Politics

Gujarat, numbers

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The vagaries of the first-past-the-poll system in India make sure that we often over- or under-estimate the meaning of election results going strictly by who’s won how many seats. But if you go by factors such as vote share and seat-by-seat break-up, you will see the complexity of any election result. Once the results are out, the psephologist disappears. But that’s when he should be there.

Given below is a break-up of 33 of Gujarat’s constituencies, as circulated by an activist. Makes for interesting observations. Continue reading Gujarat, numbers →

Government, Law, Politics

Each day Binayak Sen spends in jail is one day less for democracy in India

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ON DECEMBER 10 this year, the day internationally observed as Human Rights Day, the Supreme Court of India denied bail to the veteran rights activist, Dr Binayak Sen, incarcerated since May in Raipur jail under the Chhattisgarh Public Security Act and the Unlawful Activities Prevention Act. For those present, the 45-minute-long hearing was a horrible experience. We heard the prosecution claim that Dr Sen was part of the dreaded Maoist formation, and that giving him his freedom would mean setting him loose to spread subversion against the State. We saw, to our shock, how no verification was made of the prosecution’s claims, even as the government lawyer presented his summary of the contents of Dr Sen’s computer in the vilest terms, telling the court it contained letters describing how Dr Sen had helped organise an arms training camp at Nagpur. Defence counsel Rajeev Dhawan pointed out that the prosecution was distorting the letter’s contents, that Dr Sen had been in Nagpur in the course of a fact-finding mission into last year’s lynching of a Dalit family at Kherlanji and that he had nothing to do with any underground training. But the court felt that Dhawan’s arguments were matters to be looked into by the trial court, and it was satisfied that there was enough reason to deny Dr Sen bail.

Continue reading Each day Binayak Sen spends in jail is one day less for democracy in India →

Metropolis, Politics

Paste A Poster, Go To Jail

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The recent bill aptly titled ‘Delhi Prevention of Property Defacement Act 2007’ introduced in the Delhi assembly makes depressing reading. According to its provisions a mere act of putting posters on the walls or writing anything with chalk. paint or any other material can make you liable for a punishment of one year in jail. Additionally you can be asked to pay a fine of Rs.50,000.

The proposed act is said to be an improvement in the earlier act in operation in the state which was considered lenient. With this act the state seems to have corrected its mistake and declared it a ‘cognisable offence’. Continue reading Paste A Poster, Go To Jail →

Government, Law, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Human rights and public health are now the gravest threats to people’s safety

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Excerpts from Saikat Datta on the doctored case against Binayak Sen.

What is the basis of the Chhattisgarh police’s case against Dr Sen? The chargesheet against him says he is a Naxalite sympathiser. This conclusion was reached after his name came up when the police recovered three letters from suspected Maoist Piyush Guha, arrested at the Raipur railway station. These were written to Guha by another alleged Maoist, Narayan Sanyal, presently lodged in Raipur Jail. The police claim Guha, under custodial interrogation, confessed that Dr Sen acted as courier.

Dr Sen did meet Sanyal in jail on several occasions. But each time it was with due permission from the jail superintendent and a body search before and after his meetings. And even if we were to accept that Dr Sen smuggled the letters out, what exactly was “incriminating” in them? One letter deals with farmer-related issues, the letter writer’s health and so on. In another note, Sanyal is discussing issues relating to his case and the approach his lawyer has taken in court. In yet another, he complains of there being “no
magazines” to read in jail and terrible conditions in prison.

Activist-lawyers like Prashant Bhushan see the framing of Dr Sen on such flimsy evidence as “a message that clearly states that people must shut their eyes to violations of human rights of the marginalised or risk arrest”.

Continue reading Human rights and public health are now the gravest threats to people’s safety →

Government, Law

It’s a new year, and Binayak Sen is still in prison

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Binayak Sen’s appeal to the Supreme Court for bail was dismissed on December 10, 2007 (in one of those meaningless ironies, December 10th is of course, International Human Rights Day).

