June in Penang, Malaysia, offered interesting perspectives on the need for and ways to foster epistemologies and pedagogies that are devoid of Eurocentric and colonial bias and prejudice.

In a conference held in Penang, Malaysia from 27 to 29 June 2011 and titled “Decolonising Our Universities”, scholars and academicians from the erstwhile “colonised world” gathered to discuss ways of “decolonising our universities” from influences of Eurocentrism that pervaded academics. The presentations were not merely academic but very activist, with the clarion call for some form of Renaissance or resisting Eurocentric hegemony or both dominating proceedings. At the end of it all, the message was well taken. At least in the social sciences, which predominated the discourse on academics, there was a strong case for decolonisation: for theorisations that were not limited to the European cultural milieu, for breaking away from European thought, its categories, concepts and from the myth that they were originators of modern civilisation, and for the re-establishment of the non-Europeans as “knowing subjects” and not “passive objects” perceived through the agency of Europeans.

The basis for that discourse was laid out in a keynote by the Indian ambassador to Bhutan and popular writer, Pavan Varma who lamented the effects of colonisation on the Indian mind, which for him, still persisted today. The derision shown for Indian culture by the colonial masters had been “internalised by the ruled”, the colonisers created an education system that suited their interests, and importantly Indian languages lost their salience during colonial rule. Political scientist and social psychoanalyst Ashis Nandy as a discussant added that colonialism of the British variety was an upgrade over the “earlier form of colonialism” associated with the Spanish and the Portuguese. The British colonialists’ enterprise involved a “seepage of the values of the Enlightenment” but was equally and even more dangerous to the natives of the colonised lands, particularly India. The rampant nature of colonisation increased with the entry of the East India Company and was imbued with the values of utilitarianism represented by the likes of Mill and Bentham, justifying colonialism on the need for “progress”, enforcing natives to “climb the inclined plane of history to achieve what the Europeans had already achieved”. Another discussant, politician Mani Shankar Aiyar did not agree – colonialism, warts and all had also an element of interactivity – which was utilised by Indian nationalists and natives for their own progress. So much so that today in the age of globalisation, Indians have raised themselves to be developed. In Aiyar’s view, a “balanced” review of the advent of colonialism suggests that the consequences were not so much an entrenchment of the culture of the colonised to the detriment of that of the ruled, but the utilisation of the interactions with the colonisers to chart a “new synthesis” by the ruled themselves. Essentially, the process of decolonisation was concomitant with the process of exchange of ideas and values from the outside world.

Eurocentrist Sociology

The keynote session, albeit debating colonisation in its generics did set an important note that was explored in specifics in other sessions, especially by Malaysian sociologist Syed Farid Alatas who spoke on “Teaching Social Theory as an Alternative Discourse” to Eurocentrist sociology. Alatas argued that the countering of Eurocentrist sociology in the South was possible only through a thorough study of it using the specificities of the local. In other words, a correction of the European bias in social theory was impossible without critical engagement with western thinkers such as Marx, Weber and Durkheim in that canon. Alatas invoked the works of Filipino thinker and activist, Jose Rizal to make this point. He also argued as to how, while universalisation of sociology was an imperative, it could only be done by providing space to various civilisational voices apart from the usual European ones. In other words, recognition of social science work in the South in the form of local knowledge systems and publications in various languages were due in order to achieve a “universal sociology”.

And that certainly was lacking in the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation’s (UNESCO) World Social Science Report 2010. Darryl Macer, regional advisor for the Social and Human Sciences in Asia and Pacific unit of UNESCO, in his paper, “Decolonising Social Sciences across the World”, clearly found that the “perceived knowledge gap” between the global North and the South according to the report was a consequence of unaccounted factors (in the report) such as

lack of recognition for academic research not conducted in European languages; low recognition of non-European authors and institutions; differences in fundamental paradigms of thought and concepts of what is social science; and the need for greater South-South collaboration and exchange programmes.

Besides the above, there were other reasons for the “knowledge gap” – expressed among others in the wide gap in number of research publications between those in the North and the South. Some had to do, according to other presenters, with the lack of adequate funding for social science research and of enough autonomy for research institutions, for example in south Asia. But there was also the larger problem of a Eurocentric view of social sciences, something that needed correction. The conference decided to send a note to UNESCO asking for addressing this problem, besides suggesting remedies to the factors contributing to the “knowledge divide”.

Indictment of Eurocentrism

Ashis Nandy’s point about justifications of colonialism by the colonisers using the logic of Enlightenment values such as “progress” and “revolution” were alluded to and expanded upon in an interesting paper, titled, “History ‘Outside’ the West” by Vinay Lal. In his analytics of history and historiography as viewed by the British thinkers such as James Mill – whose works “exercised an incalculable influence” on the British civil servants – Lal argues as to how Europe’s own history was to serve as template for “all history”. The categories of “ancient, medieval and modern” that explained the European past were “assumed to be the ‘natural’ categories through which one might interpret any history”. Ashis Nandy’s expressed view on “progress” played itself out in the idea of “temporal linearity” being the informing principle of all contemporary history and “perforce condemn[ed] the people outside Europe to live someone else’s history, with consequences that have been seen across all domains of life”. Lal, echoing Alatas argued as to how in the discourse of “world history”, “the colonised and now underdeveloped subjects had no place, except, of course, as the objects of the wise discourse of knowing subjects”. World history, as much as social theory, was yet another form of colonising knowledge and the need therefore was for a history of many worlds – “our worlds”. Vinay Lal’s exposition was certainly an indictment of Eurocentric bias in historicising in the west, but it is to be stated that present-day study of history in countries such as India is not necessarily imbued with such biases.

Decolonising as a theme was extended to the field of psychotherapy, as presentations by African scholars, Augustine Nwoye and Akmalofe Adebayo, argued for an indigenous African psychotherapy challenging Eurocentric world views – both for pedagogy and practice, respectively. Nwoye in his paper, “An Outline and Rationale for the Inclusion of African Psychotherapy as an Undergraduate Course in an African University”, specifically outlined a course for African psychotherapy for undergraduate study. Adebayo propounded his idea of “Nchetaka” as a “radical and indigenous” African “academic praxis of psychology”, devoid of Eurocentric biases, in his paper titled, “A Recovering African Psychologist’s Narratives of Resistance and the Quest for Our Own Story”. The emphasis for Adebayo was to adopt a social constructivist approach that was biased towards indigenous methodologies such as “story telling” for psychotherapy. Adebayo’s paper was an interesting case of decolonising a field of humanities in praxis.

Mathematician C K Raju, in a presentation, titled “Decolonising Math and Science Education”, argued that colonisation as a process extended to the natural sciences as well. Raju, basing his presentation in favour of the traditional Indian notion of pramana – empirical proof in mathematics as opposed to the philosophy of “formalism”, argued that there existed a religious – Christian – bias in “formal” mathematics, and it was necessary to unlearn this form of mathematics that dominated curricula across the world. The validity of the argument was beyond the ken of this writer, but perhaps Raju could have tempered his views which included ad hominem attacks on scientists such as Albert Einstein. Raju’s presentation was also based on his copious works on the origins of calculus in India, the analysis of “infinite series in India” and others. His salient point was that mathematics and natural sciences had to be “de-theologised”, and that, an alternate history and philosophy of mathematics had to be worked out and taught in universities.

Emphasis on decolonisation was an imperative even in legal education in the South, as Malaysian law professor Shad Saleem Faruqi pointed out in his presentation titled, “Western Intellectual Imperialism in Malaysian Legal Education”. He argued that university curricula in the South were devoid of awareness of Asian and African contribution to knowledge on “evaluation of right and wrong, of justice and fairness, of poverty and development”, etc. Indigenisation of law syllabi was necessary, albeit not to the exclusion of western knowledge paradigms, but to resist the hegemony of western ideas, which had fallen short in elobarating human rights, public law, environmentalism and in the building of a just world. This point was illustrated in detail by South African professor, Shadrack Gutto, who argued how Eurocentrism was manifest in the postcolonial continuities in African legal systems, which militated against the interests of the African people even today.

Other presenters also built upon on the theme of Eurocentrism preventing the ability of people of the South from constructing their own systems of knowledge drawing from their rich histories. Molefi Asante argued for an Africocentric creation of knowledge and education systems, drawing upon the need to preserve the best of African ancestral traditions and working for a renaissance of the glorious African past of the Egyptian (Kemet), Nubian civilisations among others. He evocatively denounced the Eurocentric idea that the Enlightenment was an “age of reason” considering that Africa was most at risk during this period of colonisation. His paper was titled, “The Philosophical Bases for an African University – Designing Afrocentric Curricula for African Universities”. Discussants however cautioned that the need for yet another “centricism” – Afrocentrism – would defeat the purpose, as the idea was to counter the hegemony of Eurocentricism and work towards an inclusive “universalism”.

Islamisation of Social Sciences?

Presentations on the need for the Islamisation of social sciences were problematic. Directly applying theological beliefs to “social science” must surely be counterproductive, but that was not the theme of presentations from some west Asian scholars who strongly argued for the rootedness of social science within Islamic tenets.

The last session featured the attempts at creating repositories of knowledge and institutions that were stripped of Eurocentric influences, biases and epistemology. Environmentalist Claude Alvares presented a paper on “Alternatives to University Pedagogy”, which were refreshing and interesting to hear about. This paper argued for the “deprofessionalisation of the university system”, making learning more interesting and to combine experience settings and collegiality to go with learning. But would it require this to completely do away with the “university system” as it exists today, as Alvares – perhaps facetiously – argued?

A presentation on the “Swaraj University” by its founder Manish Jain exemplified one such model of alternate institution that Alvares had in mind. Innovative teaching methods, curricula and learning from experience marked the goals of this university, which is attempting to do away with the formalistic and “ritualistic” forms of established university teaching. In this reporter’s opinion, the effort is laudable, but the system surely cannot be “scaled up” for all forms of learning and teaching.

All in all, the conference on “decolonising our universities” offered insightful perspectives on the need and ways to foster epistemologies and pedagogies that are devoid of Eurocentric and colonial bias and prejudice. Having said that the dangers of this turning out to be a form of “nativism” and even perhaps intolerance of any form of western knowledge are inherent. There was in some of the papers and discussions an element of over-celebration of the native and recourse to the un-scientific.

Mani Shankar Aiyar’s invocation of Gandhi (Young India, 1 June 1921, p 170) is well worth mentioning here as the South endeavours to strip its universities of Eurocentrism –

I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all the lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.

Indignats - Harbinger of a New Politics in Spain?

2011-07-16T08:23:00.001+05:30

Prominent Italian Journalist and Leftist political activist Marco Berlinguer is interviewed on Skype on the Indignats movement in Spain.

Special Interest driven UPA resembles a sinking ship

2011-07-14T20:13:00.002+05:30

A rudder-less United Progressive Alliance has convinced no one that it is acquiring some kind of anchor by shuffling its crew on a burning deck.

That certainly seems to be the most common reaction to the "ministerial reshuffle" enacted mid-term by UPA captains- prime minister Manmohan Singh and Congress president and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi. UPA-sympathetic voices were happy that certain names that were no longer possible to be defended for their steering of various ministries have been finally asked to disembark.

Dayanidhi Maran - who was formally accused by the CBI for delaying licences for the Aircel group until it was bought off by a Malaysian firm which in turn allegedly repaid his favour in investing in the Sun Group's digital TV plans - has walked the plank and is out of the cabinet. Maran clearly worked for the interests of his family flagship Sun TV rather than that of the people who he was supposed to represent. Another person who was dropped was Murli Deora, whose petroleum ministry came under the CAG's scanner for the flawed manner in which its production sharing contract with Reliance for the exploration of gas in the KG basin was being implemented . Deora has however ensured that his son has taken a place in the list of ministers.

Siddharth Varadarajan in his normative piece about the UPA a couple of days ago, wrote that it needed the "mother of all reshuffles" to take it out of the morass that the government finds itself in. Even if many of his points were well taken, it was just "well-wishing" and many of the changes he had asked for (and to be fair, did not anticipate) never happened.

What is unsaid about how ministerial berths have been provided in the UPA is that they have got little to do with the merit of the person or his/her position on various policies. With the UPA in particular, the key to ministerial allocation generally is the ability to act for special interests. The stench of corruption and malfeasance that has pervaded the UPA has much to do with the fact that special interests - corporate mostly - have controlled policy making in the government. That is not going to change by the addition/subtraction of a few crew members in the UPA mother ship.

Consider the top four positions in the government - finance, defense, external affairs and home. Except for the defense ministry helmed by the "unimpeachably honest" AK Antony, the rest of the ministries cannot say that they had the best interests of their country's citizens in mind in the manner they implemented policy decisions. The finance minister Pranab Mukherjee has steadfastly refused to take on the most pressing problem in the country - inflation and has presented budget after corporate friendly budget. Mukherjee also has a finger in every policy pie, heading a slew of EGoMs, including the one that decided to hand over natural gas pricing on a platter to Reliance enabling them to garner a massive super profit. The home minister P.Chidambaram has been a disaster in handling issues that require high political awareness and sensitivity. His handling of the Maoist challenge, the Telangana issue, the Kashmir imbroglio last year suggest that his imperious ways of functioning have yielded little dividends in solving intractable problems of this nature.

