Tuesday, April 3, 2007

Party games


By YOGENDRA YADAV


Between Nandigram and a party that swears by human rights and lofty democratic ideals lies vast hypocrisy



Nandigram did not surprise me.
I was anguished and angry but not surprised. I had heard the story of Alipurduar from Jugal Kishore Raybir.

This dalit activist, a believer in Gandhian non-violence, was the founder of UTJAS, (Uttar Bango Tapsili Jati O Adibasi Sangathan) an organisation of dalits and adivasis of north Bengal. Through the 1980s it demanded greater regional autonomy and justice for sons of the soil. Not only did the government turn a deaf ear, the ruling party launched an offensive against them, branding them ‘separatist’ or ‘bichhinatabadi’.

The story of Alipurduar goes back to January 10 1987, twenty years before Nandigram. On that day, UTJAS had organised a rally of what they estimated to be about 50,000 people in Alipurduar, the headquarters of Cooch Behar district. As the rally started, they noticed something unusual: The police was nowhere in sight. Soon the rallyists found themselves surrounded by and under attack from the armed cadre of the CPM. The rally was dispersed as unarmed protesters were beaten and chased. The police surfaced, only to arrest the victims, once the party cadre had finished their job.

They say Jugal Raybir’s commitment to non-violence prevented a blood bath that day. But that day also marked the end of the rise of UTJAS as a political challenge to the Party. For the next few months, the UTJAS cadre was hounded by the police, attacked by the CPM and not allowed to hold even indoor meetings. This dalit movement wilted under the onslaught of the state, police and Party. That prepared the ground for the rise of militant outfits like the Kamtapur Liberation Organisation. But that is a different story.

Note the parallels between Nandigram and Alipurduar: The Party faces a political challenge, decides to nip it in the bud and executes an onslaught in sync with the police and administration. The only difference this time was that there was unexpected resistance. And that an anti-SEZ movement makes more news today than a dalit movement did twenty years ago. There were no Gopal Gandhi or Tanika and Sumit Sarkar then to point out that the emperor had no clothes.

Nandigram may not have been the worst case of police firing. We have seen similar incidents in Orissa, Rajasthan and UP in recent times. West Bengal is certainly not the only state where the ruling party uses the state machinery to crush its political rivals. Om Prakash Chautala could still teach the CPM a lesson or two in this game. But there is one thing Chautala never did. He never talked of human rights and lofty democratic ideals. A Chautala could not have issued the injured yet clinical statement that the CPM’s Politburo did after the Nandigram killings. The cold-bloodedness of the statement reminds you of the BJP top brass’s reaction after Gujarat.

This gap between the CPM’s preaching and practice did not surprise me. I have been looking at Christophe Jaffrelot’s research on the social profile of MLAs in India. His analysis shows that the proportion of upper caste MLAs is on the decline all over the country since the 1960s. There is only one exception: In West Bengal the proportion of upper castes has increased in the state assembly after 1977, after the Left Front came to power. A coincidence? Not if you calculate the caste composition of successive Left Front ministries: About two thirds of the ministers come from the top three jatis (Brahman, Boddis, Kayasthas). Perhaps you did not notice that West Bengal was the last major state to come out with an OBC list to implement Mandal. You might say, the CPM believes in class, not caste. Fair enough, but then why is the CPM in Delhi so aggressive about championing Mandal? Why does it present itself as more Mandalite than thou?

Or read the data supplied by the West Bengal government to the Sachar Committee. With 25.2 per cent of Muslim population, the state government has provided just 2.1 per cent of the government jobs to Muslims. West Bengal has the worst record of all Indian states in this respect. Gujarat has just 9.1 per cent Muslims and has 5.4 per cent Muslims among government employees. The irony, of course, is that the CPM was the first party to come out with a statement demanding implementation of the Sachar Report!

Will the CPM stop playing games? A few months ago the Party held an unprecedented State Secretariat meeting to discuss the Cricket Association of Bengal elections. The CM was openly backing Kolkata’s police chief only to be opposed by his own sports minister and Jyoti Basu. The Party finally declared that the CPM will not play politics with games, at least not with cricket. But what about playing games with politics? Will the CPM stop that as well?

Perhaps we should ask: Can the CPM stop playing games? Or are these games essential for survival for a party that has lost touch with the times, has lost faith in its own ideology and has come to fear its own cadre and election machine. Satyajit Ray’s Shatranj ke Khiladi was a brilliant depiction of the games nobility played at the time of its historic decline. Alimuddin Street may not have time for such bourgeois indulgence, but the point of this film would not be lost on an avid cinema buff like Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee. Sometimes it is not the player who plays the game; it is the game that consumes the player.

The writer is a political scientist at the CSDS, New Delhi

Thursday, March 29, 2007

After Nandigram’s Black Wednesday

--

By Praful Bidwai

West Bengal’s Left Front government has barely pulled back from a potentially self-destructive disaster following the Nandigram carnage by adopting an 8-point agreement between all its partners, led by the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPM). The agreement acknowledges that the Nandigram incident of Wednesday, March 14, in which 14 people were gunned down, “was tragic and the government will be careful to ensure that such an incident is not repeated.” It says the government won’t “acquire any land in Nandigram for any industry” and that the police “will be withdrawn from Nandigram in phases”.

The agreement commits the government to “act in accordance with the policies of the Left Front”, and says “the core committee of the Cabinet” will “meet more frequently” to take “all important political decisions… after discussion”. Although the Front fell short of condemning the Nandigram incident, it explicitly “regretted” it. Chief Minister Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee accepted “moral responsibility” for it.

The 8-point agreement became possible primarily because of the public outrage the incident caused and the tough stand taken by the CPM’s main partners—the Communist Party of India, the Forward Bloc, and the Revolutionary Socialist Party—who had been kept in the dark about the planned police action. They unequivocally condemned the police firing as profoundly undemocratic and "brutal and barbaric", and threatened to withdraw from the government.

Critical here too was the role played by the Grand Old Man of West Bengal politics, CPM politburo member and former Chief Minister Jyoti Basu. He told Front chairman Biman Bose that the CPM is running “one-party rule in this state. It doesn't look like a coalition government at all…” He publicly reprimanded Mr Bhattacharjee, and also told the Front’s non-CPM leaders to stick to their threat to quit the government if the CPM doesn’t change course.

The agreement represents a victory not just for the CPI, RSP and Forward Bloc, but for the people of West Bengal—and for the forces of sanity and a progressive consensus on economic policy. The victory was costly and bloody. And yet, it doesn’t settle all issues: Will the Left Front completely abandon its controversial Special Economic Zones (SEZs) policy? Will it refuse to have any truck with Indonesia’s Salim group—a front for the super-corrupt Suharto family—for whose SEZ 10,000 acres was to be acquired in Nandigram?

Will the Front revise Mr Bhattacharjee’s “industrialisation-at-any-cost” orientation, with total disregard for its social and environmental consequences, exemplified, among other things, by the plan to build a giant nuclear power station in a cyclone-prone area, at Haripur, in Nandigram’s neighbourhood? And not least, will the CPM conduct itself democratically within the Front, by consulting its allies on key policy issues and obtaining their advance consent, rather than throw the weight of its 176 seats in the 294-member Assembly, against the bigger partners’ 51 seats, not to speak of the smaller constituents like the Socialist Party (4 seats)?

Before dealing with these questions, it’s necessary to situate Nandigram in context. The immediate cause of the state violence there was not land acquisition, which had been put on hold after fierce popular protests in January. Rather, it was the CPM’s vengeful attempt to regain control of the area for its “cadres”—led by local MP and Haldia Development Authority chairman Laxman Seth, who has a stake in all major economic transactions. The “cadres” brook no challenge to their monopoly of power. But on January 7, they faced the people’s anger. Many were driven out. The were itching to re-establish their hold.

It’s wrong to present Nandigram mainly as an inter-party fight between the CPM and assorted Opposition groups, including the Right-wing and thuggish Trinamool Congress (TMC), backed by the Jamiat-Ulema-e-Hind and some Naxal factions, gathered under the umbrella of the Bhumi Ucchhed Pratirodh Committee, which had collected arms and blockaded entry into the area.

The TMC, deplorably, used violent tactics. But the CPM too resorted to strong-arm methods, revealed by the recent arrest of 10 of its “cadres”. The blockade started as a spontaneous people’s initiative. As CPM general secretary Prakash Karat admitted (March 19), the local “people turned against us” because of the land acquisition move.

It bears recalling that Nandigram isn’t an exclusive CPM stronghold; the CPI too has an MP (Prabodh Panda) from there. The Jamiat was long a staunch Left Front supporter—until a misconceived preliminary land acquisition notice was issued by HDA in early January, which was promptly disowned as “improper” by Mr Bhattacharjee.