A doctor working in Chhattisgarh, Binayak was arrested on May 14th 2007. His crime? He visited and treated an ailing prisoner in Raipur Central Jail with the permission of the jail authorities. The prisoner is a Naxalite. So Dr Sen is assumed to be a terrorist conspiring to overthrow the state, so dangerous that he cannot be given bail.

Continue reading It’s a new year, and Binayak Sen is still in prison →

Debates, Left watch, Politics, Violence/Conflict

Three Responses to Prabhat Patnaik – Praful Bidwai, Dilip Simeon, Manash Bhattacharjee

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[As part of the ongoing post-Nandigram debate, we publish below three more responses to Prabhat Patnaik’s earlier attack on non-CPM Left intellectuals. We publish them here for record and general interest and do not necessarily endorse all the comments. – Admin]

[Praful Bidwai’s piece was first published in Mathrubhoomi magazine. It was forwarded to us by way of Manju Menon with the following interesting prefatory comment:

“The West Bengal Coastal Zone Management Authority (WBCZMA) that recommended the change in status of Nayachar from CRZ I to CRZ III so that the chemical hub can be located here has as one of its members Smt Tamalika Panda Seth, the Haldia Municipality Chairperson. She is the wife of CPM MP Laxman Seth (“who was largely held responsible for the spiralling violence in Nandigram.”). She was made member of the
Authority when it was reconstituted in March 2005. She was elected as Chairperson when the CPM retained its power in Haldia in the 2007 civic polls.

The state Cabinet had approved the Nayachar site in its August 17 meeting. After this, it was only a matter of time before it prevailed over the WBCZMA! No amount of ‘scientific data’ can possibly stop the change of status of Nayachar from CRZ I to III.

‘Another case of regulatory capture’?”]

THE LEFT NEEDS RETHINKING, NOT ABJECT APOLOGIA

By Praful Bidwai

Prabhat Patnaik has done what no other intellectual allied to West Bengal’s Left Front has even attempted after Nandigram: namely, try to turn the tables on Left-leaning critics of the CPM by gratuitously attacking them for their ” messianic moralism” and their presumed
“disdain” for “the messy world of politics”.

His agenda goes well beyond defending the CPM or apologising for one of the most shameful episodes in the Indian Left’s history, involving the killing of peasants, devastation of thousands of livelihoods, sexual violence, and gross abuse of state power. It is to declare all criticism of the CPM’s policies and actions illegitimate and
misconceived, however sympathetic or inspired by radical ideas it might be.

The impact of Patnaik’s article will be to prevent rethinking within the CPM, which could produce course correction. Ironically for Patnaik, it will only strengthen the party’s neoliberal orientation and the “cult of development” that neoliberalism spawns, which he
rails against.

Worse, it will harden the West Bengal CPM’s readiness to brutalise peasants and workers (in whose name it speaks) in the interests of the rich and powerful, like the Tatas, Jindals, and the Salim group which is a front for Indonesia’s super-corrupt Suharto family.

Continue reading Three Responses to Prabhat Patnaik – Praful Bidwai, Dilip Simeon, Manash Bhattacharjee →

Debates, Ecology/Environment

Looking forward looking back

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While the Bali conference is finally over, work on its roadmap is only just begun. Below, am pasting a summary of Bali prepared by the Earth Negotiations Bulletin. The full report can be found on their website: http://www.iisd.ca

A BRIEF ANALYSIS OF COP 13 & COP/MOP 3

BALI: ISLAND OF THE GODS AND BREAKTHROUGHS?

