Opinions and Editorials

‘Supreme leader’ is fascist – By Ram Puniyani (Jun 26, 2012, Tehelka)

In the last few months, Narendra Modi has been much in news for his spectacular rise in BJP hierarchy and his projection as the BJP nominee for the future prime minister. On many a political debate on TV or other forum, when such charges are labelled, pat comes the reply: What about the Congress – the anti Sikh pogrom of 1984? It’s at the level of political process that these carnages, Gujarat and Delhi cannot be equated and have totally different politics behind them. There are carnages which are a part of deeper political processes, and there are other carnages which are accidental, revengeful and ‘one-off’ affairs. The Delhi massacre falls in the second category. On 30 January 1984, Indira Gandhi was walking in her compound when, right there, her Sikh bodyguards gunned her down. Indira Gandhi had been advised to remove Sikh guards in the wake of operation Blue Star. Mrs Gandhi refused, rhetorically asking: Are we not secular? After her murder, the atmosphere in Delhi got charged, the newly-sworn-in Prime Minister was glum, while the massacre started outside. Rajiv Gandhi at this point said that infamous sentence, ‘When a big tree falls, the earth shakes’. This was signal enough for the rioters, elements from the Congress, those shaken by Indira’s murder, and lumpens to carry on with the job. Rajiv Gandhi visited the riot-hit areas on the third day, the military was called and peace came in. There was no political agenda. Sikh politics, Akali politics kept going on its own steam. It was a sort of political insanity, momentary and tragic, painful and horrifying, which tormented the Sikh community. A political accident, so to say.

Gujarat is a different cup of tea. From the decade of 1990s, with a BJP government coming to power, all the wings of RSS combine, VHP, Bajrang Dal and their patriarch RSS came to full-scale unrestrained activity. RSS chief Rajendra Singh declared that Gujarat is the ‘Laboratory of Hindu Rashtra’. Different villages of Gujarat started putting up hoardings outside their villages. ‘Welcome to so-and-so village of Hindu Rashtra’. Adivasi areas started seeing the intimidation of Christians; Muslim youth were attacked for inter-religious marriages. BJP gradually started losing their grip on the electoral arena and in the forthcoming 2002 assembly elections; the fear was that the BJP may lose. Here came the Godhra, Sabarmati train burning: 58 kar sevaks, innocents, burnt alive. The local administration said it is not a pre-planned act. Modi had his own calculations; he instantly declared that it was a premeditated act by local Muslims in collaboration with the Pakistan’s ISI and international terrorists. The burnt bodies of kar sevaks were taken in a procession on Modi’s instructions. VHP called for a bandh and as per Citizens Tribunal report and the affidavit of Sanjiv Bhatt, Modi instructed the state administration to sit back and to let the Hindus vent their anger. Modi did not visit the riot-affected areas for weeks, till Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee, gathered courage to visit the victims in Shah Alam camp and Modi accompanied him. The mayhem went on and on for months. Refugee camps run by the state were wound up. There was no rehabilitation, relief and remorse from the state machinery.

The polarisation process in the state, the ghettoisation of Muslims, is more or less complete by now and Muslims have been relegated to second-class citizenship in the state. While a few affluent Muslim businessmen are turning to Modi for their survival, the average Muslims are living the life of all round neglect. Those who were alleged to be part of leading the mobs, got rewarded, re-elected, though some of them are cooling their heels in the jails under different charges. The Gujarat carnage was one more – and most horrifying – in the chain of anti-Muslim violence which began from Jabalpur in 1961 and passing through the other horrific riots of Meerut Malyana, Bhagalpur, Bhivandi, Mumbai. Ninety percent of victims have been Muslims. In many of these, the inquiry commissions have showed the role of organisations affiliated to RSS or its ideology of Hindu Rashtra.

The carnage of Gujarat is part of the series of anti-Muslim violence being spearheaded by the divisive ideology of religion-based nationalism. The same ‘ideological violence’ has manifested itself against Christians, peaking in Kandhmal in August 2008. The issue of anti-Sikh violence, equally condemnable has also to be seen in a different light. While the anti-Muslim and anti-Christian violence is guided by the ideological agenda, the anti-Sikh violence was a political accident taken advantage of by the Congress. It left behind bitter social realities. The anti-Muslim anti-Christian violence is part of the slowly developing agenda of Hindu Rashtra, the goal of RSS in this country. This RSS agenda has an authoritarian streak. Social scientists look for analogies for analysing social-political phenomenon.