The plain truth is, CPM apparatchiks instigated Black Wednesday’s police operation to settle scores in the “cadres’” favour by using the state’s armed might. They imposed collective punishment, an obnoxious method, on the area’s residents, assuming they were complicit with the Opposition. This was itself indefensible. Even worse, the 4,000-strong police force acted brutally. It didn’t use non-lethal anti-riot gear like water cannons, rubber bullets and smoke grenades until their utility was exhausted—as mandated by police manuals.

The police didn’t fire in self-defence. Instead, it shot to kill. Most of the bullet injuries were above the waist level. Many people were shot in the back as they were running away. At Bhangabera Bridge, the police pumped 500 bullets into an assembly of 2,000.

The Central Bureau of Investigation has gathered evidence that “outsiders” (CPM “cadres”) also fired into the crowd, many disguised in police uniform. The CBI recovered 500 bullets and 20 firearms from them. It also found a 657 metre-long “blood trail” at Adhikaripara leading to a brick kiln, whose shape suggests that “ a gunny-bag holding a body was being dragged”. This and other evidence should hopefully provide clues to the scores of allegedly missing persons.

It will take a long time to heal the deep wounds the Nandigram carnage has caused. Even Mr Karat concedes that the firing was “disapproved by the people of West Bengal… [who] have a high democratic consciousness.” The pivotal question is whether the CPM will learn the right lessons form the episode, which is the worst outrage to have occurred under Left Front rule in West Bengal. Unless it does so, it stands to forfeit some of its greatest gains, which have ensured its victory in election after election for three decades—a record unmatched in any democracy.

Sadly, there aren’t many signs that the West Bengal CPM leadership, in particular Mr Bhattacharjee, has lost any of its zeal for “industrialisation-at-any-cost”. Mr Bhattacharjee has a crude, reductionist, dogmatic view of history, which sees industrialisation of any kind as the sole measure of progress. He fails to understand that neoliberal industrialisation under the command of predatory corporations doesn’t produce the collective Blue-collar worker (Marx’s proletarian) and lacks the employment and social potential of classical capitalism. Rather, it bases itself upon Whiter-collar workers, is extremely capital-intensive, creates enclave-based growth, and doesn’t clear “the muck of the ages” that Marx talked about.

Neoliberal industrialisation involves capital accumulation through expropriation and destruction of livelihoods. A progressive state must not promote, even condone it; rather, it should discipline and regulate capitalism in the interests of society, especially its underprivileged layers.

However, for Mr Bhattacharjee, the Tata car plant at Singur is the model—although it is a stark case of “crony capitalism”, with unconscionable subsidies in soft loans and land grants equalling a fourth of its capital costs! It’s also an instance of socially inappropriate, elitist industrialisation, which will aggravate pollution nationwide.

Mr Bhattacharjee is also an unreconstructed believer in “stages” of historical development. For him, “semi-feudal” India must first achieve capitalism and only then attempt socialist reform. That’s why he keeps saying that he’s working strictly within “a capitalist policy framework”. His view severely underestimates the possibilities for social transformation available within India’s backward capitalism and for progress towards a more equitable, just society free of social bondage and economic serfdom.

For Mr Bhattacharjee, the ideal model to follow seems to be China, with its giant SEZs like Shenzen, unfettered freedom for multinational capital, and its latest legalisation of private property, now placed on a par with state and cooperative property. He should know better. Shenzen has turned out a workers’ nightmare, where no labour rights exist. The mere loss of an identity card can reduce workers to destitution and even prostitution. Chinese vice-minister for land and resources Chen Changzhi has just revealed that 80 percent of the 1.84 million hectares of farmland earmarked for industry was illegally acquired. Can this be a model for India?

The Left, especially the CPM, must decide whether it should fight for radical change and for socialism, or merely manage capitalism Chinese-style, however honestly. If it chooses the second option, it will get marginalised and go into historic decline. It must also make a decisive break with the undemocratic organisational culture it has inherited, which punishes dissidence and encourages a “my-party-right-or-wrong” attitude. Unless the Left undertakes ruthless self-criticism, it can’t effect overdue course correction.

Wednesday, March 21, 2007

Midnight’s Children


By Amit Sen Gupta

Chino Arab Hamara, Hindostan Hamara…
Rehne Ko Ghar Nahin Hain, Saara Jahan Hamara…

Sahir’s immortal dark irony, in Bombay’s Gateway of India, has arrived once again. The nip in the air, too, has arrived and the chill is just about moving inside the bones, like a familiar memory. It’s like reopening an old Edgar Allen Poe book, watching an old Alfred Hitchcock film, reading an old Munshi Premchand short story, as relevant now as ever. It’s like looking through the layers of an old trunk and finding a naphthalene ball inside an ancient jacket with a letter to an unknown lover.

Winter opens up new wounds, subterranean streams of desire, unopened letters, smells and skin which hang in the stillness of the frozen air, unrequited love in the time of viral infections. The memories of mother in a small kitchen with firewood and cow dung cakes.

Don’t worry, the meteorologist will tell you. Don’t worry too much about the fog or the smog in the metros, this is as deceptive and lovely as the night, winter has still not arrived because the western disturbances are far away. Perhaps around Christmas night, when the midnight worshippers trek back home, the first wave of freezing cold will arrive. Like a full moon tide.

As young reporters we always knew that this means a story, the cold wave story. That was in the early 1980s. Now, as senior pros, we know: no paper wants this story. The cold wave story.

It’s not the story of the death wish. It’s the story of the death count. Of dying slowly inside your skin and eyes. Those who die on the streets, especially in the metro’s suburbs, the walled city of old Delhi, between exile and kingdom, as the frozen narrative enters the lungs and the intestines, as they remove the posters from the walls near Jama Masjid and the Old Delhi Railway Station, Congress and BJP posters, and meticulously wrap them on their hands, legs, heads, with the last puff of the bidi, its dying fire a dying solace.

You zigzag through their bodies in this open-to-sky courtyard, little children, huddled together outside near the Nizamuddin dargah, a mother and her daughter clutching each other under a plastic sheet, a rickshawpuller on his rickshaw, his horizontal body hanging in time and space, a cap on his head, his hands like that of a forgotten musician.

The chill comes like an angel of death. It floats on a frozen liquid of icy winds. It enters the nooks and crevices of the exiled human body. It breaks resistance, the resistance of the weak, the hardworking homeless. We are so eternally fragile. The body is so ephemeral. And the weapons of the weak have all rusted with the brutality of the times.

At the Daryaganj police station near Golcha cinema, you can check the death count next morning. Unknown bodies found on the streets. No friends or relatives or lovers. Citizens of nowhere land. Midnight’s children of the largest democracy.

Chino Arab Hamara, Hindostan Hamara…
Rehne Ko Ghar Nahin Hain, Saara Jahan Hamara…


Thursday, March 15, 2007

ABANDONED WIVES

Marriage Mirage in Kerala

Married and cast away shortly after honeymoon by their Arab husbands, hundreds of poor Muslim women in the state’s northern coastal districts are cursing their fate

KA Shaji
Kozhikode/Malappuram

Deceived: Kunhamina wants her stateless children to get Indian citizenship

From Malappuram to Kasargod along the Malabar coast, poor girls are married to Arabs for a paltry sum as meher
Thirty-nine-year-old Kunhamina has no identity of her own. “Take a taxi to Kuttikattoor and ask for the ‘Arabian bride’ Kunhamina. She is famous there because of her ludicrous marriage. And no need of a postal address or phone number,” advises a senior special branch police officer attached to the City Police Commissioner Office in Kozhikode.

In Kuttikattoor, about 20 km from Kozhikode city, Faizal Abdulla Quid Ahmed and Ahmed Abdulla Quid Ahmed refuse to be photographed. “Policemen regularly come knocking on our door, threatening us with deportation. My mother has been running from pillar to post for the last 14 years, trying to get citizenship for my younger brother and me. No photographs please as they mean nothing but further humiliation,” says 21-year-old Faizal, an engineering graduate.

Kunhamina holds a slightly different view. “I will continue to strive for Indian citizenship for both of my children. They have no place to dwell other than India. You take any number of my photographs if they can ensure citizenship for my children,” she says.

Kunhamina’s husband Abdulla Quid Ahmed, a Yemeni national, is an exception among the hundreds of aged Arab men who come to Kerala every year and marry poor Muslim women of the region. He spends about six months each year in Kuttikattoor with his Indian wife and children, and supports them financially. Kunhamina is very worried that her two teenaged sons are neither citizens of India nor Yemen.

