I.
Hemant Karkare’s family – his wife Kavita, his son and daughters and other near and dear ones – have slowly albeit silently come to terms with the fact that he is no more. Yes, there are occasions when his son takes out the laptop and scans the family album icon to see his father in various moods. There are a few photographs he really loves to watch again and again, where his dad looks a different person and not the usual policewallah.There are times when his mother also joins him and every photograph reminds her of the beautiful days they spent together.
It is known that born and brought up in Madhya Pradesh, Karkare did his engineering (mechanical) in Nagpur and worked at the National Productivity Council and Hindustan Lever before making it to the IPS in 1982. An avid reader of books Hemant during his stint in the Chandrapur forests near Nagpur in 1991 took an interest in driftwood, discovered artistic shapes in them and converted them into wooden sculptures, making about 150 of them over a two-year period.
Continue reading Where Is Hemant Karkare’s Bullet Proof Jacket?
Category Archives: Government
Did Goa Government ‘Partially Finance’SS Terrorists?
Sanatan Sanstha’s link to Margao blast conspiracy just got thicker with all five accused arrested in the case having allegiance to the Hindu right wing organisation operating from Goa police said.
The latest arrest of 20-year old Dhananjay Ashtekar, an engineering student from Khed in Ratnagiri is also associated with Sanatan Sanstha’s activities. Ashtekar was arrested on Wednesday evening by state police’s Special Investigation Team, which is mandated to probe the blast. “He is related to Sanstha and has made it clear during his interrogation,” Superintendent of Police and spokesperson for Goa police department Atmaram Deshpande told PTI on Thursday.
Ashtekar was studying in an engineering college at Ichalkaranji, a town in western Maharashtra. Deshpande said that the youth was being interrogated over blast case and only when there was sufficient material on record to prove his involvement, he was placed under arrest. Ashtekar is the fifth Sanatan Sanstha activist found to be linked with the blast conspiracy which went awry on the eve of Diwali.
Earlier two accused, Malgonda Patil and Yogesh Naik, who died in the Margao blast and two arrested persons, Vinayak Patil and Vinay Talekar, have confessed their links to Sanstha, which operates through its Ashram at Ramnathi. Deshpande had earlier said that the Sanstha is under scanner as its activists are part of the blast conspiracy. The police have, however, refused to move for a ban against Sanstha as there are no enough evidence to rope in it for the conspiracy. The Margao blast took place on October 16 killing two persons.
© Copy 2009 PTI. http://www.rediff.com, November 12, 2009 15:49 IST)I.
How to keep Procrastinating When It Comes To Hindutva Terror ?
With every passing day it is becoming apparent that Indian state has different yardsticks to treat terrorism of the Hindutva kind and that of the ‘Jihadi’ kind. It is not for nothing that more than four weeks after the bomb blasts in Goa – which saw deaths of two activists of Sanatan Sanstha, a emergent fanatic group cloaked in spiritual clothing – there has not been any significant move on part of the Goan government.
Continue reading Did Goa Government ‘Partially Finance’SS Terrorists?
Maoist Martyrdom vs. State Barbarism: Satya Sagar
This is a Guest Post by SATYA SAGAR.
Satya Sagar is a writer, journalist and videomaker based in New Delhi. sagarnama at gmail dot com
Is Maoism in India really the only response to poverty and lack of development? Is an armed rebellion the only way to change the way the Indian State operates? Will such a movement lead to a better future for underprivileged people in this country? Are other forms of mass democratic struggles an alternative option at all? These are the questions that haunted me as I sat through a public hearing on drought at Daltonganj in Jharkhand’s Palamu district late October this year. Questions that are not new and have been debated repeatedly within the various strands of the Indian left movement for several decades now, with no clear answers as yet.
While I mused, there was this young woman standing on the stage, slowly edging towards the mike, patiently waiting for her turn to speak. She need not have said anything at all. Her emaciated, frail frame, the harassed look on her face and the tears silently welling up in her sunken eyes had already conveyed to us this was another tale of unmitigated tragedy. Barely in her early twenties, she had been diagnosed with tuberculosis a few months ago. Her husband was already on his deathbed due to the same affliction as there was no public health center near her village. Treatment in town was obviously unaffordable. The drought raging in the district, reported to be the worst in over half a century, would end up wiping out her entire family she explained in a quiet, matter of fact tone.