In the case of Modi, who is part of the RSS agenda at political level, their inner differences notwithstanding, the carnage of Gujarat is an expression of fascism, as politics of religion-based nationalism. Like fascism, it targets minorities (Jews in case of Germany). It asserts its supremacy as a race or religion and harps on the glorious past where the caste and gender hierarchies were the norms. Translated in contemporary times, it means abolition of democracy, abolition of liberal space, looking down upon the plural ethos of the nation and turning to the social stratification of earlier times. While the word fascism is used very often, what is it exactly? Dictatorship and massacre of minorities are the key ingredients. The other major pillar is intimidation of weaker sections through street violence, abolition of democracy and the creation of hysteria around the infallible leader. Hitler was one such, who wanted a nation of Aryans. He persecuted the Jews and then communists. He was glorified as the infallible leader, he usurped all the powers in his hands and did have an aggressive stance towards not only the ‘others’ in the country but also the ‘other nations. Hitler was also the favourite of big capitalists. Does it ring a bell about somebody gaining respectability in the Indian political scene?

http://www.tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Fw260612Supreme.asp

SEE ALSO:

• Why a Hindutva-vadi should not be the Prime Minister of India – By Shamsul Islam (Jun 28, 2012, Twocircles.net)
  http://twocircles.net/2012jun28/why_hindutvavadi_should_not_be_prime_minister_india.html
• Provoke To Prevail – By R.K. Misra (Jun 25, 2012, Outlook)
  http://outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281414
• BJP, minorities, and 2014 elections – By Asghar Ali Engineer (Jun 22, 2012, Twocircles.net)
  http://twocircles.net/2012jun22/bjp_minorities_and_2014_elections.html
• Is the Shiv Sena wary of Modi? – By Rana Ayyub (Jun 7, 2012, Tehelka)
  http://tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ne070712SHIV.asp

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The biased Indian police & Muslims – By Syed Zubair Ahmad (Jun 28, 2012, Twocircles.net)

How biased the Indian police are for Muslims is no more a secret. At a time when anti-Muslim riots were common the Indian police wrote a history of barbarity and savagery. Instead of protecting the life and properties of the citizen it literally became a party against the Muslim community. No need to mention their role in communal riots of Jamshedpur, Bihar Sharif, Bhagalpur, Moradabad, Aligarh, Meerut, Hashimpura, Maliana, Mumbai and Ahmadabad etc. Sometimes the police become mute spectator, sometimes they encourage rioters to attack on Muslims locality, sometimes protect the rioters, sometimes they open fire indiscriminately on Muslims, sometimes collect Muslims youths, take them to an unknown destination and kill them en masse. It’s the bias of police that thousands of Muslims are languishing in prisons for years on minor charges. The framing of Muslim youths on flimsy ground in terror related cases is a different matter where many Muslim youths had to spend 5-14 years in prisons for a crime they never committed.

A few days ago when the TISS (Tata Institute of Social Sciences) report pointing clearly to anti-Muslim bias of police came out, it was not a surprise. It only approved the Sachar Committee report finding that had said that only place where Muslims are overrepresented is Indian jails. Sachar Committee report also said that in Maharashtra, Muslims account for 10 .6 percent of the general population; yet they comprise 32.4 per cent of the prison population. The recent TISS study says that 96% of the respondents have not been held under preventive detention charges. It indicates that they are not viewed as a threat to law and order. The report based on the survey of 339 Muslims aged between 18 and 30 across 15 prisons of Maharashtra further says that most of the respondents do not have connections with criminal gangs or have any record which may be threat to law and order. About 25.4 percent of those imprisoned are so poor that they can’t afford lawyers to represent them. Of those interviewed 75.5 per cent were arrested for the first time and 25.5 per cent are repeat offenders. Most of those interviewed were complainants of the biased behavior of police. For example Murtaza, an agent in textile export, arrested under the Official Secrets act on charges of spying, told the TISS research team: “There are two types of law in this country. One is for Hindus and other if for Muslims. The policeman is first a Hindu and then a policeman. The judge is first a Hindu and then a judge and the lawyer is first a Hindu than a lawyer. People who work against the state, indulge in rioting, kill thousands of innocent people, and harass women and children roam free in this country. They are not punished. I am suffering only because I am a Muslim.”