The problem began when Ahmed, who was 60 when he married for the third time, took his 16-year-old Indian bride to Sharajah where he worked in a private firm. Kunhamina returned to India with her children years later. Now, however, the three feel extremely insecure as they have no ration card, no passport and no official permission to undertake any job. They have to renew their temporary permission to stay here annually for a fee of Rs 1,400.

Two of Subaida’s three daughters face the same problem. Subaida, who lives in Vattakundu near Pallikandy, however has no husband to turn to for moral and monetary support. In 1987, when she was twenty-four, she was married off to Haji Farooqui, a 60-year-old Iranian and went to live with him in Dubai. Subaida returned to India with her three children nine years ago. There has been no word from her husband for the last five years, and she is not waiting anymore.

Her children Fathima and Azna, who do not have Indian citizenship, are facing deportation. After many years of representation to various governmental agencies, she has lost all hope. “As a last resort, I met Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan last week and pleaded for his intervention. He promised maximum efforts on the part of state government to persuade an otherwise unwilling Union Government,” she said. “Since a large number of children of Arab marriages were born in Middle East and came here with their Indian mothers, they do not have the citizenship in either country and face deportation, when they become adults,” points out VP Suhra, president of nisa, a voluntary agency that works with Muslim women in Kozhikode.

In fact, the issue of citizenship is just the tip of the iceberg. Married and cast away shortly after honeymoon by their Arab husbands, hundreds of poor Muslim women in the northern coastal districts of Kerala are cursing their fate. “Arab marriages are taking place clandestinely in north Kerala even now, though there is widespread propaganda that they are not taking place in this literate and progressive state. Barely an year ago the Kozhikode police arrested two Arabs on charges of marrying teenage girls and sexually abusing them,” says a top police official who wishes to remain anonymous.

From Kasargod to Ponnani in Malappuram district, poor girls along the coast have always been married to Arabs in return of meher worth a few hundred rupees. Such marriages are rampant in Kozhikode, especially in Kuttichira, Mughadar, Pallikandi, Kampuram and Kappakkal — places where slums dot beaches, the men-folk are usually fishermen or timber workers, and women work as housemaids in city homes.

K. Shuhaib, a social activist in Kuttichira, introduces us to Ayesha, who at 34 has already been married four times. None but one lasted beyond 60 days. She fails to recollect her second husband’s name. She has two children, fathered by two of her former husbands.

Fathima alias Arakkal Pathu of Chappayil has a similar tale of woe. Forty-five-year-old Mohammed from Qatar married her when she was only 12, and abandoned her and their son three years later. She married a Saudi Arabian national later and he too left her without even waiting for the birth of her second son.

“I have never seen my father. I have no clue about his whereabouts. Even the name and address he gave to my mother’s family were fake,” says Pathus’s second son Abubacker, a headload worker. Pathu is fortunate in that she has only two children to take care of. Other women in a similar situation often have to raise many children fathered by different men. As per rough estimates, there are more than 900 such forgotten children whose fathers came from across the sea, in Kuttichira alone.

Sixty-seven-year-old TT Bhathimayyi of Thangal’s Road recalls that her father got Rs 200 as meher when she was married off to the Bahraini national Badre Mohammed Ahmed Rasheed 52 years ago. No communication was possible, as her husband only knew Arabic and she Malayalam. They lived as man and wife for three months. Her son Mohammed Mustafa now works in Bahrain after he obtained his citizenship there with the help of his step-brothers.

About 15 years ago, Subaida of Mughadar came to know of the death of her Iranian husband Hussain Mohammed in a shipwreck near the African coast. She was six months pregnant when Hussain had abandoned her. Now, she lives with her two daughters and a son. “Now, I am struggling hard to forget the bitter experiences of the past,” she says.

“My father, Yusuf Mubaraq, has done nothing for us. But his three sons in Oman helped us a lot financially after his death. However the extreme humiliation and neglect by the society had already crippled my ambition to excel in life,” says Ramla, daughter of Amina of Kozhikode South Beach. A school dropout, Ramla is now working as a housemaid to look after her 13-year-old daughter. Like her overseas father, Ramla’s Indian husband divorced her without any reason some years ago.

There are scores and scores of such ‘Arabian brides’ in the densely populated, poverty ridden coastal area; the story of Aminas, Suharas, Subaidas and Bhathimayis is repeated over and over again.

Now things are done secretly. The secrecy is the result of a number of arrests since 1985. The people living in the coastal belt know marriages take place, but will not tell you where, when, how or who is getting married. The logic is simple: “It is poverty that makes these girls get into such marriages. Sometimes a kindly Arab might look after the girl for a lifetime. Why prevent that?”

The social reason behind these ‘sales’ is directly linked to the dowry system. The girl’s family has to shell out a huge dowry in cash and gold in Muslim marriages. Girls who get married to aged Arabs come from poor families. And the meher Arabs give, which could be as little as Rs 3,000, is a boon to the family. The sanction by the clergy is another cause why the practice continues. The male-dominated clergy is least bothered about the poor women and their unfortunate children. All this, coupled with general lack of education and awareness, has made intervention by social organisations difficult. “If anything worthwhile is to be done, poverty should be wiped out. There can be no cosmetic changes,” says Suhra.

Fearing the clergy’s wrath, no political party in Kerala is taking up the issue. When the National Women’s Commission organised separate sittings on Arab marriages in Kozhikode and Malappuram last year, the State Women’s Commission — comprising nominees of the previous Oommen Chandy government — decided not to cooperate with it. The body has come under sharp criticism by women’s groups. Suhra is demanding a multi-pronged approach by the government and the civil society to address the problem.

Writer’s e-mail: shaji@tehelka.com

Saturday, March 10, 2007

HARDBOILED AND HARDCORE


Colas, Windows, Techno Parks, what’s next in his line of fire? Wait and watch. Kerala Chief Minister VS Achuthanandan believes it’s this fiery Marxism that endears him to the people, writes KA Shaji


A hardliner in personal life too, VS begins his day with 20 minutes of pre-dawn yoga followed by three idlis. Lunch is rice and vegetables; dinner is three rotis and a banana
Kerala is not Venezuela and Velikakathu Sankaran Achuthanandan, the Kerala chief minister, certainly is not the tough-talking Hugo Chavez. But for the grassroots-level cadre and Kerala’s working class, Achuthanandan has more than a few shades of Chavez and commands a standing diametrically opposite to that of his West Bengal counterpart, Buddhadeb Bhattacharya. The aura of this school dropout, who lost his mother when he was four and his father when he was 11, has introduced new meaning to Left politics in Kerala.

The CPM veteran’s decision to enforce a blanket ban on the production and retailing of Coca Cola and Pepsi in the state may have been quashed by the Kerala High Court, and his attempts to go on appeal before the Supreme Court may also not succeed. But, as a doughty fighter, he has succeeded in winning Kerala’s public consciousness in favour of his decision to ban the colas, whose manufacturers’ exploitation of the Palakkad groundwater has forced the residents of the district to walk miles to collect potable water. As a recent opinion poll conducted by a television news channel found, Achuthanandan’s decision to ban colas has only increased his popularity. He is yet to take to task the party’s youth activists for attacking cola godowns in the state saying they would not allow the mncs to re-enter the Kerala market.

Apart from being the first chief minister to impose a ban on Pepsi and Coke, Achuthanandan, affectionately called VS by his comrades, is also making headlines by logging the mighty Microsoft out of Kerala schools and saying a firm ‘no’ to investors with shadowy backgrounds. That the Achuthanandan effect is hitting where it hurts most was evident recently when US Undersecretary of International Trade Franklin Lavin wrote to the Union commerce secretary warning the Centre of a possible fall in US investment if US companies’ interests were not protected.

Following Achuthanandan’s decision to promote free gnu/Linux software, nearly 1.5 million students in the state’s 2,650 government and government-aided high schools will no longer use the Windows platform for computer education. About 56,000 high school teachers are now acquainting themselves with the Linux platform as a result. “There is no ban on any it company in Kerala. However, we wish to make Kerala the foss (Free and Open Source Software) destination of India,” said Achuthanandan, in response to criticism. In 2000, as Leader of the Opposition in the state Assembly, he was the first Indian leader to have discussions with free software guru Richard Stallman. Stallman is now one of Kerala’s it advisors, much to the embarrassment of Achuthanandan’s party rivals led by state secretary Pinarayi Vijayan. Vijayan’s group had favoured introducing Microsoft software in schools during the AK Antony regime. However, Achuthanandan stuck to Linux and warned Antony against Microsoft.