The allies of the Congress are no better, in fact quite abject as in the case of the Trinamul Congress. Before the ascension of Dinesh Trivedi to the railways ministry of the cabinet, the senior-most minister at the helm was Mukul Roy of the same party. His predecessor, leader and current West Bengal chief minister Mamata Banerjee was pathetic in her handling of the ministry presiding over numerous railway accidents and mishaps. With her attentions fixated at Writers' Buildings, she had little concern about passenger safety, train punctuality, and in her term, the Railways regressed as an institution. If she had shown the nadir of sensitivity blaming passengers for their own deaths because of a stampede in the New Delhi Railway Station last year, her junior party member and minister of state Mukul Roy emulated her by refusing to visit the site of accident in Fatehpur in Uttar Pradesh a couple of days ago. There is little confidence that Mamata Banerjee's successor, Dinesh Trivedi would be any better for the institution that still employs the largest number of workers in the country. If anything, one can expect a further movement towards greater privatisation and commercialisation of the institution to the detriment of the interests of the employees and passengers.

The DMK, of which much has been written and talked about, has always treated ministerial berths as avenues for crony capitalism, rent seeking and furthering ill gotten wealth for the first family of the party and their cohorts. The currently longest ruling political party at the centre - the DMK offers the worst example of caring little for concerns of malfeasance - notice the utter lack of compunction or remorse from the likes of DMK patriarch M.Karunanidhi, A.Raja, Dayanidhi Maran, Kanimozhi and the rest of the DMK "glitterati". The DMK still holds ministries where rent seeking is a lucrative exercise. And they have not been reshuffled in this latest cosmetic exercise enacted by the UPA.

The one minister who ruffled the feathers (relatively) of the widespread special interests with the UPA was former environment minister Jairam Ramesh. Exhibiting some spine in taking on vested interests who had always had it easy in circumventing and even formulating environmental norms and rules for their own benefits, Ramesh had earned the respect of grassroots organisers and people who had been affected by displacement and environmental degradation in various parts of the country. His "activist" presence - a derogatory reference to his methods of consulting stakeholders and environmental groups while deciding upon clearances - miffed no less than the "ace reformer" prime minister Manmohan Singh. And it is no wonder that he has been promptly removed from the post and shifted to rural development. One hopes (against hope) that his successor would show the same gumption to take on special interests - especially large real estate groups, mining companies and other assorted conglomerates willing to partake into the yields of primitive accumulation - but the peremptory shift does not yield confidence.

A few demotions and new sinecures for other ministers have not been received well by them. Mumbai based legislator Gurudas Kamat formally handed over his resignation unwilling to take on the important water resources and sanitation affairs ministry, apparently miffed at its "low profile". But that is no surprise. It is not the "low profile", but the low or practically little "rent seeking ability" in the ministry that miffs the likes of Kamat and company.

The continuation of a minister who has been expressly questioned for continuation in power by no less than the Supreme Court - Vilasrao Deshmukh also adds substance to the "special interests" theory vis-a-vis the UPA. Deshmukh, who was ludicrously in the helm of "rural development" despite having been indicted by the Supreme Court for having protected a private moneylender against accusations of torture and ill-treatment of villagers, has been shunted out to the science and technology ministry. He continues his naked quest for rent-seeking by this time trying to win the post for the presidency of the Mumbai Cricket Association with full support of the ace real estate businessman masquerading as a politician - Sharad Pawar. And that leads us to Sharad Pawar, who continues to wreak havoc on the agrarian sector in the country through sheer negligence as agriculture minister. Pawar has himself wanted to concentrate on the "very important" matters related to cricket in the role of the ICC president that he holds, but the prime minister continues to thrust the unwilling businessman onto the country.

No less than the cleaning of the Augean stables could have brought about a sea-change in the attitudes and functioning of the UPA government. But the essence of the actions by those at the helm has been to resist, deflect and parry widespread allegations of misgovernance, corruption, and malfeasance. That explains the continued presence of Kapil Sibal in the telecommunications ministry. Sibal in his role has done precisely what the corporate sector would have wanted him to do vis-a-vis the 2G scam - limit the damage to blaming a select set of individuals, deflect criticisms of widespread loss to the public exchequer by simply denying that there is a loss and parry attempts at forcing crony corporates which made the most out of the flawed 2G allocation process to pay the requisite costs of spectrum or cancel their licences. It is too bad that the Supreme Court has not bought into Sibal's methods and logic and have doggedly taken on the job of bringing the matter to justice. That Sibal's methods have alienated no less than the government's own solicitor general is testament to the extent of the role that special interests are playing themselves out in the matter.

All in all, there is no recognition by the government that it is policy that is skewed towards special interests that has generated the morass in the first place. And that is deliberate for the UPA is itself run by special interests.

Scope for Expansion

2011-07-12T16:24:00.000+05:30

India is poised to join the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation with the SCO setting new criteria for expansion.
A mong the various groupings that have been jostling to act as a counterweight to the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) in the global arena, the relatively young Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) hopes to emerge as a viable bloc. The SCO – which currently includes China, Russia and the four central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan – is seen variously as an alliance to counter the expansion of NATO into Asia, as a grouping keen to coordinate national actions on terrorism, and as a forum to promote trade and economic ties in the region. Russia in particular sees SCO as a platform that could potentially build a security alliance to thwart attempts by NATO and the US to expand in eastern Europe and central Asia, respectively.

To read more of the EPW Editorial, click here.

"Indian Media - Politically Free, Prisoners of Profit" - P.Sainath

2011-06-23T10:18:00.001+05:30

Eminent commentator and rural affairs editor of The Hindu newspaper, P.Sainath speaks to Newsclick on media discourse and other issues related to the "Fourth Estate".

Modifying the Terms of Compensation

2011-06-22T10:57:00.001+05:30

The Uttar Pradesh government makes compensation for land acquisition more generous, but is that enough?
Intense protests by farmers agitating in the Greater Noida region of Gautam Budh Nagar district of Uttar Pradesh (up) against acquisition of lush agricultural land for the “Yamuna Expressway” project finally compelled the Bahujan Samaj Party government last month to announce a new land acquisition policy. The ruling government’s hand was also forced by the support to the agitations from various opposition parties, whose representatives landed in droves to “lead” the protests. In an attempt to mollify anger about unfair compensation rates currently in place, the new policy sees the government playing a less prominent role and more generous terms of compensation for farmers whose lands are acquired, but the policy is not based on any holistic framework on land use and acquisition.

An EPW Editorial. Read more here.

'Japanese resilience tested by the triple disaster' - Brij Tankha

2011-06-19T12:51:00.002+05:30

The triple disaster - the March 11th earthquake and tsunami followed by the nuclear accident in Fukushima has tested the famed resilience of the Japanese people. Professor at the department of East Asian studies at Delhi University, Brij Tankha comments on the reactions to the triple disaster by the Japanese government and society.

A Duplicitous Godman and a double dealing Government

2011-06-10T10:22:00.000+05:30

Just as one thought that “silly season” was never ending in India's capital, the Indian central government engaged in some acrobatics, shifting suddenly from being supine and stumbling to ballistic and bellicose within a few days. Nothing else could describe the way the Indian government handled the “baba” Ramdev threat of agitating over the “black money” issue.

Indeed the issue of repatriating “black money” stashed in offshore banks is an important one and something that has added to the government's already burgeoning embarrassment of corruption charges. Yet the agitation threatened by the televangelist yoga practitioner – one among many “parvenu godmen” as Prabhat Patnaik calls them – was never more than a half-serious attempt at re-enacting the Anna Hazare moment against corruption. Instead, the government, alarmed and conditioned by the response to the Anna Hazare led civil society movement thought it necessary to engage with Ramdev in the most flattering manner possible. No less than four cabinet ministers were dispatched to pay obeisance and persuade the “baba” to give up his call for a fast to force the government into repatriating the “black money”.

That a government which paid little heed or bother to a large rally of working class protesters – cutting across political boundaries and over a lakh– who had assembled some months ago in the capital to protest inflation and the lack of government response to it, took to literally prostrating in front of a “godman” showed up its muddle headed priorities. Perhaps understanding the ridicule that it was being subject to, the government decided to swing to the other extreme after it found that Ramdev was being recalcitrant and unwilling to honor a secret pact that could have brought an end to the proposed agitation. It decided to let loose its law and order machinery, attacking gathered protesters at the wee hours of the night and in the process, invited a suo moto scrutiny call by the Supreme Court.

If the UPA had already played up the televangelist's nuisance value by paying obeisance in the first place, it had suddenly transformed him into a crusader-martyr by taking violent recourse to clearing up his rally. Incompetence is now writ large on the UPA adding fuel to the fire of resentment against it caused by the plethora of scandals pervading its existence in government.

And the embers of anger that is now raging against the government is being fanned by all kinds of recidivist forces – the RSS is actively playing a “behind-the-scenes” role in guiding Ramdev's “movement”; even the vastly discreditedKhap panchayats' representatives are trying to make hay while this fire burns. “Black money” is now merely a staging point for dark forces to pitch in their own agendas in the garb of opposing the “corrupt” government. And who else but the government is to be blamed for all this?

The shoddy defense of the 2G licensing scam offered by the government's spokespersons, the belated actions in the Commonwealth Games organisation scam, the continued nexus with big business pervading its governance, and the ongoing inaction on issues confronting the people – inflation in particular have all resulted in where the UPA finds itself – between a rock and a hard place.

What of the “civil society” that sees in the idea of an all powerful Lok Pal, a panacea of all ills that constitute corruption? Leave alone the fact that this institution targets only malfeasance and does not even tread into addressing the roots of the phenomena of “corruption”, there remain severe lacunae in the proposals emanating from the civil society representatives. The institution envisaged is suggested to have extra-constitutional powers, going against the “separation of powers” logic inherent in the representative democracy that is the republic of India. Surely a lot of perspective is required – both in the ideation of the “Lok Pal” and also, in the understanding of how much the battle against corruption is linked to the larger war against neoliberalism and crony-capitalism.

That war and the battles to be fought in the interim cannot be won if it relies upon weapons of irrationality as embodied by the likes of the “parvenu” godmen like the Ramdevs or the “Sri Sri”s whose projects go against the larger grains of civic organisation and secularism. Irrational demands and pronouncements -such as those among others made by Ramdev in the course of his agitation– trivialise the issue of corruption and the matter of hoarding unpaid taxes in offshore accounts. They also paper over the very manner and means that sustain the lives of these “godmen” who wish to perpetuate their already dubiously earned “messiah” statuses by partaking into issues of politics that is constitutionally supposed to be the arena of the secular. It is indeed farcical to therefore see a yoga guru who has built an empire out of a televangelist business that claims that “cancer can be cured via yoga”, runs a quackish ayurveda “pharmacy” that produces medicines of dubious value and content, is accused of anti-labour acts, is someone who owns an entire island overseas, leading the moral ground(swell) against “corruption”.

The government though, by its high-handed actions going against the letter of the law, has ceded whatever moral ground it had vis-a-vis the dubious “babas”, in effect, making heroes out of them. Indeed, as a double dealing government tries to outdo a duplicitous (and cross-dressing) “godman”, the real issue of corruption has been given the go-by.

In a State of Denial

2011-06-10T10:20:00.000+05:30

Triumphalism prevails as the Sri Lankan government remains in a state of denial regarding alleged war crimes.

That the Sri Lankan government and its armed forces committed a series of war crimes against the Tamil people in the course of the civil war against the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) is a known fact to many. That after the civil war, in a state of triumphalism, and invoking chauvinism, the government refused to hold accountable those guilty of war crimes and did not make any effort to address the long-standing grievances of the Tamils is also well known. Following a UN “Report of the Secretary-General’s Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka” though, there is more international scrutiny of these matters.

To read more of the EPW Editorial, click here

Money and Power Binds Parties Post-Liberalisation

2011-06-10T10:19:00.001+05:30

Shankar Raghuraman, Associate Editor of the Times of India comments on the humongous scams associated with parties like the DMK post liberalisation. A Newsclick interview.

War Crimes in Sri Lanka - UN Panel demands accountability

2011-06-04T10:27:00.001+05:30

Spokesperson of the Sri Lanka Democracy Forum, Ahilan Kadirgamar talks to Newsclick over phone from New York. He argues that the "Report of the Secretary-General's Panel of Experts on Accountability in Sri Lanka" brings about valid recommendations, which if heeded by the otherwise triumphalist and denialist Sri Lankan government could pave the way for true reconciliation and accountability in Sri Lanka following the brutal civil war in 2009.

Vanquishing of the DMK

2011-06-02T06:17:00.001+05:30

Astute alliance building and public resentment over corruption turned the tide in favour of the AIADMK in Tamil Nadu.

The outcome of the Tamil Nadu elections did not surprise many, but it was the sweep of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) that astonished everyone, including perhaps the victors. It was a wave but it was not one occasioned by a single factor; a combination of factors – resentment over corruption in the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) “family”, alliance arithmetic and voter unhappiness about everyday issues – affected a landslide that all but obliterated the DMK-Congress alliance. If there is a message in the Tamil Nadu vote, it is that a small number of welfare measures, the promise of post-electoral handouts and attempts at bribing voters with cash do not by themselves make a recipe for electoral success.

To Read More from the EPW Editorial, Click Here.

Two interviews on Land Acquisition in India

2011-06-02T06:12:00.002+05:30

'Active role of state, well defined "public purpose", consent - imperatives in land acquisition'

Dr Smita Gupta, senior economist with the Institute of Human Development and someone who is actively involved with farmers' organisations comments on the "land acquisition issue" in India. A Newsclick Presentation

'Must not see Land Acquisition in isolation from larger Agrarian Question'

S.P. Shukla, Former Member of Planning Commission, discusses the land acquisition policies and ways of various State governments in the country. He argues for a comprehensive Land Use Policy document to be prepared by the central authorities in India. A Newsclick Presentation

The Law of Intelligence Agencies

2011-05-25T06:19:00.000+05:30

New allegations on the Purulia arms drop case underline the need for parliamentary oversight of intelligence agencies.