As we sat there, the small ‘jury’ of three or four of us who had come from Delhi and Ranchi to listen to the woes of Palamu’s villagers felt much, much smaller. For her horror story was only one out of some 3000 similar ones of neglect, deprivation and outright desperation that tensely waited to be recalled that early winter afternoon.
Continue reading Maoist Martyrdom vs. State Barbarism: Satya Sagar
Resurgent Hindutva Terror: Will Goa Blast Investigations Go the Nanded Way?
PANAJI: Goa Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders like Manohar Parrikar have expressed support for the Sanatan Sanstha, the Hindu outfit blamed for the pre-Diwali blasts that killed two people on Wednesday.
Virendra Marathe, managing trustee of the Sanstha, named BJP state president Shripad Naik, leader of opposition Parrikar and party legislator Dayanand Mandrekar as politicians who stood by them in the aftermath of the blasts in Margao, 35 km from here.
Police say the blasts were engineered and executed by members of the Sanstha.
“The BJP MLAs supported us. They advised us to sue the media for defamation, for slandering the Sansthan. Dayanand Mandrekar, Parrikar and Shripad Naik supported us,” Marathe said at a press conference in Panaji.
Goa BJP leaders support us: Sanatan Sanstha
IANS 28 October 2009, 02:35pm IST ( Times of India, 28 th October 2009)
1.
How much time do the powers that be need to make any significant move when they unearth a conspiracy hatched by a self proclaimed ‘spiritual group’ to massacre dozens of innocent people supposedly to vindicate their weltanshauung and instigate a communal riot? Do they keep quibbling over minor details and let the real masterminds obfuscate their obvious links with the executioners? Do they keep talking in multiple voices and make themselves vulnerable over attacks by oppositional parties supposedly for their ‘dilly-dallying’?
It has been more than a fortnight that one witnessed a blast in Margao, where two people belonging to ‘Sanatan Sanstha’ carrying explosives in their scooter were killed and another bomb was detected – around twenty kilometres from the first spot – in a truck carrying 40 youth and a Narkasur for competition – which exposed a sinister conspiracy to instigate communal riots, but one is yet to see any concrete step on part of the government to nab the real terrorists and break their wider network.
Continue reading Resurgent Hindutva Terror: Will Goa Blast Investigations Go the Nanded Way?
What happened with the Bhubaneswar Rajdhani? Reflections on Dissent and Violence
From passengers’ eyewitness accounts, and those of the driver and assistant driver of the train (congratulations, for once, to Times of India and to Indian Express reporter Debabrata Mohanty for going beyond statements from police and other officials of the Indian state), this is what happened:
The train was running on schedule when the driver noticed logs on the tracks and a large mob of about 300 waving red flags, rushing towards the train. As the train screeched to a halt, stones were pelted (some passengers reported minor injuries from shattered window glass) and some men climbed into the driver’s cabin. Said the driver, K Ananth Rao and his assistant K G Rao to the ToI reporter, Sukumar Mahato, “They said they were holding up the train because the state had waged a war on tribals. We followed them and sat by the tracks.”
[The Indian Express story by Ravik Bhattacharjee and Kanchan Chakrabarty, unattributed to any source, claims “The Rajdhani Express was intercepted by a 1500 strong mob and its driver and his assistant were taken hostage.”]
The PCAPA (People’s Committee Against Police Atrocities) claimed
a) it was not hostage-taking, but a rail abarodha (a blockade) of the train for flouting the rail roko call, when an indefinite bandh against atrocities by the joint security forces in the district had begun since morning.
b) it was meant to draw attention to the arrest of Chhatradhar Mahato, the PCPA leader. One of the slogans sprawling in red letters across the side of the train says, in English, Chhatradhar Mahato is a good man.
