Towards dialogue in Kashmir

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

For the first time since militancy began in Jammu and Kashmir in the 1980s the state has a politician, Satya Pal Malik, as the Governor, and media reports have quoted Central government sources as saying his appointment is “a prelude to a genuine effort to start talks with the estranged Kashmir Valley.”

The unnamed sources’ words imply two things. One, the Centre recognises the growing alienation among the Kashmiris, especially the youth. Two, the earlier efforts at talks were not quite genuine.

A veteran politician from Uttar Pradesh, Malik was in the Congress, the Janata Dal and the Samajwadi Paty before joining the BJP on the eve of the 2014 elections and was named one of its National Vice-Presidents. He was appointed Governor of Bihar last year. 

All major parties of J and K welcomed his shift to the state, which has been under Governor’s rule since the Bharatiya Janata Party brought down the coalition government in which it was the People’s Democratic Party’s junior partner in June.

All these are positive factors which augur well for the success of the proposed political process. But there are also negative factors that cast doubts on its chances of success. Foremost among them is the reluctance of successive governments to move from gestures to meaningful measures. 

In 2001 the BJP-led government, headed by AB Vajpayee, appointed seasoned UP politician KC Pant as interlocutor to talk to various groups in the state and suggest measures to ensure peace and tranquility. He recommended a broad measure of autonomy and some steps to improve the working of the official machinery.

The following year a committee headed by Law Minister Arun Jaitley was charged with the task of exploring the scope for greater “exclusivity” for the state, whatever that may mean. Later an unofficial committee headed by former Law Minister Ram Jethmalani held talks with separatist groups in a bid to persuade them to participate in that year’s Assembly elections.

After a wave of unrest in the valley in 2010, the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance government, headed by Manmohan Singh, set up a three-member committee under the chairmanship of eminent journalist Dilip Padgaonkar to talk to all sections, including students, youth, political parties and separatists, and prepare a roadmap for a settlement in Kashmir.

It made a number of recommendations, which are believed to include release of youth held for stone-throwing, withdrawal of the Armed Forces Special Powers Act and de-scaling of barricades and checkpoints to ease movement of civilians in public areas.

As the PDP-BJP government faced a new wave of unrest in 2016 Padgaonkar said it might not have happened if his panel’s suggestions had been acted upon.

Last year the Modi government appointed former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma as its interlocutor for Kashmir. He could make little progress.

Normalisation in Jammu and Kashmir calls for action at two levels. Apart from talks with groups representing various sections in the state there has to be an India-Pakistan peace process, too, since the problem has an internal as well as an external dimension.

In the Shimla Pact of 1972, Indira Gandhi and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto committed the two countries to resolution of the Kashmir issue through bilateral talks. The only serious attempt in the last 45 years to find a solution through such talks was made by Vajpayee and President Pervez Musharraf when they met in Agra in 2001. Published narratives, including first-person accounts of some participants, indicate that although no agreement could be reached they had come close to one

A BJP-led government has an advantage over any other in reaching out to Kashmir and to Pakistan as it can do so without being accused of appeasement. But, then, it has to be mindful of the sentiments of its supporters who have been fed on propaganda against the other side. 

Modi began on a good note with gestures to Pakistan Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif but there could be no meaningful dialogue as the atmosphere was vitiated by militancy and truce violations. With Prime Minister Imram Khan yet to learn the ropes and Modi due to face elections in six months, this is no time for a new initiative to improve bilateral relations.

That need not hold up the planned internal process. When Governor’s rule was imposed the State Assembly was not dissolved. This led to speculation that the BJP was hoping to form a new coalition government by engineering defections from PDP and other parties. Such a step will not only damage the thin democratic fabric further but also undermine Malik’s mission. --Gulf Today, Sharjah, August 28, 2018.