Intelligence agencies claim that the nature of their work demands that they operate in secrecy; however, this licence they enjoy gives them a measure of autonomy and power that can be and is used to undermine democratic processes. Stories are legion of how India’s intelligence agencies – especially the Intelligence Bureau and even the body supposedly dealing with external matters, the Research and Analysis Wing (RAW) – have launched independent ventures in different parts of the country and wreaked havoc on the polity and society. Nothing has ever been proven for they enjoy de facto immunity, outside the pale of parliamentary accountability and at times even outside ministerial control.

To Read from the EPW Editorial, click Here.

US Lawlessness at Guantanamo

2011-05-24T06:22:00.000+05:30

WikiLeaks again exposes the hypocrisy and brutality at the heart of US policies.

WikiLeaks’ expose of the starkly illegal and brutal nature of the extrajudicial detentions at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp, through its access to detainee assessment briefs and documents that are guidelines for interrogators, tell a lot about US lawlessness and brutality in the course of its so-called “war on terror”. The accounts, numbering around 750, could possibly constitute the final tranche of documents reportedly leaked by the former US army private Bradley Manning.These documents are military “assessments” written between 2002 and 2009 and give an ample picture of the brutality at Guantanamo.

T0 Read More from the EPW Editorial, Click Here.

Analysing the 2011 Assembly Election Results

2011-05-19T11:26:00.005+05:30

I did a sequence of interviews with senior journalists/ political analysts, Paranjoy Guha Thakurta, Sukumar Muralidharan and Shankar Raghuraman to analyse the assembly election results in West Bengal, Kerala and Tamil Nadu respectively for Newsclick. The videos are embedded below -

"The Left has to introspect and rethink after this huge loss in West Bengal" - Paranjoy Guha Thakurta

This was not merely an electoral loss but a major defeat of a bastion, says Paranjoy Guha Thakurta about the Left Front's loss in West Bengal. He argues that there has to be a rethink in the Left's political outlook and organisation following this loss.

"Creditable performance by LDF in Assembly Elections" - Sukumar Muralidharan -

The LDF misses victory by a whisker in the 2011 Assembly elections in the state. The good image of the outgoing VS Achuthanandan led government was a factor responsible for the creditable performance. Sukumar Muralidharan comments in an interview with Newsclick

"Price Rise, Corruption and the Sri Lankan Issue responsible for the anti-DMK wave" - Shankar Raghuraman

Associate Editor of the Times of India, Shankar Raghuraman comments on the 2011 assembly election results in Tamil Nadu state. He identifies three major factors acting against the DMK, besides acknowledging the presence of a formidable alliance building tactic by the AIADMK led front.

Defending Mutual Interest

2011-05-02T06:30:00.000+05:30

The Sanya declaration shows that BRICS is slowly getting its act together to defend mutual interests.

"BRICS” was a slogan invented by Goldman Sachs in the early years of the previous decade as part of its marketing drive to consolidate itself in the large “emerging” economies of Brazil, Russia, India and China. The grouping has travelled a long way from then. It has now given itself a separate identity, has organised three summits, expanded to include South Africa, and is slowly but surely beginning to defend mutual interests. That at least is the conclusion one can draw from the Sanya declaration issued at the conclusion of the BRICS summit on 14 April in the coastal city of China.

To Read More from the EPW Editorial, Click Here

An Encouraging Move

2011-04-17T06:45:00.000+05:30

The Dalai Lama’s formal proposal to give up his temporal powers should make possible a reconciliation with China.
The responses by the Tibetan exiles and the Chinese government to the Dalai Lama’s formal proposal to step down as the political head of the exiles have, ironically, been similar. This, in a way, is representative of the Tibetan conundrum though for more than two decades the Dalai Lama has continued to make conciliatory offers as part of “a middle way”. The Kashag, the cabinet of the Tibetan government in exile, reacted negatively to the Dalai Lama’s decision and urged him to continue. But elections for a new “prime minister” were held and a committee was appointed to transfer political power to the Dalai Lama’s elected successor. The Chinese government’s appointed governor of the Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) meanwhile rejected the offer to step down and suggested that the tradition of reincarnation should continue and that the separation of the political and spiritual roles of the Dalai Lama was not acceptable.

To Read More from the EPW Editorial, Click Here.

Can the events in West Asia be replicated in Central Asia?

2011-04-04T16:27:00.004+05:30

Interview with Prof. Anuradha Chenoy on the Central Asian political economy, geopolitics etc -

Part 1 - Can the events in West Asia be replicated in Central Asia?

Professor Anuradha Chenoy, Center for Russian and Central Asian Studies, JNU, speaks to Newsclick about the possibility of recent West Asian events being replicated in Central Asia.

Part II -'Notwithstanding geopolitics, differences; Democracy- an Imperative in Central/West Asia"

Part II of Newclick's interview with Prof. Anuradha Chenoy of the Centre for Russian and Central Asian Studies, SIS, JNU, on developments in Central Asia, as a pro-democracy uprising wave is in progress in West Asia.

"Cash Transfers - In the Neoliberal mould of 'social assistance'" - Interview with R.Ramakumar

2011-03-26T11:37:00.001+05:30

Associate Professor, R.Ramakumar of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences comments on the proposed Cash Transfers Programme in India.

Part I of interview by Newsclick India -

Part II of Interview - "Cash Transfers can have a complementary role"

Vindication and Indignation - the Nuclear Deal Trust vote in retrospect

2011-03-17T09:54:00.000+05:30

Two and a half years ago, I wrote this on the Nuclear Deal trust vote - "Nuclear Deal and Dealing Leaders" -

"In essence, everything about the manner the Manmohan Singh government went ahead with getting legislative approval for the deal, was dubious. An opera that begin with a slew of lies made by the representatives of the government to its erstwhile left allies, continued with the addition of new partners (Amar Singh, Mulayam Yadav and his cohorts) who had their own shady self serving agenda. It has now culminated with a dark flourish as nearly 11 members of parliament went “Aya Ram, Gaya Ram” and endorsed the government, while at the same time, ensuring that their wallets were sure to be bursting out of the seams with hard money. Others took the “higher road” to patronage by negotiating ministries (the JMM for example).
In the midst of it all, the sutradar and the opera conductor, the United States administration was laughing all the way to the bank. Here was the Indian government, which had now forsworn its commitment to a better, progressive and a multipolar world, to embark upon a notorious nuclear deal with the unilaterist Americans and heck, they had even gone one step ahead of the guru of graft and chicanery, George Bush, in getting the all powerful legislative approval for the deal."

Today, as I read this from a wikileaks cable, paraphrased and commented upon by the diligent Siddharth Varadarajan in The Hindu -

[Satish] Sharma's political aide Nachiketa Kapur mentioned to an Embassy staff member in an aside on July 16 that Ajit Singh's RLD had been paid Rupees 10 crore (about $2.5 million) for each of their four MPs to support the government. Kapur mentioned that money was not an issue at all, but the crucial thing was to ensure that those who took the money would vote for the government.
...
Independently, Mr. Sharma told the Political Counselor “that PM Singh and others were trying to work on the Akali Dal (8 votes) through financier Sant Chatwal and others, but unfortunately it did not work out.” He said “the Prime Minister, Sonia Gandhi, and Rahul Gandhi were committed to the nuclear initiative and had conveyed this message clearly to the party.” Efforts were also on to try and get the Shiv Sena to abstain. Further, “Sharma mentioned that he was also exploring the possibility of trying to get former Prime Minister Vajpayee's son-in-law Ranjan Bhattacharya to speak to BJP representatives to try to divide the BJP ranks.
The cable makes it clear the Congress campaign to buy votes was not confined to the cash-filled war chests that Nachiketa Kapur and Satish Sharma had gathered.
“Another Congress Party insider told PolCouns that Minister of Commerce and Industry Kamal Nath is also helping to spread largesse. ‘Formerly he could only offer small planes as bribes,'” according to this interlocutor, ‘now he can pay for votes with jets.'”
Despite these efforts, the U.S. Embassy concluded that the UPA maintained only a “precarious lead” in the forthcoming confidence vote. “Our best guess at this time show the government maintaining its slim majority with the anticipated vote count at about 273 in favor, 251 opposed, and 19 abstentions.”

The prediction was impressively close to the mark. Prime Minister Singh got 275 votes in favour with 256 against and 10 abstentions.

...

The fact that Congress politicians could speak so freely to American diplomats about their bribing spree during the run up to the confidence vote — and that the latter could be so blasé about the subversion of democracy — underlines the all-encompassing but ultimately corrosive nature of the “strategic partnership” the two governments were trying to build.
As for Mr. Kapur, his candid display of crores of rupees to be used by the Congress as “pay offs” for the trust vote was not seen by the U.S. Embassy as compromising his democratic credentials in any way. In November 2008, he was sent to the U.S. under the State Department's I-Vote 2008 programme as an observer for that year's presidential election. “The move to invite international observers”, he wrote in a blog post, “reflects the open and democratic nature of the American society.

I feel vindicated and so would the rest of the Left and progressive minded sections of the country –from the intelligentsia, the sympathizers, and the polity. But of what avail? The very set of crooked politicians, which include the PM Manmohan Singh who should drop any more pretense of being a honest former academic after these leaks, are now continuing in power. The shady and murky dealing, the bribing, the American influence in all this and shameless resort to the most unethical of practices in getting through a dubious nuclear deal were only the precursor to an unprecedented show of malfeasance, corruption as seen in UPA-II. With the leak of the Radia tapes and this tranche of Wikileaks cables (thanks to The Hindu), the story is far, far more clear.

Manmohan Singh has no more moral right to continue as the country's prime minister and so do the rest of the pack of thieves masquerading as cabinet ministers and political leaders in the Congress and the UPA. Much more has to be said, but this blogger leaves this for now for the reader's digestion.

Alliance of Convenience

2011-03-16T16:40:00.000+05:30

The Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam stage a skit as their marriage of convenience continues.

If it was only the allocation of three seats in next month’s Tamil Nadu assembly elections that came between the Congress and the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) last week, one wonders what all the song and dance was about.

There are reasons though for the DMK playing the politics of brinkmanship; one only has to look closely at the events of the past few weeks to understand the context of the party’s actions. The arrest of former union minister A Raja of the DMK for his role in the 2G telecommunications scam and speculation about the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) soon taking action against members of the DMK’s first family over complaints of bribery have strained the seven-year-long DMK-Congress tie-up. Did the final seat-sharing “agreement” feature a quid pro quo of a reprieve for the DMK protagonists, much like the UPA government has at different points of time gone slow on CBI investigations into similar allegations of corruption against Mulayam Singh Yadav of the Samajwadi Party and Mayawati of the Bahujan Samaj Party?

The DMK-Congress alliance is a set case of how federalisation and regionalisation of India’s polity can bring about a cohabitation of otherwise historically inimical forces. Both the parties have undergone a metamorphosis in the state. The DMK, by being in power at the centre almost uninterruptedly for nearly 15 years, has long since ceased to be a marginal regional force, using its power in the centre to cater to its constituents and garnering powerful ministries which have helped its leadership/first family become a major business conglomerate. No one can deny that the DMK first family has used its political clout to create a media empire in the state that is now branching into film production, civil aviation and other areas.

In Tamil Nadu, the Congress has steadily declined to the status of a minor party, no longer able to challenge the two strong Dravidian outfits either organisationally or even ideologically. It remains content with partaking in the politics of patronage fostered by the DMK. The Congress is happy to just provide support from outside to the DMK government in the state in return for an assured and stable presence of the regional party in the centre. It has been convenient for the Congress Party in Tamil Nadu to play second fiddle to the DMK government – protesting none of the government’s excesses or policies while the DMK has used its ministries in the centre mainly to further the interests of the leadership. This lack of an ideological or moral fibre in the alliances stitched between the Congress and its allies in the UPA is one reason for the spate of decisions revealing a high degree of poor governance by the UPA government.

The price that Prime Minister Manmohan Singh claims to have paid for the stability of support from the DMK – “coalition compulsions” – is a lack of due cabinet diligence and no control over the “procedural problems” created by Raja when he was telecommunications minister. This suggests that this coalition is nothing more than a marriage of convenience.

The other major parties in Tamil Nadu are no different from the DMK. The All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) has in many ways shown itself to be a mirror image of the DMK in its policy direction and organisational structure. And the party has indicated that it would gladly take the DMK’s place if there is a rupture in its alliance with the Congress.

Coalition politics does not have to mean that the parties form alliances only as a matter of convenience. There is the better option of building an alliance around a programme drawn up before the elections, which allows the electorate to judge the alliance’s agenda ahead of the polls and also allows it to question the coalition on the programme after the polls. The federalisation and regionalisation of India’s polity was meant to result in a form of governance and policymaking that was sensitive to regional concerns and did not follow a traditional top-down approach. The DMK-Congress alliance story suggests that such a realisation is still some way off in India’s democracy.

An EPW editorial

Beyond Maritime Borders: The Indo-Sri Lankan fishing problem

2011-03-13T07:07:00.001+05:30

V. Vivekanandan, Advisor, South Indian Federation of Fishermen Societies, speaks on the issues confronting fishermen in South Tamil Nadu, apropos the problems between India and Sri Lanka over fishing close to the maritime boundary.

Part I:

Part II:

'Homilies for the aam aadmi, concessions to the rich'- Shankar Raghuraman on Union Budget 2011

2011-03-07T12:45:00.001+05:30

Deputy Editor of the Times of India, Shankar Raghuraman comments on the Union Budget for 2011-12.

A Referendum for Peace

2011-03-01T07:19:00.001+05:30

The larger Sudan region will continue to face many challenges even after the referendum on South Sudan.
A referendum held in the province of Southern Sudan between 9 and 15 January to decide on secession saw voters overwhelmingly endorsing the formation of a new nation state. Southern Sudan has been a semi-autonomous region after the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement (cpa, also called the Naivasha agreement) that ended the civil war between Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir’s National Congress Party (NcP)-led forces and the Sudan People’s Liberation Army/Movement (SPLa/M).
Read more of the Editorial here.