You should not be impelled to act for selfish reasons, nor should you be attached to inaction. (Bhagavad Gita. 2.47)

Marking the culmination of a year of unprecedented high-level political, media and public attention to climate change science and policy, the Bali Climate Change Conference produced a two-year “roadmap” that provides a vision, an outline destination, and negotiating tracks for all countries to respond to the climate challenge with the urgency that is now fixed in the public mind in the wake of the headline findings of the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. The outline destination is an effective political response that matches both the IPCC science and the ultimate objective of the Convention; it was never intended that the Bali Conference would focus on precise targets. Instead, the divergent parties and groups who drive the climate regime process launched a negotiating framework with “building blocks” that may help to square a number of circles, notably the need to reconcile local and immediate self-interest with the need to pursue action collectively in the common and long-term interests of people and planet. The informal dialogue over the past two years has now been transformed into a platform for the engagement of parties from the entire development spectrum, including the United States and developing countries.

Continue reading Looking forward looking back →

Culture, Images

A Circus, Some Laughter, A Film Festival

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I would be very reluctant to call the recently – concluded Twelfth International Film Festival of Kerala (7-14 December) a ‘circus’, but well. When the CPM in Kerala wears Caesar-like accoutrements, one may have to call it just that! At the press conference organized a few days before the festival – actually the day on which Buddhadev admitted to his ‘mistake’ — M A Baby, CPM intellectual and Minister, Cultural Affairs, Government of Kerala spoke at length about how Lenin and other worthies of the Soviet Union had endorsed cinema as a medium to ‘educate and entertain’ the masses. However when he announced the name of the opening film after many such lofty words, ripples of laughter filled the hall.

hana makhmalbaf with baby

The opening film was Hana Makhmalbaf’s ‘Buddha Collapsed out of Shame’! Of course, the CPM intellectuals could not laugh; nor could they snap at back-benchers who asked whether it wasn’t ‘Buddhadev Collapsed out of Shame’. Thus it was clear, that despite the circuses, the spectre of the people continues to haunt the CPM, to borrow Partho Sarathi Ray’s words.

Continue reading A Circus, Some Laughter, A Film Festival →

Centre watch, Debates, Genders, Law, Politics

Monobina Gupta on Inconvenient Women

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Recently Kiran Bedi, the country’s first woman police officer, sought voluntary retirement after being in the eye of a storm following her allegations of gender discrimination in the police force. Bedi, who had transformed Tihar jail from filthy dungeons to a clean and livable place and has had an outstanding career, was superseded for the post of Delhi’s police commissioner. Because she was a woman.

Women in civil service have come up against sexism time and again. Madhu Bhaduri, who joined the Indian Foreign Service (IFS) in 1968, recalls how women IFS officers launched their first protest against blatant gender discrimination in this elite branch of service, which was at that time wrapped up in layers of  discriminatory codes.

Here is an account of how it all started…

Continue reading Monobina Gupta on Inconvenient Women →

Culture, Everyday Life, Genders, Sex

Charu Gupta on Om Shanti Om and Saawariya

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Like many other lovers of Bollywood cinema, I too was caught up since October this year in the countdown to the battle of all battles, with the release of Om Shanti Om (OSO) and Saawariya on 9 November 2007. Reams have been written, debated and analysed on the two films in newspapers, television networks, and everyday discussions. They have been depicted as films catering to very different sensibilities, and representing vastly diverse forms. The verdict seems to have declared both as average films, though OSO seems to be faring better than Saawariya at the box office. I enjoyed the first half of OSO particularly and thought Saawariya as a film with great form, but not much content. 

However, as a fan of Bollywood popular cinema, what struck me most was one striking similarity between the two films. I thought both the films offered great visual pleasure and feast for the female spectators, where the spectacular and stylish nude male bodies and images of both Ranbir Raj Kapoor and Shahrukh Khan, though very different from each other, were the prime objects of desire and erotic spectacle. Both OSO and Saawariya have urban heroes, whose bodies are produced and carved, rooted in providing a voyeuristic visual treat especially to most straight women and gay men. The identity of both the heroes in these films in centrally tied to the consumption of their nude bodies by the viewer. The films in some senses signify the coming of age of a new genre of Bollywood cinema, where it is not so much the female body but the male body which circulates and is on display, offering a sexualised imaginative anatomy. They also signify that the language of discourse of Hindi films has undergone a dramatic post modernist change in its conception of desire, where most of it is conducted not through the soul but through the body. There is no central heart, but a decentring of emotions at play here. In the recent past too, nude male bodies of Hrithik Roshan and Salman Khan have been offered to the viewer. It perhaps is also a reflection of the fact that more and more women are crowding the cinema halls and form at times the major chunk of spectatorship, and they are a vital part of the cinematic experience. 