His decision to re-examine the Internet City proposal with Dubai’s Tecom Group to set up a smart city and an exclusive global it park in Kochi over a 100-acre area at an investment of $ 300 million also evoked widespread criticism. Achuthanandan detractors accused him of taking Kerala back to the Stone Age. But, to the utter shock of his adversaries, the promoters agreed to strike off clauses in the agreement they signed with the previous government that were found objectionable by the new chief minister.


Achuthanandan’s copybook Communism has been the reason why his rivals can’t stand him. But the same quality had them begging him to start their poll campaign

His opposition to the Internet City clauses has now drawn supporters from unexpected quarters. This week, the Union commerce ministry has its guns on the abuse of Special Economic Zone (SEZ) incentives. Predictably, some of his other decisions have led to Achuthanandan being labelled an anti-development CM. Like when he directed the state labour department to ensure that all companies in the state should shut shop on August 15. Objections raised by bpos located in Technopark in Thiruvananthapuram and at Info Park in Kochi had no effect. He still opposes the Rs 7,000-crore express highway project and another multi-crore venture for mineral sand mining along the Alappuzha coast. Both projects have severe environmental consequences and his opposition to them has earned him encomiums for being a ‘green chief minister’. The lobbies, which influenced the previous udf governments to sanction the two controversial projects, are now active, and as a result some of his Cabinet colleagues have started diluting their opposition to these projects. But Achuthanandan is not ready to relent.

Born on October 20, 1923 to Sankaran and Accamma in Alappuzha, Achuthanandan faced poverty from a very young age. Orphaned early, circumstances forced him to discontinue his studies in Class vii and join his elder brother working at his tailoring shop. Later he earned his living meshing coir at a local rope factory. “I may have been able to continue even without buying books but I didn’t have the strength to starve in school everyday,’’ he has said. However, he has remained an ardent reader. He began his political career as a trade union activist and joined the Congress in 1938. Like most Congress leaders of that time, he was attracted by Communist ideology. He joined the Communist Party of India in 1940 and soon became the Alappuzha district secretary. As a freedom fighter, he was imprisoned for over five years and spent a further four-and-a-half years underground. He found a position for himself in the history of the Communist movement in Kerala by actively participating in the Punnapra-Vayalar uprising where a police bayonet was driven through his leg. And now he is one of the three surviving leaders of the undivided cpi, who walked out of the national council in 1964 to float the CPM.

The CPM veteran is also a hardliner in his personal life. Known for his strict sense of discipline, his day begins with 20 minutes of pre-dawn yoga followed by a breakfast of three idlis. Lunch is a handful of rice and vegetables; dinner (always before 6pm) is three rotis and a banana. He sleeps for exactly five hours a day. “My strict diet helps me walk kilometres and climb hills even at this age,’’ he said once. He is not a fan of either music or films. Recently induced to watch a Malayalam movie with a heavily political theme, he later revealed that he was watching a film for the first time in 30 years. His wife Vasumathi worked as a nurse; she retired about 15 years ago. Son Arun, an mca holder, is deputy director of a government firm in Thiruvananthapuram. Achuthanandan’s daughter Asha holds a PhD in pharmacology and works at the Rajiv Gandhi Institute of Biotechnology.

The main reason for Achuthanandan’s popularity is his simplicity and straightforwardness. Also, it is said that he has never been known to hesitate to raise his voice whenever he discovers irregularities. And if later proven wrong, he has always been quick to publicly acknowledge it. Whether it is the drinking water scarcity in Plachimada or the multi-million dollar mnc software war, Achuthanandan is heard with rapt attention because the Kerala voter is confident of him. He has relentlessly pursued corruption cases and harassed mafia that deal in ganja, sandalwood and land. The sand mafia and the sandalwood mafia, the plantation companies encroaching on public land, the tourist resort operators who ravaged God’s Own Country to fill their coffers, the sex lords who exploited women and minor girls, the private hospital owners who built a business of trading in human organs — all have met their match in this diminutive man. Political leaders, who compromised with these elements for their personal safety and growth, cynically describe Achuthanandan as a fool who rushes in where angels feared to tread. “I have gone after several of them... like the owners of the steel smelting factories... the cola factories, looting groundwater when people did not have water to drink. So, these forces opposed to me have sent agents here to ensure that my votes could be bought over. But the people’s political reasoning cannot be bought like that,” he told this correspondent during the last Assembly election when asked about the free flow of money to ensure his defeat from Malampuzha constituency.


Nearly 1.5 million school students will no longer use Windows for computer education. About 56,000 teachers are now brushing up their Linux skills
The chief minister is also one who believes in doing his homework. Two months ago, Agriculture Minister Mullakara Ratnakaran said in the Assembly that no death was reported from Kasargod district following the spraying of the killer pesticide Endosulphan. The statement irked Achuthanandan, who as Opposition leader had campaigned vigorously for the over 300 people crippled by due to use of Endosulphan in state-owned rubber plantations. Within a week, he went to Kasargod with Ratnakaran and asked him to verify the official data with the victims’ families. The minister tendered an apology and, days later, Achuthanandan announced a compensation and rehabilitation package.

His appointment of economist Prabhat Patnaik as vice-chairman of the state planning board is perceived to be an attempt to address the agrarian crisis plaguing the state, which has seen a large number of farmers’ suicides in Wayanad district. The government is now floating an agricultural commission, a debt relief commission and a price stability commission to tide over the crisis. As immediate relief, he ordered the waiver of all loans to farmers who had committed suicide and a moratorium on all agricultural loans. As with his anti-cola stance, the courts stayed the implementation of the Bill on self-financing educational institutions but it boosted the morale of dalits and economically weaker sections. The Bill had set aside 50 percent seats in professional colleges for Scheduled Castes/Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, Backward Classes and economically weaker sections. The Kerala Assembly passed the Bill unanimously but the private college managements appealed in the Kerala High Court and the Supreme Court.

But the challenges from his party colleagues are yet to ebb. Should Kerala have a Buddha-type pro-reform CM like Pinarayi Vijayan or a doctrinaire and Stalinist VS, asks www.pinarayivijayan.org, a new website promoted by his party rivals. In the 1996 Assembly election, his adversaries ensured that Achuthanandan lost in Mararikkulam constituency even as the party won a thumping majority. He first won Malampuzha in 2001, but the Congress-led United Democratic Front took the Assembly majority. In the run-up to the state elections earlier this year, the pre-poll drama saw his rivals try to cold shoulder him by denying him a ticket. The cadre, however, saw it as punishment for doing all the right things. Ultimately, his popularity forced the Vijayan faction to eat humble pie and the party declared his candidature from Malampuzha. On the day he was to take over as chief minister, the party’s Malayalam mouthpiece Desabhimani carried photographs of all ministers on page one except Achuthanandan’s. The paper also carried a front-page advertisement from a business tycoon wishing the new government luck. This tycoon is not known for his transparent dealings and had been on Achuthanandan’s wrong side. Party sources say the businessman splurged crores to ensure his defeat.

It is Achuthanandan’s copybook non-pragmatic Communism that has been the reason why his rivals and critics can’t stand him. The same quality endowed him with such influence that rivals, MA Baby and TM Thomas Isaac, begged him to visit their constituencies and inaugurate their campaign. As a disciplined party cadre, Achuthanandan went and spoke for about three hours in each constituency on the party manifesto. At the end of the speech, he urged voters to cast their ballot for party candidates.

Achuthanandan’s supporters range from tribal leader CK Janu and women’s leader K. Ajitha to women and youth. To Kerala’s Marxists, he is one of the last of the galaxy of stalwarts like AK Gopalan, BT Ranadive, Pramode Dasgupta and EMS Namboodiripad. His politics is also known to be shrewd and one that doesn’t favour opportunism. The CM’s political line was proved correct when former Congress leader K. Karunakaran’s Democratic Indira Congress (Karunakaran) was denied entry into the ldf. There was considerable pressure from the Vijayan group to ally with Karunakaran. According to Achuthanandan, such an alliance would smack of political opportunism.

“Those who are opposed to my political philosophy and style of approach never missed opportunities to shower me with abusive language. Comic programmes being aired by Malayalam television channels are also trying to portray me in poor light. On most occasions, they stoop to the level of character assassination. However, I have no vengeance against anybody who is involved in such activities. There is no need to be insensitive to the artists behind these comedy programmes, who make a meagre earning out of them to support their families,’’ he said in response to the public outcry against television programmes, which showed him in poor light.

Achuthanandan may be the lone CM in the country who has no friends in any industrial house. And unlike Buddhadeb, he is proud of his Communist lineage. Addressing a rally in Hyderabad recently, he remembered the sacrifice of more than 4,000 Communists who took part in the Telangana rebellion.

“I wish to salute the martyrs who bring me courage to decide in favour of the poor. My government would strive to achieve what the martyrs of Telangana dreamed about,” he said.

