Category Archives: Government

Debates, Government, Identities, Media politics, Movements, Politics

Let us break the ‘silence’on Telengana movement: Sridhar Modugu

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Guest post by SRIDHAR MODUGU

It is no exaggeration to say today that Telangana is burning. Nor will we be far off the mark if we suspect that a paralyzing fear has encased its ‘intellectuals”. Everyone is lost in providing testimonies to prove themselves to be pro-Telangana and everybody is a self-accomplished activist.  In fact, the intellectuals have lost themselves as spectators. They have become immune to understand what is happening before them.

The demand for statehood for Telangana is undoubtedly a democratic and judicious demand. It has been held back since 1950s and suppressed time and again.  No doubt Mr. Kalvakuntla Chandra Sekhar Rao (KCR), the President of Telangana Rastra Samithi (TRS) did maintain the public talk with occasional tactical moves and has been considered an icon of “Telangana vaadam” as last ten years of Telangana politics are referred to.  Since 2009 November the movement could attract large mass of diversified sections of people from all walks of life and engage the attention of the people with hopes of achieving the state any day thanks to the enthusiastic role play of the media and political parties – in power or opposition. It is indeed noteworthy that since November 2009 the movement has been able to attract a large number of diverse sections of people from all walks of life in thousands. They have mobilized voluntarily and have conducted meetings in the most democratic way. That there has been considerable restraint among the people who have been dishonored, alienated and humiliated under the Andhra Pradesh rulers is without dispute. These people have mobilized democratically despite the war-like surveillance and suppression of both the para-military and the state police force.  Historical injustice – political, economic and cultural of the people of this region is well highlighted.

Continue reading Let us break the ‘silence’on Telengana movement: Sridhar Modugu →

Centre watch, Countryside, Frontiers, Government, Law, Violence/Conflict

No One Killed Meena Khalkho?: Akhil Katyal

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Guest post by AKHIL KATYAL

Now that the Anna Hazare Show is over, will the Indian media go back to looking at India as also existing outside Delhi? On 6 July 2011, Meena Khalkho, a sixteen year old tribal girl from Karcha village in the state of Chhattisgarh was raped and murdered by the local police and it barely made a dent on our news universe. A search for her name on most television news websites returns nothing. The police in Chattisgarh immediately hit upon a strategy that has now long been in circulation. They subsume Meena’s horrible rape and murder within what goes these days as a laudable mission, one that manages to neutralize all rage against police atrocities, by claiming Meena to be a Naxal and by claiming her to be fatally wounded in an encounter that night against a larger party of Naxallite cadres.

Continue reading No One Killed Meena Khalkho?: Akhil Katyal →

Bad ideas, Debates, Government, Law

Reflections on a Genuflection to the Vox Populi by Subinay Inder Singh Bedi

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The republic and the legislature look to the public for gauging the mood of the nation during the process of formulating laws that necessarily must tap into the prevailing moral sentiment and ethos of the day. Thus a law against child marriage might have been moot a half century ago, but a necessary devolution of current social perceptions. On such issues, public sentiment can guide, indeed force the hand of the legislature and judiciary to come down particularly heavily on one side of the fence. However, it is parochial of us to invoke the illegal and hare-brained claim that since democracy is popularly, rule of, for and by the people, a representative democracy is inherently bound to genuflect to populist opinion, a case in point being the recent debate over the Lokpal bill that at the time of writing was still raging and occupied prime placement amongst the media of the day.

Continue reading Reflections on a Genuflection to the Vox Populi by Subinay Inder Singh Bedi →

Centre watch, Everyday Life, Excavation, Government, Law

Your government is removing your YouTube videos and you don’t even know about it

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After reporting Google Transparency Tools’ latest revelations about how much India asks Google to delete content and pass government agencies private user data, Firstpost writes, “To put all this in its proper perspective, Indians still enjoy robust Internet freedom – and occasionally even an excess of freedoms…” And then it goes on to compare internet freedom with China, assuring all is well with the world.

There is no such thing as excess freedom. There is a way to deal with the “scurrilous postings and videos” the article talks about. It’s called the law.