In past hundreds of Gujarati Muslims were booked under TADA in connection with the cases of stabbing or if a home-made pistol or even a knife was found in their possessions. Police’s bias against Muslims led countless arrests under POTA, MCOCA, and under Official Secret Acts. Imagine a country where IPS officers of the rank of IG and DIG are found to be involved in fake encounter killing of Muslim youths only to get promotions and medals and get their names enlisted in the good book of Chief Minister of Gujarat, Mr Narender Modi. More surprising is the fact that those fake encounters were executed on the tip-off given by our intelligence agencies. Amir Khan, the resident of old Delhi who after spending 14 years in prison was acquitted this year in January by court for the lack of evidence in connection with 17 bomb blast cases in three state . He was 16 years old when he was picked and implicated by Delhi police in 1998. In 2007 when he was transferred to Dasna jail in connection to a bomb blast case, the bar council of Ghaziabad decided to not take his case. An advocate from Delhi, N.D. Pancholi had to go to Ghaziabad to represent him. Similar incidents were reported in many cities. Sometimes the advocates who did not follow the bar council’s decision were attacked by their colleagues. In a meeting Amir told that while his mother wanted to meet him in court the old lady was pushed by police aside and denied a meeting with her son while Lt Colonel Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya Singh were showered with flowers when they arrived at court. He also said while Colonel Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya were offered free services by many famous lawyers of this country, his case was boycotted by bar council.

Amir said that he was only accused but he was dealt like a criminal during long 14 years. Amir also told that in the name of investigation the police mentally tortured his relatives and harassed his neighbors. Thus his family had to face a complete social boycott. Has this happened with Hindutva terror suspects? Were the relatives of Swami Asimanand, Colonel Purohit and Sadhvi Pragya were harassed or arrested for investigation? The answer is No. The torture of Muslim prisoners by police, by jail staffs and by inmates is also very common in jails. In Sabarmati Central jail in March 2009, 22 Muslims were severely beaten and denied medical treatment. The relatives of the inmates alleged that the prison authorities were neither providing them treatment nor giving adequate food, thus allowing the condition of inmates getting from bad to worse. According to relatives, inmates were attacked when they were performing ‘salat’ or ‘namaz’ at around 5:15 p.m. and were in prostrating posture (sajda). According to the relatives, most of the inmates beaten up by jail and police staff have sustained head injuries and got their legs and hands fractured. And most of them were not in a position to stand and walk and even to go to toilet to answer the nature’s call. On 21st of September 2009, the day of Eidul-Fitr, in Jaipur jail 13, inmates were not allowed to offer Eid prayers, beaten up by the jail employees and other prisoners and the holy books were desecrated. Taking the incident seriously, the Rajasthan Government suspended Jailor Ashok Gaur.

On 28th June 2008 an under trial Prisoner Mohd Sohail Shaikh along with around 39 other Prisoners were assaulted brutally in Arthur Road Jail for almost two hours with batons, lathis, belts and stones. The assaulters who included Jail staffs (around 75 in number) and the gangsters and convicts lodged therein, kicked them mercilessly and punched them on their heads, beat the accused so much that they bled profusely, some got injured on head, some suffered fractures on their hands and legs and some were made to roll on the ground and thus some fell unconscious. They soaked in blood. Jail staff stopped beating them only when they assumed they were dead. Their fault was that they dared to question the jail authorities whether it has taken permission from the concerned court for their transfer. When their case was taken up in the Bombay high court by Jamiat Ulama Hind, then the court asked justice T V Nalvade to investigate the matter and submit a detailed report. The Principal Judge Nalvade visited the jail himself and prepared the report after detailed investigation of the incident. He rejected the sequence of the event made up by the jail authorities in their statements submitted before the court. Given the enormity of the terror cases being slapped against Muslims in several parts of the country, the community should take a leaf from Sikhs. During Khalistan movement when many innocent Sikhs were arrested and slapped with POTA, the leaders of Sikh community ordered all local Gurudawaras across the country to take up the cases of their area if the community members are arrested by police. For the accused who can’t afford legal cost of their case the fund of Zakat must be utilized as per the instruction of Holy Quran. Since the situation has got worsened spreading panic through the community the Muslim organizations should come forward to solve this problem on urgent basis.

http://twocircles.net/2012jun28/biased_indian_police_muslims.html

SEE ALSO:

• Abu Jundal: Prize catch or a victim of a turf war? – By Amaresh Misra (Jun 28, 2012, Times of India)
  http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/the-mainstream-maverick/entry/abu-jundal-prize-catch-or-a-victim-of-a-turf-war
• Muslim life in Hindu Pradesh – By Ismail Khan (Jun 26, 2012, Twocircles.net)
  http://twocircles.net/2012jun26/muslim_life_hindu_pradesh.html

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Terrorist? Not Our Man – By Toral Varia Deshpande (Jul 9, 2012, Outlook)

Lt Col Prasad Shrikant Purohit is a key player in the narrative of Hindutva terror. Believed to be the man at the heart of the extremist Hindu militia Abhinav Bharat, he was arrested by the Maharashtra Anti-Terror Squad (ATS) on November 5, 2008, for his role in the Malegaon blast on September 29 that year. On April 13, 2009, the Indian army instituted a court of inquiry (COI) against Purohit and four other army personnel. This, even as a national investigation into saffron terror continues and a criminal case is pending in a special MCOCA court in Mumbai. The army’s inquiry having come to an end, the board of officers, comprising three senior army personnel—a brigadier and two colonels—has forwarded its findings to the Southern Command. Close to 60 officers were examined as witnesses over a period of 37 months. Outlook has gained exclusive access to the testimonies of all the witnesses.