Continue reading What happened with the Bhubaneswar Rajdhani? Reflections on Dissent and Violence
Data, and its relationship with Accountability and Transparency
Cross-posted from http://accountabilityindia.blogspot.com/2009/10/on-data-and-relationship-with.html
Notions of transparency and accountability have been evolving since late 1980s. It was advocated that people must be given information about budgets, especially details of heads where money was allocated and how it was spent. This would aid in enforcing transparency, accountability and participation. In the late 1990s, as cities developed, pressure on urban infrastructure increased and municipalities became unable to respond to people’s expectations owing to a variety of reasons. The prevalent view was that municipalities and local politicians are inefficient. Elected representatives were criticized for being corrupt and favouring their vote-banks by distributing city resources to them. It was also believed that use of discretionary powers perpetuates corruption. Contemporary accountability-transparency paradigm is aimed at making transparent to the public how and why discretion is exercised in different circumstances. This (presumably) will curb discretion as much as possible and tighten decision-making.
Publishing data in public domains as a way to enforce and enhance transparency and accountability has gained greater momentum in the current decade owing to the Right to Information (RTI) Act through which various kinds of information can be acquired. In this post, I am interested in exploring the concept of data to understand how accountability and transparency are reified by using data as a primary tool. With the help of examples, I will put forward the contention that what is presented as data is in fact produced through multiple histories and contexts. Organizing /interpreting data without an understanding of some of these histories can only enforce existing stereotypes and/or lead to oversight. Continue reading Data, and its relationship with Accountability and Transparency
Grootboom, Mayawati and Supreme Courts
Mrs Irene Grootboom lived with her and sister’s family in a shack, about 20 meters square in Wallacedene, an informal settlement without water, electricity, sewage or rubbish collection services in the western Cape Town, South Africa. Most of the residents had been on the waiting list for subsidised housing for years. Mrs Grootboom and a few hundred others decided to take matters into their hands in 1998 and occupied a vacant farm that was privately owned and had been earmarked for low-cost housing. They were evicted through a court order, their new-built homes were bulldozed and their possessions burned. When a High Court judgement granted them government shelter, the government appealed to the Constitutional Court. The Court had to interpret article 26 of the new South African Constitution, Republic of South Africa, which provides that a) ‘everyone has the right to have access to adequate housing’; b) ‘the state must take reasonable legislative and other measures (such as policy and programs) to achieve the progressive realisation of this right’; and c) ‘within its available resources. The court decided to test whether the Cape Metropolitan Council’s housing program was ‘reasonable’.
Continue reading Grootboom, Mayawati and Supreme Courts
नक्सलवाद के ख़िलाफ़ अभियान कि नाम पर
नक्सलवादियों के खिलाफ केंद्र का अभियान शुरू हो गया है. जनमत को अपने इस हिंसक अभियान के पक्ष में करने के लिए केंद्र ने अखबारों में पूरे पृष्ठ के विज्ञापन दिए जिनमें ‘माओवादियों’ या ‘नक्सलवादियों’ के हाथों मारे गए लोगों की तसवीरें थीं. इनसे शायद यह साबित करने की कोशिश की गयी थी कि माओवादी हत्यारे हैं, इसलिए उनके विरुद्ध चलने वाले अभियान में अगर राज्य की तरफ से हत्याएं होती हैं तो उन पर ऐतराज नहीं किया जाना चाहिए. इस विज्ञापन के फौरन बाद छतीसगढ़ में राज्य की कारवाई में साथ माओवादियों के मारे जाने का दावा किया गया. छत्तीसगढ़ के मानवाधिकार कार्यकर्ताओं ने इसके प्रमाण पेश कर दिए कि मारे गए लोग साधारण आदिवासी थे ,न कि माओवादी, जैसा पुलिस का दावा था. केन्द्रीय गृहमंत्री ने इसी के आस-पास छत्तीसगढ़ में यह कहा कि माओवादियों के विरुद्ध राजकीय अभियान में मानवाधिकार कार्यकर्ताओं को रास्ते में नहीं आने दिया जाएगा. वे यह कहने की कोशिश कर रहे थे कि माओवादियों के खिलाफ चल रही जंग में मानवाधिकार कार्यकर्ताओं ने अड़ंगा डाला है, अब यह बर्दाश्त नहीं किया जाएगा. इस नए संकल्प पर हंसा भी नहीं जाता. मानवाधिकार कार्यकर्ताओं की अगर इतनी ताकत होती तो बिनायक सेन को दो साल तक जेल में न रहना पड़ता.