'Needed - a commission for judicial accountability' - Interview with Adv. R.Vaigai

2011-02-24T15:33:00.000+05:30

'A deal that did not make commercial sense' - Prabir Purkayastha on the Antrix-Devas

2011-02-24T15:32:00.000+05:30

Spectrum for a song

2011-02-24T15:28:00.002+05:30

A lopsided deal that awarded S-band spectrum for a song shows the government in poor light.

The sweetheart deal between Antrix Corporation, the commercial arm of the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO), and Devas Multimedia in 2005 has turned out to be yet another embarrassment for the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (upa) government. (As we go to press, the government, invoking “sovereign” interests, has annulled the contract.) The agreement involved the design, building and launch of two commercial satellites, GSat-6 and GSat-6A, by ISRO and the delivery to Devas Multimedia of a leased capacity on the primary satellite and access to transponders. This would have allowed the delivery of spectrum for use by Devas Multimedia with which it intended to introduce commercial broadband multimedia services.

For more of the EPW Editorial, please read here.

The Aseemanand Confessions on Hindutva Terror - Interview with Sukumar Muralidharan

2011-02-16T13:27:00.001+05:30

Interview with Prashant Jha on political developments in Nepal

2011-02-16T13:25:00.002+05:30

Fishing Conflict in Indo-Sri Lankan Waters

2011-02-16T13:23:00.000+05:30

Fishermen die in conflicts but communities show encouraging signs of equitable and joint management.
The deaths of Indian fishermen in late January, believed to be caused by Sri Lankan Navy personnel in waters close to the maritime boundary between the two countries, have led to a measure of bilateral discord and, more important, evoked strong feelings in Tamil Nadu. Two fishermen died in late January, one was strangled and another had been shot dead. While the number of violent incidents involving fishers has come down considerably since a 2008 agreement between the two countries that called on the governments to handle situations involving a breach of the international maritime boundary in non-lethal ways, the occurrence of such incidents makes it a live political issue in Tamil Nadu.

For more, read here

"Role of Big Capital and Food Economy leading to Inflation"

2011-01-21T18:33:00.002+05:30

Newsclick Interview with Prasenjit Bose of the Research Unit of the CPI(M) on matters concerning Inflation in the country -

An Opportunity at the United Nations

2011-01-17T16:46:00.001+05:30

Can India’s non-permanent membership of the UN Security Council be used to strengthen multilateralism?

For a foreign policy and strategic affairs establishment obsessed with permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC), India’s election as one of the 10 non-permanent members is an opportunity to demonstrate what the country can do and will not do to push for an independent approach towards promoting peace and development in the world. India has come to occupy this position after a gap of 19 years. India’s election comes with an enormous amount of goodwill – 177 nations supported its candidature and just five nations cast a negative vote, compared to the vote of only 60 odd countries the last time around. India failed in its attempt in 1996 to be elected to the UN council, but has succeeded this time and has begun serving the two-year post.

A Half Step

2011-01-17T16:44:00.001+05:30

The government falls short of constitutional requirements even after it indexes wage rates in MGNREGA to inflation.

As a sop to the millions of Indians who work on the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MgNREGA) programmes, the central government has decided to index the wage rate in the scheme to the official Consumer Price Index for Agricultural Labourers (CPIAL). This decision was announced within days of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh making it clear that the government cannot set the MGNREGA wages at the statutory minimum in each state in accordance with the provisions of the Minimum Wages Act of 1948.

Interview with Gautam Navlakha on the sentencing of Dr. Binayak Sen

2011-01-04T11:02:00.001+05:30

What Future for the Indian National Congress?

2010-12-31T22:06:00.000+05:30

A complacent Congress is unaware that it is rapidly losing all credibility.

The Indian National Congress is none the better after its 83rd plenary session in Burrari, Delhi, which also marked the 125th anniversary of its founding. For the first time since its unexpected return to power in 2004 as the head of a coalition government, the Congress Party is in deep trouble. In less than 18 months after the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) that it heads was re-elected, the party is beset with allegations of corruption, incompetence at the centre and in the states where it is in power, factionalism at all levels and it finds itself without a mass base of any kind. The only force driving the Congress Party is the “follow the leader” sentiment, which has kept the party afloat since 1998 when Sonia Gandhi took control. The excitement around the heir apparent, Rahul Gandhi, has begun to wear thin. While the younger Gandhi is credited (wrongly?) for the triumph in 2009 and he has made some attempts to rebuild the party at the grass-root level, the disaster in the recent Bihar assembly elections has removed a good part of the shine on the general secretary of the Youth Congress.

More Than Delayed Justice

2010-12-20T16:45:00.000+05:30

The initiation of war trials has the potential to establish a secular, democratic state in Bangladesh.
Democracy in Bangladesh has been blighted by assassinations of political leaders and by military forces and extremists subverting democratic institutions. Such repeated acts – military coups, political assassinations and, worst of all, war crimes against civilians – have gone unpunished and at times have even been legimitised by those in power. Now, nearly four decades after the formation of Bangladesh in 1971, the polity led by the ruling Awami League Party has finally decided to initiate trials against war criminals involved in horrific acts against humanity during what the Bangladeshis call the Liberation War.
Read more of the EPW editorial here.

Perfecting Patronage

2010-12-16T23:10:00.002+05:30

Regional parties have entrenched themselves in the system of crony capitalism.

Much of the attention in the Radia tapes, featuring lobbyist Niira Radia, has been on the mischief played by journalists. What has received less attention is the close nexus between lobbyists and regional political actors. The tapes show how different factions within the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) were pitching in 2009 for key roles in the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government. And the lobbyist’s primary concern was to bend this struggle to suit the interests of her clients and place a minister of their choice in the telecommunications ministry.

The DMK, the party of former union telecommunications minister A Raja, has been with all governments in the centre since 1996 (barring brief interregnums in 1998-99 and early 2004), as part of the United Front governments of 1996-98, the National Democratic Alliance government of 1999-2004 andUPA-I andII. Political scientists have heralded the process of accommodation of regional parties in the central power structure as a progressive feature of Indian federalism and have seen it as a deepening of democracy. The explosion from the late 1980s onwards in the number of “effective parties” in the party system was a consequence of the decline of the Congress as a hegemonic force.

The greater regionalisation and the dawn of the coalition era were believed to help a more effective articulation of local interests and do away with patronage based on power at the centre. But in truth regional parties such as the DMK have used their power in the centre to strengthen the patronage politics in their respective states. The DMK, for instance, has moved smoothly into the crony capitalist structure at the centre and has used the resources it has collected to feed the party machine in Tamil Nadu. The DMK government in the state has seen a number of welfare schemes – some well-received ones such as the sale of rice at subsidised prices and the Kalaignar insurance scheme, but also some outlandish ones such as the distribution of colour television sets. What is characteristic of theDMK’s ways of consolidating power is the manner in which the party has conducted itself during elections. Tamil Nadu political watchers point to the “Thirumangalam model” as evidence of the DMK’s successful (though illegal) use of moneyed resources to confer patronage and garner political support. The assembly by-elections in Thirumangalam in January 2009 saw the disbursal of a large amount of cash to win votes. The elections in the Madurai Lok Sabha constituency later that year also featured similar practices. The DMK has in a certain sense perfected this model through the use of resources garnered by its top functionaries in the central government in the award of licences, contracts and project approvals. The leading party in opposition in Tamil Nadu has been no better. Corruption was a feature of the All India Anna Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (AIADMK) government as well when the party was in power (1991-96 and 1999-2004) in Tamil Nadu.

Both the Dravidian parties have in the past leveraged their presence in the central government to entrench their patronage networks and strengthen the hand of the leadership. The DMK is virtually controlled by a single family which is seamlessly enmeshed in big business and politics. The AIADMK is almost a mirror image, offering very little that is different in the content of its politics and in the structure of its organisation.

The “system” of patronage has served the two parties well during phases of rapid economic growth, but what will happen if an economic crisis were to hit the state is anybody’s guess. The short-term benefits of disbursal of patronage have helped the parties manage substantial banks of support, but they tend to be short-lived as the basic economic and livelihood issues remain unaddressed. That is why newer political parties have emerged in Tamil Nadu such as the actor Vijayakanth-led Desiya Murpokku Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam.

The telecom scam, the outlook of the regional parties of Tamil Nadu and the UPA’s response, all highlight the substantive infirmities of Indian liberal democracy after liberalisation. At least in the case of the regional parties from Tamil Nadu, the expected beneficial effects of regionalisation are no longer to be seen. The so-called “deepening of democracy” that has taken place is more a case of a circulation of elites. The regional elite has partaken of the larger process of rent-seeking, using resources thus gained to disburse patronage. No substantive alternative processes of representing local interests have been explored by the regional parties and political contestation at the state level is limited to who is more effective in the politics of patronage. No wonder then that both the AIADMK and DMK have vied with each other to be part of the government at the centre irrespective of which coalition is in power in New Delhi.

An EPW Editorial

The Curious Case of Barkha Dutt (and others)

2010-12-08T18:14:00.003+05:30

Excerpts from Silver Blaze (The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes), by Arthur Conan Doyle

Gregory (Scotland Yard detective): "Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?"

Holmes: "To the curious incident of the dog in the night-time."

Gregory: "The dog did nothing in the night-time."

Holmes: "That was the curious incident."

Reality TV met News Opinionating met Court TV yesterday when well known TV journalist Barka Dutt, news editor of the NDTV channel came under cross questioning by four editors - Sanjaya Baru of the Business Standard, Dileep Padgaonkar, former editor of the Times of India, Manu Joseph of the Open Magazine which broke the “Radia tapes” story and Swapan Dasgupta, right wing columnist and contributor to The Pioneer and The Telegraph among others.

The key behind this charade held by the channel was to bring into focus the role played by Barkha Dutt as a news editor reporting during the UPA-II cabinet formation based on information she received from corporate lobbyist Niira Radia. The conversations with Radia establish a few things - a) Barkha Dutt explicitly agrees to act as a message courier between Radia (ostensibly speaking for entities within the DMK) and Congress leaders - senior ones like Ghulam Nabi Azad for e.g., b) Radia was particularly keen on passing the message as to who among the DMK was a preferred candidate for ministership in certain berths.

The anger against Barkha Dutt expressed online was on various counts. Many in the public were linking this up with the 2G scam and role of DMK minister A Raja in it. They saw it as a case of Radia playing a facilitator for the re-entry of A Raja into the UPA-II cabinet despite serious questions about the 2G scam during UPA-I and journalists helping her in the process. It was galling for the public to see journalists who they ideally see as detached players wanting to partake into such murky processes orchestrated by corporate players.

No wonder, Barkha Dutt, being the high profile journalist that she is, was prominently highlighted along with a few others. The other high profile journalist Vir Sanghvi was caught even more red handed, playing the rat to Radia’s Pied Piper in helping in message delivery and opinion making about two issues - again the A Raja re-installation in cabinet and also the Mukesh Ambani line in the gas dispute between the Ambani brothers. Sanghvi has recently taken a break from writing his column, Counterpoint. And he makes a bogus defense based on “stringing his source”, but the proof is in the pudding that is his writing and there, as is pointed out earlier, he is caught red handed doing Niira Radia’s bidding. Evidently Vir Sanghvi is more interested in pushing for the national interest as long as that interest expediently serves the corporate lobbyist's.

Barkha Dutt in her first response was outraged by the insinuations of lobbying in particular. She insisted that her assurances to Radia were basically “fibs” wanting to string her to get further information. And it is this outrage that pervaded her response besides the point on media ethics, where she questioned Open magazine (and Outlook magazine)’s decisions to publish transcripts of her conversations without contacting her for a response and so on. This was evident in her replies during last night’s inquisition-of-sorts as well.

But substantively, the key question remained and asked only by a relative few - Siddharth Varadarajan of The Hindu in his article, and by the Open magazine’s editor, Manu Joseph and his colleague. Joseph asked Dutt why wasn’t it that as a news editor she saw it necessary to bring to the public’s purview that a corporate public relations person having two of the richest clients in the world and indeed most powerful in India, was trying to pass on messages on which DMK leader was suitable for a particular cabinet post? Wasn’t it obvious that the role of corporate players wanting to have a say in getting ministers of their liking was a case of gross crony capitalism? Why was her coverage restricted to the minute-by-minute reporting of what the DMK’s demands were and what bargains were being struck by the Congress and the DMK rather than this substantial question of great public import? And why wasn’t this point highlighted even during the height of the revelations of the 2G scam, as representatives of various political parties pointed out irregularities in the 2G auction and the losses to the public exchequer (as early as early 2008). Or even during the recent release of the CAG report that put a number to the notional loss suffered by the exchequer - a mind boggling Rs 1,76,000 crore. Why didn’t Barkha Dutt want to bring out the undue and unusual interest shown by corporate players in wanting A Raja’s continuation in cabinet, during her reportage of the 2G Scam recently? Surely it was in public interest to bring out the nuances and minutiae of how crony capitalism worked and how ministers were at the bidding of big corporate players who controlled the strings of functioning of democracy from without, wasn’t it?

No, according to Barkha Dutt. It was a mere judgement call whether to report this or not. This was commonplace - the undue and shady corporate interest in public affairs and day-to-day and she didn’t consider it important enough.

Here is where Barkha Dutt is trying to string the public along with her and fib to us. Here is where the main contradiction is brought out clearly. Here is why the import of the Open magazine and Outlook magazine stories are brought out in the clear and in substance. It is similar to why the dog didn’t bark in the Silver Blaze story in the Sherlock Holmes series.