These reveal that Purohit will in all likelihood be held guilty for his association with organisations not recognised under the army. However, he may very well get a clean chit as far as being involved in activity that could be termed “terrorist” or “anti-national”. This internal inquiry is unlikely to be made public. Besides Purohit, the COI was convened to look into charges against four other personnel: Lt Col B.P. Dhar, Captain Sood, Major D.P. Sudhir and Subedar Pawar. All of them were linked to Purohit, though he remains the only one behind bars. The terms of reference set for the inquiry were primarily to establish the veracity of six allegations, most of which can be covered under what is known as “dereliction of duty” in army parlance. Purohit has been proceeded against for the following:

For reportedly proceeding on leave or temporary duty without approval from his seniors, thereby absenting himself from duty. For allegedly being a member of Abhinav Bharat, an organisation not recognised by the armed forces of the Union. For the illegal sale of a non-service pattern weapon. For having initiated procedures to get bulletproof jackets, debugging equipment and mini bug detectors for personal gains using his official position. For allegedly swapping ammunition from the army. For allegedly being involved in illegal or undesirable terrorist activity. The last ground for investigating Purohit would suggest the army is also looking into the Malegaon blast case. In reality, however, the force is looking only into his antecedents. As Rohini Salian, special public prosecutor of NIA, says, “The army inquiry has no bearing on the case before the special judge. These are two completely different investigations done by two completely different agencies.”

None of the 60 witnesses before the COI, Outlook has learnt, has corroborated the charge of Purohit being a terrorist. Several witnesses have instead used epithets like “motivated officer” and “good field operator” for him. His peers too reportedly describe him as an officer who could cultivate sources with ease. Sudhakar Chaturvedi was one such source he was cultivating, according to the argument being presented; it was he who led him to Abhinav Bharat.

This version is at odds with the ATS’s allegation of Purohit being Abhinav Bharat’s leader. In the picture that emerges from the COI testimonies, Sudhakar, currently an accused in the case, worked for Abhinav Bharat and kept feeding Purohit inputs on the right-wing group’s movements during the latter’s tenure as an intelligence officer of the Deolali unit in Maharashtra. Gradually, he became a key source and shortcut for Purohit to infiltrate right-wing groups. After Purohit was posted to Pachmarhi in Madhya Pradesh, he handed over the “source” to his unit, handled for a short while by the now retired Subedar Pawar.

http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281471

SEE ALSO:

• BJP’s Karnataka crisis threatens to spiral out of control – By Imran Khan (Jun 30, 2012, Tehelka)
  http://tehelka.com/story_main53.asp?filename=Ws300612Karnataka.asp
• ‘I Infiltrated Abhinav Bharat, Did My Job, Kept Bosses In The Loop’ – Toral Varia Deshpande Interviews Prasad Shrikant Purohit (Jul 7, 2012, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281474

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Looking for values – By Bhaskar Ghose (Jun 30, 2012, Frontline)

Mirror, mirror on the wall, / Who’s the fairest of us all? Sometimes it is not a bad thing to look into the mirror because we often forget what we are or what we have become. This is a time, more than any other, when we need to look very carefully into the mirror. What we see there may not be very nice. We may see, for instance, that we have accepted corruption and vice, theft and bribery as attributes that have little to do with the popularity a political personality may have. We have only to look at the recent elections to the State Assembly in Uttar Pradesh and, even more recently, at the byelections in Andhra Pradesh. In the first instance, the Samajwadi Party (S.P.), a party that was known for having among its leaders persons facing criminal charges, was brought back to power by a very large margin. True, the party was given a new face by its chief, Mulayam Singh Yadav, in the shape of his son Akhilesh Yadav, who has a clean record and was widely known to have blocked the entry to the party of persons with criminal records; in fact Akhilesh Yadav was then anointed the Chief Minister of the State. But did the people vote for the S.P. candidates because they were convinced that this party had reformed itself and was now a model of a clean and honest political party, or was it because they were disillusioned by Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief, Mayawati, and the other contenders from the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) and the Congress?