(Tehelka, Oct 07 , 2006)

Thursday, March 8, 2007

Menopause at 30 for millions in poverty

A young woman in Shikohabad in Firozabad district of Uttar Pradesh died a mysterious death 20 years ago. The reason for the death haunted her parents and relatives for days. Finally they found that it was her sanitary napkin that killed her. She had used an old blouse during her menstrual period. A rusted hook on it gave her tetanus that killed her. In the days when none dared to speak about a woman's menstrual period other than treat it as a matter of shame and embarrassment, an elder in
the family actually called women in the village to appeal to them to pay attention to the clothes they used as napkins.This incident is one of the many that have inspired a young man in Delhi to actually make sanitary napkins from waste clothes for every poor and needy woman in the country through his NGO Goonj. He and his network of 300 volunteers all over the country are preparing to send their first consignment of plastic-free napkins from waste and donated clothes to Shikohabad villages next month. At Shikohabad, another NGO would hand over the packets of folded clothes to self-help groups for further improvisation. Cords would be attached to each rectangular piece of cloth napkin by the SHGs and then distributed among women. The napkins are nothing but pieces of cloth that are actually waste material found in bags of donated clothes meant for Goonj's larger Vastradaan project. The pieces are washed four times and sun dried. They are then cut into neat rectangular shape and packaged as ten pieces per person in Gupta's office in Delhi's Sarita Vihar. The project answers the most basic need of every woman - that of a clean piece of cloth to wear during the three to four days of their monthly menstrual cycle.
The story of the tetanus death caused by the dirty rusted piece of cloth in Shikohabad is not the only inspiration for Anshu Gupta. A 35-year-old man who left his job as a management boss to start Goonj, he has many studies of women in need of a clean piece of cloth. \nIn fact when Gupta is told that the thin folds of clothes in his ten in one packet may not last for four days for any woman, he reels out another case study. A woman in Chennai told him that she used just two napkins for the entire period of four days. This was because she had no money to buy napkins, he says. \nGupta then talks of women he met in Dharavi's slums in Bombay. He found women who make do with any piece of cloth during the four days of bleeding, exposing themselves to disease and often death. It could be old clothes, wet clothes, or clothes used for cleaning the floors. \nSays Gupta, the scarcity of clean clothes comes from the scarcity of space for drying as also from shame and fear of men in the family. In Dharawi, women told Gupta that if at all they washed the clothes, there was little opportunity to dry them. Drying them in the sun was out of the question. \n"We dry them by hanging them behind the doors when the elders and men in the family are away. The clothes don't dry by the time the men are back. So we make do with the wet clothes," Gupta quotes the women as saying. \nGupta also points to the case of a woman in Chennai who died after being bitten by a centipede hiding in the old clothes she used during the cycle. This story came to him from bloggers who have responded to a news report on his clean piece of cloth initiative. \nGupta says that menstrual bleeding is considered synonymous with dirt traditionally, and the woman herself is treated as such at that time. So women consider it all right to use any cloth when they bleed. They don't relate this with their health. In fact use of unclean clothes during menstrual periods is one of the main reasons for cervix cancer says Gupta. \n",1]
);
//-->
The story of the tetanus death caused by the dirty rusted piece of cloth in Shikohabad is not the only inspiration for Anshu Gupta. A 35-year-old man who left his job as a management boss to start Goonj, he has many studies of women in need of a clean piece of cloth. In fact when Gupta is told that the thin folds of clothes in his ten in one packet may not last for four days for any woman, he reels out another case study. A woman in Chennai told him that she used just two napkins for the entire period of four days. This was because she had no money to buy napkins, he says. Gupta then talks of women he met in Dharavi's slums in Bombay. He found women who make do with any piece of cloth during the four days of bleeding, exposing themselves to disease and often death. It could be old clothes, wet clothes, or clothes used for cleaning the floors. Says Gupta, the scarcity of clean clothes comes from the scarcity of space for drying as also from shame and fear of men in the family. In Dharawi, women told Gupta that if at all they washed the clothes, there was little opportunity to dry them. Drying them in the sun was out of the question. "We dry them by hanging them behind the doors when the elders and men in the family are away. The clothes don't dry by the time the men are back. So we make do with the wet clothes," Gupta quotes the women as saying. Gupta also points to the case of a woman in Chennai who died after being bitten by a centipede hiding in the old clothes she used during the cycle. This story came to him from bloggers who have responded to a news report on his clean piece of cloth initiative. Gupta says that menstrual bleeding is considered synonymous with dirt traditionally, and the woman herself is treated as such at that time. So women consider it all right to use any cloth when they bleed. They don't relate this with their health. In fact use of unclean clothes during menstrual periods is one of the main reasons for cervix cancer says Gupta.
Gupta has prepared graphic literature for distribution with the napkins. It is about the ability of the sun to kill germs in the clothes. If every woman heeded this, a lot of health problems can be prevented.Fifty per cent of women in villages suffer from white discharge that often is an indication of cancer. Even otherwise, this is caused by lack of hygiene, says Gupta. A clean piece of cloth is the least one can do to provide reproductive health care. After Shikohabad, the cargo of sanitary napkins proceeds to villages in 13 other states where Goonj is linked up with several NGOs, and 300 volunteers. \nThe lack of a clean piece of cloth is something that is shared in common by the poor and the women living in conflict areas. Gupta plans to take the drive to Kashmir and the North East where the agency lending a helping hand is the Army itself. \nThe Army would supply packets of clean cloth napkins to women in conflict areas, he says. And the Army jawans would also receive literature educating them on the necessity of women having access to clean cloth during the menstrual cycle. I am in the midst of preparing the literature, he reveals. \nHis inspiration for this special drive for Kashmir and the North East and maybe later for conflict areas abroad comes from the story of a Thai woman who is now in a senior position in the Ashoka Fellowship. Gupta, who is an Ashoka Fellow himself, says that the woman in her days as a guerilla had to use pieces torn from mosquito nets during menstrual bleeding. \nThe mosquito netting was hardly suitable and often caused rashes, according to the Thai woman. And the women guerillas also could not dry the scarce clothes anywhere too long. They had to run with the wet clothes for fear of being traced by the army. Gupta's only regret is that not a single funding agency in the world considers clothing, not to speak of sanitary napkins, as a cause worth funding. Gupta is today raising funds for his clothing campaign through a network of various kinds of volunteers. \n",1]
);
//-->
He adds, "Our packet of clothes will help the women dry their clothes for two or three days before they wear it. Again the packet is also a message in cleanliness, besides telling the women that this is not something to be neglected. Gupta has prepared graphic literature for distribution with the napkins. It is about the ability of the sun to kill germs in the clothes. If every woman heeded this, a lot of health problems can be prevented.Fifty per cent of women in villages suffer from white discharge that often is an indication of cancer. Even otherwise, this is caused by lack of hygiene, says Gupta. A clean piece of cloth is the least one can do to provide reproductive health care. After Shikohabad, the cargo of sanitary napkins proceeds to villages in 13 other states where Goonj is linked up with several NGOs, and 300 volunteers. The lack of a clean piece of cloth is something that is shared in common by the poor and the women living in conflict areas. Gupta plans to take the drive to Kashmir and the North East where the agency lending a helping hand is the Army itself. The Army would supply packets of clean cloth napkins to women in conflict areas, he says. And the Army jawans would also receive literature educating them on the necessity of women having access to clean cloth during the menstrual cycle. I am in the midst of preparing the literature, he reveals. His inspiration for this special drive for Kashmir and the North East and maybe later for conflict areas abroad comes from the story of a Thai woman who is now in a senior position in the Ashoka Fellowship. Gupta, who is an Ashoka Fellow himself, says that the woman in her days as a guerilla had to use pieces torn from mosquito nets during menstrual bleeding. The mosquito netting was hardly suitable and often caused rashes, according to the Thai woman. And the women guerillas also could not dry the scarce clothes anywhere too long. They had to run with the wet clothes for fear of being traced by the army. Gupta's only regret is that not a single funding agency in the world considers clothing, not to speak of sanitary napkins, as a cause worth funding. Gupta is today raising funds for his clothing campaign through a network of various kinds of volunteers.
There are newspaper volunteers who donate their newspapers and magazines monthly. There are cloth volunteers who become collection centres for all old clothes in the neighbourhood. There are old used paper volunteers who provide paper on whose unused side Goonj does its writing. The money from sale of newspapers provides some income for the organization, which aspires to spread its motto of clothing for all and clean napkins for all women beyond this country. "I have a ready made network of Ashoka Fellows all over the world. I just need carriers for the idea so that more and more women benefit in areas of need," he says. \n\n\n\nOn 1/23/07, Sudhir Devadas <sudhirdin@gmail.com \n> wrote: \n\nThe Times January 23, 2007 \nMenopause at 30 for millions in poverty\nJeremy Page in Delhi\nDoctors identify malnutrition link \nProblem greater in rural areas\nMillions of women in India are going through the menopause as young as 30 because of chronic malnutrition and poverty, according to a study by a prominent Indian think-tank. The research suggests that almost one in five women in the country have gone through the \nmenopause by the age of 41. \nMalnutrition is believed to be a contributory factor, particularly in rural areas, although the study did not address the causes. Yesterday doctors called for further research into the condition. \n\nThe study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Change, based in Bangalore, found that 3.1 per cent of Indian women — about 17 million — reached ",1]
);
//-->
There are newspaper volunteers who donate their newspapers and magazines monthly. There are cloth volunteers who become collection centres for all old clothes in the neighbourhood. There are old used paper volunteers who provide paper on whose unused side Goonj does its writing. The money from sale of newspapers provides some income for the organization, which aspires to spread its motto of clothing for all and clean napkins for all women beyond this country. "I have a ready made network of Ashoka Fellows all over the world. I just need carriers for the idea so that more and more women benefit in areas of need," he says.