Continue reading Charu Gupta on Om Shanti Om and Saawariya →

Debates, Left watch, Politics

Fear of the Unfamiliar: Responding to Patnaik – Partho Sarathi Ray

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[Partho Sarathi Ray writes this response to Prabhat Patnaik. It was first published in Sanhati.]

A spectre is haunting the CPI(M)- the spectre of the People. All the powers of the old Left (or to borrow their term, the “organized Left”) have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee and Prakash Karat, Prabhat Patnaik and N. Ram, party cadres and state police.

The first step in the process of exorcism is delegitimization. The resistance of the people of Singur and Nandigram has long been attempted to be delegitimized by attributing it to the so-called unholy alliance of the Trinamool Congress, Jamaat and the Maoists. That is familiar terrain, to
brand all opposition as the handiwork of right wing or ultra Left forces, and hence deny it’s political legitimacy. However, what was unfamiliar for the CPI(M) was “so many intellectuals suddenly turn(ing) against the Party with such amazing fury on this issue”. That tens of thousands of common people would accompany these intellectuals, many of them long time fellow-travellers and supporters of the Left Front, out on the streets in a spontaneous show of outrage and protest was something totally unfamiliar to the CPI(M), which has converted “the people” into a fetish. And, Prabhat
Patnaik’s essay seems to have been born out of a fear of this unfamiliar.

Continue reading Fear of the Unfamiliar: Responding to Patnaik – Partho Sarathi Ray →

Bad ideas, Debates, Left watch, Politics

But Prabhat Patnaik is an Honourable Man

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[This is my response to the article by Prabhat Patnaik circulating over on the Net. His original article can be read at the end of this response. We have reproduced it in full. – AN]

This piece could be read as a letter addressed to one of my former, esteemed, ideologue-theoreticians. As young students in the 1970s and 1980s, we often went to listen, starry-eyed, to this soft-spoken theorist expound on what we thought were complex issues of our times and come back mesmerized. Yes, Prof Prabhat Patnaik (PP) was one of our idols. Today he fell and smashed himself. And then something strange happened: the broken pieces rearranged themselves to reveal a frightful other face – the face of comrade stalin.

Since Patnaik has referred to all critics of the CPM as “anti-Left intellectuals”, and has also specifically referred to the letter signed by some of us (including me), I think it would not be wrong to assume that the entire article is also addressed, among thousands of others, to me (though I may be pardoned for assuming that a nacheez like me should even exist on his radar!). Since all those who had signed the statement may have their own responses to PP – and some might not legitimately wish to stoop to the level this once-saintly figure has – I must speak for myself here.

Sometime ago, former West Bengal finance minister and marxist economist Ashok Mitra had written a piece on the happenings in Nandigram. It appeared in Ananda Bazar Patrika and was subsequently translated into English and widely circulated. In that piece, Mitra had suggested “prominent economist and party comrade of the stature of Prabhat Patnaik is hounded” by the party leadership in Alimuddin Street. In a way, we sort of knew it; rather, we hoped it would be true. An intellectual like Prof Patnaik cannot possibly be a cog in the stalinist machine, even though he may have stepped in to sign dubious statements not so long ago. We had assumed that given the political history of stalinist Marxism with intellectuals who were maligned, denigrated, humiliated and finally put before the firing squad, Patnaik had made his ‘existential choice’ a la Georg Lukacs. Lukacs, one of the most brilliant philosophical minds, decided to remain in the ranks (the ‘camp of the people’, in Patnaik’s words) and become the voice of stalinism for decades thereafter. Need we recall the whole list of such people – intellectuals – who were thus repeatedly destroyed? And do we need to tell you that so far only fascism or Nazism has been able to compete with the communist record.