Our news media revels in trying to outdo each other in bringing out procedural, titillating details as if they are doing ball-by-ball commentary of a cricket game, when it comes to political reporting. But they do not want to displease their advertisers, mostly big corporate fund dispensers, by seeing and reporting things that are fundamentally wrong in the core issue of crony capitalism. It makes more sense for them to ridicule the political class and play up the middle class imagery of the crooked political class without distinction and difference and win eye balls in that process.

This is the problem with Indian news journalism. As Lydia Polgreen of the New York Times tweeted, “the larger problem of political journalism, esp[ecially] on TV: it privileges process minutiae over substance”. The question is why? This editorial in the EPW commenting on the Paid News issue can provide answers - “The Indian media is selling its soul to the market and forfeiting its claim to be an independent estate” or this editorial , which comments on the media coverage of the 26/11 incident says,

The manifest failures of the political establishment though, cannot obscure the fact that older notions of the media serving as a vigilant watchdog over public affairs have once again proven hopelessly romantic and outmoded. The media is a slave of the market. Its social role is little else than to serve as an echo chamber for the voices of the rich and the powerful, however shrill, irrational or lacking in coherence these may be.

Or more systematically as to how profit privileges public interest in the mass media, by the formidable intellectual, Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in the excellent book, “Manufacturing Consent”. A film made on the subject can be viewed here -

So, there you go.It is a good thing that the larger public now gets to see the “lapdog of the market” face of the media for once, shown up through the “Radia tapes” story. Holmes would have approved.

Nitish Kumar’s Triumph

2010-12-01T23:44:00.001+05:30

An improved administration with a selective use of identity helps the ruling coalition triumph in Bihar.

In what must be described as an expected result, the Nitish Kumar-led Janata Dal (United)-Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) coalition has come up trumps in the Bihar state assembly elections. The coalition has not just won. By achieving a three-fourths majority in the assembly, it has nearly annihilated the opposition comprising the Lalu Prasad-led Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) and Ram Vilas Paswan-led Lok Janshakti Party (LJP) alliance and the Congress Party. The outcome repeats the Lok Sabha election results in 2009. The reasons for the strong victory in the assembly elections are the same as in the Lok Sabha polls – a very positive perception about the JD(U)-BJP government’s public works programme and the quality of state administration as also the ruling coalition’s very deft use of identity to shore up its base.

Fore more, read the rest of the editorial here.

Beginning of the End

2010-11-23T18:48:00.001+05:30

Manual scavenging persists, but community and political mobilisation of workers has initiated change.

Only those who are in denial are surprised by the continued existence in India of casteism and inhuman practices associated with stigmatisation, despite institutions of the state decreeing their abolition. But progress has been made in fits and starts, and agency – in the form of community and political mobilisation – has played a role in their slow removal. The horrific practice of manual scavenging – the worst form of untouchability and casteism under which certain communities are forced to carry human waste, and clean dry latrines and sewers – is one where the agency of community and political mobilisation has begun to have an impact.

To Read More, please click here.

An EPW editorial

Little Hope in North Korea

2010-11-04T15:41:00.000+05:30

A dynastic succession is set to ensure a continuity in repression.

In a display of grandeur exhibited to impress the world, the normally reclusive state of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea – better known as North Korea – feted visiting journalists and its citizens with a massive “celebration” on 9 and 10 October in Pyongyang. The occasion ostensibly was to celebrate the 65th anniversary of the establishment of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). But the gala event, featuring the North Korean staple of elaborate gymnastics and pyrotechnics, was held to provide the citizenry with a glimpse of the new “vice-chairman” of the military commission of the WPK, Kim Jong-Un, who also happens to be the youngest son of the ruling “dear leader” Kim Jong-Il, who himself had taken over from his father Kim Il-Sung (anointed as “eternal president” of the country after his death in 1994). The much publicised presence of the hitherto reclusive and unknown Kim Jong-Un is widely seen as a signal for his eventually succeeding the ailing Kim Jong-Il, who has ruled North Korea as the supreme leader of the central military commission for nearly two decades now.

To read more, click here.

India's UID Project: technical challenges

2010-10-20T10:37:00.003+05:30

Tough Victory

2010-10-06T08:43:00.001+05:30

A polarised Venezuela delivers a close verdict in elections to the national assembly.

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez’s “Bolivarian revolution” is intact, but the opposition has made gains. This is the message from the 26 September elections to the national assembly. The ruling Partido Socialista Unido de Venezuela (PSUV), and its allies have won 99 of the 165 seats in the national assembly and 5 of the 12 seats for the Latin American parliament, while the opposition led by the coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) has managed 64 and 5 seats, respectively. In terms of voter support, the MUD has managed to garner support from nearly half the electorate.

The Ayodhya judgment by the Allahabad High Court - A Blot on secularism

2010-10-04T16:58:00.000+05:30

Without mincing words, let me say it clearly that the verdict of the Lucknow Bench of the Allahabad High Court was an act that was as worse as the 1992 demolition of the Babri Masjid. Except the latter was an event that featured hooligans criminally bringing down a structure that for them represented Indian secularism, while the former was handed out by a set of learned judges who ultimately misread the tenets of secularism in working their basis for their atrocious final judgement.

Why do I feel so strongly? After all, despite the profound disappointment in large sections of India's minorities, among some sections of India's liberal intelligentsia and large sections of leftist supporters and adherers to the "left's" notion of secularism - there has been the maintenance of a serene calm and peace among the Indian population who seem to be tired of violence and posturing by political actors on this issue. Some see a utilitarian value in the idea espoused by the court of dividing the disputed property into three portions, which could possibly be an intriguing and workable compromise solution as they have argued.

But for me, the so called solution can only be a viable one, if it is based on a rational, civic and constitutional basis. Which is obviously and unfortunately not the case with this judgement. We know that in 1949, idols were installed in the mosque. We know that in the mid- and late 1980s, there was a frenzy created because of the opening of the locks of the Masjid - an act of pandering to the Hindu Right by the Congress government after they did a similar pandering to Islamic fundamentalists vis-a-vis the Shah Bano case. We also know that the standing structure of the Babri Masjid was destroyed in front of our eyes - riveted on newspapers and news channels - by frenzied hooligans mobilised by the Hindutva brigade of the Sangh Parivar. Implicated in the wanton destruction was nearly the entire leadership of the Bharatiya Janata Party and the act in itself shifted India's politics and society to a new and dangerous ground. Scores of riots followed, thousands of people were affected - many were killed, a degree of polarisation was managed to be achieved by the Hindutva brigade and fundamentalism took root in some sections of the population. Indian governance and administration also got affected and tainted and incidents such as the Gujarat riots were orchestrated. Suffice to say, the "Mandir" issue was the most deleterious of the three M issues - the other were Market (reforms) and Mandal (recommendations) that shifted Indian polity to new ground in the early 1990s.

With this reality and fact in front of us, we expected the Indian court adjudicating on the vexed Babri Masjid-Ranjanmabhoomi issue to do justice. And justice in this sense was to be wrought out by relying on facts and the secular Constitution. Based on this, the judges could in no way have outrightly dismissed the claims of the minority community. They could in no way have given legitimacy to dubious claims of the disputed area being the birthplace of a mythical god of the Hindus. Instead the court did the virtual opposite. It was almost that the court took no necessary cognisance of realities in Ayodhya in independent and constitutional India. Two of the three member bench of the judges, actually gave credence to the myth that Ram was indeed born in the disputed area. One even said that the Babri Masjid was not even a mosque, in many ways removing the moral illegitimacy of the heinous act on 6th December 1992.

The learned judges should have relied on the wisdom imparted in the secular Constitution to adjudicate on the theological matter. But the secularism in this case was surely the Congress version of it. Secularism as defined and understood by progressives and even among certain liberals has always been the arm's length distance between the state and faith. Matters of the state were to be strictly on the basis of civic law, with no intermingling of faith and civic governance. The Congress form of secularism, on the other hand, has mostly always, the active engagement of the state in faith - at times leading to pandering - sometimes to majoritarian fundamentalism and sometimes to minority fundamentalism. This distorted form of secularism is what is evident in the judgement.

Look at the initial lines of the gist of the judgement by one of the judges, Justice DV Sharma -

"The disputed site is the birth place of Lord Ram."

or that of Justice Sudhir Agarwal, in answering Issue No. 4 of Suit 1 -

"The place in suit to the extent it has been held by this Court to be the birthplace of Lord Rama"

Can these “leaps into faith”, as termed by many and what I would more accurately call, “leaps into irrationality”, hold true under rational and factual scrutiny? As this statement by eminent historians (Romila Thapar, Sarvepalli Gopal, Bipan Chandra et al) in Jan-Feb 1990 in the Social Scientist says,

Is Ayodhya the birth place of Rama? This question raises a related one: Is present day Ayodhya the Ayodhya of Ramayana?...

According to Valmiki Ramayana, Rama, the King of Ayodhya, was born in the Treta Yuga, that is thousands of years before the Kali Yuga which is supposed to begin in 3102 BC.

i) There is no archaeological evidence to show that at this early time the region around present day Ayodhya was inhabited. The earliest possible date for settlements at the site are of about the eighth century BC. The archaeological remains indicate a fairly simple material life, more primitive than what is described in the Valmiki Ramayana.

ii) In the Ramayana, there are frequent references to palaces and buildings on a large scale in an urban setting. Such descriptions of an urban complex are not sustained by the archaeological evidence of the eighth century BC.

iii) There is also a controversy over the location of Ayodhya. Early Buddhist texts refer to Shravasti and Saketa, not Ayodhya, as the major cities of Koshala. Jaina texts also refer to Saketa as the capital of Koshala. There are very few references to an Ayodhya, but this is said to be located on the Ganges, not on river Saryu which is the site of present day Ayodhya.

It is amply clear that the “leaps into irrationality” by the said judges of the bench, clearly don’t hold true under scrutiny. How on earth, can this be accepted then?

What of the judges’ (all three of them have accepted that there indeed was a temple over the ruins of which the mosque was built) invocation of the findings of the Archaeological Survey of India’s excavation of the site in 2003? Justice Sharma states emphatically (in the gist of his judgement) that “The Archaeological Survey of India has proved that the structure was a massive Hindu religious structure.” Justice Agarwal, in his gist, says “The building in dispute was constructed after demolition of Non-Islamic religious structure, i.e., a Hindu temple.” Justice Khan says, “Mosque was constructed over the ruins of temples which were lying in utter ruins since a very long time before the construction of mosque and some material thereof was used in
construction of the mosque.”

These statements are also major leaps into “faith” - faith in an ASI “summary of findings” and procedures that have been dismissed by acclaimed historians for various inconsistencies and abnormalities in work. Take this excerpts of the interview of historian Irfan Habib in the Frontline for example, -

The ASI report says that a temple existed beneath the ruins of the Babri Masjid. Is this borne out by the excavations?

I think I have already shown that the evidence found against the existence of such a temple is overwhelming. The ASI has made an appeal to a very small number of stones and objects coming from either early levels or obviously brought in from other sites during the mosque's construction. They are of Buddhist, Jain and Shaivite provenances. How can these be used together to prove the existence of a temple? Can the ASI produce any such combined Buddhist-Jain-Shaivite-Rama temple from anywhere in India?

As for the so-called "pillar-bases", Dr. Ashok Datta has adequately explained them as brickbats and stones used to fill holes and hollows on the ground and ruined floors. This is why these are found at so many levels and in connection with all the four mosque floors.

What sort of structure then existed beneath the Masjid?

I think it is now clear that the Babri Masjid was built at the ruined site of an open mosque (qanati or idgah), and Floor No.4 belonged to such a mosque. A mihrab(arched recess) was found in its foundation wall on the west (significantly enough, not mentioned in the report). This also explains the large amount of evidence of Muslim habitation at the site both below and above the levels of Floor 4.

In other words, two of the three judges have relied on a questionable ASI exercise and dubious findings, which have been widely questioned and have been dismissed as well.

It is the “belief” that there existed a temple over which the “disputed structure” was constructed and that the disputed area was indeed the “birthplace of Ram” that governs the judgement on the location of the idols below the previously existing central dome is to be handed over to Hindus for worship. From our limited observations from secondary sources, the dubitable nature of the basis of the claims makes the judgement untenable.

What of the utilitarian order to divide the property in disputed area to three claimants - the Hindus, the Muslims and the Nirmohi Akhara? For some, this verdict is a workable compromise that could represent a “move on” from the vexed issue that has bedevilled Indian polity and society. But justice served by a court that is supposed to rationally act on factual evidence is not supposed to be utilitarian but conforming to reason and law. This judgement of division of property is also based on the fact that both Hindus and Muslims prayed in the premises of the disputed area. Yet, relevant facts suggest that it has always been one party that has illegally placed idols within the structure, performed shilanyas and ultimately destroyed the structure. Reason cannot treat the plaintiffs therefore on the same pedestal after a purview of these facts. In that sense, this verdict is not acceptable even if it is workable and could perhaps be worked upon by stakeholders outside court.

Even the utilitarian nature of the judgement is more than problematic. The message behind this utilitarianism is that a majoritarian bias in the judgement has to be accepted by the aggrieved party and a “compromise” worked out. The message is flawed and only builds residual angst among the minority community, who are forced to accept the majoritarian bias in the judgement and are asked to accept that this is the workable form of justice.

In jurisprudence, the Allahabad High Court judgement sets, in this writer’s opinion, a bad precedent. It is incumbent on the Supreme Court to reverse the harm that is wrought out by the judgement - one that legitimises the incorrect reading of Indian secularism and one that legitimises irrational beliefs, letting them trump reason and justice. It is hoped that the Supreme Court follows civic rules and legal procedures to establish the property claims rather than arriving at conclusions from theological, mythological and irrational readings.

It is therefore welcome that some plaintiffs have pledged to approach the Supreme Court to undo the damage done.