A deluge and its lessons
BRP Bhaskar Gulf Today
Kerala, whose people, Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum has graciously acknowledged as a part of the UAE’s success story, is beginning a slow process of recovery after being battered by unusually heavy rains in the past fortnight. As rivers and backwaters across the state rose, many stayed put at home, ignoring the government’s advice to move to safe areas. In many places flood waters reached up to terraces of two-storey buildings, and thousands had to be evacuated by helicopter or boat and sent to relief camps. Educational institutions were closed and their premises and other buildings including places of worship were turned into relief centres. On Sunday officials put the last five days’ toll at 220 dead. About one million people were in relief camps. Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan, who put off a scheduled visit to the US for medical treatment to personally supervise the massive operations, said the floods were the worst in a century. No reliable estimates of property losses were available immediately. On a superficial view, the devastating floods were a natural calamity caused by the heaviest rainfall in living memory. Some localities received last week as much as ten times the normal rainfall. However, viewed against recent socio-economic developments, the floods are a result of unplanned and unregulated interference with Nature’s scheme of things. That raises the question whether those involved in such activity will draw appropriate lessons from this experience. Social and educational advancement had put the Kerala region ahead of the rest of India early in the last century. By 1970, though economically backward, the state astounded the world by registering indices of social progress comparable to those of the industrialised West. Due to lack of job opportunities closer to home, during the British period itself, Keralites had started moving to the rest of India and to other colonies like Ceylon, Singapore and Malaya, looking for employment. The character and quality of job migration changed half a century ago as professionals like engineers, doctors and nurses found openings in the West. When the oil boom triggered massive developmental activity in the Gulf States, Keralites discovered a new world of opportunities. A narrow strip of land on India’s southwest coast, Kerala is about 520 km long from north to south, and the distance from the Arabian Sea to the Western Ghats is about 120 km at the broadest point. Its 38,863 sq kms (just over one per cent of India’s area) holds some 35 million people (about three per cent of India’s population). About 10% of Keralites work abroad and their remittances play a big role in the state’s economy. Geographically, Kerala comprises a coastline, a mountainous region and the plains between them. All three have been subject to much depredations. Organised destruction of forests by encroachers, which began in the 1950s, disturbed the rhythm of nature, leading to decline in rainfall, drop in groundwater levels and drying up of rivers. Remittances from abroad spurred massive construction activity all across the state. Lakes and farmlands were filled up, hills flattened and rocks broken down to build homes and shopping complexes. After the National Geographic Traveler identified Kerala, which advertises itself as God’s Own Country, as a must-see destination the state experienced a tourist boom. Resorts came up on the coast, along the backwaters and in the hills to cater to foreign and domestic tourists. Sociologists had once classified Kerala, with continuous habitation, as a rural-urban continuum. The urban population having gone up from 16.2% in 1971 to 47.7% in 2011 (it is now estimated to be above 50%0), is evolving into a 500-km-long urban continuum, without a parallel anywhere on earth. All six cities of the state and a majority of its 87 municipal towns form part of this urban Milky Way. There are also three large airports in it. One of them, built on reclaimed farmlands, was inundated last week, and had to suspend operations. A fourth airport will open in November. This year’s unprecedented floods were a direct result of the heavy concretisation of all regions and disappearance of the traditional rainwater reservoirs like paddy fields. According to eminent ecologist Madhav Gadgil it was a disaster waiting to happen. If civil society campaigns had not succeeded in blocking some projects with immense potential for environmental damage, like the Silent Valley hydro-electric project, six-laning of the coastal highway and construction of a new highway on the hills, the floods may well have extracted an even higher price in terms of lives and property. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, August 21, 2018.

The question still lingers

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Dalai Lama, spiritual head of Tibetan Buddhism living in exile in India since 1959, created a minor sensation last week by stating that Partition could have been averted if Qaid-e-Azam Mohammad Ali Jinnah had been made Prime Minister of undivided India as suggested by Mahatma Gandhi.

He mentioned Gandhi’s suggestion and Nehru’s reported opposition to it while responding to a student who had asked how one could avoid committing mistakes in life. He said Nehru, who was a very experienced person, had made a mistake in opposing Gandhi’s proposal. 

Nehru-baiters, whose number has swelled in recent years, picked up the Dalai Lama’s observation and circulated it in the social media. Some, however, thought it was ironical that such a criticism should come from the Dalai Lama. They suggested Nehru had made a bigger mistake in inviting China’s ire by granting asylum to the Tibetan leader.