And similarly, we have seen, recently in Andhra Pradesh, Jaganmohan Reddy’s YSR Congress win 15 of the 18 Assembly byelections. The point is that Jaganmohan Reddy is known to have begun whatever business he had some years ago, before his father Y.S. Rajasekhara Reddy became Chief Minister, with assets he himself had declared to be some Rs.10 or 15 lakh, if memory serves one right, and now he has declared his assets to be in excess of Rs.300 crore. No one has questioned the sudden increase in his wealth; it has nothing to do, it would appear, with his popularity. There are similar instances all over the country. The gods have smiled on the Badal family in Punjab, and their wealth has increased by very large amounts; in Karnataka, where the Lok Ayukta has found former Chief Minister B.S. Yeddyurappa guilty of corrupt practices, and where he had to step down as Chief Minister, and even go to jail, he still has a large following among the Members of the Legislative Assembly and, by implication, among the people; and in Tamil Nadu A. Raja, who had to relinquish the post of Union Minister of Telecommunications, and who then spent over a year in jail, came out on bail to a hero’s welcome in Chennai.

So where does all this leave us? What do we find in the mirror? Is it a reflection of a people, fragmented and divided though they may be, united in the assumption that allegations of stealing public money, even killing people, are of no consequence? None of these people has done even a fraction of what Chief Minister Nitish Kumar has done for the people of Bihar. Somewhere, in the years since we were led to freedom by people who believed in the value of moral principles in public life, we have lost sight of those ideals. The generations that came after found easy money too tempting to pass by, and they passed on their beliefs not just to others in their parties but to their families. Sons and daughters were given the best education possible in the United States, Britain and in other centres of learning and academic excellence elsewhere, and are now doubtless doing well, bringing up their children in the best schools and colleges.

This may be seen as outrageous by many of us in the middle classes; but to the people, the poor and those barely able to make ends meet, it does not seem to matter. When the social activist Anna Hazare stages a fast, the crowds that go there are middle-class people protesting against corruption; do the poor go there? No. They go to the rallies called by leaders who are perceived to be corrupt and criminal. The polarisation is too obvious to miss. Principles and power. The middle class and the poor. These are what the mirror will show us – one cannot resist quoting Shakespeare on how actors hold a mirror up to nature, a mirror that shows “virtue her own feature, scorn her own image, and the very age and body of the time his form and pressure.” The age and body of the time – our time, any time – will be seen for what it is in the mirror held up to nature, to ourselves. It is time we recognised this, and moved beyond outrage and indignation. Somewhere there must be people who may not be the tall leaders of old but who can at least carry forward their ideals and principles – there are some one has heard of, whose work is known and respected – but there needs to be many such. Not the “activists”, of whom one has become quite weary, but those who do things, however small, to build their little milieu into a better place.

Only a multitude of such people can make a difference, chiefly in creating an awareness of the horrifying consequences of condoning and even celebrating the evil of bribery and thuggery when it is coupled with power, and how it can be resisted, as one frail old man showed an earlier generation. He resisted the brute force of an alien state on the moral ground that its rule was wrong. Today, the need must be to resist what is wrong perhaps by the same means. There may be other solutions. But these have to be found soon. We can see how this already fragmented, disorganised country is being shaken by the forces of what one can only call immorality. And since we cannot just wait, eyes fixed on the heavens for a leader to emerge, we have to find small solutions at our own levels.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2913/stories/20120713291309500.htm

SEE ALSO:

• ‘Corruption Is Rampant In The Lower Courts’ – V.N. Khare with Chandrani Banerjee (Jul 9, 2012, Outlook)
  http://www.outlookindia.com/article.aspx?281457
• E-Governance and Corruption in the States: Can Technology Serve the Aam Aadmi? – By Jennifer Bussell (Jun 23, 2012, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://www.epw.in/system/files/pdf/2012_47/25/EGovernance_and_Corruption_in_the_States.pdf

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Cartoons and more – By Kancha Ilaiah (Jun 2012, Sabrang)