छत्तीसगढ़ जैसी जगह में मानवाधिकार की बात करना अपनी जान को जोखिम में डालना है , यह हिमांशु से पूछिए जिनके बीस साल पुराने आश्रम को गैर-कानूनी तरीके से बुलडोजर लगा कर ढाह दिया गया.हिमांशु कोई माओवादी नहीं हैं, बल्कि वे तो माओवादियों के गुस्से के निशाने पर भी रहे हैं. फिर भी हिमांशु का न्याय-बोध डगमगाया नहीं और उन्होंने छत्तीससगढ़ में पुलिस और सलवा-जुडूम की कार्रवाई के बारे में हमेशा सच बताने की अपनी जिद बनाए रखी. हिमांशु इस धारणा के खिलाफ हैं कि छत्तीसगढ़ में सिर्फ दो पक्ष हैं, एक राज्य का और दूसरा माओवादियों का . वे वहां के आदिवासियों के अपने गावों में रहने , अपने जमीन पर खेती करने के हक की हिफाजत की लडाई में उनके साथ हैं. क्या यह सच नहीं और क्या इस पर बात नहीं की जानी चाहिए कि सलवा जुडूम के दौरान गाँव के गाँव जला दिए गए और आदिवासियों को मजबूर किया गया कि वे सरकारी शिविरों में रहें !क्या यह सवाल राज्य से नहीं पूछा जाना चाहिए कि तकरीबन साधे छः सौ गाँवों से विस्थापित कर दिए गए दो लाख से ऊपर आदिवासी कहाँ लापता हो गए क्योंकि वे शिविरों में तो नहीं हैं! अगर शिविरों में अमानवीय परिस्थियों में रहने को मजबूर पचास हजार आदिवासियों के अलावा बाकी की खोज करें तो क्या इस पर बात न की जाए कि क्या वे बगल के आंध्रप्रदेश में विस्थापितों का जीवन जी रहे हैं और जो वहां नहीं भाग पाए वे छत्तीसगढ़ के जंगलों में छिपे हुए हैं। जंगलों मे छिपे,या बेहतर हो हम कहें कि जंगलों में फंसे आदिवासी क्या माओवादियों की सेना के सदस्य मान लिए गए हैं!
Continue reading नक्सलवाद के ख़िलाफ़ अभियान कि नाम पर
Teacher-Veacher, Union-Shunion…Kya Bakwaas Hai Yaar?
(To translate for non-Hindi speakers, “teachers…unions…what nonsense is this, my friend?)
Terrible translation, but you get the gist. Those who have spent any time in Delhi University will immediately recognise the picture I paint now…imagine a long-haired, loose-jeaned youth of about twenty, casually lounging against a wall, sipping a banta (lemon soda) and occasionally scanning the horizon for that pretty girl from his business studies class…his friends will agree, “teacher-veacher union-shunion, kya bakwas hai yaar?” These are serious students lets assume, with dreams of MBAs post-graduation and eight-figure salaries. One of them might then say, “Mittal sir, he is the best, yaar; he never goes on strike, and his notes got us first divisions.”
I mean lets face it; as stereotypes of the teaching profession immortalised on screen we have the hot teacher (Main Hoon Na, and millions of others – usually involves a seemingly prim woman suddenly taking her glasses off, and shaking her bun open in slow motion), the radical teacher who inspires his students to question the system (Dead Poet’s Society), the truly inspiring teacher who turns students’ lives around (To Sir With Love) and the cool teacher, who is the students’ best friend (too many to recount). But the teacher who is an employee, joins a union and goes on strike?? Continue reading Teacher-Veacher, Union-Shunion…Kya Bakwaas Hai Yaar?
Do prisoners’ human rights stand suspended?