I write an article in a newspaper that is seen as “scurrilous”. The offending party will go to court. The court will decide if it is scurrilous enough to violate the law of the land (be it defamation, libel, or whatever) and summon me. I get a chance to defend myself. Continue reading Your government is removing your YouTube videos and you don’t even know about it →

Centre watch, Debates, Government, Law, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics

Ten lessons of the fortnight that was: Jay Mazoomdar

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Guest post by JAY MAZOOMDAAR

The 13-day blockbuster— peddled as the second freedom struggle, panned as irresponsible blackmailing, and a lot in between — is over. Anna Hazare accepted honeyed coconut water from two little girls, introduced to the crowd as a dalit and a Muslim, and went on to recuperate in one of India’s most expensive hospitals, one branded after Hindu spiritual literature at that.

News TV is still fighting the vacuum by flogging the debate – so much so that seasoned correspondents are chasing a rather dismissive Dr Naresh Trehan to unravel the mystery of Anna’s endurance. Biker gangs have gone into a sulk and roads at India Gate are looking safer for traffic and women (which is not saying much in Delhi). What is more, India has started taking note that too many Indians have meanwhile drowned in floods. Continue reading Ten lessons of the fortnight that was: Jay Mazoomdar →

Debates, Government, Identities, Mirror Worlds, Movements, Politics

The North-South Question in Punjab: Umair Javed

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click to enlarge

‘Sayeen, ham nay toh kabhee 5,000 banday kaa jaloos bhi nahee nikaala. Siyaasat kay liyay aik laash kya, aik zakham bhi nahee hay hamaray paas toh. Aur aaj lag aisay raha hay kay hamaari dheemi dheemi baaton ko sun kar yay Punjab kay tukray karnay lagain hain’  (Sayeen, we’ve never taken out a rally with 5,000 people. Forget martyrs, we don’t even have a bruise to flaunt for political mileage. And today, it seems they’ve heard our whispers and taken them to heart. Today, they’re talking about splitting Punjab.)

While talking to a few last month, I realized that most independent Seraiki activists privately acknowledge that the issue of a new province, or at the very least, a wholesale recognition of Seraiki grievances, was a cause that could only be made actionable when the People’s Party thought it to be worthwhile – and 9 times out of ten, a cause’s worth for a national level party is determined by its weight in the electoral matrix.  Continue reading The North-South Question in Punjab: Umair Javed →

Bad ideas, Debates, Government, Movements, Politics, Theory

In the Ruins of Political Society – A Response to Partha Chatterjee

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Partha Chatterjee’s post, following on Shuddha’s Hazare Khwahishein… is something of an eye-opener for me. I will not enter into a debate with him on his reading of Shuddha’s post as Shuddha and I have had our long online and offline exchanges and I have learnt immensely from these exchanges, even if a core of disagreement persists. I do think, however, that Partha is mistaken in thinking that this is the first time the question of corruption has been discussed on Kafila or elsewhere but since I am not interested in discussing that question here, I will leave that matter aside. I think I have said pretty much what I wanted to say on the movement and the myriad issues related to it and so I am no more interested in going over that territory all over again. Interested readers can see the Kafila archives if they so wish.

What has been an eye-opener for me is the way a certain other Partha Chatterjee has emerged, as soon as his theories were brought face to face with the hurly-burly of politics. The imprint of this other Partha is clearly evident in every word and sentence of this post, but most clearly in the concluding sentence where he claims that the indepdent Left has ‘its populist moment in Nandigram’. This sentence encapuslates the gist of our disagreements. It was this assessment that led Partha to write the essay, ‘Democracy and Economic Transformation‘ where, in some elliptical fashion, his own discomfort with popular politics  found expression. That is when he extended the definition of ‘political society’ to say that it was the sphere of ‘management of ‘non-corporate capital’ (of course, by capital and government). That Partha links his discomfort over the Anna Hazare movement to his discomfort over Nandigram, is in my view, a sign of the fact that his idea of ‘political society’ lies in ruins, that it collapsed at the precise moment of its encounter with the popular.