The Dalai Lama’s reading of the critical period in recent Indian history is apparently too simplistic. Richard Attenborough, in his film “Gandhi”, has played up his hero’s readiness to offer prime ministership of undivided India to Jinnah. However, Gandhi’s contemporaries viewed it only as a desperate last-minute gamble to prevent Partition.

Gandhi used to refer to division of the country as vivisection. He voiced his opposition to it with the words, “Over my dead body”. 

According to the published papers of Earl Mountbatten, the last Viceroy who pushed through the Partition plan, Gandhi suggested to him on or around April 1, 1947 to invite Jinnah to form an Interim Government comprising Muslim League members to replace the one headed by Nehru which had been in office since the previous September.

What would Jinnah say to the proposal, the Viceroy asked. Gandhi replied that if Jinnah knew he was the author of the plan he would say, “Wily Gandhi!” Mountbatten said he presumed Jinnah would be right. “No,” Gandhi said, “I am entirely sincere in my suggestion.”

Mountbatten told Gandhi he would discuss the suggestion with Nehru and Mailana Abul Kalam Azad in strict confidence.

When Mountbatten told Nehru about it, he said Gandhi had made the same suggestion before the British Cabinet Mission which visited India the previous year. The Mission considered it impracticable and turned it down. 

Stanley Wolpert, the American scholar who has done extensive research on the period, in his book, “Jinnah of Pakistan”, dismisses accounts that Nehru reacted angrily or with shock to Gandhi’s proposal. He says Nehru merely expressed doubt that it would be acceptable to Jinnah.

Gandhi suggested Jinnah’s appointment as the Prime Minister to Mountbatten after the Congress Working Committee had agreed to Partition, ignoring his known opposition to it. 

At that time an interim Parliament in which the Congress party will have an overwhelming majority was in the final stages of formation. Could Jinnah have run the government with a Congress-dominated legislature?

In any case, by then, it was too late to solve the issue of Hindu-Muslim relations by offering Jinnah a key role. The crux of the issue was the growing feeling among the minority that it might not get a fair deal in a set-up dominated by the majority. Jinnah, who was a staunch advocate of composite nationalism to begin with, had been thoroughly disillusioned with the Hindu leadership of the Congress. 

In his autobiography, My Experiments with Truth, Gandhi mentions that, on his return to India from South Africa in 1915, he devoted much thought to finding an issue on which the Hindus and the Muslims could unite and a leader who could bring the Muslims closer to the nationalist movement. 

The issue he found was the demand for restoration of the Sultan of Turkey as the Caliph. He did not view Jinnah, who was rising fast in the Congress hierarchy, as a leader who could cement the Congress’s relationship with the Muslims. He placed his trust in two brothers, Maulana Mohammed Ali and Maulana Shaukat Ali. 

Jinnah ended his association with the Congress in 1920 after Gandhi followers shouted him down for not referring to their leader as Mahatma. Maybe the course of history would have been different if Gandhi and Jinnah could pull together but the Partition decision was dictated by factors far more vital than personal equations. 

Before the week was over, the Dalai Lama took note of the criticism of his remark and offered a graceful apology. Talking to media persons in Bangalore, he said, “I apologise if I have said something wrong.” -- Gulf Today,  Sharjah, August 15, 2018.

Turning blessing into curse

 BRP Bhaskar                                                                                                                 

  The Tribune                                                                                                                    


Nature presented Kerala with many blessings: evergreen tropical rain forests, more than 40 rivers running from the mountains to the sea along its length of a little over 500 km, a network of backwaters and two seasons of monsoon rain. Gross interference with nature, often actuated by avarice more than need, is turning some of the blessings into curses. The current wave of floods that has caused widespread damage in about half of the state's 14 districts is an example.

Not that floods are a new experience. The oldest living generation grew up hearing tales of the Deluge of 99 (the figure denoting year 1099 of the Malayalam era, corresponding to 1924 CE) which not only caused extensive damage but also left many marooned in their villages or houses for weeks. That was exceptional. There were riverside villages which experienced annual visitations. But most of the time, the rainwater flowed into the sea or drained into the water bodies or into the paddy fields which got enriched in the process.         