“What a state of society is that which knows of no better instrument for its own defense than the hangman, and which proclaims . . . its own brutality as eternal law? . . . Is there not a necessity for deeply reflecting upon an alteration of the system that breeds these crimes, instead of glorifying the hangman who executes a lot of criminals to make room only for the supply of new ones?”– Karl Marx, 1853
The letter sent by an undertrial Mukesh Kumar, as present lodged in Karnal Jail (Haryana) through his counsel to the Chief Justice of India makes depressing reading. The letter talks about the manner in which he was brutalised by the Jail staff for disobeying their orders. It is learnt that the Jail wardens compelled him to clean the toilets calling him names and ‘reminding’ him of his ‘caste profession’. His refusal to continue the dehumanising work led to his public thrashing and tonsuring/shaving of his head and moustache.
According to the administration, Mukesh Kumar is one of those persons who were arrested from different parts of Haryana from April to June 2009 as part of the state campaign ‘to curb Maoist activity’. Continue reading Do prisoners’ human rights stand suspended?
On Austerity
In the 1990s, when I first understood economics, austerity was a word that scared me. It represented a paradigm that I associated with the story of Zambia in the late 1980s. Zambia had one of the more functional public health systems in Africa in the late 70s and early 80s. It then became IMF’s test case for user fees in health care and the rest of the story is familiar one of user fees, loss of access and a systemic worsening of care in an already incredibly poor country. “Austerity” was [and is] in economics of a certain tune, not about economy class travel and eliminating excess photocopying. It was about tightening state expenditure, usually to pay off large scale debts. It was part of Structural Adjustment and the attack on “big” African government, part of the shock transitions of Eastern Europe.
In one of its shades, then, austerity is the slow dismantling of the welfare state. It is not the stance — as the UPA would have you believe — that one takes in some notion of deference to the reality of poverty, it is the cause of some of that poverty in the first place. Every time one government or any other calls for “austerity drives” of any kind, the shadow of this austerity still haunts them. The austerity that causes poverty is also rooted within these calls, though more quietly.
Engaging Nepal: some difficult questions
India can continue to let its suspicion of the Maoists be the over-riding objective of its Nepal policy or seek to play a pro-active role in engineering the kind of consensus it has done since 2005.
First published in The Hindu yesterday.
Indian Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao arrives in Kathmandu on her maiden visit today, at a time when Nepal is grappling with its most serious and prolonged political crisis since the peace process began. India has to make certain difficult policy choices, reconcile the contradictions between its stated aims and actions, determine whether it remains committed to the process it helped facilitate, and use its leverage accordingly.
The fragile Madhav Nepal-led ruling coalition faces a severe crisis of legitimacy and a belligerent Maoist opposition. The Maoists have boycotted the legislature-parliament, paralysing government business to the extent that the budget has not yet been passed. They have demanded a house discussion on President Ram Baran Yadav’s “unconstitutional action” over-riding the Maoist government’s decision to sack the then Army Chief General Rukmangad Katawal in early May — a demand rejected by the other parties in government who see no wrong in what the President did. The Maoists have also launched a street movement, with the slogan of instituting “civilian supremacy” and a “Maoist-led national government.” Continue reading Engaging Nepal: some difficult questions
Magistrate Tamang, a hero: Vasudha Nagaraj
By VASUDHA NAGARAJ via FeministsIndia List
You can download here the report by Magistrate Tamang.
I cannot resist but recount this account of exemplary courage and commitment of a Magistrate working in the Metropolitan Courts of Ahmedabad. He is none other than Magistrate Tamang who has been in the news for the past few days.
Brief facts: We all know about the encounter of Ishrat Jehan and three others in the outskirts of the city of Ahmedabad which took place in June, 2004. Soon after the encounter there were enquiries by human rights groups which declared that it was a cold blooded killing and not an encounter. To counter the demands the Crime Branch ordered a Magistrate to enquire into the matter. It has been reported that no Magistrate was willing to stick his neck into this issue. Finally on 12 August, 2009 the Chief Metropolitan Magistrate (CMM) ordered Magistrate Tamang to conduct the inquiry. The latter was supposed to conduct this inquiry under S 176 CrPC. This is the section of law in which a Magistrate is empowered to hold an inquiry into the cause of death whenever a person dies while in police custody or when it is a death in doubtful circumstances. Generally, under this section of law, Magistrates record dying declarations of women who are dying and lying in the hospitals.