If we rework Shankar’s cartoon with, say, Mahatma Gandhi riding a bullock cart of democracy in his dwija (twice-born, or upper-caste) dress and Jawaharlal Nehru standing in his sanatan (upper-caste Hindu) pandit’s dress, a thread across his body, and Babasaheb Ambedkar in his suit, unhitching that cart, would Yogendra Yadav and Suhas Palshikar – former NCERT advisers – have included that cartoon for a lesson in democracy? I am sure they would not. In 1949 when Shankar drew that cartoon – wherein Ambedkar sits with a whip on a snail that is the Constitution and Nehru stands behind, also with a whip in his hand, while the masses watch the fun – Ambedkar’s role as chairman of the drafting committee had still not been appreciated by the Indian elite. The political elite in particular were cursing him. He also did not have high standing among the people at large. Only a very few educated Dalits treated him as their worthy representative. After Ambedkar joined Nehru’s cabinet, he was also seen as one who compromised himself for power. After he resigned from the cabinet in 1951 and after he embraced Buddhism five years later, his image and status transformed quite dramatically. And after the Mandal movement of 1990, Ambedkar’s stature assumed messianic proportions. The present Ambedkar is not a negotiator with Nehru or Gandhi. Rather, as a messiah of the large army of the oppressed people of this country, he is quite different from Gandhi and Nehru. While picking this cartoon from Shankar’s archives for the Class XI political science textbook, the editors should have understood this phenomenal change in perception, in the media, of the Dalit bahujan (majority).

Early in May, Dalit MPs cutting across party lines took up a cultural issue that related to the dignity and status of the most oppressed community and their icon. Human resource development minister Kapil Sibal did the right thing by apologising over the matter and promising immediate withdrawal of the textbook that carries the controversial cartoon. Questions like why this issue is being raked up seven years after the book’s publication or why this cartoon is being attacked 63 years after it was drawn need to be answered with sound reasoning and a proper understanding of the level of consciousness of the Dalit leadership itself. Do these questions not sound like yet another question, namely why make an issue of untouchability and caste, as they have, after all, been practised for 3,000 years? The answer lies in the changing consciousness as also the possible avenues that are opening up for fighting the matter out. If Ambedkar had not fought for the education of the lower castes as also for reservation in politics and jobs, there would not have been any Dalits in Parliament. Had it not been so, nobody would have asked any questions even if Ambedkar’s name was removed from Indian history altogether.

The consciousness of Mr Yadav and Mr Palshikar is couched in Lohiaite-Marxist-Gandhian politics which refuses to recognise the far greater transformative status of Ambedkar. In the intellectual realm, Mr Yadav represents a typical, symptomatic socialist transformation of Lohia – similar to what Mulayam Singh Yadav and Lalu Prasad Yadav do in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar. Somehow they are very uncomfortable with Ambedkar. This is reflected in the selection of this cartoon in the 21st century – a time when Ambedkar has overtaken Gandhi, Nehru and Lohia in stature. What Mr Yadav and Mr Palshikar refuse to recognise is that Ambedkar was not just a writer of the Indian Constitution, not just a nationalist leader and not just a theoretician; he was a prophetic figure who revived Buddhism which was driven out of India by a whole range of social forces over a period of several centuries. Thus in every Buddha Vihara today he sits alongside Buddha. The icon of the oppressed community cannot be compared with a god or goddess of the oppressors. Nor can the protest against the Ambedkar cartoon be seen on a par with the Hindutva protest against the painting of Goddess Saraswati by MF Husain. The May 11 protest in Parliament by Dalit MPs to remove the derogatory Ambedkar cartoon from the NCERT’s political science textbook is a demand that came from those representing the oppressed masses. This is the first ever major fight for the cultural transformation of Indian society. Earlier, Dalits were not seen as a people who could fight for their own cultural identity. They were seen as a people who fight for higher wages, reservation and scholarships. Shankar Pillai’s cartoons were friendly jokes for the upper-caste English-educated elite of the post-independence ruling class but certainly not for the Dalit/OBC (other backward classes)/Adivasi population.

Cartoons also carry with them the politics and culture of those who drew them. In fact, no cartoon is free from politics and caste/class bias. This is where the need arises for the emergence of a new brand of cartoonists from among the deprived sections, if only to induct Dalit culture into the realm of cartoons. Caste bias operates not only in religion, politics and economics but also in art, music and dance. Political scientists Mr Yadav and Mr Palshikar know this only too well. When NCERT textbooks were written by right-wing historians and political scientists, they were criticised by left-wing historians, political scientists and sociologists. Later, the left-wing secular academics undertook a rewriting of the textbooks. However, the problem with secular, democratic social scientists is that they are not caste-sensitive. They also do not include enough caste-sensitive Dalit-bahujan social scientists. Today any discussion on caste is seen as undemocratic; and Mr Yadav and Mr Palshikar thought Nehru belonged to the fast track democratic school whereas Ambedkar drove snail-paced Constitution drafting! This kind of senseless handling of democratic casteism must be checkmated and that is precisely what happened in the Indian Parliament on May 11.