Kashmir and the return to "normalcy"

2010-09-28T00:41:00.001+05:30

After nearly three months of a near-intifada like situation, things seem to be returning to "normal" in Kashmir. The question to be asked is what is "normal" in the valley. The answer to that would more or less determine "what is to be done" in the medium term by stake holders - the Indian state, the Kashmiri political actors and broad Kashmiri society. (cartoon courtesy The Hindu newspaper)

For the Indian state, "normal" simply means a return to status quo; i.e. a highly "security" oriented valley, where incidents of violence are held to a minimum, protests that can be managed and the administration's writ is restored. For the Kashmiri political actors, depending on where they stand on separatism, "normal" is different. For those actors that have accepted Indian citizenship, "normal" is when they can articulate their politics within the framework of what every other political actor in any other state (province) in India works with. Differences are articulated with the manner the development paradigm plays out and the political elite would want to keep the differences articulated at the rhetorical level - i.e. the political opposition blames the incompetence of the ruling party in implementing policies, over which both have generally the same opinion. Thus, the National Conference and its supporting Congress would want to function in a violence-free environment, dispensing patronage and working for the "development" of Kashmir, while the Peoples' Democratic Party would want to expose the former's incompetence in maintaining law and order and implementation of the "development" policies. At times that are abnormal, these parties tend to frame positions on the "nationality" question in terms of "autonomy" or "self-rule" - i.e. articulating sovereignty within the framework of the Indian state, but with powers that are larger than the present status quo of Kashmir as a federal unit of India. But again these positions come up and are expedient when the separatists seem to have their stock running high.

For the separatists, again, "normal" is different for different actors. For the Tehreek-e-Hurriyat, led by "hardliner" Syed Ali Shah Geelani, "normal" is when the idea of a Islamic state of Kashmir has enough currency and is articulated through the anger of the Kashmiri people alienated with the Indian state. For Geelani, it is only a break from Indian secularism and civic nationalism, that can be construed as a return to "normal". The normal and the ideal for Geelani is a Kashmir that is annexed to the Islamic Republic of Pakistan. For others in the Hurriyat Conference and the separatist "mainstream", there are different motivations for separatism and different ideas for a sovereign Kashmir, but the binding element is a Kashmir that breaks from its past - of an unhappy existence within the Indian state, of false promises of autonomy and failures of the Indian state and so on. There is an Islamic element in many of the separatists' articulations, but there is a preponderance of alienation and angst with the Indian state, that is seen to have militated against the interests of "Kashmiriyat". "Normal" for these sections, is when the Indian state is willing to talk to them to listen to their articulations for a newer future for Kashmir.

From the writings of the "ordinary" Kashmiri citizen, from the voices of Kashmiri civil society though, "normal" seems to be a different story altogether. "Normal" is when the Kashmiri citizen is not subjected to repeated and humiliating "security checks" by personnel holding automatic weapons stationed every 50 metres. "Normal" is when the Kashmiri citizen does not feel harassed by "curfewed nights", "encounter killings", and the feeling of being ghettoised. "Normal" is when the Kashmiri youth does not feel repressed and like an alien when she/he goes out of Kashmir for a job like any other youth in India does. "Normal" for the Kashmiri Pandits is when they do not have to stay in camps and come out of their miserable existence as refugees in their own land and "normal" for the Kashmiri trader is when he is allowed to go to Muzaffarabad unhindered to sell/ buy wares. Of course, as some would argue, there are different views for different classes in Kashmiri society over sovereignty, independence, Islamisation/"jihad" and Kashmiriyat. But as the protests show, there is an unifying factor of alienation and anger against the security forces that seems to transcend views on the aforementioned political subjects. In other words, irrespective of class background, age, gender, the protests have seen participation from various sections and reducing it as some experts have done to local grievances articulated by some from particular class background and separatist motivations alone does not seem to capture the story entirely well.

So, the past few months were times, abnormal. The average Kashmiri citizen, particularly its youth vented out their anger at the abnormality by throwing stones at the Indian establishment - its paramilitary stations, its offices and its army locations. The Tehreek and its supporters wanted to keep the anger on and prepare the Kashmiri citizens for a new jihad - not the failed earlier course of militancy, but this new Palestinian like model of protests. No wonder Geelani wants the Kashmiris to continue civil disobedience, not to attend school and keep the "intifada" like situation on. For Geelani, continuing with the abnormal is the way out to prepare Kashmir for his understanding of the "normal". The separatists are not happy with the deaths of protesting Kashmiri youth killed by indiscriminate security forces' firing and want an urgent redressal by the Indian state.

Meanwhile, after months of vacillating and dilly-dallying - the Indian central government's initial assessment was that the violence and stone throwing was motivated and engineered from outside, then they grudgingly accepted that there is a popular anger that requires some response from them and that culminated in the all party delegation's visit followed by some concessions on the hard security approach of the Indian state. But there is still no acceptance of what construes as "normal" for the Kashmiri citizen. There is still no change in attitude on whether or not to amend/ repeal the much reviled Armed Forces Special Powers Act, which is seen to give impunity to the Indian security forces that has made living in Kashmir abnormal for many of its citizens. There is some grudging acceptance of the venality of the Public Security Act and the detentions that it has entailed, and the need to compensate/ address concerns of protestors' families who have lost their dear ones either to security forces' firing or incarceration. But these steps are token and keeping in mind what is "normal" for the Indian state.

It was the same understanding of what was "normal" that drove the Indian state's inaction and maintenance of stasis after Kashmiris voted in the assembly elections. The "overwhelming" response in the elections was construed as a change from the demands for "azaadi"; only it was not so. The participation in elections were an outcome of the Kashmiris' understanding of "normal" - while their alienation and anger was intact, they expected the elections and the outcome to address their other daily concerns. Which did not quite happen. The Indian state's intransigence on their "security approach" and the Kashmiri political class - the ruling parties and the opposition's inability to work toward the Kashmiri perception of "normal" only heightened local grievances and strengthened the claims of the hard jihadis.

Therefore, much more has to be done by the Indian state - again to revisit its hard security approach. Militancy has been more or less defeated and the currency for hard militancy does not exist in Kashmir anymore. And there is no wrong in addressing angst over historical wrong in Kashmir on the question of the "special status" of Kashmir that has been unfairly addressed by the Indian state. That would mean, continuing political negotiations with all sections of Kashmir's polity and trying to find a way to unite a divided Kashmir without losing sovereignty or exacerbating tensions with neighbours. That would entail a revisit to the "soft borders" idea with an open mind, a look at the "special status" through the autonomy framework and enhancing connectivity with the various parts of divided Jammu and Kashmir. The Indian state should show the gumption to do so and not be afraid to transcend and reject the narrow approach articulated by the likes of the Bharatiya Janata Party or the "strategic community" which want a continuation of the "security" status quo and the management of the "Kashmiri problem".

It is impossible to accept that despite whatever currency the idea of a Islamic state of Kashmir holds, the Indian state has to pander to such a demand, as articulated by some liberals in the Indian intelligentsia. Some "liberals" hold the view that the Indian state has expended too much energy on Kashmir and it is better off giving up claims of sovereignty over the region. That is a foolhardy premise, that amounts to giving up the very basis that constitutes the foundation of the Indian republic. One must remember that exploring the middle ground - the grant of linguistic federalism for e.g. made it possible for states like Tamil Nadu to accept Indian nationality without exception, after grievances over linguistic freedom were addressed adequately. It required a tweak to Indian nationalism to make it federally inclusive and grants of linguistic freedoms to make the idea of India more coherent to Tamils for example. It requires a similar exploring of the middle ground on the question of "absolute" sovereignty in a much depressed, divided and historically wronged region.

Progressives vis-a-vis Kashmir should not give up the middle (and the correct) ground of questioning excesses by the Indian security apparatus, the incompetence of the Kashmiri ruling elite, the vacuity of some separatists' proposals on sovereignty and the incongruity and foolishness of the idea of a religious state driven by millenarian ideas. They can still manage to articulate the concerns of the average Kashmiri citizen while doing so. They (we) should demand a grander gesture from the Indian state that goes beyond the token, expedient moves to restore "normality" and push the Indian state's version of "normal" to be closer to what the Kashmiris demand as to be their "normal" state of existence. The steps taken by the Indian left, whose leaders were the first to visit the Kashmiri valley in turmoil and who have articulated bold measures to alter India's security approach, engaged in talks with separatists of all hues and views are in the right direction. Yet the Indian left is a marginal player politically in a politically volatile region. It requires the Indian ruling classes therefore to accede to the demands made by the Indian left, to be responsive to the Kashmiris. And progressives both in Kashmiri society and outside should work towards exploring and working of the middle ground and be consistent to their first principles of secularism, peace and democracy. That is closer to "what needs to be done" from a left, progressive viewpoint than what seems to be articulated elsewhere.

Where Is the Matter of Public Interest?

2010-09-22T19:58:00.001+05:30

Many interests wrangle in Parliament and within government over the property rights of an individual.
An EPW editorial on the proposed "Enemy Property Bill". Read more here.

Delusions of Grandeur

2010-08-17T16:23:00.001+05:30

Corruption and incompetence have made a mockery of the Commonwealth Games.
India bid for and set about preparing for the 2010 Commonwealth Games in New Delhi to showcase its so-called emergence as a global power. What we have had on the way is large-scale eviction of the poor from sites on the Yamuna that were chosen for the Games, a trampling on the rights of tens of thousands of workers engaged in construction of the facilities, a destruction of the surrounding environment, a judiciary insensitive to the rights of labour and the environment and now revelations of large-scale corruption.
Read rest of the EPW editorial here.

Exposure of War Crimes

2010-08-02T13:56:00.004+05:30

Wikileaks treads where mainstream media does not and reveals evidence of war crimes in Afghanistan.

An EPW Editorial.

Who Cares for the Railways?

2010-07-27T10:54:00.002+05:30

Frequent accidents reveal an apathy in the railway management and at the ministerial level towards safety concerns.

The accident on 19 July that killed 63 people when the Uttar Banga Express rammed into the stationary Vananchal Express at Sainthia in Birbhum district of West Bengal was one more in the series of rail mishaps in recent months that have taken a terrible human toll on India’s railway network. In just the past year, 14 such “incidents” have killed more than 300 people and injured hundreds. While the biggest tragedy – the derailment of the Gyaneshwari Express and subsequent collision with a goods train in Sardiha on 30 May that resulted in 170 deaths – was most likely an act of sabotage, other accidents were the outcome of factors such as human error and failure of signalling systems and tracks. Clearly, where the basic issue of human safety is concerned the functioning of the railways is beginning to fray at the edges.

Unscrupulous Mining Lobby

2010-07-20T22:00:00.001+05:30

Illegal mining continues to flourish in Karnataka, backed by political patronage.
An EPW Editorial

Que Viva Espana

2010-07-12T12:39:00.003+05:30

Spain wins a game of Total Crudeball and deservedly lift the 19th World Cup.

Yesterday night's World Cup Final between Spain and the Netherlands was not certainly an advertisement of football and it was unfortunate considering the stage and occasion. Billed as a battle between the originators of the flowing "Total Football" and the practitioners of its 21st century form, the "Tiqi-Taca", the game instead turned out to be a Rumble in the Nasrec. But ultimately, Spain, which had played less unfairly as compared to its opponent, triumphed. The winning goal was stuck by little Catalan Andres Iniesta, who in many ways, represents the spirit of Spain in the manner he plays - dribbling out of crowded areas, relentlessly passing and attempting to exploit the smallest gaps for breakthroughs. As an aside, the fact that a Catalan mattered the most in Spain's biggest sporting triumph was intriguing considering that more than a million Catalans had demanded the recognition of an autonomous "nation" of Catalonia within Spain, marching on the streets only a few days ago. It took until late in extra time for Iniesta and Spain to score, as they muffed up many an opportunity to continue a trend of bad finishing in this World Cup. Indeed, Spain are the World Champions with the least number of goals - 8 in 7 games - ever, while ratcheting up the most passes made in a World Cup since 1966.

Despite the billing of a clash between near equals in quality of play, those who had followed every game played by Holland in the Cup would have noticed the deliberate emphasis on realism that dominated Dutch play. Far from relying on total football, the Dutch had emphasised strong midfield tackling, robust counter-attacking and decisive finishing. It was the first of the qualities that dominated the Dutch style of play against Spain. Eager to disrupt the short passing game of the Spanish, Holland's forward Robbie Van Persie and defensive midfielders - the villainous Mark Van Bommel and the rough Nigel De Jong engaged in scrunching fouls. De Jong should have been sent off for this raised kick at Xabi Alonso's chest; the hard working English referee Howard Webb merely gave him a Yellow owing to the occasion. That said, the Dutch indeed played havoc with the Spanish game - the latter played a much alien game in the later minutes of the first half, relying on long vertical passes and responding in rough kind to marauding Dutch moves. Early in the half though, they looked far more assured, as their short passing game and wing play gave them a couple of good chances - one shot at goal from a cross, stopped effectively by Dutch goalie Stekelenberg and another volley by David Villa missing the left post.

The second half saw a slightly more open game, as the Dutch threatened with counter-attacks. Arjen Robben was a terror on the right wing, weaving complicated patterns at the defenders and drifting suddenly into the middle to receive weighted passes from midfield. One of his runs was halted only by the diligence of the best man-to-man defending goal keeper in the world, Iker Casillas, who struck out a desperate foot, even while diving to the left wrongly to halt a sure shot Robben ball speeding to the goal, after the latter broke free. Howard Webb's patience was meanwhile, wearing very thin. Yellow cards were being brandished left, right and center and the dirty Dutch were more often the recipients. Spain's wing play was not so much effective and Pedro was soon replaced by Jesus Navas, the Sevilla winger, whose introduction in the last third of regulation time, revved up the Spanish, who looked more threatening. But the finishing continued to lack bite, as the Spanish were unable to convert a few golden set piece opportunities.In the meantime, there was a dangerous run by Robben, who was controversially impeded by already warned Carlos Puyol from behind. The referee looked like playing advantage for the Dutch and no foul was awarded. Robben's livid remonstration meanwhile earned him a stern yellow from Webb.