Menopause at 30 for millions in poverty

Jeremy Page
in Delhi

Millions of women in India are going through the menopause as young as 30 because of chronic malnutrition and poverty, according to a study by a prominent Indian think-tank. The research suggests that almost one in five women in the country have gone through the menopause by the age of 41.
Malnutrition is believed to be a contributory factor, particularly in rural areas, although the study did not address the causes. Yesterday doctors called for further research into the condition.
The study, by the Institute for Social and Economic Change, based in Bangalore, found that 3.1 per cent of Indian women — about 17 million — reached
menopause between the ages of 30 and 34. Eight per cent ( 44 million) are in \nmenopause by the time they are 39, the institute's study showed, while 19 per cent have gone through "the change of life" by the age of 41. \nMedical experts say that natural menopause, when the ovaries stop producing oestrogen, occurs in women between the ages of 45 and 55, with the global mean being 51. Premature \nmenopause is defined as the cessation of menstruation before the age of 40 and affects an estimated 1 per cent of women worldwide. \n"It is very clear that a significant proportion of women in India are reaching menopause prematurely," wrote Dr T. S. Syamala and Dr M. Sivakami in the study, which has been presented to the Indian Parliament. "This is significant because most health programmes in India focus on women of reproductive age," Dr Syamala told The Times. "It is high time that we started to focus on post-menopausal women because of increasing life expectancy in India and because of the health risks associated with premature \nmenopause." \nThe study was based on a National Family Health Survey carried out in 1998 and 1999 and examined a sample of more than 90,000 married women aged between 15 and 49 across 26 Indian states. It did not examine the physiological reasons for the higher rates of premature \nmenopause in India — where the average menopausal age is 44.3 years. \nIt found that the problem was much more common in rural areas, among agricultural workers, and among women who were illiterate and had a low body mass index. "Most of these women are malnourished and that could be one of the main reasons for premature \nmenopause," said Dr Syamala.
menopause between the ages of 30 and 34. Eight per cent ( 44 million) are in menopause by the time they are 39, the institute's study showed, while 19 per cent have gone through "the change of life" by the age of 41.
Medical experts say that natural menopause, when the ovaries stop producing oestrogen, occurs in women between the ages of 45 and 55, with the global mean being 51. Premature menopause is defined as the cessation of menstruation before the age of 40 and affects an estimated 1 per cent of women worldwide.
"It is very clear that a significant proportion of women in India are reaching menopause prematurely," wrote Dr T. S. Syamala and Dr M. Sivakami in the study, which has been presented to the Indian Parliament. "This is significant because most health programmes in India focus on women of reproductive age," Dr Syamala told The Times. "It is high time that we started to focus on post-menopausal women because of increasing life expectancy in India and because of the health risks associated with premature menopause."
The study was based on a National Family Health Survey carried out in 1998 and 1999 and examined a sample of more than 90,000 married women aged between 15 and 49 across 26 Indian states. It did not examine the physiological reasons for the higher rates of premature menopause in India — where the average menopausal age is 44.3 years.
It found that the problem was much more common in rural areas, among agricultural workers, and among women who were illiterate and had a low body mass index. "Most of these women are malnourished and that could be one of the main reasons for premature menopause," said Dr Syamala.
\nSome health experts questioned the study's methods and conclusions and called for more focused research into the problem. "I'm not surprised, except that it's interesting to hear figures being specified in this way," said Urvashi Jha, founder and former president of the Indian \nMenopause Society. "I tend to be quite cynical about these sort of statistics, but we definitely need more research into this important field." \nDr Jha and Dr Syamala called on Indian health authorities to devote more resources to post-menopausal women, especially in rural areas where hormone replacement therapy is unavailable. \n"India's overburdened and underfunded public healthcare system has no special programmes for older women," the study concluded.

The study also found that the proportion of menopausal women aged between 30 and 49 was highest in the populous agricultural states of Andhra Pradesh and Bihar and lowest in Kerala, West Bengal and Rajasthan.
Some health experts questioned the study's methods and conclusions and called for more focused research into the problem. "I'm not surprised, except that it's interesting to hear figures being specified in this way," said Urvashi Jha, founder and former president of the Indian Menopause Society. "I tend to be quite cynical about these sort of statistics, but we definitely need more research into this important field."
Dr Jha and Dr Syamala called on Indian health authorities to devote more resources to post-menopausal women, especially in rural areas where hormone replacement therapy is unavailable.
"India's overburdened and underfunded public healthcare system has no special programmes for older women," the study concluded.

Steven Miles: As old torturer exits, healers unite in song

Those who help treat victims of torture know there is much left to do.


BERLIN - Wounded healers sang on the night that the despot Augusto Pinochet died. It started at one table in a Berlin hotel bar with a somber version of "Vinceramos," a Spanish "We Shall Overcome." People at other tables joined in and added their own songs including the chorus from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony in German and "The Battle Hymn of the Republic." Turks, Palestinians, Israelis, Armenians, Greeks, Chadians, Sudanese, Russians, Georgians, Somalis, Liberians, Nigerians, Zimbabweans, Cambodians, Sudanese, Lebanese, Pakistanis, South Africans and others contributed dozens of tunes. People rose to Argentine tangos and an a capella Guatemalan aria, and danced in Kurdish line dances as clapping hands across the room kept time.

Gen. Augusto Pinochet killed more than 3,000 of his own people, tortured thousands more, and drove 30,000 into exile. He ordered a car bomb assassination that killed its target and an innocent bystander in Washington, D.C., that U.S. officials knew about in advance and forgave him for. We did not sing in joy or mourning at his death; these were songs of solidarity in the struggle to end torture.

The hotel bar was filled with health professionals, lawyers and directors from a just adjourned conference of 400 people the International Rehabilitation Council for Torture Victims, a Danish-based network of 130 programs for treating torture survivors.
One hundred thirty countries practice torture; there are hundreds of millions of victims and survivors.

Such healers garnish little money or glory. Governments do not support those who document and treat the injuries inflicted by their own police or soldiers. There is little help for refugees and asylum seekers. Many of these healers or their relatives had suffered torture. Some had been driven into exile for speaking truth, calling for justice, or practicing compassion. All had been abraded by the brutal stories they'd drawn from others in the course of their healing work.

Ironically, Pinochet died on Human Rights Day, the anniversary of the United Nations' ratification of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That document asserted, "No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment."

Pinochet's brutal rule served a purpose. He was the first living head of state to be subpoenaed and indicted for crimes against humanity. Those legal actions set the stage for legal action against other leaders of torturing nations. Slobodan Milosevic, Saddam Hussein and Charles Taylor had every reason to believe that they would never be held accountable for their crimes. Even former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger is dodging subpoenas and the risk of extradition for supporting the Pinochet regime.

Although Pinochet avoided trial, the pursuit of justice against him marked the end of executive impunity for crimes against humanity. Dr. José Quiroga, physician to the democratically elected president who died when Pinochet seized power in 1973, watched the singing nearly too moved to speak. Eventually he, too, danced before retiring to his own thoughts in his room. Exiled by Pinochet's junta's death threats, Quiroga runs a treatment program for torture survivors in California.

The conference had closed with words from the United Nations special rapporteur on torture, Manfred Nowak, professor of law in three countries and former judge at the Bosnian war crimes trials. He reviewed the difficulty of enforcing laws against torture around the world. Then, declaring that there must be "no double standard" in the campaign to eradicate torture, he asserted that senior U.S. officials who oversaw the policies that led to the abuse of prisoners in the war on terror must also be called to account.