Continue reading In the Ruins of Political Society – A Response to Partha Chatterjee →

Bad ideas, Debates, Government, Law, Mirror Worlds, Technology

A fax about Anna: Dilip D’Souza

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Guest post by DILIP D’SOUZA

Of course everyone has their own take on the movement that’s got us all talking. It raises passions, it polarizes, it shakes the powerful, on and on. I have immense admiration for what Anna Hazare has achieved: the outrage against corruption where we had indifference before, the outlet for such outrage, the renewed hope where we had cynicism before, the way his movement has shamed brazen politicians and forced an entire government to listen.

Yet the movement sometimes reminds me, of all things, of fax machines. Continue reading A fax about Anna: Dilip D’Souza →

Bad ideas, Capitalism, Centre watch, Debates, Government, Left watch, Media politics, Mirror Worlds, Movements

Hazare, Khwahishein Aisi: Desiring a new politics, after Anna Hazare and beyond corruption

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Hazare, khwahishein aisi, ke har khwahish pe dam nikle
bahut nikle armaan, lekin, phir bhi kam nikle

Hazare, so many desires, that every desire takes our breath away
so many hopes, and yet so few

(with due apologies, for liberties taken, to Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib, sometime poet and native of Delhi)

On the ninth of april, this year,  I wrote a posting on Kafila titled – ‘At the Risk of Heresy : Why I am not Celebrating with Anna Hazare Tonight‘. A little more than four months later, I have to say I have not yet found reasons to celebrate. But I am not in mourning either. What follows is my attempt to think this through, in all its contradictory character. For once, I am not even trying to be consistent. If my argument occasionally faces two directions at once, it is probably because I feel the needs to be double faced in order to understand a double-faced moment. When all the talk is only of the need for honesty, one might want to stake a claim to being double-faced, if only for the sake of breaking the moral monotony.

Continue reading Hazare, Khwahishein Aisi: Desiring a new politics, after Anna Hazare and beyond corruption →

Capitalism, Government, Law, Left watch, Media politics

Beyond ‘Middle Class’ and ‘Corruption’: Jeebesh Bagchi

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Guest post by JEEBESH BAGCHI

I have been thinking that If we drop “corruption” and “middle class”  we may find some other way to understand what we sense unfolding from Ramila grounds and television studios.

The term middle class has bloated so much that it now holds within it Narayan Murthy to Shekhar Gupta via Nandan Nilekani to a student in Sonepat to all people in this list and on facebook.  And on the other hand corruption seem to have bloated much further in which commissions from infrastructure deals (in lakhs of crores), commissions for arms deals, someone delaying papers, to admission costs, to a hawker buying some uninterrupted time in the street (20 rupees) is all melted down.

Could one start from some other point? Continue reading Beyond ‘Middle Class’ and ‘Corruption’: Jeebesh Bagchi →

Debates, Government, Law, Movements, Politics

The office of the Jan Lokpal and some thoughts on Nivedita Menon’s post: Anish Ahluwalia

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Guest post by ANISH AHLUWALIA

The Jan Lokpal

A problem lies at the very core of Anna Hazare’s anti corruption campaign. This campaign wishes to march ahead by defining ‘corruption’ in the narrowest possible sense. Monies illegally made by politicians, members of judiciary, babus while remaining dreadfully silent on corporations, upper middle classes, middle classes who form the bulk of bribe payers…

Continue reading The office of the Jan Lokpal and some thoughts on Nivedita Menon’s post: Anish Ahluwalia →

Debates, Government, Identities, Law, Movements, Politics

Why Jai Karan supports Anna Hazare

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Jai Karan in The Times of India

My own feelings about the Anna Hazare movement are mixed, or you could say confused. I like the way the movement is bringing an arrogant government to its knees, and though I don’t know if their version of the Lokpal Bill is the best way to fight corruption, I appreciate how they have exposed the UPA’s farce of a bill. I get the point that fellow-travellers Nivedita Menon and Aditya Nigam are making about democracy and political movements, but as one unit of ‘the people’, I don’t see why I should support a movement just because it is popular. Perhaps it is my elitism and naivete and cynicism. Or perhaps I’m just confused by now. The taste of the pudding is in the eating, and I’d like to see where this takes us.