Yashpal Committee and The Future of Ideas:
The Yash Pal report argues for autonomy in higher education, both from the state and from private commercial interests.
It is only appropriate that the report of the Yash Pal Committee on higher education is being discussed by the Central Advisory Board On education ( CABE) before being implemented. The Yash Pal Committee makes a very bold appeal for the revival of the state universities and asks the planners to bridge the huge gap that exists between them and the centrally created universities. One can only hope that the state ministers are not daunted by the report’s call to grant real and substantive autonomy to the centres of higher learning. Such autonomy would effectively mean leaving educational matters to academics and cessation of interference by the ruling party or ideology of the day, not only in matters like selection of vice-chancellors and faculty but also curriculum and syllabi.
Continue reading Yashpal Committee and The Future of Ideas:
Jailing Journalists: Pradeep Jeganathan
This is a guest post by PRADEEP JEGANATHAN from Colombo.
The sentencing of J.S. Tissainayagam is deeply distressing.
While I’m neither a attorney, nor conversant with the details of the evidence presented by the prosecution, nor the text of the judgment delivered — and so can not comment on those areas, it seems clear that this judgment and sentence was only possible given the Prevention of Terrorism Act, of 1979. Two features stand out, given the PTA– the narrow bounds allowed for freedom of expression, on certain themes, and the admissibility of a ‘confession’ as ‘evidence,’ which is not allowable under the penal code. Taken together they make for a curtailing of freedom which is telling. There is an appeal pending, I understand, and there may be a possibility of a pardon, if that process is exhausted to no avail.
Notes from a Metro (Pun Unintentionally Intentional)
Enter Delhi: The boy was about 13, perhaps less. He was riding a bike which was about three times his size. He swerved between the vehicles on the road at Karol Bagh, very much in the wrong in terms of which side of the road he ought to be on, and therefore also in terms of the traffic rules and regulations. But he could not care. I looked at him and wondered,
Dilli dilwalon ki hai – Delhi is a city of the large-hearted, of the daring, the bold and the courageous.
A few days later, one of the auto drivers remarked to me during a journey,
Kehte hai dilli dilwalon ki hoti hai. Lekin yeh jhoot hai. Sabhi log yahan paise ke peeche pade rehte hai aur har koi aapko lootne ki koshish karna chahta hai – It is a saying that Delhi is a city of the large-hearted. But this is false. Everyone here is behind money, and each person is out to loot/cheat you.
Continue reading Notes from a Metro (Pun Unintentionally Intentional)
The (‘Quotation’) Gangs of Kerala
The media in Kerala is in a tizzy these days over ‘quotation’ gangs and their influence on everyday life. Like evil spirits dancing upon the bodies of fallen heroes in abandoned epic battle-fields, ‘quotation gangs’, it seems, now dance upon the dead political heroism of the Malayalees. Suddenly, the media finds, they are everywhere, settling every kind of dispute. The institutions of law and order are turning, slowly, into adjuncts or versions of ‘quotation gangs’. The recent murder of the real-estate businessman Paul Muthoot, who was apparently traveling with two of the most notorious ‘quotation gang’ leaders in Kerala, has brought matters to a head. The papers are clogged these days with advertisements feeding Onam-time consumer-frenzy and news of the Paul Muthoot murder and they don’t see any connections between the two.
Expert Committee on Metadata and Data Standards for Personal Identification
There has been considerable debate on the politics of the Unique Identification. It is claimed that the ID card will not be a citizenship card, and the government expert committee has just released a document with the standards for identification. It would be good if we could have some people who could interpret this data for us and what it means for people concerned with the long term impact of the UID
Draft Person ID Codification
http://egovstandards.gov.in/public-review/egscontent.2008-09-04.3708808455/at_download/file
Generic Data Elements-
Ai Weiwei’s (Chinese Artist) Statement: Guest Post from Monica Narula
Dear All,
I would like to share with all Kafila readers something that my friend Monica Narula posted recently on the Reader List about the intimidation that the well known Chinese contemporary artist, Ai Weiwei has faced, in connection with his support for the currently detained dissident rights activist Tan Zuoren in Chengdu. This is an introduction to Ai Weiwei in the current context and a text of his recent statement released in the context of the harrassment (including beatings by police) that he has had to go through. Please read and share widely.