Six hours later Pinochet was dead, and in a Berlin bar, a block from the Gestapo's former torture center, wounded healers sang songs in solidarity.

Steven Miles is a professor of medicine and geriatrics at the University of Minnesota's Center for Bioethics, and author of "Oath Betrayed: Torture, Medical Complicity, and the War on Terror."

Saturday, March 3, 2007

GOD COMES TO TRANS YAMUNA


By Amit Sen Gupta

God will soon arrive, many experts argue, illegally, violating legal norms, ethical norms, social norms, and flaunting his opulence and wealth to the whole world. This was LK Advani's pet project. Apparently funded by the garish Guju rich. The sprawling Akshardham temple on the banks of Yamuna, which environmentalists claim will lead to an environment disaster. It is apparently illegal, and has been manipulated on the banks by powerful people, in time and space and land where no one is allowed to build even a brick wall. Especially the poor, who are routinely bulldozed. It's an architectural masterpiece of the class divide between god and the poor. Huge fences separate the massive building with laws sprawled across the eastern horizon, as if it's apartheid country. A true reminder of why the poor multitudes should know their place. A flyover has been built specially to help future pilgrims and holy men to visit this god's abode. Below the Nizamuddin flyover, across the trajectory of this divide, overlooking the temple, are the slums of the poor. Mostly Hindus. Maybe Muslims too. But who cares. The only religion of the poor is poverty. And poverty is not a blessing. So what does their god think about them? Their living spaces? Their daily lives? Their children's habitat? Their sanitation systems? They godliness? Their sense and sensibility? Across the magnificent lawns, there are these typical tarpaulin structures. Where the workers who are building this godly masterpiece, go back to sleep after a hard day's work. Surely, they sleep peacefully. Working hard. Waiting for God. Waiting for Godot.

The Kingdom of Railway Tracks.

By Amit Sen Gupta

If railway stations are like a microcosm, an enclosed cosmos, a world within a world, a destination which is eternally ephemeral, a journey which has just begun, a journey more crucial than the destination, a song on a radio, the smell of tea boiled hard in mud kulhars, the green flag of the guard with his exquisite small room, the smell of coal earlier, now diesel and iron and rust and shit and piss on the tracks, the windows which keep falling, the sound of bridges like a mechanical tonga multiplied with a thousand houses, the night train of mystery through blinking little huts and sudden bridges and the smell of mustard flowers, Freud's dream sequence, the absence of longing and its arrival when the train stops in an 'outer' destiny where no one wants to get down because it's a strange place and an unknown place, and a strange fear stalks you, and the temptation of the unknown grabs your subconscious; if railway stations tell the truth of the city-states or village landscapes which open up outside its enclosures, its journey through the railway tracks into and outside the suburbs of big cities are a pointer to the stink which we carry our souls as planners and architects and designers and administrators and journalists and photographers and civil society activists and die-hard Indian railway fans, which I am and will remain forever. Any journey, any destination, and the story is the visual narrative of minus sub-humanity, below the most abject dehumanisations of living realities, the quagmires of filth and dirt, the open air shitting, the women moving their faces away, the plastic bottle along, long expanses of absolute degradation of life-conditions, physical conditions, the half-brick house opening to a vast slush with one million mosquitoes and pigs, thousands of Indians waking up to the stench of absolute decay, brushing their teeth with their fingers, with tooth powder, while the radio blares the songs of early morning resurrections and ads selling the consumer industries good faith, the nightmare of daily life, showcased in this dawn of arrival and departure, the slow realisation of life's value, and worthlessness, and abject despair, the sheer stink of this excreta which floats with the pigs and the nullahs just outside the kitchen where the children ease themselves, as bare in the winters as in the summer, the naked and the alive, in these dingy suburban existentialism of life's division of labour, dignity, pluralism, democracy, the defeated humanity of the golden city, chasing a dream as little as the dream, a hygienic dream as it was in the villages back home, where the next outburst of starvation or suicides or drought or hunger or flood chases them, especially those who have neither land nor bread nor a pucca house. They have only their hands and their legs and their big hearts and they buy a general compartment ticket and they enter this labyrinth of sub-human synthesis, alienated and in awe, but hard working nevertheless, outside the nuances of the nation-states, diplomatic protocols, non-alignment, globalisation, cricket victories and losses, per capital income, the gross domestic product, FDI and stock scams, their eyes shining with hope when they close it to let a dream pass by. The day begins… the nullah and the backwaters are flush with slush … beyond and outside the remixed song of the sexy India, the latest touristy sex spot, the sex capital, the farm house romp, the model cottage industry, the page three daily night show of voyeurisms, all the beautiful people, food, fashion and fun; and here, outside, on the suburbs of the big metros, next to the railway tracks of coming and going, beyond the beauty and the glitz of the glitterati, in patched and thatched and hatched polythene, blue tarpaulin and aluminium tenements, protected by asbestos and bricks and bottles and garbage, shitting on the tracks their daily morning prayers of nationalism and redemption.

CORPORATE SHADOW ON INDIAN AGRICULTURE

By Girish Mishra

As recent developments indicate, global corporate giants are out to establish their dominance over Indian agriculture. In this they are being helped by powerful quarters from both inside and outside the country. It is needless to add that their success will lead to serious repercussions for the country.
Even though the Indian National Congress, the leading anti-imperialist organisation during the freedom struggle came into being in 1885, it could become a force to reckon with only when Gandhi brought peasantry into it. The first real mass movement led in India by Gandhi was the Champaran Satyagraha of 1917 in which he successfully pitted mostly illiterate and semi-literate peasants against powerful European indigo planters who had the tacit backing of the British government. From then onwards the Congress became more and more peasant oriented and in this process it became a real mass movement. The interests of peasants came to dominate its deliberations. Presiding over the golden jubilee session of the Congress at Faizpore, Jawaharlal Nehru called for a radical reform in agrarian relations without which neither industry could develop nor could the problems of unemployment and poverty be solved. The Congress declared, "The final solution of this problem involves the removal of British imperialistic exploitation and a radical change in the antiquated and repressive land tenure and revenue systems." Both the Congress and Nehru were aware that land redistribution programme must be followed by a reorganization of agrarian relations on the basis of co-operation. While individual farming or peasant proprietorship was to continue, it was underlined that "progressive agriculture as well as the creation of new social values and incentives require some system of cooperative farming suited to Indian conditions." Unlike the Soviet style collective farming, "Any such change can… be made with the goodwill and agreement of the peasantry concerned." To impress upon the peasantry the benefits of cooperative farming, experimental cooperative farms were to be established.
Even though the Congress endorsed Nehru's approach at its Nagpur session in 1959, there arose a stiff resistance from bureaucracy, landed interests and political circles including a section of the Congress. Gradually, Nehru's approach was shelved and, from the 1980s onwards, Indian agriculture embarked on integration with the global market. Corporate agribusiness entered the scene in a big way, especially from the 1990s onwards, when India accepted the Washington consensus-based globalization. Disastrous consequences following it have manifested themselves in various forms ranging from increasing sufferings and suicides by farmers, large-scale exodus of labourers and marginal farmers after selling off or leasing out their tiny holdings, violent clashes and turbulence in rural areas and so on. Speaking at the Indian Science Congress in January this year, the Nobel laureate Prof. Amartya Sen expressed great disquiet at growing distress in the agricultural sector and increasing disparities with industrial and service sectors. Agriculture was stagnating causing asymmetries and inequalities within the country. In his own words, "Our vision of India cannot be one that is half California and half-sub Saharan Africa."
While recognizing that all is not well with rural India, the strategy of contract farming has been advanced by global corporate firms and international bodies like FAO. Charles Eaton and Andrew W. Shepherd have provided the theoretical justification in an FAO publication "Contract Farming – Partnerships for Growth". They define contract farming "as an agreement between farmers and processing and/or marketing firms for the production and supply of agricultural products under forward agreements, frequently at predetermined prices." In other words, the three basic production decisions, namely, what, how and for whom to produce will be taken by corporate entities. Their main aim will certainly be the maximization of profits. Obviously, employment opportunities in agriculture will fall. In case, marginal and small farmers want to lease out their tiny holding, they may get some sort of rent. With far-reaching changes in the character of farming, there will be a large-scale exodus of farmers to urban areas in search of jobs. This will enlarge the informal sector and the population of slum dwellers. One may look up Mike Davis's Planet of Slums (Verso, 2006) the frightening picture, sure to follow the corporate-induced agrarian reorganization.
Eaton and Shepherd state at the very outset: "In an age of market liberalization, globalization and expanding agribusiness, there is a danger that small-scale farmers will find difficulty in fully participating in the market economy. In many countries such farmers could become marginalized as larger farms become increasingly necessary for a profitable operation. A consequence of this will be a continuation of the drift of populations to urban areas.
"Attempts by governments and development agencies to arrest this drift have tended to emphasize the identification of "income generation" activities for rural people. Unfortunately there is relatively little evidence that such attempts have borne fruit. This is largely because the necessary backward and forward linkages are rarely in place, i.e. rural farmers and small-scale entrepreneurs lack both reliable and cost-efficient inputs such as extension advice, mechanization services, seeds, fertilizers and credit, and guaranteed and profitable markets for their output. Well-organized contract farming does, however, provide such linkages, and would appear to offer an important way in which smaller producers can farm in a commercial manner. Similarly, it also provides investors with the opportunity to guarantee a reliable source of supply, from the perspectives of both quality and quantity."
The above two paragraphs try to make contract farming the panacea for all the troubles at present faced by Indian farmers. In fact, if one looks more carefully and analyze the implications they are sure to lead to disastrous consequences for India's polity, society, economy and culture. The constraint of space, however, does not permit us to perform this task.
The transition towards contract farming began surreptitiously when Pepsi Foods Ltd. entered contract farming business in India by installing a Rs 22 crore state of the art tomato processing plant in Punjab. To meet its demand of tomatoes, it entered contract farming. Soon PepsiCo entered the cultivation of Basmati rice, spices (chillies), oilseeds (groundnuts) and potato.
The BJP has been more enthusiastic about contract farming. The self-proclaimed votary of national pride Narendra Modi, the chief minister of Gujarat, is on record urging the corporates to enter contract farming his state (Business Standard, November 17, 2003). In BJP-ruled state of Madhya Pradesh, Hindustan Lever, a subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch MNC Unilever, Tata group's Rallis and ICICI have joined hands in carrying out contract farming for the production of wheat. Under the arrangement, Rallis supplies agricultural inputs and know-how and ICICI provides credit and Hindustan Lever buys up the produce for its food processing units. The National Agricultural Policy of the Government of India visualizes that "Private sector participation will be promoted through contract farming and land leasing arrangements to allow accelerated technology transfer, capital inflow and assured market for crop production, especially of oil seeds, cotton and horticultural crops."
There are several serious objections to the entry of the corporate sector into agriculture. As has already been referred, the prime aim of the corporate sector will be the maximization of profits by minimizing the costs of production. In this process, employment generation will be the biggest casualty. The present exodus of the unemployed from the rural to urban areas will not only accelerate but also increase manifold and this will have serious repercussions. Second, the relationship between the corporates and the farmers will be on unequal footing. The former will most of the time have its way and dictate terms. In this context one may recollect what happened as a result of enclosure movement in England during the 18th century. Like enclosures contract farming will make farms larger and the farmers fewer. It will uproot small and marginal farmers and landless labourers from the villages. Of course, a number of them will be transformed into agricultural proletariat working for wages on the farms operated by the corporates.
Before we end, let us quote a few lines from a report "The end of Gandhi's dream: India's economic boom and bust—Mahatma's vision" (Independent, March 20): "India's big companies talk of the country's agriculture as a massive untapped resource, with exceptionally fertile land, and tropical fruits, rice and spices that are considered among the world's best. Insiders say Reliance, one of the major players in India, is planning to move into the farming sector in a big way." It is anybody's guess why Anil Ambani of the Reliance has begun distancing himself from Amar Singh-Mulayam Singh outfit.