While I sort out my confusion, I see a message on Facebook, attributed to Anu Ramdas, that says:

Continue reading Why Jai Karan supports Anna Hazare →

Centre watch, Debates, Government, Law, Politics

NAPM Extends Support to Anti-Corruption Movement and Demand for an Effective Lokpal

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[The statement was issued by the National Alliance of People’s Movements on 14 August. Much has happened since then – the arrest of Anna Hazare – accopanied by silence and often ridicule poured by the radical elite, but in the face of what is perhaps one of the most widespread mass movements in India after Independence. Over the past few days, we have been witness to innumerable demnstrations and marches in almost every colony in Delhi – where no TV camera ever reached or was even expected to when the ‘real’ action is going in in central Delhi. Contrary to the general propaganda and even our own earlier impression, this is no more simply a middle class movement. I am reproducing it here, somewhat belatedly, because it still touches on some of the post important points at issue in the ongoing struggle. – AN]

Anna Hazare Ji and manyothers across India will be starting their fast from August 16th in Delhi demanding an effective Lokpal. NAPM supports the people’s movement for a corruption-free India and urges the citizens of the country to plunge into this struggle. NAPM, along with other organisations is holding relay fast, human chains, public meetings and other programmes, in Chennai, Pune, Mumbai, Narmada Valley, Hyderabad, Guwahati, Bhubaneshwar, Bangalore, Mysore, Mou, Balia, Allahabad, Muzzafarnagar and other places. We urge our members and supporters to join this call and challenge the corrupt and defensive governments at the Centre and the states.

We strongly disapprove of the way in which government has been trying to put severe restrictions on holding peaceful protests in the capital, and Delhi Police under the garb of implementing the Supreme Court’s Guidelines is imposing unnecessary conditions on protests, as it did early this month on SANGHARSH anti-land acquisition protest, AISA-DYF anti-corruption protest and others. For an independent democratic country like ours, imposition and insistence on police permission and strict guidelines for holding peaceful protests and Sataygraha seems completely contradictory and only shows shrinking spaces for democratic freedom of expression and curb on fundamental rights of its citizens.

Continue reading NAPM Extends Support to Anti-Corruption Movement and Demand for an Effective Lokpal →

Frontiers, Government, Identities, Law, Violence/Conflict

The Banality of Bengal: Jyoti Rahman on the Tribulations of the Bangladeshi Hindus

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Guest post by JYOTI RAHMAN

List of names of Hindu students and professors massacred at Jagannath Hall on night of 25th March, 1971 by the Pakistani Army. Click to enlarge. Photo credit: Udayan Chattopadhyay.

Nirad C Chaudhuri and Jatin Sarker were both born in Hindu families in the Mymensingh district of eastern Bengal, now Bangladesh. Chaudhuri, about four decades older than Sarkar, wrote his autobiography before India held its first election, and ceased to be an unknown Indian. Sarker also wrote his life story. Unlike Chaudhuri, Sarker’s was in Bangla, published in Bangladesh, never translated in English, and not available in India or beyond. He remains unknown. Which is a pity, because if you want to know what has happened to the land where both these men were born, Sarker is a far, far better guide than Chaudhuri.

Sarker, of course, stopped being an Indian on 14 August 1947, when Mymensingh became part of East Pakistan — the eastern wing of Jinnah’s moth-nibbled land of the pure. His family didn’t move to India. They were not atypical. Many Hindu families remained in East Pakistan. Perhaps it was the presence of Gandhi. Perhaps it was the fantastical belief that Subhas Chandra Bose would return in 1957 — a century after the Great Uprising, two centuries after the Battle of Plassey — to reunite Mother Bengal.   Continue reading The Banality of Bengal: Jyoti Rahman on the Tribulations of the Bangladeshi Hindus →