best
Shuddha
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Avant-garde artist Ai Weiwei, one of China’s foremost public intellectuals, was recently detained and beaten by police when he attempted to testify at the show trial of dissident Tan Zuoren in Chengdu. Harassment and threats are connected, in part, to his “Names Project,” a performative intervention which aims to compile, publish, disseminate, and memorialize the names of the thousands of children who were crushed to death en mass in their “crumbling tofu construction” schools (the rotten fruits of official corruption and kickbacks) during the May 12, 2008 Wenchuan Earthquake, while neighboring government buildings stood intact. The State has strong- armed bereaved parents into silence, refused to investigate government corruption, and barred the victims’ names from public release. Ai Weiwei’s vocal defiance has led to his censorship, intimidation, threats and now arrest and beating.
Having spent the first 2 decades of his life with his father, the revolutionary poet Ai Qing, in a cadre labor reform camp for errant intellectuals, Ai Weiwei understands that no one in China, no matter how “high profile” is ever “safe. Thus, he has chosen to push the State as far as he can in an attempt to reclaim the public sphere for critical discourse, and champion the cause of free speech and genuine citizen and human rights in China. As such, he has willingly put himself in a great deal of danger. His recent statement merits reposting. I hope that you will pass this on and share it with others who believe in the need to nurture and support critical public intellectuals, especially in places like China, where there are so few
such clarion and courageous voices.
Ai Weiwei’s Statement
“Watch out! Have you prepared yourself?” —
Ai Weiwei: “I am ready. Or, perhaps I should say that there is nothing to prepare, no way to prepare myself. A person–this is all of me–is something that can be received by others. I offer up all of myself. When the time comes when it is necessary, I will not hesitate, I won’t be ambiguous about it. If there is anything that I am reluctant to leave behind it is the wondrous miracle that life has brought me. And that miracles are that every one of us is the same, that people are equal in this game, as well as the fantasies that come along with playing it, and our freedom. I regard every kind of intimidation, from any kind of ‘authority or power’ [sic – the character is for quanli as in ‘rights’, but from the context this appears to be a typo, perhaps?], as a threat to human dignity, rationality and reason–a threat to the very possibility of opposition. I will learn to face and confront this.”
Land and Human Rights
There are few more contentious and complex problems in India than those dealing with land and land rights. Rather than just focus on a single issue, a continuum of rights has to be established regarding land, especially in areas of access and reforms, laws and enforcement, use planning and management, administration and information, and its cross-cutting issues. The new and existing initiatives on land should be guided by the core values of pro-poor, conflict resolution, democratic governance, equity, and justice, as well as gender sensitiveness. Although land policy development is taking place, it generally lacks a human rights framework. Land is not simply a resource for one human right. While some rights have been recently established in the legal framework (like work, education, food), they all can be adversely affected by access to land, and the legal implications of it for a broad range of human rights is obvious. The Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation and Resettlement Bills should also be assessed on the basis of several international principles, interpretive documents and legal frameworks. Continue reading Land and Human Rights
A Month and a Half after Aila: Jadavpur Academics
This is guest post sent by DEEPTANIL RAY from Jadavpur University
Seven weeks after the cyclone Aila hit West Bengal, the situation in the Sunderbans remains alarming. Some of us, teachers, research scholars and students at JU, without any affiliation tags, have tried over the last month and are still trying to reach out to some of the remote areas with materials and distribute them first hand, though our efforts are feeble and insignificant compared to the magnitude of the crisis. Last weekend, we had gone to one of the remotest villages of the Hingalgunj island in the Sunderbans— with the forests on one side, and the Bangladesh border on the other.
As most of you know, Hingalgunj is a Sundarban island on the south-eastern tip of the North 24 Parganas District of West Bengal, with the Sundarban Tiger Reserve Forest on one side, and a small river separating this country from Bangladesh on the other. It is one of the block areas to suffer most from Aila— with over 28,000 families and more than 1,26,000 people affected, according to modest government reports.
Continue reading A Month and a Half after Aila: Jadavpur Academics
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 