One way to train our children in ideological politics is by making use of school textbooks. When the National Democratic Alliance was in power, it prepared school textbooks with an overdose of Hindutva ideology. Later on, the United Progressive Alliance government appointed a well-known educationist, Prof Krishna Kumar, as director of the NCERT. The textbooks that have sparked a controversy now were prepared under his directorship. By and large, the new team prepared much better schoolbooks. But the problem was that the left, secular and socialist social scientists never bothered to examine the Indian caste system. Most of these men treat Ambedkar simply as one of the nationalist leaders. They also do not seriously examine Ambedkar’s socio-spiritual status and the deep emotions of the oppressed masses that were built around his Buddhist spiritual existence. It is this status that is likely to lead to many self-assertive struggles by the Dalits. A national-level response to any desecration of Ambedkar’s statues and a similar response to remove a cartoon that depicted him in a derogatory manner are all part of an effort to put him on a different liberationist level from what an ordinary political scientist could comprehend. All the same, it is important that one respects in all humility the decision of Parliament. It is also important that one does not demonstrate an intellectual ‘Annagiri’ against Parliament. Parliament is supreme and can decide everything in this country.

http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2012/june2012/controversy2.html

SEE ALSO:

• Symbolic Injury as a Site of Protest: The case of the offending cartoon – By Sheba Tejani (Jun 30, 2012, Economic & Political Weekly)
  http://www.epw.in/web-exclusives/symbolic-injury-site-protest.html
• Dangers of deletion – By Yogendra Yadav (Jun 2012, Sabrang)
  http://www.sabrang.com/cc/archive/2012/june2012/controversy1.html

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Experiments with Aadhaar – Bharat Bhatti, Jean Drèze, Reetika Khera (Jun 27, 2012, The Hindu)

Within a few weeks of “Aadhaar-enabled” payments of Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme wages being initiated in Jharkhand, earlier this year, glowing accounts of this experiment started appearing in the national media. Some of them also gave the impression, intentionally or otherwise, that this successful experiment covered most of Jharkhand. A fairly typical excerpt, which condenses five grand claims in a few lines, is as follows: “As the new system ensures payment of wages within a week, the demand for work under MGNREGS has gone up. Consequently, migration has been checked, families have been reunited and, no less important, some workers have a saving in the bank.” Enthused by these upbeat reports, we tried to trace the evidence behind them, but quickly reached a dead end. The authorities in Ranchi referred us to the website of the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), but we did not find any evaluation of the experiment there or, for that matter, any details of it. There was no alternative, it seemed, than to check the facts for ourselves. We headed for the Ratu Block in Ranchi District, the source of most of the reports. It was, at that time (early March), one of the five Blocks where the experiment had been launched. On arrival, we found that only three gram panchayats (GPs) were involved, out of 14 in Ratu Block. The showpiece appeared to be Tigra GP, but it turned out that even there, only one worksite had enjoyed the blessings of Aadhaar-enabled wage payments. In the three GPs together, the system had been implemented at five worksites, employing a total of about 50 workers. We managed to interview 42 of them with the help of a small team of student volunteers.

The main role of Aadhaar in the Jharkhand experiment is to facilitate the implementation of the “business correspondent” (BC) model. Under this model, accredited agents provide doorstep banking services to MGNREGS workers using a micro-ATM. They act as extension counters of the local bank (in this case, Bank of India), disbursing wages close to people’s homes. Biometric authentication is meant to prevent identity fraud, e.g. someone’s wages being withdrawn by someone else. Aadhaar is one possible foundation of biometric identification, though not the only one. In this approach, wages are paid through Aadhaar-enabled accounts that are supposed to be opened at the time of UID enrolment. Authentication requires internet connectivity, so that workers’ fingerprints and Aadhaar numbers can be matched with the UIDAI’s Central Identities Data Repository. The BC model widens the reach of the banking system in rural areas. This, in turn, helps to bring more MGNREGS workers under the umbrella of the banking system, as opposed to post offices, where corruption (including identify fraud) is a serious problem. Doorstep banking facilities are also a significant convenience for workers in areas where bank offices are distant, overcrowded, or unfriendly. Coming back to Ratu, some aspects of the experiment were a little farcical. For instance, on one occasion, workers from Tigra were asked to collect their wages 10 kilometres away, so that Aadhaar-enabled payments could be done in front of a visiting Minister. On a more positive note, the system seemed to work, at least under close supervision. Further, most of the workers had a positive view of it. They appreciated being able to collect their wages closer to their homes, without the hassles of queuing in overcrowded banks or of depending on corrupt middlemen to extract their wages from the post office. They did not fully understand the new technology, but nor were they afraid or suspicious of it.