Capitalism, Government, Law, Movements

Statement on the Martyrdom of Shehla Masood

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To add your name to this statement write to Akhlak Ahmad – syed.akhlak at gmail dot com

16 August, 2011

“I am proud to be an Indian. Happy Independence Day.”
– Shehla Masood, 15 August, 2011

Gandhi “the purpose of civil resistance is provocation”. Anna has succeeded in provoking the Govt and the Opposition. Hope he wins us freedom from corruption. Meet at 2 pm Boat Club Bhopal”
– Shehla Masood, 16 August, 2011 few minutes before her martyrdom

Shehla Masood, a Madhya Pradesh based civil rights and environmental rights activist was was shot dead by an unidentified person in front of her residence in Koh-e-Fiza locality in Bhopal around 11 AM on 16th August, 2011.

We the undersigned aghast at the irony that tigers, tribals, trees and civil rights and environmental rights activists are being hunted and killed in the same manner. Continue reading Statement on the Martyrdom of Shehla Masood →

Centre watch, Debates, Government, Law, Movements, Scams

Onwards to the Independence of the Corrupt!

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Let us pledge this 15th of August, that we will tirelessly work towards the independence – nay dictatorship – of the corrupt. We must tirelessly fight every attempt to raise  corruption as an issue – by gullible people who do not understand that corruption is not a real issue. We will not allow such people to be misled by demagogues and fascists who are  interested only in power – even if they do not show their hunger for power by contesting elections. Indeed, precisely because they do not contest elections.

Is the new mantra of democracy? How else do we understand the deafening silence on the series of dictatorial measures adopted by the government, on the part of all those who have been vocal, indeed strident, in their attack on the Anna Hazare movement? It is one thing to be opposed to the Anna Hazare movement but the silence – from parties as well as intellectuals, democratic rights groups and self-righteous editorial commentators of the Indian Express – on the desperate measures being adopted by one of the most corrupt governments ever, is inexplicable. It is as if the only threat to democracy today comes from a group of people who want to raise their voice in civil disobedience against public money being looted by elected representatives acting at the behest of powerful corporate interests.

First the Delhi Police simply refused permission to Anna Hazare and the India Against Corruption fast. Then they asked them to hold their protest in Burari! That is to say on the border of Haryana. This was but another way of disallowing it. Then they came out with a novel idea – a set of preconditions that include an undertaking that there will not be more than 5000 people and that the fast will be wound up in three days. Clearly, no self-respecting set of protestors will agree to such conditions and so ‘Team Anna’ refused to sign the undertaking.

Continue reading Onwards to the Independence of the Corrupt! →

Government, Violence/Conflict

Issues in sri lanka today: A primer for activists in india

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Originally written for the forthcoming Human Rights Forum Bulletin

Very often issues related to sri lanka are spoken in a manner that is disjointed from one another. We often do not have a clear holistic picture. Many of the problems in stands vis-à-vis sri lanka come from this lack. We need a holistic picture not just of the present situation but of past histories. The holistic picture needs to be rigorous and honest; based on continuous work on the area and gathering of knowledge. In the case of sri lanka, as in many other things in the world, the significance of this cannot be stressed enough. We barely have any reports that have come out of sri lanka that are either biased or have had to struggle to expose many things and those concerned have often paid a heavy price; sometimes the price has been their life.

A friend from sri lanka, who lives in Colombo, recently commented that, right now, the situation is worse than during the war in some senses. The surveillance and the hidden violence is so intense and widespread that it is hard to escape it and there is never enough warning. The quest to turn sri lanka into a Sinhala Buddhist nation governed by a fascist is well underway. All of this being done under the garb of democracy; a garb that has not been hard to look right through. Continue reading Issues in sri lanka today: A primer for activists in india →

Debates, Government, Law, Media politics, Mirror Worlds, Politics

In Defence of Asif Ali Zardari: Abdullah Zaidi

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Guest post by ABDULLAH ZAIDI

What comes to your mind with the mention of Asif Ali Zardari? “A cunning, vile, and corrupt man,” said my 19 year old cousin. This was a good summation of what the urban middle-class thinks of him. The more I hear people talking about him the more I am convinced of the power of propaganda. “Give the dog a bad name and hang him,” Zardai once said about himself. That is what is at work here.