In extra time, the Spanish easily looked the better side, as Holland continued to hack its way trying to prevent Spain having an advantage. The introduction of another little playmaker, Cesc Fabregas helped the Spanish to create newer opportunities. Dutch centre half Johnny Heitinga got the inevitable red card as a slight push on Iniesta got the little midfield maestro sprawling on the turf close to the Holland D. Xavi missed yet another set piece, but the Spanish were exhorted by coach Vicente Del Bosque to continue to attack. And that paid dividends, as an attacking move from the left saw the ball passed to a free Iniesta on the right close to goal. Iniesta took an assured first touch and blasted a diagonal shot across Stekelenberg, finally delivering Spain the decisive edge, very close to the end of extra time. The Dutch response was cantankerous, as defender Mathijson was booked for protesting and making too much ado about nothing. Xavi and Iniesta were booked for time wasting and dilly-dallying and a whopping 13 cards were brandished not including the red to Heitinga.

In the end, Iniesta's decisiveness was enough for Spain to chalk out yet another 1-0 win - fourth in a row. It was some kind of a poetic justice. Their squad played a more true form of beautiful football, pinging passes and creating attacking rhythms while holding on to possessions and denying opponents chances, throughout the tournament. Many Spanish players impressed in different roles - Xavi, Iniesta, Alonso and Busquets were easily the best midfield while Puyol and Pique were revelations; Casillas was solid as ever and Villa carried Spain through to the finals with his devastating finishing. The coach, avuncular Del Bosque was no-nonsense, reveling in man-management - true to his calling card. Spain had already banished mammoth demons with their Euro'08 championship victory and they shrugged off their underwhelming footballing history by being triumphant in South Africa. The Dutch were third time unlucky, but earned no sympathisers for their rough effort in the final.

Johann Cruyff described his preference and admiration for the Spanish by invoking his first love for the way they played football - which trumped over his nationality. As a neutral from India, this writer stands in unison in the footballing great Cruyff to celebrate the victory of football - and the Spanish. Que Viva Espana!

Spain, Beautiful Football, the Left Winger and Me.

2010-07-09T13:15:00.000+05:30

It was the year 2000. I was just finishing up college, unsure about my future, but loving the present then. For, the four years in college were not so much about becoming an engineer, but to become an enlightened and knowledgeable person who appreciated the world around him. Part of that appreciation was getting to enjoy watching sport as an art form - my leading hobby then and even now. That was the time, I spent nights watching Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh working out perfect fast bowling even as their team disintegrated generally. It was the time, I was exposed to Kobe Bryant and Tim Duncan combining muscle with brain and skills. And one fine day in the fag end of my fourth year of engineering, to a sublime back pass by Fernando Redondo of Argentina to Raul Gonzalez of Spain, both playing for Real Madrid against defending champions, Manchester United in the 1999-2000 Champions League. That was the start of a long enduring romance for Spanish football and eventual support for the perennially under-achieving Spanish national squad that however, threw a heavy monkey off its back when it won the Euro Championship for the second time in its history in 2008.

La Liga Football was being telecast in India every alternate week, if I remember correctly then, in the early 2000s on Star Sports. It featured some good expert analysis from Gerry Armstrong, a former Northern Ireland player who had plied his trade in Spain for Real Mallorca for a while. Armstrong's commentary (incidentally Armstrong still plies his punditry for Sky Sports/ESPN Star as an expert for the World Cup today), was laced with nostalgia for Spain and Spanish football in general. The early 2000s was a time of domination of football by Real Madrid, which featured talent such as Raul Gonzalez, Luis Figo (who had just transferred from Barcelona and had earned tremendous opprobrium for the move) and good supporting cast such as Jose Maria Guti, Roberto Carlos, Steve McManaman and others. This team played flowing football featuring short passes, excellent build up and attractive ball movement. I was hitched further. Zinedine Zidane later joined the squad in 2001, adding even more quality and assurance. Real Madrid was the cynosure of all eyes, with present day Spanish coach Vicente Del Bosque, managing the squad with aplomb and astute man management skills. They were winning title after title, culminating in the 2002 Champions League triumph against Beyer Leverkusen, featuring a supreme goal by Zidane. The team played beautiful football, pinging the ball around for passes and aided by skilled individuals playing unselfishly, meshing their personalities ably to create a winning team. They lacked a solid defense though, but always looked like scoring more than the opposition to win.

But all the good work by Real Madrid did not necessarily translate into a good performance by the Spain team. Partly because, the Real Madrid team had only one Spaniard who could stand tall in comparison to his illustrious team-mates and the Spanish team did not have the same personality - as in the game - as the lead club of that time. Its 2002 performance was not bad. Spain "wuz robbed" by pathetic refereeing which handed over the game to a valiant South Korean team in the quarters.

Meanwhile Real Madrid went another direction after 2002. Instead of accumulating players who complemented the already strong talent in the team, the team's president tried to emulate the Manchester United merchandising model - create a Spanish team of stars that would earn the following of "star gazers". In 2002, Madrid signed Ronaldo, who did great, but was actually superfluous to the squad and in 2003, they signed David Beckham, an one dimensional dead ball specialist, who never gelled with Madrid. My fascination with Real Madrid was waning because of the change in philosophy from beautiful all round football to the "Galactico" model of "Zidanes and Pavons" orchestrated by overweening club president Florentino Perez (who had also dropped Del Bosque after the 2003 loss to Juventus in the Champions League). My loyalties shifted to another effervescent Spanish club, FC Barcelona which was during that time, enduring a crisis. The squad was dominated by a number of Dutch players, some great, some mediocre and was in the throes of a major makeover. The shift of loyalties was not smooth. I had read ESPN Soccernet's writer Phil Ball, "Morbo- the Story of Spanish Football" and had begun to understand the political dynamics of football and support for the game in multi-nationality Spain. The incipient left wing tendencies in me (I was living in Japan then, this time, unsure of my future career yet again), propelled me to hitch my bandwagon to Barcelona - I had just read about the Spanish civil war and the role of the Indian national movement and other left wing forces across the world in support for the Republicans against the Falangists and Nationalists led by Franco, who later patronised Real Madrid.

It only helped that Barcelona had just (fortuitously) landed a new Brazilian talent, the buck toothed and ever smiling Ronaldinho. His entry galvanised a crisis-ridden Barca. His ability to think on the move, play adventurously and linking up with effective players such as young Xavi and others, propelled Barca from strength to strength, first culminating in a La Liga win in 2005 and later the Champions League. Ronaldinho's addition also inspired other Catalans to play their best for Barcelona. Much of today's vaunted Spanish midfielders, started plying their best talent during this time - Xavi reprising Pep Guardiola's anchor midfield role, young Iniesta providing weaving and silky runs complementing Ronaldinho and other unheralded talent such as Deco from Portugal and Edgar Davids from Holland offering great support. The defense was led by the solid Carles Puyol. The rejuvenation of Barcelona coincided with the relative decline of the "Galactico" model in Madrid. Reliance on young Spanish players in Barca who were exposed to the best levels of competition, meant that the Spanish squad could summon talent that were better off from their predecessors in playing at the highest levels. Indeed, in 2006, the Spain squad did not disappoint in the initial stages, finally, managing to attain an identity of its own - a short passing squad that built tremendous pressure on the opposition through their technical excellence. But this was early days still for the present generation; they could not manage to surmount a Zidane inspired French team and lost.

By 2006, I had become a full fledged leftist. My political loyalties coincided firmly with my club ones. Barcelona's community model, its refusal of corporate sponsorship for its jerseys, its sharing and team oriented game - were more or less a fit with my imagination of a political community. No wonder, I wrote this piece - "The Left winger" in 2006. The piece was a tad naive - after all FC Barcelona was and is a commercial organisation, albeit of the community ownership kind and not necessarily "socialist". But it did convey my feelings for the kind of football that Barca then played, very well. The period of Barcelona's rejuvenation was also an interesting time for Spain politically. Spain had cast away right wing rule by Jose Maria Aznar and had supported Jose Luis Zapatero who gained popularity after withdrawing Spain troops from invaded Iraq. And Zapatero was a Barca supporter to boot.

The loss in the 2006 World Cup was not altogether bad for Spain. Spanish footballers and coaches were already being hired elsewhere - Rafael Benitez of Valencia went to Liverpool and harvested talent from Spain - in players like Xabi Alonso, Pepe Reina and later Fernando Torres. Arsenal landed Catalan prodigy Cesc Fabregas who rose to acclaim at a tender age. Spain was no longer just importers of the best talent in the world, but were worthy exporters. Their clubs' farm systems were paying off.

Their national squad had suddenly discovered a footballing philosophy that was close to what was being practised in FC Barcelona and an unifying principle that was akin to the new government's policies after coming to power. Besides, it helped that the implementers of the philosophy were the same in both Spain and FC Barcelona - Xavi and Iniesta. Spanish coach Luis Aragones added some muscle and guile to the smoothness and skill, when he summoned Brazilian emigre Marcus Senna to the holding midfield. A far more political decentralised Spain was also visibly democratised on the footballing pitch.

The iconic Madridista, Raul Gonzalez was dropped before Euro 2008 to the collective howls of the centrist Madrid media. Instead, unheralded but smooth David Villa who had plied his trade at relatively minor Real Zaragoza and the workmanlike Valencia, was given his spot behind yet another talent, Fernando Torres. And Spain's new found identity was able to cast off the demons of the past, as the team won the Euro 2008 convincingly, tearing apart opposition in the way in a technically precise and elegant manner. Xavi was named the man of the tournament. Spain was now a major world power in international football and no longer just an under-achieving pretender.

The swagger and confidence attained after Euro'08 helped Barca's Xavi, Iniesta and co. (which included the world's best footballer Lionel Messi) go up further heights under the able tutelage of Catalan hero Josep Guardiola to win the Champions League, playing the now dominating "tiki-taca" form of football. Even Real Madrid underwent a change from the flawed "galactico" model and tried to get back to a "horses for courses" policy before Florentino Perez took charge again and landed Cristiano Ronaldo, Kaka etc to reformulate the flawed system again last year. Barca and Spain, meanwhile, were accumulating players suited to this style of football and were winning nearly every game.

The present 2010 squad's thus far performance - akin to an intricately assembled and sketched painting that seems to lack a few finishing touches - is a result of years of honing the kind of football that is now seen on the field. The best players suited to the tiki-taca - the Barca specialists now teamed up with the workhorses from Real Madrid - Xabi Alonso, Sergei Ramos and Iker Casillas along with others from the Spanish hinterlands to make up a solid winning squad that has progressed well in the World Cup. Spain has now churned out an unique model of football, but not incidentally or by default but after years of persistence and effort. Too bad, their political leadership has not managed to emulate the stellar efforts of their footballing giants. Unwilling to change course radically from the right wing policies of the past, Spain is now mired in an economic disaster, even as its sportspersons are ruling the roost internationally.

If Spain wins the 2010 World Cup, defeating the tough and near equally talented Dutch, it would be a great collective balm for the country as a whole. It would also be the triumph of a footballing philosophy that is the 21st century version of "beautiful football". And a source of pride for the romanticist and the left winger in me.

Breaking a consensus

2010-06-21T16:41:00.000+05:30

The non-Maoist coalition repudiates an agreement that saved Nepal from a constitutional crisis.

An EPW Editorial.

A feature on the Maoist "challenge" to the Indian state

2010-05-31T15:12:00.001+05:30

The Aam Aadmi Facade

2010-05-31T15:03:00.002+05:30

The United Progressive Alliance has belied its commitment to the aam aadmi.

An EPW Editorial

The Case against Death Sentence

2010-05-17T18:36:00.002+05:30

Whatever the crime, there is no place in a civilised society for capital punishment.

An EPW Editorial

Red vs Yellow in Thailand

2010-05-10T16:45:00.002+05:30

A republican current in Thailand challenges traditional elite rule.

An EPW Editorial

Khaps, Castes and Violence

2010-05-03T16:07:00.002+05:30

Decrees by khap panchayats and violence against dalits paint a gruesome picture of rural Haryana.

An EPW Editorial.

Interview with Malayashree Hashmi on Safdar Hashmi's birthday

2010-04-20T21:59:00.000+05:30

Progressive Step

2010-04-19T22:30:00.002+05:30

In a significant move, political parties in Pakistan legislate on building a genuine parliamentary democracy.

An EPW Editorial

Interview with Sukumar Muralidharan on Iraq

2010-04-16T08:45:00.001+05:30

Did an interview for Newsclick with Sukumar Muralidharan on Iraq post elections -

It can be viewed here.

For the Elites

2010-04-06T02:23:00.002+05:30

What kind of university system does the government propose by allowing foreign universities?

An EPW Editorial.

Divided after the Invasion

2010-04-06T02:20:00.001+05:30

Elections have not closed the ethnic fault lines that have torn apart a post-invasion Iraq.

An EPW Editorial.

Flawed Civil Nuclear Liability Bill

2010-03-22T16:22:00.001+05:30

All eyes are on how the government reworks the Civil Nuclear Liability Bill

An EPW Editorial

On the Women's Reservation Bill

2010-03-17T11:51:00.003+05:30

A Newsclick video featuring my commentary -

Click here.