The multiple canopies of the tropical forests broke the fall of rainwater and in reaching the ground the land absorbed it easily and augmented the groundwater which sustained the rivers through the year. As a result of denudation of forests, rainwater now flows into the sea in a matter of hours. Rain-bearing clouds collapsing in barren hillside pose threats to life and property.  

Organised interference with the scheme of nature began with the arrival of families from the plains, first in singles and then in swarms, looking for land to make a living out of it or raise fortunes by developing estates. They either took over lands in the possession of Adivasis who were entitled to live and earn their living there or cleared forests.  They enjoyed the patronage of religious or caste organisations, most importantly powerful churches, and the protection of political parties that were eager to cultivate vote banks. Corrupt officials helped regularise illegal land grabs.

A Central commission which studied the problems of the Scheduled Tribes found large-scale alienation of Adivasi lands in different states and recommended that they be seized and returned to the owners.  Accordingly, the Kerala Assembly unanimously enacted a law in 1975 to return the alienated Adivasi lands. It was not implemented.

After the courts ordered its implementation and Adivasis mounted pressure through a series of agitations, all parties joined hands once again, this time to scrap the earlier law and enact a new one offering them alternative land instead. That, too, has largely remained on paper due to the insincere approach of successive governments to the Adivasis, who constitute s little over one per cent of the state's population.

For years, as encroachers converted forests into estates and built resorts, the state government valiantly sought to hide the truth by retaining the same figure for the area under forests in the annual reports until the Centre, yielding to its pressure, allowed grant of title deeds to the encroachers.  

When the state government drew up a plan to set up a hydroelectric project in the Silent Valley, environmental activists, mostly poets, campaigned against it. Prime Minister Indira Gandhi withheld consent for the project after a committee of scientists headed by MGK Menon reported that it would destroy the rich flora and fauna of the rain forests.

According to official data, the state has 11,309.5 sq km under forests. This is 29.1 per cent of the total land area. A total of 1,837.8 sq km of forest is classified as "vested forests and ecologically fragile lands". Since the government is slow in taking note of loss of forests, these figures may not reflect the current position.

The Indian Institute of Sciences, Bengaluru, reported last year on the basis of a study using remote sensing data that Kerala had lost 906,440 hectares of forest land between 1973 and 2016. This was more than 50 per cent of the present forest area. "The drastic reduction of forest cover, along with high concretisation, does not bode well for the state," said the report’s authors Ramakrishnan Ramabhadran and TV Ramachandra. 

At the time of the release of the report, the state was going through a spell of drought, which was widely attributed to the destruction of environment. And now, it is the turn of the floods. Idukki and Waynad districts, home to most of the state's Adivasi population, are among the worst hit. 

When CPI(M) veteran VS Achuthanandan was Chief Minister, he sent a team to  Munnar in Idikku district, which has seen the most degradation, to evict the encroachers. His party's district unit defeated the move with the tacit support of its state leadership.

A high-level Western Ghats Ecology Expert Panel, headed by Madhav Gadgil, after taking note of the extensive damage caused to the Western Ghats, recommended measures to stop further degradation and save what was left of the fragile forests from unsustainable exploitation in the interests of the present and future generations. Following a rash of protests by the powerful encroachers' lobby, comprising political parties and religious leaders, the Government of Kerala pressured the Centre not to go ahead with its implementation. Thereupon, the Centre set up another panel under the chairmanship of K Kasturirangan to review the matter. It obligingly watered down the Gadgil Committee proposals.

The Modi government is yet to take a call on the reports of the two committees.  

Alternating phases of drought and flood which Kerala is now experiencing is something other areas which have witnessed large-scale ecological disturbance are also gaping through. 