Despite what has been said about him, Zardari did have a political background. His father Hakim Ali Zardari entered politics well before Partition and was a member of the Khaksaar Tehreek in 1931. He was first elected to the National Assembly in 1970s. All this talk of Zardari as a political orphan who hogged the Bhutto dynasty upon marriage with Benazir, is a non-starter. In Benazir’s husband, the Bhutto family wanted someone who would remain loyal to her. That is exactly what they got in him. For Zardari, family would always come first. This was the case at the time of Benazir’s death, when he kept the family together. Benazir would often tell close aides that despite his failings, Zardari always remained loyal to the family. Continue reading In Defence of Asif Ali Zardari: Abdullah Zaidi →

Centre watch, Debates, Government, Politics

Deconstructing The NAC : Ruchi Gupta

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Guest post by RUCHI GUPTA

The past couple of months have seen a renewed attack on the National Advisory Council (NAC). The NAC has been decried as an unconstitutional, undemocratic, “super-cabinet” where unaccountable “jholawalas” hatch harebrained schemes guaranteed to run the government aground. Another line of criticism has focused on the process of the formation of the NAC, its space within the Indian Constitution, and its capacity to influence policy. The two criticisms merge with the demand to disband the NAC on the count that the NAC does not have to face the outcome of its recommendations, and by virtue of it being chaired by the head of the ruling Alliance, can arbitrarily force the implementation of its recommendations.

There is however, a need to examine how the NAC has functioned, what it has done, as well as understand the space it occupies in the policy-making paradigm of the country. While the concerns about the legitimacy of the NAC relate to important issues of Constitutionality, the criticism about the nature of its policy recommendations is motivated by ideology and is of much less relevance to its impact on democratic processes.

It is true that the NAC is an entity created to give the leader of the ruling alliance a role in policy making. Nevertheless, partly through the kind of members chosen, and the norms of functioning it has evolved, it has opened up the otherwise closed and secretive processes of formulation of law and policy, beyond its own membership to citizens groups and people with expertise. It can, in fact with some effort become a platform to further a more just and participative democracy. In this essay, we deconstruct the NAC and situate it in its political context to understand both its pitfalls and potential.

Continue reading Deconstructing The NAC : Ruchi Gupta →

Centre watch, Government, Identities, Law, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

Every time there is a bomb blast in India

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Jyoti Punwani writes:

Expectedly, the questions were the same. What were you doing on the day of the blasts? Had you gone to Cheetah Camp? Do you know anyone from the Indian Mujahideen? How many times have you been to Pakistan? Why does only your information come to us? Get your house documents.

Amanullah was ready with the answers and documents… [Must Read]

From Kafila archives:
What does it mean to be a Muslim in India today?

Government, Identities, Law, Mirror Worlds, Movements

The Unending Struggle of Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims for Equality: S. Japhet and Y. Moses

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On the sidelines of a protest at Delhi's Jantar Mantar today

Guest post by S. JAPHET and Y. MOSES

Religious minorities, both Christians and Muslims from different parts of the country have converged in Delhi to demand reservations for Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims. This is part of a long standing struggle demanding the Government to introduce a bill to amend the constitution to include Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims in the scheduled Castes list. The Christian community has been agitating since the promulgation of the Presidential Order Government of India 1950 that effectively prevents those professing religions other than Hinduism from being considered as Scheduled Castes. It has been argued that the 1950 Order violates Article 15 that prohibits discrimination on grounds of religion, race or caste and Article 25 that gives the right to all citizens to profess and practise any religion according to his or her choice. The demand is that affirmative action or positive discrimination of dalits, providing reservations in government jobs, educational institutions and representation in Parliament and state legislatures should be extended to all dalits irrespective of whatever religion they may profess and practise. Continue reading The Unending Struggle of Dalit Christians and Dalit Muslims for Equality: S. Japhet and Y. Moses →