Continue reading But Prabhat Patnaik is an Honourable Man →

Capitalism, Countryside, Debates

Whose woods these are….

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…. I think I know?

If the latest developments at the Bali Summit are anything to go by -the answer to this question is going to become very contentious in the coming years. Armed with a mandate to cut, capture, and squester carbon; Governments, International Organisations, and private companies have been working hard at arriving at a means to bring forests under the carbon market – and possibly use carbon in forests as a tradable commodity. What this means for the future of our forests is uncertain.

There are several components that can be considered under the Forests and REDD – Reduction of emissions from Deforestation and Degraded Land in developing countries. Some of the big ones are afforestation programmes, deforestation reduction programmes, carbon capture and squestering (CCS), the rights on indigenous peoples and forest dwellers, the Clean Development Mechanism and conservation. Each carries with it an entire lexicon and phrase-ology of its own.

I mentioned in previous posts, it is one of the most interesting issues at the conference – and one I hope to deal with at length in my article for Frontline – which I shall have to work on very soon. In the meantime, jus to get interested readers up-to-speed, am appending to articles that I have written for the The Hindu. They should provide the briefest of introductions. Note that the articles correspond to standards of objectivity required in “Hard News” reportage – Shall write an opinion piece for Kafila soon. In the meantime, I would urge careful readers to read against, for, below, above and around the text.

Continue reading Whose woods these are…. →

Capitalism, Government

REDD Salam

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A week ago, I had promised a short post on the Forest Issue. As promised, here it is:

Nusa Dua: As the UNFCCC World Climate Change Conference crossed the 10,000 attendee mark , delegates braced themselves for what could be one most difficult and divisive issues of what could constitute “The Bali Breakthrough.” “The working group on Reduction of Emissions by Deforestation (and Degradation) in Developing Countries (REDD) was constituted and has begun work today,” stated UNFCCC Executive Secretary Yvo de Boer in his daily press briefing at the World Climate Change Summit today. The working group is tasked with arriving at a mechanism to incorporate deforestation reduction into the framework of the Kyoto Protocol and the carbon market.

Continue reading REDD Salam →

Culture, Genders

Beaten — By a Woman!

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[Below is a chapter from my translation of N P Muhammed’s wonderful retelling of folk tales about Malabar’s best-loved folk hero and one of the earliest songsters of the Mappillapattu song tradition of Malabar, Kunhaayan Musaliar. The book, Kunhaayante Kusritikal (Kunhaayan’s Capers), which won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi’s award for the best children’s writing in 1973, is almost forgotten now. In the stories of the Mappila Muslim community of north Kerala, Kunhaayan figures as the quintessential humble-born person who grows in stature through his wit and quick thinking, rising to eminence in royal courts of late 17th- early 18th century Malabar. In these times in which the Mappila traditions of Malabar are clearly under threat, I thought that it was necessary to reclaim this figure for our children and ourselves – and translating NP’s sensitive rendering of the tales, which reverberates with the folk wisdom of the Mappilas of Malabar, seemed the best way to do it. The best thing about Kunhaayan, who impresses all of Malabar, is that he is no saint. Thus he does get puffed up a bit with all the glory, and has to be brought down a peg or two – it is his young wife who fells him, finally. This chapter is about how she does it!]

There was time when she used to brim with joy, proud to be introduced as ‘Kunhaayan’s wife’.

Not anymore.

Tears welled up in Aisakutty’s eyes.