Kerala's civil society, though weak, has been able to stop several environmentally damaging activities like the Silent Valley and Athirapally projects, over-exploitation  of groundwater by Cola factories, pollution of air and water by a Birla rayon  plant. But they still need to gather strength to prevail upon the authorities to adopt environment-friendly policies overcoming the opposition of various kinds of vested interests. *The Tribune, Chandigarh, Agust 14, 2018.                                                                                                                                                          

Modi’s messages to judges

BRP Bhaskar
Gulf Today

The Narendra Modi government ended its seven-month-long standoff with the Judiciary over the appointment of Uttarakhand High Court Chief Justice KM Joseph as a judge of the Supreme Court last week, paving the way for his elevation.

While rejoicing over the resolution of the issue, there is need to evaluate the results of the pulls and pressures that preceded it and the lessons they hold. Also, some systemic issues have come up and they need to be addressed.

The Constitution only requires the Executive to consult the Chief Justice of India in the appointment of judges. But the Supreme Court, exercising its exclusive right to interpret the Constitution, shifted primacy from the Executive to the Judiciary. While doing so, in a concession to democratic practice, it established a body, styled as Collegium, comprising the Chief Justice and a specified number of senior most judges, to decide on appointment, promotion and transfer of judges. 

Successive governments meekly accepted the incestuous system created in the process. The Modi government enacted a law to set up a National Judicial Appointments Commission, in which both the Executive and the Judiciary are represented, to pick judges. The Supreme Court struck it down.

In December 2015 the court asked the Centre to draft a new memorandum of procedure (MoP) for appointment of judges in the light of its decisions. Two and a half years later a draft acceptable to both the court and the government has still not emerged.

The government’s displeasure over the court’s scuttling of the NJAC found expression in heavy delay in clearance of names recommended by the collegium. When the collegium proposed Justice KM Joseph’s elevation, the government returned the recommendation for reconsideration. 

The rules permit the government to seek reconsideration of a recommendation. If, after reconsideration, the collegium reiterates the recommendation, the government has to accept it. 

The government could not cite anything in Justice Joseph’s record that renders him unfit for elevation. Its objections were based on extraneous considerations like availability of others who became judges before him, adequacy of his home state’s representation n the higher judiciary and the need to provide representation for Dalits and other backward classes. 

Justice Joseph was the author of the 2015 High Court judgment which annulled the Modi government’s decision to dismiss Uttarakhand’s Congress ministry and impose President’s rule in the state. It was a source of embarrassment to the Centre which was forced to reinstate the state government. 

Despite the Centre’s denial, critics viewed the bid to block Justice Joseph’s elevation as a vindictive act.

For reasons that are not entirely clear, the collegium took several months to communicate to the government reiteration of its recommendation formally and forcefully. The delay led to suspicion that the collegium may be re-thinking on the issue. That did not happen. But the delay enabled the government to lower Justice Joseph’s seniority. 

Modi had started his term setting a bad precedent by appointing P Sathasivam, a former CJI, as Governor of Kerala. Before returning to his Tamil Nadu village on retirement, Sathasivam had made it known that he was ready to take up any position befitting his stature.

There were insinuations that his appointment as Governor was reward for a judgment he had delivered as the CJI in 2013 quashing a first information report filed by the Central Bureau of Investigation against BJP President Amit Shah in an alleged fake encounter of the time when he was a minister in Modi’s Gujarat government. 

Sathasivam denied allegations of wrong-doing. He pointed out that he did not give Amit Shah a clean chit. While quashing the CBI’s second FIR, he had allowed it to file an additional charge-sheet. It was he who had transferred another encounter case against Shah from Gujarat to Maharashtra.

It may be unfair to Sathasuvan to draw a link between his judgment in the case involving Shah and his appointment as Governor. But Modi’s offer of governorship to him and erection of hurdles on Joseph’s path are liable to be read as messages about possible rewards and punishments.

The collegium recently dropped its recommendation for the appointment of three advocates as judges, two at Allahabad High Court and one at the Chhattisgarh High Court, after the Centre returned the files twice drawing attention to certain complaints about the individuals concerned. It acknowledged that it was revising the earlier decision in the light of fresh inputs. Clearly the collegium system is not the virtuous thing it is supposed to be. -- Gulf Today, Sharjah, August 7, 2018.