Saffron web of fascism


By Shabnam Hashmi

I am sorry, my dear son, yes, I agree that I have stopped spending any time with you, that earlier sometimes we used to go out for dinner and enjoy and laugh or have a quiet evening at home. You feel that somewhere the thread that bound us together has broken. No, that is not true. You have been a very nice son, a very sensitive son. You were only 15 years old in 2002 when we travelled together, meeting hundreds of victims of the Gujarat carnage, sharing their pain, their agony. Your tender heart bled, you were absolutely numbed by what we witnessed. Your photographs of the carnage exposed the brutalities, exposed the forces that were behind the brutal killings. You travelled with your exhibition to schools, colleges, to other cities, to other countries, contributing to the struggle against insanity with the hope that this madness would stop one day.

You were 15. Travelling with your mother, perhaps you thought that you could bear all the pain because your mother was with you.

You had to get back to your studies. You entered one of the elitist colleges of the country after finishing your school, and with that you also entered another world, but your mother continued her journey. Now in 2006, when I look back at 2002, I realise that it was the other way round: I could take all that pain because you were with me.

You were disturbed that though I went out with you today, I did not eat. I wanted to spend time with you and laugh and eat and enjoy, but I could not. The memories of my last week's visit to Jhabua, Dhar, Alirajpur, Amkhut, Jobut, Puniyavat and Indore do not let me sleep. I am totally shattered.

I have witnessed a well-planned, fascist agenda in action: appropriation of Muslim and Christian religious places, by either forcefully occupying them or distorting history, clearing them in the name of clearing public places, targeting well off Muslim economy, targeting the cultural symbols of the minorities, targeting their property and lives and inflicting violence on the women of the community. The RSS, VHP and Bajrang Dal goons are let loose with the full connivance of the state administration and the police force. Minorities are being physically, psychologically and economically isolated.

It is difficult to share with you in this small letter what I have witnessed and documented. I was part of the Indian People's Tribunal which travelled across Madhya Pradesh recording, documenting hundreds of cases which have occurred during the past few years. Hundreds of broken people came and deposed before the tribunal, narrating stories of torture, hatred, loot, murder and rape. The names are different, the places are different but the stories are the same, the culprits are the same — VHP, RSS, Bajrang Dal, Shiv Sena, Seva Bharti, BJP, Vanvasi Kalyan Kendra, all part of the Sangh brigade of goons.
On 30 December 2003 a prayer was in progress in Antervelia. Around 3 p.m. a mob of 250 came and started stoning the prayer hall, looted whatever was there, set fire to the house and burnt two adjacent houses. The harvest was ready in the farm that was totally burnt, an Armada belonging to the local mission was torched. This was Pursan Bhuria's house. The next day his father was arrested (for his safety!). The police refused to lodge an FIR. It was filed after four days. No one was arrested from the mob which comprised known people from Seva Bharti, RSS and Bajrang Dal. The father was released after 16 days. The police chowkie was 200 metres away from the place where the incident took place.

On 22 February 2005, Tasneem Khan was in her house in Dhar. It was the third day after Moharram. Around 1.45 p.m. she heard slogans and then the stoning started. Her house was one of the several houses where 10 families lived. Her family had a shop on the ground floor, a flourishing business of cutlery and decoration material for Diwali, rakhi and Ganpati festival. The shop was looted, and the shop and the houses were vandalised. The families escaped through the back door. Then petrol was sprinkled and the three-storied houses were set on fire. A 99-year old grandfather and a 14-year old invalid were brought out from a burning house. Fire brigades were not allowed by the mob to come and extinguish the fire. A total loss of Rs 42 lakhs took place. Three families got Rs 30,000 each as compensation, and eight families later got Rs 20,000 each. The families were pressurised not to give any names if they wanted compensation. Those who led the mob were known faces from the Sangh outfits. No one was arrested. The families have not been able to return as the houses are in not in a liveable condition and they have no money to repair them.

On 20 July 2005, Rahimuddin Khan's poultry and broiler farm, in Gandhi Colony, Dhar was attacked by a mob of 600-700 people. They killed the chickens, looted and destroyed his house. The local MLA's son kept giving instructions to pick up the daughters and rape them ("utha le jayenge, Gujarat main jaisa kiya aurton ke sath, waisa hi karenge"). Fortunately, they could flee, using the back door.

After successfully turning Gujarat into a Hindu "rashtra," the experiment is now being replicated in other states, specially in the ones which are ruled by the BJP.

The kind of violence that we documented occurs only when the hatred for the "other" has found deep roots in the minds and the hearts of the people. The creeping sound of the fascist web spreading steadily, slowly engulfing every secular space, strangulating minorities, the shameless support by the administration and police, the growing apathy and insensitivity of civil society, the feeling of helplessness, the faces of innocent children and women, the photographs of charred dead bodies, the footage of the mass graves in Gujarat, the violated bodies of victims of gang rapes, the cowardice of the "secular" political forces, compounded with the international imperialist agenda... All this haunts me.

I know we cannot turn the tide now. It has gone much beyond our control. We seem to have lost the battle of the minds and hearts. The only promise I have made to myself is that I will fight till the last breath.

Forgive me, my son, I can no longer enjoy a quiet evening. I can no longer enjoy going out for dinner with you. I can no longer assure you that they will not kill you one day.

Shabnam Hashmi
May 1, 2006