Having said this, there were problems too. Dependence on fingerprint recognition, internet connectivity, and the goodwill of the BC created new vulnerabilities. Fingerprint recognition problems alone affected 12 out of 42 respondents. Some workers did not have a UID number, and some had a UID number but no Aadhaar-enabled account. None of them had received bank passbooks, making it difficult for them to withdraw their wages from the bank when the Aadhaar system failed. Four respondents were yet to find a way of getting hold of their wages. Otherwise, the payment of wages was reasonably timely, but this had more to do with intensive supervision than with Aadhaar. It is important to understand that Aadhaar, on its own, is of limited help in reducing delays in MGNREGS wage payments. This is because the bulk of the delays occur before the banking system is involved – at the stage of submission of muster rolls, work measurement, preparation of payment advice, and so on. At every step, there is a lot of foot-dragging, and Aadhaar is not the answer. (According to the MGNREGA Commissioner in Jharkhand, quoted in one of the articles mentioned earlier, “Against one month now, payments will reach workers’ accounts in one week.” This statement is typical of the delusional mindset of the Jharkhand administration. Not only are current delays much longer than one month, the claim that Aadhaar will reduce them to one week has no basis.) What next? It is easy to envisage a certain way of extending this experiment that would turn it into a nightmare for MGNREGS workers. Three steps would be a potent recipe for chaos: depriving MGNREGS workers of bank passbooks, imposing the system even where there is no internet connectivity, and insisting on a single bank operating in each Block (the odd “one Block, one bank” rule). All this may seem far-fetched, but there are precedents of this sort of irresponsibility. Short of this, if the Aadhaar-based BC model is hastily extended without the system being ready (as happened earlier with the transition from cash to bank and post-office payments of MGNREGS wages), it could easily compound rather than alleviate other sources of delays in wage payments.

It is also possible to see a more constructive roll-out of the BC model across the country. In this constructive approach, the BC model would act as an additional facility for MGNREGS workers, supplementing ordinary bank procedures instead of becoming a compulsory alternative. This would enable labourers to bypass the BC in cases of fingerprint recognition problems, or when the BC is corrupt or unreliable. For this purpose, the first step is to issue bank passbooks to MGNREGS workers – this had not been done in Ratu. The question remains whether Aadhaar adds value to other versions of the BC model. In the adjacent Block of Itki, the BC model is being implemented without Aadhaar, in partnership with FINO, a private company. Workers’ fingerprints are stored on a smart card, used for authentication and tamper-proof record-keeping. This obviates the need for internet connectivity, an important advantage of the Itki system in areas like rural Jharkhand. Aadhaar, for its part, has two potential advantages. First, it facilitates multiple biometric applications based on single UID enrolment. Second, Aadhaar facilitates “inter-operability”, that is, linking of different UID-enabled databases. But the same features also have costs. For instance, dependence on a centralised enrolment system (as opposed to local biometrics) makes it much harder to correct or update the database, or to include workers who missed the initial enrolment drive.

Similarly, inter-operability raises a host of privacy and civil liberties issues. A brief exploratory visit to Itki did not uncover any obvious reason to prefer the Aadhaar system to local biometrics. It is also worth noting that the Jharkhand experiment is a very poor cousin of much earlier and larger efforts to implement the BC model in Andhra Pradesh. Unlike UIDAI, the government of Andhra Pradesh has conducted serious experiments with the BC model and learnt from them. Biometric micro-ATMs are now being installed at local post offices, an important idea for the whole country: micro-ATMs could give post offices a new lease of life as effective payment agencies. In short, Aadhaar-enabled payments for MGNREGS workers raise many issues that are yet to be properly examined and debated. The Ratu project, for one, looked more like a public relations exercise than a serious experiment. Incidentally, we learnt in June 2012 that Aadhaar-enabled wage payments had been discontinued in Tigra, due to resilient fingerprint recognition problems. That, of course, was not reported in the national media. Last but not the least, it is not clear why MGNREGS should be used as a testing ground for UID applications when other, more useful options are available. For instance, UID could be used quite easily to monitor office attendance of government employees. The social benefits are likely to be large, and this is a more natural setting for early UID applications than the jungles of Jharkhand. Any takers?

http://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/article3573730.ece

SEE ALSO:

• A tale of errors – By R. Ramakumar (Jun 30, 2012, Frontline)
  http://www.flonnet.com/fl2913/stories/20120713291303400.htm
• Data Mining Mafia Threatens National Security And Citizens Rights – By Citizens Forum for Civil Liberties (Jun 25, 2012, Countercurrents)
  http://www.countercurrents.org/cfcl250612.htm

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