The Congress' pusillanimity and "real" interests

2010-03-09T01:11:00.003+05:30

On the historic occasion of the 100th anniversary of "Women's Day", there were more than a few expectations. On the positive side, considering more than two thirds support for the "Women's Reservation Bill" -which envisages 33% reservation for women in parliamentary and legislative assembly constituencies in the country- the bill was supposed to be passed today with far more ease than envisaged in all these years of talking about the bill. It was expected that the overwhelming consensus on the issue would ensure that despite the vociferous but miniscule opposition, the bill would have been passed today on a momentous day. On the flip side, that "ruffian" members of parliament, belonging to the Rashtriya Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Party would take recourse to the crudest methods to prevent any discussion or passing of the Women's Reservation Bill in both the Houses was very much expected.

Yet, to the frustration and anger of many of us, only the negative expectation bore fruit. The "ruffian" members opposed to the bill behaved in a manner that was even worse than expected. Snatching papers from the Rajya Sabha chairperson and vice president Hamid Ansari was just a sampler of a bunch of crude acts from uncouth MPs wanting to disrupt the sureshot passage of the bill.

The Congress party, instead of seizing the initiative suddenly developed cold feet, lacking a strategy to tackle the lumpen but dedicated opposition from parties which were also giving outside support to the ruling coalition. The rationale provided was that, since action on the bill necessitated a Constitutional Amendment, precedence and Parliamentary culture demanded that the Bill be debated. And since the discussion was not possible in a situation of pandemonium as created by the aforementioned parties, the logical conclusion was to adjourn Parliament to the next day.

Such an argument seems very specious. As mentioned earlier, the expectations of disruption were always very high. It would easily been possible to evict the lumpen MPs who were already taking Parliamentary behaviour to depths scratching the nadir of indecorum. Rules of house behaviour clearly dictate that in certain irretrievable circumstances, MPs can indeed be evicted by House marshalls and who could enter the House in case of a vote. But the pusillanimous Congress only wanted to play "safe", and the real reason is apparent.

The threat of withdrawal of support from the RJD and the SP meant that the buffer of MPs beyond the 272 magic figure (of majority) had suddenly dried up for the ruling coalition. If numbers stood as they were now, the Congress led UPA would have only 275 MPs in support of the ruling coalition. Considering that the Finance Bill was due to be debated and voted on, not very long later, the Congress surely got jittery looking at the insecurity of the numbers. The BJP and the left parties, who otherwise support the Women's Reservations Bill have expressed opposition to various features of the Union Budget and are expected to vote against the government. In its anxiety to prevent a loss in support over the Finance Bill, the government thought it safe to prolong the hiatus vis-a-vis the long pending Women's Reservation Bill either by atleast trying to buy time and winning over the recalcitrant outfits by tomorrow or by simply bringing the Bill to cold storage.

Either ways, if the Congress does not show the enthusiasm to pass the bill, it will betray a strong anti-people angle to its functioning that has been starkly evident ever since its re-election to power in 2009. Be it over the callous provisions of the Nuclear Liability Bill in order to satisfy American nuclear business suppliers at the cost of potential hazard victims in India or in the manner a pro-corporate and inflationary budget was passed at a time when food prices had affected most sections of the Indian population, the starkly sectional character of UPA-II, favouring the rich and well off over everyone else is evident.

This writer would love to be proved wrong on March the 9th by the ruling coalition and if it shows the gumption to take on the minority few rabble rousers who are opposed to the Women's Reservation Bill and get it passed - a long overdue step in Parliamentary action that has wide public and legislative approval.

Talking and its merits

2010-03-02T16:04:00.002+05:30

The governments of India and Pakistan owe it to their citizens to engage in talks and to act substantively.

An EPW Editorial

Reservations for Muslims

2010-03-01T15:32:00.002+05:30

West Bengal needs to be careful in implementing its new decision on reservations.

An EPW Editorial

The Moratorium Announcement on Bt Brinjal

2010-02-26T17:05:00.002+05:30

www.Newsclick.in presentation on the Bt Brinjal moratorium announcement

Development and Displacement: Resentment in the Kutch

2010-02-22T17:34:00.004+05:30

A visit to the coastal areas adjoining the Mundra port in the Kutch reveals discontent among fisherfolk, traders and pastoralists over the creation of a special economic zone in the area. Apart from environmental concerns, the traditional livelihoods of residents in the area have also been affected by the new industrial projects, leading to organised protests, as witnessed in Bhadreswar village a few months ago.

The Full article (pdf format) can be read here in the Economic and Political Weekly

Competitive 'Exclusionism'

2010-02-16T10:36:00.001+05:30

The state has to assert itself to defeat the politics of exclusion of the two Senas in Maharashtra.

An EPW Editorial on the events in Maharashtra related to the activities of the two nativist (and fascist) Senas.

Back to Constitution Writing

2010-02-14T15:29:00.001+05:30

The Nepali Maoists' reiteration to focus on Constitution writing is a significant boost to the process.

Read on for an article that I wrote for the Newsclick website.

On the current political situation in Sri Lanka

2010-02-13T22:06:00.001+05:30

A Newsclick feature -

Rajapaksa’s Triumph

2010-02-09T13:28:00.001+05:30

A united but disparate opposition in Sri Lanka is unable to scuttle Mahinda Rajapaksa’s bid for a second term.

An EPW Editorial.

The Right to Vote

2010-01-25T16:21:00.000+05:30

Indian citizens everywhere should have the right to vote, but the principle of local representation cannot be violated.

EPW Editorial on NRI voting.

An unfortunate exclusion

2010-01-24T09:25:00.000+05:30

Pakistan’s interior minister made a statement that “India was not serious about the peace process” by the manner in which the cricketers were excluded. Such a conclusion is unwarranted as it does not understand the way the league functions

The decision by franchise owning businessmen to not to pick any of the Pakistani players available in the Indian Premier League (IPL) auction for its third season was unfortunate. The IPL franchisee owners clearly did not think much of the feelings of the cricketers who entered the auction process through a circuitous route, after having invited them to the auction and then refusing to choose any of them through the bidding process. It must be heartbreaking for the Pakistani cricketers who are reigning World Twenty20 cricket champions because their humiliating non-inclusion was clearly not because of cricketing reasons. So too, for Pakistani cricket lovers who wanted to partake in the passionate entertainment that the business franchise-based Twenty20 cricket was and which made the IPL so popular across the world and especially in South Asia.

Having said that, one cannot be surprised by the pusillanimous decision by the franchise owners who were worried about visa prospects for the Pakistani cricketers and disruption in the event of a similar incident such as the terror attacks in Mumbai in November 2008. The businesspeople running the IPL franchises are bound by the rationality of profit making, asset maximisation and cost reduction and the prospect of not having players whom they pay for, in the event of any disruptive incident, was daunting for them. If the formal rationality of profit making did not guide their decision, the inclusion of Pakistani cricketers would have made sense. It would have sent a signal to disruptive forces that their actions would not affect cricketing or sporting ties and that the IPL was a celebration of cricketing talent rather than anything else.

This writer had written before that the IPL suffered from the same limitations as would any project within a market driven system. To expect anything more from a commercial enterprise is folly — and therefore to expect the IPL franchise owners to think about the potentiality of a thaw in relations between India and Pakistan by the inclusion of Pakistani cricketers within the IPL fray is unwarranted. At the same time, the reaction by Indian owners of the IPL franchises should not be read as a case of “hyper-patriotism” worked up on the standard India-Pakistan rivalry. If the owners were indeed even a little patriotic and acted according to the needs of the day in India, they would not have responded so grudgingly when the Indian home minister requested them not to hold the IPL season during parliamentary election time in the country last year, after which the IPL commissioner had to take the competition to South Africa.

And that takes us to the larger issue — when Pakistani players were first incorporated into IPL franchises, there was much hailing going on about the IPL and its “revolutionary” potential to transcend national boundaries and of course, its reliance on player talent (both off and on the field) as the sole adjudicator for his value. But as the recent incidents show, the IPL is very much bound by consideration of politics just as much as the stock market rises and falls based on political trends.

There is the insinuation that there is a conspiracy — to prevent Pakistani cricketers from showing their mettle in the IPL — enacted at the levels of government. That is absolutely not true. Since liberalisation, government has only facilitated market based structures in India and has very rarely hindered them with extraneous considerations (even if much needed). Ultimately the IPL franchise owners had a will of their own and which they exercised.

But what of public opinion in either side of the border. While it is legitimate for Pakistani cricket fans — and that would mean a substantial chunk of the population to feel disappointed, nay even angry, at what has come about their cricketers, it is clear that the reaction from the representatives of Pakistan’s government was over-the-top. Pakistan’s interior minister made a statement that “India was not serious about the peace process” by the manner in which the cricketers were excluded. Such a conclusion is unwarranted as it does not understand the way the league functions.

Such is the heightened consciousness for cricket (both playing and spectatorship) in both countries, that the non-inclusion can be seen as a sign of bias and therefore enmity. This is precisely what both the governments, who would will for a normalisation of relations, would want to avoid. The unprecedented support given by fans from both Pakistan and India in 2004 during the bilateral Test series was there for all to see. What the governments can do is to facilitate cricketing competition between these countries in some manner. The government and the sports ministry can definitely weigh in with friendly advice to the Board for Control of Cricket in India (BCCI) to hold a bilateral series with a set of One Day, Test and Twenty20 games in the near future in India to assuage the feelings of the cricket lovers and to foster better ties between societies in the countries.

After all, the BCCI is not necessarily a corporate entity concerned only about its bottom-line.

A glorious legacy

2010-01-21T16:47:00.004+05:30

Short piece written on Jyoti Basu for "The Sunday Indian" magazine .

The death of Jyoti Basu marked the end of a legendary set of political leaders who were visibly part of the freedom movement. Much of the commentary following his death has primarily focused on his record making 23 years as chief minister of the eastern state of West Bengal, but what has been rarely discussed is that his political life spanned nearly seven decades - starting as a student activist who joined the Communist movement and aided in the freedom struggle while in England, later immersing himself into working class organising, working in legislature from the young age of 32 after getting elected from the Railway constituency in as early as 1946, building his rudimentary party -which was banned and came out of the same in the early 1950s - into viable opposition to the ruling Congress, and serving as the leader of the opposition for years, working in a coalition government and finally becoming the chief minister of the state. In all his roles that he played in his career - his political positions were remarkably consistent - from opposing what he called the "ultra-left" resolution for an insurrection by the Communist Party just post the independence, to utilise the parliamentary route for mass struggles and combining it with extra-parliamentary work to building a robust and highly penetrative form of three tiered democratic institutions - the Panchayati Raj when in government. In the manner he worked even with his adversaries and in the high praise that he earned for his work both in opposition and in government, Jyoti Basu distinguished himself as a democrat to the core.

Critics - particularly from the urban middle class sections and there are many - have pointed out to the lack of adequate industrialisation of West Bengal during the years Jyoti Basu ruled. The man himself acknowledged some of the shortcomings of his government - he was self-critical of his government's achievements in education and health for example, but seen in the overwhelming light of the achievements made by the CPI(M) led government in tackling rural poverty, food insecurity and rural to urban migration, it can be said with authority that the Jyoti Basu led regime was the most pro-poor among all state governments in the country. The implementation of land reforms - even today 22% of the total land distributed in India has been done in West Bengal and 54.6% of the total beneficiaries in the country were from West Bengal - was the sterling achievement in his legacy as chief minister. As regards industrialisation, the chief minister fought lengthy battles with the Central government over discrimination in clearing industrial projects and managed to build the Haldia Petrochemicals project. Following the liberalisation policies adopted in the Centre, Jyoti Basu seized the opportunity to escape the licence-permit-raj dominated economic system to construct the New Industrial Policy in 1994, but always emphasised that the policy should complement the needs of the urban and rural poor.

In the way he constructed the concept of united and left fronts, in the manner he impressed upon the Congress to build the United Progressive Alliance (the first time that the Congress was running a coalition government) supported by the Left Front from outside and in the way he was consulted by his ideological counterparts such as Rajiv Gandhi (on Panchayati Raj, relations with China), Atal Behari Vajpayee (in the Indo-Bangladesh water sharing treaty), he showed his mettle as a sagacious and wise statesman who was appreciated not just by his fellow compatriots but also by his detractors.

At a time when there is a growing rupture and disconnect between upper/middle class India and lower class, rural India, Jyoti Basu's legacy of an alternate form of government that prioritised the needs of the poor and provided dignity, livelihoods and a much viable existence can be inculcated by our present political class. His uncompromising secular vision, emphasis on building consensus, party discipline, and dedication to work for the other - empowering the marginalised are attributes and characteristics that the young should strive for and adopt even in the much changing world of the 21st century.

Interview with professor P.Sahadevan on the Sri Lankan elections

2010-01-21T16:43:00.002+05:30

Did a video interview for Newsclick.in with Prof. P.Sahadevan to discuss the Sri Lankan elections and other things some time back.

Discouraging Developments in Sri Lanka

2010-01-13T16:10:00.001+05:30

Rather than considering a progressive alternative to the two presidential candidates, incumbent Mahinda Rajapaksa and ex-army chief Sarath Fonseka, the major minority parties and their representatives have thrown their lot with either of the two candidates for short sighted reasons in upcoming presidential elections.

My post on the same in the Newsclick website.

Deja Vu in Jharkhand

2010-01-05T12:50:00.001+05:30

What can Jharkhand expect after an indecisive mandate and an opportunistic post-poll alliance?

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly

Questioning Linguistic States

2009-12-31T14:15:00.001+05:30

A half century after the reorganisation of India on linguistic lines, the order is being questioned.

An EPW editorial on the demands for state reorganisation.

Afghanistan: Beyond the ‘Surge’ Strategy

2009-12-16T11:21:00.001+05:30

A regional diplomatic option could have promised more for Afghanistan than the military approach of the US.

Editorial written for the Economic and Political Weekly