Continue reading Beaten — By a Woman! →

Capitalism, Ecology/Environment, Law

The Shotgun and the Sniper

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“The time for silver bullets has passed,” proclaimed Marc Stewart, “What we need is a Shotgun!” In his bright Bali shirt, Nike sneakers and Investment Banker haircut, Mr Stewart is the firm-handshaking, fist pumping, ever effusive all-American co-founder of Ecosecurities, a firm that specialises in developing and marketing carbon trading projects under the Clean Development Mechanism – CDM – of the Kyoto Protocol. With emission reductions under Kyoto less than a month away, Mr Stewart’s firm is looking to extend its market capitalisation to far beyond its existing 40 million USD. The Ecosecurity model functions in the following way – they find and help develop projects in the developing world that is eligible for credit credits under the CDM, and then sell the credits to firms in EU, and across the world, that are looking to meet their Kyoto targets by offsetting excess emissions against carbon credits. Firms like Ecosecurities pushed the carbon market to 30 billion dollars in 2006; and if Annex 1 agrees to further emission cuts (25-40 per cent below 1992 by 2020) the potential size of the market is open to the most optimistic hyperbole.

The “Shotgun Approach” suggested by Stewart was his response to the fact Continue reading The Shotgun and the Sniper →

Culture, Violence/Conflict

Aswatthamma Lives – Radha R.

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[We are pleased to present this guest piece by Radha R, a poet and artist, who reflects on violence and other matters.]

1985 :
We were standing at the Bakery junction just behind the campus where the better -off amongst the designer students came alone or in select groups to gorge on buns at teatime… Freshly baked and still warm and soft, the baker slit them open swiftly and expertly with an extra sharp long thin knife roughly slapping in a whole 50 grams of yellow butter that dripped down the sides …
Post the curfew there was no one now standing at the junction .In this somewhat upmarket quarter there was little outward sign of that nightmare of violence…

“Do you know how they do it?” He whispered “With knives…”
He made a quick gesture of measurement with his hands… “This long…”
“The pillion rider behind the scooterist slashes open the sides of bystanders on the road who often do not realize as they run as to how badly wounded they are… Till it is too late… The sharp edge of the knife blade is lined with calmpose, you see…To numb”

Continue reading Aswatthamma Lives – Radha R. →

Culture, Debates, Government, Identities, Politics, Right watch, Violence/Conflict

6th of December 1992 on 6th of December 2007

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What were you doing on December 6, 1992?

We remember with a great sadness that winter’s day on which the unthinkable came to pass…

Continue reading 6th of December 1992 on 6th of December 2007 →

Culture, Everyday Life, Identities, Politics, Violence/Conflict

That day 15 years ago

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Read Asad Mustafa on his memories of the day the Babri Masjid was demolished.

In many ways it is just like any other Lucknow winter day. Sun has come up and my mother is watching her pickles dry on the roof. Our neighbor, Shukla-ji’s daughter has come for a lazy winterBabri Masjid afternoon conversation with my mother and is oiling her hair. I am struggling with unsolved papers from previous years’ JEE tests. This year’s JEE is going to be my first big test in the real world.

Debates, Ecology/Environment

Kafila makes Impact at International Conference!

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In perhaps a first ever “Impact Kafila” story; the event organisers at the UNFCCC Climate Change Summit at Bali 07, seem to have changed their lunch plan. Two days ago, Kafila carried an exclusive investigative breaking news type piece on how millions of rupiahs were being wasted on freeloaders who attended lunch and refreshments and slipped away before the sessions began. Our fearless reporter posed as a freeloader and purloined one free lunch, some prawn cocktails and a can of Dr Peppers Ginger Ale (it tasted pretty awful, but I could not resist the attractive packaging) before unceremoniously leaving the premises and attending a rival side session. However, the event I attended this afternoon, had no large tables covered with starched white tablecloths, no silverware polished to a dull glow, no mile long queue of people from all over the conference – in fact, no free lunch. Continue reading Kafila makes Impact at International Conference! →

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